I
was reading the other day that The Green Party Is The Second Most Popular Party For Young
People (with Labour being the most popular).
So despite losing the
intellectual battle years ago, it seems that the economic left does have a
political future then?
Alas,
yes, it seems that way, but it's easy to see why the myths perpetuated by the
economic left continue - we are all socialists really.
What? What do you mean
we're all socialists? David Cameron is not a socialist; neither is Jacob
Rees-Mogg, nor Owen Paterson, and neither are you, Philosophical Muser. It's
just not true.
But
you mean something different. Here's what I mean. There's a very important
distinction - one I made here - the one between the socialist in the socio-personal
economy and the socialist in the market economy. In their attraction
to the economic left, many young people are confusing the two by a false
conflation. When it comes to the evolutionary socialist in us - the one that
assents to kinship, inter-personal bonds and shared-interest groups, the
predominant force is the socio-personal economy, explaining our natural assent
towards sharing, being generous and kind, and mutually assisting one another.
This legacy has primed us for millennia, long before any such thing as a market
economy of trade came into place. Consequently, on grounds of adhering to our
socio-personal make-up, we are justifiably faithful to a socialistic framework
in our cognition.
That
is not the same, though, as saying that because of our socio-personal socialism
we can justify socialism on market economy grounds. As the history of hard left
economics taking root in China and Russia shows, and as is still being shown
today in France under Hollande, the market economy operates under a different
heuristic to the socio-personal.
Our
affinity with friends and family is based on bonds of attachment, either
blood-connection (relatives) or like-mindedness (beloveds, friends, and social
groups). But the market economy extends way beyond these affinity rings, where
success isn't just about familial bonds or connecting with like-minded people,
it is about connecting with the vast majority of people who are not like us. I
may have little in common with the Indian chef who cooks my chicken biryani, or
the garage mechanic who fixes my car, or the vet who cares for my cat, but what
connects us is our ability to specialise in a market economy where goods and
services create value, and where diversity augments that value through
multiplicity.
The
qualities of the affinity rings related to the socio-personal are not the sort
of qualities that can be artificially engendered from on high in a top-down
organisational hegemony, which is why socialism in the market economy is futile
as well as being empirically imprudent. What's happening with the rise in
popularity from the economic left is that they are trying to rivet on to their
(our) socio-personal socialism a justifiable market socialism, which is a bit
like trying to justify sleeping with all our colleagues at work on the grounds
that we sleep with our husband or wife at night in our own homes. Different
strokes for different folks.
Hmm, so if we can see
where these socialist tendencies come from, this green popularity surge is
probably not that surprising either, is it?
It's
not that surprising. In the forties and fifties most of the general public
would have been fairly unmindful and apathetic towards environmental issues.
Even when I was a lad in the late seventies/early eighties you hardly heard a
word about the environment. Environmental campaigners in those days were
generally regarded as over-sensitive and largely eccentric neurotics - an easy
imputation when you're part of a minority cult. What's apparent, though, is
that the next couple of generations that followed had been taking a great deal
of notice of what they were saying, eventuating in this young green-conscious
generation that is now reaching positions of influence in government and
business, and turning our mainstream parties greener too.
So politicians are under
pressure to be greener?
They are if they want to appeal to young voters, yes. I'm told
that the RSPB has over one million members, which alone tops the number of members
of all the main political parties. Add to that all the Greenpeace members and
people of the green-left persuasion and it's probably becoming apparent that
environmental concern is a great deal more ubiquitous than is given credit for.
We know the civil service runs thousands of private opinion polls and focus
groups each year, as well as heeding the pressure from farming syndicates and
various interest groups keen to preserve the greenness of the UK, so it's
unsurprising that politicians are feeling the pressure to respond to the
nation's greenness. Politicians are, after all, primarily interested in votes
and popularity, so they have to generate policies that won't be seen as costly
in terms of votes.
Even though we see
increased environmental awareness in younger people these days, it’s often the
case that a vote for a minor party means a vote that expresses disenchantment
towards the mainstream parties.
True
as that is, I think over the next few decades we might see a change in the
political landscape, where instead of having two predominant parties, we have
five or six mid-size parties, which will mean policies that used to be trivial
will soon be more in the mainstream.
Gulp!
Exactly!
It's well known that when you're a minor party your policies don't have to
withstand quite so much rigorous intellectual scrutiny as the major parties.
When I talk of policies, I mean, of course, proposals that require the
management of funds. Don't forget, the government do not have any funds of
their own - they only have public money handed over by the taxpayers. So
everything needs paying for, meaning that the policies that come under the most
intense scrutiny are the ones that require the most diligent economic analysis.
Minor parties scarcely have to do this because there is little chance of them
ever having enough power to implement those policies. Consequently, then, minor
parties are able to have the charmed political life of promising attractive
things without ever facing the danger of having to balance them out in the
economy. For a long time the Liberal Democrats had this distinction, until slow
increase in popularity eventuated in a coalition with The Conservatives which
then mercilessly exposed their economic policies . Like the minor parties of
today, the Lib Dems used to proffer policies that told people what they thought
they wanted to hear, only to have them candidly exposed when their merits and
demerits were under more careful examination.
And the Green Party is
even worse than the Lib Dems?
Worse?
You bet it's worse; it's worse in the same way two broken legs are worse than a
grazed knee. For an indication of this, have a look at Andrew Neil's Sunday
Politics interview with Green Party leader Natalie Bennett,
which stands out for me as one of the most alarming exposures of ill-conceived
economic policy I've seen in a long time. It's rare to see a leader having her
party's policies torn to shreds without even the smallest ability to defend
them or balance them up - instead simply getting in a jam each time and
responding with “I would urge your viewers to go our website and see how the
figures are worked out.”
Alas,
that's the reality, though - their policies are indefensible - economic moonshine
of the worst kind I've seen. Not only are they inimical to successful human
progression and increased prosperity, they are antithetical to even the basic
truths you'd learn about in first year economics.
Even
if we pretend there is some solid rationale for the so-called ‘Citizens’
Income’, which promises a minimum weekly income of £72, the economic cost (£280
billion) is a pipe dream. The same is true of their proposed wealth tax, which
Bennett claims will generate between £32 billion and £45 billion, when the
reality is that wealth taxes in other European countries generated only a
fraction of that. Add to that the proposals for import tariffs, business
subsidies, increased minimum wage, price controls, and the kind of
Piketty-esque redistributive taxations that would retard innovation, and
probably drive much of our best talent out of the UK, and there is a good case
to made that with The Green Party in their current form, we have, in terms of
the economy, perhaps the most dangerous fringe party of them all - a party
whose policies would severely compromise the global benefits of innovation,
trade, competition and the free market of supply and demand far more than all
the other parties would.
A vote for the Green Party actually gives every indication of
being a vote for negative growth, as they look to free humankind from what they
perceive as the disaster of its Promethean economic advances. While it’s true
that in some cases people willingly vote for one of the smaller parties because
they are disenchanted with mainstream politics, it’s also true that as the
landscape begins to shift, and dissection of the minor parties' policies
intensifies as more look to get their feet in Westminster’s door, surely very
few people could actually bear to envisage what the country would be like if
The Green Party's policies were ever made manifest in any kind of sphere of
political influence.
With the ever-rising popularity of the Green Party, it is no
longer the case that the green vote is a spoiled vote in protestation at the
mainstream parties, nor merely a principled vote towards a candidate they
actually like and believe cares about the world - it is, in terms of human
well-being, a vote for what is surely the party with the most dangerously
counter-productive set of policies that has ever got this close to the
mainstream.
