thatcher in hospital, doesnt look good

[Domitianus]

Margaret Thatcher's comment about there being no such thing as community but only individuals is absolutely spot on and so UTTERLY misunderstood by so many people. I believe her point was that the ultimate goal of any civilised society was success and happiness of the individuals within it and a respect for the right of such individuals to pursue their own happiness and success. To subjugate the right of individual happiness to some notion of "community" (constructed to perpetuate its own existence at the expense of the individuals who constitute it) was something that Thatcher (quite rightly in my view) viewed as a profound evil. A "community" is an artificial construct, devised to serve its members, but which can often take on its own existence and be preserved despite the fact that it no longer serves, but rather leeches on, the individuals who make it up. Of course, some people cannot survive WITHOUT the community and therefore demand that it be maintained so they can feed off it while it feeds off others who do not wish to be part of it. Sound like vampirism? Well done.

If you want to see an example of "community" being considered more important than "individuals" look at Communist USSR where individual happiness, well-being, success and indeed life, were seen as being completely expendable in the attempt to perpetuate some vague, nebulous 'community' that people could only attempt to reify and make tangible by appeals to such propaganda concepts as "the Motherland" etc. Any member of the USSR who looked behind the curtain to catch a glimpse of "Mother's" knickers would, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, have realised there was nothing there and that they were sacrificing their life and potential in service of a mere word that had no tangible existence. Any community that ceases to serve the individual needs of its individual members should be dismantled or reconstituted immediately.

[citizenED]

I think you are talking about freedom, Dom, not community or society. You say that "..the ultimate goal of any civilised society was ... the right of ...individuals to pursue their own happiness and success." In so doing you seem to accept that there is a society. All individuals need the community, all individuals exist within society. I agree that freedom for individuals within society is a desired goal. But somehow promoting the idea that individuals could become free from society ie join in with the good bits but jettison the unsavoury parts - which I sensed Thatcher believed - always struck me as philosophically and morally wrong. The fact that we have a sprawling underclass of disaffected people is to my mind a testimony to the failure of Thatcherism.

[*Bob*]

I don't want to piss on anyone's chips here, fellow debaters, but Mrs Thatch never said "there is no such thing as community".

[mockney piers]

I think you're missing a few points there Dom.

Indeed a community is an artificial construct, but that's not saying a great deal as friendship, money, even family are essentially artificial constructs.

Community came about because cooperation gave us a much better chance of survival. Even at the level of the palaeolithic clan I guess there was the possibility of some lazy good-for-nothing troglodyte taking out more than he put in from the tribes communal efforts to gather enough food for the winter.

Yes ultimately the goal is for each individual's needs to be served, however had the community not been considered more important than the individual they would have all died, so there is very good reasoning for such a position.

People being people, this is exploitable, whether a tribal king gathers the resources of many clans to pay for pointy sticks and men dedicated to using them for the 'tribal interest'.

Move on a few thousand years and the Soviet Union was just the same logic on a much larger scale, indeed ours is not so very different, it's just we now have the luxury of being able to have less pointy sticks and use more of our resources for personal enjoyment.

Our modern society with it's relative safety, it's use of money (or at least digital numbers in electronic transfers) for goods and services means that much of the reasoning behind that is gone, but people are still communal creatures, we pull together in time of crisis (the crystal palace road water shortage of 2003 for instance), and depend on each other for support, happiness and good mental health, whilst having the ability to achieve some of those through an individualist manner and use of our trading credits to achieve that.

A decent society should be able to strike a good balance between use of communal resources and contribution towards that against the individual achieving the means to and having the ability to serve their own ends.

I think our society has gone too much to the latter, the emphasis on achieving happiness through consumption and being measured by our consumer power (and the status symbols that allows us to attain) atomises people and erodes our sense of communal responsibility, a feeling that we should look out for each other and not behaving in a manner which affects others ie not littering, not spitting, not playing tinny speakers loudly on the bus.

Baaah, I blither.....

[atila the gooner]

I can't believe that we have spent so much time and effort debating an old bat who may be about to pop her clogs. I've had enough of her, I'd had enough when she was in power, so I'll move on to other threads.

[*Bob*]

To put it into perspective, we've had (so far) 3000+ viewings and 7 pages of postings on the dropping of a cigar butt outside Somerfield.

So personally I would hope there ought to be a little more mileage in discussing the tenureship of someone who changed the face of Britain forever.

[atila the gooner]

But not particularly for the better.

[Domitianus]

My point is folks that Thatcher seemed to view that the nominalisation called 'community' or 'society' had grown out of control and become like a cuckoo attempting to push people out of the nest in order to sustain itself. We see much the same thing happening again under Gordon Brown unfortunately. Government is becoming larger and more intrusive into people's lives. Much of Brown's "miraculous" job creation were jobs in government - i.e: obstructive, NOT wealth generating and paid for by taxes. Rather than the state serving the people, a state is being created that is a burden and a drain on the people.

I believe Thatcher recognised the danger of this lack of balance (I agree there can be an appropriate balance) and wished to redress it more in favour of the individual. Without individuals there can be no community or state. Individuals, however, can pretty effectively exist with minimal state. Whether or not she went about it in the right way or succeeded in what she attempted is a different debate. I am simply pointing out what may actually have been a very people-oriented and humane perspective underlying what has come to be a very misrepresented remark.

Re an 'underclass'. There have always been those who find it difficult to fit into or prosper under any particular system. It certainly wasn't an invention of Margaret Thatcher. I suspect she believed that you did not empower any such people by legislating them into a state of perpetual dependence on hand-outs (any more than Nestle help third world countries by giving out free milk formula until mothers' own milk resources dry up!) On the contrary I suspect she believed that such people could be maximally empowered by creating a society that encouraged and rewarded individual initiative, rather than taxing it into oblivion and making people feel guilty if they succeeded. Again, whether or not she succeeded, is another debate.

My point in this posting is that many people assume her suspicion about "community" to have been deeply inhuman and socially fragmenting, whereas I believe she wanted to focus attention back to the welfare and opportunity of those who make up "communities" - namely, individuals. Empower and strengthen individuals and you empower and strengthen the communities they create for themselves. Often, I am afraid, it doesn't happen when the process is reversed.

[mockney piers]

That makes a lot more sense. I thought you were dismissing the concept out of hand earlier.

Quite right, it probably had gone too far for a peace time society and needed redressing.

Inertia and momentum of 60 odd million people probably mean that such redress will move society too far in the other direction, and now we clearly need to move back a bit. Hopefully as time progresses the societal lurch will lessen in intensity and we can eventually hover somewhere that more or less functions.

[*Bob*]

atila the gooner Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> But not particularly for the better.

That is indeed debatable. Hence the debating!

[citizenED]

Dom, I am starting to get your position, though I think you are confusing community, society and State. If you are talking about the State, then yes, it could be argued that the State is too big, but community, society? I don't think so. As Mockney pointed out, it's nonsensical to talk of community or society as constructs - you may as well talk about the individual as a construct (and some commentators have). Society is a given, it exists whether we, or Mrs Thatcher, likes it. And it will outlive all of us individuals here.

Your point seems to be that Mrs T wanted to inspire the disenfranchised members of society to better themselves by freeing them from regulation. Fair enough, but I don't see it. It did not happen. Of course there were always people at the bottom of the pile, but Thatcher's strident policies had the effect of creating an identifiable underclass who became trapped. I actually think she wanted to make Britain more Economically competitive and combative but knew there would be collateral damage, knew there would be a price to pay. I wouldn't say she did not care, but I would contend that she thought it was a price worth paying.