Michael Hudson - The Vocabulary of Economic Deception

Lies, damned lies and Iain Duncan Smith

The way the work and pensions secretary manipulates statistics is a shaming indictment of his department's failings

• 
• • Nick Cohen
  • The Observer, Sunday 12 May 2013

The work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, was reprimanded by the UK's statistics watchdog over his claims about the benefits cap. Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA

When you see rottenness in a system you must ask: does it come from one bad apple or does the whole barrel stink?

The rank smell emanating from the coalition is impossible to miss. At first sniff, it appears to come from the blazered figure of Iain Duncan Smith. It has taken me some time to identify its source, because appearances deceive. From his clipped hair to his polished shoes, Duncan Smith seems to be a man who has retained the values of the officer corps of the Scots Guards he once served. Conservative commentators emphasise his honour and decency. They speak in reverential tones of his Easterhouse epiphany: the moment in 2002 when he saw the poverty on a Glasgow estate, brushed a manly tear from his eye and vowed to end the "dependency culture" that kept the poor jobless.

Duncan Smith's belief that the welfare state holds down the very people it is meant to serve is pleasing to Conservative ears. To maintain his supporters' illusions, he has to lie. Last week, the UK Statistics Authority gave him a reprimand that broke from the genteel language of the civil service. The work and pensions secretary had claimed that his department's cap on benefits was turning scroungers into strivers – even before it had come into force. "Already we have seen 8,000 people who would have been affected by the cap move into jobs." How sweet those words must have sounded to Conservative ears. The government was forcing the feckless to stop sponging off hard-working taxpayers. (Taxpayers are always "hard working" in British politics, in case you haven't noticed. We never try to get by doing the bare minimum.)

The figures did not show that, the statistics authority said. More to the point, they could not possibly have shown that. Duncan Smith's claims were "unsupported" by the very statistics his department had collected.

If this were a one-off, I would say Duncan Smith "misspoke" or "lacked judgment" or, in plain English, that he was an idiot. If every politician who spun statistics were damned, after all, parliament would be empty. I would use stronger language; indeed, Andrew Dilnot, the chair of the statistics authority, is thinking about sending his inspectors into the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) because Duncan Smith is a habitual manipulator.

As journalists know, Duncan Smith's modus operandi is well established. His "people" – all of them scroungers, not strivers, who sponge off the taxpayer from their Whitehall offices – brief reporters with unpublished figures. The Tory press uses them, and, as theFinancial Times explained, when his spin doctors meet an honest journalist, who asks hard questions, they end the call and never ring back. By the time the true figures appear on theDWP website , and informed commentators can see the falsity, the spin, the old saying applies: "A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on."

Before the benefit cap, it was the work programme, which is meant to provide training for the unemployed. The statistics authority criticised the "coherence" of Duncan Smith's statistics and, once again, the manner in which his department presented them to the public. Far from being a success, the programme found work for a mere 8.6% of the desperate people who went on it. Meanwhile, Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and a former chief economist at the Cabinet Office, has convincingly demonstrated that the Tory claim that "more than a third of people who were on incapacity benefit dropped their claims rather than complete a medical assessment" is false and demonstrably false.

Numbers are stronger than words. When the powerful lie with statistics, they do so in the cynical knowledge that the public is more likely to believe them. But the manipulation does not just tell us how sly operators view the credulous masses, but how they see themselves.

The UK Statistics Authority has a fine phrase that guides its mathematicians: "Numbers should be a light, not a crutch". Duncan Smith does not wish to shine light on his policies, for he fears what he may see. He uses his twisted figures as a crutch instead, to help his dogmas hobble along. Francis Wheen once said that the one fact everyone believes they know about a public figure is always wrong. Whatever they think about his policies, the public assumes that Duncan Smith is a gentleman. He is anything but.

Portes thinks there is no wider decay in British government beyond Duncan Smith's department. I am not so sure. The British right is riding off with the loons. Like the Republicans with the Tea Party, the supposedly mainstream Conservatives have decided to woo Ukip rather than fight it. To show that they are "listening", they must pursue policies that make little sense and invent the evidence to support them.

Welfare is already at the centre of the deceit. Duncan Smith's duff data always suggests that the unemployed are on the dole because they are workshy, not because there are no jobs for them to find. If he were to admit for a moment that the distinction between strivers and scroungers was meaningless and all of us could be in a job one day and out of it the next, the rightwing argument on welfare would collapse and then where would the Tories appeal to angry, old white men be?

It is not just Duncan Smith. The health secretary says he will stop foreign "health tourists" costing the NHS hundreds of millions. He has no reputable evidence to support that figure. David Cameron says he wants tax breaks for married couples, when there is no evidence whatsoever that they encourage lovers to marry.

The policies may not work, the ills they seek to combat and the benefits they hope to reap may be illusory. But fear holds Conservatives in its grip and the general election is drawing closer. When pressed, they say that they want to "flag up" their support of marriage, "signal" their dislike of scroungers or "send a message" to illegal immigrants.

Our language has been so corrupted by the euphemisms of advertising and public relations that we no longer realise that what they mean is that they intend to lie.

Unscrambling The Politician’s Prose

Salman Khurshid's article Dunk us All in Liquid Oxygen doesn't quite manage to conceal that the ongoing events at Jantar Mantar reflect the anger of a great many Indians at the extent and scale of the culture of corruption in India’s political class

K.V. BAPA RAO in Outlook India

The Indian people are pretty well hardened to the ineptitude and corruption of their politicians. But, as the recent grid crash—in a week that gave us a burning train, communal riots, highway deaths, attacks on women, on top of another grid crash—shows, the politicians are always a step ahead of the people’s ability to take things in their stride. They see to it that we never lose our sense of wonder: what sort of minds, what thinking process, what value system, could possibly drive such a single-minded commitment to failure and disaster?

It’s all very well to say that they are venal and stupid; but that really isn’t any kind of answer. Consistent and massive failure in all imaginable fields is never the result of mere individuals acting out of ill-intent; it needs organization. And an organization requires a guiding value system that drives a rationale for comprehensive failure and corruption. It is this value system and shared mental process that is revealed when a politician writes the rare article for public consumption.

Back in 1946, George Orwell wrote a short but insightful essay on Politics and the English Language,
explaining the connection between badly-written prose and slimy political lies. The creator of the fictional Ministry of Truth (actually a factory of lies) made a lifetime study of the lies of public figures and the language they use for telling those lies. Orwell has this to say about politicians’ words:

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. [atrocious
and morally unjustifiable things] can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too
brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political
parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and
sheer cloudy vagueness."

Orwell’s insight was that, when politicians write badly, the rotten prose is no accident but a direct result and symptom of the rotten values and rationale that the writer is trying to conceal. No one can write without revealing their brain at work; when you write to lie and deceive, it is hard for the brain to reconcile what it believes to be true with the deception which it is being asked to perpetrate in logical and clear prose. As a result, the writing ends up failing on both fronts: the prose comes out unclear and barely coherent, while the truth peeks out from the covers, and can be extracted, with some effort by the reader. This extracted truth is the “brutal argument” that Orwell is talking about.
Indian politicians usually keep their brains well out of public view; they carefully avoiding putting words down for people to read and criticize. So, Law Minister Salman Khurshid’s recent article in Outlook affords a rare opportunity to apply Orwell’s methods to probe an Indian politician’s mind and piece together the brutal argument that he is not giving us, but is not quite able to conceal either.
Khurshid article was titled Dunk us All in Liquid Oxygen, a wry allusion to a popular quotation attributed to the late Hindi film actor Ajit, known for his roles as clownish villains spouting quirky dialogue. Torment by “liquid oxygen” at the hands of Ajit’s henchmen would leave the victim in a painful state of being simultaneously notalive (due to the liquid) and not-dead (due to the oxygen).

The piece is evidently intended as a plaint against the India Against Corruption (IAC) organization that currently involved in a national agitation (against political corruption) and hunger strike at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Khurshid professes “caring” for Anna Hazare—a prominent member of activist who has been on hunger strike—but insinuates that Hazare, while himself a good person, is, sadly, a lousy judge of character who keeps company with some very bad persons whom Khurshid ostentatiously refrains from naming. Khurshid expends a great many words on the dangers that these unnamed persons pose to the delicate fabric of society, in a darkly conspiratorial tone reminiscent of entrenched old-school demagogues inveighing against “outside agitators” out to pollute, and destroy, our precious political system.

Khurshid leaves no doubts at all about the sheer intense wickedness of these nameless enemies of the
people. He signs off with a famous verse from the famous poem, The Second Coming by the famous poet W.B. Yeats:

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

It seems that Khurshid is actually quite angry with critics who have been giving his colleagues in the political class a hard time about corruption over the past year or so. In the article, he lays the blame squarely on these critics (who are “the worst”) for a deepening cynicism in the public about politics and the political system, and by conscious omission, holds the political class blameless and unjustly maligned. It is another thing that, to the public, it appears as though the political animals have been laying into the public weal like so many drunken monkeys unleashed on a banana boat. And just as those monkeys might, politicians become very cross indeed when someone has the nerve to try to thwart their orgy.

The gorging monkey analogy is rather unkind perhaps, but still apt. If the political class is driven by visions of loaves and fishes of office dancing in their eyes, they are hardly likely to take an interest in raising their standards of service to the public above simian levels, so to speak. Colossal power failures, trains lacking safety systems that were standard elsewhere in the 20th century, deadly roadways, subsistence levels of potable water, grinning indifference to enemy attacks on the nation’s cities, unspeakable sanitation, a disgraceful health care systems, a dodgy education system—these and the rest of the dysfunctions besetting India all make sense now; they are built and maintained by the political equivalent of partying monkeys, when they can spare the time, that is.

Khurshid devotes a considerable portion of his article fretting about what is to become of India’s pluralistic political system in the face of the debilitating demands of the dark forces, that is to say, the anti-corruption activists. On the face of it, this is nonsense—corruption, or its impact, is the most pluralistic thing there is, sparing no one of whatever persuasion. Khurshid’s article is rather incoherent but not altogether useless. If we apply Orwell’s ideas, and carefully read past, and into, the vaguely-worded but relatively well-written peroration, we can expose the “brutal argument.” Here are Khurshid’s concluding words:

The role of democratic politics is to find a workable arrangement between competing claims,
ensuring, in the process, the stability of society. Where this breaks down, we are left exposed to
the forces of unwholesome upheaval, even violence. The strength of Indian democracy is our
unity in diversity. If the accommodation of legitimate interests is questioned every time, politics
will not be a place for angels and idealistic young men and women. Young India will no longer
dream, but will suffer the agony of unending nightmares. With the death of innocence in our
times, what then will we tell our children? Who will join politics or become a judge? Will we
bequeath to generations to come the lost years, because courage failed the good?

Khurshid evidently means to say that stability is paramount, and trumps all other concerns. Agitating against defalcations by the political class, harshly criticizing politicians, reacting to their bad-faith pretence at responsiveness with anger and refusing to back down--all these things are the forces of unwholesome upheaval, and lead to bad consequences like the reluctance of young people to dream about becoming politicians, to be welcomed, nurtured and mentored as Khurshid himself was by his Congress Party.

But, the conditions in which the majority of Indians are forced to live —dangerous, deprived and unsanitary conditions engineered by Khurshid’s own political class—are hardly a reasonable interpretation of stability  or security, except by the inhumanly low standards that were imposed on the Indian people by persons like Khurshid, persons he evidently respects and admires. And if the Indian people don’t tear each other apart in despair and rage, it is no thanks to the politicians but due to the civilisational value system that Indians carry in their collective DNA. So, what, then, is this stability that would be threatened when politicians are criticized?

Well, the political class endeavoured, quite successfully, to insulate itself from the worst of the crippling consequences of their own corruption and comprehensive ineptitude, and the insulation has held steady. Anger directed at the political class could conceivably lead to a loss of this insulation, and politicians may have to actually put up with the consequences of their actions. With this in mind, we can now translate Khurshid’s words into plain English prose as follows, which would help us understand why he took the time to write his article:

Public corruption is not important. More precisely, it is far less important than political stability,
which is to be maintained by a system of sharing the spoils of office with all political actors who
can make enough trouble, thus pacifying them. When people actually confront corruption, but
won’t settle for a cut of the action, it disrupts this political order. In the politicians’ eyes, this is
the worst possible thing that can happen to India. Ergo, those that engage in such confrontation
are the worst possible persons and therefore deserve the harshest possible treatment.
It is serious business, but the operative phrase above is “harshest possible.”

Sometimes, harsh is less possible than at other times. After some experience, the politicians have learned to treat Anna Hazare with kid gloves. Less charismatic but still somewhat powerful colleagues of Hazare can be set apart from Hazare and blamed for destroying the country, but it is better to maintain a veneer of plausible deniability and avoid naming them, since they might possibly come around to be co-opted at some time. Then, there are powerless citizens like the hapless Gurgaon housewife Rajbala, (no doubt one of the dark forces that worry Khurshid so) whom it was entirely possible to beat to death when she irritated the politicians by protesting against corruption. In the meantime, it is only prudent that the enabling machinery of protest and confrontation be crippled by effectively criminalizing, by default, all use of the internet that Law Minister Khurshid and his powerful colleagues find objectionable.

If this is the honest rationale veiled by Khurshid’s opaque prose, then it is no wonder that, when tossing in the obligatory piety about commitment to accountability, debate and so forth, his prose dissolves into incomprehensible and self-contradictory near-gibberish:

Not for a moment should my position be thought to be seeking immunity from accountability.
Ipso facto treating it as such would mean reluctance of the adversary to join in an open debate—
the essence of democracy, in whose name many self-opinionated, harsh, even irresponsible
positions are being taken.

No one in their right mind would even try to interpret what the “ipso facto …” sentence could possibly mean. Considering the brazen opaqueness of that sentence and the evident impunity with which Khurshid utters it,what follows can only be a cliché-ridden falsehood:

Let me say it with all the emphasis at my command: We stand for the fullest transparency and
accountability.

Here is Orwell again, about what lies behind such insults to the language:

"The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like
soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language
is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it
were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

When employed to camouflage a “brutal argument” with platitudes, cant and bombast, the frontal lobe of the
brain blows a fuse, prose rebels, twists itself into knots, and turns into a hideous caricature, albeit one which
still retains a flavour of the truth. What Khurshid’s article doesn’t quite manage to conceal is the reality that the ongoing events at Jantar Mantar reflect the anger of a great many Indians at the extent and scale of the culture of corruption in India’s political class. Anger induces rigidity of outlook; mass anger has a way of generating simplistic and ultimately unhelpful, even harmful answers. However, considering the depth, breadth and duration of the politicians’ malfeasance, and their stubborn imperviousness to self-correction, the expressions of anger have been rather mild, and the proposed solutions rational, lawful and fairly reasonable, for all their flaws.

Khurshid and his political colleagues are livid that people are angry with them; they simply refuse to admit the
fact that the people’s anger is entirely justified, and that it is entirely the politicians’ fault that the people are
angry. If today, the politicians feel trapped, tormented and hectored on all sides, it is but the proper and
deserved consequence of their own actions. Khurshid’s shoddily-written tantrum of an article is a symptom of the continued reliance of the politicians on bluff and bluster in their efforts to divide and neutralize the
organizers of the agitation and dissipate the people’s anger.

Khurshid’s concerns about the risks posed by the people’s anger to the stability of society are disingenuous.
The agitation has remained peaceful for over a year, a remarkable thing for a grassroots street movement.
Khurshid and his fellow politicians have vast, virtually unlimited powers, and they do use them quite ruthlessly
to protect their rather sweet little racket. Khurshid’s fear is that, once people feel empowered to scrutinize
politicians, they will turn on the politicians with the same fervour that politicians exhibit when thwarted. He
worries too much--unlike the government of which Khurshid is a member, the anti-corruption agitators, for all their anger, haven’t yet beaten anyone to death yet for confronting them, nor have they criminalized the use of the internet.

The minister is right about one thing—we do need capable young people of good character to enter the political profession, since the people cannot do without hired help to act as their proxies in the exercise of power and in the management and development of shared resources. A key requirement of the job would be the temperament to cheerfully accept intense scrutiny and criticism, even when it is unfair, all the while learning and striving to deliver higher standards of service, and communicating honestly, and clearly with the employer.

The apprentice politician might find Khurshid’s article of some use—as an Orwellian cautionary tale to show
that defending the indefensible is morally wrong and rots your prose.