Chris Bertram

Recent discussion on twitter, facebook and blogs involving, inter alia Matt Yglesias (yes, again!), “Erik Loomis”:http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/08/jimmy-carter-founding-father-of-the-beer-revolution (who kicked it all off), Scott Lemieux, John Band, Dsquared, me, and others, tells me that people get much more excited about who has the best beer than about the role of the brewing industry in late capitalism and the fate of organized laboour. It also tells me that the claim that country X has the best beer is ambiguous. Some people think that the United States now brews the best beer, but even they are forced to concede that should you wish to actually drink the stuff, you are better placed (for example) in England where a ten-minute stroll from your front door (in any major or minor city) will likely get you to a pub with a decent selection. However, the partisans of nouveau American beer chauvinism have asserted that whilst England may score highly on that dimension, the typical US supermarket has a world-beating selection of brews. I’m not so sure. But first some commentary on our three questions (accompanied by some photographs). (This post is, incidentally, fortified by the excellent Jennings “Sneck Lifter” from Cumbria, a dark bitter at 5.1% abv.)
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Here’s an interesting (or at least provocative) new piece of psychological research (link may need academic subscription) with findings concerning the moral framework generally favoured by economists:

bq. In this paper, we question the close identification of utilitarian responses with optimal moral judgment by demonstrating that the endorsement of utilitarian solutions to a set of commonly-used moral dilemmas correlates with a set of psychological traits that can be characterized as emotionally callous and manipulative—traits that most would perceive as not only psychologically unhealthy, but also morally undesirable.

“The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas”, by Daniel M. Bartels and David A. Pizarro, Cognition 121 (2011) 154–161.

This is just a short post seeking, for the purposes of mutual clarification, to highlight where I think the real differences lie between someone like me and “left neoliberals” like Matt Yglesias. I think that something like Yglesias’s general stance would be justifiable if you believed in two things: (1) prioritarianism in the Parfit sense and (2) that real (that is, inflation adjusted) income levels reliably indicate real levels of well-being, at least roughly. For those who don’t know, prioritarianism is a kind of weighted consequentialism, such that an improvement in real well-being counts for more, morally speaking, if it goes to someone at a lower rather than a higher level of well-being. So prioritarism is a bit like a utilitarianism that takes a sophisticated and expansive view of utility and weights gains to the worse-off more highly. This view assigns no instrinsic importance to inequality as such. If the best way to improve the real well-being of the worst off is to incentize the talented (thereby increasining inequality) then that’s the right thing to do.
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Last night’s BBC Newsnight in the UK featured “an item on living standards”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0132003/Newsnight_03_08_2011/ (at about 29′) and an interview with Doug McWillians of the “Centre for Economics and Business Research”:http://www.cebr.com/ think tank (whoever they are). McWilliams asserted that the UK faces a decline in living standards of 25 per cent over the next 20 years or so because of wage competition from overseas: “we” are going to be 25 per cent worse off. I have no idea how plausible this is.{fn1} However, if I’d been the interviewer I’d have followed up by asking McWilliams, “so, the economy is going to shrink by 25 per cent over the next few years?” Because I’m pretty sure that the economy is going to continue to grow, and that McWilliams also believes this, (eventually, and maybe sluggishly) and asking that follow-up would have forced him to make it explicit that he thinks we face a future of contraegalitarian redistribution (and, judging by some of the other elements in the item, longer hours). Unfortunately, the question never came. Until these questions get asked though, we’ll still have a political debate dominated by the assumption that growth-promoting policies will provide people with better lives, even though it seems that they won’t. (Which doesn’t, of course, establish that in the absence of such policies things wouldn’t get even worse.) To protect and improve the real living standards of ordinary people, we need to get redistribution explicitly onto the agenda and not just allow the assumption that rising tides lift (the key political assumption of “left neoliberalism” it seems to me) to stand.

1. To be fair, McWilliams says the decline isn’t predetermined, but can be avoided if “we” provide ourselves with enough in the way of high-tech skills to “command a premium”. Of course this is another feature of the “left neoliberal” toolkit, but as the experience of new Labour shows, it is one thing to sloganize (“education, education, education”) it is another to actually change things.

UPDATE: For some reason Matthew Yglesias has “linked to this post”:http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/04/287553/the-new-labour-record-on-income-growth/ taking it to be a data-free assertion that Blair and Brown failed on inequality (I believe that they failed, but it isn’t the subject of this post) and then waving around a Lane Kenworthy graph that he’s fond of in refutation. Two points: (1) the only point in the post that touched on the failure of New Labour was the footnote, which alludes to their record on education not inequality; (2) “Brian posted a few months ago”:https://crookedtimber.org/2010/10/01/fun-with-gini-coefficients/ in response to “the last time”:http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/09/30/198683/new-labour-and-inequality/ Matt deployed his favourite graph against “me on New Labour’s record”:https://crookedtimber.org/2010/09/30/its-about-the-distribution-stupid/ on inequality, given that, I’m surprised Matt is still waving it around.

I’ve been thinking about what, if anything, to write about the events in Norway. Obviously one’s first thoughts are with the victims of what was an especially horrible crime. I was in Oslo in April, and it really is hard for me to imagine an event such as this taking place there. Really dreadful and heartbreaking, especially since so many of the victims were young, committed, people who looked likely to make an important contribution to the life of their country.

I’m going to limit myself to a few thoughts on its wider significance. Obviously the killer is in some sense crazy, though whether that is technically true is a matter for the professionals. He was imbued with some version of an ideology which is widespread on the internet and to some extent in Western societies: nativism, extreme anxiety about Islam, hatred for liberal multiculturalist “enablers” of this, and so on. Ideas to be found on thousands of blogs, in the writings of wingnut columnists and neocons, in the shared beliefs of Tea Partiers and birthers, among the rabble of the English Defence League, and among the further fringes of extreme supporters of Israel. Is this fascist? I don’t think arguments about definitions are particularly useful. Some of this current predates 9/11, but in its current form it is a product of the US and global reaction to the attacks on the Word Trade Center. Plain and simple racist movements existed before 9/11, but this focus on a particular religion and its adherents coupled with the adoption of extreme pro-Zionism by the formerly anti-semitic right is something new. (This isn’t a single movement though, it is a spectrum, and elements of it have even been given cover, credibility and respectability by people who think of themselves as being on the left but who backed the Iraq war, strongly supported Israel over Lebanon and Gaza and who disseminate propaganda attacking those who take a different line to them on the Middle East as antisemitic racists.)

Following the Norway massacre many of the elite scribblers of this spectrum — many of whom have played the guilt-by-association game to the max over the last decade — are disclaiming all responsibility. Well, of course, they didn’t pull the trigger, but they helped to build an epistemic environment in which someone did. We may be, now, in the world that Cass Sunstein worried about, a world where people select themselves into groups which ramp up their more-or-less internally coherent belief systems into increasingly extreme forms by confirming to one another their perceived “truths” (about Islam, or Obama’s birth certificate, or whatever) and shutting out falsifying information. Put an unstable person or a person with a serious personality disorder into an environment like that and you have a formula for something very nasty happening somewhere, sooner or later. Horribly, that somewhere was Norway last Friday.

Well not content with his inaccurate digs at Henry, Brad DeLong is “having another go at me”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/07/chris-bertram-gets-a-wish-granted-and-is-very-unhappy-indeed.html . (It really does seem to be some kind of obsession with him.) He says my post “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2011/05/22/the-fragmenting-coalition-of-the-left-some-musings/ advocated abandoning social-democracy to

rely instead on a combination of:

populist nationalism[:] culturally conservative, worried by immigration (and willing to indulge popular anxieties), anxious about the effects of markets on working-class community…

and zero-growth greenism.

And that “now”:https://crookedtimber.org/2011/07/19/out-of-the-blue-into-the-black/ I’m horrified by the consequences in the form of Maurice Glasman.

Well, unsurprisingly, *wrong*, though I guess I lack the talent to write so clearly as to avoid misunderstanding from someone as determined to misunderstand me as Brad DeLong is.

First, I didn’t say that the left should abandon social democracy as such, I said that it should break with the “technocratic quasi-neoliberal left as incarnated by the likes of Peter Mandelson.” And …. Brad Delong, I guess.

Second, I didn’t advocate an alliance with culturally conservative populist nationalism, rather I argued that the group of people currently attracted by such politics would “either move towards the eco-left or will drift towards xenophobic right-wing nationalism.” And so I argued – in a post which was trying to start a conversation rather that laying down a line – for trying to build alliances between the eco-left and the traditional working class, between communitarian social-democrats and people with a more environmentally informed politics. DeLong is entitled to think what he likes about that, but he really should stop the infantile caricatures which just get in the way of having a sensible discussion. Pathetic.

Just when British Labour Ed Miliband leader is on a roll, along comes Maurice Glasman to spoil things. I’ve been willing to give Glasman the benefit of the doubt up to now, despite feeling somewhat uncomfortable at some of the things he’s had to say on immigration. After all, Labour lost the last election and we do need some proper discussions about how to connect with a somewhat alienated working-class base. Glasman, with his talk of community and his Polanyi-inspired scepticism about the capacity of the market to ensure genuine well-being seemed a voice worth hearing. Well the mask hasn’t just slipped, it has fallen off, and I think the “blue Labour” project has come to a halt with his latest pronouncements. Intra-left polemics have been marked by too much moralizing denunciation in the past, at the expense of genuine dialogue and understanding. But there is a time for denunciation, and it is now.

Today’s Daily Express “front page”:http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/259756 (Headline “Britain Must Ban Migrants”):

bq. Lord Glasman, Ed Miliband’s chief policy guru, wants a temporary halt to immigration to ensure British people are first in the queue for jobs. The Labour peer also urged the Government to renegotiate EU rules allowing the free movement of migrant workers in a decisive break with the open door policy of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. “The people who live here are the highest priority. We’ve got to listen and be with them. They’re in the right place – it’s us who are not,” he said.

UPDATE: Sir Andrew Green, who heads-up the rabidly anti-immigration group MigrationWatch, “describes”:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2015979/Freeze-UK-immigration-British-people-says-Ed-Milibands-policy-guru.html Glasman’s latest pronouncements as “over the top. It is simply not practicable”. That’s pretty extraordinary.

With the news that the BSkyB bid has been withdrawn, a pretty amazing week in British politics (with ramifications beyond) seems to have come to a climax. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, who had, frankly, looked pretty hopeless only a few days ago did a superb job on the Tories and the Murdoch empire, and kudos to people like Tom Watson and Chris Bryant who have had the courage to stand up to a threatening and vindictive organization and respect also to the great journalist who really cracked it, Nick Davies. Hard to know what the future holds, because so many of the assumptions recycled by Britain’s lazy commentariat depend on the fixed notion that Britain’s politicians have to accommodate themselves to Rupert Murdoch (that Overton Window thingy just changed its dimensions). Even the erstwhile victims of Stockholm Syndrome, like Peter Mandelson, are now declaring that they were always privately opposed. Well of course! Enjoy for now.

[Colleagues in the United States are used to the phenomenon where academic lectures and reading lists get pored over by Republican politicians and “operatives” keen to undermine academic freedom and redbait intellectuals. But it is sad and shocking that in the UK, Denis MacShane MP, who was elected to Parliament as a Labour Party candidate, has recently indulged in the same kind of thing. The Association of Political Thought has now issued a statement about MacShane’s behaviour and it is to be hoped that he now does the right thing, and issues a full apology to the scholar concerned, Anne Phillips. I was very pleased to be able to add my name to the list of signatories. CB ]

Denis MacShane and the LSE reading list: a statement from the Association of Political Thought

During the debate on Human Trafficking on 18 May 2011 (Hansard Col 94WH) Denis MacShane MP, quoting from the list of essay titles for an academic political theory course at the London School of Economics, accused a distinguished professor, Anne Phillips FBA, of being unable to tell the difference between waged work and prostitution, and of filling the minds of students ‘with poisonous drivel’. Fiona McTaggart MP agreed, accusing Phillips of holding ‘frankly nauseating views on that issue’. 

The ineptitude of this exchange – which is now forever on the official record – is extraordinary. Students are asked why we should distinguish between the sale of one’s labour and the sale or letting of one’s body. That condones neither the latter nor the former. It encourages students to reflect on how to draw an important line between things appropriate and things inappropriate for market exchange.  Asking such questions, far from being ‘nauseating’, is central to public debate about policy and legislation.  If Members of Parliament cannot tell the difference between an essay problem and an assertion of belief how can we trust them to legislate effectively?

Parliamentary debate is a cornerstone of our constitution and political culture. However, using the privilege of a Parliamentary platform ignorantly to traduce the reputation of a teacher of political theory is a dereliction of office.

[signatories below the fold.]
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There’s “a nice piece”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-link-between-climate-change-and-joplin-tornadoes-never/2011/05/23/AFrVC49G_story.html by Bill McKibben in the Washington Post about the rationality of people who repeat the mantra that single extreme weather events can’t be tied to climate change:

bq. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing. It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.

Well read the whole thing, as they say. (See also “the stunning pictures from Joplin at The Big Picture”:http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/05/deadly_tornados_strike_again.html . )

I was starting to feel somewhat neglected. Usually, when I write something of any substance on Crooked Timber, Brad De Long pops up and has a sneer. Recent efforts have been so stretched in relation to what I actually wrote that I have to conclude it’s personal and that Brad is just itching to have a go. Well that’s his problem. Usually, I’d post a short and polite correction in his comments box, explaining where I thought he’d got himself mixed up, but recently Brad has taken to “moderating” my comments, as if I were some kind of troll. Well ho hum. Anyway, “he clearly approves of my latest, or purports to”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/05/chris-bertrams-decisive-self-critique.html , since he (unsurprisingly) approves of my judgement that Leninism doesn’t offer a way forward for the Western left. Well no shit. But he also appears delighted to catch me out in a “contradiction”, because, well, didn’t I write something laudatory about Cuba on the occasion of Castro’s retirement over two years ago? (It seems Brad is keeping track, which does feel a bit creepy.) Well yes I did, though he clearly didn’t understand the point I was making, which was principally that US hate-obsession about Cuba has everything to do with capitalism and not much to do with enthusiasm for human rights. Plus (in the case of Brad and people like him) it signals that you really really disapprove of those to your left. Am I pro-Cuban in the sense that I support the ideology and strategy of the Cuban CP? Well no, of course not. I’m not a Barca fan either, for that matter, but I will be cheering them on in the Champions League final.

UPDATE: I see that DeLong has extended his original post slightly. I respond below the fold:
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I’ve never really been into anything post Desire, but went through a period of intense Dylan fandom in my late teens. That’s faded, but he’s still special and I’ll never understand the haters. Personal favourites: Visions of Johanna and Absolutely Sweet Marie.

Will Hutton had a piece in the Observer a week ago about immigration policy in the course of which he made the following remark:

bq. the European left has to find a more certain voice. It must argue passionately for a good capitalism that will drive growth, employment and living standards by a redoubled commitment to innovation and investment.

I’m not sure who this “European left” is, but, given the piece is by Hutton, I’m thinking party apparatchiks in soi-disant social democratic and “socialist” parties, often educated at ENA or having read PPE at Oxford. I’m not sure how many battalions that “left” has, or even whether we ought to call it left at all. Anyway, what struck me on reading Hutton’s remarks was that calls for the “left” to do anything of the kind are likely to founder on the fact that the only thing that unites the various lefts is hostility to a neoliberal right, and that many of us don’t want the kind of “good capitalism” that he’s offering. Moreover in policy terms, in power, the current constituted by Hutton’s “European left” don’t act all that differently from the neoliberal right anyway. In short, calls like Hutton’s are hopeless because the differences of policy and principle at the heart of the so-called left are now so deep that an alliance is all but unsustainable. That might look like a bad thing, but I’m not so sure. Assuming that what we care about is to change the way the world is, the elite, quasi-neoliberal “left” has a spectacular record of failure since the mid 1970s. This goes for the US as well, where Democratic adminstrations (featuring people such as Larry Summers in key roles) have done little or nothing for ordinary people. Given the failures of that current, there is less reason than ever for the rest of us to line up loyally behind them for fear of getting something worse. Some speculative musings, below the fold:
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Fascinating article in the British paper the Independent about the US anti-immigrant border fence and the fact that in parts of Texas engineering considerations have put 50,000 acres of US territory on the Mexican side of the fence. For those who live in this pocket, life doesn’t sound much fun:

… this corner of south-eastern Texas had its barrier constructed on a levee that follows a straight line from half a mile to two miles north of the river, leaving Ms Taylor’s bungalow – along with the homes and land of dozens of her angry neighbours – marooned on the Mexican side. “My son-in-law likes to say that we live in a gated community,” she says, explaining that to even visit the shops she must pass through a gate watched over by border-patrol officers. “We’re in a sort of no man’s land. I try to laugh, but it’s hard: that fence hasn’t just spoiled our view, it’s spoiled our lives.”

(via @PhillCole on twitter, x-posted from the Territory and Justice blog, which I’m going to be breathing some new life into. )