August 20, 2010
Recommended Reading
Recommended reading, as I’m too busy to blog at the moment:
- The second part of Stuart White’s “Political Philosophy and the Left” interview, at the New Left Project.
- And my friend James Arnold’s article on The Coalition’s plans for the NHS, also at the New Left Project.
August 18, 2010
A Journey, indeed
Tony Blair’s forthcoming memoirs have already been getting some attention. Obviously, I’m not important enough to have not read them in advance. But nor will I be reading them when they are published. And it’s not just because, as Dave Osler notes, they will contain nothing new (except, perhaps, new lies).
It’s because the title of the book tells us everything we need to know already.
Originally entitled The Journey, Tony’s explanation of how he got everything right will now be called A Journey. This is entirely appropriate. If TB had stuck to the definite article, it would imply that his premiership was somehow singularly important; an event or happening that was central and incomparable.
But that’s never the way Tony saw it. Just as ambitious young politicos view internships at Westminster as stepping-stones to greater things, so Blair saw being PM of the UK. A Journey is thus far more appropriate, leaving the door open, as it does, to future adventures.
But, appropriately enough, “a journey” still carries the messianic overtones suitable for the memoirs of a man permanently assured of his own righteous certainty. The notion of “a journey” is long-established as a trope of religious self-discovery; from Saul becoming Paul on the road to Damascus, to the “journey” of Christ espoused by contemporary evangelicals in particular.
For a man who not only felt the hand of history on his shoulder, but whose very public flirtations with Catholicism left little to the imagination regarding who he fancied he had a hotline too, “a journey” is, again, entirely apt.
Yet there’s also an entirely appropriate shallowness. Although “a journey” carries vaguely religious overtones, it also screams of superficiality, of a longing for profundity which is conspicuously absent. Typically, those who opine about the importance of “undertaking a journey” are fairly uninteresting individuals more preoccupied with proving they live lives of spiritual depth than actually doing so.
The sort of people who are drawn to new age spiritualist nonsense, and “believe” in Chinese medicine. Or who, for example, partake in a Mayan “rebirthing” ceremonies, covered in mud.
Furthermore, “a journey” succeeds in capturing perhaps the most outstanding of what we might call Blair’s “deep” political failings. For Blair, what mattered was always, precisely, the journey. It didn’t really matter where he was going, or for that matter where he was taking the rest of us. Sure, overtures were made about the importance of invading other countries, or of involving the private sector, or of endlessly spying on the citizenry.
What mattered for TB was the fun of the trip. Like a compulsive globe-trotter who doesn’t care where he ends up so long as he gets the thrill of take-off, Blair never gave too much thought to where exactly he was headed.
What mattered was always that he, Tony Blair, was having a nice little journey. And if that phrase now sounds hollow and lilliputian – especially given the facts of recent history – that, too, is entirely appropriate.
Image from the excellent Beau Bo D’Or
August 17, 2010
How Not to Run a Campaign Event
Update: in the interests of accuracy I should say that Martin of MayorWatch blog attended the event as well (see comments). But still, two people – not exactly a barn-stormer is it? I will try to reply to people later, but just finished a 90mile bike ride and feel like death, on the 2-hr train home, with no food. I have replied to Sarah Hayward of Oona’s campaign in the comments below.
I was recently invited to attend a “bloggers meeting” with Oona King, scheduled for last night. Having nothing better to do I decided to go along.
For anybody living under a rock, King wants to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor. That means overturning Ken Livingstone’s claim to the throne – not an easy task given his deeply-entrenched support. But personally I’m no fan of Livingstone, and think Labour needs to move on. So despite Oona’s deep unpopularity amongst much of the Labour Party, I went hoping to be impressed.
Arriving promptly at 7pm I went direct to the meeting room. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anybody there. A couple of waiters wandered by, and I asked if this was the right place. They consulted a clipboard: “Er, yes, but we haven’t seen anyone yet. However help yourself to drinks and snacks”.
Never one to decline free things, I indulged. But after 10 minutes I was feeling lonely. Where was Oona – or for that matter anybody else?
Suddenly, feet and voices on the stairs. Who could this be – fellow bloggers surely? Alas, no: enter King’s campaign team. The head of the group quizzed me as to whether I was a journalist. I replied that I’m just a blogger. “Which blog?” Er, Liberal Conspiracy. “Oh yeah? What’s that about then?”- asked with suspicion at the possibility of LibDem infiltration.
Now forgive me for being precious, but at a supposed bloggers meeting it might be worth knowing what the biggest left-wing blog in the country is. And the sort of content it runs. And that yes, it has covered the Ken-Oona race so far.
Anyway, small talk was made. Or rather, I was told that Oona needed to be Labour’s candidate because Ken is “old Labour, from the 1980s” and represents only inner London. After 5 subsequent minutes of being told I was wrong to suggest nonetheless that Labour’s Blairite past ought to be broken with, I made some excuse and disappeared to the toilet for 10 minutes.
When I returned there were in fact new people in the room. Bloggers, perhaps? Er, no. Some interns and staff from the New Labour “Progress” group, presumably there to represent the right of the party. And still no Oona.
For 20 minutes a guy from King’s campaign team did try to engage me in conversation. He was nice enough to ask about my background, though in future he should drop the Soviet-interrogation-voice when prying for information, such as how many readers LibCon gets, and what weight it gives to London issues. Also, whilst I know it’s hard for politicos to remember this, we ordinaries really appreciate it if you don’t constantly look over our shoulders to check nobody more interesting is around.
With still no sight of Oona, I tried to join a conversation amongst her campaign team and the Progress types. But when I questioned the view that it was “ridiculous” to attack Alan Milburn’s decision to help the Tories, a portly man apparently in charge of the conversation responded by addressing the group instead of me, and dismissing what I’d said as though it were a bad smell. As the group then physically closed around the circular table, I found myself pushed out and resorting to a discarded copy of the Evening Standard. And still no Oona.
I looked at my phone. 53 minutes had elapsed. Frankly, it was time to leave. But just as I started up the stairs – there was Oona, coming out of the lift! Except by that point I was queasy from my fourth glass of orange juice, and frankly things were beyond a joke.
Oona King’s campaign team can’t run a meet and greet where more than one person turns up.* And that one person sods off in boredom. Mayor of London? Pull the other one.
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*I mean, I could be wrong and perhaps some other bloggers were lurking incognito. But I genuinely believe I was the only person there not already affiliated with her campaign.
August 16, 2010
The Case for the Expulsion of Alan Milburn (Or, Why Tribalism Rules OK)
Tribalism gets a bad press. It usually carries negative connotations, implies irrational partisan bickering, and is used to cast disdain on opponents (internal or external).
Which is a shame, because tribalism is an important and usually indispensable part of politics. We’d all do better to recall that it has its virtues as well as vices, even if they are often born of necessity.
First, let’s recall what politics is: competition between two or more groups attempting to secure outcomes which the other side not only opposes, but frequently thinks are morally wrong. Sure, some politics is more consensual; where everyone agrees about what must be achieved, but groups disagree about how to bring it about. But that is the exception, not the rule.
As a result the left clusters into various groups – the Labour Party, the Green Party, the pre-2010 Liberal Democrat Party, etc – who amongst other things aim to oppose the perceived morally unacceptable policies of (most especially) the Tory Party. The same works for the right, who have the BNP, UKIP and Conservative parties to oppose the left, and usually Labour specifically.
Of course, being part of a political tribe carries a price. It means having to support – or at least be associated with – policies one may not agree with. Grassroots members of the Labour Party know this better than anyone, right now. Those who did not support Tony’s Murderous Mesopotamian Adventure, the assault on civil liberties, or the continuation of market-orientated Thatcherite reforms know that being of the Party isn’t always easy-riding. And there’s no denying that tribalism can lead to irrationality, pettiness and poor decision making.
But those who have stuck with the Labour tribe will largely have done so because they think that the Labour Party still offers the best way of opposing Conservative policy, and offering a realistic alternative. Much of the motivation lies in believing that much Tory policy is immoral, and wanting to stop it or reverse it. The organised Labour tribe offers a possibility for achieving that. Political tribalism is, therefore, an ineradicable part of politics. It should in turn be welcomed insofar as it allows us all to organise on a mass – albeit imperfect – scale, to advance rival moral ends.
Which brings me to the case of Alan Milburn, ex Labour MP and arch-Blairite, who has taken a job advising the Coalition on social mobility.
Clegg and Cameron have been gleefully dolling-out rhetoric about overcoming tribalism and working together. Which is all to be rejected, for the simple reason that it’s dishonest. Appointing Milburn was a stunt designed, in part, to undermine Labour during slow-news August.
More importantly, Cameron and Clegg are currently doing a very good job of squatting in the centre ground of British politics, inherited from New Labour. The rhetoric of non-partisan anti-tribalism works well here, because the whole gambit is to be a political offering of “something for everyone”. Whilst this is electorally clever, it also covers up the extent to which the so-called “centre” of British politics has been decidedly the centre right ever since Blair decided to sit there from 1994 onwards.
So when Milburn decides to advise the Coalition, he’s not engaging in anti-tribalist non-partisanship. Quite the opposite. He’s joining their tribe; the centre-right face of a now dominant Tory Party, which currently holds power instead of a Labour Government.*
And on those grounds, Alan Milburn should be ejected from the Labour Party.
Then again, as Hopi Sen points out (and Gabby Hinsliff bemoans) there’s no need to get hysterical about this. Screaming for Milburn’s blood will only inflame a bored media in the middle of the silly-season. So Labour should wait a few weeks for the agenda to have firmly moved on – and then give Milburn the boot. Honest, virtuous, decent tribalism demands it. And while they’re at it, get rid of Frank Field too.
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*Because as I’ve said previously, the Lib Dems are so invisible in this government you’d be hard pressed to know it’s a coalition at all.
August 14, 2010
Dave and the Price of Beer
Liberal Conspiracy and Political Scrapbook have been poking fun at David Cameron’s belief that “tins” of larger cost 25p each:
“I think if what you’re trying to do is stop supermarkets from selling 20 tins of Stella for a fiver that’s what we’ve got to go after.
Where I want to try and help is ending the deep discounting on alcohol”
This incident recalls the old “what’s-the-price-of-a-pint-of-milk?” question politicians are supposed to answer to show how “in touch” they are.
But how significant is it when a top politician fails the ordinary knowledge test?
There seems to be a good reason for saying “not very”. After all, the Prime Minister (of all people) has much more important things to do than trundle around Tesco buying the weekly groceries. This fact extends backwards to when s/he was leader of the opposition. The truth is, top politicians don’t know basic facts about how the rest of us live because they are busy running the country, and that’s probably to be expected and somewhat welcomed.
And I’m not sure we should pressure politicians to know myriad facts about “ordinary” life, either. For that – in the modern age of 24 hour media spin – might just mean ministers rote-learning pre-prepared lists of factoids, designed to manufacture an image of being “in touch”.
But nonetheless there is something significant about Cameron’s ignorance over the price of beer.
Dave thinks 20 cans of larger sets you back a mere £5; what a nice world that would be for many! For better or for worse, alcohol is a major source of recreation for many Britons. Yet alcohol is expensive, and takes a significant chunk of many people’s disposable incomes. If 20 cans really did cost just a fiver, many people would be effectively richer than they are at present because they’d have more money left over to spend on other things.
Cameron’s 20-for-£5 gaffe illustrates that he – and presumably the politicians who surround him – lack any accurate conception of the cost of living for most Britons.
Minimum wage is currently a paltry £5.80. If you know the price of beer, the complete inadequacy of that sum is especially clear. If, however, you think that beer (and presumably other basic goods) is as cheap as D-Cam does, then suddenly minimum wage looks a lot more satisfactory.
Furthermore, the present round of Tory cuts is set to disproportionately affect Britain’s poor, as this graph stolen from the FT shows:
If you’re under the impression that 20 cans of Stella cost a mere £5, then a 7% reduction in yearly income might seem an altogether manageable reduction. Thus if you’re a Tory who doesn’t care about inequality anyway, ignorance about the basic cost of living will make it much easier to push-through measures likely to make the poor poorer.
Of course, it’s almost certainly true that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were equally ignorant about such things as the cost of beer. The latter, especially, was probably more partial to a vintage Merlot donated from a wealthy chum, than a can of Carlsberg piss-water from Asda.
But nonetheless, Labour’s relative – albeit heavily imperfect – concern for both absolute poverty and inequality, especially compared to the Tories, meant that such ignorance was less likely to provide support for policies that penalise the most vulnerable. So when people say there’s no difference between top Labour and Tory politicians, although at a superficial level that may be true, the consequences are nonetheless likely to be different.
And that’s why lefties are entitled to laugh at Cameron’s ignorance about the price of beer, whilst having a serious axe to grind.
August 13, 2010
Status Hunger
Exam season over, it’s time to laugh at the thickos.
After all, that is the purpose of the yearly Times Higher Education feature on student howlers. You’d already heard of the dunce who described Christopher Columbus’s circumcision of the globe. Now you can split your sides once more, learning of the twit who railed against “anus crimes” and the fool’s dissertation on “complimentary medicines”.
It’s all good fun, laughing at the thickos. Right? For a start, it makes us feel better about ourselves. No matter that, given how many hundreds of thousands of students take exams each year, it’s inevitable that some stupidity will occur. Indeed, even if most of the THE examples were one-off typos, most of us would probably still prefer to laugh at the stupids.
What does this tell us?
Tim often claims that status – and the pursuit of more of it for ourselves – is an irreducible aspect of human conduct. Accordingly, we might read our collective amusement at the thickness of the thickos as a manifestation of status-affirmation. We all get off on feeling cleverer than others.
This may well be true. But what may not be true is something like Tim’s claims that status-hunger is an irreducible aspect of human conduct. As Chris points out in this thread – to much subsequent misunderstanding – it’s not at all clear what the true cause of widespread status-hunger actually is.
I’m not an anthropologist – and neither is Tim. But should we really rule-out a priori the possibility that other human societies, of which we are ignorant, were/are able to dispense with status-hunger? Or, perhaps more likely, were able to find systems of organisation which drastically reduced the extent of status-hunger, and lived in structural situations where the pursuit of status was massively discouraged, especially compared to the levels observed in modern Britain?
And even if no such society ever existed, does that mean that status-hunger is nonetheless an irreducible feature of human behaviour? Perhaps (again stealing from Chris) it’s just that the contingent facts of human society thus-far have been uniformly characterised by some basic features that have always produced status-hunger. For example, all human societies to date have been characterised by the need to allocate scarce resources amongst agents whose needs and desires cannot all be satisfied simultaneously. In a hypothetical world in which this was not so, perhaps much status-hunger would end?
But let’s suppose that’s not true; let’s even suppose that as some evolutionary biologists suggest, what I’m calling status-hunger is essentially ineradicable from human conduct, because it is rooted in our success as reproducing organisms, and thereby inescapable.*
Even conceding this, there’s something objectionable about Tim’s usual reasoning, which goes: “status-hunger is irreducible, therefore we shold largely accept that and live with it”. People like Chris and myself don’t buy this as it stands. We think the correct reasoning is rather: “even if status-hunger is irreducible in human beings, status-hunger is still frequently objectionable in itself, and can often have very nasty consequences, for example if losers are trampled underfoot by the victorious.”
Whereas Tim apparently tends to think that the “fact” of status-hunger is to some extent the end of the matter, Chris and I tend to the belief that this is really the start of the story; that the onus moves to mitigating the effects and extents of status-hunger. For example, by designing institutions which limit it and compensate for its effects, or by cultivating a social ethos that downplays self-promotion.
Prima facie it therefore looks like leftists and rightists are (partly) delineated by their respective reactions to status-hunger.
The former resist the idea that status-hunger is inevitable, and think it needs to be significantly curbed when it raises its ugly head, often using the power of the state.
The latter are less resistant to the claim of irreducibility, and are less keen on attempting to extensively mitigate status hunger’s via the power of the state, and perhaps with good reason. (Rightists will, of course, accept some status-hunger mitigation; that’s the price of living in any functioning society).
Which perhaps indicates – as I’ve argued previously – that left/right divisions are about more than just equality, in any straightforward sense.
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* FYI, I believe this to be bullshit. But that’s not important today.
August 12, 2010
Stalin Syndrome
Peter Hennessy’s revised and re-issued The Secret State contains a particularly astonishing revelation.
In the immediate post-war period, the Soviet Union was getting the best intelligence possible about British activities. This was because five top British agents – Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross – were simultaneously working for the Russians, passing on mountains of top secret information.
When that information got to the USSR it went direct to Stalin, because he didn’t trust anybody else to prepare intelligence reports for him. Yet Stalin was a deeply deluded paranoid maniac. In particular, he was utterly convinced that Britain and the USA were planning a pre-emptive strike against the USSR before it could obtain nuclear weapons.
Yet the stolen information from Whitehall indicated that Britain was planning nothing of the sort. Devastated by conflict with Germany, Britain had zero intention of attacking Russia. Indeed, British intelligence lived in dread of a Red Army push westwards at a time when American resolve in Europe was waning.
However, Stalin had decided that Britain (and America) were preparing to attack. So he systematically ignored the best intelligence information he could have hoped for, and concluded that it was all a clever ruse by the British secret service.
Depending on perspective, we should either be deeply thankful or utterly chilled by Stalin’s delusions. We should be thankful if we decide that had Stalin treated the intelligence reports with the authority they deserved, he would have swept Westwards and conquered Europe. We should be chilled if we think that, on balance, information that should have made Stalin less paranoid – and thereby less likely to start World War III – was completely disregarded by him.
But then, doesn’t modern society exhibit a variation of this Stalin Syndrome? I refer to the special war which we’ve been fighting for 40 years; our war on drugs.
As the recent Channel 4 documentaries have been making clear, this is a war which we are losing and have no hope of winning. Let’s romp through some facts, already tedious to those who’ve thought about the madness of drug criminalisation for more than 5 minutes.
Britain spent £1.5 billion “fighting” the war on drugs last year. A recent estimate put the quantity of drugs prevented from reaching the market at 1%. But even if the authorities are doing 10 times better than that, they’re way off the 60-70% supply-prevention rate that the UN estimates is necessary to have any appreciable impact on the drug trade.
We spend further billions putting drug users and dealers in prison. Addicts are not rehabilitated, and leave prison only to fall back into cycles of crime and dependency. Dealers likewise pass through the permanently revolving door of criminal justice and drug supply. In the meanwhile, the drugs trade systematically corrupts law enforcement officers, customs officials, members of the judiciary and just about any section of society it comes into contact with.
British money spent on heroin makes its way to Afghanistan, where it is used to fund an insurgency in which British troops are being killed and mutilated. Although research shows that white and middle class citizens are as likely to use drugs as the poor and ethnic minorities, it is the latter that overwhelmingly make-up the prison population. In America it’s even more extreme, as Monday’s instalment at Channel 4 showed.
And that’s not even touching on the civil liberties question: why, exactly, should informed and consenting adults not be allowed to take certain substances in the privacy of their own homes, especially when this does no harm to others? Unlike alcohol, which kills thousands every year and lies behind most street violence and domestic abuse…but which is entirely legal.
The evidence is in: drug criminalisation does not work, and we need a change of approach.
But for whatever reason, the powers-that-be are exhibiting Stalin Syndrome. Refusing to accept the evidence because it does not fit the pre-determined conclusion: that drugs must continue to be criminalised. And because of Stalin Syndrome, the Channel 4 documentaries will make absolutely no difference whatsoever.
In Uncle Joe himself, Stalin Syndrome risked the destruction of the entire planet. At least with the war on drugs it simply guarantees that we continue to collectively live-out the definition of insanity: to keep doing the same thing over and over, even when it’s failed.
Oh, that and the devastation of millions of lives across the globe. Hey, it’s your world. Try not to choke on it.
August 11, 2010
How to think about…Adam Smith
It’s quite common to see people across the blogosphere haranguing over the legacy of Adam Smith. Typically, leftists will make angry noises about how Adam Smith was not a swivel-eyed free-market zealot; a Thatcherite avant la lettre of the sort now found at the (so-called) Adam Smith Institute.
But unfortunately such noises usually lack detailed substantiation. And this isn’t surprising; outside of academia it can be difficult to find clear explanations for why Smith was a more complicated figure than the libertarian caricature allows for. What I’d like to do, therefore, is offer a small attempt to rectify this dearth of easy-access resources. Consider it a minor public service, born of post-dissertation boredom.
My aim however is not to show that Smith was somehow a hero of “the left”. Personally, I think that’s simply anachronistic, and thereby unacceptable. There’s no honest way of claiming that a thinker deeply embedded in 18th Century political situations and concerns can unproblematically be signed-up to one broad tribe in today’s vastly different economic, political, historical and social setting. But what I do want to provide are some reasons for appreciating that Smith’s ideas stand in tension with much modern free-market right wingery.
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Normally a starting point is shared between both modern left and right: that Smith was the first “modern” economist. But this isn’t very accurate. It’s much better to describe Smith as a moral and political philosopher who wrote a major tract – his Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations – focusing on the political economy of modern commercial nation-states in competitive international arenas.
That long redescription matters. Smith did not set out to write some sort of “textbook” about how economics “works”. No doubt there is much in the WofN which does attempt to understand the structure and functioning of economic processes. Yet the purpose of such analysis is to underpin Smith’s primary project: of understanding and explaining how commercial nation states interact with each other, when driven not simply by the logic of economic production but also by the more powerful and often countervailing logic of war and military competition. Thus, the WofN is as much a piece of international political strategising as it is of economic theory.
Core to Smith’s outlook, however, was something he shared with his friend and predecessor the great philosopher David Hume: that the logic of economics and the logic of politics (including especially that of war) had to be understood as intimately and permanently inter-related. Whilst it might be intellectually enlightening to hypothesise about a world of pure economic interactions, it was useless and naive to think that such a world could ever exist in practice. In reality, the dictates and demands of politics would forever be present, warping the logic of economics to serve the ends and demands of statesmen as well as citizens. The outcome was what Hume called “jealousy of trade”; a situation whereby competitive nation states would twist the workings of commerce and trade to the perceived needs of national defence and aggrandisement. For Smith as for Hume, this was an inevitable fact of life in the real world, and it had to be faced-down and dealt with, not wistfully imagined away or ignored.
However, I’m actually going to draw here on two quotes from Smith’s first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Although this work was published in 1759, before the WofN, the passages I’m interested in were actually added by Smith to the final 1789 edition, 13 years after the WofN was first published. (There is little doubt amongst contemporary scholars that Smith wanted his final version of the TMS to be read in conjunction with his economic ideas, which he also revised until his death).
The first passage which commands our attention is this:
“This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.”
To understand this passage we need to contextualise it a little. Smith was responding to – and indeed partially conceding – a point made most forcefully by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. That commercial society – or what we would now call capitalism – inevitably corrupts those who live within it.
Rousseau’s classic statement of this idea came in his polemical essay A Discourse on the Foundations of Inequality (better known as the Second Discourse). There, Rousseau railed against the rise of commercial society, which he saw not only as grounded upon avarice, self-interest and greed, but as leading to unacceptable levels of inequality and the simultaneous corruption of human beings into nasty, selfish, competitive creatures.
Smith disagreed with much of Rousseau’s diagnosis. In particular, he saw a liberalised commercial society as being to the justifiable benefit of the poorest because although great inequality would inevitably result from the establishment of commercialism, the material gains to the worst-off would justify this. Indeed, insofar as Smith was prepared to tolerate considerable inequality on the justification that it was correlated to rising living standards for all, he does share much in common with the non-egalitarian free market right of today.
But what Smith does not share with the modern free market right is a concession to Rousseau that commercial society – that is, systems of production and distribution founded upon the interaction of self-interested profit seekers – is deeply and worryingly corrupting of individuals themselves. Although Smith did not take the diagnosis to be as severe as Rousseau, Smith was also deeply concerned that a system based on self interest – as capitalism must be – carried worrying consequences for the well-being of individuals engaged in it. As Tim Worstall – of the Adam Smith Institute, appropriately enough – ably demonstrated here, this concern about the psychological effects upon individuals of a system based on competitive self-interest is hardly common to today’s free-market right.
The second passage I want to consider is as follows:
“He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chessboard have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great “chessboard of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”
This, of course, is part of Smith’s famed attack upon “the man of system”, once invoked by no less than Margaret Thatcher. Although to modern eyes this passage reads like an attack on bureaucratic state planners – of the Soviet sort right through to the Social Democratic left – it was originally directed at quite another group.
The “men of system” that Smith had in his sights were the French physiocrats of the second half of the 18th Century. Paradoxically, the physiocrats had much in common with Smith. Like him, they thought that economic logic clearly showed that societies would flourish if free trade were instantiated (particularly in the grain trade) and commercial restrictions removed so as to allow the market to allocate resources more efficiently than mercantile planners could possibly achieve. In terms of economic “theory”, both Smith and the physiocrats thought that moving to a system of “natural liberty” – i.e. free market commercialism – would be superior to the confused and counterproductive attempts by individual states to restrict trade with the aim of undercutting their rivals. Both Smith and the physiocrats recognised – correctly – that protectionism hurt everyone but that (counter-intuitively) freeing trade within and between states would lead to the “opulence” of all participating states.
But where Smith differed – and differed fiercely – from the physiocrats was in his recognition that free market reforms could not work in practice as they would in theory. The reason for this was a facet of the wider issue mentioned above: jealousy of trade. Although in theory if everybody accepted the free-market liberalisation of (say) the grain trade without question and set-about acting rationally in response to it, everything would work out fine, and indeed production and efficiency would increase. The “game” of society would go well.
In practice, however, this simply would not occur; the “pieces on the chessboard” had their own principles of motion. For example, individuals threatened by temporary fluctuations in grain price due to the interactions of supply and demand would (quite reasonably, from their own perspective) react adversely and demand that the powers-that-be intervene so as to secure prices, and in turn food supplies. Although Smith agreed with the physiocrats that in the long-run this would likely have perverse consequences and make food production lower and famine more likely, the fact was that in the short-term panicked individuals would make demands upon those in political power to interfere with the market, and that political leaders desiring to keep both their positions and their heads would respond accordingly.
As a result Smith was adamant that any economic reforms had to be made cautiously, slowly, and in full recognition of the fact that the logic of economics was always liable to be rapidly usurped and twisted by the logic of politics. Whilst Smith doubtless favoured the liberalisation of (for example) the grain trade, he opposed the programme of the physiocrats to implement free-market reforms instantly, as though the real world were a chessboard where each piece would behave exactly as the controlling player wished and demanded. In reality, the logic of politics – however disruptive from the viewpoint of the economist – would always be present, and had to be accepted as a fact of life. Economic policy must be adapted accordingly, and liberalising reforms suspended insofar as the unavoidable impact of the logic of politics made them dangerous to the stability and immediate well-being of society.
Smith’s sophisticated acceptance of the divergence between economic theory, and its inevitable corruption when put into political practice, thus comes into neat contrast with those modern-day-physiocrats of the cruder wings of the Thatcherite economic right. Then as now there abound economic policy makers who – with the best of intentions – construct free-market reforms based on theories which posit the individuals affected as acting rationally from the viewpoint of economics. What such reformers often neglect, of course, is that the logic of politics is inevitable and inescapable in real-world practice: that the pieces on the chessboard will not always move as the logic of the market would like them, and that as a result “the game of society” will go “miserably”.
Of course this last point applies to much of the left, too. Smith’s point about the men of system applies now to bureaucratic planners who believe that the state can always intervene and direct affairs without the “pieces on the chessboard” having their own alternative principles of motion, leading well-intentioned reforms to have unexpected and undesirable consequences. The disaster of state Sovietism proves that well enough.
But what’s important to remember is that Smith originally intended the point to be made against those who would too quickly introduce the market into situations where its effects would be intolerable for the people affected by them, leading to unforseen and destructive political responses. This, for Smith, was just a fact of life, and economic policy had to be shaped accordingly. The consequent complexity of this view means that even as a pro-market, liberalising proponent of nascent commercial society, Smith stands a long way from the cruder free-market sections of today’s economic and political right.
August 9, 2010
The Maximum Political Odium
When life starts imitating Armando Iannucci, ought we to worry?
Yesterday’s no-milk/yes-milk fiasco certainly looked like something straight from The Thick of It: Junior minister writes to Scottish politician suggesting free milk for under 5’s be abolished; senior minister defends proposed policy on live TV; Prime Minister spikes policy whilst senior minister still on live TV; farce and hilarity ensue as press has field day.
From what I can tell, the overwhelming reaction to this story is derision and ridicule (well, except for the Daily Mail, of course). Which raises the question: wasn’t this actually a great victory for people power?
David Cameron spiked the no-milk policy instantaneously upon hearing of it. And the reason he did was obvious: the haunting chant of “Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher” ringing in his ears.
Thatcher herself went on to describe the decision to scrap free school milk for the over 7s as incurring “the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit”. Cameron has learned this lesson already.
We thus have a demonstration of the power of opinion in politics: Cameron moved swiftly to defend free milk, simply because cutting it would associate him with too many bad things in people’s minds. It wasn’t the economic power of the milk industry, or the threat of coercion by some external group, that stayed the Coalition’s axe. It was Cameron’s recognition that he cannot afford to be too-closely associated with That Woman.
Thus popular derision alone blocked a potential government policy. Recognition of this should give pause to sections of both left and right.
The loony-right that thinks the Conservatives would sweep to power if they just emulated the Iron Lady should take this as evidence that their fantasy does not track reality. They should also recognise that Cameron is an astute politician, one who reads the popular mood well and acts decisively. Accordingly, many Tories should be rather more grateful for his helmsmanship than they presently are.
Those of us on the left, by contrast, should be more deeply concerned. As Mehdi Hasan recently pointed out, the Coalition is cutting deeper and faster than the Thatcher administration of 1979-83 ever dared. In policy Cameron is outstripping the Iron Lady. Yet in presentation he is successfully painting an altogether cuddlier image. This is “compassionate” conservatism at its PR best: soft on the outside, resolutely rock hard on the inside.
Leftists who want to “strategise” about resisting the cuts should therefore take note: the power of opinion can clearly elicit instantaneous effects in the right circumstances. “Delegitimising” the Coalition’s cuts programme in the popular mind could accordingly be the most effective way of mitigating it.
But then, it’s hard to shake the nagging feeling that if yesterday was a victory for “people power” it was a fleeting and unsatisfactory one.
And there’s a good reason for that. Any satisfaction at Coalition humiliation is bound up with the farce of yesterdays proceedings. And that farce cuts deep. Government policy (from this administration and the previous one) is now almost perennially made on the hoof, under the watchful gaze of the Sky News ticker tape. The Thick of It is so funny precisely because it’s often so true – as yesterday’s events demonstrated.
Yet the circus of modern political spin is precisely the result of government obsessively attempting to manage and control public opinion; of manipulating the media to ensure we think what they want us to think. Hence, if you’re feeling that Cameron’s climbdown was at best a particularly hollow victory for people power – you’re probably right.
August 8, 2010
Compulsory Ethics?
The Times Higher Education supplement carries an article about the recent spate of “bad behaviour” cases in US universities. These range from financial impropriety to sexual assault.
However, the article also contains a rather silly (implicit) suggestion:
“Professor Hamilton said universities do too little to encourage ethical behaviour, beginning with their training of doctoral candidates.
“The professoriate has chosen not to acculturate our members in a serious way into the ethics of the profession,” he said. If it acted like the legal and medical fields, he added, “we could be keeping track, state by state, of how many complaints are being made about violations, how many have been found to have probable cause, how many went to a hearing and how many resulted in disciplinary action”.
I have no problem with the latter idea – that institutions track and record complaints – for this seems sensible policy for all the obvious reasons.
What I find suspect is the notion that universities don’t do enough to encourage “ethical behaviour”. Although there’s always the risk that Professor Hamilton has been taken out of context, the idea that “the professoriate” has “chosen” not to “acculturate” new members into the “ethics of the profession” seems suspect.
For surely it’s silly to suggest that doctoral students should somehow be deliberately and consciously “acculturated”. Why? Because conscious, deliberate and formal “acculturation” could only take the form of compulsory ethics courses, which could presumably be of only two kinds:
Option 1: a course in moral philosophy and theory. This would be similar to what most undergraduate philosophy programmes offer; a trudge through Aristotle, Hume, Kant and the rest, with dollops of abstract meta-ethics or (if you’re really unlucky) “applied ethics” focusing (if you’re really, really unlucky) on the work of Peter Singer.
Option 2: a course not of moral philosophy, but of quite literally telling doctoral candidates what is right and what is wrong. Lessons could include “Do not launder university funds”, “Do not sexually exploit your undergraduate students”, and “Do make sure the money for poor kids really does go to poor kids, and not your mistress”.
The problem with option 1 is that knowing lots about moral philosophy is no guarantee of securing good ethical behaviour. We all know (of) highly accomplished moral philosophers who are anything but good people.
The problem with option 2 is that it’s really, really dumb. People either know the difference between right and wrong by the time they get to doctoral level, or they don’t. (Or possibly they know the difference, and choose to ignore it when they think they’ll get away with it). If people haven’t got their heads around acceptable ethical behaviour by the time they are doing a PhD, then a compulsory course is hardly likely to fill the void.
And it seems no reply to argue that established professionals ought to do more to explain-by-example that certain behaviours – y’know, sexual exploitation, embezzlement, abuse of power – are unacceptable. If this isn’t already being spontaneously communicated by the profession, then it seems highly unlikely that encouraging professors to “set a better example” will succeed. I mean, we’re talking about pretty basic cases of right and wrong here.
To be fair to Hamilton, elsewhere in the article he quite reasonably draws attention to structural factors which likely generate opportunities for wrongdoing within academia. And he’s written a big book which (from a superficial glance) explores such factors in detail.
But why not leave it there?
Unless, perhaps, there is a hidden assumption that academics are somehow special; that they ought to be less vulnerable to corruption and temptation than others because of their big brains. That just by reminding academics of their special status this will be enough to halt naughty behaviour.*
Which looks, of course, both pretty unlikely and already empirically disproved.
But it might be a nice story for academics to tell themselves. And, indeed, maybe that’s why Hamilton tells it, to the THE especially.
How human, all-too-human that might turn out to be.
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*Annecdotally, I’ve noticed a greater tendency amongst academics – especially moral philosopher academics – to deny the possibility of what the Ancient Greeks called akrasia, i.e. knowing that something is wrong and then doing it anyway. This may be of relevance.
