"The fetish of consumer choice..." - an introduction to 21st century fascism

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All the wonder - the liberation - of choice is but an indulgence. Or at least this is the view of one Andrew Dobson writing in the Guardian.

We need to discard the ideological trappings of an increasingly discredited neo-liberalism – such as the fetish of consumer choice, or the notion of the small state.

The fetish of consumer choice! Andrew Dobson would have us queuing outside GUM in drab conformity before returning to a depressing apartment - just the state TV channel braying out the instructions of our masters. And - when the electricity works which isn't every day - Mr Dobson would have our cupboard (no point in a fridge) filled with the dull product of a state factory.

In Professor Dobson's world this control is needed because of "climate change" - the imperative of impending doom demands that the state takes command and leads. All must be:

...brought back under democratic control, and control of the state must be wrested from those whose interest lies in diminishing its democratic potential for reining in the market and acting in the common interest.

Andrew Dobson does not know it but he is a fascist.

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Postliberalism - rediscovering the "F-word" in Blue Labour and Red Tory

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It’s always tricky to use the ‘F’ word when writing about political thinking. It has become so cursed by its association with genocide, racism and war that the thinking that lies underneath is ignored. It seems to me that, unless we act with care, we will tiptoe towards those ideas again:

There is a distinct combination of ideas here – of market-friendly social democracy and a greater respect for “flag, faith and family” social conservatism – that has a natural majority in most rich countries, one that was squandered by the left in the 1980s. (Though the first Blair government had some echoes of it.)

Groups such as Maurice Glasman’s “Blue Labour” and Philip Blond’s “Red Toryism” have tried to turn their parties in a post-liberal direction, with limited success. But the interest in those two movements is in itself a sign that there may be a new intellectual consensus emerging to rebalance politics after the reign of the two liberalisms.

Here we see new language – “post-liberalism”, the two liberalisms – used to replace the older language of past rejections of the enlightenment revelation that we are free individuals. Whether than tones of Hobbes’ Leviathan with its appeal to god and the monarch as the embodiment of statehood or to a 20th century critique:

It is opposed to classical Liberalism, which arose from the necessity of reacting against absolutism, and which brought its historical purpose to an end when the State was transformed into the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual.

Today we see in those anti-liberal “Blue Labour” and “Red Tory” ideas another assault on the idea of individual sovereignty. And the attendant policies echo those past ideas – not just “flag, faith and family” (a slogan that the creator of the “F word” would have loved) but the rebirth of protectionism, the corporate state and an obsession with grand projects. For draining the Pontine Marshes read instead HS2, the Severn Barrage or ‘Boris Island’ – great schemes that only the powerful state under inspired leadership can deliver.

At the core of this new philosophy lies state-sponsored community organisation – taking Alinsky’s idea of the inspired activist and twisting it to turn these people into agents of authority wrapped in the cuddly language of the “third sector”. Such people become the shock troops of post-liberalism – the advocates of the new corporate state, projectors of moral judgement and champions of subsuming the individual into an allocated geographic, cultural or social group.

This post-liberalism is founded on a different conception of the state than the “F word” – more local, less anti-clerical and closer to the “F word’s” syndicalist roots. But some of the calls are familiar:

“...we've got to re-interrogate our relationship with the EU on the movement of labour…We should be more generous and friendly in receiving those who are needed. To be more generous, we have to draw the line.”

...and:

“a commitment to regional renewal, democratising corporate governance, reform of the firm, a left patriotism, a willingness to work with faith communities and a scepticism of traditional centralising, state solutions.”

As the creator of the “F-word” demanded:

...an active man, one engaged in activity with all his energies: it desires a man conscious of the difficulties that exist in action and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle, considering that it behooves man to conquer for himself that life truly worthy of him, creating first of all in himself the instrument (physical, moral, intellectual) in order to construct it. Thus for the single individual, thus for the nation, thus for humanity. . . .

But above all:

Outside the State there can be neither individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, syndicates, classes)...

So, when those protectionist, anti-immigration, anti-choice, anti-business words drop from the lips of politicians red or blue – couched in a language of populist appeal – listen instead to an earlier post-liberal voice, that of Mussolini, and ask whether we really want those ideas again?

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A thought on the state and ownership....

It’s time to come over all philosophical again – driven, on this occasion, to explain the issues around the interchangeable use of the word “public”, “state” and “government”. And to explore why, when something is “publicly-owned” it doesn’t mean ‘owned by the public’ but rather ‘owned by the state’.

Firstly, however, we need to recall that the idea of ‘government’ – being the administration of the state’s interests – goes back a long way and that, for most of that time the state’s interests have been the interests of a narrow elite rather than the entire people. Indeed, some would argue that this still applies, that ‘government’, ‘elite’ and ‘state’ are de facto interchangeable terms.

The earliest governments serve what Finer (after Weber) described as the ‘oikos economy’ – drawing on the Greek idea of the household:

• It is not just any household: it is ‘the authoritarian household – of a prince, manorial lord, or patrician’.
• Its dominant motive is not capitalist acquisition but the lord’s organized want-satisfaction, satisfied in kind. And this remains so if, in order to secure otherwise available goods, it has market-oriented enterprises attached to it
• In its pure state, however, it is completely autarkic.

The purpose of business, of trade and commerce is not – in the manner of Adam Smith – to allow the satisfaction of individual self-interest but rather to satisfy the interests of the ‘household’ (as manifest in the interests of the household’s governors or rulers). Under such a system the individual has rights only in so far as these are granted to him – and these rights can be removed arbitrarily should the governors deem that to be in their interests.

Thus – from its earliest days – government was illiberal. Freedom was constrained by the needs of the oikos as defined by its government. The typical Sumerian, Egyptian or even Athenian was not ‘free’ but was indentured to the polity – to the state’s ‘household’. And the purpose of the state in most places today remains the same – it is uninterested in market-oriented enterprise except that such enterprise is an effect means of securing revenues allowing the state to fulfil its desires.

Which brings us to the matter of ownership and the discussion as to whether the term ‘state-owned’ equates to us (which I take to mean ‘the people collectively’) owning. Back in Sumer or Memphis we knew where we were – everything belonged to the ‘god-emperor’. We didn’t own anything except in the de minimus manner of owning a pot or a spoon.

Today it is more difficult – we do own things but only as individuals. The law and custom does not recognise collective ownership unless that ownership is defined – the Co-op is ‘mutually-owned’ in that there is a long list of members who ‘own’ the organisation. However, those individuals cannot dispose of their ownership – a Co-op membership has no market value since I cannot sell you that membership. It is not ownership but a narrowly-defined right to a ‘say’.

State-ownership – when defined in these terms – is even more nebulous. The Co-op’s members can, in theory elect to dispose of all or part of the business. In the case of state-ownership this is not the case. We – the property’s collective owners – have no power to dispose of the property through collective action. No mechanism exists for decisions about the property to be made by ‘us’, the property’s collective ‘owners’. If the mutual ownership in the case of the Co-op is diluted, in the case of ‘state-ownership’ is almost homeopathic in its dilution.

So you can see why I find the idea that something – land, buildings, forest – belongs to ‘us’ when it is state-owned difficult to accept. Yes, we have a degree of say over the government through electing representatives. But I’m not sure that this gives ‘us’ control – a prerequisite of property rights. Control of the property rests either with those employed to manage – the foresters, land agents or caretakers – or with those we elect as our representatives.  In truth this gets to the heart of differences between believers in individual liberty and Fabian social democrats.

The social democrat ideal is encapsulated in Mussolini’s statement:

“Everything within the state, nothing without the state”

There is nothing – no activity we undertake that should fall outside the remit of government action. It that respect, the state and ‘the people’ are inseparable so that which is owned by the state is de jure owned by the people. Even if those people have no say over the use or disposal of that which they ‘own’!

For the believer in liberty, the state is bounded. Limited in its ownership and scope to those things we have asked of it. Once that function is no longer required, the state’s ownership ceases. The only things ‘within the state’ are things we have placed in its orbit – all else is without the state, which is to say free. Moreover, the idea that ‘state-ownership’ and ‘public-ownership’ are in any way comparable is a fiction sustained only by those whose interests are served by Mussolini’s viewpoint.

The state may no longer be the King but that marginal release from oppression did not transform the state into the people. The state remains an instrument of control rather than liberty, of suppression rather than release and of elite rather than of the people. And state-ownership for the sake of state-ownership serves all of us badly.

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Just afore I go - a thought on education

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I rather thought this quote summed up why the 'statist' critique of free schools is so bonkers:

But then I look at the kind of poison and stupidity and vileness Michael Gove and Toby Young and Katharine Birbalsingh have to put up with, and I do wonder. It was what struck me when watching Toby’s brilliant documentary series about his temerity in wanting to create a school offering a liberal arts education (specialising in the classics) gratis and for free to any child in the area, of however lowly a background, who might benefit from it.

What on earth is wrong with that? The opponents are purveyors of our current choiceless, failing system. The headteachers of the schools that think it fine to throw out semi-literate kids without much - if any - hope, the Unions that oppose any threat to their negotiated orthodoxy and the educationalists who refuse to admit that their theories and schemes have failed.

I am delighted that we have three proposals for free schools in Bradford (and not surprised by the rather contemptuous response from the LEA bureaucracy) because I know that what we're delivering now needs shaking up. And I hope that, when these schools succeed, we'll see a raft of other new schools delivering fine education - without concern to poverty or background - that can push aside the failing and coasting schools we have today.

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Why state monopolies are bad (and I'm annoyed)

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While standing in a queue at the railway station recently I pondered a little on the contradiction of monopoly (the useless station operator had just three tills open at the busiest time of the year for buying tickets). Not the game but the control of a given industry, commercial operation of service by a single organisation. Why is it that private monopolies are bad whereas public monopolies are good?

The economics books say that the monopoly firm will always set their quantity at the level where marginal cost is equal to marginal revenue. This allows for “monopoly profits” so long as entry to the market is constrained.

So why should state monopolies – like health or education, for example – be better? Is there some special magic that makes them different? Well let’s be kind and assume that the state monopoly is stopped by a benign government from price gouging. That would be alright wouldn’t it?

Well not really – not only do monopolies (however cuddly) tend to set higher prices but they do not pass on economies of scale. So while our cuddly government might control the price a little, it does not stop the build up of inefficiencies produced by a lack of market pressure.

So where does all the money go, you ask?

When we look at most privatisation of monopoly industries – telecoms, gas, electricity, postal services and so on – one of the key initial gains lay in reducing the size of the workforce. This should not surprise us since the state monopoly is at its heart a producer owned and controlled organisation. The gains from economies of scale and the excess profits implicit in monopoly do not go to shareholders – as would be the case in a private monopoly – but to those who are employed in the industry.

Ah, I hear you say, that’s good then? After all the money that in a private arrangement goes into to pockets of fat cat owners is going to the workers!

Again, not really. Firstly the distribution is uneven – pay for administrative and supervisory employees is far higher than is merited by the skills needed to perform the task (or by comparison with similar private sector jobs) whereas the reverse is true for manual jobs within the state monopoly. This imbalance comes about because administrative functions control the distribution of cash within the monopoly organisation.

Secondly, the organisation becomes overmanned. Not only are new bureaucratic processes and systems developed but senior administrators create a culture where self-administration is a sin. PAs, clerical assistants, clerks and policy advisors proliferate – all on good money, all “contributing”, all there because the monopoly provides the cash to allow such indulgence.

Maybe (just maybe) there is a case for so-called “natural monopolies” to be in public ownership. But there is no economic case at all for health and education to be de facto state monopolies. In fact we get expensive, inefficient, overmanned services run for the benefit of bureaucracy rather than for the consumers of those services.

So I’m right to be irritated by “protecting the NHS” – from what? Efficiency? Competition? Its consumers? Marauding killer zombies? If monopolies are a bad thing – and they are – then the NHS needs breaking up. We can’t go on with the current ineffective and inefficient arrangement - it can be owned by government, charity, social enterprise - whatever - but there must be a properly competitive market.

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