Roberto Unger - Philosopher HARDtalk

levels of government. Syrian officials have dismissed the

allegations. It is time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk. What exactly is progressive politics? In the rich

world, it is identified with the centre`left, with faith in the

State's ability to ameliorate the perceived excesses of the market

capitalism. My guest today has a more ambitious take on what it means

to be progressive. Roberto Unger is an influential Brazilian political

philosopher, who taught Barack Obama law at Harvard. He served as the

former president's so`called Minister of ideas in Brazil. He

calls himself a revolutionary. Is the world, rich or poor, ready for

his progressive revolution? Roberto Unger. Welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you. You are a long established political thinker in the

left. You seem very disillusioned with the politics of the mainstream

left in the United States, and indeed in other parts of the world.

Why? On the whole today, the Progressives have no project. Their

projects are that projects of their conservative opponents, with a

humanising discount. They seek to put a softer face on the agenda of

their conservative opponents. That is not what we need. Isn't

humanising politics important? It is not good enough. What the world is

seeking now, restless as it is under the dictatorship of no alternatives,

is an alternative that would give the opportunity and instruments to

the ordinary man and woman. Sugar coating is not enough.

In my introduction to you, I used the word revolutionary. Do you

really see yourself as a revolutionary?

Well, we used to think that any consequential change would have to

come all of a sudden, in the form of a substitution of one system for

another. Socialism for capitalism. I do not believe that. I believe that

change can be substantial but nevertheless piecemeal, gradualist,

and experimental. A great problem we have in the world now, we understand

that change must be structural. It has to do with the organisation of

the market economy, and of democratic politics. Unlike the

Liberals and the socialists of the 19th`century, we can no longer

commit ourselves to a dogmatic blueprint. How then can we think and

act with regard to the structure, without subscribing to one of these

dogmas? Let me pick away at history. If you are thinking that revolution

does not have to be violent, that it does not have to be explosive, it

can be gradual and structural, where would you lay someone like FDR, and

the New Deal? That period of democratic politics in America which

to many was revolutionary? Did you see that as revolutionary? The New

Deal at the beginning was the last major episode of institutional

experimentation in the United States. We need a lot more of that,

now. For 200 years, ideological debate in the world has been

dominated by a simple model. The state against the market. More

state, less market, or the opposite. Or some synthesis of the two. A new

contest is beginning to emerge. This is about the alternative forms of

the market economy, of democratic politics, and of independent civil

society. Let me pin you down to some definitions. New forms of market.

Does that mean you are opposed to free`market capitalism, as we

understand it today? Or not? It is not enough to regulate the

market. It is not enough to compensate for the inequalities of

market through retrospective tax and transfer programmes. What we need is

to reshape the market in its institutional context. What does

that mean? So that more people have more access

to markets in more ways. What does it mean? I will give you examples of

what it means in different areas. First, we now have emerging in the

world a new style of production. It is characterised by permanent

innovation. We associate it with high technology. This style of

production is typically confined to narrow vanguards of each national

economy, weakly connected with the rest. The majority are excluded from

this vanguard. We need to disseminate these advanced practices

to large sectors of the economy and society. Finance and the real

economy. So... Let me stop you there. Important

things are being said, I want to get to the heart of each one. You have

cited the example of Silicon Valley, the creativity, the immense vitality

of that particular corner of the US economy. You have implied that you

want to see the whole of the American economy, indeed, maybe even

Brazil, imbued with that element of creativity and added human value. I

would put it to you that that is fantasy.

No. A huge national economy could never

be Silicon Valley, writ large. It would not work.

Not in the form of high technology. That is not the point. The most

important agents in contemporary economies are a multitude of small

and medium`sized businesses. Most of these businesses throughout the

world, in the US, in Brazil, are pushed back to a rear guard of

relatively primitive production. What we need is to give very large

parts of the labour force access to these advanced productive practices.

The state will not be the vehicle for doing that. Surely, the message

of Silicon Valley and the rise of people like Bill Gates and Steve

Jobs, they did what they did with an element of genius, not because of

state intervention or state messages, but because of something

within themselves. So, we have two models of

relationship between government and businesses in the world. The

American model, orange length regulation of business by

government. Then the north`east Asian model of imposition of a

unitary trade and industrial policy by the bureaucratic apparatus of the

state. What we do not have, and what we need, is the example of a

decentralised partnership between governments and firms, to the end of

disseminating these advanced practices through large parts of

each national economy. An interesting comparison. I cannot

help but reflect it. If you look at success in the global economy, much

of the success lies in those very Asian economies, think South Korea

or maybe even China, who are delivering incredible rates of

growth and industrial development, and highly educated workforces,

particularly in the case of South Korea. Temporarily. They have not

solved the fundamental problem of generalising innovation and

educational capability throughout the society. This change in the

structure of the market economy has to run in parallel with several

other changes. First, it has to be complemented by a radical change in

education. We needed to be analytic. We need to deal with information

only selectively, as a device of the acquisition of analytic

capabilities, that is cooperative rather than individualist and

authoritarian, and that is dialectical in its approach to

receive knowledge. That is to say, it introduces students to ideas,

always to contrasting points of view.

You have laid out a vision to what you think a society can deliver,

making the most of the potential of the people. Let us move away from

the abstract to the deeply political. I began by asking you

about the Democratic party and the left. Let us bring that up to date,

and talk about Barack Obama. You welcomed his election, and that was

significant, because you used to teach him at Harvard. You have since

written very powerful condemnations of Barack Obama, describing him as a

disaster for the Democratic party, and for progressives. Why a

disaster? Because the Democratic party under

his leadership has failed to come up with the sequel to results. ``

Roosevelt's new deal. There is no project in the US

responsive to the needs and aspirations of the broad

working`class majority of the country.

Obama and his collaborators have mistaken conformism for realism.

They think they have grown up. In fact, they have fallen down.

Isn't this the difference between a USA political theorist and

philosopher, and Barack Obama, who lives in the real world of

Washington politics? He has done what he can to drive a liberal

agenda. He passed through the investment of massive political

capital in his affordable healthcare act, he put stimulus into the

economy to keep America working. And he bailed out the auto industry,

maintaining American jobs. Those are all things he did because of his

vision of what government can do to help ordinary people. That is

progressive politics, isn't it? You are very limited. No challenge

to the dominant economic structure of a country. No attempt to

reorganise the relation... America does not want revolution, it

is not a revolutionary country. It is conservatism writ large in its

DNA. It is an experimental country. It is

a country, the central idea of which is faith in the constructive genius

of ordinary men and women. This faith has lived under the burden of

an institutional idolatry. The sin of the public culture of the United

States is the tendency to believe that the country discovered at the

time of its foundation is the definitive formula of a free

society. That the rest of humanity must either subscribe to that

formula, or will continue to languish in poverty and despotism.

Now the US needs institutional innovation to give opportunity and

equipment to the ordinary man and woman.

The point for you is whether what you are saying is realistic, in the

context of today's America, with today's Congress, the balance of

powers as it exists in America. Every transformation worth thinking

about can be translated into steps right now.

You have talked to Barack Obama, you communicated with him long after he

left Harvard. You have stayed broadly in touch with him. Why do

you believe he has failed to fulfil your hopes for him? Is it because he

is not prepared to show leadership, that he is not prepared to go up

against the forces that you say are working against the sort of change

you want? What is it? The most important attributes of a

statesman are tenacity, courage, hope and vision. His collaborators

have demonstrated only the first of the four. They have proved deficient

in the other three, while being prodigal in words that exalt the

virtues they are lacking. I'm looking at the words of Stephen

Holmes. He is looking at what America needs in terms of a

progressive policy. He says he constantly toy with the idea that

America needs a new age of conflict. It needs some catastrophe,

some serious moment. Just the opposite! A limited reforms of

democratic politics that we now have in the world are forms that require

crisis to make change possible. Do you want the crisis to come? No, I

want just the opposite. I want us to organise politics and democracy so

that you do not need former as the condition of transformation. Let me,

if I may, to now focused to Brazil. Away from the rich world and an

important developing economy and look at what happened when you were

invited inside the system in Brazil. The president, who you once

criticised... I agree to work with him. For the redirection of the

country. Do you think when you were brought inside the system and you

became minister for strategic affairs, some cooled you his

minister for ideas, do you think you really made a difference? There were

two great achievements in that President 's time in charge of the

country. Brazil democratised a great deal. Increasing wage, social

programmes... Those sort of entitlement programmes that in

America you say are not dealing with... Popularisation of access to

services. That was a real achievement. The second achievement

was an imaginary achievement. When the Brazilian people accepted the

President, one of them, as their leader, they accepted themselves and

that was a revolutionary change in the spiritual life of the people.

What we have failed to achieve so far is the transition to the

achievement of another, much more difficult and important task, which

is democratising on the supply side. On access to the resources and

opportunities of healthcare and education. That democratising of the

market economy will in turn require a deeply... That is what I fought

for in the government and that's what I failed to achieve. Again, it

comes down to the divide between the philosopher and practical

politician. The workers party is still in power. Lula effectively and

picked his successor, Dilma Rousseff. She says she is sticking

by the Lula agenda and what we see in Brazil today is, frankly, a

stuttering economy. Riots and protests from poor people on the

streets of Brazil 's big cities. The corporate economy is in big trouble

with companies going bust. You were part of a government and

philosophical approach to changing Brazil, which with all due respect,

does not seem to have worked. I opposed the dominant... I opposed it

in opposition and in government. It easier to be a realist if you accept

everything and it's easy to be a visionary if you consult nothing.

What you have to do is accept and confront a great deal. That is when

many in Brazil will disagree with you. One analyst wrote in the New

York Times while you were in the administration that the problem with

you is that you were to mess ionic for Brazil. You had very big ideas

about complete and radical reorganisation of the country but it

was not practical. Brazil is very open to the alternative message.

That was my experience throughout. We lack the institutions. The road

has to begin in consciousness. You cannot change the world without

ideas. And the experience of Obama and his people confirms once again

the truth that the world cannot be changed by the wealthy. One word we

have not altered between us is the word socialism. Just north of Brazil

is Venezuela. Not very long ago, I went to Caracas to talk with the

late Hugo Chavez. He is gone but President Nicolas Maduro is there

and he says he is sticking by the Bolivar in socialist revolution. You

have a lot of contacts in Latin America and beyond. Is there any

future in socialism in your view as a way of restructuring and

reordering the economy to achieve what you want, the full potential of

every individual human being? No one knows today what socialism means. So

why be hung up on these abstractions? When you go to

Venezuela and talk to your friends and they tell you that our

revolution, our socialism... I will say they have no feasible strategy

of economic growth and no lasting institution. What we need is to open

the gateways of access to the advanced sectors, to enlist finance

in the service of the real economy, because it can be a good servant but

is a bad master. You want to work with the big banks? The most massive

corporate entities in the world? I don't want finance to serve itself,

I wanted to serve production. Why wouldn't they? By changes in the tax

and regulatory structure that... Unrelated to real production. The

danger is you have to nationalise. Not at all. So heavily... No, not

all. It's not stable is against the market, it's the real market. It's

the reinvention of the market. And then comes a third element, which is

that we cannot have an inclusive market economy based on universal

precariousness of economic insecurity for the working person.

There is a new form of production emerging in the world on the basis

of decentralised networks of contractual relations, a new putting

out system. We need a new regime to protect, represent and organise that

worker. We need to associate the state with civil society in the

competitive and experimental provision of public services. In so

many of your prescriptions, you use the phrase we need. I understand

that with all your learning and many years of political philosophising

that you have very strong views about what we need. The question is,

who is the way you are talking about? The Wii is humanity. Let me

finish my point. You have two decide how your ideas, some of them frankly

pretty complex, can be turned into something that appeals to ordinary

men and women in the US and Brazil and here in Europe as well. How do

we do that? `` how do you do that? Before we persuade others, we have

to persuade ourselves. We need unity of direction. As the philosopher

says, no wind helped the man who does not know what port he is

failing to. Then we have to identify the particular circumstance the

first steps in which to move in that direction. I wonder if you believe

you can move in that direction with democracy as it is currently part

dust in the US or UK or wherever? Because frankly, democracy is not

throwing out the sorts of ideas you are trading in. It's not. White back

so who is that the fault of? Is it the fault of the people? It's

everyone 's fault. The problem is not the assignment of

responsibility. The problem is throwing ourselves into this

structure in order, radically, to expand the sense of collective

possibility. We have this very restrict different repertoire of

living options in the world. And the world is restless under the yoke of

this regime of no alternative. You say that the world is restless. I

come back to this idea of revolution. There is an interesting

debate in the UK right now and actually, funnily enough, it was

generated by a comedian who also styles himself as a revolutionary,

called Russell Brand, who the other day said in a high`profile interview

that he did not want to vote and did not want anyone else to vote. He

said voting in a democratic system that we have today is rendering

yourself complicit in a system that will never truly represent the

interests of the ordinary people. Do you agree with that? Is voting in

our system a waste of time? No, what we need is the opposite. To be

disillusioned with the solution. What we need is to act and through

our actions to create alternative political institutions. Do you mean

acting outside the framework of politics? Revolutionary action? Or

just going to be voting and exposing an opinion? Acting in every domain.

In the institutions that exist and outside of those institutions. Now

we have throughout the world a form of democratic life that continues to

depend on crisis to make change possible. Well, here we are in

Britain. And there is a movement of devolution of the creation of local

alternatives and it can only be fertile in the creation of national

alternatives if it is then combined with a style of high energy politics

at the centre. That is what I want. You believe change can happen. The

system even as it is constituted today can deliver change. We can

only work within the world that exists. We have to meet the world on

its own terms and transform the world from within. Thank you for

joining us today. Thank you very much. The weather is set to remain

relatively settled before things turn much windier and much colder

for the end of the week. Dense patches of fog as we head for the

course of this