The Argument so far – part IV

 The last post indicated the reading I hope to do to stimulate the grey cells as I try to draft the concluding chapter of my little book about our current malaise. It made the important point that, before we start even flicking a book, we need to have some questions in mind. This will help us quickly identify where (if at all) the text actually tries to develop answers…..   

I confessed that I don’t find it easy to articulate such questions – and, typically, I found my exercise producing a list of statements viz  

·       Western liberal capitalism has legitimacy as long as its political and economic systems work

·       The economic system (capitalism) has always had its critics – but the global financial crash of 2008; climate change; and Artificial Intelligence have made the case for radical change unassailable

·       For the second half of the 20^th century, the political system (democracy) seemed free from such challenges - but has recently come under fire for its failure to make its citizens feel that it represents any more their interests

·       Political parties have indeed surrendered almost all of their functions – which I once described as representation, manifesto implementation, extension of public insight and protection – and are left only with the selection of elites.

·       Most of the terms used in discussions – such as neoliberalism, inequality, populism, identity – are useless slogans which don’t contribute to anyone’s understanding of what’s at stake

·       The present situation suits “Individualists” down to the ground

·       It was 1979 when Christopher Lasch produced his “Culture of Narcissism” which anticipated the present focus on self

·       “Egalitarians” are at a loss – having lost their capacity to believe in solidarity and the engines of union pressure and of social democracy

·       The rest of us are utterly confused

·       The structure of power is basically out of balance – as Henry Mintzberg’s Rebalancing  Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and center so clearly sets out

·       But argument alone will not bring down the walls of privilege

·       The lesson of history is that force (or its threat) is needed to effect social change

·       Although history also tells us that it has to be non-violent

·       Where do we find and harness such force?    

Querying the texts – part III of the current series

It’s taken a few days to gather together and skim some of the more recent books which might be useful as I try to draft the concluding chapter to the book I’ve been working on for the past decade – the one in which I try to understand the sense of crisis which has overtaken the West. The last two posts tried to give a sense of the book’s basic arguments.

I’m one of these people who tend to read everything I can lay my hands on – imagining that it will somehow give me the clarity my confusion requires.

Somehow I never learn that I need to start with questions – against which I can query the text. I have to discipline myself to articulate these questions

POWER is the big problematic for me at the moment. How – given the selfish individualism which has invaded our modern souls – is it possible for people to come together to force the system to change for the better. It was trade unions and the working class who for that brief period after the war forced a certain balance of power. The growth of the service sector and globalisation have undermined that.  

And what about a programme which would actually attract votes? That’s why I’ve included the books on socialism, social democracy and communitarianism.

The first column gives the book titles – in chronological order – starting with the earliest. The second column explains why I think they could be useful 

Title	First Impressions
Why the Third Way Failed – economics, morality and the origins of ”the big society”; Bill Jordan (2010)	This, for a social democrat, is one of the most important questions – why did a consensual approach which rebuffs both left and right idelogies fail? Was it the absense of a serious approach? Or are we doomed to be tribal?
Unaccountable – how the elite brokers corrupt; Janine Wedel (2014)	Wedel is an anthropologist – and applies those skills to the contemporary political system of the USA
Rebalancing  Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and center Henry Mintzberg (2015)	One of my favourite little books which I’ve brought in as a measure for the other books. He’s basically got it all – strong analysis of what’s wrong; recognition of the importance of worker coops and social enterprise; and of the need for a shift in power
Back to the future of Socialism Peter Hain (2015)	Most of the books in the table are by academics but this one is by that rarity – a thinking and caring politician. The title is a reference to the classic 1956 “Future of Socialism” and is a useful update
Reclaiming the State – a progressive vision of sovereignty in a post neo-liberal world Bill Mitchell (2017)	I like the look of this book – written by an Australian - which, unusually, argues for a more activist role for the state
Wrong Turnings – how the left got lost; Geoff Hodgson (2018)	Hodgson is both a political economist and social democrat and has a strong analysis here
Why the Left Loses – the decline of the centre left; R Manwaring and P Kennedy (2018)	The classic book on social democracy (Berman) was published 15 years ago. This is a more recent assessment from Australians which looks at the lessons from recent experience. See reading list here
Is Socialism Feasible? Geoffrey Hodgson (2019)	Hodgson is a political economist and social democrat who writes clearly and is prepared to face hard truths
From What Is to What If – unleashing the power of imagination to create the world we want Rob Hopkins (2019).	Hopkins is an environmental activist who founded the Resilient Towns movement.
The Demons of Liberal Democracy; Adrian Pabst (2019)	Pabst is a Third Way man who abhors left and right. I felt this would provide a challenging read
Winners take all – the elite charade of changing the world; A Girdiharadas (2019)	One of the problems progressives have is that the devil has stolen a lot of his tunes.
Goliath – the 100-year war between monopoly power and democracy; Matt Stoller (2019)	very important review suggests the author has swallowed the liberal competition ideas of economists too literally; and has underestimated the power of class struggle in the post-war US achievements
The Free Society in Crisis; David Starkey (2019)	Have included this curious book largely from admiration of the author’s courage in limiting his reading list to books that are more than 50 years old
The evolution of communitarian ideas – history, theory and practice Henry Tam (2019)	Communitarianism is an important strand of progressive thought Tam is a very thoughtful and excellent writer who blogs here
The Third Pillar – how the market and the state leave the community behind Raghuram Rajan (2019)	an overdue analysis of the huge role which communiity bodies have to play in the future which was all too easily dismissed by the loose talk of ”The Third Way” and the ”Big Society”.  Although we do have to ask why it is that ideas apparently attractive to mainstream opinion were never taken seriously....
The New Class War – saving democracy from the new managerial elite; Michael Lind (2020)	I want to like this book – but feel the argument that managerial power needs taking down is hardly likely in itself to lead to the rebalance of power we need
Twenty-First Century Socialism; Jeremy Gilbert (2020)	This is a short and very readable book. Gilbert is the author of Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism (2013)
Unrigged – how Americans are battling back to save democracy; David Daley (2020)	The book may have a focus on the US but the move to discredit democracy and disenfranchise voters is widespread (eg contemporary UK) as is evident from books with titles such as “Against Democracy” (2016)
Rentier Capitalism – who owns the economy? Brett Christophers (2020)	A British economist gives us a good sense of the curious direction the British economy has taken. Strongly influenced by the work of US economist Michael Hudson, famous for his “Killing the Host” and “J is for Junk Economics”
Authoritarianism and how to counter it; Bill Jordan (2020)	The sociology author of ”Why the Third Way failed” takes on the question of why voters have turner again to ”the hard men” and what we can do about it...
Share the Wealth – how to end rentier capitalism; Philippe Askenazy (2021)	Too many anglo-saxon economists dominate this field – so it’s good to get a French view (a translation of a 2016 book)
Mission Economy – a moonshot guide to changing capitalism; Mariana Mazzucato (2021)	This Italian economist now based in Britain is one of the few economists who has been prepared to argue strongly for public investment and an activist role for government – see also Bill Mitchell (below) and Andrew Cumbers
Consequences of Capitalism; Noam Chomsky and Mary Waterstone (2021)	Very disappointing book – based on recent lectures delivered by Chomsky. And it shows….with the narrative often jumping into distracting stories.
Post Growth – life after capitalism ; Tim Jackson (2021)	The elephant in the room….a suitable note on which to finish

The "expandable" book

One of my favourite television watching is Seinfeld which ran for almost a decade from its 1989 start and has 180 episodes. One of them has Kramer, the goofy neighbour, sell the idea of a coffee book with a small nestling table attached - duly appearing on a television talk-show to explain the idea. And, in that same spirit, I offer you the concept of the “expandable book”

As the guy who has actually argued that non-fiction books should be rationed, you might well ask what on earth I think I’m up to - that I am actually thinking of inflicting yet another book on readers. My response is that this is a short book which can expand into larger sizes! 

At the moment my book is just over a hundred pages – although it has hyperlinks to the larger book on which it is based (whose links in turn lead to what must be several thousands of pages of reading). So it’s a huge resource. The latest version is here 

It lists and comments briefly on the hundreds of books which have been written in recent decades about “the crisis”. In that sense, it has something in common with the “50 Classic” series by Tom Butler-Bowen although I can give only a tantalising sense of the worth of the books I reference - compared to the 5 or so pages which Butler-Bowen’s books average for each of his 50. 

But it lacked, as it still does, a conclusion….So I’ve selected a dozen or so useful-looking recent books to see if they will help me clarify things for the missing text – including the latest writing of people such as Noam Chomsky, Geoff Hodgson, Mariana Mazzucato and Jeremy Gilbert.

But, first, I felt I should remind you of the basic argument of each chapter 

Chapter Title	Thrust of chapter arguments	Supporting arguments
1. Critical junctures identified	History is written by the victors – and the sycophants who surround them. Events were generally much more finely balanced than their versions admit. There’s too much fatalism around	Covid 19 as a Critical Juncture Out of the Belly of Hell
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, Syed
3. Economics relegated	This intellectual discipline is deficient and yet has too much power. It needs to be brought down a peg or three	Steve Keen, Brian Davey’s ”Credo”
4. The Blind men probe the Elephant	Talk of capitalism and post-capitalism is too loose and reified. There are various equally legitimate ways of perceiving the “beast”	57 Varieties of Capitalism
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, Paul Collier,
6. Lessons of change explored	So much protest fails and few social enterprises have a multiplier effect. How do we create winnable coalitions?	Robert Quinn
7. Change agents and coalitions sought	Progressives are good at sounding off – and bad at seeking common ground	Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism Jeremy Gilbert
8. Bringing it all together	countervailing power

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We Are on our Own

I need some help in writing the conclusion to my "Dispatches to the Next Generation" which is my attempt to answer some existential questions I posed twenty years ago. It's currently in draft here. A few years ago this was how I tried to sum it all up –

·       The “mixed economy” which existed from 1950-1990 was a healthy and effective system for us in the West

·       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.

·       Deindustrialisation and economic globalisation have undermined the power which working class people were able to exercise in that period through votes and union activity

·       Privatisation has been 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) 

We’re now in summer 2021 – with the Covid pandemic still raging. How would I now update that statement??

·       we have consistently underestimated the significance of global warming and what is now called the anthropogenic era – indeed there is now open talk of “facing extinction”

·       Globalisation is in shreds

·       Not least through the Covid19 pandemic of 2020

·       Societies are polarised

·       Thrust into narrow and selfish “bubbles”

·       Artificial intelligence threatens what we used to refer to as “employment prospects”    

                How, in such conditions, might social forces come together with a programme which stands a good chance of reforming the political and state systems of power - so that the wings of corporate power can be properly clipped??

And make no mistake – power is the central issue here. At the heart of our collective malaise is the imbalance of power. We quantify everything these days – talking for example of the 8 men who control half the planet’s wealth. But somehow this fails to galvanise any sort of collective action – reference to gini-coefficients leaves glazed eyes

The last post suggested that the manifestos of political parties are characterised by total irrelevance. Totally missing are the commitments to change the power structure eg

-       Break up monopolies

-       Tax the rich – who currently hide in tax havens

-       Reinstate media balance (including a requirement for interviewees to reveal their sources of income)

-       Develop Citizen juries

-       Stop money talking

-       Ensure that civil service advice is neutral

And why are such commitments missing? Because those in charge of political parties know they would then be the subject of highly aggressive attacks by journalists and academics in the pay of corporate power. We can no longer rely on political parties to be agents of change - we seem to be on our own 

I’ve been trying to gather together some key books to skim for my conclusion and felt that Jeremy Gilbert’s Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism (2013) was one of the important texts whose very title recognises the basic problem we face.

A future post will share some of other titles I’ve gathered together for this final push….

Politics will be very different in the AI age

Political parties may now be using algorithms and selectively targeting citizens with their messages – but, fundamentally, lack the courage to offer the public the sort of programme which would actually make a difference for voters.  Such a programme would consist of such things as

-       Breaking up monopolies

-       Ensuring that the rich (and multinationals) pay escalating rates of taxation

-       Returning privatized public utilities to the public – preferably to municipalities or “mutuals”

-       Reinstating the requirement of media balance

-       Restricting corporate funding of parties

-       Citizen juries

-       A neutral civil service

The UK Labour Party was exceptional in its 2019 and 2017 election manifestos offering this sort of programme – and see where it got them I hear a lot of you saying…..

There is apparently a project which compares the election manifestos of some 1000 political parties in 60 countries. Unfortunately it’s one of these highly academic websites with impenetrable prose. It did, however, put me on to what looks a useful collection of recent articles Why the Left Loses – the decline of the centre-left in comparative perspective Rob Manwaring and Paul Kennedy (2018) which I should add to the reading list on social democracy I recommended some 4 years ago

I’m currently in the middle of Future Politics – living together in a world transformed by Tech by James Susskind (2018) which must be one of the first popular books to explore the likely impact of the new world of algorithms and artificial intelligence. 

The premise of ‘Future Politics’ is that relentless advances in science and technology are set to transform the way we live together with consequences that are both profound and frightening. We are not yet ready for the world we are creating. Politics will not be the same as it was in the past.

For Susskind, three changes are of particular note: increasingly capable systems that are equal or superior to how humans function; increasingly integrated technologies that are embedded in the physical and built environment (the internet of things); and an increasingly quantified society, whereby details of our lives are captured as data and processed by digital systems. Those who control the technologies will exercise power over us, set the limits of our liberty, and determine the future of democracy. One of the problems is that the engineers devising and implementing these technologies rarely engage with consequences of these developments.

So, it is up to the rest of us to correct this deficiency and take responsibility for understanding and analysing the implications of this transformed world. We must, says Susskind, engage with political theory if we are to think critically and develop appropriate intellectual tools to tackle these digital developments. With this as the agenda, Susskind sets out to examine this future under the headings of power, liberty, democracy, justice and politics itself, devoting sections of the book to each of these subjects in turn.

 In Part Two, Susskind devises three categories for discussing future power: force, scrutiny and perception-control (p. 89). The big tech companies, and government agencies who work with them, will be in control of developments and thus possess the power, while the rest of us will be relatively powerless.  Susskind writes: 

“[T]he shift from law enforced by people to law enforced by technology means that power will increasingly lie in force rather than coercion, with self-enforcing laws that cannot be broken because they are encoded into the world around us.” (p. 105)

This is a really important insight. The following chapter on scrutiny is also perceptive and helpful as Susskind brings more distinctions into play: this time between scrutiny as intimate, imperishable, predictable and rateable (p. 127). The cumulative impact of this scrutiny will construct a world unlike anything we have experienced hitherto. Where we go; what we do; what we purchase; what we write, read and say; let alone who and what we know, and our work and ambitions will all be the subject of scrutiny (p. 129).

Further Reading

How to Run a City like Amazon and other Fables; ed M Graham…. J Shaw (2019)    

The People v Tech – how the internet is killing democracy (and how we save it); Jamie Bartlett (2018)   

https://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/blog-review-future-politics/

http://bostonreview.net/politics/clara-hendrickson-jamie-susskind-future-politics-review

https://www.e-ir.info/2019/02/21/review-future-politics-living-together-in-a-world-transformed-by-tech/

Dear Diary

You wonder why publishers would ever publish anything written by politicians – most recent political memoirs and biographies certainly land up being remaindered. Few politicians seem able to resist the temptation of narcissistic whingeing or settling old scores.  

But a few of the British contingent stand out for the quality of their writing and the insights they bring to their assessment of an historical period.

Dennis Healey held several senior Ministerial positions and gave us a memoir which covered the pre- and post-war years with a rare sensitivity Time of my Life (1989).

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan – living in the times before the 24/7 news cycle - was, remarkably, able to find the time to keep a regular diary (as well as to read extensively). 

Tony Benn was, however, the diarist par excellence – producing no fewer than eleven volumes covering a 50 year career in politics – and developing, in the process, from a mainstream politician to a hate-figure for the mainstream media to a “national treasure” in his retirement.   

Chris Mullin was another, less high-profile Labour figure, whose diaries impress largely because – unlike most politicians – he was thoroughly aware of his unimportance.

Ruth Winstone was the editor if the Benn diaries and has done us all a great service with her book Events, dear Boy, Events – a political diary of Britain from Woolf to Campbell (2012) 

The depths the genre has now reached are evident in the latest set of diaries to be inflicted on us viz In the Thick of It – as narcissistic and nasty bit of writing as I have come across for some time. The life of such people seems to consist of “power lunches” with “high-powered” people and adds to my conviction that if such empty-headed people are occupying the positions of power, we desperately need some of the discipline of the Chinese regime which insists that its politicians are properly trained and then thoroughly assessed and monitored as they progress through the ranks. 

But the ex-Leader of the UK Liberal party Vincent Cable has shown that some politicians are still able to think and write coherently – with his recent book Money and Power – the world leaders who changed economics 2021 epub 

Further Reading

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/08/five-best-political-diaries-observer-supplement

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/chris-mullin-on-political-diaries/

https://shepherd.com/best-books/political-diaries-united-kingdom

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/28/gossip-sex-and-social-climbing-the-uncensored-chips-channon-diaries

https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2016/04/04/churchills_history_of_english-speaking_peoples_232.html

Just Hierarchy – why social hierarchy matters in China and the rest of the world Daniel A Bell and Wang Pei (2020)