Saturday 14 October 2023
Levelling Down
“Has he given up his money?” Sir Leonard asked scornfully.
“Not a bit of it! You’re not abreast of the times, dad. Socialism doesn’t mean levelling down, it means levelling up. Robert is waiting for them to level up!”
Vernon Loder – Death in the Thicket (1932)
It’s slightly odd to encounter a quote on levelling up from over ninety years ago. At the time it was a rhetorical response to conservative jibes that socialism was levelling down.
Even odder is a modern Conservative government making this old and weak rhetorical defence of socialism into government policy.
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2 comments:
In the early years of socialist theory, "levelling up" was probably a reasonable defence. Because Marx anticipated (i.e. speculated, theorised) that after the revolution, the enormous productive capacity of capitalist industry would be harnessed by democratic control. It was only after the news began to leak out of Russia that it was shown to be a falsified theory. It appears that without capitalism, societies become far less productive, and require state terror to make people work.
So yes, we are living in quite a socialist society....
Sam - it's the enforcement which is so damaging. If socialist policies cause more harm than good, the solution is almost always more enforcement rather than relax policy restrictions.
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