Is this the shittest defence of workfare ever?

Back in 2012 when the Tory DWP boss Iain Duncan Smith was battling against the Court of Appeals decision to declare his "Workfare" forced labour schemes unlawful, he launched an astonishingly pitiful defence of his unlawful "Workfare" scams (you can see a video and my critique of it here). I never though I'd see a more useless display of poorly considered rubbish, but someone recently left an attempted defence of "Workfare" forced labour schemes on my Another Angry Voice Facebook page that even manages to beat Iain Duncan Smith's bizarre ranting for sheer wrongness.

I know it's hardly worth my time to critique a ridiculous comment on my Facebook page, but it is often illustrative to demostrate just how wrong it is possible to be (plus I actually enjoy tearing hopeless arguments to pieces, so this article should be a doddle to write).

I'm going to quote the whole comment and then go through it piece by piece showing how mind-bogglingly wrong it is.

"Workfare is obviously not slavery, as no force is being applied to join them. Anyone is free to leave at any time. Hence the scheme is liberal, ie it makes for a free and so more just society in this regard (which is why the left hates it so much). It beggars belief that anyone could claim that working for one's wage is slavery - and then in the same breath say they want to enslave other people, by living off the taxes that other people pay."

So here's my point by point demolition:

"Workfare is obviously not slavery ..." - WRONG - Firstly I didn't actually claim "Workfare was slavery", so your opening salvo is a straw-man argument. Secondly, whether Workfare is slavery or not depends on your definition of the word "slavery". If we define slavery as "forced unpaid labour" then Workfare seems to fit the definition quite neatly. I've often advised people to avoid using workfare/slavery comparisons because it can be perceived as hyperbolic language by the pro-workfare people we're trying to dissuade from supporting it, but to claim that it's "obviously not slavery" is just misleading. We'll come back to inappropriate slavery comparisons later ...

"...as no force is being applied to join them" - WRONG - It is well documented that harsh benefits sanctions are used to force people into joining workfare schemes. In fact, the court case Iain Duncan Smith lost was all about whether his workfare punishment regime was lawful or not (it turned out that it wasn't).

"Anyone is free to leave at any time" - WRONG - If people leave their "workfare placements" at any time, they are invariably punished with the absolute destitution caused by benefits sanctions. This fear of absolute destitution leaves workfare victims in the appalling situation where they have to simply put up with it if they are being bullied or abused by the bosses, or by other paid staff who resent people on unpaid workfare placements because they represent a very clear and obvious threat to the continuation of their paid employment.

"Hence the scheme is liberal" - WRONG - What the hell kind of defintion of "liberal" are you using in order to make it compatible with the state forcing people to work for no wages and with no labour rights, under the threat of absolute destitution?

"it makes for a free and so more just society in this regard" - WRONG - A free and just society where the state can bypass minimum wage legislation and force the citizen to work for no wages in jobs that they can't leave without suffering absolute destitution? What the hell kind of definitions of "free" and "just" are you using here? 

"which is why the left hates it so much" - WRONG - this isn't even a left-right issue, it's a libertarian-authoritarian issue. Stalin (left-wing) used forced labour schemes, as did Hitler (right-wing). The distinction here is whether we believe that the state has the right to extract the labour of the individual for no compensation and distribute it to favoured clients (an authoritarian stance) or whether the labour of the individual actually belongs to the individual (a libertarian stance). 

"It beggars belief that anyone could claim that working for one's wage is slavery" - WRONG - workfare isn't working for a wage, it's working for subsistence level social security payouts that have been paid for through National Insurance contributions. If the state makes the individual work in order to "earn" their social security payments, then what the individual has paid in National Insurance contributions has essentially been stolen from them by the state hasn't it? If you're fine with the government stealing from the public, you're the one who is beggaring belief, not me.

"and then in the same breath say they want to enslave other people by living off the taxes that other people pay" -WRONG - As already mentioned, unemployment benefits are paid in the form of National Insurance scheme payouts. They are not paid directly by other people, they are the payout from a collective insurance fund. If you don't understand how our social security system even works it's no surprise that you're the kind of half-wit who thinks that paying National Insurance contributions is comparable to slavery. This mind numbingly stupid "tax =  slavery" stance betrays the utter stupidity of your position. First you argue that the state taking the entirety of an individual's labour value and distributing it for free to favoured corporate clients (like Warburg Pincus, the US based conglomerate that owns Poundland) is "obviously not slavery", but then you whinge that the state taking a small percentage of the individual's labour value as a contribution towards a national insurance fund designed to protect against disability, unemployment and old age is "slavery"!

All in all this attempted defence of workfare is one of the most pitiful displays of utter wrongness I've ever witnessed!

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MORE ARTICLES FROM
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
                 
The decline in political participation and the rise of the non-traditional parties
                                       
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The myth of right-wing patriotism
                         
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12 significant Tory-UKIP defectors
                     
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Michael Gove's ideological vandalism of the education system
                            

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Margaret Thatcher's toxic neoliberal legacies
  

Universal Basic Income from a libertarian perspective - A labour market analysis

In this article I'm going to consider Universal Basic Income (UBI) from a libertarian perspective, focusing mainly on analysis of the labour market, rather than the much more common libertarian "small state" argument in favour of UBI.

The crux of the article

The current labour market is terribly unfree as it is because it relies on coercion, workfare, sanctions, draconian anti-labour legislation etc.

The introduction of Universal Basic Income would would create a much freer labour market (no more threat of destitution, sanctions or forced labour schemes, and much freer labour contracts between employers and employees), but this increased freedom for the majority would come at the expense of necessary measures in order to control inflation (which would rapidly destroy the project if left unchecked). 

The reduction in aggression against the majority of workers would outweigh the infringements on the current rights that rentiers have to exploit access to basic commodities in order to extract profit for themselves (which it can be argued is another form of aggression against the majority anyway).

What is libertarianism?

Libertarianism covers a wide range of political stances, from
left-libertarianism through to anarcho-capitalism. The thing they
have in common is that they promote freedom (although in
completely different ways).

Many people are under the mistaken impression that the word "libertarian" refers exclusively to an extreme form of US free market fundamentalism associated with Ayn Rand, the Tea Party and the like. However the right-wing fringe in the US appropriated the word for their own use with little regard to the other inherent meanings it had before.

The origins of libertarianism can be traced to the 18th and 19th Century anarchist and and socialist movements in Europe, however it was quickly embraced and integrated into laissez-faire capitalist theory too.

One of the most famous left-libertarians was the American Henry George (1839-1897), who opposed rentierism, and argued in favour of Land Value Tax. Many Georgists have argued that the proceeds from Land Value Tax should be used to fund a citizens income, or Universal Basic Income.

Left-Libertarianism is not as famous as its rabid Ayn Rand inspired American cousin, but it is an increasingly popular political stance, and one which I personally embrace.

What is Universal Basic Income
[Main article]

If you're not fully versed on what Universal Basic Income (UBI) is, I suggest that you read my introductory article before coming back to finish this one. If you haven't got time for that, or you are reasonably clued up about what UBI is, I'll just provide a short summary.

UBI is an unconditional payment that is made to every qualifying individual within an economy. There is no means testing at all, other than determination that the individual is eligible (a citizen in the economy for example). Ideally the UBI is set at a rate which is sufficient to ensure that all recipients have access to basic human necessities (a home, sufficient food and water, basic energy needs ...).

This concept is generally appealing to libertarians on a basic level because it dispenses with almost all forms of state means testing, meaning a smaller, and less obtrusive state. In this article I'm not going to focus on this compelling "smaller state" argument for UBI, in favour of considering the libertarian case for UBI from a labour market perspective.

What makes the current labour market so unfree?
[Main article]

Labour is a fundamentally important factor in any economy. Orthodox economic theories tends to treat labour as if it is just some other kind of basic commodity, however, if it is to be referred to as a commodity at all, it must be recognised as a very special and distinct form of commodity, one that can be created at will, and which takes myriad potential forms.

The neoclassical orthodoxy fails to treat the labour market as utterly different to other commodities markets and it also fails to recognise the unequal nature of the market in labour, where the employer at a huge advantage over the employee. There are innumerable factors that put the buyer at an advantage of the seller in the labour market, but perhaps the most significant is the creation of false abundance via political policies aimed at retaining a constant pool of unemployment, the "reserve army of unemployment" as Marx defined it in the 19th century, or the "price worth paying" as it was described by former Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont in 1991.

In 1918 Bertrand Russell argued against this inequality in the labour market, proposing a kind of basic income so "the dread of unemployment and loss of livelihood will no longer haunt men like a nightmare".

The constant threat of destitution is a powerful means by which employers can drive down wages and working conditions, putting them at an unfair price advantage over the worker. If the scale of unemployment has been brought about via deliberate economic policies based on the equilibrium rate of unemployment, this is a clear case of the state trampling all over the libertarian non-aggression principle. If government policies result in your labour being coerced from you at a lower rate than you would be willing to sell it, solely because you fear destitution if you don't work for low wages, you're suffering aggression at the hands of the state.
 
The spectre of unemployment and impoverishment created by economic policies aimed at maintaining "extra capacity" in the labour market is not the only current example of aggressive coercion in the labour market.

Workfare blatantly violates the libertarian non-aggression principle
[Main article]

One of the starkest examples of a labour policy which violate the libertarian non-aggression principle is the kind of mandatory unpaid labour schemes for the unemployed collectively termed "Workfare".

These schemes coerce the unemployed, under threat of absolute destitution, into giving up their labour for free, often to highly profitable corporations.

It's bad enough that the state uses the threat of destitution (via welfare sanctions) to undermine the aggregate value of labour, but that ministers of the government openly declare that they believe that the state has "a right" to extract the labour of the individual for no wage at all, demonstrates an extremely illiberal attitude towards the labour rights of the individual.

These mandatory unpaid "Workfare" labour schemes demonstrate beyond doubt that the ministers involved in administering these schemes believe that the labour of the individual actually belongs to the state.
If your government acts as if it believes that your labour is a commodity which belongs to the state, and which can be extracted and distributed for free to favoured corporations, the labour market isn't just unfree, it is grotesquely authoritarian.
 
How would UBI make the labour market freer?

If every individual received an unconditional basic income sufficient to meet their fundamental human needs (housing, food and water, energy, health care ...) the threat of destitution would cease to necessitate people into accepting wages and working conditions they deem unfair.

An unconditional basic income would also render totally unworkable the draconian regime of "Workfare" labour extraction schemes enforced via draconian welfare sanctions regimes. If the individual has a right to an unconditional subsistence income, the state loses the power to coerce and intimidate the individual into giving up their labour for free with threats of destitution, starvation and homelessness.

Even if we accept the wrong-headed idea that labour is a basic commodity with a defined value (the national minimum wage for example), we have to accept that coerced unpaid labour represents theft, and a clear violation of the libertarian non-aggression principle. Universal Basic Income would render this form of theft by the state totally unworkable, because the state would have no right to revoke the unconditional incomes of those that won't comply with their unpaid labour extraction schemes.

How a freer labour market could benefit society and the economy

I've explained a how UBI could benefit society and the economy in the primer article on the subject, so I'll try to be concise here.

The free labour market that UBI would create if administered correctly, would benefit society by alleviating extreme poverty, which would lead to a fall in poverty related social problems such as crime and poverty related ill-health.

Another benefit to society would be that the existence of UBI would push up the cost of employing people to do undesirable jobs (disgusting, dangerous or debilitating work), meaning that in turn there would be much greater financial incentives for companies to invest in technology to automate such work. The development of technology to eliminate undesirable jobs would benefit society and the economy (fewer people working in undesirable jobs, greater demand for high-tech solutions).

UBI trials have shown that people generally don't stop working and laze about once their basic necessities are provided, in fact UBI works as an economic stimulus, because people have more time to invest in starting their own businesses, and the public has more money to spend on consumption. The only demographics to substantially reduce the hours they work are mothers with young children and young people in education, it is arguable that these reductions are actually beneficial in socio-economic terms.

Why is controlling inflation so important?

Controlling price inflation would be absolutely crucial to the success of any Universal Basic Income project because without measures to stop the inflation of basic necessities (rent, utilities, food ...) the gains that UBI would provide would soon be eroded away as price rises diminish the value of the basic income payment so that it is no longer sufficient to cover the basic costs of subsistence.

If inflation is allowed to run rampant, the benefits of Universal Basic Income would soon be transferred from the ordinary citizen that receives it, to the rentiers that take advantage by hiking the prices they charge for the provision of basic commodities and services.

Controlling Rentierism

If the rentiers are allowed free rein to profiteer from basic income provision, they will simply inflate their prices in order to soak up the entire value of basic income to cover the cost of some necessity of life (rent, transport, childcare, energy consumption). If the parasitic behaviour of rentiers is not controlled, all of the socio-economic benefits would soon be siphoned off as into the bank accounts of the most ruthlessly self-interested rent seekers. Essentially Universal Basic Income would turn into a government subsidisation scheme for the most ruthlessly self-interested, which is precisely the kind of system we have now, which is one of the main reasons people have been proposing the introduction of UBI in the first place.

The only practical way to stop this kind of rent seeking behaviour from destroying UBI would be to introduce some form of market regulation to prevent landlords, utilities companies, childcare providers and the like from massively inflating their prices in order to soak up the economic benefit of UBI for themselves.

There's no such thing as a perfectly free-market economy

Anyone that believes that there is such a thing as a perfectly free market is living in the same cloud-cuckoo land as those that believe a totally state controlled economy is a possibility.

What is up for debate is how more market freedom can be created. The orthodox neoliberal would argue that greater market freedom is produced through deregulation, but the huge growth in inequality, the ever increasing size of economic crises and the rise of vast "too big to fail" oligopolies since the neoliberal craze of privatisation and deregulation became the economic orthodoxy in 1980s, suggests that they are wrong. Deregulation and privatisation have increased the freedoms of corporations and the super-rich at the expense of the majority, who have seen their share of national incomes eroded away dramatically since the late 1970s despite rising productivity.

Others might argue that the best way to stimulate market freedom is through the creation of a "fair market", through carefully planned market regulation. Rules to prevent (and properly punish) anti-competitive practices such as price rigging, formation of oligopolies, monopolies and cartels, financial doping, insider trading, political patronage, front running, information asymmetry, dividing territories, corruption and outright fraud, would create a freer and safer market for individuals and small businesses, which would increase competition and efficiency, but at the cost of the freedoms of those that currently profit from the use of anti-competitive practices.

The same kind of debate can be had over the introduction of rules (rent caps, inflation controls on basic commodities and services ... ) to prevent the rentier class form extracting the benefit of Universal Basic Income for themselves. The infringement of their "right" to gouge as much profit as possible out of basic commodities and services, would have to be weighed against the greater economic freedoms afforded to the majority.

Essentially it boils down to the question of which is the most important; freeing up the currently unfree labour market or the continuation of free market in the provision of fundamental commodities and services?

Providing more freedom in which of these markets would create the biggest increase in aggregate freedom, and which would be most compliant with the libertarian non-aggression principle? In my view the answer is obvious. The freedom of the majority outweighs the freedom of the minority.

Other libertarian arguments for UBI aside from the labour market analysis

Before I conclude I'd like to state that this labour market analysis  is far from the only libertarian argument for the introduction of Universal Basic Income.

Other arguments include the most common "small state" argument because universal welfare would reduce the size of the state by reducing the number of functions of the state. Another argument can be made that since there would be no means testing, UBI would provide greater freedom from intrusion by the state into the private lives of the individual.

Perhaps the most compelling libertarian argument in favour of Universal Basic Income is that perhaps freedom from destitution in itself is the most important liberty, because without freedom from destitution the individual is often left facing either the suffering of destitution, or the suffering of wage slavery.

Conclusion

Labour is a fundamental element of any economy (be it capitalist, state socialist or anywhere in between). and an unfree market in labour is fundamentally incompatible with libertarianism.

If the deliberate economic policies of the political establishment in your country mean that your labour can be coerced from you at a lower rate than you would be willing to sell, simply because of the threat of absolute destitution, this is clearly an act of aggression on the part of the establishment.

If your government acts as if it believes that your labour is a commodity which actually belongs to the state, and can be extracted from you for no recompense at all, this is an even more vile example of state aggression.

The introduction of Universal Basic Income would put an end to both of these forms of labour market aggression, but in order for it to work measures to prevent rentiers from profiteering by inflating the prices they charge for basic human necessities would need to be introduced. Thus the debate is not over whether UBI is compatible with libertarianism (it clearly is) but whether the benefits from the greater freedoms in the labour market would outweigh the necessary losses in freedom of rentiers to profiteer from the provision of basic human needs, which would be necessary in order to prevent the whole project collapsing into inflationary chaos.

In my view the freedoms of the majority should outweigh the freedoms of the minority, and in any case, the current freedom to profiteer from the provision of basic human necessities that the rentier class enjoy can actually be viewed as a form of aggression in its own right. Why should the profits of the minority take precedence over the basic human needs of the majority?

 

Read more articles in the "What is...." series

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

MORE ARTICLES FROM
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
         
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Why do right-wing people support "Workfare"?
                        
What is... Fiscal Multiplication?
                     
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The Tory ideological mission

  

David Cameron's contempt for free speech

In November 2012 David Cameron bragged to parliament about how much the people of Britain can be be proud of: "the oldest democracy in the world; freedom of speech; a free press; frank and healthy public debate". In the same speech he expressed concerns about infringing on the freedom of the press. Here's exactly what he said:

"We should be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press. In this House, which has been a bulwark of democracy for centuries, we should think very, very carefully before crossing that line." [Hansard]

Now, you don't have to be any kind of politics obsessive to know that when David Cameron says something, you should immediately begin reading between the lines to see where the lies are. His track record is absolutely clear.

• Cameron said "We'll cut the deficit, not the NHS" then launched a £20 billion programme of cuts to the NHS.
• Cameron said "no more top-down reorganisations of the NHS" then launched the biggest top-down reorganisation in the entire history of the NHS.
• Cameron claimed that "We're paying down Britain's debts" even though the national debt is still growing rapidly.
• Cameron claimed that the OBR had stated that austerity is not responsible for depressed economic growth, when they had actually admitted that austerity was almost entirely responsible.
• Cameron said that the government are "making work pay" but the average wage has fallen in real terms every single month since he came to power.
• Cameron said that fracking would substantially reduce gas prices in the UK but even George Osborne admits that this is a misleading fiction.

In light of this track record, it is probably wise to start from the default position that when David Cameron says something, assume that the opposite to be true.

There have been ample demonstrations that David Cameron's fine words about the importance of "freedom of speech" and "press freedom" are nothing more than hot air. In this article I will briefly outline three of the most apparent.

The Gagging Law
[Main article]

Any government with the slightest regard for "freedom of speech" would certainly not have pushed through legislation designed to limit the freedom of speech of the non-profit sector, but this is precisely what Cameron's government has done.

It is absolutely clear that the "Protection of Corporate Lobbying and Silencing of Legitimate Political Debate" legislation was designed to silence charities, religions, protest groups, community organisations and trade unions from criticising Tory party policy. Iain Duncan Smith's angry rhetoric against the Trussell Trust food bank confirms it.

Despite the protestations of the voluntary sector that the "Gagging Bill" represents a blatant attack on their freedom of expression, and attempts by the House of Lords to unpick some of the most draconian elements of the legislation, the Tories managed to get this abomination of a bill through parliament.

The main ray of hope is that the first prosecutions against the charities/religions/protest groups that dare to ignore these new draconian laws in order to speak out against the government will attract far more attention to their causes than simply letting them alone ever would have.

The "Deregulation" Bill
[Main article]

If the attempt to hide legislation designed to attack the freedom of speech of the non-profit sector in a bill ostensibly aimed at controlling corporate lobbying wasn't sneaky enough, the Tories then tried to hide an attack on the freedom of the press in a so-called "Deregulation Bill".

The "Deregulation Bill" is a hotch-potch of legislation covering ten different government departments which is being rushed through parliament as fast as possible. One of the most contentious parts of the bill is Clause 47 which would allow the decision to confiscate journalistic material to take place in secret courts, which is clearly an attack on the "free press".

The Guardian
 [Main article]

The "Gagging Law" and Clause 47 of the "Deregulation" Bill are attacks on our freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, however they are quite obscure legislative efforts to undermine our freedoms. There is absolutely nothing obscure about this next example.

In July 2013 David Cameron and his goons threatened to shut down the Guardian newspaper and imprison their journalists over the Edward Snowden leaks. Within the space of eight months Cameron had gone from lauding the "free press" and worrying about "crossing the Rubicon" of press censorship, to threatening to shut down one of the most famous newspapers in Britain unless they complied with his demands.

It doesn't matter what your views on the Guardian (leftist drivel, a good newspaper or sold-out to neoliberalism long ago), the decision to send his deputy security advisor to threaten to shut them down demonstrates that all Cameron's noble words about "freedom of speech" and the "free press" were just vapid hot air.

Conclusion

If we judge David Cameron by his actions rather than by the noble words about "freedom of speech" and the "free press" that he used in Parliament in November 2012, it is absolutely clear that he has an attitude to press freedom more befitting a tyrannical leader of North Korea than the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

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More articles from
ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE
    
The "Protection of Corporate Lobbying and Silencing of Legitimate Debate" bill
               
The mainstream media oligopoly
    
A rogues gallery of dodgy Tory party donors
            
David Cameron's austerity to infinity speech

      
Why dissent is positive
          
The "New Labour are Left-Wing" fallacy
          
What is ... Neoliberalism?
             
Margaret Thatcher's toxic social and economic legacies

        

How the Lib-Dems are just as bad as the Tories when it comes to welfare

                    
The "Deregulation" bill
                  
The JP Morgan vision for Europe
         
How NSA overreach is worse than terrorism
                                          

Absolute equality and the pedantic left

There are some, that I call "the pedantic left" who seem to prefer the idea of a permanent neoliberal crony capitalist dystopia (where the cultural hegemony dictates the definition of "socialism" is akin to something like "pure evil") to the idea that they might have to compromise with other leftists that have slightly different interpretations of what "socialism" might actually mean, so that together they can build solidarity and fight back against the ever accelerating inequality imposed by the crony capitalist establishment.

In my view this abandonment of solidarity in order to engage in pedantic left-wing infighting is one of the big reasons that the right-wing crony capitalist establishment has managed to increase inequality so dramatically and to build and reinforce such a strong cultural hegemony in the first place.

Absolute equality

Distribution of resources

The subject of this article has been on my mind for some time, but an argument with a couple of socialists over the definition of the word "socialism" has pushed it to the front of my queue of articles to write.

The argument is this: I came across an American video on wealth distribution which defined "socialism" as absolute equality, where the poorest person in society gets absolutely the same as the richest person in society (see images). The rest of the video was quite interesting so I posted it on the Another Angry Voice Facebook page with a disclaimer about the absolutist equality stance being a complete straw-man misrepresentation of what "socialism" actually means. 



In my view socialism means that people should have equal access to fundamental resources like education, health care, welfare, energy, finance and sufficient staple resources like food and water. This means that such fundamentals mustn't be monopolised or commodified by rent seekers. To put this into very simple terms; my view of "socialism" is that society should provide people with equal access to opportunities and equal access to fundamental resources, not ruthlessly enforce absolute equality in everything (no matter how much or little the individual is prepared or able to contribute to society).

Several angry socialists came along to condemn my view of socialism as "facile" in defence of the absolutist equality position I was criticising. The problem of course is that the absolutist equality stance is obviously a lot more "facile" than a system that provides equal access to fundamental resources (health care, staple resources, energy, welfare) and opportunities (such as education and finance), but allows economic freedom to pursue non-fundamental commodities (consumer products, arts, literature, modern technology, entertainments, luxury goods, Pigovian products ...).

One of the very easy to grasp criticisms of the absolutist equality position is that some people want commodities that others don't. Some people want 64" flatscreen televisions and others don't (because like me, perhaps they barely watch TV or play computer games). I don't want a massive flatscreen TV, but I have absolutely no problem with others aspiring to ownership of commodities that I don't want. If they want to work a bit harder, or for a few hours longer to acquire the luxury item I don't want, then that's absolutely fine by me, just as the guy with the TV is probably quite happy that I work a bit harder or longer to acquire the science fiction books that he might have absolutely no interest in owning.

Under the absolutist equality definition of socialism either 64" screens (and my science fiction books) would have to be provided to everyone (even those that don't want them - a waste of resources) or they'd have to be banned (totalitarianism). The only other option would be to devise a system which determines how much relative utility is provided by each non-essential commodity, which would rely on the same kind of aggregation problems as neoclassical economics does, and would result in the creation of a vast and inefficient redistributive bureaucracy (is it even possible to determine how many science fiction books create the same level of utility as a big telly? Would a state administered system that expends resources on making such arbitrary determinations result in the most efficient use of resources?).

If you think equal access to basic resources, but freedom to pursue non-essentials is more "facile" than absolutist mandatory equality in absolutely everything, you either haven't thought about it very much or you've misunderstood the meaning of the word "facile".

The value of labour

The next problem with the absolutist equality stance is that it does something that no true socialist would accept; it reduces the value of labour to zero.

One of the most obvious problems with the idea of absolute equality is the fact that all labour would have to be given the same value. The workaholic manager would earn the same as the laid back shop assistant; the highly trained engineer would earn the same as the unskilled labourer; the educated expert would earn the same as the anti-intellectual that refuses to learn new skills; the worker in a dangerous or highly stressful job would earn the same as the worker in a safe or extremely relaxing job. To the vast majority of people, such a system would be transparently unfair. If your system contradicts the common-sense view that the hardworking deserve more than the lazy, the educated deserve more than the uneducated and that jobs in which the individuals risk their health or their lives deserve some form of danger compensation, then you will never be able to enforce such a system without resorting to totalitarianism.

The idea that all labour is equal is a huge problem, but there is a bigger problem still. If everyone is to get exactly the same whether they choose to work or not, then the value of labour is reduced to zero (in financial terms) because it classifies labour as having exactly the same value as no-labour. If the person that chooses not to contribute gets exactly the same as those that choose to work (in a difficult and dangerous jobs to fun and easy ones), then the value of labour is reduced to zero, meaning that there is no financial incentive to work at all. Why would anyone get up in the morning to go and do a dangerous or unpleasant job if they were entitled to exactly the same share of resources if they just stayed at home and did nothing?

The only way an absolutist equality system could possibly work is if labour was made mandatory (for those that are able), because without labour, society would cease to function. But how would it even be possible to force people to work in a system which explicitly prohibits financial coercion?

Absolute equality is the same kind of nonsensical and unworkable absolutist gibberish as the extreme-right view that deregulated markets are perfectly efficient, which is the reason that I choose to believe in a form of socialism that provides for people's fundamental needs, eradicates poverty and removes barriers to opportunities through education and access to finance, but which takes into account the value of the social contribution of the individuals and provides the individual with the liberty to acquire non-essential resources, which therefore creates the incentives to work and to contribute to society.

I believe that the absolute equality position is an absurd caricature of what socialism means. It is such an absurdly unrealistic stance that you're actually undermining the meaning of socialism if you believe in such nonsense and proclaim yourself a socialist. You're not a socialist, you're not even a Marxist (Karl Marx believed that incentives and class hierarchies would still exist within the socialist society) you're an absolutist egalitarian.

Absolutism vs compromise

Returning to the subject of "the pedantic left", it's fair to say that the market socialist (who has a somewhat similar definition of socialism to my own) and the absolutist egalitarian have something in common. They are both strongly opposed to the crony capitalist cultural hegemony and the discredited neoliberal pseudo-scientific economic models that are used to to justify the rent-seeking behavior and outright corruption of the wealthy establishment.

Surely it makes sense for the opponents of crony capitalism to put their differences aside and agree that the most important thing in the immediacy is to come together in solidarity to oppose the cultural hegemony of the establishment?

If you believe in the absolute equality definition of socialism, surely it is better to compromise with market socialists (and other left-wing factions), because a market socialism system is far, far closer to your absolute equality ideal than the vast and rapidly growing inequalities of the current neoliberal socio-economic paradigm.

The problem is that many on the left fail to see it this way, and refuse to co-operate with anyone else on the left who has strayed from their interpretation of "true socialism". One of the most visible examples of this is that way that several members of the new left wing group Left Unity have expended their energies attacking and undermining the Green Party, rather than concentrating on the development of a coherent set of left-wing policies and a powerful social justice narrative to promote their own party.

Instead as attacking the Green Party as "not left-wing enough", it would surely make more sense for Left Unity to examine what the Green Party have done right in order to break into the closed shop of orthodox neoliberal establishment politics that is Westminster, and to identify areas of agreement in which the two parties can co-operate.

If the left spends it's time and energy bickering and infighting, they simply allow the crony capitalist establishment to continue strengthening and reinforcing their cultural hegemony.

Leftist solidarity

There are many examples of diverse leftist groups coming together in solidarity to form powerful political organisations, I'll give a couple of brief examples.

Labour
The Labour party in the UK was born of co-operation between numerous trade unions and leftist political groups. Although Labour was never perfect, and has now been usurped by adherents of orthodox neoliberalism, it did achieve a number of important things that the vast majority of left-wing people can appreciate, including the establishment of the National Health Service, the massive improvements to the social safety net, legal aid, the post-war improvements in housing, and the establishment of the economic conditions that led to the unprecedented general prosperity and social mobility of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which have subsequently been eroded away by over three decades of neoliberal pseudo-economics.

Syriza
The Greek political party Syriza (the coalition of the radical left) was formed as a coalition of various leftist groups in 2004. The groups that make it up include Social Democrats, Marxists, Trotskyites and the Green Left. In the wake of the Greek economic crisis and the economically destructive bailout conditions imposed by the IMF, the European Central Bank and the EU, they have risen to become the second most popular party in Greece and the main opposition in the Greek parliament. Since the last election in 2012 their popularity has improved again, meaning that if (when) the current coalition government fails, they will almost certainly form the next Greek government. Although they are extremely unlikely to impose a full-blownTrotskyite revolution, the Trotskyite faction must recognise that being part of a broad left-wing coalition is preferable to being a tiny minority party with no elected representatives at all.

The problem with co-operation is that when the views of several leftist organisations are aggregated, the result is not entirely pleasing to all of the participants. However, the result is usually a great deal better than a divided left bickering amongst themselves and allowing the right to maintain absolute control over society and the economy.

Conclusion

The self-defeating divisiveness of the left is deeply problematic but it is also amusing. The idea of representatives of a group called Left Unity expending their time and effort in attacking and undermining other left-wing groups is a laughable display of unintentional irony. Probably the most amusing parody of the factionalisation of the left is the famous Monty Pythons' Judaen People's Front scene from the Life of Brian, where they openly admit that the only people they hate more than their Roman oppressors are the various other anti-imperialist factions.

The only way that the left is ever going to be able to effectively fight back against the cultural hegemony of the neoliberal right, and begin reversing the trend towards ever greater inequality, is if we put our own differences aside and show some solidarity against the greater enemy.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that if you are unwilling to tolerate any left-wing views that are not almost identical to your own, then you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

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A purely hypothetical conversation

Political leader:  We're going to need your help on this ...The plebs are just not buying into our plans to censor the Internet.

Dodgy PR strategist:  What do you mean?

Political leader:  They keep signing online petitions and writing whiny liberal blog posts every time we try to set up our firewall.

Dodgy PR strategist: [laughing] so you're saying you can't make the Internet less free because the Internet is too free, and you want me to come up with a solution for you?


Political leader: [laughing self consciously, in the manner of someone too stupid to know whether they've just been insulted or not] yes I suppose so ...

Dodgy PR strategist: Well what's your pitch?

Political leader: Pitch?

Dodgy PR strategist: [exasperated sigh] Oh, come on, didn't you used to work in PR?

Political leader: Yes, but maybe you colonials use different words?

Dodgy PR strategist: [scowls at having to listen to such a brazen bullshit excuse] Sales pitch, line, propaganda message ...

Political leader:  Errrrm ...

Dodgy PR strategist: Don't tell me you've just been telling them that you're going to censor the internet?

Political leader: Well ...

Dodgy PR strategist: That's what you've been doing isn't it?


Political leader: Well, pretty much yes. We said we need to censor it because of terrorism.

Dodgy PR strategist: No wonder they're not buying it! The terrorism card was only ever going to last a decade or so. You can't just use exactly the same propaganda techniques as your discredited predecessors!

Political leader: But it worked for him, look at all the wars he got to start and all the elections he won and all of his corporate kickbacks [voice whining with envy by the end].

Dodgy PR strategist: It worked for him, but it won't work for you... Times change, you've got to change with them.

Political leader: Who can we blame then? The trade unions?

Dodgy PR strategist: What have the trade unions got to do with the Internet?


Political leader: Well ... I don't know, I was just trying out ideas.

Dodgy PR strategist: Well don't! ... I'm trying to think.


Political leader: [begins tapping fingers tunelessly on arm of chair]

Dodgy PR strategist: [scowls]

Political leader: [stops tapping fingers]

Dodgy PR strategist: Perhaps you could use some kind of wedge strategy?


Political leader: [look of podgy faced childish petulance] Oooh, not wedge strategies again. They divide us as much as the opposition ... Don't you remember the EU referendum and gay marriage? The opposition are basically the same as us now, if you divide them you divide us too.

Dodgy PR strategist: [look of astonishment at unexpected display of political insight] You might be right! ... It's not the opposition we need to divide it's the public.


Political leader: But how do we divide the public on censorship? The polls say that apart from the our reactionary core vote, the public hate it.

Dodgy PR strategist: You need a moral Trojan horse.


Political leader: [confused look]

Dodgy PR strategist: Your trying to sell them something immoral right?

Political leader: I wouldn't say immoral.

Dodgy PR strategist: You wouldn't say that censorship is immoral?

Political leader: Well, not in as many words.

Dodgy PR strategist: [stares]

Political leader: Well, these leftie liberal anarchists want to bring down the state. They've got too much freedom to spread their insidious Trotskyite rhetoric. We need to safeguard society. We need to let the corporate media re-establish control ... If you think about it - to not silence these dangerous revolutionaries would be the immoral thing to do!

Dodgy PR strategist: OK, so you've developed a morality narrative to justify it to yourself, but how about the public? Do you think you'll ever convince them that censorship is the moral thing to do?

Political leader: Well... we could work on it ... If we repeat it often enough, surely that would work ... Look at the way we endlessly blamed the economic crisis on the opposition, the public lapped that one up.

Dodgy PR strategist: Look. The trick isn't to convince them that the thing they hate is actually morally virtuous, that could take years of repetition and you'll still have a huge battle with the opposition and leave yourself open to attack. You need to trick them into accepting it.

Political leader:  How?

Dodgy PR strategist: With a moral Trojan horse strategy.

Political leader: [exasperated look at being confronted with something he doesn't understand for a second time]

Dodgy PR strategist: You know what a moral panic is?

Political leader:  Oh yes, my neighbour is an expert at creating moral panics. She did a brilliant one on paedophiles once when she was a newspaper editor. It was so funny [chuckling], the reactionary plebs even burned down a paediatric practice!  

Dodgy PR strategist: That's actually a good idea!

Political leader: What, burning down a paediatric practice?

Dodgy PR strategist: No - a paedophilia moral panic.

Political leader: Why?

Dodgy PR strategist: Because you can use the moral Trojan horse

Political leader: [confused look]

Dodgy PR strategist: Look, you're trying to sell them something immoral that they hate, so you create a moral panic and offer them the thing they hate as a wonderful gift to resolve the moral panic.

Political leader: [still looking confused]

Dodgy PR strategist: You whip up a load of hysteria about child pornography, then you announce the roll-out of a nationwide child-porn filter for the Internet.

Political leader: But I don't want to censor child-porn, I want to censor lefties and bloody liberal whingers.

Dodgy PR strategist: [another look of exasperation] Look. This way you can make them accept state censorship. You roll out the child-porn blocker and anyone who opposes it can be smeared as a paedophile.

Political leader: That's genius!

Dodgy PR strategist:  [smug look] That's what you pay me for!

Political leader: [expression of doubt, turning to agitation] But, what about the bloody lefties?

Dodgy PR strategist: Wait, I've got a better idea. 

Political leader: What?

Dodgy PR strategist: Don't just use the firewall to block child pornography, use it to block all pornography.

Political leader:  I don't like the sound of that! People like pornography, that would be unpopular. We'd lose votes over it.

Dodgy PR strategist: You just need to get your narrative right. Tell them it's about protecting children. Tell them that the wonderful innocence of youth mustn't be despoiled. Tell them that children shouldn't be exposed to vile pornography.

Political leader: What, like rape porn?

Dodgy PR strategist: Exactly. Make out that the censorship programme is an effort to protect children, and then add rape porn and paedophilia into the mix.

Political leader: So that ...[waits expectantly]

Dodgy PR strategist: So that you can roll out your firewall and taint anyone who tries to oppose it as a rape porn apologist ... But don't call it a firewall or censorship or anything like that. Call it a porn blocker or a child protection measure.

Political leader: But I don't want to protect children, I want to silence political dissent. Look what happened in Egypt and Hungary. Look what is happening in Turkey right now. We mustn't allow that to happen here.

Dodgy PR strategist: You're missing the point.

Political leader: What point?

Dodgy PR strategist: That when you launch the pornography blocker, you're setting the precident that the government can automatically block citizen from accessing perfectly legal material. Plus by installing Internet filters you're putting the censorship infrastructure in place. Once it's all rolled out, you can easily change the parameters to block whatever you like.

Political leader: That's good, but I still don't want to block pornography, do you know how popular pornography is on the Internet?


Dodgy PR strategist: OK, then give them a loaded choice.

Political leader:  What do you mean?

Dodgy PR strategist: Tell the public that the porn blocker will be optional, but that if they want pornography they'll have to opt out.
 
Political leader: But won't loads of people opt out?

Dodgy PR strategist: Not if you load the choice properly.
 
Political leader:  What do you mean?

Dodgy PR strategist: You make opting out, or opposing the scheme look like a very bad choice.
 
Political leader: How?

Dodgy PR strategist:  Well, like I said, you can stop people from opposing the scheme by talking a lot about rape porn, paedophila, violence against women and the sexualisation of childhood, then anyone who opposes the scheme will be tainted by association. You oppose those things, then if the opposition oppose your censorship proposal, the average Joe will assume that they are opposing your censorship proposal because they approve of the nasty things you oppose.

Political leader: But what about people opting out?

Dodgy PR strategist: I was just getting to that... You need to make opting out look like a really bad option too.

Political leader: But how?

Dodgy PR strategist: Let me think, [mumbling under breath] pornography, pornography, pornography ...
  
Political leader: Can't we just make it a child-porn firewall? 

Dodgy PR strategist: You could, but my idea is better.

Political leader: Why?

Dodgy PR strategist: Because you're setting the precedent that the government can automatically block lawful material, which will come in very handy when it comes to blocking the leftie websites and protest groups that you're scared of. 

Political leader: I suppose so, but I still don't want to take people's porn away. They won't like that one bit.

Dodgy PR strategist: But you're not taking it away, you're giving them a loaded choice.

Political leader: Yes, but they'll opt out.

Dodgy PR strategist: Look, most people won't opt out. Women and people with kids won't opt out. You just need to figure out a way of deterring men from opting out.

Political leader: But how? 

Dodgy PR strategist: Lets think this through, what's bad about looking at pornography?

Political leader: I don't know?

Dodgy PR strategist: Have you ever had a bad experience with pornography?

Political leader: Not really.

Dodgy PR strategist: No me neither.

Political leader: Well there was that time my mother caught me with a copy of Mayfair. That was embarrassing!

Dodgy PR strategist: That's it!


Political leader: What is?

Dodgy PR strategist: Shame!

Political leader: What about it?


Dodgy PR strategist: People are ashamed when they're caught watching pornography. 

Political leader: And why is that important?

Dodgy PR strategist: Porn habits are usually personal things, people don't want everyone to know what they've been masturbating to.


Political leader: I suppose not, but how is that going to stop people from opting out of the firewall?

Dodgy PR strategist: You could make it absolutely clear that anyone who opts out of the firewall goes on a government database of pornography users. 

Political leader: Why?

Dodgy PR strategist: Because nobody would want to openly admit to the government that they use pornography.

Political leader: That's brilliant!

Dodgy PR strategist: No worries.

Political leader: What do you call this strategy again?

Dodgy PR strategist: The moral Trojan Horse.

Political leader: Thanks! We'll get working on a fueling a pornography moral panic. I know a few newspaper proprietors that will lend a hand, as long as I totally cripple the proposed press regulation measures for them.

Dodgy PR strategist: Yes, it's always a good idea to keep the press onside.

Political leader: I'll get our technical guys working on the firewall straight away. I wonder if the tech giants do a standard firewall package we could use?

Dodgy PR strategist: Of course they do! Where do you think China get their firewall technology from?

Political leader: Oh yes! This should be easy then.

Dodgy PR strategist: Yes, it should work out quite well, as long as you remember never to refer to it as censorship or as a firewall.

Political leader:  Fine. So "pornography filter" it is then...

Dodgy PR strategist: And don't forget to fortify the moral high ground by banging on about paedophilia and rape porn.

[Dodgy PR strategist's mobile phone rings]

Dodgy PR strategist: [exiting room] OK ... OK ... OK ... I think I should be able to get him to ditch that legislation for you ...

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