Changing the Beast – being part V of a series

In certain circles, to be accused of trying to reform – rather than transform – capitalism has long been one of the gravest criticisms. 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?? 

Temperamentally, I grant you, I’ve always been an incrementalist – rather than a revolutionary – influenced first by Tony Crosland’s 1956 revisionist “The Future of Socialism”; then, at University, by Popper’s “The Open Society and its Enemies” and, in the early 80s, by Charles Lindblom – who got us all to respect incrementalism.
  
Although Margaret Thatcher kept assering 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

By the turn of the millennium the message seemed to be that Capitalism takes various forms; is constantly changing; and will always be with us. But increasingly, people were wondering whether it was not out of control. Pages 57-66 of my Dispatches to the Next Generation plot the increasing dystoptic aspect of book titles

But a few years back, something changed. It wasn’t the global crisis in itself but rather the combination of two things – first the suggestion that the entire engine of the system (profitability)was reaching vanishing point; and, second, a sudden realisation that robotization was a serious threat to even middle-class jobs.

Now the titles talk of the new phenomenon of “post-capitalism” 

Paul Collier’s book – “The Future of Capitalism – our present anxieties” to which I have devoted 4 posts – touches only very briefly on the second of the changes. But I recommend the book for its rare moral – rather than technocratic - tone and for it being the first book I can remember which takes as its starting point the concerns of ordinary people and tries to identify practical policies which might actually deal with issues such as the decline in social trust

Essential follow-up reading

I realise the previous reading list was too long. The following are they key bits of writing I would recommend for those who want to know more

Why the third way failed – economics, morality and the origins of the “big society”; Bill Jordan (2010) is a very thoughtful treatment of the experience…..(google sample only)..reviewed here

Revisiting Associative Democracy; ed Westall (2011). A short, overdue assessment of the relevance of Paul Hirst’s ideas - more than a decade after his death

Associationalism for 150 years – and still alive and well in Denmark; Kaspersen (2002)

Communitarianism Revisited; Amitai Etzioni (2015) The father of the modern movement revisits the issues

Those curious about the “Varieties of Capitalism” literature and able and willing to subject themselves to the torture of academic writing can skim one of the following..

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/db5f/97bbe6f769bdf8ca138a89bd090f35e3a39d.pdf

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~phall/VofCIntro.pdf

http://web.unideb.hu/jkapas/pdf/Kapas_varieties%20of%20capitalism.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328807093_Rhine-and_Anglo_Saxon_Capitalist_Models_and_the_1960-1993_Automotive_Industry_in_Germany_and_the_United_States/link/5be427cc92851c6b27af5c67/download

https://jeremygilbertwriting.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/psychedelic-socialism.pdf

We need to talk about……..Power

Oborne’s book was interesting because, rightly or wrongly, it seemed to identify a turning point – that the way the British system of government operated had changed significantly (and for the worse) in the 1980s……He was not the only person arguing this – a year before, Simon Jenkins’ Thatcher and Sons; (2006) had conducted the same analysis but without using such dramatic terms as “new political class” and “manipulative populism”..

And even political scientists had been remarking that the much-famed “Westminster model” (of dominant political power) seemed to have been replaced with a much more consensual one of networked “governance”. Rod Rhodes – whom I briefly met in the 1970s - had been the foremost proponent of this view with his concept of “hollowed out government”

My table included a 2006 textbook British Politics – a critical introduction by Stuart McAnulla which nicely captures the sort of debate going on in those days in these academic circles……with McAnulla taking issue with both the traditional and reformist schools of thought and suggesting that we needed to extend our understanding of power beyond the political..…

It is, of course, nothing less than astounding that it took a global financial crisis to force academia to consider that government agendas are shaped by more than political manoeuvrings – and McAnulla’s is still a fairly lonely voice in his profession….The commercial links of New Labour were memorably exposed by George Monbiot in his 2001 expose The Captive State – the corporate takeover of Britain But, astonishingly, only 2 of the 500 pages of The UK’s Changing Democracy – the 2018 Democratic Audit have anything to say about corruption

Wolin’s Democracy Inc questioning the scale of commercial funding of American political personalities was distinctive only for it being produced by an academic (one of the most respected) and came out ten years ago. Neither it – nor the various studies of the significance of lobbying activity and resources at the European level – seem to make any impact on our discussions about democracy….Here is a rare 2014 academic contribution to the question of how consistent capitalism now is with democracy

We seem indeed averse to talking about “power” and its various facets…although most of us tend to have our own little conspiracy theory….I grant you that books on the subject tend to be rather specialised and daunting…..although Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power is a very good read…..if focusing rather too much on individual rather than systemic or structural factors.

When we look for books about power, we invariably find that they are written by sociologists, a group hardly famed for its clarity - one honourable exception being the recent Vampire Capitalism (2017).

Probably the best book about the subject is Steven Lukes’ slim Power – a radical view (2005) which starts with the simple story of how the post-war argument about the structure of power basically got underway with an American (Dahl) being upset with how 2 colleagues (C Wright Mills and Floyd Hunter) were portraying a power elite that seemed impervious to accountability – at both national and local levels…

Inevitably, however, even this book is guilty of the dreaded compartmentalisatio of which academia is so guilty and fails to mention the classic work of Amitai Etzioni who in the 1960s classified organisational power in terms of “coercion, economic assets or normative values”.. Sticks, carrots and moral persuasion we would call it.....

And if you’re wondering what “moral persuasion” is when it’s at home, Joseph Nye’s “soft power” will tell you more than Antonio Gramsci’s “hegemonic power”!!

An Etzioni resource

Last week’s sad funeral at least gave me the chance to retrieve a package which had been waiting for me since November in my neighbour’s house in my Carpathian village. By great coincidence it included a copy of Etzioni’s 2003 autobiography My Brother’s Keeper - which tracks the life of a rare character who managed to straddle successfully the worlds of academia (he is an organisational sociologist) and activism and therefore thoroughly to warrant the label of public intellectual

Etzioni’s has worked as a theorist, researcher, and political advisor, and has even developed his own political strategies. Only a few social scientists have been as active as Etzioni (born in Koeln in 1929) in all four of these fields. He follows in the footsteps of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim, all three of whom were not just theorists, but were also able – although each in his own manner – to act as polemicists and political activists…..

Instead of being demoralized by the power of the market and the state, Etzioni places faith in the citizen’s practical abilities of self-organization. Etzioni counterposes the failures of the market and the state by pointing to a third social sector, the communitarian society. Even in his first important book on social theory, “The Active Society” from 1968, Etzioni formulates the ambitious goal of “societal guidance”.

His multiple roles and activities are nicely set out in an assessment of his work by David Sciulli - Etzioni’s Critical Functionalism – communitarian origins and principles (2011) and another book (produced in 2005) The Active Society Revisited took another look at one of his classic 1968 productions which I remember being a bit too overwhelmed by to venture far into….

The Communitarian Reader (2004) is a useful collection of articles by his major associates in the venture to sketch out an alternative to neo-liberalism and collectivism which became known (in Europe at any rate) as the “third way” and which, arguably, somewhat tarnished his reputation – by virtue of the charlatans (such as Blair and Schroeder) with whom he associated

Nothing daunted, he ran a journal - The Responsive Community journal – for almost a decade; inaugurated the International Communitarian Society and broadened his application of his approach in the book The New Golden Rule

For my money, the one weakness of his analysis is that it does not properly take on board issues of power and profit. 

He is now 89 and still going strong - Last year he issued The New Normal and also an interesting paper on Politics and Culture in an age of Austerity which spends too much time for me on issues of “happiness” but which makes the following critical comment on one of the recent key books on that subject

Skidelsky and Skidelsky’s seven elements of a good life are decoupled from consumerism but not necessarily from self-centeredness. Two goods are dedicated to creature comforts, namely security and good health. In their rendering, security is of the person, not the nation; health is that of the individual, with little attention to public health. The inclusion of respect and friendship (akin to Maslow’s self-esteem and affection) in the list of goods is a major step forward, as gaining these goods is disassociated from buying things to enhance one’s status or to express friendship.

Skidelsky and Skidelsky enrich Maslow by adding three goods. First is harmony with nature, which for them is not an expression of concern for the environment but, rather, a quest for inner tranquility of the individual (Skidelsky & Skidelsy, 2012).

Next on the list is personality, which is “the ability to frame and execute a plan of life reflective of one’s tastes, temperament and conception of the good… as well [as] an element of spontaneity, individuality and spirit” (ibid., p.160). Both are self-centered.

Finally, while Maslow put selfactualization at the pinnacle, Skidelsky and Skidelsky crown leisure at the top of the list of the goods. Leisure is defined as “self-directed activity” and “purposiveness without purpose” (ibid., p. 9). It is an intrinsic good wherein people can and should flourish by doing well in whatever they choose to undertake: “The sculptor engrossed in cutting marble, the teacher intent on imparting a difficult idea, the musician struggling with a score…such people have no other aim than to do what they are doing well” (ibid.)

At the peak of his European peregrinations selling the “third way” he wrote this short piece for The New Statesman – and this longer pamphlet for the Demos ThinkTank

This review of his autobiography not only gives a good sense of the trajectory of his life but sums up my own feelings that he got his wings sizzled by supping too close to the devil….

Despite this reservation, however, he is one of these rare individuals I feel who has used his endowments to create a real and original sense of the "public good"......   

Those wanting to know more about Etzioni can access archives here and interesting comments here