A progressive society needs state intervention

The topsy -turvy world of politics continues, with week-end headlines about Cameron making a "progressive alliance" offer to the Lib Dems and the publication on Wednesday of a new Tory pamphlet by Greg Clark MP and Jeremy Hunt MP entitled Who's Progressive Now, Why the Conservatives Offer the Best Hope for Progressive Politics.

It's easy for our side to ridicule these Tory attempts to steal our clothes but it would be foolish to underestimate the attraction of their latest message for the more decent elements of the population. As Clark and Hunt say in their Observer commentary on their tract (click here) "A progressive society also recognises the value of non-material goals. Cameron has repeatedly spoken of society's sense of general wellbeing and has maintained a sustained focus on social and environmental concerns. Initially this was derided as Tory cynicism eating itself...but as the progressive Conservative vision has taken shape, such criticism has become difficult to sustain." In the leafy marginals lofty appeals of this nature could well swing the vote and hence the election.

So how should we react to the new Tory agenda? The knee-jerk response of course is to list Tory transgressions against the progressive principle and make light of what they are saying by denying any talk of a "social recession" and dismissing Cameron's references to wellbeing as some kind of New Age quackery (akin to Cherie's aberrations). However the more astute response is to use The Tories' arguments on this matter against them.

As I pointed out in my previous post current discontents and the intractability of social and environmental ills have more to do with the market culture that pervades our society than government policies. It is advertising and marketing ploys that are encouraging excessive forms of behaviour, whether this be acquiring too much debt, binge-drinking, over-eating or over-consuming generally. It is the car industry that is creating our environmentally harmful obsession with the car and the sex industry that is creating our relationship damaging obsession with sex. It is a market-driven media that is responsible for young girls rating how they look as more important than how intelligent they are. And it is the rat- race for riches that is causing so much stress and mental illness.

The answer is not to give even greater free rein to market forces as the Tories would have us do but to rein these forces back where appropriate as New Labour are trying to do.  Countering the seductive and insideous influences of the market cannot just be a matter for "the family" or for "the charities"or of giving "more power to the people" since, where nothing else changes, they will all continue to be overwhelmed by the tidal wave of market pressures. Nor in a secular society can it be done by "the church" as was done (to some extent) in the old days.

No, the only sufficient countervailing force to the enormous  strength of today's market culture is the state. Only the state has the power to enable us to resist rampant consumerism. This it can do by building on and extending the interventions that have already been made to address many of our social and environmental ills, supplemented by a redirection of our education system to prioritise social and environmental goals over economic ones.

By emphasising how a progressive society can only be attained through this kind of state intervention we can mark up the essential difference between our and our opponents' approach and turn Tory efforts to claim the moral high ground in this vital area into a massive own goal.

Comments

[simona]

This sounds great as well as reassuring, but it seems to forget that politics itself - political competition, political agenda, political leadership... - is market as well as media driven.
how can the state forge a society set of values when doing this implies short-cutting communication through media and media is much more a matter of market rather than "social mission"?