Pedaling into work this morning I was considering how deeply embedded is the neoliberal doctrine of eternal economic growth, as you do. Even the nice parties are required to promise increasing GDP, more investment, more activity, more of everything all the time. To suggest anything else is backwards and out come all the easy cliches about farming with horses and throwing away ones mobile phone.
And there is a point there. In our unequal country a slowing of growth will hit the poorest the hardest. When one has a massive disposable incoming it doesn’t much hurt when it becomes merely huge. For those whose income is entirely accounted for, for whom social mobility is a myth, for the poverty trapped, it’s only the prospect of a meagre slice of growth that offers hope of improvement.
That was the gist of the pro-remain argument. If you want a little bit more money then you need to vote for the economic scheme which will make the rich even richer. Only by enabling the corporations to continue to increase their profits will you be allowed to have a little bit extra. Feed the fat man and you can have the scraps.
But that didn’t work. People weren’t persuaded to vote for prospect of higher growth. They voted for ideas: for the idea of control, of sovereignty, of xenophobia. So not good ideas, not realistic ideas, not ideas with tangible aims. In fact generally illusory and plain bad ideas. But…
Perhaps it shows that political arguments needn’t all be framed around economic growth. It is possible to gain popular traction for something other than the bottom line.
Inopportune thoughts 