October 28, 2010
Ideology vs. Fantasy
It’s been frequently suggested that our current Lords and Masters – messrs Cameron, Osborne, Clegg et. al. – are pursuing a hyper-ideological agenda. How else to explain a government cutting public spending at a pace and depth that might make Old Maggie weep?
Some suggest that this ideology is forefront in the Lords and Masters’ minds; that they know exactly what they are doing. I’ve flirted with that explanation myself. Others, like John Gray, suggest that any ideology is deep and thereby virtually subconscious. That Cameron, Clegg et. al. are so wedded to a state-minimalist right-wing worldview that they do not see this to be ideological any more than fish see water to be wet.
In general there is a consensus (at least on the left) that our Lords and Masters must have some underlying coherent purpose. After all, it’s generally acknowledged that what is being done to the economy is – at best – astonishingly cavalier. Quick re-cap: economic theory and history indicate that Boy George’s cuts are more likely to slow down or reverse recovery than aid it, whilst suggestions that bond markets will punish Sovereign Britain if her deficit is not immediately and drastically reduced appear both false and incoherent.
But assuming that our Lords and Masters know this, the puzzle correspondingly emerges: why carry out the cuts regardless? “Ideological agenda” slips-in as the obvious explanation.
Yet it’s always important to guard against inadvertent projection (or at least recognise it when it’s happening). By that I mean: we must be careful about not reading ourselves into the world around us, then mistakenly believing we have found something new.
Right-thinking people look at the assault on the economy – including many measures which will save miniscule sums but have dramatic effects on the lives of thousands – and conclude that it must be motivated by something coherent, i.e. something like an ideological agenda. After all, that’s what might motivate them, if they were in equivalent positions of power.
But what if this is a mistake? What if our leaders are actually not motivated by anything coherent at all? What if they are actually…mad?
Hypothesise with me: what if our Lords and Masters are conducting this savage economic assault because they talked-up deficit reduction so hard in the run up to the last election that they now believe their own strategic rhetoric, and have forgotten that it was precisely that. Accordingly, they may have lost their grips on what the rest of us would class as reality.
We have evidence that this sort of stuff happens, after all. For a start, intense high-level politics apparently requires a certain level of insanity in order to function on a daily basis. Indeed, look at recent case studies. Gordon Brown is by some accounts a pretty deranged individual. Tony Blair appears to have taken a long vacation from reality. His wife appears to have joined him, as evinced by her mad-cap schemes to auction off Blair’s autograph for a tenner a pop.
It’s thus very possible that our current Lords and Masters are not crafty ideological head-bangers, but individuals who’ve become dangerously detached from reality. And that need not be because there is anything especially wrong with them; that would be to commit the fundamental attribution error. It may simply be that life at the top of politics pre-requires and necessitates a certain level of delusion. Mixed with the present context, however, this may have very unfortunate consequences.
But here comes the twist: does this alternative possibility actually matter?
We will probably never know whether Cameron, Osborne, Clegg et. al. are really ideological Thatcherite crusaders, or just delusional rightist fantasists. And one key reason we may never know is, precisely, because the outcome may well be the same either way.
October 27, 2010
Necessities of War
Saturday’s Wikileaks revelations – of British and American troops in Iraq covering-up civilian deaths whilst systematically ignoring and facilitating torture – have begun to expose the full horrors of a war that long-ago went terribly wrong. Yesterday’s Guardian revelations – that British troops systematically employed torture methods that violate the Geneva Convention – makes the picture darker still, even if only by adding detail.
One consequence of the latest revelations is that they demonstrate the nonsense-thinking behind the original case and “justification” for war.
A central plank upon which the Mad Mesopotamian Adventure was floated was the claim – made tacitly or overtly – that this would be a new kind of war. Our troops would not be invaders but liberators; warriors of peace welcomed by grateful Iraqis. Smart bombs would target military installations only ensuring a minimum of civilian deaths. The Axis of Evil would be confronted by the Forces of Freedom; if there was violence only Bad Guys would receive it, as Good Guys basked in the death-lite glory of Shock and Awe.
Such, at least, were the assurances given by a Bush Administration salivating for war.
Connectedly, what came to be known as the “Decent Left” in the UK criticised those who refused to back military action. The Decents chastised what they claimed were the gutless faux-principles of an anti-war left which wouldn’t put its cruise missiles where its mouth was.
Underlying this rhetoric of decency was precisely the American assurance that a new kind of war could and would be fought. A very special kind of war, in fact: one which transcended the horrors that history teaches have attended every other war in history. Somehow the Republican Party – with Tony Blair in tow – would negate the logic of all previous conflict and be back in time for Christmas.
Hence: no longer would the presence of armed victors over invaded peoples lead to the use of planned and calculated violence against civilians. No longer would senior officers employ violent tactics to deal with rebellious native populations who viewed their “liberators” as oppressive invading conquerors. No longer would scared and exhausted young men (sent into a country to act as killing machines and operating in permanently hostile environments) enact revenge on civilians or suspected enemy fighters they (rightly or wrongly) believed had killed their comrades and were trying to kill them.
Rather, the logic of what armies do in conflict situations – or even what individuals in positions of power are prone to do to those they control – would be magically left behind. The Bad Guys would get their comeuppance, the Good Guys would ride off into the sunset. This would be, precisely, a Decent War.
We now know for sure that it didn’t work that way. Abu Ghraib, for a start, was no aberration. “Our” side did profoundly horrible and nasty things for the fundamental reason that profoundly horrible and nasty things are constituent features of all wars – and they are perpetrated by all sides, albeit in varying degrees in varying places and times.
Chris Bertram is thus right when he says:
“During an earlier phase of discussion, when those advocates [of war] were still unapologetic, but whilst the slaughter was well underway, we were treated to numerous disquisitions on moral responsibility: yes there is slaughter, but we are not responsible, it is Al Qaida/the Sunni “insurgents”/Al-Sadr/Iran ….
Well the latest Wikileaks disclosures ought to shut them up for good (it won’t, of course). “Our” side has both committed war crimes directly and has acquiesced, enabled, and covered up for the commission of such crimes by others. The incidents are not isolated episodes: rather we have systematic policy.”
But we can and must go further. The latest revelations are much more than just a reminder that the advocates of war were wrong in this instance. They drive-home a fact about war that should never have been forgotten in the first place: that war is always, and by necessity, hell.
The next time a Bush (or a Blair) comes offering “humanitarian” war of liberation, we would do well to remember such a basic fact. Iraq now sadly confirms an already long-established judgement of history: that “humanitarian war” is inevitably oxymoronic. Even if some wars, very occasionally, have to be fought regardless.
October 25, 2010
Feminism’s Complexities
When I was being born the doctor in charge of the procedure ordered a forceps delivery. He was about to go off shift, and the birth was taking “too long”. A trainee midwife was ordered to perform the procedure so that my birth did not over-run into the next doctor’s time. However, the trainee missed the side of my head and cut a gash in my face, about an inch from my eye. I still have a small scar on my right cheek – lucky, really; I could be walking around half blind.
Is this a feminist issue? After attending the excellent Feminism in London conference on Saturday, I believe it is. The reasoning is simple.
We start by noting the brute fact that only women give birth to babies. We then observe that birthing procedures in western countries have become institutionalised. That is, it is now the dominant expectation that women have their babies in hospitals, lying on their backs, overseen by a team of medical professionals administering various drugs at the instruction of a lead doctor. But this latter development has fostered a practice of viewing birth as a factory-like operation; women are put through scheduled timetables and medical processes designed by the institution to facilitate what is now deemed a “normal” pregnancy.
Unfortunately, “normal” is dictated and determined by doctors, who are in charge. And like any institutional practice, the rules are shaped by the preferences of decision-making professionals. Hence women receive epidurals, skip-loads of drugs and sometimes caesarean sections – or forceps deliveries that might go horribly wrong – not because they need or want them, but because this is what works best for medical professionals calling the shots in a busy daily schedule.
The result, however, can be trauma for the mother as she is processed through the system, especially if things go wrong. This trauma that potentially rebounds onto the child, immediately or in the longer-run. (Watch this documentary for more information).
The important point to take away today, however, is that something can be a feminist issue – i.e. a phenomenon which disproportionately impacts negatively upon women – without being the result of deliberate discrimination, prejudice or exploitation. Combining the “factory” approach of hospital birthing with the brute fact only women give birth, we end up with a situation in which specifically women (as well as their babies, depending on how wrong things end up going) but not men risk being subjected to highly undesirable practices and potential outcomes.
This helpfully illustrates one way in which feminism properly appreciated incorporates an extremely broad set of considerations. It encompasses far more than some crude thesis that women are straightforwardly “persecuted” by men. (Though having said that, it is worth pondering whether child birth would be viewed in the way it is – and women treated in the way they often are – if the medical profession hadn’t been dominated by male doctors for so many years).
But then the crude – though sadly common – view that feminists are mere paranoid simpletons screeching that all men are evil and out to get them has far more to do with the backlash than with the women’s movement itself. Whilst many men do hate women – and this deep hatred seeps into much of our society – no feminist worth her or his salt would say that’s all there is to it.
October 24, 2010
Of the Extent of the Influence of Fortune
I recently wrote a bleg querying why we experience lesser sentiments of disapprobation towards – as well as inflicting lesser punishments upon – unsuccessful wrong-doers who have exactly the same motivations as successful wrong-doers.
As it happens I’m developing a general maxim in ethical enquiry whose worth is proved today: that if you can’t find it in David Hume, it’s probably in Adam Smith.
At the end of his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith considered precisely the questions that troubled me (and those who left comments in reply):
“First, I say, though the intentions of any person should be ever so proper and beneficent, on the one hand, or ever so improper and malevolent, on the other, yet, if they fail in producing their effects, his merit seems imperfect in the one case, and his demerit incomplete in the other. Nor is this irregularity of sentiment felt only by those who are immediately affected by the consequences of any action. It is felt, in some measure, even by the impartial spectator. The man who solicits an office for another, without obtaining it, is regarded as his friend, and seems to deserve his love and affection. But the man who not only solicits, but procures it, is more peculiarly considered as his patron and benefactor, and is entitled to his respect and gratitude.”
And the same holds true the other way around:
“As the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to do good seems thus, in the eyes of ungrateful mankind, to be diminished by the miscarriage, so does likewise the demerit of an unsuccessful attempt to do evil. The design to commit a crime, how clearly soever it may be proved, is scarce ever punished with the same severity as the actual commission of it. The case of treason is perhaps the only exception.2 That crime immediately affecting the being of the government itself, the government is naturally more jealous of it than of any other.”
This leads to a puzzle:
“Such is the effect of the good or bad consequences of actions upon the sentiments both of the person who performs them, and of others; and thus, Fortune, which governs the world, has some influence where we should be least willing to allow her any, and directs in some measure the sentiments of mankind, with regard to the character and conduct both of themselves and others. That the world judges by the event, and not by the design, has been in all ages the complaint, and is the great discouragement of virtue. Every body agrees to the general maxim, that as the event does not depend on the agent, it ought to have no influence upon our sentiments, with regard to the merit or propriety of his conduct. But when we come to particulars, we find that our sentiments are scarce in any one instance exactly conformable to what this equitable maxim would direct. The happy or unprosperous event of any action, is not only apt to give us a good or bad opinion of the prudence with which it was conducted, but almost always too animates our gratitude or resentment, our sense of the merit or demerit of the design.”
But, thankfully, there is a more than satisfactory answer to hand, and one working on multiple levels:
“Nature, however, when she implanted the seeds of this irregularity in the human breast, seems, as upon all other occasions, to have intended the happiness and perfection of the species. If the hurtfulness of the design, if the malevolence of the affection, were alone the causes which excited our resentment, we should feel all the furies of that passion against any person in whose breast we suspected or believed such designs or affections were harboured, though they had never broke out into any action. Sentiments, thoughts, intentions, would become the objects of punishment; and if the indignation of mankind run as high against them as against actions; if the baseness of the thought which had given birth to no action, seemed in the eyes of the world as much to call aloud for vengeance as the baseness of the action, every court of judicature would become a real inquisition. There would be no safety for the most innocent and circumspect conduct. Bad wishes, bad views, bad designs, might still be suspected; and while these excited the same indignation with bad conduct, while bad intentions were as much resented as bad actions, they would equally expose the person to punishment and resentment. Actions, therefore, which either produce actual evil, or attempt to produce it, and thereby put us in the immediate fear of it, are by the Author of nature rendered the only proper and approved objects of human punishment and resentment. Sentiments, designs, affections, though it is from these that according to cool reason human actions derive their whole merit or demerit, are placed by the great Judge of hearts beyond the limits of every human jurisdiction, and are reserved for the cognizance of his own unerring tribunal. That necessary rule of justice, therefore, that men in this life are liable to punishment for their actions only, not for their designs and intentions, is founded upon this salutary and useful irregularity in human sentiments concerning merit or demerit, which at first sight appears so absurd and unaccountable. But every part of nature, when attentively surveyed, equally demonstrates the providential care of its Author, and we may admire the wisdom and goodness of God even in the weakness and folly of man.
“Nor is that irregularity of sentiments altogether without its utility, by which the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to serve, and much more that of mere good inclinations and kind wishes, appears to be imperfect. Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his faculties such changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others, as may seem most favourable to the happiness of all. He must not be satisfied with indolent benevolence, not fancy himself the friend of mankind, because in his heart he wishes well to the prosperity of the world. That he may call forth the whole vigour of his soul, and strain every nerve, in order to produce those ends which it is the purpose of his being to advance, Nature has taught him, that neither himself nor mankind can be fully satisfied with his conduct, nor bestow upon it the full measure of applause, unless he has actually produced them. He is made to know, that the praise of good intentions, without the merit of good offices, will be but of little avail to excite either the loudest acclamations of the world, or even the highest degree of self–applause. The man who has performed no single action of importance, but whose whole conversation and deportment express the justest, the noblest, and most generous sentiments, can be entitled to demand no very high reward, even though his inutility should be owing to nothing but the want of an opportunity to serve. We can still refuse it him without blame. We can still ask him, What have you done? What actual service can you produce, to entitle you to so great a recompense? We esteem you, and love you; but we owe you nothing. To reward indeed that latent virtue which has been useless only for want of an opportunity to serve, to bestow upon it those honours and preferments, which, though in some measure it may be said to deserve them, it could not with propriety have insisted upon, is the effect of the most divine benevolence. To punish, on the contrary, for the affections of the heart only, where no crime has been committed, is the most insolent and barbarous tyranny. The benevolent affections seem to deserve most praise, when they do not wait till it becomes almost a crime for them not to exert themselves. The malevolent, on the contrary, can scarce be too tardy, too slow, or deliberate.”
The more I read of Adam Smith, the more convinced I am that he was one of the greatest – and most accurate – moral thinkers ever to have committed thoughts to paper. How tragic that his work has been so long neglected.
October 22, 2010
The Unsensible Knave
Notorious internet liability Nadine Dorries MP was yesterday cleared of fiddling her expenses, but at the cost of compromising her credibility:
‘ [Dorries] was criticised for comments on her blog which “suggested that she spent the majority of her weekends in the constituency, whilst she had told the Commissioner that nearly all weekends were spent in her main home”.
Explaining the discrepancy, she told the watchdog: “My blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact.
“It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to Mid Bedfordshire.
“I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another.” ‘
Much merriment is already being had. But we can do more than poke fun – we can analyse.
Viewed retrospectively Dorries has acted very stupidly. With the 20:20 vision of hindsight, her claim that she used “fiction” on her blog to “reassure” constituents looks gloriously self-defeating. But that may not actually be the best way to look at things.
Before she was found out, Dories clearly made a set of calculations. That with the expenses scandal at full throttle – and having embarrassed herself on national TV in the middle of it – she needed to solidify her constituency position. Dorries thus calculated that some “poetic license” would boost her position. And indeed this might well have worked (as perhaps it did in the 2010 election), if she hadn’t eventually been caught.
That Dorries has indeed been stupid is not so much because she used “poetic license”, but because she antagonised enough people to prompt some of them to spend hours trawling through her expense claims and comparing them with her blog entries. If she’d been less of a high-profile pain in the backside, she might have got away with her “fictions”.
But what’s worth analysing goes beyond Dorries’ stupidity, wherever exactly that may lie. More interesting is her willingness to mislead constituents to serve herself.
In a parallel world where Dorries is less stupid, she would look very much like David Hume’s example of the Sensible Knave: a person who follows the rules of justice when they think they have to, but breaks them when they reckon they’ll get away with it. Although real-world Dorries is actually an Unsensible Knave, the relevant conclusions can still be summarised.
Firstly, whether sensible or unsensible, Dorries is a knave and as a general rule well-brought-up members of society a) do not like knaves and b) try to exclude them from as much public and private life as possible.
Secondly, although we probably can’t convince Dorries to stop being a knavish person (by this point she’s likely set in her ways), we can stop her being a knavish MP. In other words: over to you voters of mid-Bedfordshire; feel free to rid Parliament of this very silly woman.
But thirdly, should Dorries retain her safe Tory seat we need not trouble ourselves too much. In the end, we non-knaves are far better off, even if we can never make even the Unsensible Dorries Knave see why:
“I must confess that, if a man think that this reasoning much requires an answer, it would be a little difficult to find any which will to him appear satisfactory and convincing. If his heart rebel not against such pernicious maxims, if he feel no reluctance to the thoughts of villainy or baseness, he has indeed lost a considerable motive to virtue; and we may expect that this practice will be answerable to his speculation. But in all ingenuous natures, the antipathy to treachery and roguery is too strong to be counterbalanced by any views of profit or pecuniary advantage. Inward peace of mind, consciousness of integrity, a satisfactory review of our own conduct; these are circumstances, very requisite to happiness, and will be cherished and cultivated by every honest man, who feels the importance of them.
Such a one has, besides, the frequent satisfaction of seeing knaves, with all their pretended cunning and abilities, betrayed by their own maxims; and while they purpose to cheat with moderation and secrecy, a tempting incident occurs, nature is frail, and they give into the snare; whence they can never extricate themselves, without a total loss of reputation, and the forfeiture of all future trust and confidence with mankind.
But were they ever so secret and successful, the honest man, if he has any tincture of philosophy, or even common observation and reflection, will discover that they themselves are, in the end, the greatest dupes, and have sacrificed the invaluable enjoyment of a character, with themselves at least, for the acquisition of worthless toys and gewgaws. How little is requisite to supply the necessities of nature? And in a view to pleasure, what comparison between the unbought satisfaction of conversation, society, study, even health and the common beauties of nature, but above all the peaceful reflection on one’s own conduct; what comparison, I say, between these and the feverish, empty amusements of luxury and expense? These natural pleasures, indeed, are really without price; both because they are below all price in their attainment, and above it in their enjoyment.”
October 21, 2010
“The Road to Fairness”
Nick Clegg has told Lib Dem activists that the Coalition’s spending review “is one that promotes fairness”:
“We are not taking the decisions today because they are easy or because we want to see a smaller state, we are taking them because they are right. We have a hard road to recovery ahead, but we are determined to ensure it is a road that leads to fairness too.”
The problem is, “fairness” is a controversial term and can mean many things to many people. So to understand what Clegg apparently means by the term, we need to unpack it. Accordingly, here’s my public service for the day.
To Nick Clegg, “fairness” involves:
- Half a million public sector job losses, to be added to the existing 2.5million unemployed chasing an estimated 0.5million available jobs. This will take place in conjunction with…
- …a drastic assault on the provision of out-of-work benefits, as George Osborne abandons some of society’s most vulnerable under the dubious claim to be targeting those who see meagre state benefits as a “lifestyle choice”.
- A withdrawal of support for the permanently disabled, who will be plunged into poverty or forced into divorce in order to survive.
- Reductions in support for the elderly and most vulnerable, even more of whom will be left to die alone in their own filth.
- The use of Treasury accounting tricks to claim that the richest will be hardest hit by benefit withdrawals, on the ludicrous supposition that the loss of child benefit to a millionaire is more taxing than to those on lower incomes.
- Massive reductions in housing expenditure which will make it harder for people to find affordable housing and increase the likelihood of people becoming homeless.
- The dismantling of the NHS by the back door, with reductions in real school spending dressed up as an increase by cynically half-incorporating LibDem ideas of a pupil premium to mask what’s really happening. The result will be changes most severely affecting those on lower incomes, who depend on state-provided health and education far more than the affluent.
- Abuse of the word “progressive” such that it either means nothing at all and is simple political spin, or if employed as a technical economic claim about burdens falling heavier on those most able to pay, is transparent nonsense as slammed by the IFS, Fabian Society and Demos already. And as demonstrated by the Government’s own chart.
I could go on, but that’s a basic start. No doubt more will emerge as the hidden depths of George Osborne’s carefully disguised announcements are further explored.
But I’d like to end with a quick observation. Although “fairness” is an inherently contested concept, one near-permanent idea attached to it is that fairness involves getting what you deserve.
Accordingly, if Nick Clegg is remembered as the man who empowered a Tory government and then did nothing in office to restrain that party as it launched an assault on the heart of Britain’s economy and society, then it will be fair if people remember him as national disgrace.
If commentators disparage Clegg for inflicting vast pain on the lives of the worse-off – when he himself has never struggled nor worried about a bill-payment in his highly-privileged life – then it will be fair when people slam him as a life-wrecker, dispensing pain from the safety of his wealthy cocoon.
And when voters obliterate the Liberal Democrats at the next election, blaming them for making the Conservative’s ideological crusade possible, then it will be fair when Clegg is subsequently hated by the party he failed and destroyed, and remembered by history as a man who made all the wrong calls at all the wrong times.
Nick Clegg has told Lib Dem activists that the Coalition’s spending review “is one that promotes fairness”:
“We are not taking the decisions today because they are easy or because we want to see a smaller state, we are taking them because they are right. We have a hard road to recovery ahead, but we are determined to ensure it is a road that leads to fairness too.”
The problem is, “fairness” is a controversial term and can mean many things to many people. So to understand what Clegg apparently means by the term, we need to unpack it. Accordingly, here’s my public service for the day.
To Nick Clegg, “fairness” involves:
- Half a million public sector job losses, to be added to the existing 2.5million unemployed chasing an estimated 0.5million available jobs. This will take place in conjunction with…
- …a drastic assault on the provision of out-of-work benefits, as George Osborne abandons some of society’s most vulnerable under the dubious claim to be targeting those who see meagre state benefits as a “lifestyle choice”.
- A withdrawal of support for the permanently disabled, who will be plunged into poverty or forced into divorce in order to survive.
- Reductions in support for the elderly and most vulnerable, even more of whom will be left to die alone in their own filth.
- The use of Treasury accounting tricks to claim that the richest will be hardest hit by benefit withdrawals, on the ludicrous supposition that the loss of child benefit to a millionaire is more taxing than to those on lower incomes.
- Massive reductions in housing expenditure which will make it harder for people to find affordable housing and increase the likelihood of people becoming homeless.
- The dismantling of the NHS by the back door, with reductions in real school spending dressed up as an increase by cynically half-incorporating LibDem ideas of a pupil premium to mask what’s really happening. The result will be changes most severely affecting those on lower incomes, who depend on state-provided health and education far more than the affluent.
- Abuse of the word “progressive” such that it either means nothing at all and is simple political spin, or if employed as a technical economic claim about burdens falling heavier on those most able to pay, is transparent nonsense as slammed by the IFS, Fabian Society and Demos already. And as demonstrated by the Government’s own chart.
I could go on, but that’s a basic start. No doubt more will emerge as the hidden depths of George Osborne’s carefully disguised announcements are further explored.
But I’d like to end with a quick observation. Although “fairness” is an inherently contested concept, one near-permanent idea attached to it is that fairness involves getting what you deserve.
Accordingly, if Nick Clegg is remembered as the man who empowered a Tory government and then did nothing in office to restrain that party as it launched an assault on the heart of Britain’s economy and society, then it will be fair if people remember him as national disgrace.
If commentators disparage Clegg for inflicting vast pain on the lives of the worse-off – when he himself has never struggled nor worried about a bill-payment in his highly-privileged life – then it will be fair when people slam him as a life-wrecker, dispensing pain from the safety of his wealthy cocoon.
And when voters obliterate the Liberal Democrats at the next election, blaming them for making the Conservative’s ideological crusade possible, then it will be fair when Clegg is subsequently hated by the party he failed and destroyed, and remembered by history as a man who made all the wrong calls at all the wrong times.
October 20, 2010
Thatcher’s Children
Most people remember where they were on 9/11. Epoch-changing events have that effect, especially when they are so spectacular and obviously far-reaching in their ramifications. But not all epoch-changing events are spectacular, and they don’t always advertise themselves so obviously.
With that in mind, remember where you were today. The 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review may become a date historians return to.
Much of Britain’s post-war history can be summarised – simplistically, but with some accuracy – as follows. After the devastation of global war, and the realisation that unchecked economic and social strife leads to the violent recourse of desperate extremist politics, west European nation states erected new social settlements both to rebuild shattered economies and polities, and to serve as prophylactics against the politics of extremism.
During the 1970s the social settlement in Britain underwent extreme strain for complex reasons, but in particular due to economic difficulties of both domestic and international origin. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister, and the first phase of a radical re-settlement began. The position of organised labour within Britain was crushed, and the role of private enterprise was drastically increased. Deregulation of finance and industry expanded the scope of market provision, and contracted the role of the provider-state. However the core of the post-war social settlement – what we loosely call “the Welfare State” – was left essentially intact, although modifications were made to the way it provided services, reflecting moves towards a general market-default.
From 1997-2010 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s New Labour put the Thatcher project on hold, but did not reverse it. If anything the role of private enterprise in particular was expanded. Although core components of the welfare state – in particular education and healthcare – saw enormous increases in spending from 2001 onwards, this was undertaken within the framework of accepting the Thatcherite re-settlement on the economy as a whole. Although laudable efforts to reduce poverty were undertaken – with some considerable successes – socio-economic inequality increased, as the marketisation of everything continued apace.
From May 2010 onwards, what can be described as the second phase of the Thatcherite resettlement began. Under the banner of massive fiscal retrenchment – justified (rightly or wrongly) as a necessary response to the devastation of the 2008 financial crisis – the Conservative-LibDem Coalition has proceeded to instigate massive spending cuts which are fundamentally over-turning the post-war “Welfare State” and attendant social settlement.
Indeed, it is worth noting what has already been pushed through since spring 2010.
Whilst Michael Gove’s highly ideological free schools programme, and parallel withdrawal of ordinary state school funds, has attracted much attention it has simultaneously distracted from the massive reconstitution of the NHS being conducted by Andrew Lansley (arguably without democratic mandate). Universal child benefits have already been withdrawn. The affordability of higher education for all may be finished as the LibDems U-turn on one of their oldest electoral promises. The system of state benefits has come under severe attack from Chancellor George Osborne, as dramatic welfare caps are introduced. And reports ahead of the CSR going official indicate that the Government already expects at least half a million new unemployed from public sector redundancies alone.
And this is only the beginning, the warm-up; the light shavings of the razor before the axe falls proper.
As John Gray has explained so well Cameron, Osborne and Clegg are Thatcher’s ideological children. They see this as the only way, for they have known no other way. And thus, it may very well come to pass that 20th October 2010 will be noted by future historians as the day the British social settlement completed the change of direction begun in 1979, entering new – and as yet, uncharted – waters.
So remember where you were. Your grandchildren may want to know.
October 19, 2010
The Corruption of our Moral Sentiments
Yesterday morning, 35 leaders of the UK’s “biggest companies” signed a letter to The Telegraph urging George Osborne not to slow-down his programme of austerity cuts. At one level Gary Dunion’s tweet gets to the heart of things:
“35 of the richest people in the world support ideological cuts to services they don’t use and jobs that aren’t theirs. Hold the front page.”
But there is more to be said. These outbursts by business leaders are hardly unheard of; before the last election Tory deficit tough-talk received a glowing endorsement from industry fat cats. Why do we collectively tend to give space to the views of super-rich big business leaders? Why do their pronouncements receive an apparently automatic level of respected deference, even when they spout partisan self-serving nonsense?
Part of the answer is simple politics: the right wing Telegraph pushes right-wing agendas, and business leaders are happy to partake in this. But that doesn’t go deep enough.
A more incisive answer lies in acknowledging the existence of a general misperception of “merit”, and a mistaken belief that industry leadership (often signaled by high pay) corresponds to unique and unmatched “talent” . This results in a common belief that big business leaders have some special, unrivaled insight to offer. But as Chris Dillow has repeatedly shown, “leadership” is a chimerical beast, because its usually organisational structure and contextual factors that determine success, not the special “talents” of fat cats lucky enough to climb to the top.
Nonetheless, a general (mistaken) belief that business leaders are supremely talented individuals is likely to generate a level of deference and toleration towards their opinion-spouting that other, more lowly-placed members of society, will not enjoy.
But there’s more, and like last week the Scottish Enlightenment may have something to teach us. Adam Smith was intrigued as to why ordinary people imagined the lives of the great and powerful to be full of happiness and pleasantry, when a little reflection shows that power and responsibility bring burdens of duty and the pains of intriuge and betrayal. Furthermore, Smith noted that ordinary people have a curious tendency to be more forgiving of the “vices and follies” of the great and powerful, than of even the “poverty and weakness of the innocent”.
Smith’s account of why this might be is (typically) complex. But one important factor is his belief that in modern commercial society people are presented with two competing paths along which to run their lives. The first emphasises “wisdom and virtue”, but the second promotes material gain. Yet we soon see that most people offer greater praise and encouragement to “the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous”. As a result, the path of material gain is privileged by most, even (crucially) those individuals who never get very far along it themselves. Growing up in societies where the “rich and the great” have their plaudits sung most widely, it is unsurprising that ordinary people come to imagine that those who are rich and great lead exceedingly more pleasant and happy lives, and their “vices and follies” are tolerated as being more forgivable in such outstanding characters.
But Smith was dubious about this conclusion; reflection on the lives of the “rich and the great” appears to reveal much that a contented soul would be better off without. Furthermore, Smith worried about the consequences for all our lives of this tendency to idolise the materially successful:
“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.”
For Smith, this represented a deep problem of modern commercial society that his moral theory attempted to navigate. 250 years later, it is far from clear that anything fundamental has changed. So you’ll forgive me if I give short shrift to the self-rightous pontifications of the Telegraph 35.
October 18, 2010
The Failure of Multiculturalism?
Long post alert. Available as PDF for the hard-core faithful.
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Angela Merkel has declared that in Germany “the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other… has failed, utterly failed.”
I don’t want to offer an analysis of German politics. As with France, dipping into German political culture without knowledge of, and sensitivity to, its unique and complex history will lead only to declarations of ignorant nonsense. So I’ll confine myself to general remarks, equally applicable to Britain as to Germany.
“Multiculturalism” is a phenomenon much debated, much misunderstood, and consequently much abused. Nonetheless, it will be helpful to employ a basic – thus imperfect and loose – definition:
Multiculturalism refers to the manner of ordering a state whereby no one “culture” – be it ethical, religious, political or ethnic – is given over-riding and official privileged status, and to which citizen conformity is demanded. Competing and differing “cultures” are allowed to exist alongside each other, as well as any dominant “established” or “traditional” “culture”, provided they conform to a set of basic precepts demanded of all citizens (and groups) within the legal-coercive structure of that state.
That last qualification is important. Multiculturalism does not mean “anything goes”. Whilst religious and ethnic groups may be free in a multicultural state to eat, dress, pray etc in whatever way they choose, certain activities are proscribed regardless of whether they are part of some group’s “culture”. Thus activities such as pederasty, ritual sacrifice and forced female circumcision are outlawed by most multicultural western societies insofar as such practices fall outside the remit of permitted cultural difference. Groups that persist in such activities will not be tolerated by the state legal apparatus, and conformity will be extracted coercively via police and courts. Those that refrain from such “out-of-bound” activities will be free to live as their “culture” demands.
With that basic understanding of multiculturalism in place, I would immediately add that multiculturalism is in fact a relatively superficial phenomenon; a product of more profound underlying forces than the above definition can possibly intimate. This is because multiculturalism is clearly a political response to deeply political – and economic – tensions.
Over the past 30-60 years western European nation states have experienced large influxes of disparate ethnic and religious groups. A means of accommodating these groups both to the coercive-legal state apparatus of their new nation state and, crucially, to other ethnic and religious groups within that nation-state, needed to be found to ensure the peaceful continuation of stable society. In short, multiculturalism has been that answer.
More specifically, the past 30-60 years have seen a processes migration into western states driven by two factors in particular. First (and particularly in the more immediate post-war era) former colonial powers accepted the influx of cheap-labour provided by migrants from former exploited territories, who aided post-war recovery and economic advancement, but then stayed and settled families as citizens with relatively distinct ethno-religious cultures. In Britain this mostly meant migration from the Indian sub-continent, and the West Indies. In France it was north, and to a lesser extent west, Africa. Other west European nation states have different ethnic migration patterns largely depending on their relevant political-economic histories. Germany’s complex relation with Turkey, and its present large ethnic-Turk minority, reflects its unique, complex and not-quite-colonial history.
The second major factor is the advent of truly globalised capitalism, which demands enormous cross-border flows of not just goods and services, but also of labour. Demand for migrant work has been high in west European nation states, and foreign-born labourers have been prepared to take the menial and poorly-paid work native citizens have had the luxury of being able to turn down. (Thus the recent phenomenon of east European labour in west European states and the concerns of how many of these peoples may be “flocking” to ones shores).
These two factors have meant that, increasingly, west European nation states have needed to accommodate influxes of different groups over different times, many of whom brought deep (and not-so-deep) cultural differences with them. Luckily, within the frameworks of broadly liberal and broadly secular modern nation states this has been largely possible. Indeed looked at in the context of Europe’s long and bloody history of sectarian religious violence, post-war multiculturalism has, if anything, been a resounding historical success. Western nation states have not disintegrated into bloody inter-group massacre, and for the most part immigrant communities have accepted the social, political and economic inequalities that come with being a near-permanent economic lower class with remarkable good will and passivity. Similarly, grumbling from figureheas of dominant “native” cultures has largely been kept precisely to grumbling, rather than vicious political persecution (though France may be trying to change things).
When Merkel declares that multiculturalism has been a “failure”, she is not only playing to a xenophobic and reactionary gallery, she is also being profoundly short-sighted. Firstly, because she mistakenly focuses only on the day-to-day tensions between different groups that multiculturalism inevitable throws up. Given the great social and economic tensions western nation states face in an increasingly economically globalised world (and as the rise and thankful fall of the British National Front in the 1980s shows, this is nothing particularly new), it is unsurprising that multiculturalism does not always run smoothly. It is unsurprising that dominant ethno-cultural groups – i.e. white Christians (and secularised former Christians) – resent and fear the unknown and different Other “taking over” areas of cities where the white native Christian working class formerly lived and provided labour. It is unsurprising that white Christian working classes feeling marginalised and vulnerable thanks to receding skilled economic opportunities in a globalised economic world. It is unsurprising that they blame the Others who are perceived as “taking” jobs, and whose non-native cultural identities are read as offensively invasive. And it is unsurprising that economically and politically marginalised immigrant communities hunker-down and cling fiercely to their shared cultural heritages in the face of hostile native majorities, thus “refusing” to “integrate” in the manner demanded by dominant cultural groups.
Precisely because multiculturalism is a political solution to very serious and complex underlying political and economic tensions, it is imperfect in its daily workings and experiences periodic aggravations and crises of confidence within and between heterogeneous groups. Having said that, multiculturalism does also boast some unambiguous successes – but which Merkel pays little attention to in decrying it a “failure”.
Secondly – and as importantly – Merkel’s comments betray no grasp of the underlying economic and political problems which underpin the political arrangement she chastises. Multiculturalism is a response to a world in which the mobility of labour necessitates political compromise, and thus the development of a modus vivendi between groups. The logic of economics (especially modern trans-national capitalism) is always global and disrespectful of historically-created national borders. But the logic of modern democratic politics is by necessity national. Economic forces propel (and have in the past propelled) migrant labour across arbitrary national boundaries, thus transplanting and re-rooting different ethnic and cultural communities within different nation states. Transplanted groups themselves develop and react over time, not least to further generations of migrants as well as the established “native” culture of any given state.
Political tensions within nation states inevitably develop precisely because one nation no longer underpins one state. It is hopeless to brand multiculturalism a “failure”, therefore, without acknowledging the underlying economic forces that have brought it into existence and make it a very necessary feature of contemporary West European politics. Merkel’s (wilful?) ignorance is aptly displayed when she gives a speech claiming multiculturalism has “failed”, yet which the BBC can report as “[making] clear that immigrants [are] welcome in Germany.”
And it is, finally, worth asking: if multiculturalism has “failed”, what exactly does Merkel think can be put in its place? Given the above it should be clear that multiculturalism – contrary to the myths of many of its right-wing detractors – is not some sinister imposition of the “politically correct” left, but a spontaneous and necessary response to the fundamental political and economic challenges faced by west European nation states. Multiculturalism is an accommodation, a way of trying to contain potentially explosive forces without resorting to the intolerance and jack-booted politics that led west Europe (and the rest of the world) into so much grief and bloodshed in the last century.
One worries what Ms Merkel thinks could possibly replace multiculturalism. One also hopes that a German Chancellor, of all people, will be especially alive to the dangers that lurk beneath a discourse of claiming that this most difficult of modern political solutions has “utterly failed”.
October 15, 2010
Slamming the Beeb?
Sunny at Pickled Politics draws attention to the latest risible claims of right-wing loon tank Migration Watch.
Apparently, the UK loses £4.6bn educating the children of migrants. Except that figure looks rather shaky when you learn it includes as immigrants anybody who happened to have a foreign-born parent. (So despite having British citizenship, because my mum is French MW count my vast and on-going British education as a pay-out to immigrant families!) As if that method wasn’t bad enough, the Office of National Statistics claims not to know how MW obtained any figures on parent birth place to begin with. Further demolition can be found here.
I admit: different day, same risible nonsense from MW. What actually animates me this morning is Sunny’s gunning for the BBC over its failures to report the MW nonsense as such. Certainly, the BBC’s reporting in this instance is lamentable. And Sunny has long been drawing attention to its failures over climate change denial and its tendency to give equal space to “sceptics” when the evidence is all one way traffic in the other direction.
But I feel Sunny is too one-dimensional in his condemnation of the BBC, and picks poor strategy in response.
I’m not denying that the BBC should do better when reporting on nonsense from MW and their ilk. But let’s think about why the Beeb might fail to properly scrutinize right-wing immigration gibberish in particular. Namely, that it is currently having the squeeze put on it by the Tory party, and the threat of that squeeze has been on-going for several years. Indeed it arguably started under Labour, when accusations that Blair and Alistair Campbell had “sexed up” the Iraq War dossier landed the Beeb in serious hot water with Number 10, with the temperature turned up by the Mail and News International.
With a ferocious Murdoch clamouring for privatisation, and a Tory party whose MPs and grass-roots broadly believe the BBC is a base-camp of socialist revolution, you can see why the news wing of the BBC might be predisposed to attempt to appease its opponents by sometimes channelling their political agendas, even if only by laziness.
Now, I think this is a bad idea. The agenda against the BBC is so deep-running that nothing will ever be good enough to halt it except full-scale demolition. My point is that the real blame lies not only, or simply, with poor journalism and poor editorial oversight, but with the entire situation in which the BBC finds itself.
Correspondingly, I find Sunny’s outraged condemnations – “The BBC’s reporting has become a joke”; “you wouldn’t get the BBC report pointing that out either, because they can’t actually be bothered to ask some basic questions.” – frustrating. All the blame is laid at the BBC’s door, and they are correspondingly slammed from the left as well as the right. (I won’t even get into Sunny’s long-running claim that the BBC is a “right wing” media institution, a claim I find to be based on the mirror-image cognitive bias which motivates right-wing criticism that the Beeb is a communist bastion).
I just can’t see this strategy of slamming the Beeb as incompetent being helpful. When institutions – like people – come under attack, they tend to hunker down, take cover and put up the defences. Reform often does not follow, because self-protection takes priority.
Whatever its failings, the BBC is still a far better news and broadcast institution than anything that will replace it should the free-market Murdochites get their way. It would be much better if leftists put their energy into exposing the hypocrisies of other far more scurrilous media outlets, and of the risible “think” tanks like MW (and puppet campaign groups like The Tax Payers’ Alliance) than slamming the BBC, without thinking about why the BBC ends up making the bad calls it sometimes does.
