By Alessandro Bonetti
In this period of crisis, political and economic discussions are polarized. On the one hand, some persist in defending the standard neoliberal dogmas, even if they hide behind the curtain of apparent change. On the other hand, others advance vague palingenesis.
For instance, let’s think about the European question. Some continue to blindly believe in a dream that has turned out to be a dark nightmare, while others, in excessive simplification, advocate the dismantling of European institutions and a return to an idealized past.
But there is no past where we can go back to. Nor can we settle for the present in which we live.
What then, if anything, can we do?
We must cultivate a utopia of the possible. Thinkability is a necessary prerequisite for the feasibility of each project. We must remain grounded, bearing in mind that the main task of the government and politicians is to ensure the current well-being of the communities under their care, and not to take too many risks for the future – as Keynes said:
“[This] long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead”, the British baron famously enunciated. And he added: “Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.”
A Tract on Monetary Reform, 1923
History unfolds here and now, through our choices. Yet, in this moment we all risk being dead not just in the long term, but also in the short term if we do not act decisively and immediately.
We have to imagine new ways out of problems, thinking outside prearranged schemes. We must not abandon ourselves to pessimism. As early as 1930, Keynes warned:
“Both of the two opposed errors of pessimism which now make so much noise in the world will be proved wrong in our own time – the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments “.
Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, 1930
We must not be pessimistic, but rather disillusioned and creative at the same time. Reformists, but not moderates. The true revolutionary is the reformist because he knows how to be pragmatic but, at the same time, he knows how to cultivate the ideal of a different world. He knows he is acting inside history. And therefore, he knows how to escape the dialectic between opposing ideological positions.
Of course, the meaning of the words “reformism” and “reforms” has been distorted in recent years by political movements and international organisations soaked to the bone in the most ideological neoliberalism. Let’s try to clean it up.
The nature of the true reformist is described by the Italian economist Federico Caffè in a famous article published in the newspaper “Il Manifesto” on January 29, 1982, called “The solitude of the reformist”.
The reformist is alone, between two fires.
On the one hand, the anti-establishment folks deride him, contrasting his proposals with “future palingenesis”, “vague, with indefinite contours”, which “are generally summarized in a formula that we do not know what it means, but which has the merit of a magical pull effect”.
On the other, even reactionaries mock him, who think “that there is very little to reform, neither now nor ever, as the spontaneous operation of the market provides for everything, provided that it is allowed to act without useless hindrances”.
The “neoliberal rhetoric” does not scratch the reformist too much. On the contrary, it spurs him to fight with even more tenacity. What he “feels with greater melancholy” are the attacks of those who consider him not radical enough. But he is used to being misunderstood and therefore does not give up his intellectual vocation. On the contrary, he knows that he is actually more radical than the maximalist because he knows that “he operates in history”. His proposals want to affect concrete reality, his action takes place “within a ‘system’, of which he does not want to be either the apologist or the undertaker; but, within the limits of his possibilities, a member who is prompt to make all those improvements that are immediately feasible and not abstractly desirable. He prefers the little to the whole, the achievable to the utopian, the gradualism of transformations to an always postponed radical transformation of the ‘system'”. Because the system does not always manage to escape alternative and radical transformations.
True reformism is not just realistic. It is Keynesian.
Keynes wrote that “the fact that all things are possible is no excuse for talking foolishly” (The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919). On the contrary, the wide possibility of reality is a challenge to think and imagine what is possible and necessary.
Keynesianism is method and content; method because it rejects paralyzing dogmatism, and content because it offers tools and values to build the future.
The Keynesian does not sanctify capitalism, and he does not consider it the only possible choice. But neither does he condemn it in full. He studies it, rejecting any ideology. He has understood that there is great confusion between the partisans of capitalism and those of anti-capitalism. The former often take reactionary attitudes and reject progressive reforms “for fear that they may prove to be first steps away from capitalism itself” (The End of Laissez Faire, 1926). Many of the latter, on the other hand, who “are really objecting to capitalism as a way of life, argue as though they were objecting to it on the ground of its inefficiency in attaining its own objects” (ibidem), while they should criticize it for the domination of technics that it tends to impose on humankind and for the alienation that is not only suffered by the exploited, but by modern man in a broader sense.
The Keynesian has a phenomenological and open-minded approach to capitalism. An approach that does not translate into ideological subjection to one school of thought or the other. With great clarity Keynes wrote that “capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable” (The End of Laissez Faire, 1926).
The Keynesian is capable of thinking otherwise, of freeing himself from the shackles of useless ideologies and easy enthusiasms. And, after long reflection, he comes to the conclusion that “the political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty” (Liberalism and Labour, 1926).
None of the three points can be waived. All three are essential to humanity.
Against the illusions of a future palingenesis, the Keynesian observes that it is not sufficient that the state of affairs we are trying to promote be better than the previous state. it must be sufficiently better to compensate for the evils of the transition.
On the other hand, addressing those who advocate a (depressing) liberal conservatism, he counterposes the need to promote employment through active government involvement, making clear that “the world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always coincide” (The End of Laissez Faire, 1926).
Keynes guides us towards a revolution that is first of all personal, secondly cultural, and finally economic and social. He urges us “to be bold, to be open, to experiment, to take action, to try the possibilities of things” (“Can Lloyd George Do It?—The Pledge Examined” 1929). Of course, the defenders of orthodoxy obstruct the path. But they must “be treated with a little friendly disrespect and bowled over like ninepins” (ibidem).
This article was originally published on the Italian magazine Kritica Economica.
About the Author: Alessandro Bonetti is a MSc Economics student at Bocconi University (Milan) and coordinator of the magazine Kritica Economica.
