I doubt we will ever know who it was who first suggested that the world might for some time to come be viewed as that Before Covid (BC) and After Covid (AC). Whoever it was, I think they were right.
In a world long ago, call it October last year, things looked so different from now. Johnson had not got a parliamentary majority. In fact, he'd chosen to reduce himself to a minority. I am not sure we had heard the term ‘Oven Ready Brexit'. Covid 19 was unheard of. Checking I have a face mask was not part of my leaving the house routine. I was forecasting an economic downturn, come what may (because we were overdue for one) but I had no idea that it would be anything like the disaster we and the world are now facing.
What happened? It would be so easy to say that everything was down to Covid. But, important as that is, I don't think that is true. Coronavirus exposed this crisis. It did not, however, make it. The fact that there are countries, from New Zealand and South Korea, to several in Southeast Asia, plus Japan, who have managed this crisis so much better than we have makes it clear that there is something much more to what we are facing than the impact of a virus. Don't get me wrong, my own experience suggests that Covid 19 is pretty unpleasant. Every death earlier than it would have been has been a tragedy for all those touched by it. I do, however, think that we will eventually (and that is the appropriate word) learn how to manage Covid 19.
Doing so will, however, demand something much more from us, which to date our government has most certainly not been willing to partake in. Let me suggest just three things that have to change, but each is absolutely fundamental.
First of all, if coronavirus has taught us anything it is that we have interests in common. It should not be hard to realise that this virus treats us all, at least potentially, equally. But for the economic benefits of having space around us, which some of us enjoy more than others, the disadvantages of age, and the random misfortune of some disabilities, coronavirus would appear indifferent as to who it will infect. What is more, its consequences that reach beyond infection, most commonly seen in a variety of mental illnesses as well as its impact on the treatment of other physical conditions, are universal. It is not possible for anyone to pretend after witnessing the impact of this virus that they stand apart from the rest of us. Quite where we might be in society may vary for social, economic, physical, gender, age, geographic and other reasons. All of this I acknowledge. But for anyone to claim that there is no such thing as society is now impossible. And I would suggest that what differentiates us should now be recognised as less important than what unites us. I do not think our government has got anywhere near recognising this.
Second, what this means is that the idea of government by imposition, so long implicit in first past the post voting, but which was by and large not abused by governments wise enough to recognise that there were constraints on their behaviour, even if they were not codified, is completely unfit for purpose when a government intent upon abuse is elected. We do now have a government that is intent on abuse. And it is imposing its will against the wishes of the majority of people on a wide range of issues. The consequence is readily apparent. Whether the issue be lockdown, Brexit, devolved powers, independence, the treatment of the vulnerable in society, or more, what is apparent is that a government that is seemingly only interested in survival, the importance of which it is unable to explain, is now unacceptable to very large numbers of people. As the economic turmoil of the coronavirus created recession, and Brexit, break over the country this can only get worse.
We have got of course, had unpopular governments before now. I lived right through the Thatcher years. I well remember the anger with Blair. But what I am saying is that this is something different. What we now have is a government that is not doing what it thinks to be right. Instead, we have a government that has no idea what it is doing and in that situation would appear to be acting almost entirely for the benefit of a small coterie of people within and around the government, with reckless indifference as to the consequence. What is more, they have even given up pretending that this is not the case. We do, then, have government of the very many for the benefit of the very few, which our system has permitted because it does not have mechanisms within it to prevent a form of manipulation that it could not imagine which might have prevented the election of a government on the basis of known falsehoods propagated on a scale that our political forebears could not have imagined.
Third, the moral bankruptcy of neoliberal thinking has been exposed, and as a consequence the entire moral foundation of our economy has collapsed. The aberrational, and even mad (I use the term advisedly) thinking that underpins our economics, which suggests that we are all entirely selfish individuals, born without empathy or concern for others, has to be eliminated from our education system, where it has represented a pernicious form of corruption. At the same time its impact has to be removed from the structuring of our economy, where it has driven us to the brink of massive failure.
It could, of course, be said that this third point is the same as the first two: the mentality that has destroyed both our society and our politics is the same as that which is destroying our economy, and I would have some sympathy with that argument. Equally, I do not think that it changes my argument. It is true that neoliberalism is to blame for much of what we face: it is just that the consequences in each of these cases requires a different response.
In the case of society, we need to rediscover it. The existential question as to what our countries should be, what we have in common, and how we should share those common concerns needs to be addressed. Scotland is clearly leading the pack here, although it could be argued that the Brexit debate was a failed attempt to address this issue, most especially in England. What is certain is that the arguments are not resolved as yet, but that they must be had.
The second question that we need to address is, then, just how we deliver democracy. The fact has to be faced that we no longer live in anything even vaguely approximating to representative democracy, and that this failure is imposing an enormous cost upon us all. If we are to change then it has to be on the basis that we recognise that imposition is no longer acceptable: coalitions of common interest must be created in our future, and this process begins with democratic reform. All those parties that stand against this are part of the problem, and cannot be within the solution.
Third, and very obviously, we also need to address the failed culture of our economics. I can think of no easier way to achieve this than by revising the mandate of the Bank of England. At present, all the Bank of England is required to do is keep inflation below a 2% target. Nothing could more effectively say that the economy is to be run in the interests of those with wealth than this single statement does. The reason for the paranoia about inflation is that inflation deflates the value of debt, which debt is the instrument that those with wealth use to preserve their wealth and maintain their income whilst simultaneously, imposing their control upon most of the population. As the only indication of the economic policy of this country it is the surest sign that divided we shall fall. A change is, then, required. If that mandate was re-written as follows our economic policy would be very different:
The Bank of England shall be required to cooperate with HM Treasury in the promotion of an overall economic policy that:
-
Promotes full employment;
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Funds the transition to a sustainable, net-zero carbon economy;
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Supplies sufficient fiat currency to the economy to facilitate the smooth operation of the financial system in fulfillment of the above goals;
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Recognises that inflation might prejudice achievement of these objectives and seeks to limit it to not more than 3% per annum.
Then we would have a fundamentally different economy.
Then we might have a fundamentally different society.
And we might have a fundamentally different democracy.
We need all three.
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Nothing to disagree with there – a humanistic summation of recent events.
I sat and listened to my brother in law – someone with an extremely over-valued house in West London, property abroad (HNWI) and privately educated to boot, tell me that he was sick of seeing his taxes handed over by Cummings and Johnson to their mates.
I empathised with him but could not help but mention that his taxes did not actually pay for this stuff – it was just the Government giving its money to these people instead of to us. I followed on with a quick resume of he role of tax.
I didn’t think I did too badly but it swiftly brought an end to the conversation. As am not as financially as successful as him, maybe I lack credibility (although we are both educated to Master’s level).
It puzzles me that so many of the the middle class ‘chattering classes’ love to talk about these problems without being curious as to other ways of thinking. They seem content to ‘um and ahhh’, say ‘Oh dear’ and then talk about going to Aldi and think that they smart getting cheap food or their next investment.
BTW both my brother and sister in law work in The City.
Guess who’s getting Ms Kelton’s book for Christmas!!?
I studied KM for my Master’s degree – Knowledge Management – and one of the perennial problems in that discipline is guess what?
Ignorance. How to deal with Ignorance.
It does not pay them to understand the answers…..
“It does not pay them to understand the answers…..”
It will do as the UK economy collapses around their ears and a desperate under-class makes their life hell. This disregard of the lives of others which is the current hallmark of much of British society (a Libertarian/Neoliberal mentality) is nicely put under the microscope by Brian Hare’s and Vanessa Wood’s recent book “Survival of the Friendliest”:-
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Survival-Friendliest-Understanding-Rediscovering-Humanity/dp/0399590668/ref=sr_1_1?crid=141XRWIJJH232&dchild=1&keywords=survival+of+the+friendliest&qid=1603018465&sprefix=Survival+of+%2Caps%2C258&sr=8-1
They use the term “simianisation” to describe the process of seeing others outside of a narrow circle as less than human. The process is very clearly exacerbated by the form of marketplace capitalism we have where there is currently a very narrow control over the deployment of capital.
And look at this from our so-called most ‘progressive newspaper’ this morning:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/18/thirty-books-to-help-us-understand-the-world-in-2020
No ‘The Value of Everything’.
Or’ ‘License to be Bad’.
And ‘The Deficit Myth’.
Nor ‘Modern Monetary Theory and its Critics’.
Others here will have their own omissions.
You can say that we are a failed state – but what are we when we lack the critical tools/faculties to get to the heart of the matter? Doomed? Finished?
I keep hearing that MMT is now in the mainstream of public discourse. Is it? Because I still think we have a long, low way to go yet.
I was disappointed by that list
There is something suspect about that list. What I consider one of the best books on the list is on the Black Death, but it was originally published in 2004, although a new, expanded edition is expected early next year the G said. I would not have included MMT and Its Critics as some of the criticism is deeply unsound.
I checked with Boydell Press, the original publishers of The Black Death by Ole J. Benedictow, and found that the new edition, The Complete History of the Black Death, has a prospective price of £125 and will be available January 2021. Can there be a justification for this pricing even though it may be 1200 pages? Piketty’s recent tome was almost as long and cost about a quarter of that.
The best one is Zubhoff’s IMHO.
Zubhoff is good but hard work – I have a very good summary/review of the book if people are interested. Also read Rana Faroohar’s Do No Evil on the FAANGS, and Makers vs Takers on Wall St/City. Both excellent and easier reads. For those seriously interested I have the full reading list of the APPG on AI from the peer who chaired it – a good man who gets the problems.
Richard’s use of the term ‘mad’ is entirely appropriate. In the 60s-80’s it meant Mutually Assured Destruction referring to nuclear war. It’s equally applicable to the selfish, atomised thinking in today’s neoliberal economics which is guaranteeing environmental, economic and social destruction.
I really liked Jonathan Eldred’s ‘Licence to be bad’ and Shoshana Zuboff’s ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ books, alongside Stephanie Kelton’s ‘The Deficit Myth’ as the best of my morning books I have read in the past couple of years.
I almost get the impression that the Guardian/Observer have given up on economics commentary and analysis, at least outside what is written by their actual economics correspondents. It’s hardly surprising that you don’t get books on economics recommended, if you don’t ask for recommendations by someone who might know about such books. The implication – those in charge of the book review don’t think readers need to know, or are not interested. Maybe it’s because the Books editors themselves don’t understand the importance of economics. But in that case, the editors of the papers need to get a grip, and sort their Books sections out. It’s no use warbling on about the importance of climate crisis, social issues, etc etc, if every progressive attempt to tackle such questions is stymied by ‘we can’t afford it’. ‘Progressivism’ that neglects economic understanding is effectively castrated.
I got a plug in it today https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/18/covid-herd-immunity-funding-bad-science-anti-lockdown?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
What do you think of the Alliance for Full Employment, Richard? https://affe.co.uk/
If only they understood MMT….
This 2016 analytical article on why Trump beat Hilary Clinton provides a clue why the Labour Party does so badly. The author makes the link that the quality of a person’s education does strongly help determine how they vote and level of income plays less of a determining role:-
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-predicted-who-would-vote-for-trump/
The Labour Party continues to fail to make the link that taking an active role in educating voters in how economic and monetary systems really work is the key to electoral success.
Thomas Piketty, in ‘Capital and Ideology’ shows that this is a worldwide phenomenon. The demographics of voters (for all parties) has changed considerably in the last 50 years throughout the world.
My brother in law has made so much money out of his property dealings that he can de-couple from this country very easily and go somewhere else. They are both working from home in Croatia of all places.
I suspect that there are many ‘new-rich’ who can afford to do this.
I don’t envy them or resent them their opportunities but you can see where the half hearted (half -witted?) engagement with the real issues originates from. It’s because they have a means of escape. And that is the problem.
“[I]f coronavirus has taught us anything it is that we have interests in common.”
“In the case of society, we need to rediscover it. The existential question as to what our countries should be, what we have in common, and how we should share those common concerns needs to be addressed. Scotland is clearly leading the pack here, although it could be argued that the Brexit debate was a failed attempt to address this issue, most especially in England.”
These are sound observations, that should have resonance for everyone. They should take us back to the ‘Sermon on the Mound’ by Margaret Thatcher, and the newspaper interview which she gave before it about the solipsistic nature of a world without ‘society’, that rather gave the neoliberal free market, look after number-one and let (so-called) free markets correct whatever problems arise and in whatsoever way they resolve, game away. There was never the slightest possibility that would end anywhere – but where we are.
Scotland has been struggling with this issue it seems forever (long, long before Thatcher); and it is easy to overlook the fact that Scotland has its own share of self-serving, self-righteous, ideological dogmatists; indeed we have always specialised in producing a notably hard-faced, consequence-indifferent , stop-at-nothing variety of the species, who always manage to align themselves with power in Britain. It will no doubt be diehard Scottish Unionists who will prove the last defenders of the Internal Market Bill and the The Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) Bill (the provisions are specifically extended to Scotland in the text), to the bitter end; whatever dark place that fateful decision leads us all.
Very true
We all have them
Thanks for writing this Richard. A light went on in my head when I got to this sentence:
“The reason for the paranoia about inflation is that inflation deflates the value of debt, which debt is the instrument that those with wealth use to preserve their wealth and maintain their income whilst simultaneously, imposing their control upon most of the population.”
The ‘light’ was the use of debt for exactly as you say (and that has come together at the same time as listening to some others, like David Graeber and Michael Hudson, among others.
Thanks for that.
I am in their footsteps
Only one amendment to make:
“What we now have is a government that knows exactly what it is doing – acting almost entirely for the benefit of a small coterie of people within and around the government, with reckless indifference as to the consequence. What is more, they have even given up pretending that this is not the case.”
I’ve just finished ‘The Democracy Project’ by the late David Graeber – I recommend it as both an accurate picture of the present and an optimistic one for the future.
I doubt if these fundamental reforms will materialise until after Scottish independence.
Hope I am wrong. Wee ginger dug sums it up in his blog today.
“For millions around the globe the British Empire was a tale of tragedy, it is ending as a circus headed by a clown.”
Weegingerdug.wordpress.com
We all wish you a speedy recovery Paul. Good luck with your fundraiser.
I also hope Paul does well
Encouraging that his thinking seems not to have been impacted
Rejecting is key to any change at a UK level. All, or most, voters need to be represented in government through coalitions working together rather than the tired counterproductive adversarial system we have where only a fraction of the citizenry is represented. FPTP brings virtual, and now, actual dictatorship which means very bad governance.
But with Tories embedded in the system and Labour too putting self-serving interest before the needs of citizens it may be many decades before anything changes.
You, quite rightly, feel competent to raise these fundamental constitutional questions. It shows the paucity of ‘our’ ability to confront these deep flaws in our system that our leading modern constitutional historian ‘Lord’ Peter Hennesey,- national treasure – who so loves the British ‘good chaps’ theory of government – has absolutely nothing to say. He is totally dependent on the goodwill and patronage of the system he purports to study, to get priviledged access to senior civil servants and ministers and ex ministers.
It may seem a trivial example – but neatly illustrate how the system maintains its ‘there is no alternative’ narrative, and how difficult it will be to get these fundamental issues addressed in mainstream public and political debate
https://medium.com/@info_99507/whats-my-problem-with-lord-peter-hennessy-31958d300324
Please may I copy and post your article.
If not for profit, feel free, but please give a link to the original
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