The Delusion At The Heart Of The Left

ACCORDING to David Selbourne in The Spectator, Tony Blair’s rebranding of Britain’s Labour Party as “New Labour” betrayed the principles and traditions of the left. With the current financial crisis, the Labour Party ought to be going great guns, but it is not. In “Blairism has destroyed the Labour Party” he tries to explain why Labour is flat on its back.

Yet at the very time when socialist and quasi-socialist methods have been adopted to deal with the crisis, Labour, gripped by defeatism, flounders. The reason is not hard to find: Labour as a popular movement, as a party, and as the embodiment of an ethic, was destroyed by Blairism.

This is a rather selective reading of the problem. After all, it was Brown’s boast that he had abolished boom and bust that encouraged government and the private sector to crank up the debt. But for Selbourne the reason for the destruction is that Labour abandoned its principles.

More important, ‘rebranding’ sidelined many of Labour’s old beliefs in the virtues of community, the dignities of productive work and the ethics of public service.

Now this is very helpful because, far from illustrating Labour’s old virtues, Selbourne explains the fundamental delusions at the heart of the social democratic project that lead it again and again to destruction.

First of all: community. The left makes a big deal about community, but conservatives have developed a devastating critique of their notion of “community.” You do not have community when you have a government program. What you have is compulsion. If you want to talk about community you must confine yourself to groups of people that do not wield government power. Back in the nineteenth century ordinary people built this kind of community in a network of non-governmental associations; in the twentieth century the left destroyed it.

Next: productive work. The point about productive work is that it is work for the production of goods and services for other people. It is a form of service. In particular, the capitalist system has cunningly sublimated the warrior virtues instinctive in men to the service of the community. Today men fight for market share not for glory in battle. But the left has always interfered in this process by privileging “the workers.” Once you have started down this road he next step, of course, is to screw the consumers in the interest of protecting the workers. But productive work must always be work that is directed at serving the consumers, not in protecting the producers. We live in the modern economy by doing stuff for others; we thrive by doing things well for other people.

Finally: public service. Joseph Schumpeter rather conclusively argues in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy that Democracy is not the rule of the people. It is the rule of the politicians. The role of the people is to decide which people are to rule them. The politicians compete in a competitive battle for political success. Thus the term “public service” is really misleading. People who work for government and people who compete for political office are people interested in power. They are not really in the service business; they are in the power business.

So these three ideas, the driving principles of the progressive movement, are in fact delusions. They can never be realized, and never could be.

And that is why it is correct to say that the progressive movement and its welfare state are cruel, corrupt, wasteful, unjust, and deluded.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

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Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

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E. G. West, Education and the State

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