The Labour Party as it now stands means Tory with a more benign exterior — and it has rapidly become deeply unpopular. Perhaps Labour would serve the country and the world far better – and attract far more support—if it returned to its socialist, moral roots.
The word “Socialism” seems to frighten people. It even frightens the present Labour Party. Yet it comes originally from the Latin socius meaning “friend”, and socialis meaning “allied”; and from this the French, in the 19th century, with their penchant for abstract nouns, derived the term socialisme. Clearly the words, “social”, “sociable”, “society” etc have the same root. Thus socialism above all is about society; and the embedded idea of “friendship” suggests that society is conceived to be benign; a society of friends, as the Quakers put it. What is so frightening about that?
Indeed, this idea is, or should be, in the genes of the Labour Party. For the widely acknowledged founder of Britain’s Labour Party was the Lanarkshire coal miner Keir Hardie (1856-1915), who in 1907 wrote in his most famous book, From Serfdom to Socialism:
“To the Socialist the community represents a huge family organisation in which the strong should employ their gifts in promoting the weal of all, instead of using their strength for their own personal aggrandisement”
He also said:
“I claim for socialism that it is the embodiment of Christianity in our industrial system”
Of course in Hardie’s time Christianity was the only religion of which most westerners had even an inkling. If Hardie had lived in modern times he might have pointed out that the core moral principle of love, aka compassion, is central to the moral philosophy of all the great religions, both theistic and non-theistic. In no way is the moral principle of compassion exclusive to Christianity. Alas, though, all too obviously, the key moral principle of compassion has often gone missing not only from society but from religion – overtaken by politics and theological hair-splitting.
I have suggested that all human beings, whether religiously inclined or not, should be guided by the ‘Bedrock Principles’ of morality and ecology. Morality — moral philosophy — aspires to tell us what it is right to do. Ecology among much else offers insights into what it is necessary to do, if we want to occupy this Earth in a tolerable state for more than a few more years – or indeed if we want to live at all. It also helps to show what it is possible to do within the all too obvious limits of planet Earth. The Earth is wonderfully forgiving, but not infinitely so. Yet placed against the realities of modern politics and the present Zeitgeist this modest suggestion seems hopelessly idealistic, or as the modern put-down has it, ‘unrealistic’. For the point of politics is to translate moral principle into practical policy – which in practice means economic policy – and hence into action. And this is where the trouble starts.
Morality vs economics
Economics ought to be seen as an exercise in applied morality – and indeed many of the finest economists have been moralists first and economists second. These include Adam Smith (1723-1790) and Karl Marx (1818-1883) who obviously led the world in very different directions – though not alas in the directions that either of them intended. Thus Smith is conventionally seen as the father of modern capitalism, which he saw as a sensible economic system able to deliver justice in the embryonic industrial age. He did not and could not have envisaged that capitalism would give rise to the 20th century offshoot of neoliberalism – a no-holds-barred scramble for material wealth in which the rich inexorably grow richer while the poor grow poorer, sometimes in absolute terms and always, obviously, relative to the rich. Thus Rupert Neate in the Guardian recently told us that the world’s five richest men, who include Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Trump’s present henchman-cum-mentor-cum-carer Elon Musk, have doubled their money since 2020. If the world’s richest men or indeed women were as wise as Solomon this still would not be satisfactory, for all kinds of reasons. But they obviously are not, and their self-indulgence, their power, and the resulting inequality are disastrous, ecologically, morally, and socially.
By the same token Marx and his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) hoped and expected that Communism would close the yawning gap between the then established owners of factories and mines in the mid-19th century (the “bourgeoisie”), and the property-less wage slaves who toiled in effect to make them richer (on whom he bestowed the unprepossessing title of “proletariat”). In truth, Marx’s and Engels’ vision of the communist world to come was not a million miles away from that of St Benedict. Both envisaged an end to private property (apart presumably from such things as toothbrushes and underpants) and a society in which, as Marx put it,
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.
Marx saw the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat ending, if ever, with ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ – and, especially in the light of what was to follow, the term ‘dictatorship’ seems most unfortunate. But then, Marx could not have foreseen that his philosophy would give rise to Stalin and the USSR, or to Mao and Kim Jong Un. In general, alas, the founders of big ideas are often ill-served by their successors and the would-be disciples who claim to act in their name.
A key figure in all this is the 17th century English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) who stressed the importance of private property, which he saw to be essential to a person’s autonomy and hence to their dignity and freedom; and freedom, he felt, not unreasonably, is a sine qua non. (To be sure, monks or nuns who follow the rule of St Benedict take a vow of obedience, which means they relinquish their freedom. But they do so voluntarily. Or that at least is the idea). Crucially, too, Locke also argued that a person had a right to own land if they did some work on it and made it more productive.
Freedom of choice is what distinguishes human beings from ants, who are slaves to their genes, or so it seems (although Locke, of course, would not have expressed the matter in those terms). Locke strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and his associates who wrote the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 and so set the tone of the United States forever more. So it is that in the modern US, at least in the mainstream, any attack on private property, or indeed on private wealth, including private land, is seen as an attack on freedom. And America, above all, is ‘the Land of the Free’ and any perceived threat to private property and wealth is seen as an attack on the very soul of America, unpatriotic and ungodly. It is no accident that the American Far Right claims to be guided and protected by God (as of course does Donald Trump) and claims predominantly to be Christian (although it isn’t obvious that St Paul or St Peter would have agreed with that assessment). So it is that poor Americans with no prospect even of standard middle-class western comforts demonstrate and sometimes fight to uphold the perceived right of the super-rich to become even richer, and claim thereby to be both patriots and godly. By the same token, taxes are commonly seen as an offence bordering on sacrilege. “Read my lips” said the then vice-president George Bush senior in a campaign speech in 1988. “No new taxes!”
Where America leads…
Where America leads the rest follow, with Britain, with our ‘special relationship’, in the van. Without taxes public spending inevitably suffers, which leads in turn to what the Canadian economist (and moralist) J K Galbraith (1908-2006) called “private opulence and public squalor” – which seems to describe the modern US, and Britain after 14 years of Tory speculation, to a tee.
Starmer and Reeves, it seems to me, are infected with the same neoliberal meme. Their residual socialist instincts must surely urge them to increase public spending and it must have occurred to them that they could raise much of what is needed by taxing the richest 10 per cent, who own 50 per cent of Britain’s wealth. It must have occurred them too that if we seriously want to create a world in which human beings and what’s left of our fellow creatures can live tolerably, or indeed live at all, for more than a few more decades, then we need perhaps above all and as a matter of supreme urgency to create a more egalitarian economy. Please see my blog of February 22 2024, “Why won’t the powers-that-be tax the rich?”, based on the ideas of the Dutch economist Ingrid Robeyns, which she outlined in Limitarianism; the Case against Extreme Wealth.
It seems to me that socialism has become so unpopular, and the world has lurched so dangerously to the right, largely because socialism is seen as the enemy of freedom, including or especially the freedom to become rich. In truth it’s a con trick, since most of the people who shout so loudly and sometimes risk their own and other people’s necks in defence of Trump and his followers and his kindred spirits are in truth held back by the very system they seek to defend. This leads to extreme inequality, with the would-be fighters for freedom at the bottom. It’s a huge irony too because socialism properly conceived must be democratic. For as Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) put the matter after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, true democracy requires
“Government of the people, for the people and by the people”
However democracy itself requires discipline, which implies some curtailment of freedom, though voluntarily undertaken.
To return to the main thread: What socialism needs, and what Labour therefore needs, and what we all need, is an economy that works and is friendly both to people and to the natural world, but is not imposed from above in dictatorial fashion. Is there such a thing?
Part 2 will explore this question.
Editor’s note: This article is taken from Colin Tudge’s blog The Great Re-think.
See also https://www.colintudge.com/
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