4 - The Resurgent Left's View of Economists

Summary

Socialists take a good deal of inspiration from Keynesians.

(French Socialist politician)

I have always seen the economy as a contested, also politically contested, field, in which the different social interests of different population groups meet. And I have held on to this kind of thinking to this day, and actually find it confirmed in many ways.

(German Die Linke politician)

I have combined the left from all five countries because of how much they share. Their right-wing counterparts tend to follow more nationally rooted paths, which I cover in the next chapters. This chapter illustrates three themes. The first theme is the divergence in economic ideas, driven by the left. Much of the existing research into politicians’ economic goals and policy-making was conducted at the height of the neoliberal era, when many argue that centre-left goals were becoming more similar to those on the right, converging on a pro-market stance (Berman 2006; Mudge 2011, 2018). But many of these interviewees argue that, since the 2008 financial crisis, they have moved to the left (see also Manwaring & Holloway 2022). There is an increasing confidence that leftist economic ideas are gaining a wider audience, although, perhaps not unsurprisingly, left-wing politicians in Europe show greater confidence than progressive Democrats in the United States.

The second theme is how politicians on the left respect economists, but only if they belong to a particular strand of thinking. There are crucial differences between the attitudes of centre-and far-left interviewees towards economists. The centre left often follows “Keynesian” approaches, while the far left follows a mix of economists but only if they are in the heterodox category, outside the mainstream. The far-left politicians are, arguably, paying closer attention to economists than their centre-left counterparts. The differ-ences in which economists are respected reinforces the point that politicians would find it difficult to follow a technocratic path involving ceding control to economic experts in general.

Finally, many commentators have seen the left as generally more opposed to ceding control over economic policy to experts than the right. I find that the left still seems to believe that, in the current time, economic policy should continue to be contested in the political domain.