The Battle of Ideas - towards a new politics

by James Panton, co-convenor, Battle of Ideas

 

From the French Revolution to the end of the twentieth century, politics expressed fundamental conflicts and contradictions over how to organise society and how to approach the future. The contests between progressives and conservatives, leftists and rightists, socialists and free-marketers, expressed fundamental differences over how to understand history, reason and human agency.

However, such Politics-with-a-capital-P seems to be a thing of the past. Over the past decade and a half we have seen the demise of all such fundamental contestation, the emptying out of the political categories of left and right, and the rise of a new small-p-politics of managerialism and personality, in which ideology seems to have no role, and with which the general population is left disenchanted and uninspired. 

Today, thinkers across the political spectrum seem united in the view that There Is No Alternative. Social theorists and the cultural left regularly declare that we live in the era of ‘the death of the subject', 'the decentred subject', and 'the death of the author'. The possibility of human beings shaping the world through the application of reason and agency, once a central tenet of left-wing and progressive thought, seems unpopular, even dangerous, to those who look at the past century as an era of war, Holocaust and environmental degradation. Even the more traditionally conservative commentators who declare 'the end of history' and the 'end of politics' seem equally estranged from history, insecure about celebrating past achievements, and often distance themselves from the legacies of class, nation and empire. As Dolan Cummings points out in his essay, we now face the future with fear and trepidation.

In the absence of either progressive visions of the future, or conservative notions of our being rooted in the past, we are stuck in an un-rooted present. Contemporary culture has lost a sense of the present being the result of past achievements, and the precursor to the future. The sense that human beings are engaged in a constant process of making and re-making the world has been replaced by a sense that we are cut adrift from any means of shaping the future. Instead, we are the objects of history. Whether as individuals we are determined by our genes or by our socialisation is of little consequence – either way we are the products of things beyond our control. And whether as a society we are objects determined by the forces of globalisation or the whim of fate, the dominant sensibility is one in which human beings can do little to control their destiny. Worse, what attempts we do make to control our destiny are viewed with fear and caution.

Of course, in the sphere of formal politics there are differences between the major political parties. But the differences are of a largely technical nature. In the absence of any notion that society could be different, there is no progressive vision around which left-wingers can cohere, and nor is there a vision of the present or the future against which conservatives can react. Tinkering around the edges of society fills the vacuum where there once stood a contestation over how society should be preserved or made anew. 

Popular disengagement from the formal political process expresses the sense that the actions and decisions of politicians are of little real consequence in people’s lives. What is often referred to as ‘apathy’ manifests the inability of the current political establishment to present a project around which the general public can be inspired. In this context, the end of politics has been transformed from maintaining or improving society to seeking out sources of legitimacy with a largely disinterested and uninspired population. This striving for legitimacy and connection is expressed in the three dominant modes of elite political activity in the current period.

First, politics take a managerial and technocratic form. In the absence of large-scale visions of the future there is no politics to be argued over, there is little to be done but to tinker around the edges of society. Good management has come to replace political leadership. It is in terms of the politics of managerialism that we can understand why government has come to focus on individual behaviour in a way that is historically unprecedented. Attempts to manage and control so-called ‘antisocial behaviour’, to improve the health of the individual citizen, or to intervene in child-rearing and early socialisation, to give but three examples, all involve the development of policies directed towards intervention and regulation in the minutiae of individuals’ daily lives. The population has become an object to be managed rather than a citizenry to be engaged politically. At the same time, however, involvement in what would once have been considered the private affairs of individuals expresses an attempt by government to find points of connection with the general public outside the traditional channels and institutions of political communication. That such interventions cannot succeed in recovering any real political engagement with the general public does nothing to mitigate the often authoritarian implications of such an unmediated formalisation of the relationship between individual and the state.  

Second, in place of the substantive conflicts over the ideology and even the development and implementation of policy, the contemporary political landscape is dominated by a superficial clash of personalities and ‘brands’. The recent Labour conference had the air of a scene from a feudal court, in which a tired and aged king sat beside his anointed successor before courtly nobles who argued over the lines of succession, while the majority of the population was conspicuous by its absence (or on one occasion forcible removal) from the discussion. The apparent conflict between Blair and Brown hides a reality in which there are no substantive differences between them in terms of policy, whether economic, domestic, or international. And while those on the other side of the House of Commons are selecting a new leader, it seems clear that the choice between Brand Davies and Brand Cameron is as insubstantial as the choice between Puma and Nike trainers. The absence of real political choice is the overriding feature of contemporary politics, and sums up the profundity of the current democratic deficit. 

Third, it is in an attempt to develop a convincing political brand that politicians are constantly searching for what George W Bush called ‘that vision thing’ - a Big Idea to re-engage the public and take society forward. However, the search for ‘vision’ and ‘big ideas’ manifests precisely how disconnected the political class is from the rest of society, and how far contemporary politics has moved from the politics of old. Political vision is not something that can be dreamt up in a seminar room. The political visions of the past developed through the engagement of individuals in the political process, a popular negotiation of interests, needs and priorities, manifested in political ideologies and social projects, and enacted through an engagement with the problems and concerns of the day. The very vacuity of the search for political vision is mirrored in the overly empiricist fetish for unmediated ‘evidence-based-policy’. On one hand, politicians search for an abstract idea, while on the other, all policy must be substantiated in terms of ‘what works’. The former bears no relation to people's real needs and desires; the latter reveals a lack of political will to implement policy that might transform the present, seeking instead to hide behind the defence of what already is. Both sides of this equation lack the mediation between ideal and substance, the very process of engagement and negotiation with society at large through which politics was traditionally developed.

If we take seriously the idea that the politics of old, the debates between left and right, are exhausted, then there is a need to approach politics in a new way. Doubtless this will involve much argument and disagreement. Perhaps the most uninspiring aspect of contemporary politics is its very lack of debate. Establishing an arena in which individuals can come together to debate and argue over the what issues we should address is the first step towards the establishment of a new political climate in which ideas can be taken seriously, and individuals’ capacity to engage in the world can be developed.

James Panton
October 2005

 

 

 

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