Capitalism can’t support Socialist Welfare State

“The idea that a capitalist economy can support a socialist welfare state is collapsing before our eyes.”

I agree very much with Janet Daley’s analysis in today’s Telegraph (LINK), but it doesn’t go deep enough.

Socialist ideals (notwithstanding their opportunistic exploitation by socialist politicians and welfare scroungers) are based ultimately on the state’s claim to representing our NATION, which as an extension of our original TRIBE, has an obligation of care towards all its members.

When Britain’s welfare state was founded in the aftermath of WW2, there was a strong sense of national identity and a huge amount of social solidarity to base it on. Apart from a few rouge individuals, my parents’ generation wouldn’t have dreamed of exploiting it inappropriately, as in the meantime millions – in fact, the vast majority – have become accustomed to doing.

The question is, why is the welfare state now seen as something to be exploited, rather than used responsibly? It’s because the sense of national identity (except in sport and war) and of social solidarity, on which it was originally based, are long gone, although we –especially our politicians – are obliged to maintain the pretence.

Why, notwithstanding that many still cling to its symbols and as an abstraction, did we lose our sense of national identity and social solidarity?

The madness of mass immigration (into our already, natively and unsustainably, overpopulated country) and multi-ethnic society is partly to blame, but there is a much older and more fundamental reason than this, which is the example set by society’s wealthy and ruling elites, who have always considered it their God given right to

exploit the rest of society to their own advantage. What the welfare state did, was give those at the other end of the social hierarchy the opportunity to do the same, not in the same style as those at the top, but nevertheless.

We need to stop going round in circles (in fact a rapidly descending spiral) blaming each other (the Left the Right, and the Right the Left) and develop a much deeper understanding of our situation, which is essentially, believe it or not (and it’s high time that we did!), DARWINIAN.

Human nature is a product of Darwinian evolution and adapted to an environment which existed long before any kind, let alone modern industrial, civilization arose. We can’t help but see “society” as an environment to be exploited to our own advantage (i.e. that of our own little tribe or family). And this, in fact, is what the STATE (and the economy) developed over the centuries to facilitate (while posing as our TRIBE or NATION), to the advantage, of course, of those in a position to shape the power structures of its institutions. Initially, these were just members of the aristocracy and clergy, but over the centuries others (bankers, merchants, industrialists, and numerous professions) got in on the act (of exploitation), creating favourable niches for themselves. Until, with advent of universal suffrage, even the poor and disadvantage were able to exert influence as the clients of politicians in need of their votes.

An Ideal (socialist) Society

In an ideal socialist society we would treat each other like “royalty” (L. Rex = king, which has the same root as “kin“).

There is nothing wrong, it seems to me, with “socialist” ideas or ideals, which are a necessary and healthy response to (consumer) capitalism which treats people not as “kin” or even as human beings, but primarily as a “human resource” and market.

The problems arise – which have given socialism such a bad name – when the STATE, i.e. politicians, attempt to implement socialist ideas in a population they see as “clients” (a “market“, to be served for personal advantage and profit) rather than as kin (to be served forkinsake). It’s a view greatly facilitated by the creation of a multi-ethnic society . . .

On right-wing websites the words “socialist” and “socialism” are mainly used as terms of abuse, dismissal or belittlement, much as the words “capitalist” and “capitalism” are on left-wing sites.

Having evolved, long before the advent of civilisation, as a tribal animal, our brains are obviously hard-wired to see things in terms of “them and us” (my tribe and other tribes!). We often speak of “tribal behaviour” in respect to politics, but again, only to disparage it; never, that I’ve noticed, in a serious, non-judgemental, attempt to understand it.

You’d think that academics – evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and psychologists – would attempt to understand human society in the light of man’s deeply tribal nature, but they don’t, prevented, it seems, by the same taboos which cause politicians and the rest of us to trivialise or demonise it (especially as “racism“).

Human Beings or Resources?

What state and capital want is not human beings, but “human resources” and/or consumers, only they have to deceive us into believing otherwise.

Just as we domesticated certain animals, so too, and for the same general purpose of exploitation, we also domesticated ourselves, with state and capital training us to serve its purposes as a “human resource” (initially to work the fields and fight battles, then as canon and factory fodder, etc.), and more recently also as a “market”.

This sounds ridiculous, I know, which is partly why we have thus far failed to recognise the truth of it. There is much more to individual lives and human society, of course, but this describes the overall situation pretty well, and offers an explanation for most of our problems, some of which are existential and will put an end to us, unless we come up with solutions.

The German and Japanese states made particularly good jobs of training their “human resources”, which is why their economies have done so well (and why they made such good soldiers). The Chinese state seems to be making a pretty good job of it as well.

Our political, business and media elites look to German economic prowess and growth with envy and want us to emulate them, because they translate into more MONEY and POWER, the pursuit and exercise of which is what our natural Darwinian drive for survival, advantage and reproductive success has been perverted and reduced to, in the artificial environment of human civilisation.

What we need to do, if we want our civilisation to survive, is retrain OURSELVES as HUMAN BEINGS. It’s no good expecting the state or capital to do it for us. Or the church, which, in the service of state and capital, trained us to be good SHEEP.

Income Differentials: A Darwinian Perspective

This was written in response to a recent article about the “relatively” high salaries paid to BBC executives.

The BBC justified the salaries with the standard argument that it has to compete for “talent” with the private sector

Even so, the ca. £140,000 per annum involved seems pretty paltry compared with the millions that some bankers, CEOs, film stars, and others make.

Here a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, view of the situation:

Evolution adapted us (emotionally and behaviourally) to the “natural environment”, as it existed (on the African savannah, or wherever) long before the advent of civilisation, which represents an “artificial environment” where the intra-tribal and extra-tribal environments that once comprised our natural environment are conflated and confounded.

Thus, what we call “society” represents both our TRIBE (which, in the interests of our collective survival, as a tribe, evolution intended us, to put before our individual self-interests) and the extra-tribal environment, which included other – friendly, rival, enemy or simply unknown – tribes, and which evolution did not hard-wire us to put before ourselves, but on the contrary, to put ourselves and our own tribe first.

Economically, our own tribe has been reduced to just ourselves and immediate family, with the rest of “society” serving as an extra-tribal environment, to be exploited to one's own (family's) advantage. Originally, it was just the aristocracy and clergy (as substitute tribes) which cooperated, through the power structures of the state (which they created), in exploiting the rest of society, but over time other self-interest groups (acting as substitute tribes), especially certain professions, managed to secure advantages for themselves and their members (laid down in the legal power structures of state and economy) in exploiting their extra-tribal, i.e. social, environment.

What this view reveals is the perverted Darwinian nature of our situation and civilisation, which represents an evolutionary cul-de-sac. Unless we can find a way out of it, the relentless self-exploitation of both our natural and human environments will inevitably lead to our self-destruction.

Margaret Thatcher was right about Society

“There is no such thing as society, [just] individual men and women, and families . . “, she is reported to have said.

This is pretty much the basis on which western civilisation is organised. And that’s the PROBLEM, because we evolved to survive and “succeed”, not as individuals or single families, but as part of a larger society, i.e. tribe or nation.

What is referred to as “society”, notwithstanding its vital social importance, is in fact far more an “artificial human environment” (of niches, resources and markets), the self-exploitation of which, state and economy developed over the centuries to facilitate, mainly, but not exclusively, to the advantage of power, wealth and privilege (including academics, favoured professions, and everyone who is anyone in the media, politics, the church and business).

State and economy do serve us, of course, and we are all completely dependent on them, which deludes us into seeing this as their primary purpose, but in fact only as a shepherd serves his flock, which is not primarily for the flock’s sake (notwithstanding any genuine concern for a lost or injured lamb), but for his own and/or his employer’s sake, for the meat and wool the flock provides and can be exchanged at market for MONEY.

This is the core of my human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, approach to understanding human “society” and its ills, which I’m still developing on this and other blogs, and could do with some academic help in expanding upon.

Social mobility = Survival of (advantage to) the Fittest

In response to the article, “A government in line with public opinion” in the comments section today’s Telegraph:

The welfare state was created in the aftermath of a 6-year struggle against Nazi tyranny which had united people as never before, giving them a powerful sense of shared identity, destiny and solidarity. No longer just a State, run by privileged elites for their own advantage, but with a genuine sense of being a Nation and a People.

My parents, who experienced the whole war (my father as a Royal Marine) would never have dreamed of “exploiting” the welfare state, but remained dedicated to “doing their bit”, “playing their part”, not just for themselves and their own family, but also for the country as a whole. To have been on “benefits”, for whatever reason, would have made them deeply ashamed. My father would drag himself off to work no matter how ill he might feel. They had the attitude one would expect from people who feel that they belong to a Tribe, a Nation, a People, a continuation of the solidarity they had felt with their fellow Britons during the war.

During the 70s, however, my parent’s, especially my father’s, attitude started to change, as wave after wave of Commonwealth immigrants poured into the country he had fought to protect against Nazi invasion. As my parent’s became an ethnic minority in their own street, they realised that the British State had betrayed them.

Their work, sacrifices, sense of nationhood and solidarity had been misconceived, misplaced and in vain. Having helped to save their country from the Nazis, their leaders had opened it up to mass immigration of people we didn’t even have a shared – racial, cultural and historical – European identity with. And anyone who protested – as my father did, to his union and local labour party representative – was told they were being “racist”. – just as Mrs Duffy was, more than 30 years later, not by a local activist, but by the Labour Prime Minister himself. Betrayed, over two generations, from top to bottom.

So it is no wonder that people have turned away from the left and its ideals of social solidarity, towards the right and its more individualistic ideals (of every man for himself); especially since it was the left, with its anti-white/anti-nationalist ideal of a colourblind, globalised (Americanised,) “post-racial”, i.e. post-European, society, which provided the ideological motivation for mass immigration and creation of a multi-ethnic society, alongside and far more important than the economic motivation, i.e. the needs of state and capital for cheap foreign labour.

“Social mobility” is just a rationalised form of “survival of (advantage to) the fittest”, reflecting society’s perverted Darwinian nature, which we are in complete, official and unofficial, denial of.