Tuesday 8 September 2009

Lib Dems: lost on the ideological map?

Richard Grayson has written to ask why I omitted to mention the Lib Dems in the piece I wrote in this week's New Statesman on the ideological map of the left (originally here at Next Left). There is, in fact, no good reason for this omission. So let me try to put it right. Where do the Lib Dems stand in relation to the ideological currents and perspectives currently shaping discussion in and around the left? I invite any Lib Dem readers to comment and tell me where I am going wrong.

The Lib Dems themselves contain a number of currents, of course, and its a while since I followed goings on in the party closely. But there seems to be a clear 'left' grouping around Social Liberal Forum, associated with those responsible for the edited volume Reinventing the State. There is a clear 'right' grouping which produced the Orange Book and a follow up, Britain After Blair. The boundaries between the two are not very firm, however. There is a clear tendency for members of the one group to invite those associated with the other to contribute to their volumes. In essence, the latter have sought to reassert 'economic liberalism' as a component of liberal policy thinking, but without wanting to dismiss 'social liberalism'. The former have sought to reemphasise the 'social' dimension of 'social liberalism'.

In terms of the categories I used in the New Statesman/Next Left article, the Orange Bookers strike me (and, I think, Richard Grayson) as very close to centre republicanism. Like the Labour centre republicans (James Purnell, Phil Collins), they carry a torch for choice and contestability in the public services. They do not identify progressive politics with high rates of income tax. They readily adopt a language in which the concept of 'power', and its redistribution, is central. Consider, for example, this statement:

'Liberalism is all about power - putting power into everybody's hands. Dispersing it, breaking up monopolies and concentrations of power that distort society, warping chances for millions. Only by dispersing power in our politics and in our economy can we ensure that every person has the opportunity to make the most of themselves and to change our world for the better. Liberals believe that's the route to progress because we believe in the capacity of individuals. The raucous, unpredictable potential of people to do the right thing for themselves, their families, their communities - as long as they're empowered and entrusted to do so.'

Who said it? Richard Reeves? Phil Collins? James Purnell? (Well, no, he wouldn't use the word 'liberalism', though he uses the word 'power' a lot.) It is in fact Nick Clegg, speaking to the ippr in February of this year.

For their part, the SLF look to be closer to the left communitarian or left republican positions set out in the New Statesman/Next Left article. (This is Richard Grayson's view too.) They share with the left communitarians, for example, a scepticism about market mechanisms in the public services. They share with the left republicans a concern to restructure the state, with the emphasis on 'voice' rather than 'choice'.

There is one area, however, where both Lib Dem groups strike me as very conservative. In contrast to many of the currents I discuss in the article, neither group has thus far paid very much attention to new policy ideas for spreading asset ownership. They are what we might term ownership conservatives.

This is reflected in, and partly explained by, the fact that the Lib Dems decided early on to call for the abolition of the Child Trust Fund. This stance has always lacked a plausible rationale (see my previous post). And it has always been odd given the Liberals' own long and venerable tradition of support for 'ownership for all'. Of course, the Child Trust Fund is not a perfect policy, and those committed to the goal of 'ownership for all' might have in mind policies that will do an even better job of ensuring that all citizens have some capital of their own. But the Lib Dems - whether SLFers or Orange Bookers - have not come up with any significant proposals in this area.

And when one looks at the trajectory of party policy over the past fifteen or so years, there is a clear gradual loss of radicalism on ownership issues. One of the basic demands of the old Liberal Party was for schemes to promote co-ownership and co-determination in industry. In 1992 the Lib Dems fought the general election on the traditional Liberal platform of introducing workers' participation in firms' decision-making. In 1997, this commitment was weakened to one of 'participation and consultation'. In 2001, the notion of consultation replaced that of participation. And in 2005? For the first time since the 1920s, if not before, the Liberals fought an election on a manifesto which contained no commitment whatsoever to introduce or promote co-ownership or co-determination.

In part, this might be explained by wider changes in the political landscape. For the bulk of the twentieth century, politics was shaped by the confrontation between capitalism and socialism. The Liberals needed to offer something distinctive against this background, and ideas like co-ownership and 'ownership for all' were part of the distinctively liberal vision they offered. But post-1989, the political landscape is no longer shaped by that confrontation between socialism and capitalism. In consequence, the pressure to articulate a distinctively liberal form of economic radicalism, different to state socialism and capitalism-as-we know-it, has waned. (Of course, Vince Cable has been an insightful commentator on the financial crisis, and is more radical than the Labour government in his ideas for how to manage it: but, while important, this does not amount to anything like the vision of a distinctive egalitarian and liberal economic order that the old Liberals used to entertain.)

In part, I think, this growing conservatism on ownership issues also reflects the way in which Lib Dem thinking has become curiously detached from developments in academic liberal political theory.

The ideas behind what Labour calls 'asset-based welfare' started to emerge in academia in the 1990s. One influence was the work of Michael Sherraden on matched savings programs for low-income groups (work which shaped Labour's Saving Gateway). Another was the work of Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott on 'stakeholder grants' - capital grants that would be paid to all citizens on maturity (an influence behind the Child Trust Fund). Ackerman and Alstott explicitly defended the proposal as an expression of an egalitarian liberalism which seeks to ensure equal effective freedom for all citizens. Their book reflected a wider interest in 'asset-based egalitarianism' and 'property-owning democracy' which emerged in the 1990s as political theorists sought to give content to the ideas about 'liberal justice' developed in the work of philosophers such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin.

However, while these developments in academic political theory did find some foothold in Labour's thinking, they seem to have been quite ignored within the Liberal Democrats. When Liberal Democrats talk about their philosophy in edited volumes such as those noted above, it is striking how much they refer to the greats of the historic British liberal tradition - Mill, Green, Hobhouse, Hobson, Beveridge - and how little they refer to any of this contemporary liberal political theory.

In short, my impression - and, once again, I warmly invite any Lib Dem readers to show me the error of my ways - is that the theoretical world of the Lib Dems has become rather parochial and time-bound. As suggested, this might explain what I also perceive as a relative conservatism in their policy thinking.

Many of the themes of the emerging new left or lefts are highly congenial to the Lib Dems, and they could easily put themselves at the forefront of a new broad left coalition based on them. But to do so, they will surely need to overcome this parochialism.

13 comments:

Sunder Katwala said...

Stuart,

Thanks for this post. I hope LibDems, social liberals and others will respond to it as a constructive and open challenge as it could begin an interesting discussion. (Regular readers will know that you are not 'tribal', for example in regularly critiquing your own side on civil liberties, equality and other issues).

(One thought: Perhaps you might ask Richard Grayson if he would like to respond with a substantive post here on Next Left, or indeed elsewhere?)

I think the challenge on ownership is powerful, and it is also a somewhat strange blindspot given that the resources of liberalism could produce an interesting radicalism on that question.

One very minor quibble: it seems to me valuable and attractive feature of LibDem debate and liberal debate more generally that it does engage with the classic thinkers of modern liberalism (though I am sure your suggestion for a greater contemporary engagement too is not incompatible with that).

In particular, it seems to me that the social liberal and New Liberal traditions do contain many of the intellectual resources which could develop a liberal egalitarianism with a particular focus on inequalities of power and capacity (and one which would often shares several of the insights and instincts modern social democrats), and one which prevents what critics might think of a rather more hollowed out liberalism. This may help to 'root' a liberal engagement in these issues.

For some reason, I was reminded by this post of the interesting discussion at Liberal Conspiracy sparked by your post on Nick Clegg and libertarianism. It seems to me that the interesting question for most LibDems (and perhaps centre republicans more generally) to answer is that of 'Why I am not a libertarian', seeking to give a more substantive account than Clegg did on that occasion.

It seems to me that the most important answer from most liberal perspectives would be rooted in the failure of libertarianism to be sufficiently concerned with the distribution of autonomy and substantive liberty.

Once that move is made - as I have suggested it largely is by Richard Reeves and Phil Collins in their own centre republican pamphlet - then I think both the philosophical and policy arguments between 'social liberals' and 'economic liberals', between centre republicans and left egalitarians, and between liberals and social democrats, while still real and significant are perhaps somewhat narrower.

(Often, the differences are then debates more about applied policy and political strategy than about philosophical foundations in my view, though I expect some left communitarians such as Jonathan Rutherford and Jon Cruddas would contest that and set out that something else is at stake. But that might help to explain the constructively fraternal debate which you note between different liberal camps; and which can also be seen between centre republicanism and communitarianism.

And that logic perhaps ought to lead each of these camps to a greater engagement with the problem of 'ownership' as 'capacity' and 'power'

James Graham (Quaequam Blog!) said...

There is one area, however, where both Lib Dem groups strike me as very conservative. In contrast to many of the currents I discuss in the article, neither group has thus far paid very much attention to new policy ideas for spreading asset ownership.
I think that's a fair comment and one I for one would like to rectify at some point (speaking as an executive member of the SLF), but in fairness to the "Orange Bookers" Paul Marshall writes quite a bit on asset-based welfare in the Orange Book. In addition, Clegg himself has repreatedly talked about personal budgeting in social care.

It's an area that needs much more development though, I agree. Personally I can't see an asset-based system emerging without it being linked to land value taxation and other forms of environmental taxation.

And when one looks at the trajectory of party policy over the past fifteen or so years, there is a clear gradual loss of radicalism on ownership issues. One of the basic demands of the old Liberal Party was for schemes to promote co-ownership and co-determination in industry. In 1992 the Lib Dems fought the general election on the traditional Liberal platform of introducing workers' participation in firms' decision-making. In 1997, this commitment was weakened to one of 'participation and consultation'. In 2001, the notion of consultation replaced that of participation. And in 2005? For the first time since the 1920s, if not before, the Liberals fought an election on a manifesto which contained no commitment whatsoever to introduce or promote co-ownership or co-determination.

I feel the need to point out that at the last Compass conference the SLF organised a breakout session about industrial democracy. It is something we are very keen to put firmly back on the party agenda.

In terms of Rawls and Dworkin, a quick Google search reveals two refs to the former and one ref to the latter on the SLF website, both from chapters in Reinventing the State (and I would argue the two most crucial chapters in the whole book). Admittedly, that isn't much more than box ticking, but I don't think it is fair to say they are being ignored.

SLF is a very new organisation and with so many of our 'brains' currently working inside the party you won't see a vast amount of new writing from us on this side of the general election. But I'm confident we will start rectifying that shortly afterwards.

The underlying problem when trying to establish what Lib Dems "think" is that there simply aren't many institutions out there willing to fund it. SLF is unfunded. The Centre Forum has self-consciously positioned itself away from the party in recent years. In part however that is rooted in the fact that campaigning has been elevated at the expense of everything else within the party, especially in recent years.

I, for one, would totally agree about Lib Dem parochialism. I'm very aware that a lot of fellow Lib Dems wouldn't even recognise that as a criticism.

Stuart White said...

Sunder, James: thanks for the thoughtful and thought-provoking comments.

I think Sunder's proposal that Richard Grayson write something in reply is a good one, and I'll email him to see if he's willing.

In terms of the real differences between, say, left and centre republicans, or social and Orange Book liberals, I think Sunder is right that the differences are narrowed if the latter accept that liberty/autonomy has a material basis (as they do). But I think there are still differences around equality. The lefter perspectives tend to value greater equality in the distribution of income and wealth, whereas the emphasis in the centre republican or Orange Book liberal perspective tends to be on 'sufficiency' rather than equality.

James is right that Paul Marshall talks sympathetically in a general way about asset-based welfare in The Orange Book, and there have been other indications of Lib Dem interest, including a seminar which the Oxford Public Policy Unit co-hosted with CentreForum. So perhaps there will be some progress at the policy level in due course. I am certainly pleased to hear that SLF is putting industrial democracy back on the agenda (both within the Lib Dems and on the left more widely).

James's comment about the emphasis on campaigning in the Lib Dems reminds me of a comment that I heard a senior Lib Dem - I think it was William Wallace (?) - make at a fringe event in 2007. He said, in effect, that when he joined the Liberals in the 1950s/60s (?), the party was great at talking about its philosophy but hopeless at campaigning. But now the situation was the reverse.

Bearded Socialist said...

Richard Grayson is top. Former lecturer of mine.
Does he list any on-line stuff of his?

Jock Coats said...

First let me say, Stuart, that I am grateful to you for letting me have a copy last year of your recent paper on the Liberal policies from the war on, on asset based welfare. It did convince me that they were probably the closest we have had to a "mutualist" set of policies in this country. Coupled with similar insights such as the Single Tax movement at the turn of the last century I think it presents an unbroken history of "near-mutualism". Unbroken, as you say, until the past couple of decades.

Second, and I hope this will be of interest to others, in particular the Compass people, there will be a book published at conference in a couple of weeks' time reflecting on the prime unimplemented policy of a hundred years ago in the People's Budget of land reform.

I think I missed your LibCon piece in February on Libertarians and Nick Clegg else I would have taken more exception to it - and to Clegg's attempt to contrast the party with "libertarianism" (though I think now I did write something about it at the time! If Kevin Carson can bring himself to self-define as a "left-libertarian" I have no doubt that such a nomenclature is a perfectly reasonable description and that to try to distance the party from what Carson (after Tucker I believe) terms the "vulgar libertarians" is all very well but lumps all soi-dissant "libertarians" in with them unfairly.

There is another group of us within the party looking to produce another set of essays, probably in the form of a book for publication next year, closer to my original idea which was intended to cover more than the land issue, that will promote a much more radical "left-libertarian"/"mutualist" program.

I find it difficult to believe in any kind of "welfare" (though asset based welfare is certainly more attractive for me - I'd certainly support things like a citizens' dividend based on the yield from our "common" assets like land - as a measure on the way to true economic freedom) when I also believe, with the mutualists right back to the likes of Proudhon, that the natural returns to labour are its own product and that the ability of capitalist or landlord to collect any more than perhaps a termporary quasi-rent as a result of genuine competitive advantage in the market is as a result of state created and entrenched privileges. For example, again from your article about Clegg versus Libertarians, the problem of bankers' excessive payments is not one of the market's making, but of the state's making through intervention in the market. In that case the it is the barriers to entry to the money creation cartel operating on behalf of central banks - which are the core problem - allowing those same bankers to play with almost unlimited amounts of something they neither own nor create knowing that as agents of the state created money system the state will have to back them up if it turns sour.

I cannot believe that the likes of Beveridge, as a liberal of any sort, envisaged, in 1943, a "war without end" on his five great evils. I can bellieve that things like "ownership for all" were the corollary to the welfare state that would eventually spread the wealth around such that vastly more people would be genuinely able to accumulate for themselves the ability to gain financial freedom and eventually reduce or eliminate dependency on the "emergency intervention" of monopolized state welfare. And that precisely because such policies were not adopted by the country as a whole, and now are little even espoused within the Lib Dems, we have this seeming unbridgable gulf between the self-described "left" (not usually the SLF people like James themselves but often their hangers on who see it as a rallying point for big state intervention without thinking about it too much), and the so-called "right" in the party which most, erroneously and from my perspective insultingly, include me.

Jonathan Rutherford said...

Just to add two comments to the discussion. Richard Grayson and I are editing an ebook with the working title 'After the Crash - reinventing the left' jointly produced by the Social Liberal Forum, Soundings and Compass which hopefully will grapple with some of these issues, exploring what we have in common, where our differences lie, how we can build alliances. Importantly it will include the greens in the debate and also social movement and non-party politics.

In relation to the liberalism of Richard Reeves and Phil Collins as set out in their Demos pamphlet. I'm not convinced of their willingness to address the vested interests and power structures that determine the distribution of life chances, wealth and income in this country. They are too willing to place the burden of change on individuals alone. What follows is a politics that I don't think will reinvigorate the centre left. Nor will it help us out of the economic hole we're in. The longer version of the review of their pamphlet by Jon Cruddas and myself published in the NS is available on the Soundings journal web page if anyone is interested.

Ed Randall's Blog said...

Stuart White wrote, in response to 'Lib Dems: lost on the ideological map?', that differences between Lib Dems are not that great because so-called Orange Book liberals and and 'social liberals' agree that 'liberty/autonomy has a material basis'. I agree. It isn't locating themselves on the 'ideological map' that presents the greatest challenge for radical liberals (or Fabians). The great challenge is to explain persuasively how the shared aspiration for strengthening and protecting personal liberty can be reconciled with the pursuit of social justice in practice. James Graham speaks for many Liberal Democrats, including myself, when he says - to paraphrase him - that 'an asset-based system' capable of contributing to the development of a liberal society depends upon the skill with which we can build land value taxation and other forms of environmental taxation into our programmes and political philosophy. A great deal of the philosophical heavy lifting required to do that was done a long time ago. However, the formulation and presentation of convincing and practical proposals presents formidable problems.

When L/liberal thinkers, Hobhouse, Hobson, Beveridge and Keynes, provided theoretical as well as practical political illumination to Liberal and Labour politicians in the first half of the 20th century it wasn't their positioning on the ideological map or their party label that really counted.

I hope - with British political life in such poor condition - that all those who label themselves Social Democrat, Green or Liberal Democrat can pick up the baton that has been handed on from Henry George. I for one have no difficulty with the Cruddas quartet [Equality, Community, Sustainability and Democracy] when equality is linked so strongly and explicitly with Liberty. The hard work isn't a matter of ideological positioning...it entails finding appealing and practical ways of marrying our shared political aspirations.

Jock Coats said...

that all those who label themselves Social Democrat, Green or Liberal Democrat can pick up the baton that has been handed on from Henry George

You mean the libertarian, Henry George...:)

Bearded Socialist said...

Ed Randall is a legend of the highest order

Ed Randall's Blog said...

Jack, I mean the same Henry George who often shared platforms with Michael Davitt and H. M. Hyndman and who shared, with them, a determination to break the power of landlords and landowners. I also mean the Henry George who stood as the United Labour Party candidate for mayor of New York in 1886.

I look for great ideas and insights and am willing to take them and use them whenever I find them.

I am willing - one reason I am a liberal and a democrat - to acknowledge genius in the writings of those whose party label I don't (and couldn't possibly) share.

While I don't share George's belief that an end to economic monopoly (most specifically monopoly in land) is a panacea capable of supplying all the necessary conditions for the full development of individuals and of ushering in an age of social harmony and economic well-being I do believe that the failure to take full account of the role that private property in land/natural resources plays in our economic and social system is the achilles heel of almost all of radical politics in contemporary Britain.

Paul Mulvey, who wrote the entry on Henry George for the Dictionary of Liberal Thought, was right to point to George's lack of formal education and his cavalier attitude to statistics. He was also right to note that this lack of academic status made it possible for the Economics establishment to sneer and dismiss what George had to say.

Unfortunately the use of political labels and ideological birthmarks to sort sheep from goats in political discussion plays a similar role in stigmatising those who are deemed politically incorrect on very brief acquaintance.

I strongly recommend Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny to anyone who wants to escape name calling and labelling in political debate so that they can increase the chances of getting to the serious stuff.

Stuart White said...

Thanks to Jock and Ed and others for the further interesting comments.

I have a lot of time for the Georgist/mutualist perspective that Jock articulates, though I see it more as useful corrective to overly statist and centralist conceptions of social democracy (or 'liberalism') rather than as a fully adequate alternative. I think land value taxation is long overdue - about a 100 years overdue! - but, like Ed, I don't take the full-blooded Georgist step of thinking that land value taxation is 'the' tax we need. Like most 'social liberals', I reject the libertarian idea of 'self-ownership' and the implication that it is illegitimate to tax labour income too.

Jock's brand of left-libertarianism is, however, another important current of thought, distinct from both the SLF and Orange Book positions, and I'll be keen to do a review of the book that Jock mentions at Next Left when it comes out.

Stuart White said...

Thanks to Jock and Ed and others for the further interesting comments.

I have a lot of time for the Georgist/mutualist perspective that Jock articulates, though I see it more as useful corrective to overly statist and centralist conceptions of social democracy (or 'liberalism') rather than as a fully adequate alternative. I think land value taxation is long overdue - about a 100 years overdue! - but, like Ed, I don't take the full-blooded Georgist step of thinking that land value taxation is 'the' tax we need. Like most 'social liberals', I reject the libertarian idea of 'self-ownership' and the implication that it is illegitimate to tax labour income too.

Jock's brand of left-libertarianism is, however, another important current of thought, distinct from both the SLF and Orange Book positions, and I'll be keen to do a review of the book that Jock mentions at Next Left when it comes out.

Jock Coats said...

For both Stuart and Ed, I'm interested in this feeling you both enunciated that you are unable to believe in, say, George's remedy of the Single Tax as all that is necessary (and Ed, by implication that one of the problems with it was that George himself could not prove it with statistics).

Actually, personally, nor do I. The individualists and others iddentified "four great monopolies" - ie not just of land, but also of the money system, the intellectual property system and the tariffs endemic in "state action" whereby they protect other interests of capital especially.

Purely Georgists would say that eradicating the land problem via the Single Tax would make the others pale into insignificance. I am not so sure and I do think work needs donig on these others of the "mutualists' monopolies".

But the reason why I don't really think statistics matter, and that axiomatically such measures would be sufficient (or at least sufficient to create a better system than now, and at mmuch less cost to everyone, not just financially but in terms of other things that the state does not do well - like peace and justice) goes roughly as follows...

If you accept that there are three factors of production - land, labour and capital (setting aside the notion that capital is accumulated labour in any case), the mutualists argue that the only way for anyone to get an *unfair* advantage over another is because state interference in the market creates some *unequal* transactions in which more of the product goes to capital and land than is justified by any natural factors. If you eradicate all artificial support (Bohm-Bawerk I think called them "disturbances" I think in the free market) for rent, and profit, then surely the entire product of goods *must* go to labour - because there is nowhere else they can go.

My simplistic suggestion is that such an outcome is so radically different and more equitable than what we have today, that it would be difficult, if at all possible, to sustain the current sort of levels of "intervention" in other "social liberal" shall we say projects until one has been able to see the effects of that more fundamental change.

In this way, the state (and who says it should be an area containing a population of 60m people - why not units the size of maybe Oxford or Oxfordshire) would wither, and if then it was seen that there was any further need for coercive collective action it could be dealt with more locally, more accountably, and less monolithically (and perhaps even voluntarily through something like "cellular democracy") than the present state has to do.

Does that make sense. I'd like to believe that it would make the crucial difference on its own but even if it didn't the remaining interventions would be better done (and maybe need to be done) in a different fashion than by today's state.

By the way, it is the LVT based book that is out this conference. We have not really even begun to plan the wider mutualist/anarchist one.