As we ascend the command structure of the Socialist nation, everything becomes more general and broader before finally reaching the State itself. What keeps the State cognizant of what is occurring in the nation and abroad is the Intents of Command and Obedience. Direct orders issued by the State vis-à-vis the Constitution and the Legal Code are the primary modes of communications with the rest of the Socialist nation. The Constitution conveys the Intents and Obligations, whereas the Legal Code conveys the Duties and Rights.

Any technologies deployed at the behest of the State are designed specifically for administrative functions. Those intended for the SSE are related to the educational curriculum. Meanwhile, those intended for the armed forces, police agencies and intelligence services pertain to the national defense of the Socialist nation against potential enemies from without and from within. Technologies deployed to combat internal enemies shall be designed in such a way that they do not infringe on the Legal Code and the Constitution shared by the State and Totality. Neither the State nor the Totality are above the law, and both are called to uphold the rule of law to maintain the Intents of Command and Obedience. This does not just apply to the physical world but also the digital world, which is but an extension of the former under the Work-Standard.

Technology at the strategic level is intended to help lead and advise on the direction of economic activities at the operational level in its coordination of activities at the tactical level. What happens at the bottom of the chain of command is understood at the upper echelons. What happens at the top of the chain of command is properly conveyed to the lower echelons. All direct orders are to be understood by an Explicit Intent or an Implicit Intent.    

For the Work-Standard, such technologies are to be designed in such a manner that the State can prop up the creation of new Industries and Sectors for the VCS Economy. They need to allow the State to serve the Totality under the Constitution and the Legal Code. And, at the same time, ensure that the Totality will be able to return the favor in kind. Examples may include, but not limited to:

• Ways of enhancing the efficiency of Real Trade Agreements (RTAs), with a particular emphasis on the contributions of Arbeit and generation of Geld by Enterprises operating in Liberal Capitalist regimes as well as minimizing the effects of Economic Foreignization;
• Ways of investigating, researching, developing, and manufacturing strategic resources in preparation for when the Socialist nation loses access to them. This will also entail the State financing the development of new Industries devoted to the production of synthetic materials;  
• Ways of keeping the Attrition/Inaction Rate within a ± 3% threshold;
• Ways of increasing the Quality of Arbeit and decreasing the Quality of Geld among entire Industries and Sectors within the VCS Economy;
• Ways of boosting the Real Total Economic Potential (RTEP) and Real Total Financial Potential (RTFP), including the developments of newer and more refined techniques related to NSFIs (National-Socialized Financial Instruments), State Investments and Economic Foreignization;
• Ways for the Central Bank and VCS Economy to defend the Mechanization Rate, the Reciprocal-Reserve Banking System and its Life-Energy Reserve against hostile cyberattacks from within the national intranet until the armed forces arrive to mop up the remainder;
• Ways of developing vast digital defensive networks around State Commissariats, the Kontore, National-Socialized Banks (NSBs), State Banks, and the State for the transmitting of Geld and Information across international borders. Every data network is protected by a twin-layer digital perimeter with Information routes going through digital border checkpoints and a well-fortified firewall where Information is encrypted along with the identities of its sender and receiver. A long-term ambition for the Socialist nation involves connecting its national Intranet to an entirely different international Internet, Heliopolis, a more centralized, well-organized alternative to the World Wide Web and shall be governed by the World State Organization (WSO);
• And ways for the State’s Financial Regime, its Socialist Student Economy (SSE), armed forces, police agencies and intelligence services to prepare for the emergence of Financial Warfare waged against the Socialist nation by hostile Non-State Actors and State Actors.

A new kind of warfare is developing in the 21^st century as an outgrowth of various 20^th century military doctrines. It has only reached its infancy during the height of the Great Recession in 2008 and will be expected to gradually develop over the course of the 21^st century into something far greater. “Financial Warfare” is a relatively new concept that has yet to be elevated beyond rhetorical buzzword and taken seriously in Military Science. The Work-Standard is more than capable of conceptualizing Financial Warfare as a combination of Political Warfare, Psychological Warfare, Electronic Warfare, Information Warfare, Attrition Warfare, Economic Warfare and Cyberwarfare. The implications were already there in the context of the Political Organization Problem; never will they be apparent in the ‘Economic Calculation Problem’.

As of late, Financial Warfare strategies employed by the world’s central banks have been done with Kapital and Schuld. There are about four different ways a Liberal Capitalist Financial Regime engages the Socialist nation in financial combat: raising or cutting Taxation, borrowing and lending Kapital at low Interest Rates, printing Kapital through Quantitative Easing (QE), and the issuance of government bonds as an LCFI (Liberal Capitalist Financial Instrument). Each method corresponds to an aspect of Keynesianism, Monetarism, and the Austrian School of Economies. There are only ‘Six Alls’ within the Total Mobilization of Production for Profit (and by extension, Production for Utility): Keynesians invest all Kapital and spend all Kapital; Monetarists lend all Kapital and borrow all Kapital; and Austrians earn all Kapital and save all Kapital.   

Liberal Capitalists, whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, have trapped themselves in a bind. Low economic growth and low birthrates, Interest Rates at 0% or in Negative Interest, excessive spending and taxation, out of control Schuld Accumulation commensurate with Kapital Accumulation, and financial markets with Kapital pegged to personal opinions divorced from economic realities. Complicating everything for the Liberal Capitalists include the Coronavirus Pandemic, Climate Change, Imbalances of Trades and Payments, demographic decline and mass migrations from developing countries, political factional infighting and disruptive populists, and the emergence of automated technologies. Their propaganda denies the fact that Kapital has grown increasingly abstract since the death of Bretton Woods. Only more of the same proposals continue to be espoused with very little room left for combining innovation and tradition. Economic Nationalists and Democratic Socialists have yet to realize that they do in fact share common interests, even if there is only a steady trickle of anecdotal evidence nowadays.

The following pertains to the various Financial Warfare strategies that have been employed since the Great Recession. Note that everything described below relied on Kapital and Schuld.      

• “Currency Wars” are waged by nations determined to engage in an arms race for the most competitive Currency. The Central Banks of opposing nations devalue their Currencies, allowing them to achieve cheaper exports and more expensive imports. The Intent is to deliberately create Currency Depreciation for achieving a competitive Currency vis-à-vis foreign exchange rates, thereby ensuring a Balance of Trades and Payments in this way.
• “Gold Repatriation” is not to be seen as a sign of a return to the Gold Standard but its antithesis. The Gold Standard, as it was conceived in the Bretton Woods Conference, has been dead since 1973. Even so, the US Dollar remains as the World Reserve Currency and Bretton Woods-era organizations like the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank are still around. Post-Soviet Russia, Mainland China, India and Turkey hoard huge stockpiles of Gold to circumvent the US Dollar hegemony, spending their US Dollars on purchases of Gold. Such purchases by their central banks demonstrate the correlation between Kapital and Schuld, in addition to their willingness to tolerate higher rates of Currency Depreciation and Inflation.  
• “Digital Currencies,” comparable to the kind advocated by the Work-Standard in the previous two SMP Compendium entries, is being introduced by central banks to combat the rise of Cryptocurrencies. It can also be argued that certain central banks do this to help their government reassert national sovereignty in the digital realm as evidenced by the digital infrastructure of Russia and China. This even ties with the pursuit of alternative payment systems to bypass economic sanctions and the freezing of their finances by the United States.   
• “Flash Crashing” refers to a type of High-Frequency Trading (HFT) software deployed in 2010 by Navinder Singh Sarao, a computer hacker in England. Sarao allegedly created the software to cause a short-term crash in Prices at the financial markets. The software had been deployed on 6 May 2010 for approximately thirty-six minutes, the damage only being temporary as the financial markets later rebounded that same day. Although very amateurish and petty as far as the Work-Standard is concerned, the possibilities are there for more sophisticated variants.
• “Speculative Attacks” refer to the sudden and massive selling of a Currency by foreign investors. The Intent is not always malicious; a psychological manipulation of foreign investors in response to a perceived crisis, whether real or imaginary, is more than enough to suffice.   
• “Systemic Risks” and “Financial Contagions” exploit the interconnectedness of the world order by dint of the fact that everything depends on a few organizational entities. The moment something wrong happens to a large bank is the opportunity for its woes to spread to other countries. Such a financial crisis is made possible thanks to Globalization and the ability of foreigners to borrow loans from banks in other countries, as evidenced in the Subprime Mortgage Crisis.
• “Self-Fulfilling Crisis” is what happens when a financial crisis happens not because of economic downturn or bad governmental policy, but because the financial markets had become terrorized by their own self-induced pessimism. The opposite of this is an “Irrational Exuberance,” which can lead to the creation of Economic Bubbles as its own financial crisis.   

No central bank as of late has considered Arbeit and Geld, but that may change as the following strategies become increasingly impractical. One must realize that the problems which allowed the financial markets to experience the Great Depression are still alive and well. Very little has changed since then. What has changed, however, are the technologies and their potential for catastrophic levels of damage. The only thing keeping the financial markets afloat, besides the ability of their Parliamentary Democracies to sustain them with more Kapital and Schuld, is the overall opinion shared among investors.   

The concept of Financial Warfare is an ongoing development. It is doubtful that Liberal Capitalist Kapital and Schuld will be able to innovate further in this realm, otherwise Financial Warfare would have been elevated to something far greater than just a rhetorical buzzword. There are plenty of opportunities for the Work-Standard to play its own decisive role in times of both war and peace. Those opportunities have always existed and will continue to exist for the Work-Standard, allowing for the possibility redefine the economic rules of engagement originally laid out in the 20^th century. In fact, the entire 20^th century continues to be a lasting case study in itself because the 20^th century never ended and the 21^st century has proven to be a mere continuation.   

One of the catalysts for Financial Warfare’s emergence is the impending changeover of the present world order. The Liberal International Economic Order (LIEO) continues to languish and very little is being done to reverse its decline by the United States or the rest of the LIEO. No nation, not even the PRC, is ready to assume the mantle of heralding a different world order. When the present world order changes, there will be a multipolar world order of shifting alliances driven by the need to redefine longstanding common interests.    

Another is the dissolution of the World Wide Web in favor of a “Splinternet” of national Intranets connected to a centralized international Internet. Every national Intranet will establish their own presences on this Internet through a series of proxy servers and mirror websites. The stressors are economic as well financial, driven by concerns over cyberwarfare, cybercrime, cyberterrorism, Globalization and the determination among dozens of nations to reassert national sovereignty over the digital realm. The old distinctions between what we called the “clear web,” “deep web,” and “dark web” will change to reflect those changes. This international Internet shall be the new clear web, the national Intranets as the new deep webs, and the spaces that separate the Internet and Intranets as the new dark web.  

National culture, tradition, language, customs and norms shall be implemented online among the different Intranets. It was that American Russell Kirk who argued that every technological innovation must conform to a long-standing tradition to be imbued with any sense of Dasein. The national Intranet of the Socialist nation shall transpose the governance of Council Democracy onto the digital realm. Whether the Socialist nation and its Socialistic allies will finally realize Heliopolis and the World State Organization shall be left as an open question.

Categories: Compendium

Tags: Automation, Council Democracy, Der Arbeiter, Economic Calculation Problem, Economics, Ernst Jünger, Finance, Financial Warfare, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Socialist Finance, Technology, Work-Standard