ONE of the features of modern society in the UK is the belief that that there are deserving and undeserving poor. In fact, it’s not just a feature of the modern world – it has been a common refrain for centuries as ruling cliques attempt to justify their position by claiming what they believe to …
Category Archives: Economics
Why are we stuck in a rut?
ARE human beings – and human life itself – fundamentally good or bad? It is a question that has taxed philosophers for millennia. In one of its most recent manifestations it is represented on the one hand by Thomas Hobbes who regarded life before civilisation as being ‘nasty, brutish and short’, which we could only …
Covid v Neoliberalism
IT has become increasingly obvious that when Covid hit in early 2020 the UK was disastrously unprepared. It was the most pervasive pandemic since the Spanish Flu after the World War I. But it was the political decisions over the last 30 years, which, ironically, were hell bent on eliminating political decision-making, that exacerbated the …
False consciousness – or just plain contented?
ONE of the abiding rifts in left/right political philosophy is the approach towards the poorest members of society. The failure of socialism to overthrow capitalism perplexes those on the left of the political spectrum. For those on the right it’s simple: capitalism works, it delivers well-being for most people, so there is no reason to …
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Russia after the revolution
“THE prohibition of oppositional parties brought after it the prohibition of factions. The prohibition of factions ended in a prohibition to think otherwise than the infallible leader. The police-manufactured monolithism of the party resulted in a bureaucratic impunity which has become the source of all kinds of wantonness and corruption.” You might forgiven for thinking …
How the West made Putin
AS Putin sends his troops and tanks in to Ukraine in an appalling piece of unprovoked aggression that beggars belief, it is, perhaps, useful to remember the role that the West had in creating the conditions that made it easier for someone like Putin to take control of Russia. So, let’s recalls what was happening …
From the marshmallow mind to Citizens’ Assemblies
MANY argue that short termism is the curse of representative government. The Taliban, for example, famously said when troops entered Afghanistan in 2001 that while the invaders had watches ‘we have time’. The Chinese have a similar long-term view. But in representative governments everything is geared to the short term – from our electoral cycles …
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The myth of the Social Contract
IT is a common observation, though no less powerful for being so, that we live in an atomized society where the individual rules supreme and the collective is dead. As Margaret Thatcher once said there is no such thing as society, or words to that effect. The key philosophical definition is provided by methodological individualism …
Land ownership and tax
DOES it make sense to say that anyone owns land? Ever since the times of the Roman Empire we have had a notion of ownership in terms of absolute dominion over property. But as the late David Graeber wrote in Debt: The First 5,000 Years this idea is ‘really derived from slavery’. “One can imagine …
The myths that justify inequality
HOW did it come to this? “In 1971 Britain was among the most equal societies on earth in terms of both household income and wealth. Today we are one of the most unequal.” So writes Robert Verkaik in Why You Won’t Get Rich. For him it is largely the result of government decisions. For, as …
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