Even an Iron Lady must yield to time: Margaret Thatcher is dead.

[Healergirl]

Margaret Thatcher is dead.  Warts and all - and I freely concede that she had many shortcomings - The woman was and is one of my heroines.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11518331

[Caehlim]

I was never a fan, her politics are pretty far opposed to my own. Still, it's shocking to see the fall of so mighty a political titan.

[Medias]

I'm just amazed she's gone so suddenly, people have joked about wishing for it for so long that you just forget it's actually gonna happen one day

[Beguile's Mistress]

She was a strong, determined, assertive person who did an amazing job.  RIP

[Healergirl]

I would not call myself a fan.  Her public insistence that "Society dose not exist", her relentless wfforts to reduce the authority of Local Councils - I mean really, conservatives are supposed to be all about devolving power to the local level after all.

Just two that come to mind.

But much of the crap that was thrown at her, much of the accusations of being a bitch... that just went with the job of being a woman with real power.

On the plus side, unambiguously in my mind:  Winning the Falklands War.  Seriously, how much legitimacy do you think the Argentiine junta lost in that defeat?  Enough to bring them down  sooner than they would otherwise have fallen.

How much legitimacy would they have gained had England folded or been beaten?  Enough to wave in their people's faces for a very long time, I think.



edited for spelling.

[Beorning]

I'm curious: what's the opinion on her in the UK?

I've read some opinions on her by British comic book writers (Alan Moore, Warren Ellis etc.) and I've noticed they positively hated her... I think that Ellis called her (in one Planetary issue) a "mad woman".

[consortium11]

I'm curious: what's the opinion on her in the UK?

I've read some opinions on her by British comic book writers (Alan Moore, Warren Ellis etc.) and I've noticed they positively hated her... I think that Ellis called her (in one Planetary issue) a "mad woman".

Virulently mixed. The closest comparison in the US is likely Regan.

At its most basic if you're on the left and/or from the north/Wales you hate her for removing the state subsidies from industries and breaking the militant unions which led to many communities and towns based around those industries being devastated.

If you're on the right and/or from south then you praise her for breaking the militant (and incredibly powerful) unions, opening up the economy and moving it away from relatively low skilled manufacturing to a more service based economy, creating a vast number of new jobs in the South, allowing people to buy and own their own home and generally praising individual achievement.

[Cyrano Johnson]

At a certain level, even if she was ultimately wrong about much of what she believed herself to be right about, one has to at least respect Thatcher's ability to get and hold on to power for as long as she did in what was still, in the Eighties, mostly considered a man's game. An achievement in itself. It's a shame that her legacy didn't leave very much to admire in what she actually did with that power -- she was hardly an ally of either feminism or diversity, and in the 21st-century financial collapse we've seen clearly what ultimately comes of economic policies that consist largely of "let's deregulate the financial sector, screw the working* class and privatize everything, huzzah" -- but as a face of the Eighties-era right-wing surge across the West she at least deserves her reputation as an energetic leader of style and conviction. (Compare and contrast the largely hollow cult surrounding the memory of her contemporary, Reagan, who was more a symptom of the decay of American politics than a genuinely impressive politician.)

* Edited for greater clarity in view of the discussion with consortium11 below.

[consortium11]

...she was hardly an ally of either feminism or diversity, and in the 21st-century financial collapse we've seen clearly what ultimately comes of economic policies that consist largely of "let's deregulate the financial sector, screw the middle class and privatize everything, huzzah" --

Of the many things you can accuse Thatcher of I'm not sure screwing the middle-class is really one of them. There's a reason that the term "Essex/Mondeo man" (used to refer to a middle class individual who was doing fairly well for themselves) is used to describe those who benefited from Thatcher's policies in the 80's (which went into the 90's).

Her electoral success came about to a large extent because despite her policies causing vast difficulties for the working class (especially those in the industrial sectors and outside the south east) they visibly benefited the middle class (and the working class who aspired to be middle class).

[Cyrano Johnson]

On the whole, the basic project of trade unionism on both sides of the Atlantic was to bring the working class into the middle class as a key condition of general prosperity. Union-busting politics, which did indeed wind up undermining general prosperity in the long run, can therefore be read in the late 20th-century context as an assault on the middle class as a larger entity (although specific subsets of it, tied to the "service economy," benefited for a time).

[consortium11]

I struggle to see how diminishing union power so that it could no longer bring down governments, create the winter of discontent and call strikes without balloting members can be seen as "screwing the middle class".

Moreover I struggle to see an argument that allowing the NUM of other such unions to have the almost unmatched and unprecedented power they did would have helped the U.K's prosperity. How many winter's of discontent would the UK have suffered and how would they helped prosperity?

[Cyrano Johnson]

I struggle to see how diminishing union power so that it could no longer bring down governments, create the winter of discontent and call strikes without balloting members can be seen as "screwing the middle class".

I've always thought the most infamous feature of the "Winter of Discontent" was supposed to be wildcat strikes by essential services workers, the reverse of unions "calling strikes without balloting members." Either way it's fallacious to insist that the only alternative to such excesses was to more-or-less completely gut the trade union in favour of neoliberal globalism and an unaccountable oligarchy of high finance, which was the Thatcherite and Reaganite mantra that ultimately produced a crisis whose scale beggars any possible "Winter of Discontent" and calls capitalism's very stability into question. I'd say that result qualifies as something of an own goal.

[consortium11]

I've always thought the most infamous feature of the "Winter of Discontent" was supposed to be wildcat strikes by essential services workers, the reverse of unions "calling strikes without balloting members." Either way it's fallacious to insist that the only alternative to such excesses was to more-or-less completely gut the trade union in favour of neoliberal globalism and an unaccountable oligarchy of high finance, which was the Thatcherite and Reaganite mantra that ultimately produced a crisis whose scale beggars any possible "Winter of Discontent" and calls capitalism's very stability into question. I'd say that result qualifies as something of an own goal.

1) Thatcher left power in 1990 and since her time there have been governments from both major parties as well as considerable reform and changes to the laws governing the financial markets. She at most set the seeds for the financial crisis but if we are to blame her for that then we must also praise her for the Big Bang and the almost unprecedented wealth it brought into the UK in the years prior. Moreover, exactly what about the Big Bang do you find unreasonable or a mistake?

2) I wouldn't say that Unions are gutted in the UK. Membership is down... but that has continued to decrease since... but unions continue to have considerable power. Look at what the transport unions are able to get for their members.

3) You're still to say how preventing unions from forcing the country to a three-day week (as happened in the mid 1970's) was her "screwing the working class"

4) Could she have handled the mining strikes better? Almost certainly. But Scargill was spoiling for a fight and he wanted to break her. Without giving in she had few options.

[SunshineSparkle]

She was a woman who fought for what she believed in.

RIP Mrs. Thatcher.

[Kythia]

My mam won't have her name spoken in the house.  Just got off the phone with her and she's happy to an extent that's actually relatively distasteful (someone has died, after all).

For my part, I was born in '87 in Newcastle.  I missed the miner's strikes but I did see the devasation that her policies caused.  I think her fault lies not in taking on the unions - I fully agree with Consortium that they were too powerful and also that Scargill was responsible for at least 50% of the fight - but in the lack of effort and care she put in to rebuild the communities she shattered.  Newcastle had other problems and not all of them can be laid at her feet but if you look at South Yorkshire, say, then even 25 years on these communities still haven't recovered.

I think she should have taken with one hand and given with the other.  Fight the unions, yes, it needed doing.  But replace the economies of the pit villages with something else rather than, it appears to me at least, writing off areas that, frankly, were never going to vote Conservative anyway as simply unimportant.

[consortium11]

One of the things Thatcher can certainly blamed for is the way she refocused the entire UK economy on London specifically and the south east in general. Prior to her the economy was far more geographically balanced but when she broke the unions power and removed subsidies she shattered the North, Wales and a number of areas without offering anything in return; the majority of the jobs and prosperity she did create were in London and the south.

It's something the country still hasn't really dealt with and it causes issues on all sides.

[Beorning]

For my part, I was born in '87 in Newcastle.

Heh. Wouldn't it be fun if you were also, by chance, a Hellblazer / John Constantine fan? :)

Anyway: I see very interesting points raised about Thatcher. Back here, she's considered one of the symbols of anti-Communism - and very revered because of that (along with Reagan).

[Kythia]

Heh. Wouldn't it be fun if you were also, by chance, a Hellblazer / John Constantine fan? :)

Little enough of a fan to have literally no idea what you're talking about.  Sorry.  I shall wikipedia it but no fun for you.  Sorry.

[Beorning]

Little enough of a fan to have literally no idea what you're talking about.  Sorry.  I shall wikipedia it but no fun for you.  Sorry.

No problem :) It's just that Newcastle (or, rather, certain event that took place in Newcastle) is sooo important in the biography of Constantine... Sorry, it's comic book nerd talking :)

[Diablerie]

Heh. Wouldn't it be fun if you were also, by chance, a Hellblazer / John Constantine fan? :)

*Got what you did there*

Ah, Margaret Thatcher, many didn't like you, but you sure deserve some peace.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Thatcher left power in 1990 and since her time there have been governments from both major parties as well as considerable reform and changes to the laws governing the financial markets. She at most set the seeds for the financial crisis but if we are to blame her for that then we must also praise her for the Big Bang and the almost unprecedented wealth it brought into the UK in the years prior.

The "Big Bang," like early nineties prosperity across the pond (or indeed the pre-Depression "roaring Twenties" at the end of the first Gilded Age), was a false dawn in a general Western economy whose fundamental safeguards were already being fatally undermined by Eighties excesses. It would only be really worthy of "praise" if that had not been the case. Changes post-Thatcher in Britain, and post-Reagan in the States, simply tinkered with the trend toward catastrophically unregulated markets they had already established. It was that trend that ultimately proved disastrous. I wouldn't say they "at most" set the seeds for the financial crisis, but that they and the entire movement of globalist neoliberalism for which they were standard-bearers most certainly and demonstrably did.

(This trajectory was less clear in post-War Britain, which didn't enjoy the prosperity of post-War North America. On the other hand a lot of what Labour and the left accomplished in post-War Britain to ameliorate the loss of empire and very difficult attendant circumstances is now entirely taken for granted in or conveniently written out of the Thatcherite narrative of events. That's a key part of the myth of the Iron Lady, a part of it which needs to die.)

I wouldn't say that Unions are gutted in the UK.

Then we shall have to agree to disagree.

You're still to say how preventing unions from forcing the country to a three-day week (as happened in the mid 1970's) was her "screwing the working class"

Heath's government "forced the country to a three-day week" in the mid 1970s, and deservedly lost the subsequent election. I'm suspicious of any narrative of the history of trade unions which assumes it was outrageous for them to ever exercise their power or win any confrontation ever. That often bespeaks a mindset -- it certainly did in the case of Thatcher -- whose real problem is the idea of the working class having political power and collective bargaining clout of any kind at all.

Thatcher declared unions "the enemy within," which was about rather more than just staving off the three-day week, and I've already spelled out quite clearly the relationship of that to an assault upon the idea of anything more than an attenuated middle class from which the working class is excluded by union-busting policies.

[Cyrano Johnson]

(Not to say that the trade unions weren't guilty of genuine excesses, BTW. Things would have turned out very differently if they'd adopted the "In Place of Strife" compromise -- indeed Thatcherism might have been avoided. But Thatcher was not just a reasonable corrective to an unreasonable left. She went well beyond that.)

[consortium11]

The "Big Bang," like early nineties prosperity across the pond (or indeed the pre-Depression "roaring Twenties" at the end of the first Gilded Age), was a false dawn in a general Western economy whose fundamental safeguards were already being fatally undermined by Eighties excesses. It would only be really worthy of "praise" if that had not been the case. Changes post-Thatcher in Britain, and post-Reagan in the States, simply tinkered with the trend toward catastrophically unregulated markets they had already established. It was that trend that ultimately proved disastrous. I wouldn't say they "at most" set the seeds for the financial crisis, but that they and the entire movement of globalist neoliberalism for which they were standard-bearers most certainly and demonstrably did.

So which parts of the Big Bang do/did you object to?

Then we shall have to agree to disagree.

As someone who experiences the power of transport unions on a semi-regular basis I just struggle to see how anyone can say unions have been gutted... in absolute terms at least. As industries lose power so do their respective unions; it is how the world turns.

Heath's government "forced the country to a three-day week" in the mid 1970s, and deservedly lost the subsequent election.

Heath's government didn't do it on a whim. They did it because there was a chronic shortage of electricity due to industrial actions (notably by the coal miners). Heath's government were in a difficult position, the spectre of a currency crisis floating over them, inflation running rampant and the unions unwilling to accept pay caps.

I'm suspicious of any narrative of the history of trade unions which assumes it was outrageous for them to ever exercise their power or win any confrontation ever.

And I've presented this narrative when?

You'll find no greater fan of the way that say the German economy includes unions than me. The system there has evolved to be one of compromise and cooperation between unions, companies and governments. In the UK unions went the other way, followed by governments, focusing on confrontation above all else.

Let's remember here, the miner's strikes where Thatcher made her name came about because the mining industry was costing Britain money and had to be heavily subsidised. It was not a profitable industry and the unions were unwilling to accept the measures that may have made it economically viable.

That often bespeaks a mindset -- it certainly did in the case of Thatcher -- whose real problem is the idea of the working class having political power and collective bargaining clout of any kind at all.

I'm sure Thatcher, the daughter of a greengrocer, was completely against the idea of a working class person having political power. Other than becoming prime minister herself of course... and being one of the sponsors of the distinctly working class John Major.

Likewise, if she had wanted to end collective bargaining completely she could have done; she had the political support in the aftermath of the miner's strike. She didn't. Most of her formal restrictions on Unions are in the great scheme of things pretty reasonable; should a Union have the right to legally call a strike without its members agreeing for example?

Thatcher declared unions "the enemy within," which was about rather more than just staving off the three-day week, and I've already spelled out quite clearly the relationship of that to an assault upon the idea of anything more than an attenuated middle class from which the working class is excluded by union-busting policies.

So, where exactly did Mondeo Man come from then?

[Cyrano Johnson]

So which parts of the Big Bang do/did you object to?

The confusion this question evinces probably starts from my confusion -- I erroneously confused the creation of the noveau-riche City class dependent on deregulated investment banking with the policy that established deregulation, which of course is what the term "Big Bang" refers to. We regret the error.

What I object to about the Big Bang is the Big Bang. It's not just about my opinion; the overwhelming analysis of the modern financial crisis is that it stemmed from Eighties financial deregulation -- the Big Bang was Thatcher's version -- which essentially made the criminalization of the financial sector possible. Being determined to "compete" in a financial sector that had decided to discard safeguards known to be necessary was little better, in terms of a long-term strategy for prosperity, than being determined to found one's economy on heroin smuggling. (It of course benefited the City nouveau riche and those tied to them in the short term, but that doesn't change the fact that the financial crisis that ultimately resulted was orders of magnitude worse than any crisis of the Seventies. Therefore positing that it was all worth it on account of the advent of "Mondeo man" (or "Essex man" before him, for that matter) is on rather shaky ground at best.)

Heath's government didn't do it on a whim. They did it because there was a chronic shortage of electricity due to industrial actions (notably by the coal miners).

Yes, I know that. The question you're rather casually skipping past is whether the industrial actions were justified. There are arguments for and against, but it's certainly not a question you can just skip over.

I'm sure Thatcher, the daughter of a greengrocer, was completely against the idea of a working class person having political power.

I don't believe you are genuinely confused about whether personal power and belief in the rights of the working class are interchangeable.

[Cyrano Johnson]

(Further material about the Big Bang and the financial crisis here for interested parties.)

[Kythia]

I'm curious: what's the opinion on her in the UK?

Street parties that she's dead

[Rinzler]

As a UK person who grew up during her time in power and ended up with lefty inclinations as a result, this link here sums up my feelings towards her: http://scriptonitedaily.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/the-alternative-eulogy-to-thatcher-dead-in-body-alive-in-spirit/

In my view, the street parties are quite understandable.

[Silk]

Can't say I agree with her policies, she did just as much good as bad, but the street parties, grave dancing and bashing of a old woman who died of a stroke is not only shameful, but downright disgusting and insulting to her remaining family and people should be ashamed of themselves for it.

[Bandita]

Virulently mixed. The closest comparison in the US is likely Regan.

At its most basic if you're on the left and/or from the north/Wales you hate her for removing the state subsidies from industries and breaking the militant unions which led to many communities and towns based around those industries being devastated.

If you're on the right and/or from south then you praise her for breaking the militant (and incredibly powerful) unions, opening up the economy and moving it away from relatively low skilled manufacturing to a more service based economy, creating a vast number of new jobs in the South, allowing people to buy and own their own home and generally praising individual achievement.

Don't forget that she deregulated a lot of industries, in the model of Reagan too.  She was one of the contributing factors of the banking crash that affected both the US and England. 

And agreed, Silk... That's pretty disgusting.

And no, I'm not a fan.  Just because she has a uterus doesn't mean I liked her in any way.  But at least, being British and intelligent, she was better than Sarah Palin.  That's about as much as I'll give her though.

*note: the 'British' praise I give is because I like accents other than my own.  Not a commentary on people.

[Callie Del Noire]

You know.. I didn't have to a lot of direct fall out from the Thatcher governement when I lived in the Republic of Ireland.. but I think that some of her union breaking was needed. Can you imagine going for NINE months without a service like the mail? I don't have to.


For NINE months. no mail or phones in my home when we moved to Newtowneforbes, Republic of Ireland. That was the sort of unions that the Thatcher governement faced. Big. Powerful.

Granted the converse can be argued that she did a lot to build the disparity between the rich and the rest of us too. She did a lot that could be considered good and bad. I do find it interesting more people are happy about her death than Hugo Chavez's death. Which kind of depressing to me.

I do think, like her peer Ronald Reagan, she will ALWAYS be a divisive figure.

[Rinzler]

Can't say I agree with her policies, she did just as much good as bad, but the street parties, grave dancing and bashing of a old woman who died of a stroke is not only shameful, but downright disgusting and insulting to her remaining family and people should be ashamed of themselves for it.

I'm sure she was every bit as empathic to those gay and lesbian kids who had to grow up and feel less than human because of her support of Section 28; I'm sure she was every bit as empathic to those families who had a loved one commit suicide or suffer a breakdown because of the massive debts resulting from her deregulation of the financial sector; I'm sure she was every bit as empathic to the homeless, on account of her housing policies which saw so many council homes fall into the hands of greedy landlords and property developers.

But perhaps I'm being too harsh on the old cow. After all, don't attribute malevolence to what could be stupidity, right? In which case, I must wonder if Thatch honestly believed that poor people were some sort of urban myth cooked up by the left.

[Silk]

I'm sure she was every bit as empathic to those gay and lesbian kids who had to grow up and feel less than human because of her support of Section 28; I'm sure she was every bit as empathic to those families who had a loved one commit suicide or suffer a breakdown because of the massive debts resulting from her deregulation of the financial sector; I'm sure she was every bit as empathic to the homeless, on account of her housing policies which saw so many council homes fall into the hands of greedy landlords and property developers.

But perhaps I'm being too harsh on the old cow. After all, don't attribute malevolence to what could be stupidity, right? In which case, I must wonder if Thatch honestly believed that poor people were some sort of urban myth cooked up by the left.

And you're proving yourself better by kicking the fresh corpse of a dead old woman?

[Rinzler]

And you're proving yourself better by kicking the fresh corpse of a dead old woman?

So you're saying I should lie, and pretend to like her for an interim period between her death and some arbitrary time in the future when it's okay to dislike her again?

Why?

[Healergirl]

My feelings about the woman are mixed.  The fact that a woman  was able to gain, hold and wield that much power for so long without  the sort of semi-dynastic support that Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto received is  still kinda mind-blowing.

And I will believe until the day I day that holding the Falklands against the Argentine Junta shortened said Junta's life by five to ten years.

But... she is on record as saying that she believed that society did not exist.  Which, as one commenter put it back in the day, "If she does not believe that there is such a thing as a society, what does she think she is Prime Minister of?"  That was from memory, desite the quotes,it may not be verbatim.  I think that statement is one of the most chowder-headed things I've ever heard, and as a bartender for may years, I heard some wild and crazy crap.  If she truly believed that there was no such thing as a social bond between non-family members, well, I sure as hell would not want somebody like that running my country.

DeMalachine,

Disliking someone and figuratively  dancing on her grave are not the same thing.

[Kythia]

I don't like the woman, but the "no such thing as society" quote is out of context:

They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation"

[Rinzler]

DeMalachine,

Disliking someone and figuratively  dancing on her grave are not the same thing.

Disliking someone and 'kicking the fresh corpse of a dead old woman' are not quite the same thing either. And all I did was express my dislike of her. A dislike which hasn't magically changed just because she died recently.

[Healergirl]

Demalachine,

Point well taken.

Kythia,

I am aware of the context, and I still think it was chowder headed.  "There is no such thing as society."    Those are seven extraordinary words to string together when talking about the way  the Homo Sapiens East African Plains Ape pack hunter organizes.

How about "There are no such things as families." Which are themselves small society. 

The clientele of the local bar and grill is a society.

An army is a society.  And a very damned big one.

And of course, so is a nation.

[Kythia]

Yeah, thats kinda the point.  They're seven words strung together, out of hundreds of thousands she spoke, as part of a much wider point.  If you can honestly say you've never put a collection of words together that would look bad in isolation then a tip of the metaphorical hat to you.  I know I have.

[Rinzler]

On reflection, I think I owe an apology to Silk for being a little too sharp, and not seeing how my language could be excessively robust on this matter. Sorry, Silk.

Alas, the subject of Thatcher has a habit of bringing out my more abrasive side. In any case, I've expressed my point, so I think it's best I leave it now.

[Hemingway]

I have no mixed feelings about this. Thatcher being dead doesn't fix any of the things she did. I can see why people who were deeply affected personally would celebrate, even if, as I said, it doesn't actually fix anything.

[Caehlim]

My feelings about the woman are mixed.  The fact that a woman  was able to gain, hold and wield that much power for so long without  the sort of semi-dynastic support that Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto received is  still kinda mind-blowing.

Australian PM Julia Gillard went to the same (if you're American "Public"/ if you're British "State") high school I did, she made it to head of state without any dynasty.

Plus how many heads of state would record this announcement:

PM Julia Gillard Addresses the End of the World

[Healergirl]

Kythia,

Oh we've all said boneheaded things, the list of my howlers is long and distinguished, I have no doubt.

the distinction here is that Mrs. Thatcher acted like she meant it, and did so consistently.

Caehlim,

I think I'm crushing on her....

Christine Whitman, to name just one American state governer is another that comes to mind.  Woman with executive plitical power I mean.  I'm not crushing on her.

[Cyrano Johnson]

For NINE months. no mail or phones in my home when we moved to Newtowneforbes, Republic of Ireland. That was the sort of unions that the Thatcher governement faced. Big. Powerful.

Even given all the caveats from my earlier convo with consortium11, the basic lesson of the latter twentieth century is that wanting to live without big, powerful unions tends to put you in the hands of big, powerful corporations. It's really not a close contest as to which is worse. (The point of striking is of course to illustrate the value of paying workers what they worth once you discover the cost of not having them, and in the case of essential services as if their workers are actually essential to society, rather than outcastes that can be exploited and taken for granted. The society that tries to unlearn these lessons will, as we are discovering, pay a steep price.)

[BCdan]

When I first heard about Thatcher years ago when I was a lot more liberal, I didn't like her at all.  Now that my opinions have changed a lot and I read more about the context of when she came into power she really was amazing.  Britain was getting bailed out by the IMF and was looking very much like Spain does today, but maybe even worse.  I took this information from a poster on reddit's neutral politics subreddit who talks about thatcher in broad terms. 

During the 70's the UK was in the process of imploding. Some of the highlights of this included;

* The UK had a 3 day work week for most of 1974 as the miners union was striking so electricity was only available for transport and businesses 3 days a week.
* The top rate of tax reached 98%. There was nearly no investment activity in the UK as a result and so no growth.
* Inflation was out of control. The highest yearly average was 24.2% (in British history it has only been higher once) but in July 1978 it hit 38% (the highest monthly average in British history). As a result no one was saving, pay was having to be raised weekly and prices in stores would change daily. At gas stations people were paid to stand outside with big chalk boards and a radio so the price could be updated hourly.
* By 1979 a very large percentage of the country was on strike. Half of the hospitals were closed to non-emergencies, [trash was piling up](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01390/winter-of-disconte_1390846i.jpg) around the country as service was reduced to monthly and most of the public transport system was operating with a 10% schedule.
* While unemployment was very low there was massive job duplication in the public sector, in some cases there was 5 people filling what would have been a full time role for one person.
* There was huge resistance against economic modernization, when you left school the opportunities to go in to a skilled field were extremely limited as a result. As an example of this by 1979 the UK was consuming or exporting only about half of the coal that it mined but as a result of the political power the miners union wielded it was impossible to close down mines and the labor force used in mining was actually increasing despite improved equipment.
* [These](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/High_Rise_%27council%27_flats_-_geograph.org.uk_-_7571.jpg) hideous blocks of identical housing which were rife with crime. During the 60's and 70's government housing policy was attempting to push as many people in to these blocks as possible on the premise that if people were all forced to live in the same kind of housing then society would become more equal.
* The end of the Breton Woods system meant the GBP was massively overvalued. The loss in value collapsed the import market, it was to expensive to import new technologies from the US so the UK behind to bag behind in technology development hugely.
* By 1976 the UK was months away from bankruptcy. An IMF bailout was secured which would have kept the country running until 1981 but that would be the only credit available, no one was buying British bonds because the continued fall in GBP value, Europe had already turned down the UK for a loan and the IMF had stated they would be unwilling to extend further credit.

if the government had continued operating in the same manner then when 1981 rolled around and the government ran out of money to operate there would have been the largest economic depression in British history which would have eviscerated about 55% of output (the US great depression peaked at a 38% drop for comparison) followed by a recovery to a much lower average industrial output.

Edit:

If someone likes her or loves her is going to come down to politics but those suggesting she "destroyed" the country are ignoring her policies from 1979 to 1984 are the only reason they have the opportunities they do today.

The policies which usually are controversial are;

* She put a cap on education related spending and created a funding agency for schools which had the power to shut down or cut funding for poorly performing schools.
* She cut social services and social housing. The speech see gave which is often quoted ("There is no society")  was in relation to this, the policy set was designed to give people tools to help themselves rather then have them rely on government services.
* Her most unpopular policy was reforming the property tax to a resident tax (AKA the Poll Tax). Instead of your local services (Trash pickup etc) being funded based on the value of your property it was based on how many adults lived in a household.  This caused rioting all over the country. The current council tax system is a fusion of  this and the previous system, the amount of council tax you pay is based on the value of your home and the number of people who live in it.
* She crushed the unions. There were very few restrictions on industrial action until her premiership so unions could call action without even a ballot of their members, the political effects of this over the previous few decades had been devastating with the large unions able to bring down governments at any time they chose. The head of one of the miners union (NUM) called a strike in 1984 without calling a ballot (as he had been unsuccessful three times in the past). The strike was declared illegal, broken up by the police and she ended up closing down 150 mines to break the back of the NUM.
* Adopted a policy allowing individuals to buy their state housing with government backed mortgages.
* About 60% of what had been public sector jobs in 1978 became private sector jobs by 1990. Gas, Electricity, Water, Steel, Airlines, Telecoms and anything else that didn't seem appropriate for public ownership as spun in to a GSE and then either sold or floated.
* Draconian security restrictions while dealing with the IRA, if you had an Irish accent in London during the 80's it wasn't unusual to be detained by the police for hours. The IRA tried to assassinate her twice despite the fact she was pro-unionization, the population of Northern Ireland did (and still do) poll more unfavorably to unification then Britons as a whole so this was never really pursued.
* Lots of military spending, too much for a relatively small country. The Falklands dispute could have been resolved with the threat of nuclear action against Argentina but she wanted to build British morale by kicking the crap out of a third world dictatorship.
* She supported South Africa, Khmer Rouge and a number of other very questionable regimes around the world.

My personal view on her is somewhat mixed. I, and indeed most other economists, would agree with most of her economic policy (but perhaps not the sequence or the timetable for it) but her social & foreign policy was extremely "old fashioned" and really out of place. I hugely respect her fortitude and political avoidance though even when I disagree with the policies she was supporting, the quality to stand up for what you believe in even against your own party is a quality that's sadly lacking in most politicians around the world (famously when her approval rating dropped to 23% and the conservatives were pleading with her to pull back on some of her policies she stated "To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!")

Edit 2:

A couple of positive aspects of her premiership;

* She was a huge advocate of evidence based policy and was renowned for her hatred of those attempting to use morality to justify a political position. Drug policy was removed from political control and placed it with the hands of Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs which instituted the worlds first general needle exchange program to control HIV spread and moved from enforcement to treatment. If subsequent administrations had maintained this policy of a hands-off evidence based approach to drug policy then the only drugs that would still be illegal in the UK today would be Heroin, Meth, Crack and Coke as these are the only drugs the council continues to recommend prohibition for.
* Prior to her premiership the conservatives were hostile to both abortion and homosexuality. She had voted against her party to decriminalize both going back to the 50's and she provided the momentum for the cultural change which transformed them in to a party that supports both today.
* Her distrust of the EU and the joint currency is primarily what kept the UK out of the Euro thus avoiding the current Euro crisis. One of the reasons she was removed from power by her party was her opposition to the ERM (predecessor to the Euro), the UK joining the ERM caused [Black Wednesday](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday) which brought on a recession (as well as earning George Sorros ~$2b) and led to the political infighting which caused the conservative loss in '97.
* She was one of the first world leaders to seek an end to the cold war when the Gorbachev reforms started. She considered the cold war over in 1986. Both Reagan and Gorbachev credit thatcher with laying down the foundations that led to the eventual summit and official end of the cold war.

"They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation"

[Cyrano Johnson]

There is more detailed information on Seventies UK economic history here. The UK did indeed face some severe shocks and problems during that time -- some of which, like the mid-Seventies energy crisis, was really outside its control -- but pro-Thatcher memorialists are apt to exaggerate some of it (such as the IMF loan -- the full amount of which the country in fact never needed to draw -- or comparisons to European economies made insolvent by the current economic crisis that stemmed ultimately from financial deregulation).

[BCdan]

Well granted the loan was supposed to keep Britain afloat into 1981, but by then Thatcher was at full blast and major economic reforms were happening.  Europe was actually unwilling to extend any loans to the UK at that time due to the financial situation.  Also I wouldn't say the current problems in the EU are caused by deregulation, but by a system that is fundamentally flawed.  You can't have a monetary union without a stricter fiscal union, like in the EU.

[Callie Del Noire]

Even given all the caveats from my earlier convo with consortium11, the basic lesson of the latter twentieth century is that wanting to live without big, powerful unions tends to put you in the hands of big, powerful corporations. It's really not a close contest as to which is worse. (The point of striking is of course to illustrate the value of paying workers what they worth once you discover the cost of not having them, and in the case of essential services as if their workers are actually essential to society, rather than outcastes that can be exploited and taken for granted. The society that tries to unlearn these lessons will, as we are discovering, pay a steep price.)

You know.. I agree that unions are a powerful balanced against companies and the governement. Unions brought about fairer wages, safety measures and even a hand in consumer safety. I also think they should be watched carefully. I got to suffer without a phone/mail for nine months in the republic..then got to spend  59 hours trying to get home on our last trip back from Ireland due to the Aircraft Controllers strike. Most of those nearly 3 days trying to sleep in 70s era airport furniture in Dublin and Shannon International, then Kennedy, La Guadia and Boston here in the states before being dumped in Raleigh Durham rather than Charlotte. And we had to wait 10 days for our clothing..and another 14 days for my dad's checked briefcase and mom's makeup gear.

I've seen the good and bad points of unions. I got to meet folks in my mom's hometown that benefited from Unions.. textile town.

[consortium11]

The confusion this question evinces probably starts from my confusion -- I erroneously confused the creation of the noveau-riche City class dependent on deregulated investment banking with the policy that established deregulation, which of course is what the term "Big Bang" refers to. We regret the error.

No worries.

What I object to about the Big Bang is the Big Bang. It's not just about my opinion; the overwhelming analysis of the modern financial crisis is that it stemmed from Eighties financial deregulation -- the Big Bang was Thatcher's version -- which essentially made the criminalization of the financial sector possible. Being determined to "compete" in a financial sector that had decided to discard safeguards known to be necessary was little better, in terms of a long-term strategy for prosperity, than being determined to found one's economy on heroin smuggling. (It of course benefited the City nouveau riche and those tied to them in the short term, but that doesn't change the fact that the financial crisis that ultimately resulted was orders of magnitude worse than any crisis of the Seventies. Therefore positing that it was all worth it on account of the advent of "Mondeo man" (or "Essex man" before him, for that matter) is on rather shaky ground at best.)

Do you know what the biggest practical change of the Big Bang was?

Allowing people to trade by computer and/or phone as opposed to having to shout on the trading floor itself.

People who talk about the abolition of the distinction between stockjobbers and brokers weren't aware of the system at the time. While technically a stockbroker couldn't be a market maker in reality they were. Each firm of stockjobbers had deals with the stocktraders, commission arrangements and the like. The reality was they acted as a singular whole just with different names on their articles of association. In reality all the Big Bang did was codify what was already happening and remove some incidental costs. Likewise the abolition of strict fixed commission charges opened up the market to smaller parties and individuals; as percentage commission was allowed it meant that a smaller party didn't have to pony up huge commission fees that made trading an unrealistic prospect.

The other aspect of the Big Bang that made a difference was to open up the City and make it a place based on merit, not bloodline and education. Prior to the Big Bang the city was very much as closed shop with someone's role and prospects being decided far more on who their parents were and where they went to school rather than how good they were at their job. It was the haunt of the upper and, at best, upper-middle class and nothing had changed. With the Big Bang suddenly there was an emphasis shift away from established privilege and towards talent. Now, people can disagree with this and say it was better when it was the upper class in charge; after all the banks and traders least affected by the recent crisis were the ones still in the hands of the aristocratic elite and compare that to say the banks Bob Diamond, the working class son of two teachers, or the Yorkshire born James Crosby, the son of a teacher Andy Hornby, the comprehensive educated Stephen Hester or the working class Stuart Gulliver had major roles with all suffered. I can see that argument but I find it repugnant.

Yes, I know that. The question you're rather casually skipping past is whether the industrial actions were justified. There are arguments for and against, but it's certainly not a question you can just skip over.

My argument isn't whether the union was justified in forcing the government to a three day week. It didn't want its members pay to be capped and didn't care about inflation, ergo it was justified. Unions are a special interest group for their members; what is in the interest of their members is justified.

The question is whether it was right or wrong for the country to allow Unions to be so powerful that without balloting their members they could force the country to a three day week. It's not whether they were justified in doing so or not. It's whether they should have that degree of power in the first place.

I don't believe you are genuinely confused about whether personal power and belief in the rights of the working class are interchangeable.

You're accusing a working class woman of not wanting the working class to have power. You're accusing a working class woman who mentored a number of working class politicians into senior roles in the stereotypically aristocratic Tory party of not wanting the working class to have power. If you're right and what Thatcher did led in a large part to the current financial situation then you're accusing the working class woman who made it possible for working class individuals to hold senior positions in major financial institutions to have power.

Moreover, again, if she wanted to end collective bargaining then why didn't she? Post miner's strike she could have done. She could have completely destroyed the union movement instead of merely breaking its firebrands. She could have smashed it utterly. She didn't. She reigned it in.

Once again, your argument was that Thatcher prevented working class people from becoming middle class. She didn't. If anything her policies allowed far more working class people to become middle class... hence my frequent references to Essex and Mondeo Man. Her policies were horrible for the working class outside London and the South East... but they did nothing to screw the middle class.

But... she is on record as saying that she believed that society did not exist.  Which, as one commenter put it back in the day, "If she does not believe that there is such a thing as a society, what does she think she is Prime Minister of?"  That was from memory, desite the quotes,it may not be verbatim.  I think that statement is one of the most chowder-headed things I've ever heard, and as a bartender for may years, I heard some wild and crazy crap.  If she truly believed that there was no such thing as a social bond between non-family members, well, I sure as hell would not want somebody like that running my country.

With regards to "society" in the context of her quote (about the welfare state), at the end of the day what is society other than a collection of individuals? And what can the government do for "society"? How can the government do anything to "society" which isn't based on doing something to individuals? The government cannot do anything for "society"... it can do things for individuals and they from there can form society. But it starts with individuals and it is individuals that the state can deal with.

Her argument was that what the government had done was offer a safety net to individual people. What she objected to was what she saw as individuals using the safety net as a hammock and then demanding that "society" offer them more, forgetting that at its heart society was other individual people and by demanding more from society they are in effect demanding more from individuals. That "society" wasn't some nebulous term... it was individuals acting together.



I don't think we can be too self-rightous about the people celebrating and dancing on her grave however. While she may have not have had any political power for decades, she was someone who tore communities apart, ended the way of life of a large part of the country and undoubtedly caused them vast amounts of misery. I can perfectly understand how those from mining villages which suddenly experienced near 100% unemployment or from the industrial cities which found their hearts ripped out want to celebrate her death. Even though I believe she essentially did what needed to be done with regards to the unions and moving the UK away from a non-competitive industrial sector there is no doubt she did it harshly and without much care for the consequences of those affected. She may technically have rejected the proposed "managed decline" of Liverpool but in reality across the country she essentially left millions to rot, ripping away their pride and their prospects.

I'm not going to condemn those people for celebrating even if I find it a bit tasteless.

[Healergirl]

Consortium,

I am reluctant to cross swords with you.   In part because I agree with much of what you write - in this thread and elsewhere - and in part because you are just so damned well prepared to support your positions.

So I view this as more of a fencing match than a duel to the death.

But. (you knew that was coming)


What can government do for society?  Government is an expression of the will of a society - either passive acceptance  to one degree or another - of oppression, or at best, active participation in governance by the members.  Different elements of that society have differing degrees of power as to how the society works of course.  The expression is incomplete, only partially accurate, slow to react at times, but  government is how any society gets things done on a large scale basis.

I largely agree with your analysis of what she meant... but not completely.  I understand that she was objecting to the abuse of the safety net - but I think she objected to the existence of said net, to the existence of a larger scale society on a very deep instinctive level.  I suspect that her deeper meaning was that there should not be a society in the larger sense, a net of obligations and duties and benefits - of favors owed by one's self to strangers and owed to one's self by other strangers.

Her view of society as being,  more accurately put as properly being limited to who one actually  knew - which is what the broader context of her statement causes me to infer what she means, well, I understand the feeling, but that went out with the rise of cities, the social model works very well with communities of two hundred or less, but breaks down fast with larger groups.

In short, the view that society is nothing more than individuals acting in concert is true so far as it goes, but I do wonder if she saw strangers as being part of the society she thought of herself as belonging to. One of the implications of belonging to a society is that the individual members give up a (hopefully) small portion of their individual freedom of action, and I think she rejected that part of the bargain.

[consortium11]

So I view this as more of a fencing match than a duel to the death.

Duels to the death are messy and full of blood... and death.

I view all political debates as at worst sparring matches... and at best an exchange of ideas where hopefully everyone involved (and observing) can gain a better understanding and see new perspectives, even if all that does is reinforce their original position.

What can government do for society?  Government is an expression of the will of a society - either passive acceptance  to one degree or another - of oppression, or at best, active participation in governance by the members.  Different elements of that society have differing degrees of power as to how the society works of course.  The expression is incomplete, only partially accurate, slow to react at times, but  government is how any society gets things done on a large scale basis.

I largely agree with your analysis of what she meant... but not completely.  I understand that she was objecting to the abuse of the safety net - but I think she objected to the existence of said net, to the existence of a larger scale society on a very deep instinctive level.  I suspect that her deeper meaning was that there should not be a society in the larger sense, a net of obligations and duties and benefits - of favors owed by one's self to strangers and owed to one's self by other strangers.

Her view of society as being,  more accurately put as properly being limited to who one actually  knew - which is what the broader context of her statement causes me to infer what she means, well, I understand the feeling, but that went out with the rise of cities, the social model works very well with communities of two hundred or less, but breaks down fast with larger groups.

In short, the view that society is nothing more than individuals acting in concert is true so far as it goes, but I do wonder if she saw strangers as being part of the society she thought of herself as belonging to. One of the implications of belonging to a society is that the individual members give up a (hopefully) small portion of their individual freedom of action, and I think she rejected that part of the bargain.

I guess the key point is this:

Is government expressing the will of society or is it expressing the will of a collection of individuals? "Society" didn't vote for it, didn't protest against it. Individuals did. Can there be such a thing as "society" without individuals? And what exactly do we mean by "society"? I'd say we use the term as shorthand to describe a collection of individuals. When people talk about say "society's moral standards" they are not talking about some moral agent called "society" they are using it to describe the roughly similar moral standards of a collection of individuals. Individuals who think roughly the same things and may work with a single purpose but still at the end of the day individuals. I actually think she was wrong to specify out the family unit. In my view when everything is boiled down to its root there is nothing but individuals. That does not mean those individuals cannot help each other, cannot work with each other and cannot agree. It doesn't mean we cannot use the term "society". But it is a term, a shorthand, a rhetorical fiction. You cannot separate society from the individuals that make it up.

On your later point, to quote from the interview where "no such thing as society" appeared (emphasis mine):

But it went too far. If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.

It's also worth noting that  the enterprise allowance scheme she set up allowed anyone who was on benefits to receive a guaranteed income of £40 a week (which wasn't a bad sum in those days) if they set up their own business. It was basically an example of her principles in action; "society" (i.e. a collection of individuals) would provide a safety net through benefits if you fell and then give you a better safety net if you attempted to spring up again in the sort of entrepreneurship manner she favoured. It may not have been entirely successful and most of those who used it may have been sole traders but I think it shows her principles in action and rather renders any criticism of her wanting to remove the net entirely moot.

[Healergirl]

Consortium11,

I see your point, but look at it this way:  Do armies fight wars, or do individual soldiers fight wars?  An army is after all a social organization of  soldiers.  I don't think anybody would describe a western-style army as a rhetorical fiction.  Some third and fourth world armies?  No comment.


The example you gave of Thatcher's principles in action, showing her to be not quite the ogress many want to portray her as is a sterling example of the argument in depth preparation I so respect you for.

edited for grammar

[consortium11]

I see your point, but look at it this way:  Do armies fight wars, or do individual soldiers fight wars?  An army is after all a social organization of  soldiers.  I don't think anybody would describe a western-style army as a rhetorical fiction.  Some third and fourth world armies?  No comment.

Individuals fight wars. That's why we hold individuals responsible for war crimes and the like rather than place then back on "the army". There are no armies without individual soldiers; an army is just a way of organising them.

The example you gave of Thatcher's principles in action, showing her to be not quite the ogress many want to portray her as is a sterling example of the argument in depth preparation I so respect you for.

Oh Thatcher was an ogress, have no doubt about that. While the enterprise scheme helped many it was an imperfect tool; put simply what business opportunities are there for an ex-miner with no other skills in a mining town where no-one has any employment, any money and all the existing businesses are collapsing because they were dependant on the mines? That's to say nothing of the original capital requirements or the need to present a business plan (which doesn't sound onerous but again, we're talking about miners who often had a limited academic education as there was seen as being no need for it). It was scheme that did do a lot of good and worked well for many... but it was aimed to a large extent at the prosperous south east and London and had limited impact on the areas where it was truly needed.

[Healergirl]

Consortium11,

Individuals fight wars?  mmm.  I have to differ on that.  Individuals engage in firefights, yes,  and can commit atrocities lumped under the heading of War Crimes, and such behavior can be greatly reduced or enhanced by attitudes at the top of the chain of command. Actual battles, let alone wars require a much higher degree of organization.  Individuals soldiers are, I think, the components of a larger social structure.   A society.  And not a rhetorical fiction.

A very imperfect analogy:  People are individual atoms of varying elements, societies are (very volatile, prone to spontaneous disassembly) molecules.  They are comprised of atoms,  they are not fictions.

And blame can and has been placed on armies, a great deal of effort was expended by the NATO countries to make sure that the West German armed forces had a different social culture than the preceding Wehrmacht.  There were some , well, many similarities - effective armed forces have many common traits after all, but socially, there was quite a bit of daylight between the two organizations  And I again stress that they were societies.

I bow in no-safeword submission to your assessment of Thatcher.

[Kythia]

Consortium - have you read Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones?  Can't recommend it enough.  I only mention as some of the arguments you are making are similar to his and it reminded me.

[Healergirl]

Kythia,

Thank you for that recommendation!

[consortium11]

Consortium11,

Individuals fight wars?  mmm.  I have to differ on that.  Individuals engage in firefights, yes,  and can commit atrocities lumped under the heading of War Crimes, and such behavior can be greatly reduced or enhanced by attitudes at the top of the chain of command. Actual battles, let alone wars require a much higher degree of organization.  Individuals soldiers are, I think, the components of a larger social structure.   A society.  And not a rhetorical fiction.

A very imperfect analogy:  People are individual atoms of varying elements, societies are (very volatile, prone to spontaneous disassembly) molecules.  They are comprised of atoms,  they are not fictions.

And blame can and has been placed on armies, a great deal of effort was expended by the NATO countries to make sure that the West German armed forces had a different social culture than the preceding Wehrmacht.  There were some , well, many similarities - effective armed forces have many common traits after all, but socially, there was quite a bit of daylight between the two organizations  And I again stress that they were societies.

I bow in no-safeword submission to your assessment of Thatcher.

I'm not disputing that individuals can act together as a whole in the way they describe. I'm disputing that by acting together anything fundamentally changes. The term "society" is just a shorthand for describing that collection of individuals, their thoughts, feelings, opinions, situations and prejudices. Likewise an "army" is just an organisational term to describe a collection of individuals (who in turn form squads, regiments, companies, battalions etc). You say the army fights the war... but what if the individuals who formed that army simply refused? Would a war be fought?

Everything comes back to the individual. Everything beyond that is a useful fiction to organise and describe it.

Consortium - have you read Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones?  Can't recommend it enough.  I only mention as some of the arguments you are making are similar to his and it reminded me.

I have, although I disagree with much of it. I agree with him about the hole that was left in working class culture (and pride) with the collapse of their traditional industries, the casual contempt of the working class (often by the metropolitan left) and the way successive governments have essentially done little for the working class itself outside of offering ways for people to "escape" it, leaving the far-right to slip in. The BNP gains most of its electoral support from old-labour heartlands to a large extent because despite it's far-right reputation it's actual policies are essentially a xenophobic rehashing of traditional working-class labour positions.

That said I think he's got on over-romantic view of the working class which borders on the "noble savage" trope, he views the working class as a singular whole (which even if it was ever true certainly isn't now immigration has widened the working class) and he uses the idea of chavs and working class interchangeably. I don't think that's correct; chav refers to something different. His view of class hatred is too limited; he suggests it is simply a hatred down the classes with the metropolitan elite's contempt for chavs being essentially disguised class hatred which misses the fact that a large amount of the dislike for chavs comes from fellow working class areas and individuals.

[Kythia]

That said I think he's got on over-romantic view of the working class which borders on the "noble savage" trope, he views the working class as a singular whole (which even if it was ever true certainly isn't now immigration has widened the working class) and he uses the idea of chavs and working class interchangeably.

Mmm, I interpreted him to be pushing towards a "pride" in the working class' view of itself.  While I agree he's talking very much as an outsider looking in 1) there's a long tradition - Orwell and beyond - of this over-romantic view and I felt he was deliberately trying to tap in to that 2) the book acknowledges that its target audience is the chattering classes who are, I would imagine, rather sympathetic to that sort of idealised view.  In short, I viewed it as rhethoric rather than anything harmful.

I don't think that's correct; chav refers to something different. His view of class hatred is too limited; he suggests it is simply a hatred down the classes with the metropolitan elite's contempt for chavs being essentially disguised class hatred which misses the fact that a large amount of the dislike for chavs comes from fellow working class areas and individuals.

But the working classs can and does hate itself as an outgrowth of class hatred.  Without going into Hyacinth Bucket (I feel there should be some analogue of Godwin's law relating to discussions of British Class and "Keeping Up Appearances") there has always been a certain "self-hating" element within the working class.  Well, within any demograph.  The internal hatred is simply as aspect of that - that the working class has been de-fanged and chavs are embracing that rather than anything else.  IMHO.

Anyway, sorry for derailing, just wanted to mention it.  I return you to your previously scheduled discussion.

[Healergirl]

Kythia,

You are not derailing!

Consortium11,

A Fundamental change in group behavior.... there are any number of studies which seem to indicate that people in groups do not act /react to stimulus the way people do as individuals.  A google search on individual and group behavior brings up 144,000 hits.  Im sure there will be something in that pile for everybody.

And are you sure that fiction is a term you want to use when describing an institution with the longevity and impact of "army"?  If an army is a useful fiction, I am tempted to respond  "So are love, honor, mercy, justice, cruelty, passion, envy  and loyalty."  but I believe those to be real.  Now, societies and governments are bootstrapped into existence in that they are real because their component members say they are  - but so do their opponents.  If they are not real, then there would be no need to oppose them.  God may not exist, but the Catholic Church certainly does.  Another useful fiction?

  What is real to you, then?

This verges on tautology perhaps, but if the soldiers refuse to fight, why did they become soldiers?  And yes, even conscripts do have a choice in the matter of whether or not to serve in an army.  The classic example of soldiers refusing to fight is the Tsarist army in WWI, during the revolution - but they did fight back when attacked, so the example does not really hold up.  I think you are getting into Perfect Gas behavior territory here. 

But yes, the war would be fought - with new soldiers if need be, if opinion is so polarized as you described, the opposite pole would fill the ranks.

edited for spelling.

[consortium11]

A Fundamental change in group behavior.... there are any number of studies which seem to indicate that people in groups do not act /react to stimulus the way people do as individuals.  A google search on individual and group behavior brings up 144,000 hits.  Im sure there will be something in that pile for everybody.

I'm not disputing that people act differently in groups; that's a fact of life so obvious it doesn't need evidence. But it is still individuals acting, even if in a different way to if they were not in a group. It is still rooted in individuals.

And are you sure that fiction is a term you want to use when describing an institution with the longevity and impact of "army"?

"Army" is simply a term first used in the 14th century to describe a collection of individuals in a particular set of circumstances, based on some Anglo-French and some latin. What matters is what the individuals that make up an army do. The Roman soldiers weren't made great due to the Roman army... the Roman army was made great due to the individuals that made it up. Armies cannot exist without individuals, cannot do anything without individuals and have no power without individuals. An army is just a way of organising individuals.

If an army is a useful fiction, I am tempted to respond  "So are love, honor, mercy, justice, cruelty, passion, envy  and loyalty."  but I believe those to be real.

Apples and oranges. The things you mention are emotions/mental states. An army is not.

Now, societies and governments are bootstrapped into existence in that they are real because their component members say they are  - but so do their opponents.  If they are not real, then there would be no need to oppose them.  God may not exist, but the Catholic Church certainly does.  Another useful fiction?  What is real to you, then?

If the Catholic Church had no individual members (that is if no individuals identified as belonging to it) then would anyone need to oppose it? Would anyone oppose it?

Do we oppose fascists or fascism? For what is fascism without fascists?

But yes, the war would be fought - with new soldiers if need be, if opinion is so polarized as you described, the opposite pole would fill the ranks.

And then that would be in the individual soldiers deciding to fight. The army itself cannot do anything, it is the individuals that do it.

[consortium11]

Mmm, I interpreted him to be pushing towards a "pride" in the working class' view of itself.  While I agree he's talking very much as an outsider looking in 1) there's a long tradition - Orwell and beyond - of this over-romantic view and I felt he was deliberately trying to tap in to that 2) the book acknowledges that its target audience is the chattering classes who are, I would imagine, rather sympathetic to that sort of idealised view.  In short, I viewed it as rhethoric rather than anything harmful.

In what other circumstances would we form the opinion like that is mere rhetoric and not harmful? It's patronising, offensive and simply not true.

But the working classs can and does hate itself as an outgrowth of class hatred.  Without going into Hyacinth Bucket (I feel there should be some analogue of Godwin's law relating to discussions of British Class and "Keeping Up Appearances") there has always been a certain "self-hating" element within the working class.  Well, within any demograph.  The internal hatred is simply as aspect of that - that the working class has been de-fanged and chavs are embracing that rather than anything else.  IMHO.

I don't disagree; but Jones does. Throughout the book he talks about how the various higher social strata's have class hatred towards chavs (and extends this to cover all the working class) without accepting the dislike for chavs within the working class. He avoids discussing the divisions within the working class (one of the reasons why his view of the working class is a singular whole is unhelpful) and the impact they have had and continue to have.

[Ephiral]

"Army" is simply a term first used in the 14th century to describe a collection of individuals in a particular set of circumstances, based on some Anglo-French and some latin. What matters is what the individuals that make up an army do. The Roman soldiers weren't made great due to the Roman army... the Roman army was made great due to the individuals that made it up. Armies cannot exist without individuals, cannot do anything without individuals and have no power without individuals. An army is just a way of organising individuals.

Your example is spectacularly poorly chosen. The reason the Roman army was great was because of the discipline and training instilled by it as an institution. So yes, Roman soliders were pretty clearly made great by the Roman army.

[Kythia]

In what other circumstances would we form the opinion like that is mere rhetoric and not harmful? It's patronising, offensive and simply not true.

Hmmm, thats an interesting point.  I reserve the right to wake up at three in the morning with a perfectly formed counter argument but until/unless that happens I think you may be right there.  I had perhaps dismissed it too readily.

I don't disagree; but Jones does. Throughout the book he talks about how the various higher social strata's have class hatred towards chavs (and extends this to cover all the working class) without accepting the dislike for chavs within the working class. He avoids discussing the divisions within the working class (one of the reasons why his view of the working class is a singular whole is unhelpful) and the impact they have had and continue to have.

Here I do disagree with you though.  He doesn't mention every part of the situation, no.  But thats not to say his points are wrong, simply incomplete.  He's writing a book aimed at guardian readers, not at the working class (I hope we can leave the massive assumptions made in that statement alone and that you understand the point I'm trying to make) and so has, rightly IMO, aimed his arguments towards the issues that most affect and can be affected by them.

[consortium11]

But even Guardian itself picked up on the points I mentioned...

There's no reason for a book like this to not dwell on the internal divisions within a class, especially when exploring them actually gets back to his key point. He mentions the right-to-buy scheme as a deliberate way to undermine the working class but then doesn't take the point onward; the right-to-buy scheme gave one of the biggest boosts to the "aspirational" working class who didn't want to be working class any more and form one of the major groups within the working class who dislike the "chav" culture. It also fuelled the chav culture itself by allowing them to borrow against homes the owned to fuel a more material lifestyle which in turn frustrated some of the "working pride" sector of the class. It's all points that would fit well into his idea of the upper echelons of society deliberately trying to cut apart the working class, as would a look into immigration the UK, especially of relatively low skilled labour. Yet he leaves the points unexplored.

[Healergirl]

Consortium11,

An army is not an emotion/mental state?  I most strongly disagree.

The whole point of basic training is to change civilian emotional reaction/habits of thought into military patterns.

You said  "An army is just a way of organizing individuals."  Oh no no.  Organization is never merely "just", organization is the point, we are pack hunters, organization, flexible, adaptable organization is what we do.


Here is the problem I have with describing an army as a useful fiction.  If an army is a useful fiction, then so are organized religions, so are corporations.  If armies, religions, corporations are all useful fictions, then the term has no meaning, the useful fiction is in fact practical reality.

So, I repeat: What is real to you? 

[consortium11]

An army is not an emotion/mental state?  I most strongly disagree.

The whole point of basic training is to change civilian emotional reaction/habits of thought into military patterns.

You said  "An army is just a way of organizing individuals."  Oh no no.  Organization is never merely "just", organization is the point, we are pack hunters, organization, flexible, adaptable organization is what we do.

The US has eight field armies. Eight. The reason?

To organise.

An army is a concept. It is a name of a piece of paper. It is an idea. An army doesn't do anything. The individuals in the army do things.

Here is the problem I have with describing an army as a useful fiction.  If an army is a useful fiction, then so are organized religions, so are corporations.  If armies, religions, corporations are all useful fictions, then the term has no meaning, the useful fiction is in fact practical reality.

I'll pick on corporations as they're the perfect example.

Corporations are a legal fiction. A very useful legal fiction but a fiction none-the-less.

If a corporation a person? Does a corporation think? Does it ponder? Does it live? Does it die? Does it breath? Does it feel pain? Does it feel sadness? Including and excluding the prior as appropriate does it innately have any of the characteristics which we would say make someone (or something) a person?

And yet legally it is a person. In certain areas a person the same as you and I.

That's a fiction. It's universally regarded as a fiction. I know of no-one who genuinely thinks that say Microsoft is a real person. Yet we treat it as a person every single day. Because it makes life easier for us. Because it allows us to organise better. Because it is a useful tool to pretend that corporations have a legal personality. It is a fiction... but a useful one.

So, I repeat: What is real to you?

It is perhaps easier to reverse the question; what isn't real?

What isn't real are the filters we apply to the world to make it easier to deal with. What isn't real are the conventions and ideas we apply to make things more practical. What isn't real are the things that can be reduced down.

Let us return back to the original starting point. "Society".

The term itself comes from the latin word for essentially "comrade". It is about the bond and/or interaction between individuals. It is those individuals that form it, the individuals the drive it and the individuals that can break it. Can we touch society? Can we talk to society? Or can we touch and talk to the individuals (either singular or together) who make up society? Can a government do anything for society that in reality isn't based on doing something for the individuals that make it up?

[Healergirl]

Consortium11,


Corporations are a legal fiction?  Oh, that was very much a cloudy choice of words.  Fictions have no standing in a court of law, facts do, and corporations are very much legal facts.  You can take them to court, and they can take you to court.  Personhood of corporations is a daft idea, but legally.... unfortunately they are.

I do note the irony -which I am sure is intentional -  of a writer with the handle of Consortium11 arguing that consortia cannot be real.

 
It is perhaps easier to reverse the question; what isn't real?

What isn't real are the filters we apply to the world to make it easier to deal with. What isn't real are the conventions and ideas we apply to make things more practical. What isn't real are the things that can be reduced down.

If that is your definition of what is not real, then Literacy and Language themselves are not real.   Writing is composed of marks on a surface that have no inherent meaning - if the meaning was inherent, we would not need to learn how to read - and perhaps write.  The marks that compose writing have meaning that is assigned to them in our own heads.  Likewise language, we understand it because we learn to understand it.

Quite literally, Literacy and Language are conventions and ideas we apply to make things more practical to do and use.

This calls into question the basic utility of the useful fiction concept, because utilizing a useful fiction to discuss the existence of useful fictions is very much like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.


Are you a deconstructionist?

[Kythia]

Corporations are a legal fiction?  Oh, that was very much a cloudy choice of words.  Fictions have no standing in a court of law, facts do, and corporations are very much legal facts.  You can take them to court, and they can take you to court.  Personhood of corporations is a daft idea, but legally.... unfortunately they are.

Sorry, I think you've misunderstood consortium's point a little.  Legal Fiction is a precisely defined term and corporate personhood is perhaps the best example of it.  It's essentially a "trick" played by the legal system.  Everyone accepts that a corporation isn't a person in the same sense as me or (if for the moment we assume other people are real) you.  But treating them as one makes various things easier.

[Healergirl]

Kythia,

I take the correction like a grown woman, minimal sniffling ensues.

[Ephiral]

Consortium11, if I understand your point correctly, it seems you are arguing against the reality of anything that does not have a tangible presence. ("Can we touch society? Can we talk to society?") In that case, I think you were dodging a very valid point earlier when Healergirl asked you if love, honor, mercy, justice, cruelty, passion, envy  and loyalty were real. I would also ask you what you think you're communicating on at this moment. Can you touch the Internet? Can you talk to it? Sure, you can touch the individual machines, but that's not the same thing, is it?

[consortium11]

Corporations are a legal fiction?  Oh, that was very much a cloudy choice of words.  Fictions have no standing in a court of law, facts do, and corporations are very much legal facts.  You can take them to court, and they can take you to court.  Personhood of corporations is a daft idea, but legally.... unfortunately they are.

I do note the irony -which I am sure is intentional -  of a writer with the handle of Consortium11 arguing that consortia cannot be real.

Kythia's already mentioned this. The reason you can take a corporation to court and in turn be taken to court by them is because of a legal fiction; the fiction that legally corporations are (or at least have many of the same rights and responsibilities as) people.

If that is your definition of what is not real, then Literacy and Language themselves are not real.   Writing is composed of marks on a surface that have no inherent meaning - if the meaning was inherent, we would not need to learn how to read - and perhaps write.  The marks that compose writing have meaning that is assigned to them in our own heads.  Likewise language, we understand it because we learn to understand it.

Quite literally, Literacy and Language are conventions and ideas we apply to make things more practical to do and use.

Indeed. Language in something we applied to the world to make it easier for us to understand and to communicate. The existence of multiple languages in the world shows that there is nothing inherent about an object that means it is it's name in English (or French or Spanish or German etc).

This calls into question the basic utility of the useful fiction concept, because utilizing a useful fiction to discuss the existence of useful fictions is very much like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I don't see the connection. As a general rule I dislike the "angels on pins" concept as it seems to me to be an argument for reducing everything to ruthless practicality and dismissing any arguments that don't. Moreover if I derive pleasure from a discussion then can it really be said to be a waste of time, even if the subject matter itself is of little practical import?

Beyond that I think the discussion is useful. Take the discussions on threads below about sexism and what's known as "rape culture". If society is sexist and is creating a culture where rape is trivialised is society doing that in and of itself or does it do it because enough individuals within society think a certain way? Once you identify that then the question turns from "how do we change society" to "how do we change individuals"... and that to me is the key question.

Take drink-driving for example. This has been a crime in the U.K since the 1870's but despite that drink-driving was still endemic. One of the reasons is that while jurisprudence states that a law such as that is a way of showing society's disapproval (and through doing so shape society and its opinions) because it focuses on society and not the individual society didn't significantly change. The reality was it took about a century for drink-driving to be socially unacceptable... and it became that due to the efforts to focus on individuals and make individuals become aware of their actions. As more and more of the individuals within society came to consider drink-driving unacceptable then society came to consider it unacceptable.

Are you a deconstructionist?

Of the Derrida/Yale school? Not intentionally.

Consortium11, if I understand your point correctly, it seems you are arguing against the reality of anything that does not have a tangible presence. ("Can we touch society? Can we talk to society?") In that case, I think you were dodging a very valid point earlier when Healergirl asked you if love, honor, mercy, justice, cruelty, passion, envy  and loyalty were real. I would also ask you what you think you're communicating on at this moment. Can you touch the Internet? Can you talk to it? Sure, you can touch the individual machines, but that's not the same thing, is it?

My point isn't to reduce everything to the physical and I apologise if my arguments come across that way. My argument is to separate out things that are "real" (that is to say in some way inherent) and things that are "fictions" (that is to say, they are things we have applied to this world which are not inherent to it). Without touching on the argument that things such as "love" are just chemical reactions and stimulated nerves in the brain, love is still real; we did not invent the concept of"love" (although as above we invented the term). Love, honor, mercy, justice, cruelty, passion, envy and loyalty are (with the possible exception of "honour" which to me is very much a social construct) all real; they are not concepts we invented to make life easier.

My lack of tech knowledge may let me down here but the internet is a concept that exists in and of itself. In contrast the operating protocol (HTTP/WWW etc) are fictions we applied to it to make life easier for us much in way Windows style operating systems are a fiction applied to make computer usage easier.

Which leads to perhaps the problem with my argument. Taking it right back to the start, if we were to replace "society" with "car". Most of us would automatically say a car is real. Yet what separates it from society? Both are made up of individual component parts each of which influences how society/the car operates. If one wanted to change how a car performed one wouldn't change the car as a concept in and of itself... one would change the component parts. So in truth my argument would be that as a concept "car" isn't real (despite the fact that it is in many ways tangible... albeit you cannot touch "a car", you can touch parts of a car); it is a fiction we have invented, a shorthand to describe a certain set of parts arranged in a certain way.

The issue is how far this point goes. An engine has parts in the same way a car does. Is that reduced down? I say it has to be. Each of those parts has parts. Again, reduce it down. When everything is reduced away what are we left with? Simple raw materials? Plastics and metal? I don't think we need to go quite that far. I think we can reduce things down to a single part and build from there. A screw for example is a single part (albeit we call one section of it "the head"). Just as society can be broken down into component parts (Thatcher already mentioned one, the family) which can themselves be broken down further until we are left with the individual.

Your example is spectacularly poorly chosen. The reason the Roman army was great was because of the discipline and training instilled by it as an institution. So yes, Roman soliders were pretty clearly made great by the Roman army.

I apologise for missing this earlier.

So what did the training and discipline do? It made the individual soldiers better (either alone or in groups). Who did the training and installed the discipline? Individuals. Who decided on the training and installing discipline? Individuals. Every aspect of the "army" is entirely governed by the actions of individuals.

Roman soldiers were made great by individuals. The army in and of itself did nothing beyond organise them (which was another decision taken by individuals).

[gaggedLouise]

consortium11, in "the reason we can strike deals with corporations, take them to court or get taken to court by them ourselves is because of the legal fiction that corporations are persons, like you and me"

the word persons could just as well have been 'subjects' or 'conscious agents'. There's nothing very odd about saying something that isn't endowed with a human-form body, eyes and a brain can still be an agent, can influence others or make them change their choices by its being there and acting in its own way. And it would not mean the company, army command, church or even some animal would be any less real than you or me.

When Thatcher famously said "There is no such thing as society. There are only individual men and women, and families" she was trying to drive home the idea that society is not only an abstraction, it's simply a nonentity, a bogeyman people push around to try to (wrongfully) motivate their claims to have this and that. I strongly disagree with her on that one 8and some other things too).

[Healergirl]

Consortium11,

Thank you for the clarification!

The problem I am having is with your use of the word fiction - a word that carries a lot of baggage.  Learning that when  you use the term "useful fiction" you seem to be referring to things I would call "useful software tools", clears away a lot of the fog.

[Ephiral]

Beyond that I think the discussion is useful. Take the discussions on threads below about sexism and what's known as "rape culture". If society is sexist and is creating a culture where rape is trivialised is society doing that in and of itself or does it do it because enough individuals within society think a certain way? Once you identify that then the question turns from "how do we change society" to "how do we change individuals"... and that to me is the key question.

Except that the correct answer is "both". Hint: How do you think these individuals learn to think this way? How do you think such patterns are eventually rendered unacceptable?

My point isn't to reduce everything to the physical and I apologise if my arguments come across that way. My argument is to separate out things that are "real" (that is to say in some way inherent) and things that are "fictions" (that is to say, they are things we have applied to this world which are not inherent to it). Without touching on the argument that things such as "love" are just chemical reactions and stimulated nerves in the brain, love is still real; we did not invent the concept of"love" (although as above we invented the term). Love, honor, mercy, justice, cruelty, passion, envy and loyalty are (with the possible exception of "honour" which to me is very much a social construct) all real; they are not concepts we invented to make life easier.

Your definition of "real" seems to have some issues, then. As you have defined it here, the computer you wrote this on is not real. Computers are not inherent; they are merely a specific arrangement that we applied to certain items. I would say a far more useful definition of "real" is something which has actual, measurable consequences in the real world. Going back to my example of computers: You're reading this, aren't you?

My lack of tech knowledge may let me down here but the internet is a concept that exists in and of itself. In contrast the operating protocol (HTTP/WWW etc) are fictions we applied to it to make life easier for us much in way Windows style operating systems are a fiction applied to make computer usage easier.

Using your definition of "real", I don't see how this holds. How is the Internet in any way inherent to the world? For that matter, what is the Internet, if it is not a collection of useful protocols for arranging information and getting it from A to B? If the protocols that it consists of are not real, how is it real?

Which leads to perhaps the problem with my argument. Taking it right back to the start, if we were to replace "society" with "car". Most of us would automatically say a car is real. Yet what separates it from society? Both are made up of individual component parts each of which influences how society/the car operates. If one wanted to change how a car performed one wouldn't change the car as a concept in and of itself... one would change the component parts. So in truth my argument would be that as a concept "car" isn't real (despite the fact that it is in many ways tangible... albeit you cannot touch "a car", you can touch parts of a car); it is a fiction we have invented, a shorthand to describe a certain set of parts arranged in a certain way.

The issue is how far this point goes. An engine has parts in the same way a car does. Is that reduced down? I say it has to be. Each of those parts has parts. Again, reduce it down. When everything is reduced away what are we left with? Simple raw materials? Plastics and metal? I don't think we need to go quite that far. I think we can reduce things down to a single part and build from there. A screw for example is a single part (albeit we call one section of it "the head"). Just as society can be broken down into component parts (Thatcher already mentioned one, the family) which can themselves be broken down further until we are left with the individual.

Why is the individual real? Seems that, if we take your argument to its logical conclusion, the only things that are real are quantum states. Which, while technically correct, is completely useless as a concept, and I see no reason to support its use or advocacy beyond certain very narrow branches of metacognition.

I apologise for missing this earlier.

So what did the training and discipline do? It made the individual soldiers better (either alone or in groups). Who did the training and installed the discipline? Individuals. Who decided on the training and installing discipline? Individuals. Every aspect of the "army" is entirely governed by the actions of individuals.

Roman soldiers were made great by individuals. The army in and of itself did nothing beyond organise them (which was another decision taken by individuals).

A society, or an army, is nothing more than a group which follows certain expected rules. You cannot argue that groups-which-follow-rules are not real with one breath and then rely on their existence with the next. Either the army exists and is a thing, or it is not (and thus the organizational structure that makes it up is not either). Which is it?

[consortium11]

Except that the correct answer is "both". Hint: How do you think these individuals learn to think this way? How do you think such patterns are eventually rendered unacceptable?

They learn to think that way from other individuals. Such patterns are rendered unacceptable because enough individuals view it unacceptable. We shorthand that by calling it society.

Think about it this way; we can change individuals without changing society. We cannot change society without changing individuals. Unless you believe we can...

Your definition of "real" seems to have some issues, then. As you have defined it here, the computer you wrote this on is not real. Computers are not inherent; they are merely a specific arrangement that we applied to certain items.

I agreed with this in the below mentioned part about the car.

I would say a far more useful definition of "real" is something which has actual, measurable consequences in the real world. Going back to my example of computers: You're reading this, aren't you?

Surely this is far too wide? If a child is told a dragon will eat them if they are naughty it may well have an actual, measurable consequence in the real world as the child changes his behaviour for fear of dragons. Does that render dragons real? Or, at the very least, does it render the idea of dragons real? And even if it's the latter, what isn't real in such circumstances?

Using your definition of "real", I don't see how this holds. How is the Internet in any way inherent to the world? For that matter, what is the Internet, if it is not a collection of useful protocols for arranging information and getting it from A to B? If the protocols that it consists of are not real, how is it real?

This may be a case of my tech knowledge letting me down but doesn't the internet exist outside of the protocols and the world wide web; the protocols are a way to link the internet which in turn allows users to access the world wide web?

If I've misunderstood the system I apologise; it is my fault for engaging with a bad example.

Why is the individual real? Seems that, if we take your argument to its logical conclusion, the only things that are real are quantum states. Which, while technically correct, is completely useless as a concept, and I see no reason to support its use or advocacy beyond certain very narrow branches of metacognition.

Can we separate the individual from the parts that make it up? Especially in this context?

A society, or an army, is nothing more than a group which follows certain expected rules. You cannot argue that groups-which-follow-rules are not real with one breath and then rely on their existence with the next. Either the army exists and is a thing, or it is not (and thus the organizational structure that makes it up is not either). Which is it?

The army exists in the same way that corporate personhood exists. It is a useful fiction. It does not mean it doesn't have consequences or does not have an impact. Merely that when all things are said and done what matters is the individual. Other individuals within the army can train an individual, can better equip an individual, can teach an individual discipline, can organise a group of individuals... but it is all individuals.

[Ephiral]

They learn to think that way from other individuals. Such patterns are rendered unacceptable because enough individuals view it unacceptable. We shorthand that by calling it society.

Think about it this way; we can change individuals without changing society. We cannot change society without changing individuals. Unless you believe we can...

Think about it this way: Groups act in ways no individual member would, and in fact in ways the individual members find reprehensible. Unless you think that mob mentality and the bystander effect simply don't happen...

Surely this is far too wide? If a child is told a dragon will eat them if they are naughty it may well have an actual, measurable consequence in the real world as the child changes his behaviour for fear of dragons. Does that render dragons real? Or, at the very least, does it render the idea of dragons real? And even if it's the latter, what isn't real in such circumstances?

It renders the idea of the dragon real, yes. The dragon... not so much. What isn't real? Well, let's start with the goddamned dragon. What measurable effect does it have on reality?

This may be a case of my tech knowledge letting me down but doesn't the internet exist outside of the protocols and the world wide web; the protocols are a way to link the internet which in turn allows users to access the world wide web?

Not really. It's protocols and the servers/network cables those protocols use. "The internet" is just a convenient term for a large group of interconnected networks that share common protocols. Does that make it any less real? Can you no longer respond to this message?

Can we separate the individual from the parts that make it up? Especially in this context?

Yes, yes we can. We can talk about how an airplane flies in terms of aerodynamics and wing shape. Is this a usable, workable model? Yes. We could also talk about it in terms of chromodynamics. Is this more accurate, and likely to give better results than the aerodynamic model? Yes. Is it a usable, workable model? Not within our lifetimes. Being able to think of things in abstract and aggregate terms is necessary to function with a merely human brain.

The army exists in the same way that corporate personhood exists. It is a useful fiction. It does not mean it doesn't have consequences or does not have an impact. Merely that when all things are said and done what matters is the individual. Other individuals within the army can train an individual, can better equip an individual, can teach an individual discipline, can organise a group of individuals... but it is all individuals.

I see the line of "individual" as arbitrary. Why stop there? If you insist on reducing everything to its parts, why does the (ridiculously nebulous) concept of "person" matter?