New times demand Labour turns away from the social democratic settlement of the postwar world, says Anthony Painter
As the second world war drew to a close, western societies began to face the future once again, freed from a terrifying two decades. Out of war and depression new possibilities emerged. Nuclear power, the very first computers and groundbreaking research into what we now know as genetics were flickering on the horizon. The Great Depression had provided the political context for Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Marshall Plan was imminent. Labour’s New Jerusalem changed the United Kingdom for good. New international institutions provided new security just as the first signs of the cold war created new insecurity.
In 20 years, western societies had been transformed and a form of freedom won, termed ‘embedded liberalism’ by Karl Polanyi. There was no going back. In fact, the spirit was very much ‘never again’. Technology, values and the economy were all transformed. The following 30 years were a golden era of convenience, affluence, and widening opportunity. So much so that Tony Crosland thought we had solved the basic problems of scarcity. We just needed to turn our minds to distribution.
In a new Policy Network volume released this summer edited by Chuka Umunna, the economist Carlota Perez identified major technological leaps through the last two decades and their impact on society. It feels very 1945 again. Technological discovery is non-linear; it appears in surges. Each leap is followed by asset bubbles and concentrations of wealth and ownership. Eventually, leaders find ways of changing institutions to more evenly distribute wealth and opportunity arising from the innovation.
As Perez suggests, the technological revolution which began in the 1970s has interesting characteristics. It has led to a global spread of ideas, people and human connection. It lies behind intermediate technological change in energy production, genetics, transport (driverless cars are approaching fast) and the beginnings of a new social economy. In this generation we are likely to be able to contact almost any human being on the planet at any time at almost zero cost. This changes us profoundly – it opens up the world and spreads fear simultaneously. It is not by chance that Isis appears at this moment with some British fighters heading to the frontline.
Alongside this, a global flow of wealth and power creates new financial and geopolitical risks. The recent crash was in part a consequence of asset bubbles arising from these flows and interconnectedness. It was also exacerbated by economies groaning under the weight of inequality as debt proliferated freely.
The generation growing up now will be the freest generation that has ever lived. By this I mean every individual will have more potential influence over their own identity than any generation that has previously lived. The mistake made by early ‘blue Labour’ and ‘red Tories’ alike is seeing this value-change as a historical error or as an anarchic libertarian impulse. It is far more complex and interesting than that. It is about people being more willing to freely express complex identities. Tradition, morality and relationships are fundamental to our identities as are choice, lifestyle and adventure. We are just no longer dominated by identities – class, religion, sexuality, gender role, place – handed down to us. We can navigate between tradition and modernity in ways that make sense to us in the context of our lives.
To fight between the past and the future is to pick the wrong fight; a fight that is unwinnable other than at huge cost. Instead the centre-left has to understand that the future is rooted in the past but where it branches towards is under our influence. We are not in a fight between freedom and tradition, between the individual and solidarity. Instead, the challenge is for us, as a society, between which version of freedom we choose.
That choice is why the next election is so important. The work of the policy review under Jon Cruddas has shown that Labour, in its support for devolution, cities and new welfare institutions such as the youth allowance, is undergoing a key change in the party’s thinking. It is beginning to adopt a philosophy and platform of powerful freedom. This contrasts with the Conservatives’ vision. They also embrace a notion of freedom. But its platform is tolerant of powerful vested interests unless they happen to be in the public sector. It lacks an understanding of the social investment that will be needed – pre-school, in school, and in work and the family – if a skewed freedom is to be avoided. So we would end up with a coercive version of freedom and that is what the current Conservative approach perpetuates.
Ed Miliband has accepted the force of the policy review argument. If that acceptance is now embedded in the party’s thinking then we are at a turning point. Labour will be turning away from the social democratic norms designed for the socioeconomic context of the second half of the 20th century and towards a vision of powerful freedom fit for the times we now face. How will this insight be embedded?
That we are likely to see the spread of intelligent machines, genetic medicine, renewable power, and new modes of transport seems highly likely. The question of how these new economic opportunities are to be distributed is not. That means that nations which invest in their science base, which find means of accelerating the formation of clusters of scientific knowledge, finance, and knowhow, will capture some of the new economy. That requires intervention at a national level and across the metropolitan regions.
Skills and access to networks of knowledge are critical. This is about more than formal education, important though that is. It is about sound advice, beneficial relationships, and practical nous. The informal education system in school, in communities and in work will need support and emphasis. Linear progression is already giving way to open navigation in many fields, such as the tech economy. Our education and welfare institutions will need to be geared towards open navigation. Instead, they seem to be getting worse at it as a pathetically poor careers advice system encapsulates.
Finally, it is about access to basic finance. The minimum wage was the beginning of a movement to address the distribution of pay, not the end point. Living wages and a citizen’s income are worthy of serious consideration. Beyond this, we have to consider how to develop and finance a welfare system that is a means of aiding career growth rather than simply a blue-light emergency service. We enable individuals to invest upfront in higher education. Why not to a much greater extent in business and skills?
Labour’s philosophy of collective institution-building was the right one for the fundamental transformation that took place after the Great Depression. It is right for these times too as long as it does not become too stuck in its past institutional achievements. The future is one in which our people will enjoy even greater potential freedom. The question is whether this freedom is coercive or a powerful freedom. Labour is now posing many of the right questions and, indeed, coming up with some of the right answers. That is the prospect for a Labour government next year: to define the transformation that we collectively face.
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Anthony Painter is a contributing editor to Progress
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It’s a pity that Painter’s short essay is entitled “Brave New World”. This is of course a direct reference to Aldous Huxley’s dystopic novel that in turn is an ironic reference to Shakespeare’s utopian view of the Americas.
It’s a pity because I don’t think Painter is being at all utopian – or dystopian.
He is saying that scientific and technological change has created problems and opportunities; that our society must address the former and seize the latter; that Labour should do so in ways that ensure and increase social justice; and that the Conservatives are unlikely to do that.
I have no basic problem with any of that. But it leaves open the question of “How?”.
To answer that question, Labour first needs a really good grasp of the scientific and technological changes, opportunities and problems.
Do we have that good a grasp? Well, in opposition, we must either buy in experts or rely on experts who are members or supporters. In government, ministers may rely on civil servants and the experts that they call on.
This is all a bit problematic:
1. Defining ‘expertise’ is not straightforward: scientists are by nature a contrary lot and most are financially conflicted (they want grants for their own work).
2. Buying expertise is expensive.
3. Accessing Labour’s in-house expertise has, in practise, been quite dilatory and hit and miss.
4. Civil servants often don’t think outside the box. They are obliged to call upon the scientific establishment.
I can see this lack of grasp in what Painter says about “genetic medicine” (about which I know a little).
If he is using this term in its commonly understood meaning (“modifying a patient’s genes to effect a cure”), then such technology is unlikely to have a major impact on the health of the nation for the foreseeable future.
If he actually means “the use of advances in human genetics to improve health generally”, then, it is definitely true that, with organisational change, rapid improvements could be made immediately, at least in some parts of the UK.
And, yes, there are clear choices about the organisational changes required. The only changes that will work are those that are socially progressive. For example, they have to start with full public engagement and participation. Take my word for it… I’m an expert.
So what I am saying is that reform is essential in the relationship between, on the one hand, political organisations and governments and, on the other hand, scientific and technological experts. Reform is essential because the pace of innovation has accelerated and the scale of innovation has increased so that its societal effects are felt much more quickly than in the past.
The reform can either deliver more of the same elitism as we have today or it can deliver a more democratic way of relating to the hundreds of thousands of experts out there.
Experts – often in poorly paid, insecure jobs – are social actors too. Their voice needs to be heard. Not just because they deserve it. But also because we all need a really good grasp of the scientific and technological changes, opportunities and problems facing our world.