An OurKingdom conversation. [History: this post > David Marquand > Thomas Ash > George Gabriel > Thomas Ash > George Gabriel > Thomas Ash > George Gabriel]
As Britain plunges from economic crisis to political crisis, it is only natural that some should hope its whole system faces a crisis from which it will emerge altered in some respect they have long hoped for. For many OurKingdom contributors, the hope is for constitutional reform. Writing in the Observer last week Henry Porter hoped for a more profound awakening. Perhaps the most ambitious hope was expressed by David Marquand in an earlier Guardian article: that our moral culture itself should undergo "reform".
Marquand's target is the vision, "virtually unchallenged", he says, in the recent "neoliberal" era, that society ought to feature free, competitive markets in which individuals calculate and pursue their self-interest. (Supporters of this vision would replace 'their self-interest' with 'what they value', allowing for altruistic ends. The interests of individuals and their families have been the most common motivators however, and the expectation that this will be so has certainly shaped our moral culture.)
Marquand hopes for the replacement of this vision. This seem unrealistic to me. He makes the familiar objection that the emphasis placed on free markets has resulted in too little concern about disparity of outcome, and then mentions public anger at City bonus hunters' greed. But if this were itself enough to provoke public anger, it would have done so long ago; the anger flows instead from bonuses being propped up by taxpayer money. This was itself a violation of the idea of a competitive market, and it is quite possible that if bailouts fails to rescue the economy this will in fact lead to increased support for that idea, at least in the sphere of finance.
Marquand also places some of the blame for the current economic crisis on the moral culture he is challenging, suggesting that it led to households taking on more debt than they could afford. It is not clear how it is supposed to have done so, since this was manifestly not in these households' self-interest. As if to concede this Marquand shifts the blame to the fact that "realism that conflicted with immediate gratification had come to seem quaint and old-fashioned". This is an entirely different phenomenon, and it seems far more ripe for a change.
Comments
Tom - let me try a 3 line sketch of a not completely pro-market libertarianism:
1. people should be left to get on with their lives (with usual Millian -and always problematic- provisos about not interfering with others' in the wrong ways);
2. the lives that we want to get on with are partly determined by what all-of-us-together do and choose to do: individual life-plans are not given ex nihilo, but themselves determined by social factors, some of them subject to collective choice, some not;
3. the democratic project is to make more of those determinants subject to collective choice; democratic faith is that the right process for making collective choice will lead to many (most?) choices and opportunities for good lives.
I don't think the anger is only about the use of taxpayers' money in the bail-outs. I think it is the feeling amongst many that the culture of greed and consumerism is the (possibly unintended) result of social actions of the last 30 years; that that culture has society-wide externalities (the economic crisis being a big one); and that the political system is not innocent in having got us here.
I think my main point of difference with your impatience with the castigators of neo-liberalism is that I accept the premise that what is seen as desirable is socially determined and therefore within the ambit of what should be political. Aren't you taking desires, values and interests as outside the realm of politics?
tony
"it led to households taking on more debt than they could afford. It is not clear how it is supposed to have done so, since this was manifestly not in these households' self-interest."
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems pretty clear to me: after all, the South Sea Bubble wasn't in anyone's interest either. Maybe the households miscalculated their self-interest. Maybe the lenders miscalculated theirs. A free market system - despite what you read from time to time - is no panacea against human error. Where's the mystery?
Yes, they miscalculated their self-interest, and that's unsurprising. What I was saying wasn't clear was how a moral culture which held it acceptable for people to pursue their self-interest in the market was responsible for this.
Ah, I get it.
If the over-investment was motivated by greed, for example, then a moral culture of unfettered self-interest might clearly be implicated for the subsequent crash.
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