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Why the Third Way Failed: Economics, Morality and the Origins of the Big Society
In the wake of the economic crash, public policy is in search of a new moral compass. This book explains why the Third Way's combination of market-friendly and abstract, value-led principles has failed, and shows what is needed for an adequate replacement as a political and moral project. It criticises the economic analysis on which the Third Way approach to policy was founded and suggests an alternative to its legalistic and managerial basis for the regulation of social relations.
208 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 2010
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March 19, 2011
Their morals, and ours
Why the Third Way Failed: Economics, morality and the origins of the ‘Big Society’
Bill Jordan (Policy Press £22.99)
As the appraisal of New Labour’s record in office degenerates into the spiteful recriminations of the various party hacks bemoaning the fact that they didn’t do things their way, Jordan’s book is a useful reminder that there were once some very big ideas behind the thing the modernisers called ‘the project’, and it might be useful to run a reality check past these as well as the alleged personality defects of GB, or whoever.
Jordan reminds us that there was a grand theory which underpinned much of the logic behind the enthusiastic embrace of deregulated markets and ultra-predatory capitalism. That was the belief that, under the conditions of modernity, human beings now operated with the mind-set of machines calculating self-interest, rather than social beings orientated towards the rewards of mutuality and solidarity.
The argument here is that the promotion of individualising agendas of consumer-modelled choice with outcomes sustained by myriad forms of contractual arrangements functioned for New Labour as a political perspective which was good enough to the task of sustaining each person’s sense of belonging to a coherent and cohesive society. As long as these arrangements produced consumer satisfaction there was not need to worry about whether we lived in ‘a good society’ or not. Yet without exactly this on-going discussion, why should anyone care a fig about ‘society’?
The need for and value of a public realm in which citizens are obliged to weigh self-interest against considerations of the wider social good was ever bit as passé for the Third Way thinkers as it was for the earlier Thatcherites, who straightforwardly denied that society even existed. As a result, The capacity of the political system to challenge injustice and inequality was savagely reduced across the 13 years of Third Way government; to the absurd point where Conservative politicians could, with some plausibility, lament the cruel place which much of Britain had become.
For Jordan, New Labour’s error is anthropological in its scope. They quite simple got human nature dreadfully wrong. Rejecting the utilitarian standpoint that we are driven by calculations of the attainment of advantage, he argues that people are marked by the eternal duality of their essential beings. This is not a metaphysical point, but a biological fact rooted in the separateness of the right and left hemispheres of the human brain. Calculating self-interest does have a throne in our souls, and it is seated in our left brains, where all the arithmetic of mundane survival is done. Our less articulate emotional needs for affirmation, respect, consideration and love have their homes in the right brain, and they demand consideration in the business of making public policy as well.
The natural place where a left/right brain harmony could readily be achieved is in, as Jordan’s argument runs, that vast area of life where the care and welfare of others is the heart of the deal. The rearing of infants in the home, education in formal schooling, the care provided to the sick and the frail, the solace offered when the end of life is at hand are all areas which have been approached by left-brain led entrepreneurs calculating the scope of making a profit on the transaction. But unless you have large financial resources at your disposal the feeling is that they don’t do the caring thing very well.
The problem is that the provision of these services by centralised national states also has its drawbacks. Their dependence on finance from public taxation depresses the financial compensation available to the people who do the face-to-face caring and the bureaucratic drive for efficiency and cost reduction strains the personal element of the care provided. Our right brains drive us towards the powerful desire that public services should support high quality care and respect, but the left brain has yet to come up with an economic system which will allow us to provide them.
To cut this Gordian knot Jordan returns to his long-time advocacy of a universal basic income payable to all adult residents fixed at a level capable of sustaining a decent standard of life. He argues that only through a radical measure of this type will society make available to itself the creative and caring labour resources of vast numbers of people who will do the work primarily because its is a fruitful and rewarding way to engage with our fellow human beings.
Jordan’s abiding theme throughout this stimulating book is the question of how we get morality back into the public lives of our communities. Third Way advocates could be very moral (no more so than Prime Minister Blair), but the utilitarian structure of their approach shunted all the issues of how we should be good people into the realm of personal choices which offered up a Tesco-scale superstore of religious and New Age philosophies to suit every taste.
With an obvious sense of irony Jordan consider they way in which the task of re-moralising society opens up the prospect of fruitful conversations with thinkers on the mainstream right, with the ‘Red Tory’ Philip Blond being the pertinent example. We should be careful not to cede this territory to ideologues of the centre-right. A certain Ukrainian revolutionary had the perspicuity to remind his readers that, when it comes to appraising the nature of the capitalist beast, they have their morals, we have ours. This book gives us the important reminder that right brain-led left wingers shouldn’t be reluctant to argue the virtues of their morally good society.
Why the Third Way Failed: Economics, morality and the origins of the ‘Big Society’
Bill Jordan (Policy Press £22.99)
As the appraisal of New Labour’s record in office degenerates into the spiteful recriminations of the various party hacks bemoaning the fact that they didn’t do things their way, Jordan’s book is a useful reminder that there were once some very big ideas behind the thing the modernisers called ‘the project’, and it might be useful to run a reality check past these as well as the alleged personality defects of GB, or whoever.
Jordan reminds us that there was a grand theory which underpinned much of the logic behind the enthusiastic embrace of deregulated markets and ultra-predatory capitalism. That was the belief that, under the conditions of modernity, human beings now operated with the mind-set of machines calculating self-interest, rather than social beings orientated towards the rewards of mutuality and solidarity.
The argument here is that the promotion of individualising agendas of consumer-modelled choice with outcomes sustained by myriad forms of contractual arrangements functioned for New Labour as a political perspective which was good enough to the task of sustaining each person’s sense of belonging to a coherent and cohesive society. As long as these arrangements produced consumer satisfaction there was not need to worry about whether we lived in ‘a good society’ or not. Yet without exactly this on-going discussion, why should anyone care a fig about ‘society’?
The need for and value of a public realm in which citizens are obliged to weigh self-interest against considerations of the wider social good was ever bit as passé for the Third Way thinkers as it was for the earlier Thatcherites, who straightforwardly denied that society even existed. As a result, The capacity of the political system to challenge injustice and inequality was savagely reduced across the 13 years of Third Way government; to the absurd point where Conservative politicians could, with some plausibility, lament the cruel place which much of Britain had become.
For Jordan, New Labour’s error is anthropological in its scope. They quite simple got human nature dreadfully wrong. Rejecting the utilitarian standpoint that we are driven by calculations of the attainment of advantage, he argues that people are marked by the eternal duality of their essential beings. This is not a metaphysical point, but a biological fact rooted in the separateness of the right and left hemispheres of the human brain. Calculating self-interest does have a throne in our souls, and it is seated in our left brains, where all the arithmetic of mundane survival is done. Our less articulate emotional needs for affirmation, respect, consideration and love have their homes in the right brain, and they demand consideration in the business of making public policy as well.
The natural place where a left/right brain harmony could readily be achieved is in, as Jordan’s argument runs, that vast area of life where the care and welfare of others is the heart of the deal. The rearing of infants in the home, education in formal schooling, the care provided to the sick and the frail, the solace offered when the end of life is at hand are all areas which have been approached by left-brain led entrepreneurs calculating the scope of making a profit on the transaction. But unless you have large financial resources at your disposal the feeling is that they don’t do the caring thing very well.
The problem is that the provision of these services by centralised national states also has its drawbacks. Their dependence on finance from public taxation depresses the financial compensation available to the people who do the face-to-face caring and the bureaucratic drive for efficiency and cost reduction strains the personal element of the care provided. Our right brains drive us towards the powerful desire that public services should support high quality care and respect, but the left brain has yet to come up with an economic system which will allow us to provide them.
To cut this Gordian knot Jordan returns to his long-time advocacy of a universal basic income payable to all adult residents fixed at a level capable of sustaining a decent standard of life. He argues that only through a radical measure of this type will society make available to itself the creative and caring labour resources of vast numbers of people who will do the work primarily because its is a fruitful and rewarding way to engage with our fellow human beings.
Jordan’s abiding theme throughout this stimulating book is the question of how we get morality back into the public lives of our communities. Third Way advocates could be very moral (no more so than Prime Minister Blair), but the utilitarian structure of their approach shunted all the issues of how we should be good people into the realm of personal choices which offered up a Tesco-scale superstore of religious and New Age philosophies to suit every taste.
With an obvious sense of irony Jordan consider they way in which the task of re-moralising society opens up the prospect of fruitful conversations with thinkers on the mainstream right, with the ‘Red Tory’ Philip Blond being the pertinent example. We should be careful not to cede this territory to ideologues of the centre-right. A certain Ukrainian revolutionary had the perspicuity to remind his readers that, when it comes to appraising the nature of the capitalist beast, they have their morals, we have ours. This book gives us the important reminder that right brain-led left wingers shouldn’t be reluctant to argue the virtues of their morally good society.
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