Monday, April 20, 2015
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Final Essay
For the final paper, you will produce a primer, analysis, interpretive paper, or position paper that provides a clear argument with a precise and refutable thesis on a topic of your choosing. Although many of you, no doubt, will feel most comfortable producing a policy or position paper on a traditionally political or economic topic, feel free to adopt a broad understanding of the range of topics available to you. You don't necessarily need to write about economics, politics, or political philosophy in the narrowest sense. You could investigate some of the moral or cultural issues stemming from a political or economic topic; you could produce a case study (an analysis of a famous musician, company, person, film, etc., of interest to you); you could explore the various interepretations offered of a work of art, literature, fiction, or popular culture; or you could explore the history of a particular concept, notion, cultural trend, etc., that is part of our everyday life.
In other words, there aren't many constraints for this assigment, as long as you approach your topic in an academic way. All that I ask is that you explore your topic in detail, do meticulous research and, most importantly, present a clear, refutable, significant thesis that clearly distinguishes its position from that of your sources. As long as you can construct a specific, refutable, and significant argument about your topic, whatever you choose should be fine. My only piece of advice is that, as always, it is best to avoid controversial issues, or any topic generally discussed in terms of the narrow "pro/con" framing so common in mass media discussions of policy. Examples of these topics include, but are not limited to, gun control, abortion, gay marriage, The Affordable Care Act (AKA "Obamacare"), affirmative action, drug policy/drug legalization, athletic controversies, and others. While some of you have produced papers on these topics in the past that found interesting and novel approaches to these issues, it will become even more difficult to do this in the final paper, as you must find a great deal of scholarly sources on the topic and develop a more nuanced approach that takes a wide array of academic arguments into account. Many of these hotly contested and politicized issues lack a deep field of academic research, or are difficult to approach in terms of a nuanced argument.
Rather than trying to find a topic that seems like it would be appropriate for a stereotypical term paper, pursue something of interest to you and find a way to transform the topic into an informative, interesting, and analytically incisive essay. Use both the research skills and the conceptual and theoretical tools we have developed to make your argument more detailed and more analytically rich. Such an approach may require more work upfront, but you will find the paper easier to write as it will reflect one of your passions, and you will have had to think in advance how to approach an academic paper on the topic rather than simply falling back on well-worn and cliched approaches. In a relatively short space, your paper will need to clarify the most important aspects of an issue, consider one or several different ideas/perspectives/theoretical approaches to the topic, reveal the merits and downsides of those policies (or the perspectives you are considering on your topic), and most importantly, convincingly establish why we should lean toward a specific conclusion, interpretation, understanding, analysis, or prescription. It will be easier to do this if you have thought about your topic, why you are interested in it, and what would make for a proper academic approach to it.
Rather than trying to find a topic that seems like it would be appropriate for a stereotypical term paper, pursue something of interest to you and find a way to transform the topic into an informative, interesting, and analytically incisive essay. Use both the research skills and the conceptual and theoretical tools we have developed to make your argument more detailed and more analytically rich. Such an approach may require more work upfront, but you will find the paper easier to write as it will reflect one of your passions, and you will have had to think in advance how to approach an academic paper on the topic rather than simply falling back on well-worn and cliched approaches. In a relatively short space, your paper will need to clarify the most important aspects of an issue, consider one or several different ideas/perspectives/theoretical approaches to the topic, reveal the merits and downsides of those policies (or the perspectives you are considering on your topic), and most importantly, convincingly establish why we should lean toward a specific conclusion, interpretation, understanding, analysis, or prescription. It will be easier to do this if you have thought about your topic, why you are interested in it, and what would make for a proper academic approach to it.
The paper should be 7-10 pages long, double spaced, in 12 point, Times New Roman font, with 1 inch margins, and it should contain 4 or more scholarly sources (journal articles, scholarly books, and other works by active scholars in the field). If you would like a chance to revise the paper, please submit a draft by Monday, April 20th at class time. The final papers are due Thursday, April 30th at 12pm.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Essay three - theoretical approaches to issues
The goal of Essay #3 is to take us one step closer to producing our final term paper by going a little bit deeper into an issue of interest to you. In the last essay, we produced an informative argument that attempted to clarify misconceptions and highlight the most important aspects of an issue. Basically, you created a framework to help an intelligent layperson first approach an issue from a specific angle. In this essay, we will focus less on explaining the broad outlines of a topic and instead provide a slightly more in-depth, less introductory account that presents one or several theoretical, critical, ideological, or ethical approaches to a particular issue. Your paper should pick both a specific theoretical approach or critical tradition and a specific issue, and it should make these as narrow and focused as possible.
A theoretical paradigm is not the same thing as a stance. Rather, a paradigm represents a way of understanding an issue, one that informs one or several sets of underlying stances. The same stance or position can arise from very different theoretical approaches, and different stances or positions can arise from similar theoretical approaches. For example: if I were comparing different paradigms regarding the reform of Social Security, I might argue the following: "Although both parties favor reform of the system, a theoretical tension exists between the neoliberal and the social democratic understanding of what Social Security, and the welfare state more generally, are and should be. Whereas neoliberal proponents of private accounts see Social Security as akin to an individual investment, and thus have no problem with the system leading to radically different payouts to beneficiaries depending on the performance of those accounts, social democratic proponents of changing merely the financing of Social Security see the program as part of the safety net designed to provide a minimum standard of retirement income regardless of how much an individual may have paid into the system before retirement. Both sides may favor public investment in private securities, but their different approaches lead to divergent plans for implementing this reform."
Bring a rough draft of the paper to class on Friday, March 27th. The final paper will be due Wednesday, April 1st by class time. The final draft should be 4-6 pages in 12 point Times New Roman Font with 1 inch margins. Use MLA to cite your sources, and use at least 3 peer-reviewed sources. Make sure that you use parenthetical citation to indicate whenever you are using information from one of your sources, and do not cite a source in the works cited unless you refer to it in the body of the essay.
As you can see, once again it is best to focus on an aspect of an issue, and a paradigm or paradigms related thereto, that are as specific as possible. You are free to explore the implication of one theoretical approach, or you can compare and contrast many approaches. We have several examples of theoretical paradigms so far from our reading: Marxism, the cynical philosophy of Mandeville, the moral sense theory of Hutcheson that opposed it, and Smith's adaptation of his teacher's thinking into his own moral and economic thought. You could also, for example, adopt an Austrian approach to monetary policy, or you could compare that with the Keynesian approach--the only requirement is that the paradigm you adopt be an academic one. You could explore how modern philosophers in the tradition of Smith and Hutcheson approach a moral issue, or you could contrast the modern and the original approaches. You could also, for example, examine the Marxist take on the recent financial crisis. If you compare different perspectives, they need not be from radically different ideological camps. It would be perfectly acceptable to demonstrate how the same ideology can also lead to different policy prescriptions as a result of subtler differences.
A theoretical paradigm is not the same thing as a stance. Rather, a paradigm represents a way of understanding an issue, one that informs one or several sets of underlying stances. The same stance or position can arise from very different theoretical approaches, and different stances or positions can arise from similar theoretical approaches. For example: if I were comparing different paradigms regarding the reform of Social Security, I might argue the following: "Although both parties favor reform of the system, a theoretical tension exists between the neoliberal and the social democratic understanding of what Social Security, and the welfare state more generally, are and should be. Whereas neoliberal proponents of private accounts see Social Security as akin to an individual investment, and thus have no problem with the system leading to radically different payouts to beneficiaries depending on the performance of those accounts, social democratic proponents of changing merely the financing of Social Security see the program as part of the safety net designed to provide a minimum standard of retirement income regardless of how much an individual may have paid into the system before retirement. Both sides may favor public investment in private securities, but their different approaches lead to divergent plans for implementing this reform."
Bring a rough draft of the paper to class on Friday, March 27th. The final paper will be due Wednesday, April 1st by class time. The final draft should be 4-6 pages in 12 point Times New Roman Font with 1 inch margins. Use MLA to cite your sources, and use at least 3 peer-reviewed sources. Make sure that you use parenthetical citation to indicate whenever you are using information from one of your sources, and do not cite a source in the works cited unless you refer to it in the body of the essay.
As you can see, once again it is best to focus on an aspect of an issue, and a paradigm or paradigms related thereto, that are as specific as possible. You are free to explore the implication of one theoretical approach, or you can compare and contrast many approaches. We have several examples of theoretical paradigms so far from our reading: Marxism, the cynical philosophy of Mandeville, the moral sense theory of Hutcheson that opposed it, and Smith's adaptation of his teacher's thinking into his own moral and economic thought. You could also, for example, adopt an Austrian approach to monetary policy, or you could compare that with the Keynesian approach--the only requirement is that the paradigm you adopt be an academic one. You could explore how modern philosophers in the tradition of Smith and Hutcheson approach a moral issue, or you could contrast the modern and the original approaches. You could also, for example, examine the Marxist take on the recent financial crisis. If you compare different perspectives, they need not be from radically different ideological camps. It would be perfectly acceptable to demonstrate how the same ideology can also lead to different policy prescriptions as a result of subtler differences.
Monday, March 2, 2015
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Lead blogger for this week is...
No one! You may write about what you wish.
Let me suggest some possible food for blogger thought for those who may not know what to write about.
If you are not following the situation in Greece, it is something that you might consider paying attention to.
Syriza, a left-wing party, has just taken power. There is a sizable Marxist influence on their brand of politics, which has led to perhaps the only self-proclaimed Marxist finance minister in Europe, possibly the world. Yanis Varoufakis is, however, a very thoughtful and unorthodox Marxist, someone whose worldview fits very nicely in the eclectic mix of ideas we've been trying to create in the class.
Here's a couple of articles about him and Syriza to take a look at.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/18/yanis-varoufakis-how-i-became-an-erratic-marxist
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/13/greece-finance-minister-yanis-varoufakis-interview-syriza-eurozone
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/opinion/yanis-varoufakis-no-time-for-games-in-europe.html?_r=0
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/09/ernesto-laclau-intellectual-figurehead-syriza-podemos
(This one is about a late professor of mine from graduate school)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/tsipras-parliament-speech-austerity/
Also, here's a link about a program recently funded at UA whose purpose is to reunite political philosophy and economics, much in the spirit of this course as well:
http://uanews.org/story/ua-receives-2-9m-grant-from-templeton-foundation
Let me suggest some possible food for blogger thought for those who may not know what to write about.
If you are not following the situation in Greece, it is something that you might consider paying attention to.
Syriza, a left-wing party, has just taken power. There is a sizable Marxist influence on their brand of politics, which has led to perhaps the only self-proclaimed Marxist finance minister in Europe, possibly the world. Yanis Varoufakis is, however, a very thoughtful and unorthodox Marxist, someone whose worldview fits very nicely in the eclectic mix of ideas we've been trying to create in the class.
Here's a couple of articles about him and Syriza to take a look at.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/18/yanis-varoufakis-how-i-became-an-erratic-marxist
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/13/greece-finance-minister-yanis-varoufakis-interview-syriza-eurozone
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/opinion/yanis-varoufakis-no-time-for-games-in-europe.html?_r=0
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/09/ernesto-laclau-intellectual-figurehead-syriza-podemos
(This one is about a late professor of mine from graduate school)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/tsipras-parliament-speech-austerity/
Also, here's a link about a program recently funded at UA whose purpose is to reunite political philosophy and economics, much in the spirit of this course as well:
http://uanews.org/story/ua-receives-2-9m-grant-from-templeton-foundation
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Essay 2
Our eventual goal in the class is to produce a term paper that offers a detailed analysis--and it need not be of something that is narrowly economic or political--of a particular topic of interest to you. In preparation for this, our next paper will aim at producing an analytical summary of a particular policy, issue, or topic. For this assignment, I want you to design an argumentative paper that explains and informs a general reader about your particular policy/issue. Do not list disjointed pieces of information about the subject, but rather make an informative argument about what people often misunderstand about your issue, how it is possible to clear up those misperceptions, and what is most important to know about your issue in order to understand it most accurately. In other words, you want to explore the argumentative potential of informational modes of discourse, rather than just list facts.
Do not feel that you are stuck with whatever topic you choose for the final term paper, however. In fact, I want us to use this assignment as an opportunity for teaching each other about various possible topics and the different approaches to them. Feel free to be creative and take risks: the ideal topic is one that interests you without being overly sensationalistic or controversial and that you can explore in a detailed, complex way.
We will briefly share our findings with the class through short, informal, 5-10 minute presentations. Please prepare a small handout that distills your findings and then present it to the class. Hopefully, this will serve as a kind of "topics fair" that allows the class to explore a wide variety of different subjects that might be of interest to them as we lead up to the final paper.
For this paper, I ask that you include at least two academic sources (books or scholarly journal articles). You can use other sources--readings from earlier in the semester, substantive newspapers or periodicals found using the library database--but you must use at least two examples of academic writing. Do not cite encyclopedias (whether online or not), informational websites (about.com, for example), or other websites found using standard web searches. You can read these for background information, but don't cite them as sources. The paper should be in the neighborhood of 3-4 pages, double spaced, in 12 point Times New Roman Font, with one inch margins all around.
Finally, remember that the more specific you can be, the better. Medicare is a better topic than health insurance in general; the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is a better topic than Medicare in general; and a comparison of two specific cost-reduction schemes associated with IPAB is a better topic than IPAB in general.
Bring a rough draft (at least 2 pages) to class for peer editing this Friday, February 20. Bring a clean draft to class Friday, February 27th. The paper is due Monday, March 2, and we will start our informal presentations on this day.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
Essay 1: Locating Compelling Questions, Significant Ideas, and Convincing Textual Evidence
College writing is demanding. Before you even begin, you must formulate a narrowly defined and specific question, problem, or research agenda. You then must gather sources and research, and carefully mine these sources for choice quotations that clearly and succinctly support your points. Finally, in a few short pages, you must employ these resources to provide a specific, narrow, and refutable claim that responds to the dilemmas you have raised.
College writing is demanding. Before you even begin, you must formulate a narrowly defined and specific question, problem, or research agenda. You then must gather sources and research, and carefully mine these sources for choice quotations that clearly and succinctly support your points. Finally, in a few short pages, you must employ these resources to provide a specific, narrow, and refutable claim that responds to the dilemmas you have raised.
Because this is a daunting task, we will start out by exploring the manner in which others have done this. This will lessen the burden of defining a question to write about, it will eliminate the need for extensive research, and it will minimize the original thinking you need to provide to formulate a claim. You will still, however, need to produce a claim or thesis--one that indicates why the problem you have uncovered is interesting and significant, and what the implications of the answer provided are.
For this first essay, you will compose a short (2-3) page paper focused primarily on locating a central idea, tension, or problem in a text we have read and explaining its significance. What role does it play in responding to, clarifying, or even complicating the issues raised by the author? Doing this should not and will not require you to do significant research. We will focus on research beginning with the next paper. For now, we will simply practice developing a claim and using textual evidence to prove it. For this essay, you can write about almost anything that has something of a connection to our readings or to our class discussions. Here’s some general topics you might consider writing about:
1. Compare and contrast the ideas of two different theorists we have read, and develop a thesis that shows how they arrive at different conclusions regarding a similar topic or question. Focus on defining the boundaries of the debate as narrowly as possible, and indicating how subtle differences in assumptions, tone, focus, and approach lead to larger and more significant differences in outcomes. Don’t worry about explaining everything about their ideas. This isn’t a report, but rather a paper focused on developing your own argument that explores the implications of a debate between other thinkers. An easy way to approach this paper would be to pick a quote from each writer and focus your paper entirely on showing the important differences that develop from the ideas each writer expresses in those quotes.
2. Apply some of the ideas we have been discussing to current events. Pick an idea or two from a writer or two and attempt to explain what these show about a contemporary debate in current affairs. What would Hobbes say about the way we finance pharmaceutical research, for example. What would Mandeville think of restrictions on immigration? These are just a few examples of what you could write about. You could also combine this with option 1 and write about differences in how classical theorists might explain contemporary events. Again, your focus here will be on defining exactly how each author understands these issues, and the implications of these differences for their conclusions.
3. Pick a provocative quote from one writer we have read and explain why it is significant for his argument. Does it reveal something essential that we otherwise would easily overlook? If you had a strong reaction to something one of the writers we read claimed, try to formulate in a more formal, analytic language what that is and then explain the nature of your reaction. What larger implications does this quote present?
Whatever option you pick, or whether or not you pick one of the above options, try to avoid falling into the twin dangers of offering a book report or a harsh polemic. Avoid opinionated language like “I think,” “I believe,” “is wrong,” “is right,” “is good,” “is bad,” “contradicts him/herself,” etc. Also avoid summarizing or listing a series of facts without connecting them back to your thesis or explaining why they are important. The easiest way to do this is to present a clear thesis that empathetically approaches your subject matter without becoming either overly deferential toward it or totally hostile to it.
I’ll primarily be looking for three things: a clearly defined and argumentative thesis; formal, analytic language; and a detailed analysis of the thesis and its implications using specific textual evidence from your sources. For citations, use MLA style (a works cited list with in-text citations). Bring a rough draft of ~2 pages for 1/30 and 2/6. The final is due 2/13 by 12pm.
For more information on MLA, see here.
Basic summary of MLA: It consists of a Works Cited list starting on the top of a separate page at the end of the paper, which contains all the various sources you refer to in the body of the paper AND ONLY those sources that you refer to directly--don't include works that you have read but do not quote from, paraphrase, or cite as evidence. To cite paraphrases, just place the author's last name and the page number at the end of the sentence in parentheses, with the period outside the parentheses [example (Freud 8)]. For quotes, just add in quotation marks around the direct quotation and place the citation again in parentheses at the end of the sentence. If you refer to the author in the sentence and are not referencing a specific page, then you do not need an in-text citation beyond the mention of the name.
The basic rule-of-thumb for MLA is to give as much information in the Works Cited as needed so that a reader can find your source (author, title, publisher, date of publication, title of publication if the work appears in a journal or magazine or newspaper, translator, etc.); for the in-text citations, list only as much information as needed to find the source in the list at the end of the paper. The custom is to start with author's last name and page number, then add a shortened version of the title, and finally a first initial if there is still confusion.
So: (Freud 8), (Freud, Dreams 8), and (S. Freud, Dreams 8) would be how we would provide an in-text citation for the following entry in a works cited list:
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Ed. and Trans. by James Strachey.
New York: Avon, 1998.
1. Compare and contrast the ideas of two different theorists we have read, and develop a thesis that shows how they arrive at different conclusions regarding a similar topic or question. Focus on defining the boundaries of the debate as narrowly as possible, and indicating how subtle differences in assumptions, tone, focus, and approach lead to larger and more significant differences in outcomes. Don’t worry about explaining everything about their ideas. This isn’t a report, but rather a paper focused on developing your own argument that explores the implications of a debate between other thinkers. An easy way to approach this paper would be to pick a quote from each writer and focus your paper entirely on showing the important differences that develop from the ideas each writer expresses in those quotes.
2. Apply some of the ideas we have been discussing to current events. Pick an idea or two from a writer or two and attempt to explain what these show about a contemporary debate in current affairs. What would Hobbes say about the way we finance pharmaceutical research, for example. What would Mandeville think of restrictions on immigration? These are just a few examples of what you could write about. You could also combine this with option 1 and write about differences in how classical theorists might explain contemporary events. Again, your focus here will be on defining exactly how each author understands these issues, and the implications of these differences for their conclusions.
3. Pick a provocative quote from one writer we have read and explain why it is significant for his argument. Does it reveal something essential that we otherwise would easily overlook? If you had a strong reaction to something one of the writers we read claimed, try to formulate in a more formal, analytic language what that is and then explain the nature of your reaction. What larger implications does this quote present?
Whatever option you pick, or whether or not you pick one of the above options, try to avoid falling into the twin dangers of offering a book report or a harsh polemic. Avoid opinionated language like “I think,” “I believe,” “is wrong,” “is right,” “is good,” “is bad,” “contradicts him/herself,” etc. Also avoid summarizing or listing a series of facts without connecting them back to your thesis or explaining why they are important. The easiest way to do this is to present a clear thesis that empathetically approaches your subject matter without becoming either overly deferential toward it or totally hostile to it.
I’ll primarily be looking for three things: a clearly defined and argumentative thesis; formal, analytic language; and a detailed analysis of the thesis and its implications using specific textual evidence from your sources. For citations, use MLA style (a works cited list with in-text citations). Bring a rough draft of ~2 pages for 1/30 and 2/6. The final is due 2/13 by 12pm.
For more information on MLA, see here.
Basic summary of MLA: It consists of a Works Cited list starting on the top of a separate page at the end of the paper, which contains all the various sources you refer to in the body of the paper AND ONLY those sources that you refer to directly--don't include works that you have read but do not quote from, paraphrase, or cite as evidence. To cite paraphrases, just place the author's last name and the page number at the end of the sentence in parentheses, with the period outside the parentheses [example (Freud 8)]. For quotes, just add in quotation marks around the direct quotation and place the citation again in parentheses at the end of the sentence. If you refer to the author in the sentence and are not referencing a specific page, then you do not need an in-text citation beyond the mention of the name.
The basic rule-of-thumb for MLA is to give as much information in the Works Cited as needed so that a reader can find your source (author, title, publisher, date of publication, title of publication if the work appears in a journal or magazine or newspaper, translator, etc.); for the in-text citations, list only as much information as needed to find the source in the list at the end of the paper. The custom is to start with author's last name and page number, then add a shortened version of the title, and finally a first initial if there is still confusion.
So: (Freud 8), (Freud, Dreams 8), and (S. Freud, Dreams 8) would be how we would provide an in-text citation for the following entry in a works cited list:
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Ed. and Trans. by James Strachey.
New York: Avon, 1998.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Blog post for 1.28
Hey All,
Our first lead blogger is RJ, and his post on the worth of college can be found here.
For next week, please write your own entries in response and post them on your individual blogs by Wednesday. You can relate your post to the subject in any way you choose. The main thing to focus on is productively advancing the conversation. Carve out an an aspect of the topic that interests you. Locate a set of compelling questions or problems and start to explore them, working toward clarifying some ideas and laying the groundwork for eventually building a claim or thesis. We will discuss this topic Wednesday, so think of yourself as preparing to add a contribution that helps broaden and deepen our upcoming classroom discussions.
Our first lead blogger is RJ, and his post on the worth of college can be found here.
For next week, please write your own entries in response and post them on your individual blogs by Wednesday. You can relate your post to the subject in any way you choose. The main thing to focus on is productively advancing the conversation. Carve out an an aspect of the topic that interests you. Locate a set of compelling questions or problems and start to explore them, working toward clarifying some ideas and laying the groundwork for eventually building a claim or thesis. We will discuss this topic Wednesday, so think of yourself as preparing to add a contribution that helps broaden and deepen our upcoming classroom discussions.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
The books store angers me still...
Here's a scan of the reading for tomorrow. Let's hope I don't have to do this again for Friday...
Also, don't forget your blog posts for tomorrow!
Image source: libcom.com (via Monty Python).
UPDATE: Just checked, and the books are in! Go get 'em, and go at those blog posts!
 |
| ...or soon they will feel my wrath... |
Image source: libcom.com (via Monty Python).
UPDATE: Just checked, and the books are in! Go get 'em, and go at those blog posts!
Student blogroll
RJ: http://rjsblogfurman.blogspot.com/
Tucker: http://tuckeratfurman.blogspot.com/
Sydney: http://sydneymwright.blogspot.com
John: http://JohnMajorStumpfsblog.Blogspot.com
Daniel: http://whatdanielbutlerthinks.blogspot.com
Isaac: http://icantread.blog.com
Brady: http://xxseminarxx.blogspot.com
Matthew: http://matthewfywblog.blogspot.com/
Hana: http://HanaLepore.blogspot.com
Jack: http://jackrottysblog.blogspot.com/
Kat: http://katharineolson.blogspot.com/
Image source: MAPH student blog
Tucker: http://tuckeratfurman.blogspot.com/
Sydney: http://sydneymwright.blogspot.com
John: http://JohnMajorStumpfsblog.Blogspot.com
Daniel: http://whatdanielbutlerthinks.blogspot.com
Isaac: http://icantread.blog.com
Brady: http://xxseminarxx.blogspot.com
Matthew: http://matthewfywblog.blogspot.com/
Hana: http://HanaLepore.blogspot.com
Jack: http://jackrottysblog.blogspot.com/
Kat: http://katharineolson.blogspot.com/
Image source: MAPH student blog
Friday, January 16, 2015
Blogroll: The Endless Possibilities of Blogging--And Our First Blogging Assignment
To this end, let me share a few different blogs and blog posts that demonstrate the range of possible topics and approaches that this very versatile genre supports. While of course you are always welcome to blog about current events in the worlds of politics, economics, and international relations, you shouldn't feel that you have to blog about these topics. If you do write about them, I ask that you avoid the hot-button issues whenever possible--abortion, gun control, affirmative action, etc.--and that you think beyond the standard political framing of such issues. So, for example, if you are writing about monetary policy, and you find that many people of your ideological persuasion oppose a certain Fed action, instead of adopting the party line, try writing about the reasons why this policy might appeal to people of your ideological persuasion. In other words: scramble the circuits of the standard talking points.
Some models:
Here is an example of a fun post on a very dry topic--typography.
This post is a smart and silly critique of the inanities of popular culture.
Here's an example of a music review of an old album of an old band from my hometown that more or less became The Shins.
Of course, best and worst lists can always be a fun way to do a blog post.
You can go with something light and silly on college life or other close-to-home topics. Hey, it may seem a bit informal, but it actually does a very nice job of closely analyzing the language in the emails, albeit in a goofy way.
And of course, you can always try to elevate the dialogue when it comes to current events.
In addition to blogs like the above, you can also check out these wonderful blogs on more traditional political/economic-y subjects.
Liberal/neoliberal blogs:
Paul Krugman
Brad DeLong
Dean Baker
Wonkblog
Vox.com
Libertarian/classical liberal blogs:
Scott Sumner (there's an excellent blogroll in the right hand corner)
Tyler Cowen
Arnold Kling et al. (also has an excellent blogroll to the right)
Will Wilkinson
Bleeding heart libertarians
Cafe Hayek
Conservative/Conservative-friendly blogs:
Reihan Salam
Josh Barro
The American Conservative (My personal favorite conservative publication)
Andrew Sullivan (Actually an apostate who still has a soft spot for the old ways)
Gavin McInness (A silly blogger, but can be fun)
Marxist/Marxist-friendly/Left-leaning blogs:
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Mike Konczal
Doug Henwood
Crooked Timber
Jacobin Magazine
Corey Robin
Max Speak (another good blogroll)
Image source: Poolbusinessmarketing.com
Monday, January 12, 2015
Lead blogger sign up sheet
Please choose a date you would like to serve as the lead blogger and leave it in a comment on this post. Dates will be assigned on a first come, first served basis. The dates below refer to the Friday that the blogpost and related links are due. The class will respond to your post by the following Wednesday, and students should read each others' posts by the next Friday's class.
Jan 23: RJ
Jan 30: John
Feb 6: Matthew
Feb 13: Sydney
Feb 20:
Feb 27: Jack
March 6 (Post due before Spring break--will discuss and post responses week after break): Kat
March 20: Hana
March 27: Isaac
April 3: Daniel
April 10: Tucker
April 17: Brady
Jan 23: RJ
Jan 30: John
Feb 6: Matthew
Feb 13: Sydney
Feb 20:
Feb 27: Jack
March 6 (Post due before Spring break--will discuss and post responses week after break): Kat
March 20: Hana
March 27: Isaac
April 3: Daniel
April 10: Tucker
April 17: Brady
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Welcome! Here is our online course schedule.
Note: The readings for Monday and sometimes Friday are generally set,
while the readings for Wednesday are “to be determined” after the first few
weeks. The lead blogger for a week will choose a topic, post at least one
substantive outside reading on the subject, and create an in-depth blog post by
the previous Friday. From time to time I may move readings around or replace
them to more closely coincide with the class’s current interests. Watch the
blog for these updates.
Smith = The Essential Adam Smith
Marx = The Marx-Engels Reader
Week
1: Intro – What is “The Market” anyway?
M Jan 12: Introduction
W 14: Read Dean Baker, The End of Loser Liberalism
(Chapter 1) and Matt Yglesias.
Create a blog and send me the link by the end of the week.
F 16: Read Hobbes (chapters
XIII-XV – skim other chapters if you have time) and Mandeville ("An Enquiry Into the Origin of Moral Virtue"--for
some helpful background, read the entry on Mandeville in the Dictionary of National Biography).
Week
2 – Precursors
M 19: MLK day. No class.
F 23: Read this
and Nancy Sommers.
Read Smith, 118-123, 321-325. Make sure you are following class blog.
Week
3 – Feelings and value
W 28: Reading TBA. Post first response to lead
blogger’s post and readings by Wednesday’s class.
F 30: Bring in rough draft of paper 1.
Week
4 – Mercantilism, morality, regulation
W 4: Reading TBA.
Week
5 – Marx as a reader of Smith
M 9: Read Marx, 236-250.
W 11: Reading TBA.
F 13:
Possible library day or writing workshop. Paper
1 due by class time.
Week
6 – The Problem of Capital
M 16: Read Marx, 351-367.
W 18: Reading TBA.
Week
7 – Smith as Early Critic of Capital
M 23: Read Smith, 227-248.
W 25: Reading TBA.
Week
8: Topics fair
M March 2: Paper
2 due by class time. Short presentations.
W 4: Reading TBA. Short presentations.
Week
9 – Spring break
M 9: No class. Spring break.
W 11: No class.
F 13: No class.
Week
10 – Wealth and Poverty
W 18: Reading TBA.
F 20: No
class. Instructor away at conference. Writing workshop or possible library
day.
Week
11 – Utopian and practical thinking.
M 23: Read
Marx (piece actually by Engels), 683-694.
W 25: Reading TBA.
Week
12 – Other matters
M 30: Read Smith, 248-258.
W April 1: Reading TBA. Paper 3 due by class time.
F 3: Easter break. No class.
Week
13 – Taking stock
M 6: Easter break.
W 8: Reading TBA.
F 10: Read Marx, 193-200, 291-293.
Week
14 – Finishing touches
M 13: Read Smith, 269-284.
W 15: Reading TBA.
Week
15 – Almost there
M 20: Read Smith, 290-310. Bring in rough draft.
W 22: Reading TBA. Peer editing/workshopping.
F 24: Read Marx, 522-534. Peer
editing/workshopping.
Week
16
M 27: Last day of class. No final exam.
W 29: Study day. Final paper due Thursday, April 30th at 12pm.
F May 1: Exams.
Monday, December 9, 2013
The Three Separations: A Manifesto for Socialism in the Age of Neoliberalism (final draft)
While Marxism and socialism have enjoyed a noteworthy revival in the years since the 2008 financial crisis, this resurgence has not produced a widely accepted blueprint for a new economic order. My claim in this paper is that implementing the visionary hopes emerging from a resurgent left does not require any radical new policy ideas. Indeed, while I will argue for a version of so-called "market socialism," I differ from many others in making the following explicit claim: it is perfectly possible to challenge capitalist hegemony without challenging neoliberal hegemony. As Dean Baker has persuasively shown, a great deal of what passes for "free market" policy really represents a type of government restriction of the free market. The case is no different with socialism: in a striking paper strangely overlooked by many socialists, Grant and Quiggin have argued that a simple analysis using mainstream, neoliberal economic assumptions suggest a much greater role for government ownership of the means of production.
This conclusion, furthermore, fits nicely with the analysis offered by the school of socialist thought sometimes called post-Marxism. The work of Ernesto Laclau in particular implies that what ultimately separates socialism from liberalism and social democracy, or really any political regime from any other, is not so much a set of concrete policies. Rather, it is the mere fact that such policies occur in an environment of socialist hegemony, something that is an effect of mechanisms for framing political debates as much as it is an effect of actual policies. In a similar vein, philosopher Slavoj Zizek has argued that being a communist today means, above all else, the simple commitment to keeping what belongs to the commons in the realm of the common: "The only sense in which we are Communists is that we care for the commons--the commons of nature, of knowledge--which are threatened by the system."
In a recent and influential piece, Jacobin writer Seth Ackerman offers a rudimentary vision of socialism that, while challenging the neoliberal consensus of recent years and not explicitly adopting a post-Marxist framework, suggests that concrete policies are crucial as much because they offer a means for assuaging leftist melancholy and self-doubt as because they actually map out an exclusive path forward: "a successful radical project has to appeal to every emotional register: not just those ecstatic moments when history opens up and everything seems possible, but also those pensive and critical moods when even inveterate optimists-of-the-will find doubt and reflection taking over." What Ackerman does not fully articulate, though, is the degree to which even the most ruthlessly mainstream and pessimistic neoliberal framework already contains its own subversion when simply looked at in the right way. This becomes clear when examining the uncanny proximity of Ackerman's own proposal to Grant and Quiggin's plan to create a kind of nationalized hedge fund for managing the assets of programs like Social Security.
For this reason, the plan I will articulate for achieving socialism is, in a sense, rather conservative: it essentially leaves in place the current free market, free enterprise system of private ownership of the means of production while building a socialist structure of public ownership and social egalitarianism on top of it. The way to achieve this is simple: if socialism in the strong sense means that the government owns the means of production, then the government should simply buy the means of production.
Separation One: Ownership and Management
The work of Grant and Quiggan suggests that a strong market signal in favor of socialism already exists: the so-called equity premium. This phenomenon, discussed perhaps most famously in a paper by Merha and Prescott, refers to the long-standing mystery in financial economics that government securities consistently pay much lower returns relative to private investments than many models would predict. While there are a variety of attempts to explain this anomaly, one possible interpretation is that this imbalance exists because of the artificial intervention into the market preventing the government from borrowing cheaply in order to lend dearly. Any private bank that could borrow money on such favorable terms would be reaping these rewards by purchasing assets that yield higher returns.
However, in this case, following through on this relatively straightforward market logic leads to a conclusion that most who profess love for that same market logic find extremely unsettling: namely, that governments should nationalize the means of production. Although Grant and Quiggin do not style themselves as radicals like Ackerman, they nonetheless endorse this very conclusion, at least to an extent: "Next we consider the possibility of public ownership of equity and show that, other things being equal, increases in public ownership financed by government borrowing (that is, by selling government bonds) will improve welfare, up to the point where the equity premium is eliminated" (3). It is perhaps telling that mainstream economics, upon demonstrating that a type of socialism is indeed not only feasible but perhaps prescribed by mainstream economic principles, places this point second in the argument.
To be fair, one of the co-authors, John Quiggin, in a blog post does recognize the potential impact of his paper. He even references Marx in doing so: "To misquote Marx, the problem now is not to explain the equity premium but to derive its policy implications … Some of the implications reinforce common ideas … Other implications are more sup rising at least to those who have imbibed the current conventional wisdom … An immediate implication is that, other things (such as operational efficiency) being equal, privatisation will reduce welfare and nationalisation will increase it." Despite this interpretation, some socialists no doubt may object that this is really just a type of corporatism, or that it is a watered down version of the real thing. Indeed, the proposal would have to start out slow, and at first it would own a small portion of the means of production. As Ackerman notes, however, any economic system needs a way of allocating goods, creating new firms, and shutting down existing ones that are failing, and we should look at the market framework not so much as determinative of the ultimate nature of an economic system but as simply one possible means of allocating goods and services. Thus, Grant and Quiggin's proposal is indeed a form of socialism, even if the market is involved, because it quite literally argues that we should follow market signals in setting the level of socialism by continuing purchases "up to the point where the equity premium is eliminated."
The main concern these authors outline is that private management is ultimately more efficient than public control. Ackerman, too, raises a similar problem, and suggests that preserving firm autonomy would be necessary even with socialism. In other words, economic decisions, rather than political ones, would have to determine when a company is closed down. Grant and Quiggin indirectly provide a suggestion of how to avoid some of the problems of public ownership while getting the efficiency benefits of private management. In their article, they note that one possible policy is to "invest part of the Social Security fund in equities while maintaining the defined-benefit character of the scheme" (1). Essentially, an investment fund, modeled on a private bank, could take investments from Social Security and other public pension funds at various levels of government. To ensure safety and efficiency, these funds could be modeled on index funds and other funds that invest in an entire class of assets, thus eliminating the need for active management and the high salaries that those who manage such funds command. Because much of the money invested would come from from borrowing (selling bonds), this fund could take advantage of the higher returns that were once available only to select institutions like banks, and because these privileges are often implicitly underwritten by the taxpayer, the public would finally be taking advantage of the privilege doled out to special interest groups at its own expense. It would even be possible to use direct democracy to manage these public funds: because the people as a whole would be the shareholders, they arguably would have the right to vote on top management, just like individual shareholders do today.
Separation Two: Consumption and Ownership
This program, of course, would still leave a substantial amount of the means of production in private hands for the foreseeable future, even if it eventually resulted in the government owning the majority of the means of production. For this reason, there will no doubt be some socialists who object that this is not really a form of socialism at all. This is a reasonable objection, but I would actually argue just the opposite: even in the absence of such a policy, it would be possible to implement a version of socialism. This is where hegemony, the essence of Laclau's post-Marxist socialism, becomes crucial: even if the government attained nominal ownership of the means of production, it is not at all unthinkable that nothing could really change in the economy. The government would be under no obligation to pay out more generous public benefits as dividends, and top executives could easily continue to command outsized salaries, further exacerbating inequality--indeed, it is not difficult to imagine that the managers of the government fund might receive similar compensation.
This difficulty leads to the next and, arguably, more crucial separation that socialists should fight for: the separation of private ownership from private consumption, something that can be achieved through tax policy, specifically a progressive consumption tax. The notion of the progressive consumption tax is beginning to gain favor with both the liberal left and the right. The attraction for the liberal left is that it allows the government to raise a large amount of money in an economically efficient way; the attraction for the right is that it eliminates taxes on capital gains while encouraging the type of savings and investment that drives long term economic growth (Frank). From a socialist point of view, the attraction is less that it would raise a large amount of revenue per se and more that it would encourage a social norm of equality: while there would still be a right for individuals to own private capital, a strongly progressive consumption tax would, in practice, make it much more difficult to use this wealth to fuel luxurious lifestyles. As Frank notes, it would be possible to have very high rates of taxation on consumption without necessarily harming the economy.
Even in the absence of any direct purchase of the means of production, a progressive consumption tax could arguably achieve results even more attractive for socialists than the former policy. It would not nationalize the means of production, but it would create a kind of public utility model for private ownership of capital as such, one in which the individual benefits to capitalists and high level managers would be controlled, in a process that would also raise government revenues for more general welfare benefits. Combined with a much higher level of government ownership of wealth, this combination of outright government ownership and the private utility model of capital ownership would help to maintain the type of competitive capital market with a multitude of participants that would be necessary for maintaining efficiency in the government owned sector.
Other taxes, too, could and should be implemented as much for their disincentive effects as for the actual revenue they raise. From the perspective of ensuring socialist hegemony in the form of norms promoting equality, reducing consumption at the higher end of the income scale is arguably much more important than raising taxes per se on the rich without regard to whether that tax hits investment or consumption. Another top tax priority that would have a powerful effect on social norms would be to implement a series of taxes that are not only economically efficient but perhaps even necessary for our survival: I am thinking of, first and foremost, a carbon tax, one that was sufficiently high to reduce carbon emissions the requisite amount. After this, we could consider some other types of consumption tax: taxes on other forms of pollution, processed food, alcohol and tobacco, newly legal marijuana, traffic congestion, natural resources, land rents, and so on. All of these taxes are economically efficient and will raise money, but, especially when looked at from a global perspective, because such things are disproportionally associated with affluence, they will further limit consumption at the higher levels of the income scale.
Finally, although actively articulating these policies as explicitly socialist aims is crucial, the actual effects themselves are also consistent with the aims of equality. Indeed, they are arguably more consistent with these aims than standard, soak-the-rich progressive and social democratic policies. Libertarian economists like Scott Sumner who have a serious and genuine commitment to redistribution and equality rightly point out that in order to actually redistribute resources, it is necessary to discourage consumption at the high end while also encouraging investment: as others consume less, those resources become available for redistribution, and as investments come on line, the additional productive capacity necessary for a higher total level of consumption also gradually emerges (Sumner, "You Can't Redistribute Income"). The next section will discuss redistribution policies that not only create equality in an efficient way but that also encourage the type of norms that will further cement socialist hegemony.
Separation Three: Work and the Labor Market
Just as government ownership of the means of production through market socialism would not necessarily encourage equality, so an implicit ceiling on consumption at the top, enforced through norms, taxes, and perhaps eventually a hard cap on annual consumption, would only work toward reducing inequality at the top end of the scale. It would still be quite possible for those at the lower end to fall behind. A floor on consumption is therefore perhaps even more urgently necessary than a ceiling (however, the revenues from the taxes that enforce the ceiling are necessary to help fund the floor, so these last two at least function symbiotically). If the second separation aims at proletarianizing the capitalist class, gradually blurring class divisions by transforming ownership into a type of labor (management), on the other end of the spectrum the next separation seeks to blur the boundary in the other direction by ownerizing the proletarians, that is, ensuring a set level of compensation regardless of access to the labor market.
What this means, in practice, is recognizing that a job, and the secure compensation it offers, is not a naturally occurring product of the labor market. A variety of tax incentives, for example, create what we think of as a "good job": tax breaks on employer provided health insurance, and regulations affecting the way this health insurance works, ensure that employees in certain circumstances receive the total package that we think of as a good job. While arguably these benefits could be replaced by cash payments, cash payments would not replicate the implicit social insurance that exists in things like employer provided health insurance. Until the recent Affordable Care Act, the group insurance market was the area of the economy where insurance had to accept all people regardless of pre-existing conditions. A "good job," then, is more than the sum of its costs: in many cases it would be impossible for individuals to buy a similar benefit even if they were given the fair market value of those benefits in the form of a cash grant.
A job, then, is something akin to a type of social insurance, a deliberate policy creation of relatively recent origins, and to ensure equality at the lower end of the income scale, it is simply necessary to extend much more broadly the type of social insurance that transforms labor into jobs and, ideally, into meaningful work. The first step in this process of separating the jobs people have from those that the labor market produces is, paradoxically, to encourage a vigorous and robust labor market. Separating jobs from the labor market is not the same as interfering with the latter: indeed, part of the process of expanding comprehensive job insurance is to encourage a vigorous and free labor market. This will help to ensure that the labor market on its own does as much as it possibly can to raise labor up to the standard of work and jobs.
Many leftists have been critical of using the Federal Reserve as a means to address the recent failure of the labor market out of a sense that the goal should be to transcend the vicissitudes of the labor market altogether. They argue that to emphasize Fed stimulus is to remove the labor market from the realm of politics, and to reduce the struggle for meaningful work to a mere technical macroeconomic fluke. This is an enormous mistake. It will be much easier to extend forms of social insurance to laborers if there is already a healthy labor market. We should see a vigorous labor market, then, as a necessary but not sufficient condition of creating meaningful work: it facilitates, rather than preempts, more fundamental reforms. Indeed, as Christina Romer has argued, the vast majority of the recovery from the Great Depression was a product of monetary policy, not fiscal policy. The political boost that a very quick economic recovery provided--a boost or jolt that monetary policy is uniquely suited to provide--laid the political groundwork for the later successes of the New Deal.
The best way to establish stable monetary policy that will encourage a robust job market is to adopt something like the NGDP level targeting regime advocated by Scott Sumner ("Retargeting"). It is important to recognize the very radical implications that the apparent humble technicality of this issue obscures: Sumner's proposal aims at nothing less than eliminating recessions as such. Getting behind this proposal is not something that just liberals and progressives should be interested in doing; it should be a core socialist goal. While ending recessions could go a long way toward raising the standards of the labor market part of the way up to the standards of meaningful work and that highly unnatural social construction we call a job, it no doubt will not go all of the way there. The other part of the task will be to boost wages. The minimum wage is a great way to do this, and in an influential paper, Card and Krueger found that modest increases in the minimum wage do not lead to increases in unemployment.
Of course, this too will not be able to go all the way to creating meaningful work. To further this end, expanding wage subsidies such as the earned income tax credit and establishing a universal basic income will go a long way to furthering this separation. Finally, for those who still have difficulty finding work, implementing a government jobs program on a permanent basis will help to further eliminate any additional uncertainty associated with the labor market. The logic here, again, should not be that of intervening in the market but rather instituting free market reforms: by raising the minimum wage, we make sure that taxpayers are not subsidizing employers who do not pay their workers a living wage; by replacing paternalistic programs with wage subsidies, we combat bureaucracy and regulations that intrude into the lives of benefit recipients; and by removing the current restrictions on allowing the government to hire as many people as need work, we ensure that society can benefit from the work that these individuals are no doubt already doing, while also ensuring that society receives additional benefits for the support it is already paying--in some form or other--to these individuals. In all cases, these policies not only increase employment and improve job quality, but they also ensure strong norms that raise the social status of all work. One interpretation of Card and Krueger is that the level of the minimum wage is more a political than an economic question. Even if the minimum wage is a relatively inefficient way to alleviate poverty, raising it still creates a strong social norm for improving the status of all forms of work.
Conclusion: It's the Economic Norms, Stupid!
For too long, socialists and the left have concentrated on all-or-nothing plans. This ensured that if the left did not get everything, it did not get anything. Instead, socialists should concentrate on "nothing is all" planning: ensuring that any movement forward on any of these plans--including simply talking about these ideas more, and talking about them in an explicitly socialist context--is already to move the plan as a whole forward. This is small-c conservative politics in the best, Burkean sense of the term: through what may appear to be gradual, imperceptible changes, the totality of society slowly alters, until one day it becomes clear that we had been on the path to a brand new order all along. Norms, values, and customs, rather than explicit changes to policies, are the key movers of this small-c conservative politics, and the left has too long let the right monopolize these extremely powerful forces. To put this otherwise, once people think about themselves as socialists, and think about the norms that define their lives in socialist terms, even small changes can become extremely radical. The goal above all else for socialists should be to encourage ways of acting, speaking, and thinking that cement the social norm and precedent that any form of property with a common character--the environment, ideas, public institutions, and of course capital itself--should function as a public trust, even if and when it is nominally privately owned.
Finally, and perhaps most unexpectedly, this proposal could have broad appeal beyond the traditional left, for the simple reason that many of the ideas here come from non-socialists. Quiggin defines himself as a social democrat, but the progressive consumption tax is supported by economists and policy analysts both left and right; NGDP targeting is supported primarily by libertarians, as well as by some right-leaning thinkers; and Charles Murray, of all people, recently came out in support of a basic income. Of course, it is certain that as these views become increasingly associated with socialism, this support will begin to vanish. That is not only expected but perhaps desirable. Nonetheless, anyone who truly values free markets and neoliberal thinking more than capitalism itself will find something to like in this plan.
Indeed, ironically, the path to socialism in an international context will now run through many of the supply-side reforms supported by many on the right, because these reforms tend to strengthen the economic and political infrastructure that make an equity premium emerge in the first place. Furthermore, by placing entitlement programs on a sound financial footing and connecting their funding to the equities market, the plan also gives the population a direct interest in an efficient, productive economy. As with all people who suddenly find themselves with newfound wealth, the population will become much less susceptible to a cruder and more inefficient form of populist economic appeal: if the people own the means of production, they can always take advantage of them; but as their owners, they will recognize that, just as with any investment, it is wise to avoid drawing upon it as much as possible. As our friends on the right are quick to remind us, it is the owner who has the biggest interest of all in the wellbeing and success of the enterprise. Taking this observation to its limit, socialism becomes the ultimate pro-market, pro-enterprise neoliberal reform.
Works Cited
Ackerman, Seth. "The Red and the Black." Jacobin 9 (December 2012): n.p. Web.
Baker, Dean. The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. Washington: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2011. Web.
Card, David and Alan Krueger. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania." American Economic Review 84.4 (September 1994): 772-93. Web.
Frank, Robert. "Progressive Consumption Tax." Democracy Journal 8 (2008): n.p. Web.
Grant, Simon and John Quiggin. "Public Investment and the Risk Premium for Equity."Economica 70 (2003): 1-18.
Laclau, Ernesto. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (New York: Verso, 2001). Print.
Quiggin, John. "The Equity Premium: Puzzle and Policy." John Quiggin. John Quiggin, 5 March 2003. Web. 25 November 2013.
Mehra, Rajnish and Edward C. Prescott. "The Equity Premium: A Puzzle." Journal of Monetary Economics 15 (1985): 145-161. Web.
Romer, Christina D. "What Ended the Great Depression." The Journal of Economic History 52.4 (December 1992): 757-84. Web.
Sumner, Scott. "You Can't Redistribute Income." The Money Illusion. The Money Illusion, 26 July 2011. Web. 25 November 2013.
--. "Retargeting the Fed." National Affairs 9 (Fall 2011): n. p. Web.
Zizek, Slavoj. "Slavoj Zizek at Occupy Wall Street." Blog post by Sarah Shin. Verso Blog. Verso, 10 Oct. 2011. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
This conclusion, furthermore, fits nicely with the analysis offered by the school of socialist thought sometimes called post-Marxism. The work of Ernesto Laclau in particular implies that what ultimately separates socialism from liberalism and social democracy, or really any political regime from any other, is not so much a set of concrete policies. Rather, it is the mere fact that such policies occur in an environment of socialist hegemony, something that is an effect of mechanisms for framing political debates as much as it is an effect of actual policies. In a similar vein, philosopher Slavoj Zizek has argued that being a communist today means, above all else, the simple commitment to keeping what belongs to the commons in the realm of the common: "The only sense in which we are Communists is that we care for the commons--the commons of nature, of knowledge--which are threatened by the system."
In a recent and influential piece, Jacobin writer Seth Ackerman offers a rudimentary vision of socialism that, while challenging the neoliberal consensus of recent years and not explicitly adopting a post-Marxist framework, suggests that concrete policies are crucial as much because they offer a means for assuaging leftist melancholy and self-doubt as because they actually map out an exclusive path forward: "a successful radical project has to appeal to every emotional register: not just those ecstatic moments when history opens up and everything seems possible, but also those pensive and critical moods when even inveterate optimists-of-the-will find doubt and reflection taking over." What Ackerman does not fully articulate, though, is the degree to which even the most ruthlessly mainstream and pessimistic neoliberal framework already contains its own subversion when simply looked at in the right way. This becomes clear when examining the uncanny proximity of Ackerman's own proposal to Grant and Quiggin's plan to create a kind of nationalized hedge fund for managing the assets of programs like Social Security.
For this reason, the plan I will articulate for achieving socialism is, in a sense, rather conservative: it essentially leaves in place the current free market, free enterprise system of private ownership of the means of production while building a socialist structure of public ownership and social egalitarianism on top of it. The way to achieve this is simple: if socialism in the strong sense means that the government owns the means of production, then the government should simply buy the means of production.
Separation One: Ownership and Management
The work of Grant and Quiggan suggests that a strong market signal in favor of socialism already exists: the so-called equity premium. This phenomenon, discussed perhaps most famously in a paper by Merha and Prescott, refers to the long-standing mystery in financial economics that government securities consistently pay much lower returns relative to private investments than many models would predict. While there are a variety of attempts to explain this anomaly, one possible interpretation is that this imbalance exists because of the artificial intervention into the market preventing the government from borrowing cheaply in order to lend dearly. Any private bank that could borrow money on such favorable terms would be reaping these rewards by purchasing assets that yield higher returns.
However, in this case, following through on this relatively straightforward market logic leads to a conclusion that most who profess love for that same market logic find extremely unsettling: namely, that governments should nationalize the means of production. Although Grant and Quiggin do not style themselves as radicals like Ackerman, they nonetheless endorse this very conclusion, at least to an extent: "Next we consider the possibility of public ownership of equity and show that, other things being equal, increases in public ownership financed by government borrowing (that is, by selling government bonds) will improve welfare, up to the point where the equity premium is eliminated" (3). It is perhaps telling that mainstream economics, upon demonstrating that a type of socialism is indeed not only feasible but perhaps prescribed by mainstream economic principles, places this point second in the argument.
To be fair, one of the co-authors, John Quiggin, in a blog post does recognize the potential impact of his paper. He even references Marx in doing so: "To misquote Marx, the problem now is not to explain the equity premium but to derive its policy implications … Some of the implications reinforce common ideas … Other implications are more sup rising at least to those who have imbibed the current conventional wisdom … An immediate implication is that, other things (such as operational efficiency) being equal, privatisation will reduce welfare and nationalisation will increase it." Despite this interpretation, some socialists no doubt may object that this is really just a type of corporatism, or that it is a watered down version of the real thing. Indeed, the proposal would have to start out slow, and at first it would own a small portion of the means of production. As Ackerman notes, however, any economic system needs a way of allocating goods, creating new firms, and shutting down existing ones that are failing, and we should look at the market framework not so much as determinative of the ultimate nature of an economic system but as simply one possible means of allocating goods and services. Thus, Grant and Quiggin's proposal is indeed a form of socialism, even if the market is involved, because it quite literally argues that we should follow market signals in setting the level of socialism by continuing purchases "up to the point where the equity premium is eliminated."
The main concern these authors outline is that private management is ultimately more efficient than public control. Ackerman, too, raises a similar problem, and suggests that preserving firm autonomy would be necessary even with socialism. In other words, economic decisions, rather than political ones, would have to determine when a company is closed down. Grant and Quiggin indirectly provide a suggestion of how to avoid some of the problems of public ownership while getting the efficiency benefits of private management. In their article, they note that one possible policy is to "invest part of the Social Security fund in equities while maintaining the defined-benefit character of the scheme" (1). Essentially, an investment fund, modeled on a private bank, could take investments from Social Security and other public pension funds at various levels of government. To ensure safety and efficiency, these funds could be modeled on index funds and other funds that invest in an entire class of assets, thus eliminating the need for active management and the high salaries that those who manage such funds command. Because much of the money invested would come from from borrowing (selling bonds), this fund could take advantage of the higher returns that were once available only to select institutions like banks, and because these privileges are often implicitly underwritten by the taxpayer, the public would finally be taking advantage of the privilege doled out to special interest groups at its own expense. It would even be possible to use direct democracy to manage these public funds: because the people as a whole would be the shareholders, they arguably would have the right to vote on top management, just like individual shareholders do today.
Separation Two: Consumption and Ownership
This program, of course, would still leave a substantial amount of the means of production in private hands for the foreseeable future, even if it eventually resulted in the government owning the majority of the means of production. For this reason, there will no doubt be some socialists who object that this is not really a form of socialism at all. This is a reasonable objection, but I would actually argue just the opposite: even in the absence of such a policy, it would be possible to implement a version of socialism. This is where hegemony, the essence of Laclau's post-Marxist socialism, becomes crucial: even if the government attained nominal ownership of the means of production, it is not at all unthinkable that nothing could really change in the economy. The government would be under no obligation to pay out more generous public benefits as dividends, and top executives could easily continue to command outsized salaries, further exacerbating inequality--indeed, it is not difficult to imagine that the managers of the government fund might receive similar compensation.
This difficulty leads to the next and, arguably, more crucial separation that socialists should fight for: the separation of private ownership from private consumption, something that can be achieved through tax policy, specifically a progressive consumption tax. The notion of the progressive consumption tax is beginning to gain favor with both the liberal left and the right. The attraction for the liberal left is that it allows the government to raise a large amount of money in an economically efficient way; the attraction for the right is that it eliminates taxes on capital gains while encouraging the type of savings and investment that drives long term economic growth (Frank). From a socialist point of view, the attraction is less that it would raise a large amount of revenue per se and more that it would encourage a social norm of equality: while there would still be a right for individuals to own private capital, a strongly progressive consumption tax would, in practice, make it much more difficult to use this wealth to fuel luxurious lifestyles. As Frank notes, it would be possible to have very high rates of taxation on consumption without necessarily harming the economy.
Even in the absence of any direct purchase of the means of production, a progressive consumption tax could arguably achieve results even more attractive for socialists than the former policy. It would not nationalize the means of production, but it would create a kind of public utility model for private ownership of capital as such, one in which the individual benefits to capitalists and high level managers would be controlled, in a process that would also raise government revenues for more general welfare benefits. Combined with a much higher level of government ownership of wealth, this combination of outright government ownership and the private utility model of capital ownership would help to maintain the type of competitive capital market with a multitude of participants that would be necessary for maintaining efficiency in the government owned sector.
Other taxes, too, could and should be implemented as much for their disincentive effects as for the actual revenue they raise. From the perspective of ensuring socialist hegemony in the form of norms promoting equality, reducing consumption at the higher end of the income scale is arguably much more important than raising taxes per se on the rich without regard to whether that tax hits investment or consumption. Another top tax priority that would have a powerful effect on social norms would be to implement a series of taxes that are not only economically efficient but perhaps even necessary for our survival: I am thinking of, first and foremost, a carbon tax, one that was sufficiently high to reduce carbon emissions the requisite amount. After this, we could consider some other types of consumption tax: taxes on other forms of pollution, processed food, alcohol and tobacco, newly legal marijuana, traffic congestion, natural resources, land rents, and so on. All of these taxes are economically efficient and will raise money, but, especially when looked at from a global perspective, because such things are disproportionally associated with affluence, they will further limit consumption at the higher levels of the income scale.
Finally, although actively articulating these policies as explicitly socialist aims is crucial, the actual effects themselves are also consistent with the aims of equality. Indeed, they are arguably more consistent with these aims than standard, soak-the-rich progressive and social democratic policies. Libertarian economists like Scott Sumner who have a serious and genuine commitment to redistribution and equality rightly point out that in order to actually redistribute resources, it is necessary to discourage consumption at the high end while also encouraging investment: as others consume less, those resources become available for redistribution, and as investments come on line, the additional productive capacity necessary for a higher total level of consumption also gradually emerges (Sumner, "You Can't Redistribute Income"). The next section will discuss redistribution policies that not only create equality in an efficient way but that also encourage the type of norms that will further cement socialist hegemony.
Separation Three: Work and the Labor Market
Just as government ownership of the means of production through market socialism would not necessarily encourage equality, so an implicit ceiling on consumption at the top, enforced through norms, taxes, and perhaps eventually a hard cap on annual consumption, would only work toward reducing inequality at the top end of the scale. It would still be quite possible for those at the lower end to fall behind. A floor on consumption is therefore perhaps even more urgently necessary than a ceiling (however, the revenues from the taxes that enforce the ceiling are necessary to help fund the floor, so these last two at least function symbiotically). If the second separation aims at proletarianizing the capitalist class, gradually blurring class divisions by transforming ownership into a type of labor (management), on the other end of the spectrum the next separation seeks to blur the boundary in the other direction by ownerizing the proletarians, that is, ensuring a set level of compensation regardless of access to the labor market.
What this means, in practice, is recognizing that a job, and the secure compensation it offers, is not a naturally occurring product of the labor market. A variety of tax incentives, for example, create what we think of as a "good job": tax breaks on employer provided health insurance, and regulations affecting the way this health insurance works, ensure that employees in certain circumstances receive the total package that we think of as a good job. While arguably these benefits could be replaced by cash payments, cash payments would not replicate the implicit social insurance that exists in things like employer provided health insurance. Until the recent Affordable Care Act, the group insurance market was the area of the economy where insurance had to accept all people regardless of pre-existing conditions. A "good job," then, is more than the sum of its costs: in many cases it would be impossible for individuals to buy a similar benefit even if they were given the fair market value of those benefits in the form of a cash grant.
A job, then, is something akin to a type of social insurance, a deliberate policy creation of relatively recent origins, and to ensure equality at the lower end of the income scale, it is simply necessary to extend much more broadly the type of social insurance that transforms labor into jobs and, ideally, into meaningful work. The first step in this process of separating the jobs people have from those that the labor market produces is, paradoxically, to encourage a vigorous and robust labor market. Separating jobs from the labor market is not the same as interfering with the latter: indeed, part of the process of expanding comprehensive job insurance is to encourage a vigorous and free labor market. This will help to ensure that the labor market on its own does as much as it possibly can to raise labor up to the standard of work and jobs.
Many leftists have been critical of using the Federal Reserve as a means to address the recent failure of the labor market out of a sense that the goal should be to transcend the vicissitudes of the labor market altogether. They argue that to emphasize Fed stimulus is to remove the labor market from the realm of politics, and to reduce the struggle for meaningful work to a mere technical macroeconomic fluke. This is an enormous mistake. It will be much easier to extend forms of social insurance to laborers if there is already a healthy labor market. We should see a vigorous labor market, then, as a necessary but not sufficient condition of creating meaningful work: it facilitates, rather than preempts, more fundamental reforms. Indeed, as Christina Romer has argued, the vast majority of the recovery from the Great Depression was a product of monetary policy, not fiscal policy. The political boost that a very quick economic recovery provided--a boost or jolt that monetary policy is uniquely suited to provide--laid the political groundwork for the later successes of the New Deal.
The best way to establish stable monetary policy that will encourage a robust job market is to adopt something like the NGDP level targeting regime advocated by Scott Sumner ("Retargeting"). It is important to recognize the very radical implications that the apparent humble technicality of this issue obscures: Sumner's proposal aims at nothing less than eliminating recessions as such. Getting behind this proposal is not something that just liberals and progressives should be interested in doing; it should be a core socialist goal. While ending recessions could go a long way toward raising the standards of the labor market part of the way up to the standards of meaningful work and that highly unnatural social construction we call a job, it no doubt will not go all of the way there. The other part of the task will be to boost wages. The minimum wage is a great way to do this, and in an influential paper, Card and Krueger found that modest increases in the minimum wage do not lead to increases in unemployment.
Of course, this too will not be able to go all the way to creating meaningful work. To further this end, expanding wage subsidies such as the earned income tax credit and establishing a universal basic income will go a long way to furthering this separation. Finally, for those who still have difficulty finding work, implementing a government jobs program on a permanent basis will help to further eliminate any additional uncertainty associated with the labor market. The logic here, again, should not be that of intervening in the market but rather instituting free market reforms: by raising the minimum wage, we make sure that taxpayers are not subsidizing employers who do not pay their workers a living wage; by replacing paternalistic programs with wage subsidies, we combat bureaucracy and regulations that intrude into the lives of benefit recipients; and by removing the current restrictions on allowing the government to hire as many people as need work, we ensure that society can benefit from the work that these individuals are no doubt already doing, while also ensuring that society receives additional benefits for the support it is already paying--in some form or other--to these individuals. In all cases, these policies not only increase employment and improve job quality, but they also ensure strong norms that raise the social status of all work. One interpretation of Card and Krueger is that the level of the minimum wage is more a political than an economic question. Even if the minimum wage is a relatively inefficient way to alleviate poverty, raising it still creates a strong social norm for improving the status of all forms of work.
Conclusion: It's the Economic Norms, Stupid!
For too long, socialists and the left have concentrated on all-or-nothing plans. This ensured that if the left did not get everything, it did not get anything. Instead, socialists should concentrate on "nothing is all" planning: ensuring that any movement forward on any of these plans--including simply talking about these ideas more, and talking about them in an explicitly socialist context--is already to move the plan as a whole forward. This is small-c conservative politics in the best, Burkean sense of the term: through what may appear to be gradual, imperceptible changes, the totality of society slowly alters, until one day it becomes clear that we had been on the path to a brand new order all along. Norms, values, and customs, rather than explicit changes to policies, are the key movers of this small-c conservative politics, and the left has too long let the right monopolize these extremely powerful forces. To put this otherwise, once people think about themselves as socialists, and think about the norms that define their lives in socialist terms, even small changes can become extremely radical. The goal above all else for socialists should be to encourage ways of acting, speaking, and thinking that cement the social norm and precedent that any form of property with a common character--the environment, ideas, public institutions, and of course capital itself--should function as a public trust, even if and when it is nominally privately owned.
Finally, and perhaps most unexpectedly, this proposal could have broad appeal beyond the traditional left, for the simple reason that many of the ideas here come from non-socialists. Quiggin defines himself as a social democrat, but the progressive consumption tax is supported by economists and policy analysts both left and right; NGDP targeting is supported primarily by libertarians, as well as by some right-leaning thinkers; and Charles Murray, of all people, recently came out in support of a basic income. Of course, it is certain that as these views become increasingly associated with socialism, this support will begin to vanish. That is not only expected but perhaps desirable. Nonetheless, anyone who truly values free markets and neoliberal thinking more than capitalism itself will find something to like in this plan.
Indeed, ironically, the path to socialism in an international context will now run through many of the supply-side reforms supported by many on the right, because these reforms tend to strengthen the economic and political infrastructure that make an equity premium emerge in the first place. Furthermore, by placing entitlement programs on a sound financial footing and connecting their funding to the equities market, the plan also gives the population a direct interest in an efficient, productive economy. As with all people who suddenly find themselves with newfound wealth, the population will become much less susceptible to a cruder and more inefficient form of populist economic appeal: if the people own the means of production, they can always take advantage of them; but as their owners, they will recognize that, just as with any investment, it is wise to avoid drawing upon it as much as possible. As our friends on the right are quick to remind us, it is the owner who has the biggest interest of all in the wellbeing and success of the enterprise. Taking this observation to its limit, socialism becomes the ultimate pro-market, pro-enterprise neoliberal reform.
Works Cited
Ackerman, Seth. "The Red and the Black." Jacobin 9 (December 2012): n.p. Web.
Baker, Dean. The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. Washington: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2011. Web.
Card, David and Alan Krueger. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania." American Economic Review 84.4 (September 1994): 772-93. Web.
Frank, Robert. "Progressive Consumption Tax." Democracy Journal 8 (2008): n.p. Web.
Grant, Simon and John Quiggin. "Public Investment and the Risk Premium for Equity."Economica 70 (2003): 1-18.
Laclau, Ernesto. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (New York: Verso, 2001). Print.
Quiggin, John. "The Equity Premium: Puzzle and Policy." John Quiggin. John Quiggin, 5 March 2003. Web. 25 November 2013.
Mehra, Rajnish and Edward C. Prescott. "The Equity Premium: A Puzzle." Journal of Monetary Economics 15 (1985): 145-161. Web.
Romer, Christina D. "What Ended the Great Depression." The Journal of Economic History 52.4 (December 1992): 757-84. Web.
Sumner, Scott. "You Can't Redistribute Income." The Money Illusion. The Money Illusion, 26 July 2011. Web. 25 November 2013.
--. "Retargeting the Fed." National Affairs 9 (Fall 2011): n. p. Web.
Zizek, Slavoj. "Slavoj Zizek at Occupy Wall Street." Blog post by Sarah Shin. Verso Blog. Verso, 10 Oct. 2011. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
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