Honey, I shrunk the state
Mike King writes about two influential Quakers and the role of the state
I can think of no more fundamental question for social justice than this: how big should our state be? Those who argue for a small state place themselves within the right or libertarian tradition, while those who want more state intervention place themselves within the left or social democrat tradition. I was prompted to explore this question by two recently published books, Life After the State by Dominic Frisby and The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato, which respectively advocate small and large government.
First, I need to define what we mean by ‘big’ or ‘small’ when it comes to the state. Only two things, I think, really matter here: government spending and government regulation. In most developed countries government spending amounts to something between thirty-five per cent and fifty per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – a figure that strikes libertarians as far too high and a fact to deplore. It is much harder to quantify government regulation of our lives, though for free-market libertarians the regulation of enterprise is considered an onerous interference.
Bright and Cadbury
Quakers are a fiercely independent group of people and so it is not obvious in the first instance whether they welcome or deplore big government as appropriate for the furthering of traditional Quaker goals of social justice. Indeed, when we take two eminent Victorian Quaker businessmen, George Cadbury and John Bright, we find them at opposite ends of the political spectrum here. Although their respective campaigning and wealth were equally at the service of the poor and disadvantaged, we can say that Cadbury’s philosophy naturally leads to big government while Bright’s leads to small.
Mazuccato tells us that the US founding fathers were torn between the principles of the activist secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton and the laissez-faire president Thomas Jefferson. The latter believed that ‘the government is best which governs least’. Mazucatto then quotes this brilliant observation: ‘With time and usual American pragmatism, this rivalry has been resolved by putting the Jeffersonians in charge of the rhetoric and the Hamiltonians in charge of policy.’ What this means for Americans is that laissez-faire is the populist myth, while extensive state intervention is the rather resented reality.
In Britain there has been a growing Americanisation of the popular press, with an increasing appetite for a British kind of libertarianism, as exemplified by the work of Frisby. Mazucatto’s book, on the other hand, is a plea for us to understand that the state, far from being a drag on private enterprise, has in many cases – including Apple and Google – funded the initial research and even provided ‘start up’ capital for such businesses. The state can be an innovative risk-taker. Frisby’s book rejects any idea that the state has such value, and argues for a drastic reduction of its role and tax take.
Who is right?
So, who is right? We can say that the Quaker John Bright was an instinctive Jeffersonian, believing in as little state interference in our lives as possible, while the Quaker George Cadbury was an instinctive Hamiltonian, who worked quietly to initiate or support greater government regulation of industry. Interestingly, it was Bright who entered parliament – and made his reputation there – while Cadbury resisted all calls to stand for safe Liberal seats. As far as I know, Bright was only the second Quaker MP – the first being Joseph Pease, the ‘father of the railways’ – and in his day Bright’s political reputation was on a par with that of William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli.
The distinction in outlook between George Cadbury and John Bright is well summed up by AC Gardiner, who said of Cadbury: ‘He was a social reformer always in advance of the thought of his co-religionist John Bright, who remained constant to the strict individualism of the Manchester School, and carried his views as to the noninterference of the state in industry so far that he even opposed legislation directed at adulteration.’ The reference to the Manchester School is significant here as it is celebrated today by free marketeers, and is the ideological home of the early advocates of free trade and the free market: Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
Social and economic justice
A direct comparison between Bright and Cadbury has to be tempered with the recognition that Cadbury was born twenty-eight years after Bright, and that Bright was a skilled politician who carefully avoided arguing for causes too far in advance of their day. For example, after his stunning victory with colleague Richard Cobden in the repeal of the Corn Laws he was measured and realistic in how he then pursued the widening of democracy to include working people. But Disraeli, in his parliamentary speech supporting the Corn Laws, predicted that their repeal would involve the transfer of power from the aristocracy to the manufacturers.
George Cadbury, one of the leading manufacturers of the later nineteenth century, was keenly aware, I would suggest, of the truth of this, and that Bright’s victories for social and economic justice could not be built upon without a more interventionist approach. Industrial capitalism by itself would offer no protection to the working poor or the environment.
Bright’s earlier biographer, J Travis Mills, is clear that Bright belongs amongst the ‘enlightened conservatives’, or as we might say today, ‘one-nation Tories’. Bill Cash, author of a more recent biography of Bright, credits him with laying the foundations, in fact, for much of modern conservatism, one which places emphasis on freedom as the most important of human rights. But Cadbury could see that no amount of freedom and no extension of the franchise to working people would in themselves put food on the table of the working poor.
He and his brother Richard strove to progressively raise wages above subsistence for their workers, and the same was true for Rowntree in York, but, as Joseph Seebohm Rowntree’s famous ‘Report’ of that time concluded, it was low wages at the bottom that were the root cause of poverty. Cadbury’s life stood for the ending of contemptuous wages and bad working conditions for the urban labourer through legislation. He may well have had a strong belief in individual freedom, but I think he could see that advances in social justice on that front had to be matched by advances in economic justice for the worker, and only the state could achieve this.
A Quaker way forward
Britain saw a surge in wages after world war two that lifted the majority of working people out of absolute and relative poverty, but the rolling back of the interventionist state following Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980s saw Bright’s philosophy triumph again over Cadbury’s. Today we have millions of working poor whose wages are so low as to necessitate state welfare support and the kindness of charities, including the scandalous existence of food banks. The philosophy of freedom has brought social justice in many new spheres, and it is entirely within the enlightened conservatism of the Bright tradition that this has been, for example, extended to gay marriage.
But these freedoms have not compensated, I would suggest, for the millions who are at the sharp end of the truly staggering wage inequality that now reigns. I do not want to elevate the Quaker-inspired achievements of George Cadbury over those of John Bright, but do believe that a careful look at the differences in their approach could help us find a Quaker way forward in answering the question of how big we want the state to be. In particular, I would make these points to the inheritors of the Bright legacy, including Bill Cash. Firstly, that the abolition of the Corn Laws was an undoubted triumph of social justice, but what was to stop the manufacturers then lowering wages below the new starvation level? The extension of voting to all households was another of Bright’s triumphs, but how would that in itself end low wages, poor housing and lack of education?
Bright’s efforts to secure tenant farmers in Ireland ownership of land was laudable, but what of the millions of urban workers in England with no productive resources other than their labour and no hope of land to grow food on? Bright and the libertarian tradition emphasise freedom above all else. But how does freedom in itself put food on the table?
To those that defend the interventionist tradition, one that recognises the validity of such questions, I recommend a study of the life of George Cadbury. I truly believe that he saw further than Bright, and in his great social experiment at Bournville I believe he instigated answers to social questions we have been retreating from for the last thirty years.
Mike King’s new book Quakernomics: An Ethical Capitalism is published by Anthem Press. ISBN: 9780857281128. £13.99
For more information his Ethical Capitalism blog is at www.jnani.org/blog.
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