Conservative Foreign Policy - no comments

Nick Cohen on Tory attitudes to Europe and the rest of the world:

[...] Anti-conservatism may no longer stir the left, but opposition to Europe burns as brightly as ever on the right. The Tories are committed to pulling out of the European political bloc which includes Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right parties, ordinarily Cameron's natural allies, and heading off with the chauvinist parties of Russia and eastern Europe.

Far from standing up to Putin, the Conservatives tried to help a Putin stooge take over the Council of Europe, which oversees the European Court of Human Rights, of all things. Mainstream European conservatives were as loud in their condemnations of Cameron as mainstream socialists. Caroline Jackson, one of the few Conservative members of the European Parliament who wants to work with Britain's allies, wrote in the Financial Times that her Tory colleagues 'now have a bad reputation [rapidly getting worse] for crass and offensive behaviour'

[...]

A Cameron government will tear up the complex web of alliances and understandings through which Britain exercises her influence. It is about time journalists asked him what he intends to put in their place.

Rather depressing: (a) because Labour's foreign policy, internationalism, record of involvement with developing countries, and of condemning human rights abuses, since 1997, has been a good one - certainly a proud one by British standards; (b) a failure (perhaps) to sell that to the electorate, coupled with our national insularity and hypocrisy, means the Tory Party's stance is unlikely to cost them any votes. Far from it.

'Britons fear race violence': draw your own conclusions - 7 comments

It's hard to know quite what to draw from this BBC/Mori poll. For one thing, I can't find any detailed breakdown of the statistics. Perhaps they aren't broken down at all, which would be a tremendous weakness.

The most obvious flaw is the conflation of race, nationality, and immigration. A backlash against immigrants presumably involves opposing nationalities, though it need not - generational and cultural factors also play a part, not to mention economic differentials. Racial differences might play a part too, but a lot of water has flown under the bridge since the assumption held that racist violence was the preserve of predominantly white working-class communities against immigrants from the Caribbean or Indian subcontinent. Such racism still exists, but hardly has anything to do with current patterns of immigration.

Another problem is the assumption, presumably stemming from an odd faith in Enoch Powell's ability to foretell the future, of a contrast between the 'shaky peace' of today, and some kind of future bloodbath. Yet violence between gangs that define themselves on racial, ethnic, or nationalist grounds is hardly unknown, even if it's usually restricted to already violent areas. The absence of the large-scale riots of years past is hardly proof that tension and hostility has been reduced, just perhaps of social atomisation - the groups themselves are smaller.

Racism, nationalism, and hostility to outsiders, are common to all human societies, and the greatest limitation on the development and progress of humanity, but I doubt there's been any serious diminution of these impulses in centuries, with the exception of some large cosmopolitan cities (researchers in this field who are professional enough not to write pieces off the tops of their heads are welcome to comment on this point). Disappointingly, internationalism is a truly tiny movement in the world, and I suspect that socialism in practice has had a thoroughly negative effect, certainly when compared with free markets.

It's nearly two years since I posted this, but the section I quoted from bowblog still sounds to me like the best strategy for maintaining social harmony without surrendering to bigots (my emphasis):

Our effort, in the wealthy world, (where, let's face it, immigrants are going to continue to arrive in large numbers if we're to remain wealthy) must go into improving the capacity of our reception communities [...], boosting the resilience of the bottom social tier, taking working class grievances seriously and easing the pressures produced by ineluctable change. The goal must be to build social solidarity, to neutralise the embitterment and disconnection that feeds the fascists.

Economic freedom II / Chávez - 6 comments

My Monday post, on John Pilger and Hugo Chávez, has come in for a bit of criticism. Not so much for the post itself, which largely consisted of a large quotation from Hayek arguing that the existence of a democratic mandate does not in itself stop power being wielded arbitrarily by states, but for this extract from my follow-up comment:

In Venezuela, Cuba, and so many other countries, the top priority for their governments is (sic) to open their economies, cede political power, tackle corruption, and stop blaming the country's problems on internal and external enemies. [...]

Obviously I meant 'should be', rather than 'is', but I can't deny that's a fairly succinct, though hardly nuanced, expression of my view.

Tom from NewerLabour has left a couple of lengthy comments, and Citizen Andreas has also posted, so here's my response.

Firstly, when I refer to 'opening' one's economy - reducing state control of industry, dismantling tariffs, allowing the free movement of capital and labour, etc. - I don't mean to imply an 'off-the-shelf' solution with any guaranteed economic and political return, in any particular time frame, just that economic openness is correlated with greater individual rights and more economic wealth, less exploitation of the population by monopolists, and a reduced scope for political corruption. Note that this is not a specific point about capitalism, it's about the economic freedom of individuals from the state and from monopolies of labour or capital, and insofar as posited socialist or other future economic systems respect the individual, this analysis will apply just as much to them.

I can't make any similarly general point about the likelihood of an egalitarian distribution of income: only governments and powerful economic actors can claim to have the power to alter this - whether they really have the ability to deliver is another matter altogether, but consider this, as I quote for a second time from Hayek's The Road To Serfdom (Chapter 14), and try to imagine I'm not a starry-eyed 17-year-old Thatcherite who wears a suit to college [my emphasis]:

The refusal to yield to forces which we neither understand nor can recognise as the conscious decision of an intelligent being is the product of an incomplete and therefore erroneous rationalism. It is complete because it fails to comprehend that the co-ordination of the multifarious individual efforts in a complex society must take account of facts no individual can completely survey. And it fails to see that, unless this complex society is to be destroyed, the only alternative to submission to the impersonal and seemingly irrational forces of the market is submission to an equally uncontrollable and therefore arbitrary power of other men.

Tom continues:

There already exists a party which is meant to give us liberalism and nothing further (though I would argue that they are only liberal where it hurts poor communities and authoritarian in many other aspects. [B4L: presumably the Tories?] They may fail orthodox liberalism as Labour fails orthodox socialism). We need a party that offers more than liberalism: justice. That should be Labour.

Well, of course there has to be justice. Markets can't create justice: they have to work within the rules of justice that it is the state's responsibility to devise and enact. These can take an infinite number of forms. Only systems of justice that allow individual freedom, private property, and enforceable contracts are compatible with free markets, but this still leaves us a tremendous range: as law-makers we can try to reflect a society that enjoys risk and accepts wide variations in outcomes; one that is risk-averse and prefers strong and ample safety-nets; we could quite easily raise inheritance taxes to such a degree that inheritance was practically impossible, if society so desired. So equality of outcome can be tackled without substantially imposing on economic freedom. All of this, however, requires that the state sticks to the agreed laws and system of justice, and not penalise or promote people at its whim. This is the Rule of Law.

Too often, self-proclaimed socialist regimes have taken root within states that glorify nationalism and have contempt for individual rights, or have attempted to shift opinion in that direction. This means that, as far as justice is concerned, all bets are off. The erosion of individual rights that makes it progressively harder for people to organise outside the state represents a second reason why aspiring dictators cannot be allowed to continue far down the road to autocracy. It's all the more unfortunate when the government in question appears to have a genuine commitment to aiding a previously disadvantaged social group, as in Venezuela.

Returning to economic nationalism, Tom says:

What you seem to be saying is that it is impossible to tackle the priorities of the Venezuelan people [...] without allowing multinationals from other states to take control of certain industries.

No, not necessarily. It needn't make any substantial difference what country a particular company 'comes from', and while 'faceless multinationals' are a minority in the world economy, one compensation for homogeneity and hierarchical organisation is exposure to international labour standards.

The 'take control' reference is also crucial: whatever the economic system, my view is that the cases where society is not best served by monopolistic companies (whether in the public or private sector, foreign or domestic) being open to competition, belong in the textbooks. Free economies should not permit domination, let alone 'control' of industries, nor ought they to be as susceptible to this kind of abuse than those where state control provides companies with opportunities for corruption and collusion. Of course our favoured politicians are of unimpeachable morals, but our freedoms shouldn't depend upon the character of a few good men.

Tom also argues that:

nationalism is often progressive where the intentions of outside actors are regressive in character [...]

I would very much disagree with the 'often', and I find even qualified support for nationalism mystifying. I concede that it might bind a population together sufficiently to overthrow a tyranny, but unless that unifying force is swiftly replaced with more rational economics and politics, a generation of domineering politicians will take root, backed by the dead hand of the military, with the population stifled.

A final point on liberal institutions: the idea that Chávez (and so many before him) should have domestic restrictions tolerated on the grounds that their domestic achievements would otherwise be overturned by powerful domestic or foreign forces is, I'm sure, very persuasive for the left. Democracy's greatest weapon might not literally be 'people power', but Cuba demonstrates how those who claim to 'protecting the revolution' have created themselves a job for life. Chávez's best chance of protecting his social programmes (which I'm not going to analyse in detail) is to liberalise his economy and state, to ensure the state's monopoly of force, to break up power blocs, allow a free press and media, have a trusted legal system, and to avoid acting in such a way that prevents his government winning international friends from mainstream political parties.

Update (29/08): There are currently 6 comments stretching to approximately 3500 words, so clearly I'm not going to be able to respond "in full", but I will try to pick out a few topics and deal with those. If you want to comment yourself, please be concise and read what's been said earlier on!

Suppressing the BNP - 5 comments

This is almost too ridiculous for words: six companies will withdraw advertisements from Facebook on the off-chance that a non-BNP supporter will visit a BNP (Wikipedia) group page and decide that the same advertisements they see randomly appearing on every other page on the site imply, in this case, some kind of corporate endorsement, or acceptance, of BNP policies. If anyone owns shares in First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, the AA, Halifax, or the Prudential, now might be the right time to sell, if those companies are so quick to make fruitless political gestures that allow additional exposure to their competitors, while doing nothing to thwart the BNP except offer them additional publicity and swelling their victim-complex. If the named companies decided they didn't want BNP supporters as customers, or were prepared to campaign against the party, that would be different altogether, but their corporate image is hardly worth us bothering about. More here, and here.

*

The BNP might almost have been invented to distract good, principled, intelligent people from the international fight against bigotry, intolerance, and religious/ethnic/racial victimisation, towards a single struggle against a tiny party that can hardly be separated from the murky world of thugs and madmen (remember Derek Beackon?) that makes up the extremities of the political world. The tragedy is that, by ducking the substantive moral and policy issues, opponents' emphasis on (say) racism appears to shift from to being a moral abuse to, as this new Facebook group argues, a 'terms of service' violation. Forcing the hand of advertisers and open social networking sites, so that poor ignorant members of the public can be insulated from the BNP's extreme views, can't help opponents to mobilise the population against them.

I can't think of any cause that is so critical, or infectious, as to justify the population being kept in ignorance. An account of the atrocious record and (occasionally criminal) behaviour of BNP councillors in office would surely carry more weight. Furthermore, a grown-up analysis of their policies - a plausible-looking summary of which appear here - would allow us to go beyond the word 'fascist' to say that they are morally wrong, inegalitarian, and opportunistic; that they breach universal human rights; and that their mishmash of authoritarian economic policies - culled from both traditional left and traditional right - would make people poorer both here and abroad, just as they have failed under every other government that has ever tried them. Are we unsure that we can win these arguments among the electorate? Ministry of Truth takes some of them on here, but this is rarely done.

So, while I'm sympathetic to the old adage that the only good BNP activist is one holding a steak over his eye, we should allow parties we despise to organise on Facebook within its rules, just as Facebook allows us to organise within its rules, and concentrate on promoting our own, positive message, and criticising stupid and damaging views - with our sights on the electorate, not on ourselves.

Today's Idiocy - 4 comments

In no particular order:

Tony Blair emailing over 1.7 million people, then displaying the very same content on a page that those 1.7 million people could have read themselves at their leisure (assuming they're interested in the arguments), and at no extra cost to the taxpayer or people's inboxes.

The BBC attempting to calculate the cost of sending those mails, without even questioning the sanity of the exercise, or warning readers about the consequences of spamming.

Jade Goody axed from Comic Relief. This one writes itself:

Organisers had filmed a Question of Sport spoof in which Goody appeared with comics Jack Dee and Frank Skinner. [...]

A Comic Relief spokesman said the sketch felt "out of date" and they were concerned it could detract attention from the fundraising.

Was it 1993 or 1994 when Jack Dee stopped being funny?

Meacher enters Labour leader race. I'm not going to criticise Michael - he's beyond satire already. The tragedy for the Left - if you think that's where someone who proposes a foreign policy based upon "fundamental British interests" belongs - is that it's the considered opinion of something of the order of 20-30 Labour MPs that Meacher is a sounder bet than John McDonnell, who, at the very least, appears to have a vibrant campaign behind him, and the support of a large number of bloggers.

Nonetheless, one of these days a genuinely internationalist and pro-democracy Left will emerge and wash these white-haired crocks away, offering a vision of an alternative economy and society, rather than taxes and identity politics. Until then, I'm going to continue to back serious politicians, with plausible policies for incremental progress.

Economic nationalism v. self-determination - 1 comment

I was going to post about this anyway, but Tom Miller's comment on my Iraqi Oil post gave the plan some added impetus.

The issue there was whether a population's chances of economic self-determination (the ability to act freely) are improved by an industry - or the economy in general - being owned/managed by their government, rather than by foreign companies (I should add that the most obvious alternative - ownership by domestic companies - wasn't mentioned explicitly). There is a sense in which that desire for self-determination could have been intended to apply to the country as a whole, but that idea really takes us back to a model of countries on a war footing, desperate to secure "strategic" resources. That's something for aspiring despots like Chávez to worry about, and isn't helpful for a discussion that should focus on open economies, and differences in economic power within those economies.

I don't think we can, or should generalise about the economic freedom/autonomy of individuals solely on the basis of the ownership of the largest economic assets. Incompetent or corrupt governments can - and do, throughout the developing world - subjugate their own populations, and deprive them of the means (legal, material, social, etc.) to enjoy economic freedom, just as others can - and do - expose them to the predation of private companies. That those companies might be owned, or based abroad, doesn't in itself alter the motivation to take advantage of the economically powerless.

The idea that people cannot enjoy economic autonomy - either individually or collectively - without state ownership, "strategic resources", "national champions", or widespread restrictions on economic activity, is both prevalent and destructive, and reduces our ability to explain and to tackle our own economic inequalities, let alone those in the developing world.

Or, for rather more lucid and persuasive coverage, try this - Cooperative Islands in a Capitalist Sea? :

If everyone capable of benefiting from the alternative economy participates in it, and it makes full and efficient use of the resources already available to them, eventually we'll have a society where most of what the average person consumes is produced in a network of self-employed or worker-owned production, and the owning classes are left with large tracts of land and understaffed factories that are almost useless to them because it's so hard to hire labor except at an unprofitable price. At that point, the correlation of forces will have shifted until the capitalists and landlords are islands in a mutualist sea--and their land and factories will be the last thing to fall, just like the U.S Embassy in Saigon.

And much more. I don't agree with all of it, but it offers a model of economic empowerment that no amount of grant or subsidy can conjure up.

Update (21/01): fixed typo

Iraqi Oil - 1 comment

Few arguments are more likely to kill an intelligent conversation on world politics than the one that sets out that the toppling of Saddam Hussein was "all about oil", especially as to retort with a political (whether well-, or poorly-intentioned; well-, or poorly thought-out) or moral argument is to be derided as hopelessly naive. Also popular is what I would call the "blood and oil" argument, namely that a country's natural resources are for the sole "use" of that country's inhabitants, and that the involvement of foreigners (especially Westerners) can be construed as "raping" a country's land/assets, etc. Of course there's an environmental case for leaving natural resources where they are, but generally when we have an asset we try to use it, extracting from it the greatest possible economic value we can. Given that we can't drink oil, or build houses out of it, we can either refine it ourselves, or sell it to someone who can do a better job, if they'll make us more money, cause less waste or damage in doing so, invest in local facilities, recruit and train local workers, and so on.

Economic nationalism, however, is one of the basic economic errors that causes governments to allocated assets to individuals, or to companies, who share the same nationality, when there are foreigners willing and able to make better or more profitable use out of them. The dangers of nationalism are even more expensive in developing countries, where scrutiny is weak, when a government takes control over the use of the resources, providing opportunities for it to use the revenue corruptly, to siphon off revenue, manipulate employment, curtail investment, or to top-up falling revenue elsewhere.

Economists can suggest and exhort policies, however, there's a time and a place to raise objections like these - and higher priorities. Reflecting this, a new petition has been set up at the Downing Street site, headlined:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to not allow the privatisation of Iraqi oil, against the wishes of the Iraqi people.

The key point is "the wishes of the Iraqi people", which is why you should consider signing this one. Here's a back-of-an-envelope order of policy-making precedence:

1. The policy must be: Democratically approved
2. The policy must be: Transparent and accountable
3. The policy must be: Economically aware/well-informed
4. The policy must be: Efficient
5. The policy must: Reflect public biases
6. The policy must: Reflect public biases abroad
   

I don't know that the Iraqi people have actually voted on who should process their oil, but once the arguments have been put forward, they must approve any policy. Besides, the petition states that Tony Blair gave assurances about the dispersal of oil revenues back in 2003. The next priority is that revenue doesn't subsequently disappear into the government machine, to be used corruptly - the effects of that would be worse than any economic policy. If we're OK with (1) and (2), the next priority should be that the government at least researches the opportunities available to it, and then that it attempts to maximise revenue and minimise waste, and it's at this stage that any privatisation decision can be made. Far less important a consideration must be the nationality of oil firms, and even further down the scale is the question of whether the decision appears to armchair critics to be a defeat for America, a victory for imperialism, etc.

So if, as the petition suggests, Western corporations really are pressurising the Iraqi government into making a decision other than what is in the best interests of Iraq, that's totally unacceptable. It's another good reason to sign the petition, and support democratic forces in Iraq (which will be a first time for quite a few people), which could really do with not losing legitimacy in the face of what looks like a stitch-up. Nonetheless it would be a shame for Iraq if future economic decisions had to be made on the basis of what was necessary for national cohesion, and what minimises the chances of a backlash against foreigners. It may be essential in the medium term, but closing the economy can only make it poorer it in the long term, and this isn't a happy situation for anyone.