Politics & Ideology
The quick and dirty guide

Ideology
• Your ideology is your model of the world:
how it is, and how it should be.
• You might be unaware of it: it’s simply a
collection of values and ideas through
which you view the world: like tinted
lenses that you no longer notice.

One size fits all?
• Political parties tend to line up along
ideological lines, though some pretend
that they don’t.
• Ideology is a view of politics, economics,
and social issues.

One size fits all?
• Politics from the left: Communism, Socialism,
Liberalism, Conservatism, Fascism....
• Economics from the left: Marxist > Keynesian >
Monetarist > Laisser Faire
• Society from the left: Equality of Result >> Equality of
Opportunity >> Individualistic >> Authoritarian

What is Capitalism?
• Capitalism is a social & economic system
which privileges individual property
rights and advocates free market
economics.
• Under capitalism, the means for
producing & distributing goods are
owned by a relatively small group
• The majority of other people sell their
labour in return for a wage or salary.

A simple equation
• If labour costs are kept low, goods can be
sold at competitive prices and a profit can
be made.
• In a completely free market, businesses
are free to set the prices and wages that
the market will bear.
• Wages can be controlled by keeping
unemployment high.

Working Conditions
• As Britain
industrialised in
the 19th C, and
factory owners
prospered, the
workers - who
actually produced
the wealth -
endured terrible
conditions.

Working Conditions
• Workers endured poor
wages, impossibly
long working hours,
dangerous &
unsanitary workplaces
and dwellings, little or
no health provision,
and a short life
expectancy – if they
even lived through
childhood.

Cotton Mills
• By 1830, there were over 560 cotton mills in
Lancashire alone, employing 110,000
workers, 35,000 of them children – some as
young as six.
• Children were paid 2s.3d (11½ pence), with
adults earning about 10 times more.
• It made sense to employ as many children as
possible. They worked for 14 hours per day,
sometimes more.

Laisser Faire
• This was rampant laisser faire
capitalism.
• If the poor suffered, it was
seen as their own fault: God
wanted them to be poor.
• It was the “natural” order.
• Only the “deserving” poor
were given any social help –
through the degrading Poor
Houses.

Trade Unions
• Early trade unionists were treated like
criminals and many were transported to
the colonies
• Eventually, trade unions were legalised,
and workers organised to get better
conditions.

Reform
• Gradually, conditions improved for the
working classes.
• The 1870 Education Act provided a
framework for 5–13 year olds to attend
school.
• In 1880, attendance to the age of 12 was
made compulsory.

Objections
• Some claimed it would make labouring
classes 'think' about their dissatisfying
lives and possibly be encouraged to revolt.
• Nevertheless, working and social
conditions gradually improved.

Migrating Peasants
• At the beginning of the industrial revolution, the
peasantry migrated to cities to find work.
• But until the reforms of the later 19th Century,
workers were worse off than they had been
under feudalism.
• A mediaeval peasant got 80 days off a year (for
Church holidays) and only worked around 50
days a year for his feudal lord!

Migrating Jobs
• In a global economy, global capitalism
operates: it’s usually called globalisation.
• In a globalised economy, goods are
produced where labour is cheapest: jobs
migrate.

Improved conditions =
increased costs
• As labour conditions improved in the developed
world, capitalists looked elsewhere for cheap
labour, and production tended to move away
from more developed economies.
• For example, VW started to produce cars in
Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa.
• More recently, call centre jobs migrated to India

Cheap Labour
• At the moment, the cheapest labour can be
found in Far Eastern economies: China, Taiwan,
Viet Nam, Singapore, etc.
• A Chinese worker earns a fraction of what a
European or American worker earns.
• Very few Chinese workers can actually afford the
goods they manufacture.
• Child labour is still a factor in some parts of the
world.

Marxism
• In a nutshell, Marxism is the theory and
practice of working class emancipation.
• Emancipation doesn’t just mean
“freedom”; it refers to an ongoing process
of (or struggle for) elevation and
liberation

Dialectics
• Karl Marx (1818–1883) gave the name
dialectics to this process of working class
struggle.
• In simple terms, dialectics is a process of
contradiction...

Dialectics
new counter- argument
etc.
Argument reconciled arguments
=
Counter- new argument
argument

Dialectics
new antithesis
Synthesis etc.
Hypothesis Synthesis
=
Antithesis New Hypothesis

Struggle
New Struggle
New System
etc.
System
New System
Struggle

The Working Class
• Before industrialisation, said Marx, the peasantry
were oppressed by the ruling class through
necessity - it was the only way society could
progress through history.
• Capitalist methods of production, however,
created a new working class with collective
power.

The logical outcome...
• Marx predicted that the irrational and illogical
contradictions inherent in capitalism would
result – after struggle – in the development of a
higher form of society.
• This higher form of society would be classless,
and material abundance would be produced and
shared in common.

Collapse
• If you take Marx at his word, then the eventual
collapse of Capitalism is inevitable: nobody has
to do anything.
• For this reason, our current economic system is
sometimes called Late Capitalism
• For example, globalisation, growing levels of
debt and a permanent arms economy are some
of the predicted symptoms of Late Capitalism

Communism
• The Communists, on the other hand, didn’t want
to wait for Capitalism to collapse, and instead
decided to hurry it along with revolution
• Under Communism, the economy is entirely
state-managed and the means of production is
owned by the people.
• Ironically, China - the hub of Late Capitalism - is
also one of the last (supposedly) Communist
economies.

Socialism
• Socialism grew out of the late 19th
Century workers’ movements.
• For some, it’s seen as a stage on the way to
communism.
• In practice, it’s a compromise, with a
mixed economy: some state control, but
some elements of a free market.

The Labour Party
• The British Labour Party was founded in 1900 as
a coalition of the Trade Union movement and
various Socialist Societies.
• The Labour Party traditionally was in favour of
socialist policies such as:
✴ public ownership of key ✴ increased rights for
industries workers and trade unions
✴ government intervention ✴ belief in the welfare state
in the economy
✴ publicly funded
✴ redistribution of wealth healthcare and education.

The Labour Party
• Since the 1980s, some traditional Labour
policies have been (at least partially) dropped.
• (Ironically, the recent near-collapse of the
banking system has forced the government to
take some banks into public ownership.)
✴ public ownership of key ✴ increased rights for
industries workers and trade unions
✴ government intervention ✴ belief in the welfare state
in the economy
✴ publicly funded
✴ redistribution of wealth healthcare and education.

Taxation
• Taxation is a mechanism for the
redistribution of wealth.
• Taxes can be direct (income tax, deducted
at source) or indirect (VAT - a tax on
spending).
• Political rhetoric often revolves around
taxation.

Tax & Spend
• Labour governments are often seen as
“tax and spend” governments.
• High taxes for more public spending.
• The Labour government of 1964-70 was
notorious for high taxes
• Tax & Spend is a way of describing
Keynesian economics

Keynesian Economics
• John Maynard Keynes proposed that
governments should “pump prime” the
economy by borrowing money to increase
public spending when necessary.
• Increased spending = more jobs = more tax
revenues & consumer demand = economic
growth.

Inflation
• The problem with Keynesian theory is that it
encourages inflation: when prices and wages rise
together.
• If there is high inflation, lenders lose out, because the
value of the money loaned decreases with inflation.
• On the other hand, inflation can be seen as good for
borrowers: if wages rise at the rate of inflation, but the
value of what you borrowed reduces, you end up owing
less (in real terms) than you borrowed.

Stagflation
• This term was coined in the mid-1970s to
describe the state of the economy under
the Labour government of 1974-1979.
• There was high inflation, but low
economic growth (stagnation).

Monetarism
• Keynesianism was critiqued and
succeeded by Monetarism, which is also
known as supply-side economics.
• Controlling the money supply, in theory,
controls the rate of inflation.

Increasing and Decreasing
the money supply
• How do you increase the money supply?
1. You lower taxes, so that people retain
more of their income.
2. You lower interest rates, so that credit is
cheaper.
• And vice-versa, to decrease the money
supply.

Low Taxation Theory
• If you let people retain more of their
earned income, they will feel better off
and therefore spend more.
• The economy (and overall tax revenue)
will grow, and the benefits will “trickle
down”.

Direct vs. Indirect
• For supply-side economics, taxes on
spending (indirect) are better than taxes
on earnings (direct).
• Since 1979, there’s been a tendency for
indirect taxes (e.g. fuel tax, airport tax,
VAT) to increase, while direct taxes have
lowered.

Tax Freedom Day
• This is the term for the (imaginary) day at
which point an individual stops “working
for the government” and starts earning
for him- or herself.
• In 2008, Tax Freedom Day is 2 June.
• For a mediaeval peasant, it was 20
February!

Tax Freedom Days
• 1965, TFD = 27 April - • 1987, 5 June - Con
Labour
• 1992, 29 May - Con
• 1969, = 29 May - Lab
• 1998, 28 May - Lab
• 1973, 11 May - Conservatives
• 2001, 4 June - Lab
• 1979, 29 May - Lab
• 2007, 4 June - Lab
• 1983, 14 June - Con
The lesson? No matter what the government, taxes have
remained more or less constant since the late 1960s

Public Spending
• Education • Police, Courts, Prisons
• Health Care (NHS) • Flood & Sea Defences
• Roads, street lighting • Disaster relief
• Defence & Security • International Aid
• Waste collection, • Administration
recycling
Which would you do without in order to save
public money?

Contradictory Policies
• There’s a tendency for conservatives to argue for
lower public spending in order to lower taxes.
• But there’s also a tendency for conservatives to
demand law-and-order policies such as longer
(and more) prison sentences.
• Unfortunately, prisons are very expensive, which
tends to increase public spending.

The Spectrum
• The last time Keynesian economic
policies operated in the UK was in 1979,
when Mrs Thatcher came to power with
the conservatives.
• British politics shifted to the right, and
monetarist economic policies.

British Politics Today
• Mainstream British political parties
occupy more or less the same centre
ground: they argue over details.
• The closer the parties are to each other,
the fiercer the argument over peripheral
issues.

Political Rhetoric
Liberal
Labour Conservative
Democrats
(left-wing) (right-wing)
(centrist)
Radical, Radical, Conservative,
community progressive traditional values
values values
Free market with Free market, low
Social safety net
safety net taxation
Equality of Individual
Equality of result
opportunity freedom

Newspaper Rhetoric
The Guardian The Telegraph The Daily Mail
Education Taxation Crime
Health Crime Immigration
Freedom issues
Society Politics
(oh, and tax)