I find myself wondering if Britain is a Communist country.
“If the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were a Communist country you would not be allowed to ask that question.”
I think I might be. If Britain was under Marxist rule (which is what is normally meant by “a Communist country”) I think the rulers might allow me to ask how long we were going to be under socialism before we reached the end state of advanced communist equality – they might even give me a date when the new society would be achieved. The Soviet rulers did this from time to time – normally many decades in the future.
“The means of production, distribution and exchange are not under public control – so we have not even reached the socialist stage yet”.
That would be a better reply. However, almost half of the economy is taken by government spending alone (if one takes account of Mr Brown’s smoke and mirrors), and the rest of the economy is so controlled by endless regulations that it is at least close to be under “public” (if by this we mean state) control.
But it is really the near universal propaganda that got me wondering if was living under Communist rule.
This site is not called ‘samizdata’ without reason. In Britain there are many sources of information – books, magazines, newspapers, television and radio broadcasters. But on many matter they all say the same thing.
Take the example of the bailout/takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the United States.
In America Fox News, so denounced as statists by so many libertarians, had many critical voices on Monday September 8th. On Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” show both M. Malkin and Bob Barr (who are very different from each other on so many political issues) both laid in to the corrupt statism. And Mr Cavuto also did so. The next day (Tuesday 9th September) Ron Paul was on the show – continuing the attack. Later on the 8th of September the Brit Hume show (although Mr Hume himself was away) Ed Crane of the Cato Institute was on denouncing the bailout/takeover. There were, of course, other voices and perhaps to let Fannie and Freddie go bankrupt would have been even worse than what the government did – but this is not my point.
My point is that there was no dissent in Britain – from any media source. The BBC did not even report in its main news shows that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by the government and run by political cronies. The leftist Independent newspaper gloatingly declared that President Bush had “torn up years of lassez faire polices”. The claim that there has ever even been a “lassez faire” policy in the United States under President wild spending Bush is such a blatant bit of agitprop that it is hard to know how to respond to it.
And the so-called ‘Conservative’ newspapers? No dissent anywhere – at least none I could find. In fact the Daily Mail was demanding something similar for Britain.
It must be remembered that in Britain ‘Conservative’ means ‘Conservative party’, it does not mean conservative in any philosophical sense.
And it is not true that in Communist countries there was only one legal party – often there were several political parties (organized into a ‘front’), as long as they all supported the regime.
But it is not just this one example.
Take another incident on Monday September 8th – the Fox News refutation of “the Americans killed lots of innocent kids” lie that was going round the world.
Fox News had reporters actually on the raid in question, who had filmed the raid and openly denounced the “killed these kids” claims as lies.
This would simply not happen in Britain. Even if a British television crew had been on a raid with special forces – it would never call the crying and screaming “relatives of the murdered children” (who can cry and scream on que whenever they are told to – and can produce pictures of dead bodies) liars.
“We are libertarians, we are anti-war” – I am saying be “pro-war” (perhaps the Afghan war is all wrong), I am saying tell the truth. Something that does not happen here – on any television or radio station. If you were with someone and know they did not kill kids then it is your duty to say so. And, if dead kids are produced, to ask who really killed them. That would not be done by any British network.
But it goes a lot further than this. For example, today I went round the bookshops in my home town of Kettering Northamptonshire – a typical British town if there ever was one. In every shop there were Senator Obama’s books, and so there should be – he may be elected to a very powerful position, so what he has to say is of interest.
But in no shop was there any book that was critical of Senator Obama.
No “Obama Nation“, or “The Case Against Barack Obama“, or “Audacity of Deceit” or “Obama Unmasked“.
Perhaps these books are useless (although the first two are best sellers in the United States), but why were they not on the shelves?
“Because they would not sell” – how does anyone know, if they are not put on the shelves?
And why are the same leftist propaganda books on the shelves for ever – even though people do not buy them?
For example, in the local “W.H. Smith” there is copy of “What’s wrong with America?” (what is wrong with America seems to be that it is not yet sufficiently Marxist) – and it has been the same copy for at least two years (I know that because there is a bend in the cover).
Does this sound like commercial behaviour by a profit maximising private company? American libertarians often complain that the United States is capitalist in name, but semi-socialist in reality.
Actually that is rather more true of Britain.
I started labelling it all fascist lite years ago, rather than communist, given that the means of production is still in private hands.
I have been saying this for a while.
I actually found a great article about it on an Indian site – http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Columnists/Sudeshna_Sen_Totalitarian_Britain/articleshow/3441928.cms
Looking at the way things work outside London, it would seem to me that both Wales and Northern Ireland will become communist states by 2020. The power that WAG has over local government is absolute.
With over 50% of the work force working for the public purse, it won’t take long before not doing so is going to be pointless unless you are working for a juicy WAG contract – with all the paperwork that goes with it!
I do worry for the future – the only hope I can see is that the paperwork will kill the communist process – the bureaucracy can only be killed by suicide!
Whatever word one wants to use – communist, fascist, socialist – doesn’t really matter, it is decidedly Statist. Where it gets off the hook as being outright bad (in the classic examples of the last century) is that the camps and gulags haven’t sprung up (thought the US does have one of the highest prison populations in the world crowded with people who did not, in any way, present a direct danger to a person or their property). What we have had thus far as the building of the Ponzi Scheme and smoke and mirrors hid the fact of just how Statist things had become. But as long as people were soaked for only about half of their labor, and the rest could be borrowed, things could tumble along. Unfortunately, at least here in the US, the endgame is soon in coming. The taxes collected for Social Security will soon turn from positive to negative in relation to claims. When it does, not only will the subsidy of overall Federal spending cease, it will be a double whammy as the claims increase and the SSA needs all of its own AND the payback out of general revenues. Taxes will have to go up 10-15% just to pay for what we’ve already outlined, much less anything else that can be dreamed up by Obama or McCain.
This, of course, will cause a contraction to an economy that is barely hanging on as is, and the slice that goes to taxation will be even more as a percentage. We are headed for some very tough times, times so tough that the Mr. Nice Guy Statism we’ve had will have to turn to more drastic measures to make the system work. I don’t have enough faith that we will somehow turn towards freedom as an alternative. We are already starting to triangulate minorities ripe for persecution and it won’t be long when foreclosed upon folk, with hungry bellies, start looking for who to blame. The rest follows naturally.
‘Take another incident on Monday September 8th – the Fox News refutation of “the Americans killed lots of innocent kids” lie that was going round the world.
Fox News had reporters actually on the raid in question, who had filmed the raid and openly denounced the “killed these kids” claims as lies.’
This simply cannot be allowed to pass. The ‘reporter’ to whom you refer was Colonel Oliver North, a man who boasted about his committing perjury.
The US military is now going to reinvestigate the incident, as more information has emerged that has contradicted their (and Col. North’s account of the events): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090800633.html?hpid=topnews .
To claim that the people killed during the attack, as documented by both witnesses and with video has all been made up by people who can ‘produce pictures of dead bodies on que [sic]’ is ghoulish and disturbing.
To suggest that we should be less suspicious of ‘the greater good’ Col. North says that he serves than we would be of anyone else’s ‘greater good’ simply because his worldview happens to be more acceptable to you is typically hypocritical.
Well, the point of the post, of course, is that you have both the WP report and the Oliver North report. Something, the poster says, that could not happen in Britain — although I don’t know if that is true or not.
Paul. Britain is inevitably more socialistic in outlook because the average citizen/subject no longer even possesses the frame of reference to think about the proper role of the state versus that of the individual and the distinction between public and private spheres. Since the fall of the British empire, English nationhood and personal identity have been anchored by allegiance to socialist institutions. Being proud of ‘our’ NHS and ‘our’ BBC, are the central ways to express national solidarity. The average person in this country isn’t capable of criticising these institutions because they are the only means through which he can his conceive of his Britishness. Indeed, it seems to me that for the most Brits today patriotism is ONLY conceivable through a socialist lens. Its important to stress that I don’t mean the preferable way, but the single way. His education, the media he consumes and the larger culture he moves in have not equipped him to conceive of it in any other terms.
I have no idea how the cancerous hold of socialistic institutions like the BBC and the NHS on the British psyche can be loosened. Until that happens however, libertarianism as a political philosophy will not only be rejected by the ‘man on the street’ but he will lack the mental tools to even think about it
Nathaniel Tapley, Col North was not the only person there. The cameraman was also interviewed and he agreed with the statement. He was introduced a a professional who had many years of reporting from various hotspots.
Afghans have a habit of reporting the absolute worse case to collect as much money as possible from the “Outsiders”. I am personally glad to see two sides presented here and am content to await the outcome of the investigation. I am glad that someone other then the usual suspects (leftist media) were there. Perhaps this way we will actually get the truth?
Paul – BBC news has clearly reported that Fanny and Freddie were state owned, then privatised and have now been nationalised again. I saw it myself. Strange as it may seem, the fact that you didn’t see a report doesn’t mean there never was one…
Jerome, back when I was at school we had Alistair Campbell come in and talk to us sixth formers. When asked for the things he most admired about Britain, he listed the NHS, the BBC, the Premier League and the armed forces (Labour types are of course obliged to list the armed forces, even whilst simultaneously undermining them in myriad ways). The fact that the first three take precedence over things like the Magna Carta in the mind a man (then) at the heart of our government is a notable example of the attitude you described.
I would give anything to have something like Fox News here to get a break from the endless mindset of our Tv and most of the media. I don’t find them rabidly right wing, they let anyone on who has something to say. Can you just imagine our incompetent Ministers questioned by Bill 0’Riley, it would be a breath of fresh air. Some commentators are openly partisan, unlike others who pretend to be ‘neutral’ on the MSM but I think Brit Hume is the best host I have ever seen. I think it was Charles Krauthammer who said Murdoch had found a niche in the market – half of America! only trouble is the time difference, I end up sitting up half the night during the election phase.
Things are going to have to get a whole lot worse in Great Britain before anything is done about it.
I just hope America doesn’t head down the same road. With a company tax which is already the second highest in the world*, a work force which is already working at about the limit of human endurance and a supposedly conservative government, which has unforgivably engaged in mass deficit spending, the settings are ripe for a vast statist expansion which will have dire consequences.
* I read a hilarious refutation of this fact given by someone who supported an increase in Company Tax which asserted that because US Companies were avoiding this tax by maximizing profits abroad, it couldn’t be considered a 30% tax on profit and that such companies could take more. The irony was apparently lost on the author.
Carol42 It always amuses me that those on this side of the atlantic most up in arms about the blatant partisanship bias and distortions of Fox News are invariably readers of the Guardian or the Independent.
Perhaps the correct adjective to describe the country you are living in Mr Marks is nihilist. Which is simply a more accurate description of what communists really are.
America was an interesting experiment, however it was undermined from Philadelphia onwards principally because the organizing ethical principle of liberty was pronounced merely as ‘self-evident’. The philosophical derivation of liberty was not properly articulated, hence slavery, regulation of interstate commerce and so on right down to such things as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the draft and ’eminent domain’.
Events in Britain in the late 1680s are now not merely forgotten – but ignorance of them is consciously perpetuated in the publishing of school textbooks. Apparently Bonny Prince Charlie is now considered a more important historical figure in Britain than William III or the Earl of Shaftesbury.
As liberty is necessary to survival, the fact that its’ historical and philosophical supports are being consciously eroded indicates just what today’s children in Britain have to look forward to.
And I’m not talking about higher taxes.
No, it would be a bloodbath! That is why they (the Ministers) do not want it happening in the UK.
Actually Bill O’Reilly does not lose his temper as often as is claimed – and when he does it is never physical, just a raised voice for a few seconds (enough to make him look silly in a u.tube film, but not a blood bath).
Nathaniel I never mentioned anything about the greater good.
Nor was Oliver North on his own – are you saying the whole television crew are liars? And their film is lies?
Remember Fox News actually has more Democrats on its staff (look at the political donations) than Republicans.
But the above is not really the point.
Fox News is one station among many who express different points of view. In Britain all television and radio news presents the same editorial line.
Do you not think there is something wrong with that?
And do not reply by saying that television and radio stations either do not or should not have an editorial line – everyone has a view of the world, freedom depends on their being a choice (a real choice) of media outlets.
Ian.
I watched and listened to as many B.B.C. news broadcasts as I could stand – clearly you listened to more.
Did any of the broadcasts mention that the Freddie and Fannie were never really “privatized” but, in fact, were run by political cronies.
Genuine question – I simply do not know.
Of course the whole government/Federal Reserve Board backed credit/bubble financial system stinks – but that is another question.
What is broadcast on the B.B.C. is a constant stream of stuff about how we have a government with a fanatical faith in the market.
Even special shows put on to show another point of view actually present the same point of view.
For example, last Friday and Sunday B.B.C. Radio Four broadcast a show called “A point of view” – far from dissenting from the normal media line that Britain is controlled by evil market forces and a government in the service of business, the show claimed that the faith in the market in Britian was an addiction “like heroin”.
Britain may not be Communist, but the media and education system present such a blatent tissue of lies (with no real dissent allowed) that I fear mike is correct.
I’ll say what I say when people claim Britain is Fascist. “If that’s the case then I guess Communism isn’t that bad after all.”
Saying a sleeping potion works because it has a dormative faculty doesn’t tell us anything about it and saying Britain is Communist doesn’t tell us anything about it either. The contents of the post is interesting and worrying, the argument and title are irrelevant.
I’m no fan of Progress or epistemologies that unduly privilege scienctific thought, but I guess I’m still enough of a Popperian to think we’d got past the idea that slapping a name on something is the key to understanding it.
**
Anyway, it occurs to me that the rhetorical sleight of hand at play here is quite common. Another example you might see at this website would work like this. “Collectivism” is associated atavistic Nationalism and antihuman Communism and the bodycounts that they produce. Then any idea that deviates from the orthodoxy (like there is such a thing as Duty) is labelled “Collectivist” and is thus by association a very bad thing.
The logic would appear to work like so:
A, which has property B is said to equal C because it has property B.
D, which does not have property B is said to be similar to A and is therefore said to equal C.
(Where in the aforementioned example A=Collectivism, B=famine, povery etc. C= A Bad Thing and D= opposition to the legalisation of crack or whatever.)
I’m sure this must be a logical fallacy of some sort.
A popular joke in Russia in the early 80’s was, in loose translation, “the communism of 1980 has been replaced by Olympics” – because in the late 60′ and early 70’s the official party line was that communism would have been built by 1980 (to replaced “advanced [developed] socialism”). It seems, though, that Britain may build communism before the Russians, and they in turn may build a pretty darn good fascist state in the meantime. I really hope that the news about the UK on the west side of the pool is badly distorted, but when Samizdata and the BBC agree about the facts, I cannot help but be worried.
It is like the monkey has looked in the mirror and thinks that is the monkey.
We live by relativity and no longer by insight.
God help us all.
I remember that Plamus. I believe that by the time 1980 arrived the “Advanced Communist” stage was supposed to arrive in 2000.
Gabriel:
Of course the title was designed to attract attention, however the line pushed by the “education system” and much of the media is watered down Marxism. And the economy itself (the “economic base” for this “ideological superstructure”) is at least as far from capitalism as it is from socialism – due to the size and scope of the state.
I was reacting to the constant lies in the media about how “market dominated” Britain is.
Nor is confined to Britain. The leading “Times” economic policy writers (A.K.) stated the other day that the Bush Administration was “ultra captialist”.
The man must know that, even exculding military spending, the Bush Administration has increased government spending more than any other since Richard Price Controls Nixon.
So it was not a “mistake”, it was a lie.
Propaganda to make it seem that the fall of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae was something to do with capitalism and “too much faith in the market”.
Rather than political cronies running these government created and government backed entities – and a vast credit money bubble created by the Federal Reserve, a creidit money surge that has messed up the entire financial system.
i.e. the very loose money policy that A.K. has long supported.
As the Russian saying goes “they smash your face in and then say you were always ugly”.
People like A.K. (and the rest of the establishment) support wild spending fiscal policy and credit money bubble monetary policy – and then they blame the results on “ultra capitalism” and “too much faith in the market”.
At least in the United States there is some dissent from this propaganda, in Britain the story fits the neo Marxist “metacontext” too well.
Of course, among my other errors, I should have typed “I am not saying be pro war”.
Leaving out the word “not” was bad of me.
I agree with Gabriel. Gosh.
Guy Herbert.
Just this morning Vince Cable was on B.B.C. Radio Four saying (uncontradicted) that the Bush Adminitration was the most right wing in history and ultracapitalist. An absurd lie.
And various people were on talking about the financial crises. Not one of them pointing to the vast flow of credit money from both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England over the last several years.
There was no effort to tell the truth (by anyone of the long series of guests), as they were either government people or business people dependent on the flow of funny money themselves.
So what has caused the crises? Greedy people of course.
They might as well have said “demons” or “animal spirits” (like Lord Keynes).
The media presents watered down and distorted Marxism all the time. Because they have no alternative frame of reference – education being what it is.
Almost needless to say the guests all called for more regulations.
In the U.S. it’s often referred to as Faux News. Of course, websites expose everything from press releases treated as news to monopoly control of media.
The BBC and CBC aren’t what they were. Neither is al Jazeera or Russia Today !
C’mon guys. Somebody took types of government in history class. Bolshevik Communism and Fascism are both flip sides of the Police State.
Today in the U.S. Habeas Corpus is no longer operative. That means the serfs ( economic slaves, don’t quibble ) have fewer rights than in 1215 in Britain ! The War Measures Act can do duty as an analogue to their Patriot Act in quick time.
I read Ten Percent quite a bit and know ‘civil rights’ are gone under the lie of ‘Terror’. I’m afraid of the state. Does that count ?
Check out the Wikipedia entry on John Arbuthnot to find out about a 1735 treatise on the art of political lying. The Yanks call it flim flam : but the UK version is more ingrained.
Education is programmed by the state. Media are run by the state. History is (un)taught by the state. See a pattern ?
Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.
If I had to pick a time when the United States (forget about Britain) openly broke with the rule of law (as opposed to just having lots of laws) in peacetime I would say it was 1935 – when the Supreme Court ruled (almost without argument) that it was O.K. for F.D.R. to steal the gold of the public, in spite of the Federal government having no constitutional power to do this.
“But the Court said they did – do they have such power”.
That is what I mean by having lots (far too many) laws, but having no rule of law. The rule of law is not the arbitary power of elected politicans or judges – basic principles do exist, and they should not be “interpreted” out of existance. What the elite has done to the Constitution of the United States is like an old Protestant sterotype of what “priest craft” does to the Bible. That Protestant sterotype was unfair to the Roman Catholic Church (indeed, ironically, it now better fits some “liberal” Protestant churches since the rise of the “social gospel”), but it is what the elite have done to the Constitution.
As for Marxism.
Government reaction to crises, more regulations and other such, is not really Marxism (that is why I have been careful to say “distorted”), it is better described the way Ludwig Von Mises did in the last part of his book “Socialism” – the insanity which, for example, reacts to rising unemployment by putting up minimum wage laws or increasing union power is “Destructionism”.
But is it really just insanity?
Sometime it is not.
For example, the Community Reinvestment Act is used by groups like ACORN to demand that banks (and other such) lend to people who are unlikely to pay back the loans (“lend in this poor area or we sue you”), and the banks pass on this no-hope debt in various complex ways (thus spreading the problem and making it worse).
Is this just insanity?
Or do groups like ACORN have a hidden agenda.
As many of the leaders of ACORN are Marxists, I think it is possible that there is a deliberate wish to harm the financial sector – and the whole economy.
Or as they might put it, to “bring down capitalism by working through Finance Capital”.
Historically “Finance Capital” (banks and other such) have been a lot more willing to make deals with Marxists than many manufacturers have been.
Not paranoia – even financial newspapers like the “Financial Times” (sister publication of the “Economist”) have a history of having Marxists on their staff.
It seems that “liberals” are happy to cooperate with Marxists in ways they would not be happy to cooperate with Fascists.