This video argues that we are facing a stark economic and political choice: fascism or care.
Fascism is not history. It is happening now. It has a distinct economic logic built on extreme neoliberalism:
- Market worship
- Punishment instead of protection
- Austerity
- Fear, and
- The use of the state to enforce cruelty while insulating wealth.
The economics of care offers a different framework entirely. It puts human needs first, makes security and freedom from fear a public duty, and insists that markets must serve people rather than control them. Care is not sentimental. It is economic realism, social resilience, and democracy's defence.
This is not an abstract debate. The structures we build now will decide whether we live in a society organised around fear or one organised around care.
That is the choice. And there is no neutral ground.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
We have an economic choice to make. It is between fascism or care.
As far as I can see, those are the options that are going to be on the table soon, and there won't be any others.
And let's be clear, fascism is here now. Fascism is not about history. It is something that is happening at this moment.
We can see it in the USA. There are people there who are saying it. Robert Reich, a former minister in Clinton's government, is saying out loud that not only is there fascism in the USA, in the form of Donald Trump, but there's a Gestapo too, and he's right.
And so this video is deeply pertinent because it's about the choices we have to make if we are to avoid going down that road and having fascist economics in this country. And we need to discuss the alternative as well. What do we want? Care or authoritarianism? That is the question.
And let's be clear. This is an economic argument as well as a political argument, because fascists do have distinct economic policies.
They worship markets, and they punish people.
They cut care, health, benefits, pensions, and support for all of those in need, and they call it freedom.
They blame migrants for economic failure when that is wholly untrue, as we're seeing in the USA.
And they use the state to enforce cruelty.
And again, let's be clear, we're seeing this in the USA right now. Federal forces are shooting people dead on the street for standing up to them because this is fascism trying to impose its will against the rights of people.
But all of this has a distinctive economic logic of extreme neoliberalism that has already brought us to our knees.
So, does care have a distinct framework as well? But it is incredibly different to the framing of fascism. The economics of care are about everyone.
Everyone matters without exception, within this framework.
Social, economic and physical security are seen as a public duty that the state must provide within the politics of care.
And markets must serve people and not the other way round in this way of thinking.
And most especially in the politics of care, no one should be left to fail.
As a consequence, these approaches to economics are very far apart, and that's what we're talking about here.
Let's be clear about the economics of fascism. Fascism isn't about uniforms or rallies. It's not about symbols or marches. It's about power, markets, and control. It's about who gets to control security and who is made disposable as a result, and these are real questions to consider, which impact everyone.
Importantly, fascism doesn't oppose markets; in fact, it radicalises them. It runs the whole of society for the benefit of markets, and again, we can see that in the USA. Companies like Palantir are taking over the control of public services, and their CEO and founder has actually said he doesn't see a role for democracy anymore.
The goal of fascism is to protect capital and not people. As a result, it suppresses labour, and it suppresses dissent, and quite explicitly, it enforces inequality through the state.
And fascism is where neoliberalism ends up.
Markets are treated as morally superior.
The state is reduced to enforcement.
Social security is reframed as weakness to be condemned.
Inequality is justified as the price of efficiency.
And eliminating 'others' is treated as a cost where those 'others' are, of course, those who appear to have migrated to the UK, whether their families did so generations ago, or last week.
The discrimination is always real, and the role of the state under fascist economics has to also be understood. The role of the state in this situation is to support the powerful. The state provides police, prisons, borders, and surveillance, the things that ring-fence the rich from everybody else. It provides law to reinforce a bias to wealth, but it does not protect from poverty. There is no security for work, health or housing. The state serves order, but not care.
Who benefits? Look, you know that already. It's always the same groups. Those who benefited from neoliberalism: large corporations, financial elites, asset owners, and those who are already insulated from risk. They're just made wealthier still.
And who pays the price? You do. Workers are made flexible and disposable. Rights disappear. The sick are blamed for their illness and do not necessarily get treatment, most especially if the illness in question is mental ill health, the existence of which is very often denied by right-wing and fascist politicians. Disability is also denied. The poor are accused of failure, and the social safety net that has kept them going is removed, whilst outsiders are turned into enemies.
This is a politics of discrimination. Let's be clear about that. And fear is essential to this. Markets cannot deliver security, we know that. So, therefore, fear fills the gap. Fear of migrants, fear of unemployment, and fear of the unemployed who are portrayed as skivers, and fear of social collapse, therefore requiring that people believe in the strong man at the top of the pile. All of these ideas are deliberately stoked to turn attention away from the fact that almost everyone else is being exploited.
Now, contrast this with the economics of care. There is a completely different starting point. Human needs come first. Markets are tools and not masters. The state enables well-being. Security is a public good, and security in this sense does not just mean defence. It means security against illness, against old age, against unemployment, against exclusion, because the aim is inclusion and not exclusion. This is the inverse of fascism.
The objects of a society that promotes an economics of care are very clearly stated. Universal healthcare would be provided. Education would be seen as an investment. There would be secure housing for everyone and decent incomes, plus job guarantees. You would always be able to work if you wanted to, and you would also have the time to live and care, not least for children, but also for the elderly, and each other. You wouldn't be exploited, in other words.
The role of the state in the care economy is to be an enabling state. It creates capacity. It invests ahead of need. It maintains social and environmental capital, and it acts as a steward and not as an enforcer.
In the care economy, money matters, and I cannot help but mention this because the care economy would understand that the state can always spend if there is a need to do so to meet a need, and there are resources available to fulfil it. That's because spending comes before taxation: we know that. What we also know is that tax then shape behaviour and control inflation, whilst public investment creates resilience.
In fascism, all of this is denied. Scarcity is a policy choice. People suffer as a result. Because money is understood in the care economy, the opposite is true.
Care and fascism are things that must be compared.
Fascism economises on people by making them and their needs disposable and almost irrelevant.
Care economises for people by making them the epicentre of its concern.
Fascism relies on fear; care relies on trust.
So we have a choice. Fascism promotes austerity that creates insecurity, including, by the way, that created by AI, all of which will result in authoritarianism, whilst market absolutism will destroy democracy.
Care is, in fact, democracy's defence. What it means is that there would be a society run for people. Austerity would be consigned to history, and insecurity would be something that the state would do everything it could to abolish for the people who live within the society that a government is responsible for.
Look around. This is so different from what we've got now. We see attacks on welfare. We see hostility to migrants. We see criminalisation of protests. We see AI justified as an economic necessity. None of this is true.
Economics is never neutral. It always encodes values. We must either choose the economics of care, or we can drift into the economics of coercion. That is the choice.
These are the questions we need to ask then. Do we want an economy built on fear or one built on care? Because the structures we build now will decide that future. Literally, this is a real issue, now.
That is the choice we have to make: care versus fascism. There isn't a bigger decision to make, and there is only one answer which will benefit the vast majority of people in the world, and that is care.
What do you think? There's a poll down below.
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Looking at the whole of the UK government as an accountant I like to look at what they are spending on as a reveal of their attitude. If you had a friend who spent all their free money on holidays to the gulf you might reasonably conclude something about their character. Or if they spent it all on their kids. So for the UK government the two biggest budget items by far when grouped together are pensioner transfers and health. It’s not war spending or subsidies to the rich. We already clearly have a politics of care. You’ve won. Carry on winning.
I have yet to decide if this is trolling, or not.
I think you can be confident anyone calling themselves “reach around” is a troll. And doesn’t using vulgar slang as a user name violate your commenting policy?
Yes
“It is not war spending or subsidies to the rich”
As we are not at war, the first is hardly surprising.
Subsidies to the rich. Have you even considered all the hidden subsidies given to the rich? Housing Benefit which benefits only the landlords and in work welfare benefits which benefit the employer who can get away with paying staff a pittance. All the direct subsidies and the unreasonable taxation rates, under which paid work is taxed at a much higher rate than any other form of income.
Yours is, in any event, an analysis lacking any meaning, “the two biggest budget items by far when grouped together are pensioner transfers and health. ” What does that mean? What are being grouped together and why? What is a pensioner transfer?
You share my concerns and express them well.
In my foodbank days I used to carry round a pie chart of public spending, annotated for specific items, especially for what proportion of the dreaded “welfare bill” was actually state pension payments – about £91bn in 2016/17 out of DWP total net social investment (sorry that should read “burden on hard working taxpayers…) of around £179bn – ie: half of it.
People seemed surprised by the figures (especially right-leaning pensioners).
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a821d57ed915d74e6235dc4/dwp-annual-report-and-accounts-2016-2017.pdf
p186
Of course by rationing health and social care and rasing the pension age, we can get rid of these “burdens” (sorry – “people”) at an earlier age, by reducing claimant life expectancy, an area where gov’t have been successful for the first time in recent years.
“Die young! – help Rachel balance the books – it’s the patriotic fiscally responsible thing to do!”.
I used to do this data.
HM< Treasury make it much harder to do now.
@ Reacher Ound
You omit to show your working, or produce a table with figures in it – odd behaviour for an accountant.
Subsidies to the rich of course should include all their tax perks, favourable NI thresholds, pension contribution and Gift Aid higher rate perks, preferential low rates of tax on unearned income, corporate tax and the very well hidden corporate subsidies (including letting water companies off their fines if someone, anyone, will sink money into them.
(Not easy to give figures because tax subsidies to the rich & to corporates are well disguised.)
It seems to me as if you might feel resentful about the public spending on health and pensions, and would like to trim it? But you haven’t actually said so.
I’m interested to hear your own suggestions for ways in which those in receipt of a basic state pension can also receive appropriate health and social care, both now and in 40 years time. Dont forget to include figures.
A society which refuses to tackle these issues is a society headed for catastrophic collapse, and the wealthy will collapse soon afterwards as a sinkhole opens up beneath them.
But there are still many pensioners facing financial hardship and the NHS is not reaching everyone who needs their care. Partial care isn’t care. Several £ tens of billions more need to be spent to care properly for pensioners, and perhaps £10 to £20 billion more on health, to plug the gaps and allow for future growth in need. We can do it, so we can afford it. Let’s get on with it.
Apologies. I think I just understated the amount needed to fund the NHS properly, by a wide margin. But, hey, it’s do-able. We just need to make sure we have the people to do it, and the will.
As you say, the economy we have now is certainly fear based – fear of losing out, fear of trying something new, fear that we have not got enough money to cope when money is a fiat issue (balanced of course by the need to tax of course). Then there are the fears being used to divide and conquer – immigration, being left out, the spectre of the hard left (constantly over-egged) and goodness know what else they can rustle up to turn our attention away from destruction of the commons and what was once normal ( such as a regular water supply and decent health care) and the feeding frenzy of capital.
Agreed
You have to laugh that the tiny British passport now ranks below the previously rubbished Irish passport.
It would seem the EU pull will hasten Irish unification – even it the republic is probably not too keen to embrace the north – my be it will be a federation .
No one wants to think about the implications of the break up of the union. Many of us ‘English’ don’t really see ourselves as such – and would rather be British , or even Yorkshire,or European without really knowing why .
I am about to watch your video (or listen to the audio) as I wash my woolly socks. When I went to YouTube, up popped a video from Politics Joe ( from yesterday) where they interviewed an engineer and scientist, a member of the Uk Patriotic Millionaires. About 8 mins in, he spoke about tax, first mentioning higher tax on income from wealth, although he also spoke about a tax on assets. Would you consider an interview with him? He was also asked about the very wealthy leaving the country. There are so many stories the media feed us about why we ‘need’ the status quo, and one of the big ones is that we depend upon the wealthy elite for our jobs, and for economic growth. I thought he was very level-headed and straightforward, while obviously an ‘awkward type’ as he has been seen at Davos with a placard saying ‘tax the rich more’ when he could be enjoying his retirement in more conventional ways. Would one of your team watch the video?
Anne
We’ll take a loo9k and see where we go from there. Thanks for the suggestion.
Richard
Watched yours, extra-accessible I thought. Liked and hyped!
Thanks.
You are so right about fascism, but for some reason the public haven’t switched on to the danger of it crowding out the sort of economic thinking that would bring a more caring society. Surely, the majority of people want a more caring society. The media are not helping by clinging on to supporting right wing politicians and their failed neoliberal ideology. My feeling is that US fascism which is now established will not be repeated here in anything like the manner of Trump’s perverted regime. We are much more resistant to it, having fought and defeated it in living memory.
Sorry, but that living memory is dead. Those who fought fascism are no longer with us. We just live with those who think they fought it because they watched The Dambusters and Reach for the Sky too many times as children and now believe they were there. They are the danger. They gave us Brexit. Now they could give us fascism.
For a little encouragement: I searched online ‘Does tax cover all government spending’ and the AI assisted answer came up with a broadly MMT answer : Money creation, spending before tax receipts, tax for controlling inflation, reducing the money supply and redistributing wealth, et al.
I think the AI answer may differ slightly each time.
It does. It also feeds your known biases