Why we need populist anger

Amongst the best example of trolling your own blog I’ve ever seen, Dsquared does make one point that, if not convincing, does deserve some consideration:

However, of course, there were plenty of people who didn’t own houses in the 90s and 00s, and who thus didn’t benefit from the boom, who are suffering as a result of the recession, including the benefit claimants from whose mouths I was accused of taking the bread. Even in this case, though, I think that making a big deal about “the bankers caused this crisis/stole from us/etc” is a big mistake.

And that’s basically for the simple reason that there is no hope for egalitarian politics if you are going to build it on such weak grounds. This was the lasting contribution of Jerry Cohen’s criticism of Marx. The demands of egalitarian justice are not based in some convoluted proof that the rich have in some way stolen from the poor. The case for redistributive taxation does not rest on bankers’ bonuses being stolen goods, or even on them being undeserved. If you try to agitate for egalitarian policies based on this kind of argument, you are never going to make a strong case, because in the first place, “bankers” didn’t actually steal that money, for the most part, and secondly, if you are giving all the agency to “bankers” then you are accepting the first premis of the “wealth creators” rhetoric, and this is going to destroy you, politically, across the business cycle.

…even if it does feel like special pleading. Moreover, it sounds like exactly the sort of claptrap centrist Democrats put out whenever the hoi polloi get too uppity, that emotions and populist anger have no place in grownup politics. It’s trying to discredit genuine feelings of anger by throwing up procedural objections. It’s wrong too. Sure, populist anger at the bankers and their crimes isn’t enough to drive change, but it is necessary. If left to the financial sector and the politicians nothing will change, reasoned argument won’t work, only fear and anger will.

Because we’ve seen what happens when the financial world thinks it’s business at usual again. Only moments after they were bailed out and rescued from their own follies and criminality the banks started to complain about how they couldn’t possible be expected to pay more taxes on their unearned bonuses or actually adhere to rules that would stop another crisis. They hadn’t learned a thing from the economic meltdown because they hadn’t suffered enough. They still had their money, their power, their freedom, but for the incidental scapegoat. That obviously needs to change.