On being serious in letters

Being part II of  of the introduction to Dispatches to the next generation – the short version

I thought it would be useful to try to write a blurb for this book – on the basis that it might give me a checklist against which I could check whether the text actually fulfilled its promises – or what I thought the book should cover…..

“This is a book”, I started “about the ways we have tried to think about the economic crisis which has gripped us over the past decade”…..I paused to look at the words….”Hang on! That’s not true” I said to myself…”It’s a book about how I have tried to think about the crisis”.

The royal “we” on these occasions tends to creep in unconsciously - perhaps to protect us against accusations of subjectivity, perhaps to add an air of abstraction.

I must have forgotten that, when I first compiled this short version a couple of years ago, I had chosen the title quite deliberately to convey the sense that the book would indeed try to strike a more “personal” note or “tone” than is normal for such subjects.

I was trying, after all, to gather my thoughts together “as if” I was leaving a letter behind for my children…In such an endeavour, I was following the lead of people like Ernest Callenbach who had left behind such a letter – or Alain Touraine or Yanis Varoufakis who had penned highly personal books inspired by the thought of loved ones….

Focus of the posts in Part II

Title	What the reader takes away
The rare Economic Books which enlighten	Specialists have such a narrow focus – and are so used to talking to students and other academics - that they have lost the art of communication. I recommend a dozen books which actually bring economics to life
The Different approaches to the crisis taken by academic disciplines	A unique table I’ve developed which plots books and authors according to both their academic discipline (I selected nine) and ideological position
Other Ways to make sense of it all	This introduces a good “typology” ie a way of classifying the very different approaches and the reasons for their divergent conclusions
Exemplary critics	Application of the typology – with examples of the books and writers who have made sense to me
A rare example of good writing	When you come across an author who holds your interest, you start to ask why others can’t do the same….
PostWar Mood music – how the intellectuals made sense of our economic system	This is my annotated list of important books – from the 1950s to the start of the crash. Be warned - there are about 50 titles

Making sense of it all

It was in 2000 or thereabouts that I first started to feel that the world had taken a wrong turning – a short paper called Guide for the Perplexed captured these thoughts….

The global economic crisis of 2008 just confirmed those initial feelings. It was at this stage I started the blog – using it to record notes on my readings.

 Then one day, I had the bright idea to gather the posts in one file – just to see if there was an underlying pattern which might be of wider interest…In 2015, this was a 115 page file called Ways of Seeing…the global crisis – which consisted mainly of a critique of our political and intellectual elites. But it was a couple of years later before I realised how badly served we were by most books on the crisis and when I started to develop my own annotated list of the key books – which suggested that the “crisis” actually began in the 1970s…That’s a list with almost 100 books – which you will find in Part II of Dispatches to the next generation – the short version.

As the book has developed more or less of its own accord, it is about time for it to be given some aims – against which it might better be edited. And I have not forgotten the advice I have given to authors (and publishers) about needing powerful arguments to convince us that yet another book should be inflicted upon them

So, rather belatedly, here are the reasons why I offer the book

- It puts the crisis in its proper context – social, historical and moral

- It is clearly written

- Its guided hyperlinks allow you to select the further reading which seems appropriate eg this unique list of books worth reading

- It's written by someone who understands your uncertainties and confusions

- you can use the book lists to make you appear more knowledgeable!  

Let me try to persuade you it’s worth dipping into -

PART I

I love what I imagine was the Victorian habit of giving sub-titles to their book chapters which offered explanations of what the reader might reasonably expect to find in them. And I’ve discovered that they are a good discipline for anyone trying to edit his own text……… In this next section therefore –

- An indictment is read

- Different ways of looking at the world are sketched out

- Some explanations are offered for our discord

- The scale of moral collapse and greed is exposed

- A staircase tale about the devil is recounted

- It is suggested that Management and Economics have become the new religion

- A letter to the Younger Generation is discovered

- History is revenged

Title	Tags	Bottom line?
The Indictment	Seeking the common ground	How I saw the world in 2014
Stories we tell	Frame analysis, tropes, memes,	Different ways we try to make sense of the world
Why we disagree	Wicked problems	Pity no one has yet applied frame analysis to the global economic crisis
The scale of our moral collapse	Corporations, politicians, greed, lying, growth, spying, inequality	Has human nature changed?
A Staircase Tale about the devil	Corruption, accountability	A famous Bulgarian parable
The new religion	Management, economics, faith	the high priests of the latest religion
Against technocracy	Egocentricity, universities	How ethics has been marginalised
A letter to the younger generation	Hope, mutual support, organisation	Sound dying words
The revenge of history?	Spengler, Toynbee	Explain the significance of the table used as a frontispiece

In a following post, I’ll give you a taster for the second part of the little book – which is by way of being what the academics call a “literature review” ie not just a list of books but brief comments which give a sense of what sort of value it adds to the discussion..

As I cast my critical eye over the book as a whole, I realise that although part 1 is strong on judgements, part II is probably too descriptive and insufficiently opinionated!

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”

Making Sense of the Global Crisis

Earlier this year, I ran a series of ten posts which started with a simple question – why are we so badly served with books about the economic crisis? I bemoaned the fact that authors –

-  seem to have made up their mind up about the explanation before they started to write

- make little attempt to analyse previous efforts at explanation

- generally spend their time on diagnosis

- leaving prescriptions to the last few pages

Of course, there are exceptions – in particular Howard Davies’ The Financial Crisis (2010) which identified and briefly assessed no fewer than 39 different explanations for the crisis. And I have just been reading Vampire Capitalism – fractured societies and alternative futures a book by Paul Kennedy which appeared only a few months ago. 

An academic sociologist, Kennedy earns high points by stating in the very first sentence that he has 

“stood on the shoulders of so many giants that I am dizzy” 

and then proves the point by each chapter of his book having extensive notes (often with hyperlinks) and concluding with a bibliography of 25 pages…

More to the point, the book covers pretty extensively a lot of subjects, such as the ecological crisis and the future of work, which are normally ignored in such texts. You really feel that the guy has made a real effort to track down and summarise for us the most important texts in the field – a quite exceptional approach….which so few others attempt. You can check for yourself since the book can be downloaded in its entirety here.

I suspect that one reason for this feature is that the book is based on a much longer textbook he did a few years back called  Global Sociology – which would perhaps explain the lightness of some of the discussion dealing with the feasibility of “green solutions” to the ecological aspects of the crisis. Surprisingly, there is no reference to Capitalism 3.0 (2006) by Peter Barnes – a very fair-minded entrepreneur sensitive to the evils of unregulated capitalism. Nor to people such Paul Hawkens….whose Natural Capitalism – the next industrial revolution made such an impact when it came out as far as back as 1999. Hawkens indeed has just released an intensive analysis of 100 “feasible solutions” – assessed by a credible advisory team over the past 3 years…… Drawdown

But I didn ‘t actually mean any takedown with these remarks – because at least the man has been courageous enough to aim high, write clearly and put his stuff out there for us to assess…..I so much wish others would do likewise…….

 

In that spirit, let me return to the effort I made earlier this year to identify, in some ten posts, about 200 of the key books which try to explain the economics of the modern world – you can find them dealt with from pages 35-58 of Common Endeavour

Somewhere I have made the comment that the best books on the subject for me are actually not written by economists - so I thought I would test that throwaway remark and came up with the following table which simply identifies (very subjectively) some seminal titles which are then placed not quite in a left-right spectrum but more in a “tonal” spectrum…..

 Key Texts on the Crisis - by category of writing - and "tone"

Discipline	Critical	Moderate	Apologiae
Economics	Globalisation and its Discontents; Joseph Stiglitz (2002) Debt and Neo-Feudalism; Michael Hudson (2012) Debunking Economics – the naked emperor dethroned; Steve Keen (2011 edition)	Why Globalisation Works; Martin Wolf (2004) Shifts and Shocks – what we’ve learned, and still have to, from the financial crisis; Martin Wolf (2014) – with accompanying power point presentation.	most of the discipline
Political economy	Austerity – the history of a dangerous idea; Mark Blyth (2013)		The discipline still rediscovering itself
Political science	Democracy Incorporated – managed democracy and the spectre of inverted totalitarianism; Sheldon Wolin  (2008) Crisis without End - the unravelling of western prosperity: Andrew Gamble (2014) Mammon’s Kingdom – an essay on Britain, Now; David Marquand (2015)	Paul Hirst (stakeholding) Peter Mair	Few pol scientists trespass into the economic field
Sociology	Buying Time – the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism; Wolfgang Streeck (2013) End of capitalism? Michael Mann (2013) Vampire Capitalism – fractured societies and alternative futures; Paul Kennedy (2017)	A lot of sociologists seduced into polling work	The sociological voice is still inspired by C Wright Mills – although divided a  bit by the French school
geography	A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism – David Harvey (2005). Injustice ; Daniel Dorling 2014) A Better Politics – how government can make us happier D Dorling (2016		The geographers are a bolshie lot!
Environment		Why we can’t agree about Climate Change; Mike Hulme (2009) Natural Capitalism – the next industrial revolution; Paul Hawken (1999)	Although most of this bunch have been geographers, they pride themselves on their technocracy
Journalism	The Capitalism Papers – Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System; Jerry Mander (2012). Post Capitalism – a guide to our Future; Paul Mason (2015) ….	How Good Can we be – ending the mercenary society Will Hutton (2015)	They don’t enjoy the tenure of the academics – and therefore have to pay attention to their mealticket
Management and mant studies	Rebalancing Society; Henry Mintzberg (2014)	Peter Senge Charles Handy Capitalism 3.0 Peter Barnes (2006)	Most mant writers are apologists – apart from the critical mant theorists
Religious studies	Laudato-Si – Pope Francis’ Encyclical (2015). Accessible in its entirety here	Questions of Business Life; Higginson (2002)	A more ecumenical bunch!

My apologies to all those who may feel demeaned……but, as I hope my next post will make clear, there is a very serious point I will be trying to make……  

the concerned citizen is very badly served

You would think that, after the last decade of the global crisis, it would not be difficult to find a few impartial books clearly written by those familiar with the huge literature and which help the concerned citizen understand how exactly the crash happened; and whether any measures could realistically rekindle hope….  

We have thousands of books about the causes of the global economic crisis of 2007/08 which pin blame, variously, on banks, speculators and a score of other explanations - but few have actually been written which satisfy the five preconditions which the previous paragraph specifies - in relation to impartiality, clarity, knowledge, audience and prescription ……

Almost all are rather produced to argue an existing (partial) viewpoint; are written for students (to pass exams) or for other academics – rather than for the concerned citizen; and cover only those parts of the literature which the author’s job and/or inclinations require him/her to pay attention to…. (the last therefore excludes, for example, work which comes from the political economy (eg Susan Strange; Mark Blyth); or sociology (Wolfgang Streeck) fields…

I have a simple test for whether a book on the crisis is worth buying - go the Preface/Introduction and check how many of the key points are covered (award one point for each)–

- Does it say why yet another book is needed to add to the huge pile we already have?

- Does it argue that the book has something distinctive to say?

- is anything said about the audience the author is aiming at?

- Does it hint that there are different schools of thinking about the issue?

- No book can be comprehensive – does the author list what subjects (s)he has excluded?

- Is there an annotated further reading list in an annex?

I can’t say I was greatly helped when I googled phrases such as “best sellers in the global crisis” - I got a list of 100 books – but nothing to help me make a selection. 
I did, however, find this annotated list of 12 from someone who was writing his own book and recounted how difficult it was to get past the book buyers of the major companies, 
And there was a rare annotated list of 25 “must read” (mostly American) books on the crisis on an interesting website Planning beyond Capitalism - but its selection was understandably a bit light on books from other ideological stables…
Economics for Everyone in a very friendly-looking book which can actually be downloaded in full (all 360 pages!!) and has an excellent “further reading” list. Zombie Economics - how dead ides still walk among us; by John Quiggin (2010) is a great read    

And here's an introductory course on economics whose 11 sections have some good reading (and viewing) material - with hyperlinks.....

I’m currently sifting all the references I’ve made in my thousand plus blogposts about the issue – to see if I can come up with a commentary which might help others in my position…The names which figure are the following (in no particular order) – Michael Lewis, Michael Hudson, Martin Wolff, David Korten, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Mason, Will Hutton, Paul Hirst, Andrew Gamble, Herman Daly, Susan George, Mark Blyth, Wolfgang Streeck, David Harvey, Michel Albert, Colin Crouch, David Marquand…

If asked to make a single recommendation, I would plump fairly confidently for Mark Blyth’s Austerity – the history of a dangerous idea But I’m sure there is another book out there which I could recommend to the concerned citizen?  

At least, people are now prepared to call the system by its name – “capitalism” – before the crisis, this was a word which rarely passed people’s lips. Now the talk everywhere is not only of capitalism but “post-capitalism”…….And an encouraging American initiative The Next System had an initial report – The Next System Report – political possibilities for the 21st Century (2015) which contains extensive references to writing I had not so far encountered and to good community practice in various parts of the world.  It has since followed up with a series of worthwhile papers.

Update; there's a useful bibliography here - if a bit outdated and American. And I've also just uploaded  Economics for Everyone  – a short guide to the economics of capitalism” by Jim Stanford (2008 - all 360 pages) which I would strongly recommend