The great alternative

Jo Gnmond

Is political discussion going to revolve for ever round state socialism? Every now and then in Orkney and Shetland a whale swims aground. Even if hauled off, it all too often heads for the shore again. Is our future to consist of trying to pull ourselves a little way off bureaucratic sand-banks but always then running on to them again?

We should know now where bureaucratic socialism leads. Throughout most of European history the governed have had a healthy suspicion of too much government. It is only in the last hundred years or so that bureucratic power has been seen as anything other than a painful necessity to be kept to a minimum. And in the last hundred years we have suffered two world wars, the two worst tyrannies which mankind has ever endured and we have watched the appalling atrocities of communism in Russian and South-East Asia and the world-wide aggression of the communist states.

Though the extreme state socialists are the worst enemies that mankind has to face (if the rulers of today's Russia were removed from the earth the chances of world war would evaporate) those caught in the toils of bureaucracy inevitably steer towards the troubles which it engenders. The Kaiser might from time to time believe that he wanted peace, but his entourage and his general staff were caught by the inevitable, almost unconscious, drive to war. If the nationalised industries were in private hands and subject to the market, they would unquestionably serve us better; but their bureaucracies would obstruct any such changes.

The period of Mrs Thatcher's government has been dominated by the argument about state socialism just as certainly as have the previous forty years. That her ministers have proved impotent to change either the structure of government or the nationalised industries is taken as further proof that a big extension of government is inevitable. She herself may have struggled a bit, but no coherent alternative has emerged from her government. Even if she succeeeds in keeping inflation down for a time, we shall stand on the same sandbanks when the economy recovers.

Is there no alternative? By alternative I do not mean a purely negative alternative, such as reducing some government expenditure or hiving off small pieces of the nationalised industries. Some movement along those lines might be welcome, but it would neither change the framework of political debate nor tackle the political assumptions which dominate economic decisions. Nor do I mean theoretical laissez-faire, which attempts to ignore political organisation. It is because of political considerations that economic laissez-faire is not enough. We are not mov ed solely, if at all, by general economic theory. We are not independent individuals; we rely upon some framework, some community to sustain us and some authority to guide us and preserve us from anarchy. The task is not to try to exorcise politics but to find a new political alternative.

There is such an alternative. There has long been a strain in British politics which offers an acceptable alternative to state socialism. It is made up of several threads. These include Christianity, Popular Toryism as evinced by Cobbett and to some extent by Disraeli, and the liberalism of John Stuart Mill and Gladstone. It comprises those, like Ruskin, who stressing aesthetics have revolted against mass culture. Another thread comes from Robert Owen of the co-operatives. It has stood for the individual, but not the individual in isolation. It has stood for a democratic way of life not confined simply to the election of a government, but a democracy which accepts and upholds intellectual authority outside politics and independent of material power. It can be described as socialism without the state. It is certainly socialist if socialism means, not subservience to state or subordinate interest groups, such as Trade Unions and other bureaucracies, but equality of esteem and opportunity and some share by all in the benefits a few may create. It has been the opponent of the concentration of power. It has also opposed the determinism which goes with the surrender to fashion, particularly surrender to economic and scientific determinism which is the antithesis of civilisation. And it has been well aware that, even when organisations or individuals wield much less power than is credited to them (this may well be true of Trade Unions), they are like general staffs conditioned to moye in dangerous directions. It has certainly spoken up for the poor. It has of course defended freedom.

Why has it had so little success? Even if we discount its chances of itself being often in office and command, why has it had so little influence on changing the thinking of the electorate or warning it of the calamities which swim in the wake of state socialism?

It cannot be because it has not secured a hearing. On the contrary, writers of many sorts from Dickens and Sydney Smith through William Morris, Belloc, Chesterton, and Orwell, and in our own day, the Spectator, the Economist and many contributors to the Guardian and other newspapers have belonged to this strain in our thinking: Richard Ingrams and Christopher Booker, and from Ireland and Scotland the early Yeats, Eric Linklater, Edwin Muir and Wilfred Taylor; all have stood for a humane unbureaucratic approach to government. They have reached a wide audience in defence of humane values and the institutions which should guard them against the industrialist onslaughts of self-seeking bureaucrats.

Nor has this outlook lacked support on specific aspects of our affairs. The Institute of Economic Affairs, particularly Lord Harris and Arthur Se(don, have again and again pointed out the economic alternative to state socialism. Karl Popper kept its philosophical tradition to the forefront. It is not true, as sometimes alleged, that this alternative has been smothered in schools and universities. On the contrary, innumerable professors have been counted among its adherents.

I continue to hope that, as the failure of bureaucratic management in spheres for which it was never designed becomes apparent, we may turn to other methods involving both greater play for the market, more decentralisation and the more democratic ownership of industry through co-operatives and such like. At present I have renewed hopes for this as a result of the Liberal-Social Democratic alliance. But I fear that politics are still dominated by supposed class interests, or at least by what people believe to be the interest of their class, though they may well be wrong about the class to which they belong and the interests of that class, if they exist. It will be interesting to see how the Social Democrats deal with this hurdle in the way of common sense.

Less appreciated is the demand of the ambitious. A decentralised, distributive country, relying upon common beliefs, proven regulators and impartial law for its cohesion,does not cater for those who want office and at least the trappings of power which go with it. The only justification for the quite astonishing number of legislators, MPs, Councillors, quangos and national board members which Britain supports is that, like the mediaeval church, they provide a ladder and various perches for those who want to get on in life but have no aptitude for commerce. Our education has encouraged the clever and resourceful to go into public administration and the professions rather than industry.

It seems to me that here lies a stumbling block in the path of democracy to which no one has paid much attention. It has been assumed that all that needs to be done to satisfy political aspirations is to give everyone the vote; it is assumed that the vote will be used to elect representatives who, with a public spirited civil service, will then take on the burden of governing, anxious only that their task be discharged with an eye solely on its beneficial effects on the country. Of course, the political world is not like that at all. There are thousands of men and women who would like a political career, with all that implies: a career structure, office, prestige, power to give orders. And there are hundreds of thousands more in the public service who see it as a means of making a living which has the inestimable advantage of security but otherwise is little different from other forms of employment, in which increasing rewards, and perks, are the motives. So long as government was largely confined to members of a comparatively small class, many of whom were wealthy and all of whom had other avenues open to their ambitions, the problem was not acute. But modern developments in the ownership of wealth, class status, wider education and probably a permanent decrease in the demands of industry for labour have changed the position.

Another factor has been the habit of press and television of always demanding that government shall be doing something about something. Although, as I have said, the anti-bureaucrats have been well represented by writers and indeed broadcasters, the editorial attitude has been to call for bureaucratic action and give publicity to those who promise that their organisation will take some action, usually on behalf of its members. Those who decide on what is news must take a great share of responsibility for the growth of state socialist attitudes.

Democrats have not found a solvent for original political sin, the sin of using the machinery of the state for personal ends.

How deep is the rot can be seen in the reac tions to the riots in Liverpool. The appalling state of the inner cities is largely due to state socialist planning. Yet the clamour goes up for more of it and more central government expenditure on top of the vast sums already expended to create these deserts. Or take the ecologists and preservationists. They also too often call for more public action when it is the bureaucrats who have wasted thousands of acres of good land and at huge expense desecrate cities and countryside. The reaction to any mistaken public policy is not to alter it but to set up another public authority to counteract it. Although state socialism in Russia has reduced what is potentially the richest country in the world to penury, this is the system — not that of the USA, Japan or Switzerland — which is recommended for new African states.

Nevertheless, we must continue to hope. The present tide can only sweep us on to a dead end, and we will wake up too late to find out that total state socialism is a negation not only of the ideals of Liberals and Conservatives but of Socialists also and will probably end in war.

Private Eye is widely read but it is doubtful if it has changed anyone's behaviour, even as regards 'ongoing situations'. Neither reason nor ridicule can kill prevailing idiocies or curb original sin. The liberal economists hoped that ambition and acquisitiveness might be turned to good use through the market. Would that that had been done. Unfortunately working the market is a dangerous and exhausting business compared with a much easier alternative through the private and public bureaucracies and the encouragement of monopoly which the state offers.

What then can we do? At least identify our troubles, pick out what has caused them and seek to tackle the root causes of our discontents. Realise that there is an alternative in politics, and that it could construct as well as criticise. But if we are to win the battle against the forces which must lead to autocracy and war, then we have to find some way of satisfying or curbing original sin.

We must certainly change the industrial and political system. The joint-stock company must yield ground to various forms of co-operative. The boundary of the state must be pushed back and political decisions decentralised. We should learn not only from Mondragon but from the Japanese in devising new organisations. The Japanese seem to have succeedet in providing that security and assured prospect for which most people yearn together with a highly efficient and enterprising industrial system. They seem to have dealt fairly satisfactorilY with original sin. Wealth must be spread more widely and the entrepreneur, the genuine risk-taking entrepreneur, encouraged not only by reducing taxation but by increasing the esteem in which he is held. Individual property ownership must be seen as a boom and defence against tyranny and not ground away by taxation.

But as well as changing the system, the alternative entails a co-ordinated drive to educate people in the decisions before them. Indeed, to educate them in the very existence of decisions and choices which must be made. One of the many admirable features which it seems to me that, saY, Cobbett, Sydney Smith, Belloc and Eric Linklater have in common is an appetite for life, enjoyment of what it has to offer and some optimism about the nature of man and his position in the universe. Politics at least in the public performances of the House of Commons is too often an affair of tediums and snarls. That we can ourselves do better and enjoy doing it is indeed to be seen in many of our activities outside Politics. I would hope that soon we shall realise that we are not doomed for ever to head for the same old sand-banks. It is encouraging that in Poland, France, London and Warrington the reigning orthodoxies have taken a beating. But it is disappointing that in France and London at least the only alternative on offer is socialism of the deadbeat variety and even more disappointing that the British press should apparently assume that the rise of Mitterrand was the best possible outcome of the French general election.

Writers of the variety I describe have been well aware of the dangers in the itch to assert oneself over other people and the ex istence of evil, but they have also embraced the politics of hope. They have taught that men can lead enjoyable lives, not under the orders of bureaucrats but through behaving as members of a community guided by religion, morality, reason, obligation and mutual respect. At present too many critics of state socialism seem to be the prophets of doom preaching that only through the hair shirt shall we reach salvation. At present too, British institutions such as Trade Unions and even, alas, universities too often seem to wallow in an unattractive mixture of arrogance and self-pity. They advance a difficulty for every solution except that the state should arrange that they are paid more. I find it slightly alarming that the only wildly popular institution in Britain should be the Crown, one of whose characteristics is that in no circumstances can it ever do anything.