The Five Star Movement and the Potential for Real Change

                    

In Italy the populist Five-Star movement (M5S) may potentially win the next election and form a government. Pundits and markets are alarmed at the potential victory of M5S because its leadership has promised a referendum on the euro, the common currency which many Italians regret and might very well vote to leave if given the option. According to the professional doomsayers, Italy’s leaving the common currency would lead to uncontrolled and cascading financial crises and would represent an existential threat to the European Union.

However, the dynamics are much more nuanced than pundits assume, and this should council skepticism towards their apocalyptic predictions on the potential consequences of a populist victory in Italy.

First, any referendum on the euro would be consultative, not abrogative, because the Italian constitution forbids the abrogation of international agreements via referendums.

Second, M5S are not opposed to the euro per se, rather they object to the current set-up which ensures the continuation of austerity policies which have socially devastated Italy and other periphery Eurozone countries. In addition, the M5S recognizes that the common currency needs a political union to be sustainable. Hence they are demanding changes to the currency to make it work, changes that accord with the suggestions of the IMF, the European Central Bank, and numerous reputable think-tanks.

The purpose of a referendum on the euro, then, would be to send a signal to the country’s representatives and Italy’s European partners about how the majority feels about the currency, and this would occur after attempts to finally fix it. If the efforts to resolve the euro’s problems succeed, a majority of Italians would likely vote in favour of preserving the common currency.

This is actually an excellent strategy because Eurozone leaders have been complacent about fixing the structural flaws of the euro. After the debacle with Greece in the summer of 2015, French and German leaders presented proposals to create a banking union and centralized political institutions to underwrite the euro and to help correct the imbalances that led to the crisis. These proposals were soon forgotten, however, and hence the euro remains vulnerable and continues to disadvantage periphery countries like Italy. The threat of a referendum, even a consultative one, might just be what French and German officials need to spur them to action.

Of course, this raises the question of what might occur if this strategy of pressuring Europe’s core fails and, when a referendum on the euro proceeds, the majority of Italians vote to leave. In this scenario, given that the referendum would not be abrogative, the elected representatives of the country would have the final say on whether to officially leave the currency. If they did, a financial crisis and the end of the EU would not be inevitable. That would depend on the way the process is managed. Policies to mitigate the harmful effects of the transition would include temporary capital controls, a commitment to stay in the EU while leaving the euro, and a reserve fund to pay for essential imports.

A victory for the Five Star Movement in the next election could set in motion one of the scenarios sketched above. Either way, they would be doing Italy and Europe a favour. The threat of a referendum on the euro might spur Europe’s leaders to take action and finally fix the flaws of the currency, helping to put Europe on a more secure financial footing. If this threat fails, the referendum proceeds and a majority of Italians vote to leave the euro, they will be expressing their democratic right to leave a system that has caused them much financial, social, and political difficulty.

Arlie Hochschild's "Feeling Rules" and International Hierarchy

Our subjective worlds often have a taken-for-granted feeling in the sense that they are perceived to be natural, right, normal, and essential. Emotional patterns, impressions of the external world, perceptions of our relationships, and the opinions that form from these processes often feel like they emerge from inside of us. Sociologists have long recognized that broader macro-structural factors, such as markets, politics, and institutions, impact our internal worlds whether or not agents recognize it.  

This insight on the link between macro-structure and internal subjectivity has interested me for the past year. I began thinking about it because of a puzzle I encountered in my investigations of the politics of the euro. One of my discoveries in the course of that research was that perceptions of inter-state hierarchy correlated with support for Europe generally and the euro specifically. Persons in Southern European countries who believed their country was “inferior” in some fundamental way (e.g. the quality of citizens, institutions, etc) to other countries were more likely to support Europe (often because they saw it as the solution to their country’s perceived defects). I documented these perceptions in my book Eurozone Politics, and in one of the chapters I elaborate by distinguishing between perceived and objective inter-state hierarchy. The former has been mentioned, and the latter refers to those objective and measurable variables that determine a nation-state’s place on the pecking order, such as population, military assets, and economic size + performance. In the same chapter I argue that, in Europe’s inter-state pecking order, the last on the list matters relatively more: it is economic size + performance that helps to explain Germany’s dominance despite its military weakness (in contrast, regions characterized with intense hostility, like the Middle East, are more likely to be hierarchically organized around military capacity).


From this argument on hierarchy a question was identified: why is economic performance part of the equation? I think I may have found a partial answer in the work of sociologist Arlie Hochschild. She is not an expert on European or international politics, but her insights may be relevant to those realms. In this post I will try to elaborate on how, but first it is necessary to explore Hochschild’s ideas within the context of her discipline, sociology.


Her main contribution is that a culture’s “feeling rules” rather than internal subjective processes determine how we actually feel. She deftly uses two metaphors to illuminate the mechanisms: “dictionary” and “bible”. The first refers to the labels we give to emotions, which influence the demarcation of emotional states. It is not clear, for example, that, at least physiologically, there is much difference between, say, contempt and hate, but the different labels have implications for how they are experienced and communicated. In addition, the fact that we typically label these emotions “negative” impacts how they are felt. The second metaphor, “bible”, refers to the normative assumptions that surround emotional expression, which is another way of saying the culturally determined rules that influence the kinds of emotional reactions that are publicly allowed or prohibited. To use an example I am familiar with as a bi-cultural Italian-Canadian, in Southern Italy, open displays of “negative” emotions like grief or anger are more likely to be perceived as normal than, say, in English Canada, where the Anglo-Saxon tradition of emotional reservedness frowns upon such displays. Hochschild’s theory sheds light on how neither rule or modality is “natural” even though humans in both cultures share the same physiology. Rather--whether the persons are aware of this or not--their emotional lives are strongly influenced by the labels (dictionary) and normative values (bible) that are unique to individual cultures.


In other work Hochschild applies the framework of “feeling rules” to the realm of romantic relationships. Specifically, she asks how the structures of capitalism create rules that influence our emotions vis-à-vis dating, sex, and marriage. Her conclusions are that the shift to neo-liberal capitalism, defined as the increase in short-termism—contract work, capital mobility, rapid technological change, etc.—has impacted our “emotional investment” strategies in the realm of romance, which are now also increasingly determined by the logic of short-termism and mobility. As capital becomes mobile and short-term, romantic commitments become similar as persons shift from partner to partner, looking for the highest return, avoiding highly risky long-term commitments. In a similar vein, the de-regulation of capital and markets lead to a kind of de-regulation of romantic life, where the freedom to maximize value (profits in the market, pleasure in romance) replaces a regulatory regime that constrains freedom for some greater good that is not immediately perceived. The short-termism and non-committal hook-up culture, for example, may be the mirror, or even the consequence, of the short-termism of neo-liberal capitalist relations. 


Hochschild’s argument is compelling. Previous forms of economic organization were undoubtedly associated with different emotional relationships. More stable economic systems, from feudalism to the mature industrial economies of the post-war era in the West, were also characterized by more stable emotional investments in sexual relations. Thus there certainly is a strong correlation, but I can think of two critiques of the theory. The first is that correlation is not necessarily causation, which suggests other possibilities. It may be that emotional relations are the cause, not consequence, of economic organization, or it could be that a third and unidentified variable is causing both the distinct emotional patterns and economic organization. The second criticism is that, even if we accept Hochschild’s thesis, it leaves unexplained the fact that not all emotional investments are short-term; currently perhaps half of romantic relationships are stable and permanent (in fact, marriage retention rates are increasing, but at the higher income ladder). These couples presumably face the same economic pressures as everyone else, and yet they have formed durable partnerships. Why? Hochschild’s response might be that not all actors react in the same way to a system’s feeling rules, and few arguments can withstand such a high test. To be valid, we would need to show that actors are more likely to act in a certain way, not that all of them will. Lastly, other variables or feeling rules, like religious ones, may, in some cases, override the short-termism that inheres in romantic relationships under neo-liberal capitalism.


Although Hochschild’s conclusions can be critiqued on many grounds, it remains the case that she was on to something when she recognized that our economic structure enters our consciousness and impacts our emotions and perceptions. And this is the insight that I’d like to apply to the puzzle mentioned above, i.e., about the constitution of inter-state hierarchy. Accordingly, following Hochschild, I’d like to advance two arguments: 1) capitalism’s emphasis on performance for profit-maximization enters our consciousness so that we confer status and prestige to performance in political life, including the realm of inter-state hierarchy, and 2) those who reach the top of the pecking order are able to confer status to those on the lower end. In this model, then, the constitution and reproduction of hierarchy has two stages: the capitalist criterion of performance enters our consciousness in a way that impacts our perceptions of the external world, so that we confer value to groups that seem to perform in the market better than others; those who reach the top are, through acts of volition or omission, able to confer value and status to secondary states on the pecking order.



I will try to apply this concretely to Europe. The hierarchical system on that continent is characterized with Germany at the apex, France and the UK just below, or secondary, and Italy even lower, perhaps just slightly above Spain and Poland but undoubtedly below the secondary level. The evidence for this system can be seen whenever a major decision has to be made: Germany usually has the final say. What is more, whenever there is a global crisis, Berlin is usually the first to receive a phone call from world leaders. Curiously, this hierarchy is present even though the UK and France are militarily stronger than Germany. The reason is that war is no longer a real possibility in Europe. Other criteria are, in this context, more influential. Population, economic size + economic performance matter everywhere, but perhaps more in Western Europe. Needless to say, Germany scores highest here: its dynamic economy, based on high-value industrial goods, is the envy of the world. Germany’s dominant place on the hierarchy is ultimately reproduced by the subjective value we confer on performance, but although this value-ascription is subjective, it does not derive from inside of us. Rather, the source is the “bible”, or rules, of capitalism that value performance, which enter our consciousness and orient our perceptions of the external world, including the realm of inter-state politics. In the second stage, Germany, as leader, has the power to reproduce hierarchy by conferring value and status to those lower on the pecking order.


The implication is that economic systems impact, not only romantic and sexual relations, but also the organization and reproduction of political relations including international hierarchy. This may be demonstrated via a comparison with pre-capitalist economic forms, like feudalism, which operated on the basis of different rules that seeped into human consciousness and impacted the organization of hierarchy between political units. Under feudalism, other institutions, like religion and the military, mattered more than the market. Accordingly, virtues associated with them, like devotion, honour, sacrifice, bravery, courage, and chivalry, were more influential in determining value-ascription than the economic performance associated with capitalism.


Assuming this reasoning is valid, the next question is: so what? I can think of a few implications that are relevant. The first is theoretical. Realists argue that hierarchy is produced by objective factors like population, military, territory, and economy, while constructivists assert that it is constituted inter-subjectively. The argument of this piece, by honing in on one aspect of hierarchy (economic performance) suggests a middle way. Economic size, in so far as it reflects actual productive capacity and value creation, is objective. But the ascription of status and prestige to the criteria of performance is not an inevitable result. It rather is a consequence of the dominance of capitalist economic relations; the rules from this system enter our consciousness and orient our perceptions towards valuing economic performance more than, say, bravery. This qualifies the realist notion of the universality and objectivity of power by showing it’s socially constructed elements. But it does not completely confirm the constructivist position either insofar as economic relations are not completely reducible to inter-subjectivity.


Another implication is predictive. The shifts of political units on the hierarchy will probably mirror perceptions of their performance, or lack thereof. To continue the example above: Germany’s place at the top of Europe’s pecking order could collapse if, say, it experienced a severe recession that significantly damaged its banking system or industrial capacity. If this were to happen contemporaneously as France entered a period of rapid industrial, technological, and economic growth, the argument above predicts that their positions on the pecking order would reverse. In this scenario, Paris, not Berlin, would be the first capital to be called in the event of a crisis, and France, not Germany, would have the power to confer status and prestige to lower states, including Germany, by deciding to include or exclude them from major decisions. This would happen even though the military balance between them remained unchanged.


Another prediction is that, under capitalism, hierarchies will be less stable than in the past. Previous international hierarchies, like previous romantic commitments, were more durable, at least in part, because their economic systems and associated institutions were more stable. Contemporary capitalism is characterized by rapid shifts in technology and value creation that rapidly lead to the creation and destruction of entire industries. The fate of a nation’s place on the international hierarchy will be strongly influenced by these processes.

 

A few thoughts on W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage"

With only one exception, all the members of my book-club (myself included) gave W. Somerset Maugham’s novel Of Human Bondage a very high rating, and for good reason. It is not an exaggeration to say that the book is a masterpiece: it conveys a compelling story that evokes powerful emotions, filled with characters and events that are realistic and familiar to most thoughtful readers, and that adds penetrating insight into many aspects of life—from the lofty heights of moral philosophy, to the existential elements of love and loss, to the more mundane and prosaic elements of everyday relationships. My book-club meeting which discussed Of Human Bondage was a good reminder that the text can be interpreted from a number of angles, but here I will focus on one in particular: the significance of the social and cultural institutions and practices that feel oppressive and that make many yearn for freedom, which brings the tendency to idealize circumstances different from one’s own. Once one escapes the various forms of bondage and obtains the desired object, the reality clashes with the ideal, leading to disillusionment and the renewed feeling of being oppressed by circumstances. Philip Carey, the main character of the book, learns this lesson again and again, in particular through his experiences of work and romance. In the process, however, he matures into a talented, thoughtful, caring, and successful person, highlighting that those kinds of travails, and the thrills and sorrows they entail, are an essential aspect of genuine human flourishing.

Philip Carey did not have a very auspicious beginning. Both his parents die young, forcing him to be raised in the home of his aunt and uncle, a childless couple who live in a small town three hours from London. Philip’s uncle, Mister Carey, displays the stereotypically British tendency to be utterly unsentimental and suspicious of emotion, which creates emotional distance between the two. Mister Carey also happens to be a minister in the Unitarian faith (in the early 20^th century, Unitarianism was an evangelical form of Christianity, not the secular-liberal belief system it is today). Hence Philip grew up in a fundamentalist protestant household largely devoid of emotion. Meanwhile, Philip has a disabling physical deformity—club foot—that prevents him from excelling in sports, makes him the object of bullying and ridicule, and is psychologically traumatizing.

When Philip discovers literature, he learns that reading is an effective way to escape the distress of his life. Other tendencies also emerge when he becomes a voracious reader, like the idealization of people, places, and things that he does not possess, and the desire to escape the stifling confines of his circumstances. He also becomes academically brilliant, but he rejects the life envisioned by his caregivers of obtaining an Oxford scholarship and becoming a servant of the Church like his uncle. Meanwhile, at 20 years old Philip has his first sexual experience with the much older Miss Wilkinson, who quickly falls in love with him. While he courts her, he idealizes romance, thinking that it would bring genuine joy and happiness. He discovers that those feelings are fleeting. After the consummation, Philip becomes repulsed by her “old” age (40!), and must manage the fall out of her falling in love with him. The frustrations involved motivate Philip to escape to London where can begin his work as an accountant, a profession which promised a comfortable middle class life.

The thrill of being in a big city soon wears off when he experiences a sense of solitude and the frustrations of doing a job he hates. He develops a deep antipathy for his co-workers, and cannot imagine the monotony of being an accountant for the rest of his life. At the same time, Philip romanticizes Paris as the cure to his frustrations, in part because of the scintillating tales of the city heard from Miss Wilkinson, and partly from the French novels he read. Philip therefore makes a leap and moves to Paris to become a painter. In that city he enters the world of Parisian bohemians and intellectuals, and befriends many interesting characters from whom he learns important lessons of life. Perhaps the most important is Fanny Price. Like Philip, she strives to be an artist, and has been attending the painting school for two years. Despite much effort, practice, and determination, she has not developed talent, and refuses when the instructor at the school suggests that she abandon the endeavour. The cost of the school drives her to extreme poverty, and the failure to succeed adds to the misery which becomes unbearable and ends in suicide. From Fanny, Philip learns that success is not a matter of will, determination, or confidence in one’s abilities, and that true talent cannot be taught. Ergo, some are not suited for particular professions, and at times, it may be necessary to accept this brute fact rather than pursue unrealistic dreams. Philip applies this lesson to himself: when the instructor at the school suggests to Philip that he, too, was not meant for the craft, he decides to follow this sage advice and pursues medicine—perhaps not coincidently, the same profession his deceased father practiced.

This takes him back to London, where Philip has the most formative experience in both work and romance. On the former, Philip discovers, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he has the capacities to be an exceptional and outstanding doctor. He possesses those attributes that matter greatly in the profession: the scientific and analytical mindset that is necessary to learn and apply accumulated knowledge to specific cases, and the caring personality that motivates him to help patients even at the lowest rungs of society, and that gives the sick a sense of trust in him. While succeeding at medical school, he meets someone who turns his life around: Mildred, the woman for whom Philip develops a pathological and obsessive love. She does not feel the same, but yet she leads him on. To Philip’s dismay, his rational and analytical mind is no defense against this damaging relationship. He knows she doesn’t love him, and yet hopes that her feelings may change despite all the evidence to the contrary. For her he is willing to spend much of his meagre savings, neglect his studies, and expose himself to harm, while she treats him with contempt and indifference. This destructive relationship reaches a crescendo when Mildred falls in love with Miller, one of her customers at the restaurant where she is employed, and they run away together. One hopes that the sordid affair ends here, but it is only a brief interlude before even greater tragedies occur.

After Mildred leaves, Philip devotes himself to his studies again, and eventually gets over her. Meanwhile, he has another love affair, this time with Norah. Norah and Philip are perfect for each other: like him, she is caring, smart, and supportive. They are friends first, giving them time to know each other, and when the relationship is consummated, it enriches rather than harms the friendship. There is no awkwardness, even in their moments of silence. This seemingly happy picture cracks at the seams when Mildred returns to the scene, and frustratingly (for the reader) Philip decides to break with Norah so he can try again with Mildred, and he does this despite knowing that Mildred is not right for him. This knowledge cannot overcome that dark and mysterious part of him that desires Mildred. Even more puzzling is he recognizes that his desire for Mildred is irrational and portends trouble, and yet Philip is seemingly powerless to do otherwise. The juxtaposition of his relationship with Norah and with Mildred is not coincidental; many readers will be familiar with the tendency to fall in love with the wrong person and to have little or no romantic feelings for the right one.

To no one’s surprise, not even to Philip’s, the relationship with Mildred ends in tears when she runs away with Philip’s best friend Griffin. Philip is driven to intense jealousy and despair to the point of getting thoughts of murder and suicide. The story does not end here. After not seeing her for a long time, Philip encounters Mildred working as a prostitute on the streets of London, living in destitution. He offers to rent her one of the rooms in his apartment. At this point, the reader cannot help but feel a sense of impending doom, but the way it arrives is unexpected. After living together for a while, Mildred decides that she desires Philip, but he does not feel the same namely because of the memories of emotional torture he experienced with her. When he rejects her sexual advances, she loses control and smashes his furniture and apartment and leaves. When he meets her again, she is sick and dying of syphilis (which was lethal in the early 20^th century), while working again as a prostitute. He tells her that she is putting her clients at risk, and she replies that “men have not been good to her and so they deserve it”.

That was their last conversation, and Philip’s life moves in a new direction when he meets the family of one his grateful patients, Athenly. The latter is a colorful character who is utterly devoted to and loved by his wife and eight children. During their weekly Sunday dinners, Philip learns about the happiness that family can bring even if it trumps other desirable things, like travelling or a successful career. When Philip loses all his savings from a bad investment, he experiences the homelessness and starvation that many of his patients are familiar with, and must drop out of the final phase of medical school. He is too proud to ask the Athenlys for help, but they offer it and help him get back on his feet. Meanwhile, Sally, Athenly’s oldest daughter, develops an interest in Philip, which is finally consummated in the countryside when the two of them go for a walk. There is a sense of inevitability to their tryst, since the chemistry is mutual, spontaneous, and unforced. At this point, Philip must make a choice between carrying out his plans of travelling the world and practising medicine in exotic places, or settling down with Sally in a small English town where his medical practice will be modest. Philip opts for the latter, and perhaps finds his happiness, but the book ends there, and the reader is left wondering whether his relationship with Sally endures.

Philip’s relationship with Christianity is an essential element of the book and has important implications for moral philosophy. He had a strong religious faith as a child and early adolescent—unsurprisingly in light of his fundamentalist protestant upbringing. Philip’s faith is shattered when God does not answer his prayer to heal his club foot, which did not accord with the biblical passage that genuine faith can move mountains. This clash between Christian ideals and the brute reality of his disability could not be resolved in Philip’s eminently rational mind, and his faith is lost. But although he discards Christian supernatural beliefs, he preserves, or rather continues to practice, Christian virtues of humility, service, modesty, and love for one’s fellows. The conceptual tension is brought to the fore when he meets Cronshaw, a brilliant artist, who reminds Philip that abstract morality, even the supposedly secular kind, is actually the legacy of religion. Once that legacy is discarded, we are left with brute materiality governed by instinct and relations of power. Philip ultimately rejects Cronshaw’s observations, and the problem is never really resolved, although Athenly seems to provide a solution. Like Philip, Athenly is an unbeliever, and yet he raises his eight children in the Christian faith. When Philip asks him how he could impart beliefs to his children that he does not believe in, Athenly’s response is “a man is more likely to be a good man if he learned goodness through the love of God rather than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer”.

The sections on moral philosophy are compelling and important, especially for readers who find these kinds of existential questions interesting. But this aspect of the book is relatively less important than those which delve into the joys and frustrations of work and romance, and in particular the tension between our ideals and reality, and the ways we negotiate and manage the emotions, positive and negative, that are involved in these tensions. This blog post cannot do justice to the intense emotional rawness that suffuse Philip’s experiences in these areas of life. It is clear that W. Somerset Maugham had direct experiences with all the emotions that Philip feels, and was gifted with the capacity to reflect and analyze the deepest and most irrational parts of the human soul.