> Am I the only person here to
> have reservations about the emphasis placed on aspiration as a key
> plank of the third way?
Probably not, but I would say there has to be an emphasis on aspiration in
any kind of third way philosophy, for reasons I hope to outline in my
reply to you below.
> Clearly some aspiration is a good thing. Taking on challenging work
> expands people's horizons and stretches their abilities, and we do
> need as many people as possible to excel in their economic activities
> in order to achieve greater overall wealth. But an aspirational
> society was also a key plank of Thatcherism where I also see a number
> of negative externalities to it.
Yes, aspiration was a key part of Thatcherism, but only in so far as that
Thatcherism wanted more to be given to those who already have. What "third
way aspirationalism" ought to be is about giving a "culture of aspiration"
back to those who are, to lapse into the Blairite terminology "socially
excluded" - ie the poor, working class, inner cities and disadvantaged
ghettoised minorities.
Blair has pinpointed the problem here, which is parental expectation
limiting children, the disadvantages of parents giving children little
hope. The child who sees an unemployed society seeing little point in
working hard at school. This is how the German education system can in
some ways be worse than the old 11+ - it is selective, but self-selecting,
so children's futures are determined by the expectations of their parents.
> Firstly, aspiration engenders competitiveness. This open competition
> leads to distrust between colleagues and between peers in society
> generally. I work for a large British multinational in the information
> systems industry. One of the first things you learn in this type of
> environment is that many of your colleagues are basically out for
> themselves only, and some of them won't hesitate to climb on your
> shoulders, or even trample you down, if doing so serves their own
> careers. This also means that people have to keep an eye over their
> shoulders, and devote time to acquiring skills such as selling
> themselves rather than devoting all their energies to the things
> they're really good at. Surely this is not the way to create a more
> trusting society with greater social capital?
No, it isn't indeed, and it is important that as well as individual
aspiration we have a sense of corporate aspiration and national
aspiration. Lack of pride in company and society lead to the premise that
all there is left is the individual and we must therefore "look out for
number one".
> The competitive marketplace makes it hard even for employers like
> mine, who genuinely do try to treat their staff well. Because there
> are no boundaries, some of our competitors trim their costs by
> treating their staff less well, and the temptation becomes to follow
> suit, even when a lot of evidence suggests that overworking people
> leads to little net advantage because they become tired and then work
> less efficiently.
I don't think anyone talking about aspiration has said that there should
be no limits to how badly an employer may treat there staff. A minimum
wage will make a difference here, as will union recognition and other
measures. However the evidence you quote in your last sentence is evidence
I would accept, and so I would suggest that the sweatshop employer gains
very little indeed from their actions as against a similar employer with,
say, 45 hour weeks, particularly if they are paying the same hourly rate.
Nonetheless I would be wary of imposing rigid limits on working hours - if
someone feels themselves capable of working long hours for a short period
of time in order to save up for something special it would be the very
worst of Old Labour to suggest we ought to keep them down. Only when the
problem of employer pressure becomes very serious, or there are other
pressures, we must act as a society.
> The white Anglo-Saxon culture has become obsessed with work, and in
> particular the protestant work ethic. This may have been appropriate
> in times when people had to struggle just to achieve material
> survival, but it's value seems much more questionable in these days of
> post-materialism where Maslow's motivational hierarchy points out that
> people will then turn their attention to other factors such as social
> connections, culture, self-realisation and other less materialistic
> goods.
I'd challenge you to tell that to someone who has been unemployed for ten
years and see what their reaction was.
> expected to take paid work. The two-income model has driven the prices
> of decent-sized houses in some parts of the country (particularly, the
> home counties) beyond any but two-income professional couples - not a
> recipe for inclusion of the remainder - and it also impacts on the
> informal, unpaid family carers who in the past took care of a large
> proportion of the elderly and also looked after children to assist
> their parents.
True. We should welcome the government's moves in the last budget to
redistribute from single people to married couples with children, but we
should call for more of the same, in particular on one-income households.
> (While there is a lot of good in the teachings of Christianity, there
> is also a considerable amount of content whose value is doubtful to
> say the least. I don't believe a solely Christian-based ethical
> framework will _ever_ provide the right foundation for a better
> society. I expect that recent work on emotional intelligence and the
> way our minds work will continue to expose fairly basic flaws in the
> Christian mind-set. IMO Tony Blair needs to somehow free himself from
> his religious background and find a way of taking a wider
> perspective.)
We can agree to disagree.
> Thirdly, aspiration when taken to excess turns first to greed and
> then, beyond that, to criminality. If someone aspires to own a car
> it's fine for them to work long hours of the day to pay for it, but
> someone who can't or won't yet still wants the car badly becomes
> tempted to steal one. This of course is an extreme example, yet the
> same principle applies to much smaller interactions between people.
> For example there's one girl at our office, just graduated from
> university, who has been brazen enough to tell me all about how she
> takes advantage of her sex to cadge cigarettes for herself and her
> friends, and how she gets away with things which if they were done by
> a man would probably result in him getting punched.
I know lots of people like that, and there is a view that crime is
"capitalism in action". Anyway, people will innately want to take what
they cannot afford to buy. We deal with that by tackling poverty and
criminality (TOCTOTCOC) not by limiting people's aspirations.
> Erosion of the levels of trust between the participants to the
> transactions in question is a common strand that runs through all of
> the above phenomena. This is becoming a much more prominent issue at
> all levels of society, from professional circles down. Surely it is
> now high time to wage war on all the factors that lead to this
> distrust?
Yes, but do not look at aspiration as your main target. I am convinced
when the third way talks about encouraging aspiration it is amongst the
dispossesed, not those who are already "yuppies".
Best wishes,
jdc
John Courouble, Room 4012, Keble jdc@feeble.ml.org
President, Oxford Uni. Fabian Society
Messages only : 01865 272727 The best way to predict
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kebl0613 the future is to make it.
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