Thursday, July 19, 2012

Welcome to the (anarcho-fascist) revolution

I am quoting a small segment from wikipedia.org, describing an economic situation where the economy is designed on "the basis of private property and of private initiative, but it is subordinated to the tasks of the state. As part of the relations between workers and employers (the system is) guided by the principles of social Darwinism: the strongest support, rooting out the weakest. In economic practice, this means, on the one hand, protecting the interests of successful businessmen, on the other - the destruction of trade unions and other organizations of the working class".

Ignore some of the more emotive language, and examine the situation described in simple economics: sound like anything familiar in the UK?

It should, because the above situation is more-or-less comparable to the ideological position of the Conservative-led government. By definition, they believe that the private sector to be morally superior to the public sector; that the private sector is considered (by definition) more efficient and more cost-effective in providing services; that the public sector, by comparison, is inefficient and its workers of questionable loyalty, liable to be an arm of the unions; big business is to be indulged as much as possible, the barriers to business torn down in favour of businesses' wishes and against excessive employees' rights. And yet, in spite of the government's indulgence and favour towards business, it still feels the need to control some core design: a strong justice system; a strong policy of border control, while at the same time, encouraging business to out-source beyond the country itself. 
In other words, an illogical contradiction is in place: encouraging the free market, while supporting the the "cartelisation" of the market; against immigration, but in favour of foreign out-sourcing; against the inefficiency and innate incompetence of the public sector, but indifferent to the private sector's identical incompetence; the government wants to out-source services to the private sector, but still be in control of who gets the services; for the free market, but also against the free market.

The Conservative-led government may be considered as disciples of Ayn Rand's economic and ideological vision of a pure form of free market capitalism, but this would be a misnomer. The Conservatives in government are not pure free market capitalists, because they believe that the government should still be in core control of some aspects of the decision-making process - which companies get to run which services. A pure free market would see virtually no government as such at all; as Ayn Rand designed, "government" would only control the justice system and the military: the private sector would provide everything else. 

But the Conservatives have no wish to vote themselves out of existence. The Conservatives plan is more long-term, a slice-by-slice destruction of the British welfare state. As the David Cameron's former-key policy advisor, Steve Hilton, said, by the end of a full term, "everything needs to have changed". This is what the Conservative plan is: a virtual revolution under the noses of the electorate, much of what is being done never part of the Conservatives election manifesto.
Education, health and welfare to be redesigned out of recognition from what existed before, with much of the services handed out to large corporations, and what left pared down to the bare minimum to prevent public revolt. The justice system's public sector services to be similarly handed out to large private firms like the now-infamous G4S: police services, the prisons, and so on. 
This is all happening right now. The continual demonisation of the unions, and the continued quasi-religious zeal in the adherence to non-intervention in the free market, means that the government is indifferent and also feels blameless as the unregulated property market slowly destroys the livelihoods of families across the country; as rising property prices (especially in the uncontrolled rental market) mean that many people on what were once considered "average" salaries find themselves as the new "working poor", spending their salary on rising rents, rising bills, rising fuel, and rising high street prices, with nothing left over at the end of the month.
And all the while, the government claims to be fighting for the interests of the "aspirational classes" (whoever they are!), while at the same time doing almost nothing to help anyone earning less double the average national salary. 

The fact that the Conservatives still claim to represent the "ordinary hard-working, honest families" of Britain is typical of the arrogance of their self-belief. What evidence is there that they have done anything at all to improve the lot of the average person, the average family? None whatsoever. The evidence only points to the opposite. 
The "big con" is that the Conservatives, even after the financial crisis, banking scandals, the various corrupt and morally vacuous (or just mindless) judgements made by members of the government, still believe that they are the party best suited to governing the country, and somehow manage to twist the truth to make enough of the "aspirational" classes believe them, as well as the guaranteed votes of the indifferent and amoral rich. 

The Conservative government is in the middle of carrying out a quiet ideological revolution: you can call it an "anarcho-capitalist" revolution if you like - where the government creates a system of blissful anarchy for big business and the rich, and a system of helpless anarchy for everyone else. But that would be missing some important points, mentioned in the quote at the beginning.
The system described in the quote, which seems to similar to the mindset of the Conservative-led government, is the economic system, not of "anarcho-capitalism", but of fascism.
While the racism and prejudice has been carefully air-brushed out of existence by the likes of David Cameron and his "Chipping Norton set" of cosmopolitan Conservative friends, there still remains the economic ideology, which is unchanged, if slightly cleaned up.

This is the real truth: that while the Tories may have given the appearance of cleaning up their act from the days of being the "Nasty Party", choosing a charming but intellectually vacuous leader in David Cameron, behind the scenes the ideology of "Economic Fascism" remains.
With Cameron content to allow his ministers free rein to forcibly put their revolutionary ideas into practice on the living laboratory of the UK, fear is in the air, with ministers revelling in the psychological terror and "creative chaos" they are creating. And all the while, Cameron acts as the vacuous front-man to this amoral revolution, repeating his mantra:
"There Is No Alternative!".













3 comments:

  1. LDH,

    came across your blog last week and have enjoyed several articles. thank you.

    i'm commenting on this article because of its misappropriation of anarchism. anarchism literally means 'without rule.' it is the stateless, decentralized spiritual order within which humanity existed until the rise of agricultural civilization, a civilization that we can see today is culminating with a secular materialist hive mind of a philosophy.

    anarchism must not be mistaken for the 'chaos' it is advertised as being by the state.

    there is no such thing as anarcho-fascism. fascism is a centralized corporatocracy; today's version, as you know, is called neoliberalism. anarcho-capitalism is a decentralized, market-based, mythical economy which, according to the tenets of anarchism, would presumably be independent, local, directly democratic and, most importantly, voluntary. i say mythical because wealth inequality begets power inequality, and power inequality begets control, and control begets a centralized government as surely as day follows night.

    if you don't mind i'll leave you with a transcendent essay on anarchism:

    http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

    regards,

    reanteben

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment, and I appreciate your careful distinction made between fascism/ neoliberalism and anarcho-capitalism. I was being a bit indulgent with my use of political terminology in this post! As you may have seen from my other post "neoliberalism is the new fascism", I make my point more precisely there.

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  2. :)

    yeah, anarchism is a rooted, self-organizing principle, and as such it is an organic term rather than a political/synthetic term.

    the post you refer to is excellent and the first of yours I read.

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