 Well, good morning everybody and welcome to a conversation with Professor Michael Sandell, the professor of philosophy who is currently working at Harvard University in the School of Government. Now, it's often said that we live in extraordinary times and I think the fact that we have a packed room, in fact a completely full room for a conversation with Professor Sandell indicates what extraordinary times we do live in because there was a time not so recently when the comments of philosophers weren't seen as being so relevant to markets or even government. And yet, as an anthropologist myself, I'm delighted to say that that has now changed. People have woken up and realized that you cannot predict the future or hope to understand the present just by looking at numbers no matter how unbelievably flashy your algorithms might seem. And in fact, Professor Sandell wrote a terrific book a couple of years ago called What Money Can't Buy. Essentially, it does what it says on the tin. It explains the moral limits of markets and all the reasons why building a society and a system purely on worship of markets, worship of numbers has its limits. Now, this has become doubly relevant not just because of the financial crisis but because we are now living with, if you like, a moment of political revolution as well. So I'd like to start by asking you not so much about finance but about the big question that everyone's asking right now, what about Trump? I managed to get through a whole two minutes without mentioning Trump, but here we go. Did you predict that Trump would win? In the weeks leading up, I thought he might. I didn't trust the polls and I didn't predict those market predictors either. Money can't buy good predictions either. I think not. I think what the elites missed and continue to miss are the sources of the anger and resentment that has led to the populist upheavals in the US, in Britain and in many other parts of the world. I think that the elites assume that it's just about anger against immigration and trade and that at the heart of it is jobs. And surely that's a part of it. But it's also about even bigger things about the loss of community, about disempowerment and about social esteem, the sense that the work that ordinary people do is no longer honored and recognized. So let's roll back here a bit because a lot of the conversations I've had in Washington in the last few months have been all about what it's to do with rising inequality, people bring out these charts showing what's happened to median incomes, mean incomes. You get into these long arguments with different political camps. Some people say, well, actually hasn't anyone noticed that under Obama in the last couple of years incomes have gone up sharply? What are they complaining about? I mean, are you arguing that that basically misses a point? It's not just about economics? It's not just about economics. Inequality does matter, but for moral and civic reasons, not only for economic reasons, there are two reasons to worry about inequality. One, the familiar reason, is unfairness to those who lose out. And that can be dealt with, we debate various redistributive policies, but there is another reason to worry about inequality and it's a civic reason. When the gap between rich and poor becomes too great, we find ourselves living separate lives and the public sphere loses its capacity to gather us together and to enable us to be citizens engaged in a common project. Right. I mean, you actually say the conclusion of your book, which I, as a former author myself, I know how important it is to promote the book, so all of you with your web cams, you can see the book, what money can't buy. But you said at the end, at a time of rising inequality, the marketisation of everything means that people of affluence and people of modest means lead increasingly separate lives. We live and work and shop in plain different places. Our children go to different schools. You might call it, and I think it's a great line, the skyboxification of American life. It's not good for democracy. So you think that is essentially what lies at the heart of our current political upheaval, is it? Skyboxification. Do you want me to explain skyboxification? Yes, wonderful word. I can just about pronounce it. I have no idea how you translate that into French or German, but anyway. I think it goes back to Aristotle or something, not really. But skyboxification, it goes, when I was a kid growing up, I was a baseball fan and loved to go to baseball games. In retrospect, what I noticed, I didn't notice it at the time, was that going to a baseball game was a class mixing experience. CEOs and mailroom clerks sat more or less side by side. There were more expensive and less expensive seats, but the difference wasn't that great. It was a community building experience and then came in skyboxes where there were corporate luxury VIP boxes where those on the top could watch, the privilege could watch the game in isolation from the common folk in the stands below. And this seems to me a metaphor for what's happened in the passage you read. Throughout our social life, the public schools are less and less a place that create a shared common citizenship where people from different walks of life encounter one another. This seems to me the most corrosive effect of the growing inequality on social life and on democracy. But you could argue that what we're doing here in Davos is the ultimate corporate box, the ultimate skyboxification, not just of a sports match but of life. Well, there is something to that and the question is what can we learn here and I think the lesson of the populist uprising has not yet really been learned and absorbed. I think that these are going to be troubled testing times for democracy these next few years. But what worries me is not just the populist protest, what worries me is that the mainstream parties and the elites and political leaders don't get it. By that you mean the mainstream Democrats, the Labour Party, the French and German sort of centre left parties too? You think they don't get it too? I think it goes across the political spectrum. I think there is an exhaustion of political ideas and emptiness in the terms of public discourse. What passes for public discourse these days is either partisan shouting matches, ideological food fights on talk radio and cable television and on the floors of Congress or narrow managerial technocratic talk which inspires no one. The success of right wing populism usually reflects the failure of liberal or progressive politics and I think that's true today. It's a striking fact that the Democratic Party in the United States, the Labour Party in Britain and social Democratic parties throughout Europe have largely lost contact and credibility with the working class and middle class constituencies that traditionally were their base. Right, well I find that very interesting because I went to both the Democrat and the Republican conventions this summer and the thing that really struck me was that you walked away from the Republican convention, the right wing convention and you were crystal clear about the slogan, make America great again, short snappy and it has a verb, it's about movement, very similar to take back control which was the Brexiteers slogan, again it has a verb. The Democrats by contrast were a complete mess of images, they had two slogans, one was I'm with her which sounds like a boy band, the other one was stronger together which is very static, you might as well call it I'm with a status quo. If you were employed by the Democrats today, the center left, what would be your slogan? How would you revitalize the center left? Well I'm not sure I would begin with the slogan but I would say something about what the snappiness of make America great again that struck you. There is darkness at the edge of that slogan as there is darkness in the slogan, take back our country, from whom, and yet despite the darkness there is also a glimmer of a legitimate and important aspiration in both of those slogans that center left parties need to learn and take seriously and the aspiration, the legitimate aspiration underlying those slogans has to do with a sense of national community. The language of patriotism has been appropriated by the right for the most part, there is no reason why center left parties can't reclaim and articulate their own conception of national purpose and national community and shared identity and patriotism, so that's one place I would start. So nationalism is okay if you're on the left? Or patriotism is okay? Is it okay to chant USA, USA or Robertania if you're on the left? Well I wouldn't encourage, it depends on the settings in which those chants are intoned and many of the settings where we hear them there is a darkness at more than the edge. Sometimes right at the heart of the passions they stir but I think that one of the weaknesses of center left parties has been in the face of pluralism and for the sake of toleration to try to insist on a kind of non-judgmental value free politics and that creates a moral vacuum of void that invariably will be filled by narrow intolerant moralisms. So part of what I would call for and try to work out for the center left parties is a morally more robust kind of public discourse than the kind to which we're accustomed to technocratic impulse, the economistic faith and the market faith began with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 80s but when they passed from the political scene and were succeeded by center left parties in Britain, in the US, in Germany, the underlying premise of that market faith that markets are the primary instruments for defining and achieving the public good, that faith was never challenged. It was not moderated but consolidated that market faith and we've not really had a debate since then about the proper role and reach of markets in civic life. Right. So in a sense your slogan would be there's more to life than markets. Yes. Not very snappy. More to life than markets. It's not only the economy stupid. That would be another. But those are critical. Those are critical commentaries. What remains to be done is to fill in the content. And so one element of that content has to do with a sense of national purpose, a sense of community. But I think another ingredient that center left parties need to address is the meaning in the future of work. Right. Because part of the anger and frustration goes to social esteem, a sense that the work that ordinary people do isn't valued and isn't rewarded. And I think part of this is due to the financialization of the economy over the last three or four decades. When the social purpose of finance is to direct capital to socially useful purposes. But when so much of financial activity ceases to have much connection with that basic purpose in the real economy and yet is lavishly rewarded. It's very hard for ordinary people to believe politicians when they say as they constantly now reiterate people who work hard and play by the rules should be able to rise as far as their talents will take them. People listen to that. This slogan is the promise of a more perfect meritocracy. It rings hollow. If there is a theme implicit in the conventions you attended among progressive parties in the US, in Britain and elsewhere, it's that. To remove barriers to a freer, more perfect meritocracy. But that's ringing hollow. You call it meritocratic hubris. You wrote a piece for the Guardian, sadly the Guardian, not the FT, but I'm sure we can change that in the future. Where you basically laid out a four part plan for what you thought were the four key issues that the centre left, if you like, need to address. Do you want to quickly run through them? For my mind, we need to get granular. What are the four things that they need to actually do in their new party platform when they hire you? Well we've touched on two, a sense of national community and purpose. So patriotism is okay. If it's directed to a shared common life, restoring public places, public institutions, class mixing of civic spaces. The second one we've touched on has to do with a serious debate about the future of work and the meaning of work and what confers dignity on work. And the relation between finance and the real economy, that's all part I think of the same question. Can you come to the other two? I mean I'm very curious about that as an anthropologist because one of the things that economic anthropology has argued for a long time is that work should not be something that just economists discuss. Right. Because it's anything other than just about economics. Yes, exactly. Work is a way of making a living, we take that phrase for granted, it's about generating an income. But is that its only purpose or does it also confirm meaning and identity? And I think clearly the second as well. But if that's true, when people are thrown out of work and when the work they do is not really valued and rewarded, it's not only an economic issue, it's not just a jobs issue as we narrowly conceive it, it's an issue of meaning and identity and respect. Right. And social esteem. So those would be two things. So patricism, talk about work. Well another, you mentioned the meritocratic hubris that I've spoken about and it's connected. The more we believe that the animating purpose of our society is to enable the talented to get ahead and to remove barriers to advancement. And the more we perfect that meritocratic project, the more we're inclined to view our own success as our own doing, as what we deserve. And the effect of this is insidious in subtle ways that accumulate and that I think we're witnessing now. So those on top come to inhale pretty deeply of their own success. I'm here by dint of my own talents and efforts. And that leads to a certain attitude toward those who are not at the top, a tendency to look down with disdain. And part of what we hear again and again in the close reporting of the populist anger and protest is a sense that the elites look down with disdain, the smugness. And I think that ordinary citizens are not wrong to sense this smugness and disdain. It's inscribed almost in the animating implicit ideology or public purpose. And also, there's something deeply demoralizing about this picture, about our relation to our success and moral desert, if you wind up on the bottom. Because then you might say, well the system is rigged, it's unfair. But you might also wonder, maybe I don't work quite as hard, maybe I'm not quite as deserving as those folks on the top. And when you believe both together, that's a volatile, toxic, demoralizing brew. And I think that's animated a lot of this anger. So patriotism is OK, or it is community, pride in community is OK. Well to articulate a version of national community and patriotism. I'm looking for snappy slogans. Philosophers are not good at that. Work is good. Meridocratic hubris is wrong and the fourth one is about income inequality. It's about income inequality and it's connected to the defect of the meritocratic ideal as an ideal of a just society in the following way. Well, first we need to talk about inequality not only as a matter of fairness and distribution, but also as a corrosive, having a corrosive effect on the civic project. We've spoken about that. But there's also the relation between inequality and mobility. In the U.S. especially, we've always told ourselves this is part almost of the American dream. We don't need to worry about the inequality of income and wealth in the U.S. as much as they do in Europe. Because here in America, we tell ourselves, you can rise. You're not stuck at the place of your birth. Those class-bound societies of Europe, they worry about inequality because they have less mobility. But this comforting story no longer fits the facts. The ability to rise from one generation to the next in the U.S. is less, not greater than it is in many European countries. The U.S. and Britain actually are pretty close on this. Near the bottom in terms of the ability to rise, in the U.S. if you're born in the bottom fifth, 43% will stay there. And 70% won't even reach the middle. 4% only will reach the top. Whereas in places like Denmark and Canada and Germany, it's actually the rate of upward mobility is much greater. So today equality and mobility go together. Because the further apart the rungs on the ladder become, the harder it is to scramble up those rungs. So the fourth theme that center left parties need to think about and address creatively is, are we going to consider that upward mobility is an alternative to worrying about equality? Or do we need to think about both? And do we need to think not only about mobility, but also about creating a more equal society where the focus is not on the scramble to the top. This connects to the meritocratic issue we were discussing. Because even if we could create a society where people rose according to their talents and effort, meritocracy is not a way, not an alternative to inequality. It's a justification for a certain kind of inequality. Even a perfect meritocracy would in some ways deepen rather than solve the problems of social esteem and community. So I think broadly, this is not a slogan, Gillian, but it's a theme. Well, maybe the slogan should be, we should all be Danish. Well, you could almost say that the American dream is alive and well and living in Denmark. But here's the theme that I think center left parties should shift their emphasis from talking about mobility and perfecting individual opportunity and talk more about solidarity and community and what that means. One quite interesting detail that people in the audience may not know is that you grew up in Minnesota with Tom Friedman, who is here in the audience, who recently read another terrific book, Thank You for Being Late, which essentially argues that the secret of a good society lies not so much in Denmark but in Minnesota, or at least in Minnesota 20 or 30 years ago, where you didn't have the skyboxification of life, as you say. He uses that image in his own book. You did have a sense of community, darn cold for much of the year, but you had a sense of community. Do you think it's possible to go back to those homespun Midwestern Minnesotan values? I mean, trying to run a political campaign of let's all be Minnesotans is probably not that punchy, or it's punchy, may not be that appealing, but is that the answer? I think there are... Anyone else from Minnesota in the room? There are elements, there are values, there are civic resources that are closely connected with that experience, but I think it's important not to conceive the task of rejuvenating public discourse as a project in nostalgia. It's a project that can learn from where we've come, and I think it should begin by looking critically at the last four decades when market thinking and market reasoning and the financialization of the economy, we've come to take them for granted. So looking back 40 years or for that matter over the course of the history of democratic societies, that can inform moral and civic argument and how it might be rejuvenated, not as an exercise in nostalgia, but as a way of critically reflecting on the path we've taken, and it's a way of reminding ourselves that it doesn't need to be so. The laws of the market are not given by nature. We have designed a certain version of global capitalism through political choices. It's not like the weather that we have simply to adapt to. We have made political choices. We should reflect critically on the path we've taken, and we need to listen. This I think is the, in a way, the most fundamental piece of advice I would have, especially for progressive parties, we need, at least need to do, a better job of listening to the anger, the discontent, the frustrations, the resentments, even when they take sometimes ugly, odious form, because there is something to learn. There is embedded in those frustrations. There are legitimate grievances and genuine aspirations that we have not successfully addressed for, well, quite some time, for several decades at least. Have you ever been to a Trump rally? No. Would you like to go to one? Are you inviting me? Let's go together. Anthropologists and philosophers can go off together to a Trump rally. I have, actually, and I've spent quite a lot of the last year trying to be a one-on-one anthropologist and go into different parts of America. And, frankly, that journey has reminded me of how easy it is to insulate yourself. Right. But I'm curious, if the left doesn't listen and doesn't take on board what you're saying and doesn't formulate snappy slogans, doesn't find a way to connect to listen, doesn't adopt this four-part plan, what happens? Well, first, I wouldn't describe it as a four-part plan. I know you want snappiness, Jillian. I'm sorry, I'm a journalist. I think about headlines and bullet points. I would describe it as four themes. Okay, four theme plans. That should inform the mission and purpose, the rejuvenation of public discourse by progressive parties. What will happen if we fail? Do we get dystopian demagogues for the next two decades? Well, I think what will happen is, here's how I would think about it. People want public life to be about big things, including shared purposes and meanings and sources of identity. And when, for a stretch of time, mainstream parties and progressive parties don't offer that, don't speak to those larger questions, including questions of values, but instead talk a technocratic language, that creates a moral void. And what happens, and we're seeing it already, is the default way of filling the emptiness of meaning in public discourse is a kind of strident nationalism. That's the default source of meaning that will infiltrate and infect public discourse and global politics and its corrosive ultimately of pluralism and democracy if central left parties don't find a constructive way of moving beyond technocratic talk, of addressing values, big questions about justice, equality and inequality, what it means to be a citizen. A language of the common good, in the absence of that, that void will be filled, it's already being filled in democracies and also in undemocratic countries. A void of meaning is being filled in different ways, in different parts of the world, by a strident nationalism. That's the default source of meaning and it's dangerous. So in some ways we are sliding back towards the 1930s? Well there are elements of that, there are elements of that under different conditions and the challenge is to find is not to flee from a politics that addresses common purposes, national purposes and aspirations and moral questions even. It's to try to find our way to a morally more robust public discourse than the kind to which we're accustomed. That I think is the only way of rejuvenating democratic public life. We have about one minute left so I'm just curious. Any leaders on the political stage today, any of them doing that, capable of doing that on the mid to centre left? No, Barack Obama in 2008 seemed to be someone who was able to touch, to connect moral and spiritual concerns to politics. But he wasn't able to translate that into governing and I think that has to do with the way he responded to the 2008 financial crisis in the bailout which generated the anger and resentment which he placated rather than articulated and that unaddressed anger fed on the left, it fed the Occupy movement and then the Bernie Sanders campaign and on the right it fed the Tea Party movement and Donald Trump. Right. Well I don't want to end on a down note. There's been a fascinating conversation so instead I'm going to simply end with a call to arms. Who in the room would regard themselves as being centre or centre left? Yes, quite a lot of you. Well, I'd simply end by saying, we don't often turn to philosophers for political slogans. I'm not sure we've quite got one today. Themes Gillian, not slogans. Themes or slogans, those of you who do come from the centre or centre left, you now have your marching orders. Thank you. Thank you so much.