We Are on our Own

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

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

·       It worked because power was diffused. Each type of power – economic (companies/banks etc), political (citizens and workers) and legal/admin/military (the state) – balanced the other. None was dominant.

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

·       Privatisation has been a disaster – inflicting costs on the public and transferring wealth to the few

·       Neo-liberalism has supplied a thought system which justifies corporate greed and the privileging (through tax breaks and favourable legislation) of the large international company

·       All political parties and most media have been captured by that thought system which now rules the world

·       People have, as a result, become cynical and apathetic

·       Two elements of the “balanced system” (Political and legal power) are therefore now supine before the third (corporate and media power). The balance is broken and the dominant power ruthless in its exploitation of its new freedom

·       It is very difficult to see a “countervailing power” which would make these corporate elites pull back from the disasters they are inflicting on us

·       Social protest is marginalised

·       Not least by the combination of the media and an Orwellian “security state” ready to act against “dissidence”

·       But the beliefs which lie at the dark heart of the neo-liberal project do need more detailed exposure

·       as well as its continued efforts to undermine what little is left of state power

·       We need to be willing to express more vehemently the arguments against privatisation - existing and proposed)

·       to feel less ashamed about arguing for “the commons” and for things like cooperatives and social enterprise (inasmuch as such endeavours are allowed) 

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

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

·       Globalisation is in shreds

·       Not least through the Covid19 pandemic of 2020

·       Societies are polarised

·       Thrust into narrow and selfish “bubbles”

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

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

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

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

-       Break up monopolies

-       Tax the rich – who currently hide in tax havens

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

-       Develop Citizen juries

-       Stop money talking

-       Ensure that civil service advice is neutral

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

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

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

Politics will be very different in the AI age

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

-       Breaking up monopolies

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

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

-       Reinstating the requirement of media balance

-       Restricting corporate funding of parties

-       Citizen juries

-       A neutral civil service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Diary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cultural Values, cultural theory and Cultural Wars

“Whenever I hear the word “culture” I reach for my gun” is a quip attributed generally to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s intellectual propaganda chief - although it actually comes from a play produced by a minor Nazi for Hitler’s 44^th birthday. The martial association is understandable given the nature of “political culture”.

The last post left me aware of a confusion in the use of phrases such as worldview, cultural values and world values – and a compulsion to track down the intellectual sources behind the words. This was no easy task since the field is a rich one – inhabited by specialist academics with jargon and a dense writing style. 

Although the post is short, its complexity is reflected in the fact that it’s taken a full day to compose 

And one of my tables has helped clarify my thoughts – although left questions which will require a proper study of the books I’ve been able to find. This, therefore, should be treated as very much a first attempt 

Term used	Meaning	Origin	Typical referents
“Worldviews”	collection of quasi- philosophical/religious BELIEFS which seem to give us our respective identities		Kant Wittgenstein
“Political Culture”	A term used by political scientists which can be traced to de Tocqueville but whose modern origin is generally attributed to the 1950s and Gabriel Almond	In the 1940s and 1950s “culture” figured in the work of many American scholars as they tried to understand the challenge of modernisation faced by many societies but was then supplanted by the “rationality” of the economists Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington took the theme up again in late 1980s – with  Culture Matters – how culture shapes social progress (2000) being a seminal work, criticised for really meaning Western Culture matters	Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Edward Banfield, Gabriel Almond, SM Lipset     Lawrence Harrison Samuel Huntington
“World values”	Clusters of VALUES eg “traditional”, “modern” and “postmodern” which have been used by technocrats to make various types of social intervention	This stream of work began in 1981	political scientists and psychologists particularly Ronald Inglehart
“Cultural values”	An indeterminate term	social psychologist Geert Hofstede started work in the 1960s with IBM on cultural differences – taken up by Frans Trompenaars It also figured in the discussions about “transitology” in the 1990s	Geert Hofstede Frans Trompenaars
“Cultural theory”	Otherwise known as “grid-group” theory, best summarised here	Anthropologist Mary Douglas first developed the “grid-group” approach which was then taken up by policy analyst Wildavsky and political scientist Thompson	Mary Douglas Aaron Wildavsky Michael Thompson

Key Recommended Reading

-       Cultural Evolution – people’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world; Ronald Inglehart (2018) One of the clearest statements of the third school

-       A World of Three Cultures – honour, achievement and joy; M Basanez (2016) ) a beautifully-written book by a Mexican academic which seems to have exactly the outsider’s take on the subject I need

-       The Central Liberal Truth – how politics can change a culture and save it from itself; Lawrence Harrison (2006) A very clear analysis from a school rather in disgrace at the moment for its continued belief in western progress

-       Developing Cultures - Essays on Cultural Change Lawrence Harrison and Jerome Kagan (2006)

-       Culture Matters – how culture shapes social progress; ed L Harrison and S Huntington (2000) For my money, this is one of the most interesting books – although some of the authors are no longer considered to be politically correct. At least they feel able to say exactly what they feel!

-       Value Change in Global Perspective P Abramson and R Inglehart (1995)

Mapping values and world views

We need to pay more attention to our mind - and to the different patterns of meaning we create in our efforts to make sense of the world.

In my youth, I was aware of a tripartite division – conservatives, socialists and liberals. Not for me the Manichean approach of insider/outsider or left/right. There was always a third way – be it green or ecological.

 The blog has, of course, had regular posts about cultural values – discussing the work of people such as de Hofstede; Ronald Inglehart; FransTrompenaars; Richard Lewis (of When Cultures Collide fame) and Richard Nesbitt – a body of writing which emphasises the distinctiveness of national values most graphically illustrated in the Inglehart cultural map of the world and best explained in this brochure. It was, of course, multinational companies who funded a lot of this work as they tried to understand how they could weld different nationalities into coherent and effective teams. Those were the days when a body of literature called “path dependency” was raising important questions about how “sticky” cultural values were…viz how difficult national behavioural traits are to change

It was only in 2000, however, that I became aware of the four dimensions of grid-group theory which anthropologist Mary Douglas introduced - consisting of four very different “world views” (what she calls hierarchist, egalitarian, individualist and fatalist) which came to be known as “Cultural Theory”. I came across Mary Douglas’ theory only in 2000, thanks to public admin theorist Chris Hood’s “The Art of the State” which uses her typology brilliantly to help us understand the strengths, weaknesses and risks of these various world views. 

It’s interesting that many people now assume that this exhausts the number of world views. One book-length study compares and contrasts these various models “Way of life theory – the underlying structure of world views, social relations and lifestyles” – a rather disjointed dissertation by Michael Edward Pepperday (2009) an introduction to which is here.

But I’m just learning that I’ve been missing some important perspectives. A Futurist called Andy Hines has just sent me a copy of what is (despite the title) a quite fascinating book he wrote in 2011 - Consumer Shift - how changing values are reshaping the consumer landscape which is actually much more about values and world views than it is about consumers….

This reflects a lot of work which companies had been funding to try to get into the minds of their consumers - but which international charities suddenly realised a decade or so ago could also be used to prise money out of all of us for their (more altruistic) purposes (see below) – a politicisation of which Adam Curtis' documentaries have made us much more aware.

Hines’ book in turn took me to Spiral Dynamics – mastering values, leadership, change; produced by Don Beck and Chris Cowan in 1996 which the link explains was inspired by the work of their teacher - an American psychologist, Clare Graves. Both books have crucial explorations of the very different levels of explanation needed for discussions of behaviour and the values which underpin it. 

And lead into recent books by Jeremy Lent - the earliest of which is “The Patterning Instinct – a cultural history of man’s search for meaning” which 

is filled with details about how the brain works, how patterns of thought arise, how these shared symbols (language, art, religion, science) give rise to cultural metaphors such as “Nature as Machine” and “Conquering Nature,” and how these worldviews in turn lead to historical change. However, different cultures have different metaphors, and it is our culture, according to Lent, western (now global) culture, which is largely to blame for the damaging ways in which our root metaphors have manifested themselves on the planet.

I get the sense that psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists have approached the question of cultural values completely separately and at different times - making few attempts to engage one another in discussion? It's such a critical issue that it's time they reached out to one another.....

Further Reading

-       The Web of Meaning; Jeremy Lent (2021) an important follow up to his 2017 book

-       Britain’s Choice – common ground and divisions in 2020s Britain (More in Common 2020) a detailed picture of the british people and their values these days

-       Cultural Evolution – people’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world ; Ronald Inglehart (2018) Inglehart, a political scientist, has been at the heart of discussion about cultural values for the past 50 years – and the book and this article summarise that work.

-       The Patterning Instinct; Jeremy Lent (2017) how worldviews develop and can change history

-       Grid, group and grade – challenges in operationalising cultural theory for cross-national research (2014) is a very academic article although its comparative diagrams are instructive

-       “A Cultural Theory of Politics” (2011) a short article which shows how the grid-group approach has been used in a range of disciplines

-       Common Cause – the case for working with our cultural values (2010) a useful little manual for charities

-       Finding Frames – new ways to engage the UK public (2010) ditto

-       Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions; Keith Grint (2008) a short very useful article by an academic

-       The Geography of Thought – how westerners and asians think differently and why; Ricard Nesbitt (2003) An American social psychologist gives a thought-provoking book

-       Riding the Waves of Culture – understanding cultural diversity in business; Frans Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner (1997) the Dutchman who took on de Hofstede’s mantle

-       When Cultures Collide – leading across cultures; Richard Lewis (1996) The book which introduced us to the field – and gave us marvellous vignettes of the strange habits of almost all countries of the world   

The strange British Love Affair with Reform

I had no sooner posted about the need for every country to be critically reviewing its systems of government than the British government came up with proposals for further reform.

It was actually a year ago that the relevant Minister, Michael Gove, first signalled the intention to reform the civil service – but the disastrous performance of the British government (as distinct from the civil service) during the Covid pandemic seems to have persuaded them that, at least for presentational reasons, a rather wider review was necessary. The proposals cover only ten pages (for which parsimony we should be grateful) but seem a bit vague and repetitive to me – with talk of

-       transferring officials out of the capital

-       recruitment system which bring those with different work experience into the system eg from business, local government, voluntary organs  

-       more training for both officials and Ministers

-       establishing more challenging structures to encourage creative thinking and discourage groupthink

-       performance management

-       sharper departmental accountability

-       greater diversity

-       better coordination

-       putting data at the heart of government

-       better use of scientific evidence

Properly to appreciate what’s going on, outsiders need to understand the politics involved.

Michael Gove has been one of the central figures of the Conservative Governments of the past decade – being Minister of Education from 2010-14 when his advisor was the notorious Dominic Cummings who was famously branded by Prime Minister David Cameron a “career psychopath” for his general nastiness and disruptive style.

Cummings then became the Director of the successful Leave Campaign during the Brexit referendum – with Benedict Cumberbatch appropriately taking the role of Cummings in the film “Brexit – the Uncivil War” – but then retired to the sidelines to nurse a rather scholastic blog and a business career.

To everyone’s amazement, Boris Johnson – having won the Prime Ministership (a contest in which Gove had been a major rival) - plucked Dominic Cummings in August 2019 to be his Principal Advisor. Within a few months Cummings was talking of the need for “wierdos and misfits to be at the heart” of the policy-making process – a view fro which I have a lot of sympathy – in fact it’s one I’ve been preaching for some time here. But Cummings is just too abrasive a character to last – and was sacked by Johnson in November last year. 

But hey presto – his philosophy has now become part of the received wisdom of the British Government. The Institute of Government is a fairly recent UK Think-Tank (founded 2008) which has established a good reputation for critical appraisal and has just published its own (short) comment on the government proposals – generally favourable. In what appears a deliberate choreography Cummings had been invited a few weeks earlier to a Parliamentary Select Committee hearing at which he gave evidence for 7 hours about the serious mistakes made by government Ministers – which also attracted favourable comment from the Institute of Government.        

But how come a country famed for its conservatism seems to love reorganisation and reform so much? The link gives access to a timeline detailing the non-stop changes which have affected British civil servants over the past 50 years – many of which have been globally copied – which is part of Martin Stanley’s superb website Understanding the Civil Service

Is this perhaps what Lampadusa meant when he wrote in the famous “The Leopard” that 

“things will have to change in order to remain the same”?

Non-stop organisational reform is not a good idea. Britain’s lack of a Constitution is one of the reasons why British governments are so prone to changing structures. 

“We have a cunning plan” they say – 

but, of course, don’t stay around long enough to pick up the pieces afterwards! 

At least, this time the focus seems to be more about changing "culture" rather than structure. So perhaps some lessons have been learned!  

Further Reading/Viewing

Change for the Better? A Life in Reform; (2021) the present version of a draft which presents a distinctive view of the challenge of admin reform in a variety of countries 

Dominic Cummings’ Evidence May 2021 to UK Parliamentary Select Committee – all 7 hours (Youtube)

Government Reimagined (Policy Exchange 2021) The latest UK Think-Tank report on the subject

The UK Civil Service site’s background note on the Policy Exchange report