A wholesale ideological conversion
Rochenko has a brilliant piece on how New Labour policy, contrary to the accepted wisdom, might not just be ‘ill-thought-out authoritarian “headline initiatives”‘ dreamt up by ‘knee-jerk managerialists’. There’s something more fundamental going on, ‘a wholesale (and radical) ideological conversion’:
In other words, policy is no longer about the social satisfaction of needs (as under Welfare State consensus models of the relation between State and society), but concerns the means by which people can be disciplined into managing themselves as respositories of human capital. This resource must be invested wisely in order to maximise the possibility of gain, as with financial capital, and the investment routes used by the individual should be subjected to strict audit.
Read the whole thing. It’s another element to be factored into the grand unified theory of New Labour. The chapter on New Labour’s ideological and moral dehumanisation of the lower ranks is going to be huge.
Posted on February 29th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
| See also • Brown by the numbers • The Mainstream Media and Alisher Usmanov: Fair and Balanced • good omens |
• Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe |
|
• Filed under New Labour |
• |
Certainly an analysis needs to make the distinction between “knee-jerk managerialism” and the ideological basis of the policy proposals [and their implementation] that are a feature of the New Labour approach which Rochenko wirtes about.
However, a distinction also needs to be made between “knee jerk managerialism” ["ill thought out"; "headline grabbing initiatives" etc.] and managerialism per se. The point being to recognise the ideological underpinnigs of managerialism itself.
I’d argue that in terms of the adopted model, the underlying assumptions, the approach and the implementation process, there is little significant ideological difference between the New Labour approach (as described in ronchenko’s peice and in some of the links other posters have provided there) and managerialism.
Identifying the ideological basis of the approach is vital and important but it does not in itself negate the practical stupidity of much of what is proposed and often implemented. Nor does it negate arguments that point out that a particular idea/proposal or implemeted initiative does not correspond to reality and either cannot ,work or will do more damage on the road to ultimate failure (I’m sure many examples present themselves here).
Not that pointing such things out in a rationale and coherent way tend to make much difference. I’d suggest here that we are faced with a mindset that seeks to create it’s own reality as described in the now well known quote from an unknown Bush aide in an interview by Ron Suskind in the New York tiumes magazine of October 17 2004:
“The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”"
In this regard the fundemental issue seems not to be one of recognising the differences between the knee jerk type of managerialism and the ideological basis of New Labour’s approach but is instead one between a faith based approach and a reality based approach.
If off to read Rochenko next (if I’ve time), but I would have thought this was connected to the argument that New Labour believes in running the people to suit the economy, backed up with the threat of how globalisation is producing millions of Chinese and Indian PhD graduates who will work for a dollar a day (and yet, of course, we will compete with a world-class service economy as validated by McDonalds). My current lazy description of the process is ‘the workfare state’ (as in New Labour’s line that ‘work is good for you’ - or rather ‘work - if you know what’s good for you’) allied to a policy on Incapacity Benefit which is closer to the practice of patching up soldiers for trench warfare in WW1 than to anything resembling the welfare state).
PS: Did you read Stiglitz on the cost of the Iraq war? In amongst the figures, the phrase ‘ideology of convenience’ leapt out as a perfect description of New Labour.
In support of my post above - particularly the ‘ideology of convenience’ - here’s David Clark in 2005:
“Blair’s experience of opposition led him to conclude that Labour could only govern by making a binding accommodation with power. But what others saw as a necessary expedient of opposition, Blair has transformed into a permanent logic of government. This is the true meaning of “elected as New Labour, govern as New Labour”. Labour can govern, but only by deferring to forces more powerful than it. Dismissed at the outset was the idea that government could be used to change power relations in any significant way.”
Thanks for the link, J.
Am struggling with the beginnings of some sort of bug, so will limit myself here to copying an pasting what I’ve written in response over at SW:
Mike: Two points in response - first, I think that, while Curtis has done us a service in raising the level of TV content (his The Mayfair Set was particularly good), the amount of emphasis he gives to intellectuals (Bernays or von Neumann, for example), means that he ends up presenting a far too conspiratorial picture. The emergence of consistent ideologies and patterns of practice among policy makers depends on far more contingent and haphazard histories than the ideas-led ones that Curtis tends to end up telling. Secondly, the argument I was presenting doesn’t really present people as being coerced into being passive consumers; rather, it’s about making people into active participants in the creation of a different form of society. It’s empowerment, literally - but the power gained is power over a very limited range of options.
Dave: I’d agree that NuLabour-style governance only makes sense when understood against the background of managerialism, and also that there’s a fair amount of faith at work here. But the idea of ‘entrepreneurialism’ here makes the practices employed consistent at a level that a target-led culture of ‘what works’ does not have (despite its own ideological underpinnings). Fundamentally, it manifests a particular idea of the ‘good life’ (here’s the faith-based governance), and seeks to make this a reality by seeking to change the relationship between the present and future of individual agency in a way analogous to how widely-available personal credit altered how we negotiate between what is happening now and the future. Nevertheless - to stress again the point about contingency I mentioned in my reply to Mike above - this doesn’t mean there is some kind of seamless total worldview at work here. Rather, it’s a lash-up - and some of its expressions fall on the side of the plainly ridiculous, it’s true.
redpesto: there’s a high degree of intellectual coherence there, but it’s a by-product of many, many iterations of policy committee meetings and ministerial decisions that define themselves, again and again, against the same ‘outdated’ assumptions. It’s not a covert, fully-thought-out programme - more like, as you (and Clark) say, trying to adapt to processes which are viewed as fundamentally uncontrollable. Over time, as these ideas coalesce more and more, it becomes increasingly likely that they will begin to take an active role themselves in the formation of policy - and once things become a bit more conscious (when a party tries to define what it stands for, etc.) then that’s when the stupidities really begin.