I was motivated to this post by the speech by Khzir Khan at the Democratic Party Convention yesterday. He was eloquently highlighting the quality of a very unattractive element of American discourse that I first became aware of in the 1960's, intolerance and discrimination. I was visiting a friend in an American airbase in Scotland in 1963 and I had brought a bundle of long playing records for him to listen to. I was with my girl friend and was waiting at a table in the airman's club for my friend when four African American airmen came into the club and sat at the next table to us. I went up to the bar for a drink and one of the African Americans asked my girl friend if he could look through the records we had in front of us. She readily agreed and the gentleman began to look through my record collection. Immediately two air force policemen appeared who ordered the African Americans out of the club for speaking to a white girl. When my girl friend spoke up in defence of the airmen telling the police that they were nothing but gentlemanly towards her, she was warned that she would be ejected from the club and barred as a trouble maker. When I returned to the table I was also threatened when I came to my girl friend's and the airmen's defence as they had done absolutely nothing wrong. It was a salutary experience. My American friend later warned me never to challenge an American law official as they are very different from the British.
I have never been racist and have never understood racism. As I trust you will understand if you read this blog, my objection is to ideas, not people. When I was young almost all of my heroes at that time were African Americans. I was a massive fan of the Harlem Globetrotters and had seen them on seven occasions on visits to Britain. My great musical heroes were Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, the Platters amongst others. I have always loved Johnny Mathis whom I had the privilege of seeing in Blackpool in 1966. Thus, I was appalled and disturbed by my experience of American discrimination.
I have told you that my blog name comes from a song. It was just following this experience that I first heard Bob Dylan singing Motorpsycho Nightmare. Dylan has a good claim to be one of America's foremost philosophers, and it was through Motorpsycho Nightmare that I began to understand the white middle American worldview that is finding its realisation in Donald Trump as so eloquently expressed by Khzir Khan.
Seeking shelter and a bed for the night, Dylan approaches a farmer and gets permission to sleep for the night under the stove on the condition that he keeps away from the farmer's daughter and milks his cows in the morning because he tells the farmer that he is a doctor and has been to college. So, that's OK. However, the daughter takes a shine to Dylan and wakens him, asking him if he wants to take a shower. Dylan immediately realises he had better get away for his own safety, but needs to get the farmer to chase him off, so, he shouts out that he likes Fidel Castro and likes his beard. The farmer rushes down with his gun and calls Dylan an unpatriotic rotten doctor Commie rat. Thus, by simply expressing an admiration for Fidel Castro, Dylan gets branded as unpatriotic and a communist. The point is that Dylan knew what the farmer's reaction would be. As he is exiting the farmhouse, the farmer throws a Readers Digest at him, highlighting the reactionary views of the mainstream American media at that time, which, it would appear, have not changed much. Dylan ends the song by contemplating the fact that if it wasn't for freedom of speech he would probably be in the swamp of the American prison system because the farmer spends his time waiting for him to return so he can turn him in to the FBI. A very perceptive and honest young man.
Except for the aforementioned air police, I have never personally met an American who has not been polite, courteous and friendly to me. This includes Americans of different races and ethnic groups. I despair when I hear people like Trump pandering to the America that we see in documentaries about the Klan and the white supremacists, because we are witnessing a similar phenomenon in the UK from the right-wing of the Tory Party and UKIP. This has had the result of the Brexit vote and the almost certain outcome of Scottish Independence, thus exploiting division, hatred and the scapegoating of minorities. The Trumps, Farages, and Boris the Spider's of this world, all the self-promoting political psychopaths offer nothing but destruction, division and hatred. Theirs is a vision of a dystopian future. They, and the loathsome message they promote, must be rejected and cast into the political wilderness. I also despair when I hear Republicans banging on about American values because as Marx tells us, what they are talking about are the values of the American ruling white class. It is a truism that the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class, and it is as true for America as it is for Britain, and what are British values? Inequality, pandering to a dysfunctional royal family, hatred of immigrants and foreigners etc. etc. You can keep them as they are not my values, and I'm as British as you can be. I would be offended to be classed as a Christian, I mean, how can people like Trump and Boris the Spider tell us they are Christians with a straight face? Imagine dying and going to heaven to live for eternity with Mad Tony? However, despite that, the only sane voice that I can identify with in this world today is the Pope. He strikes me as a good man, and you cannot say that about too many Popes, but if he is a real Christian, what does that make our psycho friends? As Dylan warns us, don't follow leaders and watch for parking meters. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Friday 29 July 2016
Monday 25 July 2016
America will have her Brexit
I have come to the conclusion that Donald Trump will win the American Presidency. If there is any consolation, it is that I got both the Scottish and the EU Referendum wrong. However, if there is one common denominator staring us in the face between Britain and the USA it is that both these countries are in political crisis. America is having its Brexit moment with a massive revolt by ordinary working class voters against the political establishment and placing their faith in demagogic showmen. I watched Donald Trump closely during the Republican Convention and his facial gestures and his posture were a classic caricature of Mussolini. He even has the same self-satisfied pout. It is the same with his rhetoric, it is empty and vacuous, devoid of any substance and consisting solely of clichés. America is embracing the same kind of nonsense that the British did during the EU Referendum, and embracing the same kind of people. They are also being seduced by the same kind of right-wing xenophobia. However, I am not being critical because they are embracing it for the same reasons that the British did, they are seeing it as the lesser of two evils. They have lost faith in the political system and in the mainstream political class. Both electorates are rejecting the lies, the betrayals, and the marginalisation of ordinary people. I would only say this to the Americans, look what we were left with in Britain, all the main players in the referendum abandoned ship immediately they were faced with the result of their actions. They were not exposed as charlatans and liars; they exposed themselves without any help from anyone else, and that included our Prime Minister.
Karl Marx showed us how the political and social structure of any society was a reflection of its economic base. Adam Smith had taught us that as the technological basis of production altered and developed, so the economic system adapted to embrace the new method of production, and Marx develops this line of analysis to show us that the political, legal and social structures within society supply a stable framework that allows for consolidation and expansion of the dominant mode of production, whether it is a slave economy, a feudal, an industrial or a neoliberal. Our post-industrial society is the creation of the microprocessor which has had an enormous impact on our economic system, but as importantly, on our social system as well, with the explosion in mass communication techniques whether it be the mobile phone, the tablet etc. with the growth of social media and the instant world-wide dissemination of news and information. This growth of digital technology was accompanied by the success of the free market economic model and its policies of deregulation. Combine these three factors and you have the genesis of the financial crash and the political crisis. Digital technology and deregulation allowed for mass licensed gangsterism by the financial and business elites utilising the lie of the free market as justification for their rapacity and greed. That same great lie brought the subversion of our political class, enchanted by what seemed to them, living in their own little bubble on both sides of the Atlantic, to be a fairy story of riches and success. What they failed to see, or simply ignored, (although in Thatcher’s case it was quite deliberate) was the damage they were doing to the structures and functions of society and its crucial institutions. They became bewitched by the holy grail of the market, oblivious to the fact that it was the market, unregulated and unconstrained, that was the source of their trouble, not the unions, not the workers, not the welfare state, but the monster of their own creation.
As they deregulated the economy, it had a deregulating effect on the social system and that has now had a deregulating effect on the political. They thought they need not control the market, it is of course self-regulating, oh dear, I’m afraid not. They welcomed the deregulating of the social whose constituent parts they sought to privatise for profit, and of course created conditions that have not been seen since the Great Depression with consequences they never foresaw, and are now wakening up to the fact that they have also deregulated the political, an unintended consequence and something that they never considered would happen. The political is now out of their control. The political systems on both sides of the Atlantic are dying, they are on their last legs. As I said in an earlier post, Donald Trump is not the solution he is a symptom of the malaise, the cure will come later and like many medicines it may be very bitter. Both nations are deeply divided and in both, unprincipled charlatans are exploiting this situation with consequences we cannot forsee. In Britain, the divisions may become terminal. Why is this happening? I know I have said it before, but the root cause of all our problems? as someone once said, “it’s the economy stupid!” You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Karl Marx showed us how the political and social structure of any society was a reflection of its economic base. Adam Smith had taught us that as the technological basis of production altered and developed, so the economic system adapted to embrace the new method of production, and Marx develops this line of analysis to show us that the political, legal and social structures within society supply a stable framework that allows for consolidation and expansion of the dominant mode of production, whether it is a slave economy, a feudal, an industrial or a neoliberal. Our post-industrial society is the creation of the microprocessor which has had an enormous impact on our economic system, but as importantly, on our social system as well, with the explosion in mass communication techniques whether it be the mobile phone, the tablet etc. with the growth of social media and the instant world-wide dissemination of news and information. This growth of digital technology was accompanied by the success of the free market economic model and its policies of deregulation. Combine these three factors and you have the genesis of the financial crash and the political crisis. Digital technology and deregulation allowed for mass licensed gangsterism by the financial and business elites utilising the lie of the free market as justification for their rapacity and greed. That same great lie brought the subversion of our political class, enchanted by what seemed to them, living in their own little bubble on both sides of the Atlantic, to be a fairy story of riches and success. What they failed to see, or simply ignored, (although in Thatcher’s case it was quite deliberate) was the damage they were doing to the structures and functions of society and its crucial institutions. They became bewitched by the holy grail of the market, oblivious to the fact that it was the market, unregulated and unconstrained, that was the source of their trouble, not the unions, not the workers, not the welfare state, but the monster of their own creation.
As they deregulated the economy, it had a deregulating effect on the social system and that has now had a deregulating effect on the political. They thought they need not control the market, it is of course self-regulating, oh dear, I’m afraid not. They welcomed the deregulating of the social whose constituent parts they sought to privatise for profit, and of course created conditions that have not been seen since the Great Depression with consequences they never foresaw, and are now wakening up to the fact that they have also deregulated the political, an unintended consequence and something that they never considered would happen. The political is now out of their control. The political systems on both sides of the Atlantic are dying, they are on their last legs. As I said in an earlier post, Donald Trump is not the solution he is a symptom of the malaise, the cure will come later and like many medicines it may be very bitter. Both nations are deeply divided and in both, unprincipled charlatans are exploiting this situation with consequences we cannot forsee. In Britain, the divisions may become terminal. Why is this happening? I know I have said it before, but the root cause of all our problems? as someone once said, “it’s the economy stupid!” You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday 21 July 2016
Britain and America - the New Barbarians
I have been pondering the political situation in the UK, but have been struck by the parallels that exist between developments here and developments in the US. Politicians may not realise it but they are role models, particularly those at the top echelons of the system. They are responsible for establishing the tone and conduct of politics and their behaviour will generally define acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in matters such as speech and their treatment of other people, particularly opponents. However, their influence does not stop within the political system and extends into the wider society, acting as the benchmark for acceptable and unacceptable behaviour for society at large. Thus, if an occupant of, or a candidate for, the highest offices in the land considers that it’s OK to lie, slander, cheat and treat other people with no respect or dignity then that form of behaviour will spread throughout society as sure as the ripples in a pool expand outwards. If the ruling elite is openly discriminatory, racist, or exhibiting fascist tendencies, then that will give succour to and encourage, discrimination, racism and fascism.
As a result of what we are witnessing in both the UK and the US, I have come to the conclusion that we are becoming disturbingly uncivilised. Civilisation is a very fragile thing and the uncivilised state is always lurking just below the surface of what is a very thin veneer of everyday behaviour as we have witnessed throughout history. It should give everyone pause for thought how fast pre-war Germany, one of the most cultured and civilised of nations, descended into barbarism. That descent was the result of unprincipled politicians whose behaviour was responsible for a barbarism that still numbs the mind, aided and abetted by an atrocious and unscrupulous media.
In Britain we have just recently witnessed the ruling elite, aided and abetted by an atrocious media, winning a referendum on Scottish independence by barefaced lies and the demonization of their opponents. Politicians in the modern world no longer see their opposition as opponents, they see them as the enemy, as people to be attacked, reviled and destroyed. This was followed up by an EU referendum that was conducted on the basis of lies and religious and racist intolerance. People around the world have all noted how uncivilised this campaign was and how it marked a new low in political behaviour by the ruling elite in Britain. It was not just the fact that lies were told; it was the barefaced and outrageous nature of it, without a shred of remorse being shown by those who were guilty. It was also the demonization of others, the poisonous hatred of foreigners and immigrants. Some of the worst propaganda was perpetrated by people who were married to foreigners and immigrants, or who were themselves immigrants or descended from immigrants. The British government’s official position now towards immigrants from the EU since the Brexit vote, regardless of how long they have lived here, is to use them as a bargaining mechanism in their negotiations with the EU. Thus, we can honestly say that the EU has been so demonised by the British elite that EU nationals are no longer regarded as human beings, but as ‘things’ to be used to blackmail the EU with. That is a result of elite speech and behaviour.
I am now watching a very similar scenario during coverage of the Republican Party convention and was struck by the hatred and deliberate malice generated towards Hilary Clinton with the delegates chanting “lock her up” in a manner that was honestly reminiscent of a Nuremburg Rally, and this is from people who routinely call themselves Christians and invoke Biblical language and references to justify their policies. The nearest likeness I have been reminded of with respect to Donald Trump is the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. From this side of the Atlantic, it appears as if African-Americans are likewise demonised to the extent that they are regarded as fair game. I have written before about the long-term corrosive effect of the three-fifths clause in the original draft of the American Constitution. James Madison freely admitted that this clause referred to African-Americans as he wrote
“Let the case of the slaves be considered as it is in truth a peculiar one. Let the compromising expedient of the Constitution be mutually adopted, which regards them as inhabitants but as debased by servitude below the level of free inhabitants; which regards the slave as divested of two-fifths of the man”.
So, whilst the American Founding Fathers were appealing to natural law and divine authority in the drafting of their Declaration and Constitution, at the end of the day, in practice, the historical and social realities of the age became the dominant factors that are still reverberating today. Madison was a victim of his environment, but the people who still demonise the African-American today have no such excuse and are as guilty as those who are utilising the same tactics and rhetoric against immigrants in Britain. Such attitudes, speech and opinions have a long way to go before they run their course, with unforeseeable consequences. We are entering a dark and ugly chapter in history. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
As a result of what we are witnessing in both the UK and the US, I have come to the conclusion that we are becoming disturbingly uncivilised. Civilisation is a very fragile thing and the uncivilised state is always lurking just below the surface of what is a very thin veneer of everyday behaviour as we have witnessed throughout history. It should give everyone pause for thought how fast pre-war Germany, one of the most cultured and civilised of nations, descended into barbarism. That descent was the result of unprincipled politicians whose behaviour was responsible for a barbarism that still numbs the mind, aided and abetted by an atrocious and unscrupulous media.
In Britain we have just recently witnessed the ruling elite, aided and abetted by an atrocious media, winning a referendum on Scottish independence by barefaced lies and the demonization of their opponents. Politicians in the modern world no longer see their opposition as opponents, they see them as the enemy, as people to be attacked, reviled and destroyed. This was followed up by an EU referendum that was conducted on the basis of lies and religious and racist intolerance. People around the world have all noted how uncivilised this campaign was and how it marked a new low in political behaviour by the ruling elite in Britain. It was not just the fact that lies were told; it was the barefaced and outrageous nature of it, without a shred of remorse being shown by those who were guilty. It was also the demonization of others, the poisonous hatred of foreigners and immigrants. Some of the worst propaganda was perpetrated by people who were married to foreigners and immigrants, or who were themselves immigrants or descended from immigrants. The British government’s official position now towards immigrants from the EU since the Brexit vote, regardless of how long they have lived here, is to use them as a bargaining mechanism in their negotiations with the EU. Thus, we can honestly say that the EU has been so demonised by the British elite that EU nationals are no longer regarded as human beings, but as ‘things’ to be used to blackmail the EU with. That is a result of elite speech and behaviour.
I am now watching a very similar scenario during coverage of the Republican Party convention and was struck by the hatred and deliberate malice generated towards Hilary Clinton with the delegates chanting “lock her up” in a manner that was honestly reminiscent of a Nuremburg Rally, and this is from people who routinely call themselves Christians and invoke Biblical language and references to justify their policies. The nearest likeness I have been reminded of with respect to Donald Trump is the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. From this side of the Atlantic, it appears as if African-Americans are likewise demonised to the extent that they are regarded as fair game. I have written before about the long-term corrosive effect of the three-fifths clause in the original draft of the American Constitution. James Madison freely admitted that this clause referred to African-Americans as he wrote
“Let the case of the slaves be considered as it is in truth a peculiar one. Let the compromising expedient of the Constitution be mutually adopted, which regards them as inhabitants but as debased by servitude below the level of free inhabitants; which regards the slave as divested of two-fifths of the man”.
So, whilst the American Founding Fathers were appealing to natural law and divine authority in the drafting of their Declaration and Constitution, at the end of the day, in practice, the historical and social realities of the age became the dominant factors that are still reverberating today. Madison was a victim of his environment, but the people who still demonise the African-American today have no such excuse and are as guilty as those who are utilising the same tactics and rhetoric against immigrants in Britain. Such attitudes, speech and opinions have a long way to go before they run their course, with unforeseeable consequences. We are entering a dark and ugly chapter in history. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday 18 July 2016
Individualism is not a philosophy, it is a poison
I apologise for not posting for a week, but I wanted to reflect on the chaos that is Britain following the EU referendum and the bizarre events that have catapulted Theresa May into 10 Downing Street. Britain is going through a genuinely irrational phase in its history, and I wanted to reflect on my contention that it is one of the results of being subject to a completely irrational dominant ideology. It is truly fascinating times we live in, because we have just witnessed a whole raft of unintended consequences that have been the result of intentional human action, and this poor benighted nation is going to be subject to many more such unintended consequences for a long time to come. I know it is sad, but I am thoroughly enjoying it, it is most instructive. If you will indulge me I will reflect on the concept of individualism that is one of the main culprits in this tangled web.
The largest and most persistent problem for the human being since he/she first trod the earth has been survival, and the human species has not only survived, but flourished, by recognising the necessity for collective rather than individual behaviour. Human life is social life, and the human being is a social being. That is demonstrably correct and is what I would call a truism. Had the first human beings been motivated by an individualist impulse they would have assuredly perished, and I would not be writing this, nor would you be reading it. We can do so only because the human being is a socially cooperative being, and it was this facet of the human nature that secured their survival. That is not to dismiss the very selfish and self-centred aspects of human nature, but the demands of self-preservation ensure that it is in our own self-interest to cooperate with others and develop a division of labour in even the most basic of tasks, particularly those that form the basis of our security.
As a result, the dominant ideology of individualism that has been slowly poisoning and destroying our society for the past forty years, that formed the basis of Thatcher’s sinister claim that there is no such thing as society, is, in the first instance a denial of human nature. It is wrong and has no basis in any empirical analysis of the human condition. I do not personally believe that any serious thinker actually believes it. Thatcher and her minions were, as I have often said, well schooled but not at all well educated. To such people individualism is a mechanism, a means to an end; it is not a serious or even well informed philosophy. Indeed, from my perspective it is not a philosophy, it is a poison, both to the intellect and to society.
It is by adopting an individualist perspective that policy makers are able to label poverty and inequality as the result of life choices. If there is no society, then society cannot be responsible. There are only individuals and families according to the blessed Margaret, and so all problems are the result of individual and familial choices. There is no, nor can be, poverty and inequality resulting from class, race, ethnicity or gender etc., as these are socially constructed concepts and are therefore invalid as analytical explanations. You will begin to realise how stupid individualism really is the more you consider its implications, but, when it is embraced by governments and policy-makers, when it becomes institutionalised as a dominant ideology, it ceases to be comically stupid and becomes dangerously stupid. The individualist presents the human being as an essentially atomised individual whose only social reality is within a family structure and who does not relate to social institutions and structures which are regarded as something rather abstract and distanced from their everyday experiences; that in general, our social experience does not extend beyond the family and the types of neighbourly relationships that create types of voluntary associations. This approach is necessary if you propose attacking and discrediting our social structures and institutions and convincing people that they are dispensable and can be substituted by other arrangements that will perform their functions better and more efficiently. If they can be portrayed as somehow sitting outside of society and unrelated to everybody’s daily life, then they are indeed dispensable. Thus the whole of the Thatcher project was based on destroying Britain’s public sector, promoting the neoliberal agenda of privatisation and contracting out the services and functions of the major institutions that compose society such as health, education and welfare. By attacking, discrediting them, and denying their integral social centrality you can then justify their removal as a public service and utilise their necessary functions for profit. Her project involved a transfer of wealth and power upwards to a voracious and immoral elite and the reduction of the standard of living of working people as far as possible in order to enhance that same elite with levels of wealth that could never be justified or spent. It was however, a total denial of social reality.
It is for that reason that the British elite enthusiastically embraced the modern concepts of free market individualism and neoliberal economics, and it is crucial that we understand and establish the significance of the terms of reference that motivate economic theory and policy-making in order that we can have a clear understanding of why they have failed so spectacularly and caused so much social damage. However, as we cannot blame society for our failings because it doesn't exist, we must find scapegoats. Enter the EU and immigration, perfect! Thus, by adopting a whole series of false hypotheses, we are suffering from a whole series of disastrous conclusions for which we had to provide a whole series of false explanations, and a gullible British public lapped them up because they wanted to, with the exception of the more intelligent and civilised Celtic elements.
Fundamentally we are faced with the reality that the whole structural basis of modern Britain is founded on that series of false hypotheses, the most basic of those being the nature of the human being. I’m afraid that I have only touched on this topic, but hope it gives food for thought. Individualism must be confronted and challenged before it destroys the social fabric of life from the inside, because all serious and real solutions can only come from the perspective of the human being as a social being. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
The largest and most persistent problem for the human being since he/she first trod the earth has been survival, and the human species has not only survived, but flourished, by recognising the necessity for collective rather than individual behaviour. Human life is social life, and the human being is a social being. That is demonstrably correct and is what I would call a truism. Had the first human beings been motivated by an individualist impulse they would have assuredly perished, and I would not be writing this, nor would you be reading it. We can do so only because the human being is a socially cooperative being, and it was this facet of the human nature that secured their survival. That is not to dismiss the very selfish and self-centred aspects of human nature, but the demands of self-preservation ensure that it is in our own self-interest to cooperate with others and develop a division of labour in even the most basic of tasks, particularly those that form the basis of our security.
As a result, the dominant ideology of individualism that has been slowly poisoning and destroying our society for the past forty years, that formed the basis of Thatcher’s sinister claim that there is no such thing as society, is, in the first instance a denial of human nature. It is wrong and has no basis in any empirical analysis of the human condition. I do not personally believe that any serious thinker actually believes it. Thatcher and her minions were, as I have often said, well schooled but not at all well educated. To such people individualism is a mechanism, a means to an end; it is not a serious or even well informed philosophy. Indeed, from my perspective it is not a philosophy, it is a poison, both to the intellect and to society.
It is by adopting an individualist perspective that policy makers are able to label poverty and inequality as the result of life choices. If there is no society, then society cannot be responsible. There are only individuals and families according to the blessed Margaret, and so all problems are the result of individual and familial choices. There is no, nor can be, poverty and inequality resulting from class, race, ethnicity or gender etc., as these are socially constructed concepts and are therefore invalid as analytical explanations. You will begin to realise how stupid individualism really is the more you consider its implications, but, when it is embraced by governments and policy-makers, when it becomes institutionalised as a dominant ideology, it ceases to be comically stupid and becomes dangerously stupid. The individualist presents the human being as an essentially atomised individual whose only social reality is within a family structure and who does not relate to social institutions and structures which are regarded as something rather abstract and distanced from their everyday experiences; that in general, our social experience does not extend beyond the family and the types of neighbourly relationships that create types of voluntary associations. This approach is necessary if you propose attacking and discrediting our social structures and institutions and convincing people that they are dispensable and can be substituted by other arrangements that will perform their functions better and more efficiently. If they can be portrayed as somehow sitting outside of society and unrelated to everybody’s daily life, then they are indeed dispensable. Thus the whole of the Thatcher project was based on destroying Britain’s public sector, promoting the neoliberal agenda of privatisation and contracting out the services and functions of the major institutions that compose society such as health, education and welfare. By attacking, discrediting them, and denying their integral social centrality you can then justify their removal as a public service and utilise their necessary functions for profit. Her project involved a transfer of wealth and power upwards to a voracious and immoral elite and the reduction of the standard of living of working people as far as possible in order to enhance that same elite with levels of wealth that could never be justified or spent. It was however, a total denial of social reality.
It is for that reason that the British elite enthusiastically embraced the modern concepts of free market individualism and neoliberal economics, and it is crucial that we understand and establish the significance of the terms of reference that motivate economic theory and policy-making in order that we can have a clear understanding of why they have failed so spectacularly and caused so much social damage. However, as we cannot blame society for our failings because it doesn't exist, we must find scapegoats. Enter the EU and immigration, perfect! Thus, by adopting a whole series of false hypotheses, we are suffering from a whole series of disastrous conclusions for which we had to provide a whole series of false explanations, and a gullible British public lapped them up because they wanted to, with the exception of the more intelligent and civilised Celtic elements.
Fundamentally we are faced with the reality that the whole structural basis of modern Britain is founded on that series of false hypotheses, the most basic of those being the nature of the human being. I’m afraid that I have only touched on this topic, but hope it gives food for thought. Individualism must be confronted and challenged before it destroys the social fabric of life from the inside, because all serious and real solutions can only come from the perspective of the human being as a social being. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday 11 July 2016
The Scots Must Abandon Westminster and its System of Government
From Wednesday, in the space of nine years, Britain will have had two Prime Ministers who have taken office without election. Imagine that, the most powerful office in the land passing into the hands of individuals on a quite arbitrary basis, with no input whatever from the electorate, or even from Parliament. In the case of Theresa May, she will take office on the strength of the votes of 199 Conservative MPs. What other nation that even pretended to be a democracy would tolerate such a situation? If something happened in the United States then they have a constitutional mechanism in place to solve such a problem. They have a Vice-President, elected to that post with the understanding of all the electorate that they will be required to assume the Presidency in an emergency. If you don’t agree with that person being in a position where they may become President, then you don’t have to vote for them. This latest transfer of power without any form of democratic input is taking place at a time of the most crucial importance for the future of the United Kingdom, and, as I said, our future is being largely decided by 199 of the most reactionary incompetents on the planet, and this is happening because all of the significant personalities that dominated the recent EU referendum have all run away in terror and shame over the consequences of the damage they have inflicted. For those of you from outwith the UK who may read this, you have before you in stark detail, evidenced by their own behaviour, why I tell you that we have some of the most appalling politicians on the planet. They are utterly spineless and shameless.
As early as March 2006, The Power Enquiry, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Rowntree Reform Trust to investigate the decline in political participation in the UK, published its findings and concluded that Britain was suffering from what they termed ‘a democratic malaise’. The Enquiry stated that there was a
‘well-ingrained popular view across the country that our political institutions and their politicians are failing, untrustworthy, and disconnected from the great mass of the British people.’ And that ‘The British party system is based on the dominance of two parties constructed around the pursuit of the interests and ideological leanings of the two dominant classes that existed during the industrial era….even Members of Parliament have little say because all the decisions are made by a handful of people at the centre and then driven through the system. Politics and government are increasingly slipping back into the hands of privileged elites as if democracy has run out of steam.”
If there is one stark fact that has emerged from both the EU Referendum and the Chilcot Report it is that the British political system is in a state of serious crisis, it is broken and it is quite obvious that no-one took a blind bit of notice of the Power Enquiry’s findings as the situation has actually deteriorated since 2006. As early as 1990, the ex-Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen was warning us that the Westminster system of government was in a parlous state when, writing in the Mail on Sunday on 3/6/90 he said
"The notion that the House of Commons is made up of 650 MPs who individually reach carefully considered opinions and who act as a brake on the Executive is so far from the truth as to be ludicrous. The Whips are in absolute command. The Executive is in total control. What the government says goes."
This perspective was reinforced by the Labour MP Dianne Abbott, who, writing in the Independent in February 2011, described the committee stage of the legislative process as a ‘dead letter.’ She added
“It does not matter which party is in power. Party managers make it their business to ensure that the government MPs on the committee, who are always in the majority, say absolutely nothing. Any government MP who goes on a committee with the genuine intention of scrutinising legislation knows they risk their career.
One of the earliest and most influential theorists of the liberal democratic system of government that Britain likes to pretend it is; was John Locke. Locke was adamant that any properly constituted system of democratic government would ensure that a government who betrayed the trust that the people had placed in them would be removed. In addition, in such a democratic system, the executive should never be allowed to dominate the legislature. Parliament, as the elected representatives of the people, must always, according to Locke, be the sovereign body. It must control the executive, not the other way round as we now have in the UK. Locke argued that in the last resort
'there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.'
It is obvious that the Westminster legislature is simply useless, and, if we consider the last three British Prime Ministers we can see that the Westminster elite consider it quite permissible to lie, deceive and betray the people without a shred of hesitation or remorse. The conduct and the outcome of the two greatest foreign policy decisions taken since the Second World War, the Iraq debacle and the EU Referendum, were both the result of bare-faced lies and the vanity and personal ambitions of egotistical buffoons. If we add the Scottish Referendum is it any wonder that there is no trust whatsoever in the Westminster system? and, the tragedy is, in the absence of a written constitution, that system is founded on an enormous amount of trust invested by the British people in their elected representatives, a trust that is routinely betrayed.
The sociologist Max Weber argued that modern democratic states encourage what he terms ‘Caesarism.’ This happens because in countries with universal suffrage, political leaders are deemed to require charismatic qualities that will appeal to the majority of the electorate. As a result, regardless of the ability or quality of a modern politician, they will have great difficulty reaching the top positions in the political structures if they fail to display charismatic leadership. Caesarism therefore presents a genuine threat to the democratic process. It encourages the increasing centralisation of power and decision-making in the leadership and his/her immediate chosen circle, it threatens to corrupt the leadership itself by inflating their sense of importance whilst diminishing others, and it has the effect of elevating the executive at the expense of the legislature. All those tendencies are very evident in modern Britain, and the democratic institutions and structures that are supposed to counter caesarist tendencies in our society are failing us and not working. Principal amongst those failures are an effective and accountable Parliament and an efficient electoral system. One characteristic of modern British government and its caesarist tendencies is the way that party leaders surround themselves with non-elected advisers who become extremely powerful figures within the government, whilst not being formally part of that government, and who then go on to become MPs themselves bolstered by an inflated sense of their own importance. The fact that someone went to Oxford or Cambridge tells you very little about them as many people are well-schooled but are very far from being well-educated, and the evidence of that is in the staggering levels of incompetence we witness in economic and social affairs by our Oxbridge schooled elite. The defining characteristics of both Iraq and the EU referendum were that they were launched by people who had given no thought to either their conduct or their result. There was, quite simply, no plan A, never mind a plan B, and that is not the behaviour of well-educated people.
If there is one thing certain it is that our system of representative government is anything but representative, indeed the only remotely representative element within Westminster is the SNP group. This is the result of the Scottish system of proportional representation. It was John Stuart Mill who argued that in order for a nation to properly call itself a democracy all sections of the nation should be proportionately represented, that proportionally, the minority should be as fully represented as the majority. The alternative produces a political system based on inequality and privilege, which, he argues, is contrary to the principle of democracy. The defining characteristic of modern Britain is inequality and privilege. It has become a democratic imperative to abandon this political model. As there is very little chance of any meaningful change occurring in a Britain that is becoming more reactionary and fascist every day, then Scottish Independence has become essential. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
As early as March 2006, The Power Enquiry, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Rowntree Reform Trust to investigate the decline in political participation in the UK, published its findings and concluded that Britain was suffering from what they termed ‘a democratic malaise’. The Enquiry stated that there was a
‘well-ingrained popular view across the country that our political institutions and their politicians are failing, untrustworthy, and disconnected from the great mass of the British people.’ And that ‘The British party system is based on the dominance of two parties constructed around the pursuit of the interests and ideological leanings of the two dominant classes that existed during the industrial era….even Members of Parliament have little say because all the decisions are made by a handful of people at the centre and then driven through the system. Politics and government are increasingly slipping back into the hands of privileged elites as if democracy has run out of steam.”
If there is one stark fact that has emerged from both the EU Referendum and the Chilcot Report it is that the British political system is in a state of serious crisis, it is broken and it is quite obvious that no-one took a blind bit of notice of the Power Enquiry’s findings as the situation has actually deteriorated since 2006. As early as 1990, the ex-Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen was warning us that the Westminster system of government was in a parlous state when, writing in the Mail on Sunday on 3/6/90 he said
"The notion that the House of Commons is made up of 650 MPs who individually reach carefully considered opinions and who act as a brake on the Executive is so far from the truth as to be ludicrous. The Whips are in absolute command. The Executive is in total control. What the government says goes."
This perspective was reinforced by the Labour MP Dianne Abbott, who, writing in the Independent in February 2011, described the committee stage of the legislative process as a ‘dead letter.’ She added
“It does not matter which party is in power. Party managers make it their business to ensure that the government MPs on the committee, who are always in the majority, say absolutely nothing. Any government MP who goes on a committee with the genuine intention of scrutinising legislation knows they risk their career.
One of the earliest and most influential theorists of the liberal democratic system of government that Britain likes to pretend it is; was John Locke. Locke was adamant that any properly constituted system of democratic government would ensure that a government who betrayed the trust that the people had placed in them would be removed. In addition, in such a democratic system, the executive should never be allowed to dominate the legislature. Parliament, as the elected representatives of the people, must always, according to Locke, be the sovereign body. It must control the executive, not the other way round as we now have in the UK. Locke argued that in the last resort
'there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.'
It is obvious that the Westminster legislature is simply useless, and, if we consider the last three British Prime Ministers we can see that the Westminster elite consider it quite permissible to lie, deceive and betray the people without a shred of hesitation or remorse. The conduct and the outcome of the two greatest foreign policy decisions taken since the Second World War, the Iraq debacle and the EU Referendum, were both the result of bare-faced lies and the vanity and personal ambitions of egotistical buffoons. If we add the Scottish Referendum is it any wonder that there is no trust whatsoever in the Westminster system? and, the tragedy is, in the absence of a written constitution, that system is founded on an enormous amount of trust invested by the British people in their elected representatives, a trust that is routinely betrayed.
The sociologist Max Weber argued that modern democratic states encourage what he terms ‘Caesarism.’ This happens because in countries with universal suffrage, political leaders are deemed to require charismatic qualities that will appeal to the majority of the electorate. As a result, regardless of the ability or quality of a modern politician, they will have great difficulty reaching the top positions in the political structures if they fail to display charismatic leadership. Caesarism therefore presents a genuine threat to the democratic process. It encourages the increasing centralisation of power and decision-making in the leadership and his/her immediate chosen circle, it threatens to corrupt the leadership itself by inflating their sense of importance whilst diminishing others, and it has the effect of elevating the executive at the expense of the legislature. All those tendencies are very evident in modern Britain, and the democratic institutions and structures that are supposed to counter caesarist tendencies in our society are failing us and not working. Principal amongst those failures are an effective and accountable Parliament and an efficient electoral system. One characteristic of modern British government and its caesarist tendencies is the way that party leaders surround themselves with non-elected advisers who become extremely powerful figures within the government, whilst not being formally part of that government, and who then go on to become MPs themselves bolstered by an inflated sense of their own importance. The fact that someone went to Oxford or Cambridge tells you very little about them as many people are well-schooled but are very far from being well-educated, and the evidence of that is in the staggering levels of incompetence we witness in economic and social affairs by our Oxbridge schooled elite. The defining characteristics of both Iraq and the EU referendum were that they were launched by people who had given no thought to either their conduct or their result. There was, quite simply, no plan A, never mind a plan B, and that is not the behaviour of well-educated people.
If there is one thing certain it is that our system of representative government is anything but representative, indeed the only remotely representative element within Westminster is the SNP group. This is the result of the Scottish system of proportional representation. It was John Stuart Mill who argued that in order for a nation to properly call itself a democracy all sections of the nation should be proportionately represented, that proportionally, the minority should be as fully represented as the majority. The alternative produces a political system based on inequality and privilege, which, he argues, is contrary to the principle of democracy. The defining characteristic of modern Britain is inequality and privilege. It has become a democratic imperative to abandon this political model. As there is very little chance of any meaningful change occurring in a Britain that is becoming more reactionary and fascist every day, then Scottish Independence has become essential. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Sunday 10 July 2016
There are none so blind who will not see
The three greatest crises our country has faced since the Second World War has surely taught us two very valuable lessons. First the financial crisis of 2007-8 showed us the stark reality of the evils of unregulated economic freedom and then the Chilcot Report and the Brexit campaign has shown us the stark reality of unregulated political freedom. The great project, began by Margaret Thatcher, to remove all constraints on both economic and political decision-making, has finally borne fruit and is revealed for the disaster that some of us had always predicted it would be. All of my adult life I have listened in despair to the clarion calls for freedom from people who it was obvious had not the first idea of what freedom is. Freedom is most certainly not the right to do whatever you want, and we are now beginning to understand the extent to which Thatcher’s interpretation of freedom allowed the people in charge of the keys to the safe to treat the national wealth as their own personal pocket money to be utilised as funds for their addiction to the great casino that is the financial system. Now we are asking, where was the responsibility, the accountability that we were repeatedly told by the free market concept of freedom was an evil that was chaining the creation of wealth, and where is the paradise that was awaiting us from the never ending riches available if only we would put our faith in the market and the unrestrained decision-making of our masters? Now we have seen, in all its horror, the extent to which employers, when given their freedom, will go to sacrifice the well-being of their workforce to their rapacity in pursuit of their own gain. As a consequence we are only now beginning to learn the importance of requiring the rich to consider that they have duties and responsibilities as well as rights in both their individual and collective lives, where previously we only demanded that from workers and their representative organisations and demonised them when they sought to exercise their rights.
Our everyday experience has demonstrated the destructive capacity of, and the lie that is, the free market, a system that has been well and truly weighed in the balances and found wanting. Perhaps more importantly, the individualist philosophy that has underpinned it and provided its justification has been shown for the intellectual barbarism that is has always been. Now we can all see the dominant economic and philosophical ideology as they really are; a lie and a fraud, laid bare by experience and the reality of a United Kingdom that can no longer offer any excuses or blame anyone else. Now we are beginning to see the necessity of imposing meaningful restraints on free enterprise, accepting a temporary material loss for a greater and wider social and collective gain because we are a wealthy nation and can afford to redistribute resources to produce the type of equity that a just society demands.
Our political system is in the same state of moral and intellectual bankruptcy as the economic. Parliament is exposed as being completely useless, failing in every department of its duties and responsibility, completely out of touch and unrepresentative. Successive administrations have demonstrated that Parliament has completely failed to exercise either control or accountability over government, the civil service, the security services etc. Now we see the fruits of a Parliament that failed in its responsibilities for representation and accountability, allowing unrestrained governments to deregulate the financial system, business, economic activity and employment, developing the idea that it had the right to wage war and invade other nations irrespective of the wishes of the people who elect them. Now we see how Parliament, through its programmes of media training etc. taught our representatives how to lie and deceive and refuse to answer questions and how those same representatives eagerly lapped up such methods of mass deception that were so effective during the two referendum campaigns. The free market political and economic doctrines that have so dominated this nation for the past forty years have broken the nation. It will never be the same again. This gives us the opportunity to reform and reshape our political, economic and social institutions and structures and challenge the creeping racism and fascism that is the logical result of the Thatcherite experiment, but we cannot trust in our Westminster politicians because they simply cannot, or will not, see the reality that they are responsible for creating, and the biggest problem is that too many of them are wilfully blind. If we, the people, fail to grasp this challenge we face a grim future. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Our everyday experience has demonstrated the destructive capacity of, and the lie that is, the free market, a system that has been well and truly weighed in the balances and found wanting. Perhaps more importantly, the individualist philosophy that has underpinned it and provided its justification has been shown for the intellectual barbarism that is has always been. Now we can all see the dominant economic and philosophical ideology as they really are; a lie and a fraud, laid bare by experience and the reality of a United Kingdom that can no longer offer any excuses or blame anyone else. Now we are beginning to see the necessity of imposing meaningful restraints on free enterprise, accepting a temporary material loss for a greater and wider social and collective gain because we are a wealthy nation and can afford to redistribute resources to produce the type of equity that a just society demands.
Our political system is in the same state of moral and intellectual bankruptcy as the economic. Parliament is exposed as being completely useless, failing in every department of its duties and responsibility, completely out of touch and unrepresentative. Successive administrations have demonstrated that Parliament has completely failed to exercise either control or accountability over government, the civil service, the security services etc. Now we see the fruits of a Parliament that failed in its responsibilities for representation and accountability, allowing unrestrained governments to deregulate the financial system, business, economic activity and employment, developing the idea that it had the right to wage war and invade other nations irrespective of the wishes of the people who elect them. Now we see how Parliament, through its programmes of media training etc. taught our representatives how to lie and deceive and refuse to answer questions and how those same representatives eagerly lapped up such methods of mass deception that were so effective during the two referendum campaigns. The free market political and economic doctrines that have so dominated this nation for the past forty years have broken the nation. It will never be the same again. This gives us the opportunity to reform and reshape our political, economic and social institutions and structures and challenge the creeping racism and fascism that is the logical result of the Thatcherite experiment, but we cannot trust in our Westminster politicians because they simply cannot, or will not, see the reality that they are responsible for creating, and the biggest problem is that too many of them are wilfully blind. If we, the people, fail to grasp this challenge we face a grim future. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Friday 8 July 2016
Why I detest and abominise modern free market economics
A friend asked me why I was so scathing and dismissive of free market economics and modern market economic models whilst at the same time admitting to great admiration for Adam Smith, the author of free market economic theory. Following my answer he encouraged me to publish it in my blog. I have to apologise however, because, my answer is necessarily lengthy for a blog such as this and involves letting Adam Smith speak for himself, rather than me attempting to interpret him. In addition I will reinforce this perspective by quoting Alfred Marshall, the author of neoclassical economics to support my conclusion that modern free market economics is a fraud, and a lie. Why? Well, modern economists argue support for such abominable practices as zero-hours contracts, 'flexible' working practices, managerialism, longer working hours, days, and weeks, and the reduction of workers rights, which they hide under a concern for what they term 'regulation'. They also demand the restriction of trade union activity and condemn all industrial action for whatever reason. My first response was that Adam Smith was most certainly not the author of what we call the free market model of economics and that any attempt to blame his for that does him a great disservice. That however, requires a book in itself to explain, but we can get an insight into why he was not by actually looking at what he said. Now, on the subject of working people's wages and improvements in their living standards, Adam Smith asks the question
"Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage, or as an inconveniency, to the society? The answer seems at first abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part, can never be regarded as any inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged."
In support of this point of view Alfred Marshall writes
"The drift of economic science during many generations has been with increasing force towards the belief that there is no real necessity, and therefore no moral justification for extreme poverty side by side with great wealth. The inequalities of wealth, though less than they are often represented to be, are a serious flaw in our economic organisation."
Now, it has to be remembered that Smith published in 1776 and Marshall in 1890. What they are writing is as relevant, if not even more so, to 2016 as it was then. That must be to the eternal shame of British society today, and especially to our economic and political policy makers. It is a dreadful commentary on modern Britain that can I present such observations on 18th and 19th century Britain as relevant to the 21st century. Thus, according to a 19th century real economist, as opposed to the charlatans that we are being oppressed by and driven into intellectual barbarity, the economic structures and organisation of our society are both immoral and seriously flawed. In another observation on the condition of working people Smith writes
"The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low"
And in a discussion of the most economically beneficial situation for the greater social good of the whole nation Smith writes
"If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate, than to animate the application of many of their workmen. It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work......In reality, high profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages.....In raising the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. The rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods, both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits; they are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains; they complain only of those of other people."
This could easily have been written as a comment about the whole thrust of economic policy emanating from the pigsty since the coronation of Queen Margaret, and gives an insight into some of the reasons for the economic crisis in 2008. In light of what is admittedly a very small flavour of the observations of people whom I call real economists it becomes quite obvious that neither Smith nor Marshall would thank you for categorising them with the academic illiteracy and moral bankruptcy that poses as economics in the modern world. Indeed Marshall poses a question that should make all Tories retire in shame to contemplate the misery and damage they have inflicted on society when he asks
"Now at last we are setting ourselves seriously to inquire whether it is necessary that there should be any so-called “lower classes” at all: that is, whether there need be large numbers of people doomed from their birth to hard work in order to provide for others the requisites of a refined and cultured life; while they themselves are prevented by their poverty and toil from having any share or part in that life……The question cannot be fully answered by economic science. For the answer depends partly on the moral and political capabilities of human nature, and on these matters the economist has no special means of information."
In a commentary on the academic and mathematical models of economics that are destroying our world he writes
"Ethical forces are among those of which the economist has to take account. Attempts have been made to construct an abstract science with regard to the actions of an “economic man,” who is under no ethical influences and who pursues pecuniary gain warily and energetically, but mechanically and selfishly. But they have not been successful, nor even thoroughly carried out. For they have never really treated the economic man as perfectly selfish; no one could be relied on better to endure toil and sacrifice with the unselfish desire to make provision for his family; and his normal motives have always been tacitly assumed to include the family affections. But if they include these, why should they not include all other altruistic motives the action of which is so far uniform in any class at any time and place, that it can be reduced to general rule? There seems to be no reason."
So much for the free market nonsense of the rational and self-interested individualist consumer. In addition, Marshall addresses the question of how we should act as to increase the good and diminish the evil influences of economic freedom? As a flavour of his solutions I quote
"Some harsh employers and politicians, defending exclusive class privileges early in last century, found it convenient to claim the authority of political economy on their side; and they often spoke of themselves as "economists." And even in our own time, that title has been assumed by opponents of generous expenditure on the education of the masses of the people, in spite of the fact that living economists with one consent maintain that such expenditure is a true economy, and that to refuse it is both wrong and bad business from a national point of view."
Note the difference Marshall makes between economics and true economy. This post is now too long and I trust you are not bored if you have read this far. However, I will leave you with one more quote from Marshall when he turns his attention to the low paid.
"Though arithmetic warns us that it is impossible to raise all earnings beyond the level reached by specially well-to-do artisan families, it is certainly desirable that those who are below that level should be raised, even at the expense of lowering in some degree those who are above it"
Note his reference as a comparison to specially well-to-do artisan families. This is a quite different thing to a minimum or living wage. How does the free market neo-liberal reconcile such sentiments? I repeat, we are being degraded as a people and a nation by gangsters and fraudsters who pose as educated experts, but are in effect promoting policy to degrade and enslave the mass of the common people of this country. We must reject their economic model and their policies and return to an economic model that puts the working human being on an equitable level with every other human being regardless of class, race or gender. That is economics, the consideration of the whole human being, their economic, social and political reality in relation to their neighbour. I thank you for reading this far and you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
"Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage, or as an inconveniency, to the society? The answer seems at first abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part, can never be regarded as any inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged."
In support of this point of view Alfred Marshall writes
"The drift of economic science during many generations has been with increasing force towards the belief that there is no real necessity, and therefore no moral justification for extreme poverty side by side with great wealth. The inequalities of wealth, though less than they are often represented to be, are a serious flaw in our economic organisation."
Now, it has to be remembered that Smith published in 1776 and Marshall in 1890. What they are writing is as relevant, if not even more so, to 2016 as it was then. That must be to the eternal shame of British society today, and especially to our economic and political policy makers. It is a dreadful commentary on modern Britain that can I present such observations on 18th and 19th century Britain as relevant to the 21st century. Thus, according to a 19th century real economist, as opposed to the charlatans that we are being oppressed by and driven into intellectual barbarity, the economic structures and organisation of our society are both immoral and seriously flawed. In another observation on the condition of working people Smith writes
"The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low"
And in a discussion of the most economically beneficial situation for the greater social good of the whole nation Smith writes
"If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate, than to animate the application of many of their workmen. It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work......In reality, high profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages.....In raising the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. The rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods, both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits; they are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains; they complain only of those of other people."
This could easily have been written as a comment about the whole thrust of economic policy emanating from the pigsty since the coronation of Queen Margaret, and gives an insight into some of the reasons for the economic crisis in 2008. In light of what is admittedly a very small flavour of the observations of people whom I call real economists it becomes quite obvious that neither Smith nor Marshall would thank you for categorising them with the academic illiteracy and moral bankruptcy that poses as economics in the modern world. Indeed Marshall poses a question that should make all Tories retire in shame to contemplate the misery and damage they have inflicted on society when he asks
"Now at last we are setting ourselves seriously to inquire whether it is necessary that there should be any so-called “lower classes” at all: that is, whether there need be large numbers of people doomed from their birth to hard work in order to provide for others the requisites of a refined and cultured life; while they themselves are prevented by their poverty and toil from having any share or part in that life……The question cannot be fully answered by economic science. For the answer depends partly on the moral and political capabilities of human nature, and on these matters the economist has no special means of information."
In a commentary on the academic and mathematical models of economics that are destroying our world he writes
"Ethical forces are among those of which the economist has to take account. Attempts have been made to construct an abstract science with regard to the actions of an “economic man,” who is under no ethical influences and who pursues pecuniary gain warily and energetically, but mechanically and selfishly. But they have not been successful, nor even thoroughly carried out. For they have never really treated the economic man as perfectly selfish; no one could be relied on better to endure toil and sacrifice with the unselfish desire to make provision for his family; and his normal motives have always been tacitly assumed to include the family affections. But if they include these, why should they not include all other altruistic motives the action of which is so far uniform in any class at any time and place, that it can be reduced to general rule? There seems to be no reason."
So much for the free market nonsense of the rational and self-interested individualist consumer. In addition, Marshall addresses the question of how we should act as to increase the good and diminish the evil influences of economic freedom? As a flavour of his solutions I quote
"Some harsh employers and politicians, defending exclusive class privileges early in last century, found it convenient to claim the authority of political economy on their side; and they often spoke of themselves as "economists." And even in our own time, that title has been assumed by opponents of generous expenditure on the education of the masses of the people, in spite of the fact that living economists with one consent maintain that such expenditure is a true economy, and that to refuse it is both wrong and bad business from a national point of view."
Note the difference Marshall makes between economics and true economy. This post is now too long and I trust you are not bored if you have read this far. However, I will leave you with one more quote from Marshall when he turns his attention to the low paid.
"Though arithmetic warns us that it is impossible to raise all earnings beyond the level reached by specially well-to-do artisan families, it is certainly desirable that those who are below that level should be raised, even at the expense of lowering in some degree those who are above it"
Note his reference as a comparison to specially well-to-do artisan families. This is a quite different thing to a minimum or living wage. How does the free market neo-liberal reconcile such sentiments? I repeat, we are being degraded as a people and a nation by gangsters and fraudsters who pose as educated experts, but are in effect promoting policy to degrade and enslave the mass of the common people of this country. We must reject their economic model and their policies and return to an economic model that puts the working human being on an equitable level with every other human being regardless of class, race or gender. That is economics, the consideration of the whole human being, their economic, social and political reality in relation to their neighbour. I thank you for reading this far and you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Wednesday 6 July 2016
Britain defies rational explanation
Following the EU Referendum we have, today, had the publication of the Chilcot Report and there can no longer be any doubt in anyone's mind that, as I have been repeatedly telling you on this blog, the British are governed by some of the most appalling and incompetent politicians on the planet. Both these foreign policy disasters have revealed the British political elite to be a gang of lying psychopaths. The two most crucial foreign policy decisions since the Second World War were both decided by a catalogue of lies to satisfy the vanity and personal ambitions of sociopathic egomaniacs. At least we have had the satisfaction of hopefully witnessing the destruction of The Spider's political career as he abandoned ship with the horrific realisation of what he has done. The Spider's capitulation confirms my estimation of his character and the emptiness of his intellect. As I say about the British elite, spineless, completely devoid of dignity or shame. I am reminded of Plutarch's description of Alcibiades whom he describes as a paragon of unprincipled viciousness; cruel, deceitful, prepared to say whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear, and to adopt whatever character he thinks will win the approval of the masses. As Plutarch tells us, "He could change more abruptly than a chameleon". Unfortunately for this poor sorry nation, that can be applied to many of the personnel at the top of the British political elite. As to why the British public keep putting their faith in such revolting people it is because there is no real choice. As I tried to explain in another post, decency and intelligence have been quite deliberately excluded from British politics and our politicians are characterised by various stages of braindead. Except of course for Scotland, which thankfully has alternatives that even effect the Scottish branches of the two pigsty parties, both of whom supported Remaining in the EU.
We actually have a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party, and therefore a potential Prime Minister, Andrea Leadsom, being described by civil servants who had to work with her as 'monomaniacal' and the worst minister they had ever seen. It is almost unknown for British civil servants to comment on their ministers, so it must be bad when this happens. They commented how everything that happened was blamed on the EU by this political disaster of an MP. The latest abomination emanating from this government is a refusal by the Home Secretary who is the hot favourite to succeed The Camoron as Prime Minister, to guarantee the security of EU nationals who live and work in the UK to remain here after we leave the EU. This is just under 3 million people being threatened with deportation. Over 1 in 5 of the employees in our NHS, which is already dangerously understaffed, are EU nationals. However, I bet that none of those being considered as undesirable immigrants are the EU nationals who play in the English Premier League. I doubt if they include The Garbage's German wife, or the other EU nationals who are the spouses of inhabitants of the pigsty. The Scottish First Minister has sought a guarantee for the security of EU nationals living in Scotland and was refused. Both Cornwall and Wales survive because of EU funding, but voted to leave the EU knowing that a post-EU British government cannot, and will not, replace that funding. All of the financial warnings that were ignored during the campaign are beginning to manifest already, and you wonder why I tell you that this country is going both increasingly insane and increasingly fascist. I remind you, the Westminster pigsty is the decision-making forum of the 5th richest country on earth that refused sanctuary to 3,000 parentless immigrant children. These people are all, of course, good Christians, good Muslims and good Jews, who parade their piety and wear their faiths like a badge. It is so comforting that our leaders are all religiously committed to good works and charity whatever their respective faiths.
The good news is that we are losing The Spider, The Great Garbage and The Camoron, who have all taken fright at the horror they have unleashed and scuttled off leaving behind chaos and disintegration. They will not be missed, that is a certainty. The rats have definitely deserted the sinking ship, although I must apologise for likening these disgusting creatures to our rodent population whose natures are far more decent than our politicians, because one of the most striking outcomes of the EU referendum is how far the British have moved to the right encouraged by and goaded into open hatred of foreigners by our political class and the abominations of the Daily Mail and Daily Express. As you are probably aware there has been a release of the most graphic racism, encouraged by the demonization of immigrants and foreigners in general. Every single leave voter I have seen interviewed has cited immigration as the reason they voted leave. The residents of the pigsty who are laughingly called our representatives are the people who enjoyed a society with full employment, free education at all levels, adequate and decent housing for all, free health care, decent welfare benefits, full-time employment contracts and a catalogue of employment rights and protections, and are the same people determined to deny all of that to our children and grandchildren. Now that we are leaving the EU and the rights and benefits that are protected by the EU, we will see the full force of what Naomi Klein called 'The Shock Doctrine' unleashed on an unsuspecting British population. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
We actually have a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party, and therefore a potential Prime Minister, Andrea Leadsom, being described by civil servants who had to work with her as 'monomaniacal' and the worst minister they had ever seen. It is almost unknown for British civil servants to comment on their ministers, so it must be bad when this happens. They commented how everything that happened was blamed on the EU by this political disaster of an MP. The latest abomination emanating from this government is a refusal by the Home Secretary who is the hot favourite to succeed The Camoron as Prime Minister, to guarantee the security of EU nationals who live and work in the UK to remain here after we leave the EU. This is just under 3 million people being threatened with deportation. Over 1 in 5 of the employees in our NHS, which is already dangerously understaffed, are EU nationals. However, I bet that none of those being considered as undesirable immigrants are the EU nationals who play in the English Premier League. I doubt if they include The Garbage's German wife, or the other EU nationals who are the spouses of inhabitants of the pigsty. The Scottish First Minister has sought a guarantee for the security of EU nationals living in Scotland and was refused. Both Cornwall and Wales survive because of EU funding, but voted to leave the EU knowing that a post-EU British government cannot, and will not, replace that funding. All of the financial warnings that were ignored during the campaign are beginning to manifest already, and you wonder why I tell you that this country is going both increasingly insane and increasingly fascist. I remind you, the Westminster pigsty is the decision-making forum of the 5th richest country on earth that refused sanctuary to 3,000 parentless immigrant children. These people are all, of course, good Christians, good Muslims and good Jews, who parade their piety and wear their faiths like a badge. It is so comforting that our leaders are all religiously committed to good works and charity whatever their respective faiths.
The good news is that we are losing The Spider, The Great Garbage and The Camoron, who have all taken fright at the horror they have unleashed and scuttled off leaving behind chaos and disintegration. They will not be missed, that is a certainty. The rats have definitely deserted the sinking ship, although I must apologise for likening these disgusting creatures to our rodent population whose natures are far more decent than our politicians, because one of the most striking outcomes of the EU referendum is how far the British have moved to the right encouraged by and goaded into open hatred of foreigners by our political class and the abominations of the Daily Mail and Daily Express. As you are probably aware there has been a release of the most graphic racism, encouraged by the demonization of immigrants and foreigners in general. Every single leave voter I have seen interviewed has cited immigration as the reason they voted leave. The residents of the pigsty who are laughingly called our representatives are the people who enjoyed a society with full employment, free education at all levels, adequate and decent housing for all, free health care, decent welfare benefits, full-time employment contracts and a catalogue of employment rights and protections, and are the same people determined to deny all of that to our children and grandchildren. Now that we are leaving the EU and the rights and benefits that are protected by the EU, we will see the full force of what Naomi Klein called 'The Shock Doctrine' unleashed on an unsuspecting British population. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Friday 1 July 2016
How would Adam Smith have voted in the referendum?
A friend reproached me for my support for Remain. I thought you were a fan of Adam Smith, he said, who, he assured me would most assuredly have been a fervent Brexiteer as he would have opposed the closed shop of the EU and its regulatory and bureaucratic structures. I emailed him the following.
"The love of our own nation often disposes us to view, with the most malignant jealousy and envy, the prosperity and aggrandisement of any other neighbouring nation. Independent and neighbouring nations, having no common superior to decide their disputes, all live in continual dread and suspicion of one another. Each sovereign, expecting little justice from his neighbours, is disposed to treat them with as little as he expects from them. The regard for the laws of nations, or for those rules which independent states profess or pretend to think themselves bound to observe in their dealing with one another, is often little more than mere pretence and profession. From the smallest interest, upon the slightest provocation, we see those rules every day, either evaded or directly violated without shame or remorse. Each nation foresees, or imagines it foresees, its own subjugation in the increasing power and aggrandisement of any of its neighbours; and the mean principle of national prejudice is often founded upon the noble one of the love of our own country. The sentence with which the elder Cato is said to have concluded every speech which he made in the senate, whatever might be the subject, “It is my opinion likewise that Carthage ought to be destroyed” was the natural expression of the savage patriotism of a strong but coarse mind, enraged almost to madness against a foreign nation from which has own had suffered so much. The more humane sentence with which Scipio Nasica is said to have concluded all his speeches “It is my opinion likewise that Carthage ought not to be destroyed” was the liberal expression of a more enlarged and enlightened mind, who felt no aversion to the prosperity even of an old enemy, when reduced to a state which could no longer be formidable to Rome. France and England may each of them have some reason to dread the increase of the naval and military power of the other; but for either of them to envy the internal happiness and prosperity of the other, the cultivation of its lands, the advancements of its manufactures, the increase of its commerce, the security and number of its ports and harbours, its proficiency in all the liberal arts and sciences, is surely beneath the dignity of two such great nations. These are all improvements of the world we live in. Mankind are benefited, human nature is ennobled by them. In such improvements each nation ought, not only to endeavour itself to excel, but from the love of mankind, to promote, instead of obstructing the excellence of its neighbours. These are all proper objects of national emulation, not of national prejudice or envy".
If that is not an argument for a community of nations such as the EU, for tolerance and a celebration of diversity, and a thorough rejection of the narrow minded sectarian, exclusive campaign that was victorious last week then I don't know what it is. Adam Smith was a moral philosopher who turned his genius to an analysis of the human behaviour we call economic. His economics was a quite different species of intellectual achievement from the fraudulent insult that passes for economics in the modern world, presented to us by a parcel of rogues who demean the very essence of the discipline of economics, and yes, I am speaking about the great and the good from our most distinguished so-called seats of learning. I remind you what I have said before, we live in a world where we treat people who may be well schooled as if they were well educated. The pigsty is full of such creatures. With respect to the leave campaign, I asked my friend to consider the following and contemplate who Smith's observations here might refer to.
"Amidst the turbulence and disorder of faction, a certain spirit of system is apt to mix itself with that public spirit which is founded upon the love of humanity, upon a real fellow feeling with the inconveniences and distresses to which some of our fellow-citizens may be exposed. This spirit of system commonly takes the direction of that more gentle public spirit; always animates it and often inflames it even to the madness of fanaticism. The leaders of the discontented party seldom fail to hold out some plausible plan of reformation which, they pretend, will not only remove the inconveniencies and relieve the distresses immediately complained of, but will prevent, in all time coming, any return of the like inconveniencies and distresses. They often propose, upon this account, to new-model the constitution, and to alter, in some of its most essential parts, that system of government under which the subjects of a great empire have enjoyed, perhaps, peace, security, and even glory, during the course of several centuries together. The great body of the party are commonly intoxicated with the imaginary beauty of this of this ideal system, of which they have no experience, but which has been represented to them in all the most dazzling colours in which the eloquence of their leaders could paint it. Those leaders themselves, though they originally may have meant nothing but their own aggrandisement, become many of them in time the dupes of their own sophistry, and are as eager for this great reformation as the weakest and foolishest of their followers. Even though the leaders should have preserved their own heads, as indeed they commonly do, free from this fanaticism, yet they dare not always disappoint the expectations of their followers; but are often obliged, though contrary to their principle and their conscience, to act as if they were under the common delusion".
If you want a reason why The Spider had a change of heart, you would do well to consider Smith's reflections here. Perhaps he is genuinely ashamed of his promotion of this common delusion. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
"The love of our own nation often disposes us to view, with the most malignant jealousy and envy, the prosperity and aggrandisement of any other neighbouring nation. Independent and neighbouring nations, having no common superior to decide their disputes, all live in continual dread and suspicion of one another. Each sovereign, expecting little justice from his neighbours, is disposed to treat them with as little as he expects from them. The regard for the laws of nations, or for those rules which independent states profess or pretend to think themselves bound to observe in their dealing with one another, is often little more than mere pretence and profession. From the smallest interest, upon the slightest provocation, we see those rules every day, either evaded or directly violated without shame or remorse. Each nation foresees, or imagines it foresees, its own subjugation in the increasing power and aggrandisement of any of its neighbours; and the mean principle of national prejudice is often founded upon the noble one of the love of our own country. The sentence with which the elder Cato is said to have concluded every speech which he made in the senate, whatever might be the subject, “It is my opinion likewise that Carthage ought to be destroyed” was the natural expression of the savage patriotism of a strong but coarse mind, enraged almost to madness against a foreign nation from which has own had suffered so much. The more humane sentence with which Scipio Nasica is said to have concluded all his speeches “It is my opinion likewise that Carthage ought not to be destroyed” was the liberal expression of a more enlarged and enlightened mind, who felt no aversion to the prosperity even of an old enemy, when reduced to a state which could no longer be formidable to Rome. France and England may each of them have some reason to dread the increase of the naval and military power of the other; but for either of them to envy the internal happiness and prosperity of the other, the cultivation of its lands, the advancements of its manufactures, the increase of its commerce, the security and number of its ports and harbours, its proficiency in all the liberal arts and sciences, is surely beneath the dignity of two such great nations. These are all improvements of the world we live in. Mankind are benefited, human nature is ennobled by them. In such improvements each nation ought, not only to endeavour itself to excel, but from the love of mankind, to promote, instead of obstructing the excellence of its neighbours. These are all proper objects of national emulation, not of national prejudice or envy".
If that is not an argument for a community of nations such as the EU, for tolerance and a celebration of diversity, and a thorough rejection of the narrow minded sectarian, exclusive campaign that was victorious last week then I don't know what it is. Adam Smith was a moral philosopher who turned his genius to an analysis of the human behaviour we call economic. His economics was a quite different species of intellectual achievement from the fraudulent insult that passes for economics in the modern world, presented to us by a parcel of rogues who demean the very essence of the discipline of economics, and yes, I am speaking about the great and the good from our most distinguished so-called seats of learning. I remind you what I have said before, we live in a world where we treat people who may be well schooled as if they were well educated. The pigsty is full of such creatures. With respect to the leave campaign, I asked my friend to consider the following and contemplate who Smith's observations here might refer to.
"Amidst the turbulence and disorder of faction, a certain spirit of system is apt to mix itself with that public spirit which is founded upon the love of humanity, upon a real fellow feeling with the inconveniences and distresses to which some of our fellow-citizens may be exposed. This spirit of system commonly takes the direction of that more gentle public spirit; always animates it and often inflames it even to the madness of fanaticism. The leaders of the discontented party seldom fail to hold out some plausible plan of reformation which, they pretend, will not only remove the inconveniencies and relieve the distresses immediately complained of, but will prevent, in all time coming, any return of the like inconveniencies and distresses. They often propose, upon this account, to new-model the constitution, and to alter, in some of its most essential parts, that system of government under which the subjects of a great empire have enjoyed, perhaps, peace, security, and even glory, during the course of several centuries together. The great body of the party are commonly intoxicated with the imaginary beauty of this of this ideal system, of which they have no experience, but which has been represented to them in all the most dazzling colours in which the eloquence of their leaders could paint it. Those leaders themselves, though they originally may have meant nothing but their own aggrandisement, become many of them in time the dupes of their own sophistry, and are as eager for this great reformation as the weakest and foolishest of their followers. Even though the leaders should have preserved their own heads, as indeed they commonly do, free from this fanaticism, yet they dare not always disappoint the expectations of their followers; but are often obliged, though contrary to their principle and their conscience, to act as if they were under the common delusion".
If you want a reason why The Spider had a change of heart, you would do well to consider Smith's reflections here. Perhaps he is genuinely ashamed of his promotion of this common delusion. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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