The Guardian ran an excellent article on Saturday on the recent attacks mounted on The Spirit Level — the ground breaking book by Prof Richard Wilkinson and Prof Kate Pickett. Such attacks have been elad by the likes of the Taxpayer’s Alliance and, more surprisingly supposedly mainstream Tory think tank Policy Exchange.
I have read some of the attacks. I think them without foundation and academically and statistically weak . But as the Guardian notes:
Wilkinson was shocked by what he believes is part of a worrying trend in political discourse, also happening in the US, where a few people, often attached to right wing institutes, have set themselves up as professional wreckers of ideas.
"Do they even believe what they are saying?" he said today. "I suppose it doesn't matter if their claims are right or wrong; it is about sowing doubt in people's minds."
The authors fear the attacks have scuppered any chance of removing the inequality debate "from the left wing ghetto".
Wilkinson said: "It is now something for the left and we would rather have avoided that. People on the right will feel relieved knowing they don't have to treat this seriously and will be happy to know it has been rubbished."
That is the nub of this. Equality is an issue for everyone — as Wilkinson and Pickett have proven. Everyone gains from it — of that I have no doubt. So of course it should not just be for the left. But now it is. A tiny coterie on the right have confirmed that equality is something they not only do not care about — but that it is something they do not believe in.
The same is true of other issues. The Tax Gap for example should be an issue for all in the UK. If it were tackled we might have better public services at lower cost and have lower tax, all at the same time. But the right dismiss it as an issue. They are only interested in the maximum of £1 billion that might be collected by tackling benefit fraud. Tax evasion is £70 billion a year.
The same is true if unemployment too: low unemployment benefits all. And yet the right is going out of its way to increase it as fast as possible.
Note too all the stories in the Observer this weekend about the enormous problem for so many people in securing housing. Again, this is an issue for everyone (I’m of an age where I know many apparently secure middle class parents who are fretting like mad about this one) but the ConDems sail on — ignoring the issue.
Which makes me note what Nick Clegg has to say today:
We are restoring a plethora of rights to liberty and privacy and have set out an ambitious programme for lasting political reform.
I agree that the aim is lasting reform. This government is intent on promoting the right of the individual — which is its definition of liberty. But it is not the right to liberty within society they are promoting, it is the right of the individual over society that they promote.
So the individual can speed now without fear of being caught by a camera. the right to speed for the irresponsible motorist comes ahead of the right of the child to life itself.
The right to wealth must come without responsibility to others or to pay tax attached.
The right to health is rationed so a few will make extraordinary profits at the expense of the rest of us.
The checks and balances — such as the Audit Commission - are scarped to ensure profit profit is maximised.
The right to work is denied — so long as some can benefit from the removal of that right.
The right to a home — one of the most basic of rights, is undermined in the name of the market and the need to preserve baking stability.
This a the exercise of so called liberty without the exercise of morality.
This is the right to impose fear.
This is the thinking of the gated community.
This is the thinking of those who hate society.
And who hate government.
And who put themselves first, always.
This is thinking that no major religion has ever endorsed — because there is no moral basis to it.
This is thinking that the great enlightenment thinkers — Kant and Adam Smith come to mind — could not endorse.
This is thinking that threatens more than our well being, it threatens our society, our democracy, our political stability, in thinking term even life on earth.
This is the amorality of the right.
This is the ConDem government.
This is what the left has to challenge.
At least it looks like a barn door when set out like that.
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“I have read some of the attacks. I think them without foundation and academically and statistically weak”
A lot of people have read W and P’s book and come to the same conclusion. Wilkinson’s reaction says a lot, to me. It comes across as very insecure as defensive, apparently being unable to rebut criticism, even taking it personally, even looking for sympathy.
BTW, can W & P explain why suicide, to take just one example, is higher in Scandinavian high tax economies than outside said area?
@Lester Piggott
If you knew Richard you’d know him to be a quiet, reflective, deeply intelligent and caring man
That does come across in the interview
So he’s not an aggressive, bullying, menacing right winger – the only type of person the like’s of you respect – and he’s all the better for it
And all you can offer in response is an ad hominem – and the fact that – as his work acknowledges – it can’t explain suicide data
Is that the best you can do?
If so, it’s feeble
@Lester Pigott
Feeble indeed. Does it not occur to you that the reaction you deride might very well be one of sadness from someone who has gone out of his way to avoid attachment to one political point of view or another but has instead nailed his research to the mast of academic rigour? What evidence do you offer to support your rejection of The Spirit Level – beyond an obvious weakness for shock horror headlines/soundbites, eg the Daily Mail or the Taxpayers’ Alliance, themselves based on no more than rejecting anything that doesn’t fit in with their perverse world view?
I’ve read the Spirit Level and the recent attacks on it in great detail for a project I’m currently working on looking at the relationship between inequality and economic efficiency which will be published this autumn.
My considered view is that TSL is a very powerful and well researched piece of work. While the critics do occasionally raise useful points of clarification, for the most part they are engaged in an exercise of misinformation and spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) which will be familiar to anyone who has tried to get academic arguments out there into wider policy debates.
The only thing I would disagree with Richard Wilkinson on is that I’m not disappointed that the attacks on TSL have pushed the equalities agenda firmly to the left of the political spectrum. That’s good in my view because the UK faces a choice between the Coalition – which doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss about inequality – and a future Labour leadership that (hopefully) will make greater equality an absolute centrepiece. No more ‘progressive Conservatives’ and Lib Dem pretenders to the centre-left inheritance – at the next election there will be a clear split between neo-Thatcherism on the one hand and a progressive alternative on the other. At which point I do believe Labour will win a landslide and will then begin to implement Richard Wilkinson’s agenda, with beneficial consequences for the vast majority of the population. Clear red water – that’s what it’s about.
@Howard
Red it will have to be, too
Anything else will not do
And nothing else will meet the needs of the people of this country – who will be desperate by then
Sadly Richard, I don’t believe the left is in any way capable of defeating this particular mode. Both the mainstream left and right have all come under the control of the neoliberals.
The only chance the left has got is a strong union presence, but the neoliberals have pretty much destroyed them (oh, they are still there but their influence is decreasing day by day, as their members shrink). And the sad thing is, the harder life is for individuals the less likely they are to maintain their union fees and so on and so on…
The young don’t seem to care (none of it seems relevant to them – it cuts into their beer money and have been educated by the media that the unions are ‘bad’)
You’ve got to hand it to the neoliberals – this is one hell of a web they’ve spun.
I’m starting to fear that this country is over – we are just experiencing the death-throes
@Online Accountant
You’re right in so many ways
But I assure you – I’m not giving up yet
Not by a long way!
Yes – Sorry – in the immutable words of Arnie – “Anger is more useful than dispair” We must not dispair!
When will the real lefties realise that the electorate in the UK doesn’t want to be ruled by the hard left with a strong union prescence? The only reason Labour got to power in 1997 was due to a sharp shift to the right.
@Greg
Actually – I’m quite sure that is what they do want
And when the ConDems have done their work they’ll be begging for it
As well as work, education, healthcare, a police force and much more
Keep a little perspective OA,
We’re one of the richest, most developed countries in the world and are problems are largely technical. I can think of a few million haitians/pakistanis and others who would swap our problems for theirs’.
Hegel counselled that despair was the last stage before action.
“When consciousness feels this violence, its anxiety may well make it retreat from the truth, and strive to hold on to what it is in danger of losing. But it can find no peace. If it wishes to remain in a state of unthinking inertia, then the thought troubles its thoughtlessness, and its own unrest disturbs its inertia.”
“The only reason Labour got to power in 1997 was due to a sharp shift to the right.”
No , that was the reason Rupert Murdoch and others deigned to support it. If you remember the fag end of the Major adminstration, they were a high wire act with a bottle in their hand,loathed by the public and discredited, as new labour would be, by the finance capital they sought to serve.
@paul
Schopenhauer was bang on the money when he said that truth goes through three stages. In the first stage, it is ridiculed. In the second stage, it is violently opposed. And in the third stage it is accepted as self-evident.
This will be the tale of Labour’s progress back to power
Their progress back to power will only be of use if the electorate learn to do what FDR advised his supporters:
“Make me do it”
@ Richard, what evidence do you have to show the UK electorate wants a “proper” left wing government?
@ Paul, if the 1997 victory wasn’t to do with the emergence of New Labour (which i’d suggest started to take place before the Tories started to self destruct) why did the Labour party bother to shift itself to the right?
Personally I feel that the people in the UK (and England in particular) do not have particularly strong socialist beliefs, and despite what pain the country will go through over the next 4.5 years I can’t see the electorate ever voting in an Old Labour government again.
@nick james
Richard,
I have no doubt your description of Wilkinson is correct, and therein lies his problem. He can’t take criticism anything but personally.
As to the book itself, the authors do not consider that Scandinavia is essentially ethnically and culturally homogenous. They are a small population bound together with common religion, language and way of life. That’s fine as far as it goes, but it does rather stifle difference, individualism, variety and innovation. It has long been known that inequality is the price of progress. No doubt the cultural homogeneity is one of the reasons why I, personally, find Scandinavian countries to be crashingly dull and boring, only really interesting if you like visting old churches (and even then their churches aren’t a patch on fine old English ones). There is definitely a trade-off between equality and vibrancy. London might be an unequal city but I’d live there over Stockholm every day of the week.
Nor do they make any mention of the fact that Japanese women are highly unequal compared to Japanese men, and stay at home. Nor do they mention that Japan tends to keep foreigners out. Again this may well promote equality but at the expense of conformity.
The reason the USA is highly unequal is partly because millions come to make their living there. They are bound to start off at the bottom and be poor at that time. So of course there is a gap in the USA between those who have made it and those who have just arrived. But a hell of a lot more people emigrate to the USA, in spite of this, then to Japan or Scandinavia.
@nick james
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@paul
“Keep a little perspective OA,
We’re one of the richest, most developed countries in the world and are problems are largely technical. I can think of a few million haitians/pakistanis and others who would swap our problems for theirs’.
Hegel counselled that despair was the last stage before action.”
You are absolutely correct – much appreciated
@Greg
Captured by neoliberals
Isn’t that obvious
Now is the time to break free – neoliberalism is destroying the UK
@Lester Piggott
“inequality is the price of progress”
Towards what?
Injustice
That is what you really mean
@Richard Murphy
Towards increased standards of living.
Inequality of outcome is completely unavoidable in a world where people have different physical characteristics, different motivation, different intelligence, different outlooks.
Do you really not know that?
@Lester Piggott
But explicitly you’re not increasing standards of living
Equality is part of that standard
You’re referring to material consumption
Something quite different
With no proven link once a basic level is reached with well being
Of course variance is inevitable
But disadvantage is not