Eighteen months or so ago I helped launch the Progressive Pulse blog, of which I am the sole director. I think it's time to give it a plug as since then there have been many new contributors on this blog who could, I think, contribute to Progressive Pulse to advantage. If you'd like to, get in touch.
In the meantime, this is from Peter May on Progressive Pulse. You may agree, or disagree. That's the whole point. We find out by thinking about these things:
Why frit? Because Mrs Thatcher famously said ‘frit' once when she meant frightened.
And the overwhelming motivation in the current economy is fear.
If we grow up in a poor family we may be fearful we will not have enough to eat — indeed we may well not. If we are parents we are frightened we may not have enough resources to give children a beneficial start in life, fearful that society itself may not be capable of giving them a proper later life. In mid-life we may be frightened for our ill parents — that they will have insufficient or unavailable healthcare, or indeed that we may have to give them social care whilst often living a long way away and holding down a job as well. We can be fearful we will have to give up the house or the totality of our savings in favour of one or another's paid social care and in the end that that may not cover the cost for two. And in our mid-lives we may not succeed in earning enough for much of this anyway. My previous short post and Ivan Horrock's commentsuggests nothing less.
This is the result of the post-Thatcher consensus. Like Neoliberalism, which was started on the basis that those that had wealth were frightened they might lose it when democratic control arrived, Thatcherism has gradually created an underclass, while those that have managed to remain on top, grow, like their underlings, more and more fearful. This gives a much greater opportunity for identity politics. Thus you don't want to lose out by having to live somewhere where the streets aren't safe, and you are encouraged to be frightened by any ‘incomer', particularly those who might be after your often minimum wage job. No wonder the drugs trade is so alluring.
Of course, fear is the ‘tails' side of the coin that has the precautionary principle on ‘heads'. So thinking ‘better safe than sorry' is not unreasonable but, to have it exploited and massaged into fear, politicians and their media supporters are careful to either accept or imply that we are all very insecure — infamously from immigration — and they also suggest that our finances are in grave danger of following in the footsteps of Greece, for example. This is rather as if the farmer told us not just to go round the other way to avoid the bull in the field but that we needed to sprint immediately, while he looks on.
And when the economy is alleged to be no longer a common endeavour (which is the reason we have it in the first place) but it is dog eat dog, fear is important in keeping the pattern going.
So, if a precautionary principle can be so ‘easily improved upon', where does this leave progressives — should they be suggesting we be frightened of the rich?
It is tempting, but whilst we should be wary of them, as a human construct the economy doesn't have to based on either the rich, or fear. It could, more sensibly be based on security. Fear is energy sapping and bad for self-esteem, consequently it destabilises people and society. Neither is good for the economy, since otherwise unnecessary resources are spent on dealing with these problems. So fear effectively creates the tail chasing that is so wasteful of human resources.
Security — in effect what the economy is for — rather than fear would make society happier and more stable. We would have fewer disastrous mental breakdowns provoked by fear and insecurity. A significant and at least partial solution to these health problems lies in a less fearful economy.
Fear is energy sapping in the sense that contentment and happiness are not, so, with its reduction, there is scope for other more creative work.
Yet fear is emotional, and emotions tend to override reason — so what would change the outlook?
If so many — well almost all — our politicians are not prepared to tell people where money comes from (even when they know) then I think Distributism provides a compromise solution. Importantly, it broadly embraces the mutuality principle but it also wants widely distributed ownership.
That is particularly difficult for Conservatives to argue against, and so it could well provide a transitional as well as a radical change. Though Tories will insist that these benefits are always acquired through work, they must be wide open to the charge that as a vanishingly small number of them come from the school of hard knocks, (David Davis is the only one I can think of — and that was in his youth when there was still an unsanctioned welfare state), so other people are entitled to a leg-up even if it is never going to be as great as the one the vast majority of Conservatives invariably receive in life.
So could Distributism be the winning counter argument for the ‘frit' economy? Personally I'd say it's something progressives could and should really push for.
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Time to call Neoliberalism what it really is – Money-Bullying!
Do any of our politicians know where money comes from? While you’re looking for a new name for MMT to avoid the misunderstood word ‘theory, how about MME – Modern MacroEconomics.
I like that…
Playing Monopoly on holiday all the money comes from the Bank and ends up with the winner. How true.
But they still return it to the bank at the end
A timely plug for PP.
I’ve been a bit distracted as you know. I don’t have your single-mindedness and am neglecting my studies 🙂
Been very busy on the local Fb debate pages though….and beginning to avoid being angered by the irritation specialists venting their ignorance as a badge of pride.
Well, here I am in Berlin. Actually in former East Berlin in a flat off Borsig Strasse not far from the main station.
This is the first time I have been to Berlin and I am impressed. People are riding bikes every where; we feel safe walking around even at night; the pubic transport is excellent and people are actually quite friendly and helpful. And it is a city for real people. You can see loads of families together and there are kids everywhere running around or carrying their table tennis bats or skateboards going off to play somewhere. It is not like London at all.
But more than anything else Berlin is a living reminder of the past. There are memorials everywhere to those who tried to get over the Wall. And if you look down at the cobbled parts of the street every now and then you see brass cobbles with the names of Jews on them outside places that they once lived and who were deported to the death camps. We stopped by four of these and noted them. In fact I am going to remember them here and now if I may.
They were the Schneebaum family – man and wife (Herman and Jenny) and their two children Thea (12) and Victor (2) who ended up in Auschwitz in 1943. A 2 year old boy ended up in Auschwitz. Think about that.
Outside the Beth Cafe and the synagogue a few streets away there have been policeman on patrol 24 hours a day outside of the buildings. Whether the threat is from Islamic themed terrorists or Right Wing agitators I do not know. Both perhaps? And if that is the case just how far have we come since 1945?
Why am prattling on about this? It is because I worry that we are not keeping this simple enough. I do not really care how much we intellectualise the counter argument against neo liberalism behind the scenes. (Although I have issues with distribution as I would not class myself as an orthodox liberal at all).
But I do care how we spell out our antidote to the common man in the street. All the hatreds being stirred up by fascists (whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian or political ones) now use simple ideas to get people mad and fearing one another.
Our progressive counter message has to be just as simple. We must not over complicate it. It is about fairness. That is what we are about. And that is where the battle is – defining fairness in a progressive context. Not a Tory or right wing one. We must reclaim the concept of fairness because if we do not history could come roaring back.
Thank you. Sorry about the post but it is this place Berlin. It gets to you.
Enjoy it
I think Mrs thatcher used the Lincolnshire dialect word frit rather than frightened deliberately as it conveys scorn rather than sympathy, used in an economic dialogue those who favour policies which put economic justice before unfettered capitalism are just frit and can be dismissed as wet.