reasons we will look back on New Labour with a bemused but fond sigh #6244

I'm just flicking through [the Department for] Communities and Local Government's document, Communities in Control: Real People, Real Power, and came across this:

How many other governments are there - or have their been - who quote Arisotle in their White Papers? And yet how many other governments are there who view political engagement as a statistical outcome to be improved through joined-up policy interventions?

Take another striking example from a few months ago, which I think contains everything one needs to know about the sadly receding hopes of a well-intentioned project. A previous White Paper suggested that it could become illegal to discriminate against people on the grounds of social class. The ambition is at once vast and humble. Class, that defining trait of 'all hitherto existing societies', to be stamped out through legislation aimed at the incentive structures of the particular bigots who produce it.

New Labour has the political psychology of an infant that has yet to work out the difference between 'world' and 'self'. It removes its hands from its eyes, and believes it has just produced everything it sees. Thus political truths that will endure long after Labour, capitalism or Britain have disappeared are there to be tweaked by an empowerment agenda. Utopian economic dreams can be achieved through changes in employment law. The cart is not dragging the horse, its dragging the forrests from which all carts are produced. 

Look further at the Aristotelian policy agenda. It states:

We believe that the causes of political disengagement, while complex, can be distilled to a dominant factor: a sense of powerlessness on the part of most citizens that their voices are not being heard, their views not listened to, their participation unwelcomed or their activity unrewarded.

Ah, a sense of powerlessness. Not a fact of powerlessness, perhaps induced by the fact that only a small minority of voters actually count - and are courted politically - under the British voting system. New psychological formations must be produced within the zoon politikon, just as they must for the snobbish employer. Hence, "We will give local authorities the power to provide incentives for voting in local government elections, for example by entering voters into a prize draw." Aristotle revolves quietly in his grave.

I wrote here about what it would mean for the Tories to take human agency seriously: they would need to understand the difference between utilitarian and eudaimonic ethics, then embrace the latter, not constantly, but at least occasionally. The good life, for those persuaded by Aristotle, is not something that is produced like wealth, but something that is practiced. We must be prepared to accept that utilitarianism will rule the roost of policy formation - one cannot design public services around the practice of virtue alone - but I think it has burst its banks politically. 

The worry with this empowerment policy agenda is not simply that a calculating, economic  psychology has squeezed out the space for politics and virtue ethics. That is a common complaint, made constantly against New Labour, and which the latter has robustly rebuffed. It is that, on this occasion, the government seems to believe that the distinction between the two can be entirely dissolved. Politics and the struggle for power, that foundational human condition which precedes institutions and people, is now something for the wonks to model and improve. The final frontier of neo-liberalism (characterised in the work of Hayek, Friedman et al as the collapse of political freedoms into economic ones) is crossed once resolutely anti-economic modes of organisation and decision-making, which neo-liberals have historically been least convinced by, become embraced by those with the calculator.

It is one thing to try and mechanistically re-engineer institutions and practices which themselves lie within political history. It can be controversial too, as battles over the 'soul' of the NHS demonstrate. But to level one's policy guns, not just at sociological truths such as class, but at existential ones such as political action is just a bizarre.

Comments

[Paulie]

That's a realy good post Will.

Labour's massive overconfidence in the ability of managers will be the thing it is remembered for - and not particularly fondly (particularly by a public sector that has had it's mouth stuffed with gold on the condition that it lives in a permanent state of outrage, annoyance and insecurity thanks to that same managerial cult).

[Will Davies]

Thanks Paul. Yes, agreed.

Actually, Blair always said he wanted public service reform to be his legacy - "I only wish I'd gone further" - but was waylayed by some overseas business during his second term. Maybe he did get his wish after all

[Laban Tall]

It's certainly a post with good bits in, but if a wonderful future depends on understanding "the difference between utilitarian and eudaimonic ethics" then we're stuffed, because few of us study ancient Greek ethics. I didn't have a clue what he meant until I clicked the helpful link.

"New Labour has the political psychology of an infant that has yet to work out the difference between 'world' and 'self'. It removes its hands from its eyes, and believes it has just produced everything it sees."

I'd add that it thinks that fixing problem X is the same as spending money on problem X or legislating against X - which is why the question "what about X" is met with either "we have put Y million into ...." or "our groundbreaking criminal justice initiative 'X Marks The Spot' - which, may I add, was opposed in the house by the Tories ..."

"The ambition is at once vast and humble" - or totally idiotic. Everybody discriminates to some extent for a host of reasons - class being one.

While there are some useful insights here, I do wish they were written in English - then I read 'about'.

"I'm working on a PhD in the Sociology and Cultural Studies departments at Goldsmiths, London".

Sigh. I long for an Education Secretary (or whatever he's called this week) who will make it illegal to present any paper whose title starts with the word 'Beyond'.

[Will Davies]

Laban Tall - I could apologise for writing the sorts of things I write, but not really sure what the point would be. They're not widely read or especially influential, so if I were you, I'd leave me to get on with it.

[Laban Tall]

It was an interesting post - just a tad hard to penetrate in places. But compared to Mr Hutnyk you're a model of clarity.