Author / doctormcgrail

by doctormcgrail

Going Kwasi, Learning Economics!

On the morning of Tuesday 27th September 2022 the Financial Times reported experienced professional economists referring to Kwasi Kwarteng’s (UK Chancellor of the Exchequer) understanding of economics as being “A-level”.  In other words, his understanding involved a superficial or populist comprehension (of economic relationships) which, interestingly, is something to be expected of school children (‘why?’).

Apparently oblivious to the potential damage his actions, and those of his Prime Minister, Liz Truss, could have, the Kwasi Chancellorship initiated a chain of events (in historic proportions) leading the Bank of England, on Wednesday 28th September, to act perversely to its own policy and purpose (by buying gilt-edged government bonds when it job is to sell them).  The latter emergency purchasing strategy was aimed at saving UK (defined benefit) pension funds and the economy, more generally, from the actions of the UK peoples’ own government!

Despite all the ideology and rhetoric (fine words) bound up in claims to ‘free market economics’ – that governments should ‘leave well alone’ and can do so by reducing their own income – the tale is clearly one of a government intervention that impoverished (quite rapidly) the country.  Truss and Kwarteng wanted the market to decide, and it was soon spooked by their actions and ‘decided’ to sell UK government debt, forcing up interest rates, not just for the government but everyone in the UK and specifically those seeking mortgages.  What happens ‘next’ remains to be seen at time of writing (Kwarteng has just been fired).  Can the government now convince the market (in finance and investment) that its ‘plan for growth’ can be ‘stabilised’?  Analysts on programmes such as BBC2’s Newsnight (Wednesday 28th) were at pains to point out that even if Truss (and her new Chancellor, Hunt) now manage to do so, the resultant ‘options’ would still be 3rd and 4th best outcomes compared to having left things ‘alone’.

Though my interest in writing this piece is not simply about current economic policy.  Rather, it is about economic education and the idea that, somehow, children (high school students) – and indeed the general public (the ‘commoners’) – are and should be ‘lied’ to.

This takes the form that provision of education in economics entails a Russian Doll or Onion Peel experience, namely, stripping away layers of bigger ‘lies’ to reveal ever smaller ones (that is, there is a reasoned movement from larger to smaller ‘generalisations’ and/or conceptual ‘errors’) until ‘the truth’ is finally revealed at the ‘highest’ expert-level of ‘postgraduate’ economics, where the margins for error between theory and reality are somehow, or should be, smallest.  Based on the Financial Times’ reference to ‘A-level economics’ being part of the problem, this onion peeling process appears to sum-up our current ‘system’ of education in economics!

By way of contrast, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Reid set out to save the so-called ‘expert’ philosophy of his day (Descartes / Berkeley / Kant / Hume) from its ‘ridiculousness’ in asking questions such as: ‘how do I know I am here?’  Reid’s point was that the ‘common’ person in the street knows the answer to this question – quite simply and without the angst.  As a Scottish ‘common sense’ philosopher, Reid’s concern was that some questions cannot and should not be left, nor limited, to experts.  Essentially, discussion must be broadened out to encompass the community.

Should this not be the case with modern ‘economic’ decision-making?  But, how can this democratic goal be achieved if our economic education system perpetuates the ‘dumbing down’ model described above?  It is akin to saying that the non-experts will remain ‘stupid’ until they have picked up a PhD – something Kwasi Kwarteng has.

The alternative, of course, is to tell foundation level students in economics, whether ‘school age’ or adult returners to education, and, to wit, the great unwashed public ‘mob’, what is currently known about economic relationships.  In other words, what is wrong with starting by covering the cutting-edge state-of-human-knowledge, or what post-graduate students and professional economists actually know, understand, or argue?  In a similar vein, Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics) asks a pertinent question about why we still teach economics as if it’s 1948 (i.e. by using Paul Samuleson’s graph-based formulations)?  This just doesn’t happen in physics, biology or chemistry.  Now we know there are 8 planets in our solar system (when it was understood there were 9 when I was a child), we don’t tell contemporary school children there are 9 planets only to reveal to them later on, in university, that there are, in fact, 8.

One immediate (establishment) answer is that such economic thinking and perspectives are ‘too advanced’ for the ordinary citizen (and, by implication, child), not least because to ‘make sense’ the acquirer of such ‘knowledge’ should be conversant with complex mathematics, equations, formulae, and/or deep statistical modelling.

Indeed, was it not the absence of such understanding, data, and information from Kwarteng’s ‘mini-budget’ which spooked the markets?  He presented a political ideal – less taxation for all – but decided not to provide any evidence as to how his proposed tax cuts would be ‘paid for’ via reductions in state expenditure.  Since data was available from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), though perhaps not ‘immediately’, people had to ask the question if Kwarteng was either in a rush (to do something before a party conference), did not want the existing information to come out, or did not understand or like what the data had to say.  Despite his lack of data, Kwarteng (and Truss) forged ahead on the basis of “A-level” economic comprehension – using the overly-simplified assertion that lower taxation produces greater economic growth.

It’s a simple enough mantra, one the ‘commoners’ it was presumed would ‘get’, but also ignores basic, and simply understood, historical facts.  As Robert C. Allen notes in his Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction, a work aimed at ‘beginners’, between 1920 and 1940 the fastest growing economy in the world was that of the Soviet Union, where the ‘communist’ state utilised forced expropriation (i.e. a very ‘high’ form of taxation) to achieve rapid social change, ‘advancement’, and so-called ‘social progress’ (whilst the ‘liberal’ low-tax economies of the US and UK languished in a Great Depression).

The Kwasi mantra also overlooked the possibility of a simple ‘theoretical’ reversal of cause and effect, namely, that it is the fastest growing economies which (just happen to) have the lowest rates of taxation!  Consequently, it is not because the army is small that the economy grows (Kwarteng’s assumption), but because the economy is growing that it can afford its army (what is required) at a much lower proportional rate of taxation (or size of state to economy)!  Such oversight distracts from studying possible ‘alternate causes’ of lower economic growth (or lack of rising productivity), such as a tendency for the rate of return on capital to fall (aka a crisis of over-accumulation).  The latter is the core conclusion of Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st Century.

This is not to say that Kwarteng’s position has no intellectual merit.  In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith provides the example, in Book 5, of a state maintaining an army (actually, he refers to the British navy and its size following the 7 year war with France) above the size required in peace time.  Smith makes it clear that whilst the Admiralty has a vested interest in sustaining the navy at 100,000 sailors (because a larger navy means more power and social status for the Admirals) the general or national economy has no such ‘interest’.  Though Smith’s underlying question is ‘how should such interests, the national interest, be decided?’ 

Smith thinks it should not be left to the Admirals (who represented the top 5% of his society – the ruling class elite).  In the ensuing peace, the retained sailors continue to consume national food and clothing stocks (and much else) without adding anything to the growth of those material stocks via rising output (productivity).  Things were different during the war, when their activities were ‘valued’ and central to advancing the supply of food and clothing by securing trade routes.  Following Smith’s conceptual outline and analysis from Book 2 (on capital accumulation), where he draws the distinction between productive and unproductive labour, the sailors are being retained in roles which are ‘unproductive’ of new output – the sailors fall into a category of the population which Smith highlights in his ‘Plan of the Work’ (the first few pages of The Wealth of Nations) as ‘consumers’ of national stock rather than ‘producers’ of it.

Subsequently, Smith advocates release (or liberation) of the sailors from their state-imposed marshal deployment so they can find work best suited to their personal aptitudes and capacities via the labour market, and where the marketplace more generally (or ‘society’ expressed in its trading actions) decides where they are most needed.

However, there is no guarantee that the transfer or transition of sailors into ‘civilian’ life will, indeed, make them any more productive – not if they end up ‘unemployed’ and reliant on Poor Relief, nor if they end up having to work as domestic servants, nor as adjuncts to specific ‘masters’ (those who can monopolise trade in various ways, legislate for state subsidies of their own business, and implement all the abuses of the market Smith has highlighted in Book 4 of the Wealth of Nations).  Therefore, what Smith is advocating in Book 5 is not a simple and thoughtless ‘reduction in taxation’, but a root and branch transformation of the Mercantilist system where taxation was being used to promote the interests’ of the few over the many.  The latter is so easily forgotten in ‘adherence’ to Smithian liberal economics. 

Truss’ and Kwarteng’s priorities appear to be growing the economy in the interests of some (a few) over others with reference to trickle-down economics, on the basis that ‘some’ have a greater impact on the promotion of growth (productivity) than others.  The latter theory, of course, has been thoroughly disproved after 50 years, with the London School of Economics (LSE) having undertaken a review of all the occasions where ‘trickle-down’ policy has been invoked by politicians. The result? All trickle-down has ever produced, in practice, is greater inequality (or ‘dribble-up’) – something IMF economists were at pains to point out following Truss and Kwarteng’s mini-budget.

Returning to Reid and the traditions of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy, the moral of the tale relates to the how the interface between ‘expertise’ and democratic discussion should be constructed.  If “A-level” economics are responsible for Kwarteng’s policies then, obviously, something needs to be done about “A-level” economics!  There should be no presumption that the commons are ‘too thick’ to understand what is going on, nor that a ‘proper’ understanding of economic relationships requires a degree in mathematics.  Experts in economics should, like their brethren in physics or biology, be able to communicate the ‘latest’ advances in their field to their non-expert fellow citizens, who ultimately play a ‘role’ in keeping the ‘experts’ from becoming ‘ridiculous’.

One problem in our existing society is that expertise in economics is not (always or even typically) used to advance the wider social good but advance private (corporate and commercial) interests.  In that ‘sense’ the role of expert knowledge is skewed – it gears itself towards guarding the mysteries of priesthood, and generating an aura of mystique, rather than allowing its claims, assertions, and ‘models’ to be exposed to general, public evaluation.  And when it comes to developing (and shaping) the curricula of economic education the ‘demand’ to produce ‘more people like us’ over-rides any attempt to open up the ‘foundation’ years of study to alternate approaches (to the graph-based microeconomic and econometric orthodoxy).

by doctormcgrail

The Glass Funnel: On the Problem of Equity in a Hierarchy

In 1945 Karl Popper published his famous work The Open Society and Its Enemies, which has been viewed as a major defence of liberal democracy and an attack on historically determinist theories which see human development following a pre-ordained path.  I am not going into the details of Popper’s work here but ask a simple question: who could disagree with Popper’s desire and assertion to keep the future open and elevate the common person to equal status with that of Plato’s philosopher-king?

His argument for openness connects with many other political theorists, including Hannah Arendt, who described freedom as the ability to do something novel – in other words, freedom requires and presupposes that the future is not foreclosed but open to change.  In a similar vein, the approach of ‘Open Marxism’ adopts the term ‘open’ in a manner that applies a requirement for historical openness to what is deemed one of the most ‘closed systems of thought’ – the inevitable trudge of history towards socialism under the ideology of ‘dialectical historical materialism’.

In Popper’s view, the equality of liberal democracy acts as a foil against the ‘historicism’ (inevitability) of a totalising system – one with the tendency to ‘close off’ futures and present tomorrow as a foregone conclusion.  Liberal equality and freedom of speech will, surely, undermine the tyranny and oligarchy of Plato’s class-based social structure from The Republic (a target work in Popper’s argument), with its use of deception and essential propaganda to maintain a ‘stable’ (unchanging) social world.  Given the Bolsheviks’ adoption of Platonism in the form of the Leninist ‘vanguard’ party, where some ‘know better’ than others, and this party’s wedding to historical ‘inevitability’, Popper’s critique was an undeniable pummelling of his (and Marxist orthodoxy’s) interpretation of Hegelian and Marxist ‘philosophy’.  And, hence, Popper acted as welcome midwife to the need for a review of Marx (and those who followed him, whether Marxians or Marxists) via the praxis of Open Marxism.

The problem with Popper’s critique is that he wasn’t living in the liberal and equal world he thought or presumed he was.  Britain in the 1940s and ‘50s was far from being an ‘open society’, and in that sense could be described as an enemy of itself.  In 1945 the British Empire was yet to ‘de-colonise’, and this was an Empire on which the sun was never meant to set.  Popper’s society was not ready to accept the levelling of ‘us’ with ‘others’ – a possibility his intellectual and utopian ‘openness’ held forth.  And whilst the democratic element of Western ‘liberal democracy’ might have offered the possibility of ‘openness’ (who knows what decisions ‘the people’, now or in the future, might make?), usage of the word ‘liberal’ was firmly associated with the mini-tyranny and ‘free agency’ of the private property owner – the ‘ones’ who (to follow Sylvia Federici’s rather than Marx’s version) had liberated, and could liberate, the earth from the commoners and natives living on it (impoverishing them and making them available for ‘work’).  In short, Popper’s supposed ‘open society’ was nothing other than a contradictory dream space in which the equality of inhabitants had been taken-for-granted.  Such an ideal speech community (to use Habermas’ term) could, therefore, treat every section of ‘society’ on an intellectually-presumed equal basis, as if they had been heard, and were being heard, in a truly representative manner.

From Abstract Equality to Meaningful Equity

This position is contemporary as well as historic, and ‘liberal democracy’ is still held forth as the best political and social ‘model’, despite its shortcomings, because, as noted in Churchill’s famous quotation: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others”.  Indeed, viewed aright, the liberties of liberal democracies are, in fact, accumulations of rights, freedoms, expectations, demands, and licenses wrought by successive inferiors from the hands of their superiors.  However, criticism of the many ways in which ‘access’ to liberal democracy, premised on the need and ability to express oneself and be heard, has been denied to large portions of the population have not declined over time but have grown in number, extent, and focus, especially since the post-war social revolution of the 1960s.

Feminist, racial and ethnic minority, LGBTQi+, indigenous, nationhood, and disabled movements have all come forward in highlighting how this intellectual presumption (of legal or political equality) undermines and keeps them, in effect, silent no matter how loud they shout.  In their stead, money talks and everyone knows it (though, clearly, not everyone accepts this situation).  And in some cases not even having enough money is sufficient for certain people to gain a platform which would give them an equal footing with others.

Into these spaces of discrimination and neglect, which are locations of permanent exclusion for the majority of those discriminated against, and despite sporadic ‘punctuations’ of rebellion, or those global events involving the sudden rise and revolt of the oppressed (which shake or shatter the existing world order), new methods of population ‘aspiration’ management have come into being.  I shall call these the ‘policies of social equality’ and/or, the same thing, ‘the social policies of equation’.

Of course, to acknowledge Lenin’s question of ‘What is to be done?’, something always needs to be done and such policies and their programmes should not be rejected outright as purely ingenious system-saving products of whatever happens to be the current hegemonic or totalising vision (or, in simplistic terms, ‘the ruling class’).  Rather, they are complex figurations and the compromised outcomes of long ‘negotiation’ (or, in simplistic terms, ‘class struggle’).

Such ameliorative policies do effectively rattle what has politically been, and the way the social world was.  As the bumper sticker demands: “More blacks.  More Irish.  More dogs”.  The 19th century movement for the establishment of Sunday Schools can be berated by secular moderns for their practices of ‘religious indoctrination’, but this conveniently forgets that the Sunday Schools movement was populated by the oppressed working masses seeking literacy for their children.  The drive for literacy, which entailed first and foremost the reading of the Bible, was not simply a ruling class conspiratorial ‘plot’ (to indoctrinate) but an historical shift marked by contradiction.  The working classes learned to read and, hence, what they then read became the next point of contention and ‘negotiation’ (struggle).  The ruling class, against their economistic belief system, began to provide the ‘right’ books for free in public libraries, part and parcel of ‘rational pursuits’.  Thus, a basic concept of contradiction needs to be retained when reviewing any social policies of equation.

Anti-discrimination laws, against racism and sexism, or against non-employment and/or dismissal on grounds of creed or sexuality, were the first kinds of policies to come into being following the 1960s ‘revolution’, but they were largely a blunt tool which enabled the prosecution of what should not be done, that is, if anyone in a position of authority could be bothered to discover what should not have not been done.  It was too easy for, even publicly-funded, organisations and institutions to subtly avoid ‘detection’.  For instance, in Aberdeen and Glasgow, for 30 years after the 1974 Sex Discrimination Act, dinner ‘ladies’ were paid less than bin ‘men’ on grounds that their work was, somehow, very different and that the ‘bin men’ did a dirty, heavy, and dangerous job whilst the ‘dinner ladies’ did not.  Workers were not, apparently, being discriminated against on grounds of sex since the existing wage differentials came down to the variation in tasks involved.  It was historic coincidence that more men worked on bin (‘trash’) collection whilst more women worked in the kitchens of school canteens.

Quite correctly, the women chipped away at the theoretical justifications of the so-called ‘differentials’.  Industrial kitchens are dirty (wastes and bacteria), involve heavy jobs (a 50 litre pan of boiling water), and are dangerous (sharp knives and machetes, electric mincers, hot stoves, and wet floors).  Questions about the meaning of equality and equivalence were brought into consciousness and focus.  The law / policy claims people are equal, but what does that mean, in practice?

To get a usable answer things have to go to court or some other approved arbiter – an official pronouncement is required on what counts as ‘fair’ and equal.  But what happens if the complainants cannot afford to go to court whereas the defendants have bottomless pockets?   One answer (outside of combination and union, friendly and charitable society, or fundraising campaign amongst the commons, like ‘crowd funding’) was to establish formal publicly-funded prosecutors for the most important cases (and in the US ‘class’ cases), such as race equality commissions, regulatory ‘ombudsmen’, or problem-solving ‘czars’, who would, as state-appointed representatives, bring the cases to court.  Even so, it was clear that equal right did not equate to equal might, and simply ensuring people had a ‘right’ before the law (was applied) was an insufficient means of overcoming the foul practices of the discriminatory past and present.

And so, farther-reaching and improved policies and mechanisms of ‘promotion’ began to emerge.  Perhaps the most well-known of these would be the employment ‘equal opportunities’ form, which acts as a preventativemore than curative measure.  For large companies and institutions, this filtering recruitment mechanism helps to avoid the creation of conditions and situations which may, at a later date, land them in court or at an industrial tribunal.  The fines for breaking equality laws, regulations, and codes are often so puny, relative to the wealth being generated, that unfair hiring and employment practices could be ignored on a financial basis (just pay the fine and continue), but the negative publicity cannot be ignored, and highly developed mass-worker societies are also mass-consumer and mass-media ones.  Consequently, the structure of the workforce has to be brought into line with the population characteristics of Popper’s republic.

An accurate, temporally recent, census then becomes crucial, such that organisations and managers ‘know’ what they are dealing with – how little does the current workforce ‘match’ societal population statistics and, hence, how unrepresentative (or under-representative) is the workforce and, by implication, recruitment procedures?  How unfair is the situation? And the approach applies at the social as well as the institutional level, as politicians grapple with issues of social inequalities related to job opportunities and access to public resources, including schools, healthcare, housing, and regional development.  Hence, what started as a means of tackling ‘gaps’ between social groups with regards to ‘employment opportunities’ (because unequal ‘access’ to jobs is an incendiary point of social conflict – whether the conflict is regional, racial and ethnic, sexual, embodied, cultural, or a matter of ‘class’ – or not having ‘class’) spread to areas like civil service and army recruitment, and finally entry to higher education (which has always been one of the quintessential forms of elitism).

What has emerged are programmes and processes of social equation which American’s know as affirmative action.  Having recognised the Popperian fallacy, the ameliorative response is to generate (out of the existing ‘condition’) a world of equitable opportunities for all.  It has been noted (Ashrad) that, whilst the concept of equality refers to treating everyone ‘the same’, the concept of equity means treating individuals (or ‘groups’) ‘differently’, but with the socially-accepted aim or goal of making everyone equal, that is, so individuals (or ‘groups’) end up in an ‘equal’ position after the intervention, such as having ‘equal opportunity’.  Thus, when it comes to student places at the most prestigious higher education institutions, one approach is to lower the entry-level qualification ‘bar’ for children (and returning adults) from statistically-defined deprived backgrounds.

To sum up, this is the principle of equity in action – the disadvantaged will be raised or levelled up.

And what is the purpose of a university degree?

To the financially invested-mind the latter developments in access to higher education do not make sense – after all the sacrifice of ‘getting ahead’ in life and the resources poured into assuring their children are at the front of the queue for the highest paying jobs, houses in the safest places, and the ‘best’ positions at the most ‘prestigious’ universities, parents of privately-educated children are appalled by any proposed ‘drop’ in the so-called (culturally-biased) educational standards applied to those who didn’t have the extra tuition and resources necessary to do well in ‘traditional’ exams.  The fall-back position has to be one of technical competence – by all means level the very best of the poor up to the required standard but don’t undermine the future of those who have already gained the skills, aptitudes, and attitudes.  This process may take 6 consecutive lifetimes, never mind ‘generations’, but slow steady progress has always been the motto of conservatism.

However, to the non-invested, or open, mind it all makes perfect sense, especially when evidence bears the key point out.  Those arriving from state schools at top universities (Oxford and Cambridge) out-perform their peers from private schools in pure academic terms.  The state school entrants still can’t join the Bullington Club nor the cavalry units of University Officer Training Corps, since they haven’t got the connections nor the horses, and, thus, they will lack Bourdieu’s social and cultural capital to forge ahead, post-University.  But the discrepancy raises questions about what the university or higher education system is for?  The ‘talent’ searching and recruiting procedures of the past have been lacking, both pre and post university degree, and the more undergraduate places that have been created (required to produce or ‘massify’ a ‘higher value adding’ workforce) has increasingly led to a greater stratification of universities (type, focus, audience, rating) and the consequent emergence of higher education ‘league tables’.  But what then has happened to the supposed universal ‘standards’?

Consequently, the most disadvantaged have been lifted up but just at a moment when the peaks of the highest mountains have shot up in comparison to the ‘entry level’ foothills.

The Parallel Cult of ‘Leadership’ and Exceptionalism

Not everything, of course, has headed in the same direction, towards greater equity and the goal of a more egalitarian society.  Just as the aim of equal opportunity has emerged, increased emphasis has been placed on the rewarding of the unique and exceptional along with a hunt for ‘leaders’ (and the ‘qualities’ of leadership).  In a contemporary version of the 16th and 17th century obsession with etiquette or manners ‘manuals’, corporations and institutions flood their virtue-signalling channels with advice and ‘how to’ guides on self-promotion, branding, and ‘getting ahead’.  Members of ‘collegiate’ academic ‘staff’ (an army term, compared to the religious ‘colleagues’) are encouraged to lead and therein rise above their peers.  

Of course, now the disadvantaged have equal opportunities they must learn how to make the most of such opportunities by assimilating the ‘leadership’ qualities of those who already ‘lead’.  Those who have just undertaken study in a post-colonial educational institution, having learned about colonialism, and even had their curriculums de-colonised in the process, are now re-colonised in the world of work (which for some – casually employed university tutors – is the same place in which they studied) and via management ‘double-think’ discourses.  Unlike their forbearers, this time the colonised will have the freedom to ‘brand’ and ‘market’ themselves – forced to adopt a language which is not of their own making.  History repeats itself – first as tragedy, then as farce.

Thus, society ends up with institutions that are simultaneously trying to flatten themselves at the same time as their ‘leadership’ hoist themselves above colleagues and peers.   “Get us closer to the common people”, announces the increasingly distant commander of the ship.  The contemporary institution is ‘network’ like, more ‘complex’, and has ‘colleagues’ not ‘hands’.  Its tentacles are stretched over the earth, adding to cultural and social ‘diversity’.  Professionalised and commercialised management is required, and expert ‘leaders’ from the exploitative industries need to be floated in, or float themselves in, at the very top levels.  The ‘wages’ of inspection and direction (see Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Bk1, Chp6, Para6 for his criticism on this point) have, therefore, to be much greater than before so the right ‘quality’ of person will, butterfly-like, be attracted to the nectar – the simple prestige of ‘heading up’ a group of ‘peers’ for a short period is no longer enough.

In summary for this section, despite moves to level and democratise, to decolonise and head toward egalitarian mission statements, the modern higher education institution remains solidly ‘hierarchical’ and, to date, socially ‘immobile’.

The Glass Ceiling is in fact a Funnel

The drive towards this ‘levelling up’ of the disadvantaged (implied in the conception of equity) is a new model for the ideal speech situation.  However, its possibility and potential does rest on another Popperian-esqueassumption.  That is, the goal of levelling up is to create an open forum and community space where all are, indeed, ‘equal’.

But most often the principle of equity is not being applied on such a basis.  There is no open-space ‘forum’ where all will be senators, but rather a pyramid or cone-shaped funnel.  At the top of this funnel is a hole where only person can emerge as top meerkat or survivalist worm.  From this vantage point the world is that individual’s oyster – they gain the ability to see all around and observe what others cannot.  They are the classic liberal subject of ‘action’ (they get to do things / make a difference).  But the horizon they look out onto is made of information (not knowledge) as the one perspective they lack is that of those who are now beneath them – the failures whom they could never be.  For the other meerkats, inside the funnel, the walls are lined with dense glass which keeps them to the required (and, of course, ‘closed’ – the ‘closure’ enemy of Popper) pathway to the top.

Women’s rights activists and feminists refer to the metaphor of the ‘glass-ceiling’.  Women have been unable to rise up the ranks of organisations, but they can’t ‘see’ why.  The barrier holding them down is, after all, ‘invisible’ (and ‘silent’).  Following Federici’s line on the degradation of women, one means of keeping women down has been via the denigration of their societal contribution as ‘non-work’, that is, what happens in the ‘home’ (domestic sphere) has been disconnected from the ‘workplace’ (industrial sphere).  The reasons women have had ‘patchy’ career trajectories is because large parts of their lives were (still are) shrouded in a mysterious fog – a realm of being which was (is) not considered nor thought about in the ‘workplace’ nor as part of ‘the workplace’.

But now, after decades of social policies of equation, liberal democratic societies are doing much better!  Glass-ceilings have been cracked, broken, nay, smashed.  At the time of writing I ‘look above me’ (my particular situation and ‘line’ within society) and see tiers and chains of command and management populated by women – Scotland’s First Minister, Finance Minister, Cabinet Secretary for Education, the Director of the Open University in Scotland, and the Head of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (University of Edinburgh).  I could follow the chains further down to Head of Department, Heads of Disciplines, and Directors of Programme.

On the one hand, this shows the clear change in opportunities and culture compared to 60, 40, 20, and even 10 years ago – when none of these positions had ever been held by a woman.  On the other, not only is there a ‘great distance still to be travelled’ (according to the ‘numbers game’), there is a continued obsession with hierarchical bureaucracies derived from the army, the church, and the colonial civil service.  In short, ‘some’ women have risen to the top, but are these individuals to be taken as representatives of a ‘class’ (category / status group / identity) or as exceptional instances of good leadership (aka ‘the right stuff’)?

Is it now just a numbers game?

A specific case may be useful here.  Priti Patel became only the second woman to hold Secretary of State for the Home Office (UK), with the first woman being Theresa May.  However, Patel is of South Asian origin and from an immigrant family.  In those respects she is a first to break a glass-ceiling for ‘women of color’ (to use the American expression).  Yet, as far as UK Home Secretaries go she is thoroughly non-original.  In her time in office she has advocated using naval gunboats to ram rubber dinghies carrying ‘undocumented’ refugees across the English Channel and been accused by civil service unions (and been found responsible by a Whitehall internal investigation) of bullying.  In one sense, she is made of ‘the right stuff’.  Such an outcome will be disappointing to radical feminists who have held the view that women won’t just replace men in public life but will do things differently, thereby transforming social institutions.  The latter is clearly going to be an outcome in certain respects – women leaders are bound to bring a female perspective to managing organisations which gives those organisations a female focus and understanding (e.g. on things such as ‘flexible employment’ contracts and routines).  But in other respects those, supposedly, ‘in power’ operate under socially-accepted ‘self-evident truths’ about what ‘power’ is and how it should be managed, occupied, and possessed.

Does one then end up with moves towards equality / equity being reduced to a numbers game?  For instance, say 1 in 14,000 white male employees of a university become vice chancellor, then it is unfair that the same opportunity for white women should be a reduced 1 in 28,000 (once unequal ratios of male to female employees have been factored in).  Furthermore, if the ‘chances’ for men and women from ‘other ethnic’ minorities of attaining the same goal are much lower (again, on a proportional basis) then is this the obvious kind of ‘disadvantage’ which needs to be addressed?  Furthermore, certain ‘other ethnic’ minorities might stand out in statistics better than others, for example, Black (African / Caribbean), South Asian, and East Asian are relatively well-known and identifiable groups compared to Roma and Gypsies.  And to the gender / sex and ethnicity ‘balance’, the disability, LGBTQi, and neurodiversity ones need to be added.  And even at this point the issue of class, cultural status, ‘background’ (e.g. first generation university graduate), nor indices of deprivation have not even been mentioned let alone touched upon.

Other, more practical questions about hierarchical opportunities then come into focus.  If ensuring a ‘perfect’ mix or balance is never possible, as individuals work their way up the increasingly-crushed glass funnel of the flattened, league-tabled institution, then to what extent should a ‘sub-optimal’ position be ‘accepted’ or become ‘acceptable’?  For instance, if there are only 16 higher education institutions in a country (i.e. Scotland) that require a ‘leader’, and South Asian women make up 1% of the population (2% being people of South Asian origin), then it may have to be accepted that a female vice chancellor of South Asian origin will ‘appear’ once in every six ‘generations’ of post-holding.  Going on the basis each individual vice chancellor holds their post for 5 years, then that is once every 30 years, and that is when things are ‘equal’ or have been ‘equated’ using programmes promoting ‘equity’.

This seems an interminably difficult situation to manage, precisely because it is. Yes, there should be ‘nothing to stop’ any individual from a minority or disadvantaged group from reaching the top in the same way as someone from a white, middle-class private-education background, and everything should be done to ‘balance’ the relative advantages (privileges) and disadvantages of the various ‘groups’ (social divisions) of people involved.  But even then (other than the very obvious 50-50 female-male split, alongside the predominance of the ‘working classes’) the weight of sheer numbers in a society like Scotland’s, which is not very ethnically diverse in terms of skin colour (with 97% identifying as ‘white’ of some variation), means ‘representatives’ of certain ‘classes’ of people are unlike to emerge or appear.   Where then are the ‘role models’?

The question then arises as to what the disadvantaged are being ‘levelled up’ for?  Is it just a means of adding to the ‘competition’ for the hierarchical positions on offer?  Or a sop to saying, referring once more to Lenin, ‘something is being done’.

Equity and the Republic

An alternate way of looking at the situation is to recognise the upside-down nature of the ‘goals’, or aims and objectives, used when ‘applying’ policies of social equation.  The principle of equity – of providing the disadvantaged (the poor; the discriminated against; the intentionally or unintentionally ‘disabled’) with extra publicly-funded resources to ‘level them up’ – operates on the basis of a republican outcome, and NOT in relation to ancient institutions founded on mediaeval vassalage NOR to modernist, bureaucratic, hierarchical incorporations.

When one of the universities I work for pumps out an email for staff every Monday morning entitled ‘Online Development Toolkit’, drawn from a private company addressed at ‘goodpractice.com’, the implication is clear – these are the kinds of activities but also ‘ways of thinking’ to be adopted in the well-managed institution.  Such emails purportedly express the ‘values’ of the institution, which include the standard EDI (Equality, Diversity, Inclusion) ones of ‘respect’ for colleagues and students (no matter who they are).  Featured each week will be one or two ‘posts’ on Black History Month and quizzes such as ‘how many black female scientists can you name?’  Or “C’mon Everybody – Tips to create a more inclusive culture” and “Dealing with Discrimination – Addressing concerns about inequality” (both 21/03/2022).  But underneath these weekly reminders and promotions a very different agenda is pushed.

One finds “How to Step Up from Peer to Leader – Five ways to survive and thrive as a new boss” and “How to Boost Your Entrepreneurial Skills” (again, both 21/03/2022).  The former forgets that being a ‘peer’ – the equal of others, and not ‘above’ them – is the greater goal, and one that offers humanity an ‘exit ramp’ from the historical tragedy of the closed-off and inevitable trudge to the top of the funnel (or being crushed against its sides).  The latter forgets that social, cultural, and evolutionary anthropologists have already declared the victory of Evolutionism over Diffusionism.

For those unaware, Diffusionism was a 19th century anthropological theory declaring that things got invented once (largely by very smart people in Europe) and were then ‘distributed’ – diffused – over the earth to ‘other’ peoples.  As such, Diffusionism neatly fitted the colonial world and its need for theoretical justification.  But Evolutionism disproved the idea of ‘diffusion’ and demonstrated that all humans, no matter how culturally different and ‘non-entrepreneurial’ they may ‘seem’, are inventive!  The notion that invention is somehow the preserve of a few, an ‘elite’ bent on serving and maintaining the ‘profit motive’, is a peculiarly ‘entrepreneurial’ perspective.  Indeed, many, if not most, humans spend their time inventing ways of escaping the drudgery of the ‘entrepreneurial’ present and keeping the future, as Popper wanted it, ‘open’.

In the, now classic, cartoon image of ‘equity versus equality’, equity is represented by three people of different heights looking over a fence.  Two of them need help to see over the fence whilst the third does not.  But the point of the image, surely, is that what they are looking onto (something we do not always see in the cartoon representations) is an ‘open’ space – the future which is still to be decided, as opposed to something that has already been completed for them (the closed structure of ‘hierarchy’).