Government's deal with the public is broken - education, effort and achievement no longer guarantees you a real stake in society

I've felt for a while that the deal that successive governments did with the public - get educated, work hard, raise a family and you will be rewarded with a real, cash stake in society - has broken. And nowhere is this clearer than in our housing markets:

“Young people,” wrote Montesquieu in the mid-eighteenth century, “do not degenerate; this only occurs only after grown men have become corrupt.” By endorsing policies that restrict suburban development and home ownership, planners, investors, and the media are asking the next generation to accept conditions that their predecessors would never have tolerated.

This, says geographer Joel Kotkin, is a new feudalism where, despite the trappings of a good life and the promises of equality, we become little better than the peons of powerful oligarchies. For some, being part of the team is fine, the bread and circuses work - as Kotkin puts it, the oligarchs preferred solution is "...to have the state provide housing subsidies as well as unconditional cash stipends to keep the peasants from rising against their betters."

Elsewhere though people are looking for different answers - some see them in a cuddly green socialism that doesn't rock the oligarchs' boat too much but attaches faith-like to heterodox theories of government and economics as the basic for a planned utopia. Despite over 100 years of socialism's consistent failure its appeal persists. The oligarchs don't fear these middle class socialists because they know they can control them - America's tech billionaires are the main funders for progressive causes and for Democrat candidates, they also control the flow of political communication (the main reason why Mark Zuckerberg is such an enthusiast for online media regulation), no democrat will win a presidential election without this support.

Outside the wealthy halls of the dense urban centres, there's a different story with people in red baseball caps, yellow hi-vis jackets and check shirts asking - often angrily - why they are excluded from the society the urban elites have created. As I've commented before, the opening chapter of Robert Heinlein's 'Starman Jones' captures the sentiment:

"The incredible sight and the impact on his ears always affected him the same way. He had heard that for the passengers the train was silent, with the sound trailing them, but he did not know; he had never ridden a train and it seemed unlikely, with Maw and the farm to take care of, that he ever would."

A high speed train swooshing through Max Jones' world - not stopping just barrelling through carrying the rich and beautiful between the oases of urban wonder. And people who can leave the places inbetween do just that, decanting from Barnsley and Telford, South Bend and Flint to cram into overpriced and tiny rented apartments while working for the businesses those oligarchs own. For the rest, all the get is patronising articles about "the left behind" and kindly curated glimpses into the world of the city.

What we have isn't sustainable, the great cities of the west are parasites, humanity's dead end:

Because the great mass of the city dwellers can't afford a family, the only way to provide the services is to import more people from elsewhere. But what happens when those elsewheres don't provide people any more? The city grinds to a halt when economic growth in other places reduces the imperative to migration. So perhaps this explains the enthusiasm of the great and good of such places for elsewheres to remain poor - not starving but just poor enough for the stream of migrants not to dry up.

At the heart of all this is the idea that to maximise utility, we need denser cities and to get denser cities you have to stop people building suburbs. We know active regulatory intervention is needed by the city fathers because, left to their own devices, people will chose to live in suburbs, will prefer a family home with a garden, and will opt for comfort, safety and good schools over the excitement of a city's nights. What we're doing by stopping this happening is making such a life - once available to near all in society - something only the rich and powerful can afford.


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Not True Communism - the left and Cambodian genocide

It was in 1980 when I first encountered the Western academic response to the Khmer Rouge, Angkar and Pol Pot. This was something of an eye-opener - my spectacularly low opinion of Noam Chomsky was formed at this time - as we considered the still emerging evidence of communist atrocity in Cambodia set alongside the dominant commentary, inspired by the likes of Chomsky, that the refugee tales couldn't be believed and it was just "...a rationally conceived strategy for dealing with the urgent problems that faced postwar Cambodia."

Cambodian academic, Sophal Ear and US researcher, Donald W. Beachler call this the "Standard Total Academic View" - it was pretty much what that part of my South East Asian Politics module taught. Question the reports, challenge the numbers (we had a whole seminar dissecting the numbers who died - downwards and sideways mostly) and argue that the sources of criticism were either 'neo-colonialist', US imperialist or Viet imperialist. Even as we read reports about children killed, their heads smashed against trees, starvation and mass murder using the most basic of implements - shovels, mattocks, axes, our reading list contained stuff like this:

Chomsky invites us to consider historian Ben Kiernan’s hypothesis that the Khmer Rouge leaders never properly established discipline over insubordinate soldiers: “[Kiernan] notes that most of the atrocity stories come from areas of little Khmer Rouge strength, where orders to stop reprisals were disobeyed by soldiers wreaking vengeance, often drawn from the poorest sections of the peasantry.”

This quote comes from a frightening article by Matthew Blackwell describing both the personal tragedy, the scale of death and the manner in which so much of what we'd now call "progressive academia" denied or down-played what was happening. These were heroic socialist liberators, how could they possibly install such a reign of murderous terror? Even today some still deny - here from 2012 in American 'radical' magazine, Counterpunch:

The Pol Pot the Cambodians remember was not a tyrant, but a great patriot and nationalist, a lover of native culture and native way of life. New Cambodia (or Kampuchea, as it was called) under Pol Pot and his comrades was a nightmare for the privileged, for the wealthy and for their retainers; but poor people had enough food and were taught to read and write. As for the mass killings, these are just horror stories, averred my Cambodian interlocuters.

Set against a million dead people, torture and starvation, we have people - academics, commentors, reporters - prepared to spin and prevaricate so as to suggest that, far from the Killing Fields being the direct consequence of a deliberate policy imposed by the Angkar and inspired by the Marxism they'd learned in 1950s Paris, they were some sort of accident or mistake.

This is a pattern for these progressive academics and writers - from G B Shaw's apologia for Stalinism through Chomsky's excusing of Pol Pot to today's left fawning over Chavez's Venezuela and Castro's Cuba. And when the denial of the violent oppression communism requires becomes to painful, our leftists fall back on "that wasn't true communism".

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Murder, starvation, poverty, autocracy...how did communism get to be cool?

It came to a head with an attractive young journalist proclaiming on morning TV: "I'm literally a communist, you idiot". For me this seemed little different from someone popping up and saying; "of course I'm a Fascist, twit face" or "absolutely, you numpty, I'm a Nazi". Yet unlike these latter statements, saying you're a communist doesn't get shock horror reactions, The Guardian won't headline its spluttering indignation at someone being a communist. Indeed the more likely reaction is a sort of "bless, young people care so much about the downtrodden - communism is wrong but their heart's in the right place".

Communism - even in places that really ought to know better like East Berlin - is cool and trendy. Communism is cool despite its track record of economic failure, suppression of democracy, state-sponsored murder, starvation and the incarceration of political opponents. The cruelty of Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mao's 'Cultural Revolution', Stalin's purges and Castro's gay correction camps is set aside because, y'know, communism is cool.

Why is this - seriously, why? Here's a few thoughts with my marketing hat on.

Communism is an ideological brand and people's attachment to it isn't based on much considered analysis but on the belief that (as my Dad said years ago) "socialism just means good". And if you don't believe me, here's a response to me on Twitter following my criticism of communism:

The communist manifesto like any seminal text is not to be taken so very literally but considered and applied to the current socioeconomic climate, taking or leaving as appropriate. This just seems like adult common sense to me.

It's like the Bishop of Durham explaining how, in a very real sense there is a god but he/she/it isn't quite how it says in the bible, that's allegory. So let's explore how communism got to move from being a 19th century piece of political philosophy to a seemingly faith-based creed (despite killing about 100 million people inbetween).

Communism's brand identity has a variety of elements - workers, the people, revolution, anti-establishment - that position it well for those looking to be politically contrary (a common trait in younger people). All of the factors in communism's brand identity are positive - other than the unfortunate fact of, when put into action, its tendency to make people poorer or at least those people it hasn't killed or exiled. But the identity is strong enough to resist these unfortunate historical issues. How come?

Communism's brand associations provide a justification for the "not true communism" response to any criticism citing the Soviet Union ("Stalin wasn't really a communist"), Castro ("Cuban totalitarianism was forced on it by US aggression") or Vietnam (US aggression again). These brand associations - what do you think of when someone says 'communism' - include:

Trendy university lecturers (I recall one lecturer's opening remarks to our 'Geography of South East Asia' module - "I'm a radical Marxist geographer")

Marx and Marxism - not The Communist Manifesto but the degree to which Marx is seen as significant in economics and (especially) sociology. Communism gets academic credibility to match lecturer trendiness

Communist iconography is appealing and rebellious - Che Guevara t-shirts, the hammer and sickle, the colour red.

WW2 - the Russians were our friends and allies (sort of) so communism isn't as bad as that other totalitarianism we don't talk about except when we want to criticise slightly orange US Presidents

All the bad stuff must have been a mistake ("not real communism") because Dr Steve Rogers* is way too trendy to do anything so bad as executing shopkeepers or forcing accounts clerks to work in market gardens. And anyway Marx says (insert trite quote cut and pasted from Good Quotes or Wikipedia). "Do you like my Che t-shirt - only £9.99 down the market?"

The communist brand also has what we can call width - if you thought communism was about economics or sociology think again. Those trendy lecturers crop up everywhere and communism (or "Marxism" but in branding terms there's little difference) has something rebellious - always "challenging orthodoxy" to the point where the challenge becomes the orthodoxy - to say: in the arts, in offshoots of sociology like gender studies and media studies, in literature, language studies and doubtless archaeology.

We can take a step back and observe that communism, from its inception in Marx and Engels' manifesto, has always been predicated on the idea of violent revolution - how else are you going to get hold of the property "for the people"? But this essential violence becomes cool because some of us (especially men) get quite turned on by political violence and the people advocating the violence are rebels, cool dudes fighting for a better world.

Communism's brand is cool because the idea of using violence to remove oppression is cool (watch Star Wars if you doubt this for a second) and the flaws - communism's track record of cruel, hateful oppression - is disregarded because the iconography, identity, story and associations allow for a myth rejecting its failures, most commonly because of the actions of communism's enemy rather than because of its inherent failings. Communism is cool because its brand values allow it to resist an honest assessment of what it has done and what it means.

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Are free markets unjust?

A few days ago I posted a piece asking why The Left has such an issue with free markets. One commenter took me to task (ever so slightly patronisingly):

I care about the well-being of humans, and I care about reducing inequality (and lots of other things). I support, for instance, rights to gay marriage because these rights can massively improve quality of life for lots of individuals, without really harming anybody. I also oppose unrestricted free markets when they lead to relatively poor quality of life for lots of individuals.

The difference is that I do no believe that the outcome of a free market is just, per se. In other words, my morals and opinions about how society should operate are derived without consideration of markets. Markets are merely a tool to realize my goals.

At the core of this argument - at least as it seems to me - is a suggestion that the outcomes of free markets are, in some way, unjust. I'm going to put to one side the argument about "unrestricted free markets" leading to a "relatively poor quality of life" because it seems to me something of a nonsense.

Are free markets unjust? The post in question referenced the opening lines of Adam Smith's other book - "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" and this is, maybe, helpful in looking at justice because it is a central theme in Smith's book:

Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it.

So free marketers much have regard to justice as well as prudence and the most common criticism - seen above in Brian's comment - is that free markets are solely concerned with utility: "Markets are merely a tool to realize my goals". And Brian suggests that, if "unrestricted", those markets may deliver an unjust outcome - we much therefore manage markets so as their outcomes are just.

The problems here are twofold - firstly, are free market outcomes ever unjust? Should we prevent or limit people's freedom to exchange because we fear that some will receive no benefit - or actual harm - from the process of exchange? Secondly, is it right - just - to restrict someone's liberty so as to deliver, we hope, a more just outcome elsewhere?

The problem with Brian's argument (which I'm taking as archetypically left wing) is that he sees a just outcome as being an equal outcome - "I care about reducing inequality". But if the consequence of this equal outcome is that everybody is, on average, poorer, is that a just outcome? We have limited or directed exchange to secure equality of outcome and in doing so have removed value from that exchange - everyone is poorer: equally poorer but still poorer.

What is unjust about free exchange - about me seeking to purchase a second hand Land Rover? Is the injustice that not everyone has the wherewithal to buy a second hand Land Rovers? 4x4s for everyone! But isn't intervening in the market to make second hand Land Rovers cheaper - the outcome that delivers social justice - simply removing value from the people with second hand Land Rovers to sell? And isn't this equally unjust?

For Adam Smith, justice was primarily about how we behave:

The principle by which we naturally either approve or disapprove of our own conduct, seems to be altogether the same with that by which we exercise the like judgments concerning the conduct of other people. We either approve or disapprove of the conduct of another man according as we feel that, when we bring his case home to ourselves, we either can or cannot entirely sympathize with the sentiments and motives which directed it.

So if we behave honestly, honourably and fairly in our exchange - in the market - then justice is served. And, if the market does what markets do, the outcome will also be fair and just because both buyer and seller have obtained value from their exchange. Preventing this from happening or saying only certain parties can engage in exchange is not just. At the level of the individual, not only are markets just but limiting, managing or directing them - ending what Marx called the "anarchy of production" - is unjust.

The problem for The Left, however, is that they see poverty or, more commonly, inequality in society and ask whether - given we've a market society - this is just. Surely, they ask, there is some better way of organising exchange that will mean there isn't any poverty or, more likely, inequality. And this is a noble aim until you begin to ask what happens in a market. When I buy that second hand Land Rover I get a benefit - value - by having the off-road vehicle my heart desires. And the person selling that vehicle has the cash I've given him - value - to use elsewhere in the marketplace to meet his heart's desires. There is no point at which free exchange leads to "relatively poor quality of life for lots of individuals", quite the opposite.

None of this is an argument against regulation, laws - Smith is very definite about the consequences of injustice being punishment - but that those laws should be directed to ensuring that exchanges in the market are honest, honourable and fair. Nor is this a pro-capitalism argument - there's no reason at all why socialist forms of ownership shouldn't operate effectively in a free market. Rather it's an argument that justice and equality are not synonyms and that, if we want a fair society, a free market system is more honest, honourable and just than a system designed by government, however well-intentioned.

It is true, however, that without justice the market is not free but rather that "society of robbers" Adam Smith describes. But justice is not achieved through coercion, price-fixing, artificial monopoly or the damning of commerce. Free markets are just only if we act - through social mores, honour if you will, as much as through laws - to ensure that justice is served. As Smith put it:

If [justice] is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society, that fabric which to raise and support seems in this world if I may say so has the peculiar and darling care of Nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms.

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It's not capitalism we need to defend, it's freedom

Every now and then I get asked about why I'm in politics and, once I've done the self-deprecating bit about how no other business would have me, I get to the crunch. I am involved because free speech, free markets, free trade and free enterprise need defending. The systems of government, the lobby groups, the business organisations, the voluntary sector and 'thinking people everywhere' all conspire to limit and restrict your and my freedom to act. Challenging this sad truth is essential.

And the problem isn't capitalism, it's government. This isn't to say that big business is innocent - the amounts spent by business on lobbying government for law changes, subsidy, new trade barriers and more regulation remind us that many large organisations really don't like the idea of freedom. So when Corbyn-loving students tell me capitalism is corrupting, I get their point - hardly a day passes without one or other example of a big business getting some sort of protectionist fix or some new regulation aimed at preventing market entry. We've known this for a long while - it's the central theme of Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' - mercantilism, market fixing, cartels and protectionism, all those things the technocrats try to justify, prevent the growth of wealth, the opportunity for equality and the raising of people out of poverty.

I also understand how those young people are disgruntled at being 'Generation Rent', at having great fat student debt they probably won't pay off and at seeing my generation sitting snuggly on a pile of assets (but still moaning at having to use those assets to look after ourselves in our old age). But when Corbyn or other socialists try to say that these problems are some how a consequence of free markets, free trade or free enterprise, they are lying - even when they use the catch-all term of capitalism.

Housing in London is expensive because for sixty years we've run urban containment policies around the capital and for forty of those sixty years, London has generated more new jobs than it has new houses. And if you provide just six new homes for every ten new households, housing is going to get more expensive. This isn't the fault of the market, it's the fault of government for rationing the land we've got to build houses on. They call this planning and it's the basic building block of socialism - instead of having a free market, some folk in an office with a computer model decide what the price should be, how much should be made and how it should be distributed. It limits your freedom and it doesn't work.

Defending freedom is not, therefore, simply about the moral imperative of liberty but is justified for straightforward and practical reasons. Those freedoms - speech, trade, markets, enterprise - should be defended because they work, because they are the things that made us rich and, right now, are making poor people everywhere richer. The only places - North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe - where people are getting poorer are places where these freedoms are comprehensively rejected. Places where socialism - the planned economy - is the chosen model.

Everywhere I look freedom is under attack. Technocrats and business lobbyists saying import tariffs protect domestic business. Local councils saying limiting procurement options supports local economies. Planners saying the problem is the wrong plan not the planning itself. Farmers saying they couldn't operate without subsidy. Public health groups wanting to ban smoking in parks or to fix booze prices. Police forces calling for new powers to seemingly arrest anybody for almost anything. Housing lobbyists saying the solution is to fix rents not to build houses. Schools snatching sausage rolls from innocent children's lunchboxes. Mayors enforcing public morals by banning pretty women from advertising or drinking from the train.

And then we're told the problem is capitalism? It's not, the problem is that government - in cahoots with a bewildering lobby of charities, businesses and 'campaigners' - takes away freedoms. And we can't subdivide these freedoms - be cross about the loss of one freedom that's important to us while cheering on a ban on something we don't like. For sure some of these losses of freedom are less damaging than others but each loss - from daft rules on advertising vaping to 'Public Space Protection Orders' that make anything an official doesn't like a crime - represents a further restriction and another barrier to pleasure, enterprise or exchange.

I'm happy to defend capitalism - the idea that the rewards from business success goes to the people who put up the cash - but it's not as important as defending free markets, free trade, free enterprise and free speech. Those freedoms constrain the worst urges of business, protect us from the busybody and limit the oppressive instincts of government. We have become too glib about each new loss of freedom - even sometimes to the point of welcoming it because of the NHS or crime or community safety or, the favourite all-purpose reason, because of the children.

So let's get less hung up about whether something's owned by the people who invested, by the workforce or by the community and worry instead about those who want to take away your freedom to organise business how you want. Let's be bothered about government and business wanting to fix gas prices or food supply or where you can buy gin and lemonade. The good life we enjoy and that we'd like everyone to enjoy, was made possible by that free enterprise, by those free markets, and by that free trade. And underpinning all this is free speech - our right to speak what we see as truth, to promote our business and to challenge the assumptions and presumptions of those who govern us. Freedom matters - let's defend it.

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100 years after its birth, this can't be said too often...

From Perry de Haviland at Samizdata:

It is astonishing that in 2017, anyone can still openly call themselves a socialist in polite society and be treated with more respect than if they called themselves a fascist.

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The Great Left Wing Intellectual Debate: A Guide

I read this article. I'd share it with you but I can't find it. Thing is it said that the level of intellectual debate on "the right" (whatever that may actually mean because it beats me how people can find anything in common between me and the frothing loon who runs Prison Planet - yet apparently we're both right wing) is pretty poor. And that the left is - as it has always claimed - filled with beautiful, intelligent people engaged in fascinating policy debates.

I will summarise these left wing debates for you (so you don't have to hurt your eyes looking at the shining ones):

"Neoliberalism. Tories. Bad."

"Yes. Bad. Poor people. Food banks. Neoliberalism."

"Absolutely! Scum. Neoliberalism. Corbyn. Young People. Rally."

"Socialism." (Everyone breaks off to shout and sing "Oh Jeremy Corbyn")

"Nationalise. Magic Money Tree - ha ha ha! Young people. Poverty. Food banks. Neoliberalism."

"Tory scum. Brexit. Young people. Council houses. Neoliberalism."

"Boris Johnson. Buffoon - ha ha ha! Racism. Theresa May. Tory scum. Neoliberalism."

"Thatcher. The miners" (Everyone breaks off to sing chorus of "The Witch is Dead")

"Big bosses. Poverty. Neoliberalism. Brexit."

"Universal Basic Income." (Everyone oohs and ahs - then sings new song "Free Stuff, Freee Stuff. Free Stuff for Young People")

"WASPIs?" (Free stuff for them too - new verse added to Free Stuff song)

"Neoliberalism. Tories. Bad." (Repeat ad nauseum).

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One Hundred Years of Socialist Evil

There. I've said it. This doesn't mean that socialists are evil just that they have been seduced by the Marxist nonsense of what Deirdre McCloskey called 'this secular religion'.

Why is it evil? Because from its outset it has desired the forced transformation of man through the action of authority. There is only one socialist truth and this is owned by those who lead the people - there is no democracy here, no recognition or respect for freedom, or for the fabulous idea that we have individual identity and agency. And this - as we approach the 100th Anniversary of socialism's most extensive trial - is what it means:

"Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers," Lenin ordered in 1918. "Publish their names. Take from them all the grain. Designate hostages. Do it in such a way so that for hundreds of versts around people will see, tremble, know, shout: They are strangling, strangling to death the bloodsucker kulaks." (The term "kulak" referred to peasants well-off enough to hire workers.) "It is necessary secretly—and urgently—to prepare the terror," he ordered shortly thereafter.

And this is not an accidental correlation between an evil man and a noble ideology, it is the direct consequence of the hatred that drives socialism. Hatred of individual success. Hatred of enterprise. Hatred of initiative. Hatred of liberalism. Hatred of free thought. Hatred of independence. As another evil man inspired by socialism said - "everything within the state, nothing without the state". You, me, all of us, are but pawns in the state's direction. A control that brooks no opposition.

If you are tempted by socialism examine your conscience. Look at the 100 years since that fateful November day in Moscow and ask whether the experiment has run its course. Look around and consider that the people living under liberal capitalism are healthier, wealthier and happier than those who languish under socialism. I know you care about justice. You want rights protected and enforced. You dislike profiteering and rent-seeking. And you feel too many people still fall through the cracks of our rich society into some form of poverty. But socialism is not the answer to these problems - it is a siren voice tempting you onto the rocks of social collapse, authoritarianism and decline. Tie your self to the mast and sail on into calmer seas where people are free, enterprising, independent, innovative and caring. Reject the evil doctrine of socialism.

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An existential cry of pain - how "The Left" is losing

As a conservative, it's only recently that I've begun to use the term 'The Left' to describe...well...'The Left'. This was a term that 'The Left', somewhat self-indulgently, used to characterise its so-called values. The premise of any discussion involving such folk was that good things were left-wing and bad things were right-wing. This made life simple - the torture and imprisonment of opponents in an approved left-wing country was necessary to protect the revolution or else simply lies put out by reactionary forces of 'The Right' seeking to undermine said revolution.

In contrast, the torture and imprisonment of opponents in a place designated as 'Right-wing' is a terrible crime against humanity. If you're a Blairite this justifies bombing the terrible place back into the stone age whereas, if you're genuinely of "The Left", the response is to organise a rally, wear clothing symbolising your support for the cause (especially if it looks cool and helps you pick up girls), and do that 'organise, mobilise, agitate' thing that 'The Left' always does.

So I thought that I'd explore this idea of 'The Left'. Not as a coherent political philosophy because, Marxism aside (and Marx would have thoroughly approved of Fascism), there is no coherent philosophy behind 'The Left'. Instead we have a set of positions - some simply not 'The Right' (remember that 'The Right' simply means "bad things I disagree with") whereas others are wrapped up in an incredibly indulgent thing usually called, in that trashing of the language beloved of 'The Left', values.

A long time ago, my Dad said that socialism or socialist in its common usage (by 'The Left') simply meant good. That was it - references to socialism or 'The Left' are intended to conjure up images of people who care more than nasty people who are called 'The Right'. We get folk pulling down a good wage paid for out of tax money or from the contributions of gullible donors while arguing for more 'caring' to be done by taking more cash off other people to give to a different set of ('deserving') people (plus well paid jobs for people from 'The Left'). These people have "values" to which we should all aspire. They are 'The Left' - complete with fluffy kittens, unicorns, glitter and shiny happy people marching for change.

The problem for 'The Left' is that countries that take the ideas of the left and turn them into a platform for government often end up totalitarian, lock opponents up and routinely use torture. These countries - from East Germany to Cuba are places that people tried to leave. Indeed they didn't just try to leave 'The Left', they did so facing the risk of getting shot, arrested and tortured. Or drowning as the tractor inner tube holding up the rickety raft sinks beneath the waves.

Today, 'The Left' face a new problem. Or rather an old problem revisited. In the democracies of the western nations there's an anger among the voters. Millions of column inches are being dedicated by 'The Left' to challenging this anger - they call it 'populism', 'nativism', even 'fascism' and are really agitated by the message it's putting out to voters. Of course, because this threat to 'The Left' is (because it is a threat) a bad thing, it is therefore right-wing, from the dark places of 'The Right'. And as a result people on 'The Right' are being told they should do something about the prospect of more folk like Donald Trump getting elected.

But when you peel back the cover of Donald Trump's agenda (ditto for Marine Le Pen and other nasty populist folk) and look at the policy programme underneath, it's pretty much an agenda that, had it come from 'The Left', would have been applauded. Clamping down on the corrupt and cosy relationship between big business and government. Protecting jobs by stopping firms moving them offshore. Protecting communities by ending dumping. Making politicians more accountable. This is a left-wing programme and it is 'The Left' that is threatened by its success.

What 'The Left' doesn't realise is that us right-wing folk simply don't start from the same place in all this debate. We don't think that the agenda proposed by the likes of Trump, Farage and Le Pen is a right-wing policy platform. The problem is that, after decades of taking its working class voter base for granted, 'The Left' has been found out. Hence the spluttering, shouting and screaming about the way in which those working class voters didn't do as they were told.

There's a huge difference between sympathy and empathy. 'The Left' is very good at the former but appalling at the latter with the result that, for all its language of caring, sharing and 'aren't we good', left-wing people these days come across as patronising, judgemental and arrogant. This is the world of 'we know what's good for you' and 'it's someone else's fault, let's go shout at the government'. The denial of agency to anyone who didn't get a degree is shocking - kids get sugary snacks because their parents can't resist advertising, poverty isn't solved by getting (and keeping) a job, and we need to make it harder for people to have a drink because they don't know how to control themselves.

But these caring noises - "there, there, it's not your fault, nasty, nasty government" - don't wash when 'The Left' shows a tin ear to the communities they claim to care about. At times it seems almost as if 'The Left' are talking about a different animal - one unable to look after itself properly, a permanent victim of 'the system'. There is no empathy for the condition of these people just the idea that we can use them to make our political point (mostly about how caring we are and how our values are so good) and to paint a cartoon picture of 'The Right'.

Back in the day, socialist parties were populist movements. Britain's Labour Party, the Socialist and Social Democratic Parties of Europe, Italy's Communist Party - all these groups built their support using the same sort of populist rhetoric that they now condemn in new political movements. It's true also that these socialist parties emerged from the same place as the Fascists - this doesn't make them the same, just that (unlike conservatives) they're competing for the same voters. This is still true and, in part, explains the screams of pain and anguish from the mainstream left. The problem is that those values 'The Left' is so big on simply aren't the values of a large chunk of the traditional support base for left-of-centre parties.

So when left-of-centre pundits tell 'The Right' that this populist (or nativist, fascist, even Nazi) upsurge is some how its problem they speak from fear. Not fear of a conservative hegemony - nothing conservative about Trump, Farage and Le Pen - but rather fear that the success of populists will keep them, 'The Left', from the things that sustain their livelihood and allow them to patronise the rest of us about values. And those things are government-funded jobs, membership of influential boards or committees, positions of authority in local and national and European government - this is what motivates 'The Left' today. The insurgent populists threaten 'The Left' by borrowing its language but sounding like they actually mean it - there's a real empathy, a genuine feeling of pain rather than a patronising, smug Tony Blair-style "I feel your pain" sympathy.

At the moment, aside form America, the traditional conservative right looks set fair - no room for complacency but it wouldn't be surprising to see by the end of 2017, conservatives leading France, Germany, Spain, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Those who think that the Front National, UKIP and Five Star are a threat to the conservative right are sadly misguided. It is 'The Left' that stands to lose as it continues to pretend that a sort of international order of the smug can sort everything out but only if we can stop those pesky electors voting the wrong way.
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Socialism. A terrible and popular stone age creed.

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It is a continuing shock to me that every time socialism is shown to be destructive a new generation of socialists emerge like the worst sort of zombie apocalypse. It seems we're programmed to like this ideology - it's our stone age sensibility that makes us support a creed that serves mostly to take us back to that stone age:

According to Professors John Tooby and Leda Cosmides of the University of California, Santa Barbara, human minds evolved in the so-called “Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness” between 1.6 million and 10,000 years ago. “The key to understanding how the modern mind works,” Cosmides writes, “is to realize that its circuits were not designed to solve the day-to-day problems of a modern [humans] – they were designed to solve the day-to-day problems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.”

With the result that:

...humans are, by nature, envious, resentful and unable to comprehend, let alone appreciate, a sophisticated economic system that has evolved in spite of, not because of, our best efforts.

We're wired to think the economy is a zero-sum game, a thing of 'them' and 'us' and we resent hierarchy as well as being envious of those who have more, are stronger or seem more powerful. This is the core emotional content of socialism and explains why so many reject - despite the evidence of its success - the idea that self-interest drives innovation, invention and growth in a world unlimited in the scope of its creativity.

Socialism is a terrible ideology founded in envy and too often resulting in the very opposite of what its adherents profess to want. Yet so long as our brains respond with envy, resentment and incomprehension there will be socialists. Part of me feels we should be training these negative reactions out of people - but that would be brainwashing so probably not the best of ideas!

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There is no such thing as neoliberalism. It's just the left's favourite straw bogeyman.

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There is no such thing as neoliberalism. At least not as an ideology that determines the policies of governments across the globe. Trust me on this - there really isn't a thing called neoliberalism. Except in the febrile minds of people who think sociology is a science, go on marches against capitalism and join organisations with names like 'Cuba Solidarity'.

I know you don't believe me - after all there's all this guffle on Wikipedia to turn to:

Neoliberalism (or sometimes neo-liberalism)[1] is a term which has been used since the 1950s,[2] but became more prevalent in its current meaning in the 1970s and 80s by scholars in a wide variety of social sciences[3] and critics[4] primarily in reference to the resurgence of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.[5] Its advocates support extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Neoliberalism is famously associated with the economic policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States.[7] The implementation of neoliberal policies and the acceptance of neoliberal economic theories in the 1970s are seen by some academics as the root of financialization, with the financial crisis of 2007–08 one of the ultimate results.[13][14][15][16][17]

That's a reference dense chunk of the on-line encyclopedia. But trust me folks, there simply isn't an ideology out there called 'neoliberalism' - it's just a tag applied by people, typically but not exclusively socialists, who oppose free markets, free trade and globalisation. The whole and enormous body of academic 'knowledge' around neoliberalism is, in essence, a colossal straw man constructed from the prejudices of left-wing academics with its framework filled in by the echo chamber of socialist punditry. It is the bogeyman that left-wing mums and dads use to scare their children. It is the scary monster that keeps young socialists from straying. It is a myth.

You still don't believe me? Let's look a little further. If I search on-line a little I can find a bewildering array of socialist organisations - socialist doctors, socialist lawyers, socialist economists (an oxymoron if ever one existed), socialist christians, socialist scientists. People place themselves in a spectrum of socialism - my geography lecturer at university proudly described himself as a 'radical Marxist geographer (whatever that may actually mean). As an ideology, socialism is very well embedded in our culture. Indeed, in academic humanities and social sciences (HSS), socialism in its various guises is the dominant orthodoxy - being anything other than left wing in these HSS disciplines is almost unheard of.

Apply the same test to neoliberalism - supposedly the dominant ideology of our times - and there is nothing. There aren't any Neoliberal Societies at universities, there is no Neoliberal Lawyers Association, no neoliberal doctors groups, not even any neoliberal economist clubs. As ideologies go neoliberalism is spectacularly unsuccessful - no-one identifies with the belief, there is no body of writing promoting the creed, and there are no organisations basing their political message around neoliberalism. There is no such thing as neoliberalism - it's simply a collation of things left wing people dislike or disagree with, a convenient set of 'attitudes' as one tweeter proclaimed.

Here's an example of how the users of the term neoliberalism are confused:



So the gist of this argument - it's from Alex Andreou - is that climate change deniers and opponents of the European Union are neoliberals. And that the essence of neoliberalism is opposed to taxation, to international co-operation and state intervention. Indeed that neoliberals are ideologically wedded to greed and short-termism. OK I've got that - neoliberalism is about rent-seeking and protectionism.

Or is it? Here's some more neoliberals:

They are single-minded about the irreversible transformation of society, ruthless about the means, and in denial about the fallout. Osborne – smirking, clever, cynical, "the smiler with the knife" – wields the chopper with zeal. Cameron – relaxed, plausible, charming, confident, a silver-spooned patrician, "a smooth man" – fronts the coalition TV show.

Neither of these men are opposed to the EU or deniers of climate change and the need for action. Yet they are neoliberals - they support international co-operation, oppose protectionism and support free trade (more-or-less). Yet despite this they are neoliberals. And the only reason they are described as such is because they are also opposed to the ideas of the regressive left - economic stasis, state direction of the economy, isolationism and an over-powerful government.

There is no such thing as neoliberalism. Not once it's definition is so vague that it can encompass radical libertarians like the Koch brothers as well as populist protectionists like Nigel Farage. If Don Boudreaux, doyen of academic libertarians, is a neoliberal there is no way in which Hillary Clinton can be a neo-liberal. This is the core of the problem - neoliberalism is not a recognisable ideology:

What Boas and Gans-Morse found, based on a content analysis of 148 journal articles published from 1990 to 2004, was that the term is often undefined. It is employed unevenly across ideological divides; it is used to characterise an excessively broad variety of phenomena.

That is academic speak for neoliberalism is an empty slogan.

So next time you read some cheerful left-wing pundit and, about half way through their measured and considered analysis of some or other issue, the word 'neoliberal' crops up - maybe something like: "this is a result of neoliberal economics..." - remember that there is no such thing as neoliberalism, nobody self-identifies as a neoliberal, it is just a convenient way to describe something that the left-wing pundit dislikes. A convenient set of "attitudes" those left wing folk attribute to entrepreneurs, to conservative politicians, to directors of international institutions and to bankers.

There is no such thing as neoliberalism. It is just the left's favourite straw bogeyman.

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Socialism. A glimpse of its evil.

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From an article about that socialist paradise, Cuba:

Look, part of me gets it. I appreciate good art direction just as much as anyone else, and I see that Cuba looks like a beautifully destroyed photo op. But it’s not your photo op. The old cars are not kitschy; they are not a choice. It’s all they have. The old buildings are not preserved; their balconies are falling and killing people all the time. The very, very young girls prostituting themselves are not doing it because they can’t get enough of old Canadian men, but because it pays more than being a doctor does. Hospitals for regular Cuban citizens are not what Michael Moore showed you in Sicko. (That was a Communist hospital for members of the Party and for tourists, and I, for one, think Moore fell for their North Korea–like propaganda show pretty hard.) There are no janitors in the hospitals because it pays more money to steal janitorial supplies and sell them on the street than it does to actually have a job there. Therefore, the halls and rooms are covered in blood, urine, and feces, and you need to bring your own sheets, blankets, pillows, towels, and mattresses when you are admitted. Doctors have to reuse needles on patients. My mom’s aunt had a stroke and the doctor’s course of treatment was to “put her feet up and let the blood rush back to her head.” That was it.

This is a country where you can earn more money driving tourists from the airport to their hotels than you can as a doctor, where no-one can afford to live on the wages from their 'official' jobs, where the illegal black market dominates lives, and where to stay alive you have to break the law dozens of times a day. It's just like every other socialist place except with good looking people and plenty of sunshine.

I make no apologies for saying socialism is evil. Atheists are wont to point at religions, to describe the murder and destruction done in the name of those religions. But, for sheer murderous impact, for utter brutalism, for pillage and murder, for bringing out the very worse in humanity there are two texts that have, in a blink of an eye besides the Qu'ran and the Bible, visited more death and sorrow on the world - The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

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If the British left want an earthly paradise they should look at home.

We all have - and the left especially has - a desire to seek out earthly utopias where the things we think important are revealed and our ideology is justified. For socialists the list is long - from the Soviet Union in the 1930s through Cuba and Nicaragua to Venezuela in recent times. There have been detours through Sweden and Denmark and occasional enthusiasm for Canada or San Francisco. It's all a bit futile:

But the left has always – and perhaps has always had to – cast its net rather wider when looking for shining examples and sources of optimism, revolutionary or otherwise. Sadly, however, the sheer variety of countries in which it has invested its hopes, as well as the sometimes wilful naivety that helped nurture them in the first place, has seen those very same hopes dashed time and time again.

And those hope will always be dashed or at least so long as the left is excited by the idea of being 'anti-market' rather than just 'pro-poor'. It is odd that the chasm in politics left by the enduring legacy of Soviet-style central planning has never been properly filled - even centrist social democrats can't help but tinker with prices, with subsidies, with protectionism and with market fixing. So those social democrat ideas of lifting the poor from poverty, of creating a fair and equal society are crushed because the left simply choose the wrong policies.

The left tend to assume that the heroes of the 'right' are those authoritarians they despise (while enthusing about similar despots who lay claim to leftiness). Yet, if we're to seek for places that capture the idea of neo-liberalism best, that demonstrate how markets work for everyone, we aren't going to find it with authoritarian nationalists. It's more like this:

But Hong Kong too was once a basket case. "Devastated by Japanese occupation, the British colony's population had declined from 1.6 million in 1941 to 600,000 by 1945. Then, after the 1949 communist victory on the mainland, a million refugees arrived. Most of them were penniless."

Hong Kong owes its current prosperity to John (later Sir John) Cowperthwaite, a young official sent out to push the colony's economy toward recovery, which he did by reducing or abolishing taxes. "Even now, Hong Kong has no sales tax; no VAT; no taxes on capital gains, interest income or earnings outside Hong Kong; no import or export duties; and a top personal income-tax rate of 15 per cent.

"During Cowperthwaite's tenure, Hong Kong's exports grew by an average of 13.8 per cent a year, industrial wages doubled and the number of households in extreme poverty shrank from half to 16 per cent."

Indeed those of us who believe in neo-liberalism, who think that open markets, free trade and free enterprise are the route out of poverty - we have loads of examples of how what we believe in works. Whether it's Hong Kong or Singapore, Taiwan or Malta, Chile or Ghana, we can point to example after example of places where adopting the core ideas of laissez-faire led to economic growth and a better life for nearly everyone in those places. With the finest example being Britain itself - the place that started it all off.

So why is it that socialists have stopped being bothered by who owns things and become obsessed with how things are bought and sold. Why is it that the left want us all poorer from protectionism, corrupted by fixed markets and left with shortages or gluts from price-fixing? Whether it's energy prices, rents or, in Venezuela's case, loo paper, how is it that despite two hundred years of solid evidence telling them they're wrong, left-wing governments continue to think they can buck the market?

And why does the left support protectionism. OK it's not the old fashioned approach - the import substitution strategies that near bankrupted Brazil and Argentina or the tariff barriers that fooled European basic industries into believing they were competitive. Rather it's a new approach - we get a local or regional protectionism based on the deluded idea that small businesses are more efficient, greener and resilient - here's one of it's leading advocates David Boyle:

The prevailing economics of regeneration is based on the idea of comparative advantage. Places need to specialise, otherwise – heaven forfend – everywhere will have to build their own radios or cars or anything else.

Or so the old-world economists mutter when you suggest that ‘comparative advantage’ might be taken too far.

Because when it is, what you get is too few winners and far too many losers, places that are simply swept aside in the narrowly efficient new world, where only one place builds radios. Or grows carrots.

The problem is of course that Boyle is simply talking nonsense - as that well-known right-wing economist, Paul Krugman observed:

At the deepest level, opposition to comparative advantage -- like opposition to the theory of evolution -- reflects the aversion of many intellectuals to an essentially mathematical way of understanding the world.

And alongside this we get a set of 'ethical' protections - barriers based on environmental standards, health standards or worker 'rights' that serve to make both poor countries and rich countries poorer. Cries go up for 'anti-dumping' measures that merely serve to make the steel or paper or wool or whatever more expensive thereby reducing economic growth and damaging future prosperity.

Protectionism - whether it's called 'resilience', 'local purchase preference' or anything else - is wrong and benefits a few at the cost to the many:

Many people have argued over the years that U.S. prosperity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sprang in large part from the high-tariff policies in place during those times. Apart from the economic nonsense this claim exhibits, it is akin to claiming proudly that the great economic success of the mafia in the twentieth century sprang in large part from the organization’s “taxes” (demands for protection money) laid on members of the public.

Yet this economic nationalism is now a core feature of the left's economic policies alongside all sorts of market-fixing ideas - rent caps, energy tariffs, regulatory barriers to entry, de facto guild systems and a strange belief that places can be both part of and separate from the global economy.

Finally the left seem to believe, again despite all the evidence telling us they're wrong, that somehow if we just taxed the rich a little more then there'd be enough money for all their grand schemes. Books filled with reams of statistics tell us that enormous sums languish in supposed 'tax havens' waiting for us to apply the right rules so that lovely lolly ends up in the government's coffers rather than Scrooge McDuck's Caribbean vault.

Again this is just stupid. As if that cash is sitting in piles in some bank - it's not, it's funding businesses, supporting pension funds and a whole host of other useful things. If the government takes a load of it to spend on welfare benefits, doctors wages and what not then it's not available to provide that investment. This might be all fine and hunky dory but it isn't costless - there will be a negative effect on growth, on employment and on interest rates as a result of whacking that big tax on those rich folk's off-shore hoards. Plus, of course, we can only spend it once.

There is no utopia. There is no ideal model of government despite all the efforts of clever men to create one. We don't have the knowledge or capacity to do a better job - in nearly every case - than the market does in allocating scarce resources. So by all means promote socialised forms of ownership. By all means argue for high taxes so as to enable more income redistribution. And by all means argue for greater transparency and openness in markets. But don't lie to people and tell them that you've found a magic system that's better than those markets.

If the left want their earthly paradise they shouldn't need to look beyond Britain. Take the long view and consider how much richer we are than 20, 30, 50 or a 100 years ago. Not just the elite but everyone from the monarch down to the cleaning lady with a severely disabled son. For sure, it's a pretty flawed paradise and one that could be improved but it's as good as anywhere on earth in almost every aspect of life. And capitalism, free markets, free trade and free enterprise are a pretty big part of why that's the case.

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So how socialist was Fascism?

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Here's a clue:

By 1938, after Italy, for all intents and purposes, had emerged from the effects of the international depression, the entitites under the control of the IRI proceeded to produce 67 percent of Italy's ferrous minerals, 77 percent of cast iron, and 45 percent of its steel. About 80 percent of all shipbuilding undertaken on thepeninsula was done under the auspices of Finmare - and Finmeccanica was producing 40 percent of all machine products. The major part of all infrastructure development was the product of the efforts of similar parastate entities. In effect, by the end of the 1930s, the economy of Fascist Italy was the most extensively state controlled in all of Europe - with the exception of the Soviet Union. (from A. James Gregor's 'Mussolini's Intellectuals")

When Mussolini said he was a socialist and that he believed in state control and state direction, these weren't idle words meant to cover up his capitalist streak. Il Duce really did believe in such a state - indeed in one where the economy was organised through "national confederations of syndical organisations" rather than through the market. There is nothing right-wing - if by right-wing you mean conservative or (in the traditional rather than American sense) liberal - about Fascism. It is just another bastard child of socialism.

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No, nationalisation is not social enterprise scaled up

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Some people really don't understand the 'enterprise' thing at all do they. Here's a chap called Robert Ashton (who describes himself as a "social entrepreneur"):

I happened to be meeting a local MP who had read the blog that morning. He said that whilst he largely agreed, and knowing Jeremy Corbyn felt he was a decent chap, he said that on one thing I was wrong: Corbyn he said doesn’t champion social enterprise, he champions nationalisation.

I’ve been reflecting on that comment ever since and conclude that the only difference, in an ideal world, between nationalisation and social enterprise is scale.

This is, of course, manifestly untrue. The point about social enterprise is that it is a business that, in providing a valued service or product, also makes a wider social contribution. Indeed Robert describes such a thing:

Yet now that school campus is managed by community cooperative organisation. Led by local people, the site now hosts a wide range of community groups; the canteen is now a thriving cafe and new organisations are moving in to the town, renting space, creating jobs and making a lasting difference to the lives of those who live there.

Nationalisation isn't anything like this. It is the forced creation of a state-owned monopoly designed primarilty to promote and protect the interests of that monopoly. The reason why socialists are so keen on nationalisation isn't because it leads to better business or makes a lasting difference to people's lives - it's because nationalisation allows the government to organise business and industry in the interests of the workers (i.e. those who are employed in the nationalised business).

Robert's question as to whether government is a social enterprise is more interesting. But nationalisation is a different matter - its main impact is to destroy social value rather than create it.

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Poking, sneering, moralising and despising - the defining character of Fabianism

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Let's get one thing out of the way. I'm not sure I agree with limiting child benefit to two children but there does need to be a debate about said benefit and whether it is the best way to support children and especially children who live in what we've defined as poverty. After all a significant chunk of child benefit is paid to mothers who have no need for it (again this isn't to say the benefit isn't welcome but that no-one will lack for basics by its absence).

So I understand Iain Duncan Smith's point:

The work and pensions secretary hinted the move was being examined by his party despite previously being vetoed by Downing Street over fears it could alienate parents.

Asked about the idea on the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme, Duncan Smith said it could also “help behavioural change” in what appeared to be a suggestion that it could discourage people struggling with their finances from having more children.

Leaving aside that the Guardian is putting words into IDS's mouth, this idea probably has significant support amongst the population.  There is a widespread view (that I don't share) that having more than two children is somehow irresponsible and that child benefit provides either a reward or an incentive for such foolishness.

However, to describe what IDS has said as 'eugenics' is stretching the point well past breaking point. Yet - in a typical piece of bravado nonsense - this is what Polly Toynbee does:

Some themes deep in the heart of Toryism just never go away. Up they pop, over and over. Control the lower orders, stop them breeding, check their spending, castigate their lifestyles. Poking, sneering, moralising and despising is hardwired within Tory DNA.

The problem with this is that these days most of the proposals for controlling the lower orders come from the left-wing establishment, from the sort of people Polly approves of.

It was a Labour government that introduced the Anti-Social Behaviour Order as a way to criminalise things that aren't criminal. It is use to enforce a sterile environment that, in effect, permits the police supported by the magistracy to arrest anyone for any reason.

It is great figures from the left - H G Wells, J M Keynes and, most recently, Jonathan Porritt and David Attenborough who have been advocates of enforced population control, of eugenics. It is the people that Polly has dinner with who enthused about communist China's one child policy and socialist India's bribes for vasectomies.

It is the left with their moralising about debt and lending that wants to check the spending of the working class. It left-wing writers like Naomi Klein who put about the patronising lie that ordinary people are manipulated by corporations into something called 'over-consumption'.

And it's the left - including the last Labour government - who led the charge against people's lifestyles. Banning smoking in the pub, whacking a duty escalator on beer (while exempting wine and champagne), imposing planning restrictions on fast food takeaways and trying to ban gambling. It's the left that want taxes on fizzy drinks, bans on added sugar and salt, restrictions on portion sizes, the ending of multibuy offers and a host of other nannying interventions in people's lifestyle choices.

My party is not immune from these problems - you only have to look at Tracy Crouch and Sarah Wollaston to see this - but despising the worker is not 'hard wired' into Tory DNA. It people like Polly Toynbee who patronise and exploit ordinary people so as to prosecute their disturbed and disturbing political opinions. Political opinions we can trace back to that great Fabian socialist, H G Wells:

...the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity - beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge - and to check the procreation of base and servile types, of fear-driven and cowardly souls, of all that is mean and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men. To do the latter is to do the former; the two things are inseparable.

And that equally renowned Fabian socialist, G B Shaw:

...If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way. Is it any wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber as the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the excuse for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and the only solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility in modern populations?"

Or the ever so progressive Margaret Sanger:

 "... Degeneration has already begun. Eugenists demonstrate that two-thirds of our manhood of military age are physically too unfit to shoulder a rifle; that the feeble-minded, the syphilitic, the irresponsible and the defective breed unhindered; ... that the vicious circle of mental and physical defect, delinquency and beggary is encouraged, by the unseeing and unthinking sentimentality of our age, to populate asylum, hospital and prison. All these things the Eugenist sees and points out with a courage entirely admirable"

Eugenics was always a ghastly creed. But is was a creed - along with directing and controlling the lives of workers - that was at the very heart of Polly's Fabian socialism.

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Values? The one that really matters is freedom...

Queueing for bread - socialist values in action

This is a pretty typical framing of a left wing values statement - from Julian Dobson:

And that brings us back to values. Do we want a society that turns competitiveness into a totem, blames individuals for social problems and judges success on earnings and rates of return? Or are we looking for something more inclusive and creative, places that recognise the value generated by people’s imagination and relationships and passion for the common good? 

And the typical slightly green, middle-class leftie will feel a little shudder of affirmation through the bones at this statement. Absolutely, our lefty might say, this statement clearly separates the uncaring, individualist from the caring, sharing collectivist. They might add little mutterings about 'trickle down' or 'profits' before smiling again as the high plateau of collaborative, cooperative glory comes into view.

The problem with all this is that it is a delusion, a deliberate self-deception. All this enthusiasts for ending the dark and evil neo-liberal world and ignorant of its central truth - that far more than the state-directed, protectionist systems our caring lefties aspire to create, free market systems are absolutely about inclusion, creativity, passion value generation, imagination and mutual benefit. The secret lies in that magic word 'free' and it is all that freedom that gave us the wealth to ponder such matters as 'values'.

Once the matter of values was something for priests and philosophers. Most ordinary people - and this still stands for a great deal of today's world - were way too busy keeping body and soul together to bother about what it all meant. Then something happened. It wasn't a planned economy, it was a spark of liberty that set us free. And we became free because the trap of subsistence was removed, we could lift our head up from the daily drudge and think about those values, about what we thought the world should be like.

And the match that ignited those flames of freedom wasn't a law, it was capitalism, the liberal enlightenment that opened up trade and allowed business to innovate, to create and to transform - in just a few decades - the entire world.When the likes of Julian Dobson paint free markets in negative terms, when they demonise the idea of choice by talking about competition as a negative, and when they dismiss individual material success as somehow distasteful or exploitative, what these people do is build a mighty man of straw, a grand lie.

This lie is essential to socialism - without that mighty straw man representing capitalism's sins the logic of the left collapses into the terrible reality of a place where people queue for seven hours to buy some flour and some milk. This, rather than sunlit uplands, is the consequence of that focus on the "common good" - for there is no common good other than that determined by the interactions, transactions and exchanges of the people. And the best way to get those mutual benefits isn't through committees, co-operatives and regulations but through free exchanges in a free market. That is why the left must make a demon of liberty because they can't admit that free choice, free exchange and free speech is the best road to a good society, to a place where those values they prattle on about are met for everyone.

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Socialism in action...doing what it does best, making poor people poorer

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Venezuela is fast becoming today's example of socialism and of how it starts with excitement about liberty, crushing the Yankee Devil, taming big business and eliminating poverty. And soon turns to control, suppression, rationing and shortage:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced Wednesday that the country will introduce a mandatory fingerprinting system in supermarkets. He asserted that the plan will keep people from buying too much of any single item. 

But, you ask, why would anyone want to buy 'too much of any one item'? When I go to the supermarket, I buy to suit my immediate requirements. Since capitalism has given me a fridge freezer, I'm able to buy good for the whole week but that's it. The reason for buying 'too much of one item' is simple - the buyer anticipates shortage. We see this occasionally when some tabloid newspaper creates a scare over a consumer product's availability. But for government to seek to stop such buying behaviour, shortages have to be the norm.

And this is the case with Venezuela - the country where a smart phone app locating supplies of loo paper was developed. The government, having condemned the businesses making and distributing food and other consumer goods decided that it should intervene - controlling supply, setting prices and generally throwing its weight around in the marketplace. Such activity is justified, the government says, so as to allow the nation's poor to live more dignified lives.

The problem is actually pretty simple - by fixing prices artificially low (to help the poor) Venezuela's government created shortages. Now they've blamed variously the CIA, the political opposition and business in general for the problem using these perceived attacks on the socialist revolution in Venezuela to justify first the introduction of ID systems (described in the Guardian as "a grocery loyalty card with extra muscle") and now the use of fingerprinting to prevent 'hoarding'.

"We are creating a biometric system … to function in all distribution and retail systems, public and private," Maduro said in a televised address on Wednesday. "This will be – like the fingerprint scan we use in our electoral system – a perfect anti-fraud system."

So what's the problem here? Essentially the problem is socialism and its adherents' belief that you can abolish the market. For what Venezuelans are doing is variously: buying cheap stuff in Venezuelan shops and taking it across the border for resale at the price it should have been or else simply reselling it to other Venezuelans. Either that or else not having bread, oil, flour or loo paper because there's none to buy in the shops.

We can laugh a little as we are reminded again that fixing the price and supply of basic goods - especially while indulging in an inflationary splurge of oil money on public infrastructure - really isn't a great way to manage the economy. We can make jokes about the stupidity of socialism and make fun of Venezuela's fans like sweet little Owen Jones. But we should not forget that the current leader of the UK's opposition supports price fixing - for energy prices, for train fares and probably for anything else that gets him the votes of the ignorant.

Socialism is lovely. It's adherents are often caring, sharing folk who want the world to be a better place. But, put into action, socialism results in poverty, unemployment, authoritarian government and shortages of life's essentials. The losers in all this are those without the connections or the wherewithal to survive - the very people that socialism claims to support - the poor. As one Venezuelan put it:

 "The rich people have things all hoarded away, and they pull the strings," said Juan Rodriguez, who waited two hours to enter the government-run Abastos Bicentenario supermarket near downtown Caracas on Monday, then waited three hours more to check out.

The terrible thing is that this man, having spent five hours getting basics at a supermarket, still believes the socialists when they blame the rich. It's good politics but, like those who want to blame immigrants, simply isn't true and those setting out the policies know that it isn't true. The fault here - and every time with socialism - rests with the government.

Every time socialism is tried - and Argentina is now having another go at it - it fails. Yet another generation of people who care about the poor, who hate America and believe business is exploitative will come along, get power and prove again that socialism doesn't work. The saddest thing here is that, as that man in the Caracas supermarket queue points out, the rich seldom lose out under socialism - it's the poor that lose out.

Socialists may often be lovely caring people. But socialism is evil.

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Socialism turns people into cheats...

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Or so Alex Tabarrok reports:
 

From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall divided one nation into two distinct political regimes. We exploited this natural experiment to investigate whether the socio-political context impacts individual honesty. Using an abstract die-rolling task, we found evidence that East Germans who were exposed to socialism cheat more than West Germans who were exposed to capitalism. We also found that cheating was more likely to occur under circumstances of plausible deniability.

Of course here we are not at all surprised. We know that non-market systems protect privilege and promote favour-mongering even in law-abiding and mostly non-socialist Britain.

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From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall divided one nation into two distinct political regimes. We
exploited this natural experiment to investigate whether the socio-political context impacts
individual honesty. Using an abstract die-rolling task, we found evidence that East Germans
who were exposed to socialism cheat more than West Germans who were exposed to
capitalism. We also found that cheating was more likely to occur under circumstances of
plausible deniability. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/07/moral-effects-of-socialism.html#sthash.4w1nOOS1.dpuf