Tim Dunlop’s attack on Mark Latham’s political philosophy in The Third Way: Window dressing for capitulation (May 7) has produced some passionate, in depth debate. Today, pieces from David Eastwood, Brian Bahnisch and Glenn Condell.
The Herald’s online’s deputy night editor Kim Porteous has kindly put up Max Moore-Wilton’s report on alleged witness tampering by one of his senior officers, Dr Brendon Hammer, in connection with the children overboard inquiry. You’ll find it in Webdiary at the top of the inquiry archive in the right hand column. The history of the mess is in Edging towards the desk where the buck stops (May 3) and PM’s man out on a shaky limb (May 7). The Moore-Wilton report came down last Monday, the day before the budget, but I haven’t had time to write an analysis of it yet. I’m going the Canberra to report on the inquiry hearings on Wednesday and Thursday, and hope to have an analysis up by the end of the week.
The report and its attachments are a great read (please forgive my scribblings). The documents are:
1. Howard’s press release, May 13
2. Moore-Wilton’s report, May 10, pages 2 to 6
3. Defence department minute to Robert Hill, April 29
4. Letter from the PM’s office to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC), April 30
5. Report from PMC to Howard, May 1
6. Letter from Dr Hammer to Commander Stefan King, April 30
7. Letter from Moore-Wilton to Dr Hammer, May 1
8. Letter from Moore-Wilton to Harinder Sidhu, May 1
9. Letter from Dr Hammer to Moore-Wilton, May 6, pages 16 to 20
10. Letter from Harinder Sidhu to Moore-Wilton, May 6
11. Letter from Moore-Wilton to Michael Potts, May 7
12. Letter from Potts to Moore-Wilton, May 8, pages 26 to 27 (The last bit of page 27 has been cut off in error. It contains nothing of significance)
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One liners
Cathy Bannister: Loved the Tim Dunlop piece on Mark Latham. That analysis was spot on and timely. Anyone who can use such high falutin’ principles to come up with such populist rot as a reintroduction of corporal punishment in schools deserves a caning.
Phil Drayson in Perth: Politics confuses me – the left is in disarray! Bob Dylan said:
“Is the scenery changing,
Am I getting it wrong,
Is the whole thing going backwards,
Are they playing our song?
Where were you when it started
Do you want it for free
What was it you wanted
Are you talking to me?”
What was it you wanted
Oh Mercy
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Longing for the past
By David Eastwood
Sydney
I’m no devotee of the Third Way. I’ll confess to being poorly read on the topic and only intuitively familiar with its principles. I’m also deeply sceptical of Latham’s political agenda and the possibility, or worth, of swinging the Labour battleship in this direction. Labor’s traditional constituencies have already signalled that they won’t take this lying down.
What I do believe is that the arguments for the existence of a Third Way are compelling at face value. They deserve deep analysis and consideration in an objective fashion. The world has changed more than a little this past century. It’s intuitive that our political philosophies must evolve too.
Tim Dunlop argues long, intricately and passionately against the Third Way from a traditional leftist position, but his case against the Third Way has to be judged `Not Proven’. It is argued politically, not objectively. It seeks to attack, and not offer alternatives.
One of its key arguments is internally incoherent. It is based on a traditional, bi-polar political spectrum. It selectively and incompletely analyses supporting examples. It ignores the temporal dimension of economic theory. It argues the case from a definition of sovereignty becoming inevitably dated. It contains strong elements of sentimentality and a longing for the past.
1. Tim’s guilty-until-proven-innocent frame of reference is an inherently political stance. This can’t be a good way to assess or illuminate an issue being presented politically. It will typically ignore relevant facts in presenting its arguments (Tim does this in this piece) and will tend to draw conclusions not supported by the evidence presented. A broader paradigm taints analysis (Tim does this too).
2. Tim’s argument is internally incoherent. He presents a damning indictment of his Second Way (Economic Rationalism). He also (quite rightly) mentions that the Third Way seeks to humanise capitalism through an envelope of policy and regulation that constrains the free market. But he ignores this distinction in concluding that failings in naked, free-market economics systematically undermine the Third Way.
3. In describing the Third Way as a synthesis of two principles often considered contradictory, Tim relies on a traditional, bi-polar political spectrum. He discards the Third Way simply because it combines elements traditionally considered left and right. I’m reminded of a brilliant web diary piece from Christopher Selth last year (Left, right … how politics will march forwards, 27/9/01, reproduced below). It demonstrates ably the possibility that the political spectrum can now be defined in more than one dimension. Many of our elites, often economically right and socially left would agree that the underlying philosophy politics is changing.
4. Tim discounts the purported distinction between the Third Way and Economic Rationalism to zero, without presenting any evidence to support this. He presents no analysis of how effective Third Way principles might or might not be in mitigating the pain caused by free market economics.
5. Tim’s piece presents and analyses examples poorly and (by admission) incompletely to support its position. For example, an attestation that dairy deregulation has failed is what I would term an IBA (Intellectually Blank Assertion) when presented without any evidence as to the impacts on all stakeholders. Has the price gone up? Dunno, haven’t seen the evidence. Have displaced dairy farmers been successfully re-integrated to society? Dunno, no evidence for or against presented in this piece.
Tim’s analysis of the Boston Bakery draws parallels between the former, artisan (my term) workforce and their output and the much smaller factory baker workforce, their technological solution and the impact on their lifestyles, while ignoring the impact of that change on the displaced bakers.
If 20 factory workers replaced 80 artisans, what happened to the other 60? Unemployment in Boston (using this as a parallel for western economies as a whole) hasn’t exploded through economic development. While a handful is no doubt unemployed (around 6% on average here), how many displaced artisans joined or started boutique bakeries? How many bought Bakers Delight franchises? How many are now happily real estate agents, dog washers or the like? These are Latham’s new constituency, core to his arguments, but Tim’s analysis ignores them. Its a philosophy for winners, not workers. AJP Taylor, come on down.
Tim’s economic analysis is coloured by his guilty until proven innocent view. His attestation that free trade policy had little to with the express economic development of nations like Singapore and Japan, Korea et al ignores the facts. Free trade policy in their customer jurisdictions made these countries success. By granting them access to large and hungry markets for their inexpensive and rapidly improving products the West helped them grow. Surely, this only strengthens arguments made by the proponents of globalisation that the best way to obliterate world poverty is through free trade. Tim’s revisionist analysis is incomplete.
6. Tim’s analysis ignores the temporal dimension of economic change. If change and globalisation create short-term losers today, (and certainly they do) the theory says this is for the longer term good. More efficient distribution of economic resources will improve future welfare. Fewer unnecessary dairy farms means less pollution. Fewer dairy farmers means less subsidies in future. As I understand it, the Third Way seeks to lubricate this transition by creating substantive support mechanisms and change programs for people displaced by economic development as, ironically, was attempted in the case of dairy deregulation.
7. Tim’s analysis seems predicated on a dated view of sovereignty. Today’s sovereign states are largely geopolitical constructs, as were their predecessors dating back to Stone Age times. From the tribe, through the fiefdom, the city-state, the empire, the colony, the nation and the supranational federations now emerging, sovereignty has evolved. Globalisation is this process fuelled, as arguably it always has been, by improved information flows and technology.
If the Third Way tolerates a managed short term dislocation in a developed market (say, for example killing Australia’s uncompetitive textile industry) in return for creating many more jobs elsewhere (productivity is much lower in poor countries), and if in turn that sustains and delivers self-esteem to many more humans in less developed worlds, isn’t that a good thing? Does the fact that `they’ are not `we’ prevent us from acting in their interests?
Viewed collectively, nations and their societies are at very different levels in Maslows hierarchy (see chiron). Tim’s view of economics and communities is based squarely on a parochial frame of reference within a society seeking self-actualisation. What about those societies for whom the basic needs have not yet been met. Could we be morally obliged to further their fundamental needs over our luxuries? Our broadly Judaeo-Christian faiths speak of the common man, not of arbitrarily defined nationalities.
8. Despite his avowed contempt of sentimentality for the past, the community dislocation Tim laments late in the piece suggests a profound longing for earlier times and telegraphs our natural fear of change. My interpretation of the Third Way recognises this and seeks to mitigate it. Tim seems to discount the value of this out of hand. Tim’s view seems to be more that change is inherently bad.
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Christopher Selth (Webdiary, September 27, 2001)
Disclosure: Christopher is the former head of international equities at Bankers Trust (BT)
In response to Greg Weilo’s view of left and right, I am not sure whether or not Greg is confused about the appropriate labels to apply to his position. He is either naive or disingenuous with respect to the label appropriate to his positioning on the political spectrum. More significantly, the underlying politics of his position reflects the deep fissures in our society that the tragedy in New York is opening up.
I would like to respond to the underlying philosophical points Greg raises before coming back to labels. The two issues are, however, very linked.
Firstly, one must distinguish between underlying belief systems, and the strategies adopted by political parties. This distinction can be seen either as reflecting the notorious disconnect between politicians and voters, due to the cynical pursuit of power, or alternatively as the disconnect between high principle, or abstract theory, and its application to the practicalities of government.
A further problem appears from the difficulties, if not bankruptcy, of left and right wing economic theories in generating convincing practical outcomes. Marxism and Socialism, and Economic Rationalism no longer offer the political machines of left and right easily saleable policy stances. Note, so-called Economic Rationalism is in f act the pure application of a brand of capitalist, neo-classical economic theory. It has become clouded with the realiti es of practical, rational, economic policy.
Political parties need to be understood in terms of the electoral base to which they appeal, and the strategies they need to adopt in order to get over the line, to win elections. So-called left wing parties have two traditional constituencies; the working class, which tends to be economically left wing, but culturally conservative; and the liberal humanist intelligentsia, which is more economically rational in orientation, but culturally very liberal.
The right wing parties have a parallel fault line. One constituency is old money and small business. There are a number of sub groups here, including owners of businesses that are often local monopolists, but tend to be averse or incapable of taking on global challenges, farmers, and small businesses. These groups tend to favour state intervention to protect their positions from globalisation and the stresses of change. Their politics can ironically parallel the socialism of the working class, but for powerfully different reasons. Their cultural politics tend to conservatism.
The other group comprises global capitalists and technocrats. This group is not defending its position, it is seeking to expand its wealth. It is confident and pro-globalisation and economic rationalism. It is culturally liberal humanist.
You can see in this matrix the divides that have been evident within the Australian political landscape for some time. It is why the Labor Party has resisted homosexual law reform, and why the Coalition has locked in the positions of Kerry Packer, Qantas, and parts of the agricultural lobby, rather than promoting free trade. Left and right wing parties pursue policies in stark divergence from some simplistic understanding of their supposed underlying support base.
This is why right wing parties tend to push socially conservative and populist policies that appeal to the working classes. It will transfer votes from the traditional left to the populist right. It is key to winning a parliamentary majority. In America these were the so called Reagan democrats.
Pauline Hanson undermined the Australian right wing’s ability to claim this ground. That’s why she was so dangerous. This was why the Tampa was such a crucial turning point for John Howard. Behind this rhetoric, however, the right has little interest in the broad agenda of the working class, other than protecting jobs when it simultaneously protects the economic interests of its support base.
The globalist faction in the right, witness Peter Costello, is invariably outraged by this positioning.
The old left was interested in pushing its liberal humanist agenda to win middle class champagne socialist support, whilst being careful of not alienating its working class base. This was the Gough Whitlam strategy. You can see how long Labour stayed out of power in Australia and the UK as a result.
The new left added to its arsenal by embracing elements of economic rationalism. This was particularly the case as Marxism and Socialism were seen as failing to deliver under the pressure of global capital and change. It owed few favours to old money. The more sophisticated members of the new left, such as Paul Keating, saw that the only way to improve job prospects in the nation longer term was by making the economy more efficient. This would also win middle class votes.
The problem was that the short term pain would always leave it at risk with its traditional voting base. That is what ultimately brought Labor down. It is why Kim Beazley is so scared of declaring his hand. He is castrated by these internal tensions.
Both sides are constantly doing deals that alienate part of their traditional support base. This is reality. It is a clear outcome of the structure of our electoral process and parliamentary system.
An interesting insight on these issues can be found in the work of the now dead US sociologist, Christopher Lasch. His last book before he died, The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy is particularly thought provoking. The core thesis in this book is that the global technocracy, visible in all our major cities, working for globally focused organisations, have more in common with each other than the culture of their particular national hinterland.
I think there is a great deal of truth in this proposition. People like me, educated affluent technocratic elitist bastards, have more in common with our class compatriots in London, Paris or New York, than we do with the average man of our particular economic hinterland. In Sydney this can be metaphorically conceptualised as the difference of culture and beliefs between inner city and coastal dwellers, and the suburbs.
Lasch comments that this global class tends to be socially liberal humanist. He notes the irony that the elite might support gay rights, but at the same time feel it is for the best that inefficient industries be shut down, even at the expense of jobs and communities This is what Greg would refer to as left wing, social ideology. At the same time it is economically rationalist, which Greg identifies as right wing economic philosophy.
The important question that arises is what is the motivation behind the elite’s espousal of these values? Is it legitimate compassion, or a self-serving identification with the fashionable causes of the day, a champagne socialism that can go hand in hand with the process of personal enrichment?
It is the new religion of the upper class, which John Howard often, to his chagrin, runs up against. The have nots of our society often feel these values are hypocritical. Despite all of this, many of these values are of great merit. The irony is that it is this great Western tradition that George W. Bush keeps saying we are fighting for.
Lasch’s work is filled with dark irony. It transcends the distinction of left and right. It hits the fault line on which Greg sits. Whilst Lasch unquestionably has captured a key thread, he does not reach any conclusions. It is a provocative piece.
The attack on liberal humanism, and economic rationalism and globalisation, reflect a common factor, fear of change, fear of the unknown. Human history has seen at these moments objective analysis give way to extremism and hysteria. Legitimate criticisms from both sides are lost. We are at risk of being swept away by this tide. Extremist politics are on the rise.
The question confronting us is: Can we integrate liberal humanism with a new paradigm in economic management? Economic policy needs to balance the dynamic drive of capitalism, with appropriate measures to reduce the shock waves and to humanise the process. Regrettably most such strategies in recent times have been hijacked by traditional interest groups: old money, old unions, and old farmers. The power of governments to act in the face of global forces is itself suspect.
A new economic philosophy and social philosophy is required. We must move forward, not backward. The conservative chest beating post the World Trade Center attack risks the worst outcome.
Greg’s thinly veiled piece emphasises this point. It is not hard to decipher. Greg groups all elements of the community that are not part of his pure national core as dangerous; homosexuals [of which I am proudly one!!!], feminists, pro-abortion groups, multi-cultu ralists. On this front he calls himself a Nationalist. On the economic front, he calls himself a Socialist. A national socialist?
Is it by accident that Greg says that left wing extremists have been running things for the last 50 years, ie the post war period? Fifty years ago there was another National Socialist who was arguing the same thing. His name was Adolf Hitler.
I am afraid that the fight is just beginning against this conservative backlash. I agree with Margo that a new opposition movement is needed. It needs to do more than just say bigotry is wrong. It must address the philosophical and political roots of this problem. It must be a broad movement. It must be self critical to avoid the accusation of elitism. This must be more than just the liberal humanist intelligentsia saying how awful everyone else is.
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A Kind of Madness
By Brian Bahnisch
Brisbane
I thought Tim Dunlop did pretty well in his demolition of The Third Way. For me it was another reason not to read the principal tomes of the Third Way literature.
The first reason came in 1998 soon after the publication of Mark Latham’s Civilising Global Capitalism. My son Mark Bahnisch, who lectures in sociology at the Queensland University of Technology, wrote a review of Latham’s book in Overland no. 152. It was a negative review, concluding that “the reconstruction of the social democratic project in Australia is a task still awaiting a beginning”.
Soon thereafter, at my son’s strong suggestion, I read two stunning books, Zygmunt Bauman’s Work, Consumerism and the New Poor and Richard Sennett’s The Corrosion of Character. Since then I have been reading a fair bit about globalisation, trade, liberalism, neoliberalism, postmodernism and related matters. Along the way I have read about the third way, read many of Latham’s newspaper columns and heard lots about it on the ABC, so I claim my knowledge of the Third Way as adequate working knowledge for my present purpose.
In late 1999 Dr Mary Walsh and Mark Bahnisch wrote a review article entitled “The Third Way”: Intellectuals and the Future of Social Democratic Politics (See Journal of Sociology, March 2000) covering the works of “a sociologist, two `intellectual’ politicians and a `talking head'”, that is Anthony Giddens’ book The Third Way, Lindsay Tanner’s Open Australia, Latham’s book, plus one other book that need not concern us here. This article is a densely argued piece with few concessions to the lay reader. However what I learned includes the following:
1. The third way discourse is firmly located within the single pole of a putatively bipolar world, that pole being free market capitalism.
2. The third way discourse is going nowhere. For example it has “no effective politics that would shift or even effect the imbalance of power between an individualised society and the collective action of elite or capital groups”. Giddens accepts, in fact, that “liberal democracy is the teleological end of history” and that there is no alternative to capitalism.
3. Whereas the third wayists are concerned about the decline of trust and the atomisation of society, their solution seems to be for a weakened and untrusted state to call into being dense webs of community communication, cooperation and trust.
4. There is little if anything new in their proposals except calling into being some new and mysterious `radical centre’.
Last year my son advised me that I should get hold of a speech Mark Latham gave in July 2000 at a Globalisation Seminar hosted by the North Queensland Branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs at the James Cook University, Cairns Campus. You can find it at www.thirdway-aust.com.
He started by saying that globalisation was a hot-button issue. The only thing that people agreed about was a definition of globalisation. He then gave some of the characteristics of globalisation, some of which I found quite contestable.
He said that the changes brought by globalisation had “produced new political tensions and controversies” (agreed). But then he took a step that in one fell swoop set the ground of the argument and made it’s outcome pretty much inevitable. He said:
“The debate has split into two camps: the pessimists and the optimists; those who fear the future in a globalised world and those who welcome it. Through the eyes of the pessimists and the optimists it is possible to gain a snapshot of the globalisation dilemma.”
But hang on Mark, I thought. I’m not wholly pessimistic or optimistic about these things. I’m a realist for God’s sake! What you are going to do is polarise the debate, declare yourself an optimist and make the pessimists look like dills. You, on the other hand, will look like a visionary.
And that is what he did.
He made eight statements of contrast between pessimists and optimists, declared himself an optimist, then gave each of the statements a heading (Free Trade, Skilled Labour, Economic Decentralisation etc). Under each heading he expounded his views. It was a performance of considerable virtuosity, with references to Adam Smith, Marx, Thatcher, John Ralston Saul, Keynesian pump priming, Francis Fukuyama and many more including something he calls “the Rose Porteous principle”. Along the way he took a swipe among others at Pauline Hanson (of course) and Queensland academic Mark Bahnisch (clearly a dill).
He began his conclusion with an approving reference to Thomas Friedman’s “golden straitjacket of globalisation” (TINA – There Is No Alternative!). What followed was a rising crescendo in which he saw glorious opportunities for the future, the future in particular of left-of-centre politics. It was quite impressive, really. He paid tribute to the vision of former Labor leaders such as Curtin, Chifley and Whitlam (more recent leaders were strangely missing).
Along the way Latham states that “(globalisation) offers a golden opportunity for creative policy making and the revival of social democracy. In particular, I am attracted to the politics of the Third Way, with its agenda for economic stakeholding, mutual responsibility, social entrepreneurs and learning beyond the classroom.” Thus he locates his thinking within a broader stream.
Two weeks ago I received an email from my son with a short review article for The Journal of Australian Political Economy on the Peter Botsman/Mark Latham compilation The Enabling State. My Mark finds that ‘The Third Way’ “becomes a wonderfully versatile (because empty) political signifier” which is used to make assertions, to negate or dismiss ideas not in favour rather than to engage with them. Apparently the `Hegelian Dialectic’ is also pressed into service, which in this context actually exposes “a series of gross and unsupported generalisations and simplifications which mask the surrender to transhistorical forces of globalisation – read neoliberal markets”. That should earn him another swipe or two!
The real trick with the Third Way, it seems, is that you can put into it any content you like. But you can also use the authority and power of the brand to deal with contrary views without the inconvenience of supplying supporting argument. Meanwhile, the neoliberal project is at the very least left intact or even supported.
Back to the Cairns speech, in which there is some interesting stuff in the Cairns speech along with some errors and distortions. My interest is not in engaging with the particularities but in looking at how Latham structures his argument. He takes issues that are multi-faceted and polarises them into black and white alternatives.
For example, you have to be entirely in favour of free trade. The given alternative for a country is complete protectionism and an attempt at total self-sufficiency. In fact he sets up a series of false binaries. Here again I am indebted to my son, who has done a lot of work on the tendency in Western thought to binary forms. Such forms lead to distortions, exclusions, elisions and the establishment of hegemonies. (Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”, for example, solidified an unnecessary and undesirable cleavage between mind and body, between mental and physical activity, with the former valued over the latter.)
We need to ask who Latham’s pessimists and optimists are. The optimist is easy. It’s him. The pessimist is more difficult to identify. It not only includes all those protesters around the world who have turned up at meetings of the perceived power brokers of capitalism, protesters who are in fact impossibly diverse in their positions and purposes.
It also includes all of us who struggle with these issues in a spirit of enquiry. We may have areas of clarity that hold for a time but vary in the light of new evidence. It includes those who want fair trade rather than free trade, and many more who have positive suggestions for solving the problems of an unjust world. No trouble to Mark Latham, however. It has all been sorted and is perfectly clear. The “pessimist” is in fact a construct of “non-him”. Optimists are those who agree with Mark Latham. Pessimists are everyone else.
This is not the work of an intellectual politician. It is the work of an ideologue, some-one who has found the truth, fixed it in a collection of ideas and viewpoints, and then proceeds to bring the rest of the world to his view.
It is the fixing and the persuading that is the problem with ideologues. The fixed standpoint ossifies while the world moves on. Means not normally acceptable (such as muscling up to that other bunch of ideologues, adopting their methods) become OK because the stakes are high and the ends are good.
I see reality in terms of constant change. Everything around us changes, but most of all we change. We fix things in memory, otherwise we could not operate. But those memories are not fixed. They change as we call upon them in new situations for new purposes. Knowing is not so much a matter of finding the truth for all time, but rather a temporary fix on something that is fluid but decidable (another thank you here to my son). Such deciding is done in particular circumstances, by particular and changing person(s) for particular purposes. Knowing is best seen as a conative act, a part of human striving.
Once you have decided the decidable, you have to ask whether what you have is firmly based enough to be used as working knowledge for the purpose you have in mind. The problem with the Third Way is that it is used to support significant “truth” claims when in itself it means nothing much at all.
For the political ideologue, knowing is a done deal and reality has to change to conform. The reality that is targeted here (because we are dealing with ideas) lies inside the heads of others. So what was Latham’s purpose in Cairns? The prime purpose was not, I think, to transmit information. He piled in too much for that. Information as he employed it had two functions. Firstly it built up the authority of the presenter. Secondly it distracted from what the presenter was doing, namely positioning all those who disagree with him, his “other” in a neat little place where he could blow them away.
But there is another subtext or “hidden curriculum” as we used to say in schooling. I suspect that it is main game, whether or not Latham so intended.
Let me put it this way. The audience leaving the speech, unless they were exceptionally well informed in the area, would have retained only a few snippets of information. In the main they would have gone away thinking, Gee, that Latham fellow is impressive. He knows a lot and has thought a lot about it. He’s really got it sorted and knows where he’s going. Remember that in political ideology the ideologue’s bottom line is power. What he needs is your vote. Best you just vote and leave the thinking to him.
Well sorry, mate, it just does not stand up and I cannot bring myself to wish you well with it.
Mark Latham often has interesting things to say, but they need to be considered in their own right, not with the extra gloss of being part of a new approach to political economy. There is no philosophy underpinning the Third Way. It means nothing substantive; it is an empty signifier. But when it is called into service in the political arena to demolish the ideas of others it no longer functions as a pointless piece of rhetorical fluff, as in academia, it becomes demagoguery.
Mercifully the Third Way may already be receding into history with a residual life for a time in the colonies. In my son’s most recent review he tells us that the Guardian on 22 March this year reported that Tony Blair had replaced the “philosophy” of the “Third Way” with a new “project” of the “Third Phase” (ugh!) in a speech at Tony Giddens’ stomping ground, the London School of Economics.
Mark Latham may produce good ideas from time to time but the problem is that you can’t argue with him. Bob McMullan and Kim Beazley found his education proposals unpalatable in 1999 and dispatched them into the waste paper bin. Simon Crean looks as though he may learn the hard way.
I am inclined to think Latham will never be leader. He is almost certain to self-destruct at some stage, given his inflexibility and aggression. If he does become leader, there will be no shortage of ideas. Whether these ideas will filter up from the masses and the ministry is another matter.
Now I must tell you about the reference that got me reading the Cairns speech in the first place. It went thus:
“The most absurd claim of the anti-globalists concerns the deskilling of labour. A Queensland academic Mark Bahnisch, for instance, has linked “the deskilling of work with the growth of personal service labour”. Obviously his parents and grandparents never had to work in a production-line manufacturing plant.”
My reaction? Not even a cheap shot, just – well, weird! Also unnecessary and irrelevant. As for his substantive comment, he goes on to say that tourism and leisure services such as those in Cairns provide a “more comfortable and interesting work environment” than the “degrading tedium and discomfort of production-line work.
Well, yes maybe, but this illustrates the nub of the problem. Latham and, apparently, the third wayists generally, simply fail to understand that the whole character of the work environment has changed in late capitalism.
Sennett and others have written eloquently about the uncertainties and discontinuities of the modern work place. Their conclusion is that it is increasingly difficult to construct a career, or even an abiding identity of substance. Indeed, the pressures and threat to the individual from the new capitalism are such that it is difficult to construct a satisfying life-narrative.
Latham fails to understand that this applies to all kinds of jobs, even to his heroes, the entrepreneurial self-employed and consultants, the highly skilled workers, who, he claims, have turned Marx’s theory of the surplus value of labour on it’s head. (I think not). Thus he ends up supporting a capitalism that actually threatens the individual in very substantial ways while seeming to provide a smorgasbord of personal freedom and choice.
Psychiatry, I understand, includes these days something called “schema therapy’. The basis of this therapy is that patterns of coping behaviour (schema) learned in one setting are then misapplied in changed circumstances. This gives rise to social and mental dysfunctions and depression. The Third Way may have been useful to launch the Blairite project in Britain. Perhaps its use-by date has now passed. Certainly the political ideologue who has fixed the truth and continues to promulgate it irrespective of changed circumstances risks a kind of madness.
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Ego exercise
By Glenn Condell
I was irritated by Dr Aaron Oakley’s response to Tim Dunlop in For those who give two hoots (May 10). My reply addresses his points one by one.
Oakley: Why is it that people with little understanding of economics like Tim Dunlop feel free to give economic advice? Perhaps he should also be telling brain surgeons how to do their jobs.
Well brain surgeons get things right most of the time, don’t they? Do we need to recite the economics `hall of shame’ chapter and verse? Brain surgeons generally agree about the aims and methodology of their profession – there is `best practice’. Six economists in a room could well have six different opinions on an issue and they could all be wrong. It is about as exact a science as palmistry and unlike brain surgery, is inherently political. I wonder if Mr (oops, sorry, Dr) Oakley ever avers on opera or sport or German history. If so, how dare he without a gown and a scroll of paper asserting his right to do so?
In any case, Mr Dunlop isn’t so much `giving advice’ from the sort of mountaintop eyrie Dr Oakley obviously inhabits; he’s expressing his anger and disillusionment and groping for answers to crucial questions about global problems. Answers that economists like Mr Oakley have long been unable to provide. Perhaps they’re not politically interested, perhaps they lack the wit and compassion to tackle them. Perhaps they’re just not good enough, despite all the letters after their names.
One intelligent but unqualified man makes an attempt to impose some sense on an amorphous and complex issue and gets predictably slapped-down by another man; qualified but contemptuous of the other’s effort. One is making a contribution; the other is exercising his ego. One mind is open, the other closed.
Oakley: He asserts that “far from being the beneficiaries of ‘free trade’, the economies of East Asia owe any success they’ve had to an increase in international trade made possible by and coupled with strong government control”. This myth was debunked by my editor, Gerry Jackson , some time ago… Perhaps Mr Dunlop could tell us where Mr Jackson has erred. I won’t be holding my breath. My experience is that the Tim Dunlops of our world fall silent when challenged by the genuinely economic literate.
So there, Tim. Don’t bother next time. Silence from the start is apparently the form. Only the Genuinely Economically Literate of this world may speak to issues that affect us all.
Not being an economist, I tend to read around an issue and form a view (as it seems to me Mr Dunlop does). Recently on my travels I read a review by Joseph Stiglitz. His bio runs like this: Recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Professor of Economics and Finance at Columbia. Author of Globalization and Its Discontents, to be published in June. Former chief economist and senior vice-president of the World Bank and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Qualified enough? He recently reviewed a book by a certain George Soros who also knows a thing or two about economics (see nybooks).
Both of these men support the thrust of Mr Dunlop’s argument and note the stability that government controls have brought to Malaysia, for example . Perhaps Dr Oakley would care to take issue with them, providing they’re qualified enough. But you don’t need to be Stiglitz to understand that global financial architecture is cynically skewed against developing countries; everyone except neo-liberal economists appears able to see this clearly. Even John Anderson lost his nut at the US last week for flippantly ignoring the very strictures it insists on for poorer nations…again. Dr Oakley may have missed Mr Dunlop’s inverted commas around `free trade’ – it’s risk-free for IMF protected US investors and subsidy protected industries, but costly indeed for the citizens in developing countries.
Oakley: Clearly, Dunlop has simply chosen economic thought that reinforces his prejudices, and cobbled it all together in his long-winded article.
As Stiglitz demonstrates, there is significant `economic thought’ to support Mr Dunlop’s views. Just as there is to contest them. Mr Dunlop chose one school, Dr Oakley another. Pot, kettle?
We’re not talking about some abstract calculus known only to initiates – Mr Dunlop was addressing political issues, not purely economic ones. If you were to exclude people from discussing subjects in which economics played a part no one would ever be able to talk about anything. You’ve obviously got your laurels, Dr Oakley – stop resting on them. If Mr Dunlop is wrong in the details of his critique – spell it out, don’t just redirect him to someone even more qualified than you. I’m sure Mr Dunlop,and many other diarists, would relish the chance to respond.