h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nicolas Parsons was in Liverpool at the time.

Funny you should mention him.

> Has the Left, as a credible main stream force in UK government given up and is out of ideas?

It's not out of ideas, but it has been largely defeated, unfortunately. pedro's right that New Labour have been a major contributor to this defeat.

pedro,

> I think these things move in cycles and the right-wing wave has peaked. How the Left will come back is pretty uncertain though.

Interesting - what makes you think the right wing wave has peaked?

> I read The Spirit Level recently, which shows that increased equality is better for rich societies than economic growth. This should be at the centre of the Left's ideas: 'Hey guys, we *know* what works for societies, and it's equality. More economic growth is killing the planet, and with no benefit for us as well.'

Yes, I think the left should probably go on the offensive in precisely this sort of way. Perhaps the left has been too apologetic recently. We shouldn't be going around trying to demonstrate that we're not crazy, we should be going around showing how crazy the right is, and what a horrible place their policies would lead us to. Challenging the Tory 'broken britain' narrative seems an obvious start here.

swl,

> In the meantime, I'd say the "left" is still around, they just call themselves "Greens" nowadays.

Yep, I think a lot of the left have moved to the Green party. This happens for two reasons. First of all, the Green party is correct about climate change, and the only ones taking it close to seriously enough. (I disagree with some of their policies on this, but that's another matter.) It's to the great credit of the left that they are willing to take this seriously, and the shame of the right that they're not. Second reason: if you don't want to be part of the Labour party or the Lib Dems (both of them more or less right wing these days), then you have to go somewhere - the Green party is a natural fit.

> it's where a line is crossed and it seems to me to become a weapon to bash capitalism that I begin to have a problem

Well, from my point of view this is inevitable. Capitalism is part of the problem, because it works by maximising (short term) growth and profit. Environmentally friendly forms of energy are more expensive, and so capitalism must be biased against them.

Ed,

> We can maybe point towards some social issues on which the consensus has moved leftwards - but how important are these in the big picture?

I don't think we should underrate the importance of this though. For example, the left has (over the last several decades) managed to achieve a momentum towards ending sexism. It hasn't yet been achieved, and will take great efforts to do so yet, but the left has made it so that to be an outright paternalist or misogynist is now unacceptable. That's 50% of the world that benefits from that.

Ah, yes, swl - as soon as I posted, I remembered that I'd got the Nicholas Parsons story from you.

My Dad was on the Liverpool docks in the war, mind, I (as a health inspector - the guy who used to go onboard and make sure there was no plague) but he never mentioned any problems.

*Note* while The Spirit of the Blitz is pure propaganda, I'm not necessarily saying that the myth was entirely a bad thing. It served its purpose at the time. What I am saying, though, is that we shouldn't allow the myth to colour our view of the reality of how people (specifically, we British) will behave when faced with difficult circumstances.

Dogster:

>>Challenging the Tory 'broken britain' narrative seems an obvious start here.

I think the real challenging has to be of the view of the individual as the motor for society vs the collective. Thatcher's words 'there is no such thing as society' have become accepted. People are the architects of their own misfortune - and they are to be helped, if at all, purely by finding them individual ways out. While it's true that much can be achieved through grass roots action, this mentality is largely a cop out for addressing the socio-economic mess that generates misfortune in the first place.

As an example of how this has been taken on board by New Labour...when voters heard the pre-'97 mantra 'Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime', we might reasonably have expected this to be a promise to deal with underlying socio-economic issues. Nuh-uh. Every subsequent government action suggests that they believe that the cause of crime is 'Criminals'.

<> Dogster

Hi Dogster,

The reasons I think the tide is turning are pretty vague, I suppose, but there are a few reasons.

First off would be the Credit Crunch and the recession. It’s an obvious failing in the free market system. Put simply, unregulated markets don’t work, at least in the financial sector (which, to be fair, is different to the likes of manufacturing etc.). If the Left can’t capitalise on this, they don’t *deserve* to win, they really don’t. Also the Chinese model will be an obvious counterpoint to the Anglo-Saxon model. When they’re still growing rapidly and we’re not, it’s clear that their model will have more influence.

More broadly, I’ve been studying a bit of economic history recently (mainly to do with energy). During WW2 the UK instigated a command economy, primarily for the war effort obviously, but maintained it afterwards as a reaction to the pre-war failings of the market. Britain had stumbled in and out of recession for 20 odd years, and the consensus was that markets didn’t work as well as is currently thought. Keynes’ big technical breakthrough was to show that the economy could go for long periods below full capacity. (In the long run it would be ok, hence his famous phrase ‘In the long run we’re all dead.’)

In 1969 (I think) Richard Nixon said ‘We’re all Keynesians now’. This was the same year that Milton Friedman was elected head of the American Economics Association. It was the peak of the tide I suppose; the Americans broke the Bretton Woods agreement a few years later, which was the first step towards free market economics dominating. I think now that we're all free-marketeers, that paradigm is so dominant that it's about to be replaced. It's darkest before dawn and all that.

Even more broadly, we looked at the nature of capital: pre Adam Smith, having gold meant you were rich. Nations could then pay their armies to fight their wars. Trade meant that gold was being shipped abroad, so wasn’t regarded as a source of wealth. This of course disregarded any environmental constraints, and it occurred to me that in future that a preservation of ‘natural’ capital might become the dominant idea, although not in the short term admittedly. I also got the sense that markets are fine when there’s no real pressure on the system, but when there *is* pressure, then governments don’t leave things to chance, as it were. They ensure that the supply is there first and foremost. China’s government will (and does at present) put more pressure on oil suppliers than BP ever could. The US and EU will no doubt follow suit shortly.

Also, renewable energy simply cannot become dominant without government help. Apart from the investment required in the technology, the planning requirements, grid upgrades, storage facilities etc. will require changes that only the government can implement. And all the while peak oil is either here, or will be this decade. Keeping the lights on is too important to leave to the markets, and I’m reasonably certain they’ll be much more regulated in this field over the next decade.

And finally.. Most of the theoretical work done in promoting free markets, monetarism etc. was done in the 1960’s and 70's, perfectly in time for Thatcher and Reagan to implement them. A fair few Nobel prizes were awarded for this work (eg stuff like an independent bank setting interest rates to speed up/slow down the economy, rather than governments doing it, and the like. I’ll bet some of the most important papers in the next few years are how this can lead to asset bubbles if asset prices aren’t included in inflation indices). More recently, some prizes have gone to work showing the failings in the market system, like information asymmetry and behavioural economists coming up with models which predict herd-like behaviour instead of rationality.

Last year’s prize went to Elinor Ostrom, who (I shit you not) made a breakthrough by modelling people as……. people! With different personality types, who interact with each other socially! Her work showed how people co-operating led to better management of environmental resources than markets do (the very day after I’d written 1,500 words on the potential of market solutions to environmental problems ).

I just get the feeling that the tide is at its peak, and is starting to go out on right wing ideas. How it will pick up on Lefty ideas, I dunno though.

pedro,

Interesting stuff!

> If the Left can’t capitalise on this, they don’t *deserve* to win, they really don’t.

Unfortunately, they show every signs of failing to do so. Although, perhaps the left is trying to do so, but the Labour party is not. They really are a liability.

> Keeping the lights on is too important to leave to the markets, and I’m reasonably certain they’ll be much more regulated in this field over the next decade.

This could well be true, but will it lead to a renewal of the left more generally? In the current atmosphere, I could easily imagine it not doing.

<>

I think/hope that Labour will rediscover its Leftiness after the election (which they'll lose). NL is Thatcher's bastard love-child, and it's done more to screw the left than anything she did directly. I think Cameron moving to the centre-right will force them a bit left, he's outflanking them the way NL outflanked the Tories from 1997.

me


Not in itself, but I think the intellectual background of discouraging free markets will lead to an exploration and understanding of the alternatives, which is in the Left's territory. I think it would mirror the rightwing economics stuff from my previous post.

It's interesting to look at how the Conservatives used oil revenue in the 1970s. Rather than building infrastructure, a la Keynes, which would have strengthened our overall industrial base, they poured it into ensuring a favourable exchange market for the pound, to make Britain favourable as a centre for the financial products.

The more sensible nations - eg Norway, but also some of the Gulf sheikhdoms - instead put their income into Sovereign Trusts to provide posts of money for future spending. Norway, which spends only its capital, invests a *huge* amount of money in both domestic and foreign businesses (and they play safe by limiting their stake in any one). I can't remember the exact figure, but each Norwegian is backed by a *massive* amount of government savings. So what's the betting that currently oil-rich Norway will become a leading player in Renewables? Oh, wait...they already are...

The moral of the tale is 'Put your money in bricks and mortar'. Not only do real, tangible products provide a more reliable long-term income than 'Invisibles', but, even in an increasingly automated industrial context, they generate genuine labour and thus distribute wealth. Invisibles, on the other hand, are not only susceptible to the whims of markets but also suck wealth in one direction, increasing inequalities.

Problem is...I don't know how we move back to an idustrial economy. In terms of widget output we can easily be undercut by Asia. There's sometimes talk of our becoming a 'Knowledge Economy', designing products for manufacture overseas. Who are we kidding? China and India can easily provide the educated people needed for that.

<>

Is there any particular area that we can specialise in?

What's "widget output"?

widget output...

Asia has economies of scale and low wages which allow them to churn out masses of components and products ever more cheaply. There's probably an official Economics term for it...but I don't know it.

Point is, Britain is never going to compete on likes of screws, vacuum cleaners, whatever.


James Dyson moved his output to Asia, complaining that Britain doesn't support industrial entrepeneurship. Why couldn't he just have been more honest and say that he could pay lower wages there?


'Course, a lot of this is also <quote> killing the planet . Like the Scottish shellfish that are frozen, shipped by sea to China for peeling and packing and then shipped back.

Can we please shoot down this canard that the UK has an abnormally low percentage of manufacturing for a modern industrial country? The table below shows that the UK is doing just fine, thank you.

Percentage of GDP that is manufacturing:

Germany 30.1%
Italy 26.7%
France 24.4%
Japan 23.1%
UK 23.0%
USA 20.6%

RF

Sorry I know conversation has now moved back on topic, but I want to chuck my in on this.

>*Note* while The Spirit of the Blitz is pure propaganda, I'm not necessarily saying that the myth was entirely a bad thing. It served its purpose at the time. What I am saying, though, is that we shouldn't allow the myth to colour our view of the reality of how people (specifically, we British) will behave when faced with difficult circumstances.
<

Well knock me sideways. Of course its a myth, because it can't be proved. I know full well its a myth. It's not science. Most people have a few myths in their cupboards. The thing is to honestly admit they are myths, and therefore not take them too seriously.

I love it when Marxists start giving lectures on mythology. You stick to your myths, and I'll stick to mine.

Pedro - that was fascinating. One caveat -

"I'd been very pro-Keynesian before I knew anything about economics" Denis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1974-79.

Also your feeling that the Right has "peaked", I'm not so sure. The reaction to the economic crisis throughout Europe has been a move *towards* the Right. In this country, I'd wager that the vast majority of voters automatically equate Labour = Left and Tory = Right. So far as they're concerned, the last 12 years have been Labour therefore they've been left wing.

Frs:
>>
Well knock me sideways. Of course its a myth, because it can't be proved. I know full well its a myth. It's not science.

No - you're justr plain wrong. Pleasant though it may be for you to remain in cosy ignorance, it was an outright fabrication.

But to repeat - I'm not necessarily saying that this was a bad thing *at the time*. It was necesary to prevent a complete collapse of morale (which was teetering!), and the govt. put in place a massive 'We Can Take It' propaganda campaign, based on...well...like I said - fabrication.

What's damaging, though, is when it becomes part of the national mythology of a golden past when everyone pulled together - in contrast to the 'Broken Britain' of nowadays.

Some sources for you (there are others):

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/869/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwtwo/blitz_01.shtml

http://www.word-power.co.uk/books/myth-of-the-blitz-I9780712698207/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwtwo/blitz_01.shtml

And how friggin' *dull* of you to revert to the tired, old, lazy 'You Marxists can't talk' angle. To expect me to take the blame for everything the Soviet dictatorship did is akin to my making you personally responsible by any negative act by any woman. No? 'All birds are ducks, therefore all birds are ducks'.

RF - you may have me bang to rights - but does our industrial output include oil?

>To expect me to take the blame for everything the Soviet dictatorship<

Where are you getting all that from? That hadn't even entered my mind. As I said things which can't be proved are myths. And Marxism is not science it's just an ideology..

>No - you're justr plain wrong. Pleasant though it may be for you to remain in cosy ignorance, it was an outright fabrication.<

Oh the irony.

<<"I'd been very pro-Keynesian before I knew anything about economics" Denis Healey>>

The main problems during Denis's time were to do with inflation, caused mainly by oil prices rising fourfold. Keynes whole idea was how to deal with an underperforming economy, and it's true that the methods he espoused to deal with Depression economies didn't work very well during the 1970s. Monetarist/Thatcherite policy did cope a lot better with the inflation, but at the cost of a fairly deep recession around 1980. And of course that suited their political views, because increased inflation hurts the rich, while mass unemployment tends to hit the workers harder.

One thing to note though, is that economic problems are problems not matter what kind of approach you take. I don't think either right or left wing approaches are totally useful, and there will always be a mixture of fiscal (tax 'n' spend) and monetary (adjusting interest rates etc.) to deal with stuff.

<>

Maybe. BUT... if the Tories were in power, there'd have been a *huge* shift to the left. As NL are their natural opponents, but are actually economic Tories, I don't think people had anywhere to go politically. It is weird though, that the reaction to right-wing failure hasn't been a shift to the left.

And I don't really mean there'll be a suite of left-wing govts in 2012, say. I think that unregulated markets will be seen to be yesterday's approach in a few years' time, and this will bolster the left. The practicalities of energy etc. that I mentioned before will bolster this.

IMO the right wingers will become more centrist economically, the way NL went to the right during the Thatcher/Reagan ideas hegemony.

"What do people think? Has the Left, as a credible main stream force in UK government given up and is out of ideas?

I recorded a podcast the other week with Compass a left wing pressure group that was quite interesting but I wondered has the left just ceded too much ground to be relevant any longer?"

The solution is new ideas and new thinking. The last time the left had a completely new set of ideas was Marx and, erm, look where that got everyone. The "new left" of the '60s wasn't really new at all, it was just a confused and confusing attempt to mish-mash Marxism with social libertarianism and never really made much of an attempt to be taken seriously.

There are the green shoots of hope: the issue of climate change, the success of capitalism as a path to growth rather than an ideology (as the right has treated it since Thatcher) and the banking crisis might well see a genuinely new left emerge. Certainly, the left in general and not just the centre-left seems to be increasingly tired of the crypto-Leninists and state-socialists who have presumed leftist politics is some kind of club they own over the last century or so.

Hmm - I take your point about the economics. I'm reading "When the lights went out - Britain in the Seventies" just now. Interesting that Healey began implementing monetarist policies in 75 - cutting public spending and introducing departmental budgets.

I think the real political philosophy has been liberalism. That started in the mid 70s and has continued relatively uninterrupted ever since. Labour's lurch towards Marxism in the 80s was a disaster for them, just as the Tories moving to the Right under Howard brought electoral failure.

Whilst I'm personally uncomfortable with liberal identity politics, you want to hear the Scottish hard Left screaming about liberalism.