/ 5 April 2009

Wisdom of crowds

The surge of rallies reflects an understanding that the world is changing -- and politicians had better pay attention, writes Jackie Ashley.

The surge of rallies reflects an understanding that the world is changing — and politicians had better pay attention, writes Jackie Ashley

The popular gatherings in central London around this week’s meeting of the G20 were an expression of the weakness of the new protest politics, not of its strength.

The world’s governments have sounded uncertain and confused about the wider meaning of the economic crisis. But so too do the world’s marchers.

This is no way a criticism of the thousands who have turned out. Individuals may have coherent and clear views about what’s gone wrong, and their own agendas. So do individual organisations.

Oxfam knows what it wants; Greenpeace has a clear priorities. And whether or not you agree with them you can hardly say the Socialist Workers Party has no philosophy.

So far, this movement is less than the sum of its parts. Some want world revolution and socialism, others merely hope the G20 succeeds in giving the world a fiscal boost. Some want disgraced bankers dangling from lampposts; others want a better system of bank regulation.

For many, poverty in developing countries remains the main issue, and they have a morally unanswerable point. But plenty more argue climate change is the world’s greatest problem. For them, another era of carbon-fuelled growth would be a further disaster.

That’s unlikely to be the perspective of the trade unionist whose job is threatened. For now, airport runway protestors and engineering workers march shoulder to shoulder. For less growth? More growth? Less materialism? More?

The obvious answer is different growth and different priorities.

The British trade union boss Brendan Barber says what united the protestors is a belief that unregulated free markets don’t work — in preventing bust, fighting poverty, or greening the economy.

The actor Tony Robinson puts it this way: “It all leads down to the same thing — that politics should be about people, not profit.”

Will the protests lead to more political coherence? If you want the state to take a bigger role, you have to admit that leaders such as Gordon Brown are doing their best for the British people — public ownership of much of the banking system, new regulations on their way and taxes about to shoot back up. If you think it’s an outrage that the rich West divvies up the world’s spoils, you have to admit the G20, with India, China, South Africa and Brazil at the top table, is a big improvement on the G7 or G8.

If you want a big expansion of aid, it’s likely that panicky governments are going to be more generous if they think growth can return soon; and that protectionism, a real prospect, would come on the rich countries’ terms, not Africa’s.

If you want stability so that leaders’ minds turn to the Copenhagen climate change agenda and lower carbon growth you need the G20 to work. If you want world revolution, you need it to fail. Oxfam may be marching with the anarchists, but they have opposite agendas.

This confusion does not reflect confusion among the leaders who flew into London this week. Facing the collapse of the world banking system, seeing businesses fall like playing cards, unemployment shoot up and credit fail, they are united by panic about the immediate crisis.

Stop recession turning into worldwide depression — that’s their agenda, not climate change or an increase in aid budgets or a new world order.

If they agree at all, it will be on free-trade principles, greater powers and funds for the IMF, and some uneven economic boost.

Even getting that far is unlikely. The 2% boost to world spending being talked about is what has already been decided on by individual countries, not a further boost. Many protesters are going to be disappointed.

The politicians will answer, so what? How can they possibly meet such a ragged coalition’s demands?

They can’t. But the protests should not be brushed aside. It’s early days. This is a moment in something bigger, which will be part of our politics for a long time to come. It isn’t going to be business as usual again.

This financial crash has broken most of the sources of authority we’ve become used to over the past 30 years — the “Washington consensus” and New Labour’s claims to have got the UK’s economy and financial regulation right.

And it’s smashed the reign of the City of London slickers. Never again will we have to take somebody seriously just because he or she works for Goldman Sachs or Barclays.

This leaves more space for new political ideas, including greater fairness between different parts of the world.

The West is condemned to a period of new frugality and greater modesty, and to taking more seriously the voices of other parts of humanity. That there are now 20 in the “G” is a little political earthquake all of its own.

Equally, any new politics has to be about low-carbon growth, meaning a revolution in industry and business — but also in lifestyle.

Under the easy condemnations of bankers and neo-liberal politicians isn’t there the less comfortable truth that most of us have happily gone along for the ride? That many of us have taken ever greater material prosperity as the only true measure of a good life?

Again, if we can share the strain and live differently without condemning the poorest to even greater poverty then a change of perspective may not be a bad thing.

Politicians have barely begun to think about all this. Yet, for all its incoherence, the surge of protest does reflect an understanding that the world is changing, and must change.

It needs to be reinserted into demo­cratic politics — almost certainly through a new generation of politicians. This will come.

Ragged and posturing at times, the movement is weak and confused, but can only gain in coherence. It’s an early sign of a general reassessment that cannot be avoided. Sometimes, there is wisdom in crowds. —