Tag Archives: Ayn Rand

Why do we constantly choose men who we would reject as friends as our leaders?

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As somebody with a keen interest in history, I often see in past times leaders who resemble those of today. I see in the last three Caesars, Caligula, Claudius and Nero men who embody the characteristics, so often demonstrated in the behaviours of contemporary politicians. Caligula was mad and brutal, once slaughtering a senators son and forcing that same senator to share in his jokes about his dead son. This senator having one surviving son was forced to participate in this charade to preserve that son. He was reputed to have wanted to make his horse a senator and to have declared war on the sea. Claudius was a vindictive mediocrity, who ordered an invasion of Britain, so he could have a triumph in Rome. He believed this would establish his right to the throne. Claudius was poisoned by his wife, so her son Nero could become Emperor. Nero was a vainglorious man who believed that he was a talented poet, musician and playwright. He was neither, but his courtiers out of fear flattered him by praising him as a talented artist. Madness, mediocrity, charlatanry and vaingloriousness are personality traits that I can identity in so many of contemporary leading politicians.

Although contemporary political leaders no longer have the power or right to kill their enemies, they as so many vindictive Caesars try to destroy them. The media can be relied upon to indulge in the character assassination of their rivals. Any right wing politician can expect the media to conduct on their behalf the most vituperative and vile attacks on their left wing rivals. Intimidation is their weapon of preference. It is no coincidence that so many politicians are poor public speakers. They don’t need to employ reasoned speech, as they have much more effective means of silencing their critics.

Without exception the person who abuses, exploits and intimidates people is recognised as the person best qualified to be leader. These are people who amongst our friendship groups, we would reject recognising them as unpleasant dysfunctional individuals. Today power and the ability to use and exploit power are seen as the only political virtue required of a politician. What we worship is the abuse of power. Bad behaviour by our leaders is excused as being necessary to get the job done.

Contemporary politics lacks any great motivating belief or ideology. The politicians who govern us today have grown up in what is an age of relative plenty*. They and the people found the great ideologies of the past unnecessary, as no great change was needed in society, all were well fed and housed. The great anger at the injustices of society of which gave rise to the great reforming and revolutionary ideologies of the past was no longer there. The left grew complacent and abandoned socialism and was negligent in the protecting the rights of the people.

Whether it be called individualism or something else, people saw the life as being the acquisition of material goods, the securing of a comfortable lifestyle. However in this complacent society, there were the malcontents. These malcontents were of the right, the wealthy right. They wanted a return to the unequal society of the past. A society that gave them a unique set of privileges of wealth and status. They wanted back a society that deferred to wealth and privilege.

All societies have periods of crisis, any organisation created by fallible mankind is prone to periods of failure. When the economic crisis of the 1970s occurred, rather than take action to remedy the most obvious failings of a society that served most people well; the right seized the initiative and implemented a series of changes that would create not a society that served all well, but one that served to benefit a small group of the most privileged.

They also had an ideology, Neo-liberalism which claimed that by dismantling the regulatory state it would free the economy to create more wealth for all. These regulations which they were so eager to destroy were those that protected the well being of the people. Soon even the political left adopted this philosophy believing it the only means of attaining political success. Neo-liberalism is a belief system empty of any moral code. The only moral value that can be ascribed to this philosophy is a belief in success to be achieved at any cost.

What Neo-liberalism created was a moral waste ground, a society in which the old social contract was destroyed. No longer did the political leaders govern in the interests of the people, so the people no longer gave there consent to be governed by their current leaders. Dissatisfaction with the political leadership has grown, increasingly people have turned to political groupings outside parliament which promise change. Change that will benefit them the people. Although these leaders are charismatic, what they offer is unreal solutions to real problems. Solutions such as leaving the EU as the means to restore national prosperity and pride. These political groups are so like the millennial cults of the past, that offered magical but unreal solutions to real problems. Since they preach the impossible, they don’t employ reasoned argument, but the tactics of the advertising industry to sell there set of impossible truths. Criticism of such movements only attracts hostility and threats. The British Brexiteers constantly make threats about what will happen if they are denied. A threat left unspecified.

Returning to my main argument since the onset of the Neo-liberal revolution we have been taught that the only people that count are the ‘movers and shakers’ of society. Such people can be identified by their abrasive personal style and there contempt for the ordinary people. The billionaire heroes of Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Unchained’. Even politicians that are far from being characterised as movers or shakers feel they have to adopt this mode of behaviour. A politician would feel insulted if they were described as principled and of good character. Unless of course it was in their election literature and being used as a means of winning votes.

There is also the self fulfilling prophecy. Our expectations of the political class are so low we expect them to behave in an unprincipled manner. Any politician that behaves differently is an object if suspicion.

* This has become increasingly less so since the Neo-liberal reforms of the late 20th century and the financial crash of 2008

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Why our times desperately need the economics of optimism

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Economics can be categorised and divided in a number of ways, but one the most fundamental divisions in economics is between that of the economics of optimism and that pessimism. Quite simply the first tells you how to do things and the second why should not attempt to do things. The former is the economics of change, the latter is the economics of no change. Usually the first is associated with left of centre politics and the latter with right of centre politics. Possibly the best example of the latter is the current policy of austerity practised by the Conservative government. They can say no too many desirable things such as more spending of health care on the grounds that there is no extra money to finance such spending. In the words of the Prime Minister Mrs May,  there is no ‘money tree’. They prioritise sound finance over other social goods. In contrast the social democrats or socialists would ask the question, how can we raise more money to finance increased spending on health.

Usually the economics of pessimism holds sway in economics, so I will explain that first. One of the earliest exponents of this school was the clergyman Thomas Malthus. The originator of the theory of diminishing returns. He stated quite simply that there was a finite quantity of productive resources and if the population increased indefinitely the same quantity of wealth would be divided between more and more people and so each successive generation would have less than the previous. There was he believed a  saviour which prevented the mass impoverishment of all, a natural system of checks and balances that kept the population numbers in check. These were disease, famine and war.

Today’s economists of pessimism believe that there is a similar limit on to the good things in life and for the sake of the well being of society the poor must be denied a fair share of these good thins. There is just not enough to go around.  Far better that wealth is restricted to the deserving few, the wealth creators, without whom we would all go hungry. These are the billionaires that the popular right wing novelist  Ayn Rand lauds in her books. Wealth is the just reward for their zeal and enterprise. She does not deny that the masses deserve some share of the  wealth. However all they are entitled to are the ‘crumbs’ that fall from the rich man’s table. What these economists call the trickle down theory.

In the simple story told by Ayn Rand, if the super rich were prevented from enjoying their obscene wealth, they would cease in their work of wealth creation. In one of her books she describes how the billionaires disappear from society and go into hiding. Without their enterprise societies collapse and thousands of the poor starve to death. Only when the billionaires cease their strike do things return to normal and the surviving poor are now able to benefit from that minimal income that the generous billionaires think they deserve.

There is interestingly another strand to this economics of pessimism, traditional Catholicism of the Catholic ultras. This although a Christian philosophy of life and economics, is in practical terms is little different from that of Ayn Rand. Mankind they believe is corrupted by original sin and human society is but a corruption construction made by sinful man. Any attempt to reform or improve this damned and corrupt society is doomed to failure. Only God has the power and knowledge to create the good society, or heaven on earth. Any attempts to redistribute are income doomed to failure by the very nature of this dysfunctional society. They are likely to have the unintended consequence of making things worse for all as increased taxes to will add to the costs of production so making businesses inefficient so reducing output making all poorer.  All that is permissible is individual acts of kindness or charity. In a corrupted society inequality is inevitable, as are the vast inequalities of wealth and income. Changing or improving a society of people damned with original sin is impossible and should not be attempted.

Although the economics of pessimism has usually been the dominant mode of economics, there was a brief period during the 1950s and 60s, when the reverse is true. Usually this philosophy is associated with J.M.Keynes, but there were others such as Michael Polanyi. Briefly economic practice was directed to making and preserving the good society or the welfare state. Economic policy making was intended to  five combat what William Beveridge defined as the “Giant Evils” in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease. Perhaps for the first time in its history the economy was directed in a manner which benefited the majority of people rather than the lucky minority.

Then when the economic crisis of the 1970s hit the Western economies it was easy for the economists of pessimism, to demonstrate that the crisis was caused by the profligate spending urged on governments by the economists of optimism.   Since then the pessimists have prevailed.

Now when faced with a crisis in Western economies, economies that fail to generate sufficient employment and income to meet the needs of their people, government policy can be summed up as either ‘can’t do’ or ‘won’t do’. As the governments have shown little interest in the welfare of their peoples, populist movements have developed. Movements that threaten governments with their ideology of economic pessimism. European right wing populist movements with the exception of the British, are threatening to intervene in the economy to protect and maximise the welfare of the people. If governments persist with their policies of ‘can’t and won’t do’, they will be replaced by those that can. What the populists of both the right and the left espouse is an economics of optimism or more simply the economics of ‘can do’. While some doubts must be expressed about the politics of the populists, what they do believe is that governments need an activist economic strategy. If the National Rally of Marie Le Pen ever attain power they will find that they need to intervene in business to protect the welfare of the people of France. Employment protection measures will be re-introduced, employers will find it impossible to pay less than a living  wage. Taxes will be increased on business to finance health and social care. Policies that are normally associated with the left. Societies may become less free and more intolerant but people will accept that if it means a better standard of living. What is forgotten is that the popularity of Hitler in Germany came improving the material well being of the German people. In return they tolerated the cruelties and barbarism of the Nazis.

Heaven save us from ‘Great Men’*

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Heaven spare us from great men*, should be amended to include the much greater category of those who think they are great. Perhaps the greatest curse of the present age is the numerous would be great men who wish to remake the world according to their own thinking. Government now in the U.K. is one of disruption, as each new minister tries to make his mark by changing or reversing the policies of his predecessors. In the U.K. at least never has the country been so ill served by the activities of the disruptive and damaging individuals.

History at my primary school was the history of great men. I remember lessons on Alexander the Great and King Alfred (the Great).We would sit quietly at our school desks listening in awe to stories about their achievements broadcast by the school radio. Not until I was much older did I realise that there was a dark side to these men. Alexander the Great destroyed great civilisations, the destruction of the Persian capital Persepolis was one of his crimes. The destruction of this great city by fire was nothing other than an act of senseless vandalism. At the time of its destruction Persia had already been defeated and its destruction was no other than an act of revenge which served no purpose. When conquering the Persian Empire, his army had came across a Greek town whose forebears had fought with the Persians on the side of the Persians a 100 years earlier. He decreed that descendants of traitors should be destroyed. All within the town boundaries were slaughtered.

However Alexander was not only a destroyer, he introduced Greek learning and culture to the wider world. In Alexandria the city he built in Egypt, housed the greatest library in the ancient world. Alexander was a educated man, his tutor Aristotle was the leading philosopher of his age. Unfortunately today’s great men while sharing Alexander’s taste for destruction, lack his talent for creation. They either seem to lack education or despise the education they received. What these men have is a shared barbarism. Whatever they claim they have a distaste for learning. They may enjoy the opera but they don’t see the need for the culture of the arts to be shared with the lower orders of society. Arts education has been removed from state schools, as all they want from state schools is a simple functional education that will make the masses fit for the workplace. Not for these men will the legacy of a man such as Carnegie who endowed society with theatres and libraries. If these contemporary great men are educated they deem this as something that should not be shared with the undeserving majority.

Great men such as Alexander can only succeed through the ruin of their rivals. Alexander probably conspired in the murder of his father other enemies through warfare. In an authoritarian political system the destruction of your rivals is necessary for success and the only means of remaining in power. Paranoia is the common personality trait of the authoritarian leader. One king of the classical age so feared assassination that his bed was on a pillar that could only be accessed by a drawbridge, one which he could pull up at night to deny access to any would be assassins.

Winner takes and keeps all is not appropriate in a democracy. Politician have opponents who should be respected. Success should only be achieved by playing politics according to the rules of the game. If a politician’s opponents are described as enemies, this is not the action of a democratic politician. The essence of democracy is a plurality of political viewpoints and power bases. Rival power groups and politicians compete for power in the legitimate manner. Being prepared to lose and accept the rule of your rivals is one of the essentials of a democratic system. Unfortunately contemporary great men don’t operate according to the rules of the political game. They set out to destroy their rivals and their power bases. Such men intend to retain power by creating a one party state, and they manipulate the political system to achieve that end. Other politicians and their political parties can be tolerated only as long as there is no possibility of them attaining power. The toleration of other political parties is merely the democratic patina, which gives legitimacy to the political system.

What is common to all the contemporary great men is that their greatness is self chosen. All are desk bound warriors, who unlike the great men of the past they have never hazarded their lives in defence of their country. One great man to whom these great men in Britain pay homage is Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill took part in the last cavalry charge made by the British army at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. He unlike them was willing to risk his life in service of his country. Does there awareness of their lack a heroic hinterland drive them to claim a greatness they little deserve?

There is one long forgotten study which suggested that successful businessman were the victims of inattentive parents. Their parents had paid little attention to them when they were small. Consequently these children adopted a variety of attention seeking behaviours to attract the attention of their parents. This behaviour continued into adulthood, over achievement being a means of attracting the attention of a now non existent parent. They needed recognition and by making a large fortune they now received it. Does not each of our current great men also crave this attention and adulation? Are all our current great men also victims of neglectful or inattentive parents?

There is one characteristic of these great men that makes them a threat to democracy. They crave adulation, they want others to recognise their greatness. One characteristic of democracy is that all are subject to the rough and tumble of the democratic process, even the greatest of politicians is subject to ridicule. This is something our contemporary great men cannot stand. What pains them is that there fellow men cannot respect them for their greatness. They can only achieve the respect they demand and crave, through silencing those who show disrespect. This can only be achieved through negating those very democratic institutions which to them there enemies exploit to unfairly mock them. All these contemporary great men are anti democratic as they wish to silence the voice of dissent and mockery, whether it be in parliament or the media.

Our democratic systems of government lack the one element that enabled the Athenian democracy to survive catastrophic defeat, and a disastrous plague, a means of neutering the ambition of these great men. In Athens whenever a great man of overweening ambition threatened the democratic system, the demos (people) could respond by voting into exile these dangerous men. Anglo-Saxon democracies lack this protective mechanism, we instead have little means of protection from their damaging behaviours. Perhaps just as the Anglo-Saxon societies led the Western world into liberal democracy, now they might be the leaders in adopting the new authoritarianism.

*I cannot remember the source of this quotation

*l appear to have excluded great women from my essay. I am aware that great women such as Catherine the Great of Russia have exercised supreme power. What I am writing about is a personality trait that is overwhelming male. A destructive ambition for greatness that destroys all around it.

Intellectual stupidity a practice common to both Economists and Politicians

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Intellectual stupidity is not a concept that is to be found in book on either the subject of economics and politics. This is a concept that was created by Robert Musil. He distinguishes between two types of stupidity, natural and intellectual. The first is the one due to physiological factors, it occurs when an individual lacks the mental capacity for higher order thinking. Although he would be criticised today for his use of this offensive word, he can be justified when its contrasted with intellectual stupidity. A term Hannah Arendt had in mind when she criticised evil as personified by Adolf Eichmann as banal. This was a man who lacked intellectual curiosity, he was unable to empathise with the millions of victims of the holocaust. He thought the was a good man because he made the trains to the death camps run on time. The fact that these trains took millions to their deaths was no significance to him. Their deaths were somebody else’s responsibility. He was in his mind a good administrator not an essential player in the holocaust.

Politics and economics practitioners are blighted with a similar failing. Milton Friedman was guilty of this failing. When Milton Friedman was told that the Chilean government when introducing the free market reforms he advocated were imprisoning, torturing and killing opponents of these reforms, he said it was a price worth paying. Just as with Adolf Eichmann his vision all that mattered was the introduction the Chicago School of Economic management to human societies. Human rights was for him just a matter of secondary concern. Recent political history has been dominated by such practitioners of intellectual stupidity.

In Britain such stupidity has been demonstrated by successive governments in there implementation of the free market economy. They see there role as being facilitators of a Hayekian free market system. When ever such reforms produce failures such as the collapse of Carillon, a company to which many government sources had been outsourced; it was a consequence of poor management with the company. Never was the policy of privatisation of government services considered to be a flawed concept. The ‘Economist’ magazine while exposing the failures of Carillon’s management mounted a strong defence of the outsourcing of government services. Now two other outsourcing giants Capita and Interserve are in trouble. Yet our government remains committed to outsourcing as a policy practice. This is demonstrates intellectual stupidity, as government ministers cannot contemplate any alternative policies or thinking.

Intellectually stupid politicians are always trying to second guess their civil servants. Rather than seeing them as experienced administrators who can offer them practical and useful advice on policy matters; they are seen conspirators who are trying to obstruct their policies. The traditional civil service practice of providing the minister with a series of policy alternatives from which to choose is seen as a threat to the integrity of government policy making. Just recently a senior politician who studied history at University decided that economists at the Treasury were conspiring to undermine Brexit, by producing erroneous data on the consequences of leaving the EU. This politician who has only a brief acquaintance with the subject of economics, claimed he could see not just errors but treachery in the work of these Treasury economists. This failure to accept any alternative view of events to the individual’s own is typical of the intellectually stupid thinker.

Why is intellectual stupidity the default mode of thinking of our politicians?

Perhaps part of the explanation lies in the books they read. Friedrich Hayek’s book ‘The Road to Serfdom’ can be read in a few hours, possibly on a wet afternoon, when there is nothing else to do. In this short book he claims to offer the solution to our contemporary malaise. There is no end to these books that claim to have the answer. Another such is Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Unchained’, yet another writer who claims to provide the solution to our current malaise. What these books encourage in their readers is a cult like belief, that they alone have the exclusive possession of the truth. The blinkered mindset of an ‘Moonie’, Jehovah’s Witness or Scientologist, is mirrored in the thinking of so many of our leading politicians. The lack of curiosity about alternative thinking is characteristic of the intellectually stupid.

These politicians have also been to the elite universities and this has given them an intellectual arrogance. They after a short period at university just ‘know’. One exemplar of this type is the politician who is an English graduate who decided that he did not need any advice from experts in their field (educationalists and economists), as he had acquired sufficient understanding ‘to know’. He as with so many of his colleagues ‘knows’ any further knowledge would be superfluous to the task in hand. These politicians can be best described as ‘generic’ politicians, as such they believe that they have already possess all the skills and knowledge necessary for the most demanding of political positions.

This lack of intelligent curiosity is demonstrated in these three remarks made by politicians about food banks in the U.K. The first said that increase in food bank use food was because people were attracted there by the free food on offer. Another said increased food bank use was a good thing, as it had shown that his government was more effective than the former at publicising this service. The last said people go to food banks for many reasons. What none of these politicians could say that people on low incomes were reduced to such desperate straits, that they were forced to go to food banks to get the food they needed for themselves and there families. Just as Adolf Eichmann could not bring himself to admit the his trains were taking the Jews to there death, so these conservative politicians cannot admit that there policies are creating such widespread impoverishment that thousands are now forced to go to food banks in order to survive.

This callousness is not the consequence of intellectual dishonesty, but a thinking that prevents thinking of either the Jews or the less well off, as people of any consequence. They are demonised either as a threat to the well being of the German people or a threat to the well being of the British economy and society. The political philosophy of both Adolf Eichmann and contemporary conservatives treats certain groups of people as inferior beings who lack the rights accorded humanity in general. A world view best summed up by the Nazi official who called Jews vermin.

What Robert Musil writes about intellectual stupidity is very similar to the thinking of Augustine on evil. He describes evil as a not knowing of God. People who don’t know God commit what we term bad acts. Augustine as a Neo-Platonist also equated God with Good, so people who did not choose to know God could not know good. The intellectually stupid chose not to know the evil of their actions and as such are unable to know good. These intellectually stupid would be the people who Augustine’s would accuse of doing evil acts.

Against Riches

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Socrates is perhaps the first of the great philosophers and he was hopeless with money. His wife was driven to despair when he instead of working at his profitable trade as a stone mason, he spent his time in philosophical discussions with his friends in the market place. There is some dissonance between philosophers and wealth. Even when such as Bertrand Russel they inherit wealth, they usually mismanage it and bequeath their heirs less wealth than they themselves inherited. Wittgenstein was a philosopher in the true socratic tradition, he gave the estates he inherited to his brother, as managing an estate would be a distraction to his study of philosophy. There is something about the love of wisdom that causes philosophers to disdain wealth.

Wealth does seem to produce trivial or just plain silly thinking in the people that possess it in abundance. Possibly best demonstrated in the life style website Goop of the actress of Gwyneth Paltrow. There one can find all manner of bizarre lifestyle practices that are claimed to enable the practitioner to lead a better life. While such sites are easily mocked and are of little real significance, what is disturbing the reverence with which the thoughts of the very rich are treated. Billionaires think that the possession of such great wealth distinguishes them from the common run of mankind. They see themselves as supermen, who think that they should be privileged not just for their possession of great wealth, but for there thinking, they are the thinkers of exceptional thougts. I remember reading as a child that the common man would be out of their depth at the dinner table of the Mountbatten’s*, because these gifted individuals thought thoughts beyond the comprehension of the ordinary man.

These ‘great thinkers’ can rely upon myth makers to weave a story that demonstrates their superiority. Ayn Rand is the latest of the myth makers who claim the possession of great wealth as an indicator of a great mind, a person who is one of society’s shakers and movers. Prior to that it was people such as Lord Blake who claimed that membership of the aristocracy was the best qualification that a person could have for leadership roles in society.

Yet when the thoughts of these great men are examined, they are notable not for there genius but their mediocrity. I remember reading of what billionaire who claimed to be able to solve Britain’s unemployment problem. He claimed that it could be done by abolishing the minimum wage. What he claimed was that the current wage rates made too many people to expensive to employ, therefore there was unemployment. Obviously if wages were cut all would be employed. What never occurred to him was that a certain minimum level of income was necessary for human survival. The fact that low wages would lead to hunger and other social ills was of no consequence to him. For him the poor never featured in his thinking as fellow human beings.

The question I want to answer is why does the possession of great wealth make it impossible to think great thoughts. I am not condemning the possession of wealth, just the possession of great wealth. As a person of modest wealth that would be hypocritical, I do believe that there is a certain minimum level of wealth that is necessary for the good life. There is no virtue is not being able to pay the bills.

When trying to ask why such ordinary men believe that they alone are uniquely gifted with knowledge denied to others, one answer is arrogance. The vast majority of the wealthy were born into wealth and as such from the very moment they were conscious, they expected to be deferred to by those around them.Whatever they said would be treated with respect, no matter how silly their ideas. Growing up on a country estate, I soon learnt that the greatest misdemeanour was to show disrespect to the seigneur or a member of his extended family. Disrespect meant uttering some disagreement no matter how moderate the thoughts expressed by a member of this group. The father of the current seigneur demanded that his workers only spoke to him if he spoke to them first. Anybody who disrespected this rule was immediately dismissed. While this is an extreme example, it does demonstrate how privilege of birth leads to the corruption of the intellect.

All of these people it can be argued have been educated at our elite universities, so they should as Lord Mountbatten thought be better educated than the common place individual. However such education seems to be designed to give them an elegance of expression rather than of thought. All the lazy prejudices of the wealthy are given a literary sheen that makes them when expressed appear profound. A friend of mine who was a former member of the working classes, always criticised Bob Crowe* when he appeared on television for the inarticulate nature of his expression and thinking. What he was doing was equating a limited verbal vocabulary with an unsophisticated manner of thinking. Yet I never heard him utter such criticisms of the various representatives of the employing class or the political right who appeared on TV. He as with all of us was over impressed with an elegance of speech which disguised a vacuity of thinking.

Probably it helps that the ideas of the wealthy are so often part of the mainstream of the public dialogue.  In an unequal society the ideology of social and intellectual inequality is one of the essential props necessary for the perpetuation of the system. Therefore it is easier to get one’s thinking accepted and into print if such thinking accords with the accepted belief system. Finding a publisher is much easier if an individual writes in the language of the mainstream. The media then confirms the thinking of the most mediocre of the class of the wealthy. It really should be of little surprise that the wealthy and privileged should think that their thoughts are those that are correct and true, as they are rarely exposed to contrary thinking in the media.

What I want to argue for is the superiority of the thinking of the lower middle classes, a group for whom life is often a struggle. This is not a struggle for survival but a struggle for success. A struggle to gain those material goods thought necessary for the good life. Yet they are also group which has sufficient leisure for study and whose education introduced them to the writings of the great thinkers of the past. Aristotle was a doctor and as such is one whose life is an exemplar for the middle class thinker. There is no privilege, one has to earn the right to heard, one has to compete within the market place of ideas. Not having a privileged status one is denied to opportunity to think stupid thoughts, as such thinking would be ridiculed. Isaiah Berlin wrote that the case for right wing philosophy is almost impossible to make*. A reasoned philosophy cannot have as it’s founding principles self satisfaction, complacency, greed or the abuse of power. When people such as Lord Blake defend privilege they rely upon tradition, they see tradition as the passing down of a superiority in thinking and manner from one privileged generation to another. Bear and bull baiting were traditional sports practised in Britain for centuries, yet this did not make them right, both were justly outlawed because of they were barbaric. Blake’s defence of privilege is equally fallacious.

Not having a privileged upbringing makes one aware of the inequalities and unfairness of human society, whether one wishes it or not you are constantly being reminded of the failings of that society. One is born a critic of society, a discontent being inured which makes one instantly critical of existing human practices and ideas.  Without this critical faculty, thinking becomes trivial ,insubstantial and uninteresting, it is the thinking of the self satisfied. This sense of a lack of an indefinable something in society is what drives us to look for new and different answers. Kierkegaard writes of the abyss, the point at beyond which the thinking person comes to that point at human thought ceases provide any meaning to life. For Kierkegaard it is at this point that people turn to Christ. Only Christ can provide this missing something . Although I love Kierkegaard as an author, I would suggest that this sense of an abyss instead forces on one a recognition of the inadequacy of existing ideas and the desperation to seek new answers.  I don’t believe philosophers can ever adequately answer the problem posed by the abyss. Every generation will find fault with existing thinking and will feel the need to find new answers to the challenge of the abyss. It is the reinventing of the wheel but a very profitable reinventing. Being born to wealth means the sense of the abyss will never be as acute, as wealth can always buy distractions from the abyss. Possibly this is why the life of the super rich is one of conspicuous consumption, they constantly need new toys to distract them from the emptiness of their lives.

If the rich and privileged are not capable of great thoughts, I would argue that they are disqualified from great holdings of wealth which give them power over the lives of others, which they are not qualified to possess. There is one contemporary example which demonstrates the unfitness of the rich to their wealth. Hugh Hefner the millionaire publisher used his magazine ‘Playboy’ as a vehicle for promoting his thinking and superior lifestyle. A man whose written thoughts were no more than a manual on how to exploit young women, which demonstrates the essential nastiness that is at the heart of the culture of the rich and powerful.

* A former member of the Royal family at whose table the now Prince of Wales regularly dined.

  • The former leader of the RMT union who in negotiations regularly outsmarted his opponents. Men all of whom had been educated at the elite universities and whom one would think would be superior in the skills of reasoning and argument. I do suspect Bob Crowe overplayed his inarticulacy, so as to give his opponents a false sense of superiority.
  • One exception to the rule is Michael Oakshott, but his conservative philosophy was a philosophy of scepticism, which was inherited  from the Greek philosophers of scepticism, men such as Pyrro and Sextus Empiricus. Reading Wikipedia `I see that I have a very different understanding of Michael Oakshott to that of the author of an article on him.

Weimar Britain 2010 – ?

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There seems to be a gathering darkness in our society, unreason seems to increasingly be the language of our times. The darkness of unreason is said to have come from outside the political process, from  the extremists of the right who have been increasingly successful in infiltrating the political mainstream. Although there success is not entirely down to their own efforts, as they have been aided by collaborators from within the political mainstream.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this darkness is the increasing harassment of immigrants. All to often there are stories such as that of the grandmother of Singaporean origin who was sent back to her homeland, despite having a family in the UK. She was sent back penniless to a homeland where she had no family. Indifference often bordering on cruelty so often governs the actions of our politicians.

When I see the flourishing of unreason in society, I look to the past for explanation. One obvious parallel is the German Weimar Republic that was destroyed by the forces of unreason. One writer that tried to explain the rise of the forces of unreason was Ernst Junger. I find his book ‘On the Marbles’ particularly apposite. There exists within his narrative a wild uncivilised  family of huntsmen who live deep in the dark forest. This family breeds an exceptionally vicious and violent breed of dog, who are breed for nothing but fighting. In the climax of the book this pack of barbarous dogs takes on the hunting dogs of the foresters and destroys them. Now this barbarous family has control of the forest. There is one futile attempt later by the politicians to come to terms with the barbarians of the forest, but it ends badly in their death.

There is a darkness in the souls of us all, but a darkness that is suppressed by civilisation. Norbert Elias wrote of the significance of etiquette in making organised society and social  progress possible. When people started treating each other with courtesy and respect organised society becomes possible. These etiquette codes of behaviour or rituals are passed from generation to generations giving society its shape but once they are disregard or disrespected society begins to resemble a shapeless mass and loses its civilising aspect.* Football without rules is a meaningless undignified scramble and even the most aggressive and competitive of footballers who will resort to cheating to win a match, still accepts the need for rules. They know that if there were no rules to break there would be no game of football. Politicians increasingly resemble the cheating footballer but unlike them they don’t just want to break the rules to their own advantage, but they want to destroy the rules and reshape the game in their own image.

Ernst Junger’s allegorical tale was very prescient, there are dark groups in society who while they remain isolated and excluded from the mainstream, pose little threat to the larger society. If they are isolated in the depths of the forest they are little threat to the civilised whole. However once this dark group is welcomed into the mainstream of the body politic, their very ruthlessness enables them to rise to the top. Just like Junger barbarous dogs they destroy the opposition, an opposition that has not been breed for fighting.

This dark group existed within German society, they were the German nationalists. The most extreme of which were the Nazis. Mainstream politicians thought there ideas insane, such as wanting to return the bulk of the population to the land. Farm work and rural life they believed led to the cultivation the manliness virtues that the Nazi’s admired. Too many German men lived soft easy lives in the town and had lost the Aryan virtues that the Nazis admired. Having such crazy ideas led to the political elite believing that such simpletons could be easily managed.

When the economic crisis of 1929 lead to widespread unemployment, which many blamed on the government. The discredited ruling coalition thought that by incorporating the increasingly popular Nazi’s into government they come benefit from their popularity. They would be a useful counterweight to the powerful communist party. The conservative intellectuals such as Franz Von Papen thought that they could easily manage the ‘unsophisticates’ of the Nazi Party. Instead these conservative politicians lacked the ruthlessness of the Nazis and were out manoeuvred by them. The well behaved dogs of the conservative right proved no match for the wild dogs of the Nazis.

Once the Nazis gained control they removed those civilised constraints that kept those dark instincts of the German personality suppressed. Soon civilised Germans were treating there Jewish neighbours in the most cruel of manners. Once those civilised rules of social interaction were removed the darkest of behaviours become common. Millions of Germans knew of the existence of the death camps, yet only a small number of German opposed their use. Ordinary German citizen if they knew of Jews hiding form the authorities would not hesitate to betray them.

What I believe is that once the barbarous dark forces in society are admitted into the mainstream of the body politic they corrupt the political process and take it over. There barbarous belief systems cannot tolerate any diversity opinion or difference, so must they destroy it. That destruction as in Weimar Germany will be the destruction of the democratic system.

While the dark forces in Britain remained isolated and excluded from the mainstream, they could be tolerated as the harmless indulgence of a tiny minority. However in Britain as in Weimar Germany changes occurred within the governing elites that made possible the introduction of the barbarous views of the extremists. Within the conservative political spectrum there had always been a significant minority that hated the post war settlement. High personal taxation and the tax revenue used to fund of social welfare programmes and the health service they saw the illegitimate action of government. They saw the economic crisis of the 1970s as an opportunity to destroy the social democratic state. Whether it was the free market economics of Milton Friedman or the Neo-Liberalism of Hayek and Rand, they had a brutal philosophy. What they wanted was the re-create the society that pre-dated Hobbes ‘Leviathan’. They wanted a society of in which ‘nasty brutish’ men, were not restrained in their actions by the state. It was human competitiveness not social organisation they believed was the motor for economic and social progress.

As this philosophy increasingly took hold on the Conservative party, its policies became more and more brutal as it sough to recreate the society of ‘nasty and brutish’ men. Although policies were couched in morally virtuous terms such as taking people out of the dependency culture and making them self sufficient, all but the most deluded of Conservative must have realised they were practising a policy of cruelty. This policy was corrupting of the people making the policy, as implementing cruel social policies is not a morally neutral activity, it corrupts the mind. The poor become defined as a subhuman species unworthy of the decencies of human society.

With this degradation of moral sensibilities conservative politicians have not hesitated to exploit the those dark atavistic sentiments on race and ethnicity to win support. However what they fail to realise is that they these sentiments are not something that can used when needed for electioneering and then forgotten. Once they have been imported into the political dialogue they remain there. These politicians so resemble so many Franz Von Papen’s  who thought that they could use the extremists for their own ends.  Similarly these conservative politicians are offering extremists access to power, an access that they will exploit.

Again Ernst Junger’s allegoric tale offers a useful explanation of the current situation. Bad as the current conservative politician are, there are the much more dangerous extremists who are beginning to enter the political mainstream. The conservative politicians are like the hunting dogs in his tale, they are trained to hunt herbivores and not to fight other dogs. I liken them to they hunting dogs because they are trained to hunt weak herbivores of society, the poor and less well off majority. Neo-liberalism of the Ayn Rand type has schooled them in how to attack the less well off majority to benefit of the billionaires class, but it has not schooled them in how fight off the extremists. I fear that our conservative Neo-liberal politicians, will be as with Weimar’s conservative politicians little more than a conduit to power for the extremists. 

  • I must confess that my summary of Norbert Ellias thinking does not do justice to him. His ideas are far my complex that my summary would suggest.

The British Army a metaphor for Britain’s economic decline

Economics, Neo-Liberal economics, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When you wish to understand what is happening in an economy, the answer comes from the small things. Not from the micro-economics of the classical economist but from stories repeated about events in the real world. The source of inspiration for this essay was a comment from my daughter who has friends who are married to soldiers. Their husbands are very discontented, as they seem to waste their time on a series of seemingly meaningless tasks. It seems as if the bad of practices of national service days are being reinvented when soldiers could be told to do such meaningless tasks as cut the grass with nail scissors. If they are correct the British army seems to be at present an organisation without purpose or meaning.

This I can contrast with the attitude of a former pupil of mine who served with the army in Northern Ireland. I thought that he would have hated service there because of the dangers. Instead he loved it, he had two posting there and was considering leaving the army because his next would be an action less posting to Germany. Anybody with even the briefest knowledge of the British army knows that it can do mindless routine like no other organisation. He as did many others join the army for the excitement, a life out of the routine. I cannot describe in words the excitement he told me he experienced on an active mission hunting an IRA unit.

A dysfunctional army and discontented soldiers is a metaphor for so much of contemporary Britain. There are countless business organisations that demonstrate the same lack of purpose, due to poor leadership and with a discontented workforce. What the British army demonstrates is how state and private sector organisations become increasingly dysfunctional in a society that appears to be in decline.

Britain has been in decline since it lost its Empire and in the words of Dean Acheson it ‘has lost an empire and has not yet found a role’. In the post war period many politicians attempted to find a new role for Britain. At first it seemed its future lay with Europe and the country joined the EU. However being one of the leading nations in the EU did not satisfy the political class, as it had not injected the hoped for dynamism into British economy and society. What the political class wanted was the great shock that would electrify the economy and restore it to economic health and they found the needed great shock they needed in the practice of Neo-Liberal economics.

One of the great ideas of the Neo-Liberal revolution is the idealisation of the private sector business model. In consequence much of the public sector was transferred to private ownership and that included much of the defence department. Now procuring weapons for the army is in the hands of a private sector organisation called the Defence Procurement Agency. This department was intended to be a commissioning agency, that would outsource the design and production of defence equipment to private sector companies, so getting the best deal for the armed services from the competing defence contractors.

It was assumed that by outsourcing expertise to the private contractor the government would cut out the expense of employing its own specialists and it could leave the difficult decisions about  design and production to the private sector companies. Unfortunately these very same companies also practised cost cutting and reduced the most expensive labour costs, which were the design engineers. Outsourcing of design has led to a multiplicity of contractors involved in producing a product that usually fails to serve its purpose. The new army automatic rifle (SA80) costing more than a £470 million is an example of the abject failure of this policy*. It tends to jam when used in action. Special forces units who are constantly in action never use it because of its unreliability, instead preferring to use the American alternative. Having to make do with inferior and unsuitable equipment is destructive of morale and it is said that in the Royal Navy service morale has never been lower, as it is the service most affected by having to operate with poor and inadequate resources.

Generals and politicians have with enthusiasm adopted the cost cutting practices of Neo-Liberalism. This means that in consequence the cost of having realistic large scale training exercises is too great in terms of men and resources. There is just not the money to keep the army trained in is a state of readiness for war. All to often soldiers are given home leave, as this is the least expensive option. One way politicians and the generals have tried to overcome this problem is by cutting the numbers of serving soldiers and instead relying upon the cheap part time reserve solder to fill the gaps in the time of crisis. Forcing experienced soldiers to leave the army because they are too expensive is destructive of morale.

Warrant officers are the unsung heroes of the army. These non-commissioned officers are the men who make the regimental system effective. They have years of service and are the men that keep the regiment operating at maximum efficiency. Officers come and go, but they are always there. However they are expensive and the government and generals decided that they should reduce their numbers in a cost cutting exercise.  A number of warrant officers who received their redundancy notices were on active service in Afghanistan. Many private and state organisations have suffered similar drops in service effectiveness, when they have got rid of much of the middle management.

Neo-Liberal theory emphasises the great value of the entrepreneurial leader, societies movers and shakers, whom Ayn Rand states the billionaire class. This has been applied to the army as the cost cutting has been at the expensive of the junior ranks, not the generals. It is believed that all is needed is the great man who will meld the disparate units that make up an army unit into an effective fighting force at the time of crisis. Skills, training and experience are almost irrelevant in the junior ranks, as what matters is the genius of the leader. Therefore whatever cuts are made they should not apply to the generals, as they are the key personnel who will make the army great in the times of war. In consequence the British army is one of the most ‘over generalled’ in the world. The British army is about the size of the American marine corps which has only a third of the generals.

The great weakness of current British army is that it does not have a large cadre of outstanding leaders. Too many of the current generals are quite undistinguished and there are too many duds amongst them. When an American general addressed a conference of senior British army staff to discuss the lessons learnt from the conflict in Afghanistan he said gentlemen you have failed. It is an open secret that the Americans have a very poor opinion of the British army or more particularly its generals.

There is a very revealing story from Afghanistan which reveals the poor quality of British generalship. There was an airbase in which was the responsibility of a British and American general. The British general was responsible for the defence of the perimeter. He left some watch towers unoccupied.The Taliban spotted this and crept in and destroyed a number of American aircraft. The American General who was responsible for the defence of the aircraft was sacked, although he was comparatively blameless, while the British general was not only not sanctioned but he was promoted to a higher grade. Incompetence does not seem a bar to seniority in the British army.

This is why my daughters friends husbands find that they are doing no real soldiering, it is because they belong a dysfunctional organisation that is unable to effectively utilise their talents. Recently the government was criticised for failing to respond adequately to Hurricane Irma. The Americans and French evacuated their citizens from the islands in the before the hurricane struck, the British did nothing. While much of the blame for the inaction must rest with the politicians, it is also likely that if the defence minister had asked for immediate action, the armed services would have struggled to respond.

What the British army demonstrates is the current British vice, over investment in a poor and undistinguished leadership and underinvestment in its workforce. Almost all British companies have experienced a ruthless weeding out of middle management and of its more expensive and skilled staff. Once the British Atomic Energy Authority was one of the world leaders in nuclear engineering, but since privatisation the new company disposed of the expensive engineers and became largely a commissioning organisation. Now when Britain needs to build new nuclear power stations it lacks the expertise to do so and instead relies upon outsourcing the task a French company EDF. The leadership of the nuclear industry is so poor that it is not concerned that the two nuclear power stations that EDF is building in France and Finland are so delayed by construction problems and cost overruns that are years behind schedule. Just as in much of British industry a poor leadership makes poor decisions.

*The initial model of this rifle used by the army was so poor that it had to be modified and re-engineered by the German manufacturer Heckler and Koch.

*The branch of the armed services that has suffered most from the lack of in house expertise and poor leadership is the Royal Navy. Its new £1 billion Daring class destroyers are so badly engineered that they are prone to break down. The only solution is cut large holes in the sides of the ships so engineers can install new power units. A ‘patch up’ job that will be extremely expensive and could double the cost of equipping the navy with these new ships.

The Cult of Neo-liberalism and the bizarre beliefs and practices of its believers

Economics, Neo-Liberal economics, religion, , , , , , , ,

Cult movements are supposed to appeal only to the marginalised in society, that is the losers desperate to find a way of out the dire circumstances in which they find themselves. Yet evidence shows that cult movements are as equally likely to appeal to the rich and powerful. The Orange movement with its emphasis on sexual freedom was a movement that appealed largely to the young and wealthy. However a cult movement of the rich and powerful can avoid being labelled as disparagingly as such because they have control of the media. Cult like movements redefined as mainstream political or social ideologies much like established religious practices. In a secular society such as ours cult movements will lack the mystery and religion usually associated with such and instead claim ‘realism’, to be a practical movement for individual and societal improvement. The cult that currently grips the imagination of the rich and powerful is Neo-Liberalism.

Believers in Neo-Liberalism as with all cult members have a fervent belief in the rightness of the message and reject any evidence to the contrary. To paraphrase George Orwell it central belief is ‘private enterprise good, public or state enterprise bad’. Currently in Britain all our prisons are being transferred to private management. Despite reports from the prisons inspectorate that such prisons are poorly managed, largely due to cost or staff cutting measures intended  to turn prison’s management into a profit making activity, political leaders seem oblivious any problems arising from the privatisation of the prison service. Riots, rising prison suicides are not the things to turn the political leaders away from their belief that prisons can only be run successfully, if they are under private management. There is nothing to match the fervour of the converted for their cause. When criticised they will say that the reforms they have introduced will take time to take effect and what is being witnessed now are the painful birth pangs of a new society coming into being. Without wishing to name politicians I feel they are so similar in nature to the Jehovah’s Witnesses that come to my door promising me salvation if become a member. A salvation promised on as little evidence as that provided by the cultish Neo-Liberals.

All cults have a charismatic leader, one who have a message one which points out the failings of current society and the way to a brighter and better future. Scientologists had Ron Hubbard, Neo-Liberals have three Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Followers of each cult treat the writings of the founders as holy texts and try to follow to the letter their writings . It helps if the charismatic leaders as death sanctifies their writings, much as earlier death gives pop stars that aura of specialness and which boosts their record sales. All these leaders were persecuted and vilified in their own societies. Ron Hubbard was dismissed as a fraudulent science fiction writer and the prophets of Neo-Liberalism were persecuted by the liberal social democratic establishment of their time, who dismissed their writings as lacking merit. As all of these prophets are dead there writings cannot be subject to revision making it much easier for them to be seen as the unalterable holy writ.

One of the holy writs of Neo-Liberalism is that any state intervention in the market is hateful and destructive. For British Neo-Liberals the very personification of this hateful state intervention is the  European Union (EU). Any damage inflicted on the economy or social fabric of the nation occurring from a precipitate exit from the European Union is a price worth paying. When the Global Institute for Economic Affairs states that leaving the EU will diminish national income by 10% they dismiss it as a mere trifle. A valid comparison is with the regime of Pol Pot, they have a wish to return the economy to year zero so they can remake it according to the collective scripture of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Fortunately for this group of very rich and powerful Liberals the martyrs that will be sacrificed are the less rich majority, not the rich minority.

A cult movement also sanctities its members and demonises outsiders. Ayn Rand writes that the saviours of mankind are the rich and powerful or more precisely the billionaires. All the powerful Neo-Liberals imagine themselves part of this class whether they are or not. This also makes them very greedy for money, as wealth demonstrates that they are one of the elect. Ayn Rand characterises the poor and desperate as the undeserving poor, who when they die in their thousands in ‘Atlas Unchained’  meet a fate they deserve. This makes tax avoidance a moral cause as by paying taxes the rich are merely giving money to the undeserving poor on whom it is wasted. Politicians can claim high taxes on the rich are immoral, as it takes money away from the rich who will use it well and gives it to the poor who will squander it. A morality given common sense expression by the Surrey woman who wrote that the rich have greater need of money than the poor as they have more things on which to spend their money. The wants of the rich are many according to her reasoning, whereas the wants of the poor are few, so they only don’t require much money.

Media commentators who write about the death of Neo-Liberalism misunderstand the persuasive power of a cult. Believers are immune to rational argument, the collapse of the economy on Brexit will leave them unmoved. There is a tribe in New Guinea who worship Prince Phillip as a God and who believe that one day he will come and distribute to them the wealth that was unfairly stolen from them by the Europeans. All they have to do is to await the arrival of Prince Phillip and the prosperity that he will bring. Neo-Liberals are as rational in their beliefs as this New Guinea tribe. They will believe that whatever economic disasters occur during Brexit, are unrelated to their practice of Neo-liberalism. The failures in the economy be a consequence of the government failing to implement Neo-Liberal policies properly, if only they had been more Neo-liberal in their approach to policy making all the problems that afflict the economy would never have occurred.

Neo-liberalism will only die when all its powerful proponents are removed from power. Until then Neo-liberal policy making will be practised by our government.

Bankers the unruly and uncontrollable children in the family

economic history, Economics, Neo-Liberal economics, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Politicians seem to think that as they can manage their own family budgets, they have all the knowledge necessary to manage the economy. This results in statements such as the government needs to balance its books or that the country has maxed out its credit cards. Such statements demonstrate an appalling ignorance of the economy and how it works. However there is a competence that is lacking at the most elementary of levels,  as too many MPs are appalling at managing their own finances. Disraeli one of the greatest leaders of the conservative party was always on the verge of bankruptcy because of his extravagant lifestyle. Fortunately he had a rich wife and friends ready to bail him out. Politicians are as likely to follow his example as they are that of his prudent rival Gladstone. The recent expenses scandal when it was demonstrated that most MPs used their expense account to finance their comfortable lifestyle. People still remember the MP who used his expense account to pay for a duck house. If financial rectitude is not characteristic of many MPs This should give pause to any claim that they are capable of managing the economy.

If the analogy of family finances is to be made it should be said that the government resembles the nominal head of an unruly family, whose views are largely disregarded by the family members. The unruly children in the family take little notice of the head of the family, only listening to them and accepting their authority when they get into trouble. The banks are the obvious example as they pay minimal heed to the authority of the government except in times of crisis such as during the financial crisis of 2008.Once the crisis passed the banks forgot their need for government support and showed a lack of gratitude to the governments actions for bailing them out during the crisis. They successfully prevented the government from introducing a reform which would have separated their retail banking activities from those of investment banking. If a bank fails  in future the government is still on the hook, as it can’t protect the individual customers of the bank without bailing it out for the much larger losses incurred by its speculative investment banking arm.

This is no small matter as the combined assets of the banks are in total ten times the value of our national GDP.    Our national GDP is the country’s national income. There are four large banks in the UK and it is not unreasonable to suggest that the assets of each is in total a sum near to, equal to our GDP or greater than it. In the event of a failure of one of the large banks the government could be called on to raise a sum equivalent to our national income to bail them out. At one time during the crisis of 2008/9 the government of Gordon Brown had to pledge a similar figure to our banks creditors to prevent a run on their finances. Fortunately the banks creditors did not call on our government to make good this pledge, they were satisfied with the the pledge alone. When the next crisis occurs the country may be less fortunate.

When I describe the banks as unruly children over whose actions their parent has little control, there are numerous examples I can cite of such behaviour. Britains biggest bank is HSBC and Standard Chartered is its branch in the US. This bank almost lost its licence to conduct banking in the USA because of its money laundering activities. Only the pleas of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer prevented the American financial authorities from withdrawing its banking licence. It had lost its licence to bank in the USA, its parent bank HSBC would have been in serious financial trouble and it would have had to ask the British government for financial support to enable it to cope with the crisis.

The family finance analogy of which so many politicians are so fond of using describes so well the activities of the banks. The banks are the prodigal children who can behave as badly and irresponsibly as they wish as they know that their parent the British government will always come to their aid no matter how badly they behave.

In Britain as in most countries the politicians are content to remain in ignorance of these unpleasant truths. They believe that their homespun economics all they need, or they are ideologues who believe that the great prophets of economics Hayek, Friedman and Rand said all there is to be said about economics and the managing of the economy. This last group believes that all the answers to matters economic are to be found in books such as ‘The Road to Serfdom” (Hayek) or ‘Atlas Unchained’ (Rand).

There are a small group of politicians who understand the problems of which I have written, but they are only too willing to pretend that all is well in return for government office or employment as well paid lobbyists for the financial sector. Money is incredibly effective balm for soothing fear.

I am not the first person to express concern about the appalling ignorance of our politicians. Leo Amery looking around at his fellow politicians in the 1920’s said that the country would be better served, if there was  separate parliament consisting of industrialist and trade unionists to manage the economy and industrial policy.

A REPLY FROM AN ECONOMIST TO THE ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM OF DONALD TRUMP AND MICHAEL GOVE

economic history, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, United Kingdom, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(There were many errors in my first draft, it was written in anger and published without  a thorough checking for error.)

Contention

Economists don’t always have the right answers, they can be wrong at times, but their answers to problems are better than those of ill-informed politicians and journalists. There are plenty of never-never land politicians selling an unreal picture of the world to the electorate. There are many fewer such economists because there work would have undergone informed scrutiny by their peers and much that is dubious would have been discarded. The overwhelming majority of economists believe that Brexit will inflict significant economic damage on the economy, while a significant number of politicians and most journalist believe the reverse (who are lacking any evidence apart from their misguided optimism in the rightness of their beliefs).

Confession of interest

I am one of those experts that Michael Gove spoke abouto he said people are fed up with and who they should be ignored by the people  when making decisions about the future, such as how to vote in the EU referendum. I am one of those people who following Aristotle’s advice  have dedicated the best part of their life to study. What Michael Gove is trashing is the value of learning, I cannot accept that my years of study have been wasted. How can such small minded person go against centuries of a tradition that values learning? He is a graduate of an elite university but he seems to dismiss the value of what he learnt there. I can say to Michael Gove that when teaching in a tough secondary school I never demeaned myself to pretending that I lacked learning. What young people can identify is the phoney, the teacher that pretends to be like them. Michael Gove’s attempt to pretend to be one of the people is as phoney as my colleagues who adopted a fake working class accents and mimicked the words and manners the young in an attempt to win their favour. Behaviour as phoney as that of the Dad who to tries to impress by claiming a knowledge of and love for garage music and rap.

The dangers of contempt for learning

If Michael Gove’s lead is followed as experts such as myself as regarded as just another self interested individual with an agenda to promote, a lot is lost. Economists such as myself are in possession of or can access a body of knowledge about the economy not available to others. Acquiring and understanding the store of economic knowledge takes years and to be honest a life time of study, because the subject is always changing and developing. What Michael Gove is saying is that my learning is of no consequence. I cannot accept that the anti intellectualism of todays politicians will stand future scrutiny. Without wishing to be too unkind Michael is an insignificant figure compared to Adam Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Hayek, Polanyi and Robinson. With time his anti intellectual populism will be a but a minor blip in the progress of humankind. In studying economics I developed a critical faculty which makes it possible to make reasoned judgements about government policy, rather than relying up prejudice and common sense on which to found my judgements. Paraphrasing a much greater thinker than myself who used this phrase in the context of religious belief, those who don’t believe in God are likely to believe in anything; similarly those who don’t believe the truths of  economics are likely to believe any nonsense about the economy.

One such nonsense is the current belief that there is a real knowledge of the world, which is only possessed by men of business, who deal every day with the complexities of the real world, as opposed to the unreal world of academia. One such person held to possess this knowledge is Donald Trump, the next President of the United States. I would question the breadth of his knowledge, he is a real estate developer. Yet one who has failed in several business ventures and has only been saved from bankruptcy by the protection afforded by US law to such people. If you wished to buy and develop a property you would go to a real estate agent or property developer, but one with a better track record than Donald Trump. Apart from his deal making in which he has a very mixed record I cannot see how Donald Trump has a better understanding of the world than me. As a teacher I would be criticised for living and working in an unreal world, which is a silly phrase as the school is as real as the boardroom. One other silly untruth is that teachers lack the toughness to cope with the real world, all I can say is that these people who say that have little understanding of the difficulties of teaching a group of adolescents. One of the most telling examples of the falsity of this stance is a video on Youtube, where Michael Gove is addressing a group of teenagers. They show complete disdain for his lecture and indulge in all the behaviours of disaffection typical of teenagers. What I am saying is that my experience as  teacher of economics is as valid as Donald Trumps as a property developer, although if I’m honest I think mine is the superior knowledge of the world.

When politicians deny the truths of learning they became prey to the teaching of messianic and charismatic charlatans such  as the  novelist – Ayn Rand author of ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ whose followers include Sajid Javid and all politicians of the Neo-Liberal persuasion. Her book paean to billionaires who she believes are the heroic figures that make our civilisation great. The central figure of the book John Galt a man of independent means who is puzzled as to why billionaires keep disappearing from society. He is taken to a mysterious canyon remote from Washington, where the billionaires are hiding, seeking sanctuary from a rapacious Washington. These  billionaires are fed up with being oppressed by a government that so taxes and regulates them, that they are denied their role as the creative driving force of society, a rapacious government has reduced them to impotence. It does not realise that without their enterprise, society would fall into stasis and decline. When these billionaires go on strike society collapses and thousands of the useless poor die as a poor and weak government is forced to withdraw the income on which they depend for their survival. Eventually a discredited government is forced to welcome back the billionaires on their terms and these billionaires put society back on its feet and society develops and prospers. Many politicians of the new right are followers of Ayn Rand and her influence can be seen on government welfare policy. The Ayn Rands in government believe in a policy of brutalising the poor to the extent that they are forced to work at any price for anybody. It’s a cure for the wasteful culture of dependence, to such as ‘Sajid Javid’ homeless and misery is a just punishment for the useless poor. When governments ignore the truth tellers they are prey to the charlatans and other paddlers of fantasies and falsehoods.

Economists do possess a knowledge of the economy which is invaluable  for the effective running of government. One such economist is Anne Pettifor who is constantly ignored by governments because she tells them truths they don’t want to hear. Economists such as her can be compared to the Old Testament prophets who were constantly ignored by the rulers of Israel.

Anne Pettifor -is the author of ‘The First World Debt Crisis’. While most politicians are aware that economic growth is driven by consumer spending and debt, such as the popular car leasing system, they have little awareness of the dangers of this policy. The growth of consumer debt is so large that it has created a credit or debt mountain of unsustainable proportions – UK bank debt in 2009 – 586% of GDP it falling to around 400% of GDP in 2009 (Dominic Raab), but has since risen. Even Germany has similar problems the collective debts of its banks are over 300% of GDP (much of the money lent to Greece was recycled back to the German banks who had made too many ill-judged loans to the Greeks, so as to prevent them experiencing a liquidity crisis).The UK vies continually with Japan for the title of most indebted country of the industrial developed world.

David Cameron was right that Britain was maxed out on its credit card, he was just wrong about which credit card.

Rather than tackle the problem the government spends billions on quantitative easing to provide the cash to keep the banks afloat. At the height of the financial crisis in 2008/9 Gordon Brown was willing to spend a sum equivalent to the almost the total national income to keep the banks afloat. The official policy is to kick the problem can down the road leaving it to a future government to tackle the problem.

Why do governments fail to tackle this problem? They fear the electorate reaction, if they brought the credit boom to an end. Loans of various kinds account for a significant proportion of people’s spending and to reduce lending would in effect to reduce people’s incomes in that they would be unable to spend as much as previously on various consumer goods. What they are most scared of is cutting spending in the housing market which would lead to a fall in house prices. The belief amongst politicians is that falling house prices equal lost election.

The best informed of politicians know that the risk is that the whole financial house of cards will come tumbling down in a crash as bad as that of 1929, yet they prefer the risk of a future catastrophic crash to taking action now.

The right and wrong of economics

Although I can as an economist make more accurate predictions about the future than any politician there are limitations to the usefulness of my predictions. I cannot say exactly when a predicted event will occur or how great will be its impact on the economy. The economy is a dynamic social institution that is constantly changing and changes can maximise or minimise the impact of the predicted event.

Last year The Observer published one of my letters in I which predicted an economic downturn in 2017. I made my prediction on the basis that all free and largely unregulated markets are liable to exuberant booms that always end in a crash. Past history shows that such crashes occur every nine years, that is 1990, 1999 and 2008/9.

This contention is supported by the economist Hayek. What he stated was that there is a period when the benefits of innovation are exhausted and economic growth falls and the economy falls into recession. This has happened to the UK as the benefits from the mass production of consumer goods begin to tail off. Since the mid 1980s there has been too many car manufacturers in Europe, making cars that were needed. The consequence was retrenchment in the car industry and in Britain the disappearance of the native car industry. When industry fails to deliver alternative sources of income need to be found. In the UK, USA and Western Europe that has been the development of the speculative industry, increases in income no longer come from employment but from the increase in the value of assets, such as houses. A speculative economy is particular prone to booms and busts, as there become periods when it is generally believed that prices have peaked and they can only go down. These downs are quite spectacular and cause widespread distress.

However although I can predict with confidence that a downturn will occur, there are a number of proviso’s that I must make about prediction:

There is no iron law that states a downturn will occur every nine years, but evidence from the past shows that this is likely, it is events that may change the date of the crash.

Brexit – if Teresa May calls an early  election the uncertainty generated by that can bring the date of the crash forward to whatever she makes that announcement.

Events may occur that halt the downward trend – if the government panics at the thought of there being held responsible for the negative effects of Brexit and states that it will do whatever deal is is necessary to ensure that Britain remains in the single market, this could result in a boost to business confidence with businesses now rushing to make the investments that they had postponed due to the uncertainties of Brexit. This rush to investment will lead to a temporary boost to the economy that will delay the economic downturn. However it will only postpone the crash.

Conclusion – Economists are not infallible but they are closer to infallibility that most politicians. What economists possess that politicians do not is an understanding of the workings of the economy.