The Burdens of Ambition

British society is inarguably the most affluent it has ever been. British people have never lived so long, in a greater degree of comfort or with greater opportunities than right here, right now. British society has virtually overcome poverty, even if the very bottom line of social security for citizens is charity.

So how is it that our society can still throw up riots, theft and looting such as was seen around England in August?

'Towards the end of the century, ...a change began to manifest itself. The working classes, whom popular education had made, for the first time, articulate, became increasingly discontented with their lot. The glamour faded from the material progress which had seemed such an inestimable blessing to their fathers. They came to take this progress for granted, and to turn questioning eyes on the gross inequalities which progress had done nothing to diminish. The more prosperous society as a whole became, the more indefensible did it seem that the great mass of the people should be condemned to live lives which, even though they represented a real improvement on preceding generations in elementary physical standards, where none the less narrow stunted lives, unillumined by hopes, and haunted by the constant terror of a plunge into extreme destitution in the event of accident, sickness or unemployment'
-Liberal Industrial Inquiry, 1928

One argument that can be made follows the suggestion that greater affluence breeds greater consciousness - which in turn generates discontent, as the remaining injustices shine out exposed, made clear by the contrast.

Amongst these injustices are the burdens placed upon the less fortunate, the burden of making ends meet, of finding & keeping work, of staying healthy enough to earn your basic life's needs. But there are burdens of another kind too. As more wealth is created, so increases the burden to achieve the ambitions that affluence gives light to.

And that burden can be crushing.

Yet the opportunties that help relieve that burden are no greater: income inequality has increased and the poorest children in Britain during the last decade have not taken as much of a part in post-16 education as the richest. When things go wrong, even the bottom line of support in Britain, charity, suffers as it attempts to help. Charity has found itself become a degrading option, due to the stigma against handouts, which prevents those who need help most from seeking it out (National Assembly for Wales, 2011).

People are caught between these twin burdens of need and want. They struggle to make ends meet while being fed lifestyle marketing, that drives ambition to attain things and their associated status. But the inaccessibility of wealth makes those ambitions a source of frustration, one permeates our society and cannot be shaken off. Those burdens continue to be added to in pursuit of our ambitions - mortgages, student debt, cheap credit. It has become the foundation of our economy, to use credit to overcome unequally distributed wealth (Harvey/RSA, 2010).

These factors coincide with a politics that is trapped in an unhelpful 'us vs them' rhetoric. In 2010 we saw the Liberal Democrats subjected to a vote 'squeeze', caught at the middle of the the left-right dynamic. This sort of thinking has been used by politicians, lobbyists and others to rally support; typified here by Brendan Barber, General-Secretary of the TUC (2011), on the Tory-Liberal coalition:

'Liberal Democrats risk ending up on the wrong side of the fundamental divide in British politics'

These are cheap, negative tactics. They build upon basic 'ingroup-outgroup' mentalities to manage, corral and organise followers, promoting a divisiveness that has turned into a social reality.

When all these economic and political factors are combined with...

- a parliamentary system that is inspiring disinterest, elite societal figures persistently exposed as connected to corruption but remaining un- or insufficiently punished;

- a capitalist system that encourages ambitious, single-minded & intensely focused self-interest; while isolation from positively reinforcing communities increases;

- with, not just unrequited, but unrequitable ambition, the achievements of which we are driven to believe to be the key to 'happiness' or 'success' or 'self-worth';

...you breed a toxic brew that is festering within our communities.

Right now, our problem is no longer one of creating more wealth, but of finding a way to allow that wealth to be more widely, not just spread, shared and enjoyed, or redistributed, but accessed through greater opportunities for that wealth to be earned.

The coalition, in its attempts to create smaller government, seems to have heard of burdens:

'identify areas where central government can get out of the way, reducing burdens and bureaucracy'
-'Open Public Services' White Paper, 2011.

They need to reapply those ideas to welfare policies - to reduce the burdens upon people, not services, and in doing so set them free. Free to live lives with real chances to earn reward by merit; and free from the 'constant terror of a plunge into extreme destitution' (Liberal Industrial Inquiry, 1928).

'the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them... One's regret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him in which, in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living'
-Oscar Wilde, 1891

'the end of political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they may have it more abudantly'
-Liberal Industrial Inquiry, 1928

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References:
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+ 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; also known as the 'Yellow Book'; chp 1, pg 5-8; Ernest Benn, 1928.

+ National Assembly for Wales' 'Follow up inquiry into child poverty: eradication through education?'; Chair's Foreword, pg 5; Children and Young People Committee; February 2011.

+ RSA presents David Harvey's 'Crises of Capitalism'; on Youtube; 28 June 2010.

+ TUC's 'Lib Dems are "abandoning centre-ground"'; 11 March 2011.

+ The Coalition Government's 'Deregulating the Public Sector', pg41, ch6 - Ensuring Diversity of Provision; in 'Open Public Services' White Paper; July 2011.

+ Oscar Wilde's 'The Soul of Man under Socialism'; London, 1891.