Great Disorder

The term “Great Disorder” has been cited in print since at least 1974 to describe China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Mao Zedong (1893-1976) sought to create “the great disorder under heaven” in order to achieve “the great order under heaven.”
 
Gerald D. Feldman used the term ‘Great Disorder” in the title of his book about the creation of Germany’s Weimar Republic—The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914-1924 (1993).  Societe Generale’s Dylan Grice was familiar with this book and cited it in 2010, furthering popularizing the “Great Disorder” term.
 
The financial blog Zero Hedge, on October 2, 2012, printed:
 
“Further debasement of money will cause further debasement of society. Dylan, like us, fears a Great Disorder.”
 
The website Business Insider, also on October 2, 2012, wrote in the article “Dylan Grice Writes His Most Negative Note Ever: ‘I Am More Worried Than I Have Ever Been’”:
 
“What’s this Great Disorder? Grice is talking about monetary easing by the world’s central banks. Grice is concerned that, as history has shown, currency debasement will lead to ‘social debasement,’ or a rise in social disorder as trust breaks down on a large scale.”
 
 
OCLC WorldCat record
The Great Disorder under the Heavens: China’s View of the World Today
Author: G P Deshpande
Edition/Format:   Article : English
Publication: Economic and Political Weekly, Aug., 1974, vol. 9, no. 32/34, p. 1275-1276
Database: JSTOR
 
OCLC WorldCat record
The great disorder : politics, economics, and society in the German inflation, 1914-1924
Author: Gerald D Feldman
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press, 1993.
Edition/Format:   Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
German Post-Expressionism = The Art of the Great Disorder 1918-1924.
Author: Dennis Crocket
Publisher: Pennsylvania : University Press PA, 1999.
Series: FOR REFERENCE ONLY
Edition/Format:   Book : English : 1. Aufl
 
Boston (MA) Globe
BOOK REVIEW
Making sense of the ‘great disorder’ of the Cultural Revolution
By Michael Kenney, Globe Correspondent |  August 22, 2006
(...)
Their account is authoritative, and presented with powerful narrative sweep. As they make clear, the Cultural Revolution was all Mao, all the time. He was determined, they write, “to create ‘great disorder under heaven’” in order to achieve “great order under heaven.”
     
New York (NY) Times
Gerald D. Feldman, Historian of the Nazis and Finances, Dies at 70
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: November 15, 2007
Gerald D. Feldman, an eminent historian of 20th-century German history who concentrated on the intersection of economics and politics to explore subjects like the hyperinflation of the 1920s and the cozy relationships between financial companies and the Nazis, died on Oct. 31 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 70.
(...)
His book “The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics and Society in the German Inflation, 1914-1924” (1993) analyzed the stupendous inflation that followed World War I. In 1918, immediately after the war, seven German marks purchased one dollar; by the end of 1923, a dollar in Berlin bought 4.2 trillion marks.
 
Dr. Feldman asked how a state and its financial institutions could “effectively defraud” citizens through this protracted inflation, then bring about their acceptance of a new currency based on paper notes rather than gold. Part of his answer was not kind: “character deficiency.”
   
Zero Hedge
Dylan Grice On What Weimar Republic Popular Delusions Can Teach Us About Japan’s Upcoming Hyperinflationary Bankruptcy
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/14/2010 13:35 -0400
(...)
From Dylan, on how anecdotal evidence is always wrong, appropriately starting with that most misunderstood topic - the Weimar hyperinflation:
(...)
But the explanation as to why there were so few cats and dogs in Berlin (they’d been eaten and their skins used for leather) did not. Indeed any claims by locals of shortages, hunger or starvation was treated as “hearsay” since “there was no evidence, whatsoever, of scarcity or want in the outward impressions we got.” On the contrary, the “mania for dancing” was observed as was the “huge crowd of middle class men and women” in the local bars “… waltzing and foxtrotting and drinking expensive wines.” (see “The Great Disorder” by Gerald Feldman, Ch 3)
 
Zero Hedge
From Currency Debasement To Social Collapse: 4 Case Studies
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/02/2012 11:16 -0400
At its most fundamental level, SocGen’s Dylan Grice notes that economic activity is no more than an exchange between strangers. It depends, therefore, on a degree of trust between strangers. Since money is the agent of exchange, it is the agent of trust. Debasing money therefore debases trust. Grice emphasizes that history is replete with Great Disorders in which social cohesion has been undermined by currency debasements. The multi-decade credit inflation can now be seen to have had similarly corrosive effects. Yet central banks continue down the same route. The writing is on the wall. Further debasement of money will cause further debasement of society. Dylan, like us, fears a Great Disorder.
 
Business Insider
Dylan Grice Writes His Most Negative Note Ever: ‘I Am More Worried Than I Have Ever Been’
Matthew Boesler|Oct. 2, 2012, 1:25 PM
SocGen strategist Dylan Grice is known for being pretty bearish in general, but this could take the cake.
 
Check out the way Dylan Grice begins his latest missive:
 
I am more worried than I have ever been about the clouds gathering today (which may be the most wonderful contrary indicator you could hope for…). I hope they pass without breaking, but I fear the defining feature of coming decades will be a Great Disorder of the sort which has defined past epochs and scarred whole generations.
 
What’s this Great Disorder? Grice is talking about monetary easing by the world’s central banks.
 
Grice is concerned that, as history has shown, currency debasement will lead to “social debasement,” or a rise in social disorder as trust breaks down on a large scale.