Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Left and Right in the economic crisis

2013; Routledge; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13569317.2013.784006

1469-9613

Jonathan White,

Populism, Right-Wing Movements

Abstract Two decades after the Cold War, the political traditions of Left and Right were widely deemed to have fossilized. Many saw them as unable to express vital alternatives, and only distantly related to contemporary political life. This article examines how far this remains true in the light of more recent upheavals. It looks at the key divisions of opinion to have emerged from the economic crisis that broke in 2008, identifying important differences concerning in what sense it a crisis (the production of disorder vs. production of injustice) and how it can be explained (acts of moral or intellectual transgression vs. a pattern of adhesion to problematic doctrines and practices). It goes on to argue that these differences can be seen as extensions of older Left–Right dichotomies, albeit articulated with a second division between technical and normative reasoning. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenge political actors face in positioning themselves coherently according to these divisions. Acknowledgements For comments on a written draft, I thank Bob Hancké, Claus Offe, Waltraud Schelkle and Lea Ypi, as well as the Journal's referees. Earlier versions of the argument were presented at the LSE-Hertie School Dahrendorf Symposium, November 2011 and the conference on 'Left and Right: the Grand Dichotomy Revisited' at the University of Minho, Braga, March 2012. Notes 1. Here, I treat situations of crisis as separable from the ruptures in belief they may occasion. Note though that where no such ruptures are forthcoming, some might question the application of the term crisis. On the interplay between its intersubjective and objective dimensions, see J. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Cambridge: Polity, 1988), pp. 1–3. 2. In the midst of a crisis, it is hard to decide of what it is a crisis. One assesses it using the same inherited ideas and reference points the crisis itself may undermine. To capture some of its mystery and unknowable scale, as well as to keep things simple, this article will refer to it in the singular and with a capital 'C', as the Crisis. 3. See e.g. A. Giddens, Beyond Left and Right (Cambridge: Polity, 1994); F. Furedi, Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right (London: Continuum, 2005). For the opposite conclusion—that tendencies towards ideological convergence have made the Left–Right idiom more necessary than ever, see C. Mouffe, On the Political (London: Routledge, 2005). 4. A useful overview of these debates is P. Mair, 'Left–Right Orientations', in R. Dalton and H.-D. Klingemann (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Behaviour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 206––222. 5. Cf. R. Koselleck, 'Crisis', Journal of the History of Ideas, 67(2) (2006), pp. 357–400. 6. I. L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1972). 7. Making a similar proposition, see A. Boin, P. 't Hart and A. McConnell, 'Crisis exploitation: political and policy impacts of framing contests', Journal of European Public Policy, 16(1) (2009), pp. 81–106, p. 82. 8. Following N. Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), p. 1, we can treat the Left–Right framework as comprising a mix of 'ideas and movements'. Actors naturally may display multiple, sometimes contradictory, ideas: the relationship between the two is to a degree free-floating. 9. Cf. S. Lukes, 'Epilogue: the grand dichotomy of the twentieth century', in Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy (Eds) The Cambridge History of Twentieth Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); J. White, 'Left and Right as political resources', Journal of Political Ideologies, 16(2) (2011), pp. 123–144; J. White, 'Community, transnationalism and the Left–Right metaphor', European Journal of Social Theory, 15(2) (2012), pp. 197–219. 10. The distinction as presented excludes certain lines of argumentation, notably the optimistic view that the Crisis corrects imperfections rather than generates them. In neo-Schumpeterian manner, it may be suggested such moments of turmoil remedy the misallocation of value, weed out what is unviable and generally provide opportunities for societal renewal. Such reasoning has been fairly rare in public discourse, particularly as the Crisis has become protracted, but its retrospective appeal cannot be discounted. 11. Rather than as a deep-seated crisis, this perspective is likely to see the events of the day as one of capitalism's periodic crashes—an interruption rather than a break, albeit an especially harsh one given today's increasingly globalized conditions. For reflections on the crash/crisis-of-capitalism distinction, see A. Gamble, The Spectre at the Feast (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 5ff. 12. See e.g. the report by the High Level Group on Financial Supervision in the EU, 'De Larosière Report', Brussels, 25 February 2009, pp. 7–8. 13. A succinct account is given by IMF Chief Christine Lagarde in an interview with The Guardian, 25 May 2012, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/25/christine-lagarde-imf-euro 14. For one such analysis of the origins of the Crisis focusing on weak fiscal and monetary policy in Europe and the US, see the European Commission report, 'Economic crisis in Europe: causes, consequences and responses', European Economy, 7 (2009), pp. 12–13. See also 'De Larosière Report', op. cit., Ref. 12, p. 3, pp. 10ff. 15. European Commission, op. cit., Ref. 14, p. 13. 16. C. Crouch, The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2011); D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); R. S. Turner, Neo-Liberal Ideology: History, Concepts and Policies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); Gamble, op. cit., Ref. 11, pp. 70ff, pp. 143ff., for a discussion of where neoliberalism shades into 'neoconservatism'. Note that broadly similar economic arguments, though again with a somewhat greater role envisaged for the state, go under the heading 'Ordoliberalismus' in some European countries. 17. C. Moore, 'I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right', The Telegraph, 22 July 2011. 18. P. Oborne, 'The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom', Daily Mail, 11 August 2011; R. Scruton, 'Unreal estate', OpenDemocracy, 12 September 2011. For commentary on the take-up of moral critique on both sides of the political spectrum in contemporary Britain, see J. Forsyth, 'Who are the undeserving rich?' The Spectator, 1 September 2011. 19. Daily Mail journalist Oborne speaks of 'moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society […] An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up', and the country 'needs a moral reformation' (Oborne, op. cit., Ref. 18). Also in moralist vein, see Scruton, op. cit., Ref. 18: 'the elementary moral truths of debt and obligation were forgotten and ignored so thoroughly during the last 10 years […] what we are seeing, in both Europe and America, is a demoralisation of the economic life. Debts are no longer regarded as obligations to be met, but as assets to be traded'. 20. A more theoretical, and somewhat idiosyncratic, elaboration of such arguments is in P. Blond, 'Rise of the Red Tories', Prospect, 28 February 2009. 21. F. Schirrmacher, 'Ich beginne zu glauben, dass die Linke Recht hat', Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5 August 2011. 22. E. Teufel, 'Ich schweige nicht länger', 2 August 2011: 'The CDU needs to be the party of ordinary people again' (author's translation). 23. Christian arguments have similarly re-emerged in Britain, as voiced e.g. by the Archbishop of Canterbury, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15550015 24. C. Seibt, 'Der rechte Abschied von der Politik', Tages-Anzeiger, 8 August 2011; M. Spreng, 'Die Politik und das Monster', blog entry, 13 August 2011; U. J. Heuser, 'Anständig zahlen', ZEIT online, 18 August 2011, available at www.zeit.de/2011/34/01-Finanzkrise-Reiche/komplettansicht 25. C. Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 26. One might view critiques of the design of the eurozone and calls for its abolition as going beyond a critique of transgression to a critique of adhesion (i.e. to a long-standing and mistaken process of European integration). Yet the call tends to be for a reversion to the status quo ante: doing away with the euro and/or the EU is presented as returning society to the straight and narrow, not transforming it: it thus has the character of a critique of transgression rather than adhesion. 27. D. Cameron, speech on 'moral capitalism', London, 19 January 2012. 28. See e.g. A. Pearson, 'What we need now is a banker behind bars', The Telegraph, 25 January 2012. In Britain, the much-discussed idea of removing a banker's knighthood illustrates a variation on the theme of individual condemnation and punishment. 29. See C. Crouch, 'After privatised Keynesianism', Compass: Think Pieces, No. 41 (2008). 30. See www.euromemo.eu. For a diagnosis of the origins of the Crisis, see EuroMemorandum 2012, pp. 19ff. 31. See e.g. the annual Marxist festivals in London (http://www.marxismfestival.org.uk/), where several of the figures mentioned below have spoken. 32. E.g. J. B. Foster, The Great Financial Crash: Causes and Consequences (New York: Monthly Review, 2009); D. Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (London: Profile, 2010); with a US focus, G. Duménil and D. Lévy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 33. G. Carchedi, Behind the Crisis: Marx's Dialectics of Value and Knowledge (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 34. Ibid. 35. Cf. EuroMemorandum, op. cit., Ref. 30, pp. 3–4. 36. An analysis of some such proposals can be found in R. Blackburn, 'Crisis 2.0', New Left Review, 72, November-December 2011. 37. 'Czechs stage huge anti-government rally in Prague', BBC News, 21 April 2012, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17799937 38. As the statement of the Occupy London group puts it, 'We do not accept the cuts as either necessary or inevitable. We demand an end to global tax injustice and our democracy representing corporations instead of the people […] We want structural change towards authentic global equality. The world's resources must go towards caring for people and the planet, not the military, corporate profits or the rich'. Occupy London, Statement, 16 October 2011, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/17/occupy-london-stock-exchange-occupylsx 39. For a discussion of the fractal structure of divisions of opinion in the social sciences, see A. Abbot, Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences (London: W. W. Norton, 2004). 40. On some of the political issues at stake, see White, 'Left and Right as political resources', op. cit., Ref. 9. 41. 'Whatever its language, form and following, [the Left] makes the assumption that there are unjustified inequalities which those on the Right see as sacred or inviolable or natural or inevitable and that these should be reduced or abolished' (Lukes, op. cit., Ref. 9, p. 17). Cf. Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction, op. cit., Ref. 8; P. Anderson, 'A sense of the Left', New Left Review, 231 (1998), pp. 73–81; A. Noël and J.-P. Thérien, Left and Right in Global Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 42. D. Fuchs and H.-D. Klingemann, 'The Left–Right schema', in M. Jennings and J. van Deth (Eds) Continuities in Political Action: A Longitudinal Study of Political Orientations in Three Western Democracies (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), pp. 203–234. 43. Wittgenstein's other metaphor, of the rope fibres, is equally instructive: the continuity of the rope lies not in the continuity of each fibre, but in the continuity of their interweaving. 44. Cf. M. Gauchet, 'Right and Left', in Pierre Nora (Ed.) Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French past, Vol. 1, Conflicts and Divisions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 241–298. 45. See e.g. Crouch, The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism, op. cit., Ref. 16. 46. In a critical period from 2010 to late 2011, not only was the Centre-Right a majority in the European Parliament, but also not for a century had such parties so dominated the national parliaments of Europe: only in Slovenia, Greece, Austria, Cyprus and Denmark did a party of the Left retain power. Party-based classification can be misleading—Social Democratic parties are conventionally treated as leftist, yet those which committed themselves to a 'Third Way' in the 1990s and early 2000s might equally be regarded as Centre-Right—but in this case such observations merely underline the Left's predicament. 47. See e.g. EuroMemorandum, op. cit., Ref. 30, p. 27, where austerity measures are explicitly criticized for making inequality worse, though with an emphasis on the functional rather than normative consequences of unequal societies: 'In accentuating social tensions, already under stress due to the crisis, austerity policies lay the ground for political tensions, if not instability, as right-wing populism grows stronger'. 48. Furedi, Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right, op. cit., Ref. 3; Giddens, Beyond Left and Right, op. cit., Ref. 3. 49. Even if these narratives have potential mass appeal, communicating remains a challenge. In recent years, just as in the mid-19th century (Gauchet, 'Right and Left', op. cit., Ref. 44), many political actors have been reluctant to couch their appeals in the vocabulary of 'Left' and 'Right', something which may hinder their visibility. If the Left–Right division discussed is to be recognizable as such to more than a politically engaged minority, it is likely that more political actors will need to position themselves and others with explicit use of these terms (White, 'Community, transnationalism and the Left–Right metaphor', op. cit., Ref. 9). 50. The dislocation between denunciations of capitalism centred on its tendency to self-destruct versus its tendency to produce injustice was if anything stronger in the 19th century, expressed e.g. in the contrasting works of Marx and Proudhon. For one discussion, see S. Berman, The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 23ff. 51. For an analysis of the Dutch Labour Party in these terms, see D. Finn, 'Order reigns in the Hague: the Dutch elections and the Socialist Party', New Left Review, 77 (September-October 2012), pp. 80–81. 52. See P. Mair, 'Representative versus responsible government', MPIfG Working Paper 09/8 (2009). 53. Proposing this as the main axis of the age: S. Žižek, Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2010), p. ix. 54. British euroscepticism on the Right bears clear traces of this: calls for the repatriation of decision-making powers from Brussels have tended to be focused on economic and social rights legislation such as the Working Time Directive, which are more easily undone at the national than European level. 55. See Gramsci's 1930s observation, 'the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to believe previously […] The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear' (A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976), p. 276. 56. A. van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960).