It must be a good show when a sociologist (who does not seem to think his discipline is a by-word for socialism) says:
A lot of progressives have stopped believing in progress… and have begun to look nostalgically to the past and have come to reject modern life in many respects and, in a very kind of desperate way, believe that in the good old days when things were small and tangible and when people lived in small villages, everything was all right.
Yah. When asked if those making charitable donations to certain green organisations campaigning to halt industrial-scale development in the third world realise the consequences of their support, this same individual says
Absolutely not, people do this for the best possible motives, but the kids don’t realise that by going there and telling them ‘this is the way you must live your life’, you’re actually being fairly coercive; you’re imposing upon people a lifestyle that is quite ill-suited to their circumstances, and you end up becoming complicit in an authoritarian world order where one group of people’s world-view becomes the dominant one and everyone else’s becomes quite secondary.
[my emphasis – JW]
Who is this erudite chap? Why, it is Professor Frank Furedi, interviewed on the excellent Mine Your Own Business documentary. This movie has been billed by some as a ‘right-wing’ counterpart to a Michael Moore production, but it comes across as considerably less polemical – and enormously more believable – than the average output from the portly and infamous self-declared son of Flint.
This is a useful film for the liberal cause. I am twenty six, and I have a lot of friends who I would describe as instinctively left-leaning. I have shown the film to some of them. I would like to describe a ‘road to Damascus’ scene, but there were no Pauls in my audience. Still, several seeds of doubt were planted, and that is a great start – I too was a socialist, but for that seed of doubt planted several years ago. Consequently, I talk to a lot of young people about extending the principle of personal responsibility. I have often thought that the young are natural libertarians – yet, because they are frequently reliant upon the patronage of others for their livelihoods, matters of economics concern them not. Socialism appears affordable and desirable when one pays less than 10% of their income to the tax man. Regardless, I have discovered that it is not so hard to convince a young person of the merits of what is dismissively described as “rugged individualism” by statists – until the environmental question is raised. This is much harder to overcome, because the underlying science is arcane, mastered by few and is thus vulnerable to manipulation. I firmly believe that green politics represents the ultimate bulwark against the adoption of liberal ideals. Therefore I recommend this film. It graphically displays the victims of international green politics – the world’s poorest – those that the green movement purports to champion. For this alone, Mine Your Own Business is a useful production. Young people who are socialists are generally well-meaning. They want to help the poorest. Fine – help the poorest the liberal way. Help them via voluntary charity. Decouple the link between the Greens and the poor, because the poor confused Greens are inherently antipathetic towards the plight of the poor, whilst championing them. They are no good to anyone – in fact, they can be positively deadly.
Thus, it is essential that the Greens are denied the ability to become a large ‘catch-all’ political movement by encroaching meaningfully into the economic arena. Scarily, they have come thus far and we must aim to roll their influence back to saving sequoias and killer whales, because when it comes to economics – that is, the realm of human welfare – Greens are instinctively genocidal. Of course, they will deny this, but ask them about the earth’s grave overpopulation problem. Most will concur but not extend this rationale to its logical conclusion because they are good (and misguided) people who would never associate themselves with a cause that overtly demands the slaying of billions. Deduction, fools! Admittedly, the Greens have their consistent advocates. And you thought the Final Solution was a pretty fucking awful idea.
The point is that the Green movement has crept into the mainstream. It urgently needs to be repulsed to the ideological fringes, because it is inherently anti-human. Mine Your Own Business contributes to this process, so it should be supported.
Great post. The first quote is a zinger.
Actually, quite a lot of sociology is not crap, but perfectly interesting and worth studying. Arguably, the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith was a work of sociology. The Scottish Englightenment thinkers like Smith, Hume, Millard and Reid were what might now be called sociologists. Herbert Spencer probably qualifies. De Tocqueville’s Demcracy in America has bits of it. De Soto, Alan McFarlane,,,, the list of good stuff goes on.
Perhaps liberals need to reclaim sociology from the state planners. Come to that, they should do the same for analysis of class.
What Furedi is describing sounds very much like a return to the kind of socialism promoted by William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th century. There’s the same worship of nature, the same nostalgia for an idealised past, and the same demonisation of modern technology.
If Morris had had his way the British poor would have been denied the enormous improvements in living standards that industrial society ultimately produced. They would have been kept down in picturesque serfdom, living in squalor while rich aesthetes like Morris swooned over their marvellous hand-crafted pottery.
The New Morrisites of the green movement are engaging in the same kind of class war, but on a global scale. It is a crusade of the rich against the poor, in which the latter are to be denied any possibility of material wealth in order to assuage the consciences of those who already have it.
I admit my brush with sociology is somewhat jaded by recent experience at the tertiary level.
It’s interesting that the green movement of today was built by subverting and taking over the efforts of people like Teddy Goldsmith and John Aspinall who, though strange in many ways, were not socialists. Even the Ecology Party began life, as one activist told me in 1980, worrying that “zere are too many people” (German accent) – an entirely different agenda to the current one.
Environmentalism strikes such a strong chord with so many people, and socialism has so patently failed to safeguard it when not trying to use it as a trojan horse, that it the socialistentryism is actually on weaker ground than many suppose.
PJ O’Rourke, in between attempts to annoy eco-crazies (“snacking high on the food chain”), has put forward a convincing argument for regarding environmental niceness as an economic good we have to pay for if we want it. Since this has the merit of being capable of actually working – unlike the watermelon nostrums we’re more accustomed to – I’m surprised to see it made so rarely as an argument; one that might plant that seed of doubt…
Peter,
On the origins of the religion of ecology in reactionary vitalism, you need Anna Bramwell Ecology in the 20th Century. The sociology of the Green movement is fascinating, I can assure you as an erstwhile insider.
Peter Risdon said:
“PJ O’Rourke … has put forward a convincing argument for regarding environmental niceness as an economic good we have to pay for if we want it.”
PJ O’Rourke is exactly right and that is the argument that has to be made over and over to counter the loony lefty greenies. It strikes right at the foundation of their beliefs – that the environment has greater moral worth than human life, liberty and happiness. A nice environment is an economic good and environmental problems are economic problems and can be solved in the same way as other economic problems – markets where possible, government action only where necessary.
Thanks for the links, especially for the Furedi site. By coincidence, I first heard of him just yesterday when I read this excellent article. Looks like a lot more good stuff to go through.
It always seemed to me that human life, liberty and happiness is seen by many enviromentalists as something that is positively bad in themselves. Any solutions to environmental problems that does not also damage these things therefore tends to be rejected.
Guy, I was something of an insider myself – a member of the Ecology Party and an honorary shareholder in the Greenpeace ship Cedarlea (fun presentation ceremony, if only for the opportunity to admire Pamela Stephenson at close range). I worked in the Greenpeace offices when they were run by people who rode fast motorcycles and ate hamburgers.
Robert is right. The environmentalists Chris refers to are, of course, watermelons. I was suggesting this field should not have been vacated by everyone else. It is capable of being a libertarian trojan horse, not that I am for a moment suggesting libertarians would be so calculating.
One item in the page to which this links does sound partly sensible, viz: ‘One small, but appropriate, token gesture would be to ban immediately all forms of assisted conception, including the use of donated sperm or ova. The fact that relatively affluent couples, or single women who cannot achieve pregnancy by good old-fashioned copulation, or even choose not to do so, can demand the use of expensive medical technology to satisfy their ‘need’ for parenthood is unacceptable in a hugely overpopulated world.’
Obviously, one should not ban something that can be provided by a free market, but is there really any justification for this sort of treatment being provided at public expense?
Or, of course, for child benefits that subsidise the procreation of the poor?
I’m often amused when posters on this site (and it’s becoming more regular) link to articles from sp!ked, and its contributors (as Frank Furedi is).
Given the general antipathy for anyone who considers themselves a leftist, it’s odd that so many links are given to the online presence of the Living Marxism group, founded after LM magazine lost the libel case ITN brought against it. The origins of the site are quite clearly stated (most recently in this January article (Link) from ex-editor Mick Hume:
I say this as someone who used to subscribe to LM (which, just for information, campaigned against the banning of handguns, if that endears it any more to regular readers of this site), and as a regular reader of this blog.
I quite often get shouted down on this site for daring to suggest that there is a strand of thought that would consider itself left-wing that has many sympathies and areas of agreement with libertarian thought. For many of the posters here, there is no socialism but state socialism.
In fact (and I’m going to get a drink to prepare myself for the responses) there is a large and well-pedigreed strand of left wing thought that would find sympathies and areas of common action with libertarian views.
Much as you might not like to believe it, there is such a thing as libertarian socialism: or, my preferred term, mutualism. Proudhon is loved by the more anarchist wing of socialist movements, and remembered primarily for saying ‘Property is theft.’ However, what only a select few of us remember is that, in the same pamphlet, he argued ‘Property is freedom’. Proudhon argues that only by being able to exploit the fruits of his labours without interference from authority could a man be truly free.
Proudhon was vehement that the state should not be allowed to own any assets. He saw the state as a threat to individual liberty. he also saw excessive power in the hands of those who owned what others had produced as being a threat to liberty (this is probably where most people here would part company with him).
Thirsting for freedom and deploring encroachments on it are not the sole preserve of those who would call themselves libertarians. The No2ID campaign received just as much support from the hated greens who read Schnews as it did from the people who read this site. Lefties campaign against CCTV, the Terrorism Acts of 2000 and 2001, the Religious Hatred Bill and the state subsidy of religious eduication through the academies programme as well.
Hell, even the most strident, ardent and eloquent anti-Europeans are left wingers. Tony Benn has been the most passionate opponent of greater European integration of the last thirty years. His opposition to the signing of the Maastricht Treaty (and his refusal to be seduced by the Social Chapter) led to a masterful dissection of it, and its implications in Parliament. I can get you all copies of this if you want.
Anyway, unleash the vitriol. I’m only making the point that there are a lot of people who would consider themselves lefties, and would disagree with a lot of you on a lot of things, but when it came to the basic issues that affect us, when our governments become increasingly authoritarian and openly fetishise their growing power to intrude into our lives, we’d find an awful lot to agree on.
I come here to challenge my views. I enjoy it here. I agree with about a good proportion of what is said without hesitation (and have found some of the best though-through comments on this site rather than others); I also find it frustrating and find myself clawing at my cheeks and screaming: ‘Do you not see?’ at an unresponsive screen. But hey, how am I going to know that I’m right, if I don’t test what I think?
Anyway, thank you all. Keep up the good work. I’m (almost) right behind you…
Peter,
Interesting, I briefly joined Greenpeace back in the 70’s. It seemed very different then …
I have a polar opposite position to the Green/Reds but support the concept of environmental protection. The environment is not of greater worth than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Rather, my right to own my property in peace means others may not trespass on it. Not with their bodies or their by-products.
Very few freedom lovers actually seek or accept the kind of cesspit environmental tragedies that seem to be de rigueur in many collectivist countries. When everyone is responsible, no one is. I think the rule on pollution is a simple one. Whatever it is, it may not leave the property owned by those who consent to have it.
Thanks you Nathaniel for having the courage to say what you think will get you shouted down.
That doesn’t mean I don’t disagree with you.
I think that libertarians -as time goes on- will find increasingly strange bedfellows, or at least strange fellow travelers. Nobody wishes to be crushed under a boot, and I think everybody can agree that the governments of nation-states (as they currently exist) are the biggest and meanest boots around.
What will get the libertarians here and elsewhere riled up is that when you talk of libertarian socialism, they will fear that, while you may make the right noises about fighting this big scary boot, you would -if you could- wear that boot yourself to achieve the socialist positions. Not saying that you would, but that is the fear and I do not doubt that some people who identify themselves as ‘libertarian socialists’ would put on that spiked and cruel armor of coercion thinking that they could use coercion properly where everyone else had failed.
If we are being honest and upright here, the enemies of our enemies are not our friends. The enemies of our enemies our potentially, and temporarily, our tool. And a dangerous tool at that.
Good luck with everything.
Natheniel,
I used to subscribe to LM magazine as well. I found it refreshingly open in its support for freedom and choice.
While I would argue that there can be no socialist libertarians, because modern socialism is all about increased state interference, there are unquestionably people who regard themselves as left wing who are also libertarian, just as there are those who regard themselves as right wing. This only serves to provide more evidence that left and right wing are questionable terms.
In the past I have been in the situation where my friends regarded me as right wing, while at work I was shocked to find that I was regarded as extremely left wing.
In reality, rather than the one dimensional politics (left and right along a single line) we are always having shoved down our throats, there are as many dimensions as there are issues to have an opinion about.
Thanks for the responses, there’s lots (as always) to chew on…
I’m going to disagree with you, Lokon, in that although we must never slip into the easy trap of believing that my enemy’s enemy is my friend (that way lies fellow-travelling and Operation Phoenix), I don’t accept that we’re only each other’s tools, either.
We have a differing perspectives, both a few hefty paradigm-shifts away from those of the current mainstream of political thought. In some things, however, we agree. That’s why I come here (generally to lurk and listen), because I think a debate honestly joined with people who are willing to try radical shifts in their thinking is always worth having.
What I was commenting on, really, is the knee-jerk assumption in many posts that every left winger is a frothing state socialist, who just wants to bleed the rich, whilst often linking quite approvingly to articles from sp!ked and the Manifesto Club.
If you take a look at Proudhon’s mutualism, or even many anarchist (but not anarcho-syndicalist) movements, you’ll see that many want to actively destroy the boot, not to change who’s wearing it. They differ with you (I assume) on the best way of doing it. Mutualism explicitly denies the state any coercive power.
Chris – I know all too well the too left-wing for one group, too right-wing for another. I (and, incidentally, one of LM’s sales-people – although I’m sure he wouldn’t like to be called that) instantly ostracised ourselves from the college lefties whilst at university by supporting a motion at a JCR meeting that suggested that the BNP had as much of a right to enter hustings (and they weren’t even our hustings, we were approving or disapproving of something going on hundreds of miles away in Edinburgh) as candidates from any other party.
For a few of us, it was a freedom of speech issue. For many, it was an anti-fascism issue. And for me, freedom came first. I was baffled then (and am to this day) that there were two lonely lefties willing to make that argument.
Still, Samizdata always seems to have a place for misfits…
I accept what you say about the quite false left-right line, somewhere on which we are all meant to fall. I think that freedom can be approached from different angles, and it’s something worth pooling resources, on occasion and when appropriate, to fight for.
Anyway, thanks again for all the thoughts. Lokon, I may be your enemy, but, I assure you, you are not mine. You just happen to be someone whom I haven’t convinced yet.
Nathaniel, the issue that continues to separate “libertarian socialists” – a real oxymoron – is the issue of property rights. That tends to be the killer issue for me.
There is a quite respectable tradition of mutualism, of course, which blurs the edges of socialism and liberalism. I don’t mind folk who want to build a socialist utopia with their own money and with the voluntary consent of those involved. A key proviso has to be that people should be free to join, and more importantly still, to leave such utopias.
I think you can see where I am going……
Yes, Jonahnathan, I see where you are going. Maybe it’s just that I do not see a qualitative difference in the positions of many people on this site (and Hayek) and mnay who would think of themselves as left-wing.
I’m going to quote from The Road To Serfdom (pp.124-5 in my Routledge edition): “There is no reason why in a society that has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained, the first kind of security [security from physical privation, and the certainty of a given minimum sustenance for all] should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom… there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody.”
He, of course, believed that that point had already been reached in Britain. It is rare (although it does occasionally happen) that libertarians, even on this site, argue for the privatisation of the armed forces or the police.
Essentially, then, I think we disagree on what Hayek’s ‘minimum’ is. The difference for many is quantitative rather than qualitative.
The rational problem with that, Nathaniel, is that when you guarantee “that some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody”, you are subsidizing the conduct that leads to that state. It is unavoidable that whatever is subsidized is encouraged and increased.
By placing qualifications on the receipt of charity (something most private philanthropies do) you can avoid this increase is poverty.
My personal belief is that any project that rewards people for being impoverished by helping them without qualification, is evil. Consequences matter. Nobody should every be made that unqualified guarantee. They should always have to alter their behavior to receive it.
Just to check, you do know who Frank Furedi is, the name of the party he used to chair and his, ahem, interesting position regrading Bosnia, right?
I’m not saying it invalidates the argument of this movie, far from it, but we can at least say that it’s not likely to be the ‘right wing’ alternative to anything very much.
(his antics also mke for a fairly interesting read)
“A lot of progressives have stopped believing in progress… and have begun to look nostalgically to the past and have come to reject modern life in many respects and, in a very kind of desperate way, believe that in the good old days when things were small and tangible and when people lived in small villages, everything was all right.”
It’s called “community”, but it’s not communitarianism (which is socialism for kindergartners).
We conservatives have always felt that way. My Daughter refers to us as “kinda like Amish, but with technology”.
I commend to all the works of Albert Jay Nock, for a truly conservative weltanschauung.