Thatcherism is dead: Thatcherism lives

Thatcherism is dead. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. That seems to be the obvious inference to draw from Penny Mordaunt's call for the reintroduction of national service.

Let's call this what it is - forced labour. Whereas Thatcher long and loudly proclaimed the value of freedom - so much so that the Economist's obituary labelled her a "freedom fighter"- her epigones now want to deny people the most basic of freedoms of what to do with their lives, thus rejecting Thatcher's assertion that "a man's right to work as he will" is "the essence of a free economy."

This, however, is by no means the only way in which today's Tories are profoundly anti-Thatcher.

She declared the single market to be “a fantastic prospect for our industry and commerce” which offered “complete freedom for our manufacturers, our road hauliers, our banks, our insurance firms, our professions to compete.” The Tories have of course ripped up these freedoms.

Thatcher also thought that a key role for government was to provide stability, so that companies could plan better for their futures:

An economy will work best when it is built on a framework of clear and predictable rules on which individuals and companies can depend when making their own plans. Government's primary economic task is to frame and enforce such rules.

Today's Tories, by contrast, lurched from creating years of uncertainty about Brexit to inflicting the ideological fanaticism of Truss upon the economy. "Fuck business" was perhaps the only sincere thing Boris Johnson ever said.

Also, the Thatcher government favoured a tax system that was neutral between income and capital gains, so that labour was not penalized relative to capital ownership: Nigel Lawson argued that taxing the two differently "creates a major tax avoidance industry". Today's Tories, however, regard tax-dodging as a feature not a bug, and want to encourage rentierism at the expense of real work. 

And then, of course, there's home ownership. Thatcher was smart enough to know that if you wanted people to support capitalism you had to give them at least a chance of owning property. Today's Tories have forgotten this. Which explains one massive difference between the 80s and now - that in the 1987 election the Tories actually led Labour by 39-33% among 25-34 year olds, whereas today (pdf) less than 15% of under-50s support them.

It's not just the Tories who have abandoned Thatcher, though. So too in many regards has public opinion. The majority of voters support public ownership of utilities and transport companies and a wealth tax. And many opponents of London's ULEZ plan favour vandalising cameras, which would have horrified Thatcher with her strong support for the rule of law.

Thatcher, it has been said (by John Gray, I believe), hoped to create a society of men like her father - a hard-working entrepreneur in a market society - but in fact left us one with men like her son, a talentless amoral grifter who made money by exploiting political contracts. We see evidence for this is not just in the economy's regress to feudalism in which wealth depends upon political power and asset ownership, but also in daytime TV. Programmes such as Homes Under the Hammer and Bargain Hunt show that the British public prefer to make money from rising house prices and selling tat rather than from the hard work, innovation and entrepreneurship which Thatcher lauded.

But, but, but. Despite all this. many Tories still think of themselves as Thatcherite, and many leftists believe our economy is Thatcherite. How can we explain this?

Simple. Although Thatcherism was an abject failure in terms of promoting support for widespread freedom and creating an entrepreneurial property-owning market economy, it was a success in another respect. It certainly did increase inequality. What matters here is not just income inequality, although the share going to the top 1% has risen from 6.8% to 12.7% since 1980. Inequalities of power in the workplace have increased with the smashing of trades unions and reassertion of "management's right to manage" (a now-overlooked Thatcherite slogan). And so too have inequalities of political power: whereas Labour used to be "in hock to the unions", it now defers abjectly to the billionaire-owned media.

And it is these inequalities that the right values far more than rhetoric about liberty and free markets. As Corey Robin has said, "the priority of conservative political argument has been the maintenance of private regimes of power." Or as the man put it:

The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.

Comments

[Blissex]

I don't like our blogger's repeated attempts to stand astonished that right-wing politics is about the material interests of the property and finance lobbies and of the business owner lobby secondarily, as if the propaganda mattered in any way to voters.

I like even less laughable arguments like this:

«the reintroduction of national service. Let's call this what it is - forced labour»

The claim is so ludicrous both because:

* It is based on exactly the same logic as claiming that taxation is forced labour (and indeed that's what Thatcher meant by saying "a man's right to [...] spend what he earns").

* Nobody is obliged, gun to the head, to pay taxes or do national service: only those who have freely chosen to be members of the UK have to respect the rules that members have decided for themselves, like paying membership dues in cash or in kind.

You don't want to pay taxes or do national service in the UK? TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY and give up your UK membership and purchase membership in a state that requests neither. There is a wide market in state memberships, with plenty of choices.

As to a commonly misunderstood "detail":

«Thatcher was smart enough to know that if you wanted people to support capitalism you had to give them at least a chance of owning property.

In the UK not many people care about "owning their own home" as the propaganda says, but many people care a lot about owning a property deed that doubles in price every 7-10 years (entirely at the expense of those poorer than them) and can be bought on 10 times leverage, and is pretty much guaranteed by the government, and is usually tax-free.

If price of (the land of a) property were not being pumped up relentlessly by the government and the BoE then not many idiots would want to put all their savings into something that depreciates with time and has zero returns or has the risk of big swings in price potentially landing them into large leveraged losses (as in the 1990s or the 2000s), and in addition ties them expensively to a particular location.

«Today's Tories have forgotten this»

They haven't forgotten that 60-70% of potential voters own property, and there is also a good number of their heirs.

[L Soss]

I love the "dead parrot" reference. I'm sure most Brits picked it up...Americans, that's another cuttlefish.

[rsm]

One wonders, what real work might our blogger have done if rentierism had not been so profitable?

Does a man under Thatcher have the right to refuse to own property and self-provision on commons, as John Locke made a pre-requisite for capitalism (see the Lockean Proviso)?

[aragon]

"If price of (the land of a) property were not being pumped up relentlessly by the government and the BoE [...]"

But such a good foundation for a national economy, and ponzi schemes always end so well.

After all Sunak and Starmer are counting on the money illusion continuing to work.

But back to Health care and software:

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/03/vista-computer-history-va-conspiracy-000367/

"The four-decade struggle over the VA’s health IT system reveal some philosophical and logistical quandaries that arise in big health-care management systems, in government IT—and in the economy in general. Should the evolving pieces of a complex technological program run independently, or as an integrated, centralized whole? Should they be customized to user needs, or standardized for simplicity’s sake? Does the answer lie in open-source or proprietary technology? Does passion or accountability promise the most success? Problem solving or planning? Creativity or control? And who should be trusted to come up with the correct decisions—experienced careerists or outside analysts? Or politicians? And finally, who best serves the veteran: the private sector or the government?"

The latest: (hardhats.org)

"April 24, 2023: VA Pauses all future roll-outs of the new Oracle Cerner EHR."

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ehrs/oracle-to-rewrite-va-s-cerner-ehr-system-amid-outages.html

"Oracle to 'rewrite' VA's Cerner EHR system amid outages"

"The VA has a $16 billion contract with the Oracle Cerner to overhaul the agency's health records system and make it compatible with the Defense Department's system. However, the project has been plagued by 498 disruptions since its implementation in the fall of 2020."

"In addition, Shereef Elnahal, MD, a VA undersecretary for health, said in the hearing that he heard from VA employees in Ohio that problems with the EHR system are causing healthcare providers to leave their jobs."

We don't need Oracle to force people out of jobs in Healthcare, U.K Health Ministers and managers are already very effective at driving staff to despair...

$16 Billion USD in addition to 4.3 Billion DoD contract and 50 million in exclusive hosting Fees - chicken feed as Boris would say...or nice work if you can get it.

[LJC]

"Thatcher, it has been said (by John Gray, I believe), hoped to create a society of men like her father - a hard-working entrepreneur in a market society - but in fact left us one with men like her son, a talentless amoral grifter who made money by exploiting political contracts."

Actually the quote comes from Peregrine Worsthorne. See page 348 of Eliza Filby's biography "God and Mrs Thatcher"

[Laban]

"son, a talentless amoral grifter"

I can think of another amoral grifter, son of a national leader, who's far more amoral and a far bigger grifter than Mark Thatcher ever could be or wanted to be, perhaps because his father's an amoral grifter too, or was when he had a functioning brain..

[Blissex]

«Actually the quote comes from Peregrine Worsthorne. See page 348 of Eliza Filby's biography "God and Mrs Thatcher"»

Also online:

«However, it is undeniable that Thatcher’s policies led to a nation that was more individualistic, hedonistic and greedy. With this in mind, I press Filby as to whether Thatcher ever regretted unleashing the forces she did. “Yes,” comes the instant reply. “Peregrine Worsthorne [Telegraph journalist] once said that, ‘Margaret Thatcher came into Downing Street determined to recreate the world of her father and ended up creating the world of her son.’ It’s a pretty damning assessment but it’s actually quite true.”»

[Blissex]

«"If price of (the land of a) property were not being pumped up relentlessly by the government and the BoE"
But such a good foundation for a national economy, and ponzi schemes always end so well.»

Property has a much stronger foundation than dutch tulips, cabbage-patch dolls, bitcoins or shares for pumping up prices:

* With other assets classes you can stop buying or sell and exit the market entirely.

* It is not easy to hold a job without a dwelling. Housing for most people is a necessity, at worst they can downsize and double up.

Many people can say "bitcoins are overpriced, I don't want to buy them or I want to sell them", not many people want to say to their husband and children "Rents and house prices are too high, it's a bubble, we are better off selling this home/stop renting and become rough sleepers".

Because of this the price of housing is superlinear with demand: if demand exceeds supply, if 2 properties could rent for £1,000 a month each, 1 property can rent for £2,500 a month (which is why HMOs work so well), so it is more profitable to leave one empty.

[Blissex]

«Property has a much stronger foundation than dutch tulips, cabbage-patch dolls, bitcoins or shares for pumping up prices [... because it is a necessity not an option ...]»

As to shares, right-wing political strategists have tried via stakeholder pensions/401ks to also turn them into a necessity for having a retirement income, so almost everybody would have to bid up share prices to put them into a retirement fund.

But in the UK and similar countries it is property that is already a necessity, and is the major pension asset.

Boris Johnson: «I think the vast majority will want to put their pots into the market with the greatest yield over the past 40 years – and that is property»

Chief Economist of the BoE: «Haldane believes that property is a better bet for retirement planning than a pension. “It ought to be pension but it’s almost certainly property,” he said. “As long as we continue not to build anything like as many houses in this country as we need to ... we will see what we’ve had for the better part of a generation, which is house prices relentlessly heading north.”»

[Blissex]

The background to almost every discussion of the politics and economics of thatcherism and reaganism:

http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/index4.html
“It’s fine to be unconcerned that the rich are getting richer, but blind to deny that middle-class wages have stagnated or worse over the past dozen years. In the aftershock of 2008, large numbers of Americans feel exploited and abused. Rather than workable solutions, my party is offering low taxes for the currently rich and high spending for the currently old, to be followed by who-knows-what and who-the-hell-cares. This isn’t conservativism; it’s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation.”

[Blissex]

«Property has a much stronger foundation than dutch tulips, cabbage-patch dolls, bitcoins or shares for pumping up prices [... because it is a necessity not an option ...]»

More precisely the others are "collectibles", and pump-and-dump schemes involving "collectibles" are both easier to start and more fragile than those involving "economic goods", in particular those that are necessities.

"Collectibles" is an underused category of economic talk, perhaps because who stand to make a lot of money from "collectible" bubbles are often generous "sponsors" of economic commentators.

[rsm]

Has Blissex ever heard of copper cornering schemes?