Two social contracts, only one is broken
A poll reported today is a case study in the meaning of 'the social contract' and why the political establishment misreads the issue so badly. Two thousand people aged between 16 and 29 in Britain were asked a range of questions and the disparity in answers is informative.
Over half of young people would refuse to fight for Britain in a war under any circumstances. Only about one in eight disagrees with the statement that our 'democracy is in trouble'. The key issues for them are the cost of living, housing and job insecurity.
As for what social policies would be most likely to improve the quality of their lives? Better wages, affordable housing and more career opportunities. This is all a perfect illustration of what is meant by 'the social contract' in social theory, and the political response goes a long way to explaining the malaise in our democracy.
The social contract simply means that if you contribute as a constructive, positive member of society and 'do your bit' (turn up for work, pay your rent, abide by the law, participate in the democratic process) then society will 'do it's bit' (offer you a reasonable job in the first place, provide a salary which enables you to live a decent life, makes housing available and affordable, protects you from crime, reflects your hopes and needs in politics).
Crime rates aren't up, employment is pretty steady, rent arrears are up but are still paltry in comparison to the overall housing market, until now participation in elections has been reasonable. Once side has continued to fulfil its side of the contract but the other hasn't.
It therefore explains why 'exceptional requests' (such as being willing to fight and die for the nation) being made of the side of the contract which has been betrayed by the other side are met with such stark rejection. Almost all the young people quoted in the poll and most of the commentators asked to look at these numbers concur.
Where there is reason to be more sceptical that the political side understands what this means from the perspective of a younger generation is that they still continue to measure this against a growth frame. The general line is 'we were supposed to make our children better off than we are'.
But that is a highly political and highly ideological frame which is at the route of the problem. 'Better off' implies higher levels of aggregate wealth, which implies the issue is growth in wealth, which implies GDP growth. That means that the contract is fulfilled by economic growth. That means growth policies should be priorities.
That is the problem; it is the growth politics that broke the contract in the first place. We have very much created greater wealth but its distribution has not only been unequal, it has been very significantly generationally unequal.
This reflects a reality that politics is now driven by a completely different social contract, that between wealth and policy. This contract says 'we will prioritise the interests of the wealthy and in turn they must enrich society as a whole', or so-called trickle-down theory.
This is the true social contract in day-to-day government. We are seeing this right now. A housing market made unaffordable by relying on private interests to provide housing has created a genuine housing crisis which is creating a generational political crisis. To solve this the politicians are currently proposing to rely even more on private interests.
In reality politicians have replaced the real social contract (between citizens and the state) with a proxy contract (between the state and the wealthy) based on an ideology that states the interest of the wealthy and the interests of the rest of us coincide, when they very much do not.
What politicians get wrong is that young people are currently comparing themselves to their parents. There is no evidence in this poll that suggests young people are in any way focussed on 'doing better than their parents'. That is an interpretation which is coming not from them but from political insiders.
Young people just want a house and a job; the politicians just want GDP growth because their ideology makes them believe that it is GDP growth which will give people a house and a job. So long as the people and the politicians are all working on these different contracts the disparity will keep opening up.
Common Weal has repeatedly encouraged politicians to swap a growth frame for a development frame. Either problems are getting solve or they aren't, and if GDP growth isn't solving the problems the politicians should stop pretending it will in the future.