What Would a Fairer Society Look Like? | LSE Festival

good evening good evening welcome to the lse for the final event of the lse's 2023 Festival my name is Neil Lee I'm a professor of economic geography here at the lse I'm also a faculty affiliate of the international inequalities Institute I'm also kind of an old jaded tired academic right I I've been studying inequality poverty and disadvantage for the last decade it's not always been fun so I think it's nice that today we're going out with something which is a little bit more optimistic you know maybe a little bit more sort of future focused maybe we'll be going out on something which is sort of helping us think you know get get into the sort of next you know Next Period of life with some vision and optimism and to do this we're going to be asking the question what would a fairer Society look like and I'm delighted that we have a stellar panel of people who are going to be kicking us off to talk about that so we're starting off with Daniel Chandler an economist and philosopher based at lse an author of free and equal what would a fairer Society look like it's excellent I have almost finished it and I'm hoping tonight's going to give me the sort of push through then we have eye church at booktube an author academic and editor based in London and she currently co-directs the human rights program lse where she's associate professor in the department of sociology then we have sweaty sweaty d-pak is a practitioner in Residence at the lse's Marshall Institute she works with private and public foundations in strategy development and design and oversees a portfolio of businesses and startups across philanthropy socially minded businesses and the Arts and then finally we have David Willetts president of the resolution Foundation Lord Willits president of the resolution Foundation who is a member of parliament for haven't a minister for University and Science and worked at hm Treasury and the number 10 policy unit and he also has an excellent book on this topic the pinch how the Baby Boomers stole their yeah how the Baby Boomers took their children's future and I I love this book because my father a baby boomer bought it for me for Christmas just to measure things were Lively around the dining table um so our speakers are going to be setting out their vision of how we can create a coherent vision for a better and fairer world if you're a Twitter user please feel free to tweet hashtag is lse Festival um if you're if you do have a phone please put it on silent so that we can listen to people and not disrupt the event the events being recorded and provided there are no technical difficulties it will be available online afterwards after our speakers have spoken for five minutes there will be an opportunity each there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions please take that opportunity if you're watching this online you can submit them via the Q a feature and please include your name and affiliation at times um I will open the floor for questions in about 20 minutes but first of all um we're going to be kicking off with Daniel thank you very much okay great thanks Neil uh such a pleasure to be here thanks everyone for coming out um and I think yeah the question of what would a bear a society what would a fair Society look like is such an important one I think it's so easy at the moment to point to what's wrong with our societies to culture wars the role of money in politics inequality poverty climate crisis and yet despite those problems and despite the obvious appetite for something different often feels very hard to find a coherent vision of what a better fairer society would look like and my book free and equal draws on the work of the philosopher John rules to try and set out that kind of vision for those who don't know about rules he was an American philosopher born in 1921 died in 2002 his most famous book is a theory of Justice which was published in 1971 and he's really The Towering figure of 20th century political philosophy I think it's hard to over the influence that his ideas have had within Academia and he's someone who's routinely compared to the greatest thinkers in the history of Western thought the likes of Plato Hobbes Kant John Stuart Mill and yet his ideas are relatively little known outside of Academia and I guess the purpose of my book is to try to to change that so Rose's starting point is the idea that Society should be fair and obviously he recognizes that while most people agree with that ideal on some level we obviously disagree about what exactly fairness means or what if their society would look like and he put forward a famous thought experiment to help us think through that question and to move from the abstract idea of fairness towards a concrete set of principles that we could use to think about what if their society would look like and how to design our our basic political and Economic Institutions so he argued that if we want to know what a fair Society would look like we should think about how we would choose to organize that Society if we didn't know which person we would be within it so whether we would be rich or poor black or white gay or straight and I think that's both an incredibly you know an intuitive way to think about fairness I think it's also pretty obvious that if we were to think about society that way we wouldn't choose to organize it how it is today where some people have to rely on food banks to feed themselves and wear class race and gender play such a uh have such a profound influence on people's chances in life um so rules argued that we would choose two fundamental principles of Justice to do with freedom and equality respectively and hence the title of my book free and equal so first he argued that we would choose the basic Liberties principle basically that we would want to protect our most fundamental freedoms personal freedoms like freedom of speech religion sexuality but also the political freedoms that we need to play a genuinely equal role in political decision making and then he has a second equality principle that's really got two interlocking Parts the first is a principle of fair equality of opportunity basically the idea that everyone should have the same opportunity to develop their talents and abilities in life irrespective of class race or gender and obviously on some level that's a familiar principle that's quite widely shared across the political Spectrum but I think we often underestimate quite how radical that is and also how far away we are from achieving it in practice today but still many liberals have stopped there and sort of argued that equality of opportunity on its own is enough and if we have a quality of opportunity then equalities don't really inequalities don't really matter and that I think underpins the meritocratic thinking that's quite dominant in our political discourse but rules rejected um meritocracy and argued that alongside equality of opportunity we also need to make sure that outcomes fair not equal but fair and that's the basis of his this other principle called the difference principle which is really the most radical bit of his philosophy and that's the idea that a degree of inequality can be justified but only if those inequalities ultimately benefit everyone Say by giving incentives to work hard or to study or to innovate but crucially he argued that it's not enough that those benefits you know just a little bit of it trickles down to those at the bottom he argued that we should organize our economy so that the least well-off are better off than they would be under any alternative economic system and also he he emphasized that when we're thinking about inequality it's not only the distribution of money that matters but also the way our economy distributes economic power and control and and also shapes people's opportunities for dignity and self-respect then finally alongside those two principles he argued that we would choose a principle of intergenerational Justice a key part of which is maintaining the ecosystems on which you know any any stable Society depends um so I think you know what's exciting about rules is that we get this very comprehensive and unified framework for thinking about what a fair Society would look like um I think it sort of resolves some of the false spinaries that we're presented within politics between freedom and equality between caring about opportunity and outcomes and also between you know worrying only about money or thinking about dignity and self-respect um unfortunately rules didn't say that much about what it would look like to actually put those principles into practice and as both an economist and a philosopher the point of my book really is to pick up where rules left off and think through a practical program for what it would look like to put those sort of achieve his vision of a fair Society um there's obviously too much to go through uh now just sort of maybe do a quick have I got time to quit okay I'll be very quick just to give a sense of what some of those ideas would be so I think first is to overhaul our Democratic process to get money out of politics through new ways of funding uh political parties I make the case for proportional representation because that would make sure that every vote counts equally and the votes are translated into seats and also to incorporate more direct participation into the political process I think we do much more to achieve equality of opportunity the most important thing being investing in Universal early is education but I also think we need to look at the sort of elephant in the room when it comes to thinking about equality of opportunity which is the role of private schools and I argue that we should at least remove their charitable status if not abolishing them entirely as Finland did in the 1970s and then I set out a sort of agenda for how we might transform our Economic Institutions including I make the case for a universal basic income for a much broader agenda of pre-distribution where we invest in people's skills and try to bring about a more equal distribution of wealth and then also an agenda for changing the balance of power in the workplace so I'm conscious I've run probably way over already so I'll stop there but hopefully that gives the flavor of I guess one vision of what a fairer Society would look like wonderful thank you very much we'll now hand over to Aisha um thank you for the invitation to share some thoughts today thank you also to all the workers and staff that have been making the lse festival run I have prepared some written comments because we were given only five minutes and I have chosen every word carefully um I would like to begin by observing how the question posed before us today what would a fairer Society look like refrains from Conjuring an ideal Society it invites us instead to a limited seemingly grounded comparative framework it demands we imagine not a just Society but a fairer one fairer than what every hitherto existing Society or this one of hereditary rights hereditary privileges hereditary property fairer than this Commonwealth of food banks built through Colonial dispossession and slavery nevertheless implicit in the question of a fairer Society is the possibility even the desirability of transformation but if something needs to be changed that something falls short of everything we would need to transform to live in a just Society economically politically ecologically ethically globally that everything includes quote-unquote realistic questions which strangle the imagination rendering our yearning for revolutionary change and Justice unrealistic not merely for now but forever yet it is in the nature of every revolutionary passion for justice as the philosopher hamara once named it to resist this strangulation the Longing For What appears to be impossible compels Us in Che guevara's of heuristic commands to be realistic by demanding The Impossible this revolutionary realism as I would call it contrast sharply with what cultural critic Mark Fisher describes as capitalist realism capitalist realism is worse and that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it Margaret Thatcher's forcefully insistence that there is no alternative represents perfectly well the confining vision of neoliberals who are capitalist realists are excellence invested in drawing borders around the imaginable and the possible their ideological work consists in shaping our sense of reality and with it what is and is not seen as realistic and achievable Fisher argues further that capitalist realism is not a particular type of realism it is more like realism in itself this realism s provide I put I would emphasize a shield protecting us from the perils posed by belief especially belief in anti-capitalist ideologies of the past nevertheless capitalist realism maintains the prevalence and depressive belief today that all hope is a dangerous illusion it renders any revolutionary desire for justice social global economic ecological not merely unrealistic but naively if not madly misguided capitalist realism I would like to suggest Panzer imagination in colorless parades of trooping pragmatism policing the limits of our capacities to act to live even to love one another differently in this situation the injunction to be realistic by demanding The Impossible requires immeasurable experiments in imagining otherwise in feminist writer Lola olofemi's formulation it is not incidental but essential to capitalism however that incorporate that it incorporates into the global market as consumable Goods our own anti-capitalist desires for living differently according to different principles in a just Society in this scene Mark Fisher finds alternative and independent cultural spaces and attitudes become established Styles in fact the dominant Styles within the mainstream this Insight allows him to observe have capitalist realism is very far from precluding a certain anti-capitalism here and now if that all sounded too abstract the LSC festival with its alternative question of a fairer Society can offer one example of what Fisher names capitalists sorry corporate and capitalism how else shall we explain the silence here around the strike wave that has been sweeping through and Beyond The Academy as unionized workers at the Lac demands survivable workloads and survivable conditions decent pay and decent pensions it becomes impossible not to question the profit-making calculus of capitalist realism is this what a fair University looks like today well funded institutes examining inequality and well-attended festivals curated to demonstrate impact and corporate social responsibility both evidence and cater to our desire for social change and justice they also offer corporations and I'm not excluding universities the opportunity to shape the world as the LSC slogan Has It by confining revolutionary desires and energies within the borders of capitalist realism in Fisher's words such undertakings perform or are anti-capitalism for us not unlike Disney films with anti-capitalist themes even this very speech they enable us to participate in capitalism with a clear conscience nevertheless there are moments and moments networks and collectives as soon realist Poetics where capitalist realism cracks growing through those cracks we become a spring the Arab Spring the Occupy spring the movement for black lives spring to mind they find us mad at last Justice that burning longing enchanting every Mantra of revolutionary action opens the scene of our imagination we promise no justice no peace without capitalist realism what would a just Society really look like [Applause] [Music] a wonderful challenge not least to this institution sorry so if we can move on please thank you as well to all of the workers and all of the team for me I was just by saying that a lot of what my kind of sharing to you of what a fairer Society is really comes from the grace the integrity and the wisdom of everyday people who are resisting around the world for me that's black and Global majority feminists children youth activists adolescent girls indigenous peoples most of my real understanding about Freedom really comes from adolescent girls I was lucky enough to um run a global organization that invested in girls Visions their ideas and allowed them to make decisions over millions of dollars worth of philanthropic money and one of the things that we used to start with was when we brought girls together we would not focus just on the plight and on the injustices that they were facing whether that was FGM whether that was child marriage whether that was violence whether that was war but we instead asked them to close their eyes to really think about waking up The Day After the Revolution and what it meant to truly be free what did they feel like what did they do and what did they want to say to the people next to them and the things that they would share would be very humble to be able to walk down the streets to be able to wear what they want to be able to dance to be able to make decisions over their lives all of the things that were denied to them as adolescent girls and continue to be around the world free societies are a vision but they can become a reality and that kind of vision and that passion fueled a lot of their work it fuels movements today who despite all of the odds show up in pursuit of what a fairer and a Freer society looks like one of the things that always sticks out to me is the phrase by civil rights activist in the U.S Fannie Lou Hamer who says that nobody's free until Everybody's Free and this notion that our freedom is not individual but it comes collectively and it comes with others there's also an incredible Aboriginal activist that I work with called Lila Watson and she says if you've come to help me you can you're wasting your time but if you've come because you understand that your Liberation is bound to mine then let us work together so for me a fairer Society is one hinged on a solidarity economy where we're actually looking at Social profitability instead of just Financial profits that the health and the well-being of people is considered over corporate profits that the social and environmental impacts of the things that we consume and how we consume them and take her into taken into account and that there is real power built in the heart of communities around the world indigenous wisdom has taught me that not just the freedoms that we exhibit that we hope for over our bodies the decisions over being able to move and make decisions over our bodies they extend to our lands and our territories that they're one and when we're in such a time of not just social and political struggles but also ecological and climate struggles that wisdom becomes even more clearer for me again with girls from around the world who came from very fragile communities those living in reservation sites in you know different national parks and and other areas what they really taught me was that when um the land becomes exploited whether that's mind whether that's logged um their bodies also become the site of exploitation there is no differentiation between the exploitation of the land and of people's bodies in those moments and so we really need to think about solidarity economies that bring that together where will all of this come from well I also take the black feminist theory of abundance that we do live in abundant times and there is enough um I'm privileged enough to work with not just incredible movement activists but I advise some of the most wealthiest families and companies in the world on their philanthropy and I don't subscribe to the fact that philanthropy or billionaires are going to save us in fact that system is built upon exploitation and and philanthropy itself cannot change the systems we're in but what you do see is that there is incredible abundance of financial Capital there's incredible abundance of food there's incredible abundance of all the different resources but the scarcity mindset that we're currently living in prevents any of that equal distribution so for me I know that there is abundance and I do believe that a fairer Society is much more equal redistribution within that and finally I will just say that we do need strong and accountable democracies in order to Steward a solidarity economy to be able to ensure that freedom is there to be able to protect um social and ecological systems and to be able to redistribute abundance um with Rising fundamentalism with rollbacks of progressive human and social justice agendas with shrinking civil space around the world we really need much more change I would just um end with two sort of phrases from Grace Lee Boggs an incredible civil rights activist who also reminded us that movements come not just from critical mass but from critical connections so we need to build movements that bring together disparate and diverse thoughts in order to really attract and transformatively change our societies um and also she reminded us to remember what time is it on the clock of the world what are the challenges that we're facing today and how do we organize build solidarity and connect to one another thank you foreign David well thank you very much indeed and thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this debate uh you've heard some very uh bold Visions as accounts of what Affair Society might look like I'm going to offer a couple of charts which just try to focus about on what Britain is like and how we compare with some relative comparators so I'm president of resolution Foundation a think tank and charts is what we do so I hope you don't mind if I share with you a couple now this is um a rather different approach to equality less Visionary than what you've heard before but this Compares Britain with other Advanced Western European countries so this doesn't say imagine a radically different world let's this says think of us compared with Germany or France or Sweden and this has the three lines the red the red block is how is the incomes of people who are in the poorest 10 percent of society the Blue Block is people in the middle in about 50 percent and the pale green is the richest 10 and kind of the flat the zero is Britain so this is basically comparing Britain with some other Advanced Western countries and what it shows us is that in Germany those poorest members of society are so that Germany is Deutschland it's the block on the left it's Germany then Netherlands then Sweden then France reading across so this tells us that the poorest people in Germany are a lot better off than the poorest people in Britain 25 percent better off the middle people in Germany are about 20 percent better off and the richest people in Germany are about five percent better off than the richest people in Britain uh I'm not going to take you through everyone but if you look uh go along to the fourth block France this tells you that in France the poorest people in France are about 25 30 percent better off than they are in Britain the middle people in France are about 10 percent better off and the richest people in France if anything have slightly lower incomes than the highest paid people in Britain so you don't have to have a picture of a radically different society and what I say to my colleagues in politics and in policy and in the world of think tanks and the affluent people that I meet in business or law is why is it that when Britain is underperforming as an economy so our total income per head in Britain is lower than Germany and the Netherlands and Sweden and France why is it that the burden of adjusting to our being an underperforming economy compared with other Advanced Western European countries is so heavily borne by the least well-off or the people in the middle and if you are in the most affluent 10 or 20 percent the incomes you enjoy in the comparisons when you go on holiday in France or Italy or skiing you think you're about the same position as an affluent lawyer or Banker or academic in those countries so why is it that the burden of adjustment is born of our underperformance which is a shared problem of the British economy is born so heavily by the less affluent and I go on to say actually I want to see a reformed more effective British capitalism I think it is it's an imperfect system but I think looking around the world it's the best option we've got but if we are to have the drive to reform our performance so we perform better as economy it's a very bad start if the most powerful most influential most successful people in Britain financially successful are not seeing any of the costs of our economic underperformance so that's the first job the second chart is about what I think is the most important change in British political economy over the last 30 or 40 years and this is a ratio it's a ratio between total National wealth assets which most of us individuals is basically two things it's our pension rights and it's the property we own our flat or house it's the ratio the value of those assets to the GDP the national income and it says that for a long time basically wealth was about three times income if you tried to top up the calculate tot up all the value of all the houses we've got in the country and the pension claims we've got it added up to about three times GDP but in an extraordinary change in the last 30 or years that has risen to something more like seven times GDP so wealth has grown relative to income and where you move from that as an abstract economic statistic to real life is that's why buying your first flat or your house out of your income has got so much harder the gap between the cost and the value of wealth relative to what you can earn has grown and look I used to work for Margaret Thatcher and Margaret Thatcher envisaged a society of what the slogan then was a property owning democracy she wanted to see ownership spread more widely and she wanted a world in which if you worked hard you could expect to build up an asset a society where assets have risen so much relative to income is a society where acquiring wealth out of your earnings is harder and inheritance matters more inheritance becomes a more important route to wealth and earnings are less important route now that is not my picture of a healthy vigorous society and what the effect that it has had and this is what my book is about is that the People by and large who own all that wealth are of generation the post-war generation boomers born between 1945 and 1965 to which I myself belong so we've ended up riding this extraordinary escalator in which our wealth has become more and more valuable even whilst and got detached from earnings and some of that well it comes in roughly two equal forms actually we focus on housing but pension rights are worth about the same amount we voted ourselves pension rights in a form which is very hard for the younger generation to acquire the defined benefit pension and to get a house you have to be in looking to your parents to inherit it these I think are practical forms of what a fairer Society might look like within the traditions and conventions and understandings of modern Britain thank you very much so we only have an hour so I'm going to press on to sort of to questions I'm going to probably take questions in groups of three um if you put your hands up if you have them and it would be nice to go to um The Confident hands up for questions please we've got quite a few here I think if we just start off with this gentleman here um and then this gentleman with the glasses and then the gentleman with the headphones sorry if you could say who you are and where you're from as well um David Walter from Hackney uh uh also how many of birkbeck okay um isn't the idea of a fairer Society in this country specifically to do with the fact that it's basically the horse that has bolted after the barn door has closed I mean I mean since 1066 the idea of property ownership has been taken away by the Normans and then you have the situation where the industrial revolution of the 18th century has basically taken away the autonomy of landowning uh peasantry who were then pushed into the cities drew the to increase the power of the Industrial Revolution and then also this goes into issues in colonialism where others people's land was taken over to supplement to the wealth of this country when it was an Empire okay how do you manage to overcome the unfairness of a thousand years of British history okay great question at the end yeah if we try and keep our questions pithy that's useful because we we don't have that long then the gentleman here with the glasses yeah um thank you very much you're on Grant I'm now a journalist uh mainly been covering the Ukraine war which I um did predict because of the height of pressure my question is um where does taxation play in addressing the issues that the Lord Willits has so precisely highlighted great thank you and then the gentleman with the um headphones thank you uh so as a sixth form student um I was just going to ask so you you suggested that uh that we could abolish private schools so are you implying that uh inheriting from your parents or your parents wealth is fundamentally unfair okay so inherently yeah so if I'm uh Daniel do you want to start off with that one yeah and then we'll go David can talk about um uh Taxation and do you feel comfortable in history yeah so okay I'll take the question about private school so the the reason I think we should abolish fee paying schools I should be specific rather than privately managed the problem is with with people paying fees and the the case for that rests on the importance of the quality of opportunity and I think an essential part of that is that people's access to education doesn't depend on how much resources their parents have um and I think whether whether there's I think there's a role for some I don't think we should you know I don't think any passage of financial resources that all transfer of financial resources from one generation to the next is wrong but if it if it prevents people from uh being able to develop their skills and abilities and to participate in economic life then that's the problem and that's the reason why I think we should abolish private schools and part of what I'm trying to do in my book I guess is to show that there are sort of strong liberal Arguments for doing that that abolishing private schools isn't sort of a first step on the road to some kind of authoritarian socialist Nightmare and that you can you can do that while still having a very strong respect for for lots of important basic freedoms but the freedom to spend lots and lots of money on a private school just isn't of the same importance as lots of other freedoms that liberals can and do care about should I just take that question and we can do whatever yeah no I'll leave I'll stop okay we'll do the the taxation point which was I think directed at you David yeah and look I think there's a legitimate debate about the total burden of Taxation and people can differ on that but for any given amount of Taxation I think in Britain we tax earnings and income too heavily relative to Capital so I would rebalance the system so that we taxed Capital more I don't think it's feasible to have a sort of single National wealth tax there's no register of national wealth but there are things you could do you could have a different design of inherited tax for example might well have a lower rate but have a get rid of a lot of the special exemptions you could have a better design council tax which counts as a tax on Capital but is actually incredibly regressive and much more heavily by people in low value properties and high value properties so there's a again there's an incremental agenda you can do working within our system to have a fair tax balance okay um I would just actually add to that that oh since just 2020 we've got a you know the top wealthy in the world actually hold 78 trillion dollars worth of wealth um a really huge amount of funding um and I don't know for many of you if you know the difference between a million a billion and a trillion they are they you know have one letter difference but a million seconds is 12 Days a billion seconds is 31 years and a trillion seconds is 31 600 years thereabouts so the level of wealth that we have is completely you know um out of out of proportion and I think the other thing was that not only since 2020 wealth amongst just the top one percent in the world uh grew by um an extra 5 trillion just since 2020 and forever every new billionaire that was created which was every 30 hours it pushed a million more people into poverty as well so I do think globally we really need to think about Taxation and that redistribution and I can also tell you as someone who works with billionaires it's very hard to spend that amount of money nobody needs that amount of money um they struggled to spend it themselves and the ones that are trying to give away their billions of dollars are accumulating their money at far higher rates then they're able to actually distribute it out so what a thing to be able to say as someone who works with billionaires with inflation as it is maybe soon I would like to briefly thank you for raising the colonialism and its role in building the wealth of this country often when we operate within the framework of the nation-state in a post decolonization moment Empire's role colonialism's role in building The Riches of this country which are of course privatized uh slipped from analysis so one response to that would be to support movements for reparations I think we have some questions online so I'll hand over to Peter and it'd be nice to get a question from a woman as well as the other you know yes or non-binary yes so we've got a question from Mary Stokely to Swati who said do you believe that it is possible for our idea of a perfect Justice or a perfect Society to actualize in reality or is it something that we can only ever work towards and also a quest a general question for everyone combining the arguments of rethinking private school status investing in education and the issues of inequality within universities how should the role of universities be changed to achieve any of your ideal Fair societies great so the two good questions started with sweaty if that's okay then David and then we'll go to this side yeah absolutely I think it's a really good question I mean I do believe that it's possible I think when we look at the systems of Injustice that have led us to where we are they are socially constructed whether that's capitalism patriarchy race these are socially constructed systems that yes have been put together and have been reinforced through policies through social through cultural through legal and religious Norms but that also means that they are socially constructed we constructed them collectively and it means that we can dismantle and reimagine them whether that's possible in my lifetime is something that I don't want to wait to find out I would like to work towards that world regardless of of my time on this planet and you know I know that many many people around the world ascribe to that and that's what gets them through the difficult days that they're working through is the knowledge that a new possibility is there and people see it within them movements that they work in and it's not like these societies aren't able to change or to shift in directions at one point we thought that colonialism wasn't you know was the only sort of possibility we thought that slavery in the transatlantic trade was the only normal those systems have changed yes they may have been reinvented in other ways but we are still aware of them and we're still looking to dismantle and reimagine them hmm well I think specifically on universities the best thing we can do is ensure that people from a wide range of backgrounds and with low incomes get to go to university and look my analysis on that having been the University's Minister was that uh and this gets to the heart of some of the wider debates we've been having when universities were entirely dependent on public expenditure they were never a priority as we've even heard early years investing in early years is what not even is always the priority and one of the ways of saving limited public expansion on universities we're controlling the number of places which is indeed what they do in Scotland my view was if you take them out of public expenditure if you expect well-paid graduates to pay back and you get rid of the control on the number of places at universities you actually expand opportunity and the evidence is that is indeed what has happened the biggest single growth in participation in University in the last 10 years has come for people from disadvantaged low income backgrounds and England has a far more access for people from low incomes than Scotland because in Scotland places are rationed so I'm not a believer in rationing I'm a Believer in open opportunity and only paying back if you are can afford to through having the earnings benefit of being a graduate more widely I would just make one point I suspect I'm probably the only person on this panel who thinks that many of the alternatives to the system within which we live are worse I don't think our system is perfect and indeed I actually think one of its strengths is the Restless social conscience so every generation has new battles to fight to make Britain a better place or to make an advanced Western European country a better place but I have to say when I look around the world at whether I see an alternative model that is superior to Messi Western liberal capitalism I do not see it and some of the concentrations of power required to make the radical Transformations that The Visionaries have always wanted to Advocate some of the concentrations of power required to deliver those changes end up threatening some of the freedoms we value so yes improve it yes never accept what we've got but don't Chuck away what I regard as some of the fundamental principles of a free and open society which is precisely why we could continue to argue about how it could be better I'm going to come to you now because you made some challenging comments about universities in your in your presence that's a very difficult question for someone who makes a living by teaching at the University like you I am also fundamentally implicated in the criticism that I raised during my talk um I I'm an advocate of being in the University but not of the University I don't think the university is the only institution this is Fred Martin by the way a theorist in the United States I don't think the university is the only place where knowledge gets produced the university has a monopoly almost a total Monopoly unfortunately over legitimate knowledge what classes for legitimate knowledge but knowledge production happens in social movements it happens among activists it opens it happens happens with an indigenous communities so if the question is about the place of the University knowledge production I would displace it as the sole and only legitimate place where knowledge gets produced thank you Daniel I'm going to add my own little question onto you as well which is that everything I've read about your book is like this guy wants to abolish private schools and I just wonder why you think that has been you know so such an important why why is that being so controversial yeah uh maybe I might take the the question about sort of whether we can really achieve a just Society first and then come come back to that um so yeah I think it's I do think that it is possible I think I just spoke so powerfully about how important it is to retain a sense of you know to remember that our institutions are you know being created you've made the same point and that we can change them and part of what I think is so inspiring about rules is philosophy is that he really takes that seriously he talks about creating a realistic Utopia a vision of the best for the Democratic Society can be but given what we are you know given the realities of of human nature and based on a realistic understanding of how institutions work in practice and you know the projects of my book is really to take those practical questions very seriously and to think through how we could change our institutions in a way that would would put sort of bring that about not just to look incrementally at what might be achievable at the next election but to push a set of principles that I think do build on the best traditions of open and liberal societies that I think David is very importantly underscoring but showed that taken very seriously those principles Point towards institutions that are really quite different to the ones that we have today and that that really quite far-reaching change is is both Justified and possible um and so then yes to come up private schools why that's I mean it's it's you know it's in a way it's a small part of the overall agenda set out in the book um I guess it uh I don't know I think it challenges the sense of a sort of a particular attachment to freedom and a particular conception of Freedom that's very dominant in our in our public debate that sees sort of very expensive economic freedoms as kind of sacrosanct and I think again part of what's helpful about rules is philosophy is it helps us to distinguish between the freedoms that really matter freedoms to live our lives according to our own beliefs freedoms to be equal participants in Democratic politics and some economic freedoms like the freedom of Occupational Choice the right to own personal property like clothing and housing but distinguishes those from the sort of more expansive idea of economic freedoms that's often used to block economic reform um by sort of thinkers on the more libertarian right and then opens the way to to an you know to a liberal agenda that respects freedoms but also takes equality much more seriously can I very briefly plead guilty sorry sorry I just wanted to say something about the possibility of another world and the possibility uh also of remaking the Societies in which we live this is just a plugin to recommend as an anthropologist uh one book do dawn of everything a new history of humanity which clearly shows written by two Scholars and anthropologists and an archaeologist David Graber and David wengro which expands our imagination by showing in the great scheme of human history we have as you have suggested imagined many different ways of living much fairer more just more free than the short history of capitalist structures when you think about the grand history of humanity so they note in this history three freedoms that Humanity has always practiced the freedom to move which is under threat everywhere the freedom to move the freedom to disobey and the freedom to remake social institutions and social arrangements to reimagine them I don't I will have to disagree I don't believe that there's a set human nature which then limits our possibilities on the contrary we make as humans ourselves okay David thank you um and I I think those are important freedoms I I guess I would probably argue that they're more enjoyed more widely though imperfectly in modern liberal market economies than anywhere else and I'd just like to understand what uh prohibiting private education means I was going to plead guilty to being a believer in economic freedoms so we can buy things we can buy holidays we can buy cars we can buy Flats we buy stuff the offense would be committing the acts of petting for education so there would be a prohibited transaction which presumably need to be enforced that the one thing you're not allowed to buy is education and if we catch you out buying some education you're breaking the law that is it's it's feasible I have to say it's not a vision of a society that I find appealing or consistent with my view of the freedoms that people should have I think maybe just to add on is and this is sort of a bit of a left field to to the discussion around um private schools but I think for many wealth holders that I work with and there is a Global Network of them um you know they really think about the Privileges that they enjoy and think about something that's called the story of my wealth how did the wealth and the Privileges that I enjoyed today actually get created who was exploited what land was extracted from what are some of the things that actually led to me being here today and you know education plays a role in that but also you know many have looked back on whether they're gram or great-grandparents were involved in the slave trade or whether they were involved in tobacco production or whatever it may be to really question have I landed in the spot of my sort of day-to-day life just by myself or has there been in a story that actually allowed me to get there and by doing that it allows them not just to unpack and understand where they sit today but to really think about how they can play a role in a new social sort of promise with the democracies or with the societies that they work in today and I think that for me it's about making sure that everybody feels that they are able to have that internal reflection and to truly think about what privileges they enjoyed and how to make sure that we really do behave from a space of solidarity that is the place that I'm at today really something that everyone else can enjoy without me doing or or sharing or moving some of my own sort of experiences wealth resources or privileges as well wonderful thank you we've got time for one more question can we get one from a woman oh brilliant um and yeah yeah we'll start there thank you [Music] um I was mentioned and um I love her work um I think she speaks quite clearly about not only what we should abolish to create a fair fair Society but also what we can create and [Music] um beyond abolishing the border the nation the market economy kind of thinking about more radical principles of building of creating I think maybe you could if you could elaborate on that or something great why and he's very broad like yes everybody wants freedom but what does that really mean okay so it was Freedom great thank you I'm gonna just add on my own question to that because we're almost out of time so then I'm just going to ask the panel should we be optimistic about the future are these Visions potentially going to be realized so if we start this end with Daniel um just yeah just on that question I think that uh although we've talked a lot about abolishing private schools the the sort of the agenda in the book and I think Rosa's philosophy is very much an agenda of building institutions that would achieve those principles and again I think what's you know hopefully the value of a thinker like roles is that it moves us Beyond just ABS the abstract idea of freedom to a specific account of which freedoms matter most how much equality we should be aiming for how we should organize our political system so I hope it is it sort of is a more practical basis for doing that kind of building um I guess on the question of how whether we should be optimistic or not I think I I mean I'm sort of optimistic by nature and I guess the experience of writing this book it involved looking around the world at really amazing examples of countries that are doing things differently in all sorts of amazing ways like in Seattle where they have a you know fun they've banned private donations to political parties have a democracy voucher system where everyone gets the same amount of money to donate to political parties in Germany they have a very different system of a balance of power between workers and owners I think so seeing all of those examples seeing how they could and trying to bring them together into something coherent that gives me hope that change is possible wonderful thank you very big questions um thank you for sure yeah it's a very short time I don't I don't even know where to begin but I thought I would begin with the realization that our very imagination is Shackled through uh demands to be realistic so we need to clear imaginative space to be able to begin building another kind of Life another kind of world so the primary task and I'm not saying let's sit and imagine as we're sitting at the University you know imagination also emerges in political practices political practice and in communion and Union with others nobody has the answers I don't have the answers Lola doesn't have the answers either the point is for us to come together and there to imagine together am I optimistic I think we are heading for ecological disaster I think I think the inequality that your Institute deals with our utterly unacceptable and disastrous so how to remain hopeful The Long View of history of human history that I mentioned gives me hope the fact that we are creative beings the fact that we have not always been here and we need not remain here sweetie yeah I would just Echo that I am optimistic about the future I think change is completely constant um time changes all the time we live on a huge planet that is spinning all the time changes everything that Humanity has always had and it's everything that our communities sort of organize around as well is the knowledge that changes possible that it's there um I also think that everything and I mentioned this before ever the inequalities that we're in I too am sort of get into that Spate of just being like Oh my God another thing to be doomed about another thing to feel unhopeful about and yet it's the strength and the integrity and the hope of everyday people who Despite All Odds get up every day collectively to reimagine that world for me that's the world that I believe is possible it allows you to dream it allows you to Hope and it allows you to know as I should also share that it's not that it's just possible it's happened many many times over before and there's nothing really stopping us from being able to change things moving forward David fine um uh well I'm also I'm not I'm an optimist I'm actually an optimist fundamental because I think younger generation have massive challenges notably climate change the climate emergency but also fantastic resilience and skills and character um I don't might I think it's exciting that we have all these imaginations of a world without a nation state or whatever I have to say I personally think that those type of Institutions serve us well and as well as celebrating people who imagine a completely different world we should also celebrate the decent lives led by people who through toughness bring home some earnings in order to keep their family who try to raise their kids decently who go out to vote for a political party that's close to their priorities there's that kind of decency lived within a modern liberal society that doesn't involve it being totally transformed and that is another form of good citizenship foreign [Applause] talking to the younger generation my nine-year-olds in the front row so I have to conclude because if I don't get home her mother will be very cross with me um so it's the final event of the lse festival um so we just need to say a thank you to all of the people who've been involved in putting it together in particular sort of Staff teams um the sort of people have been doing all the wonderful super audio Affairs and so on I need to particularly um say thank you to Antigone and Louise sorry I'm taking Louise over there um who are two of the best people in the lse uh to telling academics when they're talking nonsense which is a lot of the time um so thank you very much to the lse festival team [Applause] now I have to remind you all that we have drinks a drinks reception now and you can see the the sort of wine is behind you um Dave and Daniel will be signing copies of their books just over there I've read them both and I would thoroughly recommend them and just finally if we could just give a you know ground of Applause for our wonderful speakers thank you so much thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: LSE

Views: 2,724

Keywords: LSE, London School of Economics and Political Science, London School of Economics, University, College

Id: tlds-v8_eug

Length: 62min 2sec (3722 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023