Capitalism 4.0 and the platitude that is economic growth

People are talking about a Capitalism 4.0. Capitalism must change for the better, they say, and become more responsible. The financial crisis that started in 2008 has demonstrated that very clearly.

I don’t know much about macroeconomics, but I find this whole discussion almost as disappointing as I find it interesting. Surely it doesn’t take an economics professor to see that, far from promoting Capitalism 4.0, the financial crash punched market economics right in the face?

Critics of the current set-up often argue, and convincingly so, that our alleged free-market economy is far from free: rather, we’ve got fully-fledged socialism and market regulation for the rich – while indeed the 99% have to put up with the harsh conditions of the market. But neo-liberals don’t like this argument. It’s childish, they say, and it’s getting old.

The fact that the only thing they ever seem to be able to counter with is an arrogant frown or a patronising smile and head-tilt would perhaps be quite the give-away if it wasn’t for the fact that the framing of the debates they take part in is always inherently neo-liberal, making any statement critical of the free market sound absolutely absurd. Just like capitalist critiques are only ever met with the rhetorical question ‘So what do you want instead?’, those in search of a Capitalism 4.0 seem to, despite agreeing that the current system is massively flawed, base their reasoning on the assumption that there is no alternative to capitalism. It came, it saw, it conquered; and now it’s here to stay. Except it didn’t quite conquer. It fucked up.

Many have argued that, as part of Capitalism 4.0, the market needs to be more responsible. Fair trade must pay off, as must environmental consciousness. We must promote innovation and long-term strategies. When it pays off for businesses to be responsible, we will get a responsible capitalism. Voila!

Here’s the beef: these people are insisting on a free-market economy, yet they’re dreaming of ideals which are antithetical to the normative principles of market logic. The market doesn’t reward responsibility – it rewards efficiency which leads to the maximisation of profit. It’s plain and simple: the market doesn’t care. Yet we’re so wrapped up in this obsession with the market as the solution to all problems that we think we can nudge it into a position of promoting justice and equality, despite the complete opposites of those values being inevitable symptoms of a capitalist system. If anything is getting old, it’s that naivety. We clearly want state regulation of markets. We clearly have to admit that this is the end of neo-liberalism.

Oh, and one more thing: let’s just clarify once and for all what this economic growth that is being repeated like a mantra really is all about. Economic growth is about the rise in demand for commodities (we want more things!), and economic success is about consumers’ increased ability to purchase those commodities (we’re spending more money on things!). Viewed in a long-term perspective, capitalism has done a good job promoting economic growth – those numbers don’t lie. Yet, it doesn’t come as news to anyone that the inequality between the people buying those things and those unable to afford any things at all is increasing steadily.

Economic growth, then, is about comfortably rich people being able to get more comfortable. And really, in all honesty, how much more comfortable do we middle and upper class people need to get? How much stuff do we really need?

I’m sick of talking about capitalism, free markets and economic growth. Call me banal, but the only economics I want to talk about is the economics that puts people first.

I don't know how he does it

“If you want to have it all, it’s your job to work out how to do it. If you can’t, give something up.” That’s David Cox’s advice to Kate, the high-flying fictitious character in the film I don’t know how she does it.

I suspect we’ll read many a harsh critique of the super-woman film, but I wasn’t quite prepared to read this in the Guardian. I’m not saying that this Hollywood plot doesn’t need some ripping apart – the have-it-all approach to life indeed deserves questioning – but your way of criticising something says a lot about your outlook on life. And I guess, somehow, I keep forgetting that even the most liberal publications in the UK look at parenting as a one-woman job.

Many would agree – and I’m sure I will too if I ever see the film – that the plot is nothing but a boring cliché. My idea of the real world, however, differs quite a bit from Cox’s. He answers the question of how she does it with the accusation that Kate uses her poor husband, a man who wishes to focus on furthering his own career but is forced to bring their injured son to the hospital when selfish mammy is at work. He explains her success by pointing the finger at the way she expects of her employer to be flexible, thereby, he suggests, somehow undermining the efforts of women who don’t need flexibility at work because they don’t have a family: they’ve had to make a sacrifice, means Cox, so why should we let selfish Kate get away with not making one?

“Motherhood is voluntary,” Cox reminds us. But “fulfilling all other aspirations at the same time may or may not be practicable.”

This is where I lose him completely. We’re supposed to look at Kate as a “scumbag” for wanting it all (but, he insinuates, not doing it well enough), yet her husband is described as a victim. Isn’t fatherhood voluntary as well? What does he mean?

Here’s what I think he means. Fatherhood isn’t that demanding, after all. Most fathers manage very well to combine fatherhood with successful careers, thank you very much. And so no one ever says, ‘I don’t know how he does it’. Why? Because parenting is a mother’s job. It’s a mother’s fault when a child is malnourished; the mother is the one who’s neglected a child who doesn’t learn to talk when other kids do. Laundry, school runs, hospital visits – it’s all done while the father’s at work. That’s how he does it: he’s got a wife.

About mothers, Cox writes that “if they can’t work as hard as their childless colleagues to get a seat on the board, they could manage without one.” But of course, a majority of the board members aren’t childless. They’re fathers. And fathers don’t have to make sacrifices, we all know that. Right, Cox?

[All of the above is of course based on yet another of the patriarchy's great myths: the idea that not getting to spend a lot of time with your kids isn't in itself a sacrifice for fathers. But that's another discussion for another post.]

Inequality and social unrest - this is politics

“Keeping people safe is the first duty of government,” said David Cameron in the House of Commons after recalling parliament. Not a particularly surprising statement coming from a true conservative. But put into context, where what the prime minister is really saying is that the government’s main task is to protect one part of society from another, it not only explains to some degree how we ended up in this situation in the first place, but also expresses the idea of an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ which could lead to further segregation and unrest.

Cameron went on to say that the riots were “not about politics or protest – it was about theft,” and that “in too many cases, the parents of these children, if they’re still around, don’t care where their children are.” In other words, don’t blame the government – blame the parents. Which parents? Those in the ghettos, who don’t belong to ‘us’. Those from whom the government will protect you.

It’s easy to fall into the mindset of anger and vengeance and agree with Cameron. We’re all angry about what’s happened to our city: the amount of people who have lost their homes and livelihoods; the amount of taxes required to recover from this; how many of us suddenly no longer feel safe in our own streets. These crimes are inexcusable, so why pretend they’re justifiable?

They’re not, of course. This kind of deliberate destruction is never justifiable, be it in London or in Norway or in Iraq. But that doesn’t change the fact that it feels a bit as though a rhetoric comfortably suitable to the boys in charge – and I’m talking about the government here, not the rioters – has been shoved down our throats and we’re too angry to question it.

There’s an inherent flaw in the argument that these people are mindless scum and hence the whole thing is apolitical. Aren’t we suggesting that they’re too ignorant to see what they’re doing to their own communities? Aren’t we saying that they’re mindless enough not to care? Well that, people, is politics.

If thousands of young citizens are convinced that there’s no place in society for them, if they’re so disconnected from their own city that they feel like they have nothing to lose and it makes no difference if they go and smash it to bits and burn it down, then we’re failing somewhere.

It could be the British class system and the segregation, or perhaps the increase in higher education fees and slashing of means-tested grants. Perhaps it’s the sometimes completely unjustified stopping and searching of certain groups of people (intended to keep other groups of people safe, I guess). Maybe it’s a cocktail of all of the above, along with a long list of issues which I, as a middle-class creative in Crouch End, don’t even know exist.

Then there’s the added complication of the fact that peaceful protests don’t work, that people came out in droves to show their dissatisfaction with the suggested increase in higher education fees and were ignored. Some would say that the government lost its mandate right there and then. Those rioting in the streets of London and other cities may not have had a political agenda in mind, but we’re not exactly encouraging them to either: it’s pretty clear that the politicians don’t want to listen to them. That politicians, on top of that, show a complete lack of respect for public funds by abusing the expense system probably doesn’t help.

We’ve got to dare to ask ourselves what went wrong that led to these riots, and in doing so we have to admit that these people are real citizens who have to be a part of society. The right-wing rhetoric of making the rioters into mindless monsters may fit very well in with an ideology that insists that a certain level of unemployment is necessary as an incentive for people to work hard, but it’s not only proven wrong by the events in Britain over the past week – it’s also exactly the kind of talk that confirms to these people that they don’t belong and that society doesn’t want them.

Cameron wants to protect one part of society from another, the one outside of it. On Twitter, another suggestion came up: how about social justice and equality instead?

Ideology v politics from the gut: why you have to choose sides

I’m not going to lie: it did disappoint me when David Mitchell wrote that politics shouldn’t be about ideas but about money. Maybe because I admire him so much, both as a writer and as a political commentator, and I didn’t want him to eliminate every bit of hope I’ve ever had for the world. Maybe because the truth hurts.

Or maybe it was because I’ve been wanting to write about the importance of ideology for some time now, and his black-and-white reasoning challenged my arguments further. And I’m just not sure I’m quite ready to start arguing with Mr. Mitchell.

I’ve seen a lot of political freestylers around on Twitter lately, many of whom are highly intelligent, politically clued-in writers. They advocate what you could call a go-with-the-flow kind of approach to politics, suggesting that you don’t have to sign up to any particular school of thought but can make your mind up about any given policy in complete isolation.

I realise that this isn’t exactly what David Mitchell is saying, but in the absence of the fancy ideas he’s laughing at, we’re kind of left with nothing but freestyling, whether we like it or not. There is of course something quite attractive about this trust-your-gut attitude that people are promoting, but it’s got a flip-side too: if politics is all about money, surely it’s not a go-with-the-flow kind of person we want in charge? At the end of the day, how can we trust that tomorrow she’ll spend money the way yesterday she promised she would?

Mitchell’s column was inspired by the news that retail guru Mary Portas had been hired by the government to save the high street, and he’s got a point: it’s a gimmicky idea that probably does a better job ticking PR boxes than saving a sinking retail ship. Agreed. But he draws the conclusion that ‘we get distracted into thinking that politics is about ideas, innovation and “thinking outside the box”, rather than seeing the mundane truth which is that it’s primarily about money. Governments decide how much tax we pay and what to spend it on. They should express their values and priorities through how they take money from us and how they give it back – and that’s what we should judge them on.’

There are two important words here: values and priorities. To me, these words sum up politics better than any budget or equation ever will. When a government acts – when a budget is drawn up, when cuts are made, when funding is moved from one area to another – it puts our money where its mouth is, to use Mitchell’s clever words. But this is only one of many steps in a political process which, I will continue to insist, depends on ideology as some sort of backbone.

Like Mitchell writes, the way a government spends money is an expression of its values and priorities, and this is key; the values come first, not the money. At the very heart of a democratic system is an electorate that votes for candidates who represent their values and worldview – and the day they vote for something else, be it charisma, populist promises or a PhD in Economics, accountability goes out the window.

Let’s think about this go-with-the-flow attitude. In fact, let’s use as an example last year’s general election in the UK. Say you’ve always voted Labour. Then a wildcard is thrown into the pot, promising to abolish higher education fees. This is important to you, so you vote for them – it’s just one of many policies, but one you really care about. The wildcard, also known as Lib Dems, goes into coalition with the Tories and compromises on the one issue you really cared about, probably hoping that its sympathisers will appreciate a number of other liberal policies they manage to push through. Labour ends up representing the opposition. Now what? You feel robbed – but as long as Lib Dems keep fighting for their liberal core values, you can’t really complain.In addition to values, Mitchell mentions priorities – because there’s a lot of prioritising and compromising in politics. This is why the freestylers have it wrong: you do have to make your mind up, sign up to some sort of ideology, and choose sides. You do have to decide what kind of world you want to live in, and accept that politics is about more than just the money in your wallet at this very moment. You do have to accept that in order for your values to be represented overall, compromises will have to be made – but it’s keeping your eyes on the goal that will make it all make sense.

That is why the go-with-the-flow people have it wrong. Motions get ignored and policies get compromised on. Circumstances change. But scrutinise yourself, and you’ll find that your core values – the way you look at people, your idea of what justice really is, your opinion on freedom versus obligations – don’t change that quickly. They’re bigger than that.

Decide where you stand and vote for a party that stands near you, and soon you’ll find that – more often than not – they’ll use your money to create your kind of world. Or go with the flow. Freestyle. Vote with your wallet. Follow your gut and vote for whatever feels important today, right now, for you. And end up feeling robbed, like those responsible for Lib Dems’ success in the last election – the students.