For us to build a great economy we must......
For us to enjoy a great society we must......
For us to create a great culture we must.....
For us to found a great nation state we must......
This question will reveal pretty well where you stand on many political and policy issues because the value-sets around those four words have been well established over the centuries but they have lost their meaning over the last fifty years; it's as if there has been no history at all before 1966 and, in a perverse way, that is true.
The economist Francis Fukuyama wrote an article entitled "The End of History?" in 1992 celebrating the ascent of Liberal Democracy in the West. Two years later Neo-Conservatism was born in the US with Fukuyama as a main cheerleader and Neo-Liberalism began to stretch its muscles via the newly reunified EU. Fukuyama's thesis was that Liberal Democracy would be the final form of human government (possibly with setbacks lasting decades but ultimately universally accepted) and that the evolution of politics would then cease.
Clearly, today, we see that Liberal Democracy was nothing more than window dressing for the hyper-capitalisation of maturing economies and the commoditisation of human labour and natural resources. Neo-Conservatism jumped into resource warfare like a giddy six-year-old jumps into a bouncy castle and, just like that sugar rushing kid, got bounced off again so there were tears before bedtime. Neo-Liberalism sauntered past the wailing Neo-Conservatives to snatch the last of the rice krispy cakes and fizzy pop only to vomit it all back up in 2007 in a spectacular crash that still hasn't been fully or even satisfactorily explained (satisfactorily would mean that we could use that explanation to ensure no repeat event could happen - we're still waiting).
Within a mere quarter century since Francis Fukuyama wrote his first article we experienced the rise and fall of two major socio-economic political systems that deployed armies, unleashed technocrats and traded in nations with ease and......we're right back at the starting point with less than we had in our possession back in 1992. So what went wrong?
Francis Fukuyama made the cardinal errors of first believing that his generation represented the apex of human attainment, which was bad enough, and then believing that the political theory apparent to him from his historical perspective was the best and most effective theory possible ever. He wasn't stupid or even misguided but he couldn't escape the blinkered illusion given to his generation, the Baby Boomers. He would have been about 14 years old when the Summer of Love happened in the US and about 16 years old when France's establishment was overthrown by the Socialists. He was part of a generation that was actively tearing up the rulebook of tradition and starting from scratch much like Chairman Mao had done in China, Che Guevara was doing alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba and Pol Pot was just beginning to do in French Indochina (Vietnam). The history that mattered began with his generation and the world would ultimately be a better place for it because they were sticking it to the Man.....man.
In hindsight, he was forced to recant his earlier claims, especially his alliance with Neo-Conservatism, an ideology totally discredited which lacked even the conviction to accurately name itself. If the actions of the two Gulf wars and the debacle in Afghanistan can be taken as the more accurate guide to the ideology, then it was Neo-Imperialism just without the imperial pomp and splendour being wasted on the people.
Now, just to be clear: Empires can only succeed and last if they provide more than they reward.
We're back to Monty Python's immortal sketch from The Life of Brian: "What have the Romans ever done for us?" In that sketch, the People's Front of Judea have to acknowledge the vast array of advances and luxuries the Romans have afforded the 'oppressed' people of Judea. It makes the case brilliantly for why Rome's Empire lasted so long in its many guises. The march of Rome over mostly tribal nations was bloody and without any semblance of honour but it brought forth a new age of thinking and innovation built upon the steady foundations of the Greek model.
I stated earlier in this blog that I believe that the waxing and waning of civilisations are cyclical and when the leaders and thinkers of any given empire lose sight of the grand sweep of their history and the vast unknowable possibility of their future the entire civilisation must collapse under the smoke and mirrors needed to maintain the preposterous notion that we have come as far as is humanly possible. Whenever I hear this argument put forward by economists, futurists or even artists I hear the voice of Weimar Germany, Jacobean Britain, Easter Island.
We haven't even begun to invent and expand....we're still on the nursery slopes of our civilisation.
You read that right: Our Civilisation. Civilisation is all that matters.
In five thousand years, will archaeologists be sensitive to our societal prejudices? Will they care about our economic debates? Will they be bothered to learn our dance steps? Will they even recognise the name and imagery of our flags of state? Unlikely, even with unbroken millennia of peace, these details will be largely forgotten or irrelevant. What will motivate the archaeologist into digging and excite their curiosity and imagination is the notion of our civilisation as a whole.
Civilisation is the entire organism of our communal living coming together across the functions of trade, society, politics and the arts and sciences to build a complete, discrete, and unique whole. It is that combination and harmonious co-operation between these functions which embeds itself into history and can be recognised from great distances in time.
So to get back to the question I began with: What argument do you trust more?
I trust none because none of these statements are trustworthy. An economy that predates upon its own society is parasitical and will be bankrupt very quickly, a society that does not create art or science is stagnant and will be superseded, a state without societal values is a mere regime and will be overthrown, a culture without structure and monetary value becomes decadent, degenerates and eventually dies out. If we are to build anything that could last long term into our future we cannot exclude any of these four pillars of civilisation.
How to do that? All four pillars of our civilisation have one common denominator: people.
Everything we do, all our wars, intrigues, triumphs and achievements, is all the work of people. If we're going to have a future that spans the centuries into millennia we'd better be clear about our building blocks; adobe crumbles, granite is too rare, wood rots, concrete cracks and tumbles and even Lego bricks eventually warp with time. Only people remain roughly the same from millennia ago to today because people replenish, learning a little bit more with each generation and recording that into their folk memory. What political system do we have that satisfies the needs of all four pillars and whatever new pillars we develop in the future (such as the one that social media is forming - connectedness)? Yes, you guessed it: Democracy.
Now let's go through the four pillars of given societies:
I have written before about high finance and capital, their limitations, their instability and their unpredictability. I have also written about how economic models that reward more than they provide create far more problems than they are worth. Now, I want to delve deeper into the whole nonsense of 'economics versus society versus culture versus nation state' and how none of these are capable of supporting a civilisation on their own or even together with one or more missing.
"For us to build a great economy we must......vote for capitalists".
For the last twenty five years we have been trained and advised and cajoled to start up enterprises and make our fortune. Engaging in enterprise is an all consuming task that may or may not succeed no matter how much work one puts into it. The factors that can make a failure out of even the most evident supply/demand strategy are so numerous and come from so many different angles that one need to be obsessed with the concept of business just to make the necessary sacrifices.
Enterprise, the word stems from the French phrase entreprise - which literally means "to hold between" which is a brilliant image to remember. An entrepreneur is someone who grabs at the value that flows between supply and demand. Literally, the entrepreneur needs to see the demand in a given market first and then to work out the supply side to ensure that he or she can deliver to that market. Once this has been successfully accomplished, the entrepreneur needs to receive sufficient payment that justifies the investment and effort from that transaction.
If this is not the case then there is no point in continuing with that activity. Failure is part of the growing process of the entrepreneur and nobody ever became a self-made millionaire easily.
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| Yes it is really this difficult. With thanks to the artist Bobbie Carlyle. |
The first transaction seems very reductive at first but it is accurate because once a demand has been satisfied, other entrepreneurs will enter the field using the homework of the first entrepreneur, added to that the demand would need to be recurring otherwise the market will peter out just as quickly as it manifested.The transaction may be a one off commission, a day manning a market stall, seeing out the period of a contract or even the term of a ten year lease. What matters is that the entrepreneur manages to take from that first equation more than he or she has put in including time, care, effort and cash.
Engaging in enterprise is much harder than simply dreaming up business plans or brainstorming and thinking 'different'. Every enterprise eventually fails unless it can find a wider customer base or different demand. Nothing gets scaled up unless it can be shown to offer superior reward to the effort provided. When your product or service achieves ubiquity then its cost can reduce to a fraction of the original as scale compensates for shaved profits.
This boring transactional style of business has brought us to this point in history with space programmes, electric cars and smartphones et al but there is another parasitical style of business that eats out the core of enterprises; 'The Markets' (with a capital M). The Markets is shorthand for the 'investment, stock, bond, and corporate share markets'. The Markets used to provide necessary funding for entrepreneurs to develop their businesses to reach greater and more actual markets for their goods and services and thus provided value to the equation in return for a profit for their investment. In a globalised world getting your product or service to a given market no longer requires the tenacity and investment of a Marco Polo. Now the Markets are literally buying up businesses that have been developed solely to be bought up (IPO model) without any clear idea of what good or service they are providing and to whom they are providing it. Serving the Markets is a glass bead game.
What is a glass bead game?
Hermann Hesse wrote a brilliant novel entitled The Glass Bead Game. It is a marvellously detailed, complex, epic, intimate and vivid narrative over many fictional biographies of seemingly the same character. The dominant biography has this character being the greatest, most celebrated exponent of a game involving glass beads around which his entire civilisation has been built. Everything stops in the civilisation, work, conversation, play, production, everything, when he faces other players at the glass bead game. The entire civilisation's well-being hangs on him winning this game, defeating his opponents with vision, strategy, guile, cheek and wit as he moves the beads about the game. The game is never described in the novel. Its rules remain beyond our ken. It is unclear even if there is a board for these beads to sit upon. The game doesn't produce anything other than prestige for the player and by extension his civilisation.
The Markets behaving as they do is a glass bead game insofar as they do not produce but they provide prestige for its players but otherwise they are meaningless and impossible to truly master. The amount of money sloshing through the Markets exists for its own purposes and no longer represents investment of any value but mere selection of yet another bauble for the fund manager to boast about. The Markets could all cease tomorrow without warning and what would change? Nothing. Business and production would continue as it always has because the demand for staples and luxuries hasn't gone away. This is positively dangerous behaviour for a financial system that is teetering on collapse as it stands
What is capital's role in a civilisation? Capital as I have described in earlier blogs is merely that which we have confidence in. We measure that confidence in values such as shares, bonds and complex instruments. When capital is high, the company can invest and expand, when capital is low the company must contract and divest of employees. Capital is just confidence, so when a country's currency loses value it's not because mountains and rivers have disappeared or the population has been decimated by a pandemic. It just means that the Markets are no longer confident that the economy can pay out as generously as before. This is as good thing to any sensible person because otherwise the people of that economy are being fleeced and those without the means to invest are the ones who pay the most, forcing them to fall upon the state to provide for them. The effect upon the state's internal budget is contraction and the state's overall real value is depleted. All for the glass bead game that is The Markets. Unless investors have an expert understanding of the enterprise they have bought controlling interests in (which would require an impossible level of expertise), they will ultimately bleed it to death.
Voting for capitalists gives licence for a neo-liberal race to the bottom, coring out of a state's infrastructure and value. Disaster for the many to pay for the tax haven bubble of the few.
Socialism has often been confused with Communism, sometimes understood as Communism-lite and this is largely Karl Marx's fault as he saw Socialism as the transitional state between Capitalism and Communism but systems don't work like colour wheels. It isn't an orderly shift; orderly shifts don't happen in politics. The two systems are very different on a very fundamental level. Socialism is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
"Any of various economic and political political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods."
Further:
"A system of society or group living in which there is no private property."
"A system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state."
Communism however is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
"A theory in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed."
"A theory advocating the elimination of private property."
"A final stage in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably."
Do you see the difficulty? Socialism is further along the route of state control than communism unless you are talking about Stalinist Totalitarianism which was a con to begin with. Socialism is never likely to hand the means of production over to a Communist 'common'....ever. Marx got it backwards.
Thus we need to look at what 'society' means in this context, again from Merriam-Webster:
"An enduring and co-operating social group whose members have developed organised patterns of relationships through interaction with one another"
"A community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, collective activities and interests"
If we are serious about our politics we need to cut across the arguments both emotional and radical to get to the end goal of Socialism. That goal is often portrayed as a redistribution of wealth to benefit the poor within our society and to renationalise or collectively own major infrastructures and industries that some leaders deem to be critical. Laudable at first glance and I am very much into equity within my civilisation - we really don't need so many 'have-nots' wandering around with desperate faces and tragic lives....we really, really don't. The problem arises when one considers seizing the means of production and distribution for the state in the hope of sharing it out equitably based on criteria that have never been defined other than income and personal wealth.
In a system in which there is no private property how does one arbitrate personal wealth and income?
Plus, are Socialists aware that the means of production and distribution are no longer housed within their own borders? Seizing those will most likely result in warfare with China. And for what? To hand it over to a yet to be agreed 'common'? This is not ever going to happen.
Society as a means to define people is an imposed identity. Society is not inherent, it doesn't reside within a person; it needs to be taught (common traditions, institutions, communal activities etc.) Thus society is coercive in the context of Socialism because individuals, through their own genius, industry, or creativity may create value and wealth, even culture, but that must be offered up to the state. Really? All benefits other than a slightly better stipend and maybe a medal must be sacrificed on the altar of 'society', bad or good? Clearly Socialism would never ever have come up with Athens' Golden Age, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the internet even...why would anyone bother?
People need motivation - money and material rewards motivate far more than the good words of your fellow comrades. People are simply not going to go out on a limb for societal gain unless they get the greater part of that gain somehow. Fear also motivates, of course, but terrorising a people causes the society to lose its creativity and innovation because both need free-thinking, even creative anarchy. A rigid society cannot bend to changes such as newer technologies, industrial shifts, demographic shifts and even people's ways of interacting with one another. A rigid society is brittle and soon snaps and fissures into full on anarchy in which there is no social contract and thus, no society.
If people vote Socialism then, I believe, it is to rebalance perceived over-capitalisation. I doubt there are many people out there who dream of seizing all the private wealth; just clawing back that which has been unethically taken from them. Socialism on its own could not provide a permanent or even long term solution to a civilisation's challenges. It was and remains simply an argument to redress the injustice of feudal land and resource grabbing by the aristocratic class under a monarchy.
Actually, it wasn't liberal values that brought you these boons to your life; it was people rising up and demanding their rights through the very socialist action of denying their labour until they got what they needed. In the US one cannot claim to be a Socialist much less a Marxist (that's the exclusive right of Fox News to declare) so one who believes in simple equity in the workplace, equity of taxation, equity under the law etc. must lay claim to be liberal and progressive. As if it constitutes progress to assert the same rights that people all over Europe enjoy through their cultural values.
"Progressive politics" are those espoused by the Democrat Party in the US (a party that continuously denies the oxygen of publicity to any other party that may represent a better fit for liberal values - which doesn't seem to be very democratic to me!). Progressivism developed in the US through the university system that operated at the turn of the 20th Century. Highly educated urbanites objected to the untrammelled social Darwinism brought about by the industrial age and made their objections clear in newspaper articles and protests outside factories which is admirable until one realises that the objections were more about how these dirty factories devalued their neighbourhoods than the struggle of the common people to improve their lot.
Social and industrial change in the US didn't actually happen until after the First World War, a war the Democrat Theodore Roosevelt encouraged US citizens to engage in because it would make the world "safe for democracy". Liberals and progressives weren't wrong in what they said but no amount of newspaper articles and well meaning banners and marches changed anything. It was the direct action of people refusing to be modern day serfs to a corporate mogul who had just bet the farm on a land war in Europe. No production meant that the US would be on the losing side and their 'interests' would be lost to the Kaiser and his cohort.
Why the history lesson?
Social change in the US and to a lesser extent the UK came through via a different medium - a grass-roots, direct action kind of resistance, a movement that is cited today as the last stop before anarchy and cannibalism: Populism. Populism wasn't so interested in getting applause for a moving speech or clever legal argument; populism wanted change and made it happen through refusal to co-operate with a rigged system. Its proponents and agents were by and large rural and many couldn't read or write.However we rarely hear about these agents of social change. The reason for this is because populism isn't codified or regulated and can just as easily turn radical and violent as social and just. How can we know if a populist movement with result in positive social change or two steps backward to crueller times?
The populist movement always is a reaction to whatever orthodoxy or culture holds sway at the time of the uprising.
Here lies the central problem with the liberal ideal: it is not everyone's ideal, it's not even tolerable to some people, some little people, some people with no voice and no influence. A culture that pleases the aesthete will inevitably come at the price of many people's livelihoods or rights who are just not valued by the custodians of that culture. Culture, no matter how low its origins, seeks to rise through the demographics and be appreciated and patronised by the wealthy and powerful. Think of opera in in the late 1600's, an entertainment for the masses using easily remembered arias and garish, fantastical sets and costumes, finding its way into the rarefied courts of Versailles and Modena. The same happened to hip hop moving from the ghetto crews of the 80's and 90's until today's mass dance culture spawning the celebrity lifestyle cult of the impossibly rich Kardashians and Beyoncé et al.
Populists are people who do not fit into the scheme of the Liberal except as food for songs, poems and polemic plays. I have written in the past that Karl Marx wasn't remotely a communist but merely an economist who wanted to put forward an argument about capital and show another way, solely to win the admiration an respect of his fellow bourgeois peers. Liberal theory is about individual freedom and agency but the individual the liberal imagines is culturally and socially their peer so when someone from a lower 'caste' say, a rural, religious, middle aged farmer with a precarious job and low income, seeks agency and individual freedom to say what is on his mind well....that gets shut down fairly quickly.
Liberals' aggressive US cousins are the wonderfully named Libertarians (A word worthy of Fox News it just sounds like an insult) who mix the concept of the individual as sole arbiter or rights with the very fun idea that resources belong to those who find them first and mix work with those resources to produce commodities. All well and good until one remembers that the North American continent was populated by very successful and sustainable nations before the Mayflower ever set sail.....
Liberalism is the Enlightenment writ large in all of it's blue-blooded, powered periwig glory. It has merit and, oh boy! it astonishes when it has to but as a model for an entire civilisation it can't last for even three generations before the great unwashed storm the palaces with pitchforks and guillotines.
"For us to build a great society we must......vote for socialists".
Socialism has often been confused with Communism, sometimes understood as Communism-lite and this is largely Karl Marx's fault as he saw Socialism as the transitional state between Capitalism and Communism but systems don't work like colour wheels. It isn't an orderly shift; orderly shifts don't happen in politics. The two systems are very different on a very fundamental level. Socialism is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
"Any of various economic and political political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods."
Further:
"A system of society or group living in which there is no private property."
"A system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state."
Communism however is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
"A theory in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed."
"A theory advocating the elimination of private property."
"A final stage in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably."
Do you see the difficulty? Socialism is further along the route of state control than communism unless you are talking about Stalinist Totalitarianism which was a con to begin with. Socialism is never likely to hand the means of production over to a Communist 'common'....ever. Marx got it backwards.
Thus we need to look at what 'society' means in this context, again from Merriam-Webster:
"An enduring and co-operating social group whose members have developed organised patterns of relationships through interaction with one another"
"A community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, collective activities and interests"
 |
| All this came to pass because of one man who perfected hyperspace just to win a people's medal. Up the revolution! |
If we are serious about our politics we need to cut across the arguments both emotional and radical to get to the end goal of Socialism. That goal is often portrayed as a redistribution of wealth to benefit the poor within our society and to renationalise or collectively own major infrastructures and industries that some leaders deem to be critical. Laudable at first glance and I am very much into equity within my civilisation - we really don't need so many 'have-nots' wandering around with desperate faces and tragic lives....we really, really don't. The problem arises when one considers seizing the means of production and distribution for the state in the hope of sharing it out equitably based on criteria that have never been defined other than income and personal wealth.
In a system in which there is no private property how does one arbitrate personal wealth and income?
Plus, are Socialists aware that the means of production and distribution are no longer housed within their own borders? Seizing those will most likely result in warfare with China. And for what? To hand it over to a yet to be agreed 'common'? This is not ever going to happen.
Society as a means to define people is an imposed identity. Society is not inherent, it doesn't reside within a person; it needs to be taught (common traditions, institutions, communal activities etc.) Thus society is coercive in the context of Socialism because individuals, through their own genius, industry, or creativity may create value and wealth, even culture, but that must be offered up to the state. Really? All benefits other than a slightly better stipend and maybe a medal must be sacrificed on the altar of 'society', bad or good? Clearly Socialism would never ever have come up with Athens' Golden Age, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the internet even...why would anyone bother?
People need motivation - money and material rewards motivate far more than the good words of your fellow comrades. People are simply not going to go out on a limb for societal gain unless they get the greater part of that gain somehow. Fear also motivates, of course, but terrorising a people causes the society to lose its creativity and innovation because both need free-thinking, even creative anarchy. A rigid society cannot bend to changes such as newer technologies, industrial shifts, demographic shifts and even people's ways of interacting with one another. A rigid society is brittle and soon snaps and fissures into full on anarchy in which there is no social contract and thus, no society.
If people vote Socialism then, I believe, it is to rebalance perceived over-capitalisation. I doubt there are many people out there who dream of seizing all the private wealth; just clawing back that which has been unethically taken from them. Socialism on its own could not provide a permanent or even long term solution to a civilisation's challenges. It was and remains simply an argument to redress the injustice of feudal land and resource grabbing by the aristocratic class under a monarchy.
"For us to found a great culture we must.....vote for liberals"
Liberal values, the values that brought you the weekend, the 40 hour week, maternity leave, universal suffrage, race relations, school meals and free health care.....Actually, it wasn't liberal values that brought you these boons to your life; it was people rising up and demanding their rights through the very socialist action of denying their labour until they got what they needed. In the US one cannot claim to be a Socialist much less a Marxist (that's the exclusive right of Fox News to declare) so one who believes in simple equity in the workplace, equity of taxation, equity under the law etc. must lay claim to be liberal and progressive. As if it constitutes progress to assert the same rights that people all over Europe enjoy through their cultural values.
"Progressive politics" are those espoused by the Democrat Party in the US (a party that continuously denies the oxygen of publicity to any other party that may represent a better fit for liberal values - which doesn't seem to be very democratic to me!). Progressivism developed in the US through the university system that operated at the turn of the 20th Century. Highly educated urbanites objected to the untrammelled social Darwinism brought about by the industrial age and made their objections clear in newspaper articles and protests outside factories which is admirable until one realises that the objections were more about how these dirty factories devalued their neighbourhoods than the struggle of the common people to improve their lot.
Social and industrial change in the US didn't actually happen until after the First World War, a war the Democrat Theodore Roosevelt encouraged US citizens to engage in because it would make the world "safe for democracy". Liberals and progressives weren't wrong in what they said but no amount of newspaper articles and well meaning banners and marches changed anything. It was the direct action of people refusing to be modern day serfs to a corporate mogul who had just bet the farm on a land war in Europe. No production meant that the US would be on the losing side and their 'interests' would be lost to the Kaiser and his cohort.
Why the history lesson?
Social change in the US and to a lesser extent the UK came through via a different medium - a grass-roots, direct action kind of resistance, a movement that is cited today as the last stop before anarchy and cannibalism: Populism. Populism wasn't so interested in getting applause for a moving speech or clever legal argument; populism wanted change and made it happen through refusal to co-operate with a rigged system. Its proponents and agents were by and large rural and many couldn't read or write.However we rarely hear about these agents of social change. The reason for this is because populism isn't codified or regulated and can just as easily turn radical and violent as social and just. How can we know if a populist movement with result in positive social change or two steps backward to crueller times?
The populist movement always is a reaction to whatever orthodoxy or culture holds sway at the time of the uprising.
Here lies the central problem with the liberal ideal: it is not everyone's ideal, it's not even tolerable to some people, some little people, some people with no voice and no influence. A culture that pleases the aesthete will inevitably come at the price of many people's livelihoods or rights who are just not valued by the custodians of that culture. Culture, no matter how low its origins, seeks to rise through the demographics and be appreciated and patronised by the wealthy and powerful. Think of opera in in the late 1600's, an entertainment for the masses using easily remembered arias and garish, fantastical sets and costumes, finding its way into the rarefied courts of Versailles and Modena. The same happened to hip hop moving from the ghetto crews of the 80's and 90's until today's mass dance culture spawning the celebrity lifestyle cult of the impossibly rich Kardashians and Beyoncé et al.
Populists are people who do not fit into the scheme of the Liberal except as food for songs, poems and polemic plays. I have written in the past that Karl Marx wasn't remotely a communist but merely an economist who wanted to put forward an argument about capital and show another way, solely to win the admiration an respect of his fellow bourgeois peers. Liberal theory is about individual freedom and agency but the individual the liberal imagines is culturally and socially their peer so when someone from a lower 'caste' say, a rural, religious, middle aged farmer with a precarious job and low income, seeks agency and individual freedom to say what is on his mind well....that gets shut down fairly quickly.
Liberals' aggressive US cousins are the wonderfully named Libertarians (A word worthy of Fox News it just sounds like an insult) who mix the concept of the individual as sole arbiter or rights with the very fun idea that resources belong to those who find them first and mix work with those resources to produce commodities. All well and good until one remembers that the North American continent was populated by very successful and sustainable nations before the Mayflower ever set sail.....
Liberalism is the Enlightenment writ large in all of it's blue-blooded, powered periwig glory. It has merit and, oh boy! it astonishes when it has to but as a model for an entire civilisation it can't last for even three generations before the great unwashed storm the palaces with pitchforks and guillotines.
For us to found a great nation state we must....vote for conservatives.
Conservatism is the second oldest continuous political ideology in the west after democracy. The longest standing political party on Earth if one allows for some rebranding is the British Conservative Party which can trace its lineage back directly to the Cavaliers of the English Civil War. Emerging from that conflict to the Restoration of the monarchy, through to the Tory Party of the 18th Century and finally the modern Conservative party one constant has remained embedded within this cadre: Maintaining the social hierarchy.
The history lesson is especially important to revisit when we deal with Conservatives because the centre right movement all over Europe is essentially made up of the descendants of land owning, cavalry knights who could command the fealty (the very life in war) of their tenants to go into battle, to fight or die solely to serve their master's claim over land and property. That's the social hierarchy we're talking about; that's the constant that has lasted centuries. To the conservative, property rights trump human rights because up until only 150 years ago people were property.
Conservatism is in the business of conserving the status-quo and nothing else. All other values are open to negotiation, all other needs can be disregarded up to the point of the party risking its grip on power, all other agendas can be kicked down the road; only the interests of property matter and must be attended to first. How conservatives differ from capitalists can be illustrated in one easy statistic: measure what percentage of capitalists fail in their ventures and yet continue to speculate, now do the same for conservatives. There's quite a variance. Capitalists continue to re-invest their profits in the effort to win more profits whereas conservatives do not generate wealth, they hoard and move wealth between themselves, seeing wealth and property as their place in society, their traditional lot. The conservatives don't give one hoot about profits (save for those made by their ancestors) but concern themselves to retaining their hierarchical position as the natural rulers over men.
Social mobility is not a conservative value. Higher education for all is not a conservative policy. Equitable and efficient distribution of wealth is not a conservative priority. State services, fairly distributed and generously maintained, are so much wasted money to the conservative mind. It seems that conservatives and neo-liberals can seem interchangeable but neo-liberals are in the business of strip mining a state of value and commodity whereas conservatives are in the business of retaining both state value and commodities for their peers. I would vote conservative before I would vote neo-liberal, that's true, but I would not choose conservatives for their virtues.
If you think I am being partisan in this analysis then I ask you to listen to the schoolboys and girls from economically neglected areas and then listen to their peers from the leafy red-brick suburbs; you will hear a marked difference in the confidence and assurance of the latter group; they literally expect to be running the country when they leave college. Conservatism ensures that, albeit they will have some struggles, there will always some superior level of support and opportunity afforded to them because of where they go to school, who their parents are, what golf clubs their fathers join etc. None of this will be the result of legislation, ordinance or even manifesto pledges; it is the embedded in the culture of wider Europe without ever having to be mentioned.
The history lesson is especially important to revisit when we deal with Conservatives because the centre right movement all over Europe is essentially made up of the descendants of land owning, cavalry knights who could command the fealty (the very life in war) of their tenants to go into battle, to fight or die solely to serve their master's claim over land and property. That's the social hierarchy we're talking about; that's the constant that has lasted centuries. To the conservative, property rights trump human rights because up until only 150 years ago people were property.
Conservatism is in the business of conserving the status-quo and nothing else. All other values are open to negotiation, all other needs can be disregarded up to the point of the party risking its grip on power, all other agendas can be kicked down the road; only the interests of property matter and must be attended to first. How conservatives differ from capitalists can be illustrated in one easy statistic: measure what percentage of capitalists fail in their ventures and yet continue to speculate, now do the same for conservatives. There's quite a variance. Capitalists continue to re-invest their profits in the effort to win more profits whereas conservatives do not generate wealth, they hoard and move wealth between themselves, seeing wealth and property as their place in society, their traditional lot. The conservatives don't give one hoot about profits (save for those made by their ancestors) but concern themselves to retaining their hierarchical position as the natural rulers over men.
Social mobility is not a conservative value. Higher education for all is not a conservative policy. Equitable and efficient distribution of wealth is not a conservative priority. State services, fairly distributed and generously maintained, are so much wasted money to the conservative mind. It seems that conservatives and neo-liberals can seem interchangeable but neo-liberals are in the business of strip mining a state of value and commodity whereas conservatives are in the business of retaining both state value and commodities for their peers. I would vote conservative before I would vote neo-liberal, that's true, but I would not choose conservatives for their virtues.
If you think I am being partisan in this analysis then I ask you to listen to the schoolboys and girls from economically neglected areas and then listen to their peers from the leafy red-brick suburbs; you will hear a marked difference in the confidence and assurance of the latter group; they literally expect to be running the country when they leave college. Conservatism ensures that, albeit they will have some struggles, there will always some superior level of support and opportunity afforded to them because of where they go to school, who their parents are, what golf clubs their fathers join etc. None of this will be the result of legislation, ordinance or even manifesto pledges; it is the embedded in the culture of wider Europe without ever having to be mentioned.
Conservatism represents the interests of those who have always enjoyed the more privileged social positions that has been the case throughout conservatism's history and always will be the case. This historical bias towards property over progress, many have argued, has held up technological change until some of the 'right people' were in strategic positions within that industry. That is not to say conservatism is all bad; in wartime especially, an officer class with a tight knit subculture and jargon is essential, if change happens too radically the threat of social cohesion breaking down becomes very real. Conservatives being conservative often slows down the rate of change to the point where it can be manageable and that is a good thing. Certainly conservatives do create a well of value within their number which does attract speculators and financiers which can promote economic growth and a stronger focus on economics in general isn't a bad thing - the meltdown in 2007 was from a lack of focus and accurate reporting.
I guess it boils down to whether one is in the right demographic or not whether they would be interested in shoring up a status-quo. During the 20th Century we had two upheavals which resulted in mass warfare and a doing away of the old orders entirely the first was the mass unemployment brought on by automation and a full retreat from the land into the cities which only found resolution after the mass slaughter of the First World War and then the economic collapse of Weimar Germany and rise off Bolshevik Russia ushered in the horror of the Second World War.In comparison, the fall of the French ancien régime in 1968 and the fall of the USSR in 1989 were mercifully not resolved by war but by diplomacy.
This time, however, we are faced with stark questions about the purpose of labour itself as a means to earn a living, the right to basic human needs and comforts, how will energy and information be distributed and by whom to whom, the credibility of economics, politics and media and it looks like the politicos and despots of the world are actively shaping up for a biggie. Conservatism may have finally had its day because the status-quo is so degraded and obsolete as to not be worth keeping - whether this resets social hierarchies or does away with them altogether is down to how and why we vote here and now.
For 'nation state' read 'Kingdom' and 'Empire' and don't mistake it for that's the origin of the conservative.
Why am I saying this?
Soon you will be facing yet another election in Ireland. A decade has passed since the meltdown in the global financial world and we have been paying far more than our fair share of that loss simply because we didn't have anybody in our political mix who had the nerve or the knowledge to spare us the Troika bailout. You will be well versed on what the various political parties have to promise and how they will poster up your main street with their mug shots seeking your vote.
How they speak, the priority they stress in their speeches will tell you just what they are really. Their words are calibrated by very clever speech writers to appeal to you based on your priorities. If you are worried about your money, they will talk about the economy as if that is all that needs attending to. If you are worried about your community, they will talk about the society as if community alone will bring us back to equity. If you are worried that Ireland is losing its soul and values, they will talk about how important culture is and how we can solve our problems through tradition and culture. If you are nervous about political division becoming violent conflicts they will speak about how important it is for us all to protect the state.
This essay is to remind everyone reading it that we do not live in an economy, we do not live in a society, we do not live in a culture and we do not even live in a state. We live in a civilisation.
The truth is we need to attend to all four of these areas as well as our rural culture, how wealth is generated, used and stored, how people move and what future they can look forward to. The truth is, if we have a civilisational vision then we can find solutions to no matter what challenges face us. It is important at this moment in our history to assert the truth that we need the input of all these agendas to achieve a balanced and prosperous civilisation.
And we do have a civilisation, in fact, we have one of the greatest civilisations on Earth. Despite our recent history of failure, corruption and graft; because of our tragic history of starvation and migration; as a result of our tenacity, creativity, good humour and innate intelligence we have a civilisation with unparalleled reach across the entire world.
I am willing to bet there is an Irish pub in North Korea!
OK, so I checked....
To ensure our civilisation matures and achieves its full potential keep those four plates spinning. If you want a government that listens to you and keeps an eye on all those plates at once. Now what kind of government could do that but one that has no other values attached to it. We need a party of government that invites you and me in at the start and encourages us to have our say no matter whether we are primarily interested in an economy, society, culture or nation.....a democratic party.
I guess it boils down to whether one is in the right demographic or not whether they would be interested in shoring up a status-quo. During the 20th Century we had two upheavals which resulted in mass warfare and a doing away of the old orders entirely the first was the mass unemployment brought on by automation and a full retreat from the land into the cities which only found resolution after the mass slaughter of the First World War and then the economic collapse of Weimar Germany and rise off Bolshevik Russia ushered in the horror of the Second World War.In comparison, the fall of the French ancien régime in 1968 and the fall of the USSR in 1989 were mercifully not resolved by war but by diplomacy.
This time, however, we are faced with stark questions about the purpose of labour itself as a means to earn a living, the right to basic human needs and comforts, how will energy and information be distributed and by whom to whom, the credibility of economics, politics and media and it looks like the politicos and despots of the world are actively shaping up for a biggie. Conservatism may have finally had its day because the status-quo is so degraded and obsolete as to not be worth keeping - whether this resets social hierarchies or does away with them altogether is down to how and why we vote here and now.
For 'nation state' read 'Kingdom' and 'Empire' and don't mistake it for that's the origin of the conservative.
Why am I saying this?
Soon you will be facing yet another election in Ireland. A decade has passed since the meltdown in the global financial world and we have been paying far more than our fair share of that loss simply because we didn't have anybody in our political mix who had the nerve or the knowledge to spare us the Troika bailout. You will be well versed on what the various political parties have to promise and how they will poster up your main street with their mug shots seeking your vote.
How they speak, the priority they stress in their speeches will tell you just what they are really. Their words are calibrated by very clever speech writers to appeal to you based on your priorities. If you are worried about your money, they will talk about the economy as if that is all that needs attending to. If you are worried about your community, they will talk about the society as if community alone will bring us back to equity. If you are worried that Ireland is losing its soul and values, they will talk about how important culture is and how we can solve our problems through tradition and culture. If you are nervous about political division becoming violent conflicts they will speak about how important it is for us all to protect the state.
This essay is to remind everyone reading it that we do not live in an economy, we do not live in a society, we do not live in a culture and we do not even live in a state. We live in a civilisation.
The truth is we need to attend to all four of these areas as well as our rural culture, how wealth is generated, used and stored, how people move and what future they can look forward to. The truth is, if we have a civilisational vision then we can find solutions to no matter what challenges face us. It is important at this moment in our history to assert the truth that we need the input of all these agendas to achieve a balanced and prosperous civilisation.
And we do have a civilisation, in fact, we have one of the greatest civilisations on Earth. Despite our recent history of failure, corruption and graft; because of our tragic history of starvation and migration; as a result of our tenacity, creativity, good humour and innate intelligence we have a civilisation with unparalleled reach across the entire world.
I am willing to bet there is an Irish pub in North Korea!
OK, so I checked....
To ensure our civilisation matures and achieves its full potential keep those four plates spinning. If you want a government that listens to you and keeps an eye on all those plates at once. Now what kind of government could do that but one that has no other values attached to it. We need a party of government that invites you and me in at the start and encourages us to have our say no matter whether we are primarily interested in an economy, society, culture or nation.....a democratic party.
