Peter Franklin: Hypercapitalism or hi-tech conservatism?

So, a largely predictable reaction to last week’s competitiveness report from John Redwood. Not having read the thing myself, I’ve no idea whether this really was, as widely billed, Redwood’s blueprint for a hypercapitalist Britain – all motorways and no regulation. Thus I won’t be dissing his utopia just yet.

However, if one picks through the output of our leading freemarket think tanks, the heady scent of hypercapitalism soon becomes apparent. Alongside a car-fixated view of transport policy and the traditional bonfire of red-tape and bureaucracy, other key elements include dramatically reduced taxation, the relaxation of planning constraints and an all-pervading eco-scepticism. Optional ingredients include immigration limited only by employer demand, the privatisation of public services and a heartfelt devotion to nuclear power.

Needless to say, this vision of the future has its opponents – and not just on the Left. Conservatives, big ‘c’ and small, are well represented in the ranks of our conservation movements. The uniform of the planning protester is as much twinset-and-pearls as nose-ring-and-dreadlocks: crusty conservatives and crusties standing shoulder-to-shoulder against the developers.

As befits true conservatism, this is nothing new. Anti-capitalist sentiment was a feature of the Young England movement, which counted Disraeli as a leading member. Disraeli’s novels, most notably Sybil, contained horrifying descriptions of conditions in the growing industrial cities of the North. Arguably, it was the Liberal Party that was the more committed representative of Victorian capitalism, with Conservatives reluctant to let go of the agrarian past. In culture too there was a conservative reaction to industrialisation. Pugin, Ruskin, Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites looked back to the Middle Ages for inspiration. Of course, some of these regarded themselves as radicals, even socialists, but theirs was a strangely conservative kind of radicalism, holding up the craft guilds of Medieval Europe as an idealised model for the trade unions.

Though the power of modernity was to triumph in both politics and culture, a yearning for the past and a disdain for development has survived into the 20th Century and beyond. One of the most popular examples is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which contrasts the simple peasant goodness of the Shire with the industrial might of Mordor. In a key turning point of the story, the treacherous wizard Saruman embarks upon a programme of crash industrialisation, transforming the countryside around his stronghold into a hellish landscape of mines and foundries. In the film adaptation, this scene is vividly depicted, trees toppled whole into vast furnaces dug into the ground. I dare say a modern day Saruman would build nuclear power stations instead of subterranean tree furnaces; nevertheless the forests would still be doomed – falling before his motorway construction programme (Isengard to Barad-dur in under two hours!). 

But now I’m being naughty. I’m using a work of fantasy to set up a false dichotomy between development and the common good. In the real world, industrialisation has had its drawbacks, some of them severe, but it has brought about levels of prosperity that our agrarian forebears could not have imagined. It is easy, therefore, to portray conservative conservationists as romantics at best and selfish nimbies at worst. Yet, this is to set up another false dichotomy – one between conservation and economic growth. New technology is providing us with cleaner, greener substitutes for the polluting developments of the past. For instance, electronic communication provides alternatives to physical travel, while new building methods are producing houses so energy efficient that they don’t need to be heated. Of course, all this requires investment – but then so do less sustainable technologies as they wear out or hit capacity limits. Moreover, this isn’t just about material infrastructure: our social infrastructure is wearing out too – with economic consequences. For instance, across much of the country, employers face labour shortages. But again, there are alternatives to hypercapitalist solutions. For instance, should we import workers from abroad or should we resource innovative social enterprises to re-train and re-motivate the millions of working-age Britons currently parked on welfare?

Thus across the board we have a choice – whether to invest in hypercapitalism or in the alternative, what one might call hi-tech conservatism. But is this a further false dichotomy? After all, why can’t we have new motorways and ultra-fast broadband? Building on the greenbelt and new eco-towns? Well, to a limited extent we can – the limits being set by the finite amount of public and private capital available for investment. Thus we can go for hypercapitalism, hi-tech conservatism or some sort of compromise between the two.

Many will argue that the market should be left to find a natural balance. After all, what business is it of mere politicians to make the necessary decisions? Actually, I don’t think we can avoid a conscious choice at the political level even if we wanted to. For a start, the hypercapitalist options generate external costs – environmental and social – that have to be paid for somewhere down the line, often with the involvement of Government. More fundamentally, all options – hypercapitalist or otherwise – take place within a policy framework which can never be neutral. For instance, though the electricity industry is largely in the private sector, a policy framework of regulation, subsidy and basic assumptions is strongly biased towards a top-down, centralised model of transmission and distribution dominated by the major generating and infrastructure companies; the same framework frustrates efforts to set up localised electricity networks. It is politicians that will decide whether to reform this system, keep it as it is or send it even further in the wrong direction. Whichever option they choose implies a vision for the future they want for our country. Similar choices must and will be made wherever public policy influences investment in Britain’s material and social infrastructure.

In the end, the dream of hypercapitalism – in the sense of a genuinely laissez-faire economy – is just that, a dream. More realistic, however, is the emergence of ‘state hypercapitalism’ – an economy where development trumps conservation and corporate interests dominate by competing for favours from the biggest player of all: the Government. I don’t know of any Conservative who dreams of such a future, but I know a man who does and his name is Gordon Brown.

Comments

[Graeme Archer]

What an excellent, excellent article.

Do you have an opinion on a more micro-level forging of this dichotomy, Peter? I get very worked up about rubbish councils being allowed to destroy community high streets. I would be hard pushed to explain exactly why I am nearly always on the side of the shopkeeper over the (avowedly free market) council planning department, in preferring to have the Georgia coffee shop rather than Starbucks, or the Bouche deli rather than a Tesco metro - but I know that I am, quiveringly so, in my deepest bones. I like to dress this up as being on the side of the little platoons - some sort of spurious post hoc theorising I fear, however. (I do know it's got nothing to do with the Lord of the Rings!). I would happily have joined the Heathrow protest as well. It's about the powerlessness that people feel at the hands of the state bureaucracy I think. How nice to think that Disraeli would have approved!

[Stephen B]

Hmmm...seems about the right moment to recommend Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crunchy-Cons-Conservative-Counterculture-Return/dp/1400050650/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/203-1089460-2432755?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187775659&sr=8-1)book and articles (http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher071202.asp).

Although written from a US perspective with a heavier emphasis on the religious, I think the message may strike a chord with many UK conservatives (and infuriate others) it argues that conservatives have values in common with crusties and people protesting against the effect of big businesses on their neighbourhoods (among other things)

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

This piece is a wonderful example of what is wrong with modern Conservative thought. Redwood gives you a way out of the malaise that is concensus fluffy headed rightish socialism and you baulk at it.

[Andrew Lilico]

Peter sets up a curious dichotomy - as if the only alternatives were to be of what he seems to think is the "Right", apparently some sort of anarcho-libertarian, government-free, privatize-the-army, get-drunk-in-the-Union-bar-whilst-singing-"Haaaang, Nelson Mandela" brand of student lunacy; or central-planning-the-green-Conservative-way, with noble environmentally-oriented government deciding which are the technologies of the future, whilst the rest of us accept that "growth cannot continue for ever" and all agree to live within ten minutes walk (or a short bike ride) of our place of work and never drive our cars for fun (unless they are solar-powered).

I don't accept that matters reduce to just these options. Furthermore, I believe that it is a considerable error to attack advocates of market-only solutions. Even if we consider their laissez-faire visions unconvincing or unlikely to be optimal (as I often do), they nonetheless remind us of an important truth: the Market provides solutions to virtually all of these problems, and solutions that often work well, so if we are to propose schemes of government intervention to improve on or complement the Market's outcome (which I agree will often be potentially useful) we should do so humbly - understanding that we will be trying to improve on solutions that are already likely to be good, so our own state-directed efforts have a high hurdle to overcome if they are to be justified. An approach of denigrating the priests of the Market will only lead us into the error of believing that Market outcomes are so bad that any old thing that the State does is bound to be an improvement, with the consequence that State solutions will be lax, inefficient, and often make things worse rather than better.

[Paul Marks]

Government spending is over 40% of G.D.P. and the rest of the economy is tied up in a vast web of regualtions (more than 80% of the new ones E.U. inspired - but that means that some are still H.M.G.s idea).

And Mr Franklin is talking about "hyper captialism" and laissez faire.

As for the Lord of the Rings, both the Dark Lord and the White Hand beleived in state control (the opposite of laissez faire).

On Lord John Manners and Young England - yess Dizzy was on the fringe of this movement (to say he was a "leading member" is overegging things) - but that it is a bit unfair to the rest of them. They were not all like this statist old fraud (Dizzy was totally dishonest, about everything, and to treat him as if he was a serious political thinker is absurd).

If you do not want industry do not have it - and I agree that air and water contamination is a tort (as the person shoving in the filth is harming someone elses air and waters supply).

On atomic power:

Doubtless Mr Franklin is also a believer in man made globel warming.

Sir you really are having it both ways - no to C02 and no to atomic power to.

Lastly John Redwood's suggestion.

Someone makes small suggestions for the reduction of tax and regulations - and Mr Franklin (no apology for making the same point) starts talking about "hyper capitalism".

God help the Conservative party (of which I have been an active member for decades) if this is the state of it.

[Yet Another Anon]

the traditional bonfire of red-tape and bureaucracy
Unfortunately every time either a Labour or Conservative minister gets rid of a dozen regulations they quickly add a few thousand more on top of those.

Why couldn't Michael Hestletine just say he wasn't going to accept any of the regulations dti bureacrats were proposing until he had examined every single one and only approved those considered vital.

Maybe it's time to scrap BERR leaving just a Department for Science & Technology with no interest in regulating the private sector?

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

Having re-read this piece I was wondering about the reference to laissez-faire economics in regards to Lord of the Rings. I think it was a lame attempt to equate laissez-faire with evil. A bit sad really.

[Yet Another Anon]

I think it was a lame attempt to equate laissez-faire with evil.
Aside from the fact that The Lord of the Rings is fiction and so suggesting that it could be used as a method of economic evaluation is no more reasonable than suggesting that Superman or The Mysterons could be; in fact Saruman was seeking to seize power and either work with Sauron or replace him - they desired to become the state and have total control over economic and social affairs, on the other hand Rohan, Lorien and Rivendell very much had forms of War Socialism, the Hobbits seemed to operate with a some kind of anarchist system without any kind of police, military or authorities at all - only an Oxford academic could imagine that a system with no kind of authority could function without disintegrating into riots, in fact the Hobbits then have to organise themselves to deal with Saruman and before this they have been being protected by the Rangers who lament at being taken for granted by a bunch of naive anarchists.

Gondor very much is a mixed economy so far as I can make out.

[Yet Another Anon]

>>>>As for the Lord of the Rings, both the Dark Lord and the White Hand beleived in state control (the opposite of laissez faire)<<<<
I don't recall Gandalf concerning himself much with economic policy, laissez faire doesn't mean stripping the defences to the bone - that is anarcho-capitalism or hardline neo-liberal thinking.

[AlexW]

Any right-thinking hobbit would agree with Mr Franklin. Clearly, in order to avoid a repeat of the hideous War of the Ring, central government need to institute a register of magical ring bearers, introduce racial profiling for orcs in stop-and-search, and security check all wizards for megalomaniacal tendencies. Oh no, wait, that's fantasy - and this article is a load of hokum.

The central problem with this article is that it crassly conflates a range of diverse issues under the perjorative banner of "hypercapitalism". Instead of seriously analysing, for example, the usefulness of nuclear power, it yokes it to a label which is ex hypothesi bad. It simply places every solution to a social or economic problem into a handy box by which we can determine whether it's good or allied to the forces of Mordor.

A truly bad article.

[William Norton]

This misses the really important question: Is Hogwarts a grammar school?

"Hi-tech conservatism" is too clunky a name - suggest "Cybertoryism" instead.