BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Left Behind
By Paul Collier
Published by Penguin Books, 2025, rrp £10.99
REVIEW (PART 2 OF 2)
BY TIM BARTON
Part Two of Left Behind is titled ‘Spiralling Up’, and is a detailed look at how previously ‘left behind’ places have in fact triumphed and reversed the trends. This is the meat of the book, with chapters on ‘how places renew from the grass roots’, ‘inclusive prosperity’, ‘building the sinews of the State’, and ‘the morality of common purpose’.
Collier accounts for England’s special status as a failing economic state by reference to other countries’ choices to devolve power, investment, and both public and private finance. Thus, regions in danger of being ‘left behind’ may in fact be able to build in more resilience. Much of the book details examples of different tactics, few of which our politicians seem interested in, but which set out possible roots away from neglect and poverty for areas ‘left behind’.
Possibly most resonant for us in England is a section on ‘crisis as opportunity’. The emergence of a possibly true Left political party in the last few weeks may be seen as a national opportunity to fight the entropy dragging this country down, that is, if they can find a way to see off the threat from the entropy accelerators of the nationalist right. Examples Collier uses include post-1945 West Germany, Bangladesh after 1970, and the Basque region of Spain. Renewal ‘from the grass roots’ is in the author’s view a foundational step toward reversing trends in ‘neglected places’.
The role of the Quakers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are briefly outlined, as they ‘believed in living simple but purposeful lives in which every member of their community had equal agency’, as opposed to an ossified and hierarchical approach taken by the established church and state. Other dissenters serve as examples as well – without Quakers, Baptists and Methodists we might have had no successfully emergent trade unions, credit unions, building societies, etc, and ultimately perhaps no Co-Operative Party or Parliamentary Labour Party. These religious dissenters catalysed and focussed working-class organisation.
WE NEED A ‘THICK’ STATE
Entropy is a term originating in thermodynamics. In essence, it is defined as a force that brings disorder to ordered systems. In thermodynamics this is a result of energy draining from a system, and changing to cooler forms. Used in sociological, political or economic systems theory, it is an ever-present drain on energy. Indeed, I see it as the true ‘invisible hand’ in the market. It does, sadly, the opposite of the invisible hand Adam Smith mooted in passing – it was never an important element in his economic ideas. As in chemical and physical systems, it takes a great deal more energy to push a system up a hill than it does to roll it back down again. For local economies that suffer from underinvestment this creates huge issues, and ultimately ‘neglected places’ will no longer be peripheral but everywhere, unless, despite ‘free market’ ideals, governments, councils, and community bodies curb the market, intervene in the markets, and inject a great deal of energy in renewal.
For this to work for everyone, rather than the current dead-end of massively increasing the wealth of the few at the expense of the many, Collier suggests a number of requirements. As with the Quaker example, we need ‘inclusive prosperity. We need a state apparatus that is inclusive, unlike out current elitist, indeed predatory, state, and ‘thick’, which Collier differentiates from ‘big’. Big states tend towards over-bureaucratisation, and thin states allow too much power to unelected unaccountable non-state apparatus such as corporations and their think-tanks and lobby groups. Thus, Denmark is an example of a successful ‘thick’ state, that ‘uses its large revenues to be inclusive’.
Other topics covered are ‘liveable cities’ with controlled urbanisation; service industries that are people-focussed or even -owned, such as utilities, transport, schools and libraries; embedding ecologically sustainable building practices; effective taxation and regulation of the mega-rich, amongst whom Collier investigates fossil fuel companies, with a section on ‘how Norway beat Britain’. Regulation and taxation require controlling ‘slippery accounting’, off-shoring to tax havens etc. Resource development requires strict controls on how it impacts local communities as well as the environment.
BLUEPRINTS FOR POSITIVE CHANGE
Perhaps his most important chapter is ‘Building the Sinews of the State’. All the above is all very well to suggest, but nothing happens by magical thinking. One example would be the ‘capacity to tax’. Collier gives some insight into how a low-tax low-infrastructure state such as Uganda historically succeeded in increasing tax revenues. The current media propaganda against taxing the wealthiest more, with the new ‘project fear’ bogeyman of ‘capital flight’ indicates how much of an issue the capacity to tax can be
Collier is a ‘communitarian’, and like others of that ilk, such as Amitai Etzioni, has a grand catholic plan that describes the problems very well, but often seems errantly optimistic in its prescriptions. His views here are expressed in the chapter ‘The Morality of Common Purpose’. Contemporary ideology suggests morality is automatically served by the market and that supporting those ‘left behind’ is a wasted effort – see every Daily Mail headline on benefits (except pensions, I wonder why, eh?). This ideology must be named Enemy and expunged with extreme prejudice, yet is grows stronger by the day.
Nevertheless, whilst our era often suffers from a preponderance of ‘individualism’, some assumptions communitarians make tend to ride roughshod over individuals for the sake of community. It is a hard balance to maintain, and one might agree that we have shifted too far from community, but we must keep sharp or we stand to lose as much as we stand to gain. I would wish to see a lot more power imbued in the grass roots too, as a state is by definition hierarchical in ways that, again due to entropy as much as design or intent, are inimical to the fight to not be ‘left behind’. Overall, I think Left Behind’s blueprints for positive change are important, so long as approached and enacted critically.
Left Behind is available from Bookbuster, 39 Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1RE
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