‘Market’: a dirty word?
Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 4 October) touches on an issue which has been the occasional subject of my thoughts since the Conservatives coined their slogan ‘Of course there’s such a thing as society — it’s just not the same thing as the state.’ He says, ‘Mr Cameron did not use the word “market” [in his conference speech]. He referred instead to our “free enterprise system”. One can see why. But it would be a great pity if the word “market” became a negative in political discourse... ’ My impression is that the word ‘market’ is already a ‘negative’ to much of the electorate. Mr Cameron seems to share this impression. The word’s negative connotations appear to derive in large part from the common elision of two separate but related concepts: markets and capitalism. This elision seems to me reinforced by the normal division of human activity into the ‘private’, ‘public’ and ‘charitable’ sectors. But isn’t ‘charitable’ activity simply the operation of markets without the involvement of capital ism? And why do we allow the ‘private’ sector to be described as ‘private’ when it offers its services to the public? If the Tories want to convince the country that the private sector serves the public better than the public sector — with or without the direct involvement of capitalism — they might want to combat the negative associations that such categorisations and confusions generate. Running away from those associations seems to hand an unearned advantage to the Left. If the word ‘market’ were commonly understood as the free association of individuals, it might generate in the electorate the same beautiful associations Mr Moore finds in it.
Perhaps Mr Moore should encourage Policy Exchange or the Conservative party to consider ways of ‘decontaminating’ the concepts which underlie Conservative thought, as well as the brand itself. But then, he is probably doing that already. Indeed, it may be that Mr Cameron — well ahead of me — was finding a euphemism for capitalism, not markets, after all.
Richard Samuel
London W10
Previous page
