Marxism 2009

Earlier today I picked up a leaflet for this year's Marxism festival in London. The list of speakers and courses is impressive: David Harvey, Terry Eagleton, Tariq Ali, and, amongst many, many other socialist illuminati, the irrepressible Slavoj Žižek. I'm not familiar with David Harvey's work, though I have heard of him. Acquainting myself with his work is made easy by the video lectures here, in which he performs close readings of the first volume of Capital. Nor am I familiar with the format of these Marxism festivals, organised by the Socialist Workers' Party: there's no indication when individual talks are, or whether it's possible to attend a few in a casual way or whether the festival demands (encourages, rather) full-on commitment. That said, the entire week is made accessible to all by a reasonable price scale and assistance with transport and food on a nationwide basis. There's even a creche for committed Marxist families! (Doesn't Marx critique the family unit somewhere? I wonder how such groups relate to the great man's work..)

The reactions of the rich to Darling's proposed 50% income tax rate for those earning £150,000 or over will undoubtedly whip up high levels of indignant rage at Marxism 2009. Unsurprisingly, the rich are themselves indignant at being penalised for working hard in life, something which they view is ample justification for their more than ample remuneration. Some time before today's budget - in the preparations for the policies announced today, presumably in last November's pre-budget report - suspicions were raised at the extent of this penalty on the wages of the rich, the main response to the idea being that high taxation de-incentivises hard work, making people less likely to seek enterprise through unremitting graft.

But unremitting graft is not exclusive to the rich. Most people in British society waste many years of their lives doing hard work in unforgiving jobs that pay very little and offer even less protection in retirement. Besides this necessary, though lamentable, strata of the British workforce, there are those who train hard through higher education leading to careers that offer satisfaction and quality of life, though not in the wage packet. I'm talking here about teachers, nurses, youth workers, social workers, arts workers, all of whom contribute to society in many diverse ways and see this as an incentive to work hard in life. So the rebuttal of the rich to high taxation is therefore hardly reasonable. Might it be that one of the driving forces behind the current crisis has been an entire raft of professions motivated precisely by the wrong incentive? And perhaps the current crisis demands that we examine what contributes to society at the same as offering quality of life, something to which all people, rich and poor, are rightly entitled.