There was no Herodotus before Herodotus

Ralph Russell (editor) The Oxford India Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals (Oxford India Collection)-2003

Mirza Asadulah Beg Khan, known from his pen name as Ghalib or Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869), is perhaps the greatest among the Urdu poets and the Indian poets who wrote in Persian and one of the greatest poets of Asia.

Khurshidul Islam-Ralph Russel Three Mughal Poets. Mir-Sauda-Mir Hasan, Oxford India Paperbacks 1994 (first edition 1969)

The three great poets presented in this volume - Mir, Mir Hasan and Sauda - lived in Delhi, or in its general vicinity, in the eighteenth century during a time of widespread violence and disaster. The Mughal Empire was crumbling and disintegrating internally as the great feudal nobles fought among themselves for control of the emperor. In this atmosphere of misery, demoralization, and despair occurred the first major flowering of Urdu literature.

Sauda, the first to be discussed, wrote poems in all the main classical forms, but he was an unequalled satirist in an age that cried for satire, and it is that portion of his work that is considered here.

Mir Hasan also was born in Delhi and probably lived there until after the occupation, massacre, and looting of 1739, which occurred when he was about fourteen. Like his two contmporaries, he wrote in all the classical forms and excelled in one, to which he devoted most of his effort. In his case it was the mansavi , a long narrative poem in rhymed couplets often telling a love story.

Mir, perhaps the greatest of the three, is, in the opinion of the authors, one of the great love poems of world literature. His favourite form was the ghazal , a subtle and difficult one which the authors discuss in detail, giving numerous examples.

Roger Brock on Herodotus the Naturalist

In this final talk from the summer 2026 edition of the Herodotus Helpline, Dr Roger Brock (Leeds) explores Herodotus' sustained interest in wildlife and animals. Dr Brock's talk also contextualises Herodotus' approach against other ancient and more modern approaches to the natural world.

Pietro Vannicelli on Herodotus' account of Deioces (1.96-101)

In this penultimate edition of the summer 2026 edition of the Herodotus Helpline, Professor Pietro Vannicelli (La Sapienza, Rome) provides a close examination of the languages and concepts underlying Herodotus' account of the Median king Deicoes, considering transformation of personal ambition into accepted and durable political authority.

I think it is pretty bad. Chibber seems to completely reproduce the standard orthodox economic arguments against planning, but doesn’t even try to address how “market socialism” would still produce the same pathologies as any economy where market competition and profit maximization are permitted. Moreover, from what I have pieced together, the failure of the Soviet and Warsaw pact economies were not so much because of cenplanning per se, but their continued reliance on the West and the global capitalist economy via debt, with the contradictions becoming unmanageable after the global shock of the 70’s (although stagnation in terms of slowing growth rates were already becoming a problem in the 60’s). In the Soviet case specifically, I’m also pretty convinced by the view that it was the crash industrialization program under Stalin that, while successful in the short term, baked in faulty and inadequate foundations that basically ensured at every level a defective production system and industrial supply chain that most former Soviet states still haven’t been able to overcome. One could say this was a failure of Soviet planning in a broader long-term sense, but not a Hayekian one...

These are big and difficult questions. I am not economist, but I will give you the best answers that I can give.

Concerning the economy of the Soviet Union, I think that we agree that, despite the fact that the Soviet economy had important successes (although with a very heavy human cost in Stalin's period), the final result was stagnation and decline. Now, if we try to find the causes of this failure, I think that in the first place the idea of a socialist revolution in a country in many aspects underdeveloped was problematic. As we all know, the anticipated revolution in the developed capitalist countries did not happen and the Soviets found themselves isolated, in an economically particularly precarious position and in face of very difficult dilemmas on the economic policies that they should adopt. I agree with you of course that Stalin's authoritarian and violent answer to these dilemmas ("the crash industrialization program under Stalin', as you say) "..., while successful in the short term, baked in faulty and inadequate foundations".

I would add that the more general lack of freedom and democracy in the countries which had adopted the marxist-leninist model created a very important alienation between rulers and society- but a socialist economy cannot function in the long term when such alienation exists. This became obvious when the Soviet economy became more complex and there was the urgent task of introduction of new technologies and of a general restructuration of economy and society that would have permitted this introduction in an efficient way. I would add also that the Soviet leaders overplayed their hand and believed that they could compete with the USA in the arm race as economically equals, a belief that imposed a very heavy burden on their economy. Of course to be fair we must recognize that the destructions and losses of WW II played also their very negative role in the economic trajectory of the Soviet Union.

(Btw I see that among stalinist communists in my country is popular the theory that the Soviet Union was in fact in the way of restoration of capitalism since 1956 and that already the Kosygin reforms of 1964 had introduced important aspects of the capitalist market in the Soviet economy. Personally I don't take this theory seriously and I believe that the economy of the Soviet Union was a planned economy -call it statist or authoritarian socialism or statist economy or statist or particular mode of production, this is another discussion- till the final stage of the perestroika. It is a different question that corruption and black market undermined the system from within and created social strata with an interest in the restoration of capitalism- in fact of a capitalism of mafia type- or that on a part of the Soviet elite dawned the idea of transforming its political power into capitalist wealth)

Now, concerning the more general debate about central planning and market socialism, personally I am still sympathetic to the notion of a democratically planned socialist economy, based on the ideals of cooperation and solidarity and on the common effort for the flourishing of all the members of a socialist society as human persons. Market socialism is perhaps a notion somehow contradictory, although of course it has its good defenders among socialists, and one could not exclude the coexistence of planned and market socialism in a long period of transition from capitalism to fully-fledged socialism.

However, the problem with a planned socialist economy is that its implementation in a free and democratic society would face formidable difficulties and challenges and would necessitate a change of economic paradigm or rather of civilization. One of these challenges is of course the problem of economic coordination and allocation of resources in our complex and largely globalized economies without recourse to the price mechanisms of the market (and without overconcentration of power in the hands of some kind of technocratic elite, let alone in the hands of the leadership of the One and Only Party). I don't think that this problem is technically insuperable, but its solution, beyond its technical aspects, supposes the existence of a broad alliance of social forces that could create and make work the institutions necessary for a successful democratic socialist planning in a free society. However, more generally personally I don't see that exist today even potentially the social forces that would be willing and capable of undertaking the gigantic effort of the replacement of capitalism with a democratic planned socialist economy (or with any other form of socialist economy). To say what I truly think, I believe that Marx' prediction that capitalism would give birth to its own gravediggers has not been confirmed by history and that Marx underestimated the capacity of survival of capitalism through its crises and transformations and conversely overestimated the revolutionary potential of the proletariat.

To conclude, I think that within the limits of our historical horizon the best we can hope and strive for is a democratic mixed economy, with important public and cooperative sectors, powerful trade unions and more generally social organizations, regulation of the market and especially of the labor market, welfare state, redistribution of wealth, environmental protection, and recognition of the pursuit of non-economic values -the more general flourishing of human personality- as final aim of the functioning of the economy.

Vasiliki Zali The Shape of Herodotean Rhetoric. A Study of the Speeches in Herodotus’ Histories with Special Attention to Books 5-9, Brill 2023