The relationship, or lack thereof, between wages and the value of work has seemed a particularly pertinent question lately. Many of the workers whose salaries are below the threshold for tier 2 visas are the very same workers deemed 'essential' during lockdown. There are some quite familiar arguments as to why wages often do not seem to reflect 'value'; these include different levels bargaining power, positive and negative social externalities of some work, and the impact of established norms and expectations about what kind of wage or salary a certain profession should receive.But I'd be tempted to go further than this: even if we were to imagine a world with equality of bargaining power and without significant economic externalities, we should not expect wages to approximate some kind of absolute value distinct from price, simply because value, as a quantifiable or quantified entity is itself an emergent phenomenon of systems of exchange and distribution.
Imagine a simple exchange relationship between two individuals. Individual A gathers food, and individual B plays music to entertain A. A easily can gather enough food for both individuals to survive, so there is really no need for them both to do so. Perhaps we imagine this pair to be mercantile enough to come to some kind of arrangement: B plays music for A for a certain amount of time a day in exchange for food. You could imagine a ratio between the two: 1 meal for 1 hour of music. Perhaps some days A doesn't feel like listening to music, some days B is less hungry than others, and instead sticking to some bartering ratio, they instead denominate both things in terms of some third item both have scarce supplies of it takes some effort to replenish.
We could then start to think about something called 'price', this being the ratio at which each item is exchanged for this third, common denominator. But what would this 'price' have to do with 'value' in an absolute sense? Life might be boring without music, and life couldn't continue without food. These are different kinds of value, for which there is no quantifiable means of comparing, except in terms of exchange ratios for which they are exchanged, or price. And it is fine to refer to those quantities associated with each thing, so long as we remember that all we are really describing by that quantification is volumes of exchange. This does not mean that this ratio would not be informed by value: if A didn't like B's music, A wouldn't be happy with this relationship. And the ratio of exchanges would have to be such that the volume exchanged did not exceed what A or B was willing to part with in exchange for what the other offers. But the ratio doesn't quantify how much better off A and B are for carrying out these exchanges, just that they are better off, and that they occur in a ratio that both are willing to agree to.
If we extend this to real world transactions, the fact that one person is willing to pay £10 for something might show that they prefer having that thing than having £10, and by extension, other things they could have spent that £10 on. But it doesn't tell us much about the value of that preference being satisfied in relation to some other person's preference being satisfied of an equal monetary value (£10 extra spending money is obviously worth more to someone who is broke and might need the money to pay a landlord than someone who is very wealthy, but can we quantify how much more?).
But does this mean prices tell us nothing about value? No, they do tell us something. They you what transactions people are willing to enter into. They allow you to make extraordinary predictions about what you can expect of a vast array of economic interactions with agents you know little, or nothing, about. This is in and of itself of great value- it makes societies 'legible' to observers, and allows for the coordination of economic activities and the division of labour without central planning. But this is not the same as reflecting 'value' in an every day sense. Prices, and by extension wages, do not allow for the worth different individuals attach to things to quantified by a universal common denominator. Rather, they allow us to predict what agents are willing to do for them, and the ratio in which these actions will occur. This is true before we even get into thinking about inequalities of bargaining power in the labour market.
Coronavirus: three deadly misconceptions
Most crises provoke their fair share of bad ideas, and the Coronavirus pandemic is no exception. Three misconceptions seem to stand out in particular, and I thought I'd try and spell out why these ideas didn't work.
1. Lockdowns need to be 'timed' correctly to have the maximum impact.
This was the go to justification for the delay of implementing social distancing measures in the UK. Superficially, there appeared to be some logic to it. If lockdowns are time limited, it might make sense to ensure they are in operation during the period where the infection curve peaks. The logic is alluring until you realise that when that peak occurs is itself determined by the time a lockdown is started. So far as we can tell from Italy, Spain and China, this is roughly 3 weeks later. This time-lag is independent of the level of spread before the start of a lockdown (assuming, that is, some existing community transmission). The only situation in a delay would reduce the burden on a health system is the one in which it was merely a one-off act designed to mitigate Covid's 'natural' spread to a large majority of the population, in other words where we had given up on actually preventing people from getting the disease.
2. There is a trade-off between suppressing Covid and the economy
This one also sounds pretty intuitive, as social distancing measures obviously reduce economic activity. Indeed, if they didn't, they probably wouldn't be working. People can't go to restaurants, bars, pubs, cinemas, etc. Most can't go to work, and only some of this can effectively be shifted to work done at home. Clearly this is going to cause substantial economic disruption. What's less clear is that the alternative would prevent much of this disruption from occurring anyway. High rates of infection would inevitably mean large numbers of people dropping out (hopefully temporarily) of the workforce, and a large proportion of discretionary spending would likely fall regardless, as people worried about catching Covid going out and feared a loss of income. What lockdowns hope to achieve is limit this period of disruption to a shorter time frame, after which restrictions can hopefully be eased off when accompanied by greater levels of testing. And if you are going to do a lockdown, the earlier the better in economic terms, as this means it can be relaxed at an earlier stage. Moreover, in the long term, covid suppression will likely lead to a swifter recovery, as a larger proportion of the workforce will have been protected and less adjusting will be necessary.
3. Test and trace can only work if we manage to find and isolate every single person infected with coronavirus.
If this were the case, test and trace programs would have a hopeless task. It is simply inconceivable that health care workers could manage to trace and track every single person infected with coronavirus, and a strategy based on that aim would be futile. But this is not what test and trace programs aim to achieve. Rather, they aim to find a large proportion of people who have contracted coronavirus at an early stage and get those people to isolate themselves, thereby reducing the average rate of transmission. If this is reduced to a number below 1, the numbers will exponentially decline regardless of the fact that many people slip through the net. And if average rates infections are kept just a little above 1, increase can be kept sufficiently low to allow for significant periods of relaxation of lockdown rules. What effectively test and trace aims to achieve is to render Covid a less infectious disease.
1. Lockdowns need to be 'timed' correctly to have the maximum impact.
This was the go to justification for the delay of implementing social distancing measures in the UK. Superficially, there appeared to be some logic to it. If lockdowns are time limited, it might make sense to ensure they are in operation during the period where the infection curve peaks. The logic is alluring until you realise that when that peak occurs is itself determined by the time a lockdown is started. So far as we can tell from Italy, Spain and China, this is roughly 3 weeks later. This time-lag is independent of the level of spread before the start of a lockdown (assuming, that is, some existing community transmission). The only situation in a delay would reduce the burden on a health system is the one in which it was merely a one-off act designed to mitigate Covid's 'natural' spread to a large majority of the population, in other words where we had given up on actually preventing people from getting the disease.
2. There is a trade-off between suppressing Covid and the economy
This one also sounds pretty intuitive, as social distancing measures obviously reduce economic activity. Indeed, if they didn't, they probably wouldn't be working. People can't go to restaurants, bars, pubs, cinemas, etc. Most can't go to work, and only some of this can effectively be shifted to work done at home. Clearly this is going to cause substantial economic disruption. What's less clear is that the alternative would prevent much of this disruption from occurring anyway. High rates of infection would inevitably mean large numbers of people dropping out (hopefully temporarily) of the workforce, and a large proportion of discretionary spending would likely fall regardless, as people worried about catching Covid going out and feared a loss of income. What lockdowns hope to achieve is limit this period of disruption to a shorter time frame, after which restrictions can hopefully be eased off when accompanied by greater levels of testing. And if you are going to do a lockdown, the earlier the better in economic terms, as this means it can be relaxed at an earlier stage. Moreover, in the long term, covid suppression will likely lead to a swifter recovery, as a larger proportion of the workforce will have been protected and less adjusting will be necessary.
3. Test and trace can only work if we manage to find and isolate every single person infected with coronavirus.
If this were the case, test and trace programs would have a hopeless task. It is simply inconceivable that health care workers could manage to trace and track every single person infected with coronavirus, and a strategy based on that aim would be futile. But this is not what test and trace programs aim to achieve. Rather, they aim to find a large proportion of people who have contracted coronavirus at an early stage and get those people to isolate themselves, thereby reducing the average rate of transmission. If this is reduced to a number below 1, the numbers will exponentially decline regardless of the fact that many people slip through the net. And if average rates infections are kept just a little above 1, increase can be kept sufficiently low to allow for significant periods of relaxation of lockdown rules. What effectively test and trace aims to achieve is to render Covid a less infectious disease.
The economy vs covid suppression: a false dichotomy
A number of commentators are suggesting that policy makers face a major trade off between prosperity and disease prevention in response to the coronavirus. Those who are doing so are largely, though not exclusively, arguing in favour of more relaxed social distancing measures to prevent job losses and loss of income to businesses. Readers will come to their own judgements about the morality of such arguments if this tradeoff exists. I'd like however to make some arguments for why in my mind, this tradeoff is likely to a false one.
1. If very large numbers of people become ill, they drop out of the labour market while they (hopefully) recover. We can't say for sure precisely what proportion of Covid cases are truly asymptotic, but a reasonable guess based on countries like Iceland and Korea with very large testing programs is not more than half. This means that if Covid spreads uncontrolled, large numbers of people drop out of the workforce regardless. It also means that those involved in key professions (NHS, food distribution, water, gas and electricity supply etc etc) who will have to try and continue to work in any situation are more likely to become ill, as higher rates of infection in the general population mean any given individual, key worker or otherwise, is more likely to become ill.
2. Very high levels of spread of the Covid could well lead to panic. Lockdown or otherwise, people with savings or supplies might simply refuse to go to work, whether their employer allows them to or not. Those who are don't have the economic security to do this might just tell their employer they have Covid symptoms and need to self isolate.
3. Failure to enact suppression strategies will not be a politically sustainable option. If, as is likely, countries which stick to suppression strategies see a significant short term reduction in new cases and fatalities, any government which took a different route or reversed suppression measures prematurely due to 'economic' concerns would face extreme political pressure to introduce or reintroduce suppression strategies.
4. The faster and more thoroughly you enact suppression strategies, the more quickly case numbers fall and you can legitimately start to think about easing things off. Getting ahead of the curve sooner means not just lower fatalities in the short term, but a shorter period of economic disruption.
5. The long term economic damage from coronavirus isn't just about disruption this year. It's about what the labour market looks like after this is all over. Very large numbers of infections means, for reasons too grim and too obvious to spell out, a period of difficult adjustment in the labour market.
The broad thrust of these arguments is pretty simple. One way or other, we are going to see a period of major economic disruption. The choice is whether governments get ahead of the curve, and keep that period as short as possible, or let things get out of control and face the same, if not greater levels of disruption for a longer period of time.
Social distancing fatigue
Part of the government’s current thinking on coronavirus seems to revolve around the idea that after a certain point, the public could become ‘fatigued’ at control measures, meaning they would become less and less effective. This, so it is argued, might justify postponing the implementation of social distancing measures to a later date. At the risk of becoming yet another non expert who should shut up about this, the underlying logic of this seems dubious, but I’ll try and reconstruct it as best as I can.
It’s true that some social distancing measures have to be delayed, as they can only effectively be implemented once you know where the mass of cases are (e.g restriction of travel to and from particularly affected areas). But some things can be done across the board (e.g school closures, banning large gatherings). So far as I can tell, these slow down infection rates irrespective of absolute numbers, provided there is some spreading to be reduced. Now, if you assumed that you could only implement social distancing measures for a short period of time, once, it might make sense to try and reserve this for the time you thought would be the peak (if nothing else to flatten the curve enough to help hospitals). But this would be true if and only if measures carried out earlier did not prevent this high peak happening in the first place. The overall trajectory of the infection would have to be largely unaffected by earlier social distancing measures, just delayed.
This overall trajectory, presumably, would be the virus infecting a large enough proportion of the population for herd immunity to start kicking in and slowing down the rate of new infections. In other words, you basically have to assume that sooner or later, a very large part of the population is going to get infected and you can only implement social distancing measures for short time periods.
This seems like a rather bizarre position at a time that China and Korea seem to have managed to dramatically limit new cases to absolute numbers converging on something like 1/20,000 and 1/5000 of their respective populations. This seems to suggest that preventing large portions of the general population getting infected is very possible. Even if you don’t eradicate the infection entirely, extensive contact tracing and testing might well be enough to prevent the outbreak from ballooning again once numbers have been brought down through social distancing. But such measures would presumably only be possible if numbers were small. Even if you ended up with a bit of a cycle of lower and higher levels of social distancing measures, this would not need to be carried out in perpetuity, just until more effective treatment or vaccines were developed and mass produced.
In effect, the logic behind delaying social distancing, if government statements are taken at face value, seem very shaky indeed. They are applying highly speculative behavioural science (can anyone find a citation that supports social distancing fatigue kicking in at specific time points?) in a way that even if true, require quite specific understandings of the spread of the disease which don’t seem to fit the pattern of what is occurring in countries with more rigorous social distancing measures. And that’s before we think about what ‘fatigue’ would actually result in (people can’t go to sports matches that aren’t happening, even if they want to). No other developed country has explicitly endorsed such a strategy, presumably because the risks are so asymmetric. If the government is right, they perhaps make things slightly easier in a very bad situation. But if they’re wrong, they will be the people who allowed the UK to see extremely widespread infections, when other countries avoided such an outcome.
Is expansionary fiscal policy good or bad news for Labour?
There has been a lot of speculation recently about whether Johnson's government will embark on a major program of public investment funded by borrowing. There have certainly been big promises on additional spending in health and the police, and the decision to press ahead with HS2 is a major spending commitment. Taking the statements of the current government at face value is certainly risky, and this isn't the first time there has been speculation about the end of austerity. In the early day's of May's premiership, there was plenty of talk about the end of 'Osbornomics', and whether Hammond would significantly relax the fiscal framework the Treasury was operating under. This did not amount to much. But let's assume for a moment that Johnson really does go for a major deficit spending splurge. Obviously this would have big implications that go beyond politics. But one, admittedly limited, question that that this raises in my mind is what implications this will have for the Labour Party going into the next general election. Does this make life easier or harder for progressives?
The way I see it, there are two countervailing forces at work here. On the one hand, in some ways this would seem very bad news for Labour politically. For the last 10 years, austerity, in the face of low interest rates and persistently slow growth have been something of a massive open goal for Labour. It presented an easy way in which an opposition party could promise to make people's lives better without huge tradeoffs. Just spend more money on stuff people want, and let fiscal multipliers take care of the debt to GDP ratio, and use near zero interest rates to invest in infrastructure projects which will almost certainly generate non zero returns. OK, there are limits to how far this can be taken, and in any case may mean only modest increases in current spending with larger increases in capital spending. And there are plenty of other goals a left wing government would want to pursue, like reducing income inequality, that this does little to address. But it still represented one easy way in which Labour could plausible say they would make things better without obvious losers. Indeed, the business friendliness of expansionary fiscal policy was something that Labour did not properly exploit (austerity, combined with Brexit, made the Conservatives anything but the party of business). If these easy wins are taken out of the picture, life may get more difficult for Labour by the next general election. And if the Conservatives take expansionary fiscal policy too far, and focus too much on things which don't generate investment returns, Labour might even need to start worrying about deficit reduction.
But the collective psychology of austerity is a strange beast. As Chris Dillow writes here, austerity seems to have lowered expectations about what a government can do and whether a government can make public services better. In some ways this is a variation of an old phenomenon: underfund a state service so badly that people lose faith in the ability of the state to run that particular service. But with austerity this is more pervasive: the every day reality of stagnation becomes a kind of cynical realism, and promises that involve life getting better are easy to shrug off as unrealistic fantasising. This kind of kind of cynical realism is, of course, advantageous to the party that proposes the least economically active state. Persistent low growth also has a habit of making politics meaner, angrier and more focussed on finding scapegoats, all of which is conducive to the kind of culture politics progressives seem to be on the losing side of at the moment. Expansionary fiscal policy could, then, even undertaken by a Conservative government, be good news for Labour. By showing that the government can do good things it might raise expectations in a way that makes more people a little more receptive to manifesto pledges, and if it raises growth it may dampen the appeal of nativism.
All of this, of course, is rather overshadowed by the Brexit shaped elephant in the room, which may well lead to a major economic shock in the near future. But taken on its own terms, the political effects of expansionary fiscal policy are rather uncertain. It is unclear whether Labour Party strategists should greet recent expansionary noises positively or with trepidation.
The way I see it, there are two countervailing forces at work here. On the one hand, in some ways this would seem very bad news for Labour politically. For the last 10 years, austerity, in the face of low interest rates and persistently slow growth have been something of a massive open goal for Labour. It presented an easy way in which an opposition party could promise to make people's lives better without huge tradeoffs. Just spend more money on stuff people want, and let fiscal multipliers take care of the debt to GDP ratio, and use near zero interest rates to invest in infrastructure projects which will almost certainly generate non zero returns. OK, there are limits to how far this can be taken, and in any case may mean only modest increases in current spending with larger increases in capital spending. And there are plenty of other goals a left wing government would want to pursue, like reducing income inequality, that this does little to address. But it still represented one easy way in which Labour could plausible say they would make things better without obvious losers. Indeed, the business friendliness of expansionary fiscal policy was something that Labour did not properly exploit (austerity, combined with Brexit, made the Conservatives anything but the party of business). If these easy wins are taken out of the picture, life may get more difficult for Labour by the next general election. And if the Conservatives take expansionary fiscal policy too far, and focus too much on things which don't generate investment returns, Labour might even need to start worrying about deficit reduction.
But the collective psychology of austerity is a strange beast. As Chris Dillow writes here, austerity seems to have lowered expectations about what a government can do and whether a government can make public services better. In some ways this is a variation of an old phenomenon: underfund a state service so badly that people lose faith in the ability of the state to run that particular service. But with austerity this is more pervasive: the every day reality of stagnation becomes a kind of cynical realism, and promises that involve life getting better are easy to shrug off as unrealistic fantasising. This kind of kind of cynical realism is, of course, advantageous to the party that proposes the least economically active state. Persistent low growth also has a habit of making politics meaner, angrier and more focussed on finding scapegoats, all of which is conducive to the kind of culture politics progressives seem to be on the losing side of at the moment. Expansionary fiscal policy could, then, even undertaken by a Conservative government, be good news for Labour. By showing that the government can do good things it might raise expectations in a way that makes more people a little more receptive to manifesto pledges, and if it raises growth it may dampen the appeal of nativism.
All of this, of course, is rather overshadowed by the Brexit shaped elephant in the room, which may well lead to a major economic shock in the near future. But taken on its own terms, the political effects of expansionary fiscal policy are rather uncertain. It is unclear whether Labour Party strategists should greet recent expansionary noises positively or with trepidation.
Language and the selectorate problem for the left
Paul Krugman is worried about a Sanders candidacy. Not because of what a Sanders presidency might mean in policy terms, but because he bandies around terms like 'socialist' in a way that provides easy lines of attack for his opponent in a presidential campaign, when a term like 'social democrat' may be both more apt and less open to mischaracterisation. What I think is going on here is part of a broader problem for the opposition parties in both the UK and the USA. For both the Labour Party and the Democrats portions of the selectorate are providing incentives which damage the parties' prospects with the wider electorate. This is partly a question of style and partly about different meanings and idiolects that exist within the contemporary left.
Forget for a moment what the true meaning of terms like 'socialism' is and whether they can include what is essentially a program for a more robust welfare state, greater income redistribution and improved workers' bargaining power in the context of a market economy. Yes, it's true that many European social democratic parties have the word 'socialist' in the name, but historical nomenclature can be misleading. Once upon a time the Bolsheviks were the a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The real question here is what associations people actually have with the term. To many on the left in the UK, 'socialism' might mean buying a coffee from a vendor on a living wage, on the way to a better run train service taking you to a job with proper protection as an employee. But like it or lump it, to many older voters it still refers to an economic and political system based on state ownership of the means of production and distribution, and carries with it the legacy of the iron curtain. Words can mean whatever we want them to mean, but effective communication requires a common understanding of this meaning. Maybe associations can change, but that takes time, and time is not on our side.
The problem is using terms with this kind of ideological baggage has big payoffs in leadership races. To portions of the selectorate, it signals a clear break with the worst aspects third way centrism and the perceived timidity of the centre left after the financial crisis. In the UK this is partly a response to Milliband's attempts to triangulate on austerity, and in the USA the inadequacy of the Obama fiscal stimulus and piecemeal nature of healthcare reform, both of the latter largely being a result of political impediments to anything more comprehensive. This kind of signalling is not limited to the use of the term 'socialist': in the Labour leadership elections it has become something of a necessity to describe anything and everything as 'radical' and to fetishise outdated markers of social class as a means of establishing authenticity.
The tragedy of this is it distracts from the fundamentally conservative character of much of the program of the modern left. It is about preserving the welfare state and saving it from starvation through underfunding. It is about defending the tremendous social progress of the last 40 years, of societies that have become more inclusive of minorities, in the case of the UK much more multicultural, imperfect and incomplete as that progress may be. It is about defending the rule of law and upholding liberal democratic norms in the face of their assault from authoritarian populism. And it is about protecting the environment for ourselves and future generations. This kind of conservatism is harder to paint as radical and threatening, but the left finds itself in a kind of trap. The signals you need to send to win over substantial portions of the selectorate may be major hinderances with the wider electorate.
Forget for a moment what the true meaning of terms like 'socialism' is and whether they can include what is essentially a program for a more robust welfare state, greater income redistribution and improved workers' bargaining power in the context of a market economy. Yes, it's true that many European social democratic parties have the word 'socialist' in the name, but historical nomenclature can be misleading. Once upon a time the Bolsheviks were the a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The real question here is what associations people actually have with the term. To many on the left in the UK, 'socialism' might mean buying a coffee from a vendor on a living wage, on the way to a better run train service taking you to a job with proper protection as an employee. But like it or lump it, to many older voters it still refers to an economic and political system based on state ownership of the means of production and distribution, and carries with it the legacy of the iron curtain. Words can mean whatever we want them to mean, but effective communication requires a common understanding of this meaning. Maybe associations can change, but that takes time, and time is not on our side.
The problem is using terms with this kind of ideological baggage has big payoffs in leadership races. To portions of the selectorate, it signals a clear break with the worst aspects third way centrism and the perceived timidity of the centre left after the financial crisis. In the UK this is partly a response to Milliband's attempts to triangulate on austerity, and in the USA the inadequacy of the Obama fiscal stimulus and piecemeal nature of healthcare reform, both of the latter largely being a result of political impediments to anything more comprehensive. This kind of signalling is not limited to the use of the term 'socialist': in the Labour leadership elections it has become something of a necessity to describe anything and everything as 'radical' and to fetishise outdated markers of social class as a means of establishing authenticity.
The tragedy of this is it distracts from the fundamentally conservative character of much of the program of the modern left. It is about preserving the welfare state and saving it from starvation through underfunding. It is about defending the tremendous social progress of the last 40 years, of societies that have become more inclusive of minorities, in the case of the UK much more multicultural, imperfect and incomplete as that progress may be. It is about defending the rule of law and upholding liberal democratic norms in the face of their assault from authoritarian populism. And it is about protecting the environment for ourselves and future generations. This kind of conservatism is harder to paint as radical and threatening, but the left finds itself in a kind of trap. The signals you need to send to win over substantial portions of the selectorate may be major hinderances with the wider electorate.
Small 'c' conservatism and the Labour Party
‘To be conservative, then, is to prefer the
familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery,
the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the
distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect,
present laughter to utopian bliss.' Against the backdrop of current political
developments, Oakeshott’s description of conservatism may seem a little off the
mark. But self descriptions always need to be treated with a little bit of suspicion:
no doubt many Communists would have said and believed that what they were doing
was in the name of human freedom and about ending subjugation. But as an
aspiration, this idea of conservatism doesn’t seem like an altogether bad one, though I think we should be suspicious of liking the familiar or rejecting the possible for the actual for their own sakes. Caution, a
desire to preserve and build on the good aspects of what exists, empiricism and a suspicion of utopianism are not all bad things. Conservatism, in this sense, may be
better represented by the left of British politics now, and perhaps this is
something the Labour Party should embrace.
Much of the agenda of the contemporary British left is, after all, about preservation. Preservation and restoration of the welfare state, of a flourishing public sphere, of the post war diplomatic order and of a tolerant, pluralistic, multicultural society. What we are essentially describing here is conserving and building on the gains of the 20th century. Environmental protection and combatting climate change is a more striking example still. How, then, would this this with the increasing demands for ‘radical’ change, and for the increased interest in ‘systemically’ criticism, in particular with capitalism and the market economy?How does this fit with the rehabilitation of ‘socialist’ as a self description? I’m not convinced there is as much substance to these terms anymore as might appear at first glance.Very few people are advocating a planned economy, or for that matter any kind of coherent means of organising economic life that is dramatically different to the status quo. No doubt the contemporary left in the U.K. has a particular interest in nationalisation, but this tends to be limited to public goods which are often state run or owned in countries with a flourishing private sector. The principled opposition to private sector involvement in certain services may have better or worse justifications, but it doesn’t amount to a plan to fundamentally reorganise society, in the way that many socialists in the 20th century did advocate.
Perhaps for this reason the 'radical' left has actually been quite open to liberal economics. Examples of this might be opposition to
austerity framed in terms of standard macro economic arguments, or an openness to carbon taxes as a means of reducing emissions.
Certainly, there are certain aspects of a left wing agenda that amount to a
challenge of existing power (eg a greater role for collective bargaining in
wages). But for the most part, and perhaps even here, this could easily be
described as an attempt to make capitalism work better, whilst protecting the
vulnerable from its excesses. This desire to conserve and build on existing
gains might contrast nicely with the destructiveness of the Conservative Party,
and might well be a better pitch to the wider electorate than calls for
radicalism, or use of outdated vocabulary.
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