Ok so if economics does determine”culture” and the limits of integration and understanding. How does it work?
We will develop this later but it is about a few simple things; social and economic value and how it is created, controlled and allocated. It not difficult stoopid!
The issues of culture, cultural convergence and cultural relativism have to be understood or debated with common reference points. If not, confusion reigns as arguments are held which have common terms which unfortunately mean different things to different groups or cultures. It is essential that in the twenty-first century and particularly in the post capitalist, western post industrial period we gain some narrative which has a widely agreed objectivity so we can ensure that we don’t sacrifice our hard grafted for western liberty on the gilded altar of a neurotic moral relativism. Because this is going on now, unchallenged and utterly misunderstood. Simply look at the different ways “equality” is used around the world, particularly in relation to women’s rights.
If we deal with the world’s non-western cultures, and we won’t specify them but let’s just say they are the ones that discriminate on what we have come to know in the west as “improper” grounds, we find there is a lot of inhumane behaviour much of it state sanctioned, much of it a throw back to the primitivism that it was Capitalism’s destiny to sweep away. We have come to overlook this by adopting the stance of the moral relativist. Adopting this approach FGM is no different to a Boob job or a western contract based marriage no different from polygamy. They are legitimate or illegitimate versions of the same things. When there is a clash, for example, the death penalty for “sorcery” we turn a blind eye…..we have no narrative either to understand this or challenge it so we ignore it and the pathetic plight of those condemned by it.
The West has lost its moral leadership cowed by shrill claims of moral imperialism. The reason we have lost our humanitarian voice (except when talking to ourselves) is that we have lost touch with what makes and shapes morality….and that is economics transforming often barbaric holy books. It doesn’t matter whether it is tribal economics or advanced post industrial debt dependent consumer economics, economics shapes our moral parameters.
Because most “liberals” don’t understand the role of economics in moral behaviour they can’t create a narrative which helps us understand the traditional culture’s hatred of behaviour like homosexuality nor our western tendency to promote it. We can’t look traditional people in the eye whether here or in their country of origin and ask them whether they understand why they think our culture is immoral, or what it is about our culture they are most appalled by. We just don’t go there perhaps because we can’t face having our nieve belief that everything in the world is fine and “liberal” challenged by the opinions of “disadvantaged” ethnic groups who will shout “post colonial” at us if we challenge their moral perspective.
The only way to avoid being accused of racism or equally to avoid turning a blind eye to abuse of minority lifestyles in “traditional” cultures is to have a grounded narrative. A narrative upon which a debate can be found which avoids stereo types, or a mere race and ethnicity based slanging match but which draws out safe debate with people who harbour prejudicial views from whatever cultural origin including western culture. The basis for this narrative has to be economics as this is not only relevant territory for a healthy debate it is safe territory, at least it should be in the 21st century. Later we will examine how this relationship between economics and culture works. As we said above it is about value both social and economic. Is it as Marx suggested the riddle of history solved!
For too many decades now the west has failed to grasp that it’s unique offering to the world was its capitalist system. Loved and reviled in equal measure, those who loved it loved the wealth it conferred through its capacity to deliver massive volumes of economic value or profit. Those who hated it hated it because this economic value was created according to the left by “stealing” value from the workers. This “capitalist” system, the ability by risk taking capitalists to mix land, labour and capital to create profit was in terminal decline at the outbreak of WWII and was extinct we believe by the 1980’s.
Capitalism however shaped the British nation and the British nation shaped the world or much of it. The capitalist system needed and got a legal contractual foundation free of corruption, it required consent and it required the right to make choices. The Corn Laws were and early battle by capitalists against state vested interests as perhaps Brexit for Brexiteers is today.
the contract, choice and consent basis that capitalism needed to thrive eventually took on what is called a “social character”. It moved from being merely legal or economic to being the bedrock of what is now the welfare system with its obligation to distribute wealth, as well as becoming the basis of the “free market”.
Everyone in the west has freedom in enormous quantities, born of a capitalist system generations of westerners have grown up with and fought to preserve. We cannot imagine our freedom being under threat. But it is. It is because to accept it, you have to understand it and its origins in capitalism. Something the “stoopid” European and British “left wing” don’t get.
In the UK in Europe, Australia, Canada and America we have brought large numbers of people into our country who have no heritage of choice, consent and contract. When there is no consent in the west a crime is committed but in many cultures that escaped the furnace of 18th to 20th-century capitalism, consent is either a decadent idea or an utter irrelevance. These cultures know where consent is allowed to be practised and where it is not. Like wise with contract and choice. You cannot consent or choose to be Gay for example.
The final issue is about value. Before you can stop any culture practising discrimination against minority “lifestyles” that culture needs to produce sufficient “economic value” to survive changes to the way society is organised. A simple, primitive culture, namely one that does not create much economic value (pumping it out of the ground and selling it doesn’t count) will punish those perceived to be undermining the social and economic system. Thus gay people or those women who fail to observe a pre determined social role will be punished.
We hope this makes sense and readers can understand that capitalism liberated us and should not be condemned. We also hope the left wing will understand that by continuing their war on capitalism (even though it no longer really exists) they are waging a war on contract, choice and consent and playing into the hands of the primitive cultures for whom our freedoms are a theological and sociological abomination and our moral relativism is our Achilles heel.
The final point to ponder is this; we no longer create value in the west either social or economic, we create wealth…money. how long will our culture last therefore irrespective of the forces railed against it?
