What’s Left of the Left?

I do understand that many readers dislike wading through chunks of text and like to get to the “bottom line”. That’s why, a couple of years ago, I started these famous TABLES - which try to extract the core messages from a dozen or so books. Today’s post starts positively – moves into more critical vein but ends with extolling a book which seems to strike all the notes this child of the 60s has been desperately looking for

The last post ended with an excerpt from Jacobin’s review of Thomas Pikety’s “Time for 

Socialism” which had me returning to the future of the British and, indeed, European Left

- on which so many anguished columns have been devoted in recent decades. 
This article from 2013 I found very thought-provoking  Labour – left and right; party positioning and policy reasoning

 - in that it made me realise that we needed to explore the links between different levels -

• the working class/precariat – whose interests left-wing parties are supposed to further 

• parliamentary representatives – who have to balance considerations of feasibility, legitimacy and support

• party programmes – which need to appeal to the floating voter

• public perceptions – very profoundly affected by mainstream media (controlled by corporate power) 

Liam Byrne (a Labour MP) has an article in (Political Quarterly - a famous Social Democrat journal establised a century ago) which, in so many ways, indicates the impotence of the breed. His piece -

• repudiates nationalisation

• prioritises educational opportunity

• and aspiration

• wants more punitive welfarism

• supports (ill-defined) “de-inflationary measures”

and continues -

The conservative response to the pandemic was in many ways extraordinary, but confined within the bounds of what was deemed acceptable in the post-GFC fiscal and monetary framework. But, there is little evidence that social democrats would have acted in a manner that was drastically different.

Since the end of the Third Way era, little has been done by the party family to develop a new political economy—a way of comprehending the world and the possibilities for rupture—specific to the creed. Social democrats have differentiated themselves by proposing specific progressive policies, but when it comes to broader ideas about the economic and political framework, they tend to replicate the core tenets of the governing orthodoxy, formed as it is through the institutional networks of power that shape established social relations. But more generally, the stark reality is that social democratic politicians are often indistinguishable from progressive technocrats

Centre-left parties have sought to distinguish themselves by their probity, loyalty to fiscal and monetary orthodoxy and fidelity to correct parliamentary process. They have done so while the ‘political centre of gravity [h]as shifted leftwards’, with a greater general acceptance that higher rates of government debt are acceptable if it is being used to create ‘the industries and jobs of the future.’24

Social democrats who pledged too far-reaching a vision of social reform routinely found themselves disciplined by the merciless mainstream media conglomerations, leading policy experts and the markets themselves. Now, in a period of tightened economic and fiscal constraints, jumpy markets and endemic low growth across the developed world, social democrats have again raised adherence to the orthodoxy to a principle. The bounds of the politically possible are being policed not by their opponents, but by social democrats themselves.

The social democratic project needs to be more than the reallocation of budgetary expenditures; it needs to be about the rebalancing of social power. To do this, the creed must develop a consistent and coherent alternative political economy—one that reflects the interests of a social constituency of labouring people as they exist today. It is insufficient to retrofit an economic agenda suited for a class structure that existed forty years ago.

The political cynicism that has become endemic in the neoliberal era poses challenges for all democratic parties, but is particularly potent for social democrats. Social democracy is the political force of social transformation—albeit within constitutional and electoral bounds. A generalised belief that democracy is failing, that politicians constitute an alien and self-protecting class, and that change is not possible—all rebound significantly on the left’s political prospects.

The challenge for social democracy is to utilise government to undercut this disillusionment through practical and immediate changes that can be identified in local communities and individual workplaces, but which also compose a larger picture on social change for general betterment. Through this, social democrats can create social constituencies for their policies and construct long-term governments. This is a transformative project that can only be pursued with a coherent and distinctive vision of the type of society the creed seeks to create, but one that is perceived as realisable. As British Labour discovered to its detriment in 2019, it is not sufficient to present a bundle of individually popular polices.

Somewhere beyond both Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Blair there is a social democratic means to comprehend the political economy of modern capitalism, and a strategy to change it. The challenge is to find it.

And I think I’ve found it!! It’s by an Italian sociologist now living in London and it’s called 

The Great Recoil Paolo Gerbaudo 2021

Recent Assessment of the Left
What’s Left of the Left – democrats and social democrats in challenging times ed James Cronin, George Ross, and James Shoch 2011
Endgame for the Centre-Left?  Patrick Diamond 2016

The Socialist Ideas of the British Left's Alternative Economic Strategy Baris Tufekci 2020

The Great Recoil Paolo Gerbaudo 2021
Toward a Social Democracy Century? ed K Hofman de Moura, A Skrzypek, R Wilson 2022

Can Economics change its Spots?

I’ve written fairly savagely about economists in the past – so it’s about time I recognised there are some in the new generation who are thinking differently. And I’m not talking about the behavioural economists who, for me, have little to offer – they’e just making minor adjustments to what remains a thoroughly complacent, arrogant and selfish view of human nature. The table which follows doesn’t do justice to the new wave of iconoclasts who are clamouring for our attention – but it’s a start

	Famous for	Key Books
Kate Rawarth	The concept of planetary limits	“Doughnut Economics”
Isabella Weber,	Questioning prevailing wisdom about inflation	“How China Escaped Shock Therapy”
Mariana Mazzacato	Exploding myths about corporations and the State	“The Entrepreneurial State” “The Vaklue of Everything” “Mission Economy”
Thomas Pikety	Exposing the scale of inequality	“The Economics of Inequality” “Capital” “Capital and Ideology”
Mark Blyth	Ruthless dissection of the politics behind the economics	“Austerity – the history of a dangerous idea” “Angronomics”
Yanis Varoufakis	Being the bad boy of the eurozone – but a great story-teller!	A textbook an autobiography “The Global Minotaur” “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?”

 
And, because I’m impatient to get this post – with all its usual hyperlinks – to my readers, 

let me finish with a great review of Thomas Pikety’s latest book “Time for Socialism” from 

what is rapidly becoming a never-to be-missed journal - Jacobin
 

The fact that a thinker with Piketty’s intellectual influence has embraced socialism is significant in itself, paving the way for greater numbers of people to begin envisioning a world beyond capitalism. But what should we make of his vision of socialist transformation?

Talk of a relatively gradual and already underway shift toward socialism will no doubt raise eyebrows among radicals trained to expect that a break with capitalism will necessarily require some form of revolutionary rupture in the state and economy. Yet this gradualist vision should not be dismissed out of hand.

The truth is that we have no way yet to precisely predict the form that a transition to socialism will take in an advanced capitalist democracy. Piketty’s insistence that the radical reforms he envisions will be won through struggle against (rather than accommodation to) corporate power is likely sufficient as a strategic horizon for the foreseeable future. Though a more rapid and less peaceful revolutionary break may eventually be put on the agenda in the face of minoritarian employer reaction, there’s no need nor any political benefit to project immediate revolution as the only possible path forward.

Some radicals may similarly frown upon Piketty’s insistence that the transition to socialism is already underway, as seen in the growth of the welfare state and related declines in economic inequality. Yet here too the author is onto something: the reforms won by socialists, organized labor, and social movements over the past century have made significant incursions into market relations.

Despite neoliberalism’s ravages, the welfare state has not been dismantled even in places like the United States and the UK — current and future struggles for decommodification are thus being waged on a significantly higher social baseline than they were in, say, the 1930s. As such, the most pertinent criticism of social democrats — one shared by Piketty — is not that they were gradualists, but rather that they eventually proved incapable of being effective gradualists. Instead of continuing to shift power and control toward working people, social democratic parties largely abandoned this project in the face of economic crisis, globalization, and employer resistance from the 1980s onward.

Nor does it make sense to criticize Piketty for omitting calls for the nationalization of the economy’s commanding heights. There’s a strong argument to be made that markets for private goods are fully compatible with (and arguably necessary for) a thriving socialist society — provided that the state radically undermines capitalist power and wealth, that firm-based economic democracy is expanded, and that robust welfare policies provide everybody with the essential services they need to survive. That said, Piketty’s case would have been strengthened had he engaged more with proposals for a complete democratization of firms, as famously envisioned by Sweden’s “Meidner plan.”

A more significant limitation is that Piketty says little in the book about the importance of rebuilding the power of organized labor. This question gets passing mentions in his admonitions to “rethink institutions and policies including public services, and in particular, education, labor law, and organizations and the tax system” and to “stop denigrating the role of trade unions, the minimum wage, and salary scales.” Yet the author’s relative inattention to organized labor today is somewhat surprising given his commendable focus on the urgency of bringing back working-class politics and his consistent acknowledgement of the historical importance of trade unions in reducing inequality.

Perhaps Piketty, with his expertise in leveraging data to identify historical trends and policy solutions, felt that it was best to leave it to others to flesh out the strategic lines of march necessary to win his proposed vision. But without a revitalized labor movement to change the balance of class power, the author’s most ambitious policy solutions are unlikely to pass — and some of his other proposals might not have their intended consequences. Employee comanagement, for example, generally can serve as a tool for increasing workers’ influence when paired with robust trade unions. But in the absence of the relatively favorable relationship of forces created by strong working-class organization and the credible threat of disruptive workplace action, comanagement plans risk becoming toothless at best and mechanisms of employer control at worst, pushing workers to rubber stamp bosses’ prerogatives.

Power – its "hard" and "soft" aspects

Power impacts on us in so many ways – at the office, at university, when we seek authorisation 

for a document, even when we go shopping. It can be exercised benignly or harshly. 

What redress do we have when we feel we are being unfairly treated – do we meekly accept?

Or do we agitate and protest? 
Power is a topic which crops up fairly frequently on tne blog .but I’ve reached the stage 

I would like to know how my thinking on such an important issue has changed/developed

 over time – so I’ve crafted one of my tables to explore this.

It’s never easy to formulate how you understood things when you were young – although, in my

 case, I do have the evidence of things I wrote almost 50 years ago, particularly an article

 - “Community Development – its administrative and political challenge" - and a little book 

“The Search for Democracy – a guide to and polemic about local government in Scotland" (both in 1977). 

Both had been written after a decade of experience first as a community activist and then 

of a political strategist trying to reform bureaucracy from the inside. 
A careful rereading of both documents gives me this summary of how I then understood power 

Our society is hardly what one would call a participatory democracy. The term that is used - "representative" democracy - is official recognition of the fact that "the people" do not take political decisions but have rather surrendered that power to one tor several) small elites - subject to quinquennial (or infrequent) checks. Such checks are, of course, a rather weak base on which to rest claims for democracy⁴ and more emphasis is therefore given to the freedom of expression and organisation ^. whereby pressure groups articulate a variety of interests. Those who defend the consequent operation of the political process argue that we have, in effect a political market place in which valid or strongly supported ideas survive and are absorbed into new policies. They further argue that every viewpoint or interest has a more or less equal chance of finding expression and recognition. This is the political theory of pluralism.⁵

Community development is an expression of unhappiness with this view of the operation of the policy process. At its most extreme - in some theories of community action - it argues that the whole process is a gigantic confidence trick. In its more liberal version it merely wants to strengthen the voice of certain inarticulate members of society. There is, I think, a relatively simple v. a:-in which to test the claims of those who argue that there is little scope for improvement in the operation of our democratic process and that any deficiencies art attributable to the faults of individuals rather than to the system.' It involves looking at how new policies emerge.

The assumption of our society, good "liberals" that most of us essentially are, is that the channels relating governors to governed are neutral and that the opportunity to articulate grievances and have these defined (if they are significant enough) as "problems" requiring action from authority is evenly distributed throughout society. This is what needs to be examined critically - the concept of grievance and the process by which government responds to grievances. "Problems" emerge because individuals or groups feel dissatisfied and articulate and organise that dissatisfaction in an influential way which makes it difficult for government to resist.

"Grievance" or "dissatisfaction" is not. however, a simple concept - it arises when a judgement is made that events fall short of what one has reason to expect. Grievance is a function of expectations and performance - both of which are relative and vary from individual to individual - or. more significantly, from group to group

The process whereby "problems" are brought to the attention of government can be represented in a diagram you’ll find in the article. From the recognition of these eight stages flow various questions:

1 Do all groups in our society have the same expectations about government or (say) the social services?

2 Do all groups share roughly the same level of critical perception of their own achievement?

3 Is the capacity to articulate grievances equally distributed in society?

4 Is the capacity to organise that articula­tion equally distributed?

5 Is the process by which the political system picks up signals a neutral one?

6 is the process by which civil servants define problems and collect information a random one?

7 Does the way our decisions are taken and implemented affect the chance of their subsequent success? ⁹

Community development grew in the 1960s as, increasingly, negative answers were given to these sorts of questions" and - perhaps more significantly - confidence grew that the situation could be changed.

The table below starts with a post about how aspects of power have been been understood in the UK in some of the literature since the start of the new millenium and then widened the focus to look at how more cosmopolitan figures in Europe and the US have theorised about the subject; and at the more hidden aspects of financial power. 
Amitai Etzioni classified power in terms of “coercion, incentives and moral persuasion” – 

sticks, carrots and seduction we might call it. And if you’re wondering what “moral persuasion” 

is, Joseph Nye’s concept of "soft power"  explains it very well

Recent Posts on power

The post	The take-away	How it advances understanding about power
Who Runs Britain?	The insularity of the British discussion – with Perry Anderson being a rare exception	Included a detailed reading list of the key books on the subject from 1999 to 2018
We need to talk about power	The discussion becomes more cosmopolitan	Steven Lukes (UK and US) Amitai Etzioni (US) Joseph Nye (US)
A Challenge to Financial Power	A tribute to the originality of Robert Skidlesky and David Graeber	See the previous post on rentier capitalism
Against Binary Thinking	Theory Y was right!!	We need to become less cynical
On our Own	How I understand the world – and a draft agenda of change	Jeremy Gilbert’s “Common Ground” (2014) is one of the few books which tries to break out of the left-right conflict
Leaders we Deserve	Klaas’ “Corruptible – who gets power and how it changes us” is a psychological look at the topic and based on a global search which ignores the huge literature on the topic	Few said it better than Robert Michels 100 years ago – in “Political Parties” which looked at how trade unionists and social democrats were seduced by power
Speak Memory	Key reading for me since the 1960s	Another great reading list
On Power	Why are so many books on the subject deeply disappointing
Deepening our power	Forget electoral ref – enact direct democracy!orm

I take 2 lessons from the table - first that my thinking about power has deterioted - the analysis

of 1977 was much sharper than the more recent stuff! And second that I have been too inclined 

to repeat myself- and too reluctant to take the time to read the books I have referenced. 

For example, the process of drafting this post has unearthed another few critical books 

British Politics – a critical analysis Stuart McAnulla (2006) – the book may be 17 years old but it is, for me, simply the most honest analysis of the perversities of the British system

Political Traditions and UK politics Matthew Hall (2011) Very good on the continuing power of tradition on UK politics

Who Runs the Economy – the role of power in Economics https://vdoc.pub/download/who-runs-the-economy-the-role-of-power-in-economics-7a8c1cfqh4u0 ed Robert Skidelsky and Nan see this podcastCraig (2016) A rare discussion of the most profound weakness of modern economics

How Westminster Works – and why it doesn't; Ian Dunt (2022) a brilliant analysis which exposes the superficiality of British politics and the role played in that by political journalists who focus on the Lobby and neglect the work of Select Committees. For a useful discussion see this podcast

But what can I do? Alaister Campbell (2023) Tony Bliar’s spindoctor emcourages citizens to protest. Pity that comes just as the UK government is cracking down on protest!

What's in a Name??

Bett Christophers  put it rather nicely - 

Scholars have made various attempts to capture the essence of the model which governs 

the UK economy . The two with most traction are “financialisation” and “neoliberalism”.

Neither concept quite suffices  - rather the UK economy is a quintessential case of “rentier capitalism”.

To understand rentier capitalism, one first needs to understand rent. Rent is income generated 

by virtue of exclusive ownership or control of a scarce asset of some kind. A rentier is the recipient 

of this income: the individual or, more commonly, corporation that controls the asset. Rentier 

capitalism is an economic order organised around income-generating assets, in which overall 

incomes are dominated by rents and economic life is dominated by rentiers. Fundamentally 

orientated to “having” rather than “doing”, it is based on a proprietorial rather than entrepreneurial 

ethos. That, in short, is the UK since the 1970s.

But my fellow-blogger Dave Pollard expressed it even better in his most recent post
 

In a recent extraordinary essay, the historian blogger Aurélien analyzed the types of activities that make up our economy, and how the pursuit of each type of activity dictates our political priorities. There are, for him, four types of activities that make up our economy and the pursuit of each type of activity dictates our political priorities.

• in boom times, creative and productive activities prevail, the economy is strong, and political regulations, laws and incentives are oriented towards the encouragement of sustainable, value-creating activities.

• But when the resources that drive the economy (especially energy) become costly or 

• scarce, and the economy falters or stagnates, economic activity shifts toward unsustainable 

• extractive, rentier and predatory activities, most of which are actually useless, unnecessary

• and even value-destroying.

• And he continues -

Pre-industrial economies were extractive - people mined, cut down trees, hunted and gathered crops, or planted small gardens. This was fine as long as the population remained small enough that the resources extracted had time to self-renew. But as the human population grew, these resources were increasingly depleted. The first victims of this were the large mammals across the world, rendered extinct through overhunting. Now, we are facing shortages of affordable resources of all kinds.

Beginning with the Enclosure Movement in the 18th century, global economies shifted towards value-destroying activities. This began with the dismembering of usury laws, the rise of banks, and the shift of the upper caste from industrialists to rentiers, renting properties to farmers and home-owners, and charging interest on loans, instead of doing anything productive.

Simultaneously, with the availability of currencies to transact new kinds of activities, predatory economic activities soared. Military confiscations and pirates have existed as long as militaries have, of course, but now human societies also had to deal with gangsters extorting payments and tolls, theft of cash, and the requirement to pay bribes to get things done. And the top caste, ever seeking ways to acquire more wealth without having to earn it, established an entire new “professional-managerial” class, exploiting the increasing complexity and unmanageability of the economy by creating do-nothing jobs for themselves and their children — as ‘managers’, lawyers, consultants, auditors, specialized ‘trainers’, lobbyists, and marketers.

None of this activity actually produces anything of value, and most of it merely adds unnecessarily to the cost of products and services - but the top caste were able to persuade legislators that these activities merited the highest professional salaries, and that these activities should actually be included in GDP, rather than subtracted from it. At one time, just as one example, the music “industry” was about making and playing music, and the proceeds went mostly to the musicians. But then the “industry” was taken over by an oligopoly that intermediated between the musicians and the public, and extracted, in the form of fees, royalties, and markups, almost all of the proceeds, leaving most musicians impoverished. And now, as Aurélien laments, there is more money to be made as an IP lawyer suing musicians for copyright violations, than there is in the creation of music itself. That’s where we find ourselves today.

Aurélien suggests that the mindset that allows this “arises when society loses faith in the

 future and in our ability to construct it”.

We have entered a period where politics in the widest sense has become nothing but extractive

and consists essentially of seeking opportunities for personal, professional and financial 

benefit from the conflict, stagnation and decline of current societies. For we live in a society 

where, for the first time in several centuries, it seems impossible to seriously imagine a better

 world for all, or even most.
Once the economy became so perverted towards non-productive activity, it was inevitable 

that our political system would become likewise perverted to reward such non-productive activity. 

Aurélien explains:
If you are a Minister in charge of an important function of government, it makes sense 

for you to starve this function of resources, rather than improving it. Why? Because the

 worse the system performs, the greater will be the demand by those with money for alternatives.

• Once a postal service loses a monopoly on certain deliveries for example, an entire field 

• of extraction opens up for lawyers, financiers, advertising agencies, logistic consultants and others to promote the development of private-sector alternatives. 

• Likewise, the more you can inculcate the feeling among the general population that things 

• are getting worse  and services will inevitably decline, the more they will accept this state of affairs, and feel there is no alternative to paying more for worse service.

So: Step 1: Shift the economy, and how it is measured, so you and your top caste colleagues 

get paid exorbitantly for doing nothing of value. 
Step 2: Use your wealth and power to bully governments to change government policies and

 laws to reward extractive, rentier and predatory economic activities above all others, and 

then to deregulate and cut taxes on profits from such activities. 
Step 3: Propagandize the public to believe this is “progress” and “the free market at work” 

and to relentlessly lower their expectations of what both corporations and governments can and should do for them.

I find this a very clear and succinct analysis of what’s happening – 

not just in the UK but in Europe as a whole.