I have published this video this morning. In it, I argue that wealth is not just pounds saved. It's also good health and education, a sustainable environment, decent housing, and much more. So why does Labour, when it talks about growth, only seem to talk about finance?
The audio version of this video is here:
The transcript is:
Labour says it wants to increase wealth, but what does it mean by wealth?
I think we're meant to assume that it is talking about increasing the financial wealth of the UK, a figure that is already £15 trillion when we look at private financial wealth in this country, and bigger if we take into consideration, of course, the assets of the state.
So, is that the number they're talking about?
Or are they talking about income, the gross domestic product of the country? Is that the wealth they're referring to? Because if they are, that's not wealth, that's income, and they're not the same thing in economic terms.
But do we need to see an increase in the stock of private sector financial wealth in this country to deliver change when we've already got £15 trillion pounds worth of that wealth? My answer is no, I don't think we do.
We do need more houses, but we don't necessarily need an increase in the value of the existing stock of houses.
We do need better pensions, but that doesn't necessarily mean we need to increase the six trillion or so pounds already saved in pension funds.
And do we even need to measure this wealth in financial terms?
I would like the stock of our wealth in terms of healthy people to increase.
I'd like the stock of our education wealth, in terms of us being better educated people, to increase.
I'd like the stock of our natural environment, the wealth in the world around us, to increase, by cutting pollution, and taking shit out of rivers, to be blunt.
I'd like to see the world being wealthier in terms of the quality of life that people can enjoy because too many don't have a decent quality of life at present.
And I blame that in no small part on the government.
Those things seem to me to be really important measures of wealth.
So why is Labour focusing only on the stack of financial wealth in the country? Have they got that wrong? Are they heading for the wrong target? Are they not going to deliver what the people of this country want?
I fear they are going to fail. And that's because they can't work out what's important and therefore increase it.
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And I blame that in no small part on the government.”. That’s the libertarian view too. It’s funny how the communists and libertarians can start from the same place in their thinking
Orthodox Marxism and Libertarianism are remarkably similar ideologies. They both assert that if you get the economy “right” – i.e. according to their prescription – then everything else will turn out right. They both are attracted to a quantity theory of money. They both advocate a small or nonexistent state and yet require a strong state to work. According to Marx, under communism, the state would wither away. In both cases the advocates of the ideology think that it is justified to impose their ideology using violence.
Finally both ideologies seem to attract similar personality types. In Russia and China, committed Marxists seem to be able to transition seamlessly into oligarchs.
American Libertarianism is nothing like European Libertarianism.
That is a crucial distinction. They are utterly and absolutely incompatible.
Marx fell out with Bakunin at the 2nd International over the authoritarian nature of his prescriptions. Bakunin, one of the fathers of anarchism, held that libertarian socialism, then titled anarchism, being mutualistic, does not require authoritarian institutions.
Marx had been highly critical and destructive of Proudhon – he of “all property is theft” renown, and that was the trigger to Bakunin’s absolute denial of Marxian authoritarianism.
Libertarian socialism does not require ” withering away of the state” because there is no centralised top down power structure in the first place, but a series of layers of collective and collaborative self governing decision making. This was the situation immediately post 1917.
Post 1917 Bolshevism had to destroy mutualism by establishing the absolute dominance of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat”.,
This involved a bloody civil war, actually much of it fought in Ukraine, and required the original power of the soviets through their socialist organising committees to be suppressed and taken over by absolutist, authoritarian, Leninist central committee control headed by a narrow Bolshevik leadership cadre.. i.e. a dictatorship.
The final victory of Marxist authoritarianism post 1917, over the delegated powers of the soviets, is generally marked by the failure of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921.
It then morphed into totalitarianism in the following decade.
Most anarchists believe(d) in non-violence and that ‘the means are the ends” as opposed to the essential Marxist commitment to violent overthrow, but recognised that violent resistance was sometimes necessary at an instrumental level.
In anarchism, or libertarian socialism, those collective powers that do exist, are built up in various federalistic forms such as syndicalism, by consent and consensus between independent groups. Spatially it is federalist. The nation state is seen as far from ideal.
True anarchism is a form of self government and is basically a participatory democracy.
Russian political thinkers of the 19thC like Herzen and Kropotkin identified, observed and described self government with their perspectives originating in peasant, and post serf, agrarian Russia with villages and communities self organising and co-operating, both socially and economically. They ran their own lives and solved any problems that arose.
Kropotkin identified such mutualism and reciprocity from their ways of life.
Polanyi also identifed these social values as pre-capitalist, and arguably EP Thompson noted the same mutual aid in ‘The Making of the English Working Class’ too.
The key words are mutualism and reciprocity.
These have now re-emerged in 21stC environmental movements.
Today, Murray Bookchin probably provides the most obvious succession to 19thC anarchist thinking.
Any delegation of powers in anarchism is exactly that, it is iterative, and is most definitely not the handing over of power in a representative system – say in a single vote every five years, such as we claim is liberal democracy.
American libertarianism, by contrast, is exclusively individualistic and has been appropriated by the laissez faire, free marketeers as a justification for their self seeking forms of capitalism, where capital still holds the majority of power, and property rights are absolute and strictly enforced.
It is rooted in social Darwinism, whereas European libertarian thought is founded on mutualism.
There is some 19thC overlap – the egoism of Max Stirner being the main crossover between European libertarian thinking and American libertarians, and later Emma Goldman.
These adherents even self define as anarcho-capitalists – an absolute contradiction in terms, given the rigidity and coercion involved in capitalist institutions.
So please, anyone using the word ‘libertarianism’ be aware of the concept’s long and complicated history, and distinguish between the largely American red in tooth and claw form, and the exactly opposite of mutual aid in European thought.
In Marxism it is called “the withering away of the state” (ironic given Lenin and Stalin’s record)
There is a framing problem here; the right and left are not talking about the same thing. Marxists imagined empowering people having destroyed capitals power (and the state that went with it) but were vague about what followed. Anarchists got it. The right wing economic libertarians just ignore power altogether so whoever has by getting rich just bosses around those who don’t – with no safety net because hey you aren’t a survivor of the fittest if you are poor. Social Democrats want to reform capitalism to give it a human face but since Thatcherism have been too ready to accept economic liberal framing and haven’t addressed power, they are now struggling as that power is used to stop them doing even modest things.
Unless you acknowledge your philosophical point of view and relentlessly explain why it is different and that your argument start from different values you end up being boxed in, the power of the Overton window is used to make alternative ideas seem daft. That’s why people who ask for a vision are just asking to be comforted by having something to hope for and it’s why those who say they should shut up and be “pragmatic” are wrong.
Richard I am happy to say never makes this mistake.
Good example today – Guardian article about Cataract operations; The pragmatic view – just fix it for patients, outsource, dont worry about the use of the private secotor. The real result – resources, expertise, trained staff etc. taken from the NHS to support profit. Long term damge to capability. Profit is a siphon taking away the increase of the common wealth, it is not a “right livelihood”.
Now reimagine and reframe; empower small group of professionals to set up and run a cataract service (which can be run as a a “sausage machine”) organised as a cooperative within the NHS framework and you might have something worth trying BUT thats not what is on the table.
Thanks
Financial wealth and GDP are completely different things. For a start, the units of measurement are different. Financial wealth is measured £ while GDP is measured in £/year. Confusing the two is like confusing a distance with a speed.
It would be interesting to see economist and former Cabinet Secretary, Gus O’Donnell, added to the growing list of non-MP’s being appointed as ministers by the Government. He often states ‘GDP is a measure of economic performance and not wealth’ and long championed the use of an alternative measure, Gross Domestic Wellness (GDW).
GDP is not even a measure of positive economic performance if any notion of ‘value’ is added to the concept.
A multiple pile up on a motorway or major flood generates economic activity hence contributes to GDP, but both have negative ‘value’ to the people involved.
Additionally it is a horrendously sexist measure as it deliberately ignores non financial contributions, mostly made by women.
Bhutan certainly are on the right track with GDH… but there is still no generally accepted alternative to GDP, which is very disappointing.
I’d emphasise the role of the UN’s SDG as a sensible basis for an alternative way of thinking.
Perhaps wellbeing is too hard a concept for the dismal science.
Well if you’re going to suck up to the rich to benefit yourself as a politician (already Labour Party funding comes more from the rich than trade unions) then you have to first focus on what the rich want which is even more money for themselves regardless of how others lead their lives. It’s a mental illness you’re dealing with here that fails to understand that life actually works more productively and with greater stability on the basis of balancing your needs against those of others and the planet (the symbiosis of hologenomics). The failure to understand is excused by the ridiculous trickle down scam argument which is all that Scammer and Deceives preach!
A friend told me yesterday that he is trying to persuade his daughter not to have children because the future of our planet looks so bleak. In contrast, I have several times heard of indigenous tribes that think seven generations ahead.
Hurricane Beryl ‘amassed its strength from record warm waters that are hotter now than they would be at the peak of hurricane season in September … Experts say the hotter water temperatures are a result of the global climate crisis driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.’ (https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/01/hurricane-beryl-caribbean) It also was the earliest category 4 Atlantic hurricane on record.
So, Rachel Reeves wants increasing wealth when we know that the use of fossil fuels must be rapidly phased out. That means bringing private car construction to a halt very soon and reorganising our society to manage with public transport and active travel – which also encourage physical fitness, provide healthier air and fewer road traffic accidents
Even though house-building is energy intensive, a massive construction programme is being planned. There also needs to be more thought about anticipating travel demands. What’s more, even more houses – as far as I have heard – will do little to address the homelessness problem unless there are restraints on those who own more housing space than they need.
Can the whip system allow for any discouragement of ownership of houses and vehicles? Is it possible to have fair taxation of those who have much more wealth than they need?
Consumption must be restrained in companies that are designed to maximise profits. Public ownership of energy and water companies would make much more sense. Could the press magnates permit that – even support it?
A less frantic society which deliberately created more cohesive communities could be so much more enjoyable that nobody would talk – as my friend did – of not wanting grandchildren.
When I was about 10 my granny told my father, in my hearing, that he should never have had us as this was a terrible world to be brought up in.
I really appreciated that.
Yes, excessive consumption has to be integrated into ‘growth’ thinking, and driven out of the economic system. We cannot avoid degrowth.
The rugby league that includes both northern and southern hemisphere teams, and the recent one week tours by English Premiership teams to play ‘friendlies’ in Australia are classic example of this utter unsustainability. Eat yer heart out Thorstein Veblen..
Home building need not be as energy intensive with repurposing, and lifecycle costings being used as a metric.
There is no reason why glass, with very high embodied energy, cannot last hundreds of years.
We have to move to resource utilisation criteria, very rapidly indeed.
There must be a presumption against demolition and redevelopment.
In Manhattan the average life of a building is under 60 yrs, (63yrs across the whole USA) yet we still have whole towns and cities that are basically medieval.
In the UK most of England’s housing stock is pre 1919 – so it is climate amelioration that is the priority, to improve energy performance.
Shortlife buildings can only be justified if they are resource light, with reclamation integral to the build cycle.
@tony. “There is no reason why glass, with very high embodied energy, cannot last hundreds of years.” Indeed 2000 year old glass items have been excavated from Han dynasty tombs.
Focusing on one headline gross number – whether that is GDP or wealth – ignores the important factor of distribution. Who gets it?
Left to itself, the great sucking machine of capitalism delivers the bulk of financial returns to those who already have capital. The already wealthy get increasingly wealthier, and (to adopt the analogy from anothe commenter) the “rising tide” drowns everyone else who is anchored to the seabed with chains of poverty. Absent that is mechanisms to reallocate and redistribute via public services.
Another mantra often heard is “There is no free lunch.” However all life on earth is powered, eventually, by the sun, and sunshine is free. So, in a sense, there is a free lunch and the real question is “Who is eating it?”
She means increasing the wealth of the already wealthy. Then some of it will trickle down to the rest of us won’t it. Er, won’t it?
Very useful comment, Brian fish, to seek to make distinctions of that kind.
Climate catastrophes are racing towards us. Even jet plane travel is vulnerable: “One Dead and Dozens Injured After ‘Extreme Turbulence’ ” (last month).
The media could be much more helpful and there could be restrictions or requirements to make the output more positive so that we avoid the worst. Reith identified the BBC’s public service aims to educate, inform and entertain.
If sport is included in entertainment – and it’s certainly not either of the other two – then BBC output is perhaps 95% entertainment. Even news discussions encourage shallowness, brevity and interruptions to keep viewers and listeners ‘entertained’.