Dieu et la société

Un article qui fait réfléchir, Jamie Whyte dans le Financial Times rappelle comment en 1987 Margaret Thatcher a formulé l'idée que la "société" est un concept à gauche comparable à "Dieu" à droite. Challenging.  (Au passage : les fondamentalistes islamiques sont donc à droite, à coté des  bigots chrétiens et autres gourous). Mentionné par Le Crédule Libéral ici.

"They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people." So said Margaret Thatcher in 1987. Anybody who now agrees with her is generally regarded as unfit for public office. Even the Conservative party has repudiated her wickedness. David Cameron never misses an opportunity to assure his audience that she was wrong, that there really is such a thing as society.

This new consensus is regrettable, because Mrs Thatcher was right. All costs and all benefits accrue to individuals. Re-read the quotation: that is clearly what she meant by denying the existence of society. If people claim that society ought to compensate them for some misfortune ("cast their problem on society") then, though the government might arrange this compensation, it cannot provide it. The cost must ultimately fall on individual men and women, usually through taxation.

It is not surprising that leftwingers should wish to obscure this simplefact with grandiose talk of society. A sensible case can be made for some redistribution of wealth. Since a pound is worth more to a pauper than to a millionaire, transferring money from the latter to the former increases aggregate wealth.

But this argument is not agreeable to leftwing politicians. For, if maximising wealth were the goal, we would need to take seriously the anti-work and anti-investment incentives created by such transfers. Anyone thinking of the matter in this way would probably conclude that transfers are currently too great. No, leftwing politicians always cast their redistributive policies as a matter of morality or justice. Which is why they need their inflated conception of society. They need something greater than individual men and women to provide the moral foundation for their compulsory transfers.

Suppose your neighbour's unmarried and unemployed 17-year-old daughter fell pregnant. It would be preposterous to claim that you therefore owed her money (unless, of course, you are her baby's father). But a politician who wants you to pay her can skirt this problem with the judicious use of "society". She has a claim against society to help her in her time of need. What kind of society, after all, allows poor children to suffer? And you have a duty to society to pay about half your income in tax, since society has been so good as to furnish you with a high income.

Society is for the left what God is for Christians. Its mere existence creates moral obligations, with no need for contracts and with no need for tiresome debate about the merits of making these obligations law. Those who deny the existence of society are simply trying to evade their responsibilities. In this era of secular piety, that is a grave political sin. Hence Mr Cameron's incessant affirmation of society.

But "society isn't the same as the state". Mr Cameron's equally incessant qualification is supposed to give us a reason to vote for the Conservatives instead of those who have always loved society. He believes in the higher entity, but he disputes the incumbent clergy's approach to serving it. He is no Richard Dawkins. He is Martin Luther to the Labour party's Papacy. It is precisely because he loves society that he wants to "roll back the state".

This might be a cause for celebration. Rolling back the state would certainly help individual men and women. Alas, it is a hard task for someone determined to distance himself from his party's nasty, society-denying past. In his rebranding exercise, Mr Cameron has promised not to reduce taxation, to cherish the NHS and state schools and to remove from their staff the few performance incentives that now burden them. By seeking to engage charities in the state-regulated and state-funded provision of social services, he aims effectively to nationalise them. None of this constitutes rolling back the state.

Indeed, Mr Cameron aims to takethe state to places that no one but a Kibbutz-dweller could ever have imagined it might reach. In a recent speech, he espoused the orthodoxy that the state has a duty to protect its citizens. He then claimed that such protection includes "giving children emotional stability".

When confronted with such creeping lunacy, a well chosen mantra can help to secure your sanity. Fortunately, we have one to hand. Just repeat after Mrs T: there is no such thing as society.

The writer is author of Bad Thoughts:A Guide to Clear Thinking (Corvo)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Comments

[Rédigé par:paulo]

Bonjour,

Le problème c'est que Dieu n'est ni à droite ni à gauche ...cela est un pur concept des "gouvernants" de ce monde , qui pensent et se prennent pour...des dieux . On ne peut pas se dire "chrétien " ou croyant comme l'avance Thatcher ou Bush ou bien d'autres lorsqu'on " court-circuite " Jésus-Christ ...et donc l'humanité