Blue Labour: Reactionary, Unrealistic and Illiberal

Chuku Umunna on Blue Labour:

At the root of this is a belief in our innate mutual dependence. We believe individuals should be given the freedom to flourish, thrive and prosper, not just economically but in spirit and heart too. This can only be achieved in the context of a strong, cohesive society supporting each of us and our families in that endeavour, promoting the common good.

What sounds like the sort of typical blandishments and empty cant that you might expect from a politician from any one of the main parties is actually a front for a more controlling and dangerous ideology.

First up, the use of the word “dependence” is concerning. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that we are mutually interdependent. But the point is that it is interdependency. I may be dependent to some extent on the people around me but in other, no less important, ways they were dependent on me. The problem with phrasing the debate in terms of dependence is dependence automatically sets up a hierarchical power relation. If we are dependent on others with that dependence being in some reciprocal, then they have power over us. And that is the sort of mindset that has created a culture of welfare dependency among many people in our country.

Also, I get very uncomfortable when people – especially politicians – talk about the common good. Because, in short, it doesn’t exist. In a modern, plural, diverse and multi-cultural society the common good is a nonsense. A community as wide as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will be able to find no consensus on what constitutes the common good. Hell, you’d struggle to find such a consensus on the common good in most families and friendship groups. And such diversity is fine; it allows people to have choice about the different ways in which they can live their lives.

But when a politician talks about the common good, you want to be asking them who decides on the common good. Because the answer will be them. And this is exactly what is happening here. There is no common good; we are simply seeing another politician saying what they think is good should be the conception of the good that everyone has to live under. What makes it worse is there is no pitch, no attempt to sell a common good to the people to create a consensus around it. No, this is what parties of all shapes, sizes, colours and creeds do – they try to force their conceptions of the common good on everyone else without really debating it. So this isn’t a politician explaining what he thinks we have in common with each other, it is a politician arrogantly assuming that his conception of the good life is one that everyone else should comply with.

And his whole mindset is accurately portrayed in the first line when he talks about people should be given freedom. The arrogance is so strong that it is almost audacious – you can only have freedom if someone Umunna decides to give it to you.

But this isn’t that surprising for a Labour politician – after all, they spent a large proportion of their time in power telling you how to live your life. What is surprising, though, is reading that a Labour party member like Umunna is actually a conservative at heart:

Glasman has been accused of indulging in nostalgia, which some cite as the “blue” in Blue Labour. This misses the point. When the case is made for the conservation of certain cherished national institutions such as our forests, the post office, Dover Port or, in London, the Billingsgate fish market porters, it is not made for tradition’s sake but because these institutions are part of the social fabric of our country that bind us together – they institutionalise our social democracy for future generations, something we failed to do sufficiently enough in government.

This has little to do with the Labour movement, and little to do with socialism. This could almost be the voice of the father of British conservatism, Edmund Burke, talking. Except it is arguably more reactionary than anything the deeply conservative Burke had to offer. Because this seems to be calling for the preservation of aspects of British life that have actually, in some cases, had their time and ended. Umunna is basically calling for certain, cherry-picked aspects to life to be preserved even in the face of overwhelming change. That is more than conservative. It is, as I’ve already mentioned, reactionary.

Of course, a case can be made for preserving, say, the forests. But it is a case that needs a more compelling logic than “it’s good because I happen to have deemed it a cherished national institution”. Again, there’s the problem of who chooses what is a cherished national institution. For some people, it might be the Church of England. Yet for others that might be the opposite of an institution that is cherished. Others still might not care in the slightest about that institution. The point is that the classification is based on subjective judgements and far from the sort of beliefs that everyone holds. The classification is very much in the eyes of the beholder, which leads us to question exactly why Umunna’s perception of a cherished national institution should be allowed to dominate over other opposing views.

Furthermore, the idea that these institutions “bind us together” is also problematic. Partly because, say, the fish porters do precisely nothing to bind me to anyone else in this country or beyond, but also because negative parts of life can bind people together just as surely as positive ones. The Blitz, for example, helped to bind many people together. Does that mean that we should recreate the circumstances when, on a nightly basis, death fell from the skies? Of course it doesn’t. But it does mean that Umunna’s arguments needs to be a little stronger that spurious, contestable claims about his own cherry-picked institutions creating a sense of community.

For me, “flag” talks to a sense of nationhood and togetherness. I was roundly condemned by some (on the Left) on twitter for attending street parties to celebrate the Royal Wedding in my constituency. I make no apology for doing so and am proud of the events that took place in my area. Thousands attended and what I witnessed was not some doe-eyed, adulatory worship of the Royal couple but a sense of pride in our country and a delight in the excuse to coalesce, relate, mingle and share some time with neighbours one often only sees in passing.

It strikes me that this is very much a pitch for typical conservative voters; it is all about national pride and preserving stuff associated with rural and/or disappearing parts to British life. Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite work, mainly because Umunna is having to project his own interpretations of events in order to make his arguments work. There is simply no evidence that the people who celebrated the Royal Wedding in street parties did so through some sort of sense of national pride. Some may have done it for exactly that reason, to be sure, but others might have done simply because they had the day off. Others still may have done it to follow a trend. Yet more people may have held a party to express republican sentiments. In order to make a shaky case for a nostalgic, self-serving pseudo-conservatism, Umunna is giving himself some sort of omniscience that he clearly does not, and cannot, have.

Furthermore, the line about spending “some time with neighbours one often only sees in passing” just doesn’t work. You may see your neighbours all the time; you may seldom see them. But the fact that you may or may not have spent some time with them when the Royal couple dominated the TV screens for a day means next to nothing, since we choose the relationships we have to a large extent. You choose your own community of friends. If that includes your neighbours, then that’s ‘cause you’ve chosen it. If it doesn’t, then the same logic applies. We don’t need an event like the Royal Wedding to create a sense of community among neighbours; that happens if we want it to happen.

There’s a sense in which Unumma wants to foist a sense of community on people regardless of whether they want it or not. In that sense, I suppose, his project is very socialist – it wants to remake community and society in the image of what he believes is good, and what he believes is right. What is unpleasant, illiberal and dangerous about his logic is the extent to which it removes your right to choose the way in which you life your life. This Blue Labour nonsense – itself a dull rip-off of the equally odious Red Tory conception of Philip Blond – has little to do with freedom. Instead, it has everything to do with a state led by nostalgic idealists like Umunna nudging, cajoling, rebuking and even forcing you into doing what they think is right. As such, it is very much a continuation of what has gone before – business as usual for modern politics – on the grounds that you are treated like an infant by paternalistic politicians who have the arrogance to think they know better than you on the absolutely fundamental question of how you live your life. The fact that it is presented in a soft way with nice, nostalgic images should not disguise the fact that this is very different to any meaningful manifestation of liberty.

Let's actually have ideology in politics

Chuntering noisemonkey Ed Balls on the "regressive" Coalition:

“The government’s ideological assault on our welfare state and public services is not simply economic vandalism, I fear it will damage the very fabric of our society too."

I have little interest in what Balls has to say - I'm tired of listening to his vapid and deeply predictable assaults on the Tories and/or the Lib Dems. You could replace Balls with a basic programme designed to spew out attacks on the Con-Dems every few days without damaging political discourse in this country. In fact, such a programme would positively improve British politics, if only because Balls would be excised from it. Binning Balls would be lancing a festering wart on the face of British politics.

No, what does bother me is the increasing use of the word "ideological" in relation to the government's spending cuts. Put simply, there is nothing ideological about these cuts; they are basic economics. The Labour government spent too much, the new government has to spend less - therefore it has to cut spending.

That's not to say that there is anything wrong with ideological attacks on the size of the state and state spending. In fact, I'd love it if the government was being ideological. It would make a welcome change from the bland technocratic government that we have had to endure in this country since 1997. To actually have a government doing something because they believe in it rather than to get good headlines or because they have no choice would be a welcome fucking change, quite frankly.

Using the term "ideological" in the way the quote above does is to run the risk of turning it into an insult - which would be beyond stupid, even for a witless toad like Balls. Surely the reason why people get into politics and join a political party is because of ideology? Politics should be ideological, and if the main parties actually remembered the ideologies they are meant to believe in then politics in this country would be one hell of a lot more interesting than the beyond bland bullshit and empty posturing that had now been substituted for political debate.

Left-Wing? Join the Greens.

Via Charlotte Gore, I see Sunny Hundal has seen the light and decided to join... well, the Labour party. His reasoning, if you can call it that, is this:

But I also think there is a broader issue here. I’ve long said that lefties need to get more involved with Westminster and not just wash our hands off it when we get disillusioned. By that, I don’t necessarily mean going for political office but finding ways to put pressure on Westminster from the left.

Ah, the old entryism argument. Worked so well for Militant Tendency in the 1980's. And no doubt will work just as well for lefties joining the Labour party now.

What I don't get, though, both with people like Sunny and my self described left-wing friends who voted Labour at the last election, is how they can dare call themselves Labour supporters or members and then claim to be left-wing. Because there is nothing left-wing about the Labour party - nothing. Its record in power speaks for itself. It was responsible for the Iraq War. For the decimation of civil liberties in this country. For the debasement of democracy and the rise of spin. For the bailing out of failed banks. What is left-wing about that? Nothing. So why support them? Some sort of base tribal loyalty, where the Tories are worse than Labour, and the feeling that deep down the latter party remains in some way genuinely left-wing - even though the available evidence would (quite literally violently) suggest otherwise.

And lefties can't claim that there isn't an alternative. If you believe in left-wing politics - if you believe in socialism, if you believe in combatting climate change, if you believe a party with a truly pacifist agenda - then go join the Greens. Seriously; they are an updated version of what the left used to stand for. And they've even got an MP now, so you can't dismiss them as political by-standers. The choice is clear, the choice is stark - join a party discredited by endless compromise and a brutal yet pathetic 13 years in power, or join a party that pretty much stands for what you stand for but isn't utterly ideologically tainted. Some choice...

Of course, I can't stomach the Greens - but then again, I can't stomach the Labour party either. Yet as far as I am concerned the Greens have one big advantage over the Labour party - they are not the ideological equivalent of toxic waste. So the choice is simple: if you feel you need to be a member of a political party and you are left-wing, then either join the Greens and retain a shred of fucking dignity or follow Sunny and join the Labour party. Or to put it another way, sell your soul to the political equivalent of the devil.

The BNP: Both left AND right-wing.

As well as giving British fascists the chance to go and embarrass us on an international stage, the minor BNP victories in the EU election has led to some arguing that the BNP is actually left-wing, whilst it has led to others reasserting its place on the right of the political spectrum. Unsurprisingly, those who identify as left or right don’t want the BNP infesting their part of the political spectrum.

Of course, you can make great cases for the BNP being on either end of the political spectrum, and I’m not going to rehearse those arguments here. Suffice to say that the BNP is an extremist party, and as a result can sit at the extremes of either the left or the right.

Because aside from the rhetoric, there is bugger all difference between the extremes of the left and the right in practice. Hitler may have despised Stalin and vice versa, but the way they implemented their politics were identical. Hitler had no issue with bending industries to the needs of the state, just as Stalin had no issue with scape-goating and persecuting minorities based on race and/or religion. The BNP, which has the draconian and utterly ineffective economic policies of the socialist left combined with the traditionally* racist policies identified with the reactionary right, simply represents the extremes of any party or political position that believes the answer to the problems faced by a country is a strong state.

Which makes the BNP the best party to illustrate why a small state is best. The BNP are a statist party that want to use the state to suppress minorities and suppress the economy. They simultaneously show the dangers of the extremes of both the left and right wing – you give enough power to a statist party, and that party can break the economy whilst persecuting ethnic minorities on the wishes of a vocal group of ignorant, self-identified indigenous mis-fits.

Doesn’t matter if you are a Tory or Labour, right-wing or left-wing when it comes down to it, since the BNP can claim to sit on either side of that spectrum. Debates about where they sit on that spectrum are smokescreens for the fact that they sit at the extremes of both ends at the same time. On some levels, the BNP are on your side Tory Supporter, they are your neighbours Labour Supporter. If you are traditionally left-wing or right-wing, then the BNP simply represents some of the extremes of your political beliefs. If you want to take anything from this debate then it should be that the BNP simply show how meaningless it has become to talk about the traditional left-right divide when the real political debate should be about how much power you want the government to have.

*Although leftwing Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown adopted that racist, BNP sounding slogan of British Jobs for British Workers, showing that racism is not the preserve of the right.

The Communists Are Coming!

Good morning, and welcome to G20 day and the anarchy that surrounds it. I'm The Nameless Libertarian, and I'll be live-blogging all the action as it happens, across Britain's Capital, today. All out riot or damp squib, I'll be here, bringing you the details minute by minute.

No, of course I won't really be live-blogging the bunch of guff that happens today. Partly because I suspect nothing will happen, but mainly because I have a job* and therefore don't have the time to waste on such things.

Still, the potential protests have had one great advantage. I'm able to come to work in dress down today. Fucking ace. God bless the hippies. Trixy wouldn't approve, and I'm not sure - given the massive police presence around and about today** - it is actually needed, but fuck it. I'll warmly embrace any opportunity for me not to have to wear a fucking suit.

However, one thing is worth pointing out today. That is what the protestors aren't. They aren't Communists - Marxism has little time for protest, seeing it as ultimately pointless and doing nothing to progress or hinder dialectical materialism and the inevitable revolution. They aren't anti-captialist - their fucking Che t-shirts are mass produced by capitalists. They aren't pacifists - that tag will die as soon as the first brick and/or punch is thrown.

If they are anything, then they are nihilists. They don't believe in anything. They don't have anything to fight for, they don't really believe in anything. They are just against *stuff*.

Many people accuse Libertarians of being negative, and having nothing to offer. They are, of course, morons. Libertarianism is the most liberating of all political ideologies, and offers a true, radical change for the world. These protestors are the ones who are just negative and have nothing to offer. They are against capitalism, they are against war, they are against climate change. And they have nothing to offer, except their impotent, ill-thought through rage.

Fuck 'em***.

*For the moment (crosses fingers)
**25 police vans parked on one street this morning on my route to work. 25. And not one of them was parked properly.
***Not literally, they won't have washed in ages.

You can take your Marxism and you can shove it right up your...

… well… you can probably guess the rest.

One of the many negative aspects to this economic downturn is the rush of people towards socialism and the big daddy of socialist morons, Karl Marx himself. And what is even worse than people trying to register support for ol’ Karl is people trying to be funny about their suddenly vaguely fashionable Marxist tendencies. As this article proves.

I could do a detailed fisking of that article, but holy Jesus, I have better things to do with my ever diminishing life. The author tries and utterly fails to be funny repeatedly, at the same time as revealing his ignorance of the very ideology he is championing. A word to the not-so-wise; if you are going to pursue an ideology, make sure you actually know the details of whatever it is you are meant to be defending and advocating.

However the rush towards Marx, and the constant veneration of odious Marxists like Che Guevera by some, reveals a deeper ignorance of an ideology that is deeply destructive. Yeah, Marx got some things right. He reckoned that boom and bust are natural parts of capitalism. But most economists would recognise that. He also had some interesting theories about alienation of labour – ideas that still have some relevance today. But for a man who wrote as prolifically as Karl Marx, getting something right at some point was inevitable. Just as that infinite number of monkeys at those typewriters could, in theory, come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.

Yet in so many different ways, Marx was utterly wrong. And his errors are so numerous that it would almost be compelling, if they weren’t so dangerous. None more so in his conclusions about where his spurious theories of society would take us all. As counter-culture and cool as it might be to support Marx during this (perfectly natural, even according to Marx) downturn in global capitalism, I think everyone should be very clear about supporting Marxism means. It means you support violent revolution. It means you support dictatorship. It means you support the collapse of the society we live in, and handing over absolute political power to violent revolutionaries who are going to divine some sort of better society for all from a non-existent blue-print. You can claim that Marx’s ultimate intent was utopian; the practical ends of his ideology are thoroughly dystopian.

Marxist theorists (for, believe it or not, they do still exist) will argue that we have never had an actual application of Marx’s ideas. Well, bollocks to that. The Stalinist state, the Maoist state, the regimes of Pol Pot and Kim Jong Il are all examples of the deluded, insane and deeply destructive implementation of Marxism. The problem isn’t that Marxism has never been correctly applied; the real problem is that Marxism is a deeply flawed political ideology that advocates dictatorship and sees people in general as largely bovine and in desperate need of firm guidance from portly, disconnected from reality philosophers such as Marx. The end result of Marxism is the Soviet State, pure and simple.

The recession will have come as a shock to many, and will cause some to review their political beliefs. That’s fine – it is a healthy thing to review what you think in light of events (something Marx himself wasn’t that good at). But the answer to any review of ideology should not be Marxism. Marxism doesn’t work; if you try to force Marxism on societies, then your utterly, utterly destroy those societies. Applying Marxism to countries damaged by the recession will lead to the death of democracy in those countries, and the complete stagnation of their economies.

You might ask the question about what we need to do in the face of the credit crunch. The answer is not turn to Karl Marx.

The Alternative Convention on Modern Liberty

I'm going to try* to make it to this tomorrow:

As some of you will be aware the Convention on Modern Liberty is occurring on the 28th of this month.

The event will take place at the Institute of Education in Russell Square. However, you may also be aware that it is a little expensive to attend.

So to make sure us poorer types don't feel left out we're organising an Alternative Convention on Modern Liberty.

It will occur just around the corner at a pub called The Friend at Hand.

We will be convening from 12pm. Which will also be perfect for those of you attending the real event as lunch begins at
1pm.

This is an open event so whether you're a libertarian or not you're more than welcome to discuss liberalism with us.

Liberalism is a fascinating ideology that you can debate for hours. It informs so much of the political discourse of this country, and, indeed, most of the world. It is now such a broad church that it can encompass everything from the Social Democracy of the Liberal Democrats to the anarcho-capitalism of some Libertarians. Which also then begs the question of whether, given it is so broad, we can still refer to liberalism as a meaningful ideology anymore. It is a school of thought that can be endlessly discussed - and no doubt will be at this meeting tomorrow, so I reckon it is worth turning up if you can.

Plus it is taking place in a pub, which is always cool.

*And that is very much I'm going to try to make it. Owing to a mix of fecklessness, indolence and general lethargy I'm actually very bad at turning up to stuff. And when I do turn up to place, I'm often late. Basically, attendance and punctuality aren't my strengths. But I'm still, with the very best of intentions, going to try to make it to this tomorrow...

The Immoral Nu Labour

Ignore the questions around the seperation of Church and State and instead just savour the Anglican bishops who have gone on the attack and given Nu Labour a mauling:

"The government isn't telling people to stop overextending themselves, but instead is urging us to spend more... That is morally suspect and morally feeble. It is unfair and irresponisble of the government to put pressure on the public to spend in order to revive the economy."

So there we have it - Nu Labour being described by Bishops as morally suspect and feeble. What makes this even sweeter is the is a government once run by a man who has converted to Catholicism, and is currently being headed up by the son of a Scottish Church Minister. 

But it is not just in the area of morality where the Nu Labour project is both suspect and feeble. In fact, their moral failings come from a failure of ideology. Nu Labour does not, and never has, believed in anything. It is a mix of half-baked policies and dull truisms brought together to form an anodyne, electorally neutral manifesto, devoid of principle, ideological coherence and in desperate need of a moral compass. Nu Labour is immoral not because it tells people to spend when they can't spend, but rather because the whole project is fundamentally amoral. It isn't about right or wrong, but simply the pursuit of power at all costs. The reason why Nu Labour is urging people to spend right now is not down to morality, but rather a desperate (and most probably in vain) hope that such spending will reinvigorate the economy and push people towards voting for them again whenever the next election happens.

And before anyone gets all excited from the Tory camp, let me point out that the Tories are not any different. They too are a PR exercise in search of an idea. Just look at their response to the financial crisis - they are saying nothing. They are offering nothing. They are muted by their own hand, crippled by the over-riding fear that saying anything at all might have them pegged as the nasty party again, and therefore consigned to electoral oblivion once more. They lack an ideological spine, they lack a moral base. Their whole ethos is built around a desire for electoral success. Questions of right and wrong are completely secondary to that concern.

The Libertarian ideology has something to say within this debate, and offers a clear moral choice. By removing the state from people's lives to a large extent, we allow them to make the moral choice for themselves on so many different levels. The government should not tell the population to spend; equally, it should not be arrogant enough to tell them not to spend. Rather, the government should let people make their own choice, and take responsibility for themselves. People may get it right, or they may get it wrong. But at least they have made the choice themselves. 

Libertarianism and Being Positive

One of the challenges of being a Libertarian is dealing with the frankly incorrect and often ignorant views about this ideology. There are too many objections, too many misinterpretations, to deal with in just one blog post. Frankly, it would take an epic volume to fully dispense with the myriad of objections that Libertarians encounter, and I sense that even if that volume was written, Libertarians would still face objections that begin “yeah but…”

But I want to deal with two objections that pretty much sum up the crucial arguments people make against the Libertarian cause because they also illustrate some crucial points about why I personally am a Libertarian – and one of the crucial problems encountered when people are advocating the Libertarian cause.

First up, we have a comment left at DK’s place about how people present and thus how some people perceive the Libertarian Party of the UK:

Some Libertarians present the party as a shallow "drink and do drugs wherever you like party" with no policy other than wishful thinking.

Well, Libertarians do tend to argue for freedom around drink and drugs. Frankly, I do not think it is any business of the state to legislate on what their citizens put into their bodies and how they live their lives. But it isn’t just about drink and drugs – there are far more fundamental points to be addressed here. It is down to the fundamental Libertarian idea that you own yourself – no-one else should have a claim to your body or the way you live your life. On top of that, there is the question of personal responsibility. As an adult, you should take responsibility about how you live your life and whatever successes and failures you have in your life. By legislating on how much you can drink, and about what substances you can put into your body, the state is removing your right to live your life as an adult. I don’t see a great deal of difference between opposing the state deciding how much of your income you can spend through taxation and the government deciding how much you can spend on getting pissed or stoned. Yes, drink and drug use is more frowned upon in polite society, but the issue is a deeper one – it is a question of personal freedom and personal responsibility.

The other objection the Libertarianism is summed up in this old post from Never Trust A Hippy:

Other examples are, of course, or friends the bloggertarians. Raise a question - any question - and the answer is always 'sack public employees' / 'school vouchers' / 'government can't work' etc. The thick shitheads.

Substitute Libertarian for Bloggertarian, and you have the way many people on the left view the Libertarian ideology. Except, of course, they are spinning what Libertarians actually want to make the ideology as a whole appear negative and attacking.

It is true that a lot of Libertarian proposals involve reduction. And cutting. And, yes, sacking. The whole credos is around reducing cutting government waste, and reducing government power. Part of that realistically means that some people will lose their jobs – but only if they are carrying out a job for the government that does not need to be done. So yes, you could argue that the policies of any Libertarian policies are negative because they involve attacking the status quo and changing the way things are at the moment.

Yet there is a reason why Libertarians want to cut, to reduce, to limit. And it is for very positive reasons. They want to reduce government waste to increase the amount of your money that you have to spend. They want to reduce government power and influence within society to increase the amount of freedom you have to live your life. And, yes, their policies will lead to some government workers losing their livelihoods – but guess what, that will increase the money in your back pocket as well. The means could be perceived by some (and generally by those who believe that state intervention is pretty much the answer to everything) as negative. The end results are extremely positive.

Part of making the case for Libertarianism will inevitably involve the advocates selling their ideas in the most positive way possible. We shouldn’t talk about reducing government waste, we should talk about increasing the net incomes of the taxpayers. We should talk about limiting the government, we should talk about liberating the people in this country. The reality is that so much of modern politics is about getting the right sort of sales pitch. It is very easy for the statist enemies of the Libertarians to argue that it is a negative creed; it is the fault of Libertarians if this deliberate misinterpretation is allowed to stand.

The Libertarian ideology is one of the most optimistic, enabling and life-affirming ideologies you could possibly come across. It aspires to give you more personal responsibility. It will give you more freedom and more of a right to live your life the way you want to live your life. Ignore the spin, ignore the jibes of the statists and of the left-wing. They want to tell you how to live your life; we Libertarians want to let you get on with living your life with minimal interference from anyone else.

Knowing Your Right From Your Left... And Not Caring

One of the phrases I see from time to time - sometimes linked to my own ramblings - that irritates me is "right-wing Libertarian." Now, I am a Libertarian - if you haven't picked that up from by blogging pseudonym then you really need to engage those little grey cells. But I wouldn't define myself as right-wing.

Sure, I have some right-wing views. I am very much in favour of capitalism, and believe that government intervention into the economy should be minimised as much as possible. The current state of the UK economy - where the government has spent billions on a rescue package and on nationalising banks and has achieved nothing more than the exacerbation of this crisis - merely increases my faith in the self-regulation of most markets. Likewise, the rhetoric of personal responsibility means far more to me than the endless talk of community and state actions. I do believe that it is down to the individuals within society to make the best of themselves in any way in which they see fit, rather than relying on the state to create some sort of equality of outcome.

However, I also have some very left wing views. I believe that people should be as free as possible within their private lives, and am against any discrimination or state interventions based on gender, race, or sexual orientation. Protecting and increasing our civil liberties should be a political priority as far as I am concerned, and I am instinctively against social conservatism.

Which is why none of the main parties in this country can actually represent my views effectively. The Tories may offer more economic freedom and may wish to control the markets less, but time and time again they fall back on the mindless reactionary rhetoric that appeals to the readers of The Daily Mail. Likewise, the Labour party are generally more pro-social progress; however, they believe the economy is best controlled by the state to a large extent, and are increasingly also trying to regulate other areas of the lives of their citizens - including such mindless activities as trying to control how much alcohol in this country actually drink.

The reason why Libertarians are so often dubbed right-wing is because of the parties that first adopted some Libertarian ideals - the Republicans in the US under Ronald Reagan, and the Tories in the UK under Margaret Thatcher - are traditionally seen as right-wing. Yet neither of those politicians, and neither of those political parties, actually offered what I would define as a Libertarian agenda. Reagan began the drift of the Republicans towards Christian fundamentalism, whilst Thatcher was very much a narrow-minded social conservative. Reagan and Thatcher were looking for a way of justifying their (admittedly needed) economic reforms ideologically. But don't mistake the so-called New Right with being Libertarian.

All the main parties in this country, be they right-wing, left-wing or centrist all look to increase state control in one area or another. And that is why I don't define myself as left-wing or right-wing. In fact, I would claim that being a Libertarian defies conventional ideological analysis - at least if you are going to use the traditional dividing lines of left-wing versus right-wing.

Because ultimately, the right/left divide doesn't mean anything. It all comes down to choosing which areas you want to cede authority and choice to the state. If you want proof, then look at the extremes of both the right-wing and left-wing ideologies. The right-wing extreme is the nightmare of Nazism, whilst the left-wing extreme can be seen in the likes of Stalin and Pol Pot. And, sure, the rhetoric of those abhorrent regimes was completely different - with the Nazi's talking of racial purity and striving for the fatherland whilst Stalin's regime was all about the push to progress, whatever the human cost. But when your remove the rhetoric you have exactly the same thing - the subjugation of the individual and the dominance of the state. The extremes of the right and of the left are not total opposites - rather, they are identical in terms of the way they function and the horrific costs on those who live in those states.

So I am not right-wing; nor am I left-wing. Rather, I favour an ideology that calls for control of the state rather than state control. Traditional left-wing and right-wing parties cannot offer that, since they all favour state control in different ways. So for the record, I am neither left-wing or right-wing. I appreciate it may be difficult for some to grasp that, in a society where all political views tend to be tagged as left-wing or right-wing. However, these categories are actually irrelevant. The real conflict is between those who would increase the power of the state in some way, and those who would control and reduce the influence of the state. The former have dominated the political agenda in the UK and in the West for too long. Now we need to leave behind the simplistic talk of right and left, and start thinking about just how much we want the state to be involved in our lives.

Why Socialism Means Dictatorship

Over at Jackart’s place there has been some fierce debate over socialism versus capitalism, mainly with those of a right-wing disposition taking on the laughably naïve Sugarhoney. Now political ideology is something I have studied extensively, so I thought I would throw a couple of thoughts into the debate.

Jackart writes “Socialism is Communism writ small”, which is pretty much spot on. Both socialism and communism want to achieve the same aim – the end of the capitalist way of life (and, btw, liberal democracy). Their key disagreements lie in how that is to be achieved. Communism (as created by the hopelessly wrong Karl Marx) sees the end of capitalism occurring because of a violent revolution and a subsequent dictatorship of the proletariat*. Socialism, as advocated not only by purists such as Eduard Bernstein but also all those of a Social Democratic ilk, sees the creation of the socialist state through piecemeal reform and through undemocratic, economically damaging institutions such as Trade Unions. The means are different – the end is the same. The end of capitalism and, as a result, dictatorship and society based on misery for all.

See, the problem with socialist and communist ideology comes down to their perceptions of human nature. They see human beings as, in some way, perfectible. They think that, given the right circumstances, human beings will be reborn as generous, giving beings who are happy to make every effort in all parts of their life to share the proceeds with their neighbour, regardless of what the neighbour has done. In the crushingly naïve view of the socialist, the perfected human will be more than happy to adhere to the Marxist maxim “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

Of course, people don’t work like that. Humans are capable of acts of great goodness and generosity. They are also capable of acts of extreme selfishness and greed. The instinct of humanity is to get the best for the individual and the individual’s loved ones. If strangers can be happy as well, all well and good – but the happiness of others is not the main motivating factor of the average human. People want to acquire, and they want to have their efforts rewarded. The only way that you can fight that instinct is through the state interfering and compelling people towards the more socialist way of thinking. That is why thousands of kulaks starved in Stalin’s collective farms. Stalin tried to compel them to be communists. In doing so, he forced them to act against their instincts, removed their freedom and led to many of them dying.

Jackart also writes:

“Fascism is merely a better dressed form of communism. So does it matter whether its the Jews or the Kulaks who got exterminated - Surely they're both still people? Both creeds are equally evil.”

I would agree with this as well. We have to stop thinking about this debate as being between right and left. It isn’t. It is the difference between freedom and state control. The only real difference between socialism/communism and fascism/Nazism** is the ideology they pay lip service to. They both take the chance to interfere in the lives of their people, they both remove the freedom of the citizens in an attempt to make them conform to an idealised and incorrect view of humanity. I always find it very telling that Nazism is, technically, National Socialism. Socialism with a Nationalist bent. The far ends of the political spectrum are Libertarianism (be it capitalist or anarchist) and Dictatorship (be it socialist, communist or fascist).

Basically you’ve got a choice. You can have a society where everyone is free to go out and make the best of their lives, in what ever subjective way in which the citizens view success. Some will be happy, some won’t. But that have, to a large extent, the choice. Or you can have a society where the government tries to control every element of the citizens’ life and where everyone is equally miserable, barring the tiny ruling elite. Liberal Capitalism versus Socialism – the choice is literally as stark as freedom versus dictatorship.

Therefore, if you are a socialist – like Sugarhoney and the glaringly ignorant Terry Kelly - you are not a democrat and you support dictatorship and misery.

Quite simple when you sit down and think about it, really.

*And please don’t tell me that Lenin, Stalin and all the other bastards who ran the Soviet Union were some sort of departure from classic Marxism. They aren’t. Everything they did – every evil, brutal act – was explicitly condoned by Marx by him advocating of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. And don’t give me “oh, well, Lenin et al weren’t members of the working class”. That may be the case, but Marx explicitly stated that the working class would be joined by members of the other classes as the violent revolution drew near – middle class people like Lenin would become part of the proletariat as the dictatorship of the proletariat loomed.
**Aside from the fact that communism has a far higher death toll. I’m not condoning Nazism of the Holocaust in anyway, but fundamentally murdering someone in a concentration camp is the same as murdering someone in a Gulag. The crime is the same – murder. And I am disgusted by murder in whatever form it takes, regardless of the ideology or reasoning behind it.