Integral thinker Jeff Salzman, posted a link the other day on his Facebook page with the tagline, Integral consciousness emerges: A British Lefty argues for free market capitalism.

The article Salzman linked to is this one by Tom Doran. Salzman didn't expound any further on what he meant by saying this view was integral. But I have to say if this piece by Doran exhibits integral consciousness then integral consciousness isn't probably very helpful or important--at least when it comes to economic and political policy. And worse, it may not be all that bright. 

I want to focus in particular on this passage where Doran criticizes the current view of the Labour party in the UK concerning itself (and its recent past in particular).

Doran writes:

"That problem is not, as it was in the 1980s and '90s, a sentimental attachment to socialist dogma. The trauma of four successive election defeats finally empowered the modernising forces within Labour, under Tony Blair, and made the party embrace capitalism. So far, so good. But the embrace was reluctant. The left accepted New Labour's newfound market socialism (best expressed by Peter Mandelson famously being "intensely relaxed" about the accumulation of wealth), but only as a last resort, a tacit admission that nothing else had worked. This ambivalence betrays itself in the widespread attitude towards Blair himself. Where Conservatives continue to lionise their last leader to win three elections - sometimes to a self-parodic degree - many, perhaps most, Labourites regard their most successful leader ever with an air of sheepishness ('ah yes, that time when we were in power for over a decade. A grisly business') or worse."

Um, couple of points here. One, I would imagine Labourites in the UK are uncomfortable with Tony Blair in no small part because of his leading role in the debacle of the Iraq War.

For example, consider this one?

"Mr Blair admitted that he deliberately avoided apologising when questioned about his role in the conflict at the Chilcot Inquiry earlier this year because he could not face the prospect of seeing the headline: 'Blair apologises for war' the following day."

As a parallel, US Democrats love Lyndon Johnson for passing the Civil Rights & Voting Rights Acts, as well as Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and other elements of the Great Society program. And yet Democrats are also uncomfortable (rightly in my opinion) with Johnson's overall legacy for his massive escalation of US involvement in Vietnam.

Two I could imagine some Labourites are concerned about New Labour's policies of deregulating industries, particularly the financial services industry, which played such a central role in the recent worldwide economic collapse.

Doran then goes on to criticize current Labour Leader Ed Miliband. Doran helpfully links to (and even quotes, if in a somewhat snarky mode) this interview of Miliband in that raging leftwing publication, The Telegraph.

Here are some of the crazy radical things Milliband says:

'Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown] were products of their historical circumstances.' They had to break with the past, but in the process, New Labour became too credulous about business: 'The consensus around regulation ['light touch'] turned out to be really problematic.' The project became 'too easy and accepting' about globalisation: 'It's just not true that all the top CEOs will leave the country unless we pay them whatever they demand'.

And:

"I believe capitalism is the least worst system we've got...It is ironic, says Mr Miliband, that Mrs Thatcher's reforms, which attacked many vested interests, created new ones: they need to be taken on. There are too few banks, and six companies control 99 per cent of energy supply: 'This is about the free market working properly'. It just isn't enough to deregulate the private sector. Wealth is created by 'the private sector working with government. We shouldn't be ashamed of wanting an industrial policy.' There are 'different capitalisms' – Scandinavian as well as American."

On the other hand there's Doran:

A straightforward, Blairesque embrace of free enterprise is out of the question; it has to be couched in righteous equivocations to meet the approval of the party faithful.

We're only a few years out from the most devastating global economic collapse since the Great Depression. Hell we're still in it. And Great Britain very much so. The current Tory government has implemented an austerity budget which has left the UK in continued recession (or near recession). Which is by the way exactly what the US Republicans were proposing in the latest election cycle. The US Democrats, under Obama, pursued a Keynesian stimulus package, which while imperfect, has seen the US, without a doubt, be in a stronger position than the UK.

So the problem then is somehow Ed Miliband saying fairly run of the mill left-center social democratic things like he wants capitalism to be more responsible? He thinks monopolies are problematic because they can (surprise!) overly concentrate power in the hands of few which can then lead to systemic failure when those few become dominated by groupthink--when they appear to be unaccountable and can force governments to bail them out if they fail, encouraging risky betting? Doesn't Miliband at least sound not completely crazy given what's happened these last few years?

I guess not. Clearly what we need is integral consciousness that is totally pro-free market? WTF? Being even more free market is what integral must be all about--we surely don't want any left-wing thinking infecting our brains. 

Problem is even Doran doesn't really believe this simplistic one-sided view. Here's how he ends his piece:

This essential truth does not oblige those of us on the left to become uncritical free market fundamentalists. On the contrary: for all its genius, capitalism will continue by its very nature to have victims and losers, and they aren't going to get any sympathy from the right (as the current government makes abundantly clear). Labour can and should be proud of the welfare state it did so much to bring into being. But we are obliged to recognise the facts. Namely that, for most voters, especially Labour's core vote, the market is not a cold tyrant or a cruel exploiter. It is a liberator, perhaps the greatest in history.

Zooming back out from the Doran piece, I want to return to why this view would in any way, shape, or form herald the emergence of integral consciousness. My only guess is that we are yet again seeing yet another simplistic frame around integral that goes something like this:

Modernism promoted free-market capitalism. But then postmodernism went overboard, in a dialectical fashion, by negating capitalism. Therefore post-postmodernism (or integral) will re-value capitalism. A left-winger who likes free markets? That must be integral.

There's no rejection of capitalism in Miliband. In that Telegraph interview Miliband continually points out that he thinks quite differently than his father (who was a famous, full on Marxist). The argument is about how best to deal with the reality of global capitalism. Miliband is taking a slightly more left of center position than New Labour of the 90s/00s. He's not returning to the much more full throated socialism of 70s and 80s Labour. Doran doesn't agree with that position--he seems to prefer Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's approach--that's fine. Members of the Labour party can have their intra-party fight. But what exactly is integral about Doran is saying?

For all loose talk among certain integral thinkers of there being some great rejection of capitalism among postmodernists, where exactly is that rejection? Global capitalism is running amok everywhere. Some stereotypical post-structuralist Boomer hippes in university philosophy departments aren't stopping it. So why is integral now supposed to be about re-entrenching free market neoliberalism?

If Jeff Salzman (or whoever) would like to make an argument for free market capitalism they are of course free to do so. It's not clear what free markets ever really mean in practice given the enormous amount of taxation, social subsidies, and legal advantages that exist for certain business interests. Not to mention that places like the US and UK where free market philosophy is strongest didn't actually practice free market economics when they rose to power. Nevertheless, folks can make the free market argument on its own terms. But this blithe equation of such an economic view with integral is really weak and unsubstantiated.

So I'm not saying Ed Miliband is now the integral thinker. I don't think having debates about which one economic or political view is the integral one and which others aren't is a particularly useful exercise. Miliband, Doran, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron all clearly fit within already existing labels of political and economic theory. Labels, by the way, that actually clarify what views those individuals do and do not hold. Something saying they are integral (or not integral) does not. And there are all arguing within the overall framework of neoliberalism. There are differences in their views but there is also a huge amount of overall agreement. 

In other words, the views of those individuals (and the groups they represent) are quite easy to figure out. There's no need for outside systems like integral to explain them. I don't think a model drawn from psychological developmental systems is particularly helpful when it comes to labeling and understanding political-economic perspectives. At least when used in this simplistic spiralling kind of way. Regardless I just don't see how a pro-market Labourite Tony Blair/Gordon Brown-esque perspective is integral. 

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Update I: There is good work that's been done applying integral theory to economics. I recommend this piece by Daniel O'Connor as well this one by Christian Arnsperger. These are very nuanced arguments and neither is a simple pro-free market fundamentalist stance. 

Update II: I guess I have to say this least I get blasted in response. I'm not anti-markets. I do think markets should be highly restricted in terms of their scope. I think we've allowed a major influx of market-based values into political and social arenas where they do not (I think) belong and therefore have corroded our discourse and value systems. This is by the way a view held by Adam Smith, who like all the original economists correctly understood that economics should be a sub-branch of moral philosophy rather than mimicking physics.