We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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On a recent trip to the English city to Sheffield I was reminded of the cause of our problem with the growth of statism – and the threat it poses to civilization.
The purpose of my visit was to meet up with an old friend, be shown round the centre of the city (some interesting buildings, and good parks in walking distance – offering a fine view of the city) and to go out into the hills over the Yorkshire border in Derbyshire (fine hills right next to the road).
However, there was a sale at the central library in Sheffield and we visited it. Library sales are a common thing in Britain, to “make space for new books” – but also to get rid of books that are no longer tolerated, without having to actually destroy them (book burning is still considered a thing to be avoided). One of the works on sale was the four volume ‘The Science of Society’ produced by William Graham Sumner Associates at Yale in 1927 (Sumner himself having died in 1910). The four volume work was on sale for a Pound (no surprise – I was got a 1949 edition of Human Action for ten pence from a British Library sale).
In those days, even at an elite University like Yale, it was still not uncommon for academics to be free market folk and Sumner had been the best known pro freedom sociologist in the United States. The Sumner club carried on Sumner’s opinions and was to provide resistance to President Roosevelt and the other “New Dealers” in the 1930’s. So one would expect a scholarly examination of the customs of various societies (in those days the lines between sociology and anthropology were less rigid), but an examination from a pro private property point of view. Just as modern examinations are scholarly, but written from a point of view which favours violations of private property.
Well what is there?
The first thing I noticed I was expecting – the evolutionist philosophy. Just as with Hayek, private property is not supported as a matter of metaphysical (by ‘metaphysical’ I mean something that does not depend on material advantage, i.e. something that is supported on principle – Hayek’s talk of rights in the Road to Serfdom is lip surface, Hayek neither believed in metaphysical rights or even free will).
Private property is supported because it is good for society – a larger population can be sustained over the long term, and all sorts of development can occur. Cultural evolution is an older idea than biological evolution. Work on the evolution of such social institutions as language goes back to at least the 18th century. → Continue reading: How a trip to Sheffield reminded me of the cause of our problem
In the Daily Telegraph there was a story about the decay of Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire. Paths worn out, litter, and general decay. Even the purple heather is being overwhelmed by bracken (perhaps a lesson to all those who think that ‘Mother Nature’ will always make things nice if she is left in charge). As usual ‘underfunding’ from the government (national and from the local government of the city of Bradford) got most of the blame.
But there were some other things mentioned. The pressure of the number of visitors was pointed to (no price of entry, no real owner… ‘tragedy of the Commons’ anyone?).
The removal of power from the local town to the city of Bradford back in the early 1970’s (by Edward Heath and Peter Walker the Conservative party ‘modernizers’ of their day – people much like David Cameron and Francis Maude in our own time). Was attacked by some people. Some people wanted to copy the ‘Malvern Hills Conservators’, a voluntary group in Worcestershire (or whatever it is called these days) which has been protecting the Malvern Hills since the 19th century – rather than trust either the city of Bradford or the local town council. And some local people pointed to something of interest.
Anne Hawkesworth (now that sounds like a Yorkshire name), from the local town council is quoted as saying “If you stand in the centre of Ilkely and look up, on one side you see the purple of the Beamsley and Devonshire estates, but on the Ilkley side you just see bracken”.
J.S. Mill (not a man I admire, as some readers here may know) said that private ownership of great estates could only be justified by the owner acting as a guardian for the people. I believe that such private ownership needs no ‘justification’, any more than Mr Mill should have had to ‘justify’ owning his house or his boots.
However, there is no denying that private ownership has proven to be a better guardian of the environment than the state.
Having previously written a post on Alfred the Great (who I still think was the greatest Englishman who ever lived) and his family, I think it would be nice to present a pro-Viking post (or at least pro-Norse: not quite the same thing).
To go a Viking is to ‘raid’ in the language of old Norse and most Norse people were not raiders – they were farmers, craftsmen and traders (although someone might be any of these three things and still be a raider at some time in their life) like most non-Norse people in the period (from the late 8th to the early 12th centuries).
Raiding is not a libertarian activity (robbery, slave taking, rape and murder are violations of the non-aggression principle) and (as stated above) non-raiding occupations were much the same among Norse folk as among non Norse folk. So why do many libertarians (and non-libertarians) have a soft spot for the ‘Vikings’ (if we must call the Norse Vikings)?
Well a case can be made for the Norse as the freedom loving folk of pro-Viking popular legend.
It starts with Charlemagne (768-814). Charles the Great King of the Franks and later first Holy Roman Emperor. Charlemagne’s grandfather was the great general Charles Martel who defeated the Arab invasion of France, and his father was Pepin who deposed King Childeric and made himself King of the Franks (rather than just the “Vicar of the Palace” and real power behind the throne that Charles Martel had been). Charlemagne had some trouble imposing his rule (over other claimants to the throne) and had to beg the aid of Tassilo the ruler of Bavaria.
However, the internal politics of the Franks would not be a great concern if it were not for the policies of Charlemagne. Most rulers of this period raided (the later Vikings were not breaking totally new ground here) – loot was a good way of winning the loyalty of the hard men one need to be able to count on to preserve one’s rule. But Charlemagne raided more than any other ruler of his time.
Sometimes Charlemagne waged war with an ideological justification, for example the long wars against the Saxons in order to impose Christianity (more on this later). Other times it was to eliminate a potential rival (such as when Charlemagne betrayed Tassilo by the conquest of Christian Bavaria) and sometimes it was just in search of loot and ‘glory’ (such as the long distance raiding against the Avars). Charlemagne’s wars against the Saxons and his pressure on the Frisians (part of centuries of pressure on these folk of what is now the coast of north west Germany and north east Holland) and Denmark caused considerable interest in the Northern world.
Serfdom (the semi-slavery of the peasants – and idea that went back, in various forms, to the late Roman Empire) was never successfully imposed on the Frisians or the Saxons, but the spreading of religion by the sword was not Charlemagne’s only intent – the spreading of the Frankish social system (a military elite, loyal to a great warlord, living off the forced labour of others) was certainly part of the story. And in order to imposer this vast numbers of people were killed in Charlemagne’s campaign of terror.
It is hard to be sure (and it is contested) but some claim that there were great councils of the North – and that the ‘Viking Age’ (at least at first) was a response to the activities of Charlemagne. Certainly (even if we keep to the idea of the Vikings as independent raiders) the pressure on the Frisians meant that their sea power could no longer control the North Sea – leaving the area free for others.
Charlemagne also favoured the power of the Church – not just the worship of the Christian God. This meant the rise of what came to be called tithes and other forms of church taxes. But even after the Norse became Christians they tended to resist such taxes. For example in Iceland they were not imposed till the 1080’s and in Norway to the early 1100’s.
Serfdom as also strongly resisted by the Norse. In won out in Denmark – but never in Sweden or Norway (even after these areas became nation states). The case of Norway is interesting. As late as the early 1100’s there were still four different peasant assemblies that elected Kings (who did not have to be the same person) – such ideas were outside the mainstream of European thought (as expressed by Charlemagne and those who came after him). Slavery did exist in the Norse world – but it tended to decline. For example, in Iceland it died out completely in the 11th century. And (of course) Charlemagne was just a greater slave trader than the Vikings ever were.
Lastly there is the matter of price control. There were (broadly speaking) two views of the concept of the ‘just price’ in legal-theological thinking of the time. There was the view that the just price was a price that was freely decided between buyer and seller (this view is reflected in the laws of Bavaria in the 8th century) and there was the view that the ‘just price’ was the price established by custom or law.
Charlemagne favoured the latter view – and his officials (and those of later Kings) tried to impose detailed price controls (and other regulations). The Church was never united behind Charlemagne and his officials – but Charlemagne had saved the Pope from the power of the Lombards and the Pope did declare him Holy Roman Emperor, so the view of the dream of extensive state power (itself a dream of re-establishing the controls of the late Roman Empire) was a respectable one within the Church – and cast a long shadow over the Middle Ages and beyond.
The Norse however rejected the very notion of Imperial power in such matter (indeed in all matters). So perhaps people are not totally foolish to remember some aspects of the ‘Vikings’ with certain warmth.
In my bitter and twisted way I often resent people being given good jobs when they have no clear talent for these jobs. Before going back to Bolton (I still have not set out) for my pointless course (pointless because I have not been “allocated 120 documented teaching hours” and therefore can not pass) I went over to a local supermarket to get a something to eat.
I started to read the Daily Telegraph, the leading Conservative newspaper in Britain and came upon an article by Mr Boris Johnson (Conservative party MP and journalist). The article was about the recent announcement of the closure of a car factory in Coventry in the English West Midlands. Fear not, argued Mr Johnson, for although this particular factory is closing, industry in general in the United Kingdom is doing well and unemployment is only 4% of the workforce.
The problem is that unemployment was 5% of the workforce in January (and I bet it has gone up since then). and industrial output has been falling for over a year. I actually agree with the thrust of Mr Johnson’s article (that we should not copy French regulations – although quite a lot of regulations have already come in over the years), but the careless attitude to facts irritates me.
Christopher Booker (of the Sunday Telegraph – the sister paper to the Daily Telegraph) regularly attacks journalists (including Mr Johnson) for getting the facts wrong (on the EU and other matters). But these journalists (and people in other walks of life) just carry on writing and speaking as if facts do not matter. How is it that people can get high paying and important jobs and just not bother about what they are doing? For example, Mr Johnson will have at least one paid ‘researcher’ – so it is not as if it would be a great effort for him to get the facts right (he just does not care – just as many other important people just do not care).
I know I have said it before, but it offends me that (for example) David Cameron (who has a degree in Politics Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University) talks as if he did not understand what the words “social justice” meant (i.e. the belief that income and wealth should be “distributed” by government in accordance with a pattern held to be just). Does he really believe in ‘social justice’? In which case he should not be a member of the Conservative party – let alone the leader of it. Does he not know what the words mean? But he is not Ian Duncan Smith (an ex leader of the Conservative party and ex-army man who also uses these words, but can not be blamed for not knowing what they mean) he has (as I said above) a degree in PPE from Oxford – how did he get the degree if he knows nothing about basic political philosophy? Or is he trying to trick people by using words he thinks they will like whilst not caring about the formal meaning of these words? In which case he is dishonest.
“Mr Cameron is not dishonest, he is a nice man and Mr Johnson is a lovely man”.
No Mr Cameron is not a ‘nice man’ – nice people do not call “most” (the exact word was “mostly”) of the members of another party “closet racists” without a very good reason. He was not referring to the genuinely racist neo-fascist British National Party (BNP), who pose no threat at all to the Tories, but rather the anti-European Union United Kingdom Independence Party, who do indeed take votes from the Tories. He also refused to apologize – and then got the party Chairman (arch plotter Francis Maude) to come out with even more smears.
And of course this is the same Mr Cameron of the PR work for Mr Green of Carlton television. When Mr Green was busy using shareholders money to try and prop “On Digital” Mr Cameron not only denied it was happening he said “if you print that I will have you sacked” to several financial journalists.
Mr Johnson is not a “lovely man” either – he cheats on his wife and then makes a little joke of it (in the hopes that he can get out of trouble). He also made great play of how anti-EU he was (when he stood for Parliament) – and then voted for the arch EU fanatic ‘Ken’ Clarke to be leader of the Conservative party (Mr Johnson then, I believe, supported Mr Cameron in the last leadership election).
These men have no honour and no ability, other than the ability to somehow get to the top.
“It is just because you are bitter and twisted Paul” – well that is true, but I still do not see why Britain has to have so many people in high positions who do not care about truth. It is as if the entire ruling elite (almost regardless of party) want to be the “heir to Blair” as Mr Cameron is supposed to have claimed to be.
Government spending, taxes and regulations are all on the rise in this country and have been for quite some time. This has happened many times before in history, but there is a odd thing about this time.
Most people seem to think that we have a ‘free market’ government, and that Mr Blair is very ‘pro-business’. I can understand people thinking the government is very close to some businessmen (the people who are connected politically), but there is a view that this is a general ‘free enterprise’ regime.
In the past Marxists held that various Labour governments were “really pro-capitalist” because these administrations were not as collectivist as Maxists would like. However, it is more than a few Marxists today. It does seem to be a common view that a state of affairs where way over 40% of the economy is spent by the state and what is left is controlled by a vast web of regulations is a ‘New Labour’ system where the government has turned its back on ‘social justice’ and is not doing enough to ‘help the poor’.
In the United States the wild spending Bush administration (responsible for the Medicare extension, “no child left behind” and the biggest increase in ‘entitlement’ spending since the days of L.B.J. and Richard Nixon) is held, by some people, to be ‘free market’. But then (like Nixon) Mr Bush is a Republican (who are supposed to be free market – even if they often not so) and has actually cut taxes (by some definitions).
In this country there should be no such confusion – the government is from the Labour party, and taxes (as well as spending and regulations) have been increased and are increasing – yet the view persists that this is somehow a pro free enterprise administration.
Many in the Conservative party seem deeply confused. For example Michael Gove MP writes in Forward! (the journal of Conservative Way Forward – I wonder if the people who control this journal know that ‘Forward’ [in various languages] was the name for first Marxist and then Fascist newspapers in 20th century Europe) that President Bush is not “concerned” enough about the “very poorest” and should have more of a “one nation social obligation” (supposedly John McCain would be more collectivist than George Bush and would, therefore, make a better President)
If this waffle means that President Bush should have spent even more money on the various health, education and welfare programs then Mr Gove knows nothing about what has been happening in the United States (but then Mr Gove has little interest in the United States, other than his desire that it should make war in various places). However, it is clear that Mr Gove (and his master Mr Cameron – the leader of the Conservative party) also think that there is not enough statism here.
The words ‘social justice’ are often used by some people in the Conservative party, as if there was no knowledge that basic point of being a Conservative is to oppose ‘social justice’ (statism – specifically the “redistribution of income and wealth”) and to support justice (private property – to each their own). The virtue of benevolence (what used to be called the virtue of charity) is indeed a good thing – but it is a different thing from the virtue of justice. It does no good (indeed it does vast harm) to confuse the concepts.
So we have a government that is greatly increasing the size and scope of the state and an opposition that seems to think that the government has not gone far enough. I suppose it might be claimed that Mr Gove and Mr Cameron are so deeply moved by the thought that there are poor people that they are willing to try anything, even “social justice”, in the misguided hope that it will reduce (rather than increase) poverty.
However, I am poor and I have not noted Mr Gove or Mr Cameron rushing to me and offering me a job or other aid. I know of no evidence that they have some deep feeling for the poor. At the base of their words does seem to be a belief that they well get more votes by talking and writing in this way – i.e. they think that even after the orgy of spending, taxes and regulations of the last few years, the people of this land are still in love with the “public services” and with “social justice”.
Perhaps they are right. As I have noted, many people do seem to think of Labour statism as ‘New Labour’ free enterprise. It is very odd.
I have not seen anything written here on what is being called the Abolition of Parliament Bill – the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill that was going through Parliament last week (whilst ‘Dave’ Cameron was off on paternity leave).
I have heard it finally finishes off the delegated legislation process (the process by which ministers and civil servants pass regulations with power given them under enabling Acts of Parliament) – a process that A.V. Dicey observed before the First World War and Chief Justice Hewitt was the last major establishment figure to oppose (“The New Despotism” 1929). It has taken a very long time to finish the process, but it seems Mr Blair will complete it.
Of course in a modern big government Welfare State having every regulation examined by Parliament is not possible (one extra reason to oppose a modern big government Welfare State).
Still a Statute that allows ministers to alter any regulation (apart from in the field of tax) without coming back to Parliament, and set up to two years in prison as a punishment for failing to obey their arbitrary regulations – well it does seem to a bit much even for Britain.
Have I just dreamed it all then?
Also nothing on our dear friends the Local Government Standards Board – people have noticed them now they have suspended Red Ken from his position as Mayor of London for a month (for nasty things he said to a Jewish journalist).
However, the Board has been doing this sort of thing (and far worse) for years. For example, if a councillor writes to try and expose the “wind farm” con (it is a con because it does not greatly reduce CO2 production – as the wind turbines do not produce much power and have to be “backed up” by coal and gas fired stations which run all the time as a safeguard) they might not (if the Board feels like it) be allowed to speak (or vote) against “wind farms” in council debates.
Ditto saying that Council ‘Chief Executives’ are paid too much or are useless (‘Chief Executives’ are the highly paid useless trash who have replaced what used to be called Town Clerks) – if a councillor says that he is in big trouble.
There is no automatic right for an elected councillor to oppose government policy (or ‘best practice’) in modern Britain and has not been since Mr Blair set up the Board. If the Board will let you speak and vote fine – but they may choose not to.
I am not a fanatical supporter of democracy, but I thought that many people were supposed to be. I have heard very little about what is going on in Britain – most people seem either to not know or not care
Governments are not know for being truthful, but it would seem sensible to tell lies that have a reasonable probability of being believed – and I do not agree that the “biggest lies are the most likely to be believed” (at least if by ‘biggest’ we mean thing that are most obviously false).
However, the British government seems to have adopted a policy of telling obvious lies. In the last few days alone we had (for example) the claim that “violent crime has fallen by 23%”. This was duly reported by the Independent newspaper (a newspaper that hates the current government, but hates truth even more – and so was glad to support the claim). This was brought out in support of the government policy of allowing “24 hour drinking”, I am not much interested in the policy (other than like so much ‘deregulation’ it has turned out to mean a lot more form filling and other such), but the claim of vast drop in violent crime was obvious nonsense.
If the government had said “contrary to people’s believe that violent crime is rising, it is actually saying much the same” that might well still have been telling lies (as violent crime is, most likely, on the up) but they would have been more likely to be believed.
But to say a “23% drop in violent crime”? They might as well have said a 123%.
Then there was the recent launch of a new navy destroyer – “The most powerful ship built since World War II”… actually it is an extremely expensive (£1 billion pound) grossly under-armed ship (part of the government’s ‘buy European’ policy – a policy exposed by Christopher Booker and Richard North). But why say “most powerful ship built since World War II” – an obvious lie even to people who nothing of Booker or North?
Lastly we had yet more claims of super educated school children “the best ever” – almost needless to say the Universities (hardly strongholds of free market people) reported today that the students they are getting are as ignorant as sin.
What is the reason for all these wild lies?
Today Mr Blair and his cronies will bring their banning Incitement to Religious Hatred (i.e. death to another part of what is left of free speech) idea before the House of Commons.
Normally one must be careful not to use the word “evil” in politics. One must not claim a monopoly of virtue for one’s own side in any political debate as one may always be wrong and, even if one is correct, the people on the other side may simply be honestly mistaken. They may be voting for a bad statute, but they are not themselves bad people.
However, the vile scheme that is the banning Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill has been exposed so many times (and in so many places) that no member of the House of Commons can honestly say that they did not know what they were voting for.
There is no question of (say) “the balance of argument” or “people of good will taking different sides”. The people who vote for this bill (in the hopes of their party getting some Muslim votes – and, of course, not from tolerant Muslims) are voting for something they know to be evil, and that makes these members of the House of Commons bad people, unfit to serve in the ‘Mother of Parliaments’.
I hope that a full list of the Members of the House of Commons, and their constituencies, who vote for this measure is published and widely distributed so that people will know who not to vote for in the next General Election.
I also hope that people who live in the constituencies of the MPs who vote for this bill write to them to, politely, express their horror and disgust with what they have done.
Sometimes people are shown ink blots in the hope of finding clues as to their mental characteristics. If the ink blots remind you of the ‘wrong’ things then you may have problems.
However, a different form of “ink blot madness” has been doing the rounds for some time: The ink blot strategy.
The ink blot strategy holds that the British won in Malaya (now Malaysia and the independent city state of Singapore) not by killing, capturing or driving out the communists, but by taking bits of Malaya and making life “so good” in these bits that people “did not want to fight the British any more” and then expanding these bits “like ink blots”. By copying this strategy we can all win in Iraq – or so it is claimed.
There are various problems with this idea. Firstly it is not what the British army did in Malaya – whatever some people may say they did. In reality the men went out and fought the enemy (in the jungle or elsewhere). Certainly there were ‘protected villages’ and so on, but Malaya was a fight (it was not a welfare project).
Further the British did not give vast amounts of aid to Malaya. Britain did not have this sort of money to give away in the early 1950’s and it would not have really improved economic life anyway (more on that below). In so far as economic life did improve in Malaya during the “Emergency” British aid was not the real reason.
And, of course, the (mostly ethnic Chinese) communists in Malays were not fighting for “better socio-economic conditions” anyway – they were fighting for communism (hint, that is why they were called ‘communists’). Try asking someone who knows something about Vietnam how all the welfare statism there did not make the VC or NVA vanish (nor was ‘support’ for them among civilians based upon poor social or economic conditions, such support was based on terror – you helped the communists or you and your family would be killed)
How can someone be so plain daft as to suppose that the reason someone becomes a suicide bomber in Iraq (whether they are from Iraq or from outside) is because they turned on the light one day and it did not go on. “Oh if only the electricity and the water supply worked better, then I would not strap a lot of explosives to myself and go blow up a bus full of school children”.
Also physics teaches us that it is less difficult to destroy that to create. The terrorists left undisturbed (under the ink blot strategy) in ‘their’ bits of Iraq will find it less difficult to come in and blow things up in ‘ink blot land’ than the U.S. Army (or anyone else) will find it to build nice services.
The ink blots will not ‘spread, they will shrink. Going on the defensive is sign that one has no real will to win – and would mean that soldiers being killed would be dying for nothing (as the poltical choice to give up had already been made – sound familar?).
Then there is the assumption that government can make the lives of people Iraq “so good they will not fight”, it is not just that the terrorists are fighting because they would like nicer ‘public services’ (which is absurd), but the whole idea that the government can make so many millions of people have such happy lives.
One does not have to a libertarian to see the absurdity of this idea. The government can not (for example) make the lives of Compton in greater Los Angeles. “So good they will not want to fight” (after so many decades of welfare schemes and ‘urban renewal’ schemes) – so how is going to that in Iraq?
Whatever one thinks of the Iraq war, the ‘ink blot strategy’ is stupid. And whoever the military officers and politicans who are behind may be, it is time they shut up. If the war is justified then fighting should continue (i.e. the enemy, especially the leadership, should be hunted down and killed or caputured), and if the war is not justified then the troops should come home.
But there is no ‘socio-economic road’ to victory.
On Friday the 13th of January I listened to BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions, The first question was “Can we trust President Bush over Iran…?”
Now I am no fan of President George Walker Bush (on his watch there has been the biggest increase of government spending since President Johnson and the biggest increase in domestic government spending since President Nixon), but it was an odd to hear someone clearly regard President Bush as worse than the President of Iran (a man who has denied the Holocaust, pledged to wipe Israel off the map, and has supported suicide bombers, in various parts of the Middle East, for many years).
The audience cheered and clapped the various anti Bush comments of Clare Short M.P., and the (rather milder) anti-Bush and pro-UN comments of the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes present.
The Conservative party person on the panel (Mr Ian Duncan-Smith) did not really try to defend President Bush (although he did say we should not exclude the United States from world affairs). So that left the last member of the panel.
This man (whose name I can not remember) is the new editor of the ‘Financial Times’. Now this newspaper has (perhaps surprisingly, given its name and target readership) normally been on the left of British politics (it tends to favour government spending and regulations, and it favours the statist European Union) so I did not hold out much hope for balance.
And indeed, later on, the editor turned out to have some very standard statist opinions – for example he supported a total ban on smoking in bars and restaurants (almost needless to say, the audience was wildly in favour of a ban “by 98%” – most likely they would have supported any bit of statism that was put in front of them). However, I was surprised as the editor started a pro Bush story of how he had met the President some time ago and…
Then the BBC suddenly went off the air. The broadcast of the show started again when the story was over. At the end of the programme the BBC blamed “technical difficulties” for the break in transmission.
So I listened to the repeat of the show (today Saturday the 14th of January) in order to hear the editor’s story of his meeting with President Bush. It was cut out of the programme – even the start of the story that had been broadcast on Friday night. It seems that the BBC will not tolerate any pro-Bush comment.
Of course it is not a simple of hatred of President Bush as a man (indeed if the B.B.C. people bothered to find out about his policies they would be surprised to find that they support some of them – the bad ones, “No Child Left Behind”, the medicare extension, and so on). They hate President Bush as a symbol of certain American characteristics that they, as members of the ‘liberal’ (i.e. illiberal) left hate – opposition to higher taxes, opposition to ‘gun control’, a belief that crime is caused by evil human choices (not poverty), belief in the family, and in tradition (including traditional religion), national pride and resistance to would-be world government institutions (such as the U.N., the various international ‘rights’ treaties, and the ‘World Court’).
President Bush may not be up to much, but as long as he serves as a symbol of all the BBC hates about the United States (i.e. all the good things in the United States) I find it hard to totally dislike him.
There are some things that most people know (or think they know) about the British book trade. For example that books are very expensive compared to some other places, and that buying a paperback can be unwise – due to the system of “perfect binding” where the pages are just stuck on to the spine, so they fall out if one actually reads the book a few times.
However, I do not wish to examine such points here. I wish to point out the simple leftism of the book trade. This may seem a predictable whine from a libertarian like me, but it is more than a whine.
Recently I read a review of Robert Conquest’s Dragons of Expectation in The Economist.
The review claimed that Conquest did not understand that his side now dominated the world. If by “his side” the review meant anti-Marxism, this domination does not seem to be in evidence in universities (or, in terms of attitudes, in most of the electronic media and much of the print media in the Western world – let alone in such places as Latin American governments), but let us leave that aside.
I went to bookshop after bookshop in search of Robert Conquest’s work. Borders, Waterstones, W.H. Smith – you name the shop, no book.
“But you could order the book or get via the internet” – but why should I have to?
Why should a work by the leading historian of Soviet Russia (the author of “The Terror” and other works) not be found on the shelves, so that I can have a look at it and decide whether I want to buy it? In fact none of Robert Conquest’s works were on the shelves of the bookshops of whatever town I happened to be in (London, Bolton, Manchester, York, Kettering – it did not matter what town). And remember Robert Conquest is not a radical libertarian – he is just a historian who did more than any other to expose the crimes of the Marxists.
Take the example of Borders in York – wall to wall Noam Chomsky. Literally wall to wall – a whole shelf full of his political writings (not his writings on the basis of language) and books on the next shelf to. And (of course) the endless works of M. Moore, and all the rest of the ‘death to Bush’ crowd.
Now I am no fan of President Bush, he has gone along with greater increases in domestic government spending than any President since Richard Nixon (and Mr Nixon had the excuse of a Democratic party controlled Congress). But the legion of Bush haters one finds in the book shops do not attack ‘No Child Left Behind’ or the Medicare extension or all the rest of the wild spending.
When they attack his foreign policy they do not understand that it is (for better or worse) a continuation of the policy of such men as President Wilson – i.e. an effort to impose democracy overseas. They present the whole policy as an effort to line the pockets of business contractors – or to impose Christianity in place of Islam. And when the authors discuss domestic policy they present a mythical anti-Welfare State pro-free enterprise President Bush.
Just as works on British politics present a free enterprise Mr Blair – rather than the real one of higher taxes, higher government spending and more regulations.
“Such ideas may be absurd, but they are the books that sell and book stores are in business to make a profit”.
How do they know that these will be the only books that will sell when they hardly ever advertise anti-statist books? Certainly there will sometimes be a promotion for an anti-statist book (such as the recent Mao: The Unknown Story – although this work seems to blame Mao as a man, rather than socialism as a doctrine for what happened in China), but this is very rare.
If one sees the notice “We Recommend” or “We Highly Recommend” on or near a book, it is a fairly safe bet that the book is bad – full of factual errors and written by someone who would like to nationalize the bookshop and send its shareholders to the death camps [editors note: there are solutions to this].
I am not even sure that such books do sell well. After all, if this so, who does one see (every sale time) great piles of leftist books on sale at half price (or less). I say again, how do the book shop people know that British people do not want to buy anti-leftist books in economics, history, philosophy and politics when such books are hardly ever promoted and are mostly simply not on the shelves?
A person who comes into a bookshop (rather than buys over the internet) is there to see what sort of books are about in areas of knowledge that he is interested in. To physically touch and look at these books – to see what he might like to buy (rather than just trust reviews). And yet a person who entered a British bookshop would encounter (for example) in economics just establishment Keynesianism (with all the standard absurdities, such as the doctrine that an increase in government spending financed by credit expansion boasts long term income) and Marxist (or Marxiod) attacks on Keynesianism. Chicago school works are very rare and Austrian school works virtually non-existent.
The “passing trade” – the people (like me) who often go into book shops to look at books, just can not find works we want to buy. Someone who is not committed politically will find very little in British book shops to challenge the left and open new possibilities to him. And someone who already knows what he wants may as well go straight to the internet (after all the books are not going to be in the bookshop).
“Anti-statist books do not sell” – really? Or is it that British bookshops are dominated by people educated in the universities and these universities are strongholds of the left?
There will be token non-leftist books in the bookshops – but the weight of the left is overwhelming, and I very much doubt that he it has much to do with what sells.
In what used to be called the ‘Middle Ages’ men of learning got together at various places in England (as they had done before in other lands) – Oxford, Cambridge and other towns (where universities were later suppressed by various means).
At first these scholars operated on a fairly informal basis (this was the tiny element of truth in the old lie about Oxford University being founded by Alfred the Great – Alfred visited the town, Alfred always had men of learning with him [indeed was one himself] such men had students, therefore…) and students paid them for their teaching.
Later such learned men operated from collages (the oldest in Cambridge being Peterhouse) and helped educate students (mainly for the church).
Over time students (or those who helped them) tended to pay the collage rather than individual learned men (although the old idea lasted in Scotland – where Adam Smith claimed it was the great advantage that Scottish higher education had over English) and the direct connection between students going to a master they revered became somewhat weaker.
In the 19th century the University (as an institution, backed by Acts of Parliament) started to rise in importance relative to the collages. And in the 20th century government began to play a much bigger role – first through funding individual students (rather than just setting up a collage with an endowment – as various Kings and other leading people had done) and then, rather later, by increasing regulation of what went on in the Universities (he who pays the piper calls the tune – as the academics forgot to their cost).
However, in both Oxford and Cambridge the idea (if not the reality) of the independent scholar – the man (these days ‘the person’) seeking truth and passing it on to students lived on.
This week one of the last reminders of the days when men of learning were independent (rather than just employees of the University) finally died.
For 800 years it has been assumed that it a person made a discovery it was their discovery – but now it has been decided that this is not quite so. → Continue reading: The end of Cambridge?
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