The Agony of Mammon: The Imperial World Economy Explains Itself to the Membership in Davos, Switzerland

by Lewis H. Lapham

Earlier this year some 2,000 of the world's most prominent business and political leaders--among them Bill Gates and the President of Brazil, also George Soros and the Chairman of the Hong Kong and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1859847102
• ISBN13: 9781859847107
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Verso
• Length: 84 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Bill Richardson on Iraq

This book describes the Davos scene in winter. Davos, in case you have not received your invitation yet, is where the elite meet on an annual basis to discuss the mega-issues facing mankind. More precisely, it's where buyers (banks) and sellers (governments) come together to discuss investment possibilities -- risk and reward. That's all fine, and Lapham's description of the event strikes me as reasonably accurate. But here's the reason to look at this slim book. Take a look at the pages wherein Bill Richardson, then the US Secretary to the UN, describes Saddam Hussein and the threat posed. For a minute, forget that you are reading about views expressed during the Clinton Administration. Remarkably consistent argument across Administrations. In Richardson's words, "He's asking to be bombed."

Scathing attack on our anti-democratic rulers

Every winter, some 2000 members of a modern cargo cult make their way to the resort of Davos. They seek, like other supplicants, enlightenment in the high mountains, in their elusive delusive Shangri-La. They confer and network and ruminate, seeking to divine the movements of their inscrutable God. And they search for the seers who will reveal the truth.Who are these modern cultists? Well, they call themselves 'the great and the good'. They certainly preach a great deal of good, for ever propounding the virtues of insecurity and austerity for others, of security and wealth for themselves.Conspicuous amongst them last year were representatives of two of the world's most arrogant Governments. Helmut Kohl was there promoting the euro, telling members that it would be introduced, whether the peoples of Europe liked it or not. And the US Ambassador to the United Nations boasted how he told the UN's members that "we will send the bombers no matter what you decide to do." Coincidentally, Thomas Mann set his great novel The Magic Mountain in Davos. There, his characters lived in states of advanced and terminal ennui, induced by their endless vague ratiocinations, but at least their deliberations did no harm to others: they suffered, but did not inflict suffering on others. These modern cultists suffer the same ennui, induced by their endless seminars, networking and presentations. They have the shared delusion, that capitalism, a system driven by pitiless self-seeking, brings universal benefits. For the system that they worship, now for the first time imposed virtually worldwide, is at once plunged into near universal decline. Living standards fall, and unemployment rises, across the globe. Wars and social disintegration spread.This witty book beautifully deflates the pretensions of these characters. All their clumsy deliberations cannot hide the fact that their preferred solution, unfettered capitalism, is the problem; the problem they abhor, socialism, is the solution.

Armchair economics at its best!

Imagine Britain's Charles Handy a master chef or William Greider a Picasso painter and you approach the sensual pleasure of reading Lewis Lapham on world economics, especially a meeting such as Davos.Lapham's "The Agony of Mammon: The Imperial Global Economy Explains Itself to the Membership in Davos, Switzerland" is an engaging self-proclaimed outsider's look at the January 1997 meeting of Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum. First organized in 1971, WEF (for those in the know, simply 'Davos' will apparently do) is an annual international summit of policy, business and media leaders in the Swiss Alps. Lapham found himself among the elites of the elites when he was invited as a participant (for whom the nearly $20,000 in registration fees are waived) and greeted with a sterling white ID badge -- several ranks above the orange passes traditionally reserved for members of the working press.Upon making the initial trek up the funicular to the conference venue Lapham writes of, "...heads of state, finance ministers, policy intellectuals, Nobel Prize-winning physicists, corporate executives as thick upon the ground as pine needles."Later, through characteristically Laphamian eyes he observes, "...the lesser nations of the earth become colonies not of governments but of corporations, the law of nations construed as the rule of money, and the world's parliaments intimidated by the force of capital in much the same way that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they had been intimidated by the force of arms."Lapham's lively, self-effacing style is always a joy to read -- even if one often suspects that he is among the last to believe his own quiet hyperbole.