The Future of Britain

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HISTORY Pillars of Civilization Ed Creedy What begun with the glory of the ancient Greeks ended with the hiss and whirr of the great machines of the industrial revolution? These changes encompassed vast swathes of history, from the Classical Mediterranean to the Renaissance papacy of the sixteenth century, a single process which has snowballed through the narrative of the past c. 3000 years. Unnoticed by many, it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can truly consider the monumental nature of this unseen process. This process has shaped the culture and society of our own lives today, as it regards what is most instrumental and central in the very way we act and live. (Perhaps then this relevance suggests that a study of history is imperative in allowing us to understand our own times, indeed our own selves.) It is a process of transformation, from civilisations and cultures based around belief systems in the divine, to those based around a sense of economic gain and self-promotion. As is clearly observed throughout the span of the Classical World, religion was of paramount importance within society. It pervaded all aspects of life and provided each and every citizen, slave and foreigner with an understanding of both how one should, and how one wanted, to act. Belief in the deities of Greek or Roman mythology provided the drive and purpose for each and every act, be it observation of feast days, festivals and rituals, or the inordinate amount of wealth and time accorded to either one of these religious pursuits. There were deities for all manner of everyday and extraordinary objects, events and feelings. One for each of war, peace, love hate dreams or even riches. Yes: even money was subordinate to religious observation and adoration. Famously, for example, the Siphnian treasury at the important sanctuary of Delphi was known for its elaborate building and even more elaborate and rich treasures stored within. Silver, gold, ivory and precious stones were all offered within in accordance with religious belief, religion truly dominated all aspects of the ancient world, subjugating even the power of wealth and riches. Yet gradually this began to change. Chronologically, the course of the development of a ‘greed of gods’ to a ‘god of greed’ can be mapped through the progression of time. Hints of this natural subjugation to the divine being questioned can be observed through the biblical account of Judas, turncoat against his beliefs for 40 silver coins, and this was already occurring in merely the first century AD. Further on from this we can see the wealth and corruption of the Renaissance Papacy in Rome (and for a time Avignon) during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The pervasive desire for the worldly had, even then, the capacity to overwhelm the supposedly pious. It was the nineteenth century where this development found its completion. The Industrial Revolution of this time lead to cultures of greed as the rich and elite found new ways to pursue greatness, no longer via any religious means, but now through the acquisition of wealth. Finally civilization had shifted from a spiritual to an economic quest. No longer were the divine the pinnacle: man had taken their place, and it was simply the next wealthiest man who was able to usurp the former. This desire for economic benefit, this greed, has continued into today’s world, the financial disaster of 2008 epitomising how far men will go these days to serve their greed “Belief in deities provided purpose for every act Ed Creedy Voltaire, who lived during the eighteenth century, was a man who recognised this monumental shift was taking place. He pithily commented that ‘when it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion’. He may well have recognised the change that was taking place, the shift from the subservience of money to religion, to that of religion unto money, and this comment alludes to that. Perhaps even he is suggesting that in shifting to what is an inherently selfish worldview, we have in some way sold our soul, abandoned our principles, and deserted our spiritual nature. Or maybe we can satisfy ourselves with the cripsness of a new dollar bill. Suffice to say, we’re addicted to greed.ƒ WWII POW Camp Economy Harry Jones Robert A. Radford, an economist who was taken prisoner during the Second World War observed that markets may appear spontaneously, evenly during the worst of times. However, can a POW camp really be seen as a simple economy? Radford wrote in ‘The Economic Organisation of a POW Camp’ that he found similar trends in the camp as to a market stating ‘a POW camp provides a living example of a simple economy’. This idea initially developed because prisoners wanted comfort from goods as they were going through horrific times. Prisoners were not aware of what was unfolding within the camp; such a market simply arose due to the circumstances they faced. Each prisoner was given a ration pack by the Red Cross, which included basic foods and cigarettes as well as private parcels containing personal items. Prisoners began to trade food and cigarettes and it wasn’t too long before different foods were priced in terms of cigarettes. Thus cigarettes became a type of currency in POW camps. They could be seen as a perfect substitute for money as they were desirable (as most people were addicted through stress), very light and convenient in size. Even if a prisoner did not smoke, he knew that the other prisoners would be willing to trade for the cigarettes. This helped to cause a driving demand. In addition, there is no risk of hyperinflation as even when more cigarettes were introduced into the market, the ‘money’ supply was always limited by smokers’ consumption. This made it a deflationary currency in the same manner as Bitcoin. However, this also caused problems because cigarettes would decrease in circulation as more were consumed, before a huge injection of cigarettes at one time caused prices to change dramatically. This shows how the market was actually working properly with reactions to changes in supply and demand. The prisoners could easily alter the amount of tobacco in each cigarette, which would lead to each one being examined before the exchange. Gresham’s Law states that bad money will drive out the good money. In the case of cigarettes, it was hard for the currency to be completely uniform and any good money was driven out. This shows how even though cigarettes seemed to be a currency, there were many faults with it – cigarettes were not suitably fungible, causing Radford to state that ‘the market was not yet perfect’. However, the POW camp could be seen as a very simplified example of how some exchanges used to take place in different parts of the world. In Virginia in the 1700s, cash was so scarce that farmers would use tobacco as a cash crop to exchange goods and buy the machinery they needed. This was very similar to the POW camp ‘tobacco mentality’, albeit with the quality of tobacco under study. In Virginia, however, the market was regulated more as if the tobacco was not of a decent quality, it would be burned. This shows how they tried to correct the market failure unlike in the POW camp. This was only because there was no intervention to correct the market failure within the POW camp. Even though the German guards and the Red Cross (providing and monitoring rations) acted as a type of state, they did not regulate what happened within exchanges. However, the POW camp could be seen as an economy in this sense because even though there was no intervention, exchanges were still taking places and the prisoners found ways to get around any problems that occurred. Even though it may seem that the POW camp is an example of a simple economy, we can’t forget that it was in fact a Prison Camp. This meant that the all-powerful state of the German guards and Red Cross were able to control everything within the camp, thus creating an entirely separate world of its own. Therefore, the conditions of the camp had already been set up and prisoners were simply carrying out what they already knew. Each prisoner had no way of determining the resources available to other prisoners and therefore equality was created within the camp. Cigarettes may have developed into the currency only due to the fact that German guards could be bribed with them. If this was not the case then there could have been a different situation. The POW camp then, may not be as similar to an economy as we first thought, and therefore Radford’s article must be taken lightly as simply a useful insight into the world of economics. ƒ American economic aggression Rupert Fitzsimmons How history explains the United States’ economic psychology. American Economic policy is often criticised for being aggressive and, on some occasions, violent. There is little doubt that Bush’s war in Iraq was somewhat motivated by the Middle East’s monopoly on oil. Indeed many argue that the whole of the Cold War was - aside from a mere clash of ideologies - the classic American spirit of ‘Coca-Cola-capitalism’ ‘kicking up a fuss’ about not being able to continue spreading, sucking up and dominating 34 35
HISTORY the world’s markets. Hence the historian must ask himself where this reckless desire to paint the world with greenbacks actually came from. Was it (as is widely believed) a result of the free market reforms known commonly as ‘Reaganomics’? Clearly not, Reagan is too modern to explain this Cold War mentality. Thus we must look earlier to find the origin of this idea. If one is willing to accept that this economic outlook has been in existence throughout the entirety of American history, then such a cause should be identifiable. This cause, I am willing to suggest, is to be found in the land; quite literally, in the geographical extent and plentiful resources of the USA itself. For the first immigrants to the vast lands, in the form of Dutch settlers, were given free reign over their ‘New World’ – it was open for exploitation. As the years progressed too, the settlers travelled west in search of more arable land or mineral deposits - the whole way, driving out the forest, the buffalo and the Indian. The land cost nothing, yet had value beyond what the poor settlers could ever have hoped for when embarking on this voyage from Europe. This, I propose, fuelled an obsession in the collectiveconscious of the Americas for capital gain at the expense of no personal loss. Subconsciously, money grew on trees and was ripe for picking, irrespective of the damage that it caused. As the land ran out, however – as the settlers had sucked the life out of the East’s forests, hunted the buffalo of the Great Plains to near extinction and the lands of the West met rampant agrarianism – the noregrets, proto-Coca-Cola-capitalism that had been born out of circumstance had to turn elsewhere in order to continue feeding the demands of the greedy. It had to turn on both the American immigrant inhabitant himself and the wider neighbours of North America at large. This psychology can be tracked especially well in contemporary America; great industrial powerhouses such as British American Tobacco or the many oil companies have, as a result of their financial excellence, the ears of both federal and local governments throughout America and, due to their lack of respect for the individual, have no problem causing great anguish both at home and abroad. It seems that so long as a profit is turned, the damage caused is nothing more than a minor annoyance as it may diminish, if only slightly, future profit and credibility. A disgustingly immoral approach to business that can only really be blamed on the original plenty that faced the European settler. One further consideration to the concept outlined above is found in the very creation of the USA as a sovereign state; it is fair to say that prior to the establishment of the Union by the founding fathers after the Revolutionary War, the aggressive economic expansionism was firmly in place, as demonstrated above. However, the war itself, surely, helped develop this questionable mind-set. All is fair in love and war, so the post-chivalric code of dishonour states, and perhaps, as the United States were begotten in this climate and the wars – both Revolutionary and Civil – touched so many of the American people that this conscience-free approach to war has become engrained on the American psyche at large. (Perhaps also, the reason why the United States appears always be so eager to engage in conflict – be it the foreign War on Terror or the domestic War on Drugs – is in order to justify, at some deep psychological level, the continuation of this motto in everyday life.) So, the American economic psychology continues, created out of the pseudoutopian impression enveloping the early settlers of the United States and then perpetuated out of their fixation on conflict. The infamous dollar bill carries the curse of America’s history in every citizens’ wallet. ƒ What, if anything, does the Trolley Cart Dilemma show us? Tim Foster A trolley cart is careering out of control. Up ahead are five workers, who are about to be killed by the trolley cart. But on a spur to the right stands a lone individual. You, a bystander, happen to be standing next to the lever that could divert the trolley, (a move that would save the five, yet sacrifice the one). Do you pull it? If you would pull the lever, then you are not alone: most people when presented with this scenario would do so. Consider, however, a second example: you are no longer next to the switch, but on a bridge. The only way to save the workers is to push a fat man onto the track. This is certain to stop the trolley killing five people, but again, at the expense of an innocent life. Is it morally permissible to push the man off the bridge? At this point, many people are inclined to change their mind, and let the five workers die. But is this logical, given that the outcomes of both scenarios is mathematically identical? Both of these situations make up the trolley cart dilemma, a moral problem first posed by Phillipa Foot in her 1967 paper, ‘Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect’. It is a problem that plays into thousands of economical and historical issues, such as capitalism: many may gain, but a few suffer as a result. Or perhaps humanitarian intervention, such as in Iraq in 2003, or even now in 2014. Historians might try to justify many wars, policies, decisions and events by using the wellknown Vulcan phrase: ‘The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few’. Or, indeed, the one. The idea of ends justifying means that can be traced back to at least the Greeks, and maybe further still. People’s answers to these problems, and others like them, help to identify whether their ethical outlook is mainly teleological or deontological. Teleological ethics locates moral value in the consequences of an action: if an action produces favourable outcomes overall, then it is justified; in short, ‘the ends justify the means’. This is in stark contrast to a deontological approach to ethics, where actions are believed to have value in and of themselves, regardless of the consequences that they produce. In other words, actions have intrinsic value, and are not morally justified or condemned by their consequences. When one applies these moral outlooks to the above dilemmas, the fault line is clearly shown. Consequentialists (i.e. those who subscribe to a teleological outlook) would likely kill the one person in both scenarios, arguing this is justified as more lives are ultimately saved by killing the one man. By contrast, most deontologists would submit that murder can never be justified, as it is always wrong irrespective of the consequences. Therefore, deontologists would likely allow the five workers to die. Whilst this analysis is illuminating on an academic level, it fails to account for the gut instinct of many, which is pull the lever but not push the fat man. Is this inconsistent, or can this differentiation The Trolley Cart Dilemma - would you kill one to save four? be ethically justified? The main attempt used to try and justify this discrepancy is to advocate the doctrine of double effect. This notion, first discussed by St. Thomas Aquinas, gives a name to the reason why many have trouble accepting that it’s permissible to push the man off the bridge. The doctrine states that, for an act to be moral, it must produce good outcomes that are at least as important as the action taken, and which are governed by good intentions (i.e. you cannot push the fat man for fun). By these criteria, both acts seem to be justified, however, there is one final condition: the good effect must be produced by the action, not by the bad effect. This is why, for many, pulling the switch is preferable to pushing the man onto the tracks. By pulling the lever, we are taking an action that indirectly results in the death of the man on the track. In the second example, we are intentionally pushing the man to his death. Based on the doctrine of double effect therefore, whilst the former is moral, the latter is not. Does this really solve the problem? Consider a final twist: you are back next to the switch, like in the first scenario. The problem remains identical, but this time the person you are killing is not a stranger, but the person you love the most. Suddenly, things become unclear again. The doctrine of double effect cannot obviously defend killing a stranger (who is probably an innocent victim with his own loved ones) but sparing a loved one. Is this reason to doubt logic? Or emotions? Or both? One thing is for sure: it is clear reason to doubt that this dilemma will ever be ‘solved’. This, by extrapolation, says much about most ethical problems. Subjective preference even plays a part in how much people value different outcomes vis-a-vis decisions. The lack of a straight distinction between emotions and logic in problems like this will keep us flummoxed for generations ƒ 36 37
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