Stumbling and Mumbling

On unequal sympathy

It's easy to see why so many people accuse the west of hypocrisy. Joe Biden's condemnation of the murder of Alexei Navalny whilst bombing Yemen, Syria and Iraq and condoning Israel's attacks on Gaza suggests that he - like many western politicians - regards some lives as more worthy than others.

This apparent inconsistency recalls Adam Smith's idea of sympathy. "The source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others," he wrote, is our imagination; it arises "by changing places in fancy with the sufferer."

Our imagination, however, is limited. It is easier to put ourselves in the shoes of some people than others, and so our sympathy is spread unevenly.

One source of this difference is simply that it's easier to "change places in fancy" with people like ourselves. Politicians find it easier to imagine themselves in the place of another politician than in that of a young Muslim in a poor country - hence their greater sympathy for Navalny than for the victims of Israel's attacks or western bombing raids. This tendency isn't always malign: it can be a reason for class-consciousness.

This helps explain why opinion about the Israeli government's attack on Gaza is dividing Jews and Muslims even thousands of miles away: Jews are more able to sympathize with other Jews facing antisemitic attacks, whilst Muslims are more able to sympathize with Muslims. Yes, there might be antisemitism on one side and Islamophobia on the other, but even if there were not we would still see this division.

There's another source of unequal sympathy. It's what Thomas Schelling called the identifiable victim effect. The death of a known person, he wrote, invokes “anxiety and sentiment, guilt and awe, responsibility and religion" but, he added, "most of this awesomeness disappears when we deal with statistical death.” As Dan Ariely wrote, "once we have a face, a picture, and details about a person, we feel for them.” (The Upside of Irrationality, p 241).

We have scientific evidence for this. Deborah Small and George Loewenstein gave (pdf) people $10 and offered them the chance to pass some of it onto someone else. When they were told that other person would be drawn randomly from a list, they gave an average of $2.12. But when they were told that the person had already been chosen they gave an average of $3.42 - more than half as much again even though they knew nothing else about the person. Which shows how statistical people are morally discounted.

In similar experiments James Andreoni and Justin Rao found (pdf) that when potential recipients could speak to the potential donor, the donor gave an average of 24% of the money compared to only 15% when neither party spoke. "Communication dramatically influences altruistic behaviour, and appears to largely work by heightening empathy."

Stalin might not have actually said "if only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics", but if he did he was uttering a truth. We knew Navalny as an identifiable person, and this alone generates sympathy for him. By contrast the 29,000+ killed in Gaza are statistical deaths. This is why opponents of Israel's attacks want to put names and faces to the victims - because it humanizes them and so generates sympathy.

This same thing helps explain why MPs who were so relaxed about deaths caused by austerity are so agitated by death threats (assuming this to be what they are) against their colleagues. Not only are their colleagues like them and therefore easy to sympathize with, but also they are identifiable victims, whereas the victims of austerity are mere statistics: this asymmetry is reinforced by the fact that our political system actually selects for psychopathic traits.

The victims of austerity, like those of the Israeli attacks, are poor and obscure. Which was Smith's point: the rich and powerful are more visible to us, he said, and better known and so we sympathize with them more:

When we consider the condition of the great, in those delusive colours in which the imagination is apt to paint it, it seems to be almost the abstract idea of a perfect and happy state. It is the very state which, in all our waking dreams and idle reveries, we had sketched out to ourselves as the final object of all our desires. We feel, therefore, a peculiar sympathy with the satisfaction of those who are in it...Every calamity that befals them, every injury that is done them, excites in the breast of the spectator ten times more compassion and resentment than he would have felt, had the same things happened to other men....All the innocent blood that was shed in the civil wars, provoked less indignation than the death of Charles I.

The corollary of this, he said, is that:

We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent.

There is, therefore, a hierarchy of concern, with the rich, powerful and well-known at the top and the poor and obscure at the bottom. When John Donne wrote "Any man's death diminishes me Because I am involved in mankind" he might have added that some men's deaths diminish us more than others.

You might say all this is natural, even obvious. Maybe. But natural does not mean immutable. If there is an "expanding circle" of concern for others as Peter Singer has claimed, it's because we have learned to sympathize with more people than we did centuries ago. And our identities - and hence whom we sympathize with - vary with socioeconomic conditions and campaigning: much of bourgeois politics consists of an effort to reduce the salience of class by increasing that of anything else.

Herein lies a problem. D.D. Raphael writes that "Smith thinks of sympathy as the key to understanding moral judgment" (The Impartial Spectator, p 117). It is this that determines what and whom we condemn or condone. And yet sympathy arises from factors which, as he saw, are morally arbitrary: power and fame get more acclaim and sympathy than virtue or obscurity.

Which is why our moral judgments might seem absurd or hypocritical to outsiders.

To some extent, this is inevitable. All codes seem odd from the outside: try explaining to a non-fan why cricketers applaud a bowler aiming a 90mph projectile at a man's head but find it disgraceful if he scratches the ball.

Few people in politics, however, even try to step outside and question their own moral judgments. Moral claims often owes more to narcissistic self-righteousness than to detached thought. I've often criticized unthinking technocrats, but unthinking moralists are at least as detrimental to a healthy politics.

Labour: office vs opposition

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please." Marx's words should give a little encouragement to those leftists despairing of whether a Labour government could do any good.

Of course, there are reasons for despair. The abandoning of the promise to invest £28bn a year in greening the economy suggests, says Grace Blakeley, that "if current policies are maintained in office, we will see basically no changes in macroeconomic policy under a Labour government."

Which is a big problem, because we need different macroeconomic policy if not to restart growth (something best done by supply-side reforms given that we're near full employment) then at least to repair our broken public services.

And history offers us a bleak warning: there are few examples of a government being more leftist in office than in opposition. Hence Grace's words:

The relentless shift towards the right we’re seeing within the Labour Party in opposition will not slow when the Party goes into government. If anything, it will speed up.

Nevertheless, I - very warily - disagree with such pessimism. I suspect there are pressures which will force Labour to be more radical in office than it is promising to be.

One is that the Westminster environment will be very different next year if - as is possible - the Tories are reduced to a few dozen seats. Hundreds of new Labour backbenchers will not want to go to their constituencies and tell people the government is doing nothing to stop their school falling down or to help them see a doctor. They'll be yapping at ministers to do something. And at least some will have the wit to point out that the annihilation of the Tories was not just a rejection of corruption and incompetence but also as a rejection of the ideology that has given us economic stagnation and wrecked public services.

What's more, if the post-1997 precedent is any guide, the rump of the Tory party will turn inwards and focus on its pet obsessions. Gibber about wokery, cultural Marxism and the left's capture of our institutions will only remind Starmer that the Tories are simply irrelevant.

In this context there'll be no excuse for the BBC to continue to invite the Tory party's outriders onto its shows. The IEA-Telegraph-Spectator crew will be seen for what it is - a handful of cranks cosplaying at a deluded image of Thatcherism and representative only of anonymous billionaires.

The voices around Westminster will therefore be very different from what they now are. Which means the influences on Starmer will change.

Such voices will, though, merely remind him of the truth outside Westminster - that changing policy isn't some leftist pipedream but a brute necessity. As John Harris says:

Even if Labour’s belief that it can only win by staying quiet is correct, arriving in government – and remaining there – will surely demand something very different.

The demand is not merely that we must get NHS waiting lists down; save councils from bankruptcy; repair schools; fix the railways; restore the criminal justice system to some sort of functionality; and get the economy growing. Even if Starmer didn't care about any of this, he would still need to do something.

This is because failing to address these problems would foster hostility to the political system and political class. Five more years of economic stagnation and declining public services will lead people to believe that neither political party can do anything for them.

And the backlash this creates won't be an intelligent one. Back in 2006 Ben Friedman showed that economic stagnation led to illiberalism and a revolt against democracy. Subsequent events have vindicated him. Markus Brueckner and Hans Peter Gruener have described how "lower growth rates are associated with a significant increase in right-wing extremism". And Ana Sofia Pessoa and colleagures have shown that "austerity-driven recessions amplify the political costs of economic downturns considerably by increasing distrust in the political environment."

Even if Starmer wanted to do no more than preserve the legitimacy of the existing political system (and capitalism) and prevent the rise of the far-right, he would therefore need to rescue the economy and public services.

There's something else, hinted at in Starmer's recent speech to the Scottish Labour conference:

I grew up working class in the 1970s. And while I don’t plead poverty, I know what a cost of living crisis feels like. I know what it feels like, to be embarrassed to invite your friends round, because the carpet’s threadbare. There’s a hole in the window. The phone’s been cut off. Because your family can’t keep up with their payments. The cloud of anxiety that hangs over a house. The “what next” fear of the postman coming down the path. Will he bring another bill we can’t afford? I remember that....How can you talk about changing inequality, or racism, or any other structural injustice in this country, without an account of class.

No recent Tory PM could have said this. And it matters. Starmer's (and Reeves') upbringing has instilled in him a sympathy (to use Smith's word) towards working class people to a greater degree than most Tories have. It might be no accident that Labour's promise of more workers' rights has (do far?) survived the lurch to the right. 

This does more than merely increase the chances of redistributive taxation, given that revenue-raising is necessary. It also means that Labour's instincts are not on the side of the opponents of economic growth: nimbys opposing new-builds and infrastructure investment; incumbents and monopolists opposing competition policy; rentiers opposing land taxes; lawyers and accountants opposing tax simplification. And so Labour is less likely to continue with policies that favour these vested interests and stymie the economy.

The incentives and constraints facing a Labour government will therefore be very different from those now facing it in opposition. We should not therefore be confident that the party's words now are a good guide to its actions in office.

There's a recent precedent here. When Theresa May entered Downing Street in 2016 she promised to fight "burning injustices". But little progress was made in doing so, because her time in office was consumed with Brexit. Which tells us that a Prime Minister's intentions are not necessarily a guide to their actions. As the man said, people do not make history as they please.

Sadly, however, there are big caveats here. One was pointed out by Robert Cialdini:

Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment (Influence, p 57).

This, he says, can cause us "to act in ways that are clearly contrary to our best interests". Starmer and Reeves might know now that talk of "the nation's credit card" is gibberish, but they could come to believe it. There's a famous episode of Colditz in which a POW feigned madness in the hope of being sent home only to actually become insane. Labour faces the same danger.

There's also the fact that money talks. Even a small donation helped Reeves drop Labour's popular commitment to spend £28bn on decarbonization - and there'll be more where that came from.

And then there's the possibility that the causes of economic stagnation are so entrenched that even more radical policies than Labour is currently promising will not overturn them. Even if Labour does move leftwards, it might not be able or willing to move sufficiently so.

I can't say how great these dangers are: none of us can foresee the future. But I can say something. Even if a Starmer-led government offers only the small chance of sensible policies, it's a bigger chance than the Tories offer. And even out-of-the money options are worth something.

Psychopath politicians

Do politicians have psychopathic tendencies?

I ask because there's for years been talk of how companies select for psychopaths. One study by Paul Babiak and colleagues found that psychopathic traits are around five times more prevalent among senior executives than they are among the general population, and some notorious bosses have had nicknames indistinguishable from those of killers, such as "Fred the shred" and “Chainsaw Al” Dunlop. As Manfred Kets de Vries says:

Not all psychopaths are destined for prison; some may even be in top executive positions. Wherever power, status, or money is at stake, such individuals will be around.

But of course, there's power and status in politics too, so shouldn't we expect psychopaths to be around there too?

One reason to think so is that, as de Vries says, "the power games that typify organizational life come naturally to them." The psychopath’s attributes, he says, are needed in decision-takers:

Many of the qualities that indicate mental problems in other contexts may appear appropriate in senior executive positions, particularly in organizations that appreciate impression management, corporate gamesmanship, risk taking, coolness under pressure, domination, competitiveness, and assertiveness. Even those traits that reflect a severe lack of human feeling or emotional poverty (lack of remorse, guilt, and empathy) can be put into service by SOBs in situations where being ‘‘tough’’ or ‘‘strong’’ (making hard, unpopular decisions) and emotional slickness work in their favor.

Babiak and colleagues add that "some psychopathic features (e.g., callousness, grandiosity, manipulativeness) may relate to the ability to make persuasive arguments and ruthless decisions."

There's more. Psychopaths, says Babiak, have a "grandiose sense of self-worth". This too helps one succeed, simply because hirers - and we might add voters - often mistake overconfidence for actual ability. The superficial charm and glibness of the psychopath also helps in politics: people want to know that their politicians have the answers, not that the world is a complex, unmanageable place with nasty trade-offs.

What's true in corporate life, then, might also be true in politics - that psychopathic traits (or "psychopath-lite" in de Vries' words) facilitate success. As Brian Klaas has written: 

Psychologists refer to a particularly toxic set of personality traits as “The Dark Triad,” and as the name suggests, it has three components: Machiavellianism; Narcissism; and Psychopathy (being a psychopath). When you pause and consider it, it seems particularly obvious that people with these traits would excel as politicians...you’re more likely to encounter a psychopath in the halls of Congress or in Parliament than you are in your local supermarket.

In fact, there's one thing that helps psychopaths more in politics than in the corporate world - the media’s valuing of “strong leaders.” Starmer’s ruthlessness, for example, is reported as being a matter of congratulation rather than as a possible symptom of a disorder  albeit, perhaps, because it is directed towards the enemy.

We’ve reason to suspect, therefore, that politics, like business, can select for psychopathic traits. A lot of political behaviour becomes more comprehensible once we realize this.

For one thing, there’s the persistent pattern of coercive control, in the urge to restrict freedom – be it wanting to ban under-16s from social media, banning disposable vapes, restricting the right to protest, and limiting our freedom to live and work in the EU. The kneejerk attitude of our ruling class - both main parties and the media - is to say no.

Closely related is the desire to preserve status inequalities. Opposition to devolution, to worker democracy and to well-functioning markets are usually seen as three different things. But they have a connection. All three help to preserve existing inequalities of power. That betokens the psychopath’s concern with status hierarchies.

Another feature of psychopaths is their dishonesty and manipulativeness and ability to form and dissolve alliances as their interests require. As de Vries puts it, for the psychopath “after people serve their purposes, they are quickly cast aside.” This is consistent not only with Starmer’s treatment of Corbyn, being both an ally and opponent as his career required, but also with those Tories who claimed to be Thatcherite only to pursue violently anti-Thatcherite policies such as erecting trade barriers, restricting home ownership, increasing business uncertainty, complicating the tax system and generally fucking business.       

And then of course there’s the lack of empathy. George Osborne liked to speak about “tough choices” (which were of course always tough on the poor rather than rich), without caring about the deaths caused by austerity and benefit sanctions. Such callousness is another hallmark of the psychopath.

We can see the obsession with bombing countries in this context: Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria. Given the lack of efficacy of so many of these ventures, one might wonder whether “collateral damage” is a feature rather than a bug.

You might object there that there’s another symptom of psychopathy which should disqualify people from positions of responsibility: a lack of impulse control and inability to make good long-term plans. “Should”, however, does not mean “does”, as the fact of Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister demonstrated.

His elevation was not, however, an isolated example. Wanting to leave the EU without a plan on how to do so was a classic example of such impulsivity and a lack of planning, as were the on-off decisions about HS2. Both of which are part of a pattern noted by Sam Freedman:

[An] incredibly short-termist approach to public spending infects every area of policy-making. From endless expensive delays in defence procurement, to the refusal to invest in preventative programmes across education, health and crime that could ensure better outcomes and future savings across the public sector. The phenomenon is known across Whitehall as ‘Treasury Brain’.

Now, I know that psychiatric diagnosis at a distance is bad practice. But I’m not trying to diagnose individuals, because my point isn’t about them. It’s about the system, the structure. Its functioning is consistent with politicians being selected for psychopathic traits. This isn’t to say that all politicians are psychopaths, any more than the claim that the police are institutionally racist means that all policemen are racist. It’s merely that there are systemic forces facilitating a tendency.

It’s easy to get angry at politicians’ dishonesty and callousness. When you get to my age, however, you need to reduce your blood pressure. One way to do so is to recognize that such characteristics are not so much isolated individual failings as the nature of the system.

And this is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, we really do need someone to take tough decisions, to choose whom to throw under the bus. When Starmer says "sometimes you have to be ruthless to be a good leader" he is echoing a better man, the great Alan Sparhawk: “You may need a murderer, someone to do your dirty work.” It's true. But like many great truths, only a partial one. The question is: do we need psychopaths here, and now? And do we want the choices that they make?