Month: February 2025

What we must take from Marx

Britain is a nation that enjoys making light of its peculiarities and eccentricities. We enjoy having a laugh over a slightly self deprecating and scathing analysis of the fine-points of our society. We are keenly aware of the little things that set us apart – most famously the class system.

Unblemished by the tumults of the continent, we never saw fit to put whole socio-economic stratas to death, and such, on this isle has evolved a range of economic classes; that at times can seem whole cultures within themselves. The topic of a good Harry Enfield sketch, the plethora of verbal inflections in dialect, or what one tends to do on a Sunday, to general mannerism and pattern of speech – there is much that can set one into working, middle, or upper class. We view class not through a reasoned analysis, nor through a simple review of how much money is in one’s wallet – in fact, these tend to be quite secondary thoughts when judging someone’s place in the hierarchy.

Class is understood through a range of social signifiers, all of which have their root in one’s upbringing, which have their root in the upbringing of one’s father, and his father, and his father, and so on.

No matter how much money you win for your coffers, no matter how noble and high your method of work is, no matter how much you may put on a rendition of received pronunciation – you cannot really change your class. You may own a country estate, go shooting pheasants with the lads on Sunday, you may call your son Tarquin, but if your Dad came from a pit village, and passed down the speech, mannerism, and sentiments of said pit village to you – you’ll never leave the place. You may be able to win your son a jaunt up the social ladder, Joseph Chamberlain’s little known son called Neville transcended his father’s position in the middle class by growing up far away from his Dad at Eton, managing something of a different upbringing thereby.

The ultimate result of this strange institution is an utterly cartoonish understanding of class. It is entirely possible in this view of things, that a well-born feckless son from a manor in the home counties could spend his days shepherding pit-ponies around mineshafts in South Wales, and still outrank Gwyn Jones who was born in the pit village just adjacent, and made enough money to buy that very country estate mentioned.

Do not suppose that I write against such cartoons, they are quite wonderful, and I wish not for some Jacobin iconoclasm to mandate state-approved classes based upon occupation. These things make brilliant Harry Enfield sketches, however, when we seek to understand British society, and thereby create a successful right-wing movement, we have no time for the twee cartoons of such a sketch. We can not begin to engage in a successful right-wing, or nationalist political program without a firm understanding of how social classes interact in this country, every political movement must find itself between a class antagonism, lest it fail. Hence, we must begin to integrate Marx’s view of class into our thinking. Marx, despite standing in near complete contradiction to us, is the only thinker from which we can concretely define and analyse the real and tangible class divisions within the British people, beyond the thesis of a sketch.

Marxist class analysis centres around how one relates to the means of production. Totally ignoring someone’s salary or mannerisms – Marx defines class purely through the manner in which one works. We all know of the two main classes of industrial capitalism he expounds upon – the proletarian, and the bourgeois. The bourgeois class owns means of production (in Marx’s time this could be a cotton mill or a steelworks) he holds this capital, and purchases wage labour in order to produce goods with it. The Proletarian class are the folk from whom wage labour is purchased, not owning any means of production themselves, the working class sell their labour-power in order to make a living.

Furthermore, Marx introduces the petit-bourgeois class. Marxists (who cannot for the life of them agree on anything) disagree on what exactly this class is, and whom makes up its ranks. Simply, it could be said, the petit-bourgeois class may own alternative forms of capital (such as a small shop) but are unlikely to purchase labour power in the working of this capital, and wherein he does, he likely works side by side with the proletarians he pays.

Now, Marx does not ramble on like this all day, and he eventually gets to the point: antagonism. The ultimate purpose of delving into these social relations is getting to grips with the separate desires and interests each class works toward. To put it simply, the proletarian seeks to labour as little as possible for the greatest wage. The bourgeois, inversely, wishes for the proletarian to labour as much for the smallest possible wage.

In this, we find Marx’s most valuable lesson. In taking up his understanding of class, we need not blanketly throw his particular analysis of the Victorian urban sprawl onto our day, we need not even use the word bourgeois and such – in fact, the economic relations of our day can be said to have deviated so much from Marx’s day that such terms are useless. We must centre in on the antagonism between the classes, while also putting key caveats on our understanding of it.

If one is to ignore this doctrine of antagonism, then one is to ignore nearly all of British political history. Is not the rift that has dominated our nation since even before the Civil War that of Whig and Tory? One cannot separate these two groups from their diametric class antagonism. The Tory of the country, who profits from agriculture, who finds himself well off in the ancient landed hierarchies. The Whig who profits from the city, who thrives in more modern and capitalistic relations of the mill and steelwork. There are few debates of British political history that can be fully understood without getting to grips with this specific sociological battle. We cannot look to Peel’s full thrust support for the abolition of the corn laws, and championing of free trade thereby, without understanding that the Whig sought out this reform in order to ensure the flow of cheap grain into urban centres, and the mouths of their proletarians, at the expense of the Tory landowner and his tenant. Without this economic antagonism, there is no movement to abolish the corn laws.

Now, this is not to say that all hitherto history is that of class struggle, we should not assume that Peel was consciously plotting to pull the rug under the Tory landowner – no one thinks this way, in fact, class antagonism while informing these political disputes can sometimes enter the sub-conscious. We can understand this doctrine without becoming totally affixed to it.

Principally, we must maintain that class is not the prime fraternity of man. There is no international working class or the like, and such is a fanciful idea. Ultimately, one’s nation and ethnicity trump their class identity. Leftists like to imagine that they have more in common with a working class Chinaman than a billionaire of their ethnic kin, but while Richard Branson may have vastly different economic interests; you can share a conversation in your mutually native language, you celebrate the same festivities every year, you probably share the same cultural references and tidbits. Man is much more than his economic interests, and his identity goes much beyond what he’d like to be paid at work – such a totalising view of class ignores the depth that makes up men’s lives.

Nonetheless, we can simultaneously hold that ethnos is the prime fraternity of man, while recognising the inherent divisions within such a thing. Without a comprehension of these differences, we will remain ignorant as to how to effectively mobilise our people in a political movement. Blindly assuming that if we put forward a political program that broadly seeks to better the condition of the native Briton, that such will rally all sections of our people will lead us to ruin.

While it is true that in ‘diverse’ societies, democracy simply becomes an ethnic headcount (see South Africa) such diversity is concentrated in certain areas of our country. Areas such as Bradford fit this model much more, wherein the diametric antagonism between the native and immigrant groups naturally trumps the bounds of class, however in other areas of the nation this is not such. (Ironically, it is class antagonism that brought this into being. Former industrial areas are highly saturated with immigrant groups due to the importation of cheap labour into mills and cotton works, for example.) Thereby, we must understand the class antagonisms we can ride, and the classes with whom we have appeal.

To illustrate this, let us think to the average voter in the 1983 general election, the man who voted for Thatcher, and the man who voted for Foot. The man who voted for Thatcher, 38 years on, has likely benefited from the deindustrialisation of the country, much more attuned to a neoliberal regime of international finance and services. He is likely insulated from the demographic issues of the nation, perhaps he will scoff at some anti-social behaviour on the tube, but he is not bound by public transport. Let us think now to the man who voted for Foot, he has seen the industries his family worked in for generations crumble before his eyes, and the economic impetus of his town dry up. Equally, he has seen an unprecedented swamping of its demographic character in mere decades. He has lost his home, and his work at the behest of short sighted, shock doctrinaire neoliberalism.

Who is more likely, do you think, to support a nationalist cause? We all know that the working class tend to be more right-wing in our day, but if we do not understand the antagonism (being in this case, deindustrialisation) that this tendency has its roots in, then we shall fail to harness this support. Once we comprehend this, we will understand that nationalism has no future among the jungles of the free market, it must entail economic nationalism, and an active role of the state in economic affairs in order to steer the economy toward the national interest.

Without being at the parapet of class antagonism, that fuels all successful political movements, we march aimlessly into bogs and marshes. We must understand that nationalism has to be a movement in the interests of the disenfranchised native working class, that acts in the interests of that class. Without this, we are but ideologues barking into the wind.


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Private property and the environment: competing or reconcilable objectives?

When it comes to the question of the environment and what to do about it, there are a number of assumptions—the outcome of which does, for the most part, map nicely—with respect to who will be saying what about it. For example, that a Leftist is more inclined to refer to themselves as an ‘environmentalist’, coupling their ideological convictions of social progressivism with concern for ecological damage, is, for the most part, true. Equally, that a right-winger is less likely to refer to themselves as an ‘environmentalist’, is also, for the most part, true. I suspect that the inclination of the latter is more out of reaction to the prevailing Leftist narratives around environmental protection, rather than a genuine indifference or lack of concern around the matter considered in itself. Certainly, with respect to myself, as I refer to myself as both a Right-libertarian (of the more ‘reactionary’, as it’s often called, conservative inclination) and an ‘environmentalist’, I seek to present the case in favour of private property and environmental protection as being reconcilable, not hostile or competing, objectives. This I aim to do without too much of a foray into the dense political-philosophical and economic-statistical thicket, where one can get lost rather easily and squarely miss the point.

As a matter of first principles, it almost goes without saying that the Right-libertarian stance is one which emphasises the importance of private property, and therefore of property rights by default, in all human affairs. It is a case of ontological significance for the human being to be able to determine the boundaries and limits, the inclusion and the exclusion, the ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ before one is able to situate themselves appropriately in dealing with the community. In other words, a distinction between what is private, and therefore one’s own, and what is not, is antecedent to one’s proper place in wider society. This is not simply a matter of distinguishing between ‘personal’ and ‘private’ either—a case of semantic hairsplitting if ever there was one—but is a statement of profound significance. That which is privately owned implies not only the antecedent distinction foregoing one’s entry into the community, but further implies the differential of being able to realise gain from peaceful, contractual exchange of one’s goods based upon a value matrix of temporal, or time-based, considerations. It asks: will you defer gratification now for a higher reward at some future date? Some prefer immediate consumption, others delayed gratification; it is the latter case which tends towards a realisation of gain, as foregoing consumption now can provide higher gains, or profit, in the future. Whereas in the case of the former, one values immediate consumption more highly, and therefore does not delay gratification appropriately enough to contribute the necessary goods or assets towards more time-consuming, labour-intensive, and developmental pursuits which tend to appreciate in value. This important factor of time-consideration (referred to in Austrian economic theory as ‘time preference’) is a universal a priori such that it will play a role in any given economic situation. The socialist collective will still include those who prefer to delay gratification and co-ordinate for future returns, and it will most likely be those who form the body of bureaucrats which oversee, and yet do not have a proper investment in (qua non-owners), the administration of things.

From here, the question becomes: who is the right person to which the task may be deferred? There is a lengthy index of things which most of us are happy to defer as a responsibility of someone else. For example, while I could butcher a chicken if required, I would rather not, and am happy to defer that responsibility to another who is paid to do so, providing me with what I need to make dinner. Likewise, I will, in my paid work, take on responsibilities over people and things which others do not wish to do, and are happy to leave to me. Our products or services may be exchanged peacefully through the medium of money (even if, as it currently stands, the money used is horrendously unstable, inflated, untied to anything with a real asset value, etc—fiat currency) and there is no further cause for concern. Similarly, both of us will make our own time-based valuations of goods and capital. Both of us will have to consume immediately at least every day to stay alive and gain some enjoyment of idle time, but one or the other of us may display a greater preference for delaying more capital, in the form of savings and investments.

Carrying this same question over to the issue of the environment, when it comes to making firm judgements with suitable incentive structures, who is the right person to whom the task may be deferred? If the stewardship of the environment is between government agencies and private property owners, then in both cases the task has been deferred to someone else. But who is the better, and why? The Right-libertarian, and therefore my own, case is that environmental concerns are better, as a mutual factor of justice and probability (qualification and quantification), left in the hands of private owners. Those who are more stringently tied to ownership titles are, by default, more inclined to sustain a profound concern over the capital values of assets held.

This principle is equally as applicable to land and what’s on it as it is to anything else in a private economy. At its most basic level, one wishes to realise a greater return on future goods when consumption of them in the present is delayed—why are factors such as land, and how it’s employed, be any different? In the case of government ‘owners’ (nonowners, or ‘caretakers’), there is no stringent incentive structure, and therefore no same level of concern for anything except that which may be looted in a shorter term when held relative to the long-term returns desired by the private owner. These government nonowners may have a concern by way of public law—perhaps some vague notion of ‘value for taxpayer money’ or something to that effect—but this concern alone is not enough, particularly because they do not bear the full cost of waste, inefficiency, destruction, and so on. For example: if 100 people utilise a piece of land and even ten of them trash it, who will foot the bill? Although the clean-up operations will, as things currently are and all else equal, be organised by a local council, there is no proper structure in place to deter or disincentivise such trashing from even occurring. The council clean-up team, and the administrator-bureaucrats who sent them, do not personally front the cost of such measures, and instead rely on a predetermined budget. This means that there is nobody who is personally affected or put out by the presence of trashers. However, were the land privately owned, there is a personal tie (the owner’s) to the asset value of the land, and therefore destructive trashing behaviour will be thoroughly accorded with the appropriate measures, such as compensation, restitution, or expulsion. Equally, the owner being subject to the full-cost principle, will have an interest in keeping down insurance premiums and clean-up costs, and will therefore put in place stringent conditions, e.g. payment-for-entry, as well as security teams charged with monitoring the use of the land by the consumers on it at a given time. A very simple yet very effective yardstick to measure the validity of my claims here—and one which would be satisfactory for those empirically inclined—would be to watch and average the behaviour of consumers when occupying ‘public’ property against utilising space which they have paid to enter and is administered properly, such as private gardens or grounds.

Conditions in place, where does environmentalism factor in? Care for and stewardship of the land imply moral/ethical qualia, and therefore a wholly subjective assessment, of what it means to engage with the natural world, itself a changing and at times dubious human construct. In the economic assessment alone, as outlined (albeit briefly) above, there is little intrinsic merit in saying that any one given moral judgement should be imported into the calculations of profit and cost, capital value and loss, asset utilisation and non-utilisation, etc. For example, one private owner of land may realise greater returns on selling up huge swathes of land for environmentally destructive purposes, such as factory- or house-building. (To be sure, these uses are required and, in the instability of the globalised-state economy, probably desirable to some extent.) Yet in this case, what’s to stop him? It is a matter of two further economic injunctions (before we move onto the place of appropriate moral judgement): opportunity cost and insurance premiums. In brief, land is usually a sought-after investment as a way to stabilise one’s portfolio due to its nature of slow-but-sure growth potential; therefore, if one is set to realise greater returns, and a greater opportunity thereof, for maintaining and even increasing the value of the land in the direction of soil quality for agriculture, forestry for timber, pasture land for animals, and so forth, then the sacrifice made in selling up for more environmentally-destructive measures will not seem worthwhile. In a climate where all roads are leaning former—high soil quality for domestic agriculture and high quality timber are increasingly sought after goods, for example—it is only a matter of time before the former outweighs the latter, the opportunity costs favour the preservation, rather than tarmacking of, land. Likewise, one’s insurance premiums are likely to skyrocket if the behaviour and activity conducted on one’s land threaten pollution, despoliation, or threat to quality of life or even, in extreme cases, to life itself. If everything around the piece of land in this imagined scenario is privately owned—including waterways, hedgerows, and so forth—then the constant threat of legal action, coupled with hiking insurance premiums, altogether disincentivise such behaviour. Externalities are more difficult to slip under the proverbial rug if one is surrounded by other owners, with an interest in appreciating returns (all else equal), who are capable of and empowered to take action and injunctions against undesirable behaviours.

Objective considerations aside, what about the moral/ethical injunctions? Admittedly, these being more subjective, it is usually left to a matter of aesthetic taste and criteria for such moral judgements to hold ground. This is much more suited therefore to the realm of opinion, further away from the domain of tangible economic fact. However, it is worth pointing out that many do, annually, seek retreats (either long, short, or permanent), relief, and respite in the aesthetic beauty of the countryside. Lucrative property portfolios, parks, gardens, walkways, vineyards, orchards, woodlands, campsites, activity centres, trusts, etc spring up, suggesting that there are many who are keen to escape the noise, pollution, smog, dust, and psychologically-overbearing atmosphere of the big cities, and instead find some solace amongst birdsong and woodland.

Likewise, there are increasing reports detailing the way in which certain practices are negatively harming the human population, such as bio-chemical engineering, microplastics, and pollution, to borrow a couple of examples. (To refer briefly to an economic consideration: should these reports prove correct, as I suspect they will, then one’s own insurance premiums for engaging in this sort of consumption will go up, and therefore have an average impact of disincentivising the consumption of goods which are, by all accounts, harmful to both oneself, others, and the environment.) I, as a rural dweller myself, am entirely sympathetic to this need, understanding the desire to maintain the balanced, steadier, quieter pace of rural life itself. It is one of those situations more dialectical insofar as if we didn’t have it, and therefore didn’t know any better, then fine—but we do have it, do know better, and therefore should, in my estimation at least, have some concern for its preservation and well-being.

In the absence of any clear governmental responsibility or concern, and in the absence of any trustworthiness for government programmes (and, I argue, rightly so), the purpose of this piece has been to demonstrate that one can indeed hold tight to two convictions which are not mutually exclusive. The first is the conviction that private property rights are essential to human civilisation and peaceful relations, and the second is the conviction that there are reasons, both objective and subjective, for being concerned about the state of the environment. Human stewardship and responsible management have been practised for centuries, and it is worth resurrecting these practices, both economically and morally, before it is too late, without leaning too heavily on tax-funded, unpredictable bureaucrats to do the job.

The latter situation is akin to asking a bank robber to ensure that ten percent of his loot is donated to a charitable cause, and on this condition he will be let off the hook. It is time to reassess the role of private property rights in this equation, without dipping too heavily into the hysteria around total alarmism—although I appreciate that in the span of this article I have only been able to do so cursorily, and therefore have not given a total treatment of the matter.


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Can Britain do business with Taliban-led Afghanistan?

I can’t say I’ve ever hosted the Taliban, although if presented with the opportunity, the Worshipful Company of Brewers wouldn’t have been my initial choice of venue.

This irony wasn’t lost on Daniel Evans, frontier markets and technology investor, co-founder of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange Group, and Chairman of the newly-founded Afghanistan Advisory Council (AAC).

Evans joked the venue would allow him to lay claim to successfully organising a piss-up in a brewery, although it must be said the event wasn’t a piss-up at all – partially because the drinks were appropriately alcohol free, but mainly because the foundation of the AAC marks the first actual step at rapprochement with Afghanistan since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.

All-in-all, a pretty serious affair. Serious enough to receive a written endorsement from Nooruddin Azizi, Afghanistan’s Minister of Industry and Commerce:

“On behalf of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, I want to emphasize that the investment environment in Afghanistan is feasible, with strong security and government policies focused on economic development. As many know, Afghanistan is an untapped country with significant business and investment opportunities across various sectors, including energy, industry, infrastructure, mining, agriculture, and health.

We welcome any proposals and investments in Afghanistan, assuring you that the government will fully protect and support all initiatives.”

The launch was attended by businessmen from a variety of interested parties; railway construction, petrochemicals, international finance, and so on. Michael Mainelli, current President of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry and former Lord Mayor of the City of London was among those present, as well as Miles ‘Lord Miles’ Routledge, adventurer-turned-YouTuber-turned-junior member of the AAC.

Among other ambitions for a hospital, a hotel, a logistics centre, and a railway terminus, the AAC’s flagship proposal of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), set to be attached to Kabul airport, has won the backing of Mohammad and Zahid Asif, Owner and Managing Director of Walid Titan Ltd respectively, who are providing the land for the zone.

The precise details of the SEZ have yet to be fleshed out, although it’s clear that the AAC is looking to Dubai’s International Finance Centre (IFC) as a model; a demarcated zone where the norms and customs of international commerce prevail, and regulations are to be drawn up on the advice of the AAC.

The SEZ is one of several projects set to be funded by a new National Growth Fund, which will provide resources to develop a diverse range of industries and projects, such as a far-reaching hospital construction programme. One of the hospital centres will be located in the SEZ. The AAC has been given the mandate to advise the creation of the fund.

One might ask why the Taliban would allow any of this. If one reads between the lines, the SEZ would allow what are essentially Western standards of conduct to take root in an otherwise Islamic theocratic state. Sure, it’s not exactly going to be Amsterdam but it’s hard to square such a proposal with the totalising ‘Islamofascist’ caliphate prophesised by thought leaders of the dilapidated pantheon of liberal-humanitarian interventionism.

The simple but surprising reality of the matter is the Afghans seriously want to get down to business. In fact, it’s becoming clear the Taliban are more eager to do business with the British than vice versa, and not without valid reason. They’re highly suspicious of the Americans, their opinion of the Russians isn’t much better, relations with Pakistan have massively deteriorated within the past year alone, and China and Iran look more like regional threats than potential allies.

Kabul, 7th August 2024, (Right) Nooruddin Azizi, The Minister for Industry & Commerce, (Left) Daniel Evans, Chairman, Afghanistan Advisory Council

As bizarre as it sounds, the Taliban’s view of the British continues to be informed by the Empire, which they regard in a similar manner to how many of us Moderns regard the Roman Empire; that is, as a milestone in human achievement. The British are viewed less as hated enemies and more as honourable and accomplished adversaries. If that’s not soft power, I don’t know what is!

As one would expect, the Afghans have zero appetite to be controlled by a foreign power, but they’re not completely isolationist; they’re quite happy to enlist the help of foreigners with the know-how required to stabilise their war-battered economy, having endured invasions from the USSR and the US-led coalition, ongoing skirmishes with groups like ISIS-K, and incoming Pashtun refugees from neighbouring Pakistan.

It’s a matter of political ideology whether it’s preferable to live in a less-developed but comparatively liberal country over a more-developed but comparatively illiberal one, but – as a general rule of thumb – it’s better to have functioning railways, roads, and hospitals than to not have them at all. Some things aren’t exactly ideological touchstones. Is it really so polarising to believe that Afghanistan should have a reliable supply of currency, rather than making do with sheets of borderline dust held together with glue and tape?

Beneath debates on the political and religious destiny of Afghanistan lies an economy which needs to be run regardless, and the AAC hasn’t so much muscled into this gap, but waltzed into it; partially because the organisation seems to be ahead of the curve on this issue, but also because its founding members felt they had nothing better to do.

On his release from jail in October 2023, having been arrested for not having his papers in order, Routledge – who described the experience as “the best networking opportunity I’ve ever had” – received an email from Evans with the subject line “Bored/gold mine lol” – a proposal which snowballed into setting up a full-on, nation-wide development fund with the blessing of the Afghan government.

Overall, the AAC is filling the vacuum left by a regime that doesn’t know what to do with Afghanistan. One suspects it’s pretty hard to see a path forward with that much egg on your face!

For the past two decades, Britain’s political system has stuck to the same playbook; a hodgepodge strategy of attempting to nag and bomb Afghanistan into becoming a liberal democracy with little-to-no regard for local idiosyncrasies and so forth.

Indeed, no country is a blank slate and Afghanistan is no exception, but more than an investment opportunity – that itself is laden with several obvious benefits; Afghanistan is rich with natural minerals – but a real chance to rehearse discombobulated statesmen and commentators in the virtues and practices which factor into good nation-building; which I cannot help but feel is the spiritual mission of the AAC, even if not said so outright.

Keir Starmer, take notes!


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