A sassy lady walks into a room, throws down a big book and says, “This is what we believe now!”. It is with this literal thud that the world changed, apparently. The lady is Margaret Thatcher, the book is by FA Hayek and the famous bedtime story is still shared by ruling class toddlers today. It’s a dreamy way to describe the neoliberal revolution.
The nightmare birth of this world order is truly written in blood and fire — and, no, this is not to single out the violence of the neoliberal regime. It’s just a reminder that the world does not ever change by the thud of a single book, but in countless historical whimpers.
Still. This is the sort of crap we tell ourselves: it is through “respectful debate” political fates are decided. It is by a “nailed it!” video from Waleed Aly. Apartheid was ended on a show very much like The Project, and not by armed struggle.
As Annabel Crabb had it upon the death of Nelson Mandela, the guns of the African National Congress are not an explanation for the end of an era, but terrible things we must take care to excuse. The real lesson Mandela teaches us is one of compassionate reason, etc. For injustices to end, “they have to be relinquished both by the perpetrator and the victim”. Okay, sure. And the real story of history is not war and class antagonism, but the friends we made along the way.
This liberal faith in the power/goodness of human reason is, of course, a crock. No, the Apartheid regime was not resolved like a sentimental summer movie and, no, Margaret Thatcher probably never did throw down The Constitution of Liberty. First, it was an awfully big book and she a petite crypto-fascist. Second, Margaret would never have bothered to violently throw down a book herself. She’d have engaged a private thug to do it. Finally, has anyone who tells this story about the neat fairy-tale ending to the Keynesian era even read Hayek? As a writer and a thinker, the guy was pretty much Dan Brown. But, he did know by instinct, if not by reason, that someone needed to write dense books to defend the ruling class. The Constitution of Liberty is far less a work of theory than it is a big, thick alibi for the idiot crimes that have been committed for centuries.
In 1950, Friedrich published an essay that continues to inform liberal strategy. If you want to know why all those blokes at The Australian continue their adorable struggle for The Ramsay Centre, you can find the answer in The Intellectuals and Socialism. Hayek didn’t think of socialism as a mass response to capitalism. For him, the fact that millions in the Soviet Union were spared the misery of the Great Depression was irrelevant. The real reason that some people fancied socialism was that capitalism hadn’t marketed itself properly.
Say what you like about our man Marx, but that bit about how a person with a shitty life will be eventually compelled to face its conditions with sober senses is hard to contest, even in debate club. No. The reason that people get antsy about capitalism is not persuasion by poncy intellectuals, but capitalism itself. I started reading Marx again when my income fell last decade to $40,000 p/a. This is what can happen, Friedrich. We are a class of socialists growing in number due far less to fancy books and far more to economic decline.
Still, the liberal-left and neo or classical liberals continue to believe that it’s all about spin and that history begins and ends with a thud. You can make people think new anti-racist thoughts with a billboard and revive old ruling class thoughts with a course at the Ramsay Centre. The Ramseys are just as open about their faith in the Power of Propaganda as the liberal-left. The Ramsay website has a message to the business community about the need for cultural spin: “Who can be subtle, articulate, in the best sense critical (‘criticism’ literally means ‘judgement’): who can find the angle or niche you need in order to be competitive, distinctive, persuasive.” If someone bothered to punctuate, format and rearrange these words into actual English sentences, they would read a lot like the Hayek essay.
Personally, I’m quite glad that the neoliberal right continues to uphold its faith in the Contest of Ideas. It means that they haven’t had any new ones in years, which is why we have Tom Switzer, a writer from the right I remember as once seeming rational, still banging on about gulags in the Gitmo era. If the best that the best of the right can come up with is “Marx equals death!” as liberal order crumbles, our sober socialist senses have a chance.
No regime in history has ever been powerfully imposed at a nice meeting. Political change of any sort — even the kind I’d prefer — will always claim many victims and can never claim to have a single author. Not Hayek. Not Marx.
This is not to say that intellectuals are unimportant; an interpreter for the stuff of sober sense can help change the grammar of the world. It is to say that even intellectuals must eventually face the conditions of life. But, here we are, in the age of the surveillance state, with Switzer still teaching millennials the intellectual responses of the right from forty years ago. May he and his kind long continue to intellectualise about a world that doesn’t exist.
I’ve read this three times and still cant work out what it’s about.
I’m going out now to find this book Salma wrote. I shall not be defeated!
Summary: the violent imposition of political authoritarianism is preferable to a “contest of ideas”…but those who bring up Gulags and warn “Marx equals Death” are just being silly.
If the Ramsay Centre’s degree in Western Civilisation ever gets up anywhere, surely the works of Marx and Engels will be on the curriculum?
“It’s just a reminder that the world does not ever change by the thud of a single book, but in countless historical whimpers.”
Wrong Helen : absolutely wrong. The world changed with “The Origin of Species..”
and with the papers of Maxwell confirming the finite speed of light and of General (and Special) relativity; the former describing just what gravity was with the latter identifying the implications for a finite speed of light. I could include topics on the circulation of blood to Copernicus to Turing.
Keeping it short, Kuhn in is (small) book (1962) “The Nature and Structure of Scientific Revolutions” made just this point – and contradicts your assertion. Feminism and the Declaration of Independence came about by “historical whimpers” along with a good deal else but “thuds” most definitely change matters from time to time.
South Africa was a “going concern” prior to sanctions and Mandela. It hasn’t gone in
any direction other then backwards in 30 years. So much for the example here.
Human reason : Jesus!
“Hayek didn’t think of socialism as a mass response to capitalism.”
A companions with von Hayek and Friedman’s “Free to Choose” would have been more constructive than some oblique construct to the economic perspective of von Hayek (which would require some thousands of words to do it justice).
“But, here we are, in the age of the surveillance state, with Switzer still teaching millennials the intellectual responses of the right from forty years ago. May he and his kind long continue to intellectualise about a world that doesn’t exist.”
An absurd amount of credit here. The millennials have been taught (and hence learnt) damn all. Here I am in New York and the millennials (and Y & Z) are utterly clueless in regard to their own history. The sanitised content in a good number of museums does not help. The Class War was co-opted (hijacked) by the much more astute Right who came to control the interoperation of history. Maggy had a point. There is NO such thing as society. Is all about the prevailing ethos and world view that can be set like a clock or speed up or down like a microprocessor.
Small but significant recommendation: either assume that the readership has a intimate understanding of the writing of von Hayek OR leave it alone; above all do NOT attempt to explain it. Rundel, displaying his ignorance some months ago, got himself in to the same pickle playing with Sraffa.
In other words : anticipate the readership (c.f. the fiasco that attempted to explain the Trump – Putin summit) and write to that level of comprehension. Do NOT attempt the Union or only the intersection will be happy – if, indeed, anyone is happy.
Not a hight score Helen. Sorry. You could have identified the “no role for government” that existed in managerial and right-wing economic literature from circa 1985 until 2007-8 when the big boys asked to be bailed by the government – while, simultaneously, begrudging welfare. You might have explained the increase in the salaries of CEOs (by an order of magnitude) to wages over the last twenty years. von Hayek – yes you have a point but your exposition deserves a fail.
“Feminism and the Declaration of Independence came about by “historical whimpers” along with a good deal else but “thuds” most definitely change matters from time to time.”
Why yes I remember when everyone simply accepted everything from your examples the moment the book was published! Come on.
Do explain “moment”. The observations of Eddington, confirming the General Theory, were not well received initially (because they contradicted Newton) and similarly for Darwin – hence the Oxford Debates etc. but empiricism triumphed over prejudice rather rapidly. The “thud’, in relative terms, was instantaneous. Helen, your (merger) defence of her notwithstanding, is incorrect.
Yep, more spurious claims from Kyle. The only things that have ever had impact are when the intellectual class catch up with what is happening in the real world, otherwise the real world ignores them. And for Origin of the Species and Maxwell’s and Einstein’s theories, they changed science relatively quickly (decades) but didn’t impact society at all really, and to a great extent, still don’t.
Please just THINK about what you have written. The GPS (and ancillary systems) have created a revolution in marine navigation, aviation and (yep) how to get to the next rock festival. As for Darwin just read the letters of Thomas Huxley. As for “spurious” identify one inaccuracy of mine – whereas anyone ought to be able to provide copious instances where the examples provided have transformed (Darwin not the least) society.
Perhaps I ought to have joined the point : the functionality GPS (GONASS etc.) is entirely dependent upon the papers of Maxwell and Special relativity.
“‘For him [Hayek] the fact that millions in the Soviet Union were spared the misery of the Great Depression was irrelevant.” Is Helen Razer referring to the many millions who were spared from the Great Depression having died from starvation in Stalin’s collectivisation of agriculture in the early 1930s? Or is she rather referring to the many millions who were saved because they were executed or transported to the “Gulag Archipelago” in the Stalin/Yezhov terror of 1936 to 1939? Has Helen not read even one standard history of the Soviet Union in the 1930s?
This is no defence of Stalin, Rob. It’s a fact, though, that the USSR was between the wars (and remains) the fastest growing economy in history. So it’s true to say that loads of people experienced a sharp ascent in conditions and just as true as it is to say that JS was monstrous.
Like, we can say that without the Red Army, Europe would have fallen to Europe. (20 million dead Russian soldiers are usually counted as the deaths for which Stalin is responsible.)
Things can be neither good nor bad and still true. It’s absolutely true that the view of many in the West was one of envy of the Soviet experiment. It’s also true that much of Europe transformed to compete with the command capitalism of the USSR and all those things we once loved about Sweden would likely not have emerged without the Soviets.
Saying that many workers and communists held the place up as an example when Hayek was writing is just a statement of fact. We can read it in books. Why you gotta do the Stalin was evil thing? I know it. So does everyone. Doesn’t mean I’m overlooking the forces of the time or am insane tankie.
Not Europe, but Germany. Oops.
Either way. Settle.
No, I think that you had it correct the first time, “Europe would have fallen to Europe“.
If only!
Helen, your claim was that Hayek ignored the fact that millions of Soviet subjects were spared from the misery of the Great Depression ie that Hayek overlooked the fact that conditions for the working class and the peasants in the USSR during the thirties were preferable to the conditions faced by the working class of countries like the United States, the United Kingdom or France or Australia. The standard of life in the USSR during the forced industrialisation of the Soviet Union and the collectivisation of agriculture was infinitely worse than conditions of workers or peasants/farmers in “the West”. Industrialisation in the USSR was built on the state’s massive exploitation of powerless sans trade unions labour. If you send me your address privately (my email is r.manne@latrobe.edu.au) I’ll send you a standard economic history of the USSR, by the socialist scholar Alec Nove. But beyond the state’s economic exploitation during the period of the Great Depression, as I’m sure you know, millions of peasants died of starvation during the collectivisation drive (which was integral to forced march industrialisation); further millions of people of the nations Stalin suspected of disloyalty were uprooted and then perished in the lands they were transported to; while further millions were executed or sent to die in the frozen labour camps of the Gulag Archipelago in the Stalin/Yezhov great terror. As you know I’m a longtime critic of Hayek and the neo-liberal fantasy of the market uber alles. But to suggest that from any point of view–including measurable standards of living–the lives of the workers or peasants of the Soviet Union were preferable to the lives of the working class or the peasants/farmers in any democratic capitalist country during the period of the Great Depression is wrong.
The Brits and the Yanks ought to have blown the Russians to pieces. But then there would have been no USSR or a Cold War for an extension of the War for a few months. Can’t have everything I suppose.
I ought to have added that the Czechs and the Pols (et al) must have considered Yalta to be a damned odd irony given the justification for the War (against the territorial claims of Germany) in the first place.
Fastest growing from what base?
Delusional fantasy is not restricted to those on the political right. More than a few on the left entertain the idea of achieving a more egalitarian society through progressive identity politics and without the need for confrontation with the ruling class.
Agreed – more or less. The Right is playing the Left at its own game. The identity-politics is being accommodated by the Right as (1) a means of censorship and (2) an insulator to prevent assaults upon the governing classes. What seems to APPEAR as a victory comes to be applied as a tyranny. The irony, of course, is that the society will become less egalitarian.
I was on the Berkeley Campus some weeks ago; the first time in 40 odd years. Then there was the Free Speech Movement. Not a trace of it remains. In point of fact there are any number of topics that are “no-go” regions nowadays — period! About a 175 degree reversal.
And where will the ruling class end up after you “confront” them? According to Razer, there won’t be any Gulags and “Marx doesn’t equal death”…
With that reasoning the Ruling Class most certainly equals subjugation if not alienation. Take a flick through Miliband (yes the father – and NOT the son) “The State in Capitalist Society” and the penny may well drop.
Aye, but for how much longer DH? When Time magazine blends Trump and Putin into one amorphous ruling mug all the screeching about Totalitarian Appeasement (from the ID politix ‘right’) and Imperial Oppression (from the ID politix ‘left’) is impossible to hear as anything but one big shouty defensive blocking chant protecting all and any form of material wealth/power. ‘Identity Politics’ in its entirety – because let’s never forget that it takes two screeching sides of a ‘Culture War’ to keep that fatuous fart-filled balloon of privileged middle class narcissism airborne – is growing evermore seeable as the intellectual Uncle Tom of our epoch. Bring it on I say, man. Bring on the evermore repulsive neoliberal inequalities; bring on the evermore headf**kingly inane #hashtag vapidities. Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out. Let all the vanities of our era bonfire themselves to extinction. #Goodtimetobealiveandangrywithnotmuchtolose.