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824   27 September 2003   

barren socialist perception

Alan Milburn re-surfaced this week, with a think-piece about New Labour, in the Guardian.  Sadly, he only demonstrates the barren socialist ground which Blairisim has become.  There's plenty about the inaccessible abstraction which he calls "fairness", deftly replacing "equality" in his socialist firmament.  But nothing about Labour acting to strengthen each individual - in Place of Fear..

To be fair, Alan Milburn has tried hard to come up with some kind of intellectual rationale of Blairism, of New Labour.    But the harder he tries, the more barren the intellectual landscape becomes.  There are no political shots left in the locker. The ideological cupboard is bare.

At one point, my spirits perked up.

  • "Now, more than ever, Tony Blair has to spell out New Labour's purpose.  He has to communicate our values and vision for Britain.  For me - and I suspect for him - it is simple enough.  It is about creating a fair future for all, one in which the insecurities of the global economy demand a renewed social solidarity"

What's that?  How can that be?  I agree fully with that!  But spirits are raised only to be dashed.  The rest of this vapid piece focuses on perceptions of the vacant concept of "fairness".  "Fairness is the soul food Party members crave" - what craven nonsense!

  • "Fairness" is useless, as the frail central concept of a political position. Milburn says nothing - literally nothing - about Government delivering to its people support, in the face of growing global insecurities.  Nothing about unemployment, nothing about poverty in old age.  That single idea, if we could capture it, would transform future socialist politics - and Labour's long-term electoral prospects. But Alan Milburn will not, it seems, be making any constructive contribution to this process...

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825  29 September 2003  

Abdroid Chaos

More examples this week of the havoc wreaked in our lives by the rampant proliferation of artificial personality.  Certain Directors of Equitable Life are being sued personally for negligence in the conduct of the failed company - and they thought they were protected by "limited liability".  And in America, new confusions are being sown because companies, as artificial persons (i.e. persons nonetheless...) are considered to have rights of "free speech" under the Constitution...

In the Equitable Life case, the former Directors are dismayed at being sued for negligence in their conduct of the company.  So dismayed indeed, that they are launching a pre-emptive strike to stop the proceedings at the outset, on the grounds that the action has no prospects of success.  Judgment is awaited.

It is common for "Directors" to believe that "limited liability" protects them against allegations of negligence - that they are somehow cocooned by the presence of the abdroid (the "artificial person", which the company constitutes) and that their actions are all to be attributed to the abdroid, not to themselves.  These are serious misconceptions.  I believe that thousands upon thousands of our fellow-citizens are misled by their misunderstanding of company law, and popular conventions about the conduct of company affairs.   Directors are not alone in their misconceptions - if senior management understood the extent of their personal liabilities, there would be widespread concern, if not panic.

"Limited liability" was invented not to protect Directors or Managers, but to protect risk-taking absentee shareholders, by giving them the assurance that - having contributed to the financing of the company and purchasing a fully-paid-up share - their liability for the debts of the abdroid would be legally limited to the figure invested.  If they had been "partners", they would have had to meet the firm's future debts - but as "shareholders" in a limited liability company, they could limit their exposure.  They might well lose all their money, but they could not be called on to pay any additional sums.  This device was the key to the mobilisation of resources to fund the global industrial revolution, from 1850 onwards.

But the legal doctrine says nothing to limit the personal liability of Directors or Managers - for civil wrongs (fraud, deceit, negligence) committed in the course of their conduct of the company.  That is why the Equitable Life Directors are being sued.  It is alleged that they presided over years and years of incompetence in the conduct of the company's affairs, and they failed to exercise their supervisory functions carefully enough.  And I find it difficult to see why these allegations should not be investigated properly.

Statesides, further legal dispute continues to rage over the constitutional rights - in this case, free speech - for artificial persons.  Last year, NIKE were denied a free-speech defence, in a dispute about running overseas sweatshops.  Tobacco companies are claiming the constitutional right "not to incriminate themselves", in a range of cases.  And in California, the Milk Advisory Board is in trouble over its claims that "Great cheese comes from happy cows - happy cows come from California!".  In Europe, human rights groups are challenging the right of companies to use the European Convention to assert their "property rights".  In all these cases, "artificial personality" is being abused.

Our social and political systems, indeed our moral senses, are becoming entangled in fallacious reasoning, generated by the phenomenon of artificial personality.   Artificial personality is the Japanese Knotweed of the social order, insidious in its penetrative potential.  Abdroids should in my view never be entitled to rely on human rights legislation.  Abdroids are a mere technical legal device, designed to achieve certain limited commercial ends, and useful for those purposes.  But culturally and politically, we have come to attribute far too much weight and importance to them.  They should be deliberately down-graded throughout society, by legislative change - which is under our control.  That is the purpose of my campaign to Tame the Corporations.

What do you think?  Drop me a line

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