Tide going out?

It's looking that way -- the tide of statism, that is. There are signs that it may have reached its high-water mark sometime in the 70's of the last century, and has been slowly receding since -- lower marginal tax rates, privatization initiatives, deregulation, etc. And, of course, the momentous collapse of "actually existing" socialism in the early 90's. In the midst of history, as we always are, it can be difficult to see real turning points, and there have certainly been some big waves washing in to obscure the trend. But as we now watch even the welfare states of Europe begin to step back from the path they'd been following, as though from an abyss (to mix metaphors a little), it's increasingly difficult to avoid seeing what's before us. The latest example may be that Nanny State bellwether, Sweden, as an article by Duncan Currie, "Sweden's Quiet Revolution", indicates:

The broader story of the 2010 election is the collapse of Sweden’s old political order, which was dominated by the Social Democrats (who held power for all but nine years and a few months between September 1932 and October 2006). “There is a general change in Swedish society,” Stockholm University political scientist Jenny Madestam told the New York Times prior to the vote. “Social-democratic ideas are losing their grip on Sweden, and we are getting more and more individualistic.” Indeed, the country is a far more market-friendly place today than it was 20 years ago, thanks in part to reforms implemented by the Social Democrats themselves. Over the past two decades, it has been one of Western Europe’s most energetic liberalizers — cutting taxes, loosening regulatory shackles, and increasing competition.

This is what gives the left -- liberal, green, anti-capitalist, or "progressive" -- such willies. For some time now they've had to pin their dwindling hopes not on their ideas, which even they recognize as a bit old and stale, if not sclerotic, but on things like demographics -- more immigration! -- or, or, maybe a great big capitalist crisis! And so, when a great big capitalist crisis (GBCC) came along, as they routinely do, imagine the relief and even exhilaration of the left -- especially as, in the US, it coincided with not just the first black president but with the first black "progressive" President!

Little wonder, then, at their confusion, consternation, and bitterness now, when they see that even a GBCC doesn't seem to be able to turn the tide.

P.S.: here's an earlier take on the bellwether.

UPDATE: Oh, and for a little more on the greens (green being the new red for many old lefties who can't quite bring themselves to say the word "socialism" anymore), here's a piece by Johnathan Adler, "The Sorry Green Giant", showing how much of the politicized environmental movement has been taken over by an ideological rump of displaced anti-capitalists, with the result that that movement too is experiencing the ebbing of trust and interest we see in projects to expand the state everywhere:

The environmentalist love affair with big government leads to counterproductive policies and alienates large portions of the electorate. Americans may support environmental protection, but they don’t support a massive, overweening regulatory state. If the only Green answer to ecological concerns is yet more government control of private economic activity, many Americans will turn away.

This year the environmental movement suffered a tremendous political defeat — some would even call it a reckoning.

The mysteries of markets

The good folks at Crooked Timber once again provide fodder for thought, and once again it's John "Make the Rich Pay" Quiggan who's churning it out. Here he is opining about "interesting intellectual evolution":

There is, I think, room for a version of liberalism/social democracy that is appreciative of the virtues of markets (and market-based policy instruments like emissions trading schemes) as social contrivances, and sceptical of top-down planning and regulation, without accepting normative claims about the income distribution generated by markets.

Which, given the context, no doubt is evidence of an evolution, even is it's only venturing onto land. The comments provided more fun, with one thinking the above description "would describe all but the far end of the American left" and then JQ characterizing his own passage as a "Rorschach blot", which he thinks means "I'm on to something, but I don't know what". The last clause, at least, is clearly true.

What he's onto, though, may be a concise illustration of the basic incoherence of the strategy of the so-called "Third Way" ("strategy", as opposed to pragmatic tactics, note). I tried to suggest that in a comment myself:

Whether Third Way, Fourth Way, or Nth Way, though, you may find that you’ll have a bit of a problem in accepting markets, etc. as “social contrivances” while rejecting the resulting income distribution. Unless of course you simply intend to ignore “normative claims” altogether. A vexing problem, no? Markets work well, or seem to, but for reasons that we don’t understand, and their outcomes are always so not fair….

But that was maybe a bit too cryptic for that neighborhood. To explain: markets only work, even as "social contrivances", because of the income distributions they generate. If you reject such distributions then you're essentially rejecting markets and their accompanying virtues. If, on the other hand, you accept the virtues of markets, then that alone is a "normative claim" -- calling them "social contrivances" doesn't get you out of the dilemma, since any and all social structures/processes can be so described. What's happening is that there are two distinct "normative claims" being asserted -- a socialist one, in which goods and services are literally "distributed" by some one or group on the basis of some notion of fairness; and a market-based one, in which goods and services are simply traded and not "distributed" in any but a metaphoric sense. And therein lies the incoherence.

On a practical level it's quite true that we routinely mix and match these kinds of claims, meaning that we routinely adulterate whatever non-market claims there are in order to obtain some benefits from market virtues for some, and then we routinely adulterate those market virtues in order to obtain some other "normative claim" as defined by ... well, we're never exactly sure. Messy, as the real world always is. But we can respect the practicalities of the situation -- social inertia, dependencies of various sorts, etc. -- while still working toward a resolution of the incoherence. In other words, we can choose fundamentally between working toward a First Way, or toward a Second Way, but striving toward a Third Way is the pursuit of a mirage.