How not to analyse an election result (Marxist studies version)

I'm not going to give my take on the events in the USA. I was wrong (not in disliking Trump but in thinking he would get thrashed) and this is most probably because I don't know enough about the dynamics and processes of US elections so relied on the media filtering of polls to provide guidance. Problem is, of course, that the media leans towards polls that are either outliers or favour the ideological bias of that media (or both).

There's lots of good stuff emerging - not from the big brave pundits on national media but rather from folk like Aaron Renn and Joel Kotkin who bring experience and geography to bear on the issue.

For some though, we get an object lesson in how not to analyse an election result. Here's Dr Sophia Price, Head of Politics and International Relations at Leeds Beckett University. It starts like this:

Marx’s adage ‘first as tragedy then as farce’ seems a fitting place to start on this bleak winter post-election morning. In Zizek’s (2009) book of the same name he notes Marx’s correction of Hegel’s idea “that history necessarily repeats itself”. “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy , the second time as farce” (Marx 1973 quoted in Zizek 2009). For Marx, this second comedic version would mark the “last phase of a world-historical form”.

I know what you're saying - why read on and what in heaven's name has all this to do with the US Presidential elections. Some of you might also smile and remind our author that Zizek - every trendy's favourite Marxist - endorsed Donald Trump. But the article's not very long and soon escapes from quoting Marx as it settles down to present the usual collection of academic sub-Marxism's favourite memes:

...there are a wide range of memes and posts that relate our present moment to the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

Of course. Just a shame that modern Marxist academics seem not to have the first clue about Fascism.

...the analysis of the shift to extreme, right wing politics...has to be located within the context of the global spread of neo-liberal capitalism in which free trade and the roll back of social protection and labour rights has intensified the competition between workers.

We move on:

It is important though that...we do not lose sight of the intersections of race, gender and class within these processes.

We arrive at the conclusion having decided that - Donald Trump is a fascist (he isn't) and won because of racism (partly true but, I suspect, an oversimplification). And that the response should be:

...to properly locate race and gender within the analysis of class relations and contemporary capitalism that have provoked these social changes, in order to be able to formulate a viable, progressive and inclusive alternative.

It seems to me - having sat up all night watching people poking at maps on the telly - that the problem isn't capitalism but rather the failure of government that talked more about race and gender than it did about jobs, schools and healthcare.

The problem is, however, that students only get this sort of analysis - framed in terms of boilerplate Marxism - meaning that they can only see the ideas underlying Trump's success (or Brexit for our author takes a moment to demonise voting the leave the EU) as problematic. The almost complete absence of any academic commentary from the right means that our understanding of the social changes influencing the Trump phenomenon are developed entirely on the basis of a discredited philosophy of state control.

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Ideology, ideology, ideology!

At first the term "ideology" referred to the study of ideas and their origins. Over time this has transmogrified into our modern, familiar - I might say comfortable - definition:

...a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

It is for this reason that ideology is important yet it has become something of a pejorative term - I recall someone upset by my thoughts on public health sending a screaming tweet: "Ideology, ideology, ideology" it said, as if I would be upset by my observations being basis on a more-or-less coherent set of thoughts.

We have arrived at the point where, in the minds of too many, there are two distinct positions in any debate or discussion - "ideology" and "evidence-based" - where the latter is deemed to be superior. The problem I have is that, without a premise for your proposal, prescription or policy, any amount of evidence won't necessarily tell you that it's the right (or wrong) thing to do.

We're told - repeatedly - that alcohol can be damaging to our health. I'm guessing that nearly all adults and most children are aware of the risks (although not necessarily how to assess or quantify those risk) involved in drinking. Let's assume that some evidence is presented showing that, if we increase the price of drink, then consumption will fall and fewer people will damage their health as a result. Indeed, since there's lots of evidence that increasing price reduces consumption, we could apply the evidence to any activity or product that has negative social consequences.

The point isn't what the evidence says but whether we should enact some policy on the basis of that evidence - is it right to make booze more expensive for everyone because a small number abuse alcohol? This isn't a decision you can make on the basis of evidence, it can only be made on the basis of ideology - a premise that says all population intervention in personal choice is justified on health grounds. The evidence says the decision - putting up the price of beer - will have a positive impact on health but the decision to restrict choice (for that is what a price intervention is) is ideological.

As of course would be the opposite decision - not increasing price because personal choice trumps public health.

Ideology matters.

Our public administration has adopted an ideology that needs, in the interests of democracy and freedom, to be challenged. Yet whenever a challenge to the premise (essentially that government intervention is always justified) is made, the response isn't to present a logical rationale for that ideology but to gather together "evidence" showing how government intervention is a good thing. "What matters is what works", as Tony Blair would have put it.

The result of this outlook - a sort of anti-ideology ideology - is a sterile debate conducted on the basis of fact-checking, appeals to (evidence-supplying) authority and attacks on the critic for basing his argument on 'ideology'. The irony of this is that debates between, say, Marxists and libertarians are more honest and interesting than the faux-debate that dominates much of our current political discourse.

Take a look at the debate over Scottish independence. The Scottish government under its Scottish Nationalist Party leadership has produced a vast tomes setting out the "evidence" for independence with the emphasis on the economic case. And those opposed to independence have, likewise, set out their case for retaining the United Kingdom.

However, the argument isn't about the economy at all. Nor is it about the welfare state or the army or nuclear bombs or any of the other aspects of the debate. The argument is ideological - should Scotland be independent or not. And the voters will, in the main, make their decision to for 'yes' or 'no' on the basis of this ideological debate. Or rather on the basis of an ideological debate that simply hasn't happened because we've forgotten how to lift politics out from the banal and pragmatic and into the realm of ideas.

Accusing someone of "ideology, ideology, ideology" isn't an insult, that base of ideas allows us to make policy choices where the evidence doesn't direct us to a choice - the world of macroeconomics is filled with such choices, for example. And ideology provides the basis for these choices, big and important choices that affect everyone's lives, to be debated and discussed.

Ideology really does matter and we should use it more often.

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Pioneers wanted! Capitalism, Marxism and living on the moon.

"Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish."

Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, Skylife, 2000

Starting a discussion of capitalism - in space or anywhere else for that matter - by quoting Rosa Luxemburg isn't a good plan. Dear old Rosa believed that capitalism needs a frontier - a periphery - to succeed. And, like most Marxists who talk about capitalism as if they own the term, Rosa gets it wrong. Still this didn't stop the chap from Lenin's Tomb getting all confused about space (and capitalism) in the Guardian.

Capitalism really isn't the point when we talk about space exploration. Google 'commercial exploitation of space' and you get pages of learned, legal tomes with titles like:

Law and Regulation of Commercial Mining of Minerals in Outer Space

Commercial Utilization of Outer Space: Law and Practice

Creating a legal framework for the commercial exploitation of outer space

Now this writing suggests two things to me - firstly that the capitalists really are interested in space. And secondly that the controlling hand of government is placing constraints on making money out there in the great blue beyond.

More importantly, exploration - and that's all we've done so far - never really interested capitalists, even the ones who termed themselves "merchant adventurers". Where we are familiar with space, commercial exploitation is commonplace and successful:

On 10 June 1995, International Launch Services was established, upon the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta companies, to market Proton and Atlas launch services to the commercial satellite telecommunications marketplace worldwide. Prior to the merger, each of these companies were competing in the commercial launch services market with the Proton and Atlas rockets. Lockheed entered the launch market in 1993 with the establishment of Lockheed-Khrunichev- Energia International (LKEI), the joint venture to exclusively market the Russian Proton launch vehicle. Similarly, Martin Marietta had entered the commercial launch arena with the family of Atlas launch vehicles. Neither rocket was new to the market, however, and provided a combined heritage foundation of more than 450 launches at the inception of ILS.

Despite the persistence of government controls and restrictions on space exploitation, capitalist progress has been made (and I guess we shouldn't mention Richard Branson selling over-price trips into space to celebrity millionaires).

The real problem here is that our Marxist confuses the fact that lots of goodies undoubtedly lie below the surface of the moon (and all over the solar system) with whether those goodies are actually worth exploiting. Right now we're doing a pretty good job (whatever the greenies say) of fuelling our world - in most cases we're not running out of stuff and where we are there are some pretty useful alternatives that don't require us to go to the moon to get them.

What we have to consider here is that we need a sort of unholy alliance between the controlling government and the free spirit. People like John Leeming are needed:

“You seem to fit the part all right. Your technical record is first-class. Your disciplinary record stinks to high heaven.' He eyed his listener blank faced. 'Two charges of refusing to obey a lawful order. Four for insolence and insubordination. One for parading with your cap on back to front. What on earth made you do that?'

I had a bad attack of what-the-hell, sir,' explained Leeming.” 

So the government gave Leeming a state-or-the-art super-duper scout ship to explore the galaxy. Just as government funded Columbus, subbed Magellan and encouraged (if turning a blind eye to piracy is what we mean by 'encouraged') Drake. Because it got them out of the way by sending them off into unexplored oceans. If they died, it was their risk. But if they found something the government could take the credit.

Our Marxist lives in something of a binary world - the choice is between timid capitalism:

Of course, under capitalism the state's ability to explore the unknown is limited by its priority of making things work for business, or developing a greater war machine. States don't need an immediate return on investment, but if they're to justify taxing profits, they need to demonstrate some sort of plausible return. Hence, there's always more money for military arsenals than spaceships. 

And glorious socialism:

So, this is what we need. First, international socialism. And to paraphrase Lenin, socialism = soviet power + interstellar travel. Don't ask me how we get that, we just need it as a precondition for everything else. Second, an international space exploration programme, funded with the express purpose of adding to the sum of stuff and human knowledge. Third, a popular space tourism programme. 

I'm not intending to try and unpick the ignorance of demanding a system that is a myth to replace a system that is a fact. Instead, I want to offer another alternative - we'll call it the Eric Frank Russell system. We'll invite independent minded, pioneering sorts (with a scattering of John Leemings) to go and live on the moon. Not a few of them but lots - we'll charge them with the task of creating the means to live there, the ways to reach the moon and the way they'll run the place when they get there.

And hopefully what we'll get won't be international socialism or corporatist capitalism (the two choices our Marxist offers us) but this:

 

...;

In which I get a little Marxist in the cause of minimum government

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This is quite a difficult thing for me to write - partly because I'm stepping out from the areas where I'm comfortable with my knowledge but also because it challenges a more or less universal misunderstanding. And it begins with this quote from Engels:

The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished,” it withers away.

Setting to one side the vast (and largely incomprehensible) corpus of Marxist thinking, it strikes me that there is nothing to disagree with in the idea that the state will become superfluous. And those of the right (or at least the freedom-loving bit of the right) should share the objective - or is it the consequence - of Marxism.

Now I take the view that Marx's historical determinism - that the process from the hypothetical cave to a free socialist life is inevitable - is a load of nonsense. But this doesn't negate the ambition to which Engels alludes - that a perfectly just society would not need government. It is an admirable liberal aim.

The problem - and all the disagreement - comes from the route that Marxists (or rather 'communists', which I understand is a slightly different thing) choose to reach the shared objective of a free society, by which I mean one that does not require governing. Here's another Engels quote:

At the same time we have always held that in order to arrive at this and the other, far more important ends of the social revolution of the future, the proletarian class will first have to possess itself of the organised political force of the state and with this aid stamp out the resistance of the capitalist class and re-organise society.

The contradiction - an acknowledged contradiction - here is that in order to create a world free of the oppression of government it is necessary to seize control of government and through those means 'oppress' any people or organisations ('the capitalist class' is a conveniently broad concept) that stand between today's society and that perfectly just society we desire.

The problem here isn't that Marx's ideas were wrong but that the programme developed with Engels and operationalised by Lenin, Mao and others was wrong. This was a failure of strategy not a mistaken ambition - if we agree that, in part, this ambition is a just society free from the inevitable oppression that comes with government.

What is most bizarre however isn't that some people still adhere to the failed prescription of Engels (although this is somewhat odd) but that Marxists make common cause with Fabian Socialists, who had - and have - a very different view of the state. Here's Mark Bevir:

Fabian economic theories, unlike those of the Marxists, almost required their adherents to call for an interventionist state. The Fabians believed that rents could not be eliminated since they arose from the variable productivity of different pieces of land and capital.  The only solution was for the state to collect rent and use it for the collective good.

We have -on "the left" as we like to call it - an alliance between people whose end game is a free society without government and those who, in a manner reminiscent of Plato's 'guardians', believe that a (courageous) state is necessary for the just society to operate. It seems to me that Marxists are making common cause with people whose ideology is not simply different but diametrically opposed to what they believe. Those who want Marx's end game (and who could argue with that - other than Fascists and Fabians) need to make common cause with people who share the same broad objective but embrace a different strategy, who think making government smaller now makes more sense than trusting to those controlling government rejecting power.

Clinging to a failed strategy is daft. Yet that is what many on the Marxist left are doing - clutching to a belief that controlling the state is what matters rather than joining with those who wish to see a smaller state now. The principles of cooperation, collaboration and coproduction that Marxists applaud are shared but the means to the end are not.

I may misunderstand Marx here, in which case tear what I say to shreds, but if a free, just society is the end - and surely it is - then Marxists, rather than sneering at libertarians, Randians and anarcho-capitalists, should spot the shared ground and see that a society where the state directs or controls over half of human activity is not the sunlit uplands that Marx imagined.

Or maybe not...

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Work, 'Big Society' and the labour theory of value

In his Living with Rats blog, Julian Dobson provides a well-crafted piece on the ‘Big Society’ drawing on the ideas of Robert Owen and, crucially, on the concept that all value is intrinsic – something has value and that is it. The actions of man cannot alter that fact. This is the core tenet of socialism – so not surprisingly something to which the socialist mill-owner (don’t you just love that term – such oxymoronic delight), Robert Owen would subscribe.

This is how the labour theory of value works:

A worker in a factory is given $30 worth of material, and after working 3 hours producing a good, and using $10 worth of fuel to run a machine, he creates a product which is sold for $100. According the Marx, the labor and only the labor of the worker increased the value of the natural materials to $100. The worker is thus justly entitled to a $60 payment, or $20 per hour.

If the worker is employed by a factory owner who pays him only $15 per hour, according to Marx the $5 per hour the factory owner receives is simply a ripoff. The
factory owner has done nothing to earn the money and the $5 per hour he receives is "surplus value", representing exploitation of the worker. Even the tools which the factory owner provided were, according to Marx, necessarily produced by other workers.

All quite straightforward really. So, if Julian and the New Economics Foundation are right and value (however we define it) does derive from labour then we need to worry about this:

…'the unpaid labour that is crucial to keeping society and communities functioning - the time that is put into caring for older people, volunteering for the community, exercising democratic rights to protest, and raising children'.

All this voluntary activity is work: it is labour that produces a wealth of social goods that would otherwise default to the state, either as a provider of services or as the place where the buck stops when society falls apart. It must be seen as such, and the Big Society provides an ideal lens.

In a world where we accept the labour theory of value then all this activity should be paid. After all if it is work then it has intrinsic value and for this value not to be remunerated must mean that some one else – the husband, the brother, the neighbour – is profiting at your expense.

Except – as a moment's thought would tell us – the labour theory of value is nonsense. Something’s value isn’t determined solely by the labour involved in producing that something. We know that because we experience the truth of it every day (and not just from watching Antiques Roadshow). And you know, the ‘Big Society’ isn’t about ‘production’ or ‘work’ it’s about value. And just because we choose a non-traditional measure of value, doesn’t mean that we should pretend that ‘work equals value’.

However we choose to measure value (and I like money because everyone understands it and it, famously, stores that captured value) it isn’t created solely by labour – Julian speaks of wasted work which can only be described as the creation of negative value. In the final analysis something is worth what it’s worth – the value is determined by consumption not by production. And volunteering – however ‘productive’ it may be – is an aspect of consumption made possible only by the value added through exchange. Which isn’t to belittle it – I for one do not work to produce. I work so I may consume. And part of that consumption is the pleasure I get from voluntary activity.

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Do you want a Marxist government?

Many folk like to draw a comparison between the leadership of the Conservative Party and "New" Labour. "There's no difference"; these folk cry; "Cameron is just the reincarnation of Blair." After two days in the presence of a collection of avowed (well those I asked) Labour supporters, I can tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. Here's a selection of the thoughts and comments of these people. Ask yourselves whether you think David Cameron believes any of this?

"The triple challenge of peak oil, climate change and financial collapse. Indicative of the crisis of late capitalism."

"We need a new definition of wealth. Common wealth rather than private wealth."

On the suggestion that he meant the nationalisation of land: "Yes, bring it on."

"There is a new paradigm. An end to the rational-economic model." (one presumes it will be replaced by an irrational economic model).

"We need to abolish land value. And replace it with social value."

All of the people expressing these views were academics, policy-makers in government agencies - people not without influence. These were not the ravings of a Marxist fringe. People believe this rubbish. But none of those people are Conservatives, none of those people run private businesses, and none of those people are David Cameron.

However, the labour Party, large chunks of the Liberal Democrat Party and, of course, the ghastly Green Party have been entirely taken in by this dangerous and deluded reincarnation of the Marxist myth of government directed salvation.

So don't blame me if your protest vote results in a Marxist government.

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Markets, ownership and the politics of place

I have spent the past couple of days at a Symposium on Place-making and Culture - two days that have been educational and eye-opening. And I say this both positively and negatively.

On the positive side there is a real recognition that places aren't manufactured - indeed that attempts to manufacture great places are often a failure. Linked to this is the concern that our planning system - a rigidly moderated collection of rules, regulations and guidance notes - acts to stifle the creativity and originality of community efforts to create place. Yet sadly, nobody present questioned either the need for a rule-bound planning system or suggested that the term "place-making intervention" is profoundly undemocratic.

Instead we had a species of naive Marxism - the "triple challenge of peak oil, climate change and financial collapse" explained as indicative of the "crisis of late capitalism". This latter is a term I hadn't heard expressed seriously since the early 1980s - perhaps indicating how the debate about economic recovery will play out. Academics from the social sciences and arts seem charmed by the pseudo-economics of the New Economics Foundation and its associated brand of cuddly Marxism. And central to this world view is the search for an "alternative definition of value" - I have heard in the past two days people advocate land nationalisation and the proposal for a 'social valuation of land'.

Now I'm happy that most of this will remain safely contained - mostly harmlessly - within social science departments of newer universities and in the wackier fringes of arts practice. But I am a little worried that no-one is prepared to make the case for private ownership and the free market. Presenters and contributors all started from the view point that there is a "paradigm shift" away from free markets (a statement I find almost entirely without meaning yet glibly accepted by these modern day pseudo-Marxists).

Great places are great places because of the accumulated actions of individuals who 'intervene' in that place - by being traders or customer of traders, by commissioning architects and designers, by being those so commissioned, by renting an office there, by walking round admiring the buzz, by painting a wall, by busking on the corner...by a myriad of private actions taken without reference to public authorities and often, in truth, performed in the teeth of opposition by those public authorities that banter on so smugly about place-making.

And at the heart of all this is ownership - private ownership. People who own something tend to care for it, will police the actions of those who make use of it and seek most of the time to maintain and improve that something. Public space - by not being owned - is only cared for through the medium of those public authorities who want to control and direct our lives and activities. The authorities who don't like buskers, peddlers and street traders. The authorities who ban signs, who seek rents and taxes from private actors and who wish to stigmatise pleasure and enjoyment.

So step one in "making" great places is for governments and planners to shove out of the way. Step two is to promote the private ownership of space. And step three is to allow the market to do what it does best - create new activities, attract customers, create excitement and generate the value that makes for a great place.

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