Leninism Unbound?: The U.S. Celebrates "Anti-Communism Week 2025" [2-8 November]: A Reverie on President Trump's Proclamation

 

Pix credit here

 The United States observes "Anti-Communism Week" this week. To that end, President Trump has issued a Proclamation: Anti-Communism Week, 2025 (7 November) the text of which follows below. The Proclamation ought not to be dismissed lightly. There were other commemorations at the state level (eg, Governor DeSantis (Fla) Victims of Communism Day).

Proclamation: Anti-Communism Week, 2025 contains within it a substantial and profound insight into the ways in which "Communism" is understood within at least one portion of the American elite, and with that, the way in which this understanding can then be effectively projected to define and discipline the terrains of solidarity enhancing debates within liberal democracy. Here one does not inhabit the realms of theoretical insight or of a strong alignment between words and their meanings beyond that for which they are constructed in the popular imagination. That popular imagination, in turn, and in many places, might have drifted into new understandings that become the means of encasing ideas, fears, and incarnations of those "things" which distinguish the community of believers from non-believers, and more importantly, as a means of measuring and identifying apostasy and heresy among the community of believers. It is to that extent, and within that contextual framework, that one might useful read and consider carefully the language of the Proclamation, not just for what it says, but for what it intends to mean. At the same time, the Proclamation creates a curious veiling of Leninism as a normative system of operational structuring, within and beneath the normative premises of the political economic model in whose service one can write a number of histories of "Communism" from the late 19th to the 21st centuries. That veiling, in turn, creates a space within within liberal democratic and markets Leninism  (and certainly its sensibilities) may be applied within the normative contexts of liberal democracy while distancing those practices (managerialism for example) from the oppositions, threats and challenges of incompatible and oppositional normative systems. That produces the fundamental contradiction that the Proclamation both alludes to and avoids--how does one combat oppositional systems and their normative frameworks, how does one create the means to measure taboo deviation (heresy) or apostasy (systemic rejection beyond the name of the thing rejected), how does one engage in those actions (a key thrust of the Proclamation) without making it impossible to adopt (and adapt) its attached methodological normative structures (perhaps usefully shorthanded as vanguardism) to the manifestation and development of liberal democracy itself. That is, is it possible to recognize Leninism as a critical element of the critique of the destructive element in "communism" without at the same time foreclosing the instrumentalization of Leninist sensibilities and techniques in the service of liberal democratic institutions and norms?

1. Destructive ideologies. Communism, or rather what is ascribed to its manifestation by those purporting to be "Communists" as they established dictatorships of the proletariat and then reconstituted them as the apparatus through which they would remake the world in their own image. 

Across continents and generations, communism has wrought devastation upon nations and souls.  More than 100 million lives have been taken by regimes that sought to erase faith, suppress freedom, and destroy prosperity earned through hard work, violating the God-given rights and dignity of those they oppressed. (Anti-Communism Week, 2025 )

In the process, Communism bears the burdens of its Leninist application. And by shifting the "blame" for the implementation of destruction in the name of an ideological goal it both excuses and masks the central role of Leninism, rather than the construct "Communism" in the anthologies of the 20th century.  Freed of its connection to destruct, though very much its architect (both ideological and as an operationalizing ideology constructing possibilities for progressing along a socialist path toward a "Communist" society, Leninism could be transposed into any political ideology as an ideology of management and control, as opposed to a means of managing a realization of communism in a society far from ready for it, and thus  ready for Leninist management (guidance and leadership). 

To be clear, Communism might be usefully understood as a very specific way of seeing the world and social organization, It starts from a series of premises built around the (1) nature and exploitation of productive forces (capital) (2) around which human society is both inevitably formed (and understood), and (3) through which in the course of an inevitable progression of human development, enhanced and accelerated by tech innovation (the industrial revolution in the 19th century was the available baseline) (4) that will produce the conditions within which equality (the end of class distinctions and the need for welfare to be driven by relations between people and capital) one in which people are all workers and work is de-centered as the way in which social organization is understood and elaborated. There are lots of lacunae, of course, and people have been arguing about them for some time. Among these are the invisibility of difference other than class, and more importantly, the extent that violence driven by the identified leading forces of social progress (eg, the "workers of the world;" whatever that means and it means different things to different groups at different times).

Pix credit here

But Communism is meant to describe a quite specific lebenswelt (lifeworld), a means of understanding the premises around which human reality can be rationalized, and then taking those premises and applying them in a linear sequential time line (like block chain, but here constructed out of stages of historical development) that points to an "ends." Leninism, on the other hand, might be understood as providing the way in which one can create normative structures for producing "right" pathways for the "best" way of realizing "Communism" and for policing and protecting those determinations.  Those normative structures do not deal with the normative premises of "Communism" as such, but rather to the value and justification for the means of realizing communism.  When attached to Communism (now perhaps better or at least more commonly labelled Marxism), Leninism might be understood to be built on the fundamental premises that any society, even one that is not yet ready to progress can be lead and guided toward a faster and more efficient realization of its inevitable end goal through the leadership and guidance  of the vanguard of social forces whose consciousness (and commitment) are already developed farther along the path toward the goal (in this case the establishment of a communist society).  To those ends, the means, virtually any means, may be understood (or the negative impacts of which may be valued or judged)) as the (individual) costs of the efficient and properly directed apparatus of transformation toward the perfection of alignment between society and the normative vision of itself which gives (in its own mind at least) legitimacy and authority to a Leninist "party" ad the justification of the employment of its means. From Soviet Marxism, one then encounters the progression (everything is always a progression) from professional revolutionaries to revolutionaries in power, to the overseers of an apparatus that both defines the normative regulatory path for society and directs people along it. 

Pix credit here

Reconsidered in this way one understands both the power of labeling the destruction as "Communism" (one attacks two distinct ideological bird with one stone) and also the way it misdirects that labeling, one that permits Leninism--re-imagined for any ideological political-economic system--to take hold anywhere.  More specifically, one might be forgiven for rethinking the operative first part of the Proclamation spoke to  the view that, in the name of communism, socialist Leninist parties have invoked the imperatives of necessary and inevitable change to justify a century or more of actions that are horrifying to those who claim solidarity with other political-economic models.  For liberal democracy, of course, both the normative framework and the ideology of its mechanics are to be condemned, and thus condemned, amalgamated into a single "thing". 

And that is both the promise and tragedy of and embedded in Leninism. It is both a means towards an ends and an ends in itself in terms of the normative basis of its own organization, purpose, means, and methods. Its normative schema  can be applied to any ideological project or collective enterprise--the fundamental operative premise that any system can be perfected through the leadership and guidance of an organized collective, a "brain trust," an "elite", a social, intellectual, or other group, that is dedicated to whatever objective around which it exists.  Its two critical elements have seeped into many forms of governance well beyond the "Communist universe"though it has been central to that development since 1917. The first  is that all social collectives have an ultimate ideal form and purpose that must be realized; second that this realization can be more efficiently attained or accelerated where a n organized group can take the lead and manage the process of progress.  

2. The Ruination of and that is "Communism." The Anti-Communism Week, 2025 Proclamation notes 

For more than a century, communism has brought nothing but ruin.  Wherever it spreads, it silences dissent, punishes beliefs, and demands that generations kneel before the power of the state instead of standing for freedom.  Its story is written in blood and sorrow, a grim reminder that communism is nothing more than another word for servitude. (Anti-Communism Week, 2025 Proclamation)

Pic credit here

What, then, has brought ruin? The question becomes more complicated.  From the perspective of liberal democracy and its fundamental norms, the alignment between the ultimate goals of Marxism, and the means used to accelerate fulfillment of those goals (expressed on and through their impacts on the bodies of individuals),  is impossible to break. 

Communism (or Marxism) is a conceptual challenge for liberal democracy (and with it, its approach to the relationship between people and productive forces). The two may aspire to similar goals, but their cognitive frameworks are incompatible, especially with respect to the nature and role of the individual and the purpose of social organization. That is important, and indeed central to competition among distinct visions for organizing and valuing political frameworks--and thus the point of that paragraph. 

Leninism, on the other hand, is an operational threat.  That operational threat emerges from the autonomous normative  structures of Leninism, one that permits the Leninist cognitive  model to be transposed virtually anywhere social collectives seek to "perfect" or at least engage in conversations about the "best" ways (there are no best ways only choices that produce benefits within a context of risk, risk mitigation, and threat to systemic integrity and solidarity) to manage their organizational and conceptual choices.  

3.  From "Communism" (Marxist-Leninism) to Heresy to Leninism Unbound. That distinction and that understanding produces the bridge to what may be the critical paragraph of the Proclamation:   

New voices now repeat old lies, cloaking them in the language of “social justice” and “democratic socialism,” yet their message remains the same:  give up your freedom, place your trust in the power of the government, and trade the promise of prosperity for the empty comfort of control.  America rejects this evil doctrine.  We remain a Nation founded on the eternal truth that liberty and opportunity are the birthrights of every person, and that no ideology, whether foreign or domestic, can extinguish them. (Anti-Communism Week, 2025 Proclamation).

This is where the Proclamation becomes interesting.  One is not focused here on "Communism" as such, though that has become the avatar within which it is possible to speak about Leninism (again because in the American imaginary the terms are either indistinguishable or the idea is that one is impossible without the other).  

Pix credit here

The Leninist impulse, the vocation of Lenin's "professional revolutionaries" (however one defines revolution from historical stage of development to another, and therefore however one can define revolutionary), is necessarily always looking for a cause through which it may develop itself within a meta-normative context (though in the original Lenin assumed that mass movements would produce from out of their own ranks their own vanguards to who, as professional revolutionaries, leadership would be delegated (What is to be Done,§ 4.2)). Here, the Proclamation uses old tropes (the "Red Scare" fears of 1919-23 and the early 1950s) to project onto contemporary spaces.  Here the Proclamation suggests, those new foundations of revolutionary agitation can be embedded within their own normative avatars, “social justice” and “democratic socialism," the last a reference to the recent victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York City (discussed HERE). That is neither unexpected nor new. And again, that conjoins what some might be tempted to aggregate as the "Marxist" normative impulse, with its Leninist operational principles, making them indistinguishable and suggesting that the synergies of that melding augments the horrors of its product. 

The objection, of course, is to both. Both suggest a core orienting set of social collective premises that, to put it politely, challenges the core orienting premises of both liberal democracy of as a political ideology and markets as its individual autonomy affirming transactional element. And both are vanguardist (and thus inviting a Leninist solution to the problem of its implementation) in the sense that they require substantial "consciousness raising and mandatory measures to ensure that the population "grows into" the new social "basic line."

This reasoning suggests two quite interesting ideas (perhaps just ideas not rising even to the level of insight). The first is an oldie but goodie: that external challenges always have a way of either strengthening or corrupting the articulation and understanding of the core premises from out of which it is possible both to develop the conceptual cage of a reality ordering system (through the second order generation and application of its derivative values). That dialectical process is essential for the disciplining of a political-economic model within its own ordering cages. That applies with equal force to liberal democratic (market) systems as it does to Marxist-Leninist systems. To those ends it is always necessary to develop the means (and the measure) for  distinguishing between "within the system" debates and heresy.  And then also to distinguish between heresy (the changing of elements of the normative cage) and apostasy (the abandonment of that cognitive universe in favor of another. The Trump Administration views both "social justice" and "socialist democracy" as heretical within the umbrella of liberal democracy, and implies that their vanguardism (Leninism) pushes them not just into apostasy but recasts them as the professional revolutionaries that are meant to be the death of the system itself. 

The second may be the more interesting:  it is that, even assuming that "social justice" and "democratic socialism" are not part of some sort of revived "Communist International" in modern form, Leninism itself can be a force in its own right, one that might be threatening when tied to opposing normative systems, but one that may be compatible within the operational modalities of liberal democracy and its markets. This goes beyond the usual discussions in intellectual circles between liberal democratic representative democracy and co-called Marxist vanguard democracy (eg here). It goes to the essence of "brain trust" or "expert" governance--the governance, for example of technocrats as clusters of expert vanguards, on the one hand, and the adoption by these elites of the techniques and normative sensibilities of Leninist professional revolutionaries on the other (consider here; its appeal to political conservatives here). In this sense techno-democracy (and its compliance based modalities of management) might be understood as a form of techno-Leninism; but so can the imposition of mandatory consciousness raising sensibilities of certain social justice approaches (cf., here). More radically, one wonders whether the Leninist impulse can be embedded more generally within the normative foundational premises of liberal democracy (my earlier reflections here: 

Pix credit here

Liberal Democratic Leninism in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Tech Driven Social Progress: Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless Frontiers Retreat and "The Golden Age of American Innovation"). More radically still, the embedding of some of the core norm-techniques of Leninism within private life--sometimes euphemistically labelled mangerialism, and adopting variations of democratic centralism within a hierarchically arranged vanguardist mileu focusing on objectives based leadership (consider eg here, and in its germinate contemporary form in The Managerial Revolution (1941)). These might suggest that the future of capitalism cannot escape some form or another of Leninism; perhaps neither can liberal democracy. And there is the magic of this Proclamation--one continues to focus on normative oppositions; instruments to realize these normative idealized end points, however, including the measure against which they may operate on a social collective and its body politic, can vary with the circumstance. 

 And so the fundamental question that describing the tragedy that was Marxist-Leninism's tragic century implies but avoids answering. Leninism, and its vaguer forms of vanguardism, are constructed within a normative structure that knows no limits in the service of the ideology of which they are an instrument except this: in that service the only limitation is fidelity to that ideology's ideals and objectives; just how ruthless can such an instrumental system be permitted to be in that role? History suggests one answer; perhaps there are others. 

 

Greater China Legal History Seminar Series – ‘Sir George Staunton’s 1810 Translation of the Qing Penal Code’ by Prof. James St. André

 

 Delighted to pass along this announcement for a quite interesting seminar, with thanks to Lutz-Christian Wollff for bringing it to my attention:

Sir George Staunton’s translation of the Qing legal code, entitled Ta Tsing Leu Lee, published in 1810, stands as a curious early artifact of Chinese-English translation for several reasons: a massive undertaking, it was prepared by a hereditary aristocrat with no formal legal training at a time when the number of direct translations from Chinese could be counted on one hand and next to nothing was known of China’s legal system. In this presentation I will attempt to explain why he attempted this amazing feat, what he accomplished and what his contemporaries thought of it, and fit his translation into the contemporary discourse on both law in Great Britain and the nascent field of sinology.

Using a variety of primary sources including his journals and letters home to family while based in Canton, I argue that Staunton’s translation can and should be read as a work which was meant to persuade its readers that the Chinese had a concept of justice, and that his end was accomplished by a variety of choices in the process of translating, editing, annotating and publishing the work. Although modern scholars now see his work as too free, it is precisely in the freedom which Staunton takes with the text that he accomplishes his aims. The reception of the translation as reflected in contemporary reviews, however, reveals that Staunton was not successful at convincing readers to accept his interpretation of what the code meant, despite the fact that they accepted his translation as accurate, a rather neat irony that speaks to the question of expert knowledge and its interpretation even today.

About the Speaker:

James St. André is Professor and Head of the Department of Translation at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he teaches literary translation, translation history, translation theory, and research methodology. He is also the Director of the Centre for Translation Technology. Recent publications include Conceptualising China Through Translation (Manchester University Press 2023) “Implications of Computer Code Translation for Translation Studies” (2023), and “The Translator as Cultural Ambassador: The Case of Lin Yutang.” (2023). Works relating to law and legal translation include “ ‘But do they have a notion of Justice?’ Staunton’s 1810 Translation of the Great Qing Code” (2004), “Reading Court Cases from the Song and the Ming: Fact and Fiction, Law and Literature” (2007) and “ ‘He “catch no ball” leh!’: Globalization Versus Localization in the Singaporean Translation Market” (2006), which includes a section on legal interpreting in Singapore.

Register here to attend the seminar on or before 20 November 2025, 5:00pm (HKT).

Linda Wood Reporting From the Eleventh session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights

 

Pix Credit here

 

The eleventh session of the OEIGWG took place from 20 to 24 October 2025 in room XVI of the Palais des Nations. Recordings of the discussions are available on UN Web TV. These sessions have been a marvelous experience in both the brilliance and tragedy of these sorts of exercises at a time of substantial change.  In some respects the Treaty effort represents the accumulation of  an extraordinary amount of good intentions and positive moral reasoning. It does represent a plausible application of the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, though not the only one. Yet that choice is the issue; it suggests the fulfillment of a political desire that extends back to the 1970s, combining  the essence of the now ancient New International Economic Order with the techno-bureaucratic legalism of the failed Norms project  the taste for which might have reached its zenith just as COVID augured in a new age. But perhaps most tragic is the embrace of a retro approach that both celebrates a state system that is otherwise ideologically problematic onto which is delegated  the duty to fulfill international legal obligations all the while rejecting the plausibility of private law and markets as a space for the generation of useful collective action. And of course the real tragedy is  the quite naive view--taken as something like holy writ--the the best object for the regulation of system of economic production, and of the nexus of relationships within which they are organized, through a focus on one, but not all of its components. The regulation of multinational enterprises has always most usefully served a a metaphor, or better put as the avatar representing a complex polycentric system of organizing economic activity; it is to the regulation of that system and its relationships, rather than of one of the objects  through which that system acquires its form and power, that will will eventually have to confront if what one wants to do is to privilege human rights (however defined) as a factor in the production of human undertakings. Perhaps it is time to stop focusing on avatars and instead confront what the avatar has come to represent. 

But that is politics, a politics that, like other political projects before it, will be tested in the fires of negotiation of a final treaty text and then in the trench warfare of implementation within a system in which States can be compelled to a far less extent than the enterprises that are the object of all of this drafting.

 And thus back to the work of the OEIGWG, now starting its second decade of work. These OEIGWG treaty drafting sessions have been quite marvelously reported by Linda Wood, who has been doing a remarkable job of both engaging with and chronicling this quite interesting process (see the most recent here, here and here). So I am again delighted to pass along this marvelous reporting from Linda Wood

It was an interesting and busy week at the 11th session of the LBI.
There were new States that attended and presented for the first time.
The draft report on the eleventh session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights is found here.
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/igwg-transcorp/session11/igwg-11th-report.pdf
The OEIGWG Chair-Rapporteur 2026 Roadmap for the implementation of HRC Decision 56/116, including the intersessional thematic consultations towards the 12th session is here;
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/igwg-transcorp/session11/igwg-11th-proposed-2026-roadmap.pdf
The updated draft legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with States updated texts on Articles 12-24.
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/igwg-transcorp/session11/igwg-11th-textual-proposals-lbi.pdf
The paper received 14 October 2025, Articles 4-11, was discussed at the LBI. However, States only gave general comments and wanted more time to consider this paper. It was agreed that all States and non-State stakeholders can make submissions by 1 February 2026. The contributions on the thirteen Chair-Rapporteur’s suggested redrafting of selected provisions of Articles 4 to 11, will be posted on the working group’s website.
* * * 
The first intersessional thematic consultation, to be held in February 2026, will be focused on: Articles 12 to 24 of the Updated draft legally binding instrument, including on the textual proposals submitted by States during the eleventh session.
The second intersessional thematic consultation, to be held in April 2026, will be focused on: Article 1 (Definitions), 2 (Statement of purpose) and Preamble.
The third intersessional thematic consultation, to be held in June 2026, will be focused on: Art. 3 (Scope) and a general overview of the text and the way forward.
Building E at the Palais des Nations is undergoing renovations as part of the Strategic Heritage Plan (SHP). The usual rooms were not available. There are also the ongoing funding issues.
The room used for the 11th session of the OEIGWG was smaller and did not have the same capacity as the 10th session, in 2024. The numbers of people who wanted to attend, were limited and changes were made to the registration process. This resulted in some who wanted to attend, being unable to.
The joint statement on behalf of Change The Law Limited and The Responsible Contracting Project for 16.1., Implementation, was presented.
Links to recordings;
1st Meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1u/k1ulns1or9
2nd Meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k1kb5l3uis
3rd meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1b/k1baa85czq
4th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1z/k1zspjijyk
5th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1b/k1bo9mov3p
6th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k14/k14bssvpqx
7th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1n/k1nnub555j
8th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k19/k19fenjwhb
Meeting 24 October 2025 with states only, there is no recording available.
9th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1s/k1s5u0806u
As previously mentioned, I believe some states require the additional support that an NGO can help with. Please contact your Mission in Geneva to see if you can assist.

Links to the documents on the OEIGWG website follow below along with the I have attached the Chair Rapporteurs suggested redrafting of selected provisions (arts. 4 to 11) of the updated draft legally binding instrument. 

Ready for Pre-Ordering: "Legal Imaginaries of Crisis and Fear Dark Constitutionalism" (Martin Belov, ed., Routledge 2026)

 

 

I am delighted to pass along the announcement of the publication of a set f brilliant essays in Legal Imaginaries of Crisis and Fear: Dark Constitutionalism (Martin Belov, ed., Routledge 2026). In its website the work is described as follows:

This book explores the epistemological, semiotic, semantic, and heuristic dimensions of the dark emotions in constitutional and international law. We are living in times of crisis and emergency where negative emotions and dark feelings are abundant. As these have come to form the intellectual and socio-legal context for the performance of constitutional and international law, this book explores their place – especially the politics of fear, but also anger, hate, despair, and crisis – in our current constitutional polycrisis. Focusing on this ‘dark constitutionalism’, the book draws together an international and interdisciplinary range of scholars to consider the place of emotive semiotics in collective meaning making, the constitutional politics of emotions, and emotional approaches to global challenges in a time of crisis, emergency, and transition. The book thereby develops a compelling analysis of the use of negative emotions in the shaping of contemporary constitutional imaginaries, and with it a novel account of the rise of dark constitutionalism. This book will appeal to researchers and scholars working in the areas of legal theory, legal philosophy, constitutional law, international law, and socio-legal studies.

 The Table of Contents follows below. 

The draft of my contribution, Revolutionary Constitutions and their Constitutionalism: The Internalisation of Fear as Process and the Performance of Crisis in the Service of Stability, may be accessed HERE. The PPT of my presentation of that contribution may be accessed HERE. The abstract of the contribution also follows below. 

Reflections on the Victory Speech of Mayor Elect Mamdani; The Politics of Virtual Archetypes, of Avatars and Icons, Becomes Better Defined

 

Pix credit here

I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few. New York, tonight you have delivered. A mandate for change. ​​A mandate for a new kind of politics. A mandate for a city we can afford. And a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that. (Transcript of Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Speech)

 

Pix credit New York Times

The man, Zohran Mamdani was elected to the mayorship of New York City on 3 November 2025.  He delivered a speech to celebrate his victory. The lines above perhaps represent the most revealing element of a speech that was meant, as all political speeches are meant to do, to reveal the avatar and icon that are now no longer contained within the human person, but which have now become the form of humanity only barely contained within the body of a person (Avatars, Icons, and Adversaries--Full Text of Vice President's Harris's Remarks at the Democratic National Convention). In the process, the transformation of the human into an idea defined within the confines of the virtual space of the avatar  that serves as a conduit to the virtual as icon, also invites an equally compelling transformation of the physicality of the spaces over which that avatar-icon (in human form) has a measure of authority into a virtual reality of itself, a representation of the idea of itself that is encased in physical form but that is itself the avatar of a signification that melds together all of its parts into a singular object--one form, one will, one purpose,one idea ("And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together.") (Transcript of Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Speech).  Yet there is ego in avatar, and there is a structure to the dialectic routing for which ikons serve as doorway. Mayor elect Mamdani, like Kamala Harris last year, and following a pattern now deeply embedded in culture, constructs his avatar from out of privileged shards of personal history, which are then fused into an identity that assumes a form useful as icon as a function of the inherent ideas embedded in and thorough the representations of avatar. 

Pix credit here (Avatar the Last Airbender)

This reframing might then be useful in understanding the text of the victory speech that Mayor elect Mamdani projected out to the idea, the significance, of the masses in dialectics with which engagement is inevitable. And in this case, that engagement was undertaken in the shadow of another avatar-icon, the current sitting President of the United States ("After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power." (Transcript of Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Speech).). What is signified now, what produces the cognitive cages within with a virtual dialectics may  be undertaken, has escaped the human and encased  itself within the idea of itself--an idea that is itself the incarnation of the premises and understanding of the reality of things that in virtual spaces acquire not just value but produces judgment in the virtual with consequences over the bodies and spaces that house these avatars.  One no longer speaks about Mayor elect Mamdani the man, or President Trump, the man, or New Yok, the city, or its inhabitants, as humans. One speaks now only to the ideas and reality ordering spaces that is housed (for the moment) in the body of Mayor elect Mamdani, and President Trump, and the idea of the City of New York as well as that organism that represents the collectivity of the humanity of New York as a singularity, the body of which resides now within the avatar of the mayor elect. 

 

Pix credit here

Once framed in this way, and beyond the usual bromides that are required textual performances within the expectations built into victory speeches of this sort at this stage of the historical development of the U.S., engagement with Mayor Elect Mamdani's  speech given in celebration of his electoral victory becomes a richer experience. One is interested, for this purpose, not in the specific manifestation of the politics of the Mayor elect (though that will be the language and meaning-verse through which his dialectics with opposing political avatars will be undertaken), but in the underlying transformation of the forms and fundamental structures through which politics is rationalized. That transformation suggests a melding, in a modern version of its medieval forms, of the physical bodies of representatives with the idea of the thing they represent. They are not in that sense and in this Republic, leaders, but rather representatives--something that our avatars sometimes forget in the process of their transformation from human to something greater in the virtual spaces of ideas and signification. In the process, one encounters a move toward a politics that is no longer human. The idea of the human--as a singularity and more importantly as a collective object, now drives politics in ways that technology has made possible. It is from that cognitive foundation that one can, without  more, humanize Mario Cuomo (the opening quote) and at the same time reduce that humanity to something that no longer has significance in the virtual space that matters. In the holographic representation of the physical, the physical itself becomes a secondary object--one driven by its virtual self--both digitized and digitalized, operating within the parameters not of human expectations but of the coding inherent in the triumph of cognitive systems that then shape not just the virtual presentations of these political objects, but also, and only indirectly related,  the physical spaces in which they are to be manifested.  

 

It in in these spaces that the idea of Mayer Elect Mamdani will confront the idea of President Trump within the virtual landscapes of New York City, and perhaps beyond. The full text of Mayor Mamdani's speech (courtesy of the New York Times) follows below. It is from that text that one acquires a better sense not just of the well understood ideology that serves to frame the reality within which the incoming administration will function (defined as a variant of American "democratic socialism" the nuances of which are worth extracting), but also the way that this ideology is framed by the construction of identity avatar into which humans now pour themselves and in the process become something different, something virtual--a signification of their "selves" only partly represented by their bodies that are both expressions of that ideology and its consequence, and that shape both--in virtual space. 

 

 

On the Death of Richard (Dick) Bruce Cheney (January 30, 1941 – November 3, 2025)

Pix credit here

 

 

Richard (Dick) Bruce Cheney, who, among the many actions, occupations, and activities that marked the outward appearance of his life, served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush, died on 3 November 2025. 

There may be a temptation to remember the man that was Mr. Cheney through the prism of those actions and life events for which his was most famous, reducing his life to those instants when he achieved great heights in political life and in service, as he saw it, to the Republic (eg here).  I prefer to remember the man at that gloriously fecund moment of his life when he set himself on a personal and public path the end of which was marked on 3 November 2025. And, perhaps, there is no better measure of that moment that when the future vice president of the Republic served as vice president of the C Club of Casper College which he attended in 1963 (for a semester, having attended Yale University for several semesters before then and the University of Wyoming afterward).  Perambulations through youth ought not to invite judgment other than that they tend to set the cognitive parameters against which a person sometimes understand and measure themselves. It is not until the end of a life's path, though, that one may look at on those moments that form the person, moments that may well augur the future course for which a younger person may be unknowingly preparing. It is in contemplation of those vagaries of the stuff that forms the person, and the wonder with which a life's course meanders from birth to death, that magical combination of circumstances and active engagement of a life force within them, that one remembers the man, celebrates the life, and draws from it what lessons one can.

Perhaps there is no better measure of the man, Richard (Dick) Cheney, than in the way he remembered a colleague, former President Gerald Ford, in remarks delivered at the former President's state funeral  in December 2006. 

Nothing was left unsaid, and at the end of his days, Gerald Ford knew how much he meant to us and to his country. He was given length of years, and many times in his company we paid our tributes and said our thanks. We were proud to call him our leader, grateful to know him as a man. We told him these things, and there is comfort in knowing that. Still, it is an ending. And what is left now is to say goodbye.

That was tribute enough for the former President; and it is tribute enough for the person who delivered them in his own time.  And so in memory of both, and to mark the passing of the former vice president  I include below the full text of the "Vice President's Remarks at the State Funeral of Former President Gerald R. Ford" (30 December 2006) which in offering a tribute to the former President also permitted a look at the spirit of character of the man who gave the remarks. 

Pix credit here

 

 

Reflections on 石英, 智能社会”研究三题 【构建中国哲学社会科学自主知识体系】[ Shi Ying, Three Research Topics on "Intelligent Society" (Constructing an Independent Knowledge System for Chinese Philosophy and Social Sciences)]; 国务院关于深入实施“人工智能+” [Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Implementation of the "Artificial Intelligence+" Action; ]; and 以“人工智能+”开启中国特色智能化发展新篇章; [Opening a New Chapter in China's Intelligent Development with "Artificial Intelligence+" (High-Tech Department NDRC]

 

Pix Credit here

The term "artificial intelligence" has acquired a protean quality--it is at once fetish, invocation, curse, and shorthand for a range of hoped for or feared transformation not just in social relations in the physical world, but for the transformation of the mechanics of ordering reality through which social relations may be conceived and manifested.  All political and normative organs, especially those created to express and manage human social relations in accordance with whatever cognitive model they mean to manifest, believe that, having created artificial intelligence in their own image, they can, with nothing more than the flip of a textual legal-institutional switch, bend that construct to its will and enslave to as an instrument of to do with as they wish. 

An yet that fundamental premise--that humanity is at the center of all of its creations, and thus centered in control-- is only the beginning rather than the end point of analysis. That is because while humans share this notion of humanity at the center of things, human collectives express this, construct its meaning and realize that meaning through the collective organs that they establish for that purpose, in vastly different ways. Those "ways" in turn, are an expression of quite distinct ordering premises bound up in ideology--the political-economic models through which human collectives rationalize the world around them (in normative and utilitarian ways). It is the materialization of that rationality, bounded in turn on the generative human conceit, that produce the structures of hopes, fears, desires, approaches and solutions that are proffered up within a spectrum of "good" to "bad", vales that themselves reflect both the fundamental conceit and their specific rationalizing premises built into collective orders (eg here). 

And so it is with that most peculiar creation of humanity, constructed out  of generative conceit in our own image--generative intelligence and its ecologies of tech enhanced computation.  Three of the most interesting ordering regimens to have emerged both reflect and further refine three of the most significant conceptual cages for human cognitive collective building--(1) liberal democratic ordering; (2) Marxist-Leninist ordering; and (3) anarchist-fractured autonomous ordering. The first obsesses about risk impacting behaviors that adversely affects rights holders and the self-actualization of individuals organized as identity collectives. If the first em,beds risk aversion as the primary principle of governance the second embraces risk taking as the organization of collectives around markets the protection of the integrity of which provides the only basis for managing behaviors. The third starts form the opposite end of the spectrum--the collective rather than the individual--adds a purpose to collectivization (the realization of a communist society)and devotes its primary energy to the development necessary to direct all human activity towards the deployment of productive forces along a Socialist path toward its communist goal. If the first fears risk, the second embraces it, and the third embeds risk within a more complicated balancing in which risk is not the center but a factor in its analytics of development (in the Chinese sense--modernization). 

Pix credit here

The first has settled on a risk centered rationalization of the conceptual spaces for the generation, creation, development, interconnection and autonomy and autonomy of tech enhanced autonomous decision making and generative intelligence; and not just tech (eg here). Liberal democratic collective spaces like to have things done for them, but they also like to see themselves in control, especially of those who serve them, whether these servants take physical or virtual form. In the process the generative ordering of collectivity has become risk aversion. and they have become absurdly risk averse. That has become the principal ordering premise of the organization and operation of the entirety of liberal democratic society.  One grounds its ordering on the elaboration of rights, spaces, behaviors, identities the condition and forms of which must be preserved at virtually all costs.  Regulation, and systems, are all a function of the prevention, mitigation, and remediation of adverse impacts on these behaviors, identities, conditions and autonomous. Politics revolves around the generation of those things  that are the objects of impacts analysis; and the state (as well as non-state sectors) may operate only as a function of avoiding negative impact. Politics, then, becomes a function of defining categories of things, behaviors, conditions, etc. the impacts of which become the core of regulatory supervision. And those behaviors, conditions, expectation, innovation that produce negative impact (as these conditions and effects are also measured, itself another critical element of norm and technical-standards politics) may be regulated or suppressed (unless that is inconvenient, of course; eg here).  That, in essence, is the spirit of instruments like the EU AI Act, and various variations within the liberal democratic sphere. The EU and UN elites have embraced this approach with vigor that resembles in some respects the zealotry of those who have "found" religion (eg here, here, here here, here, here). It was a sensibility that the Biden Administration also shared (here).

Pix credit here

The second takes liberal democratic spaces, as well as those spaces uncomfortable with the warm embrace of liberal democratic ordering projected form out of developed States in anther direction. This approach to generative and tech enhanced innovation, use, and projection, is grounded on the protection of autonomous decision making rather than on collective risk management. It tends to be aligned with markets driven collective formation and operation, one in which the managerial role of the State recedes before the aggregated iterative activities of autonomous individuals pursuing their own agendas, bumping up against each other, and in the aggregate producing inductive, a sense of the collective expectations, behaviors, values, and protections of the market spaces within which such autonomy is protected and operates. Here markets rather than the State take pride of place--the State itself can be reconstructed as the aggregation of a layered set of operating instructions for the maintenance of the good order of market spaces and the protection of its principles--transparency, protection of rights in property and against fraud and deception, and fairness as a collective principle. This is a space in which autonomous and generative intelligence may be developed and deployed in an environment in which producers may assess, and bear the risks of whatever it is they develop. It is a system that can operate only where the State can tax these activities enough to maintain capacity to police and operate organs in which people may resolve disputes in ways that affirm collective expectations, and one that can discipline behaviors that threaten the integrity of this iterative, inductive collectivity. It is also one in which the role can be undertaken not just be the State but by non-State actors: indigenous communities, like minded collectives, and the like. The Americans tend to  long for  this position  as an ideal but tend to practice something like a markets Leninism (eg, here, here, here, here, here, here).

Pix credit here

The third, and for my purpose today the most interesting variation is presented by the engagement of Marxist-Leninist cognitive cages with tech based and generative intelligence. Both Marxist-Leninist and liberal democratic cognitive cages center the State as the virtual personification (incarnation really) of the people whose collective constitution is necessarily privileged over the individual, to which quite different spectra of behaviors may be tolerated (and regulated in different ways). Liberal democracy encourages a managed individual self-actualization; Marxist-Leninist States encourage collective actualization through which individual self-actualization may be realized. At the center of the engagement of Marxist-Leninism with tech enhanced analytics and decision making, as well as with generative intelligence, is the fundamental principle of development. Socialist modernization is the one key principle, and the one core element, of the integrity of the system and the fiduciary obligation of the vanguard of social forces organized as a Communist Party through which the masses may be brought forward from their less developed state to one in which it is possible to combine both material wealth and cultural readiness, for the establishment of something like a classical communist state of being. Tech and AI, then, are productive forces, all productive forces are pwned by the State, the use and development of which is a central concern for the exercise of leadership and guidance by the Communist Party vanguard in accordance with core principles of Socialist democracy (Whole process people's democracy in China). That gives tech based and AI generative system both a strong political dimension (the innovation of which is a key element for Socialist modernization grounded in high quality production) and a methodological one (tech and AI as a necessary element of modernization the risks of which must be understood as a function of the benefits for collective modernization). Risk, then, is a secondary element to the development of high quality production, and high quality production is valued as a function of its contribution of modernization as that may be assessed  as against the goals of forward movement along the Socialist Path that shapes both production and the cultural development of the human (and collective humanity) preparing it for successful transitioning to Communist social organization. (see, eg here, here, here, here, here, here).

All of these streams of understanding in Marxist-Leninist engagement with tech and AI are evident in three documents that may be worthwhile to read. The is first, 石英, 智能社会”研究三题 【构建中国哲学社会科学自主知识体系】[ Shi Ying, Three Research Topics on "Intelligent Society" (Constructing an Independent Knowledge System for Chinese Philosophy and Social Sciences)]. It focuses on a Socialist engagement with the thinking about AI and tech- based production from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. That engagement, in turn, may be better understood by reference to two official pronouncements: The first is 国务院关于深入实施“人工智能+”行动的意见 (国发〔2025〕11号= [Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Implementation of the "Artificial Intelligence+" Action; State Council Document No. 11 [2025]]; and the second is 以“人工智能+”开启中国特色智能化发展新篇章; 发布时间：2025/08/26 [Opening a New Chapter in China's Intelligent Development with "Artificial Intelligence+" (Published: 2025/08/26; Source: High-Tech Department National Development Reform Commission].

The State Council Opinions frames the issue for analysis:

In order to deeply implement the "Artificial Intelligence+" action, promote the extensive and in-depth integration of artificial intelligence with all sectors and fields of the economy and society, reshape the paradigm of human production and life, promote a revolutionary leap in productivity and a profound transformation of production relations, and accelerate the formation of a new form of intelligent economy and intelligent society characterized by human-machine collaboration, cross-border integration, and co-creation and sharing, the following opinions are hereby put forward. [为深入实施“人工智能+”行动，推动人工智能与经济社会各行业各领域广泛深度融合，重塑人类生产生活范式，促进生产力革命性跃迁和生产关系深层次变革，加快形成人机协同、跨界融合、共创分享的智能经济和智能社会新形态，现提出如下意见。]

The NDRC essay then situates the State Council Opinion within its operational development in and as modernization of both economic, cultural and human developmental. 

As another strategic deployment by the state to promote technological revolution and industrial integration following "Internet+", the "Opinions" leverages China's three core advantages: a complete industrial system, a large market size, and rich application scenarios. It constructs a spiral development paradigm of "innovation driving application, application promoting innovation," accelerating the full-chain restructuring and deep coupling of artificial intelligence with the real economy, comprehensively stimulating new momentum for industrial transformation, cultivating a new paradigm of intelligent economy, forging a key fulcrum for seizing the commanding heights of global intelligent competition, and building a new pattern of high-quality development driven by new-quality productivity. 作为继“互联网+”之后国家推动技术革命和产业融合的又一战略部署，《意见》立足我国产业体系完备、市场规模庞大、应用场景丰富三大核心优势，构建“创新带应用、应用促创新”的螺旋式发展范式，加速人工智能与实体经济全链重构、深向耦合，全面激发产业变革新动能、培育智能经济新范式，为抢占全球智能化竞争制高点锻造关键支点，构筑新质生产力驱动的高质量发展新格局。

The contrast with liberal democratic and markets driven anarchic systems could not be more starkly revealed. And it doesn't really matter. Each is true to its own cognitive processes and their resulting rationalization of the world within which collectives are organized to manage humans in accordance with their respective logic.  Soon, perhaps, a generative intelligence might do that better than the humans seeking to fulfill the promise of their respective cages of cognition manifested as political-economic ideologies of productive and human forces.  

The text of the three documents,  石英, 智能社会”研究三题 【构建中国哲学社会科学自主知识体系】[ Shi Ying, Three Research Topics on "Intelligent Society" (Constructing an Independent Knowledge System for Chinese Philosophy and Social Sciences)]; 国务院关于深入实施“人工智能+”行动的意见 (国发〔2025〕11号= [Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Implementation of the "Artificial Intelligence+" Action; State Council Document No. 11 [2025]]; and 以“人工智能+”开启中国特色智能化发展新篇章; 发布时间：2025/08/26 [Opening a New Chapter in China's Intelligent Development with "Artificial Intelligence+" (Published: 2025/08/26; Source: High-Tech Department National Development Reform Commission] follow below in the original Chinese and in English translation.

pix credit here

 

Innovation in Warfare Goes Global--Lessons Applied to Sudan

 

 

Pix credit here

The war between rival factions of the Sudanese Arab elite has provided evidence, again, that the techniques and modalities of violent aspects of warfare have neither ideology nor limits--they are instruments the utility of which is a function of desire and objectives by those who use them. In the case of Sudan it appears to be used to eliminate non-Arab Black Africans from contested parts of Sudan. Racial and ethnic cleansing has become the stuff of the ordinary in the wars that have emerged below the triggering points of international (and certainly U.N.) organized outrage. That was again illustrated in the context of the all of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The Wall Street Journal reported that "Sudan’s civil war is taking a jarring turn in Darfur, where an Arab-led militia is now using state-of-the-art drones and execution squads to dominate the region’s Black population. . . . The group behind the violence, the Rapid Support Forces, led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has previously been accused by the U.S. of pursuing a genocide of Darfur’s Black population. Two decades ago, its predecessor was involved in the killing of more than 200,000 people in Darfur." (Nicholas Bariyo, "Sudan Militia, Armed With Drones, Hunts Down Black Population of Darfur," Wall Street Journal 31 October 2025).  Of particular interest was the way in which dual purpose technologies have been used  in the conflict.

The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL, HUMAN SECURITY EMERGENCY: El-Fasher Falls to RSF: Evidence of Mass Killing, 27 October 2025) was a bit more circumspect: "“El-Fasher appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution,” the HRL said." (Yale report finds evidence of RSF mass killings in Sudan’s el-Fasher). Al Jazeera noted "The RSF, which has been fighting Sudan’s military for control of the country, killed at least 1,500 people over the past three days as civilians tried to flee the besieged city, the Sudan Doctors Network said on Wednesday. The group, which tracks the country’s civil war, described the situation as “a true genocide”. (here; "Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye and Jordan have condemned the abuses committed by the RSF in Sudan."). Goobal mass mobilizations, however, do not appear to have emerged either in the first phase years ago nor now.

 

Pix credit here

The U.N, reporting follows below.

 

Revista Española de Empresas y Derechos Humanos Núm. 5 (2025): Nº5 - Octubre 2025 Just Published

 

 

Delighted to pass along information about the publication of the latest volume of  Revista Española de Empresas y Derechos Humanos Núm. 5 (2025): Nº5 - Octubre 2025.

The volume includes some very interest9ng and powerful essays that are well worth reading. The table of contents and links to the essays follow below. The full volume of essays may be accessed HERE.

2025 Absa Africa Financial Markets Index Released

 

I am delighted to pass along the recently released Absa Africa Financial Markets Index. The Absa Africa Financial Markets Index was produced by OMFIF in association with Absa Group Limited. The pRess Release explained:

Progress despite global headwinds

The past 12 months have seen highs and lows around the world. Difficult macroeconomic conditions, compounded by a turbulent trade environment and geopolitical tensions, have created challenges for African economies. As a result, countries in this year’s Absa Africa Financial Markets Index have seen their progress hampered by global headwinds. While a third of countries were able to improve their overall scores, the remaining two-thirds saw their scores fall or remain unchanged. However, this is just the surface story. The detail shows important developments in a number of areas.

The index assesses financial market development across the continent through the lens of transparency, accessibility and openness. Now in its ninth year, it provides a benchmark for market infrastructure and an opportunity for policy-makers to learn from improvements across Africa. With support from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the index covers 29 economies in the region. This equates to approximately 80% of the population and gross domestic product of Africa.

Enter your details on the right to access the report.

The most interesting focus of the findings are on those instruments and actions that reflec6ted the sensibilities and objectives of the international al financial order before 2015. Not that these are either wrongheaded or irrelevant.  It is just that since 2015 and especially in the United States since 2025, the focus of financial instruments and political objectives in both liberal democratic and Marxist Leninist States has shifted primarily toward modernization (by whatever name modernization is utilized--development, stronger national economic integration, sector security and the like). Most useful, in this respect, then, is on the growth of market variation in financial products offered--greater variation suggesting depth of market and a growing consumer taste for differentiated product. Bit the object of all of this is development and development strategies and it is hoped that this might be better focused. In that respect ESG and ESG related products are a great vase in point, one that requires a bit m ore drilling down to the essence of the product offered to get a better sense of what it is that the market considers useful or at least market ready ESG instruments. That is a small quibble in light of the quite useful information digested and presented in the report, one worth considering carefully. 

Key findings:

While many economies faced a decline in reserves adequacy in the 12 months to June 2025, countries that prioritised tackling inefficient foreign exchange regimes fared best.

In total, 18 AFMI economies now offer environmental, social and governance-related or Islamic financial products, providing crucial diversification for both short- and long-term investment.

Despite backtracks on ESG goals globally in the past year, four AFMI countries have issued green bonds for the first time this year, taking the total number to 14.

Expectations for GDP growth rose in 22 countries this year despite the more challenging economic conditions.

 The Table of Contents and the Executive Summary of the Index follows below.