Why is it demonstrably absurd?

The article was about the death of ideology and the notion that this is killing off interest in politics among the young.

It isn’t about the notion that there are no debates that make a difference to people’ lives. NHS spending and efficiency makes a difference to millions of lives. It just isn’t a matter of ideology. Its managerial.

I write this as a champion of managerial politics – since I think it comes from liberal democracy triumphiing as an ideology – and because fewer people die from clashes over detail and direction within an ideology than between ideologies.

But that doesn’t make those managerial debates ideological.

Of course it didn’t. It may have ended one particular ideological struggle — or at the very least called a temporary ceasefire — but to suggest that the Road Protests that took place in Britain during the decade that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall weren’t ideological is rather strange. Similarly the protests at the London Arms Fair, the G20 summit, Faslane… all are, to a greater or lesser extent, based upon ideology (“The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture”).

I was 18 when the Wall fell and had become involved in left wing political activism a couple of years earlier. The discussions I had around the campfire at the Newbury Protest eight years later were no less ideological than those I’d had as an idealistic 16 year old Marxist (though — I’d hope — just a tad more sensible).

To declare the death of ideology when you actually mean “the ending of one particular ideological battle” might make a better headline but doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. The lines have simply shifted. Whether it’s feminism, religious belief or ecological sustainability, ideology will have just as great a bearing on the future as it’s had on the past.

What’s in a handle? The disagreements over the cited policy issues are wide and have divergent fundamental roots. The decisions, one way or another, will produce real differences in the lives of millions. To put all that down to mere differences in managerial style seems to me to be demonstrably absurd.

Those are still just disputes in managerial style among ruling elites, they are hardly signs of major ideological conflict. It may get people within that elite hot under the colar but that’s the narcissism of small differences; most people outside those elites aren’t even aware of the debate.

Anyway, your assertion “In large measure, conservatism is precisely a disposition (against change)”, is entirely simplistic.

It is a disposition which recognises the limited susceptibility to change and tolerance for change in human beings. It recognises that human beings are motivated by complex forces far more deeply ingrained, often innate, than that of the simplistic model of the world which underlies the convictions of the left. It is a disposition which sees it as wasteful of time and energy, and often detrimental, to strive to change the unchangeable, eradicate the innate, attempt to make real unrealisable ideals. Far better to recognise the existence of human imperfections and ameliorate their excesses and effect progress by piecemeal social engineering, which can be reversed if necessary, rather than massive revolutionary gestures. Then change proceeds at a tolerable pace. How have I come to this conclusion? Not from textbooks or lectures or symposia, but simply from 62 years of observing human beings and being subject to the inexorable influence of reality. I was a lefty in the 1960′s. I voiced the same sort of things I see on this forum. I railed when my elders said “You’ll think differently when you’re older. You’ll be reading the Daily Telegraph in ten years time.”I cringe to think that I believed what I did then.

I’m a different person from the one I was 40 years ago. Paul Sagar will be too. No offence, Paul. I think you’ll find that most old reactionaries like me were fiery radicals in our youth. Time and experience work wonders. Look at Tony Benn.

I’d be inclined to agree with you – But I then fail to see how lacks ideology today.

We’ve seen the Tories split over signing the European social chapter. We’ve seen Labour split over an interventionist foreign policy. But neither debate was particularly ideological. Everyone (almost) wanted what was best for Iraqis, and for Britain to be safe. And people debated whether invading would further or worsen those aims. Likewise the Social Chapter was a debate about hurting the economy or hurting our influence in Europe. It was not primarily one of sovereignty despite that being tact on.

So a strong pragmatic aspect remains in politics even where there are severe splits.

To illustrate that just look at the railways and the tube.

The Tories privatised the railways – Labour nationalised them (Network Rail debts are classified as public debt now I believe)

Meanwhile Labour privatised the maintenance of the Tube (Gordon Brown as Chancellor forced the PPP on London) and the Conservatives (Boris Johnson) oversaw the renationalisation of it (by deciding not to re-issue PPP when the firm went bust.)

This demonstrably pragmatic outlook is a strong theme in British politics. And while marginal matters like Nationalism (various independece movements) and socialism (notably during WW2) play their parts – their influence over wider society is always very limited because of the concensus around libeal democracy.

Free trade was, on most definitions, an ideological position – like free markets or the freedom of the press. The arguments within the Tory Party (and it is instructive that the prime instigator of Tarriff Reform was not a Tory at all) were less about the practical and immediate effects of tarriffs and more an ideological question of how they saw the future of Britain and her Empire.

Similarly, for the Liberals, Ireland. Home Rule was surely an ideological question. Parties don’t tend to split on practicalities, but on ideologies. That’s why (for example) Bevan resigned over NHS charges for spectacles.

Again – I’m not sure that’s ideological. I agree it is a fundemental disagreement. But that’s not the same thing.

Taking an entirely seperate example so as not to confuse matters – the ANC split in South Africa at one point about whether their very singular ideological aim (liberal democracy – and thus equality) would be best achieved by violence or non-violent civil disobedience.

Of course some people had a principled pascifist view, but the debat was largely one about achieving an aim.

Likewise with trade tarrifs and the EU (I know less about the Corn Law debates within the tory Party I’m afraid, though again, that’s pre-liberal democracy as the universal status quo).

On the EU the debate in the Try party was one about the best option for prosperity in the UK economy. With tariffs it was to some extent about the right move to strengthen the empire, but also to some extent a debate about whether the empire should be strengthened if that meant hunger for Britons.

Neither view questioned the ideological status quo that we werea liberal democracy with a right to property and so forth.

—

Remember – debate even now is often vehment and irreconsilable. That doesn’t make it idealistic.

So tell me what ideology lay behind the debates on trade tariffs in the first third of the 1900s? I would argue none, since it was a pragmatic debate about strengthening ties in the empire and the cost of food for the poor.

I’d disagree on that – Imperial Preference was one of three times when the Conservatives split on an an explicitly ideological policy – IP being the conflict between free trade and the attempt to construct a protected trading area. The first was the repeal of the Corn Laws, the third was over Europe in the 1990s. It is, or should be, instructive that when the Tories have focused so heavily on an ideological debate the immediate result has been an electoral thumping.

I don’t see how the acts you list as counter-points are ideological.

Nationalisation of the Bank of England (and of coal and steel) reflected the economic crisis faced and the drive to exert Keynesian control. Now I suppose you could argue Keynesian economic modelling is a philosophy – but that would be foolish. It is more accurately understood as one of many political undertakings within a philosophically and so economically liberal society.

Creation of the NHS likewise – born out of solidarity rather than ideology. Its founders honestly believed it would be a short lived entity that would deal with the backlog of longstanding demand for healthcare – and then would scale down as demand would have been met. (read the memoirs of its main protagonists – they are fascinating)

On Wilberforce and the riots acts – you seem to have ignored my “since the 1800s” comment. The 1800s were, after all, when we fully established liberal democracy as the near-universally accepted order for Britain. Indeed the constitutional crisis of 1910-11 was the final desperate act by a minority to keep the UK from being a liberal democracy. And they failed.

In fact you seem to attribute any lack of consensus to ideological dispute.

So tell me what ideology lay behind the debates on trade tariffs in the first third of the 1900s? I would argue none, since it was a pragmatic debate about strengthening ties in the empire and the cost of food for the poor.

Likewise What philosophical grand idea lay behind the debate over rearmament? I would argue none as it was a debate about how to best secure the nation’s interests abroad, and safety at home.

I don’t see how the acts you list as counter-points are ideological.

Nationalisation of the Bank of England (and of coal and steel) reflected the economic crisis faced and the drive to exert Keynesian control. Now I suppose you could argue Keynesian economic modelling is a philosophy – but that would be foolish. It is more accurately understood as one of many political undertakings within a philosophically and so economically liberal society.

Creation of the NHS likewise – born out of solidarity rather than ideology. Its founders honestly believed it would be a short lived entity that would deal with the backlog of longstanding demand for healthcare – and then would scale down as demand would have been met. (read the memoirs of its main protagonists – they are fascinating)

On Wilberforce and the riots acts – you seem to have ignored my “since the 1800s” comment. The 1800s were, after all, when we fully established liberal democracy as the near-universally accepted order for Britain. Indeed the constitutional crisis of 1910-11 was the final desperate act by a minority to keep the UK from being a liberal democracy. And they failed.

In fact you seem to attribute any lack of consensus to ideological dispute.

So tell me what ideology lay behind the debates on trade tariffs in the first third of the 1900s? I would argue none, since it was a pragmatic debate about strengthening ties in the empire and the cost of food for the poor.

Likewise What philosophical grand idea lay behind the debate over rearmament? I would argue none as it was a debate about how to best secure the nation’s interests abroad, and safety at home.

Apart from Professor Allen (mentioned above), the Yorkshire NUM was getting advice from at least one other professor of economics to my knowledge.

One interpretation is that Scargill was bright enough – or sufficiently advised – to realise that the strike was doomed but wanted a demonstration of revolutionary action by the workers even if that failed. At the time there was certainly popular gossip about whether the strike would succeed in bringing down the Thatcher government re-elected in September 1983 with a majority of 140. IMO it was hugely significant that other trade unions and the Labour Party backed away from supporting the strike. One reason was the failure of the Yorkshire NUM – the lead region in the strike – to hold a strike ballot. The Nottinghamshire NUM did hold a ballot as a result of which the pits there kept working, as did the Leicestershire pits.

Mick McGahey, NUM VP, eventually distanced himself from the course of the strike with delphic comments such as: “We are a movement not a monument”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_McGahey

And this about “flexibility”:
http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/87_07_24.pdf

Btw an interesting incidental is that from January 1985 through to 1990, Putin was based in East Germany as a KGB liaison officer with the Stasi. The KGB and Stasi cooperated fairly closely so, presumably, Putin was placed to read the reports of Stasi agents operating in Britain and put suggestions to the Stasi about the control of the agents.

“A left-wing academic, unmasked as a spy in the unfolding Cold War scandal, has denied acting illegally or betraying his country.

“Vic Allen, 77, a former leading member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), said he had ‘no regrets’ over providing information to the East German Stasi secret police.

“The retired Leeds University professor, from Keighley, North Yorkshire, said he did pass on information about CND’s activities. But he said he considered that perfectly legitimate because he belonged to a pro-Soviet, pro-East German faction of the group.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/09/99/britain_betrayed/451366.stm

“Also named is Vic Allen, a retired professor of economics at Leeds university, who was a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and went on the first Aldermaston march. A firm Stalinist, it is alleged he passed on information about CND to his East German handlers.

“After the revelation this weekend that he had been ‘an agent of influence’, he said he had no regrets. . .

“Prof Allen was an ally of Arthur Scargill during the 1984-85 miners’ strike. In 1987 he published a book, The Russians Are Coming. His pro-Soviet views were well known. . .”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,271697,00.html

I wonder how Professor Allen and his colleagues are commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall?

How come then that there was no agreement between the New Labour government and the Conservative opposition over whether a fiscal stimulus was the appropriate response to the financial crisis and the recession the crisis induced? Why the split in America between the Democrats and the Republicans over the fiscal stimulus of the Obama administration? Why did Peer Steinbrück, the SPD finance minister in the previous German government, condemn the cut in VAT for a year, announced by Alistair Darling a year ago, as “crass Keynesianism”?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/11/germany-gordon-brown

In recent years, public spending on healthcare services as a percentage of national GDP in Britain has risen closer to the average for west European countries. How come if Labour and the Tories took the same view on the political priority accorded to funding the public services?

Why the disagreement over Cameron’s Big Society vision if Labour and the Conservatives share the same ideology and represent the same interests?

“Because of the privatisation and sale of council housing that I mentioned but which you cropped.”

Nuts. The majority of households were already in owner-occupied homes even before Thatcher was elected to government in May 1979 – council tenants were a steadily diminishing minority.

Crappy autocorrective text!

Anyway, to clarify: those clashes of ideology I mentioned in 6. are best understood as *practical opposition* to ruling ideologies rather than clashes between competing ideologies.

Because of the privatisation and sale of council housing that I mentioned but which you cropped. They altered peoples lives materially, not (primarily) ideologically.

‘The biggest threat to the government was from the miners’ strike of 1984/5 but that was mainly lost because of massive coal stocks above ground built up prior to the strike, the continued working of miners in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, the prior conversion of power stations to burn either coal or oil, and because the Labour Party and other trade unions backed off supporting the NUM. Apart from the strike bound NUM members, practically everyone else regarded the strike as doomed to fail. All the Police did was to constrain the violent picketing that went on.’

Again, those are primarily material factors not ideological ones.

‘It’s curious that the New Labour governments have not repealed the industrial relations legislation of the Thatcher and Major governments’

Not surprising as they represent the same interests as the Tories did. The population in general don’t buy into ideology. Sometimes the ruling classes have opposing ideologies, sometimes (like now) they share the same one. Ideologies are a luxury reserved for those whose material needs are already taken care of.

There’s certainly opposition to ruling ideology among the working class but it’s practical, not theoretical. The proletarian intellectuals Gramsci theorised become absorbed – if they stride at all – within the ideological battles of the ruling classes and generally insulated from the practical necessities of life.

If so, I’m not clear on how the Conservatives led by Mrs Thatcher so easily won general elections in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

As best I can tell, no one was being forced to vote Conservative in the various ballot stations I went to for those elections and there were no subsequent media reports of massive election fraud that I recall.

The biggest threat to the government was from the miners’ strike of 1984/5 but that was mainly lost because of massive coal stocks above ground built up prior to the strike, the continued working of miners in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, the prior conversion of power stations to burn either coal or oil, and because the Labour Party and other trade unions backed off supporting the NUM. Apart from the strike bound NUM members, practically everyone else regarded the strike as doomed to fail. All the Police did was to constrain the violent picketing that went on.

It’s curious that the New Labour governments have not repealed the industrial relations legislation of the Thatcher and Major governments.

Those ideologies wouldn’t even be recognised by most people. That’s a clash between ruling elites. Ideologies usually are. For the bulk of us life is lived within economic and legal restraints, not according to ideologies whether they are dominant or (more rarely) oppositional.

The reason that Thatcherism/Reaganism succeeded wasn’t just that they won ideological hegemony (to return to Gramsci’s theories mentioned in an earlier thread) but that they changed those material constraints through, for instance, anti-union legislation, restructuring the police into a professional strike-breaking paramilitary force and the sale of council houses and large scale privatisation which gave many people a material stake in collaborating with the new economic relations.

Marx himself gave little attention to ideology and far more to materialism.

I trust Mr Lewis has written as a matter of urgency to the IMF and to the OECD about their assessments of policy options to deal with recessions to put them right, as well as to all those (many) governments which pushed through fiscal expansions in response to recessions.

Readers here may be interested in this article by Professor Feldstein on: The Case for Fiscal Stimulus
http://www.nber.org/feldstein/projectsyndicate_fiscalstimulus.pdf

Professor Feldstein, of Harvard, is probably the most senior and widely respected academic economist associated with the Republican Party. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors during the Reagan administration and was president and ceo of the National Bureau of Economic Research 1977-82, 1984-2008.

Also of special interest is this paper by Prof Greg Mankiw (Harvard): The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer:
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/files/Macroeconomist_as_Scientist.pdf

It is of special interest as Prof Mankiw was for a while chairman of the council of economic advisors in the GW Bush administration 2003-5.

Keynes has never been short of critics and I can think of more than a few with rather stronger academic credentials than Mr Lewis – such as Professor David Laidler: Fabricating the Keynesian Revolution (Cambridge UP, 1999):
http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/0256

Try: Robert Skidelsky: Keynes – The Return of the Master (Allen Lane 2009)”

Try: Hunter Lewis: Where Keynes Went Wrong

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Where-Keynes-Wrong-Hunter-Lewis/dp/1604190175/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257978706&sr=8-1

Haven’t read Skidelsky’s book but have read Paul Davidson’s “The Keynes Solution”.

Same here – and I challenge anyone who has read Cameron’s lecture on Tuesday about The Big Society to claim that ideological clashes have withered away:
http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/11/David_Cameron_The_Big_Society.aspx

In response to recent events, both the IMF and the OECD have produced papers assessing the case for a fiscal stimulus to stabilize national economies. In the nature of the pressures on international organizations, both will have played down explicit ideological clashes to avoid giving offence to member state governments. I post the links here for any readers who want some return value for those fractions of their taxes which go in subscriptions to the IMF and the OECD:

OECD: Effectiveness and scope of fiscal stimulus
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/3/62/42421337.pdf

IMF Case for global fiscal stimulus
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/spn/2009/spn0903.pdf

Btw on above references in the thread to British history, readers may be interested in what Ben Elton’s uncle said in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge on: The Future of the Past (1968):

“Now one of the most curious things about the English, I think . . . is that they suppose themselves to conscious of history and to be enveloped in History. They are not. They are both indifferent and ignorant as far as history is concerned. If you want a really historically conscious country you have to go either to Central Europe, where they have too much history . . . or to the United States, where they have so little of it. I think that England could do with knowing more about its past, but that’s always been so.”

Quoted in Norman Davies: The Isles (1999). Geoffrey Elton was born in Tübingen, under the name of Gottfried Ehrenberg. Fortunately, he and his brother managed to reach Britain in 1939.

If you click through the link, you’ll see it doesn’t specify with what. It’s not merely reform & regulation of capitalism though, as there is a third option for that (which was the option most people went with, unsurprisingly).

I am an economist; and I still see ideological divisions amongst my colleagues – Keynesians, Monetarists, Austrians, etc. On the one hand it is enchantingly old-fashioned. On the other, the current crisis has reminded everyone how devastating the chosen blindness of ideology can be.

True.

Could this be one of the reasons?

“Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, called on nations to pump in 2 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) in an attempt to stave off a severe global recession. . ”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5168725.ece

See this IMF review in July 2009 of fiscal expansions by member countries:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/spn/2009/spn0921.pdf

This is the outcome so far:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/the-story-so-far-in-one-picture/

Three cheers for Keynes !

Try: Robert Skidelsky: Keynes – The Return of the Master (Allen Lane 2009)