As George Monbiot notes this morning:
In various forms — Conservative, New Labour, the coalition — we have had the wrong government for 30 years. Across that period its undemocratic powers have been consolidated. It has begun to form an elective dictatorship, in which the three major parties are united in their desire to create a security state; to wage unprovoked wars; to defend corporate power against democracy; to act as a doormat for the United States; to fight political dissent all the way to the bedroom and the birthing pool. There's no need to wait for the "wrong" state to arise to conclude that mass surveillance endangers liberty, pluralism and democracy. We're there already.
They're delivering what J P Morgan is demanding.
We do, of course, need the Courageous State instead.
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In the comments to that article there’s some discussion, if that’s the right word, of tax evasion with the typical libertarian argument, if that’s the right word, proffered that if snooping into private communications is illegitimate then so is state taxation. Of course these two things are completely inequivalent but the irony is that it’d be far easier, cheaper and less invasive to crush tax crime simply by instituting country by country reporting, increasing the enforcement capabilities of HMRC and threatening to cut off tax havens unless they desist in their tax havenry. It’d be so very easy and so completely defensible – and yet the British state would rather spy on its entire citizenry with next to no oversight or public accountability and at enormous political and financial cost.
Correct me if I’m wrong – and I for one do acknowledge when I’m wrong – but when you recently set out what people want, finishing with “that’s all”, you didn’t mention freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of assembly.
Nowhere in your manifesto has the Courageous State ever discussed an individual’s right to keep his or her property, free from arbitrary expropriation by the State. Indeed when it is posited that property in the first instance belonged to the individual; not the state, the Courageous State replies “wrong”. Similarly, an individual’s right to choose what he or she wished to acquire and consume is overridden by the Courageous State’s better understanding of what that individual “needs” as opposed to their “artificial want”. Concerns over press freedom, highlighting the experience of Zimbabwe and suggesting that Leveson represented a couple of steps down that route, are called “crass”.
The JP Morgan document is fascism; I oppose all fascists, no matter what flag they claim to fly.
The Courageous State is a fascist state: “All within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”.
I challenge you to post this and to respond.
Absolute nonsense
I only argue that the right to own property is conditional in the sense that the taxes due to acquire it must be paid first
All you say is an utter misrepresentation of what I wrote – and if any issue was missed it was because I was already 100 pages over length
As for the state ‘knowing’ what people want – far from it – what I argue is that the state should prevent adverts manipulating that knowledge – something very different indeed
As I understand it (and I too could be wrong but I think not) the ‘Courageous State’ is still a liberal democratic state wherein people are by and large free to consume what they want in a largely free market. The difference is that such a state recognises the various inevitabilities of markets in their neoliberal mode: market failure, proliferating inequality, criminal manipulation, endemic inefficiency, environmental catastrophe. It recognises that markets can only function properly if regulated and that a modern, democratic society can only function properly given the intervention of a state that is aware of and embraces its own necessity. This is contrasted to the cowardly state we have now, which believes itself to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution and, correspondingly, longs for its own destruction.
The accusation of ‘fascism’ seems to be a product of your imagination, Ironman. Freedoms of speech, assembly, access to education and healthcare, etc. are only possible in an environment where other resources and other courses of action are restricted. You’re only free to walk home at night safely if other people aren’t free to knock you over the head and steal your wallet, etc. Freedom as an absolute, ideal condition is nonsensical. A legitimate, competent social democratic state would work to permit and encourage all the freedoms that matter by regulating those elements of life that require regulation *and only those areas*. Of course, what freedoms ‘matter’ and what regulation is ‘necessary’ are open questions that must be addressed through a democratic process. But that doesn’t change the fact that intervention and regulation are necessary conditions of the kinds of freedom enjoyed in liberal, democratic societies.
‘Arbitrary expropriation by the state’ – that old tired, totalitarian spectre dredged up by libertarian fantasists. Our states are owned by the rich, run by the rich, dedicated to the purposes of the rich. ‘Arbitrary expropriation’ is a completely absurd fantasy. We’d have to be in a parallel universe or some extremely distant point in the future in order to imagine such a thing happening from our present standpoint. Our politics are completely and totally dominated by the wealthy and, as such, arbitrary appropriation of their monies is basically inconceivable.
So, given all of that, why do people keep bringing it up? Pure ideology. It’s the stuff of science fiction but people keep bringing it up because they think that it justifies their prejudices. Just because such a scenario can be narrated it is implied that its occurrence is plausible and that we must guard against it with the utmost vigilance and suspicion, with all other political projects sidelined.
Those fighting for tax justice are fighting directly against the core interests of the most powerful forces in human history – those of the contemporary super rich, an elite unprecedented in history. Those fighting against ‘arbitrary expropriation of wealth’ are fighting against something that is borderline impossible in the world in which we live. It’s ridiculous to think that these battles have anything in common.
Yes, our states as they presently exist are attempting to control and regulate our lives in a fashion that could very well be described as fascist. But the idea that this could lead to the state just taking people’s money is mind bogglingly ridiculous. We have to fight tooth and nail just to get people to pay what they already owe. Even a tax that amounts to a tiny fraction of 1% on financial transactions is treated as scandalous and unthinkable by the powers that be.
The fear of ‘arbitrary expropriation by the state’ is pure ideology. It serves no other purpose than to reinforce the status quo. The same goes for labelling liberal, social democrats ‘fascists’ just because they think that state power can do good as well as evil.
Well argued
Your understanding of the Courageous State is correct
how far can any right be absolute if others are adversely affected by that ‘right’?
i could claim a right ‘to consume a lot of alcohol’ but I then have to give up my right to drive and possibly inflict injury on others.
i acknowledge there is unlikely be a universally accepted consensus on this.
I think a point Richard Murphy makes is that those with wealth and power can ride roughshod over those who do not. The freedoms of the poop and powerless also need protection.
No, I recall it very well. I had actually argued that taxes were not theft and i did not believe anyone could genuinely think they were. Our exact exchange then was:
Me: In the first instance property belongs to the individual and not the state.
You: wrong.
Yes it is rong if taxes are not paid
Exactly right
But net property after tax does belong to the individual
The distinction is very important
I may not know what I’m talking about but here’s what I believe:
Property only exists as a concept within a legal order. If that legal order apportions X to the state and Y to individuals then only Y belongs to individuals. There cannot be property before the division because the division itself constitutes property in legal terms. The legal order creates Y as private property at the same moment that it creates X as public property. Y can only exist as private property because of X; X is literally the price paid in order to have Y. If you think that X+Y are owned by the individual and then only later appropriated by the state then you may be confusing possession with ownership. Ownership and property, again, only have meaning within a legal order – an order that protects property as well as appropriating it through legal means. Of course, the legal order could be unfair but that doesn’t change the fact that Y only exists because of X and that there is no legally meaningful ‘property’ that precedes the legal order.
The only way around this would be to posit some kind of natural law that precedes any specific legal order.
You’ve been reading Murphy & Nagel.
If not you’ve reached the same conclusion
And so did I
I’m not sure Philip’s analysis works where you have more than one country. Lets say I’m a UK resident and I, say, put cash I inherited from my Swiss grandmother in a Swiss bank account. My cash and the income earned from it is protected by the property rights laid down by Switzerland but the UK has the full taxing rights. So I do have X + Y in Switzerland and no Swiss tax although I pay X in the UK but don’t need to rely at all on the UK’s propety rights although I need to comply with its tax laws. This implies to me that taxing rights and property rights are not some aggregate that means I only ever have the net amount. As such they are actually separate and distinct even in a legal sense without recourse to any natural order of things.
This is pedantry of the most stupid sort
You are well aware we have double tax treaties to resolve such issues
And what is this natural order you obsess about?
Do you think dinosaurs had property rights?
You will see I said you don’t have to resort to any natural order (law) which was Philip’s point not mine so I don’t see how I’m obsessed with it when I actually say it is not necessary. The double tax treaties don’t alter my analysis that property and tax rights are distinct either. I will be interested in Philip’s comments on the debate as I sense he is more modest on his abilities than is actually the case.
@ J Ledbetter
Thanks for your comment on my comment! First of all, my previous argument was, of course, a simplification. I think the X/Y equation is the underlying principle. How it works out in fact or in law is much more complicated and case-specific.
Secondly, I think it’s important not to confuse ‘legal order’ with ‘national law.’ Legal orders do extend beyond borders precisely because, as Richard pointed out, there are many treaties between nations that establish what rules apply when working across borders. Any regime is imperfect and it only holds together because it’s continually challenged and revised but that’s true of national regimes as well as international ones. Again, one would have to look at the specifics of the case but I think the general principle holds unchanged even in transnational situations.
Thirdly, I’d go back to what I said before about property and possession. If you possess something that, due to some legal blind-spot or other, is not subject to any definitive legal judgement with regard to ownership then you may *possess* that thing but you don’t necessarily *own* it. It may be your ‘property’ in lay, common sense terms but not in formal, legal terms.
So, even if one does find a hole in the legal order that doesn’t indicate a deeper layer of natural ownership beyond the law but simply a grey area where ownership is legally undecided. Such a possession may thereby avoid things such as taxes and regulations but it may also not be afforded legal protections since it is, strictly speaking, outside the law. (Although this is not necessarily the case since many ‘offshore’ tax avoidance ruses manage to get state protection while avoiding the other side of the coin – tax, regulation, etc. They manage to have their cake and eat it too. Ronen Palan’s academic work is really good on this point. Either way, the point vis-a-vis possession versus ownership stands.)
By the by, I’m much more of a sociologist and political scientist than an economist, lawyer or anything like that so that’s the direction I approach this from, the basic idea being that of denaturalising social formations and looking at what holds them together instead of taking them for granted. Theoretically it’s a ‘constructivist’ argument, although that word differs in meaning in different contexts and between different disciplines.
I’ve not read Murphy & Nagel but I’ll take a look, thanks!
Thanks!
You should enjoy Murphy & Nagel and I stress that Murphy is not me
Philip: I’m not sure that addresses the point I was making.. It’s not a grey area or a hole in the law as you suggest. i dont have to rely on any natural law either. From a Swiss property law perspective I own and posses the full asset. I enjoy the full protection of Swiss property law without any resort to international agreements or UK law. If someone steals the asset or tries to defraud me I have full legal redress available to me under Swiss law for the full amount. One of the reasons people use Switzerland is they think its stability versus their home country makes it a more secure place to hold assets.
The taxing rights are those of my home country (and I don’t really need the tax treaties to help me here as the position is typically the same with a non treaty country in this particular regard). In any event the treaties are concerned with tax rights not property rights.
It’s clear to me that one country taxes me and the other – independently – gives me the full property rights and security over the asset I own. So the net argument cannot hold.
But Swiss law can be – has often been – designed to undermine the law of other states
How is that a legitimate property right?
Richard: There’s nothing special about Switzerland as I could have chosen any country. I’m happy for you to choose a country which you consider does have legitimate property laws and my analysis still stands.
And I do not agree
Talking of Big Shadowy Financiers calling all the shots and dodging the bullets, not sure if Richard and followers are aware of this analysis of Ed Snowden’s situation from Max Keiser. ” The American economy runs on the confidence, confidence that the world accepts the US dollar as world reserve currency, confidence that the US bond market will remain the standard. And what we are seeing is a sell-off in a bond market and a sell-off in the stock market, because confidence in the US and its ability to maintain a global empire through interest rates and the Central Bank policy is crumbling before the world’s very eyes.
What’s interesting is that Edward Snowden worked for Booz Allen. Booz Allen allegedly along with a few other companies are the masterminds behind LIBOR market rigging, energy market rigging, FOREX market rigging.”
http://rt.com/op-edge/keiser-international-confidence-crumbling-snowden-182/#.UcloP9kuGEs.twitter
You can pick up a nice little CCTV kit from Maplins from well under £500. If you want to a larger budget would give you a very comprehensive coverage. A few decades ago my home phone was tapped. It was very useful. If the line was a bit dodgy a moaning call to someone would have the GPO round in an hour or two when the norm was a week or two. Also, I never had to wait to get a phone. The great thing was then I never had to worry about getting my message across. Now I have to fiddle about with blogs and such like.
I presume I’m bugged
My wife reckons that if I’m not the security services will have lost all their bias
Richard, my wife Barbara has raised the point that they have no need to bug you! If they have an internet connection they could read your every thought on twitter and this blog! You leave no stone unturned!
I promise I do much more than I ever reveal here
Well thank you Philip. Thak you for helping me to understand the Courageous State so much more clearly.
Thank you for explaining that we can separate between the freedoms ‘that matter’ and, therefore, those that don’t. Thank you also for explaining that the distinctions between these is a matter for debate. Of course, me being a neoliberal fantasist and all that, I always thought individual freedoms were sacrosanct.
Thank you also for explaining that my concern – funnily enough based to some degree on my Zimbabawean experience – regarding arbitrary expropriation by the State is entirely misplaced because it is ‘inconceivable’. So I must have dreamt all of that. I must also have dreamt all of that expropriation I had believed occurred in the USSR, China, Cuba, Cambodia, Zimbabwe and of course National Socialist Germany (does that mean all states with the word Socialist in their name then?). Not to mention the appalling loss of human life that accompanied it, much of it by design. That must all be a product of my imagination as well.
And thank you for pointing out the “market failure, proliferating inequality, criminal manipulation, endemic inefficiency, environmental catastrophe” inherent in market lead economies. My understanding that endemic inefficiency and the Chernobyl meltdown happened in the Socialist utopia that was the USSR must also be a product of my fevered neoliberal imagination.
And I really must thank you for explaining that ownership only dervies from the State, that it never existed in Natural Law and isn’t recognised by those fine faith traditions Richard has often quoted.
Finally, thank you Richard for endorsing Philip’s explanations. I would hate to think that by reading another commentator I had only read a filtered version of your opinion that had been lost in translation.
Thank you for your facetiousness
Please do not bother to call again
This is a place for debate – not abuse
You’re only proving my point. The USSR is dead and buried and its return, even in Russia let alone Britain, is inconceivable. Britain turning into Zimbabwe is also inconceivable, therefore it’s an irrelevant comparison. These are fundamentally different political regimes. Imagining that the British state (or any other European or North American state) could suddenly decide to take people’s money is the stuff of science fiction. It’s contrary to the very fabric of our world. It’s not strictly impossible but it’s darn close and it’d take many, many years and huge transformations in order to put us in a place where it could happen. So why are we worrying about it? Ideology, pure and simple. It’s a fantasy – yes, a fantasy – that reinforces certain political predispositions. That’s its sole purpose.
It’s probably true that we should be wary of talking of ‘the state’ since really there is no such thing, there are only actually existing states. Yes, some states in history have engaged in arbitrary expropriation but these states are so fundamentally unlike the liberal, democratic states that we are talking about that the comparison only reinforces the point: any liberal, democratic state doing such a thing is so unlikely that it’s not even worth thinking about.
The battle to find a way to stop massive wealth inequality crushing all other forms of social relation is a real, present and perilous one. The battle to stop liberal, democratic, capitalist states from arbitrarily taking people’s money simply isn’t a battle at all. It’s not even a question.
And yes, some freedoms matter more than others. The freedom to bludgeon people over the head with impunity is less important than the freedom to not have your head bludgeoned for no reason. The primary purpose of law is to enshrine such distinctions and to universalise them within the territory to which they apply.
I’m sorry if my tone in my previous comment was insulting, I was just trying to make my point forcefully and I stand by the substance of what I said.
“In various forms — Conservative, New Labour, the coalition — we have had the wrong government for 30 years…It has begun to form an elective dictatorship, in which the three major parties are united in their desire to create a security state; to wage unprovoked wars; to defend corporate power against democracy; to act as a doormat for the United States”
Wow! George Monbiot has just described Australia, NZ, the United States, Italy, Greece and nearly every ‘democratic’ country in the Western world. In the U.S. Gerald Celente calls his country’s system a “two-headed monster”. So I guess in the U.K. it’s a “3 headed monster.
I note in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/21/labour-radical-change-austerity-ed-miliband ) that Ed Miliband thinks himself a 2013 version of Clement Atlee. Goodness me. :-O
He believes that Labour can create radical changes in a time of austerity: “Miliband has urged his party to remember that the post-war Labour government achieved radical social change while also managing to run budget surpluses in a time of austerity. The Labour leader urged party members concerned about his decision to accept coalition spending plans for 2015-16 to recognise that high day-to-day spending is not the only route to social justice and that Clement Attlee created the welfare state and NHS while also balancing the budget.”
I think Miliband has just signalled which way his government will go if they win office – more of the same. “Steady as she goes”. This just about confirms Monbiot’s statement.
“Unelected Oligarchy”
http://filestore.democraticaudit.com/file/de232c951e8286baa79af208ac250112-1311676243/oligarchy.pdf
“We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system.”
Timothy Geithner US Secretary of the Treasury, previously President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.1/3/2009
Bill Mitchell has a good post on Miliband is anything but a Clement Atlee: “British Labour — light years away from 1945 on another planet”
(http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=24419). And no doubt many of your readers would have seen the letter to The Guardian from Greens MP Caroline Lucas – “Westminster now has three parties of austerity” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/24/uk-three-parties-of-austerity), confirming what Monbiot has said.
Regarding the discussion on property rights and tax paid in the middle of this thread the problem is not your statement that the right only exists if tax is paid but what that means combined with your other statements!
You have often refused to set a maximum limit on either income taxation or wealth taxation and believe the State should be free to tax as required. Now you may claim that it is ridiculous to suggest that the state would tax at 90-100% but the fact that there has been 90%+ income taxation in my lifetime and that you refuse to rule it out means that it cannot be discarded as easily as you would like.
If you combine this statement that the State is free to tax as it likes with property rights only existing after tax is paid then you come to the problem.
Property rights only exist if you pay the State tax it wants but that amount could be the entire value or near enough of the property leaving the individual nothing. The effect is then that your property rights do not in fact exist because the State can take them away by taxation if it wishes.
Claiming paying tax grants property rights is a bit worthless if you reserve the right to take the property away by tax any time you like!
You ignore democracy
If people voted for 90% tax that’s fine
I doubt they will
So you admit that Property rights are not guaranteed by the State and that if you can obtain the slightest democratic backing then then can be discarded using high taxation.
OK, good to know, everything an individual owns is up for grabs by the state if you can get 51% of the vote!
Utter nonsense
Of course they are upheld – so long as tax is paid
For you to pretend I I have said otherwise is straightforward fantasy on your part
Politely, stop being stupid or don’t call again
Got to love the way GB tries to absolve itself from all responsibility. Firstly, The US is still a colony of GREAT Britain. We pay taxes to them through the Britain-created IRS in the form of “income tax”. We suck each other’s [….]. The CIA (arguably not even a US derivative) has always funded and still is funding the European Union which robs nations of their sovereignty. Read the book Bilderberg Group and The Secrets of the Federal Reserve. The US is a puppet to both the Federal Reserve (British and European owned – see Rothschilds..) and the UK, Israel, and the UN.
Here’s the deal. We (the puppet governments) are all in bed with each other. ALL corrupt. ALL power hungry. ALL money hungry. If you ever once felt that your government had YOU in their best interests (in the name of democracy or socialism), you are patently naive. The agenda began decades ago and is now unfolding before the eyes of the world.
US citizens have been victimized in this through poisoned water, food and air. Most Americans are sick, very sick, or dying slowly. Most of us are brain damaged. Spare the sarcasm. This is serious. We were the beta experiment. Now you guys will understand what Americans have been putting up with for decades. I don’t wish it on you, but you will come to finally understand Americans and the agenda behind everything. One day you’ll learn that in school, you don’t learn “history”, you learn HIS STORY. Propaganda. Everyone. All countries.
Did you know that you have no voting power. Your “leaders” as well as the “leaders” of the US are SELECTED – not elected. At least the US hasn’t see a legitimate election in decades.
Everyone’s democracy had been faked. Let’s wake up. Listen to alternative media. Anything but what is mainstream because it is what makes you brainwashed. There is an agenda – part of it to keep you good and distracted. The government controls your media and mine.
I do not think it is all faked
You may
I still hold out hope