Alex Deane on the limits of the market, particularly with reference to the railways.
Thanks to the "free" market, the kiosk that Deane describes probably sells pornography. And while I am not advocating that the State be in direct control of such things, on what evidence does he hold that the private sector is inherently more efficient? Are the banks efficient? Are the privatised utilities? Are the railways?
Thatcher herself (who nationalised a bank) refused to privatise the railways, and she was right. A dogmatic objection to public ownership is alien to the tradition that rightly nationalised electricity in the Twenties.
Like endless foreign wars, unrestricted markets are the stuff of pseudo-conservatism, and actually corrode everything that one would wish to conserve: national self-government (the only basis for international co-operation, and including the United Kingdom as greater than the sum of its parts), local variation, historical consciousness, family life (founded on the marital union of one man and one woman), the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West, agriculture, manufacturing, small business, close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, all forms of art, mass political participation within a constitutional framework, respect for the absolute sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilisation to the point of natural death, the constitutional and other ties among the Realms and Territories having the British monarch as Head of State, the status of the English language and the rights of its speakers both throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and the rights of British-descended communities throughout the world.
The railways are crying out for renationalisation. And since they were only ever privatised on the scandalous understanding that the taxpayer would always guarantee the profitability of private companies, they could and should be renationalised without further compensation, those involved having already been more than compensated enough.
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Classical patrimony? Under the Roman Empire the State didn't own anything. Everything was the property of individuals.
ReplyDeleteAs for "Biblical", the Church's teaching is that the State should only be involved in what it must be. Everything else should be the preserve of others.
And it must be involved in preserving all these good things against the "free" market, a Jacobin concept.
ReplyDeleteThere cannot be a "free" market in goods and services generally, but not in alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitution or pornography; therefore, there must not be a "free" market generally.
And there cannot be the unrestricted movement of goods, services or capital without the unresticted movement of labour, i.e., migrants; therefore, there must not be the unrestricted movement of goods, services or capital.
All the conservative traditions of Europe and the Anglosphere used to understand these things, and where they still exist, they still do. Where there is no longer any such understanding, there is no longer any such tradition.