PHILLIP Blond has been hailed as David Cameron’s ‘new favourite intellectual’. I must admit it’s news to me that Cameron actually has favourite intellectuals; British politicians usually abjure that sort of thing as some unspeakable vice, generally associated with the French.
Nevertheless, the Lancaster University theologian has secured considerable publicity for his book Red Tory, in which he reportedly makes the case for twenty-first century Disraelism.
Oddly enough, Blond wasn't always a red rightist. I am told by a friend who was a contemporary of his at Hull University in the 1980s that in those days he was simply red, so to speak. Memories fade, of course, but she seems to recall that plain old Phil, as he was known, was even sympathetic to the views of anarchist publication Class War.
I intend to get round to reading Red Tory over the summer, and obviously would not presume to comment on his ideas in depth until I have done so. But we get a taster of what he is about in the Guardian this morning, in which Mr Blond argues that ‘the new Conservatism can create a capitalism that works for the poor’.
The headline proposition alone is enough to warn the reader to expect momentous silliness ahead. Capitalism is an economic system premised on the exploitation of the working class. No variety of capitalism ‘works’ for the poor, except perhaps in the sense of funding a welfare state that can ameliorate some of its worst effects. It works for the owners of the means of production, though. But let’s take a quick run through the stall Blond sets out.
Over the last 30 years the Anglo-Saxon world has adopted the most disingenuous of economic systems. Under the guise of capitalism for all, we have produced an extraordinary amount of capital but an ever diminishing number of capitalists. Rather than trickling downwards, wealth has leveraged upwards – denying increasing numbers of people the ability to truly own, trade and prosper.
In 1976, excluding property, the bottom half of the UK population owned 12% of the marketable wealth; by 2003 that had fallen to just 1%. Economists at Société Générale recently calculated that in the United States, the income of the highest paid fifth rose by 60% after 1970, while for all others it has fallen by 10%.
From the pen of a Tory – ‘red’, true blue or pink with purple spots - that is quite an indictment of the free market. It is, moreover, spot on. The thing is, Mr Blond seems genuinely surprised by all this, as if an ever growing disparity between rich and poor is an anomaly - or ‘externality’ in the jargon - rather than a sure sign that the system is working well in its own terms.
Through monopolisation of capital markets, deployment of unprecedented leverage capital has centralised around a model of debt-financed speculation that – without any due diligence – has been transferred wholesale to the taxpayer, more than doubling the entire national debt.
Yeah. Some German guy – who lived about the same time as Disraeli, as it happens - analysed all this in detail back in the nineteenth century. Noting a tendency towards the concentration and centralisation of capital is nothing new, and is nowadays an orthodox position, even for mainstream economists.
Note to Mr Blond; the capitalist state is not called the capitalist state for nothing. One of its functions is to defend capitalist property relations, if necessary through measures of state capitalism.
The average citizen now suffers twice over. Since ordinary incomes were too low to support desired standards of living, personal debt financed the gap. Desperate to secure an asset base against which debt could eventually be redeemed, those without capital herded en masse into debt-financed property bubbles that were always going to burst, leaving many with no equity and a hugely enhanced personal debt. That debt has returned by many multiples on the public balance sheet – leading to tax increases and service cuts. No wonder people, full of furious contempt, are willing to challenge the accepted economic orthodoxies.
No leftie could put it better. But why did this happen? Largely so that employers could increase the rate of exploitation by holding down wages, while simultaneously maintaining the consumer spending necessary to sell their products.
David Cameron recognised all of this …
A prime example of what Private Eye used to call Arslikhan, no?
… and spoke at Davos early this year of the need to recapitalise the poor and create a capitalism that works for all. The key political aim of this truly transformative conservatism must be the generation of an asset effect for the decapitalised bottom half of society.
Recapitalise? They never had any capital to begin with.
Assets must, however, come from somewhere …
You can see why he’s considered a top-notch intellectual, can’t you?
… and since redistribution and expenditure via the state has such a poor record in alleviating dependency …
Except when it comes to bankers, of course.
… a fresh approach is required. Welfare or public expenditure should move from a spending to an investment model. The aim must be to free the poor from welfare subsidy through the generation of asset independence.
Where to start? In Blond’s Disraeliworld, where everyone is an ‘asset independent capitalist’, there would be no workers. That’s why it can’t happen, Phil.
The following are some ideas as to how this might be achieved:
1 The poor become dragons …
Puke.
The overall level of the UK bank bailout depends on definition, but authorities agree that it represents some £1 trillion. At some point these assets will be broken up and sold back to the private sector. Even at a rough figure of 5% return …
There is no guarantee that the taxpayer is ever going to see that money again, let alone a 5% return. Even if the scenario does pan out, it is decades away.
… this will produce an enormous capital injection of £50 billion. The argument on the progressive right is that since the poor suffer the greatest marginal rates of taxation (the bottom fifth of households also pay a greater share of their income in overall taxation than any other group), this money should be used to repay debt and lower their tax burden.
The argument on the right is that 45% income tax is an abomination unto the Lord and that tax cuts should be directed to the rich, which will magically maximise overall tax take. Laffer Curve and all that.
But such repayment will generate no asset effect for those at the bottom. A far better idea would be to distribute a substantial proportion of the return to the poor via investment vouchers. These vouchers should only be activated in conjunction with others – creating an associative investment pool.
We’ve had a foretaste of how this might work in the shape of the giveaway privatisations of the 1980s. If the vouchers had any value, most people would cash in rapidly rather than transform overnight into a new race of Siraluns.
With appropriate advice …
Remember the pension mis-selling scandal?
… a whole new class of asset investors can be created at the bottom of society. Further, if they invest in ordinary businesses they will only get a standard return.
Everybody must get above-average returns. Not mathematically possible, I’m afraid.
If, however, they choose to invest in social enterprises, their investment will generate both an economic and a social profit. Investment in local shops, for example, will give both a monetary and social stake and return. So envisaged, the poor generate a stakeholder economy around a universalised dragons' den that provides seed capital for a new generation of businesses.
Shopkeeper capitalism vs Tescopoly. There can be only one winner.
Right. My lunch break is over. More later.
Posted at 13:59, 3 July 2009
Comments (34)
It's called a 'pyramid scheme'. Enough of this nonsense: Revolution NOW!!!!!
Jesus Christ, Dave.
Go on, I double-triple-with-chocolate-sprinkles-whipped-cream-and-strawberries dare you:
show me one genuinely free market in this country.
Come on, show me one free market.
As I understand rightwing wingnut thinking, there are no chemically-pure examples of free markets anywhere in the world. Just as there are no pure socialist economies.
Every market is mixed to some extent, right?
Every market is inherently statist- private property is just a relic of state sovereigns who claimed the divine right to the natural world, and to distribute it as they pleased.
Modern right-wing "Libertarianism" is not about getting rid of the state, it's about getting rid of the specific state institutions that irk the rich, while deifying the ones, like private property, that the rich find pleasing.
Very good post Dave, but I am disappointed with your criticism of Obnoxio. He's clearly made an effort towards being less of a tedious bore by not posting that the BNP are left wing. I think that deserves a pat on the head.
Otherwise Dave you have hit the nail on the head. It staggers me sometimes the abject ignorance of capitalist commentators about their own system.
I remember back in the early days of the New Labour government, Blair got all the CEOs of the rail franchises into Number 10 and demanded they improve services. He was genuinely staggered when they, in so many words, told him to get stuffed as they were responsible to their shareholders, not the Prime Minister.
Mike has got 'libertarianism' down right in my opinion.
I am being nice today.
On the contrary; libertarianism, with its anti-intellectual property stance, its distate of central banking, etc etc, is opposed to the state institutions that keep the rich rich.
I'm also going to point out that because any government action can only be based on the threat or use of violence, any support of state action is immoral.
Welcome to communism then, Martin. If you're honest about being anti-statist, that is. There's just as much state in private property as there is in a welfare cheque.
To be honest, I see nothing wrong with communism. The only condition is, it's gotta be voluntary.
I disagree, in the same way that you wouldn't expect a petty thief to voluntarily hand back what they seized.
At the risk of sounding like slightly sycophantic, MikeSC has absolutely nailed right wing 'libertarianism' in that second para of his post above.
I'm going to use that one myself (assuming mike as a good leftie doesn't mind;) )
Apologies for the accidental 'like' above, like.
I don't mind, I probably sto... er, *redistributed* it from someone else in the first place ;)
"As I understand rightwing wingnut thinking, there are no chemically-pure examples of free markets anywhere in the world."
Watch and learn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0
"Watch and learn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0"
Ha ha brilliant!
How are you going to read Red Tory this summer? According to Amazon.co.uk, font of all knowledge on book releases, it comes out in Jan 2010.
Great marketing pitch to have had a book reviewed in several thousand current affairs magazines months before he's decided what to write in it. Possibly he'll just collate all the blog comments about it and stick them in.
"Economists at Société Générale recently calculated that in the United States, the income of the highest paid fifth rose by 60% after 1970, while for all others it has fallen by 10%."
Well that's a load of arse to start with.
Absolutely no way has the income of 80% of Americans fallen 10% over the last 39 years. Simply not true.
You might be able to say "the portion of GDP going to the top 10% has risen by 60%" or some such, but absolutely not that real incomes have fallen for 80% over that time period. Absolute cobblers.
I seem to recall the Conservatives did seek to capitalise the working classes.
It was called "right-to-buy". Thatcher gave a lot of poor bastards who had been paying rent to the state for their home years the right to buy that property at a discount (still at a hefty premium to the costs of building and the revenues from rental income).
Every bloody leftie, including no doubt Osler, came out of the woodwork to contest that right.
Think of it; Thatcher - the real leftie; Lefties - just state capitalists.
Every bloody lefty was absolutely right to be against the right to buy because "far from seeing council estates transformed by their home-owning former tenants, it has led to fractured communities, the rise of exploitative landlordism and a lack of housing so severe that some councils are now trying to buy their old homes back."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/sep/30/housing.houseprices
speKe yOur BrAneS in The Times
" ... it has led to fractured communities". Erh no. It has led to the development of "mixed communities" where a variety of tenure is recognised to contribute to the life and vitality of an area. The monotenure model of provision gave us Brixton, Toxteth and any other Godawful crime-rinsed ghetto on the edge of town.
"... exploitative landlordism". So state landlordism wasn't exploitative? I see logic has been turfed out the window in favour of messianic socialism.
" a lack of housing so severe that some councils are trying to buy their old homes back". Obviously, our boy's a lapsed empiricist. Why bother with a few facts when you can stare into your beer and take a position. Doncha think that 2m immigrants into this country over the past decade have contributed just a tad to the housing shortage.
This may seem crazy 'abstract' academic thinking etc but so was David Freuds 12 weeks 'research' on the welfare reforms which incredibly will soon be policy. There is every reason to think Blonds ideas will be taken up by politicians. Imo, politics in the Uk is in many ways a very extreme right wing affair, but masked by a basically all party consensus which normalises such radical and brutal polices, for example, such plicies as forcing unemployed to sweep the streets wearing yellow bibs would have been seen as cruel by many Tories even in the 60's0, etc.
Here is an important link on the fight against Welfare Reform:
http://harpymarx.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/tuc-social-policy-forum-welfare-reform-bill/
I was there as Louise kindly remarks.
Absolutely no way has the income of 80% of Americans fallen 10% over the last 39 years. Simply not true.
Ooh, argument from personal incredulity. Haven't seen that one for a while!
Michael Read obviously couldn't be bothered to read the link in my post and I don’t blame him. After all it demonstrates the devasting effect that dogmatic free market ideology has had on working class communities and no Thatcheroid wants to be reminded of that. Instead he wants to scapegoat migrants for the housing shortage even though a new interim report from the IPPR concludes that migrants to the UK over the last five years make up less than two per cent of the total number of people in social housing and that 90 per cent of people who live in social housing are UK-born. Still much more fun to have a pop at that the darkies than analyse the structural impact of neo-liberalism eh?
"dogmatic ... Thatcheroid ... scapegoat migrants ... IPPR ... darkies - and finally, that good old cliche of cliches - neoliberalism".
Just how does a fella with these get up in the morning, have breakfast with the wife and kids and not know that he's a complete fraud.
You're staring at shadows on a cave, mate. They're not real. You're not either, but you are never going to know it.
This is all getting very existential michael – are you saying that I’m a figment of your imagination or that you’re a figment of mine? Perhaps this entire exchange is being conducted in the Matrix. At any rate you’ll have to give me lessons on how best to perceive objective reality through such non-conceptual, neutral descriptives as “godawful crime-rinsed ghetto”, “messianic socialism” and “bloody lefties” – clearly non contestable realities all.
Motes and beams, mate.
I was replying in your currency. You just didn't get the irony, or for that matter, a Platonic allusion.
Still, you got as far back as the Matrix. You'll have to go back a couple of thousand years, and grow up a bit, and you'll get a decent idea.
"Grow up" = read Plato?
I've read The Republic and I haven't got the faintest idea what half-brained bullshit point you were trying to make with the cave analogy.
Maybe you could provide us with your working definition of irony next time you pop down from your lofty intellectual perch too.
It is a little known fact that Lefties don't do irony. And now I come to think it, humour is a tough one too.
Think Mark Steel. The lumbering cruddy set-up, the bleedin' obvious apercu and the punchline which you worked out from the first two minutes of the patter.
"The pursuit of rational self-interest really fucks shit up in practice". I bet that's sported grandly on a T-Shirt.
Fuck me, if I were your kids I'd be ashamed of you. Wottsit? Geezerpunk.
"... exploitative landlordism". So state landlordism wasn't exploitative?
I had some friends in Lambeth who were renting an ex-council house from a private management company at about £300. If it had still been owned by the council, the rent would have been about £80 per week.
Matthew Stiles' observations
One of the problems the social housing sector has is its tenants sub-letting their properties to others at rents greatly in excess of that charged by the state landlord.
You can't buck the market.
What your friends could have witnessed is "tenant landlordism" - inevitably a smart-arse leftie with principals to liquidate into readies as quickly as possible via an arbitrage on rent.
Look for the bastard who has read Althuser, Marcuse and Gramsci and he'll be screwing you just like it says on The Wire.
Mr Read
Your message is a bit of a ramble but the place I am talking about wasn't a sublet. It was a result of the right-to-buy, the property ended up being bought by an absentee landlord.
Mr Stiles.
This is basic logic. You can go from general to specific but you can't go the other way. Follow: All swans are white. I see a swan. It is white.
What you told us was an event which had no relevance whatsover to anything in particular. Just your thoughts with lefty spin.
Never mind. All lefties do it. Fucking headbangers.