It's a great success of the Conservatives' rhetoric that they have convinced a lot of this country that 'Living beyond one's means' is the crime of the benefits claimants. This has been accomplished simply by the old staple technique of twisting definitions.
At the heart of the misconception, there is a conflation of this nebulous idea of 'means' and income. This is a misconception only on the part of the public who have bought into the idea. The Conservatives who have spun the story should not be seen as a piece with the accepting public. The public are mistaken - fooled - but the Tories are wilfully misdirectional.
The Conservatives have spun the story - sadly accepted in many quarters - that to live beyond your income is the great sin that has triggered the depression. They are able to gain credibility from pundits across the spectrum citing 'living beyond means' as the trigger for the depression. But note the distinction: Means, not income. To equate the two is the Conservative falsehood. Those without income are living beyond their means if they live at all, and those with absurdly overinflated incomes would struggle greatly to live a lifestyle that actually exceeded them.
The truth is that those 'living beyond their means' are comitting the excess at the point of income - their income is wildly beyond a reasonable level. And likewise, viewed in this light - the true light - we see that it is preposterous to accuse the benefits claimants of living beyond their means. If they have an income of zero, how can they possibly be living in excess of anything?
Of course a lie like this is insidious. Nobody explicitly draws the connection underpinning it - indeed, to do so is to expose the strings. Instead it is simply made a tacit assumption, an unspoken underlying definition. That way there will be many - those who are not already scrutinous but who assume veracity - who do not even notice an assumption is being made. And the best way to reinforce the false equivalency is simply to take it for granted, as if there is nothing even to dispute. But there is, and not just in this case. And those who assume veracity on the part of those in power are going to find themselves deeply confused down the line as to how things have gone so bad.
More to the point, they'll be responsible.
5 comments:
That's the core idea of the Conservatives. Know your place, commoner.
Maybe the trick here lies in assessing to what degree the economy itself depends on such ideological attitudes as the one you've exposed. Who can deny that the most crucial ingredient in capitalist relations, the feature that holds them together and generates competitiveness (grail of businesses, liberals and conservatives alike) is plainly and simply: envy. I think it's hard to overestimate the role of envy in all of this---both on the side of the new authoritarian post-democratic asian-style capitalist government we've ended up with ('lazy unemployed loafers with the curtains still drawn while us hard-working taxpayers have to join the morning traffic queues) *and* on the side of the workerist-unionist socialist backlash ('it's easy to call yourself hard-working taxpayers when you've got private healthcare, a second home and personal assistants'). If envy defines this whole space (and the throwing of figures at one another suggests it does) then the trap the left is consistently falling into is that of taking up their allotted place in this space.
I mean, I think this is what you are hinting at in your comments about the failure of the left and I tend to agree. It's easy to slip into the attitude of hurling abuse at the 'millionaire tories' and playing tattle-tale on their personal excesses in the press but the problem is that this attitude towards the dominant forms of relation takes place entirely *within* the agenda set by these relations. As you say, the criticism shouldn't be about income or money or aimed at getting little fragments of satisfaction from tracing the circulations of pay-offs and bail-outs and exposing them to the public. Then you get caught up in the space of a vulgar economic determinism which disavows ideology---or rather falls for it. It would be better to reformulate a leftist position that is very much at odds with this game (which is, in any case, what a true definition of leftism should be).
That's taking a long-term view obviously, where I see a real need for a proper left to emerge.
In the shorter term, where the hell are the liberals now, with their precious principles of social-democratic welfarism? These guys also need replacing. While I think it's unwise (in the long term) to fetishise democracy, there is definitely something valuable in social democracy which should be preserved. Just because new, post-democratic forms of capitalism have exploded in Asia, it does not mean that western liberals should abandon their democratic business models in favour of these authoritarian standards. Democracy hasn't failed, it has served us relatively well, if imperfectly, since the revolutionaries secured it for us. What failed was particular governments' adhesion to democratic principles, granting too much on paranoid statist projects and too little to their electorates. There's still legs to the notion of radical democracy and for the emergence of a social-democratic-leaning liberal wing in opposition to Cleggism.
So my own criticism is sort of forked. In the short term the emphasis should be on democracy and people, the people who in the last instance collectively legitimate governments and thus to who they are morally indebted---us, a social 'we'. And in the long term we need to think our way out of this 'class warfare' frame of mind and confront the social antagonism that supports late capitalism and makes it possible. The old conservative lie 't'was ever thus' must be laid bare.
I think we should dissassociate the economic principles from the political ones here.
Democracy is a defense against tyranny. The concept of seperation of powers is formed on the idea that no one man or institution should be able to subvert the government to further their own ends.
Democracy has nothing to say on caring for the infirm or ensuring children are literate.
Yes, but only in a democratic framework (and I mean radically democratic in the sense of Étienne Balibar Ernesto Laclau Chantelle Mouffe, not the pseudo-democracy we've had under capitalo-parliamentarianism) can the infirm and illiterate ever hope to find representation. The core principle of democracy (demos kratos) is that the voiceless and unheard are desired at the very centre, as equal partners in debate. That's what I'm talking about.
And you can't split economics and politics---an economy is a political fact and the danger of depoliticising it is precisely what we're seeing in today's neoliberal constellation.
These inhumane ideals only last as long as it takes the tables to turn.
Why, objectivist writer Ayn Rand herself collected government Medicare coverage and Social Security payments under her married name, Ann O'Connor.
The hypocrisy of those who say the 'welfare state' is allowing people to 'live beyond their means' is repugnant to me.
It's usually only a matter of time before the laissez-faire capitalists look to the system for assistance.
Still, their fierce self-interest and rugged individualism sure looks good on paper. Hmph.
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