The strange case of conservative progressives
One of the most interesting lines in Tony Blair’s revealing book comes in the introduction:
’…I was and remain first and foremost not so much a politician of traditional left and right, but a moderniser. I wanted to modernise the Labour Party so it was capable, not intermittently but continuously, of offering a progressive alternative to Conservative rule. I wanted to modernise Britain so that, while retaining pride in having worn the mantle of the world’s most powerful nation as the twentieth century began, it didn’t feel bereft and in decline as the twenty first century began because that mantle would no longer fit’.
The admission that Blair was not a man of the left – indeed he acknowledges that on economics and law and order he is on the centre right – may appal some in the Labour Party but comes as no surprise to those of us who worked for him.
Everyday it seems a Labour leadership candidate repudiates another aspect of New Labour doctrine and record. But behind this tactical posturing there is a more profound questioning, which is of wider relevance and interest than Labour’s internal manoeuvrings.
In this month’s Prospect, two former Brown advisors Nick Pearce (now back as Director of ippr) and Gavin Kelly write about the need for social democrats to tap into a sense of ‘social patriotism’:
‘Beyond eco-conservativism, the centre-left hasn’t worked out the strands of conservative thinking that should form a core part of its political identity in the 21st century. Only when it finds a sure footing on this territory will it find a way of responding to some of the cultural concerns of the electorate that currently find expression in hostility to immigration.’
And here is Jon Cruddas MP, one of Labour’s most original and respected thinkers, writing in a few weeks ago in the New Statesman:
‘Labour has to win back…terrain with a language that can encompass both cosmopolitan modernity and English conservative culture, linking them together in a sense of national purpose. It would incorporate all the things Blair dismissed as anachronisms: tradition; a respect for settled ways of life; a sense of local place and belonging; a desire for home and rootedness; the continuity of relationships at work and in one’s neighbourhood.
England once had this kind of conservative, common culture; it acted as a counter to the commodification of labour and to social isolation. Ruskin provided its rallying cry, “There is no wealth but life.” At one time Labour gave expression to this kind of conservatism. It need not be reactionary, right-wing, or sentimental, although it has been all these things. Its political character will depend on Labour’s capacity to articulate a progressive and ethical conservatism that embraces difference. It need not be parochial or conformist: England celebrates a rich tradition of volatile, creative cultures. ’
These ideas strike a chord. Here is an extract from an article I wrote last year in Prospect:
‘New ideas about human nature can contribute to a more substantive meeting of minds between left and right. Thoughtful conservatives are once again recognising the importance of social context, inequality and the limits to market rationality. Labour thinkers can use the research to make the case for collective action and social justice, but they may also become more cautious about the capacity of the central state to empower communities, and more interested in the role of social norms and civic institutions”
So as Tony Blair reminds us that he was above all a moderniser, some thinkers from the left are exploring how (small ‘c’) conservative perspectives can be incorporated in the social democratic story.
Call me a sad case, but I find this intriguing. The RSA is a strictly politically non-aligned organisation but that doesn’t mean we aren’t interested in politics. Indeed, over the last few years we have had fascinating events discussing currents in left, right and liberal thinking.
Usually when people talk about moving beyond traditional left and right it is seen as a political ploy – a form of triangulation. But exploring the possibility of philosophy and practical politics which seeks to reconcile the ideals of social justice with the insights of social conservatism is a fascinating intellectual exercise.
I see an RSA event in which social democrats and social conservatives (like Roger Scruton or Ferdinand Mount, for example) are invited to explore common ground. Any takers?
An occasionally useful halfwit …
Well folks, this is it. My 500th blog post. Don’t worry I’m not going to go back over the previous 499, listing my greatest hits, my unread classics and my favourite comments.
Instead I want to explore some questions about the study of human behaviour. These have come up in the context both of the RSA’s projects (such as the Social Brain) and my own writing and broadcasting as the Society’s Chief Executive. For example, I am currently engaged in a project for Radio Four under the working title ‘God on My Mind’. I can predict some of the criticisms that will be made when the programmes are broadcast. Indeed Ray Tallis, who recently criticised my Prospect piece, has shown remarkable prescience in already attacking this project despite, as far as I know, not even knowing of its existence.
The issues were rehearsed at a recent lunch organised by the magazine Prospect at which I was the guest speaker. From the outset I adopted my well practiced self-deprecatory pose, recognising the infelicities in my own recent Prospect piece on politics and the brain, and the dangers of trying to ‘explain’ human behaviour through brain scans or the theories of evolutionary psychology.
But despite starting with this tactical retreat, as the lunch went on I found myself wanting to defend the new science of behaviour from two of the charges directed at it by my learned and sceptical lunch companions.
The basis of the first attack was that even to talk about behaviour showing up in brain activity, particularly through the use of colourful fMRI imaging, would inevitably lead to a reductionist account of human behaviour. The risk of course is real and has been underlined both in Tallis’ articles and in critiques of ‘the voodoo correlations’ of social neuroscience.
The identification of brain regions with certain characteristics or behaviours may be simplistic and the idea that just to see where something happens in the brain is somehow to ‘explain’ it is ridiculous. Yet the scope for advancing our understanding comes from the capacity to cross reference observed behaviour with neural activity.
Here’s an example:
Yesterday Dan Pink spoke at the RSA about his new book on human motivation, ‘Drive’. Part of his critique of carrot and stick incentives as the primary means to improve performance rests on the famous candle experiment. In this, subjects are shown a table adjacent to a wall. On the table there is a candle, a book of matches and a box of drawing pins. The task is to attach the candle to the wall, light it but not allow any wax to drip on to the table below.
The solution to the puzzle is to remove the drawing pins from the box, pin it to the wall, stand up the candle in the box, and light it. To get to the solution requires the lateral leap of seeing that the drawing pin box is not incidental (merely holding the pins) but is an object in play. In repeated experiments it has been found that if subjects in one group are told they will win a cash prize if they solve the problem and subjects in another group are simply asked to solve it without any incentive, it is the members of the latter group who, on average, get to the solution quicker.
The experiment is suggestive of a specific neurological process. Perhaps the cash incentive increases the activity in parts of the brain associated with deliberate problem solving or anxiety and this somehow blocks or drowns out the activity in another part of the brain associated with intuitive leaps or pattern recognition. This is something that could presumably be tested (maybe it has already been) by asking people to solve the problem in a scanner. Whether or not such a pattern is observed does not affect the significance of the original experiment, and patterns of neuronal activity are not a useful finding in themselves, but the two together can give us interesting insights into the ways cognitive tasks interact. Such findings, could for example, complement other research which appear to show our will power is reduced after we have undertaken a taxing mental problem.
Back at the Prospect lunch the second critique I sought to rebuff was reminiscent of the 14th Century Pope’s hostility to translating the Bible in English: ordinary mortals aren’t to be trusted with information they might misuse. the line here is that human behaviour is so complex and reflexive that any model a layperson could understand would, by its nature, be misleading. So, when in the lunch I posited my metaphor of human behaviour as an elephant (our automatic brain) being ridden (by our conscious brain) though a cultivated jungle (society and culture) the reaction was the kind of dismissive shudder you might get if, while lunching at The Ivy, you asked for a bottle of Hirondelle (if you’re under 40 ask your parents).
The problem with this position – apart from its eye-watering elitism – is that the alternative to one model of human behaviour isn’t none but another. So, even if there are lots of over-statements and simplifications in new thinking about behaviour (for example, the ‘Nudge’ epidemic) the new debate is surely better than the unthinking reliance on the myth of homo economus that dominated policy throughout the nineties.
The RSA is interested in these issues because our overarching mission is to release human potential for the benefit of society. To understand how to do this we think we need a credible and comprehensible account of the key factors shaping human behaviour.
I didn’t convince anyone at my lunch and I dread to think what my learned interlocutors said about me when I left. But, and this is in no way meant as a slight on my lunchtime companions, all of whom have made a considerable impact on the world, I’m going to comfort myself with this motto for my 500th blog:
‘better to be an occasionally useful half wit than a purely decorative intellectual’.
Superfreakonomics – what is the evidence for human altruism?
We held two great events here yesterday. In the evening RSA Chairman, Luke Johnson, hosted a speech by Sir John Rose, CEO of Rolls-Royce, on the topic of creating a high value economy. The Great Room was also full to bursting at lunchtime for a conversation with Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner about their book ‘Superfreakonomics‘.
Having read the book it was obvious to me that among the most controversial issues was the authors’ critique of ‘evidence’ about inherent human altruism. Levitt and Dubnar were fascinated, as it turned out this point had hardly been raised with them amidst all the arguments they had had about issues like climate change and prostitution. Nevertheless they set about making their case with great gusto.
You need to read Chapter 3 of the book to get the whole argument but in essence, and relying heavily on the work of economist John List, the two Stev(ph)ens refute often cited evidence from the ultimatum and dictator games which purports to show that people do not simply maximise gains but instead put a price on an innate sense of fairness. This may work in the artificial setting of the research project where students want to show how great they are but the evidence disappears when you construct a similar experiment in the real world.
What is more, we are only as fair as we think we have to be to avoid looking mean. So when people are asked to divide a $10 gift between them and an anonymous other they might choose to give away $3 or $4. But if their options include being able to take money off the other person (so the range of options are from giving away the whole $10 to keeping the $10 and taking $5 dollars off the stranger) the subjects adjust their offer to zero. In other words if simply not stealing is made to feel like it is a benign choice, people use that to legitimise keeping 100% of their windfall gain.
For me the interesting question is what does this more traditional self interested account of what drives us mean for our policy inclinations. At the beginning of my recent Prospect piece I wrote:
“As a schoolboy socialist in a 1970s grammar school, the first political arguments I had were about human nature. My idea of the good society rested on a view of people as collaborative and benign, qualities hidden by the depredations of ‘the system’. Working-class Tory mates mocked my naivety. To them we were self interested. Some succeeded by their efforts, others failed or cheated and would change only if incentivised or compelled “.
But it turns out the link between our view of man’s innate characteristics and our view of what government should and should not do are not as simple as this. Even if we think human beings are, in their interactions with strangers, overwhelmingly self interested this doesn’t mean we should be champions of laissez faire economics and a minimal state. The reverse could be true.
If we think pro-social behaviour is vital to the well-being of society but that people only behave in this way when incentivised, we might think it is more important to attend to the fabric of society (which generates the social norms that incentivise pro-sociality) and to how the state can encourage people to do the right thing.
The state I’m in
Sometimes, well, quite often actually, I find myself using an idea repeatedly but having the gnawing feeling that I haven’t really thought it through. This has happened recently with an assertion I made first in my 2007 annual lecture but repeated most recently in my inexplicably overlooked Prospect piece, namely that I am ‘an enthusiastic collectivist but a sceptical statist’.
It’s already late on Thursday evening and I have an in-tray bigger than the collection of a small municipal library so I can’t work through this thought properly, I just wanted to flag it up before I forget.
The thing is I am not anti-state. I think, for example, the actions of our own government and those around the world saved international capitalism from falling of a cliff a few months ago. More fundamentally, the state is vital to dealing with a whole set of social, military, economic, cultural and environmental priorities which would not otherwise be addressed adequately or at all. Most fundamentally of all, the failings of the state are generally the failings of us, the people, in relation to our often incompatible demands for safety, freedom, individual affluence, community cohesion, economic growth and sustainability.
What I mean when I call myself sceptical about the state is, first, that the state – especially the central state – finds it very hard to successfully manage local public services, particularly those that rely on a strong relationship between providers and users, and, secondly, that it generally lacks the capacity, subtlety and responsiveness to affect the changes in people’s lives that it intends – which doesn’t mean I think these things can be left to either the market or the spontaneous organisation of communities, but that the central state needs to be more strategic and realistic about its role. For what it’s worth, this is a view I consider to be perfectly compatible with a progressive political orientation (I say this partly in response to the complete stranger who came up to me the day before yesterday on the Piccadilly Line platform of Kings Cross underground station and called me ‘a nasty right wing s**t’).
The question about the size and role of the state is already at the heart of the political debate as we move towards the general election. It needs to be a debate that moves beyond a crude pro-state, anti-state dichotomy. But until I get a bit more precise in my own terminology I had better not go about criticising others!
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