Interpreting | 2009.10.25
Our speechless outrage demands a new language of the common good | Madeleine Bunting
Market theory closed down public discourse about injustice. But we urgently need to describe what we should value
There was a coterie of economists in the 50s in Chicago intensively working on a set of ideas that were widely regarded at the time as marginal. They had little influence on mainstream public debate for another 20 years, and their ideas didn\'t win votes for nearly 30. But the story is now familiar of how Friedrich Hayek and his associates produced the intellectual roadmap for both Thatcher and Reagan, and the notions cooked up in Chicago – such as efficient market hypothesis – have dominated political economy for the last 30 years. Hayek\'s legacy, which now lies in ruins all around us, is still brightly promoted, but its claims to fairness and freedom have been utterly discredited.
The institutions that so benefited from Hayek\'s legacy – in the financial sector – seem oblivious to the crisis of legitimacy they have stumbled into. That\'s because the public outrage they prompt has no language or intellectual framework to make sense of itself, or to shape a new settlement. But it\'s only a matter of time.
But don\'t look to economists to get us out of this hollow mould of neoliberal economics and its bastard child, managerialism – the cost-benefit analysis and value-added gibberish that has made most people\'s working lives a mockery of everything they know to value. Economics developed brilliant technical skills for monitoring and managing complex economies, but an interpretation that allied them to grossly crude understandings of human nature came to dominate.
We need to be looking to political philosophy. I\'m as hazy on the subject as the next person, but in the beautifully concise explanations of American philosopher Michael Sandel , I see great insight into our current predicaments. If any political reckoning is on its way – patience is the key lesson of the Chicago school, such shifts can take a generation – then perhaps it might come from the philosophy department of Harvard.
Two Harvard political philosophers in the last four months have produced books on justice, and both take outrage – the existence of it, the need for it in our grossly unjust world – as the starting point. Amartya Sen brought out The Idea of Justice in July and Sandel\'s Justice came out last week. Sandel was doing the round of radio studios and lecture theatres; his mild manners and gentle face conceal a surprising capacity for outrage.
That\'s where he starts his book, probing the affliction of speechless outrage that comes over many of us every morning: how can they? How can they think they are entitled to live life like that? The bonuses, duck ponds, moats, cleaning bills, of course, but also the gross inequality of lives in which money now means nothing because there is so much of it, complacently ignoring the modesty and struggle of others.
Here are two superb ambassadors championing the cause of what they call "public reasoning" in our political life. Bluntly, they are urging people to ask the difficult questions, and not to accept the straw man arguments. We have been prepared to settle for spurious claims – such as human nature is only motivated by self-interest – for too long.
The desire for justice, the outrage at injustice: these are deep visceral human emotions, evident early in childhood, illustrated across cultures and across time. Sen draws from Hindu tradition, Sandel from US thinkers such as John Rawls . The last generation has produced deeper and more pervasive injustice probably than at any time in history. Sandel cites the fact that US chief executives were paid 344 times the average worker\'s wage in 2007, against 42 times in 1980. How have they got away with this?
Sandel argues that the dominant theories of justice – the utilitarian greatest happiness of the greatest number and the liberal freedom of choice – have been inadequate and have generated a public preoccupation with rising GDP and the rights of the individual. What has largely been abandoned is any meaningful debate about the common good. He quotes Robert Kennedy in 1968: "GNP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play." It\'s chilling that we have done so little to advance this insight in 40 years.
"Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things," writes Sandel. It\'s a fond liberal illusion that the state can be neutral here – "justice is judgmental", he adds. We shouldn\'t shrink from the arguments that might result about what we should value and why. Here is a clarion call to put ethics back into daily life and at the centre of public debate, and give proper attention to how we cultivate in citizens an ethical life of mutual responsibility and respect.
If all this sounds a little abstract, an anecdote comes to my mind, which seems to illustrate how we have run adrift and how very timely his interventions are. My 12-year-old son set off on a shopping trip last month with a ridiculously large chunk of his savings to buy a trendy pair of trainers. It was his first solo trip to central London. He bought the shoes and walked out of the shop in them, but immediately realised they were too small. He was too embarrassed to turn round, so he put them back in their bag, and came home. I saw immediately that they were too small with no sign of wear, and urged him to return the next day and ask for the right size, which he did. But because he had walked out of the shop wearing the shoes, the assistant refused. I couldn\'t see how any assistant could have sold them to him, and I phoned up and politely told the assistant so. He said my son had seemed satisfied, and it was not his responsibility to ensure he bought the right product. I replied that all human interactions involve responsibility, and concluded by suggesting this could rest with his conscience. He was incredulous, and replied that he knew nothing about conscience. It was a courteous exchange of mutual incomprehension.
Managerial guidelines and market theory of free agents making choices were the only two frameworks this shop assistant was using to do his job. It illustrates in a tiny way the ethical vacuum in which too many daily decisions are made, let alone the grander scales of injustice that have us spluttering into our breakfast cereals. From bankers to MPs to shop assistants, we hear the lament of exoneration: "I was only following the rules."
So what will fuel this ethical debate? Here, I have one disagreement with Sandel. He calls for faith traditions to join their voices to the public debate about the common good. They do already, and I\'m not sure they can do more, given how little traction religious belief has in Europe, (a much more secular place than Sandel\'s America). I would argue that the challenge Sandel is setting us is to find a way to articulate a common set of ethical guidelines on which both believer and non-believer can stand. Plenty of schools already struggle to do just that, outposts beleaguered by a hostile culture. One handbook used in schools does it brilliantly, 16 Guidelines for Life starts with such counter-cultural values as humility, patience and contentment, and concludes with service and courage. We\'ve reached a sorry state that this handbook should sound so necessary, and so startlingly radical.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]/ethics-society-values-economy
