I wrote two blogs yesterday on what I called the Tory revolution - the plan to sell off as much of the government as possible before they leave office in 2015. The first related the plan, the second added commentary from Ivan Horrocks, a regular commentator on this site.
Another regular commentator, whose opinion is always welcome here, is Andrew Dickie. He responded to Ivan, and I think his comment worth sharing too:
Ivan and I have been in agreement on this before — this will be a Neo-feudal state, in which we subjects in the oligarcho-democratic state we now enjoy are transformed into serfs,without rights, in a feudal state where the land-basis of mediaeval fedualism will be replaced by a “territorial” carve-up on the basis of income streams from taxation = Prince HMRC and Duke NHS and Marquess Tertiary Education, and Earl Secondary Education — somewhat reminiscent of Prohibition Chicago!
These new “garagiste/card-sharping/rent-seeking” baronage know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and their only skills are those of rip-off and plunder, and are a universe away from the real economy and real wealth creation, which will be the task of the serfs — as it always was.
And oligarcho-democratic state? Well, we've never been a real, full democracy. First of all we are still currently “subjects” under the Crown, rather than being free citizens of a truly sovereign state. Secondly, on top of this, the old landed aristocratic set-up, deriving from this monarchic/class principle and structure also constrained our free exercise of power as citizens, but that set-up was modified, to produce a semi-democracy, in response to popular pressure (we owe SO much of our current “freedom” to Chartism, Trade Union pressure, and the sacrifice of thousands of ordinary people in two World Wars — without those, the old feudal set-up would never have changed). So we have a oligracho-democracy.
This lot, however, want us truly to be subjects, lacking all rights, but bound to a money-making machine and elite, in which which we have a duty to pay, and they have the right to be paid. Frankly, I'm beginning to feel like one of those small businesses in Chicago that had to pay Al Capone protection money! That's the set-up they're after — obtaining money with menaces is the charge! Maximum penalty 14 years!
Labour should be putting down a marker — a future Labour Government will bring all these illicitly disposed of mutually created assets back under democratic control, without compensation where possible, which, given that it is highly likely that their new “owners” will already have made more than they have paid for the assets, will be easy to justify.
I wish Andrew was being melodramatic. The trouble is all he says is justified and wholly foreseeable. The need to challenge this imminent disaster grows by the day.
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Labour putting down a marker,i definitely wont be hold my breath, a bunch of neoliberal, posh, privileged, careerist, elitist, self-serving out of touch , unrepresentative of their constituents and millionaires to boot! There all the same the whole shebang, and as disabled / sick person, I most certainly wont be voting for my abusers, and thats ALL of them, I will fight them.
Have to agree with your view of the Labour party, Teddy McNabb. This could not happen unless all the mainstream parties were complicit.
I agree with Teddy and I value breathing too much to wait for any party to change from their current positions. All of which makes me interested in what Teddy and others would vote for. A new thing is required.
We do indeed live in an era of revolutionary conservatism.
Generally, conservatives are characterised by wanting to keep things like they are at present.
More often than not, conservatives are also traditionalist: they want to maintain the present’s continuity with the past.
Not infrequently, conservatives are also regressive: they want to turn the clock back to a lost, glorious bygone era.
However, *our* conservatives, the ones who dominate our politics at present, are *revolutionary*: they want the future to be like the present, only more so.
More prosaically, our conservatives identify the prevailing power structures and inequalities of the present, find them to be pleasing and seek to entrench them even deeper, extend them even further, build them even taller.
It’s a particularly fearsome kind of revolution that is driven from above, by the most powerful.
They also need to give a commitment to bring government and public administration back under democratic control, Andrew (although as one commentator has already noted, it wouldn’t pay to hold your breath on that).
As you’ll well appreciate, neofeudalism (as with the original variety) cannot operate without a web of lesser minions (for want of a better term – ‘servants’ was the badge originally attached to this group if I remember my history correctly)who carry out the wishes and maintain the priviledges of their masters.
While attention is fairly often focussed on the extent to which the political side of government in the UK has been captured and corrupted by money (corporate, oligarchical, etc) very little attention focuses on the inner structures and processes of government: what used to be called public adminstration. Richard picks up on the HMRC example fairly regularly here, and Private Eye has frequent snippets, but they do not do justice to the scale and extent of the capture of key aspects the system and operation of public adminstration.
For example, while it can be argued that the rationale for the secondment and interchange of personnel between government and the private sector was valid when the Fulton Committee first proposed it in the late 1960’s, and remains so to some extent still, the result was certainly never intended or imagined. In short, successive governments (and, once again, New Labour plays a key role) have pursued this policy far beyond what was ever intended and without any serious investigation into possible outcomes and impacts.
We now stand at a point where the scale, extent and – most importantly – consequences of these developments for a supposedly representative democracy have become deeply damaging – and possibly will be terminal unless something is done very soon.
If anyone thinks this is an overstatement take the example of ‘representatives’ (we might also call them servants of neofeudalism), or ‘agents’ of the big four accountancy and consultancy companies. We now have a situation where they advise and work with our political parties while in opposition; carry out the same functions for parties while in government; routinely undertake analysis and evaluation of policies; are involved in all kinds of systems and structures for regulation and oversight; sit on the so called management ‘boards’ of departments and agencies; and so on a so forth.
If you question anyone involved about this the stock response is that it’s all about bringing skills and best practice from the private sector into government. It may well have been once, but the primary reason now is power, influence and control. The mafia must look on with admiration!
This is the largely unseen but underpinning dimension of the slide into neofeudalism.
Ivan, this is so important and unreported, you must put it into a publishable form. I will post it on Facebook – but it won’t be much read. Can you please at least send an article on this to the Morning Star.
That’s very good of you Carol. Thanks. I hadn’t thought about publishing more widely but will seriously consider it next week.
Agreed Ivan – I never said it would be easy, and, though I am currently a member of the Labour Party, I have resigned from it before on matters of principle (in 2001, over Blair’s completely pusillanimous handling and response to the Jenkins Report, the implementation of which would have prevented the formation of our current malign Coalition, with a chance of having brought in more Green Party MP’s and so the possibility of a Red-Green-Progressive Coalition = a Courageous Government), so my allegiance is profoundly contingent and conditional! So, I’m waiting to see how things develop = half holding my breath!
On Philip’s point about “our revolutionary conservatives”, I think I have made the point before in this Blog, and certainly elsewhere (one of the problems of entering one’s pre-dotage – I am only 68, after all! – is you tend to recycle your stories a bit too often!) is that Thatcher was a Right-Wing Maoist: she had all of Mao’s hatred of “experts” and “old” ways of doing things, wherever the conflicted with her single-minded drive to extirpate ANYTHING that was not subservient to her new God – the market – which always knew best, and which, like some slavering Moloch, demanded its victims in droves. Alas, she was also far more savvy than the blundering twins, David and Gideon, indeed, than Mao himself, because she saw how to suborn the members of any possible centre of opposition, via the Right To Buy and Shares in British Gas etc., so that these so suborned have now forgotten what solidarity and loyalty and fairness and the common good mean.
Those of us who DO recall these values, and so oppose all this, and wish to see Richard’s Courageous State really DO have an Everest to climb, when keeping to the easy foothills that will lead us back into the Dead Sea will be SO much easier that climbing to freedom on the other side of the mountains.
I try to be an optimist but always have Gramsci’s famous dictum in mind: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.
A good reminder in your last comment….
I’ll recycle it soon, I suspect
Some times the intellect gets in the way of what we know in our core to be right. It feels like the time might have come to begin dis-engagement from the intellectual and appeal to a deaper sense in people of what is right.
The Thatcher observations are very well made, Andrew, though she would no doubt be spinning in her granny flat if she heard them (what a thought). And thanks for reminding me of Gramsci’s dictum. No doubt being locked up for a fair while gave him plenty of opportunity to mull on that- and put it into practice.