Two articles have struck me this morning. One is in the Guardian, by regular commentator John Harris. The headline in this article says most of what you need to know:
Labour is stuck in the last century. Its adversaries have seized the future
He is right.
He even manages, in one sentence, to explain how Marxism Today moved to them quite far right (it's all down to the key role of the bourgeoisie in the process of change, and he manages to not use the term).
Harris clearly thinks Labour is tilting at windmills.
The other article is about renewable energy. But windmills aren't the link. In the FT Prof Nick Butler has appeared to have come across the quite shocking idea that the European Green Deal is intent on changing European energy policy. It would appear that he finds this state intervention shocking, and terribly EU in style. He even describes it as being absent of innovation. It's an article as lacking as foresight as too many in Labour are in Harris' view: both view a 2020 problem viewed through a decidedly 20th century lens. Why the FT published the article is anyone's guess.
There is, of course, a reason for linking the two pieces. Labour is in a time warp, dedicated to a type of campaigning that fits a social and industrial structure within society that no longer exists. Butler clearly wants a 1980s open market based solution to what he appears to reluctantly think might be a problem, to which he apparently thinks the state has no answer when it comes to allocating capital.
And there is the point of reconciliation. In 2029 the state has a decided role to play. The authors of The Green Swan, to which I referred yesterday, have recognised it. What is going to have to happen is that the state must adopt a new and profound role to tackle the allocation of capital required to manage climate change. It has to allocate limited capital to address the issues arising because there is too great an uncertainty for markets to do so. And the state has to also address the consequences of decommissioning capital. And it has to address the considerable risks arising from redistribution of wealth, income and other resources that arise from both.
This is a real issue. The only windmills involved will be doing a valuable job for us all.
And the management of the tasks involved requires a new political vision.
The questions arising are not just about class, although there will be class implications. The questions are about survival, of us all. There may have never been a greater natural leveller.
This is what the left has to be about now.
The right is pursuing individualism as a political path to popularity. But that is quite emphatically not a route to the required answers. Only tackling climate will provide any answers now.
The question is, can the left get its head around this? The evidence is far from clear as yet.
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Since it’s behind a paywall, I haven’t read Prof. Butler’s piece in the FT. I refuse to pay to read centre-right propaganda, as we’re already inundated with the stuff for free. I suspect you’ve captured the essence of his gripes. And you’ve certainly captured the essence of John Harris’s characteristically insightful and perceptive piece in the Grauniad.
What jumped out at me was the contrast he highlighted between Labour’s “combination of old-fashioned statism, … increasingly middle-class makeup, .. [its] focus on the politics of attitudes and behaviour [that] sometimes teeters into shrill intolerance, not least online” and “Conservatism’s eternal promise .. that its supporters will be left alone.”
Most people are perfectly happy to delegate their ultimate authority to elected representatives every four of five year to elect a government. And they rely on those in opposition, on the media and on the plethora of civil society groups and organisations pursuing their interests to ensure the elected government provides some sensible governance in the interim. And when they vote again they will cast their judgement.
What is also, and perhaps even more relevant, is that Labour (similar to almost all left-of-centre parties in the advanced economies) has locked itself in to the neo-liberal narrative about monetary and fiscal policy. The populist illiberal economic nationalists in power in Poland and Hungary and seeking power in Italy and other European countries simply reject and ignore this narrative. The Trump administration is contemplating “Tax Cuts 2.0” to help secure his re-election — and damn the fiscal and current account deficits.
The neo-liberal stance is demonstrably failing, but the populist illiberal economic nationalist stance is equally damaging. The primary objectives of economic policy are to increase the productive capacity of the economy and to ensure the widest capture of the increased productive capacity while maintaining economic stabilisation across all economic sectors.
The European Commission is locked in to the neo-liberal stance. Vice-President Timmermans who has primary responsibility for the Green Deal can’t demand the national fiscal support that is essential to make it work. Vice-President Dombrovskis responsible for the overall economic stance has been appointed to prevent that — and to limit the role of the ECB. So the Commission is really at nothing.
So the question is: should the focus be on telling people the truth about how money is actually created, spent and destroyed, how the current fictions benefit the wealthy and powerful at their expense and why governments are not households and have the ultimate responsibility to increase productive capacity and to maintain economic stability? The illiberal economic nationalists know the current narrative is a lie and are making political hay by rejecting it. Why can’t the left tell the truth and seize the narrative?
If we knew that answer to that question we’d all be a lot better off
My final question is rhetorical. The left has to seize the narrative or it will become irrelevant. But I would counsel against using climate change as the battering ram. I’ve used the horse and cart analogy previously. Putting the cart in front and loading it with additional ‘wonderful-to-have’ policies will lead to the continuing failure of and by the left. The right and centre-right is either manoeuvring to absorb support for populist illiberal economic nationalism (as in the UK and the US) or stealing some of its clothes in an effort to isolate it (as in Germany and Scandinavia). Neo-liberalism is dissolving before our eyes and it is being replaced by something nastier and uglier. But the right and the centre-right are determined to maintain control of the emerging narrative and to acquire and retain political power. Their response to climate change will be subservient to these efforts.
I think a lot of what John Harris says can actually be directed at you and your crusade for a return to the big State..
Since when have I campaigned for a big state?
I have argued for an effective state
Not the same thing at all
@Paul Hunt
I would agree that actually it is a far from a rhetorical question the left has to uncompromisingly embrace the ‘where money comes from’ question:
http://www.progressivepulse.org/society/explaining-how-money-works-on-the-doorstep-in-220-words
@Peter May,
I’m sure you’ll not be surprised to find I fully agree. I recently had a conversation with a friend who is highly competent and experienced in matters mathematical and scientific and he casually ventured that, until very recently, he had never given any thought to how money is created, or to how government spending and taxation works, or to the role of banks and “all that type of stuff”.
Naturally I seized my opportunity and to see him grasp that the time-hallowed myths are really power and wealth protecting fictions as the scales fall from his eyes was truly wonderful.
Of course, I’m not saying that a superior intelligence is required. In this instance it was simply scientific curiosity. But a basic understanding of these issues is, and should be, in the “every schoolchild knows” territory. It’s frighteningly simple, as all the best ideas are; but far from simplistic. It’s just that the high priests of economics ordained by the wealthy and powerful have spun complex webs of deception and sophistry to protect and advance the interests of the latter – and to increase their own rewards.
However, the focus should be on the mechanics. How and on what and on whom money created should be spent is a matter for another day. But there should be a focus on the need for economic stabilisation and on the minimisation of imbalances within the main sectors of the economy and in aggregate.
I suspect that if they were given the opportunity to grasp the import of these issues, ordinary voters would be absolutely furious that they have been lied to for so long.
Seems amazing how we’ve gone from Labour running an innovative and modern campaign that energised and delighted parts of the electorate in 2017 to being stuck in the last century in 2019.
Some insightful stuff in Harris’s article, particularly on why conservatism is so successful (as Paul notes above) and his thoughts on narratives of class and industry, but also some nonsense. He doesn’t address at all the Tory campaign that was filled with promises to massively increase the size of the state.
He also talks as if Labour are responsible for portraying the Labour heartlands as nothing but angry socially conservative men. It seems to me the media, and certainly his own paper, should shoulder a significant portion of the blame for that one (If Brexit is good for nothing else it will be the end of journalists heading to the north east and the midlands to ask angry social conservatives why they voted for Brexit). Then he goes on himself to talk about the Labour heartlands as if no one voted Labour at all in them and they were one hegemonic block.
I’m also fairly tired of pieces bloviating about ‘what went wrong’ or ‘what needs to be done’ that fail to say Brexit was the biggest factor. Or fail to mention it at all. Sure it wasn’t the only factor, but it was unquestionably the biggest factor and analysis that ignores this is pointless.
I agree with those comments without hesitation. Had there been a referendum before a general election the issue of Brexit would have been settled and the electorate could have then voted on the offer from the parties. This would have shown the stark difference between the Labour offer and the paucity of the Conservatives [other parties are available].
The apparent ‘U turn’ by the Tories on their austerity agenda, part of their offer would have been subject to scrutiny and debate and would have shown it for what it was. He is no friend of yours who chops your arm off and then offers to sew it back on. The Tories knew this and so made the motto ‘let’s get BREXIT done’ as their election winning strategy with the spectacle of Mr Johnson at one press conference leaving the stage shouting it.
Sadly they were right.
More recently, or at least since 1979, conservatism’s eternal promise has been that their supporters will be better off under Toryism – left alone? I’m not sure as they have moved towards a surveillance state.
Among other things – and Scotland shows much of what has been wrong with Labour: complacency, taking voters for granted, MP’s sense of entitlement that they should be re-elected, etc and, fundamentally, doing virtually nothing to improve matters for Scots after Thatcher’s destructive policies – among all that, Labour is still living with the legacy of the Blair/Brown years where they continued and extended many of Thatcher’s policies, sucking up to the rich while ignoring the very people Labour had been founded to speak for, failing to make radical changes to the voting system or abolishing the Lords, or getting rid of nuclear weapons, and of course embarking on a disastrous and illegal war for which not one of them has been held to account.
No one expects Tories to end child poverty, deal with inequality, create evidence-based policies to tackle crime or drugs. But Labour was supposed to be different, based on a socialist philosophy which worked towards fairness and equity for all – but it turned out they were just the same when the rhetoric was stripped away.
If Labour is not socialist with a modern 21stC form of socialism, if socialism cannot be made fit for 2020 then Labour is in terminal decline. From what little I’ve read of the comments of the leadership contenders (when they’re not hating the SNP – and, by extension, those who elected them) their program for government sounds like it’s been cribbed from the Twitter-sphere rather than being based on some serious analytical political thinking.
Nevermind, Red Ed (lol) will come up with the answer. (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/27/labour-defeat-due-to-gimmicks-and-division-say-members)
A detailed riposte to John Harris’ article
http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-silences-of-john-harris.html?m=1
That’s such a gross misrepresentation of what John Harris has written for a long time that it’s ludicorous
I am well aware that Harris is more than familiar with Marxism Today, etc., and has commented on it many times.
Likewise, he has considered Labour politics many times.
That critique is a lazy caricature and ignores that Harris has in effect used the Guardian to write a blog and any one article cannot be read in isolation. It’s lazy work from someone who can be quite good.