If I were to do a one-page obituary of the ‘good’ lady, what would I say? Many people would argue that Mrs Thatcher saved the country from the unions, and perhaps make mention of privatisation and monetarism. In fact when people praise Thatcher - apart from those in Eastern Europe - they generally say that she suppressed the power of the unions when these latter were ruining the country.
But others would say she did not in fact save the country: she saved it for the bankers, and the unions were simply trying to protect the workers from the banks: for nearly 25 years working people bore the brunt of ruinous economic policies such as keeping up the value of sterling, and acquiescing in terms dictated by the IMF, most notoriously in 1976. And thus workers, through their unions, were in a militant mood. And indeed they would say, rather than address the flawed economics creating this situation, Thatcher brought in doctrines to perpetuate what was basically in decline.
If I were to characterize conservatism, I might say
(i) They are the party of the greedy rich, who play upon people's fears and desire for a [flawed and pathetic] respectability. (left viewpoint)
(ii) They care for individual and protect them against big government, and support business big and small, who are the backbone of our economy. (right-wing viewpoint)
(iii) They claim, as in (ii), to care for the individual, but in practice this is an uneven playing field, which they defend and re-inforce with the full force of established authority. (centrist, with a mirror-image analysis of Labour and the unions)
(iv) [last but not least] They counsel caution and moderation against reckless popular demagoguery. (moderate)
Above are analyses of conservatism, which also seem to define those outside conservatism as well – in terms of perceptions. But if one is looking for a sure path to righteousness in the above, especially (i), they will not get it, since we have not looked here at the self-interest of other groups.
So what is Mrs Thatcher’s philosophy?
There is doubt as to whether she is really a Tory. The relatively left-wing Tory leader Harold MacMillan said that her directions were not Toryism, and it was he who coined the phrase ‘selling the family silver’. And in the Observer, 29 September 1982, Milton Friedman claimed that "the thing that people do not recognise is that Margaret Thatcher is not in terms of belief a Tory. She is a nineteenth-century Liberal."
In fact both she and the neo-liberals could be described as (ii) above, whereas MacMillan would fit into (iv) above, continuing a tradition from Disraeli through the Chamberlain family to the ‘Butskellites’ of the ’fifties. But no, she is not a liberal, in any sense, either economic or social. To demonstrate this let us look at her intuition and logic, and in identifying the differences with liberalism, I come out with perceptions I don’t think she and her followers would like at all.
So where did Mrs Thatcher follow her intuition, and where did she pursue logic?
In setting and pursuing her goals, she followed her intuition. But in her methods she was willing to be logical:
(i) Like logicians she set axioms, which seem to take the form greed is good, first and foremost. (There is a serious moral issue here which I shall address at the end of this article.) One might say that these axioms reflect her intuitions, which view any questioning of greed with suspicion. But there were no axioms in terms of long-term economics let alone long-term profit. In both respects the 19th Century liberals were more subtle.
(ii) Like good logicians, she knew how to formulate bad logic – which I discussed in the last Issue’s topic of Logic - and this she would use to arouse people’s fears, with scapegoats such as the ‘Enemy Within’.
Liberalism was outgoing, seizing opportunities, while conservatism tries to cling on to what they have. Cling on to Britain’s financial empire, and do so by fighting the perceived enemies, here unions and inflation. And here conservatives will lose because they are suppressing symptoms rather than constructively engaging with causes.
I have in the past displayed a model of exploitation, where technology is the strength of the exploiter, and fear and distortions are used against those exploited. But as often happened with conservatives, force, not fear and distortions, is used against the exploited, and fear and distortions are used to win over the exploiters. This might be described as ‘authoritarian populism’.
And because her axioms were so simplistic and short-sighted, they were in the end counter-productive. In effect, by running down industry in favour of finance, she killed the goose that was laying the golden eggs, and thus became the real Enemy Within. And so the long downhill road to the toxic loans.
Let us now look at the serious moral issue relating to the idea that greed is good. This is a crude account of the neo-liberal view that social justice is a problematic concept if it differs from market outcomes. One can indeed take such a view as axiomatic, but one might also say that this is not best treated as axiomatic, so much as a hypothesis that may be tested. It is like asking how far we have a valid analogy with the view that in an emergency you should put your own oxygen mask before putting them on other people. And in testing such a hypothesis ‘no animals should be harmed’ - nor humans.
But instead of testing such a hypothesis Mrs Thatcher has shown an absolute conviction in her own rightness: this convictionist approach seems to brush aside the idea that people might be harmed by other people’s greed, and in this matter one may argue that the lack of scientific testing is immoral.
Martin Prior
The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 47 'Open Topic'
The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 47 'Open Topic'
