How The Fabian Socialists Won Control of Athens
Ever since the denizens of the “Third Way” started to parade their wares in the Athenian agora, we have seen increasing discourse about “stakeholders”. The term “stakeholder” is a code word for owner or ownership rights.
We are probably all familiar with “stakeholder” discourse. Take any business: it is argued that the “stakeholder” is that a person or class of persons which has a stake in the business. They are affected or some way dependant upon the business—whether directly or indirectly—and this means they have a right to influence or shape the way the business runs or operates. The classic “stakeholders” in a business, according to stakeholder theory are the owners (shareholders), its customers, and its employees. Stakeholder theory advocates that ownership rights (in the sense of influence, command, direction, and control) be extended in some “appropriate” way to all stakeholders.
So much for the theory. It makes intuitive common sense. If you are affected in some way, you have a right to have a say how things are run and done. It's the good-old-Kiwi way, right?
Now, extend it to the implied duties and responsibilities of government. It follows that the duty and role of government is to ensure that the “rights” of all stakeholders are duly recognised, considered, and protected. Since it is the duty of governments to protect property and punish theft, it follows that the state has a right to recognise and advance the implied ownership rights of customers and employees over owners of a business. The duty of the state is to be the arbiter, the institution which balances the ownership rights of all stakeholders in the marketplace.
The concept of “stakeholder” is wonderfully flexible and malleable. It can be applied to almost all human activity. In the case of the family, the stakeholder concept firstly identifies all who will be affected by the lifestyle of the family—both directly and indirectly. Since the family is the bedrock of society, it turns out that all people, all social groups, the entire community become cast as stakeholders in every family. Since all children have a stake (interest in, indirectly affected by) in the way every child is treated, all children, it is argued, have a social ownership right in every family. All wives or women have a social ownership right in every family. Since the way a child is raised affects its behaviour and aptitude and application at school, the entire educational establishment has a social ownership right in every family. And on it goes.
Suddenly, all parts of society are seen to have a stake in every family. Since all society is represented by the state (according to prevailing Athenian orthodoxy), and since the state alone (apparently) has the power and asserted competence to balance all the competing interests and stakes it follows that the state must positively intrude into every family in the country—regulating, controlling, prescripting, and proscribing family life. It must do so, if the stakeholders' interests are to be recognised, reflected, respected and preserved. Welcome to the Third Way—the early twenty-first century's version of Fabian socialism.
Another application is environmentalism or greenism. You own a house. Well actually on paper you do, and possibly the bank thinks you do. Certainly you laid out capital to have the title of ownership transferred to you. But actually, according to stakeholder theory you share ownership of your property with a large number of additional stakeholders. To be sure they did not lay out any capital, but they have a stake or an interest in your family home.
First off, there are the neighbours. What you do with your property—the grounds, the trees, the garden, the extensions, the vehicles—all of this affects the neighbours in some way or other. Because they are affected, they have rights to have some influence and control over what you do with your house and section.
Then there is all of mankind. You and your house are linked to the wellbeing of mankind and the entire world. If you pollute; if you despoil the environment; if you contribute to “global warming” all mankind and all animal life is affected indirectly. All mankind, as represented through the local greenists, and the greenist controlled local authorities, therefore have a right to prescribe and proscribe what you do with your house and grounds. Much of what you do, or wish to do, with what you own requires their consent—as mediated through the legalistic processes of the Resource Management Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Building Code(s), and a cluster of regulations about trees, footpaths, fences, heights, views, and preservation orders.
In each and every case, stakeholder theory or ideology has been used to reduce property and ownership rights, and extend control to the rules, regulations, and prescriptions of the government—both central and local. But arrogations of state power and intrusion never happen in abstraction: they are always transmitted through cloaking concepts. In our day, the key, heavy-lifting justification for increasing centralised, state control over all property is the ideology of stakeholder rights.
Our parents taught us that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck there is a high probability it is a duck. So, no-one reads Marx any more. Engels is a misspelt geometrical term. Fabian Socialism is an evil character in a Charles Dickens novel. But socialism is alive and well, nonetheless. In fact it has made astounding strides and advances within Athenian society in the past twenty-five years. Unbelievable advances. It has a different garb and is cloaked in upbeat haute couteur. No-one wears cloth caps any more, but socialism and socialists are more popular and influential than ever. Stakeholder ideology has advanced the socialist cause and reality so effectively that even so-called capitalists embrace it now. It is the brave new world.
Richard Nixon once infamously commented that “we are all Keynsians now” as he promulgated a paper-backed monetary system. Were he alive, he would probably sardonically add “and now we are all socialists”. It has come about through the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing-ideology of stakeholder rights.
No comments:
Post a Comment