Comments on Tory Bear - right-wing political gossip: Never Been One For Blondes

I would find Blond's arguments easier to swall...

2009-11-28T03:45:52.428Z

I would find Blond's arguments easier to swallow were he to more frequently acknowledge his massive debt to Chesterton and Belloc's distributist programme.

TB is right not to be entirely enthused. But make ...

2009-11-27T01:03:51.306Z

TB is right not to be entirely enthused. But make no mistake about it, Blond is a genius. I think his ideas would be hard to turn into a white paper and get any paper derived from those ideas through parliament. (But I may be, and hope to be, proved wrong…) And what Blond proposes is a damn hard thing to communicate to the electorate.

Blonds is not “red” in the same way we know “red”, his ideas are mutualist rather than “state socialist”. Socialism without the state (coercion), essentially. This is significant because it is an aspect of socialism that has been neglected by the “left” for about sixty years and Blond is the first modern thinker to adapt it in any modern sense. Also, state socialism was never a true ideology of the working classes. Not by a long shot. The early “Labour Movement” (cooperatives, friendly societies etc.) was a mutualist movement. So Blond is right to proclaim himself the intellectual “heir” of the left. It was open for the steal.

What TB has just posted is Blond’s critique of the state and it is a Libertarian critique. Tim Evans, the President of the Libertarian Alliance, would agree word for word with the above as would most of the libertarians I know. There is a lot of overlap between libertarians, free market anarchists and mutualists/mutualist anarchists.

I personally do not think Blond goes far enough. For example in his healthcare plans (laid out in his publication “The Ownership State”) I think he should extend ownership or at least the responsibility of funding to patients (customers). But what is important to note is that not only are the “left” morally bankrupt but also they are intellectually bankrupt too. All the ideas, all the imaginative thinking about policy is coming from the “right” and a lot of it is not incompatible with a libertarian perspective.

Has Blond been reading The Kitchen, I wonder...? ...

2009-11-26T23:23:11.064Z

Has Blond been reading The Kitchen, I wonder...?

DK

I've been reading a biography of Mark Guy Pear...

2009-11-26T21:25:49.206Z

I've been reading a biography of Mark Guy Pearse, a 19th century Methodist preacher who became one of the early Christian socialists. It is truly illuminating to see what "socialism" meant to men like himself.

What he was doing was finding ways to help those in trouble in London. Those who had no friends to help, those who fell down the gaps. He raised funds from the churches to run little services to get men back on their feet. This, to him, was socialism; society helping each other. It did NOT mean armies of grey bureaucrats extorting 46% of all the earnings of the poor and bossing them around. It wasn't about hate-filled attacks on the middle-classes. It wasn't about locking up people who dared to object to fashionable vices, chosen specifically to be offensive to as many as possible. It wasn't about the bureaucrats owning everything.

It was just an extension of the principle that all decent people would want to help the unfortunate.

I suspect the distortion of socialism by Marxism has a great deal to answer for.

Surely there is room for a conservative socialism?

When I saw a picture of this chap headed 'red ...

2009-11-26T20:37:22.035Z

When I saw a picture of this chap headed 'red tory' with a sub heading saying David Cameron had promoted the opening of his think tank - I winced, put my head in my hands and ground my teeth. I couldn't bring myself to read the articles.

Having read your post however, I am cheered somewhat.

As a working class lad I loathe what Labour have done to the working class and the under class they have created which traps people and robs them of not just aspiration for a good standard of living - but robs them of hope altogether. I firmly believe that this is the route of the 'nothing to lose' mentality behind many crimes.

If this is the kind of thing we should expect from him, then it couldn't come soon enough.

Desperation? Derision, rather.

2009-11-26T18:28:11.740Z

Desperation?

Derision, rather.