WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

 The last post suggested that too many books simply regurgitated what most of us already know about the economic system and that what is needed is a text which builds on this knowledge and identifies the detailed steps required for us to achieve a better world. Since my retiral in 2011, I’ve actually been working on such a book and am pleased to present the latest version - What is to be Done? Dispatches to the next generation. This runs in at 150 pages but is linked to a larger version which is double the size.

One of the Annexes gives hyperlinks to several hundred books which purport to thrown some light on the operation of the economic system – în some cases with some notes

Each of its chapters contains a table with links to the posts which inspired the text – with a ”takeaway” message. Let me summarise the chapters

Chapter 1. Critical junctures identified

History is written by the victors – and the sycophants who surround them. Events were generally much more finely balanced than first versions admit. Many people consider that the West has lost its way recently - and are struggling both to identify the reasons and to explore how a different future could be built. For some, it is simple – just a question of turning the clock back to the golden days....But most people recognise this as no more than an emotional tic and really want to understand how we – in the UK, the European mainland or the US – managed to make such a mess of things; and then what steps might be taken to build better societies...

This chapter looks back at the events of the past 80 years to try to identify the crucial points which have turned the hopes of the postwar period to the despair which currently grips many societies

Supporting Arguments can be found in Covid 19 as a Critical Juncture 

( Duncan Green 2020) and Out of the Belly of Hell Anthony Barnett 2020

Chapter 2.Trespassing encouraged

Intellectual specialisation has made it difficult for us to understand the world Most leaders of organisations are in the grip of groupthink and need countervailing mechanisms of accountability to help them see new realities

Boundaries – whether between countries, fields of study, professions, classes, religions or political parties – are usually heavily protected. But those able and willing to cultivate cross-border connections are often hugely rewarded – not just with monetary profit but with new insights. Just look at the Hanseatic League and the intellectual and cultural – let alone commercial - richness of towns and cities which lay on trading routes.

Supprting Arguments can be found in Irving Janis’ “Victims of Groupthink” (1972), Gillian Tett’s “The Silo Effect” (2015) and Matt Syed’s “Rebel Ideas” (2019)

chapter 3. Economics – rather than statues – should be toppled from its grip on our minds

2008 should have been the death knell of economics since it had succumbed some decades earlier to a highly-simplified and unrealistic model of the economy which was then starkly revealed in all its nakedness. But the subject had, perhaps deliberately, been made so boring that people felt they had to ”leave it to the experts”.

John Kenneth Galbraith’s ”Almost Everyone’s Guide to Economics” (1978) was probably the first book to try to rectify this – but it is only in the new millennium that things have shown sign of improvement. Annex 3 lists texts which are enjoyable as well as useful. But we have to be realistic about the chances of a real reform in the education of economists. Academic economists have invested a lifetime’s reputation and energy in offering the courses they do - and neither can nor will easily offer programmes to satisfy future student demands for relevance and pluralism….. chances are, they think, that the next cohort will be more pliable... 

Supporting arguments can be found in Steve Keen and Brian Davey’s ”Credo” (2014)

chapter 4. Probing the Elephant

Talk of capitalism and post-capitalism is too loose and reified. There are various equally legitimate ways of perceiving the “beast”. Why do we have so much difficulty finding a word to describe the nature of the system which is wreaking so much havoc on the world? Is it globalisation? Neo-liberalism? Capitalism? And does it matter?

It’s more than ten years since the global financial meltdown – although a lot of writers now concede that the rot started a lot earlier…The Marxists may be a bit extreme in suggesting about 200 years earlier…..although there is a christian school of thought that would go back to the Garden of Eden….

“Exploitation” is not a word you hear a lot about these days and yet it so vividly captures what we have done – with ever increasing intensity - to people, to the land, to resources. Initially the suggested remedies were technical in nature – if massive in their financial implications - with private debt being nationalised and traumatic increases in state debt. Slowly we have realised that political and moral responses offer the only real hope. But the neoliberal model has gone from strength to strength – with no real attempt made to rein in the financial sector.

This chapter will look at various attempts which have been made to understand the nature of the Beast whose voracious appetite keep us all in thrall and to which Varoufakis gave the name The global minotaur.

Supporting arguments can be found in 57 Varieties of Capitalism

chapter 5. A new social goal is needed for the commercial company

Shareholder value ignores other crucial dimensions – such as the wider community and workers, Cooperative and social enterprises employ more people than we think – but have to struggle for legitimacy

In certain circles, to be accused of trying to reform – rather than “destroy” or “transform” – capitalism has long been one of the gravest criticisms if not crimes. Not only this accusation but the very distinction has, however, always seemed a bit ridiculous. What would “transformation” actually mean?

And who on earth could be attracted to the notion of wholescale nationalisation and associated bureaucratic power – to say nothing of even worse scenarios?? I, for one, would rather support workers’ cooperatives…

Although Margaret Thatcher kept asserting that capitalism was the only way – or, in her own words, “there is No Alternative”, a mantra which soon attracted the acronym TINA – we have, since the end of the Cold War, become familiar with the “Varieties of capitalism” literature. Eased into it by Michel Albert, with later work by the likes of Crouch, Hall and Soskice being much more academic and, often, impenetrable. But by the turn of the millennium the message seemed to be that

- Capitalism takes various forms

- although it’s actually called “globalization” and

- will always be with us.

But all that changed in 2008 – earlier pages have plotted the increasing dystoptic aspect of book titles on the subject and the increasing use of the previously unmentionable word beginning with C

chapter 6. Lessons of change explored

So much protest fails and few social enterprises have a multiplier effect. How do we create winnable coalitions? We use the concept of “change” all the time but there seems to be surprisingly little written about it as an all-embracing concept. The literature on change is, of course, immense but is divided very much into several completely separate fields which guard their boundaries very strongly - dealing with the individual, the organisational and the societal respectively (forgive the last term but “social” does have a rather different meaning from activities relating to a particular society). The first field tends to be interested in things like stress; the second in the management of change (but in 3 separate sectors); and the last in collective challenges to power which often go under the label of “social change”

Capacity development is one of the few approaches which recognises the importance of all three – although, in reality, its focus is on training and it never ventures into the dangerous field of social change. It’s only in the past year or so that people have dared challenge this.

Our understanding of that phenomenon generally comes from history books the most popular of which deal with individuals - who are easier to identify with. Talk of technological and economic forces tends to be too abstract for most people – although recent books from the likes of Jared Diamond and Yuval Hari are enjoying a new vogue by virtue presumably of our increased awareness of the power of technology

For more – see A short note and annotated bib on Change

7. Change agents and coalitions sought

Progressives are good at sounding off – and bad at seeking common ground

This book started with questions which I was posing 20 years ago to help identify where I should be putting what energies I had left in me. I have to confess that, so far, the book (and the blogposts on which it draws) is the only tangible result of those questions!

An issue I keep returning to in the book is our inability to make ”common cause” as the world seems to be collapsing around us. It’s not that we don’t care – or are apathetic. A lot of us participate actively in discussions and demonstrations. It’s rather that our energies are dissipated in too many, diverse fields of concern... And in increasingly polarising debates – sometimes about issues which have echoes of the medieval debates about ”angels dancing on the head of pins”. Why is this?

Our developing egocentricity seems also to undermine the possibilities of effective collective action. For example, too many of the big names who write the tracts about the global crises present their analyses and prescriptions with insufficient reference to the efforts of others. They have to market their books – and themselves – and, by that very act, seem to alienate others who could be their comrades in arms. For more see Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism Jeremy Gilbert