This item was posted on LinkedIn last night by Dr Raj Thamotheram, with whom I have been in occasional contact for quite a long time.
Removed at request of an image copyright holder
As is apparent, the message was about the failure of Thames Water's holding company to repay its debt, but what it actually made me think about was the claim that there was a difference between the position of centrists and progressives, which seems at least as interesting.
My problem with Raj's claim is that I don't think that there are many centrists anymore. I know that those who like to claim that they are moderates on both left and right seek to call themselves centrists, but as far as I can see, they are nothing of the sort. To me, they look like extremists.
It is extreme to believe that markets must supply the solutions to all problems.
It is as extreme to believe that the state must be constrained from undertaking activities that it is both perfectly capable of delivering and which would undoubtedly meet real needs that markets cannot address in society.
It is extreme to believe that the wealthy must be under-taxed because they are the only creators of value in society.
It is extreme to believe that everyone has a duty to work whatever opportunity the 'market' offers to them, and whatever their personal situation.
It is extreme to believe that those who do not conform to the markets' demands are unworthy of support.
And, it is extreme to believe that privately owned, wealth-extracting monopolies should be permitted to operate without hindrance in our society, even though the inevitable consequence is growing inequality and the stifling of real competition, innovation and opportunity.
All these things are at least as extreme as believing that the means of production should all be held in common, which is a view to which I have never subscribed, and which now largely exists as a figment of the imagination of those pro-market extremists who suggest that they are fighting socialism when what they are actually fighting is the mixed economy.
A genuine centrist does not promote the status of the individual above that of the community any more than they promote the interests of the community above that of the individual. Instead, they understand that the two live in constructive tension.
What is more, they will recognise that the relationship between the individual and community will vary for each person and will, of course, be dependent upon the strength of the community in the area in which they live.
Saying so, they will recognise that the real opportunity for choice that society must provide is in that spectrum between meeting needs individually and communally. It is in this spectrum that centrist politics really exists.
That said, a genuine centrist does, in my opinion, believe that it is the duty of the state to ensure that the needs of everyone are met before the capacity of society is used to address wants. That is because the centrist believes that everyone must have a chance to participate in the society of which they should be a part.
The centrist should also, by definition, be able to see themselves as part of a continuum. In other words, the present is not their sole focus, unlike the pro-market extremist, who sees the moment as being their only point of concern. In contrast, the centrist appraises appropriate action in the present, taking into consideration what they know about the future, having learned the lessons of the past. As a result, they cannot, for example, be indifferent to the consequences of climate change, unlike those who prioritise what they think to be market needs, who clearly are.
There is nothing centrist about the behaviour of either the Conservative or Labour parties at present. In my opinion, both are pro-market extremists.
Both seek to undermine, belittle and dismiss the power of the state to solve problems.
Each of them seeks to actively constrain its ability to meet need.
Both believe that it is only the private sector that can solve the problems that we face.
The leaderships of both parties ignore the interest of communities across the UK.
Their focus on choice highlights the priority that they give to the individual.
They ignore need and instead promote behaviour that will allow some to satisfy their wants, because those are the people that they associate and identify with.
As a consequence, they permitted bias to wealth within our society, as a result of which they permit a tax system that decidedly under-taxes those with the greatest capacity to pay.
Nothing about the behaviour of either the Conservatives or Labour can in any way be described as centrist. If you dismiss solutions that involve government. If you ignore the importance of community. If you are only interested in the powerful. If you are indifferent to those in need. If you are careless about the future. If inequality does not worry you. If you deliberately treat some as being of no concern. If you do all these things, then you are not a centrist. You are an extremist. In that case, the problem that we face is that at the next general election, what our two largest political parties will give us will be a choice between more or less competent versions of extremism.
I am not an extremist. I am a centrist.
I reject the extremes of those who claim to be pro-market.
I do not think that there is a viable alternative where the state is the answer to all known questions.
I believe that markets, government in all its varieties, individuals, communities, companies, charities and other voluntary organisations all have essential roles to play in our society, and each should be permitted to do what they are best at without crowding out the others because in that way we get the best outcomes.
You would have thought that should be obvious. But the dogmatists who dominate politics at present appear quite unable to comprehend this. For them, there would appear to be only one answer to any question, which is that the market must provide, even though that market that they promote is, itself, rigged in favour of a few.
The truth is that the centre has not held. It has given way to extremism. The need is to rebuild it.
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It is extreme to assign those views to the vast majority of people. It’s just your usual straw man nonsense, coming from someone who is most certainly nowhere near the centre.
That’s quite weird because first of all there’s nothing extreme about me, and second I only meet people deeply disillusioned with our extremist politicians who are desperate fur something better that it seems you would wish to deny them. Why?
I rarely contribute to this blog. But that’s not because I am not interested. Far from it. I read virtually all the contributions made. I find the standard of contributions and discussion extremely high. If and when i have a contribution to make or a question to ask, I would have no hesitation in doing so.
It is therefore with some surprise that I see the contribution from “Hannah Barton”. It is clearly nothing more than an excuse to be blatantly rude. It does not attempt to engage with the issues or enter into constructive discussion. Perhaps its only merit is to remind the rest of us that there are people out there who prefer to stay in their own close (and prejudiced) world rather than getting out, exploring and understanding the world around them.
Your second para summarises exactly what I occasionally post such comments
I pile more from ‘her’ (because it is safe to assume the name is false) have been deleted.
Indeed, the vast majority of people, the electorate, do not hold the pro-market views Prof Murphy expresses. But the vast majority of politicians, Tory and Labour, act as if these are their views. They don’t SAY so — they can’t, for example, say they want to cancel the NHS — but that’s how they ACT.
Or do you define the centre as halfway between Tory and Labour, which seems to me to be splitting hairs?
Nothing new here I’m sorry to say in terms of so-called centrist politicians actually adopting pro-market extremist policies. The Labour Party which has tried to pitch itself as a progressive centrist party has always been vulnerable to individuals who have been duped by the unbalanced market fundamentalist ideas of the wealthy. Here’s the story of Phillip Snowden a very senior member of the Labour Party in the 1920’s early 1930’s who was eventually thrown out of the party:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Snowden,_1st_Viscount_Snowden
How do you stop progressive policies being ditched in the Labour Party like the current charlatan Starmer is attempting to do? Not a great deal I don’t think until you have so-called progressive mainstream media papers like the Guardian and the Mirror calling for the Labour Party to refuse to accept donations from wealthy business people and indirectly campaigning organisations affiliated to the party. Progressive ideas like Richard’s Taxing Wealth Report are not going to make much headway in the current Starmer Party (once upon a time the Labour Party) until this type of funding is banned from the party.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/labour-conservative-party-donations-2023-spending-analysis/
https://thedarkarts.substack.com/
(See articles entitled “Where Labour and the Tories got their money” and Labour’s Lobbying problem”)
I fundamentally disagree with the narrative (centrist, extremist, marketist etc). In the case of water, society needs:
a) adequate supply of drinking water – taking into account climate-related events
b) that sewage is treated in a fashion such that UK rivers and seas are not contaminated.
There has been a 30 year experiment using “the market” via private companies, coupled to regulators.
Results 1: In 1980, the UK was losing around 1cubic Km of clean water/yr due to leaks. In 2024 the UK was losing 1 cubic Km due to leaks (about 300 olympic sized pools per day).
Results 2: there is one river in the Uk that is safe to swim – this only due to public action.
The investments by “the market” needed both to stop leaks and treat sewage never happened. “The market” financially excavated the water companies.
What is left is govermnet funding & government action. The modalities of this are worth discussing, T
The idea that “the market” has any significant role (apart from as a supplier of equipment) is laughable given the past 30 years. Only fantasists would imagine it has an operational role.
Neither LINO nor the Tories want to do this (involve gov in a meaningful way). This makes them unfit for gov of any sort.
We can extend the above to a wide range of areas, health, eduction, transport, power etc etc. Both main parties are diff side of the same coin (or pair of buttocks – chose your metaphore as suits) – neither have anything to offer, zero, nada, zilch.
So what is a better narrative?
The narrative is:
What does the Uk need to do to (this is the example for water):
a) fix endemic the leaks
b) clean up the highly polluted rivers & sea.
30 years of privatisation/”the market” did not work. This leaves government.
What needs to be discussed is government methods/modalities. In a separate blog you covered Thames Water – the most egregious failure.
There was a discussion on compo (or not) for shareholders. I assume that pension funds are not operated by imbeciles – thus they knew what they were getting into. If they didn’t – they don’t deserve to run pension funds. But this is a detail.
What Joe citizen wants, right now, is action. The only way this can happen is if gov takes over & politicians finally take operational & financial responsibility for the critical infrastructure on which the country depends. The market experiment has had its day. That said, when gov steps in and makes capital investments – then this has to be at the expense of the current shareholdings – they get diluted and over time their holdings evaporate.
Practical politics – delivering services for the citizen that are fit for purpose and at a fair price. Gov can do this – the market has over several decades shown that it cannot. Time for a change.
& for those that may think “yeah so what does Parr know” – I used to run an industrial effluent treatment plant & have a modest knowledge of the operations side of things – following the Camelford disaster – I wrote to staff emphasising the dangers of aluminium sulphate (used to clean up water)..
Thanks
I don’t think you are a centrist Richard. The political ‘centre’ is not a universal or a-historical ‘common sense’; it changes in different in different times and places. If we were writing and reading in Afghanistan now we might say something like ‘the centre position is that girls should go to school, but enabling them to go to university is extremism’; when slavery was the norm centrists saw abolitionists as extremists; the centrist view on women voting was votes just for middle and upper class women…
The centrist ideology is in essence this: ‘things are not too bad, radical change is risky, best to just tinker a bit’. It is the ideology of the status-quo – in every time and place it accepts the framework of that society’s norms – it is in fact the most ideological position of any political stance. Sometimes it is ‘reasonable’ (because sometimes things really are not too bad, and radical change really is always risky) – but nowadays, up against capitalism’s dallying with social breakdown and the reality of climate-ecological breakdown, to which there are no non-radical solutions, centrism is unreasonable.
In the UK neoliberalism has cohered the centre and right for 40 years – it IS the centrist position there – and it is the right that is breaking the consensus because they have taken on board the fact that climate-ecological breakdown, etc, are existential threats to current lifestyles and economies, and they prefer to ‘preserve capitalism by undemocratic means’ (as one definition of fascism has it). But centrism is lost in the UK – anybody can see it is lost – because it wants both of 2 incompatible futures: the radical action that reason and evidence imply, and the relative inaction the status-quo demands.
So what is a better narrative?
Geoff. If Neoliberalism has cornered the centrist position for 40 years and most voters like what they’ve done why are the Tories its arch-proponents so much behind in the polls?
Mr Cox,
I think your argument is a-historical. It is true that the “centre” moves; but when you describe a historical “centre”, there was no “centre”; before Party politics there was no centre, and before the mid-nineteenth century even ‘Party’ was so loose in its structure and discipline, there was no “centre”. A “centre” in politics is essentially a modern concept.
For some of the major issues you describe the determinant was not a political “centre”; but a moral position. The key to the moral position, for example on slavery was not political or “centrism”, but based on religion, or property rights. The problem was two fold; first, when slavery was an acceptable norm it was because property rights (even chattel property rights in humans) possessed priority over human rights. Hence, emancipation of slavery was only achieved through a full financial compensation to slave owners for their slaves, at market value. It as the only way to achieve emancipation, because of the depth of commitment in Parliament and beyond to the priority of property rights. Second it wasn’t “centrism” that made slavery otherwise morally acceptable, but religion. A compromise in Christianity with slavery has unambiguous roots in St.Paul, that possesses a very long and uncomfortable intellectual history. In the slavery emancipation compensation records (1833-8), seventy Church of England clergymen are listed as beneficiaries, and a further substantial number served as trustees, or similar.
The Overton window has moved so far to the right that anything that looks like centrism of 30, 40, 50 yeas ago now looks like left wing extremism. We have to resist the polarisation that the extremists want to force upon us.
Is it a shame that Labour seems to be continuing to follow the Conservatives to the right, just as a new generation sees the moral and social bankruptcy of the neoliberal philosophy that the winner takes all, there is no such thing as society only individuals, there is only taxpayers money, the state can’t afford to do anything, that has led to such outrageous wealth for a tiny few. The ridiculous monomaniacal focus on GDP and growth and productivity and not on the environment and wellbeing. And the truth encapsulated by concepts such as MMT and Doughnut Economics. We don’t have to live in a world that is so unfair, unequal and unstable.
There *is* an alternative.
Agreed
Thank you for this, Richard. There are so many points with which I agree. I’d like to make one point.
So much is about the use of language. The Tories are being advised on language by Frank Luntz, an American, who gave Bush “climate change” instead of “global warming”. He said it sounded less frightening and more like a natural cycle. Look where that’s got us.
He’s given the Tories “independent providers” instead of “private healthcare companies”. His suggestion for the next alteration of meaning is “economic freedom” instead of “capitalism”.
My point is this. Maybe it’s a good time to rebrand what the Tories so disparagingly name as “socialism” when attacking Starmer (and which Labour has abandoned anyway)
Centralists. Centralism? Any ideas?
Simply refuse to accept that either Party is anywhere near the centre. Each mention of Labour being on the “centre left” can be mocked and laughed at. Each mention of the Tories being a “centre right” Party (and yes, that was claimed by a Tory Minister on BBCQT) should be equally derided.
I haven’t quite thought this through to an action plan! But it is the LANGUAGE we must must challenge. And separate the centre from the extremes.
Agreed
What is the alternative language for centrism?
Few under understand that words can be invented. For example, Auguste Comte, the 19th century French sociologist invented the word “altruism.” A centrist essentially wants a balance between the market and the state. We can invent a word to describe this “balancing” just as Comte did with altruism also a word for a form of balancing.
I agree
But it has to be obviously understood
Many of the words which might apply have already been nabbed:
“Progressive”? Nope. Wrong anyway. “Democrats”? Nope. For obvious reasons.
“Common Sense” has been nicked by a right leaning faction of the Tory Party. “The Middle”? Not snappy enough.
“Left Out”? Nope!
I’ll have a think. I like language when it works – NOT when it’s twisted to hide a malign purpose.
Thanks
Conciliation.
Conciliator?
Does it sell?
No, it doesn’t sell, but it is till better than a “Centre” that is, as an incontrovertible fact, on wheels; shunted around by right-wing journalists to suit their latest scripted political scam.
I get that
On the one hand, I don’t think we should get hung up on a “label”. Trying to define “Centrism” and encapsulate it in a persuasive concept/image will be no easier than truly defining “left” or “right”. What’s at issue here is primarily the perception/understanding of how money works in society, how government interacts with money in practice (currently mostly to society’s detriment) and how the relationship between government and money has worked in the past (sometimes even to society’s benefit), and in today’s environment with an election nearing, what we can and should do to improve that relationship.
We are faced with the stark fact that society in general, and governments in particular, are grossly ignorant of how these things do work, and how they could and should work. The task is to rectify that ignorance. Richard’s blog goes a long way down that road, and there are more than encouraging signs. Richard’s “Taxing Wealth Report” has incalculable potential to provide the answers that people deserve when they constantly ask “how will we pay for this?”. Hopefully, if we can get those answers in front of people, they will begin to understand that they have been misled by both left and right, and there is a real possibility of a more sensitive, informed and cogent response to society’s needs.
I am now going to contradict myself. At the head of this response, I said “I don’t think we should get hung up on a “label”. Well, in the case of MMT, I’m not so sure. Modern Monetary Theory provides the clearest explanation to date of how money is created, distributed and retrieved, and it clearly contradicts many of the assumptions that are, and have been made in the past. And it makes nonsense of the claims that politicians of all main parties proffer about the “affordability” of proposed policies. So MMT clearly has a lot on its shoulders. But is “Modern Monetary Theory” a good name?. “Modern” has all the potential connotations of being new, brash and potentially untested. It is easy to imagine detractors dismissing it as “yet another bunch of economic theorists pushing the latest fad.” Why should they rely on this new fangled stuff rather than the stuff they know?.
The truth is that MMT is not that Modern. It has been put into practice many times when circumstances demanded, albeit unconsciously, and without anybody having to read the then non-existent MMT manual. I believe I have read that academics were formulating this description (in due course to become the “MMT” description ) of how the money economy works, as long ago as the middle of the last century. It is only recently that public knowledge of MMT has become noticeable, particularly following the publication of “The Deficit Myth”. So, it’s an unfortunate handicap to imply, by its name, that MMT is new, untested, and unproven.
I have similar concerns about “Theory”. To detractors, and public alike, this could equally be interpreted as “untried and untested, yet to be validated”. And I’m not sure that “Theory” is an appropriate term to use. MMT is after all primarily a description of how things actually work. If it were to be found to be wanting, it would be because the description was in some way inaccurate, not because a “Theory” had been disproven.
I would be more than happy if a magic fairy came along and gave us a brand new name for MMT that would capture the general publics imagination!
I have gone on at some length because it is abundantly clear that neither of the main parties are capable of absorbing a challenge to their understanding of how society and the economy work. It seems almost inevitable that it will take a third party to break the logjam. That will take time, and will require an enormous amount of work in promoting an informed and common sense approach government spending.
Richard has complete the Herculean task of preparing the “Taxing Wealth Report” and I know he will take every opportunity to get good coverage of the common sense ideas/conclusions within it. I wish him enormous good luck. And if there is anything we can do to help, please ask!!!!
Many thanks
I will ask
And, I wholly agree that MMT is badly named – Bill Mitchell’s bad, as my sons would say
Since centrists are essentially “balancers” and the universe works on the principle of balancing then an alternative word for centrists has to revolve around another word for balancing. Auguste Comte’s invention of the word “altruism” provides a clue.
That is the word I have been playing with
But balancing the books is a poor precedent
If you don’t accept that the Labour are centre left and Tories are centre right, then your perception of where the centre is are so distorted from reality so as to be meaningless.
The whole point is that there is a normal distribution with most people close to the centre and fewer and fewer people as you go to the extremes.
Pretending that the vast majority of people are NOT in the centre just makes a mockery of the whole concept, and emphasises what an extremist you actually must be!
With respect, that’s total nonsense
Sure that might be true of politics at a moment but as the late Austin Mitchell MP once said to me, when he joined Labour he was thought to be right wing and when he left parliament decades later he was apparently a left winger but had not, in his opinion, changed his mind in between. So what happened? The location of the centre of population shifted. But did that really make him an extremist? Of course it did not. It just meant the centre was now much further other right. Unless you say that the push by the media, Tufton St, etc defines ‘normal’, and I don’t, then your claim is a meaningless claim in political terms even if you have a basic grasp of the normal distribution at a point in time.
@ Trever Chessun
Most people, when asked, say they’re “middling” or centrist, but on closer questioning have quite polarised views.
Meanwhile, the market fundamentalist views which much the political and media class seem determined to normalise remain much less common among the public. They’ve always been smuggled in on the back of the social conservative vote, and now that’s finally falling apart.
Agreed
So, how do we rebalance opinion?
I wish I knew, Richard. Find better language, as others suggest? Infiltrate the institutions and recruit like-minded people, as the neoliberals have done? At the very least, people like yerself must keep plugging away.
Potterji’s observation is acute. Don’t expect of people more than realistic compromise offers. The alternative is culture wars. Nobody said it was easy. Britain is not, and never has been quite what it ostentatiously claims, or what it prefers to believe. Illusions are held close.
While not specifically relevant to the title of this thread, a pertinent article appeared in today’s Sunday Times. Daniel Susskind’s article referring to his book ‘Growth: A Reckoning’ expounding his views that we need BETTER growth (particularly related to research in Technology & Environmental development) is essential. ‘Growth’ is not necessarily bad, but the likes of Reeves need to push for a different type of growth than she is currently doing.
The abandonment of the £28billion commitment to Environmental measures is her biggest failing so far.
There is a lot more we can do for each other…..
Only the state has the power to regulate. Only the state can create debt-free money. The state has to be an integral part, even maybe the dominant part, of the economy.
There is no such thing as debt free money
All money is debt
Fair enough, but his other 2 sentences are important. Too often the “mixed economy” descends into the feral gouging capitalism we have at present because the State part of the mix has been captured by financialisation, Tufton Street lobbyists and “influencers”, press billionaires and sundry others and has emasculated what is possibly the most important part of the State’s role which is regulation of the market or capitalist sector so that it performs primarily on behalf of the citizenry, and its ordinary employees and only secondarily for the benefit of shareholders and executives. The exact opposite of what we have today.
With proper regulation and other forms of governance and ownership – co-operatives , workers self directed enterprises etc – the fundamentals of nationalisation could be achieved by other means.
Personally, i would tend to be extreme in some areas – the ownership of land for instance which is the legacy of powerful men with a lot of swords, and more recently, with the enclosures, of rich men with clever lawyers. But then what really is extreme in one era isn’t in another. The normal curve is just a statistical description of a population at a point in time and says nothing about the upper and lower limits being immutable. Height distribution is good example of how it can change.
What is important, in whatever way we describe ourselves, is what effect the policies we propose have on individuals, especially those less fortunate. Neither party seems to care about those at the bottom of the curve.
The state can’t create taxation free money but it can’t normally be balanced with its spending for at least three reasons the private sector wants to save and import and the state wants to be in a position to successfully bid for real resources at reasonable prices.
[…] Cross-posted from Richard Murphy’s blog ‘Funding the Future’ […]
There are three possible ways of dispensing resources in our society – market, redistribution and gifts. The centrist position should be that all are viable – but not equally viable for all needs. They have all their pros and cons.
So, for example, the market can’t supply a good education, because market actors must have the opportunity to dismiss a customer s/he can’t satisfy. But that is no option for education; all have the right to it.
And so on.
The marketeers are as extreme as the stalinists, but in a different corner. According to Philip Mirowski the think the market is god, and we humans shouldn’t even try to understand it or its consequences. That is extremism to me.
Very good. I would add that driving markets is the notion that money is a “thing” that can be accumulated to stave off uncertainty. Few understand the adverse effects of thinking this way.
As others have noted, the political centre has moved from 30 years ago. That does not make the new centre, the new “unbiased” compromise position.
The Russian and North Korean states would both want to suggest that their “centre” was The Centre.
Now that Labour are prompting Tory ideals, the new centre is much further to the Right.
As many on the Left have recognised, they are unrepresented. That this has not occurred democratically, is of concern.
While the public may want some obvious solutions, it is right to look at why certain public services have failed.
We’re supposed to learn from history. If there is one thing that history shows, is that we don’t.
Agreed
Dear All
Maybe a good time to speak up for the second to last time…………….
It has come to my attention that I am being ‘missed’ apparently for whatever reason.
I’m actually quite uncomfortable with this but……………….
First of all, let us just remember that it is this blog and the work of the man who runs it, that is the most important aspect – not who comes along, least of all me.
Secondly, this blog achieved for me what I wanted. Superbly.
For me MMT is a truth.
I say this because all the other failed snake water and received wisdom we are living under is just what Abbey Innes (2023) says it is:- ‘Ahistorical’. That is to say that ‘Conceived or done without consideration of history or historical context’. We are living with a negation of truths – social, economic, industrial, anthropological etc. All the truth of MMT needs now (and has been revealed time and time again to be historical fact on this excellent blog) is an opportunity to be put into practice in order to observe how true it is and monitor and adjust/moderate or even abandon it if it leads us to disaster (be assured that advocates of MMT are better and more observant scientists and interventionists than any Neo-liberal).
It is also true – unfortunately – that for MMT to be put into practice there will need to be revolution in the way markets are managed and how political funding is resourced. Because market fundamentalism’s untaxed profits are creating political hegemony in a system where there should be equal competition for ideas and even hegemonies themselves. Currently, one hegemony is out-funded by another to the point where the under-funded hegemony has had to make itself look like the overfunded one. The result? One hegemony, no democracy, no political plurality. No hope. No solutions. No courage. No politics.
As Russell Ackoff (p.80, 2010) succinctly puts it:
‘How far an organisation can evade government regulation is proportional to the amount it contributed to the election of successful candidates: Lobbyists are lawyers who no longer practice law; they buy it. Elected officials whose campaigns are financed by corporations sell the law to them. Together they form a vicious circle from which the public cannot escape………………)’. This is your politics now entering the Starmer era. I’ve shredded my poll card already.
Additionally, we also need a revolution to unlock the legal system that underpins the neo-liberal hegemony – from the legal status of corporations to the responsibilities of the UK government to its citizens. All this needs to be re-purposed.
We also have a sound theoretical basis on this blog for an effective system of taxation under MMT, so that as MMT creates money, it is destroyed in order to help combat inflation. You don’t leave an overflowing bucket wasting a resource like water, over spilling and causing accidents and damage: you empty it out for the purpose you were filling it for and refill and repeat. Is that not the natural economic cycle of money creation and destruction? We also know – or at least anticipate – that MMT does not last forever – it is a tool that needs to be used on and off when required. And what is worse is not to use it for the common good (bankers please note).
Your host also generously caters for those numpties who believe taxation pays for everything in his Taxing Wealth Report and also has done tremendous work in exploring Resource Accounting – accounting for what we are exploiting/taking instead of just treating things as if they are magically ‘just there’ and only accounting once ‘value has been added’ (I have to laugh – but not at Resource Accounting).
Which leads me onto my third point, and to why I no longer will be here.
Our only obstacle in all of this is Politics. In fact, what we have as politics at the moment is not even worthy of the name, but we’ll put that to one side for the moment and deal with the reality.
No – not ‘political economy’ – another discussion point on this blog – I’m talking about politics in its purest, fundamental sense. And also, therefore, democracy.
Having satisfied myself on economic and fiscal matters care of a host and fellow contributors in whom my trust is marrow deep, (Mike Parr, John Warren, Clive Parry etc) I now have a rather intense gaze directed to the political shall we say? I need to wrestle with that. However, in the political sphere I am far less trusting. Indeed, I have become very suspicious of words this last 14 years so please forgive me. This is where I break with you.
To guide me and my meagre faculties is Chantal Mouffe and her use of Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberal democracy which many of you might find unacceptable. I could not care less. Mouffe was very brave to use Schmitt’s optics and entirely rational to do so.
My contempt for liberalism (voiced more reasonably in the past no doubt) has got the better of me I’m afraid. As Mouffe contends, liberalism’s emphasis on the individual cannot be reconciled with democracy, since the latter is concerned with more collective sentiments and objectives. The philosophical logic of each excludes the other. Fact.
According to Mouffe (writing in 2014), she posits that politics is a highly developed form of warfare devoid of violence, with a winner and loser usually. Politics is a competition between hegemonies.
The trouble is what constitutes violence? At one extreme there is Gaza. At the other end of the scale we have more subtle violences – economic violence – the withdrawal of money by a sovereign currency printing state for example – hurting and abandoning people like it has been doing here since 2010 – if not before by Mr Blair and Mr Brown. Starve them, make them ill, blame them, harry them but just don’t kill them – it looks bad and is a little too obvious! And it draws attention to those making billions at our expense. But violence has many subtle forms – and I contend that our liberal world has just not acknowledged this yet.
So, what to do?
Well, that is the journey I am about to embark on now, free of liberalism and free of the over- accommodating over wrought, suffocating and earnest English middle class ‘politeness’ and reasonableness that always fails in its dealings with unreason.
It’s always someone else’s job in the Neoliberal/liberal world to be reasonable – never something that such liberals (and that is what they are, fundamentally) will impose on themselves in the name of personal freedom – a perfect circle, a self enclosed system as Ms Innes points out in all neo-liberal and other fascistic thinking.
Violence in this sense, self fulfilling and at other’s expense – whether full on or subtle, weapons or words – has to be met with violence otherwise we are doing just what Mirowski (2013 p.242) has pointed out in that we are just reduced ‘ to judiciously studying’ the new realities that these extreme liberals create time and time again at our expense. In other words, we are going to have to wrestle with pigs, get filthy and learn to enjoy it too.
A hegemony is a domination. Can any of you liberals cope with that? Does it offend your senses? What do you think power is about? Could you cope with being in hegemony for the ‘common good’? Could you say Schmitt’s words ‘Sovereign is he who makes the exception’ when you enforce taxes sufficiently on those funding your adversaries and raiding the Treasury? Or if you take a well known newspaper to task for promoting fascism?
Can any of you here do that? I wonder? Learn to enjoy less pluralism with people who hate you? Perhaps you’ll have no choice in the long run because as we know, Neo-liberalism – like Nazism and Leninist communism – is not about choice at all. Liberals propose working with people who deny them equality in the political process, who deny them resources, who deny them legitimacy. Ridiculous – I ask you! Really?
Recently our host did himself a disservice to my mind. He declared that he was a ‘centrist’ which made me feel quite sad but also justified in removing myself. I understand that Richard creates this blog so that HE can think. Good. Think on this then, if you will.
‘Centrism’ is another liberal political hoax. I’m sorry to say that. But I feel it is true. Centrism is still trying to do what liberalism simply cannot: to reconcile the primacy of the individual with that of the collective. It will always cave in to the individual over the collective because it is fundamentally subjective. Liberalism is about the ‘me’ not the ‘we’.
Centrism is a centrifugal force in politics (it should be called ‘centrifugalism’ perhaps) that does what all centrifuges do – it separates – yes? It accepts differences – separations – and then thinks it can make them work together. Centrism is so typically Western as well – obsessed with noting differences rather than similarities whereas the Near and Far East seem more occupied with similarities and common interest.
Centrism is Western philosophical failure writ large. Because it ascribes reasonableness and rationality even to competing ideas in a way that neo-liberalism, Nazism and Leninist communism does not. It is far too accommodating of even anti-social ideas. This makes centrism – and the liberalism that drives it – weak and naive. Even more so, if finance is not watched closely under the guise of ‘freedom’. Centrism is half hearted hegemony and inadequate. I’m sorry, but I think it true. You cannot reason with unreason. And you cannot reason with an unreason that is better funded than you.
To create a synthesis of ideas to run a society, you need to be looking for commonalities and also accepting the bad behaviours that less naive liberals like Adam Smith and Frederic Bastiat acknowledged in history and that need to be dealt with (monopolies for example). In other words, human frailties have to be taken into consideration and that people/individuals are NOT always rational. The slack that modern liberals give to individuals is over. Sorry. Too slack. Too much benefit of the doubt. Too little reward of any faith.
If Mouffe is right and that politics is always a competition between competing hegemonies then pity the rest of society that has to live with the consequences (yo-yoing between war, poverty, austerity and state-sanctioned exploitation to new-deal, welfarism etc., – too much a contingent existence in my book for ordinary people). What is needed is something alluded here before – a form of permanent constitution above hegemonic competition – but one that needs to put the collective FIRST and at its heart should be an interventionism against individual gain over the collective.
The West – the UK God help us – needs something constitutive like the ancient Chinese had and may even have now – a ‘Gaunzi’ a guide as to how to manage a society passed between rulers to keep the people happy, productive and loyal (and now including sustainable use of the Earth’s resources) that involves certain interventions from the State against the historical bad behaviour in markets in particular, mitigating the impacts produced on society and the planet of the instability that these markets promote and create. (Weber, 2021).
And before anyone chips in about the dark side of Chinese Communism lets recall the post Soviet joke at the beginning of Abbey Innes book shall we (most instructive):
‘We always knew that everything the Party told us about communism was a lie. What we didn’t know was that everything they told us about capitalism was true.’ (frontispiece, 2023).
How will a Western Guanzi style constitution get a hold? Well, with great difficulty I imagine and also maybe not without violence (verbal or otherwise) of some sort as unpalatable as that seems. But if Mouffe is right, what replaces it needs to be hegemonic in principle. It needs to crowd out neo-liberalism – for sure. Neo-liberalism needs to be avulsed from society. It may have its uses but operationally its shallowness and uselessness has been reified.
We live in perverse times, where we are going to need radical ideas supported by radical politics and unlike (say) Thatcherite neo liberalism – Centrism is NOT radical. To make matters worse, the radical in this case – the use of MMT is just the historical story of money creation in action and how it created functioning markets and societies in the first place (Desan 2014) – it is already a historical (but oft denied) fact. It’s not new. In this case, ‘the radical’ is going back to good ideas. How messed up is that? And what does it tell us about the hegemony holding that back? It is the Right who have been radical by destroying history. And they will not stop – like the Soviets. As Milan Kundera said ‘He who controls the past, controls the future’ – a lesson learnt by one who lived under Soviet control.
This fundamental disapproval of liberalism/centrism I have makes me very bad company on a blog like this and it is tinged with sadness but I am beyond mincing my words with confused liberals. But that is why I have gone.
But I am also at this moment in time suffused with energy, excited and feel close to something big and meaningful although my journey with Mouffe is far from complete. But this is about politics – not economics or money. My mental health is fine BTW – I have responsibilities for whom I must not make life harder than the Neo-liberals already have. I’m a working stiff after all.
And, when I arrive at my conclusions, then that will be my plot of England upon where I will stand and defend myself and look out at the world, with my back straight and eyes wide open, no doubt tut-tutting judiciously. It’s as simple as that and everything I want.
What we all feared would happen, has already happened but is actually worse than what we feared (please note Mr Kruse), because we have failed to keep an eye on all those new millionaires created under the guise of ‘liberalisation’ and how they have abused their freedom and bought our democracy to give themselves unparalleled hegemony by pouring ever more untaxed millions into the political system. But we must all come to terms with it in our own way.
This is my way, that’s all.
But make no mistake there can be no pussy-footing around with Neo-liberalism. These are people who despite having everything want more. It is time for the Left to ‘make the exception’. At the moment we need to play low and dirty like our opponents. Being rational and honest is not enough in these fascist times where emotion seems to count for everything.
So, Cheerio then.
And please let that be the end of it. Attention is elsewhere. New people will come to the blog. There are still excellent and thoughtful contributions here. Life goes on. Sorry about the essay. But in principle at least I believe I am right to raise these political issues as the ideas discussed here are GOOD ideas.
Russell Ackoff ‘Systems Thinking for Curious Managers’ (2010)
Abbey Innes ‘Late Soviet Britain’ (2023)
Christine Desan ‘Making Money’ (2015)
Philip Mirowski ‘Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste’ (2013)
Chantal Mouffe ‘On The Political’ (2005)
Chantal Mouffe ‘For a Left Populism’ (2018)
Isabella Weber ‘How China Escaped Shock Therapy’ (2021).
Thanks PSR
And one comment: if you think what I described as centrism is not radical, you missed the point. If seeking optimality on behalf of all people is not radical I am not sure what is. I fear you are heading for decidedly naive extremism, but it is your choice. Go well.
Thanks for the reading list PSR – I’ll get the Chantal Mouffe.
Thanks for the essay – excellent as always (i.e. I learnt stuff)
As you know I have a new project, (you are very welcome to join)
One thing I notice about the neolibs (of all shades) what they say/promise is used as window dressing (& natch the end result is not what you expected).
However, two can play at the “wolf in sheeps clothing game” – which is what I hope to do.
The new project is likely to out last me – but I hope that it is possible to out think/out maneouver those whose only focus is money & its acqusition.
Join us.
“At the moment we need to play low and dirty like our opponents.”
No !!!
Like this you mean:-
https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1612048162746687493
Mr Schofield – thanks for the vid – which nicely exposes Starmer’s hypocrisy (he buys it wholesale you know).
However, one needs to play a quite different game if one is to beat the neo-libs (or indeed the libs).
Showing them up as a pack of liars is not enough – everybody already knows that.
One needs to dissemble and misdirect – don’t allow them any “framing space” – indeed develop new narratives which they will struggle to conteract.
Adam Smith, let alone Karl Marx, would be dismissed by the current Labour mob. Smith makes the argument for intervention in ‘Moral Sentiments’, the book the Tories never read, when a business does something to damage the well-being of citizens – something Smith considered paramount.
I am proud to consider myself a centerist, and a LibDem as I think they are the most centerist of major political parties.
Out canvassing at the weekend I was explaining our position as beeing middle of the road and the resident said ” the danger of being in the middle of the road is you wil get run over, by one side or the other” Quite an interesting comment.
🙂