Smallism: An approach for our time.
| Author | Parker, Simon |
| Position | Policy Development - Book review |
Small is Powerful, Adam Lent, Unbound, 2016.
Creative Citizen, Creative State, Anthony Painter, RSA, 2015.
Nothing is true, everything is permitted--Aleister Crowley
It has been a long time coming, but in the summer of 2016 British politics--perhaps even Anglo-Saxon politics--entered a new phase. The referendum on leaving the European Union and Donald Trump's ascendancy in the US presidential race have created a world in which certain types of facts no longer matter. These are the sorts of facts produced by experts: the economists, civil servants and academics whose views have defined public debate for several generations.
The crisis of expertise has many causes. In part, it springs from the way in which expertise bounds and defines political debate. Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn are generally tired of people telling them that cherished left-wing policies are somehow rendered impossible by external constraints. For them, neoliberalism has been a mechanism for framing political choices in terms of making markets more efficient, crowding out the space for moral considerations.
While Thatcherism reduced the state's role in the economy, Blairism expanded the state in the service of a more effective kind of free market. Neither questioned that the ultimate role of government was to facilitate the workings of a market economy and society. If we accept that foundational principle, then we inherently limit political choices to those which can be made to work with the grain of the marketplace. The current rebellion against political elites bears some resemblance to the pre-industrial bread riots described by E.P. Thompson, in which mobs forced bakers to sell their wares at a fair price regardless of market conditions. Long-suppressed moral claims are erupting back into the public realm.
This kind of politics is bewildering for established political parties, because morality does not always conform to the facts. If morality trumps a search for the truth, then anything is permitted. Leaving the EU really will yield [pounds sterling]350m for the NHS, Jeremy Corbyn really can win the next general election, Mexico will pay to build a wall to keep its own citizens out of the USA. Politics ceases to be a battle between the well-educated in Westminster and becomes a bare-knuckle contest between differing, hermetically-sealed world views. The last time politics came close to this was at the height of the antinomian rebellions of the 1960s, a moment when issues like Vietnam in the USA or the legacy of Nazism in Germany rendered suspect the views of practically anyone born before the 1940s. It is a sort of politics with which the British in particular are highly unfamiliar. And it poses profound challenges for social democrats.
British social democracy is a cathedral of expertise. Ever since a Labour minister famously declared that 'the man in Whitehall really does know best' the dominant Fabian tradition has prioritised expert knowledge over civic energy. The Blair years saw the ultimate triumph of Labour's attempts to create a panopticon...
To continue reading
Request your trialCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
