Going my way?

[imomus]

Back in 2005, I wrote an entry entitled Why does it always swing on me? which predicted -- correctly, as it turned out -- that Koizumi would win in Japan and Merkel in Germany. I knew this simply because it always happened to me; I'd arrive in a country, attracted by a relatively liberal government, only to face a swing, a reaction, a rightward re-adjustment. Since this had happened throughout my adult life, I figured the pattern would continue. Governments of the nations I lived in would always be swinging right.

One of the interesting things happening now, though, is that pretty much everyone -- from George "Socialist" Bush downwards -- has suddenly swung left, thanks to the financial crisis and the sudden collapse of neo-liberal free market ideology. I was one of the few Japan-watchers to be against the privatisation of the Japanese postal savings bank, for instance (the issue over which Koizumi called, and won, that 2005 election), but now it's become a new orthodoxy to regret that privatisation -- the current Japanese prime minister, Taro Aso, was vehemently against it, for instance, and the current banking crisis makes his stance look wise.

One of the most extraordinary and heartening things to happen in the last month has been the rehabilitation of two great veterans of British left wing politics, Michael Foot and Tony Benn. Several commentators have noted that Foot (now 95 years old) called for greater state control of the banks in his 1983 Labour Party manifesto, and that this now suddenly looks pretty smart (We're all socialists now, comrade!). Even free market-friendly papers like The Financial Times and The Times are suddenly hailing Mr Foot (whose glasses, too, look a lot more fashionable than they did).

I remember feeling a surge of hope when Foot was elected leader of the Labour Party in the early 80s. He's probably the only leader of a UK political party in my lifetime whose views even remotely resemble mine. He was, unfortunately, slayed at the polls. Even today, with his values and views vindicated, there aren't enough British people buying his old paper Tribune to keep it in business.

So -- in this political season, when the US looks likely to elect its most left-leaning president in a generation -- what are my political views? And which politicians represent them, in which countries? Well, on the Political Compass test I score:

Economic Left/Right: -7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.03



This makes me solidly left-libertarian. It puts me in a lonely part of the Political Compass, in terms of actual representation in the political process. Only Gandhi somewhat represents my views, amongst the historical figures cited by the Political Compass website. In terms of US politics, Brian Moore, Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney occupy the general area of my views (though I support Obama simply because he has a chance of winning and thereby tilting the US at least in the direction of left-libertarianism).

As The Economist recently pointed out, the UK is generally to the left of the US in its values, and the EUzone is somewhat to the left of the UK. Perhaps surprisingly, that study found that the British were closer to Europeans (and Canadians) than they were to Americans in their political attitudes.

Germany's red-green alliance (in power when I arrived here in 2003) is the closest I've come to living under a government I fundamentally agree with; apart from that, there's still a big gap between my beliefs and the values of most European governments, though Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands come closest. In terms of parties, the New Zealand Greens and the Irish Socialists might be my cup of tea. In the UK only the Greens are thinking my way. In terms of parties in power, Helen Clark's New Zealand Labour Party are heartening (in the Obama way; they actually have power, and somewhat represent my views -- though less than parties too unpopular to govern, like Michael Foot's 1980s Labour). Clark renationalised railways and banks before the current crisis made such things fashionable.

Just as parties out of power usually represent my views better than those in power, so cities probably represent them better than whole nations. My views are closer to those of the average New Yorker than the average American, and the average Berliner than the average German. And if you canvassed people by profession, you'd probably find a lot of artists, writers and musicians at least as left-libertarian as I am, and probably more so.

Now, the question is, have I -- like Michael Foot -- succeeded in living long enough to see the world finally swinging to me rather than swinging on me? Am I about to become gratefully average in my political views? Not just "an average indie musician" or "an average Berliner", but "an average European" or even "an average Westerner"? Sure, my views overlap with Joe "Germlin" Howe's already, and they'll probably never overlap with Joe the Plumber's, but are they about to overlap -- just a bit -- with Joe Sixpack's? And if so, how long is it going to be before we get parties occupying the lonely lower left quadrant of the Political Compass actually in power? Outside of South America, that is?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Economic Left/Right: -8.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.79



Wow, wasn't really expecting to be so far into the negative numbers. I don't feel that out of touch with the world :o

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Could it be that the strategy is always in the top right quadrant and the tactic always in the bottom left one (in Certeau's terms (http://imomus.livejournal.com/275786.html))? In other words, could it simply be our powerlessness as individuals that makes our attitudes what they are, and could it be that if we were suddenly political parties in power, we'd drift up to the upper right quadrant? Maybe we don't expect politicians to follow us down into the lower left quadrant, just as we wouldn't expect actors to jump off the stage and join us in the audience.

[(Anonymous)]

While I love your writing on culture/arts/etc, you're fairly clueless when it comes to politics. Yes, Koizumi went overboard with postal privitization, but that was a relatively small error compared to the enormous good he did for the Japanese economy. From this excellent article http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=0fd35b90-4e86-46fc-91cd-2426a0a658ff:

"That's what ultimately made the difference in Japan. In 2001, the country's maverick prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, slashed government spending and forced banks to cut nonperforming loans by creating a government body that allowed them to admit the loans had failed and still sell them off, thereby giving government more say in how banks were run. Koizumi's strategy "subjected [the banks] to more rigorous loan write-offs and forced changes in management," notes one study of Koizumi's first term, published in Asian Perspective. This changed the way Japanese banks operated, forcing them to scrutinize borrowers, even companies with which they had been cozy, and prompting them to overhaul their business models. For good measure, Koizumi's leading economic adviser declared in a high-profile interview that no bank was too big to fail--a warning to everyone in Japan's financial sector. By the first quarter of 2004, Japan's economy was growing at over 6 percent, one of the fastest rates in the industrialized world, and the stock market had risen by 50 percent over the previous year."

[eeuuugh.livejournal.com]

What would Brecht say about that!

I'm somewhat to the left of you, and right now I'm in Nicaragua, on my way to Bolivia--I'd be there already, but I no longer fly. Evo might be doing great things, but I don't see myself becoming complacent, considering the behavior of marxists at Kronstadt and the Hague Congress, among many other incidents.

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

Michael Foot believed in massive expansion of state control (anti-libertarian) and in closed shops even for writers and journalists (anti-libertarian). The one truly libertarian cause he espoused was his opposition to the EU - because it was so top-down and unaccountable.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

There's nothing Socialist about giving banks loads of taxpayers' money (especially while the public are being asked to take pay cuts). This is not the end of capitalism, just the beginning of a new stage of it.

[trufflesniffer.livejournal.com]

Isn't a belief in increased state control of the banks and other aspects of the economy an (almost archetypal) example of Left-Authoritarianism rather than Left-Libertarianism?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

But how long did that little miracle -- which was nothing more than neo-liberal orthodoxy -- last? Four, five years?

[barnacle.livejournal.com]

What you call a closed shop others would call sensible unionization to protect the workforce from short-termist policies of exploitation and neglect. Your choice of vocabulary gives the lie to any objective validity of what you're saying.

[craig-pulsar.livejournal.com]

I don't know anyone who has scored in the positive numbers in that Political Compass. Either everyone I know is a hippy at heart, or there is something flawed about their scoring methodology. Mind you, as most musicians and artists are skint, it is entirely predictable that most are socialists.

[barnacle.livejournal.com]

What I find interesting about the political compass is that more and more these days it gives a misleading answer, and doesn't even answer the right question.

I don't want to bang on about how the axis of left-right seems to be of little worth to my own political stance these days, especially as it's still a useful terminology for my own upbringing. But being raised a socialist, educated a liberal, and now turning deeper and deeper green by the day: I would never in my life vote for the Tories, yet have some admiration for Merkel, owing to her encouragement of the green tech industry in Germany, and her greenness generally. She might not be as verdant as Callmedave claims to be, but she's certainly delivering more than he's ever likely to do.

Arguably for me the questions in the political-compass survey are more interesting than the answer. "Land should not be a commodity to be bought and sold." Never mind my answer to that one: my reasoning is what counts for my political stance.

[ohayo-sakura.livejournal.com]

I did that political leanings test a while ago, and my result is situated exactly where you are, on the lonely left.
As you've expressed, it will definitely be interested to see what impact the financial crisis has on the collective political leanings of nations,....

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

I didn't say state enforced closed shops were bad. Merely that they were not "libertarian".

There were always workers who - for whatever reason - did not wish to belong to a union. Closed shops necessarily meant that such people got fired for their beliefs. Maybe firing them was for the greater good of the other workers. But it was not "libertarian".

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's a massive misreading of events to describe the great bank bailout as a leftward turn. It's using the reserves of the state to prop up the neoliberal financial system. Agreeing to buy equity in the banks was an absolute last resort when other bail-out plans failed, and it is very much part of the plan to sell off the shares once the market recovers. So this is almost the reverse of a leftward turn, it's more like a right-wing coup d'état: raid the state in bad times, return to the status quo when the storm is over.

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

And for the state to insist that all journalists belong to a union closed shop is to insist that all journalists must believe in union closed shops. Journalists who believe otherwise must either perjure themselves or give up writing.

[(Anonymous)]

(http://tinypic.com)

from joe x

Political Compass

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Isn't the Political Compass a loaded test which divides the world into two groups: Libertarians (in the American guns-dope-and-Ayn-Rand sense) and evil authoritarians who probably strangle kittens for fun?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ha, I'm way to the right of you!

Re: Political Compass

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"Statement 1: "If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations."


Hmm. Which do I like best? Humanity or trans-national corporations...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

While I agree that "this is... just the beginning of a new stage of capitalism", I think it's undeniable that taking banks into public ownership is more socialist than leaving them in private ownership.

Here's Tomasky (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/20/commentanddebate-john-mccain-barack-obama) in today's Guardian: "McCain, now openly using the word "socialist" to describe Obama's proposals (the week after his friend George W Bush took federal control of nine major banks!)..."

Re: Political Compass

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Would you prefer "Whose interests should be prioritized, the majority of the people trans-national corporations affect or just the shareholders?"

[silkytooth.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

i'm curious as to what we disagreed on?
j

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It may have been the question about whether first generation immigrants can ever integrate into the host society. I answered no because I don't think they should have to, but a "liberal" answer is probably supposed to be "yes they can".

Surely proof that banks 'own' the government, if anything.

[(Anonymous)]

Pouring work-money into a black hole created by fantasy-value is an intervention I can do without.

If the world turns socialist it is as likely to be National Socialist as the Green party. "Who do you blame for the problems?" Tick A for foreigners, B for the bourgeoisie, C for errors in fiscal regulation since the 1970s. Let's hope people don't vote with their 'psychogeography'.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

how does that help the working people in their struggle?