Polygamy and the Obedient Wives Club (OWC)

I came across this e-mail recently, and thought it worth sharing. It publicises an Islamic talk on polygamy, to be held in West London today. It’s a raw expression of attitudes within quite traditional societies – pretty hilarious and somewhat cringe-worthy too. As the saying goes, you can’t make this shit up. Enjoy!

CAN THE OBEDIENT WIVES CLUB (OWC) - aka THE POLYGAMY CLUB WORK IN THE UK?

A debate and discussion with Brother M Ali and both his wives [Founding members of the Global Ikhwan Polygamy Club]

Date: Wednesday 23rd November 2011

Time: 6.30 pm – 8.00 pm

Venue: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL

In July this year, Global Ikhwan, a group based in Malaysia launched, with great controversy, the "Obedient Wives Club (OWC)", with admirable intentions to curb various social ills, including prostitution and gambling, by showing Muslim wives how to "be submissive and keep their spouses happy in the bedroom". The understanding is that this, in turn, would lead to more harmonious marriages and societies.

"In Islam, if the husband wants sex and the wife is not in the mood, she has to give in to him. If not, the angels will curse her. This is not good for the family." (Mrs Dr Darlan Zaini, literature professor and co-founder of OWC)

"If we provide our husbands [with] more than a prostitute can give, then he will not go out looking for it. Men are by nature polygamous, we hear of many men having the ‘other woman,’ affairs and prostitution because for men, one woman is not enough. Polygamy is a way to overcome social ills such as this.” (Dr Rohaya Mohamad, medical doctor and 3rd wife of Mohamad Ikram Ashaari)

Global branches have now opened in Australia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Indonesia and now London. With a huge "Muslim spinster" crisis, and increasingly large numbers of divorced women with children, could this be a solution for women in the UK and help stop Muslim men ordering their "mail order brides" from the Muslim world as well as curb their secret weekend retreats, made easy thanks to EasyJet and Ryanair?

Apparently, the above Dr Rohaya Mohamad also declared that by becoming a “good whore …to your husband” and serving him “better than a first-class prostitute”, women could help "curb social ills like prostitution, domestic violence, human trafficking and abandoned babies" – all of which she attributed to unfulfilled sexual needs. – see the Guardian.

Weird things are happening in Malaysia and the Far East – first the cult of the Islamic Gold Dinar (to replace the imperialist invention that is paper currency) and now this. These champions of polygamy appear to have also published a book entitled “Islamic Sex: Fighting Jews to Return Islamic Sex to the World.” Now, I know that Jews are very good at business and moneylending, but sex as well! For those not familiar, an imagined Jewish threat is pretty much an article of faith among zealously orthodox Muslims. It’s in the history and in the present of course. In the comedy film, Four Lions, a car breakdown was blamed on a conspiracy of ‘Jewish spark plugs’! Naturally also, some Muslims and many Islamic organisations want to ‘Islamize’ everything (by their own admission). From Islamic banks and mortgages to Islamic environmentalism and Islamic ethics, Islamic social sciences, the “Islamization of knowledge” programme in the US, Islamic holidays, and now Islamic sex, we have it all.

The subject of polygamy seems to have headlined in the Arab Spring too. Back in October, in a set-piece speech and with the world’s media looking on, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, head of the interim government in Libya, said a strange thing. He declared that polygamy would be allowed, as per the Sharia, and that existing restrictions on it would be lifted. Quite why this was so important to him remains a mystery. His intention may have been to appease the small but vocal Islamists – in which case it reminds us (as in Pakistan) that this is what matters most to the religious establishment. Not democracy or freedom, for these are man-made concepts, but polygamy, triple talaq (divorce), stoning women, etc.

Lessons from the Arab Spring: Egypt

Almost a year on since the Arab Spring began with Tunisia in December 2010 it appears to be kinda fizzling out now. (…those dreaded words that no one wants to say). Sadly, while great changes are afoot in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the regimes in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen look to have survived, for the moment. The latter group are far from stable of course, and sooner or later another wave of uprisings will occur for sure, if not next year then sometime in the next decade perhaps. And while it doesn’t sound very exciting to speak of decades, unfortunately that’s how long it takes. Historically, momentous changes are measured in epochs and generations, not months. So anyway, this moment seems as good as any, to round up my musings over the last year and summarise a couple of important lessons, starting with this posting on Egypt.

Lesson 1 says that please, please, please, can we finally drop this notion that America and the Western powers install and maintain dictators in the Middle East. The fact is that America, as the largest power ever known to man, has next to no influence or leverage. We saw this during the Egyptian uprising where American rhetoric followed (i.e. was led by) what was happening in the streets in Cairo and Alexandria. The Egyptian people themselves made it happen, which I’m sure we can all agree on, except for the most habitual of conspiracy theorists. The bit that people find harder to accept, however, is that the prior stability of the regime was also down to the Egyptian people – that they didn’t sufficiently want change or weren’t sufficiently capable of demanding it. It should be obvious, if one just thinks about it, that the political and cultural climate in any country is a reflection primarily of the economic structures of that society, not of outside forces. Mubarak had power because the Egyptian people were relatively weak. And while the West does business with whoever is in power, that isn’t the same as saying the West is primarily responsible for propping them up. It is worth remembering that despotic regimes ruled unequal societies of the Middle East (as everywhere else in the world) for centuries and millennia, well before the West was around to supply them with guns and money.

Lesson 2 is that economic freedom, or in other words free-market economics, is a necessary condition for real (or sustainable) revolutions – notwithstanding the tendency to associate revolutions with socialism or Marxism. European history demonstrates that successive changes in the social and political order went hand-in-hand with a bottom up economic empowerment of the lower classes – note the rise of the merchant class or middle classes. In Egypt then, it wasn’t so much the grinding poverty of the masses, but the disenfranchised yet capable, well-to-do that were a key ingredient in a successful uprising. Whereas decades of violent opposition from the Muslim Brotherhood had failed miserably, what we saw in 2011 was a rather more enlightened group of revolutionaries who knew how to get both the local population and the international community on side, and indeed how to annoy the hell out of a dictator and then make him look feeble. Mubarak’s mistake was to have let this group of well-to-do Egyptians prosper without fully co-opting them into the state machinery, whereas previous Egyptian rulers over the centuries had been adept at nullifying any emergent independently wealthy class. Yet, it wasn’t Mubarak’s dong either. In a sense, relentless trade and globalisation over many decades was dragging Egypt and its masses, as in almost every country in the world, ever so gradually, until at some stage a political awakening of the masses just had to come about.

Still, the scourge of collectivism remains. What we have now is an incremental and rather unsatisfactory rate of reform (with much disillusionment in Egypt as I write), and this is really not surprising at all, for the economic power balances and the cultural make-up of Egypt have barely shifted. As such, they do not warrant a real revolution. The military has always been the real obstacle rather than Mubarak himself, and the reason for this is their owning much of the country’s resources. Vast tracts of agricultural land, leading industrial and manufacturing plants, construction companies, Red Sea resorts, are all owned by the military top brass – which is by far the largest economic power base and dubbed as an ‘economy within an economy’. These guys might grudgingly allow elections, but real capitalistic free-market competition? Don’t think so. Then we have the Muslim Brotherhood, ostensibly pro-market right now, though I suspect only because they are the economic outsiders at present, while ultimately a centralising ideology lurks in their psyche. Finally, we have the secularists, be they political figures or grass roots revolutionaries, who largely subscribe to socialist ideas. These are the people who see great benefit in nationalised industries (a sure path to corruption, centralised power and yet another dictatorship), minimum wages, price controls/subsidies and generally supporting the dependent classes (as opposed to empowering them), and they see no great problem in a bunch of elites drafting a new constitution.

Basically, a libertarian culture hasn't really taken hold in Egypt, and so the counter forces of centralisation threaten to make this a one-time-only revolution, as we’ve seen in Communist and socialist experiments elsewhere (not least in the post-colonial Middle East and North Africa). As Friedrich Hayek observed of 20^th century Europe (The Road to Serfdom), it is rather strange that so many people think they can have political freedom without economic freedom.

Islamic extremism & moderate Muslims: Is there really any difference?

As a committed Muslim myself, my answer to this question is sadly, and to put it bluntly, NO. Community leaders and commentators, the mainstream media, as well as Western governments, however, are all at pains to make the distinction that suicide bombers do not represent the majority of peaceful and law-abiding Muslims. Mainstream media and governments recognise that it would be counterproductive and irresponsible to speak of a problem with Islam or all Muslims – rather terrorists are a minority who hold extreme views, they say. But what about the voice, or the sentiments, of moderate Muslims themselves? Well, this is quite revealing when we give it some attention.

In the aftermath of 9/11, I recall in Britain’s Muslim community a mix of stunned silence and moreover a denial that Muslims even carried out this attack. Conspiracy theories aside (about the American military industrial complex or the CIA orchestrating a war), it was primarily just a reflex defensiveness. Conspiracy theories grew of course, and persist today, even while further suicide bombings and near misses/failed attempts are occurring virtually every week. More to the point, however, there was hardly a noticeable wave of condemnation of the 9/11 attack from Muslim community leaders here in Britain. It wasn’t until the bombings arrived right at home, with the 7/7 attacks in 2005, that Muslims seemed to wake up somewhat and voices against terrorism started to be heard. Beneath this half-hearted disapproval though, a wall of silence come denial pervades. Indeed, I believe that the majority of orthodox Muslims are unable to challenge the extremist worldview and rather share much of that worldview themselves. If some people are prepared to kill in the name of their belief, and many are drawn into such action, then it is because there is a fertile breeding ground in wider Muslim society.

The first thing is that no serious discussion has taken place among Muslim groups and communities about the issue. No attempt to identify the ideological source of the problem, or the many factors that feed into it, or that it’s even a problem. One can present alternative verses of the Qur’an to make the opposite case from violence, as has been done. But since it is possible to invoke the Qur’an on polar opposite views on virtually any subject, this becomes a sterile exercise in the end. Likewise, I find it pointless when, for example, it is said that terrorists misinterpret a particular verse of the Qur’an (about killing the Jews and the enemy) and take it out of context, and that this is apparently why they are persuaded by violence. This text-obsessed discourse (being part of the problem really) overlooks human nature and the real world, in so far as those intent on seizing the military vanguard of Islam would have found one verse or another, one hadith or another, anyway. (Hadith are recollections of sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad).

Instead, a unison voice now repeats endlessly that the media is portraying Muslims in an unbalanced way, that ‘we’re not all terrorists’, that ‘we’re being unfairly vilified’, and that some (nonsense) thing called Islamophobia is on the rise. Now, defensiveness, complaining, and playing the victim, is all fine and well, if at least some genuine discussion of the internal problems was taking place in the background, but this is not so. Rather, the victim mentality is part of that denial.

As an aside, this victimhood is misplaced even on technical grounds. Muslims seem to think that coverage of terrorist bombings (and let’s be clear they do happen – a lot) and airtime on news channels for extremist nutters are unfairly depicting and stigmatising the rest of them. Defence of the reputation of Islam is basically all that Muslim voices have offered to the public discourse since this whole tragic episode began. But then again, since when did the media try to depict anything, on any subject, in a balanced way? Since when did the media talk about the average Joe who goes about his daily uneventful life? Also, why should Muslims be exempt from scrutiny? Do we think we are the only ones to be criticised? (Not that any real criticism has been levelled anyway). Why is it so hard for Muslims to understand, that scrutiny and debate is what the media is all about on a daily basis? Politicians are ridiculed all the time, environmentalists, pressure groups of all kinds, and business leaders are regularly grilled, and sleazy celebrities and sports stars are often vilified. Perhaps it is because a culture of public debate has always been absent from Muslim society (note the 1000+ years of authoritarian governments, authoritarian religious leaders, obedience within the family, etc) that when faced with a bit of critical analysis in the West it comes as a shock to the system. Perhaps this aversion to public debate is the very mechanism that prevents recognition of any problem within the Muslims or with their Islamic worldview.

As for this Islamic narrative or worldview, it basically says that the Western powers are trampling all over the Muslims world, something that began with that great injustice of colonisation and which continues with neo-imperialism, oil-grabbing, and all manner of foreign policy interference. Another part of the narrative is that Islam is unique, different to the West, and the divine imperative means that its laws must be established if not globally then in Muslim lands at least. These two are the basic, most critical, ingredients for a suicide bomb. Upon only a little reflection it should also be clear that both are cornerstone features of the Muslim worldview as far as the moderate majority is concerned – where a ‘them and us’ attitude is commonplace. This narrative is part of the Muslim DNA, and the strength of the grievance in particular can’t be emphasised enough, as it tends to overwhelm the conscience and the rational faculties, the more Islamic one becomes.

This is also well established in the Shari’ah, whose spirit we cannot do without we are told (and which emerging governments in Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere say the law should be derived from). Notice the classic apartheid of dar-al-Islam and dar-al-harb (the abode of Islam vs the abode of war), the millennia of discouraging Muslims from venturing into foreign lands or just mixing with non-Muslims anywhere, the lower legal status and discrimination of non-Muslims in business contracts, the ‘protectionism’ of prohibiting mixed-religion marriage, etc. The Shari’ah, as we know it, is rife with parochialism, insularity, assumed truth and superiority, and very much about conflict with other worlds. Things are always to do with religion, and all demarcations of right and wrong, good and bad, are synonymous with Muslim and non-Muslim, while actual values and their meanings seem to have fallen off the radar completely. To a degree this shouldn’t be surprising, since the Shari’ah came about at a time of imperial military expansion – i.e. a common Medieval war-mentality that became permanently institutionalised.

The full consequence of all this though – not only opposition to the West and persecution of Christian minorities in Muslim countries, but also an obsession with being the right kind of Muslim, leading to inter-Muslim sectarian violence virtually everywhere around the world (bombings of mosques, Shia’ pilgrims, Sufi shrines, assassinations of reformists, secularists, difficult politicians, etc). Differences and arguments are settled with a denunciation as kufr (un-belief) and a mere sigh of disapproval towards religious/cultural norms often attracts a death warrant. It seems the more Islamic you become, the more you take your faith seriously, the more you have to hate others, including other Muslims, and so the Muslim capacity for lawlessness has become legendary. There were of course free-thinking and liberal movements in the Muslim world, but the above is basically the orthodoxy that the masses of poor illiterate Muslims embraced from the 8^th century onwards.

Back to the present, there is much that I could say here, on whether Muslim problems are really because of foreign meddling or because of their own failures, but there isn’t the space in this posting. I would simply repeat that the majority are unable to counter the extremists effectively, are often reluctant to anyway, indeed sympathise with it, because they hold much the same views. For example, it is common to find the view, even if it isn’t always said aloud, that America basically got what it deserved. One cannot raise the al-Qaeda or Bin Laden question among many Muslims without immediately being met with, ‘well the British did this and that to us, the Americans are always after their own interests, how is it any different from American warplanes killing thousands of innocent Muslims, or America’s continuing support for Israel’, and so on. There is also a great sympathy and admiration that Bin Laden at least tried to stand up for Muslims. His heart was in the right place, they say.

Strong popular sentiment doesn’t stay hidden, and this was well and truly confirmed by two prominent Islamist figures recently. In a BBC Panorama programme in May 2011, Professor Khurshid Ahmad, deputy leader of the Jamat-i-Islami in Pakistan, and a disciple of Mawdudi, said that he felt “shock” and “grief” at the killing of Osama Bin Laden and that Bin Laden was a “martyr”. The Jamat, along with the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East, are the foremost and supposedly moderate of Islamic movements globally. Khurshid Ahmad’s sympathies shouldn’t be surprising perhaps coming from a religious leader in that ancient hotbed of religious fervour, and a consequent failing state, that is Pakistan. [See the Talibanisation of Pakistan]

More interesting, however, is that he had spent some four decades or so, in and out of the UK, having established and led the Islamic Foundation in Leicester since 1973 – the Islamic Foundation is the intellectual home of the largest Islamist movement here. Along with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Pakistani Jamat trains thousands of community activists in the UK who in turn take up positions in many mosques and organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). And it is these mainstream organisations that the British government and media looked to when it sought a voice of the moderates that would, in partnership, condemn and marginalise the extremists. The MCB and others duly obliged, but with customary ambiguity in their pronouncements and a distinct lack of action at the grass roots.

Khurshid Ahmad himself, by the way, is a leading contributor to the field knows as Islamic Economics, both by his own writings and in mobilising the resources of the Islamic Foundation as the premier global publishing house on the subject. Islamic Economics is basically about why the ‘Islamic economic system’, where God-given rules are established (mainly the prohibition of interest), is different and indeed superior, to the Western capitalist system. This is about resistance to the imperialist world order of the West, and it is basically the ‘intellectual’ wing of Islamism.

The other prominent Islamist figure I alluded to is Dr Kamal Helbawy, European spokesman no less, for the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed a founder of the MCB. At about the same time, Dr Helbawy expressed much the same view as Khurshid Ahmad, when he referred to Bin Laden as ‘a great Mujahid’ (often translated as ‘holy warrior’). His admiration for Bin Laden is evident when he also said “We appreciate him as a rich man living in KSA who left this luxurious life and moved to a hard life in mountains and caves. He helped his Afghan brethrens and participated in Afghan jihad effectively” and further “I ask Allah to have mercy upon Osama Bin Laden, to treat him generously, to enlighten his grave, and to make him join the prophets, the martyrs, and the good people.” Dr Helbawy’s views on terrorism are further illuminated when he said “I think that what the Americans claim about September 11th was a trick and a bait they accused Al-Qaeda of. All evidences and indications refer that the Americans are the ones who planned this matter.” [Sources: here and here]

I should re-iterate, however, that you don’t need to be an Islamist to sympathise with Bin Laden. The narrative as I mentioned has deep roots in Muslim society the world over. Thus, what is considered extremism in the headlines is really an expression of the mainstream Muslim mindset – one that continues to blame the West long after colonial days, and is still unwilling to question any of its own sacrosanct premises or its basic interpretations of Islam. 1000+ years of inability to self-review on the one hand, and now cultural resistance to the West on the other, are two sides of the same coin. Both give rise to suicide bombings as an absolute response, because both instincts are held absolutely. It is the ‘immovable object’ meeting the ‘irresistible force’ of modernity. The former has a long track record of survival, however, establishing in the process a powerful self-defence mechanism permeating its masses. It will thus fight back for sure.

So there we are. Someone had to say it.

Financial meltdown, anti-Capitalism, and #OccupyWallStreet

Right grievances but wrong solutions?

Not as dramatic as Tahrir Square in Cairo or street-to-street gun battles in Libya or on-going heroic uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East, the occupiers of Wall Street, now replicated all over the US and the world, could well effect a more profound shift in global politics than even the Arab Spring. Indeed, as the US economy and the EU, particularly the Eurozone, stagnates, and with rising unemployment and inflation, I think civil unrest in the West is likely to escalate for months to come, if not years. Could it even be the beginning of the end?

In view of this widespread feeling of anger, resentment and disillusionment, I thought it worth reviewing the financial meltdown of 2008, its causes, and its persistence. In particular, should we really blame the bankers, and should we pressure our governments into reigning back capitalism, as some of the ‘occupy’ protesters might want? I do think the broader sentiment of the occupiers is more sensible than that, and more nuanced and reflective of the complexity of problems we face. Much of the grievance seems real and justified (crony capitalism particularly involving the banking sector), but the proposed solutions could still be wrong. Emotive issues of inequality and social justice, for instance [“We are the 99%”], often lead to calls for more government involvement/intervention and less job creating private sector activity, which is seriously counterproductive. So, for the purposes of this post, let’s focus on why the 2008 meltdown happened and why its consequences are so persistent and manifest – and therefore, who should take the flak, the bankers or the government or us.

Though it all seems a bit murky, elusive, and getting more multifaceted by the minute with the Greek debt crisis, I will try to get down to the bare basics. First thing to acknowledge is that boom and bust is normal, and specifically, asset prices (stocks, property) will always, now and again, become inflated and deflated. Why? Because no one knows what is the ‘true’ or sustainable value of a particular firm’s stock or of a 3-bedroom house in Golders Green. As potential buyers we speculate, we try to get in on the action when things are cheap, and we get anxious and exuberant in equal measure when prices are rocketing. Many of us will remember the run up to late-2008 if we were trying to buy a house. It was the height of the bubble and yet more and more of us piled in, if not in exuberance, then at least not to get left behind. And of course the peak is only known in hindsight. Now put yourself in the shoes of stock market investors and traders, and you’ll see that it is much the same. As much as we may try to depict them as gamblers, they are fundamentally like us. They overstretched themselves in the financial markets like we overstretched ourselves in mortgages and credit card debt. Basically, we are all human with limited knowledge of things.

Now for that obscure thing called CDOs (Collateralised Debt Obligations), which are said to be at the heart of the 2008 crisis. Such financial innovations are now popularly denigrated as being a means for deceiving investors with sheer complexity. The CDOs we’re talking about here are those which take a bunch of mortgages (loans made by US mortgage lenders) lump them together into one bundle, then split them up into several tranches categorised by things like types and grades of repayment risk and priority of payments. These tranches are then sold on to other investors, each according to their taste - i.e. which tranches they prefer.

That said, we don’t need to know the nuts and bolts of CDO’s (thankfully) because the problem isn’t really the product itself or its complexity. New and complex products come out all the time and investors get used to them after a while. For instance, the very act of issuing or selling a company share was itself a completely unknown and perceptibly dangerous innovation many centuries ago. Indeed, innovation is the lifeblood of modern dynamic economies and by its nature it presents new challenges - i.e. instability. In any case, I also find it hard to believe that investors with billions at stake, including pension funds and global banks, didn’t know that these CDOs contained high risk sub-prime mortgages.

Rather, I think the truth of the crash lies in something else commentators have mentioned – irrational exuberance – though with the emphasis on exuberance, because it’s not really that irrational. Investors were willing to pay over the odds for these CDOs and much else besides, meaning also they were willing to tolerate higher risk, because this was a bull market and the bull had been running a head of steam for quite a few years. It’s no different to the ordinary property investor or hopeful homeowner willing to pay, or having to pay, over the odds for a house in 2008 – remember, you didn’t want to get left behind.

So markets go up and down, but what actually happened was more than that. It was a massive correction which led to a lasting economic slump and sharply rising unemployment. This needs explaining, and here we come to the role of us (society), government, and regulators. The thing is, catastrophe occurs when a lot of things go wrong at the same time, not when you have just one or two mistakes like sub-prime mortgages and exuberant finance. It’s like when you’re driving along and you momentarily take your eye off the road, reaching for the stereo or something. That’s mistake no.1 and you would often get away with it. But then suppose at the same time a nearby parked car has its door open right in your path. A collision may ensue. Yet even then, you could often swerve and avoid it so a collision is still not inevitable. Suppose then another parked car on the opposite side of the road opens its door at the same time as well, or perhaps there is a traffic island in the middle of the road preventing you from swerving! Now a collision is almost certain. Thus, catastrophe occurs when many things go wrong simultaneously.

Back to the economy then, what else went wrong in this perfect storm? Well, banks weren’t adequately regulated, and in particular retail banking (the bit that handles ordinary savings) wasn’t adequately protected or ring-fenced from investment banking where risky dealings are commonplace. Put another way, many of Britain’s biggest banks were stupid to put ordinary savings at risk by dealing in sub-prime mortgage backed securities (CDOs) and related debt, and not keeping them separate, while regulators were even more stupid in letting this happen. Quite bizarre then that while the FSA (Financial Services Authority) insists on checking-up on every single transaction, and every single client phone-call, in every small financial advisory firm that it grants a license to, it didn’t notice any of the daylight transgressions of the big banks. To clarify, I certainly wouldn’t call for more regulation, because the industry is far too overregulated anyway, preventing small players from entering the market and depriving small investors of investment advice and a decent range of affordable products. What was lacking was proper regulation, and proper enforcement of regulation, for the big banks.

Finally another failure was very much down to all of us. I say us rather than the government because we voted for Labour’s tax and spend policy, thinking well, more teachers and doctors and police, great. For a long time we probably didn’t see that it was old Labour, same as the one that was unelectable at the time of Neil Kinnock, because Tony Blair’s premiership gave it a reforming, pro-market, veneer. But underneath it was Gordon Brown presiding over tax credits reaching families earning £50,000 a year, skyrocketing public sector spending and employment, and the ‘discovery’ of a new phenomenon called child poverty (as distinct from parents’ poverty!). Ultimately, when you spend, spend, spend, you don’t have enough to deal with a rainy day. And the economy, with its private sector stifled, isn’t in a position to grow when it most needs to. Consequently today, we find ourselves amidst this great debate as to whether the government should cut its spending, continue as before, or whether it should increase spending instead, if the economy is to grow again. It is telling, however, that for the Labour party, spending on the public sector is to be increased in both good times and in bad. There is something seriously wrong with this approach. So this, in a nutshell, completes my thoughts on why the car crash of 2008 has had such a lasting impact. It is our fault really.

As an addendum, I also mean to say that it is not the bankers’ fault. All this populist banker bashing is ill-conceived I think, hence a couple of things are well worth clarifying. First, we must take the bad with the good. The same bankers were there during the prior decade-long boom and we didn’t complain then. We wanted to bank that, so to speak, but it seems we don’t want to take responsibility for the downside when it inevitably follows. Remember, both the boom and the bust come as a package – together. Second, contrary to much perception, we’re not helping out the banks. We bailed them out, not because we felt sorry for them, but we did it for ourselves. When banks collapse, and a run occurs, it is we who lose out, and we prevented that. I’m not a banker by the way. I’m just concerned that we’re getting the whole analysis wrong.

As a second addendum, admittedly I’ve only spoken about the UK circumstances on what is really a global issue. If we consider the US, two more important circumstances arise: (i) the rush to sell mortgages to people who clearly didn’t have the means (i.e. sub-prime), and (ii) some of the top bankers, so-called experts, and government, all in cahoots with each other. Let’s be clear, both of these are a failure of government, not really of capitalism per se. It was government that forced a financially irrational over-selling of mortgages, and it was government that succumbed to cosy relationships with bankers. It follows that what we need is less government involvement, more transparency, effective regulation, separation of government and corporations. In the less developed world, usually there is no distinction between government and big business (they do deals with each other and are often the same people), and look what it does to those countries – they have crippling levels of corruption and even armed rivalry for political power. So let us not ask for this. Let us not ask for governments to nationalise industries, or tax more and spend more. We need government to stay out of things and let the job-creating private sector function properly as it ought to.

Self-righteous friends of the poor

For many of us fortunate enough to be among the affluent of this world, we carry a certain burden of conscience. A conscience that compels us to volunteer for community services, make regular charitable donations, even go off to remote and deprived parts of the world to lend a hand, and do what we can. This is part of being human, and those who make great sacrifices for the sake of others deserve great respect.

What I wish to spotlight here is not those well-meaning efforts, however, but a strand of Western society and its discourse, replicated all over the world, which claims to be, more than anyone else, the true friend of the poor. It monopolises the ‘social justice’ rhetoric, and probably most of us associate with it at one time or other. Yes, this is the liberal-left, without whose political and cultural leadership we would all descend back into selfish savagery, like cavemen… so it goes.

We see this in the widely held view, for instance, that Labour represents poor people and Tories represent the (tax-evading) rich. It also manifests in well-established institutions, be it welfare benefits, minimum wages, foreign aid, labour laws, high tax-and-spend government, and so on. These are often popular things, as we’ve tended to vote for them time and again. They makes us feel good, satisfy our conscience, and for those leading the charge, they are a source of political moralising. For others such as myself, often at the receiving end of that moralising, it is hard to present a rational argument in opposition to many of these populist, and actually quite destructive policies (I shall explain why) without losing the emotional argument from the off. Those on the political left are said to be the good guys and if one doesn’t agree with their ideas and sing the same hymns, then one must be selfish, uncaring or even culturally un-progressed.

To turn all of this on its head now, I shall talk about why the liberal-left, and with it much of our collective thinking on social justice, is itself little more than self-interest and elitist indulgence. Note that what follows is only a quick sketch, since this is just a blog not an essay. Undoubtedly, I haven’t explained my ideas and premises to the full.

Exhibit A is welfare dependency. It is one thing helping the most vulnerable, but quite another for large segments of the population to be living on government support. For millions, welfare is a lifestyle and a frame of mind inherited from generation to generation, rather than seen as a transition back to something better. The obvious results are ghettos and run-down council estates, while less obviously, depression of the psyche and stupefying of the intellect. The sons and daughters of council tenants, by sheer normality, aspire to their own council homes and find little else in the way of inspiration. The key thing to notice here is that the poor stay poor and dependent on the wealthy middle class – thus social structures stay as they are. I contrast this with the other model of society where enterprising people are rewarded with wealth and power such that existing social structures are constantly challenged by newcomers, upstart seekers of their fortune. Here, people are active, assume responsibility, and they do stuff. This is the model we had built over many centuries and which gave us the Industrial Revolution in the first place. This is how the modern world came about… and it happened well before the welfare state came about. My latter points probably aren’t self-evident and unfortunately they require more background explanation than I have space for here. Perhaps it is for another blog post if there is popular demand.

Exhibit B is foreign aid. In recent years, credible voices have emerged questioning the value of aid (Dambisi Moyo, Sorious Samura, Paul Collier, William Easterly), since little of it actually reaches the people it is intended for, and where it does it makes them permanently dependent on support, it inflates the cost of delivering that aid, it kills off domestic markets and prices, much of it is siphoned off by corrupt government officials and politicians and thereby ends up strengthening the very corrupt institutions that cripple the country in the first place. Decades of development aid have had little discernible impact on development, according to research. Yet collectively we are averse to noticing this problem. One would think that the purpose of development aid is, well… development, yet an entire global industry of aid agencies and NGOs, as well as their patrons (that’s us), seems little interested in evaluating the outcomes of their effort. So I can only conclude that the outcomes – development or poverty alleviation – isn’t what really matters to us as a society, only that donating money, filling up clothes banks, and running NGOs, makes us feel good and upright. Once again, it appears the reason for doing it is our own sensibilities, and not really the interests of the poor.

Exhibit C you will likely find the most controversial one – climate change. I’m not saying there is no such thing as climate change. But certainly there is no such thing as pure science, since interpretation and political filters determine what emerges as public discourse.  To illustrate, suppose that we hand over all of the scientific data to say China and India… will they react to climate change in the same way we did? Emphatically, NO. Most of their people are still overwhelmingly poor, so economic growth is their priority. The corollary being that we in the West can fall in love with the environment, and many of us can speak of zero economic growth with a straight face, and of cutting back, because we can afford to (seemingly). What’s more, climate initiatives have made it harder, more expensive, for slum dwellers and destitute people in less developed countries to obtain electricity for instance. Some of our hallowed middle classes are even concerned about ‘food miles’ – that our food imports rack up a monstrous carbon footprint in transit – so they would have us stop imports and grow our own tomatoes and oranges. The idea of self-sufficiency has become fashionable again. But they appear unconcerned with the fact that this would cost us more, use up more resources, and indeed have a higher carbon footprint as studies have shown. Incredibly, they are also quite happy to obliterate the livelihoods of peasant farmers and pickers in Africa, for the sake of their environmental sensibilities.

Exhibit D is the anti-GM crops movement and the broader organic movement, both environment related. Consider that there is no evidence of harm from GM products, and that on the basis of a superstitious fear – that we don’t know what will happen in the future if GMs proliferate (as if we were ever able to predict the future anyway) – we’ve effectively prohibited poor African nations from taking advantage of this technology to raise their crop yields. [See The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley]. More broadly, we yet again oppose technology and innovation. Note that technology tends to benefit the poor more than the rich (factories and mass production, telecommunications, motorised transport, air travel, electricity, washing machines, the internet, i-phones/Apple, twitter, etc etc). As for organic potatoes, it is fine for those who can afford it. It’s nothing more than saying we would like superior (organic) products and we’re willing to pay for it. But if we haughtily present it as social and cultural progress, then it becomes altogether more dangerous. Humans have been altering plants and animals since we first learnt to domesticate them, and over the subsequent thousands of years all of these plants and animals have changed beyond recognition from their original form (their wild ancestors). We did this to make food supplies more certain, and more available, for progressively more of us. The fact is that our rational modifications are what supplies potatoes and chicken at incredibly cheap prices – benefitting you know who – the poor.

Exhibit E is anti-capitalism and anti-economic growth, whereby we proudly oppose big business, for instance, supposedly in solidarity with the common man. Small is beautiful, save the local grocers, and so on. We seem to be unaware that large companies employ the vast majority of people, paying their wages and paying the taxes to fund our welfare state (the alternative being mass unemployment and all that goes with it). Or that a progressively expanding scale of enterprise is what delivered the Industrial Revolution in the first place, or that free economic competition is the only way existing economic powers and social structures face challenge, or indeed that we the ordinary people actually own these large companies – they are not separate entities. They are large precisely because being listed on stock markets they’ve raised capital from a nationwide pool of investors. Through our direct investment or via pension funds and insurance funds, it is we who own them. Once again, the mechanism that empowers ordinary people and upstart entrepreneurs, and which challenges the status quo through economic dynamism and competition, is something that our liberal elites would put a stop to. It means that whoever is the biggest don around at the time of the liberal-left revolution stays the biggest don forever after, since no more innovation and growth is allowed. How convenient. Interesting also that the same liberal elite tend to think that money and wealth isn’t important. ‘Let’s focus on other more meaningful aspects of human development’, they say. This is truly the indulgence of the rich.

By now the major themes should be obvious. (1) Present social structures shouldn’t be disrupted – meaning that the middle class folk of today don’t wish to be overtaken by any future generations of upstart hard workers. This is ensured by welfare dependency, anti-technology, anti-growth, and anti-capitalism. (2) Self-interest of the rich pretending to be an enlightened friend of the poor and saviour of humanity in general. Indeed, all this is in keeping with the historical pattern, from classical antiquity to the feudal Middle Ages. Aristotle and his fellow Greek philosophers are well known for their snobbery towards traders and merchants. Throughout the Middle Ages too, the landed aristocracy looked down upon merchants (the ordinary people trying to get by and get on) to the point of the latter’s activities being the stuff of social stigma. Reviled Jewish moneylenders were an extreme case but they weren’t the only social outcasts. Today then, it is the English middle class and some of their cousins elsewhere in the Western world who define good and bad for the rest of us. As always, the elite are powerful opinion shapers, for they have convinced voters in deprived regions of Britain as well as leaders of the less developed world that they are with them, when they are really for themselves, as is eternally human nature. Call it my instinctive cynicism.

Crippled by the EU

It seems that politicians are loath to trust the voters on this question of whether Britain should be part of the European Union. A referendum is still denied, even by the present Conservative-led government. They fear (correctly) that the issue is beyond comprehension for most and that the public would end up making a rather ill-informed choice, most probably with a NO. So let us be clear about what’s happening instead – political leaders want to proceed with an undemocratic YES, whereupon important constitutional, legal, and administrative institutions take shape at the discretion of an elite, who are called policymakers. It begs the question also, how did European integration come to be so large an issue and so impenetrable? When was it more manageable in the past, if ever, and how come it quickly snowballed without consultation? People don’t naturally jump head first into something they don’t know much about, so in this sense a NO is the natural and very sensible answer.

Indeed, if the situation just described doesn’t ring alarm bells, it jolly well should. We should ask ourselves what has happened consistently in the past, and still today all over the world, when the people acquiesce to an elite and things get out of hand. Basically, I am about to describe why European integration is a bad idea, and you will find that things like individual liberty and economic prosperity are at stake, more so than national sovereignty. Certainly, this isn’t about such trivialisations as xenophobic attitudes or having the Queen’s head on our currency.

The early-modern period in continental Europe was marked by a stampede of dictatorships – Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco – they being the inevitable products of a collectivist popular mindset, whereupon power runs away from people into hands of elite ‘policymakers’. Half a century on from the last of these dictatorships, a collectivist and centralising instinct still persists, however, and its destructive force is just as potent. It now takes the form of social-democracy (a contradiction of terms if ever there was one), the European Union project and the Euro. And because of this Europe is once more on the brink of collapse.

The financial meltdown of 2008 and the on-going Greek tragedy were/are like a car crash waiting to happen.  To explain, it is possible that one could zoom around the highways at excessive speed and nothing will happen for a long time, so much so that one doesn’t feel one is doing something wrong. But the reality is that sooner or later a spectacular and tragic collision will occur for sure. Both crises are also perhaps a blessing in disguise, a wake-up call. For instance, we would not have known that the previous Labour government in the UK was spending far too much and the discipline wasn’t there to cushion us against a bust when it eventually arrived. And what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger right? In the UK we at least appear to be learning, as the public does now recognises the need for fiscal discipline.

As for the EU and the Eurozone (monetary union), however, our continental neighbours show no sign of any learning. To a large degree neither do we on the matter. The Greek situation, in fact, is part of a bigger problem, for which a more appropriate analogy is required. This is the proverbial frog placed in a pan of water that is gradually heated to a boil, and the frog dies having never noticed his predicament. He doesn’t notice because it happened all too slowly. Thus, more deadly than the present Greek situation and virtually undetected, is the universally suffocating effect of political and fiscal union, the EU project itself. It goes undetected because our so called intellectuals – the broadsheet commentators, business leaders, elected officials – have been totally conditioned by the fact of the EU’s existence, incapable of seeing the bigger picture. And yes, this is about the EU itself, not just the Euro.

When the Euro was first adopted in 1999 its pros and cons were hotly debated. I remember a job interview where I was asked to explain if I was for or against it. Put simply, the major advantage was said to be currency stability and better price comparison, which would allow businesses to operate more easily across borders, thereby improving trade and competition. As tourists also, we have to say that the convenience of a common currency has improved our travel experiences, though Switzerland is still a pain.

The major disadvantage of the Euro was said to be diverging economic performances. If some Eurozone countries went into recession while the rest were in good health, or if some Eurozone countries tended to drag their feet compared to others (as with the North-South situation now), the laggards can expect little relief because monetary policy (interest rates) are set for the Eurozone as a whole and because currency devaluation is obviously not possible. This is what the Foreign Secretary William Hague recently described, reiterating his comments of 1998, as “a burning building with no exits”.

But important as these issues are, this isn’t even the half of it. Anyone vaguely familiar with the European mindset knows very well that neither the EU nor the Euro were pursued for economic reasons. The real reasons were political. I certainly concur, but I also think the stated political reasons hide a deeper motivation – something of a dark past and a fatal flaw in the European psyche – which afflicts the mainland continent more than Britain.

One of the stated reasons is that political union prevents war. Centuries of bitter and costly armed conflict, culminating in the two world wars of the modern age, have left Western Europeans with a nagging fear of recurring mutual destruction, apparently. This is rubbish, and I think many European policymakers themselves know that it is something of a pretext. We are now a long way from armed conflict within Western Europe because unprecedented economic growth in the last two centuries, along with the spread of democracy, have manifestly altered the cost-benefit calculation of war, to the point that it is just not worthwhile anymore. Can you imagine Germany trying to invade France again today!

The real reason for political union is the persistence of a collectivist mindset going back to the Middle Ages. In this time, the major countries of Continental Europe (e.g. France, Spain, and Germany) retained their absolute monarchies for much longer than did England. Reflecting a more rigid, more feudal, and less free society, economic growth was thus slower to take hold there. By contrast, an individualist and pro-commerce culture took hold more so in England, and initially in Holland, where arbitrary rule gave way to an emerging and powerful merchant class – a bottom up cultural and economic evolution. It is for this reason, among some others, that the Industrial Revolution, to which we owe the modern world, happened in England and not in France, Germany or Spain. Today, notice that socialism, the modern expression of that same collectivist culture, is much stronger in continental Europe than in Britain. And it is this instinct that compels our European neighbours to pursue such all-embracing and centralising projects as European Union with such vigour.

In defence of the EU project it is also said that a larger political and economic unit will help counterbalance and compete against other countries like China and the US. But this is another massive fallacy, as the same history alluded to above demonstrates. Before the modern world, for nearly a thousand years, city-states in Italy and then European nations competed against each other, often, but not primarily, by violent means. Entrepreneurs and commercial centres flourished where the political and legal climate was most favourable, so rulers competed to attract markets and fairs. The first direct consequence was the Italian Renaissance from the 1300s. Competition between states also led to political reforms, reforms in taxation and the management of public finances, most notably in Holland and then England, leading to what we now know as modern accountable government. With a consequent improvement in ‘rule of law’, security of life and property, and with bottom-up law-making (English common law), civil society institutions and business enterprises proliferated like never before, and they reached unprecedented scales of operation, delivering modern infrastructure and mass factory production.

None of this happened in China, a large entity ruled by a single imperial decree, which was left stuck in the Medieval world. At the risk of sounding nationalistic, let’s also be clear that it was from these conditions a tiny island nation arose, Britain, to become the largest imperial power the world ever knew, exceeding even China and India’s economic standards many times over.

Now let’s return to the European Union which basically seeks to be like China, with centralised law-making, monetary and fiscal union, and political unification in every important respect. Hopefully the fatal flaw is apparent now. In such a union, there is no incentive for any of the member states to pursue reforms in governance and law since there is no competitive advantage to be had. Instead, it is a race to the bottom to see who can become the most complacent and who can succumb the most to populist welfare-communism. This ‘moral hazard’ problem afflicts leading countries such as Germany and France, and not just the obvious free riders like Greece and Spain (not that Germany and France needed an excuse). There is also an absence of plurality in legal systems, which would have otherwise allowed for the testing of different laws in order to find the best ones.

What we have now in Europe is an extraordinary bureaucracy where (i) every country and every bank is to be bailed out, in what is a heroic denial of the reality that someone somewhere has to take the hit (and it ought to be the ones who made the mistakes), (ii) a pointless myriad of gains and losses, subsidies and contributions, exchange rate advantages and disadvantages, all of which bind member countries into a muddle of epic proportions, (iii) a top-down legal system of continental hallmark, a tried and failed system, is imposed on Britain, and (iv) an elaborate network of corrupt and largely unaccountable regional development funds is busy constructing its own empire.

The result in the immediate term is slower growth than would otherwise have been the case, and in the long term, stagnation, mainly as I say, due to this inherent disincentive to innovate. Imagine you are standing in the year 1750… and then the Industrial Revolution never happens. Would you subsequently miss it or wonder why it didn’t happen? Of course not, you would have no concept of it in the first place. Likewise, we don’t know just how much of a disaster the EU project is, since we have no concept of the alternative world we effectively gave up, until of course the project brings us finally to a grinding economic halt.

This is why it is a slow boil to a certain death. The collectivist disease still pervades the European mindset, and despite Britain’s initial hard work in bringing about the modern world, much of Europe is now hell bent on reversing it all. The moral of the story – population size doesn’t matter, because it’s the quality of your economic and political organisation that determines economic and military strength. Like the industrial transformation, another new world awaits discovery… but it will never happen as long as collectivism dominates our consciousness as it has done so often in prior human history. On present trends, however, it looks like destruction is on the cards, if not ensured by the present debt crisis, then by a stagnation that will be permanent and not just prolonged.