The Cunning of History

The dominant theme of the Afghanistan saga is poor planning, and has been since the US and UK backed the Mujahideen in the 1980s and so sowed the seeds of al-Qaeda. Indeed, you could argue it has been the theme since 1839 and the First Afghan War. The consensus on display in the recent House of Commons debate is that we were right to invade in 2001 but lessons must be learnt about the poor operational foresight that has been characteristic of the endeavour since, right up to the chaotic scenes at Kabul Airport this week. Despite the evidence of history that poor operational planning by the military and the Foreign Office can usually be traced to strategic misjudgements in Number 10, our politicians have insisted on a firewall between the original decision to join the US posse and all the disappointments and calamities that came in its train. Instead, MPs have turned their focus to the traditional laments of incompetence (insufficient resources and inadequate military equipment), the politicians' lack of honour (leaving interpreters to their fate), and even the dereliction of duty of the Foreign Secretary (not making a phone-call). My aim here is not to offer a detailed explanation as to why this outcome was inevitable, nor to revisit the folly of Tony Blair, but to ask what this means for planning itself.

It is important to put planning into a historical and social context. Though the history of the twentieth century has been presented as the failure of central planning and the triumph of decentralised planning, via the price mechanism and markets, in reality there was a steady increase in the planning and coordination functions of the state. The dirty secret of neoliberalism is that it assumes an assertive central authority that can plan the creation and maintenance of artificial markets that advance capital accumulation. Perhaps the most famous example was the conjuring of a market in British council house sales in the 1980s that drove both the secular rise in property prices and the expansion of landlordism. Even in the private sector we have seen the adoption of the techniques of central planning, from global supply chains and vertical integration to the winner-takes-all dominance of online platforms.

The advance of central planning has also been visible in the social sphere. Though it is excused as providing the skills necessary for a modern economy, and therefore ultimately subject to the market, the education system is an example of how social reproduction has become more centrally planned since the 1970s, with the focus on national standards and league tables. Despite the rhetoric of personal responsibility and the often punitive nature of its operation, the welfare state has expanded over the last 70 years with not only more benefits (however inadequate) but a greater responsibility for the state to intervene in "troubled families" or track "radicalised" individuals. Parallel to this, we have internalised planning into our daily behaviour in the form of neoliberal performativity: setting targets, measuring progress, ticking-off our achievements. In this environment, the government's failure to plan - Blair's evangelism, Cameron's insouciance, May's blunders, Johnson's buffoonery - looks like a performance intended to distract us from the reality that our lives are heavily planned by central authorities in both public and private spheres.

The reason why state intervention and planning has come to prominence in political discourse in recent years is less to do with the dawning realisation after 2008 that the private sector was incapable of the heavy lifting needed in a modern economy and more to do with the growing anxiety over climate change. This is a collective action problem of unprecedented scale, both at the national and global level. Despite attempts to introduce market mechanisms and "green finance", it is clear that the steps necessary to comprehensively cut emissions will require the nakedly coercive powers of the state. Contrary to the libertarian myth of the right, this is actually an attractive prospect for the parties of capital, whether conservative, authoritarian or neoliberal. For conservatives, it presents an opportunity to reinforce the defence of existing privileges in the face of an existential threat more credible than communism or the woke conspiracy. For authoritarians, it presents an opportunity to coordinate society more thoroughly and extend the state's invigilation into ever more corners of life. While for neoliberals it promises new state-maintained markets that route public funds to private capital and dynamically discipline individual behaviour.

Much of the political debate around climate change has been dominated by these rightwing frames. For all the talk of socialism or barbarism we remain trapped in the paradigm of classical economics where only incentives matter - e.g. how are we to encourage the transition away from fossil fuels? In defence of this approach, we are told to consider the salutary lesson of the gilets jaune, as if petrol price rises were the sole explanation of that uprising rather than merely its trigger. We're also suffering from a faux radicalism that presents social democratic goals, such as boosting productivity and improving working wages, as a justification for watering-down climate commitments. Meanwhile, the much-touted vision of a "Green New Deal" remains a shopping list of pious hopes when not diverted by more tangible infrastructure programmes that turn out to be exercises in corporate largesse or rhetorical "levelling-up" that is just more hot air. What's lacking is any discernible plan to actually change society and the economy (because you can't radically reform the latter without impacting on the former). But this isn't because such radical change is beyond the rightwing imagination.

Margaret Thatcher's administration in the UK, like that of Ronald Reagan in the US, was interventionist in its methods and radical in its goals - it simply used interest rates rather than sectoral planning and the state allocation of resources to reconfigure industry. It was indirect rather than direct, but no less an interference in the economy. But she was also no slouch when it came to direct intervention. The winding down of the coal industry was long planned. It wasn't inevitable or opportunistic, and both the ends and means of policy after 1979 marked a radical departure from the state's postwar strategy of modernisation and cooperation with organised labour. Starting with the Ridley Plan in 1977, it was a calculated programme intended to end the direct dependence of the economy on coal and society's indirect dependence on the goodwill of the NUM. The point is not that she should be lauded for getting the UK to abandon coal earlier than many other countries, as many of her present-day fans insist, not least because this simply resulted in greater CO2 emissions from gas, but that she showed just how radical a government could be in changing the fundamentals of industry. She also showed how effective a government could be in privileging favoured groups, from landowners to the self-employed.

The pushback against Covid-19 vaccines is not merely a perverse libertarianism. It is also an expression of the belief by relatively privileged groups that they should not be asked to make sacrifices. This is quite distinct from the weak uptake among less privileged groups, where fear of the state and low information combine to make people reluctant or merely fatalistic. This demand for privilege, both between different classes in society and between countries at different stages of development, will also inform the ongoing struggle around the measures necessary to arrest climate change. The argument between developed and developing nations as to which should shoulder the greater burden in cutting emissions is well known, as is the suspicion of the latter than the former's conversion to the cause of reduction is partly motivated by a desire to entrench its relative privilege. But we can expect to see the same dynamic within nations along class lines as justifiably discriminatory demands, such as a frequent flyer levy, clash with the self-interested insistence that the state should impose costs equally on all citizens, in the manner of a poll tax. The irony is that the latter requires far more intrusive planning yet will be advanced by those most adamant that central planning doesn't work.

It is reasonable to cavil at the hyperbolic claim, in response to the recent IPCC report, that "humanity is guilty" when it comes to climate change, particularly given the dominant role of industry and the regulatory failures of successive governments, not to mention the corrosive effect of a press-promoted climate scepticism, but we shouldn't let ourselves off the hook entirely. Electorates usually vote for modest improvement and otherwise a quiet life. The UK's repeated election of the Conservative Party, a political machine that has done little in the way of conservation in any dimension since 1911 but has proved adept at advancing social development while preserving the privileges of property, is proof of that. The party's longevity in office is often attributed to its "competence", but even the most superficial familiarity with British history should disabuse one of this myth. If the return of Labour to power looks unlikely at the moment, and regardless of whether you think the party would be up to the challenge under the current leadership, then we are inevitably banking on the Tories' attraction to central planning to effectively address climate change. Is it the cunning of history that the Conservatives should find themselves in this role, just as they have been obliged to oversee the unravelling of Tony Blair's geopolitical amibitions in Afghanistan and the final retreat of empire?