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Global Policy, February 2018

Social and : Beyond Sibling Rivalry

Steve Fuller University of Warwick Abstract

The failure of ‘’ to gain traction in the current political landscape can be diagnosed in many ways. The diagnosis pursued here, partly in response to a of recent debates, is that and neoliberalism have been artificially divided by the spectre of . But now that Marxism is no longer a serious geopolitical force (though it remains quite potent in academia), the time is ripe for the two ‘centre-left’ movements to come by recovering their common Fabian heritage, which stresses the value of social experimentation.

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Policy Recommendations

• Marxism should no longer be regarded as the polestar of Left-leaning . This point is already reflected in the actions of most politicians and policymakers today, but it needs to be embraced by the academic community if its opinions are to have any relevance in today’s political arena. • The shift away from Marx should be made in the context of reconciling the differences between ‘social democracy’ and ‘neoliberalism’, two technocratic forms of that draw their inspiration from British Fabianism but have been increasingly seen by academics as polar opposites. This infighting, typically mediated by some phantom conception of Marxism, has contributed to ’s blindsiding by the rise of ‘’. • Fabianism’s strength in this renewed context is that it approaches technological from the standpoint of enabling greater flexibility in terms of social organization, combined with more intensive interest in data collection. These provide the structural preconditions for inducing a sort of ‘super-liberal’ attitude at the administrative level that encourages systematic social experimentation, for which originally applied the clunky phrase, ‘piecemeal social engineering’.

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Global Policy, February 2018

Introduction academics – perhaps due to US-based nostalgia for FDR’s and LBJ’s Great Are social democracy and neoliberalism – have treated ‘social democracy’ as a fundamentally the same or different? In his political oasis where one might have all the recent Global Policy commentary, Michael benefits of Marxism without any of its costs. has attempted to draw a sharp line The vividness of this oasis only increased between the two twentieth century progressive once Marxism itself was removed as a serious , following up on my exchange with global political force with the end of the Soviet Johan Söderberg. This in turn was prompted Union, now nearly thirty years ago. Thus, by a debate that I had with Philip Mirowski at nowadays a kind of perfected state is the University of Lancaster in July 2018 on imagined as ‘social democracy’, which then whether neo- could be the source of serves as the presumptive academic a better future for universities. I supported the benchmark for judging all political-economic motion, Mirowski opposed it. For his part, regimes. Tribe articulates the background assumptions about the history of neoliberalism that frames In contrast, ‘neoliberalism’ stands for anything Mirowski’s position (and supports that thwarts that vision in the context of Söderberg’s). Since my main disagreement capitalism’s seemingly relentless march. with Mirowski is at this level, Tribe’s Mirowski contributes to this narrative – which contribution was useful in laying out Mirowski’s has been also championed by more visible assumptions so explicitly. figures such as -- by drawing some direct historical links between those who However, Tribe misunderstands the spirit of are now held responsible for the onset of this my thesis, which is not that social democracy globalized demonic sense of ‘neoliberalism’ – and neoliberalism have only come close say, Reagan, Thatcher and their various together in the recent past. Rather, they have political offspring – and that elite club of been always close together, and that their economists, and policymakers apparent differences are an artefact of recent known as the Mont Pelèrin Society, who historiography. The thrust of my argument is coined ‘neoliberalism’ in the 1930s. that we tend to regard social democracy in a warm nostalgic glow, while treating In this context, something called ‘ neoliberalism as a demonized ‘other’ – and values’ are alleged to have increasingly moreover, this asymmetrical treatment distorts contaminated all of social relations, the political sensibility, especially of those on suggesting a kind of debasement of ‘worth’ to the ‘Left’. This essay will elaborate on this ‘price’, as Kant would put it: that is, a reduction point and end by drawing some policy lessons. of ‘intrinsic value’ to whatever the market can Of course, ‘social democracy’ and fetch. However, this pejorative sense of ‘neoliberalism’ are slippery terms, a fact that ‘market’ is social democratic spin. Strictly already provides prima facie support for the speaking, neoliberals see the market simply argument presented here. The two terms are as a mechanism for unblocking the flow of slippery not only because they are used in , the value consequences of which are multiple ways but also because their open. To be sure, ‘openness’ in this sense substantive histories are mutually entangled. does allow the sort of para-Nietzschean value This essay is about the latter. But it is worth found in Ayn Rand novels. This is remarking on the semantic difficulties at the because one meta-level value consequence of outset. ‘marketisation’ is that people come to think of states of the worlds as ‘choices’ that in the past ‘Social democracy’ is normally understood might have appeared either necessary or much better by politicians than by academics. impossible. Social democratic politicians have always been mindful of the tension between The political psychologist Philip Tetlock supporting the entitlements of trade unions associates this turn of mind with the breaking and respecting the demands of a liberal of ‘taboo cognitions’, according to which the democratic society. However, like-minded sacred is rendered secular – even in nominally

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secular , as when truth-telling is seen ‘constrained’, ‘freed’ and ‘wasted’. These not as unconditionally but as subject to various ‘states’ of capital qua energy roughly benefit-cost analysis. Consider Benjamin correspond to kinds of state policies. Franklin’s injunction to be ‘economical’ with the truth, to which Abraham Lincoln A good way to read what follows is to imagine responded, ‘Honesty is the best policy’. Both a world in which ’s normative involve taboo cognitions, in that truth-telling is sensibility – with its menacingly totalizing view rendered negotiable. The only ‘value’ that the of capital – is no longer the polestar of the Left. market itself upholds in all this is the fluidity of To be sure, in many respects, the perspective capital, which to market agents appear as an presented here is closer to the default ‘optionalised’ world, one in which necessity ideological stance of politicians and and impossibility are taken off the table. policymakers of all the major parties in contemporary Western . And it Neoliberals are not especially committed to may prove to be a viable conceptual basis on such widely touted ‘market values’ as which to reconstitute the ‘Left’ as an consumerism, let alone to some blanket for a world in which capitalism, while ever replacement of the state by the market. On the changing, is the name of the game. contrary, neoliberalism can be reasonably seen as putting the state in the business of The schism over redistribution: Can creating and maintaining markets. Classical anyone be free if everyone isn’t free? liberalism never expressed things so bluntly because until the second half of the nineteenth The Mont Pelèrin Society’s coinage of century, the potential power of the modern ‘neoliberalism’, which is Mirowski’s and Tribe’s nation-state to alter an entire population main preoccupation, should be historically decisively – ‘extending its phenotype’, as understood as the product of a breakaway Richard Dawkins might say – had not become group of social who, in the wake of clear. The British Fabians, the main historical the formation of the and its global vehicle by which social democracy morphed exportation of , came to see into neoliberalism, were arguably the first to – not equality per se – as the main appreciate this point, the ideology of which is enemy of individual freedom. In this argument, best called . the key policy of collectivism was state- mandated redistribution of , presumably The contrast with Marxism couldn’t be starker. according to some scheme that would result in Marx himself underestimated the potential the relevant sense of ‘equality’. power of the state as an independent agency, and Marxists who have paid lip to the The basic problem with the ‘Soviet state’s agency have tended to portray it as the experiment’, as these nascent neoliberals saw field in which class is either temporarily it, was its fundamental premise that no or permanently resolved – the former as the individual can be truly free until everyone is capitalist state (which includes social free. In effect this rendered the key modal democracy), the latter as the . In terms ‘truly’ and ‘everyone’ hostages to effect, Marxists focus all agency on capital political fortune, as the wait for universal itself, as if it were a demonic shapeshifting emancipation could in principle last forever – force – the materialist correlate of Hegel’s especially if the principal instrument for world-historic spirit – that can be at one expanding society’s sphere of freedom is moment consolidated in monopolies and at the compulsory redistribution, whether it be next moment dissolved in gales of ‘creative through taxation or outright confiscation. Such destruction’. While the Fabian tradition also a mentality would only incentivize the rich to sees capital as all pervasive, its frame of protect their wealth, which may require reference is closer to that of ‘energy’ – a squandering it if conflict is involved, rather conceptual fixture of fin de siècle natural and than invest it in ways that might benefit others social science – about which Mirowski has as either employees or shareholders. In the written very interestingly. Capital as energy long term, the economy would at best remain can be ‘harnessed’, ‘channelled’,

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stable but would more likely shrink – and, in both frequently referenced ‘democracy’ – that any case, certainly not grow. in practice limited the opportunities of their own people to pursue free and fruitful lives. However, the Soviet Union’s rapid expansion But most heinous from the nascent neoliberal along many different economic dimensions did standpoint, was the squandering capital in all not make this anti-redistribution argument its forms, not least what the Progressive seem especially compelling when it was first economist Irving Fisher had begun to call presented by Ludwig Mises in 1920. However, ‘human capital’. The result was that while the the argument started to acquire plausibility in American rich contributed unprecedented the 1960s when the Soviet experiment started amounts of money to arm the combatants, the to show the strain of imperial overreach. At American poor contributed their lives in that point, followers of Mises, especially his unprecedented numbers to the effort. Here student , started to be Wilson’s admiration for Bismarck’s political championed by a renovated ‘’, and economic unification of Germany comes especially in the US, where the first generation into play. Bismarck had managed at once to to benefit from a social democratic welfare retain his conservative aristocratic base, state – the legacy of the New Deal – had appease the ascendant social democrats and already begun to revolt against that very same neutralize the menacing Marxists by offering state’s imposition of military conscription to social security in return for national security – fight in the . that is, ‘welfare for warfare’ -- through the alchemy of redistributive taxation. This was The very idea that one’s welfare was ‘owed’ to Realpolitik of the first order. In effect, Bismarck the state (and hence one must fight in its wars) threatened the rich with the spectre of the poor was abhorrent to the ‘student movement’. It not defending their wealth in time of war to get revealed the Janus-faced ‘welfare-warfare them to accept taxation at a rate sufficiently state’, as both the social democratic high – but not too high – in order to bribe the sociologist Alvin Gouldner and libertarian poor to stay loyal to the rich. The phrase economist Murray Rothbard put it at the time. ‘protection money’ would not be inappropriate We should see today’s ‘Silicon Valley’ in this context. mentality as a downstream effect of this development, with figures such as Stewart The role of the Fabians in the transition Brand and Kevin Kelly functioning as from social democracy to neoliberalism intergenerational bridges. Its signature policy style, as frequently and acutely pilloried by the The interesting question to ask in this context journalist Evgeny Morozov, is to replace the is what sort of social democrat was, or is, likely administrative functions of the state with a set to become a neoliberal. The obvious answer is of well-designed smartphone apps. one who is willing to dispense with collectivist conceptions of social order if they interfere too Moreover, alarm bells about the prospects of much with individual , as that would the welfare-warfare state had already rung in undermine the overarching goal of enabling US Progressive circles around the time of the everyone to realize their full potential, which in Bolshevik when one of their own, turn is the indirect but more reliable route to , imposed a national greater and maximum to fight the First World War, even though for all. Much more could be said about how the US had not been directly attacked. Wilson exactly that link between liberty and justified American entry in the European productivity/prosperity is supposed to work, conflict by arguing in the first mass public but the idea is that ‘collectivism’ comes to be relations campaign that the US cannot seen as blocking it. consider itself truly free unless Europe is also free, given that the US owes its existence to The UK Fabians provide the missing historical Europe. In the minds of who link. Most of the key players in the formation of became the neoliberals, Lenin and Wilson the Mont Pelèrin Society – including the shared a conception of the state that is in the continental ones – had begun their political business of realizing some higher order idea – journey as Fabian sympathisers. Not only is

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the technocratic style and ‘aspirationalist’ who has served as the Tory go-to politician on rhetoric of neoliberalism traceable to the welfare matters for the past quarter century. Fabians but so too is the radically He is a neoliberal Tory whose forthright instrumentalist attitude that neoliberals have interventionist stance vis-à-vis people’s toward all social formations, ranging from the personal lives the Fabians would have family to social classes more generally. The appreciated, not least in terms of the idea of functional equivalence of social life and social ‘universal credit’, whereby disadvantaged experimentation – what nowadays is simply people are supported in a bureaucratically called ‘marketization’ – is a policy sensibility monitored system on the expectation that they that the neoliberals inherited from the Fabians. eventually provide for themselves. A crucial When rebranded the UK Labour rhetorical feature of this idea is that the money Party as ‘’ in 1994, he was simply that these people receive is called ‘credit’ not updating the sensibility that had led the ‘benefit’, which might otherwise suggest that Fabians to launch the as a the state was providing charity rather than breakaway group from the Liberals in 1900 investment. A corresponding idea in the US, and subsequently informed all serving Labour popularised by its own Tony Blair figure, Bill Prime Ministers. Moreover, the sensibility Clinton, is ‘workfare’ (as opposed to ‘welfare’). crossed party political lines, starting with Tory As of this writing, considerable controversy is PM , himself an apostate raging over the implementation of universal Liberal who supported ’s credit, with the usual cross-party point-scoring. Fabian-inspired version of the , Nevertheless, both Labour and Tory claim the which aimed to breed what in another context basic idea as their own. I have called ‘natural born liberals’, people ‘fit to be free’. To be sure, this cross-party of Organized labour as the elephant in the purpose during the Second World War only room helped the Labour Party to boot Churchill out of office after the war. Nevertheless, all major So far, I have failed to mention the elephant in UK political parties – whether officially ‘social the room in any blended history of social democratic’ or ‘neoliberal’ – have claimed democracy and neoliberalism: organized ownership of the welfare state to such an labour. Here is where ‘social democracy’ as a extent that every UK politician routinely refers political institution enters the picture. A key to the cornerstone of the system as ‘our NHS’ organizational inspiration for the Labour Party (). was the German Social . Its key political innovation was to incorporate the Still more significant in most people’s minds in trade unions in the determination of party the transition from social democracy to policy, which proved to be a winner in the neoliberalism is the election of Tory leader ballot box. The Social Democrats became the as PM. She actually masters of block voting. In fact, their success brought into her cabinet and advisory circle managed to thwart Marxist predictions that the people who self-identified as ‘neoliberal’. Yet, would start in Germany. her strong Tory credentials did not diminish However, an open question remained: Was the Fabian spirit. This was made manifest in this alliance with the unions to be taken as that most dutiful ‘child of Thatcher’, David reflective of ‘social ontology’ at some deep Cameron, whose brilliant speech to the 2015 level (e.g. as exemplars of the ‘forces of Tory Party congress – delivered shortly after production’) or simply a matter of political was elected leader of the expedience? The Fabians were on the side of Labour Party – was right out of the Fabian expedience – and Tony Blair finally drew the playbook and even grudgingly acknowledged line when that expedience ended. I mean here as such by the at the time. his 1995 revision of Clause IV of the Labour (What a difference Brexit has made to Party constitution, which officially legitimized Cameron’s legacy!) neoliberal means to bring about ‘social democratic’ ends. In effect, it removed the Someone who has arguably kept that cross- state from upholding certain forms of work, party faith in our own day is Iain Duncan Smith, which had been suggested in the original

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Fabian formulation – and had been the basis the historian E.P. Thompson exemplified this of organized labour’s grip on the Labour Party. turn of mind, whose vision of is It’s worth observing that Blair managed to based less on overcoming capitalism to reach amend Clause IV shortly after becoming a better place than on recalling a better place leader of the in – that is, that could have been reached had we never before the Labour Party’s three impressive had capitalism at all. electoral victories under his leadership. He correctly saw this move as a vote-winner. The neoliberals, to their credit, long understood trade unions as rent-seeking Here it’s useful to recall Marx & Engels’ monopolists with regard to human labour that original tagline for capitalism: ‘All that is solid blocked the flow of innovation. Margaret melts into air’. This referred to what more than Thatcher made the point politically visible in a century later Labour PM the 1980s by forcing the unions into the referred to as the ‘white heat of technology’ as rhetorical corner of justifying their existence in part of a policy to educate the next generation terms of ‘defending’ and ‘protecting’ jobs, of Britons for ‘higher skilled’ jobs than those of , livelihoods, etc. In response, their parents. Those old jobs would become organized labour, perhaps unwittingly, self- either automated or simply made redundant, identified as guardians of past privilege rather as the ‘solidity’ of the parental livelihood was than the industrial vanguard that had ‘melted’ by scientific . This made galvanized social democracy a century earlier. ‘upward ’ – the sociological The unions were increasingly seen by the correlate of Wilson’s message -- the implicit electorate as old-fashioned and even enemy of trade unionism, which had staked its . Even in their time in opposition legitimacy on the perpetual need for certain under Thatcher, and certainly once Blair sorts of skilled workers. In all this, Wilson was acquired power, the Labour Party itself began elaborating on the vision for the ‘future of to create a similar distance, starting with the socialism’ put by one of his cabinet abandonment of Clause IV and going so far as ministers, former Oxford Economics don, to replace rigid collectivist ideas of ‘trades’ with . more fluid individualist ideas like ‘skills’ as the centrepiece of its own policy for a ‘post- Indeed, the Achilles Heel of social democracy industrial knowledge economy’. Mirowski’s has always been the power of trade unions to twitchy views about Hayek’s collapse of slow the pace of more ‘knowledge’ and ‘’ start here, since than the non-unionized electorate has been Hayek – and neoliberals after him – basically willing to accept, typically by threatening regard knowledge as high-rent information ‘’. By the ‘non-unionized based on academic monopolies. electorate’ I mean people on either sociological side of unionized labour, as seen The problem of public and from a class perspective: on the one side, non- academia as organized labour: unionized workers; on the other side, Neoliberalism’s challenge to social members of the liberal professions; the two democracy groups that formed the natural constituency for neoliberalism. This last point goes to the heart of Tribe’s dubious claim that neoliberals don’t recognize Adding to social democracy’s difficulties in the market failure. In fact, three of the four reasons 1960s was the rise of identity politics within the he cites for market failure – externalities, ‘’, which tended to fetishize monopolies and asymmetrical information – historically rooted forms of social and are ones that neoliberals quite clearly economic practice as ‘cultures’ (aka praxis). recognize. However, their solutions don’t The ultimately nostalgic rhetoric of this self- involve the classic Keynesian policy of the styled ‘Neo-Marxist’ movement enabled state itself doing what the market fails to do by contemporary trade unionism to bask in the increasing the level of public finances through reflected glow of socialism from the direct taxation. Rather, it involves the state previous century. That icon of New Leftists, enforcing proper market conditions, a policy

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that one of the original neoliberals, the ‘ordo- demonstrated in extended training, liberal’ Alexander Rüstow called ‘liberal examinations, specialist jargon and their interventionism’. These measures include associated forms of ‘tacit knowledge’ – serves incorporating externalities into how prices are to impede people’s access to the knowledge set, breaking up monopolies and incentivizing they need to compete effectively in the competition, as well as making relevant multiple overlapping markets in a dynamic information more easily available so people capitalist society. The burden of proof with can make more informed choices. regard to labour value is thus shifted onto humans to provide ‘added value’ vis-à-vis any These provided the foundation for West potential machine-based substitute. Put Germany’s post-war ‘social ’, bluntly, for neoliberals, the ‘human touch’ is or ‘Rhineland capitalism’, as it was known at presumed to be a pretext for rent-seeking the time. While normally seen as a beacon of behaviour, until proven otherwise. ‘social democracy’, the was in the fact instituted by the ordo-liberal This finally gets to the question of public Ludwig Erhard, as part of a Christian goods, which probably provide the strongest Democrat-led ‘’ of parties. case for the Keynesian compensatory state Generally speaking, Germany’s post-war approach to market failure. Indeed, some prosperity should be taken as evidence that economists define a ‘’ in a Keynes- social democracy and neoliberalism have friendly, question-begging way – namely, any been willing to trade and share ideas in a necessary good that cannot be adequately common project with markedly successful supplied by the private sector. However, it outcomes. would be more economically perspicuous to say that a necessary good is truly ‘public’ if it Implied in the last measure to overcome would cost society more to restrict its access market failure – the need to redress than to allow free access. Neoliberals can information asymmetries – is the idea that agree with this refined definition. It enjoys the academic labour is no more sacrosanct than virtue of keeping empirically open the question any other form of organized labour, if it invokes of which goods do indeed count as ‘public’. But ‘expertise’ to hold monopoly power over, in a conceptual question remains: What exactly this case, knowledge validation. This is what is the function of public goods such that their ultimately bothers Mirowski about Hayek and production at certain levels is a matter of was the point on which my debate with necessity? Mirowski began. Neoliberalism tends to suggest that we academics are too much like Take the classic welfare state examples of the trade unions for comfort, especially in an public goods: universal access to age of artificial intelligence that increasingly and healthcare. Neoliberal state involvement shapes our sense of what is an ‘adequate’ here amounts to human capital investment, level of evidence, knowledge, intelligence, etc. which is understood as a risky intervention. The standard-bearer for this line of criticism of One never truly knows in advance who will academia’s epistemic prerogatives is Google need or make the most out of the investment, – from its ordinary search engines to but the hope is that as a result of the Google.ai. The point is that just as most forms investment, enough people will live of manual human craftsmanship have significantly more productive lives. Whether migrated to machine work, the same may also that hope is realized remains an open soon apply to much of human brainwork, question. ranging from routine legal and medical practice to academic instruction and . A vivid illustration of the neoliberal In effect, the technological replacement of here is the 2010 Browne Review, which human labour – brainwork included – reduces established the UK’s current ‘graduate tax’ the information asymmetries between humans approach to higher education funding. The in the marketplace by undermining the review was commissioned by Labour PM monopoly advantage of trades and and implemented by Tory PM professions, whose ‘expertise’ – as David Cameron. And notwithstanding this

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cross-party support, it is increasingly seen as everyone subsidizing higher education as a having been too optimistic in the investment’s good that in the first instance only benefits a rate of return. Indeed, notwithstanding few but which eventually benefits everyone. In neoliberalism’s fondness for the ‘knowledge this respect, the multiplier effect is really a form economy’, it remains unclear whether treating of ‘trickle down economics’, a phrase normally higher education as a public good makes good -- and disparagingly -- associated with economic sense in the way that treating neoliberals. primary and secondary education clearly However, neoliberals object to the Keynesian does. Thus, some neoliberal economists, such approach to public goods as simply state- as Alison Wolf, have explicitly argued for mandated paternalism. For them, either higher diverting state funds from tertiary to lower education matters to people’s lives or it levels of education. doesn’t in terms of building the human capital needed to make them fit to be free. In that In this context, it is often forgotten that case, someone who benefits from higher Keynesians – and social democrats more education without having attended university generally – have had a more relaxed attitude is potentially a ‘free rider’ – i.e. someone who to the ‘need’ for everyone to attend higher gets enough from higher education to satisfy education. This reflects their greater concern their own interests but not enough to have for a ‘balanced’ and ‘stable’ economy that invested in it themselves. By such neoliberal doesn’t suffer from the wildly fluctuating logic, the full potential of higher education as a patterns of under the ‘gales of public good is not realized unless everyone ’ promoted by invests themselves – not simply their -- capitalism. Thus, social democrats aim to do in it. However, this can lead to a false sense of to two countervailing tendencies: the empowerment that is not redeemed in the drive to ‘upward social mobility’ and the old improvement of one’s . This socialist ideal of everyone being equally seems to be the emerging verdict on the valued for the work they do, regardless of Browne Review’s strategy of incentivizing whether it’s brain- or hand-based. In the UK everyone to enter higher education. In that context, while neoliberals are comfortable with case, as was suggested above, neoliberals the national economy drifting towards London- may come to conclude on empirical grounds centric brainwork in and the that higher education is indeed not a public creative industries, social democrats would good. ensure that the UK retain its traditional industrial base, which involves all of the Is social democracy vs. neoliberalism regions and does not require a university ultimately a historiographical mirage? degree. Perhaps in order to redress the balance of All of this helps to explain the Keynesian their relative political fortunes in today’s world, understanding of higher education as a public social democracy tends to be judged by its good. It doesn’t depend on everyone going to theoretical aspirations and neoliberalism by its university, unlike the neoliberal idea of human practical policies. This ends up making investment. Rather, it depends on democracy look better than it ever has been, everyone benefitting from the consequences while neoliberalism looks worse than it could of those few who make it to university. That’s be. No doubt it helps that social democrats because the social democratic conception of such as Mirowski tend to be the ones writing public good is framed from the consumer’s – the histories of neoliberalism. And of course, not the producer’s – standpoint. This idea is neoliberalism has by no means worked captured in the ‘multiplier effect’, which is perfectly, given the ease with which the state Keynes’ way of showing the knock-on positive can be captured by large corporate and effects of, say, non-academically trained financial interests, which in turn makes it people interacting with academically trained difficult to apply the requisite ‘liberal ones. The populace will get better medical interventionism’ for truly free markets to care and better opinions on which to take flourish. Moreover, within neoliberalism there decisions at the ballot box. This justifies has been much disagreement whether

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intergenerational transfers of wealth can be ruler’s demand for obedience. Foucault properly counted as human capital seemed to find neoliberalism especially investments, given their tendency to create interesting because of its radically bottlenecks in the flow of capital more depersonalised conception of the state – a generally. But at the same time, social product of its anti-collectivism – that democratic regimes have been equally captive nevertheless still manages to focus intently on – this time to organized labour, which has people’s lives in the attempt to make them ‘fit effectively put the state in the business of to be free’ (aka ‘wise investors of their human subsidizing unprofitable forms of employment, capital’). It’s the sort of state that Calvinists or often resulting in higher taxes, larger budget Deists – the sort of people who founded the deficits and stagnant . US -- could appreciate. If Foucault is to be faulted -- perhaps reflecting An instructive way to acquire a more acute the taboos of his times -- it would be for his historical perspective is to take a closer look at failure to see the connection between human ’s 1978-9 Collège de France capital and eugenics as integral to the welfare lectures, collected as The Birth of Biopolitics. I state’s ‘biopolitical’ preoccupation with health wonder whether this celebrated posthumously and education. Nevertheless these matters published work about the origins of were always interrelated, ranging from neoliberalism is ever read by those who cite it. Fisher’s coinage of ‘human capital’ to What is most interesting about the book is that Beveridge’s ultimately failed attempt while Foucault’s course took place just before LSE Director in the 1930s to establish a chair Thatcher and Reagan were swept into office, in ‘social biology’ as the foundational social heralding what would soon become the science discipline. ‘neoliberal revolution’ that supposedly marked a decisive break with post-war social Nevertheless, without entirely accepting the democracy -- as if neoliberalism and social peculiar spin that Foucault gives to the rise of democracy were two distinct strands of neoliberalism, his account is certainly in the thought locked in mortal conflict. Yet, this right ballpark – and preferable to the one sharp difference is not to be found in presented by Mirowski. Mirowski’s account Foucault’s own telling of the origins of seems customised for today’s disoriented neoliberalism. Even the post-war leftists who imagine neoliberalism as a disagreements between Keynesian and conspiracy cooked up by the people who neoclassical economists are portrayed as backed Reagan and Thatcher, who in turn are being largely over hermeneutical differences portrayed as having foiled some social concerning the same set of economic democratic utopia – typically associated with equations and their policy consequences. the elimination of -- that Taken as a systematic way to understand the supposedly had been on the verge of being world, these equations provide the basis for delivered in 1979-80. This is notwithstanding the ‘cyborg science’ that Mirowski in his best the , unemployment, labour unrest and book, Machine Dreams, critiques economics energy crisis that were in play at the time. for having become. Mirowski’s efforts are always brilliant, to be Foucault’s main point is that all these sure: an Adam Curtis-style ‘behind the scenes’ arguments are conducted against a shared exposé that amplifies the significance of the ‘biopolitical’ sensibility (a term Foucault Mont Pelèrin Society, perhaps to the point of refashions from Rüstow’s ‘Vitalpolitik’), which caricature. Nevertheless, it’s telling that is endemic to ‘welfare states’, due to their Foucault never mentions Mont Pelèrin, though concern with how people manage their lives. he does discuss the Walter Lippmann In this context, Foucault fashioned the term Colloquium which preceded it. My point here ‘governmentality’ as a placeholder for the is historiographical. The style of ‘demystifying’ activities of the state and potentially other historiography championed by Mirowski is superordinate agents (God?) who are rhetorically most compelling when we already engaged with its subjects/citizens in this believe that a movement or tendency has intensive manner—that is, beyond an absolute come to fruition – and hence has revealed its

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‘true colours’. In that case, the telos of the history focuses largely on how that trajectory Here it is worth recalling that when Herbert was kept hidden for so long or emerged only Butterfield coined ‘Whig history’ in the 1930s, gradually. In Mirowski’s case, this is really little he was referring to the kind of self-glorifying more than a ‘sour grapes’ version of Whig history that mid-nineteenth century British history – that is, written from the standpoint Liberals told about the English Civil War two from those who are not the beneficiaries but centuries earlier. The Liberals saw themselves the dupes or victims of such a long gestating as heirs to the Whig legacy. While of course movement. But be in its sweet or sour form, they were right in several important ways, the Whig history tends to leave one with a Liberal spin overlooked the inconvenient fact peremptory sense of how history ultimately that England ultimately restored the turns out that fails to account sufficiently for the , notwithstanding the ‘triumph of future’s openness. Think of this point as an liberty’, which is Whig history’s dominant updated version of Karl Popper’s original narrative thread. Moreover, the monarchy was critique of ‘historicism’. never quite as politically inert as the Whig historians suggested – not least in their own To best explain where I’m coming from, day, the period when the UK, for better or consider the following analogy, which you may worse, set the standard for on a initially find melodramatic. I take Foucault’s global scale. The fact that we still refer to the The Birth of Biopolitics and, say, Mirowski’s second half of nineteenth century Britain as Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste as akin the ‘Victorian Age’ suggests that all is not quite to the histories of that were right with the Whig account of British history. written, respectively, before and after the Moreover, astute observers of the UK political Holocaust was generally acknowledged. In the scene today understand that the monarchy’s case of neoliberalism, the Reagan-Thatcher stalwart public posture and occasional revolution corresponds to the Holocaust in the judicious nudging has provided a stable minds of social democratic academics like backdrop to a that is Mirowski. given to considerable divisiveness.

Analogous to Foucault’s book is Franz A sour grapes version of this account Neumann’s Behemoth, first published in 1942, approximates the more cynical Marx-inspired a decade after Hitler had assumed power. It versions of the aftermath of the English Civil remains the most sophisticated critical War – E.P. Thompson’s is a good case in point exploration of the long-term prospects of – whereby the Whigs are portrayed as having Nazism’s unique amalgam of ideas and falsely advertised themselves as the people’s policies. But it assumed that any outcome to party when in fact they were the original the Second World War would keep Nazism bourgeois traitors to the class struggle, always alive at least as a political option. Of course, intent on closing the door to freedom behind the total military defeat of the Nazis and the them, once they had got the upper hand over subsequent revelation of the enormity of the the King. Instead of self-glorifying, this version Holocaust overtook Neumann’s framing of the of Whig history is self-flagellating, but the situation, which in turn has led to a general display of political virtue remains the same. neglect of his book in more recent times, This is comparable to Mirowski’s accusation notwithstanding his own credentials as a that neoliberals are hypocrites with malign member. Nevertheless, this intent, whose idea of ‘free markets’ really neglect has arguably led those who are amounts to pseudo-markets where the state supposedly ‘on the right side of history’ (aka protects large corporate interests and private ‘politically correct’) to be blindsided by the capital investors. Like its sweeter version, longing of many, especially on the European such a sour grapes account of Whig history Far Right, to revive an updated version of presupposes that the current state of play ‘Nazism sans Holocaust’ of the sort that reveals what the movement in question – in Neumann had presupposed as being viable in this case, neoliberalism– had been about all his forensic examination of the movement in along. To return to the earlier Nazi analogy, action. this cynical reading of is

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comparable to that presented in Zygmunt ranging from the state-provided to the Bauman’s and the Holocaust, which individually-mandated – the social democratic portrays the Holocaust appears as not only the and neoliberal default positions, respectively – inevitable outcome of Hitler’s project but also has regularly testified to the two movements’ of ‘scientism’, the analogue of ‘liberalism’ in common ground. But much too the social democratic critique of neoliberalism. often this shared vision has been stymied by The argument, then, amounts to conceding ‘ political differences’, which amounts the contemporary dominance of the ‘scientific’ to politicians struggling among themselves to or ‘liberal’ sensibility at the outset and then increase their chances of being returned to turning it against that sensibility. office. To his credit, Obama overcame those differences at a time when the US Congress Nevertheless, neoliberalism from its inception had become polarized to such an extent that has harboured voices – typically in its the federal was forced to shut politically libertarian wing – who have down for a considerable period. consistently argued against state subsidies for historically important firms that over time have As it turns out, the states lost by Romney in come to lose their competitive edge (e.g. US 2012 swung back to the Republicans in 2016, and UK steelmakers and automakers) and as Donald Trump promised both to protect even against the state ‘bail out’ of major banks existing jobs and involve the state in a round after the 2008 global . These of new job creation, notwithstanding the public neoliberals openly challenge the post-war deficit spending entailed by such policies. economic consensus that some enterprises Indeed, the spirit of Trump’s pledge was closer are ‘too big to fail’ due to the social and to FDR’s New Deal than to any neoliberal economic costs of market failure on such a programme. But luckily – at least for Trump -- large scale, such as massive job losses, Mirowski’s ‘hypocritical neoliberals’ who depleted pensions and mortgage foreclosures. control the US Congress have been quite Of course, such political purism is easier to open to any economic policy that their maintain if one is not in a position of electorate would welcome and their funders responsibility for the public finances. tolerate. In this context, one should not Interestingly, Mitt Romney’s attempt to make underestimate the continuing allure of neoliberal purism central to his 2012 ‘protectionism’ and ‘’ in squaring Republican US presidential bid proved to be the circle between social democracy and unpalatable with swing voters in the old neoliberalism in politicians’ minds. In effect, industrial states, which in turn served to return public spending in the ‘national interest’ is an Barack Obama to office. To seal the deal with investment strategy to maintain the political- the voters, Obama promised to protect jobs in economic power infrastructure, very much in the automotive industry, notwithstanding his the Bismarckian spirit. earlier warm words for hastening America’s transition to a ‘post-industrial’ economy that To get a good final look at the stakes between was not so reliant on the fossil fuels. social democrats and neoliberals, consider a persistent political-economic problem that has Plotting the future of the social been given renewed scrutiny by Thomas democracy-neoliberalism relationship Piketty in his celebrated 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Piketty is referring to Barack Obama is a classic post-war the increasing gap between the rich and the ‘consensus politician’ who easily permutes poor, a tendency that is driven by the rate of social democratic and neoliberal rhetoric and return on capital assets consistently policy: usually leading with social democratic outstripping the rate of first-order economic rhetoric followed by neoliberal policies, growth. This enables the rich to get richer sometimes the reverse. The first politically simply by being already rich without producing successful version of US social health anything themselves or even investing in new insurance, ‘Obamacare’, is an object lesson. enterprises. Ricardo and Marx would have The proliferation of hybrid options on health recognized this state-of-affairs as the revenge insurance, not only in the US but worldwide, of the rentiers.

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realization. In this respect, the spectre of Marx The social democratic leanings of Piketty and haunts the entire discussion – and it should be his many followers project a policy horizon exorcised once and for all. rather like that of my Global Policy critic, Tribe, which depicts the difference between social In this post-Marx world, social democracy and democrats and neoliberals in terms of the neoliberalism are best understood as offering former wanting a more regulated and the latter complementary approaches to dealing with a less regulated capitalism. However, as we the problem of inequality. They are matters have seen, the real bone of contention is over that can be decided by the usual democratic the locus and type of regulation. Whereas means – and have been for more than a neoliberals would aim to limit the hereditary century in the West. It follows that those with transfer of wealth in the name of keeping lingering sympathies for Marx need to come to markets open to newcomers, social democrats grips with the prospect that people may would focus on taxing current wealth with the rationally decide in ways that from an expert explicit aim of reducing inequality through a viewpoint seem to go ‘against their own state-based redistribution scheme. In the interest’. It may simply be that the Marxist – or language of : equality of more generally, the expert – understanding of opportunity versus . the people concerned is wrong in some crucial respect. Put another way, for neoliberals inequality is a problem only if it is irreversible, as when There is no reason to think that once people offspring acquire advantage through inherited are given a greater say in their lives – be it wealth at levels that make them invulnerable through extended suffrage, greater purchasing to market forces. In that case, the state is in a power, more education and/or access to the position to stop that cross-generational internet – they will come to conclusions that transfer of wealth through ‘liberal intervention’ correspond to the views of those who think of the sort that the US Progressives pioneered they know better. Indeed, hostility to more than a century ago, before social ‘democracy’ as a political ideal until the democracy and neoliberalism went their nineteenth century was predicated precisely increasingly separate ways. This would be in on this point. However, there is no need to fall the name of ‘equality of opportunity’. In back to that position, notwithstanding the contrast, social democrats tend to see tendency in commentary – Mirowski’s being inequality at any given time as itself so among the most sophisticated – to rely on problematic for social cohesion that they tropes of ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘deceit’ (with regard would have the state use ‘progressive to politicians and policy makers) and ‘bias’ and taxation’ to redistribute wealth, regardless of ‘ignorance’ (with regard to the general public). whether the wealth was achieved by one’s The experts may indeed know less than they own or one’s parents’ efforts. The implied think. This dawning awareness in our times is regulative ideal, albeit incompletely realized, is what I have called the ‘post-truth condition’. ‘equality of outcome’. Readers can decide which of these two mutually entangled Moreover, the appeals to capitalism’s movements – neoliberalism or social menacing ‘structures of domination’ that Marx- democracy -- offers the better policy horizon to inspired academics still brandish as trump deal with the phenomenon that Piketty has cards ring increasingly hollow in public identified. discussions. When these appeals were first made more than a century ago in texts Policy Implications: Toward Fabianism 2.0 circulated in workers’ reading groups, they were interpreted as esoteric knowledge, on The salience of the ‘social democracy vs the basis of which one might plot a revolution. neoliberalism’ divide is largely a latter-day Nowadays, after decades of overexposure – Marx-inspired construction, in which all the both at the academic and the popular level – remaining hopes of Marxists are placed on the such appeals have become the stuff of panto shoulders of ‘social democrats’ -- and politics. People ‘always already’ know about ‘neoliberals’ are those who would thwart their these ‘structures of domination’, can respond

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with the appropriate level of horror when which are mostly the product of ideological prompted – and then decide matters quite spin on their histories. The recent rise of differently when something really matters to ‘populism’, which has blindsided both their own interests. A virtue shared by social ideologies, should focus minds here. It democracy and neoliberalism is that they try requires reanimating the Fabian impulse, not to conduct politics this way. which married a vivid organizational imagination with an intense interest in data However, in our emerging post-Marx world, gathering. both social democrats and neoliberals need to face what might be called the Fabian Here it’s worth recalling that the Fabians were Question: What is the exact role of avid enthusiasts for ‘propaganda’, the creation in a democracy? of a total information environment in which people are in continuous interaction with the The Fabians favoured thinking of society in opinions of others – a literal ‘marketplace of terms of blocks because people who think and ideas’. Thus, the Fabian Society has been act the same way are more easily sometimes seen as the first modern think tank. administered to (managed, manipulated, etc.) In this spirit, a renovated Left should engage than disparate individuals who think in many more constructively with public opinion different ways. Marx-style class analysis research and public relations, which have provided the most convenient blocks in the shown impressive ingenuity over the years in early twentieth century because of the ease configuring populations to bring about with which people self-identified and self- outcomes that might not otherwise have organized in terms of their relationship to the appeared . Indeed, the 2016 US . But unlike Marxists, presidential election and Brexit referendum Fabians were committed to class analysis only illustrate how one propaganda strategy can insofar as it served administrative purposes. triumph over another. Other ways of dividing the populace for administrative conquest may prove more The challenge for the Fabian 2.0 is that our efficient in the future. increasingly information-rich environment is owned and framed by commercial cyber- Fabian open-mindedness about how people platforms with which the state is struggling to are to be classified was complemented by an comprehend, let alone control. While the obsession with getting the best data possible original Fabians would have been impressed about the most aspects of people’s lives. The by Facebook, Google, they would have been Fabians were unabashed enthusiasts for the in awe of China’s emerging ‘ surveillance state, which harks back to system’. The social democratic and neoliberal Foucault’s original interest in social offspring of Fabianism should not only learn democracy and neoliberalism as two sides of from these developments but also the biopolitical complex. Of course, the recent reappropriate them in the spirit of what Karl in information technology – from Popper long ago called the ‘piecemeal social the advent of the internet to today’s interactive engineering’. social media – have breathed new life into this Fabian enthusiasm, especially given the ease with which people reveal themselves, Steve Fuller is Professor of sometimes simply to attract free publicity. Is Social in the Department of this development also part of democracy’s at the University of Warwick, UK. outworking or something more sinister in the Originally trained in history and of making? That question remains even after the science, he is the author of more than twenty ghost of Marx has been purged. books. His most recent work has been concerned with the future of humanity (or The direction of policy travel in all this is clear. ‘Humanity 2.0’) and the future of academic Once Marx is off the table, the Left should work knowledge and the university as an institution. toward reconciling the current differences His latest book is Post-Truth: Knowledge as a between social democracy and neoliberalism, Power Game (Anthem, 2018). His next book is

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entitled, ‘Nietzschean Meditations: Late Night Thoughts of the Last Human’ (Schwabe Verlag) and is due out later in 2019.

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