As you grow more mature, in other words older, you know of a significant number of people who were once on the Left who have undergone a long, and sometimes not so long, journey to the extreme centre. As a new generation of activists, trade unionists and leftists are coming on the scene, I though I would provide them with certain telltale signs of an impending shift amongst their present companions or comrades.
1. “you know most violence is suffered by the poorer sections of society, so it is important that we on the Left take crime seriously. Crime can not be just an issue of the Right.”
In itself there is nothing wrong with this statement, or the others to follow. It is the case that crime affects working-class communities very hard. But the trajectory that sometimes follows is from “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” (Blair) to “the Left is on the side of the criminals” (Greece’s present minister of justice). However, there is little evidence that progressive governments are “soft” on crime and even less that leftists have not written widely on the issue and proposed a myriad of proposals – the bibliography is vast. If anything, progressive governments have been too conservative in how they approach the issue.
2. “it is important to keep in mind that in the modern era life patterns have changed and many people welcome more flexible working arrangements. We must move with the times.”
Again, there are some people who can choose to profit from part time, nomadic, or at-a-distance work. This approach was critical for Third Way theorists and is still in vogue today, despite all the evidence of the resulting rise in inequalities. But the critical word here is choose. The drive for precarious employment has not been driven by demand but by the supply of precarious jobs that have increased the exploitation of workers, and not just young workers.
3. “the left is too much concerned with the redistribution of wealth and not its production.”
Again, a grain of truth in this statement but one which is prone to turn into a reappraisal of the supposed dynamism of the market and the importance of entrepreneurship, even if it is “healthy” entrepreneurship. Moreover, a disdain for production can hardly be seen as a characteristic of the alt-global and the return of the commons movement, the reappraisal of what a developmental state would look like, not to mention the whole discussion about changing both consumption and production models if the climate is to be saved. It is in any case an odd argument to be making when about 1.6% of the world population have grabbed almost 50% of global wealth.
4. “The Left is obsessed with public enterprises, while the positive outcome it expects can be achieved more effectively through appropriate regulation of the private sector.”
Here I struggle to find even a grain of truth. If the neoliberal period has shown anything, it is that the companies supposedly subject to regulation are the ones that ultimately dominate the operation of regulatory authorities. The railways in Britain, water services in France, and almost all public utilities in Greece demonstrate exactly this. And something more: the issue of ownership is not only a matter of efficiency—whether private enterprises are more efficient than public ones. It is also a matter of power: privatizations have increased the power of the private sector and its ability to impose itself on the public interest.
5. “the state is an ossified bureaucracy, with public servants having little incentive to serve the public given their security in work.”
The trouble with this statement is what seems “naturally” to follow: why not establish quasi-markets, in say education or health, to provide the “correct” (correct for whom one might ask), to align incentives with public goals? The idea that enhanced democracy, cooperative frameworks, citizen’s juries, and other ideas that are out there, is never considered. A state run on entrepreneurial criteria is a state to serve entrepreneurial interests. The last forty years of experience attest to this simple fact.
6. “participatory socialism, state planning or participatory budgets are good ideas in theory but of little practical use in that they are too time consuming for the ordinary citizen who has little time to be going constantly to deliberative institutions”.
The costs of democracy, together with monetarist macroeconomic policies, was one of the main planks in the rise of neoliberalism (public choice theory). But hectic lifestyles, the need for more than one job, the drive to compete, the necessity of status-conscious consumption are not the givens of human nature but part of the system that both public choice and monetarist theories encouraged. For those of us increasingly influenced by ecological thinking and the need to terminate the drive to endless growth, the move to more relaxed lifestyles and more free time are the actual goals of alternative policies – cultural activities and involvement in the issues that concern ordinary people. The lack of time for deliberation is goal of modern capitalism not a reason for preserving it.
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Those who adopt one or more of the above arguments may genuinely believe them, or they may coincide better with their evolving material conditions, or they may have lost faith in the potential of politics to change the world. Whatever is the case I hope this manual will help those who persevere to spot shifts in-the-making!