To achieve our goals for the future, technoprogressives should accept that capitalism, properly managed and regulated, can be a powerful force for good, and we also must regain a deep sense of optimism and historical vision.
Sheri Berman is associate professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York. Her latest book is The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century.
A recent essay that Berman wrote for Dissent magazine seems worth consideration for technoprogressives. She begins:
The current financial and economic crisis has once again placed the dangers of capitalism at the forefront of our collective consciousness. The left, which until relatively recently had seemed adrift across much of the Western world, lacking in coherent and convincing responses to globalization and neoliberalism, appears once again poised for a comeback, as citizens yearn for stability and security in difficult times.
However, as Berman points out in her essay, the current troubles and exposed weaknesses of laissez-faire capitalism do not automatically mean that progressive policies will fill the void. Or if they do, it will only be the result of astute, knowledgeable and skilled leadership from the left. The humanist ideals of social democracy can once again assert their place as a stabilizing factor against capitalism’s rambunctious energy, but not without a reinvigorated effort.
Here in the United States, President Obama’s tepid measures with regard to financial markets—where he’s trying overly hard to accommodate a broken system—threaten to endanger his whole progressive platform. If he manages to right the ship of finance in time, then it’s still possible he can press forward with long overdue fundamental and comprehensive changes that will combine education, clean energy, and climate change initiatives along with health care reform and infrastructure rebuilding. It’s not difficult to see how they all fit together, nor to see how sensible it is to address the complex system as the sum of its parts instead of taking incremental steps with each separate component. But understanding the big picture is one thing, and finding the strength, courage, and political savvy to successfully take on the overall challenge at one time is quite another.
And that’s where individual progressives come in. We too must step back and see the interrelations between various pieces of government policy; we must recognize the value of a broad approach to reform; we must look for ways to support comprehensive proposals and steer clear of single-issue campaigns that will distract from and potentially damage the greater movement of change.
That’s not Berman’s only prescription, however. She has two more challenges for those on the left: first, to accept that capitalism, properly managed and regulated, can be a powerful force for good; and second, to regain a deep sense of optimism and historical vision.
Regarding the first point, and the deep-seated mistrust of capitalism that many progressives nurture, Berman says:
At its root, such fears stem from the failure of many on the left to appreciate that capitalism is not a zero-sum game—over the long run the operations of relatively free markets can produce net wealth rather than simply shifting it from one pocket to another.
That’s a highly significant point, which, again, might seem obvious to many of us but to others is hard to accept. Nonetheless, an honest review of history has to show that capitalism has indeed produced some mighty valuable fruits, even if we’re not always pleased with how those metaphorical harvests are distributed.
But if we can take a positive approach, then it is possible to have our strawberry shortcake and eat it too:
Helping people adjust to capitalism, rather than engaging in a hopeless and ultimately counterproductive effort to hold it back, has been the historic accomplishment of the social democratic left, and it remains its primary goal today in those countries where the social democratic mindset is most deeply ensconced. Many analysts have remarked, for example, on the impressive success of countries like Denmark and Sweden in managing globalization—promoting economic growth and increased competitiveness even as they ensure high employment and social security. The Scandinavian cases demonstrate that social welfare and economic dynamism are not enemies but natural allies. Not surprisingly, it is precisely in these countries that optimism about globalization is highest.
In the United States and other parts of Europe, on the other hand, fear of the future is pervasive and opinions of globalization astoundingly negative. American leftists must try to do what the Scandinavians have done: develop a program that promotes growth and social solidarity together, rather than forcing a choice between them. Concretely this means agitating for policies—like reliable, affordable, and portable health care; tax credits or other government support for labor-market retraining; investment in education; and unemployment programs that are both more generous and better incentivized—that will help workers adjust to change rather than make them fear it.
As for Berman’s second challenge, that of regaining and projecting a deep sense of optimism, she says:
The left has traditionally been driven by the conviction that a better world was possible and that its job was to bring this world into being. Somehow this conviction has been lost. As Michael Jacobs has noted, “Up through the 1980s politics on the left was enchanted—not by spirits, but by radical idealism; the belief that the world could be fundamentally different. But cold, hard political realism has now done for radical idealism what rationality did for pre-Enlightenment spirituality. Politics has been disenchanted.” Many welcome this shift, believing that transformative projects are passé or even dangerous. But this loss of faith in transformation “has been profoundly damaging, not just for the cause of progressive politics but for a wider sense of public engagement with the political process.”
As social democratic pioneers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century recognized, the most important thing that politics can provide is a sense of the possible. Against Marxist determinism and liberal laissez-faire, they developed a political ideology based on the idea that people working together could make the world a better place. And in contrast to their democratic socialist colleagues, they argued that it was both possible and desirable to take advantage of capitalism’s upsides while addressing its downsides. The result was the most successful political movement of the twentieth century, one that shaped the basic politico-economic framework under which we still live. The problems of the twenty-first century may be different in form, but they are not different in kind. There is no reason that the accomplishment cannot be developed and extended.
We see this as a major part of our mission here at the IEET: to help in creating a compelling, positive vision of a future that can be attained, but that will only come about through the forthright adoption and deliberate application of technoprogressive policies.
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