ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JULY 11, 2015
These past months have marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of France--the principal subject of William Shirer's The Collapse of the Third Republic.
Reading Shirer's book it seems plain that the disaster was overdetermined. Relative to Germany, France was a declining power--demographically, industrially, and therefore also militarily. And of course, France's government was far from making the most of what resources it did have, participating with Britain in making mistake after mistake. Their repeated failure to oppose Germany's overturning of Versailles (the reinstitution of conscription, the march into the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, the destruction of Czechoslovakia) strengthened Germany's strategic position by increasing its resources and depriving France of crucial allies, while diminishing the credibility of the Western powers--so that Belgium opted for neutrality, and Hitler was emboldened. The hesitation of the French government to come to terms with the Soviet Union cleared the way for Molotov-Ribbentrop, and the attack on Poland--during which the Western Allies let slip a significant opportunity by failing to attack western Germany while its forces were engaged in the east.
Still, even if being confronted with Hitler in the first place was the result of a staggering chain of miscalculations (some more understandable than others), when the Battle of France began, the Western Allies were hardly at a disadvantage in either numbers or quality of equipment (except, perhaps, in the air), one reason why their quick collapse in 1940 came as such a shock at the time--one that staggered contemporary observers, who groped for explanations.
Alongside the profound failures of diplomacy and grand strategy, there was military failure, with much often made of the French leadership's falure to appreciate the significance of the battle tank.1 However, the fact remains that the French had about as many tanks as the Germans, and more powerful tanks. It would therefore be more accurate to say that they failed to appreciate the offensive potential of the tank--and that this was not a matter of simple technological short-sightedness, but larger and deeper mental blinders.
Prior to World War I, the French army had been gripped by the "cult of the offensive"--the mind-over-matter stupidity that held the elan of French soldiers would somehow overcome machine gun fire. Some have attributed this to the influence of the deeply anti-rational Modernist philosopher Henri Bergson--which seems to make about as much sense as basing military theories on T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland."
A million or so dead in No Man's Land later, the idea finally sank in--and in a turnaround worthy of Moliere's Orgon, switched from the cult of the offensive to the "cult of the defensive." This was reflected in a whole host of ways, like the French doctrine regarding responses to enemy breakthroughs. Rather than massing their forces for a counterattack, they dispersed them to "prevent infiltration"--and were quick to fall back in the interest of maintaining a continuous defensive line. The accent on the defensive, the dismissal of the offensive, also meant a lower premium on the speed of movement, or on the communications technology necessary to conduct a fast-moving battle. Thus, the French army made do with motorcycle-riding dispatch riders instead of teletype and radio as ways of delivering orders drawn up and acted upon in leisurely fashion.
Given these assumptions it was natural for the French high command to think of tanks as infantry support weapons, to be dispersed among its infantry unit rather than concentrated into a handful of hard-hitting divisions. Natural, too, that it use rail cars to move its tanks over even short distances, and that it not bother to equip its tanks with radios (and that the air force neglect close-air support).
In short, the French high command's appraisal of the tank reflected its broader appraisal of warfare more generally--a product of deep national trauma and equally deep attachment to the apparent causes of past victories, the hold of which was the greater because in the French army the senior officers of World War I were, often, the senior officers of the '30s (Maurice Gamelin, Maxime Weygand, Phillippe Petain).
It was by no means the only mistake the French commanders made in organizing the country's defense. The lack of unified command (the French Army had three separate headquarters, as well as an incoherent division of responsbility between Generals Gamelin and Georges); the astonishingly wrong-headed dismissal of the possibility of an armored charge through the Ardennes so that only scanty and weak forces covered the area (despite the warnings of, among others, Basil Liddell Hart); the failure to provide a reserve in case of a breakthrough (extreme even by the standards of the cult of the defensive); the failure to properly utilize the air force (much of the fleet of aircraft never even going into action)--and of course, the retention of the superannuated old men in charge, which contributed to so much of the above (the accounts of their enervation are astonishing)--were each colossal in themselves.2
It might be noted, too, that the Western Allies having arrived at this juncture, not all the mistakes were France's. The British were no more far-seeing when it came to the new style of warfare, the Belgians too slow to prepare for the German attack, let alone collaborate with the British and French. Still, the weaknesses in the essential doctrine and organization of the French forces, insured that there was no recovery from these mistakes. That propensity for dispersing forces and falling back, that slowness to make its moves, turned retreats into routs, disorganized what resources remained available, and left the commanders further and further behind the evolving situation so that the counterattack which could have thwarted the invasion never materialized.3 Instead the Germans' high-risk gamble on an armored thrust through Sedan to the Channel paid off beyond their wildest expectations.
In hindsight, it all seems a reminder of the price of drawing the wrong lessons from history; the worship of old pieties making open questions seem as if they had been settled for all time; failing to appreciate the ways technology interacts with culture and organization, and the latter's hampering the former, even while being disrupted by it; and the staggering mediocrity, delusion and incompetence of those who typically wind up in high office; problems by no means exclusive to the military sphere.
1. The claims about a "Maginot mentality" scarcely seem worth discussing. Fortifications, when properly conceived, built and maintained, are not a substitute for other forms of military power, but a support to them--and the French seem to have appreciated this. The Maginot Line, which the German commanders knew better than to take head-on, did its job by confining their attack to limited portions of the frontier. Additionally, the French were never totally reliant on it, having as they did the field army that they moved into Belgium, and which they could have positioned to block the attack through the Ardennes.
2. Weygand's mind, appallingly, seemed stuck not even in the last war (1914-1918), but the war before that (the 1870 Franco-Prussian War), the French "generalissimo" obsessing over combating an imaginary Communist takeover of Paris as German forces swept to crushing victory.
3. Overwhelming as the detail in Shirer's account of the campaign can seem, it does masterfully show exactly how the failures of doctrine, organization and the commanders' nerve led to tactical, operational and strategic disaster, where a reader of a briefer and simpler account would have to be content with the generalities.
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Making Sense of Keir Starmer
The New Statesman recently ran a poll discussing the confusion among the British public regarding Keir Starmer's politics.
The confusion did not surprise me in the least, for three reasons.
1. The extreme sloppiness with political language seen across society. Words like "conservative," "liberal," "neoliberal," "socialist" all have well-established, quite coherent and useful, meanings, but even supposed "pundits" (another horribly misunderstood and misused word given that "pundit" literally means "learned" and so many of them are anything but) do not even seem aware of those meanings. Even when they give the impression that they have sufficient mental capacity to grasp the concepts (this does not happen often) they show those meanings little respect--at their worst falling back on the postmodernist claptrap that all speech is language games, and no definition any more or less valid than any other. The result is that even those approaching the issue with genuine knowledge and in good faith have a hard time making themselves understood in such a situation.
2. The generally lousy job the press does of clarifying the issues of the day and the positions of prominent political figures toward them--instead subjecting the reader or viewer to an incessant rain of details without context, worsened by its preference for politics to policy, its fear of analysis, its "both sidesism," its tabloid foolishness.
3. The reality that politicians find it useful to not be too clear on what they stand for. This is hardly new to the neoliberal age, but it has arguably become a wider problem in it because just about anyone near the mainstream is forced to stand on an economic platform that has never been popular, and which has grown ever more deeply unpalatable to the broad public. Accordingly the "center-right" pretends to be more moderate than it really is, the "center-left" pretends to be more left than it is (in Britain, hardline neoliberals from the Conservative Party posing as "One Nation conservatives," and their not terribly counterparts from Labour calling themselves "socialists").
These days the game is wearing thin--and one cannot claim that Keir Starmer has refused to play it. In presenting himself to the public he has called himself a "socialist," made quite the list of social democratic promises, and heavily invoked the spirit of "Old Labour" (where Blair never missed a chance to put it down"). Still, close-reading his more substantive statements about how he sees the world and what he is prepared to do, especially the statements that came further and further away he got from winning his party's leadership contest, he often it seemed to me that he sounded far more Blair then Bevan, as his more leftish promises seemed to fall by the wayside. (You can find my detailed take on this here.)
Those inclining to appraise Starmer generously may see him as a well-intentioned figure walking a fine line in difficult circumstances--wanting to take another path while anxious about offending elites, and a party Establishment, still deeply committed to neoliberalism, no matter how it has disappointed, or grown discredited. Those grading less generously, however, can see him as only the latest in that very, very, very long line of neoliberals who pretended to be something other than what they were, producing what they see as the train wreck that is "fuel crisis Britain"--and indeed it strikes me as neither surprising nor inappropriate that British voters identify him more with Tony Blair than anyone else.
The confusion did not surprise me in the least, for three reasons.
1. The extreme sloppiness with political language seen across society. Words like "conservative," "liberal," "neoliberal," "socialist" all have well-established, quite coherent and useful, meanings, but even supposed "pundits" (another horribly misunderstood and misused word given that "pundit" literally means "learned" and so many of them are anything but) do not even seem aware of those meanings. Even when they give the impression that they have sufficient mental capacity to grasp the concepts (this does not happen often) they show those meanings little respect--at their worst falling back on the postmodernist claptrap that all speech is language games, and no definition any more or less valid than any other. The result is that even those approaching the issue with genuine knowledge and in good faith have a hard time making themselves understood in such a situation.
2. The generally lousy job the press does of clarifying the issues of the day and the positions of prominent political figures toward them--instead subjecting the reader or viewer to an incessant rain of details without context, worsened by its preference for politics to policy, its fear of analysis, its "both sidesism," its tabloid foolishness.
3. The reality that politicians find it useful to not be too clear on what they stand for. This is hardly new to the neoliberal age, but it has arguably become a wider problem in it because just about anyone near the mainstream is forced to stand on an economic platform that has never been popular, and which has grown ever more deeply unpalatable to the broad public. Accordingly the "center-right" pretends to be more moderate than it really is, the "center-left" pretends to be more left than it is (in Britain, hardline neoliberals from the Conservative Party posing as "One Nation conservatives," and their not terribly counterparts from Labour calling themselves "socialists").
These days the game is wearing thin--and one cannot claim that Keir Starmer has refused to play it. In presenting himself to the public he has called himself a "socialist," made quite the list of social democratic promises, and heavily invoked the spirit of "Old Labour" (where Blair never missed a chance to put it down"). Still, close-reading his more substantive statements about how he sees the world and what he is prepared to do, especially the statements that came further and further away he got from winning his party's leadership contest, he often it seemed to me that he sounded far more Blair then Bevan, as his more leftish promises seemed to fall by the wayside. (You can find my detailed take on this here.)
Those inclining to appraise Starmer generously may see him as a well-intentioned figure walking a fine line in difficult circumstances--wanting to take another path while anxious about offending elites, and a party Establishment, still deeply committed to neoliberalism, no matter how it has disappointed, or grown discredited. Those grading less generously, however, can see him as only the latest in that very, very, very long line of neoliberals who pretended to be something other than what they were, producing what they see as the train wreck that is "fuel crisis Britain"--and indeed it strikes me as neither surprising nor inappropriate that British voters identify him more with Tony Blair than anyone else.
Saturday, July 17, 2021
The Other Road to Singularity
In his landmark 1993 paper "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive the Post-Human Era," Vernor Vinge raised four possible paths to the "intelligence explosion" that is the Singularity. The first three involved computers--1. the advent of a computer with what we would call strong "artificial intelligence"; 2. a computer network's more spontaneously developing such intelligence; 3. an integration of human and computer intelligence through advanced mind-machine interfaces (allowing, for example, a human brain with its superior pattern recognition and other abilities to access the vastly superior computational capacities and data storage of computer systems); and 4. a purely biological enhancement of human intelligence.
It is, of course, the case that we hear most about number one, somewhat less about two and three, and least of all about number four, the non-computer, biological option.
Why is that the case?
My impression is that this reflects the observable rate of progress in those areas. Where the computing sector has had "Moore's Law," and the geometrical expansion of the computing power available at any given price (and total computing power on Earth) that goes with it, the medical sector's feats have been . . . less impressive. Indeed, the contrast has been sufficiently pointed, and noted, that the term "Eroom's Law" has been coined to refer to how the development of treatments and cures has, rather than becoming quicker and cheaper in the manner of computers, become slower and more expensive instead.
Amid all that it has been far easier to picture rising computer power beating biotechnology to the finish line in the race to produce a greater-than-human intelligence for decades. In fact, even with some questioning the likelihood of Moore's Law's continuing as microchip fabrication reaches the apparent limits of the possible in silicon, and the long-awaited substitutes prove to be (like so much else these days) "behind schedule," it can still seem that way.
It is, of course, the case that we hear most about number one, somewhat less about two and three, and least of all about number four, the non-computer, biological option.
Why is that the case?
My impression is that this reflects the observable rate of progress in those areas. Where the computing sector has had "Moore's Law," and the geometrical expansion of the computing power available at any given price (and total computing power on Earth) that goes with it, the medical sector's feats have been . . . less impressive. Indeed, the contrast has been sufficiently pointed, and noted, that the term "Eroom's Law" has been coined to refer to how the development of treatments and cures has, rather than becoming quicker and cheaper in the manner of computers, become slower and more expensive instead.
Amid all that it has been far easier to picture rising computer power beating biotechnology to the finish line in the race to produce a greater-than-human intelligence for decades. In fact, even with some questioning the likelihood of Moore's Law's continuing as microchip fabrication reaches the apparent limits of the possible in silicon, and the long-awaited substitutes prove to be (like so much else these days) "behind schedule," it can still seem that way.
Why Do People Deny That Tony Blair Was a Neoliberal?
Why was that the case? I think the likeliest answer is that they set the bar for not being a neoliberal so low, seeing any deviation from the austerity-deregulation-privatization-etc. agenda as disqualifying one from inclusion in such company. And as they point out, Blair did indeed increase funding for health and education, for example. Yet he did it within conditions of broader austerity, paid for the NHS with increased payroll taxes and for college by charging tuition (breaking campaign promises on this score, repeatedly), and continued the longtime, piecemeal, "backdoor" privatization of both those services (with his PFIs and his "concordat" with the private health sector and his internal markets and his "school choice" and much else). Blair did make working people some concessions, like a minimum wage and some latitude to unionize, but he drew a hard line beyond the minimums he granted, enough so for this to be a sticking point where Britain's participation in the EU's further integration was concerned (Blair regarding the neoliberal EU's courts as too dangerously leftish to be allowed to decide cases between British labor and British management). Meanwhile, whether the issue was upper-income tax levels or monetary policy or privatization, or stringency in the face of users of the social safety net, or constraints on strike action, or government passivity in the face of deindustrialization and embrace of a free-wheeling financial sector as the driver of the economy instead--or even the rhetoric in which he explained and justified it all, which could easily appear to out-Thatcher the early Thatcher--Blair consistently carried forward the model Thatcher handed down.
The result is that, a couple of tweaks apart, his neoliberal credentials are indisputable and overwhelming. More pertinent to the present, however, is what such confusion means in this moment when we are hearing so much about "the end of neoliberalism." The simple truth is that pundits have been calling neoliberalism finished over and over again for four decades now--in part because they assumed that the intellectual discrediting of the model in so many more eyes must necessarily translate to its end. Alas, things are more complicated than that--while certainly it would take more than a few Blair-like tweaks to really bring about a shift to another economic approach. It would require a whole new way of thinking about how economies achieve growth, and distribute its benefits, the way neoliberalism represented when it became a real political force back in the '70s, and no such change is even suggested by anyone remotely mainstream now.
The End of Neoliberalism? Don't Bet On it
So did it go again in 1997, after the Asian financial crisis, and in 2000-2001 after the New Economy bubble burst and a raft of colossal financial scandals that in the U.S. had a Republican (!) President signing Sarbanes-Oxley and appointing a vigorous new SEC chief to crack down on Wall Street malfeasance. That mood didn't last, though, but soon enough when that same Republican was presiding over a still bigger financial train wreck there was more talk of "This can't go on" and "This time it's for realz!"--which in many minds was affirmed by the election of a new President--the first Northern, blue state Democrat since Kennedy, one might add--whose slogan, supposedly addressed to the change-minded, was "Yes we can." Instead what he really seemed to be saying was "Yes we can go on being neoliberal," and indeed he did for his eight years in office . . .
Of course, it was less clear than before that he was right about that--certainly where ignoring backlash was concerned, with the backlash from the right, which was to see Obama hand the office over not to his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but to Donald Trump. Since then we have seen trade war, and pandemic, and a still worse economic crisis making the phrase "worst since the '30s" appear ever-more tired without its being at all untrue, and neomercantilist maneuvers in areas like microchip-making--but that hardly signals the end, as becomes clearer if we think about what neoliberalism really means. Neoliberalism, after all, is not just the rollback of the industrial development-welfare-macroeconomic management state (hence the tax cuts and privatizations and deregulation and union-busting and the rest), but a still broader way of running an economy, easier to understand when one looks beyond the official theorizing and the intellectual history to how things actually work.
One can explain the matter this way. Where at mid-century the prevailing growth model had been a "Keynesian Fordism" that leveraged the "propensity to consume," particularly by way of manufacturing, to expand the Gross Domestic Product, neoliberalism (or "Neoliberal Financialization") leverages the "propensity to invest," and centers on finance, making for the centrality of that speculation-minded, creditism-pumped, digitally-enabled, globalized financial sector that is the hallmark of the era. And far from stepping away from that economic model, governments the world over remain strongly committed to it (hence, along with the tax cuts, etc., also the ever-looser monetary policy, the quantitative easing, and the rest, to keep the gamblers on asset values at the casino table), to the point that alternatives are not even imagined by anyone pretending to mainstream respectability. So long as that remains the case, the most that might be imagined would be Keynesian patches to a Neoliberal system--and that is indeed the most we have seen to date, with the direction of a little corporate welfare to manufacturers, a little more money for social services, rather than even the slightest hint of a New Deal era-like change in model.
Thursday, July 15, 2021
Of British Middle Classness
I have been struck again and again by the long record of attempts by British politicians to persuade their public that the old class differences for which Britain has been famous, and even notorious, have been dissolved within a state of generalized classness, where everyone was somehow vaguely "middle class." Thus there was John Major's rhetoric of a "classless society," and, as if Major had somehow succeeded in bringing that about, Tony Blair's display of open contempt for class differences and class conflict as having "no relevance whatsoever to the modern world" in his 1997 General Election Manifesto while shortly after John Prescott declared that "We are all middle class now." There was also negative affirmation of such pretensions in the denial that there was such a thing as a "respectable" working class anymore, the worthy supposed to have long since been uplifted into the middle class, leaving behind only a residue of "chavs" who have only themselves to blame for their lot--while there was scarcely more acknowledgment of anything above the middle class (Blair characterizing the class conflict he was dismissing as "middle class versus working class"), with commentary about the undeniably ultra-privileged speaking of the children of privilege as merely "upper middle class."
However the British public has not been entirely persuaded by this talk--indeed, seem to have been considerably less persuaded than, for example, their American counterparts. After all, the reality of class differences is especially hard to ignore in a country where there is a monarchy and a House of Lords and knighthoods, where there are "public schools" like Eton and the cult of the "gentleman" and the intricate, ostentatious hierarchy of accents George Bernard Shaw so famously satirized to so little real-world consequence--and one must remember is the Old World with its lower physical mobility, stronger family and community ties, and associated longer memories.
Indeed, Selina Todd holds that so far as Britons are concerned, what makes the working class working class is still the fact that it must live by work, and especially work for others with their means of production, rather than live off of the work of others by way of its possession of means of production--bluntly speaking, by who has power and who does not--even if some of those workers happen to have college degrees, white collar jobs, houses and cars. This would seem reflected in nearly sixty percent of Britons identifying themselves as working class in a recent poll (with, it seems, far higher numbers doing so in regions where the prosperity of the super-rich is less in evidence and less influential, like the northeast, where nearly eighty percent regard themselves as such).
In short, in spite of the persistent efforts of conservatives and neoliberals, it would seem that in Britain the traditional conception of class endures.
However the British public has not been entirely persuaded by this talk--indeed, seem to have been considerably less persuaded than, for example, their American counterparts. After all, the reality of class differences is especially hard to ignore in a country where there is a monarchy and a House of Lords and knighthoods, where there are "public schools" like Eton and the cult of the "gentleman" and the intricate, ostentatious hierarchy of accents George Bernard Shaw so famously satirized to so little real-world consequence--and one must remember is the Old World with its lower physical mobility, stronger family and community ties, and associated longer memories.
Indeed, Selina Todd holds that so far as Britons are concerned, what makes the working class working class is still the fact that it must live by work, and especially work for others with their means of production, rather than live off of the work of others by way of its possession of means of production--bluntly speaking, by who has power and who does not--even if some of those workers happen to have college degrees, white collar jobs, houses and cars. This would seem reflected in nearly sixty percent of Britons identifying themselves as working class in a recent poll (with, it seems, far higher numbers doing so in regions where the prosperity of the super-rich is less in evidence and less influential, like the northeast, where nearly eighty percent regard themselves as such).
In short, in spite of the persistent efforts of conservatives and neoliberals, it would seem that in Britain the traditional conception of class endures.
The Limits of Reform in Labour Britain
In the post-World War II period Britain had a government committed to full employment and a massively expanded welfare state (with the NHS, free education up to the college level, a two-tier pension system), which also countenanced the unionization of the work force and was prepared to go so far as nationalization to achieve its economic ends. In the resulting circumstances jobs were plentiful, poverty fell, the country enjoyed a "golden age of social mobility," and there was a broad rise in living standards.
Naturally to many progressives looking back at it from the neoliberal era, and the "New Labour" party of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer it seems an enviable lot--such that, inheriting the New Labour vision in its moment of total bankruptcy, Keir Starmer evokes the memory of the era, the "spirit of '45," with a frequency matched only by his utter inability to convince.
Still, it is worth remembering that in its post-war heyday the Labour Party's record, even setting aside the extent to which the Conservative governments in power half the time halted or even rolled back many of its initiatives (particularly in areas like public housing); or for that matter, the way in which an outsized military profile and the associated balance of payments problems tied the Labour Party's own hands with regard to the realization of its own projects when it was in power; was regarded as a great letdown by many of its most ardent supporters.*
In considering this it helps to remember what Old Labour promised. The party's constitution explicitly committed it to the emancipation of the working class on the basis of collective ownership of the means of production and distribution, and many took this seriously, expecting that a Labour government, especially one with a broad mandate like the one elected in '45, would deliver a society that would really be economically, socially, politically equal, where workers would exercise greater power in society and control over their lives--or at least, go a very long way to this. However, the vision of the politically effective portion of the Labour Party was, at least where the near term was concerned, rather less far to the left, rather more technocratic and meritocratic. Their nationalizations were selective and saw nationalized businesses continuing to run on the same business-like lines as before, the scope they allowed unions was for bargaining over wages and conditions and not workers' control of industry (while much of the work force was still not represented by unions at all), their welfare state was funded by contribution rather than distribution, and they preached equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome (a social ladder still existent, if with working people given somewhat more opportunity to climb it than they had before).
Thus if there was high employment, and poverty was in decline, and workers' living standards rising, even by the differing, more modest metric the center was using to judge the country's progress, it was still not all they might have hoped for. Granted the benefits of postwar consumerism as a consolation prize of sorts as the socialist dream fell by the wayside, workers found that much enjoyment of those benefits required required overtime, second incomes and a good deal of credit, which left them more harried, more insecure, and feeling less in control of their lives than they would have hoped to be in a situation where jobs were plentiful and wages going up. And for all the meritocratic talk the record of social mobility looks less impressive on close examination. Where educational and occupational opportunity was concerned, it was far easier to give students more years in school than to really equalize the educational opportunities of the children of manual workers and the children of privilege, let alone open up access to the more prestigious, remunerative careers that young people were likely to dream of becoming someday, the volume of which did not budge so much. Especially with the economy demanding more assembly-line workers than technologists, more clerks than Chief Executive Officers, more nurses than surgeons, more schoolteachers than Oxford dons or Fleet Street journalists or barristers (never mind novelists), there was not much more room at the top, and traditional public school-and-Oxbridge privilege substantially monopolized it. The result was that in the end not very many moved up, not many of those who did move up moved very far up, and even those who made headway tended to do so only after great exertions and even sacrifices, at the end of which they may have been unsure the game was worth the candle--while more often than not alert to the difference there would have been in the prospects of talent being recognized and duly rewarded, or simple "return on effort," had they been born in a higher social station.
These disappointments and frustrations were by no means slight, or slight grounds for the disenchantment of many with the situation then (memorably dramatized in the writings of "angry young men" like John Osborne). Still, just as with the post-war American anxieties over a business culture turning the country's white collar-wearing workers into "organization men," those worries can seem a comparative luxury in the post-Thatcher, post-Blair world in which working people are told to not even dream of social safety nets and living wages--a reminder of just how far the expectations of what may scarcely be able to call itself a "left" anymore have fallen.
* In the thirty-four years of the 1945-1979 period the Conservatives were the party of government for seventeen years (1951-1964, 1970-1974), fully half the time, with the earlier thirteen year stretch (with its three General Election victories) arguably critical in reining in the party's grander visions.
Naturally to many progressives looking back at it from the neoliberal era, and the "New Labour" party of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer it seems an enviable lot--such that, inheriting the New Labour vision in its moment of total bankruptcy, Keir Starmer evokes the memory of the era, the "spirit of '45," with a frequency matched only by his utter inability to convince.
In considering this it helps to remember what Old Labour promised. The party's constitution explicitly committed it to the emancipation of the working class on the basis of collective ownership of the means of production and distribution, and many took this seriously, expecting that a Labour government, especially one with a broad mandate like the one elected in '45, would deliver a society that would really be economically, socially, politically equal, where workers would exercise greater power in society and control over their lives--or at least, go a very long way to this. However, the vision of the politically effective portion of the Labour Party was, at least where the near term was concerned, rather less far to the left, rather more technocratic and meritocratic. Their nationalizations were selective and saw nationalized businesses continuing to run on the same business-like lines as before, the scope they allowed unions was for bargaining over wages and conditions and not workers' control of industry (while much of the work force was still not represented by unions at all), their welfare state was funded by contribution rather than distribution, and they preached equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome (a social ladder still existent, if with working people given somewhat more opportunity to climb it than they had before).
Thus if there was high employment, and poverty was in decline, and workers' living standards rising, even by the differing, more modest metric the center was using to judge the country's progress, it was still not all they might have hoped for. Granted the benefits of postwar consumerism as a consolation prize of sorts as the socialist dream fell by the wayside, workers found that much enjoyment of those benefits required required overtime, second incomes and a good deal of credit, which left them more harried, more insecure, and feeling less in control of their lives than they would have hoped to be in a situation where jobs were plentiful and wages going up. And for all the meritocratic talk the record of social mobility looks less impressive on close examination. Where educational and occupational opportunity was concerned, it was far easier to give students more years in school than to really equalize the educational opportunities of the children of manual workers and the children of privilege, let alone open up access to the more prestigious, remunerative careers that young people were likely to dream of becoming someday, the volume of which did not budge so much. Especially with the economy demanding more assembly-line workers than technologists, more clerks than Chief Executive Officers, more nurses than surgeons, more schoolteachers than Oxford dons or Fleet Street journalists or barristers (never mind novelists), there was not much more room at the top, and traditional public school-and-Oxbridge privilege substantially monopolized it. The result was that in the end not very many moved up, not many of those who did move up moved very far up, and even those who made headway tended to do so only after great exertions and even sacrifices, at the end of which they may have been unsure the game was worth the candle--while more often than not alert to the difference there would have been in the prospects of talent being recognized and duly rewarded, or simple "return on effort," had they been born in a higher social station.
These disappointments and frustrations were by no means slight, or slight grounds for the disenchantment of many with the situation then (memorably dramatized in the writings of "angry young men" like John Osborne). Still, just as with the post-war American anxieties over a business culture turning the country's white collar-wearing workers into "organization men," those worries can seem a comparative luxury in the post-Thatcher, post-Blair world in which working people are told to not even dream of social safety nets and living wages--a reminder of just how far the expectations of what may scarcely be able to call itself a "left" anymore have fallen.
* In the thirty-four years of the 1945-1979 period the Conservatives were the party of government for seventeen years (1951-1964, 1970-1974), fully half the time, with the earlier thirteen year stretch (with its three General Election victories) arguably critical in reining in the party's grander visions.
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Of "Middle Classness" and Popular Culture
I have recently been giving some thought to the idea of what it means to be "middle class."
The criteria for middle class status vary from time to time and place to place, but these days, at least, to be a middle class adult seems to mean their one's being a college-educated, salary-earning white collar worker with a career rather than a mere job, affording that worker a certain standard of consumption providing a minimum of comfort, mobility, security and opportunity for their children (home and car ownership, health insurance, college for the kids, retirement, a few extras here and there like a night out or a vacation).
Crunching the numbers it seemed to me that the percentage of Americans who have the full package in even basic form is probably in the single digits; and especially if one insists that, as the mid-century expectation had it, the household gets it on one income, in the low single digits, and likely declining with incomes stagnant and much of the package becoming ever more exorbitant. (Given what college now runs, even those one might judge to be very well-off at a glance can looking needy.)
Considering that it seems there is a great difference indeed between middle class and "middle income" (mixing of which two very different categories does not always seem a slip-up on the part of those who do it).
It seems, too, that popular culture is way off the mark in presenting what is in fact wealth as mere middleness is a universal norm with anything less (the actual norm) a shabby aberration popular culture is way off the mark. This makes the obvious question just why it does it do so.
Obviously popular culture, as Thorstein Veblen already had occasion to note a century ago, caters above all to the upper "affluent middle class," which is, after all, the group living something like this for which all this is not so remote as it is to others. Significant, too, is the extent to which the people who make pop culture in Hollywood and elsewhere have generally inhabited a bubble of privilege for generations, with all that implies for perceptions. (When Chris Pine speaks of his background as "blue collar" I do not get the sense that he is being ironic.) And there is the dramatic convenience that people who have little money find the range of possible activity they can undertake very limited--too limited for a TV writer's convenience, certainly. (That working class, really blue collar family? We won't be seeing an episode about their wacky adventures on vacation anytime soon.)
Yet it seems to me undeniable that we would not see so much of this were audiences not receptive to it.
Simply put, there are stories and characters people follow because they relate to them, because they see themselves in them and connect with them--and others they are attracted to because they represent a fantasy of what they wish they were, how they would like for their life to be, and I think the latter is what is relevant here. In reality the viewer may not have a very attractive home--but when looking at the screen they would rather see the spacious, lavishly appointed house rather than cramped and less appealing surroundings like those in which they actually live. Indeed, it may well be that the worse off they are materially, the more they want the escape.
The criteria for middle class status vary from time to time and place to place, but these days, at least, to be a middle class adult seems to mean their one's being a college-educated, salary-earning white collar worker with a career rather than a mere job, affording that worker a certain standard of consumption providing a minimum of comfort, mobility, security and opportunity for their children (home and car ownership, health insurance, college for the kids, retirement, a few extras here and there like a night out or a vacation).
Crunching the numbers it seemed to me that the percentage of Americans who have the full package in even basic form is probably in the single digits; and especially if one insists that, as the mid-century expectation had it, the household gets it on one income, in the low single digits, and likely declining with incomes stagnant and much of the package becoming ever more exorbitant. (Given what college now runs, even those one might judge to be very well-off at a glance can looking needy.)
Considering that it seems there is a great difference indeed between middle class and "middle income" (mixing of which two very different categories does not always seem a slip-up on the part of those who do it).
It seems, too, that popular culture is way off the mark in presenting what is in fact wealth as mere middleness is a universal norm with anything less (the actual norm) a shabby aberration popular culture is way off the mark. This makes the obvious question just why it does it do so.
Obviously popular culture, as Thorstein Veblen already had occasion to note a century ago, caters above all to the upper "affluent middle class," which is, after all, the group living something like this for which all this is not so remote as it is to others. Significant, too, is the extent to which the people who make pop culture in Hollywood and elsewhere have generally inhabited a bubble of privilege for generations, with all that implies for perceptions. (When Chris Pine speaks of his background as "blue collar" I do not get the sense that he is being ironic.) And there is the dramatic convenience that people who have little money find the range of possible activity they can undertake very limited--too limited for a TV writer's convenience, certainly. (That working class, really blue collar family? We won't be seeing an episode about their wacky adventures on vacation anytime soon.)
Yet it seems to me undeniable that we would not see so much of this were audiences not receptive to it.
Simply put, there are stories and characters people follow because they relate to them, because they see themselves in them and connect with them--and others they are attracted to because they represent a fantasy of what they wish they were, how they would like for their life to be, and I think the latter is what is relevant here. In reality the viewer may not have a very attractive home--but when looking at the screen they would rather see the spacious, lavishly appointed house rather than cramped and less appealing surroundings like those in which they actually live. Indeed, it may well be that the worse off they are materially, the more they want the escape.
Saturday, June 19, 2021
Transportation as a Service and the End of the Romance of The Car?
As those who follow such matters are well aware, the conventional wisdom regarding self-driving cars has changed profoundly in a few years' time--from matter-of-fact expectation that they will shortly be a large and swiftly growing part of everyday life, to sneering dismissal of the prospect of their appearing anytime soon, and perhaps ever.
To be fair, I do not know that those who dismiss the technology are wrong. Indeed, I acknowledge that the present lowered hopes reflect our having painfully acquired a better understanding of just how tough a task it actually is to develop a car that can drive itself as safely as a competent human driver given the present state of the art in the relevant areas (perhaps most obviously, the power of the computers that must do the "deep learning" on which we are relying). However, it does seem to me that the dismissal is as exaggerated as the earlier hype, for a lot of reasons--one of which is the distaste many seem to have for one of the more transformative possibilities the self-driving car brings with it, namely a turn away from individual vehicle ownership to "Transportation as a Service" (Taas).
Those who have sneered at the prospect (often, giving the impression of fear of a shrunken auto market's implications for their particular business) have given many reasons besides technical feasibility. These have prominently included the satisfactions cars render besides transport--what one can call "the romance of the automobile." Exemplary of the tendency, ex-BP CEO Lord Browne emphasized in his Washington Post op-ed that cars are not "simply [a way] to get around," but also "signal our values and extend our private space--things a shared service cannot offer."
Fair enough--except that "signaling our values" to the world at large and "extending our personal space" are comparative luxuries which mean more to some than others, and which some can more easily indulge in than others (facts to which the privileged consistently display an extreme obliviousness). People need transport, pure and simple, and buying such cars as are within their limited means is something they do to meet that need, with any question of immaterial pleasure of far less consequence. Indeed, given how the costs of car ownership weigh on household budgets (any household making under six figures, certainly, is very hard-pressed to afford two vehicles), to say nothing of the other hassles involved (from maintenance to legal liability in the event of accident), it is easy to see many people regarding a transport service merely adequate to meet their needs at a fraction of the price they pay to own and operate a car of their own as a relief.
It is easier still to picture people happily abandoning the hassle of car ownership in favor of Taas when we consider the behavior of the younger age cohorts (from early thirtysomethings on down), in whose lives driving has simply not been so big an element, or even their prospects, to the point of so few of them bothering to get licenses. Some see this as a matter of the preference of many young people for urban over suburban living, and the extent to which, wherever they happen to be, they live their lives online (shopping, socializing, recreating through a screen). However, it is also because they see less point to getting a license when their hard-pressed parents are less able or willing to get them a car, and when their buying a car with their own money is a remote prospect (used vehicles are averaging $25,000 these days--all as the minimum wage their college degrees do not save them from still runs $7.25 an hour)--while the same poverty is, after all, a major reason why they spend so much more time doing things online than going out.
Driving later and less even when they have owned cars, something far more of them will have not done and may not even expect to do, they could be expected to let go of the idea of personal auto ownership that much more easily. Indeed, were Taas to come along in any economic circumstances like the present, I suspect that many would embrace it and never look back, while private auto ownership (which would, of course, be self-driving auto ownership) would become something like a private plane--a luxury purchased only by the wealthy few, mostly because they can.
To be fair, I do not know that those who dismiss the technology are wrong. Indeed, I acknowledge that the present lowered hopes reflect our having painfully acquired a better understanding of just how tough a task it actually is to develop a car that can drive itself as safely as a competent human driver given the present state of the art in the relevant areas (perhaps most obviously, the power of the computers that must do the "deep learning" on which we are relying). However, it does seem to me that the dismissal is as exaggerated as the earlier hype, for a lot of reasons--one of which is the distaste many seem to have for one of the more transformative possibilities the self-driving car brings with it, namely a turn away from individual vehicle ownership to "Transportation as a Service" (Taas).
Those who have sneered at the prospect (often, giving the impression of fear of a shrunken auto market's implications for their particular business) have given many reasons besides technical feasibility. These have prominently included the satisfactions cars render besides transport--what one can call "the romance of the automobile." Exemplary of the tendency, ex-BP CEO Lord Browne emphasized in his Washington Post op-ed that cars are not "simply [a way] to get around," but also "signal our values and extend our private space--things a shared service cannot offer."
Fair enough--except that "signaling our values" to the world at large and "extending our personal space" are comparative luxuries which mean more to some than others, and which some can more easily indulge in than others (facts to which the privileged consistently display an extreme obliviousness). People need transport, pure and simple, and buying such cars as are within their limited means is something they do to meet that need, with any question of immaterial pleasure of far less consequence. Indeed, given how the costs of car ownership weigh on household budgets (any household making under six figures, certainly, is very hard-pressed to afford two vehicles), to say nothing of the other hassles involved (from maintenance to legal liability in the event of accident), it is easy to see many people regarding a transport service merely adequate to meet their needs at a fraction of the price they pay to own and operate a car of their own as a relief.
It is easier still to picture people happily abandoning the hassle of car ownership in favor of Taas when we consider the behavior of the younger age cohorts (from early thirtysomethings on down), in whose lives driving has simply not been so big an element, or even their prospects, to the point of so few of them bothering to get licenses. Some see this as a matter of the preference of many young people for urban over suburban living, and the extent to which, wherever they happen to be, they live their lives online (shopping, socializing, recreating through a screen). However, it is also because they see less point to getting a license when their hard-pressed parents are less able or willing to get them a car, and when their buying a car with their own money is a remote prospect (used vehicles are averaging $25,000 these days--all as the minimum wage their college degrees do not save them from still runs $7.25 an hour)--while the same poverty is, after all, a major reason why they spend so much more time doing things online than going out.
Driving later and less even when they have owned cars, something far more of them will have not done and may not even expect to do, they could be expected to let go of the idea of personal auto ownership that much more easily. Indeed, were Taas to come along in any economic circumstances like the present, I suspect that many would embrace it and never look back, while private auto ownership (which would, of course, be self-driving auto ownership) would become something like a private plane--a luxury purchased only by the wealthy few, mostly because they can.
Why Did the Press Get Solar So Wrong?
As I have remarked before, techno-hype seems to periodically go boom and bust--and we are living in a moment of bust as recent expectations surrounding carbon nanotube-base chips, self-driving vehicles, virtual reality, and much else come to naught. Yet looking at the expectations that proved exaggerated I also find myself noting the less publicized technologies that progressed rather more rapidly than the purveyors of hype expected, with renewable energy, and especially photovoltaic solar, the outstanding example--to the point that the fossil fuel and nuclear sectors may now have trillions of dollars in "stranded" investment on their hands.
Why did the press get solar so wrong? It seems to me there are three reasons.
1. Solar energy represents a solution to a major problem. The press trafficks in fear, not hope. This actually gives it a reason to belittle anything that would be a solution--and of course, believe and repeat any belittling thing that is said about them, of which there has been no shortage, and which has by no means all been a function of thoughtful analysis.
2. As a disruptive technology up against sustaining technologies (a lot of interests feared and hated the thought of an energy transition) solar faced a profound PR battle, compounded by the ecological, political, and even "culture war" implications of the associated choices. (Bluntly put, there was a lot of investment, far beyond Big Oil, in a fossil fuel-powered economy; a lot of hostility to any notion of government shifting its weight from subsidizing fossil fuels to trying to accelerate an energy transition, a prospect the more plausible if renewable energy looked promising; and in general a lot of enmity toward the idea that the prerogatives of business might have to be compromised for the environment's sake.) Naturally there were plenty of people who did everything they could for a very long time to persuade the public that solar power was just a flaky hippie fantasy, and tough-minded, practical people had better keep their minds on good old king coal instead--and never mind that global warming stuff they were hearing about. And they were the kind of people to which the press was inclined to listen. They treat Goldman Sachs with far more respect than Greenpeace, after all--but it was Goldman Sachs which turned out to be wrong.
3. Last, and perhaps least, is the fact that solar, hugely consequential as it is in technical, commercial and ecological terms, is simply not that exciting from the standpoint of the gadget-happy consumer. When it comes to personal, immediate experience, utility-scale solar (and it is this which has smashed the records--not the domestic kind that can mean never paying an electric bill again) still delivers electricity the same way as fossil fuels or nuclear or anything else. People flick the switch and the lights come on, with the actual cause of their coming on far away and unseen. There is thus not much for the purveyors of gadget hype to get all excited about the way they did over the Segway scooter (I still remember when they were telling us this would "change the world!") or virtual assistants. And so this could not and did not offset factors 1 and 2.
All the same, solar has arrived. And if you've been looking for good news about the climate crisis, well, here it is--the best hope yet that we can actually do something about the problem. Hopefully it won't be the last piece of such news.
Why did the press get solar so wrong? It seems to me there are three reasons.
1. Solar energy represents a solution to a major problem. The press trafficks in fear, not hope. This actually gives it a reason to belittle anything that would be a solution--and of course, believe and repeat any belittling thing that is said about them, of which there has been no shortage, and which has by no means all been a function of thoughtful analysis.
2. As a disruptive technology up against sustaining technologies (a lot of interests feared and hated the thought of an energy transition) solar faced a profound PR battle, compounded by the ecological, political, and even "culture war" implications of the associated choices. (Bluntly put, there was a lot of investment, far beyond Big Oil, in a fossil fuel-powered economy; a lot of hostility to any notion of government shifting its weight from subsidizing fossil fuels to trying to accelerate an energy transition, a prospect the more plausible if renewable energy looked promising; and in general a lot of enmity toward the idea that the prerogatives of business might have to be compromised for the environment's sake.) Naturally there were plenty of people who did everything they could for a very long time to persuade the public that solar power was just a flaky hippie fantasy, and tough-minded, practical people had better keep their minds on good old king coal instead--and never mind that global warming stuff they were hearing about. And they were the kind of people to which the press was inclined to listen. They treat Goldman Sachs with far more respect than Greenpeace, after all--but it was Goldman Sachs which turned out to be wrong.
3. Last, and perhaps least, is the fact that solar, hugely consequential as it is in technical, commercial and ecological terms, is simply not that exciting from the standpoint of the gadget-happy consumer. When it comes to personal, immediate experience, utility-scale solar (and it is this which has smashed the records--not the domestic kind that can mean never paying an electric bill again) still delivers electricity the same way as fossil fuels or nuclear or anything else. People flick the switch and the lights come on, with the actual cause of their coming on far away and unseen. There is thus not much for the purveyors of gadget hype to get all excited about the way they did over the Segway scooter (I still remember when they were telling us this would "change the world!") or virtual assistants. And so this could not and did not offset factors 1 and 2.
All the same, solar has arrived. And if you've been looking for good news about the climate crisis, well, here it is--the best hope yet that we can actually do something about the problem. Hopefully it won't be the last piece of such news.
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