Ex: http://www.themarketforideas.com
Mihail Manoilescu, more than an engineer, journalist or professor, was a Romanian political and economic thinker. Although in his country he was not recognized and his theory used, he has inspired other countries in different regions. His ascension was great, as great as his fall. Mihail Manoilescu ended up in the darkness of oblivion, obscurity and, consequently, death.
Early years
Mihail Manoilescu was born on December the 9th, 1891, in Tecuci, Romania, coming from a family with old boyar origins (Boyar was a nobility title attributed to members of the 10th-17th century Russian aristocracy). In 1893 the family moved to Iași. Mihail Manoilescu remained there until he began his university studies. His father, Constantin Manoilescu, was a teacher and member of the Socialist Party. Natalia Grigoreanu, his mother, was also a teacher.
In 1910, he graduated from the National High School in Iași. Mihail Manoilescu wanted to pursue law studies, but his precarious financial situation, left fatherless when he was nine years old, did not permit it. Consequently, he applied and was admitted to the National School of Bridges and Roads in Bucharest (now The University Politehnica of Bucharest), and graduated as valedictorian in 1915.
He was assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs after completing his university studies, as an engineer, in an artillery regiment in Roman, Moldova. Under Eng. Tancred Constatinescu’s leadership, he built an original model of howitzer (the “Manoilescu type” 210 mm howitzer). Mihail Manoilescu’s career started in the military area and, after the First World War, became the General Director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in 1921.
Mihail Manoilescu started his incursion into the business world through investment in the minerals sector. Together with his brother, Grigore Manoilescu, he became co-owner of Sorecani Mines, in Cluj County. They made a significant investment and opened new galleries considerably increasing the production of lignite. They established an agreement with the Belgian company Electrobel to build a power plant in Aghireșu, inaugurated in 1930.
Economic thought
While developing his financial backing and power, including by becoming shareholder in a bank, Mihail Manoilescu published a book that many consider his greatest and most relevant bibliographical work: Théorie du protectionnisme et de l’échange international (Theory of protectionism and international exchange) in 1929.
Looking for a simple overview of the main ideas/concepts of Mihail Manoilescu, Sorin Șuteu (2016) considered the “author’s main findings:
- In any country, labour productivity varies considerably depending on the economic branch. The biggest differences are between industry and agriculture. Their report is relatively constant and was named the Manoilescu constant.
- It makes the industrialized countries have considerably higher labour productivity than predominantly agrarian countries.
- As a result, in international trade, when an industrialized country sells a product to an agrarian country, we actually talk about the exchange between the work of a small number of industrial workers and the work of a large number of agricultural workers”.
Manoilescu, as per above considerations, considered that industrialized countries had the capacity and power to exploit agricultural countries by means of trade. The natural consequences of this situation were the losses in the national income that were recorded. In order to solve these shortcomings, “the author proposes two solutions:
- The industrial way, consisting in the manufacture of goods, in the country, with labour productivity above the national average.
- The commercial way, based on the importation of those goods with lower labour productivity than the national average” (Șuteu 2016).
To implement these ideas, Mihail Manoilescu’s recommendation is to adopt the measures aimed to protect and stimulate the economic sectors with productivity above the national average.
Although influenced by the economist Friederich List, he theoretically distanced himself from List: the protection he advocated was not temporary. He believed he had identified an important exception to the conclusions derived from exchange models, based on the presumed perfect competitiveness of the markets, which were behind the free trade policy advocated by most economists.
Impact abroad
At the time it was published, the book was harshly criticized by classical economists such as Jacob Viner (1932), or neoclassicists such as Bertil Ohlin (1933). In 1954, future Nobel laureate Arthur Lewis seems to have independently presented the argument, originally proposed by Manoilescu, that protection was justified in less developed countries, where wages in industry were excessive in relation to agriculture (Lewis 1954, 159). In the late 1950s, Everett Hagen also concluded in an article that historical experience suggested that protectionism was responsible for the acceleration of economic progress in countless countries, which were fully industrialized after the English Industrial Revolution. The United States, Japan, the Soviet Union and three Latin American countries – Brazil, Colombia and Mexico – clearly exemplified this statement. In each of these cases, the increase in per capita income was associated with the greater participation of the industrial sector in the global income, that is, the income of industrial employees increased more than the growth of the world economy. Therefore, it was statistically true that industry contributed more to raising per capita income.
This theory was very well received in Latin America. At this time, Brazil was in a very serious economic crisis following the Great Depression of 1929. So, this theory was growing because of the difficulties and challenges that Brazil experienced in the export competition with African and Asian countries. This fact was used to justify the low wages in Brazil.
The industrialists of São Paulo generally supported the values of organization, elitism, industrialization and, increasingly, as the 1930s progressed, of state intervention in the economy. After 1937, they also supported the Getúlio Vargas (1937-45) dictatorship. It is no wonder, therefore, that they were attracted to Manoilescu’s theses, values, and attitudes.
Industrial production grew by 50% between 1929 and 1937, creating income and strengthening the domestic market (Furtado 1980). The Brazilian economy recovered relatively quickly after the crisis, returning to a 9% annual growth rate already in 1934. This policy generated deficits for the government, but sustained the level of economic activity; the domestic protection given to the industry through exchange control, the regulation of the compulsory consumption of domestic production of raw materials, and the prohibition of imports by idle companies were fundamental for the industry to grow at an average of 10% per year between 1930 and 1936. Rising imports stimulated the use of the idle capacity of industries; fiscal, monetary, credit, and coffee policies ensured demand on the other side, causing industry to grow by more than 11% a year between 1934 and 1937.
Impact at home
In Romania, the protectionist doctrine of Manoilescu could not be applied. This doctrine was not accepted in the geopolitical context of the nation. After 1944, another model of development was applied by external imposition. In Brazil and in other Latin American countries as well, political and intellectual elites evinced a pragmatism in thought and action that was free to adopt Manoilescu’s theory as the basis for economic development strategies.
It is important to consider that, over time, Manoilescu not only acquired sympathy for Nazi and fascist regimes, but also he was a believer in these social and political models. The subsequent situation of Soviet dominance in Romania, mainly after the end of the Romanian-German alignment, made impossible any attempt or intention to adopt his economic conceptions.
After World War II, Manoilescu completely lost his credibility, mainly because of the support he gave to the regimes that were in place, or that would come to take power in the 1930s, in Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Brazil, then for the eventual failures of his theory. His political pragmatism led him to renege on his economic ideas, to support the Third Reich on the eve of the war, and to advocate Romania’s insertion into the German war effort as a supplier of primary products.
Through his influence and integration into Romanian political power before the fall of the Nazi regime, his status, credibility and his own life would be doomed. In 1945, Mihail Manoilescu was arrested for one year and two months, without a trial. He was also fired from the Political Economy Department of the University Politehnica of Bucharest and purged from university surroundings. He was released from the prison, but kept under surveillance.
In 1948, Mihail Manoilescu was arrested again for political reasons. He was taken to several prisons and, in 1950, he was jailed in Sighet together with the former officials of the interwar and war periods, who had been incarcerated in conditions of extermination and who had never been brought to trial. He died in prison on December 30th, 1950. The family was only notified eight years after, in May 1958. After his death, legal procedures were brought against him for his activity as a journalist and he was sentenced in absentia on April 1952.
Conclusion
It is verified that the bibliographical work and the protectionist theory of Manoilescu gained great importance for the foreign countries, mainly in the case of Brazil. Over time, his economic theses were re-evaluated and not all of them were discarded, being analysed until the present day, contributing to the enrichment of the debates about the adoption of national economic measures.
Photo credit: https://expo1921.mnir.ro/ro/expozitia/expozitia-si-targul...
Bibliography
Furtado, C. 1980. Formação Econômica do Brasil. São Paulo: Ed. Nacional, http://www.afoiceeomartelo.com.br/posfsa/Autores/Furtado,....
Lewis, W.A. 1954. Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour. The Manchester School 22(2): 139-191.
Love, J.L. 1996. Crafting the Third World: Theorizing Underdevelopment in Rumania and Brazil. Stanford University Press, https://books.google.ro/.
Pușcaș, V.; Sălăgean, M. 2012. Mihail Manoilescu – Economic Thought and Economic Reality. Anuarul Institutului de Istorie “George Barițiu” din Cluj-Napoca, tom LI: 325-336, http://www.historica-cluj.ro/anuare/AnuarHistorica2012/19....
Silva, L.O. 2010. Roberto Simonsen: A industrialização brasileira e a Segunda Guerra Mundial. História Econômica & História de Empresas 13(2): 25-52, https://doi.org/10.29182/hehe.v13i2.
Șuteu, S. 2016. Mihail Manoilescu and the Theory of Protectionism. Revista de Management și Inginerie Economică 15(4) http://www.rmee.org/abstracturi/62/20_Personalitati_Mihai....





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"Washigton Post" listed the whole series of invectives against Dugin. Nothing new in this. They represent the propaganda tics of the servants of liberal globalism, who feel that their system of world domination is about to fall inevitably. The spring of the peoples engaged in the total battle for the restoration of national sovereignty becomes a global phenomenon that can no longer be stopped. And Dugin is one of the most vocal spiritual and ideological leaders who brings together intellectuals and political movements from whole continents engaged in the collective effort to regain the freedom stolen by this new type of extraterritorial imperialism. 





On l’aura au moins dit une fois.
Le film donc dénonçait notre déshumanisation progressive et indolore sous l’effet de la technique et de la communication. Et ce n’est pas moi qui le dit mais 
Tragique destin que celui de ce jeune Liégeois qui n’aura pu exercer sa profession que durant une quinzaine d’années. Pour beaucoup, il demeure le découvreur de Céline auquel son nom demeure associé. Et pourtant nombreuses sont les œuvres importantes du XXe siècle qu’il aura publiées : L’Hôtel du Nord d’Eugène Dabit, Héliogabale d’Artaud, Tropismes de Nathalie Sarraute, Les Beaux Quartiers d’Aragon, Les Décombres de Rebatet, Le Bonheur des tristes de Luc Dietrich, Les Marais de Dominique Rolin, Notre-Dame des Fleurs de Jean Genet, pour ne citer que les plus connues.
Le Rebelle et l’Anarque sont ces figures, ces paradigmes, ces « représentations » offertes à la reconnaissance de l’homme qui les perçoit comme manifestation épiphaniques insaisissables par la pensée mais s’imposant à l’évidence, pour peu qu’il accepte – l’homme n’est jamais contraint que par soi-même dans la vision jüngerienne du monde – de ne pas lui tourner le dos.
The first phase is the actively nihilistic phase. You can find this distinction in The Will to Power. Nietzsche explains that there are two kinds of nihilism. The first one is passive nihilism. It’s like a decrease in the strength of the spirit. It’s weariness. It’s weakness. It’s like a quasi-Buddhist “no” to life. It’s the will to hide from the suffering of life. So it is like an exhaustion, a devirilization, as we would say today. And for Nietzsche, of course, this was not only something metaphysical. It directly corresponded to the historical reality of Europe, and back in the nineteenth century, he said that Europe was now an aging Europe, an old Europe, a cosmopolitan Europe headed towards globalization. Not incidentally, Nietzsche was one of the pioneers of pan-Europeanism. I will also talk about that.

So this is the concept of sovereignty. And the model of the Anarch was represented by a historian, Martin Manuel Venator, who serves in a fortress of the tyrant of a future city-state, Condor. He works in his fortress at night, at the bar, and he listens to different conversations among the visitors and writes down his reflections, and he says, “I am an Anarch in space, and a meta-historian in time.” At first, this conception of the Anarch was taken differently by Ernst Jünger’s colleagues in the Third Way. For instance, Julius Evola believed that the concept of the forest passage, of Der Waldgang, was a betrayal of Jünger’s early views. He said that it is a reverse version of Ernst Jünger as we knew him. It’s as if he felt there was something bourgeois about this concept. But ten years later, Evola developed exactly the same concept of the differentiated personality in his book, Ride the Tiger. He also developed the concept of apoliteia, and later he wrote 

When Orwell finished Animal Farm in 1945, it was a very bad time to promote anti-Communist books with talking animals. This one was too clearly an allegory about the Bolshevik Revolution and the Stalinist aftermath, as subtle as a cow-pie (one barnyard feature that does not appear in the book). Over two dozen publishers rejected it promptly; Churchill’s coalition government had been touting a pro-Soviet line since 1941. Against this background, Animal Farm was about as welcome as a sympathetic book review of Mein Kampf (which Orwell did in fact once publish, during the Phony War period).
But the use of pigs raises all sorts of other complications. All the male pigs but Napoleon, we are told, have been castrated. This fact is introduced late in the book, and rather obliquely: “Napoleon was the only boar on the farm.” But hold on: Napoleon has sired many porkers, presumably male often as not. Surely they’re still intact – some of them, anyway. Is Orwell just being forgetful, or does he fear certain distasteful matters will slow down the story?



Dans le dossier très complexe et très épineux de la 5G développée par la firme chinoise Huawei, les Européens, surtout les Allemands, se montrent très réticents à annuler les projets qui sont déjà en phase de réalisation. Pour les Etats-Unis, ne pas se laisser distancer par les Chinois dans la technologie de la 5G est un impératif de sécurité nationale, d’où les multiples interdits qui frappent la firme Huawei et la mesure qui a permis l’arrestation d’une des cadres de la firme au Canada récemment. La raison majeure de cette panique à Washington vient du fait que la 5G chinoise ne possède pas la « porte d’entrée » (le « backdoor ») permettant à la NSA de s’y introduire, comme dans les appareils Samsung. Les appareils chinois et même certains modèles d’Apple permettent en revanche aux services chinois d’y accéder : l’Europe, qui n’a jamais misé sur ces technologies, se trouve dès lors coincée entre les Etats-Unis et la Chine et soumise à leurs réseaux d’espionnage, sans possibilité de répondre à ce défi et d’en contrer les inconvénients. 





C’est à Rome que j’ai appris la disparition en avril du cher Jean-Claude Albert-Weil (1933-2019), l’un des écrivains les plus singuliers que j’ai rencontrés. Cette chance, je la dois à mon ami Marc Laudelout, l’éditeur du Bulletin célinien, qui, vers 1997, attira mon attention et celle de quelques happy few sur un hallucinant roman, mixte de Swift et de Philip K. Dick, Sont les oiseaux.
Je ne fus pas séduit par ces suites dont le délire narratif et langagier me rebuta. Je pense que Jean-Claude Albert-Weil fut l’homme d’un seul livre, un roman-monde où il déversa d’un coup et dans le bon ordre ses phantasmes de démiurge. Je l’avais perdu de vue depuis longtemps, ce qui n’atténue en rien ma peine à l’idée de ne plus revoir cet homme unique qui m’aimait bien. 



Après une quinzaine d’années de recul, Faye refit surface à la fin des années quatre-vingt-dix, alors que le mouvement identitaire, ou du moins ses idées, prenait une nouvelle orientation, se définissant de moins en moins comme « national-révolutionnaire » et davantage comme « identitaire ». La transition d’Unité radicale (UR) en Bloc identitaire, bien que causée par la dissolution d’UR illustre à merveille ce changement qui fut loin d’être superficiel.
Aux discours et à la vision métapolitique véhiculée par ses compatriotes, Faye opposait la dure réalité. Les conflits ethniques et la submersion migratoire n’auraient rien à voir avec les débats académiques opposant les tenants de la Révolution conservatrice contre les adeptes d’un socialisme européen. Cet intellectualisme minant le camp national était pour lui une tare. Les grands mots ne changeraient rien quand la situation dégénérerait.












Ce n’est pas un philosophe, autoproclamé ou pas, même s’il est amoureux de la sagesse, comme l’indique le mot lui-même, mais ce mot a subi tellement d’avatars qu’il ne veut plus dire ce qu’il exprime.
Pendant une période qui a quand même duré dix ans, de 1987 à 1997, Il a été un animateur de radio reconnu sous le nom de Skyman, et aussi de télévision sur France 2 où il imaginait des canulars dans l’émission Télématin. Il a aussi, pendant cette même période, collaboré à des revues de bandes dessinées comme L’Echo des savanes, en compagnie d’auteurs plus ou moins déjantés généralement situés à l’extrême-gauche.
La pensée de Guillaume suivait très exactement l’évolution de la situation et il réagissait comme un général sur un champ de bataille, un général qui maîtrise l’ensemble des paramètres minute après minute et qui prend des décisions que la plupart de ses subordonnés ne comprennent pas. Ses lecteurs et ses amis ont souvent été désarçonnés par ce qu’ils croyaient être des revirements ; il n’en était rien ; Guillaume Faye se portait à l’assaut exactement là où les défenses faiblissaient et là où elles avaient besoin de renfort. Petit à petit, il a pointé très exactement – comme une « frappe chirurgicale » – le danger le plus important, écartant tous les autres et préconisant des alliances momentanées, avec Israël d’abord, ce qui n’a pas plu à tout le monde ; le danger auquel on devait prêter toute notre attention et tous nos efforts étant le Grand remplacement des populations européennes par des populations africaines manipulées et rassemblées par la religion musulmane. Dans son dernier livre paru post mortem, Guillaume ne fait plus la distinction entre islam et islamisme, il emploie donc le terme générique de « musulman ». J’ai acheté ce dernier livre à Daniel Conversano, son dernier éditeur, qui l’a tiré du coffre de sa voiture, dans l’enceinte même du cimetière où a été inhumé Guillaume. C’était encore une façon de lui rendre hommage.
L’Europe
La convergence des catastrophes a des racines plus anciennes si l’on se reporte à un temps plus long, dans l’histoire sacrée des dieux plutôt que dans l’histoire récente des hommes, l’histoire profane. Toutes les anciennes traditions qui fonctionnent selon le système cyclique ont évoqué ce type de catastrophes ultimes dans le passé ; il suffit de lire Eliade, Daniélou, Evola ou Guénon pour s’en convaincre. La convergence des catastrophes, pour nos anciens, se manifeste par une conjonction de cycles astrologiques, les petits s’emboîtant dans les grands et qui, à un moment, se rejoignent tous pour arriver à leur fin pour ensuite repartir de plus belle, tout comme les aiguilles d’une montre se rejoignent sur le 6 (le 666) pour remonter ensuite toutes ensemble à des vitesses différentes. Guillaume m’avait d’ailleurs fait la surprise – je ne sais pas si c’est pour me faire plaisir – de citer un de mes articles sur le sujet dans sa Convergence des catastrophes, qu’il avait signée Corvus, mais je doute qu’il ait été vraiment convaincu par les références appuyées aux anciennes traditions de ce texte. Il s’agissait d’un article de la revue Roquefavour que j’éditais à l’époque, article datant de 2004, que j’ai repris ensuite dans mon livre La Roue et le sablier.
La technoscience
Selon Pierre Vial et Robert Steuckers, les deux ruptures successives d’avec le GRECE l’ont traumatisé -.il n’a jamais abordé le sujet avec moi, par pudeur ? – son caractère impulsif peut l’avoir amené à blesser certaines personnes dans la fougue de ses réactions, mais il en prenait conscience et il le regrettait rapidement. Il est devenu alors un garçon fragile et vulnérable qu’on aurait dû protéger et non pas accabler.
Pierre-Émile Blairon