Will the political-realignment rubber hit the road in 2024?
Nothing is more pathetic than an idea whose time is gone
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production.
Karl Marx
If there’s one thing an interest in history has given me, it’s a deep appreciation of Marx’s famous quote about those running a society determining its value system.
Most of the time.
Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci took Marx’s penetrating insight and whipped up an elaborate theory of hegemony, thereby definitively answering the question “What’s the matter with Kansas?” almost a century before it was posed by journalist-commentator Thomas Frank. You probably haven’t flicked through Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (Gramsci was imprisoned by the Fascists in 1926 and died in gaol shortly before WWII kicked off). But you probably are familiar with Hans Christian Andersen’s rendering of the Emperor’s New Clothes folktale. To summarise, high-status individuals decree certain things are true and, for a time, middle-status and low-status individuals accept those things are indeed true.
Everybody can immediately identify the ridiculous value systems of those living in other times or other societies. But we all have a blind spot about our own questionable societal presuppositions. Everyone flatters themselves that they’d be the boy pointing out the Emperor has no clothes. But history repeatedly demonstrates there’s a 99.99999% chance they’d be part of the crowd marvelling at the non-existent garb of the Great Ruler.
If you lived in Sparta, you’d think it was entirely natural to venerate bloodthirsty warriors. If you lived in medieval Europe, you’d view it as a self-evident truth that monarchs had a divine right to rule, and your village priest wouldn’t disabuse you of that notion. Those born between circa 1900-1945 default to assuming it’s the role of governments to protect ordinary folk from the depredations of the rich because that’s what Anglosphere governments did during much of their adult lives. If you were born after 1970, you probably assume the only hope of ordinary people finding employment that might facilitate a vaguely middle-class lifestyle is to make local conditions as ‘business friendly’ as possible for peripatetic plutocrats and corporations. After all, that’s precisely the message politicians – ‘third way’ types as much as overtly right-of-centre ones – have been incessantly broadcasting since circa 1980.
The futility of swimming against the historical tide
Crude Gramscianism would suggest the ruling class exerts iron control over the epistemological means of production and successfully indoctrinates 100 per cent of the population. This is not how things work in the real world, even in totalitarian dictatorships. (This is one of the reasons totalitarian dictatorships not infrequently collapse.)
What actually happens is that a particular set of ideas slowly come into fashion, stay in fashion for a period, and then gradually go out of fashion. (The circle of life for ideologies.) The selection of socially sanctioned values is not arbitrary. The mindsets that come into vogue are usually helpful in addressing issues a society is facing.
However, while the currently fashionable ideas may address one set of issues, they almost always create another set of problems. For instance, governments across the Western world embraced Keynesian policies from the 1930s onwards. From circa 1945-1975 – the Thirty Glorious Years, as the French style it – this resulted in fast-growing, relatively egalitarian societies with high levels of social capital. Average workers in Anglosphere capitalist societies enjoyed a significantly higher standard of living during this golden period than their counterparts in any of the ‘workers’ paradises’ then on offer.
However, after a few years of double-digit unemployment and inflation, and facing much-increased competition from the first-generation of Asian tigers, elites in Western countries decided to adopt a new set of ideas in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
These were newly embraced ideas rather than freshly minted ones. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was published in 1943. The Mont Pelerin Society was established four years later. Yet, for a seemingly interminable period, the anti-Keynesians were treated like kooks. Keynesian economic policy was delivering spectacular results for both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. So why would you want to roll back the State, reverse tax-and-spend policies that had generated widespread upward social mobility, and return to a Gilded Era distribution of wealth?
There is no alternative
Keynesian ideas were embraced by both ruling elites and, it’s reasonable to assume, non-elite individuals from circa 1930-1980. Ruling elites then embraced neoliberal ideas. It’s unclear to what extent non-elites ever got with the neoliberalism program. But neoliberals aren’t wrong when they note vast numbers of ‘aspirational’ lower-middle and working-class voters throughout the Anglosphere have enthusiastically supported tax-slashing, union-busting, privatisation-loving, globalisation-promoting, wealth-creator-venerating politicians – from both the Right and Left – in recent decades.
Neoliberalism did appear to be rough medicine for what was ailing the Anglosphere following the end of the post-war boom. So, it’s certainly conceivable that even lower-income voters were willing to embrace an ideology that didn’t appear to serve their economic interests, at least in the short term. If it was the early 1980s and you were an unemployed factory worker struggling to afford fuel and groceries in an era of rampant inflation, you would probably be amenable to the Thatcherite-Reaganite argument your grim fate was a result of bureaucratic bungling and that a market-deregulating tide could potentially lift your boat.
The transition from Keynesianism to neoliberalism was remarkably rapid but not seamless. A lot of old-school Leftists, including Australia’s current PM, as well as a lot of old-school conservatives, such as Malcolm Fraser and B.A Santamaria, were appalled by neoliberal policy prescriptions. But by the mid-1980s, Keynesian arguments were widely considered archaic, wrongheaded and déclassé. Nobody wanted to listen to any warnings that letting the free market rip might have unfortunate downstream consequences.
Neoliberal policies did seem to revive the economic fortunes of Western nations, at least for a time. Some, and arguably many, boats were lifted. But as those at all points of the political spectrum accept, at the start of 2024, the Washington consensus looks almost as tattered as the Keynesian settlement did in 1978.
As many have noted, even those right-of-centre parties that were once monomaniacal champions of corporate tax cuts and free-trade agreements are now seeking to delicately crabwalk away from “elites” and “Big Business”. Many of these parties are currently attempting to rebrand themselves as “workers’ parties”. Ones willing to (belatedly) protect the economic interests and (sincerely) respect the social conservatism of their growing number of lower-middle and working-class supporters.
Hence the increasing hysteria among well-situated members of the elite about the rise of what’s invariably labelled populism, but what’s usually an entirely predictable response to the excesses of neoliberalism.
Are we there yet?
Societies can find themselves in an ideological interregnum where the old ideas haven’t entirely been abandoned and the new ideas haven’t yet become hegemonic. I’m not the first to observe Anglosphere societies entered the interregnum stage some time ago.
Whatever their opinion on Trump and Brexit, almost everyone agrees the events of 2016 represented a long-brewing backlash against one neoliberal policy dear to the hearts of both cheap-labour-loving corporate elitists and diversity-worshipping cultural elitists. Seven years on, many elitists remain incandescently enraged at the obstinate stupidity of the Great Unwashed. I suspect the befuddled despair of incumbent elites isn’t likely to be much lessened by this year’s plethora of elections, especially the one scheduled for November 5. Particularly given the response of US and UK elites to the events of 2016 has been to double down, albeit somewhat tacitly, on mass migration. (As Australians of a certain age will recall, it’s entirely possible to swiftly shut down illegal immigration if the political will exists to do so.)
It's just a hunch, but I think 2024 may be the year the febrile interregnum ends. Just like the Keynesian settlement had a stake driven through its heart in 1979-1980 when Thatcher and then Reagan came to power. At this early stage of the game, it’s impossible to predict what form post-neoliberalism will take. But given what happened during the transition from Keynesianism to neoliberalism, it’s possible to make some educated guesses.
Here are mine.
The neoliberal ‘truth’: The State is the cause of all your problems. Get rid of all those pettifogging bureaucrats and an anarcho-capitalist paradise will soon emerge. Sure, some people will be much more prosperous than others, but we’ll all be so much richer that the mere multi-millionaires won’t be inclined to indulge in the ‘politics of envy’ against the billionaires! A rising tide, etc…
Even better, in this new libertarian land of milk and honey, nobody will have to pay much tax. After all, the more you cut taxes, the more tax revenue you raise. And it’s not like some nations offering high-net-worth individuals and corporations sweetheart deals will soon see all nations forced into a race to the bottom, tax-cutting auction.
Also, there’s now no need to worry about not being able to fund government services after making tax-paying more or less optional for those individuals and organisations with all the money. That’s because we can just borrow the shortfall from Chinese factory workers forever. And given that every Anglosphere business owner and C-suite executive is maniacally committed to job creation, they will indubitably invest all that extra revenue productively rather than simply pocketing it, thereby creating many secure, well-paid, high-skill jobs and resilient, recession-free economies.
The post-neoliberal dispensation: Letting the free market rip has worked out exceedingly well for C-suiters, pretty well for shareholders, and not too badly for certain subsets of employees. (Though even in-demand, well-remunerated employees must now fear being abruptly hurled on the scrap heap, possibly for no greater infraction than growing older, given how Darwinian many contemporary workplaces have become.)
But as is becoming more apparent with each passing day, free-market economics hasn’t worked out quite so well for other sections of society. Non-CEO types are likelier to flourish in a society with a more Scandinavian distribution of life opportunities and wealth. This is probably an appropriate juncture to mention those in Anglosphere nations – who did gulp down the neoliberal Kool-Aid – are quantifiably more miserable than their counterparts living in Scandinavian social democracies, who didn’t.
The neoliberal ‘truth’: The world is divided into winners (i.e. the ‘talented tenth’ of the population) and losers (i.e. the 90 per cent of the population that doesn’t have a 120+ IQ and a prestigious degree from a top-tier university).
While we may be tempted to feel some misplaced sympathy for the losers, everybody ultimately benefits by showering the winners – the Masters of the Universe, as Tom Wolfe memorably labelled them back in 1987 – with deference, status, wealth and, most importantly of all, political influence.
For example, suppose you start paying CEOs 200X the average employee’s salary rather than a pitiable 20X. In that case, they will presumably perform around ten times better than their counterparts did during the Keynesian era. This will result in the businesses they oversee performing much better, resulting in a range of positive societal outcomes. Not least for the Joe and Joanne Averages, who are now earning 1/200th of their boss’s salary. Or collecting the disability pension and downing opioids because their boss shipped their job to Vietnam.
As an aside, if you ever wonder why corporate elitists seem so laughably out of touch, I’ll invite you to consider how much you understand about the lives of those who earn 1/200th of your annual salary. (For the average Australian worker, that would be someone making $1-$2 a day.)
The post-neoliberal dispensation: The success of an organisation might not be solely determined by the genius of its leadership group. After many years of C-suiters (and shareholders) capturing almost all the benefits of increased productivity, maybe the foot soldiers deserve a larger slice of the economic pie.
The neoliberal truth: The free movement of labour, capital and goods will lead to widespread peace, prosperity and joy. Also, there’s no need for first-world nations to hold onto their heavy or even light industry, given there’s so much cheap and reliably compliant labour readily available in the developing world.
After all, it’s not like a society that’s longed ruminated over its Century of Humiliation might be willing to shoulder the US’s one-time role as ‘the world’s workshop’. Then use some of the resulting revenues to fund the largest military build-up in peacetime history. Then start throwing its weight around. And given that no two nations with a McDonald’s have ever gone to war, America definitely won’t ever again need the industrial capacity that proved so handy from 1941-1945.
The post-neoliberal dispensation: Much like Communism, globalisation has turned out somewhat differently in practice than it appeared in theory. Despite or because of all the hyper-globalisation of the last three decades, we’ve somehow entered a Second Cold War, which could develop into a hot war at any moment.
Nations now face the choice between throwing their lot in with the Chinese, who’ve played a blinder since 1979 but may now be faltering, or the Americans, who’ve shot themselves in both feet repeatedly in recent decades but who, having exhausted all other possibilities, might now be expected to do the right thing.
My New Year’s resolution is to try to keep these weekly diatribes to a manageable length, so I’ll stop there.
But if you have a good or service you’d like to promote, you may care to read on.
Have I got a deal for you!
When I started this Substack, it was purely a passion project. Two years on, it’s still purely a passion project. But I’m now wondering if it can be a partially monetised passion project, thereby allowing me to spend a little more time on it.
Bear with me here; I’m not going to put the hard word on you to take out a subscription.
When I click on the ‘Job Titles’ button in LinkedIn’s ‘Top demographics of unique viewers’ box, here’s what typically appears: Founder, Co-Founder, Managing Director, General Manager, Chief Executive Officer, Account Manager, Editor, Journalist, Copywriter. Most of these high-flying individuals are based in Australia, though some are in the UK and US. They disproportionately work in one of the following fields: Financial Services, Software Development, Advertising Services, Media Production, Writing and Editing or, oddly enough, Food and Beverage Services, Food and Beverage Manufacturing, and Retail.
(Do I realise just how wanky the above paragraph sounds? Yes, I most definitely do. But with generative AI about to hoover up even the mouldy sandwich crusts from my content-creation lunchbox, this is no time for jocular, self-deprecating humility.)
Given my frequent dyspeptic rants against them, I have no idea why (a small proportion of) Australia’s corporate and cultural elite read Precariat Musings.
Maybe they hate read it.
Perhaps they are referencing it to gauge when it’s the right time to fuel up the private jet, gather the polycule participants, summon the shock-collar-fitted pilot and decamp to their luxurious New Zealand bolthole.
In much the same way some senior members of the judiciary (allegedly) enjoy having a PVC-encased, stiletto-clad dominatrix stomp on their testicles while calling them a vile worm, it’s also feasible that those in burdensome positions of corporate or cultural authority get off on being periodically hectored about their shameless self-dealing.
Who knows?
In any event, here’s what I’m proposing. If you need to attract the attention of corporate decision-makers or cultural agenda-setters, you pay me money to run a (small and tasteful) ad beneath my weekly diatribe. Which could become a twice-weekly or thrice-weekly diatribe, if that sweet, sweet ad revenue starts pouring in.
If the ad has the desired impact, you keep paying me money to run it. If it doesn’t, you don’t.
If that’s something you’d like to have a no-strings-attached chat about, please shoot me an email at nigel@contentsherpa.com.au.