Porter’s Pensées

One of the appeals of free-market capitalist theory when it first arrived on the (British) scene in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries was that it appeared to be natural, and so consonant with many of the new scientific assumptions of the time. Leaving an economy untrammelled would enable it to develop, advance and grow in the same way that nature does – plants, animals, humans, diseases, humanity as a species (after Darwin), societies (often as empires), the universe, knowledge… and indeed, almost everything. It was an optimistic view of life and of history, adhered to by Marxists as well as by the free marketists, albeit with the adjustments to the mechanics of economic ‘progress’ that were insisted upon by Karl. (His, remember, was a ‘scientific’ socialism.) And it arguably still prevails in the political discourse of today, and especially in all parties’ emphasis on the necessity for economic growth.

That’s what they nearly all promise; on the assumption that material progress is the main measure of a government’s success, with ‘are you better off now than you were under the last lot?’ being a key question in many politicians’ rhetorical armoury. If people don’t feel ‘better off’, then the previous government will have been deemed to fail in its main mission; if the answer is ‘yes’, the incumbents will have a good chance of getting back into power. Barring major interruptions like wars, economic ‘progress’, measured in monetary terms, is seen as the natural way societies should go. That is why ‘growth’ is so much emphasised in election manifestos today; certainly in Britain, and probably in other countries too.

I don’t know how apt the analogy with ‘nature’ is to this way of thinking; but if it is a factor there seems to me to be an obvious flaw in it. Yes, everything in nature does evolve ‘naturally’; but that isn’t the end of its story. After growth, in every case, comes death, often fired by the same evolutionary mechanisms that powered that self-same growth. Another way of putting this is that every living and evolving thing contains the seeds of its own destruction; as Marx predicted in the case of capitalism, and could be seen in the way capitalism – and indeed the world – are developing today.

If this is so, then we obviously ought to pause before giving capitalism or any other kind of ‘development’ free rein, and perhaps consider better ways of measuring ‘progress’. Another rationale for the free market was always supposed to be that the wealth it created for the rich would invariably ‘trickle down’ to the rest of us; but that no longer seems to be happening, with the gap between the (very) rich and the (pretty) poor widening in most capitalist societies. There’s already enough ‘wealth’ washing around in the world – certainly in Europe and America – to satisfy and motivate everyone if it were shared around more fairly; which of course would require socialism – of a sort – to effect it. Then we shouldn’t need ‘growth’, but only a better distribution of the wealth we have already accumulated; which among other advantages might temper social and political unrest, and even – it could be said – make people nicer. So let’s have done with ‘growth’ as a desideratum, or as a measure of ‘progress’, and manage better with what we’ve got.

Of course this analysis is somewhat simplistic, and not particularly new. As I was composing this post Kajsa came across a reference to a book by the Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito, who calls himself a ‘degrowth Marxist’, which could well express more rigorously what I’m getting at here (see https://www.philonomist.com/en/article/kohei-saito-marxist-pro-degrowth-and-pragmatic). I’ve not yet read the book, but will try to get hold of it. In the meantime, let’s hope that 2025 – growth or no growth – turns out better than 2024.

Bored with simply surviving into old age, without much work to do, apart from posting this inconsequential blog, I’m now thinking – only thinking, as yet – of turning the academic expertise I’ve gained over the past sixty years into writing one of those ‘alternative history’ novels. You know the sort: ‘what if the Neanderthals had won their struggle for dominance over homo sapiens 40,000 years ago’; or ‘Harold had defeated William at the Battle of Hastings in 1066’; or ‘the Reformation had never caught on’; or ‘the Battle of Waterloo had turned out the other way’; or ‘the Indian Mutiny had stopped the British Empire in its tracks’; or ‘Hitler had won World War II’; or ‘Robert Kennedy had survived to become the 36^th President of the USA’; or ‘Diego Maradona’s ‘hand of God’ goal in the World Cup quarter-finals of 1986 had been disallowed’…. and so on. Novels have been written based on most of these fictional scenarios (though not the Maradona one, I think), which are usually quite fun; and can also furnish food for thought for serious historians, who should never assume that anything that has happened in the past was inevitable – certainly not when it could have involved individual human agency. I’ve got the material for this project at my fingertips, to be supplemented by good old Wikipedia; and am now hoping that I may have the imagination to be able to think beyond what was, to some ‘might have beens’.

The particular ‘might have been’ that I’m choosing centres around the British General Election of May 1979, and the notion that Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party actually lost it, thus presumably changing Britain’s subsequent history for at least a decade. This outcome was not inconceivable at the time – what, a woman? and a grocer’s daughter to boot? – as neither was the idea that some of her feistier ideas would not be smoothed down by their contact with political reality if she won. In fact that ‘reality’ turned out very differently from how most of us had predicted it, and so we in Britain ended up where we are now.

The novel will begin with its hero waking up on the morning of 4^th May 1979 to a narrow but secure victory for James Callaghan’s Labour Party; and will continue with a story about him (or her: I’ve not decided yet; it will probably be safer for me to stick to a ‘him’), set against the events that would follow thereafter. I’ll need a good ‘plot’, probably one that involves him (or her) in the politics of the day, but not too prominently. That’s my main difficulty currently: I can’t think of one. Any ideas?

I don’t know if I’m up to this. I’ve tried my hand at speculative fiction before, but got nowhere with it. Inventing history, I have come to realise, is much more difficult than retailing and analysing real events. And I still remember my A-Level English teacher’s assessment of me when I disappointed him by announcing that I was applying to university to read History rather than English: ‘The trouble with you, Bernard, is that you have no imagination’. He may have been right.

Further to my post of 20 Nov…

From Dagens Nyheter, via the Guardian.

MP for Hull, and Blair’s Deputy PM. Probably the last of ‘Old’ Labour. Working-class origins, worked on the Hull ferries, came up via the Trade Union movement and Ruskin College. Much mocked by his social ‘superiors’, but a good and warm-hearted man, with solid socialist principles. (I met him very briefly on a train to Hull. Second-class carriage, of course.)

Who in Britain remembers those ‘Protect and Survive’ pamphlets sent to every home during (I think) the Cuban missile crisis, advising people what to do if an H-bomb hit them? (I only remember ‘hide under the stairs’.) Well, the Swedish government has just circulated this little booklet to all of us here: ‘Important information for Swedish residents, if crisis or war comes.’ Remember how close we are to Russia…

I’ve not blogged recently because of a struggle I’m having with HMRC, which seems to be staffed exclusively by robots. The Swedish Skatteverket is much more customer-friendly. It knows what you’ve earned, for example, before you tell it. One of the advantages, perhaps, of living in a more invasive – and protective – State.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is under fire today for not taking sufficient action against a sex offender, John Smyth, who worked for the Church of England in a number capacities, most of them involving the care of adolescent boys, usually at public schools – Winchester especially. Wiki’s piece on him characterises Smyth as a sadist; and also reveals that he was a defender (as a lawyer) of Mary Whitehouse, the infamous campaigner for ‘morality’ – rather narrowly defined – in the sixties and seventies:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smyth_(barrister). There’s a petition on line now to persuade Welby to resign his own position as head of the Church. The issue may rest on when and how much he knew about Smyth. I know nothing more about him, apart from what I can find on the web.

The case however has reminded me of a similar one I was cognisant of in my younger days, and which I wrote about here, in a post that I think is worth republishing: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/march/clerical-abuse.

And then only yesterday I received a long email from my old school, telling of a music teacher there, one David Pickthall, who has just been sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for sex offences spanning 40 years. That was after my time, thank God; but I do remember some other rather dodgy masters while I was there.

All this happened in all-male environments, of course. But I imagine it was worse for girls.

Before the election – the election – there were predictions that a Harris win, disputed as it would inevitably be by the Republicans, would spark a new American ‘civil war’. That danger has obviously receded with Trump’s victory, for the time being at least; but the deep divisions in America clearly haven’t. So I suppose a ‘civil war’, at some level – not necessarily military – is still a possibility.

Which raises the following question: how would – or will – the sides line up? In 1861 the issues were pretty obvious: States rights and slavery vs. federalism and slave emancipation. Today however they’re not quite so clear; and also not so geographically distinct. There’s no longer, as I understand it, a meaningful ‘Mason-Dixon’ line between the putative adversaries. The closest to this I’ve seen was a map from the younger Bush era dividing the USA into (1) ‘America’, which comprised the more liberal states on the north-east and west coasts, together with Canada, and (2) ‘Godfuckistan’, which was the name given to the centre and south. (That of course was drawn by a liberal. Why doesn’t it come up for me on Google?) After Tuesday’s election some features of that map remain the same; but not quite so tidily (https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=electoral+map+of+USA+2024). Pennsylvania for example is now a red state; Colorado and New Mexico blue. Neither the Mason-Dixon nor the America-Godfuckistan lines work any more.

Nor do gender and age, as means of demarcating the sides. The surprises here are the number of women who voted for the misogynistic Trump, and the number of young people who did too; both figures decisively up, although in neither instance forming a majority. But in any case it’s difficult to imagine a genuine civil war between genders or age groups, splitting families, as it must. Levels of education might be a more useful measure: see https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/voters-with-no-college-degrees-favour-donald-trump-check-who-supported-the-president-elect-us-election-results-2024-11730954001195.html. But how do you arrange a ‘civil war’ between the college-educated, and high school dropouts? Or between the ‘élite’ and ‘deplorables’, as they are sometimes fond of characterising each other? And in what form? Not with guns, surely, despite the ubiquity of these in the USA.

The most likely scenario is a war of ideas and propaganda: essentially an extension of the ‘culture wars’ that are (apparently) raging presently: unpleasant as they are, but mostly peaceful, apart from when protest marches turn into riots. (And bloody riots, if Trump turns the National Guard on them.) Is that the way the country will/would divide? ‘Patriots’ against the ‘woke’? ‘Democrats’ against ‘populists’? ‘Winners’ versus ‘losers’? One set of myths against another?

Could all that turn into what might properly be called a civil war? And how will/would it end? Can anyone visualise a ‘Compromise’ like that of 1850 (you see, I know my American history), to calm it down temporarily? Or does one side have to win?

This isn’t only an American problem. We have a similar ‘divide’ in Britain: the Guardian versus the Daily Mail, for example; and even in Sweden, although the ‘elite’ side is holding up rather better here. It’s clearly a global phenomenon: the growth of ‘populist’, nationalist and essentially reactionary sentiment elbowing out the older and more liberal consensuses (consensi?), to create what we ‘progressives’ will now need to accept is a new political normality. – Except that this normality was probably always there, albeit hitherto hidden under the historical surface from us naïve (élite) liberals, but now revealed more widely by social and other media. And perhaps threatening to plunge other polities into civil wars, too.

So, it’s over. The verdict has been delivered, and the sentence – four more years of Trump – is about to begin. In Britain both Nigel Farage, not unexpectedly, and Suella Braverman appeared on BBC Radio this morning to enthusiastically welcome the news. I wonder how many other Brits share the same opinion? More, probably, than we innocent liberals liked to think.

It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise; and wasn’t to a soft Marxist like me, who rejects the Hegelianism, doesn’t fully understand the economics, and is uncomfortable with the determinism, but has nonetheless long been impressed by the ‘theory of history’ that is found in Das Kapital. The idea of events being driven by underlying material forces – mainly economic – has always seemed to me to be born out by the actual history of both Britain and the USA, the two leading capitalist powers in modern times. Trump, as I’ve suggested before, embodies what might be seen as the latest – possibly the last – ‘stage’ of capitalism: mainly financial, shorn of any innovative or constructive rationale, and its ‘ethics’ reduced to a merely competitive and acquisitive (a)morality.

According to Marx, at this stage the whole system should now be crumbling under its own internal contradictions, to be succeeded by revolution, a dictatorship of the proletariat, and eventually socialism. I can’t see much sign yet of any of that; and have no hope – or fear – of its coming before capitalism – and everything else – perishes as a result of climate change. (Which Trump denies.)

8 pm, CET. Awaiting the US election results nervously. If Trump wins it may be a sign of the final victory of capitalism. That’s what he represents and indeed personifies: not America, or democracy, but the worst aspects of a relatively unrestrained and increasingly criminal capitalist system. The America I know is better than this.

I hope to comment on the election more fully when the agony is over; which we’re told won’t be tonight or even tomorrow. (Or this week?) I’ll be sitting up nonetheless, glued in front of the TV, with a KFC ‘bucket’, and a few cans of Coors to hand. (How more American can you get?)

Pray for Kamala. – But of course those Americans who believe in the power of prayer, the ‘fundamentalists’, won’t.

Incidentally: here’s an interesting historical piece, showing that America has never been impervious to fascism: https://www.hnn.us/article/ohios-little-known-fascist-member-of-congress. Is that what’s coming this week?

Swedish companies are nearly a year into a dispute with Elon Musk’s Tesla, over trade union recognition. Unions are powerful here, with 90% membership, and ‘collective bargaining’ being (I think) a legal requirement in industrial disputes.

This is rather like the reform that the late great Labour politician Barbara Castle recommended for Britain under Harold Wilson in her In Place of Strife white paper, before the foolish British unions (and Wilson) turned it down. I suspect it’s one reason for Sweden’s rather better record on the manufacturing front than Britain’s over the last several years. (See https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/01/one-year-on-we-know-this-swedens-trade-unions-are-more-than-a-match-for-elon-musk.)

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By the way (and continuing on from my last post): The Apprentice (film) is well worth watching. The real star is not Sebastian Stam, who plays Trump, but Jeremy Strong, who was also in Succession. Here he plays another villain, the evil Roy Cohn (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn), Trump’s ‘go to’ lawyer, and apparently the most malign influence on him.

I can see why Trump hates the movie so much; and can’t really see why any American who sees it could ever vote for him. Perhaps Cohn’s persona and message – ‘you’re either killer or a loser’ – appeals to them?