The New Serfdom

by Angela Eagle

  In this new work there has been a welcome diversification of the view of what economics looks like in the real world. Some theorists begin by regarding the economic structures as a sub-system of a much higher system, such as society, nature or even the universe, rather than an abstract, all-powerful but separate system. This immediately means that economic activity must be analysed as an integral part of a larger complex system rather than being abstracted from the context it is actually operating within. This more holistic setting is immediately more realistic and predictive, too. Bioeconomics, humanistic economics, socioeconomics and green economics all seek to incorporate the real human context and bring them together with the insights of psychology and observed human behaviour, which is sometimes altruistic and not just narrowly selfish. Concepts such as inclusive growth, which is explicitly designed to benefit the disenfranchised and aim at achieving more equal outcomes, are increasingly making an appearance even in IMF papers. In these new contexts, more generous social protection systems and democratisation can be part of an economic case for a successful inclusive development. In orthodox economics it might be dismissed as irrelevant or, as Hayek notoriously thought, the information delivered by market mechanisms was more important for freedom than democracy itself. Likewise, concepts of emotion, hope, self-esteem and the nature of the social relationships which sustain a community also become a part of the analytical tools an economist can utilise to explain behaviour, predict outcomes and make appropriate policy recommendations. In her recent book, Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth makes a powerful case for a complete rethink of the discipline, including creating an economy which needs to be both redistributive and regenerative by design. She is correct to point out that the world is in need of new thinking on tax, the financial system and what should and should not be left to the market to provide.

  There is an urgent need for Treasuries around the world to start putting climate change, public health, sustainable jobs and equality at the heart of their planning. Their models need to be changed to track not just economic output but how different scenarios and approaches affect the future of our country in terms of environment, sustainability and the happiness and wellbeing of our citizens. These models would, for example, show more clearly the case for investing in our green future, in lifelong learning to help those whose jobs disappear due to automation, and in proper childcare and social investment so we can make best use of all our citizens’ talents in the workplace. If, at every one of the austerity Budgets laid down by George Osborne and Philip Hammond, they’d had to admit as an integral part of their calculations and presentations how their plans disproportionately harmed women or our environment, the past eight years might have worked out quite differently. Having worked as a Treasury minister, Angela can almost hear the squeals of horror from career Treasury mandarins, but there is no reason beyond inertia for not trying different approaches to economic planning that would benefit us and future generations.

  DEMOCRACY AND WOMEN’S VOICES

  The Enlightenment cannot be regarded as complete until all of humanity is included in the protection afforded by the concept of universal human rights. This has to apply in theory and also in practice in all societies the world over. But it would be a good start if we could deliver this simple commitment in our own country. It would also be transformative.

  No society can be completely fair or equitable without the empowerment and inclusion of the 51 per cent of the population who are female. So, fighting to achieve this is of the utmost importance. The year 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of some women in the UK achieving the vote. (It is ninety years since women won the vote on an equal basis to men in the UK.) Women fought, braved the riot police and were ridiculed and belittled by the entire political establishment. When they stood up for their civil rights they were jailed, tortured and died to win the right to vote. Even a perfunctory glance at the hostile press coverage, the vicious cartoons and the anti-women’s suffrage propaganda produced at that time makes it clear how badly they transgressed by daring to campaign for their rights and how heroic and brave they were. They made one error though. They believed with a passion that if they could only win the vote, equality would surely follow as night follows day. They were wrong. The women who followed in their footsteps know better now. Getting the vote was a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for moving towards equality. A century later, there is a great deal still to do. The shocking Fawcett Society report condemning a culture of misogyny in the UK in 2018 is a sign. The necessity for the creation of the #MeToo, #TimesUp or #EverydaySexism hashtags, the sexual harassment crisis engulfing Hollywood and spreading elsewhere (including to our own Parliament), and an occupant of the White House who boasts about assaulting women indicate that we are going backwards. The spectacle of the seedy, men-only Presidents Club dinner, during which captains of industry and the leaders of UK business were provided with young female ‘hostesses’ earning £175 to amuse and be abused – all these outrages attest to the unfinished nature of the women’s revolution and to the necessity for radical change.

  Just as we need to move to a more ethical and holistic approach to economics, so the times cry out for a more holistic and ethical approach to our democracy. When Angela was first elected to the House of Commons in 1992, she was only the 163rd woman ever to become a Member of Parliament in its entire history. Only fifty-nine other women were returned to that parliament out of the 650 constituencies contested in that election. And it was clear to Angela from working in Parliament itself that it was created in the image of a Victorian men-only club. It developed many of its odd peccadillos long before women were even allowed to be elected there. Why else would she have to put on a top hat to make a point of order during a division (which she never did as it would have made her look ridiculous!)? Why do government and opposition MPs still face each other while having to remain two sword-lengths apart in the Commons chamber? The adversarial nature of the Commons is widely despised by the electorate, who can barely stand the animal noises and the football terrace nature of Prime Minister’s Questions (although Angela relished becoming one of the very few women who have ever been able to take it, against the then Chancellor George Osborne in 2015 and 2016). Reform to our democracy needs to make Parliament and its proceedings less arcane and more understandable to the watching public – in language and in procedure. There has been some progress (and the top hat has thankfully now gone!), but much modernisation remains to be achieved.

  The continuing male domination of public and political life skews the nature of the decisions made and that in turn affects the kind of society we create. We doubt very much, for example, that had women gained the vote in 1893 (as they did in New Zealand) or in 1906 (as they did in Finland) that it would have taken women in the UK until 1997 to begin to develop a coherent, if still inadequate, preschool childcare system. Systems of paternity leave move forward at an unpaid snail’s pace and yet many men wish to be able to spend time with their very young children without being regarded as strange or not career-minded. Male domination of public and political life causes the separation of what are regarded as ‘male’ and ‘female’ characteristics when what we actually need is an integration of them and their free expression in every individual. We need to move away from the idea that women should do all the nurturing and caring while men go out and compete. In reality, every human personality has the potential to be caring and competitive, strong or emotional, and these aspects of being human ought to be allowed to be expressed without the rigid gender stereotyping which so disfigures our society and oppresses men as well as women. Boys don’t cry, apparently, but they might grow up to be happier if they were allowed to express emotion without having their masculinity instantly brought into question. And competitive girls should be admired and not just accused of being lesbians.

  We need our politics and public life to echo with the voices of women and all other marginalised, rarely heard groups so that we can make our democracy whole and
our democratic debate full and more representative than it is now. This needs to be reflected in local as well as national government and in other walks of life too. Democratic engagement will increase if we open up power structures and make them more accountable to all of our communities. That is the way finally to include everyone in the Enlightenment values which made our modern era.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A NEW COLLECTIVE NATIONAL MISSION

  There have been moments in British history where a sense of national mission has crystallised into communal effort for the common good. The fight against fascism in the Second World War was one such example. It was a moment of existential crisis which galvanised the entire country in the battle for survival. Our freedom, our values, our very existence as a nation were at stake. The national mission was the defeat of fascism and all levers of the state and civil society were mobilised successfully to achieve that one purpose.

  Britain was determined not to repeat the mistakes made in the aftermath of the First World War, when the British political class’s insistence on clinging to pre-war economic and political orthodoxies meant those who fought in the trenches returned to an economic slump and mass unemployment. In 1945, it was imperative that the great sense of national mission persisted after the end of hostilities. The election of a Labour government promised national renewal and a new political settlement based on the same mutualism and state action that had won the war. While the country was grateful to Churchill for his leadership and inspiration in the war, it did not trust the Conservative Party with organising the peace. That post-war Labour settlement was achieved against all the odds by an exhausted and bankrupt nation which defied the odds and rewrote the political terms of trade for the next thirty years.

  After forty years in thrall to market fundamentalist smallstate dogma, a transformation as dramatic as that required after the devastation of the Second World War is long overdue. We have diagnosed the maladies that ignoring the collective needs of our communities in favour of selfish market fundamentalism has wrought on our wellbeing as a country. We have seen rising levels of inequality juxtaposed with obscene wealth in the shadow of Grenfell. We have highlighted the spiritual damage done to those neglected by society; the scourge of loneliness, mental illness and isolation. The proliferation of foodbanks and rises in homelessness; the neglect of public services; and the spread of exploitative employment practices – all these things tell us we need a fundamental change of direction.

  Realising the full extent of the possibilities for action requires us to discard the stifling, withered scope for political action in a Hayekian minimal state. Only then can the world of possibilities for the betterment of society open up. In an era where the potential of the state to deliver change for good has been systematically denigrated, reacquiring the confidence to forge ahead with this vision and deliver on it will be key. And to succeed in this task, market fundamentalist orthodoxies must be directly, specifically and confidently challenged head-on, as we have sought to do.

  Creating a better and fairer society despite the formidable challenges we currently face requires nothing less than a new national mission, our goal to ensure that all our citizens have a stake in our country’s future, and to develop a more equal society that works for everyone. A society where each can strive to reach their full potential and no one is discarded or left behind. A society where everyone can contribute and expect support when they need it. The uncertainties created by Brexit make this much harder and succeeding becomes even more of an imperative. The relations between labour, capital and the state need to be re-founded on a fairer and more socially sustainable basis.

  CIVIC PATRIOTISM – THERE IS SUCH A THING AS SOCIETY

  Part of our mission is to reclaim patriotism from the nationalists for the progressive cause. We should not just be content for our society to emerge as an incidental by-product of hands-off market mechanisms, where greed is the only accepted motivation. How can we even contemplate being so indifferent to the context in which we must live and thrive? Caring about what kind of society we have created is key to the quality of life experienced by the vast majority of our fellow citizens as well as to our own prospects. That, in turn, as we have seen, is key to their health and wellbeing and as such it is a crucial area of concern in our political endeavours. The super-rich may get to opt out of living among us, but the vast majority have to live in the society that emerges from the context set by our economic and political assumptions and our subsequent political and economic activity. The type of society we live in is therefore directly affected by the choices we make and the interest we take. We should aspire actively to manage and nurture our society like a good gardener improves the soil and plans next year’s planting. We need to develop a new ‘civic patriotism’, which means caring about the collective context in which our own individualism can flourish. Civic patriotism is not jingoistic, nor is it about nationalism or identity politics. It is about developing a collective pride in the kind of society we create, nurture and sustain. It is about developing a holistic rather than simply an individualistic approach to our politics. It is about the context in which we live rather than just focusing on our own concerns.

  Civic patriotism asserts first and foremost that there is such a thing as society and it is from this assertion that all else follows. After forty years of atavistic, selfish individualism which implicitly judged the vulnerable as losers and measured moral worth in terms of wealth and remuneration, this statement is in itself radical and transformative. Together we want to create a country and a society that works for everyone. And we acknowledge that we have the potential to do so should we choose to see this as a political, social and economic possibility.

  We also have a duty to nurture and develop the resilience of our new society. As well as having reasonable expectations of how it can support us in the developments occurring in our own lives, we need to have a view of what we can do to support it. To misquote Kennedy: ‘Ask not what your society can do for you, but what you can do for your society.’ Within this new vision of society there is an implicit inter-generational contract which will supersede the current breaking down in harmony between generations. As members of that caring collective political entity, we owe duties to others. We need to be able to trust that caring, mutual support is reciprocal and will be there for us in times of need. Intergenerational solidarity is a central part of this new settlement. Collective provision in such a society must include, as a minimum, access to health and social care for those who require it and adequate social security provision too.

  The values of democratic socialism, equality, democracy, liberty, co-operation and internationalism all speak to the type of society which should now be forged anew. Individuals should be active participants not passive recipients of any support they may need to access, be it education, lifelong learning, skills training, social care or anything else. Having a say, influencing how provision is organised, listening to all voices, inclusion – all these are principles that must be reflected in the delivery of the services which will make a reality of our new society. Bureaucracy does not have to be bureaucratic; it can be responsive and sensitive if it is properly resourced and valued.

  In this way we can reimagine our national purpose and create a new destination to aim for in our political and economic endeavours.

  TAXATION – THE MEMBERSHIP SUBSCRIPTION FOR A DECENT SOCIETY

  We need to change the debate on tax and the attitude that is taken towards it in current political debate. Without the collection of taxes, governments can have little influence on much of anything and a government wishing to create a fairer society cannot avoid considering reform in this area. Market fundamentalists would like us to believe that taxation is a huge imposition by the state on individuals, which deprives them of ‘their’ money using coercive power. They then seek to delegitimise taxation as if it were organised larceny, but, as we have argued, it is the membership subscription we all pay to live in a civilised soci
ety. Market fundamentalists routinely portray tax as a drag on creativity, innovation and enterprise. In the more extreme versions of market fundamentalism, redistributive taxation is even painted as a morally evil thing which reduces personal remuneration, thereby weakening personal incentives and effort. In such a distorted moral universe it is easy to see why tax avoidance flourishes with the impunity as demonstrated in the leaks of the Paradise Papers. And those who organise it seem to do so without shame.

  This corrosive ‘everyday libertarian’ attitude to taxation has become a well-established narrative, and after years of anti-tax propaganda in the UK it is all-pervasive. But it is wrong. To make the case for redistributive taxation we have to challenge the ludicrous anti-tax narratives that have been allowed to take hold.

  The market fundamentalist case against tax is based on assumptions which are simply wrong. The most blatant is that pre-tax market outcomes are somehow ‘just’. In reality, they are no such thing. They are actually a function of the political decisions and choices which have been made by the state itself. The market that distributes pre-tax income and wealth between individuals does not exist in a vacuum. It is embedded and regulated by laws the state administers. This web of laws and context directly affects the outcome which is delivered, and the rules often have a direct effect on the rate of profit which is earned itself. The rate of return is, therefore, not some kind of ‘natural’ return; it is almost always a direct result of the political choices which have been made by the government on behalf of the society it serves and are implicit in the rules it has set. For this reason, it is not legitimate to portray individuals as if they are entitled to money (earned or unearned) which they have acquired before the government ‘interferes’.