Vote Clegg get Cameron? I think quite a few voters are going to experiance buyer’s remorse

Interestingly, Dom, none of the people who complained most loudly about “thirty years of misplaced socialist economics” shared in the pain of Thatcher’s “cure”.

Firstly that is not true Mark (Mark C…Mark Chadbourn…this could get confusing!). A great many unionists supported trade union reform for example, opposed Scargill’s strikes, welcomed the chance to own their own property etc. And secondly, many of those people were paying extortionate tax rates to prop up these failing industries year on year without any improvement.

Mark CN, thanks for having me. The sub-standard products I was referring to were those produced by the domestic nationalised British industries, such as British Leyland, British Airways, etc. (Did you know that Thomas Cook was once owned by the government?) So I was supporting the *domestic* economic reforms, not foreign policy. Of course Suharto is a terrible man and such deals should not be made…though it is worth pointing out all our hypocrisy on this matter, as we drive around in our Saudi oil-fuelled cars and tap away on our Chinese produced computers!

The point is that capitalism is a far more productive (indeed, in the technological creativity it unleashes it is seemingly exponentially productive) system than slavery. Karl Marx of all people recognised this fact, but he lacked the imagination to see technology evolving beyond its Victorian limits. Under slavery and under feudalism, the standard of living was practically stagnant for centuries at a time. To my parents’ generation, the idea of an indoor toilet or a colour tv – a tv at all! – is novel. These changes have not randomly appeared out of nowhere; the Marxists are right to recognise the unprecedented positive potential of market economics (*not*, may I add, laissez-faire ones). Where I part with them – and where history in the West and now in the East counters their assertions – is on the front that communism is an even higher system.

Slavery was exploitative not just in the Marxist sense, but in the wider sense too. Like feudalism, it enriched the tiny few at the expense of the unchanging many. Capitalism DOES NOT DO THIS. The increased standard of living in Britain today relative to two or three centuries ago is a direct consequence of the liberalised economy and yes, the socially aware government that played some part in spreading the wealth that that economy produced. The similar success story in China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, India, and countless others – all of course at various stages along the same path that we took first – is testament to this too.

I’m no libertarian believe me, but before Thatcher, this country had swung far too far the other way. I would love for Thatcherism to have never been necessary, but the fact is it was, and this country is in a better state because of it, notwithstanding the pockets of alienation and poverty that remain from the broken communites of that era. I do not deny the immense pain that many, including some in my own family, felt, but the blame for that does not lie with Thatcher: the blame lies with thirty years of dogma that held that an entire community can depend on one source of employment forever, and that the government can and should step in to pump money into the economic corpse of that community long after it has died.

[And absolutely, I'm a great fan of Villjamur, just not the Soviet Union ]

I actually agree with the spirit of what you are saying; I advocate a mixed economy, state regulation, economic competition, etc. I’m pretty satisifed (with some exceptions…banks anyone?) with where we are now. But where we are now is not where we were thirty, forty, fifty years ago. Then, we were riding high on the post-war socialist-cum-Keynesian experiment, in an explosion of activity that was colourful and exciting for a while, but soon gave way to disaster and decay. Thatcher rose to power at a time when the post war consensus had reached breaking point, when rubbish piled up in the streets, the dead went unburied, and striking ambulance drivers had to be replaced with the military. Thatcher the woman was one particularly staunch figure, but Thatcherism the idea was inevitable *because it was right*. The Thatcher era actually began before Thatcher herself, when James Callaghan admitted that Keynesian socialism was untenable (“We cannot go on…” etc) On the domestic front, the broad number of Thatcher reforms were utterly and unfortunately correct.

But on the international front I of course agree with you, I’d advocate a much tougher relationship with the autocracies we presently trade with. That said, I think you’re confusing two issues – Thatcher’s domestic reforms, privatisation, trade union legislation, etc on the one hand, and international trade on the other.

I look very much forward to it! Is that book two, or book three?

Why do you think it was wrong? Do you think there were serious economic problems facing the UK prior to Thatcher? And if so, what should have been done instead?

Of course there is a connection but it is quite possible to pursue economic liberalisation of the domestic economy without opening up to foreign monstrous regimes. I’m defending the former, but the latter.

Sounds intriguing!

While I can’t comment authoritatively on the Britain of the past, I can say that of the present, those parts which did survive the attacks of Thatcherism and far-right maxo-capitalism, are some of the best things about this country today, I feel.

Certainly in the areas of transport and energy, privatization in hindsight was a terrible step backwards. As an American, I can only say how grateful I am that social leftovers like the NHS have not disappeared entirely. It is, even in its wounded and harried state, worlds away and far better than anything we’ve had (or sadly are likely to have) in the States.

Productivity always comes at a cost: a high cost, for the world at large and for the poorer segments of it especially. The current financial waves of instability and economic polarization are but some of the most headlined symptoms of a much larger, global malaise whose name is capitalism. It might bring you colour flat screen tvs and in door toilets, but it asks a bloody high price for it.

The affects of Reaganomics and other such contemporary policies in my own country, have left deep and damaging scars. Scars which I understand, are not limited to the nation where many of these misjudged policies were engineered and dispersed.

Sadly, I must strongly refute Dom Sharp’s claim that capitalism does not enrich the tiny few at the expense of the unchanging many. This is indeed what it does, certainly in its hyper-idealized state. My country is living proof where the gap between rich and poor has rarely been greater and socialism let alone communism, has been viewed as an evil unmatched by any other. This inequality for (almost) all is funded by the powerful black ops business model of aggressive free market capitalism. No one can even say how large this gap has become due to the fact that the highest tiers of the mega rich in the US derive a large section of their income from corporate ways and means that are untraceable and unaccountable even to the federal government.

To keep from riding too far off on a Yankee tangent, the roots for much of this today, can be firmly linked to the seeds sowed and socialist landscapes which were cleared, in the days of Thatcher and Reagan.

I doubt though, that you’d ever see the images above in the UK of today. Time passes and men and women grow only weaker as political animals. Representative voices may seem to be made more powerful linked as they are by new technology but so too grow the opponents which they contest with for control. It’s an arms race in which the other side has billions to spend and billion upon billions to lose. Throw in the apathy of a well entertainment saturated apathetic public with a short attention span and little stomach for recalling past mistakes, and it’s amazing I suppose that any vestiges of more healthy economic and political systems survive at all.

Best wishes and hopes for the coming week,

Eric