11.08.09
Reap what you sow
Busy busy busy.
But I do have time to observe the following: if you take Ancient Rome as the model for your national institutions, giving yourself a Senate on the Capitol, and in the great founding text of your constitution it is argued that you are establishing a republic and explicitly not a democracy (i.e. your are emulating Rome not Athens), then don’t be suprised if a few hundred years down the line your generals start getting political and meddling with the elected leaders’ plans.
Eh?
11.07.09
The Change We Need?
Today I attended the Fabian Society’s The Global Change We Need conference. With an impressive performance from David Miliband kicking things off and two excellent debates, it was a day well spent.
However, during the exchanges one thing kept coming up again and again: the issue of what progressives want to bring about, of how to encourage the wider population to accept progressive goals. The final debate was even called “Progressive Economy: How to get there”.
This P word. We need to talk about it.
First off some etymology. The word “progressive” entered the leftist vocabulary of self-definition when the American right did a successful hatchet job on the word “liberal”. It’s an American import, and the product of a very American political history.
That “progressive” is a response to a hatchet job is instructive about the way the word is now used: as a fluff term which is warm, cuddly, nice-sounding and most importantly, vague. After all, nobody’s against “progress”, or in favour of regression are they? You can’t be attacked for wanting “progress” because surely everyone agrees that – the world being the nasty place it is – making progress is a good thing. That’s what progress means, right?
Well perhaps it is, though the philosophers out there are likely to be pretty sceptical. But let’s ignore the philosophical deep waters, and worry about this instead. When we’re all talking in fluff-terms about “progress”, we’re not talking about these things: redistribution, equality, fairness, tax justice, the role of the state in correcting the market, gender and race rights, and all those other issues which were central to what used to go by the name of “the left”.
Instead, we talk about being “progressives” and our wonderful “progressive” goals, shying away from stating what those goals might actually be or how they might be brought about. In turn, we don’t argue for them, but rather leave the traditional goals of the left as implied by what “progressivism” is vaguely gestured to involve, for fear of making the horses bolt.
Except here’s the catch. Because “progress” is a fluff term which itself doesn’t mean anything, anyone can use it. And they do. That’s why David Cameron has claimed that the Conservatives are not only compassionate but progressive. It’s why Nick Clegg declared that the Lib Dems are now the true home of British progressives. Because nobody is against progress, and because it doesn’t mean anything and simply invokes vague feelings of warm fussiness, the term is co-opted by opponents, and can’t carry any meaning for those in favour of the ideals listed above.
Perhaps even worse, use of the term may not just hollow out the left and hand useful rhetorical ploys to opponents, it may also be self-destructive. Barack Obama campaigned under vague terms like “Change”, “Hope” and “Yes we can!”, driven forth by the enthusiastic masses of American “progressives”. But a year down the line, he finds himself with an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, a broken economy, and healthcare reforms that teeter on the edge of disaster. If Obama’s presidency fails to live up to the (unrealistic) hopes it raised, what will become of the concept of being a “progressive” in (American) politics? Without any sort of stated ideology to fall back on – egalitarianism, collectivism, social justice or whatever – the whole thing will look like the vague fluff it arguably always was. No prizes for guessing which party will suddenly find itself easing back into power.
So, The Global Change We Need? To stop using the damn P word, and have the courage of our convictions to actually say what we believe, and say why we’re right. If that means long, difficult and complex thinking about what equality, justice, fairness and the rest mean in the 21st Century, then good, let’s have that debate. Better that than the vacuous fluff of “progress”.
Today I attended that Fabian Society’s The Global Change We Need conference. With an impressive performance from David Miliband kicking things off and two excellent debates, it was a day well spent.
However, during the exchanges one thing kept coming up again and again: the issue of what progressives want to bring about, of how to encourage the wider population to accept progressive goals. The final debate was even called “Progressive Economy: How to get there”.
This P word. We need to talk about it.
First off some etymology. The word “progressive” entered the leftist vocabulary of self-definition when the American right did a successful hatchet job on the word “liberal”. It’s an American import, and the product of a very American political history.
That “progressive” is a response to a hatchet job is instructive about the way the word is now used: as a fluff term which is warm, cuddly, nice-sounding and most importantly, vague. After all, nobody’s against “progress”, or in favour of regression are they? You can’t be attacked for wanting “progress” because surely everyone agrees that – the world being the nasty place it is – making progress is a good thing. That’s what progress means, right?
Well perhaps it is, though the philosophers out there are likely to be pretty sceptical. But let’s ignore the philosophical deep waters, and worry about this instead. When we’re all talking in fluff-terms about “progress”, we’re not talking about these things: redistribution, equality, fairness, tax justice, the role of the state in correcting the market, gender and race rights, and all those other issues which were central to what used to go by the name of “the left”.
Instead, we talk about being “progressives” and our wonderful “progressive” goals, shying away from stating what those goals might actually be or how they might be brought about. In turn, we don’t argue for them, but rather leave the traditional goals of the left as implied by what “progressivism” is vaguely gestured to involve, for fear of making the horses bolt.
Except here’s the catch. Because “progress” is a fluff term which itself doesn’t mean anything, anyone can use it. And they do. That’s why David Cameron has claimed that the Conservatives are not only compassionate but progressive. It’s why Nick Clegg declared that the Lib Dems are now the true home of British progressives. Because nobody is against progress, and because it doesn’t mean anything and simply invokes vague feelings of warm fussiness, the term is co-opted by opponents, and can’t carry any meaning for those in favour of the ideals listed above.
Perhaps even worse, use of term may not just hollow out the left and hand useful rhetorical ploys to opponents, it may also be self-destructive. Barack Obama campaigned under vague terms like “Change”, “Hope” and “Yes we can!”, driven forth by the enthusiastic masses of American “progressives”. But a year down the line, he finds himself with an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, a broken economy, and healthcare reforms that teeter on the edge of disaster. If Obama’s presidency fails to live up to the (unrealistic) hopes it raised, what will become of the concept of being a “progressive” in (American) politics? Without any sort of stated ideology to fall back on – egalitarianism, collectivism, social justice or whatever – the whole thing will look like the vague fluff it arguably always was. No prizes for guessing which party will suddenly find itself easing back into power.
So, The Global Change We Need? To stop using the damn P word, and have the courage of our convictions to actually say what we believe, and say why we’re right. If that means long, difficult and complex thinking about what equality, justice, fairness and the rest mean in the 21st Century, then good, let’s have that debate. Better that than the vacuous fluff of “progress”.
11.03.09
An Open Letter to the Conservative Leadership
Dear Conservative Party Leadership,
I spend a lot of time attacking you and your party. But I’m prepared to cut a deal. If you do just one thing for me, I promise I will stop pointing at your insane economic policies, your amazing broken promise on a Lisbon referendum (the first government to break a key promise before being elected?), your far-right allies in Europe, your netroots maniacs, and your complete lack of policies regarding basically everything apart from destroying the economy.
Sounds good? OK, what I want you to do for me is this: abandon wholesale New Labour’s stupid, short-sighted, naive, utterly idiotic, meddling, creativity-destroying philistinism towards Britain’s universities.
I’m thinking not just of the (leaked) proposals to rate university courses on the same model as food packaging here, though it is my inspiration for writing to you. I’m actually thinking much more widely. About, for example, the mind-blowing stupidity of aspects of the Research Assesment Exercise, which virtually dictates how institutions receive funding (although now Mr Mandelson is complaining that institutions are too research-driven and not offering a “consumer-driven choice” to undergraduate students!) Of New Labour’s persistant attempts to meddle with top universities, claiming this is justified because they don’t accept enough state-sector students due to some implied bias in favour of posh kids, when in fact anyone who has done access work (e.g. yours truly) knows that the biggest problem is that state schools as a general rule are simply not as good as fee-paying ones and are far less likely to encourage students to aim for the top, thus meaning that, by age 18, applicants from the independent sector outnumber, and simply look better (even if they are in truth not), than their state-educated competitors. In general, I’m thinking of New Labour’s obsession with targets, control and denying autonomy and independence to anything within its grasp.
In general, I’m thinking of New Labour’s obsession with targets, control and denying autonomy and independence to anything within its grasp.
Of course, I’m biased. After attending a less-than-great state school (though admittedly, there are far worse around, and mine benefited enormously from New Labour cash), I beat the odds and made it to Oxford. There I had the unbelievable privilege of an intense course of study, where I was permitted to abandon “useful” subjects like economics and political science, and instead focus on philosophy and political thought. I also received another immense privilege, for which I am eternally grateful: being tutored by individuals who were likewise able to pursue their own interests and ideas without their purse-strings being (overtly) yanked by the state, thus pulling them into line and forcing them to research something “useful”. Indeed, after a post-graduation spell in the so-called “real world” (I prefer “world of integrity-destroying boredom”), I am back studying something entirely “useless” in the eyes of that fabled business sector which has done so well of the past 18 months. But I can presently do so without myself or my tutors being told that this must cease because it doesn’t have “economic benefits”.
But don’t just take my biased word for it. Consider for a start that most of my undergraduate peers – thanks to the education we received – have gone on to do all sorts of “useful” jobs for banks, lawyers, management consultants, political parties and other such parasitical greed-factories wealth creators.
Think also of something else. If I continue to post-doctoral level, I will myself teach the future cogs in the parasitical machines innovators and entrepreneurs to think independently and for themselves. Of course, only a platinum fool would be unable to see that this really matters. Because it is impossible – contra fashionable rhetoric – to teach “the skills of the future”. Mostly because nobody knows – by definition – what the skills of the future are yet. The best we can do is teach people to think for themselves with an ability to adapt to the new and the changing. People who can do that will be able to acquire the skills of the future, when we find out what they are. That’s why our universities have for decades turned-out vast numbers of articulate, intelligent, highly adaptable and self-reliant individuals able to acquire the requisite skills of the moment. That they read classics, English literature, philosophy, maths, French, engineering, biology or whatever at university is irrelevant. It was the skills that the process of learning equiped them with that mattered.
Only a platinum fool could fail to understand that universities cannot be graded on a check-box system, with priority given only to those studies that have “economic value”. All study has economic value, somewhere down the line – it just might take rather a while for it all to become apparent. And anyway, it’s abundantly clear that many of our institutions at present already contribute vast sums to the national economy. Take Cambridge University, which is estimated to contribute £50billion per annum and employ 110,000 people already. Surely only an ignoramus of monolithic proportions would think it wise to increasingly meddle with this, believing that check-box inspection and hoop-jumping for cash could do anything but stifle and constrain.
But then, even if study didn’t render economic benefits – had no instrumental value whatsoever – would that be such a bad thing? Surely only a philistine of gargantuan scale would claim that it was therefore valueless, and should be cut-down to privilege the “economically valuable” pursuits?
I confess, dear Tory leadership, that I do indeed hold Peter Mandelson to be such a platinum fool, monolithic ignoramus and gargantuan philistine. Indeed, I could go on and on and on about how wrong-headed the present administration is. But Mary Beard, Simon Blackburn and David Mitchell have made many good points already.
Instead I will simply say this. David Cameron has declared his love of decentralisation (though some have found it more complex than he supposes). Michael Gove announced that he wants more “traditional” and “proper” subjects on the school curriculum. Now, whatever the deficiencies of these two men and their rhetoric may be, I implore you to put your Tory money where your mouth is: leave the universities be, ease the grip on the purse strings, reverse New Labour’s attacks, restore academic freedoms and sit back and watch as the economy, the country, students, academics and – ultimately – the government all benefit.
Do that, and I promise I will spend the rest of my blogging days telling people about how amazing I think Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments is (because it is, and once you’ve read it you will sympathise with me*), and recommending people simply ignore the nasty party and listen to Philosophy Bites all day instead.
Your Sincerely,
Paul Sagar
–
*That’s a little joke for philosophers there. Mandy won’t get it – will you, Dave?
Why I’m Scared
The busier you are, the faster time passes. So right now it feels to me like we’re hurtling towards the day David Cameron will be in Number 10. And i’m increasingly scared.
The first reason I’m scared is because of the Conservative’s rhetoric on economic policy. Tory grassroots have already launched an attack on the Financial Times (that renowned bastion of worker solidarity) for allegedly being biased against Cameron and Osborne. But it’s not just the FT that’s sounding alarm bells about Conservative economic rhetoric.
Think tank Centre:Forum last week released a report on Tory economic proposals. Despite having many political differences with CF, over the past few months I’ve come to respect their economic output – and in particular, their chief economist Giles Wilkes – a great deal. I’ve not had time to read the “Slash and Growth?” report yet, but I have read part of the conclusion posted on Free Thinking Economist:
It may seem odd to urge a future government to care about economic growth. But the Conservative’s extreme aversion to public debt risks producing policies that prioritize deficit reduction over all other objectives. Public debts have risen largely to allow private indebtedness to fall without producing catastrophic consequences for the economy. The prior rise in private indebtedness passed unnoticed by the same Conservative opposition that is now almost hysterically worried about a similar rise in public debt. This makes no sense; if the past few years tell us anything, it is that Britain’s macro-economy can be at far greater risk to private debts than public. . . .
If the next government is to take economic growth as seriously as the deficit, it should consider taking an economic path that allows for slightly more consumption. Japan’s experience during its long struggle against deflation is highly pertinent; twice (in 1997 and 2001) it introduced fiscal reforms to tackle the deficit, and twice achieved the precise opposite.27 Despite being an export-champion, its last fifteen years have been dire. If the next British government proceeds upon the basis of deficit reduction before growth, it risks achieving neither.
The natural reaction to this worrying conclusion about Tory plans is to think “but surely they can’t be so stupid; surely this is all just rhetorical posturing to garner votes, that will be abandoned post-election?” But then if one reads Hopi Sen, such comforting thoughts quickly evaporate.
The second reason I’m scared is to do with Europe, or more precisely, what the Tory attitude to Europe tells us about Cameron.
It’s not so much that Cameron has left the EPP to sit with a bunch of anti-Semites, homophobes and frothing maniacs who want to play Waffen-SS re-enactment (although this is worth repeatedly pointing out). And it’s not even that Merkel and Sarkozy have apparently started briefing against Cameron as being “untrustworthy”. Nor is it the fear that Cameron could become so isolated in Europe – and so desperate to please his grassroots and undercut growing UKIP support – that we are forced to leave the EU. (EU withdrawal may not be feasible or realistically on the cards, but even if it came to pass I’m not sure I’d be wholly distraught, as I don’t really know what I think about the EU overall. Because it’s bloody complicated. Though I do know that its enormous democratic deficits, problems with corruption and monetarist obsession with central bank independence and monetary union unsettle me, and that i’m not going to join the “Europhile” camp just to put smelling-distance between myself and odious prigs like Nigel Farage).
What really bothers me about the Tories and Europe was summed-up by (of all things) The Economist, when discussing the Tories’ new European alliance:
…if this shoddy, shaming alliance is the price [Cameron] was obliged to pay his party for the changes needed to make it seem modern and compassionate, what sort of party is it that Mr Cameron leads? What else will its members demand, and what else—when his popularity and authority wane—will he be obliged to give them, after he becomes prime minister?
Quite.
The third thing that bothers me is two-fold, and concerns opposite extremes of the Tory Party, and relates to the point just made.
At one extreme there is Lord Ashcroft, whom The Observer yesterday revealed may be being primed for a cabinet-level job. As well as Tory deputy-chairman, Ashcroft is a major donor to the Tory Party, who channels money into marginal seats so as to boost Conservative chances. He also recently bought a controlling stake in ConservativeHome, and has a controlling interest in TotalPolitics magazine (and by extension, Iain Dale). Ashcroft not only holds many purse strings, but is apparently attempting to consolidate power and influence within the party by maneouvering to influence its highly vocal and energetic netroots. This worries me. The man who pays the piper calls the tune (although interestingly, the Belize government appears to have objected to this principle recently). I am very concerned by the prospect of unelected Lord Ashcroft being the real power-holder in a Cameron government.
At the other end of extremes, the Tory grassroots appear to give the lie to the notion that Cameron has modernised or changed the nasty party. The idea of All Women Shortlists recently sent the grassroots absolutely cuckoo. Europe is obviously still a bomb waiting to explode inside the party. A while ago grassroots dissidents complained that influential ConservativeHome was “too right-wing”. Although the leadership went into hyper damage-limitation over Dan “60 Year Mistake” Hannan, he has a huge following within Tory grassroots. Unmarried Conservative PPC Liz Truss was recently at the centre of a storm as she faced de-selection by her local party following revelations she had an affair with an existing MP…though there was no hint of a suggestion from the grassroots that the married male MP Mark Field should lose his seat. Tory gut-reaction was straight from the 14th Century: punish the woman.
I could go on.
My fear is that Cameron is simply the presentable face of an unreformed party of many unrepentant Thatcherites, and even greater numbers of socially conservative, small-minded bigots…who are all increasingly coming under the influence of one hands-on billionaire.
So yes, putting all that together makes me scared. And I think I’m right to be.
10.31.09
On Trick or Treating
OK quick extra blog. Trick of Treating – what is it?
Either:
1. A horrific American import which encourages children to threaten strangers in order to extort material goods
Or:
2. A wonderful institution which encourages social cohesion by breaking down barriers of anonymity between neighbours in our atomised neo-liberal society; after all, on what other night would parents allow their kids to knock on strangers’ doors and accept sweets from what could quite possibly be peadophile boogermen?
Discuss.
To the barricades
Blogging is light because I have a million and one things to do, and I am stressed. Maybe there will be a post tomorrow about how people might think about “democracy”, and just what that might be. Maybe, if I can finally sort-out exactly what the hell I think is wrong with Leo Strauss’ critique of historicism…
Today, however, I want to call you all to the barricades (of teh internets). Several months ago I asked readers to submit complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority regarding an advertising campaign by Maximuscle Protein. The ASA upheld the complaints made against Maximuscle, banned the company from repeating such an advertising campaign, and accordingly Maximuscle adverts are now far more toned-down (no pun intended). We’ll never know whether it was the campaign emanating from this blog that made the difference, but I like to believe it was.
In that spirit of optimism, I’m going to ask everyone to submit complaints about another advertising campaign, this time by Sketchers Shoes. The campaign claims that Sketcher’s “Shape-up” shoes can “Promote Weight Loss, Tone Muscle, Improve Posture”. Indeed, these incredible shoes are allegedly so good that they allow you to “get in shape without setting foot in a gym”.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a PDF with the advertising claims, and then attempts to vaguely justify them.
Now I’ll admit that it’s probably possible that these shoes do tone muscle, and maybe even to a noticeable and significant extent. But that they burn a significant number of calories to the point where they can generate weight-loss, and to such an extent that one can get in shape without “setting foot in a gym”, i.e. doing any actual physically demanding exercise? I find that very hard to believe.
Obviously, I’m no expert on physical exercise. But from my limited knowledge, weight-loss occurs from burning more calories than are consumed. I find it very unlikely that a pair of shoes can cause a person to burn sufficient calories that this translates into meaningful weight loss (meaningful being “getting in shape without stepping foot in a gym”).
Of course, I could be totally wrong. These shoes could be truly revolutionary. But if they are not, then this advert shouldn’t be allowed, insofar as it misleads consumers into thinking that Sketchers shoes can promote weight-loss on a level comparable to conventional regular physical exercise.
So I’m going to ask you to join me in complaining to the ASA (via this form) along the following lines: ask the ASA to find out whether Sketchers’ claims about weight-loss and calorie-burning can be backed up by actual scientific evidence, to the extent that wearing such shoes can genuinely replace conventional physical exercise; if Sketchers’ shoes can’t do that, ask the ASA to ban the advert on the grounds that it is unacceptably misleading.
You may be wondering why I care about this. Well, I don’t have anything against Sketchers specifically. And I don’t really care if silly people buy these shoes thinking believing they’ll get thin. What bothers me is the world of advertising and marketing more generally.
We live in an age of constant bullshit, where we are told and sold lies on a daily basis. Modern consumerism largely rests upon selling people rubbish that they don’t need, on the back of false and exaggerated claims which are designed to inculcate desires as much as to satisfy them.
I see two things as broadly resulting from this. One is the ever-growing predominance of quick-fix culture; don’t go to a gym and put in hours of hard, boring exercise, or deny yourself nice-tasting food so as to lose weight – just get a pair of shoes that burn that fat for you! (Except of course, they probably don’t). For a whole host of reasons, I really dislike quick-fix culture. The other resuly is a hollowing-out of language as the mundane and trivial is described in terms that should be reserved for the meaningful and important – resulting in the debasement of values as distinctions between quality and trash are eroded away. These phenomena go beyond marketing and advertising, of course – but they have a lot to do with the growth of aggressive consumerism and the extent to which politics and wider culture increasingly emulated marketting. People may say the Bill Hicks sketch is cliched, but I like it.
So for me, complaining about Sketchers to the ASA is my own, small, personal resistance to the tide of inane, debasing, bullshit which informs so much of what is wrong with modern culture and society. Feel free to add your own insignificant weight to mine.
10.28.09
And the knee jerks again
Following on from the rather ill-thought out Legg decision to make MPs pay back expenses that were within the rules when claimed (but not some of those who made, er, illegal claims), the latest stupidity is (apparently) to impose a blanket ban on MPs employing family members.
Why is this stupid? Well consider the following.
I used to work for John Pugh, MP for Southport. John has never disguised the fact that his wife, Annette, works part-time for him as a Parliamentary secretary. Nor that she took a (substantial) pay-cut in 2001 to work for John, and so takes home a salary well below what somebody of her skill, dedication and quality would normally command in London. John and Annette have come to this arrangement for numerous reasons, but one is an awareness that all must be above board, and there must be no question of John abusing his office to hand out freebies to his family.
And frankly, the people of Southport should be very grateful that they did come to this arrangement. It’s not just that Annette works incredibly hard, is incredibly able, and puts in ridiculous hours. It’s that she’s known John for decades, and so is uniquely placed to help organise the chaotic working week of a committed MP. Having been at John’s office for 7 months until last September, I can say that without a doubt it was Annette that kept John and myself on-track, and the office functioning as well as it did.
That will soon be over. Annette will no longer be able to work for John and the people of Southport. John will be forced to employ somebody who doesn’t know him, or how his office works. The new person will almost certainly have to be employed on a full-time basis. And they will command a much higher salary than Annette did. End result? John has to employ a worse secretary (at least in the short run; I trust John will find somebody who in the long-run will get up to scratch – but it will take time) for more money. Apparently, the taxpayer and the people of Southport are supposed to gain from this situation.*
Obviously I’m in favour of preventing nepotism and abuse a-la-Derek Conway. There is a problem with some MPs employing family members on grotesquely unjustified salaries. But the correct solution to this is to implement a measure that should have been undertaken years ago: making all MPs’ staff employees of Parliament and not the MP directly. That way salaries can be centrally set, with MPs having staff-number caps to ensure that they’re not deceitfully employing family dead-weight. (This would also help stop the shameful practice of using unpaid interns, incidentally).
Such a reform would ensure that the minority of those abusing the system are prevented from doing so, but that good, hard-working and dedicated staff can remain. This would benefit taxpayers and constituents.
Unfortunately such a sensible measure wouldn’t fulfil the reflexive bloodletting of MPs that the popular hysteria currently demands. So everyone loses, and the situation is worse than it needed to be.
Same shit, different day.
–
* I know the proposals will allegedly be phased-in over a 5 year period, but I think my point still stands.
10.27.09
Can’t cut…won’t cut?
Gordon Brown has u-turned on his decision to cut £20 million (already downgraded to £17.5m) from the Territorial Army budget. This follows pressure from David Cameron in last week’s question time, and a threatened revolt from Labour backbenchers including former Defence Minister John Reid.
We keep being told by the Tories that cuts must come as soon as possible, and by Labour that cuts will have to come, but not yet. (I tend to agree with the analysis laid out [over many posts] by Giles at FreeThinkingEconomist: that cuts will need to be made, but making them before Britain has moved into a period of growth (a-la-Tory rhetoric) will likely plunge us into deep recession. Until then, the credit markets can wait).
Yet when it comes to actually making these spending cuts, the will of the government evaporates as the other side makes political hay. But if we can’t cut the budget for civies playing soldiers at the weekend, then what on Earth can we cut? This surely has to be one of the easiest cuts to make in all public spending.
Perhaps I’m missing something. Perhaps the TA is essential to Britain’s functioning and wellbeing. Perhaps the sky will fall down if it doesn’t get £20 million a year.
But if this is the way government acts when it comes to making the public chop, perhaps the left’s (and Giles’) fears about a pre-mature-cuts-induced Torygeddon Econodisaster are unfounded.
Though it’s out of the frying pan, into the fire, right? Cuts will have to come one day: but if not the TA, then what?
La plus ça change
When debating politics, it often feels like arguments go round in circles. The same points seem to get made over and again by all sides. The specific issues at hand may change, but the underlying positions informing responses can seem not to.
And I’m not just talking about tiresome, stuck-record individuals. If we go back over 250 years – to the early-mid 18th Century, during the great debates about the emergence of commerce, the benefits (or vices) of luxury, and the great enquiries into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations – we find patterns of argument that should look astonishingly familiar to contemporary readers.
Take the following by Jean-Francois Melon, from his enormously influential A Political Essay Upon Commerce (which according to Istvan Hont, dominated the debate on the emergence of nascent capitalism for 15 years after it was published in 1734):
“The excessive Price paid for some trifling Provisions, which the Luxurious Man displayeth with Profusion, at an Entertainment, the Merit whereof, he would have to consist in the Expensiveness of it, is an Instance of the highest, and most ridiculous Kind of Luxury, and yet, why should this extravagant Expence be exclaimed against? The Money thus earned, would, if it lay in the Chest of the Luxurious Man, remain Dead to the Society. The Gardiner receiveth it, and hath deserved it, as a Recompence for his Labour, which is thereby excited again. His Children, almost naked, are thereby clothed; they eat Bread in Plenty, enjoy better Health, and labour with a cheerful Expectation. The same Money given to Beggars, would only serve to feed their Idleness and Debaucheries.”
The attitude expressed is not at all dissimilar to the modern defence (usually from the political right) that the rich can spend their money on whatever the hell they like, even if that consumption is stupid and superfluous. It’s their money, after all. Furthermore, the added justification which follows – that money spent leads to employment, production, growth and ultimately better living for those lower down the social order – is not a million miles away from the “trickle-down effect” argument beloved of neo-liberal politicians (and some economists) in the 1980s especially. The final remark – that there’s no point giving money to the poor, they must work for their subsistence – should hardly be unfamiliar to modern readers.
But Melon’s remarks are nothing compared to this tirade from everybody’s favourite civic republican multiple-child-abandoner, Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
“As soon as the use of gold was known to men, they all strove to pile up a great quantity of it. Naturally, success had to correspond to the various degrees of industriousness and avidity of the competitors – in other words, they had to be deeply unequal. This first inequality, combined with avarice and with the talents which had produced it, must have increased even more through its own strength; for one of the vices of existing societies is that the difficulty to acquire anything always increases according to needs, and that the surplus the wealthy have is itself what enables them to deprive the poor of the bare necessities. It is an axiom in business as well as in physics that one makes nothing with nothing. Money is the true seed of money, and the first crown is infinitely harder to earn than the second million. Besides, thefts are punished only when necessity makes them forgivable; they cost honour and life to the poor man, and bring glory and fortune to the wealthy man. A destitute man who takes a crown from a harsh man sated with gold in order to have bread is a thief led to the gallows, whereas honoured citizens peacefully quench their thirst with the blood of the craftsman and the farmer. And the monopolies of the trader and the embezzlements of the taxgatherer bear the names of useful talents and ensure those exercising them that they have the favour of the Prince and the esteem of the public. That is how the wealth of the whole nation makes the opulence of a few individuals at the expense of the public, and how the treasures of millionaires increase the destitution of the citizenry. For in that forced, monstrous inequality, it follows that the sensuousness of the wealthy devours in delights the substance of the people, and blows their way only a dry, stale, brown bread at the cost of sweat and servitude.”
- Luxury, Commerce and the Arts, 1754
Rousseau packs so much into this passage it’s hard to know where to start. But I spot:
- Complaints that money begets money, and inequality harms the already worst-off the most, which is very similar to a now standard “left wing” complaint against the lack of equality of opportunity in present-day British capitalist society;
- Multiple claims that it is the very wealth of the rich which makes the poor, poor. And not just because poverty is a relative concept – elsewhere in the essay Rousseau notes that “the words poor and rich are relative, there are poor people only because there are rich people, and in more than one sense” – but because the rich “deprive the poor of the bare necessities”. Again, this should not be a new or novel concept to the modern reader;
- Reflections upon the frequency with which (what we would call) “white collar crime” is severely punished, versus the leniency offered to that of the “blue collar” variety, something I’ve reflected upon before;
- Praise being heaped upon the professions of the well-off, whilst the important tasks undertaken by the poor are marginalised and under-valued despite their being essential. Members of the financial services industry calling themselves “the wealth creators” and justifying grotesque salaries and bonuses whilst nurses and bin-men go on unsung and largely unnoticed, anyone?
- That inequality is “monstrous”. Indeed it appears for Rousseau to be the inevitable and despicable outcome of free commerce and wealth-accumulation (which we would probably now call “capitalism”) and leads to the misery and suffering of the poor, who end up with only “stale, brown bread” as the rich devour with delight their substance. However, given what Rousseau says about inequality in On The Social Contract we can also extrapolate another thought (not expressed directly in this early essay, but definitely in the later 1763 work): that inequality is bad because it leads to mistrust, factionalism and the break-down of the civic community. In sum, if there is inequality everyone suffers, not just the poor. Wilkinson and Pickett use empirical data about health, happiness and life-expectancy in The Spirit Level to argue that inequality is bad for everyone in modern society. Rousseau favoured appeals to the political and civic nature of the good human life. Different arguments, to be sure. But inequality is derided in both for its unhealthy effects upon human beings.
The only apparent divergence between Rousseau’s polemic and standard modern “left wing” complaints against (what we now call) capitalism is his denigration of tax collectors. Most modern leftists see tax and its collection as a positive force. But then, we must recall that Rousseau almost certainly has mid-18th Century France in his sights here, where huge chunks of the nobility (and clergy) simply didn’t pay any tax due to their estate privileges. So Rousseau’s hostility on that front shouldn’t bother us too much or be at all surprising.
Personally, I find the above passages pretty striking. It looks as though – in some respects and broadly speaking – we’re having pretty similar fights, and making roughly the same points, as were being fought and made when nascent capitalism first garnered popular and intellectual attention in the early 18th Century.
Whether you find that simply interesting, or perhaps a little depressing, is an indication of your outlook on life and politics, I suppose.
10.26.09
Manual Spectator Headline Generator
After previously supporting the vacuous (and dangerous) nonesense that there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and after recently deciding to join the ranks of the global warming deniers, The Spectator editor Fraser Nelson has decided to go for Aids denialism as well (and again).
Ben Goldacre at Bad Science and Sunder at Next Left have good analyses (with tonnes of links) covering the science and the politics. I have nothing new to add, as everything that needs to be said has been.
Instead, I thought we could anticipate – or perhaps even suggest – some headlines the home of Mad Mel might run in future. How about:
- “Is the Earth really spherical? It looks round to us. Legitimate questions need to be asked about the post-Colombus Consensus that one does not fall off the edge of the world if one keeps sailing west.”
- “Is the Sun really at the centre of the solar system? If you look at the sky, you can clearly see that the sun revolves around us. Is it acceptable to have a debate about whether Copernicus pulled off the longest-running con in world history?”
- “Evolution: Fraser Nelson asks: ‘Just because I write and act like a monkey, does that mean my ancestors were monkeys? It’s time to challenge the left-liberal-pharma-industrial-complex and ask if God had the answers all along.”
- “Dinosaurs: are we being tested by God?”
- “Gordon Brown: Born and raised in Scotland? Or born and trained in Afghanistan? It’s time to ask: is the PM really British, or part of a sinister foreign terrorist conspiracy?”
- “Revealed: NHS death panels execute “unproductive” elderly. Truth about 60 year mistake unveiled.”
- “Do bacteria really exist or are they really just a vicious plot manufactured by the soap industry in order to get a hold of ordinary honest hard working people’s (your!) well-earned money?!” (Thanks Mads)
The list will be updated as I think of new ones. If you have suggestions, put them in comments and the best ones I’ll add to the main post.
