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What Price Justice? The Failures of the Left and the Political Economy of the Future
Abstract:
This paper addresses three specific problems. First, it describes and explains the growing
distance between the political left and the working class. Second, it identifies a myth that has
prevented the political left from advancing beyond its present position. This myth, broadly
accepted as fact by mainstream politicians across the political spectrum, suggests that the
state is financially constrained and can no longer afford traditional social goods and welfare
provisions. Third, it suggests the left can move beyond its present pattern of failure and
reconnect to the fragmented multi-ethnic working class by adopting a radical new economic
approach. We offer a brief introduction to this new economic approach towards the end of the
paper.
Simon Winlow and Steve Hall
Contact details:
Simon Winlow
Social Sciences
Lipman Building
Northumbria University
Email: simon.winlow@northumbria.ac.uk
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The Failure of the Left
Let’s face facts: over the course of the past fifty years, the left has moved seamlessly from
defeat to defeat. Together we have somehow managed to manufacture failure when all
objective indicators suggested inevitable success. It makes no sense to argue otherwise. The
partial political and socioeconomic gains made during the modern era have disappeared into
history. Only their shadows remain. In Britain, those born after the neoliberal revolution find
it difficult to imagine the ‘cradle to grave’ welfare provision or the bipartisan political
commitment to full employment that lifted the working class out of the desperate and
widespread poverty of the pre-war era. Since the election of Thatcher in 1979, and perhaps
even earlier than that, the left in Britain has offered the masses precisely nothing.
Many friends and colleagues who resolutely disavow the left’s long history of tactical
blunders and intellectual wrong turns tell us we are too pessimistic. Apparently, the left has
been gathering its strength for the battles that lie ahead. Soon its political parties will make a
decisive breakthrough and at last we will see the beginning of neoliberalism’s end. We cannot
deny that neoliberalism is struggling to sustain itself and that dissatisfaction with the current
order is growing and mutating, sometimes in worrying ways. It is possible that a change in
direction may soon be upon us. However, throughout our entire adult lives we have listened
to similar groups on the left talk of impending breakthroughs and imminent triumph.
However, in the midst of all this, neoliberalism has maintained its course. It is now a veteran
power, older and more strategically mature than the post-war social democratic settlement. Its
resilience in the face of the crises it encountered as it performed its primary task of
transferring wealth and power from the social body to the richest 1% of the population (see
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Picketty, 2014) has allowed it to be a resounding success for the corporate business class it
represents.
While capitalism’s core logic has remained firmly in place throughout its history, its broad
structure has undergone significant changes. These changes have not been forced upon it by
antagonistic political groups. Rather, capitalism has changed when it has been expedient for it
to do so. Capitalism changes so that it might continue, largely by expanding consumption
while it fragments and incorporates potentially antagonistic groups before they harden
themselves into a threatening political alliance. It is a remarkably amorphous politico-
economic system, constantly alert and responsive to changes in social reality. We might
imagine that capitalism will soon collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, or that
the incipient socialism of the young will propel us toward a new and just socioeconomic
system. However, this dream of an easy victory is kept alive only by underestimating
capitalism’s ability to adapt and the left’s ability to alienate ordinary people. It may be true
that a new capitalism will soon be upon us, but capitalism it will be nonetheless, and not
necessarily a fairer and gentler version.
The only spectacular success the post-war left has enjoyed is its construction of a mode of
near total capitulation in the socioeconomic dimension. But even in that the left failed to
achieve true distinction, because for decades all mainstream political parties and social
movements were spectacularly successful in resigning themselves to neoliberalism’s
economic triumph. They sat back as all forms of value were dissolved in the icy waters of
egotistical calculation and the well-being of the financial economy was elevated above the
well-being of the people and the natural environment upon which we depend. Despite the
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capitalist economy’s inherent tendency to disequilibrium, we were told time and again that
sacrifices must be made to restore an enduring equilibrium that had never been experienced.
The traditional socialist principle that the economy should be subordinated to the well-being
of the people and made to work in their best interests fell out of favour. Now, looking back
from our precarious vantage point, this principle appears unworldly and idealistic, out of time
and out of step with the cold economic logic that came to dominant politics as the social
democratic era withered and died. A new range of cultural concerns have arisen on the left
while the traditional commitment to economic justice and inclusion has fallen by the wayside.
Many on the political left in Britain today accept the neoliberal orthodoxy and its negative
outcomes. They seek only to advance the interests of minorities within the system as it stands.
In this paper, we discuss in detail the left’s recent failures. We problematize its liberalisation
and its disregard for the economic dimension of everyday life. We claim that the left’s
liberalisation and disregard for economic justice severed its traditional bond with the multi-
ethnic working class. Drawing upon ideas from heterodox economics, we will then offer a
few suggests of how the left in Britain might reattach itself to the scattered remnants of the
old proletarian class and seek once again to represent its interests. We will conclude by
claiming that the modern monetary system enables future leftist governments to spend in the
public interest and create a full employment, high productivity economy that can finally put
the nightcap on a zombie neoliberalism that is carrying us closer to the precipice with every
passing day.
Disintegration
If the left is to attract popular support capable of moving Britain beyond neoliberalism, it
must renew the narrative of shared interests in a form that is imaginative and clear enough to
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attract ordinary people and transcend the cultural field that since the 1980s has been
fragmented into hostile camps by postmodern liberalism’s regressive ‘identity politics’
(Fraser, 2013a, b; Lilla, 2018; Kuldova, 2018). Such a narrative must be economically literate
yet able to inspire individuals to imagine how everyone’s lives will be improved. This is not
an easy task, but it cannot be shirked.
Since the end of the miners’ strike in 1985, the British left has yet to even mildly
inconvenience the neoliberal edifice and its principal beneficiaries. Neoliberalism’s mobile
business oligarchy has successfully waged an unremitting war against a leaderless and
culturally fragmented working class. The traditional left’s institutions once imposed a degree
of ideological coherence across its broad church. It disseminated a message that was clear
and attractive to anyone who was willing to question the conservative hegemon and listen:
We all, irrespective of our gender, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation, suffer as a result of
elite investors’ greed and the unrestricted movement of capital, but if we stand together we
can displace our collective enemy, relieve suffering and make genuine progress. These
institutions allowed the working class to organise in opposition to the interests of capital,
avoid the totalitarian perversion of Stalinism and succeed in effecting concrete improvements
to the lives of many millions of working-class Britons.
However, many of these institutions have disappeared entirely from the political stage, or
now find themselves in such a decrepit condition they verge on irrelevance. For the moment
at least, functioning leftist institutions capable of harnessing popular dissatisfaction to a
universal political cause are thin on the ground. Instead, the left’s traditional demands for
economic stability and inclusion have been replaced by a cacophony of identitarian bickering,
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which now pervades academia, mass media and social media. As liberal-postmodernist
identitarianism convinces the left’s self-appointed elite that they are about to uproot the
imaginary cultural power structure, its excesses alienate the electoral majority needed to
uproot the actual corporate power structure. While some on the left still hope to truncate the
economic inequality intrinsic to neoliberalism, they accept the dominance of the business
class and ignore the traditional project of class solidarity. Indeed, many mock this project as
an anachronism as they throw themselves headlong into capitalism’s relentless competitive
struggle in the hope of advancing the specific interests of their chosen micro-community. For
them, this is now the sole meaning of ‘politics’, the only game in town.
It is now vital that we are brave enough to acknowledge the depressing truth of our situation.
It’s clear that throughout the neoliberal age the working class has been in full retreat. The
small improvements in identitarian ‘tolerance’ we have seen on the cultural field – which
translate politically as tactical concessions made by neoliberalism to improve its ‘progressive’
image and secure its continuity (see Fraser, 2013a, b) – are overshadowed by the horrors that
have unfolded on the economic field. Stable and secure industrial jobs have disappeared, to
be replaced by highly exploitative, short-term and often quite demeaning jobs in the service
sector (see Cederstrom and Fleming, 2012; Lloyd, 2012, 2013). Technology threatens an
increasing number of jobs in all sectors of the economy (Yang, 2018). Many of the
entitlements won during the post-war era by trade unions and legally enacted by the left’s
main political parties have been withdrawn, and many of the communities that grew in the
shadow of modern industries have broken apart and no longer offer the support and comfort
once taken for granted. We can deny all of this – and many of our colleagues on the left often
do precisely that – but the facts are there for all to see. In the absence of true opposition, the
global business oligarchy has now seized an almost incomprehensible proportion of global
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wealth (see Hope, 2018). The state, hamstrung by its continued devotion to market ideology
and regularly demonised by a left infected with libertarianism, continues to imagine itself
incapable of regulating the global oligarchs. The gap between rich and poor is now as wide as
it was during the brutal years of industrial restructuring at the beginning of the capitalist
project (Picketty, 2014). We are living through an uncanny postmodern variant of the gilded
age. Crisis stacks up on top of crisis. In Britain last year well over one million people found
themselves hungry and reliant on food banks (Trussell Trust, 2018). A country with the sixth-
largest economy in the world, and with over 134 billionaires and 191,000 millionaires in
London alone (see Gillet, 2017; ITV.com, 2015), now displays a quite staggering breadth of
inequality. The obscene wealth of the transient absentee elite sits alongside the desperate
poverty of the socially immobile post-proletariat (see Atkinson, 2017). Where, we might ask,
are the political representatives of the struggling and divided masses? Why has there yet to be
a concerted attempt to transform this depressing reality? What happened to those who
promised to rescue the working class from capitalism’s relentless competition, and lead them
into a peaceful future free from insecurity, want and exploitation?
In fact, the state we’re in is a good deal worse than we have hitherto suggested (see Winlow
and Hall 2013). The metaphor ‘dark storm clouds gathering on the horizon’ is a cliché so apt
we can revive it without embarrassment. Financial instability, technological replacement of
workers, climate change, resource depletion, mass migration and the rise of ethnocentric
nationalism further erode modernity’s achievements and cast doubt on the continuity of
liberal democracy as a doxic way of life (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018; Winlow et al, 2018).
The neoliberal business class will continue to use the supine mass media to convince us that
we cannot live without their acumen and dynamism. The nationalist right is growing in
strength as it feeds on the abundant anxiety and anger that permeates areas of permanent
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recession in the cities and the provinces (Goodhart, 2017). Already they are whipping up
ethnic hatred and scapegoating minorities, but while they claim to be defending the nation
from instrumental immigrants and extra-national corruption they still promote the socially
destructive neoliberal market economy. As the nationalist right prosper the hapless
postmodern liberal left aid their cause by promoting toxic identitarian wars and alienating
huge swathes of everyday voters (see Winlow et al, 2017).
Only a renewed left can rise to the meet this gargantuan challenge. However, the current
political left is in absolute disarray. The left’s losing streak throughout the neoliberal era
cannot be attributed solely to the ideological power and guile of a powerful, skilled and
dedicated adversary. Throughout Europe and the USA, the left’s mainstream political parties
enacted policies that immiserated large sections of the multi-ethnic working class and
enriched the global oligarchy. In Britain, the Labour Party, established to advance the
interests of all working people, capitulated to a regressive market fundamentalism that
destroyed traditional industries, impoverished and fragmented the working class, and freed
the global business class from regulation. In doing so the party gradually alienated its
grassroots supporters. Since the election of Neil Kinnock in 1983 the Labour Party has
accepted Thatcher’s victory in the economic argument. It restricted itself to the task of
applying neoliberal principles to grow the national economy in the unrealistic hope that
somehow at some point this would serve the interests of all. Labour politicians followed
Hayek in assuming that all state involvement in the economy is counterproductive, and
Friedman in assuming that the fundamental objective of economic policy should be to cut
state spending, reduce taxation and balance the budget. Their commitment to neoliberal
economic logic matched that of their counterparts in the Conservative Party. The Democratic
Party in the USA underwent a similar reorientation, as did the Socialist Party in France. All
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parties justified their capitulation by claiming that it would free the people from the
dependencies of the past and ensure progress and prosperity. We can see quite clearly that
couching this grim economic programme in the narrative terms of freedom and progress
aligned it rather nicely with progressive sociocultural policies around gender, ethnicity and
sexuality. Of course, we now know that neoliberalism’s adoption of the latter with a
spectacular display of mass-mediated piety, enthusiasm and razzamatazz helped to justify the
former, but perhaps more importantly it was able to do this without inconveniencing itself.
Adopting identity politics cost neoliberalism absolutely nothing in the dimension of political
economy, but it profited greatly in the cultural realm as it promoted itself as the champion of
minorities and the slayer of regressive tradition’s monstrous dragon. Of course, not everyone
fell for this, but it convinced enough to remain electorally successful and hold its position as
the only game in town.
The neoliberal left told everyone that they should never feel ashamed about competing
aggressively for upward social mobility. Only an inadequate work ethic would prevent the
individual from rising. The market would give people new technologies, drive new
efficiencies and, in time, the lifestyles of all would improve. Neoliberalism’s populist
ideological project was thus based on a lie by association and a half-truth, both carefully
constructed and broadly disseminated; first, surely politicians so keenly involved in
progressive cultural policies must also be involved in progressive economic policies; and
second, these policies would improve the lives of the whole population. This ideological
project succeeded brilliantly by being so near to the truth yet so far.
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Neoliberalism has already achieved most of what it set out to achieve. Principally, it has seen
off organised mass labour and expanded profit-making opportunities for bankers and
investors. It will not simply disintegrate at any moment now because increasing numbers of
young, middle-class voters – often mired in personal debt, unable to find a satisfying and
reasonably remunerated job and staring downward social mobility in the face – are attracted
to the old-school, social democratic politics of Jeremy Corbyn. Neither will it collapse
because academic leftists continue to issue their perennial calls for ‘social justice’ while
exposing in ever more graphic detail the genuine harms neoliberalism inflicts on individuals,
societies, culture and the environment. To win the support of ordinary men and women who
have suffered greatly during the neoliberal era and are now, regrettably, flocking to populist
parties on the political right (Winlow et al, 2017, 2018; Goodhart, 2017; Hochschild, 2017),
the left must undergo a fundamental transformation. Many voters who have not been exposed
to the ‘liberalising’ effects of doctrinal higher education and have no interest in the claims to
moral and cultural superiority relentlessly issued by the established liberal intelligentsia (see
Hedges, 2011) have drifted away from the Labour Party. Support has declined significantly in
many of the constituencies devastated by deindustrialisation and disinvestment (see for
example Goodwin and Heath, 2016; Ford and Goodwin, 2015). Many working-class voters
believe the political left is composed of elitist middle-class liberals who look down their
noses at the working class and find many of their cultural traits and everyday concerns
reactionary and distasteful (see Winlow et al, 2017). For many, the left’s principal concerns
appear to be cultural tolerance and political correctness. In politics, mass media and
academia, the left’s traditional concern with the traumas that underemployment and poverty
have visited upon the communities of the old proletariat have been overshadowed by the
largely middle-class politics of identity. For ordinary people, the left is more concerned with
ensuring the free movement of people across borders than providing reasonably stable and
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remunerated employment; more concerned with increasing the number of women and ethnic
minorities on the boards of large corporations than curtailing the power of those corporations;
more concerned with securing equal pay for female broadcasters than boosting public
investment to reduce inequality, anxiety and despair. This is the crux of the matter: For many
ordinary people today, not only has the left ceased to represent them and their interests, it
does not even appear regretful, embarrassed or apologetic about it. Rather, the left is firmly
aligned with a neoliberal social, political and economic order that has systematically ignored
gradual immiseration and increasing desperation. Twenty years of qualitative research in
Britain’s old industrial regions (see for example Winlow, 2001; Winlow and Hall, 2006; Hall
et al, 2008; Winlow et al, 2018) has for us made it abundantly clear that if the left is to move
beyond the injustices of the present and create a new and inclusive economic system, it must
fight hard to forge new links with the post-industrial working class. It must stop focusing
solely upon minorities and first and foremost seek to represent and improve the lives of all
those in insecure socioeconomic positions. If the left cannot do this, if it refuses to construct
an appealing economic narrative and leaves ordinary people feeling forgotten and
unrepresented, then many will continue to drift to the far right (see Winlow et al, 2017, 2018).
The political battles of the future will hinge on this issue: who will capture the hearts of an
increasingly insecure, angry and animated working class? If the left fails, catastrophe awaits.
We are all zombies now
Happy to occupy the moral high ground and indulge themselves in a constant iconoclastic
critique of every cultural meaning, practice or value they deem obsolete or regressive, today’s
left has no intention of actually taking power and using it to make a better world (see
Holloway, 2010). Deracinating cultural history, virtue-signalling, anti-authoritarian posturing,
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calling out stigmatising media discourses and removing discriminatory practices represent the
limit of their ambitions. These goals vary widely in their laudability, but too often they appear
as a loose set of cultural objectives that has replaced the traditional commitment to economic
inclusion and equality. Many leftist academics now seem disinterested in the evolution of
capitalism and the present state of global political economy. They have lost interest in the
grubby business of production, consumption and exchange at the very time when its
tumultuous upheavals are causing the most severe damage. When pressed to comment on
economic matters, they tend to argue that the state must combat tax avoidance to increase its
revenues. These tax revenues, they claim, should be used to bolster our ailing welfare state
and then perhaps boost employment in ‘green’ industries. As we will see in the pages ahead,
such strategies are ill-informed, out of date and totally inadequate.
The economic policies of culturally-fixated leftist political parties have not kept pace with the
rapidly evolving global economy, and neither have they consulted the best new academic
theories and research produced in economics and social sciences. Even the most radical leftist
parties in Europe tend to go no further than the ‘tax and spend’ limit imposed by social
democrats in the sixties and seventies. This must be transcended. Policy tools are available
that can assist us to build a post-neoliberal order in which the injustices of the present are
entirely absent and the economy functions to address the needs of the people. We will return
to this vital issue in a moment.
The financial crisis in 2008 signalled the end of a specific economic stage of neoliberalism.
The years of using quite ruthless national and supranational institutions to restructure the
world as a playground for free markets and speculators without any grave systemic setbacks
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were at an end. For a moment history gestured that it might reengage its dialectic and move in
a different direction (see Winlow et al, 2015). However, the left beyond Blairism – fixated on
minority cultural issues, politically inept, unpopular and largely economically illiterate – was
unable to take advantage of capitalism’s weakened condition. The left simply joined everyone
else in expressing disgust at the powerful financial sector’s greedy denizens, at the same time
playing into the bankers’ hands by stressing the argument that taxes pay for public spending
and unthinkingly confirming their claim that the country needs them more than any other
industry. Even the Conservative Party, by then totally dedicated to advancing the interests of
neoliberalism’s financial elite, was capable of sensing the popular mood and strategically
engaging in a bit of measured banker-bashing. However, this effusive moral critique from
across the political spectrum meant absolutely nothing. The neoliberal right is impervious to
such attacks no matter where they come from. The financialised global market cannot be
shamed, nor can it be rehabilitated through its agents. It can only be controlled or replaced.
What was needed was a strident structural critique capable of drawing the attention of
ordinary men and women to the operational and consequential realities of neoliberal
capitalism’s market dogma. The financialised market itself was at fault, and unless significant
regulations were enacted by states such crises would happen again and again. However, the
mainstream left refused to identify the market as the fundamental cause of the crisis. Many
refused to talk about capitalism altogether. The left’s political elite quite clearly still had faith
in the market. They could look past the widespread suffering caused by the crash to a near
future in which the market once again enhanced our prosperity and drove forward our
consumer lifestyles. Correction and redemption, as always, are just around the corner.
Ultimately, there was no intellectual cohesion amongst the left because none of its leading
lights feel compelled to propose a convincing alternative economic model to the public. The
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need for that has passed. Instead, the financial market was permitted to limp onwards to the
next stage of its development. Put simply, dogmatic neoliberalism strategically dispensed
with its ideological garb and presented itself as pure economic pragmatism. Most mainstream
economists were sure that the free market had proven itself to be the best means of creating
employment and boosting lifestyles. Of course, they were sure of the free market’s unrivalled
efficiency and organisational capacity because during their philo-Hayekian disciplinary
socialisation this point had been stressed repeatedly, and many of their jobs depended upon
promulgating neoliberal myths that were themselves built upon the most reductive and
simplistic accounts of human subjectivity and decision-making. The elements of
Keynesianism that remained active in the mix were those advanced by neo-Keynesians, who
were, by and large, interested in diluting Keynes’s original work and aligning it with
neoclassical first principles, favouring wage flexibility and the gig economy over minimum
wage laws and trade union bargaining. Economists, especially those steering the policies of
the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, The European Central Bank and the World
Trade Organisation, stated clearly in the months after the crisis that they were willing to use
any tool that might function to restore order. For a while that seemed true, but once the
economic power of the state had been used to stabilise the financial economy, all key
financial institutions returned to their focus on market solutions. The financial crisis had
ensured that neoliberalism’s principal protagonists would no longer talk openly and
enthusiastically about the mysterious wonders of markets, but that no longer mattered. An
increased measure of coyness did not prevent the logic of the market continuing to inform
their decisions and act as the object of their unconscious commitments. If the financial crisis
of 2008 killed neoliberalism, its believers refused to accept its death. Its corpse was quickly
reanimated with a massive dose of new money created by central banks – euphemistically
renamed ‘quantitative easing’ to calm the fears of hyper-inflation that, ironically,
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neoliberalism had always stoked up to manipulate populations – and it stumbled forwards as
a zombie to wreak yet further devastation.
On the political field, zombified neoliberalism’s principal move was the reinforcement of the
Friedmanite injunction to cut state spending. A perfect justification was found: the nation
could no longer afford it. Efficiently burying the fact that after the 2008 crisis the UK’s
central bank created almost a trillion pounds of new currency to bail out banks – it was not
injected into the real economy and therefore inflated only the bond markets in the financial
economy – the neoliberal economists and politicians declared that the country was broke. The
sprawling bureaucracies of the state were expensive and inefficient therefore it made no sense
to spend hard-up taxpayers’ money on them. Everything that could be cut had to be cut.
Neoliberal dogma pushed western populations into the vortex of austerity (see Kelton, 2015).
The personal tragedies caused by austerity, ranging from food banks and riots to increased
rates of suicide and mental ill-health, are legion and well-documented (Blythe, 2015,
Mendoza, 2015; Lansley and Mack, 2015). However, the political tragedy is that the left was
not prepared to take the historic opportunity presented by the 2008 financial crisis. The
inherent contradictions of the neoliberal economic model had been laid bare. The media was
for a time abuzz with stories of corporate malfeasance, and the mindboggling wealth and
greed of the global banking elite inspired considerable popular anger. The long-standing
neoliberal drive to deregulate the financial sector had enabled it to construct new financial
instruments derived from other assets – hence the ‘derivatives’ market – and sell them to the
global investment class. In the run-up to 2008 even cautious investors were distracted from
indications of impending structural problems in the financial markets by the promise of high
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returns. When the market did crash, the vast majority of those who had for many years
profited so handsomely from the vagaries of financial markets appeared to walk away
entirely unscathed. The punishments dished out by the state to those who had played a role in
the catastrophe were shockingly weak. It was ordinary men and women who earn their
incomes and pay tax in the real economy who bore the brunt of the catastrophe, and they bear
it still. In the weeks following the crash, the state created around £850billion of new money
‘ex nihilo’ to bail out banks judged ‘too big to fail’ (see Grice, 2009). £850billion. It is a sum
to take the breath away.
Throughout most of the larger industrialised states of the global north, the regressive and
counterproductive politics of austerity followed the 2008 crash. The answer to a problem
caused by the speculative excesses of the deregulated free market was to allow the market
more room to manoeuvre by ensuring the gradual withdrawal of the state and its welfare
systems. There were, of course, notable changes. In the wake of a historic contraction of the
financial market, during which there really was a genuine threat that cash machines would be
turned off and a financial crisis would precipitate a deep and destructive social crisis (see
Darling, 2012), much of the rhetoric about the self-correcting efficiency of markets would
have to be wound down. The market would have to be nurtured back to life by a brief but
intense burst of state intervention. However, the state intervention that followed the 2008
crisis was unusual because it was geared to resuscitating the deregulated financial market
rather than creating full and stable employment or forcing the market to reel in its most
predatory and destabilising practices. Instead, new money was created to recapitalise the
banking system. Key politicians made it abundantly clear that the state would do everything
in its power to return the market to an even keel. Sure, people were suffering and consumer
lifestyles across the west were in rapid descent, but the most important thing was to reassure
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capital that it would see a return on investments. Once the market had stabilised and
investment capital had been coaxed from off-shore tax havens, GDP would return to growth,
tax returns would increase, business leaders would be happy, and politicians would be able to
tell voters that they had fought hard to return the national economy to growth and done so in
the interests of all. This time the financial market speculators would handle their volatile
derivatives with more care.
One could be forgiven for assuming that the reaction to this disappointing result would be an
animated attempt by the left to convince the public that it had on its drawing board at least an
adumbrated sketch of an alternative direction. On the contrary, even today, ten years after the
crisis, the senior politicians in the Labour Party – the official opposition, no less – are bereft
of alternative economic ideas. Not only that, but these politicians and their advisors seem
resistant to the idea that alternative ideas should even be on the agenda.
You get what you pay for
We have already noted that identity politics and virtue-signalling are cheap, a safe political
substitute for the economic justice that would cost the business class the earth – quite
literally, because they own most of it (see Pearce, 2012). Most politicians are now convinced
that no matter what we decide to do it must be done on the cheap. The tacit suspicion
amongst the business class – who are perhaps already unconsciously adjusting to ecological
limits – that economies can no longer keep on growing in the sectors that produce traditional
high returns is now fuelling new legal and illegal entrepreneurial schemes in the digital
economy (Hall and Antonopoulos 2016). For those who rely on their labour rather than rent-
seeking or big business profits for their living, the future looks more uncertain than ever.
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Without a substantive leftist politics to alleviate that uncertainty and the insecurity that is
bound to accompany it, the future of politics looks bleaker than ever.
Neoliberalism can continue to deliver cheap imaginings of cultural justice in its competitive
circuits for the foreseeable future, playing musical chairs with those amongst the identitarian
groups who manage to keep a fingerhold on the economy as the economically discarded sink
further down. But in this age of incorporation, where will the impetus for a substantive form
of social justice come from? DeValve et al. (2018) speak of love as the basis of justice. At
least, as a principle, love is far more substantive than tolerance, a concept that essentially
means putting up with things you don’t much care for (see Badiou, 2013). So many of our
songs are about love. The regularity with which we keep on singing about it would suggest
that in its personal romantic form it is one of our timeless primal yearnings. Tolerance pales
by comparison; we could hazard a guess that ‘I will Always Tolerate You’ would not have
been a hit for Whitney Houston. But in their otherwise interesting text Devalve et al. perform
the standard classical liberal manoeuvre of excluding the economy as a field where love can
operate with its unmatched heroic, enriching and civilizing outcomes. Playing into classical
liberalism’s hands like this leads us to an impoverished destination where affective public
virtues are not intrinsic to a way of life, but mere fleeting consequences of private vices
allowed their head and organised by the market. Exempting the economy as a distinct sphere
reproduces the pseudo-pacification process, which has displaced and utilised the finer forms
of our affective being and our culture as insulation rather than drive and purpose (Hall, 2012).
The economy is too vital and basic to be an exception. If love in the broader unconditional,
selfless and social form of agape cannot be extended to the economy, talking about it too
much seems to be evasive and hypocritical; too long spent talking about abstract ideals as
economic reality becomes more unstable and unjust will induce in the public imagination
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nothing more than suspicion, cynicism and nihilism. The left will continue to be deservedly
mocked and outmanoeuvred by the regressive and brutal but more transparent and sincere far
right.
The inability to extend agape beyond personal relationships and the tribal micro-community
has been one of humanity’s timeless frustrations (Eagleton, 2008). Early distributive efforts in
the chaotic military tribalism of mediaeval Europe failed, as the personal ambition fuelled by
rapidly expanding opportunities in the nascent market economy burst through fragile ethical
codes (Hall 2012). As far as capitalist investors were concerned, long-term economic projects
that sustained communities and provided a degree of security were always an inconvenience;
they were financed and maintained only where necessary for production and profit (Hall and
Winlow 2003). To cut a very long story short, at this point in neoliberalism’s global project –
and it was indeed a conscious, intentional project and not a naturally evolved form (see
Slobodian, 2018) – the system’s logic has compelled us to settle on the socioeconomic
principles of short-term profitability and redistributive taxes to pay for social infrastructure
and other complex human needs. This makes us dependent on wealth creators in a globally
financed system, which, in a partially deindustrialised British economy kept alive by a
service industry struggling against austerity, disproportionately increases dependency on the
financial system and its taxes. The left can preach love and justice, and indeed work hard to
ensure that these ideals are practiced as much as possible in specific institutional settings such
as criminal justice or healthcare, but whether such practices can be normalised in the
economic engine-room, where competition is relentlessly intensified to meet demand with
supply at the right price, is another matter.
20
Where some have prospered and expanded their parameters of personal freedom, others now
live in the wreckage of neoliberal economics (Lansley and Mack, 2015, Seabrook, 2015). The
left’s political abandonment of the economic base in favour of culture and identity has
ensured that robust and effective opposition no longer exists where it is needed. Yet cultural
analysis is a sharp tool that could, if combined with increased economic literacy, cut through
the mysticism that sustains neoclassical economics’ hegemon. For instance, to get straight to
the heart of the matter, the foundational myths that sustain neoliberalism as the dominant
economic form are based on cultivated misunderstandings of concepts such as money, hyper-
inflation, deficits and so on. Let’s take money as our primary example here. In large-scale
ancient economies, money was never created as an exchangeable representation or store of
value of the wealth already created by production and trade. No ‘barter economies’ existed –
bartering was reserved for deals with enemies or non-monetised interpersonal micro-
interactions. The agents of ancient economies noticed that economies that freely issued credit
experienced rapid growth, because of the simple principle that existing goods could be traded
for the promise of future labour. Money was thus issued as credit, based on a calculated risk
of future economic expansion while its value was stabilised by official nomination as sole
currency for payment of government money obligations – fees, fines, and taxes.
Along with the stability of prices, the stability of currency is vital to economic health. At
various points across history, money, which functions simply as a record of debits and credits,
has been wrongly conflated with the physical medium in which these IOUs were recorded.
Since the USA abandoned the gold standard in 1971, most currencies around the world are
issued by fiat. Some governments spend and tax in their own fiat currencies, others in foreign
fiat currencies. The former either allow their currencies to float freely or adopt a fixed
exchange rate. Cash, reserves and treasuries constitute the net money supply, which is used
21
by the banking sector to facilitate settlement payments. Banks are simply private companies
franchised by states – initially because of their knowledge of specific local economic
conditions and opportunities for growth – to create another layer of money through the
issuance of bank credit. This credit should be used first and foremost to grow the real
economy, but today lending primarily fuels the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real
Estate), which is wealth extractive, not wealth creative. This fragile house of cards sits on the
back of existing material assets and social infrastructure. Vast profits and payment of
substantial taxes (many of which are still evaded or avoided) allow the financial sector to
propagate the myth that we are all dependent on its activities.
This way the elite investment class exert disproportionate control over the issuance of money,
insisting that credit is created only where it guarantees high returns rather than where it grows
sustainable economies reactive to human needs. Today’s restricted issue of money by treasury
departments for public spending or by central and commercial banks for real economic
growth – otherwise known as austerity – is justified by ideological myths of hyper-inflation
or the threat of deficits immiserating our children’s future. In fact, over-production of money
is a consequence of hyper-inflation, not the cause. It is triggered by seismic events such as the
loss of a war, a collapse in output, brazen corruption, political instability, or removing a peg
to a stronger currency. The causal relation between inflation and money growth in stable,
productive countries is weak if not absent, a fact that flies in the face of Milton Friedman’s
claim that inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon (see De Grauwe and Polan, 2005).
The point is that democratic control over the issue of money could shift the balance away
from the global finance industry by insisting on more investment in long-term projects, new
services, new production centres and new markets that meet social needs, provide real
benefits for current and future generations, and comport with ecological sustainability.
22
Demand for goods and services and the ability to use the currency to pay taxes will sustain its
extrinsic value, therefore it can be issued to meet all demands and employ all labour up to a
society’s productive limit without causing runaway inflation. Of course, this sort of economic
model is not simple to operate and there are many problems to debate. For instance, in a
globally dependent economy, currency devaluation could impact badly on a nation’s ability to
import materials for production, and centralising such mighty economic power in the hands
of national governments and encouraging import substitution could lend support to
ethnocentric nationalism (see Mitchell and Fazi, 2017). Our point, however, is that the vital
debate on the relationship between new economic models and their potential impacts on
societies, cultures and subjectivities is virtually absent throughout academia – even in
economics departments (Earle et al. 2017) – mass media and politics.
For us, a debate of such vital importance must become central and ubiquitous. Given the
abject failure of command production economies in the past, such as the Soviet Union’s
Gosplan system, and neoliberalism’s slow-motion catastrophe (Dupuy, 2013), a new
economic model should be the first item on the left’s agenda. There is no space here to
discuss the whole spectrum of heterodox economics in detail, but, briefly, to whet the
appetite, despite censorship by the dominant neoclassical hegemon in economic thought and
little support from the culturally-fixated left, contenders are taking shape in various dark
rooms. Firstly, advocates of cryptocurrencies argue that they should replace fiat and credit
money. These new digital ‘commodities’ operate outside of politics and bypass big investors.
The hard limit set on these digital coins forces participants to ‘mine’ them as if they were
gold, which, advocates say, should sustain their value and force participants to engage in
productive and trading activities. However, many progressive economists see this as the least
attractive solution. The value of Bitcoin, for instance, has fluctuated wildly. The basic
23
principle behind the cryptocurrency increases cynicism and suspicion of human institutions
while it bolsters blind faith in market participants, what Keynes described as Animal Spirits
(see Akerlof and Shiller, 2010). Thus far the cryptocurrency scene has become riddled with
criminals’ ‘dirty money’ and a crypto-oligarchy has rapidly arisen from the winners who
converted their digital currency back into fiat currency, which they claim to loathe. The
statement that libertarian deregulation is the road to justice has up to now sounded rather
empty.
A revived perspective based on localism and alternative money is rooted in the principle that
local demands should be serviced by local complementary currencies and production, thus
energising local economies, especially those abandoned by big finance. However, while the
belief that large-scale national money issue and international bank credit disempowers and
alienates communities rings true, localism is often accused of merely tinkering at the edges.
Economically depressed regions would be very difficult to revive because large corporations
would still control all the major markets. A dual money economy would not bring fiat money,
the finance industry or the major economic sectors under democratic control – e.g. energy or
transport – even though this would be essential for social justice and ecological sustainability.
Reform of the financial system would still present major problems. Softline bank reformers
argue for regulation, while hardliners argue for the withdrawal of banks’ entitlement to create
money. This banking reform movement spans the political spectrum and can encourage points
of agreement between otherwise hostile political enemies. The British ‘Positive Money’
movement, for instance, argues that banks should be bypassed and left to wither on the vine
as citizens are allowed to open accounts at a central bank in a democratic, accountable and
24
transparent sovereign money system. This would accommodate localism yet still wrest
control from the rentier and financier class and allow lending for low-interest, long-term
projects.
While the Positive Money movement furnishes us with many useful insights (see for example
Jackson and Dyson, 2013), Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which is endorsed by some
Positive Money advocates, offers a deeper and broader approach that could still be combined
with local democratic control. For MMT advocates (see for example Mitchell and Wray,
2016), money is not created through production and trade – the ‘veil over barter’ myth
propagated by advocates of neoclassical microeconomics who simply erase money from their
models except as the bogeyman that causes inflation (see Keen, 2017) – but issued as
sovereign currency by governments. Like it or not, governments are at the centre of the risk
calculations that organise all credit-based economies. The primary function of taxation is to
create demand for the currency, i.e. to have people willing to labour for it and invest in it.
Therefore, government spending is not limited by tax revenues, and fiscal deficits allow the
non-governmental private sector to net save in the government’s currency. Governments
cannot run out of their own sovereign money, but they are limited by land, materials, labour,
and knowledge. If all currency were to be issued for expanding production and services rather
than speculation, quantitative easing, share-buy-backs and so on, the increased productive
capacity would constantly provide the currency issuer with more breathing (fiscal) space and
inflation would remain low. Furthermore, as the Georgists point out, as long as government
taxes land values (the rent of location), public and private investments would not be pocketed
by rent-seekers as windfall gains.
25
To cut a very long story short, the unemployment problem can be quite easily solved. The
sociological consequences would be enormous. The application of the MMT model could
rescue abandoned communities, and fund essential public services and new sustainable green
sectors of the economy. A job guarantee programme (see for example Mitchell, 2019),
running alongside a welfare system for those unable to work, would not only eliminate
unemployment but boost local services in ways that localism could not. It would also raise
the wages bar to higher levels, with which private companies would be forced to compete. Of
course, there are many problems to discuss, but the point we are making here is that
something as vital as an epochal change in the economic model we use to organise our social
lives is at present not even on the left’s agenda, because it has been locked out of the room by
a combination of destructive neoclassical economics and fetishized struggles across
intersections of identitarian social power within the system as it stands. This new
macroeconomic thinking, imaginative but also grounded and knowledgeable, has been
marginalised and denied the space it needs to develop into a coherent political programme
that can be taken to the people. A job guarantee programme addresses at root the huge
practical problems ordinary people face in providing for themselves and their families. The
ideas we have touched on briefly here – and, we must stress, we offer here only a very
introductory and truncated account of a growing body of work that demands detailed
attention – if they were to be adopted as policy and popularised, offer leftist political parties
an opportunity to reconnect with ordinary people in ways that their current ‘tax and spend’
economic policies and iconoclastic cultural policies do not.
Struggles against discrimination on cultural grounds always lead to pleas for economic
inclusion, but in the current neoliberal system the economic inclusion of all citizens is simply
impossible. If anything, neoliberalism’s ability to provide well-remunerated and secure
26
employment or business opportunities for all has been rapidly diminishing for some time and
shows no signs of improving (Yang, 2018). The existence of such obdurate, parlous and
deteriorating underlying socioeconomic conditions demands that we defer talking about
‘social justice’ until we are able to construct the fundamental building blocks of an economic
system able to accommodate it.
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