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I returned to work yesterday, having fulfilled the promise I made to myself to really take last week off, a little blogging apart.
I hoped to have another part of the Taxing Wealth Report out today. However, other issues that had accumulated during the week off got in the way of that, and might continue to do so today. Be assured, though, I will be back on it soon.
What are the diversions? Every one of them is in some way or other about narrative building. Whether the issue is accounting, tax, microeconomics or macro, the need is always the same, it seems. The requirement is that we find a better way of explaining what is happening, what we want to happen, and what the constraints in achieving that might be, with all that being told in a way that suggests that the obstacles might be overcome.
This, I think, is really important. Most people have no idea what economics, accounting and tax are really about. And yet, the consequences of decisions made on these issues by a tiny number of people have profound consequences in their lives. Because of climate-related issues, those decisions will also have similar consequences for generations to come.
In every case, the issue is the same. It is that a discipline developed for social benefit has been captured by professionals who then wish to secure their position within society by making their expertise mysterious and so accessible only at a price. This requires that it be wrapped in language intended to exclude understanding by all but a few. And the more inaccessible the methods that the practitioners of these arts are, the better it is for those who are active within these fields because this (by and large) moves them beyond challenge. This is, for example, the reason for most of the maths used in these disciplines. Much of it adds little value because it is based on dubious data and even more dodgy assumptions, but the mystique of the techniques used disguises that fact to produce results that are supposedly of value.
I have always questioned this approach. I inherently doubt disciplines that seek to exclude others from understanding to secure the privileged position of the practitioner. That does not mean I reject the idea of expertise. Nor do I reject the significance of technical skills, including in statistics. What I question is the creation of shibboleths – which are the deliberate barriers constructed by so many with the primary intention of excluding others.
Proper narratives and debates about them should break these barriers down. They would also explain what is not apparent because so much goes unsaid in our society.
So, for example, it is simply not said that the core beliefs of the Conservative and Labour Parties are now remarkably similar. That fact can be ignored because core political economic narratives are neither known nor discussed. And so, a pretence of difference can be constructed in the place of real debate.
This matters. What both parties can do in the absence of narratives is suggest that there is a choice available within our electoral system when, in a very real sense for most people, there is almost none: the option is to choose between one pro-market, small state exponent and another, and that is it.
Whether this can be changed given the forces lined up to reinforce the system of control hidden behind veils of pretence that we now have is a good question. Maybe that is simply not possible. It could be that the vested interests are too strong to permit that change.
I, however, live with hope. When it is so apparent that the existing narrative is failing – with the people of this country very clearly thinking that to be the case – the opportunity for change has to exist. And when people can see – as is again apparent – that the political choices they are being given do not answer the questions, needs and wishes that they have – with the majority of people in this country appearing to want solutions more radical than those that politicians want to present them with – there has, again, to be the opportunity for change.
But I keep thinking that this cannot happen unless we have better narratives. We need to have the best stories to tell. Or, as was said by Julie Walters in ‘Educating Rita’, there must be a better song to sing.
That is the most pressing need we have now. The old is dying, as Gramsci noted, perhaps a little prematurely. The new is waiting to be born. The problem is, no one seems quite sure how to deliver it. That is the political economic coundrum of our time. Solving it is all about creating new narratives, I think.
How to do that is the question needing an answer.
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