It is all about choices

I apologise for not having posted for some time but mein laptop vost kaput and I had to have it repaired. This involved getting a new hard drive and having to reinstall everything including Windows and Office etc. which, for a technological imbecile like me, was a daunting and time consuming process. However, the absence of a computer has given me time for reflection and I cannot avoid my increasing incredulity at the speed of descent into the bottomless pit of politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The situation in the USA is truly alarming with the divisive nature of congressional politics assuming the status of open hatred and this is reflected on the streets and in the media. Both The Moron and Theresa May have turned out even worse than I bargained for and both American and British governments are in a genuine and dangerous crisis. The Moron's stint as president must assuredly end very badly for the USA as its political culture is now genuinely scary, but it is the UK I wish to comment on here.

The Tories persistently peddle the mantra that because the 2008 financial crisis left the nation with such a punitive and costly deficit then austerity was not only necessary, but also, reverting back to the sacred words of the Blessed Margaret, there was no alternative. That of course is not only a barefaced lie, it is patently stupid. Austerity is both an ideological and political concept. Ideological because it is based on a very narrow and specific way of thinking, and political because it involves a series of quite deliberate choices that are the result of that specific way of thinking. It is part of a belief system that is itself rooted in the entrenched and ever present class warfare that is the essential characteristic of the United Kingdom. Britain, as I have repeatedly told you in this blog, is based on privilege, entitlement, and exclusion, and to the Tories it was neatly summed up by the Blessed Margaret who categorised people by whether they were 'them' or 'us'. I frequently comment that the notion that there is no alternative is a totalitarian concept. Now, those familiar with British politics will be aware that the Tory government will not allow a vote by either Parliament or the British people on the Brexit situation. It will not even sanction a vote by its own MPs or party. It has also refused to allow any input by the Scottish Parliament, The Welsh Assembly, or any political institution in Northern Ireland other than the DUP who they bribed to support their government after the last election. Thus Britain is governed by a set of ideological politicians who simply refuse to even pay lip service to democratic norms. They are both ideologically and by nature, authoritarians who must get their own way. One of the largest targets for the Tories war against democratic institutions has been local government. Local governments have suffered an average 60% cut in their budgets since the last election and local government has been effectively crippled. In his ‘Representative Government’ John Stuart Mill argues that
‘The very object of having a local representation, is in order that those who have any interest in common which they do not share with the general body of their countrymen may manage that joint interest by themselves.’

Liberal democracy requires a system of limited government with defined independent centres of power. Thatcher launched an aggressive war against such independent centres of power and her main targets were Britain's system of local government and the trades union movement. Both have been effectively crippled allowing central government to do what it wants, which was Thatcher's primary aim. Democratic governance requires legitimacy and representation and as wide a dispersal of power as is necessary. The principle of local government is designed to satisfy such requirements as is neatly summed up by Mill. If such local responsibility were to be replaced by centralised administration from London, it is argued that such local individuality of approach would be sacrificed to uniformity, and that the adaptability of local decision-making would give way to rigidity and the centralised imposition of a bureaucratic ‘only one way’ of doing things. That is exactly what has happened in the UK. If local government enjoys a degree of autonomy from the centre, the power of the state is therefore fragmented and limited and that is anathema to authoritarians like Thatcher and her successors. As the political commentator John Kingdom notes, the elimination of local government is generally taken as a symptom of totalitarianism.

However, austerity is not inevitable, even given the disaster of the financial crisis. Politics is the art of choosing between alternatives and the Tories made the classic fundamental choice between imposing cuts or raising taxes, which was of course, completely ideological. For example Alfred Marshall was professor of political economy at Cambridge from 1885 till 1908 and founded what we know as the Cambridge School of Economics and so is hardly qualified to be labelled a socialist or a Marxist, even by the fevered imaginations of right-wing Tories or American Republicans. In his 'Principles of Economics' in 1890, he wrote that

"It has been left for our own generation to perceive all the evils which arose from the suddenness of this increase of economic freedom. Now first are we getting to understand the extent to which the capitalist employer, untrained to his new duties, was tempted to subordinate the wellbeing of his workpeople to his own desire for gain; now first are we learning the importance of insisting that the rich have duties as well as rights in their individual and in their collective capacity; now first is the economic problem of the new age showing itself to us as it really is. This is partly due to a wider knowledge and a growing earnestness.......In particular this increased prosperity has made us rich and strong enough to impose new restraints on free enterprise; some temporary material loss being submitted to for the sake of a higher and ultimate greater gain. But these new restraints are different from the old. They are imposed not as a means of class domination; but with the purpose of defending the weak, and especially children and the mothers of children, in matters in which they are not able to use the forces of competition in their own defence".

If Marshall was to write this today, The Moron would be mocking him and sneering at him at one of his infamous rallies and the Tories and their lickspittles in the media would undoubtedly seek to have him removed from his Chair at Cambridge. Today's capitalist employers are no longer untrained in their duties, indeed they are all too well trained today in how to subordinate the wellbeing of their workers to the desire for their own gain, another of the legacies of the Blessed Margaret, and sentiments such as Marshall's would render them impotent with rage. As Marshall obviously tells us, there are choices, there are alternatives. Both The Moron and the British Tories are quite deliberately dismantling our respective systems of politics and remodelling them in their own image. If our peoples allow them to do that, then they will get exactly what they deserve. You have been warned

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat