New Labour finally get it right - no to pushing up the price of booze

[Reuben]

Ive just posted this up at The Third Estate:
(http://www.thethirdestate.net)
Liam Donaldson – the UK’s Chief Medical Officer for the past decade – is something the crusader. The smoking ban , which he describes as his ‘greatest achievement’, does not appear to have satiated his appetite for reshaping our lifestyles. Thus he is unveiling plans to set a minimum price for alcohol of 50 pence per unit.

To my shock, the Labour government – which up until now has pursued an obsessively paternalistic agenda – has taken the right approach to these ridiculous proposals. Gordon brown has come out and said that he is unwilling to punish the vast majority of responsible drinkers, not least during a recession. Indeed it is well known that the booze tax like the tobacco tax hits the poor hardest. Meanwhile the Lib Dems, to their discredit, have said that they support an end to ‘pocket-money priced’ alcohol. I am imagining that the likes of Clegg and Huhne might have a different conception of ‘pocket-money prices’ from the great mass of society.

Aware that boozing is, in most circumstances, considered a personal choice, Liam Donaldson has defended his proposals by pushing the concept of ‘passive drinking’. ‘England’, he says, ‘has a drink problem and the whole of society bears the burden. The quality of life of families and in cities and towns up and down the country is being eroded by the effects of excessive drinking.’ There is so much one can say here. Does he imagine that the quality of life enjoyed by families will be improved by eroding their real incomes through higher alcohol prices? Meanwhile, I simply don’t believe that alcohol causes anti-social behaviour in the way many people reckon it does. Yes the two often go together on a Saturday night in Swindon, but, as anyone with a background in social sciences understand, Correlation is by no means necessarily indicative of causation. I am sure my fellow Third Estaters will back me up when I say that the student culture at Cambridge is characterised by massive amounts of boozing, but that violence and the threat of violence is absent like it is nowhere else.

More generally the notion of ‘passive drinking’, as something comparable to passive smoking, is simply ridiculous. Smoking – as a chemical process, in and of itself – has the capacity to physically harm those other than the smoker. Drinking on the hand does not. Unlike tobacco, when I drink alcohol, it does not seem into the bodies of those around me. Rather it is generally thought to be associated with certain kinds of behaviour which may harm others. Needless to say, if you start punishing activities because they might be associated with other activities, you effectively have a mandate to police every individual choice or decision no matter how personal.

Sometimes the way in which a person constructs a sentence can offer a real insight into they think. Consider the following comment that Liam Donaldson made to the times a couple of years back:

“The first thing you see when you walk into a supermarket is a wall of cigarette packets, we need to do something about that, and let’s get the cigarette out of Kate Moss’s mouth.”

“Let us (presumably society) get that cigarette of Kate Mosses mouth”!!! While I object to the idiotic expectation that celebrities should be role models, it is not so much the sentiment that I mind here. Rather it is the way in which it is expressed which fills me with discomfort. Liam Donaldson could, of course, have said ‘let’s get Kate Moss to stop smoking. But instead, Kate’s body is presented as a passive object, with which society should interfere. In fact Kate – in her entirety – doesn’t even get a mention. It is sufficient to simply state what we – society – need to do to her mouth. We are, then, dealing with a man who very way of thinking runs counter to any notion of autonomy over one’s own body.

[pastradamus]

Fair play to them. At least for once they had the worker in mind. Its punitive to charge anyone so much as a penny extra during a recession for social enjoyment. Clocking up the price of alcohol does not prevent yob's and thugs from doing their thing and getting boozed up - Ireland is perfect evidence of that.

[YKTMX]

I don't know, I'm rather sympathetic to measures like this. The Scottish government is trying to get a similar policy through the parliament right now. I don't think they will. I'm not a libertarian, so 'paternalistic' measures do not bother me, in principle. I'd have to judge each proposal on its merits - and it seems clear to me that reducing the amount of alcohol that people drink is a worthwhile aim. I'm not sure that it's best to go about it using price floors, right enough.


Needless to say, if you start punishing activities because they might be associated with other activities, you effectively have a mandate to police every individual choice or decision no matter how personal.

It's not the case that alcohol "might" be associated with violence, it is a demonstrable fact. What do you think the sensation of being drunk involves? You know that nice feeling, that's a drug fucking around with the chemical composition of your brain, affecting your nervous system etc. The chemical composition of the brain is a large determining factor in the type of behaviour one is likely to exhibit.

My aunt is a nurse in a hospital here in Glasgow. She tells me about the hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of young lads who come in every week with their heads smashed open or their faces permanently disfigured because either they've been drunk and got into a fight, or someone else has been drunk and attacked them.

The notion that getting drunk is a completely "self-regarding" form of behaviour, hence not subject to legislation, is unsustainable.

As I said, I don't know if price floors are the way to go, but I think moaning about 'paternalism' is not a sufficient response.

[Vanguard1917]

The capitalist state trying to police working class behaviour through taxation or other means should be opposed by all those who take their socialism seriously.

It should be reminded that, in contrast to the pro-authoritarian position of those like YKTMX, the 19th century socialist Karl Marx had no time whatsoever for ruling class attempts to dictate to workers how and when they can and cannot drink. In 1855, he condemned Government attempts to legislate against Sunday trading of alcohol because he argued that such laws were directed against workers' consumption: 'The workers get their wages late on Saturday; they are the only ones for whom shops open on Sundays.' When masses of workers gathered in Hyde Park (London) to protest against the anti-drinking legislation, Marx stated: 'We were spectators from beginning to end and do not think we are exaggerating in saying that the English Revolution began yesterday in Hyde Park.'

Just like today's paternalists in Government who want to do all they can to restrict the freedom of workers, the paternalists of the 19th century pursued policies to keep the masses in check. When the masses protested, Marx insisted that that took on 'the character of a class struggle waged by the poor against the rich, the people against the aristocracy, the “lower orders” against their “betters.”'

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1855/06/25.htm

[Pogue]

I don't see how the state has the right to punish me or anyone else for what they see as a social problem when the same state is responsible for so much shit.

That and cheap booze is good news. I'm a controlled drinker, I've never hurt myself or anyone else. Why should I pay more? Maybe Labour should spend less money on hassling asylum seekers and getting armed to the teeth fighting illegal unjust imperialistic wars and spend more money on the NHS so it doesn't get so badly affected by alcohol related problems.

[Zurdito]

Fair play to them. At least for once they had the worker in mind.


Really?

Seems to me that at a time when they are drastically trying to encourage consumption, with 0.5% interest rates, they were not likely to bring in measures like this.

If they had anyone in mind though it was the drinks companies and the food and drinks sector.

[YKTMX]

The capitalist state trying to police working class behaviour through taxation or other means should be opposed by all those who take their socialism seriously.

It should be reminded that, in contrast to the pro-authoritarian position of those like YKTMX, the 19th century socialist Karl Marx had no time whatsoever for ruling class attempts to dictate to workers how and when they can and cannot drink.

The proposed legislation doesn't seek to regulate either of those things. It seeks to promote a small reduction in the amount people consume. It is being justified, persuasively, on public health grounds, not on 'moral grounds'.

As I said, I'm not a Kantian liberal, so I'm not really interested in 'autonomy', or in promoting the notion that individuals should be allowed to get along with their lives completely free from 'paternalistic' interventions.

I know the opposite view coheres in many 'leftist' minds, but for the life of me, I can't understand why. I suppose it just underscores the extent of the influence of bourgeois ideology on our society.

[Q]

A drunken proletariat is lesser of a threat to them.

[Zurdito]

The proposed legislation doesn't seek to regulate either of those things. It seeks to promote a small reduction in the amount people consume. It is being justified, persuasively, on public health grounds, not on 'moral grounds'.

As I said, I'm not a Kantian liberal, so I'm not really interested in 'autonomy', or in promoting the notion that individuals should be allowed to get along with their lives completely free from 'paternalistic' interventions.

I know the opposite view coheres in many 'leftist' minds, but for the life of me, I can't understand why. I suppose it just underscores the extent of the influence of bourgeois ideology on our society.

It kind of depends on who is doing the "paternalistic intervention". It's not very revolutionary to support the bourgeois state having more control over the lives of the proletariat.

A large part of the ocncern for "public health" is because they want to cut costs on healthcare, because they want to raise taxes, because they want to raise productivity, and because they want to stigmatise drinkers and smokers in order to be able to deny them healthcare with popular support, or to point and say "how can there be poverty when workers waste on x self-indulgent product", etc. It is most defintiely part of an economic and moral assault on the working class.

Neither do we have the demagogic individualist position of "self-ownership", which only serves to keep the masses dumbed down and to permit tobacco/alcohol/junk food etc. sectors to make super-profits ont he basis of the degradation of society's public services, productive forces and social cohesion.

No: the communist position is that capitalist deprivation, alienation and lack of education drives many people to seek solace in "animal" pleasures - as Marx said, under capitlaism workers are "animal inthe human (work) and can feel human only in the animal (drink, food, smoking etc.)". Our position is not to stigmatise these things in order to allow the state to fund itself htrough taxing them and to deny those who practice them public services, nor to allow it to deny workers their escapism in the name of keeping them productive. And neither is our positions "each to their own". Rather we put forward our own higher cause forw orkers to rally to to replace all kinds of "opium" - the struggle to eliminate its material causes.

Now, if a workers state or a workers army int he civil war needed to ban alcohol or smoking for whaever reason, I would favour it. Support for "denial of individual autnonomy" depends onw ho is doing it and for what reason, let's not make abstractions of real issues.

[PoWR]

I know the opposite view coheres in many 'leftist' minds, but for the life of me, I can't understand why.

Maybe it's because you come out of a trend that established itself by rejecting communism.

[Pogue]

The proposed legislation doesn't seek to regulate either of those things. It seeks to promote a small reduction in the amount people consume. It is being justified, persuasively, on public health grounds, not on 'moral grounds'.

As I said, I'm not a Kantian liberal, so I'm not really interested in 'autonomy', or in promoting the notion that individuals should be allowed to get along with their lives completely free from 'paternalistic' interventions.

I know the opposite view coheres in many 'leftist' minds, but for the life of me, I can't understand why. I suppose it just underscores the extent of the influence of bourgeois ideology on our society.

Are you perhaps suggesting that the desire to have control over the direction of ones life and levels of consumption oneself rather than being restricted by the state is somehow an bourgeois notion?

[Vanguard1917]

Now, if a workers state or a workers army int he civil war needed to ban alcohol or smoking for whaever reason, I would favour it.

That's a strange sentence with which to end that post. Why would we support alcohol and tobacco prohibition in society?



The proposed legislation doesn't seek to regulate either of those things. It seeks to promote a small reduction in the amount people consume.


Yes, it seeks to make it more difficult for people to consume alcohol by making it more expensive. That's regulation of people's consumption -- the very thing which Marx opposed when he supported the workers who denounced restrictions on Sunday trading, which were also designed to regulate workers' consumption.



I know the opposite view coheres in many 'leftist' minds, but for the life of me, I can't understand why. I suppose it just underscores the extent of the influence of bourgeois ideology on our society.


In practice, bourgeois society is filled with restrictions on individual freedoms, regardless of what the ideals and theories of some bourgeois ideologues. That's why it has always been leftists who have been the ones to consistently stand up for greater freedoms for workers.

[Zurdito]

That's a strange sentence with which to end that post. Why would we support alcohol and tobacco prohibition in society?

The future is undefined. I don't think during a civil war, or possibly in a post-revolution workers state under seige from imperialism, there is going to be a lot of room for luxury goods for example, and as another example the workers state/army might find that banning alcohol and drugs especially improves our ability to win.

Like I say that is completely hypothetical, the future is open and any number of situations and problems can arise.

[Vanguard1917]

The future is undefined. I don't think during a civil war, or possibly in a post-revolution workers state under seige from imperialism, there is going to be a lot of room for luxury goods for example, and as another example the workers state/army might find that banning alcohol and drugs especially improves our ability to win.

I see what you mean. And i think those two reasons (army discipline and economic scarcity) are very different from a state wanting to restrict alcohol with authoritarian motivations, as is the case here.

[Zurdito]

I see what you mean. And i think those two reasons (army discipline and economic scarcity) are very different from a state wanting to restrict alcohol with authoritarian motivations, as is the case here.

yes. if you see my post it was clear I oppose the bourgeois state in its attempts to do this. :)

[Vanguard1917]

yes. if you see my post it was clear I oppose the bourgeois state in its attempts to do this. :)

I'd oppose a future workers' state doing that, too.

[Zurdito]

I'd oppose a future workers' state doing that, too.

On the other hand, I am not about to set absolute rules for a future workers state which will confront problems we can't possibly know now.