The most
recent contribution to The Baffler, ‘Eat Your Chart Out’ (Jan 2, 2019) by Jon
Greenaway, highlights a phenomenon I was not in any way aware of,
namely the prolific use of dubious charts and graphs by online
right-wing commentators. These are used without much statistical
nuance to demonstrate that the positions of Trumpian demagogues have
scientific validity. One embarrassingly awful example outlines that
reading fiction more than non-fiction leads to people to vote
Democrat, while reading non-fiction over fiction leads to voting
Republican. The piece is entertaining for the most part, but towards
the end Greenaway highlights another group that is overly fond of the
use of charts: centrist liberals.
The wonkish liberal crowd loves information, and devoutly
fetishizes facts and smart graphs that can reduce the complexities of
political reality into banal platitudinous data points. In this
narrow compass of wonkery, matters like survival under the pressures
of late capitalism can become cleverly nullified through the correct
combination of tax credits and means testing.
The first sentence
here is much less objectionable than the second. There is no doubt
that ‘wonks’ in general are heavily into quantitative analysis,
data sets, statistical projections and the like. It is difficult to
imagine formulating and defending policy positions without such
analysis. The second sentence though is as crystal-clear an
encapsulation of the problem left-of-centre intellectuals have
perennially had against those closer to the centre.
I’d like to draw out the implications of this. In doing so I'm also drawing quite a long bow from what is only a couple of sentences. I apologise in advance for this.
The biggest hint of where Greenaway is coming from is in the phrase ‘late capitalism’. This is the title of a book published by the Marxist economist Ernest Mendel way back God’s knows when. Whenever you see it casually used in an essay (as it is in this piece by Laurie Penny in the same publication), it suggests that its user has the vague conviction that capitalism in its current form will eventually collapse. It is not explicitly developed these days because everyone, including someone like me who has rarely read Marx directly, knows implicitly what Marx propounded on the fate of capitalism.
The remark about the centrist liberal wonk working through a ‘narrow compass’ opens a few more doors given what we know of the 'late capitalist' tag. The centrist liberal, unlike say the socialist or Marxist, offers work-arounds to problems caused by the fundamentally exploitative nature of capital. The centrist liberal's proposed solutions - ‘the correct combination of tax credits and means testing’ - are not really solutions so much as slightly ameliorative stabilisers. The injustice of the overall system continues even as minor holes are plugged here and there. Later in the same concluding paragraph, Greenaway writes of the ‘idealistic metaphysical dreams of centrist liberals who imagine a perfectly rational consumer as the universal subject’. The division between Greenaway’s brand of leftist radicalism and centrist dogma could not be made clearer.
Recently I’ve thought a bit about this division, which if you want to be bold and non-specific can be labelled the revolution vs reform debate. Most movements and parties in history that have been broadly left-wing have always seen some factions arguing for more direct, immediate means of overturning the status quo and others arguing for a more patient, piecemeal approach. Think of Eduard Bernstein’s ‘evolutionary socialism’ in early 20th century Germany or the debate between Alexander Herzen and Boris Chicherin in 1850s Russia (actually a flat in Putney but you know what I mean). Greenaway would probably dismiss ‘reformist’ as an accurate label for the kind of centrist liberal he has in mind. I gather he’s thinking more of Clintonian and Blairite wonks who advocated for the heavier marketisation of society, continuing rather than reversing the attack on the welfare state kicked off by Reagan and Thatcher. It’s true that the Clinton and Blair years did much to degrade liberalism. Not much one can done about recent history, nor is this the place to settle what said recent history ultimately means. But at the very least there is something ironic about radicals being outraged by the erosion of the welfare state (to the extent that such erosion is actual as opposed to being mainly rhetorical) which is that the gains made by the welfare states of the post-WW II democracies were themselves the product of reform, not revolution. 'If the welfare state is anything,' wrote Stein Ringen in his elegant book The Possibility of Politics (1987), 'it is piecemeal reform'.
What I’ve concluded is that there is one pretty strong advantage that liberalism in general has over socialism, Marxism and other radical ideologies of the left: it exists. Alternatives to it are simply that, alternatives. They may have brilliant minds behind them, they may be attractive and inspiring, but rarely have they successfully sprung from the page into the real world. Liberalism has its theorists and books, but also the luxury of being an actual presence in laws and institutions rather than simply an abstraction floating around in the heads of intellectuals. (Although it never hurts to continue trying to make liberal practice more like liberal theory).
And as for the two policies Greenaway highlights as belonging to the centrist liberal’s toolkit – tax credits and means testing – it would be wise, rather than defending these, to point out that at least they’re policies. Is it being too unkind to belabour the apparent absence of the word ‘policy’ from the vocabulary of much left-wing rhetoric these days? Such an absence is explained thus: The word ‘policy’ implies that one has moved away from simply being in opposition to something and is on their way to actually proposing something. Now the kind of democratic socialist left that I feel is where Greenaway (and The Baffler in general) sits, has been in opposition for a long time in virtually all the major developed democracies. They have not found themselves in the last half-century in a position where their ideas might have some tangible influence. Hence the rhetoric of leftists who are still paying tribute to Grandpa Karl (Stanislav Andreski’s line) is couched exclusively in terms of oppositional analysis. Plus, there is something oxymoronic about radicals coming up with policies. It strikes me that the further away you are from the centre (in both directions), the less grip you have on the necessity to devise them.
Greenaway concludes his article with the injunction to ‘understand the world around us, its contingency, flaws, and fragilities—together with the ways that political analysis, connected to the material reality of the world we share can herald a new way of living, for all people’. I agree wholeheartedly. And I’m not only entirely in sympathy with his argument about the use of simplistic charts, but I couldn’t put it better if I tried. But the mistake in my opinion in all declarations of advocating for ‘a new way of living’ is the assumption that such a destination can be reached without those pesky liberal wonks. After all, they know all sorts of stuff about inflation, housing, trade, transport, poverty that are potentially more useful in ushering in a fairer, more equitable world than knowing how to interpret the interstitial praxis of ambulatory doubles masquerading behind a doldrum of hyperrealistically retentive oompa-loompa whoopeeeee I’m a pirate! At the risk of killing the joke I have to point out that that's not a real thing.
The renowned social scientist John Braithwaite suggested in his book Markets in Vice Markets in Virtue (2005) a potential alliance between street-savvy activists and the technocrats (accountants, lawyers, patent examiners) who know all the arcane and obscure details about how business is conducted. Such an alliance he considered most effective in tackling the thornier issues of regulation and oversight; in the case of his book it was the regulation of tax shelters. This kind of thinking – about sharpening strategic along with analytical tools – is not very apparent in publications such as The Baffler, which to be fair does not present itself as a registry of world-saving ideas. It is zany and satirical. But I detect from reading many contributions that sincere residues of outdated socialist tropes are at work. Such tropes can inform polemics, but they can't inform politics.
I’d like to draw out the implications of this. In doing so I'm also drawing quite a long bow from what is only a couple of sentences. I apologise in advance for this.
The biggest hint of where Greenaway is coming from is in the phrase ‘late capitalism’. This is the title of a book published by the Marxist economist Ernest Mendel way back God’s knows when. Whenever you see it casually used in an essay (as it is in this piece by Laurie Penny in the same publication), it suggests that its user has the vague conviction that capitalism in its current form will eventually collapse. It is not explicitly developed these days because everyone, including someone like me who has rarely read Marx directly, knows implicitly what Marx propounded on the fate of capitalism.
The remark about the centrist liberal wonk working through a ‘narrow compass’ opens a few more doors given what we know of the 'late capitalist' tag. The centrist liberal, unlike say the socialist or Marxist, offers work-arounds to problems caused by the fundamentally exploitative nature of capital. The centrist liberal's proposed solutions - ‘the correct combination of tax credits and means testing’ - are not really solutions so much as slightly ameliorative stabilisers. The injustice of the overall system continues even as minor holes are plugged here and there. Later in the same concluding paragraph, Greenaway writes of the ‘idealistic metaphysical dreams of centrist liberals who imagine a perfectly rational consumer as the universal subject’. The division between Greenaway’s brand of leftist radicalism and centrist dogma could not be made clearer.
Recently I’ve thought a bit about this division, which if you want to be bold and non-specific can be labelled the revolution vs reform debate. Most movements and parties in history that have been broadly left-wing have always seen some factions arguing for more direct, immediate means of overturning the status quo and others arguing for a more patient, piecemeal approach. Think of Eduard Bernstein’s ‘evolutionary socialism’ in early 20th century Germany or the debate between Alexander Herzen and Boris Chicherin in 1850s Russia (actually a flat in Putney but you know what I mean). Greenaway would probably dismiss ‘reformist’ as an accurate label for the kind of centrist liberal he has in mind. I gather he’s thinking more of Clintonian and Blairite wonks who advocated for the heavier marketisation of society, continuing rather than reversing the attack on the welfare state kicked off by Reagan and Thatcher. It’s true that the Clinton and Blair years did much to degrade liberalism. Not much one can done about recent history, nor is this the place to settle what said recent history ultimately means. But at the very least there is something ironic about radicals being outraged by the erosion of the welfare state (to the extent that such erosion is actual as opposed to being mainly rhetorical) which is that the gains made by the welfare states of the post-WW II democracies were themselves the product of reform, not revolution. 'If the welfare state is anything,' wrote Stein Ringen in his elegant book The Possibility of Politics (1987), 'it is piecemeal reform'.
What I’ve concluded is that there is one pretty strong advantage that liberalism in general has over socialism, Marxism and other radical ideologies of the left: it exists. Alternatives to it are simply that, alternatives. They may have brilliant minds behind them, they may be attractive and inspiring, but rarely have they successfully sprung from the page into the real world. Liberalism has its theorists and books, but also the luxury of being an actual presence in laws and institutions rather than simply an abstraction floating around in the heads of intellectuals. (Although it never hurts to continue trying to make liberal practice more like liberal theory).
And as for the two policies Greenaway highlights as belonging to the centrist liberal’s toolkit – tax credits and means testing – it would be wise, rather than defending these, to point out that at least they’re policies. Is it being too unkind to belabour the apparent absence of the word ‘policy’ from the vocabulary of much left-wing rhetoric these days? Such an absence is explained thus: The word ‘policy’ implies that one has moved away from simply being in opposition to something and is on their way to actually proposing something. Now the kind of democratic socialist left that I feel is where Greenaway (and The Baffler in general) sits, has been in opposition for a long time in virtually all the major developed democracies. They have not found themselves in the last half-century in a position where their ideas might have some tangible influence. Hence the rhetoric of leftists who are still paying tribute to Grandpa Karl (Stanislav Andreski’s line) is couched exclusively in terms of oppositional analysis. Plus, there is something oxymoronic about radicals coming up with policies. It strikes me that the further away you are from the centre (in both directions), the less grip you have on the necessity to devise them.
Greenaway concludes his article with the injunction to ‘understand the world around us, its contingency, flaws, and fragilities—together with the ways that political analysis, connected to the material reality of the world we share can herald a new way of living, for all people’. I agree wholeheartedly. And I’m not only entirely in sympathy with his argument about the use of simplistic charts, but I couldn’t put it better if I tried. But the mistake in my opinion in all declarations of advocating for ‘a new way of living’ is the assumption that such a destination can be reached without those pesky liberal wonks. After all, they know all sorts of stuff about inflation, housing, trade, transport, poverty that are potentially more useful in ushering in a fairer, more equitable world than knowing how to interpret the interstitial praxis of ambulatory doubles masquerading behind a doldrum of hyperrealistically retentive oompa-loompa whoopeeeee I’m a pirate! At the risk of killing the joke I have to point out that that's not a real thing.
The renowned social scientist John Braithwaite suggested in his book Markets in Vice Markets in Virtue (2005) a potential alliance between street-savvy activists and the technocrats (accountants, lawyers, patent examiners) who know all the arcane and obscure details about how business is conducted. Such an alliance he considered most effective in tackling the thornier issues of regulation and oversight; in the case of his book it was the regulation of tax shelters. This kind of thinking – about sharpening strategic along with analytical tools – is not very apparent in publications such as The Baffler, which to be fair does not present itself as a registry of world-saving ideas. It is zany and satirical. But I detect from reading many contributions that sincere residues of outdated socialist tropes are at work. Such tropes can inform polemics, but they can't inform politics.
Comments