In the
1980s, Margaret Thatcher introduced us to TINA – her refrain being that “there is no
alternative” (to the liberalisation of national and global markets).
Social
democratic parties bought into that argument and have shown no inclination to
rethink policies since the global crisis began almost a decade ago. Jeremy
Corbyn’s Labour party, I grant you, is one exception – but has attracted
vitriolic attack on the basis that there can be no going back to the world of
the 1960s and 1970s.
The argument
generally consists of the following elements -
- The state
can’t get out of the immense debt which it has taken on by rescuing the banks
- Although
the operations of privatisated industries are subject to increasing attack, the
idea of reprivatisation is rarely presented in social democratic programmes
- The
ideology of greed has become so legitimised, lives so atomised and the
commodification trend so strong that notions of collective and cooperative
effort seem more and more unrealistic
- We can’t
stop automation
- Only
eccentrics question the worship of growth
Of course,
convincing programmes need to be based on a sound story…..about what exactly
has been going on in the post-war period? It’s clearly not enough simply to
blame neo-liberalism,,,,,
This week I watched one of the best narratives I have
so far come across - Global
Trumpism – presented by Mark Blyth, author of Austerity
– history of a dangerous idea which I wrote about earlier
in the year.
Blyth’s
style of historical ideas, colloquial language and slides is a gripping one
which puts other economists into the shade….
His starting
point is the growth of populism throughout Europe and now the States and the
question whether (as I tended to suggest in one
blogpost on Brexit) it is a reaction to immigration trends and fears – or
has a more basic economic explanation…. He shows how the location of Brexit and
Trump supporters correlates with the devastation caused by globalisation and
recent Chinese imports; job insecurity et al - but then uses the largely unknown
figure of Michael Kalecki to show how the post-war Keynesian consensus
unravelled in the 1970s
Kalecki had warned as far back as 1943
of a central flaw in the Keynes’ model – which duly presented itself in the
1970s with the arrival of serious inflation which was dealt with by first
monetarist and then neo-liberal policies. The post-war regime slowly gave way
to one of secular disinflation; capital assertiveness; global markets; strong
central banks; and weak trade unions and parliament
As befits a
political economist, Blyth wants to know about losers and winners – none of
this cosy nonsense about equilibrium….and uses Branko Milanovic’s slide of global
trends in income distribution showing
the shape of an elephant to back up his argument about global trumpism….
He returns,
finally, to his initial point in exploring the various economic options we seem
to have –
- The sort
of spending on infrastructure which Trump’s campaign envisaged? (probable but
not with anticipated results)
- the return
of “good jobs”? (unlikely)
- getting
corporations and the rich to pay more tax (“fat chance”!)
All in all a
really thought-provoking presentation……from a Professor of Political Economy - a dsicipline which hopefully will be finding a deserved place for itself after almost a century of
neglect…….
