In Praise of Older (Wo)Men

Sheldon Wolin is a name to conjure with – in the early 1960s his book “Politics and Vision” was the core text for my course on political philosophy. He was born in 1922 and taught at Princeton University.

I thought he was long dead….but was delighted to discover yesterday that not only is he still going strong but that he has become almost a revolutionary in his old age….

In one very recent video series he deals with the question of whether Capitalism and democracy can Co-exist – allowing me to stumble on his explosive 2008 book Democracy Incorporated which can be read in its entirety here; reviewed here and summarised here

 If this analysis of a ‘democracy without citizens’ – in which popular sovereignty is reduced to ‘consumer sovereignty’ – sounds too Cassandra-like, Wolin backs it up with detailed history. (This history is, admittedly, heavily US-centric, but since the US is perhaps the limiting case of a managed democracy, this focus is instructive.)
Wolin rides roughshod over the standard American self-image of being the world’s most robust democracy. In chapters 11-12, he traces the evolution of American democracy back to the Putney debates of the 1650s, in which Ireton upheld the interests of ‘independent’ property-owners against Rainsborough, who championed the rights of the non-landed, and therefore non-voting classes .

It was Ireton’s anti-egalitarian position which, Wolin maintains, effectively triumphed in post-revolutionary America. Hamilton and Madison (unlike Jefferson) were deeply sceptical of democracy, precisely because it threatened the extant distribution of property and wealth: portraying the popular will as infected by ‘passion’, they confined ‘reason’ to a class of ‘guardians’, which was purportedly blessed with the insights of ‘cool and sedate reflection’ . They hence went about constructing a political system in which elaborate checks and balances stymied the wishes of the democratic majority, thereby ensuring a politics of ‘deadlock’ , which could be resolved only by the intervention of the powerful.

According to Wolin, then, though the ‘political coming-of-age of corporate power’ (xxi) took centuries, the conditions for managed democracy were instituted early on. The one real exception on this road to inverted totalitarianism was Roosevelt’s New Deal ‘experiment’ of the 1930s, which Wolin discusses in chapter 2. This ‘counterimaginary of a state-regulated capitalism’ was a valiant attempt to control corporate activity for the common good, but it did not survive World War II.

This ‘constitutional imaginary’ succumbed, steadily, to a Cold War ‘power imaginary’ which was prepared by the US’s wartime taste of global power. This power imaginary replaced a preoccupation with welfare, participation and equality, with what Wolin terms a ‘dematerialised’ ideology of patriotism, anticommunism and fear

This new, Manichean ideology, although not explicitly in the service of corporate wealth and inequality, certainly had these as its corollaries. And this because,

• first, the Soviet Union was (nominally) committed to anti-capitalism and a thorough-going egalitarianism, thereby lending capitalist individualism a patriotic aura, and impugning its detractors. 
• Secondly, the Cold War generated a massive increase in defence spending, which in turn made the American economy highly dependent on the corporate defence industries.
• And thirdly, since all enmity was now directed at Communism, any suggestion that there might be economic enemies at home became seen as artificially and invidiously divisive, or even (as in McCarthyism) tantamount to Communism itself.

There is also an interview with both Wolin and another iconoclast – J Ralston Saul – at an interesting website called Common Dreams

The emphasis on age and experience reminded me of a charming blog which carries the (sexist) title Britain is no country for Old men which celebrates the lives and achievements of various characters. It gives a good sense of the Britain that was…..My posts sometimes feature older, inspiring activists such as Stephane Hessel (95) and Grace Lee Boggs (99) 

With all the emphasis these days on innovation, it's good , however occasionally, to have the perspective of experience ........

Kafka is alive and well

Both my passport and my driving licence need renewal this year – the  hurdles I face (on mainly the former) will force me to stay put in Romania for the entire summer period….I am amazed that British citizens are (literally) not up in arms about the impossible (centralised) systems which have been in place for passports for the past few years.

We are told to expect a wait of 3 months (minimum) for the delivery of updated passports – during that period we are without a passport with emergency passports being available (returns only) for 100 quid.

If, like me, you have changed your address almost each year and find it impossible as a result to satisfy the requirement of notifying the driving licence authority of changes of address, you are reduced to giving a relative’s address. 

If you are living abroad, you are told to get a driving licence from the country of residence – with all the tribulations that involves of presenting yourself for a test as if you were a trainee driver (instead of one with 50 years’ experience – in 12 countries) 

Now I read of the Kafla-esque experiences Brits are having with their cars being towed away and being forced to pay hundreds of pounds to get them back even although their road discs are entirely up-to-date…..

This post may sound a bit Colonel Blimpish but it does indicate that IT systems in the UK are not exactly delivering on the promising new world we had been promised!!!! 

The photograph which has been heading these posts for almost 4 months is now changed since the warm weather has at last appeared here in Sofia!!! It shows one of the sculptures which graces the park in which the Sofia City Gallery is located.

King James English

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest” (Ecclesiastes 9.10)

What is it that makes these and the other words and phrases from the King James edition of the Bible have such a deep impact on our mind and soul? And do they have the same effect on those who read them in translation?

Brits usually think that the 17^th Century language of the Bible is original – but it is in fact a translation. Not only that but an example of what we imagine to be impossible – excellence by committee!! The story is told here.

Big Screen Time

It’s 40 years since I read John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” (reviewed here) but it’s a phrase which has returned recently to haunt me – see my latest E-book effort Ways of Seeing…..the Global Crisis.

I heard the phrase again in a Bucharest cinema in a short trip I made at the end of the month – although it was expressed as “Maniere de voir” and it came from the mouth of the legendary photographer Sebastiao Salgado whose life film director Wim Wenders was celebrating in the documentary Salt of the Earth. 

About time that such photographers were properly celebrated – have there, I wonder, been films about such figures as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz and the times in which they lived? Documentaries we have - eg a curious one with CB here which has him reminiscing...a much more insightful commentary here but what about films which try to recreate the lives and events through actors and film sets?

This question occurred to me since I have been viewing recently quite a few films about other artists…..such as Picasso, Renoir, Turner, Dickens and Beethoven.

And it led me to Jeremy Iron’s portrayal of iconic Alfred Stieglitz in a film (TV biopic actually) which actually focuses more on the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe and bears her name as the title. Indeed the only photography which figures in the film is the infamous exhibition Stieglitz mounts of O’Keeffe’s naked body….  

For the most part films about artists are trite – even if the scenery is nice (Turner) - with plots turning on an highly selective aspects of the artist’s life…and failing to give either a sense of the artist’s creativity or of the times in which (s)he lived.

One exception - The Invisible Woman – made a big impact on me largely because it gave us insights into the importance of public readings for people such as Dickens; and of his God-like status in those days - which allowed everyone to whitewash his young love out of existence. But although the film apparently cost 12 million dollars to make only 3 million has been recouped in box-office takings – hardly an encouragement to creativity when most blockbusters these days cover their costs within the first month (here I have a confession – I was able to stream it………).

The detailed book by Claire Tomalin on which the film is based can be bought for about 15 euros – but will give many hours of pleasure…..As did Hilary Spurling’s 600 pages of Matisse 

It made me wonder about the economics and aesthetics of the different ways of presenting ideas and creativity – such as films, documentaries, books or even video presentations such as this ted talk by Salgado. So many millions of dollars (and wo-man hours) spent on film production to give (each of) us less than 2 hour’s (shallow) “entertainment” compared with a multiple of that enjoyed during the reading of a book – whose costs are a tiny fraction. Nae contest!

And yes I know that it is not a question of either/or – that films encourage (some) people to buy (and even read) books…..and most people have neither the time nor the energy to read….

But, still, we need to fight for the book -  ""Fahrenheit 451" still gives me a thrill every time I think of it, depicting a world without books in which a few brave individuals risked prosecution for their having memorised the text of one particular book…..

Regular readers know that my nomadic existence of the past couple of decades has helped me develop an immunity to television and newspapers – now television sets are banned in the places I control and I am happy to buy only LeMonde Diplomatique (as the only journal which still retains footnotes!). It is my location which enables me to be so selective - and makes me yearn for a campaign on the lines of the 1978 book “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television”. Rather ironically, I'm currently reading a superbly-written book Armchair Nation - an intimate history of Britain in front of the TV 

addenda
- this list of 100 films based on the lives of artists and writers reveals that I missed one great film - Carrington!!
- and this list of books which the current TV series Mad Men has shown characters reading is a sign of hope.......

Good viewing in Sofia

Some great exhibitions recently here in Sofia

You don’t often get to see collections of Nikola Tanev’s paintings – the last one was 5 years ago at the National Gallery. But last month the Finesse private Gallery put on a fascinating collection some of which I;ve put on flickr

Spassov, Angel (1884-1974) was a well-known  sculptor – one of many greats produced by Bulgaria although the current exhibition at the Bulgarian Union of Artists on Shipka St also shows what a good painter he was…A great catalogue on his work was recently issued by Pleven Gallery

And the National Gallery has just opened a rare exhibition of industrial landscapes which cover not only the communist period but the early part of the century too. Here are some examples from my flickr collection.

The first is a Zlatyu Boiadjiev (from 1945);

the second a Petar Dochev;

the third a powerful canvas (1965) from of Bulgaria's first women industrial landscape artists - Maria Stolarova (who's still going strong - but with still-lives);













and the last - a 1950s Nikola Tanev

·         

Those wanting to see more of examples of Socialist realist can consult Socialist construction in the work of Bulgarian artists (Sofia 1954) one of the many resources available in my Bulgarian Encounters – a cultural romp

40 billion pounds' worth of social sciences????

I have a love-hate relationship with the social sciences – grateful for the vistas its literature opened up to me at university in the early 1960s in Scotland when it was still possible to roam widely amongst the disciplines…..still able to feel the energy of the disputes and the freshness of what people such as Durkheim, Michels and Weber were saying…..since then things seem to have closed over a bit – not least, perhaps, because of the “instrumentalist turn” the social sciences took in America as brilliant minds turned their attention in the aftermath of the second world war to social and organisational problems. First corporate planning and management with contributions from people such as Russell Ackoff - then PPBS and the “War on Poverty”.

I was gripped by the stuff and failed to appreciate the hubris involved…….although people such as Aaron Wildavsky; Peter Marris and Martin Rein; Etzioni; and Donald Schoen were exemplars of a more sceptical and humanistic approach……From 1968 I pursued a dual track of political involvement and fairly interdisciplinary academic reading – for 15 years having the freedom to roam the library stacks and inflict monologues on political issues on polytechnic students who were following Degrees courses in Land Economics and Engineering.

From the mid 1970s I had become an almost full-time (Regional) politician but was confronted in 1983 with the need to make a serious contribution to a new full-time Social Science Degree at my Polytechnic. By that stage I had changed my loyalties from economicsto politics/public admin - but could not take the narrowness of what I was expected to teach seriously……after 2 years I got out….  And as the universities increased in number and size, the pretensions of economics, management and even psychology grew enormously (Sociology was a bit of an outrider). Their claims – and language – grew a bit outlandish…..and I, for one, lost sympathy with it all….

In 1978 Stanislaw Andreski had written a magnificent critique called Social Sciences as Sorcery which, significantly, has long been out of print despite the fond memories it produces in many who who have read it…I was trying to find a similar attack on the pretensions of modern social science but could find only the rather puffy  Profscam – Professors and the demise of higher education (1988). 

I had hoped that Michael Billig’s Learn to Write Badly – how to succeed in the social sciences would have some of the same punch and weight as Andreski but, despite some disparaging remarks about the factory conditions of university life, it ultimately disappoints. It reviewed quite well – but you would expect that!

My surfing, however, did reveal that social scientists are deeply concerned about their lowly status in academic and political circles. So concerned that (in the UK)  they have launched a Campaign for social science (with booklet)…….which has attracted some media coverage. The need for a shake-up was explored in this article

The first thing to have in mind, as background, is the astonishing size of the social science literature. Few people appreciate this. The Thomson Reuters Web of Science database (which is by no means exhaustive of the entire global academic output) lists more than 3,000 social science journals. The journals classified as economics alone contained approximately 20,000 articles last year. This implies that one new journal article on economics is published every 25 minutes – even on Christmas Day.

This iceberg-like immensity of the modern social sciences means that it is going to be difficult to say anything coherent and truly general across them. Nobody walking the planet has read more than 1 per cent of their published output. Most of us have not read 0.1 per cent. Such facts should give all of us – whether or not we agree with Christakis – pause for modesty in our assertions.“The social sciences have stagnated,” he says. “They offer essentially the same set of academic departments and disciplines that they have for nearly 100 years: sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology and political science. This is not only boring but also counterproductive, constraining engagement with the scientific cutting edge and stifling the creation of new and useful knowledge.”

Lack of interdisciplinarity, narrowness and impenetrable language are the common criticisms - which can be found in many publications throughout Europe and North America. Key reports and books include -

Disciplinary Barriers – a report on the State of Higher Education in 8 European countries (2005)

Social science for what? 2007

Social science and policy-making – the search for relevance (2007)

Public Value in the Humanities and Social Sciences (2010)

If only we knew – increasing the public value of ss research – John Willinsky (2010)

In Defence of Public Higher Education (2012)

Toward a knowledge Base for university-public engagements (2012)

The public value of the social sciences - John Brewer (2013)

Prospering Wisely (Feb 2014)

Sir Humphrey and the Professors – what do the mandarins want from the academics? (2014)

Social Impact of the sciences – the end of the ivory tower? (2014)

Impact and Value in the Humanities (2014)

Measuring the impact of social science (2014)

Half a million academics are employed (full-time) in British Universities these days – and about 50,000 of them are social scientists with a similar number (according to the UK campaign’s 2015 report “The Business of People”) employed in government and commerce…….

The report proudly claims that they contribute an astonishing 40 billion pounds’ worth of value to the economy – a claim which reveals the very philistinism of which they accuse those who attack social science…..
An excellent critique of what is a quite disgraceful document can be found on Open Democracy

Seminal Books of the past - part II

Apparently I’m not alone in my interest in making a list of “the key books of the century”….I’ve just unearthed the first of what promises to be a series of posts on “the hundred most influential books since the war” – which appeared last month in the Time Literary Supplement and gave us 20 titles from the 1940s….It draws our attention to an interesting initiative of 1986 when

a diverse group of writers and scholars came together to try to assist independent East European writers and publishers both at home and in exile. The Chairman was Lord Dahrendorf, Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford (and prominent German politician!). Other members were the French historian Francois Furet; Raymond Georis, Director of the European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam; Laurens van Krevelen of the Dutch publishing house Meulenhoff; the Swedish writer Per Waestberg, at the time President of International PEN; the European correspondent of the New Yorker, Jane Kramer; and the historian and commentator, Timothy Garton Ash.

The result, in 1995, was a book “Freedom for Publishing, Publishing for Freedom” which listed 100 key books, listed sequentially on the TLS blog. 

The very first book on the list for the 1940s is one I knew I had forgotten to put on my list – Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” (now rectified). 
I think I should also have included the writings of Max Weber and Raymond Aron……so reserve the right to produce a more definitive list which better reflects my particular criteria of impact, coherence and "sustainability" (ie "lasting power")

I have resisted the temptation to peek at the books the TLS blog gives for each of the following decades – until I have completed my own effort - and simply pass on this list of 20 key books for the 1950s. A few years ago, Time Magazine gave us an interesting annotated list of the 100 best nonfiction books

Of course all such lists are arbitrary – but the last post does give a good sense of the conflict and repression which was the European experience in the first half of the 20^th century with the sense of liberation and assertiveness of the immediate post-war period – as well as the first warnings of the excesses of our way of life in the late 1960s.

I am having much more difficulty identifying “seminal books with a distinctive voice” for the last 40 years. I had little difficulty naming almost 40 books for the earlier 40-year period – but can find less than 20 so far for the period since 1973…..I can suggest at least two reasons for this deficiency -
-  First that the battle-lines on most disputes were drawn in the first part of the century – and we are now operating in the tracks made by more famous (and original) men and women…..
-   University growth, social science specialisation and bureaucratisation has killed off creativity….

Clearly such assertions need to be justified and I hope to post on this shortly.....

For the moment, let me simply list the books which came to mind as I tried to complete the list.....the Peters book is there not for its quality but simply because it reflected the "mood of the time". 

And, so far, I don't feel able to include a book covering the post 2001 anxieties about migration - although Chris Cauldwell's 2009 Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is a front-runner. Nor have I tried to touch the issues related to information and security........and the list does include some mavericks who are personal favourites (eg Kohr, Douthwaite, George, Quinn and Dorling)

So my tentative list for the post 1973 years includes -

The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism – Daniel Bell (1976)

Orientalism – Edward Said (1978)

The Breakdown of Nations – Leopold Kohr (1978)

The Culture of Narcissism – Christopher Lasch (1979)

In Search of Excellence – Tom Peters and Robert Waterman (1982)

Imagined Communities – Benedict Anderson (1983)

Casino Capitalism – Susan Strange (1986)

Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky (1988)

The End of History – Francis Fukuyama (1989)

Reinventing Government – David Osborne and Ted Gaebler (1992)

Everything for Sale – the virtues and limits of markets – Robert Kuttner (1996)

Short Circuit – strengthening local economies in an unstable world - Ronald Douthwaite (1996)

The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century – Susan George (1999)

Change the World - Robert Quinn (2000)

A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism – David Harvey (2005)

Injustice – why social inequality persists – David Dorling (2011)

Then there are tens of thousands of volumes which management writers have given us – of which the better have been produced by people such as Henry Mintzberg,  Charles Handy and Ronald Dore

Key Books of the 20th Century - Part I

For the past few days I’ve been engaged in a frustrating and probably useless task – trying to list the non-fiction books I think worthy of consideration as the "seminal books" of the last century….for English-speakers. This links to a table you will find on page 2 of the paper "Ways of Seeing...the Global Crisis" which tries to give a sense of the key debates of the post war period........

Any such list has to be arbitrary since league tables of book purchases or library loans are difficult to get hold of, unreliable and nationally biased. And note the dual (rather heavy) qualifications "I think" and "worthy of consideration"..... it is a list drawn up by a white male who had a Scottish university education (in politics and economics) in the early 1960s and is limited therefore by that interest in political economy – rather than, for example, psychology…. (although I have included the injunctions of Dale Carnegie and Benjamin Spock as well as the more thoughtful analyses of Carl Rodgers)
But "Mein Kampf" and the writings of Ann Raynd are excluded - despite the influence they had...... I simply can't view them as serious.....

My surfing did unearth some “mega-lists” generated from 107 "best of" book lists from a variety of sources eg this one which is, however, strongly biased to American reading….

As a starter, let me offer this list of 35 books – taking us to 1973. 

Political Parties – Robert Michels (1913)

Public Opinion - Walter Lippmann (1921)
Revolt of the Masses - Jose Ortega y Gasset (1930)

Moral Man and Immoral Society - Reinhold Niebuhr (1932)
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money - JM Keynes (1936)

How to make friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie (1936)
The Managerial Revolution – James Burnham (1941)

Escape from Freedom - Erich Fromm (1941)
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy – Joseph Schumpeter (1942)

The Open Society and its Enemies - Karl Popper (1944)

The Road to Serfdom - Friedrich Hayek (1944)

Baby and Child Care - Benjamin Spock (1946)

Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male – Kinsey (1948)

The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir (19949)
The Lonely Crowd - David Riesmann (1950)

The Power Elite – C Wright Mills (1956)

The Future of Socialism - CAR Crosland (1956)

The Hidden Persuaders – Vance Packard (1957)

The Affluent Society – JK Galbraith (1958)

The End of Ideology – Daniel Bell (1960)

The Death and Life of American Cities Jane Jacobs (1961)

On Becoming a Person - Carl Rodgers (1961)

The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin (1962)

Silent Spring – Rachel Carson (1962)

Capitalism and Freedom - Milton Friedmann (1962)

The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan (1963)

Unsafe at any speed - Ralph Nadar (1965)

Modern Capitalism – the changing balance of public and private power – Andrew Shonfield (1966)

The New Industrial State – JK Galbraith (1967)

The Costs of Economic Growth – EJ Mishan 1967

The Active Society – Amitai Etzioni (1968)

Deschooling Society - Ivan Illich (1970)
Future Shock – Alvin Toffler (1970)

Beyondthe Stable State – Donald Schoen (1971)

The Limits to Growth – Club of Rome (1972)

Small is Beautiful – Ernst Schumacher (1973)

Somehow I think its going to difficult to find an equivalent number for the 40 years which followed!!