The Case For Our State ...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

meanwhile back at m'lords

why don't we all (being rational creatures of the market) go to food banks? Because you have to be referred, by your local authority, or by the social services, or by a jobcentre; so now Freud would have us believe in a solid half a million people prostrating themselves before some or other agency, possibly – within his worldview – walking away from a job, for the sake of some stuff that is free. Some free peas. As an assessment of your fellow man, this is unhinged; I would say it bordered on a phobia. Maybe Freud was bitten as a baby by somebody he thought was poor.

What to do about this withered meanness, this denaturing mistrust of others? How prevalent is it? I have no idea. But when a Tory comes so close to saying who he despises and why (hungry people, for being so greedy), it seems important not to miss it.

[ahinton]

meanwhile back at m'lords

Some of that almost reminds me of the mentality that gave rise to the workhouse culture in Britain based upon the notion that poverty was a crime.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

of course he applies a classical economics argument about markets and money, with no sense [apparently] how he feathers the nests of the rich and nabobs like himself .... i see he has caused a mild embarrassment for the PM, slight flush at Q Time ...

what they do see is trillions of £ of tax revenues and expenditures going begging for the want of the odd privatisation, outsourcing, or market discipline in the public sector [not that many ever ran a successful value creating business, as opposed to rentier incomes and city gangsterism] which they think would be better deployed gambling on currencies and land

sweet rationing ended this day in 1954 [i remember it well!] and the NHS is 65 this month ... i wonder whether all that public ownership of power, coal, steel, etc and communal provision of health and education, and realistic taxation to pay off the yanks and look after people, was that economically counter productive? later the Unions were apparently out of control .... what do we think that the present state of big money and land interests in the UK are currently? at least Arthur Scargill could be voted out of office by his members ... Lord Freud will be a stickier proposition to get rid of [unless he continues top so spectacularly embarrass the toff'n'cash mob that runs the place]....

how might we envisage addressing challenges such as energy and climate, economic development and education etc without that sort of governing ideology of shared burdens, progressive taxation and fairness ......

one might further add that standards of honesty were given a touch more than lip service in the Attlee days [but not much]

not one major breakthrough in economic or social welfare ever came about because of the 'free market' .... both businesses and communities need an active socially committed state ...

iddeology is now as, or more, important than it was in the 20s and 30s in the 20Cent .... when people chose between Hitler/Stalin/Democracy in Spain and Europe and then across the world as the war raged ....... in the 50s et seq it was a no brainer to be anti soviet, tanks on the lawn? but now ideas, and big ideas matter .... and the relationship between thought and class interest was never more apparent than the crass remarks of Lord Freud eh? ...and the capacity to debate them never more trivialised eh?

[Serial_Apologist]

of course he applies a classical economics argument about markets and money, with no sense [apparently] how he feathers the nests of the rich and nabobs like himself .... i see he has caused a mild embarrassment for the PM, slight flush at Q Time ...

what they do see is trillions of £ of tax revenues and expenditures going begging for the want of the odd privatisation, outsourcing, or market discipline in the public sector [not that many ever ran a successful value creating business, as opposed to rentier incomes and city gangsterism] which they think would be better deployed gambling on currencies and land

sweet rationing ended this day in 1954 [i remember it well!] and the NHS is 65 this month ... i wonder whether all that public ownership of power, coal, steel, etc and communal provision of health and education, and realistic taxation to pay off the yanks and look after people, was that economically counter productive? later the Unions were apparently out of control .... what do we think that the present state of big money and land interests in the UK are currently? at least Arthur Scargill could be voted out of office by his members ... Lord Freud will be a stickier proposition to get rid of [unless he continues top so spectacularly embarrass the toff'n'cash mob that runs the place]....

how might we envisage addressing challenges such as energy and climate, economic development and education etc without that sort of governing ideology of shared burdens, progressive taxation and fairness ......

one might further add that standards of honesty were given a touch more than lip service in the Attlee days [but not much]

This post really deserves a better reply than this one, but anyway...

not one major breakthrough in economic or social welfare ever came about because of the 'free market' .... both businesses and communities need an active socially committed state ...

Because of, or because of??

iddeology is now as, or more, important than it was in the 20s and 30s in the 20Cent .... when people chose between Hitler/Stalin/Democracy in Spain and Europe and then across the world as the war raged ....... in the 50s et seq it was a no brainer to be anti soviet, tanks on the lawn? but now ideas, and big ideas matter .... and the relationship between thought and class interest was never more apparent than the crass remarks of Lord Freud eh? ...and the capacity to debate them never more trivialised eh?

Part of the reckoning with history that will have to take place is a thorough re-examination of who was really responsible for the Cold War, and what truth lay in the US's claim that the USSR was hell-bent on world domination.

The old New Left view was always that the Soviet Union was not expansionist, and never intended world domination, which would have involved OK-ing revolutions in the West which would have undermined its own position as modeller of how socialism should be. The E bloc countries under its domination were a protective buffer against the West. Ever since the establishment of Stalin the Comintern had imposed directives defensive of the Soviet Union on its national parties - this prioritisation of defending the "socialist motherland" coming at the expense of overthrowing capitalism in the west (peaceful coexistence) that eventually led to alternmative economic strategies that restricted political change to within parliaments, all attempts to organise extra-parliamentary action autonomous or supportive of progressive legislation being denounced as "ultra-left": rhetoric reflecting back unapologetically to the few times the Stalinists and post-Stalinists had tried to keep control of whatever actions had been initiated for their own pro-Soviet purposes, from the Left Turn of the early 30s (opposing often physically united anti-fascist fronts with reformist parties) via Popular fronts with nationalist parties against fascism later in the decade, to arguing for soldiers to turn their guns on their own officers in the wake of the breakup of the Hitler-Stalin pact in '39, right through to Eurocommunism in the 1970s and '80s.

Communist subversion in any anti-western sense in the West was restricted to espionage - to getting the technological knowhow to be able to create nuclear bombs and ongoing monitoring of NATO's strategy tactics. I seem to remember Perle admitting that the inner sanctum at the Pentagon never in its heart of hearts swallowed its own line on the Communist Threat, though I am unable to find a goggle reference to this, but the following link contains some of the clues, if one can winkle out by speed-reading through this:

http://www.books.google.co.uk/books?id=ihbJnhXqmYEC&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=stalin+concerned+poland+vital+security&source

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

the cold war, Cuban Missile Crisis included, was one that one had to sides in against the Soviets no matter the faults of the West .... their missiles were pointing at the UK, then the main battle carrier in the US Fleet ... they were utterly totalitarian and cynical, militarist and suppressed the peoples of the Soviet Bloc with a ruthless and oppressive state system ... but there were many things i agree S_A, that the judgement of history will see differently

and i confess to finding the left, hard and soft, in the UK in the 60s and 70s et seq a most unpalatable pack of hounds in a constant rage ....

Because of, or because of??

not sure what you mean; what i meant was that the free market does not create major innovations or improvements, the payback is too unpredictable and long term .... Thatcher recognised this when she built the Channel Tunnel as an exercise of her own reigning will

my main concern wit this thread was to make the point that we need an active and committed intervening state, and that neither side of our politics is articulating any thing like what is needed and it is just not being discussed ... the Left Right ideological split is most unsuited if one starts from the premiss that the State is necessarily larger than the right wants and not as deranged and union dominated as Callaghan and Blair would have it ... so an intelligent and active state addressing communal and societal development is beyond our politics?

[Serial_Apologist]

the cold war, Cuban Missile Crisis included, was one that one had to sides in against the Soviets no matter the faults of the West .... their missiles were pointing at the UK, then the main battle carrier in the US Fleet ... they were utterly totalitarian and cynical, militarist and suppressed the peoples of the Soviet Bloc with a ruthless and oppressive state system ... but there were many things i agree S_A, that the judgement of history will see differently

and i confess to finding the left, hard and soft, in the UK in the 60s and 70s et seq a most unpalatable pack of hounds in a constant rage ....

not sure what you mean; what i meant was that the free market does not create major innovations or improvements, the payback is too unpredictable and long term .... Thatcher recognised this when she built the Channel Tunnel as an exercise of her own reigning will

my main concern wit this thread was to make the point that we need an active and committed intervening state, and that neither side of our politics is articulating any thing like what is needed and it is just not being discussed ... the Left Right ideological split is most unsuited if one starts from the premiss that the State is necessarily larger than the right wants and not as deranged and union dominated as Callaghan and Blair would have it ... so an intelligent and active state addressing communal and societal development is beyond our politics?

I'm not so much disagreeing with these points, Calum, just wondering how the state as agency in such a model would be made accountable, and by whom, and what sorts of structures might be required for that to work. The reason I see a reckoning over the Cold War as desirable is that the sorts or arguments over what would be likely to happen in the event of an electorally mass-appealing party challenging the existing status quo would re-emerge - as they already are, to judge by John Snow's I thought insulting performance of telling two protagonists in the present Egyptian situation what democracy should mean, on tonight's Channel 4 News. It can mean many things other than the currently failing parliamentary one, but if one is arguing for something different in any context, let alone the British one, socialists have a long, and greens a more recent record, of calling for strategies involving community, or in other words, extra-parliamentary means, in the implementation of a stronger or strengthened form of democracy, as opposed to the sham facade it is at present.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

John Snow's I thought insulting performance

..quite

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

members may find this theoretical, but engagingly written, essay and its associated links of interest
Sloan Wilson wrote this

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

bless Will Hutton send him a postcard!

[amateur51]

bless Will Hutton send him a postcard!

Everyone needs to remember that it's Vince Cable's fingerprints that are all over this.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

and who's fingerprints are all over this?

[ahinton]

and who's fingerprints are all over this?

And, following Barclays' drubbing over the LIBOR fixing scandal and other more recent financial misdemeanours such as alleged US energy price fixing involvement, whose are all over http://www.citywire.co.uk/new-model-..._NMA_Daily_EAM ? Interesting that this should surface just after the presumably convenient recent departure of Sir Mervyn King, n'est-ce pas? Actually, come to think of it (as we're all going increasingly to be having to do as time goes on), can anyone think of anything in any walk of life that's wholly immune to fixing and manipulation of one kind or another?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

And, following Barclays' drubbing over the LIBOR fixing scandal and other more recent financial misdemeanours such as alleged US energy price fixing involvement, whose are all over http://www.citywire.co.uk/new-model-..._NMA_Daily_EAM ? Interesting that this should surface just after the presumably convenient recent departure of Sir Mervyn King, n'est-ce pas? Actually, come to think of it (as we're all going increasingly to be having to do as time goes on), can anyone think of anything in any walk of life that's wholly immune to fixing and manipulation of one kind or another?

NO

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

no sh1t sherlock

[ahinton]

no sh1t sherlock

OK - not good news, of course - but what's so different about this than the cream-offs, inefficiencies, deals and the rest that can and do take place within the public sector alone, not least in unofficial subbings to the private sector? Does anyone really believe that the public sector as a whole is so uncorrupt and incorruptible that they won't ever see and take advantage of a deal here and a deal there if and when they can? I happen to know (albeit not that well) someone who rose through the ranks in the Royal Navy to a senior position within its procurement area purely (as he admitted quite openly) so that he could take advantage of each position to make intenal profits which, of course, cost the taxpayer just as do similar shady deals and shareholder prioritsations do within the private sector when governments sub work to them; I well remember him saying "I'm a civil servant; the government's given me a business to run, so in reality the government works for me". He wasn't even especially secretive about it; as he noted, if you do this kind of thing and keep your mouth shut about it, you might get found out and would deserve to be so. He's retired now but, while working he and others made considerably more than they were remunarated by way of salary and some of them used part of their ill-gotten gains to invest in pensions which, now that they're vested, are higher than their civil service pensions. There's been far more publicity given to procurement scandals within the Army than the Navy and it is well known that these have cost the taxpayer a fortune, but all that I've ever read about them puts the problem squarely down to appalling administration and training issues alone, which takes quite abit of believing, I think. Not every civil servant would do this kind of thing, not all would be in a position to do it and many would not want to or be too afraid to, but let's not kid ourselves that it's a simple case of public sector good, private sector bad.