The decline of the impartial spectator

That video of Allegra Stratton laughing about a Downing Street Christmas party last year shows that the government is taking for fools those who observed the law – even to the point that it meant leaving relatives to die alone. There is indeed “one law for us and another for them.”  

Naturally, this has aroused widespread anger. As Adam Smith wrote, “All men, even the most stupid and unthinking, abhor fraud, perfidy, and injustice, and delight to see them punished.”

This poses the question: what is the disease of which Stratton’s laughter is a symptom?

I ask because to someone formed in the 1980s the sight of a Tory showing contempt for the law is perplexing. Thatcher often and loudly proclaimed the importance of the rule of law; I can’t imagine her laughing about illegal parties in Downing Street. What we have here is another example of how today’s Tories are anti-Thatcherite.

Nor, I think, is it simply a matter of class difference. The Queen, famously, observed social distancing rules even during her husband’s funeral.

Instead, I want to suggest that this reflects something else, something found in Adam Smith.

We are, he wrote, naturally selfish: “we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men.” But, he said, this selfishness is restrained by an impartial spectator who lives within us – what others call conscience. It is this spectator who “shows us the propriety of generosity and the deformity of injustice”, and who reminds us that if we act unjustly we will “render ourselves the proper object of the contempt and indignation of our brethren.” The fear of such contempt keeps us honest, thought Smith. And even if our misdeeds go undetected by others, this “man within” will give us an “inward disgrace.”

D.D. Raphael summarized Smith’s theory thus:

The approval and disapproval of oneself that we call conscience is an effect of judgments made by spectators. Each of us judges others as a spectator. Each of us finds spectators judging him. We then come to judge our own conduct by imagining whether an impartial spectator would approve or disapprove of it (The Impartial Spectator p 34-5)

The fact that Stratton saw flagrant injustice as a matter for laughter rather than shame suggests that, within her, the impartial spectator is weak.

And not just in her. One purpose of the spectator, said Smith, was to remind us that “we value ourselves too much and other people too little.” But this over-valuation – what Smith called self-love – is evident in others: in Johnson attempting to place himself above the law;  in the Luckhurst’s contempt for their customers at Durham University*; in Rees-Mogg thinking the party was a laughing matter; or in Geoffrey Cox’s disregarding his constituents in favour of more lucrative employment. Indeed, we could see the cult of shareholder value and profit maximization as examples of capitalists generally acting in an anti-Smithian way, by “prefer[ring] the interest of one to that of many.”

And of course, if one’s peer group are pursuing self-love there is no shame in doing so oneself. What Smith considered to be a great restraint upon selfishness – fear of disgrace in the eyes of others – thus disappears.

But why is the impartial spectator so weak? I’d suggest three reasons.

One is the decline of religion. One difference between the Queen and Johnson is that she is religious, and has thereby acquired a greater sense of duty and (a Smithian word) propriety.

A second force is the rise of a perceived meritocracy. When he coined this word in 1958, Michael Young meant it as a warning:

If the rich and powerful were encouraged by the general culture to believe that they fully deserved all they had, how arrogant they could become, and, if they were convinced it was all for the common good, how ruthless in pursuing their own advantage. (The Rise of the Meritocracy, pxvi)

You might think that Stratton and her like have little merit. But that’s not the point. They think they have, and so become “insufferably smug” as Young predicted.

A third factor is that recent decades have seen an significant form of increased social distancing. For a long time, the ruling class was dominated by men who had done military service and so come into close contact with working class men – an experience which reminded them of their own good fortune and taught them respect for that class. For them, the “man within” at least occasionally spoke with the voice of a working-class soldier. The Times’ obituary of Lord Carrington wrote:

He found himself sleeping in a hole beneath his tank with his four crew who came from poor backgrounds and had suffered hardship during the pre-war years. The experience shaped his politics, he said later. “You could not have got a finer or better lot than they were. They deserved something better in the aftermath of the war.”

Something like this attitude persisted into my adult lifetime. In my first job most equity salesmen had army backgrounds and so were accustomed to working with the working class. It might be no accident that some of the Tories most critical of the government, such as Tobias Ellwood and Tom Tugendhat, are army men.

It’s not just the decline of military men that has weakened the impartial spectator, though. Perhaps the decline of manufacturing has had a similar effect. Factory bosses who encountered working class men on the shopfloor had some arrogance knocked out of them in a way that those who travel the private school-Oxbridge-professions escalator have not.

Of course, in saying all this I don’t mean to romanticize the past: exploitation and injustice have always been with us – although remember that inequality was lower in the post-war era than it is now. All I’m suggesting is that class arrogance and over-entitlement is more obvious and egregious now than it used to be.

Which is a counterweight to calls for Johnson to resign.

Maybe he should. But what we also need to be rid of is the mindset which he represents. And disposing of that is a much bigger task.

* Yes, customers. If you are charging £9250 a year you are in the customer experience business, not the vigorous debate business.

Comments

[Blissex]

«For a long time, the ruling class was dominated by men who had done military service and so come into close contact with working class men – an experience which reminded them of their own good fortune and taught them respect for that class.»

That is something that I have often thought is quite important, as well as the usual germanic attitude that the troops of the army share the spoils of victory.

«All I’m suggesting is that class arrogance and over-entitlement is more obvious and egregious now than it used to be.»

But the episodes brought forward are *quite minor* (see "Bullingdon Club"...) in themselves and even compared to the past. They are being bigged up because the "whig" faction behind Starmer (and resentful that the Conservative "whigs" have been purged) is bigging them up for a character assassination campaign against Johnson, as they cannot attack on the policies as broadly they are the same.
Problem is, tory voters have no illusions as to Johnson's (lack of) character.

«But what we also need to be rid of is the mindset which he represents. And disposing of that is a much bigger task.»

I quite agree with this: it is not about Johnson, it is about fighting the ideology and policies it has as consequences.

But the ideology (which I think is rooted in noddy-theology) is not merely a mindset, it is also enabled by social, economic and political factors. It is these whom the "left" should fight: the mindset of a few cranks would not matter much, but for the social, economic, political context that makes them so important.

[Nanikore]

A very interesting read and very poignantly put together. I agree that the problem is much bigger than Johnson. I just hope the left is moving back to the people. But I think the problem is bigger than the political system. Brexit was a big warning that perhaps the elite as a whole had become detached. I also think there have been big problems in the economics and other professions to the extent that a distrust of experts in certain professions was understandable. During the neo-liberal era economists were held in awe. For sure a lot of neo-liberalism and the Third Way was inspired by classical and neo-classical economics. But the problem, and the origin of the problem, one of deep seated cynicism, is even bigger than the dominating paradigms of the economic profession.

[rsm]

《inequality was lower in the post-war era than it is now.》

For blacks? Do economists think everything is ergodic?

Are Adam Smith's observations trite and commonplace, expressed in a supercilious tone of entitlement that somehow fascinates economists desperately searching for excuses why greed is good? If your bread comes from the self-interest of the baker, why shouldn't your laws come from the self-interest of the lawmakers?

Why shouldn't the baker raise his prices as a pure power play, and why shouldn't lawmakers break their own silly laws? Doesn't the impartial spectator simply change as needed to make both these suddenly seem socially acceptable?

How far does Adam Smith actually get you? Do you just end up in selfishness where anything goes?

[Dennis Smith]

“We are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men”.

What is going on here is at least partly a function of changing conceptions of the self, and of ourselves as a collective. Adam Smith’s views are ambiguous because he apparently wants to combine a belief in the universality of human nature (“we are always …”) with a belief in human progress (the different stages of society).

It’s not clear how he hoped to achieve this fusion, partly because his own religious views are famously opaque. It’s easier to believe in uniform progress and the invisible hand if you imagine a providential God lurking in the background – a belief-set held by Moderate Scottish clergy with whom Smith was on good terms.

As a crude generalisation, western society has been moving from a more socialised to a more individual (neoliberal) conception of the self over the centuries. This is partly what we mean by ‘modernity’.

Take away the intellectual support of the providential God, and the obvious explanation for this trend is that it’s easier to discard outdated, arbitrary social conventions and identities that it is to create ones. As sedimented beliefs and practices fracture, so do the shared bases for constructing new ones through democratic negotiation. All that remains is a fragmented asocial self.

[jim]

Conscience is the thought that someone might be watching. But no-one who matters is watching, so you can do what you like.

What bothers me about society is that we seem to be dividing in some sort of caste system. One you have got a decent job you get your kids into private school. With a bit of luck and pull they will join a self perpetuating caste with a fast track to jobs in the Big 4, the professions, the meeja and politics. From there a string of BTL properties, party with the right people and Boris is your uncle, And no-one is watching, no conscience required.

I am not particularly against private education but what does trouble me is what seems the stratification of society. If I look up the life story of any of the scandal hit political types in recent news I see privilege, a largely charmed life. I don't mind folk getting on but this seems like a system rigged to accelerate the sharp elbowed and I don't like that. Not even sure those who are getting on are particularly bright, just pushing the right buttons.

[Blissex]

«perhaps the elite as a whole had become detached»

The previous feudal elite was also largely detached, and there were of course peasant riots, but it endured for at least 800 years.

What the current elite think of their "detached" station? They probably think that is a good thing, and that if there are lower class riots, that is just a cost of doing business, no problem as long as it can be managed, and they are putting in a lot of legislation, with the keen help of New Labour, that will allow them to manage them all the easier.

They are planning to last another 800 years on top: "the end of history", "there is no alternative".

[Blissex]

«What bothers me about society is that we seem to be dividing in some sort of caste system. [...] a self perpetuating caste with a fast track to jobs in the Big 4, the professions, the meeja and politics. From there a string of BTL properties»

A lot of mere middle class people think that is exactly what they want, and that they and their children will join the charmed castes, they will become gentry too with their 3 bed semi in a suburb "worth" 1-2 million pounds now, eventually that BTL portfolio; their dream is to a "Pride and Prejudice" world, with themselves as masters of course.

That is the thatcherite dream of mass rentierism, and it is very popular, as the 14m Conservative votes shows.

But they are wrong because it is unsustainable: it cannot happen forever that 30-40% of the population be rentiers living in style by extracting their income from the remaining 60-70%, because it takes the work of at least 10-50 servants to keep a master in the style they have entitled themselves to.

It currently only *looks* as if thatcherite mass rentierism can work because of fantastic rates of increase of debt and various favourable circumstances related to imports and capital flows.

From some actions, papers and policies by right-wing (not just Conservative) people my impression is that they know that eventually even the Home Counties and the south-east in general will crash like "the north", as there is not enough rent to make so many people affluent, and only the M25 area will continue to be prosperous thanks to property and finance exports.

[ltr]

December 10, 2021

Coronavirus

United Kingdom

Cases ( 10,719,165)
Deaths ( 146,255)

Deaths per million ( 2,134)

China

Cases ( 99,517)
Deaths ( 4,636)

Deaths per million ( 3)

[ This Tory government only cares about those people with whom it identifies, but so too current Labour leadership. ]

[Jim]

I had struggled to see what the Brexit project would bring. A trade free-for-all, Singapore on Thames or some sort of Miss Marple Britain. We don't really seem to have got any of these but the Miss Marple bit seems closeish.

A kind of upper middle class nirvana with rose clad cottages, private incomes, good old army majors and assorted spongers living on pensions and land rent and hard faced old people bossing everyone about. Except what is missing is the forelock tugging gardener. Gardeners are now very expensive and frequently Brazilian or Chilean but not so often Polish. And don't talk about cooks and nannies, like hen's teeth and liable to be nicked by the sharp elbowed. Miss Marple never had trouble like that.

Some theorists claim that the ERG et al plan to take away all our rights and somehow enslave us all. But there simply aren't enough of us to keep the master race going. That one is going to be an epic fail. The run up to 2024 should be interesting, Trump and all.

[Blissex]

«I had struggled to see what the Brexit project would bring.»

By itself not much change. The EU has too few powers and too small a budget to matter much either way to a big highly developed country like the UK, either as a tyrannical oppressor or as the shining city on the hill.

What brexiting portends is more geopolitical and especially political, as a change of ruling faction and direction, for the "Britannia Unchained" people as a desirability and by Philip Hammond mentioned as a possibility:

https://www.welt.de/english-news/article161182946/Philip-Hammond-issues-threat-to-EU-partners.html
“We are now objectively a European-style economy. We are on the U.S. end of the European spectrum, but we do have an open-market economy with a social model that is recognizably the European social model that is recognizably in the mainstream of European norms, not U.S. norms. [...] If we have no access to the European market, if we are closed off, [...] We will change our model, and we will come back, and we will be competitively engaged.”

«A trade free-for-all, Singapore on Thames»

That is a bit of myth to make it sound cool, the model is really Dubai with the "kalafa" system.

«or some sort of Miss Marple Britain. We don't really seem to have got any of these but the Miss Marple bit seems closeish.»

Agatha Christie once wrote that she never expected to be "so rich that she could afford a car, or so poor that she could not afford to have servants".

«Gardeners are now very expensive and frequently Brazilian or Chilean but not so often Polish. And don't talk about cooks and nannies, like hen's teeth and liable to be nicked by the sharp elbowed.»

The big dividend of brexit in due time will be to, Dubai style, import lots of temporary indentured workers from the Commonwealth, not classified as "immigrants", but "contractors", to be kept in closed ghettos (for work in "free ports" or in private homes), and paid rather less than the overpaid eastern europeans with their fancy ECJ-imposed rights. The "Windrush" campaign and the "labour shortages" campaign have been preparing public opinion for that.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/buyout-boss-says-brexit-will-be-good-his-business-will-mean-30-cut-uk-wages-1602631
“One of the biggest names in European private equity said that Brexit will be good for his business, but will mean a 30% wage reduction for UK workers. [...] He added that EU immigration will be replaced with workers from the Indian subcontinent and Africa, willing to accept "substantially" lower pay.”

[ltr]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/business/economy/human-rights-export-controls.html

December 10, 2021

U.S. and Others Pledge Export Controls Tied to Human Rights
A partnership with Australia, Denmark, Norway, Canada, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom aims to stem the flow of key technologies to authoritarian governments.
By Ana Swanson

[ Britain then, just when trade is sorely needed, has been taken to a new Cold War by the United States. And, no, the British will not be re-colonizing China ever.

The idea that colonial powers might again control the development of a range of hopeful countries is intolerable. ]

[ltr]

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-12-11/China-fully-vaccinated-82-5-of-people-close-to-herd-immunity-15UfETYfH5S/index.html

December 11, 2021

China fully vaccinated 82.5% of people, close to herd immunity

Over 1.16 billion Chinese people, or 82.5 percent of the country’s total population, have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Friday, said an official of the National Health Commission (NHC) at a press briefing on Saturday….

[Blissex]

«The idea that colonial powers might again control the development of a range of hopeful countries is intolerable»

But it is entirely possible: all it takes if for example for China to be split in various pieces, with a set of "colour" coups, and then each piece will be easy to control, as just as the south America countries are.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40396396
"Opening and dividing China", The World Today, May 1992:
«Needless to say, not all these regions are like to have the same views on foreign policy questions. Coastal regions would be less willing to see relations with the United States deteriorate, or take a hard line with Honk Kong or Taiwan. Worries over stategies of "peaceful evolution" pursued by outsiders would be different if one thought of Islamic, Mongolian, or Taiwanese ideals. In sum, domestic reform in China is helping create several Chinas, with potentially different foreign policies. [...] As the Soviet empire collapses, it is time to ask far-reaching questions about the shape of the Chinese empire. Of course there are major differences between the two cases, but there are nevertheless increasing signs that as China continues its economic reforms and opens to the outside world, it will also run the risk of fragmenting.»

The attitude is that in this quite funny (in hindsight) story:

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2009/10/23/geye23.ART_ART_10-23-09_A17_DVFEUK6.html
«Documents released by the British Foreign Office in September, for instance, show the surprising depth of the antipathy British leader Margaret Thatcher and French leader Francois Mitterrand held toward the changes in Germany. [...] At one point, the prime minister even went so far as to warn Mitterrand that a restored Germany would "dominate" Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, leaving "only Romania and Bulgaria for the rest of us."»

It may take decades or a century, but with intervals of decades, the USA have been splitting first the spanish, then the german, japanese, english, soviet empires, bit by bit. Next up are probably China, and some time later, India.

[rsm]

《 it is unsustainable: it cannot happen forever that 30-40% of the population be rentiers living in style by extracting their income from the remaining 60-70%, because it takes the work of at least 10-50 servants to keep a master in the style they have entitled themselves to.》

Is the income of the rich created, much more than extracted?

For context, recent "Black Friday" real economy sales were quoted in the tens of billions; but do financial transactions on the same day number in the trillions of dollars?

When will stubborn, blinkered economists focused on "ground rent" acknowledge the vast amounts of outright money creation that fuels incomes at the top?

As long as economists ignore this financial money creation, will their analysis and policy prescriptions remain unimaginative, unhelpful, staid, trite, as boring as Adam Smith?

[ltr]

But it is entirely possible: all it takes if for example for China to be split in various pieces...

[ This is of course impossible and offensive. Entirely offensive. Enough of the prejudice. Enough. ]

[ltr]

The idea that colonial powers might again control the development of a range of hopeful countries is intolerable and impossible.

[Boyo]

@Blissex: I always find your posts fascinating. Do you have other writing to which you can point? Failing that a reading list of books that most inform your priors.

[Blissex]

«I always find your posts fascinating»

That's too kind, perhaps it is just that I am willing to be more candid than others...

«Do you have other writing to which you can point?»

My comments on "The Guardian" and the "All That Is Solid..." blog for example:

https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/16345762?page=1
https://www.google.com/search?num=50X&as_epq=blissex&as_sitesearch=averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com

I also have a "blog" where I paste quotes that I find interesting, copied from my giant quote list, but I haven't updated it in a while, but still I hope it is interesting:

https://motsperdus.tumblr.com/archive

«books that most inform your priors»

My priors are also inevitably informed by my life experiences, and as to that I am a bit coy, let's say that I have been familiar with upper-middle and upper class elite thinking, and also lower class people, in more than one country, that is a wide range of attitudes.

As to books, I have read so many it is difficult to choose, but some relatively recent ones that I have found enlightening (whether I agree with them or not):

E Wrigley, "Energy and the english industrial revolution"
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsta.2011.056
https://voxeu.org/article/industrial-revolution-energy-revolution
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/energy-and-the-english-industrial-revolution/A18E48989B4A915D0E77A29D57D85763
WM Jevons, "The coal question"
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-coal-question

M Pettis, "The volatility machine"
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Volatility_Machine/fWnnCwAAQBAJ
A Landes, "The wealth and poverty of nations"
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Wealth_And_Poverty_Of_Nations/Oo25BwAAQBAJ
JM Keynes, "The general theory"
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/
H Minsky, "Stabilizing an unstable economy"
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/144/
D Graeber, "Debt: the first 5,000 years"
https://www.google.de/books/edition/Debt/MY9utgEACAAJ

R Winstone, "Events, dear boy, events"
A Clark, "The Tories"
A Marr, "A history of modern Britain"
T Benn, "The Benn diaries"
D McBride, "Power trip"
H Mikes, "How to be a Brit"
Z Zhao, "Prisoner of the state" (part 3)
S Seagrave, "Lords of the rim 2020"

Some random blogs (I omit some interesting somewhat "politically
incorrect" ones):

https://medium.com/incerto
https://michael-hudson.com/
https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/
https://www.euanmearns.com/
https://delong.typepad.com/
https://github.com/braddelong/public-files

"Mainstream media":

https://www.businessweek.com/
https://www.fortune.com/
https://tribunemag.co.uk/
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/

But in general for me it is useful to read a lot, in particular trade and other "obscure" publications and blogs, and books, because the interesting news and insights as a rule "somehow" do not appear with prominence.

[Boyo]

Thank you, Blissex. A great deal to look at here.

[Blissex]

BTW I very much recommend this one:

R Winstone, "Events, dear boy, events"

It is a collection of quotes from diaries of UK people (mostly english of course) for many decades and they are very revealing.