Devaluing excellence

Disputes about wages are rarely about financial considerations alone, but are often tied up with ideas of respect, expectations and morality. The fact that we call wages "earnings" alerts us to the close link between pay and our sense of desert. As Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch and Richard Thaler wrote in a famous paper (pdf), "rules of fairness can also have significant economic effects."

We should regard the pay disputes of academics and junior doctors in this light.

The thing is that they all did what teachers tell us are the right things to do. They studied hard and got top grades. And their reward? For junior doctors, it's a mere £14 an hour (pdf). And many academics cannot afford (pdf) basic necessities and face job insecurity.

Yes, some will become well-paid senior doctors and professors (although even the latter have seen pension cuts). But their landlords won't accept the promise of big money in future instead of payment now, so why should they?

Hence their sense of injustice - a sense heightened by the contrasts between doctors' pay and the millions handed to firms' for often-defective PPE, and between academics' pay and that of vice-chancellors.

What we pay is what we value, and these priorities signal that the Tories value cronyism and managerialism more than learning.

From this perspective, we should regard the underpayment of junior doctors and academics alongside cuts to arts funding and the BBC's attacks on the BBC Singers and orchestras. (Yes, redunancies have been suspended, but the mere initial announcement of them indicated the BBC's priorities.) What all these have in common is an undervaluing of academic and technical excellence and an overvaluing of cronyism - not just in PPE contracts but in the BBC appointing Tories such as Robbie Gibb, Richard Sharp and John McAndrew to senior positions.

Here. as so often, we need Alasdair MacIntyre. He distinguished between goods of excellence - which consisted in mastery of particular practices - and goods of effectiveness: wealth, power and fame. Sometimes these two goods go together: if you are an excellent footballer, you'll acquire the goods of effectiveness. But often they don't, as when musicians struggle to earn a living.

The word "neoliberalism" is much misused. We might, however, attach that label to the valorization of the goods of effectiveness over those of excellence - of winning at all costs over performing well. This is true not just in the NHS, the BBC or universities. Barney Ronay's observation that the Chelsea team shows the "distorting effects of money without sense or love or care" is a complaint that the goods of effectiveness have eclipsed those of excellence. It's also a trend in both business and the public sector generally, where managerialism is eroding professional skill and autonomy; a big reason why many erstwhile "middle-class" people voted Labour in 2019 was that they have become proletarianized.

The intellectual decline of the Tory party is part of this trend. When MPs such as Dorries, Gullis or Anderson flaunt their boorish ignorance like pigs wallowing in muck they are demonstrating the same contempt for learning that causes them to underpay well-qualified professionals. Not that the disease is confined to a few grotesque outliers. Even the "sensible technocrats" such as Sunak or Hunt never give any hint of being influenced by serious thinkers in the way that Thatcher often expressed her debt to Hayek, Popper or Friedman. Matt Goodwin, emboldened perhaps by the knowledge that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, has espied a gap in the market for a Tory intellectual - but his sneer that anyone demonstrating a sign of education is a member of the "liberal elite" merely further reveals the party's philistinism.

Which, from a historic perspective, is odd. Many Tories traditionally aligned themselves with an educated elite. Think of Edmund Burke fearing that, in a revolution, "learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude." Or Michael Oakeshott's claim that education is "an initiation into a civilization". Or Roger Scruton's defences of "high culture" against the depredations of the left. Or Allan Bloom's defence of the "canon" against the "closing of the American mind".

That the right has, perhaps with the sole exception of Jesse Norman, abandoned this tradition shows just how far it has been taken over by an obsession with money and power to the exclusion of excellence.

It's not just its crass philistinism that should trouble us about this. Everyone with a stake in currently-existing capitalism should be worried.

Intelligent defenders of capitalism have long known that its stability requires a large and contented middle class. Thatcher tried to create a property-owning democracy for just this reason. Which is just what her epigones are not doing. In alienating professionals such as junior doctors and academics (and squeezing them out of property ownership) they are creating a narrow elite to which erstwhile allies are now hostile. If doctors - a traditionally conservative bunch - won't side with the ruling class, then who will?

History has a warning here. Peter Turchin has shown that revolutions are more likely when the ruling elite becomes narrow, closed and antagonistic to the middle-class: think of the French and Russian revolutions.

Which is why everyone wanting capitalism to be sustained must support academics and doctors - not just because doing so valorizes intellectual achievement, but because it forestalls a dangerous isolation of the ruling elite. Sometimes capitalism needs an inoculation - a small illness to prevent a worse one.

You might think it odd that a Marxist is making this point. Well, whilst my brain and heart favour revolution, my Isa statements do not. As Hayek said (pdf):

The main task of those who believe in the basic principles of capitalism must frequently be to defend this system against the capitalists.

Of course I appreciate that some conservatives don't want to support "woke" academics, just as some leftists won't like seeing that there's a conservative case for higher pay in the public sector. But politics, if it is to be a worthwhile activity, must not be a search for ideological purity but rather a building of alliances.

Comments

[Geoff]

Isn't there something more here - the Tories don't seem to be indifferent to excellence, but actively see it as a threat to be eliminated - hence the attacks on culture. Anyone who would espouse pursuit of the goods of excellence irrespective of whether they would lead to achieving the goods of effectiveness - as an academic advising a student to do a PhD might do - threatens the valorisation of only the goods of effectiveness, and suggests a scale of judgement against which the Tories might be found wanting.

[ltr]

Intelligent defenders of capitalism have long known that its stability requires a large and contented middle class. Thatcher tried to create a property-owning democracy for just this reason. Which is just what her epigones are not doing....

[ What a splendid essay. ]

Geoff:

Isn't there something more here - the Tories don't seem to be indifferent to excellence, but actively see it as a threat to be eliminated - hence the attacks on culture....

[ Nice insight. ]

Beware of those intent on making the UK more insular. Openness is essential to societal well-being.

[Blissex]

«Intelligent defenders of capitalism have long known that its stability requires a large and contented middle class. Thatcher tried to create a property-owning democracy for just this reason. [...] If doctors - a traditionally conservative bunch - won't side with the ruling class, then who will?»

The argument from the whole piece seems to me to that the political stability of an extractive system depends also its main extractors forming a political coalition with a larger number of secondary extractor.

That may well be right, even if depending on conditions a small minority of main extractors may not need a significant support base to stay in power.

But I think that our blogger is further arguing that “academics and doctors” should be part of that supporting minority. That used to be the case in the past, but with changed conditions there is no need for the composition of the extractive middle class to stay unchanged.

For example once upon a time clergy were part of the extractive middle class (and some even of the upper class) but they longer do.

Academics from the point of views of the right are doubly damned for being "communists" and "euroquislings", so no surprise; NHS doctors are merely associated with a "communist" system. Also both categories can be far more cheaply replenished with immigrants, for example:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/09/britain-needs-to-double-the-number-of-doctors-it-trains
“Britain needs to double the number of doctors it trains
Last year 59% of new registrations in England had been trained by other countries, writes Prof Rachel Jenkins [...] This should not be as expensive to Treasury as feared, as the current putative costs are artificially set and do not reflect actual expenditure incurred by student training, either in the universities or in the health service.”

That means that England is offering 2/3 of the positions that used to support a middle class living standards to immigrants.

Which also means that today's right-wing reckons that academics and doctors are too small categories to matter electorally, and are just costs to be minimized.

After all there are millions and millions of property owners *and their heirs* that are the natural supporters of the party for incumbents.

[Blissex]

«the Tories don't seem to be indifferent to excellence, but actively see it as a threat to be eliminated [...] threatens the valorisation of only the goods of effectiveness, and suggests a scale of judgement against which the Tories might be found wanting.»

Like in the main article this point is based on the mere assumption that "goods of excellence" are values-in-themselves, that is absolute values that cannot be questioned. But I guess that a lot of people would be more than satisfied with receiving plenty of "goods of effectiveness" without working too much, just like property owners and other rentiers.

For example for lots of people "learning" is not a value, it is a *cost* on the path to acquiring "goods of effectiveness" and this does not apply to them and would not think like this:

«pursuit of the goods of excellence irrespective of whether they would lead to achieving the goods of effectiveness»

"Goods of effectiveness" for example the ability to pay for long trips all over the world and build many real-life experiences, versus spending the same time reading books and learning. Are the people who prefer the former to the latter all tories? I guess not.

I would have preferred to read here an argument that there are cases where "goods of excellence" are actually more enjoyable and useful than "goods of effectiveness", that is some more nuance.

BTW in general my impression is that the conservatives are not against the pursuit of "goods of excellence", at least for people of independent means, they just don't want to pay salaries and wages high enough for the servant classes to be able to afford to pursue them.

[Blissex]

«For example once upon a time clergy were part of the extractive middle class (and some even of the upper class) but they [no] longer do.»

That was because the role of the clergy was to preach the sanctity of incumbency: “The rich man in his castle, / The poor man at his gate, / *God* made them high and lowly, / And ordered their estate”

In our modern times it is Economists instead who preach it in a slightly different form: “The rich man in his castle, / The poor man at his gate, / *The Markets* made them high and lowly, / And ordered their estate”.

[Blissex]

«Many Tories traditionally aligned themselves with an educated elite»

Perhaps the "tl;dr" here is that the middle class segments with interests aligned to those of the upper class changes with time, just as the dominant upper class segments do change, and are no longer those of the professional middle class, as as the dominant upper class segment first was agricultural landowners, then business owners, then business executives, and now is finance speculators.

What might interest our blogger and us instead of worthy preaching as to the "goods of excellence" could be figuring out which segments of the middle class are currently the champions of thatcherism, if no longer the professional middle class. I would guess shop and trade owners, for example (in addition to residential property owners, whether BTL or occupier).
BTW as to the professional middle clas a very typical tory quote:

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/nicholas-parsons-1923-2020/
“The son of a doctor and a nurse, Nicholas Parsons was raised in a ‘well-to-do, professional, middle-class family’. His parents weren’t rich, but before the war a GP’s wage went a lot further than it does today. His father could afford a butler, a cook, a maid and a nanny.”

Another one as a bonus to understand the context:

"The Macmillan Diaries, Vol II":
“As a kind of tranquiliser I am taking a course of Henry James! What a world – how quiet and peaceful and happy it was for the “upper and upper-middle classes”. Now it’s a nightmare. Happily, it’s a much better world for the masses, as has been brought home to me most forcibly in writing the history of the inter-war years.”

The purpose of thatcherism turned out to be to bring back the world of Henry James, in a different form, that of Anthony Trollope, as per Chakraborrty on Cameron:

https://twitter.com/chakrabortty/status/942373687168249857
“So the old Etonian married to the daughter of a Baronet now appears to be fronting a private equity fund full of Chinese state-capitalist money. Truly, 21st century Britain is Anthony Trollope's daydream.”

[MJW]

I take the poorly paid Junior Docs line with a pinch of salt, they may not earn as much as they think they are entitled to, but the low pay examples are all based on the most inexperienced junior doctors. Within a few years they will be earning multiples of the average annual pay.

A junior doc with two years of experience may compare themselves to a shop worker and feel this is unfair given their superior status, but after 10 years of experience the shop worker will still be where they are on the pay ladder whereas the junior doc will now be one 3 or 4 times the average annual earning.

[Blissex]

«the low pay examples are all based on the most inexperienced junior doctors. Within a few years they will be earning multiples of the average annual pay»

In any case 2/3 of junior doctors are immigrants, so many english voters could hardly care less. While I guess that 2/3 or more of mid-career or senior doctors are not immigrants.

Put another way, incumbency/insiderism is the still the supreme english "good of excellence", and since many voters (around 14 million apparently) regard themselves as incumbents/insiders, that is what democracy delivers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3239540.stm
«For 40 years doctors from South Asia have propped up and provided the backbone to the NHS. They arrived fresh from their medical schools, full of hopes and ambitions. But their dreams were quickly quashed when, instead of getting posts in teaching hospitals or top medical fields, many found that the only doors open to them were in the ‘Cinderella’ specialities like mental health, geriatrics and accident and emergency. [...] Dr Bashir Qureshi, who arrived from Pakistan in the early 1960s said: “There was a pecking order and we just accepted it. “If a job came up the English person would get it first, followed by the Scot, the Welshman, the Irish, the Pakistani, the Indian, the Sri Lankan, the West Indian and then the African. This was always regardless of qualification — but it meant I knew I would get the fifth job to come up.”»

[rsm]

《In our modern times it is Economists instead who preach》

Can we acknowledge openly yet that prices are much noisier than supply-and-demand theory predicts, thus inflation is not the sin that the orthodoxy claims and can be solved with indexation?

[ltr]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/business/uk-poorer-inflation-bank-of-england.html

April 26, 2023

Central Banker to Britons: You’re Worse Off. Accept It.
The comment, from the Bank of England’s chief economist, was offered as a way to curb inflation. But the message has fallen flat.
By Eshe Nelson

[ Impossibly obtuse and mean; the point however should be that this is simply not necessary. ]

[LJC]

'From this perspective, we should regard the underpayment of junior doctors and academics alongside cuts to arts funding and the BBC's attacks on the BBC Singers and orchestras.'

or put more simply, "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun".

We all know what happened to the last ruling group that thought like that.