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December 19, 2008
Historically, the right argued in favour of framing the market in a state managed by a highly skilled technocratic elite, albeit under a degree of political control, while coupling this with social solidarity managed by the state. The left sought to bring about egalitarian outcomes through social engineering and disliked the market as the generator of inequality.
The social democrat view of the interventionist welfare state was seen as broken by the 1980s because the state was held to be inefficient in guiding the economy and was acting as a brake on the freedom of the individual. The solution was to withdraw the state both from its management of the economy and to some degree from regulating it and the extension of the market into areas hitherto protected from it, like health and education. The victory of liberalism was followed by the capture of liberalism itself, by those who reduced it to an overwhelmingly economic reading of it
George Schöpflin in Open Democracy says in this period of the shift to marketisation:
saw the emergence of the slogan "politics as management" - a clearer illustration of depoliticisation is hard to imagine. The idea that the market is politically neutral in effect says that political forces should not intervene in regulating the market, including the consequences of introducing market values into areas traditionally exempt, basically because markets are self-correcting and will return to the optimal outcome, equilibrium.The result of this depoliticisation, that there are key areas of activity to which political and social considerations do not apply, has been a kind of political vacuum, now increasingly occupied by populist narratives.
Schöpflin says that the ideals of egalitarianism, social solidarity and social justice have been badly bruised in this process. The major income inequalities that have resulted have simultaneously affected the life-chances of significant sections of society and have left them without much of a stake in the system, especially where cumulative losers are concerned.
In Australia the inequality caused by the global market was countered by tax cuts and tax transfers. This pattern is continuing with the structural adjustment taking place to address global warming and it indicates that the state has continued to play a far greater role in determining economic strategy and regulating the economy
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Now that it becomes evident that as rudds election promises slowly become defunct one by one it is interesting to watch those that voted for him and the psychology of their comments.
Some have given up, some are angry and others hold strong to "things would of been much worse with howard" and "they are just following the howard model"
Its a good laugh for me.