a taster for "Dispatches to the Next Generation"

 As I was born DURING the second-world war, I strictly don’t qualify as a “baby-boomer” since those were born in the more optimistic period just after the war but, in all respects, I belong to that generation - with all the sense of disrespect if not entitlement we brought with us….

In trying, in the past few years, to write something I call “Dispatches to the Next Generation” from a selection of my blogposts over the past decade, I have found it developing into

·         a critique of the degeneration of the initially successful post-war economic and political systems; as well as

·         an attempt to understand the mistakes my generation made; and

·         an exploration of what we have to do to avoid the fate that seems in store for us all     

 I don’t pretend to be an economist – although I lectured in that capacity in the early 1970s before I saw the error of my ways

Nor is it easy to pin a political label on me – although I did spend 22 years of his life as a senior Labour councillor with responsibilities for devising and managing unique strategies for opening up the policy process and for developing social enterprise in what was then Europe’s largest local authority. The subsequent 22 years I spent as an adviser on institutional development to ministries in central Europe and Central Asia

In its present form, the book has both a short and long version and I realised today that it has a combination of formats and elements which make it fairly unique –

·         The booklet I have just uploaded is actually a taster to the longer book (300 pp) which is not yet satsifactory enough for uploading

·         The taster version now has a narrative and is long enough (150 pages) to be read as a stand-alone version  

·         It is available in the top-right corner of the blog and is called Dispatches Taster and contains hyperlinks to more than 70 short essays - each of which you can access by a simple click

·         A few of these are contained as samplers in the relevant chapter

·         The annexes contain a guide to some 200 books published in the last 60 years which have been specially annotated to give the reader a sense of their significance 

Indeed that book guide is of one the highlights – and should probably not be relegated to the final section of the book!

What you will find in each of the booklet chapters

 

Chapter Title	Thrust of chapter arguments	Supporting theories
1. Critical junctures identified	History is written by the victors. Events were often finely balanced. There’s too much fatalism around	Covid 19 as a Critical Juncture
2.Trespassing encouraged	Most leaders of organisations are in the grip of groupthink and need countervailing mechanisms of accountability to help them see new realities	Janis, t’Hart, Syad
3. Economics relegated	Basic model is badly flawed and needs urgent reinvention	Steve Keen,
4. The Blind men probe the Elephant	Talk of capitalism and post-capitalism is too loose. Are we really clear what the core and marginal aspects of the system are – and can the beast be reformed?	Brian Davey’s ”Credo”
5. A new social goal is sought for the commercial company	Shareholder value ignores other dimensions Cooperative and social enterprises employ more people than we think – but have to struggle for legitimacy	Paul Hirst Colin Mayer Ed Mayo
6. Lessons of change explored	So much protest fails and few social enterprises have a multiplier effect. How do we ensure that there is real learning?	Robert Quinn
7. Change agents and coalitions sought	Progressives are good at sounding off – and bad at seeking common ground	??
8. Bringing it all together	countervailing power social enterprise

 

Six Questions about the new draft

The book has now expanded to 140 pages – each of which seems to have half a dozen hyperlinks. That makes almost 1000 of them. The book still needs a proper conclusion – but can be accessed in its current state here. It's been constructed from the notes I have made over the years  as I tried to make sense of what “experts” were saying in the hundreds (indeed thousands) of books which have deluged us about “the crisis”. Your eyes may glaze over when you come across some of the lists which appear from time to time - so let me anticipate some of your questions….

1.   Why should we read it? After all, you’re the guy who said we needed to ration non-fiction books!

And that’s precisely why I have taken so long to write this damned thing…..at least 10 years. When I wrote that post, I offered the reader some tests to apply to any new non-fiction book. These included explaining what was distinctive about it; annotated reading lists; typologies showing the variety of perspectives the field offers; and visuals and other material to make the text less boring

2.   If you’re so critical of economists, who do you mention so many Economics books?

The majority of well-written books about the global crisis are actually not written by economists! There’s a table in this section (page 46 or thereabouts) which gives examples of the key books about the global crisis in 9 other disciplines apart from economics

3.   OK but why inflict so many titles on us?

Three reasons – First, anyone who wants to be taken seriously in discussions needs to be aware of some of the key names and titles in “the literature” – even if you only flick a few pages to get a sense of their style

People, secondly, differ in their tastes – and I’ve tried to structure the lists by various categories to allow you to find what suits you…For example, p43 gives you access to 8 introductory books which are great reads in themselves….

I would agree, finally, that academics are too good at throwing bibliographies at us. Indeed they overwhelm us with them – whether in footnotes, brackets or end-pages. It’s almost a virility test with them. I get very frustrated with this – since all these lists do is to flaunt their superiority – they don’t actually tell us anything interesting about each book. And that’s why I decided to try not just to list the more interesting of the books – but to add a few notes to give readers a sense of whether it was their sort of book..

4.   Surely neoliberalism has been discredited?

You would think that, as the deregulation which was its hallmark blew up in our faces, this would have led to a rethink but as Colin Crouch first showed in 2011 (and Philip Mirowski in 2013) the doctrine of commercialising anything that moves has actually strengthened. Most people are still scratching their heads to try to understand how this happened and why it seems so difficult to put an alternative agenda together…

5.   Why can’t progressives unite around an agreed agenda for change?

There are a lot of egos at stake! But also so many different perspectives. And it is a notorious fact of history that progressive forces tend to fight one another more than “the enemy”. Understand that, and we will be half way to achieving consensus

6.   Why should I trust anything you say?

If this is the first time you have come across my material, this is precisely the question you need to pose..The only answer I can give is that you will see from the blog I have had for 10 years that I try to keep an open mind on issues – painfully aware of the legitimacy of the different ways of seeing things

"A Pluralist “Reader’s Digest” Guide to the Global Crisis"??

One of the great features of British newspapers – apart from the cartoons – used to be the “Parliamentary Sketch”. 

Television cameras were allowed to show the proceedings of the British House of Commons only from Nov 1989 – prior to which a rather special sort of journalist attempted (from the early 19^th century) to put some flesh and bones on the rather dry reporting of political news.

You might have thought that the arrival of a dedicated television channel would have killed the parliamentary sketcher’s occupation but, instead, it gave it an enormous boost.

Simon Hoggart was The Guardian’s man in the place for 20 years until his sad, early death in 2014 – but his words live on in his collection House of Fun (2012) which I picked up recently in my second-hand bookshop in the Bucharest centre. Each entry is about 2 pages – and is a real gem as you can see from some of the excerpts given when you click the title…And John Crace has given the art of the parliamentary sketch a real edge in the past few years…..

I suddenly realized that my “Dispatches” book has the same structure – even if it’s missing a bit of the humour! A short entry – focusing on an idea or book rather than a politician – which can be dipped into almost at random…….although I have tried to give it a certain logic…..

And that led, in turn, to another of these dangerous, creative leaps….My book can perhaps be seen as a thoughtful “Reader’s Digest” Guide to the global crisis.

My generation is a bit sniffy about the Reader’s Digest – and its ideological purity is indeed questionable….But its original instinct is not all that different from that of Allen Lane who brought us the Penguins in the 1930s……

So what do you think? Should I stick with my “Dispatches……” title – or call the book “A (pluralist) Reader’s Digest Guide to the Global Crisis”?

Invitation to a lucky Dip

Being part III of the marketing for Dispatches to the next generation

I generally write for myself – to help me make sense of things.

I am not one of these natural story-tellers….who weave tales which seduce listeners. That’s why so many of my texts lie around in an unfinished state – it’s not that I lack the discipline or patience to complete them….I simply don’t have the skill…..

But this is a different sort of book – more like a collection of essays you can dip into at any point whenever the mood takes you….not having to bother about the story line or the history of – or connections between – the various characters who figure in the story….

So, take heart, this is not a book to daunt you – but rather….to get you moving…

Part III – sketches for a future world

Title	Takeaway
Economic aspects of social change	In which I make an early attempt to distinguish books according to their place on the political spectrum
Sketches of a broken world	A list of what I consider the most interesting books since 2010 – 50 of them!
Fightback	Some individuals to inspire us to action
A Neglected Classic	I’m generally disappointed by the books on how we might change things, but this is one person who makes sense
Thinking beyond capitalism	presentation of a useful typology – with examples
Small is still Beautiful	How a 1970s idea has grown
The Commons	A concept which has become fashionable in recent years
There is another Way	A reminder of the importance of workers’ cooperatives
Cooperation	And of the importance of this ethic
Beacons of Hope	Change requires both perspiration – and inspiration. And these are inspiring examples….
In Praise of Political Economy	The comeback of an old Scottish discipline
Post Capitalism is here?	How people reacted to a book which caused quite a stir in 2016
The solidarity economy	Few authors appreciate – or do justice to – the scale of the “social economy”

A Priceless Guide to the writing about the Global Crisis

The last post tried not only to identify what it was that had so impressed me about the “Defending Politics” book but also to generalise possible lessons for the hundreds of thousands of writers whose titles and marketing blurbs shout at us from the bookshops and internet.  

I have always loved Oscar Wilde’s aphorism – “I always pass on good advice; it’s the only thing to do with it”. But, on this rare occasion, I actually took on board the advice – in an effort to try to reduce the 200 plus pages of a draft I’ve had for some years - Dispatches to the (post-capitalist?) future generation - to more manageable proportions.

It’s a book which takes the form of a series of posts which were more like letters to my children (and their generation) who were very much in my mind as drafted them. Perhaps that’s why this “giving of account” (with all the religious overtones that term carries!) has been so difficult to complete in a satisfactory way…….

                                      

I’m quite proud of the shortened version which has emerged this week - Dispatches to the next generation – the small version. Just 70-odd pages (excluding the annexes) - about 20 pages of them an annotated reading list of “key” books about the global economic crisis which give a brief sense of more than 100 books published in the second half of the 20^th century worth further study

I’m experimenting with the following marketing blurb - 

The author does not pretend to be an economist – although he lectured in that capacity in the late 1960s and early 70s before he saw the error of his ways.

Nor is it easy to pin a political label on him – although he did spend 22 years of his life as a Labour councillor with responsibilities for devising and managing unique strategies for opening up the policy process and for social enterprise in Europe’s largest local authority (The political compass test, however, placed him in the libertarian left quadrant).

The subsequent 25 years he spent as an adviser on institutional development to governments in central Europe and Central Asia.

So he knows the enemy!

I‘ve always kept notes on the books which impressed me…and the arrival of electronic files and hyperlinks have made the task of collecting and retrieving these lists a positive pleasure. I still find it amazing that my blog can find and present within seconds ruminations about a book I read almost a decade ago. 

Academics are good at throwing bibliographical references at us. Indeed they overwhelm us with them – whether in footnotes, brackets or end-pages. It’s almost a virility test with them. I get very frustrated with this – since all these lists do is to flaunt their superiority – they don’t actually tell us anything interesting about each book.

The Annexes include a little section on some of the great books of the past century and also a favourite of mine – “Just Words – a Sceptic’s Glossary”