Its the economy, stupid

The following is a quote by Will Hutton the English economist in this weeks Observer analysing the reasons for the impetus behind support for the Yes campaign

English Toryism's infatuation with a libertarianism that denies  obligations to society and each other, has abandoned justice and equity in its public policy positions and is the author of the great "cashing out" of the past 30 years. All our utilities, five million council houses, many of our great companies and swaths of real estate in our cities have been cashed out in the name of market forces, of liberalisation, of being open for business and wealth generation. What has been created is predator capitalism, massive inequality and a society organised to benefit the top 1%.

As I told you in my last post, the referendum is the lasting legacy of Thatcher and here Hutton admits that the dominant ideology denies our obligations to society and each other, which was exactly what Thatcher hoped to achieve by her statement that there is no such thing as society. In addition, he tells us they have also abandoned justice and equity. What irritates me about such things is that I have been writing this for years and have written it repeatedly since beginning this blog, so, why has it taken people like Hutton all this time to understand it? Now, one of the great lies about modern Britain is that we are implementing an economic programme that was founded by the great economists such as Adam Smith who established the discipline of economics; that Smith was the father of free market laissez faire economics and what we are being exposed to is the fundamental assumptions of classical economics for which there is no alternative. This is of course total garbage.

It was Adam Smith who wrote that "the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy society" and we are indeed witnessing Britain being destroyed, but it is not the Scots who are doing this, it is an unjust and grossly unequal economic system. In addition, Smith never mentions either 'the free market' or 'laissez faire' and such concepts did not appear in his writings. He argued for free trade, but not for what is now termed the free market. So, our dominant economic model is a fraud. If you do want to argue from Smith's writings then you will need to accept that the appalling injustice we see throughout the UK is literally destroying that society. Why does no-one ever quote Smith in that context? Libertarianism is a denial of our social nature and has produced a distorted and bastardised economics that has spawned an equally distorted political structure to protect it as it loots the national treasury and impoverishes whole communities and groups of its own citizens.

This is what Westminster and the Better Together campaign cannot, and indeed will not, understand. The engine of independence is a rejection of the dominant economic, social and political order and a demand for a new economics and politics in order to heal a seriously damaged social system. Regardless of the outcome of Thursday's vote ( and I am still predicting a 57% Yes) the divisions destroying our society will not and cannot be healed until we adopt a new political and economic model. There can be no recovery or healing with the present system and personnel in Westminster. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.