Mike Kenny offers a response to the compass programme for renewal.
Compass bills itself as a 'pressure group providing direction to people and organisations who want a more democratic and equal society' (see www.compassonline.org.uk). It operates both as a loosely constituted network of like-minded political sympathisers, and a left-of-government lobbying force. Reasonably adept at gaining access to media outlets, Compass tends to adopt the style of the think-tank while making efforts to engage a broad range of academic and policy intellectuals in its various projects.
Its website buzzes with the leitmotifs of pluralism, informal debate, and joining-in. So it is something of a surprise to find that Compass has expended considerable energy in distilling its many activities and conversations into a series of programmatic statements. There is a lingering sense of unease with this move - this is not a 'manifesto', we are assured, but a programme for renewal: manifestoes imply that their authors 'have all the answers' (see compass website). Whatever we are to call them, the programmes that Compass has delivered (The Good Society and A New Political Economy were published at the end of 2006, while Democracy and the Public Realm is to appear soon) cover a very wide range of policy issues and debates. They propose some sharp diagnoses of Britain's current social ills, highlight the moral and practical deficiencies of the Labour governments' performance since 1997, and sketch some suggestions for alternative policy paradigms in all the areas that are covered. Even if we accept that there is a clear-cut distinction between manifestoes and programmes, it is worth noting that programmes too have produced some of the most wooden and limited examples of political communication known to British politics. So why exactly has Compass chosen this moment to present its arguments in this form?
The democratic
left(s): some history
Before attempting any sort of direct answer to this question, a brief
account of Compass's view of its own history and the present political
moment is useful. This grouping presents itself as the heir to a 'democratic
left' lineage. Invoked both as a tradition and coherent political position
within left politics, this badge of honour assumes a powerful contrastive
meaning. It is used to signal all that is good about the progressive political
tradition, and all that Compass dislikes about New Labour. The latter's
record since 1997 amounts to a:
scattershot of policies: policies have flitted from authoritarianism
to empowerment, from pandering to big business to being focused on poverty
reduction, from programmes firmly based in evidence to those arising
from back-of-the-envelope hunches.1
The moral vacillation and lack of big-picture thinking that have supposedly crippled these governments is balanced off against a 'democratic left' in possession of a 'clear vision and set of underlying values' (ibid, p190). For those who have been involved in or associate themselves with such a tradition, this presentation may be a bit disorientating. For this apparently unitary category collapses together a cacophony of divergent voices and groupings, some very different ideas about the ends and means of socialism, and some of the major intellectual debates of the late twentieth century.
Indeed, for all the emphasis on the coherence and primacy of its 'values', it is not hard to detect in Compass the residues of some diverse political ideas about what the 'democratic left' is all about. Elsewhere on its website, we find short accounts of the two main traditions it celebrates: the various manifestations of the New Left, which is presented as arising in 1956 and moving through the Euro-communist project pursued by sections of the Communist Party in the 1970s, culminating in the impact of Marxism Today during the 1980s; and the 'soft left' which emerged out of the re-alignment of Labour Party politics in the mid-1980s.2 Both of these groups were themselves, as these brief accounts hint, marked by some important internal differences and debates, and, until recently, showed little interest in each other. That these historical differences have in some respects been set aside in the current period is to be welcomed. But the refusal to notice the divergences of political perspective which shaped these contending impulses is inhibiting, as they underpin some of the potentially contradictory features of these programmes.
It is also worth noting that the question of whether there is any direct linkage between these earlier self-styled 'modernising' projects and the 'New Labour' phenomenon remains a potentially difficult one for those associated with both of these groups (not least because of individuals involved with them who have assumed positions in government since 1997). A good deal of debate has developed around possible connections and linkages between New Labour and both Marxism Today and the Kinnockite-sponsored realignment in the Labour Party, yet those who guard the memory of these earlier moments understandably deny responsibility for the parentage of Blairism. As a result, there is a particular zeal among these and other left currents about creating a distance from all that is New Labour, a powerful impulse that sustains a potent politics of denunciation (often focused on Blair himself). But while moral and political critique are important, they can degenerate into little more than collective self-congratulation unless blended with a desire to undertake some hard strategic and political analysis, and to consider what lessons might be learned from this most recent experience of Labour in power.
It is clear that a lively and wide-ranging discussion pre-dated the production of these documents. On one of the web discussion forums attached to The Good Society, Jonathan Rutherford reports on the difficulties this kind of dialogic process can generate for those holding responsibility for distilling a coherent whole from the many views and positions which were aired (his description will sound familiar to those involved in earlier New Left and other radical political ventures). There is, however, something disconcerting about the contrast between this process and the, perhaps unavoidable, 'we know best' tone that creeps into political programmes. Such statements tend to figure in our political culture as attempts to be parade one's serious and practically-minded credentials, and invariably imply a political consensus that belies the differences of perspective among the group or party producing them. Compass might have been advised to consider the history of the 'democratic' (and undemocratic) left before selecting this genre, for there have been many programmes and manifestoes that have not lasted long in the political imagination, or had an impact commensurate with the effort behind their production. The New Left has in fact generally seen itself as the kind of grouping that does not produce such programmes. Those few exceptions to this general rule - the ill-fated May Day Manifesto of 1968, and the New Times manifesto that the Communist Party published in 1989 - illustrate why this instinct was a good one.
Ethics and politics
in The Good Society
In the case of the 'Good Society' statements, whatever the earlier discussions
may have been like, the final text contains a good deal of 'mid-range'
ethical aspiration and policy discussion, the latter infused with the
'what works best' tone of the think-tank pamphlet. The policy suggestions
are a hotchpotch of old social democratic favourites, newer ideas and
projects (some associated with particular authors - David Held, for instance,
when we get to trans-national governance), or calls for the bolder implementation
of New Labour aspirations. The ethics/policy bifurcation is mapped onto
the structure of most of the chapters in each document. Most start with
a brief, sometimes grudging, account of some of the possible advances
made by government since 1997 in a particular policy area, and then move
to a more wholehearted castigation of New Labour's policy failures, measured
against the benchmark of the progressive values which Compass celebrates.
The values that are asserted - and assertion, as opposed to justification,
is the watchword here - comprise an interesting, if slightly awkward,
mixture of social democratic egalitarianism, newer concerns about well-being
and happiness, and some New Lefty ingredients - pluralism, democratisation,
civil society.
The competing aspirations and expectations apparent in the documents seem to have sustained different political ideas about their purpose for those participating in this venture. So, while The Good Society is trailed as a 'focus for discussion and debate', and viewed by some as merely the beginning of a thoughtful conversation about 'what is to be done', for others one senses that more is at stake here. A particularly optimistic reading of the prospects associated with Tony Blair's imminent departure and the identity of his likely replacement haunts some of the thinking behind these statements. Both the timing of their release and some of the notes struck within them, give these the air of a 'programme in waiting', available to an ambitious leader, steeped in the right kind of progressive values and traditions, perhaps.
Which of course brings us to Gordon Brown; or at least one view of the likely leader-to-be. For GB will surely be the 'elephant in the room' for most of the readers of these documents. He is named on only three occasions - in A New Political Economy and nowhere else. Two of these references seem genuinely incidental. But on another occasion we find a quotation from one of his speeches heading Chapter 1, 'The Good Economy' - an interesting hint, perhaps, of the desire for a more general sponsorship? It is certainly hard to read these documents and not wonder whether some participants in these ventures see in Brown the kind of progressive figure who shares 'our' values. That Neal Lawson, the Chair and guiding force behind Compass, was once a political adviser to Brown, adds some weight to the thought that the authors hope that some parts of what they have produced might help the generation of a more radical programme by the next prime minister. Here too the 'democratic left' story that Compass invokes might have been a salutary guide. Just over forty years ago, the rise of Harold Wilson within the Labour Party and the 'modernising' cross-factional image that he skilfully fostered, generated some highly unrealistic expectations followed by exaggerated disillusion in some left circles. Others around the New Left were rightly more circumspect, offering some weighty and balanced analyses of 'Mr Facing-Two-Ways' himself, and the state of Labour politics in this period.3
The danger here is that the dream of capturing the leader-in-waiting, and quite often an exaggerated sense of that figure's 'radical' credentials, underpins the fantasy of achieving a 'shortcut to socialism'. This kind of aspiration has a pretty long and pretty undistinguished history on the left. The increasing likelihood of a Brown premiership has already stoked in the media some highly implausible and unsubstantiated ideas about what he will actually be like in office, and the kind of policy course he will be plotting in terms of domestic and international affairs. All the available evidence suggests that while he will want to be seen to diverge from Blair in some important ways, and is clearly a very different kind of political figure to his predecessor, a good deal of the trajectory that government has pursued since 1997 will remain in place - not least because of Brown's influence upon domestic policy-making. The growth of the hope/fear of the emergence of the 'truly radical' Gordon Brown once he crosses the threshold of No.10 is itself an interesting reflection of the political times. If this kind of dream is harboured in the ranks of Compass, it ought to be given a reality check. A progressive strategy that ties itself to the mercurial fortunes of individuals is just as likely to collapse beneath the cycle of exaggerated hopes and excessive disillusion now as has always been the case.
It may be that this sort of aspiration follows naturally from the moral discourse which these statements deploy, and the absence of an avowedly political analysis of the New Labour phenomenon. Amidst all the talk of what government should have been doing, little is said about what it could have achieved. What socialist intellectuals used to call 'the limits of the possible' figure hardly at all. But without some sense of what kinds of radical policies might have been attempted, and how opposition to them would have been overcome, and at what cost, this kind of moralistic critique can lack proportion and persuasiveness. Very few meaningful lessons are likely to be learned from these extraordinary years of Labour administration without a sharp combination of policy audit, political analysis and moral critique. What were the opportunities that were missed? Why did some ministers drift into some highly authoritarian and illiberal positions? Why did the egalitarianism that clearly animated some members of the Cabinet and many of the party dissipate so markedly through the three terms? Is internal decay and disarray the inevitable outcome of a party holding power for a decade? Little light is shed on these and other related questions by a perusal of these documents.
Towards a political
understanding of the life and times of New Labour
Debate about the ideological character and provenance of 'New Labour'
has tended to revolve around disagreement between those who see it solely
or mainly as captured by the neo-liberalism that Thatcherism made hegemonic
in British politics, on the one hand, and those for whom, despite appearances,
this government can be understood as an ideological cousin (even if a
distant one) of previous Labour governments. More usefully, commentary
has begun to focus upon the singular combination of ideological languages
and ambitions that animated New Labour and helped Blair effect a strategic
shift into the centre ground of British politics. The government's endless
refrain of its third-way credentials and the recurrent emphasis on its
own pragmatic character and opponents' doctrinaire qualities have on the
whole distracted commentators from attending to its hybrid ideological
qualities. New Labour's rule has both consolidated and shifted many of
the terms of reference of political debate for all the other parties;
and has helped forge an increasingly narrow and technocratic consensus
in some key areas - economic policy most obviously. Perhaps hardest of
all for 'the left' to come to terms with has been New Labour's success
in projecting liberal-left opinion in many policy areas as its keenest
enemy. What exactly can progressives do to respond to this kind of positioning?
Other difficult questions follow. For the Labour 'modernisers' of the
mid-1990s succeeded in part because they offered both party and country
a powerful framework for understanding some important economic, social
and cultural transformations. However superficial and deterministic the
New Labour account of these may have been - and it was undoubtedly both
- it is clear that the endless refrain about socio-economic change requiring
a loosening of the relationship with the ideological past, and of the
need for older philosophies to be re-considered in 'new times', was a
powerful weapon against the re-assertion of known truths favoured by sections
of the left and right. Total recoil against these kinds of 'narratives'
is perhaps understandable, but cannot itself be a substitute for the development
of alternative accounts of the ethical and policy implications of socio-economic
change.
Moreover, a more politically minded analysis ought to pull away more fully from New Labour's self-presentation as the master of all it surveys on the political field, and ponder whether this political period was to some degree the product of some profound shifts in the nature and functioning of democratic politics, over which government has exercised relatively little control. Analysts have pointed to the combined significance of a number of social and political developments that threaten to 'hollow out' the culture and practices of representative democracy.4 These include a marked decline in public faith in the capacity of government to deliver in key policy areas, combined with a dramatic increase in expectations of it; the re-configuration of all of the dominant ideological narratives that underpinned party identities from 1945; the rise of news- and celebrity-mediated political cultures; the emergence of an increasingly technocratic political debate from which the public are increasingly alienated, and the consequent space opening to new kinds of populism; and the hollowing out of political parties as vehicles of intra-party debate and political participation. These and other changes are having major impacts upon the political cultures of democratic states. Distinguishing between those that stem from 'structural' transformations, and will be harder to reverse, and those that are the outcomes of contingent political choices, is a vital challenge for progressive thought.
Because they address so many different issues in a short space, the Compass statements do not easily lend themselves to a clear exposition of priorities: everything sounds as urgent as everything else. This is unfortunate in that there is a strong case for progressives granting to questions of political and constitutional reform a major strategic and moral priority. Successive Labour governments have eagerly used, and sometimes abused, the extraordinary degree of power and authority bestowed upon them by the centralised and untrammelled character of executive authority in the creaking Westminster model of governance. They have at times shown little regard for some of the most important entrenched liberties and rights associated with the British judicial system, and - some important Constitutional reforms aside - have been reluctant/unable to take forward the project of devolving power and responsibility to regional and local authorities. In all of these (and some other) respects, the comparison with their Conservative predecessors is a depressing and concerning one. A process of serious self-examination by the left about whether these stances arise in part from aspects of the Labour tradition is surely required. Moreover, addressing such issues as the government's retreat on Lords reform, the need to overhaul the financing of local government, the neutering of the Human Rights act, and the attack upon the independence of the judiciary, could well be an important catalyst for the emergence of a new wave of progressive political action and debate.
Compass offers numerous criticisms of the un-democratic (and occasionally anti-democratic) character of the Blair governments' behaviour and decisions. But these pertinent arguments sit rather uneasily alongside one of the most significant, guiding threads of these documents - the presumption that the primary agent of social emancipation is a progressive government pulling the levers of the nation-state. While a reformist government, parliamentary legislation and the institutions of the state are all vital ingredients of progressive politics, this reflex threatens to obviate hard thinking about how to recast the institutions, capacities and instruments that the democratisation of British governance requires. For a group that claims the imprimatur of the New Left in particular, the conflation of public interest with the state is surprising. Little thought seems to have been given to how this commitment fits with these documents' emphasis upon the value of personal empowerment. More generally, this axiom inhibits serious pursuit of the implications of a democratically-minded agenda. Progressives need to ask what institutional mechanisms and forms of governance can be developed to counter the market-led reflex of New Labour's approach to the project of improving the quality and responsiveness of public services. And is there an alternative paradigm that can withstand the fiscal and political pressures of the contemporary period that coheres around neither state nor market as its axial principle? The 'third sector' has been talked up in some circles, but we remain a long way from a coherent and developed conception of an alternative legislative and institutional model based upon such groups and organisations.
A New Political
Economy
The comprehensive sweep of these statements has some undoubted merits,
particularly if we compare Compass to some of its forebears. This reveals
the degree to which the arguments of once-marginal groups, including feminists
and environmentalists, have now percolated into, and become part of the
'common sense' of, many leftists. This is apparent both from the prominence
accorded to the vital issue of social care, and its many inequities, and
the profile given to green issues throughout.
More generally, it is to their credit that Compass give such centrality to the question of establishing 'a new political economy' for the left. This signals an engagement with a way of thinking about economic policy and change which highlights the integral character of political processes and identities, and leaves behind the nineteenth-century economism which blighted so much of the thinking of the twentieth-century left. Equally, this focus signals a readiness to address one of the most debilitating, yet rarely acknowledged, challenges for the socialist and social-democratic lefts in the contemporary era. This arises from the collapse of faith in the major agent and embodiment of socialist political economy - the institutions and practice of state planning. The abandonment of this paradigm by parties of the left over the last twenty years, and the tacit or enthusiastic embrace of market mechanisms and values, is both cause and sign of this major shift of outlook. The dilemma facing Compass-style progressives is, however, stark: if not state planning, nor the market, then what can be the agent and embodiment of progressive economic governance and public management? There are some interesting broad-brush ideas in these statements about the need for new kinds of regulation, governance and democratisation at the heart of the political economy which the left might develop. But, here as elsewhere, the thinking feels embryonic and uncertain. At times we slip back into the aspirations of old-world British corporatism; and at others we are invited to renounce the Anglo-American model of capitalism and embrace the European social model, and, specifically, to contemplate the Nordic countries' combination of productivity levels and social provision. Yet, while it has long been cited by social democrats, Sweden has rarely made British progressive hearts soar...
A particular difficulty arises in this area because of the government's successful record in managing the economy. While Blair's administrations have been broadly lucky in terms of the conditions in which they have governed, Gordon Brown's fiscal and political management of economic policy has contributed significantly to electoral success. The redistribution and investment in public services that have been developed - and more has been attempted than is acknowledged here - have been made possible by the stability associated with managed economic growth. What is missing in the Compass documents is a more focused analysis of how this record compares with that of other Labour administrations, and a strategic and political (as well as moral) argument for the expansion of some of the government's more promising and effective programmes - tax credits, child poverty reduction, child trust funds, etc - into more ambitious and challenging redistributive schemes.
Coming up with
'the good(s)'
The idea of posing big questions about 'narratives' and values at a point
when the steam is visibly running out of the Blair regime is undoubtedly
worthwhile. These governments have been badly damaged by some spectacular
policy blunders at home and abroad, an inability to find a language for
their more noble intentions, a dogmatic adherence to market-focused models
in key areas, and the continual whiff of minor scandal, all of which give
some grist to the mill of those who stress the debilitating impact of
its lack of overarching 'narrative' or purpose. But there is something
of a fetish in left-of-Blairite circles with the causal impact of this
government's lack of narrative that requires some qualification. First,
this is a critique that applies more obviously to the government'sperformance
since 2003. Before then, a mantra about the political implications of
global-economic and technological changes was relentlessly intoned to
justify legislative activity across a variety of policy areas - from reducing
benefits to single mothers to removing rigidities in labour markets. And,
second, this kind of critique tends to rest upon the assumption that its
wielder is herself in possession of 'the narrative' that has unjustly
and unwisely been neglected. This kind of hubristic take on the complexity
of political challenges and opportunities facing government is deeply
unconvincing.
The 'grand narrative' of Compass barely masks an important tension in its collective thinking: between, on the one hand, the promotion of the merits of a range of alternative perspectives about 'the good', and, on the other, the age-old ambition of parts of the left to build its moral and political case upon the idea that there is one ultimately superior picture of the good society, which equates with socialism. The first of these perspectives requires a recognition of the legitimate range of values and goods which individuals can hold and pursue, and that a democratic society can encourage. For progressives, this means accepting the pluralistic and negotiative character, and often unpredictable outcomes, of democracy. The second idea has its origins in nineteenth-century paradigms that promoted the fatal fantasy that, with the achievement of 'the good society', major social tensions, problems and moral disagreements will wither away. This is a strain within socialist discourse that has done the left little good. The Compass perspective, while clearly not connected with some of the totalitarian projects that the latter ambition has inspired, is fatally uncertain about which of these horses to ride.
'We're losing the ability to imagine different ways of living' (The Good Society, p 11) is the lament that underpins the Compass focus on 'the good society'. This is certainly true if we look for inspiration from the worlds inhabited by the political class and journalistic commentators. But it is not so obviously the case if we turn our attention away from the rather monochrome world of party-political discourse and look out across the multiple sites and communities that make up contemporary society in its real and virtual forms. 'The utopian' is very much alive and kicking in the more dense, diverse, often apolitical networks and forms of belonging that capitalist civil society has fostered. Some of these are expressed in genres and projects that do not sit comfortably with progressive politics; while others might provide lessons and inspiration for the latter. There are, usefully, many references in these documents to the work of a variety of pressure groups, campaigns or movements that have succeeded, sometimes after years of hard slog, in shifting the climate of opinion on particular issues in a way that has compelled subsequent action by the political class. There may well be some wider hints here about the kind of efforts and style of campaigning required to shift the 'limits of the possible'. This is admittedly a far cry from the kind of panoramic and visionary assertions that the 'good society' framework implies. But it is not necessarily its opposite either.
The leading American philosopher Michael Walzer's recently expressed scepticism about the resurgence of the values-discourse that he detects in parts of the Anglo-American liberal-left may well be pertinent here.5 He warns against the reiteration of familiar values in place of hard political work and thinking, and urges progressives to become more sensitive to the frictions and antinomies that their own values can generate: how, for instance, to reconcile the universalistic character of equality with the desire to pass power to different communities, in relation to the provision and consumption of health and other services. When told by Compass that '…we need to generate a culture and politics of respect and recognition throughout civil society. Such a culture is guided by mutuality and reciprocity' (p24), many of us will want to know what this actually means in a context where the demands for 'respect and recognition' of some groups ignite the suspicion, righteous anger and occasional bigotry of others. More generally, it may be added that the moral narratives, and perhaps even languages, upon which the major ideologies have drawn since 1945 now have to compete in and adapt to a political culture that is more cynical, more opinionated and less deferential than it was even twenty years ago.
Conclusions
For all the talk of pluralism and democracy, the 'value-set' (as philosophers
put it) at the heart of these documents is in this light too assured of
its own rightness, and too indifferent to its weaknesses. 'The good' according
to Compass involves an egalitarian interpretation of social justice that
supposedly enables a strong commitment to freedom alongside a renewed
emphasis upon the value of cultural pluralism. Such a perspective faces
more challenges - in terms of its philosophical underpinnings and capacity
to resonate with the diverse 'publics' and individualistic culture of
early twentieth-century Britain - than are acknowledged here. Certainly
progressive politics cannot just be about pluralism, cultural diversity
and liberty. But the mere re-assertion of the supposed core values of
the left, with their in-built 'monistic' biases, need to be balanced against,
and perhaps re-considered in the context of, the many different legitimate
kinds of goods that democratic society allows to flourish. Put more bluntly:
progressive politics has some long overdue lessons to learn from liberalism,
not least in terms of accepting the pluralistic and negotiative character
of democracy. Looked at from its beleaguered final phase, one of the most
important lessons arising from key moments and developments in the life
of the Blair governments - the David Kelly affair, the political orchestration
of an illiberal climate of fear as a response to genuine anxieties about
security - is that parts of the Labour tradition, and voices within the
political mainstream, are suspicious of and sometimes hostile to, the
values, institutions and practices that a functioning liberal democracy
requires. Coming to terms with, and countering, such tendencies - in the
culture at large, in politics, and in the institutions of the state -
should be a starting-point for self-styled progressives who wish to promote
the vision and reality of a better kind of society than that which will
survive the fall of Tony Blair.
My thanks to Andrew Gamble for comments on an earlier draft of this article, and Jonathan Rutherford for the invitation to contribute this review essay.
Notes
1. Neal Lawson and Hetan Shah, 'The Next Progressive Political
Phase', in G.Hassan (ed.) After Blair: Politics after the New Labour Decade
(Lawrence & Wishart, 2007), pp 190-1.
2.
www.compassonline.org.uk/uploads/documents/WhatIsTheDemocraticLeft.doc
3. See for instance J. Hughes, 'An Economic Policy for Labour?, New Left
Review 24, 1963; Perry Anderson, 'Critique of Wilsonism', New Left Review
27, 1964. On the early New Left's assessment of Wilson, see Michael Kenny,
The First New Left: British Intellectuals after Stalin, Lawrence and Wishart
1995, pp132-6.
4. Colin Crouch, 'New Labour and the Problem of Democracy', in
After Blair.
5. Jonathan Freedland and Michael Walzer, 'The Next Left: a Transatlantic
Conversation', in After Blair.
Subscribe
to Soundings a journal of politics and culture
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |