The word aspiration does not do it for me. I have already explained that I do, of course, aspire to many thing, but in current political debate the word aspiration appears far too often to mean the gratification of the desire to consume for it to have any acceptable political connotation that I would wish to share. That has not, however, stopped it becoming part of the current centre ground debate in British politics. That is because, I have no doubt, this debate is playing to the personal consumption agenda.
That then leaves a question. What is the word around which those who do not put personal consumption as their highest goal wish to coalesce in debate? I have given some thought to this issue, and the need for that one chosen word to convey a sufficient message within itself to communicate both what people feel and what an organisation that might use it, even as its organisational title, might stand for. The word I have so far settled on is 'care'.
I care.
I care about me. And my family. It would be wholly inappropriate, and no one would believe me, if I said I did not.
But I care about other people too. Not just those I know. Or just those in my locality. But people at large. I want the best for them, as I do for my own.
In that case I care about what income they have.
And I care about the opportunities they enjoy.
And I care about their education, security and healthcare too.
Importantly though, I think care is a verb. Anyone can say they care. What matters is making sure care is evidenced by things happening. That's what care as a verb requires. And in this context I know my limitations.
I can't by myself care for everyone, of course. That is only possible collectively and that is not possible whimsically, which is the basis of philanthropy. Care requires systemic collective action that is accountable and subject to appropriate decision making. It's precisely because I care that I believe in government and what it can do for people.
But it's also because I care that I value each person individually, and their own individual rights.
And it's because I care that I want to and can reconcile the paradox of believing in both collective and individual rights.
It's because I care that I want to pay the tax that lets me express my care communally. But it's the same care that also makes me want that tax to be paid equitably, accountably, consistently and by all who owe it at the time that it is payable.
So of course I care about me, my family, my friends, my community, and the world beyond it. But I believe that mutual care requires us to act for each other, and to share, most especially with those in need.
I believe we must care for the young and the elderly, the poor and the disabled.
And that we must care to make sure all business can compete fairly and openly so that we can share our common wealth whilst preserving the right to individual property.
We must relieve poverty.
We must build sustainably if we care for our children.
We must have businesses that deliver what our communities need, and trained people who can own, run and work within them.
We must educate.
And we must protect people from risk.
That's what caring does. And that's why it's so much more powerful than aspiration. Aspiration does not deliver. Care does. I know which I would rather have.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
When we have Caroline Flint obscenely (used advisedly) wittering on about “let’s scrub the scroungers”, it’s clear that the Labour Party has lost the plot – and comprehensively so.
So, why not seek to replace it with the Care Party (the Mutual Care Party?), one of whose foundational principles will be respect for (= no shameless demonisation), and REAL mutual care for the vulnerable and marginalized.
As for Labour “they shoot horses, don’t they?”, when it’s clear they’re totally knackered.
Flint actually used the phrase: “who are in work and play by the rules” which is a carbon copy (pardon the pun) of the phraseology used by the Tories in their systematic vilification of the poor/ill/unemployed. Just when you thought Labour had hit rock bottom and ultimate state of vapidity, you discover it can get worse. Labour is now a cruel joke that neo-liberalism is playing on us. I can only laugh (rather manically) at the shameful display.
I can’t tell you how angry I am that the proud name ‘Labour Party’ has been hijacked. I know so many people in the Party who think like me and I love them dearly, but I cannot see how I can remain a member under the leadership which threatens.
Carol- I think it is time to let go, difficult as it is. Thinking about this, the words of Byron’s ‘Ode to Napoleon ‘ came to mind:
“Tis done—but yesterday a King!
And armed with Kings to strive—
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject—yet alive!”
A bit dramatic perhaps but there is barely any trace of real vision left and we now have a living post-modernist joke being played out.
A few months ago I started using the phrase ‘the caring class’, partly as a reaction to working class having less meaning and being less encompassing. Very recently I have started to use the phrase ‘reclaim labour’. This of course is a reaction to those who only look out of the Overton window, whose frame they define and allow it to restrict their view. Labour is not separate from its members. We are it and we need to be guided by first principles, not by an attitude which treats voters like consummers and writes policies as if they were an advertising campaign. Thanks Richard for your guidance. The party desperately needs guidance from people like you.
I admit I don’t write it for Labour
It’s open to anyone
Thanks though
Gosh Carol, I couldn’t put it better than that myself at all.
As a lover and a supporter of Mother Nature I also know that it is cruel and has a harsh logic all of its own – whether you on the peak of Everest or in a forest in rural England. Nature is hard. Many creatures die everyday and Nature is indifferent to this.
Out there in the natural world if you are weak (young, disabled, injured, ignored, neglected, unprotected, ill) you usually end up as something else’s dinner. That is to say your chances of survival or greatly reduced. If you are weak, you actually end up fuelling the aspiration of other creatures to live – and in doing so lose your own life.
There are many examples of animals in the natural world protecting each other in such circumstances but it is not as uniform as amongst the human species.
I always saw human society as a buffer against that harshness – a way of subverting the laws of nature – because we are actually hard-wired to care for each other – it is a way of organising ourselves for survival. Human kindness also has a reciprocity about it – we do give to receive because it is actually a survival mechanism and there is evidence to suggest that we are the top species on the planet because we have actually co-operated with each other rather than always competed.
This capacity for kindness, for co-operation and as you said ‘to care’ is what actually sets us apart from other species. It places a huge responsibility on us which for the last 30-40 years some seem to think that we should unlearn.
You are right to point this out – caring is a cool and intelligent thing to do.
Indifference is stupidity but encouraging to see the less fortunate, or young and old as a burden does unfortunately help those who feel entitled to more than the rest of us to accrue at our expense.
You might care but the media and government could not care less, and starve and impoverish by design.
Tax is not taxing to the very rich and politicians.
The poor, in or out of work, and however long we live, are 100 per cent taxpayers.
Income tax is not even a quarter of the money from people to government.
Stealth taxes and VAT are 75 per cent of all tax, and bears down hardest on the poorest, on the most basic of things.
VAT on:
Tampons
Maternity pads and maternity breast pads
Condoms and lubricants
hot take way food
sweets for the kids
cakes for their birthdays
Premium tax on insurance for powered wheelchairs and mobility scooters
And a great long list ad infinitum.
The huge cost of duty on alcohol and cigarettes.
The poor therefore have a 90 per cent tax rate.
Pensioners will end up with nil or nothing for state penson out of the con that is the flat rate pension,
by the device of the merger for the first time of SERPs opt out and National Insurance history, that is wiping out a working life altogether.
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
You might care to share out that petition, to stop folk cashing in their pension pot, just to lose over 55 per cent in tax.
Or defer their state pension to lose most of it to small print or to the flat rate pension new rules.
Lowest flat rate state pension forecast seen so far is £8.39 per week after 45 years in work.
So many of the poorest, especialy women have had their state pension abolished by various changes coming next year.
Those with savings lose Pension Credit. Yet savings barely cover a couple of years of bills, on averagel.
40 per cent of the over 50s are disabled an/or chronic sick and those benefits being lost.
There is the idea mooted of taxing at source disability benefits and Atttendance Allowance.
Whilst 40 per cent of Carers (mostly women hit by raised retirement age as family carers) will lose that allowance under Universal Credit new rules, when nationally rolled out.
Tax is used to lie about the poor and demonise them as not contributing to society moneywise.
There is no adult who is not a taxpayer in the UK and this has been the case for generations.
The flat rate will never be a single tier pension, as everyone will get different amounts, and a great many men and women will be left in penniless starving old age, in Work til you die or starve if you can’t forever in life.
I think you overstate your proportions by some way, which does not help your argument
But the principles are sound
But tax campaigners have to get facts right
I have not got time to correct all
The word that came to my mind that could underpin a decent Labour party philosophy is FAIR. A fair days pay for a fair days work, a fair rent for housing etc etc. The current potential Labour leaders don’t appear to have any philosophy apart from I want to grab power and ape the Tories. Its totally dispiriting.
A spirit of justice or fairness drives caring
Fair is a weak word in politics. What is a fair wage? What is a fair tax rate? Every person has their own opinion, so the word “fair” is useless.
Not at all
Fairness is an innate quality even children can judge against -usually remarkably appropriately
You would just wish to deny the effectiveness of moral judgement
Whether it is morally right for the State to take 45% of a man’s pound against 50% of a man’s pound is clearly subjective depending on who you are talking to. Miliband used to talk of “fairness” in restoring the 50% rate. Who is not to say that 45% was already “fair” and 50% is “unfair”? Would 80% be fair? It would be to some people.
If people want to use fair as a buzzword then they need to declare their standpoint to begin with. This is why I think it’s a poor and woolly concept.
What you are saying is judgement is not allowed
And yet you are suing it in making your comment
It is the plight of the moral positivists to forever do this
There is no way you can get out of it either: your position is logically impossible, as the logical positivists found
My point is that Nick Clegg (for example) saying that everyone needs to pay their “fair share” is meaningless. “Fair share” means different things to different people.
So?
I love you means different things to different people
Are you saying it is meaningless or incomprehensible as a result?
That would be absurd. We are quite capable of identifying context
Maybe you aren’t
In my smaller caring world, now the children don’t need me because they are grown, I want to live long enough to outlive my 10 yr old, possibly last dog, maybe another older rescue might be fitted in.
In my larger caring world, no more habitat intrusion for animals we share our planet with. No exploration in the Antarctic, or is it the Arctic.
Love cats also, not many creatures I don’t adore.
Aspiration is a word that will be getting up many noses before too long. So long as we remember that we are all in this together!
The more I think about the future, the more I come to the conclusion that care, has to be, infinitely more than aspiration, the foundation we build our society on. Care trumps aspiration every time. If we care, we aspire, if we aspire, we don’t necessarily care. We have to believe that humans have the capacity within them to do the right thing, but “What is the right thing?” If we build a society with care at its core, I believe the right thing becomes clear. It won’t be a utopian world, that’s impossible, but it could be a world where humanity can sustain itself, the alternative Is what we have now.
The future has many hurdles, science and the advancement in genetic engineering is an major human evolutionary concern, other than a deadly virus or a meteor impact,( maybe climate change, I’m yet to be convinced) The elite having the wherewithal to be a meta human, Stronger, fitter, brighter, May sound farfetched, but isn’t this happening now, even with all the struggles mankind has gone through to bring about some form of relative equality. This is why care will be what saves the human race, nothing else.
It seems and all embracing word to me
I suspect not many will hear though
Richard
As, I think, you recognise, the main political parties & the right-wing media who frame the terms of debate, have a very specific use of the word “aspiration”.
George Osborne would be revolted & appalled if somebody said they were hoping to reduce the hours they worked in order to, say, learn Italian or master the Clarinet or take up Fencing. In no way, shape or form, is Osborne in favour of “aspiration”, the desire to improve. “Aspiration” is defined purely as the desire to get more & consume more.
I’d like to know, & I hasten to add from any representative of any political party, why we suddenly decided that people like Plato, Buddha & Jesus were such utter morons? I mean, they all said, there is nothing worthwhile to be gained from pursuing worldly goods & yet, now, we say “what sorts of muppets don’t pursue worldily stuff”?
Agreed, entirely
eriugnus
I fully agree that if “aspiration” is defined solely as meaning “accumulating more material wealth” then the term is being misused. Politicians of all hues have made the mistake of limiting their views to economics and believing that GDP and tax rates are the only issues worth discussing (even for example the immigration debate was largely reduced to a question of whether immigrants were net contributors to the economy or not).
But just as aspiration does not equal wealth, so “care” must not be reduced to “spending other people’s money”. What we need is a way of rethinking society to take light of the fact that materially, we are all better off than ever before (and I struggle to accept that someone who can afford a mobile phone is in any way in “poverty”), but morally and spiritually we have become utterly impoverished and lacking in imagination.
Roger
Being without a mobile phone is being in poverty in the modern world: you cannot communicate with it
If that is not a measure of isolation, what is?
Richard
Roger, many can afford a mobile phone as well as many other things we might consider as luxuries, like having your nails or hair done to make yourself look pretty. But if you can’t afford a basic human necessity like a roof over your head… I’m afraid you’re just subscribing to the divide and rule philosophy promulgated by the right.
‘Aspiration’ is alive and well in the USA. Unfortunately, with the rise of inequality, the fulfillment of aspiration is effectively dead.
I cannot imagine why those would-be Labour leaders are scrabbling round for a program when Richard Murphy has done the job for them.
That was not my intention!
“Care” as a moral crusade is all well and good but where do you stop when you base your argument on moral terms?……..At the border?….National Sovereignty?
Why is it a moral failing not to “care” about a fellow British citizen but fine if billions live their life in poverty all around the World. The only argument for not helping the rest of the World’s poor is a practical one of affordability and if that argument trumps the moral duty to “care” then why can’t the same argument also work within the UK?
All of politics is based on morals
What else do you suggest it might be based upon?
And what do you think might inform decision making if not morality?
And please do not say rationality because what is rational is a moral decision
You wish all politics were based on morals!………That pure ideological faith is no longer the driving force in politics….
Today it is practicality, affordability and creating a wide enough appeal to achieve election victory.
Why pretend that a moral crusade will achieve anything when there is so much evidence that if brings only election defeat.
Richard
What you really mean is that the higher morals of the faith and wisdom traditions have been abandoned in favour of the lower morals of self-interest and disregard?
Why not be honest that this is what you are promoting?
Or does that make you uncomfortable?
And if it does not, why not? Do you really have such contempt for others?
Richard
‘Affordability’ is never the real issue-we can afford what reasonable use of resources allows once vested interests have been stripped away. If we operate in a ‘beggar your neighbour’ economy then gross inequality and poverty will subsist. Keynes new this. But now the ideology is more debt and privatisation of the assets of poor countries to encourage greater levels of entrepreneurial zeal apparently – worked out well hasn’t it?
I’d rather see politics as a moral crusade rather than an amoral market crusade any day Richard noname.
If all politics did was accept and reinforce the status quo, why would we need it at all? Why should it exist?
As for affordability – there is enough money in the world to help everyone, but the problem is that in the name of deregulation and freedom, it is hoarded, or used to buy political favours to do nothing about inequality at all.
The idea that the rich have earned this money is not true. All that has happened is that the financial system – aided and abetted by stupid politicians and economists – has simply meant a redistribution from the bottom/middle to the top. It is the biggest misallocation of resources in human history.
Also the failure of Labour was not just down to people not getting morality, it was a number of factors such as people thinking that Labour had made the country bankrupt (something that is absolutely impossible at a practical level for a currency producing nation such as ours).
Come on – think about it!!
Our society is shaped by an all powerful few, it always has. Throughout history we see religion and those who convey its message be followed and revered, they created the conscience of society, in most instances perverting religion to gain power, control and wealth. I don’t prescribe to the notion that without religion the world would be a much better place. For me, that’s implausible, if there is no God then religion is man made. So it’s mankind with fault and religion is a product of mankinds nature.
Today, in the developed world we are dictated to and controlled by a ruling elite that preachers that the pursuit of money is the avenue to a contented existence. It’s natural to desire materials that enhance and enrich our lives on a carnal level, but human nature is complex and no amount of wealth could satisfy all our needs. It’s apparent that policies of both the conservatives and to a slightly less extent labour party are engineered to reflect our carnal side. I hope labour resist the temptation to move to the right and instead have faith and stay true to the morals and beliefs that gave birth to the party. They are needed more today than ever.
“What you really mean is that the higher morals of the faith and wisdom traditions have been abandoned in favour of the lower morals of self-interest and disregard? Why not be honest that this is what you are promoting?”
Yes I am promoting a more realistic vision for what can be achieved, I have no problem admitting that.
When I was a child I loved the idea of a white knight versus an evil villain, the simplicity and appeal of good/bad……black Vs white but as I grew up I realised the world is grey.
For me to succeed academically and win my Uni place others had to lose and have a worse future………when I succeeded in dating the pretty girl I liked (now my wife) the other man she was dating lost her and perhaps the happiness that would have followed.
In business every contract I won, every order received took business from others, some will just have earned less money, some lost their jobs, some companies went out of business with the lost jobs and dreams.
I want to take people as they are and how they actually vote, not preach from a hill, remote and self righteous in my purity.
That is why to many who view this blog you waste your talents, your refusal to do the work, to compromise and get grubby with those you dislike, your ego and faith requires a level of uncompromising purity that creates a useless them and us rather than progress.
Hence your refusal to join a political party and your easy dismissal of 10 million Tory voters as lacking in decency and 4 million UKIP voters as racist.
Hang on, you’re saying I create them and us when you have just described your zero sum view of the world, three times over?
Pardon?
You are making no sense at all
Surely it is not rocket science to see that if you voted Tory you are implicitly supporting.
1) Ever increasing inequality.
2) The systematic vilification of the poor.
3) Ever expanding corporate oligarchy (TTIP)
4) A morality of ‘I’m-alright-jackism’
5) Punitive measures against the vulnerable because of the gross errors of an out of control banking system (bedroom tax).
6) The augmentation of a runtier economy
Yes sir-I’d say that if you voted Tory your moral compass is askew!
Amusing typo: ‘runtier’ should, of course read ‘rentier’ but perhaps the former is applicable as well! (how do you get that smiley emoticon?).
Good luck and well done Richard, you appear to have all you desire, but this site does not in my opinion knock what you have it achieved, it just recognises the fact that not everyone can succeed, however hard they try. Don’t we still deserve a life, where we can provide the basic fundamental needs we require, like a decent roof over our heads good health care and education for our children. You appear to have adopted the survival of the fittest, well I’m afraid that is the route to human obliteration.
I am bemused by that comment
I’d say it is the exact opposite of all I believe in
Not you Richard Murphy, the other Richard
Ah….