Neo-Conservatism and the State
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NEO-CONSERVATISM AND THE STATE Reg Whitaker 'This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that Mortal1 God, to which wee owe under the Immortal1 God, our peace and defence. For by this Authoritie, given him by every particular man in the Common-Wealth, he hath the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is inabled to forme the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutual ayd against their enemies abroad.' -Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan II:17 [I6511 If there is one characteristic of the neo-conservative political hegemony in America and Britain in the 1980s upon which both enthusiasts and most critics seemingly agree, it is that Reaganism and Thatcherism are pre- eminently laissez faire attacks on the state. From 'deregulation' in America to 'privatisation' in Britain, the message has seemed clear: the social democratic/Keynesian welfare state is under assault from those who wish to substitute markets for politics. Ancient arguments from the history of the capitalist state have risen from the graveyard to fasten, vampire-like, on the international crisis of capitalism itself. Once again the strident Babbitry of 'free enterprise versus the state' rings in the corridors of power, in editorial offices, in the halls of academe. Marshall McLuhan once offered the gnomic observation that we are fated to drive into the future while steering by the rear-view mirror. Or, as Marx wrote in regard to the French Revolution, revolutionaries '. anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries, and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language.' Nor is there any shortage of well-paid 'gladiators' to find 'the ideals and the art forms, the self-deceptions that they need in order to conceal from themselves the bourgeois limitations of the content of their struggles7.' Thus a public policy research institute in Washington opens a major study of The Reagan Experiment in 1982 with the following preamble:2 A counterrevolution is underway, after a half century of growing federal efforts to stabilize the economy, insure individuals against misfortune, redistribute income and opportunity. The nucleus of this counterrevolution is a philosophy of more limited government. Its articulation by a popular new president has 1 2 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1987 sparked a fresh debate about the purposes of government and the ability of individuals and institutions to advance in an environment of diminished federal assistance. Yet the deception of 'more limited government' is increasingly difficult to sustain when the US government under Reagan sends the deficit over the two hundred billion dollar mark-the highest amount ever recorded and in constant dollars the highest ever attained in peacetime.3 The deception is equally difficult to sustain in the face of a government which prepares and executes a series of re-invasions of the state into civil society and the private behaviour of individuals. In the same way the deception of Thatcherism as an anti-state movement is as difficult to sustain in the face of the deployment of police like an army of occupation against striking coal miners, their families and their supporters, and the savage use of the Official Secrets Act against dissenters. It is certainly not a 'more limited government' which invades Grenada, shells Beirut, bombs Tripoli, harasses Nicaragua, carries out the most massive arms buildup in US history and plans the staggering multibillion dollar Strategic Defense Initiative, or 'Star Wars' project. Nor is it a 'more limited government' deployed by the Iron Lady to wage war on Argentina, nor anti-statism which infused the high ritual of the victory celebrations in which Church, Crown, and Nation were assembled and displayed like a talismanic Holy Trinity. The State under Neo-conservatism Neo-conservative rtgimes have been in office in Britain since 1979 and in America since 1981. Enough time has now passed to assess the impact of promises to 'get government off our backs'. To begin with the crudest of statistical indicators, have Reaganism and Thatcherism actually reduced the overall size of government? In the United States, total government expenditures as a percentage of the GNP rose from just under 30 per cent in the late 1970s under the presidency of Jimmy Carter to reach 32.5 per cent in 1985 in the first year of Reagan's second term. By a somewhat different indicator-government final consumption expenditures as a percentage of GDP by type of expenditure-government was spending at just below the rate of the late 1970s, but this followed an increase in the early 1980s.~The number of persons employed by government as a percentage of the total non-agricultural workforce has marginally tailed off from the Carter to the Reagan presidencies, from 17.9 per cent in 1980 to 16.8 per cent in the autumn of 1985 (although this has to be placed in the context of a decline in private sector employment).' In Britain, by four different measurements of public expenditures as a per- centage of the GDP, Thatcherism has resulted in a larger state than existed when the Tories took office in 1979, and indeed government NEO-CONSERVATISM AND THE STATE 3 expenditure under Thatcher is slowly regaining the historic dimensions reached in 1975176.~Public sector employment as a percentage of the employed labour force was 29.4 per cent in 1979 and had declined to 26.9 per cent in 1985, but if employment in public corporations is excluded (where privatisation has been taking place), the percentage of the employed labour force in direct government employment was slightly higher in 1985 at 21.7 per cent than it was in 1979 when it was 21.2 per cent.' The overall size of government has certainly not been reduced in any significant way by neo-conservatism. Gross size is not much of an indicator of the nature of the neo- conservative state. What about the allocation of resources within big neo- conservative governments? At the level of campaign rhetoric and party manifestos, there is no question that the intention has been to reallocate expenditures away from welfarelsocial security programmes in the US, and from welfare and direct government presence in production in the UK, toward defence, policing and defence-related research and development programmes. The record in office partially bears out these intentions. In the US, defence outlays as a percentage of GNP rose from 4.7 in 1979 to 6.4 in 1985, an overall increase of 117 per cent in six years. Moreover, these figures do not include indirect defence expenditures. In this regard, outlays on defence-related R & D increased by 150 per cent over the same years, while non-defence related R & D increased by less than 19 per cent. Federal government outlays on 'science, space and technology' increased by 65 per cent in the six years from 1979 to 1985, and in the same period expenditures on a budget category suspiciously called 'international affairs' shot up by 117 per cent. The function of 'administration of justice' increased by over 50 per cent over the same span.' In Britain, Thatcher has presided over a similar pattern: defence accounted for L6.8 billion in 1977178 and E17.1 billion in 1984185; 'law, order, and protective services' L1.8 billion in 1977178 and E3.6 billion in 1984185.' Neo-conservatism has delivered on its promises to put more tax dollars into defence and policing. The reverse side of this coin, the promise to slash spending on social programmes, presents a more obscure and contra- dictory record. Of course there have been well publicised assaults on particular programmes, and fierce cutbacks of funding: no one in a social service capacity at the street level in either Britain or America would dare to deny the reality of the attack, or the very real human costs. Yet the bare statistical record suggests a more ambiguous interpretation. While US defence expenditures rose by 117 per cent from 1979 to 1985, as noted above, during the same period expenditures on 'human resources' (educa- tion, health, social security, income security) rose by 76.4 per cent. Expressed as a percentage of GNP, human resources expenditures by the federal government rose from 10.9 per cent in 1979, before Reagan, to 12 per cent in 1985, into Reagan's second term-almost double the 6.4 per 4 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1987 cent of GNP accounted for by direct defence expenditures. In Britain, the figures are yet more perplexing. From 1973-74 to 1984-85, we find that spending on health and personal social services increased by 41 per cent and social security expenditures by 74 per cent. In 1977178 the proportion of defence to social security expenditures in the budget was 48.9 per cent; after six years of Thatcherism it was 45 per cent.'' Of course, the early 1980s were years of deep recession, high unemployment and heavy claims on existing social programmes. Social democratic or overtly Keynesian governments might have run more deeply into red ink on social spending (although the record of the Socialist government in France in the same period offers little support for this). Yet the failure of the neo-conservative 'revolutionaries' to reverse significantly the exist- ing patterns of warfarelwelfare functions is nevertheless a telling confirma- tion of the tenacity of the welfare state, a point which has been made strongly in recent years by Goran g her born." If traditional forms of state expenditure have shown surprising persist- ance in the face of anti-welfare state rhetoric, the point of course remains that neo-conservative governments have attempted-with some success- to shift priorities towards coercion and accumulation and away from legitimation.