NATIONALISATION of the banking system is not quite the Sovietisation of Britain, avers Simon Heffer in today's Daily Telegraph. Not quite. But it is, he argues, a start. What's more, I think he is being serious.
There's no other way to read his astonishingly misguided article, published under the headline ‘we’re all socialists now, comrade’. Just so readers get the message, it is accompanied by a picture of Gordon Brown, photoshopped to make it look as if he wearing a Red Army general’s uniform.
Let’s assume that such patently puerile nonsense is intended to make a genuine political point. In that case, it would be churlish not to welcome our newfound if involuntary fellow traveller to the workers’ state in which we have this morning woken up.
By the way Simon, we will eventually need to have a word with you about the ‘re-education facility’ we have set up for the free market right. It is in a most pleasant location, in an expropriated former public school in the agreeable London suburb of Harrow.
Attendance is voluntary, of course. But let’s just say you would be well advised to report there at the specified time. I mean, we wouldn’t want something untoward to happen to your family, would we? And we certainly don't want to have to knock on your door at midnight or anything like that. That's jolly bad form.
And the 14 hours a day of intensive dehayekianisation lectures, repetitively barked out over the tannoy system, will soon have our real life Rubashovs au fait with Ernest Mandel’s take on Kondratiev long wave theory.
OK, this isn‘t going to happen, of course; but then neither is the quasi-1984 dystopia that Heffer paints pour épater les lecteurs du Torygraph. That’s because Britain stands no closer to socialism now than it did when the free market triumphalism that he so nostalgically advocates was in full swing.
As I have argued before, socialism is not about giving a no strings £500bn to Britain’s bankers; this measure has emphatically not been carried out, as a febrile Heffer imagines, as a result of ‘the instinctively socialistic leanings of our prime minister’.
No, this decision has been taken because the ruling class has no alternative but to make the rest of society foot the bill for its bungled economic management. This is a bail-out, comrade Heffer; the clue’s in the name. Don’t worry, you’ll learn about it in the camp.
Unless I’m missing something, the social relations of production in Britain have been left very much unchanged by this development. Every sphere of society remains shot through with the spirit of extraordinary class privilege, even as much-disparaged immigrant cleaning workers, ordinary Joes in call centres and local government officer, teachers and traffic wardens pay up to maintain the rentier bourgeoisie of Bishop’s Avenue in gold-tapped bathroom bling-bling.
Heffer goes on to quote Ayn Rand - one of the intellectual gurus of free market fundamentalism - as arguing that the difference between the welfare state and the totalitarian state is only a matter of time. Presumably he does not see the irony of this statement, just 24 hours after the class he represents has collectively received a handout equivalent to one-third of Britain’s GDP. A word of thanks wouldn’t go amiss, mate.
At the apex of the delusional fantasies Heffer comes up with this little gem:
[S]ocialism requires the suspension of the iron laws of economics, including those of supply and demand. What that achieves, of course, is the distortion of the economy, grotesque inefficiency in the use of scarce resources, the limiting of growth and of the extension of prosperity.
Read that again, slowly. Socialism distorts the economy? Actually, it was Thatcherite capitalism that transformed Britain from a country that actually made things into an Alice in Wonderland nation, confident that it could secure lasting prosperity simply by slicing, dicing and repackaging surplus value extracted from the global working class. It is precisely the economic model of the last three decades that now stands in the dock, not the model advanced by the democratic left.
Put simply, Simon, cut out this infantile rightist scaremongering, if only for the sake of your amour propre. What Brown and Darling have done perhaps invites parallels with the 1930s America of FDR. But comparisons with the USSR not only demonstrate grotesque historical illiteracy for an educated man; it stands as a gratuitous insult to the many million victims of Stalinism.
And finally, ponder this; if capitalism is so great, how come we are where we are now?
Posted at 10:42, 9 October 2008
Comments (14)
He needs to read his father's book, 'The Uses of Literacy' and ponder on where we come from.
'The uses of literacy' was by Simon Hoggart's father, not Simon Heffer's. Simon Hoggart is also smug and annoying at times, but unlike Heffer he's a good writer and often very funny.
What Brown and Darling have done perhaps invites parallels with the 1930s America of FDR.
The bourgeoisie of 30s America reviled FDR for his actions and accused him of Bolshevism too. The hatred of the American ruling class for the man who saved them from a potential workers revolution passed to their descendants and inspired the free market ideologues of Reagan. Some on the far right spoke of FDR as the American Stalin.
Britain is just a large version of Iceland.
Forget socialsm. Who will buy?
Heffer is a ridiculous, Bunteresque, tory turd. His conclusions make him sound like a lunatic. That's why he can't answer:
"if capitalism is so great, how come we are where we are now?"
Heffer.. never read him. He is sounding about two decades out of touch these days. But Hoggart, much better.Jenkins best of all.
By the way its NOT a bailout.. Darling says this every time he speaks.Every mention of this "preferential share purchase" is prefaced by "let us be very clear here.. this is not a bailout"
So please don't repeat the words bail out again or the whole investing for the future slogan will begin to sound like just another one of many ideas that have been and are being tried until one of them works.
Peter Oborne wrote a similer article in the Daily Mail, headed ''Day that Britain change forever''
He writes: Phase one lasted from 1945 to 1979. During these years, the post-war State was dominant in almost every corner of life and the economy was characterised by periodic crises culminating in the social and financial collapse of the 1970s.
Then, starting in 1979, Margaret Thatcher lifted the straitjacket of government control from the economy - opening the way to almost three decades of unprecedented prosperity.
No mention of the two worst recessions since the war.
But what do expect from the Mail and Telegraph.
The bankers are acting as if they're doing the taxpayer a favour in taking the money!
"Giorgio Questa, professor of Finance at Cass Business School, says: "The Government is trying to get political mileage out of using the taxpayer to make good for their mistakes in the last 10 years. They have been abysmal in the conduct of supervision and now they want to interfere again."
Independent, 9th October
Poor dears want to have their cake and eat it - they've been banging on about the wonders of 'light touch' regulation for a decade - and now castigate the govt. for letting them dig their own grave.
The free market fundamentalists generally seem to be in full retreat though, Ruth Lea, late of Lehman Brothers and the very right wing Institute Of Directors has just been on Q/T claiming she has aloway been in favour of regulated markets!.
Capitalism has worked, sort of.
Socialism has fucked up big time, every time, without fail.
Why does it take 1000 words of pseudo-think to get to that choice?
'Capitalism has worked, sort of.'
Capitalism has only 'worked' for the minority of the human race living in wsstern Europe, North America and some Eastern Asian states, and not coincidentally these have been the states which have most often intervened in the economy. The Randian free market paradise has been a disaster whenever it has been tried - or more commonly imposed by force.
'Socialism has fucked up big time, every time, without fail.'
True Socialism has only been attempted for brief periods - the Paris Commune, the worker's soviets of 1917 - so I presume by 'socialism' you are referring to the State capitalism of Stalin and his heirs. Even so, these states proved capable of matching or exceeding the growth rates of nominally 'capitalist' states - such as in Eastern Europe in the 50s and 60s.
Much as I loathe government intervention in markets at the best of times, no government - be they Labour or Conservative - is going to let banks fail because the side effects for confidence across the UK economy would be catastrophic.
Heffer was getting a bit carried away yesterday.
"such as in Eastern Europe in the 50s and 60s."
C'mon, are you seriously suggesting the DDR or Czechoslovakia were economically even *close* to West Germany by 1969?
(yes, I know WG was an interventionist mixed economy, but it was 'nominally capitalist' in the sense you're using).
'Socialism has fucked up big time, every time, without fail.'
"True Socialism has only been attempted for brief periods - the Paris Commune, the worker's soviets of 1917"
These statements are not mutually exclusive, you know.