From there, it was just a step to consider how a politics of care might be very different from the stereotypical politics of the assumed “normal person”, which is common to all neoliberal political parties at present, including both Reform and Restore.
What we realised was that we had found the defining difference between those neoliberal politics of slightly varying hues and the politics of care. All neoliberalss, including those on the far-right, assume, paternalistically, that there is a “normal person” whose needs they must satisfy. The politics of care is fundamentally different. It presumes that the role of politics and of the state is to assist a person to fulfil their own purpose, which need not be normal at all, and around which diversity is permitted.
It was as if a canyon had opened, a rift had been discovered, or even a new paradigm had been noted. I confessed to some excitement as a consequence.
Having worked out that one size does not fit all the man still insists he’s against neoliberalism, classical liberalism, markets and choice and continues on with the asnwer of MOAR STATE and MOAR TAX.
Sigh.
The entire point – along this axis at least – of markets and liberalism, neo- or not is that folk vary, their desires, potentials and possibilities vary and so we need a system that leaves folk be to live their own life their own way. It’s the very point of liberty in fact. Sure, sure, a helping hand here and there but he’s doscovered the very point of the system he fulminates against.
I confessed to some excitement as a consequence.
He did a little wee in his pants didn’t he.
Capitalism – the left’s term for what normal people call freedom.
Indeed. Term was coined by Marx as a pejorative for free enterprise. Anti-capitalist is literally anti-freedom.
“It was as if a canyon had opened …”
Shame he didn’t fall in.
It’s where his brain should be.
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;”
Does Spud have any “Ken”?
What a weasel word “care” is. I’d put the ‘politics of care’ in the same category as ‘çare workers’ who couldn’t give a fuck.
Yup. And ‘care homes’.
Fortunately I think most people have rumbled that one. And the more experience you have of the ‘care’ sector, the less you believe the ‘care’ part.
“It presumes that the role of politics and of the state is to assist a person to fulfil their own purpose”
Excellent. My purpose is to live happily where I am in a fundamentally British culture with no state restrictions on how I choose to travel, eat and think. I also want a mild welfare state with low taxation and an energy system that provides me with cheap and reliable power for whatever I choose to do with it.
Whilst this “need not be normal” it probably is normal enough to win a democratic election.
So Muslim men whose purpose in life is to sexually abuse underage girls are well catered for under this policy? Would seem to be.
‘well catered for’
Does that mean hanging??
“ All neoliberals, including those on the far-right, assume, paternalistically, that there is a “normal person” whose needs they must satisfy. “
Thats not so much a straw man as a straw Mount Everest.
Murphy trying to scare people with his neoliberal straw man…
Do sit down, Sergeant. Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent.
Politics WILL care for you whether you like it or not.
Politics will take care of* you, more like…
*Paulie walnuts applies
No to digital ID.
“It presumes that the role of politics and of the state is to assist a person to fulfil their own purpose”
Better men and women than him have grappled with the problem of what is the purpose of life and couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer, which is partly why the Founding Fathers left it at:
And that the government should stay out of the way especially when it came to the pursuit of Happiness because helping one person persue their Happiness is likely to come at the cost of someone else’s Happiness.
In Spuds case that fulfilment of purpose, however he defines it, is going to cost other people a lot of money and given the effectiveness of government won’t achieve their goals anyway.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
And Oh Boy hasn’t that concept caused some shit?
I confessed to some excitement as a consequence.
He thought he was finally going to be able to kill the rich and take their stuff.
The politics of care is fundamentally different.
Marketing told him they were having trouble selling “kill the rich and take their stuff.”
They had a shiny new, focus-group-tested “good” word, ‘care,’ for him to use instead.
The ‘politics of care’ means “kill the rich and take their stuff.”
A friend mentioned the new, to me, term “trad wife”. I said you do realise you’re describing me and Mrs Ltw?
I told the missus about the exchange and she knew all about it. As she said, “it’s like cisgender, they had to invent a new term for being normal”.
It was very hot yesterday morning, so hot that Jacqueline and I did not feel like going birdwatching in the morning. We did, instead, set off to sit in the garden of the Poets’ House Hotel in Ely, to drink coffee.
And then the conversation began.
Jacqueline wanted to discuss the role of the Fabians in Labour history. A long time ago, I was a member. I knew enough to start that conversation.
Then she brought up the Rockefeller Foundation and its impact on medicine and education in the first decade of the 20th century, a topic she has studied extensively. We began to explore that and its consequences, a theme we had discussed before.
This all sounds tedious as fuck. I think I’d rather wrestle a face-eating leopard than listen to a second of Ritchie’s table talk.
He was a Fabian and no longer is? Was he thrown out of there as well?
“I was a Fabian you know”
Steve, these are the workings of a great mind, a deep thinker. This is how such people spend their time.
“Great” and ‘deep” are relative terms, mind.
I think we’d probably call Jacqueline “long-suffering”, “patient”, or perhaps even “indulgent”. “Deluded” also comes to mind.
She must be as mad as he is.
Or “that’s nice, dear” is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in Ritchie’s imagination.
What, you think he lets her get a word in edgeways?
The antecedent appears to be Labour. Not Fabian.
But that is not what neoliberals believe.
He would probably not be as rabidly afraid of neoliberalism if he actually knew what the word meant.
He might be even more afraid if he understood neoliberalism.
“assume, paternalistically, that there is a “normal person” whose needs they must satisfy” at least involves a government catering for people’s needs. Although Murphy disagrees on who, what or how the government should cater for, at least the concept of a government doing things is within his worldview.
The idea that people prosper more if the government stops trying to do things? That’s the sort of concept that his mind won’t be able to cope with, because it blows a hole in his entire conception.