what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020
Showing posts with label corporate power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporate power. Show all posts

Sunday, January 12, 2014

The perversities of modern power

Over the past year or so, I have been coming back to some questions I first posed a decade ago – namely how people of my age (disgusted as we are by the behaviour of our corporate and political elites) might best focus our energies and resources to help nudge the systems of which we are part to a more hopeful future - and who were the people we could support in that venture . 
My initial - if rather tentative - answers were contained in a 30 page paper Draft Guide for the Perplexed. (The link gives the pdf file of the Guide which, unfortunately, doesn't allow the access to the links in the body of the text (the footnote links are OK), You can find a word version linked at the end of the post Draft Guide for the Perplexed – its about 20 titles up from the end of the list which that website link gives)
Breaking Out from an Insane World was one important recent post in that series.
The last post in the series had a summary of my recent reflections about the subject which I’ve now amended to read -
  • The “mixed economy” which existed from 1950-1990 was a healthy and effective system for us in the West (The UK, as always, is an exception)  
  • It worked because power was diffused. Each type of power – economic (companies/banks etc), political (citizens and workers) and legal/admin/military (the state) – balanced the other. None was dominant.
  • Economic globalisation has, however, now undermined the power which working class people were able to exercise in that period through  votes and unions
  • Privatisation is a disaster – inflicting costs on the public and transferring wealth to the few
  • Neo-liberalism has supplied a thought system which justifies corporate greed and the privileging       (through tax breaks and favourable legislation) of the large international company
  • All political parties and most media have been captured by that thought system which now rules the world
  • People have, as a result, become cynical and apathetic
  • Two elements of the “balanced system” (Political and legal power) are therefore now supine before the third (corporate and media power). The balance is broken and the dominant power ruthless in its exploitation of its new freedom
  • It is very difficult to see a “countervailing power” which would make these corporate elites pull back from the disasters they are inflicting on us
  • Social protest is marginalised
  • Not least by the combination of the media and an Orwellian “security state” ready to act against “dissidence”
  • But the beliefs which lie at the dark heart of the neo-liberal project do need more detailed exposure
  • as well as its continued efforts to undermine what little is left of state power
  • We need to be willing to express more vehemently the arguments against privatisation - existing and proposed)
  • to feel less ashamed about arguing for “the commons” and for things like cooperatives and social enterprise (inasmuch as such endeavours are allowed)
But how do we go about re-establishing some sort of balance of power?

How can social forces be strengthened; and political and state systems of power reformed - so that the wings of corporate power can be properly clipped??

I’ve been encouraged to return to this theme by the summary of and papers from this very recent Conference on the Restructuring of the Corporation 

The papers are certainly fascinating – but suggest (with the exception of Henry Mintzberg) that change will come from within the system. Most people involved in these arguments about social and economic change focus on one or other of the three parts – political, legal or commercial ie stronger, more focussed protest; or different voting systems; or more social enterprise; or more corporate social responsibility; or stronger legislation against lobbying for example. Few so far seem to see Mintzberg’s point that we need a mixed cocktail!  

The illustration is a woodcut by the marvellous Hans Masserel

Sunday, December 8, 2013

What is to be done?

The discussion thread to the David Simon article is worth looking at. It confirms my view that few people are taking the time or trouble to explore the feasibility of the various paths which are open to those of us appalled with the behaviour of our commercial, financial, media and political rulers and systems.

Let’s try to set out what most thinking people would probably agree with (after some argument)–
  • The mixed economy we had for almost 40 years after the war was a good system for us in the West
  • It kept power in check
  • Economic globalisation has, however, now undermined the power which working class people had in that period – probably irretrievably
  • Neo-liberalism has supplied instead a thought system which justifies corporate greed
  • All political parties and most media have been captured by that thought system and the elite which now rules the world
  • Privatisation is a disaster
  • It has undermined both the capacity of western states – and the trust people had in the public sector of those states
  • It is no longer possible to see a “countervailing power” which would make these corporate elites pull back from the disasters they are inflicting on us
  • Bricks are perhaps part of the answer (also “suicide missions” of the elderly!)
  • The ruling elite understand this threat – which is why it has been building up an Orwellian “security state” ready to act against “dissidence”
  • But the beliefs which lie at the dark heart of the neo-liberal project do need more detailed exposure
  • We need to be willing to express more vehemently the arguments against privatisation – to feel less ashamed about arguing for “the commons” and for things like cooperatives and social enterprise (inasmuch as such endeavours are allowed)
  • to feel less ashamed about arguing for “the commons” and for things like cooperatives and social enterprise (inasmuch as such endeavours are allowed)
  • to take more strength from appropriate points in history and 
  • to take the time to find and talk with those who can distill the essence of what others have been saying..........We don't need to reinvent the wheel - and should beware those with ready answers!
By comparison have a look at what some Germans were saying in June 

Breaking out from an insane world

It’s highly appropriate that, at the end of the week during which I have been thinking and about blogging the difficulties what, for lack of a better phrase I have to call “social reform”, a blistering article appears.
I won’t spoil the effect by revealing, for the moment, the identity of the writer. What is important for me is that the author gives central place to the notion of a “re-balancing” of power and systems. Have patience – the excerpt is a long one! So I’ve taken the liberty of adding some headings……
The notion that capital is the metric, that profit is the metric by which we're going to measure the health of our society is one of the fundamental mistakes of the last 30 years. I would date it in my country to about 1980 exactly, and it has triumphed.
The great irony of it is that the only thing that actually works is not ideological, it is impure, has elements of both arguments and never actually achieves any kind of partisan or philosophical perfection. It's pragmatic, it includes the best aspects of socialistic thought and of free-market capitalism and it works because we don't let it work entirely. And that's a hard idea to think – that there isn't one single silver bullet that gets us out of the mess we've dug for ourselves. But man, we've dug a mess….
 Some history
A working class that had no discretionary income at the beginning of the century, which was working on subsistence wages was turned it into a consumer class that not only had money to buy all the stuff that they needed to live but enough to buy a bunch of shit that they wanted but didn't need, and that was the engine that drove us.
It wasn't just that we could supply stuff, or that we had the factories or know-how or capital, it was that we created our own demand and started exporting that demand throughout the west. And the standard of living made it possible to manufacture stuff at an incredible rate and sell it.
And how did we do that? We did that by not giving in to either side. That was the new deal. That was the great society. That was all of that argument about collective bargaining and union wages and it was an argument that meant neither side gets to win.
The unions actually mattered. The unions were part of the equation. It didn't matter that they won all the time, it didn't matter that they lost all the time, it just mattered that they had to win some of the time and they had to put up a fight and they had to argue for the demand and the equation and for the idea that workers were not worth less, they were worth more.
 The big mistake
Ultimately we abandoned that and believed in the idea of trickle-down and the idea of the market economy and the market knows best, to the point where now libertarianism in my country is actually being taken seriously as an intelligent mode of political thought. It's astonishing to me. But it is. People are saying I don't need anything but my own ability to earn a profit. I'm not connected to society. I don't care how the road got built, I don't care where the firefighter comes from, I don't care who educates the kids other than my kids. I am me. It's the triumph of the self. I am me, hear me roar.
And so in my country (the US) you're seeing a horror show. You're seeing a retrenchment in terms of family income, you're seeing the abandonment of basic services, such as public education, functional public education. You're seeing the underclass hunted through an alleged war on dangerous drugs that is in fact merely a war on the poor and has turned us into the most incarcerative state in the history of mankind, in terms of the sheer numbers of people we've put in American prisons and the percentage of Americans we put into prisons. No other country on the face of the Earth jails people at the number and rate that we are.
 I’m no pansy!
I'm utterly committed to the idea that capitalism has to be the way we generate mass wealth in the coming century. That argument's over. But the idea that it's not going to be married to a social compact, that how you distribute the benefits of capitalism isn't going to include everyone in the society to a reasonable extent, that's astonishing to me.
And so capitalism is about to seize defeat from the jaws of victory all by its own hand. That's the astonishing end of this story, unless we reverse course. Unless we take into consideration, if not the remedies of Marx then the diagnosis, because he saw what would happen if capital triumphed unequivocally, if it got everything it wanted.
 But things can’t go on like this!
Unless we take stock of the fact that maybe socialism and the socialist impulse has to be addressed again; it has to be married as it was married in the 1930s, the 1940s and even into the 1950s, to the engine that is capitalism.
The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenile notion and it's still being argued in my country passionately and we're going down the tubes. 
OK at this stage I have to tell you that the author is the guy who created and wrote one of television’s best series - “The Wire” – one David Simon who has delivered this amazing blistering address  He goes on the say -
And that's what The Wire was about basically, it was about people who were worth less and who were no longer necessary, as maybe 10 or 15% of my country is no longer necessary to the operation of the economy. It was about them trying to solve, for lack of a better term, an existential crisis. In their irrelevance, their economic irrelevance, they were nonetheless still on the ground occupying this place called Baltimore and they were going to have to endure somehow.
 The great horror show
That's the great horror show. What are we going to do with all these people that we've managed to marginalise? It was kind of interesting when it was only race, when you could do this on the basis of people's racial fears and it was just the black and brown people in American cities who had the higher rates of unemployment and the higher rates of addiction and were marginalised and had the shitty school systems and the lack of opportunity.
And kind of interesting in this last recession to see the economy shrug and start to throw white middle-class people into the same boat, so that they became vulnerable to the drug war, say from methamphetamine, or they became unable to qualify for college loans. And all of a sudden a certain faith in the economic engine and the economic authority of Wall Street and market logic started to fall away from people. And they realised it's not just about race, it's about something even more terrifying. It's about class. Are you at the top of the wave or are you at the bottom?
 So?
So how does it get better? In 1932, it got better because they dealt the cards again and there was a communal logic that said nobody's going to get left behind. We're going to figure this out. We're going to get the banks open. From the depths of that depression a social compact was made between worker, between labour and capital that actually allowed people to have some hope.
……..Or we're going to keep going the way we're going, at which point there's going to be enough people standing on the outside of this mess that somebody's going to pick up a brick, because you know when people get to the end there's always the brick. I hope we go for the first option but I'm losing faith.
 Looks like we have to throw bricks
The other thing that was there in 1932 that isn't there now is that some element of the popular will could be expressed through the electoral process in my country.
The last job of capitalism – having won all the battles against labour, having acquired the ultimate authority, almost the ultimate moral authority over what's a good idea or what's not, or what's valued and what's not – the last journey for capital in my country has been to buy the electoral process, the one venue for reform that remained to Americans.
Right now capital has effectively purchased the government, and you witnessed it again with the healthcare debacle in terms of the $450m that was heaved into Congress, the most broken part of my government, in order that the popular will never actually emerged in any of that legislative process.
So I don't know what we do if we can't actually control the representative government that we claim will manifest the popular will. Even if we all start having the same sentiments that I'm arguing for now, I'm not sure we can affect them any more in the same way that we could at the rise of the Great Depression, so maybe it will be the brick. But I hope not.
This emphasis on the importance of balance was the focus of a very good (but neglected) paper which Henry Mintzberg published in 2000 about the Management of Government which starts with the assertion that it was not capitalism which won in 1989 but "the balanced model” ie a system in which there was some sort of balance between the power of commerce, the state and the citizen. Patently the balance has swung too far in the intervening 20 years! Mintzberg is a very sane (Canadian) voice in a mad world – ás is obvious from this article on managing quietly and his ten musings on management
I mentioned his paper on the blog a couple of years ago when he seemed to be writing a book about the need for re-balance but his website contains now only a promise of a pamphlet. Mintzberg is one of the few people familiar with the relevant literature who could develop an appropriate typology to help us move forward from the desparate shouting......



Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Draft Guide for the Perplexed

Some 12-13 years ago I drafted a paper with the rather odd title “Living for Posterity” which was -
"one man’s attempt to explore how he might “make a difference”; or at least feel that what he is doing is improving the human condition rather than compounding its problems. For I was at the enviable point in my life where I didn’t need to work full-time and could choose what I did with my time and life.
The first half of the paper still has the form and content it had when it was originally written (in Tashkent) in 2001 some 10 years after I had left political life in Scotland and started the nomadic life of a consultant in countries which were assumed to be in some sort of transition from a form of communism to capitalism".
How – was my question – should I use my energies and resources (time, skills, knowledge and money) in the future to best public (rather than private) advantage?
My 2001 note was structured around 5 questions -
  • why I was pessimistic about the future and so unhappy with the activities of the programmes and organisations with whom I dealt – and with what the French have called La Pensee Unique, the post 1989 “Washington consensus”
  • who were the organisations and people I admired
  • what they were achieving - and what not
  • how these gaps could be reduced
  • how with my resources I could help that process
One friend responded and I returned to the questions 10 years later and tried to update my thoughts.
On Sunday I had a stimulating chat – over a white wine - with a new acquaintance about the issues and have been encouraged to do a minor update which you can find on my website with the title - Draft Guide for the Perplexed

I’ve been very lucky in my life – having a position of considerable political influence in the West of Scotland for 22 years from the age of 28 – and then having responsibility for a variety of capacity-building projects in central European and Central Asian governments for another 20 odd years.
From these very different vantage points (and my constant reading) I have developed some views about what we might call social/political interventions…..Unfortunately I find that my attempt to communicate these gets perverted by language – not just my own imperfections but, I suspect, the verbal infrastructure itself. Hence the pleasure I got from drafting a “Devil’s Dictionary” to warn people about language – entitled Just Words

I readily confess to being one of these annoying people who “takes stock” every few years of what has been going on in a place for which I felt some affinity and offers some uninvited (and generally unpalatable) comment. I started the habit in the mid- 1970s and was allowed to indulge the habit by my various positions. I might say that it made few friends!
Although I continue to write a blog I now use it mainly to pass on what I consider to be useful perspectives of others who are better skilled than  -, whether by virtue of their more felicitous language, their experience, reading or understanding.