Marxist-Lentilist

Review of Mary Mellor, The Future of Money and Hill and Myatt, The Economics Anti-Textbook

2011-07-19T15:53:00.004+01:00

Mary Mellor, The Future of Money: From Financial Crisis to Public ResourcePluto Press, London, 2010. vii + 197pp.
£16.00 pb

Rod Hill and Tony Myatt
The Economics Anti-Textbook: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Micro-EconomicsZed Books, London, 2010. Ix + 305pp.
£19.99 pb
http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book/paperback/2010/economics-anti-textbook

These two books in different ways speak to the current global economic crisis – and contribute in different ways to our understanding of the causes and consequences of that crisis and what opportunities for transformation it presents. Rod Hill and Tony Myatt’’s book The Economics Anti-Text Book, offers a comprehensive and devastating critique of the dominant economic paradigm – namely neo-classical economics – which has so spectacularly failed. Mary Mellor’s The Future of Money focuses on the theory and practical dynamics of the financial system, the credit crisis and the relationship between the money and real economies. Both offer important insights into the ideological dimensions of the current crisis of capitalism and the importance of ideas, particularly around questioning hegemonic and authoritative capitalist understandings of ‘economics’ and ‘the economy’.

The Economics Anti-Textbook is an extremely timely, well-written and important piece of work in that it conclusively demonstrates the thoroughly ideological ‘pro-market’ character of the dominant neo-classical economic paradigm taught in both secondary schools and higher education. It is written in an very engaging style which sets out to mimic the presentation style of standard economics textbooks, goes on to reveal their normative or ideological underpinnings, highlight what these textbooks fail to include, before proceeding to deconstruct the main tenets of the standard neo-classical economic paradigm. In setting itself against the dominant paradigm this book is firmly within the growing body of heterodox economics literature that has burgeoned in the last number of years (Fullbrook, 2008; Keen, 2001; Quiggin, 2010).

What Hill and Myatt reveal in their book is on many levels frightening. The almost ‘full spectrum domination’ of the teaching of economics by the neo-classical paradigm means that every years hundreds of thousands of students across the world who read and learn about ‘economics’ from the many neo-classical economics textbooks available and are set as required reading are effectively indoctrinated. Students reading these textbooks and associated economics courses are systematically denied any exposure to alternative forms of economic analysis (whether that be Marxist, socialist, social democratic, feminist, green etc.). The almost complete absence of pluralism, debate and consideration of alternatives within these textbooks means that students almost cannot but come to the view that there is only ‘one’ or ‘true’ way of thinking about economics. That is of course that the free-market, capitalist status quo is not just the ‘best’ way to think about and organise the economy, but actually the ‘only’ way. As Hill and Myatt put it, “‘economics’ has come to be synonymous with the economics of a particular view of capitalism. It wasn’t always this way. At one time, economic textbooks routinely contained chapters on alternative economic systems, on the evolution of economic doctrines, and the advantages and disadvantages of the corporate form. In dropping these subjects perhaps mainstream textbooks have been ‘dumbed down’. Certainly, the range of thinking has been narrowed” (249; emphasis added). Along with this elimination of alternatives to capitalist economics, and perfectly in keeping with the ideological turn in the teaching of economics over the last three decades, Hill and Myatt identify another equally problematic and pervasive feature of the vast majority of economics textbooks. This is the downgrading of a number of key issues to being of marginal or second order importance or not worthy of consideration in terms of their role or place in understanding economics. These include the neglect of the distribution of wealth and income from economic activity, or where it is discussed, issues of the distribution of income and wealth are presented in terms of an inevitable trade-off between ‘efficiency’ and ‘equity’; the lack of empirical proof of some key neo-classical economic ideas and principles i.e. ‘real world’ economic activity does not conform to the mythical world of ‘perfect competition’; the consistent downgrading of the social context of economic activity and the centrality of community; and most glaringly, no analysis of power or the legal structures (such as private property, contracts, tort etc.) which underpin the ‘free market’.

Myatt and Hill exposes is the fundamental lack of critical thinking at the heart of the trashing of modern economics as well as the reduction of ‘economics’ to deregulated, free market ‘capitalism’. Economics textbooks are written by leading academic economists (mostly American it has to be said) and of course read by undergraduate or secondary school students as ‘authoritative’ since they generally lack the ability, capacity and skills to challenge what they read in these textbooks, and upon which they will be examined. The end result is the uncritical absorption of ‘economics is capitalism’ and the equally uncritical acceptance of the principles of deregulated ‘free market’ as the only way to organise the economy.

There are some common themes both books analyse. One is the role and function of the capitalist state in general and its relationship to corporations in particular. One the one hand Mellor reminds us that, “In capitalist economies, the state is a capitalist state and has always stood behind the capitalist financial system as the guardian of the money system, financial properties and contracts” (2). On the other Hill and Myatt point out that the orthodox economic paradigm views the state as “neutral, intervening to correct market failure, and to redistribute income so as to make market outcomes more equitable” (18-19), a misleading and deliberately false view of the reality of capitalism in which “The power of the largest corporations rivals that of the state; indeed they often hijack the state’s power for their own purposes” (19). In Mellor’s case she demonstrates how the current economic crisis located within the financial sector shows how the state in Europe and America especially was committed to the co-creation of a ‘too big to fail’ financial regime (52).

While for most readers of this website this will be met with a perhaps bored and impatient ‘And?’ or ‘so what?’, it is significant that this is being (finally) said in relation what is not covered in the textbooks that are routinely used to teach economics. A telling and very interesting point raised by Hill and Myatt – though insufficiency explored in my view – is that while more advanced postgraduate texts and monographs within the broad neo-classical economics paradigm (and indeed by some of the same authors of the standard undergraduate textbooks), do acknowledge (some of) the deficiencies of the simplistic textbook presentation of the free market model of perfect completion, supply and demand price equilibrium, voluntary exchange and so on, these are all routinely absence or downgraded within the textbook presentation. This of course means that the overwhelming majority of those who learn about economics are not exposed to these anomalies to the orthodox paradigm and (potentially) critical perspectives.

A second is that both books re-establish the case for non-market, explicitly political (and planned) ways of thinking about and organising the economy. Mellor makes the case for the democratisation of money creation. As she puts it, “At present, given that money is issued largely into the private sector, but has to be taxed back out again (with difficulty) for public use. Socially-issued money would go the other way round, prioritising democratically determined social relevant expenditure with the commercial economy having to earn the money into its sector thought carrying out socially relevant and ecologically sustainable activities” (163). She makes a strong and persuasive case for money issue and credit creation being treated explicitly as a public and commonly owned resource and “returned to public control” but notes that the latter does not automatically mean making money creation subject to state control. She outlines a number of non-state options here – publicly issued credit being made available to cooperatives and mutuals, a universal citizen’s income, an independent and democratic monetary authority with the power to issue credit, but independent from the state, and the participatory budgeting pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil (167-8).

Allied to this is the argument Hill and Myatt make about the relationship between innovation and the pro-market mantra of ‘perfect competition’. Quoting William Baumol they note that “the perfectly competitive model has almost nothing to say about the capacity of the market economy to innovate and grow because perfect competition is largely incompatible with innovation... oligopoly is where most of the innovation occurs. Oligopolistic firms have the most to gain, and are big enough to be able to afford the outlays” (134; emphasis added). This rejection of the myth of ‘perfect competition’ as the best guide to economic organisation is closer to the real-world reality of contemporary capitalism where innovation tends to occur in non-competitive, oligopolistic or monopolistic markets, as can quickly be seen in the software, computer, telecommunications or pharmaceutical sectors for example. Another benefit of this anti-perfect competition perspective is that it can be used to further defend the benefits of other non-perfect competition and non-market forms of economic organisation from worker-owned and managed cooperative firms to state-owned economic enterprises.

A third is the case for a ‘post-growth’ view of the economy. Both books make the case for the economic, political and ecological irrationality of the capitalist imperative for growth and capital accumulation. This is in part related to the debt and credit basis of contemporary capitalism. As Mellor puts it, “A fundamental problem of a debt-based money issue is that it creates a growth imperative within the economy…Debt has long been used as a means of trapping people into work as indentured labour” (25). The explosion of ‘credit card culture’ in the mid/late 1980s not only masked the reality of declining wages in western countries, or the elevation of finance capital and the financial services sector as the dominant sector of advanced information /knowledge based 21st century capitalism,

The Polanyian influence is clear in both books. Economies are - and ought to be – embedded in social norms and objectives and regulated politically (whether by the state or some other democratic public authority). Economies are also embedded in and dependent upon ecological systems. Both books, but especially Mellor, argue for the need for an alternative economic system to deregulated, neoliberal capitalism in which ecological sustainability is central alongside social justice, equality and a stress on quality of life/well-being rather than ‘economic growth’. In questioning orthodox, GDP-measured economic growth and the structural imperative within capitalism for constant expansion, the authors of these two books are part of a recent surge of books, reports and schools of thought. Examples of this ‘post-growth’ thinking includes Tim Jackson’s Prosperity without Growth (Jackson, 2009), Molly Scott-Cato’s Green Economics (2008), Boyle and Simms’ The New Economics (Boyle and Simms, 2009) to the ‘de-growth’ movement and emerging models of ‘green political economy’ based around replacing ‘economic growth’ with ‘economic security’ (Barry, 2012). For Mellor any post-growth, sustainable economy is based around ‘sufficiency’, social justice and a ‘provisioning economy’ (154-160), a central feature of which is the reclamation of money as a public good and brought under democratic control. Hill and Myatt are not as explicit as Mellor in outlining their alternative to neo-classical economics and its realisation in contemporary capitalism, but they do question the ‘growth fetish’ (151) and how within the orthodox economic paradigm the existence of ‘externalities’ (the imposition of a cost onto someone else and not reflected in the price) are not exceptions of the rule within capitalism, but constitute a major part of its modus operandi (153-168). This ‘post-growth’ perspective is explicitly linked to an egalitarian perspective, whether related to the inconvenient truth ignored by orthodox economics textbooks that what matters for individual well-being is relative not absolute consumption, income and wealth (Hill and Myatt, 158, 201), or that capitalist debt-based growth is a way of managing and masking inequalities rather than reducing them (Mellor, 141)

This leads to the necessity of a much wider conceptualisation of ‘the economy’ than either the dominant orthodox paradigm or indeed Marxist alternatives have presented. This is more evident in Mary Mellor’s book. From her broadly socialist eco-feminist position she argues we cannot understand either the current ‘economy’ or ‘economics’ or more progressive, just and sustainable alternatives without seeing the fact that economic relation are embodied (and gendered) and embedded (and ecological). This is what underpins her insight about the importance of adopting a provisioning and sufficiency perspective which recognises “all forms of beneficial work and activities” (7) and not just ‘employment’ and formal economic activities. For her what is needed is an “ecofeminist political economy [that] challenges the exploitative boundaries of the economy as defined by capitalist patriarchy” (158).

Mellor’s important book makes the strong case for the ‘re-embedding’ of the money and credit system within the ’real economy’ via democratic, political means. Her’s is an argument based on the reality that “in complex societies it is clear that a public money system is needed to enable production and exchange” (166), but a first step in transforming the current capitalist, disembedded, free-floating financial system is to politically put the financial genie back in the bottle as it were. Key here is to see that the essence of modern banking is to put people into debt rather than encourage them to save (61), and from this debt flows a reconfiguration of power relations which she describes as ‘debt-slavery’. This ‘debt-slavery’ of course has deliberate echoes of Marx’s notion of ‘wage slavery’, and perhaps is best seen as a more 21st century version of the latter, and in many ways much more powerful as a disciplining structural reality of the economy and people’s lives under neoliberalism.

Mellor offers a Marxist and Foucauldian based analysis of the ‘financialisation’ of societies in the last thirty years, the policies and impacts of the ideologically successful project of creating a ‘people’s capitalism’. At root the con-trick of financialisation for Mellor comes down to the inversion of the C-M-C relationship (commodities produced for sale in order to purchase another commodity) to M-C-M+ (where the intention of production is simply to make money) (20). As she puts it, “At the heart of financialisation was the assumption that money can be made out of money and that money in itself can secure a person’s economic life. Savings were no longer security for a rainy day, they were investments. A house was no longer a home, but a financial asset” (59). As well as the explosion of cheap and easy credit masking a decline in real wages, Mellor, here drawing on the work of Panitch and Konings (2009), demonstrates how lower income working class people were not only drawn into this ‘brave new world’ of ‘property owning democracy’ but were enthusiastic supporters of this move. As she notes “The financialisation of social life has seen people enticed into financialised capitalism through pensions and various forms of financial investments, including shares”, which was a calculated and managed transition such that, “Security has become based on investment rather than insurance and collectivised risk” (63). This is a measure of the (almost) complete success of this ideological project of financialisation over the past three decades, and one any serious anti-capitalist analysis needs to learn from and about.

What both books suggest is that from the current crisis within capitalism, whether at the level of ideas about economics or understanding the money and financial system, there are opportunities for reform and transformation. Against the individualised, financialisation of everyday life I completely agree with Mellor that, “economic security can only be achieved through public action and social solidarity, not through the market” (3). Against the presentation of one way of thinking about economics as ‘the truth’ and the explicit indoctrination of people (especially young people) into this ‘regime of truth’, we need, as Hill and Myatt propose greater pluralism, debate and critical thinking within economic analyses and models.

Both books, but particularly Mellor’s, show that what has happened in the past three decades has been the socialisation of risk, the ‘democratisation of debt’ but the continuing privatisation of profit and unequal distribution of socially created wealth. The public bailouts of the banking system across the core capitalist nations, which has led commentators to talk of ‘socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor’, accurately captures the dynamic of contemporary finance-dominated capitalism. It denotes on the one hand the success of neoliberal market ideology and practice, ranging from the active creation of ‘neoliberal subjects’ and identities to specific neoliberal policies of deregulation, the creation of a constant state of insecurity for individuals and communities to the commodification of once public goods. On the other, in response to the global financial and economic crisis, ‘socialism for the rich’ denotes the transfer of wealth from the public, via the state to financial capital, while at the same time it is the most vulnerable in society who suffer from the public sector cuts of contemporary austerity politics. Both books make significant contributions to any progressive political analysis of how it has come to pass that a global crisis that originated within private finance capital has led to public sector cuts as the solution. Both chart different dimensions of the three decades of the birth and expansion of neoliberal capitalism – ideological indoctrination and a decisive success in the battle of ideas about the economy (Hill and Myatt), and the dominance of finance capital, and the related ‘financialisation’ of society and credit card capitalism and debt-based consumerism and individualised insecurity (Mellor). And both establish the case for a new political economy in response to neoliberalism, in the conjoining of some very old socialist ideas (the collectivisation of security, non-market forms of economic organisation, the importance of socio-economic equality) with some newer or different ones (a ‘post-growth’ economic vision, a focus on well-being rather than income, the creation of a ‘provisioning’ economy based on principles of sufficiency rather and efficiency and maximisation). While it may sound touchingly naïve and insufficiently theoretically ambiguous to reflect the multiple complexities of the current crisis of capitalism (as opposed to simply being a crisis within capitalism), what I take from both books is that it is upon this new political economy –allied to a political strategy based on eco-socialism (Wall, 2010), radical green political economy (Barry, 2012) and/or materialist ecofeminism (Salleh, 2009), amongst others – that progressive politics will be based in the 21st century.

References

Barry, J (2012), The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate Changed, Carbon Constrained World (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Boyle, D and Simms, D (2009), The New Economics: A Bigger Picture (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).

Fullbrook, E (ed) (2008), Pluralist Economics, (London: Zed Books).

Jackson, T (2009), Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, (London: Earthscan).

Keen, S. (2001), Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences, (London: Zed Books).

Panitch, L and Konings, M (2009), ‘Myths of Neoliberal Deregulation’, New Left Review, 57, pp67-83.

Quiggin, J (2010), Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us, (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Salleh, A (ed) (2009), Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice : Women Write Political Ecology (London: Pluto Books).

Scott-Cato, M (2008), Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice (London: Earthscan).

After the party, the hangover?: An analysis of ‘post-Celtic Tiger Ireland’ in the light of the February 2011 election

2011-03-16T09:42:00.001Z

Audio recording of my lecture I gave last week as part of the Ocassional Lecture series of the Australian Senate.....

The alchemy of modern political economy - turning private debt into public debt and austerity

2010-12-22T09:29:00.003Z

Excellent post on Bright Green 'People economics: against the European austerity doctrine'. My quick comments on the back of reading it below:

Austerity driven responses to the financial mess is nothing short of simply 'displacing' private loses into public debt. What we're witnessing is a socialism of the rich - we're seeing the 'socialisation of risk' (through this displacement, now copper fastened by the European Commission's decision as you indicate in your post. But we're not seeing the socialisation of profit or benefit - that's still privatised! The transformation of private/banksters debt into sovereign debt is perhaps the nearest we have seen to a process of political economic alchemy – turning the dross /worthlessness of private losses into a publicly (tax-payer) backed but still privately owned income/capital stream.
This can be most graphically seen in the Irish case of the coalition government in September 2008 being forced with inadequate and partial information and the deliberate manipulation by the main banks operating in Ireland (which deliver revenue to banks and bondholders in Germany and the UK and elsewhere), to issue the bank guarantee scheme. The latter was the legal instrument by which the alchemy worked – transforming privately held debt into public, tax-payer backed debt, and kicked off the austerity drive in Ireland.

Another good analysis of the financial crisis in the Eurozone can be found here European Monetary Union: Muddling Through, Falling Apart, Going Where?

Where Next for the Greens in Northern Ireland?

2010-12-22T08:56:00.002Z

I was asked to write a piece for Bright Green - reproduced here.

With forthcoming elections in both parts of the island of Ireland in early 2011 (Assembly and local elections in NI in May and a general election in the republic of Ireland, probably in March) it is timely to look ahead at what and where next for the Greens in NI.
It seems to me (and I write this in a completely personal capacity) that there are 4 issues which will figure large for the Green Party here in NI.

1. Establishing itself as a permanent political force within NI politics: the coming local and regional Assembly elections in May 2011, will be a real test for the party. It will establish whether the breakthrough of getting one MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) elected in 2007 (Brian Wilson in North Down) can be built upon and a green presence in the Assembly and local government be maintained. Brian Wilson will not be standing again and the party has wisely decided to put its limited resources behind the candidate chosen to replace him (Steven Agnew, European candidate from 2008, the party’s research officer, and the highest profile Green in NI). It is vital that the party keep the North Down seat since this is the best chance we have of electing another Green to the Assembly. There are other strong chances for the party – for example there is a strong presence in South Belfast – with Adam McGibbon as candidate there, another high profile candidate and elected member of Queens University Student Union, who should make a strong electoral impact, building on his excellent Westminster performance earlier this year.

2. Building the party at local level and connecting with communities: as the newest of NI political parties (in the sense of having an electoral presence), it is vital that the party increase its representation at local council level. This is for a number of reasons. The first is strategic and ideological – as a political movement based on bottom-up, grassroots democracy, the party needs to avoid being too ‘top-down’ in terms of having an unbalanced electoral profile. The party really needs an organic bottom-up, locally-focused development plan, selecting candidates and focusing on issues and areas that will offer Green Party representation for local communities and their issues. A second and relayed reason is that through greater local engagement, working with communities and local groups, the party can develop a ‘post-conflict’ analysis and agenda. The political conflict which has shaped and continues to shape NI politics is something that Greens cannot shy away from, and the best way of doing this is to engage more with communities and from that engagement develop and articulate what ‘green politics’ (and associated issues such as sustainability/and the transition away from unsustainability) means for communities (especially urban working class ones) who are coming to terms with the ‘post-conflict’ process in NI. Here key issues/questions are – how to connect the transition from unsustainability to issues of conflicting ethno-nationalist identities; can the party articulate a political analysis and vision that ‘connects’ with the ‘realpolitik’ of the hegemonic ‘nationalist-unionist’ dynamic?; can green politics be ‘indigenised’ in the sense of being a ‘normal’ feature of the NI political landscape? Indeed how can it portray itself not only as ‘normal’ but the natural choice for progressive voters? Some of the work on these issues have been done over the last number of years, but more is needed to localise and build the party and its political analysis and project as entrenched and enduring political presence in the tough political environment of NI politics.

3. Maintaining its distinctiveness : it is clear that as issues such as climate change and peak oil (usually of course translated into energy security) become mainstream political issues, there is a danger of Green Parties losing these policy/political issues as uniquely ‘theirs’. Even in NI, where our last environment minister (from the hardline unionist DUP) was and still is a prominent climate change denier, our most recent budget (ironically from the same DUP Minister who is now minster for finance) has flagged up the ‘Green new Deal’ as a key policy area for investment. In NI traditional Green Party policy areas have been adopted and adapted by local rival political parties (noticeably the constitutional Irish nationalist SDLP, and the ‘soft unionist/cross community’ Alliance Party). The Green Party in NI must (in my view) welcome the (late) adoption of Green policy by these ‘slow learners’ while pushing ahead in maintaining its distinctive approach to these issues. For example, the party needs to begin to question orthodox economic growth – largely unquestioned in most ‘Green new deal’ type proposals- and also the really attack the neo-liberal economic ideology underpinning the current economic crisis and also at the heart of all other political parties’ manifestos and policies.

4. All-island dimensions of the Green Party and green politics: the Green Party in NI is officially a ‘regional council’ of the Green Party in the Republic of Ireland (since December 2006), thus meaning that it is the NI branch of an all-island Green Party. At the same time the party has strong links to the Green Parties in Scotland and England and Wales and has signed Memoranda of Understanding with our sister parties to formally establish these important East-West links. These all-island and all-UK aspects of the Green Party in NI are work in progress and clearly there is more that could be done in terms of coordinating policy development, electoral support, media support etc. between the Green Party in NI and its sister parties in Scotland, England and Wales and the Republic of Ireland. The Green Party in Northern Ireland, like NI itself, is (in my view), the place where these ‘islands overlap’ and there are multiple benefits for all sister Green Parties of these islands in seeing NI as a place, an issue around which the uniqueness of a Green political vision can be articulated. Doing green politics in NI is like running on sand, given the legacy of the war and conflict and its outworkings. The creation and sustaining of a strong Green Party in NI will benefit all sister Green Parties throughout these islands, by acting as a key link between them all, and demonstrating how a shared green political perspective (often viewed as ‘fragile’ and ‘soft’ by some) can thrive and be relevant and take strength from its tough political surroundings.

Podcast of interview with me by Bob Hernan

2010-12-01T16:39:00.002Z

Podcast of me being interviewed by Bob Hernan from Irish Environment

Rethinking economics - first workshop of new think tank

2010-12-01T12:24:00.005Z

Last Saturday (27th November) I organised a workshop, the first public outing of a new think tank I've helped start - the Centre for Progressive Economics. The title of the workshop was 'The Global Economic Crisis: Analyses and Responses' and on a very cold morning around 30 people braved the elements to listen to three presentations and discuss ways in which the progressive left in general and the Trades Union movement in Northern Ireland in particular could beef up its analysis through engaging with university reseachers and becoming informed of the growing and existing evidence base for alternative economic analyses and policy prescriptions to the dominance 'neo-liberal' one.
The first presentation was from my colleague Andrew Baker who gave a wide-ranging, informed, incisive and provocatively entitled paper "Why Austerity is not commonsense but a politically driven nonsense". In his paper and subsequent discussion during the Q&A, Andrew systematically outlined and then demolished 5 'myths' that characterise the UK Lib-Con coalition's economic rationale and rhetoric of 'austerity' as the only policy option for the UK.
The five myths are
1. The country was on the verge of bankruptcy and risked becoming like Greece
2. Government debt is like household debt, or credit card debt. Like a household we have to balance the books and not live beyond our means as a nation.
3. Spiralling public debt is the result of 13 years of ruinous Labour spending and economic mismanagement.
4. Bond markets were demanding cuts in public spending and without them interest repayments on government debt would have spiralled out of control, choking off any prospect of UK economic growth.
5. Fiscal austerity is expansionary and will lead to private sector growth

The upshot of Andrew's analysis is that there is no economic rationale behind the drive for austerity, but rather represents a poliotically opportunistic attempt by the coalition to:

a) drive through deep public sector cuts now and blame the previous Labour adminstration on it, while the latter is still fresh in the public's memory. As Andrew puts it in his conclusion:

"The principal driver of the strategy is political opportunism and a concerted effort to pin the blame on the last government. This is the coherent thread running through the narrative the government are constructing."

and b) ferment/re-ignite class divisions and social tension. As he puts it
"Government strategy looks to be an effective way of fermenting class politics, social polarization and dislocation. "

Both the dogmatism around 'there is no alternative' to austerity and the deliberate creation of class tensions have obvious echoes of Thatcherism and its clear the Con-Lib adminstration is laying down a marker for how it wishes to proceed in 'remaking broken Britain', largely by breaking up the welfare state and immiserating millions with all the social costs of that, it seems.

Andrew's presentation was followed by John Woods (Convenor, NI Green New Deal group) who talked about a green approach to responding to the economic crisis. His presentation on ‘The Green New Deal in Northern Ireland’ outlined how this rather unique coalition of groups and organisations (from the Trades Unions to the CBI, Friends of the Earth, NICVA and the Ulster Farmers Union) have proposed job creating policies around the retrofitting of social housing, which also tackles fuel poverty and reducing carbon emissions. See here for the group's Housing proposals.

The final paper was from Andrew Fisher (Coordinator- Left Economics Advisory Panel) the title of which was "It’s the politics, stupid: ‘Responding to the UK Comprehensive Spending Review’" in which he pointed out the millions in unclaimed tax which could be used to address the fiscal problems of the British state, rather than attacking those on low income and welfare. Based on previous research by the Tax Justice Network he explained how the existing Tax Gap and Tax Injustice within Britain means that £120 billion in tax is lost, avoided or uncollected.

The final element of the day was a open discussion around the relationship between the Trades Union movement, progressive economics, academics and academic research. It was opened by Brian Campfield (NIPSA) and touched on issues around the research needs of the trades union movement, the importance of being briefed and up to speed on the latest research and the need for a focus on challenging the media's constant re-inforcing of the dominant neo-liberal line when discussing the economic crisis and Northern Ireland's response to it in particular.

It was a good start, the first of many and well done to all who participated and helped in its organisation.

It is hoped that the papers and presentations from the day will be put up on the Centre for Progressive Economics website soon.

The White Poppy: Remembering all war deaths and challenging the culture of violence

2010-10-18T10:00:00.004+01:00

On November Remembrance Sunday and the weeks leading up to it we will see the proliferation of Red Poppies, people wearing them in the lapels and what seems almost like the compulsory display of red poppies by TV presenters. The red poppy, distributed and promoted by the British Legion has become the dominant way in which people in the UK remember that who gave their lives in war (both world wars and other conflicts including the current ones in Iraq and Afghanistan).

The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) is according to its website, the oldest secular pacifist organisation in the UK and each year at this time promotes the wearing and public display of the White Poppy as an alternative or in addition to the Red Poppy. The origins of the White Poppy campaign can be traced to the aftermath of the First World War, there was discussion about the link between the commemoration of those who gave their lives in that war and the ways in which that commemoration promoted and sustained a ‘culture of war’.

Thus the idea of decoupling Armistice Day, the red poppy and later Remembrance Day from their military culture dates back to 1926, just a few years after the British Legion was persuaded to try using the red poppy as a fundraising tool in Britain. A member of the ‘No More War Movement’ suggested that the British Legion should be asked to imprint 'No More War' in the centre of the red poppies instead of ‘Haig Fund’ and failing this pacifists and others who rejected war as a means of resolving conflict should make their own flowers.The details of any discussion with the British Legion are unknown but as the centre of the red poppy displayed the ‘Haig Fund’ imprint until 1994 it was clearly not successful. A few years later the idea was again discussed by the Co-operative Women's Guild who in 1933 produced the first white poppies to be worn on Armistice Day (later called Remembrance Day). The Guild stressed that the white poppy was not intended as an insult to those who died in the First World War - a war in which many of the women lost husbands, brothers, sons and lovers. The following year the newly founded Peace Pledge Union joined the CWG in the distribution of the poppies and later took over their annual promotion.

The key motivations and distinctiveness of the White Poppy from its origins in the mid war period to this day are a) to commentate all war dead (the British Legion’s red poppy campaign only commemorates British war dead) and b) it rejects the military culture which still characterises Remembrance Sunday and to promote instead a culture of peace and challenge war and state-sanctioned violence. Within Northern Ireland and Ireland as a while where thousands of men (and women) have fought and died in the British armed forces since the first world war onwards, the White Poppy also has the advantage of enabling those who cannot support the British Army connotations of the Red Poppy a way to acknowledge and remember those Irish men and women who have died and fought in the British Army.Indeed, while I am a pacifist (but a believer in non-violent direct action if needed) I am drawn to wearing the White Poppy also as my way of commemorating my grandfather, a Dublin man who joined the British army and fought and was injured fighting in North Africa. In providing this way of commemoration, the White Poppy, finally allows those in the Republic of Ireland or those from the Irish Nationalist community in Northern Ireland, to publicly express and acknowledge those Irish citizens who fought and died while serving in the British armed forces. Up until recently, there was a silence, a shameful silence politically about these men and women, as if from an Irish nationalist perspective one had to ashamed of them. Thankfully this is now changing and one can only think that a wider appreciation and awareness of the White Poppy can help rectify this wrong.

At the same time, the White Poppy campaign in its expression of non-violence also means it has a very real and current relevance in drawing attention to the continuing ‘culture of violence’ which characterises how states (and others) seek to resolve conflicts and tensions. For example, one of the motivations behind the Peace Pledge Union is to highlight the ways in which military spending (at essence improving the capacity to inflict death and injury) takes funding away from life-sustaining efforts to improve human life. The PPU estimates (as of Monday 18th October) that Global Military Spending Since Jan 1, 2010 is approximately $1,065,098,794,869. Against that figure consider the following: Estimated costs to provide the following:

Shelter for every human being $21,000,000,000

Eliminate ALL Starvation and Malnourishment $19,000,000,000

Clean Safe Water for every human being $10,000,000,000

Thus, the White Poppy campaign is a call to question this shameful waste of resources and also to remind us that we should never be fooled (if in these days where talk of public spending cuts and reducing budget deficits serve as blatant propaganda to soften us and prepare us for reductions in the welfare state) that the issue is funding. How is it we can spend hundreds of millions of pounds on an illegal war and occupation of Iraq yet are told there is no money for new hospitals? How can we take seriously the proposition that we can and will spend millions of tax-payers money on upgrading the Trident nuclear missile system yet we cannot subsidise university education so that its available to all, but rather are told we have to allow universities to charge what they like? In this case, the PPU and the White Poppy campaign enable a space to be created where we can look forward to the day when it is an army general rather with a tin can on the main street looking for donations for a new tank, rather than a junior doctor doing the same looking for funding for a dialysis machine. Ultimately, the question is where do we want our taxes to go – on funding better ways to kill or better ways to sustain life?

In many respects what the White Poppy campaign attempts to do is to move Remembrance Sunday celebrations away from a mere commemoration of past conflicts and an exclusive focus on only British servicemen and women, towards an expression of sadness at humans’ inability to resolve their differences in a peaceable way. Wearing the white poppy is an opportunity to reflect on the causes of war not just the inevitable human casualties and should not be seen as an insult to those who choose to wear the Red Poppy. There should be space given to those of us who choose to wear the White Poppy and we should not be made to feel, as I sometimes do at this time of year when I wear the White Poppy, as disrespectful to the memory of those who have died in conflict. The White Poppy, when properly understood and placed within its context, is a more universal and encompassing expression of remembrance within which the wearing of the Red Poppy can be placed.

More information on the White Poppy and the Peace Pledge Union can be found at

Resilience: individual and communal

2010-09-26T08:59:00.008+01:00

Rather appropriate coming after my post about 'Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain' project I have just came across the following series.

Eight-part series of The Basics of Resilience by Chris Martenson

What Should I Do?: The Basics of Resilience (Part I - Getting Ready)

What Should I Do?: The Basics of Resilience (Part 2 – Water])

What Should I Do?: The Basics of Resilience (Part 3 – Storing Food)

What Should I Do? The Basics of Resilience (Part 4 – Growing & Preserving Food)

What Should I Do? The Basics of Resilience (Part 5 – Health and First Aid)

What Should I Do? The Basics of Resilience (Part 6 – Heat, Power, & Communications)

What Should I Do? The Basics of Resilience (Part 7 – Protecting Wealth)

What Should I Do? The Basics of Resilience (Part 8 – Community)

Chris Martenson Podcast On Surviving And Resilience

I have read some of Martenson's work in the past and while close to some aspects of the DM perspective, there are elements that overlap with the Transition Movement. However there is a distinctly American flavour to his perspective, one that can also I think be seen in the work of Sharon Astyk, the influential blogger and author of the wonderful Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front.

The American flavour I am talking about is the often very individual/family focus of their writings (combined almost always with clear, practice 'how to....' advice on everything from growing and storing food, house maintenance, health and making whatever money and energy you have go further). This very domestic focus - while not neglecting community or politics completely - stands at one end of a continuum of resilience with the community focus of the UK and Irish Transition Movement at the other. It is, as Astyk herself states a 'Little House in the Suburbs' (Chapter 9 of her book), and obviously echoes the pioneering spirit of those who went west in the 19th century in America, set up farms, villages and towns bootstrapping and laying down the infrastructure for themselves as they went. While of course not buying into the American myth of 'rugged individualism' completely, there is a clear individualistic focus to these conceptions of resilience which one does not find in the UK and Irish cases which are much more community and communal in focus. Though not definitive evidence it is telling perhaps that it is only the final of Martenson's series that addresses community. Astyk is more community orientated but even here her take on community seems to be one of neighbours and friends coming together to help one another out rather than a community which may include strangers and people we only dimly know, the connection being that they live in the same geographical space as we do.

So beyond telling us that different cultures and places are thinking about and practicing resilience differently is there more to be said about these differences (given after all that what they share is as important as what differentiates them)?

I'm not sure to be honest....and in these times of inevitable transition we need to try as many different ways of living, experiments in building resilience...and yet that dimension of the 'American' take on resilience canvassed here (and of course focusing on two writers cannot be taken to be representative of all American resilience thinking and action), that dimension which has a 'lifeboats' feel to it does spark a nagging doubt in my mind that when the shit hits the fan, it is communities not families or individuals that will be to be fore in offering responses to those inevitable shocks and transitions associted with peak oil, climate, food and resource crunches.

Dark thinking for dark times - The Dark Mountain Network

2010-09-24T10:32:00.006+01:00

A couple of months ago, reading an extremely thought-provoking and provocative article by Paul Kingsnorth on openDemocracy entitled 'Confessions of a recovering environmentalist' (a colleague and friend Andy Dobson written a response), I followed a link from the article and discovered 'Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Network: A space for conversations in a time of global disruption' and ordered a copy of its first publication Dark Mountain, which I'm part-way through.

Part of me was repelled by the strong pessismtic (or realist) 'ecocentric' critique of human-centred green thinking - largely I supect because I detected or could only believe that the almost celebratory tone of 'the end of human civilisation as we know it' was motivated by a deep and disturbing misanthrophy...and therefore I was transported back over 20 years to my negative and gut reaction to certain misanthropic - and at times racist strands of - 'deep ecology'. It is clear that the Dark Mountain project is animated by deep ecological concerns, and can be seen as yet another spontaneous green/ecological response to the crisis of our time, and the great transitions that are unfolding and will quicken as this decade progresses. Other related responses include the Transition movement, the related peak oil /post-carbon discourse, such as the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, permacultural inspired thiking and movements (especially around food and land - is it perhaps no surprise, at least from my anecdotal evidence, that most Transition towns are focused around, are strongest in or at least have their foundation in local food production and connecting to the land?), to Collapsonomics and anarchistic 'eco-primitivism' .

But there is a growing number of reports and writings both within civil society and from within the 'state system' which point to the looming threats coming down the pipe in the coming years. These range from the recently leaked German Military report on the destablising political implications of peak oil to a report from the Irish think tank FEASTA, written by David Korowicz entitled 'Tipping Point: Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production - An Outline Review' .

Collapse, threats, apoclyptic thinking, dread and a clearly identifable 'endism' can I think be fairly used to characterise these new and emerging forms of green thinking and action. Dark thinking for dark times indeed...

And I think they all have a point, and whether one agrees or disagrees they should not be simply dismissed as doom-sayers, irritating 'teetotalers pissing on the party' - though no doubt they will and have been. They may after all be simply pointing out the bleeding obvious that 'the emperor has no clothes' and rather than trying to green our existing way of life (perhaps in a more regulated, perhaps even more democratic manner), we should prepare ourselves and our communities to live different lives, 'fit for purpose' for living in more resilient, low-impact societies. That issue - and its a huge one of course - will have to wait for another time.

For now what I'd like to conclude with is what attracted me about Uncivilisation. Apart from its brutal honesty, it was in both the Dark Mountain manifesto and subsequent edited volume, the integration of culture, music, poetry, imaginative fiction all tremendously 'life affirming' (or the sugar to sweeten the pill perhaps). It has always been my view that one of the appropriate responses to crisis is creativity and imagination, and certainly the style (if not necessarily) the substance of the Dark Mountain project is one that those of use active in thinking and acting about green issues and the pressing need to create and sustain individual and collective resilience in face of the inevitable transitions we are facing, need in these anxious times. To think about living life in a carbon constrained, climate changed world will require not only courage, something I think is evident in the Dark Mountain perspective, as it is is also in all those movements, practices and groups that stand against foundational aspects of our dominant culture (and here, and of course partly speaking from where I stand, people active in Green parties and environmental, transport, food, land reform groups etc. - though I feel the DM perspective wrongly dismisses the latter). But along with courage it is the creativity, the reaching into our culytural imaginary that I also think is to be applauded in the Dark Mountain intervention. An perhaps 'intervention' is entirely appropropriate here in that the DM call (for it is clearly such) is one which in part calls on us to 'stop', down tools as it were and re-think and re-act. If as the now commonplace view has it 'business as usual is not an option', why would we not entertain the prospect that 'thinking as usual is no longer an option'?

This cultural turn is to be welcomed not simply for the inlcusion of this life affirming perspective but also more importantly because it forces us to confront the deep cultural, ethical and psychological imperatives driving ecocide (if I were not weary, as a humanist, of the term, one could include 'spiritual' in that list). Perhaps my main worry here is the tendency (and one I detected long ago in deep ecology) for this cultural turn to also go along with or act as a prelude to a depoliticised or anti-political turn in green thinking. While of course a lot more argument is needed to substantiate my closing comment here - I remain unconvinced - and not a little troubled by - the claim that the solution to the deracinated contemporay human condition lies in a depoliticised reponse to our current crises. Perhaps one indication of this is when the The Dark Mountain Network becomes a Movement.

Saral Sakar 'Understanding the present-day World Economic Crisis: An Eco-Socialist Approach'

2010-09-23T21:25:00.004+01:00

Interesting essay from an eco-socialist Indian colleague - Saral Sakar - offering an eco-socialist analysis of and prescriptions for the global economic crisis.

He notes the following:

It was said that in the first seven days after the stock exchange crash, wealth amounting to 2.5 trillion dollar was lost, and since the stock exchange peak of one year earlier, stock owners lost 8.4 trillion dollar (Wall Street Journal, 10.10.2008). But what does that actually mean? One says in such cases, the wealth vanished into thin air. But in reality, nothing concrete vanished, no house, no car. What vanished into thin air were only some numbers on paper, some zeros after a digit. The 8.4 trillion dollar were only fictitious wealth. A year before the stock prices peaked, the same stocks were valued much lower. Only speculation had driven the market value of the stocks upward. After the crash, what was in any case fictitious wealth ceased to exist.

Worth remembering of course that much of this lost wealth was illusory, paralleling the creation and circulation of 'fiat money' within an over-heated economy fulled by a double whammy of a stock market bubble and a housing bubble. But...while this correct, how many peoples' pensions were reduced or lost in that process of fictitious wealth destruction?

Later he suggests that what really triggered the crisis is the fact that the capitalist world has reached 'limits to growth'
Trade-unionists and all kinds of leftists may blame the current misery of the working people on brutal capitalist exploitation, on the weakness of the working class, on speculators without any conscience, on greedy bankers, on globalization that has caused the relocation of many production units in cheap-wage countries etc. Of course, at first sight, all these explanations are partly correct. But on closer look one cannot but realize that when, on the whole, there are less and less resources to distribute because it is getting more and more difficult to extract them from nature (think of oil exploration off the west coast of Greenland!), then, even in a better capitalist world with a strong working class, at best a fairer distribution could be achieved, not more prosperity for all. It is now necessary to think in totally new terms; a paradigm shift isnecessary, a shift from the former growth paradigm to what I call the limits-to-growth paradigm.
His analysis is that we are headed for a long period of economic contraction, which must, in his words, lead to a 'steady state economy' as we adjust our economic system to the available energy and natural resources we can exploit and use sustainably. And he concludes that what we are witnessing is "not simply the crisis of capitalism. It is the crisis of industrialism altogether, in whichever socio-political frame it might be packed. "
Interesting and provocative analysis as one would rightly expect from an eco-socialist perspective. It would have been useful if there had been some attention given to what one might call the classic question posed by Lenin 'What is to be done?'

Peak oil and the coming world's energy mess

2010-09-14T10:10:00.003+01:00

Interview here from the Energy Bulletin with Bob Hirsh about his forthcoming book The Impending World Energy Mess: What It Is and What It Means to You. He was the lead author of an influential US report in 2005 on peak oil - of course completely ignored by the Bush adminstration. Hirsch :

"I believe that the onset of the decline of world oil production is likely
in the next two to five years. And when I say “oil,” I mean all liquid
fuels".

What's noticeable from the interview (though the book may be different) is
the typical American focus on the individual (how we as householders can best
protect and forewarn - and forearm - ourselves about the decline in world oil)
and the blame being put on the government. While there is talk of that new
buzzword 'resilience' there is no sense that this is a collective property or
venture. I'll hold off any further comment until I read the book but I would be surprised (pleasantly) if the analysis involved more than techno and individualistic options all filtered through a free market pro-innovation lens...

Talking about economics...

2010-07-27T13:41:00.001+01:00

Very late (and lazy) ...but just came across this podcast of my contribution to the TASC conference last October in Dublin City University....enjoy

Celebrating the Cuban Revolution

2010-07-25T12:31:00.004+01:00

Off later this afternoon for a boat trip on the river Lagan for a trades unionist organised celebration of the Cuban revolution in 1959. The revolution is now 51 years old and the 26th July movement celebrates the 1953 campaign leading up to the overthrown of the Batista dictatorship, which began with Castro and others attacking the Mocanda barracks in Santiago de Cuba

While of course not saying that Cuba is perfect, it has abused the human rights of its citizens in the past and is still short of being a democracy - and therefore should be criticised - it has made some remarkable achievements nevertheless and has on the whole improved the welfare and lives of millions of Cubans. The fact that it's managed to survive in the face of concerted US pressure and the continuing blockage led by the US (though Obama has relaxed some of the worse excesses of the Helms-Burton act) is remarkable and something worthy of celebrating.

Not least of the reasons is the fact that Cuba had its 'peak oil' experience decades ago when the Soviet Union collapsed and had to adjust rapidly to a declining oil economy. The Power of Community film that's commonly shown and discussed in the Transition Town movement is about how Cuba responded to growing food when oil, chemicals, fertiliser, machinery etc (the oil-based elements of industrialised agriculture) gives an indication of the ingenuity and community-based solutions Cubans came up with. Cuba, warts and all, therefore has something to teach us...and then there's the fact that it has some of the best health care outcomes for its citizens that countries with much more wealth....and at the UN Haiti Donor Conference on March 31st, the government of Cuba made the offer to rebuild the entire Haitian National Health Service. What this translates into is that Cuba has made a commitment to Haiti greater than the entire G7 bloc...nuff said...

Hasta La Victoria Siempre !

The Economics Anti-Textbook...

2010-07-24T15:13:00.002+01:00

Just got a copy of The Economics Anti-Textbook: a critical thinker's guide to micro-economics http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=4326 - really looking forward to reading it. Have just posted a quick 'preview' on Progressive Economy...will do a full review when I've read it fully...

Celebrating the 12th across the entire island

2010-07-24T11:43:00.006+01:00

Former PD leader and Irish minister for justice, Michael McDowell made a (calculated) media splash at the annual McGill Summer School in the Glenties in Co. Donegal this week by suggesting that the 12th of July should be celebrated in the Republic of Ireland. Before I give my own reaction/take on this I want to point out how his suggestion was received here in 'norn iron'.

His comments were welcomed by the Orange Order and some unionist politicans while others, such as the normally sensible Nick Garbutt in the Newsletter condemned it his opinion piece yesterday 'Flags, Emblems and Ignorance' http://www.newsletter.co.uk/columnists/Flags-and-emblems-and-ignorance.6438266.jp. His argument completely by-passed the possibilities and debate opened up by McDowell's comments, focusing instead in McDowell's starting position of 'republicanism' and the fact that not all Protestant or Unionists are members of the Orange Order. On the former point I think McDowell was engaging in an attempt to reclaim republicanism from Sinn Fein (something that is to be welcomed and indeed the articulation of a 'civic republicanism' is something I support and have attempted to flesh out from a green political perspective in some of my academic writings). On the latter Nick seems to approach the debate about a more inclusive celebration and public acknowledgement of the 'orange tradition' in Ireland, determined from the outset to reduce that tradition to the Orange Order. That was not McDowell's point at all. His references to truly celebrating the 'orange panel' in the Irish Tricolour is, if one reads his speech, is about the 'non-gaelic, non-catholic' tradition on the island of Ireland i.e. that bit which is (take your pick, British, Anglo-Irish, Ulster Scots) and largely located in Northern Ireland. No one, I think, reduces the 'orange panel' to the Orange Order but the call for the celebration of the 12th opens up a debate about the Republic of Ireland becoming more mature and inclusive and living up to the spirit of a republican polity and society in the public acknowledgement of pluralism and diversity (and as indicated below, a recognition of the sectarianism suffered by the Protestant community in the Republic. But more significantly, and taking Nick's point head on, it raises the issue of what the 12th of July celebrations mean for those Protestants and Unionists who are not members of supporters of the Orange Order. It seems to me that this calls for a debate about whether there is a need for another non-Orange Order, non-12th July celebration of Britishness, Anglo-Irishness, Ulster-Scottishness etc? Because at present this public celebration is defined and confined to the 12th July. Thus it is unfair to criticise McDowell for reducing the cultural celebration and public display and acknowledgement of Unionism to the 12th celebrations since there are no other ones currently available. But the main issue is that McDowell should be congratulated not accused of ignorance for starting a long overdue debate on this issue.

My own views are that what McDowell's suggestion opens up is to be first and foremost to be welcomed. If the Republic of Ireland is to live up to its 'republican' (i.e. civic republican) not Irish nationalist character (though of course the latter has historically dominated and coopted the former) then making the 12th July a public holiday in the Republic - or failing that, providing some state-backed i.e. public recognition of it (beyond the President hosting a 'private' reception), has another (in my view) progressive advantage. And that is the acknowledgement within the Republic of Ireland that the Protestant community has suffered sectarian discrimination, marginalisation and unequal treatment since the foundation of the Irish state. That this discrimination was uneven, subtle and did not mirror the levels suffered by Catholics in Northern Ireland, does not in any way undermine the fact that there has been a wall of silence and a refusal within the Republic of Ireland to acknowledge the fact that to think that 'sectarianism' was and is something confined to Northern Ireland in general and is another term for 'anti-Catholic' in particular, was and is simply wrong.

That many within the Protestant community in the Republic quickly realised that to get by within the new state the best course was to 'keep their heads down' is itself evidence of how, to abuse that well-worn phrase and apply it to a different context, the Republic of Ireland was 'a cold house for Protestants'. It is of course for members of the Protestant community in the Republic themselves to articulate the extent to which this was and is the case, and it is good to see that in the last number of years there has been a steady stream of academic research focusing on the sectarianism and discrimination experienced by them.

If we are to build a new relationship between the two parts of the island, the two dominant political and religious traditions (which involves the active seeking to create a more pluralist set of identities upon which to base political interests and politics), then a public debate needs to begin the Republic of Ireland around the claim that it was 'a cold house for Protestants'. This has begun - fitfully - for an example see the exchange between Senator Eoghan Harris and historian John A Murphy on the extent of anti-Protestant discrimination in Cork http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/corks-bloody-secret-a-small-dispute/

Killing the Messenger: Con-Libs close down the Sustainable Development Commission

2010-07-22T21:00:00.004+01:00

The cuts have begun...the Con-Lib coalition has lost no time in cutting one of the few 'critical friends' of the government, the Sustainable Development Commission, described as an 'arms length agency' by the DEFRA (Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs) Minister who announced it was to be axed at the end of the current financial year in the House of Commons on Monday. Also to go is the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which shared with the SDC an unrivalled reputation of evidence-based, brave and courageous inquiries, reports, holding government to account and advocacy.

Clearly the Tories don't want any friends paid by the taxpayer (critical or otherwise) while they're running the show (as a rule Tories don't have too many friends...unless the 'market' dictates some 'optimum' number of course). The message is clear, the Tories (despite Cameron's piffle about 'being the greenest government ever') could not give a fuck about the environment, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, soil fertility erosion or any of the other related newly categorised 'non-problems' the UK faces. Have a problem with the implications of really implementing 'sustainable development'? Well, here's a solution, simply kill the messenger. Power speaks so clearly and eloquently when it organises...in this case organises something 'out' without reason. Why should a reason be given, the fact that the government has spoken and determined that the £3 million saved from the SDC is 'the reason' is sufficient...nevermind that it was one of the few decent initiatives of the previous government in terms of preparing this country for life in the 21st century, that is life in a carbon constrained, climate changed world.

Centre for Progressive Economics

2010-07-19T17:26:00.003+01:00

Sneak peak of a new progressive think tank I'm involved with in Belfast...watch that space!

Mission statement of the new Centre

The Centre for Progressive Economics Economic exists to promote an alternative, progressive economics for Northern Ireland and beyond. A range of progressive economists, activists and social policy researchers working in universities, the labour movement and activist research organizations have come together to break the cosy neo-liberal consensus that controls the public debate and dominates economic policy. We have joined forces to ensure that a critical and alternative perspective is heard.

New publication

2010-07-18T14:03:00.003+01:00

Bit of self-promotion...well if I don't do it who will? Just got the proofs of a new book Renewable Energy and the Public, edited by Patrick Devine-Wright in which I have a co-authored chapter (with Geraint Ellis, a colleague from Queens). Our chapter's entitled 'Beyond Consensus?: Agonism, Republicanism and
a Low Carbon Future'.

One of the things we argue for is that the transition to a low carbon economy should not shy about from embracing, accepting and ultimately viewing conflict, debate and disagreement about that transition as negative or worse, to shut up, marginalise or otherwise vilify those who object to the decarbonisation of the economy in general or who raise objections to specific renewable and low carbon energy technologies or initiatives - such as most commonly objections to wind farms. Rather, from a broadly civic republican perspective (which values pluralism and agonistic/respectful democratic disagreement over 'consensus') we suggest that what is required is to move the debate away from a narrow focus on renewable or low carbon energy production (which is sadly the dominant political response). To quote from our conclusion:

"The argument we have outlined is that, by allowing a greater range of options for communities to choose how (but not whether) they ‘do their bit’, changes their incentive structure to allow a greater range of low carbon options to be negotiated in each locality. This requires moving beyond a focus on energy production to include reducing energy consumption, increasing, efficiency and adopting nonenergy carbon options such as ‘green’ waste management, food, transport, housing etc. This would require a major reformulation of the institutions in which energy and development are regulated; for example, changing land use planning to energy descent planning. Indeed, a rethink of the regulatory system is necessary in order to provide the appropriate context for the bargaining we have outlined here, with a need for a nationwide low carbon energy strategy in which communities (spatial or aspatial) know that they must achieve carbon reduction targets, but with a degree of flexibility about how they do this.

This may paradoxically) deliver more renewable energy deployment than one which narrowly focuses on the installation of renewable energy technologies. However, the greater penetration of renewable energy is not the only, or indeed the most, important consideration – it is but one among a variety of means by which the transition to a low carbon economy can be achieved. We need to take a ‘bigger view’ than renewable energy production as the only way in which we can create a sustainable energy future: allowing communities the option, for example, that a sustainable energy future may be one that uses less energy. "

Now yer appetites are whetted, go ye out and buy loads of copies!

Overcoming addictions

2010-07-18T13:44:00.002+01:00

Nice to see the new Lib-Con (or is it Con-Lib...or just a simply Con?) government's Energy and Climate Change secretary (secretary for DECC now there's a title!) the Liberal Democrat's Chris Huhne following in the wake of his counterpart in the Republic of Ireland, the Green Party Minister for Energy, Eamon Ryan, in a public all for the UK to end its addiction to fossil fuel. As he put it,

"But as oil becomes ever more difficult to extract, and as demand for oil surges in the emerging economies, we need to recognise the dangers inherent in our history of fossil fuel addiction"

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/Energy_Summit/Energy_Summit.aspx

Also interesting to note his brazen appropriation of the language of the 'Green New Deal' championed by the Green Party and think tanks such as the new economics foundation.
No mention of peak oil, unlike Eamon Ryan's open acceptance of this as the policy and geological context within which we need to address energy security, and of course nothing about reducing energy consumption. It will be interesting to watch how far each - Huhne and Ryan - can get in their plans for decabonisation of the economy given the constraints each face politically as junior coalition partners in bed with right-wing, non-progressive parties.

Deputy leader of Rwandan Green Party hacked to death

2010-07-17T16:08:00.004+01:00

"The deputy leader of Rwanda's Green Party was found murdered yesterday amid a crackdown against opposition organisations before next month's presidential elections. Andre Kagwa Rwisereka's body was found in the early hours on a riverbank, a couple of miles from his abandoned pick-up truck. His head was nearly severed and a large knife was found nearby. The murder followed complaints by senior party officials of death threats, police harassment and intimidation."

Terrible, just terrible...

Against the backdrop of the Democratic Green Party being banned from registering as a political party and to stand candidates in next month's election.

Orange parades, protest and rioting

2010-07-15T19:08:00.002+01:00

Well...its that time of year again when I'm torn between wanting desperately for some sunny, rain-free weather and wanting it to lash out of the heavens to keep the 'recreational rioters' off the streets. We've now had four nights rioting, attempted shooting of police, attempt to burn the Dublin-Belfast train and while I can't say I'm a fan of the Orange Order and their insistance on walking down areas they're not welcome or wanted (the ostensible reason for the rioting and protest by nationalists) neither do I support the wanton violence that we've seen here (mostly by young men, but there are reports of kids under 10). It seems things have 'kicked off' in part due to the concerted and organised efforts of republican dissident groups such as erigi who for example formed the Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective which effectively ousted the original Ardoyne Community group from protesting against the Tour of the North Orange Parade. Even Sinn Fein has criticised GARC as a 'self-styled and non-elected' i.e. they represent competition for them.

On a related point I cycled into work on Monday - the 'Twelfth' as its known here, the main day for the Orange marches and met about four of the them on my 14 mile trip from Bangor to the University - no issues there. But I went to get lunch round the corner from my office in Botanic Avenue - those from norn iron will know - quite an experience...Two drunken young men out of their heads singing sectarian songs (could not make them out they were that drunk but something along the lines of "If you're....you're a taig"), groups of people squatting around drinker export larger and blue WKD, general air of menace about the place. Two PSNI landrovers cruised about, one with a touching (and large) sign which read 'Alcohol may be confiscated'...decisive policing!
Went home late ...mistake, Botanic a sea of druken men and women with the policce trying calmly to contain them, had to pass people blocking the road on Donegall pass, then the stand off at Short Strand where on the other side had to wade through crowds of people - drunk of course- and hoping they would not hear my accent. Welcome to Norn Iron!

Remember Limits to Growth?

2010-06-15T11:47:00.003+01:00

Remember this? Well despite the passing of time the basic analysis of the Limits to Growth report from the early 1970s is still as valid as ever...we just have more science, data and evidence to back it up.

While the Club of Rome and the green movement, parties, thinkers and activists it mobilised still hold the main hypothesis of the LTG report - namely it is biophysically/themodynamically/ecologically impossible (that means no fictional 'free market' can overcome these non-negotiable limits - for any orthodox economists out there the limiting factors on the economy is energy not money) - some extremely eloquent new thinkers and movements have emerged in the past decade. Alongside movements such as Transition Towns, of which I am a (not very active) member and also sometime observer, I have been drawn to authors such as James Howard Kunstler and Richard Heinberg. Heinberg in a recent article has noted that

The "normal" late-20th century economy of seemingly endless growth actually emerged from an aberrant set of conditions that cannot be perpetuated. That "normal" is gone. One way or another, a "new normal" will emerge to replace it. Can we build a different, more sustainable economy to replace the one now in tatters? Let's be clear: I believe we are in for some very hard times. The transitional period on our way toward a post-growth, equilibrium economy will prove to be the most challenging time any of us has ever lived through. Nevertheless, I am convinced that we can survive this collective journey, and that if we make sound choices as families and communities, life can actually be better for us in the decades ahead than it was during the heady days of seemingly endless economic expansion.
http://www.postcarbon.org/article/80688-life-after-growth

I like the idea of a 'new normal', though not the sentiment that we will /may suffer before we get to it, and think this is perhaps as good a way of describing the alternative infrastructure, lifestyle, economy, economic thinking that greens like me have been banging on about for years.

Now that I think of it, my Masters dissertation way back in 1990 was on Limits to Growth...wonder where it is?

Peak oil and political theory

2010-06-15T11:07:00.003+01:00

Every since I got into the green/sustainability/environmental academic and activist area a frequent question for me - as a 'political theorist' by profession, academic discipline and disposition - has always been what does political theory, theorising about our political situation look like in the context of all the stuff I usually read about such as biodiversity loss, climate change, peak oil, food insecurity, energy insecurity and the geopolitical implications of all of these and more? What do the likes of great contemporary political thinkers such as John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Judith Bulter, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor and others within the 'political theory canon' have to say to us about these issues? Do they tell us anything? Are they the temporary product of an oil-based civilisation and therefore the foundations and principles upon which they are build and their main concerns (their particular take on justice, identity, group rights, agency, the subject etc.) as shaky and as finite as the fossil fuels which (in part) made them possible in the first place? While of course too crude a way to frame modern political theory, it is a moot question to ask - what use/benefit are these theories if removed from the reality of the situation we are facing? Can they/should they be critiqued for not including more than a cursory discussion of the ecological crisis? Look up the following key words in the index of any contemporary political theory book - ecological, energy, climate change, biodiversity, peak oil, low carbon, thermodynamics - to see how much attention is paid to these pressing concerns? The danger of course, and one that is only too obvious if one were to mechanically follow this logic - is that we would make a standard for judging the usefulness/merit etc of any political theory by how it was grounded in/related to/spoke to the ecological crisis . Is the ecological crisis and the associated energy, climate, resource and food crises - of such import that one could justify this? Have the 'circumstances of justice' (and identity, group rights etc) changed so radically that one can dismiss the vast majority of contemporary political theory as patently 'unfit for purpose'? But is the 'applicability' and 'usefulness' of political theory its only or main criterion? I'm not sure and would hate to see a systematic 'ecological -proofing' of political theory (reminscent of Mao's injunction during the disasterous cultural revolution of forcing intellectuals to work in the fields perhaps - though I do think academics could get their hands dirty a bit more than we do!), BUT...given the 'planetary crisis' we are facing it is an entirely legitimate question to ask 'what is political theory doing to help?'

Aftermath: World without oil

2010-06-15T10:59:00.002+01:00

National Geographic documentary 'Aftermath: World without oil'...

The dawn of a post-carbon world?....

2010-06-15T09:23:00.002+01:00

Hmmm...well, its been a while since I used this site! Facebook has taken over my on-line 'diary writing', and can't promise to keep this blog updated....but anyhow, sure no one is reading this and like most blogs its more for me and my own amusement/sanity.
The link to James Howard Kunstler, an author of fierce and honestly held views - largely offering a 'doomer' analysis of peak oil - or a 'realistic' one depending on one's views - think Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but with more jokes and acerbic wit (and a bit more hope...). Somewhat like John Gray - another author I've strangely come to admire more and more over the years (sure sign of me becoming more conservative/reactionary?!) , Kunstler offers a scientifically informed, ecologically and energy-informed analysis of our coming post-carbon world, and it ain't pretty....Hobbes and Malthus for the internet age...but sobering nonetheless to read if nothing to temper the often hopelessly unrealistic views of those who think 'the market/reform' will take care of it, or others who think simply circling the wagons and re-localisation (by itself) will suffice.

Academic Capitalism and Knowledge as Capital

2009-11-09T10:33:00.010Z

More off-cuttings from the 'buke' I'm writing....

“The University is a business and anyone who thinks otherwise is sadly mistaken. We are a business with education at our core –the intellectual capacity of the University is first and foremost – but the University needs to generate income streams in order to shape its own destiny rather than have it determined for it.”
Bob Burgess, Vice-Chancellor, University of Leicester (University of Leicester, 2007; emphasis added).

Let us take one (amongst many) example of the normalisation and ubiquity of the regime of ‘economic truth’, to use Foucault’s term, under neoliberalism. Education, especially, but not limited to higher education, is now increasingly and primarily viewed and organised through an economic lens – a degree is needed to get a job, generic employability skills are embedded in modules taught, state funding for research privileges those forms of knowledge which can potentially contribute to economic productivity and competitiveness, academic staff are increasing appraised and judged against a variety of economic and quasi-economic criteria. Education is not viewed, promoted or seen by its recipients i.e. students (now of course re-named not customers or users) or by teaching staff (trainers) as something a ‘good in itself’, nor are objectives of creating critical citizens, engaged in their communities and wider society (Barry, 2007b).[1] In Alistair MacIntyre’s terms the internal goods and standards of the ‘practice’ of education is being undermined or corrupted by the externally imposed goals of the ‘institution’ of the modern university geared towards economic objectives and organisational self-understanding (MacIntyre, 1***). Notions of ‘mission-led’ science, technology or engineering, that is, the creation of knowledge and technologies to ‘make the world a better place’, improve human well-being wilt in the face of imperatives and incentives for ‘commericalisable research’, intellectual property rights, patents, spin-out companies, ‘use relevant’ research; Knowledge-Transfer Partnerships and now in the UK, the Research Excellent Framework (REF) and its focus on measuring and rewarding the ‘impact’ of research.

As the same time, as encapsulated by the quote from the Vice Chancellor of the University of Leicester above, universities are today not simply places for the production and consumption of ‘market-relevant knowledge and skills’ but are themselves businesses, and therefore in competition with other ‘knowledge providers’ in a global marketplace. As Paul Ramsden, Chief Executive of Higher Education, recently put it:

The narrative of this contribution has concentrated on the challenge of how to maintain and improve our performance in global terms. To secure world class status by 2020, we will need to sustain the UK’s pre-eminent position as a provider of high quality teaching and student experiences against a background of a larger and more diverse student population and increasing international competition.
(Ramsden, 2008: 10; emphasis added).

All this is seen by critics as ‘academic capitalism’ and characterised by “the increase of external research funding at universities and a market-orientation of research” (Keskinen and Silius 2005: 18). This academic capitalism and the commercial corruption of the practice of universities (in teaching and research) has become particularly acute in the current economic recession as business leaders and corporations as well as the state demand that ‘research and development’ is corralled and marshalled in the service of pulling the economy out of recession and to ensure the ‘international competitiveness’ of the domestic or regional economy.[2]

Guala, in a review of Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics, notes that:

The government must constantly intervene, but on society, rather than on the economy itself. Notice the diametrical opposition with social democracy: government intervention is not required so as to fix the imperfection of markets, but to make a market economy possible – by creating and sustaining competition, for example, by having in place an appropriate legal system that supports the functioning of markets. But also by encouraging entrepreneurship in all areas of life, including those areas that were traditionally alien to the economic way of thinking and acting. In a world were individual choice, risk management, investment in personal development and so forth have become ubiquitous buzzwords, these ideas do not seem bizarre at all. (Guala, 2006: 6; emphases added)

The actors, institutions, habits, subjects of neo-liberalism need to be actively created, sustained and re-created as necessary – the role of government is to create active consumers, active entrepreneurs, to instil entrepreneurialism as both normal and desirable (even enforceable) and to accommodate society to the needs and requirements of the ‘the market’ rather than vice versa. In this way, the move to embed entrepreneurial skills within university undergraduate programmes in the UK is but a real world example of the operation of this ‘regime of economic truth’ or the ‘neoliberal planetary vulgate’ (Bordieu and Wacquant, 2001). One of the policy priorities of the British government since the early 1990s has been to render the country more economically competitive by transferring knowledge into wealth creation. A regulated quasi-market in higher education was created by the 1988 Education Act, by which the government forced universities to respond to market pressures and to become more entrepreneurial in terms of income generation from non-state sources. This led to radical changes in institutional organisation, management and behaviour, including most significantly the growing influence of business interests on university priorities, with businesspeople influencing the curriculum. Throughout the 1990s, successive British Governments emphasised the role of universities in the ‘knowledge society’ and the need to be more entrepreneurial within the globalised knowledge economy. For instance, in 1993 the Conservative Government launched a ‘technology foresight programme’, intended to encourage networking between researchers and the ‘end users’ of research (principally businesses, especially those technology related), to identify priorities for research development and to exploit them according to economic and social demand. The 2003 White Paper The Future of Higher Education argued that radical reform was necessary to widen student access to universities and to make universities more responsive to the demands of the global economy. These set the framework within which universities operate as adjuncts to the demands of the national and global market, to ensure the production of university graduates and universities themselves with the skills, experience, competency and character to secure and enhance the international competitiveness of the UK economy.

One example of this embedding of an entrepreneurial ‘economic truth’ is the following press statement which accompanied the awarding to the University of Nottingham of the ‘Entrepreneurial University of the year’ in 2008:

Ian Robertson, Chief Executive of the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship, which sponsored the category, said: "Choosing a single successful university was difficult. But entrepreneurialism was a clear and visible part of Nottingham's culture. A very difficult decision was eased by the breadth and depth of that entrepreneurial culture at the University, from senior management through to staff and the student societies. (University of Nottingham, 2008)

The current prioritisation of STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) is yet another instance of this ‘economisation’ of the university – a further transformation of institutions of higher learning into servicing the current needs of the national economy in the context of a global market. Other bodies of knowledge, subjects and disciplines – philosophy, classics, foreign languages that are not related to ‘emerging markets’ (such as India, China, Russia), cultural studies, are deemed ‘superfluous’ to the requirements of the ‘lean and focused’, market-orientated, modern university keen to be seen to be producing ‘impact’ and ‘policy-based’ research. As Claire Fox has put it, “Forget being a ‘curiosity-driven’ scholar; become a thoroughly modern ‘impact’ researcher, contributing to the economic and social wellbeing of the nation” (Fox, 2009), though the reality is that although ‘social wellbeing’ is publicly stated as a goal of publicly funded research and teaching, the reality it is a poor second to the ‘real deal’ of contributing to ‘economic competitiveness’. Research and teaching aimed at social wellbeing is not excluded, but certainly not supported to the extent that knowledge leading to commercial exploitation is. Government’s rhetorical support for it also functions as useful window dressing and a convenient fig leaf to hide behind whenever this crude economisation of the university is broached.

The newly established Excellence Framework (REF) is simply a continuation of the ‘closed’ system of disciplined assessment, ranking and categorisation of individual university departments and universities as a whole which goes back to the 1988 Education act. This ‘panoptic performativity’ (Perryman, 2006) of the ‘excellence’ ‘qualispeak’ and ‘audit’ and attendant ‘micro-managerial’ academic organisational culture has largely rendered academics into the ‘docile and compliant bodies’ necessary for this form of governmentality to operate successfully. As Readings (1996) put its there is an ideology of “excellence” which functions to judge, rank and control knowledge production within universities, and produce particular types of bodies and subjects in both academics (‘on message and orientated towards producing high impact, quality publications’ etc) and students (‘the oven ready’ graduate).[3]

From a Foucauldian, MacIntyre or Marxist perspective, the ideology of ‘excellence’ (a powerful discourse, partly from being so generic, in terms of focusing on ‘fitness for purpose’, as well as, at least initially, being such obviously a ‘good thing’ – who can question ‘excellence’?) is an extremely powerful mechanism for further integrating the University with the productive, economic logic of globalised capitalism through the disciplinary activities of the ‘competition state’. This discourse ‘works’ not because nobody knows what ‘excellence’ is but because everybody thinks they know what is (Lim, 2007: 6), and therefore the ‘pursuit of excellence’ becomes like the US Declaration of the ‘pursuit of happiness’. As Readings notes:

Generally, we hear a lot of talk from University administrators about excellence because it has become the unifying principle of the contemporary university. (. . .) As an integrating principle, excellence has the singular advantage of being entirely meaningless, or to put it more precisely, non-referential. (Readings, 1996, p. 22)

How does a university compete in a market where everyone is claiming and being judged by ‘excellence’ benchmarks? If every university is excellence, what does that mean? Apart from the tried and tested mechanism of ‘excellence inflation’ (which nicely complements ‘grade inflation’ at the student level) – whereby one simply tries to hyperbolise and exaggerate one’s ‘excellence’ as better from other universities’ ‘excellence’ (Darbyshire, 2008: 37) – one can join an ‘elite’ grouping of universities (say the Russell Group in the UK which markets itself as the ‘Top 20 research active universities in the UK’) or seek to be placed in the top 10, 50 or 100 of some market and politically meaningful league table with one’s competitors.

As Readings puts it, excellence “draws only one boundary: the boundary that protects the unrestricted power of the bureaucracy” (Readings, 1996: 27; emphasis added). Any department that fails to conform is simply closed down, as can be witnessed in the erosion of subjects such as classics, philosophy, womens’ studies, cultural studies i.e. any subject deemed not achieve the required standard when those standards of excellent are increasingly composed of economic objectives.

Here we see the disciplinary fulfilment of the discourse and practices (institutionalisation and bureaucratisation of ‘quality controlling’) of ‘quality and excellence’ within the academy. In Loughlin’s words: “The purpose of the ‘quality revolution’ in management theory was explicitly Orwellian. Its goal: to produce a language to facilitate the control of working populations by making meaningful opposition to the policy decisions of senior management within organisations strictly impossible” (Loughlin, 2004: 717). For those academics caught in the disciplinary web of such bureaucratised systems, or at least those who have some sense of disquiet about such processes, there is a sense the whole ‘research excellence’ and other academic quality control exercises are grudgingly put up with (if not actively resisted) as a form of ‘tax’ to be paid for being a ‘scholar’ in the modern higher education world of ‘total and totalising quality control and controlling’.

As Derbyshire has forcefully put it:

The worlds of health care and education have been colonised by ‘The Audit Society’ and managerialism. Under the benign guise of ‘improving quality’ and ‘ensuring value for money’ a darker, more Orwellian purpose operates. Academics had to be transformed into a workforce of ‘docile bodies’, willing to scrutinise and survey themselves and their ‘performance’ as outcome deliverers and disciples of the new ‘Qualispeak’. (Darbyshire, 2008: 35)

What is crucially important to understand here is the partial and one-sided ‘entrepreneurialism’ that is being prompted by state and university management. Social entrepreneurship, encouraging novel and creative forms of ‘active citizenship’ is resolutely not on the agenda. Here is important to review the rhetorical commitment on behalf of the state to an expansive conception of entrepreneurship

Reforming curriculum and assessment…will ensure graduates who are educated to the standard which the future economy and well-being of our nation demands. That standard must enable them to embrace complexity, climate change, different forms of citizenship, and different ways of understanding individuality and cooperation. A student experience that is fit for the future will develop their qualities of flexibility and confidence and their sense of obligation to the wider community. (Ramsden, 2008: 11)

This sounds good, but the vast bulk of effort has not gone into encouraging forms of active citizenship in relation to climate change or social responsibility, but rather into conventional economic growth activities. Ramsden goes on to state that

The vision of learner as passive consumer is inimical to a view of students as partners with their teachers in a search for understanding – one of the defining features of higher education from both academic and student perspectives, and powerfully embodied in academic culture since at least the time of Humboldt. There is no reason to impose a false divide between higher education as a road to a better, more highly-paid career and a vision of it as a life-changing personal experience. (Ramsden, 2008: 16)

But such rhetoric rings hollow when one weighs up the stress on purely economic, productive scientific, technological dimensions of entrepreneurialism, innovation and creativity. Investment in technological and scientific knowledge production will always be disproportionally more expensive that most social science and humanities subject areas. Nevertheless a quick glance at the sheer scale of the disparities of funding for STEM subject areas in teaching and research and social science and humanities, really brings home a sense of where the state’s priorities lie and therefore where the priorities of university management lie. To use Foucauldian terminology, modern universities are actively creating particular sorts of subjects, shaping – rather explicitly in the constant reference to the ‘student experience’ in modern University management speak - and rendering these economically necessary subjectivities (skills, knowledge, dispositions, character traits) socially and culturally desirable.

Indeed, discussions of ‘academic freedom’ within government – such as a speech by Bill Rammell is curiously one-sided in which only some things and issues are up for debate. In his speech the then Minster used academic freedom as a counterpoint to Islamic extremism on university campuses (Rammell, 2007). For example, questioning economic growth – while of course not outlawed (at least not yet) – is nonetheless neither encouraged, actively supported or regarded as a ‘good career move’ academically speaking, given it is such a heterodox and ‘dissident’ intellectual pursuit.[4]

The point of this brief excursion into the modern ‘brave new world’ of ‘knowledge production and consumption’ (aka modern universities) is to demonstrate, as if this were needed, the real world, institutional and mundane, workday context within which knowledge is produced, taught and disseminated in the modern university. While of course it is entirely possible that the dominance of neo-classical economics could have taken place in an academic context different from the one described as happening over the past 20 years or so in the UK, it is also the argument of this chapter that the institutionalisation of the forces of ‘academic capitalism’, viz., the quality controlling auditing bureaucracies, the manipulation by the state of the political economy of research funding, the promotion and ‘encouragement’ of ‘impact’ oriented research ‘excellence’, all provided the conducive institutional conditions for the privileging of neo-classical economics and its achievement of ideological and pedagogic hegemony within the academy.
[1] A wonderful example of this which fits perfectly a Foucauldian analysis (or indeed one based on MacIntyre’s critical analysis) is the re-naming of the UK Department of Education as the Department of Business Innovation and Skills. Enough said.
[2] A good example of this is the increasing calls in the Republic of Ireland for more funding for applied scientific and technological research (reference) or more worryingly, the general trend in research funding which allocates fewer resources to fundamental research in favour of supporting and boosting research which has an industrial or economic application.
[3] The discourse of the ‘over ready’ graduate is revealing in that it is not, as one might expect, used as a critical term in deconstructing or analysing higher education, but also used as a positive or merely descriptive term. As an example, see the following from the newly appointed Director of the Business School in the Southampton Solent University: “I have always been keen to develop graduates who were enterprising and employable – and that will be my ethos here at Southampton Solent. I want our courses to produce oven-ready graduates who can hit the ground running, not only in business skills, but also in enterprise” (Southampton Solent University, 2009; emphasis added). For further analysis of the ‘oven ready graduate’ see .
[4] Of course there are some exceptions such as academics like Herman Daly who have developed successful academic careers in questioning orthodox economic thinking and economic growth – or more recently Tim Jackson and his well-received report and book Prosperity without Growth (Jackson, 2009). This issue of green or heterodox positions which challenge what passes for ‘common sense’ and the orthodox mainstream, will be explored further in chapter X.. in relation to reading green politics as a form of ‘dissident’ politics within contemporary capitalist societies and cultures.

Dig where you stand .....and die

2009-11-06T21:26:00.004Z

As usual, reading and writing on the 'buke' that is obsessing me - and for whatever reason occasioned by re-reading Molly Scott-Cato's wonderful book - Green Economics http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=34067 - I was reminded about how we can define community. I'm always banging on about 'digging where you stand', that is doing the best you can, doing what you can do in your local community, but it struck me this also is about (or could be about - I don' want to frighten the youngins out there!) about the sense of 'home' of 'being' one feels in recognising that all this digging where you stand is also digging your own grave - metaphorically speaking. To think that where you are now, all the people and wonderful stuff you do now in THIS place at THIS time is ....well...a prelude to your graveyard oration (clearly I'm arrogant and confident enough that there will be people who will be concerned about such things when I'm gone!). This may be a new test of community each of us can try. If you were to die, do you think anyone apart from your immediate circle would notice? Where in other words do we find meaning for the ultimate human experience that is death? For me, its where I am now and perhaps that is the greatest value I can place on where I am and feel part of.... I'm not feeling poorly by the way so I plan to be around for a good while yet!!

The Economist Emperor has no clothes: Toxic Textbooks and Dissident Economics

2009-11-06T19:27:00.003Z

The children’s fairytale ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ is useful (like Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax) for uncovering the ultimate psychological and cultural basis for how we think about economics, and economic practices and concepts such as money, credit, exchange, property, patents etc. Something becomes real with power and potency not because of its own qualities but because enough people imbue them with these qualities i.e. it becomes ‘real’ not because it exists but because enough people say it exists. Reciprocally, the economic imaginary creates and sustains its own subject – that is to say economics studies not the real economic world as it is, but bases its claims to knowledge on its study of an imaginary world – the economic imaginary. In large part this imaginary is made possible by the progressive disembedding of the economic from society (Polanyi, 1947). This imaginary world is peopled by perfectly rational, utility maximising individuals, firms existing in perfect competition and a market which clears at a price when supply meets demand.

According to Gilles Raveaud, one of the co-founders of the ‘post-autistic economics’ movement in France, one of the reasons for starting the movement was criticism of

"the construction of ‘imaginary worlds’ by economists. That is, worlds which do not have any link with any plausible mechanism in reality. Such worlds (the famous ‘models’) are just developed for their own sake, because of their tractability. We no longer want to be taught such fairy tales, the aim of which is not to explain ‘reality’, but just to show the ability of the writer to construct a ‘nice model’. It may be fun for the authors, but we do not want to be part of the game". (Raveaud, 2000)

Now ‘myths’, ‘fairy-tales’ and ‘imaginary worlds’ are not terms we usually associate with modern economics and the application of these terms – which I think is perfectly appropriate – seems to suggest a critique of economics that goes beyond its false denial of its normative assumptions and refusal to see itself as ethical, partial and biased, ideological and political. And that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this! So long as there is openness and honesty about value positions and normative judgements, neo-classical economists have as much right as anyone else (but a strictly equal right) to contribute and make arguments around how the economy ought to be organised. This is the appeal for pluralism within economics that is at the heart of the heterodox and post-autistic economics movement.

A good example of how frustration with the dominance o the neo-classical orthodoxy is being expressed is the ‘Toxic Textbooks’ campaign. This is a campaign started by students in the Sorbonne in Paris in 2005 for greater pluralism within university courses on economics – a demand for greater democracy and debate within the teaching of economics. The ‘Toxic Textbooks’ campaign is on one level simply another front in the battle against the neo-classical orthodoxy and in many respects that is correct. But it also reveals in a very public manner the fact that what is at stake here is an ideological battle for ‘hearts and minds’ and not simply an ‘epistemological’ paradigm shift in some Kuhnian sense. One of those who have championed the campaign is the heterodox economist Steve Keen who in a provocatively entitled article entitled ‘What a load of bollocks’, notes how despite the current economic crisis and the fact that neoclassical economists did not either predict it not after the crisis see any need to correct some of its basic assumptions, the orthodoxy intends to continue on as usual and regardless.

Two prominent economics textbook writers have recently written that the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) shows that the world needs more economics rather than less. Writing in the New York Times, Gregory Mankiw could see some need to modify economics courses a bit in response to the GFC, but overall he felt that: “Despite the enormity of recent events, the principles of economics are largely unchanged. Students still need to learn about the gains from trade, supply and demand, the efficiency properties of market outcomes, and so on. These topics will remain the bread-and-butter of introductory courses.” Writing on a blog The East Asia Forum, authors Doug McTaggart, Christopher Findlay and Michael Parkin wrote that: “The crisis has also brought calls for the heads of economists for failing to anticipate and avoid it. That idea, too, is wrong: much economic research pointed to the emerging problem. More economic research (and teaching), not less, is the best hope of both emerging from the current crisis and of avoiding future ones”. What a load of bollocks. The “principles of economics” that Mankiw champions, and the ”More economic research (and teaching)” that McTaggart et al are calling for, are the major reason why economists in general were oblivious to this crisis until well after it had broken out. (Keen, 2009a) http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/05/25/what-a-load-of-bollocks/

The sheer dominance and power of the neo-classical orthodoxy, the profound lack of debate and criticism within the modern academic economics profession means that while of course the normal academic channels and modes of knowledge production should be used to develop and articulate critiques (such as academic journals, publications, research projects and conferences), there is also a need for direct action as it were. As against an authoritarian regime, dissidents would be foolish to advance their arguments against the regime solely by the established ‘rules of the game’. In the case of academic economics journals these are almost completely monopolised by the orthodoxy, with heterodox economists forced by the lack of pluralism and encouragement of dissident perspectives within mainstream academic economic journals, to create their own publications, journals and associations to support and promote their work. In this way the ‘Toxic Textbooks’ campaign can be seen as the ‘direct action’ complement to the ‘normal’ channels of intellectual protest. Like an authoritarian political regime, the neo-classical intellectual regime is largely immune and deaf to critiques through the ‘normal’ channels –hence the move to the streets by heterodox dissidents and their explicit casting of the issue in terms of a battle for hearts, minds and curriculum.

As Keen in another article noted:

The current economic meltdown is not the result of natural causes or human cnspiracy, but because society at all levels became infected with false beliefs rarding the nature of economic reality. And the primary sources of this infection are the “neoclassical” or “mainstream” textbooks long used in introductory economics courses in universities throughout the world…If economics were in any sense a science, this dramatic failure would lead to a period of soul searching and intellectual ferment from which would emerge a more empirically grounded vision. But with the essentially unscientific nature of economics, this development is unlikely unless enormous pressure is brought to bear on academic economics departments by their students, by business groups, unions, and community groups–in short by anyone whose welfare is affected by the economy…The most immediate source of pressure will be students of economics, who can and should actively protest against being taught neoclassical dogma as the global economy goes into meltdown around them. (Keen, 2009b)
http://www.rgemonitor.com/globalmacro-monitor/256781/economics_students_join_toxic_textbooks

It is not only the inertia of the established and therefore powerful orthodoxy that explains why one can understand this more ‘direct action’ approach being taken by the dissidents, but also because the stakes are so high. The economy and teaching about economics is far too important to be left to a self-selecting and self-reproducing ‘sect’. In short, because whoever controls the teaching of economics controls the policies that determine how the human economy operates, the stakes are enormous in terms of affecting well-being and survival of billions of people. The stakes are enormous also because the economy is human sphere which has the most direct, material and metabolic relationship with the non-human world which is the ultimate foundation for all life on the planet – human and non-human. If, as the dissidents believe (and I count myself amongst those dissidents) that the current economic orthodoxy is literally causing the liquidation of the life-supporting systems on the planet (and calling this ‘progress’), then their direct action, using whatever means necessary, is understandable and laudable. It is in defence of life and an earth-based economics supportive of life and well-being against the life-destroying or life-ignoring imperatives of the ‘orthodox economic regime of truth’ that the foundational motivation of the dissidents can be found. Ultimately, the ‘Toxic Textbooks’ campaign is about taking back control of economics from a powerful intellectual elite and their dominant paradigm which supports, justifies and give intellectual credence to an economic system that is literally killing life.

Greens in Government - its not whether or not you sup with the devil, but simply how long is your spoon

2009-10-29T12:05:00.003Z

After another conversation with someone this morning about, amongst other things

As Green Party TD and Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources noted in the Dáil in a debate in early July 2008:

We bought bigger cars for the status that it gave. We built bigger houses with X number of bedrooms and bathrooms, regardless of how we were going to heat these massive properties. We flew to New York in a way that turned Madison Avenue into our latest Grafton Street…Let us be honest with ourselves that is the phenomenon that occurred… In the last decade China and India started to produce our goods for us at a fraction of the cost. That brought down inflation in the developed world and allowed the central banks to lower interests internationally, which led to easy lending, bad lending. (Irish Times, July 11th, 2008)

Greens in government - Its not whether or not you sup with the devil, just how long is your spoon

2009-10-29T11:09:00.006Z

Ocassioned by another conversation with my good friend John McCormick - who also feeds us since its his organic fruit and veg that feeds my family and I every week - discussing the all too common statement that the 'greens have sold out' by being and continuing to be in coalition govt in the Republic with Fianna Fail (FFers). You hear and see it everywhere the all too glib refrain of 'the one ethical party has sold out', 'I'll never vote for the Greens again'; 'I feel betrayed by the Greens' and other statements along similar lines. This dilemma was forcefully brought home to me (not that it needed any reinforcing for me!) at the meeting on 10th October in Dublin where the party took the decision to continue in govt on the basis of the revised programme for govt. Some party members were saying similar things - and the issue of NAMA seemed to act as the lightening rod for various concerns members had about our continued participation in govt.

I want to outline my own take on all of this. I believe politics is the 'art of the possible' which also means its the 'art of compromise' - those who niavely think that one can get all one desires politically within the modern liberal demcratic system are well....naive. If they don't want to play the game of liberal/bourgeois party politics, then well...don't play the game. Go and play a different one, and while of course this does not mean those who refuse to play the game cannot criticise those of us who do, at least acknowledge that we who play the game know the game's rules...we're not naive. We know and accept its about compromise, and negotiation and at root about the politics of 'good enough' or 'second best'. So yeah I'm a full on 'realo' , realist but with principles and often wonder if people who do criticise do so on the basis of full knowledge of the game and rules thereof. Just as in Norn Iron I'd much rather a (very) bad peace than a (moderate) good war, likewise south of the border ('down Mexico way'....) I'd much rather the FF-Green coalition than FG-Labour alternative. Does anyone who cares about the need to decarbonise the economy, begin the long-overdue step change in the transition away from unusustainability seriously think this will happen in the Republic without the Greens in power?

A lot of anger has been directed at the Greens as if a) the junior member ofthe coalition that b) was not within an ass's roar of being in power during the Celtic Tiger period which laid the causes of significant aspeces of the current economic jocker the Republic's in, as if the Greens were responsible for the crisis or somehow that it is entitely appropriate for them to be judged by different criteria which means they must bear a disproportionate amount of the blame and atract a disproportionate amount of public ire and anger for the current mess. If its a junion coalition party people want to blame its the PDs not the Greens they should be after, and if they wish to direct their anger at the political authors of the current crisis - look no further than the FFers. But, and in conclusion, there is also another party that is not being factored into the conversations about who is blame for the current crisis.

Consider the following:

We bought bigger cars for the status that it gave. We built bigger houses with X number of bedrooms and bathrooms, regardless of how we were going to heat these massive properties. We flew to New York in a way that turned Madison Avenue into our latest Grafton Street…Let us be honest with ourselves that is the phenomenon that occurred… In the last decade China and India started to produce our goods for us at a fraction of the cost. That brought down inflation in the developed world and allowed the central banks to lower interests internationally, which led to easy lending, bad lending. (Irish Times, July 11th, 2008).

Who said this? An astute social and political commentator like Fintan O'Toole or David McWilliams? A member of the Labour or FG party? Someone from CORI or David Begg of the Trades Union movement? No, it was Green Party TD and Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. And what he was saying - namely that people in the republic need to look closer to home (as well as seeking other causes) for causes of the current economic crisis. While irresponsible lending by banks certainly happened, while developers built thousands of houses for the 'buy to let' market, while various Irish companies made money from promoting the puchasing of houses and apartments in eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and elsewhere - no one 'forced' Irish people to do any of this (if compulusion was anywhere it was for those for whom the 'Celtic Tiger' economic boom was something they read about rather than experieced themselves). People (by which of course I do not mean ALL people - since not everyone engaged in the orgy of debt-fuelled consumption, spectulative house buying for a quick buck and all the rest of it. Yes, perhaps one of the reasons why the Greens attract a disproportionate amout of the public anger about the end of the Celtic Tiger and the curent pain is that to publicly admit that the responsibility lies sqaurely with the FFers, the PDs and their active encouragement of consumption, debt, housing speculation etc is to also have to face the fact that many people did so knowing that this was too good to be true, that maybe there was something wrong with the developer-FF coalition on the back of which so many Irish people made a lot of money snd had a high old time. Maybe, just maybe, focusing anger on the Greens is a way to avoid looking at the FF mirror in which a lot of people currently slagging of the Greens will find their own reflection. After all, its only when the tide goes out do you know whose naked, and to hide their embarassment people will use any fig leaf....Green in this case.

Neo-Liberalism as a Water Ballon

2009-10-28T12:25:00.002Z

This is a fantastic, simple, funny and wonderful explanation of ne0-liberalism explaining how the operation of its principles is the root cause of our current economic problems. I particularly like the explanation of the class, gender, racial and disability division of society and its unique way of outlining how 'credit' fuels consumption and spending. Hats off and well done to those who did this!

What a weekend!

2009-10-11T20:56:00.002+01:00

TASC Progressive Economy Conference - Saturday 10th October

2009-10-08T14:12:00.007+01:00

Just finished my presentation to the TASC Progressive Economy Conference entitled 'Greening the Economy, Greening Economics' - http://qub.academia.edu/JohnBarry/Talks. The picture here basically summarises the paper which critiques the dominant neo-classical economic orthodoxy - a theme I've been banging on about for years/decades its seems - ever since I first had the temerity in an undergrad economics tutorial in UCD in the mid 1980s to question the ethical and political values underpinning it. I seem to recall it was a discussion sparked by an article - whcih as I recall had lots of those impressive looking econometric algorithms and tables etc. which basically developed a 'model' and 'proof' (not an 'argument' mind or anything as 'soft' as that) that bought sex was not as utility maxmising as sex with someone you love. I'm kidding you not and I'd love to find that article again. This experience was for me (although scarily not everyone else in the class and not least the economics lecturer who shall remain anonymous) the 'emperor has no clothes' moment when I said WTF? First its obvious why this would be case but more importantly what was this economic thinking doing meddling in this aspect of human experience? I was happy (and still am) that if you've a limited budget and have to choose between a coiuple of optoins as to what coat to buy, had fixed 'non-transitive' preferences, didn't take the views of others into account, lived on this mysterious island where everyone was perfectly rational, utility maximising and there existed the utopia of a 'perfect market' with perfect information, neo-classical economics is yer only man!

The FFers

2009-10-08T13:34:00.003+01:00

Says it all....and not a Green in sight!

NAMA: Toxic legislation for toxic debts?

2009-10-07T22:21:00.001+01:00

O'Donaghue resignation

2009-10-07T11:22:00.002+01:00

I'm tempted to think that if someone were to say to me 'What do you think about O'Donaghue's resignation?', I'd reply 'A good start'. O'Donaghue is only the tip of the ice berg in terms of the culpability not just of the FFers but of other political parties in the Republic who've been parasitic on the body politic. That's why the Green Party's demand for a reduction of the number of TDs as part of the re-negotiation of the Programme for Government is spot on, as is their other demand for an end to corporate donations to political parties. O'Donaghue, like other FFers such as Ray Burke are simply an exaggerated example of the arrogance within that party that it was the 'natural party of government' in Ireland and for whom political power, priviledge and patronage (though appointments to the boards of semi-state agencies etc) was something they were 'to the manor born'. The likes of O'Donaghue have acted like an aristocracy, whose power like the aristorcracy and monarchy is fundamentally based on a lack of openness and transparency and critical reflection. If I was asked further for an epithet for O'Donaghue it would be this: 'Some people bring joy wherever they go: some whenever they go'. Let him be the first of many as the stables of Irish politics and the political class are cleaned out.

Bring back Sammy!

2009-10-05T22:01:00.003+01:00

Things have been quiet, too quiet on the environment front here in 'norn iron' since we swapped the climate change denying Minster Sammy Wilson for his creationist party colleague Edwin Poots.

Sammy while vilified by Greens and environmentalists - he positively took pleasure in winding us up - is sorely missed since his combination of arrogance, ignorance and media-hunger was gold-dust for green campaigners, giving us plently of media coverage. So, perhaps time to bring back Sammy? Just in time for the implementation of the new sustainable development strategy perhaps?!

Big week for the Greens

2009-10-05T17:18:00.004+01:00

This is going to be a huge week for the Greens in Ireland. On Saturday we hold a special convention to vote on two significant issues which depending on how the vote goes may mean we walk from coalition government with Fianna Fail leading to a general election - and possible electoral meltdown for ourselves - based on the kicking we got in the locals in June. The first issue is party support for a new Programme for Government (PfG) which is being negotiated and finalised as we speak. The FFers also got a kicking in the June polls and are extremely weak, so the Greens rightly are pushing them hard on getting more radical green proposals into the PfG.

The second is NAMA (National Asset Management Agency) proposed legislation - a 'toxic' piece of legislation to deal with the toxic loans in the Irish banking system. This complex piece of legislation seems to come down to basically Irish taxpayers - via the state - compensating those bankers and developers who engaged in risky and speculative financial dealings during the boom time of the Tiger economy, by bailing out the banks and buying up around 75 billion euro of toxic debt for sum of around 54 billion euros. Its a lot more complex than this, and its caused outrange within Irish society and the Green party. However, the argument we're told is that we need NAMA to get the economy going again, to start credit flowing from the banks etc.

A group within the Party, called Greens against NAMA, is calling for the party to reject it. A member of this group today emailed me the following interesting clip which makes the case against NAMA and connects it to the issue of peak oil - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55fv--uo8D0 . In that video Party leader John Gormley does make the point that NAMA is simply kick-starting an unsustainable economy, but we're not going to change it overnight etc.

The danger, of the many that now confront the party, is that a rejection of NAMA will fuel a groundswell to reject the PfG and participation in government and lose the change of a generation perhaps for the Greens to be in power and get some radical policies implemented. If NAMA is the price for our staying in power for another 2 years, will members reluctantly support it? or should they support it? I have to say I'm conflicted on this one - NAMA doesn't look like a good deal (but what are the alternatives? - here I have to admit I'm partial to nationalising all the banks myself) - but the pragamatist in me does want the party to stay in power - but not at any cost....Dilemmas, dilemmas. On this one, politics looks less like the art of the possible than squaring the impossible...

I'll be down in Dublin on Saturday for the convention - and also speaking at the TASC conference that morning - http://www.tasc.ie/ ...so I'll be making my mind up which way to vote on both these issues then....

What would Steiner do?

2009-10-02T20:51:00.005+01:00

Off to an Anthroposophical Society of Ireland workshop on the financial crisis in Dublin (looking forward to it if not the 6am start!) 'Money - In Search of Truth and Reality within the Financial Crisis'.

I've been reading a little about Steiner's view of the economy - as part of his conception of the 'threefold social order' (economy, state, society), but can't say I've really understood him. In an effort to better do this I've joined and now subscribe to the Centre for Associative Economics - http://www.cfae.biz/The latest issue its journal - Associate! has some interesting articles. In one I read the following:

"To bring balance to purchase money and loan money, we need to step in through gift money and convert our excess surplus into purchase money: in effect to give away capital to maintain a healthy economy. This is not necessarily a matter of more charity; there are other ways this can be accomplished such as interest free loans, or loans that can be written down as the borrower achieves success in his or her business activity. The other solution is to cut debt, to reduce the principal on a housing loan, in effect just shrink the amount of debt in the economy. These actions free up funds to spend on core activities; ideally activities which serve the general needs of humanity – education, health, culture. This gesture is guided by the understanding that capital cannot grow indefinitely in relation to spending money, that excess surplus has to be returned to the economy in a healthy way, that my surplus at some point is probably best used by someone else, not accumulated for my benefit. “What is mine is yours and what is yours is yours.” This, according to the Rabbi, is the attitude of the virtuous for it recognizes the importance of giving. The parallel in the associative economic view is the importance of gift money".

This idea of 'gift money' seems to be that for moral as well as sound economic reasons (to prevent booms and crashes) 'surplus' profits (or a proprtion of them) should be simply recycled back into the system. The idea of interest free loans has a definite appeal in relation to the financing of any 'Green New Deal' with innovative financial mechanisms such as 'Green Bonds' or creating a 'Green Bank'.

In Steiner's 1922 lectures on economics he writes perceptively about money and its role in the economy;

"We ought not to let money merely flow
into circulation and give it freedom to do
what it likes. For we thereby do something
very peculiar in economic life. If we require
animals for some kind of labour, the first
thing we do is to tame them. Think how
long a horse has to be tamed before it can
be used. Yet we let money circulate quite
wildly in the economic process"

Steiner, R Lectures on Economics, New Economy Publications, Canterbury 1996 - emphasis added.

From what I can gather - or gather so far from my very limited reading and understanding of his ideas - what Steiner had in mind was the necessity to build in devaluation within the money supply. This is something I've come across before in my research and reading on alternative/complementary currencies and the use of 'scrip money' during the 1930s Depression (I wonder will our current economic woes which are being called a recession develop into a depression so that it will have to have a capital D like the 1930s?!), which was a form of local money existing alongside the official currency http://www.depressionscrip.com/.

One of the main issues with scrip money is it had an in-built depreciation mechanism - either each time you used it, this was one transaction closer to it being no longer useable (i.e. each scrip note had a fixe number of transactions it could be used for), or there was a date set when the scrip note would be worthless and no longer accepted as a medium of exchange. The ingenoius element of scrip money, and which speaks to Steiner's concern about the dangers of 'surpluses' being accumulated, is that these currencies encouraged exhange and economic activity but discouraged hoarding. What's the point of hoading currnecy that is 'worthless' after it time limit has come?

I would suspect that as the economic crisis deepens we'll see a return to such localised responses. Alongside people shopping more in charity shops anothe depression-beater is re-localisation, and one of the most successful and best know recent examples of this is the Totnes pound championed by the Transition movement http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/totnespound/home .

2009-10-02T20:28:00.002+01:00

Had great fun today blogging and responding to posts I put up on TASC's Progressive Economy website - first reponding to comments from mainstream neo-classical economists on the release of the Comhar Green New Deal report -http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2009/10/comhar-report-towards-green-new-deal.html? and also a reply 'The Neo-classical empire strikes back' - http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2009/10/green-new-deal-neo-classical-empire.html to a post Richard Tol had put up on http://www/irisheconomy.ie attacking the report. The replies to these two posts and ensuing conversations were illiminatation. I'll put them below

"I'm sure Richard Tol, if he so chooses, will be well able to defend his position. However, for me, Richard's post identifies the clear choice between, on one hand, governments setting (and committing to) the policy and taxation regime, facilitating the market mechanisms (e.g., cap-and-trade) and applying the necessary regulation and, on the other, governments being the prime movers, investors, policy-makers, regulators, winner-pickers, etc. Att all times and places, when and where this choice is valid,and applying the tried and tested tools of economic analysis, the former is superior to the latter.
October 2, 2009 2:35 PM
John Barry said...
OK, fair enough - its clear where we both stand on an unfettered market and role of the state etc. but what about the other points raised in my post - for example the ideological bias and dominance of one take (neo-classical)on economics? I'm unsurprised whenever I raise this 'hidden' aspect of the mainstream take on economics that the silence is both deafening and telling. I'm NOT saying neo-classical appraches are always and everywhere wrong etc, all I'm asking for is a) an explicit recognition of its normative assumptions and b) greater pluralism in the debate about economic policies. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
October 2, 2009 2:46 PM
Paul Hunt said...
The difficulties always arise when the economic circumstances are such that some deviation from the first option may be required to achieve a valid policy objective. The configuration of energy policy, regulation and economic organisation in Ireland is so dysfunctional that major reform is required if the objective is to begin to alter the pattern of energy consumption and to reduce carbon emissions in the short to medium term.But this, of course, isn't on the political agenda. There may, indeed, be a role for direct government intervention in the context of incomplete, inadequate or malfunctioning markets, but only when the fundamental dysfunction is addressed. As a result we are fated to experience expensive, economy-damaging government interventions.
October 2, 2009 3:00 PM
John Barry said...
And the question as to the ideological and normative assumptions of neo-classical economics?.....Go on, you can say it here - you're among free thinkers!
October 2, 2009 3:19 PM
Paul Hunt said...
You jumped into the join between my posts - posting on this site is a pain. By no means "unfettered". Even the most imaginative S-M fan would struggle to conceive of the incentives and constraints I see as necessary. The huge body of theory and evidence has persuaded me that markets are the least worst tool we have to make capitalists (possessors of human, physical or financial capital)jump through hoops to deliver economically and socially useful outcomes. And, to the greatest extent possible, governments should focus on using this tool effectively - rather than intervening directly. There will always be plenty for governments to do in other areas.
October 2, 2009 3:22 PM
John Barry said...
So, just to be clear - the basic ideological position is the following:Markets are good, but need government regulationGovernments should stay out of marketsMarkets deliver for societyAnd of course none of these are 'objective' or 'scientific' but based on normative assumoptions not about how society or the economy is, but how the economy ought to be.But may I ask, though I guess I know the answer - what are markets for? what does a market based/organised economy deliver? Namely, orthodox economic growth - which again has a whole range of normative implications and assumptions - ranging from how this acts as a substitute for greater socio-economic inequality, its implications in terms of global justice and the distribution of development opportunities globally; how a sub-system (the economy) can expotentially grow when the larger system (the ecosystem) is finte and fixed; to the really thorny issue of the contribution of this model of economic growth to well-being beyond a threshold. So... if one is not an egalitarian, is not particularly concerned abotu global justice, or ecological limits, or that well-being ought to be a matter for public policy, then its clear - neo-classical economic growth is yer only man. Is what I've said here a complete distortion of your position?
October 2, 2009 3:39 PM
Paul Hunt said...
I'm not dodging your legitimate questions. I'm not keen on labelling - it encourages pigeon-holing and stereotyping (as well as creating carricatures), but we need to distinguish between Neocons, Neo-liberals and Progressives. As I have pointed out on previous posts, the Neocons have shamelessly purloined the neo-liberal brand which has a distinguished pedigree from Adam Smith through JS Mill to Keynes and onto Krugman, Sen and Stiglitz in the modern era. Only for the purposes of this post I would describe Neocons as "Markets everywhere; government nowhere (expect to enforce prperty rights, to clean up the mess they make or to prosecute profitable wars)"; Genuine Neo-liberals as "Markets where possible; government as and when required"; Progressives as "Governments everywhere; and markets only if we really have to". I know this is probably unfair, but if the cap fits...
October 2, 2009 3:44 PM
John Barry said...
Paul, I think you misunderstand me. I'm not interested in labelling myself, but am asking about the underlying values, and normative principles which each and every theory of political economy has - whether it makes these explicit or not. Each of the three positions you outline - neo-cons, neo-liberals and progressives - have different (and some shared) normative views, all I'm asking for is a greater honesty or self-awareness that none of these positions - and others - are objective, scientific, value-free or non-ideological. That's all. My main gripe is the continuing fiction amongst neo-classical economists that their position on the economy is somehow non-political or non-ethical or non-ideological.

So far no reply to this last post....

Green New Deal for Republic of Ireland published

2009-10-01T13:34:00.005+01:00

Comhar - the Irish Sustainable Development Commission - has today launched its 'Green New Deal' document outlining an alternative, green, sustainable and low carbon path to economic recovery in the Republic.

As someone who has worked on the GND for NI (and as someone who had some small input into this report), I am extremely pleased and welcome it obviously.

Some of the report's findings include:

· Revive the Irish economy and create job opportunities through building an innovative, low-carbon and resource efficient society.

· Protect ecosystems and biodiversity while reducing fossil fuel dependency.

· Provide for greater social inclusion through stimulating new green jobs, reducing fuel poverty and delivering better access to transport.

· Build ecological resilience and capacity to adapt to climate change.

It recommends focusing on the following areas:

· Improve the energy efficiency of existing housing stock
· Renewable Energy
· Transforming the National Grid
· Delivering Sustainable Mobility
· Public Sector Investments
· Skills and Training
· Green Infrastructure

All of which the report argues would create hundreds of thousdands of jobs, create economic activity as well as enhancing energy security, begin dealing with peak oil ('leave oil before it leaves us' as it were) and reducing CO2 emissions.

The report has been discussed in today's Irish Time's by Jim Gibbon

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1001/1224255612654.html

The timing of this is interesting in that the Green party has begun negotiations with Fianna Fail about reviewing the Programme for Government and its clear the junior coalition party is going to push for greater 'greening' of that programme and has a list of radical policy demands that may, given the weakened state of FF, be delivered upon.

I'd like to think that there was some synchronisation involved....and good luck to the Green negotiating team in pushing the FFers as far as possible to implement some radical policy changes.

Beyond the Growth Paradigm

2009-09-30T21:45:00.007+01:00

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." J Krishnamurti

Following on the previous blog, just came across this from the excellent Adbusters in Canada and the latest edition of their magazine 'Thought control within economics' . Another analysis of the need to overturn the dominance of neo-classical economics within the academy https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/85/textbook-insurgency.html

Other inspiring sources of the fightback against this neo-classical hegemony is the 'decroissance' or 'degrowth' movement in France and the 'Toxic Textbook' campaign http://www.toxictextbooks.com/ of which I'm a member here in Ireland -more anon as soon as anything's organised. One great aspect of this latter campaign is its provocative 'health warning' stickers it has designed to be put on neo-classical economic textbooks- see above.

Its not that the neo-classical model has necessarily got it all wrong or is necessarily 'bad' but its hegemony is stifling pluralism and exposing students in Universities to different perspectives on economics, what the economy is, how it can or should be organised, with what principles, institutions etc. etc.

I sometimes think there is a lot of parallel between the struggle in Eastern Europe against communist domination and this similar intellectual (but with very real effects) struggle against the tyranny of neo-classical economics. and the pressing need for it to be returned to its proper position as one amongst many approaches, not the only, or necessarily the best. I'm reminded here of the following "Economists give answers not because what they say is true, but because they are asked".

Limits to and beyond 'economic growth'

2009-09-30T20:52:00.000+01:00

Went to an excellent talk by Prof. Tim Jackson - Economics Commissioner of the UK's Sustainable Development Commission http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/tim-jackson.html - at Queens last night 'Northern Ireland and the Transition to a Sustainable Economy'. Tim author of the SDC's report Prosperity without Growth - http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/redefining-prosperity.html - out next month as a book -Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet - http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=92763. What was one of the most interesting aspect of the evening - extremly well attended - was the utter silence from those who one would have imagined were defenders of the orthodox economic growth perspective in the audience (neo-classical economists, senior policy-makers etc.). Not one question or comment came from those in the lecture whom I would have expected to defend what Tim was criticising. Reflecting on this afterwards I suggested that 'power does not need to speak', the brave defenders of the economic status quo do not need to defend it with reasoned arguments. No doubt there was much mutterings afterwards about how utterly wrong Tim's analysis is, how impractical etc., but in public...silence and no sign of reaction, except the discernable stiffening of backs and shifting in seats. But nada by way of publicly defending what they believe....

Northern Ireland Economic report on Innovation contains little innovative thinking

2009-09-30T10:38:00.000+01:00

In Northern Ireland, the Barnett review - Independent Review of Economic Policy (DETI and Invest NI) - http://www.irep.org.uk/Docs/report.pdf - published yesterday, is weighty and provides much food for thought in terms of the economic challenges and opportunities for NI. However whether the NI executive (aka Sinn Fein and the DUP) will use it to create a new economic strategy or whether it will sink only time will tell (my bets are on the latter). Some of the main findings of the report - commissioned by the Department and Enterprise Trade and Investment - are outlined below.While the report finds that Invest Northern Ireland has contributed to job creation and NI's overall economic performance, it confirms the views of those, like me, who have viewed NI's economic strategy as partly a 'race to the bottom' in terms of seeking low-wage and insecure service sector jobs. As the report puts it:"When compared to other UK regions, NI has attracted a higher number of new foreign-owned investment projects and promoted a higher number of jobs per head of population. However, many of these jobs, particularly those in the service sector, offered wages below the private sector average (e.g. contact centres). Furthermore, a significant proportion of support was associated with safeguarding jobs in the manufacturing sector" (p.7).While recognising that a lot of the policy drivers affecting economic performance lie outside the NI Executive, it also notes the lack of improvement in NI's productivity and sees R&D as a key driver of economic growth, which it views as - surprise, surprise - FDI attracting and export-led. One of the report's most striking recommendations - and one likely to cause perhaps most political upset within the NI executive - is the proposal for the creation of a single 'Department of the Economy' - (requiring the amalgamation of two existing Departments - DETI (which the DUP hold) and DEL (which the UUP hold)). Re-carving political power within the 4 party executive - especially given the increasing hostility betwene the DUP and UUP - is not politically feasible, even though it make make economic and policy sense (but then when did the latter have anything to do with how the NI executive operates?!).Another, unsurprising finding is that Universities should support STEM and 'Innovation relevant' subjects more (which in the current financial constext facing Universities in NI means less 'non-economic' subjects, and further increasing the trend towards viewing the primary role of University as providing skills for the economy), and create more industry-university innovation links. However, the report also suggests the creation of: "A new institution for commercially-oriented research should be explored in NI, along the lines pioneered by the successful VTT institute in Finland. The institution should be outside the University system and not subject to the constraints of the Research Excellence Framework (REF)" (p.10). So, speaking as an academic, the authors of the report either thought universities were not deemed to be up to the task, or were inappropriate, or that it was accepted that there is some scope (just) and rationale for universities to also engage in non-economic research and teaching. If the latter - how big of them!There is mention of the 'Green New Deal' (and indeed support for the social economy) for NI but this is not seen as a central plank for economic recovery. Here the report echoes the short-sightedness of the Matrix report - http://www.matrix-ni.org/ which likewise viewed a green, low-carbon economic strategy as something that was of future, but not of immediate relevance to the regional economy in NI.It views the Green New Deal not as a distinct, innovation-led strategy to provide jobs,enhance energy security and begin the process of putting Northern Ireland on a 'low carbon' path, but as something which merely contributes to 'energy saving and conservation' (p.11) as part of the 2008 Strategic Energy Framework. Sadly, this indicates to me the authors of the report did not either read what the GND is about and what they possibilities are for a GND in NI, or did and decided rather to present a conventional 'business as usual' economic analysis and set of recommendations.While the report does outline some good ideas, provides a wealth of information, data and critical analysis of the NI exeutive's economic policy, it is regretable for a report that focuses on and arguges for the centrality of 'Innovation', that it contains precious little innovative economic thinking.

Technically competent barbarians: the role to planetary hell is paved with economically rational decisions

2009-09-27T15:14:00.000+01:00

More out of laziness than anything else, I thought I'd get double benefit as it were from cutting and pasting below, an excerpt from a chapter (on Green Political Economy) of one of the books I'm currently working on.

Renowned holocaust scholar and former director of the International Research Institute at Yad Vashem, Yehud Bauer in an address to the German Bundestag, mused on the reasons how the evils of the Nazi regime gained intellectual and cultural acceptance within Germany. For him, “The major role in this was played by the universities, the academics. I keep returning to the question of whether we have indeed learnt anything, whether we do not still keep producing technically competent barbarians in our universities” (Bauer, 1998; emphasis added).

When it comes to the teaching of economics at universities – and sadly many other forms of knowledge which have been influenced (or corrupted might be closer to the truth) by modern economics, such as large swathes of so-called 'political science', sociology, agriculture or planning for example – a provocative thought would be to ask whether Bauer is correct in his analysis. Rather than serving to weed out, transform or blunt the rougher edges off such ‘barbaric’ - but perfectly rational forms of thinking and action- universities are in fact complicit in maintaining and increasing the reach of this barbaric thinking.

Rothstein, picking up on Bauer, points to the dominance of empirical/quantitative focus in modern political science (the term itself of course immediately gives it away) which has increasingly drawn inspiration and methodological techniques from neo-classical economics. Like Bauer he wonders if the profession is producing ‘technically competent barbarians’ (Rothstein, 2005: 5). That is, highly trained and skilled professionals devoid of ethical reflexivity or trained and schooled in thinking that ethical, normative thinking and argumentation are ‘outside’ and are not integral to of the proper remit of their activity as political scientists or economists. It is important to note that the criticism being developed here is not simply that the ‘barbaric’ logic of modern neo-classical economics is destroying people and planet but that a large part of this reason for this barbaric and life-destroying logic is the failure and refusal for this way of thinking about the economy to integrate ethical and political-normative considerations as core features. In other words, it is possible to ‘rescue’ neo-classical economics from itself as it were and to recover and establish its ‘proper place’ at the table amongst other forms of knowledge and normative positions in discussing the economics, what the economy is and how best it ought to be thought about and organised. An account of economics devoid or actively resistance to the integration of normative and ethical thinking paves the way to planetary destruction.

Economics does not describe and explain or predict the world, it actively creates and recreates it in its own image, according to its own (hidden or occluded) value system and logic.

Part of the issue – indeed a benefit – in including ethical judgement in economic decision-making is that it debunks another element of the myth of modern economics – namely that of expertise based on knowledge giving those who possess it (and have the credentials etc to prove it) superiority over ‘non-experts’. However, this levelling of economic analysis – i.e. permitting non-economists and non-experts a role undermines both the claim of modern economics to be able to produce and know the ‘truth’ about the economy, and also the desire for non-economists/non-experts for the latter to be the case. As Aldred puts it, “Often the truth is that economists don’t know…This kind of modesty is not what many of us want to hear. We yearn for the comfort and security of definite answers. But an honest economic analysis can typically hope to do much less than this” (2008: 8; emphasis added). Typically any comprehensive, honest approach to addressing economic issues requires recourse to democratic political and ethical debate, seeing the issue from a variety of positions – scientific, political, cultural, social, and ecological as well as ‘economic’

Tetlock’s study of people who make prediction their business, i.e. people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses is instructive here. It turns out that they are no better than the rest of us (Tetlock, 2003). When they’re wrong, they’re rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. This is abundantly the case when it comes to modern economics – how many economists predicated the current economic recession? How many of these so-called economic experts have come out publicly to say they got it wrong? The dogmatism and arrogance that modern economics exudes – its refusal to be more modest in its claims, own up to its limits and admit its mistakes – is of course a major problem when one thinks of the multiple negative consequences for people and planet of following its prescriptions. Having an impressive looking mathematical formula for one’s views does not either make those views ‘the truth’ and therefore superior or better than the views of others, nor does this algorithmic underpinning make those views attractive or desirable – it just means you have an impressive mathematical formula for your views.

Aldred, J. (2008), The Skeptical Economist, London: Earthscan.
Bauer, Y. (1998), ‘Address to the Bundestag, January 1998), available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1990_1999/1998/1/Address+to+the+Bundestag-+by+Professor+Yehuda+Baue.htm (accessed 27/09/09)

Tetlock, P. (2003) Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton: Princeton University Press),

Rothstein, B. (2005), ‘Is political science producing technically competent barbarians?’, European Political Science, 4, 3-13.

The Corruption of the Academy

2009-09-24T22:09:00.000+01:00

Clearly, given this is my first blog since June, I'm not a particularly good blogger! Perhaps its the kids (two), or that I have a very busy real (i.e. non-on-line) life with lots of wonderful 'real-world' interactions with 'real' people, or that my various commitments and job occupies my waking hours more than they ought to, but whatever it is ....here it is. My most recent entry.

It was occasioned by telephone conversation with my good friend John McCormick, an organic farmer, which while it started about something else ended with me going off on a bit of a rant or eloquent stream of consciousness - delete according to your preferences when you've read what's below. The rant was basically me expressing my deep and continual frustration with the conservatism and lack of pluralism and real creativity and exchange of ideas within the academy (supposedly the place where the 'unthinkable' can be thunk etc.). While the vast majority of academics are thoroughly decent people (of course we have the egoists and sociopaths - mostly confined thankfully to econometrics, or postmodernism - only kidding!) there is something deeply, deeply disturbing to witness (and be a part of) a system of knowledege production and associated work practices which in the main promote and sustain the unsustainable, the unjust. the undemocratic i.e. namely the 'status quo'. Often it seems to me that what universities and places of higher education do is to prepare and create a future for people which is exactly like the present only with ...better teeth, more vitamins, bigger TVs, faster downloads, more stuff..bascially what we have at the minute just with 'better', 'more', 'faster', 'bigger'. And...what a dismal, unimaginative and unsustainable imaginary and objective this is. 'Making the world a better place', 'improving the collective lot of humanity', 'leaving the world in a better state than we found it', such objectives and motivations for knowledge are, in the modern 'hard ball' world of the academy, quaint, useless, 'not with the programme', and therefore actively rejected and ridiculed as having anything more than an (almost obligitory) rhetorical (and therefore completely cynical) role as window dressing when compared with the 'real deal', the 'real issue' and the 'only' or at least most valued/prized/incentivised (call it what you will....I call it corruption and bullshit, but then that's me, a great believer that 'exaggeration is when the truth loses its temper') form of knowledge production.

Us 'knowledge workers' (as I tend to think of myself, though this is a term that most of my academic colleagues would reject...'What? you mean to say we're 'workers'?! Preposterious! We're academics. We're scholars. We're...intellectuals. But workers?! Give me a break!'), paid for our core funding by tax-payers money (remember that people, YOU pay our wages, ask what we've done for you lately with your money by the way next time you meet us), are not encouraged to think of what we do or ought to do in terms of 'making the world a better place', but rather in terms of get the research funding secured, create a new degree to attract non-EU students (preferably from China since this is the last remaining great solvent, sovereign power remaining on the planet). No, our job is to maintain the status quo, deliver subject/disciplinary specific modules which all will ensure the smooth acquisition of 'transferable employability skills' to produce, in the words of former Vice Chancellor of Queens, George Bain (now of course an engaged and enraged citizen in the Lough Neagh vacinity since Rose Energy decided to built a chicken-shit incinerator near his house), our job is to produce 'oven ready graduates'. That is, half-baked (like a lot of things the academy prodcues these days), graduates who can slot easily and effortlessly into middle management of business/the state/civil society(of course this last one is NOT what the university aims to do, but for sake of completeness and mirroring the completely rhetorical/cynical stance of universities I will include it). To conclude, the role of universities today is to complement, enhance and above all comply and support the existing social and cultural order, its role is not to create critical citizens or spaces in which people can imagine alternative futures....which is why sadly, most of the interesting, life-affirming, progressive knowledge-based work I do is done in spite of, rather than because of the academy, whom I regard more and more as the 'boss', 'the man' against whom I have to work around, under and behind, while also making sure I deliver on my official contract. On this last point I have for many years lived by the following dictum, and I've found it useful and helpful in coping with (if not of course solving the tensions I have on a daily basis between what my values and heart tell me to do, and what I actually do): "The wise peasant bows down low and farts silently as the great lord passes by". Never, ever confuse outward signs of deference for inner compliance!

2009-06-04T16:40:00.000+01:00

Having written a blog for progressive economy - Where's our 'Green' Whitaker? was reflecting on the relationship between the imperative for orthdoox economic growth (and the conventional neo-classical economic theory and thinking which accompanies) and sustainablity, (in)equality and well-being.

I'll begin by citing Thomas Friedman, once the cheerleader for unfettered neoliberal globalisation, who has recently become a 'proto- green' (at least from an economic perspective). In an extremely interesting op ed piece for the New York in March he states:

"Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

Welcome to the party Thomas, us greens have been saying as much for a least 4 decades.

Couple that with two excellent discussions this week - one by John Woods, director of Friends of the Earth Northern Ireland and another by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett both of which spoke to the same key issue- namely that we have the empirical evidence that economic growth is not just ecologically unsustainable (i.e. not compatible with 'one planet living') but also needs inequality which undermines general well-being in society.

John Woods presented a summary and implications for Northern Ireland of Tim Jackson (Economics commissioner of the UK's Sustainable development Commission) and his recent SDC publication Prosperity without Growth http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=914. John's talk and Tim's argument is, basically, that what the green movement has been saying for decades is true: beyond a certain point, economic growth does not only not add much to general and average well-being, but through positional comeptiion, status competition and 'defensive' consumption, actually undermines human well-being. Here the real challenge is how to design public policy and especially macro-economic policy which aims to enhance human flourishing rather than a narrow focus on one means to flourishing i.e. conventional economic growth.

In the excellent disucssion which followed John's talk, it was clear that the dominance of the discourse and myth of 'economic growth' is one of the main reasons for people to misunderstood greens and others who question 'growth'. The issue seems to be that many people cannot but view a non-growth argument as anything but 'bad' whereas the real issue is to seperate out growth from 'prosperity' (as Jackson does), 'flourishing' (after Sen) or in my own work 'economic and social security', or to simply draw a distinction between economic growth and well-being. The evidence behind Jackson's report is pretty compelling, drawing on decades of research in economics, behavioural economics, psychology and cultural studies, all of which show that growth after a threshold does not appreciably add to average well-being ( the infamous 'crocodile graph' is illustrative here demonstrating rising GNP over decades coupled with well-being faltlining since around 1960).

Wilkinson and Pickett 's talk was also robust in its empirical evidence. They were talking about their new book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resource/the-spirit-level and presented an impressive range of statisical and cross-country analysis which shows the strong correlation between inequality and a range of issues from obesity, lack of trust, crime, imprisonment, mental health. What I found particularly striking was their evidence that inequality does not simply negatively affect the least well off, but almost everyone does less well the more unequal the society.

So, the upshot? Well... green critiques of economic growth now have a firmer evidence base, the need for more redistributive economic policies is needed, the creation of less unequal socieities not only is inextribly linked to challenging economic growth (i.e. if you are an egalitarian or on the left, you should be in alliance with greens) and what is needed above all is more pluralism in economic thinking. What does public policy look like when its free from the imperative of economic growth, competitiveness and all the other guff of 'there is no alternative' economic thinking and what does public policy look like when its aimed at directly improving quality of life, human flourishing rather than economic growth?

The need for a new model of the economy

2009-05-29T14:39:00.001+01:00

Been thinking this crurent economic crisis should be an opportunity in so many ways - not just in terms of using it as an opportunity to re-direct the economy in a more sustainable and renewable energy manner - a la 'Green New Deal' - see http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2009/05/guest-post-towards-green-new-deal.html - but equally, if not more fundamentally, to break with the dominance of neo-classical economics. While I've been writing and critiquing neo-classical economics for over 20 years for its limited focus (orthodox measures of GNP/GDP thus excluding non-monetised work and exchange, especially the gender labour in the domestic sphere, as well as of course the 'free' and unpriced 'gifts' of the ecosystem) and its promoition of 'economic growth' as a structural necessity for the economy (that is, the economy needs continual economic growth in order to stave off failure - impossible in a finite biophysical work, and undesirable in relation to human well-being), the recent 'Toxic textbooks' campaign http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=521557514&v=feed&story_fbid=82623368533#/group.php?gid=73911783278&ref=nf
has reminded me of the need for a deeper reform of not just how we re-organise the economy but how we understand what the economy is. Part of the point here is that neo-classical economics is a) as value-based and ideological as any alternative account of the economy - i.e. it is a form of political economy just like Marxism, green political economy etc. but b) its dominance 'crowds out' these competing models thus supressing pluralism, debate and contention - why would we assume that there is one model for the economy and how to understand and conceptualise it, when we wouldn't accept that there is one model or conceptualisation of the polity or society?

Post Celtic Tiger errata

2009-05-26T17:06:00.000+01:00

Have just read Showcasing Globalisation?: The Political Economy of the Irish Republic http://www.amazon.com/Showcasing-Globalisation-Political-Economy-Republic/dp/0719069939 by Nicola Jo-Anne Smith on my way down on the train from Belfast to Dublin. Its a good source of empirical data and debates about the Irish economy in terms of whether it really is 'globalised' or merely 'internationalised' and actually concentrated in terms of trade to a couple of countries - US and the UK in particular. Its also a rather infuriating read - lots of 'on the one hand...but on the other...' and frustratingly fails to come down with any analtyically insightful or normatively interesting positions. It contests that Ireland is a 'competition state' (Irish-style) as maintained by critics of the neo-liberal CT model such as Peadar Kirby or Denis O'Hearn yet does not outline what a 'competition state' is and how it differs from a 'welfare' or 'developmental' one. It also offers the most torturous account of the persistence of inequality in Ireland but maintaining this is not a major issue given the rise in absolute wages for most and the provision of a (bare and increasinly thread-bare) social safety net. But perhaps most frustrating of al, and which to my mind, really undermines the book's contribution, is there is no discussion of the dynamics of globalised capitalism or indeed the character of irish capitalism. It is as if one can blightly discuss 'globalisation' without mentioning capitalism!
Nevertheless, despite my criticisms, it is a good start to the debate about the CT and more importnant the post-CT siotuaiton, not least in Smith's argument that both the 'Whittaker moment' in the 1950s (which heralded the end of DeValera-style protectionism) and the social partnership model of the late 1980s ( of the commonly held features which explains the CT 'take off') were borne out of crisis. Where is our 'green Whittaker now' and is there a green version of social partnerhsip and the need to use and respond to the current economic (and growing political) crisis by restructuring the state, economy and civil society in Ireland?

Greens fight BNP and get Joanna Lumley's backing

2009-05-25T12:40:00.000+01:00

Joanna Lumley, fresh from shaming the Labour government into giving justice to the Gurkhas has come out in support of the Green Party and publicly backed Green MEP Caroline Lucas http://southeast.greenparty.org.uk/region/southeast/news/joanna-lumley-backs-caroline-lucass-campaign.html

It also looks as if theonly way to stop the BNP Leader, Nick Griffin, from getting elected to Europe is to back the Green Party's MEP candidate Peter Cranie http://www.stopnickgriffin.org.uk/sites/stopnickgriffin and www.greenparty.org.uk.

What's infuriating is the way the media are hyping the BNP up out of all proportion to their popular support - see article in Independent today http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-we-must-stop-exaggerating-the-threat-of-the-bnp-1690424.html.

Infuriating for us, i.e. the Greens, since we're way out-polling them yet do you think the press gives us the same coverage? I suppose violence and jackboots sell...Ho hum...

2009-05-24T18:16:00.000+01:00

While working on the chapter about 'Resilience and the Transition Movement', I came across this remarkable UK Government report released last November - entitled 'Powering our Lives Sustainable Energy Management and the Built Environment, http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Energy/EnergyFinal/final_project_report.pdf. Its a fascinating read, commissioned by the Foresight programme of the Office of Science and Technology. While Transition towns gets two explict mentions, what I've found particularly interesting is one of the four scenarios outlined in the report - 'Sunshine State' - which contains some elements of the Transition vision. Here's some quotes from the report:

"International solidarity has fallen by the wayside in response to climate change and expensive energy. Instead the Government has fostered an emphasis on localism to respond to energy problems supported by a shift in social values after a period of outages and fuel shortages. A Sunshine Index is the main metric of progress, not Gross Domestic Product. Home insulation and other energy efficiency measures are universal following strong regulation. Retrofitting is sometimes done alongside adaptation work to help buildings cope with warmer and wetter conditions. Green roofs and parks are common as part of comprehensive local sustainable drainage systems to counter flooding. There are more local shopping streets and other community resources, partly because of planning decisions intended to promote local autonomy and partly because of municipal enterprise. New build commonly uses off-site construction methods, often from overseas. (Foresight, 2008: 71)

However, unlike Transition, the Foresight study has the ‘Sunshine State’ scenario involving greater fossil fuel use (Foresight, 2008: 75), but like Transition, it notes that “In one of the Project’s future scenarios, Sunshine State a community approach, relatively uncommon in the UK today, becomes increasingly prevalent” (p.92). However, there is an intruguiing mention (nothing more) to an Energy Reduction Strategy (p.174)

The 'Sunshine State' scenario (who or what committee came up with this lame and non-informative title?!) is outlined in the report as follows:

"It was a world away from the ‘live for the present’ consumerism of the last part of the 20th century, and the shock has led to the emergence of new social values, which reinforce the importance of self-direction and self-determination, but also the need to try new ideas to resolve problems. Although there is technological innovation in this world, the principal driver of change is the development of new social institutions, many of which are about better ways of sharing limited resources at a local or community level. One of the motivations for this has been deteriorating mental health outcomes, worsened by climate change anxieties, which could have had huge public health costs if not addressed. Many of the new social institutions consider tackling mental health to be their priority, particularly in terms of the impact it has on the isolated and more vulnerable members of society who perhaps do not have strong family support structures in place. This is a world where almost anything which can be decentralised has been…. Expectations have shifted from the turn of the century, this world is slower and it is different, but it is still an affluent world by any historical standards". (Foresight, 2008: 171; 175)

However, from reading the coonclusion and recommendations of this report, its clear–and perfectly in keeping with the UK government’s strategy as outlined in its 2006 Energy White Paper – that energy decarbonisation is preferred to energy descent. That is, decarbonisation with energy consumption the same or rising (based on use of nuclear power and carbon capture and storage or sequestration) is the strategic option as opposed to prepating our people and infrastructure for a life with less energy (based on renewable, green and clean sources of energy). That an official document even comes that close to considering a future energy scenario such as 'Sunshine State' one out lined in this report, while welcome, it only adds to one's disappointment to see it will have absolutely no effect on UK energy, climate change or sustainable development policy.

Time to re-think economics not just the economy

2009-05-23T22:53:00.000+01:00

Have been reminded of my long-held belief in the dangers of one conception of economics dominating our thinking by the recently launched 'Toxic Textbooks campaign (wesbite here http://www.toxictextbooks.com/and on Facebook here http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=73911783278&ref=nf).

It is not just that the dominant neo-classical view on economics is deeply problematic, or normative (supporting an individualistic, utility and profit-maximising view of the self, is sexist and blind to ecological limits and realities), but its systematically 'crowding out' alternative views on economics. More pluralism is required in the teaching of economics to undergraduates as well as in the mainstream media, but it seems to me the best place to start is in the academy where economics is taught. I vividly remember my own undergraduate economics course as one where I was fed a diet of strict neo-classcial macro and micro economics, finance/monetary economics, an optional module on the history and modern origins of economics (now an increasing rarity in most undergraduate economics courses in the UK, Ireland and the US), and a right-wing version of 'market socialism' by Moore McDowell (brother of the former Progressive Democrat minister for Justice, Michael). There was no discussion of or even mention of Marxist economics, green economics, feminist approaches, etc. THis is not to completely dismiss neo-classical economics out of hand but simply to say a) neo-classical economics is not value free, scientific or neutral, but an ideologically-informed conception of 'political economy' and as ideolgical and normative as feminist, green or socialist economics and b) what has neo-classical economics to fear from some pluralism in economic thinking?

The current economic recession and evident failure of the neoliberal globalised, deregulated model is a chance not simply to change economic policy and strategy but also economic thinking - to change that is the grammar (rules) and not simply the language of economics.

Day 2...Apathy leading to the far-right gaining

2009-05-22T14:06:00.000+01:00

Its by accident I set up this blog - did it inadvertently while attempting to become a blogger for the 'progressive economy' blog of TASC - http://www.progressive-economy.ie/ but now I've set it up I'll try and use it for odds and sods. Been avoiding working on my book, Vulnerability, Sustainability and Green Politics - well not exactly avoiding - tied up with helping the European elections - for the Green Party's candidate Steven Agnew - www.greenpartyni.org/ - as well as doing some Transition Town work and doing my bit for developing awareness and support for a 'Green New Deal' for NI - spoke to Morning Star reading group (mostly members of the communist party and Trades Union movement) on Wednesday - interesting discussion to say the least. At that meeting I said there was a real sense of the 1930s around - not just to do with the recession and proposals such as a Roosevelt inspired 'Green New Deal' but also the discernable shift in working class suppport for far-right parties such as the BNP in the UK (where the Greens are the only party that can stop them getting their first MEP) and Libertas in Ireland or Jim Allister's 'Traditional Unionist Voice' here in Norn Iron. What worries me (and others) about the forthcoming election is that the apathy people feel in the wake of the MPs expenses scandal, will mean people won't vote, and as always in these situations the extremists and determined tend to win.

Hmmm...the beginning

2009-05-21T16:08:00.001+01:00

First post...hmmm how does this work? Got three kids downstairs playing merry hell, slugs have eaten my lettuce, book to read and write a review by tomorrow and also campaigning to do - for the Green Party's candidate in NI - Steven Agnew. May put up something on the 'Green New Deal' which I'm involved in and also writing and thinking about as a way of tackling the multiple 'crunches' we're facing - finanical, economic, jos, climate change, energy insecurity and food - not bad eh?