Materialist politics

I don't wish to deny the essential function of directing and coordinating labour in large economic enterprises. To the extent that, for the time being, no alternative has been proposed to replacing the entirety of capitalism with an alternative system when it comes to this coordinating function, to that extent I recognise that a business or capitalist class is necessary. However, let me try to cut through this morass by stating as clearly as I can the central point I wish to make. The Greens have been criticised by the established media on the ground that to tax the very wealthy will lead to billionaires leaving the country, and this will lead to the government forgoing a certain amount of revenue from taxation. This is questionable; rich people have always traditionally threatened to leave the country, but few people will actually leave because of a tax increase. But the fact is that to the extent that the billionaires will leave the country, so to that extent the billionaires are a luxury our society can no longer afford to keep. To cater to their interests simply to prevent them leaving will mean losing millions of talented youngsters who could form the basis of a skilled labour economy, rather than a rentier economy such as the neoliberals advocate. The reason for this is that for people to flourish they need housing that doesn't take up half their incomes in rents or mortgage payments because of a lack of public investment in social housing; they need water and energy that are not charged at extortionate prices because private companies care solely for their shareholders. So we need taxation for public investment, and an extension of public ownership, all of which is contrary to the immediate pecuniary interests of the very wealthy. Young men who know that, later in their twenties, they will want to start a family, are leaving because they know that if they stay in this country (I'm talking about Britain) then they will not be in a position to do this. If, therefore, we do not tax the very wealthy, then young people are going to continue to emigrate, taking their skills and talents with them. It is odd that the neoliberals defend economic policies on the ground that they will supply more money for government spending, but in doing so reject policies that would actually enable people to have greater autonomy, including the choice to start a family. This, then, is my basic objection to the 'classical liberals' who want a small government. If you are a genuine conservative, if you believe in families, then you ought to believe in the economic conditions that will enable people to have those families. In any case, the classical liberals are putting forward a chimera. For global neoliberal policies fuel mass migration, and austerity fuels resentment, leading to the perfect conditions for fascism and the destruction of civil liberty. In other words, classical liberalism is idealist because it is not rooted in an understanding of the balance of social forces within society. It merely dreams up a utopia that happens to be congenial to the dreamer, and supposes that everyone can be made to see its intrinsic appeal over innumerable other utopias. This ignores the whole material basis of political ideology, as Marx saw. A politics not grounded in material and social reality is an impotent politics, unable to prevent the drift to fascism. The choices, therefore, that are actually before us are social democracy or right wing authoritarian populism; and between these two I choose social democracy as the more civilised. We must deal with the choice at hand and not forgo the possibility of shaping the future through a retreat into idealist dreaming. An impotent politics is a useless politics.