³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Big versus small state is a simplistic argument and how does it apply to the massive privatisations of functions previously performed by the state at both national and local level. How do we view redistributive transfer payments and real services in this context - is the so called free market going to do the job? I am afraid what I read here is 90% academic. There is no need for Labour to say what cuts it agrees with and have an alternative CSR to reveal before the end of next month. If it is so self evident that there is no alternative Labour should offer to join the coalition - a national government of compulsive austerity. Labour should oppose the cuts which will affect the majority of society but not the wealthy whose pips will be mute. A change of leadership must bring a review of Labour's recent policies on the economy as well as looking forward to the next decade.

Labour are in a very difficult place in terms of developing a credible policy platform.

In trying to do so they will either end up looking like the existing coalition government wearing different clothes but with the disadvantage of being tainted by their recent past or have to resort to tearing up the labour rhetoric of the last 15 years, in effect a cultural change which will take years to run through and will leave the electorate deeply suspicious of them if it is done too quickly.

Neither of those options will get them into power next time unless the coalition goes into meltdown, which on current evidence does not look likely.


It looks like political wilderness for labour for the next 5 years at least with a shot at power in 10 years probably the best they can hope for, by which time the world is likely to be a very different place I suspect as the underlying economic changes and geo-political consequences continue to unfold.

By that time labour will have to be a very different party to reflect that new situation, it is very hard to see it happening before then.

To expect the required level of transformation to occur before the next election is neither realistic or helpful, they have to hunker down for the long haul I think.


I actually feel a little bit sorry for Ed. I doubt he will be leading the party by the time (if) they win another election... destined to be a Neil Kinnock type figure perhaps.

Social democracy is unaffordable.
Either you are a socialist or a capitalist.

The sooner the Labour Party wakes up to this fact the better.

"The unresolved debate within Labour is whether or not it can achieve the social objectives it believes in with a smaller state."

I suggest there is no 'debate'. The answer's long been known to be no.
Dig out Debtjuggler's quote from the end of a 1990s academic article cited in at the end of August as that struck at the heart of Libertarian economics.

/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2010/08/as_the_leaves_turn_gold_the_wo.html


If the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ editors have a long pause for thought asking how it was that immediately after WII, Britain adopted national socialism (also known as socialism in one country) giving some thought to all the heated anti-fascist populist rhetoric since, and what little is now left of Britain as a consequence (including the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ when it comes to integrity and quality), asking how and why this ever became so. I doubt anyone will ever thank me, as I suspect, that given the way things are going, in no time at all you'll collectively have jumped ship or migrated.

However, should you stay, focus upon behaviour, not on rhetoric (reasons are not causes, that's just the language of politics). It might also help to look for cues in unexpected places, as the markets clearly aren't always right when it comes to determining value, that's just Natural Selection for you. Civilisation is supposed to be about managing life, not returning to the law of the jungle.

We need to keep the two issues of the ongoing size of the state and the level of state borrowing separate - Keynes highlighted the role of the state in being counter-cyclical - the game is boom=surplus, recession=deficit - get this one wrong you'll get a depression.

But Keynes wasn't looking at economies against the backdrop of such huge deficits in public and private borrowing - neither was he doing his analysis in a world of such huge trade imbalances. Yes QE has been used much more that increased spending to attempt to stave off a double dip recession, but has it worked?

IMHO simply pumping more liquidity into the system doesn't mean that it results in more lending to businesses - there is always going to be a risk calculation by the banks, and given the state of their balance sheets and increased regulation of capital ratios etc., there is a risk that all this liquidity will just leak away from UK PLC to our competitors' industries if they are more competitive, on into bankrolling speculators.

So what is the right role for the state today? Firstly it can't be seen in isolation from the rest of the economy - for example, if we had full employment there would be a lot less need for welfare payments or "make work" schemes to soak up unemployed people.

Should the Clause 4 approach be reinstated? The argument for it is probably the failure of rail privatisation, the collapse of industries like coal, steel, shipbuilding, etc, but would we really be willing to fork out to renationalise electricity, gas, BA & BT? No. Are we happy to have applied good, solid socialist policy to taking such a huge stake in the banking industry? No we're not - there are plenty of other good ways to invest hundreds of billions in the UK.

So if we don't see expanding the role of the state as practical, a priority or even desirable, how far should it contract? The ConDems have agreed that the NHS is here to stay - there are other areas of similar concensus, broadly around protecting those in need, even if we disagree about what constitutes "need" and what level of support is provided. Ditto defence - ditto policing, ditto most other areas - then the ConDems want a quango cull - we'll need to see what this means. Suffolk's virtual local government approach is a radical departure - we need to see what it really means on the ground.

That leaves the role of the state in the economy and industry - this is already heavily shackled by EU competition rules and by GATT obligations and I think this is the key battleground for Ed Miliband.

We don't really want civil servants running commercial companies, neither do we want taxpayer's money that is needed for public works and services diverted into bankrolling the private sector, so spreading scarce reesources too thin.

What we do want is for our private sector to provide the jobs and tax revenue the country needs. Government still holds the key to creating the right economic climate to grow businesses and our economy, which at the moment is built on the Washington Concensus plus the assumption that the City will bring in enough invisible exports and taxes to fund the yawning gap in our balance of trade, and to bankroll the public sector. Both these assumptions are now busted flushes and our options for good old reflation by borrowing & spending are blocked by the level and cost of our debts.

Where does that leave the Labour Party's options for the future? Well, addressing the root causes of the problem - too higher level of imports, plus too few manufacturing jobs = deficit + borrowing. Labour needs to break with the free marketeers, to spell out that British industry cannot compete in rigged markets and use the power of the state through the public sector to impose import tarriffs on unfair exporters - Obama is about to do this in the US - and take action to re-energise UK manufacturing.

Labour should not see the size of the public sector as a measure of how socialist it is - we should measure outcomes and quality of life, not the number of civil servants employed. But neither should we go on accepting the mantra that "it's not the job of Government to back winners" - the merchant banking business virtually disappeared in the credit crunch - this was supposed to be their job - but as the banks can't or won't pick up the load, that only leaves government in a position to act.

There is a clear choice between the ConDems and Labour - a supine, ideological policy of slashing the state and hoping the private sector will move in to replace it, or to actively manage and intervene in the economy in the right direction. Labour needs to end the supernatural belief in the magic of the market and develop a programme for government that will rebalance the economy that is pragmatic and practical to deliver a sustainable economy, a sustainable society that is also environmentally sustainable.

Ed Miliband knows a thing or two about sustainability from his environmental background - he needs to develop a model based on this as the core concept for Labour - "fairness" is fluffy cloud politics - sustainable is something you can get to grips with, measure and forecast.

Ed will fall into line, the only one that COULD have made a difference was Abbott and she would never have got the job as Labour does not do LEFT as they are social democrats and as Marx said...'the social democrats are the first lieutenants of capitalism.....

@3 duvinrouge

The Labour Party has never been socialist in your sense and never will be. The members and supporters wouldn't wear it. I was a member for 25 years: Branch secretary, branch chairman, constituency press officer, shortlisting committee, council candidate etc.

If you knock on doors and talk of "isms", the door will be shut in your face. What people want to hear are concrete measures which will improve their lives, or stop them getting worse. In any community, you need to be known and trusted before people are prepared to give you more than 30 second of their time.

Forget the Labour Party - right or wrong it isn't for you. Left entryism won't work either - the militant tendency tried it and got nowhere. Most of the leaders were chancers anyway; though I always respected Dave Nellist. Right entryism? Well that may be a different matter - I always thought Tony Blair was a right entryist.

There are many types of socialism, and a number of free-market philosophies which aim to counteract the contradictions of the present system. Social Credit is one which attracted support in the past, and may do again.

Your views seem to me somewhere between the SPGB and the Libertarian Communists I knew when I was a student. They are mentioned in Wikipedia as the ones who were expelled from the SPGB



Take it from me - the Labour Party will always be your enemy. Join or form something else and knock on doors. Be prepared that you will learn more from this than those whose doors you knock on.

Only the Westminster Village is concerned or worried about what Labour will or will not do next.

They are out of power for the next 5 years so what they do or do not do now is of little concern to the majority of people in this country who do most of the working, the living and the dying.

Only a complete numpty does not now realise that the Brown & Darling Great Bank Bail-out ripped-off the nation in order to make bankers richer. That's what Labour has done for the ordinary British Public - good ain't it!?

No one has really challenged or questioned them on this. They have not even been made to sweat by some difficult questions let alone brought to book.

So Labour MPs and so-called grandees can puff and preen and talk endlessly on the news programmes. Journalists will question, fawn over and sometimes adore them... pampering egoes and indulging the odd delusion... but it is all meaningless isn't it?

Labour is of no consequence until 2014 at the earliest - between now and then they will have numerous changes of policy, several u-turns and the egoes being pampered and flattered today may not even be in Parliament come the next election. Labour might even have a new leader by then.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will angst about our house prices, our jobs and our pensions, or lack of them, and carry on regardless. You never know - oneday we might even rebel against the minions of political and economic conformity that call themselves politicians.

What chance a British Tea Party of the Centre Left?

Excellent contribution No. 5. It easily forgotten that the mass disaffection with New Labour began before the credit crunch and yet the press in castigating Ed Miliband seem to want more of the same - another Blair! It also easily forgotten that the Lib Dems portrayed themselves as more left than Brown-Darling. Now it is all slash and burn so we can please the IMF and it is by no means certain the coalition will survive beyond three years. The effects of the CSR have yet to kick in but will be evident before the local elections.

For balance, Ben Bernanke only contemplated an increase in medium term inflation goals following a severe bout of deflation where people were losing confidence in the central bank to maintain price stability. Only in this drastic ( his word) scenario could he conceive this should be done. In fact, he said it was inappropriate for the US to do this in the current circumstances...and then went on to list all the downsides to such a policy, for example increasing the risk premia on holding debt ( like US Treasuries or gilts) where there was an inflation loosening. I think the context of Bernanke's mention of this is important.

I agree that the debate focuses too much on fiscal matters, and therefore someone ( it would be nice to see HM Opposition getting involved) should be asking questions about so-called monetary intervention by BoE, QE/bank bail-out 7, why it hasnt worked as initially intended ( ie to help the real economy as opposed to financial companies), what dangerous bubbles it might have created, the risks it poses to the asset classes it has distorted, how it could be reversed etc.

@8 Tawse

"What chance a British Tea Party of the Centre Left?"

Bloody Good Idea! perhaps we can call it the Left-Tea Party ...?...;-D

We need a list of practical measures, which must in my view start with money reform (or none of the others will work).

I'll have a think over the next few weeks while I'm revising for my OU exam on October 20th. Bye 'til after then. :-D

We don't seem to hear much discussion of the economic model of the "mutual" firm. Surely the joint ownership by the employees and customers (the main stakeholders of the firm) minimises the potential for confrontation. The market is not always the ultimate arbiter of economic efficiency, and nor is the state.

The Co-Op has a credible track record of running funeral services, farming, retailing and even (safe!) banking. Certainly in sectors where innovation is secondary to other key characteristics (such as stability, service, safety etc.) then a mutual firm is the best method for balancing inherent tensions to everyone’s satisfaction.

Surely this model provides a (non anarchic!) means of direct democracy whilst also enabling greater social awareness and conscience.

Mutuals need not be "monopolistic" nor corrupt. Aspects for which both socialist / statist organisations as well as Capitalist ones have fallen foul of.

They can adapt with the times when needed, but also provide the sense of stability & dependability that we need for uncertain times ahead.

"Surely this model provides a (non anarchic!) means of direct democracy whilst also enabling greater social awareness and conscience."

No. For 'non-anarchistic' just try the substitute 'private-sector' in order to see better see what's pragmatically going on. The rest is merely not-so-clever school-talk, best ignored as distraction - the stuff which serves to keep undergraduates etc off the streets and journalists employed.

. At 3:27pm on 27 Sep 2010, richard bunning wrote:

"Labour should not see the size of the public sector as a measure of how socialist it is - we should measure outcomes and quality of life, not the number of civil servants employed."

I can only conclude from what you write that you are still rather young.

Do you really understand, I ask, that putting all of the means of production, communication and exchange into public ownership essentially means that everyone in employment is a civil servant? This includes banking (means of exchange). The objective is to provide work for people and for people to work for each other. That is the idea of the state.

The problem is making it work. To make it work one has to have manageable people, a strong police force and big army. You have to outlaw, and police, anarchists. Anarchists are unruly. Anarchists are anti-social. Anarchists refuse to be regulated and can be very clever at getting their own way at the expense of others. That is why statist regimes are authoritarian. It's because the means of production, exchange and communication are all in public ownership that they are totalitarian. The idea is simple but it's hard to implement and sustain in the absence of sound population management. Look closely at post WWII rhetoric and Liberal-Democratic foreign policy waged against statist regimes (e.g. Cuba, USSR, N Korea, Zimbabwe either militarily or using sanctions and Human Rights), and you'll see how population management has been vilified in the interest of predatory 'free' markets aka consumerism at home regardless of how mature people are. The language of choice is peddled like a candy and drugs..

You think the NHS is safe? Just look at polyclinics, or speak to consultants.

Back in the late Sixties Labour sought to recruit me: a young politics graduate.

I didn't bite as I have always been concerned at the love affair Labour had with the concept of the big state. The only way I could equate the big state with the idea of socialism was in the Soviet system and that was the last thing I wanted.

So I followed the path of the libertarian left into the political oblivion occupied by moralists and intellectuals who won't dirty their hands with corporate power.

I did eventually find a role in life in developing flat management systems within the SME sector. This is usually called shirt-sleeve management where the boss is at the coal-face with the workers. In such environments you have to empower the work-force, you have to ensure there is a decent split of the profits and advice is free between the employees and the proprietor(s).

These models work and work well. They do not suffer the productivity problems of corporate culture where there is time and energy for office politics. You either get on with the job or get out.

I see no reason why such a model should not go that one step further into proper workers' control. This was the original cooperative idea. This was the vision of the mutualists.

The big challenge is why not?

The big challenge to Labour is whether it is even aware of this? Somehow I don't think so as there are no easy careers for the sharp-elbowed petty bourgeois in this economic model. That is the problem the Labour Party has: it should really be called the Movement for Outdoor Relief for the Lower Middle Class.

the uk political class has no nation building science., which as the iraq inquiry showed was behind the fiascos of iraq and afghanistan and the current uk predicament.

One doesn't get the sense, in the labour leadership, of a guardian class motivated by the poverty of the 1930s with a 'never again' attitude that gave them the energy and dynamism to fight through against establishment opposition things like the NHS.

the current guardian class are blinded by false idols of equality and fairness as if just saying them means something. So we have gone from the poverty of the 1930s to people getting 30k a year in benefits so they can never get a job. Can't rally guild that 'poverty' lilly much more? Gone from the poverty of no basic medical care to people getting sex changes. Can't rally guild that 'poverty' lilly much more? And so on. The 1930s dragons are slain except for what some call 'long finance'.

the poverty' these days is not in material things where food is so cheap people are obese The poverty lies not in the things of the body but the things of the mind like skills, in the arts, in the the lack of philosophy that allows philistinism and false idol pig philosophy to dominant creating a chav culture which is nothing other than the poverty of self respect.

ie we are poor in the good and the things of the good because the guardian class do not take it as the highest idea of the mind but substitute ersatz like fairness. You can be fair without being good [e.g in the thief model who steals from everyone so is 'fair'] but you cannot be good without being fair. So why choose the lesser over the greater as the basis for a world view?

If the good is the highest idea of the mind what follows?

#8. At 4:32pm on 27 Sep 2010, tawse57

Great post...please LEARN from 'admonishment' from others, despite their style. Don't take it personally.

Always keep posting!

If only some of the posters on here could run the country!

I sincerely ask you all others to listen to the part of the Radio 4 'Today' programme from this afternoon (from 27 mins onwards on the 'Rheinland solution').
/iplayer/console/b00txgxq/PM_27_09_2010

There is no austerity in the Rheinland.

14. At 9:23pm on 27 Sep 2010, stanilic wrote:

"The only way I could equate the big state with the idea of socialism was in the Soviet system and that was the last thing I wanted."

Then you were growing up in the 50s and rebelling against the state like so many others. You were just another recruit to anarchism other teenagers and youths. Libertarianism was a tool of the anti-state right, not left. You should try to describe what you did not in terms of how you were induced to see the world, i.e. as others abused you to make it go the way they wanted, but as it was looking at the outcome. If you don't do that, you won't see what I'm telling you, and harsh though it is, unless more see it, things will steadily get worse as it was .....nihilism.
.

#7 Sasha Clarkson

"The Labour Party has never been socialist in your sense and never will be."

Yes, the Labour Party is social democratic not socialist.

When each generation thought their kids would be better off than them, it was quite rational not to want to overthrow capitalism.
But the post-war boom, based upon cheap energy (i.e. oil) has finished.
Todays kids are going to be worse off than than their parents.

To try & maintain profit rates the working classes will be squeezed more & more, e.g. unemployment, lower wages, more debt, longer hours, retiring later, etc.
The conditions of the working classes are getting worse.

Social democracy cannot help, because the capitalist rate of profit can't afford it.

Hence, the Labour Party needs to wake up to the new reality.
The next phase of the crisis will focus minds because it will be much harder to stop capitalism descending into severe recession.

Social conditions shape consciousness.
The Labour Party may not be destined to always be social democratic.

17

The more you change the more you stay the same.

Labour are only Social Democrats in the personal perspective of a certain demographic.
For instance, LAbour are, in the perspective of the millions of average wage earners priced out of housing, Economic Facists.

[The Labour Party are directly responsible for inflating the biggest asset bubble in History. The Housing Market.
Labour then transferred that debt onto everyone else in society.

So our money is being stolen, through QE, Low IR, increased taxes, mortgate relief, to pay for this toxic mortgage debt, to bail out the banks. In effect, our money is being de-valued and stolen to pay for other peoples houses.
Whilst keeping us in debt slavery. Keeping houses massively overinflated, and ensuring millions can never afford their own small house.]
But this is not a 'socialist' act.

The Labour party has implemented policies which support one section of a society, to the extreme detriment of another section of that society [via blatant theft and cronyism]

The most notable characteristic of a FACIST ideology is the separation and persecution or denial of equality to a specific segment of the population.

The preferred class lives in relative comfort, while the oppressed class lives in a Facist state.

Labour are completely justifiably hated like no other government whom has held power amongst certain segments of society.

And Labour have yet to even comment on those issues......

"19. At 10:18am on 28 Sep 2010, stanilic wrote:
17

The more you change the more you stay the same."

That's a bit cryptic, but leaving paranoia and other irrelevancies aside, let's run with the theme and see where it goes. Can I make you think self-critically?

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳2 screened on "Unequal Opportunities with John Humphrys" last night.
This examined the 'educational attainment gap' between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils.

Someone coming to this cold might be concerned and ask "What is this educational attainment gap? Why does it seem to be the case that schools which have pupils from better off families do better than those from worse off families?" At one point, Humphreys visited the chap responsible for TEACH FIRST based in Canary Wharf. This is a private concern which recruits/trains people to be good teachers. The chap said it was purely a business concern and that he had no background in education, just business.

Question: What's possibly wrong here? Is there subterfuge, or is it a case of innocents abroad? How does one go about deciding?

21

I think I will continue with being cryptic.

"... it's interesting that it took a pollster not a politician to write it ..."

No, the problem is that a pollster is more likely to believe in the literal truth of his own polls. I wouldn't put too much weight behind Kellner. The article makes a big jump from assertions based on his poll data that the public would not sustain higher taxes, and that they prefer cuts to higher taxes. But, regarding the former, if you re-phrase the poll questions to be more direct - would you pay higher taxes in order to provide this service - then the results are somewhat different. Regarding the latter, it's not surprising that the poll ratings right now - after months of softening up by the coalition and before the cuts bite - reflect a grudging agreement with the conventional rhetoric. But wait until the cuts bite and we will see if they are so popular.

Kellner is right, though, that the public distrust the government over the expenditure of taxes. But that is also a reflection of natural distrust, the fact of continuous anti-state coverage in the right-wing media, and the expenses scandal. The real battle for Labour is to make a convincing case for a larger state. It can be done. If you go to France, Denmark, Germany, Scandinavia, for example, then free or inexpensive childcare is not controversial. People there are as anti-tax as here. But they still see the merits in comprehensive state provision of many benefits, and the middle classes are often the main beneficiaries.