Pessimistic thoughts about the left

I am of the left in my bones because I believe in protecting the vulnerable. I think top marginal tax rates should be in the range of 70-90% and very probably over 75% [believe it or not the economic literature largely supports this]. I believe we should massively reduce the prison population. I belive in a transition to post scarcity communist economy. I cannot stand the right and sometimes I am sorely tempted to hate them. But the left? The left really irritates me. Not, however, in the typical kind of “dissident self-described heterodox leftist” kind of way, but in a way that as far as I know is unique to me. The left won’t grapple with tradeoffs because it doesn’t want to upset its own constituents.

Marx as popularly received (not necessarily the actual Marx) said that we don’t need to think too hard about a future communist society because there would be a revolution and then it would sort itself out. To plan was to be presumptuous- the democratic masses would iron out the kinks in their spontaneous enthusiasm and democratic wisdom. This is what we in the ideas business call a very bad idea. Thus started a long and illustrious tradition of dealing with all apparent tradeoffs by saying that come the revolution it will all be sorted out. This habit continues, like a specter haunting, even among those who don’t believe in The Revolution.

I was having coffee with a trot friend of mine once. I spoke about the genuine difficulties that would face any kind of actual leftwing government. He assured me that this was nothing to worry about because once the workers took over [everywhere, simultaneously], their inborn ingenuity and knowledge of the actual conditions of their labor would lead to a joyous explosion in productivity like never before seen in history. This included annual growth rates of up to 50% a year and at the beginning a large and instantaneous explosion of new productivity, etc., etc.

There is no reason to believe this, and in the absence of these miraculous fruits, with or without a revolution, any left-wing regime newly ascended to power will have to face tradeoffs. This is true regardless of whether its economic model is a command economy, market socialism, or social democracy.

The left has equated thinking about tradeoffs with neoliberalism, but neoliberalism isn’t thinking about tradeoffs, it’s thinking about tradeoffs with the wrong set of priorities.

Let me give an example. The other day I attended a politics in the pub discussion. The speakers were an Australian senator, a candidate for parliament, and a senior union activist. It was quite good, all things considered. I was particularly gratified that the speakers raised the issue of University Democracy- universities used to have governing boards that were much more composed of students, staff, and alumni. Over the years, and with encouragement from the government, universities altered their own constitutions to tip the balance of their councils towards people nominated by the governing body themselves, and in the case of Sydney University, persons directly selected by the minister.

Being my usual difficult self, I decided that I wasn’t satisfied to ask a Dorothy Dixer question. For some reason I wanted these poor individuals to weigh in on an issue that is genuinely vexing me. How should we think about “administration” in the university context? We know there are a variety of non-academic costs. We know that some of them represent inefficient creeping corporate bullshit. Consider the category of administrative expenses- we know that, for example, the deputy vice-chancellor for best excellence strategy is administrative bullshit. We know that the person who helps students sign up for courses is not administrative bullshit. Somewhere in between those two, we flip over into corporate bollocks- but how to draw the line both politically and economically? That’s a tricky question.

For my pains, I received a very definite and even (slightly) hostile response. The official position of all the speakers was that all administrative waste comes from the C-Suite employees, and no one who isn’t earning more than, say, 300,000 a year needs to go.

I don’t want to exaggerate how big a problem corporate bullshit spending is because it is frequently exaggerated. I believe, although I am not certain, that it is a worse problem in the US than in Australia. Even in America, I suspect it is exaggerated a bit. Nevertheless, it is a real problem and one that, while we could maybe get away with ignoring it at the moment, will tend to get worse for structural reasons unless checked.

Here are some figures from the American context:

Interest in administrative staffing, raised by Veblen (Citation1918) a century ago, has carried through to today, in part due to the rapid growth in non-academic employment in higher education. As seen in Table 1, between 1976 and 2018, the number of full-time faculty employed at colleges and universities in the US increased by 92%, during which time total student enrollment increased by 78%. During this same period, however, full-time administrators and other professionals employed by those institutions increased by 164% and 452%, respectively. Meanwhile, due in part to the proliferation of part-time and adjunct faculty, the percentage of full-time faculty decreased from 67% to 54%, whereas the percentage of administrators who were full-time increased from 96% to 97%

Ideally, we need to fire many deputy vice-chancellors, probably also many of their flunkies, and possibly a bunch of senior administrators who aren’t flunkies in the C-suite. Now, to reiterate, when we’re talking about the portion of university administration that may have to go, we do not mean the beleaguered individual who handles enrollments or advises you on completion requirements; we mean Bob.

Bob works for the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for international excellence as a “best practice analyst”. Bob is not a bad guy. Bob’s salary is not even that high compared to a lot of people- some of them academics- tramping around the university. Bob probably believes in what he does. Nevertheless, there’s a good chance that in a truly well-structured university, Bob would have to go. At the very least, a hiring freeze on new people like Bob would have to be implemented. Some people like Bob have an academic background, and could perhaps be transitioned back to research and teaching. Others could be moved across to more useful areas of administration. Nevertheless, the headcount of Bobs has to be decreased. Maybe this could be accomplished satisfactorily with a hiring freeze and a voluntary redundancy package offer, but only maybe- no promises.

This would be true even in the best possible circumstances. There is too much bad in the world that needs to be combatted to waste bright people as the deputy junior international vice practices excellence senior intern manager.

Worse, we are obligated not just to fire them, but to undeniably fuck them over. There is no plausible method of making the transition a net improvement for them. Being fired is one of the worst things that can happen to a person psychologically. Theoretically, we could compensate them enormously in such a way that made the net effect on them neutral, in practice this is politically impossible. Overall there will be net gains from moving them from largely useless to useful work, but those gains will not primarily accrue to them. Maybe in an overall sense, a leftwing government will benefit them, but this particular action will not.

But the left can’t talk about this, because it never, ever, wants to say “no” to those in its coalition, and then in the rare situations in which we find that we do have power, suddenly we have no plans, and just have to turn to the existing neoliberal playbook because that’s what’s on offer.

Somehow the right never seems troubled by the symmetrical problem- their supporters just assume that the leopard will never eat their face. Even now we are hearing stories of fired government bureaucrats who voted Trump and thought they would never lose their jobs because “they were one of the good ones”. The right just says “no” to whatever and people read an exception for themselves into it. The left won’t upset anybody in the economic realm, and this comes out in, among other ways, a refusal to make serious plans that tackle the hard questions in advance. And again, all too often that means when we take power we meekly pick up the existing playbook because it’s the only thing on offer. We haven’t done the group assignment prior to the due date for fear of offending someone in the group.

Now, maybe this is just one of those problems we shouldn’t touch. Maybe we should spend zero political capital on it and save our powder for other targets, but we should still talk about it openly and frankly among ourselves. Further, the problem is more general than any one case. As long as it persists, we lose the power to make real proposals to structurally alter society and instead just imagine a version of society like it is now, but with fairy dust sprinkled all over it.

I know why, structurally the speakers are forced to give the answer they gave me. That’s the problem. I’m not saying that the problem is that the left has chosen to refuse to think about these tradeoffs out of malice or stupidity. We are structurally obliged to think this way- e.g. because we represent unions that represent all but the most senior of bureaucrats (at least theoretically- how many of these people working for the deputy Vice-Chancellor For Best International Practice Excellences even are members anyway?)

Overall I’m pretty pessimistic about this. I don’t see a politically viable solution. We just have to do that work we can, and hope that somehow in the tumult of history, it works out. We need to start thinking very clearly about leftwing economic planning starting with the baseline material of a society built for the alien values of capital accumulation and the hobby horses and empire-building dreams of oligarchs, only indirectly concerned with human welfare.