A Restorative Story

Where would capitalism be without its critics? Át least from the time of Marx capitalism has been analysed and torn to pieces, and perhaps one could conjecture that without the reactions against it it may have been more rampant in its creative destructiveness. But reading The Invisible Doctrine by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison (Penguin 2025) it seems clear that capitalism was always rampant, with little restraint. True, people in political power have occasionally called it out, from FD Roosevelt to even Ted Heath’s ‘the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism’ remark but more often in the benign phraseology of ‘a mixed economy’ or ‘the third way’ politicians bend their knee to the inevitability of capitalism’s power, a power which it is said triumphed in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
It is trendy to talk these days of ‘late capitalism,’ which is suggestive of its impending death. I would suggest this scenario is implausible, since one of capitalism’s great powers is its transformative ability. Monbiot and Hutchison place the origins of capitalism in the growth of colonialism and slavery, and follow its development through a cycle of ‘boom, bust, quit’ before re-emerging in a refreshed but recognisably similar form. It may be that the state has intervened more pro-actively in its management, e.g. U.S. anti-trust laws of the early 1900s and the Glass-Steagal Act of the 1930s placing constraints on banking activity, to the UK’s nationalisations of the 1940s. Capitalism has overcome all these challenges, most often through its grip on political power.
 
That power isn’t always channelled through dark money. Personal ambition is a key driver. Take this example:
 
'Basically I understood aspiration. I like people who want to succeed and admire people who do. When I was at the Bar—and the seven years I spent as a full-time barrister were immensely formative for me in many ways—I did a lot of commercial and industrial work and got on well with the risk-takers, those who don’t mope around, who had ‘get up and go’. I hate class, but I love aspiration. It’s why I like America. I adore that notion of coming from nothing and making something of yourself.
 
Our writer continues:
 
 '. .  nevertheless I sometimes underestimated the ruthlessness and amorality that can go with moneymaking. Don’t misunderstand me: many business people can be creative people for whom money is the consequence of their success, rather than the motivation. But others don’t give a damn.'
 
This could be a toolmaker’s son writing of course, but no it’s Tony Blair (A Journey, Hutchinson 2010 p.115 and of whom a book was written entitled Blair Inc c.f. previous blogs) ’Others don’t give a damn’ - Blair says in this disarming admission of innocence and capturing his lack of ideological analysis, that most despicable conceptual activity. It is an important feature of Monbiot and Hutchison’s book to point out that a certain ideology is all around us, hence the ‘invisible doctrine.’ Blair was as ideological as they come, in tune with all the then great riffs of capitalism, ‘get up and go,’ ‘not moping around,’ ‘making something of yourself’ and perhaps most importantly of all ’hating class.’ The class system was abolished! How was this achieved?
 
Alistair Darling wrote in his memoir of his time as Gordon Brown’s Chancellor of the Exchequer:
 
'Living standards were rising for most people but not for all. People on middle to low incomes, especially those with no children or whose children had left home, were beginning to feel the squeeze well before the crash of 2007. The ’squeezed middle’ is neither a new or peculiarly British political problem.  It has been a growing feature of most developed countries for more than two decades. But generally, most people felt better off. In addition to the annual holiday, there would be a second break, weekends away. Low-cost airlines thrived as more and more people acquired the means to take breaks abroad. A lot of this was fuelled by increased borrowing and the running up of credit-card bills. People did this on the back of the security that comes when you see the value of your home increase each year and you do not fear losing your job. (Back From The Brink: 1,000 days at Number 11, Atlantic Books 2011 pp. 7/8 emphasis added)
 
Then the house of cards came tumbling down, thanks to the complacency that the mirage of economic growth had spawned (to mix metaphors). As Darling wrote after becoming Chancellor, everything seemed ‘tranquil’ after a decade of growth. It seems he had to learn a lot in the subsequent years. And this despite saying that the squeezed middle and lower income earners were being increasingly squeezed over the previous two decades—the entirety and more of the New Labour government’s time in office. It is hard to detect that today’s Labour government (of all people so to speak), has learnt anything from the financial crash. It’s like Gordon Brown saved the (banking) world by co-ordinating their bail-out and such is the financial world’s gratitude they are once again telling the Chancellor how to do her job, and it has to be said she seems keen to listen. The financial crash was so yesterday. Nothing has changed.
 
As with all books on the dysfunctional aspects of our civilisation, one wants to rush to the end of the analysis to find in the final chapter an answer to the question ‘What can you (or we) do about it?’ The solution is we’re told to be found in a Restorative Story, one that can be easily disseminated and understood, as well as explained and will appeal. Monbiot and Hutchison suggest a few components, many of which will be familiar to people on the green/left/co-operative axis. Bottom-up decision making essentially combined with more localism. The message is the rich need us more than we need them, and unlike Tony Blair we can create society with our own hands, not have a version of it thrust upon us by the rich and their multiple elites. All well and good, but as the authors acknowledge, those elites currently wield the power (which they amply demonstrated in the defenestration of one Jeremy Corbyn, who is not mentioned in this book).
 
I bought The Invisible Doctrine on my trip to Sheffield yesterday, and Waterstones had a buy one get one half price offer on which encouraged me to buy Head North, by the mayors of Greater Manchester and Liverpool, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham respectively. They have a ten point plan for making Britain (or at least the North) equal. I will read and compare. Both authors wield some power, and it seems one of them at least is getting up the noses of the Starmeroids. How I wonder will their proposals create a ‘Restorative Story?’ I will read it and find out.