The Creditocracy: How We Got Here!

Guest blogger Barry E. James of Humane Economics responds to “A Brief encounter in Tesco” (see previous Blog post)

“...in order to change things, we must lead these politicians towards policies which create a safer and better future for all of us…

(Definitely not your average exchange over groceries!)

Daniel mentioned that “our political and economic system was really the legacy of 40 years worth of neo-liberal thought”.

I think it’s helpful (and may be crucial) to understand that it goes back further and runs very deep. Understanding where it came from allows us to understand both how and why we got here. The diagnosis is the first step to understanding the disease, which is the first step to a cure!

• A small group of people, mostly economists, created various organisations which still exist, to propagate a core set of axioms or ideas that quietly infiltrated and now lay at the foundations of our civilization, and all the political parties as well as (big) business culture, flowing from teaching delivered still by business schools and through PPE courses

• So a change of government is unable to help the situation as things stand

• The core ideas behind it were ormulated as a riposte to communism / ‘central planning’ in 1947 by a group of mostly economists

• It was spread through and have been fostered in business schools ever since, backed by US financiers subsequently spreading globally through academia

• The axioms / Friedman ‘doctrine’ entered the mainstream first in September 1970 - over 50 years ago, and changed the way we all think
  

  • Maximising (not just making) profit is key, and nothing must stand in its way

  • Businesses / businesspeople can and should be ruthless, predatory, in pursuit of profit

  • Maximising profits will fix everything else (so is morally right - not just justified but right) … and nothing can be fixed without them

  • Everything can (and should) be measured via money / valuations / revenues…

  • Price determines value (not the other way about)... and anything that cannot be priced is treated as worthless ‘externalities’)
    

• This went beyond theory, infecting business and politics, because of the retreat of a consensus on principles of human decency occasioned by the vacuum created by the failure of religion as vision-holder of humanity. (We rejected religion, principally christianity, without replacing it with anything else).
  

• It was in the 70s that Thatcher* and Reagan brought these principles into the mainstream and politics - both their top teams had a large element from the Mt Pelerin Society.

  • Before this hospitals and schools were run as befits hospitals and schools - now the started to be run as businesses, and increasingly through the lens of money, profit and finances. Becoming cost-centres rather than community assets.

  • Politics became increasingly about managing the money and the economy (‘It’s the economy, stupid’) and less about human issues, such as housing, health and work/employment (which were all increasingly monitored and managed by £amounts as a proxy for success)
    

• New Labour, including. both Blair and Brown finally gave in and embraced this after at least elements of the Labour party had tried to hold out
  
  

• The ‘New’ signalling that society as a whole had changed and accepted this as a necessary part of modernity. Indeed this (and economics) was presented as science, from which there was no escape of alternatives. This is not and never was true. As a growing number of ‘heterodox’ economists affirm when a discipline fits the theory to the world it’s a science, when it attempts to to fit the world to the doctrine/theory (a good example is the theory of ‘perfect markets’)it’s a form of faith
  
  

• This became the vocabulary of politics as well as business and ghettoised more traditional and human-centred ways of thinking, seeing and talking. To within families (which were demoted in worth as subject to the needs of the ‘get on your bike’ economy) and survives (mostly) also in small business and sometimes communities culture

• The Mt Pelerin Society has survived, spread and a branch morphed into what is the IEA, the Institute of Economic Affairs, a UK ‘charity’ who’s funding is famously opaque, which (not very) silently constantly lobbies at all levels for ‘free markets’ and ever-smaller government (aka less tax).
  
  

• The IEA is the backbone of the 55 Tufton St** mafia behind Liz Truss. Who through her finally got their hands directly on the levers of the UK economy - her words, policies and actions were direct from their agenda and dogma’

Although the Truss government lasted only 45 days both corporate business and government remain, unknowingly, framed by these core principles. Which it is easy to see - when you step back away from them. The perpetuate the spiral we are in. And the continuing meta-crisis including climate change (a cost centre) and increasing inequality (the freedom of markets above humanity and so wealth concentrating in fewer and fewer hands - the clients of those who make the market rules).

Like you Daniel I remain, insist on remaining, hopeful. But many of the people I speak to fear that there is no good end in sight and the likely (or inevitable) outcome is that it will all come to a crash, a disintegration of economy involving much suffering for the many, to change direction.

I continue to hope not. To work to avert that level of disaster - and towards cushioning the blow should it come.

I believe it IS possible to find, create and make the tools necessary to detox our thinking - but we’re not there, not by a long chalk. We need to learn from those who’ve done something like this before.

Until the opportunity to do so comes along I continue to try to lay some of the foundations through Humane Economics and Humane.Energy.

As a filmmaker you are, in many ways, much closer to the front line in terms of the means to treat this toxic madness. Artists and other filmmakers have a direct line into the lifeblood of our collective mind / culture - our ‘nettelligence’ (a term I’ve devised for our living moving zeitgeist, that houses our collective worldview, values and norms).

If this inspires a spark of recognition as to what it is we are up against I’d love to hear from you, and to discuss how and in what way we might join forces.

NOTES

* Thatcher was a publicly avowed follower of Hayek, banging one of his books onto the table at the 1st shadow cabinet meeting (reportedly among various other such meetings) after assuming the leadership saying “This gentlemen, is what we believe”.

** See video linked and also these references

Liz Truss: The Oligarch's Prime Minister | George Monbiot

A Democracy in Name Only": George Monbiot on Truss Resignation & Who Will Be Next PM

© Copyright Barry E James November 2022

Barry E. James

Founder of Humane Economics and Humane.Energy.