post-autistic
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issue 39
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Opinion The Dream Of Creativeness As Outcome Of Political Economy Margaret
Legum I
have a dream, to coin a phrase. It is that human creativeness will become the
agreed objective of political economy. Creativeness is more fulfilling and
inclusive than happiness. Economics will be put in its place – not a science
but as the servant of ethics, exercised through the democratic political
process. (Bear with me for the dream: I
come to the means later) How
is human creativeness fostered? By all research, it starts in the character
of childhood experience, and is reinforced through good education with
inspiring adults. Children are more creative who are appreciated rather than
deprecated, who attract affection, humour and respect instead of scorn,
dismissal and insult, whose bodies are treated with tenderness and not
violence. Of course creativity can spring from appalling pain, but more often
it is crushed. What
kind of political economy supports that kind of childhood experience? In essence it is one in which their
dependency needs can be met – their weakness, their neediness, that trusting
expectation of care which adults find so touching. The total dependence of
babies and small children is what captures the hearts of even the hardest of
adults, and gets us outraged when children are damaged, their small bodies
traduced, their trust abused. And
what kind of situation gets dependency needs met? We all know that it is
about carers with the resources, the time, the personal sense of security and
the inclination to meet children’s individual physical and emotional needs
and enjoy doing so. Contrast
that with the experience of the great majority of children world-wide. Adults
have the care of children in situations without any of the necessary
conditions. Millions of mothers must tell their children there is no food, so
there is no point in crying. Even middle class parents in the North have
little financial security: jobs are casualised from
the top of large corporations to the level of the checkout. Even if the worst
does not happen, the fear of
traumatic loss is deeply corrosive to relaxed, enjoyable family life. Over
a hundred leading childhood specialists of various disciplines wrote a letter
to the Daily Telegraph last week.
They describe widespread depression and other behavioral
and developmental problems among British children, who are expected to cope
with a variety of carers, in a fast-moving competitive culture, pushed by
market forces and exposed to material unsuitable to their stage of growth.
They say children need real food and real play, as opposed to junk food and
sedentary second-hand entertainment: they need proper time-taking attention.
The result of its lack is a rise in substance abuse, violence and self-harm –
and a sharp reduction in academic achievement. Publication
in the Telegraph suggest the Tories
will use this issue against the Labour government. Which is ironic, because
it is the political economy they introduced in the 1970s that lead to
children’s needs being ditched in favour of the fast competitive commercial
culture that eats up everyone today. All policy-makers now put competition at
the top of the agenda – not only in the private but also the public sector.
Your job is on the line unless your output is high and rising. The security
of your income and the ease of your family life is the last thing that
counts. Whereas
in my children’s early years my journalist husband could afford to keep us
all in reasonable comfort, all my children’s families must bring in two
incomes while they raise children. So today’s children are deprived of
consistent, relaxed, responsive parental care
to create minimal financial security. And every government bends every
effort to push single parents into the workplace, rather than paying them to
care for their own children. You would think we were desperate for labour –
rather than desperately short of jobs. Making people work for money, as a
condition of survival, is the weirdest, and cruelest,
of the outcomes of the current political economy. How
would that have to change to make the dream come true? Money
must come back down from the top where it accumulates in the financial sector
and diminishes national purchasing power.
That sector pushes up property prices, and keeps labour costs low and unemployment
high. The financial sector must stop hoarding our buying power to use it for
speculation. That means limiting its right to send capital round the world in
search of richer pickings. Fortunately
there are signs that the tide has turned. Economists like Joseph Stiglitz, and the king of global capital, George Soros, warn that without widespread redistribution – via
capital controls in some form – the world is heading for financial
disaster. The globalised
capital market, says Soros, ‘is more dangerous to
capitalism than communism ever was’. Popular
opinion is changing too. Politicians in Sweden, now facing election, have
attacked elements in the financial sector; a German politician likens some
bond dealers to locusts. And in Britain, the Observer’s city columnist, Anthony Hilton predicts that a change
in No 10 Downing Street would be ‘bad news for City’s fat cats’, because
there is a popular revulsion against City incomes. That
would be the start of a political economy that would enable democratic
governments to allocate resources to suit their own electorate rather than to
attract footloose capital. It will not create the dream overnight, but it
will remove the most savage barrier to its conception, and then its birth. ___________________________________ SUGGESTED CITATION: |