I am coming to the conclusion that even the most progressive of political parties are stalling.
I know that there are very sound people working away at policy positions and that the left still manage to oppose the worst excesses of the continuing neo-liberal onslaught, but it seems to mean that the problem remains that we are using the current political and economic paradigm as the model to pass our deliberations on.
But that’s just Realpolitik right? People out there expect us to present policy that is familiar, even if they fundamentally disagree with it. We have to do with the reality as we find it. We didn’t create it, what can we do? We can analyse using Marx or gramsci of course and that’s ok, but none of this moves us away from having to deal with the socio-economic-political landscape that has come to dominate the USA and Europe.
Wrong.
It would be much more interesting and, I believe, necessary to start introducing more creativity into policy. I have said before that if policy positions are put out there, it is not beyond the wit and wisdom of all progressive economists to figure out how to finance it.
My dad and people in his generation (the 1940′s-70′s) believed that the future would hold less physical work and more leisure time for the working class – for everyone. When do we ever hear anybody on the left seriously advocate less working hours. Not just a few hours here and there, but a three day week, for example. What about moving arts and leisure up as political priorities. The value of time and space – real quality of life issues. The process of offering a vision that takes us away from wage slavery, ill health, an education system focused on point scoring and not rounded learning and universally available flexible childcare and special needs support requires more than a rebuttal of current policy. It is a fundamentally a much wider project that must be advanced here if we are to avoid a continued slide into misery for the greater number of us.
None of this is in the political agenda in any serious way in my view and it needs to be introduced. A serious debate must begin. It takes brave people to do this in the face of ridicule from some on the left as well as the usual suspects and it is a longer term project for progressives to embark on, but the fact remains that we are not winning on the battlefield – the paradigm – that exists. We have to shift the paradigm.
Photo courtesy of Donncha O’Caoimh @ inphotos.org.
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June 10, 2011 2:00 am
The Limits of Growth was a book title in 1970. The ‘Club of Rome’ that published it stated that the earth’s finite resources could not tolerate infinite Growth i.e. using up timber, cement and rare earths, minerals, fossil fuels, potable water, fish in the oceans and other resources. The Left and the Right slammed this book as a plot. Then in the 1980s we had even John Healy (‘Backbencher’) in the Irish Times endorsing the ‘Work is Dying’ thesis of despondent prophets who said that the expansion of technological innovation (mass production and computerisation) was killing off much work. The logical response was for social engineers (governments, entrepreneurs & trade unions?) to organise the sharing out of many existing jobs (especially to bring more women into the labour market) so that people would find themselves contributing to economic life and doing other things in their increased spare time. The unemployed should be paid to enhance their domestic and creative lives, said one member of the UCD psychology department on national radio (Paddy Walley, I think). In response leftwingers like the Workers Party and Alan Dukes of Fine Gael denounced such a scenario as a debilitating scenario. What happened towards the late 1990s and rught up to 2008 was a full employment and full overproduction celtic tiger boom economy that drew thousands of Eastern European and other migratory workers into Ireland.
So where does social theorising go from here? Are some of the dismissed ideas of twenty and thirty years ago worthy of re-examination? Are the local self-sufficiency economic ideas of FEASTA worth a look-at? The back to the land experiences of the organic farmers, many of whom came from the UK and continental Europe, to settle in marginal areas? Some of these and their camp followers published an Alternative Ireland Directory in the mid-80s. There were also a few ‘kitchen table’ publications circulating, largely through the health food shops, that focused on aspects of a Fourth World economy in depressed town and countryside. But how many hundreds of people in a population of over 4 million actually participated in and benefited from the implementation of such ideas and projects?
My comments respond to Vincent Woods’s observation: “The value of time and space – real quality of life issues. The process of offering a vision that takes us away from wage slavery, ill health, an education system focused on point scoring and not rounded learning and universally available flexible childcare and special needs support requires more than a rebuttal of current policy.” I am simply filling in what I consider to be background history. I hope I am not dampening optimism by recalling real experiences. Are sections of the Mainstream Society willing to consider the ideas and past experiences of the Alternative Society?
June 12, 2011 10:33 pm
While neither Claiming Our Future nor Is Feidir Linn are political parties, they have been trying to do what I think probably amounts to changing the paradigm. (I don’t know where the boundary between a ‘reform’ and a ‘paradigm change’ is.)
At Claiming Our Future’s Galway event in May, one of the four sessions was devoted to discussing Is Feidir Linn’s idea of a maximum income, while CORI (now with the new brand of Social Justice Ireland) has for some time been promoting the idea of a basic income — a universal, unconditional minimum income paid to all adult citizens in the state. (The basic income is an idea that even made it as far as a Green Paper in Ireland.)
In the USA, The Nation asked sixteen writers for 400-word articles on the theme of “Reimagining Capitalism”. (Well, 18 writers actually — three of them collaborated on a single contribution.) In that series, Christopher Mackin (whose day job is the Ray Carey Fellow in Democratic Capitalism at Rutgers University) has written about employee ownership. I think that is an idea that could be a useful paradigm breaker/mover/shifter/changer.
June 13, 2011 10:19 am
@Tomboktu
I agree, the Claiming Our Future idea is refreshing. There are plenty of groups and individuals out there who are trying to be creative. I still don’t see any of the progressive political parties doing anything other than respond to the agenda which has become the accepted/acceptible norm – the paradgigm.
Instead of starting with the premis of a vision and then applying economics to it, we still use the model laid out by the department of finance (or our reading of it) and write policy as best we can to be able to present it to stand scrutiny from the media and our political opponents.
The fear of being accussed as utopian or ignoring economic ‘realities’ stiffles creativity or even a true reflection of what we believe is possible.
I understand why parties do this, but it wasn’t adhering to the enemies agenda that brought whatever progress has been gained so far. Somebody has to lead with the chin here. We’re not winning on this territory.
June 13, 2011 10:21 am
Eh, the W is sticking on my laptop. That was me above and not some bizarre coincidence!