The National Complex

I’ve written recently about economic neurosis, but the psychiatric metaphor doesn’t end there. There is also the problem of national complexes.
It was President Eisenhower who coined the term ‘military-industrial complex’ and warned of its threatening nature. Those very serious and potentially terminal threats still exist of course both in terms of weaponry and distortion of the economy. But there’s another continuing threat from colluding forces in western society that endangers our quality of life if not our very existence.
The last few decades have hit western productive industry and ordinary people so hard, particularly in this country, have seen the rise of a powerful, destructive and anti-democratic complex – the politico-business complex.
This is the compact that has heedlessly extracted exorbitant profits – financial, political or both - for themselves and, relentlessly seeking more globalisation, that has eviscerated productive industry in this country.
The politico-business complex has destroyed millions of jobs and exported others - and often the equipment that went with them. It has presided over the closure of household-name firms and seen others sold off to foreign bidders and uncertain futures. And it has, as intended, profited the super rich immensely - aided and abetted by tax avoidance schemes and loopholes that have remained unclosed by successive governments.
There are two interlocking mindsets that have developed. It is not simply the business elite who are responsible for destroying western industries and quality of life but the political class across the major parties who have been fellow travellers and deluded beneficiaries in this process. The political elite have seen it as in their interest to curry favour with powerful business elements – and not just the manipulative and threatening owners of the press.
The politicians have been enthralled by rich and powerful business interests and of course in the continuing absence of reform in party political funding, have been financed by them. There is no such thing as a free-of-cost democracy. The choice is between having a substantial element of public funding with the cost up front and in the open or having a much greater cost, both financial and human, hidden away behind ruinous and partisan economic policies and disloyal industrial management practices.
Governments were deceived into thinking that importing lower cost (superficially) versions of goods formerly produced at home and so keeping down inflation in the short term was good in the long term. The productive gap would of course be filled by wonderful financial services – we know all too well where all this led. It is doubly unjust that people in the communities destroyed by these policies and others over the past 30 years are facing further benefits cuts while the destroyers are given a tax break to add to the loopholes and ease of use of tax havens.
And we are so often told that there’s no alternative, that we are all victims of markets. But in so far as this is true, it is only so as long as countries continue to act separately rather than in concert and so long as ‘free-marketeering’ and austerity based economic theories are given the time of day.
Economics has been described as ‘the dismal science’ - dismal, certainly in the variants invoked in an attempt to justify the destruction of western industry and subsequent austerity. But ‘science’ - much less so in any of the senses of its meaning from simply ‘knowing’ to being rigorous, demonstrable and testable. And in the context of austerity it is worth noting that the word ‘economise’ means not ‘to cut back on’ but ‘to make best use of.’
The original name for economics itself, ‘political economy’, is a very good fit for the age of the politico-business complex. Never has this older description been more apt, although ‘partisan economy’ could be a modern update - as we are seeing to our cost.
High time then for disassembling the politico-business complex and beginning the lengthy task of building a virtuous economy that operates in the interest of the common good.