The Real Politics of Envy

Amid all the euphoria and teeth-gnashing of last Saturday night and Sunday morning, one comment stood out for me[1]. Forget the knee-jerk responses, the boasts and recriminations, the what-ifs and how-comes. Amid the cheering and chanting at Liberal party central, a familiar, frail figure emerged ghost-like out of the huddle. John Winston Howard, Australia's second longest serving Prime Minister, materialised to pronounce on why they had won. His answer was uncharacteristically brief, not framed by a long preamble preceding the "but" that normally signalled when his true message was about to begin. Simple. Labor was paying the price of attempting to "divide Australians". This was a phrase much rehearsed and delivered during the election by Scott Morrison. Labor's overt policy agenda to modestly redistribute income to lower income Australians while boosting the supply of basic services to all Australians was a bridge too far, according to the current and ex-Prime Ministers. It smacked of the politics of envy, conjuring up the hideous crime of class warfare.

This sentiment flows through the lifeblood of the true conservative, whether born or born-again. it arose at the very dawn of representative democracy in nineteenth century Britain, reflecting the fear of mob rule that had millennia before turned the ancient Greeks against this radically unusual form of government. Plato and Aristotle both suspected that even in carefully circumscribed democratic polities like the Athens of their times, rule by the people would inevitably lead to chaos and the death of culture, if not the enfeebling of the race. As radicals fought to extend the franchise to all men, and eventually all women, slaves and dissenting religious observers in Europe and America, the conservative's constant refrain was - "beware unleashing division among the classes and uncertainty as to one's proper place in the ordained scheme of things". Even the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill was hesitant, proposing that universal suffrage should wait until the lower classes were educated up to the status of responsible citizens, though, almost alone among the men of letters and science of his age, he fought hard to include women in that happy future.

In short, John Howard was genuflecting to the born-to-rule mentality that drives people who are comfortable with the current situation and fearful of change. Why, then, was it workers and those in lower socio-economic areas that turned their back on Labor's plans for change? Likewise, why did the conservatives lose votes in affluent inner and central city electorates in the large cities? The Coalition's hard men, Peter Dutton, Barnaby and Kanavan, were quick to crow "you've lost the workers, mate". Doesn't this run against all I've just said? No. It's more complicated.

The answer lies in decoding the real message underlying the rhetoric of division. In a class-divided society like ours, most people are fully occupied in looking after the immediate ongoing needs of themselves and their families. They either must work for others at the wages on offer or run their own small businesses. The wealthy have choices. They can work or not work, depending on how much they have and how much they would like to have. Workers and the lower and aspiring middle classes have little control over the conditions and remuneration of their economic roles and do not enjoy the luxury of choice over whether or not they work. The vulnerability of the vast majority of voters to any cessation or disruption to their work concentrates the mind wonderfully. A conservative strategy that stresses the dangers of change, any change, finds fertile ground among 'the battlers'. This is especially so for self-employed and small employers, who bear enormous business risks and have limited reserves to deal with unexpected shocks. Large employers and wealthy elites have the resources to contemplate changes, even changes that would seem to harm their immediate material interests. For many a latte-sipping cosmopolite - I here use the language of conservative contempt - environmental goods and real income redistribution (within limits) to the poor and disadvantaged is what economists term a 'luxury good', that is, a consumption item that expresses a 'positive income elasticity of demand'. The richer you are, the more you can indulge your noblesse oblige. Conversely, those who fear the loss of their current means to income or face government interventions that might prevent new opportunities arising for jobs to replace those that have disappeared, have a clear and present incentive to vote against those changes.  

These considerations make the result last weekend, especially in Queensland, somewhat more explicable. Many people in the electorates of North and Central Queensland fall into the income-insecure category alluded to above. They have seen their customary employment opportunities leaching away, as the mining boom of the naughties ebbed and year after year of drought afflicted struggling farmers, even in historically fertile regions. Youth and indigenous unemployment soared, associated with a range of social pathologies. Traditional ways of life generations long were at risk. Farmers left the land. The banks and foreigners were blamed. All sorts of make-do responses, aided by an uncoordinated mosaic of government assistance schemes at local, state and federal levels were drawn upon to help vulnerable people through. Any and every opportunity that promised to inject resources and hope into local communities was eagerly seized upon. Many of these promises were just that - promises that failed to materialise, empty vessels floated by opportunistic entrepreneurs and politicians. But to desperately insecure voters, they represented hope, while the prognostications of 'experts' and the well-off, well-meaning folk to the South were just so much guff. The conga line of environmental activists following Bob Brown north to Townsville (cue Johnny Horton's North to Alaska here) would have been more effective staying at home. Traditional jobs in farming and mining are seen as the birthright of many rural Australians. The livelihood of suppliers and service businesses in small towns relies on the local multiplier effects of those activities continuing. Maintaining the status quo eats deep into the psychology of identity. Work includes but is more than putting food on the table. It's who we are. Politicians and interests in distant places who threaten to take all that away had better have plausible paths to alternative livelihoods and the satisfaction of the deep wellsprings of belonging.

But the explanation cuts deeper still. Moral psychologists have pointed to the multiple deep emotional anchors of conservative predilections in politics. Notions of justice and desert are heavily influenced by a tendency to compare situations. Thus, a struggling farmer or small business operator on the edge of going out the back door, even though they are working 70 hour a weeks and making other material sacrifices, can be forgiven for thinking that the views of affluent professionals in Melbourne and those with time to drive a couple of thousand miles up the coast, are poison. The other side of this coin is the fact established by decades of research by behavioural science that we all hate losing something even more than we like gaining the same thing. Many older retirees thought it highly unfair that the franking credits they had become used to receiving would be taken away, even though most of them didn't receive them! It was seen to be unfair on those few per cent who did, and also a possible hint of what a redistributive Labor government might do next. Finally, the natural tendency to think that you are working harder and therefore deserve more than someone else who is not working as hard but is getting a leg up by government focuses resentment on the latter - even if you are not working harder or they have been prevented by circumstances beyond their control from working at all.

Thus, the real politics of envy is constructed by the intersection of deep structures in both human nature and the class divisions that routinely separate the life chances of people across society, generations, gender and ethnicity. People who vote in ways that they hope will protect themselves and their families in troubled times are not selfish in the accepted meaning of the condition. They are desperately trying to survive and are easily led by conservative politicians to blame others, while the real beneficiaries of the absence of change continue to quietly enjoy their dominant position and privileges.

It is clear, with near-perfect hindsight, that Labor played into the government's hands by going all-out for change, but the lesson to draw is not to curl up into a small ball in opposition but to understand the absolute necessity to address the real sources of insecurity among communities currently undergoing economic decline. Forcing policies that can be attacked by conservatives as 'elitist', no matter how crucial in the long sweep of the future - and here serious action to address climate change ranks high - will only put-off indefinitely the election of a government that will actually bring about urgent far-reaching change. For the desperate, Lord Keynes oft quoted dictum states - "In the long run we are all dead". We might add, failure to act appropriately in the short run will kill us quicker - by starvation. We are in a race. The opportunities lost over the next three years of conservative government in dealing with the manifold future costs of human induced climate change may not be recoverable. But we must act in the hope that they are and, in the short run deal with the bitter seeds of insecurity, particularly in regions that fell back on the bromide of the familiar. Labor's agenda and leader was mercilessly attacked by the Murdoch press and Sky-after-dark. This is to be expected, it was ever so, with one or two exceptions, during my lifetime. Any progressive program will bring the defenders of the status quo into the open, firing on all fronts. Social media gives all political participants - and that potentially means all voters - an alternative channel to countering the mainstream tsunami of biased and misleading propaganda, while also opening up new lines of deception. Research that consistently shows the prevalence of ‘confirmation bias’ - our tendency to see and search out information that reinforces our deep beliefs - points to other barriers to rational discourse when putting real reform before voters. This is another reality that must be recognised and circumvented.

In spite of all the celebration in Coalition circles, remarkably little has changed.The blast of hyperbole following the result reflects the weight of smashed expectations and level of disbelief (among supporters of all sides) rather than the reality of the stark numbers. Compared to the election outcome in 2016, the Coalition will end up in all probability with an increase (maybe) of one seat in the Lower House, Labor will lose one and the cross bench will grow by one. This leaves Labor with the task of taking about five seats from the Coalition in three years time, hardly a daunting task, especially in view of the challenges that the government will face. The Senate will remain a check on the government. Having gone to this election with a threadbare agenda, Morrison must now develop a program in a climate of both growing domestic and international dangers. In the former case, stagnation expressed by stubbornly stagnant wages, weak productivity growth and a Reserve Bank that has fired most of its stimulatory bullets, against the backdrop of record level national public and private debt, threatens to see unemployment head back up, with collateral wash-over threats to mortgage defaults, housing values and personal consumption. Internationally, the uncertainties unleashed by Trump's foreign economic and geopolitical interventions may shake a do-nothing Australian government into wakefulness. As the Australian economy cools, the courageous assumptions baked into Morrison's election Budget will prove illusory. As the revenue flows slow, either the government will need to give up on its ambitious infrastructure program, or cut public expenditure and services more severely or allow the Budget to disappear back into the red or - horror of all horrors - the generous tax cuts promised to the affluent will be cut back. As conservative voices often proclaim - there is no magic pudding.

The government is faced with a wicked problem. Doing nothing leaves the economy and their future political prospects firmly set on 'shipwreck tack'. Actually addressing the intensifying, path-dependent challenges of climate change, energy costs and economic stagnation will open up all the old fissures in the Coalition ranks, notwithstanding the forced departure of its fighting field marshal. The next few years will determine whether Morrison is Moses or Muggins. As the Prime Minister contemplates the fruits of victory, he may begin to comprehend the force of the old saying - 'be careful what you wish for'. This may prove to be a very good election to have lost.

[1] For those readers who missed the fact that Australians went to the national polls to elect our next government, I can tell you that the messy result that has returned the incumbent conservative coalition government with what looks like a wafer-thin majority, has unleashed a storm of bemused commentary and what Americans call 'Monday morning quarter-backing.'