As I have already noted, I have been thinking about a question that people often ask me, which is how do we actually create the change that might lead to a politics of care?
It is a fair question to ask me. After all, I have spent decades writing about tax justice, economics, public finance, inequality, and the failures of neoliberalism. But if there is one thing I have learned, it is that movements that create change are not built from arguments alone. They are, instead, built from stories.
People need a framework
Let me contextualise this.
The principal reason why neoliberalism has been so successful is not that it is right. It is not, has not been, and never will be, not least because its economics are deeply flawed.
Its success, then, lies elsewhere. It has come from providing a simple framework through which people can understand the world. That message is straightforward. It is that:
- Individuals compete.
- Markets allocate resources.
- Government interferes.
- Success is personal.
- Failure is personal, too.
That story is easy to tell, easy to remember and easy to repeat.
That is why facts alone cannot dislodge that narrative. Something else has to take its place.
So what might that alternative framework look like?
For me, it begins with a very different understanding of what it means to be human, from which I can develop what I call a politics of care.
This is that alternative narrative:
- We are social beings.
- We are interdependent.
- We rely on one another throughout our lives.
- We flourish because we care and because others care for us.
From that, there follows a very different understanding of society:
- The purpose of society is to create the conditions in which everyone can flourish.
- The purpose of the economy is to support that goal.
- The purpose of the state is to help us achieve it together.
That is a framework. It is simple enough to remember, but it also has profound implications for how we think about everything from taxation and housing to health and education. It is enough to build a political revolution on, and that is what we need.
People need a language
Ideas spread when people can borrow the words.
Looking back over my own work, some of the concepts that have had the greatest impact have been those that gave people language they could use for themselves.
“Tax justice” is one example. The term was unknown when John Christensen and I began using it. It has been in widespread use since then.
“Secrecy jurisdiction”, a term I did not invent, but did define so that it became useful, is another.
”The Green New Deal”, of which I was co-creator and principal scribe for a long time, is definitely another.
These ideas mattered because they provided ways of describing realities that people could already see but had struggled to articulate. And they have had a significant impact.
The same challenge exists now
If we want to create an alternative to neoliberalism, we need language that people can adopt and use in their own lives and communities.
Perhaps that means talking about a politics of care and an economics of hope.
Perhaps it means describing the last forty years as an Age of Indifference and asking how we might create a new Age of Compassion.
Perhaps it means putting ideas such as flourishing, belonging, security, creativity and care at the centre of our political vocabulary.
The precise phrases matter less than the principle. If people cannot repeat an idea, it will never become a movement.
Change takes time
There is another lesson in all this. It took me a while to learn it, but more than a quarter of a century of campaigning has made me realise a truth, which is that narratives do not change overnight.
Neoliberalism did not suddenly appear in 1979 or 1980. Its intellectual foundations were laid three decades earlier by Hayek, Friedman and the Mont Pelerin Society, which they co-created. The ideas were developed, refined, debated and promoted long before they became politically dominant.
The same is true of most major social transformations. I have seen this in my own work on tax justice, country-by-country reporting, tax havens, and the Green New Deal. A decade or more was required for anything to happen.
That can be frustrating. We live in an age of instant communication and immediate reaction. We are encouraged and want to think that change should happen quickly, but history suggests that is a vain hope. The ideas that matter often spend years, or even decades, taking root.
That, however, is not a reason for despair. It is a reason for persistence. What matters is not whether a particular post, article, event or video changes the world tomorrow. What matters is whether it contributes to a larger story that people can understand, share and eventually act upon.
Which brings me back to the question of change and the creation of a politics of care. Having reflected on this, I no longer think the most important task is proving that neoliberalism is wrong. There is already ample evidence of that, and we also know what can and should replace it, and that all the intellectual foundations we need to replace neoliberalism now exist. The more important task is helping people imagine that thing which we know is better.
In that case, the need is for a relatable and repeatable story that explains who we are, why we matter, how we depend on each other, and what kind of society we want to build together. That is the challenge. And it may also be the opportunity. It is from that story that a politics of care can be built.
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Thanks Richard, I’ve been thinking about this a lot myself lately. I had a discussion with someone yesterday who couldn’t see a way ahead under any circumstances. In fact they even thought it was a waste of time to learn about how the economy works because there would never be a chance to put it into practice.
I’m more optimistic myself. Like you I think we need to learn from the opposition: how they sell their message; how they harness emotion over facts; how they tell stories that stoke that emotion.
And I’m optimistic because I know change happens – we learn that from looking at the past: from mercantilism to Adam Smiths Classical economics to Neoclassical economics to Keynesian economics to Neoliberalism. What’s next? Well we need a ‘next’ or we won’t be here at all. Neoliberalism is killing the planet – and us.
I’m optimistic because I think this time I think the change will come from the people not from the academics or the politicians. My advice is to ignore the those in power and concentrate on educating citizens.
Thanks
Planting a forest takes time. The more people dropping acorns and keeping the weeds back, the better.
Richard – I think we have to confront the concentrated ownership of the public square – all the legacy billionaire press, the state propaganda BBC and the tech bros’ social media.<p>
Only one narrative is allowed. It may be that an alternative will only be given a hearing when there is some existential crisis as in the thirties with depression and the war – when Keynes became accepted.
I agree
One thing we might be able to do is push the idea that inflation should be controlled by varying taxes, not by interest rates. This is a long way from MMT I know, but is a step in the right direction. The concept that controlling inflation using interest rates transfers wealth from the poor to the rich and from the young to the old is very hard to argue against, even in our mad media landscape. Instead the BOE interest rate could be set exactly equal to or slightly above the target rate of inflation, and fixed at that.
MMT says we should change taxes to control inflation – and that is entirely possible
How about “It’s time to live as if we all mattered”?
I think there’s a problem with both “care” and “compassion”, because both of these are things one person does to another. I think the idea of mutuality needs to be included somehow.
Not anwers, just thoughts.
But they necessarily involve reciprocity – an issue I was working on late last night
An example:
Consider a miserable office/workplace environment with a toxic atmosphere, and poor leadership. A very junior member of the team starts bringing in home-baked cake/biscuits once a week, incuding a gluten-free option (the toxic manager is gluten-intolerant) – they are for everyone.
Surprise, a little cynicism, enjoyment, wonder, curiosity, and it is contagious. 6 months later much has changed and not just in that office. Because one (powerless, low status?) person had a defiant resilient anthropology of hope and stuff started to happen – she/he had set it free.
Thank you
The whole system is clearly broken, I think the best bet would be to start again and create a new political party who’s representatives are not controlled or manipulated by the corporations and banks.
Watch this video about how even Tory voting areas are suffering
It’s from *seven years* ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7E4Kxl7Ei4&t=1s
How Do You Create Change?
1. Don’t give up.
2. Hold the fucking line.
3. Sell the collective benefits over and over again.
4. Do it all again until.
I agree with thus simple outline. You just have to keep going, understand the “mission” and be really alert to any opportunity that turns up….you never know in advance what that might be but you have to recognise it when it presents itself. And like the story of the cakes from Robertj, what seem like small things can have huge impact.
I forgot to mention something that is actually quite important.
You have to take Richard’s example and do your research to establish why the change has to take place at all.
It feels like this is what the green party has been trying to do to an extent. I really hope they take note of this and are open to working with you, it really is important! KUTGW
I am open….
We need a story, perhaps a split narrative of how it all connects. The impoverished, the elite and how, in some way, we are connected. Show, not tell.
Only stories bring us to experience a situation that we generally can’t experience. Make a comedy – that gets us on a gut level.
Here is a quote I wrote down, but can’t recall the source. Got a feeling it’s Chinese… Anyway…
Tell me and I will forget.
Show me and I may remember.
Involve me and I will understand.
A story gets to is off guard, bypassing surface resistance and gives us time to think about the message.
Am sure you know this Richard but even so, always worth putting it out there.
I am working in this.
Richard, I appreciate your nuts and bolts explanations of money mechanics and economic structures and just as importantly your deep sense of social justice which together are so evident in many of your suggestions for challenging the prevalent neoliberal paradigm. Just wanted to say thanks as I am enjoying the education :-).
Thank you, Bill
The sheer deadweight of orthodox economic explanation of bond market power and the household analogy are amply illustrated by an article in The Conversation today from Alper Kara the Head of Department of Economics, Finance & Accounting:
“… those markets are what make it possible for governments to spend money. Each of the bonds is essentially a loan from an investor to the state”
https://theconversation.com/how-bond-markets-have-become-one-of-the-most-powerful-forces-in-modern-politics-283025
Not a glimmer of a question about where money comes from in the first place. I read it in frustration and despair, but thankfully Richard and Steve Keen are here to counter these lies. KUTGW
He is a threat to our future – teaching students unthinking nonsense.
Talk to as many women in positions of responsibility as you can. You very often find that at local level they are the ones keeping everything going: the headmistresses, the council chief execs, the food bank managers.
Your phrasing “the politics of care” will appeal to them.
I’ll say again that one of the most rewarding aspects of helping start and manage an independent food bank in a wealthy Dorset market town 10+ yrs ago, was watching middle-class women volunteers get radicalised after a short spell of volunteering on “almoning” duties – chatting to the clients, and learning about the reality of Treasury/DWP austerity first hand from those affected.
Thank you
You’re a hero, not only are you directly helping people in need, but you’re helping to change the perception of other people with regards to this demographic. There is a kind of us vs them mentality in society (maybe a defense mechanism, i don’t know….), but there is alot of people who believe they could never hit rock-bottom, alot of people that believe they will never become seriously ill and so on…, the more people realise it can happen to anyone and often when you least expect it, hopefully the more empathy we will create in society.
It’s long been my view that Middle England is misunderstood. They can be self interested and “conservative” but they believe in fairness either for moral or practical reasons. Once people really understand that the benefits system is not only not generous but can be positively punitive they become appalled.
The truth is the most reactionary people about benefits are often working class people, typically the self employed “tradies”, as they imbibe a diet of lies each day from the RW press. I can state that with categoric certainty since I grew up in a Daily Mail reading household. I’m sure quite a lot of tax evasion by such traders is justified on the basis that “I’m not giving money to scroungers”.
But the Left has been pretty useless on this front. Last week I sent my proposals for a public facing campaign to defend the benefits system and state pension to 14 anti poverty charities and Unite the Union and the TUC. I specifically said it should campaign in Tory and Lib Dem voting areas since the inhabitants of those places can put pressure on their local MPs, write to the media etc. Only one organisation – the JRF – expressed any interest.
If Richard is interested I can ask a friend to forward it to him by email (I’m away from my normal computer right now). I am happy to help in any way on this matter.
You can send my way but I get far more than I can ever read these days.
[…] the following piece builds directly on those that I have already published, as it relates directly to the issue of identifying narratives that lead to a politics of […]
The story(ies) need to be anchored, coordinated and their key messages repeated consistently over time.
Fifty guys in a cage firing different coloured water pistols from different angles will never tame the lion no matter how much time you give it.
Each of the political parties you have listed have a foe they oppose – the establishment, the foreigner, the hand wringer
I am wondering if the politics of care has a foe or if it is system without any. To support something it is helpful to know what it is not. Or maybe this philosophy is just ‘for’ things
Posting in the spirit of exploration
I will post a reply as a blog post in the morning, quoting you.
[…] comment was posted here last night by a commentator called Howard, in response to my post on how we create […]