There is no virtue in doing without things that are unavailable

Some time ago I wrote a blog about the ridiculousness of claims that the West is more materialistic and, therefore, somehow less virtuous than the old Communist system was.

Let us look at the argument: at least they are not obsessed with materialism and consumerism. To start with, what is the basis of Communism and Marxist Socialism but materialism, dialectic or otherwise? The whole political ideology, the whole basis on which state and society are to be built, purport to be materialistic, discarding religion, spiritual entities and "empty" intellectualism. Not only were the ideas discarded and banned, their proponents and practitioners were arrested, exiled, murdered or forced to convert to the worship of Materialism. Socialist Realism from which the artists in this exhibition fled one way or another is the glorification of materialism in art and its apotheosis heralded (or was meant to herald) the trampling down of all non-realist, non-materialist expression.

So much for the underlying ideological basis of Communism. The problem was that it could not provide the material goods that materialism promised to all. While theoretical materialism remained a good thing, its practical assumption had to become a bad thing since it did not exist in the workers' paradise. In particular, it had to be pronounced as bad by Western supporters (at a distance) of that non-materialistic materialist workers' paradise as they could not hide indefinitely behind the lie that consumer goods in the West were available to very few people. In fact, there is an odd correlation between growing contempt for consumerism and materialism and the wider spread of the actual goods.

Were people in Communist countries really not interested in consumer goods? Were they heck. No-one who has ever lived in those countries especially the Soviet Union and managed to communicate with the indigenous population can forget not just the queues for goods that might appear or might not but also the obsessive discussions of what might be available and where, what might be acquired at home or - blissful idea - abroad.

In Soviet cities directions were given by shops. Get off the bus at such and such a shop, turn right, walk to another shop, then right again and it's the second entrance. That sort of thing. Naturally, one had to ask the driver where such and such a shop was, which would cause great excitement on the bus: why were you going to that shop? Was there anything being sold there?

There is another aspect of the question that I recall explaining to a few people who talked rubbish about consumerism was one I recalled when reading a book entitled Medieval Tastes by the eminent Italian historian of food and food culture, Massimo Montanari. (One cannot spend one's entire time on the EU and Russia.)

In the chapter on monastic cooking (a fascinating subject) Professor Montanari discusses the question of fasting and ascetic rigour, explaining:

It should immediately be made clear that deprivation does not mean absence. On the contrary, one can only deprive oneself of that one has, of what one is accustomed to having: "privatio praesupponit habitum", Rabelais ironically remarks. On this, monastic culture is in agreement: there would be no value or merit in a renunciation that was obligatory in some way because of circumstances; it is necessary to renounce an available pleasure so that the choice acquires value and meaning. 

There is no virtue in eating nothing but cabbage and potatoes by way of vegetables with pickled cucumbers and tomatoes in the winter if the shops have no other vegetables.  This would be a virtue if people, say all those people who are advocating the consumption of nothing that is not local and seasonal, did it by choice. I have noticed that they do not ever do so; I have also noticed that as soon as it became possible in former Communist states to eat a more varied diet people immediately started doing so. Of course, they still pickle and salt cucumbers, tomatoes and mushrooms for winter but I do that quite often as well, adding jars of chutney and other home-made preserves. I happen to think they are better to eat than most shop-bought stuff but the important thing is that it is  my choice to do so.

Well now, which of all the economic systems that have existed throughout history in the world has made the making of those choices possible?

These are NOT voluntary organizations

I spent part of yesterday in journeying to and from Oxford and reading an elegantly short book edited by the highly distinguished Tom G. Palmer (full disclosure: he is a friend of long standing and we both love cats), entitled The Morality of Capitalism.

The essays are uneven but I do recommend the book to all either because they might find pithy arguments to back their own opinions or because they might find it interesting to read arguments that oppose their opinions and undermine their emotions. As John Milton, one of this blog's patron saints, explained some centuries ago, one reason why speech must not be controlled is because even people who are in the right (and he thought there were people in the right) need to be able to test their opinions against opposing ones.

I shall try to do several postings about the book and the various essays, some more critical than others and some that will use the essays as a starting point, a little like sermon texts. (Yes, you can stop reading now, if you wish to.)

Today's "text" comes from David Boaz's excellent piece Competition and Cooperation (on page 31), which argues the to me irrefutable point that a free economy (not the crony capitalism and regulatory statism we have) relies on competition but cannot exist without co-operation that involves our free participation.

In particular, the author differentiates between all organizations that are "voluntary", whether they are businesses that need to make profits or charities that do not, and those created by the states, who, obviously enough, enforces our participation in them.

Some analysts distinguish between commercial and nonprofit organizations, arguing that businesses are part of the market, not of civil society; but I follow the tradition that the real distinction is between associations that are coercive — the state — and those that are natural or voluntary—everything else. Whether a particular association is established to make a profit or to achieve some other purpose, the key characteristic is that our participation in it is voluntarily chosen.

This clarity of division has been muddied, probably deliberately, by the change in terminology. The trouble, particularly in Britain, lies with the expression "voluntary organizations". In many cases this term has replaced the old word "charity" as the bodies in question are not precisely charities: they do not raise money from private donors, either individual or corporate, for specific and clearly understood aims. Instead they receive money from the state. They are not, therefore, accountable to the donors in the way they spend that money, pursuing a particular charitable purpose.

In fact, they are, despite their preferred description, not voluntary organizations. As they are funded by local or central government with, in the case of the larger ones, the occasional grant from some transnational body, they are actually part of the state machinery and rely on hand-outs that are taken from that patient milch-cow, the taxpayer, whose participation in the funding is far from voluntary. They are also, controlled in their aims and activity by the state, its minions and its political ideas.

The subject has been much in evidence in the fairly vehement discussions in my borough, where the Council has managed to reduce local tax for the third year running without, they say, reducing essential services. So far as I can make it out, they are not wrong though there is some debate going on about Meals-on-Wheels. As I don't know the rights and wrongs of it, I cannot comment.

I can, however, comment about another and far more vociferous complaint. It seems that the Council has saved money by cutting back on its grants to "voluntary organizations", who appear unable to function without hand-outs from taxes, and by selling a rather fine but somewhat dilapidated building where a number of these organizations had offices for which they, presumably, paid no rent. The building is going to become a free school, which is yet another good idea.

Over twenty "voluntary organizations", we are told in tones of horror, will have to close. What will happen to their clients? Well, what indeed.

My immediate question was about the number. Why on earth do we need that many "voluntary organizations"? After all, if twenty-plus will close, many more will remain open and functioning at the Council's that is our expense. Do we really have that many different vulnerable groups who need all this help? Is there not, perhaps, some overlap between the various groups and their activity, with money going out more than once for the same purpose? Could they not, perhaps, be inventing problems and vulnerabilities in order to survive and keep claiming money?

Neither I nor anyone else knows the answer to those questions but I strongly suspect that if these organizations were really voluntary (and there is nothing to stop them from becoming that now); if they had to present proper plans and well defined aims to potential donors and be evaluated by the people who might voluntarily give them money rather rather than tick boxes on forms created by local councils and civil servants on the basis of their own priorities, we would find out those answers. We would probably find out exactly how useful these "voluntary organizations" are to anyone except the people who work in them either for money or for free.