Why Corbyn won, the Peter Mair explanation

Henry Farrell :- “Mair argues that this is bad for democracy. Quoting another political scientist, Rudy Andeweg, who says that “the party … becomes the government’s representative in the society rather than the society’s bridgehead in the state,” Mair suggests that political parties are becoming glorified spin doctors for state power.”

Yes, indeed, and this is very like the situation in one-party states. Although we have more than one party, many of those parties function as conveyor belts of information into society rather than the other way round.

The Peter Mair explanation is actually that Yvette Cooper won, after widespread disinterest and a further decline in party membership.

It’s true that political parties in the UK aren’t funded as systematically as in some other European countries. But it is also true that the amounts involved are not trivial. In 2014/15, Labour got £6.7 million* in ‘Short money’** out of total income of around £35 million.***

* Funding is driven by a formula based on votes and seats, so Labour will get less in the current parliament, the SNP wll get more, and the LibDems will go back to getting some (they were ineligible in the previous parliament as a party of government).

** That’s Short as in Edward Short, the Cabinet minister in the Wilson government who introduced the scheme, not miniaturised bank notes.

*** The time periods don’t quite align, so the ratio of the two numbers isn’t precisely accurate, but it’s a reasonable approximation.

Blair is of course exemplary in this respect.

And before him, Bill Clinton.
~

“It’s not at all clear that the new forms of collective identity which have helped propel Jeremy Corbyn to leadership will be anywhere near as enduring as the old ones.”

Right.

See Occupy, Puppies, etc., etc. A flash mob is not a community.

“See Occupy, Puppies, etc., etc. A flash mob is not a community.”

Corbyn won on the first ballot with 60% of the vote. This is a victory for the British Left. Now they must build on it. I hope they succeed.

Roger Gathman @11

For “guarantor of monopoly” I’d say “facilitator (in many cases) of oligopoly,” but that’s not a major point.

On your main point, I’m not persuaded that most politicians’ first priority is to become wealthy. Yes, a lot of them do and, e.g., most sitting U.S. Senators are already fairly well-heeled, but if one’s main interest is in getting rich there are more direct ways to (try to) do it. Being a legislator in the U.S. House or Senate comes with headaches (the constant need to raise campaign funds, polarization in the chambers themselves, etc.), so one has to have some interest in either (a) public policy or (b) the accumulation of political power as an end in itself or (c) both, in order to make it a minimally sensible career path. If one just wants wealth, period, probably easier to go other routes.

Raven:
“but which Left?”

Well for a start all the people who rejoined the party after the disastrous election. And the people who seem to be joining in the wake of his victory. Maybe you could join them?

“Well for a start all the people who rejoined the party after the disastrous election. And the people who seem to be joining in the wake of his victory. Maybe you could join them?’

+1

And that suggestion is much appreciated Kevin! Canadian political blogging is in my experience not that great. (Of course I could have just been looking in the wrong places)

Excellent analysis by Henry, thanks Chris for linking to it.

Kevin, thank you for that suggestion. I didn’t know of it.

23,I have read this before and it really puzzles me – if the US were really in the business of bringing in returns for its citizens, it could do much much better than buying and selling AIG. Let’s start with takeovers of Apple and Google and work upward, man.

It’s a really great piece—and since I ordered Ruling The Void about three days ago, this is particularly exciting. From what I’ve heard/read, it does sound to me a lot like Colin Crouch’s Post-Democracy (which I also read on Henry’s recommendation, in fact). If anyone on here has read both and has any thoughts, I would be very curious to hear.

Financial services seem to be a bit of a special case. The problems are often solved by being openly prepared to throw money at it, sometimes you actually have to provide the capital, but it being available if needed can mean it isn’t needed.

AIG was actually insolvent what it needed was a backer with deep pockets. Only a monetary sovereign had deep enough pockets. The difficulties it had got itself into meant that it could be acquired for a pittance and the confidence conferred by the state guarantees implied by the nationalisation enabled the business to recover. Apart from the insurance liabilities the rest of AIG was sound, the insurance liabilities were big enough that the company as a whole was bankrupt. Nationalisation fixed the problem that made nationalisation affordable.

Being lender of last resort is usually directly profitable as well. That is quite apart from the indirect benefits of preventing the financial system from collapsing due to contagion

Mair’s book is good but I think his 2006 New Left Review article makes a stronger version of the argument. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be an unpaywalled version online.

There’s a qualitative difference between Sanders, who is campaigning on a range of issues, and Trump or Carson, who are campaigning as outsiders without offering much of real substance. Some may consider Sanders a kind of outsider, but that’s hard to square with the fact that he’s one of the longest-sitting members of the Senate.

I think Sanders’ appeal is that he’s offering economic policy prescriptions that are actually popular with a lot of people, and he’s not Hillary Clinton. Despite the usual suspects, vanity candidates, and outright clowns running on the GOP side, I think the Democrats are in real trouble. They have little alternative to nominating Clinton – many would be enraged by what they would see as a second betrayal of women – but at the same time, they recognize that she isn’t a very good candidate, and they wonder if she’d even be the kind of President they want. HRC’s legacy is that she’s a neoliberal hawk, and a Clinton administration likely means more of the ‘centrist’ consensus that drives income and wealth inequality and foreign adventurism. Sanders offers them the fantasy of an alternative, and they’re going to flirt with that fantasy for a while, before surrendering to the need to support, nominate, and vote for the Lesser Evil. Meanwhile the flirtation is (again, as in 2008) feeding the counter-narrative that she isn’t actually very electable.

Layman @34,

Well said. But when you say “fantasy,” with regards to Sanders, you mean the pipe dream of his winning, correct? Not that he’s pushing a fantasy? IMO, Sanders is about as sincere, authentic and genuine as you can get in American politics, and he can backup his own policy ideas logistically, functionally, numerically, etc.

@34
I think this well articulated with respect to Sanders and Clinton.

I’d add that the perverse fascination with a Biden campaign has all to do with the weaknesses you point out with respect to Clinton (and the likelihood that Sanders for all his strengths will not appeal widely enough) and nothing to do with how poor of a candidate Biden himself would make. Biden has been viewed as a clown for the better part of the last 6 years, it must be the 20% of the party that has lived under a rock that finds his candidacy preferable to the alternatives (i.e. it would probably take him less than a month to gaff his way out of the polls).

Henry Farrell’s piece, linked in the OP, ended with a question about what’s there, when we talk about a “base of support” for a leftish political party:

The problem is twofold. It isn’t clear that the base for mass parties is there as it used to be, but it is is clear that the elites whom parties have come to depend on like the system the way that it is, and have resources that they will use to protect it. . . . it’s not clear that the social and political conditions which once allowed people like Corbyn to succeed are there any more.

Membership organization, I think, is the key: membership organization is how one gets at least a part of the mass of followers, including especially the “right-wing authoritarian followers” (using quotes to indicate that I mean this in the sense of a category of social psychology, as in Altemeyer’s work) to support some variation on a socialist policy program.

Without participation in membership organization at the bottom of the economic pyramid, there’s no basis for a leftish politics. Without participation in membership organization, what you have are eyeballs watching teevee or catching fragments of argument on the radio and not paying any attention, except for a week or two around a major election, when they are saturated with slogans and 30-second spots. Politics becomes a matter of salesmanship and mass marketing, a politics where “philosophy” never goes any deeper than the level of word association (tested, of course, with scientific sophistication in focus groups and survey research).

As long as you sound kind of serious and believable, smooth and articulate, and push the right emotional buttons, then the substance of what is said need never be confronted or examined.

Already, Corbyn is being raked over the coals for apparently not singing the national anthem at some event. Lots of folks are trotted out to say how various groups are likely to react, about how this is disrespectful of the sacrifices made by the military, and so on and so forth. It reminded me of when Obama was bullied into wearing a flag pin on his lapel.

That Sanders’ candidacy may be sunk by a “movement” that is little more than a hashtag simply illustrates the extremity.

“it’s not clear that the social and political conditions which once allowed people like Corbyn to succeed are there any more.”

What does he mean ‘once allowed’? Corbyn’s victory was virtually unprecedented. I can’t think of an occurrence in mainstream politics where such an outsider won a comprehensive victory in a leadership struggle. Other left-wingers usually possessed some experience in government or in a shadow cabinet or headed an organisational role within their parties.

Trying to suggest that there was some kind of ‘Golden Age’ of opportunity for outsiders like Corbyn to ‘succeed’ in oligarchical party politics is false. He represents a completely anti- (and outside)establishment position. The test is whether he can keep that status up. Failure will be if he feels compelled to compromise too much with the ‘traditional’ ways, not if he doesn’t win an election. As Bruce suggests, it is building democratic mass movements that is the key, not dabbling in the dark arts of manipulation.

Good (but short) article in the Baffler about Randolph Bourne, by Andrew J. Bacevich.

Crucial among those insights is the imperative of distinguishing between country and state. To Bourne, the former is benign, the latter anything but. Country, in Bourne’s lexicon, is nearly synonymous with civilization. It implies a way of life, based on shared language, customs, and culture. The modern state, by contrast, is a “repository of force.” It exists for one purpose alone: to impose its will. Toward that end, the state engages in a never-ending quest for power, conducted chiefly at the country’s expense—taxing, policing, stoking rumors of war. The country flourishes in an environment that permits and even encourages nonconformity. The state seeks compliance, deference, and regimentation.

Prior to the twentieth century, the people of the United States had demonstrated a strong preference for country over state, with few inclined to confuse the two. As citizens of a republic, Americans had eyed the development of European states warily. Even if they had obeyed the state’s authority, Bourne wrote, they had done so “grumblingly.” In this earlier era, the state held “no bedazzlements or sanctities to gild it.” Why live in a fetid swamp like Washington, D.C., over Boston or Cincinnati or San Francisco, or any of the wide-open spaces in between?

Was there a British version of Bourne, on the eve of WWI? If so, is Corbyn from that “tradition”?

Plume @ 44: . . . the disappearance of the left is largely due to its decades’ long dismissal of the need to build infrastructure, institutional support, party bases or really any kind of lasting structures to aid solidarity. Its basic assumption that it shouldn’t have to, because its message is so clearly “righteous.” And it is, in fact, righteous. It really is clearly on the side of the angels.

Yes, exactly.

I think there’s a reflexive feedback loop, where, if you don’t have an institutional structure, you are forced to rely exclusively on a very abstract “righteousness”, because you don’t have the resources to generate anything else. Abstraction is cheap and the less concrete your policy desiderata, the easier it is to paper over profound differences and difficulties.

If you do have an institutional structure, you can generate more concrete policy programs, but sometimes you lose a bit of the righteousness in the process, because the institutional structure can be contested and corrupted, and the motives of those involved can be attacked.

This has always been the source of a number of related problems with labor union support, where it is expressed in a panoply of ways, and lots of people are instinctively repulsed by labor unions, because of a reputation for corruption, reactionary defense of economic interests, racism and the like. “Union bosses” and similar propaganda finds an audience. Labor unions are never quite sure whether they should favor universal benefits, as it undermines their distinctive ability to deliver benefits to members. The attempt to institutionalize fairness in rules governing work responsibilities, promotion and so on, can become symptoms of paralysis in the workplace, and generate resentment and restlessness. And, so on.

Bourne and his distinction between state and country may seem to resolve the contradiction, but to me, it also seems to dodge the inherently problematic paradox. I don’t think we can ever avoid the problem of governance, and put the state on automatic pilot in any way. A weakened state is not an attractive option, nor is a strong state in the hands of a selfish oligarchy. Nor is there any possibility of a political stasis, where democracy becomes permanent; it must be re-invented, over and over.

Bruce @45

You’re partly right about the stances of Burnham and Cooper, but Burnham is currently the one that presents most danger to Corbyn. As a member of the shadow cabinet he is more likely to be able to say that he has given Corbyn ‘a chance’ and is acting in the best interests of the party if/when he sticks the knife in his back.

Cooper and the Blairites, on the other hand, are sulking and throwing their toys out of the pram. By placing themselves in isolation they are hoping to keep their hands clean if things go wrong, but by being so uncooperative so soon after Corbyn’s landslide victory they will have completely tarnished their name with the party’s membership and their disloyalty will be remembered. I suspect one or two of them, particularly those with marginal seats, might well cross the floor.

Plume @35
Trump is an outsider that speaks for the base. No one else is anti-immigration, anti-trade, pro-SS and Medicare, and for taxing Wall Street. Jeb!, and most elite repubs, have opposite positions on all four economic issues, issues that are important to the base. Today the Club for Growth announced funding $1M of ads against Trump in Iowa. The Kochs don’t invite him to the billionaire candidate-vetting conclave. He’s being picked as the outsider candidate by several prominent conservative talk radio hosts.

Now from an income/wealth/education perspective, Trump is among the elite. But he is as close as there is to a “base” populist in the repub field and he’s driving the establishment nuts. His support is working class and, as the press notes, lower income and lower education than the TP voter and the average republican. If he doesn’t self-implode, you will be astonished at the amount of money that will be spent by the repub establishment to bring him down. There are billions of dollars and an army of establishment repubs in DC and throughout the country that have been waiting eight years to take control of the White House and executive branch. This ain’t a hobby for them or something to bs about on the blogs. It will be vicious.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34267886

Crossing the floor is always open to a careerist.

Wouldn’t crossing the floor make the person superfluous?

More superfluous than being in Labour? No.

1. Parties can offer incentives to cross the floor. Feather in the cap.
2. It’s another real vote in parliament, where slipping into minority is a danger to the entrenched government.
3. A careerist might garner some real power. Ministers are just MPs after all.
4. The vanishingly-rare weirdo who does it to serve his constituency may in fact benefit those confused voters in government largesse.

@BruceWilder: “I can’t, off the top of my head, think of a figure in Britain, who represented opposition to the war before the war in the way someone like Bourne did.”

Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald.

Sorry, somehow missed Placeholder’s comment

GBS, although he may not be the kind of figure you have in mind.

Two cabinet ministers resigned in opposition to the 1914 declaration of war. John Burns and John Morley. Burns took little part in politics after this and stood down in 1918. Viscount Morley was rather elderly, he had been a member of Gladstone’s last cabinet.

Germany’s unprovoked invasion of Belgium had been decisive it was so clearly lacking any moral or legal justification that it largely silenced opposition to the war.

From Henry’s article:

“As part of Labour’s reform plans, it replaced its old system for electing leaders …
…
The old mass membership parties of the early 20th century were based on social institutions that no longer exist. Being a member of the Labour party wasn’t just about voting for leader — it was about identity and social life…. Unions are far weaker than they once were, except in the public sector. …
It’s not at all clear that the new forms of collective identity which have helped propel Jeremy Corbyn to leadership will be anywhere near as enduring as the old ones….
More importantly, perhaps, it’s not clear that the social and political conditions which once allowed people like Corbyn to succeed are there any more.”

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) also recently changed how leaders are elected, to give more of a say to the “rank and file” membership of the ALP. I think this was also to make the leadership more stable. But in the last leadership ballot the ALP membership vote favoured Anthony Albanese, while the Parliamentary ALP vote favoured Bill Shorten, who won the leadership.

The success of the Labor party has in some ways been its undoing, as it has by now won a lot of the goals it came into being to achieve, such as universal and compulsory suffrage, universal education, universal healthcare, universal social security, minimum wages, holidays, and so on.

The Liberal party now supports these institutions, except that it prefers private versions to state versions where it can. So medium-high income working people are often just as well off voting for the Liberal Party.

The unions are still quite important here, but this is a double edged sword. The unions can help the ALP get support for policies and policy compromises, like in the 1980s the ALP brokered The Accord which slowed growth in wages and slowed inflation, and in the 2000s the union movement helped the ALP defeat the Howard Liberal-National government on the basis of it trying to introduce WorkChoices which was a labour deregulation policy. On the other hand, key union figures can have too much influence on the parliamentary ALP and they are not properly accountable to the public, and also you can have union leaders who engage in shonky dealmaking with companies for a cut for themselves.

The main problems we face are about improving the outcomes achieved through these existing institutions, and also global environmental and inequality problems.

The Labour/Labor parties are not really that progressive on the global inequality issues or the global environmental issues. This is because they have relied on the idea of national economic growth to decrease national inequality even at the expense of creating greater inequality in developing countries, this is as policy making favouring national economic growth is a form of mercantilism I think. And because as working people often lived in poverty now the Labour?labor parties promote greater consumption of material goods as being a sign of greater welfare, which is not true and puts too much strain on the environment and leads to greater international inequality, as it is not possible for everyone in the world to live like the average Australian does now as there are not enough resources.

I think there are still a lot of voluntary organisations and sports groups even just thinking of the ones in my small shire here, and ones at uni. We have churches that are not especially right wing in Australia as well, in fact I don’t think of any of the older mainstream churches (Catholic, Anglican, Uniting [an amalgamation of Presbyterian and Methodist and other small churches) as being especially right wing generally speaking, even if some are on particular issues. We have one bank here that is customer owned, and one that is a former building society that became a bank but has “community bank” beaches where profits go back into the community by a grants process. Our local federal and state MPs here both regularly hold “listening posts” for people to meet with them at the local Trades Hall which the private owners generously make available for the purpose.

But there is a problem if people voted for Jeremy Corbyn as he reminds them of Labour in the past, as the problems we have now are different, and are in many ways the outcomes of the policies of the past.

In terms of the global environmental and inequality problems, Austerity is a reasonable outcome, unless people are really prepared to argue that the present day population of the UK or Australia or USA etc are entitled to a higher material standard of living than the population of poorer countries elsewhere and than the future generations of their own countries who will bear the brunt of the environmental problems we are causing like climate change, loss of biodiversity and extinctions, soil degradation, etc

That is true

The original run of Left B0ok Club titles in the 1930s (Victor Gollancz’s project, which included Orwell’s “Road To Wigan Pier” and Koestler’s “Spanish Testament”) had a book “Tory MP” by Simon Haxey, which detailed the inter-relations of the UK ruling class circa 1939. Most of the old LBC titles are collectible and available, and copies of that edition are still around. We could do with a follow-up for 2015, which wouldn’t be restricted in its scope to 1 party.

> The success of the Labor party has in some ways been its undoing, as it has by now won a lot of the goals it came into being to achieve, such as universal and compulsory suffrage, universal education, universal healthcare, universal social security, minimum wages, holidays, and so on. The Liberal party now supports these institutions, except that it prefers private versions to state versions where it can.

Interesting; sounds like Australia is something like a super-Sweden, a unique social-democratic paradise on the Earth that has experienced no Thatcherist/Reaganist turn during the last 40 years at all and has nothing to worry about but environmental problems and its pangs of conscience about the insufficient happiness of people in other countries. I wonder if everyone’s experience there is the same. As for ‘private versions’ that are run for profit, they threaten the very nature of the institutions in the long run, because they inevitably become more expensive and/or less accessible, thus having an anti-egalitarian effect. Privatisation is simply one of many well-tried and efficient ways to gradually demolish the welfare state and increase inequality; it’s not a trivial matter of its technical implementation.

>But there is a problem if people voted for Jeremy Corbyn as he reminds them of Labour in the past, as the problems we have now are different, and are in many ways the outcomes of the policies of the past. … In terms of the global environmental and inequality problems …

So somehow environmental polution and the poverty of poor countries have been caused by rich countries’ distributing their resources too equally and controlling them too democratically, by their having had too much public ownership of railways, too high taxes on the rich, too affordable education and healthcare, and too few wars. You would think that matters of distribution are separate from matters of overall wastefulness. But sure, I suppose one might argue that anything that hurts the majority of the population, decreases its living standards and kills off some of it is good, since it moves us further back towards the Middle Ages, which, whatever you say about them, at least were environmentally sustainable. If we go back to a world where only a minuscule minority lives a half-decent life thanks to being manually served by other humans as opposed to machines, this will presumably stabilise the environmental situation. The only remaining question is what the point of stabilising the environmental situation will be, under such conditions. The answer is, I suppose, maintaining a glorious diversity of truly natural organisms starving, killing and eating each other for as long as possible until the collapse of Solar System.

As for global inequality, there seems to be this interesting notion, one might call it ‘redistribution of progress’, or the Left’s ‘interconnected vessels’ theory, having a pretty similar effect to the Right’s ‘trickle-down’ theory. In this view, increasing hierarchy, tyranny and misery in the countries that have the least of them is supposed to be offset by a corresponding decrease of them in the countries that have the most of them. This is just another intellectual excuse for capitulation to the prevailing forces of the day. Our business is, first of all, maintaining justice, equity and democratic control in our own lives, families, neighbourhoods, villages and countries; this is absolutely basic and non-negotiable, and everything else comes afterwards. A Left that doesn’t get that has lost its way and has no future.

As for climate change, it certainly is an existential threat, but the catastrophic failure to address it reasonably is due to the political influence of plutocracy, authoritarianism, and imperalism, and somehow blaming it on increasing democracy, welfare and egalitarianism is absurd.

@39
>To me, Sanders’ recent trouble with minorities (#Blacklivesmatter) is perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this entire campaign season. … But it appears that Hillary has locked up traditional (Dem) minority blocs

For me, one of the biggest surprises in this US presidential campaign is that, apparently, as everyone else has known all along, Hillary Clinton is black. Whereas Corbyn’s problem is of a more conventional nature, namely being too pro-Muslim and/or pro-Irish, Sanders’ problem is that unlike Clinton, he is not black, so black people can’t relate to him. He also, scandalously, talks a lot about *other things besides race* – all that weird and incomprehensible stuff about inequality, which certainly makes him suspicious and suggests that he is soft on police shootings and doesn’t care about black people. Why, all knowledgeable people seem to be in agreement that, in order to gain the trust of minorities, it is practically *obligatory* to be an obvious corporate shill determined to push neoliberal policies that harm them – after all, in that way, you will seem reassuringly familiar to them, because you’ll resemble all the other Democrats that they’ve grown used to voting for. And, to prove your true and unconditional fidelity to blacks and Hispanic people, you must never exhibit the slightest shade of populist appeal to blue-collar whites, indeed, if possible, you must be explicitly repulsive to them. This is also connected to the well-known fact that all white Americans with working-class accents like Sanders’ are racists. All of this information about Sanders’ un-blackness must be spread far and wide. And, of course, nobody should support him – it’s clear that when faced with a choice between this shady white person from Vermont and a Republican, Black and Hispanic people will overwhelmingly vote for the Republican, and therefore Clinton is the only hope of the Democratic Party. (/end sarcasm)

As for Corbyn – many have argued that Labour can’t win or survive with him, but what they don’t explain is why, if this is true, Labour *ought* to win or survive at all. The UK has already got an austerian plutocratic hawkish party, there’s no need for another (why, if you ask me, there’s no need for more than zero such parties, but never mind). If, indeed, assuming the worst, left-wing policies have no future, and humanity is doomed to a new and eternal Middle Age, then there’s nothing to lose and no harm in left-wing parties’ at least remaining true to themselves until their demise. Of course, as long as one lives and breathes, one has to hope that this will not turn out to be the case.

F Foundling

“So somehow environmental polution and the poverty of poor countries have been caused by rich countries’ distributing their resources too equally and controlling them too democratically, by their having had too much public ownership of railways, too high taxes on the rich, too affordable education and healthcare, and too few wars. You would think that matters of distribution are separate from matters of overall wastefulness.”

But countries don’t just consume their own resources, except when they get sanctions like Cuba and North Korea .

Think of there being a global pool of resources, then various processes distribute resources between countries and transform them into goods, and then after this finally you have the national pool of goods to be distributed in the countries themselves.

I simplified that, but this process is why rich countries over consumption contributes to global inequality and global environmental problems.

Just the population of London alone consumes as many resources as could be produced in the whole land occupied by the UK, which means either the people in the rest of the UK live on air, or else the UK obtains resources from other countries through the process I sketched above.

I don’t think railways, education, and healthcare are the main drivers of material consumption, although I am sure they could be more sparing in their use of materials.

“For me, one of the biggest surprises in this US presidential campaign is that, apparently, as everyone else has known all along, Hillary Clinton is black. ”

Not for nothing was Bill Clinton called the first black president.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/10/05/comment-6543

Whereas Corbyn’s problem is of a more conventional nature, namely being too pro-Muslim and/or pro-Irish, Sanders’ problem is that unlike Clinton, he is not black, so black people can’t relate to him.

To be fair, Guardian journalists are concerned that, unlike Cameron and Clegg, he isn’t a woman.

Bruce Wilder @ 71
We could, conceivably, in solidarity and deliberately, restructure the political economy to use a lot less resource and to impose less strain on the assimilative capacity of the environment, and work toward a secular decrease of human population. With intelligent planning, the reduction in resource and energy use could be dramatic, without much affecting people’s ability to lead satisfying lives — the elimination of some wasteful practices would be experienced as a subjective improvement — we could all work less, for example, if we dial back on the production of things we don’t much need and on selling that stuff to one another.

Maybe because I didn’t use the words in solidarity (thinking it might be save to assume that on a supposedly leftish site), or I dunno, speaking while female, or something.

Per capita energy consumption in some countries peaked a surprisingly long time ago. In the UK it was 1973, in the US 1977. While as you get richer you tend to consume more stuff it is also true that over time the amount of energy required for a given amount of consumption drops. In a competitive market it pays to reduce your costs, energy is a cost.

To name just one example, although Americans after the oil price shocks initially started buying more efficient cars, the trend soon reversed. By the early 21st century, the average fuel efficiency of US vehicles was only slightly better than it had been 80 years ago.
http://www.gizmag.com/us-vehicle-fuel-efficiency-improves-3mpg-80-years/12410/

Bruce W @ 85
Val, you have been known to preach the politics of personal virtue

Hole, digging, etc

Val,

Riffing off some of your comments:

To me, one of the most monstrous and destructive things capitalism does to a society is to radically alter its (mis)conception of “standard of living.” And because of its endless marketing (as in, lies), most people don’t even realize this has happened. Most people just accept all of this as “natural.” That we now view “standard of living” as our ability to buy mostly useless crap, which we throw away at shorter and shorter intervals, replacing mostly useless crap with newer mostly useless crap.

In reality, we could, politically, massively increase and improve “standard of living” for the vast majority via public policy, which would involve the capitalist system only tangentially, if at all. I see six main components to this:

1. Provide free cradle to grave public education and training. Free (high quality) public education through PHD levels and beyond, plus trades, arts and crafts, etc. etc.

2. Provide free cradle to grave health care. The highest quality, at no cost.

3. Radically extend our park system, remove all fees, protect millions and millions more acres, and absolutely ban — as in, 100% — any and all commercial development on those lands.

4. Provide free cradle to grave fitness centers, including physical therapy.

5. Provide free public access to cultural venues, for concerts, lectures, seminars, etc. while expanding networks of museums, libraries, etc.

6. Provide free (high speed) public transportation, while concentrating on green, sustainable energy/vehicles.

. . . .

We need to redefine what it means to “live the good life” and end the stranglehood of lies due to capitalism’s obvious self-interest in maintaining a culture of endless consumption. Like Nietzsche’s power for the sake of more power, we consume for the sake of more consumption. This is simply not sustainable.

That this comparison is even made (has to be made because the media narrative requires it) is depressing. They treat GOP lunatics as if they were credible political candidates and are all already at work trying to destroy Corbyn as “hard left”. It would be totally out of the question that the NYT would ever describe a UK or American conservative in a position of power as “hard right.” (http://www.eschatonblog.com/2015/09/so-hard.html)

Plume,

“To me, one of the most monstrous and destructive things capitalism does to a society is to radically alter its (mis)conception of “standard of living.” And because of its endless marketing (as in, lies), most people don’t even realize this has happened. Most people just accept all of this as “natural.” That we now view “standard of living” as our ability to buy mostly useless crap, which we throw away at shorter and shorter intervals, replacing mostly useless crap with newer mostly useless crap.”

I couldn’t agree more. I remember when it was easy to get small appliances fixed—vacuum cleaners, lamps, toasters—-and that is what one did, repeatedly if necessary. Now it is quite difficult to find a place to repair these things, and yet toasters and coffee makers do not last more than a few years.

The standard of living as defined by what people can buy is a huge, weird deception. The kind of provisions you detail go much farther in enhancing lives, and honestly I think most people would recognize that, but as soon as more public services are proposed, there is a great outcry that we can’t afford it.

I haven’t followed this thread, just happened to catch the last few comments so sorry if I’m just repeating what you and Val have already been saying, but what the heck!

Trader Joe,

It is true that we use the toaster and coffee maker every day, as I have done for much of my adult life. In my experience these appliances do not last as long as they used to.

When I was in grade 10 in 1968 or so I had a chemistry teacher who told us that it was possible to make a lightbulb that would last a lifetime (or some extremely long time) but that it didn’t pay to do so, so lightbulbs burned out and we replaced them, over and over. He also claimed that cars could be made to last much longer than they did, but again it would not be profitable for the manufacturers to make them that way. This is the built-in problem with capitalism. The motive to profit trumps all others.

I would not say that modern is always worse, but in this respect we have not improved: we are a much more disposable society than we used to be.

Trader Joe @93,

I don’t mean to imply that kind of set in stone formula. Actually, quite the reverse. It’s my contention that we can have our cake and eat it too. As in, we can simplify and make things better in the modern world — through technology, science, etc. .

Virtually all scientific and technical advances are really just added steps on the ladder of human development. They’re not some new explosion of the unique, without precedent. They build on the past. And the people behind them are sitting on millions of shoulders, etc. etc. But because of the Grow or Die imperative of capitalism, because of limits imposed by the necessity of profits, there is a built in need to make things more disposable, more quickly obsolete . . . . and one of the ways we’ve divided society and atomized the masses is through extensive and extended division of labor. The Powers that Be really don’t want us to work side by side on the same things, or to know how to do the vast majority of the work of production. They want to spin all of that out into greater and greater levels of specialization . . . . so everyone is dependent upon corporations and capitalists for their keep . . . and arbitrary hierarchies can be rationalized.

I’m saying it doesn’t have to be this way. We can simplify the way we do and make things. We can learn, each of us, to do a far greater portion of production. We can cross-train beyond that. We can learn how to take care of what we make or buy ourselves. Self-provisioning was one of the first casualties of the capitalist revolution. Home production. Self-sufficiency . . . . not only in growing one’s own food, but in building one’s own house, furniture, tools, etc. etc.

In short, there is no reason why we can’t keep adding new steps, new advancement, new tech, while, at the same time reducing our consumption, our overall production, our spinning out into endless specialization. We can make our advances local, lasting, sustainable, small is beautiful, community-based. We can be both “modern” and conservators of the earth.

Plume @96
We’ve exchanged on this before. I don’t have a problem with the prescription implicit in your endpoint of a simpler world with more equality.

That said, I’m not sure how we build aircraft, improve healtcare and maintain infrastructure for multiple billions of people without some organizing hirearchy, which often seems lacking in your descriptions – perhaps capitalism isn’t the best or correct hirearcy, but; Pandora’s box is quite well opened at this point, so to mix my metaphors, I don’t see a path to putting the toothpaste back into the tube short of a lot of death or destruction.

Wiemar UK is what is going to happen next. After that, the deluge.

TJ 93 etc., your remarks are not addressed to me but I point out in 83/84 that while modern cars are not worse than they were in the old times (I fully agree that they are safer and less polluting), they are hardly better in terms of fuel efficiency. This is specifically true for the US where the dominant culture for decades has simply placed zero, or even negative value on fuel efficiency. Until recently, buyers were more interested in the size of coffee holders than in gas mileage. It’s relevant to remember this because people tend to assume that “technological progress” automatically energy efficiency. It simply doesn’t. The US in particular could achieve higher living standards with half or less of the energy use (as other advanced countries already do). Technology doesn’t deliver this on its own, it requires change at the level of cultural values.

Trader Joe @98,

Not suggesting ending hierarchies in this case. I’m suggesting that we downsize them. Given how steep they are, we have a ton of room for that.

And I think it’s going to happen anyway, whether we choose to do it or not. The perfect storm of massive inequality, climate change and mass migration is going to end capitalism and the dominance of the “developed” world, and we’re going to have to start over. The earth can’t sustain our consumption, and will force us to radically downsize our lifestyles, one way or another. To me, it makes far more sense to do whatever we can to create a sustainable economy now, one that dramatically reduces inequality, if for no other reason than to prevent violent revolutions. We should be trying to ease into less consumption/production . . . rather than being shocked by the inevitable time bomb.

(To me, the moral imperative for social justice and ecology should be enough for that. But the practical reality is there as well.)

We can and should reduce the segregation and separateness of our work, teach holistic approaches to labor, teach the fundamentals of self-provisioning, building what we need, repair of what we build, and get as close as possible to knowledge of the complete round of production, not just a tiny fraction of it. Right now, we live in a world in which we are quite helpless without umpteen different specialists to get through our days, and I don’t think many people really think about that. They should. In the sense that we must shop for virtually everything we use, we haven’t really progressed that much from the hunter/gatherer stage. We wear better clothes and get to our hunting and gathering in automobiles. But we’re even more divorced from the earth and our own “being in the world,” given the layers upon layers of stuff in our way.

We didn’t build the stuff we buy. We don’t know how it all works. We can’t fix it. I think it’s long past time to change that to the degree possible.

It’s not about putting the toothpaste back into the tube. It’s about learning how to make the toothpaste and those large, bulk storage bins we’d keep it in.

Trader Joe,

“perhaps capitalism isn’t the best or correct hirearcy, but; Pandora’s box is quite well opened at this point, so to mix my metaphors, I don’t see a path to putting the toothpaste back into the tube short of a lot of death or destruction.”

I think it is a mistake to talk about capitalism the way we do as a structure. In the early use of the word it was used to describe government actions and policies that too heavily favoured holders of capital rather than working for the public weal.

“Capitalism” is not best described as a structure in my opinion, but a practice. The structure is how in the U.S. you have a federated Republic, or in Australia we have a federated constitutional monarchy etc.

Governments should not practice favouring holders of capital over the public weal, as it is unjust and inequitable.

However, favouring holders of capital supports mercantilism, which countries engage in to be able to use resources from poorer countries in the global economic hierarchy.

I liked Hu Shi’s doctrine of “more talk about problems, less talk about isms” although later in his life he became somewhat of a follower of Hayek, probably as a reflex due to the experience of Communism in China.

Mercantilism is not appropriate because really it is a form of racist nationalism – so it was appropriate for empire building colonialism, but as that was wrong it doesn’t matter if it was appropriate to it anyway.

But mercantilism has left us with a problem of a very unequal global economy, which should be fixed. The best method is the contract and converge approach, however you have to keep in mind that often development programs don’t go to plan for a variety of cultural and political etc reasons.

Similarly policies that favour holders of capital have led to overuse of natural resources and environmental degradation etc, the best method to fix this is introduce better management of natural resources so they are not over used, and limit consumption.

As capitalism is a practice rather than a structure, it is adaptable. But policies shouldn’t favour holders of capital over the public weal, so capitalist practices should reform to be equitable. Having a more equitable economy would be much better, you wouldn’t have to nationalise everything like if you want a dictatorship of (a small segment of) the proletariat, but the economy would undergo changes led by changes in law and policies to ensure greater harmonisation between economic, social and environmental objectives.

Plume @ 105
Plume I agree with a lot of what you’ve said here, but I think we should be calling for an end to hierarchies.

The position I’m coming towards is that people on the left who have any sort of public voice (even as commenters on blogs :)) should be expressing what we really want to see and not trying to moderate our position to fit with orthodox discourse.

By doing so, we may be ridiculed by such as Bruce Wilder or Layman (let alone right wingers, but they will ridicule us anyway). But by saying what we believe, I think we open up the debate and broaden the discourse for politicians like Corbyn.

This does mean I think that we need to address misrepresentation. Being ridiculed as unrealistically left, as Bruce W does to you (“word salad”) is not as damaging as being portrayed as a kind of individualistic right winger disguised as a left winger, as Bruce tries to do to me (“preaching [individual] moral virtue”).

If you want people to engage with you, maybe you should give the petty vindictiveness a rest and stop cultivating your persecution complex.

Capitalism as an economic system is very different to the pre-capitalist system of mercantilism. Mercantile systems were characterised by extensive use of subsidies and tariffs and monopolies to favour particular industries especially export industries that would allow the state to accumulate gold and silver, which were used as money and viewed as a store of value. Force was frequently used to acquire colonies which were generally forbidden to trade with other Europeans in order that they buy their imports from the mother country. Markets operate ion some sectors but a highly regulated in others and the state actively intervenes often deliberately reducing competition. Mercantilism lacked any able theoretical advocate and the most influential description of it is by Adam Smith who was very hostile. Mercantilism favoured export and running a capital account surplus. It was the characteristic economic policy of the eighteenth century. It was hostile to imports and would fight colonial wars fairly often to produce captive markets. Gold and silver, money at the time, were regarded as true wealth.

Corporatism, the economic policy favoured by fascism is somewhat similar. The state imposes high tariffs actively aids the formation of monopolies and cartels and subsidises favoured industries. It advocates autarky and is hostile to trade in general. Fascist states liked to keep war and aggressive policy toward neighbours as an option, this was greatly helped by not being dependent on them for vital imports. Economic activity was viewed as wealth and self-sufficiency as a positive good.

Capitalism on the other hand favours, free largely unregulated markets and considers that all trade is a positive good. The state actively intervenes to prevent the formation of monopolies and cartels. Economic activity is viewed as wealth. Specialisation is viewed as a way of increasing productivity and therefore total wealth. Trade inevitably produces a group who have a strong motive to oppose war with their trading partner, Apple are opposed to war with China as they import iPhones from there. Capitalism is fairly pacifistic as it’s hard to sell things to people when they are trying to kill you. War to open completely closed markets is infrequent and mostly happened in the nineteenth century as the cost quickly overwhelms the benefits. When wars were fought, the Opium War and Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan for example, they tended to be short and the loser was required to open their markets to all not just the victor (completely the opposite of mercantilism which sought exclusive access).

That’s funny. While I was writing my comment, one of those cheerleaders must have posted. Brett deals solely in capitalist theory, puts his rose-colored glasses on, and his race-horse blinders, and can see only the most absurdly optimistic forecasts from those theories . . . . absolutely ignoring anything that doesn’t conform with his utopian beliefs. He ignores the absolutely bloody history of capitalism and its present demolition of human rights and the environment.

For him, capitalism can do no wrong, ever. It’s all simply wonderful, everyone is happy, free and even in their slavery workers, child laborers, indentured servants, and actual slaves are joyfully singing. It’s like one of those American text books from the 1920s that taught about “happy negroes” in the fields.

This is what happens in a society saturated and overwhelmed by the propaganda of one system — a system which allows no alternatives.

“Trade inevitably produces a group who have a strong motive to oppose war with their trading partner, Apple are opposed to war with China as they import iPhones from there. Capitalism is fairly pacifistic as it’s hard to sell things to people when they are trying to kill you. War to open completely closed markets is infrequent and mostly happened in the nineteenth century as the cost quickly overwhelms the benefits. “

When the U.S. fomented a coup in Iran, this had nothing to do with the profits of the Anglo-Iran Oil Company? The AIOC opposed the coup, because that’s where their oil was made?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état

Brett Dunbar,

I think mercantilism is a sub category of capitalism. Usually you date the beginnings of capitalism to the ending of feudalism.

This correlated with the beginning of colonialism and the scientific revolution that would prefigure the industrial revolution.

I think these correlations were what made capitalism possible – as if governments are going to make policies favoring holders of capital over the public weal it is very socially problematic if you don’t have mechanisms for economic expansion and control of unhappy publics. Colonialism provided one of these mechanisms and science another.

I think possibly the distinction you are drawing could be better nominated as between mercantilist capitalism and liberal capitalism. What do you think?

My main point was really that I think capitalism should be understood as a practice rather than a structure, and that as governments ought not favour holders of capital over the public weal, capitalism could be understood as a maladaptive practice, which as a practice can be changed to allow a more equitable and less environmentally damaging economy to develop without making deep structural changes of the sort of the Chinese Revolution.

Labour have ceased to represent the mass of working people. Instead they set worker against worker to justify their position as an hereditary elite broking relations between groups of working people, seeking conflict wherever they can, and when they cannot find it they invent it usually on racial grounds. They seek division instead of unity and lack ambition for workers.

as an example, non UK readers may wish to familiarise them selves with this:

http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1407/independent_inquiry_cse_in_rotherham

Re Capitalism, Global trade and Open markets:

The real precedent for our current system of trade liberalization (WTO etc.) can be found in the 19th century opium wars. If you want a succinct summary of capitalism’s tendency towards trade liberalization, that is it: imperialist powers waging war on a mostly defenseless foreign country in order to force their government to tolerate Western organized crime syndicates doing business as they see fit.

At the very least, Brett, I think you need to come up with a good theory for how the Opium Wars are consistent with your narrative of capitalism’s “pacifist” tendency.

T M: i’m not certain about the opium wars.

If you look at the present War against Drugs, driven by the US but predominant in much of Europe, I would say: this is insane, counterproductive, driven by God only knows what puritan and malefic forces, if it were up to me I would abolish it tomorrow.

Looking at the Qing/Manchu War against Drugs, should “i say something different?

Stephen, if you are not familiar with the Opium wars, try wikipedia. It’s BS to compare the opium wars to the current day “war against drugs”. The aggressors in the opium wars were Western powers wishing to force China into submission. China was a helpless victim. They just asked Britain, France and the US to respect Chinese laws in China.

Plume @ 113: For me, I find it mostly a waste of time to get in the weeds regarding our current, utterly failed system, and “scared to eat a peach” liberal incrementalism drives me up a wall. As mentioned before, American conservatism is worse. But the desire to find “the center” and to take tiny baby steps while Rome burns is the height of irresponsibility. And, frankly, boring as hell — at least from my perspective.

Brett Dunbar @ 112 reminds us that reactionary conservatives have their stories, and not just stories, but a whole, ready-made rhetorical engine, spinning out rationalizations and bull excretions by the long ton, much of it legitimated by neoclassical economics. We can call this ideology, “neoliberalism” for convenience. (More strictly speaking “neoliberalism” is the centrist/pseudo-left half of a dialectic with conservative libertarianism; it is the dialectic that generates the ideological rhetoric.) Neoliberalism, as a political and economic ideology, dominates political and policy thinking and debate in the world today. “There is No Alternative” (TINA) is the deadly catchphrase that concludes the neoliberal policy prescription, for “free trade” (which isn’t) and for austerity and for privatisation and so on.

I am interested in neoliberalism as a political phenomenon, and I have a particular interest in its relation to neoclassical economics. It is a set of fictions, seductive narratives that give the impression of understanding complex phenomenon, and more than any of that, it is a rationalization — especially for the politician or the politically aware citizen — of what we do and why we do it. Like a common language, neoliberalism is a coordinating device for politics, helping people agree on what to do, where a collective choice is involved, and providing a story about why it is the responsible thing to do and we are all good people for doing it, even if — maybe especially if — these are “the hard choices” and “the tough decisions”.

One of the pretensions of neoliberalism is that it derives directly from the sober, deliberate and considered worldview of experts in economics, deeply knowledgeable of institutions, history and technical esoterica. (Indeed, one of the readily identified sources of neoliberalism is the Washington Consensus, a set of policy assumptions and desiderata that formed the conventional wisdom of academic economists and apparatchiks of international institutions like the World Bank and IMF.)

The truth is, that the neoliberal-conservative libertarian dialectic has been driven by a cartoon version of economics, drawn like a comic book in lurid colors and a few swiftly sketched, heavy lines. Wherever there might be an interesting or sophisticated idea, it tends to be obscured, as critical thinking is cast aside, and zombie ideas (as Professor Quiggin labeled them) march on unphased by logic or facts.

I do not imagine most people are much interested in economics as a body of ideas. Getting into the weeds, as you put it, feels like trying to sort out what if any conspiracy assassinated Kennedy. But, politics, as a form of contentious cooperation, requires conventions of language and gesture as well as process, and the common disinterest in critical thinking on economics feeds the power of neoliberalism, because neoliberalism has this remarkable rhetorical engine: it can explain everything. (Well, Brad DeLong can explain everything, after his second giant mug of coffee, but it amounts to the same thing. ;-) The Labour Party, in the aftermath of the GFC, famously fell victim to the neoliberal narrative that associated its big spending ways with the economic distress of the financial crisis, and the Conservatives have largely escaped blame for the consequences of their austerity policy, again because a neoliberal narrative assures us that the government should tighten its belt and control the dangerous deficit and so on. There isn’t much real economics in either narrative, really; the emotional anchors that make the political argument effective are to more deep-seated, personal experiences and maybe even to race memory that treats a financial crisis as a harvest failure and demands sacrifice to appease the gods. The neoliberal rhetoric engine, though, with the cooperation of hack economists (Ken Rogoff or Greg Mankiw could be illustrative exhibits), helpfully prevent a more critical public consensus from forming. If a politician is not speaking in the conventional frames and terms prescribed by neoliberalism, that politician can be marginalized — in fact, has to be marginalized — for not speaking the common language.

There was a time, when the Labour Party, as part of the many-threaded Socialist movement, had its own ideological language and an apparatus of membership organizations to train people to speak and understand the rhetorical language of Socialism and the social construction of its worldview(s). As an ideology, it could be cartoonish too. I’m not sure exactly how it mattered, really, beyond providing some (somewhat dubious) policy heuristics. The boring incrementalists took advantage of the traumatizing experiences of the Great Depression and Second World War, and the social solidarity that experience produced, to inaugurate reforms, reforms neoliberalism studiously fails to understand or even acknowledge.

I am not sure why neoliberalism has such a grip on otherwise intelligent people. (Yes, even Brett Dunbar is clearly pretty smart, and not obviously motivated simply by trollish ill-will.) Peter Mair and Colin Crouch, referenced in the OP, have had some interesting insights into the emergent political dynamics. Criticizing the economics foundation (aka neoclassical economics) — my little hobby, joined in since the advent of the econoblogosphere by many competent professionals — really doesn’t seem to be making much headway. At least, few influentials ever seem to change their minds or their rhetorical habits, let alone doubt the advisability of following the conventional lies that lead down the road to neoliberalism. (Maybe there’s a critical mass forming; we live in hope.)

Plume, I appreciate your often trenchant criticisms of our benighted politics, but I do not understand what you think your manic constructive cheerleading can accomplish, especially as so much of it is premised on a sweeping denial of reality. “Capitalism” is not an actor; it is not even a fixed, specific, distinctive “thing”. Hierarchy figures prominently in how the economy is organized, and relates to specialization in production — I see it as problematic, but I can acknowledge its roles. (Neoclassical economics can’t either, which ought to be telling.) It is hard to give what you say much credence, when you can’t. “utterly failed system” means something to you, I guess, that it doesn’t mean to most people.

I don’t think we understand the system, and neoliberal politics, with a false understanding rationalizing its policy desiderata, is playing political jenga with the system, gradually dismantling it and testing how far it can get without inducing collapse or taking responsibility for increasing dysfunction. Neoliberalism’s patrons are doing pretty well so far, by its lights. Expecting a millenarian collapse used to be one of the markers of Marxism, and I see you’ve adopted it. I don’t think that’s distinctively “capitalism”; I think that’s distinctively human, unfortunately. Apocalypse as the anti-utopia.

Expecting a millenarian collapse used to be one of the markers of Marxism

I smell straw

Bruce @128,

I agree with a great deal of what you said, but we seem to be talking past each other in small ways — that loom large. For instance,

Hierarchy figures prominently in how the economy is organized, and relates to specialization in production — I see it as problematic, but I can acknowledge its roles. (Neoclassical economics can’t either, which ought to be telling.) It is hard to give what you say much credence, when you can’t. “utterly failed system” means something to you, I guess, that it doesn’t mean to most people.

I fully recognize the place of hierarchy in our current economy. In fact, it’s one of the key points for my criticism of that economy, and I thought I had made that clear. Clear as mud, apparently. I see capitalism as uniquely dependent upon hierarchies, waaaay beyond any previous set of economic arrangements, and I see that as part of its overall (top down) plan, a necessity, baked in — for ownership. Whenever I talk about a reduction in those hierarchies, it is with the understanding that we replace capitalism with a different set of economic arrangements, one far more conducive to that reduction.

The part in bold is key here. It may just be that the barrier between us rests on the implied “an economy” in that statement — unless I misread you, which wouldn’t be the first time for me. As in, I think a lot of people see our system as just like any other economic model, past, present or future, so that its elements must — must — carry over into the next one, and the next, and the next after that, should they appear. In reality, this isn’t the case. The internal logic of capitalism will utterly disappear from the earth with new economic arrangements. What we see as “necessary” now will be completely forgotten in the future because it simply won’t apply. “Severe hierarchies” are one such possibility.

And I’m not suggesting an absolute end to them. I’m not saying a perfectly flattened pyramid. But I can easily envision a world — a much, much better world — wherein the topmost top to the bottommost bottom is a few rungs on the ladder, instead of thousands. And I can easily envision this working quite well, with plenty of “efficiency” and “innovation” and a very nice standard of living. Again, because there are thousands of possible alternatives that quite simply won’t be in the same universe as the old capitalist one . . . . won’t have the need for its arbitrary, neck-breaking steepness . . . . won’t have its arbitrary requirement for autocratic, bureaucratic structures.

Ironically, the seed for this massive reduction in hierarchies actually lies in capitalist soil. And it’s observable to pretty much anyone who has ever worked in a corporation, as a grunt, as a front line worker. We can readily see how much we run things on our own, how often the various layers of management aren’t around when we need them, don’t help us even when they are around, get what we do so wrong so often, get what the customers want so wrong so often, leave the training of new employees up to us, year after year and so on.

In reality, hyper-specialization and endless reproduction of hierarchy simply don’t work any better than the collective capacity already in place . . . and it actually separates company from worker, company from customer, and workers from each other to deleterious effect. In short, even within capitalism, there is no real reason for the steepness of hierarchies in place, beyond the desire to create massive distance between executives and rank and file employees, and between rank and file workers themselves. There is no evidence that these severe hierarchies produce better quality goods and services, or provide a better customer experience, much less a worker’s.

(more later)

Sorry if #132 is TLDNR.

To sum up: I do see the role for hierarchies in the capitalist system. I never said they didn’t have a role. My point is, however, that there are alternative ways to organize the economy which would enable a radical reduction in them . . . . and that this would produce a better standard of living for the vast, vast majority, and far and away more social justice, freedom, etc. etc. I think a huge reduction would also dramatically improve the quality of goods, customer experience and workers’ experience. And I think even within capitalism, much of the severity of those hierarchies is unnecessary, and primarily there to sustain massive inequality, to rationalize it, and to atomize the rank and file.

I also think that we’ve overdone our hyper-specialization . . . . and that it’s time top teach, from the cradle on, a holistic grasp of as many forms of production as we can . . . to teach self-provisioning and self-sufficiency from Day One . . . . to teach how things work, how to fix them, how to keep them running. We truly haven’t done ourselves any favors by narrowing forms of knowledge virtually to esoterica in field after field after field. Aside from “job security” for the various priestly castes, this really doesn’t make for a better society.

IMO, we need a massive revolution in education that includes a Manhattan Project on “how tos.” For starters.

Brett: you’ve just described a war as long as World War One as “fairly brief”.

[a four-year war is long enough that it must be a result of a reconsidered and reconfirmed commitment, politically: this happens at about the twelve-month mark. A sustained commitment over a period of several years cannot usefully be regarded as “fairly brief”, even if the degree of commitment remains low. You don’t appear able to make this distinction, which is a matter of serious concern to me.]

The degree of commitment makes a big difference, the wars both used forces that already existed to conduct a series of mostly small scale operations. First there was a brief incident at the end of 1856 involving forces already in Hong Kong bombarding Canton to secure the release of three Chinese crewmen of the Arrow. This led to the government losing a motion of censure.

That this House has heard with concern of the conflicts which have occurred between the British and Chinese authorities on the Canton River; and, without expressing an opinion as to the extent to which the Government of China may have afforded this country cause of complaint respecting the non-fulfilment of the Treaty of 1842, this House considers that the papers which have been laid on the table fail to establish satisfactory grounds for the violent measures resorted to at Canton in the late affair of the Arrow, and that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the state of our commercial relations with China.

Palmeston won the following general election with an increased majority. Which can be viewed as a mandate for the war. The French joined in ostensibly on the grounds of the Chinese execution of a missionary; Saint Auguste Chapdelaine, although it may have been more that they saw British victory as inevitable and wanted to participate in the treaty.

Then at the end of 1857 a 6,000 strong Anglo-French army occupied Canton 1st January 1858. The city was then held for four years. The Chinese were rather preoccupied with the Taiping revolt and were in no position to retaliate.

Naval expeditions against Taku forts were launched in 1858 (succeeding in capturing forts, returned when China signed 1858 peace treaty) after China failed to ratify the treaty 1859 (Chinese victory) and 1860 (forts captured) the Anglo-French army then occupied Beijing following the torture and execution by slow slicing of several members of a diplomatic mission led by Harry Parkes negotiating with the Chinese. The Old Summer Palace was burned in retaliation. The Chinese government was forced to ratify the 1858 treaty.

The actual fighting was limited to a small number of expedition, it wasn’t close to continuous.

Hit the “post” key by mistake:

Last sentence should begin with: I do think it’s the case that no previous economic system . . . .

Bruce Wilder @ 128

Like Plume, I am not an apocalyst(if that’s a word). But I do think that anyone who looks seriously at the evidence around climate change and environmental degradation would have to think humanity is on a very dangerous path.

My response to that is that we (collectively) need to reduce consumption drastically, share resources fairly (I deliberately say fairly rather than ‘more fairly’), and invest in renewable technologies. In doing this, I think there are many potential social and health benefits.

In order to do, or as part of it, I think we need to discard systems of knowledge that have their origins in patriarchy and that value competition and exploitation over cooperation and care (as in my comment to Plume above). As I have discussed previously, Marilyn Waring has written extensively about this, if you want an economic reference.

Perhaps you could explain why you think that is “preaching moral virtue”.

Val,

Discourses on power.

To me, this is one of the biggest reasons TO focus on capitalism. Because of its nature. Like the scorpion and the frog, etc. Its nature is to concentrate power and wealth at the top, in a few hands . . . . and I can’t for the life of me understand why this doesn’t bother virtually everyone. Its mechanics, its internal and inherent “logic,” drive power and wealth upward to the top of the pyramid. By design. It has no natural, internal incentive for dispersal of power, and forces governments to take on that role, if they choose to. And they mostly don’t.

IMO, it makes no sense to accept an economic system that forever requires government intrusion . . . . not only to keep the economy afloat, to bail it out when it inevitably goes into crisis, to violently open up its markets, etc. etc. . . . but also to re-redistribute, offset and mitigate the natural reproduction of mass inequalities. Of power, wealth and access.

And I’m not saying that capitalism is the first economic system to concentrate wealth and power at the top. Every economic system based on profit/empire/gain has done this, and every economic system controlled by any financial or power elite. But capitalism is ours to deal with, here and now. We have no other economic system to contend with or confront. So it strikes me as obvious that it should be our focus, our focal point. If we were in the Feudal era, I’d want to concentrate on Feudalism, etc.

And this is where alternatives come in. This is where we can design a set of arrangements that don’t concentrate power and wealth at the top . . . . that end economic apartheid, that make sure social justice is baked in. Doesn’t have to be any of the things I’ve suggested in the past. But alternatives should be able to alter those arrangements and the way we organize society enough to at least do the following:

Create a sustainable, eco-friendly production, distribution and consumption loop.
Radically reduce the concentration of power by dispersing it into as many different hands as humanly possible
Allocate resources, access and compensation in a fair manner, across the board, to literally everyone, with no one left out
Which removes the built in incentives and power to concentrate goods and services in a few hands
Which removes the ability of the few to control the many in the economic or political realm

Parallel with the economy:

Teach the broadest possible range of skills, crafts, arts, artisanship, communication, languages
Teach the broadest possible range of Big Picture knowledge of how to build, maintain and repair the things we use everyday
Teach the care and conservation of our environment, its protection, how to ensure it thrives . . .
Teach peace, diplomacy, cooperation, rather than endless war, violence as solution to everything, competition as our fate

For starters.

I did note that wars with an economic justification were common during the mercantile era. To the extent that the mercantile school had a thought out system they seemed to make sense. I quoted Smith’s criticism, he pointed out that the interest on the debt incurred on the American colonies exceeded the value of the trade never mind the profit. Capitalism, at least how I use it, is quite different to mercantilism, seeking open free trade with low tariffs rather than binding colonies to trade exclusively with the home country with high tariffs.

Brett,

Wars have always been launched chiefly for economic reasons. Prior to capitalism, they were virtually always launched to make the ruling class in question — this usually meant kings and queens — richer and more powerful. From capitalism on, it meant making the ruling class — the financial elite — richer and more powerful. It is exceedingly rare in world history for a war to be started for any other reason. It’s almost universally always been: expansion of power — wealth is power. Land is wealth. Wealth is power, etc.

Saying that certain sectors of the economy don’t necessarily benefit is meaningless. Or saying that taxpayers may lose their shirts is irrelevant. Within any capitalist economy you have hierarchies among the hierarchies, and the most powerful in those hierarchies call the shots for our governments . . . which they control. Who else are they going to go to war for? And if they really cared about the population, they wouldn’t use them as cannon fodder, century after century, while the ruling elites kick back in their smoking jackets and laugh.

Wars tend not to be fought for economic reasons. Bluntly they, almost without exception, cost far far more than any conceivable economic benefit. Geopolitical reasons, ideology, nationalism, strategic reasons are common enough but not economic reasons. Modern warfare is far too expensive to be waged for economic reasons.

Of course, feminists have criticised Engels’ theory, but it is interesting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_the_Family,_Private_Property_and_the_State

Brett,

Come on. Too expensive for whom? Where do you think the money comes from? Someone’s private stash? The entire populace is taxed . . . and in America’s case, it’s all put on a credit card for the entire populace to (maybe) pay off someday. Well into the distant future when most of the current actors in that war are dead or past caring. And who reaps the immediate rewards? The Military Industrial Complex and their tangential partners. They make instant profits on borrowed money which will only eventually be paid back (maybe). Their CEOs score now, today, with the tab for this pushed into the future. Their stockholders score now. Today. On borrowed money.

In short, the rich pay nothing for current warfare, and they make immediate gains.

And while political leaders benefit from the appearance of “being tough” by launching wars, they’re paying their donors back for putting them into office. Depending upon where (and when) the wars are fought, gas and oil reserves, heavy metals, mineral wealth, diamonds, rubber, cotton, coal, food production and future markets galore. Land. Behind all geopolitics in the modern world stand economic interests. They pull the strings. They’re the puppet masters.

And “nationalism”? Again, that’s just cover for economic interests. It’s just a way to whip up popular support among the rubes to advance those economic interests. It’s political cover. Nothing more.

Ideology? The only ideology that matters in the modern world right now is personal greed, and its supreme vehicle is capitalism. Wars have always, always been fought to expand the wealth and power of the ruling elite. To believe that this has changed because, capitalism, is beyond naive.

Val @151,

Again, it doesn’t matter that they were there before capitalism. Capitalism is now. It’s the existing economic model, and it’s the very best in history at radically increasing the levels of inequality in the world, globally. No other economic system before it has so engulfed the world, or managed to merge imperialism with economics to such a degree. No other system is so all-encompassing, takes over so many aspects of life, monetizes so much, commercializes so much, leaves so little outside the economy. Everything is for sale, and this is getting worse by the day. It’s “totalitarian” in its reach. And this includes human psychology as well. It’s soooo good at this totalitarian takeover, most people seem to think it’s all “natural” and nothing to worry about.

If you really want to compare it to past systems, try doing so with regard to any of them following us home, following us to work, on vacation, everywhere. This simply was never the case before, as writers like Norman Mailer pointed out even back in the 1950s (Dissent).

Yes, we’ve had inequality, patriarchy, private property for centuries, and centuries before capitalism. But we’ve never had this kind of control over our lives from the economic sector. That needs to change, for a host of reasons. All of them essential to the health and well-being of humanity and our survival on this planet.

Henry Farrell omits the most relevant point of Mair’s analysis and therefore exaggerates the novelty of Corbyn’s election. In ‘Ruling the Void’ he argued that during the ‘Golden Age’, from Bretton Woods to the first oil crisis, social-democratic governments could ignore the exit options of both capitalists and consumers. With this no longer possible ideological positions have softened and electoral choices narrowed. This will remain true even if Corbyn becomes Prime Minister unless, of course, he resurrects Labour’s Alternative Economic Strategy from the late 70s and early 80s, which he shows no signs of wanting to do.

Corbyn’s triumph is less an indication of a great popular shift in attitudes to elites and more the result of a parochial constitutional change in how the Labour party elects its leader. This summer, for the first time in its history, individual members became the kingmakers. Had there been OMOV in 1935 it is extremely doubtful that Clement Attlee would have become the party leader. It’s more likely that Lansbury would have survived his battle with Bevin or, likelier still, that Stafford Cripps – then in the throes of wondering whether socialism needed parliament at all – would have emerged as top of the pile. Later on, in 1980, Benn wouldn’t have bothered with the deputy leadership. He’d have gone for the top job. And with OMOV he’d have romped home.

All sides knew it. It was the PLP and, latterly, the trade-union bloc vote, that prevented Labour’s individual membership from electing left-wing leaders. With these brakes removed they were finally allowed to do so last week. You don’t need Mair to understand what is going on; just a look at Labour’s rule book.

Mark H,

“With this no longer possible ideological positions have softened and electoral choices narrowed. This will remain true even if Corbyn becomes Prime Minister unless, of course, he resurrects Labour’s Alternative Economic Strategy from the late 70s and early 80s, which he shows no signs of wanting to do.”

I have been wondering if the UK press and Labor Party has taken much notice of Inequality: What Can Be Done? by the economist Anthony B. Atkinson this year?

I have not read it, but it was reviewed in the NYRB by Thomas Piketty earlier this year and seems to have some concrete suggestions for new economic policies in the UK that depart from the TINA model:

“He proposes universal family benefits financed by a return to progressive taxation—together, they are intended to reduce British inequality and poverty from American levels to European ones.

He also argues for guaranteed public-sector jobs at a minimum wage for the unemployed, and democratization of access to property ownership via an innovative national savings system, with guaranteed returns for the depositors.

There will be inheritance for all, achieved by a capital endowment at age eighteen, financed by a more robust estate tax; an end to the English poll tax—a flat-rate tax for local governments—and the effective abandonment of Thatcherism. The effect is exhilarating.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jun/25/practical-vision-more-equal-society/

T M@126: I completely agree with you that “It’s BS to compare the opium wars to the current day “war against drugs”. Thing is, though, that wasn’t at all the comparison I was making. I was comparing the current “war against drugs” in the West, using legal and military means against trading in drugs, and the 19th-century policy of the Chinese empire, using legal and military means against trading in drugs. It is not obvious to me that the first is stupid and futile, but the second was quite all right. I would be interested in your thoughts.

@163

“My point is that the Labour party’s internal election results produced a candidate widely regarded as unelectable”

Well, from that I would assume that you either:
1) feel that the membership of a political party should be restricted to the role of a passive supporter and the professional politicians are the real interpreters of the popular mood, or

2) suggest that the desires and interests of the majority of Labour Party supporters are invalid and out of touch with the majority of society. In which case they should voluntarily practice self-denial and follow the logic of point 1).

“the election resulted in a right of centre Tory government with a small, but sufficient working majority, which isn’t exactly an historical anomaly.”

I’m afraid that you’re struggling to see the wood for the trees. Your bald statement disguises the facts that:
1) the traditional centrist third party was routed, losing 2/3rds of its vote and 75% of its MPs;
2) it was replaced as third party in the popular vote by a populist-nationalist party with anti-establishment leanings which took votes from all parties;
3) that the defeated Labour Party actually obtained a significant gain in votes in many constituencies while losing votes significantly in other (non-Scottish) seats;
4) that there was a small but significant increase in the vote for the Green Party, which possibly cost the Labour Party some important seats.

All these factors were disguised somewhat by the FPTP voting system and its anomalies, but it would be a confident person who could base a strategy on reconciling all those trends with a wildly incoherent method of election.

Nazi Germany was corporatist rather than capitalist. They are very different ideological positions. Corporatism is intensely nationalistic and hostile to trade as it is viewed as making you dependent on foreigners. It also favours monopolies and cartels to the point of the Nazis largely banning small businesses. Autarky, that all domestic consumption should derive from domestic production and that all profits should be retained domestically, is an aspiration of corporatism. It is alien to capitalism which favours specialisation as that takes advantage of comparative advantage. Military aggression to gain control of your supplier makes sense in the context of corporatism. Corporatist states also made it difficult for domestic subsidiaries of foreign businesses to export profits to the parent company. This meant that with the Hollywood boycott of Nazi Germany taking the moral high ground didn’t cost the studios much, as they couldn’t expatriate the profits anyway.

During the 1930s Europe was divided between three distinctly different economic systems, the western democracies were capitalist, the right wing dictatorships of central Europe were corporatist and the Stalinist USSR was a command economy.

In any event several of the campaigns to seize economic resources were fought in order to be able to continue fighting the war. The war wasn’t being fought in order to obtain resources.

Brett, I think you mostly go wrong by viewing “capitalism” as a thing itself. Reading you, I get the impression that you see it as some self-regulating, entirely logical, rule-based entity that promotes only the good. As ZM smartly puts it, it’s really a practice, not some separate, stand-alone entity. Capitalism is just the sum total of actions taken by capitalists and their effects. It’s atomized. Which means no single business owner is acting in accordance with the dictates of the capitalist pope, forever seeking to dress it in virtuous glory from head to toe. They’re acting solely in their own best interests, selfishly, and those interests rarely if ever correspond with your conception (of a capitalist) Marquess of Queensberry rules.

IMO, you’ve imagined all of this and are working overtime to shield that practice from any responsibility for its actions.

Corporatism is fairly explicitly non-capitalist. The attitude to international trade and monopoly are rather different. Corporatism is in practice a lot closer to mercantilism than it is to capitalism. Fascist rhetoric was very hostile to international capitalism, it is a fairly common populist position.

Policy differences include:

International trade: corporatism is hostile and favours autarky, capitalism strongly in favour, mercantilism favoured exports and was hostile to imports.

This leads to sharply different policies on tariffs: corporatism favours high tariffs, capitalism low or no tariffs, mercantilism favoured high import tariffs and low or even negative export tariffs.

Monopolies and Cartels: corporatism (and mercantilism) strongly in favour will use legislation to bring it about, capitalism opposed will use legislation to prevent them.

Small businesses, corporatism hostile Nazi Germany used legislation to force mergers and consolidation. Capitalism generally in favour legislation usually aims to make life easier for small businesses, mercantilism had no particular position.

Btw, corporatism in no way favors autarky. They favor the supremacy of capital, and care nothing about national borders. In fact, those borders are a major hindrance to what they want to do. Sell their wares wherever they want, have their own country back that “freedom” and force other nations to take down all of their own barriers.

You really have things backward.

Corporatism IS capitalism in its late stage. It’s the natural evolution of its practice. Greater and greater integration into every aspect of life, with no barriers between nations, where the corporation itself becomes its own nation in a sense. Fiefdoms competing with other fiefdoms for dominance . . . . while they all work together to ensure general political cover for this, for this eradication of national boundaries . . . in favor of omni-commerical relations. Grow or Die. That must include imperial extension beyond those boundaries.

With the rarest of exceptions, no corporation wants to be hemmed in by the concept of nation-states. It’s not in their best interests.

Bruce,

Naww. I don’t see it as a thing in and of itself. Never have. I see it as the sum total of individual actions/actors using what we can call the “capitalist” mode of production, with its social arrangements running alonside. It’s a “system” in the sense that these actors/actions are linked together, via physical and virtual networks, markets, laws, institutional supports and so on. But it does not exist as a Platonic Essence or as a divine spark from the Christian/Gnostic/Kaballish god.

“It’s the natural evolution of its practice. Greater and greater integration into every aspect of life, with no barriers between nations, where the corporation itself becomes its own nation in a sense. Fiefdoms competing with other fiefdoms for dominance . . . . while they all work together to ensure general political cover for this, for this eradication of national boundaries”

Funny, I had to re-read the opening sentence to that paragraph twice because it is almost word for word a self description of communism from about 1890-1990 (with state instead of corporation).

Sebastion @176,

Funny, but it’s almost word for word the opposite of “communism,” as we’ve already discussed here. Except for the end of nation-states, borders, etc. That’s definitely a part of actual communist theory. But there are no fiefdoms. And there are no “states.” Communism is the absence of the state once socialism has become virtually second nature, and the state apparatus is no longer necessary to sustain it. Communism means full on democracy, no political parties, no ruling class, no classes, period.

Please read Kristin Ross’s Communal Luxury for an excellent, if too brief primer on socialist, anarchist communist, communist thought, especially in the 19th century. Its main focus is the Paris Commune of 1871, but it brings in decades of thought before and after.

Brett Dunbar @ 175

Plume never lets any facts of history slow him down.

I’m not sympathetic to your narrative of benign capitalism, but I have been impressed with your breadth of detailed historical knowledge. I hadn’t known anything about the Opium Wars, beyond the name.

Bruce @180,

Be specific, please. What “facts of history” do you think I’ve gotten wrong?

And if you have actually read this thread, you’ll notice several posters have refuted Brett’s version of history regarding the Opium Wars. Methinks you’re far too willing to accept his version without doing your own research.

Btw, you and I both use labels. Like “neoliberalism.” Everyone does. But we also generally believe our own usage of them is better than the next guy’s. Rinse and repeat. In reality, of course, all of these labels are highly problematic . . . . Christianity, Capitalism, Left and Right, Liberalism, Communism, Corporatism, Socialism, etc. etc. They’re all fictional constructs which depend upon at least some level of buy in, of agreement. But all of them also provoke a diversity of “definitions.” On message boards such as this one, we compete, in a sense, for the acceptance of our own definitions. Not that this is the goal. Or should be. But it’s useful as a starting point — at least — for further communication. As has been apparent from the start, here, we all too often get bogged down even with the starting points.

If you have a better idea for avoiding this, please share. But, remember, you, too, use labels. You’re not above them.

I’m using corporatism to mean the system whose adherents called corporatism, and seems to lack any other name. It tends at times to be used as a snarl word for what could be called corporate capitalism. Which isn’t corporatism it’s capitalism where the primary form of organisation is the joint stock limited liability company (corporation in US commercial law). It isn’t exactly helped by the tendency of some of the far left to use capitalism to mean anything they don’t like the ultimate absurdity is calling the Stalinist command economy state capitalism when it is about the least market based system imaginable.

Lenin called what the Bolsheviks implemented “State capitalism.” He and his fellow party members believed it was the only way to pull Russia, kicking and screaming, into the 20th century. They used the very same “primitive accumulation” practices that were imposed on the British, and later on colonial conquests of the British. They replaced the previous ownership class with their own appropriation of worker generated surplus value. They never allowed democracy. They never allowed the people to own the means of production.

Again, please read Michael Perelman’s The Invention of Capitalism, and Van der Linden on Lenin’s use of State Capitalism.

I’m very consistent in discussing capitalism as M-C-M, exchange value and the appropriation of worker-generated surplus value, and I use capitalists’ own words, theories, goals and practices to define it. You, however, have idealized those practices, romanticized them to a surreal degree, and are oblivious to their actual real world application and impact.

Sorry, Brett, but the radical concentration of wealth, power, access, ownership and compensation, due to capitalism, is staggering. Marx was right about it continuing and getting worse. It has.

Or do you think that 80 people holding as much wealth as 3.5 billion isn’t a continuation and acceleration of that? Or the fact that the richest 400 Americans hold more than the bottom 60% combined? Or that one family, the Waltons, hold as much wealth as the bottom 40% of the nation? Or that by next year, the richest 1% will hold as much as the “bottom” 99%?

Please take off your rose-colored glasses and get rid of those blinders.

No, Sebastian @184,

I go by more than two centuries of socialist, anarchist, anarchist-communist and communist thought, along with their small-scale practice. You, OTOH, go by a few decades of right-wing propaganda.

It is, by definition, impossible to have a “communist state.” By definition. Or, as you put it, “self-description.” Unless you completely make up your own, from the point of view of a supremely biased enemy, and absolutely divorce it from all socialist writings from the last two centuries.

Will try another metaphor:

You’re a basketball coach. You’ve long believed the game should go through the center, and you’re considered a “centrist.” You want to ensure the greatest percentage possible of points in the paint. You don’t want your guards taking three pointers. You want the ball worked into the center for the easiest, highest percentage shots. Like dunks.

A team hires you. Your personnel is decidedly strongest at the guard spots. One and two. They shoot three pointers incessantly. They rarely work the ball into your new center, and you change your offense to fit your personnel. You’re no longer “centrist” in effect or practice or reality.

Your team doesn’t win a lot of games, and your critics bash you. Some of them are caught up in your reputation as a centrist and blame centrism for the losses, even though your center virtually disappears in every game as your guards go bombs away from three point range.

Does it make sense to be critical of “centrist” beliefs? Or something else entirely?

As for “capitalism.” Please describe it in your own words. Both in theory and in practice, if possible.

Back to Corbyn, he is tapping into the dissatisfaction with the bankster/both-sides alliance. They always win, we always lose. It is showing up on the left and the right, and is precisely why I’m so afraid of a Trump like candidate (because if you tap into that vein just right it might be enough to win).

Please note I’m not saying that Corbyn is Trump-like in the sense of sharing specific policy views, or that Corbyn is a bad person (though I’m definitely saying that Trump is). I’m saying that they both tap into a particular and serious dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Gotta laugh at Brett’s #182 – ‘Marx was right to notice some problems with early capitalism act fortunately they’ve now been fixed’

“More surprisingly, European established left parties have mostly not responded to the crisis in any meaningful way and Labour is one of them. No leading Labour [ or Democratic Party] politicians seems i.a. interested in a coherent investigation of the UK banks’ activities before and after 2007… This silent space has been Corbyn’s to occupy”

Disagree Sebastian. The amazing thing is that Corbyn has said very little about financial regulation or banking – his platform was pretty much anti-austerity, anti-Iraq war, pro-taxing the rich and support for public ownership (rail, NHS, etc). I haven’t seen him standing up gunning for the banks.

Brett @198,

Seriously. How on earth can you make the reeee-diculus claim that the problem of concentration has been “solved” in light of the stats I provided. Read Piketty. Read Stigletz. Read anyone who provides the data on the massive inequality on display throughout the world.

Come on. You are oblivious to current realities. Completely oblivious.

As for stock ownership. The richest 1% owns more than 50% of all stock. The bottom half owns roughly 0.5% of the total.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/

Pleeeze take off your blinders.

Abbe Faria @ 197

Quantitative Easing for ordinary people has been one Corbyn’s most resonant anti-austerity slogans. It is not pro-regulation per se, but it does pick up resentments quite nicely, which is really all Labour needs to do at this point.

Yes, Bruce. It’s all my fault. I’m a really, really bad person, and you’re perfect and above the fray.

Btw, I’m still waiting for you to provide ANY evidence that I misuse labels, or that I’m not consistent, or that you don’t misread me wildly. All you ever do is assert this, endlessly, without one iota of proof, and then, like a little child, take the side of right-wing cheerleaders whom you see as being against what I say.

The old “enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Bruce, grow the fuck up.

LFC,

Thanks for that. I think.

;>)

Yeah, I can see that it’s tedious at times. But I repeat myself generally in response to folks like Brett, who repeatedly shake their pom poms for capitalism(s), and seem absolutely oblivious to all the data that disproves their contentions about its endless bounty for all concerned. I wonder at the lack of the same criticism directed their way. I also repeat myself because the same old nonsense is posted by the Sebastians of this world, regarding “socialisms” and “communisms” and I can’t help thinking I’ve been beamed back in time to the 1950s and the McCarthy error.

Oh, well.

Brett @206,

Yes, out of the bottom half of the world’s population — 3.5 billion humans — there is a large number of people below 15. Not two billion. But it’s a significant amount.

But we’re talking about 80 human beings holding as much wealth as they do. Just 80. Think about it. You continue to claim that capitalism has done all of these remarkable things, including raising living standards across the board, despite the data that counters this.

Such as:

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

And you keep saying that there is no longer a problem of concentration of wealth, even though all the data says it’s getting worse. Can you honestly say that it’s not slam dunk proof of that concentration that just 400 Americans hold as much wealth as 60% of the population combined? Or that just 9 Walton heirs hold as much as the bottom 40% combined? Or that more than half of all corporate ownership is still in the hands of just 1% of the country, with more than 50% of all stocks, bonds and mutual funds in their hands? Or that early next year, for the first time, the richest 1% will hold more total wealth than the rest of the nation combined? Again, just the 1% will control, own, hold more wealth than the bottom 99% of the country combined.

Seriously. How on earth can you maintain the fiction that capitalism doesn’t radically concentrate wealth among the few? All of the data says it does just that. It’s not even debatable.

Plume 205
I wonder at the lack of the same criticism directed their way.

Well, I am more than willing to say that they (e.g., B. Dunbar) can be even more tedious. I didn’t mean to suggest you shouldn’t reply to and try to convince them. People’s basic beliefs tend to be hard to shake. Discrepant evidence gets minimized, etc. But still it may be worth the effort.

I was pointing to a specific problem which Marx had observed. It was then dealt with by an incremental change rather than through replacement of the entire system. That is actually true of a fair number of Marx’s arguments he was pointing to a real problem but underestimating capitalism’s adaptability.

Irony: capitalism ‘adapted’ (in the West) with social democratic reforms which were in part a response to a credible threat – ‘replacement of the entire system’ as in the East…

Engels @211,

Very true. Liberal and social democratic “reforms” allowed capitalism to soldier on. They provided just enough crumbs to prevent full scale revolution — primarily from the left, but from the right as well. Just enough to quiet the populace and get them to comply with an economic system designed to enslave them. Just enough to fool them into giving it another chance, and another, and another, until there were no alternatives.

And with the absence of any alternatives, those liberal and social democratic reforms were rolled back, with at least the tacit approval and complicity of the former reformers. Throw in continued capitalist crises, continued chances for Disaster Capitalism, and the plutocrats are granted even more leeway to roll back reforms and install new austerities. All in the supposed name of “efficiency” and crisis management.

Yep, capitalism “adapted” alright. It captured the political systems around the world and got them all to ensure its survival, by hook or crook.

Plume @213 and engels @214

Disaster capitalism is one of the associated threats of climate change. I don’t know if much research has been done on this yet, but here in Australia during the 2001-09 drought, a range of measures were taken by governments to reduce irrigation, including buy backs/sale of water rights and incentives to sell up farms. Such measures cause a shift to larger, more capitalised farms which have the capacity to buy up water rights and smaller properties. They also use more waged labour. Thus there is a (at least potential) shift from the ‘yeoman model’ family farm which was politically popular in Australia in the 19th and 20th centuries (until the neoliberal era) towards a kind of feudal capitalist model of big properties owned by absentee owners and shareholders, utilising ‘wage slave’ labour.

The alternative is usually a shift to women doing more ‘off farm’ waged work to support the property (there is research evidence about this).

As I say, not sure how much evidence there is yet to support the disaster capitalism scenario yet, my evidence is largely observational because I’ve lived in irrigation areas and have friends who still live there.

The potential for disaster capitalism in response to climate change is one of the reasons why I always stress that an egalitarian response (including equality of women and men) is so important in responding to climate change. There’s lots of reasons but this is one of them.

I do feel these conversations on CT would be enriched by having a gender perspective and more participation of women, but at the moment I think the way these threads go discourages that. (Can only hope that I don’t get accused of a “persecution complex” or whatever again for pointing that out – really, just look at this thread, it mainly is a conversation between men and quite often seems to turn into a pissing contest.)

Back to the OP topic, I am still wondering if any UK commenters could tell me the answer to my previous comment I will copy

I have been wondering if the UK press and Labor Party has taken much notice of Inequality: What Can Be Done? by the economist Anthony B. Atkinson this year?

I have not read it, but it was reviewed in the NYRB by Thomas Piketty earlier this year and seems to have some concrete suggestions for new economic policies in the UK that depart from the TINA model:

“He proposes universal family benefits financed by a return to progressive taxation—together, they are intended to reduce British inequality and poverty from American levels to European ones.

He also argues for guaranteed public-sector jobs at a minimum wage for the unemployed, and democratization of access to property ownership via an innovative national savings system, with guaranteed returns for the depositors.

There will be inheritance for all, achieved by a capital endowment at age eighteen, financed by a more robust estate tax; an end to the English poll tax—a flat-rate tax for local governments—and the effective abandonment of Thatcherism. The effect is exhilarating.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jun/25/practical-vision-more-equal-society/

I agree with Engels, there’s nothing at all radical about those proposals. They effectively fit in with the type of neoliberalism that came from New Labour with the intent on ’empowering’ or cajoling individuals in order that they can compete better in the ‘global marketplace’. They don’t address inequality.

But those aren’t Corbyn’s proposals, they’re Tony Atkinson’s… (and maybe I’m being a bit unfair but I have a sort of immune reaction to capital grants now, after listening to the hard sell here from [I think] Prof.s Brighouse and Quiggin over quite a few years…)

This article is about Sanders but I believe it applies just as well to Corbyn.

http://theweek.com/articles/577927/bernie-sanders-wins-centrist-liberals-are-morally-obligated-support

#baeofpigs please

ZM @216
I don’t how to say this w/o possibly sounding obnoxious, but there is a very long-running and ongoing academic/political debate about the origins of capitalism. Turns largely on conflicting understandings/definitions of capitalism and readings of history, so the etymology of the word ‘capital’ won’t resolve it. (Braudel and those who agree w/ him are indeed “reputable” but represent one particular view in this debate.) I’m not going to give online refs b.c don’t want to re-derail the thread.

The Soviet system was capitalist? This is exactly what I mean when I noticed that you take such broad definitions of concepts as to make them useless.

Fish are basically doughnuts, because they both have nutrients.

People are basically concrete walls, they both are made of atoms.

Nietzsche was a pope, they all talk about God.

Oh, and Sebastian,

Did you bother to watch the Chomsky video I posted, or the other links to book recommendations? I’m guessing, no.

One thing I’ve noticed here is that the very same people who keep complaining that my posts are “bewildering,” refuse to click on videos, articles and links to books that back up what I say, buttress it, elaborate further, etc.

If you’re “bewildered,” that’s on you, not me. I’ve done the work to make this more than comprehensible to anyone with an open mind.

If you want to be comprehensible, use at least half your important words in non jargony ways. If you are counting Soviet Russia as capitalist you are using too broad a definition of ‘capitalist’ to make useful connections with the thought processes of people who use ‘capitalist’ to mean something other than ‘everything having to do with an economy in the last 1000 years’.

Plume@230: your use of self-contradictory obfuscations like “state capitalism” is shared by other people who agree with you, but that doesn’t make it any less self-contradictory.

Sebastian@223: I fear that what Plume means by “capitalist” is “something that Plume strongly disapproves of”. In that sense, the Soviet Union and Mao’s China were, to Plume’s credit, definitely capitalist.

Bruce 180: Your not knowing anything about the Opium Wars doesn’t lend confidence to your claims about other commenters’ historical knowledge.

The economic background of the Opium Wars is really interesting. China in the 18th century was the world’s richest country. China exported many goods that the West wanted, like silk and tea, but didn’t have much interest in buying Western goods so they ran a big trade surplus and accumulated silver currency. The British figured out that they could balance the account by paying with opium (cheaply produced in India) instead of silver. This is what the Opium Wars were mostly about. The opium trade was the most important revenue source of the British Empire in the 19th century.

Britain’s role as the world’s leading drug cartel, complete with its violent enforcement arm, is not some footnote of history nor does it constitute some kind of aberration from capitalism’s benign tendencies; it was central to the development of both capitalism and imperialism.

I don’t personally use the term ‘state capitalist’ to describe USSR but it’s a reasonable and very common analysis among Trotskyists and anarchists. It doesn’t mean one can’t distinguish between feudalism and capitalism, as Sebastian implies.

Google is your friend, Sebastian.

Wait are we accepting the Soviet self descriptions as accurate now? Thank god! I can call them communists again. And socialists!

Glad we cleared that up.

Sebastian H @242,

Would it make you feel better if I stopped calling the Soviet Union “State capitalist,” even though Lenin and his cohorts, along with a great number of leftists have for many decades?

Fine. I’m okay with that, if you, in turn, will stop calling it “socialist” or “communist.”

Deal?

In short, in order to better communicate what it really was, we probably need to come up with another term entirely. I’m open to suggestions. We should perhaps agree to rule out the following:

capitalism — state or otherwise
socialism — or socialisms
communism — or communisms
anarchism
anarchist-communist

etc. etc.

T M @239: “The opium trade was the most important revenue source of the British Empire in the 19th century”.

Interesting if true. Do you have a reputable source for that?

I await, without much hope, your explanation of why the current Western War against Drugs is a Bad Thing, but the 19th-century Chinese War against Drugs was a Good Thing.

Plume@240: I have read what you have written. I find it inconsistent. Could you please explain why your projected Plumeworld is not, by your own explicitly stated criteria, capitalist?

Stephen @246,

I missed your @234, and it’s truly “bewildering” to me. I can’t really tell when or where you’re referring to my alternative, or to the present situation, or some historical time period. Your use of “Plume-capitalist” is really baffling, as my suggestions for alternatives are all about its (capitalism’s) complete disappearance, its absolute, 110% negation . . . as if it never had existed.

But I don’t want to go down that road again, regarding suggestions for alternative systems, so I’ll leave it alone.

As for Nazi Germany. It certainly had a capitalist economy, on a war-footing for most of Hitler’s reign. I can’t see how anyone could argue that it wasn’t capitalist — for the reasons I’ve described before. M-C-M and exchange value, private ownership of the means of production, appropriating the surplus value generated by workers. For-profit, etc. Hitler even made this easier by wiping out all unions, killing labor activists, importing slave labor, etc. etc.

For the purposes of this thread, I’ve agreed to stop referring to the Soviet system as “state capitalism,” but that might be a very good term for Hitler’s Germany.

@249,

Again, I don’t want to go down that road again . . . but, in short:

The people would literally own the means of production. Directly. No buffers. No middlemen. No political parties or other proxies in between them and that ownership. There is no separated, fractional ownership class. Everyone has an equal share, an equal voice, an equal say. Everyone is co-owner.

Full on democracy inside and outside the workplace. It would involve a riff off of Richard Wolff’s WSDE.

Instead of M-C-M and exchange value, we use C-M-C and use value. “Money” is all electric, debit, comes from a commonly held pool, absolutely separate from sales/prices. There is absolutely NO linkage between revenues and compensation, funding for public works and revenues, etc. etc. No taxation. No debt. All funding for comp and public works comes exclusively from those commonly held pools.

For starters.

Igor@252: I’m afraid that when Plume and capitalism (by whatever definition) enter a thread, it does tend to drift a bit. Doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be corrected.

#252 Agree it would be more interesting to read / talk about Corbyn and the wider significance of his rise

Engels and so on.

Sorry. Will stop derailing thread. It’s just difficult to avoid responding when one has been misread and misrepresented to a surreal degree.

Enjoy your day, all.

Plume: no, I don’t think at all that what you are proposing is the same as modern capitalism, and I can’t see why you think I do.
But I still don’t see why, for example, you believe a hierarchical structure involves no”appropriation of surplus value ” by the upper levels of the hierarchy: or how your ideal society can be made to work without some level of organisation, i.e. hierarchy.

When you have answered that, you might consider replying to the other points I have raised.

Also: when you say “All funding for comp and public works comes exclusively from those commonly held pools” where do the pools come from, and who determines their size (and rate of increase or decrease), or the proportion to be allotted to different aspects of compensation or public works?

Minor point: when you say “state capitalism might be a very good term for Hitler’s Germany” I think you are contradicting your earlier description of the state of affairs in Nazi Germany: business being privately owned, and business owners appropriating the surplus value of their workers, financiers making money from money, the entire economy being profit-driven”.

But what is one more self-contradiction after so many?

S 247, I’m not sure to what extent China criminalized the mere possession and personal use of opium. I think it would have been foolish then as it is now. But that is different from enacting and enforcing import restrictions. I think sovereign nations have the right to do that and using force of arms to make recalcitrant government “agree” to giving up those restrictions is under no circumstances justifiable.

It is important to keep in mind to what extent the demand for opium – undoubtedly an addictive substance the use of which frequently has destructive effects on users – was created by British government policy. Also note that Britain used its imperialist mastery over a subservient India to mass produce the drug (instead of food) on huge areas of prime agricultural land, with little economic benefit to the local population. It’s hard to find a more revealing example of economic exploitation in the age of capitalistic imperialism or if you prefer imperialistic capitalism.

The US btw although a minor player also profited from the (illegal) Chinese opium business. James Bradley’s The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia has a fascinating chapter on the involvement of FDR’s ancestors and how their image of China still shaped American perceptions in the 20th century.

Stephen @261,

I’m thinking you’re just trolling at this point. Where did I get the idea you were equating the two? How about here:

I only meant to point out that, unless I have misunderstood you, the criteria you use for describing Nazi Germany as capitalist also apply to what you have described as your ideal state (which is not, of course, to say that I think your ideal state would be the same as Nazi Gemany). No matter whether you would prefer to think your ideal state is anti-capitalist: I am just suggesting that, by your own criteria, it isn’t.

. . . .

Organization can be horizontal, as was demonstrated in the Paris Commune, in thousands of communes and kibbutz around the world, Occupy, anarchist Spain, Mondragon, to some degree, etc. etc. “Hierarchies” can rotate, be temporary. The reason there is no appropriation (and no exploitation) of workers is because they own and control their own production/surplus. See Richard Wolff’s WSDE for a basis. Google him and WSDE for a large sample, etc.

The pools come from societal agreement, backed by a constitution. They’re numbers we’ve agreed to pool and own together. Unlimited numbers, but we also agree to budgets for the nation, for regions, for communities. You work, you get digits from these pools. You buy things from outlets, those digits are deducted. You have your own personal account, your community has one, its region has one, the society as a whole has one. All of this is organized and decided democratically.

In the capitalist system, which is a fiction, held together entirely by fractional agreements, money is another fiction, supported by agreement. In our current system, these fictions and these agreements benefit a tiny fraction of the population. I’m suggesting that for the first time in history we use fiction to benefit the entire populace.

See Yuval Harari for how fiction has worked throughout history.

Now I really am going.

Thread derailment can be tiresome, but not nearly so tiresome as complaints about thread derailment.

ZM @ 160 and 217:

Well I hadn’t heard of it, so that’s one data point for you. Of course an unreasonably large percentage of my economics knowledge comes from Crooked Timber… A quick google finds reviews in the Independent and Guardian when it came out, which is better that I’d expect if I wrote a book, but for an LSE professor / knight I think that’s probably not getting much attention. Of course, publishing a book on inequality a few weeks after the UK elected a Conservative government could be seen as poor timing!

Nazi Germany wasn’t capitalist, its economy was largely isolated from world trade. And the economy was heavily regulated and organised into monopolies and cartels in the corporatist manner. The state actively intervened to suppress competition. All of this is similar to mercantilism. And is pretty much exactly the kind of thing Adam Smith was criticising.

The way I use capitalism is to denote the free market internationalist system that developed based on Smith’s ideas.

The easy creation of a limited liability joint stock company was introduced in order to allow for a business to attract investment from the merely prosperous rather than only the rich. And to limit the risk of owning a business to the value of the investment. That made shares an attractive investment for pension funds. That wasn’t the reason it was done, it was merely a consequence.

2 billion is a reasonable approximation for the number of under 15s. A little over a quarter of the world population is under 15 the world population is about 7.5 billion. To one significant figure that’s 2 billion. In any event about half of the people who lack significant assets young enough that you wouldn’t expect them to have assets.

Again, as mentioned upthread. The richest 1% in America holds more than half of all stocks, bonds and mutual funds in America right now. Please tell me how that squares with your ideas regarding the lack of concentration of wealth, or capitalism’s supposed boon to the non-rich.

As of 2016, that richest 1% will hold more wealth than the rest of the nation combined. The 1% will hold more than half of all wealth. The “bottom” 99% of the country will hold a bit less than half. Think about it. Think about that extreme inequality. It’s enough to make the 18th century denizens of Versailles blush.

And just 80 human beings hold more wealth right now that the bottom half — 3.5 billion humans — of this planet. It’s a sign of desperation for you to try to defend that on the basis of kids under 15 years of age. Seriously. That’s sheer desperation.

Brett, “capitalism” has never been in real life what Adam Smith’s fairy tales imagined it to be. And even he, at times, argued against his own fairy tales. It seems to me that you still believe in them.

Have suggested it before, but you really need to read The Invention of Capitalism, by Michael Perelman. He uses Smith’s own words, and the words of Ricardo and a dozen other classical political economists to show how far from reality their vision really was. And, how elitist it was, all too often. Their own words. In context. With in-depth, extensive sourcing and notes. It’s a seminal, must-read work.

I never said he described “paradise.” And, no, he wasn’t at all “realistic.” He did write about political economy largely within a vision of optimal conditions, at all times — and these never occurred, anywhere, ever. He also had no real concept of the costs of the sweeping, violent changes to British life, including the highlanders of Scotland and the people who had previously self-provided. He, along with many of his upper-crusty cohorts, often harangued those who were reluctant to join in the new factory work . . . bashed them repeatedly for being lazy, good for nothings, slothful, etc. etc. — if they were content to make their own way in the world, grow their own food, self-provide enough to get by, and maximize their free time. This was considered immoral, ironically, hypocritically, by the gentlemen of leisure who wrote these broadsides, sitting in their smoking robes, in front of their nice old fireplaces, their servants at the ready.

The whole “Protestant Work Ethic” thing was nothing more than hypocritical sloth shaming in the guise of religious virtue. It was one more way to embarrass “the peasants” into abandoning their free time, their commons, their holidays, their families and friends in exchange for pennies a day in the Dickensian hell of those factories. As in, sheer propaganda.

For the Brits who read CT:

Which British newspapers are the best in your view, and will present the most accurate info regarding politics, including (perhaps, especially) Corbyn? Which are most insightful?

I read the Guardian and think it has an excellent online edition, but I don’t really know much about the British Press overall. Which papers, in short, stand to give us the more accurate portrayal of the subject of this particular thread?

Good article on press coverage of Corbyn:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/british-tabloids-press-corbyn-labour-leader/

The Guardian/Observer is a “site of struggle” as my South African comrades used to say, as is the Independent.

Ed Vulliamy wrote an interesting reflection of his own newspaper’s treatment of JeremyCorbyn.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/20/ed-vulliamy-jeremy-corbyn-observer-editorial

Steve Richards often has interesting things to say, usually in the Independent and Patrick Cockburn there has been consistently ahead of the curve about the Middle East. But the rest of the paper appears to have been copied off other websites.

Lynne @ 94

Almost entirely off-topic, but: it’s not incidental that your chemistry teacher could probably be disciplined in an awful lot of school districts today for being unpatriotic enough to introduce ideas like this to impressionable young minds. Which might explain (reflect?) the pervasiveness of the idea that democracy and patriotism are somehow inextricably woven together with market thinking (or capitalism, or what have you). I worked at a high school in South Carolina until a couple of years ago, and can report that teachers were disciplined for far less. I remember when a coworker I was friendly with saw a copy of something vaguely lefty in my car once. (Maybe a copy of the Baffler? Hell, in SC, Harper’s might qualify as cause for concern.) He advised me to throw a jacket or something over it. I’m not making this up.

Guardian, though it really goes on my nerves all the time, is the only readable mainstream paper, the rest is rubbish or niche. I say this as someone who can appreciate conservative papers if they are serious and well written.

the Guardian came to support Kendall

They endorsed Cooper, no? Not that it’s much better, but she was probably the least offensive of the Other Three.

I used to read the Guardian opinion pages a lot but these days I only read George Monbiot. Incidentally, he ardently supported Corbyn.

http://www.monbiot.com/2015/08/18/curator-of-the-future/

Sure, agreed.

More on the Graun and Corbyn
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/21/red-neoliberals-how-corbyns-victory-unmasked-britains-guardian/

Daragh, so the pig wasn’t mentioned on BBC News all day then? (To be clear I was referring to Cameron’s sow-job specifically, not the book as a whole. Fair enough if it was on Newsnght though.)

Monbiot gets on my nerves tbh. Combination of public school condenscension and ‘contrarian’ take on issues like like nuclear power. I like (equally upper-class) Milne, and Younge.

Monbiot doesn’t do “contrarian takes”. He takes issues seriously, researches them meticulously, and engages with opposing arguments. He has been consistent for years now in arguing that nuclear power is the lesser evil compared to coal.

Oops. Last paragraph mine.

Fine, but I object to the label contrarian.

To return to the original topic and discussion there of, noted neoliberal sell-out rag The New Statesman has conducted detailed research showing that the views of Corbyn supporters are substantially out of step with both Labour’s existing and potential electorate.

But of course, the fact that most Guardian columnists aside from Seumas ‘Except for the Wall and the Stasi, life in the GDR was Great!’ Milne continue insisting that Corbyn is probably unelectable and will be bad for Labour is simply a sign of their neo-liberal elitism, or somesuch.

TM I probably should have left Monbiot out of it, I just find him annoying (by ‘contrarian’ I meant something like elite ‘left-wing’ journo takes ‘brave’, ‘independent’ stand which just happens to coincide with interests of a major section of British industry and right-wing opinion – nb. I’m not suggesting anything improper)

If it wasn’t for the fact that he has claimed allegiance to the Lib Dems (don’t laugh at the back) I could have sworn that ‘Daragh’ was a pseudonym of Peter Mandelson’s.

For a leftwing, but not supportive, view of JC see http://leftfootforward.org/2015/06/an-open-letter-to-jeremy-corbyn/

For the pig story: as I understand it, the journalis responsible, Isabelle Oakeshott, appears to admit that she has no idea whether it is true or not:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/steerpike/2015/09/anthony-seldon-takes-isabel-oakeshott-to-task-over-piggate/

The ‘old system’ he alludes to is not antique but was put into place in 1981 to take the choice of parliamentary leader away from Labour members of parliament.

He does not consider that Corbyn’s victory is a manifestation of the joys of vandalism, of taking a rock, contemplating it for a moment, and propelling it through a plate glass window. Corbyn’s not much more likely ever to be prime minister than he is to be president of the B’nai B’rith. (Cannot help but notice Corbyn’s bad case of the Jew Thing merits no notice here or in the article quoted).

Is there a book about who rules Britain that is comparable to Domhoff’s Who Rules America?

Since Domhoff fancies that ‘ The owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., the owners of corporations, banks, other financial institutions, and agri-businesses.’ rule America, I’d hope the British counterpart produces a better book. You cannot write about The Regime in this country without writing about the legal profession unless your hopelessly confused or deliberately obfuscatory.

Daragh: when has Jeremy Corbyn advocated abolishing competition among private companies?

You cannot claim to have read this very short book unless you are hopelessly inattentive or downright knuckleheaded.

I’m quoting the synopsis that Domhoff himself provides of his essential thesis. And why would anyone write about the legal profession and limit his discussion to non-practicing elected officials and corporate inhouse counsel? (Unless, of course, they are hopelessly inattentive or downright knuckleheaded?).

Given that Lee Arnold’s excuses for the book does not make his book look any better, I’m not the one in the hole.

The difference in the attitude to competition in the capitalist system and that in a mercantile or corporatist system is fundamental.

The Smithian system uses competition as the basic operating principal it’s a consumerist approach where costs are kept low and profits limited by the consumer having a wide range of producers from which to chose. The legal system in capitalist states is directly hostile to monopolies, hence things like the EU competition commission or the US Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Mercantilism and corporatism are both much more producerist allowing producers to collaborate and merge in order to raise prices and profits at the expense of the consumer. The state would interfere in order to reduce or eliminate competition.

Nazi Germany wasn’t capitalist. For example the chemical firm IG Farben had funded the Nazis rise to power partly due to Hitler promising to prevent the import of oil. IG Farben had invested heavily in synthetic diesel, believing peak oil had arrived in the mid 1920s. And then large oil deposits had been discovered in the middle east, without a captive market it faced ruin. The Weimar regime was fairly determinedly capitalist and wasn’t going to sacrifice the interests of the public to save the shareholders of IG Farben from the consequences of its blunder. In pursuit of autarky the Nazis massively interfered in the market in an anti-competitive manner.