Conservative values require socialist policies. That’s my reaction to this essay by Kevin Williamson. He bemoans the “degraded state of the conservative movement” for telling the poor that immigrants and elites are to blame for their hardship and neglecting the traditional conservative message that “what is not necessarily your fault may yet be your problem, that you must act and bear responsibility for your actions.”
What Kevin fails to ask, though, is why is his conception of conservatism now out of favour?
In part, it was always an act of bad faith. In a hierarchical society somebody must be at the bottom of the heap. Sure, any individual might escape that fate by work, thrift and diligence. To believe that everybody can do so is, however, is to commit the fallacy of composition.
Also, even those who do escape need luck. I should be a poster boy for how you can escape poverty through work, study and savings: I grew up in a single-parent family hiding from the rentman behind the sofa to become a millionaire (just). Even this, though, needed luck: the luck of being perceived as intelligent; the luck of graduating in an age when well-paid jobs were expanding; and the luck of years of house price inflation. (No doubt posh cunts will poshplain why I’m wrong, but they can fuck right off).
What’s more, the scars of child poverty don’t heal. Those born poor are more likely to die young and be anxious and lonely than those born rich even if they do get good jobs.
The decline of traditional conservatism, though, might not be due simply to people waking up to reality. Instead, such conservatism has lost its economic base. I’ll concede that there was a time when the bourgeois values of study, hard work, ambition and thrift paid off – if only by giving you more chance of being exposed to good luck. But things have changed, for example:
- Job polarization means it’s harder for people without qualifications to achieve economic progress: some of the rungs of the jobs ladder are now missing. You can’t progress from the postroom to the boardroom now there are no postrooms, and working-class women can’t meet well-paid husbands in typing pools any more.
- If you get a degree and graduate job, you face more oppressive working conditions than we used to have: managerialism has eroded professional autonomy and so proletarianized what used to be the middle class.
- Younger people have no hope of buying a house, especially in London, unless they work in finance or have access to the bank of mum and dad. Even those who are otherwise upwardly mobile thus will remain propertyless.
- In an age of secular stagnation in which real interest rates are negative, there is no reward for thrift, even for the few who can save.
To put it bluntly, bourgeois virtues pay off in a bourgeois society – where there is a large middle class. But they don’t pay off in a 1% takes all society where wealth is accumulated in shadier ways.
Which brings me to my point. If conservatism is to escape its current “degraded state” then we need to (re-)create the conditions in which it is something more than a sick joke – conditions in which hard work and self-help pay. Such conditions include:
- Measures to increase pay, by improving workers’ bargaining power. Also, we need better jobs, which might require more government intervention to support technical progress.
- Improving the quality of work, which might require increased worker control. In truth, this shouldn’t be as radical as it seems. Back when work did pay for the “middle class” it did so because many of them became (meaningful) partners in law or accountancy firms.
- Policies to reduce house prices and so facilitate mass property ownership. This requires more than housebuilding. It requires a reversal of the financialization of the housing market.
- Measures to make thrift pay. This entails a looser fiscal policy, one effect of which would be to raise interest rates and the return on savings.
Traditional conservatives - those who support the virtues of self-help – should therefore be sympathetic to Corbyn because he, more than others, is offering to create the conditions in which those virtues will again pay off.
Fuck the posh cunts!
Trump won b/c the supposed intellectual conservatives with their trickle down economics and conservative bs are no longer believed by the voters. They're not delivering rising living standards and Trump tapped into the anger.
He ran on fear and anger directed at incompetent elites. He mocked the establishment Republicans during the primary. Mostly he scapegoated immigrants and foreign trade with unpatriotic corporations outsourcing jobs. (See Brexit). An incompetent, corrupt elite is making "bad deals."
A stagnant economy is turning politics toxic. I am hoping Corbyn becomes PM and is somewhat successful, keeping hope alive.
Posted by: Peter K. | October 21, 2017 at 01:55 PM
Bravo for the righteous rant.
Peter: Unfortunately, the Tories are making such a hash of Brexit that a Labour government is likely to be handed a poisoned chalice.
Posted by: marku52 | October 21, 2017 at 03:25 PM
Well said. We are where we are and the Tories and New Labour have nothing to offer and nowhere to go. They delivered this economic runt and the electorate is beginning to understand that.
The folly of Brexit is only going to compound their agony (and ours). Our service-based economic fantasy was never going to last and that's certainly the case if Brexit continues to undermine it by devaluing sterling. Households are already "enjoying" low wages, record debt and low levels of savings. There is almost no prospect of exports pre- or post-Brexit gnawing away our rolling balance of trade deficit. Furthermore, crap service jobs leave almost no scope for increasing productivity and none of the purblind employers who benefit from them is going to raise wages in order to dimnish their own balances sheets.
This is becoming the most exquisite of petard hoistings, the only trouble is that its authors will not being paying the price for it.
The Tories have no answers: to Brexit; to the economy; to inequality and social mobility; to the lack of investment; to the lack of social housing; to industrial policy; to educational attainment; to skills and training...
They are totally useless and done for.
Posted by: E Hart | October 21, 2017 at 10:24 PM
Nice one Chris!
Posted by: TickyW | October 21, 2017 at 10:59 PM
Overall "conservative" torysm as our blogger says used to be the torysm of the lower gentry, of the "established" middle classes, and maybe in part of the upper "skilled" working class. But today the Conservatives are the party of the leverage industry, they are a party controlled by whigs. Large parts of the middle classes, as they are, are in effect part of the leverage industry and have become whigs.
So yes, today the mildly socialdemocratic of the Old Labour party under Corbyn is nearer to "one nation" torysm than the very whiggish Conservative party. But the problem is: where are the "one nation" tory middle classes of old? They have largely disappeared. Maybe there are some remnants in the north, but they have been voting often Labour after thatcherism wrecked their region and their own chances. There used to be a thick layer of traditional tories in the north, lawyers, teachers, surveyors, engineers, managers, accountants, etc., but many of those families were declassed when their region's economy crashed and could no longer support them,.
As to the usual topics:
«Policies to reduce house prices and so facilitate mass property ownership. This requires more than housebuilding. It requires a reversal of the financialization of the housing market.»
Even this is a false alternative, in part because target public housebuilding can break the financialization of the housing market; but in most part because what matters is the political will to replace whig narrow rentierism with a tory "ownership society" or with socialdemocratic "public housing for everyone who wants it".
Posted by: Blissex | October 21, 2017 at 11:21 PM
Seems to me that the lower classes are no longer needed. They are no longer the engine of growth and wealth, they have become a cost and something of a nuisance to manage. At one time a useful few did rise up out of the lower classes, but not so much nowadays. Their necessary social education has been allowed to dry up and to be replaced by panum et circences.
How will this situation develop? I suspect a vision of keeping the lower classes under control lies at the root of Brexit. They were fooled into believing the EU and its rules caused their lack of usefulness and value. Nothing could be further from the truth, the EU will tend to keep up the value and rights of the lower classes. However, with the skilled use of Bots, Twitter and Facebook as well as the DM and DT the ruling class are currently pulling up the drawbridge on any form of social democracy. The economic problems Brexit will cause will not fall on the upper classes but on the middle and lower class.
How will this end. Follow America, expect well organised chaos with words that support the ordinary person and deeds that support the 1%.
In short I don't believe there will be any move to de-financialise housing. Education as a route up will consist of get your kids into private school and hope they grab one of the few decent jobs going. The middle class can easily be cowed into submission, they always have. Short of thermonuclear war or plague I don't see any way this trend will change.
Posted by: rogerh | October 22, 2017 at 09:14 AM
«Seems to me that the lower classes are no longer needed.»
Perhaps "no longer necessary"...
This could be the point of view of the property elites:
* They regard the british isles as their own "plantations", with human livestock in them.
* They setup some sheds with machinery in some corners of their plantations (factory cities) and set many of their servants to work them, with the servants living in stables near the sheds (urban tenements).
* The sheds however far from their mansions were ugly and smelly and the servants not very docile and expensive to feed.
* So they collectively fired their machinery servants and hired a new servant class abroad, out of sight, cheaper, more docile, and they moved there the sheds with the machinery.
* They replaced some of the sheds with machinery with barns full of scribe servants (the service sector) living in barracks out of sight (the suburbs).
* Then they realized that thanks to Mr Bell and Mr Marconi and their successors they could move abroad also a lot of the barns with servants (e.g. call centres, IT, ...) too and they did, and they got rid of the servants working in them.
* Now they realize that they only need personal servants as maids, gardeners, cooks, handymen, and the other servants are not necessary, so G Osborne has been simply cutting state funding for them, their sheds and barns and stables and barracks; let them sort themselves out.
So the servant classes may largely be not necessary, but they, at least some of them, are still needed as personal servants.
After all up to WW2 20-40% of workers were personal servants. “In Agatha Christie's autobiography, she mentioned how she never thought she would ever be wealthy enough to own a car - nor so poor that she wouldn't have servants”.
Posted by: Blissex | October 22, 2017 at 10:10 AM
«at least some of them, are still needed as personal servants.»
Correction: the proprietor elites still do need some personal servants, but they don't need to be from the local livestock; they can be imported from Poland or Romania, or when they too become too expensive or uppity, from Asia or Africa.
Posted by: Blissex | October 22, 2017 at 10:32 AM
Conservative positions are bunk. They’ve been continuously disproven over and over again. The only thing maintaining them in the Information Age is ignorance and stupidity. Likewise with conservative values they’re just window dressing to distract the rubes.
Posted by: Oakchair | October 22, 2017 at 07:35 PM
The primary Conservative value is to hold on to power. U turns and adopting labour positions are about trying to stay in power.
The Tory problem is the UK wants a Soft Brexit, but the Tory party cannot deliver one. We have to wait for anything up to another 12 months until the Conservatives fall apart. There is only a majority in the commons for a Soft Brexit.
It's a bit like watching a beached whale thrashing about trying to get back to the ocean. The whale is dead but we are going to have to listen to it's last gasps for some time.
Posted by: Bill Posters | October 23, 2017 at 09:52 AM
Tory men and whig measures?
Posted by: David Landon Cole | October 24, 2017 at 04:43 PM