A Relevant Program for the Left
Posted in Personal Miscellany
on February 21st, 2012 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Politics,
Energy
The Left has not been really relevant in a long time. The Left has been completely routed since the fall of Communism, impotent and pushed into niches on the edges of society with no popular appeal. Contrasted with a potent and virile (if increasingly vile and loathsome) Right, the Right's accusations of milquetoast centrist politicians like Obama having an "extreme Left" agenda is bitterly amusing. The closest things we have seen to a resurgence of the Left as a political force with mainstream political relevance has been anti-globalization protests, which have drawn mostly disgust from the broader public who are uncomprehending and indifferent to the movement's beliefs and goals. In fact, even these resurgences are plagued by a perception and/or reality that they are united by nothing more than a common spirit and have no coherent ideology or program. However, I can think of at least one coherent and plausible program from a mainstream perspective that could be proposed based on an analysis of the anti-globalization Left.
My idea actually stems from a proposal by Jeff Rubin from his book Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller. Rubin's thesis is that globalization is threatened by the end of the era of cheap energy, given that we are near or at peak oil and hundred-dollar-a-barrel oil is the new normal, pretty much now and forever. Globalization critically depends on plentiful and cheap energy in order to make the competitive advantage of distant low-wage economies relevant. For that reason and to combat global warming, Rubin proposes that a high price must be placed on the consumption of hydrocarbons, i.e., via something like a carbon tax. But how do you address the huge advantage that countries that don't implement a carbon tax gain in your market with their even cheaper goods? Rubin proposes tariffs to counteract any such competitive advantage and to encourage our trading partners to get on board.
I think that Rubin has perhaps inadvertently put his finger on the whole problem with globalization from the point of view of the Left and why this is one of the few issues still capable of energizing the base. What is the problem with globalization? Aside from the fact that some people get rich off it, which the Left hates on general principles, globalization completely neuters the Western labour movement in countries with effectively globalized economies.
The whole leverage of the "workers of the world" is to withdraw their work, especially, to strike. In democratic countries with protected, domestically-oriented economies, this is very effective. Democracy and rule of law sharply limits the ability of factory owners to resort to brutality in order to resolve a labour dispute. The option is still there and has been used, but it is much less effective. Where the economy is firmly domestic, the ability to cut off a domestic supply of some good is a potent weapon. However, in a globalized economy, the production in question can simply be moved to a cheaper economy with weaker democracy, human rights and rule of law, and a greater tradition of exploitation. The cherry on top is that even with increased transportation costs, with the tariff walls removed the foreign-made goods are actually substantially cheaper.
While people living in areas that used to have a strong manufacturing base suffer as that base is hollowed out, many people do very well in a society flooded with cheap goods, effectively multiplying their purchasing power, and the working class people in the hardest hit areas are effectively neutralized by bile-spewing right wing media playing to their worst qualities. The Right has shown a true genius for yanking the economic rug out from under the working class while using clever propaganda (e.g. talk radio, of which the Left has no remotely successful equivalent) to obtain the ardent support of a majority of the people they have just finished screwing.
Afraid of further alienating the public, people with liberal beliefs in public life mainly vacillate and distance themselves from their own convictions. They are like 90 pound nerds living in fear of the big bad Republican bullies. Literally pissing their pants, actually. Those on the Left with strength of their convictions, on the other hand, have no interest in being part of the system or truly engaging the public, thinking naively that all they need to finally win public support is having sufficient dedication to their drum circle at the local Occupy protest.
The Occupy protests are actually a good thing because they are winning some much-needed attention and for the first time finding some badly needed public resonance in their anger at the unpunished criminals in the financial system who steered the economy onto the rocks and continue to profit, and the politicians who bailed them out and sheltered them.
To be relevant in a democracy, however, any political movement needs a strong hook into the mainstream, and that is what the Right has shown a consistent genius for doing at the same time as the Left has demonstrated mostly utter incompetence.
What I would like to see the Left do is twofold:
One, a big part of the Left's problem is the total disconnect of its academic braintrust from the values and beliefs of the mainstream, and the unwillingness of mainstream figures with liberal beliefs in the United States to own it (things are a bit better in this regard in Canada). Quite frankly, in matters of religion and social issues, the Left has a strong case and a lot of mainstream support. Cowering in fear of conservative bullies and being unwilling to own "extreme" positions like supporting gay marriage only fuels the impression of liberals as the caricature painted by conservatives. People on the left need to step up efforts to directly make their case to the public on social issues. The erosion of conservative support on issues like gay marriage shows that the public is not so far from the liberal position, and with persuasion it could be possible to take that wedge away from conservatives and directly engage the mainstream.
Secondly, a program to return to the world of 1970 and eliminate the trade agreements that give us a flood of cheap Chinese goods is going to be a non-starter. The jobs won't instantly come back, and the economic damage and higher prices would evicerate the Left's credibility for a generation. So how to bring manufacturing back and restore the labour movement's bargaining power, a key foundation of the Left?
I think the Left should focus on financial regulation, bound to be a public winner, and shown to be an economic winner. Canada's Liberal banking regulation, which the Conservatives were not able to dismantle in time to drive Canada into the abyss with the rest of the world, saved Canada from the worst effects of the recession and have a lot of credibility. I also think that the Left should focus on living within our means and consistent budget surplusses, as the Liberals used to post. While this sounds like a right-wing issue, in fact the Right has a terrible record in this area, and the Left could own it. Financial rectitude frees governments to a significant degree from being beholden to financial markets and their agendas. Regulation in other areas, such as safety and the environment, are good areas where the Left can exploit the Right's weakness and find broad public support. The Right's effort to demonize "regulation" will backfire like night follows day in terms of environmental destruction and safety scandals, and this can be used against them.
None of that is really innovative. The idea which I think is innovative and could be gradually implemented in a way that could win public support without hitting people's lifestyles too much (at first, but eventually it would have a significant impact because the goal would be to wean us off cheap, slave-made goods) is a modernized system of targeted and calibrated tariffs.
Old-style protectionist walls are tempting to a leftist, but I think this is a dangerous temptation that will destroy our economy, and with it the Left's credibility. I'm sorry, Communism has failed, and ideological alternative economies to capitalism are an intellectually bankrupt non-starter. However, the Right is wrong in thinking that they have proven their point about free market capitalism. Not a nation on earth uses free market capitalism, and in those instances where markets were made more free, as we have seen in the last twenty years or so, the result has been increasing instability and disasters like the ongoing financial crisis and recession. The Left can run on an ideology of regulated market capitalism. It's an opportunity for the Left to be the sane ones on the right side practicality and to paint the Right as the dangerous radicals threatening the stability of our economy and our collective prosperity. It may be modest in terms of the actual hard Left's goals, but it's practical and capable of moving things forward, and that may be enough to unite much of the Left behind such a program.
That brings me back to targeted tariffs, a kind of regulated free market concept. The idea is that we would have free trade but also fair trade. Countries whose competitive advantage comes from lack of labour and environmental regulation should face tariffs that would slowly eliminate their unfair advantage, while countries with broadly comparable or better protections compared to our own would have free and unfettered access to our markets. This calibrated globalism, especially adopted by a significant number of countries, would give countries with poor protections incentive to improve in order to gain greater access to markets, and would blunt to some degree the effect on prices of erecting an old-style wall, because goods could still be manufactured in the cheapest location à la Ricardo (when factoring out unfair advantages due to exploitative policies), preserving some of the advantages of globalization and making everyone better off.
To avoid political manipulation, tariffs could even be set in a special court, to which anyone, local or foreign, could appeal to try and set, change or remove a tariff.
To put it mildly, this is not an idea without problems, but in my opinion, it is defensible and possible to give mainstream credibility. I think this is the kind of thing the Left needs to do in order to give the movement as a whole traction and relevance.
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