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1973-"The Summer Before the Dark"

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 12th May 2011

  Chefone's now deleted piece on Henry Kissinger brought out the significance in his life of 1973 as a year when things changed.
  
  I am being reminded of this as a more general aspect of Western history by the Doris Lessing novel whose title I have used for the thread.
  
  It was published in 1973 and is set in a Britain disrupted by strikes that are an inconvenience to the central character. Her husband is a neurologist flying off to international conferences, and she, after two decades of being wife and mother, finds herself suddenly earning a huge salary as part of a Global Food organisation, in which she recognises all of the delegates to the various conferences, that she translates for and later helps to organise, as members of an exclusive international club..Their life is spent flying around a conference circuit and going through the motions- at times- of fighting "their corner".. But after the rituals comes the socialising, bonhomie, night-life etc.
  
  Dr Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy was part of this same culture, when there was a wartime legacy of looking to "top- people" to manage international affairs, and "sort things out" in wheeler dealing- because as in a game of whist more than poker- it was believed that "men in power" now knew the game and could play their cards- finessing the odd play here and there.. But it was all in the game.
  
  But the Third Edition of the Oxford University book "The Economic System in the UK" 1985 says defensively of economic planning:
  
  "There is relatively little validity in the view that the post-1973 period, which resulted in virtually none of the country's economic objectives being achieved, represented a major failure of economic analysis. Not only was the crisis of 1973-6 initially caused by factors largely out of control of the UK, but economic analysis was in fact rather succesful in predicting the likely course of the crisis and in indicating the severity of the different policy options needed to deal with it.."
  
  In other words all those people who were expected to manage affairs and keep the world out of crisis, and were given some credibility, leeway and power to "take the helm", were no more able than anyone else to keep us all out of deep trouble.
  
  I think that public credibility has never been restored.
  
  Cass
  
  

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• Message 2

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  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Thursday, 12th May 2011

  Monday 1 January 1973 - the UK joins the EEC.
  
  Enuff said.

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  Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Thursday, 12th May 2011

  Last year an English university -- Oxford, I think, but it may have been the other place -- organized a series of lectures to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of "The Origin of Species." They were published as podcasts, including several installments by theologians: Listening to them, I was forced to come to the conclusion that theology is actually the study of theologians, much as philosophy often becomes the study of philosophers.
  
  I often get the same impression of the science of economy, i.e. that it at times is less the study of the economy, than of economists. This board has seen some lengthy Holy Wars between people seeking to prove that this or that school of economists is right, and that seems to be the general tenor of much of the economic debate. That is not, of course, a very scientific approach; it is much more a religious model of operation, like Pelagius and Augustinus struggling to define orthodoxy and heresy between them. Indeed "orthodoxy" seems today mostly a term used in the context of economical theory.
  
  And the High Priests of political economy are indeed reminescent of the priest-kings of earlier generations. By assuring us that they know how to placate the gods, and ensure the prosperity of their following, they convince the people to reward them with substantial power and material wealth, despite a lack of evidence that it is actually within their power to deliver what their promise. Levers of economic power such as central bank interest rates are treated with the utmost reverence although they may not actually be connected to anything substantial. In reality, economic policy seems to be at its best when it focuses on damage limitation.
  
  This religious and semi-magical attribute of economic wisdom may also explain why experienced businessmen regularly fall victim to transparent frauds (a.k.a. consultants), bubbles rise and burst all the time, and rating agencies gave the highest ratings to extremely dubious investments. To focus on 1973 or any other year seems misguided in the face of this great over-arching continuity of gullibility and disappointment. What distinguishes .com bubbles from tulip crazes?
  
  It is not my intention, however, to dismiss all economists as frauds . Valuable work has been done by people who sought to describe how people and larger units interact in the economic framework. But describing something is one thing, and regulating it another. In this regard, incidentally, I find it just as arrogant to proclaim that the 'system' is self-regulated by some invisible hand, as that it can be forcibly regulated by a visible hand. Call me a pessimist.
  

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 13th May 2011

  Mutatis
  
  Your post made be take down J.K. Galbraith's "A History of Economics. The past as the present" that brings out very clearly the chemistry that has shaped economics as individivuals with their special human foibles and strengths have reacted to their perception of their present.
  
  In line with my OP two of the last few chapters are headed "Affirmation by Mars" followed by "High Noon"- and relates to the elevation of economics to High Priestly status. Then comes "Twilight and Evening Bell". US inflation went up by 6% 1969-70, 8% 1972-3, and 14% 1974-5- producing a new term "double-digit inflation".
  
  In line with my teaching mantra "We study the Past so that we can live the Present with an eye of the Future" I was very much in tune with his last two chapters "The Present as the Future" 1 &2. The very last section starts:
  
  "So we come to the end of this journey. Some things, one hopes, are clear. The past, we have seen, is not a matter of passive interest, it actively and powerfully shapes not alone the present but the future. Where economics is involved history is highly functional. The present is not to be understood in neglect of the past."
  
  But my OP was also suggesting that along with economics the post-war "High Noon" was a time when the "boffins" who had been heralded as saviours - decisively shaping the war from laboratories and workshops- were invested with a kind of religious belief in the ability of science and technology to solve the problems of the world.. Some would say that is still the case; but only really for the sciences that deal with physical realities. The human sciences like Economics, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology and their various applied forms are no longer seen as the forces which can be used to shape the future. How will posterity look back on the great age of the surgical lobotomy followed by the chemical lobotomy of "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" ?
  
  But to go back to your image: There has been a priestly contest not unlike those in Ancient Egypt. The Scientists dethroned the Humanists.. and now we are left with the Money Men.
  
  Cass

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 13th May 2011

  I wrote something last year that included this section based upon an article by a Harvard Professor of Politics who thought that British politics by 1961 was just a question of good management:
  
  **
  CONSERVATIVE ONE-PARTY DEMOCRACY
  Professor Beer’s article that year , entitled β€œDemocratic One-Party Government for Britain”, was written in the context of four successive general elections in which the Labour Party had received a declining % share of the vote given to the two main parties; and the future for Labour looked bleak. Beer could see that prior to the landslide victory in 1945 the Conservative Party had been in power, either on its own or in coalition, for most of the previous 45 years; and Beer credited the Tories with a particular talent for trend-reversing recoveries. He noted the revival of the late forties under the influence of R.A. Butler and how recently young people from the universities, who would previously have become socialists, were moving into the Conservative Party. Would two main parties be needed in future?
  
  Beer could see class conflict subsiding with a decline in ideological politics because there was a general acceptance of the basic structure of the welfare state and the managed economy. Increasingly parties did not clash in the pitched battles of opposing social philosophies, but in small skirmishes. Points at issue had become marginal, statistical, quantitative, mere matters of more or less. It was a situation that had favoured the growth of powerful pressure groups committed to single-issues of immediate interest rather than those of general national concern. It seemed reasonable to postulate that for the foreseeable future one-party democracy based upon Conservative governments would provide effective rule.
  
  As far as organised Labour was concerned the managed economy, with its policies of full-employment, had raised the trade unions to the status of some of the most powerful pressure groups. If Conservatism was the traditional party of the wealth-pursuing interest, then a Conservative government that the trade unions could struggle against in the interests of their members offered the rewards of power without responsibility. Interestingly a survey in 1959 had shown that even among Labour supporters 3% thought that the party’s policies would endanger the country’s welfare, while 24% thought that they might. Perhaps some of these 27% were internationalists, but that was not likely to recommend them to the UK electorate as a whole.
  
  ***
  
  Cass

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