Sketches of a new world? - part IV of the series

My recent posts won’t have made a great deal of sense to those who have come to the blog for the first time (you can actually read each year’s posts as an E-book – by going to appropriate line of the list in "new material" the right-hand corner of the blog).

Even my regular readers, however, would probably find a recap useful….

I’m writing a text entitled “Dispatches to the Next Generation” which, in confessional mode, tries to make sense of the mess which my generation has made of things……

I am, of course, well aware that thousands of books have been written about the global crisis - but almost all have one simple defect – they attribute blame to other people.

I start, instead, from the spirit which infused a 1978 book called “The Seventh Enemy” (by R Higgins) which listed 6 global enemies- then seen as “the food crisis”; the “population explosion”; scarcity; environmental degradation; nuclear threat; and scientific technology. The seventh enemy was….ourselves….our moral blindness and political inertia…Another such rare book is Danny Dorling’s hugely underrated Injustice (2011) which identified 5 “social evils” – elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair – and explores the myths which sustain them. Unusually, the argument is that we are all guilty of these evils and of sustaining these myths......

There is a further problem about the literature about the global crisis – which is that a lot of it identifies the problem as the financial bubble which exploded ten years ago and fails to do justice to other issues and to the other voices which were issuing strong warnings from the 1970s……It’s only in the past year that people have been realizing that this crisis is deeper and goes back longer…..

The book at the moment has an odd structure – since it’s made up of posts triggered by my reading of the past decade…..and, as I’ve got deeper into the editing process, I’ve realized that I need to be more disciplined in the selection of key texts which have shaped “our thinking” over the past 60 years… ..And, in this, I’ve been helped by these two diagrams from the Commons in Transition people – one called the “Current Capitalism Paradigm”, the second “Beyond Capitalism”. Last week I presented an improved version of the first diagram which contained hyperlinks to authors who gave good analyses of the various problems identified about the current capitalism paradigm….and a later post gave additional detail on these important writers

Now it is time to look at some of the key texts which appeared after the crisis but once it had sunk in that this crisis was not going away.

Of course, any such list is highly arbitrary – I have tried to offer an all-too-brief justification for most of the choices. The texts are in chronological order....and UPDATED as at Feb 2020

Envisioning Real Utopias; Erik Olin-Wright (2009) It’s appropriate that this book heads the list since Olin-Wright devoted his life to trying to understand the capitalist system and how it might be tamed. His university keeps a full range of his papers accessible here – and they are a real treasure trove for the serious researcher – and activist.

How Markets Fail – the logic of economic calamities; John Cassidy (2009) Amazing that this journalist could not only give us some first thoughts on the global financial breakdown of 2008 but put this in the context of a critical analysis of mainstream economists over the past 2 centuries

The Road from Mont Pelerin – the making of the neoliberal thought collective; ed P Mirowski and D. Plehwe (2009) One of the first books to explain in detail how the thinkers who found themselves on the margins after 1945 got together and found the money to fund the hundreds of Think Tanks which created the neoliberal doctrine which now rules the world.

23 Things they didn’t tell you about capitalism; Ha Joon-Chang (2010) One of the best exposures of the myths economists would have us believe

The Enigma of Capital; David Harvey (2010) Puts the crisis in proper historical and economic context although a bit too technical for my taste.

Why the third way failed – economics, morality and the origins of the “big society”; Bill Jordan (2010) is a very thoughtful treatment of the experience…..reviewed here

The Global Minotaur – America, the true origins of the financial crisis and the future of the world economy; Yanis Varoufakis (2011) One of the few economists on the list and one of the best on the subject….click the title and you get the entire book!!

The Strange Non-Death of NeoLiberalism; Colin Crouch (2011) The first of a wave of books to explore why, far from dying, neoliberalism became even stronger…Crouch is a political scientist but not the easiest of reads.

Injustice – why social inequality persists – David Dorling (2011) Quite excellent treatment from a prolific geographer

The Economics of Enough – how to run the economy as if the future matters; Diane Coyle (2011)

A rare book directed at the active citizen and dealing with our concerns about the environment, scale of debt, lack of trust etc She’s not a fan of the zero-growth school of thinking. Very clear writing and can be highly recommended. Perhaps lacks just a bit of zest. And economical - only 150 pages!!

Debunking Economics – the naked emperor dethroned; Steve Keen (2011) an updated version of his powerful 2001 critique. One of the best there is….

America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy; Gary Alperovitz, (2011 edition) The grand old man of the American left gives us as clear an analysis as you are likely to get (apart from Mander below) 

The Future of Work – what it means for individuals, markets, businesses and governments; David Bollier (2011) A good sound treatment by someone prominent in the P2P movement

Business as Usual – the economic crisis and the failure of capitalism; Paul Mattick (2011) A rare and very clear Marxist explanation of the financial crash

The Crises of Capitalism – a different study of political economy; Saral Sarkar (2011) Sarkar is an Indian-german academic and brings an eco-activist approach to this book.

Misrule of Experts? The Financial Crisis as Elite Debacle M Moran et al (2011) a rare essay which goes beyond the common explanation of the crisis as accident, conspiracy or calculative failure and frames the crisis differently as an elite political debacle

The Crisis of global capitalism – Pope Benedict XVI’s social encyclical and the future of political economy; ed A Pabst (2011) I wasn’t even aware of this encyclical until I came across this book recently

Revisiting Associative Democracy; ed Westall (2011). An overdue assessment of the relevance of Paul Hirst’s ideas more than a decade after his death

The Capitalism Papers – Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System; Jerry Mander (2012). Highly readable analysis from a great American journalist and activist. The title, for once, gives us a clear indication of what to expect - one of the clearest analysis of why the American system needs transformation. Its flaws are dissected one by one before he, rarely, gives us a 60 page indication of what should take its place - small scale, cooperative ventures.  One of the few books on the topic I would recommend. Just don't expect a good analysis of a world without work....  

Debt and Neo-Feudalism; Michael Hudson (2012) – one of a series of papers where this prominent and radical economist spells out his view of financial capitalism – which can also be found in his blog. A joint article on the rentier aspect of the crisis is here…Also have a look at this 2012 discussion - how finance capitalism leads to debt servitude

Austerity – the history of a dangerous idea; Mark Blyth (2013) A political economy treatment which surpasses and updates Varoufakis.  One of the best!

Buying Time – the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism; Wolfgang Streeck (2013) Highly readable critique from a German sociologist – called, in this long review, a “reluctant radical”

Never let a serious crisis go to waste – how neoliberalism survived the financial meltdown; Philip Mirowski (2013); too much jargon and verbosity for my taste – although it has received a lot of attention as you will see from this symposium. The author defines here the 13 commandments of neoliberalism. “The Road from Mont Pelerin” which he edited in 2009 tells a better story.

Disassembly Required – a field guide to actually existing capitalism; Geoff Mann (2013) A tantalising little book (written in simple English) which purports to offer an explanation free of the usual myths; focuses usefully on the rise of “financialisation” after the 1970s; but, ultimately, disappoints with a “cultivate one’s garden” conclusion.

Perfect Storm; Tim Morgan (2013). A good treatment by an international consultant

“The Entrepreneurial State – debunking private v public sector myths” Mariana Mazucatto  (2013) An overdue argument about the role of the state

Does Capitalism have a Future? Immanuel Wallerstein, Michael Mann, Craig Calhoun (2013)

I came across this very recently….I’m not sure if I missed much – but with such a title and set of authors, it has to be listed

The Locust and the Bee – predators and creators in Capitalism’s Future; G Mulgan (2013) This should be an important book but is written at such a level of generality that I gave up at about p100. For a text supposedly about the potential “good” side of capitalism, it’s significant that there are no entries in the index for “cooperatives” or “ownership” and no mention of Jeff Gates’ “The Ownership Solution” of 1998 despite a credit Gates gave Mulgan…

New Spirits of capitalism? Crises, justifications and dynamics; ed Paul du Gay, Glenn Morgan (2013). A collection of papers from organizational and management theorists who analyse the 1999 book by French theorists.

End of capitalism? Michael Mann (2013) Substantial academic essay from a historical sociologist –and good summary of what the author contributed to the previous book

Take Back the Economy – an ethical guide for transforming our communities; J Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy (2013) Very readable localist approach (see also Douthwaite)

Democratic Wealth (2014) – being a little E-book of Cambridge and Oxford University bloggers’ takes on the crisis

Rebalancing Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and center; Henry Mintzberg (2014) who is my favourite management guru – for the bluntness of his writing…In a famous 2000 HBR article he warned that 1989 and other socio-economic changes were creating a dangerous imbalance.

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; David Harvey (2014). Book can be downloaded – anything from this Marxist geographer is worthy of note

Civic Capitalism (2014) a short paper from the interesting SPERI unit at Sheffield University

Renewing Public Ownership – making space for a democratic economy; Andrew Cumbers (2014) reviewed here

Crisis without End - the unravelling of western prosperity: Andrew Gamble (2014). A political scientist who has analysed neo-liberalism since the 1970s (google the phrase and you will be able to download a very helpful analysis he did as long ago as 1979!)

The Limits of Neo Liberalism – authority, sovereignty and the logic of competition ; William Davies (2014). A well-written and thoughtful sociological analysis which can be read in full at the link

The future of work; Jacob Morgan (2014). A useful overview – if a bit too American in its spirit! The link gives the entire book

Reinventing Organisations; Frederic Laloux (2014) – a strange sort of book (which can be downloaded in full from the link) redolent of the American 1990s’ style of Peter Senge et al who promised a more liberating type of organization.

Shifts and Shocks – what we’ve learned, and still have to, from the financial crisis; Martin Wolf (2014) – with accompanying power point presentation. Although Wolf was an apologist for globalization, he is as clear and objective economist as that breed is capable of producing..

Utopia or Bust – a guide to the present crisis (2014) a small book with a rather misleading title and subtitle – since it actually deals with 6 authors, David Harvey, Robert Brenner, David Graeber, Fredric Jameson and 2 useless others. But it has a good little guide to further reading

The Second Machine Age, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (2014).Important analysis of the implications and likely impact of information technology

Laudato-Si – the Papal Encyclical of 2015 which threw down an ecological and moral challenge to the power elite. A summary is available here. Its entire 184 pages can be read here

Rise of the Robots; Martin Ford (2015). I’m told this is one of the key writers on this fashionable topic

Sociology, Capitalism, Critique; Dora, Lessenich and Hartmut  Rosa (2015 – translated from 2009 German original). Too many of the references I give are, of necessity, anglo-saxon so I am delighted to include this book.

A New Alignment of Movements? D Bollier (2015) How the thinking of the “platform commons” people has developed

The Butterfly Defect – how globalization creates systemic risks and what to do about it; Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan (2015) I actually don’t know anything about this book but the theme is an important one

Change Everything – creating an Economy for the Common Good; Christian Felber (2015 English – 2010 German). I’m not impressed with this book at all – too simplistic and doesn’t reference the relevant literature but it seems to have encouraged some European groups…..

Credo – economic beliefs in a world of crisis; Brian Davey (2015) An original alternative approach to economics

Commons Transition (2015) a curious book from the Commons in Transition people which is frankly a bit of a scissors and paste job from various projects including one in Ecuador….

Post Capitalism – a guide to our Future; Paul Mason (2015) a best-seller but bit of a curate’s egg whose basic thesis is spelled out here….

Inventing the Future – Postcapitalism and a world without work; N Srnicek and Williams (2015) - sociologists . You can read it for yourself in full here and take in a good review of both above books here. Also a best-seller….

Cyberproletariat – global labour in the digital vortex; Nick Dyer-Witheford (2015) Thought provoking book from a Canadian media/political economy academic

The Locust and the Bee – predators and creators in capitalism’s future; Geoff Mulgan (2015) a typically dispassionate analysis from the ex-head of the Demos ThinkTank who was also Head of Tony Bliar’s Policy Unit

The Next System Report – political possibilities for the 21st Century (2015) The opening essay from a fascinating American project whose latest output is this great series of papers

Rethinking Capitalism – economics and policy for sustainable and inclusive growth; Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato (2016). Looks well-written and up-to-date – from the social democrat stable

How will Capitalism End?; Wolfgang Streeck. (2016) a collection of this political economist’s key articles, many from New Left Review. Superbly written but weak on future of work and environment

And the Weak Suffer what they must – Europe, austerity and the threat to global stability; Yanis Varoufakis (2016) Partly an update to his “Global Minotaur” but much more – a passionate analysis of the perversity of the austerity doctrine

Utopia for Realists – and how we can get there; (2016 Eng) Journalist whose little book has got a high profile. It certainly is written very well but is very light and focuses mainly on universal income and the short working week. Example of great marketing

  

Globalisation and its Discontent Revisited; Joseph Stiglitz (2017). Stiglitz is one of the clearest writers and has long been free to say exactly what he thinks…

Vampire Capitalism – fractured societies and alternative futures; Paul Kennedy (2017)

A sociologist’s treatment which earns high points by stating in the very first sentence that it has “stood on the shoulders of so many giants that he is dizzy” and then proves the point by having an extensive bibliography with lots of hyperlinks…It can be read in full here

Economics for the Common Good ; Jean Tirole (2017 Eng) Nobel prize winner 2014..French Economist. This is political economy as it should be practised – taking the themes of interest to us all and reasoning seriously with us about them.

Crashed; how a decade of financial crises changed the world; Adam Tooze (2018) The definitive book on the subject, with another good review here

The Future of Capitalism – facing new anxieties; Paul Collier (2018) a very thoughtful book which sparked off a series of posts on my blog

Come On! Capitalism, short-termism, population and the destruction of the planet; (Club of Rome 2018). The quality and bite you expect of Club of Rome publications

The Value of Everything – making and taking in the global economy; Mariana Mazzucato (2018)

It’s remarkable that this is one of the few books to focus on the obvious question of what gives products their value….

People, Power and Profits – progressive capitalism for an age of discontent; Joseph Stiglitz (2019) a dissident ex-World Bank chief economist whose latest book I’ve not had a chance to read….

Capitalism, alone – the future of the system that rules the world; Branko Milanovic (2019) Ditto for the present WB Chief Economist’s

The Globotics Upheaval – globalisation, robotics and the future of work; Richard Baldwin (2019) A highly readable analysis of these topics

Capitalism on Edge - How fighting precarity can achieve radical change without crisis or utopia; Albena Azmanova (2020) excerpts of which I review here

Mood Music - how the intellectuals have made sense of our system

In the decade after the 1929 Great Crash, capitalism had been in such deep trouble that its very legitimacy was being questioned. Almost 90 years on, we seem back in the same place….

The destruction wrought by the Second World War, however, supplied a huge boost to European economies - supplemented by the distributive effort of Marshall Aid and the new role of global agencies such as The World Bank and the IMF – let alone the role of American Capital… ….

In Europe, Governments replaced key private monopolies with public ownership and regulation; and earned legitimacy with social provision and full employment. The “mixed economy” that resulted brought the power of unions and citizens into a sort of balance with that of capital.

By the mid 50s, therefore, Labour politician CAR Crosland’s seminal The Future of Socialism could argue to some effect that managerial power was more important than ownership – an analysis with which economic journalist Andrew Shonfield’s original and detailed exploration of European Modern Capitalism – the changing balance of public and private power (1966) concurred. And which was already evident in the 1959 German SDP’s Bad Godesburg programme.

And. by 1964, the British PM Harold McMillan expressed the ebullient European mood when he used the phrase “you’ve never had it so good” – the growth of the core European economic countries being one of the factors which encouraged the UK’s membership of the Common Market in 1973 – although even then there were voices such as that of EJ Mishan warning of The Costs of Economic Growth (1967) and of…. The Limits to Growth (Club of Rome 1972).

Daniel Bell was another important voice questioning the brash confidence of the post-war period – with his Coming of Post-industrial Society (1971) and Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)

But most people by then were convinced that governments, science and big business had found the answers to the problems which had plagued the 20^th century. The ending of American dollar convertibility (to gold) and the first oil crisis of the early 1970s may have raised questions about the “overload” of state capacity - but privatization seemed to give the economy new energy if not a new era of greed. James Robertson’s The Sane Alternative – a choice of futures (1978) may have been the last voice of sanity before Thatcher took over……

There’s a nice little video here of Charles Handy reminding us of the discussions in which he participated in the 1970s about the purpose of the company - and the casual way people such as Milton Friedmann and his acolytes introduced the idea of senior managers being given “share options” as incentives. Handy regrets the failure of people then to challenge what has now become the biggest element of the scandal of the gross inequalities which disfigure our societies in the 21^st century.

The 1980s and 1990s was – despite that - a celebration of a new spirit with even social critics apparently conceding the irresistibility of the social and technical change taking place - Charles Handy’s “The Future of Work” (1984); James Robertson’s Future Work – jobs, self-employment and measure after the industrial age (1985); Casino Capitalism  by International Relations scholar, Susan Strange (1986); The End of Organised Capitalism by sociologists Scott Lash, John Ury (1987) and the columns of Marxism Today – the journal expressed the mood.

One of the latter’s contributors, Andrew Gamble (a Politics Professor), wrote the most clear and prescient analyses of the key forces - The Free Economy and the Strong State – the politics of Thatcherism (1988). 

It’s taken 25 years for the power of that analysis to be properly appreciated….

For the Common Good; Herman Daly and John Cobb (1989) gave us a sense of how things could be organized differently, Herman Daly being one of the few economists in those days willing to break ranks against the conventional wisdom….. 

Then came the fall of communism – and triumphalism. Hayek (and Popper) were wheeled out to inspire central European intellectuals – I encountered so many well-thumbed copies of the former’s (translated) Road to Serfdom (written during the second world war) as I travelled around Central Europe in the 1990s on my various projects …..

But, by then, western academics were getting wise… .. and a deluge not only of critiques but of alternative visions began to hit us….. I can’t pretend this is exhaustive – but these are some of the titles which caught my eye over the next decade….

- The State We’re In; Will Hutton (1995); after Michel Albert’s book on different sorts of capitalism, this was the book which showed us Brits what we were missing in the Seine-Rheinish variant

- The Future of Capitalism – how today’s economic forces shape tomorrow’s world; Lester Thurow (1996). Always ahead of himself, it’s significant that this book never got a serious review

- Political Economy of Modern Capitalism – mapping convergence and diversity; ed C Crouch and W Streeck (1996). Gives the Hutton thesis a much more technical gloss

- “Everything for Sale – the virtues and limits of markets” – Robert Kuttner (1996). The first majot blast across the bows of neo-liberalism

- Short Circuit – strengthening local economies in an unstable world” - Ronald Douthwaite (1996). Very practical – but also inspirational….21 years on, it hasn’t really been bettered

- Making Sense of a Changing Economy – technology, markets and morals; Edward J Nell (1996) delightfully-written and unforgivably neglected book – since it went against the grain of the celebratory claims for economics at the time

-  The End of Capitalism (as we knew it) – a feminist critique of political economy (1996) 
very much ahead of its time – not least in its title

-  From Statism to Pluralism - democracy, civil society and global politics; Paul Hirst (1997)

argues the case for “associational democracy” in both the public and private sectors. It has a powerful beginning – The brutalities of actually existing socialism have fatally crippled the power of socialist ideas of any kind to motivate and inspire. The collapse of communism and the decline of wars between the major industrial states have removed the major justifications of social democracy for established elites – that it could prevent the worse evil of communism and that it could harness organized labour in the national war effort. Those elites have not just turned against social democracy, but they almost seem to have convinced significant sections of the population that a regulated economy and comprehensive social welfare are either unattainable or undesirable

- Natural Capitalism – the next industrial revolution; Paul Hawken (1999). A persuasive vision of how green technology could revitalize capitalism….

- The cancer stages of capitalism; John Mc Murtry (1999). A much darker vision….. 

- “The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century” – Susan George (1999). A satirical piece which forces us to think where present forces are taking us….

- The Great Disruption – human nature and the reconstitution of social order; Francis Fukuyama (1999) An important book which passed me by until 2017 – it is a critique of the loosening of our social fabric since 1965…..

- Economics and Utopia – why the learning economy is not the end of history; Geoff Hodgson (1999) a clear and tough analysis by a top-class economic historian of why socialism lost its way – and exploration of what it will take for it to restore its energies. If you want to get a sense of the range of arguments which have convulsed economists and activists over the past century, this is the book for you – despite the dreadful academic habit of supporting every statement with brackets containing 3-4 names of academics).     

- CyberMarx – cyles and circuits of struggle in high technology capitalism; Nick Dyer-Witheford (1999). It may be a PhD thesis – but it’s a great read…..

- The New Spirit of Capitalism; L Boltanski and E Chiapello (1999). Surprising that others have not attempted this critical analysis of managerial texts since they tell us so much about the Zeitgeist…..these are mainly French (and a bit turgid)….The only similar analyses I know are a couple of treatments of managerial gurus by Brits (one with a Polish name!)….

- Capitalism and its Economics – a critical History; Douglas Dowd (2000) Very readable

- Anti-capitalism – theory and practice; Chris Harman (2000) A Trotskyist take….

- Globalisation and its Discontents; Joseph Stiglitz (2002) is probably the best on the subject - exposing the emptiness of economics orthodoxy….

- “We are Everywhere – a celebration of community enterprise” (2003) 

- Another world is possible Susan George (2004) – one of the great critical analysts of global capitalism

- Why Globalisation Works; Martin Wolf (2004) – one of its most powerful defenders

- A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism – David Harvey (2005). One of the world’s experts in Marxist economics – so a bit heavy going…..

- Knowing Capitalism; Nigel Thrift (2005) A geographer turned turgid post-structuralist, this book requires considerable perseverance!   

- Models of Capitalism; Colin Crouch (2005)…. It was in the 1990s when the variety of different types of capitalism were properly appreciated 

- Capitalism 3.0 (2006) by Peter Barnes - an entrepreneur repulsed by "free-market" ideologues 

- Global Capitalism – its fall and rise in the twentieth century; Jeffry A Frieden (2006)…an exceptionally well-written account of a subject which, at the time it was being written, was not a popular one!!

- The Culture of the new capitalism; Richard Sennett (2006) - who remains one of the few intellectuals capable of matching Bell in the lucidity of their exposition (and breadth of reading) about social trends…..

- Theorising Neoliberalism; Chris Harman (2007) How a Trotskyite sees things

- Globalisation and Contestation – the new great counter-movement; Ronaldo Munck (2007). An interesting description and analysis of social reactions to economic power over the past century – using a Polanyi perspective

- New Capitalism? – the transformation of work; K Doogan (2009) A sound academic treatment of key issues...

And that’s all before the crash – the next post will try to give you a sense of the post-crash writing… 

Economics - a rare example of good writing....

We’re so overwhelmed by the mountain of books and blogs available about economic issues that I’ve sought to give readers some tests they can use on material they come across - to help them more easily select the material worth spending time on……

One of the five things I look for is clarity of writing – from the simple argument that confused writing is a sign of a confused mind. Authors who rely on abstract language have allowed the language to take over their thinking.

A second thing I look for are signs that the author is able and willing to classify other specialists according to the different perspectives they bring – and generous in his attributions…      

I’ve just come across an excellent example of what I mean – from the Michael Robert’s blog The Next Recession who starts his latest post with a great name-check on the Keynesian economists who dominate leftist discussions there days - 

Keynes is the economic hero of those wanting to change the world; to end poverty, inequality and continual losses of incomes and jobs in recurrent crises.  And yet anybody who has read the posts on my blog knows that Keynesian economic analysis is faulty, empirically doubtful and its policy prescriptions to right the wrongs of capitalism have proved to be failures.
In the US, the great gurus of opposition to the neoliberal theories of Chicago school of economics and the policies of Republican politicians are Keynesians Paul Krugman, Larry Summers and Joseph Stiglitz or slightly more radical Dean Baker or James Galbraith. In the UK, the leftish leaders of the Labour party around Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, self-proclaimed socialists, look to Keynesian economists like Martin Wolf, Ann Pettifor or Simon Wren Lewis for their policy ideas and analysis.  They bring them onto their advisory councils and seminars.  In Europe, the likes of Thomas Piketty rule.

 Those graduate students and lecturers involved in Rethinking Economics, an international attempt to change the teaching and ideas away from neoclassical theory, are led by Keynesian authors like James Kwak or post-Keynesians like Steve Keen, or Victoria Chick or Frances Coppola.  Kwak, for example, has a new book called Economism, which argues that the economic faultline in capitalism is rising inequality and the failure of mainstream economics is in not recognising this.  Again the idea that inequality is the enemy, not capitalism as such, exudes from the Keynesians and post-Keynesians like Stiglitz, Kwak, Piketty or Stockhammer, and dominates the media and the labour movement.  This is not to deny the ugly importance of rising inequality, but to show that a Marxist view of this does not circulate.

Indeed, when the media wants to be daring and radical, publicity is heaped on new books from Keynesians or post-Keynesian authors, but not Marxists. For example, Ann Pettifor of Prime Economics has written a new book, The Production of Money, in which she tells us that “money is nothing more than a promise to pay” and that as “we’re creating money all the time by making these promises”, money is infinite and not limited in its production, so society can print as much of its as it likes in order to invest in its social choices without any detrimental economic consequences.  And through the Keynesian multiplier effect, incomes and jobs can expand.  And “it makes no difference where the government invests its money, if doing so creates employment”.  The only issue is to keep the cost of money, interest rates as low as possible, to ensure the expansion of money (or is it credit?) to drive the capitalist economy forward.  Thus there is no need for any change in the mode of production for profit, just take control of the money machine to ensure an infinite flow of money and all will be well.

 Ironically, at the same time, leading post-Keynesian Steve Keen gets ready to deliver a new book advocating the control of debt or credit as the way to avoid crises.  Take your pick: more credit money or less credit.  Either way, the Keynesians drive the economic narrative with an analysis that reckons only the finance sector is the causal force in disrupting capitalism.

So why, Roberts asks, do Keynesian ideas continue to dominate? Here he brings in Geoff Mann - director of the Centre for Global Political Economy at Simon Fraser University, Canada and his new book, entitled In the Long Run We are all Dead which argues that Keynes rules .  

…….because he offers a third way between socialist revolution and barbarism, i.e. the end of civilisation as we (actually the bourgeois like Keynes) know it.  In the 1920s and 1930s, Keynes feared that the ‘civilised world’ faced Marxist revolution or fascist dictatorship.  But socialism as an alternative to the capitalism of the Great Depression could well bring down ‘civilisation’, delivering instead ‘barbarism’  – the end of a better world, the collapse of technology and the rule of law, more wars etc.

So he aimed to offer the hope that, through some modest fixing of ‘liberal capitalism’, it would be possible to make capitalism work without the need for socialist revolution.  There would no need to go where the angels of ‘civilisation’ fear to tread.  That was the Keynesian narrative. This appealed (and still appeals) to the leaders of the labour movement and ‘liberals’ wanting change.  Revolution was risky and we could all go down with it.  Mann: “the Left wants democracy without populism, it wants transformational politics without the risks of transformation; it wants revolution without revolutionaries”. (p21).

Those wanting more detail can read this well-written paper (20 pp) by Mann entitled “Keynes Resurrected?” (2013) as well as his critique of Thomas Pikety

Exemplary Critics

I’m a great fan of diagrams – apart from giving us a breathing space from text, they show that the writer is aware that we all operate with very different types of understanding. 
hAnd - even more than the act of writing itself - the process of designing a diagram will quickly throw up the flaws in your thinking…….

Six categories form the heart of the two diagrams from the Commons Transition people I referred to yesterday - I liked the selection of the worlds of “work”, “citizens” and “conscience” as key categories – we all behave differently in these spheres……and I understood the “politics” and “economy” labels – we have various assumptions and expectations in those fields….

It was the sixth category however – of “consumption/production” which utterly confused me. What exactly is it – and how does it differ from “economy” and “work”?? And why are “workers’ cooperatives” not included in the “economy” category (and “social enterprise” included not there but in “work”??)

There were actually two diagrams – one purporting to illustrate the “present capitalist paradigm”, the second “Beyond Capitalism” and containing illustrative names……

The first diagram, however, was also bereft of such illustrations and I therefore offered a simpler version of the diagram which included the names of writers I considered offered useful examples of the schools indicated (with appropriate hyperlinks)….

I readily concede that the names selected probably said more about the world of an ageing (male) Brit than anything else – even so, of the 23 names selected, only five are actually English.

I do, however, have to confess that all but two are male (although I generally quote people like Susan Strange and Susan George).

Let me introduce this exemplary group – in future posts I hope to say more about those who have written critically in the past 50 odd years about the economic and political system which has us in its grip…… I start at the top left corner of the diagram with some key names in the increasingly critical debate about the health of our democracies........

Sheldon Wolin was one of America’s most distinguished political scientists – producing in 1960 one of the most lucid and inviting political textbooks “Politics and Vision” (700pp). As a student of politics between 1960-64, it was his book (and Bernard Crick’s “In Defence of Politics”) which inspired me to pursue politics as a vocation……
He died in 2015 at the grand age of 93, having produced seven years earlier a withering critique of the American political system - Democracy Incorporated – managed democracy and the spectre of inverted totalitarianism

 Peter Mair was a highly respected Irish political scientist who died at the height of his powers at the age of 60 and is renowned for Ruling the Void – the hollowing of Western Democracy (2013) which encapsulated the increasing despair of serious political scientists about the post 2000 trajectory of democracy.

 Robert Michels started the critique a hundred years earlier with his “ Political Parties – a sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy” first produced in German in 1911.

 Jeremy Gilbert is a British academic whose  Reclaim Modernity – beyond markets; beyond machines (2014) was a contribution to the ongoing debate about the future of the British Labour party 

David Graeber is an American anthropologist who has written powerfully about the history of debt; about anarchism; and more recently about aspects of modern work…..

Mark Blyth is a Scottish-American political economist whose Austerity – history of a dangerous idea made a big impact when it first appeared in 2013 and even more so in his subsequent lectures…

Yanis Varfoukis is a Greek-American economist whose The Global Minotaur – America, the true origins of the financial crisis; and the future of the world economy (2011) ……

Wolfgang Streeck is a German sociologist who has produced a series of powerfully-written critiques of the modern economy, culminating in How will Capitalism End?

David Harvey is an English Marxist geographer who has been based in the States for the past few decades; and become famous for his courses on Marxism and capitalism. One of his most powerful books is A Brief History of Neo Liberalism (2005)

Guy Standing’s claim to fame is The Precariat – the new dangerous class (2011)

New Capitalism? The End of Work (2009) by Kevin Doogan is a surprisingly critical assessment of the writing which from the mid 1980s has warned of the increasing job insecurity which lies ahead. It’s worth reading for its summary of writing of this important field.

Barbara Ehrenreich is an American journalist who has famously worked undercover to bring to readers her experiences of just how grim working life can be eg “Nickel and Dimed”

Joseph Stiglitz was the World Bank’s Chief Economist until his challenges of its Orthodoxy proved too much for them to bear. Globalisation and its Discontents (2002) is one of the many trenchant books he has written to expose the emptiness of economics orthodoxy….

John Michael Greer is an American writer and one of the most prominent of what might be called the apocalypicists – who consider that the western world is on a “Long (if slow) Descent” to a simpler world…I’m using the word in a respectful way since a lot of their arguments are convincing – and Greer’s analysis of American politics is the most profound I’ve seen.

Dmitry Orlov is another such apocalypticist – a Russian engineer who came to the States in 1974 (when 12) and, on home visits, having seen the USSR collapse at first hand, has been suggesting since his     Reinventing Collapse; the Soviet Experience and American Prospects (2005) that a similar fate awaits the States… 

Michael Pollan is a Professor of English in the States who became famous for his writing on agro-business

Naomi Klein is a radical Canadian journalist who made an impact with her “No Logo” (1999) and “The Shock Doctrine” (2007) books about capitalism. This Changes Everything (2014)

Oliver James is a British psychologist whose various books (such as “Affluenza” 2001) reflect the concerns of a lot of people….

Pope Francis has become the remaining hope of a lot of progressives. On Care of our Common Home (2015) is an encyclical which lambasts the present economic system and doctrines… 

Christopher Lasch was an American cultural analyst whose The Culture of Narcissism (1979) caught well the self-centredness of America in the post 60s period. His penetrating critiques continued with The True and Only Heaven – progress and its critics (1991) and his posthumous The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1995)

Edward Snowden is the whistle-blower par excellence – working for a CIA sub-contractor he unearthed and spilled the story of the scale of American hacking of private accounts…

Julian Assange is an Australian computer expert, publisher and activist who has been holed up in London’s Ecuador Embassy since 2102 for fear of extradition to the US for “trumped-up” charges by the Swedish authorities…. 

Danny Dorling is a British geographer whose Injustice (2014) rivals the moral power of RH Tawney‘s writing and whose A Better Politics – how government can make us happier (2016) is one of the clearest invitations to a better society

Understanding the mess we're in

The left-right scale has a long history – the left label coming in the 20th century to designate people on the basis of their attitude to the economic role which the state should play in society. Since, however, the late 50s and the arrival of a more “self-expressive” spirit, an additional dimension was needed to indicate attitudes to the hierarchy/participation dimension (ie political power). 
The political compass website – which allows you to take your own test – labels these additional dimensions “left authoritarian” and “left libertarian”

Last year I came across a couple of diagrams from the Commons Transition people which I found very useful correctives to the normal simplifications we get about what is going in the world….  

It uses six dimensions – which it labels “politics”, “the economy”, “work”, “citizens”, “conscience” and “consumption” to identify a dozen key concerns which have surfaced about recent global trends. We can certainly quibble about the logic of the dimensions - and the labels used for the trends - but the diagrams are thought-provoking and worthy of more discussion than they seem to have obtained in the couple of years they have been available.

The first of the diagrams details the “Current Capitalist Paradigm” but, for my money, could be improved by adding some names of illustrative writers. 
I have therefore taken the liberty of producing a simpler version of the diagram which includes about 20 names – with hyperlinks in each case to key texts. Readers who are frustrated by the tiny lettering of the names around the perimeter should therefore simply click on the link (NOT the diagram above) and then click the particular name whose material they want to access.

The second diagram is entitled Beyond Capitalism and does include illustrative names. This too could, in my view, do with some additions (and deletions) and I hope to include an amended version in a future post. For example, it is a bit light on robotisation…..

For the moment, however, let me simply offer my readers the diagrams as a better way of mapping the literature to which we should be paying attention…..  

NOTE - this is the first part of what will be a series of posts focusing on these diagrams