I trust you will have seen the latest Tory plea to abandon the politics of envy and champion the wealth creators in our society. Absolutely, first-class, I agree. But wait a minute, are we talking about the same people?
My problem with the Tory point of view is that for their mentality the only people who create wealth are the business and financial class. To the free market mindset working people do not create wealth; they are wealth preventers, rather than creators. That is because these people only see the working class as a cost, never a benefit. It never occurs to the Tory and free market mentality that wealth comes from labour. You see, you can have all the money in the world for investment, but without the physical labour of a working man or woman, that investment will never realise wealth. You may finance a golf course for example, and provide facilities for people who will pay to play golf for the next thousand years, thus returning a very lucrative profit on that investment, but nothing will happen until that golf course is physically built. In addition, the course has to be designed and planned. It is very unusual for any one person to have the money to invest in a new golf course and then have the ability to plan, design and then physically construct that course all by themselves. In addition, they will necessarily need to utilise tools and machinery that were themselves produced by human labour.
Another argument is that the state and the public authorities cannot create wealth. The most successful, and prestigious golf course in the world is a municipal course, owned and maintained by the local council, St. Andrews. It also hosts, arguably, some of the most prestigious wealth creating tournaments in the world. This creates wealth for the whole kingdom of Fife, and of course the Tory government's tax coffers. It would be interesting to know how closely Scottish golf courses, most of which are municipally owned, rival the royal family in tourist income for the nation?
Of course the idea that wealth comes from the input of labour will be immediately dismissed by the intellectual giants from the free market right-wing as Marxist, despite the fact that it is a truism. Marx said it so it must be wrong, simples. In addition, anyone who agrees with this point of view must, by defintion, be a Marxist as well, they are incapable of exercising their intellect to come to such conclusions without being infected with communist propaganda.
However, does it ever occur to such people that teachers and doctors and janitors and bus drivers etc.are wealth creators as well? How much wealth would be created in a modern economy without the ability to read, write, count and work a computer? How much of those activities would be possible without the ancillary services that underpin them and maintain them? As a result, the activities of the state and the public sector, so hated by the neoliberals, are fundamental to the process of wealth creation. We therefore come to the realisation that the creation of wealth is a whole society activity, it is a social activity and cannot simply be attributed to certain individuals regardless of how gifted they are. I therefore look forward with full and confident expectation to the Conservative Party sponsoring the trades union movement as an essential cog in the wealth creation machine. I mean the Tories are not stupid people are they?
I meant to use this post to comment on the neoliberal free market hatred of the state, I will address that next.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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