Votes for babies

The Guardian has an article arguing that babies should have the vote. Well, all children. In other words, no age restriction. As soon as you leave the womb, you're allowed to help choose which party should rule the country for the next four years.
   It's easy to mock, but I don't object to the principle. The problem comes in practice: the most popular version of the scheme involves proxy votes, and I don't believe in proxy votes. There's already too much contracting-out going on in modern politics. Would a person be able to get ten votes rather than one, by having ten children?
   But my main problem with the suggestion is the claim there's evidence that ...

... larger electorates produce better decisions.

I don't see how it would be possible to get objective data to support that claim. Who is going to judge that a decision is 'better'?
   One of the problems of modern democracy is surely that electorates are already too large: there's too many voters. No one feels they have sufficient power to make a difference simply through voting; hence we get voter apathy — also caused by the fact that there isn't enough genuine choice on offer.
   I suggest drastically restricting voter numbers. Ensure that each person privileged to vote feels there's a really important decision at stake. How about this: allocate, by lottery, seven (yes, seven) votes in each electoral district to people who want to be considered for the role (including precocious 9-year-olds and other interested children). For a week, this team of seven people would consult with the political candidates, and with one another. Ideally, they also engage with other residents of the district, via social media or in person. At the end, they each vote anonymously for their preferred candidate.
   Might help to concentrate the mind, and make people feel something important was at stake.

central banking: the end is nigh?

Crazy like a fox. Donald Trump is certainly shaking things up, more than any Western politician in recent history. His ultimate objectives aren't always apparent from the theatrics. But perhaps a degree of camouflage is necessary for a political leader who is deeply counter-cultural (in the new sense of that word; that is to say, who's in opposition to the il-liberal hegemony).
   One area where it's hard to know what he's really aiming at is the Federal Reserve. If his goal is to retain the Fed with all its powers, but have it controlled by politicians, then I'm dubious about whether this will benefit America. But what if he's really trying to float the idea of Fed abolition?
   It's so radical that it would be ludicrous to imagine a member of the US government even thinking about it, if that member weren't President Trump.
   Milton Friedman thought you didn't need central banks. If he was right, then the Fed should be seen as simply part of the elite establishment that restricts our freedom of action but isn't itself subject to democratic control.
   Certainly if any nation is going to take the lead in bringing the era of central banking to an end, it's going to be the USA.
   More about abolishing the Fed in a Reason article by Brian Doherty.

Down with skool!

Labour needs to cut spending if we're to avoid government debt rising to America's disturbing level of >100% of GDP.
   Cutting benefits is controversial, for good reasons. If people plan ahead on the basis of available benefits, sudden unexpected cuts will cause suffering.
   It's no good complaining that some of them are 'scroungers'. At least the individuals concerned are benefiting from whatever handouts they choose to take up.
   On the other hand, there's sure to be plenty of expenditure within the state education system that's not benefiting anyone, and probably causing harm. Why isn't this up for discussion? Because the teaching profession has too much power. It's part of the state apparatus, but it’s not under democratic control.
   Buttressed by Marxist-inspired ideology, the education profession has become a law unto itself. See for example what the NEU, Europe’s largest education union, are saying about the supposedly urgent need to 'decolonise'.

Read more about Marxist ideology in
Power-Mad & Hypocritical.

POWER-mad & hypo-CRITICAL

My colleague Christine Fulcher and I have now published our analysis of cultural Marxism (a.k.a. 'Critical Theory') as a book, available from Amazon. Ebook only for now. Paperback on the way.

We hope buyers will leave a brief review on Amazon. Number of reviews seems to be the key figure in determining whether a dissident publication receives attention, more so than average score.

Busy people may wish to leave an ultra-short review.
For example:
Review: "Seems OK" Title: "Seems OK"
When we last looked, Amazon wasn't allowing ratings without a review, at least not for books. But reviews can apparently be as short as you like.

Amazon UK
Amazon US

Revenue from sales of this book supports the work of Oxford Forum.

reality vs. the elites

The Brexit and Trump revolutions have exposed a curious feature of politics in the West. We have seen a political class who, rather than simply doing their jobs, have become ever more preoccupied with the idea of making things better for 'the many', at the expense of 'the privileged few'. Yet it turns out that, rather than becoming more representative of the population as a whole, the political class has become less so. Their preoccupations, many of them informed by the political theory they were taught at university, have turned out to be largely irrelevant to the concerns of the average voter. Conversely, what does concern voters has been largely ignored by them.

The phenomenon of politician-voter divergence highlights a possible defect in human psychology.
   Many economists — and some other academics — have been turning away from the narrow model of self-interest that has been the basis of economic theory, and towards the idea that humans are altruistic, as well as selfish. We all know we can feel better when we have done someone a good turn, so altruism is clearly a drive that any theory of behaviour must take account of.
   What most altruism researchers have ignored, however, is the likelihood that what a person derives satisfaction from is not the improvement of another person's position as such, but the belief or feeling that they have improved that person's position.
    In one-to-one interactions, the potential for divergence between belief and actuality tends not to matter. If I smugly believe I have made things better for someone, but have actually made things worse, the chances are I will soon have my mistake pointed out to me.
   On the other hand, in situations where a group of people are machinating to 'improve' things for another group with whom they do not interact directly, the probability of chronic divergence can be quite high. People can spend years kidding themselves they are making things better for others, all the while feeling virtuous and morally superior; meanwhile things are getting no better for the targets of their 'benevolence', and are getting worse for everyone else.

In a democracy there is, in theory, a mechanism for (eventually) removing from power a political group whose beliefs have diverged too far from reality. However, we know that the mechanics of representative democracy are far from perfect. Major divergences between voter preferences and the actions of the political class can continue for decades before finally being brought back into correspondence.
   If during the period of divergence, alternative viewpoints were suppressed or even demonised, the process of readjustment can have short-term explosive and extremist effects — rather like a boiler that has been prevented from having regular releases of pressure.

In an academic context, there are no corresponding corrective mechanisms, either in the short term or the long term. Academics are in a position, collectively, to define 'truth' and so to become effectively immune to criticism. As an organised group, they can persist indefinitely with a theoretical system that falsely claims to identify what is in people's best interests — whether those people are the population as a whole, or specific groups targeted as deserving special treatment.
   The academics' theoretical system can be expanded, becoming ever more grandiose and forbidding, so that in the end it is near-immune to attacks by anyone outside academia. It cannot be criticised in detail without enormous effort, which few have sufficient incentive to undertake. In any case, there is always the defence of 'virtue', allowing academics to denounce their critics as selfish, uncaring, oppressive or worse.
   Contrary to the supposed academic ideal of openness — difficult to maintain in the face of the kind of emotive moralising that seems to be increasingly de rigueur — the academic class can ensure, by means of a process of careful selection and suppression, that no critics exist on the inside either.

* * * * *

update about forthcoming book
Slight change of plan.
The 12 tropes of cultural Marxism will be preceded by an introductory critique of 'Critical Theory', entitled:

---

Power-Mad and Hypo-Critical:
Why humanities professors
love cultural Marxism

---

which is currently in the final stages of preparation.
We expect to publish 12 tropes as a sequel to this, later in the year.

weekend notes

private schools
• Labour's current leader may not be an outright Marxist like his predecessor, but the Marxist influence is visible nonetheless in the Party's current priorities. Belief that it's virtuous to penalise the bourgeoisie, or references to 'sharp-elbowed parents', are standard Marxism-inspired tropes, observable these days among 'conservative' politicians as well as the more overtly left-wing ones.
   The most notable action so far of the new government has been to make private education more expensive. The people most penalised by this are not the wealthy, but those at the margin who have saved hard to keep their children out of the clutches of damaging comprehensive schools, and who now won't be able to.

search warrants

• Another indicator of Marxist inspiration is a love of the state. We all know by now — or should do — that the 'withering-away-of-the-state' idea was one of Marx's phoney tropes. Most Marxists, both before and after 1917, have known full well that communism necessarily involves a larger and more powerful state apparatus.
   Labour long ago stopped being the party of civil liberties. It seems to have been the Conservatives (!) who came up with the idea that police should have the power to search houses without a warrant, but Labour made no protest at the time and now seems pleased to be able to put it into law. The only person to have objected, as far as I can make out, was Priti Patel.*
   What it seems to mean is that police will be able to enter your home without a warrant, simply on the basis that some app — probably produced in China — shows that a stolen phone is located somewhere on your territory.
   YouGov suggests that only 30% of the electorate strongly support this change in the law. May I suggest a rule of thumb for abolishing a centuries-old civil liberty? How about 'strong support from more than 80% of the population'. Not: 'strong support from 30%, plus enthusiastic support from Westminster elites'.

Prime Minister wanted
• No wonder the Conservatives were given a massive thumbs-down at the election. I have seen it suggested that the batch just booted out were more leftist even than Sir Keir's current Cabinet.
   Now whence could come a capable party leader not afraid to back non-leftist values? Personally, I would have no objection to the role being contracted out to a foreigner. Or how about an AI — with appropriate safeguards of course.
   It seems British humankind is no longer capable of producing a suitable individual, able to survive the militant tactics of the SJW cultists, and general trashing by 'liberal' media. Decades of socialist mindset and tall-poppy syndrome have seen to that. (America, take note.)

Britain's broken roads
Dear Amazon.com, please could you fix our roads?
   You helped the people of Britain through the COVID crisis by supplying them with things they needed. Well, there is another crisis now, and we could do with your help again.
   Local government departments don't seem able to cope. Although they have very kindly spent a lot of money on reducing speed limits from 30mph to 20mph, this hasn't helped much. Driving through a pothole at 20 is not a lot better than driving through it at 30.
   I wonder whether you could perhaps agree, with local dignitaries, to some kind of trial, in a test area. I suspect that, in some areas at least, local people would be willing to contribute financially towards the cost of such a scheme — in the hope of a future reduction of council tax, once the scheme was proven successful.
Yours etc.

* via Sophie Chambers @ The Conversation

Marxist theory is a device

At first sight, Marxism is simply a set of theories about human societies — a set that has grown increasingly complex over the decades, so that it is now difficult for anyone to engage with it without first being trained in how to employ its arcane concepts. This is certainly how the cultural arm of Marxism is currently presented to undergraduates, in Literature Studies and other humanities subjects: as a set of theories that can be used to interpret cultural phenomena, without this necessarily having political implications.
   Traditional political Marxism itself sometimes tries to present itself as no more than a scientific theory, with the anti-capitalist politics merely following as a consequence.
   But Marxism is not a theory that just happens to have political implications. Marxist theory is essentially a device; a device designed to produce regime change. The theory may be the part that most catches the eye of intellectuals, but it is strictly secondary to the political goal.
   Marx himself made this aspect of his thinking very clear: he despised social theorising unless it had a political objective. His attitude is encapsulated in his well-known assertion:

Philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Marx's idea of 'change' was not one of slow improvement, or of bringing society more into line with the preferences of the less well-off. Marx disapproved of piecemeal politics, and he wasn't greatly interested in what individual workers wanted. What he aimed at was complete revolution: revolution of rulership, revolution of the economy, and revolution of thinking.
   Marx's intellectual followers, by and large, adopted the same attitude: social theorising must always have a practical goal, and the goal should be revolutionary rather than partial. Those followers set out to help their master's plans, by constructing complex social and psychological theories which would help to convince people that Marxist doctrine was correct and that it should be implemented.
   This goal-driven approach to theorising has had — via intellectuals' embracing of Marxism — a major impact on research, and on the university environment. Social theories are now often blatantly judged, even in academic contexts, not by how well they correspond to reality, but by whether they are more likely to lead to political action or inaction. (Action good, inaction bad.)

* * * * *

The important thing to realise about any given element of Marxist theory is: there is always an agenda. However abstract or obscure a component theory may seem, there is likely to be a political purpose driving it.
   To attempt to understand a Marxist theory purely on its own terms — as though it is only about what it seems to be about — is futile. Most of the theories of cultural Marxism can only be properly understood by recognising what is driving them. The question to ask in each case is: what are the consequences of accepting that this theory or perspective is correct? How is accepting it likely to affect the way people see themselves, one another, their society, and the notion of government? Will acceptance of the theory facilitate the Marxist agenda?
   The pseudo-rebellious impression often generated by cultural-Marxist theorising — its air of 'anything is possible' or 'all speculations are allowed' — should be regarded as a deception. This impression of philosophical rebellion or playfulness is best interpreted as one of the tropes of Marxist theory. That is to say, it is a specific device, used to achieve a specific effect, while masquerading as something more genuine.
   Similarly, Marxism's attempts to gain the moral high ground, by exploiting sympathy for less privileged social groups, and implying that application of its ideas would improve matters for those groups ('implying' because, for good reasons, Marxists rarely spell out how precisely their ideal society will avoid differentials of privilege), should be seen as yet another political device, rather than as a theory intended to have correspondence with reality.

Extract from the forthcoming book The 12 tropes of cultural Marxism.

cultural Marxism — the Article

My posts on cultural Marxism are now available as an article. Readers already familiar with them may wish to jump to the concluding remarks, which are new.
   My hope is that there is scope for 'deprogramming' some of the many people who have been brainwashed with cultural-Marxist ideology at university, or at least that the numbers being added annually to the population of the brainwashed may start to decline.
   Sections 8 and 9 of the article are extracts from the forthcoming book, The 12 tropes of cultural Marxism: Unmasking 'Critical Theory', which is expected to be published later this year or early next.
   Thanks to the readers who sent feedback to myself and to my colleague Dr Celia Green.