oh goody, another post about “narrative”.

This is an issue to which I may turn.

quite possibly I am out of step with the majority of LC readers …. but for the love of God, please, spare us.

there’s an insight lurking somewhere in this post. I think it might be that political movements need popular support if they are to be successful. What a brilliant idea.

[a short note on rational choice theory. A good deal of it shows that "rational choices" in many situations can lead to bad outcomes: rather than justify laissez-faire policies, it more often does the opposite. Further, every time you argue something like Conservatives will use the cyclical deficit as an excuse to push through ideological cuts, or say that businesses will tend to fake green credentials rather than become genuinely green, or that firms will use transfer pricing to avoid tax, etc. etc. you have construed the actors in question as rational self-interested agents. I'd suggest that whilst certainly being a limited view of human behaviour, it's a pretty useful one]

Indeed.

“We have to say what success, social justice and a good life are. That’s the real challenge.”

How many more “we need an alternative vision/narrative” pieces are to be written before someone decides to give us some idea as to WHAT THEY ACTUALLY HAVE IN MIND?

And, before the hyperbole gets going, just a reminder that the IFS estimates that Total Managed Expenditure will fall from 48% to (gasp!) 40% of GDP in 2016, 40% being the 20 year pre-crisis average. It was below 40% throughout Labour’s first term.

Whilst the cynicism in the opening comments may be deserved, I think the author has done a service in at least beginning a credible analysis of the philosophical failures of the NuLab aberration. You have to correctly identify and prevent errors lest you repeat them, as the Labour leadership contest so far looks to be doing.

Of course, the next bit is the really hard bit. Good luck with that but any mention of tankie-speak such as “ownership of the means of production” and I’m outta here

“For whatever motive – and reducing a budget deficit is hardly dishonourable – Cameron is seeking to redefine the individual’s relationship with the state, more radically than anyone since the 40s. ”

Which is why I believe we need to attack the Lie Dems at max warp captain.

We know what Call me Dave is, and the shysters he rode in on. But the Lie Dems are out of their depth. They are being taken for the biggest mugs in recent years. They can convince themselves that they are doing it for the country, but we all know that is a pile of poo.

The Labour Party’s problem is that it is utterly mired in the heritage of New Labour. All the Tories have to do if Labour opposes them is to say that these are New Labour policies taken one step further. And all of the leadership candidates bar Abbott are up to their neck in New Labour. The least that any opposition from them would receive is a charge of hypocrisy.

This is the tragedy that we face today. New Labour has delivered the country to the Tory/Orange Liberal small state agenda. It will take several years before a credible opposition can be mounted from the Labour leadership.

helen, can you point out the “credible analysis of the philosophical failures “

It’s fairly laughable that it’s always the “benefits culture” that gets it in the neck when in every country that follows the extreme neo-liberal model the movement up and down between social classes is virtually nil.

Combine that with the marketisation of almost everything and you can see what joy it must bring to be born at the bottom; to be told you must get a job in a “service economy” when you barely have the social skills to buy a postage stamp; all the while having a culture shoved down your throat 24/7 that says there’s no value in anything other than celebrity – getting rich for doing nothing – and buying “stuff”.

Yet what do we get? A government intent on going even further down this road.

Perhaps if the opposition wasn’t also quite so attached to this neo-liberal “narrative” we might get somewhere. The thing is though, they are up to their elbows in it.

Richard, you scold Jenkins for misidentifying the “British Left” yet never get around to telling us what the “British Left” is. If it must reorganise, when was it organised? If it must say what it’s for, what is it for?

The Right believes that the market can solve everything (except for making war and fighting crime which are the proper business of government). While the market solution leads to poverty and indeed preventable deaths, it is still the best because any alternative involves people deciding how much wealth – and health – other people shall have. It believes that such willed allocation of resources is so wicked that any amount of fetishism of market forces is justifiable. More sophisticated right-wingers (more sophisticated than the libertarians of the Enrique type who swarm on this board like bumblebees at summer’s end) recognise that such fetishism is problematic and justify it by reference to the Fallen State of Man.

The Left believes that human intellect can, in the fullness of time, produce Utopia through rational planning. However, all attempts to bring this about, whether on a small or a large scale, have been wrecked by the Fallen State of Man – as Robert Owen, at the end of his life, realised. The question is whether, as the Fabians believed, a more limited version of this – devising criteria for determining when markets work for the good of the many rather than the few, rather than fetishising or excoriating them – is possible.

The practical difficulty is in providing political funding for a Party with this philosophy. Capitalists obviously are only really interested in funding parties that will serve their interests, and Trade Unions likewise are only interested in the producer interest of their members. Although the Internet was supposed to have made raising lots of little donations as easy as raising a few large ones (the Liberal landslide of 1906 was funded with fewer than half-a-dozen cheques IIRC), I see no sign of it yet.

And all this before we get to the brute fact that race is more important in our politics to-day than it ever has been. And there is nothing whatsoever left-wing or even liberal about belonging to one ethnic group or another. The politics of race are the politics of fear,tout court.

a culture … there’s no value in anything other than celebrity – getting rich for doing nothing – and buying “stuff”.

I do not recognize this culture. The Western/UK culture I’m familiar with is rich and complex, if anything is disparages getting rich for doing nothing, and says there’s much more to life than material consumption. I think you should get out more, and meet some people. Culture resides in people, and I think you’ll find most people do not think about life in the way you portray, at all. Some do, sure.

I think you are taking a few elements from celebrity culture, telly, magazines, advertisements, exaggerating their importance and extrapolating wildly to construct a wholly misleading picture. Why are so many left-wingers fond of doing this?

5 “The Labour Party’s problem is that it is utterly mired in the heritage of New Labour. All the Tories have to do if Labour opposes them is to say that these are New Labour policies taken one step further. And all of the leadership candidates bar Abbott are up to their neck in New Labour. The least that any opposition from them would receive is a charge of hypocrisy.”

Yup. New Labour has destroyed the left of centre view. It always made me laugh when the tory trolls would come on here and talk about communism or socialism or some such bullshit. Nu Labour was shit because it was Conservative. Blair is being well rewarded by big business for his crimes.

The Labour leadership is filled with nu Labour rejects who have zero credibility. It is very disheartening that none of them seem to understand the damage they have done over issues like civil Liberties. But this is not unique. Obama is now attacking the left of his party who are pissed off with his pro corporate , pro Bush war on terror, clap trap.. Punch a hippy has been his tactic and now hardly anyone on the left of the Democratic party can be bothered to turn out to vote for him. This will be interpreted by the corporate media as meaning Obama was “Too Liberal,” when he loses the mid term elections, but that is crap. The corporate Democrats will move further to the right to try to appease the Conservatives who will never vote for them anyway.

Liberals did not vote for Obama for a health care bill that denied the public option, and gave the corporate private sector everything they wanted. Liberals did not vote for Obama to privatise social security. Liberals did not vote for Obama to continue Bush’s power grabs. But that is what they have got. So they will stay at home, next election.

If you’re aiming for poetry best to get it right.
Bumblebees do not swarm.
Honey bees do.

I don’t believe Luis Enrique is a libertarian at all, though he can speak for himself.

Mike Killingworth

I really do wonder how people like you work – I mean, you obviously don’t proceed by reading what people write and then forming an opinion based on what you’ve read.

I suspect you identify comments which you think are critical of some left-wing position, identify critics of left-wing with right-wing, and right-wing with libertarian, and Bob’s your uncle, and I’m a libertarian. (and an unsophisticated one, to boot). The same goes for the author of this post.

Even in this thread, I’ve mentioned how laissez-faire policies “aren’t justified”. How libertarian does that sound, to you? I would ask you to show me something “libertarian” I’ve written, but I don’t think I could bear it. I just googled my name plus government on LC, and found this comment. How libertarian does that look to you?

(although it’s nice to be compared to a bumble bee: I am fond of bumble bees).

@Luis, cjcjc

Pretty much, yeah. I guess it’s still early days for the left wing in terms of coherent organisation, finding voices etc. It’s been dead 30 years, and we’ve been trying to reanimate it for 3 months.

It all depends on if we bury NuLab and move on, though. If it continues then frankly they’ll never get elected again unless Dave really, really screws something up.

I don’t think bees would be libertarian. Well not the social ones who all work as a team for the good of the hive anyway – maybe the solitary bee is a better metaphor. It’s usually stingless too… arf!

On topic: Agree with @14.

“It’s been dead 30 years, and we’ve been trying to reanimate it for 3 months.”

Indeed.
It’s quite amazing really.
I mean you have (and always had) all these people decrying NuLab as “not left wing”, etc., you wouldthink they might have an alternative narrative – “look, here’s one we made earlier” – ready to go.
(Something you can never accuse the right of not having!)

Yet the cupboard is bare.
As bare as bare can be.

I really don’t know why there’s all this existential angst on the left. It’s not as if the Conservatives haven’t given the left plenty of opportunities to distinguish ourselves from them. And Nu Lab has shown us which bits to get rid of. A sensible centre-left party, advocating a mixed economy, fiscal discipline, redistribution & progressive taxation, some aggressive shake up of the financial sector, a smattering of Industrial Policy, investment in green infrastructure, some extra spending on deprived areas … I mean just act like Germans or Scandis … and we should trounce the Conservatives next time out. I don’t know whether that would count as a “continuation of Nu Lab” or not, but it I reckon it’d be eminently electable. It’s not a hard message to sell – run the economy sensibly, focus on trying to strengthen the position of those at the bottom of society and get in the faces of those at the top a bit more .. ok, I admit the current crop of leadership candidate is dispiritingly weak, but come on everyone get a grip. You can wail and gnash your teeth if you’re hoping for some fantasy ideal of pure left-wingedness to materialize out of nowhere, but if you’re just hoping for a realistic and sensible left-leaning government to get in power asap, there are lots of feasible, left-wing things to be doing.

[14] “unless Dave really, really screws something up” – the signs are all there that he might.

In office just a few short months yet he’s developed a predilection for slashing that puts dear old Freddy in the shade.
http://www.leighmachin.com/images/FreddyKrueger/imgFreddyKruegerFront.jpg

If the consequences of Tory austerity measures are anything like on par with the experiences of the miners then there may well be a backlash – and you don’t have to be Einstein to work out that the public will soon rumble that D-Cam, and his old Etonian chums are entirely insulated from policies that will almost bring pain to so main others?

Remember, at least Blair was able to trade on a feel good factor when he first came to office in 1997 – in part, because episodes like this seemingly belonged to the past
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ubgig29l4k&has_verified=1

Well not for much longer?

Mike
Luis is not a right wing libertarian but a realist leftist.
Just because the odiius right wing journalist or architect cjcjc agrees with him doesn’t mean he is right, or wrong or is a right wing libertarian.

It’s quite amusing to think that if New Labour weren’t of the Left then since 1979 we have had nothing but governments of the Right – so this nation is more right-wing than left.

But oh! One day the Left will reorganise itself – and say what it is for. Lo! There will be a vision of what the Left is trying to do. And I say unto ye, my friends, the Left shall deliver a new narrative for life in the UK. We will persuade the country of the need for a new understanding of living in this community that justifies change, a new direction, and a purpose for delivering difference within those pragmatic policies that underpin good government. We have to say what success, social justice and a good life are.

That’s the real challenge.

So it has proved.

UK liberty
Are you OK
You sound like you have OD on a cross between songs and praise and collected speeches of Thatcher.

“In office just a few short months yet he’s developed a predilection for slashing that puts dear old Freddy in the shade.”

But it is all just theory at the moment. They have not said exactly what they are going to cut. There has been lot’s of spin but no hard facts. I am betting that the 40% claim is just horse shit. So that when the cuts are nothing like that the public will say “Oh good not to bad.” (MANAGING EXPECTATIONS) But I also think that the departments are creating the information for a future tory govt so they will know how they would cut 40% if they can get away with it.

A lot of shit is going to hit the fan in one go. Cut’s will start to be announced just as Vat goes up. Nobody knows what the effect will be, but it could drive the economy off the cliff. Many Lib Dems may want to jump ship then. Who knows?

@cjcjc

I guess nobody wanted to rock the boat while Blair/Brown were on top and Labour was the hip cool party for young adults who were going places, so the cool radical trots bailed out. Presumably Labour’s now full of those guys who thought Cool Britannia was actually a thing. Who knows?

I think it suits Britain better for Labour to be the underdogs again. I also think they should get used to the doghouse for a bit before we start actually listening to them though.

In that case the Left has to reorganise itself – and say what it is for. Regaining power would be good. Regaining power for a purpose would be so much better.

I think the biggest problem for Labour (if not the left as a whole) is that the perception is pretty much on them being focussed on regaining power, not the purpose. To actually put this as the first objective, with a preferable but optional second objective of having a purpose, seems very wrong. The purpose is what people will vote for – unless you are counting on alienated Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters going back to Labour despite the fact they offer anything new. So the purpose is needed first – and gaining (not regaining – that falls straight into the Conservative ‘it’s all their fault’ narrative) power is about enacting the purpose, not just gaining power.

And the definition of purpose is twofold. One is pragmatic – that is to deliver workable solutions in government.

But the other is to deliver a new narrative for life in the UK. This is something much more telling. It is to persuade the country of the need for a new understanding of living in this community that justifies change, a new direction, and a purpose for delivering difference within those pragmatic policies that underpin good government.

I think the former pragmatic purpose is what government tries to do, with mixed success as a rule. As to the narrative, this is not about government, and indeed will be corrupted by association with government, as government requires practical decisions which do not always fit the narrative. And the narrative will need to be accepted for the pragmatic solutions that go with it to be electable remember – if you take 1983 as an example, Labour did not lack solutions, but nowhere near enough people brought the narrative required to justify them.

My concern here is that you put power before purpose and pragmatism before narrative, which if anything is actually the legacy of New Labour, originally a radical (if not radically-left wing) party who failed to act radically. The narrative needs to be in place to justify having power, not the other way round.

Can we ban the word “narrative” please? I’ve never in my life heard any of my friends or colleagues when discussing politics say “oh the reason why I don’t/didn’t vote Labour is because they haven’t got a narrative”.

@Watchman

“you put power before purpose and pragmatism before narrative”

Yes, New Labour aped the Tories in more ways than one. The shit hit the fan, fairly (but not as much as it could have) catastrophically at the election. The Tories have always been pragmatic about gaining power (this is a good history of the Tory party from that aspect) which is why they chose ex-PR man and all-round reasonable cove Call Me Dave as leader rather than the more likely (then) David Davis.

“The Right believes that the market can solve everything (except for making war and fighting crime which are the proper business of government).”

Fail!

Absolutely no one, not even me, believes that markets can solve everything nor that they are perfect or that they never fail.

That they’re pretty good things in general, yes, that they’re the default position, possibly, but they certainly do fail at times and at some tasks and the interesting things are working out when and what to do about it.

For example, the existence of copyright and patents, the very idea of intellectual property itself, is an admission that a pure free market won’t work in this field (IP being a public good) and thus we’ve got to do something about it.

“embracing in its totality the mantra of rational choice theory”

As Luis points out….the assumption is that people try to get what they want in a rational manner. The interesting part of it all is when they so try and yet don’t get it. It’s when rational choices break down that the subject and the assumptions get interesting….

“narrative”.

Look, people want to know (well, those that are remain interested) what you’re going to do for them, how you’re going to improve their lives. People aren’t interested in visions and narratives and whatnots – especially if you don’t actually say what’s involved.

If you can’t articulate what you are going to do to make it easier for Jack and Jill to get a reasonable wage, house, pension, healthcare, education, inheritance to leave the kids, etc, then you’ve got two hopes.

@27

Hang on a second Tim, didn’t you say on another thread that with markets “there are no losers” because everyone willingly chooses the better option? Hence the child working 16 hours a day to earn $1 by making trainers is “better off” than his starving peers who are begging (or worse)? So everyone’s alright..? But now markets can fail! Righty-ho.

Spot on @28 btw.

“Hence the child working 16 hours a day to earn $1 by making trainers is “better off” than his starving peers who are begging (or worse)?”

This is true.

“But now markets can fail! ”

This is also true.

“Hang on a second Tim, didn’t you say on another thread that with markets “there are no losers” because everyone willingly chooses the better option?”

This is not true, for that’s not what I said. What I did say was that in every voluntary transaction both parties to the transaction must be made better off by that transaction otherwise the transaction will not take place.

So there can be no losers, only winners, among those making voluntary transactions.

The classic (and widely understood) example of when markets fail is when not all of the effects of the transaction are being borne by the participants in the transaction. Externalities, in the jargon, of which pollution is the most often noted example but public goods with their positive externalities are another one.

There’s really no mystery here at all you know….people have been making these points for at least a century, it’s a cornerstone of neo-classical economics….

@31

Well ok, let’s go back to those kids making trainers: I’d say that is an example of market failure by reducing the child’s choices to starvation or slavery. But that isn’t what you said on the other thread, or at least that’s not how it seemed.

So there can be no losers, only winners, among those making voluntary transactions.

Tim, will you stop that. Nobody except you is using the word “losers” to mean being made worse off in a transaction compared to your available alternatives, which is all you’ve said is ruled out in a voluntary transaction. Everybody else defines the word “loser” to refer to the poor buggers whose best option is to work 16 hrs in a sweatshop whilst the winners are sipping cocktails. Everybody has repeatedly pointed out to you that what they’re talking (losers & winners) about is the options that are available to chose between. Everybody else is talking about losers meaning born holding the shitty end of the stick as opposed t’other end, the fact that the shitty end holders could choose let go and fall to their deaths (hence are “winners” in the voluntary holding onto stick transaction) is not the point. Stop being obtuse!

So there can be no losers, only winners, among those making voluntary transactions.

Does that include child prostitution if the child is willing or not coerced.
There are no so call voluntary transactions for most of us. We have to work because there is no alternative
For an individual who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to a public school, engaged in business transactions that if failed your wealthy parents will bail you out and now you work for 3 lunch break organisation because of your contacts. If you ever joined the real world there is no such thing as voluntary
You don’t work, you lose your house and your dependents end up on a drug filled council estate.

“Everybody else defines the word “loser” to refer to the poor buggers whose best option is to work 16 hrs in a sweatshop whilst the winners are sipping cocktails. Everybody has repeatedly pointed out to you that what they’re talking (losers & winners) about is the options that are available to chose between. Everybody else is talking about losers meaning born holding the shitty end of the stick as opposed t’other end, the fact that the shitty end holders could choose let go and fall to their deaths (hence are “winners” in the voluntary holding onto stick transaction) is not the point. Stop being obtuse!”

But if people are using this meaning of “winner” or “loser” as a critique of market based systems then they’re all wrong, aren’t they?

Because ending up with (or being born with) the shitty end of the stick isn’t something which is exclusive to market based systems…indeed, it’s a feature of every socio-economic system. So the existence of such shitty stick holding cannot be used as a critique of a market based system.

“I’d say that is an example of market failure by reducing the child’s choices to starvation or slavery.”

Err, no, this is an example of a market success. For choices have no risen from starvation or slavery to starvation, slavery or sweatshop…an advance provided by the market making that sweatshop option available.

Sure, we all want more and better options to be available…..which is where it gets interesting. What system can we, could we, might we, use to do so?

Given the number of choices we have in our market for near 300 years socioeconomic system….well, we might consider that to be something of a clue really.

“Stop being obtuse!”

I don’t think he’ll listen Luis…

“You don’t work, you lose your house and your dependents end up on a drug filled council estate.”

That is what is, in this obscure technical jargon economists like to use, what is known as a “choice”.

@35

“I’d say that is an example of market failure by reducing the child’s choices to starvation or slavery.”

Err, no, this is an example of a market success.

*facepalm*

Businessman: “Hey there, little Johnny; would you rather work 16 hours making shoes, or be a prostitute on the streets of Bangkok?”
Johnny: “But, Mister, why can’t I be a rich businessman like you?”
Businessman: “Sorry little Johnny, that’s not how the world works. But at least you have a choice!”
Johnny: “But, Mister…”
Businessman: “You’re a winner! Smile!”

TW is right is he not?

The sweatshop is an advance on subsistence farming.

That may not be saying much, but it is.

You don’t think we jumped from serfdom to the factory acts to where we are now in a decade or two, do you?

How we get those people from the sweatshop to the modern factory – *without reducing the number of jobs available* – is the question.

@ 31 ‘What I did say was that in every voluntary transaction both parties to the transaction must be made better off by that transaction otherwise the transaction will not take place.

The financial sector, particulalry banks made countless ‘voluntary transactions’ up to September 2008, it led to people losing their home because they could not pay their mortgages and the despised public sector having to bail out banks that were “too big to fail”

So much for neo-classical economics eh? “Creative destruction”, “the hidden hand”. Yeah right.

Neo-liberalism is a busted flush, it is the Emperor’s New Clothes except no one dare say so, because that would be an admission we have been going in the wrong direction for 30 years.

So we sit here waiting for the next big crash, which will be even bigger that the last one.

If neo-liberals were to have a motto they could quote Samuel Beckett “Try again. Fail again. Fail better”

But if people are using this meaning of “winner” or “loser” as a critique of market based systems then they’re all wrong, aren’t they? Because ending up with (or being born with) the shitty end of the stick isn’t something which is exclusive to market based systems

No Tim, really … it’s quite possible to believe that as a dynamic system the market economy turns some people into winners and others into losers, and that it means a whole bunch of people end up getting born in disadvantaged and others into advantaged positions, creating winners and losers, or (alternatively) even though everybody enters into transactions voluntarily, some people end up with bad outcomes, others good (not just by virtue of their choices, but through mechanisms of market economy). And that some other form of economic organization might produce smaller gaps between winners and losers, perhaps market+some income redistribution+govt spending, hence it makes sense to argue market based systems, left to its own devices, “create losers” (even if it’s not necessarily true)

In defense of Tim, it matters where you start off. If people start off starving, and the market offers them a choice starve or work in a sweatshop, and the non-market economy would leave them starving, then that’s a gain. If there is some available non-market economy in which those people wouldn’t be starving, then, well, that system would be better than the market. However, some people seem to be implicitly arguing that people have only got such shitty choices (starve or work in sweatshop) because of the market, and it’s really not obvious that’s true. Most places in the world where people are starving suffer from too little functioning market economy, and too much government unhelpful behaviour (it’s true! check out empirical research on poverty + quality of governance).

And if (as I suspect Tim would argue) that if left to operate, the market would produce a sequence of improving choices (next generation has choice work in sweatshop or in decent factory, the next decent factory or services etc.) then again, the fact that right now in some places the choice is horrible (starve of work in sweatshop) does not tell us that the market is not the best available system.

@42

It may be the case that countries less economically free are more likely to use child labour but it still implicates the guilt of the market because the kids are making trainers, t-shirts, iphones for consumers and comapnies in rich western societies. The market needs cheap labour like a junkie needs a fix – hence it looks towards places with lax working conditions, etc. and exploits them rather than actually do anything helpful. In that respect the market is no better than a pimp.

this, by the way, is where “narrative” comes in – we have let’s say 3 stories here about how the market works – Tim’s, mine, and let’s say captain swings. The left does need a narrative, but I think really we’ve already got one – it is that while the market may grow the pie, it slices it up rather unfairly, so we’ll try to do some things to correct that. Lots of people share this narrative already, and it’s quite an easy story to expand (inter-generational advantage/disadvantage) and to fit policies into, like reforming banking and progressive taxation.

what we don’t need is Richard Murphy trying to tell us what success, social justice and the good life are.

“because that would be an admission we have been going in the wrong direction for 30 years”

Absolutely. Because we’re all so much worse off than in 1980, aren’t we?
Especially in the developing world.
Yeah, they’ve really gone backwards, haven’t they?

I’m not sure Luis and Tim’s underlying “narratives” are at all different, are they?

They might differ about matters of detail – exactly where and how to intervene/regulate, exactly how much and to whom to redistribute – but that’s about it.

My apologies for calling LE a libertarian. Frankly I can’t always be arsed to distinguish the political views of people to the right of Diane Abbott.

[24] Broadly sensible. Now explain how you deal with the race dimension. More particularly, please explain how you would convince Black/Asian youth that they are better off being the children of immigrants rather than of conquerors (which is basically the radical agenda) without resorting to market fetishism & holding up as role models people of mixed race like Oona King.

What I did say was that in every voluntary transaction both parties to the transaction must be made better off by that transaction otherwise the transaction will not take place.

So there can be no losers, only winners, among those making voluntary transactions.

I have a billion pounds; John has no pounds. I offer John a fiver to scrub my collection of blocked-up toilets. Everyone’s a winner!

They might differ about matters of detail – exactly where and how to intervene/regulate, exactly how much and to whom to redistribute – but that’s about it.

Hah! If those are “matters of detail” Hayek and Keynes had scarce disagreement.

It may be the case that countries less economically free are more likely to use child labour but it still implicates the guilt of the market because the kids are making trainers, t-shirts, iphones for consumers and comapnies in rich western societies. The market needs cheap labour like a junkie needs a fix – hence it looks towards places with lax working conditions, etc. and exploits them rather than actually do anything helpful. In that respect the market is no better than a pimp.

Please suggest an alternative.

@49

Anarcho-syndicalism.

Maybe… I’m working on it

@49 again

That’s the difference between the left and right y’see, we on the left believe that a better world is actually possible, the righties just shrug and say “it is what it is” and let people suffer in the meantime (despite what Tim W says people do suffer under free-market capitalism).

I love the “left’s” insistence on its monopoly on morality, and constant attribution of bad faith to others.

I think the righties would rather make the observation that the world is progressing (more or less) the whole time, and that the workings of the market have played a significant part in that progress. Yes, as has sensible governance too.

Certainly *so far* – perhaps Mr Pill’s solution (whatever it is) would prove the exception – the history of other forms of economic organistion has not been a happy one.

That’s the difference between the left and right y’see, we on the left believe that a better world is actually possible, the righties just shrug and say “it is what it is” and let people suffer in the meantime (despite what Tim W says people do suffer under free-market capitalism).

People suffer under all systems at present, because none is perfect.

To achieve perfection is the aim of all political ideologies however (to claim it for the left alone is an incredible piece of arrogance – for God’s sake even the bloody facists want to create a perfect state), and despite some differences in presentation these perfect futures all look very similiar – everyone has everything they can possibly want or need, no crime, no illness etc. It is simply a matter of what ideology you think is the best way to get there. For those of us who believe that the market (which is the best producer of technologies, and the best distributor of scarce resources to those technologies, even if it does create victims when people distort it) is the solution, the aim is to produce a situation where everyone can have all the information they need to make the best decision for themselves at all times. This would obviously involve the state not making decisions for them.

I assume, although I cannot get my head how this would work, that most non-market left-wing thinkers believe that the best way to advance towards the perfect future (let us call it ideal communism, or paradise for short) is to allow the state to determine where we should direct resources and to develop technologies. This is I think a key failure in much left-wing thinking – to equate the power of the state to use the present systems of technology and resource distribution to do undoubted good with the ideal way of progressing towards an ideal. To put that another way, there is a purpose to the state in all but the most extreme market-centred views, which is to provide for those in the here and now who need support due to failures in markets (lack of necessary information or exploitation – which is not a market process).

Therefore, the state can be seen as a necessary correction for the imperfections of the market in its current state (I doubt anyone here would deny that role to it, although interpretations of what this means will vary). How the state then also takes on the role of the market is beyond me, although I would be glad to see how people explain this.

I think those contrasting market and left-wing views (which has to mean state centralisation of some sort, unless you are advocating outright anarchism (hey, meet the libertarians – you’ve got common ground!)) are trying to contrast what to free-marketeers is basically a process (the market) and its safety-net/regulator (the state). I cannot see that this is actually an either/or – unless you want to try Leninist or Maoist communism again, or perhaps return to the oligarchies which controlled both states and markets (as one entity) until the last century?

let’s split this into 3 elements

1. how does the market work? (everything from innovation, efficiency, wage determination, market failures etc.)
2. what scope is there for successful intervention in the market by the government?
3. what is our objective. in jargon, what is the social welfare function

There is room for a huge middle ground here. Tim & I for instance prob share a fair bit w.r.t 1. (hence me constantly being taken for a righty) but not everything (I prob disagree about wage determination for instance). Lefties are more optimistic about 2, but even a righty can see the govt is capable of redistribution, they may just not want to do it. Which bring us to 3. which is where the real disagreement are. Far too many lefties have daft ideas about 1 and 2. I’d call myself a lefty because of what I think about 2 and 3, but there’s room for plenty of overlap and combinations.

@25 Spot on, Sugar. That was the first thing I thought when I read the article: ffs, another twat talking about narrative.

You know what’s wrong with the left, and with Labour (evidently not both the same thing)? That they can’t talk about “where we went wrong” without reference to “narrative”. Perhaps it’s not the narrative that’s the problem. Perhaps people aren’t interested in “the story” you tell. Perhaps they want policies, and concrete ones at that. Perhaps they’re not going to vote for you all the time because of some historical or symbolic association that said “narrative” is expected to “evoke”. Maybe, especially with AV, they will vote for you on the basis of a few distinct policies, much like people voted in 2005 for the Lib Dems on the basis of their Iraq and fees policies.

Labour needs to admit what lost it support over its time in government (Iraq, fees, mishandling of the economy, attacks on civil liberties, etc) rather than obsess over what the “narrative” for the next election campaign will be, and just STFU until people are ready to listen to them again. They lack credibility because they too bought into the cuts “narrative”, and look where it got them: they try to oppose the government but no one cares, no one is listening.

As Attlee once said to Laski, “A period of silence on your part would be most welcome”.

@46

My apologies for calling LE a libertarian. Frankly I can’t always be arsed to distinguish the political views of people to the right of Diane Abbott.

Hey Mike.

I’ll cough up to your “unsophisticated libertarian” handle but I reckon I’m more left wing than either you or Dianne.

Want to hear my narrative again?

Get out of Afghanistan
Scrap Trident
Break up the banks and mutualise the ones we own
Citizens Basic Income
Raise corporation tax
New competition legislation
Education voucher system
Decriminalise all drugs

It needs to allow individuals responsiblity for their own lives again.

I’m somewhat boggled by the idea anybody would regard Dianne Abbott as a bellwether for, or the defining boundary of, worthwhile (left wing) political thought

“what is our objective. in jargon, what is the social welfare function”

OK, I’ll offer one, a possible future, one that I think it would be good to see (although I won’t live that long).

How about a world where the average GDP per capita is in the $75,000 to $80,000 range? Where the average GDP per capita in the currently developing countries (ie, sub Saharan Africa etc) is at current-ish US rates….some $40-$50 k? Where global inequality has shrunk dramatically….we’ve had convergence in the jargon. That convergence not just because the gap between $40k and $80 is smaller than that between $500 and $40,500 in its effects, even if it’s the same number of dollars, but because the number of dollars in hte gap has also fallen.

Global population is 7 billion and falling….we’ve beaten the population bomb.

Essentially, we’ve got a rich, fat and happy world.

Sounds pretty good to me really. And it does seem to be achievable by 2100. At least, that’s what the International Panel on Climate Change says….for that’s one of the models it uses in its reports. It’s the A1 family of scenarios.

And guess what? How do we get from here to there?

Well, according to the IPCC, which is, after all, the scientific consensus, this describes the outcome of a globalised, capitalist, market economy.

Yeah, OK, I’ll buy into that……

I’m astonished that anyone would use Dianne Abbott as an example of thought….

cjcjcjcj “I love the “left’s” insistence on its monopoly on morality, and constant attribution of bad faith to others.”

Why do you love it? Because you have denied being a Conservative. Are you now admitting you are a conservative? And could you apologise for lying.

Tim Rand “I’m astonished that anyone would use Dianne Abbott as an example of thought….”

I’m sure she would wear that as a badge of honour to be labelled unthinking by a your weight Randist.

@53

Well, perhaps – but righties like Tim W constantly tell us there are no losers with market capitalism and folk like cjcjc tell us there’s no point considering an alternative and ukliberty don’t want to consider one. I assume you’ve read Candide and are familiar with the character of Dr Pangloss (for those who haven’t and aren’t, Candide goes through lots of trauma and calamities (with hilarious consequences) but Dr Pangloss remains optimistic throughout saying everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds – ie:nothing can be changed so don’t bother trying) and it is he that a lot of righties have in common with.
Everyone talks of how communism or socialism failed – well so has market capitalism. People are dying every day due to “market failure”. People lose their livelihoods due to the mistakes of the overlords. Children work staggeringly long hours to make ends meet (and this is “winning”). It is not a successful economic system. It looks like that to some from our point of view because we are the beneficieries of it. But we are the minority, and the majority of the world are suffering because of our self-rightious(sp) Panglossian outlook.

“but righties like Tim W constantly tell us there are no losers with market capitalism”

No, I don’t say that. I say that participants in voluntary transactions are not losers.

Capitalism however is a very different matter. For capitalism (a description of a method of ownership of productive assets) and markets (a method of exchange) are two entirely different things.

We can certainly have capitalism without markets (a system of privately owned monopolies for example) and we can certainly have markets without capitalism (a system of workers’ co-ops, mutuals and so on, competing in markets, for example).

The mixture of capitalism and markets certainly works pretty well but if forced to choose only one of the two I’d go for markets and capitalism can go hang. And one of the things which classical liberalism has retained from its early roots is a very great suspicion of capitalists….as Smith himself advised we ought to be, that businessmen meeting together only to screw over the public thing.

Just as an example, I can certainly see losers in the current world economy. The cotton farmers of West Africa for example, shat upon from a great height because the capitalist cotton farmers of the US are able to coopt the US political system to gain huge subsidies and trade barriers against imports to their benefit.

I can and do argue that we should have no production subsidies and no trade barriers exactly to stop people being shat upon in this manner.

I agree absolutely that our corrent socio economic system is not perfect, that it can be made better. It’s just that I don’t think markets are the problem: I think restrictions upon them are.

“I’m sure she would wear that as a badge of honour to be labelled unthinking by a your weight Randist.”

I doubt it very much Sally, doubt it very much. Even if she knew about it her reaction would (rightly) be “who the fuck is this Worstall shit?”

[56] I’m cool with most of that except for the drugs bit. Perhaps I should – not having written anything for the site for yonks – offer Sunny a piece making the case for keeping our drug laws more or less as they are. I quite like the idea of writing 600 words which attract dozems of adverse comments and not one in support

Oh, and it didn’t have to be Diane – it could’ve been Michael Meacher or any one of a few others.

this is quite an easy one. if you look back the Labour Party was committed to clause 4 public ownership. One of the first things Blair did was to remove this commitment. i think it was viewed cynically he thought that the centre point of labour philosophy was stopping it getting elected. For instance we have seen what a shambles rail privatisation and franchises are. Bringing the railways back into public ownership makes a lot of sense.

One of the other important aspects of policy needs to be social justice and without some kind of wealth redistribution this is never going to happen. Anything worthy of consideration as left wing as to include a fair distribution of rewards and this cannot be achieved merely equality of opportunity in the bad times this freezes up altogether.

There is not one leadership candidate who as the faintest idea of how they can reconcile the above with taking a new direction if they cant they will be heading further away in the direction from traditional labour values.

i have not voted for Labour since 1997 their policies have effected me in negative ways eg welfare to work.

tony walker

folk like …ukliberty don’t want to consider [an alternative]

Wrong. What I complain about, what I’m bored by, is being asked to consider ‘visions’ and ‘narratives’.

@1 Luis Enrique: “a short note on rational choice theory. A good deal of it shows that “rational choices” in many situations can lead to bad outcomes: rather than justify laissez-faire policies, it more often does the opposite. Further, every time you argue something like Conservatives will use the cyclical deficit as an excuse to push through ideological cuts, or say that businesses will tend to fake green credentials rather than become genuinely green, or that firms will use transfer pricing to avoid tax, etc. etc. you have construed the actors in question as rational self-interested agents. I’d suggest that whilst certainly being a limited view of human behaviour, it’s a pretty useful one”

Can you run that one past me again slowly, please?

Are you proposing that (in reality) politicians suggest cuts or taxes on things that they dislike? That they are presenting themselves as fair minded slashers, but slash ideologically and preserve pragmatically (vote conservation)?

If so, how do you oppose it? Part of the opposition argument might be that less extreme cuts are required. But that doesn’t stand up well when the UK (and most developed countries) are so indebted. Sensible opposition requires a serious budget that spends less money than is gained from tax income, which also maximises tax income without damaging future economic performance.

When objecting to ideological cuts in service X, opposition has to come up with savings elsewhere. Ideological opposition to all cuts was the Labour position in the 1980s; that worked out well, didn’t it.

Property multimillionaire Michael Meacher?
9/11 troofer Michael Meacher?
Is that who you mean?

Fab.

@31. Tim Worstall: “What I did say was that in every voluntary transaction both parties to the transaction must be made better off by that transaction otherwise the transaction will not take place.”

Fail, as you would say, Tim.

In a voluntary transaction both parties *perceive* that the transaction makes them better off.

Pop down to your local car dealer and haggle the price down on the vehicle of your choice. Happy with your deal, you send down a mate with better bargaining skills to buy an identical car. And he gets a lower price. It is the same transaction, but your mate has £300 more in his bank account.

You perceived a good deal; your mate got a better one. (We could also imagine scenarios around fire sales where the seller accepts the first bid rather than sitting on the assets for a while.)

@ 64
I’m cool with most of that except for the drugs bit. Perhaps I should – not having written anything for the site for yonks – offer Sunny a piece making the case for keeping our drug laws more or less as they are.

This is not a debate that justifies 600 words. We don’t need to begin to discuss the negative externalities of prohibition.

Because it is no business of anyone else, and certainly not the business of the state, what I put in my body.

“In a voluntary transaction both parties *perceive* that the transaction makes them better off.”

That is a qualifier I do normally put in, I think I’ve done so above somewhere. It does get boring repeatedly typing it out though.

BTW, your example doesn’t show the opposite. That the deal A/C yields more to C than the deal A/B yields to B does not show that B has lost from the deal….only that he’s not gained as much as C.

Both B and C are better off (or percieve etc) than with no deal.

[70] The basic proposition of “liberalism” appears to have escaped you, Pagar.

[71] When I was taught the theory of markets, there was an assumption that, in the pure form of the theory, both parties have access to all relevant information (including the abilitiy to filter information from noise, of course). The extent to which this theoretical assumption is justified in real life is a major tool in the analysis of when markets can be trusted. It is, for example, for more nearly true of restaurants than it is of health care.

Charlieman @67

I’m sorry – I didn’t put much thought into the my examples, I was just trying to illustrate that we all frequently think of people as being rational and self-interested when we ‘rationalise’ people’s behaviour. So for instance I thought that Conservatives are interested in shrinking the state and are ‘rationally’ (in the sense it would work in a rational choice model) exploiting this opportunity to get what they want. My point was that although Murphy R seems to think ‘rational choice theory’ (something he evidently does not understand) is some freakish construction, in fact we all use it all the time. My other point was that rather than justify blind faith in markets, rational choice theory is actually what economists use to show how markets can go wrong.

There is noticeably a bundle to find out about this. I assume you made sure nice factors in options also.