How to Fix the World?

I’ve managed to keep my head down and get a sense of the first 6/7 books in my list of some 30 I felt I needed to look at to spark off some movement in my brain cells as I try to write a satisfactory conclusion to the text I’ve been working on for some years about the various global crises we confront (the 1st of the E-books listed in top-right corner). These are the books – and my initial reactions… 

Title	What I make of them
Development Betrayed – the end of progress and a coevolutionary revisioning of the future; Richard Norgaard (1994)	A book ahead of its time – with its distaste for modernity and progress and our loss of community. It’s strong on the philosophical mistakes we’ve made but the gloom of its first half made it difficult to sustain the reading. Need to return for the positive messages
The Third Way and Beyond – criticisms, futures and alternatives ed Hale, Leggett and Martell (2004)	There was a moment in the late 1990s when the idea of “stakeholding” (Hirst; Hutton) offered a different concept of the company and of capitalism – but Tony Blair blew the opportunity. I’ve just come across this book – which seems to capture the possibilities of that time…..
Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism Jeremy Gilbert (2013)	The title certainly points to what I consider the central dilemma of our times – although Gilbert’s language is too suffused with French “constructivist” thinking to make much sense to me….
Unaccountable – how the elite brokers corrupt; Janine Wedel (2014)	Wedel is an anthropologist – and gives a powerful account here of the corruption at the heart of the American economic and political system. A bit light on prescriptions
Rebalancing  Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and center Henry Mintzberg (2015)	One of my favourite little books which I’ve brought in as a measure for the other books. He’s basically got it all – strong analysis of what’s wrong; recognition of the importance of worker coops and social enterprise; and of the need for a shift in power
Back to the future of Socialism Peter Hain (2015)	Most of the books in the table are by academics but this one is by that rarity – a thoughtful and caring politician. The title is a reference to the classic 1956 “Future of Socialism” and is a useful update – although it has been criticised for being too much of a defence of New Labour
Reclaiming the State – a progressive vision of sovereignty in a post neo-liberal world Bill Mitchell and Thomas Fazi (2017)	written by an Australian economist and Italian journalist, this is an excellent analysis of the various forces which both weakened the state and strengthened the forces of privilege and reaction You get the sense that leftist parties and governments just rolled over…The last half of the book focuses on 3 issues – modern monetary theory, UBI and nationalisation

 As usual, however, I’ve been diverted by other tantalising titles – not least Gordon Brown’s new book "Seven Way to Change the World" 

I have always had mixed feelings about Brown - admiration at one level for his mind but awareness that he could be a bit clunky and overwhelming.

I still have memories of going to meet him for lunch in 1974 when he had invited me to contribute to his famous "Red Paper on Scotland" . I had just been elected to one of the top positions in Europe's largest Region and he, I was thinking at the time, is a bit of a young upstart - being talked about even in his early 20s as a future Prime Minister. 

But I must have hidden such feelings well - since he asked me a few years later to write one of the chapters of a book he and Robin Cook edited about inequality in "Scotland; the Real Divide".

He may have been out of power now for more than a decade - but he is extraordinarily well-connected to the global intellectual elite and, if anyone's capable, of getting their mind around the key issues confronting us, it's him.

My gut feeling is that he is too much of an ivory-tower "policy wonk" to be able to communicate with us - but the title he's chosen shows that he knows he's got to get the level right.....even if the sub-title “how to fix the most pressing problems we face” is a bit hubristic.

But this was ever Gordon’s problem – a confidence that targets and incentives could fix problems….Interesting to see that the phrase also creeps into the title also of Ed Miliband’s new book….What does this tell us? 

Other tempting titles are -

Title	Why the book seems relevant
Rethinking Governance – the centrality of the State; S Bell and A Hindmoor (2009)	It was a rare voice in those days actually making the case for strategic government
Power and Love – the theory and practice of social change; Adam Kahane (2010)	One of 3 important books I missed in those years demonstrating the lessons the burgeoning social movement offered for a revitalised democratic practice – Kahane being now a Canadian consultant in reconciliation and change
Can Democracy be Saved? Participation, deliberation, social movements; Della Porta (2013)	Della Porta is Italian and one of the world’s most prolific writers on social movements
Waves of Democracy – social movements and political change; John Markoff (1996 - 2013)	And Markoff is a Pittsburgh Prof of political science
Dangerous Years – climate change, the long emergency and the way forward; David W Orr (2016)	David Orr is one of the most serious academic ecologists. This interview gives a good sense of the book’s argument
Human Scale Revisited – a new look at the classic case for a decentralist future; Kirkpatrick Sale (2017)	An updating of an important 1950s book which has long fascinated me
Democracy and Prosperity – reinventing capitalism through the century of turbulence T Iversen and D Soskice (2019)	This is a pretty academic book – taking us through the very important literature on “Varieties of Capitalism”
Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire; Rebecca Henderson (2020)	A powerful book which pursues the critical question of whether capitalism can actually change for the better. Henderson thinks it can – an argument I look forward to hearing!
Inequality and the labyrinths of democracy; Goeran Therborn (2020)	The possibility that capitalism is inconsistent with democracy has become an increasingly loud question in recent years – and is here magisterially addressed
Market Economy, Market Society; interviews and essays on the future of European social democracy; ed M Adereth (2021)	What looks a fascinating contribution to the discussion from the Iberian peninsula
Seven Ways to Change the World – how to fix the world’s most pressing problems; G Brown (2021)	Brown is the most serious and well-read of global ex-leaders –as is shown in this excellent review
Go Big – how to fix our world; Ed Miliband (2021)	another defeated ex-Leader of the Labour party, Miliband doesn’t quite have Brown's gravitas – but gets a suitably serious assessment analysis from the other side of the Atlantic here

 

GroupThink – what always brings power down

One of the features of systems of power is what Noam Chomsky has called “Manufacturing Consent” – or the insidious imprinting by national educational systems and media empires of simplistic stories of heroes, villains and other questionable narratives….. Unfortunately, however, for the powerful they end up believing their own propaganda – dissenters who suggest that the world is not as the official organs are portraying it are ridiculed and marginalised.

“Groupthink” came into our language as a result of a 1972 book - and Paul t’Hart’s subsequent  “Groupthink in Government” (1994) helped spawn a veritable industry…

Organisations and governments should therefore all be alive to the dangers of complacency and some indeed have gone to the lengths of appointing “devil’s advocates” to challenge the status quo…. “Rebel Ideas” is a recent good read on this. 

But, somehow, all the checks consistently fail – as we have just seen, tragically, in Afghanistan. To many of us, of course, we should never have been there in the first place but the question on everyone’s lips these days is how on earth so-called “intelligence” – let alone the “chattering classes” - could have got things so wrong. It is a question that seems to have been recurring rather too frequently these past few years – vide Brexit and Trump 

One of the answers is that people have been looking in the wrong places – if they really wanted answers about Afghanistan, they should have been asking basic questions about money flows and social systems.

-      Take, for example, this report just issued by the independent British Think-tank ODI – Lessons for Peace which demonstrates that the cash from the poppy trade outstrips disbursements from the Kabul government by a factor of 10 to 1.

-      Or this short article from Anatol Lieven that explains the role that social networks have played in the collapse of any resistance to the Taliban 

But Presidents and governments prefer to listen to the assured voices of the military who promise victory – and seem to have a built-in resistance to listening to the doubtsayers who bring bad news….. And, since the start of the Vietnam war, there have been any number of voices questioning the conventional wisdom. One of the most prominent has been Paul Rogers (suffering perhaps from his designation as Professor of Peace Studies – although increasingly recognised by security advisers). Even before 9/11 he was making the argument against the belief that military power could defeat guerrilla tactics – as you can see from his collected writing here 

Update; 

Of all the analysis I've seen since the weekend about the Afghan tragedy, this is the best I've read. It's from a marvellous small weekly E-journal Scottish Review

Tariq Ali has a good briefing - another excellent source of information is here

But perhaps the best is this recent briefing from a couple of anthropologists who worked in the country some decades ago and this one from an unknown pakistani  

The Importance of Critical Reading

Five weeks ago, I shared a list of books which I felt would help me as I tried to draft a conclusion to the book I’ve been working on for the past few years about the sense of crisis which has gripped us westerners since the start of the new millennium.

I confessed that I was one of these gullible readers who imagined that reading would somehow transmit important messages to my brain – and that I lacked the patience to formulate some questions with which to interrogate a book before I opened it… 

And lo – after 5 weeks – despite having recognised the importance of these books, I’ve failed utterly to follow through. The books lie unread – perhaps because I couldn’t be bothered to pose the sorts of questions which would help me identify those sections of books which seemed to offer answers

So, I’m having another go – but I never learn….I’ve added a few more books!! 

But, this time, I’ll start at the beginning – and try to work my way through the list – gradually…..hopefully posting as I go?  

The first column gives the book titles – in chronological order – starting with the earliest. The second column explains why I think they could be useful 

Title	First Impressions
Development Betrayed – the end of progress and a coevolutionary revisioning of the future; Richard Norgaard (1994)	A profound and clearly-written explanation of what has gone wrong….To keep the narrative going the main text avoids footnotes and references which are put at the end in a superb 65=page set of bibliographic notes
Why the Third Way Failed – economics, morality and the origins of ”the big society”; Bill Jordan (2010)	This, for a social democrat, is one of the most important questions – why did a consensual approach which rebuffs both left and right ideologies fail? Was it the absence of a serious approach? Or are we doomed to be tribal?
Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism Jeremy Gilbert (2013)	The title certainly points to what I consider the central dilemma of our times – although Gilbert’s language is too suffused with French “constructivist” thinking to make much sense to me….what, for example, are we supposed to make of this section – “It explores the implications of ideas of affect for a non-individualist conception of political agency, and goes on to develop these ideas with reference to philosophical reflections on the nature of decision to be found in the work of Derrida, Levinas and Laclau. The chapter then asks what some of the political and analytic implications might be of such a conception of agency, in particular what the implications might be for thinking about cultural and aesthetic experience, examining the arguments for and against Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’ and the ongoing value of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque”
Unaccountable – how the elite brokers corrupt; Janine Wedel (2014)	Wedel is an anthropologist – and applies those skills to the contemporary political system of the USA
Rebalancing  Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and center Henry Mintzberg (2015)	One of my favourite little books which I’ve brought in as a measure for the other books. He’s basically got it all – strong analysis of what’s wrong; recognition of the importance of worker coops and social enterprise; and of the need for a shift in power
Back to the future of Socialism Peter Hain (2015)	Most of the books in the table are by academics but this one is by that rarity – a thoughtful and caring politician. The title is a reference to the classic 1956 “Future of Socialism” and is a useful update
Reclaiming the State – a progressive vision of sovereignty in a post neo-liberal worldBill Mitchell and Thomas Fazi (2017)	I like the look of this book – written by an Australian economist- which, unusually for the time, argued for a more activist role for the state. His co-author, interestingly, is an Italian journalist. It’s just that I get impatient with economic arguments these days
A Research Agenda for Neoliberalism Kean Birch (2017)	Seems to be one of these rare clearly- written books which asks the questions citizens want answers to. He seems to be a sociologist?
Wrong Turnings – how the left got lost; Geoff Hodgson (2018)	Hodgson is both a political economist and social democrat and has a strong analysis here
Why the Left Loses – the decline of the centre left in comparative perspective; R Manwaring and P Kennedy (2018)	The classic book on social democracy (Berman) was published 15 years ago. This is a more recent assessment from Australians which looks at the lessons from recent experience. See reading list here
Is Socialism Feasible? Geoffrey Hodgson (2019)	Hodgson writes clearly - and is prepared to face hard truths
From What Is to What If – unleashing the power of imagination to create the world we want Rob Hopkins (2019).	Hopkins is an environmental activist who founded the Resilient Towns movement.
The Demons of Liberal Democracy; Adrian Pabst (2019)	Pabst is a Third Way man who abhors left and right. I felt this would challenge some of my preconceptions
Winners take all – the elite charade of changing the world; A Girdiharadas (2019)	One of the problems progressives have is that the devil has stolen a lot of his tunes.
Goliath – the 100-year war between monopoly power and democracy; Matt Stoller (2019)	very important review suggests the author has swallowed the liberal competition ideas of economists too literally; and has underestimated the power of class struggle in the post-war US achievements
The Free Society in Crisis; David Starkey (2019)	Have included this curious book largely from admiration of the author’s courage in limiting his reading list to books that are more than 50 years old
The evolution of communitarian ideas – history, theory and practice Henry Tam (2019)	Communitarianism is an important strand of progressive thought Tam is a very thoughtful and excellent writer who blogs here
The Third Pillar – how the market and the state leave the community behind Raghuram Rajan (2019)	an overdue analysis of the huge role which community bodies have to play in the future which was all too easily dismissed by the loose talk of ”The Third Way” and the ”Big Society”.  Although we do have to ask why it is that ideas apparently attractive to mainstream opinion were never taken seriously....
The New Class War – saving democracy from the new managerial elite; Michael Lind (2020)	I want to like this book – but feel the argument that managerial power needs taking down is hardly likely in itself to lead to the rebalance of power we need
Twenty-First Century Socialism; Jeremy Gilbert (2020)	This is a short and very readable book.
Unrigged – how Americans are battling back to save democracy; David Daley (2020)	The book may have a focus on the US but the move to discredit democracy and disenfranchise voters is widespread (eg contemporary UK) as is evident from books with titles such as “Against Democracy” (2016)
Rentier Capitalism – who owns the economy? Brett Christophers (2020)	A British economist gives us a good sense of the curious direction the British economy has taken. Strongly influenced by the work of US economist Michael Hudson, famous for his “Killing the Host” and “J is for Junk Economics”
Futures of Socialism – the pandemic and the post-Corbyn Era; ed G Blakewell (2020)	A series of short, succinct statements from pro-Corbyn social scientists working in the UK. Gives a very good sense of what is currently fashionable
Authoritarianism and how to counter it; Bill Jordan (2020)	The sociology author of ”Why the Third Way failed” takes on the question of why voters have turner again to ”the hard men” and what we can do about it...
Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century ; Andreas Malm (2020)	Malm is a Swedish economic historian/ecologist who has become, in the past decade, one of the most radical of the global warming campaigners. In this latest book, he explores the very different paths governments have taken faced with the Corona and Climate challenges; and maps out a very different route…  There’s an interesting interview with him here
Share the Wealth – how to end rentier capitalism; Philippe Askenazy (2021)	Too many anglo-saxon economists dominate this field – so it’s good to get a French view (a translation of a 2016 book)
Mission Economy – a moonshot guide to changing capitalism; Mariana Mazzucato (2021)	This Italian economist now based in Britain is one of the few economists who has been prepared to argue strongly for public investment and an activist role for government – see also Bill Mitchell (above) and Andrew Cumbers
Consequences of Capitalism; Noam Chomsky and Mary Waterstone (2021)	Very disappointing book – based on recent lectures delivered by Chomsky. And it shows….with the narrative often jumping into distracting stories.
Post Growth – life after capitalism ; Tim Jackson (2021)	The elephant in the room…. Written in a refreshingly accessible style
The Return of the State – restructuring Britain for the Common Good Ed P Allen et al (2021)	A book calling for a rethink on globalisation and the place of financial capital – with contributions from people such as Robert Skidelsky, Ann Pettifor and Stewart Lansley – questioning the role of financial capital.

 

The Church of Economism

Mine was the modernist generation brought up on the Huxleys, HG Wells, GB Shaw and Bertrand Russell.

Keynes and the Atom Bomb were probably the two factors which helped us brush aside the doubts about modernity which had plagued the inter-war generation and place our faith firmly in science. And the new discipline of Economics was part of our new-found confidence. It was Gordon Brown’s fate to pronounce the “end of boom and bust” just before the global financial system imploded in 2007. But economists have established themselves for at least 50 years as the new priesthood on whose words we all hang……. 

That is slowly changing - 2008, of course, should have been the death knell for economics since it had succumbed some decades earlier to a highly-simplified and unrealistic model of the economy which was then starkly revealed in all its nakedness…..Steve Keen was one of the first economists to break ranks very publicly way back in 2001 and to set out an alternative - Debunking Economics – the naked emperor dethroned.

This coincided with economics students in Paris objecting to the homogeneity of syllabi and reaching out to others – creating in the next 15 years a movement which has become global. This is a good presentation on the issues (from 2012) and an excellent little Penguin book The Econocracy – the perils of leaving economics to the exerts by Joe Earle, Cahal Moran and Zach Ward-Perkins (2017) is based on their experience of stirring things up on the Manchester University economics programme. The book’s sub-title says it all! 

But the groundwork for the challenge to the what some have called the imperialist grab of economics had been laid much earlier – with EJ Mishan’s “The Costs of Economic Growth” (1967); Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful – economics as if people mattered” (1973) and Hazel Henderson’s “Creating Alternative Futures” (1978)

And it was some 2 decades ago that the notion of economics as a religion was first aired; and has become an increasingly serious proposition – as you will see from this table I have constructed. 

I still remember the moment when I realised that the scholastic disputes during the Reformation were exactly the same as can be found amongst contemporary economists. I was reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s large volume about the Reformation in my kitchen in Bishkek in 2005 or so when it suddenly became so obvious. But, until I did this table, Susan George and Brian Davey were the only people I knew making this argument. But yesterday I came across of Rapley’s “Twilight of the Money Gods” and googling unearthed the rest…… 

Those wanting a good short intro to the subject might want to read Richard Norgaard’s article Church of Economism and its Discontents

Key Books on the subject of Economics (and management) as the new religion

Title	Author’s background	Comment
Faith and Credit – the World Bank’s Secular Empire Susan George and Fabrizzio Sabelli (1994)	Political scientist and activist – and anthropological economist	The first book I remember making this argument
Economics and religion – are they distinct? HG Brennan and A Watermann (1994)	Brennan is a political Philosopher	A new discovery for me
The Faith of the Managers – when management becomes a religion; Stephen Pattison (1997)	UK Management and theology	The only title which seems to make the connection
Economics as Religion – from Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond ; Robert H Nelson 2001	US Economist with strong interest in history of the discipline and environment	Nelson was a very distinguished academic
Political Economy and Theology since the Enlightenment; A Watermann 2004	Economist	Very thorough exploration
From economics imperialism to Freakonomics Ben Finer (2009)	UK Economist
Is God an Economist? By S. Wagner-Tsukamoto 2009	Interdisciplinary scholar
Economics as Good and Evil -= the quest for economic meaning Thomas Sedlacek (2011)	Economist	And, as a very young man, was adviser to Vaclev Havel
Credo - economic beliefs in a world in crisis; Brian Davey (2014)	Started in economics and moved to community development
Twilight of the Money Gods – economics as religion and how it all went wrong John Rapley 2017 – book can be read here	Development economist who mixes practice with theory	And changes his career path – at one stage becoming a journalist
Bettering Humanomics – a new , and old, approach to economic science; Deirdre McCloskey (2021)	US Economic historian	And a superb writer – although this book makes no concessions
Religion and the rise of capitalism; Benjamin Friedman (2021)	US economist	Detailed book which moves from Adam Smith to focus on US

  Those wanting a good short intro to the subject might want to read Richard Norgarrd’s article Church of Economism and its Discontents

What contemporary detective television tells us about the UK

I haven’t posted for almost 2 weeks – my readership has therefore plummeted from some 300 a day to about 50…..confirming my feeling that blogs are like drugs – people need a fix on them….indeed become dependent…..I’m not sure if I want to encourage such habits – so perhaps I should follow Chris Grey’s example and make my posts WEEKLY

Or, when my creativity languishes, put up a link to one of the (many!) good posts which readers may have missed – for example this post on mapping values and world views 

And I’m conscious that I’ve not made much use this year of my Snippets feature – which I use to store interesting links which I haven’t been able to develop into a single post. In that spirit, let me share an interest I have in one cultural aspect of contemporary Britain – the television detective genre.

My mother was a great fan of Inspector Morse which ran from the late 1980s to 2000 – precisely the period I was out of Britain. I would stay with her for a couple of weeks each year from one of the dozen or so countries in which I was based until her death in 2005; and became quite addicted to it myself.

Starting in 2013, Endeavour portrayed a younger Morse starting his career in 1965….There was, of course, a strong element of both elitism and class in the series – based in Oxford, with the University buildings and its academics playing a prominent part in the narrative.

It’s taken me some time to realise that there is in fact a much better UK detective series – namely Vera, based in Newcastle and the superb surrounding Northumbrian landscapes and coastlines. Its strength is the realistic portrayal it offers of the different employment challenges of contemporary Britain – whether its immigrant workers, fishing communities, construction sites, ex-mining communities or caravan parks and holiday lets….

I’m surprised noone’s done a post-doctoral thesis on the series. I wrote a lot last year about what Brexit told us about the UK. Proper study of the Vera series – currently running to 11 – would probably tell us more than most academic studies!