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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780255367721 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | London Publishing Partnership |
| Publication date: | 02/07/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 398 |
| File size: | 838 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
THE ENDURING APPEAL OF SOCIALISM
Introduction: socialism is popular
Support for socialism in the abstract
Socialism is popular in Britain. Not just among millennials, but also among people in their 30s and 40s. According to a YouGov (2016a) survey, two in five British people aged between 18 and 50 years have a favourable opinion of socialism. Another two in five are not sure, leaving only one in five with an unfavourable opinion. Capitalism, meanwhile, has far more critics than supporters in the same age group; in fact, it has more critics than supporters across all age groups.
In a similar survey, 43 per cent of respondents said that having 'a genuinely socialist government' would make the UK 'a better place to live' (YouGov 2017a). One in five respondents were indifferent or unsure, leaving only 36 per cent who thought that it would make the UK 'a worse place to live'.
In a complementary survey, only 29 per cent of people between the ages of 18 and 50 agreed with the statement 'Competition among private-sector companies increases living standards for the great majority of people, as it leads to new and better goods and services, creates extra jobs and keeps down prices' (YouGov 2017b). But as many as 37 per cent agreed with the opposite statement, namely 'Competition among private-sector companies reduces the living standards of millions of people, because it helps mainly the rich, leads to poverty wages for many workers, and often results in shoddy goods and services.' (The remainder answered 'Don't know'.)
Those findings are corroborated by a recent Populus survey, which asked respondents about their main associations with capitalism, socialism and various other -isms. Common associations with capitalism include 'greedy', 'selfish', 'corrupt' and 'divisive' (but also 'innovative'). Common associations with socialism include 'For the greater good', 'Delivers most for most people' and 'Fair', terms that almost nobody in Britain associates with capitalism (Legatum Institute 2017). The most common negative association with socialism is 'naïve', a trait which is not really all that negative, and which some may actually find endearing.
Support for socialist policies
Terms like 'socialism' and 'capitalism' may mean different things to different people. But support for socialism in the abstract is also matched by support for individual policies that could reasonably be described as 'socialist', perhaps not on their own, but at least as a bundle.
Industry nationalisations, for example, enjoy widespread popular support. A majority of people favour the (re-)nationalisation of bus companies, energy providers, water companies, the railways and Royal Mail (see Figure 1). Where a sector is already nationalised, such as primary/secondary education and healthcare, there is virtually nobody in the country who wants to change that (YouGov 2017c). Earlier, similar surveys show even larger pro-nationalisation majorities for even more industries (YouGov 2016b, 2015a, 2013).
Another survey finds that one in four respondents want to nationalise car companies and travel agents, while one in three want to nationalise food retailing (Legatum Institute 2017).Ian Dunt, the editor of Politics.co.uk, was right when he said that 'the public hardly believe in the private running of anything' (Dunt 2015).
For most industries, the pro-nationalisation majority remains intact even when surveys include an additional, pragmatic-sounding response option such as 'whatever works best' (seeFigure 2). This suggests that for most supporters of public ownership this is a matter of principle rather than a belief in the superior efficiency of the public sector.
Price controls are also a very popular policy, albeit with a lot of variation between sectors (see Figure 3). More than seven out of ten respondents support price caps for energy and public transport, with fewer than one in five opposing. In this particular survey, supporters and opponents of rent controls roughly balance each other, but more recent, similarly worded surveys on the same subject find large majorities favouring rent controls (see Hilton 2016). There is no overall support for Venezuela-style price controls for food and groceries, but a significant minority – more than one in three respondents – are in favour of that as well.
Government regulation and interference with business decisions are also popular, both in the abstract and when specific examples are mentioned (see Table 1).
A relative majority also supports a larger state, as opposed to the status quo or a smaller state (see Figure 4). The margin vis-à-vis the status quo is not huge, and it is not consistent over the years. But it is a consistent finding that virtually nobody in Britain wants the state to be any smaller than it currently is.
Most of these policies are not exceptionally radical on their own. A nationalised railway industry or capped bus fares would not turn Britain into North Korea. We can find plenty of prosperous market economies which have implemented one or more of those policies (although none that have implemented the whole package).
But what such results do show is that the often-heard claim that Britain is in the grip of a 'neoliberal hegemony' is the exact opposite of the truth. In the economic sphere, the zeitgeist is statist and interventionist. Support for free markets is an exotic and unpopular fringe opinion. As Allister Heath, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, puts it (2017):
Spend more, regulate more, tax more: it's UK politics' stultifying new orthodoxy. Its proponents [...] set the parameters of our increasingly narrow national conversation. [...] There is no longer a debate: merely a relentless assault on capitalism [...] amplified by 'centrists' who keep conceding to the Left.
The anti-capitalist mainstream
Surveys provide a glimpse into the mood among the general population. Among the politically most active sections of society, socialist – or at least anti-capitalist – ideas have long been predominant, and highly fashionable. For example, all high-profile protest movements in recent decades – be it anti-austerity, Occupy or anti-globalisation – were explicitly anti-capitalist. In 2011, a small 'Rally Against Debt' in Westminster attracted considerable media coverage, although it was, according to the New Statesman, only attended by about 200 people. This was because it was so counterintuitive. We are so used to the idea that protest must be left-wing and anti-capitalist that the idea of a protest against government largesse feels jarring.
Last but not least, the politics/economics sections of high street book stores are also invariably dominated by anti-capitalist literature. The books of Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Yanis Varoufakis, Owen Jones, Ha-Joon Chang, Paul Mason, Russell Brand, etc., are bestsellers within their genre; pro-market books are a rarity. Writers such as Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman or Thomas Piketty are clearly politically on the centre-left, but in relative terms their books are often the most 'neoliberal' ones one can find in a typical high street bookstore. If this constitutes a 'neoliberal hegemony', one wonders what a left-wing hegemony would look like.
After the 2017 General Election, the Financial Times claimed that 'Jeremy Corbyn has staged an unprecedented socialist revival'. He has done no such thing. One cannot revive what has never been dead. Socialism has never been away; it has just not always been at the immediate forefront of day-to-day politics. It may have returned there with 'Corbyn-mania', but the appeal of socialism was never about any one particular political candidate, party or movement.
Some readers will probably find it odd that although this book is partly about socialism in Britain, it has next to nothing to say on 'Corbyn-mania', Corbynomics, Momentum, etc. But this follows logically from the recognition that 'Corbynistas' are not the radical insurgents they think themselves to be. They do not, and indeed could not, challenge 'the prevailing orthodoxy' because in many ways their ideas are the prevailing orthodoxy. They are just a political manifestation of a widespread antipathy to the market economy, which long predates them, and which will outlive them, in whatever form. When Hayek dedicated his book The Road to Serfdom to the socialists of all parties, he knew what he was doing. Today, he would probably dedicate it to the socialists of all parties, protest movements, campaign groups, charities, universities, religious organisations, media outlets and social media platforms.
The pervasiveness of socialist assumptions
What is perhaps more important than support for any specific socialist policy or set of policies is the fact that socialist assumptions about economic life permeate our whole economic policy discourse. These assumptions are rarely spelt out explicitly, and most people would probably not even regard them as 'socialist' – just as 'common sense'.
Take the above-mentioned support for nationalising industries, such as energy or train operators: this need not, in itself, be a socialist position. One can take the view that market competition is generally beneficial, but that some sectors are just not amenable to it (say, due to natural monopoly elements). This is not a socialist argument. But it is not the argument that is usually made.
The conventional argument is that 'profiteering corporations' are 'ripping off the public', and must therefore be nationalised in order to make them work for 'the common good'. They must be made accountable to the public rather than to private shareholders. Very few people will regard this sentiment as 'socialist'. But for at least four reasons, it very much is.
Firstly, average profit margins in the sectors where support for nationalisation is strongest are only about 3–4 per cent. This suggests that the argument for nationalisation is not an economic argument at all, but a moralistic impulse – a knee-jerk condemnation of the profit motive. This anti-profit moralism is part of a socialist mindset.
Secondly, the argument rests on the assumption that the public sector is driven by altruistic motives, and that therefore, whatever is done by the state is done with 'the common good' in mind. This is a quintessentially socialist assumption. It is also, to say the least, debatable. As economists of the Public Choice School have demonstrated time and again, self-interested behaviour exists in the public/political sphere as much as anywhere else: senior civil servants trying to expand their budgets and their remit in order to improve their prestige; rent seeking by special interest groups; political clientelism; 'jobs for the boys' tendencies, etc. (see, for example, Tullock 2006 [1976]).
Thirdly, there is the assumption that there must be a conflict between the aim of satisfying people's needs and the aim of earning a profit. But under conditions of voluntary exchange within the rule of law, how else can a company make a profit other than by supplying what people want, at a price they are prepared to pay? How could it be profitable to ignore people's needs?
Fourthly, there is the idea that nationalisation brings an industry 'under democratic control' and makes it 'accountable to the public'. This, too, is a socialist assumption, and a very dubious one at that. As Seldon (2004 [1990]: 179) explained:
[T]he notion that 'society as a whole' can control 'its productive resources' is common in socialist writing but is patently unrealistic. The machinery of social control has never been devised. There is no conceivable way in which the British citizen can control the controllers of 'his' state railway or NHS, except so indirectly that it is in effect inoperative.
And elsewhere (ibid.: 210):
What belongs nominally to everyone on paper belongs in effect to no-one in practice. Coalfields, railways, schools and hospitals that are owned 'by the people' are in real life owned by phantoms. No nominal owner can sell, hire, lend, bequeath or give them to family, friends or good causes. Public ownership is a myth and a mirage. It is the false promise and the Achilles' heel of socialism. The effort required to 'care' for the 50-millionth individual share of a hospital or school owned by 50 million people, even if identifiable, would far outweigh the benefit; so it is not made, even if it could be. The task is deputed to public servants answerable to politicians who in turn are in socialist mythology answerable to the people. In this long line of communication the citizen is often in effect disenfranchised.
We can also see a quasi-socialist mindset in populist rhetoric which frames practically all social conflicts as conflicts between 'the people' (also known as 'working people' or 'ordinary people') and 'the elites', or some variation thereof, such as 'the 99 per cent' versus 'the 1 per cent'. This is a watered-down version of Marxist class theory, in which social classes, not individuals or more specific groups, form the main unit of analysis. In this mindset, 'The People' are a homogeneous group with common, and easily identifiable, economic interests and preferences. There is therefore a very easy solution to most of our economic and social problems: get rid of The Elites, and replace them with champions of The People.
But the People-versus-Elites template is a very poor guide to the political conflicts we actually observe. Of course, our personal preferences and economic interests sometimes correlate with social class – just as they sometimes correlate with age, gender, region, family status, ethnicity, tenure, occupational status, religion, nationality or health status. But social class is just one dividing line among many. On virtually all the high-profile issues of our time (Brexit, immigration, the housing crisis, 'austerity', welfare reform, etc.), the dividing lines run across social classes, not between them. Socialists sometimes acknowledge this, but they put it down to a form of 'false consciousness' deliberately created by The Elites in order to distract and divide The People.
This is because socialist mythology treats The People as a romanticised abstraction, which has little to do with actual people. As Terry Pratchett writes in one of his novels:
Some [...] were on the side of what they called 'the people'. Vimes had spent his life on the streets, and had met decent men and fools and people who'd steal a penny from a blind beggar and people who performed silent miracles [...], but he'd never met The People.
People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient.
Socialist assumptions can also be found in the unconditionally sympathetic coverage of industry strikes in the 'progressive' press. Most economists, whatever their political persuasion, would argue that the main determinant of pay levels is productivity. Industrial action may well often be justified, but it is a sideshow: if we want to see wage increases, then we must, first and foremost, support measures that facilitate productivity growth. Economists disagree profoundly over what those measures are, but not on the fundamental point.
Contemporary socialists, however, see living standards primarily as the result of power struggles. Living standards of ordinary people rise when they organise and fight for it, and stagnate or fall when they cease to organise and fight for it. In this mindset, the focus is almost exclusively on the distribution of wealth, not on its generation.
Finally, plenty of controversial causes become a lot more popular as soon as they are cloaked in anti-capitalist rhetoric. For example, Snowdon (2017: 75–80) shows that while 'nanny state' measures (i.e. paternalistic lifestyle regulations) are not particularly popular in Britain, they become so as soon as they are presented as anti-industry measures. The difference is, of course, illusory. It is impossible to make it harder for a company to sell a product without also making it harder for customers to buy that product. Nonetheless, shifting the emphasis from consumers to producers is an effective strategy, because it taps into popular anti-capitalist sentiments.
(Continues…)
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