THE THIRD WORLD IN BRITAIN
Anthony Daniels says we should look abroad to
understand our inner cities' problems - and their solution
THERE could be no better training for life in the British inner city than a spell in the so-called Third World. As Africa is to North America, the inner city is to the rest of Britain. And, of course, many of the solutions proposed by middle-class bien pensants to the problems of the inner city are precisely analogous to those which they have so long proposed to solve the prob- lems of the Third World.
I spent rather more than three years in Tanzania, whose leader, Julius Nyerere, was the patron saint of Thirdworldism. According to this strange doctrine, what needed to be explained was not wealth but poverty: for Man is born rich, but everywhere — at least in Africa — is poor. And the answer to the question of Why some countries are poor and others are rich can be explained in a single word: exploitation. The way the world's economic cake is divid- ed is inequitable and founded upon brute power relations, leading in effect to theft. West- ern civilisation is founded on cheap cashew nuts.
The doctrine states that no count— can be expected to break free of the cycle of pover- ty by its own efforts. Countries which are Poor cannot afford capital for investment. Therefore transfer payments from rich to Poor countries (a kind of global income tax) are necessary to equalise the countries of the world. This is a matter both of eco- nomic and moral necessity. And since the inhabitants of poor coun- tries, naturally enough, are themselves very Poor, they as individuals cannot be expect- ed to save and invest: only the government, which has relatively large sums at its dis- posal, can do this on their behalf. There- fore government must have a preponderant role in the economy, or else there would be 110 growth or investment at all. It is important to remember that this far- rago of nonsense was for many years virtu- ally an unchallenged orthodoxy, at least among those who considered these matters at all. Anyone who challenged it was vili- fied, not only as incompetent and ignorant, but as a morally defective person — for who is so mean of spirit as to deny the poorest of the poor their chance of a better life?
For several decades Peter Bauer the economist pointed out the absurdity of Thirdworldism. Simple reflection on the doctrine's premises should have demon- strated its untenability, for if the ineluctable cycle of poverty really existed, we should all be dressed in animal skins and living in caves. He demonstrated empirically that poor people frequently could, and did, save and invest if the condi- tions were right. He pointed out the conse- quences — economic, social, moral, political and psychological — of govern- ment control of the economy. He also demonstrated that the effect of so-called development aid was to subsidise grossly anti-economic policies, such as, in Tanza- nia, moving three quarters of the peasant population by force from where it was liv- ing into semi-collectivised and politically tightly controlled villages. Development aid to Tanzania allowed members of the sole political party, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi, to grow fat: literally, for in the villages you could tell a party man by his girth.
Returning to the inner cities of England, I began to realise that many of Lord Bauer's strictures on Thirdworldism applied analogously to Britain's social poli- cies. The relatively poor of our inner cities could not be expected to improve their lot for themselves, so our Bien pensants said, because they lacked the wherewithal to do it: therefore it must be supplied from out- side, in the form of subventions from those who were better off.
Just as the entire government apparatus in Third World countries came to rely on subventions from outside donors, without which it would have collapsed, so a vast bureaucratic apparatus has been built up in this country which is dependent not only upon central government subsidy, but upon the continuation of the problems which it is ostensibly meant to solve. And just as in Tanzania it was discovered (miracle of mir- acles) that billions of dollars of aid disap- peared without any economic development at all — in fact rather the reverse — so, after vastly greater sums poured into social services and education in this country, we find our cities pullulating with illiterate psychopaths. According to the bien pen- sants, what we need, therefore, is to spend more on social services and education. The billions were not enough, apparently, to break the cycle of poverty. As Lord Bauer also pointed out, one of the roots of the disastrous doctrine of Thirdworldism was liberal middle-class guilt. This guilt attaches not to one's indi- vidual conduct, of course, but to the way the world as a whole is organised, from which one has undoubtedly benefited. This guilt liberated one to behave as one chose: for what was a little peccadillo such as betraying one's wife compared to the inequitable and unjust distribution of income in the world?
Such 'guilt' is really disguised self-impor- tance. It makes the middle classes responsi- ble for everything in the world: not a sparrow falls, but it is the duty of the mid- dle classes to rescue it. In fact the middle classes need a large population of lame ducks — and there's no one lamer than an illiterate psychopath — to assure them of their own providential role in society and history. Another of Lord Bauer's fundamental ideas is that culture is an important vari- able in development. Not all the resources in the world, or even the correct legal and institutional arrangements, will guarantee economic development if, for some reason, the cultural climate in the population is opposed or indifferent to it. We need always to make a distinction between nec- essary and sufficient conditions, and there is no single sufficient condition. I have little doubt that the cultural cli- mate of our inner cities is profoundly and deeply antithetical to economic advance- ment. The reasons for this have nothing to do with the legal or political arrangements in this country, and those who babble of constitutions and citizenship and bills of rights not only make no contribution to improvement but actively help to prevent it. For the ideas which guide the conduct of the inhabitants of our inner cities are Thirldworldist in inspiration. In their con- ception, the economy is not a dynamic thing, like a language in which an indefi- nitely large number of things can be said, but a cake, the number of whose crumbs is finite, and therefore to possess a crumb is
automatically to deny it to another. The best you can hope for is to snatch some- thing from someone else.
Moreover, under the present unjust social, economic and political arrange- ments (equivalent to the unjustness of the world trading system, which favours the rich nations to the detriment, indeed the economic enslavement, of the poor), heredity and environment are destiny. `It's all right for you to talk,' say my patients, 'you've got a good job.' When I ask how I got a good job, the answer is always the same: I was born into the right family. No effort whatever on my part was required. It is hardly surprising if people imbued with these ideas make few efforts on their own behalf, for what would the point be of doing so? Thus it turns out that our middle classes are guilty after all, not for stealing the wealth of the country, but for filling the minds of the poor with this rubbish, which would be laughable if it were not so deeply tragic in its effects.
Those who would understand our inner cities must read Lord Bauer on develop- ment economics. They will find more illu- mination there than in all the lucubrations of our foolish and cowardly clergymen.
The author is a doctor.
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