The Beast – part II

The penultimate post of 2019 surveyed the critical state in which the economics “discipline” has found itself in this past decade. Despite having an Economics degree and actually teaching the subject for a few years in a Polytechnic in the 1970s, I readily admit my confusions - globalisation - the new tools of financial engineering and IT have introduced totally new dimensions to the economic world and left me (and most others) very conscious of our ignorance.

I knew I had to put my distaste for economics books aside and take time try to understand not so much the financial crash but rather the true nature of this turbulent system

So, a couple of years ago, I produced two rare annotated lists of books. First of the key books written before the 2008 financial crash; then of those I judged worthy of mention which had appeared after the crash. How, you might reasonably ask, did you select these books? Why should we trust your judgement? I try to answer such questions here

One thing I noticed was how differently the various academic disciplines dealt with the subject. Economists seemed the obvious people to start with – but their texts were remarkably dry and clearly oblivious to a lot of important factors. For people who had failed to anticipate the crash, their tone was also a bit too cocky and self-assured. 

The sociologists had a more plausible story to tell but generally seemed too ready to critique it all. I was most impressed with the smaller numbers of political economists (Blyth, Collier, Stiglitz, Streecken and Varoufakis), economic historians (Tooze) and even a few journalists (Mander)

Honing the recommendations

The two lists I did in 2017 dealt with more than 100 books – and I realise my readers don’t have time for this. So last September I had another look at the lists and came up with clear recommendations first of 15 important books which were written before the crash; and then of about 20 which appeared after it   

Somehow, however, the books never satisfy – after all they tend to convey the same message –

- The system is voracious, never satisfied

- It’s unstable – boom and then bust

- It leads increasingly to more and more inequality – the 1% have been replaced by some 25 families who control 99% of the wealth

- markets are naturally “oligopolistic” – ie tending to be controlled by a few massive companies which engage in billion dollar marketing and destructive pricing

- markets display none of the characteristics on which economists base their claims about the benefits of markets   

But this doesn’t stop my belief that the next book will give me the answers I’m seeking… eg the latest Stiglitz or Milanovic. Just as the Minotaur has an unquenchable thirst for profit and development, so as readers we are never satisfied. …Somehow we have to resist this temptation….to learn when we have had (or know) enough

Is it the system – or us?

The posts take an interesting turn toward the end of the year when Robert Greene’s latest book sparked some thoughts about human nature; and Zuboff raised the issue of surveillance capitalism. The posts about human nature reminded me of a book which had made a big impact on me as far ago as 1978 – “The Seventh Enemy” by Ronald Higgins. It was one of the first to look at six looming issues - viz of the population explosion, food shortages, raw materials exhaustion, environmental degradation, nuclear power; and abuse of science and technology. And to suggest that the real enemy was the seventh – us, the human race! Higgins’ book is no longer available but you can get the gist from this BBC documentary.

The table in yesterday’s post contained the first half of last year’s posts about the economic system. The table below completes the job – with the first 8 being those most concerned with economics…..

Post title	What sparked it off	Why you should read it
Selecting a Brains Trust for the End Times	The best of the authors are invited to a dinner before the crash	All selections are invidious – I’ve chosen here the individuals who had the ability to write clearly about the nature of our economic system BEFORE the 2008 crash
For Serious Activists only	And after the crash	Those who helped our understanding most after 2008
Another World is Possible	Erik Olin-Wright	Few authors have dealt properly with utopia
What’s in a Name?	Searching for the best book to recommend about “capitalism”	An American journalist wins by a long chalk – with his “The Capitalist Papers”
New Economic Thinking	Some promising new perspectives	Some great hyperlinks
Capitalism – by academic discipline	I realised how rarely I have tried to define the beast	Very rare table which uses 3 different lens to find how 11 different academic disciplines try to define the beast
A rare example of interdisciplinarity	A book from a global institute for social progress	Most writing on the subject suffers from being written from a single discipline
Can Economics change its Spots?	Review of 5 books	Explains why noone should take economists seriously these days
How did we let them get away with it?	Mount’s “The New Few”	A brave right-winger admits exposes the new oligarchy
Human Nature	Robert Greene’s latest book	An assessment of our frailties which is superbly written
Generational Cycles	Robert Greene again	How the 1970s American Democrats killed a great populist tradition
Turning Points	Alt history	we need to push back more against social forces which are presented as irresistible..
Building Character	David Brooks “The Road to Character”	An unfashionable subject these days!
Is our social DNA  changing?	Daniel Bell, Richard Sennett, Fukuyama; Davis “Reckless Opportunists ”	Is 1980s’ greed and opportunism; and social media changing our behaviour?
More surveillance than capitalism	Zuboff’s trilogy	Why I have my doubts about an overly-hyped book from an author I used to admire
Bullshit Jobs	David Graeber’s latest	Explains the importance of a book the academics would like to ignore