Business creates all else

BUSINESS is being defended by David Cameron in a speech he is to give today. That a prime minister feels such a need to do so speaks volumes about the state of our culture. On the socialist Left free enterprise is seen as a force for imprisoning the worker into wage-slavery.

            Even after the failed and brutal experiments of living under socialism that millions of Europeans were subjected to in the last century, the socialist Left cannot bring themselves to turn off the life support they give to such an impractical, merciless, and puritan system of living.

            Socialism is the antithesis of capitalism, and by implication, of  business. The businessman still remains the ‘greedy capitalist’ to the socialist Left.  As capitalism goes through one of its periodic crises, the socialists believe that their time has come and the cry goes out to every branch of whatever organisation the comrades belong…one more push!

            Capitalism in crises invigorates the socialist Left,  much as a cold shower cools the frustrated ardour of a priest faced with the temptations of the flesh. The socialist Left live for the day the dialectical process behind their CEO’s philosophy of Historical Materialism completes the process whereby socialism replaces capitalism…Marx will win the day!

           

BUT THE OLD Marxist Left are easy quarry when presenting a pro business argument. When it comes to centre Left politics as a whole, including his own party, the prime minister needs to perform.

            Tony Blair tried to change the culture of the Labour party by leading it away from traditional Left- wing thinking once engraved in the Clause IV of the party’s constitution; ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’.

            New Labour, as it fashionably became, succeeded in getting rid of this antiquated nostrum for electoral failure. But it left much resentment within the party. Blair even tried to isolate the wretched unions by approaching business for its financial support, and while his grip on both the party and government remained, the Labour Party carried success before it.

            Today, however, we have Ed Milliband leading the party, who, you will remember, was the placeman (because of the party’s electoral college) of the unions. While Blair took two steps forward, Ed has taken one step back. He has openly attacked city bankers whose profligacy regarding bonuses is deeply unpopular with the people, at the moment. But times will change and the peoples’ prospects will improve; but I doubt Ed Milliband’s will. Besides, for all their unpopularity, the City has paid £20 billion annually into the Treasury, which is something the Labour leader is either ignorant of, or is concealing from his public, to keep their tempers flared.

            As for the government’s coalition partners, their business minister has been as equally robust as Ed Milliband when it comes to the City. To be fair however, of all the Left of centre parties, the Liberal democrats take a more tolerant view of business. For they know that it is from this sector that the country’s wealth is being generated, and they appreciate that the private sector; and it is only the private sector, that keeps our schools and hospitals functioning. They do so by employing millions of people who pay their taxes, while the employers themselves make a financial contribution to their employees national insurance.

            But when it comes to the City and the banking sector, they, like Labour, are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water. City bonuses are none of any politicians business (except, of course, for electoral propaganda), and if they carry on as they are in deprecating the wealth they bring to this country; a country which, remember, no longer has a manufacturing sector that accounts for the bulk of the nation’s wealth, then the financial sector, which has been responsible for much of the billions poured into our schools and the NHS over the past decade, should be valued more than it  is by our political class.

WHICH, NO DOUBT, is why Mr Cameron feels the need to speak up for the business community. But even the Conservatives remain prepared to make the right anti-business noises if the public are less than satisfied with their lot.

            Cameron has to weld a business ethic once more onto our culture, not seen since before the last war. Capitalism, which is the system for business and the provider of wealth for the people, needs to be once more appreciated and understood.

            Wealth is good for a people and their nation; and its only known proven form of creation is capitalism. It is the engine of progress in manufacturing, medicine, and science. The only contribution that a socialist society made to such an endeavour was the Kalashnikov automatic rifle, which kills thousands of people on an almost daily basis.

            Capitalism has been the greatest and most progressive force in history; and even Herr Karl Marx was forced to agree with the description. His concern was for the welfare of the worker which in his time was dire. But if he lived today, would he be prepared to stand by his dialectic? I doubt it; for modern capitalism would have well surpassed Marx’s expectations of it. If he were a man of integrity he would bow down in defeat.

            But this prince of socialism was as chippy, to say the least, as his modern observers; and would have encouraged the anti-capitalist Left to fulfil his ‘scientific’ formula  for the birth of communism.

IN EUROPE Social Democracy is preferred to capitalism, and ‘solidarity’ to competition. All the main parties of Europe believe in ever greater public spending – which means collecting more taxes from the over regulated private sector and its employees.

            Well, this remained the case for forty years, right up until our European political elite came up with the idea of a single currency; a project which is now under sustained attack after countries (particularly in southern Europe) incurred large amounts of debt built from the cheap loans they had access to, thanks the more advanced and successful northern economies.

            Now, the public sector which social democracy cultivated until, in some countries it competed with the private sector as a percentage of economic activity, is having to shrink causing social unrest in many countries – and we are only at the beginning.

            In what the French derisively calls, the Anglo-Saxon economies i.e. Britain and America. The state, in theory at least, should play a minimal role leaving the private sector to deliver up the wealth via minimal regulation. In such economies, the state and public sector is seen as something which needs constant pruning to stop an economy from degenerating into a Greek example.

            The minimal state with the minimum involvement in the private sector, and a stern and constant watch over the growth of the public sector, is what allows business to flourish. The Anglo Saxon model is being seen by many in France today, as the right one to follow after the calamities surrounding the euro, and the grip the public sector had over Greece.

SO DAVID CAMERON is right to champion business and he should not just do it through one speech, but constantly refer to its wealth creating centre; whether in technology, science, publishing, engineering, and every other form of economic activity. It is the free market model that directed humanity from steam power in the 18^th century to nuclear power in the 20^th .

            It is the profit motive that stimulates all such advances. But in social democratic Europe (including the UK), profit is a dirty word tainted by human greed and should be sent immediately into the appropriate ring of Hell according to the Left.

            The free market with its spur of ambition and betterment, surpasses all else as alternatives to a capitalist society – for they have been tried and have failed horribly.