A Question of Worth: Economy, Society and the Quantification of Human Value 1784535915, 9781784535919

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Christopher Steed spent twelve years in Whitehall, where he worked on trade policy towards South Africa and deindustrialisation during the Thatcher years. He is qualified psychotherapist and counsellor and holds doctorates in sociology and education from the University of Exeter, and in theology and history from Trinity College, USA. He has worked in education and in senior management roles in not-for-profit organisations, and has over twenty years experience as a parish priest. He currently works for the Diocese of Winchester, developing a community hub for social innovation, and is a research fellow at Southampton University.

‘A genuinely essential book: it draws from an unusually wide range of first-hand experience as well as theoretical sophistication, and provides an unsparing diagnosis of the lethal vacancy at the centre of our culture. We have so shrunk and redefined what we mean by value that individuals and institutions alike are going through varieties of inner (and often outer) disintegration. The challenge is how we are to restore both a connected social reality and a critical social imagination. Deploying social science, psychology, ethics and theology together, Chris Steed gives us cause for hope as well as anxiety.’ Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, former Archbishop of Canterbury ‘Christopher Steed has written a deeply thoughtful and challenging book. It is a timely contribution to a debate many more of us should be having.’ Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive, RSA, former Chief Adviser on Political Strategy to Prime Minister Tony Blair

A Question of Worth Economy, Society and the Quantification of Human Value Christopher Steed

Published in 2016 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright © Christopher Steed The right of Christopher Steed to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of images and to acknowledge statements and citations. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. ISBN: 978 1 78453 591 9 eISBN: 978 0 85772 954 5 ePDF: 978 0 85772 751 0 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents Introduction Chapter One

Setting the Scene – Cameos of Yesterday How Did We Get Here? Quantification as a Way of Life

Part One

The Social Transmission of Value

Chapter Two Chapter Three

The Differentiation of Worth – Life in Layers The Distribution of Worth – You Are What You Earn The Demonstration of Worth – You Are What You Own

Chapter Four

1 15

23 34 46

Part Two

Capitalism on the Couch

Chapter Five Chapter Six

1st Symptom: Private Lives and Performance Anxiety 59 2nd Symptom: Power Imbalance – the Sunny Side of the Street 67 3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat 79 4th Symptom: Pain – (the Emotional Cost of Recession) 96 Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind 107 5th Symptom: Performativity and Education 126 5th Symptom (continued): Performativity – Workplace and Wards 137 6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour 148

Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve

vi Contents Part Three

Marching to a Different Drum

Chapter Thirteen Environments of Value Chapter Fourteen Rebooting Capitalism Chapter Fifteen Visions Seen: High-Value Society and the Goals of Politics

165 176 197

Postscript Through Thick and Thin Notes Index

210 220 238

Introduction: Setting the Scene – Cameos of Yesterday The great questions of the day are questions of value. Our value and worth are contingent upon what we earn, what we own and upon the construction of our identity in the pecking order of contemporary society. We dwell in a world haunted by escalating inequality and environmental degradation, a world at risk from global terrorism and impersonal forces. It is a world where the natural sphere with which we interact so profoundly has lost its sacred quality and become a resource; a world conditioned by progressive domination of a monetary scale applied impermissibly across the board. Amid the astounding technology, the niche consumption and the financialisation that characterises much of the globe, the prevailing mood music is that the only values we can usefully measure are expressed in terms of economics. GDP, the calculation of productivity, the value of goods and services, measures the wrong things; it says nothing about how far the economy is creating the good life for people of how the economic jam is spread. A change is needed in the way we look at the economy. The focus on quantification, on counting buying and selling, means that our way of life is characterised by fragmentation and by a short-term focus on profit. That may be inevitable through forms of association where contract trumps covenant most of the time but in so doing, the social contract (the implicit pact in society) is gravely weakened. Erode the economic and you erode the personal. Our high-octane society brings a pressure that is immense and often crushing. There has to be a better way of organising things. GDP is an inadequate signifier of the health of a nation. A new model for growth is needed that is not based purely on economic growth. It is clear to any observer who both looks around and dares to peer within that the really important issues that frame the contemporary human situation are those that cannot be measured. How, to invoke Oscar Wilde,

2  A Question of Worth did we end up knowing the price of everything, but the value of nothing? What price can be placed on time (the scarce commodity of late modernity) and on gift (the essence of relationship)? What price on living harmoniously with nature or community (the two-fold context where we live together in our common home)? Whether it is called the ‘greater good’, the ‘common good’ or the ‘collaborative commons’, in the realm where we are more than isolated entities, measures of quantity and numbers are unavoidable. How else do you apportion scarce resources? Yet quality is also vital to human flourishing. What, after all, is wealth for? What kind of society do we want to be in? What price do we place on the non-quantifiable and non-economic goods, the things GPD cannot measure, that make life worthwhile? Do we really want economic and social arrangements that see unemployment or poverty as personal failings? Old labels are probably unhelpful except as indicators of broad churches. Traditionally, the ‘right’ in politics doesn’t get the idea of ‘capacity’: that whole sections of society lack capacity to further worthwhile goals. As its foil, very often the ‘left/progressive’ spectrum of politics represents a world view that has had little theology of wealth creation or the recreating effects of responsibility. ‘Self-reliance’, however, is only a thin line away from the kind of independence that erodes mutuality, any concept of reinventing duties to other people and thinking of other people, not just ourselves. The result of a society shaped only by economic and monetised transactions is shown up by what happens when the economy and monetisation of everything fails. Two hundred years ago, Georg Hegel would have understood this. Hegel’s book Philosophy of Right (1820) sought to confirm the direction of the Prussian reformers to bring about a more dynamic and liberal society.1 People are, he suggested, coming to think about themselves in a new way, as those who give meaning to their lives and are conscious of themselves as autonomous individuals. For Hegel, the freedom to engage in commerce and the means to flourish within civil society are both expressions of this. It is a key area of institutional life and promotes freedom. Though a strong believer in the marketplace as a place of exchange in which we are inevitably connected with the interests of others, Hegel did argue that the contractual model is not appropriate for thinking about human relationships generally.2

Introduction: Setting the Scene – Cameos of Yesterday  3 We struggle to find an account of human value on the contemporary scene. The classic way of differentiating value was based on correct identity. This leads to social hierarchy and second-class people. Amid an age of austerity, we have an economic way of valuing human beings. This leads to reductionism. We have a way of valuing the human, too, based on status goods or self-improvement projects. This leads to mere externality: value judgements divorced from what people are inside. In these pages, we will explore how the way we live now generates major issues for the value and worth of people, for humans in harmony with what is around us and what is within us. We will consider those three main channels through which human value is shaped and transmitted. Our journey will take us through contemporary landscapes in which our current model of economy and society focuses on how what you are worth depends on measures of quantity – how much you own or earn. These arenas give rise to significant casualties. The value and worth of people is under assault in contemporary society, yet questioning this is inescapable. Can we do things differently? What would a different way of organising the economy look like? How did we end up with a market society and not just a market economy?

In our exploration of what contemporary society does to the value and worth of people, it is important to say that I do not wish to offer a miserabilist account of things. There are plenty of other realities that sit alongside the costs of our civilisation which one sees played out on social landscapes. To each of the costs, a list of benefits could be adduced. I finally finished editing the ideas that constitute this book on the last day of June 2015. Three terrorist actions had rocked the international community, ripping up people’s lives in a completely unIslamic disregard for the sanctity of life. That day, Greece defaulted on a 1.7 billion Euro payment to its international creditors. Things were on a knife-edge. What became clear was how poverty, mass unemployment and spiralling inequality fuel social strain, crime, poor mental health and suicide – leering companions of the brutal (some would say ‘necessary’) austerity programme that beset Greece in the wake of the economic crash that saw bailouts given at German rates of interest. Yet I began to write this book about the way issues of human value are

4  A Question of Worth constantly generated in our world at the end of 2008. Here are snapshots of life taken from one month as 2009, a year rich in anniversaries, waited to unfold. Think of value and most will think of economics. There is a strong resonance between economic value and the value of the people whose activity it describes – a resonance best understood through its opposite. When banks and markets fail, it is people who are devalued and devastated. The collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers one September Sunday sent the markets into a nosedive.3 It signalled a collapse in confidence and an economic crisis unique in modern times. The globe had not witnessed a synchronised slump on this scale since the Great Depression. Everywhere, consumer demand fell. Overnight, capital became scarce, crippling Eastern Europe. Trade flows dried up, affecting countries dependent on exports, from China and Japan to Germany. Across the world, companies were forced to slash production, postpone plans and lay off workers in their millions.4 There is an intriguing resonance between economic value and the value of the human. The global economic downturn was a crisis for both. Whenever the financial system is simply increasing its own value, the link between wealth and well-being is strained. Humans become pushed to the margin by global financial flows. Impersonal economic forces devalue those unable to work or to sell. Society creaks under the pressure. Governments everywhere tried desperately to pull levers to manipulate the struggling global economy. Value lay at the heart of the economic crisis. The recession of 2008–9 saw share prices tumbling and billions wiped off asset values. As the biggest financial crash since the 1930s was beginning to bite, it was the people themselves who got bitten. In another landscape that month, in the wake of yet another well publicised death of a child known by social services to be at risk, that of Baby Peter, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet declared, ‘Children, the most precious and vulnerable members of our societies, deserve closer attention to their care and education and better protection against abuse’.5 Such shocking events pointed to a far greater incidence of child maltreatment than official statistics suggest: substantial under-reporting of child maltreatment by schools and physicians to child-support agencies; the need for multidisciplinary teams for effective maltreatment prevention; and acceptance of child welfare as a human right. It was said that around a

Introduction: Setting the Scene – Cameos of Yesterday  5 million children in the UK at that time might have experienced neglect or outright abuse – verbal, physical or sexual. The media storm in the UK over the death of a child who was not protected by social services highlighted the effect that dysfunctional lives have on those involved. At the end of 2008, Indians witnessed on their TV screens gunfighters shooting up the main railway station in Mumbai, engaging in a hotel siege and killing 160 people. A few days later came a trial, the first opportunity that still-grieving relatives had to take the measure of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who confessed to masterminding the terrorist attacks on New York, known now in history as 9/11. The World Trade Center in New York, symbol of global capitalism, was targeted. Hijacked planes flew into the two skyscrapers and as the towers crumbled, so did any safe certainties. Manhattan’s two front teeth had been knocked out and the world entered a new era. The defendant was unrepentant. He refused legal counsel from a man who had fought in Iraq and killed his brothers and sisters, and pleaded guilty, knowing that a guilty verdict would result in the death penalty. Mohammad and other defendants were keen to be martyrs, indeed had been looking forward to being so for a long time.6 That ambition highlighted the way that the ideology he promoted had no respect for life. People were disposable pawns to be sacrificed for the cause. Governments everywhere had become agitated by forces raging against them, which seemed to emanate from an alien planet, a mentality far removed from the familiar assertions and safe assumptions of those who ruled the political world. The masters of the universe struggled to comprehend what was driving those crazies, the fanatics who were willing to blow themselves to bits to further their cause. The face of what governments called ‘terrorism’ was well known to history. The realisation of some cause, usually national freedom of a minority or liberation of the oppressed masses, meant bombers and assassins had regularly fired above the parapet. Missiles, rockets and guns we understood. But it was not easy to confront ideologies that appeared to use humans as weapons or had a theology of sacrifice and martyrdom. It was unnerving. On a lesser and occasional basis, the violence that trashes sacred life is a regular companion of human affairs. Crime statistics have long been kept by governments, but the first annual ‘Hate Crime Report’ in the UK was published at the end of 2008. Hate crime includes offences committed against

6  A Question of Worth people because of sexuality, disability, age, gender (including domestic violence), race and religion. The figure for such prosecutions during the three years prior to 2008 was more than 200,000.7 The figure for abuse of women went far beyond that. By some estimates, 2 million females, in the UK alone, during that year would experience some form of domestic violence, direct abuse, rape or harassment – just because of their gender.8 Along with class-based social divisions, the various types of hate crime were markers of the way the world had been divided up. The fight for equal status was the voice of those urging gender equality, of the struggle to throw off colonial administration, and of the civil rights movement in the heady emancipation of the 1960s. Birmingham, Alabama, encapsulated the struggle that black people in America had endured for centuries. Four people out of ten were African American. In one area of the city, Kelly Ingram Park, uneducated, poor black families risked their lives to be treated as equal. ‘Uppity niggers’ dared to live outside the neighbourhoods designated for them by white Americans and, as a result, they had been dynamited. Across the city, there was a protected enclave where ambitious black families could start businesses, embark on academic study and try to shut out the racism around them. They still used the ‘Blacks-only’ hospital, The Holy Family. One child born at that hospital was the future secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. The all-white baseball team had dropped out of its league to avoid black-andwhite people mixing together. African Americans could not go to the zoo unless it was their designated day. The Police Chief ordered fire hoses and police dogs to be used against black protesters and their children. The images shocked the world. Thanks to her determined mother, Condoleezza Rice managed to avoid what Martin Luther King, Jr called ‘the ominous clouds of inferiority’ in her mental sky. She went on to become George W. Bush’s secretary of state despite the abusive racism that surrounded her childhood.9 Those days were passing. For much of the US (except for perhaps in policing), racist attitudes appeared to be nasty relics of the past. As Rice was leaving her post, in December 2008, Barack Obama, the first black US president, was preparing to take office. The last month of 2008 witnessed a social explosion. The spark was Greek police killing a teenager. It could have happened anywhere. But the incident lit a fuse. Soon, the capital, Athens, was on fire. Discontent rose to the

Introduction: Setting the Scene – Cameos of Yesterday  7 surface: discontent with the dead hand of administrative bureaucracy, with corruption, but, above all, with life at the bottom of the Athenian pile. Sooner or later, those whom the gods relegate are bound to react. The ancient Greeks called it ‘hubris’. This was followed in France by demonstrations in the best traditions of urban legend and some innovative forms of social protest, like the picnic in a supermarket. Amid the shelves, protesters squatted in the aisles and just helped themselves! The Greek crisis was to come full circle.

Taken together, these events were a signpost to a profound crisis in our civilisation, of which the economic devaluation was a marker. These cameos taken at random from life at the end of 2008 have at least one thread running through them. They are about the conversion of humans into objects, into commodities, about the failure to nurture and value the human dimension. In different guises, they are a breach of what it means to be human. Either that, or they illustrate the contradictions of human existence. Shrouding our world is the spectre of dehumanisation, a dehumanisation that makes us ask why we are compelled to live as if we had any value? What links these different fields of twenty-first-century life together is that they are different forms of value. In this book, we are going to focus on the way economy and society are organised so as to generate issues of human value and worth, constantly played out to any concerned commentator. Disciplinary boundaries have shunted them into different arenas for purposes of classification. In the nineteenth century, political economy used to be about economy and society taken together. Perhaps the twenty-first century will witness their re-union. In the market economy, supply and demand all come together like scissors to fix the value of assets, property and the monetised worth of labour. Power relations that govern our lives in broader society both express and communicate hierarchies of importance. Economic issues can hardly be separated from the analysis of power relations in which they operate. Neither can they be separated from the value and worth of the social actors, the participants in firms and organisations whose well-being is vital for productive and happy environments. Environmental concerns form a massive agenda in our time: the value placed on the environment, and those who live and work the land, is up for grabs in the

8  A Question of Worth high-carbon world we have created and it is deeply intertwined with the economy and our social order.

Tributaries for this Project This project has had a number of personal tributaries, each of which brings a particular focus but which, taken together, hopefully flow into something bigger: it is a broad-brush and, indeed, fresh take on economy and society that tries to show the causality and the casualties of ceaseless quantification of a system that by its nature keeps wanting more and more and therefore visits such pressure on people. Firstly, I had 12 years in management and policy work in Whitehall, London. My posts at the Department of Trade and Industry – as it was before migrating to the Department of Industry – gave me a window on exports and trade policy, particularly against the backdrop of the apartheid-era response to South Africa (which was and remains a key supplier of vital raw materials). In addition, I witnessed the huge shift in our industrial policy during the 1980s, when manufacturing and mining went down during Margaret Thatcher’s years in government and a service economy became dominant. Time in the Marine Division of what then ended up in the Department of Transport grounded me in the era of globalisation, enabled by container ships that began to dominate the oceans. Ten years in education and in the not-for-profit sector provided very different insights on to different worlds where issues of human value and worth are sharply played out. Teaching history and, to a lesser extent, philosophy and RE (as well as psychology and sociology to A-level in Adult Education), it struck me how the agenda to raise standards in order to obtain productivity through results was decisive in shaping the experience of contemporary education. Those convictions surrounding the impact of education being a strategic issue both nationally and in the international stakes, have left me clear on the need to broaden considerably our view of what constitutes success. They are underlined by a number of years’ experience of school governance, linked with work in the parish where league tables were hot topics of anxious conversation. Twenty years’ parish experience gave me a lens on life that has few parallels

Introduction: Setting the Scene – Cameos of Yesterday  9 outside of being a GP. For anyone with imagination and empathy, work of this sort grounds you in the lives and realities of ordinary people, hearing their concerns and attempting to grasp the pressures upon them. If they sense you are interested, people are often willing to confide in you because they recognise that the discussion is neither judgemental nor ‘official’. Ten of those years were spent on tough housing estates where the English riots erupted in 2011, and also in South London. I learnt firsthand about poverty, crime and social exclusion, but also about the gang culture that disfigures our cities amid a very real search to belong. No one can work on these estates without being touched by the odd, but very human mix of brave community, keeping the human spirit alive amid the taut neuroticism that blights people’s lives where deprivation is more than just a word, and where drugs and drink addiction can be the default position. The banality and the reality of poverty and cold damp houses are the daily grind for many, struggling to make ends meet, sort out the benefits and find work that is better than merely low grade. I witnessed the emotional impact of unemployment, as well as the pressure on hospitals as parishioners had to negotiate waiting lists and try to find a route through significant health problems. It became clear talking to real people about real problems, that concerns about immigration do not arise, in general, from a spectre of the foreigner, but rather from the ways in which communities feel swamped by pressure on jobs, housing and public services. In the area just north of Tottenham, where I worked, there were over 60 different nationalities jostling together. Immersion in people’s lives in this way prevents one being merely a flâneur, a stroller, walking in the anonymous spaces of the modern city, experiencing the complexity, disturbances and confusions of the streets, taking in the fleeting beauty and transitory impressions of the crowds.10 Though going on to work in very different contexts, a further ten-years’ parish experience subsequently provided alternative lenses through which to try to understand the lives of those I was part of. During those years, I was involved in local groups of highly motivated people, working hard to make their communities places where humans can thrive. In many rural districts, it became clear how the need for affordable homes jostles against economic pressures that are driving all but the rich or professional retired out of our communities. Working as a counsellor, as well as minister in several churches, and being a registered member of the British Association

10  A Question of Worth of Counselling and Psychotherapy provided a steady stream of clients. Endeavouring to understand their situation yielded vital insights that helped me frame this project and also integrate theory with practice. The encounters were deeply instructive. What began a period of sustained reflection in client observation was noticing how, in various domains, issues of worth were being constantly generated when people were facing its erosion. Either it was having a negative impact on them or it was resulting in what I came to call ‘the Protest’ – ‘I’m worth more than that!’ – issued in quasi-economic terms, as if the worth people felt they had was being compared with a falling share price or a paltry offer for their house. In the same way that a Geiger counter registers the presence of radioactivity, these reactions seemed to be clues to the presence of a force in our psyche or the social world that motivates a good deal of human action. This book is a ‘reflection as research’, tuning into the value struggles, which are being moulded by social forces, faced by individuals. Describing three factors generating disvaluing – indifference, inequality (diminishing) and indignity – was a qualitative response to client observation, which, I suggest, could be replicated empirically. On being repeatedly struck by how many clients spoke of experiences of devaluation and how they expressed their indignation in terms of value –‘I’m worth more than that!’ – I wanted to examine the role that worth and value play in everyday life. There is a danger in seemingly being able to explain things without bothering to try to prove them; it is the classic fallacy known by its Latin tag, post hoc ergo propter – arguing from how we act to infer why we act as we do. So, given the difficulties of verifying inter-subjective experience and without empirical tests using survey data, reported experiences about this have to be approached with care. In client observation, I began to look into the statements people made that implied that issues of value were generated along the power lines of human exchanges. It was a form of participant observation. The question I set out to answer stemmed from intrigue. Why were human narratives, often of distress, generating statements about human value or its erosion? In the fields of education, management and counselling through which I have wandered, professional qualifications have sharpened the perspective. But it was a masters in social theory and then post-doctoral work in social sciences that helped considerably to give an academic edge to the journey

Introduction: Setting the Scene – Cameos of Yesterday  11 I was immersed in. I could more readily discern how reports of individual distress were mirrored by what was going on in the world around, most notably the economic car crash of 2008. An interactive dialogue between the local and personal seemed to go hand in hand with global forces bearing down. Trying to get my head round critical pedagogy in education with its sharp analysis of power, as well as a thesis using qualitative research, gave me conceptual tools with which to understand the world more critically. The practitioner journey I was immersed in meant these ideas were rooted in lived experience and were never allowed to be ‘just academic’. It was a transformative time. I have in addition hugely enjoyed and benefited from being a member of many of the myriad networks that have sprung up in recent years to link people together in fruitful dialogue. Membership of such varied spaces as Amnesty International, the Shared Value Initiative, Global Justice Now, the Plymouth Social Enterprise Network and especially the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) have provided another frame of reference. The latter has been especially helpful as a catalyst for bringing together fellow travellers in a very exciting journey about the other world that is already under the radar of the mainstream way of organising economy and society. Mixing with some remarkable people, I learnt more about what it means to align and empower those fighting for social, environmental and economic justice. Membership and involvement with the British Sociological Association has been a feeder to this project, which proved invaluable. Another tributary may be mentioned: a link with a digital management consultancy. There we thought about the issue of technological displacement, rolling like a tide towards us as computers learn to think and so many jobs are automated away. I do not claim to have had senior roles in these fields in my journey. It is I hope the breadth of the varied experiences at the coalface that gives a well-rounded insight into how issues of the day are issues of value. For me at least, grasping how the felt value of people is thrown up (and often thrown out) is a strong lens on contemporary society. What was emerging both from immersion in parish life and client observation is that the drive to feel and assert human worth clarifies social dynamics. I went on to develop a theory about this and then to assess how the drive to say, ‘we count … we matter’ is

12  A Question of Worth expressed in the ‘voice-and-choice’ society that seems to be emerging. Those concerns are for potential follow-up volumes.

In the economic car crash that heralded the great recession of our time, what has been under assault is not just financial value but people: people under immense strain. We need not be a market society as well as market economy. If we grasp the pressures of modern society, the dominant economic narrative can be re-calibrated so as to give more space to be human and another story told. The task is urgent; the fourth Industrial Revolution is already engulfing us threatening to widen the gulf between those that can keep up and thrive and those that will join the ranks of the left behind. ‘We are people not products.’ Value is a storm centre in contemporary society the value placed on assets, the value of property, the value of stocks and shares, as well as less tangible values such as the value of the environment and the value of community. The particular focus of this book is somewhat different: the value of the human. It is about what happens to the value of people in contemporary society. The usual way of referring to what someone is worth is economic. A purely economic conception does not begin to sum up who we think we are, however. Often people respond from a very different space, transcending the external valuation placed upon them as they protest their value. ‘I consider myself an intelligent, articulate woman so I’m worth more than the £6 an hour I’m paid on minimum wage’, declares a female interviewee.11 What a curious statement, with unsuspecting depth! Producing goods and services on an industrial scale was a vital part of the way the world as we know it today was made. The Western world was built on a top-down, competitive approach in pursuit of output. The imperative to do more for less – boost productivity at less cost – permeates the whole of life. However, the problem with a purely economic conception of a free market society is that it puts profit before people; before well-being and justice. The dominant narrative and strategic issues in global society are about driving up productivity, standards in education, and competitiveness to enable us to stay ahead in global markets. But can we come up with a non-economic account of describing human value and worth? It is an important question.

Introduction: Setting the Scene – Cameos of Yesterday  13 The market economy profoundly distorts human worth. It reduces what you are and what you can do to what you are worth. Generating shareholder value is not the only form of value. ‘How much am I worth?’ is the key question in an economic system because it is a question that is more than economic: it is social and intensely personal. It is also an on-going question, accentuated even more so by the new technology in the fourth wave of industrialisation. In the Faustian Facebook contract, we become a commodity by dint of saying what we ‘like’, by revealing identity markers or personal information. An incident will open the gates to law firms offering to represent us. We have been sold for US $55. Or by selling personal data, a data broker can hawk a list of ‘rape sufferers’ to pharmaceutical companies at a cost of US $79 per name.12 In the course of this book, we move through four phases. Firstly, we set the scene and work out how we ended up with a consumer economy that engendered social arrangements where what we are worth has come to depend on quantity. As a concerned parent said to me in the context of the materialism that lures young people (and indeed adults): ‘Society allows big business to groom our children into being horrible little consumers which is a life-long addiction. We have been manipulated into needing bigger, better, faster. We have been duped!’13 Secondly, we ponder what are the channels for the transmission and shaping of personal worth in contemporary society? This is not just about the economy in the classic sense; this is profoundly about power. Indeed, I contend that economics has to reckon more than it has with the way power is disbursed, as that is central to the context in which economic activity, narrowly defined, operates. The usual measures of economic growth tell us nothing about GDP is distributed or how whole swathes of young people are left behind in finding a good job or a place to live. Thirdly, we will look at the battlefield casualties of our economic and social order, particularly as they shape the value and worth of human beings. The rhetorical device we will use is one I am very familiar with: that of a client. In effect, we put capitalism on the couch as we note the dysfunctional ways that the world we have created undermines and often destroys the value of the human. Finally, we ask perhaps inevitable questions. Can we do things differently? What would it mean to widen our concept of value beyond the

14  A Question of Worth bottom line or find alternatives to GDP that are better measures of progress? Can we engender harmony between different forms of value in a way that respects the need to bring money into an industry yet promotes value in the social ecology and among those who participate in an enterprise? Can we promote quality in non-economic goods and not just quantity? And crucially, can we address the issues of human devaluation in society as a whole, seeing that as a space where enlightened self-interest meets the economics of mutuality? To ask questions about the link between economic value and human value is to enter an arena of contradiction and ambiguity that reflects the human situation. When the economic machine seizes up, it is humans that are devalued and dumped. When official policies favour older, more established workers, it is the young that are disaffected and excluded from the system. When the tidal wave of automation threatens to wash up whole swathes of workers on a lonely shore, what an oppressive waste of talent. Economic activity, so central to human action, can provide contexts in which human value and worth is nurtured so as to add value to society and the work of organisations. Its opposite is also true. Capitalism undermines itself because it perpetrates a category error: it takes no account of inner value precisely because it conflates internalised worth with economic worth and therefore commodifies the interior. This book discusses the contradictions, conflicts and the power within contemporary capitalism. For capitalism displays a reductionism that recognises nothing but material interest and the maximisation of profit. Its central drive is to feed off itself by the accumulation of yet more capital. As the impetus towards ‘social capital’ attests, within the contemporary trend towards colonisation of the whole of life by economic imperialism, social relations are deemed to be physical and quantifiable in all but form. From Bourdieu and Becker onwards, it has been custom to regard non-economic forms of capital as equivalent to the economic. ‘Social capital’ has become an analytical umbrella term. Treating human capabilities in volume terms, however, leaves the subject vulnerable to economic downturn, to profit but also loss. As a Greek voter lamented after four years of recession, ‘if you lose your self-esteem, you lose everything’.14

1 How Did We Get Here? Quantification as a Way of Life ‘Our minds soon lose control when things go all our way: when we enjoy success, we end in disarray.’ – Ovid1 ‘However great our wealth may wax, it seems too small, still something lacks.’ – Horace2 ‘Increasingly, the logic and structure of the marketplace came to stand as a shaping metaphor for society in general.’ – H. S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist3 ‘In what path of life can a man be found that will not animate his pursuit from seeing the steam engine of Watt?’ – Arthur Young, Tours in England and Wales4

Our way of life represents a speed and noise culture for millions. It is so fast that if there is no e-mail response within 24 hours, we wonder what is wrong; for texts, the compression of time and expansion of expectation is even more marked. Our culture is also profoundly dysfunctional. How did we end up with social arrangements that pose such serious issues for the

16  A Question of Worth value of those who created them and that place people in such a pressurecooker of achievement? Our way of life too has created a carnivorous society in which we are only useful if we are economically productive, where our output can best be quantified in monetary terms. This has been attested by earning power and, increasingly, by consumption. Late capitalism – a term I will use rather than ‘post-modernity’ – recruits its subjects from those who can keep up; who can be productive through demonstrating an exchange value in the global marketplace. Industrial, and then post-industrial society, constructed a world based on restless output and constant productivity. Pursuing growth at all costs has trapped us in a culture of performance and an insatiable demand for more and yet more. We now need to remind ourselves of some history. Quantification as social imperative and religion arose from a restless urge to count. It was through numbering and measuring that the world could be tamed and explained. Its arrogance lay in how human beings could achieve mastery, or at least attempt to discover ‘how we’re doing’ as a form of knowledge. The drive towards productivity and efficiency as a mode of life is fairly recent. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Industrial Revolution saw the greatest transformation humanity had ever witnessed the conditions of life. From working the soil to working underground, from tools to textiles, yields and output tripled and then tripled again. Powered by the steam engine that brought iron and coal together, machines began to do the work for which human hands had toiled so arduously before. The production of everything 80-fold built the modern world. In the journey from field to factory, how physical work was conducted changed forever. Industrial transformation was based on an unprecedented leap forward in output and productivity to achieve higher rates of output at less cost than your competitors. If production costs – be they labour, land or transport costs – were reduced, it gave a private enterprise an enormous advantage over similar producers. Driving down unit costs meant that prices could be lowered and customers tempted to buy that particular product. The rewards, in the form of profits, could then be harvested. The major question that economic history has to address is this: why and how did Western Europe succeed in achieving something that no society in history had ever done? That is, break from an agrarian past and move

How Did We Get Here? Quantification as a Way of Life  17 on to a different path; break through the negative feedback barriers that confined people to poverty. The factory method and mindset dominated life and labour through the first Industrial Revolution. Its astonishing output and productivity was based on steam engines, iron and coal. In the second Industrial Revolution, based on oil, cars and electricity, output and productivity rose to new heights. Everywhere, the demand was for more – more in ever increasing varieties, shapes and sizes, ever increasing output, output, output. The second wave went hand in hand with exponential growth in consumer products, from nylons to toasters. The infrastructure was provided by a platform of fossil fuels that not only powered the electricity, which in turn powered the tools that made the vehicles that ran on oil, but also powered the telecommunications that wired the economy together. This was power at the end of the cable. National grids, both of power lines and roads, became essential to industrial economies in the twentieth century. Thus, the result of the economy stepping up many gears was a dramatic increase in productivity and output. The economic panic of 1907 in the United States highlighted that the nation had been enjoying an average annual growth of 7 per cent since the 1890s.5 At that rate, total industrial production was doubling every ten years. Yields and, therefore, profits were enormous. Increasingly, outputs exceeded inputs, the very essence of productivity. Supply was driven by the arrival of a mass-consumer economy and vastly expanded appetite creating incessant demand. Wealth creation required that modern economies invent things, make things. That was spectacularly true of the Industrial Revolutions. What a long way the world has travelled since those transformations reshaped traditional ways of life! Economic liberalism, long regarded as the motor of growth, required free movement of the factors of production. As a consequence, global flows of capital and trade were raising people out of poverty on ‘an industrial scale’. Thus, Japan and China, once they entered the world capitalist economy in the 1950s, witnessed growth rates escalating on average at an impressive 7 per cent per annum at the close of the century. ‘Speed is the new creed.’ We are seeing the equivalent of these industrial revolutions in China today. Within ten years, millions went from working on farms to factories. Urbanisation and economic expansion has been faster and on a far greater

18  A Question of Worth scale in China than for any other society anywhere at any time. Unprecedented transformation has resulted in changing expectations and wider horizons. City life means young Chinese can make something of themselves. Dramatic change has been especially marked in the position of women. No longer are young women in rural areas trapped by traditional roles: social relationships have been transformed. In the late twentieth century, the world entered a new wave of expansion, a third Industrial Revolution based on computerisation of routine tasks, satellites and communications; and combined with containerisation, globalisation and the internationalisation of finance. Going global heightened the need to keep up in the race to the top; the alternative was a race to the bottom. In the Latin America of the 1960s, for instance, capital and labour combined to generate productivity approaching three-quarters of that of the United States. Boom times well and truly marked the turn of the millennium. The rapid industrialisation of China stimulated high demand for Latin American commodities. Poverty fell and the middle classes bulged. At the time of writing, however, there is considerable concern about stagnant economic growth in Latin America. Lack of innovation, lack of infrastructure and increasing violent crime has taken its toll on the region. Productivity has slumped to barely half that of its giant neighbour to the north.6 Globalisation has had its detractors. Across the world, citizens’ movements fought the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the multinationals. The diversity of the human enterprise, critics argued, was swamped by 200 transnational corporations which ran the world;7 they were too centralised, too undemocratic and authoritarian. Industrial society was perceived to be a juggernaut rolling out from the West, sweeping everything away before it. (Until the Tiger economies kicked in, it had seemed to be an export of Western commodities, values and priorities.8) The result was a brutality of exploitation and inequality arising from what V. Shiva has called ‘the walls that globalisation is building – walls of insecurity and hatred and fear’.9 New social movements arose in revolt against impersonal producers. Eric Schmidt of Google suggests: ‘The pace of change is accelerating’.10 In a typical week in corporate America, 10 billion shares of Fortune 500-listed companies will have changed hands in frenzied trading. Their bosses will have been deluged with 750,000 incoming e-mails. Apple sells thousands of

How Did We Get Here? Quantification as a Way of Life  19 its products every other minute; customers download an Apple app every millisecond. ‘We’re putting a premium on speed’, says the Chief Executive. ‘People ask, is there a silver bullet?’ comments the CEO of IBM. ‘The silver bullet is speed.’11 It is worth underlining that the economy today is in the throes of another transformation. An entirely new economic world is being integrated into the old, at the same time making it hugely more efficient while superseding and transforming it. Industrial transformation has been staggering. In the twentieth century, humankind had taken to the air and learnt to fly like birds, travelling long distances for both holidays and work. Jets shrank the planet forever. The people made clothes from chemicals and played music by laser-beam. They strode into space and placed their feet on the moon. Satellites and space stations circled the globe. Metal reinforced towers defied the sky. Endless tarmac tracks ran everywhere. Electronic communication became part of the experience of millions, shaping their attitudes and opinions. Computer power doubled every 18 months. The last years of the twentieth century saw the economy in the throes of another transformation. Planet earth became wired up in a fourth transformation that astounded those who lived even a generation before. An entirely new economic world was becoming integrated into the old, making it hugely more efficient at the same time as superseding and transforming it. The fourth Industrial Revolution is based not on rail or road, but on the electronic superhighway of the internet. This powerful infrastructure facilitates ‘big data’, vast quantities of information stored and deployed. How far the new digital economy is boosting productivity has been hotly debated and its failure – the Solow paradox – particularly so. Everywhere were the mobile phones and the microprocessors that now outnumbered humans two to one. Online with e-mails and faxes, the people were now accessible anywhere, anytime. Data became a commodity that could be bought and sold: the raw material of the age. Computers started to talk to each other. The people had never dreamt that one day they would stare at a screen to buy a house or a holiday, books, food or an airline ticket. Every town and every person everywhere was now networked with global intelligence. The people woke up to a futuristic environment, full of robots and smart clothes. They had stumbled into a portal

20  A Question of Worth of computer-generated film images from digital cameras. They blinked at the challenge of gene therapy, artificial wombs, cyber sex, interactive technology and virtual friends in a new world of nanotechnology, biotechnology and info-technology spinning ten times faster every decade. It could transform humanity every bit as much as printing and the Industrial Revolution. But it also threatened to depersonalise, to offer sci-fi possibilities for exploitation on an undreamt-of scale and to disenfranchise those in the developing countries unable to play catch-up. These are the economic and social arrangements we have made. They come with a huge price tag.

Part One The Social Transmission of Value

2 The Differentiation of Worth – Life in Layers ‘Labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or article of commerce but as human beings entitled to a reasonable standard of life.’ – The foundation of the International Labour Organisation [ILO]1 ‘Sidaram Manji was shot, not because of what he had done but because of what he was, a Dalit, formerly known as “untouchable”, living in a mud hut on the edge of Mauri in Bihar, north-east India. He worked as a bonded labourer in the field of his killers, Bhuminar landowners whose large brick houses occupy the centre of the village. He drank from a different well, used a different temple and never strayed over the invisible line segregating Dalits from Bhuihars. His crime was to fish in a pond deemed out of bounds by the landowning caste that controls the village.’ – The Guardian, 6 May 20142 ‘Where I come from, it was all put-downs. You’ll never amount to anything, it’s no good teaching you lot!’ remembers someone growing up in the East End. You may have wanted to get out of here but when Mums and Grandmas scrubbed steps or cleaned toilets and Dads went into the factory, what was the point. Low expectation, low-self-worth comes from being told – “that’s all you’re worth”. The emotional poverty was crushing. When I tried to brighten up the community centre, people resisted at first. They had got used to the rubbish surroundings because it was saying to them, “this is what we are – rubbish!”.’3

24  A Question of Worth The proposition being advanced here, in this book, is that social life is shaped by and transmits value. Differentiation in society is replete with messages about who are high-value people who are of lesser worth. Our experience is radically affected by the value society places upon us. The reality is that the social transmission of value and worth is far more than a question of what individuals do for or to each other. Value is communicated at a much broader level than conscious actions and choices. It is embedded within society; individual practice can be read off social practices on a far bigger scale than people and families. Human worth is transmitted by deeply rooted social structures, or, more properly, systems whirring away behind the scenes to quiet yet deadly effect. It is, for the most part, systemic factors that explain racism or the power of other ‘isms’. Any analysis of social differentiations – such as class and gender or indeed organisations – is enhanced by looking at them as systems, as fields. Our understanding of the family is enhanced by assessing the dynamics between its members and seeing it as a constellation. Analysis of human violence is also served by regarding violent exchanges as taking place in their own system; in other words, cultures of violence. Examine the reasons why alarmingly high numbers of young people in global society find is hard to get a job or decent housing and the problem is clearly systemic. Think of it! The experience of gender violence or gender orientation, age, disability, ethnicity or class reflects the silent and often lethal power of hidden forces. In the American Deep South, vicious racism went hand in hand with a supposedly genteel culture; both a product of a way of life shaped by ‘the system’. Reflecting differing scales of worth as applied to differing groups of humanity, ‘the system’ also transmitted and communicated those scales. Human value is exercised in action, in the way in which people experience life differently. It is not to be reduced to ‘attitudes’ or ‘prejudice’. Titanic forces are showing up: forces that are not the work of a day or an hour.

‘The social constrains’, argued Émile Durkheim, the founding father of sociology in the nineteenth century.4 This was nowhere more true of class. A traditional society constrained the kind of lives people lived and defined their place in the world.

The Differentiation of Worth – Life in Layers  25 In these initial chapters, we are exploring the concept that class and other ways of dividing up the world are profoundly moulded by whether or not society places a high value or lower value on its subjects. Human devaluation both transmits the inequalities of the world and helps to shape them. Social pressures cluster those with similar subjective experience into categories and fixed groups such as economic and occupational classes. In addition, social evaluation brings with it a host of stigmas, labels and normative judgements about who is standard issue and which type of person is of lesser worth. What is crucial to note from the perspective of this book is that such social valuing, inherently relative to other human subjects as communicating and shaping lesser or higher worth, digs into ‘value in oneself ’. When aroused, this supplies energy for ‘the Protest’. Durkheim watched as France entered into a political alliance with Tsarist Russia in 1893. He lived to see the overthrow of the Romanov Dynasty and the Russian Revolution in 1917. The social attitudes of the Russian aristocracy undoubtedly contributed to the unrest that turned violent as social revolution exploded. ‘The old government knew better how to deal with this peasant scum you call the people’, one squire wrote to Prince Lvov, prime minister of Russia’s Provisional Government of 1917. Yet Prince Lvov saw this as the revenge of the serfs. ‘If only Russia had been blessed with a real landed aristocracy like that in England, which had the human decency to treat the peasants as people rather than dogs. Then perhaps things might have been different.’5 Karl Marx, a German émigré and journalist who had arrived in Paris in 1843, was the inspiration behind the politicised form that the social upheaval took in Russia.6 Marx wrestled with the problem of how to promote a communist revolution in a country that was predominantly agrarian and in which the urban working class was small. Nevertheless, it is clear from contemporary Russian accounts that factory workers struggled with social influences that wanted to place them only slightly higher up the social ladder than the peasants. Some factory owners, unconstrained by legislation, could order arbitrary and humiliating punishments or prescribe how workers should dress at all times. This was resented as an affront to their personal dignity. ‘We are not even recognised as people but are considered as things that can be thrown out at any moment […] outside Russia, even horses get to

26  A Question of Worth rest. But our workers’ worth is worse than a horse’s’, commented O. Figes in A People’s Tragedy.7 When it came, the social explosion was a release of several pent-up forces. Durkheim died a few days after the Bolsheviks seized power. By then, however, Vladimir Lenin had declared war on privilege. Every village and town, he said, ‘should be left to develop its own means of cleansing Russian land of all vermin, of scoundrel fleas, the bedbug rich and so on’.8 Durkheim developed a theory of social class based on the idea of the division of labour in society. The normal state of affairs he saw as being social solidarity – conflict arising from industrialisation was but a temporary anomie. What constitutes social class today, however, has been more influenced by Marx with his conflictual account of social divisions. In 1844, 14 years before Durkheim was born, a young Marx met Friedrich Engels, who had just published his Condition of the Working Class in England. It was a stirring essay on the dehumanising effects of industrialism. Engels famously described housing in Manchester, the premier manufacturing city of the world in his day, as resembling ‘cattle-sheds for human beings’.9 Fast forward a hundred years to a boy from 1950s’ Huddersfield, heartland of the British industrial working class and once characterised by overcrowded streets, long hours in the mills and personal cycles of poverty amid the many positive ways that communities knit together – through kinship and family webs, friendships, clubs, unions and chapels. This boy is conscious of the possibility of some social mobility, moving from a working-class home through university into the junior ranks of management, but he is conscious, too, that there the line ends: There were two kinds of graduates that they took. There was me and my kind. But there were others that joined at the same time – right regiment, background, right car, knew how to handle a pair of guns and a fishing rod. They got on like houses on fire. Up and up they went, just like that. They’ll be on the board of managers now. But I felt I was being left behind in a corner, just neglected. No matter what I did. No matter how good the ideas. Nothing happened. After two-and-a-half years, they offered me a job that I could have done when I was sixteen. That I could have done quite well at sixteen. Nothing more. So I wasn’t going to start at the bottom again. Not after two-and-a-half years. It was like playing snakes and ladders, only my kind being the kind that comes down the snakes. I gave my notice in.10

The Differentiation of Worth – Life in Layers  27 Many examples could be adduced to illustrate how dehumanising attitudes reproduce class inequality. These statements speak of a valley where depressive, devaluing factors have pushed the very worth and felt value of people down. Social forces affect their being, not just social and relative position. They are not merely external. What is needed to translate this process into a whole class of people is systems thinking. Oppressive forces act at the level of beyond the individual. The things we do to prove our worth are as varied as the range and sum of human activity. How many fish you catch is the measure of life. Measurable results are a source of significance in contemporary landscapes, affecting more and more women as well as men. The differentiation of worth is one of three main channels through which value is disbursed in contemporary society. These channels for the transmission of value are clearly related. Occupation and income are intertwined even though occupation status and what sort of people are high or low value bears little relation to the value of the work they do. In particular, emotional labour (work that is about people primarily) is less highly prized than making money. These become sources of power; the ‘stay-at-home mum’ and the CEO are placed very differently when it comes to power relations central to our current economic model. In a recession, work-driven norms are problematic; they trigger demoralisation and loss of personal value that mirrors erosion of economic and financial value. The lived experience of real people shows how much over the years those sources of significance are evolving under social change. ‘I’d feel guilty staying at home all day, as if I’m not contributing’, comments a client.11 Work gives people a stake in the system though not everyone feels that is particularly important to them. Society is haunted by the inevitable question: platform for ‘how do you do?’ but rather ‘what do you do?’ The accumulation of social capital, of status, is a project of the first importance in the type of society we have created. It is one where such quantification is of greater importance as a measure of value than quality of time or relationship; efficiency is more highly charged and valorised than effectiveness.12 The differentiation of value shaped by occupation and power position shapes the way economy and society is organised. Without espousing a purely negative account of life and labour, hierarchies of importance suit

28  A Question of Worth those who have the right skills, who look the part and are of the right age. In parish life, one encounters those who have perfectly proper aspirations to get on and get ahead as well as those who cannot keep up, those who are weary of what used to be called the ‘rat race’ and those who are elderly. To feel that one is locked out of the system or no longer valued is a very great burden. Increasingly, it is young people the world over that the system does not serve very well, who will take the difficult start to work experience and work patterns through their adult lives. Allowing young people to find pathways to work should be a primary function of an economy that works for all. Wealth has, of course, always been a marker of identity and status. The change from traditional society to industrial society changed the equation and opened up new forms of riches and professional occupation. Some background is necessary to understand how the way value is transmitted in society is closely connected with identity-driven power relations. The sharp observer of early American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville thought that with the division of labour in the industrialisation that was growing steadily in the 1830s, the horizons of the workers were constrained. All they needed to know was one thing – how to operate the machine. The mind of the masters and factory owners, however, expanded with division of labour. The master needed to know many things in order for the enterprise to flourish. Bound up with power, such compression of knowledge or its contrast was leading inexorably to new social polarisation.13 Those who are valued depend therefore on what is valued. Value is a scale of importance yet while the nouveau riche of de Tocqueville’s day could break the social mould, class barriers were immensely strong. They still are. Class differences affect the age people marry, how they will vote, health outcomes, education and whether they attend church. The dice is loaded against many children even before they start school. Their prospects are predictable from the lives of their parents. The problem is to explain such differences without some idea of class. In post-structural sociology, essentialist categories dissolve. Although a stable and fixed career trajectory pertains to a smaller number of people, social mobility is still limited.14 Despite one’s place in society being of less and less concern, relative life chances do not alter very much from one’s social background. Indeed, in the UK, the Social

The Differentiation of Worth – Life in Layers  29 Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s annual reports demonstrate that social mobility is on a downward slide.15 An elderly lady recalls the way in which class imperatives operated in her childhood and yet how, throughout her life, she was able to hold her head up high. She truly believed: ‘I’m just as good as anyone’. Her mother was from a middle-class family her father from the working class. Although her family wasn’t that well off, her father was never quite accepted by her mother’s family. He adored his daughter, however, and that fact surely must have formed the basis of her positive outlook and confidence rather than her class or social background.16 The UK was the first country to industrialise. It was then the first to deindustrialise. In 1911, 40 per cent of the workforce was employed in manufacturing. It is very different today, however. The contrast between blue- or white-collar (manual) labour and non-manual labour is less important than it used to be. Operating working industrial environments can be as high-tech as any white-collar worker’s desk. It may, nevertheless, be true that most work provides jobs that are ‘just jobs’. Higher-paid work is more likely to impart identity to the worker. Technology has enabled a much greater output to be generated by less human labour. The effect of this has been to reduce the market value of low-skilled workers. These kinds of jobs are disappearing in the West. More labour-intensive jobs require different skills. The service sector, for example, requires skills such as empathy and creativity, skills usually associated with women, which, in turn has resulted in a rise in female participation in the workplace. Today, those who are left out or left behind are often men with low skills or young people struggling to get on the work or housing ladder. Economic dislocation is here to stay. Children grow up hearing all kinds of messages about the types of people who are valued most and those who do not enjoy the same social esteem as their parents/peers. This is culturally transmitted through expectation and attitudes. It emerges most clearly in encouraging or discouraging aspiration.17 The gift of imagination – that is, a vision of what is possible in life – is a key issue in social mobility. Those at the bottom of the social ladder are often informed about their own inferiority. In the UK, for example, the education system informed this: it could be read in the reality of being deposited in a secondary modern school when the bright, replete with advantages, went to the local grammar school. Now it can be read in the advertisements, the

30  A Question of Worth celebrity culture and the cleverness of experts. The process of devaluation is set to continue. According to a report on social mobility in the UK, seven out of ten jobs created in the future will be professional or skilled jobs.18 Thus poorly skilled men and women are trapped in poorly paid jobs and experience the conditioning effects of devaluation that result in the poverty of aspiration – the real enemy of personal progress. Class has been such a major organising concept because in industrial society, production, distribution and regulated work are vital. In the West, there has been the landless labourer, the worker who was free to sell anywhere what he or she had. Labour thus became a commodity. For Marx, it was the experience of work that defined the relationship to the means of production. Society did not arise from the individual; it was the other way round. The German sociologist Max Weber disagreed with this viewpoint: it was the way one found work and the rewards from it that were the important processes.19 He believed that a person’s life chances would vary according to his/her access to a wide range of sources of economic power. For some, it would be property, for others their capital would add to more than the value of the property. But status was also important to Weber. In his opinion, different individuals or groups are viewed or valued differently and have greater privileges than others. Many factors are thus important in determining the pecking order – such as education, housing and occupational status. Social esteem or honour is based on positive and negative privileges. ‘Classes, status groups and parties are phenomena of distribution of power within a community’, he wrote.20 The nature of work and society has changed a great deal since Marx criticised the Industrial Revolution. Today, there is a hierarchy, not of social class but rather of occupation. Whether people are workers or owners of factories has been replaced by creating identities around lifestyle or job. Consumer power defines social status. Weber argued that status, or ‘social honour’, also defines where people are on the social ladder. Nurses receive a lower wage than some workers and yet are very respected in society. Due to the influence of Marx and Weber, analysis of exploitation and inequality has focused on economic, power and status systems. In a more recent theoretical analysis, the French writer Pierre Bourdieu emphasises the concept of different forms of capital – economic, cultural, social and symbolic – which together empower people in their struggle for

The Differentiation of Worth – Life in Layers  31 position. As a result, individuals occupy a space with those who also experienced the same conditioning.21 When it comes to the choice of occupation, people often end up doing the most natural next step. This used to be going down the mines because your father did. What Bourdieu is suggesting is that it is not just economic relationships that shape our life chances. Cultural capital also mediates the fundamental conception of the life we inherit, giving people the ability to function on the abstract register, to be reflexive and more imaginative. Usually, this comes about through education. Unless class and cultural capital are addressed there, the status quo will remain. Drawing on this conceptualisation, The Great British Survey, the largest study of class conducted in the UK, was undertaken by the BBC in 2013 and involved more than 161,000 people. It suggested that although class (and therefore value accretion) remains, people in the UK now fit into seven social layers.22 According to the survey, the traditional categories of working, middle and upper class are outdated, fitting only 39 per cent of people. Class has traditionally been defined by occupation, wealth and education, but the research suggests that this is too simplistic. Instead, it suggests that class has three dimensions – economic, social and cultural. It found a new model of seven social classes ranging from the elite at the top to a ‘precariat’ – the poor, precarious proletariat – at the bottom. The BBC Lab UK study measured economic capital – income, savings, house value – and social capital – the number and status of people someone knows. The study also measured cultural capital, defined as the extent and nature of cultural interests and activities. The cultural dimension had been left out of class analysis. Cultural interests and consumption patterns should be central. The new classes are defined as: • Elite – the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals. • Established middle class – the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. Also, the largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital. • Technical middle class – a small, distinctive new class group, which is prosperous, but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy.

32  A Question of Worth • New affluent workers – a young class group that is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital. • Traditional working class – scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by its members having the oldest average age of 66. • Emergent service workers – a new, young, urban group that is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital. While the elite group had been identified before, this is the first time it has been placed within a wider analysis of the class structure, as it was normally placed together with professionals and managers. At the opposite extreme, the ‘precariat’, the poorest and most deprived grouping, were found to make up 15 per cent of the population. The members of this group live precarious lives in that income is uncertain; individuals often walk a financial tightrope. These two groups at the extremes of the class system had been overlooked previously in conventional approaches to class analysis, which had focused on the middle and working classes. Studies were all about how much capital had been accumulated, though capital should be redefined to include cultural and social capital, as well as economic. The trope was, however, one of quantification, of accumulation. What mattered was how much of this prized commodity you had! In the West, society witnessed a downgrading of manual labour, in contrast to technical expertise and the downgrading of domestic labour, which is not regarded as productive. Every society grades people according to social prestige of occupations so that ‘the most important positions are most conscientiously filled with the most qualified persons’.23 Inequalities of outcome and poverty are embedded in the system, repeated and recycled across the generations, and are very difficult to shift. But class is also about hierarchy of value: where you stand in the grand scheme of things; an attitude of mind fed by messages of society about those who are more highly valued in contrast to ‘the distant resigned eyes of many whom the world elected to dismiss as nobodies’.24 No biography can be separated from the social and economic context from which it arises. Devaluation is exclusionary. It operates through cultures that establish a pecking order of who is superior, not just in social rank but also in worth. A working-class boy in the parish grows up believing he is worth less

The Differentiation of Worth – Life in Layers  33 than others and, therefore, has less ambition as well as fewer options. This is social conditioning. It translates into the expectations someone might have had regarding the type of job or occupation to go for. For many, the middleclass subject serves as a template, an aspirational standard against which working-class people represent lack. Middle-class identifiers silently pass as normal. A middle-class value system colonises life and aspiration: workingclass children are subjects in devaluing narratives of lack, seen as deficient, not normal. This sustains a poverty of aspiration: a strong feature of poverty. Anyone who is upwardly mobile must learn to read another culture. This is the reality of subjective experience, for what it means to be ‘classed’. Class is ‘a way of growing, feeling, judging, taken out of the resources of generations gone before’.25 In parish life, it is clear that children grow up hearing all kinds of messages both about who is valued and also about the kind of people who do not enjoy social esteem. This is culturally transmitted through expectation and attitudes. It emerges most clearly in encouraging aspiration.26 This will become increasingly problematic when, as noted earlier, seven out of ten jobs created in the future will be professional jobs and many groups will be ‘the left behind.27 It may be that to speak of status and hierarchy remains the best way of negotiating meanings, as if to say, ‘I work; I am ordinary like everyone else’. Nevertheless, in contemporary society, the stereotypes in many European countries portray working-class people as lazy, slobs, a hated group, those to be mocked. Though it is also increasingly true of young people, the white working-class culture is the great ‘left behind’ in many political economies. The public culture denigrates the working-class experience: ‘Chavs’ are seen as dirty, idle and racist.28 In late capitalism, even in societies that have deindustrialised, the hierarchy of value continues to have force. Inherited wealth and privilege may be far less valorised today but there are those that are still treated as less worthy. They are subject to an ideology that we all get what we deserve in life. What seems clear is that new layers, new forms of class, will arise from the growing gap between the experience of many young people in the global economy and the chasm opening up between the proliferation of low-paid, insecure jobs and the higher – end skills that will thrive as jobs are automated away. The Fourth Industrial Revolution will reshape society as well as the workplace.

3 The Distribution of Worth – You Are What You Earn ‘The value or worth of a man is, as of all other things, his price.’ – Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 10 ‘At a fundamental level, the model of globalization and deregulation has blown up, and that’s what’s caused the current crisis. We’re now at the end of that ideology.’ – Newsweek, 13 October 20081

How then does our type of society ascribe and transmit value to individuals and groups? The central message of this book is that much social experience and interpersonal life is shaped by the value placed upon us. In contemporary life, value is accorded to individuals and groups in a way that is unrelated to inner value or ‘value-in-oneself ’. What someone is worth is awarded to social participants on the basis of the wage economy (economic value), identity badges (status value such as ownership or appearance) or identity boundaries (social value; being the right sort of person). These fields are well documented in their own right. What I want to argue is that each is a prime channel for the social transmission of value. A lack of any one of these leads to a fall in the value of people or personal wealth, in

The Distribution of Worth – You Are What You Earn  35 the same way as the value of a bank account, property or shares is eroded. Assigning value and worth to people and groups comes up against the inner worth that they have (‘value-in-oneself ’). In parish and client work, I became intrigued by what happens when these external assessments of value meet an internal sense of value. Crucially, these three main channels communicate what people are worth. Yet they are not neutral and passive channels. The distribution of value through the wage economy and sources of wealth, its demonstration through accumulation, consumerism or self-improvement projects, and also the differentiation of value through different positioning in the economic system also profoundly shape social experience. In other words, these markers to external value are forms of power. They are routes by which power is disbursed in contemporary life. Power and value are inseparable. The economy is far and away the main way that society ascribes value and worth to people in the West. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote about the power of the market to commodify labour and turn it into a thing valued only by its price. What someone is worth is primarily a question of wage rates and asset value. The workplace is the medium through which value is transmitted. The relationship between the work we, and others, do is problematic at the best of times but especially in times of economic restriction. Economics is about value, how it is generated through work and profits and how prices are determined that reflect what something is worth at any one time. So what is the link between economic value and human value? What do we mean by value? As I write this chapter, a storm has just broken over Lord Freud, a government minister in the UK Coalition. A descendant of Sigmund Freud, he was recorded at a Conservative Party Conference saying that some people with a disability were ‘not worth the minimum wage’. In his view, the appropriate remuneration for this group in the marketplace is much less than for others. Wrapping the issue around the question of ‘worth’ is what has caused the uproar that has followed. The term is evocative. Many have responded strongly by defending the equal value of all workers; others have said that while the word is confusing, there is still a need to differentiate the contribution that different people make to a firm.2

36  A Question of Worth A few days after this media storm came a strike. ASDA shop-floor workers, mostly women, were protesting against an issue of justice: they wanted to be paid the same rate as warehousemen. It was, as their spokesperson said, a matter of ‘value’. The shop-floor staff had the same value as warehousemen.3 This is an account of the role that human value and worth plays in contemporary life. Arguably, by spilling over into non-market relations, the market economy profoundly distorts human worth. It has reduced what you are and what you can do to what you are ‘worth’. The longest downturn in the economy since the Great Depression raises significant issues about the value of the human. The system of economic rewards is not, of course, a single giant machine delivering wages and salaries that determine how much people are worth. There are in reality countless small-scale systems (organisations) that deliver formal value and worth as measured in terms of financial rewards. Such organisations function within the large-scale system of the economy. Although it is rumoured that external worth is not the arbiter of how much individuals are valued and that a competitive market system is no virility test, interior knowledge tells a different story. Wages and salaries generated by organisations deliver a relative value that is highly prized. That was constrained in the crisis of capitalism following the economic crash of 2008. Average earnings had barely risen by 2014, and for many, real wages were lower. Economics usually concerns itself with the model of the rational person acting to maximise the utility of decisions. The notion of marginality assumes that supply and demand come together like scissors to fix the value of anything. The process is neutral and takes no account of implicit bias. The reality is that economic activity places people within a force field of power relations. Subconscious influences are pervasive in economic decisions, hence the rise of behavioural economics, which stresses it is about people and their random actions. Power is disbursed through the economic system and where people are positioned. Economics does not normally concern itself with power relations but it needs to if we are to counteract human devaluation. I think of a trained and experienced chef, who I will name ‘Robbie’, who is now compelled to work in the kitchens of a well-known chain of eating and watering holes. The pay is minimum wage and ‘zero-hours’, which means

The Distribution of Worth – You Are What You Earn  37 Robbie has to accept whichever hours are required of him that week under hot-house conditions. Literally, this is sweatshop labour. There is no appeal, but as his new partner cannot seem to find better-paid work herself, together the couple cannot make the budget stretch to cover the essentials, let alone anything else.4 For many in our communities, wage levels are set in such a way that people are compelled to walk a financial tightrope. There is little left over, leaving many only an unexpected bill away from increasing debt. How much someone is worth invariably is tied up with what they are worth in the marketplace. Yet remuneration cannot be the sole arbiter of worth. If that were the case, how should we give an account of value that involves low-paid, but ‘invaluable’ jobs? Would new forms of social status and the remarkable capacity for self-reinvention be rooted in usual descriptions of the economic system? How, too, could we give an account of other forms of social grading and exam testing based on external markers to do with identity? Differentiation is inevitable, unless a society like that of Communist China is built where doctors and dustmen are paid the same. ‘Equal value’ is a concept that was introduced in the UK Equal Pay Act by the Equal Pay (Amendment) Regulations of 1983. Equal value was not defined, except to say that jobs should be compared ‘under headings, such as effort, skill and decision’. Such ‘headings’ (or ‘factors’) are used in job-evaluation systems to analyse and compare jobs, to put them into a rank order based on the demand of the work as the basis for grading and pay. This has been important for employers with predominantly female workforces in comparing jobs and deciding what the workers are worth. The economy is a prime transmitter of worth. Arguably, the economy distorts human value by being reductionist, taking life and labour to the level of input–output relations. There is a massive problem with the way human value is distributed in contemporary societies. What someone is worth is primarily a question of wage rates and asset value. Economic activity is the site and focus of participation in value. Salary structures, remuneration packages and earnings potential distribute worth to millions. Participate, and one is located somewhere on a status escalator. Do not find a job or be unemployed, be the wrong gender or type of person, or just be old, and the ‘would be’ or

38  A Question of Worth ‘have been’ workers are thrown off the escalator; alienated from the prime source of value in Western life. The workplace with its enormous variety of organisations becomes the medium through which value is transmitted: to paraphrase economist Adam Smith, an invisible hand that confers worth. Whereas traditional society organised itself around its relationship to the land (which gave rise to the polarisation of inherited wealth and power), in contemporary society, people have come to place enormous significance on occupation as a marker of status. In most jobs that are not essentially vocational, worth is distributed through what one is worth in the marketplace. That determines relative income, and with it, both material possibilities and status in society. More than ever, a monetary scale has become the measure of life and merit. Industrialisation did not invent this. In his magnum opus The City of God, Augustine argues that in the human city, people live and move there in order to make a name for themselves, to obtain power and achievement and recognition by others. By this, they then become somebody.5 Following on from the ideas of Augustine and also Thomas Aquinas, the basis of the good society meant the sin of avarice. Merchants and traders were frowned on, especially those who lent money at interest. The desire to improve social status by getting richer was dangerous to society and soul. This negative view – downright hostile when it came to ‘usury’ – dominated attitudes until the growth of capitalism in the late medieval and the early modern period. It led to the projection of such sin on to Jews (who were frowned on by mainstream Christian society, anyway). The problem, as theologians warned, was that the City of Man would became a place of exhaustion and oppression: exhaustion because the pursuit of riches was frenetic; oppression because feverish effort to gain recognition meant treading on others in the social hierarchy. This is because under mercantilist thinking the amount of wealth is fixed: if one wins, the other loses. If is a zero sum game. Gradually, a more positive view of wealth creation and commerce developed. Economic activity was no longer tainted and sinful. Max Weber famously described it in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as representing a positive stimulus and highly valorised attitude. That resolutely ‘this-worldly’ philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that there is nothing wrong with the desire to get rich. It is only if pursued through illegitimate means that earthly well-being should be condemned.6 Over a century later,

The Distribution of Worth – You Are What You Earn  39 Adam Smith’s enquiry into how market economies worked was a positive account of trade and commerce, to be unshackled so as to deliver ‘universal opulence’ (read ‘prosperity’). Against that backdrop, the transformation of life and work from the latter end of the eighteenth century onwards has sharply accentuated the monetisation of the world. It became widely accepted that individual achievement should be rewarded. Today, the wide disparity in incomes is under the media spotlight. Although all forms of inequality are widely discussed, it is the sharp contrast between chief executive officers (CEOs) and their employees that gets most attention. The wage disparity in a CEO being paid astronomically more than the non-managerial staff accentuates this protest. As often observed, people don’t seem to mind someone being paid like a king as long as they themselves are not paid like a peasant. Without implying a miserabilist account of the contemporary West that is one-sided, many in the parish are trapped in a low-wage and low-value life. According to the report ‘Escape Plan’, the UK thinktank Resolution Foundation found that while some in low-paid work were able to escape, for three-quarters, pay progression was a mirage. While single parents, older workers, those with disabilities or those working part-time may aspire to better paid employment, they, in fact, often slip backwards.7 Far too many have migrated in and out of low-paid work instead of moving up the pay ladder. Celebrity pay, meanwhile, is off the chart.8 The question is whether the rich world or poor world can find the political and economic will to create a fair society. Most Americans are worse off than they were a generation ago. The benefits have gone to the top of the pile. At the bottom, real wages are lower than they were 60 years ago. In real terms, wages are falling in real terms while executive pay is untroubled by economic crisis. People need money in their pockets and purses. Without that, spending and hence demand cannot fuel an economy.9 The Living Wage movement, as we see it today, was not born in the UK. It arose from community organising in Baltimore, Maryland and New York through Saul Aulinsky’s ‘relational organising’ approach. New York City introduced a Living Wage law in 1996. The idea is spreading, although it is not a recent idea. Adam Smith stressed the need for employers to pay decent wages: ‘It is but equity that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the

40  A Question of Worth people should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably clothed and fed’.10 The argument is that a fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay and that the Living Wage makes sense for everybody. People paid fairly will spend more in local businesses. Employers will get higher productivity, employee loyalty, reduced sickness absence and fewer workplace disciplinary issues. The welfare bill will come down. It may be an effective way of tackling poverty. The Living Wage Commission’s 2014 ‘Working for Poverty’ report argued that it is also about feeling valued. Many low-paying jobs, such as cleaning and catering are outsourced to external service providers, which means staff are employed by a different firm from that of those in the premises in which they work and this can lead to staff getting a message that they are undervalued and invisible. For example, one outsourced cleaner, working at John Lewis in London’s Oxford Street, stated: I work for John Lewis but I am not one of the partners. We, the cleaners, are the invisibles in this beautiful palace. We are not the one with the John Lewis badge and are not treated as a part of the family. We walk the same floors, use the same lifts and canteen but are strangers in the place. Sometimes, we feel like rats who are in hiding, do our job, not speak to anyone, don’t get asked any questions or how my day was. Yet, we always make sure the place looks spotless and fresh.11

In the UK, the median full-time salary in 2010–11 was £26,200 per year, but someone working full time for the minimum wage would only earn around £11,000, while the top 10 per cent earned over £52,600.12 As a supermarket worker, paid £6.70 an hour, reported to the Living Wage Commission: I do not smoke or drink because I try to keep a car on the road so that I can visit my brother in a care home seven miles from my home. I also pay around 80 per cent of my income on rent, food, Council Tax, utilities, telephone, broadband and petrol. I take a holiday every two years for a week to visit family. It does not leave very much to save or to replace household goods when they fail.13

How hard people work: what pressure they are under. The whip of achievement drives millions forward on the treadmill. Yet there is huge concern as I write

The Distribution of Worth – You Are What You Earn  41 about the productivity puzzle. In the US, workers’ output fell by 3 per cent between the last quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015. Figures from the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) did show, however, that US productivity had nevertheless risen by 11 per cent since the financial crash began in 2007. This was very good going compared with the US’s European peers.14 In the UK, the need to boost productivity and get more and more output per hour has become a fierce imperative. The only answer, seemingly, to the lagging productivity gap is to work more people for longer hours to keep up. In late capitalist society, from China to Chinatown, workers live relentless lives. It is not only in pursuit of financial status that people are working longer hours – 50 or 60 hours a week is not uncommon (paradoxically the same work hours as in the early Industrial Revolution).15 The imperative to earn is in order to consume. Status has meant acquiring ‘status goods’. Increasingly, it is consumer power that has defined social status. Yet participation in the labour market is not just about having money to spend, it has become a prime source of significance and marker of competence for millions of women who want economic opportunities. The wage economy is, therefore, central to the social transmission of value and worth. According to a groundbreaking study by the World Bank,16 involving visits to 15,000 classrooms, Latin American schools are mired in educational failure. A strong reason for this is that large numbers of teachers are recruited from school-leavers who are less bright, trained badly and also crucially paid anywhere between 10 per cent and 50 per cent less than other professionals. Salary levels indicate their status. Contrast this with the news coming through, as I write this, that the CEO of Tesco has been fired and retired on account of this international supermarket chain under-performing. Smaller discount chain rivals have been undercutting it at one end of the market, while quality stores have been nibbling into profits at the other end. The outcome has been that the unique value-for-money and selling proposition Tesco has to offer is now being sharply questioned. On hearing of the news, share values began to recover, the market reaction being that Tesco could now pull its socks up.17 Economics is about value, how it is generated through work and profits and how prices are determined that reflect what something is worth at any one time. I am arguing that there is a different form of value – ‘value-inoneself ’ – the drive for which is fundamental to social processes. So it is

42  A Question of Worth worth recalling that there is a value theory relating to goods and services to explain how their price is determined through the wage and salary system. Marx did not originate the idea of a labour theory of value. It was given classic form by Adam Smith, the prophet of capitalism, as he sought to explain how the price of goods and services is determined: The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people.18

Behind the value of a good, the economist argued, is the human labour in producing it: The value of any commodity, […] to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.19

It was David Ricardo who formulated the classic statement of the link between economic value and the value of the labour involved. ‘The value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not as the greater or less compensation which is paid for that labour.’20 These classical economists saw prices and value as reflecting primarily the costs of production. According to H. Davenport, ‘The scientific development of economic theory began as an attempt to solve the value problem’.21 Marx defined the value of the commodity in terms of labour. Agreeing that products are exchanged in the marketplace roughly in line with the labour costs of producing them, he argued that value is the ‘socially necessary abstract labour’ embodied in a commodity. The usual outline of factors of production – capital, land and labour – were subsumed into labour. It is human capital alone that creates all the value and therefore the source of profit incentives. Human value is without qualification, an intrinsic worth

The Distribution of Worth – You Are What You Earn  43 independent of how much you are worth on the market.22 It is socially unacceptable for the rich to derive income from the ownership of property. It is equally undesirable for factory owners to cream off the ‘surplus value’ produced by the workers above and beyond the wages they receive. Surplus value is the amount that the factory owners pocketed. In the Marxist view of the world, this was a route that leads to the exploitation and impoverishment of the working classes. Communism played on the desire for justice as well as a desire for revenge.23 The great theme of Das Kapital, Marx’s magnum opus, was showing how capitalism works. It was, however, a conflation of apparent scientific analysis with angry polemic. Because human labour was the primary source of value – ‘in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread’ – profit was surplus value. The difference between the amount at which the capitalist sold goods and the amount he paid his workers meant that exploitation was fundamental to the system. All the profits should return to the workers. Investment and capital represented historic exploitation of the labours of previous generations. It was, therefore, unjust that there should be returns for the investment said to bring money into an industry. Indeed supervision by management fell under the same hammer. In feudal societies it had been abundantly clear. The time the serf worked for the lord was laid down. In the new industrial system, the time that labourers spent working for their employers was far more hidden. The worker sells his bodily powers to the capitalist with the result that human work was now a commodity. It was in the interest of the factory owner to drive the price of people down to the lowest possible subsistence level in order to keep the proletariat barely surviving so that they and their children could remain workers in the capitalist system. Marx did recognise that the explosion of productivity created potential for a society in which work could become more creative. Capitalism was constantly changing and indeed reproducing itself as it spread across the world. As real wages fell in line with the imperative to keep profits up, capitalism was acting as its own gravedigger. Marx was wrong about that. Wages were rising in the very years that Das Kapital was being written and yet the average number of hours being worked was falling. Perhaps he did have a point though that the short-term effects of the factory system led not just to misery, but also to the breakdown of the

44  A Question of Worth traditional family. Not only was the worker enslaved, as women and children, too, were dragged into the production process. Yet as they went out to work, women would have the ability to earn money and, paradoxically, this would soften industrialisation; the workplace would become more feminised.24 At first blush, it seems apparent that things are worth what they cost to make them. Yet though superficially attractive, the labour theory of value is problematic. It is by no means the case that all the effort of our labours results in something that can be traded. Also, as Adam Smith observed, there are many natural objects that have not had labour expended on them. Gemstones and berries have an economic value in their natural, un-worked state. Marx failed to take into account that consumer demand changes over time and within time. Wine that ferments over years is more valuable than wine that is newly made. The labour theory of value fails for another reason. Reforms in the labour market are often necessary. It also fails the test of what economists call time preference. Consumer demand is usually for items that are readily purchasable here and now rather than for those that involve waiting. If an item is sold on later, a worker cannot usually be expected to wait until he or she gets paid. A labour theory of value may have been valid for the first Industrial Revolution when machines began to do the work. The second wave of industrialisation early in the twentieth century when assembly lines took over meant that industries began to be less labour-intensive. Wage costs are growing less and less important because labour represents a small part of making and selling things. In 2012, a US $499 first-generation iPad included only about US $33 of labour costs.25 As manufacturing goes digital, it will change how goods are made and, therefore, the human element. Few items now reflect the cost of components and the labour that goes into their manufacture; they reflect rather, the price that consumers are prepared to pay. The economic way of valuing human beings is inherently reductionist. Increasingly in contemporary society, the nature of your job is less important than what money you have. Arguably, we have become more divided by money. The demand for ‘more, more and still more’ is shrill. Position in society is increasingly defined by it. Keeping up at all costs is vital for competing in the global race. The relationship between the work we and others do, or do not do, is

The Distribution of Worth – You Are What You Earn  45 problematic at the best of times but especially so in times of economic restriction. Society is haunted by the inevitable question, ‘What do you DO?’ – not ‘who are you?’ but ‘what are you?’ The translation of ‘what?’ into ‘who?’ constitutes a pernicious category error. Continuous and, at times, harsh evaluations are made according to one’s occupation or by those in close relationship to the subject. A greater proportion of the population is now retired, unemployed or unemployable. Most would agree that these all deserve to be valued still, their lives given ‘worth’. In modern industrial societies, with their continuing hierarchy of individual value, the economy is the prime arena through which worth and value is assigned to participants. ‘You are a street cleaner, this is all you are worth’26 is reflected in wages. Put simply, in a society where income is the primary measure of worth, those on higher incomes are more important than those on lower. Those who are off the workplace radar, such as the unemployed, or those who pursue other important goals – such as bringing up children or care for the elderly – have less social influence and selfworth precisely because they are not earning. Where that leaves those who do not put money in the bank to show for their labours is hugely problematic in late capitalism. Those who fail are relegated to the margins or choose to opt out. As one American mother expressed it in an interview in Parents Magazine: Before I quit teaching to stay at home with my first baby, I thought that the hardest part of leaving my job would be losing the money. I was wrong […] the real problem with not earning a paycheck, I found, was keeping up with my self-esteem. If I am not earning a salary, what am I worth?27

4 The Demonstration of Worth – You Are What You Own

‘I have tried long-term relationships but I have got a fast moving internal mechanism. There is a tyranny of choices, endless choices; you can buy washing machines, cars, jeans – why not consume people in the same way?’ – Russell Brand1 ‘Economists attempt to attach a monetary value to non-market goods by looking at the impact that these things have on utility. Utility, in the broadest sense, refers to the satisfaction that a person gets from consumption of a good, or to the change in their welfare or wellbeing.’ – HM Treasury (2011) Green Book2

The power lies in society with those who dictate the terms of who or what is valued. If the distribution of worth in our type of society is shaped by wealth and how much you earn, the differentiation of value in our type of society is rooted in power relations. The relationship between those who own and distribute wealth and those on the receiving end is one of power and pecking order. Those who pay the piper call the tune. This is not only a question of

The Demonstration of Worth – You Are What You Own  47 ownership and access to the means of production as against the hapless workers. Such Marxist dualism did not fit the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first. Those who call the tune are just as likely to be corporate advertisers as corporate multinationals. Those who wield enormous influence are not so much producers who attempt to satisfy demand, politicians who respond to events or media people who report on them or even educators who inform learners later about what is happening. The wielders of power are the persuaders, those who shape demand. Power equals the production of images. Any analysis of power relations involved between bosses and staff (the twentieth-century equivalent of factory owners and workers) needs to be supplemented with grasping the power relations involved with consumerism. In turn, an analysis of power relations needs to be fitted into economics as a whole. This would turn and return economics into the discipline of political economy from which it sprang. Now we are to consider the demonstration of value through accumulation of high value consumer goods combined with self-improvement projects. These channels run deep into our psyche. The social transmission of value is out of step with the position people often take up in response, which reacts from a sense of reflexive inner value. In defining human worth externally, society perpetrates a category error; an error that is played out with deafening tones in parish life in work with families. Today, in the drive towards expansion and productivity at all costs, everything can be thrown away; everything is disposable. As Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman observed, the 2011 riots in England provided a window on disaffected consumers. Living and working in distressed urban communities that can be characterised by greed and boredom, I found it disturbing how many of life’s possibilities were no longer summed up in no longer the ‘doggie in the window that costs half a crown‘ but rather by ‘that pair of trainers in the window!’3 Arguably, the acquisition of brands is about the acquisition of value. Consumer culture is pedagogical. It teaches young people that to achieve status, you must own. The catch is that to own, you need money. Acquisition of things becomes the means to acquiring recognition and respect (read value) through status-enhancing goods. The latest brand or gadget increasingly defines identity: their lack conveys relative humiliation. The only way

48  A Question of Worth frustrated young consumers can respect themselves is by buying some latestname brand clothes and sophisticated electronic equipment. It confers social acceptance. Traditionally, in many working- and lower-middle class families, the impact of relative poverty was to generate thrift. Today, in a society characterised by bewildering consumerism, a culture of ‘feeding on demand’ is set up: ‘I want it and I want it now …’ To invoke the ideas of economic historian R. H. Tawney, has the ‘Acquisitive Society’ spawned acquisitiveness? Where value and worth are in things you possess, the result is inevitably social insecurity among those who feel that they lack. The much-publicised use of Blackberries in the English riots showed that technology was undoubtedly a factor in the emergent consumerism that shapes urban social ecology. As the latest toys and tools become status symbols, the bewildering speed of new technology’s rapidly evolving offerings is inseparable from consumer culture. There is, moreover, a strong link between the way that relative poverty is devaluing and the impact of insecure parenting. The impact of inconsistent parenting style is made worse if everyone around you seems to be enjoying the consumer party. The pressures of modern society start early. Children are socialised into consumerist culture from which they become alienated and disaffected; the sexualisation and commercialisation of the world around them bites them to the core. The industrial transformation of the world has not just been about supply. As ever, supply creates its own demand. A consumer revolution had been slowly gathering pace even before the celebrated ‘take-off into sustained growth’ of the Industrial Revolution in the 1780s, with huge growth in the quantity and variety of manufactured goods available for purchase. Historians now recognise the impact of this cultural transformation as signifying immense development in trade, in manufacturing and in the public culture of the marketplace.4 Commercial transformation was powered by consumer goods pouring in great quantities and varieties from shops, markets and by a new breed of salesmen, anxious to promote their wares. The print trade was part of the infrastructure of expansion, creating a means of advertisement that predated the subsequent rise of mass-circulation magazines and newspapers.5 Seeds were sown for the rise of industrial capitalism. That is a debate for economic historians. The results of consumerism go far beyond the imaginative capacities of those who lined up to cheer or lament

The Demonstration of Worth – You Are What You Own  49 its rise and rise 250 years ago. Before the advent of mass-consumer economy, the French writer Voltaire had argued that economic growth meant an increase in material well-being and, with it, the possibility of consumption. Luxury goods were available to a wider group of people. Material prosperity, said Voltaire, was the basis for higher civilisation. Tastes changed. What previous generations, influenced by moralists and Christians, had regarded as frivolous, his contemporaries now saw as necessities. The humble scissors, once seen as fit for ‘dandies and squanderers’, were becoming commonplace.6 ‘Luxury’ had been a pejorative term; fulfilling material satisfactions was at the expense of the common good. Abstinence and austerity had been promoted as Christian virtues or as the outcome of civic moralistic traditions. That was changing fast, however, as pursuing economic growth brought increased opportunity for material well-being and therefore consumption. Voltaire was a standard-bearer for the new Enlightenment culture in which prosperity was to be welcomed: the ‘Worldling’ celebrated.7 Voltaire’s critic, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contended this. Long before advertising became the province of the persuaders, he argued that wants and desires were being needlessly stirred up. Humanity was being driven by infinite yearnings for things that cannot be realised. Yet, paradoxically, we never get enough for that which we crave most, the esteem and recognition of others. The result was that material goods and wealth are not inherently satisfying and end up deflating us. How greatly things have moved on from the high noon of the Enlightenment. It took a long time for attitudes to change towards the accumulation of wealth and its association with greed and extravagance. The self-restraint and thrift that characterised much of Victorian society now had serious drawbacks. As a big idea, ‘consumption’ came to lose previous images of ‘using up’ and therefore wasteful destruction. Henceforth, satisfying human needs and desires was positive; it was socially acceptable. Now that industries had the capacity for mass production, a key question arose. ‘If everyone deferred gratification, who would buy the new products?’8 It was paramount that people buy. Economist Thorstein Veblen described the new mood as ‘conspicuous consumption’.9 On the back of a considerable expansion of credit and purchase by instalments, the 1920s were widely seen as embedding consumption firmly

50  A Question of Worth within the American Dream. The consumer craze took hold. ‘The American citizen’s first importance to his country is no longer that of citizen but that of consumer.’10 Twentieth-century consumerism aimed at nothing less than a massive re-programming of its eager followers. The car industry was in the forefront of this revolution. Rather than turn out one model-T Ford, why not segment the market and entice continuous selling with a new car every year, organised around the production of artificial dissatisfaction? Exterior elements such as colour or trim would seal the deal and personalise the market, as well as segment it. The consumption craze then spread to products in the home. Then it went global. The phenomenon of built-in obsolescence lay at the heart of the massive expansion of consumerism. Products were deliberately made to break; the new became obsolete quickly. Everything was disposable, everything a lifestyle choice. As the Marxist critic Marcuse argued, society played with false needs; creating needs and superimposing them through advertising. People desire new products. That is not freedom. It is merely the ability to choose one item rather than another.11 Marcuse’s one-time student Daniel Bell presciently observed that there were ‘Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism’. In its organisation, the industrial corporation required serious self-restraint. To sell its products, however, what was needed were consumers who would ‘buy and buy now’. Deferred gratification had been necessary to early capitalism when the cultural ideal of being frugal was dominant. That had changed in a society where a continuous production of new wants and new means of satisfying those wants was the order of the day in the social order of shopping.12 Driving the transformation of capitalist products from luxury to necessity was the power of advertisers, who quickly became one of the most influential voices in Western society. Consumers were now calling the tune and paying the piper. This was because effective demand was central to economic growth. To entice people to buy the products of their ingenuity that flooded the markets, the producers enlisted the help of advertisers, Vance Packard’s ‘Persuaders’. The persuaders formed a group of three Marketeers: swashbucklers all amid heroic scenes of print, film and electronic media. And so advertisements acquired sophistication amid the flickering images of television. All this came at a price. Consumers reacted against a lack of faces

The Demonstration of Worth – You Are What You Own  51 in remote, impersonal forces. Even through a Marxist lens, producers were by no means one group. Fiercely competitive among themselves, they had to sink or swim in a larger pool. Everywhere, local producers were faced with the tidal wave of global markets. This matters profoundly. UNICEF UK commissioned an ethnographic study to explore some of the reasons why levels of well-being were so low in children in the UK compared with those in Spain and Sweden. The result of a research project using accepted canons of qualitative methodology13 showed that children felt trapped in a ‘materialistic culture’ and did not have enough time with their families. This research paid particular attention to the role of materialism and inequality in children’s well-being. There is a growing consensus in the literature that these concepts are inextricably linked: materialism is a cause, as well as an effect, of negative well-being, and countries that have higher levels of inequality are known to score lower on subjective well-being indicators. The 2011 UNICEF UK study’s methodology was underpinned by Ecological Systems Theory,14 a Child Rights Social Ecology perspective that sees child development as part of a broader social, cultural, economic and political set of systems. Materialism had hitherto been conceptualised as a psychological construct and most notably as a personality trait or, more recently, as a component of an individual’s value-set. It had rarely been studied as a social phenomenon. Underpinning the research with the Child Rights Social Ecology model allowed the researchers to take a fresh contextual look at the interplay between materialism, inequality and well-being. The evidence suggested that materialism appears to be problematic for adults as well as children. While technology and clothes brands were actively coveted, for the majority of the eight- to thirteen-year-olds across the three countries, new toys, fashion items and gadgets were not central to their wellbeing. Rather than wanting to acquire things for their own sake, material objects and consumer goods tended to fulfil a range of purposes in children’s lives: utilitarian, symbolic and social. There is a symbolic use of brands that confers either superior status or the avoidance of bullying that is much more problematic than being merely functional.15 The role of consumer goods in the lives of children is therefore complex and not easily reduced to a single notion of greed or acquisitiveness.16 However, while most children agreed

52  A Question of Worth that family time is more important than consumer goods, within UK homes there seemed to be a compulsion on the part of some parents to continually buy new things both for themselves and their children. British parents were often buying their children status brands believing that they were protecting them from the kind of bullying they experienced in their own childhood.17 In this way, ‘things’ stand as proxy for personal value, a deterrent against its erosion. Consumption undoubtedly represents a ‘feel-good factor’. The allure of touching and trying something on, indeed the very atmosphere of shopping, is a motivator. But conspicuous consumption feeds a representation of a valuable self that has been sold to us by the advertisers. The image-makers convince because the products will convey. That mysterious ‘something about us’ feeds identity construction, so our observers will realise we are people of status, wealth, power or other perceived goods, the ‘coolness’ and the balm. Like nearly all forms of social valuing, this is gendered. Though it implicates more women than men, the new social order of shopping, the new social order of shopping recruits its subjects to achieve the demonstration of worth. It is all part of the hedonistic individualism that seems to characterise our times. If you have not got this or that, you feel a failure. It is pseudostatus. Contentment is seen as a weakness. Our experiences, our tastes and our purchases are not just arbitrary. They reflect who we are and our capacity to make new selves.18

Self-improvement Projects Consumer culture is not just accumulation of status goods. Self-improvement projects are now all the rage. Society’s obsession with the shape and size of women’s bodies has helped shape a generation of anorexics and people suffering from other eating disorders. Being thin has come to signify qualities of character such as self-control and strength as well as beauty, success and happiness. Anorexia is about control; using a strict attitude to weight is a defence, arguably the only one a girl has, against chaos. Rather than helping anorexics to accept and befriend their bodies, the hospital may view it as a problem, as an enemy. UK clinical psychologist and critic of biomedical psychiatry Lucy Johnstone argues that,

The Demonstration of Worth – You Are What You Own  53 treatments which focus solely on weight gain are falling into the same trap as the anorexic herself; they are treating her body as an object, as something separate from her as a person, to be forced into one shape or another without any regard for what this means for the young woman herself.19

Generating a ‘new you’ is a product of late capitalism. Breast augmentation, losing weight, popular psychology are intended to satisfy the desire, not so much to be healthy as to look better. When the fashion industry is characterised by big money and skinny models, images become predatory. It is a repressive society that distorts human worth, however. The sexualisation of girls involves a blatantly sexist marketing mood based on money. It is rooted in a narrow definition of beauty. A woman’s image becomes the most important aspect of her personality. For a woman especially, her sense of herself is tied in with how she relates to her body. This is a weary exercise in socially assigned value. Today, women are now allowed to be neither plain nor old. Anti-ageing beauty products, Botox injections and plastic surgery promise to turn back the clock. The current pressure on women to look young – and the blind acceptance of this by celebrities and others – is sorely felt by most women as a lack of their value and worth. It might be a letter or advert from a health farm saying, ‘Turn back the clock!’ It might take the form of a beautiful young lady who says she would consider ‘having work done’. The anti-ageing lobby implies that looking young is the holy grail of beauty, that youthful equals beautiful. Most voices protest. ‘Old is beautiful, too. It’s only Western society which is telling us that isn’t the case!’20 But the reality is that human subjects are called to identities within a gender stratification order that relegates older women to playing second fiddle. In this way, the prevailing ideology of our time, the social representation of youthfulness, recruits its subjects. Clothes and fashion are recruited as short-term improvement projects demonstrating social status. In the UK, the working class of the first half of the twentieth century wore caps; the middle classes wore Homburgs. At the dawn of the twenty-first, injecting a deadly biological agent into the skin meant we were now the Botox generation, pursuing the elixir of youth. Recruiting clothes, skin and fashion leads to a confusion between status and value. In a quest for quantifiable value and worth, in a bid for new forms of

54  A Question of Worth wealth, power and knowledge and external value, the haves and have-nots changed seats. In short, status, whether arising from self-improvement projects or consumption and accumulation of material goods, is a marker of human value. Power lies with who determines what is valued, which then is etched into identity. Being high value or having lesser worth (differential status through class, gender or age) remains heavily accented in post-industrial society as much as, if not more so, than during the Industrial Revolution. They are markers of power, of quantification. One’s occupation or financial heft is about how much I am worth in the marketplace, winners and losers having greater or lesser value according to how much they perform. These three markers of worth are forms of personal capital. They are shaped by an industrial paradigm that not only stressed output, but went hand in hand with counting and measuring as forms of knowledge. Power and positivism are sisters. Yet the routes for the social transmission of value are deeply problematic. Social transmission of worth according to quantity and performance is fine for the winners and may even incentivise those who have the wherewithal and right skill-set to keep up. There are losers, however; myriads of losers in the performance stakes. Battlefield casualties include: • those who cannot keep up appearances or are excluded from the treadmill; • those experiencing the emotional impact of recession when the system falters; • those who are trapped in poverty and inequality, whether poor nations or groups; • those on the receiving end of predatory profit-driven producers who have no social responsibility and take no notice of the common good; • those who experience the downside of performance culture in organisations and institutions of contemporary society such as schools (which train people for high-output society) and hospitals (which care for the wounded and burnt-out workers).

The Demonstration of Worth – You Are What You Own  55 What follows are reflections on the way we live now. The costs of our way of life will be phrased in terms of putting ‘capitalism on the couch’ to see how such problems play out in personal and family lives. Yet, fundamentally, they are systemic issues. They arise from systems of social and economic life that haunt us by their facelessness. Against the dysfunctionality, how much we earn and how much we own there is invariably a reaction that is human, oh so human.

Part Two Capitalism on the Couch ‘Somehow, large numbers of people somehow became conditioned to think that making money and profit was an end in itself instead of being a means to an end.’ – Author’s parish notes

5 1st Symptom: Private Lives and Performance Anxiety ‘Unfortunately, because there are relatively few high-status occupations and limited amounts of income and wealth, the great significance we attach to these indicators of competence may be damaging to the self-esteem of those who lack the desire to attain them – the have-nots.’ – W. Swann1

The National Web The dysfunctionality of the economic model that shapes modern society shows up constantly in the parish and consulting room. So as both rhetorical device and analytical lens, we will put capitalism on the couch, using the therapeutic motif as a lens on what our economic and social arrangements do to the value and worth of contemporary people. As we put our way of life on the couch in no particular order, our client exhibits behaviours that place the most enormous pressure on people to look good and to keep up. There is profound ambiguity in those very pressures, contingent as they are on the high opinion (or not) of others. Social media with its incessant squeeze to look ‘cool’; peer pressure and social status, with their lean and hungry look – all are emaciated substitutes for authentic relationships.

60  A Question of Worth Arguably, it is the close relationships people have that determine the strength of society. Where human relationships and social bonds are weak, society is weak. When they are strong, society is strong. The individualised society described by the eminent sociologist Zygmunt Bauman2 shows markedly less connection with others. Every capitalist society in the West probably creates millions of people who are affected by the modern epidemic of loneliness and isolation. There are said to be nearly 5 million people in the UK alone who say they have no close friends.3 Eleven per cent reported being isolated. Everywhere the need is for reconnection, to recover and regain the qualities that make us human. This book is being written at a time of intense retrospective debate over the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. While the meaning of the legacy remains fiercely contested, the background is less so. Thatcherism and its associated ‘Reaganomics’, monetarism and much freer markets, represented a re-alignment of political economy. Thatcherism argued that social aspiration is hardwired. To get society going again, the need was to restore individual responsibility. Appealing to conservative instincts, Thatcher promoted wealth creation and a market economy. In my days at the DTI, it was clear that global pressures were resulting in deindustrialisation; the erosion of manufacturing. Industrial policy would be reset so as to go with this flow rather than endeavour to counteract it. Help for industry was out. What was less apparent was the erosion of entire communities.4 To many eyes, this is a side-effect of capitalism. It shatters communities and shapes individualised responses. Rather than people looking out for each other cooperatively, they look out for ‘number one’ – a lament that is a recurrent theme in both parish life and client work. There is no doubt a fresh balance to be struck between the needs and rights of the individual and the requirements of collective life. At a family or even street level, a lack of love and communal bonds will commonly be associated with difficulty and dysfunctionality. Anecdotally, such a seam runs throughout the life course. Young children suffer neglect and often go on to experience stunting; impaired development of cognitive functioning and ability to settle emotions. Most children grow up mentally healthy, but surveys suggest that more children and young people have problems with their mental health today than 30 years ago. That’s probably because of changes in the way we live now and how that affects the experience

1st Symptom: Private Lives and Performance Anxiety  61 of growing up. One sees growing children devoid of the character – nursery of a warm home lacking in guidance and boundaries; rootless adolescents; couple relationships under unparalleled strain and changing expectations; parents often heroically struggling to manage with children of their own in an atomised, nuclear family unit; older people left alone for days and weeks – all this is all too common in the lived experience of private lives today. The thread is not so much a failure of public policy: it is a failure of love and social connection.5 Relationships are the key to human flourishing. People do not do well if they are isolated. In the first year, demand on the UK charity ‘Silverline’ far exceeded expectations, with 200,000 more calls than anticipated. The single biggest reason for people calling was loneliness, the charity reported. More than half, 54 per cent, said they had nobody else to talk to. The TV broadcaster Esther Rantzen who founded ChildLine, has said: We knew loneliness existed in this country, but the extent of this epidemic of loneliness and isolation suffered by people over 65 has shocked and alarmed us. Many of our callers ring us on a regular basis because they tell us we are the reason they can get through the day. As one widow told me: ‘Many times I wanted to give up. Now I have something to live for’.6

Such anxiety about the lonely self seems to be an increasing characteristic of late modernity. Yet paradoxically, the solitary, individualised self co-exists with anxiety of a different kind. Performance anxiety to do with the competitive self-in-relation-to-others stems in part from the capacity to create ourselves that is such a marked feature of the emerging twenty-first century. The significance of significance is changing. Forms of self-creation abound, ranging from fashioning our own image under the knife to disclosing compulsively our external selves through social media. We have become our own PR machine. A teenager in the parish is beset by cripplingly low-self-esteem. She is exposed to porn, confused about sex, vulnerable to drugs and is barely a sandwich away from an eating disorder. Yet she is online 24/7, incessantly in touch with Facebook friends. What is needed so often are authentic relationships and the kindness that public policy can neither capture nor mandate. There is a problem with sources of worth. They are unstable. Contemporary lives demonstrate this repeatedly. Under the fluid conditions of late capitalism,

62  A Question of Worth ‘the Games People Play’ (as sources of significance) are unstable as a location for value-in-oneself. As Bauman points out, fluid (or liquid) modernity is a strong feature on the landscape of contemporary life.7 For the first time in our history, we are confronted with change as a permanent condition of human life. Ways of behaviour need to be cultivated which are fit for living in this state of constant change. Acting according to habits, customs and previous knowledge is not a good recipe in a world where there is no longer one dominant authority. Rapidly changing identities and shifting sources of significance assault the self; circumstances render a self that is fragile against the pervading illusion of material success. Critics of consumption have pointed out how hard we have to run to control our own destinies. Getting more, having more, holding more is perhaps insurance against fear of loss. Yet in its deep ambiguity, as American psychologist Ed Diener argued, materialism is toxic for human happiness.8 Diener coined the phrase ‘subjective well-being’, the scientific term for how people evaluate their lives. Such anxiety about the project of the self is inimical to flourishing. In his classic formulation of client-centred therapy, Carl Rogers argued that if you come to feel you are valuable only if you are clever, successful, attractive or good, you will end up formulating ‘conditions of worth’. These are harmful; they limit your freedom to act. If you think you are only valuable because certain things are true, you will lose the ability to act freely. By contrast, those who experience unconditional positive regard are confident of their value. They will become ‘more understanding of others, more accepting of others as separate individuals’.9 In short, they will live a connected life. ‘The less we value and accept ourselves, the more we are driven to work hard to ensure other people’s affection, approval and acceptance.’10 ‘I was only worthwhile if I was useful’, laments a client.11 Valuable only if ‘useful’? That is what Rogers’ conditions of worth amounts to: a quasi-economic statement, implying contract and dependent love. ‘Valuein-oneself ’ is magic gold – value not in a utilitarian, conditional mode of life and performance but as an aspect of personal existence; of being, not just performance. It is neither instrumental nor contractual – ‘if you do this, I will do that’ (typical of monetary economic relationships). Instead, it is covenantal; problematic when sources of significance are under threat.

1st Symptom: Private Lives and Performance Anxiety  63 The point being made here is that unstable sources of value end up being devaluing. Sources of significance and value are in flux in our society. We can pursue this drive to be valued in ways that cultivate it extrinsically or intrinsically. If we pursue it externally, in appearance, etc., within the conditions of post-modern life, it will be unstable. Society is changing with regard to the sources of value and self-worth. The world of work used to offer stable professional recognition or a sense of belonging to a factory or mining community: jobs today are now rarely permanent. Unemployment is profoundly demoralising. Men feel this very keenly, especially as the role they had as principal provider has been steadily eroding. ‘Being breadwinner is still crucial to a male psyche.’12 At stake is how we define ourselves and the source and sense of value. Changing patterns of work, and resultant identity dilemmas combine with economic crunch in such a way that uncertainty prevails. In an industrial age, a career for life was the standard. Now multiplicity of careers is commonplace. There is uncertainty too when it comes to the face (and body) we present. This may be in conflict with the images set by TV as to the kind of image and style that is valued by society at any one time. The result is appearance anxiety. For all those who find a response in personal makeover projects to be empowering, there must be many more who experience the fascism of appearance practised by our current social arrangements as oppressive. It reinforces low self-esteem, especially with girls.13 A psychologist cautions about the ‘pornification’ of Western society, in which boys and girls are pressured to conform to gender stereotypes; boys pressured to conform to macho images, girls as sexually available objects.14 Arguably, when people talk about self-esteem, what they really mean is lack of a valuable self. A girl gets pregnant to get love: a boy tries to extract love to stop feeling bad about himself. As I write this, a British Olympic hero demonstrates this particularly disturbing aspect of contemporary Western culture. The feminist revolution was supposed to establish far less transient things than merely having the perfect figure and manicured looks. Yet Rebecca Adlington, who won two Olympic Gold medals, the accolade for high achievement in swimming, publicly dissolved as she compared herself to a model who had ‘Barbie-doll looks’. The 24-year-old had already endured some terrible slurs about her

64  A Question of Worth looks. ‘I wasn’t trying to be a model but pretty much every single week on Twitter I get somebody commenting on the way I look’, she commented.15 Meanwhile, a high-profile case about breast implants being filled with industrial-scale silicon was going through the French courts (leading to the manufacturer receiving a four-year jail sentence).16 The widespread availability of cosmetic surgery means that a perfect face and body is achievable by anyone who wants to sculpt themselves into somebody else. In the status stakes, success, money and high achievement are not enough as measures of being externally valued. Society’s interest and control over women’s bodies means that contemporary Western women must reinvent themselves to conform. It is a tale as old as time. In an era of social media scrutiny, the result is insecurity and low-self-esteem (value). ‘Because you’re worth it!’ – the strapline on a L’Oréal advert cleverly plugged into the quest underlying the pressure to look good and fit in. It affects men as well as women. To have a body like Adonis and look like the latest footballer celebrity sends messages about the kind of people who are highly prized. Witness the now fashionable demand for cosmetic surgeries in Western societies. Girls are forced to grow up at an unnatural pace with the result that sexualism and materialism is harming emotional well-being. Half of girls in the UK said one of their peers suffered from depression; two in five knew someone who self-harmed; and one in three had a friend with an eating disorder.17 It is as if feminism never happened. Women are judged and judge themselves by being pretty. This is how the prevailing ideology of our time, the social representation of youthfulness, recruits its subjects. Body modification is a way of enacting cultural reality, making the experience of embodiment problematic, objectified in relation to others. As Lyon and Brabalet warn, in the current configuration of the market economy, the body becomes a possession which, through its appearance, provides opportunities for social and professional advancement: appearance, display and the management of impression are the capital goods of the consumer economy.18

Contemporary life is marked by the commodification of leisure. Even leisure becomes a product to be consumed. The recipients thus position and value themselves according to the stringent tests of a socially-valued

1st Symptom: Private Lives and Performance Anxiety  65 leisure and reward system. We are, according to the social critique of the Frankfurt School, as much alienated in our consumption and leisure as in our work.19 At stake is whether people feel themselves to have worth-inthemselves, intrinsic value, rather than what is dependent on what people earn or do. It is about the accumulation of things and, therefore, ourselves as objects. Within the culture of his day, Marx saw this clearly. He argued for a notion of ‘commodity fetishism’ in which items are seen as objects independent of our subjectivity.20 Goods are valued as symbols of happiness, their possession making the difference between the complete or the incomplete.21 Faced with a sense of devaluation, the injured psyche feeds a desire for consolation, whether through drugs, alcohol, self-injury or strategies of addiction. The deficit must be made up somehow; empty space either covered over or comforted. At all costs, by any means, the void must be avoided. In a culture where highly prized people are the celebrities, the significance of significance is changing. It is liquid. Many writers have commented on the instability inherent in the construction of identities. What it means to be a man or a woman has also been in a huge flux. Our sense of a valuable self depends on the value others place upon us. ‘No one feels an unending certainty of being loved and valued for who we are […] but sometimes as the extension of someone’s hopes or as a means of demonstrating their importance.’22 Celebrity culture sells us an image of the people we want to be like, undermining the stability of ‘value-in-oneself ’. One sees these tensions in the consulting room. Because one is attractive and has a lot of money, one becomes a marketing symbol and a basis for short-term projects of favour and emulation. It’s common to feel, ‘I could be that celeb and be on the front of that magazine!’ And that externalises our value. Reality TV now means everyone can have their 15 minutes. In summary, humans derive value in a variety of ways. Significance is key to this quest. It lies at the heart of consumer transformations, which otherwise can seem to be negative. When things that once were fixed start to shift, people have to respond creatively or defensively. Under the liquid conditions of modern life, social forms and norms rarely have time to solidify and cannot be a frame of reference.23 A sense of being worthwhile can emanate from worthwhile projects we are involved with. However,

66  A Question of Worth a sense of value that depends on income, talents and achievements will oscillate according to the un-predictability of circumstances, testing how far a sense of ‘I am acceptable – full stop’ is embedded within the psyche. We are hostage to those who hold a negative opinion of us.24 The problem with conspicuous consumption, commodification and other forms of self-improvement is that they run up against the reaction the human subject seems to have against being regarded as a commodity. By their very nature, these sources of value in liquid modernity end up devaluing human subjects at the point where personal and social life meets. Consuming material goods or self-improvement projects are not ends in themselves. They stand proxy as in a mirror to reflect back a greater or lesser sense of perceiving oneself as worthy. The circularity is surely unhealthy. Bolstering self-esteem through accumulation of material items writes a bigger cheque than it can deliver. Consuming this product lures its customers with the tantalising prospect of becoming like the self-confident, happy people depicted in the advertisement. At the heart of consumerism is the quest for significance. Yet at the heart of the false promise is not authentic relationship; it is a fake mirror.

6 2nd Symptom: Power Imbalance – the Sunny Side of the Street ‘Today, the five richest families in the UK are wealthier than the bottom 20 per cent of the entire population. That’s just five households with more money than 12.6 million people.’ – Oxfam UK, ‘A Tale of Two Britains: Inequality in the UK’1

The year 2016, according to an Oxfam Study, is the year in which the combined wealth of the richest 1 per cent will overtake that of the other 99 per cent.2 Extreme economic inequality is threatening to undo much of the progress made on the millennium goals and their aim of ensuring that millions more people have food on the table, a decent education and health care. It is to inequality that we now turn as another symptom of capitalism on the couch. So far, we have considered how the restless urge to keep up and look good is a strong feature of our way of life, characterised by productivity and output. Our second marker of the way capitalism fuels human problems is that it generates vastly unequal rewards. That is to put it dispassionately. Today just 85 people now own as much wealth as half the world’s population, while nearly a billion people can barely afford to feed their families. In the lived experience of contemporary people, this matters and it matters at

68  A Question of Worth various levels. That is the practical question, rooted invariably in relative poverty. There is also an important theoretical question as to WHY it matters if rewards are spread unevenly and is such inequality the cause of social ills. A man in the parish remembers growing up in 1940s’ Bristol. Naming the estate he grew up in, he remembers the contrast between his (poorer) neighbourhood and the middle-class housing on the opposite side of the road where the estate bordered on to private housing. ‘They had the sunny side of the street’, he recalled ruefully. ‘We lived in the shadows.’3 And that is the problem with inequality. It marks the divide between those who live, in terms of resources, on the sunny side of the street and those who dwell amid greater invisibility in the shadows. In the summer of 2014, the world was emerging into the sunnier side of the street. Who or what was to blame for the economic misery? Was it profligate governments … bankers … the complexity of financial instruments or financialisation … human frailty … predatory investors … institutional failure? Were the regulators asleep at the wheel? Was it false theory and failure of policy? Was austerity really necessary after all? As M. Blyth has asserted, austerity was not imposed by an outside body such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF); it was a domestic political decision.4 In May 2014, Lynn Forester de Rothschild organised an international and high-level meeting, the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism, in London on that very subject. Fund managers representing one-third of the world’s investable income descended on the capital on a mission to try to solve capitalism’s current problems. They joined 250 delegates from 37 countries and 35 business sectors, representing assets under management of about US $30 trillion (£18 trillion). The conference was convened under the banner: ‘The Will To Make Capitalism Fairer; The Means To Do It’. It claimed to be an ‘unprecedented’ conference with only one purpose: to ‘find practical ways to renew the capitalist system, making it an inclusive engine of economic opportunity and shared prosperity’. Capitalism has undoubtedly been an engine of economic opportunity and prosperity. No other economic order could have lifted 200 million people out of poverty in China at the end of the twentieth century without enormous violence. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, along with other keynote speakers, including Prince Charles, criticised the bonus culture of the financial world as she

2nd Symptom: Power Imbalance – the Sunny Side of the Street  69 urged effective action to tackle too-big-to-fail banks. She called for the G20 to pursue pay reforms, ‘because the behaviour of the financial sector has not changed fundamentally in a number of dimensions since the financial crisis’. Lagarde pulled no punches. The 85 richest people on the planet, some of whom were in her audience, could fit into a double-decker bus. Yet between them they owned as much wealth as half the world’s population – 3.5 billion people.5 There is no doubt that the world witnesses wealth inequalities on a huge scale. The per capita national income of the richest country is 200 times that of the poorest. The richest 1 per cent of the UK population is now wealthier than the poorest 50 per cent put together – a disparity that has been growing steadily since the 1970s, and on current trends will widen even further.6 In post-industrial England, homelessness reduces life expectancy by 30 years. That is on a par with Afghanistan. The effect of a health postcode lottery is that every underground station you pass through going east out of central London reduces life-expectancy by one year! Globally, 2.6 billion people try to survive on less than US $2 a day. Whether on a global or national level indices of inequality keep rising.

The Left Behind The inequality boom is certainly a feature of the times. Curiously, it took place soon after the rise in equality that is one of the most far-reaching of the social changes since the 1960s, when my generation came into political consciousness. One way of reading the last 200 years in the West is the long journey towards emancipation – the emancipation not just of the working classes but of women, the disabled, ethnic minorities, colonial subjects and those of diverse sexual orientation. The white Anglo-Saxon male version of the world and its hold on the levers of power gradually yielded to a different reality. As the tide of rule by a few Europeans receded, more and more social groups pursued their dream of inclusion, equality and a place in the sun. They were no longer prepared to be written-off. The view had taken hold that equality could not be held in the abstract. It was no longer possible to affirm the worth of people in general but not give value to women, working class

70  A Question of Worth or black people. The fight against prejudice was not just about demanding equal rights but about recognising equal status. It was about the dispossessed refusing to be exploited or continue in a lifetime of toil, regaining dignity and asserting a new identity as part of creating a more equal society. As the era of equality began to unfold, several important books were written. The Labour MP Anthony Crosland published his Future of Socialism in 1956. It pointed to the triumph of redistributive justice and equality under the conditions of transformed capitalism. Marxism was redundant; social democracy was in the ascendancy. Mass consumer abundance meant that resources were gradually being equalised. Because everyone deserves an equal share of the national prosperity, you end up getting what you deserve (as does everyone!). Regulated capitalism would see to that.7 Two years later came another seminal book. Michael Young narrated The Rise of the Meritocracy.8 It was dystopian. A triumphant meritocracy had flattened class distinctions only to replace them with new distinctions rooted in educational attainment. Drastic inequalities remained but could now be justified. Merit perpetuated inequality. You get what you deserve based on your talents – on your IQ. After the crisis of social democracy in the 1970s, equality went out of fashion. Socialism is now passé, a dinosaur that has been replaced with the far more nimble market mammals. Before the advent of smartphones, the view took hold that markets are smart compared with the villains of the narrative: well-intentioned governments. Despite new forms of power and wealth, meritocracy has now become a positive word. Light-touch regulation was associated with prosperity taking off (for some). Today, we are seeing the return of the inequality theme. The postwar social democracy project resulted in a consensus that redistributive taxation was both necessary and fair in order to pay for education, health and welfare for all. Most Western democracies spend about 25–30 per cent of national income on education, health, welfare and pensions. The glaring inequalities of the past seemed to have narrowed. Then once again they widened. In 1981, the richest fifth of teenagers in the UK were three times more likely to go to university than the poorest fifth. By 2001, the gap had widened to them being five times more likely. Inequality in fact widened under the New Labour project. Gone were the days when manufacturing and

2nd Symptom: Power Imbalance – the Sunny Side of the Street  71 mining industries meant there were plenty of jobs for everyone. In boom times, political parties seemed relaxed about it. In times of bust, the issue of inequality became more pressing.9 Before the economic car crash took hold, a bestseller had marshalled statistics to prove that unequal societies are unhappier. In rich societies, the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. Large inequalities of income in a society have often been regarded as divisive. However, thirty years’ research demonstrates that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them – the well-off as well as the poor. Wilkinson and Pickett endeavoured to prove that almost every modern social and environmental problem – ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations – is more likely in a less equal society.10 It was a thesis that proved controversial. Central to the counter-charge was that ‘The Spirit-Level’ conflated causation with correlation. Just because phenomena are associated with certain factors does not mean that they have been caused by them. With an intentional reference to Marx, Capital is built on more than a decade of research by Thomas Piketty, and a handful of other economists, amassing an immense store of data.11 The grand theme is historical changes in how income and wealth are concentrated. A century ago, despite industrialisation slowly contributing to rising wages for workers, West European society remained highly unequal. Private wealth was overwhelmingly in the hands of rich families who sat astride a hierarchical and mostly closed class structure. The impact of economic depression and the wars of the twentieth century changed things. A combination of high taxes, inflation, bankruptcies, and the growth of the welfare states had the effect of shrinking wealth dramatically. Mid-century social democracies became more egalitarian as both income and wealth were re-distributed. However, wealth is now reasserting itself; indeed, it is becoming as significant to modern economies and is up at levels not seen since before World War I.12 Wealth is so concentrated, Piketty argues, that a large segment of society is unaware of its reality (though public obsession with the glitz and glamour of the uber-rich might seem to belie this). In the light of the stealthy march and concentration of wealth, Piketty advocates a grand theory concerning capital and inequality. The basic proposition is that wealth grows faster than economic output. Faster economic

72  A Question of Worth growth will diminish the importance of wealth in a society; slower growth will increase it. Population growth that slows global growth will make capital more dominant. In short, unequal rewards are a feature of capitalism; it is incapable of spreading the wealth around. The Piketty prescription was that governments intervene, adopting a global tax on wealth to prevent soaring inequality generating economic and political instability down the road. The modern version of Das Kapital has its critics. Are the statistics on which Piketty builds his case reliable? Will the future look like the past? Should we not assume that it will be correspondingly harder to earn a good return on wealth if there is more of it? For the most part, today’s millionaires acquire wealth through work rather than inheritance. Others contend that Piketty’s redistributive policy recommendations are ideological rather than driven by economics. In short, his diagnosis is largely correct, but the prescription is flawed. Yet lavish praise has also been heaped upon this contemporary reprise of Marx. ‘Piketty is in no doubt that the current level of rising wealth inequality, set to grow still further, now imperils the very future of capitalism. He has proved it’, argued Will Hutton.13 Andrew Hussey, a British historian, called the book ‘epic’, ‘groundbreaking’ and argues that it proves ‘scientifically the Occupy Movement was correct in its assertion that ‘capitalism isn’t working’.14 One former senior economist at the World Bank called the book ‘one of the watershed books in economic thinking’.15

Mind the Gap When there is no growth, ‘responsible capitalism’ becomes an issue. When people get little out of the system, its inequality becomes accentuated. J. P. Morgan, the classic American financier, reportedly said that in the interests of fairness, the ratio of pay of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) to the median worker should be about 20 to 1. The multiple of top executive pay to the median was 25 to 1 throughout most of the twentieth century, then from the mid-1980s, it rocketed to 150 to 1 (a six-fold rise). In 2011 alone, amid recession, the pay of the UK FTSE 100 top executives had risen by 49 per cent. In the 1980s, the ratio of top executives’ to average salary levels in the organisation was 30 to 1. By 2012, it was 110 to 1. In the US, the ratio was about 500 to 1.16

2nd Symptom: Power Imbalance – the Sunny Side of the Street  73 Certainly, what has happened to income inequality puzzles economists – why are top salaries racing away while wages at the other end of the scale are bumping along the bottom? The usual method of measuring disparity in income is the Gini coefficient. On a scale of 0 to 1 (where 1 is the highest measure of inequality), inequality increased rapidly in the 1980s, with the Gini rising from 0.25 in 1979 to 0.34 in 1991. During the 1990s and 2000s, inequality reached a plateau and then rose to reach a peak in 2007–8, when the Gini coefficient reached 0.36. The UK was not alone in seeing rises in this. Most industrialised countries saw increases in inequality between the mid- 1980s and the late 2000s. Economists are not sure why this is so. Is it the result of different levels of education or the result possibly of pressures shaped by globalisation as developing countries have more unskilled labour while countries such as the UK focus on skilled enterprise? Is it the result of development of the ‘global superstar’ phenomenon where firms will pay very high salaries to attract the best on offer as does the world of sport and entertainment? The reality may be that pay differentials are more acceptable; social norms have changed. Yet we are still left with the tension between hierarchy of income and the way this impacts hierarchy of (felt) value. As the cover design of a recent book by Gornick and Jäntti on the way economic disparities impact on the middle classes illustrates, it is like a grossly unequal distribution of peanuts between two piles.17 Nevertheless, although the strengths of an economic system turn into weaknesses when it falls and vice versa, there is no gainsaying that the human cost of inequality is considerable. It may be that the Anglo-Saxon economic model is more prone to peaks and troughs but there is a price to pay in terms of relative deprivation if it brings growth for a few only. In the UK, there is a widening gap between the top 10 per cent who earn more than £40,000 and the rest. This creates social worlds that are moving further apart. Average incomes have barely changed. The poor have fallen behind. Inequality is ‘profoundly socially dysfunctional’.18 Why should it be that some live on the sunny side of the street and some seem condemned to live in the shadows? Many Western countries are deeply unfair places. For evidence of that, witness how the way we organise economy and society brings sharply uneven returns, over-rewarding the elite while leaving many at poverty levels. The cry of the Occupy Movement

74  A Question of Worth that rose up in 2011 in the wake of the recession, had as its commanding slogan, ‘we are the 99%’. Yet in the US, it is not a question of the top 1 per cent racing away; it is the top 0.1 per cent that now own as much wealth as the 90 per cent of the population below them.19 According to the Resolution Foundation, the UK has among the highest proportion of full-time low-wage workers in the OECD countries. As I write: A recent report ‘Using Ethical Investment To Close The Gap’, highlighted how CEOs of FTSE 100 companies earn on average 130 times what the average employee earns (contrasted with a ratio of 10 to 1 in 1970).20 Just 15 of these companies pay the Living Wage, which was a growing campaign concerned that the benefits system should not be the main source of income growth for those in low-paid jobs. The Second Annual Report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission sought to make the UK a Living Wage country.21

The Commission also called for the abolition of unpaid internships. Social mobility is on a downward slide. There is less room at the top. We still need a good theory as to why inequality matters. Patently it is grossly unfair if the wealth of a powerful minority grows greater while the poorest people get left behind. The moral case seems unequivocal, though it does depend on one’s theory of justice. The philosopher John Rawls’s notion of justice proposes that a level playing field is the one people would surely opt for under the conditions of a veil of ignorance about their life chances beforehand – left with few resources, it could be you! As Rawls argues in his theory of justice, it is the notion of the common good: ‘Government is assumed to aim at the common good, that is, maintaining conditions and achieving objectives that are similarly to everyone’s advantage’.22 There is also the economic distortion to which economist Joseph Stiglitz refers.23 A less well-regulated economy is a consequence of a growing disparity between rich and poor through financialisation and rent seeking (the rich taking up more space in the economy and squeezing the poor). To work properly, the economy needs the 99 per cent to buy and supply the demand for products. How far inequality damages people is another matter. The real point about why unequal economic returns leads to social strain that is unsustainable is that people are overconcerned about the shape of the

2nd Symptom: Power Imbalance – the Sunny Side of the Street  75 distribution curve. Surprisingly, inequality is not on the list of factors people say is important to them in terms of well-being. The World Happiness Report, in recent years, is quite clear on this.24 What matters to people is not so much the shape of the distribution curve as how it affects them in everyday life. In short, it is poverty people are concerned about rather than inequality when they say they are feeling the financial squeeze. Nevertheless, relative effects do matter. Beyond obvious material aspects of ensuring that the proceeds are divided fairly, growing inequality generates social distance. In a global economy where success is based on how much one has (whether of wealth, status or social position), the have-nots become more aware of having less value. They feel their position relative to dominant markers of success; compared to those who live on the sunny side of the street, they inhabit the shadowlands of being worth-less. A proposal for how relative effects affect lived experience will have to be the subject of a follow-on volume.

Inequality New and Old Whatever the concerns have been about inequality in the past, as the Fourth Industrial Revolution gets under way, it will pose disturbing questions about how evenly economic jam will be spread in the future. The mix of economic transformation and social strain that characterised previous waves of industrialisation is being recast. This technology future will bring massive change in the way we live. Concerns about the risks posed by computers and the internet are not new. In 1996, John Perry Barlow, a cyber-libertarian, published a Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, warning governments that the internet was a democratic project they could not control. He was only partly right. Governments attempt to police cyberspace the whole time. Issues to do with control of cyberspace, dangers of the digital world affecting the brains of young people, desensitising them to violence and atrophying social skills have often worried parents. Susan Greenfield writes from the perspective of neuroscience that the rise of the worldwide web, social networking and video games poses considerable risks to human behaviour and serious thinking.25

76  A Question of Worth Society is re-engineering the world of work. A lot has happened since sociologist Daniel Bell wrote about the coming of post-industrial society, describing a society in which knowledge played a greater role in the new service industries that were steadily eclipsing manufacturing. More people were now working in education and health. These necessary inputs into economic activity were what economists were calling ‘human capital’ (by definition, an economically loaded term). Today, the decline in the proportion of factory workers is being reworked in such a way that operating a factory is likely to involve high-tech work whereas the white-collar workers are facing the dramatically stealthy displacement of work by machines. The roles are reversed. In The New Division of Labor,26 Levy and Murnane described the contrast between human and digital labour. The classic idea of the division of labour that meant industrial-era tasks could be handled systematically was that people should do those jobs where they have a comparative advantage. In the highly organised bureaucratic systems that emerged, people and computers were indivisible.27 People were the computers, adding up accounting systems so that profit and loss could be calculated and doing those routine administrative tasks that delivered the public services of their time. Back then in 2004 Levy and Murnane were, however, optimistic about the red lines between what people could do and what was possible only with automation. Cars were one area of society that needed the human component. It took Google only a few years to develop driverless cars. By 2014, they were ready to go into production. On the horizon now, Brynjolfsson and McAfee, an economist and scientist respectively at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, argue, humanity is being driven into uncharted territory. Innovation and technology have always been a motor for progress. What is taking place before our eyes is that the growth of technology is both exponential and digital. As middle-class jobs disappear, the gap is set to widen considerably between those whose skill set is enhanced by technology and those competing for the chance to wait tables or undertake other low-grade work.28 There can be little doubt now about the great divide being opened up. Between a skilled and wealthy few and the rest of society, a great gulf is looming. Brynjolfsson and McAfee ponder whether human workers can upgrade their skills fast enough to compete with rapid automation. Gifted, creative and

2nd Symptom: Power Imbalance – the Sunny Side of the Street  77 empathic individuals will always make their mark. They are being empowered. It is the unskilled by the standards of the future who will lose out. Owners of capital and proprietors of innovation will remain winners. Labourers with only modest skills would be vulnerable. This stands in marked contrast with previous waves of industrialisation. There may not be a job bonanza this time. Tasks that require complex communication such as speech and language recognition are gradually yielding to technology. The future is robotics, 3D printing and the reinvention of publishing and retailing such items as books, music and indeed everything. Such technical change is rapidly making jobs redundant. The skill set shaped by new technology will be different to what has gone before.29 Digital products and services have huge economies of scale. We are entering the era of near zero marginal cost, where the additional cost of providing the extra unit of something is near negligible. Jeremy Rifkin suggests that this very fact signifies the eclipse of capitalism.30 Seven to eight billion people in a wired-up world represents a huge resource for improving global society. In the twenty-first-century digital economy, there will be enormous increases in the quantity of wealth – but will the bounty be spread? Where does the imperative for digital access leave those that, at present, stand outside the new world as much as craftsmen were faced with change they did not understand at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution? As computers learn to think, to do the work of human brains much as machines took over the labour of human hands in the first Industrial Revolution, are we creating a greater division between the haves and have-nots? In big data economies, are we creating new markets, for instance in governments selling our tax data or health indices? Commodification of big data is an issue that is set to grow. Yet for indications of the way that the economic transformations ahead already affect society, we need look no further than the debates about digital inclusion.31 Inevitably, the relationship between the citizen and the state is becoming digital. The role that technology can play in supporting adults with learning difficulties is beginning to be appreciated. It can enable disadvantaged learners to access opportunities – as long as they access the technology. The expansive role of digital inclusion goes beyond whether clients have a laptop computer or smartphone or whether they go to their library. Technology enables those with learning difficulties to tell their stories or greet their

78  A Question of Worth advocacy workers and have a say in what is said – about them! Yet for all those who have or can find a voice, there are many who are either ignored or invisible. Access to new, integrated benefit of universal credit is unabashedly digital. Many elderly people put their younger friends to shame by adapting enthusiastically to technology such as search engines or Skype. Yet as a Carnegie Trust Report pointed out, ‘there remain many citizens who do not have access to benefits. Those without access to digital technology are suffering increasing levels of disadvantage as a result of this exclusion’.32 At the time of writing, some 20 per cent of UK households do not have even a basic internet service, 23 million people do not have skills to access an online service and nearly 8 million have never used the internet (of which 3 million live in social housing).33 Does that mean we are disenfranchising many who cannot keep up with the need to be online in the world of today and tomorrow? Should we redefine work so that non-computer tasks are at a premium? Does that enable those high in skills of empathy and creativity to flourish? What does the rolling tide of automation do to the technologically unskilled? Are new forms of inequalities rising? All we have for the future are questions. We simply do not know what we are dealing with. What does seem clear is that economic inequality is contributing decisively to financial instability, wasted human capital, lower well-being and mental health, domination of politics by an elite few and voter apathy. Such transformations in our economic and social system require a reframing of its classic anxieties: anxieties based on the way our client, capitalism on the couch, is deeply unfair in how it treats those caught up with its partiality.

7 3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat ‘There is a lumpen proletariat […] in all towns quite distinct from the industrial proletariat. It is a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all sorts, living off the garbage of society.’ – Karl Marx1 ‘The most distinctive characteristic of poverty today is the very high number of working people who are also poor.’ – Joseph Rowntree Foundation2 ‘Why don’t homeless people do something to help themselves?’ – Emmaus UK (charity) publicity leaflet3 ‘If disrupted children, often living in abusive backgrounds, are told they are no good, they will play up in school and expect you to kick them around. If you tell them they are worth something, they don’t believe you!’ – A youth worker reporting his experience of working with schools in Hackney4 ‘I think we’ve looked at a little bit of Britain that is grim, which is stark, which is about families that carry from one generation to the next. This hasn’t suddenly come about overnight. We are talking about generation after generation of things like abuse and violence that then beget another generation of teenage mothers, that then get in with the wrong types of fellas, who then are violent, who then bring up more children and then, hey presto, they say

80  A Question of Worth it all started out with our Johnny when he was eight. He was playing up in school and they think he’s the problem and actually when you talk to John you realise that child was neither the beginning of their problems nor indeed is he really their problem.’ – Louise Casey, Head of the UK Government Troubled Families Programme5

The Wire ran for five series. It was a hugely successful TV show set in Baltimore. Hailed by some as a Greek morality play for our times, it coloured in an underworld of policemen and drug dealers, those pursuing liberation and some sort of redemption if that was on offer. The show spoke of how humans had become superfluous to industrial society. There were in fact two Baltimores: the one of the middle-class areas and the one outside their gates – violent, poor and unloved. ‘Two nations’ has been a theme to do with the haves and the have-nots, rich and poor. In the UK, the idea of one-nation conservatism has reflected the ideals of those who wanted to close that gap. A lady in the parish is a carer. She is on the minimum wage. Not owning a car, she is compelled to go to her first job in the day by bus. After a time with an elderly client, off she goes again by bus to her second appointment. And so it goes on throughout the day. The trouble is that she is not paid for the time between clients, for the bus fares. It is grinding her down. A single problem torpedoes the amount set aside for anything that makes life worthwhile. Bad attitudes among those in low-wage jobs are unsurprising given the lives they lead. Ill-health and depression stalk their lives. Yet the main problem with being poor in a wealthy world does not lie here, according to Linda Tirado, author of Hand to Mouth, an account of being poor in America: it is the assumption by those who are better off that the poor are just not trying hard enough. It is an existential threat to self-esteem. Over the years, a succession of books, documentaries or reality TV shows has taken the wraps off what it is like to be poor. Being squeezed hard economically is not just about juggling zero-hour contracts and low-grade work, poor housing or having to go without or cut down on basic necessities. It is often

3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat  81 the experience of being treated as poor or long-term unemployed. It is being devalued and despised by the culture you live in.6 In our look at what contemporary society does to people, using the rhetorical device of putting ‘capitalism on the couch’, we have seen that our client sparks off huge performance anxiety. An obsession with speed and productivity is out of control. The pressure to look good and keep up, arising from sexualisation and commercialisation, bears down on the recruits of late capitalism. We have noted also that our client is deeply unfair. Unequal economic rewards are generated routinely and in a way that is almost certainly intrinsic to the system. The reason why this matters though, moral outrage apart, probably is less to do with what people feel about the income distribution curve than the daily experience of feeling the squeeze, struggling to make ends meet. Human landscapes are shaped by the struggle for human value and worth. This epic pursuit takes place against the many factors in social life that devalue the human and indeed shows up in that dark background. In what follows, it must be stressed that although our economic and social arrangements create losers as well as winners, late capitalism does not just leave everyone on or under the poverty line barely able to cope. Some, maybe the lucky few, are able to find routes out of poverty. To be sure, human devaluation is a villain in the drama of poverty for reasons we will explore. But the way the value of the human is pursued in everyday life and in social processes means that under the right circumstances, people can escape poverty – effectively revaluing themselves. This is highly politicised. Human devaluation is sustained by rude, crude ways of naming. To both left and right, poverty is a sin. To the right of politics, those who are on benefits are to be distinguished from people who work hard and struggle to do the right thing. To the left, the poor are the victims of injustice. Through neither prism is there much real agency. In themselves, those in poverty are perceived to be neither important nor interesting. They become a collectivised ‘blob’. These factors were highlighted in the heated debate that surrounded sweeping changes to the UK welfare state after 2010. Overall spending on benefits had risen three times in real terms from what it was in the late 1970s, when Thatcher became prime minister. Her death in April 2013 led many

82  A Question of Worth to recall a hugely iconic figure who had stood for people taking responsibility for themselves. That same month, a benefits cap was introduced. No household would receive more than the average working wage. Benefits were raised by less than the inflation rate – a cut in real terms. A cap on housing benefit of £400 a week would force some claimants to move to cheaper households. Housing benefit would be docked by 14 per cent if they had a spare room; 25 per cent if they had two. Labour dubbed this a ‘bedroom tax’.7 The criteria for disability claims would be tightened. A universal credit was introduced in pilot form, designed to merge different benefits, tax credits and allowances into one payment. As a TUC (Trades Union Congress) paper argued, however, these welfare reforms had an especially significant impact on the most marginalised. Those already living in poverty and insecurity were at greater risk. It was not just the unemployed or those who had been reliant on disability benefits due to mental health problems. This time, it was those in employment, working insecure zero-hours or variable contracts that were hit hard. The requirement to report changes in financial circumstances online in ‘real time’ would accentuate the risk of being exploited and disenfranchised for those who found the internet hard to access. Indebtedness, homelessness and family breakdown loomed large.8 The CEO of a charity that had worked in situations of poverty in Birmingham for a century observed: ‘I am stunned by the level of desperation and deprivation that is going on within communities […] the most vulnerable people seem to have no choice. The biggest and immediate issue is obviously welfare reforms, which is impacting massively around here’.9 At a theoretical level, poverty is a complex issue. We noted early, while discussing the new forms of social classification outlined by the Great British Survey, that about 15 per cent of the population form the ‘precariat’, who experience a fragile economic time of it (see Chapter 2). Poverty depends, though, on how it is measured. For instance, at the time of editing this (June 2015), child poverty is flat-lining, based on what has become the customary index for relative poverty of earning less than 60 per cent of median income. Relative poverty can mean a race to the bottom. Median earnings can fall and therefore relative poverty falls. The lived experience in parish and consulting room puts this kind of statement into perspective, however.

3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat  83 Poverty measured by how everyone else is doing is only part of it. But at heart it is from their absolute sense of who they are and what they can afford. PSE UK, 2012 was the most comprehensive survey of poverty and social exclusion ever undertaken in the UK. Around one-third of households faced significant difficulties. The necessities for all households were heating, damp-free housing, clothing and sufficient food. Yet in the UK of 2012, 2.3 million households, in which 1.5 million children lived, could not afford to heat living areas of their home. Taking such housing necessities as heating, damp-free home and adequate decoration, in the austerity Britain of 2012, 13 million people (aged 16 and over) lived in inadequate housing conditions (around 3 million more people had substandard dwellings than in the 1990s). At least 1 million children and 5.5 million adults went without one or more basic clothing necessities; a warm winter coat, with properly fitting shoes. Twelve per cent of young people aged 18 to 25 and 21 per cent of the unemployed could not afford appropriate clothes for job interviews.10 Poverty showed itself in other ways. In nearly all of the households where there were children going without one or more items, adults in the household were cutting back on their own food: in 93 per cent of these households at least one adult often ‘skimped’ on their own food. Well over half a million children lived in families that could not afford to feed them properly. The age of austerity pushed increasing numbers of people below the poverty line. Even in a rich world economy like the UK, more than one in four children live in poverty.11 To people who have not lived the experience of poverty, it is hard to grasp what it is like continually having to struggle to feed one’s family. Poverty means to live in a freezing flat, not being able to hold birthday parties or go out. It shows up in the things you can or cannot do. Child poverty blights childhoods. According to the UK Child Poverty Action Group, over 60 per cent of families in the bottom income bracket would like, but cannot afford, to take their children on holiday for one week a year. Child poverty has long-lasting effects. By 16, children receiving free school meals achieve 1.7 grades lower at GCSE than their wealthier peers. Leaving school with fewer qualifications translates into lower earnings later. Lack of jobs, stagnating wages and increased living costs combine with spending cuts to place considerable pressure on the poorest in society.

84  A Question of Worth Food banks and pensioner fuel poverty had become common in the UK by 2012.12 Payday loans were a political issue; usurious interest rates without credit checks meant the vulnerable were being driven deeper into debt to pay for basic needs. Before the recession, in the UK there were 300,000 taking payday loans. By 2014, that had risen to nearer 5 million. Legalised loan sharks knew that many of their borrowers would never repay. Those who could repay get charged such a rate of interest that the bad debts can be compensated for. At the opening of the Church Credit Champions Network (CCCN) in May 2014, an investment banker, Hector Sant, pointed out that 7 million people were now using high-cost credit providers. The debt of the average UK household had risen to nearly £13,000, not taking mortgages into account. In evidence from a network of debt counsellors, 36 per cent of clients said they had contemplated suicide; testimony to the way financial pressure had overwhelmed the defences of the self and reached inside the psyche.13 Our focus here is not on the statistics that could be replicated across rich nations, and even more so among poorer countries. Non-material aspects of poverty illustrate the dichotomy between different forms of value. Deficits in income and financial value are exacerbated by the social valuing that writes off the poor. Those trapped in poverty have to endure public rhetoric which confuses and conflates them. The result is that the hardcore poverty in evidence in many a social housing estate becomes a shield for the great majority of those who get up early and are prepared to work hard. The distribution of value through the externality of the economy is experienced internally and subjectively. Arguably, the sense of self and of value (or its deficit) is the means by which economic and social distress is mediated into the psyche. Under austerity conditions, ‘scroungers and benefit cheats’ were defined in opposition to ‘us’. Those whom society looks down on feel they are carrying the burden. Here are some voices from a Focus Group that underline this:14 Advocacy is really important. Someone going with you, speaking up for you. You notice how differently they speak to someone speaking up for you. All that affects your self-worth. You’re not important but this person helping you gets treated totally differently.

3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat  85 What would make a difference? To get back to work […] being treated not as a number but a person […] being part of a community. Being given respect is a big issue for me. Given respect, your own self-respect comes up again. The DWP [Department of Work and Pensions] now have the right to sanction you. If you give them the wrong address by mistake, it stays on your record for three years. Suspicion too means you’re not given self-worth or value. It’s different to not being given dignity. Poverty makes you feel marginalised. Self-worth? You’re hanging on by a small thread! You lack confidence if meeting new people.

Such voices, that could be multiplied across the Western world and extrapolated across the world, highlight what Robert Walker at the University of Oxford has called ‘the shame of poverty’.15 New ideas about poverty stress that it is fundamentally an issue of human rights. Material inadequacy is not its main feature. But what exactly is poverty? Poverty is about social and power relationships and addressing it requires an attention both to dignity and respect whereby people can advance their rights and their claims. As economist Amartya Sen argued, poverty is the failure to achieve capabilities of a minimum level sufficient to give them dignity.16 This is fundamentally about individuals and groups discovering their value. Or as a study of extreme poverty observed about those furthest from established norms: [T]hese people have been disqualified, demonised and degraded to the point of being designated as having no value to the world. The radical inferiority conferred on them meant that victims were no longer considered fully-fledged human beings but as subhuman, the scum of the earth with no rights.17

‘Shame’ very much features in lived experience when the complex lives of those living in poverty are laid bare. In-depth interviews of some 40 people

86  A Question of Worth using food banks, as well as data from many more respondents (more than 900 at three food banks around the country and a further 178 clients in Tower Hamlets) showed that most users were facing ‘an immediate, acute, financial crisis’. Crucial among these interviewees was that going to a food bank was ‘unnatural […] embarrassing or shameful’.18 The stigma is considerable; another way of framing the shame of poverty, and perhaps the prevalence of shame generally as a social emotion is to do with having one’s value diminished.

Malign Circuits To be clear, dysfunctionality and destructive or unhelpful behaviour patterns can take place anywhere and in any social grouping or class. It is when layers of such things as family instability, poor mental health, lack of educational attainment and often drug or alcohol addictions are super-imposed on low income that malign circuits of poverty are set up. These factors are strongly associated with low income and resources but are by no means the sole cause or result. Income measures are insufficient markers of disadvantage. What is needed is a richer definition of poverty. The move from personal and moral explanations of unemployment to economic and structural causes is one of the main features of social analysis in the twentieth century. Yet it is also true that there are sections of society who do, on the face of it, experience recurrent poverty, seem trapped in a culture of no-work or low pay, do not participate in other forms of civil society and are content to draw benefits; hardened into a welfare dependency that in many cases runs alongside drug and alcohol dependency. On some hardcore social housing estates, someone who holds down a regular job is regarded as a curiosity. Children arrive at school on Monday and weep. Entire generations have never had a job. Any father is characterised by his absence. Abuse and neglect are family members. Disadvantage comes in a package; unemployment, drugs, domestic violence are often familiar companions. Inner city areas and some council estates are ‘a receptacle for problems’, for destructive behaviour patterns.19 This is a sad reality to anyone who has lived and worked there. Yet dysfunctionality is part of a very particular sub-culture. It is not to be conflated with being poor. How

3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat  87 micro-cultures and family systems shape behaviour is a large question we cannot address here. Explaining poverty in terms of economic and social conditions (the left-wing approach) does not go far enough. Nor will it do to explain poverty as a failure by individuals (the usual right-wing theory). A mediating factor is needed which is often overlooked. That is, the role of family systems, ‘constellations’ as they are often called, or micro-cultures. The lived experience of poverty is embedded in these sub-cultures at the level of neighbourhood and even family, which both reproduce poverty in the way that they shape identities as well as patterns of behaviour. The problem is how to speak of such sections of society and how to think of ‘them’. It is tricky and requires new language. Even to speak of ‘them’ is exclusionary. To speak of the ‘excluded’ is to set the speaker up as the legitimating centre as much as talk of the Third World sets up a privileged centre as the First World. And to arrange social groups hierarchically is to collude with the old naming and valuing of the world that is far too busy establishing and sustaining pecking orders. Defenders of the sections of society thus described spring up with heated indignation and laudable motivation against any appearance of blame and fault. The response seems to be that this relocates poverty back to the self and individual responsibility rather than social conditions. Such advocacy did their clients no favours. There is as much ideological blindness involved in an unwillingness to consider, for example, that welfare dependency can be harmful as there is in knee-jerk reactions of ascribing fault and blame. The Labour Party, in the UK, was constitutionally unwilling to discuss the influence of behaviour on deprivation. Until the kind of thinking evident in the New Labour project, there was a marked refusal to consider that poverty had anything other than causes arising from social conditions. Entrenched lifestyle patterns hardly featured on the agenda. The reality is that the attitudes politicians have in their sights do not occur in a vacuum. A retrospective glance is helpful. The emphasis in Victorian social thinking had been on the notion of the undeserving versus the deserving poor who had it coming to them. It was their fault. Back in the 1880s, there was what commentators called ‘a social residuum’. The much-cited studies of poverty by English social reformers

88  A Question of Worth Charles Booth, in 1890, and Seebohm Rowntree of York, in 1899, examined where the poverty line should be drawn and what should be regarded as minimum needs. In the 1930s, there was a form of corrupted Darwinism that led to the rise of the eugenics movement and attempts by apparently respectable public intellectuals to pass legislation to allow the forcible sterilisation of ‘mental defectives’.20 The search by influential psychologists for the ‘scrounger’ was followed by the hunt for the ‘problem family’.21 The fear was that society was breaking down due to poor parenting. The residue of society was characterised by dirty homes and verminous children. Health visitors were given a manual suggesting that the problem family was characterised by weekly income ‘wrongly’ spent, ‘bad’ feeding, poor furniture, unsuitable sleeping arrangements or inadequate clothing.22 Thanks to full employment, poverty diminished as incomes grew. The state provided free milk, school meals and cradle-to-grave health care. In the 1960s, analysts used the term ‘disreputable poor’. The 1960s and 1970s saw Peter Townshend’s study of how basic necessities had changed.23 There was much talk of ‘a cycle of deprivation’ or, as the acclaimed social scientist Michael Rutter expressed it, ‘cycles of disadvantage’.24 There is, in other words, no single problem of a cycle of deprivation transmitted through generations; rather, many forms of disadvantage that arise in many contexts. In the UK, an emphasis since these debates has been on reducing Child Poverty. The white paper ‘Opportunity for All’ declared that the key to tackling disadvantage in the future is the eradication of child poverty. Children growing up in disadvantaged families generally do less well at school, and are more likely to suffer unemployment, low pay and poor health in adulthood. This poverty of opportunity is then more likely to be experienced by the next generation of children’25

It was from anthropology that the idea of a sub-culture of poverty grew that demonstrated how the poor reflected the social environment in which they found themselves and adapted their own culture accordingly. This, argued Oscar Lewis, based on fieldwork among 100 Puerto Rican families in San Juan in contrast with their peers in New York, demonstrated ‘both an adaptation and a reaction of the poor to their marginal position in a classstratified, highly individuated capitalist society’.26 This analysis was paralleled

3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat  89 in the UK by findings that there were the same feelings of hopelessness and despair and a similar lack of participation in institutions.27 The poor are devalued. The problem with these sorts of analyses is how to speak of those deemed to be ‘at the bottom’ (itself a language of devaluing which is both loaded and political). It is both loaded and political. We are bedevilled by a rather silly set of labels commentators wrap around their perception of where a particular stance is thought to be coming from. In social analysis for the twenty-first century, we can no longer be captured by the seating arrangements they used in the French Revolution. Talk of ‘Far Left’ or ‘New Right’ is no longer a flag of convenience. It is but an image of the past. The same could be said for the label ‘neoliberal’. Liberal and conservative still hold some cachet of meaning in these debates but the problem comes when labels are constructed as ideologies and writers pick‘n’mix. The Labour of Blair and Brown had tried very hard to tackle poverty and inequality. Labour left office, however, with UK levels of its people living in households of relative poverty (60 per cent below the national median income) higher than all but six of the member countries of the European Union.28 The concept of ‘social exclusion’ was developed largely in France. René Lenoir, secretary of state for Social Action in the Chirac government, had estimated that the excluded made up one-tenth of the French population. Who were they? What the emerging social analysts had in their sights was the rise in long-term and recurrent unemployment, single households, social isolation and the decline of class solidarity and community bonds. It was open to question if this idea captured the data and if it could measure the problem.29 Nevertheless, the idea spread. It rapidly became fashionable terminology. A European Community White Paper, ‘Growth, Competitiveness and Employment’, called for action against social exclusion. This was a different approach. In adopting it, New Labour was heavily criticised by some at the time for playing down the role that material inequalities play in the construction of poverty. New Labour’s favourite professor, Anthony Giddens, had also expounded the decline in civic bonds and the deterioration of neighbourhoods, evident in ‘the weakening sense of solidarity in some local communities and urban neighbourhoods, high levels of crime and

90  A Question of Worth the break-up of marriages and families’.30 The concept of social exclusion had been a major feature of Labour government policy; understood as the outcomes and processes through which people and groups are denied access to resources, rights and the opportunities others take for granted.31 In a speech shortly after taking office, launching the Social Exclusion Unit, Tony Blair argued that: Social exclusion is about income but it is about more. It is about prospects and networks and life-chances. It’s a very modern problem, one that is more harmful to the individual, more damaging to self-esteem, more corrosive for society as a whole, more likely to be passed down from generation to generation than material poverty.32

This was a different approach. Poverty was not just about material issues and lack of resources as had been proposed in the UK since the days of philanthropist Joseph Rowntree. It was relational – inadequate social participation, lack of integration, lack of power. And it impacted on self-esteem, i.e. personal value. Classic studies from Charles Booth onwards have relied on low income as a measure of poverty. If new approaches to understanding poverty are to be factored in, poverty is much more than limited income. Extra money in the pocket through tax credits would not necessarily reduce it. S. Ringen, for instance, argued that income is an inadequate and actually misleading measure of poverty.33 In the UK, the welfare state – with its tripod of state pension and national insurance; council housing; and the National Health Service (NHS) – had been a massive achievement in the politics of the first half of the twentieth century, despite the two world wars.34 Building on the conviction that the state could successfully plan the economy, it represented an unprecedented shift towards a more equal society. But major questions began to be asked at the century’s end about whether the war on poverty and looking after citizens in need had not led to dependency on the state. Short-term dependency was one thing but the danger that gradually grew in the political consciousness was that of long-term dependency. To cries of alarm, not only was the welfare bill creating unfunded liabilities that could cripple future generations but a whole sector of the UK’s people would always depend on help from the state. The balance between incentive to work and a safety net

3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat  91 began to be much debated. With a welfare budget of nearly 25 per cent of the total spend, a welfare state had brought untold benefits but had also created its own problems. The years from 2003 to 2010 had seen a 60 per cent rise in the welfare bill. Central to concerns in the UK was a policy instrument devised in the Tony Blair–Gordon Brown years to top-up low-income families and reduce child poverty. Tax credits played a role in keeping people in work and gave people the means to make ends meet. It ended up going to nine out of ten households. In the eyes of critics, this was untargeted welfare, explaining why the welfare bill had grown so quickly. Central to the social mission of the UK Coalition government of 2010 were three strands: 1 A call to localism, shrinking the state and engaging a new generation of volunteerism to deliver provision that used to be public territory. 2 Deficit reduction pursuing austerity (when in January 2013, Parliament approved a 1 per cent cap on benefits, this was the first real-term cut in state assistance since 1931; a vote which split the then Labour government and forced them to go into coalition). 3 A retrenchment of benefit reduction, moving away from welfare on grounds both of cost and of an increasing perception that dependency did not promote human flourishing. In a 2013 debate on the welfare benefits up-rating bill, designed to limit the increase in most benefits and tax credits to 1 per cent, the Coalition government’s position was clear: ‘We will have failed if we still have a welfare system which does not make work worthwhile’.35 It is beyond the scope of this book to write a thesis on poverty. Suffice it to note that the role of human value applied to the landscape of poverty is at least three-fold: 1 Economic and social forces that drive poverty and result in generations of people trapped in low-pay, poor-quality housing and often educational failure. Compounded by forms of devalued identity rooted in

92  A Question of Worth class, gender, ethnicity and disability, multi-factorial explanations such as these each have something to say about the way value, or its lack, is experienced by individuals and social groups. 2 The way social inequality is experienced. Poverty produces subjects whose sense of self-worth, cradled in devaluation, is low. Everything tells those at the bottom that their experience is one of lack. But it is not a deficit per se; it is lack in comparison with those around them. Relative poverty is powered by being of less worth than others. The ‘have-nots’ become acutely conscious of their situation contrasted with the ‘have’. Media and the role of advertising in consumer culture underline this every day. 3 Another reality which is hard to discuss devoid of politicisation but which is associated with ‘hardcore poverty’. It is the families where children do not go to school routinely, where few people work, where often there is substance abuse, domestic abuse and violence. Such issues could be said to constitute lifestyle choices but it could be argued that these choices are a product of the devaluation they have experienced which, mediated through family cultures, is transmitted to those around them. The result is often a demeaning quality of social relationships and a meagre measure of self-respect, often lacking in pockets of consolidated poverty. Whatever the precise relationship between the social relationships that shape us and the notion of a fixed core of individual self (i.e. the perennial debate about agency and structure), it seems clear from the lived experience of poverty that in a small minority of ‘hardcore’ cases, malign circuits are created. Demeaning family cultures (which arise anywhere across the social spectrum and which often generate crippling emotional inequality) combine with lack and deficit (whether income or education) to produce dysfunction. The lives of the poorest in society seem to be characterised by behaviour patterns that set them back constantly. This account does, however, need to be supplemented by a fourth factor, which compounds the situation on top of the first three factors that drive and sustain poverty. I refer to public rhetoric.

3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat  93 The age of austerity brought sharp cuts to welfare budgets. The danger was that the need for such cuts was being underlined by an ideology portraying benefit claimants sleeping in with curtains closed while their hard-working counterparts were off to make ends meet at work in low-paid jobs. These were the undeserving poor. There were, to be sure, the deserving poor who were genuinely hard-up from time to time. In the public mind, these Victorian categories were often conflated. We have to make a very sharp distinction between the poor and those who were designated ‘troubled families’. The reason why this distinction is important is that it shapes rhetoric. Sixty per cent of those in poverty were in work. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s annual report for 2012 estimated that there were 6.1 million people who lived in poverty. This was 1 million more than the number who lived in households where people did not work. Despite the strong claims that work was the best route out of poverty, there was a very high number of working people who were also poor. Poverty was clearly not due to worklessness. Hopefully, studies are helping to dispel urban myths. Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low-pay, No-pay Britain, for example, demonstrated that two generations of complete worklessness in the same family was rare – less than 1 per cent of cases.36 The majority of benefits were going to the hard-working but low-paid population. There was little evidence of the culture of worklessness, much hailed by politicians. It was clear that the false dichotomy between ‘deserving poor’ (strivers, children and pensioners) vs ‘undeserving poor’ (shirkers, addicts and parents of ‘hoodies’) created damaging impressions. Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that fewer than one in five remain unemployed for longer than 24 months.37 The public rhetoric ignored the fact that much of the welfare bill was spent on pensioners who had paid for their pensions through National Insurance contributions through their working years and 90 per cent of low-income families were in work, yet the work that was available was often low-grade and low paid. It was not that the poor shunned work. Rather, in an economy where there was little available, jobs such as security, cleaning and social care could not sustain a family. Inevitably, children growing up in such households experienced child poverty. What seems clear from the coalface is that the age of austerity resulted in many more people experiencing poverty as they migrated

94  A Question of Worth in and out of insecure, low-paid jobs.38 Reshaping the public discourse about poverty, the poor were seen as feckless, indolent and largely to blame for their own misfortune. Soaking up far too much of the welfare budget, they were subsidised by the public purse at the expense of the hard-working. With state cash becoming increasingly tight, at best, the political rhetoric around benefit claimants was far more suspicious; at worst, it was distinctly hostile. The poor are very definitely devalued by social pressures which relegate them to the bottom of the pile. Yet to add insult to injury, the least well-off in society are devalued by the better off, who blame the poor. Rhetoric that surrounds them is itself disvaluing, becoming yet another source of relegation. The better-off and the self-sufficient saw themselves as supporting benefit claimants who were out of work and clearly shirkers. Despite clear evidence that the majority of those who were in poverty were in work, albeit low-paid works, the polarised language of ‘shirkers vs strivers’ came to dominate the way the public saw the debate. Addiction to drink or drugs affected barely 4 per cent of families claiming benefit. Survey after survey was showing that attitudes in the UK towards the poorest in society were hardening. Little over a quarter believed the government should spend more to ensure the poor could make ends meet. Over half had come to believe that the state should spend even less; that a less generous system would help people stand on their own feet. Singled out, single mums came in for special and enduring condemnation. In the UK of 2011–12, some 46 per cent of lone-parent families were below the poverty line compared with 24 per cent of families with two parents. In highlighting such figures, the charity Gingerbread pointed up the urban myths.39 The average age of a single mum was 37 and over half of this group had their children within marriage. The 1.9 million lone parents caring for 3 million children had a disproportionate number of children with disability (34 per cent) as well as disabilities of their own (33 per cent). Also, it was the amounts spent on benefits for older people, together with pensions, that accounted for most of the eye-watering sums. As I write this, the UK Conservative government is preparing a major drive to find a £12 billion cut in the welfare budget. Poverty debates, whether the focus is on income measures or individual explanations as well, are set to run and run. Recently a conference involving policy makers from 40 countries convened in Colombia to discuss deep-rooted poverty using

3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat  95 a multi-dimensional lens. Social integration is becoming more important for well-being than income. It eases financial deprivation. A woman in a World Bank study says, ‘I like money and nice things but it is not money that makes me happy; it’s people’.40 Yet can deep-rooted social problems really be addressed by tackling dysfunctional individual behaviours? As the Guardian newspaper’s social policy editor observed, ‘economic poverty eats life coaching for breakfast every time’.41

8 4th Symptom: Pain – (the Emotional Cost of Recession) ‘An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.’ – Plutarch ‘I can think of no depression that has been so deliberate and had such catastrophic consequences.’ – Joseph Stiglitz1

The next symptom of capitalism on the couch we will look at is the pain it inflicts when things go badly. Under pressure, our client lashes out in destructive and self-destructive behaviour, causing a huge amount of pain. It is people who suffer from the economy seizing up. The age of austerity threw more people into poverty and evoked enormous political debate about social policy and welfare reform. Everyone agreed there should be a safety net for those who were hardest hit or unable to find work quickly. But how should the public purse deal with the huge strain on finances that benefits represented? In wartime Britain, William Beveridge never envisaged that temporary relief would result in 30 per cent of government expenditure going on the benefits bill – the state being father to many children. However, was the safety net now being dismantled?

4th Symptom: Pain – (the Emotional Cost of Recession)  97 24 October 1929. There is pandemonium inside an old stone building on 11 Wall Street, in lower Manhattan. Some days live on in economic infamy. That day of sharp falls in the stock market was dubbed ‘Black Thursday’. Five days later saw panic selling on a massive scale as investor confidence first sagged and then collapsed. That was ‘Black Tuesday’. Though the precise relationship between the two is a matter of debate among economic historians, the stock market losing one-third of its value is the leading suspect in precipitating the Great Depression of the 1930s when the world saw a severe downturn in manufacturing and employment. That crisis of the 1930s became problematic. In Poverty and Population, Richard Titmuss (‘the high priest of the welfare state’) documented the depressed areas of Britain. He noted appalling wastage resulting from poverty and inequality.2 The economic downturn after 2008 was a similar crisis of value. In the frame was not only GDP or lowered-asset value but the value and worth of the human. Arenas of contemporary life under economic pressure are linked by struggles between different forms of value that arise within financial transactions and social exchanges. The money economy remains the prime means by which value is distributed according to position in the meritocracy or privilege. Our spotlight here, however, is on inner value, an active and dynamic conception of which translates into a vital factor that illuminates social life. This was under siege in the recession when ‘austerity in the UK was wreaking havoc on the lives of millions’.3 The economic crash and the Great Depression effectively abolished a single world currency – gold. But in a slump, it is people who suffer the most. ‘Being thrown on the scrap heap’ is a recurrent sigh of those trashed by economic forces. It is a denial of their worth that parallels erosion of the worth of companies. The notion of devaluation often applies to currency fluctuation on the international money markets.4, 5 Yet there is intriguing resonance between economic value and the value of the human. In the 1930s or at the end of 2008, global economic downturn became a crisis for both. Impersonal economic forces devalued those unable to work or to sell. Governments everywhere were desperately pulling levers to manipulate the struggling global economy. Economic horsepower needed to be powerful enough to defy gravity and address the age of austerity that came up fast behind the worldwide credit squeeze.6 Greek debt and Spanish unemployment

98  A Question of Worth sparked off movements of citizen protest that characterised the 2011 moment: a protest against humanity being devalued and pushed to the margins. Everywhere, it seemed that poor people were paying the price of austerity. In the UK, the leading candidate for reducing the costs of the state in a time of recession was that of benefits,7 also known as ‘state hand-outs’ in the eyes of those who despised them. It was argued that the welfare bill was just too high. It had to come down; however, bringing it down involved pain, considerable pain. As leading charity The Children’s Society pointed out in response to proposed cuts in public expenditure that the country would have to undergo until 2020, lowering the total amount of benefits a household could claim would represent ‘a brutal blow to millions already hit by repeated cuts to critical support’. The CEO argued that ‘far too many families in this country are already struggling to provide a basic standard of living for their children […] these further cuts will make it harder for families to put food on the table and pay the rent to keep a roof over their head’.8 In 2009, the World Bank had estimated that until 2015, the economic slump would result in between 200,000 and 400,000 children dying every year.9 The crisis was not felt in boardrooms in richer nations. Its impact was felt by underweight children and anaemic expectant mothers in poorer ones.10 ‘The poor should not be the victims of problems caused by the developed world.’11 The point is that issues of value (or its opposite) are generated when, either at a micro-economic or at a macro-economic level, the centre cannot hold. A firm going out of business or laying off its workers, farmers experiencing a fall in commodity prices or demand falling in the economy will result in the dehumanisation of humans. Has anyone worked out the human cost of recession? A client complains of the action by the organisation that led to her being told the job she is doing is not needed any more. She is ‘on the scrap heap’. A straightforward commercial decision one might think – yet the way it was done led to her feeling discarded. ‘I wasn’t just re-cycled, I’ve been put in the rubbish bin!’12 It feels as if her value has been written off. It is an existential assault. From client observation and parish work, I offer three principles as a window on social and private worlds that enables us to explore the impact of human devaluation and recession on the inner life:

4th Symptom: Pain – (the Emotional Cost of Recession)  99 1 Indifference – the Protest against impersonal forces that arises when we are not heard or taken seriously. 2 Inequality (diminishment) – being put down, belittled, reduced, a denial of the full measure of one’s humanity. 3 Indignity – the anger of a valuable self being set aside, assaulted or invaded. In the UK, the charge sheet against the toll on the human of the age of austerity can be read in various ways through this lens. As illuminated in both parish work and psycho-therapeutic contexts and applying it to lived experience during the global economic crisis, non-materialist conceptions of value are generated and reacted to in a number of ways.

1) Indifference (the politics of invisibility and inaudibility) In the recession, humans had become pushed to the margins by global financial flows. The emotional impact was highlighted in what Oxfam described as ‘the perfect storm’ of public spending cuts and economic stagnation causing substantial hardship to people living in poverty.13 The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the New Policy Institute estimated that in the UK were more people in working families below the poverty line than in families either where workers had retired or did not work. This was a first.14 Child poverty was heavily affected.15 By 2014, Save the Children was forecasting that the number of children in poverty in the UK could actually rise by 1.4 million to nearly 5 million by 2020.16 This would be the highest-recorded level of child poverty for a generation. The UK Children’s Society reported that vulnerable teenagers were falling between the cracks of childhood and adulthood. Those between 16 and 17 were more likely than any other age group to be at risk because of trafficking, sexual abuse and exploitation. Significantly, it was those from poor backgrounds that were twice as likely to report higher levels of unhappiness.17 A worsening financial situation put a strain on community life. The poor suffered especially.18 As we have seen, the shame of poverty is intensely devaluing. Seeming indifference from society combined with how the poor often experience

100  A Question of Worth officialdom results in those at the bottom of the pile seeing themselves as shunted off and stigmatised. No one really bothers. A survey by the Prince’s Trust reported statements by secondary school teachers that increasing numbers of children arrived at school unkempt and undernourished. ‘Often, pupil’s shoes are very cheap and do not last. Children come to school with them, home-glued, sellotaped, stapled or even elastic-banded on to their feet.’19 Increasing numbers were pushed below the poverty line. Lack of jobs, stagnating wages, increased living costs combined with spending cuts to place considerable pressure on the poorest in society. Food banks and pensioner fuel poverty were now common experiences.20 Seeming indifference was often the experience of those who were trying to access ‘the system’. A man in the parish in his fifties had been a tradesman; now he has received a letter saying his benefits are being reduced. He cannot understand why. Being completely unused to being articulate, he lacks the voice to challenge. An ‘impersonal system’ communicates a message. As one client pointed out, ‘if no one bothers about me, why should I bother about anyone else?’21 Here are voices from one Focus Group that I attended:22 You get angry at the system. You feel powerless. I didn’t want to go on to unemployment benefit. Keep applying for benefit or low-paid work with two CVs a week sent out as proof you’re doing something – it lowers your self-esteem It’s the sense of hopelessness, of being stuck at the bottom, that gets to you […] it brings on mental health problems. The government is like a big machine. You’re just not treated with respect. You’re part of a busy system. Plus you’re talking with someone who is just part of a little cog in a big machine. You don’t matter. The whole message is that you don’t matter. You end up feeling like, I’m not important. All this form filling is definitely not user-friendly. No one cares what happens to you. You’re just like a piece of sh**.

4th Symptom: Pain – (the Emotional Cost of Recession)  101 What would have made a difference is if someone would listen to me, treat me like a person. At the job centre, they didn’t believe what I was saying. Being laid off and trying to claim practically destroyed me. Having to go cap-in-hand to ask for help is what gets to me. Having been OK financially before, it’s demoralising.

Food poverty became a fact of life as ‘food banks’ entered the political lexicon. Their number surged and became a regular feature of British life. Amid the biggest shake-up of the British welfare state in 60 years, the Trussell Trust, after it established a network of food banks, expected to feed 200,000 people in 2012; an increase of 100 per cent over the previous year.23 The figure rose: 913,138 people were receiving three days’ emergency food from Trussell Trust food banks in 2013–14 compared to 346,992 in 2012–13.24 The inner impact of being pushed towards food charities was described by a British tabloid in the following terms: [A] young couple trudging into the church hall looking gaunt, meek and beaten […] They have walked for three miles in heavy rain, their thin clothing so drenched it sticks to their skin as they huddle by a radiator for warmth […] Behind them a smartly dressed couple who’ve never been on benefits before suffer the indignity of explaining how they lost their jobs and home and cannot feed their kids.25

As I write these words, the ‘Emergency Use Only’ report on food poverty is causing a storm. Published for the House of Commons in December 2014, the report is based on evidence on the extent and causes of hunger in Britain, the scope of provision to alleviate it and a comparison with other Western countries. Can it really be that there is still hunger in Britain? Is it not a case of well-meaning charities and churches having a soft spot for sob stories? Perhaps many recipients simply do not know how to budget. Or is the reality that supply creates its own demand? Yet the principal ‘reality’ is that so many of those who use food banks do so because their benefits are being reprocessed. Government ministers staunchly denied that welfare sanctions had anything to do with the rise in food banks – notwithstanding a University

102  A Question of Worth of Oxford study that found greater use of food banks linked to higher unemployment, sanctions and cuts in welfare spending.26 In parish life up and down the country, it is clear that having to go to a food bank is humiliating. Through no fault of the army of volunteers who keep them going, food banks are stigmatising places. During its Birkenhead evidence session, the commission behind the report heard from a local resident who had relied on food assistance, who said: ‘Nobody wants to go to the food bank. Nobody wants to jump through the hoops. Everybody would rather have hope’.27

2) Inequality and Diminishment (the Politics of Reduction) By 2013, it had become clear that fears expressed at the beginning of the UK public spending cuts were being borne out. The most vulnerable in society were being hit hardest. It was poorer people, single parents, women, those with disabilities and those from ethnic minorities who seemed to be bearing the brunt.28 Early on in the economic thinking of the UK Coalition after 2010, it was announced that 80 per cent of deficit reduction would come from spending cuts and 20 per cent from taxation. Yet government cuts seemed to bear down on the most vulnerable. The Equalities Commission observed that the government failed to take account of the how key elements of the programme of cuts would impact on women, ethnic minorities and the disabled.29 In the UK, public sector cuts hit women disproportionately. Cuts of 70 per cent came from women’s income – twice as much as the impact of spending cuts on men. Women represented two-thirds of the lowest paid, often holding down jobs for dependants. Women were more reliant on benefits.30 The recession hit them harder. By 2013, five years of on–off recession had left Britain considerably divided. In the top half of the ‘hour-glass economy’ were lucrative, service jobs for the highly qualified; in the bottom half were the lower paid, trapped in status-lowly work and struggling to make ends meet. Many in the ‘squeezed middle’ had been pushed to the lower half as wages stagnated.31 These growing inequalities continued the trend towards deindustrialisation and automation that had reshaped labour markets for the previous 30 years. They were accentuated during the recession of 2008 onwards that left economies in the West bumping along the bottom; accentuated too by what

4th Symptom: Pain – (the Emotional Cost of Recession)  103 has been dubbed the ‘L’Oréal factor’ – CEO’s paying themselves exorbitant rates because they felt they were ‘worth it’.32

3) Indignity (the Politics of Indignation) In a crisis of capitalism, lack of dignity becomes a major issue. The impact of austerity is to take away the dignity people have or claim. Poverty creates indignity, especially when it is associated with the kind of public rhetoric that creates images of ‘shirkers or strivers’. Such external devaluing becomes written into the psyche; ‘you start blaming yourself for the external stuff ’.33 By mid-2013, almost 8 million (that is, one in seven) young Europeans were not in work, education or training. Across Europe, youth unemployment rose stubbornly and stayed there. It became, in Angela Merkel’s words, ‘Europe’s most pressing problem’, one that risked ‘a lost generation’ if left unattended.34 We are concerned here with the interior impact of recession as a crisis for human value. The greatest burden of economic recession fell on the unemployed. The large majority of long-term unemployed become psychologically impaired.35 Recession cuts people off from a major source of self-validation, the dignity of work, and places considerable strain on another, the potential affirmation of family. ‘Give people a job to do and they take pride in it.’36 The risk was that many young people without work would never regain their foothold on life and were destined for the revolving door of low-paid work. The effect of unemployment is to pathologise the unemployed: ‘they are to blame for their misfortune’. It is also profoundly devaluing. The notion of a ‘social psychology’ of unemployment has a wide running in social analysis. Monetisation of working experience means that unless you are doing ‘wage work’, you are valueless. Unemployment follows a pattern.37 Shock and a period of constructively trying to adapt to changed circumstances is followed by deterioration, boredom and lack of self-respect (value?) ending in apathetic fatalism. The problem with regarding economic necessity as the greater good for which sacrifices of individuals and communities are worthwhile is that it is ruthlessly utilitarian. It is economic Darwinism, hurting especially the

104  A Question of Worth unskilled working man or woman in its implication that society’s purpose should be to maximise the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The poor might become poorer but if the general economic wealth is rising – as it did in the 1980s – the result is argued to be legitimate. Yet the doctrine of economic necessity validating destruction is not only utilitarian, it is also implicitly a class-based demand. Recession left behind victims who were unable to grasp their potential – educationally, financially and often geographically. Insecurity replaced aspiration as the dominant concern of many voters.38 The psychic hinterland of recession is unquantifiable. Demoralisation seems to be an issue in situations of long-term unemployment or enduring financial pressure. Recession generated an atmosphere of increased fear and a lack of certainty, triggering people into anxiety and depression. There was a marked increase in the UK in those contacting helping agencies deeply fearful about reduced benefit, unemployment and debt. The UK charity ‘Childline’ reported that 13 per cent of calls in 2011 were worries about family relationships due to money. Mental health charities reported a considerable increase in calls from those anxious about financial and job insecurity. NHS figures showed a dramatic 40 per cent increase in depression-related medication: These figures came as no surprise. At SANE we are already living with the serious consequences that recession can have, particularly for people already close to the edge. Equally worrying, we are receiving requests for help and support from people with little or no previous contact with mental health services who are finding their financial problems are making them ill.39

In ‘The Austerity Britain Report 2012’, 300 doctors were asked how they thought the recession was affecting their patients. Over three-quarters believed the economic downturn had affected the health of their patients negatively and that there had been an increase in new cases of mental health in the previous four years.40 Antidepressants like Prozac and Seroxat accounted for a rise of 10 per cent in anti-depressant prescriptions in 2010.41 There was evidence also that economic hardship took its toll on parent–child relationships (leading to stress, which in turn might reduce parenting quality and cause the deterioration of relationships). Even people not directly affected

4th Symptom: Pain – (the Emotional Cost of Recession)  105 by a current economic downturn may still experience feelings of stress and anxiety due to a lingering sense of anxiety about the future.42 The effects of the economic recession reach beyond lay-off to psychological distress. Worry about potential job loss was causing employees to place unnecessary responsibilities and stress on themselves in an effort to stand out above and beyond other employees in anticipation of potential downsizing. The European Social Survey in 2010 of all EU countries found that unemployment during the recession had adversely affected not only the financial stress of individuals but also their life satisfaction and feelings of being worthwhile. ‘The Survey also found that even when they are re-employed, levels of job security and commitment are very low, as the reality takes hold that jobs are no longer for life and are at the whim of unstable economic circumstances.’43 On the more extreme end of the scale, suicide in Ireland and Greece was up 25 per cent in the wake of austerity measures of 2009–11: the greatest source of death among young men. Overall, suicide rates rose sharply across Europe during the banking crisis.44 Britons fared worse than average with an 8 per cent rise in suicides. Taken together, impacts such as these draw attention to the damage that recession and its aftermath was having on society, especially on the vulnerable. As Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz observed: ‘before leaders who embraced austerity policies open the champagne and toast themselves, they should examine where we are and consider the near-irreparable damage that these policies have caused’.45 Austerity was a bleak reality for many. Recession was not only an economic squeeze, it slew its millions through existential crisis, through the fear and despair it generated. The human cost of a frenetic output system has been tension between work–life balance. But people pay for economic depression too, in practical consequences, in relationships and in psychological depression at being thrown on the scrap heap. Expressions of indignation through street protest or quieter anger can be seen for what they are – a hot assertion of human dignity. At the heart of this trembling indignation is concealed a surprising economic metaphor – ‘We’re worth more than that!’ The downside of austerity lies in an unseen ‘underclass’. The underclass may not actually exist but that there are those who live lives below the radar can hardly be disputed. Central to the way Oliver Stone invests the characters

106  A Question of Worth of his film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps with mythic dimensions is the Goya depiction, Saturn Devouring His Son. To stand in his way is to risk being consumed.46 For recession eats into the soul, as well as pockets.

9 Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind ‘Listen to the silence. The enormity of what happened across England last week has been slowly buried under acres of commentary and analysis of why it happened. But what did happen? What happened was the slow simmering, everyday brutality of life on the streets of our cities and large towns exploding and bringing us to the edge of the complete breakdown of civil order. As mobs steamed their way up high streets smashing and looting they gave clarity to the fear, casual violence and nihilism that has become a part of the fabric of our everyday life. This is England. Look at the destruction, feel the fear; this is what we have made of our country. The problem belongs to all of us, and no amount of retributive justice will solve it.’ – David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, New Statesman, August 20111 ‘These are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualified consumers.’ – Zygmunt Bauman, Social Europe, 2011 ‘There is a case not just in moral terms but in enlightened self-interest to act, to tackle what we all know exists – an underclass of people cut off from society’s mainstream, without any sense of shared purpose.’ – Tony Blair2 ‘I don’t see a broken society. I see a minority of people who took advantage of the country when the country was in crisis. They didn’t think of the country and only thought about themselves, their own personal greed and

108  A Question of Worth satisfaction.’ – Tariq Jahan, whose son, Haroon, was killed in the riots in Birmingham, UK, 10 August 20113

There are many kinds of people who do well in the frenetic, global race. The human subjects who will succeed in the workplace are serious, productive individuals who are efficient, skilled, fit in, look good and keep up. They are disciplined, putting off immediate gratification to fulfil long-term goals. Increasingly, in an era when pensions have to be less generous, they will work till they drop and shop till they stop. In the first waves of industrialisation, urban life had grown both intensively and extensively. Now, half the world lived in the city. But what of those who do not fit in, who inhabit the urban marginalities in dire need of regeneration and who seem to lack capacity for the incentivisation (the route out of the status competition against which they feel locked out)? The problem of distressed urban communities is hardly new. Neither is it confined to a typical time or place. One thinks of the banlieues of Paris where alienation and violence are rife, framed by modernist architecture. Across the pond, up to 20,000 mainly young people belong to Asian American gangs: membership has grown since 2000. Gang members communicate using social media. The constant struggle to stay ahead – the natural selection of contemporary life – has taken its toll of Asian Americans. The numbers living in poverty has grown by 133 per cent since 2007.4 In the age of austerity, there has been growing pressure on the social fabric. The new president of the International Committee of the Red Cross warned of the damage being done to social cohesion through more people becoming poor.5 The bonds of affiliative relations are weakened. The crisis has affected the most vulnerable groups in society – the homeless, young people, single-parent families, immigrants, the elderly and uneducated. Many voices warned against the danger of social unrest. Were the English riots cut from that cloth? Tales of the left behind perhaps?

Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind  109

Criminality Pure and Simple? The public disorder in August 2011 shook the British state to its foundations. It rattled profoundly our sense of stability and security. Here were riots and rioters out of control on the streets of major cities on a scale that had not been seen for a generation. What rocked politicians, media and those caught up in it alike was not just the volcanic uprising of social conflagration but the way it seemed to spread. City after city saw a wave of social discontent break out in acts of burning, looting and violence that sometimes turned lethal. Up to 15,000 people, most aged under 24, actively took part in the riots, with ‘countless more bystanders observing’.6 Five people died, some 5,000 crimes were recorded, and the economy is thought to have lost £0.5 billion. The death of a 29-year-old black man in police custody was a trigger. On 7 and 8 August, there were further outbreaks of disorder, mainly in London. On 9 August, the incidents were mainly outside London. And then it stopped. How to analyse and understand it was the problem. During the national soul-searching that followed, most commentators were agreed that containment and damping of the August heat should came before efforts to understand its causes. Why did the fire ignite and spread in the way it did but break out in some cities rather than others? Clearly, there was not just one narrative. Was it … an outbreak of criminality? … Looters just helping themselves? … Single parenthood? … A crisis in values? … A profound question for society as a whole? Journalists, community leaders and MPs shaped a range of responses, not all of them from well-meaning analysis. An e-petition calling for rioters to be deprived of benefits reached 100,000 signatures. There was a reaction, to do with disquiet about the severe and variable sentences handed down: disproportionate, according to the Director of Campaigns for the Howard League for Penal Reform, Andrew Neilson. As the co-ordinator of Church Action on Poverty wrote, ‘a palpable air of vindictiveness hangs in the air: name and shame, lock up and throw away the key, evict them, deprive them of benefits’.7 According to the Prime Minister, society was sick. Asserting the primacy of law and order, David Cameron declared that the riots were about criminality pure and simple. Yet while the riots may have exhibited criminality, by no stretch of the imagination were they simple.

110  A Question of Worth The urban disadvantaged constitute marginalised populations with their own histories and gritty social realism. Crime, poverty and social exclusion stalk the streets. For these are the neighbourhoods of the dispossessed. Some streets near London N9, where I lived, are so notorious that they have been dubbed ‘the swamp’ by local police. Violence is all too common and knife crime continues. In early 2008, five youths were murdered in revenge attacks in just three months. As I revisit these words, a 52-year-old man has just been stabbed to death there by five teenagers when he challenged them about gate-crashing a party. Edmonton Green was a flashpoint during the riots.8 In the commentary that followed those August nights, the breakdown of family life was a popular target. Other commentators focused on an underclass steeped in poverty but also a consumerist aspiration that was in direct conflict with it. Predictably, left-leaning responses stressed social and economic factors that shaped behaviour. The political right would have none of it: what was at stake was a breakdown in personal responsibility. After all, here were individuals behaving badly. As one looter confessed, ‘this is brilliant, we heard it was all kicking off on Twitter and came right here’.9 And did not the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, write of the ‘jocular greed and brutality’ of the conspiratorial tweets?10 In subsequent Sunday newspapers, two prime ministers clashed over the causes of the riots. David Cameron proclaimed to Sunday Express readers that riots illustrated the need to ‘reclaim’ society. ‘The greed and thuggery we saw during the riots did not come out of nowhere’, he said. ‘There are deep problems in our society that have been growing for a long time: a decline in responsibility, a rise in selfishness, a growing sense that individual rights come before anything else.’11 But Tony Blair, in an article in the UK newspaper the Observer that same day, said that to make this argument was to ‘trash our own reputation abroad’. Despite famously warning about moral decline after the murder of James Bulger, when he was Shadow Home secretary, Blair said he now realised that his 1993 speech was ‘good politics but bad policy’. He said, ‘Britain, as a whole, is not in the grip of some general “moral decline” […] Young people now were generally more respectable, more responsible and more hardworking than they were when he was young’.

Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind  111 Instead, the rioting was mainly caused by ‘the group of young, alienated, disaffected youth who are outside the social mainstream and who live in a culture at odds with any canons of proper behaviour […] The Left says they’re victims of social deprivation, the Right says they need to take personal responsibility for their actions; both just miss the point’. Blair contended that his government developed specific policies to deal with these people and that they required intervention ‘literally family by family and at an early stage, before any criminality had occurred’. Problem families notorious in their local communities should be strongly encouraged to relinquish delinquency. Such is the contested politics of early intervention. The New Statesman published reactions to the suggestion by David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, that the left take more seriously issues of family breakdown and absent fatherhood.12 By contrast, Iain Duncan Smith, UK Work and Pensions secretary, argued that the middle classes ignored problems on housing estates and were shocked when ‘the inner city finally came to call’. He said that failure to deal with the ‘distorted morality’ within society was to blame for riots. The worst outbreak of anarchy for decades demonstrated how our poorest communities had become ‘fertile grounds’ for drug dealers, gangs and moneylenders. Better-off communities turned a blind eye to the problems in these ‘ghettoised’ estates. Duncan Smith went on to draw a direct link between riots and social breakdown – an underclass blighted by a culture of ‘welfare dependency’. The riots showed the worst of Britain; clean-up the next morning showed the country at its best.13 In these kinds of debates, there is a question of whether usual types of analysis are too straight-jacketed. Sociology is uniquely placed to provide insights into the social environment, but do parenting styles, lack of respect for others or community bonds fall within the sociological imagination? Where do we look for culprits? Did the fault lie within systemic factors affecting society or in individual failure to act responsibly, i.e. the longstanding debate between the relative effects of structure vs human agency? As Parliament, police and press attempted to explain the cause of England’s August riots in a series of reports towards the end of 2011, one surprising theme bubbled up to the surface. It was not ‘criminality’ or ‘underclass’ or ‘greed’. It was ‘respect […] courtesy’ – or a lack of it from the police. Clearly, in the immediate aftermath of the rioting and looting, it wasn’t

112  A Question of Worth greater courtesy that people were calling for, but the introduction of water cannon, rubber bullets and exemplary punishment! The Guardian/LSE  research study, published in early December 2011, reflected on how a ‘discourteous manner’ from officers conducting stop and search in many of the districts where rioting occurred was a ‘significant factor in sparking the disturbances’. Two hundred and seventy rioters from London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Salford had been questioned for the project. It was the only study thus far into the worst civil unrest for a generation involving in-depth, large-scale interviews with people who actually took part in it. A rioter expressed the bid for autonomy: ‘this was war and for the first time we were in control’.14 ‘5 Days in August’, the interim report a week earlier by the independent panel set up by the government’s Riots, Communities and Victims Panel, found ‘many people told the Panel that police “Stop and Search” was consistently carried out without courtesy’. Concurrently, Scotland Yard’s own reflections on the disturbance in the capital cited ‘a level of tension’ among sections of the community prompting the Met to note that stop and search must only be used ‘in an intelligent, professional, objective and courteous way’. The Final Report of the MPs’ Communities and Victims Panel, published in March 2012, drew on intensive, although not necessarily high-quality, empirical evidence, including interviews with adults and children who were either at risk or had offended: a survey of 1,200 residents, 200 in each neighbourhood, designed to ensure the responses were representative of the wider local population (the Neighbourhood Survey); round-table discussions with academics and voluntary and community sector groups; and research with Youth Offending Teams and local authorities. The Panel estimated there were in fact up to 500,000 families who display three or four defined characteristics linked with disadvantage. While the conditions in which they lived were often poor, the necessary thresholds to trigger significant public service attention were never quite reached. They were not subject to the problem – families programme and the interventions they received were sporadic, uncoordinated and based on the individual rather than structured around the family. Their contact with public services was therefore much less intensive. Instead they ‘bump along the bottom’ with their children. Children were often absent, excluded or performing poorly at school and known to

Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind  113 police – characteristics of the core group of rioters – destined for outcomes similar to their parents.

The Language of the Unheard? The English riots of 2011 were not riots carried out by children: they were largely carried out by young adults. The MPs’ panel also concluded: ‘we do not believe that these were race riots’. Members observed that most convicted rioters were not gang members. Another myth that had sprung up was that the rioters were heavily influenced by social media. Although a major democratising influence, the influence of social media should not be overstated. Its use by young digital natives is routine and it was also the case that messages, calling for revenge for Mark Duggan, who died in police custody, and saying where to meet, were disseminated largely via Blackberries. Yet granted that there was technology and other triggers bringing crowds together in collective violence at that time and in those places, what was the raw material they were moulding? Echoing Martin Luther King, Jr’s comment about riots in 1960s America being, in the final analysis, the language of the unheard, what did the public disorder that rocked the English summer of 2011 say about the state of society? Those whose actions spoke in mindless (or rational) fury were shouting – but what were they shouting? Or were these just ‘Mad Mobs and Englishmen’?15 Let it be assumed that for most of the people most of the time, there are social controls acting as a brake on people doing what they want when they want. Family and community act as breaks and restraints. Political theorists in the tradition of Thomas Hobbes have argued that our natural state is one of constant conflict and rampant selfishness if allowed to go unchecked. Social compacts are enacted to rein in the potential for unbridled liberty that would otherwise prove disastrous. Individuals exchange restraint on their actions for law and order. So what then led to a sudden breakdown of the normal controls on behaviour? Was it a classic case of social disorganisation theory, where community dislocation broke down social boundaries? And who were the rioters? Since the days when French social psychologist Gustav Le Bon observed the revolutionary crowds involved in the Paris Commune of 1871, crowds

114  A Question of Worth have been seen as primitive and guided by violent and animal instincts. De-individuation theory saw crowd violence as the result of a breakdown of social restraint. By way of contrast, social psychologist Steve Reicher’s study of riots in the St Paul’s area of Bristol in 1981 did not see crowd members morphing into a de-individuated, primal state. Rather, they were acting in terms of a social identity that they shared through specific values and understanding of what they were doing. Reicher stressed that it was important to understand the actions of a crowd through social identity theory, how they saw the fury and the rage they were expressing.16 But where did that fury and rage originate? In August 2011, the consensus was that rioters were rioting without a cause, but this was not the reaction of those who had rioted. Of the 270 people interviewed, 85 per cent said policing was an ‘important’ or ‘very important’ factor in why the riots happened. It was second only to poverty, declared by 86 per cent of rioters to be one of the main causes. It is clear from analysis of the Ministry of Justice statistics that the rioters were not a monolithic category.17 Final comparisons by age showed that 26 per cent of those brought before the courts for offences relating to the public disorder were aged 10–17 (juveniles) and that a further 27 per cent were aged 18–20. Only 5 per cent of those appearing were over 40 years old.18 Statistics of those charged with riot-related offences showed they were overwhelmingly young, male and, to judge from the lack of jobs recorded, unemployed. These were, therefore, young people emerging into adulthood who had thrown off the usual social controls on behaving badly and decided either that they had no stake in their communities or that rioting offered a thrill or material rewards for free. Interviews picked up few expressions of remorse; indeed the word ‘fun’ featured in an interview with two girls who had joined the party.19 Here was excitement to light up a drab existence, playing into a mounting sense of frustration of being disvalued. It was an exercise in mindless anomie that seemed to deny any sense of responsibility by young people for their actions. Many young people in the areas of urban distress that generated the English riots may have felt that belonging to mainstream society is not worthwhile. A society with something to offer is closely linked to having a job, which is an important source of feeling that one is a worthwhile person. Some critics alleged that a vacuum of police action created the conditions in

Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind  115 which the public disorder spread like fire. Withdrawing the police was the wrong strategic response. This reading of events is not in conflict with there being deep-seated social causes to the riots. Clearly, causes were multiple. A smouldering sense of the unheard was articulated through sporadic violence. On display during those mind-stretching August nights was crowd psychology working on disengaged young people, excluded from the show that everyone else was enjoying so heartily; a generation who saw little hope, growing up with a soul-destroying sense of not being listened to.20 The tenor of the more considered and thoughtful reactions was that there was no single narrative about criminality and opportunism. Rather there were multiple social causes, especially: • • • •

complete indifference to a society with nothing to offer; high levels of unemployment and hopelessness; a clear correlation with deprivation; rampant materialism.

There were not only deep-seated social factors. Considered reaction also drew attention to personal factors specific to individuals: • • • •

lack of engagement with education; parenting deficits; deficits in resilience and respect; suspicion of police/ ‘stop and search’– lack of courtesy.

Although having their own dynamic, these different arenas of the social ecology do, however, have a common theme. Multi-factorial explanations such as these each have something to say about the way value – or its lack – is experienced by individuals and social groups. And by ‘value’, I do not mean economic or social value per se; rather the impact on a personal sense of value in the lived experience of people in the kind of distressed urban communities characterising English riot geography in 2011. Interpreting the public disorder suggests a layer of ‘meaning’ beyond usual forms of explanation. Riot acts can hardly be separated from the definitions and meanings attached to them. Social breakdown is constructed and

116  A Question of Worth interpreted. It has to do with different charts in which materialism, marginalisation, unemployment and deprivation are mapped on to parenting styles in particular families, educational failure, lack of internalised boundaries and humiliating experiences of ‘stop and search’. A thread running through such lived experience is that here is absence (or erosion) of value. Reading the riot acts and texts of violence in the social and personal factors highlighted in the riots, it is helpful to look at human value in two different ways than it is usually conceived. One is to relocate the notion of human value away from an aspiration (‘of course people should be valued!’) towards it being a social dynamic. It is not, in other words, an ‘ought’, but rather an ‘is’; embedded in the human operating system. The other shift in perspective I suggest that clarifies social dynamics is to see the notion of human value in terms of its contrast pole: human devaluation. The raw material swirling around that crowd behaviour acted upon was, I suggest, the shout of the devalued, no longer prepared to play by the rules. In erupting into anger, mindless anomie (or both), ruining property and looting, what spilled over was the public drama of the devalued shouting to assert their value at the expense of their own community. The crisis was a drama, not of values (plural) but value (singular): specifically, the value and worth of people. There was a major problem to do with an erosion of value experienced by certain groups in relation to society that led to social controls breaking down in an attitude of ‘I’m worth … I couldn’t care less about the community’.

The Dearth of Worth Some of the issues highlighted in the commentary were systemic factors operating in patterns that affected groups; others were specific to individuals within the urban environments. Do these factors indicate a single unifying narrative about the absence or erosion of value? And how do they overlap?

Indifference to a Society with Nothing to Offer First, here were the massively disengaged coming out to play (violently). The sense of alienation and being cut-off from the mainstream is profoundly

Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind  117 devaluing. When one has little stake in one’s community or own future, what is eroded is any sense of building a worthwhile life and being a worthwhile person, of dignity. In a thoughtful analysis, David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, said:21 The riots revealed a younger generation detached from the moral norms and obligations of adult society; the experience of poverty, despair and hopelessness; and a deep sense of ‘I don’t care’. ‘Above all the events combined the nihilism of the dispossessed and the narcissism of the consumer. Why have you done this? ‘Because we can!’

A sense of alienation is associated with a frustration and sense of marginalisation from society that spills over into criminal activity. The apartheid between those who demonstrate non-participation in the world of work, clubs, community organisations, sport or other dimensions of civil society compared with those who are engaged perhaps reflects an important insight: passivity is paralysing, not energising. The heightened sense of disaffection, marginalisation and powerlessness  meant that young males were excluded from sources of self-validation that promote value.

Reaction Against an Impersonal System Linked with this, the riots demonstrated the devaluing effects of reaction against an impersonal system. Depersonalisation leads to a loss of value. The riots showed what happens when institutions seem mechanical and the system lacks a human face. This provokes detachment. It started in a rage against the impersonal, hitting back against a system perceived to be unfair. The death of Mark Duggan in police custody that acted as a tinderbox for the Tottenham riots led to angry voices clamouring that they had not been given answers and were not being heard. In contemporary, mass society the experience of those on the receiving end of public and private services is not rich. The lack of face leads to lack of voice. For those lacking the education to navigate their way through bureaucracy, the ‘system’ can seem alien, and alienation is the outcome. In distressed urban communities, the police can seem to be a state-imposed force and society seems run by an agency that denies agency. This surely feeds the massive disengagement that

118  A Question of Worth characterised the riot geography, as young people acted out a passive rather than participatory stance in relation to their communities. Here were young people who realised firsthand how difficult it is to form a family but, in addition, they saw how hard it is to find stable employment. Alienated and marginalised from meaningful work, a passive relationship to the system meant that education and state provision purported to do something for the disengaged and bring them in from the cold, accompanied, however, with little encouragement for young people to take responsibility for their own lives. Finding their place in the world, their identity was insecure. Systemic factors promoting the erosion of value include the reality of gender roles in flux. For young males especially, the overall message they have imbibed may well be ‘You are under-valued, you are worthless. Society treats you like s*** So let’s act like it!’

Lack of Work Before the riots, data published by the Office for National Statistics showed that one in five 16- to 24-year-olds were unemployed. The ‘inactive’ population – which comprised young people who were neither working nor unemployed – stood at nearly 3 million, the highest level since data was first collected. Analysis suggested two-thirds of these 16- to 24-yearolds were staying on in education, perhaps to stave off unemployment. Moreover, 40 per cent of those working were in what the ONS defined as ‘elementary’ or ‘service jobs’, i.e. working in bars or shops.22 At a time when the unemployment figures were soaring to a 17-year high, the fact that more than one in five 16- to 24-year-olds were out of work meant that a generation was being ‘shunted into the sidelines’. As the CEO of the youth charity the Prince’s Trust observed: ‘There are now enough unemployed young people to fill every football stadium in the Premier League, with almost 200,000 left queuing outside’.23 The Ministry of Justice statistics underlined that rioters were, to judge from the lack of jobs recorded in court reports, unemployed. Only 8.9 per cent of defendants either had jobs or were studying.24 In some local authority areas, over 61 per cent of rioters were unemployed. ‘Many of the people involved are likely to have been from low-income, high-unemployment

Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind  119 estates, and many, if not most, do not have much of a legitimate future’, observed criminologist and youth culture expert Professor John Pitts. Unlike most people, some of those looting had no stake in conformity. The absence of aspirations, commented the MPs’ Panel, is a danger for society. ‘We need young people who are able to improve their education and get a job that fulfils their ambitions and allows them to achieve their potential.’ Worklessness brought despondency and anxiety among the young. ‘The things that normally constrain people are not there. Much of this was opportunism but in the middle of it there is a social question to be asked about young people with nothing to lose.’25

Deprivation The riots demonstrated also the devaluing effects of poverty and lack. The Prime Minister claimed that the riots were not about poverty, but the Guardian newspaper’s database of court cases raised the question that there may be, at the very least, a correlation between economic hardship and those accused of taking part in the violence and looting. David Singleton, a Liverpool University urban planning lecturer, analysed the preliminary data published by the Guardian by overlaying the addresses of defendants with the poverty indicators mapped by England’s Indices of Multiple Deprivation, which breaks the country into small geographical areas: 41 per cent of suspects lived in one of the top 10 per cent of most deprived places in the country; and 66 per cent of neighbourhoods of those charged had got poorer between 2007 and 2010. As Singleton commented: ‘rioting is deplorable. However, if events such as this are to be mitigated in the future, the prevailing conditions and constraints affecting people living in areas must form part of the discussion. A “broken society” happens somewhere, and geography matters’.26 Care must be taken in drawing easy assumptions from measures of social deprivation about the causes of riots. In a classic analysis of Negro–White race riots in the US between 1913 and 1963, Lieberson and Silverman looked at rates of population growth, the proportion that was Negro, rates of white unemployment, the income of black people and also rates of people living in sub-standard housing. Crucially, they found these indicators

120  A Question of Worth were the same in riot-cities as cities that did not riot.27 Nevertheless, the Guardian/LSE research project, which is the only study to involve interviews with hundreds of people who rioted across England, found they were predominantly from the country’s most deprived areas. The downturn in the economy featured heavily in interviews, with many complaining of falling living standards and worsening employment prospects. Compared to population averages, those brought before the courts were more likely to be in receipt of free school meals or benefits and were more likely to have had special educational needs and to be absent from school. This pattern held across all areas. By matching information on those involved in the public disorder with data from the Department for Work and Pensions (for adults) and the Department for Education (DfE) (for juveniles), the Ministry of Justice was able to assess the socio-economic status of those who had been brought before the Courts up to 28 September 2011. Three times more of those adults were claiming an out-of-work benefit at the time of the disorder than the working-age population in England in February 2011. Comparing suspected rioters aged 10 to 17 with the status of the general population of pupils in schools, rioters were four times more likely to come from poverty areas than the general population, three times more likely to have special educational needs (SEN), four times more likely to be permanently absent or excluded from schools, between three and four times more likely to claim free school meals but nearly five times less likely to have five good passes at GCSE.28 When the MPs’ Communities and Victims Panel investigated the link between deprivation and rioting, it became clear that 70 per cent of those people brought before the courts were living in the 30 per cent most deprived postcodes in the country. Of the 66 areas that experienced riots, 30 were in the top 25 per cent of the most deprived areas in England. Job Seekers Allowance claimant rates were 1.5 percentage points higher among 16- to 24-year-olds in riot areas (7.5 per cent) than non-riot areas (6 per cent).29 This link is supported by findings from the University of Manchester, whose research paper examining association between poverty levels and the likelihood of being involved in the riots found that a third of looters in Manchester and Salford came from the poorest districts.30

Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind  121 Research carried out by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) published later that August looked at the relationship between different indicators of poverty and deprivation and the boroughs where violence and looting took place. They found that in almost all of the worst-affected areas, youth unemployment and child poverty were significantly higher than the national average while education attainment was significantly lower. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research: ‘child poverty rates in local authorities where riots flared are stubbornly high […] while poverty is no excuse for criminality, it places additional pressure on families not only to make ends meet but also to spend time together’.31 Being young and black was cited commonly as a factor in the riot geography, especially due to the impact of ‘stop and search’ by the police. Young black men were indeed a sizeable group among those charged. Yet black people were also far more likely to be the victims of crime. Young people of all groups are far more likely to commit crime, and the black population is significantly younger than the general population. Once stopped and searched, black people were no more likely than white people to be arrested.32 Moreover, research on young people published by the Home Office suggested that, if other factors have been controlled for – such as weak school discipline, liberal parenting, strong parental guidance, socioeconomic class, local drug problems, weak local control, siblings in trouble with the police, household size, gender, and family type – then ethnicity is not a reliable predictor of the propensity to commit crime.33 In fact, the difference between male and female crime rates was far greater than that between racial groups.34 Where the narrative of the riots did feature women among its dramatis personae, it was working-class and black women who were marked out and demonised.35 The culture of areas involved with riot geography does seem therefore to be profoundly devaluing. Deprivation was a clear marker of lack, with all its attendant frustrations. It does not go beyond the evidence to suggest that those raised in such social environments were alienated, not just from society, but from sources of self-validation that participation in purposeful tasks can provide. An analysis based on value is not the same necessarily as class analysis.

122  A Question of Worth

Rampant Materialism We have thought already how materialism is crucial to how postmodern subject are formed. The set of systems that transmitted lack of value to those in riot-prone areas includes the rise in consumerism, raised as a concern by many people. A desire for designer brands was identified as a major reason for young people to become involved in the disturbances. Half of all recorded offences were acquisitive, with the riots characterised by opportunistic looting that was ‘very much targeted at brands’, as the MPs’ Riots Panel found. The Final Report called for the Advertising Standards Authority to clamp down on youth-oriented advertising.36

Constructing a Narrative Riots are a reaction to a society that devalues and demoralises because there is nothing to do. If there is anything to the thesis that lack of value is being acted out in the riots, where could these young males have experienced devaluation that exploded those August nights or conversely experienced social environments where there were deficits in building up a sense of worth? Here are reflections on a number of factors that were forced to the surface in the 2011 riots. Firstly, there is a set of systems at work. The way society operates was perhaps perceived as a conspiracy to exclude from the party those who were already on the margins. A sense of alienation and disconnection played out. The alienated and devalued, especially the paradigmatic ‘young unemployed male’, had lived for a while on the edge of dehumanisation. The catalyst was an act of depersonalisation that seemed to confirm that society was being run by an outside agency. The lived experience of those who rioted seems to have been dehumanising. Crucial to this was the exclusion from the world of work and any sense of wanting to ‘get on’. Nihilism was a feverish response as the police were attacked and chased off, and high streets, department stores and shops became lawless spaces that were systematically ransacked. People were enjoying themselves. As Lammy observed, for a short period, those who took part in the looting were, probably for the first time in their lives, participants

Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind  123 in something larger than themselves. The looting was terroristic, but many of those involved felt empowered and free; for them it was a joyful experience.37 The question is how far what may be termed the dynamics of human value provides a lens for looking at the public disorder? The experience of being young, out of work, relatively poor and ghettoised in housing estates fosters human subjects who are dehumanised, especially the bleak experience of the young, unemployed males in distressed urban communities who turned to the violent opportunism that provided the template for the riots. Creating a dependable background means young people do not need to fight ceaselessly for recognition. The riots in English cities in August 2011 were the reaction of those who are barely noticed, grabbing back their voice. At least that was the experience of some in distressed urban communities. Others saw an expensive, nihilistic thrill, an exercise in consumer narcissism. The struggle for human value structures subjective experience. It was this that was played out on those hot nights. Individualism and social factors reflected systems in which urban marginalities exist. The background, I suggest, to angry rioters devaluing property and trashing their communities was that their sense of value had been trashed and they were responding opportunistically. Young people, especially young men, growing up feeling they have little worth were left wondering how far they can contribute to the society from which they have been relegated. How a society might be constructed with a more human face is not a question that would have troubled rioters. Yet it is central to the distressed communities that spawned them. To an observer, it seemed as if the normal exchange value system was broken down in the wave of looting. Rioters just grabbed what they wanted and the logic of disaffected consumers led to their targeting the symbols of their exclusion. However, a deeper narrative suggests itself. Those whose lived experience is on the edge of dehumanisation perhaps sought to claw back a moment of significance, feeling empowered and liberated. It is an exchange system of a symbolic nature. The disaffected, devalued self requires compensation. The disempowered and excluded whose value is demoted by society are bound to find ways of rising up to find their voice and take their power. As a bid for respect, the drive to claw back a sense of worth or esteem is played out in many interpersonal dramas, underlined in gang culture and on prominent display in the public disorder.

124  A Question of Worth In short, we need to ask how far the abandonment of some urban areas, poor educational attainment, youth unemployment and poverty add up to a social group without hope, not listened to; a group so constrained by the scripts that violence broke out in frustration in the riots. Either the value and worth of rioters had been eroded (leading them to kick against systemic or individual pressures) or there was little sense of being worthwhile to start with. Yet it is crucial to stress that those on the ground in those August nights was very far from being typical of urban experience in British cities. There is a marked shift in the geography of social problems.38 Nationally, and this is true of many post-industrial societies for interesting reasons beyond the scope of this book, crime and violence are more rare now. Surprisingly, it is the inner city, once so blighted by urban distress, where the improvement has come. Social problems seem to have spread to seaside towns and rural communities; many blighted by drugs and anti-social behaviour for instance. Indeed, drug-running gangs may have been building bases outside London – witness ‘Operation Fortress’ in Hampshire and Southampton on the south coast.39 Key to the success of the Operation is bringing together the police with voluntary groups to work towards common goals to restrict the supply of drugs, reduce demand for them and rebuild communities. Police attention has been on gangs and guns. It is not so much inner London but post-industrial cities such as Portsmouth or Hull that do not do well in educational attainment. Increasingly, rural areas are falling into the bottom half of the league table and feature a rising rate of pregnancies for girls under the age of 18.40 It is important not to see the urban disadvantaged through a miserabilis account that is itself devaluing. Clearly, Britain’s post-industrial cities are changing. Policies in recent years targeted inner cities with cash and expertise to encourage enterprise. Immigration is altering cities profoundly. In the inner city London Borough of Newham, only 40 per cent of the population are white British.41 The 60 per cent ethnic minority often bring different attitudes towards aspiration, drunkenness and family solidarity. High-rise estates and the old blighted districts of social housing are being knocked down.42 In this book, we explore the idea that modern society damages our sense of self. Issues of value are underlined very strongly on the urban margins. Especially if other sources of self-worth are not available, those who believe

Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind  125 that, without the latest fashion item, they are not worth very much will fight and scrape for their value in any way possible. Let the last word go perhaps to Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury. The accounts of riots had left him enormously sad and he wrote: Too many of these young people assume they are not going to have any ordinary, human, respectful relationships with adults – especially those in authority, the police above all. Too many of them inhabit a world in which the obsession with ‘good’ clothes and accessories – against a backdrop of economic insecurity or simple privation – creates a feverish atmosphere where status falls and rises as suddenly and destructively as a currency market. The big question that’ Reading the Riots’ leaves us with is whether, in our current fretful state, with unavoidable austerity ahead, we have the energy to invest what’s needed in family and neighbourhood and school to rescue those who think they have nothing to lose. 43

10 5th Symptom: Performativity and Education ‘No one ever says “enough” in the education system. It is always “more, more!.” The only response is “must do better”, “try harder”; messages we have heard from early years!’ – ‘Another World Is Happening’, a RSA-sponsored symposium on education, 9 April 20141 ‘Schools bring little influence to bear upon a child’s achievement that is independent of his background and general social context.’ – The US Coleman Report, 19662 ‘I’m not a sausage in a sausage in a sausage machine. They want me to get 5 A–Cs. I’ll give them that but they’re not interested in me as a rounded person.’ – Christopher Steed’s parish notes3

In Culture and Anarchy, as the Industrial Revolution was transforming life, Matthew Arnold described the British bourgeois as cultural philistines. With society becoming much more commercial, the aristocratic rule of society had yielded to these middle-class professional types. Yet he lamented that bourgeois culture was now dominant.4 Instead of asking

5th Symptom: Performativity and Education  127 what purpose the social machinery served, the middle class focused on means rather than ends. Aligning the accumulation of means with their purpose made the same mistake as confusing the increase of material improvement with moral improvement. It was for this reason that Arnold objected to proposals for payment by results. Rather than schools being funded according to measurable amounts and performance in the three ‘Rs’, Arnold attacked such a mechanical conception of education. The very principles of being industrious and pursuing self-interest, on which commerce depended, were simply not appropriate to the task of education. What counted was not just acquiring instrumental skills but the liberal arts, which enabled their recipients to reflect on their situation so as to discover questions of purpose. Education is vital to human flourishing. Our way of life depends on mass education from which none may be excused. For the most part, great progress is being made in the global spread of education and literacy to fulfil Millennium Goals set by the UN. One notable exception is the landlocked country of Chad, where malnutrition and the stunting of cognitive development that afflicts a quarter of the world’s children is markedly higher than average. A report by UNICEF highlighted that decent education and health care are prime avenues of escape from the grinding poverty.5 ‘Educare’ – the drawing out of possibilty – is the panacea for many evils. The reality, however, is that there has been no real consensus as to what education is for and what should be taught. Ideological debate in Britain since the 1944 Education Act has centred on whether education should promote individual enlightenment or social change. The modern view stresses acquiring skills that future employers will value so that you will be a valuable member of the workforce. It includes some notion of giving pupils an equal chance to win the race of life rather than starting off with an advantage or disadvantage that follows you wherever you go. Because of the way that the values of the dominant class are maintained, such that pupils are not trained to ask questions about the logic of the system, inequality and social exclusion are perpetrated. There is the Durkheimian view that through society, and sometimes through education, the learning process should sift and sort pupils, promote social cohesion and socialisation. In short, education is essential for a meritocratic society.

128  A Question of Worth The problem is that society is not just unequal because of class and privilege. Equality of outcomes is problematic: some pupils are more talented than others. Unavoidably, education socialises pupils into certain values and winners and losers (if you are a pupil who doesn’t do exams). Significantly, northern European countries – Germany and Scandinavia – are widely praised for their technical and vocational education systems that try to ensure whole groups of young people are not undervalued. And that is the point. It may be an English disease that success is defined in narrow academic terms, tilted towards the gilded and privileged and towards nurturing children from the neck up. Children from those sections of society that are not valued need to discover value and have a capacity developed that will add value in their school and then in wider society. Many schools have to act as de facto social services, spending an inordinate amount of time on pupils with problems. This requires a pluralistic view of what constitutes success, an education system that is not all about passing exams, a classroom that is not a testing ground and where anxiety never allows children any rest. What follows must not be overdrawn. There are many examples in those of my own acquaintance, where schools care passionately about developing the child holistically and in an engaging way at the same time as urging young people to achieve their full potential. This is happening more and more. It is a grassroots revolution, enshrined in official documents. One criteria in the Office for Standards in Education (OFTSED) for monitoring schools in England and Wales is ‘teachers create a positive climate for learning in their lessons and pupils are interested and engaged’.6 Yet this reality sits alongside another reality: a world where businesses offering standardised testing accrue huge profits; a reality where education’s value in monetary terms means it has to turn a profit. It is a reality where students are commodities and the drive towards monetisation generates a culture of relentless testing and where the pressure to massage results is considerable. It is a reality where schools and education establishments are reconceived as businesses and constant assessment makes for increasing levels of stress among teachers, and performance-related pay drives the classroom. Since students who do not ‘do exams’ usually generate poor results, it is exacerbated when staff are under terrifying degrees of pressure. It is a reality where universities are so financially driven that having enough

5th Symptom: Performativity and Education  129 students sign up for courses, especially those from abroad who bring in more revenue, and obtaining substantial research grants are all-consuming needs. A business rather than an academic model means that, against very short timetables, output is required regardless of quality. The balance has been tilted in favour of administrators rather than academics. All too often, graduates are used as low-cost lecturers, and opportunities for life-long learning or special needs provision are skinned to the bone. Education is ‘drawing out’ (from the Latin, educare), not driving up standards in a value-added drive to see how many levels students can improve on. ‘We really need to be at level 6,’ says a teacher at a parents’ evening.7 But who are the ‘we’? Are business and learning increasingly contradictory? Should student learning be the subject of market forces where there is no incentive to improve. As Weber saw it, the very essence of industrial society and the regime of rule-governed activity accompanying it lay in it being impersonal.8 This is true of a modern education system in the West where many voices have been raised against a utilitarian approach. Performativity was a resultsdriven, instrumental view of what children should be educated for, as if we were all ‘homo economicus’. Education seemed no longer to be less interested in the pursuit of ideals such as that of personal autonomy or emancipation then the means, techniques or skills that contribute to the efficient operation of the state and social cohesion. We need to get this into perspective. Some standardisation, rigorously applied, may be necessary in the short-term to achieve results. Yet should not education be an end in itself rather than a means of getting ahead of others and thereby stealing a competitive edge? Or is education not simply harvesting the earth for academic success? Education should not just be aimed at producing pupils as products for a capitalist society; arguably it should help foster creativity and empathy. It cannot just be about products of the mind. Love of learning for its own sake, the ‘divine spark’ from which much else flows should be kindled. The ability to imagine technical pathways is needed. The arts (and for that matter, sports) can elevate self-esteem; they enable the view that all pupils have potential. Arts especially can generate a sense of creative subversion and restless innovation. It is more commonly realised now that human flourishing

130  A Question of Worth depends on a range of abilities. A single conception of capability represents an old paradigm. As American developmental psychologist Howard Gardner has stressed, multiple intelligences are varied but also function in dynamic interaction.9 That is why interdisciplinary perspectives are often seed-beds for creativity. As a reaction against the commanding criteria to ensure maximum output from the system, voices in the West protested against a utilitarian approach. It is feared education is primarily technocratic and concerned with the means and skills that contribute to the efficient operation of the state in the world market and its social cohesion. An instrumental view of education requires individuals of a certain kind – not autonomous persons but automatons: standardised, governable individuals.10 Alongside those concerns were those of depersonalisation – the need to treat pupils as people, holistically, not as learners who tick boxes. There was immense pressure to succeed, for exams to prepare and herd pupils through, and to try to ensure that absentee records did not allow a school to slip down the league tables. At the same time, it was recognised that schools did not compete on a level playing field between the inner city and schools in the leafy suburb. Hence value-added measures were constructed: the intention was to measure the extra value that schools gave to disadvantaged pupils. Yet critics of school league tables complained that performance was still a dominant rhetoric, mostly recording teaching for the test rather than pupil development. Breathing in and out the spirit of industrialism, the figure of Thomas Gradgrind in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times may have been a parody, but suspicion and fear of such depersonalisation as his obsession with ‘facts, facts, facts’ are, however, still evident in debates about contemporary education. They are directed against the often-stated policy objective of delivering targets through standardised systems designed to leave little to chance or to the individuality of teacher and learner. Surrendering holistic development to the overriding criteria of teacher performance was a high price to pay. Yet pupils object to being part of a production line. In disenchantment with the constant demand to test, to quantify, headteachers in the UK have often threatened to boycott some Standards Assessment Tests (SATS) or have indeed carried that threat out. In the US, Common Core allowed students in different states to be measured

5th Symptom: Performativity and Education  131 against each other. Since the advent of ‘No Child Left Behind’, signed into law by George W. Bush in 2001, US states are required to test students annually. It is controversial. Many on the right of politics criticise common standards and testing. Many on the left criticise continuous testing because it undermines teachers and unions.11 Contemporary mass education systems are rooted in the Industrial Revolution. The typical trope is that of the teacher at the front drilling pupils, endeavouring to produce more and more in order to initiate them into industrial society. The British example is instructive. Here we had the first country to escape an agrarian past and ‘take off into sustained growth’, to use US economist Walt Rostow’s phrase. Shortly after Matthew Arnold published Culture and Anarchy in 1869, William Gladstone’s Liberal government enacted the Education Act of 1870, with the express aim of educating the populace through a state education system designed to serve industrial society. During World War II, 1944 saw a fundamental reform of the British education system. Education was to be vital in postwar reconstruction. The school-leaving age was raised to 15. A national system featured technical and grammar schools, but it was locally managed with district authorities firmly in the driving seat. Central government had very little power to change things. There was growing disquiet that only 15 to 20 per cent of children went to grammar schools. The education system had a two-tier result with the brightest pupils getting O-levels and the rest secondary modern CSEs, reproducing higher-value vs lower-value pupils. In 1964 the new Labour prime minister Harold Wilson promised grammar schools for all; but even Government Circular 10/65 could only request local authorities to propose plans for comprehensive education. Quality mass education for everyone in the UK led to a golden period of meritocracy during which, in principle, all were valued and none left behind. Commonly, the system was tilted towards elitism and failed those who were not academic. When, in 1976, at Ruskin College Oxford, Prime Minister Jim Callaghan made a speech inaugurating a ‘great education debate’, he was almost apologetic in explaining why he was saying something on that subject. Education was a ‘secret garden’ in which teachers were free to plant what they want. Resistance from teacher unions was vociferous. The 1988 Education Act brought a very different approach. A National Curriculum

132  A Question of Worth was introduced with stated outcomes and a new emphasis on teachers being much more professional. Although still catering for 100 per cent in principle, in practice the education system was catering for 0 per cent. To correct this, a centralised agenda was imposed on schools to drive up standards. Anyone who has worked in education since 1988 either as a teacher or school governor is acutely aware of the impact of the revolution. Fundamental to the New Labour project after 1997 was that reform was needed to break down the ‘Berlin Wall’ of social division between rich and poor. Incremental change was no longer enough. To get real value out of the education system, a complete overhaul was required. Results were published so parents could see how the schools were doing. The state should provide ‘choice’ for parents so that ability could be rewarded. Hence the rise of academies, schools that their architect, Andrew Adonis, described as ‘a new type of all-ability independent state school with dynamic independent sponsors taking charge of their management’.12 Such alternatives to ‘bog-standard’ comprehensive schools were not all ‘New Jerusalem’. Who were their sponsors exactly and what were their interests? What is the price of public accountability, exclusion policies, teachers’ pay or provision for special educational needs? Was it sensible to base reform on centralised power? The education agenda of the coalition government from 2010 largely continued this agenda, driven by the ambition of breaking up the state monopoly in education and allowing more and more schools to become self-directing academies within a careful regulatory framework. In addition to community (read ‘comprehensive’) schools, there was a plethora of academies, free schools, faith schools and independent schools. Co-operative trust schools proved a popular alternative to schools not attracted to the new academy status. Generally, measures were introduced to reduce the regulatory framework that streamed out of Whitehall; for example, seemingly outmoded views of the curriculum, new and less bureaucratic rules for assessing and sacking under-performing staff and employing unqualified people in a teaching role.13 Yet the educational system still seemed to be driven by performativity – be it the marginalisation of the arts, an overhaul of public examinations or a more pressurising inspection regime. As Addison observes, the 1988 Education Act imposed on schools a bureaucratic system

5th Symptom: Performativity and Education  133 of targets, monitoring and controls of all kinds, which the Clement Attlee government had attempted, without much success, to apply to industrial production in the late 1940s and early 1950s.14 The target-driven culture was intended to equip and empower people through giving them qualifications and confidence to compete and to find and discover a sense of value that was more than just ‘academic’ because it was also economic. More and more schools opted out to run themselves to the point where, at the time of writing, 70 per cent of British secondary schools are state schools outside the system. Seeing those on the receiving end of education as customers was not just what happened in schools. David Willetts, UK minister for Higher Education, observed in 2011 that, ‘our changes to the financing system will also drive structural reforms in higher education. The force that is unleashed is consumerism’.15 Education has become a strategic issue. How we are doing is a source of performance anxiety not just between schools but between nations. In the industrialising or post-industrialising world, ministers of education scan international league tables to see who is falling behind. The driver so often seems to be homo economicus, as if children are the latest producer in training. The anxiety to produce in order to perform runs all the way through from nursery education to universities. Within higher education, the restless urge towards quantity, often at the expense of quality, is determined by the urgent need to demonstrate the impact of departmental research and teaching. Invariably, ‘impact’ means economic impact and measurable benefit. Early years should be stressed. The politics are hotly contested. The pressure to succeed and keep up with the rest of the world is grinding, amid laments that ‘pretending that test scores are the most important outcomes of education is considered reform’. High-performing nations demonstrate a marked respect for the teaching profession by not having ‘amateurs as teachers, superintendents or principals’.16 Other voices protested that this ethos of ‘trusting the professionals’ and ‘letting the teachers teach’ was, however, camouflage for not taking on the teacher unions, who seemed to be a block to progress. In an era when many still lack decent education, health care or security, the overriding emphasis must be to focus on outcomes.

134  A Question of Worth There are many voices calling for change. In Creative Schools, Sir Ken Robinson sets out his practical vision for how education can be transformed to enable all young people to flourish and succeed in the twenty-first century.17 He argues for an end to the outmoded, industrial systems of mass schooling and proposes a highly personalised, organic approach that draws on today’s unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students and develop their individual abilities and love of learning. There are many examples of people and projects that are already revolutionising education through innovative approaches to teaching, learning and school culture. The 21st Century Learning Initiative grew out of the work of the Education Trust in the UK established in 1983. It became one of the first major websites on learning and grew as a virtual organisation.18 One key message of the initiative is: ‘Battery hens or free range chickens: what kind of education for what kind of a world?’ It is an echo of the protest against a single-minded focus on performativity and the outcome-based learning that is the mantra of governments and education establishments. ‘Battling for the Soul of Education’, representing the findings and recommendations of three decades of synthesis, helps raise national debates far beyond talk of targets and curricula, to something more fundamental and  inspiring. It offers a diagnosis and suggests possible treatments based on current understanding of how human beings actually learn. It describes how our systems came to be so dysfunctional, so that we may avoid repeating the same mistakes again.19 Education has an important role in helping us to achieve our potential, but the processes by which we assess ability were designed for an industrial age. Vocational courses that transmit mastery of work-related skills are often the leftovers of the Industrial Revolution. They have been bedevilled by low status and lack of creative innovation. In a high-performance world, adults can rarely afford to be wrong or to fail. Yet children are infectious learners and learn by experimenting. What is needed is to find a way of releasing and channelling that innate creativity and help discover passion. Where pupils are disruptive so as to get attention, perhaps the knowledge system in the classroom seems too much like a conveyor belt, delivered by impersonal forces they can neither see nor relate to, driven by purposes unknown to them. It is likely that students need to relate to a human being

5th Symptom: Performativity and Education  135 consistently – preferably a qualified teacher. The problem is this. Is there a way of assessing success without the compelling need for measurement? It is often asked, ‘why do we have to measure a child’s learning in the first place?’ Yet publicly validated examinations will remain as the passport towards recognition by others (especially employers) that students achieve. It is the pass to the global system. There seems no way round it – unless, that is, young people are taught to compete not just with others in a highly competitive world, but also with themselves primarily. A learning environment in which pupils flourish is about the exercise of an imagination that must be stimulated to flourish at all levels. In 2012, just over 30 per cent of white British children entitled to free school meals got five good passes at GCSE. This was fewer than poor children from ethnic minorities. The race is already set before children come to school. Where there is a deep lack of faith in education to help their children to get on, parents are less likely to engage with it. When the job pages of local papers are filled with advertisements for care workers, bar staff and cleaners (important tasks though these are), the horizons of possibility are not expanded. Young people and parents alike must surely be able to imagine routes into the workplace and better jobs. To avoid technical courses being seen as having lower value, they must be tied closely to work, imparting essential skills quickly and cheaply.20 Education by definition recruits the imagination of aspiration, drawing out (educare) towards other options than the script handed out to children by background. This is vital. When disguised as working selves, many adults cannot wait to retire. Others, by contrast, could not imagine taking many steps back. There is too much excitement. The things they do are not merely the product of brain or hand, they are an extension of what they are as people. Their valuable selves are invested in their projects. Their work is part of them and, indeed, at one level, it is them! The technological revolution is driving massive change in the business model for schools and higher education. Thanks to on-line courses, the continual rising demand for university courses in global markets means anyone with access to smartphone or laptop computer can access the knowledge once restricted to the lucky few. Anyone with access to a smartphone or laptop computer can access knowledge once restricted to the lucky

136  A Question of Worth few. Because of economies of scale, the price of learning is falling all the time. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) began in Canada in 2008. They quickly generated considerable excitement. What is the point of thousands of professors, each delivering the same course, when the same experience can be delivered at virtually zero marginal cost? Yet the doubts persisted, born of hesitations about the lack of human contact and concern over depersonalisation. Central to the school experience, as conceived for generations, is a particular view of pedagogy based on the teacher–pupil relationship. Similarly, the university or college experience is not just learning facts and sophisticated views but networking, debating and interaction with professor and peer. How can digital education replicate such social capital? Realising this, distance-learning providers endeavour to supply blended learning: online courses that nurture students as learners through technology-driven interactive experiences. It is a new world. The last word goes to a retired teacher, who reflected, ‘education is not about treating children like battery hens to see how many eggs they can produce’.21 It remains to be seen how far the new digital economy will overcome the battery hen.

11 5th Symptom (continued): Performativity – Workplace and Wards ‘For my routine prostate check-up, we had to go down to have the biopsy in theatre. This wasn’t because they needed to operate. It was because they needed to keep up usage rates in the theatre. It was all a matter of targets!’– Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission.1 ‘I would argue that a culture of care would need to support paid carers in a direct engagement with the needs of people with dementia and recognise that they are also people with diverse emotional needs who need to feel supported and valued.’ – www.dignityincare.org.uk.2 ‘Talk to us and not at us. Treat us like adults.’ – A protester against reduction in health care.’ – World at One3 ‘For those of us who are cognitively intact, time is like a stream of water in which we float with the current. For someone with Alzheimer’s, time is frozen into individual snowflakes, which touch the skin and melt.’ – An Australian chaplain, Methodist Homes4

138  A Question of Worth We are putting capitalism on the couch, using the rhetorical device of therapy as if our economic and social system was a client in search of selfunderstanding. Following the previous discussion about the education factories that were shaped by the Industrial Revolution, what are we to make of another way that performativity is manifested? Deploying considerable ingenuity, our client has created highly efficient systems in every walk of life dedicated to restless productivity. There is a cost though in driving people forward to every greater output; a price to pay. A man in the parish working in the city returns every night profoundly depressed, to the point of hating his job. He has continually to crack down on employees, to ‘put the screws on them’. The need to get the most out of the staff drives the workplace but it comes at a price. The result is not a happy productive environment but a restless place, joyless and sullen.5 Management styles have largely been shaped by the restless imperative of getting more and more out of the system. Mental health issues in the city seem to be on the increase. In his book Fear and Self-Loathing in the City, Michael Sinclair, a chartered psychologist who practised there, described a range of issues presented by clients.6 Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse were the main culprits, but behind them, Sinclair argued, lay a generalised fear of failure and a strong self-loathing. The need to be perfectionist and always in control bumps up against failure when city workers do not measure up to such exacting standards. These individual pathologies are, however, sharply accentuated by an organisational culture that is so often downright toxic. A long-hours’ culture is driven by a fear of new people coming up who may outrun you; it’s a fear where you dare not admit mistakes; a fear where high-octane performance is intrinsic to a blame culture. As I write, a major UK retailer is facing strong condemnation on the grounds of audit and financial regulation (or its lack thereof). Eye-watering sums have been fudged in the accounts. An insider tells of the culture that drives employees to falsify or at least exaggerate the profits.7 It can be summed up in one word: ‘fear’. It is the fear of not keeping up profit margins, fear of falling sales, fear of falling behind, fear of pressure from above, fear of pressure from outside: fear is the driver in this culture.

5th Symptom (continued): Performativity – Workplace and Wards  139 At the same time, labour rights activists say that the electronics giant Pegatron, Apple’s biggest contractor in China, has failed to explain at least five deaths of young workers in recent months. Workers interviewed by China Labour Watch, a non-profit group that monitors working conditions in China, have complained loudly about long working hours and harsh working conditions at Pegatron, some of which in previous years led to health and safety issues there. In September 2013, a young Chinese labourer named Shi Zhaokun began working long hours at a huge manufacturing plant that produces Apple’s new iPhone 5C. One day, Shi was unable to make it to work and checked into a hospital, his family says. Soon after, he was pronounced dead from pneumonia. Apple’s supplier responsibility statement bars employees of supplier companies in China from working more than 60 hours a week; so does Chinese law. But according to documents, Shi worked 79 hours in his first week, 77 in his second and 75 in his third, in violation of the law.8 Cultures of working excessive hours invariably lead to ill-health, poor morale and a negative rather than positive environment.9 Critics of the BBC institutional culture, identified as being detrimental to its functioning, have spoken of internecine warfare as a prime culprit.10 Here you have highly talented people pursuing levels of rivalry and striving for esteem that can descend into bitterness. It also featured prominently in the release of documents highlighting how the culture was vitriolic and not just competitive and was undermined by workplace bullying, a fact of life in the corporate jungle. Organisations need to discern what cultures of devaluation are. Bullying and denigration in the workplace are not just the result of a few rogue operators. They occur within organisational systems. One in four absences are due to bullying. Some 100 million days of productivity are lost.11 Organisations and workplace culture in our times have been shaped by the frenetic drive towards speed and output. It is not just in industrial factories where assembly lines are commonplace. We have constructed large bureaucracies to run education and health. Education factories and healthcare factories are obvious manifestations of assembly-line production in the public sector. The assumption that ‘bigger is better’ underlaid the growth of bureaucracy and organisations in the factory age. New forms of economic life generated

140  A Question of Worth new forms of social life through the experiences of urban labourers among the proletariat and those of the growing middle class who performed professional tasks required to keep the whole system expanding. Originally, factories and assembly lines were places where work could be concentrated, mechanised and powered by the black gold of coal. Now they were not working in their homes, the workers could no longer see the result of their labours. The first factories were places where long hours of back-breaking labour were ground out amid grime and smells and where the labourers lived in cattle sheds. The factory was not only a place where labour was concentrated and clustered around machines; it became a symbol, along with the railway, of the new age. It was paradigmatic, a mindset, and it stood for a powerful approach to the organisation of life and work. The ‘factory’ was synonymous with huge output.12 Machines began to do the work of human hands but it was when individuals were grouped together in factories that division of labour became central to the new economic order. In Adam Smith’s pin factory, productivity leaped forward as different workers were assigned different tasks. The factory became emblematic of the new industrial age. Machines replaced human hands and animals. Factory labour was mechanised, with huge increases in productivity. As owners of the means of production tried to squeeze more and more out of the system, larger and larger units were concentrated into the factories, which were growing ever more ubiquitous. They were visual symbols of the age of mechanisation and of the mechanical universe where even the cosmos acted like a machine. Factory life had come to stay. Though industrialisation often seems associated with large scale, returns from around the UK in 1851 indicated that over two-thirds of firms employed less than ten people.13 Though on a larger scale, even railways and ships were essentially created by craft method. It was when parts made in one part of a factory or production site were taken mechanically to another that the age of machinery entered into another phase. Machines produced other machines. The assembly line had arrived. Scientific management became fashionable. Workers were given smaller and smaller bits of the machine to work with. For many, this was the chance to earn. For most it was tedious drudgery softened by the monthly pay packet and the camaraderie of the canteen. Workers became extensions of

5th Symptom (continued): Performativity – Workplace and Wards  141 the machines. Those who had to spend a lifetime under gruelling conditions began to resist. Unrest grew louder. Many felt they were treated as cogs in a greedy machine in a mechanised age. Workers fought the conditions in which they were expected to work. Men and women who had been bolted to the factory floor for so long rose up in indignant protest. To keep up, companies were obliged to make the wheels spin faster and faster. Its workers on the treadmill had to run just to keep up. In the new industrial economies, quantification was the prime type of knowledge that was needed. Intuition, emotions, feelings were not a reliable guide to human knowledge and action. Collection of statistics became prime means by which governments could comprehend what was happening and bring scrutiny. Weber observed that the business corporations that lay at the heart of these transformations drew on the same bureaucratic mode of thought and operation that characterised public administration. Systematic calculation of profit and loss in the organisation of the industrial firm relied on the rationality of the ledger. Being strictly impersonal was both its strength and weakness. Nevertheless, rational computation won the day in the industrial field and in the economic commitments on the battlefield. The rise of large hierarchical organisations was characteristic of industrialisation and its consequences. The pioneering German sociologist and polymath Max Weber is associated most strongly with the articulation of modernity in terms of the demands of efficiency. Achieving more for less expenditure of effort lay at its heart.14 The scientific mentality that stressed rationality combined with the relegation of values and emotion to the subjective realm to drain the modern world of wonder. Modern bureaucracy was highly organised and rule-based so that standardisation could remove arbitrary judgements with their scope for capriciousness. Technological achievement ‘on an industrial scale’ went hand in hand with the achievement of organisational culture and bureaucracy. What counted now was being ‘an organisation man’; knowing the files, knowing how to fit in, receive instructions and pass them on to those below. Zygmunt Bauman argued that such industrial efficiency and ‘order-making’ is the very epitome of modernity and was the murderous zeitgeist in the Holocaust, where death factories were the order of the day.15 Following Weber, the Columbia University sociologist C. Wright Mills went on to argue that large managerial corporations had, in their pursuit of

142  A Question of Worth scale and efficiency, created hierarchies of workers who carried out routine, repetitive tasks that seemed meaningless and uninspiring.16 The lack of imagination – the worst crime of all perhaps – was typified in the IBM punch cards. The constant refrain about organisations is that bureaucratic systems suppress basic humanity and the care, kindness and generosity that express it. By stressing economic performativity and the urgent need to compete in the global arena, ‘homo economicus’ is not a rounded individual but the manufacturer of output, the pursuer of tasks; valued for labour and thoroughly commodified. French sociologist Jean-François Lyotard suggests that modern society is characterised by ‘performativity’, the reduction of all judgement to the criterion of efficiency of input-output relations.17 Certainly, the economic way of valuing human beings is inherently reductionist. The performance management culture characterised by efficiency can have a dark side. ‘It’s about power and control,’ complains someone about the micro-managing tendencies that the boss deploys discouragingly. But maybe this is really a narrative of value, the need to be valued in a competitive environment against the zero-sum game of devaluing staff? Only one person can be allowed to win! ‘Lack of respect for the workforce, bullying and intimidation by management lie at the heart of this dispute’, declared a UK Trade Union leader in an airline cabin crew strike. The same reaction is sometimes heard in schools; a teacher referring to the ‘fear-driven blame culture’ at the heart of the inspection regime of the British Office for Standards in Education.18

The growing depersonalisation of humanity is not only about the risk of seeing the human as a mere instrument of production; it poses the greater danger of seeing ourselves as on that production line, passive and subject to manipulation by any interested party. In view of the difficulties of reconciling individual needs within collective conditions, institutional life is bound to increase the perception of devaluation unless public service provision can develop a truly human face. Doing things on a more human scale away from the education and health-care factories that characterise our times is

5th Symptom (continued): Performativity – Workplace and Wards  143 a conundrum for policy makers shaped by the ‘bigger is better’, industrial mode of thinking. Management language has been about what administrators could reduce to systems, not about people being served. The medical model of health care, for instance, is intrinsically top-down. The person becomes a patient who IS a diagnosis. He or she is not just a recipient of health care: he or she is defined by his or her diagnosis. The medical model, no less than other professions, attracts the aura of expert knowledge. This, too, can be a top-down vision of people which is profoundly depersonalising. It is not just that the expert knows best – of course, he or she does by reason of their training. Rather the medical expertise easily becomes a strategy of power and the patient is passive in its face. It is difficult for those who lack capacity to argue back, to articulate a different perspective.19 A patient is prepared to trade this for the confidence in the ‘top-down’ expertise of medical practitioners. These issues were paraded across the epistemological divide that haunted health care or psychiatry in the twentieth century. Is madness, for example, a sign of background noise, mere epiphenomena that are ultimately no more meaningful than the physical symptoms of cancer and to be treated with antipsychotics? Or is the patient someone to be listened to? According to Daniel Leader, obsession with predetermined outcomes and normalisation means the patient has become an object to be treated with a drug bag that dulls the brain and dehumanises those it seeks to help.20 Diagnosis helped to name the world and provide labels that could be both re-assuring and a vehicle for treatment. Yet in many quarters, especially those influenced by a humanistic tradition, diagnosis came to be regarded as an exercise by the unquestionable power and position of the expert. The issue of power and need for empowerment seems to be at odds with a mode of diagnostic delivery. The politics of diagnosis were highlighted in the controversies around the proposed revision of the Fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders in 2013. DSM was first published in 1952 but even the chair of the Task Force that produced DSM–IV criticised the new draft. Its critics argued that it applied psychiatric diagnoses to an ever-widening circle of distress. It was a set of descriptions and contributing factors to mental illness. Biological and neurological aspects were minimised. Social causes of problems, such as unemployment, were ignored. Pathologising

144  A Question of Worth the human situation and the medicalisation of behaviour in terms of illness seemed complete. According to news reports and internet comment, more than half of those on the DSM–V Task Force had some connection with the pharmaceutical industry. The problem was that a label is required to obtain help and often bequeaths some form of legitimacy to symptoms. A counter-argument for ‘no more labels’ was that a clinical diagnosis restricts treatment and obscures the person behind the problem.21 The emphasis in the UK has been on targets, delivering outcomes based on spreadsheets from a Whitehall desk. Assessed against mission statements and stated aims of public organisations, everything can seem on track and acceptable. The boxes have been ticked. If the emphasis is instead on lived experience, however, the conditions on the ground as it were of human interaction with the state and its various associated institutions, a different picture emerges. There, experience is neither rich nor rewarding. It is often a report of not being heard, being disregarded, so that your life situation does not count in contrast with the overall picture that is being measured. Concern in health provision has been about meeting targets at the expense of patients; targets set in the name of raising standards. The human factor, the lived experience of those on the ground, is often at odds. It was health care that the protest against the impersonal most strongly came to the fore in recent times. A wave of reports expressed concern about the quality of health-care provision in the UK. In October 2011, the Care Quality Commission found that many patients, especially among the elderly and more vulnerable, were being neglected. Then the NHS Future Forum outlined a series of concerns about the lack of focus on compassion and caring. Nutrition, mental well-being and even spirituality should be on the agenda. Health care was too important to leave to the professionals. In December 2012, the Chief Nursing Officer in the UK said that a new culture would need to be built to redevelop compassion. It was clear that very highly qualified nurses were needed to take on the increasingly complex nature of nursing but had skills been emphasised at the expense of compassion? Care seemed in short supply. Anecdotally, those involved with health-care systems care about patients but constant number-crunching and auditing makes a job joyless. Nurses were encouraged to place dignity at the heart of their work22 but practitioners

5th Symptom (continued): Performativity – Workplace and Wards  145 still appear to be struggling against a system that ‘wants’ the opposite. ‘Patients seem to be becoming numbers not people. I am having to fight against what the system wants in order to provide dignified care to my patients.’23 The secretary of the Royal College of Nursing commented that: ‘Dignity should not be an afterthought or an optional extra. Each and every patient – whether they are in a hospital, a GP’s surgery, in the community or in a care home – deserves to be treated with dignity and respect’.24 So often health-care professionals are developing a standardised package for people for whom it doesn’t seem appropriate. They are burnt out by the time they get to 60. Professionals work at a frenetic pace in contemporary society. A huge burden of paperwork and administrative overload causes great stress. ‘You have to keep proving that you are a worthy person’, complains a health-care professional. ‘It’s important to gain funding.’25 Social worth and value for money are clearly intertwined in narratives such as these. Yet what such regimes do to those that have to deliver the service should also be factored in. It erodes their personal worth, subjecting them to the stress of never doing the best job, always having to play catch-up. The report on serious failings at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust between January 2005 and March 2009, which resulted in the appalling suffering of many patients, highlighted the negative organisational culture that was endemic to the systemic failings. As the Chief Officer of the NHS Federation observed, ‘staff give of their best when they feel valued, not inspected’. There seems to be a strong and intrinsic connection between a culture of value and the value that is generated from that environment, in that case, the value of the human being served. Value is the key ingredient. Analysis of the Trust’s board meetings from 2005 to 2009 found that discussions were dominated by finance, targets and achieving foundation trust status. Yet between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust over three years, the Healthcare Commission report stated: On behalf of the Government and the NHS I would like to apologise to the patients and families of patients who have suffered because of the poor standards of care at Stafford Hospital […] There was a complete failure of management to address serious problems and monitor performance […]

146  A Question of Worth This led to a totally unacceptable failure to treat emergency patients safely and with dignity.26

Three years on, observers said the same culture was prevalent. In the UK, the trend in the 2000s had been towards creating a ‘patientcentred’ health service. There were many factors in that trend such as science and technology and changing family structures, but crucially as well, changing understanding of rights and choice. Rising expectations about being patient-centred meant trying to shape more services around the user. Putting patients first meant that ‘no decision is made about me without me’, patients having more clout and choice in the system, better information about how the NHS is performing, choice among providers and being able to choose the name by which they are addressed. Personalised health care meant negotiation and agreement of plans of care. When the Coalition government came to power in 2010, it set out its vision to modernise the National Health Service and put patients at its heart.27 Patients were promised a stronger voice on NHS services locally through the creation of Healthwatch groups. The result was the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, enshrining these ideas. Personalised care came to be placed alongside an agenda of localism – local solutions for local people. By stealth, pluralism, diversity and choice became the mantras of the age. At the end of the twentieth century, the medical profession was learning to value the human, to embody valuing people within its practice. Healing could not be reduced to technique. In the climactic moment of the film Patch Adams, aspiring doctor Hunter ‘Patch’ Adams is speaking in defence of unusual methods he had embarked upon in his training. In an emotionally charged moment, he makes a plea for patients to be treated as more than patients where one is successful sometimes. ‘If you treat a person, you will win every time’, he says.28 The Gesundheit (Good Health) Hospital he started became a thriving concern. It flew a banner for treating a patient holistically, as a person, not an object of care: The loudest cry of patients was for compassion and attention, which was a call for time. Initial interviews with patients were three to four hours long, so we could fall in love with each other. Intimacy was the greatest gift we could give them, especially at a death bed, with intractable pain or chronic, unsolved

5th Symptom (continued): Performativity – Workplace and Wards  147 medical problems […] To sweeten this intimacy, when I made a house call, I opened every drawer, snooped in every closet. I wanted to know the patients in all their complexities.29

The growing depersonalisation of humanity is not only about the risk of seeing the human as a mere instrument of production; it is the greater danger of seeing ourselves as on that production line, passive and subject to manipulation by any interested party. In view of the difficulties of reconciling individual needs with collective conditions, institutional life is bound to increase the perception of devaluation unless public service provision can develop a truly human face. It is the Protest against the same factory level health care model that has its parallel in education factories. As an MP lamented, referring to the personal loss she had experienced, sadly accompanied by care that was depersonalising, ‘my husband died like a battery hen’.30 ‘Industrial-scale’ health care features the battery hens once again, this time minus the eggs!

12 6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour ‘The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed two great classes – tramps and millionaires.’ – The platform of the US People’s Party, 1st Convention, Omaha, 18921 ‘I am talking about an institution that clothes, feeds and houses us, employs us and invests our savings. It is the source of economic prosperity and the growth of nations around the world. It is a much-neglected institution because, at the same time, it has been the source of terrible deprivation, poverty and environmental degradation.’ – Francesca Martinez2 ‘The pursuit of profit allows for no consideration of morality or ethics, which is why so many of us are so unrepresented. Left to its own devices, this insatiable insane greed for more-more-more will ultimately destroy the environment that nourishes us, and all the humane ideals that so many have fought and died for to create.’ – Francesca Martinez3

6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour  149 From symptoms and behaviours that have unintended consequences that are often devastating, our sixth behaviour pattern demonstrates our client acting in ways that are amoral, explicit and destructive. Our client is not in a good place. Here, the economic order is patently dysfunctional. Hungry and cold, carnivorous capitalism eats its children. This way of operating and organising society results in inequalities of wealth and income distribution that sit alongside crippling damage to people. Whenever the business mode of organising economy and society is the dominant narrative, communities and environment suffer hugely. The root of the problem is profit-hungry productivity; the fruit is predatory commerce, greed and mismanagement. Yet our client is not only predatory, cold and hungry: our client is a rapist, out of control. Today as I write this, it has been 30 years since the gas cloud in India. On that deadly night, hundreds died. As toxic gas spread from a leak in a chemical plant, hundreds began to suffocate in nearby Bhopal, home to more than 900,000 people. Terrified tens of thousands fled the slums that were now scenes of death. We were choking and our eyes were burning. We could barely see the road through the fog, and sirens were blaring. We didn’t know which way to run. Everybody was very confused. Mothers didn’t know their children had died, children didn’t know their mothers had died and men didn’t know their whole families had died. Thousands of dead cats, dogs, cows and birds littered the streets and the city’s mortuaries filled up fast.

More than 20,000 people required hospital treatment for symptoms including swollen eyes, frothing at the mouth and breathing difficulties. That night, in 1984, caused the immediate deaths of thousands of people and has resulted in life-long suffering for almost 120,000 survivors. The culprit was methyl isocyanate gas (MIC). It had leaked from a valve that broke under pressure. Yet under investigation, it became clear that the owners of the chemical factory, Union Carbide, did not apply the same safety standards at its plant in India as it operated at a sister plant in the US state of West Virginia. It wanted to cut costs. That was the real culprit. Six safety measures designed to prevent a leak had either malfunctioned, were turned

150  A Question of Worth off or were inadequate. The safety siren, intended to alert the community should an incident occur at the plant, was turned off. Minimal compensation was paid to victims, either by Union Carbide or its new owner, Dow, which continues to pollute the environment with toxins and cancer-causing chemicals anywhere it considers the pollution will not be noticed. There are laws about corporate responsibility. Banks are fined; Enron is pursued, anti-trust laws have been pursued in the US since the days of General Sherman. There is concern at this time about digital monopolies enjoyed by Facebook, Amazon and Google. Corporate power feeds on itself before it eats its children. On the contemporary scene, the extractive, food and clothing industries meet humanity’s most basic needs at a huge price. In June 2015, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, delivered the annual speech at Mansion House in the City of London. This time, although this was a dinner jacket affair, the gloves were off. Carney spoke of the failure of regulation that had led banks to act dysfunctionally. An amoral, ethically pragmatic stance had been adopted as cultural practice. Ethics were what you could get away with. Corporate failures, insider trading and fixing the exchange rate for commercial gain had been too common for too long. A rules-based approach was imperative. The public had seen eye-watering fines for institutions but no one individual had gone to jail. No longer should the wealth-creators function without a moral compass. The age of irresponsibility was, proclaimed Carney, over.4 This is not to say that alternative forms of economic organisation have offered better solutions than capitalism. Communism slew its millions and offered even less space to be human. Though the dysfunction we are looking at in this book is an outcome of the dominant global economy, it would be misleading to suggest that the twin imperatives of productivity and profit were an invention of the Industrial Revolution. In slave-owning societies, most people considered slavery to be a fact of life. Slaves were obtained as spoils of war, through kidnapping or as a legal punishment. In modern times, slavery has been thoroughly exploitative as well as being inefficient. Slave trading was fundamental to the economic system of many nations up to the nineteenth century. It was Europe’s sweet tooth that began the most notorious traffic in human beings that has taken

6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour  151 place – the Atlantic slave trade. About two-thirds of the slaves who survived the Atlantic crossing – the so-called ‘Middle Passage’ – ended up in Europe’s sugar colonies to feed the growing demand for sugar.5 At the peak of the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century, Europeans were shipping 90,000 Africans a year to the Americas in some 200 to 300 ships. From 1519 (when figures are available) to 1867, over 11 million humans were forcibly taken across the Atlantic. Britain accounted for 28 per cent of this trade. And these were only the survivors.6 John Newton, a former slave trader, who became a Christian and went on to write the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’, described how human beings were packed in like sardines: With our ships, the great object is to be full […] the slaves lie in two rows, one above the other, on each side of the ship, close to each other, like books upon a shelf […] The poor creatures, thus cramped for want of room, are likewise in irons, for the most part both hands and feet and two together, which makes it difficult for them to turn or move, to attempt either to rise or lie down without hurting themselves or each other. I believe nearly one half of the slaves on board have sometimes died and that the loss of a third in these circumstances is not unusual.7

Inspection of the slave ship Brookes in 1789 showed that male slaves were allowed a space of only six feet by one foot four.8 Many died through sickness. In the notorious case of the slave ship Zong, slaves were thrown overboard to conserve fresh water (even though water was not about to run out). There was an enormous public outcry. A painting by Turner describes the terrible scene. Even the sea and sky is angry. Defending slavery ‘meant regarding enslaved people as lesser human beings and thus not to be treated in the same manner as free individuals’. Slaves were seen as animals, although were not to be treated so harshly as to threaten life or productivity.9 The decision to use African slaves was not only about profit. Colonists in America could not imagine using European labour in this way. Africans were different. It was acceptable to enslave them. Africans were not fully human, clearly inferior to whites in mental and spiritual faculties.10 Once slaves were dehumanised, treated as objects and not as people like ‘us’, the slave trade helped build a mindset of racism that became deeply embedded in attitudes

152  A Question of Worth to black people subsequently. Basic food and shelter were provided, at least as long as the slave was of value to the master. Procreation was encouraged to produce additional slaves – additional capital assets. Medical care, horrible and inadequate as it was, was provided so long as the slave was useful. As Berenbaum wrote: When no longer useful, the slave was sold to someone less fortunate, or abandoned to die, much as we might treat an old car that is either repaired until repairs are too costly and is then traded, or, when beyond all utility, junked.11

We have moved a long way since those times and the anti-slavery campaigns that roused the conscience (the first really effective campaigns rooted in human dignity). Yet men and women, boys and girls continue to be sold as property. An estimated 12 million men, women and children are slaves, recruited for forced labour or sexual exploitation; as many as were brought across the Atlantic in the notorious trade of the past. Thirteen thousand slaves are forced to work in the United Kingdom.12 Human trafficking is the third most profitable criminal activity after drugs and weapons. Young girls are sold into sex slavery for Islamic state fighters.13 No country is immune. Every year, some 600,000–800,000 people are traded across international borders. Over 8 million children are exploited in forms of slavery whether it be to pay a debt, whether they are serving as child soldiers or involved in pornography, prostitution or used as forced labour. Sexual exploitation is the main reason for the traffic in women and girls. Boys tend to be exploited for forced labour. People are sold so their organs can be forcibly removed for sale. Some parents reportedly earn so little that, unable to feed their families, they have been willing to hand over their children to human traffickers. There is no straight line between slave-owning societies and today’s corporate giants. Yet it must be remembered that slavery contributed to the growing wealth of Britain. The Industrial Revolution was founded in part on wealth from the slave trade. Today, though in different ways, the global economy remains exploitative. Its trail of rape both of communities and of the environment would, if it were an individual, require reporting to the police and being held accountable.

6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour  153 The operating principle remains the same. Although slavery is hardly an efficient mode of production, the twin-imperatives of productivity and profit drive the need to extract more and more at less cost. We are back to the numbers, to the balance sheet. Across the globe, the food, clothing, pharmaceutical and extractive industries wield enormous power. With power goes responsibility. At least that’s the sermon! Across the globe, the lament grows; from garment factories in Bangladesh to food industries bringing plague to millions through adding salt and sugar (the same culprit that fuelled the slavery of yesteryear). To achieve whitening of black skin in Kenya, a major pharmaceutical company uses levels of mercury that would be banned in the richer countries. A third of the world is starving, a third of the world under-fed while the rest are busy dieting. In a world running out of land, there are 80 million new mouths to feed every year. In pursuit of ever-increasing quantity, humanity has stained the oceans, a life-support system for the planet. We have destroyed coral reefs; rainforests of the sea. Food chains are slipping down into a marine junkyard dominated by plankton. Rivers and streams are filled with effluent disgorged from manufacturing plants and with untreated sewage. Rivers are dead. The water is sick. How can water be both the bringer of life and of death? There are few places left where forests had not become timber. Country after country has sawn through its inheritance. We are haunted by the ghosts of living things lost and gone forever. Countless species of animals have been sacrificed for land and illegal trade. One-eighth of the world’s birds are about to fly into extinction. Thousands of species are becoming but a memory or a photograph. Instead of caring for the planet, humanity has systematically raped it. If sustainability means anything, it is surely nurtured by seeing through a different lens. Community and environment are the contexts in which business and trading, so central to human activity and prosperity, are carried out. Failure to see with imagination has led to the environment being treated purely as a resource; something to plunder. Failure to benefit community has had destructive consequences. Indivisible, both community and environment pertain to the same sphere with which we interact. Perhaps the term that can encapsulate the economic context best is the ‘social ecology’.

154  A Question of Worth Global Justice Now mounts a campaign for justice for people in Borneo. Their letter begins, ‘imagine getting just half a penny per square metre for land that had been in your family for generations. This is what has happened to people in Indonesian Borneo’.14 The background was that an international mining company was planning to build massive coal mines stretching over an area more than twice the size of London, destroying some of the last pockets of primary rainforest in Borneo. As well as depriving indigenous peoples of their customary land, the mine could pollute water sources upon which millions depend. The campaign sought to send the company a strong message: ‘no forest destruction for coal!’ As in the food industry where sugar, salt and chemicals have damaged thousands and sparked obesity epidemics, unscrupulous companies certainly play a large role in environmental harm. Our client is also shown up as predatory by being incredibly self-centred. Richer countries in the West are extremely reluctant to open their markets. All too often, developing countries face almost insuperable problems in selling their commodities in richer – world markets. ‘Self-centred, everyone for himself ’ attitudes apply in a different way as well. Today, individualism and the decline of the communal is a major concern across civil society. The British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm argued that ‘the values of consumer-society individualism and the search for private and personal satisfactions above all else’ were responsible for the decline in fortunes of the Labour Party.15 In fact for political parties, churches, trade unions and community organisations, the decline in participation and volunteering has been marked in a single generation. Trade Union representation in the workforce in the large OECD countries exposed to globalisation such as the UK and the US, has shrunk steadily to approximately half its 1980 levels. Much of this may have been due to the move to a service economy, since specialist workers in manufacturing have more bargaining power. It may be too that other political avenues are open to workers. But it seems clear, as observed by the chief union representative at a Swedish vehicle manufacturer, Scania, that ‘the younger generation is more individualistic’.16 This is not just a European story. China’s turn to capitalism occasioned widespread comment and concern about how a focus on social solidarity and the righting of historic inequalities has led to gated communities, deepening health

6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour  155 inequalities and the widening of distance between rural and urban realities.17 Inequalities mean we withdraw from the others that make us human. It is a real challenge. Living in tight community conflicts with the very strong sense of individuality that has been a growing element in our subjectivity for several centuries. Robert D. Putnam, in his much-cited text Bowling Alone, draws attention to the decline in community civic-mindedness. During the Great Depression years of the 1930s, membership of 32 organisations in civil society fell dramatically.18 Invoking the aftermath of World War II, President John F. Kennedy summoned the ethos of communal ties and collective sacrifice in his inaugural speech, ‘ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country!’. At the end of the 1960s, sociologist Daniel Bell observed that ‘there is more participation than ever before in America […] and more opportunity for the active interested person to express his personal and political concerns’.19 Yet Robert Putnam described how things were changing in the later decades of the twentieth century; the social capital was being squandered. Civil society institutions such as youth clubs, churches and trade unions, post-offices and pubs are less in evidence; either weakened or absent. The individual in isolation from society is a legacy of the hedonism and individualism from the 1960s onwards. This individualism was, he argued, due to spending more time alone on the internet and in our cars and, crucially, in front of the television. Atomisation was also exacerbated by pressures of time and budget. When these inputs of association came under considerable strain in the age of austerity, the effect on community bonds seems to have been significant. One survey charted a decline from 44 per cent of citizens in England and Wales who volunteered some unpaid help in 2005 to 37 per cent in 2010.20 Evidence is mixed regarding the contribution of community ties to recruiting political activists.21 One analysis of the strength of community ties in the UK in 1999 suggested that ‘aggregate levels of social capital have not declined to an appreciable extent in Britain over the post-war years’.22 But this was before the recession impacted on the economy and community life. In the UK, the ‘Citizenship Survey’ asks questions about the extent to which people volunteer their services. ‘Helping’ in this way could include shopping

156  A Question of Worth for elderly neighbours as well as babysitting. The average time Britons engaged in volunteering dropped markedly. Across the whole population, it fell from 3 hours, 7 minutes a month before the financial crash to 2 hours, 8 minutes in 2010 data.23 Bringing together formal volunteering with informal offers of help points to a fall in community engagement of around 25 per cent. There does seem to have been a social as well as economic recession. The result can be that life is about ‘me’ rather than ‘we’. We take less notice of each other or are less inclined to help neighbours when under pressure. A drop of about an hour a month in volunteering shows that people get less involved. In short, we need a more connected society. Communities and the common home around us are interwoven. What is happening in the natural environment has clear implications for human life.24 These two spheres should not be separated. Inextricably and intimately, the social ecology is the context in which humanity coheres. As a moral imperative, it ought not to suffer the compression of a single-minded focus on productivity and profit in pursuit of quantity. It is the poor who suffer particularly. It is the poor who pay for deforestation, for air pollution and for water being spoilt. It is ordinary people in Greece at the time of writing who have been deeply damaged by the brutal austerity programme arising from a whole country teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Financial speculators continued to make eye-watering profits from gambling on the crisis and those who lent recklessly are not held to account. Always an easy target, bankers, bonuses in the UK across the first parliament of the Coalition government as it drew to an end in 2015 were reported as being roughly equivalent to the amount the government had trimmed off public spending in those five years – some £80 billion!

Two Narratives There have been two narratives. One is to see capitalism and making money as being inherently exploitative and conducive to greed. State aid is good, business is bad. Commercial decisions may be well and good in their sphere but not in order to meet social aims which, by definition, are unquantifiable and must usually be provided free by a benign state. The other narrative is to see the economic sphere as inherently good. Participation in meaningful

6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour  157 work is conducive to flourishing. Marx formulated his critique of capitalism in the era of grim factory labour. This competing narrative sees a strong version of a capitalist critique as outmoded and unhelpful. The point is that economic activity, so central to human action, can provide contexts in which human value and worth is nurtured so as to add value to the work of organisations. In turn, this can feed economic growth. So it is that political leaders either work hard at shredding any image they have of being hostile to business or bend over backwards to prove they are business-friendly. Either that or they do not care. In Latin America, ‘dependency theory’ has a strong running, with its claim that foreign exploitation of its raw materials lay at the heart of the economic woes on the subcontinent (a claim repudiated by loudest critic, Eduardo Galeano, author of Open Veins of Latin America).25 Political leaders on the left of French politics have traditionally had to demonstrate their credentials by exhibiting great suspicion of the commercial sector. President Hollande was elected in 2012 by declaring war on ‘the world of finance’; denouncing the ‘grasping and arrogant rich’ in rhetoric that appealed to anti-capitalist instincts but failed to mention the need for competitiveness. Over the Atlantic, business leaders portrayed US president Barack Obama as being a class warrior; rather unfairly since his tenure led to higher stock market values and record corporate growth. However, they complained that he never passed up an opportunity to miscast them as the bad guys or unpatriotic. (Obama said that CEOs should be motivated not just by shareholder value.) He accepted that they sign up to a set of professed values but said that his ‘challenge to them consistently is, is your lobbyist working as hard on those issues as he or she is on preserving that tax break you’ve got? If the answer is no, then you don’t care about it as much as you say’.26 By contrast, rarely was there such a gulf between a businessman’s public image and his standing among peers as with ex-BP boss Tony Hayward, attacked in the US over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill but remaining popular in the city. ‘There was a lot of goodwill towards him among investors’, says Charles Whall, who manages a global energy fund. ‘Hayward did try to behave as a good corporate citizen and communicated with shareholders throughout the crisis.’27

158  A Question of Worth There is a duality here that frustrates clear thinking on this issue between competing accounts of the role of business. One is a negative story to be told about the effects of capitalism, a story that invariably betrays itself by affixing adjectives such as ‘predatory’, ‘greedy’ or ‘selfish’ to it. When private equity funds buy up and squeeze companies or when the global financial machinery seizes up, it is people who suffer – the human cost of homes repossessed, relationships under strain and the threat of redundancy or of millions falling back under the poverty line in developing countries. The competition for consumer abundance and the world of plenty leads to social ills – as Jeremy Seabrook states: [E]verywhere the talk is of violence, loneliness, family breakdown, mental illness, racism and the spoiling of human relationships. Everything speaks, not of the boundless joy that should have come with the release from the old poverty but of great human pain. The anger, frustration and discord are not seen as being part of the material improvements, which are sacrosanct.28

The financial crisis demonstrated the large-scale expansion of financial markets associated with the growth of financial institutions, combining deregulation to free up markets with sustaining endless consumption through extension of credit and instruments.29 This had been part of a trend. It did not arise in a vacuum. The importance of declaring dividends and making high levels of profit was bound up with predatory conglomerates making very large profits from stripping and rationalising companies.30 Traditional firms now had to compete with these opportunistic businesses and do so by undertaking predatory buying and selling of other firms themselves.31 By 2011, 40 per cent of British large manufacturing companies of 15 years before had been either broken up or acquired by private equity/foreign owners. The result of delayering business generated a culture where there was an increased emphasis on profitability and the emergence of profit-motivated executives. ‘Greed is good’, says Froud et al.:32 Even in blue chip companies, whose managements once built factories, market share operating management became an endless series of cheap financial dodges […] This work is punctuated and interrupted by major restructurings and changes of ownership where it is the financial engineering which is crucial.33

6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour  159 As Fine observes, such ‘financialisation’ implied the systemic dominance of finance over industry with damaging implications for productive activity. Hedge Funds did not care for the industry they were entering or the assets they were stripping. Extracting maximum share values was top priority and capital investment was now a revenue stream.34 There is a sharp contrast between the wealth-creating endeavours of conservative philosophy and the new financial capitalism. The latter has dissolved the relationship between business activity and the wider public good that it should be serving indirectly. In the global economy, short-term quick profit is the overriding objective; values that support the value of the human such as respect and decency are disregarded.35 In no small measure, this may not be a crime to be laid at someone’s door so much as the outcome of a 24/7 world where shares change hands at blinding speeds as investors sniff instant returns. Despite this duality, the reality is far more nuanced. Caution must be shown against viewing the economy as a machine that goes out of control periodically, bringing misery to its victims. It is misleading too if we see the economy purely through the activities of corporate transnational power. The crimes of the food and pharmaceutical industries, of garment and mining giants, are not the whole story. There is a narrative about people getting a job or qualification that incentives and revalues them. There is a decidedly positive story to be told in wealth creation that slowly delivers people from grinding poverty. India has an individualistic brand of capitalism featuring millions of busy entrepreneurs and rapid growth. The Manila Water Company provides three times as many people with safe and reliable supplies after privatisation as the state did before, but at a fraction of the price.36 It should be said that the capitalist economy can also provide incentives to clean up pollution – witness the way a successful trading system for sulphur dioxide emissions solved the US’s acid-rain problem by selling credits in the marketplace for a profit if they clean up beyond the minimum that regulation requires. Moreover, leading Asian businesses, conscious of the deforestation, foul water and air-pollution that accompanied the Tiger economies, are going beyond the strict requirements of regulation. For instance, the Kadoories, a family of Iraqi Jews who landed in Hong Kong in 1880, now control one of Asia’s largest energy companies, CLP Holdings.37 Its coal plants make it one

160  A Question of Worth of the biggest polluters on the planet. Sensing a change in public mood, in 2005, the Kadoories vowed to slash the carbon-intensity of its businesses involved with power-generation by more than three-quarters by 2050. Already by 2013, CLP had become the biggest investor in clean energy in China; the biggest developer of wind-power in India. The Marxist commentator David Harvey described the contradictions he perceived at the heart of capitalism – its drive to accumulate capital beyond the means of investing it, its imperative to use the cheapest methods of production which leads ultimately to consumers lacking the resources to consume, and its compulsion to exploit nature to the point of extinction. These are the tensions that underpin the persistence of mass unemployment, the downward spirals of Europe and Japan, and the unstable lurches forward of China and India.38 There is no real alternative to capitalism. Markets generate wealth and create jobs. This leads to a social arrangement that guarantees property rights and allows people to reap the reward of their labours, and once there is a place of exchange for those who can supply what others need, you end up with capitalism. The need is to ensure a more humane, responsible capitalism. Unquestionably, in the wake of the financial car crash, a combination of the financial crisis, misconduct by financial institutions, controversial executive remuneration packages and tax practices had undermined confidence and trust in corporations. As the traditional model of the corporate world was under scrutiny, Mars Incorporated and the Saïd Business School announced a pioneering, multi-year research partnership to explore the potential for building ‘mutuality’ into business models. ‘Mutuality’ was defined as the aim of a firm to create lasting positive benefits across stakeholders including its employees, suppliers, customers and communities. The project was intended to explore a new business management theory based around mutuality that might inform the next generation of business leaders, and engage industry in ongoing learning about what is possible for business when it comes to bettering society. The aim was to provide measures of mutuality. The project seeks to expand managerial focus beyond simple profit to take into account the full cost and potential benefit for business, society and the planet by doing business according to principles of mutuality, and addresses new forms of scarcity – human, social and environmental.39

6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour  161 Instead of big corporations manipulating us through a ruthless pursuit of profit and expansion, the concept of Shared Value suggests that business can be a force for good in society rather than being a force that dwells in a parallel universe to the well-being of those around. So what does a new economic model look like?

Part Three Marching to a Different Drum ‘Can’t you see? We are in a different place where we have to think differently and find ourselves a new way of being.’ – Katherine McMahon, The Rose of Sebastopol1

13 Environments of Value ‘Business has no business encroaching on human rights. Human beings should not be treated as economic pawns in an ideological chess game. Not everything in the world should be exploited as a source of profit. We need to keep hoping and believing that a more equal and sustainable society is possible, to remember what it is to be human, to share, to cooperate, to care for each other. We need to stop a tiny minority driven by crazy greed to turn every aspect of our precious lives into dollar signs. We are all worth more than that.’ – Francesca Martinez1

The economic and financial troubles afflicting the Western world after 2008 were not a sovereign debt crisis because governments had run up unsustainable debts. They were due primarily to a banking crisis caused by the irresponsibility of the US financial sector, an irresponsibility that extended across the globe and caused the rescue of banks that were too big to fail.2 The crisis did not trigger a left-wing revolutionary action. Historians of the future will have to determine whether democratic politics such as the antiEuropean elections of 2014 and after (or, conversely, the lack of engagement with politics) represented a slow-burning fuse of reaction. Nevertheless, the voices and the thunder were sounding louder and nearer. ‘Capitalism is in

166  A Question of Worth dire need of renewal’, they shouted – the contrast between those at the top who are reaping huge rewards and those who feel themselves to be locked out of the system, is growing ominously. Witness Thomas Piketty’s Capital, the surprising bestseller of 2014. There is widespread concern that unequal economic returns, which may be endemic to the operation of free markets, are leading to social strain which is unsustainable. But what alternatives were there? What ideologies lay waiting in the wings? The far-left was bankrupt; communism ideologies were now museum pieces. Problematic for the version of capitalism sustained by the credit bubble of the early twenty-first century was that the global finance underpinning it was merely increasing its own value. It had become divorced from real money and the ‘real’ value of the assets on which it rested. Arguably, it had also become divorced from human value; the value of the labour that went in to producing goods and services on which wealth depended as well as the human value of those who were affected by economic forces beyond their control. Something had gone wrong with the essential social contract for capitalism – blessed are the risk-takers – if the undeserving poor and taxpayers generally had to pick up the pieces. Communism and capitalism are words that have come down to us from the nineteenth century. The dualism between them played itself out in the twentieth. What would a new economic philosophy entail?

Different Forms of Value The social and economic turmoil of our times is, at heart, a drama about different forms of value. Globalisation – and indeed all economic activity – is about maximising financial value. Derivatives are contracts whose value fluctuates with the price of an underlying asset. Trading derivatives represent a huge global business. The majority are sold through direct exchange between two parties rather than through an exchange such as a bank; i.e. ‘over the counter’ (OTC). Derivatives have been a major factor in reducing the role of banks since the financial crisis and institutions coming under massive financial strain, for example the collapse of the insurance firm AIG in 2012. Derivatives have grown and performed well in the financial crisis. According to the Bank

Environments of Value  167 for International Settlements, which monitors all this globally, the notional amount of outstanding contracts totalled US $710 trillion at the end of 2013, up from $633 trillion at the end of 2012.3 The financial value is immense. From a different side of the field, another issue emerges. As outlined by Norman Lamb, minister in the UK Coalition government after 2010, the UK government placed official emphasis on the need to build the kind of fairer society where mental health is treated on the same parity as physical health rather than being a poor relation. Yet in an annual report by the Chief Medical Officer in 2014, the evidence was that funding for mental health was actually falling. Mental illness cost the country between £70 billion to £100 billion per annum in benefits, lost earnings and the impact on the NHS. In a 2006 study, the cost of suicide for a working person was calculated to be £1.6 million. It seemed that the British state could save £15 for every £1 spent if there was a quick response the first time a young person experienced a mental health episode.4 Would this cost-benefit consideration be value for money? As I write this, Ebola is wreaking havoc in West Africa. Drug companies had not previously responded to Ebola. In the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry, the rich get the best treatment. There is no interest in developing drugs that do not pay. The drug companies have no interest in poor African countries that cannot pay. An African life is of less value. A cure does not represent good value. Value is an assessment of importance. What is valued in the marketplace depends on relative importance and the cultural meanings assigned in systems of symbolic exchange. When applied to people, value is a measure of how important, how ‘valuable’ they are. But to whom? We have been exploring how capitalism and the way we do things damages our sense of self and massive pressures that condition people. Areas of social life shaped by industrial economy and the requirement to succeed are not the only narrative of our economic arrangements. The profit motive shapes some of these reactions but by no means all. Nevertheless, the contemporary crisis of capitalism threatens the social fabric and, with it, the sense of well-being that people enjoy. Stagnant economic growth as GNP bumped along the floor combined with measures of youth unemployment of around 50 per cent in the southern Euro-zone was a bleak experience, a

168  A Question of Worth wasteland for many. Crucially for this discussion, it cuts people off from a major source of self-validation – the dignity of work – and places considerable strain on another –.the potential affirmation of family. These seem to be routes through which value is mediated into people’s sense of a valuable self, undermined in recession. A market-dominated economy reached into the home (in the form of restless status good everyone wanted) and even became inscribed on people’s bodies in the form of self-improvement projects. Amid the incessant urge to keep up, everything was now subject to commodification, its market value. Even the consumers became commodities. External wealth or status are indicators of merit and ability. When income disparity is on the rise and there is inequality in material circumstances, it matters. Those at one end of the spectrum see themselves as worthless by comparison with the fortunate ones. There is an impact on social cohesion. Should we care if the human dimension is pushed to the wall? Value is clearly a vital aspect of economics through the concept of utility, what something is worth to a prospective purchaser in a way that will bring satisfaction. Yet what tools do we have for a non-economic analysis of the value that pertains to people? How much are we worth? The ghost that haunts discussions of this kind is that human beings have an intrinsic worth. Yet the very notion of ‘value in oneself ’ must itself be critiqued. Is the notion of human value something that does not in fact exist in and by itself, but only through interaction with other valuers?

What Is Value? In 1933, in his Epistemological Problems of Economics, Ludwig von Mises argued that the Austrian theory of value is the core element of a general theory of human behaviour that transcends traditional limitations of economic science. Value theory applies to human action at all times, as opposed to economic theory, which applies to human action guided by economic calculation. Von Mises argued for the subjective theory of value that depends on the reality of having to make choices in daily life between various possibilities. Such decisions are drawn from the inner utility value that people wrap around things in their world rather than an objective, universally valid value.

Environments of Value  169 He wrote: When I change the habitual course of my conduct and begin to consume less meat, for example, and more vegetables, this must affect the market. The change originates in me and is not predicated on the supposition that consumption has previously changed. Indeed, the change in consumption consists precisely in the fact that I change my consumption.5

The value of things is problematic in post-industrial society. Economic incentives are there in full to produce new and better gadgets with continual upgrades and to market these strongly. Yet the value of the human is even more of a serious issue. In the longest downturn in the economy since the Great Depression in the 1930s, the way that something (assets, shares, national output) loses its value is intertwined with the way that someone (a social participant) loses his or her ‘value’. Economic pressures that arose in a continuing stagnant economy compound the erosion of human worth that occurs in social life for many factors that deny a full measure of humanity to people. The postwar neoliberal project found its focus in Hayek’s insistence that free markets were the route both to prosperity and to democratic governance.6 In a more recent theoretical analysis, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu emphasised the concept of different forms of capital – economic, cultural, social and symbolic – which together empower people in their struggle for position. As a result, individuals occupy a space with those who also experienced the same conditioning.7 Bourdieu observed that all solidarities and collective behaviour are dissolved into market exchanges.8 Following Bourdieu, there is a strong emphasis on forms of capital as important for social critique. The issue of cultural capital receives centre stage in contemporary analyses of inequality.9 Bourdieu’s forms of capital were the major theoretical driver shaping a new delineation of social class categories.10 There is an irony about the reactions and indeed theoretical deference of the sociological community to Bourdieu. Few conferences are complete without anchoring reference to papers and seminars in his conceptualisations. At the same conference, there will very likely be some opposition to, indeed indignation against, the neo-liberal zeitgeist that pervaded the political-economic consensus of the last generation. Yet there is a neoliberal

170  A Question of Worth calculus implied in Bourdieu’s analysis of capital – monetary capital, human capital and social capital where everything is a commodity. This is curious. At different times in the twentieth century, the concept of social capital has been much cited in the literature about community life and civic bonds. It was given emphasis by Bourdieu in his analysis of social networks11 and by Coleman regarding the social context of education.12 ‘Social capital’ speaks of social networks and civic connections having value; isolated citizens are not rich in social capital. It is not the same as human capital, which is about investment in education, training and skills. Well-connected citizens, rich in social connections and contacts, are more productive. Social capital implicates people in reciprocal obligations – ‘You do this for me, I’ll do that for you’! It can be bridging (inclusive between different players) or bonding (with a clear focus and task that excludes others). It is twentieth-century language for networks of civic engagement. ‘Social capital’ is a problematic concept. There is a tension at the heart of it. Social capital implies a market-shaped measure of connectivity but it is expressed in quantifiable terms rather than relational. It is as if you can aggregate the value of social bonds, add them up and compare them. Except as a language, a way of speaking about community bonds, implied quantification is vacuous. What does it mean to say I have x amount of social capital while your connections amount to y? Can bonding and bridging be a matter of counting things, of amounts with an assumed monetised scale? Is there any way of speaking of the value of the human without using the terminology of capital, of quantity, of amounts? It may be that an approach more appropriate to the nature of personhood is to conceive not of capital but of relational capacities – capacities that are developed and nurtured through voice, through communication, not accumulation. So what do we mean by value? How much value is placed on a life? The Domesday Book of 1086, for instance, was a valuation of what England was worth to its new conquerors, the Normans. Included in the value of these estates was a reckoning of the worth of their bonded labourers. Sir William Petty, the seventeenth-century doctor, calculated the value of a person to be somewhere between £60 and £90. His cost-benefit analysis outlined in Political Arithmetick suggested the state should intervene to ensure better

Environments of Value  171 medical help and therefore save life. The cost of transporting people away from London and caring for them outside the plague-infested capital would yield a return of £84 for every £1 spent. Centuries later, an attempt was made to estimate the capitalised value of lives lost in World War II. The aim was to draw up a balance sheet between Axis and Allies as well as to arrive at a total cost of going to war between 1939 and 1945. The loss of life was estimated at £47,500,000,000 in 1965 prices. The capitalised value of a human life was meant to be roughly equal to the total income per annum that someone who lost their life would have earned.13 The wartime loss of life at that time represented somewhere about £1280 per life. There is of course no appeal to gender in these figures. The woman is a silent object. The value of women’s lives lost does not feature in rude calculations of this sort. By contrast, when a US soldier killed Afghan civilians in a murderous rampage in March 2012, families of those murdered were offered the equivalent of £29,000.14 A fifth example may be adduced, quoted extensively in discussions of business ethics.15 The Pinto was a Ford model developed from 1973 onwards for the small car market to ensure that the Japanese were not going to capture the entire US subcompact market. During trials, it became clear that the rear-mounted fuel tank of the Pinto made the car highly vulnerable to a collision from behind. The way that the rear-end was designed to take potential impact into account was due to considerations of space. Ford knew they could install a fire-prevention burn device that would cost a mere 11 dollars but calculated that this would not be cost-effective. At least 500 burn deaths resulted, as a result of which lawsuits drew out the cost calculations. Potential costs (which included people dying) outweighed the potential benefits. Ford assumed 180 burn deaths at a cost for each life lost of US $200,000 (provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; the value was based on deferred future earnings – DFE16). Essentially, Ford was making a reckoning of how much it would expect to get sued. This is of course to deploy an approach that treats monetary value as equivalent to human value. The instinctive response is that human life is more important than money. The currency is not, however, the same. These two aspects of value are not commensurate. To confuse them is a category mistake.

172  A Question of Worth Calculations have moved on.17 Some US federal regulatory agencies value life differently when determining the cost-benefit, e.g.: Agency

Value in US $ Millions

Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)

2

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

8

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)

5

OSHA

3.5

Office of Management & Budget (OMB)

1

The usual response is that each life is of infinite value. This looks correct but does not stand up to logical analysis. Because of the nature of infinity, if the claim to infinite value is true, the loss of a thousand human lives would represent the same value as the loss of one. Any two lives would be equivalent. The claim to equal value is difficult to sustain if saving person A is the same as saving person B yet person A is starting out and person B is at the end of life. Lives are not of equal value across the age spectrum. Is a destructive life of a hardened criminal equal to a life of peaceful accomplishment? Clearly, the content of lives differs. Calculations of this kind are often deployed in contemporary discussions about decisions to allocate medical resources.18 So what do we mean by value? To define terms, value is understood as ‘the amount of money something is worth […] the importance of the worth of something’.19 To have value, something must be considered important or worthwhile. We are all practical agents as valuers, making judgements as to the worthlessness or valuableness of something. The concept of worth shares a circular definition with this. ‘Worth’ is what is equivalent in value to something specified, the monetary exchange of an asset. It also contains the notion of something that deserves to be treated and regarded in a certain way. These two ideas are complementary. It is well known that, in the Leviathan written in 1660, Hobbes argued that the self-interest of social actors requires that there be strong undivided authority as a control or the rule of the mob would prevail.20 It is less well known that Leviathan addressed issues of human value.

Environments of Value  173 The manifestation of the value we set on one another is that which is commonly called honouring and dishonouring. To value a man at a high rate is to honour him; at a low rate is to dishonour him. But high and low, in this case, is to be understood by comparison to the rate that each man setteth on himself.21

Worthiness, Hobbes argued, is different from the worth or value of someone. It also differs from his merit or desert, and consists of a particular power or ability for that which he is deemed to be worthy. That notion of worthiness, Hobbes said, is what is usually seen as ‘fitness’ or ‘aptitude’. There can be little doubt that contemporary Western society is shaped by market dominance. It is the prevailing practice, if not philosophy. Michael Sandel’s thesis is worth recalling here regarding the improper extension of markets to the whole of society. ‘A market society is a way of life in which market values seeps into every aspect of human endeavour. It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.’22 Today’s textbooks redefine economics as the interaction of people in society, the science of everyday life. With its theory of value drawn from utilitarianism, economics used to be a subset of moral philosophy. Paradoxically, with its take-over of Western culture, there is less emphasis on marketisation in favour of behavioural economics or the value of health, education and nature driven by empirical data. The theory of value is corrosive when applied in every area of life. The alternative to a utilitarian account of value is a pluralistic account of value – we have an instinctive wish to relate in a non-market way – love, intrinsic goods, override various intrinsic goods such as learning, care and communality. In an age when everything is up for sale, human value cannot be commodified as a piece of private property. Sandel’s thesis is open to question. It does not consider how far the unwelcome intrusion of a market might improve both quality and quantity of the good or service under consideration.23 It lacks historical perspective in that the institutions of civil society have long been the subject of private profit and patronage. Much of this narrative about market dominance is about profit, which is the prime suspect in the case though itself code for ‘excessive profit’ rather than profit per se.

174  A Question of Worth Concerns about the growth of the ‘radical ideology’ of marketisation and quantification since the 1980s reached a crescendo in 2014 in the wake of negotiations towards a sweeping Trade and Investment Partnership (TITP) between the European Union and the United States. The Trade–Justice movement of the previous 15 years, trade unions, and groups campaigning over consumer rights, social justice, the environment and poverty – came together to mobilise against it. Public services of all kinds could be opened up to multinational companies in the name of competition. It was ruled that health-care had to stay in the deal otherwise it would be against the interests of pharmaceutical companies. Education would have to allow greater involvement by private companies. Regulations to protect the environment and people could be eroded and any challenge would be subject to the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). Companies could ask courts to override national governments. Days of Action and vociferous protests objected to this considerable extension of marketisation into public services in this way.24 The spilling over of market relations into other relations has been a recurrent theme of critics of capitalism. It was a strong theme in the writing of the eighteenth-century writer Edmund Burke, ‘the father of conservatism’, who is remembered mainly for valuing order over freedom, and tradition over revolution such as was breaking out in France at that time.25 Contractual relations were the main form of relations in the market but a spill-over into other forms of non-contractual obligations was not a good development, Burke thought. There are many relationships that are not the kind of markettransaction people enter into through choice that can then be wriggled out of when not convenient. Political and social relations are non-contractual, an implicit pact in society despite the notion of a ‘social contract’, while personal relations are covenantal.26 Yet this caution has always been mixed with a practical recognition to do with the evolution of public taste. Life insurance was, for instance, frowned on heavily when it began to come in during the nineteenth century. It seemed to be a case of profiting from death. The shift in public attitude, while not perhaps on the same scale as the change in attitudes towards usury (interest) over the centuries, was nevertheless marked. Not having life insurance came to be stigmatised as failure to provide for one’s family. The reality is that

Environments of Value  175 wherever there is supply and demand (amidst the scarcity which shapes the entire economic paradigm) people are prepared to pay. There has always been a market for women of negotiable affection. The world’s oldest profession is as strong today in the form of contractual sex workers as ever, though voices are increasingly saying that the demand should be criminalised rather than the supply. Markets form in the trade of organ donation or sperm though is heavily proscribed in the case of buying and selling humans. And it always encounters a reaction of public taste when it enters the field of intimate human relationships. For even in post-industrial society, ‘what am I worth?’ is, at a fundamental level, ‘what I am worth to someone?’ It is relational. In many arenas still, the presence of a possible financial advantage will skew the argument. Public taste regards it as entirely inappropriate and indeed morally wrong that someone should gain in the case of assisted suicide. That would be to bring market-relations into spheres that ought to remain strictly outside economic transaction. The value of the human is at stake and this trumps asset value. For a human community to flourish, a market economy is surely vital. In essence, this means an open means of buying and selling. The problem comes when there is a market society driven by the imperative of obtaining ‘value for money’, not just a market economy.

14 Rebooting Capitalism ‘So reclaiming modernity means rediscovering those “large available understandings” in the first instance. It means articulating the misunderstandings that have taken their place, the ideas that we now see pass for “economics” or, more comically, “common sense”– that all relationships can and must be monetized and made “efficient”; that all of human connection can be reduced to performance metrics, which can then be turned into targets; that everyone is, first and foremost, a consumer; and everybody values, above all other things, the right to make consumer choices.’ – Z. Williams1

Capitalism on the Couch? What has been outlined arises from reflections about life and work in a number of arenas, including parish life, where people’s lives are played out. What follows are notes on how our way of doing business and organising ourselves could be subject to transformative change. It is no tirade against capitalism. Being pro-business is essential. Between the operation of corporations or financial institutions wielding transnational power and the local company making what it perceives to be sensible business decisions, there is a great gulf fixed. Yet if a client or patient exhibited the signs and symptoms we have discussed and hopefully illuminated from

Rebooting Capitalism  177 contemporary life, we would surely need to refer them. When predatory behaviour and abuse is an issue, confidentiality is no longer sacrosanct. Accountability takes precedence; the police must be involved. This book has attempted to chart a deep insecurity in contemporary life about how we are valued. What is needed at this time is a new conception of human value and how people’s worth can be unlocked. Our focus is not on shareholder value or value of assets, and that is part of the problem. We do not have the vocabulary for a dynamic understanding of value that is more than economic. A non-economic way of valuing humanity is not grounded in quantity, or accumulation. In what then is it based? The real issues of public and private life are not just economic; they concern a different form of value: human worth. When the stock of tangible value of assets and economic activity falls, perhaps this has a knock-on effect on the way people are shaped by an inner sense of worth arising from what we do. It is in the workplace where wealth is created and where we are subject to economic and hierarchical ranking according to worth. The economy shapes humanity. It is in the labour-intensive workplace that we experience cultures that either devalue and objectify people or that liberate human subjects to add value through catalysing ‘value-in-oneself ’. These are environments of value. In capitalism, social relationships are governed by the exchange value of the goods they produce. The ‘Carnival against Capitalism’ on 18 June 1999 kicked off the anti-globalisation movement. It brought together a diverse range of protest groups: numerous activists including revolutionary socialists, anarchists, environmentalists, trade unionists and reformists. The coalition made itself felt at the World Trade talks in Seattle that were then going on. When non-governmental organisations, churches and trade unions mobilised thousands to turn out to protest against the economic recession before the London meeting of the G20 in April 2009, the rallying cry was ‘Put people first!’ There are, it seemed to shout, vast areas of human need untouched by the marketplace. The turn to the market in the 1980s and 1990s was fuelled by a massive expansion of credit, effectively corresponding to consumer debt in the West. The trend towards creative financial innovation and re-packaging of securitised assets was dubious; Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the US Federal

178  A Question of Worth Reserve, asked if anyone could provide a shred of evidence that it had led to economic growth.2 Arguing for instruments to democratise and humanise finance, critics contended this view, arguing that the idea that the financial sector is parasitic and too large is a myth. Yet there can be little doubt that the financial system, as well as being the engine of the capitalism that has lifted unprecedented numbers of people out of poverty in recent times, has also slain its millions. Money is a store of value. Essentially, spending is to do with extinguishing value. Economists and business worry about the falling share value. Families worry about household finances shrinking. However, there is another store of value that is crucial for economic and social organisation: human worth. When that is under assault in the body politic, there is a reaction. In a world where external wealth is the measure of inner worth, value is replaced by price and humanity itself is a mere cost factor.3 In short, the Industrial Revolution accentuated trends by which selfinterest meant accumulation of worth through goods, status and wealth. What counted was being ‘productive’. This remains a term that is economically laden. The prizes go to those who operate successfully in the market economy. As was evident in heated debates about Private Finance Initiatives to help build hospitals and schools in the 2000s or about commercialisation and marketisation of health care in the UK during 2011–12, there has been no shortage of voices urging that capitalism is selfish and that moral as well as market disciplines should constrain the economic system. How can people see themselves as self-serving individuals and members of a human community at the same time? Adam Smith is usually held to have been a rational egoist when it comes to business, admiring the zeal to turn a profit. ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their own self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.’ Yet there is another Adam Smith, the author not only of the acclaimed text The Wealth of Nations but also of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759. An intellectual industry has developed endeavouring

Rebooting Capitalism  179 to reconcile the two perspectives. People act out of conscience, he said, not just self-interest. They relate to each other not just through a market where they maximise their interest, but as people. ‘How selfish so ever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him.’4 The link between economic value and human value is not just descriptive; there is also a prescriptive element to it. This is ‘normative economics’, facing up to perennial policy questions, with ‘good’ or ‘bad’ consequences. It is problematic. As David Hume argued, there is no logical way to deduce an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. The ground for value-free economics is small. There is an ‘ought’ in how the system should work or be made to work, so as to serve human interests. The economy ‘ought not’ to be divorced from those it ‘should be’ serving. In our time, the ‘ought’ of economic activity has been represented by movements towards fair trade for developing countries, assistance to industry, help for those thrown out of work and social movements such as Occupy or Los Indignados. How the economic system ‘ought’ to work is a disturbing question when faced with poverty such as experienced in the slums of ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ – the local name for the squalor in which a sea of people live beside a lagoon in Accra, Ghana, where the river and sewage are one and where rubbish is a mountain.5 To be sure, there are countless examples of exploitative capitalism that disfigure the human landscapes of our time. A road in Tanzania is built to transport minerals from mining operations to Chinese markets. It is unnaturally straight, constructed with complete disregard for local communities. The way the physical landscape is disfigured is not in a separate category to the marring of the human landscape. Environmental and social aspects of economic activity are strongly linked to the human impact. For its critics, unbridled capitalism inevitably takes us down this road. Thanks to years of deregulation, the business elite effectively control all areas of government no matter who the incumbent is. The profit motive drives all but very few have benefited: Britain has become one of the most unequal countries in the world and the gap between rich and poor continues to rise. The unquestioning worship of the profit motive is destroying our environment, our support networks, and our public services. The pursuit of

180  A Question of Worth profit allows for no consideration of morality or ethics, which is why so many of us are so unrepresented. Left to its own devices, this insatiable insane greed for more-more-more will ultimately destroy the environment that nourishes us, and all the humane ideals that so many have fought and died for to create.6

At the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism in May 2014, transformative leadership requires values to be taken as seriously as valuation, alongside a greater social consciousness that will seep into the financial consciousness and change forever the way we do business.7 The conference discussed subjects ranging from the social responsibility of business to how management and labour can work together to increase the benefits of capitalism and how chief executives can drive the long-term agenda. There is a major question about whether actionable pathways to create such Shared Value will not just be more of the same ‘top-down’ prescription. There is, however, a more far-reaching question. What transformative changes need to be made to the systems? The plates are shifting. Global society is being reshaped. It runs concurrently with another sweeping transformation, the fourth Industrial Revolution courtesy of the new infrastructure of the internet. The internet is the first ever truly two-way media. Instead of sitting back and being broadcasted at, we are now active participants and contributors. We now place a priority on connection, on being part of the conversation, on participation. People have 24/7 access to high-quality information and inspiration, so they no longer need to go to the regular channels for those things. Slowly but surely, these global, societal shifts are changing how things are done. More and more communities are finding creative ways to prioritise connection, dialogue, participation and empowerment. People expect to work collaboratively. We are consumers but not just purchasers. There are many voices campaigning for an economy that works for people and communities. Power must be put in the hands of people, fostering bottom-up economic growth and taking advantage of the many innovations that civil society has created. From community energy to housing, from business to public services, the emphasis is that economic and social policy can and must reinforce one another. Social enterprises or co-operatives are seen as key to strengthening social economy.8 If the economy hots up again, it remains to be seen whether that will draw people back into the formal economy. In what may be a sign of a seismic shift

Rebooting Capitalism  181 towards a social economy, there seems to be a different approach to a culture of maximising profit, utilising the intriguingly formidable infrastructure of the internet to create a new collaborative economy. Watch this space! Failure of a laissez-faire approach in which capitalism can be left to do what it likes was disturbingly palpable. Yet promoting a humane capitalism that builds into its processes an awareness of the effects on people in all that it does is on the horns of a dilemma. How is this measured without a people dimension – traditionally off the balance sheet – becoming one more item to be ticked off in the interests of performativity? A system giving value to people rather than eroding it may be one of: • markers to economic health that go far beyond GDP and find new ways to measure progress; • the social economy, growing much faster than the market economy in many countries; • social enterprise growing rapidly and offering a model that is accepted as mainstream; • multiple micro-histories and career options as those who lose jobs get thrown out of the traditional economy and are willing to take risks and find new challenges; • the social-market version of capitalism. Scandinavians pay higher taxes but the returns come in the form of high-quality public services which avoid damaging levels of public debt; • redressing the balance in favour of those vulnerable to economic downturn; • disavowal of the notion that continuing economic growth is a cosmic law; • an environmental marker giving practical expression to the reality that the value of humans is inextricably linked to the Earth of which we are part; • some kind of inequality index, hopefully with cross-party support, that funnels wealth back through the system so those who have a builtin disadvantage can grasp their future better; • Shared Value initiatives rooted in the idea that if you do not do good, you do not do well;

182  A Question of Worth • extending democracy into the economic sphere through participation. Organisations that practise economic democracy are more likely to be happy and productive places. Democratising the economy is vital. Interestingly, countries that escaped the worst of the economic car crash include Sweden, which combined economic growth with egalitarian outcomes and a high standard of living. It virtually functions as a social corporation. In Germany too there was a symbiotic relationship between big business, big unions and a powerful state. It enabled workers to have a voice: recognition through participation. In the participative paradigm that is emerging, a new economy is being shaped. It ranges from companies serious about climate change, through to peer-to-peer lending schemes described as shadow banking, to social enterprise and crowd-sourced investment like Kickstarter and sharing platforms to do with the Gift Economy in which we borrow and lend items we do not use often and that can therefore be leased and lent rather than owned. Through the new technology acting as midwife to social economy, collaborative projects and democratic initiatives abound that are nothing to do with GDP. Today, we are nearing the end of the emphasis on quantification and output. We cannot go on like this. There is little scope for the common good and the twin sphere of the social ecology headlined here in a global economy dominated by consumerism. Maybe we are on the cusp of change where quality is at least as important as quantity, where success does not just mean getting richer and where fitting its subjects for economic growth is not the only concern for a market-shaped society. In the post-industrial economy, what came to be prized was scientific and technical knowledge but also the ability to empathise with people. The service economy was more relational: teacher–pupil, doctors–patient, managers–staff. The coming transformations in the fourth wave of industrialisation that will re-invent business. The coming transformations will underline the demand for less tangible, human services. Skills in dealing with people rather than manipulating objects using human hands become more important. Enormous possibilities for harm as well as good go hand in hand with human potential. The

Rebooting Capitalism  183 question is how we can make use of the technologies and methods that are transforming the economy. Reaction against mechanisation (of both brawn and brain) seems to be rooted in the protest against what depersonalises us. At the same time, we are witnessing the rise of robots. Have humans and machines swopped places? The factory of the industrial era stood for depersonalised endeavour in the workshop and assembly line. The curious ambiguity at the heart of the internet is that what it takes away with one hand, through distance and robotic remoteness (thus removing the human dimension), it gives on the other – thus enabling interaction over a wider field. There is now only one society: global society. In the fast-moving swirl of work, a new economic and social order is gradually emerging. New political forms are rising, rooted not in top-down prescriptions but in ordinary people creating meaningful change through everyday actions.9 Instead of withdrawing from each other and becoming strangers, we can rediscover the quality of the social relations and community life that cradles human wellbeing and a high value for people. Concerns about depersonalisation in the machine age have long been expressed. There is an unnoticed irony in the rapid exponential growth of new technology that is scything down all before it as 47 per cent of jobs (by one study) are being automated out of existence.

Widening the Concept A brief look then at the five dimensions that leaders at all levels of society need to pay attention to that might offer a framework for the kind of economic model that promotes human flourishing.

1) Market Value First and foremost, the main purpose of a company is to make commercial decisions. For any given action, contract or project, there has to be a business case. A sensible business decision has to be made about costs and ensuring value for money. Generating value is what a company does all day. It has a value chain whereby value is added at each stage of a journey into production

184  A Question of Worth (often leaping across continents to do so). Getting a product into the marketplace requires what marketing people call a distinctive ‘value proposition’ (its unique branding and set of reasons why anyone should buy it). It is perfectly right and proper to provide economic returns to those who bring money into an industry or risk investments in an enterprise. There is no case to answer on moral grounds against wealth creation. Continued economic growth is vital to ensuring prosperity yet the scale and pace of it deserves the criticism it attracts. The mantra of economic growth at all costs is simply not sustainable in a world of scarce resources that wants genuinely to protect the environment. There is though a need for a ‘theology’ of wealth creation, especially within progressive politics and faith communities. The industrial-era profit-driven paradigm should not be the last word yet business is vital to create wealth. The left of politics has trumpeted the need for quality jobs but being pro-jobs without being pro-business is inconsistent. Late capitalism is not just about asset stripping. Those who argue that the free market has had its day have few answers to how the very wealth that underpins social aims can be created. When incomes fall, there is greater bigotry and the rise of the far right in politics. In short, as economist Milton Friedman observed, most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie and that one party can gain only at the expense of another. An inclusive capitalism is where a rising tide is raising all boats; the workers are gaining as well as shareholders. ‘Markets’ become an eponymous demonised spectre in the eyes of detractors. Yet they are essentially a place of exchange, as in house purchase, and can be a sphere where human value and worth is liberated as people trade, buy and sell the work of their hands and heads. Should, though, a business case, a commercial decision, include other imperatives such as gender equality? The opposite is also true. Marx had a theory of surplus value but failed surely to allow for any concept of human value. He saw things in a one-dimensional way. Productive forces were the bad guys because they just could not resist exploiting and trying to get more and more output and therefore profit. The protest against the commodification of humans arose from the activities of greedy capitalists. But this narrative was too one-sided. Productive forces can also be landscapes in which human potential is released through fulfilling labour. Capitalism can be liberating for some

Rebooting Capitalism  185 because it enables people to participate in work or be their own boss. Creating wealth is not just about greed; it is empowering because useful energies are released that can add to the existing wealth. Because of a failure to recognise this, ‘socialism had little or nothing to say about the creation of resources; it was concerned about their distribution’.10 The struggle for value becomes a site of ambiguity. It is not clear-cut. Places where depersonalisation occurs can also be a space where people re-value and re-empower themselves. Human value offers a lens by which forces of devaluation can be seen. But it also shows its opposite. Have we been stuck in a Marxist dualism between the workers and the producers? Are they in fact operating in the same space? The shape of the global economy has changed out of all recognition since Marx analysed nineteenth-century industrial capitalism. Consumption and demand drive things along, not just production and supply. Power is in the hands of consumers. So, while markets and profits are negative for many, it would be idle to deny that they also generate opportunity. Profit brings money into an industry. That is not just about returns to shareholders for taking risk; it is also about investment. As Michael Porter argued at the Shared Value Summit in May 2014, there is a growing disconnection between social challenges and the resources society has to address those challenges.11 That imperative suggests the need for business and society leaders alike to rethink the role of business in society. Signs of transformation are under way. An angry comment from a parishioner could stand as a summary of public distrust of big business, do these people have no social conscience? Do they learn nothing about ethics on those MBA courses? Yet there are new perspectives by many managers who are optimistic about business and its capacity for social transformation and who are moving away from the idea that business just needs to get on with the job. It is time for business to give back. This is more than philanthropy and it goes beyond thinking about Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR). In political rhetoric, it is Conservatives who tend to stress the power of incentive. Yet work seems to be incentivising because it digs into our need to feel valuable and worthwhile. The problem with some critiques of economics is that they apply the same test to large-scale macro-economics

186  A Question of Worth as to micro-economics. There is a different order of thinking involved. A system that brings loss to one life (be it jobs or home) can equally benefit thousands of others. It is the economic analogue of the problem of pain. We look at individual and personal cost and may not realise that a different level of systems thinking is required because value and wealth are not just located in the local community. The rules of the trading system are weighted against poorer nations which may not get a fair price for their produce. It is systemic devaluation that has real human consequences for individuals. Yet the economic system – or network of systems – can be used also to give value to people.

2) Value in the Social Ecology As we saw in Chapter 12, communities and the natural environment are interwoven. Inextricably and intimately, the social ecology is the context in which human life coheres. Within this twin sphere, a high value should be placed upon respecting both the environment and communities likely to be impacted by business decisions. Only by acknowledging the context in which it operates can business be redeemed as a force for good in the community. Management strategy focuses on companies creating measurable business value by identifying and addressing social problems that intersect with their business. The new concept of Shared Value creates new opportunities for companies, civil society organisations, and governments to leverage the power of market-based competition in addressing social problems.12 A growing number of companies known for their hard-nosed approach to business – such as GE, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Unilever and Wal-Mart – have already embarked on important efforts to create Shared Value by reimagining the intersection between society and corporate performance. This is a comparatively recent version of the demand for responsible capitalism that surfaces when there is a reaction against an economic and social order that can seem so driven by seeing everything as a source of profit that it is out of control. For instance, as the European Commission acknowledged, there was widespread public concern about the impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deregulation of trade barriers between the EU and the USA. The concern was that ‘it would

Rebooting Capitalism  187 undermine regulation and existing levels of protection in areas like health, safety and the environment’.13 As part of deregulation of markets, the TTIP would bring about lower hurdles relating to the use of toxic chemicals, erode labour rights, compromise food safety and harm the environment.14 Procurement policies that promote social and environmental goals will no longer be drawn so tightly. The Conference on Inclusive Capitalism in May 2014 could likewise be cited, warning of the dangers of unbridled capitalism that takes no account of the effect of its actions (with children, we would observe no doubt that the moral development of empathy is needed in such a case). The Shared Value perspective is unlikely to be exposed as a short-term idea. How do we link the value of external stakeholders with the strategic value of the firm? The imperative of corporate leaders is always to create value for the firm. By contrast, Shared Value is the convergence of economic or financial value with the value that can be placed on social goals in which people can flourish. Social goals or environmental aims do not have to be in irreconcilable contrast with commercial benefit for the organisation. There is no intrinsic opposition between the narrow self-interest of business and the interests of the public. The Shared Value framework defines a new role for business in society that goes beyond traditional models of corporate social responsibility. Rather than focus on mitigating harm in the company’s existing operations, Shared Value strategies engage the scale and innovation of companies to advance social progress. They are positive. Shared Value initiatives offer new ways for other societal actors to engage with corporations in delivering social impact.15 The Merck Manuals16 are a good example of Shared Value in practice. Merck is committed to bringing out the best in medicine and scientific research. As part of that effort, Merck provides all of the Merck Manuals as a service to the community in order to combat river blindness in some countries. It is widely recognised now that it is not profitable for businesses to pollute. Neither is it socially acceptable to have unsafe working conditions. Business has to take account of the social context in which it operates and not just see it as a backcloth for its operations. There is, as the Shared Value Initiative highlights, a deep and fundamental alignment between building

188  A Question of Worth revenue and meeting social needs. This is not just a trade-off. The very things that shared interest and Shared Value will do to address social need may also maximise profit. Profit is what enables business to solve the problems of society. There is now in the UK an annual ‘Business in the Community’ award.17 In short, the challenge of these initiative is to think about how companies create a business model that addresses social problems but also create solutions and disavows destructive consequences. The connecting thread is that of value, Shared Value. The plates are starting to shift.

3) Participant Well-Being The human cost of a frenetic output system has been tension in work–life balance. But people pay for economic depression too, in practical consequences, in relationships and in the psychological depression at being thrown on the scrap heap. The long-term damage caused by the financial crisis is evident in the large numbers of people in their late teens and early twenties unable to find work. This is the cost of capitalism. The crisis has not led to any fundamental reappraisal of how to ‘govern’ the companies and corporations that comprise our economic model. For many in work conditions have deteriorated. How we move beyond industrial era capitalist work relations requires fresh thinking to make organisations uniformly humane spaces. The indignation against it – whether through street protests such as Los Indignados in Spain in 2011 or the Occupy Movement later that year, the delayed fuse of the anti-politics European elections of 2014, or quieter anger in personal life – can be seen for what it is: a hot assertion of human dignity. This trembling indignation conceals a surprising economic metaphor: ‘We’re worth more than that!’ One way of lifting people out of poverty is to boost pay. The minimum wage is a national anti-poverty benchmark to ensure that there is a basic remuneration. An exploitative capitalism might simply maximise profit by minimising cost, especially cutting corners in pay and conditions. An enlightened business environment though is one that recognises there is no deep opposition between ensuring that its staff are paid a living wage (a social goal) and that they are productive, thus bringing the firm benefit (a commercial decision). This was a strong emphasis in the writings of Warren Bennis, a pioneer in leadership studies and staunch critic of the lack of

Rebooting Capitalism  189 leadership in Washington, DC. There is no point in employing knowledge workers if you are not going to use their knowledge creatively! The well-being of society is inseparable from added value that comes from corporate performance (the former is the context for the latter). Human well-being must be seen in an integrated framework. Another term for this is ‘the common good’. Shared Value is not just a question of two dimensions converging. A third aspect must also be added to Shared Value: the well-being that comes from personal, inner wealth. The intersection between society and corporate value needs to be complemented with the human value of its participants. Inner value of workers – the value of what they produce (quality and quantity) – value added for the organisation – value for society Human flourishing is deeply rooted in those who feel engaged in worthwhile pursuits. When the value that is within us is nurtured through interpersonal relationships or cultivated by social policies, it is released and translates into an added value for tasks we do within organisations and wider society. Put simply, people are more productive when they feel that the value placed on them or that they discover counteracts and transcends social pressures that devalue them. This is why staff retention and productivity go hand in hand with a sense of being involved or being able to negotiate one’s own hours. There are, however, two additional literacies that are needed to reboot capitalism. One is to do with power, the other is the dimension of quality that is often at odds with quantity.

4) Power Imbalance and Inequality We have looked in some depth at unequal rewards that are generated by our capitalist way of life. Capitalism is a casino. At one end of the game, it is winner takes all. There is little doubt that turbo-charged capitalism and financialisation has resulted in impressive rates of growth. Yet what happens in the shadows of this growth is causing serious concern.18 Many informed commentators

190  A Question of Worth have expressed dismay at the growing gap between rich and poor, between dominant and unheard voices. Clearly, the constant drive to create higher and higher output creates not only winners but losers: those who are left out or left behind. It is not just about Western economies. For instance, Chile’s economic performance is impressive. Policies of the president, Michelle Bachelet, such as tax reform, have helped to promote this. Yet for all that, Chile is one of the world’s most unequal societies. The latest UNDP Human Development Report showed only 18 countries out of 140 with an income distribution more unequal.19 GDP measures generally do not tell the story of how economic progress is distributed within society. Every company has a power footprint. Intentionally or not, it exercises considerable power in the forcefield of its operations over customers and staff. Power is a subject that creates silences in boardrooms. Yet collective action, equality and human rights, and striving for new forms of democracy, are not left-wing concepts played out in politics but alien to the business environment. Issues like these are negotiated constantly within companies. Addressing human devaluation will seem somewhat nebulous. It does, however, need to be borne in mind that, through the processes described in Part One of this book as highlighted by lived experience, people’s lives are shaped by the value that society places upon them. The systemic way that distribution, demonstration and differentiation all communicate and condition external value is inseparable from power relations. Power and the exercise of social value are different sides of the same coin. The economic and social order of producing and consuming is disbursed through power relations. It structures how people sit at different places vis-à-vis wealth and different forms of power. The French social theorist Michel Foucault20 saw the construction of subjectivities in terms of power relations that are embedded in a variety of social settings; power flows dynamically in different directions. A Marxist view of power flowing from a single locus such as the ruling class is a top-down, insufficient notion. From the perspective of this book, power relations are rooted in ascribing and transmitting social value in which some groups and individuals are demoted. For the most part, economics has not had a theory of power. Since the political economy of Adam Smith, his heirs and successors, it has been

Rebooting Capitalism  191 customary to separate rational from non-rational influences. Economics laid claim to people acting rationally, ‘homo economicus’. Sociology has concerned itself with issues of power and social structures, with the non-rational dimensions that shaped implicit bias. To combine the elements of differing forms of value referred to, widening a concept of Shared Value is vital. For business to be a force for good in society, a stronger version of value is needed against the backcloth of structural factors that inhibit well-being. A weak version of Shared Value would perhaps have regard to community benefit. That is a start but it does not go nearly far enough in unlocking the full value of those who participate in economic activity across society. At a theoretical level, a strong version of Shared Value combines economics and sociology which should never have been divorced. Heterodox economics, for example feminist understandings of the economic system, endeavours to show that the economy has been a man’s game, playing out for the benefit of the few. The dismal science has hardly been neutral in its understanding of power relations. If the classic political economy had kept pace with sociology with its formidable contribution to grasping the social systems that structure human activity, this may not have happened. A successful economy can provide work opportunities that will unlock the value and worth of human participants and add value to any enterprise stemming from an enhanced sense of self-belief. Recycling is one of the biggest industries in the Dharavi district of Mumbai, probably Asia’s biggest slum. Here 30,000 ‘ragpickers’ scavenge on the rubbish tips that are generated by a burgeoning city. Low-caste Hindus live their lives on everyone else’s leftovers. Yet there can be a surprising sense of value and community. Recycling work does not produce rubbish-tip lives. ‘If poverty can seem dehumanising from afar, up close Dharavi is vibrantly and triumphantly alive.’21 Reading international capitalism as a narrative of exploitation of individual workers is also one-sided. A study of maquiladoras, factories set up just over the border in Mexico to take advantage of low wages and eastern access to US markets, shows how they are routinely and reflexively accused of using cheap labour in damning conditions.22 Yet there is another story to be told. The Maquiladoras are also a source of jobs for those that would have no option otherwise but to labour under scorching heat.

192  A Question of Worth A site of exploitation (to those looking in) can also be a place of participation in work and it can offer incentive (to those looking out). Owners of sweatshop factories in Asia seem inherent exploiters of cheap labour, feeding greedy Western consumers on the look-out for cheap clothing bargains. Yet as a non-governmental organisation that supports women garment workers in Bangladesh observed, the garment industry has promoted women’s economic empowerment. These women are the first in conservative, rural, grindingly poor Bangladesh to have any sort of freedom. They come from villages where they were at the beck and call of their fathers, brothers and husbands. Even the cramped conditions, long hours and appalling wages they endure in Dhaka are emancipation. Don’t take that away from them.23

5) Quality not Quantity Valuing and placing greater importance on non-economic goods that help nourish human worth should involve relationships, work–life balance and the gift of time. The real issues of public and private life are not just economic; they concern a different form of value: human worth. What shapes people’s experience in contemporary life is the value that society places on them. A greater societal well-being equates to a higher sense of value among people and groups. Well-being is an outcome of people feeling valued. What is needed at this time is a new conception of human value and how the worth that people have can be unlocked. A non-economic way of valuing humanity is not grounded in quantity or accumulation, but in ‘soft’ issues of quality that are less grounded in measurable values. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does very little justice to these sorts of measures. For instance, if I babysit for your children or grandchildren and you pay me, that is on a balance sheet somewhere. If I care for my own, that is not. Measures of growth are, at best, morally neutral. Cigarette or weapon sales will register on GDP irrespective of the harm they do. Growth in GDP can hardly be a sensible measure of human well-being if it ignores quality of life. The private economy has become disconnected. Within the conditions of late capitalism, it threatens to disconnect society from itself. But the

Rebooting Capitalism  193 state is no different. It is often over-centralised and impersonal. Our system of government and the public services it delivers often attain reasonable public support and customer satisfaction but it does not offer contemporary people the space to be human and lacks the trust needed to sustain communal bonds. Public services have pursued ‘value for money’ and ‘customer satisfaction’ but have neglected the human relationships that lie at their heart. The words liberté, égalité, fraternité were at the heart of the conception of society envisaged by the supporters of the French Revolution; the first two are often discussed in political philosophy but where is the latter? How we maintain and give an account of the common good is hugely important in an era marked by fresh anxieties about capitalism. Adam Smith’s notion of self-interest indirectly creating wealth for all has a lacuna best illustrated with the example of a school parent–teacher association (PTA). Notoriously, parents are vociferous in striving for their own children’s success and often lack a sense of what will benefit everybody. If we are fundamentally to relocate the idea of human value we need to move from simply affirming people’s worth, and instead make human value part of our operating system, integral to human motivation. Have a strong sense of our own value for ourselves is a pursuit that feeds an important dimension of human existence, one clearly illustrated by the contrast when we consider circumstances that make people feel devalued. In organisations, as in personal life, our social experience is so often one of being written down, or written off, our value and potential not recognised. It is as if we are of lesser worth, much like some of the asset values or share prices the accountants are discussing in the room next door! Just as house prices tumbled in the wake of the economic meltdown, so the value of the human can be lowered (or perceived to be lowered) in settings such as organisations. What causes people to say, ‘We won’t put up with this!’ or ‘I’m worth more than that!’? I suggest that the circumstances that give rise to perceptions of being devalued in this way boil down to three factors: 1. Indifference – not being seen or heard. The senses of sight and hearing of those with power to propose come across as being clouded, hence workers feel unnoticed or ignored.

194  A Question of Worth 2. Inequality – so often people walk away from workplace encounters less than they are – dwarfed and belittled (unintentionally or otherwise). Invariably, put-downs are to do with the reactions of the person rather than their actions. Or in creative teams, human potential and consequently the emotional life of professional people fails to be respected. 3. Indignation – often, human responses that express indignation are about indignity. This might relate to overt workplace bullying concerning strong-arm tactics that fail to bring people round to the leadership’s point of view. Giving of ‘quality’ time, whether among families or neighbours, is off the balance sheet yet patently of prime importance for social and interpersonal life. It does not feature in GDP but, without it, human communities would be grey and meagre spaces. Theaster Gates is an American conceptual artist, one of the most influential artists in the art world. He makes bits and pieces from derelict houses in his neighbourhood. Though a man with two degrees in urban planning (and a further one in religious studies) and someone who worked for the city’s transport authority, he chooses to live in an abandoned building in crime-ridden Chicago, the ‘murder capital of America’. A community grass-roots movement of which he is part seeks to act as a catalyst in jumpstarting community value, to model what radical kindness could look like. Gates is quite sure that when there is no work, hands do not have dignity. Violence in the neighbourhood is about anger, ‘something to do with a man’s usefulness. This thing that gave them dignity is no longer there’. In a stigmatised neighbourhood, the people are poor but proud. Gates produces socially engaged art.24 Perhaps art and culture are tools of rejuvenation. Perhaps they help us march to a different drum, representing a non-economic way of valuing human endeavour that is not about quantity, relentless production or instrumental to other ends – unless it is for reflection or transcendent moments. For the essence of community is association and interaction. It presupposes a relational way of understanding the lives of contemporary people in postindustrial society.

Rebooting Capitalism  195 Relationships thrive when we have time. We need time to be with family and friends, and time to pursue our enjoyment and interests. But time is a scarce commodity in late capitalism. It is about quality and not just quantity. People either have too much time with no work, no money and nothing to do, or they have too much work and no time for anything else. There are many questions in all this. Can there be a shared space, a commons in which communities fulfil their purpose but, in addition, work towards human flourishing and welfare of the common good? Can business operate in that space? Can a new politics change the language of the debate and create a bridge between incompatible arguments about the unequal economic returns built into capitalism and the social goal of a playing field not already tilted in favour of those that have? The nature of work is changing. In the industrial era, work came to be valued highly. The economic goal of meaningful jobs for all became a social goal. Yet the reality of the workplace in modernity was the factory assembly line churning out production relentlessly, taking no prisoners. A vision of work in the post-Fordist, post-industrial economy is that everyone is entitled to be a creator, that factory life should leave room both for initiative and the contemplation of the finished product.25 In health care and education alike, the need to ration public services and find economies in the way they are delivered is paramount. To be sure, teachers face enormous pressures to fulfil targets and drive up standards. Yet there are countless voices stressing the idea that, just as we shouldn’t define parenting quantifiably, fitting people for a high-pressure open global economy cannot be the only aim of education. We would not after all want to define parenting in quantifiable terms. Will Richardson, an educational blogger, argues strongly that the prospect of ‘my teacher is an app’ does not present us with a disturbing future where technology has taken over the classroom. It opens up new learning opportunities. A teacher monitors progress made by students online, sees if homework is being done and allows students to go on at their own pace. Learning can be creative and enjoyable, drawing on students’ interest in the online world.26 An environment of value emphasise not just quantity but quality. Workplace quality is something that does not inevitably follow from quantity. The standard response of corporations or public service providers is ‘more’. This

196  A Question of Worth is what people have heard since they were young. It is a reaction of quantity, cranking more and ever-increasing amounts out of the system in an effort to keep up and keep on top. To that end, top-down cultures of command and control have to be in place. ‘Environments of value’ have a different focus, however. The focus is on ‘quality’, on the human relationships that save us from the isolating individualism that would otherwise be our fate. Of all non-economic goods that are highly prized, the gift of time is perhaps the greatest.

15 Visions Seen: High-Value Society and the Goals of Politics ‘The political arena has shrivelled drastically, back to a technocratic promise to use our taxes to provide services a bit more efficiently than the other lot.’ – Jackie Ashley1 ‘Our good ideas and innovations will address the challenges that arise, improve the quality of our lives, allow us to live more lightly on the planet, and help us take better care of one another’ – Brynjolfsson and McAfee2 ‘Our present leaders – people of wealth and power – do not know what it means to take a place seriously; to think it worthy, for its own sake, of love and careful work. They cannot take any place seriously because they must be ready at any moment, by the terms of power and wealth in the modern world, to destroy any place.’ – W. Berry3

In this chapter, we will try to wrap up the issues raised in this book by asking how far the way we view our economic arrangements and social priorities is aided and abetted by looking at what they do to the value and

198  A Question of Worth worth of human beings. In particular, can such recognition lead to political re-ordering based on what enables human beings to flourish?

What is striking about contemporary political landscapes is how anodyne they are. I came into political consciousness in the iconic year 1968. In March of that year, Bobby Kennedy spoke about a system of government that had lost touch with the people and their daily lives. The state of our nation, he said, is judged inadequately by the GDP. We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product. For the Gross National Product includes air pollution, and ambulances to clear our highways from carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. The Gross National Product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads […] It includes […] the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children.

Politics has been reduced to debate about the relative merits of pragmatic policy offerings. It is only where something really big comes up – like the future of the country – that people really are engaged. For most of the time, citizen voters will react on the basis of gut feeling and mood-music; certainly not complex issues such as the European Union. So often, politics is about who you trust, especially on issues where it is going to really affect them, such as the economy. If even half-way true, that is a sad state of affairs. It is sheer lack of imagination that probably bores voters. It is also half-way to being inevitable. After all, the days when people seemed really to care and be passionate about the big issues, such as the 1930s, were also days of blood and fire. Prosperity in the West has probably made a great deal of difference as to whether politicians govern in prose or poetry. Food on the plate results in less fire in the belly.

Visions Seen: High-Value Society and the Goals of Politics  199 Perhaps the way to engage citizen voters is to return to the big issues, the purpose of politics and what it is for rather than how to navigate to an unseen iconic land. Talk to many voters about the relative merits of policies and the result is likely to be a yawn. Engage with people about the kind of country they would like to live in and what kind of a world they would like their grandchildren to grow up in and it may be they sit up and take notice. Where are the politicians today who will eschew retail policies – a billion or two extra here and there – and instead emulate those who, like John F. Kennedy, who inspired his generation to reach for the stars? To quote his brother, Bobby, again: And if the Gross National Product includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages […] It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.’ It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.4

Capitalism on the Couch So where does this account of how human value is under assault in the global economy leave us? Using the metaphor of a client in therapy, we would have to say that the situation is not good. Our client demonstrates behaviour patterns that give rise to serious cause for concern. These include: • Induces widespread PERFORMANCE anxiety in frenetic tendencies to keep up and look good so as to compete with everyone else. The way late capitalism recruits its subjects is deeply problematic. Constrained by the scarce commodity of time, it does not offer us a space to be human amid the relationships that nurture us. This kind of value is about valuing those things that nurture worthwhile lives. • Is hung up on POWER – concentrations of wealth generates hugely unequal returns. The richest 300 people in the global economy have

200  A Question of Worth

•

•

•

•

more wealth than half the world, the poorest 3 billion.5 We have seen nothing yet. The transformations as computers learn to think will widen inequality. This kind of value is about truly comprehending that our economic system is not neutral with respect to power. Produces POVERTY – our dominant economic narrative brings hundreds of millions out of poverty worldwide but impoverishes others. People withdraw from each other. As we saw in the English Riots of 2011, these factors create malign circuits that sustain poverty. This erodes the value and worth of people. Inflicts PAIN – recession eats into the soul as well as the pocket. Through the lens of factors that drive human devaluation (indifference, indignity and inequality), when the economic machine seizes up, it is people that suffer. Creates cultures of PERFORMATIVITY – in the wake of the global economy is an over-heated need to be short-termist and tick boxes for performance criteria. Schools become education factories, hospital wards places of battery-hen throughput, and workplace culture is frenetic and bullying. This erodes social value. The dominant economic model is PREDATORY in its behaviour. Whether that is in the form of financialisation or the contemporary equivalent of enclosures, profit-driven greed destroys communities and the environment in the name of economic value.

If we were faced with clients (or this come to that, adults or patients) who spread anxiety around them, inflicted pain, impoverished others and were hung up on power and control, we would have extremely serious concerns, to say the least. If our client or patient was not just dysfunctional but predatory, we would be obliged to waive confidentiality and report this so that there could be accountability! Our client, the model of economy and society with which we operate, delivers widely different outcomes. No other engine could have raised living standards to anything like the same extent. History demonstrates that; especially recent history. The prime reason why the Millennium Goals concerning global poverty were met so early was because of an economic miracle, particularly in China.

Visions Seen: High-Value Society and the Goals of Politics  201 Yet the same way of operating that delivers spectacular results for many ignores the plight and the pain of those it leaves behind. In its trail, the capitalist global economy into which we are all plugged in takes no prisoners. The quantification paradigm encourages casino behaviour and, with it, the compression of all values into one single-minded focus on productivity and profit. No other value is intrinsically important, least of all the value and worth of those that economic activity purports to describe. Our economic model returns value to investors and the classic factors of production yet it also engenders a culture of consumption that consumes. I propose then that what is needed is a wider concept of value; a broader definition that should stress the following elements as a five-fold bottom line: Economic value – both as valuation of the components of value such as rent, capital and land, as well as returns to those who risk money in an enterprise through responsible business and fostering a favourable climate to the creation of wealth. Value in the social ecology – that interactive sphere where community and the natural environment mingle; where social value and a high value on relating harmoniously with the physical and organic is the context for human activity. Value of social participants – be it the well-being of workers and staff or of those on the receiving end of goods and services as customers or clients. A happy and productive workforce and respect for end-users gets the best out of people. Organisations and companies should be in the well-being business. Redressing, giving voice and capacity through education to those who are devalued by power relations in the way the economy and society is organised. Valuing and placing greater importance on non-economic goods that help nourish human worth – relationships, work–life balance and the gift of time, knowing the price of things but also their true worth.

Against this background, it is worth arguing that successful societies ensure that peoples’ lives are not simply dictated by the circumstances of their birth

202  A Question of Worth because societies will fail where rich kids grow up to be rich adults and poor kids grow up to be poor adults. ‘The Twin Virtues’ view argues that the compatibility of unequal outcomes and equality of opportunity is an important answer to many of the seemingly intractable economic, political and social questions facing the world today.6 These remarks are relevant to the terrain that we have surveyed in this book about the value and worth of human beings being under assault in contemporary society. Politicians of all stripes could do well to think hard and strategically about how we help build a good society. We could do worse than to re-think what helps to make people flourish? What nurtures, or erodes, human worth? Drilling down to grasp the factors that make for the value and worth of individuals and groups within that society and help them to thrive is to approach questions of larger and deeper purpose. Many of the big-ticket political theorists have grasped this. Aristotle routinely asked questions concerning the end purpose of things, their teleology. As philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre brought out, ‘virtue’-driven perspectives to do with the kind of narratives of end results were central to Aristotle. Aristotle asked questions about the good life, the conditions under which humans flourished in relation to an overall story.7 His Nicomachean Ethics described virtue as essential to how people should live. What counts is being a good person. How then should we live? It is both an age-old quest and a timeless question. Ideas about the good life were currency in circulation before and after the Greek philosophers. So what makes a political community flourish? Much recent work has been done on this subject though from a very different perspective than that of Aristotle. Instead of ‘virtue’ read ‘happiness’; instead of ‘ethics’ read ‘well-being’; instead of ‘living well’ read ‘personal fulfilment’ or ‘satisfied’. Aristotle’s contemporary resonance might perhaps be that of subjective well-being, that has become a huge industry.8 Ways of measuring well-being that go beyond GDP are taken up by international bodies such as the OECD and by national governments such as the British and Italian. There are many critiques of this approach. Trying to capture well-being and happiness reflects an individualistic approach to capitalism that privatises well-being. The normative standard is that of ‘what makes me happy’. It is governments that

Visions Seen: High-Value Society and the Goals of Politics  203 decide official indicators in a way that is inevitably top-down and technocratic. Critics underline that the whole project accords with a consumerist modernity and that the well-being of specific social groups will vary. Ethnic minorities are less satisfied with their lives.9 There does seem something in this whole endeavour that is worth capturing, however. Whether it is a list of indicators for the UK Office for National Statistics or a sociological approach that stresses happiness as a biographical project, how people reflect on their lives is crucial to the quality of society. For the official statistics, participants will be asked such questions as ‘overall, how satisfied are you? … what worthwhile things do you have in your life? … how happy did you feel yesterday?’ In other approaches, there might be a stress on the notion of practical capabilities that nevertheless have moral weight such as living conditions, income, health status or housing. Throughout this endeavour to come up with measures of wellbeing that are beyond GDP is an attempt to find out what makes people flourish. This might be a ‘thin’ description, such as ascertaining what really matters to people. Or it may be a ‘thicker’ description to do with why they matter. There does seem to be solid evidence as to what factors have a negative effect on well-being: • • • • • •

unemployment; lack of income; serious stress in couple relationships; loss and bereavement; lack of friendship network; health problems.10

On the whole, countries are happier when there is: • • • • •

higher social spending as a proportion of GDP; unemployment insurance against risk of being out of work; low unemployment and inflation; clean air and environment; openness to trade.11

204  A Question of Worth So where does this take us if we want to discover what makes societies flourish or how individuals can experience a good life for themselves? From the extensive literature on this, the quest for explanation stands out. As we drill down into these accounts and go one level deeper, some of these factors are to do with feeling safe in the face of ‘risk society’. It is the fear factor that accounts for its opposite: the need to be secure. A stable country and political system makes for greater well-being. Economic security involves adequate resources. If people fear their resources are under threat, they will not have much sense of well-being. They will vote for safety. Indeed, most commentators said ‘playing safe’ was a strong feature of the 2015 British General Election, the results of which delivered such a shock. Some of these effects are about a sense of relative status. It is how we do relative to others that is vital to well-being. Many economists have done immensely important work on such effects.12 Perhaps a good theory is still needed to account for the impact of relative effects. Anecdotally, if a worker on a social housing estate has a better car than others, it will generate a negative impact.13 Drilling down into this, such narratives are often about value. The value of a car is tied in to the personal value and worth of its owner or that of envious neighbours. Nurturing a good society dedicated to the common good has a great deal to do with the issues of value highlighted in this essay. What emerges is the importance of a sense of value and worth to the well-being of society. What happens when that is eroded or denied directly affects well-being. Nurturing ‘the common good’ can draw on the resources and insights of human psychology as well as theology of all stripes about what enables people to thrive. It also implies limiting and countering the darker side of human interaction to do with power and control that erodes value and well-being. Building a high-value society means that the contradictions and deficiencies of our existing economic and social way of doing things are firmly addressed and reversed so that people can flourish. The first task of government is facilitating safety and security. The rule of law is paramount. People must be able to sow seeds and expect a harvest. Beyond that, to enable political communities to flourish means that the negative impact of our way of life should be tackled. In reverse order to the effects outlined in this book, an account of human flourishing in relation to worth and value could include:

Visions Seen: High-Value Society and the Goals of Politics  205

1) The Production of Economic Value (vs the Tendency to be Knowingly Predatory) One of the major fault-lines running through our economic and social system was that our client has a strong tendency to be predatory; unchecked, this tendency will be destructive. It is the flipside of the economic dynamism and entrepreneurial instinct that is indispensable. For societies to flourish, they must be economically productive and prosperous. They must allow the greatest number possible to have jobs and get on in life and better themselves. The worst effects of capitalism – the greedy, exploitative aspects – need to be held to account. There is no justification in morality or economics for multi-million-dollar salaries that are beyond the dreams of avarice for the vast majority. Yet societies and business alike do well when there are strong incentives to invest and bring money into an industry or enterprise, rewarding those who take the risk. Societies that are not pro-business will not generate economic value for their people because it is inconsistent to be pro-jobs without being pro-business. An agenda of re-distribution is woefully inadequate by itself to generate economic value. Brazil, a leading member of the emerging BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies, espoused a post-ideological approach that matches wealth creation with wealth redistribution, which has been trumpeted as ‘the financial strategy of the future’. Governments should be on the side of the wealth-creators, as well as the downtrodden, while at the same time ensuring that business ethics are upheld. Shorn of the greed that cares only about shareholder and financial value, business is a positive endeavour, and economic activity is morally ‘good’. The common good depends on it. Individuals can hold their heads up high and perhaps acquire the self-respect that comes from the dignity of work. Small business start-ups can release dynamism and flair, boosting financial value through mobilising inner value. Yet an economic system has no choice but to face up to loss of jobs in firms that are no longer viable. Historically, a system that destroys uneconomic jobs is also best at creating new ones. A study by an American think-tank, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, showed that economic churning boosts productivity and hence material well-being but at a cost in turnover of jobs. Between 1977 and 2005, about 15 per cent of jobs were destroyed each

206  A Question of Worth year.14 The Anglo-Saxon economic model tends to create greater economic dynamism and business start-ups than the European social democratic model of cushioning workers. These are very hard issues for societies. It does not detract from economic value to argue that some kind of index between the worth of workers and the money made by a company could help to redress the balance between capital and labour. This link is hugely difficult to enshrine but a rule of thumb should recognise the link between human input and potential human cost. Pay differentials have moved from about ten times the average salary of their workers to considerably more. A report on ethical investment recommended application of the John Lewis partnership model of an index of top executive pay of no more than 75 times the lowest.15

2) Social Value (vs the Tendency to Cause Pain and Pathology for those Who Cannot Keep Up) Another of the propensities of our client we noted is the tendency to cause pain and pathology. This is inadvertent rather than intentional. Our economic and social order regularly generates distress; it seems to be a by-product of our way of doing business. For societies to flourish, its people must be protected against things going wrong in the business cycle that produce social pain and pathology. The human cost of recession is enormous; it is individuals and families that suffer. The social ecology is worth investing in to ensure that communities can prosper, even when they under considerable strain. A basic stance of stewardship can be adopted towards the natural world so that it is not seen as a resource to rip up and plunder but rather as the rich context of human and all life. This has to involve the responsibility of those who are able to make a contribution to society to do so, and the responsibilities of the rest to help those who cannot, to do so at every stage of life.

3) Individual Value (vs the Tendency to Quench the Human Spirit) For a society to flourish, people within it must thrive and do well as individuals. We have seen how in the frenetic, global race to the top, there are

Visions Seen: High-Value Society and the Goals of Politics  207 many who cannot keep up, who will fail in the rat race as being insufficiently rodent. There needs to be in place too an inspiring education system to put things right and decent health-care provision when things go wrong. This is where social value interacts with the value of the individual. Education and health care, however, do not need to be either constructed or sustained using the factory method that characterised the Industrial Revolution. As we have seen, the purpose of education is to ‘draw out’ – what someone might grow into in the journey of learning does not cease when he or she has ceased to be part of an educational institution. In contemporary society, individuals tend to do well as adults if they do well at school and find their natural level. The reverse is also true in most cases. Poor children will grow into poor adults. There should be no one left behind. Addressing poverty is in society’s interest and also of those who experience it. There will be no flourishing for those unable to feed their families or afford what their society considers to be a basic standard of living. Hence there needs to be a safety net that ensures people will still have a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. It is for politicians to draw up and debate where lines are drawn and how much relief to give. Such debates are complicated and tricky. Nevertheless, flourishing means there is insurance against things going badly wrong in the economic system that will otherwise tear the social fabric. The value and worth of human beings is under serious assault in times of economic downturn or more structural micro-cultures of poverty. It is also under assault where the workplace or dysfunctional family life generates endless wear and tear of the people’s sense of themselves. To enable human flourishing to be a reality, bullying in organisational or school cultures should be firmly addressed. It has been noted several times in this book that the kind of factors that erode or write off a sense of individual and group value include: • indifference – not being heard or seen; • indignity – assault, invasion, rejection; • inequality – unfair treatment, being diminished. These experiences could be markers to socially useful knowledge as key insights to nurture the value and worth of human beings.

208  A Question of Worth

4) Power Imbalance (vs the Tendency to Run Things for the Benefit of the Few) Our client is also radically unfair. The footprint of our economic and social system is hardly neutral with respect to power. The world works well for the few all the time and for the many, some of the time. Societies flourish when inequality in power is addressed. The balance of power radically shapes the differing ways people experience their lives. Creating level ground for opportunities has to be fairer than the table being weighted against whole sections of society. Where some social groups are discriminated against, where corporate power is wielded in a way that creates damage, the downtrodden will rise up. Theirs is a bargain with history, for our way of life generates its opposite. People may not care so much about the shape of the distribution curve in theory but they do when it scythes down their self-worth in the form of their standing relative to others. Societies will not flourish when whole groups of people are held back while others do as they please. The mighty and the wealthy can contribute to the common good. Other voices need to be heard for a political community to thrive, as in any democratic project.

5) Valuing Relationship and Other ‘Goods’ (vs the Generation of Solitary Anxiety) We noted the performance anxiety that warps the value of people: the need to prove and acquire a certain identity. Anxiety about performance or body image is not only shaped by the image-makers and persuaders; it is also fed by the restless urge to keep up in the race of life. It is, however, in the interests of a flourishing society to ensure that the results of battle do not always go to the strong nor the race merely to the swift. We have noted the paradox. To thrive, people need to thrive in projects holistically other than task production. Crucially, we need to be in close relationships; wired up with affirming human connections for all other exchanges to be instantiated and run smoothly. That means non-monetary gifts such as the gift of time and love. As noted earlier, the French Revolution made much of three banners under which its soldiers fought to change l’Ancien Régime – equality, liberty

Visions Seen: High-Value Society and the Goals of Politics  209 and fraternity. The first two have been staple products in political philosophy since. The third has been much less emphasised and outside of movements that stressed solidarity, has been largely absent. Perhaps it is time to return to the importance of ‘political emotions’, as American philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues; in short, the power and importance of love in politics.16

Postscript Through Thick and Thin In the early stages of industrialisation, the acute observer of an American democracy barely 50 years old, Alexis de Tocqueville, saw that the possibility of possession meant that people became more anxious about acquiring wealth and thereby social status. Everyone can now imagine well-being and what it means to improve themselves. Nothing keeps people in their place; hence, there is a restlessness, a search for improved well-being that grows even as it is satisfied. This leads to a striving for ambition: the result though is dissatisfaction and disappointment. The ethos of trade spilt over into people being isolated from each other, an individualistic self-concern that caused the American to shut himself off and let the larger society take care of itself. He carefully distinguished this from egoism but nevertheless, acquiring enough wealth to take care of themselves led to people being turned back into themselves. De Tocqueville saw this as fundamental to capitalist democracy.1 In de Tocqueville’s view, it is in everyone’s interest to behave honourably and to form the association that was, he considered, the mother of all knowledge one needed in democratic life. Habits of association were extended from civil society to business and politics but also the other way round. Religion was, he thought, a powerful force in counteracting individualistic isolation. The English riots of 2011 epitomised distressed urban communities characterised by involvement in anti-social behaviour, truancy and adult unemployment and reliance on benefits. There are, needless to say, countless communities that, though living under the conditions of late capitalism, do not experience urban distress, pockets of poverty or gang culture as the norm. Yet there are a great many who struggle in such places as North London’s housing estates where the riots unfolded. Life is tough. Somehow, rich pockets of community flourish in these unpromising environments.

Through Thick and Thin  211 This is Gesellschaft, urban mass society; densely populated, with a much smaller sense of community than the traditional Gemeinschaft, village culture.2 There are countless examples of rural communities that are out of the ‘rat race’, in tangent to the capitalist economy. Here is one such: North Devon.

Life in the Iconic Village – North Devon off the Grid (a Case Study) West is best? People like living around here. Inhabitants of the rural areas of the West Country are almost twice as likely to cherish where they live than city dwellers; most people probably want to live in the country. A study by insurer NFU Mutual found that more than a third of those living in the countryside ‘loved’ their local area. Of all areas surveyed in their Countryside Living Index, no one said they disliked their surroundings. Introducing the satisfaction survey of attitudes towards rural and urban areas, the NFU Mutual Chairman observed the clear preference for country living, which continues to rise.3 This was despite the rise in the cost of living, which had increased at twice the rate of urban areas in the previous twelve months. The cost of fuel and the cost of running a car meant financial pressure on life in the countryside that was tantamount to year-on-year rural inflation.4 Crime was also very much the main bone of contention for country people, a blot on the landscape. Yet despite crime and the cost of getting around, the countryside seemed to have much to offer. An abundance of amenities and vibrant high streets in urban areas were clearly no match for the fresh air, outdoor pursuits and community spirit cherished by those who live in the country. As one West Country incomer put it, ‘I think you tend to work more efficiently when you know you can go for a walk on the beach in the sunshine’.5 The classic sociologist Max Weber saw a world being disenchanted in favour of economic and technical progress.6 Yet enchantment remains in North Devon, a land of streams and formidable hills rising and rolling wherever the eye roams. There are to be sure strong concerns over increasing house prices, which is crippling for local people on low wages, rural poverty caused in part by

212  A Question of Worth increased living costs and reduced wages (even if someone has a job, it’s often not enough to keep them ‘solvent’.) Poverty is often seen as an urban phenomenon and the figures on poverty rurally rarely show up on censuses as there is mixed affluence. Rural education is expensive as funding is often provided to schools on a per-pupil basis, which means that small rural schools suffer from inadequate funding and may even have to close, particularly with transport becoming more expensive. With local cuts in some transport services, many bus routes have been withdrawn. According to Devon County Council categories, anywhere from one-third to 100 per cent of communities are remote, with poor access to services.7 In many urban areas, 50 per cent of the population changes every five years; there is a very high churn. That is much less the case in somewhere like North Devon, though second-home owners are frequent. The lack of affordable housing constitutes as big a squeeze here as in most rural areas. Young people can rarely afford to stay and draw on the support structures of nearby family. The strength of the local economy is patchy. Most small farmers of sheep and cattle have either left the industry or have to fight extremely hard for every penny of their margins in order to sell lambs, beef or milk. Some have had to resort to computerised production methods to watch over their stock, and to alert farmers to how much feed they have had and when they will give birth. In the Foot and Mouth disease epidemic, many suicides were reported among the agricultural community. Farmers took their shotgun to the barn rather than battle any more to retain their livelihoods, now destroyed. Farming can be an isolated life; the women feel it most. The sons are leaving. Overall, the contribution of agriculture to local employment has been declining for generations. The shape of rural life has altered dramatically since World War II. Agriculture used to take precedence over other rural policies. Not any more. Rural policies are not just about food and timber production and preventing urban sprawl. Recreation, landscape and natureconservation goals are also vital. Tourism makes up the slack to a degree but here too there have been hard times with contemporary tourists flocking in search of assured sunshine elsewhere – courtesy of cheap flights. High-quality jobs are thin on the ground though many strike out on their own with new

Through Thick and Thin  213 technology that is not centred on place. This is a reversal. In the Industrial Revolution, the brightest people left. The age of austerity hit North Devon hard. Fierce reduction in public services – especially local authorities which traditionally spend money on those who need assistance – has had a big impact. So too has a sharp reduction in benefits and intense scrutiny over help such as Disability Living Allowance. The dismantling of the safety net means that many live lives of struggle and anxiety, having to report to a job centre in Barnstaple but not having the means to get there other than walking over the hills. The local area feels itself to be on the periphery. This feeds a sense of economic disadvantage. Of particular local concern is that one in five North Devon workers are paid less than a living wage. This is not just a problem for individual households, but for everyone in North Devon. Taxpayers are subsidising low-wage employers through tax credits and welfare benefits. A fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. The Living Wage makes sense for everybody. People paid fairly will spend more in local businesses.8 What does community mean in this place? Is it being reworked by postindustrial society? Community is a problematic concept. The word is fuzzy, imparting to us mutuality, a warm feeling, a feeling of being loved, valued and having a purpose in our world. It speaks of familiarity and continuity, a place small enough in which to know people. By contrast, in high-rise London, where I have lived and worked, there was nowhere to come out and meet your neighbours. In an anonymous urban space, old traditions lose their grip. The role of religion and family is weakened. By contrast, in the villages of North Devon, everyone knows your business. This can be positive or negative. Community can be thick or thin. Thick community is characterised by a strong sense of togetherness. It is homogeneous. One doesn’t want to be different. That gives a great sense of solidarity. Or there is ‘thin’ community with a greater sense of freedom and diversity, where people can no longer presume to know what their neighbours are thinking and where it is easier to find people ‘who are different to me’. This is more the urban pattern of life. Most of the rural and small communities around North Devon are of the ‘thick’ variety, representing an older cohesive society where everyone knew each other. There are many perspectives on what kind of social relationships

214  A Question of Worth should be characterised as communities – whether face to face or inhabiting the same locale.9 A moralised community must involve solidarity whereby members give each other’s interests some non-instrumental weight in their practical reasoning – such as the ‘Gay Community’, which is rather thin on the ground in this socially conservative space.10 Communities are partly constituted by shared ways of life, rule-governed practices that are woven together to ensure cooperation and survival. International studies expert Benedict Anderson’s idea of an ‘imagined community’, drew on people who conceive of themselves as related to each other in some way through shared narrative.11 However problematic the concept, it is clear that there is a need to belong or to identify with a group. Is there an ‘us’ and ‘them’ about these communities? Once there was deference flowing upwards and paternalism flowing downwards. Unlike the surrounding hills, this has eroded. For the most part, the rural church is hugely important to the life of the village and community identity. Pub and post office are also central to their communities though all these facets of local cohesion are under serious financial constraint and the need to make affordable provision. The rural idyll remains, however, a powerful myth. It has powerful political connotations. Who owns the countryside? How do tensions between local employment and agricultural needs play out against environmental concerns? Conceptions of what exactly is the countryside pose interesting questions about the meanings we attach to conservation and the environment and to our most basic needs for food, shelter and procreation. ‘The countryside is thus a powerful metaphor for our own mortality as animals rather than sophisticated people cocooned in the artificial world of cyberspace.’12 In 1995, the first white paper on rural areas since the Scott Report of 1942 reported a Countryside Commission Survey that said that 93 per cent of people considered countryside as valuable and 91 per cent considered society has a moral duty to protect the countryside for future generations.13 Gone are the days when the countryside was an essential food producer that needs to be protected from urban growth. These days, goals for the countryside focus on four main objectives: food security, improving the welfare of rural residents, protecting the rural environment and rural recreation.14

Through Thick and Thin  215 Drawing on the work of the French social theorist Jean Baudrillard, researcher Ken Halfacree argues that socially constructed rural spaces become increasingly detached from geographical rural space.15 Halfacree suggests that there are two ways of defining what rural means – first, the approach which attempts to define the rural as a distinct locality; second, the social representation by ordinary people on the physical environment: in other words, a belief in the rural idyll.16 The dream of the rural model has been interpreted and reinterpreted. Yet the chaotic nature of urban life does not find its antidote in rural tranquillity. Tempting though it is sometimes to conceive of rural life as a fantasy world – an extra-urban space in which people do what they want to do – or to construct images of ideal retreats, it is a mistake to romanticise the countryside. But the countryside is different. People do things differently. They acknowledge perfect strangers on walks. Urban spaces reflect social and technological change. Twentieth-century planners designed the classic industrial city, intended to ‘design-out’ pollution, congestion and overcrowding, replete with walkable distances, open spaces and green parks. These were ‘technologically enhanced Edens’ that were intended to be the birthplaces of a ‘new man’.17 However, the urban model rarely succeeded in sustaining romantic visions of our place in nature. That task was left to the countryside where invented Edens were secondary. Here was the real thing. Here people were free of the sensory overload of urban life and the overwhelming kaleidoscope of experiences bombarding the senses and challenging their sense of self.18 Cosy images of the rural idyll remain. Should we go further and further down the road to the ‘rustic theme park’ or return to reality?19 Asking the question of what rurality and community means to different people show how far different conceptions of rural existence are used for political purposes. The cosy image of the countryside in the nineteenth century as central to the strength of the nation benefited the wealthy and the landowners because of the distraction from poorly paid and underfed farm labourers.20 It yielded to contrived imagery of idealised countryside sponsored by the middle classes.21 Deeper understanding of how people negotiate the meanings in their daily lives sheds light on rural existence. So here are some voices of North

216  A Question of Worth Devon, very much ‘off the grid’ of industrial capitalism and, to a large extent, far from shaping influences presented by post-industrial society with its enduring emphasis on accumulation, income and wealth and status – in other words, quantification.

Voices Farming is a way of life. You have got to love it. There is no holiday. I couldn’t leave it – I don’t know anything else. My life is based on £1500 a cow. Farming doesn’t appeal though to the youngsters. ‘Small community?’ I get tired of it sometimes. It’s too closed. Everyone knows you. There is so much rivalry and jealousy. In my opinion, these newcomers are changing a village into a town. They’re just not joining in the activities as people used to. It’s not just a question of people not knowing everyone like they used to, they’re just not getting involved with anyone else. I hardly know them across the road for instance. Everyone is just too busy with their own lives. There’s nothing to do here. When I came, it was like exchanging my social life for being close to my parents. Those new people are coming in and running our village! The successful are wanting to take over the less successful. As a result, we are losing our identity. Until you were accepted, it wasn’t easy living here. Took a long, long time to be accepted – years and years’ British farmers don’t need outsiders to tell them how to nurture sustainable landscapes. They’ve been farming the land for generations. (With reference to European harmonisation Directives.) Locals can be especially touchy about church. It is their church. Their family have supported it for generations and grandparents are buried there. That’s what makes them accepted. Many locals are protective of each other and defensive in the face of these ‘incomers’.

Through Thick and Thin  217 As kids, our family was suspicious of outsiders, of strangers at the door – ‘what should we say to him?’ Country people didn’t go in for meeting and greeting incomers. Most round us were subsistence farmers, rough and ready we were. We didn’t want to change. This is how we have lived.

In summary, there are two powerful rivers running through North Devon: land and tradition. The strength of rural communities lies in an imagined relationship between past tense and the imperative. ‘This is how it used to be; this is how it “ought” to be.’ People come here to live a pleasant rural life and, paradoxically, often set up community groups that are against development. Yet community spirit is alive and well in North Devon. There is some common land, for example Brendon Commons, near the border with the neighbouring county, Somerset, which retains equal right of access for all. Local farmers graze their sheep on the Commons and, by some mysterious process, re-gather them afterwards. Closer to home, ‘Free Help’ is taking off in Combe Martin – offering items for lending or time to care and share. This is a significant straw in the wind; a community lending a hand to neighbours and shielding itself from hard times. People here are very connected. One can’t walk down the street without people knowing and greeting you. At least that is how it used to be, and still is to a large extent. Yet here, as everywhere, things are very different now. We have become a far more diverse society. The forces of fragmentation are centrifugal, atomising nuclear communities. We are becoming a nation of individuals. The social isolation of village communities ceased long ago.22 Today, national and international factors make inroads into local identities. The very pressures of social mobility remove working-class young people out of the communities that need them but into the diversity of outside. North Devon may have a ready-made platform for the rise of the social economy. There is a stronger sense of community to begin with. Many come here because of it. Being more time-rich is an attractive way of life for many, whether they come from communities where everyone pitches in or from anonymous urban spaces. It depends on the willingness of people to share time and energy. The result can be that life is about ‘me’ rather than ‘we’. We take less notice

218  A Question of Worth of each other or are less inclined to help neighbours when under pressure. As noted earlier, a drop of about an hour a month in volunteering shows that people get less involved. Yet, in parallel, in many places there is a new mood of volunteering which may be defeating the pessimists about the atomisation of society. Certainly the advertising industry endlessly fuels a vision of ourselves as consumers rather than citizens. The anti-austerity movement is experimenting with forms of direct democracy, organising horizontal spaces for collective decision-making; witness the Citizen’s Pact, a grassroots approach to influencing EU policy by creating citizen-led proposals for a radically different Europe. The forum for this was online engagement and a presence in marketplaces to develop a manifesto. There are hopeful signs of a new civic service, a spirit of volunteering or communitarian prescriptions such as restorative justice for young offenders or housing trusts. Rather than people looking out for each other cooperatively, they look out for ‘number one’. Yet there is a positive side to the (market-shaped?) atomisation of contemporary society. In many quarters, there is advocacy of small community to re-gain social connection, in line with Dunbar’s well-known observation that around 150 people is optimum for close ties. For example: The Restart project along with restart parties in which local people work out how to mend everything from broken kettles and iPads to digital radios and phones. Repair skills are disregarded so this is an opportunity to think differently about the way they operate and to challenge the consumer system at local level.23 Sharing and learning of hands-on skills. Volunteer collectives. The Totnes pound set up in 2007 by the Totnes Transition Team in Devon. Attempts in Frome, Somerset to create a new, inclusive democracy from the bottom up.24 An energy company that takes money that customers spend on electricity and gas bills and uses it to build more renewable green energy. ‘People Power is

Through Thick and Thin  219 at the heart of what we do – the more people join us, the closer we’ll come to generating 100 per cent of our own energy’, the website asserts.25

The thread running through these endeavours is that they are self-­empowering with hopeful, action-oriented answers that might help jump-start conversations about the way we operate. The post-industrial self is not defined alone as a single entity but by reference to family, to place and increasingly, social connection. This tension will remain. Too much community spirit can equate to lack of privacy. How we recreate bonds of civic society in a way that is compatible with an individual sense of freedom will be an on-going tension. Iris Young builds on feminist theorising about the important differences such as gender, race and disability to problematise notions of community that are too comfortable and comforting. Community is repressive and potentially exclusionary. Community is an understandable dream […] but politically problematic […] because those motivated by it will tend to suppress differences between themselves, or implicitly to exclude from their political groups persons with whom they do not identify.’ What she proposes instead is ‘the unoppressive city’ which ‘offers an understanding of social relations without domination in which persons live together in relations of mediation among strangers with whom they are not in community.26

There is a strong positive side, born of the yearning to belong, the instinct for association. It will be found in community organisations where people come together to help each other. Belonging is not a fixed entity, it is ‘the desire for some sort of attachment, be it to other people, places or modes of being […] wanting to belong, wanting to become, a process that is fuelled by yearning rather than the positioning of identity as a stable state’.27 Belonging is forged of possibilities, not limits. Network society has not freed us from any supposed tyranny of place but brought new possibilities and online communities. Despite Marx’s contention that with both production and consumption becoming internationalised, proletariat identity would do away with particular identities, the yearning to belong will not disappear in post-industrial society. An urge to find places where humans are not valued for their market position will not dissipate and is sure to grow. Belonging is in constant movement; modes of belonging are in surface shifts.

Notes Introduction 1. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge, 1991). 2. S. Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge, 1972). 3. L. G. McDonald and P. Robinson, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers (London, 2009). 4. A. Gamble, The Spectre at the Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession (Basingstoke, 2009). 5. The Lancet, 3 December 2008. 6. BBC Radio 4 news, 8 December 2008. 7. The Crown Prosecution Service, ‘Hate Crime Report 2007–2008’ (December 2008). Available at www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/CPS_hate_crime_report_2008.pdf. 8. BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 29 January 2009. 9. C. Rice, P. Stothard and N. Danziger, ‘Condoleeza Rice’, The Times Magazine, 1 April 2006. 10. C. Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Oxford, 1964). 11. BBC Radio 4, PM, 14 November 2014. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/pm. 12. B. E. Harcourt, Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age (Cambridge, MA, 2015). 13. C. Steed, parish notes. Not attributed and used with permission. 14. BBC Radio 4, PM, 25 May 2012. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/pm.

Chapter One: How Did We Get Here? Quantification as a Way of Life 1. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, II. 437–8. Available at http://www.poetryintranslation.com/ PITBR/Latin/Artoflovehome.htm. 2. Horace, Odes, III.24. 62–4. Available at http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/ Latin/HoraceOdesBkI.htm. 3. H. S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI, 1991), p. xvi. 4. A. Young, Tours in England and Wales, quoted in E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (London, 1977), p. 42. 5. R. Bruner, The Panic of 1907 (Hoboken, NJ, 2007). 6. E. Schmidt and J. Rosenberg, How Google Works (London, 2012). 7. ‘The Creed of Speed’, The Economist, 5 December 2015. 8. The Economist indicators and report, 27 June 2015. 9. A. Giddens, Sociology (Cambridge, 1989). 10. K. Robins, ‘Tradition and Translation: National Culture in its Global Context’, in

Notes to Pages 15–30  221 J. Corner and S. Harvey (eds), Enterprise and Heritage: Cross-Currents of National Culture (London, 1991). 11. V. Shiva, ‘The Polarised World of Globalisation’. UN Global Policy Forum, 10 May 2005.

Chapter Two: The Differentiation of Worth – Life in Layers 1. J. Shotwell, The Origins of the International Labour Organisation (New York, 1934). 2. ‘Untouchability’, Guardian, 6 May 2006. 3. C. Steed, client notes. Name withheld and used with permission. 4. R. N. Bellah, (ed.), Emile Durkheim: On Morality and Society, Selected Writings (Chicago, 1973). See also A. Giddens (ed.), Emile Durkheim: Selected Writings (London, 1972) and Stedman S. Jones, Durkheim Reconsidered (Cambridge, 2001) for a more recent assessment. 5. O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 (London, 1996), p. 365. 6. I. Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (Oxford, 1963). 7. Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 114. 8. Ibid., p. 524. 9. F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Chicago, 1984). 10. B. Jackson and D. Marsden, Education and the Working Class (London, 1986), p. 180. 11. Steed, client notes. 12. M. Taylor, Speed Limits: Where Time Went and Why We Have So Little Left (London, 2015). 13. A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by A. Goldhammer (New York, 2004). 14. M. Lipset and R. Bendix, Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Rutgers, NJ, 1992). See also ‘Phase 1 Report, an Analysis of the Trends and Issues Relating to the Professions’ (April 2009). Available at www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media. 15. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. ‘State of the Nation 2014: Social Mobility and Child Poverty in Great Britain’ (October 2014). Available at https:// www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-of-the-nation-2014-report. 16. Steed, client notes. 17. G. Payne, Social Divisions, Social Mobility and Social Research (London, 2007). 18. ‘Britain’s Closed Shops: Damning Report on Social Mobility Failings’, Guardian, 21 July 2009. Available at www.guardian.co.uk. 19. W. Mommsen, The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber: Collected Essays (Chicago, 1992). 20. M. Weber, ‘Class, Status and Party’, in H. Garth and C. W. Mills (eds), From Max Weber (London, 1948), p. 181. 21. P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, 1986). 22. BBC Radio 4, Thinking Allowed, on the British Sociology Association Conference, London, April 2013. 23. K. Davis, Human Society (New York, 1959), p. 367. 24. A. de Botton, Status Anxiety (London, 2005), p. 14.

222  Notes to Pages 30–42 25. B. Jackson and D. Marsden, Education and the Working Classes (London, 1964), p. 172. 26. Payne, G., ‘Social Divisions, Social Mobility and Social Research’, Sociology, 41(5) (2007), 901–15. 27. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, ‘State of the Nation 2015: Social Mobility and Child Poverty in Great Britain’ (December 2015). Available at https:// www.gov.uk/government/news/state-of-the-nation-2015. 28. O. Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (London, 2011).

Chapter Three: The Distribution of Worth – You Are What You Earn 1. Newsweek, 13 October 2008. 2. I refer to the public debates in the UK on this subject between 15 and 18 October 2014. 3. BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 24 October 2014. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/ radio4/todayprogramme. 4. C. Steed, client notes. Name withheld and used with permission. 5. Augustine, City of God (London, 1972). 6. T. Hobbes, Leviathan (Indianopolis, IN, 1994). 7. A. Corlett and M. Whittaker, ‘Low Pay Britain 2014’, Resolution Foundation. Available at www.resolutionfoundation.org, November 2014. 8. BBC Radio 4 news, 23 November 2014. 9. South West TUC, A Guide to the Living Wage (Bristol, 2014). 10. A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London, 1776). 11. Living Wage Commission, ‘Work that Pays: The Final Report of the Living Wage Commission’ (June 2014), p. 12. 12. J. Cribb, ‘Income Inequality in the UK’, Institute for Fiscal Studies (2013). Available at www.ifs.org.uk/docs/ER_JC_2013.pdf 13. Living Wage Commission, ‘Work that Pays’, p. 12. 14. ‘US Productivity Puzzle’, The Economist, 13 June 2015. 15. J. Schor, The Overworked American (New York, 1991). 16. B. Bruns and J. Luque, Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington DC, 2014). 17. BBC Radio 4 business news, 21 July 2014. 18. A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Indianopolis, IN, 1982), Book 1, Chapter V. 19. Ibid. 20. D. Ricardo, ‘Absolute Value and Exchange Value’, in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo’, Vol. 4 (Cambridge, 1951). 21. H. J. Davenport, Value and Distribution (New York, 1964). 22. K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (London, 1969). 23. A. Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (London, 2009). 24. J. Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought (New York, 2003). 25. ‘The Third Industrial Revolution’, The Economist, 21 April 2012. 26. Steed, client notes.

Notes to Pages 42–52  223 27. N. Seid, ‘Learning To Live Without a Paycheck: How One Mom Gave Up Her Job But Kept Up Her Self-Esteem’, quoted in W. Swann, Resilient Identities: Self-Relationships and the Construction of Social Reality (New York, 1999), p. 122.

Chapter Four: The Demonstration of Worth – You Are What You Own 1. ‘Drug Addict. Sex Addict. Is Russell Brand Really What Radio 2 Needs?’, Daily Mail, 6 November 2006. 2. HM Treasury, ‘Green Book’ (2011), p. 57. 3. Z. Bauman, ‘Interview – Zygmunt Bauman on the UK Riots’, Social Europe (2011). Available at https://www.socialeurope.eu/2011/08/interview-zygmunt-bauman. 4. N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb (eds), The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England (Bloomington, 1982). 5. I. Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675–1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (New York, 1986). 6. H. C. Clark (ed.), Commerce, Culture and Liberty: Readings on Capitalism before Adam Smith (Indianapolis, 2003). 7. D. Williams (ed.), Voltaire: Political Writings (Cambridge, 1994). 8. S. Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York, 1992), pp. 169–70. 9. T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New Brunswick, 1992). 10. R. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity 1920–1940 (Berkeley, CA, 1995), pp. 347–60. 11. H. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA, 1964). 12. D. Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York, 1973). 13. Y. S. Lincoln and E. G. Guba, Naturalistic Inquiry (Newbury Park, CA, 1985). 14. U. Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design (Cambridge, MA, 1979). 15. R. Belk, ‘Children’s Recognition of Consumption Symbolism in Children’s Products’, The Journal of Consumer Research, 10(4) (1984), pp. 387–97. 16. T. Kasser and R. M. Ryan (1993), ‘A Dark Side of the American Dream: Correlates of Financial Success as a Central Life Aspiration’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(2) (1993), pp. 410–22. See also M. L. Richins and S. Dawson, ‘A Consumer Values Orientation for Materialism and Its Measurement: Scale Development and Validation’, Journal of Consumer Research, 19(3) (1992), pp. 303–16. 17. Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute in partnership with Dr Agnes Nairn, ‘Children’s Well-being in UK, Sweden and Spain: The Role of Inequality and Materialism’ (2011). Available at https://www.unicef.org.uk/Documents/Publications.IPSOS_ UNICEF_ChildWellBeingreport.pdf. 18. L. A. Paul, Transformative Experiences (Oxford, 2014). 19. L. Johnstone, Users and Abusers of Psychiatry (London: Routledge, 2000) p. 113. 20. Ibid., p. 113.

224  Notes to Pages 52–67

Chapter Five: 1st Symptom: Private Lives and Performance Anxiety 1. W. B. Swann, Resilient Identities: Self, Relationships, And The Construction Of Social Reality (New York, 1999). 2. Z. Bauman, The Individualised Society (Chichester, 2001). 3. Church Urban Fund newsletter, June 2015. Available at www.cuf.org.uk 4. C. Caryl, Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the Twenty-First Century (New York, 2013). 5. See the work of the Relationships Foundation. Available at www.relationshipsfoundation.org. 6. E. Rantzen ‘“Shock” at Numbers of Lonely People Seeking Help in Silver Lines First Year’, Yorkshire Post, 25 November 2014. Available at http://www.yorkshirepost. co.uk/news/community/shock-at-numbers-of-lonely-seeking-help-in-silver-line-sfirst-year. 7. Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Oxford, 2003). 8. E. Diener, Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth (Chichester, 2008). 9. C. Rogers, Client Centred Therapy (Boston, MA, 1951), p. 520. 10. D. Rowe, The Successful Self (London, 1993), p. 37. 11. C. Steed, client notes. Name withheld and used with permission. 12. P. Farmer, ‘Men and Mental Health: Get It Off Your Chest’. Mind, press release (2009). 13. S. Orbach, Fat is a Feminist Issue (London, 2006). 14. Comments by Dr Linda Papadopoulos, Daily Telegraph, 6 March 2010. 15. Daily Mail, 25 November 2013. 16. BBC Radio 4 news, 10 December 2013. 17. Girlguiding UK and Mental Health Foundation, ‘A Generation Under Stress’, (2007). 18. M. J. Lyon and J. M. Barbalet, ‘Society’s Body’, in T. J. Csordas (ed.), Embodiment and Experience (Cambridge, 1994). 19. H. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (London, 1986). 20. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (London, 1976). 21. T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (London, 1983). 22. L. Gomez, Introduction to Object Relations (London, 1997), p. 60. 23. Z. Bauman, Liquid Times (Cambridge, 2007). 24. The Economist, 22 December 2007.

Chapter Six: 2nd Symptom: Power Imbalance – the Sunny Side of the Street 1. Oxfam, ‘A Tale of Two Britains: Inequality in the UK’, Oxfam Media Briefings, 17 March 2014. Available at http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/a-tale-oftwo-britains-inequality-in-the-uk-314152. 2. Oxfam, ‘Inequality and Poverty’. Available at www.oxfam.org.uk. 3. C. Steed, parish notes. Name withheld and used with permission. 4. M. Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford, 2013).

Notes to Pages 67–75  225 5. Daily Telegraph 26 and 27 May 2014. See the video capture of the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism, 27 May 2014, referred to on the website. Available at http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financevideo/10857507/Lagarde-calls-for-moreintegrity-in-capitalism.html. 6. D. Dorling, Inequality and the 1% (London, 2004). 7. A. Crosland, The Future of Socialism (London, 1956). 8. M. Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870–2033: An Essay on Education and Society (London, 1958). 9. F. Mount, The New Few: Or a Very British Oligarchy – Power and Inequality in Britain Now (London, 2012). 10. R. Wilkinson and K. Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (London, 2009). 11. T. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA, 2014). 12. J. Weissmann, ‘Piketty’s Data is Full of Errors’, Financial Times, 23 May 2014. 13. W. Hutton, ‘Capitalism Simply Isn’t Working and Here Are the Reasons Why’, Guardian, 12 April 2014. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ 2014/apr/12/capitalism-isnt-working-thomas-piketty. 14. A. Hussey, ‘Occupy Was Right: Capitalism Has Failed the World’, Guardian, 12 April 2014. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/13/occupy-rightcapitalism-failed-world-french-economist-thomas-piketty. 15. J. Cassidy, ‘Forces of Divergence: Is Surging Inequality Endemic to Capitalism?’, The New Yorker, 31 March 2014. Available at http://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2014/03/31/forces-of-divergence. See also B. Milanovic, ‘The Return of “Patrimonial Capitalism”: Review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, Munich Personal RePEc Archive, October 2013. 16. ‘Ever Widening Gap between CEO Pay and Average Salaries: JC Penney Boss Earns 1,800 Times the Average Cashier’, Daily Mail, 1 May 2013. 17. J. Gornick and M. Jäntti (eds), Income Inequality: Economic Disparities and the Middle Class in Affluent Countries (Redwood City, CA, 2013). 18. P. Toynbee, ‘This Expenses Shame Crowns Labour’s Failure on Fairness’, Guardian, 9 May 2009. 19. ‘Forgot the 1%’, The Economist, 1 November 2014. 20. Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility (ECCR), ‘Using Ethical Investment To Close the Gap’, 27 October 2014. 21. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, ‘State of the Nation 2014: Social Mobility and Child Poverty in Great Britain’ (October 2014). Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/ 365765/State_of_Nation_2014_Main_Report.pdf. 22. J. A. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 223. 23. J. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality (London, 2012). 24. J. Helliwell (ed.), ‘World Happiness Report 2015: Summary’. Available from http/ worldhappiness.report/summary. 25. S. Greenfield, Mind Change: How Digital Technologies are Leaving their Mark on our Brains (London, 2014). 26. F. Levy and R. J. Murnane, The New Division of Labour: How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market (Princeton, NJ, 2014). 27. E. Brynjolfsson and A. McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York, 2014), p. 16.

226  Notes to Pages 75–86 28. Ibid. 29. R. Kurzweil, Spiritual Intelligence: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (London, 2000). 30. J. Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons and the Eclipse of Capitalism (New York, 2014). 31. Witness the introduction of the UK Digital Inclusion Charter (2014). Available at www.gov.uk/government/news/digital-inclusion-strategy. 32. I am grateful for papers presented and discussion brought at a Digital Inclusion Conference in North Devon on 23 June 2014, entitled, ‘Off the Radar’. Available at http:// www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/changing-minds/knowledge---culture/digital-inclusion. 33. See note 32.

Chapter Seven: 3rd Symptom: Poverty and the Lumpen Proletariat 1. J. Welshman, A History of the Excluded, 1880–2000 (London, 2006), p. 6. 2. T. MacInnes, A. Tinson, C. Hughes, T. B. Born and H. Aldridge, ‘Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion’, Josef Rowntree Foundation, November 2015. 3. Emmaus homeless charity public information leaflet (2012). Available at www. emmaus.org.uk. 4. BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 25 May 2012. 5. Louise Casey speaking on BBC Radio 4 Today programme, 18 July 2012. 6. L. Tirado, Hand to Mouth (London, 2014). 7. ITV News, ‘National Housing Federation: “Bedroom Tax” “Wrong in Every Respect”’, 31 March 2013. 8. Joint paper by WB/Transform for Work Ilfracombe/University of West of England/ TUC, September 2014. 9. See www.birminghamsettlement.org. 10. Poverty and Social Exclusion, ‘Going Backwards: 1983–2012’. Available at http:// www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/going-backwards-1983-2012. 11. Child Poverty Action Group, cpag.org.uk. 12. Church Urban Fund, ‘Tackling Poverty Together’ (January 2013). 13. www.theguardian.com/money/2014. 14. C. Steed, parish notes, October 2014. 15. R. Walker, et al., The Shame of Poverty (Oxford, 2014). 16. A. Sen, Commodities and Capabilities (New Delhi, 1999). 17. X. Godinot with T. Viard, ‘Extreme Poverty and World Governance’, quoted in Walker, et al., The Shame of Poverty, p. 24. 18. J. Perry, M. Williams, T. Sefton and M. Haddad, ‘Emergency Use Only’, The Child Poverty Action Group, Church of England, Oxfam GB and The Trussell Trust (November 2014). 19. A. Power, Poor Areas and Social Exclusion (London, 2000). 20. R. Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars (London, 2009). 21. G. G. Field, Blood, Sweat and Toil: Remaking the British Working Class, 1939–1945 (Oxford, 2012). 22. M. MacEwan, Health Visiting: A Textbook for Health Visitor Students (London, 1957), pp. 58–9.

Notes to Pages 86–97  227 23. P. Townshend, Poverty in the United Kingdom (London, 1979). 24. M. Rutter and N. Madge, Cycles of Disadvantage (London, 1976). 25. Department of Health and Social Security, ‘Opportunity for All: Making Progress’. Cm 5260 (2001) p. 40. 26. O. Lewis, La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty – San Juan and New York (London, 1967), p. xli. 27. K. Coates and R. Silburn, Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen (London, 1973), p. 153. 28. Institute for Fiscal Studies, ‘Emergency Budget June 2010’ (June 2010). 29. G. Room, ‘Poverty and Social Exclusion: The New European Agenda for Policy and Research’, in G. Room (ed.), Beyond the Threshhold: The Measurement and Analysis of Social Exclusion (Bristol, 1995). 30. A. Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 78–82. 31. C. Pantazis, D. Gordon and R. Levitas (eds), Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain: The Millennium Survey (Bristol, 2006). 32. Cabinet Office, www.cabinet-office.gov.uk. 33. S. Ringen, ‘Direct and Indirect Measures of Poverty’, Journal of Social Policy, 17 (3) (1988), pp. 351–65. See also S. Ringen, Poverty: The Rowntree Project Revisited (Cambridge: MA, 2009). 34. Field, Blood, Sweat and Toil. 35. Baroness Stowell, Hansard, 11 February 2013. 36. T. Shildrick, et al., Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low-pay, No-pay Britain (Bristol, 2012). 37. A. McCarron and L. Purcell, ‘The Blame Game Must Stop: Challenging the Stigmatisation of People Experiencing Poverty’, Church Action on Poverty. Available at www.church-poverty.org.uk/stigma/report/blamegamereport. 38. H. Aldridge, P. Kenway, T. MacInnes and A. Parekh, ‘Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (November 2012). 39. www.gingerbread.org.uk. 40. Quoted in The Economist, 6 June 2015. 41. Guardian, 18 July 2012.

Chapter Eight: 4th Symptom: Pain – (the Emotional Cost of Recession) 1. J. E. Stiglitz, ‘A Greek Morality Tale’, Project Syndicate, 3 February 2015. Available at www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greece-eurozone-austerity-reform-byjoseph-e--stiglitz. 2. J. Kincaid, ‘Richard Titmuss 1907–73’, in P. Barker (ed.), Founders of the Welfare State (Farnham, 1984), pp. 114–20. 3. M. O’Hara, Austerity Bites: A Journey to the Sharp End of Cuts in the UK (Bristol, 2014), p. 2. 4. M. Brewer, J. Browne and R. Joyce, ‘Child and Working Age Poverty from 2010 to 2020’, Institute for Fiscal Studies (October 2011). 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid.

228  Notes to Pages 97–103 7. Ibid. 8. Matthew Read in a statement put out in response to Conservative Party plans announced at their conference in September 2014. 9. World Bank, Spring 2009, www.econworldbank.org. 10. United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition, Spring 2009, www. unscn.org. 11. BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 26 March 2009. G20 businessmen in London – BBC Forum in advance of G20 Summit, April 2009. 12. C. Steed, client notes. 13. Oxfam, www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/pressrelease. 14. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2013’ (2013). 15. Brewer, Browne and Joyce, Child and Working Age Poverty from 2010 to 2020. 16. Ibid. 17. The Children’s Society, ‘Seriously Awkward: How Vulnerable 16 and 17 Year Olds are Falling through the Cracks’ (June 2015). Available at www.childrenssociety.org. uk. 18. The charity said that families had been hit by a ‘triple-whammy’ of flat wages, cuts to benefits and a rise in the cost of living. See www.savethechildren.org.uk/resources/ online-library/fair-start-every-child, May 2014. 19. Prince’s Trust, April 2012, www.princes-trust.org.uk. 20. Church Urban Fund, ‘Tackling Poverty Together’. Available at www.cuf.org.uk. 21. C. Steed, client notes. 22. C. Steed, parish notes, October 2014. 23. Trussell Trust, December 2012, www.trusselltrust.org. 24. Trussell Trust, December 2014, www.trusseltrust.org. 25. B. Reade, ‘Our Hidden Poor: The Desperate Families Begging for Food Handouts to Keep Alive’, Daily Mirror, 30 April 2012. 26. University of Oxford, ‘Study Finds Greater Use of Food Banks Linked to Higher Unempolyment, Sanctions and Cuts in Welfare Spending’ (April 2015). Available at http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-04-09-increased-use-food-banks-linked-higherunemployment-sanctions-and-welfare-cuts. 27. A. Forsey, ‘An Evidence Review for the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the United Kingdom’. Available at www.foodpovertyinquiry.org. 28. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2012’ (York, 2012). Available at www.jrf.org.uk. 29. Equalities Commission, 2012, www.equalityhumanrights.com. 30. Fawcett Society, January 2013, http://fawcettsociety.org.uk. 31. ‘The Hourglass Electorate’, The Economist, 4 May 2013. Available at http://www. economist.com/news/britain/21577102-polarised-living-standards-meanpolarised-voters-hourglass-electorate. 32. H. Stewart, ‘Shocking Figures Reveal the Growth in UK Wealth Gap’, Observer. Available at www.theguardian.com/society/feb10/uk-super-rich-richer-as-majoritysqueezed. 33. Steed, client notes. 34. The Economist, July 2013. 35. M. Jahoda, ‘Economic Recession and Mental Health: Some Conceptual Issues’, Journal of Social Issues, (4) (Winter 1988), pp. 13–23.

Notes to Pages 103–111  229 36. Steed, client notes. 37. R. Liam and J. H. Liam, ‘Psychological Effects of Unemployment on Workers and Their Families’, Journal of Social Issues, 44(4) (Winter 1988), pp. 87–105. 38. P. Diamond, ‘Southern Discomfort’, Policy Network (2013). 39. Mind, Samaritans and Sane: www.mind.org.uk/, December 2012; www.samaritans. org/, December 2012; www.sane.org.uk/, October 2012. 40. ‘Austerity Britain.’ Available at http://www.insightrg.com/downloads/austeritybritain-key-findings-august-2012.pdf. 41. ‘Prescriptions Dispensed in the Community’, NHS News, August 2012. 42. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, August 2012. 43. C. Cooper, ‘The Psychology of the Recession in the Workplace’, Psychology Today, July 2013. 44. The Lancet, August 2011. 45. J. Stiglitz, ‘Stagnation by Design’, Project Syndicate, 6 February 2014. 46. New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com.

Chapter Nine: Excursus: Pathology in the City – Tales of the Left Behind 1. New Statesman, 22 August 2011. 2. Cabinet Office, December 1997, www.cabinet-office.giv.uk/seu. 3. Hasan, Mehdi, ‘Tariq Jahan Tells Medhi Hasan: “I Don’t See a Broken Society”’, New Statesman, 24 August 2011. Available at http://www.newstatesman.com/ society/2011/08/son-death-haroon-jahan-family. 4. The Economist, 13 June 2015. 5. BBC Radio 4, World at One, 7 January 2013. Available at, www.eesceuropa.eu. www. bbc.co.uk/radio4/worldatone. 6. Riots Communities and Victims Panel, ‘After the Riots: The Final Report of the Riots Communities and Victims Panel’ (March 2012). 7. www.churchestogetherconnect.org/profile/NiallCooper. 8. 15 December 2014. 9. E. Allen, ‘We Will Use Water Cannons on Them’, Daily Mail, 11 August 2011. Available at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024203/UK-RIOTS-2011-DavidCameron-orders-police-come-hard-looters.html#ixzz1Xs4eNSt3. 10. London Evening Standard, 9 August 2011. 11. Sunday Express, 21 August 2011. See also the Observer for that day for the article by Tony Blair. 12. New Statesman, 22 August 2011. 13. K. Walker, ‘Iain Duncan Smith: The Riots Gave Middle Class a Taste of Real World’, Daily Mail, 11 August 2011. Available at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ article-2037574. 14. Professor Tim Newburn, 4 December 2011. 15. C. Stott and S. Reicher, Mad Mobs and Englishmen? Myths and Realities of the 2011 Riots (London, 2012). 16. S. Reicher, ‘Social Influence in the Crowd: Attitudinal and Behavioural effects of

230  Notes to Pages 112–125 De-individuation in Conditions of High and Low Group Salience’, British Journal of Social Psychology, 23 (1984), pp. 341–50. 17. ‘UK Riots: The Demographics of Magistrate Cases and Convictions’, Guardian, 11 August 2011. 18. Ministry of Justice bulletin, 13 October 2011. 19. BBC Radio 4, World at One, 11 August 2011. 20. This references the conference organised by the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research at London South Bank University (LSBU) and the Institute for Policy Studies in Education at London Metropolitan University. It explored the relationship between the riots and the Coalition government’s austerity policies and took place on 28 September 2012. 21. http://www.davidlammy.co.uk, 8 August 2011. 22. Office for National Statistics, 21 July 2011. 23. BBC News, ‘Youth Unemployment: Fears Over Record Figures’, 16 February 2011. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12482018. 24. ‘UK Riots: The Demographics of Magistrate Cases and Convictions’, Guardian, 11 August 2011. 25. Guardian, 8 August 2011. 26. Guardian, 15 August 2011. 27. M. Bloombaum, ‘The Conditions Underlying Race Riots as Portrayed by Multivariate Scalogram Analysis’, American Sociological Review, 33(1) (1988). 28. Ministry of Justice bulletin, 13 October 2011. 29. University of Manchester (2011), www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/ .../research/papers. 30. Riots Communities and Victims Panel, ‘After the Riots’. 31. http://www.ippr.org, August 2011. 32. M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R.  Reiner, Oxford Handbook of Criminology (Oxford, 1997). 33. J. Hales, C. Nevill, S. Pudney and S. Tipping, ‘Longitudinal Analysis of the Offending, Crime and Justice Survey 2003–06’, Home Office Research Report 19 (November 2009). 34. R. Garside, ‘Crime Cannot Be Explained by Race’, Guardian, 29 June 2010. 35. Y. Taylor, Educational Diversity: The Subject of Difference and Different Subject (Basingstoke, 2012). 36. Riots Communities and Victims Panel, ‘After the Riots’. 37. D. Lammy, Out of the Ashes (London, 2011). 38. As quoted in a report by The Economist on inner city transformation. 39. www.hampshire.police.uk/, August 2014. 40. www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/conception-statistics--england-and-wales/2012/. 41. www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/, July 2014. 42. Such as the Dollis Valley Estate in the London Borough of Barnet, which was demolished in 2014. 43. Church Times, 1 December 2011.

Notes to Pages 126–138  231

Chapter Ten: 5th Symptom: Performativity and Education 1. ‘Another World is Happening’, RSA-sponsored symposium on education, held in North Devon, 9 April 2014. 2. J. Coleman, Equality of Educational Opportunity (Washington DC, 1966), p. 325. 3. C. Steed, parish notes. 4. S. Collini (ed.), Arnold: Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings (Cambridge, 1993). 5. UNICEF special report. Available at www.unicef.org. 6. OFSTED Monitoring Form template, 2015. 7. Steed, parish notes. 8. M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berkeley, CA, 1978). 9. H. Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York, 1983). See also K. Davis, J. Christodoulou, S. Seider and H. Gardner, ‘The Theory of Multiple Intelligences’, in Robert J. Sternberg and Barry Kaufman, The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 485–503. 10. J. D. Marshall, ‘Performativity: Lyotard and Foucault Through Searle and Austin’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 18(5) (1999). 11. www.corestandards.org. 12. A. Adonis, Education, Education, Education: Reforming England’s Schools (London, 2012). 13. The Education (School Teachers’ Appraisal) (England) Regulations 2012. 14. P. Addison, No Turning Back: The Peacetime Revolutions of Post-War Britain (Oxford, 2010). 15. D. Willets, Times Higher Education Supplement, 26 May 2011. 16. D. Ravitch, ‘Hoaxes in Education Policy’, The Teacher Educator (2014), pp. 153–65. 17. K. Robinson and L. Aronica, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution that’s Transforming Education (New York, 2014). 18. www.21learn.org, September 2008. 19. J. Abbott, Battling for the Soul of Education: Moving Beyond School Reform to Educational Transformation (London, 2014). 20. C. Christensen, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (New York, 2008). 21. C. Steed, interview notes. Unattributed and used with permission.

Chapter Eleven: 5th Symptom (continued): Performativity – Workplace and Wards 1. C. Steed, client notes. 2. See www.dignityincare.org (2013), regarding a programme of training to facilitate culture change in the UK National Health Service (NHS). 3. BBC1, 15 May 2015. 4. www.mha.org.uk. 5. C. Steed, parish notes. 6. M. Sinclair, Fear and Self-Loathing in the City: A Guide to Keeping Sane in the Square Mile (London, 2010).

232  Notes to Pages 138–151 7. Steed, parish notes, December 2014. 8. D. Barboza, ‘Worker Deaths Raise Questions at an Apple Contractor in China’, CNBC News. Available at http://www.cnbc.com/id/101263402. 9. Trades Union Congress, About Time: A New Agenda for Shaping Working Hours (London, 2002). 10. BBC Radio 4, December 2012. 11. S. Giga, H. Hoel and D. Lewis, The Cost of Workplace Bullying and Bullying at Work (Manchester, 2008). 12. BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 25 June 2014. 13. S. G. Checkland, The Rise of Industrial Society in England, 1815–1885 (London, 1964), p. 134. 14. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber (London, 1948), pp. 214–15. 15. Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY, 1989). 16. C. W. Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Class (Oxford, 1951). 17. J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester, 1984). 18. Steed, parish notes. 19. Steed, client notes. 20. D. Leader, What is Madness? (London, 2011). 21. J. Davies, Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good (London, 2014). 22. Nursing Times, June 2008. 23. Author’s parish notes. Used with permission. 24. www.rcn.org.uk, June 2008. 25. Steed, client notes. 26. www.healthcarecommission.org.uk, 17 March 2009. 27. Department of Health, ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’ (2010). Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/ 213823/dh_117794.pdf. 28. Patch Adams (1999), starring Robin Williams. 29. www.patchadams.org. 30. Ann Clywd MP talking about the death of her husband following a similar statement in Parliament. BBC Radio 4, 4 January 2013. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/ worldatone

Chapter Twelve: 6th Symptom: Predatory Behaviour 1. J. D. Hicks, Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People’s Party (Minneapolis, 1931), p. 140. 2. C. Mayer, ‘Mutuality and Morality in Business’, in ‘Exploring Mutuality’, The Brewery Journal (January 2014). 3. ‘1984: Hundreds Die in Bhopal Chemical Accident’, On This Day, BBC News. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/3/newsid. 4. www.abc.net/au/news, 11 June 2015. 5. R. Fogel, With or Without Consent: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989), p. 17. 6. S. Engerman, S. Drescher and R. Paquette (eds), Slavery (Oxford, 2001), p. 5. 7. J. Newton, Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade (London, 1788), pp. 110–11.

Notes to Pages 151–158  233 8. E. Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, Vol. 2 (New York, 1969), p. 592. 9. Engerman, Drescher and Paquette (eds), Slavery, p. 6. 10. A. T. Vaughan, ‘The Origins Debate: Slavery and Racism in Seventeenth Century Virginia’, in Roots of American Racism: Essays on the Colonial Experience (New York, 1995), p. 171. 11. M. Berenbaum, ‘The Impact of the Holocaust on Contemporary Ethics’, in J. Banki and J. Pawlikowski (eds), Ethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust: Christian and Jewish Perspectives (Chicago, 2001), p. 24. 12. As cited in public debates on the issue in November 2014. 13. BBC Radio 4, World at One, 22 December 2014. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/ worldatone. 14. WDM newsletter, October 2014. 15. E. Hobsbawm, ‘Observations on the Debate’, in M. Jacques and F. Mulhern (eds), The Forward March of Labour Halted (London, 1981), pp. 167–82. 16. OECD figures quoted in The Economist, 6 April 2013. 17. J. Biehl, B. Good and A. Kleinman, Subjectivity (Berkeley, CA, 2007), p. 2. 18. R. D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, 2000). 19. D. Bell and V. Held, ‘The Community Revolution’, quoted in R. D. Putnam, Bowling Alone, p. 17. 20. Ibid. 21. C. Lim, ‘Social Networks and Political Participation: How Do Networks Matter?’, Social Forces, 87(2) (2008), pp. 961–82. 22. P. A. Hall, ‘Social Capital in Britain’, in British Journal of Political Science, 29(3) (1999). 23. The 2010/11 Citizenship Survey Questionnaire. Available at www.nationalarchives. gov.uk. See also www.comunities.gov.uk/documents/pdf and also C. Lim and J. Laurence, ‘Doing Good When Times are Bad: Volunteering Behaviour in Economic Hard Times’, The British Journal of Sociology, 66(2) (2015), pp. 319–44. 24. As argued, for example, in the Papal Encyclical Laudato Si. See w2.vatican.val/ content/Francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_encliclica-laudato-si.html. 25. At a book fair in Brasilia in 2014. See ‘Galeano: “Eu não seria capaz de ler de novo ‘As Veias Abertas…’, cairia desmaiado”’ CartaCapital. 14 April 2014, and E. Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Montevideo, 1971). 26. The Economist, 9 August 2014, www.economist.com/unitedstates. 27. Financial Times, 14 September 2014, www.ft.com. 28. J. Seabrook, What Went Wrong: Working People and the Ideals of the Labour Movement (London, 1978), p. 13. 29. W. Lazonik and M. O’Sullivan, ‘Maximizing Shareholder Value: A New Ideology for Corporate Governance’, Economy and Society, 29(1) (2000), pp. 13–35. 30. G. Krippner, ‘The Financialisation of the American Economy’, Socio-Economic Review, 3 (2005), pp. 173–208. 31. J. Crotty, ‘The Neo-Liberal Paradox: The Impact of Destructive Product Market Competition and “Modern” Financial Markets on Nonfinancial Corporation Performance in the Neoliberal Era’, in G. Epstein (ed.), Financialization and the World Economy (London, 2005).

234  Notes to Pages 158–171 32. S. Ackroyd, ‘Post-bureaucratic Manufacturing: The Postwar Reconstruction of Large British Firms’ (2011). Available at w3.unisa.edu.au/management/research. 33. J. Froud, et al., ‘Shareholder Value and Financialization: Consultancy Promises, Management Moves’, Economy and Society, 29(1) (2000), pp. 80–110. 34. B. Fine, Social Capital versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millenniumm (London, 2011). 35. J. Norman, The Case for Real Capitalism (London, 2011). 36. The actions of the Manila Water Company, www.manilawater.com. 37. M. Clifford, The Greening of Asia: The Business Case for Solving Asia’s Environmental Emergency (New York, 2015). 38. D. Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (London, 2014). 39. www.sbs.ac.uk.

Part Three: Marching to a Different Drum 1. K. McMahon, The Rose of Sebastopol (London, 2007).

Chapter Thirteen: Environments of Value 1. F. Martinez, ‘Hands Off Our Public Services’, Huffington Post, 25 March 2013. Available at http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/francesca-martinez/hands-off-ourpublic-services_b_2951098.html. 2. M. Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford, 2013). 3. The Bank for International Settlements, ‘Semiannual OTC Derivatives Statistics’. Available at http://www.bis.org/statistics/derstats.htm. 4. https://www.gov.uk/.../chief-medical-officer-cmo-annual-report-public. 5. L. von Mises, Epistemological Problems of Economics (Indianapolis, 2013). 6. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago, 2007). 7. P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, 1986). 8. Bourdieu, ‘The Essence of Neoliberalism’, Le Monde Diplomatique (English edition), 8 December 1998. 9. M. Savage and T. Bennett, ‘Editors’ Introduction: Cultural Capital and Social Inequality’, British Journal of Sociology, 56(1) (2005), pp. 1–12. 10. M. Savage, et al., ‘A New Model of Social Class: Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment’, Sociology, 47(2) (2013), pp. 219–50. 11. P. Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, in J. G. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York, 1983), pp. 241–58. 12. J. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 378–98. 13. J. M. Roberts and A. J. P. Taylor, History of the Twentieth Century (London, 1968), Chapter 74. 14. BBC Radio 4, World Tonight, 25 March 2012. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/ radio4WorldTonight. 15. The Engineer, ‘Ford Pinto’, Engineering.com, 24 October 2006. Available at http:// www.engineering.com/Library/ArticlesPage/tabid/85/articleType/ArticleView/ articleId/166/Ford-Pinto.aspx. See also, C. Leggett, ‘The Ford Pinto Case: The

Notes to Pages 171–187  235 Valuation of Life as it Applies to the Negligence Efficiency Argument’, Law and Valuation Papers, Spring 1999. Available at http://www.wfu.edu/~palmitar/ Law&Valuation/Papers/1999/Leggett-pinto.htm. 16. http://www.safetyxchange.org, 22 October 2008. 17. Ibid. 18. J. Fieser, ‘Ethics: Consequentialist Theories’, in Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Available at http://www.iep.utm.edu/; L. M. Hinman, Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory, 3rd edition (Belmont, CA, 2003), Chapter 5. 19. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition (Oxford, 2008). 20. P. Zagorin, Hobbes and the Law of Nature (Princeton, NJ, 2009). 21. T. Hobbes, Leviathan (Peterborough, ON, 2010). 22. M. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (London, 2012), pp. 10–11. 23. For example, the supply of kidneys or blood on a donation basis seems to have benefited from a voluntary system, as argued in R. Titmuss, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy (New York, 1997). Yet most health-care systems make use of blood which is paid for. 24. For example, Global Justice Now, 11 October 2014. 25. D. Bromwich, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence (Cambridge, MA, 2014). 26. J. Muller, Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political thought from David Hume to the Present (Princeton, NJ, 1997).

Chapter Fourteen: Rebooting Capitalism 1. Z. Williams, Forward, in M. Fisher and J. Gilberts (eds), Reclaim Modernity: Beyond Markets, Beyond Machines (London, 2014). 2. R. Shiller, Finance and the Good Society (Princeton, NJ, 2012). 3. H. Geissler, Sapere Aude: Warum wir eine neue Aufklarung brauchen (Berlin, 2012). 4. A. Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (New York, 1853). 5. The Economist, 29 August 2009. 6. F. Martinez, ‘Hands Off Our Public Services’, Huffington Post, 25 March 2013. Available at http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/francesca-martinez/hands-off-ourpublic-services_b_2951098.html. 7. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/, 26 and 27 May 2014. 8. www.socialenterprise.org.uk/social-economy. 9. A. Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Redwood City, CA, 2013). 10. P. Jenkins, Mrs Thatcher’s Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era (London, 1987), p. 18. 11. Witness the discussions at the Shared Value Initiative Summit, May 2014. 12. http://sharedvalue.org/about-shared-value. 13. European Commission, ‘Communicating on TTIP, Areas for Cooperation Between the Commission Services and Member states’, 7 November 2013. 14. M. Pollack, The Political Economy of the Transatlantic Partnership (Fiesole, 2003). 15. http://sharedvalue.org/about-shared-value.

236  Notes to Pages 187–209 16. 17. 18. 19.

The Merck Manuals. Available at www.merckmanuals.com/professional. www.bitc.org.uk/services/awards…/responsible-business-awards. J. Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society (New York, 2014). United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report. Available at http://hdr.undp.org/en/2014-report/download. 20. M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction (London, 1979). 21. The Economist, 22 December 2007. 22. W. Vollman, Imperial (New York, 2009). 23. F. Pearce, Confessions of an Eco Sinner (Boston, M.A, 2008). 24. BBC Radio, Zeitgeisters, 19 April 2014. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/ Zeitgeisters. 25. C. M. Fletcher, The Artist and the Trinity: Dorothy Sayer’s Theology of Work (London, 2014). 26. http://willrichardson.com/post/12686013800/my-teacher-is-an-app.

Chapter Fifteen: Visions Seen: High-Value Society and the Goals of Politics 1. Guardian, 2 May 2004. 2. E. Brynjolfsson and A. McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York, 2014), p. 93. 3. W. Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community (New York, 1993). 4. A. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times (London, 1978), Chapter 39. 5. ‘The World’s Billionaires’. Available at www.forbes.com/billionaires/list. 6. ‘Thomas Piketty’s “Capital” Summarised in Four Paragraphs’, The Economist, 4 May 2014. Available at http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/ economist-explains#sthash.qgRskThF.dpuf. 7. A. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edition (Notre Dame, IN, 1984). 8. E. Diener, ‘Subjective Well-Being’, Psychological Bulletin, 95 (1984), pp. 542–75. 9. A. Gumber, ‘Well-Being in Ethnic Minorities’, British Sociological Association Conference on Well-Being (Leicester, June 2015). 10. Papers by A. Oswald, Professor of Economics, Warwick University. Available at www.andrewoswald.com. 11. J. Helliwell, R. Layard and J. Sachs (eds), World Happiness Report 2015’ (2015). Available at http/worldhappiness.report/summary. 12. See the work of Armin Falk, Centre for Neuroscience and Economics, University of Bonn. Available at http://www.cens.uni-bonn.de/team/board/armin-falk/ armin-falk#workingpapers. 13. C. Steed, parish notes. 14. The Economist, 30 May 2009. 15. R. Higginson and D. Clough, The Ethics of Executive Remuneration: A Guide for Christian Investors (Atlanta, GA, 2010). 16. M. Nussbaum, Political Emotions (Cambridge, MA, 2014).

Notes to Pages 210–219  237

Postscript: Through Thick and Thin 1. A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by A. Goldhammer (New York, 2004). 2. F. Tonnies, Community and Civil Society (Cambridge, 2001). 3. www.nfumutual.co.uk, September 2012. 4. Office for National Statistics data, June 2012. Available at www.statistics.gov.uk/. 5. As reported in the Western Morning News, 8 September 2012. 6. J. Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography (Cambridge, 2008). 7. Devon County Council – Strategic Intelligence, September 2011. 8. According to a community meeting organised in August 2014. 9. A. Mason, ‘Two Concepts of Community’, in N. Snow (ed.), In the Company of Others: Perspectives on Family, Community and Culture (Lanham, MD, 1996). 10. A. Mason, Community, Solidarity and Belonging: Levels of Community and Their Normative Significance (Cambridge, 2000). 11. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991). 12. A. W. Gilg, Countryside Planning (London, 1996). 13. Cm 3016, 1995. 14. B. Hill and N. Young, quoted in A. W. Gilg, Countryside Planning. 15. K. Halfacree, ‘Locality and Social Representation: Space Discourse and Alternative Definitions of the Rural’, Journal of Rural Studies, 9 (1993), pp. 1–15. 16. K. Halfacree, ‘Talking about Rurality: Social Representations of the Rural as Expressed by Residents of Six English Parishes’, Journal of Rural Studies, 11 (1995), pp. 1–20. 17. R. Kargon and A. P. Molella, Invented Edens: Techno-Cities of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA, 2008). 18. D. Upton, Another City: Urban Life and Urban Spaces in the New American Republic (Princeton, NJ, 2008). 19. Gilg, Countryside Planning, p. 242. 20. H. E. Newby, The Deferential Worker: A Study of Farm Workers in East Anglia (London, 1977). Also, Newby, Green and Pleasant Land? (London, 1979). 21. S. Daniels, Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the USA (Cambridge, 1993). 22. K. Hoggart, et al., Rural Europe: Identity and Change (London, 1995), p. 25. 23. The Restart Project, www.therestartproject.org. 24. P. Macfadyen, ‘Flatpack Democracy : A DIY Guide to Creating an Independent Politics’. Available at www.flatpackdemocracy.org. 25. Ecotricity, www.ecotricity.co.uk/transitionfreepress. 26. I. M. Young, ‘The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference’, in L. J. Nicholson (ed.). Feminism/Postmodernism (London, 1990), p. 303. 27. E. Probyn, Outside Belongings (London, 1996), p. 21.

Index Adlington, Rebecca, 63 African American, 6 AIG, 166 America see United States of America Amnesty International, 11 Aquinas, Thomas, 38 Attlee, Clement, 133 Augustine, 48 Aulinsky, Saul, austerity Britain, 104, 228 Baby Peter, 4 Bachelet, Michelle, 190 banlieues (Paris), 108 Barbalet, Jack, 64 Baudrillard, Jean, 215 Bauman, Zygmunt, 60, 62, 224, 231 bedroom tax, 82 Bell, Daniel, 76 Bennis, Warren, 188 Berenbaum, M., 152, 232 Berry, W., 197 Beveridge, William, 96 Birmingham, Alabama, 6 Blair, Tony, 89, 90, 91, 110, 111, 107, 229 Booth, Charles, 88, 90s Bourdieu, Pierre, 30, 169, 170, 222, 234 Brand, Russell, 223 Brendon Commons, 217 BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), 205

British Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), 142 British Sociological Association (BSA), 11, 236 Brown, Gordon, 89, 91, 222 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 76, 197, 225, 235 Bush, George W., 6, 131 Callaghan, Jim, 131 Capital (Das Kapital, Marx), 43–4, 71, 72, 166, 224, 225, 232, 233, 234 Capital (Piketty) 71–2, 166 capitalism, 43, 50, 57, 68, 165, 176, 177, 180, 184, 187, 189, 199, 223, 224, 225, 233, 234 Care Quality Commission, 144 Casey, Louise, 80, 226 Charles, Prince of Wales 69 child poverty, 29, 74, 83, 88, 221, 222, 225, 226 Childline, 104 Children’s Society, 98, 99, 228 China, 4, 17, 18, 37, 41, 68, 139, 154, 160, 200, 205 Church of England, 101 Citizenship Survey, 155 City of God, The (Augustine), 222 Collaborative Commons, 2, 225 common good, 2, 54 Creative Schools (Robinson), 134, 231 Crosland, Anthony, 70, 225 CSR (Corporate and Social Responsibility), 185

Index  239 Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (Barlow), 75 Department of Trade and Industry, 8 Department of Transport, 8 Diener, Ed, 62, 224, 235 Disability Living Allowance, 213 Domesday Book, 170 Dow Jones, 198 Duggan, Mark, 113, 117 Durkheim, Émile, 127, 26, 221 Eastern Europe, 4 Ebola, 167 economic expansion, 17 Epistemological Problems of Economics (von Mises), 168, 234 equal value, 35, 37, 172 ‘Escape Plan’, 39 European Commission, 186, 235 Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, 205 Fear and Self-Loathing in the City (Sinclair), 138, 231 Fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, 143 Friedman, Milton, 184 French Revolution, 89, 193, 208 FTSE, 72, 74 Future of Socialism (Crosland), 70, 225 Gardner, Howard, 130, 230 GDP, 1, 13, 14, 97, 181, 182, 190, 192, 194, 198, 202, 203 GE (General Electric), 186 Gesellschaft, 211 gingerbread, 94 Gini coefficient, 73 Global Justice Now, 11, 154, 234

globalisation, 8, 18, 73, 154, 166 GNP, 167, 198, 199 Google, 76, 150, 186, 221 Gornick, Janet C., 73, 225 Great Depression, 4, 36, 97, 155, 169 greater good, 2 Greece, 3, 105, 156, 227 Halfacree, Ken, 215 Hand to Mouth (Tirado), 80, 226 Hard Times (Dickens), 130 ‘Hate Crime Report’, 5, 220 Hegel, George, 2, 220 Hobbes, Thomas, 34, 38, 113, 172, 173, 222, 235 Hobsbawm, Eric, 154 Holy Family, 6 Hollande, François, 157 Horace, 15, 220 Howard League for Penal Reform, 109 Huddersfield, 26 IBM, 19, 142, 186 Industrial Revolution, 18, 19, 20, 30, 41, 44, 48, 54, 75, 77, 126, 131, 134, 138, 150, 152, 178, 180, 207, 213 Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), 121 Intel, 186 International Labour Organisation (ILO), 23, 220, 221 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 68 internationalisation of finance, 18 Jäntti, Markus, 73 Johnson & Johnson, 186 Johnstone, Lucy, 52, 223

240 Index Kennedy, Bobby, 198 Kennedy, John F., 155, 199 Kickstarter, 182 King, Martin Luther, 6, 113 Lagarde, Christine, 68, 69 Lammy, David, 107, 111, 117 Lancet, The 4, 220, 228 Lehman Brothers, 4, 220 Lenin, Vladimir, 26 Leviathan (Hobbes), 172, 222, 234 Levy, Frank, 76 Lieberson, Stanley, 119 Living Wage, 39, 40, 74, 213, 222 London, 8, 9, 40, 68, 69, 109, 110, 112, 124, 150, 154, 171, 177, 210, 213, 220–7, 229–37 L’Oréal, 64, 103 McAfee, Andrew, 76 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 202 Manhattan, 5, 97 Manji, Sidaram, 23 Martinez, Francesca, 148, 165 Marx, Karl, 26, 30, 35, 42, 43, 44, 65, 71, 72, 79, 157, 184, 185, 219, 221, 222, 224 Marxism, 70 Merck Manuals, 187, 235 Millennium Goals, 127, 200 Mills, C. Wright, 141, 231 Ministry of Justice, 114, 118, 120, 229 Mohammed, Khalid Sheikh, 5 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), 136 Morgan, J. P., 72, 230 Mumbai, 5, 191 Murnane, Richard J. 76, 225

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 171 Nestlé, 186 New Division of Labor, The (Levy and Murnane), 76 New Labour, 70, 87, 89, 132 New Statesman, 107, 111, 229 NFU Mutual, 211 NHS, 90, 104, 144, 145, 146, 167, 228, 231 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 202 Nussbaum, Martha, 209 Obama, Barack, 6, 157 Occupy Movement, 72, 73 Office for National Statistics (ONS), 93, 118, 203, 229, 236 OFTSED, 128 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 74 Ovid, 15 Packard, Vance, 50 ‘Persuaders’, 50 Philosophy of Right (Hegel), 2, 220 Pickett, Kate, 71, 225 Piketty, Thomas, 71, 72, 166, 225 Pitts, John, 119 Plutarch, 96 Plymouth Social Enterprise Network, 11 post-industrial society, 16, 54, 76, 169, 175, 194, 213, 216, 219, 223 post-modernity, 16 Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low-pay, No-pay Britain, 93, 227 ‘precariat’, 32, 82 Prince’s Trust, 100, 118

Index  241 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The (Weber) 38 PSE UK, 2012, 83 Rantzen, Esther, 61, 224 Rawls, John, 74 Reicher, Steve, 114 Rice, Condoleezza, 6 Richardson, Will, 195 Rifkin, Jeremy., 55 Rogers, C., 62, 224 Romanov Dynasty, 25 Rose of Sebastopol (McMahon), 163 Rothschild, Lynn Forester de, 68 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 49 Rowntree, Joseph, 79, 90, 93, 99, 226, 227, 228 Rowntree, Seebohm, 88 Royal Society of Arts (RSA), 11, 126, 230 Sandel, Michael, 173 SATS, 130 Saturn Devouring His Son, 106 Schmidt, Eric, 18, 221 Shared Value, 11, 161, 180, 181, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 235 Shared Value Initiative, 11, 187, 235 Silverman, Arnold R., 119 Smith, Adam 38, 39, 42, 140, 178, 190, 193, 223 social mobility, 74, 221, 222, 225 Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, 29 socialism, 70 South Africa, 8 Stiglitz, Joseph, 74, 96, 105 Stout, Harry S., 15, 220 Swann, William B., 59, 223, 224

Tawney, R. H., 48 Thatcher, Margaret, 8, 60 Tirado, Linda, 80 Tocqueville, Alexia de, 28, 210, 221, 236 Tottenham, 9, 107, 111, 117 Tours in England and Wales (Young), 15, 220 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 186 Troubled Families Programme, 80 Trussell Trust, 101 TUC, 82, 226 ‘Twin Virtues, The’ 202 UNICEF, 51, 127, 230 Unilever, 186 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 190 University of Manchester, 120 urbanisation, 17 United States of America, 6, 17, 18, 41, 80, 113, 119, 151, 154, 155, 157, 159, 174, 194, 221, 222, 228, 229, 232, 233, 236 Walker, Robert, 85, 132 Wal-Mart, 186 Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, 106 Weber, Max, 30, 129, 141, 221, 231, 232, 237 Western Europe, 16 Whall, Charles, 157 Whitehall, 8, 144 Wilde, Oscar, 1 Wilkinson, Richard G., 71, 225 Willetts, David, 133 Williams, Rowan, 125 Wilson, Harold, 131 Wire, The 80

242 Index World Bank, 18, 41, 72, 95, 98 World Happiness Report, 75 World Trade Center, 5 World Trade Organisation (WTO), 98

Young, Michael, 60, 70, 110, 121, 123, 135, 152, 212, 219, 220, 225, 236, 237 Zhaokun, Shi, 139