What the Left Gets Wrong; and What the Right Gets Wrong

Pragmatic problem-solving is better than ideological dogmatism

"Fighting young bears" by Tambako the Jaguar is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

In 1937, Spanish philosopher and essayist José Ortega y Gasset wrote: “Being left-wing, just like being right-wing, is one of an infinite ways that a man can choose to be an idiot: indeed, both can be seen as a form of brain injury…” A little harsh, perhaps, but as he wrote these words, Spain was tearing itself apart in a bitter battle between left and right. Moderates, centrists and liberals, like Ortega y Gasset, watched in misery as the tragedy unfolded.

Previous entries to Sharpen Your Axe show us why rigid ideologies can easily lead us astray, as Ortega y Gasset noticed nearly 85 years ago. Having one model of the world, instead of balancing different models, makes us worse at making predictions; reacting badly to criticism stops us from updating our worldview; and utter certainty tends to be less useful as an attitude than cautious uncertainty. Meanwhile, true believers in an ideology will always be tempted to invent conspiracy theories to protect their mental models from troubling counter-examples.

So, what does the contemporary left get wrong? I feel that it devotes far too much energy to thinking about inequality and not nearly enough to economic instability. There is much too much indignation about billionaires, which largely misses the point that most billionaires are first-generation entrepreneurs and most of their wealth is tied up in the shares of the companies they founded. Entrepreneurship should be encouraged - it tends to generate good results for society on a net basis, including many new jobs. Making a small handful of people hideously rich seems a small price to pay.

Economic instability, however, is a whole different issue. In 1970, libertarian economist Milton Friedman wrote that the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits. Since then, many business leaders have taken his advice to slash costs. We have seen widespread offshoring, downsizing and cost rationalization, plus many more euphemisms for firing people. As a result, jobs are no longer for life and many families live in fear of economic ruin.

The left should focus relentlessly on economic uncertainty. In a fast-moving world based on creative destruction, qualifications can get past their sell-by date very fast. As a society, we too often fail middle-aged people who need to retrain before they are financially secure. If we can help someone survive economically for a year or two while they update their skills alongside other mature people, we would get much better results than those provided by our current systems.

Education is the best investment, both for individuals and for societies. We need much more emphasis on reskilling, upskilling and lifelong learning. This is a cause that the left should embrace with open arms, along with building a steady flow of new homes to keep housing affordable.

So, what does the contemporary right get wrong? Around 60% of Boris Johnson’s latest cabinet in the UK went to fee-paying schools, while almost half attended Oxford or Cambridge. This is much too narrow. People who come from such privileged backgrounds can often struggle to understand how the other half live, with dire consequences for policy.

One of the big advantages of sending middle-class kids to state schools* is that they get to spend a little time with a wide range of people, including some children of alcoholics, drug addicts or prisoners, not to mention those of people who are struggling with mental illness, disability or poverty. I suspect that if some of your childhood friends were dealt a bad hand in life, you might be much less likely to vote for savage welfare cuts as an adult.

The right’s lack of sympathy to people who need a little help from the state now and then often becomes kneejerk snearing. Personal freedom is important, sure, but a little solidarity goes a long way. There is even a self-interested argument here: Your pension depends in part on the bright kids of struggling parents doing well in the labour market. If they crash out of school because of poverty and bad circumstances, society as a whole will suffer.

If you want to avoid the traps of dogmatic left-wing or right-wing thinking, you have three basic choices, which sound similar and can overlap but are actually slightly different. One is to stay on the left or the right, but to become more moderate. The second is to become a centrist and borrow ideas from the left or right as needed. People who go down this route often take an interest in the most liberal aspects of the left and the right. The third is to forget about ideologies and get interested in pragmatic problem-solving instead.

Perhaps surprisingly, the global finance industry is showing great leadership when it comes to pragmatic problem-solving on climate change. ESG is a very big deal in finance. People who skip the financial pages might never have heard the letters, which stand for environmental, social and governance issues.

Green financiers are rebelling against Friedman’s claim in 1970 that raising profits is the only goal of business. It traces its roots to the Equator Principles for project finance, which were first launched in 2003. The first green bonds were issued in 2007. Since then, green finance has gone from strength to strength. Climate Action 100+ is at the forefront. It is an investor-led initiative on climate change. Some 615 investors have pledged to create incentives for the energy transition. They control $60 trillion in assets - equivalent to more than 70% of the total world economy.

While the left and the right too often indulge in sterile and one-dimensional debates, ESG financiers are engaging pragmatically with real-world problems, such as funding innovative cleantech and providing incentives so oil companies and the like take climate change seriously. Some ESG initiatives are too marketing-focussed, but the movement can also be a real driver for change. One of the most exciting developments involves shareholder activists buying stakes in polluting companies and lobbying for a change in strategy to reflect ESG concerns.

Even if you have never taken much of an interest in financial news, it is worth keeping an eye out for articles on the latest ESG developments. My bet is that its proponents will probably change the world faster and more effectively than the politicians. In recent days, for example, we have seen exciting news that a nuclear fusion startup raised $500 million as part of a general rush to fund cleantech projects. See you next week!

*Full disclosure: My middle-class parents sent me and my brothers to the local state school. I am also middle class and I did the same for my daughters.

Sharpen Your Axe is a project to develop a community who want to think critically about the media, conspiracy theories and current affairs without getting conned by gurus selling fringe views. Please subscribe to get this content in your inbox every week. Shares on social media are appreciated! If this is the first post you have seen, I recommend starting with the critical-thinking rabbit hole, which includes links to a free book.

[Updated on 10 March 2022] Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.