DID YOU KNOW we are on the verge of a “pivotal, fascinating and dangerous moment” if Mr Cameron doesn’t do something? To head off disaster, that is. I didn’t know that, either, until I read Matthew Taylor’s blog:
…the forces of hierarchy (Government) are realising that their ultimate priority – the maintenance of order – means that they must respond to the growing solidaristic backlash of resentment from an immiserated population by taking on the individualistic, free riding ethic of global capitalism.
Oh dear, I didn’t realise the situation had got so bad. Perhaps I’ve been living in rural isolation too long. Maybe I should get out more to find who and where these “immiserated” people are. Then I can ask them what this “solidaristic backlash” is.
I wonder if Mr Taylor thinks it’s the dissipated assortment of anarchists, communists, alcoholics, politically-confused, anti-capitalist, antisemitic and outright mentally ill who constituted the finger-waving tent-dwellers of the Occupy movement. They seem to have immiserated themselves out of existence.
Or maybe it’s the Marxist Black Bloc types who turn up at various times to break windows, spray graffiti and chuck stuff at the police. Or the rioters who caused mayhem in English cities a couple of years ago. It could be them I suppose, because the BBC did call them “protestors”, and the BBC is impartial and never wrong, is it?
I quite like the “individualistic, free riding ethic of global capitalism” myself and think the world would be immeasurably worse off without it. Having listened to people going on about it over the years I’ve come to the conclusion they don’t like it for the simple reason they don’t control it.
IT’S THIS OVERWEENING desire for control that attracts them to scientific and pseudoscientific approaches to society which seem so popular at the moment. Matthew Taylor talks about taking the study of society “to a scientific level”, always in the hope that we can engineer good citizens as a result. That’s how we get Cameron’s “nudge” nonsense and the preposterousness of checking our national happiness quotient. How on earth do you measure something such as equality or “wellbeing” or happiness? Does it really make a difference if some actions are right-brain or left-brain or is the whole concept bunkum? Neuroscience is the new phrenology. All our social and political problems will be solved by the right application of its discoveries if you believe these shysters.
It all sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it? And nothing’s more certain than that these theories will join those other failed scientific fads of the past so beloved of our political and intellectual superiors – eugenics and Marxism. You can see why the progressive tendency love the idea that human beings are reducible to data and their behaviour predictable, that everything about us can be defined in a set of laws. That way they can plan the next utopia for us – and if these laws are “scientific”, then everything will not only be right but justifiable. Obvious.
But what is this dangerous but fascinating moment we’re about to pivot upon? Well, it seems to be that we’ve lost faith in our politicians. And inequality is rising. Combine the two, do a pivot and bingo! you get revolution! Funny how the left love the idea of revolution.
So we’ve lost faith in our politicians – that’s because they’re not worth having any faith in. I’m not sure they’ve ever ranked highly in our estimation, anyway. Whatever happens, we still end up with them and paying for them. I think we’re still some way off the rope and lamppost moment, more’s the pity.
And inequality? My reply to that is sucks to your inequality. Even those at the bottom of the pile in Britain today are better off than many of us were back in the 1960s and 1970s, even the 1980s. Inequality is only a problem when people don’t have enough to live on, and that, a few food banks notwithstanding, is not the case here. Today’s immiseration is yesterday’s cushy.
No, equality/inequality is just another part of the victimhood agenda, along with racism, sexism and all the other isms and phobias those of us outside the liberal left tendency are supposedly guilty of. The aim of that agenda is not to raise people up but to level us down. Matthew Taylor half acknowledges this when he says “some of the world’s richest individuals – people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are also aware of the crisis and the need to squeeze the ‘fat cats’ to save the system”. Yes, of course, capitalists who’ve safely made their pile now advocating the squeezing of other capitalists. Except it wouldn’t stop with the fat cats, would it? But there you have it, the progressive approach, no doubt scientifically proven, that all problems are solved by spending other peoples’ money.
So sucks to your equality. And sucks to your revolution. Because if there is a revolution in this country, it’s not going to be the one you’ve got in mind. It won’t be a result of the failure of global capitalism but of the cockup of continuous political interference. And you’ll probably be at the wrong end of it, wondering why the backlash wasn’t solidaristic and trying to work out how you got the figures wrong.
