The Economy. Does it Really Matter?

I caught Newsnight this week. I try to avoid doing this because it winds me up. However, this week it was actually quite interesting and, dare I say it, thought provoking. 


Jeremy (let's call him Jer) was attempting to stimulate debate on the alternatives to capitalism following David Cameron's statement in the week about moral capitalism. Capitalism that was socially irresponsible. A type of capitalism that must be stopped. 


Bastion of the far left and son of a marxist theorist Ed Miliband agrees with him. And not to be left out, Nick Clegg fancies helping us develop a "John Lewis" economy where everyone owns a wee bit of the company they work for. How egalitarian. 


Maybe I've missed something but it would seem to me that there is a subtle political revolution which is steering us more and more in the direction of communism? And I say communism, rather than socialism. A society which has common ownership of production at its very heart. (Not people). 


The flavour of the Newsnight discussion intrigued me. Jer brought on a well known Marxist to tell us why and how capitalism was doomed to failure. Then failed to interview him well. Keynsian economics theory was referred to in the programme as "revolutionary" some 80 odd years after it was first produced but Jer forgot to tell us what that actually meant. 


Revolutionary? Really? 


Either way it's clear that this concept of moral capitalism and economic predators with fat cat bonuses is here to stay. 


However, their rhetoric could be a smokescreen and distraction for what's really happening. 


So, here's how I see it. In our so called "free market" Keynsian society, the following things have happened in very recent years:


Individuals and households up and down the country have been encouraged, programmed and positively been forced down the route that owning your own property is a rite of passage. In truth, in Britain and the USA, you're not a real contributing citizen until you've straddled yourself with a 25 year debt amounting to tens of thousands of pounds through which you will actually pay more than double the actual cost of your property. 


This lending has been made free and easy by the capitalist (and, don't forget, evil) banks that ultimately control whether our economy stands or falls. They alone, we are led to believe, have the power. Not governments. And not the people.  


These banks soon found out that not everyone actually has the ability to pay these onerous, 25 year loans. So they did what any self-protecting capitalist venture would do and minimised their liabilities. Only, in their case, they found a way to do it which kept the debt "in play" as an asset. In so doing, creating a chain of transactions which, at best, could only be described as a game that combined the best of Russian Roulette and "The Weakest Link". 


As with any weak link in a chain, it will eventually break and, like a pile of dominoes, the effects are compound. In what felt like an extremely short period of time, our banks began to fall. And the people bailed them out one by one. State owned banks in a capitalist society. Who would have thought it possible?


Taking one bold step further towards a Marxist economy, as a country we are now in an interesting position where thousands of households "own" a mortgage debt, lent to them by banks which are now owned in a large part by the government which is in turn "owned" by the people of the country. The rest of us rent council properties. Which are owned by the government. Which owns the banks. Hmmmmmmm. 


In the background, electricity and gas companies battle with market pricing mechanisms and a consumer base that is continually telling them that they can't afford to pay those prices. Transport companies are lambasted for pushing up fares beyond which consumers can afford to pay. We've even had one politician suggest that the rich should pay the fares for the "ordinary" man. Robbing the rich to give to the poor. Robin Hood would be proud. 


This all sounds like the basis of a communist society to me and before we all go hurtling towards it at a break neck speed we should maybe stand back and ask ourselves: Is that what we really want?


Do we want a society where every gets exactly what they need. Not what they want, but what they need. 


As any political theorist will know - go too far to the right and you will end up on the left. Politics and, so it would seem, economics are not linear, but circular in their behaviour.


Which brings me nicely on to literary theory (often ignored in these troubled times, but a fairly useful reference tool for those that think it's just all so unfair). 


Thomas Hardy had it down nicely in his novels where Fortune's Wheel was the main factor in whether a man (or woman) succeeded or failed, economically speaking. However even Hardy had the nonce to understand that everyone begins their life at a different place on the wheel, going through both good times and bad times in order to live life to the full. It was, in essence, the meaning of life. That's why Tess never seems to get a proper break, it's why the Mayor of Casterbridge seems to be forever battling with bad luck through the ups and downs of his own career. 


Hardy wasn't the only one providing us with a commentary on economic success. Fielding did it too. And hundreds of years before him, so did Shakespeare. And years before him, Ovid. 


So, perhaps, just perhaps, what I'm trying to say is that our leaders need to be very careful if they think they have control over these situations. 


Economics are complex. However out of complexity, order will come. It's a cyclical thing. It's the way of the world. Complexity theorists know that. Writers of old know that. Heck, even the free market knows that. 


So in answer to my question about the economy, does it really matter? Yes, I think it does. 


But it matters to each and every one of us. Because we ARE the economy. Not the banks. Not the governments. The people. 


We are the market. We decide whether a business succeeds or fails. We decide whether a person's skills are valuable or not. We decide how we can better ourselves. We decide in which bank we should put our money. 


We decide. 


For the time being at least.