Labour must get comfortable with enterprise

[Hopeless Romantic]

Over the coming months, Alex Smith and Luke Bozier will be putting together a pamphlet on Labour's relationship with enterprise. This post acts as an introduction to that work:

Despite its faults, capitalism is the single most successful system in history at creating opportunity, freedom, expression and happiness. Enterprise provides livelihoods for billions of people the world over, and has done more to provide dignity and quality of life than any comparable political or social system. This is a notion with which the Labour Party is still too uncomfortable.

If you were to think carefully about our movement's purpose for being, and list the Labour Party's values in 2011, you might come up with a set of predictable, abstract-and ultimately subjective-soundbites for our collective creed: expanding aspiration; reducing poverty; commitment to public services free at the point of provision; equality and justice; solidarity and collectivism; a future fair for all.

Those universal values have made Britain a more equal and a better country. The few occasions during which Labour has been in power since its formation have seen radical improvements in many of these areas: as Tony Blair said 'Labour is the political wing of the British people'. But if we are to continue implementing our values in the 21st century, we need to embrace enterprise more fully, and realise its true potential as a vehicle for creating prosperity for all.

more http://www.labourlist.org/labour-must-get-comfortable-with-enterprise

[tjwmason]

1. Are they talking about enterprise or capitalism

Or are they trying to elide these two different concepts.

I'm all in favour of enterprise, and the biggest problem with capitalism is its tendancy to undermine enterprise by favouring large corporations who gain excessive power and use it to undermine anything which stands in their way (be it employees, environmental concerns, small enterprises...).

[non sociopath skin]

2. So we're back to entrepreneurs saving the world, eh?

As recently as this morning, my wife (who has her own one-person business)was discussing with a member of the local Business Start-Up Team (initiated under New Labour, soon to be eliminated by the ConDems) the impact that enterprise has had in these Interesting Times.

Apparently 20% of last year's new business start-ups have failed already while only 10% of small businesses are doing better than last year with 70% hanging on but doing the same or less. Not a lot of potential new friends there, Ed.

Maybe it's just me but I don't see any more logic in the viewpoint that the private sector alone can save the world and create universal happiness than the Stalinist logic of saying that the state can. Surely it's a truth universally acknowledged that the public sector does some things best (usually the ones that will never turn a fast buck), the private sector does others best and that a surprising amount can be achieved when the two work productively together?

Trying to believe otherwise results in the nonsense with which we're all too familiar in this neck of the woods whereby the Tories assume that thousands of job losses in the public sector (plus an equivalent in those areas of the private and voluntary sectors whose main clients are public) can be offset by a growth in small start-up companies manufacturing exotically-flavoured crisps or soft-porn accessories for hen nights and providing yet another tanning parlour or fish foot spa.

Sorry, Dave, but even though Mrs. Skin's enterprise (no, it doesn't involve tandoori flavoured crisps or besloganed hot pants :evilgrin: )is doing very nicely, thank you, she's unlikely to be in a position to take on any redundant care assistants or public health officials just now ...

The Skin

[fedsron2us]

5. Agree entirely Skin

As one of the replies to the article states

How can the poor engage in Enterprise when they have no equity to invest and the cost of borrowing capital is either prohibitive or the resources are denied them by the lenders ?

The issue is simply ignored by the authors who seem to think that businesses are conjured into existence by an act of will.

[T_i_B]

6. "seem to think that businesses are conjured into existence by an act of will"

That's a major problem with a lot of right wing thinking. Places which are poor and where people don't have money to spend won't have a thriving private sector as people won't be able to afford what the businesses might want to be selling.

Compare the businesses you find (if you can find them at all) on a sink council estate and in the leafy suburbs and there's a big difference. Sadly our RW chums seem not to have any awareness whatsoever of this.

[fedsron2us]

3. If you want to know why I left the Labour Party

look no further than this document. Pages of vacuous guff about enterprise, the knowledge sector and the digital economy but no examination of the primary cause of poverty which is that the poor HAVE NO CAPITAL. The truth is that the whole British economic and governmental system is designed to ensure that the masses never have any control over the wealth that they generate. Indeed, when it looks like they are acquiring any reserves of cash in shares, pensions or housing you can be sure there are whole armies of politicians and financiers working on ways to divest them of their hard earned cash. The fact that so many fuckwits in the Labour party never address this simple fact just increases my suspicion that the UK is rapidly moving to a political system identical to the US where the political colours change at elections but the status quo remain unchanged. The party has completely lost touch not only with working people but also the ideas that brought it into being.

What really fucks me off is that even ex Thatcherite politicians such as Cecil Parkinson can recognise that there is a huge crisis in contemporary capitalism yet somehow Blairite dickheads just don't get it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13784467

One only has to watch Bloomberg 'business' channel in the morning with its acres of adverts for various financial spread betting companies and 'trading' platforms to realise that the system is as devoted to punting for quick gain as the bunch of losers who hang around the local Ladbrokes. The concept of investing capital in productive activity to produce a long term increase in wealth is now completely alien to the western market model. Instead the idea is to get quick gains for yourself at the expense of other market participant and hang the long term consequences. It is a mechanism that is essentially devouring itself with the inevitable consequence that it can not survive in its current form for more than a few more years

The wealth of generations has been looted and punted away speculating on the markets over the past 30 years with most of it being lost in the Blair/Brown era. This dynamic duo consistently confused financial chicanery with 'Enterprise' and would not have recognised the concept of productive investment if it had crapped on their heads. Instead, Labour allowed an orgy of debt creation in the private sector and unregulated casino capitalism that would have left even John D Rockefeller reeling. As a result the UK has one of the most dysfunctional economies in the world with an over dependence on consumption, massive personal indebtedness and a banking sector crippled by its permanent exposure to the hugely overvalued British property market and the debt liabilities tied to it. Worse as the crisis has unravelled the gap between the rich few and the rest of the population has grown ever wider.

[LeftishBrit]

4. Sigh; one of those Blairite articles that basically says that Labourites should be moderate Tories

Well, the LibDems essentially became moderate Tories and are now down at 9% in the polls, so it's not an automatically winning strategy.

'Enterprise' is not necessarily bad in its place; i.e. firmly in the private sector of a mixed economy, and producing something useful, not just making money out of money. However, using business to run public services, or trying to model public services on businesses, is useless. There is an assumption in too many places that private business is automatically more effective than government. In fact - and I live in a place with one of the worst County Councils - I have NEVER come across a government service as inefficient as certain businesses that I've encountered!

'capitalism is the single most successful system in history at creating opportunity, freedom, expression and happiness'- Thatcher couldn't have said it better.


'the future economy demands it: whether we like it or not, by the time of the 2015 general election the British economy will have been fundamentally rebalanced; the public sector will have shrunk significantly and the private sector boosted.'

The public sector will certainly have shrunk if Cameron et al continue to get their way; the private sector won't necessarily be boosted, however. Public service cuts do NOT necessarily boost the private sector, and in bad economic times generally have the reverse effect.


'Jobs will not come easy in the future; nor will they always be secure. Entire business models will come and go, and the business cycle may shorten, rather than lengthen.'

This is a likely consequence of Tory cuts and of allowing bankers and short-termist entrepreneurs to run the economy. However, it's not something that's ordained by God or Nature. Job insecurity is a political and social evil that Labour should be fighting against, not just accepting.

'However, the future economy also creates boundless opportunity. Young British entrepreneurs will flourish and succeed. Some will climb high up the social ladder, and create valuable new jobs for people from similar backgrounds.'

Reagan called it 'trickle-down' economics, didn't he? The point is that entrepreneurship is all very well as *one* part of the economy. But it's not for everyone, nor is it all that the country needs. Well-managed public services have never been so vital. Perhaps the one most crucial area where true *natural* rather than politically-driven change will affect the future economy is that people are living longer; a higher proportion of the population will be elderly; and they are inevitably going to need *public* services. Also, education is more vital than ever in a high-tech society, and considerations about global warming as well as the aforesaid ageing population make improvements in public transport essential. Etc.! Not to mention all the other services that have always been important and are being threatened by this government, notably housing.

'That means a radical new approach to education, where accounting and budgeting are as valued as traditional mathematics, and where business and marketing are offered as core parts of the national curriculum alongside IT and English.'

Budgeting perhaps; but 'marketing as a core part of the curriculum'?

'And it means we must abandon our approach as the party predominantly of the post-war welfare settlement, shackled to the Labour cathedrals of the welfare state and National Health Service,'

One of the most chilling statements I've seen in a long time and I've seen plenty! Even most Tories would not OPENLY express such contempt for the NHS, though we know they have it in practice.

People like these are barking up the wrong tree anyway. They need to consider one question of historical fact, almost never raised.

Question: How much greater a percentage of the vote did the Tories win in their 2010 sort-of-victory than in their 1945 debacle?



Surprising answer:

None. They won an identical 36% of the vote in both elections.

The difference is that the anti-Tory vote was far more divided between different parties in 2010 than in 1945.

Labour should not IMO be concentrating on winning votes from the Tories. Tory votes came mostly from hardcore Tories who will not vote Labour anyway, plus a smaller number who were simply against the incumbents at a time of economic crisis.

What Labour need to do is to win back votes from the smaller parties: mainly the LibDems, but also the Nationalists. They have been fairly successful in winning many of the LD voters back, or rather Clegg has been fairly successful in driving many of us back to Labour. They have so far been less successful with the Nationalist votes. But they won't get the vote of most of either by becoming Tories in all but name, and especially not by rejecting the traditions of the welfare state and NHS. If they go down that path, they may in the end drive many people to choose that political party, all too popular in the United States, known as Why-Bother-to-Vote.