Emotion and Ideology: Liberal Strategies and Labor Responses

Dr Tristan Ewins

The Conservatives won the recent election in Australia largely because ‘they pushed all the most effective emotional buttons’ ; and had the ‘Power Resources’ to do so most thoroughly. Labor had comprehensive, rational policies in the economic interests of a clear majority of Australians.  And yet still Labor lost. 

In order to trace some of the causes beyond this result we need to consider the place of emotion and moral judgement in political activity and choice.

What follows is a brief consideration of the science: after which there is a much more significant consideration of the political ramifications. 

In his work ‘Hayek versus Marx’ , Socialist intellectual, Eric Aarons ; who had a background including a Science Degree in University: noted that

“The cortex or thin covering layer of the frontal lobes of the brain is the focal point for our reasoning capacity.”   (Aarons p 107)    

He further considers the observation of the scientist, Damasio, that:

“secondary” emotions…have to go through the cortical reasoning centre to activate the body..”

Thus he concludes there is a:  “connection between emotion, reason and action…”

For Aarons, this is corroborated by Damasio’s work in the case study of “Elliot’:

Here an “orange-size tumor” was “removed from the right frontal lobe of his brain…” When tested [he] did well in moral judgment – and in providing solutions to social problems… But thereafter he remarked “And after all this, I still wouldn’t know what to do!”  

Damasio realised: “the connections between the emotional and the reasoning centres of Elliot’s brain had been severed by the operation to remove the tumour from his right frontal lobe…”

Thus, in light of this analysis, we are provided with a rationale as to why:

“moral sentiments spurred action more strongly than reason”… (Aarons, pp 107-108)

Reason and moral sentiments (partly emotional in origin), thus, ought be taken together: the entirety of the human psyche directed towards the tasks of justice, solidarity, kindness, progress and survival. 

Again ; Labor’s loss can be explained in part by the Conservatives’ superior Power Resources.  A sympathetic Conservative Press, a cowed ABC, the active support of a billionaire willing to pour tens of millions into a campaign to channel preferences to the Liberal-National Coalition.

Reforming Civics Educations has some potential to get people thinking rationally and making consistent values-based decisions. (which is why some Conservatives oppose curricula reform for  active and critical citizenship ; even where there is no Ideological prejudice)  But it will always be a mix of reason and emotion ; and emotion will be perhaps the most significant motivating factor.


Obviously Labor still has a very significant working class base ; but there are also 'working class Tories' - who while a minority,  do a lot of damage.  A 3.5% swing to Clive Palmer ; and a comparable vote for One Nation – were enough to swing the election on preferences. And unless we can somehow restore a sense of class consciousness, things will get worse.

The problem is that Conservative propaganda is carefully crafted around a series of ‘mythologies’ .  And it works. The stigmatization of class conflict ‘from below’ (while rationalising and naturalising class warfare ‘waged from above’). 'Aspirational' Ideology ; the stigmatisation of distributive justice as 'the politics of envy'. We have to tear these ideas apart in the public sphere or we will always be operating in a context of Liberal Ideology. That must involve a mixture of rational deconstruction ; and appeal to emotions of Hope, Love, Social Solidarity and Righteous Anger.   


Genuinely progressive policies can inspire Hope exactly because they appeal to instincts of social solidarity and compassion ; while addressing fears of homelessness or joblessness ; or being ‘cast adrift’ amidst medical costs (eg: dental) which can spiral out of control.  A rehabilitation of some ‘class struggle’ discourse could also emphasise that the class war is being actively waged against the working class and the vulnerable. But that a struggle for justice is not some ‘politics of envy’ , and does not deserve stigma.

But perhaps part of the problem is the dominance of emotion in politics - especially fear. As opposed to rational consideration of policies within a values framework.  German intellectual Jurgen Habermas strove for  a ‘Perfect Speech Situation’ of enlightened and rational exchange to deliver socialism.  But to a degree we have to come to terms with the place of emotion. Because it cannot be entirely changed. And emotional themes can add power and momentum to our own policies.  That’s not entirely bad.  The problem is that it also leaves us open to cynical manipulation.  

Conservatives in Australia have always rejected trade unions and class struggle waged by workers ; whether for ‘a fairer share of the pie’ in its modest form ; or socialism in its radical form.  Religion has also played a part. Divisions between Catholics and Protestants, and ‘loyalty to Empire’ fueled Philip Game’s dismissal of the New South Wales Lang Labor Government in the 1930s.  At the time several quasi-fascist militias had also been formed ‘for fear of Communism’ (and Catholics)  Lang had refused to repay ‘war debts’ to Britain incurred in the mobilisation of the First AIF (Australian Imperial Force) – which suffered over 60,000 casualties (deaths) during World War One. But Catholic hostility to Communism also led to the split of the Labor Party in the 1950s, and the formation of the Democratic Labour Party – which supported and reinforced Conservative Governments for decades.

Historically, the emotional/moral climate shifted significantly during the Hawke years.  Hawke’s themes of ‘reconciliation’ helped capture the imagination of a generation ; not least of all because it brought the corporate sector on board.  The corporates saw they could gain under a Hawke government via corporatist arrangements.  (though temporary because of the labour movement’s decline ; and the resulting disinterest of business once it had got what it wanted)  Partly this involved economic restructuring and reforms that were helpful for the Australian economy’s continued success.  But it also involved a ‘management’ of the labour movement’s decline as opposed to a stronger fight to prevent it.

The right to withdraw labour in many circumstances was abandoned while promoting rhetoric of ‘reconciliation’. Industrial action was reduced in the public imagination to “disruption” ; where ‘conflict’ was considered ‘bad’.  This confirmed popular aversion to “union power”.  Unless it was ‘responsible’. (ie: cowed and passive) For years the message was hammered home: industrial action was ‘disruptive’ ; and Labor’s relations with the unions could prevent industrial action.  Blue collar unions were stigmatised (in the media and by the Liberals) in a play to old class prejudices between ‘white collar’ and ‘blue collar’ workers ; with persistent delusions by some that they were ‘middle class’.  There is still much of this with popular perceptions of the CFMEU.

In part you could say it was a matter of ‘Power Resources’ ; with a compromise based on the balance of class forces. But Swedish unions never compromised as much as Australian unions under the Accords and after.  And the Accord never delivered anything remotely ‘Nordic’ in scale.

Since then the monopoly mass media has carefully ‘pushed our emotional buttons’ to shape the political climate of the country.  ‘Union power’ equaled ‘thuggery’ and ‘disruption and inconvenience to the public’. Apparently, so do mass protests. Amidst structural unemployment, the jobless were  vilified as ‘freeloaders’ and pressed into forced labour.  An ‘aspirational’ Ideology was developed to divide the working class ; and con middle income workers into supporting economically Liberal policies which were not in their interests.  “Aspirational” Ideology was contrasted with policies of ‘Envy” and 'Class War' ; which were morally dismissed as undermining social cohesion ; and ‘getting in the way’ of those willing to “have a go”. (the Liberals' most recent rhetoric in undermining what remains of the nation’s egalitarian traditions)  

The campaign to ‘stop the boats’ played overwhelmingly on Fear ; and ‘the Tampa election’ (2001) was won on the basis of moral condemnation and fears founded on false claims of refugees ‘throwing children overboard’. 

Importantly ; the rise of the New Left in the 1960s - and its later development into today’s social movements - was depicted in such a way as to split the working class.  Conservatives developed a discourse on so-called ‘Left Elites’ ; ‘the Latte set’ and ‘Chardonnay Socialists’ - who were ‘out of touch’ with ‘mainstream Australia’. Social conservatism was cultivated in much of the monopoly mass media , and was appealed to in order to divide ‘the Left intelligentsia’ from ‘the mainstream’. (ie: the majority of the working class)  The most ‘extreme’ examples of ‘Political Correctness’ were reported at regular intervals in order to maximise popular resentment. And ‘the PC class’ was depicted as being ‘arrogantly judgmental’ against the popular majority. (who just happened to be the working class)

The impression that Labor might repress ‘religious liberties’ may also be a ‘bridge’ too far. There is a conflict of rights here which can only be negotiated – it cannot be resolved. Long term, the Reaction cannot and will not ‘turn back the clock’ on sexual liberties.  But if Labor is not careful – and allows a polarisation to occur - a resurgent Christian Conservatism could be instrumental in delivering victory to the Conservatives.

Right-Libertarian small government philosophy (manifest at times in the Institute of Public Affairs and Centre for Independent Studies) has promoted the idea that capitalists and workers all have an inalienable right to whatever wages, profits or dividends they receive in the ‘marketplace’. Labor had been complicit in the small government and privatisation Ideologies for decades.  Finally under Shorten Labor embraced significant (though still modest) progressive tax reform. But now that a scare campaign has contributed to its defeat, it might be reluctant to venture there again. 

The idea that “tax is theft” undermines notions of social solidarity, collective consumption and social insurance.  Even though these deliver significant results for all workers. Implicit is a moral judgement: “tax is theft, and no-one has a right to take YOUR money”.  A ‘death tax’ (eg: an inheritance tax or death duties) is thought to be particularly offensive ; hence the (dishonest) Liberal scare campaign. It is no coincidence that inheritance taxes could mainly impact upon the bourgeoisie. And the fact that employers expropriate surplus value from workers apparently has no place in this discourse.

These efforts have not been entirely successful.  Again, Labor retains a significant base.  The New Social Movements which emerged from the New Left together involve a significant base of mobilisation and influence.  Though they are not a replacement for the strategic location and significance of the working class.

Arguably, humanity possesses instincts of social solidarity which have been essential to its survival. And most people care for family who might end up enduring horrors in under-resourced nursing homes ; or may linger for over a year waiting for home-care packages. 

Exploitation of workers – especially of those on the lowest wages – can also be argued as theft.  Citizens have every rational reason to fear that Conservatives aim to gradually undermine the nation’s ‘social safety net’ ; and atomise workers and lower wages while reducing their bargaining power. And to lose your job usually means relegation to destitution under NewStart ; and forced to exhaust your savings. For both young and mature workers job prospects can often be bleak.  Conservative hostility to Socialised Medicine (eg: Medicare) is also much more than a ‘Labor scare campaign’. A ‘flat tax’ may seem fair superficially ; but would take from low to middle income workers and redistribute to the rich.  Finally there has been a backlash against the open ended detainment of asylum seekers in concentration camps ; and indifference and narrow self-interest in face of the threat of Climate Change to the Planet.

By contrast there is the Hope that a Labor Government could fund a National Aged Care Insurance Scheme.  It could re-regulate the lower end of the labour market ; subsidise the wages of child care workers and aged care workers ; consolidate and increase Newstart while abolishing labour conscription ; consolidate the ‘social safety net’ – expanding Medicare into Dental ; expanding public housing ; funds to eliminate homelessness.  Labor could ‘fine tune’ the NDIS. (National Disability Insurance Scheme)  Further ; Labor could implement onshore processing of asylum seekers.  It could lead the way on climate change with direct investment in renewables.  And it could restructure the tax system: including the addition of new brackets, and the indexation of lower brackets to prevent the vicious cycle of bracket-creep and regressive tax cuts.  (leading gradually to flat taxation)

Again, though:  Labor faces an imbalance of Power Resources.  It must fight to end the influence of ‘Big Money’ in Politics.  And together we must resist moves to ban organisations like GetUp from actively campaigning during elections. We must mobilise our own resources to challenge the monopoly mass media.  And upon achieving government we must implement policies for true media diversity.  In the face of massive opposition we need to develop the strategy and tactics to fight the Conservatives against the odds and win. 

There is also the possibility that the Liberal victory is a ‘poison chalice’ in that escalating tensions and trade war will help lead to economic downturn. 

There are those who will argue that some of these policies ‘have been tried but failed’.  But if Labor renounces a distributive justice agenda it abandons its very reason for being.  Labor must respond with regroupment, rather than retreating into an insipid Blairite Centrism.  Labor must be the Party of progress ; though for that we also need some idea of what we want to progress towards.  I have suggested a short term agenda here ; but long term we must ask more fundamental questions about capitalism.  By making emotional and moral appeals ; with a mixture of messages at a variety of levels – from the complex to the simplified and the concise.  And also promoting clear moral judgement and policy evaluation. 

Labor needs to re-evaluate its strategy and tactics without abandoning substance.   That is the path to a possible future Labor victory.


Bibliography:

Aarons, Eric; Hayek versus Marx And Today’s Challenges; Routledge. New York, 2009

Karl Marx - A Nineteenth Century Life - Review by Eric Aarons

 

 

above: A photograph of a young Karl Marx

In this article former National Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia Eric Aarons reviews a new book on the life and work of Karl Marx.  Eric explores this new title in light of his vast experience as a socialist activist.  Amongst the themes Aarons explores are: Marxism determinism,  the Hegelian connection, the historical context of Marx's work, and the question of class as the central category for socialism.

 

 

by Eric Aarons;  August 2013

The publication of Jonathon Sperber’s new book Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life is a notable and welcome event.  It is very well written, and uses the new MEGA (Marx and Engels’ Collected Works) which corrects and replaces, on the basis of meticulous research, older translations, and even whole books such as The German Ideology, never published by Marx or Engels.   It is not suggested that such errors were deliberate, but correcting them provides a more reliable basis for scholarship.  

 

Another feature, which the author himself supplies, is a relatively short and, in my view, correct account of the thoughts and theories of writers who influenced Marx, for instance Georg Hegel.   Hegel is often hard to interpret because his reasoning, especially concerning the journeys of ‘the world spirit’, is difficult for most of us to penetrate or accept.   And, though Marx may have been somewhat influenced by the positivism of his day, he was far from embracing it.  Re Marx’s article On the Jewish Question, often held to contain anti-Semitism, I concur with Sperber’s view that this is erroneous and misses the point.

 

I don’t think anyone will be able to fault the author on matters of fact; but there will always be issues of judgment, priorities, omissions and the like, some instances of which I will raise.

I had read a number of books about Marx’s early life, but was particularly taken with his essay on the high-school one: ‘Observation of a Young Man on the Choice of Profession’.  Marx wrote: ‘… it did not suffice to follow an occupation for which one had both the inclination and ability. Rather, the chosen occupation should be one that “grants us the highest dignity, that is founded on ideas, about whose truth we are convinced, that offers the greatest field in which to act for humanity, and even to approach the universal goal, completeness and perfection. Every occupation is just a means to that goal”’. Marx suggested that such completeness and perfection occurs at the intersection of the fulfillment                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   of individual inclinations and abilities, and the improvement of the human condition (page 31). Most of the many communists I have known have been motivated by that social value. 

 

Sperber generously evaluates the Manifesto of the Communist Party as ‘a literary masterpiece: compact, pithy, elegant, powerful and sarcastically amusing all at once, and was a deeply personal expression of Marx’s own experiences and intellectual development.’      (p. 203). But he did not comment on the fact that it included the words: ‘if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also’, which was clearly what Marx had in mind for a socialist society, and came to be a major negative factor in the Soviet and later Maoist economies.
 

Radical Democracy

 

In chapter 3, Sperber presents an interesting account of Marx’s deepest view of democracy, which is centered on his long-term view of a degree of unity between private and public property. In his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, (written in France) Marx went further than he had before about a new arrangement of state and society. This he described (after reading Rousseau) as ‘a union of the private interests in which the particular private  concerns with the general would simultaneously articulate the universal common good, since both would be manifestations of the people, the basis of democracy’. Marx emphasized his view that ‘the universal common good would no longer be the exclusive property of the state standing against and opposed to society. Instead there would be a regime in which the particular private concerns of civil society would simultaneously articulate the universal common good since both would be manifestations of the people, the basis of democracy’ (page 115)

 

It was in France also that Marx entered his first real relationships with the actual working class, when consciousness of its own suffering, aspirations and ideas were just emerging, but nevertheless then saw in it the class force that could carry through his revolutionary hopes.

 

There, too, Marx wrote his article on liberation of the Jews: ‘having identified Jews with capitalism, he conversely identified capitalism with the Jews. If egoism and practical need were principles of Judaism, they were also principles of civil society. These principles were articulated as money “which is the essence of man’s labour and his being that has been alienated from him. That alienated being dominates him and he worships it.” (p. 131)

Neo-liberal doctrine holds, on the contrary, that ‘most people are still reluctant to accept the fact that it should be the disdained ‘cash-nexus’ which holds the Great Society together, that the great ideal of the unity of mankind should in the last resort depend on the relations between the parts being governed by the striving for the better satisfaction of their material needs’. * (Law Legislation and LIiberty ,vol, 2, page 112).

 

Where I come in

My interest in Sperber’s book did not stem from a desire to try to protect Marx from criticism. Though my father and his parents were members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), I personally had little interest in politics, though I had experienced, through observation, some of the human wreckage among those who had survived the Great War, then lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s.

 

But in 1938, at age 19, when I entered university and a new world war loomed, I joined the CPA, avidly studied Marx, and engaged in university politics. At war’s end, I became a Party Functionary (apparatchik) specializing in party education, then in general party work. In 1951, at Chinese invitation, I lead a group of young members to a school on ‘Marxism and the Thought of Mao Zedong.’ It lasted 3years.

 

The high expectations of rapid ‘left’ progress following the crucial role of Soviet forces in ‘tearing the guts out of the Germany Army’, as Churchill put it, then the victory of the Chinese Revolution and the demise of colonialism, nevertheless did not materialize. More truths about socialist economic and democratic failures emerged, China and the Soviet Union fell out and Communist Parties split.

 

To cap it all, Soviet and satellite forces in 1968 invaded a Czechoslovakia that had developed a program to create ‘socialism with a human face’. I did not and do not believe that Marxism, as such, had anything to do with those reprehensible events, but I felt deeply an obligation, to myself and those I had taught, to re-examine the founding beliefs, ideas and theories of the movement that had set out to replace the very flawed capitalist system that is now spawning ever more dangers to the planet itself, and to its dependent inhabitants, human and otherwise.

 

Inevitability

 

Though this concept became one of the greatest and oft repeated faults in the theoretical system that Marx built, Professor Sperber does not deal with it. In Marx’s Preface to the first edition of Capital, he wrote: ‘… even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement – and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society – it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its natural. development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth pangs’. (emphasis added)          t

 

He made another, even stronger, appeal to the ‘inevitability’ of human advance to socialism, and to the dialectical method, in his enthusiastic welcome to the review of Capital in the St.Petersburg European Messenger (May, 1872). This said:

 

The one thing which is of moment to Marx is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of motion of moment to him, which governs these phenomena … Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connections into a different one … and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. (emphasis added)

 

Marx comments: ‘Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectical method?’

 

How to study human society?

Long ago, as the humans originating in Africa migrated around the world, establishing along the way some settlements that became permanently different types of society, the issue arose of how to study those differences in a systematic way. There may be others, including some of the Greek and Roman thinkers, but one set of outstanding precursors of Marx in this area were the Scottish Historians, the most famous of whom is Adam Smith.  Another member of that group was William Robertson, who summed up their orientation: ‘In every inquiry covering the operations of men when united in society, the first object of attention should be their mode of subsistence. Accordingly as that varies, their laws and policy must be different.’ (Collected Works, 1812, vol. 5, p.111; quoted by Andrew Skinner in his Introduction to the Penguin edition of The Wealth of Nations Books 1- 3).

 

{Smith devised a four-stage set of social developments, using what became (perhaps from the above source) Marx’s ‘mode of production’ concept  to establish guiding lines between them, together with a corresponding degree of development of property relations. The first featured hunting and gathering, as with the native tribes of North America, where private property was negligible.

The next stage, pasture, featured a nomadic existence and a distinctive form of private property – cattle – along with the beginnings of class divisions between rich and poor, and the origins of civil government to ‘establish peace’ between them.

 

The third stage, in Smith’s scheme, is the agrarian one, following the decline of Rome, where ownership of great landed estates was for the rich, and tillage activities for the poor – that is, the feudal system. This existed also in South America and the Meso-American area that connected it with the North.
 

The last stage was the commercial one, in which private property in the rapidly developing means of production was the primary feature, and capitalists made commodities to sell them at a profit.  Concerning this, another of the Scottish Historians, David Hume, wrote that: ‘Unlike other passions, which are quite inconstant, material interests are constant and difficult to restrain: this avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal and directly destructive of society.’ (Stephen Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume, 1991 page 294)

 

A little History

 

It is difficult to write about a history book, without writing about history. Yet I have no historical knowledge of the period under review that could add to what Professor Sperber has so thoroughly researched. But I point out for the reader some of the facts he unearthed that particularly impressed me.

 

For instance: ‘the extent of the newspaper articles written by Marx between 1853 and 1862 was greater than everything else he published during his lifetime put together.’ (page 296)

 

‘Three major topics dominated his writing: the Crimean War of 1853-56, and its implications for the foreign policies of the great powers and the domestic politics of Great Britain; the conditions and conflicts  of the British Empire in Asia, including the Second Opium War with China in 1856-60, along with the massive Indian uprising against British imperial rule in 1857, and the implications of these conflicts for global capitalism; and the causes and consequences of the worldwide recession of 1857, including what Marx hoped would be a new wave of revolutions in Europe’. (page 302)

 

A few years ahead, we find Marx active in the affairs of the International Working Men’s Association. Known as The First International, this was ‘a loose federation of affiliated  workers’ societies. Twenty three English trade unions with upward of 25,000 members, were the backbone of the group.’ They were particularly involved in solidarity movements, for instance convincing German artisans not to be recruited as strikebreakers during the London tailors’ strike of 1866 (page 358), and indirectly playing a significant role in the Paris Commune of 1871.

 

Marx also helped to wind the organization up in 1864.This centred on the fact that the anarchist Russian, Bakunin, and others of like mind favored above all the setting up of ‘secret societies’ which Marx rightly opposed, because politics,  even then, had come to require open public views, as with the Manifesto which proclaimed ‘The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.’ To fail to do so and to rely on ‘secret societies’ and conspiratorial groups is, in effect, to accept defeat in advance, because radical new ideas have to ‘win the battle of democracy’ by winning over a large body of the active citizens.

 

Is there an alternative to confiscating all private means of production

 

Marx said in the Manifesto: ‘In all these movements against the existing social and political order of things [the communists] bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.’  And, achieving power in 1917 in the midst of the ‘Great’ First World War, the communists built and operated, for seven decades, a society based on state-ownership of all the main means of production, along with suppression of small businesses. But they never succeeded in creating, on that basis, a permanently viable economy or a democratic polity.

There were three main reasons for this failure: First, that the concentration of ownership (actually ‘control’, because the means of production couldn’t be sold) of all the means of production by the government gave the leaders virtually uncontestable power, which both Stalin and Mao took for themselves.  Others following them, particularly Mikhail Gorbachev, tried hard to radically amend the system, but were unable to curb the power of the overblown government apparatus that had developed, or reverse the resentment, inertia and ‘look after yourself’ attitudes of the workforce. Second, there was no way open in which individuals could better themselves and have an opportunity to wield a modicum of influence on economic and/or political power.  Third, the ideology (as it had now become, see below) buttressing that state of affairs, claiming to be Marxist or ‘Marxist-Leninist’, was rigidly enforced, leaving no opportunity for alternative views and practices to develop, or theoretical advances and corrections to be made.

 

Human will, consciousness and intelligence

 

These precious characteristics are indeed inborn (genetic) aspects of the human species, but as we all know, they are modified (increased, diminished, fixated, in particular directions …)  by our associations: family, occupation, experiences in life, education, and media impacting our eyes, ears, tastes and other senses…

 

Consciousness and self-consciousness, though found in embryonic forms in other species, is particularly significant; it developed in the human species, and is exhibited in sociability, cooperation, empathy, morality, social values, inventiveness, science, the arts and sport …

 

Reason suggests that in the limitless universe in which we exist, there must be other species with similar characteristics with whom we could connect and learn from.   But, despite many years of search by various means, no such beings have yet been found. It’s early days; but at the same time, increasingly worrying signs appear of possible human self-destruction through global warming and the stress on the resource-providing base of the planet we now impose, is now being escalated by the melting of billions of tons of now frozen methane, which is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

 

 The Labour Theory of Value

Many economic theories developed quite early as capitalism gained the ascendancy.  Among them was the question of the worth, or value of any particular commodity among a host of others. The first and most extensively held view was that the value of any commodity depended on the quantity of socially necessary labour expended in producing it.  This view had connections with the earlier feudal system where artisan guilds controlled production, then executed with small manual tools. There seemed to be no other common feature invested in commodities other than labour and the time it spent in producing them.  The early economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, held to that view, as did Marx and many others. Capital, Vol.1, Chapter 1, featured it in a big way, often cracking the heads of those reading it.

 

But the issue became serious as the Industrial Revolution got under way at the beginning of the 19th century, when large quantities of capital had to be laid out on machines, buildings and ancillaries.  This capital produced no extra profit, it was held, though a portion of its own value was passed on in the product (depreciation).  The rub was that the ‘rate of profit’ – profit divided by total capital – must fall.  Many pamphlets at that time lamented that fall while Marx regarded it as another addition to the inevitability of capitalism’s demise.

 

I won’t go into the details of other views finding fault with this theory, but Marx himself developed a telling one, not noted by our author. It occurs in the Grundrisse:

 

… to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose ‘powerful effectiveness’ is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production.   (The development of this science, especially natural science, and all others with the latter, is itself in turn related to the development of material production.)   … Real wealth manifests itself,  rather – and large industry reveals this – in the monstrous disproportion between the labour time applied, and its product, as well as in the qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and the power of the production process it superintends. Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate more as a watchman and regulator to the production process itself… As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure.

 

Marx then returns to a renewed emphasis on his guiding values and the ultimate aim of his theoretical and political activity:  ‘real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then no longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time’ ((p. 708) in which all humans can develop to a fuller extent their individual capacities.

Today, unemployment in many countries is nearly as high (in some places even higher) than it was in the 1930s, and looks likely to be so for longer. Socialism ‘as it existed’ clearly is no longer conceivable.  The challenge is to find new ways in which to change capitalism in the social direction suggested above by Marx.

 

The Hegelian Connection
 

Though Marx always remained respectful of Hegel’s erudition, he fairly early in his career came to reject the idealist philosophy involved, and adopted a materialist outlook. He  rejected the idea that changes in the history of human societies emanated from the journeys of the  world spirit which nevertheless occurred ‘dialectically’, as both Marx and Engel averred. It may be the case that ideas and concepts do develop in that way, with each connected to all others, causes change places with effects, quantitative changes causing qualitative ones, and negations being in turn themselves negated…

 

I give an example of my doubts from Chapter 32 of Capital 1, titled Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.  Its theme or proposition is that, if the current form of accumulation continues, a (probably revolutionary) change will occur. No substantiation is given, only the following assertion:

The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property.  This is the first negation of individual private property as founded on the labour of the proprietor.  But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a Law of Nature, its own negation.  It is the negation of the negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist era, i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.(emphasis added)

 

‘Dialectics’ can prove nothing by itself.  There must be a concrete analysis of any particular transition in nature or society; after that, the adjective ‘dialectical’ can be added, if applicable.

 

Legacy

Part 3 of Sperber’s book deals with Marx’s legacy, beginning with his theoretical work, and it was rather surprising to learn (through the new MEGA) that the three volumes of Das Kapital had been destined to appear together .  The contents of volume 3 and 2 had been largely completed first, while volume 1 was excerpted from the whole for first publication. We all know that volumes 2 and 3 were not published while Marx was alive, but were later put together and edited by Engels.  This provides more than enough evidence for Sperber’s observation that Marx had difficulty (undoubtedly with reasons) in completing his projects.  It also feeds the prevalent eclecticism, whereby support (or condemnation) for almost any political-theoretical proposition of Marx’s can be drawn.

 

The property question

 

Marx always put this in the first place, as in the Manifesto: ‘ in all [mass movements] against the existing order of social and political things, communists bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.’ And still to this day public ownership of all the main means of production, distribution and exchange is the core of what socialism means to most people, so far as they consider it at all.

 

But this ignores another fruitful insight of Marx – the concept of base and superstructure –  articulated at some length in his Preface to ‘A contribution to the Critique of Political Ecconomy.(1859). Here Marx wrote:

 

At a certain stage of development the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the  existing relations of production, or with the relations of property, (the latter being just a legal expression of the former) … from being forms of development of the forces of production, these relations are transformed into their shackles. An era of social revolution begins … one must always differentiate between the material upheaval in the economic determinants of production, which can be observed exactly by means of the natural sciences, and the juridical, political, religious, artistic or philosophical, in short, ideological forms in which they fight it out. . .  (page 400)

 

This brings in a welcome variation to the earlier assertions that social change is driven by natural laws* (pp. 3-4 above  ) and that will and consciousness are but expressions of the social facts outside them. It gives us a much more realistic Marx, and a more effective basis for conducting socialist politics, raising again the property question.

 

Confiscation of all significant private property in means of production became the base from which developed a dictatorial, socially repulsive and economically ineffective superstructure, which few would now accept. Yet it is big, even monstrously large, private property that now has the (money) power to dominate much of political decision on what is to be produced, *(coal is the awful example today, see: BIG COAL: Ausralia’s Dirtiest Habit, by Pearce, McKnight and Burton) Note also the unprecedented gap between the top few per cent and all the rest:  The top I per cent now get 24 per cent of total wealth compared with 9 per in 1970; BHP-Billiton’s top executives now get 200 times the average worker’s wage, compared with 6-7 times 20 years ago.

 

The top few welcome and seek to build on the already outrageous gaps between themselves  and the declining middle and, (with a few exceptions) take no action to deal with the key issues of climate change and the growing threat to the capacity of the planet to provide indefinitely the quantities and quality of resources required to meet the needs of human and other living species.

 

A possible alternative to confiscation?

 

In view of the fact that a system with this economic base failed, and that large numbers of working people now possess some important property, it is difficult to see a way in which majority support for confiscation could now be built. But consider instead the possibilities of custodiandship.  This was an early view in human history, namely that people were not owners, but custodians, of the land they occupied, used and lived from. Owners of big property could retain possession, but with legal responsibilities for the preservation of its riches. (Mining would be a particular problem, but offsets could be found).

 

Marx’s view of human nature

Marx should be included among the humanitarians, but he had a rather strange view of human nature.  He avowed that ‘nothing human is alien to me’, and his relationships to his own and other children were often quite touching.  But he wrote that ‘the human essence … is the ensemble of the social relations.’ *(6^th of his Theses on Feurerbach). He also said, regarding trade, that ‘men making exchanges do not relate to one another as men’  *(Excerpt Notes of1844), though he said also that this connection was better than none at all.) More important still, was the fact that feelings, emotions and the moral sense, which feature in human values, and are a crucial part of life in general, not excluding political life, were neglected, as Antonio Gramsci so emphatically emphasized. Perhaps they were not ‘material’ enough for Marx? Humans are multi-facetted creatures and cannot be simplified to suit classifiers, organizers or manipulators.

 

People who participate in social movements, and particularly those leading them, need to study (difficult as it may be) what is going on in people’s heads, and avoid assuming that a worker, (a proletarian if you like) is, by that classification, already at least half-way to being a militant rebel.  One of the main things I learned from my time in China is the attention they gave to this aspect of ‘knowledge’ (not always for good purposes, be it said).  But much of the left in the West seems to pay far more attention to the externals than to the internals, as a recent book by Jonathan Haidt has emphasized * (,.).though the efforts of the right-wing media and their successes in this field should be accepted by the left as a constant caution. }

 

Ideology

     

This term is often used by Marx, and Sperber gives a fair definition of how Marx saw and used it: ‘that social conditions shaped individuals’ ideas so as to further the interest of the social group to which they belonged.’ (p. 103)  Existing in most social professions, ideology is particularly prevalent in economics.  Marx was rather more forthright regarding the sequel to the first major capitalist economic crisis ca1830 (after the death of Ricardo) when it ‘was no longer a question of whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not.   In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prize-fighters … * (Preface to 2^nd German edition)

 

This is not all in the past, and Rose Friedman (an economist and partner of Milton Friedman)      recalls that she had ‘always been impressed by her ability to predict an economist’s  positive views from my knowledge of his political orientation, and have never been able to persuade myself that the political orientation was the consequence of the positive views.’  Later, Mllton moved in her direction . * (Hayek’s Challenge by Bruce Caldwell, page 380)

 

Sperber’s sub-title: A Nineteenth Century Life

 

We could cut things short by saying ‘of course Marx was a nineteenth century man’.  I am old enough to remember the now antique tiny ‘cat’s whiskers’ radios early in the 20^th century, followed by large valve ones, and the Ford and Buick automobiles. There followed a virtually endless variety of great inventions, ranging from miniturization with transistors, television, the personal computer and the internet, communication satellites circling round the globe, the beginnings of space travel… The slums I saw in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney have disappeared, and bedbugs are now a dying species, while a relative material abundance for the majority of people in the economically developed countries is developing.

 

There have also been some cultural advances, notably in the ‘gay’ area, but not many others, while the would-be scientific area of economics has again revealed its damning and destructive potential.  Virtually none of the economists who followed the current economic doctrine predicted the crash that was impending, though they had adopted some new doctrines with impressive names, such as DSGE – Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium.  (In plainer English it means ‘Ever-changing Conjectural General Equilibrium’ , a condition  that capitalism has been unable to reliably provide.)

 

It has brought us to the point where producing energy by burning fossil fuels is warming the atmosphere of the whole planet to a dangerous extent, causing extreme weather events, and, as we saw earlier, now beginning, as predicted, to melt the methane hydrate or clathyrate lyng  at the bottom of cold arctic seas and threatening to melt the frozen soils of the tundra, releasing huge quantities of the now inert greenhouse gas methane, which, science tells us, could cause untold – and expensive (in the trillions) – catastrophes.

 

Natural laws, as discussed earlier in this piece, are about inevitabilities; and I suggested that we cannot accept the view that any existing set of human relationships, including the current tones, are destined to remain dominant. A new alternative cannot be plucked out of the air, but must be built by sustained human effort.

 

Not a ‘class’, but a ‘peoples’ movement

 

It is not the purpose of this piece to discuss at any length what could replace capitalism. But change will only come about through the ideas, thoughts, motivations and actions of large numbers of people who, like the young Marx, wanted to act for the benefit of humanity; and we should think more about custodianship. It cannot succeed as a ‘class’, but can do so as a ‘peoples’ movement’ of the kind shown in the last quarter or one third of the 20^th  and the beginnings of this century.

 

The hardest part of all is to change habits of thought and behavior, which have formerly been achieved only in circumstances where the ‘mode of production’, and thus of thinking and acting, has begun to spread widely in all sections of society. Unfortunately, because the ‘socialist’ alternative failed so badly, and with no other in sight, we have to try to politically defeat or neutralize the worst of the inveterate contributors to the now deadly – both naturally and financially – new, virulent, stage of the global warming saga humanity has been, far too comfortably, living with for well over a quarter of a century.

It has brought us to the point where producing energy by burning fossil fuels is warming the atmosphere of the whole planet to a dangerous extent, causing extreme weather events and beginning to melt the frozen ice cages at the bottom of cold northern oceans and frozen soils of the tundra which contain huge quantities of the presently inert greenhouse gas methane.

Geology Professor, Mike Sandiford, of Melbourne University recently revealed yet another indication of the (too often misplaced) power of human effort:

Rivers and glaciers have moved about 10 billion tons of sediment from mountain to sea each year on average over geological time. Each year humans mine about 7 billion tons of coal and 2.3 billion tons of iron ore. We shift about the same amount again of overburden to access these resources, along with construction aggregate and other excavations. In short we are now one of the main agents shaping the earth’s surface.(Sydney Morning Herald, May 23, 2011)

And the sea, with the looming destruction of the world’s largest living entity – The Great Barrier Reef, and general over-fishing.

 

Natural laws, as discussed at the beginning of this piece, are about inevitablities; and I suggested that we cannot accept the view that any set of human relationships, including the current ones, are destined to remain dominant. A new alternative cannot be plucked out of the air, but can be built by human effort.
 

It is not the purpose of this piece to discuss at any length what could replace it. But change will only come about through the ideas, thoughts, motivations and actions of large numbers of people who, like the young Marx, wanted to act for the benefit of humanity.

A Democratic Economy for the Left- a friendly reply to Eric Aarons

above: Social democratic economist Karl Polanyi - author of 'The Great Transformation'

In this our latest article Shayn McCallum responds to Eric Aarons again on the theme of the Democratic Mixed Economy. Drawing from the insights of Karl Polanyi McCallum argues for a democratic mixed economy employing both markets and planning, but moving beyond 'the market society'. For McCallum economy must serve society and not vice versa. This includes environmental preservation. 

Honest and respectful debate always welcome!!!

The Democratic Mixed Economy Facebook group can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/152326549326/


And our 'ALP Socialist Left Forum' Facebook Group can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/102658893193637/

New participants welcome!


Shayn McCallum, October 2012


I appreciate the response that Eric Aarons recently made to my recent article on a democratic mixed economy. His critique raised a number of important points that I had been either entirely unable to address or at least unable to expand on in my paper which had been originally written as a contribution to discussions on economic policy within the Party of European Socialists, first being circulated within the French Socialist Party and German SPD. I also offered it within the UK Fabian society as a critique of Ed Miliband’s “Decent Capitalism”. Indeed, my main target in writing the original article, as much as to promote the idea of what I term (albeit imperfectly) a “democratic mixed economy” was to attack the use of the term “decent capitalism” which, I feel, is an unfortunate choice, linguistically and semiotically, that sets the parameters of the debate on economic policy at exactly the wrong point.


This original article was somewhat truncated to meet maximum length requirements and, therefore, was only partially able to convey the theoretical position I am coming from. As I feel a more detailed explication of this background may serve to clarify the areas in which my approach and Eric’s both converge and diverge, I would like to take the time to more clearly set out my assumptions below.


To begin with, I’d like to go over some of the areas where I feel Eric and I are closer than it may appear based on my original article and Eric’s subsequent response. Firstly; both Eric and I share an ecological emphasis. This may not be terribly clear from my original article but, in fact, we both appear to be agreed on the need to prioritise the issue of environmental destruction and, therefore, question any economic model based on untrammelled growth. I hinted at this very briefly in my original argument by including a few sentences rejecting the idea that there is much value in trying to reinvent manufacturing in the advanced capital-dominated societies. Also, like Eric, I am not overly challenged by the idea of a post-industrial society (although this involves problematic aspects which I will come to further on in this response). Furthermore, I would also tend to agree with Eric that econocentric arguments reducing socialism to questions of property forms are caught in an overly-limiting approach that is, at best, irrelevant and at worst, totally incapable of offering cogent responses to modern realities. Although, due to being an article focusing on economic issues, it may not have been clear; my intention was largely to attack econocentric thinking, which remains deeply imprinted in our collective consciousness.


With all respect to the considerable genius of Karl Marx, the Left remains burdened with the legacy of “Marxism” which, I would argue, is merely the flip-side of neo-liberalism, in that both approaches are agreed on the centrality of economics. This is, ironically, part of the reason why neo-liberalism gained so much ground among social-democrats after the rise of Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980’s and the collapse of Soviet-style socialism in the last year of that decade. The either/or, Marxism vs. Liberalism discourse ultimately obscured what was always really going on within the advanced, capital-dominated societies. Although capitalism is a force that has, especially in recent years, established greater and greater dominance, I do not feel it is entirely accurate to simply refer to most modern economies or societies as “capitalist” as this obscures the complexity of what is actually occurring. Capital has had to struggle to establish and hold onto its hegemony over the course of its dominance. “Capitalism” (meaning the hegemony of capital) is a reality, but it is not as strong as either the Marxist approach, nor that of its neo-liberal mirror image, would have us believe. In fact, a brief look at the actual history of capitalism shows its hold to have been marked by constant precariousness and unending setbacks resulting from its many, obvious failures and the ways in which societies have organised to check and restrict its power. Failing to realise this, amounts to short-changing ourselves at exactly the moment when we have an opening to fundamentally change our way of life for the better.


To clarify where I am coming from; I should explain that my own theoretical position is strongly rooted in the thought of the sovereign socialist thinker Karl Polanyi, whose nuanced critique of capitalism was equally critical of the economism of Marx’ approach.


Polanyi and anti-economism


Karl Polanyi was a sovereign socialist of Hungarian origin who authored one of the most comprehensive critiques of capitalism produced from outside the Marxist tradition; The Great Transformation (which Eric clearly alludes to in the title of his response to my article). Indeed, Polanyi was seriously critical of Marx, in that, Marx’ own critique of capitalism was fundamentally econocentric. The eschatological historicism of Marx that predicted an inevitable collapse of the capitalist system and/or its overthrow by the socialist proletariat was based on one serious error; that the free-market capitalism described by the classical economists such as Smith and Ricardo represented the economy as it actually was (or would become in time as the last remnants of feudalism were expunged) rather than merely as an idealised, utopian model. In reality, capitalism, as envisaged by the classical economists, is an impossible system- a utopia (or dystopia) capable of functioning only on paper. This contention of Polanyi’s is borne out by the fact that, whenever there is an attempt to establish a self-regulating market system, collapse occurs soon after. Polanyi himself witnessed the Great Depression and we are currently witnessing the second proof of Polanyi’s theory as the rotten fruits of three decades of neo-liberalism are reaped over our heads.


Liberal economists, of course, always counter from the opposite perspective; blaming government intervention or imperfect policies for inhibiting the growth of the “true” self-regulating market yet, quite honestly, whilst this ever-ready excuse that things went wrong because the capitalism involved was not “pure” capitalism should be given more credibility than the frustrated Marxist claim that the Soviet bloc collapsed because it was not “pure” socialism, is beyond me. The reality appears to be that there is always something blocking the “pure market economy” and always will be because such an economy, in reality, is utterly unworkable. Most people, not just the working-class, will want to oppose it or, at the very least, modify it to reduce its extremes. Thus the undying nature of the liberal dream paralleling that of the convinced Marxist; “our system would surely work if only people would stop getting in the way and diluting its purity”. We are faced with a hermetically-sealed, self-replicating logic as un-debatable as an item of religious faith.


According to Polanyi however, society must be understood as an organic whole, of which the economy is but one embedded part. Unlike Marx who divided a society into its “base” and “superstructure”, Polanyi made the point that this econocentrism had only emerged with the industrial revolution and was part of the ideology of this revolution. For most of history, the economic question had been secondary and embedded within a broader network of culture, social expectations, legal arrangements and political systems. The specific feature of capitalism, as a rising force, was a conscious effort to extinguish pre-industrial and pre-capitalist modes of existence to impose “the rule of economics” over the whole society. Where under feudalism, with all its abuses, ordinary people enjoyed certain unspoken social rights, primarily the right to live by, if all else failed, hunting and gathering on common land, measures such as the famous enclosures act forced the poor to seek their means of sustenance by selling their labour on the market. The important feature of the rule of capital was its totalitarian nature- its quest to privatise common space in order to ensure total compliance with the market.


Moreover, “the market” was no longer the simple merchant’s or trader’s market that had existed and evolved in most societies able to support more than a subsistence economy but rather a new system based on legal contracts in which virtually every form of commodity could be traded. As Eric points out in his response, financial markets and consumer markets are of a different nature yet “market economics” ignores this fact and treats all commodities as basically similar. Land, labour and capital may all be bought, sold or rented alongside consumer goods and professional services in a theoretical space of free and open mutual contracts entered into willingly by buyers and sellers. What the rising capitalist class intended to do was to make this system pervasive so that, rather than the multi-level feudal economy based on taxation/tribute and peasant subsistence with trade existing, however sophisticated, as a secondary pursuit by the urban bourgeoisie and peasant farmers producing enough to trade in surpluses, capitalism was a system seeking to enshrine trade and exchange as the central economic mechanism. The dream of capitalism, in other words, is not merely a “market economy” (to replace the multi-tiered economies of the pre-capitalist era) but, in effect, a “market society”.


So far, none of this picture much contradicts Marx, however the important difference between Polanyian and Marxian narratives is that, unlike Marx who believed that the capitalist revolution had been successfully completed, or at least soon would be, Polanyi argued that the reality was somewhat more complex. People resisted the imposition of the economy on their lives creating, what Polanyi termed “a double movement” in which every attempt to advance capitalism was met by popular resistance, necessitating compromises and accommodations between the revolutionary capitalist class and the various counter-forces (which included, alongside the nascent urban proletariat, the peasantry, dispossessed feudal aristocracies, petit bourgeoisie and various other groups all presenting a range of, often contradictory and antagonistic, objections to market rule). Unlike Marx, who envisaged a revolutionary awakening in the urban proletariat as the dialectical antithesis of this capitalist rise, Polanyi saw a conservative resistance to a revolutionary capitalist class attempting to preserve, and later extend, rights which were being extinguished. Moreover, it was this initially conservative response that empowered the radical answer in socialism which Polanyi defined as “the tendency inherent in an industrial civilisation to transcend the self-regulating market by consciously subordinating it to a democratic society”[1].


Marx had ambiguous feelings towards democracy. Towards the end of his life, he began to speculate that, in countries such as Britain at least, socialism might yet be introduced peacefully. For most of his life however, Marx saw parliamentary democracy, in particular, as little more than a bourgeois trick. Subsequent orthodox Marxists belittled and ridiculed notions such as “the parliamentary road to socialism” and the revisionist ideas of Bernstein that, in the end, despite the ongoing embarrassment they caused, came to roost in the practice, if not theory, of virtually the entire European socialist movement (including the Eurocommunist parties). Whilst Marxists disdained the political, seeing all politics under capitalism as bourgeois politics, the success of socialist parties- not necessarily in building (capital “s”)“Socialism” as conceived in its pure form, but in forcing back the power of capital, clearly show its effectiveness. This success is much under-estimated, I believe, due to the ideological blinkers imposed by orthodox Marxism. According to the Marxist “revolutionary” reading of social-democracy, reformism was a form of betrayal and the reformist working-class suffering from “false consciousness” however, for Polanyi, like Bernstein before him, this slow, incremental struggle in the field of politics was the natural form of the struggle for socialism itself in a democratic (or democratising society). Moreover, for Polanyi, this process of democratisation was, in itself, part of the socialist struggle per se.


Looking at modern history through Polanyian eyes, everything suddenly makes sense. Whereas Marxists struggle to account for the lack of revolutionary fervour in the European working-class and liberals insist that capitalism and democracy are inseparable twins, a Polanyian reading of history sees democracy emerging and advancing largely against capital. This is particularly obvious in the neo-liberal era as democracy is being increasingly reduced to an empty ritual whilst “the market” is held up as an apolitical, “common sense” area not to be interfered with by meddling politicians or the unwashed plebeian masses with their “market distorting” trade unions, environmental organisations and other barriers to the sovereignty of business. In truth, “capitalism” has never managed to fully establish itself although it has acquired considerable ideological force, because, in the end, most people (including smaller capitalists) don’t want to live in the kind of dystopia capitalism actually implies. If “pure” capitalism were ever established, it would quite simply resemble hell for almost everyone (shades of which we can see in the U.S. or Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland among others)- a system with no security where every individual was seeking the maximisation of their own self-interest and the losers were simply “left to the wolves”. Modern “capitalism” as we live it is a compromise and always must be.


“Economic Freedom” and “Freedom from Economics”


The neo-liberals rankle against the necessity of this “market-distorting” compromise which has arisen as a result of subordinating the economy to society through the mechanism of democracy and have instead, attempted to create a conceptual universe based on “economic freedom” and have moved to enact policies, over the last 30 years, which entrench this mythology.


“Freedom” in neo-liberal terms is the freedom to enter contracts, to buy and sell at liberty and to act in one’s own self-interest. It does not take a great deal of effort to expose the shoddiness of this conception of freedom which, for the majority does not even amount to meaningful economic freedom (for example; can the “right” to work for subsistence wages or starve be considered a genuinely free choice? Yet this is the essence of the neo-liberal approach to unemployment).


The socialist answer to capitalism, has always been, in effect, to propose “freedom from economics”. Marx’ rare ruminations on communism envision a society where work is no longer mere “labour” but performed as an act of contribution to the society or self-fulfillment, for which each individual may expect the satisfaction of his/her material needs without the need for elaborate accounting. It is a beautiful vision and one worth dreaming about for the very distant future. For the forseeable future however, we may have to tolerate some degree of economic rule over our lives. Nonetheless, the goal of the Left must be to “put economics in its place”. The economy must serve humanity and not the other way around. In other words, rather than the empty ideal of “economic freedom” which presents a false definition of what it means to be free, the Left must continue to struggle for “freedom from economics”.


Ironically however, to free ourselves from economics we must turn our attention more to economic issues. I would like to assure Eric that, perhaps contrary to the impression given in my previous article, I am not altogether dismissing questions of culture as political issues, yet, I must insist that these must not become the sole, or primary, focus of politics in the current period. Unfortunately, for the moment, economics truly is the “substance” of politics because the market has enslaved us. How can we doubt this for a second when the richest, most prosperous societies in the world are facing galloping poverty rates, massive unemployment and the wholesale destruction of social services? Moreover, this is all occurring in the middle of unprecedented material abundance. Throughout Greece and Spain the shelves of shopping centres and supermarkets groan with an abundance of goods even as the streets outside fill with the recently impoverished and unemployed who lack the economic means to consume what is available. Here we see the tyranny of economics and the waste and inefficiency of a market society. Production and distribution are misaligned.


This does not imply that the only, or even preferred solution is a return to Soviet-style planning. The downfalls of this system have been enumerated at length for years. Nor is there much point asserting some utopian notion of “democratic planning”(not that it mighn’t be a good idea to experiment with this on a small scale) or some other exotic solution. People used to being able to determine their own consumption preferences in the marketplace are unlikely to want to replace this with a totally planned system no matter how democratic. Markets clearly have their place but what should that place be? What goods and services should be covered by the market and which should be provided as untraded “social goods”? These are important questions. Few people much mind having a variety of restaurants to go to or a choice of clothing styles or technological items but perhaps many of us do not feel a pressing need for a variety of power providers competing to sell us electricity or a host of private banking institutions that differ only to the extent that they are ripping us off. And there are other “empty” choices that would perhaps be more satisfactorily be taken over by well-run, transparent, public service providers (or perhaps a combination of public and third-sector non-profit providers if so desired) such as education, health, public utilities and welfare services.


My reason for proposing a “democratic mixed economy” (and I should point out I am not “married” to the term but prefer it, for a number of reasons, to any of the alternatives on offer) is to allow for an open-ended experimental approach to reorganising the economy that puts people first, through the democratic, participatory mechanism and which is open-ended with regard to the question of the role and limitations of markets, the ownership and property mechanisms that exist and the degree of state, as opposed to private, cooperative or third-sector delivery of services. My own orientation within such a framework, would be strongly towards the socialist end of the continuum and the “mix” I would prefer would perhaps be leaning heavily towards the public/cooperative/mutualist approach but, in the end it would not be me but the majority which would (hopefully) have the final say on the composition of the mix (which would be bound to change over time anyway- probably in ways we cannot even foresee).


Issues of Economic Structure and Governance


Of course, as Eric pointed out, with regard to Australia but, in fact it is also largely true of all the advanced economies, we are no longer dealing with “industrial” but rather “post-industrial” economies in most of the wealthy nations. As I mentioned above, I do not feel the shift to a service economy is, in itself, a particularly terrible thing any more than it can be seen as intrinsically emancipatory. There is, however, an important element to this structural shift which presents a far more serious problem for the Left: the growing international division of labour effected by “globalisation”.


It should be obvious to anyone that, no matter how abstracted from any kind of material production most of our jobs become, someone somewhere has to be growing the food we eat, buy, sell, market or advertise just as someone has to manufacture the clothes we wear, the vehicles we travel in and the computers we increasingly rely on in our service-sector jobs. The idea of a “virtual economy” is a risible fantasy that can only exist as long as we are prepared to ignore the fact that everything we really need to stay alive is physically produced somewhere.


Indeed, the shift from a “production” to a “consumption” oriented society was one of the pillars of neo-liberal strategy. As Marx pointed out, when we view economic processes as consumers it is easy to ignore the injustices and exploitation that delivers us cheap goods, however, if we look at the same process through the eyes of producers, all of these miseries become clear. Not only did killing off industry in the wealthy countries have the effect of increasing unemployment (and therefore facilitating union-busting and assaults on wages in order to pursue the anti-inflationary policies that neo-liberals are so in love with) but also allowed large companies to deepen the international division of labour that is so beloved of free-trade theory, by relocating manufacturing to the cheap-labour havens of the “developing world”.


Add to this the fact that there is no equivalent of the state at international level to govern or regulate these processes and it is quite clear that this whole process has had a great deal to do with a strategic flanking of the postwar social-democratic compromise. Governments renounced their competencies over economics “for the greater good” leaving no political response to market rule easily available.


To a large extent, this explains the “deer caught in the headlamps” response of social-democrats to the current global economic crisis. The tools simply do not yet exist to do much about the problems we face. Where governance mechanisms are being instituted however, as can be seen at present in the European Union, they are not of a democratic nature but rather embody a technocratic response aimed at preserving the hegemony of capital, if not the self-regulating market nonsense that has had its dirty underwear exposed yet again.


So, what to do? In this era, international coordination among Leftists is a matter of survival. This is something I have been actively struggling for in the Party of European Socialists. Socialists and social-democrats in Europe (which is my primary focus as I live on the margins of Europe in Istanbul, Turkey) need to work much more unitedly to present structural reforms at the European level that would enable greater democratic participation and transparency as well as advance a Europe-wide “social Europe” agenda. This is not an easy proposition as the European institutions are weighed down with layers of treaties, bureaucratic and technocratic measures and entrenched ideologies that are firmly opposed to reform. The European Union was specifically conceived of as a “benign technocracy” rather than a democracy as its architects feared (probably correctly) that European public opinion would be hostile to integration- let alone political union.


The need to reform Europe is only one, fairly limited, step in the struggle to reform globalisation. I, personally, do not consider globalisation as an intrinsically negative phenomenon and certainly see no future in any attempt to go backwards to re-entrench the Westphalian state or try to reindustrialise the rich world economies. Our problems today truly are global yet we lack global political mechanisms to deal with these. Ultimately, these struggles to oppose and limit the power of capital must become international and, moreover, they must be democratic if they are to succeed in any worthwhile way.


Environmental Collapse and Reevaluating Growth


Finally, I’d like to address one of the most pressing issues raised by Eric in his critique of my previous article; environmental destruction. This is perhaps one of the most important indications of our need to adopt a global approach as the environmental disaster posed by climate change is not limited in its effects to any one country or region but rather, poses significant risks for all life on earth.


The ideology of untrammelled growth central to capitalism is profoundly dysfunctional. The only analogue in nature to an organism that recognises no limits or controls to growth is cancer. As we all know, the point at which untreated cancer cells cease growing is at the point where the host body dies. It is an ugly analogy but, the economic system we currently follow is essentially cancerous. Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” increasingly looks more like simple destruction without any “creation” worth mentioning.

It is necessary that, lacking a global political mechanism able to coordinate such efforts, individual nations do what they can to respond to the environmental crisis but, we must acknowledge that, just as individual responses to the related economic crisis are limited, so too will our very best efforts to address the environmental crisis be. This is, however, no reason for refraining from the attempt. What can be done must be done and struggle is the best way to perceive the limits to what can be achieved and the only way to force up past those limits.


What Is To Be Done?


The task for Leftists in the current era is, I would argue, to advance international cooperation and solidarity among ourselves whilst reaching out to our allies. The movements for change of the future are liable to be networks and loose coalitions cooperating around specific issues rather than the mass parties of the past. We need to leave our ideological conceits, sectarian preferences and vanguardist fantasies buried in the Twentieth Century where they belong.


Our goal must, I believe, be to advance new forms of participatory democracy at the local, national and international level and, a major programmatic focus must be economic. If we are to ever be “free from economics” we must attack economism by offering alternative economic models that subordinate the economy to society and democratic politics. As much as possible, we need to experiment with practical models rather than attempting to push dry theory which does little more than keep academics in jobs. People are understandibly skeptical of almost any new idea until they can see for themselves that it works. The wasteland of failed ideas lurks behind us all and provokes us all to caution and conservatism; the Left needs to work with this cautiousness rather than trying to browbeat people with our “superior understanding”- an unfortunate personality flaw which has left us stereotyped as “out-of-touch, self-righteous elites” by the cunning conservative populists of the Right.


There is no question that the task is daunting and the stakes are extremely high but the global crisis of capitalism is right on top of us, threatening everything we hold sacred and even everything that keeps us alive. There is a golden opportunity presenting itself, for perhaps the briefest of times, to change direction and lay the foundations for a quantum shift in the way we live on this fragile planet of ours, how we treat each other and how we view ourselves and our societies. The possibility to really change for the best is tantalisingly tangible yet frustratingly held back by our own limitations and the lack of structures to work through.


I admit that my own answers remain vague and more a matter of principle than detail but these things are always a collective effort. Already there are countless examples of activists doing what needs to be done and trying to implement change on the ground, perhaps what we need is just to deepen our links with each other and see what can be gleaned from our common experience as we try to forge disparate acts of resistance and creation into a broader strategy for change. The nature of the times demand that we stretch the limits of our creativity in responding to the needs of our era.


In contrast, it is in just such times as these that the last thing we need is a “Left” that has nothing more to offer than a bleating plea for “decent capitalism” based on a return to some sanitised, nostalgic fantasy of the industrial past. Such an appallingly stunted vision is worse than no vision at all, and it is in this spirit that I was originally moved to make my previous contribution to the economics debate within the European social-democratic movement.


A Final, Personal Note


I hope this goes some way towards clarifying the perspective from which I approached my previous contribution on the “democratic mixed economy”. I believe there are several points on which my own views and Eric’s converge or, at least overlap though several points of contention may yet remain, which I believe is a strength rather than a weakness as it is only through discussion that ideas can be refined. I would be more than happy to discuss these ideas further with Eric or anyone else who is interested. The most important thing is to discuss and develop the concepts and approaches that can take us forward and my own views are nothing but a work in progress- I am always open to the persuasion of better ideas and more insightful perspectives. In other words, all (constructive) responses are welcome.



[1] Polanyi Karl (2001 (1944) The Great Transformation, The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston,
Beacon Press p. 242