Britain in recession: time to debate ideological basics

28 Responses to “Britain in recession: time to debate ideological basics”

1. Snowball

   on January 23rd, 2009 at 15:35

   Good stuff. If Dave was told to ‘piss off back to your Saturday morning paper sale’, as someone who actually did do regular paper sales throughout the time Blair was in power I can remember even on those paper sales being told by the occassional New Labour loyalist or trade union bureaucrat that the SWP by criticising Blairism was somehow ‘disgracing the working class movement’ and how we should be grateful the Tories were not in power. Though those type of comments did tend to become increasingly rarer as the reality of Blairism became more apparent.

   Those in London interested in a real life debate on ideological fundamentals on economic matters might like to hear Alex Callinicos speak on ‘The International Socialist tradition in political economy’

   6.30pm, Friday 30 January. Room 629, Birkbeck university, Malet Street, London WC1

   ‘At this, the first in a series of seminars organised by International Socialism journal, Alex will set out the analysis of capitalism first developed by Tony Cliff, Mike Kidron and others associated with the journal. He will consider its strengths and weaknesses in relation to later analyses that emerged from the 1970s onwards, such as those developed by Ben Fine, David Harvey and Robert Brenner.’

2. Richard Harris

   on January 23rd, 2009 at 15:49

   David…Would were that were so.

   BUT “the left” is as gutless and complicit is this as anyone else. They either bought into it (careers) or kept their mouths firmly shut. How else does Vince Cable now appear as the most far sighted and prophetic? A Shell economist saw further and deeper … Really…what does THAT tell us?

   Andrew Glyn RIP …so where were the prescient forecasts when he was courting Japanese post Marxism ?. Unlike Larry Elliot (Guardianista ~ certainly NO Marxist ) who was far more aware and vocal. Likewise the late Susan Strange ~ ex FT and business academic. And Graham Turner (Keynes…NO Marxist)

   John Pilger recently quoted Terry Eagleton on the “Tesco-isation of the Universities”

   He could have been equally talking about the contemporary “left” as they averted their eyes.

   BANKRUPT.

3. Richard Harris

   on January 23rd, 2009 at 15:54

   Having said that…!

   David Harvey is WELL worth reading.

   A same more people didn’t.

4. Miller 2.0

   on January 23rd, 2009 at 16:14

   “the lack of social housing and the planned creation of pockets of permanent unemployment were major factors in everything from youth crime to increased alcoholism and the rising prison population”

   Or, crucially, sub-prime…

5. Scratch

   on January 23rd, 2009 at 17:00

   But the left now has to chance to press home its points

   No it doesn’t, attempts to raise questions of inequality, powerlessness and poverty after 30-odd years of pointedly ignoring them despite their ever-increasing salience will be correctly seen as fraudulent bandwagon jumping.

6. wonderfulforhisage

   on January 23rd, 2009 at 17:55

   I enjoy reading your blog and may I make a plea for a better layout of the text. I subscribe via RSS and that arrives without any paragraphs. This makes a longish blog by you difficult to read. So I transfer to your actual site and find the text spread right across the screen, making it difficult to read.

   I’m no technician so can’t suggest a cure but perhaps somebody else could.

7. Dave

   on January 23rd, 2009 at 18:10

   @ Snowball: sounds good, but I suspect if I go, I’d better wear my stab vest.

   @wonderfulforhisage: I am distressed to hear this, can anyone help? Blog does read OK at http://www.davidosler.com, though.

8. frenetic

   on January 23rd, 2009 at 19:13

   ‘n tandem, Jobcentre Plus groups will be located in children’s centres to advise parents on work. A government document says: “Many [parents] would never consider visiting a JCP particularly if their partner is already working, but may be more receptive to the services in a relaxed setting like children’s centres.”

   A parallel scheme has already worked in health centres with Jobcentre Plus staff trained to do basic medical work, such as injections. The staff from the job centre would also advise on back-to-work strategies for people previously hard to reach. The scheme is being promoted by the work and pensions minister Kitty Ussher.

   http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/23/free-childcare-purnell-benefit-reform

   Has anyone seen this, it’s in the Guardian: its hard to believe but now DWP staff are acting as erstatz nurses in G.P’s surgeries, isn’t any professional body opposing this? they are like ‘spys in the cab’ for claimants. It’s also an indication of how Purnells reforms are powering ahead, almost without scrutinity. They were nasty even when there was a boom,now they are downright punitive. People who have just been made redundant will get a shock when they sign on and I imagine they will be angry and confused. Purnell is one of the most powerful politicians in the UK with power over millions, plenty of interventions to be made by the left, but will they/us do so?

   I think we have to return to basics, unlike many i have very little interest in ideology, Socialism has to be about looking after your neighbour, the lonely pensioners freezing to death, workers losing their jobs, housing, welfare cuts, the NHS. Of course, one has to have a framework to understand society and i am not knocking those who want to ‘text dwell’, but i will leave that to others, while groups like LCAP deal with immediate concerns

   http://www.lcap.org.uk/

9. history tells us things

   on January 23rd, 2009 at 19:16

   ‘But the left now has to chance to press home its points

   No it doesn’t, attempts to raise questions of inequality, powerlessness and poverty after 30-odd years of pointedly ignoring them despite their ever-increasing salience will be correctly seen as fraudulent bandwagon jumping.

   @Scratch,

   Much of the left has largely ignored poverty in the Uk, for many years, but over the last year, bloggers like Dave have recognised this deficit and discussed such issues, but to me, fighting inequality has to be central.

10. rootless-e

    on January 23rd, 2009 at 23:48

    The left’s interventionist proposals, in either Marxist or social democratic/Keynesian variants, are routinely castigated as a one-way ticket to North Korean Hell, by express or stopping train as appropriate.

    Would you trust a centralized economic management under Gordon Brown?

11. Marcus

    on January 24th, 2009 at 10:18

    If the left and socialism requires an economic crisis in capitalism to sell its strong points, then it remains merely an economic critique of capitalism and not a political alternative to it.

    Eyes on the prize, Dave.

12. john

    on January 24th, 2009 at 10:40

    There is LEAP but sometimes their blog can go for a week without a post.

13. Jon Rogers

    on January 24th, 2009 at 11:57

    The original post is spot on. That’s why the LRC will be launching a crisis campaign – and why those twiddling their fingers about when to launch the “Peoples Charter” need to get on with it.

14. Richard Harris

    on January 24th, 2009 at 12:09

    “This approach was developed in (the late) Susan Strange’s later book Mad Money: When Markets Outgrow Governments (1998)NOTE 1998! This work anticipated the current hubris of financial leaders and policy-makers – in their belief not just that one upon another set of bogus practices and inflated LOAN systems could be sustained, but in that what they had created somehow corresponded to a NATURAL and hence implicitly eternal order. Such beliefs are above all rooted in ignorance of history.

    Now, in the dramatic days of mid-September 2008, the unprecedented intervention of the United States government and of its European counterparts in financial markets also confirms the validity of much of Karl Polanyi and Susan Strange’s approach to the understanding of political-economic life and institutions.” ~ Fred Halliday.

    Polyani was calling it “fictitious capital” in 1944…WHO was listening? Or caring?

15. Idle Pen Pusher

    on January 24th, 2009 at 17:23

    I agree we need to return to a debate about fundamentals. Not the tired left/right argument. That’s for yesterday’s men living out the past. The true debate is about liberty versus coersion.

    Does humanity flourish under conditions of peaceful liberty, or is he best suited to the iron fist of the state, punching him into what’s in his best interests?

    Is the naked political self-interest of the politician or political activist seeking to force his notions of charity and equity onto otherss a nobler variety of self-interest than that of the personal self-interest of a drug-taker or the economic self-interest of the entrepreneur or tradesman, affecting only those who voluntarily choose to co-operate for their mutal benefit?

    The fundamental question is how far is it legitimate to extend lethal violence, at the core of every action the state takes (why pay taxes or obey the law unless the state is prepared to overpower you with its monopoly of the means of violence, ultimately lethally so, to ensure your submission?), into the realms of previously peaceful, voluntary society? And to what extent is the current reach of that coersive sector in society legitimate and what could be done without resorting to threats of violence?

16. Sue R

    on January 24th, 2009 at 20:28

    Idle Pen Pusher cannot be serious. Tell me he or she took a wrong turnign looking for the loo. We need to ask ourselves does humanity flourish under conditions of plentiful food, water-tight housing, education for social and self-development, security in going about our lawful business, and jobs that provide a living wage and contribute to the development of our fellow human beings etc etc. Then we need to set about achieving those aims. It’s not rocket science.

17. Derek Wall

    on January 24th, 2009 at 20:33

    Hi Dave,

    any chance of blogging on Jerry Hicks, many of us on the left are backing him for Unite General Secretary, a real grassroots trade union lefty and a pretty eco friendly one with his support for environmental engineering, no heathrow, lots of renewables…any way his blog is here, http://jerryhicks.wordpress.com/

    go on give his campaign a bit of support…much your blog where your blog sentiments above are heading

18. Idle Pen Pusher

    on January 25th, 2009 at 00:29

    Sue R, we certainly do prosper better when the conditions are right for food, education and accomodation to be produced plentifully and to the highest possible standard.

    Quite how any of that is at odds with the real debate on the legitimacy of using state violence to enforce the opionions of the representatives of the majority onto the population I’m not sure.

    I’d also agree it’s not rocket science. Where in the world are people most prosperous? Where they are free and not at war. Where are they least prosperous? Where they are under coersion or war.

    But there is a moral aspect to this debate as well as a practical one. It might well be accepted that the innate inefficiency and sheer wastefulness of government is hugely detrimental to the society it feeds off. But imagine a parallele universe where that weren’t so. Imagine a fantasy land where the public sector responds to what its customers wanted rather than the conveniences of the employees. Imagine the government could manage something well and efficiently.

    Even then, would it be right for the majority to use the threat of violence against the individual (try refusing to pay your taxes if you doubt this threat is very real), ultimately the threat of lethal violence (try defending your liberty with arms if you doubt this too), to force their ideas of which particular government programmes are or aren’t worth paying for onto those individuals who disagree?

    It is this debate – the debate that boils down to how far in society it is right to use violence to enforce your ideas onto those who disagree with you, that is the real debate.

19. Toodle Noodle

    on January 25th, 2009 at 11:30

    Idle Pen Pusher -

    What you articulate is a hodge-podge of Robert Nozick, Adam Smith, Ayn Rand and Noam Chomsky, with a dash of politically-correct piety thrown in for extra flavour. Perhaps if one or other of these ideas had been more forcefully (and, indeed, violently) impressed upon you, your ideas would be more coherent.

20. chris

    on January 25th, 2009 at 11:46

    It’s surely easy to counter the Hayekian case.

    1. “If central planning of national economies is a bad idea, how come bosses think central planning of companies is a good idea?”

    2. “What makes you think rent-seeking is confined to the public sector? Why can’t it happen in companies?”

    Hayekians used to reply that market forces would compete away corporate rent-seeking and the flaws of centrally-planned companies. But surely the banking crisis refutes that idea.

    I see no problem for the left.

21. Barry Kade

    on January 25th, 2009 at 13:12

    There are a few things we must understand before we can remake the socialist left.

    Thatcher, Blair and Hayek were all riding a wave, a certain moment of history – the break up of the nationally organised mode of state monopoly capitalism (classical imperialism)and its mutation into its new phase of a globalising neo-liberalism. This was the key movement marking the late twentieth century, from the zenith of state monopoly capitalism in the 1950′s, the moment of its rupture between ’68 and ’74, the consolidation of the new mode with Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton and Blair – and now its exhaustion and crash.

    The new left and the 1968 uprisings were also part of this assault on the system of state monopoly capitalism. Thus this left was part of a social change that expressed a desire for more personal autonomy and a more participatory democracy. The international phase of state monopoly capitalism had been marked by an authoritarian managerial and technocratic regime, centralisation, and Fordist mass standardisation. Any welfare provision and moves towards equality were distorted by these constraints.

    Thus the revolts of 1968 suggested a libertarian and egalitarian rejection of authoritarian welfare state capitalism. However, capitalism was not overthrown – rather under the impact of this crisis it mutated into its neo-liberal form. To do this, it to some extent also enrolled or appropriated the desire for more personal autonomy and participation. Thus not just Thatcher’s council house sales – but also a more general move towards a more networked form of capitalism. This involved a less centralised and standardised command and control system and moved more towards enrolling peoples ‘participation’ in escalating the rate of exploitation.

    As this neo-liberal phase enters meltdown, the socialist left can indeed be remade – and with mass appeal.

    But it must retain its memory of why their was a popular rejection of authoritarian state monopoly capitalism.

    The argument between Hayek’s followers and their left opponents – between a centrally planned capitalism versus its marketised alter-ego – always missed the central point.

    The valid criticisms of the blindspots of a centrally planned economy have found no solution in the dominance of the market – but instead have long suggested the need for democratic and participatory planned economy.

22. Richard Harris

    on January 26th, 2009 at 09:57

    Hey (not) a trick question…

    What’s the difference between an economy bag of boneless chicken breasts…and the BBC’s Editorial Executives…?

    (A) Nothing organic, but the chicken feeds children.

    A DAY OF THE DEEPEST SHAME.

23. Sue R

    on January 26th, 2009 at 10:06

    Gordan Brown today (Monday) has said that what we are experiencing are ‘the birth pangs of a New World Order’. That’s alright then. It will all be ok in the end, we just have to wait a little bit longer. NOT.

24. CharlieMcMenamin

    on January 26th, 2009 at 10:21

    Both Chris Dillow (aka Stumbling and Mumbling) and Barry Kade make important points, but I’m not yet confident they don’t point in different directions.

    Chris’ point about market discipline not, actually, stopping ‘rent-taking’ or ‘producer capture’ is a good one as far as it goes – but it simply establishes that both the state sector and the private sector might be subject to such undesirable pressures. It doesn’t give any clue as to how this might be avoided – and therefore doesn’t lay the basis of a left economic programme.

    Crudely put, Barry’s emphasis points towards greater workplace democracy and control. But quite a lot of the City and the financial sector more generally has suffered from outrageous ‘rent-taking’ by the employees in the form of bonuses – see, for example, http://www.tuc.org.uk/economy/tuc-15492-f0.cfm. Furthermore, many argue that the possibility of acquiring such bonuses has driven deeply risky behaviour that has now destabilised the whole global economy. So there is actually a case that says it is ‘workers’ (sic) – rather than owners – control is at the root of the problem. (I’m over-egging the pudding, in order to make a rhetorical point).

    I think the left still does have a problem. It doesn’t have the basic intellectual tools to propose an alternative way of running the economy in any detail. This is something I deeply regret.

25. Another Dave

    on January 27th, 2009 at 14:11

    Is there an economics possible that raises living standards for most people on the planet and gives them greater control over their own lives? This is the Holy Grail, of course, and is probably the most important question facing all sections of the left in our generation. There can’t be any socialism unless we get a plausible answer on this. But it is a huge task, and, to get anywhere, would require the work of a large number of like-minded, flexible-thinking, knowledgeable and talented people over many years.

    After Iraq, however, and the apparent retreat of many into the safety of the broad political dogmas that existed beforehand, it doesn’t seem as though the conditions are in place for the “ruthless criticism of all that exists”—only the starting point for such a programme, which would also have to turn its gaze in multiple directions, towards itself as much as to the outside. Perhap one reasons that this doesn’t happen very often is that, for many, the left is something like a family, and, at the social-psychological level, not many family members want to risk becoming an outcast by speaking out of turn.

    Right at the beginning of The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel says this:

    “The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given philosophical system, and only to see reason for the one or the other in any explanatory statement concerning such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather, it sees only contradiction in that variety. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole. But contradiction as between philosophical systems is not wont to be conceived in this way; on the other hand, the mind perceiving the contradiction does not commonly know how to relieve it or keep it free from its one-sidedness, and to recognize in what seems conflicting and inherently antagonistic the presence of mutually necessary moments.”

    And, if you can get past the fancy language and the romantic organic metaphor, I think it’s the same with Hayek, or neo-liberalism: what in them is useful? What can be usefully absorbed? What remains after the withering criticism to be absorbed? That is, there has to be an appreciation and a firm grasp of Hayek and of neo-liberalism, of their strong points and achievements, as well as their weaknesses and faults, before they can be superseded. The same applies to all previous intellectual and practical efforts towards developing a socilist economics, including the holy-of-holies, Capital.

    From the point of view of empirical investigation, it means distinguishing capitalist propaganda from results. For example, where are their development efforts or their standard macroeconomic policies successful, and why? And where are they unsuccessful? Do they have any tools that we can reuse?

    Despite the colossal scale of the current financial-economic crisis, I personally haven’t yet seen anyone coming close to grasping the nettle (maybe I’m looking in the wrong places). Certainly not the inflexible ideologues of the SWP, who seem to pull everything they touch to the right, and whose ham-fisted/ hare-brained attempts to oppose the injustices of capitalism somehow always intimate the preparation of something worse (this is a prejudice that I’m willing to confront, given time). But not even intelligent Marxists such as Brenner, who otherwise looks pretty much correct, so far as I can see, about the causes of the current crisis being found in the monetary response to the problem of long-term decline in profitability in the advanced capitalist countries.

26. Idle Pen Pusher

    on January 29th, 2009 at 03:13

    Nothing untrue about my seeing the debate as being one of violence versus peace not being identical to a single famous thinker’s ideas, Toodle Noodle.

    Though utterly unremarkable, too, which is a shame if my understanding of it as being intended as a somehow derogatory remark is true.

    What is my “dash of politically correct piety”, though? Did that mean anything, or was it just a standard tag?

27. Idle Pen Pusher

    on January 29th, 2009 at 03:20

    Chris:

    “It’s surely easy to counter the Hayekian case.

    1. “If central planning of national economies is a bad idea, how come bosses think central planning of companies is a good idea?”"

    Seriously? You think the advantages of spontaneous order and power dispersion are invalid simply because when individuals voluntarily choose to work together as a company they normally do so under a condition of that company’s actions being planned?

28. Jim

    on January 29th, 2009 at 14:44

    Kudos to Idle Pen Pusher. He or she has distilled my basic hatred of State interference in my life in a few choice sentences. I just wish I could have articulated it myself.

    To quote Mao (and I don’t do that often) ‘Power comes from the barrel of a gun.’ The State has guns, I don’t. Ultimately all State power, the ability to tax, legislate etc comes from that inherent latent violent potential.

    The argument is as IPP sets out – how far are we prepared to allow the State to use its violence in furthering its aims? Just to enforce basic criminal laws on murder, theft, rape etc, or at the other extreme, the creation of death camps for the people who oppose the aims of the State? There is a continuum, where do we draw the line?