Do we need a think tank of the Left ?

Keith Dixon, Raisons d'Agir

Please let me start by saying that I think the question that we have been asked to address today is very largely rhetorical. My own response - which I will try briefly to make more explicit - is of course a positive one. Although I must say that the use of the singular here - "a" think tank - is somewhat problematic, but I'll return to that shortly. The question then, from my point of view, is not so much "whether" (we need a think tank) but "how" (to construct one). How can the Left (a nebulous concept, if ever there was one, given what passes for the "Left" in most European countries nowadays), how can the radical, critical Left at present emerging from or alongside the social movements throughout Europe, and well beyond, develop original forms of cooperation and coordination in the intellectual field in order to subvert the present political order of things?

My own modest contribution to this debate can be found - between the lines, so to speak - in the essay which I published in 1998 in the Raisons d'Agir series, now translated into German, entitled Les Evangélistes du marché. The explicit purpose of that little book was to look at the way neo-liberal intellectuals in Europe and the United States regrouped after the Second World War in what by that time had become for them a very inhospitable ideological climate, and how, within thirty years they had reclaimed the ground lost under the Keynesian consensus and helped to accomplish what can only be called a revolution, in economic, social and political terms. I took the United Kingdom as the main focus for my study, firstly because that is my own academic field of research, but also and perhaps more importantly because the successes of the neo-liberals have been particularly remarkable there, to such an extent that for many sympathetic observers outside Britain, the country has become, since the Thatcher onslaught, the home of "really existing liberalism". If my explicit purpose was to explore the intellectual contours of the neo-liberal victory in Britain, there was a second message I hoped to get across, which was that the French Left in particular - I was at that time writing to a French audience - and the Left more generally had much to learn from the modes of organization and intellectual intervention of the Hayekian Right.

Having lived for more than half my life now in France, but remaining still partially anchored in the political realities of my home country, it seemed to me that the Left on both sides of the Channel had long underestimated both the doctrinal striking power of the New Right (this was an underestimation that the British Left paid dearly) and, more straightforwardly, the importance of ideas (and those who produce them) in political struggles. This of course is not specific to the Left and it is worth reading the exhortations of Ralph Harris, for example, one of the leading figures of the Thatcher revolution and for a long period director of the Institute for Economic Affairs, urging his fellow Conservatives as late as the early eighties to abandon their philistine anti-intellectualism (cf The Challenge of a Radical Reactionary, Centre for Policy Studies, 1980) . It may not be specific then to the Left, but it is today one of its major handicaps.

In France, a workerist tradition within the labour movement and among the intellectuals associated with that movement had long functioned as an impediment to any recognition of the value of an autonomous contribution from intellectuals. A second and equally pernicious practice has now emerged from the ruins of the old forms of engagement with political realities - that of the "expert" called in by governments and political parties of all hues to provide informed advice, most often about how to bolster the status quo, how best to manage the existing order of things. It is of note, from this point of view, that the budget devoted to Anthony Blair's "private cabinet" (cf. The Guardian of the 8th of November, 2000), the group of "experts" many of whom have been recruited from the modernising think tanks of New Labour, has almost doubled since he arrived in 10 Downing Street.

Paraphrasing Keynes (and von Hayek) I would suggest then that there can be no political subversion of the dominant ideas of government without intellectual subversion, and I would then add that such an activity in present conditions can only function properly on an international level. It was that basic idea which led to the creation of the Société du Mont Pèlerin by a small group of dedicated neo-liberal intellectuals (and a handful of journalists sympathetic to their cause) in 1947. Their objectives at the time were both crystal clear and totally utopian : to overthrow (by peaceful means, of course) the dominant Keynesian (social democratic, interventionist ) order of things, to work towards the re-establishment of the "free play of market mechanisms" throughout society, to curb the "monopolistic" power of the trade unions, and to undermine the foundations of the so-called "Welfare States" emerging from the post-war settlement. In the early fifties, when this intellectual network was being constructed, essentially around the ideas of von Hayek, even the most extravagant of gamblers would have hesitated to put any money whatsoever on the possible success of these "market madmen". And yet…

I have no time here to go into the detail of the fundamental changes that have taken place in British society over the last twenty years, since the effective collapse of the Keynesian consensus. I will simply have to state (although I am more than willing to take the time to demonstrate) that much of the initial, utopian programme of the neo-liberals has now become reality : the massive privatisation of industry and services, putting an effective end to what Ralph Harris called mockingly "the mixed up economy"; a significant weakening of social protection at a time when both mass unemployment and mass poverty have re-emerged; the partial dismantling of the institutions of the Welfare State, with, for example, the introduction of market criteria into the functioning of the National Health Service; the re-establishment of what is euphemistically called the "management's right to manage" both on the labour market more generally and within individual firms; the return to the situation prior to the legislation of 1906 concerning trade union rights; the generalization of a casualized and "flexible" workforce; and lastly, (more recently) the re-emergence of a "disciplinary state" more intent on stigmatizing, punishing and incarcerating the poor than in eradicating poverty.

The intellectual and political victory of neo-liberalism has been such that even a change in the party in office (marked by the arrival of Blair's New Labour in 1997) has done little or nothing to break the Hayekian consensus (cf Un Digne Héritier) . I am not arguing here that the organized intervention of the neo-liberal think tanks - Institute for Economic Affairs (1957), Centre for Policy Studies (1974) and Adam Smith Institute (1976) - was the only determining factor in the transformation of British society. There were of course at the time of the neo-liberal onslaught of the early and mid-seventies an unprecedented social and economic crisis, a civil war waging on part of British territory, and a institutional Left with little or nothing to offer in terms of radical alternatives. What I am arguing is that without the body of doctrine elaborated patiently (and collectively) during the barren years of opposition to the Keynesian status quo there could have been no Thatcher revolution.

Let me briefly now suggest some lessons that we might usefully draw from the subversive activity of the neo-liberal revolutionaries.

1. Although it is widely believed on the Left that the neo-liberal think tanks and intellectual networks have benefited form massive financial assistance from private firms and individuals, and that this has been one of the keys to their success, this is only very partially true. It is indeed true that the major neo-liberal foundations in the U.S. (Heritage, the Manhattan Institute, etc.) are large and well-provided for organisations, with hundreds of full-time staff. But on the other hand, the Institute for Economic Affairs, which played such a key role in the battle of ideas in Great Britain, for many years operated on a shoe-string budget with only two poorly-paid full time staff . In fact in going through the accounts of the three major British think tanks one is struck by their relatively modest budgets, at least until the Thatcher revolution began to roll effectively in the mid-eighties. By that time much of the intellectual groundwork had already been accomplished. It is possible then to achieve much with little.

2. The key to the success of the British think tanks (and no doubt their sister organizations elsewhere) has been their willingness to pool resources on an international level. Whereas the left is still trying to emerge from pre-history in terms of international co-operation (although I don't deny that much has been achieved in the recent period in the mobilisation against the World Trade Organisation, etc.), internationalism came apparently easily to the so-called New Right. The Société du Mont Pèlerin functioned for many years as an international centre of intellectual resources, providing its national outlets with high-power, heavyweight advice. Thus we see, for example, von Hayek, Friedman and later Charles Murray intervening directly and effectively in British domestic debates, via the think tanks.

3. The think tanks in Britain operated with a large degree of autonomy from the established political parties and organisations. This is true at least for the IEA and for the Adam Smith Institute and no doubt explains their success in recruiting and converting well beyond the ranks of the Conservative party, which came to be the natural carrier of the neo-liberal message (although that particular monopoly has now been broken by New Labour). Above all, that autonomy gave them the lee-way to 'think the unthinkable", to borrow an overused expression, well beyond what might be considered as politically correct or acceptable in parliamentary politics. Von Hayek was particularly distrustful of the capacity for compromise of all political parties, including the British Conservative Party, which for many years he saw as an unworthy vessel for the neo-liberal crusade.

4. Lastly, the neo-liberal think tanks learned how to economize their energies, among other things by a careful targetting of their audiences. Thus we see the City, the journalists of the major national newspapers; academics (teachers and students) emerging as the key groups to be converted. This was done by organising lunch-debates for members of the City, special briefing for journalists and short and readable publications, written by specialists and re-written by the house-writers of the think tanks, for the academic world.

Perhaps much of this cannot be reproduced as such, but it can certainly, and for some here perhaps paradoxically, serve as a source of inspiration, if we are to be able to set up a network of think tanks (of collective intellectuals), national and international, capable of combining co-ordination and autonomy, flexibility and effectiveness, organisation and spontaneity, and above all of looking beyond the narrow national provincialisms that continue to divide and weaken us.

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