Episode 2 My Favourite Political Thinker

On row upon row of shelves in libraries like this one,

in the heart of the House of Commons,

there are books on philosophy, society and politics.

But, you know, there are only a very few authors who have managed

to combine all three disciplines and seen their ideas adopted

and sometimes put into practice.

Now working as a political journalist at a time

when politics is viewed with such scepticism, we asked some famous

faces to choose those political thinkers

they think really are worth celebrating.

In this programme, we're going to look at some of those who've

built on the ideas of the past

and made a modern contribution to how our politics works,

even if in our first instance that means tearing it all down

and starting again.

London's trashy, trendy Soho with its bars

and boutiques is not the first place that comes to mind

when you think of Karl Marx, but he'd be very at home here.

He was at home here. He lived in this building in the 1850s,

and London became the communist capital of the world at the time.

I'm off to meet a man who not only thinks Marx is much maligned,

but is still relevant today.

That's quite hard to do for 21st century society.

When the man was writing here, exiled from Paris in the 1850s,

but my guest wants to drag him

from museum relic to modern relevance, via the pub.

So come on, then, why do you like Marx so much?

To be honest, Giles, I could hardly avoid him growing up.

I've got four generations of family who were involved in some

sort of radical politics, more than a few copies of Karl Marx's books

-were lying around when I was growing up.

-Actually, that's quite apt,

because we're sat in the Museum Tavern, opposite

the British Museum in London, and that's where he wrote Das Kapital.

But he's often more comfortable sat in the pub.

He certainly liked his drink, Marx. He's not the dour,

old crusty philosopher I think a lot of people think of him as.

He went on these infamous pub crawls.

He's once reputed to have smashed a mirror in this very pub with

a bar stool, for example.

He was chased by police officers because of his drunken antics.

Of course, it's not that that makes me so interested in Marx,

it's his ideas. I think, actually, a lot of them are still relevant today.

I'll give you one example - alienation.

It's this idea that by working for someone else,

you lose control over your own life, your own destiny, if you like.

You lose a bit of your own humanity.

I think today whether you work in a call centre or an office,

you can certainly drink to that.

-As Karl Marx would say, Prost.

-Prost.

Dr Elizabeth Frazer, fellow in politics at New College Oxford, our

in-house expert says, "Like him or loathe him, Marx is a huge figure."

If you want an idea of how big Marx is,

then he's the one who's got an -ism with his name in front of it.

He's the only person for whom you can be a Marxist.

But criticism of Marx is extensive, from the academic

and economic to the enraged and impassioned.

Marx is criticised for exactly the reason that his admirers admire him.

According to him, it's production that explains everything else,

and many of his critics say that's just plain wrong.

There's another issue, which is that he

thought about the role of the Communist Party in a way that

with hindsight we can see enabled Lenin to

develop his idea of the vanguard party, and that opened up

the authoritarian state party systems of the Soviet era.

That's clearly something to put to a fan,

but not before I've shown him something

at the Marx Memorial Library.

There you are, Owen - Communist Manifesto.

Four decades after it was first published,

but still, that's the 1888 edition.

Which is extraordinary, cos that's only five years after Marx died

and Engels himself was still alive.

Don't forget, this is the second most read book on Earth after

-the Bible itself.

-But isn't that the problem?

The Communist Manifesto, the connection to Marx.

It means of all thinkers, he's the one that gets the charge -

you're responsible for the death of millions of people.

But blaming Marx for the Stalinist totalitarian regimes which

killed millions of people, it's a bit like blaming Jesus for the Crusades.

There's absolutely nothing in his work whatsoever which backs

the Gulags, the Stalinist police state.

But there is lots in there about revolution.

Absolutely. But don't forget Marx was writing at a time of despots

and autocrats that dominated the European continent.

Even in Britain, there still wasn't universal suffrage even for men.

What Marx actually later argued was that

if you had universal suffrage for men,

you could have a democratic, peaceful transition to socialism because

it would allow a majority of working people to be elected to parliament.

So here we are, Highgate Cemetery.

Anyone who's seen it, Marx's grave, I think it's a fairly big monument.

That's the funny thing. Originally it was only a very small rock.

Marx was a modest man,

only a very few people actually even turned up to his funeral.

It was only the 1950s that this huge extravagant monument

we know today was actually put up.

So there he is.

What relevance does Marx have to our politics today, do you think?

Isn't it all a bit over?

You don't have to be an armed revolutionary or

even on the left to think that this was a pretty prescient bloke.

He predicted globalisation, he wrote of the need for capitalists to

constantly go across the globe for ever-expanding markets.

He wrote how capitalism lurched constantly from crisis to crisis,

and he also predicted that capitalism would create a huge working class.

If you look on a global scale, that's exactly what has happened.

If you want to understand the world,

if you're interested in social justice, you can't ignore Karl Marx.

Marx inspired a revolution, but Peter Kropotkin who lived

through it was an anarchist not a communist.

I'll make a bet that most people think

they know what an anarchist is

and wouldn't expect to find out about one

at the Royal Geographical Society in London,

but I'm here in Kensington to meet the editor of the Idler Magazine,

who thinks the work of Peter Alexeyevich Kropotkin can

tell us all about how to live our lives better.

-Tom, how are you?

-Giles, hi. Very well.

Why have I come to the Royal Geographical Society to find

out about an anarchist?

Well, Kropotkin was a fascinating character. He was a Russian prince.

In his teens he joined the army and he served as page to the tsar,

and in his 20s he became an explorer. He was a geographer.

He did five-year trips across the mountains of Siberia, which he

wrote up in these learned journals and created fantastic,

beautiful maps which are still in use today here.

Later in life, he became the centuries foremost proponent

of anarchism as a social theory.

OK, so why do you like him so much?

I like him because I was researching a book called How To Be Free,

which was trying to find out how we could inject more

freedom into our everyday lives and free our spirits.

I read Kropotkin's book Mutual Aid.

Firstly, it's a very well-written book.

The first half is a scientific study of cooperation among animals.

He then goes on to talk about human beings,

and it's full of inspiring ideas on how we can improve our leisure

time and improve our every day lives and take control of our lives.

If you think this is a funny place to find an anarchist philosopher,

let me show you where he actually lived when he lived in England.

All right, let's do that.

When you said come and see where he lived in London, I didn't

think we'd end up in suburban Bromley. But this is where he lived.

Blue plaque says, "Theorist of anarchism."

What is his theory of anarchism?

His theory of anarchism is essentially that he

is against authority in whatever form it might exist.

He's against the potentially tyrannical power of the state,

which forces its citizens to do things they don't want to do.

He's against big business.

Both state and big corporations take away our individual freedoms.

When we're left alone, he says, and we're left to be free,

we cooperate voluntarily and we create wonderful things.

He's about as far away as you could get from the popular conception

of the anarchist as a Molotov cocktail-throwing,

bus-stop-smashing guy.

There's a problem in anarchism which is that the idea is

that in mutual society, we aren't subject to any coercion,

but critics want to say that just

because the person who's getting you to do what

they want to do is your equal, that's no less coercive than

if someone who's above you gets you to do what they want to do.

Come down this alleyway.

'Tucked away is the Freedom Press bookshop he helped found,

'and he's still very much on sale today.'

Tom, you don't think we should be afraid of the concept of anarchism.

Not at all. It's the most friendly of all the political philosophies.

It basically believes that people are good,

and left to their own devices, they'll do good things.

He does go back to Russia, but we shouldn't make a mistake -

he's not a communist, he's not a Bolshevik.

No, he's not at all a Bolshevik.

He's very much against any form of state socialism

because it's a form of power and it takes away individual freedoms.

He feared it would lead to totalitarianism, which it does.

Now he went back to Russia.

I can't take you to Russia cos we can't afford it,

but I've got the next best thing. Come with me.

Thank you very much indeed.

Tom, I couldn't take you to Russia,

but Abracadabra Russian restaurant in London will do.

The Russian we're talking about was writing in the late 19th century,

a world very different from ours.

Is he relevant to today?

Well, he's actually strikingly relevant

because we complain about not enjoying our work.

We say we're stuck in a boring job and people want to escape from it.

We also complain about a government which we feel has become too big

and too controlling, so what Kropotkin is saying is take some

responsibility back, take some power back.

It could be something like growing your own vegetables or organising

a cricket match with the neighbours, these kind of creative acts.

He's not just making a manifesto for just enjoying yourself,

he thinks this will make a better society.

He thinks this will make a society of responsible human beings,

and that's better for everybody.

I'm going to take control of the food chain. Have a blini.

Kropotkin's anarchy was non-aggressive and changed ideas.

Gandhi's non-aggression changed nations.

You know the thing about being a politician

and a wax figure in Madame Tussauds is you're only really relevant

because you're in power.

You're a here today, gone tomorrow politician,

unless of course you're a true icon.

Over here, there is one,

still relevant in 2014 even though he died in 1948 - Mohandas K Gandhi.

Not only a prolific political philosopher and writer,

but because he lived that philosophy, he managed to change the

course of history for four important countries, including our own.

But I'm off to meet a Scottish comedian and broadcaster who

thinks Gandhi's influence goes even further than that.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: 'So to his Poplar home where we leave this bizarre little man whose

'coming has caused so much comment, complete with loincloth,

'spinning wheel and goats' milk.'

Hardeep, good to see you.

-Hey, how are you, Giles?

-So you've brought me to Bow.

-Where else?

And we're talking about Gandhi.

I gather he was here in 1931 for a huge conference,

loads of the countries that were part of the Empire invited.

It's up in the West End and he's here.

Well, that sort of epitomises the man.

He was offered to stay with the king, but being the man of the people

that he is, he decided to come to the East End,

to the gritty East End with the real people.

That kind of marks him out from other great statesmen and leaders.

They've actually got his room here where he stayed, kept as was.

-Simplicity is the key.

-Absolutely. Would you like to have a look?

I've got a little loincloth and spinning wheel

-and some goats' milk for you.

-Yeah, thank you very much.

No expense spent.

Mr Gandhi will have this for his friends

and be able to meet them and have talks when he likes,

just as we do.

Here we are. This is the balcony.

Where he was staying in 1931, pretty much as we've just seen.

-Yep, and this Mahatma Gandhi's room, actually.

-Yeah?

Which I think says more about the man than anything else.

The aesthetic life - few cushions on the floor, that's where slept,

the spinning wheel.

Sort of like a prison cell, which is

kind of apt considering how much time he did spend in prison.

What do you think is his basic philosophy, in a nutshell?

Well, let's put it into context.

India in the '40s, incredibly febrile.

A war was being fought around the world.

India had a choice -

to have an armed uprising against empire or to find another way.

Gandhi found that other way.

What he did, particularly during the Salt Marches, Gandhiji

and the rest walked right up to the line and were

battered down by the sticks of the Indian members of the British Army.

They went back the next day and were battered down again.

I think what Gandhiji showed is there's only so many times you can

hit a man with a stick before you realise it's pointless,

you're losing the moral argument.

I think that's the point.

He never lost the morality of his argument.

It's interesting.

All of that influence is demonstrated in paperwork

from the British, that they don't know how to deal with him.

I can show you some documents which prove it.

First, he's very worried about state power, laws and policing,

which he thinks will always have to use violence.

Secondly, of course,

he sees the British imperialism as an archetypically violent,

oppressive system, and he thinks the only way to answer violence

is with non-violent resistance.

Got it. Let's have a look at this.

Now this is basically at the National Archives -

records of what the government were making of Gandhi's

campaign for Indian independence.

In 1940, they're all just reporting back his intransigence, if you like.

He's very clear, it's independence or nothing.

But then, by 1943, they've just arrested him

and they're saying he can't correspond with Jinnah,

of course the founder of Pakistan,

they're just not going to let him talk to him.

So it's clear that Gandhi is crucial to Indian independence,

but it's not the India that he wants that he gets.

I believe without Gandhiji there would be no independent India.

He was absolutely instrumental to the entire process.

But what's perhaps not as well known is the work

he was doing in terms of keeping the internal body politic coherent -

stopping the factional communal violence between the Hindus

and the Muslims.

It was a dying regret of his that partition occurred

and it wasn't the India, the united subcontinent he wanted.

But what's fascinating about Gandhiji was he managed all this change,

all this influence but without being a formal politician.

He never held office.

Now I know it might sound cheesy, but I'm going to take you to

an Indian restaurant, but there is a point to it.

I don't really like all that foreign muck(!)

-See why?

-Ah!

Come on in, have a pew.

Hardeep, I brought you to Gandhi's restaurant.

It's not just the name, though.

This is a restaurant frequented by prime ministers -

John Major, Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling come here.

The Prime Minister of Bangladesh has been here.

Does Gandhi have any relevance to modern politics?

I don't think there is an international figure

from recent history that's had a greater impact on politics.

If you trace the narrative through-line

from Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela,

what's been happening recently in Burma, that passive resistance -

not stepping down but neither stepping too far up has proven

to work time and time again.

I only imagine that if we had people with that Gandhian philosophy

around in Palestine, perhaps, and Israel, there might be peace there.

There may not have been a genocide in Rwanda.

There may not be the Crimean situation now.

But really I think what we should do to honour Mahatma Gandhi

is have a small vegetarian snack.

I'm not about to tell you how to eat a small Indian snack.

The last thing I want to do is a poppadom preach.

GILES LAUGHS I'm in trouble deep.

Gandhi wanted little personal wealth,

but for Hayek, money was everything.

You know, I think it's fair to say that these days most of us

have enough trouble managing our own bank accounts let alone

an economy, but for the people in this building, the Treasury,

and those outside who are economists, that is their job.

I'm going to meet a financial analyst and blogger who thinks

you can't do that job unless you've studied the work of Friedrich Hayek.

-Louise, nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you too, Giles.

We are of course in the Institute of Economic Affairs,

a body which Hayek inspired the founding of,

and we're sat at Hayek's kitchen table.

-I know.

-Having a cup of tea.

-It's quite exciting.

Now why do you like him so much?

I recognise a fellow fighter.

He was an Austrian immigrant to this country and his family had

suffered the deprivations between the walls of Vienna.

He came with little money, and yet he took on Keynes -

wealth, privilege, education, establishment, Cambridge.

This Austrian upstart took on Keynes.

For that, he's incredibly brave.

But, also, when it became apparent the world fell in love with Keynes,

he stuck to what he really, really believed in.

It was an unpopular message, but he kept saying it.

For that, you have to admire him.

Let's go to the LSE, where he starts his lecturing career

and his British economic journey, if you like.

Yes, you can finish your tea first.

I will, thank you.

So we're in the London School of Economics' old theatre where

Hayek used to lecture, but it's quite astonishing that they gave

him a job, because apparently his early attempts were pretty turgid.

Incomprehensible is also a good word.

He had a strong Austrian accent,

he spoke in long sentences with lots of sub-clauses and he drew

these marvellous triangular diagrams that few in the audience understood.

I'm very honoured to stand on the Hayekian stage

but his entry to the LSE wasn't that great.

So, if he is so incomprehensible,

-can you explain what it is he's trying to tell us?

-Three things.

He believed firmly in free markets,

he thought that economies were highly complex and that therefore

government interference would always end up badly.

In fact, when they did interfere, the outcome was worse than

if they had done nothing at all.

Well, this audience were listening to him in the '30s,

it's not for another 50 years that someone really adopted him,

and to show you how important that is,

I need to take you to the old heart of Torydom on Earth.

So, Louise, we have come to what is now

Europe House in the heart of Westminster but back in the days

of Margaret Thatcher, this of course was Conservative Central Office.

And, of course, Margaret Thatcher is crucial to Hayek's story, isn't she?

Absolutely. Hayek was ignored for decades.

Everyone went mad for Keynes and his ideals.

And then we had the economic crisis of the '70s, stagflation, and Keynes

was maybe not such a great solution to the world's economic problems.

And what Thatcher did was go back to Hayek and, in particular,

it's this book, Hayek's The Constitution Of Liberty

and apparently she came into this building,

slammed it down on the table in a very Thatcher way and said,

"This is what we believe", which is

fabulous and it's all about rolling back the stage, privatising

state-run businesses and introducing competition as much as possible.

And so everybody starts studying him, his reputation is enhanced but

I guess the real question is now, of course, is he relevant to today?

For Hayek, politics is bad.

Whether we think of politics as governments trying to do the best

they can or whether we think of politics as politicians being

snakes, for him, both ways, politics is bound up with coercion

and it's always got that element of violence in it.

For Hayek, economics is the realm of freedom.

Hayek died in 1992,

never seeing the spectacular financial meltdown of 2008 onwards.

But having written a book on one form of economic theory,

does he have something to offer us today?

I brought us back to the Treasury because it seems most relevant to me

that what they're trying to do is clear up the mess if they can

and trying to prevent it happening again.

Does Hayek have anything to teach them?

Oh, without a shadow of a doubt.

None of the big economists have all the answers,

they all have something relevant to say - Keynes, Hayek and Friedman.

But what's interesting in this crisis,

America may have gone Keynes' stimulus, but here in Britain,

we have chosen to cut spending and impose austerity.

Very much Hayekian principles.

What I really like though are some of his comments that he wrote or

quotes that he made 70, 80 years ago

and I've chosen one and that quote is, he said,

"If you want to avoid the excesses of the business cycle,

"banks should keep a close check on their lending."

Oh, if only they had here in the UK, we'd have saved ourselves

70, 80 billion of taxpayers' money so that, as far as I'm concerned,

is the reason that you should all vote for Hayek.

That's told you.

Hayek had views on money but for Ayn Rand,

it was who made it that mattered.

These days, there is a huge market for books about unleashing

the power of the self, the potential of the individual

and that is essentially the philosophy of the American

author Ayn Rand and I've come to Borough Market in London to

meet a commentator and broadcaster who says

he can explain her philosophy through the medium of lettuce.

So, Charlie, why do you like Ayn Rand

and what does she have to do with lettuce?

Well, first off, The Fountainhead was a book that just changed my life,

it was a book I could not put down.

But as to the lettuce, my father was a greengrocer.

Maybe you've had this happen, where a parent says something that seems

so innocuous at the time, it holds great meaning.

He was stacking lettuce one day in his shop and he turned to me

and said, "You know why I made a pyramid?"

I said, "No, Dad." He said, "Because I can. I'm my own boss.

"No-one tells me how to stack the lettuce."

So, that simple act of stacking the lettuce was so Randian in that he was

the author of his own destiny, no-one told him how to stack the lettuce.

OK, that was a pyramid of lettuce.

Let's take you to a steel and glass pyramid not far from here,

the Shard, which also has a lot to do with Rand.

OK.

Ayn Rand was a Russian emigree.

Fiercely anti-Communist,

unconventional in both her thoughts and lifestyle, even her fans found

her tricky, but Dr Elizabeth Frazer of Oxford University says her books,

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, were powerful.

She's inspirational.

Her vision of free-market society has inspired so many people.

Very, very controversial.

But if there were a prize for the author who's got the most people

saying, "I read this book and it changed my life", she would win it.

Well, Charlie, we are now surrounded by the most incredible

view from the Aqua Shard restaurant in the Shard in London.

But I'm just wondering what was Ayn Rand's world view?

Her world view would have been the people that built this view,

that built the Shard,

she loved heroic men of vision that had intellect,

and this building in particular, if you go up, it's a cathedral,

not to God, she was an atheist,

but a cathedral to the powers of mankind, men were her gods.

She tended to present philosophical ideas as

though they were her own invention and that really estranged

serious thinkers and serious politicians as well.

It was extraordinary that she refused to cooperate politically,

including with people who really liked her ideas and would have

liked her to be a figurehead for new conservatism in the 20th century.

She was very sectarian and capable of being very nasty.

However nasty though,

how many other political philosophers have

had their books turned into a movie, with its enigmatic catchphrase,

"Who is John Galt?"

My medal, your railway. It's us who move the world.

Atlas Shrugged is all about railways,

steel and building a bridge but a little bit like the one we're

standing next to which is a little ugly, a little grubby.

People seem to think that Randian philosophy is a bit the same,

supremely selfish. Is that fair?

No, not if you define selfishness the way Ayn Rand did.

Selfishness is about the self, being true to your own ideals,

taking care of yourself first and foremost,

not living off the state, not living off of others.

I think it's a more nobler way and if you could do that, think of

how the welfare roles would shrivel up, how society would be better off.

I think it's a far better philosophy than living off the state.

Now, it's not just that many wouldn't agree with that,

but in October 2011,

some were prepared to camp out on the streets in front

of St Paul's Cathedral to demonstrate their opposition

to such views but actually, Rand herself predicted all that.

So, if you look over to the side of us

is where the protesters were, the uncut, the 99%,

and she described in her books this dystopian state, this welfare state.

The leechers and the moochers,

the moochers were the ones wanting the money, the entitlement state.

The leechers were people like the church or the government demanding

on a moral imperative that companies pay more tax and give more money.

It's easy to be altruistic with other peoples' money.

This was a dystopian welfare state that she described in her books,

the collectivism that she hated,

but the answer also that she did give was it's trade, it's commerce,

it's jobs, it's a flourishing economy -

that's what lifts people out of poverty, not giving them money.

That's why Ayn Rand is relevant for today.

By the way, who is John Galt?