Tinkering about (2021)

Book Review from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Angrynomics by Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan (Agenda Publishing, 2020. £12.35)

The economist Mark Blyth and hedge fund manager Eric Lonergan postulate that anger takes two distinct forms, public and private. Public shows itself in protests, strikes and xenophobia (tribal), while private anger shows itself as mental health issues and despair. They assert that policies enacted by most of the current ‘neoliberal’ governments have failed to address this underlying public anger and that that is the main reason for the recent rise in the popularity of right-wing populist governments. The analogy of hardware and software to describe some of the economic mechanisms to support their arguments is unconvincing. Fintan O’Toole’s book, Heroic Failure, provided more convincing arguments for the shift in the public mood away from neoliberal ideology and the rise in nationalism.

There are references to the French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital and his idea of a wealth tax. However, they never get around to properly criticising his ideas, despite the promise in the text. They introduce their ‘big’ idea of taxing corporations for use of the public’s personal data, and then investing this in the stock market. They estimate a high return of 6 percent invested over a 15-year period, which might seem unlikely given the volatility of the market. This scheme seems more likely to increase commissions for the financial services sector while having no impact on the immediate issue of the huge growth in inequality and the dearth of ‘decent’ jobs, poor public healthcare and lack of social housing. 

The above ideas are just tinkering around with the capitalist system in a classical Keynesian way. They will not prevent the insatiable advance of capital accumulation and the continued rise in inequality and anger of the dispossessed working class.

Nick Sampays