What’s happening with the global economy? How can we turn change in the direction of greater social justice? At our May meeting we welcomed Dr Peter Dwyer, tutor in Radical Economics at Ruskin College, for a chat about global politics.
Dr Dwyer is clear that the free-market model isn’t working; even arch-capitalists like Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, acknowledge that people are losing faith in the market model. We discussed the relationship between the state and the free market and he pointed out that George Bush, despite being ideologically opposed to nationalisation, presided over “the greatest piece of nationalisation in modern history”: the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac.
The obvious failures of the current system give us an opportunity to talk about alternative models, but so far there isn’t much political appetite for this. For example, nobody in mainstream politics is questioning the desirability of growth for growth’s sake; the Green Party is working on a zero-growth model but it isn’t being publicised.
We also talked about global superpowers such as China, with the surprising revelation that many items labelled as “made in China” are actually made in other countries and assembled in China; the origin of goods isn’t as clear-cut as we might think.
One of the questions from the group was about Dr Dwyer’s job title: why “radical” economics? The answer involved an interesting digression on the nature of our attitude to economics. Many universities see “economics” as a subject comparable to maths; there are right and wrong answers. Ruskin’s decision to put “Radical” in front of “Economics” is a way of signifying that the college sees the subject as more politically inflected and open to interpretation. It was interesting to hear that Ruskin students cover subject matter that many mainstream universities don’t touch.
We ran out of time before we’d finished discussing all the interesting issues raised by Dr Dwyer’s talk, but the group is hoping to get him to come and talk again before long, perhaps on his specialist subject of South Africa. He believes that the global South doesn’t get enough attention and it is “time to talk about the South/South dynamic”.
We finished on a hopeful note: the seismic changes – “Europe is being massively and violently structurally adjusted” – offer an opportunity to challenge old certainties such as the idea that markets are inherently more efficient. Dr Dwyer believes that “a space is opening up” for new and alternative ideas that might have been unthinkable before.
