The Independent
After months of confusion, contradictory statements and embarrassing media interviews, Labour has finally brought some clarity to its opaque policy on Brexit.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Shadow Brexit Secretary, has announced that the Opposition wants the UK to remain in the single market and customs union during a transitional phase after it leaves the EU in March 2019. During that period, Labour would accept the rules of both arrangements, including free movement – a departure from the party’s manifesto at the June election, which said “freedom of movement will end when we leave the EU”.
Significantly, Starmer does not rule out permanent membership of the single market and customs union after the transitional phase, if the EU agreed reforms on issues such as migration.
Labour’s move is overdue but welcome. Remaining in the EU’s main institutions for the transition is common sense. Such an “off the shelf” arrangement would provide the certainty and stability that business desperately needs, probably reducing the loss of investment and jobs. Despite that, Theresa May seeks a more complicated “bespoke” transitional deal, and insists the UK must leave the single market and customs union in 2019. The time and energy wasted on securing such an agreement would be much better spent on forging a long-term UK-EU partnership.
Although the Chancellor Philip Hammond would probably support an “off the shelf” transitional deal, Ms May seems worried that hardline Brexiteers would then accuse her of not implementing last year’s referendum decision. The Prime Minister should start to do what is right for her country rather than her party.
If she does not, it will fall to Parliament to ensure a sensible transition in line with Labour’s new approach. House of Commons arithmetic means that several of the 20 pro-European Conservatives would need to vote with opposition parties to secure single market and customs union membership for the transition. When MPs return to Westminster next month, these Tories will come under enormous pressure not to hand Jeremy Corbyn a landmark victory. But they should act in the national interest, even if Ms May does not.
Mr Corbyn, a long-standing Eurosceptic, should be applauded for his pragmatism. Although many working-class people in the North and Midlands voted Leave last year, voters did not endorse Ms May's hard Brexit vision in June. Labour is now unmistakably the party of soft Brexit.
Mr Corbyn has also acknowledged the support for close EU links among his MPs, party members and the trade unions – not to mention the adoring crowds at Glastonbury. Probably he senses that Labour’s new stance will enable it to make trouble for Ms May in Parliament. What he wants above all is another election; after his performance in June, who can blame him?
The Opposition now offers more clarity on the biggest issue facing the country than the Government. In a series of position papers in the past two weeks, ministers have set out to replicate much of what the UK currently enjoys after Brexit – on issues including customs, the Northern Ireland border, civil judicial cooperation and data protection. Which, of course, begs the question: why not stay in the single market and customs union, at least during the transitional phase?
Although Boris Johnson has been virtually silent on Brexit over the summer, the Government’s papers show that it has adopted his totally unrealistic “have-cake-and-eat-it” approach. This has naturally gone down badly with the 27 EU members. They have not fallen for a naked attempt to switch the focus on to a trade deal before “first round” matters are settled on citizens’ rights, Northern Ireland and an inevitable divorce payment on which the UK refuses to engage.
When negotiations resume in Brussels on Monday, David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, will urge his counterpart Michel Barnier to show more flexibility. Yet it is time for the Government to do just that. It would also do well to display the same clarity and pragmatism as Labour.
Showing posts with label certainty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label certainty. Show all posts
Monday, 28 August 2017
Tuesday, 3 March 2015
We’re desperate to believe in something. But bringing God into economics is risky
Eliza Filby in The Guardian
With just over two months to go until polling day, it is becoming clear that the most interesting ideas are emanating from those not seeking election. The Anglican bishops have issued a pastoral letter which, despite being mauled by leading Conservatives, legitimately aims to move the debate beyond the old market-v-state model towards a new vision, one that incorporates themes of civil society, interdependency, human dignity and the common good.
Meanwhile, leading Conservative thinkers Tim Montgomerie and Stefan Shakespeare have launched their “good right” initiative, which hopes to succeed where David Cameron has so obviously failed: to detoxify the Conservative brand. Making the Tories electable again is certainly the aim, but at its core is an even more ambitious endeavour: to re-establish the moral credibility of the free market. To this chorus of extra-parliamentary voices we might also add “blue Labour” Maurice Glasman and “red Tory” Phillip Blond and, for that matter, Russell Brand. Even if their ideas are unlikely to feature in forthcoming party manifestos, a movement is clearly afoot. This disparate group may differ on the remedy but share a diagnosis: the neoliberal revolution is politically and morally defunct. One way or another, they are all dancing on Thatcher’s grave.
But to those seeking a new moral vision for Britain, Thatcherism itself offers a cautionary tale. It was, much like now, a response to widespread disillusionment and a redundant political consensus. Like the “good right”, Conservatives in the 70s also sought to disconnect the association of collectivism with virtue and reinstate the moral integrity of the “invisible hand”. Margaret Thatcher would eventually cast herself as the shepherd leading the British people out of the dark days of decline towards the path of economic and social enlightenment. Ultimately, however, it was a story of false idols and unintended consequences – one where the mix of God, economics and single-minded vision proved to be toxic. The paradox of Thatcherism is that, like all political ideologies, there was a complete discrepancy between its aims and outcomes.
“Economics is the method; the object is to change the soul,” Margaret Thatcher declared in 1981, revealing the way in which Thatcherism for her was always about transforming values rather than simply GDP. A strong religious basis to her outlook stemmed from her father – the greengrocer, councillor and Wesleyan lay preacher, Alf Roberts.
If we were sourcing the origins of Thatcherism, we wouldn’t find it in the pages of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom or Milton Friedman’s monetarist theory but in Roberts’ sermon notes, now housed in Thatcher’s personal archive at Churchill College, Cambridge. Contained in them is the theological basis of Thatcherism: an individualistic interpretation of the Bible, a nod to the spiritual dangers of avarice, the Protestant work ethic, praise of the godly virtues of thrift and self-reliance and, finally, a divine justification for individual liberty and the free market. In short, Thatcherism always owed more to Methodism than to monetarism.
Thatcher herself had been a preacher before she entered politics, and even though she transferred this missionary energy from pulpit to podium, her religious values remained crucial. On becoming Conservative leader, she saw it as her chief mission to discredit the assumed moral superiority of socialism and reconnect the broken link between Protestant and capitalist values in Britain. Preaching from the pulpit on several occasions – most famously to the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly in 1988 – Thatcher unashamedly asserted the Biblical case for the sovereignty of individual liberty and the ‘invisible hand’. Thatcher’s pledge, of course, was that greater wealth would not encourage selfishness but neighbourliness. With more money in our pocket and less dependency on the state, we would be free to exercise our moral virtue and perform our duty as Good Samaritans.
We would not walk by on the other side, nor would we need state-imposed traffic lights to guide us there.
In the end, though, even she was prepared to admit she had failed in her crusade. When asked by Frank Field what her greatest regret in office was, she replied: “I cut taxes and I thought we would get a giving society, and we haven’t.” She was right. A survey conducted by the Charities Aid Foundation in 1989 revealed that those who gave the most to causes were not from the prosperous south but were disproportionately located in those areas that benefited least from the Thatcher boom.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Thatcher’s naivety was perhaps her greatest flaw.Photograph: ITV/Rex/ITV/Rex
Thatcher’s naivety was perhaps her greatest flaw: her understanding of capitalism for example was more a provincial than global one; Alf Roberts behind the counter of his grocery shop rather than the yuppie on the trading floor was the image of market transaction in her mind. It is little wonder then that she could not understand the world she had created, where the nation’s homes and household budgets were entwined with a global financial services sector that made up an ever-growing percentage of Britain’s GDP, largely internationally owned and in the hands of speculators concerned with short-term gain and distant from the deals and lives they were gambling on. In private Thatcher used to rage against bankers and their bonuses. Why did they not follow the example of those in the army she would cry, which in her view was the model demonstration of responsibility to one’s fellow man.
As someone reared in a home where profligacy was a vice and thrift a virtue, nor could Thatcher fathom why so many Britons struggled with debt. Yet paradoxically it was her government that did most to encourage it. What might be termed the “democratisation of debt”, be it in the form of credit and store cards, personal loans and of course, mortgages, fundamentally reordered the nation’s psyche and our attitudes towards money and the state. In short, we transferred our dependency from the government to the money-lenders. The notion of deferred gratification or thrift, that is saving for something before consuming it, became an alien concept for Britain’s “grab now, pay later” society. Total consumer credit more than doubled, while the number of credit cards nearly tripled in the 1980s and would spiral to unimaginable levels over the next two decades. This culture of credit too trickled down the social scale for as the government squeezed the benefits system so those low-income households turned to credit companies who asked few questions. In 1980 22% of households were using credit; by 1989 that had trebled to 69%, with an estimated 50% of those loans going on essentials. As the New Economics Foundation report of 2002 into debt recognised this led to the absurd situation whereby “what the taxpayer was providing in terms of benefits, the lender was often taking away – with interest”. It is doubtful that even Thatcher considered Britain’s record personal debt as part of her plan of “setting the people free”.
Thatcherism laid the foundations for a culture in which individualism and self-reliance could thrive, but ultimately it created a culture in which only selfishness and excess were rewarded. Thatcher liked to quote John Wesley’s mantra, “Earn all you can, save all you can and give all you can,” and yet it was only ever the first instruction that was sufficiently encouraged. While Cameron and Osborne have spoken at length about paying off the ‘nation’s credit card’, they have consciously avoided entreating individuals to pay off their own. Tellingly, it is now a vote-winner to talk of governmental thrift but political suicide to talk of personal thrift. That is the true legacy of Thatcherite economics.
When Thatcher said that there was ‘no such thing as society', it was a rallying cry for individual moral responsibility
When Thatcher uttered those now immortal words that there was “no such thing as society”, it was not a negative or flippant statement but a naive rallying cry for individual moral responsibility. Perhaps the flaw in her thinking was not that she did not believe in society but that she had too much faith in man.
Thatcher seemed to have forgotten the key doctrine in both Conservative philosophy and the Bible: the Fall. Thatcherism was a challenge to individual moral virtue, yet in Thatcher’s Eden, when given the choice, we – of course – ate the fruit. Where critics tend to go wrong in their assessment of Thatcher is that they do not consider that there was any moral, only economic, thinking behind it; where Thatcher’s admirers go wrong is that they do not admit that was a fundamental discrepancy between her aims and outcomes.
It is, of course, wrong to heap all the blame on Thatcher. This culture was encouraged and this behaviour continued unabated under New Labour. Much like a gangster’s wife who enjoys the lifestyle but does not question how her husband gets his money, Blair and Brown were content to pocket a significant share of the profits to fund their schools and hospitals.
By 2008 the world seemed on the precipice of something fundamental, but one of the remarkable features of the last seven years is how little has changed. Perhaps Thatcher’s great mistake was that, as Alfred Sherman said, “she saw life in primary colours”.
So there is credibility and value in dreaming up an alternative where Thatcher insisted that there was none. Given the contemporary disillusionment with capitalism, voters are still in desperate need of something to believe in. What the neoliberal experiment of the last 30 years teaches us is not that religion and politics do not mix, but that the politics of certainty is where danger lies.
Meanwhile, leading Conservative thinkers Tim Montgomerie and Stefan Shakespeare have launched their “good right” initiative, which hopes to succeed where David Cameron has so obviously failed: to detoxify the Conservative brand. Making the Tories electable again is certainly the aim, but at its core is an even more ambitious endeavour: to re-establish the moral credibility of the free market. To this chorus of extra-parliamentary voices we might also add “blue Labour” Maurice Glasman and “red Tory” Phillip Blond and, for that matter, Russell Brand. Even if their ideas are unlikely to feature in forthcoming party manifestos, a movement is clearly afoot. This disparate group may differ on the remedy but share a diagnosis: the neoliberal revolution is politically and morally defunct. One way or another, they are all dancing on Thatcher’s grave.
But to those seeking a new moral vision for Britain, Thatcherism itself offers a cautionary tale. It was, much like now, a response to widespread disillusionment and a redundant political consensus. Like the “good right”, Conservatives in the 70s also sought to disconnect the association of collectivism with virtue and reinstate the moral integrity of the “invisible hand”. Margaret Thatcher would eventually cast herself as the shepherd leading the British people out of the dark days of decline towards the path of economic and social enlightenment. Ultimately, however, it was a story of false idols and unintended consequences – one where the mix of God, economics and single-minded vision proved to be toxic. The paradox of Thatcherism is that, like all political ideologies, there was a complete discrepancy between its aims and outcomes.
“Economics is the method; the object is to change the soul,” Margaret Thatcher declared in 1981, revealing the way in which Thatcherism for her was always about transforming values rather than simply GDP. A strong religious basis to her outlook stemmed from her father – the greengrocer, councillor and Wesleyan lay preacher, Alf Roberts.
If we were sourcing the origins of Thatcherism, we wouldn’t find it in the pages of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom or Milton Friedman’s monetarist theory but in Roberts’ sermon notes, now housed in Thatcher’s personal archive at Churchill College, Cambridge. Contained in them is the theological basis of Thatcherism: an individualistic interpretation of the Bible, a nod to the spiritual dangers of avarice, the Protestant work ethic, praise of the godly virtues of thrift and self-reliance and, finally, a divine justification for individual liberty and the free market. In short, Thatcherism always owed more to Methodism than to monetarism.
Thatcher herself had been a preacher before she entered politics, and even though she transferred this missionary energy from pulpit to podium, her religious values remained crucial. On becoming Conservative leader, she saw it as her chief mission to discredit the assumed moral superiority of socialism and reconnect the broken link between Protestant and capitalist values in Britain. Preaching from the pulpit on several occasions – most famously to the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly in 1988 – Thatcher unashamedly asserted the Biblical case for the sovereignty of individual liberty and the ‘invisible hand’. Thatcher’s pledge, of course, was that greater wealth would not encourage selfishness but neighbourliness. With more money in our pocket and less dependency on the state, we would be free to exercise our moral virtue and perform our duty as Good Samaritans.
We would not walk by on the other side, nor would we need state-imposed traffic lights to guide us there.
In the end, though, even she was prepared to admit she had failed in her crusade. When asked by Frank Field what her greatest regret in office was, she replied: “I cut taxes and I thought we would get a giving society, and we haven’t.” She was right. A survey conducted by the Charities Aid Foundation in 1989 revealed that those who gave the most to causes were not from the prosperous south but were disproportionately located in those areas that benefited least from the Thatcher boom.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Thatcher’s naivety was perhaps her greatest flaw.Photograph: ITV/Rex/ITV/Rex
Thatcher’s naivety was perhaps her greatest flaw: her understanding of capitalism for example was more a provincial than global one; Alf Roberts behind the counter of his grocery shop rather than the yuppie on the trading floor was the image of market transaction in her mind. It is little wonder then that she could not understand the world she had created, where the nation’s homes and household budgets were entwined with a global financial services sector that made up an ever-growing percentage of Britain’s GDP, largely internationally owned and in the hands of speculators concerned with short-term gain and distant from the deals and lives they were gambling on. In private Thatcher used to rage against bankers and their bonuses. Why did they not follow the example of those in the army she would cry, which in her view was the model demonstration of responsibility to one’s fellow man.
As someone reared in a home where profligacy was a vice and thrift a virtue, nor could Thatcher fathom why so many Britons struggled with debt. Yet paradoxically it was her government that did most to encourage it. What might be termed the “democratisation of debt”, be it in the form of credit and store cards, personal loans and of course, mortgages, fundamentally reordered the nation’s psyche and our attitudes towards money and the state. In short, we transferred our dependency from the government to the money-lenders. The notion of deferred gratification or thrift, that is saving for something before consuming it, became an alien concept for Britain’s “grab now, pay later” society. Total consumer credit more than doubled, while the number of credit cards nearly tripled in the 1980s and would spiral to unimaginable levels over the next two decades. This culture of credit too trickled down the social scale for as the government squeezed the benefits system so those low-income households turned to credit companies who asked few questions. In 1980 22% of households were using credit; by 1989 that had trebled to 69%, with an estimated 50% of those loans going on essentials. As the New Economics Foundation report of 2002 into debt recognised this led to the absurd situation whereby “what the taxpayer was providing in terms of benefits, the lender was often taking away – with interest”. It is doubtful that even Thatcher considered Britain’s record personal debt as part of her plan of “setting the people free”.
Thatcherism laid the foundations for a culture in which individualism and self-reliance could thrive, but ultimately it created a culture in which only selfishness and excess were rewarded. Thatcher liked to quote John Wesley’s mantra, “Earn all you can, save all you can and give all you can,” and yet it was only ever the first instruction that was sufficiently encouraged. While Cameron and Osborne have spoken at length about paying off the ‘nation’s credit card’, they have consciously avoided entreating individuals to pay off their own. Tellingly, it is now a vote-winner to talk of governmental thrift but political suicide to talk of personal thrift. That is the true legacy of Thatcherite economics.
When Thatcher said that there was ‘no such thing as society', it was a rallying cry for individual moral responsibility
When Thatcher uttered those now immortal words that there was “no such thing as society”, it was not a negative or flippant statement but a naive rallying cry for individual moral responsibility. Perhaps the flaw in her thinking was not that she did not believe in society but that she had too much faith in man.
Thatcher seemed to have forgotten the key doctrine in both Conservative philosophy and the Bible: the Fall. Thatcherism was a challenge to individual moral virtue, yet in Thatcher’s Eden, when given the choice, we – of course – ate the fruit. Where critics tend to go wrong in their assessment of Thatcher is that they do not consider that there was any moral, only economic, thinking behind it; where Thatcher’s admirers go wrong is that they do not admit that was a fundamental discrepancy between her aims and outcomes.
It is, of course, wrong to heap all the blame on Thatcher. This culture was encouraged and this behaviour continued unabated under New Labour. Much like a gangster’s wife who enjoys the lifestyle but does not question how her husband gets his money, Blair and Brown were content to pocket a significant share of the profits to fund their schools and hospitals.
By 2008 the world seemed on the precipice of something fundamental, but one of the remarkable features of the last seven years is how little has changed. Perhaps Thatcher’s great mistake was that, as Alfred Sherman said, “she saw life in primary colours”.
So there is credibility and value in dreaming up an alternative where Thatcher insisted that there was none. Given the contemporary disillusionment with capitalism, voters are still in desperate need of something to believe in. What the neoliberal experiment of the last 30 years teaches us is not that religion and politics do not mix, but that the politics of certainty is where danger lies.
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Libertarianism and the Leap of Faith – The Origins of a Political Cult
By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland
What is less well-known is that today’s most popular political cult – that is, libertarianism – was born in very similar circumstances; it too, arrived into the world out of the obscure 19th century debates over economic ‘value’. But before we explore this in any detail it might be appropriate to speculate a little on what characterises a political cult and why so many of these find their sustenance in economic theories of value.
What is a Political Cult and Why Do they Often Love Economic Value Theory?
A political cult is characterised by a political or economic doctrine that answers all the ‘big questions’ about life, the world and everything else. The doctrine that is handed down is then to be conceived of as a way to live one’s life – a project, handed down from Mount Sinai, that one is under the moral obligation to spread far and wide. This is why we refer to these movements as cults. And it is this that gives them such an awesome status in the glazed eyes of their devotees.
Under such circumstances, politics becomes a sort of religious calling. In these doctrines there is usually an ‘Evil Being’ who is opposing the spread of the ‘Good’ on earth and it is these that are to blame for all the bad things in the world. In Marxism this Evil Being is the capitalist; in libertarianism it is the figure who is at different times referred to as the ‘collectivist’, the ‘liberal’ or the ‘socialist’. Needless to say that, since these figures are usually ones of Extreme Evil they must be ‘liquidated’ or ‘eliminated’ at the first possible opportunity lest they spread their Demonic Gospel to the masses.
Political cults thus provide their devotees with a firm identity in an otherwise changeable and, let us be frank, confusing world. Like all cults they provide an anchor for their devotees with which they can fasten themselves to a rigid doctrine. They also typically lend their devotees a Holier-Than-Thou attitude as they provide them with ‘secrets’ that those outside of the cult cannot grasp. Not only does this allow the devotees to feel ‘special’, in modern political cults it also gives them practical, albeit ‘secret’ advice about what they should do in their day-to-day lives. (Think of the advice to buy gold or foreign stocks coming out of certain libertarian front men, for example).
Finally, the political cult will usually offer their followers the possibility of a Heaven on Earth. If the follower behaves well and spreads their beliefs to others they will eventually arrive at some sort of Utopia. This is their reward for believing in the doctrines, despite these doctrines being ridiculed by others.
So, why do these cults spring out of economic doctrines based on value? Well, this is a very complex question but there is one key aspect that is absolutely fundamental. In order to understand it a little better we must think for a moment about what economic ‘value’ supposedly is. It is, in fact, when we boil it right down, a moral entity. If we can tell what people ‘value’ and why, then we can make prognostications on what is Good for society as a whole.
In times past organised religions handed down fixed value systems to their adherents. Today people have become disillusioned with religious systems – ostensibly because they conflict with these peoples’ supposedly ‘scientific’ worldview. But the impulse among some for the self-assurance provided by a religion is so strong that they seek out ‘scientific’ systems that operate in an identical manner to religious or cult systems.
This is why the economic doctrine of ‘value’ is such a good foundational stone for such a cult. It provides a pseudo-scientific account about how people attribute value to things and in doing so tells the cult member a ‘Truth’ that they can use to make turn the world into a Utopia in which the optimal amount of ‘value’ is realised by the optimal amount of people.
Karl Marx claimed that ‘value’ was embodied labour and hence his followers concluded with him that all that was Good sprang from labour and that society should thus be based on free labour. The libertarians – together with the neoclassicals that they otherwise scorn – believe that all ‘value’ springs from utility maximisation. While the neoclassicals simply tinker with toy-models of ‘value’ to bolster their pseudo-scientific prestige, the libertarians undertake a leap of faith into the unknown and claim that in the theory of marginal utility they have found a ‘Truth’ that must be brought down from Heaven to Earth.
The Birthing of a Cult
Libertarianism was born out of the late 19th century doctrine of marginalism; a doctrine that went on to gain popularity with those opposed to Marxism. We will not dwell too much on the doctrine of marginalism when applied to the analysis of ‘value’ – having done so elsewhere. Here we will merely note that marginalism provides a moral defence for the supposedly ‘free market’ system that we live under today.
Marginalism, when applied to ‘value’ analysis, holds that it is in Man’s nature to follow a certain path in his consumption habits. These habits are determined by his maximising his utility. Most modern marginalists claim that they can use this concept to show that a ‘free market’ system is the fairest social system possible, since it responds automatically to Man’s marginal utility preference it delivers ‘value’ in a perfect and harmonious manner.
Markets deliver this ‘value’ through the mechanism of price. Prices, which reflect peoples’ desires to maximise their marginal utility, ensure that the most equitable distribution of ‘value-in-the-abstract’ is accommodated for by the ‘free market system’. And this is the point at which marginal value analysis becomes a value judgment in a very real sense.
The neoclassicals held, and continue to hold, that their models could capture this complex dynamic. Such an assertion was and is, of course, absolute rubbish. But the Austrians took a different tack. “Yes,” they said, “marginal utility theory is the correct way to go, but we cannot formulate models that adequately capture the inner workings of this great mechanism.”
In their book Modern Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World, the authors provide a good summary of this approach. In the book they discuss what effect the discovery of marginalism’s inherent uselessness had on the Austrians:
This was a clever move. While the neoclassicals tinkered with their silly toy-models, trying to show how prices are determined through a sort of grand marginal calculus, the Austrians shrugged their shoulders as to how such a Divine Event could occur. Instead they began to think of price as a sort of Miracle that proved the divinity of the Market mechanism. They then went on deploy this argument to show that anything that encroached upon this Divine Being’s presence was inherently Evil:
Note what is happening here. The Austrians, like their marginalist brothers and sisters, thought that in marginal utility theory they had found the source from which ‘value’ truly flowed. They never for one moment questioned that. Even when they came to conclude that marginalist analysis could never definitively show anything useful about price determination, they remained confident – indeed, they became even more confident – that such an analysis was Truth.
In short, they postulated a theory and then when confronted with the inconsistencies of the theory when it was applied to any practical ventures they simply threw up their arms and claimed that such inconsistency showed just how true theory was and how much we should respect it. The knowledge that the theory imparted then became, in a very real sense, Divine, in that we meagre humans would never be able to grasp it and instead should simply bow down in front of the Great Being that possessed this knowledge – that is: the Market.
This is what gives the libertarians their religious zeal. In their quest for the Grand Truth they find this Truth to be inaccessible to Man. But in this inaccessibility they find a Higher Truth again; namely, that there is some other entity out there – a benevolent entity called ‘the Market’ – that possesses this Truth and all we have to do is follow the Laws which it has handed down to us and we will eventually reach Utopia. This is, of course, a leap of faith – a truly Kierkegaardian Leap of Faith.
From the Leap of Faith to the Knight of Faith
The Austrians were never quite content with the chicanery and political posturing that they had passed off as scientific debate. As alluded to above, their theories about market prices were forged in the debates with those who advocated a socilialistic planned economy. Being ideological to the core, the Austrians were, for a while at least, perfectly content with saying that while no economist could say anything worthwhile about price determination – and thus, any attempt at a socialist planned economy would be doomed to fail because there could be no perfectly informed coven of evil socialist economists who could administer it – they were still happy with the airy theory of market prices that they had just poked such a large hole in. Yes, they had undertaken a Leap of Faith by admitting that their logical constructions would never be whole but, as Kierkegaard well knew, every Leap of Faith needs a hero, a Knight of Faith – and the Austrians soon found theirs.
The Austrians had, although one suspects that they never fully realised this, essentially proved that their theories were inconsistent. There was always, lurking somewhere, that element that disturbed the calculation of prices in the market models.
Let us emphasise here that this element of disturbance was found, not in reality, but only in their models and in their minds. The fact is that the Austrians, even in out-stepping their neoclassical brethren, were still only exploring their own fantasies. This fact must always be kept in the front of one’s mind when considering their doctrines.
We highlight this because it was precisely at this point that the Austrians could have conceded that they were building castles in the sky – ideologically and emotionally motivated castles in the sky, no less – and that it might be time to grow up and give up on the whole sordid venture of trying to establish a ‘logical’ ‘economic’ basis for ‘value’ that would temper them with the moral certainty they needed to carry on their political crusade. But not so. Instead they found a Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith to fill the gap in their logic. And that Knight of Faith was the entrepreneur.
The Austrian economist Israel Kirzner put it as such in his fine paper ‘The Economic Calculation Debate: Lessons for Austrians’ (which is also an excellent historical overview of much of what we have here been discussing):
And this ‘discovery’, of course, comes from the entrepreneur who was hereafter identified by the libertarian as the social hero who broke through all barriers in the pursuit of the creation of new ‘values’ – and by that, we mean economic ‘values’ – for the community as a whole. Kizner again:
In Kierkegaard’s writings which, like the writings of the Austrians sought to establish a theological metaphysic from which an individual could derive principles of moral certitude, it was the Knight of Faith – the true believer with complete faith and certainty in both himself and God – that filled in the logical gaps inherent in even the greatest philosophical systems. For the Austrians the entrepreneur filled the same role – except that this was a great hero that had both full faith in the Market and the ability to find opportunities to inject disequilibrium into the price system through innovation.
By now we are far outside the realm of anything even remotely resembling a science of ‘value’. What we have instead is a vast metaphysical and moral system that is built around a very specific – not to mention very narrow – conception of value, together with a sort of existential appendage in the form of the hero-entrepreneur. The hero veneers over the logical flaws in the metaphysical system, while that system remains in place as a faith-based explanatory schema which can be applied to the world around the libertarian.
Note how fantasy blends into reality almost completely at this point. No longer do we separate our supposedly ‘factual’ ideas about ‘value’ from the mythological figure of the entrepreneur. Fact and fantasy merge to form a sort of continuum the purpose of which is to insulate the devotee from any empirical evidence that might arise to prove them wrong – or, at least, misled – regarding, for example, more fundamental and more pressing macroeconomic questions. They simply know what is what because they have it all worked out – and no silly facts are going to tell them otherwise.
From the fertile source of marginal utility value calculus the Austrians thus constructed a pristine moral and metaphysical system. But in doing so – like all metaphysicians – they allowed their imaginations to run away with them. They never noticed the point at which they crossed that fateful line; that line that separates our attempts to represent the world accurately and dispassionately to ourselves from our attempts to create a fantasy world in which we can live. The Austrians had, at first, attempted to use their imaginations to explain the world around them and, in doing so, had fallen into a dream world of their own creation.
And so the foundations of the political cult we call libertarianism were firmly in place. It is an ingenious creation which even came to include what CG Jung and other mythologists might call a central ‘archetypal’ or mythic figure. Even more specifically, what the Austrians have done is insert into their narrative what the great American mythologist Joseph Campbell called the ‘monomyth’. The monomyth is a recurrent theme in mythologies from all over the world. It is essentially a ‘hero myth’ and, as Campbell argues, can be located in most major religious narratives (Christ, Buddha etc.). In this the Austrians provided the libertarian religion with their very own version of the monomyth.
That most libertarians are ignorant of the source of their beliefs – just as most of them are not very conversant with economic theory generally, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding – only adds a sociological dimension to their cult. Their cult forms a hierarchy where those who are closer to the Grand Truth are supposed to know more than those who are less conversant. Those who are less conversant then scrutinise the Great Texts – which are largely taken to be Holy Writ – until they can advance up the priestly ranks.
The Malign Consequences of Political Cults
After experiencing what used to be called ‘Bolshevism’ we are well aware of the dangers of political cults if they should ever ascend to power. Indeed, we already had forewarnings of this danger in the cult of Reason that Robespierre erected in revolutionary France upon the intellectual architecture that Jean-Jacques Rousseau had constructed for him. All of these cults espouse liberty and freedom and end up creating regimes of pure tyranny. Why? Because in their violent desire to turn reality into a Utopia, they stamp all over reality as it fails to conform to the images in their minds.
Some have objected to fellow Naked Capitalism writer Andrew Dittmer’s ‘interview’ series as an attempt to misrepresent the libertarian movement by espousing the ideas of an extremist. This is unfair. The views of people like Hoppe may be fringe among libertarians – then again, they may not be – but the zealousness is the same across the whole movement.
Libertarians think that they have unearthed a Truth that no one else can grasp (because, of course, this Truth being so pure, anyone who could possibly grasp it must then by default recognise it as Truth). And they think that if they can get adequate social and political power to enforce this Truth we will all be better off for it. Hoppe’s vision of a totalitarian, corporatist future is thus realistic in that if libertarians were ever truly to get into power they would have to enact an immense violence upon the world to try to get it to conform to their vision of Utopia. In this, they are like every other political cult that has ever existed. And they are just as dangerous.
In fact, the libertarians are the direct heirs to the Marxist-Leninist throne. Even though their motives differ substantially, their Faith is based on very similar principles – which is not surprising given that both movements grew out of the same 19th century debate over economic value. In this regard it is useful to recall John Maynard Keynes’ characterisation of Marxism-Leninism:
The goal may have changed, but the unswerving faith in pseudo-scientific – or, to be very precise, in the Austrians case, because they tend to eschew ‘scientificity’: pseudo-rational – economic doctrines has not. Let us just hope that such a cult does not deliver to us another era of primitive tyranny and medieval inquisition. It is our democracies that are at stake.
You wanted God’s ideas about what was
best for you to coincide with your ideas, but you also wanted him to be
the almighty Creator of heaven and earth so that he could properly
fulfil your wish. And yet, if he were to share your ideas, he would
cease to be the almighty Father.
– Søren Kierkegaard
Political cults often have the strangest
and most obscure origins. Take Marxism, for example. Today it is
well-known that Marxist doctrine essentially sprang out of the obscure
19th century economic debates over the source of ‘value’. By ‘proving’ –
that is, lifting the assumption from classical political economy – that
all ‘value’ came from labour, Karl Marx went on to show that it was
therefore only logical to assume the existence of something called
‘surplus value’ that was sucked out of labourers by a parasitic
capitalist class. From out of this obscure debate flowed an awesome
political movement – and a tyranny to match.
What is less well-known is that today’s most popular political cult – that is, libertarianism – was born in very similar circumstances; it too, arrived into the world out of the obscure 19th century debates over economic ‘value’. But before we explore this in any detail it might be appropriate to speculate a little on what characterises a political cult and why so many of these find their sustenance in economic theories of value.
What is a Political Cult and Why Do they Often Love Economic Value Theory?
A political cult is characterised by a political or economic doctrine that answers all the ‘big questions’ about life, the world and everything else. The doctrine that is handed down is then to be conceived of as a way to live one’s life – a project, handed down from Mount Sinai, that one is under the moral obligation to spread far and wide. This is why we refer to these movements as cults. And it is this that gives them such an awesome status in the glazed eyes of their devotees.
Under such circumstances, politics becomes a sort of religious calling. In these doctrines there is usually an ‘Evil Being’ who is opposing the spread of the ‘Good’ on earth and it is these that are to blame for all the bad things in the world. In Marxism this Evil Being is the capitalist; in libertarianism it is the figure who is at different times referred to as the ‘collectivist’, the ‘liberal’ or the ‘socialist’. Needless to say that, since these figures are usually ones of Extreme Evil they must be ‘liquidated’ or ‘eliminated’ at the first possible opportunity lest they spread their Demonic Gospel to the masses.
Political cults thus provide their devotees with a firm identity in an otherwise changeable and, let us be frank, confusing world. Like all cults they provide an anchor for their devotees with which they can fasten themselves to a rigid doctrine. They also typically lend their devotees a Holier-Than-Thou attitude as they provide them with ‘secrets’ that those outside of the cult cannot grasp. Not only does this allow the devotees to feel ‘special’, in modern political cults it also gives them practical, albeit ‘secret’ advice about what they should do in their day-to-day lives. (Think of the advice to buy gold or foreign stocks coming out of certain libertarian front men, for example).
Finally, the political cult will usually offer their followers the possibility of a Heaven on Earth. If the follower behaves well and spreads their beliefs to others they will eventually arrive at some sort of Utopia. This is their reward for believing in the doctrines, despite these doctrines being ridiculed by others.
So, why do these cults spring out of economic doctrines based on value? Well, this is a very complex question but there is one key aspect that is absolutely fundamental. In order to understand it a little better we must think for a moment about what economic ‘value’ supposedly is. It is, in fact, when we boil it right down, a moral entity. If we can tell what people ‘value’ and why, then we can make prognostications on what is Good for society as a whole.
In times past organised religions handed down fixed value systems to their adherents. Today people have become disillusioned with religious systems – ostensibly because they conflict with these peoples’ supposedly ‘scientific’ worldview. But the impulse among some for the self-assurance provided by a religion is so strong that they seek out ‘scientific’ systems that operate in an identical manner to religious or cult systems.
This is why the economic doctrine of ‘value’ is such a good foundational stone for such a cult. It provides a pseudo-scientific account about how people attribute value to things and in doing so tells the cult member a ‘Truth’ that they can use to make turn the world into a Utopia in which the optimal amount of ‘value’ is realised by the optimal amount of people.
Karl Marx claimed that ‘value’ was embodied labour and hence his followers concluded with him that all that was Good sprang from labour and that society should thus be based on free labour. The libertarians – together with the neoclassicals that they otherwise scorn – believe that all ‘value’ springs from utility maximisation. While the neoclassicals simply tinker with toy-models of ‘value’ to bolster their pseudo-scientific prestige, the libertarians undertake a leap of faith into the unknown and claim that in the theory of marginal utility they have found a ‘Truth’ that must be brought down from Heaven to Earth.
The Birthing of a Cult
Libertarianism was born out of the late 19th century doctrine of marginalism; a doctrine that went on to gain popularity with those opposed to Marxism. We will not dwell too much on the doctrine of marginalism when applied to the analysis of ‘value’ – having done so elsewhere. Here we will merely note that marginalism provides a moral defence for the supposedly ‘free market’ system that we live under today.
Marginalism, when applied to ‘value’ analysis, holds that it is in Man’s nature to follow a certain path in his consumption habits. These habits are determined by his maximising his utility. Most modern marginalists claim that they can use this concept to show that a ‘free market’ system is the fairest social system possible, since it responds automatically to Man’s marginal utility preference it delivers ‘value’ in a perfect and harmonious manner.
Markets deliver this ‘value’ through the mechanism of price. Prices, which reflect peoples’ desires to maximise their marginal utility, ensure that the most equitable distribution of ‘value-in-the-abstract’ is accommodated for by the ‘free market system’. And this is the point at which marginal value analysis becomes a value judgment in a very real sense.
The neoclassicals held, and continue to hold, that their models could capture this complex dynamic. Such an assertion was and is, of course, absolute rubbish. But the Austrians took a different tack. “Yes,” they said, “marginal utility theory is the correct way to go, but we cannot formulate models that adequately capture the inner workings of this great mechanism.”
In their book Modern Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World, the authors provide a good summary of this approach. In the book they discuss what effect the discovery of marginalism’s inherent uselessness had on the Austrians:
Faced with the impossibility of mathematically deriving prices and quantities on the one hand and a metric of social welfare on the other, some Marginalists understood the limitations of their utility calculus. Mainly of an Austrian persuasion (most notably Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter), they even gallantly tried to use this failure to the advantage of their claims on behalf of untrammelled markets and against the encroachments of collective agencies, trade unions, governments etc.
This was a clever move. While the neoclassicals tinkered with their silly toy-models, trying to show how prices are determined through a sort of grand marginal calculus, the Austrians shrugged their shoulders as to how such a Divine Event could occur. Instead they began to think of price as a sort of Miracle that proved the divinity of the Market mechanism. They then went on deploy this argument to show that anything that encroached upon this Divine Being’s presence was inherently Evil:
If no degree of mathematical sophistication can pin down the ‘right’ prices and quantities, how can a government or any other form of collective agency work them out? How could a socialist economy, or even a national health service, ever price things? Thus, the market mechanism is indispensible because of the radical indeterminacy of prices.
Note what is happening here. The Austrians, like their marginalist brothers and sisters, thought that in marginal utility theory they had found the source from which ‘value’ truly flowed. They never for one moment questioned that. Even when they came to conclude that marginalist analysis could never definitively show anything useful about price determination, they remained confident – indeed, they became even more confident – that such an analysis was Truth.
In short, they postulated a theory and then when confronted with the inconsistencies of the theory when it was applied to any practical ventures they simply threw up their arms and claimed that such inconsistency showed just how true theory was and how much we should respect it. The knowledge that the theory imparted then became, in a very real sense, Divine, in that we meagre humans would never be able to grasp it and instead should simply bow down in front of the Great Being that possessed this knowledge – that is: the Market.
This is what gives the libertarians their religious zeal. In their quest for the Grand Truth they find this Truth to be inaccessible to Man. But in this inaccessibility they find a Higher Truth again; namely, that there is some other entity out there – a benevolent entity called ‘the Market’ – that possesses this Truth and all we have to do is follow the Laws which it has handed down to us and we will eventually reach Utopia. This is, of course, a leap of faith – a truly Kierkegaardian Leap of Faith.
From the Leap of Faith to the Knight of Faith
The Austrians were never quite content with the chicanery and political posturing that they had passed off as scientific debate. As alluded to above, their theories about market prices were forged in the debates with those who advocated a socilialistic planned economy. Being ideological to the core, the Austrians were, for a while at least, perfectly content with saying that while no economist could say anything worthwhile about price determination – and thus, any attempt at a socialist planned economy would be doomed to fail because there could be no perfectly informed coven of evil socialist economists who could administer it – they were still happy with the airy theory of market prices that they had just poked such a large hole in. Yes, they had undertaken a Leap of Faith by admitting that their logical constructions would never be whole but, as Kierkegaard well knew, every Leap of Faith needs a hero, a Knight of Faith – and the Austrians soon found theirs.
The Austrians had, although one suspects that they never fully realised this, essentially proved that their theories were inconsistent. There was always, lurking somewhere, that element that disturbed the calculation of prices in the market models.
Let us emphasise here that this element of disturbance was found, not in reality, but only in their models and in their minds. The fact is that the Austrians, even in out-stepping their neoclassical brethren, were still only exploring their own fantasies. This fact must always be kept in the front of one’s mind when considering their doctrines.
We highlight this because it was precisely at this point that the Austrians could have conceded that they were building castles in the sky – ideologically and emotionally motivated castles in the sky, no less – and that it might be time to grow up and give up on the whole sordid venture of trying to establish a ‘logical’ ‘economic’ basis for ‘value’ that would temper them with the moral certainty they needed to carry on their political crusade. But not so. Instead they found a Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith to fill the gap in their logic. And that Knight of Faith was the entrepreneur.
The Austrian economist Israel Kirzner put it as such in his fine paper ‘The Economic Calculation Debate: Lessons for Austrians’ (which is also an excellent historical overview of much of what we have here been discussing):
[T]he truth is that Hayek opened the door to an entirely new perspective on the “goodness” of economic policies and institutional arrangements. Instead of judging policies or institutional arrangements in terms of the resource-allocation pattern they are expected to produce (in comparison with the hypothetically optimal allocation pattern), we can now understand the possibility of judging them in terms of their ability to promote discovery.
And this ‘discovery’, of course, comes from the entrepreneur who was hereafter identified by the libertarian as the social hero who broke through all barriers in the pursuit of the creation of new ‘values’ – and by that, we mean economic ‘values’ – for the community as a whole. Kizner again:
For Austrians, prices emerge in an open-ended context in which entrepreneurs must grapple with true Knightian uncertainty. This context generates precisely the kind of choice that stimulates the competitive discovery process. In this context, the entrepreneur does not treat prices as parameters out of his control but, on the contrary, represents the very causal force that moves prices in coordinating directions.
In Kierkegaard’s writings which, like the writings of the Austrians sought to establish a theological metaphysic from which an individual could derive principles of moral certitude, it was the Knight of Faith – the true believer with complete faith and certainty in both himself and God – that filled in the logical gaps inherent in even the greatest philosophical systems. For the Austrians the entrepreneur filled the same role – except that this was a great hero that had both full faith in the Market and the ability to find opportunities to inject disequilibrium into the price system through innovation.
By now we are far outside the realm of anything even remotely resembling a science of ‘value’. What we have instead is a vast metaphysical and moral system that is built around a very specific – not to mention very narrow – conception of value, together with a sort of existential appendage in the form of the hero-entrepreneur. The hero veneers over the logical flaws in the metaphysical system, while that system remains in place as a faith-based explanatory schema which can be applied to the world around the libertarian.
Note how fantasy blends into reality almost completely at this point. No longer do we separate our supposedly ‘factual’ ideas about ‘value’ from the mythological figure of the entrepreneur. Fact and fantasy merge to form a sort of continuum the purpose of which is to insulate the devotee from any empirical evidence that might arise to prove them wrong – or, at least, misled – regarding, for example, more fundamental and more pressing macroeconomic questions. They simply know what is what because they have it all worked out – and no silly facts are going to tell them otherwise.
From the fertile source of marginal utility value calculus the Austrians thus constructed a pristine moral and metaphysical system. But in doing so – like all metaphysicians – they allowed their imaginations to run away with them. They never noticed the point at which they crossed that fateful line; that line that separates our attempts to represent the world accurately and dispassionately to ourselves from our attempts to create a fantasy world in which we can live. The Austrians had, at first, attempted to use their imaginations to explain the world around them and, in doing so, had fallen into a dream world of their own creation.
And so the foundations of the political cult we call libertarianism were firmly in place. It is an ingenious creation which even came to include what CG Jung and other mythologists might call a central ‘archetypal’ or mythic figure. Even more specifically, what the Austrians have done is insert into their narrative what the great American mythologist Joseph Campbell called the ‘monomyth’. The monomyth is a recurrent theme in mythologies from all over the world. It is essentially a ‘hero myth’ and, as Campbell argues, can be located in most major religious narratives (Christ, Buddha etc.). In this the Austrians provided the libertarian religion with their very own version of the monomyth.
That most libertarians are ignorant of the source of their beliefs – just as most of them are not very conversant with economic theory generally, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding – only adds a sociological dimension to their cult. Their cult forms a hierarchy where those who are closer to the Grand Truth are supposed to know more than those who are less conversant. Those who are less conversant then scrutinise the Great Texts – which are largely taken to be Holy Writ – until they can advance up the priestly ranks.
The Malign Consequences of Political Cults
After experiencing what used to be called ‘Bolshevism’ we are well aware of the dangers of political cults if they should ever ascend to power. Indeed, we already had forewarnings of this danger in the cult of Reason that Robespierre erected in revolutionary France upon the intellectual architecture that Jean-Jacques Rousseau had constructed for him. All of these cults espouse liberty and freedom and end up creating regimes of pure tyranny. Why? Because in their violent desire to turn reality into a Utopia, they stamp all over reality as it fails to conform to the images in their minds.
Some have objected to fellow Naked Capitalism writer Andrew Dittmer’s ‘interview’ series as an attempt to misrepresent the libertarian movement by espousing the ideas of an extremist. This is unfair. The views of people like Hoppe may be fringe among libertarians – then again, they may not be – but the zealousness is the same across the whole movement.
Libertarians think that they have unearthed a Truth that no one else can grasp (because, of course, this Truth being so pure, anyone who could possibly grasp it must then by default recognise it as Truth). And they think that if they can get adequate social and political power to enforce this Truth we will all be better off for it. Hoppe’s vision of a totalitarian, corporatist future is thus realistic in that if libertarians were ever truly to get into power they would have to enact an immense violence upon the world to try to get it to conform to their vision of Utopia. In this, they are like every other political cult that has ever existed. And they are just as dangerous.
In fact, the libertarians are the direct heirs to the Marxist-Leninist throne. Even though their motives differ substantially, their Faith is based on very similar principles – which is not surprising given that both movements grew out of the same 19th century debate over economic value. In this regard it is useful to recall John Maynard Keynes’ characterisation of Marxism-Leninism:
[It] is the combination of two things which Europeans have kept for some centuries in different compartments of the soul – religion and business.Keynes also highlighted an important point about how such cults become influenetial:
[They derive their] power not from the multitude but from a small minority of enthusiastic converts whose zeal and intolerance make each one equal in strength to a hundred indifferentists.
The goal may have changed, but the unswerving faith in pseudo-scientific – or, to be very precise, in the Austrians case, because they tend to eschew ‘scientificity’: pseudo-rational – economic doctrines has not. Let us just hope that such a cult does not deliver to us another era of primitive tyranny and medieval inquisition. It is our democracies that are at stake.
Saturday, 17 December 2011
Why pretend we know everything? It's time to embrace uncertainty
It is certainty that we need to worry about, as extreme ideologies prosper in these uncertain times
Who knows if David Cameron's refusal to sign the EU treaty is a good thing or not. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters
I don't know what I am talking about. And, quite frankly, you should be relieved that I know that I don't know. The world is full of people proclaiming about stuff they don't know much about. My trade depends on it. Pundits, politicians and economists, too, all depend on some kind of bladder-busting meta-analysis to keep us quiet. In fact, they are just winging it.
Too many nights I have watched economists on television being treated with undeserved reverence. "Economics is largely a made-up pseudo-science!" I want to scream. After all, it has been almost entirely useless in predicting the mess we are in. Indeed, by coming up with grotesque calculations whereby rich people's investments were effectively risk-free and financed by the jobs and homes of the poor, many economists were cheerleaders pre-crisis.
This is not another anti-bank rant. It is now self-evident that banks did some bad stuff, but the diplomatic immunity they were granted was not merely political. Anyone who makes out that they know what they are doing and can turn a fast buck and believes, yes really believes, in something – anything, themselves even – is facilitated by society. And, yes, this is usually backed up by a narrative of questionable facts.
What is valued is certainty. What is devalued in such a world is uncertainty. Those who aren't sure are weak. Poor. Faithless. Uncertainty is often worrying and feminised. Real men know real things. So they have been lining up to tell us that David Cameron's refusal to sign the EU treaty is the best thing ever to have happened, or the worst thing ever to have happened, when, actually, no one is quite sure. Reconciling a belief in the democratic process with the recognition that the euro is still in big trouble and Greece may well go anyway, means it is impossible to line up clearly in the Eurosceptic versus Europhile shadow boxing. It is up in the air.
As this year has been a news tsunami, it would be far more interesting to acknowledge what we did not know rather than what we did. Most experts did not predict the riots, the Arab spring, the extent of the economic meltdown. I recall meeting a learned professor in Tel Aviv three years ago who explained that Iran not Egypt was now the centre of the Arab world and everything would start there. Like many others, I thought recession would produce some kind of resistance but had no idea how that would manifest itself. As for the financial crisis, our lack of foresight is mind-boggling.
But in public, and especially in politics, an admission of uncertainty is seen as problematic. At a dinner I attended a few years ago, a young politician was asked a question to which he had no answer. He said: "I don't know about that; I will go away and find out." It was Ed Miliband as it happens, and I was impressed. But the guys I was with crowed: "We got him there!" This relentless reduction of politics to point-scoring, this public-school obsession with certainty, is a turn-off. Look where it leads. Not so long ago, George W Bush said that if America "shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift towards tragedy. This will not happen on my watch." Apart from war, this "certainty" helped to produce the debt crisis.
It is certainty that we need to worry about, as extreme ideologies prosper in these uncertain times. Yet there have always been ways of thinking that properly refute certainty. The school of "weak thought" coming out of Italy via Gianni Vattimo follows a clear line from Nietzsche onwards that pushes against finality, and urges us to understand historical circumstance. "There are no facts, only interpretations and this too is an interpretation," Vattimo has said.
The work of Nassim Taleb also confronts us with the idea that the economic models used by the banks were based on the idea of stability. The ecology of the banking system could not predict risk properly at all (although Taleb did, actually). Then we have a genius such as Zygmunt Bauman, who has long been telling us that we live in "liquid modernity", that individuals can no longer plan careers and progress in linear, certain ways. Yes, it is like the weather: changeable.
Of course those who most understand the value of uncertainty are scientists themselves. As the delightful Jon Butterworth wrote this week, science has nothing to fear from uncertainty. The sexy little Higgs Boson particle, which may have flashed up in the data in Cern (I imagine it as a burlesque sort of particle) has meant we have listened to physicists telling us very excitedly about how much we just don't know.
This has been wonderful. The opposite of political discourse: to hear clever people talking about the limits of their own knowledge. How weighed down is public life with its emphasis on certainty. How dumbed down is belief. The big divides are not between different beliefs, but the differing degree of certitude in which those beliefs are held.
No one knows. No one has the answers. Uncertainty is where we are. It is to be embraced. Christopher Hitchens, when asked which word he had most overused, said he was shocked to find on rereading his work that it was "perhaps".
I love that. Perhaps, right now, is the best word. I'm sure of that. Perhaps.
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