So I will quote the ending (the rest of the email you can find in part I):
I think I'm in a funny position because ultimately I believe capitalism is immoral and support radical changes to our economic system. At the same time I am a pragmatist and recognize that our financial system has created the most successful economic machine in the history of the world, that it serves a function to benefit human welfare (albeit imperfectly) and I'd rather have it continue than collapse altogether, or be changed imprudently for moral reasons without pragmatic consideration. Humanity hasn't been smart enough to figure out an economic system that is both functional and ethical. Eventually we will, but there's no point in breaking the old machine until we've the replacement ready.
Ethics vs. Pragmatism
The core message of the email is something like this: I don't know which economic plan is best, because I don't understand any of the plans or what's going on with the economy. On that issue I will have to defer to the experts. And if they say a given plan will work, then we should do that. We may feel that it's not right, that the wrong people are benefiting, that it's unethical or even immoral, but those are private concerns, to be debated amongst ourselves, and should not impact sound policy.
Again I don't mean to caricature Brett's email in any way. Obama said the same thing in his speech to congress:
I know how unpopular it is to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions. I promise you -- I get it. But I also know that in a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment. (Applause.) My job -- our job -- is to solve the problem. Our job is to govern with a sense of responsibility.
A division has been created here. What Brett calls "ethics" have been made private and personal, an interesting topic of conversation, perhaps, but not a basis for how we must act. We may sense an injustice in this economic plan, may feel that our society is unequal, unfair, but these feelings are configured as just that - feelings, emotions - a populist rage that can be the object of social analysis but will not be taken seriously. These feelings are at best irrational, but more likely those of a child who feels wronged. "Life isn't fair," they tell us at that age, with a condescending smile.
On the other hand, what Brett calls "pragmatic" is what becomes public. Away from the irrationality of ethics, away from the pathos of justice, the pragmatic is simply what will work. It emerges at a time of crisis but asks that we don't change too quickly. It occurs through vigorous rational debate in the public sphere, but insists that debate refrain from a recourse to politics. Rather, in this case, we defer to the economic experts; even Obama is imagined as simply a communicator. So here the economic pragmatic becomes naturalized - there are economic laws that stand apart from the ideologies of politics, and we must listen to those best equiped to understand those laws: the Timothy Geithners and Larry Summers, the smartest guys in the room, the absolutely competent, the ones who have the best interests of the country at heart.
After eight years of an administration that never listened to the experts, on climate change or stem cell research or interrogation or security or war or the economy or anything else, this sounds like a convincing argument. But you can see what has happened here. We have claimed to have evacuated politics from the public sphere - but is this ever possible? Isn't the public inherently political? To be a little more concrete, Brett and I may or may not trust Warren Buffet or Paul Krugman or any number of other people, but there is one group I certainly do not trust. Following Simon Johnson in this interview, if we described the way policy has been formed in this country for the past thirty years, the word to describe our political system would be fairly simple: oligarchy. The corporate super-rich have had an inordinate influence on the public sphere, and it just so happens that these are the exact same people who will benefit the most from this bank bailout. This isn't (just) a matter of personal distaste - the types of policy options that are being presented, and the terms of the debate, are all expressions of power relations, and right now there is a class of people who still have an extraordinary presence in Washington. Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers are the very people who deregulated the banking industry (as well as the energy industry, leading to the Enron fiasco), have profited from that deregulation, and they still have deep ties to the industry.
Economic "laws" are not immutable, nor is the creation or change of an economic system something that occurs against a neutral, apolitical backdrop. Rather, it is always shot through with power relations. Our current system is unethical because it is not functional for everyone, or for most people, and I would argue that this is precisely the point. Currently, a few people benefit, and those people are not citizens among citizens, but are inordinately powerful. I do not want to change an economic system overnight; I am not a revolutionary. But if there are any Friedmanite "distortions" here, it is the super-powerful super rich, and those people must go.
Meanwhile, even if we do away with Bush era ideology, the ideology of privatization, perhaps it would be wise to publicize something else - this private conversation we've been having, about what is ethical and what is just. It may require that we disavow our love affair with functionality and efficiency, but I nevertheless think that it would put our collective and individual actions on firmer ground.
One final note (and yes there will be a Part III - I'm very loqacious about all of this somehow): the idea that many people have to nationalize the banks is not at all radical. Nationalizing here is at most a momentary socialism, but more likely just an organizational tool. The new banks will be resold to private investors, but just different private investors. It is simply a way to reintroduce competition while keeping everything else about late capitalism. That there is such resistance to this option indicates to me the foothold a very small group of people have in our political sphere. It is really 300 rich people defending their position against 300 other rich people - but then oligarchies tend to be parochial in this way.
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3 comments:
Hey, Ameeth. Mike here. I assume this is the Brett I know and love we are talking about?
Although Brett of course will have the final word on this, I think you are misinterpreting his stance regarding the "ethics" of the bailout. A pragmatist pays attention to the real effects of her decisions, not just to the principles they conform to. In some cases, the principles may be (or appear) right, but the effects--or at least the immediate ones--may be undesirable. For example, I may find a time when it is "right" to steal even if, on principle, I think stealing is wrong.
On a related note, I think it's interesting that Obama said to _justify_ the bailout that we shouldn't "yield to the politics of the moment." It's very much unclear to me that this bailout is good in the long run, as it seems to create the wrong long-term incentives. It may yield the best outcome in the next 10 years, but it seems likely it isn't the best choice for the next 100.
Ameeth - You've written a nice piece here based on a misunderstanding of my position. I think Mike has picked up on what I meant, but just to clarify a bit more:
Ethics is most certainly a public issue. There are no private issues on the table at all here. It's a public issue about what the best course of action is for our society as a whole. Ethics isn't opposed to Pragmatism in the slightest -- in my view, pragmatism is an essential part of ethics and ethical considerations. Ethics without pragmatism is what we might call Ideology -- as Mike says, acting on a principle without regard for the real consequences of actions. In many cases I think acting on the basis of an "ethical ideology" without practical considerations is unethical, i.e., when it has harmful consequences for a great number of people. I think here in San Francisco there are a great number of people with an "anti-capitalist ideology" who support policies which would have disasters consequences for our economy and well-being, hence, although I consider myself "anti-capitalist", I often find myself arguing in favor of it for what I see as ethical grounds.
I think Warren Buffet's analogy is apt, that our economy is like a person who has had a heart attack and is laying flat on the ground. In that situation the correct action is not to lecture him about how he ate too much butter, or rally to improve societal dietary standards. The right action first is to do what it takes to keep him alive, and consider deeper changes addressing the causes of the situation only after he's stabilized.
Now suppose the man has been shot. The fact of a moral transgression by some third party doesn't change the fact that our first response needs to be to save his life. We could further imagine that the person who shot him is also the only one who knows how to save his life, but is demanding $100 payment for the service. This has the ring of negotiating with terrorists, but still, I say pay the money and save his life! Especially when we remember that this one man represents the material well-being of millions or billions of the lowest classes of society who stand to suffer the most from jobless, lack of credit, homelessness etc
Now this last analogy is on the assumption that the bankers who go us into this mess are the only ones who can get us out, which is likely false. Certainly if we have a plan for nationalizing banks on the table, and we believe it will work, and it doesn't have the negative affect of profiting the oligarchs, then I prefer that plan. That I consider an ethical judgment and a pretty obvious one. What is not obvious is what the details of such a plan would actually be, whether we could muster political will to accomplish it in a reasonable time, and if it would work. Certainly we have the ethical obligation to strive for the best possible course of action involving the least injustice, but we also have an ethical obligation to get moving quickly lest we let the patient die on the table while we debate.
So this is all an even higher level response to your post just to say "benefitting the oligarchs doesn't necessarily make a plan the wrong choice." I agree that the capitalistic oligarchy we have is unjust, I also believe there actually is an ethical good in such a system inasmuch as it does succeed at getting people houses and food better than nearly any other system we've actually seen realized on a large scale in human history.
A nice book to read demonstrating both the evil of capitalists and their crucial roll in helping our world to function is "The House of Morgan" by Ron Chernow.
Looking forward to part III,
Brett
quick comment on issues which I'll try to get to in more detail in part III. I understand the basic ethical question as Mike frames it: one may have a set of principles, but the exigency of the circumstances force one to make a different choice. Yes it is wrong to reward greedy bankers, but we are in the midst of a crisis, and so must act so that the economy doesn't completely fail. as brett says "benefitting the oligarchs doesn't necessarily make a plan the wrong choice."
the point of my post was actually not to critique the logic or ethics of this argument. Rather, I'm more concerned with the way in which this current debate is being framed and presented to us. I put "ethics" in quotation marks because I'm not talking about ethics as such, but am actually referring to a range of affects and discourses, everything from a somewhat reactionary sense of injustice to a feeling that we can't address the economy without also addressing consumer capitalism as a cultural phenomenon. But, we are told, now is not the time to for our feeling that this system is unequal. Now, we must act, pragmatically.
What is ironic to me about having this public debate to act pragmatically is that none of us know, or feel that we know, enough to understand what the means. So we must trust the experts. And when you start to look at these experts, at the people in charge, at the people who have given money and the multiple ways that they are institutionally connected at the highest levels, well, I at least become very suspicious. This is even more the case in third world countries, who have been told how to manage their economies and resources by "experts" since colonialism.
So, in sum, I'm generally not too interested in talking about ethics or economic systems as such without also talking about the concrete power relations involved. Indeed, what is most interesting is the way in which these power relations become invisible in the course of having this supposedly open national debate.
Again what's funny is that this short term bank nationalization program strikes many people as the most practical thing to do, much more so than this confusing, weirdly incentivized Geithner plan, and yet it seems off the table. Also funny is that short term nationalization is really not anti-capitalist ideology, but actually a rather minor redistribution of power, if not wealth.
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