This lecture, the fifth part of a course titled "What is to be Done?", explores the key features of contemporary politics that shape what is possible in the world. It sets the stage for considering how to effect constructive change, despite seemingly depressing realities.
The lecture begins by highlighting the importance of local versus global inequalities. People tend to compare themselves to similarly situated others, making local disparities more impactful than abstract global inequality figures. This is illustrated through examples like the Capuchin monkey experiment and Rick Santelli's rant against mortgage relief. The lecturer contrasts the Trump and Sanders campaigns, noting that Trump focused on the feeling of being "screwed" by elites rather than on broader inequality, resonating with the idea of "loss aversion," where people are more motivated by avoiding losses than achieving gains. This insecurity and fear of downward mobility, especially among the middle class, are significant drivers of political behavior.
The lecture then turns to structural factors: the decline of organized labor and the corresponding rise in the power of business interests. The collapse of communism as a viable alternative has further strengthened capital, particularly in an era of globalization and technological advancement. Simultaneously, political parties have weakened and fragmented, making it harder to enact programmatic platforms and creating an environment ripe for populist leaders who exploit insecurity with simplistic solutions.
Despite this bleak assessment, the lecturer advocates for a "realistic utopianism," echoing Kant's dictum that "policy without politics is empty, but politics without policy is blind." He critiques the tendency for policy experts to ignore political feasibility and for political scientists to neglect normative considerations. He uses Piketty's call for a global tax on capital as an example of policy without politics and the Occupy Wall Street movement as an example of politics without policy. Occupy Wall Street expressed moral outrage at the bailout of financial institutions in the 2008 financial crisis, but had no specific policies to fix any problems.
The lecturer outlines six "building blocks of effective distributive politics" aimed at bridging the gap between desirable policies and political feasibility:
1. **Coalitions:** Thinking strategically about the coalitions needed to support a policy, both inside and outside the legislature, is paramount. The lecturer contrasts the median voter theorem, which doesn't occur systematically, with the majority rule divide a dollar game, illustrating the inherent instability of purely interest-based coalitions. The success of the campaign to repeal the estate tax is used as an example of building a very successful coalition inside and outside of the legislative bodies and is due to heading off potential blocking coalitions as well.
2. **Blocking Coalitions:** Identify and anticipate potential blocking coalitions and strategically preempt their efforts.
3. **Business Interests:** Acknowledge the significant power of business interests and consider their role as allies or opponents.
4. **Moral Narratives:** Craft compelling moral narratives to hold coalitions together, motivate action, and prevent defections when opponents offer better deals. The discussion covers that these can be different moral narratives with the same goal in mind for effective impact.
5. **Proximate Goals:** Pursue achievable, incremental goals that serve as way stations towards a broader vision. A success story with approximate goals include abolition of slave trade. Medicare is discussed as an example of unintended long term consequences.
6. **Entrench Gains:** Implement mechanisms to solidify policy gains and make them difficult to reverse. The success of Social Security's funding structure is contrasted with the failure to entrench the gains of Reconstruction, as it protects a current success through effective funding processes.
The lecture concludes with a cautionary note. The lecturer points out that those six elements are not enough. That building blocks of effective distributive politics are important but they're not a substitute for good policy and that bad policy can meet all six of these criteria. The 2008 housing crisis is discussed as an example. The "American Dream" had support in both parties, moral narratives, proximate goals, and leadership support.