The suggestion has been made in response to posts that I have written here that if you are on the left, you are either on the side of the working class in a struggle for power or you are, apparently, a technocrat fiddling with economic plumbing that might keep capitalism working. You cannot, they imply, be both.
The implication is binary. You can either focus on action or thinking out solutions, but not both.
You can overthrow the system, or support the existing system, but you cannot, apparently, radically improve what we have to ensure it delivers what people need.
One or the other is the order of the day, apparently.
That worldview is grounded in an old philosophical error. René Descartes divided the mind and body: thought versus matter, power versus substance. That Enlightenment dualism has long since been discredited. Yet many on the left are putting it on view again, resurrecting it in a crude economic form, suggesting that the class struggle is all that matters and nothing else does.
That suggestion is based on three profoundly mistaken assumptions.
The first is the idea that understanding how an economy works is irrelevant to changing it.
But, if that were true, why study exploitation, ownership or rent extraction at all?
And why understand interest rates, or inflation, or the mechanisms that allow capital to dominate labour?
To pretend that power floats free of institutions, whether monetary, fiscal, or regulatory, is to hand those institutions to the right.
To use what I think to be a helpful analogy, a plumber who refuses to understand how pipes leak is not a revolutionary. They are incompetent.
The second claim is that technocracy always serves capital. Now, of course, we know that expertise can be captured by elite interests. We know that much of it is. But that is precisely why those who care about labour, the politics of care, the planet and democracy must understand the tools that shape economic life. Knowledge is not the enemy in that case. Ignorance is. The possibility really does exist that someone who knows how money works can choose to use that knowledge in the service of working people, even if the left denies it.
Modern monetary theory is a good example: it describes the pipes, valves and flows of the system. Whether that knowledge is used for austerity or for the public good depends not on the theory, but on politics.
The third false assumption is that the economy is a battlefield for class warfare, and not a servant of society and everyone in it. The truth is that we do, of course, live in relationships. Every economic action connects to others.
The result is that you can worry about ownership and still care about how tax administration functions.
You can fight for higher wages and also understand bond issuance.
You can support class struggle while rejecting the idea that “hammers and sickles are the only tools that matter”.
To insist otherwise is to deny human complexity. People are not single-issue creatures. We are caring, calculating, emotional, strategic, anxious and hopeful , and often all at the same time.
In that case, Descartes was wrong. So too is any politics that revives his dualisms. Economics is not a choice between:
- Power or plumbing
- Struggle or structure
- Class or competence
It is all of those at once, and any pretence that it is otherwise is wrong, and the left will only change the world when it recognises this truth.
We do not, in that case, need less understanding of how economies actually function. We need more, directed toward the public good, aligned with workers' and communities' interests, and used to hold the powerful to account.
Liberation is not just about class struggle. It is also about skills with spanners, calculators, and even spreadsheets, and the willingness to see the whole system as a living set of relationships, capable of serving us all.
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Yes, lots of big points here.
There is a great quote in Tony Judt’s book ‘Ill Fares the Land’ (2010) p.139:
‘The worst thing about Communism is what comes after’ – Adam Michnik.
This statement applies not just to communism – it could apply to capitalism and Neo-liberalism equally. Anything that needs opposing, that needs changing – what comes after must be discussed and developed and agreed. It must work. There must be a plan. ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’ as one German general once remarked – so you need technocracy, plan B, plan C, you need to know the tools at your disposal and then do the Carl Schmitt bit – do it. Be sovereign with your power but also your brains.
A weakness of the Left is that they contend that what they prescribe is widely accepted and wanted when in fact it is not. And we see this when we delve into conversations with them – everyone might agree on the change bit, but the ‘how’ – which is key to capturing any gains – is underdeveloped. Too much desire; not enough technical detail.
Much to agree with.
Prof you are truly one of the most democratic, fair, pro-social people I know. You have privilege especially your intellect and social power and you continue to use it for public good.
A truth teller.
It’s like expecting a broken down car to work without fixing the engine. In fact a refusal to lift the bonnet, denying that the engine drives the car!
I have taken the issue into another forum, radio silence, engine ignorance, I believe one person is going to explore MMT so that’s a win.
Descartes also believed animals were machines, and their cries of pain, whilst under vivisection, were nothing but a machine squeaking.
Descartes duality it’s another Invisible Ideology – can be seen everywhere look at the NHS the mind is the cinderalla service, look at Westminster split sides of benches with people shouting at each other. Look at nature and how we other and exploit it.
We should be careful a bit. Descartes only described dualism as a proposition. The only thing he knew was that he couldn’t disprove it. He still doubted that the mind was different to the brain. He thought they were the same but couldn’t explain how they are the same. Modern interpretations are much harder. They have much less doubt it no doubt at all. That we truly control everything and responsible for it all.
Well yes but class does come into it in the sense of needing to understand the implications of allowing one class (group) of people to own and direct large amounts of capital with the possibility this class will get up to anti-social or “dominance” tricks unless countervailing methods are in place. In other words “reverse dominance” methods need to be structured into human societies and correctly understanding how money is created is a basic starting point for such structures:-
https://takku.net/mediagallery/media.php?f=0&sort=0&s=20150105180501874
Too many across the centre left spectrum are obdurate ideologues (they’re in the Greens too), and quite a few rather authoritarian. It is often difficult to persuade people to focus on primary threats (ownership of infrastructure, command of social and mainstream media, pollution, etc) than to esoteric points of C19 and C20 publications. When I characterise myself as a Bennite socialist, I get flak for being complicit with the capitalist! Polanski has been a refreshing innovator, and is clearly rattling a lot of cages as his economic understanding develops, so there is some hope!
I like using the ‘Likes’ buttons – and seeing what others ‘Like’ – so thank you for creating and maintaining the system … but the system has stopped working properly.
We are still waiting to find out why the plugin is no longer working
We use a third party piece of software and a part of that has gone AWOL
If it is not repaired soon we might have to think about changing the system.
I am rather uncomfortable with how the label ‘Left’ is being used with little attempt to define what part of the ‘Left’/left thinking is being referred to. There is not a homogenous block of ‘Left’ and, speaking as if there is, is only useful in setting up an army of ‘straw men’ … all arguing at cross purposes.
The ‘Left’ label can be used to describe views which span a spectrum of political beliefs/ ideologies that range between revolutionary to democratic socialist; total nationalisation of the economy to various degrees of mixed economy; anarchy and benevolent authoritarianism; Bennite socialists to Tankies. It is absurd to lump them all together. The only common denominator seems to be that all those on the ‘Left’ want a fairer, more equal society with redistribution of wealth… the differences are how to achieve it.
(However, I’m sure that there are those on the centrist Right who would say that they want that too … )
There is a video coming tomorrow…
The language of combat & struggle has been used by extremes of left and right for centuries. They think it hides from people their desire to be dictatorial. It’s been used by Lenin, Hitler, Napoleon and many more.
People outside of the domineering class co-operate. It’s how charities and groups like Amateur Theatre and Re-enactment societies keep going.
As usual, a very perceptive article – political false dilemmas are pervasive and pernicious, and need to be debunked – but . . .
For the record. Blaming Descartes for *any* sort of questionable, hard-and-fast binary distinction, including political distinctions, is attributing guilt by free association.
Descartes’ solution to the mind–body problem is indeed dualistic – the human mind is an immaterial substance; the human mind is a material one – but in Meditation VI, he writes, ‘I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am besides so intimately conjoined, and as it were intermixed with it, that my mind and body compose a certain unity. For if this were not the case, I should not feel pain when my body is hurt, seeing I am merely a thinking thing, but should perceive the wound by the understanding alone, just as a pilot perceives by sight when any part of his vessel is damaged’, etc.
In other words, the mind and the body are closely united, and interact closely with each other at every moment.
Also, mind–body dualism dates back well before the Enlightenment – to Plato, at least, in Western culture, and further back than that in Eastern thought.
Descartes has attracted a lot of flak down the years, but much of it misses the target, sometimes wildly – just thought I’d take the opportunity to point this out.
I will live with the representation of Descartes then.
The man might be misunderstood, but the idea attributed to him is still massively destructive – and is at the core of Enlightenment (so-called) thinking.
Having taught the history of philosophy for years at university level, I wouldn’t agree – but this dispute is tangential to the main topic of your post, so I’ll leave it at that.
I don’t think the man or woman on the Clapham omnibus is going to vote for class struggle. That’s what matters, especially with our electoral system.
Can we persuade enough people to vote for our ideas?
I think Your Party are unfortunately barking up the wrong tree with this. Hopefully the Green Party will not make the same mistakes and will at the very least push Labour considerably to the left by 2029.
Agreed
The last section of tonight’s Novara Media’s economics was just head in the hands. They were discussing Zack’s appearance on the Rory Stewart/ Alistair Campbell podcast. You were mentioned along with a mish mash of misunderstandings, which ended up lumping together Gary Stevenson, Grace Blakely, James Meadway, Yanis Varoufakis along with Keynes and Friedman… and Adam Smith thrown in for great measure!
Kieran Andrieu rescued the discussion a little by talking about Keynes … only to have Bastani regret that the economy has only been in surplus a few times since WW2! Sadly, no point in watching.
I think I will give that a miss