When we look over the history of English verse the steady progression away from the strongly rhythmical is marked, and yet there is, as far as is known, no explanation of why this should be so. It is obvious that modern poetry tends to be written in formless forms, by why has this happened, when the reverse movement, into ever more elaborate, regular, repetitive structures is, on the face of it, as likely. I suspect, in addition, that random movement is not the explanation, since the same direction of change is found in all the European languages, and also, perhaps in other literatures.

To return to the English case, let us observe that the change is heralded by a progressive abandonment of the ornate forms for serious statement, until in our period elaborated verse is perceived as risible, and if ostensibly serious, then ironized. This point begins to open up the field for us, since it appears that the transition is one of alterations in attributed value. At first we can do no more than say that the fashion for ornate verse has waned at the same time that its default perceptual state has become more and more humourous; but there seems every reason to think that these two facts are related. – Perhaps it is that standard verse has progressively been abandoned as a vehicle for serious thought because it has been adopted as a vehicle for comic expression. This is a little more plausible than the reverse position, i.e. that comic writers have merely adopted what was left open to them, but it still leaves unanswered the question as to why ornate writing should become “funny”. I propose, therefore, to treat these two phenomena, as some may think them, as one and provide only a single cause for both.

I shall begin with a discussion of what constitutes (elaboration) in verse, produce a logical consequence of this fact and then make some remarks on the possible historical significance of this point.

The ornaments of poetry are numerous, metre and rhyme, in all their many combinations, and tropes, in all theirs. For the time being I shall leave aside the question of tropes, which have largely survived the decline of metre and rhyme, and concentrate on these latter elements. Both metre and rhyme are repetitive structures. Not only do they repeat, but they do so at repeated intervals. This gives the reader the impression of a structure ordered on regular principles, a phenomenon that is not common in the texts which he is likely to read elsewhere, or to the utterances which he might here and there come across. Such things are rare, exhibit a peculiar degree of formal order and, because of their predictability, are oddly memorable when compared to other text strings or uttered statements.

We can appreciate just how unusual these forms are by a short train of reasoning involving the shelves of Borges’ much discussed universal library, in which there is a copy of all the books which have been written, all the ones which shall be written, and all those that could be written; in short, all possible books. (I am assuming that this is a grammatical library.)

Since the library is infinite we might expect there to be an infinite number of Miltonic sonnets in the library, and while it is true that there are an infinite number of books containing one or more sonnets in this form, the number of actual sonnets is finite. How can this be so? The infinitude of the number of books in the library is a product of two features, firstly that the length of books are not fixed, secondly that sentences may be infinitely extended by the addition of (framing) phrases, a phenomenon labelled 'recursion' by linguists and logicians. But if the extent of the text string is specified, or metred, recursion cannot operate, and the number of grammatical examples of English falling within that specification is finite.

A sonnet is a specified structure, having a fixed length of no more than 14 lines, each line to contain five beats (or just possibly, 6), and ten syllables (just possibly twelve). It will rhyme in a particular pattern, and though words can be multiplied infinitely in number, the line length limitation again means that there will be a limited number of rhymes.

Every additional specification makes the possible set of sonnets smaller, though of course, even with the numerous limits placed upon it in the various forms conventional among us, that set is still very large. The point is that it is finite, and that it is a member of an infinite set, the set of all grammatical sentences. Since this is so it is an infinitesimal: n/∞. Sonnets are very improbable forms, but so are any specified forms, pantoums, villanelles, triolets, double dactyls or whatever.

Now you may think that this is interesting as far as it goes, but has rather little bearing on the larger question of verse in general, since although there are a number of highly limited forms there are also an infinite number of possible stanza forms, rhyme schemes, and combinations of these parts. This is, of course, quite true, but the limitation issue applies at another level than that. I shall now argue that there are a limited number of poetic lines. In English it is possible to write lines having anywhere between one and six beats. A seven beat line decomposes into a four beat and a three beat line. These lines can employ either (duple) or triple metre, in rising or falling cadences. Practically, it is only possible to write three, four and five beat lines, this restriction being extrametrical and imposed by the lung capacity of human speakers or some other as yet undetermined factor. Given that there is this limitation on line length it therefore follows that there is a finite number of metrical lines, though there is of course an infinite number of combinations of these lines into poems of unspecified length. Just as with the sonnets this is also an infinitesimal.

It is now time to make a decisive move in the argument, and I will do so by suggesting that the limitations found in the forms honoured as poetic around the world all have the same root cause: they make the statement so couched and unusual in that they belong to a small set in the possible utterances available to speakers of that language. It is tempting to suggest that musicality is the main element in this matter, but there are reasons for thinking that this is not so. Firstly in some languages, such as Japanese, the verse tradition does not use restrictions concerning musicality, it counts syllables, and secondly musicality, euphony, and melody, need not be associated with metricated repeating structures, though in fact they often are. Indeed, some people would suggest that such repeating structures constitute musicality. I suggest that they do not, and that they are merely commonly associated, their appearance being explained through a similar line of reasoning given above.

I propose therefore that in all languages the principles of order associated with poetry will be found to create a finite set of possible text strings. The main claim rests on the assumption that the relative scarcity of strings which satisfy the conditions of the restriction makes them particularly interesting to the human mind, that is that these are items which the mind is particularly likely to respond positively to, and acquire. The question of memorability is a simple one; clearly texts with a repetitive structure, particularly rhymes, will have enhanced memorability, since certain elements of the information are encoded twice in the same form and related to each other. If one is lost the other, which points to the blank location, can be used to reconstruct at least some part of the information. It is noticeable that in really good mnemonics the rhymed words will be ones that are hard to infer from grammar and context.

However, the reasons that would explain why versified text is of especial interest, aside from memorability, are not evident to me. I have in other notes suggested that structural regularity is evidence of design, and the extremely designed appearance of verse may give it an enhanced truth value in the eyes and ears of the recipient, but I have no evidence on this point and cannot take it further at present. It may be that its “specialness” is all that is required to explain the fact, it may be that an insistent beat reduces resistance, or it may be that the listener mistakes the apparent external authority, by which I mean that the fact that the language permits a rhyme, may be seen to justify it.

Before moving on to the historical thesis concerning these matters, it will be necessary to make a preliminary logical move from the state of the argument so far. We have seen that the restrictions of verse are such as to reduce the set of available text strings from an infinity to an infinitesimal. We know, therefore, that it is easier to say something which does not conform to the restrictions than it is to say something which does so. – This much is obvious and commonsensical. I have discussed only a few of the restrictions used in verse, since I want the matter to remain clear, but there are, in fact, large numbers of supplementary restrictions over and above the simple metrical requirements already listed. Complying with these is additionally problematic. However, they are optional grace notes, and even very respected poets use them only occasionally in each line, or group of lines. I am thinking here of the (ingenious) variations in stress position and strength that prevent monotony but do not break expectations created by the metrical set.

Thus we see that statements in verse are variably satisfactory, that is they are variably elegant, or proper, in their satisfaction of the requirements of the specified repetitive structure. Colloquially we say that a piece of verse is more elegant, or better, than another.

Now, statements and groups of statements are also variable in their truth value, i.e. in the degree to which they program a brain to model a specified physical process with accuracy and success. (Alert readers will note that I am trying to side-step the objection that statements are only variable between two positions, true and false, and that I am doing so by suggesting that such exclusive truth analysis is only appropriate as a debugging technique for discussing the elements of propositions.)

The next stage is to ask whether these two variables are positively correlated. Our first response must be, of course, that they are not, and there is a mass of empirical evidence to suggest that they are not so. However, we can from earlier stages of my discussion show that they cannot be so. We know that the set of metrical lines is finite, and that the same is true for most specified lyric forms, and that even longer forms, epics even, may be rendered finite sets if the structure is so specified as to present the recursive possibilities of language infinitely expanding its length. All the members of these sets are more metrical than the non-members of any of these sets. Therefore if truth value and metricality were positively correlated all the members of these sets must have a higher truth value. Since, however they are a finite set and there is an infinite number of situations to model this is highly unlikely.

We are therefore confronted with two genuine variables, structural repetitiousness and truth value. Two variables cannot be simultaneously maximized. All possible statements can be placed on a variable truth axis, and they can also be placed on a variable structural repetitiousness axis. On the truth axis some statements in verse are higher in value than some in prose. But if we want to maximize the truth value of a statement we will have to neglect the structural regularity of that statement. Consequently if you wish to maximize the structural regularity of a statement, this will be at the cost of its truth value.

This point, which lies beneath all suspicions that verse, indeed any utterance which appears to be maximizing a variable other than truth, is trifling and a waste of time, is almost commonsense to those educated in other disciplines, but it barely occurs to those in English, or if it does it occurs as a guilty fear that they are wasting their own and their student’s time. However, I propose that this state of affairs is relatively recent and is the result of the growth, firstly in literacy , and secondly in that offshoot of widespread literacy, the scientific world and its information exchange. The growth of these two areas has made comparison between on the one hand, prose, the written and less redundancy laden, version of everyday speech, and, on the other poetry, both possible and necessary, and since the mnemonic value of repetitiously structured utterance is now negligible the judgement will often go against the poets.

I am suggesting that the conflict between prose and poetry, so evident in day to day life, even for a literary professor, is based on not on an arbitrary preference but on a correct estimate of its probable truth value. Moreover, there is a prevalent suspicion of those who employ such forms, and this too is soundly based. Though it is, as noted above, true that some statements in verse have a higher truth value than some statements in prose, it is also necessarily true that for every statement in verse there must be a statement in prose with a higher truth value, though lower memorability. Therefore whenever a person chooses to use verse and rhyme they are maximising some other than truth value, and though this will be in many cases acceptable, in comic verse for example, in others the audience will be well advised to stand on their guard.

You will now appreciate the point to which I am driving. The decline in the status of verse and rhyme can be explained as a decline in its utility, the powerful mnemonic effects being rendered insignificant by printing and literacy, and as a growing awareness that formal repetitiveness is inevitably correlated with reduced truth value. As this status declined poets, anxious to maintain their position, altered their writing techniques so as to retard the erosion of public respect, and writing styles which had previously been scanted because they were less ornately structured became more prominent. The history of English verse is the history of this movement, through from the exceptionally elaborate structures of mediaeval written verse, through the stanzaic elaborations of the 17th Century to the camouflaged repetitiousness of the 18th Century couplet, and so on into the 19th Century and the strong current, moving from Shakespeare, via Milton, into free verse. The triumph of blank verse and its high status, was rapidly and in some senses paradoxically achieved, for what could be more amusing in fact than the jingling bells of rhyme? It is barely surprising, however, that this form should be associated with a dramatic and wih an epic philosophico-religious poem, for in both cases the need confronting the poet will be to produce statements that do not appear egregiously false, and this is difficult since both employ extended narrative and we are, for good reasons, well-equipped to detect flaws in stories.

Detailed descriptions, with accompanying statistics, will have to wait, but a few closing remarks on the result of that history, in our own time, are worth making. Contemporary poetry is predominantly non-metrical, or so subordinates its principles of metrication that they are a minimal restriction. Yet the pretensions of its makers, and the claims of its admirers have not diminished, indeed they have increased in volume and intensity, as well they may, for no one listens. The poets are in a difficult position: they wish to be taken seriously and regarded as a distinct and distinguished statement producing group, but the most obvious way in which their product may be so distinguished is now, properly, recognised as a structural form that sacrifices truth value for memorability and effects which would perhaps have once appeared mystically profound and now seem merely comic. Verse and rhyme are the property of the humorist and the versifier, he who acknowledging the lowered truth value of his remarks employs these devices to entertain. What can the poet do? Firstly he or she may bury or camouflage the principles of metrication, thus hoping to produce a text string that will slip under the guard of the now-alerted reader. (I should say that I do not mean to suggest that poets are fully aware of the character of their actions, they probably perceive their actions as entirely aesthetic, by which we may understand that the first person who is to be deceived is themselves.)

Secondly, they may accentuate other rhetorical elements while reducing the repetitious structural complexity or removing it altogether. For example it would be unsurprising to find that the sentence structure of prose poems are not only more elaborate than that of ordinary prose but also that of verse. Other elements of style for which similar points might be made include, density of simile or metaphor (if this were born out by research it would be a remarkable triumph for my theory, for the richness of verse in these elements is proverbial). The use of less restrictive repetitive structures such as assonance or consonance instead of metre and rhyme, the use of obscure reference to subdue the reader, and similar postural devices which transfer the burden of distinctiveness from the work as it can be seen on the page to the writer. This latter idea is of considerable interest, since the theory seems able to explain what is at first sight an oddity, that as poems have grown simpler, in the obvious structural ways, the claims made for poets, have become grander and grander.

If I am right, these activities are aimed at distinguishing poetry, perhaps only subliminally, without alerting the reader to the fact that truth value is not high on the agenda. We should therefore expect to find apparent freedom from constraint, or partial freedom, such as blank verse and imperfect rhyming more commonly than complete absence of restriction, since these features, if smuggled through, may have the desired effect on the reader. Alternatively we may expect to find that elaborate tructures are used, but the poems are presented as heavily ironised verse. – I would call these pieces “Mock Comic”, to indicate that there is some doubt over the modesty and humour claimed in these poems and for the statements they make. A variant of this position may be to render ludicrous the idea of truth, thus insulating the poem against rebuttal.

A further possibility is that other principles of order will be employed, such as semantic metrication, the recurrence of lexical items or semantic fields at intervals more or less regular.

The possible substitutions are numerous, but as can be seen they are all either attempts to disguise structural repetitiousness and its constraints, to replace it with a principle which may not appear to interfere with truth value, or to abandon it entirely and transfer the major claims for importance from the text to the poet.

These are stop-gaps merely and cannot address the underlying question of truth value and utility, without, that is, abandoning “poetry” altogether and turning to prose. To do this of course would be to adopt the techniques of science. The alternative to this, already hinted at, is to abandon the high claims made for poetry, and to do so genuinely and not in the insincere “Mock Comic” and ironic mode already mentioned.

Instead poetry can be regarded as a form of statement not principally concerned with truth value, and that openly and for other, unpretentious purposes, maximises other variables. Suitable purposes would be humour and mnemonic value.

All court cases are concerned to determine who did what to whom, when, and why, sometimes with a signature or a tap of a key, sometimes with a four inch blade. In essence this is the determination of empirical fact, and only as a secondary matter is there the question of whether these determined facts constitute a breach of the law.

Now reflect on the cost of such an investigation. Historians concerned with larger phenomena struggle to determine the facts even in areas where there are detailed records, such as cabinet papers or written orders or national accounts. Granted, that the discussion of cause and effect in such large scale instances is troubled by vague ontological specification; 'What were the causes of the First World War?' or 'Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in England?' or 'Was there an Industrial Revolution?' But in a sense these pale into insignificance beside the difficulty of finding out who was holding the knife, who signed the will, or whether the outstretched arm was an act of defence or aggression. Frequently enough, there were almost no witnesses beside the main parties, and the facts must be determined by inference from a miscellany of assertions, by interested parties, objects, circumstantially related, it is claimed, to the event under question, and the conclusions of experts brought in to assess the evidence, the blood on the carpet, the hair on the stair, the ink in the pen.

It is remarkable that the population is willing to support the cost of this activity, which nothing less than forensic history of an infeasibly detailed kind. Why do we do this? Ostensibly because justice must be done, but this cannot be the case for we none of us care about this in the majority of specific instances, perhaps not at all, and our interest in the abstract principle of justice appears to have no other content than our own self-interest; that is to say we are willing to pay for this staggeringly expensive determination of ephemeral facts in the cases of others because we wish for that facility to be available to us in the future. In other words we fear that a) we might be the victim of crime,and that b) we might be disadvantaged by injustice.

Thus, the reduction of cost in administration of public justice must start by reducing the apparent probability that an individual may require extremely scrupulous prosecution and investigation. This is not quite the same as reducing the incidence of crime, though that will help, since the public probably over-estimates the probability of a crime against which the system of public justice can protect them. In other words, it is necessary to show the public that the system cannot protect them against most infringements, and that these will go uninvestigated because the trail was never warm and is now stone cold. This in turn will reassure them with regard to the second fear, that they will be unjustly prosecuted. If the probability of the guilty coming to justice is low, then it is still more unlikely that the innocent will be mistakenly convicted. As this realism dawns, then the public will become increasing reluctant to pay for the courts to engage in a micro-history of no intrinsic interest except to the parties involved, and notable to the rest of the population only for its astonishing expense.

The established literature on utility, seems deliberately to evade the single governing tendency of human actions, and instead allows itself to be distracted by the many subservient activities that incline statistically to the attainment of the over-riding end. The fact of the matter is that:

Statistically, humans gather resources with which to secure their reproduction.

This is axiomatic, and the phrasing is deliberate. It makes no presumption about temporal sequence, which plainly varies to a degree from individual to individual, and a little between the two sexes. No more does it rule out extended and indirect efforts to ensure that their children and grandchildren succeed in their endeavours, though these commitments are discounted due to fading degrees of relatedness as well as temporal distance, thus encouraging the concentration of scarce resources on nearer and dearer.

Composing this over-arching routine are a large number of sub-routines, these activities, as already noted, having a statistical property of inclining towards the achievement of the governing end; governing because if it fails, it exerts a statistical tendency to remove the sub-routines that led to failure. In other words, they are or will be selected against over time.

The apparent disconnection between the activities undertaken by human beings and the securing of reproduction is just that; in appearance only. Often, indeed, it is obvious that there is a plausible link, as when a person gathers resources enabling them to house a family and educate the children, but on occasion this may not be obvious at all, as when a person paraglides or climbs mountains or seeks to win a soft toy in a shooting gallery, or any of the multitudes of other things that seem either pointless in themselves or possibly even counterproductive because of wasted time or needless risk. It may even be the case that individual cases of behaviour are not adaptive (assuming that we could ever determine this), but in fact this is to be expected since the routines are selected for because they have a statistical bearing on the securing of reproduction (inclusive fitness).

Part of the impression of disconnection arises from the boundaries set around an action, say paragliding. In itself, it appears a needless risk, but if the context of this activity is expanded we would see that 'paragliding + meeting certain people + boasting both these activities" might well be statistically conducive to securing reproduction. Shooting for the soft toy is in itself useless, but seen as a part of "going out with friends + etc + etc" is likely to be reproductively functional.

Thus, and as so often in these cases, the boundaries of the categories employed are altogether crucial and may be used tendentiously to prejudice the conclusion to which we are driven. What after all, is an 'action'. Why say that 'sitting down' or 'crossing the road' are actions? Why not say that 'going to work (in which are combined many other 'actions') is an action'; or that 'fitting in with one's friends and contemporaries, of which climbing mountains or playing tiddly-winks may be a part', is an action? The whole life may be taken as an action, if you so choose, with all the fragments of behaviour that compose it being seen as contributing statistically to the outcome. Indeed, taken as a whole, human lives, all of them, leave no doubt that the tendency is for humans to act so as to secure their reproduction. In this trajectory we see individuals 'doing things' (arbitrarily defined) that obviously contribute to that, such as collecting resources, acquiring a mate, giving birth, but also many others that do not seem so, such as brushing crumbs off the breakfast table, choosing to wear grey not black socks, and going on holiday to Greece to study antiquities. The first of these cases no more proves the case than the latter disproves it. They are incidental to the principal observation, which is based on the lifetime tendencies of millions of individuals.

But we owe the critic some sort of comment on the fine texture of behaviour, which is often puzzling. The answer is four-fold:

1. We cannot see, always, the links that make an 'action' probabalistically conducive to securing reproduction.

2. The 'action' may well need to be understood as part of a larger constellation of behaviours that may constitute such an 'action'.

3. The propensity to behave has evolved against a background of contextual facts that will never be repeated, so we should not surprised if the system produces actions that are imprecisely focused on the securing of reproduction; some divagation is to be expected.

4. Evolution is itself a statistical phenomenon, and adaption will also be so.

The problem faced by the first Thatcher government was a conglomeration of nationalised industries, associated unions, and the civil service. The problem today is different, though there is obviously some considerable overlap.

The civil service is a common thread, but the unions are less important (in large part because of changes to union law made by the Thatcher governments), and there are now, thankfully, few fully nationalised industries. But instead of the latter we have private industries and businesses that are so dependent on the state for their income, either because they provide goods and services to the state, or because they provide goods and services that are mandated by state regulation, or because they provide goods and services on the state's behalf. All are interesting, and the latter particularly so since the category encompasses the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which is often thought of as being a type-specimen of the sacrifice of public interest in disadvantageous contracts with private capital. But seen in the larger context these contracts are revealed in a different light, namely as high risk acts entailing submission to state authority, and therefore paid at above market rates. In effect these are acts of self-nationalisation.

This process of absorption, typified by the PFI, is the heart of the so-called Third Way, and has resulted in an extension of the state that is in many respects more thorough and potentially more damaging than the transparent nationalisation of the Attlee period. No compensation payment is made in a lump sum, as was made for example to owners of coal mines, and self-nationalisation is much harder to unwind since the private capital thus in the process of being dissolved into the state's organism will actually defend the state even as it is being digested.

"Goodbye Ipswich!"

And leaned from the train as it stood at the platform.

Then later, suddenly, he said:

"Where's the baby?";
    "Downstairs";
"Why don't you bring him up?";
    "'cos I 'aven't eaten him yet".

His dark skin was covered in grime
But light grey against it his exquisitely neat hair
Moved in soldierly ripples from nape to front,
Carefully combed but never washed.

Excellent.

Stephen Belltree

Well, it could be worse,
There are reasons to be thankful;
And our duties of course, those hang,
How does Cowper put it?, 'on us', if it was Cowper.
What do you think of him? I’ve always rather liked his poems,
There’s something very attractive about him. Hard to say what.
Have you read that new book by, by, Peter Bu Ba, Bath? No, I haven’t either,
But I’ve got it here somewhere; it’s on my list.
I’ve so many things to do this year, though
And my history to write, of course.
Well, it’s part of the job.
I never imagined, I come from the hills and there’s lots there,
When I was a little boy playing in the snow, that I’d end up here,
Making my living in the city; no I never thought that would happen.
No, I never could have imagined that, not in a dream, a nightmare,
Impossible.

Lois Sedgepool

It’s a tricky situation, but I rather enjoy it;
Like working in a mental hospital,
There’s always the reassuring feeling that,
Whatever, there’s some space left between you and the worst.

I mean, there was a little gap the last time I looked,

But recently, you know, I’ve been feeling that it's
Narrowing.
Tea?

I’ve written some more poems, by the way,
Seven hundred since last Tuesday in fact, but they’re only limericks,
So, they don’t count do they?
I’m going to advertise myself as strippalimagram, what do you think?
It’s the body I’m not sure about,
Quite a problem.
And my mother, of course, she won’t approve.
Is that really your advice?

I see.

We often speak of the harm done to 'consumers' by the impositions of a state that sometimes works in conjunction with commercial corporate bodies. (If Smith were alive and writing today he would surely revise his famous remark to the effect that whenever public servants and men of business meet they are sure to conspire against the consumer.)

But if we were to try to identify this 'consumer' we would struggle, for it is very rare to come across a person who is a 'consumer' of the purest type, that is to say a private individual who is a net taxpayer, not in receipt of benefits, and a person whose income is independent of policy-induced industrial levies and regulations. Thanks to the extension of the state's activities, I would wonder if there are more than a handful of such people in the 60 million strong population of Great Britain.

Thus it is that politicians advocating liberty find themselves rousing not a subset of the population, but attempting to persuade one element in a person's mind to rebel against another. Of course, those arguing from the other side face a similar task, but their work is easier in that they play upon near universal guilt at self-assertion, and the strong tendency to feel safe when sacrificing personal advantage to the 'collective' interest, since we are persuaded that our most dangerous competitors will be compelled to do the same.

Collectivist theory springs from a selfish urge to restrain the success of others, for fear that they may secure resources sufficient to out-reproduce the self concerned. The matter is not represented to the mind clearly or in terms remotely like this, but in practice it has characteristics that are consistent with this account and with no other and certainly not with the rhetoric of collectivism. Perhaps the most striking of these is that collectivism is actually less able deliver collective goods than individualist societies.

No one should doubt that that most people prefer societies marked by low levels of inequality. It is also true that those same individuals simultaneously strive to maximise that between themselves and those below them, but this does not change the fact of their preference for equality, which is manifested in political choices and also everyday morals and custom. Introspection will confirm this. In fact, more remarkably, individuals will actually prefer equality to absolute wealth. In other words, if offered a choice between a lower income in a flat society and a higher income in a very unequal society, they would choose the former. Indeed, they will prefer the flatter society even if that society has a lower aggregate wealth. This last point is remarkable since it shows, as clearly as one could wish, that in spite of its claims egalitarianism is selfish. That is to say it will countenance lower collective wealth, implying reduced ability to withstand external threats, if that puts the self in a less relatively disadvantaged position. The continuing romance of the post-war socialist experiment – The Spirit of '45 – demonstrates this point.

Collectivist rhetoric, then, is a sly means to, a cover for, egalitarianism, which is the actual aim, not the common good. Indeed, insofar as there is a common good this is better served by a less equal society, since such societies are vastly more effective at generating wealth. Of course collectivism claims that an equal society is in the interests of all in terms of wealth and resilience, but this is obviously false since such societies deprive individuals of motivation, and eventually, as Mandeville foresaw, generate nothing but poverty. Nevertheless, the substance of the common good is in the last analysis very limited in extent. The terms 'common interest', or public interest' or 'common purpose' are hardly ever used in their literal sense, namely with the connotation that everyone feels the benefit equally, which is hardly surprising since in practise such an outcome must be vanishingly rare. Some only, and perhaps not even an absolute majority, may feel the benefit of an action deemed to be in the 'common interest', but these individuals themselves may not feel it with equal force, and there will nearly always be a gradient of benefit even within the category of winners. It is hard to see how it could be otherwise.

However, while in the vast majority of cases one may reasonably suggest that a claimed common good is in fact sectional and probably to the benefit of only a fraction of that section, there is a common good, even if it is very narrow in extent. Human populations can and do pool resources for the purpose of a) defence, and b) recovery, prospective or actual, from natural disaster. Even staunch individualists recognise the value of the armed services, the police, and the fire service, and as these examples show, it is quite wrong for collectivists to suggest that unequal societies will fail to provide resources for common purposes, for, as witness the responses of the democracies in the First and Second World Wars, they do so willingly and much more effectively than nominally collectivist societies since they have more resources to pool. Paradoxically, then, it is collectivists who are the enemies of collective endeavour, and the individualist, abused as vicious and selfish, who delivers what public virtues may actually be had.

Laissez faire, laissez passer: Let people do as they please and go where they please. Are there nobler sentiments in politics? Yet the first is everywhere reviled, and the second is forgotten, which is all the more remarkable since it is far and away the most important of the two; without going about the earth in freedom all other actions are limited in their scope and kind.

Indeed, if this most crucial of the principles of liberty is forgotten one of the most far-reaching impositions of the state passes almost unobserved. Indeed, most would think that freedom of travel was obvious and secure, and some would cite the restriction of, for example, the 16th Century as a comparison. Certainly, relative to that time people are not only very much more able to be mobile but also at greater liberty to exercise their mobility; they have cars, bikes, access to planes and trains, and they are not restricted to their parishes or beaten back into them when they stray beyond those bounds.

But the access to mobility and the relative freedom masks the fact that because of taxes on transport fuel and vehicles people are vastly less mobile than they could be. The loss of opportunity and thus of wealth is unlikely to be small. Laissez passer, laissez faire.

When I buy £80 worth of diesel for my car, 60% of that expenditure is tax, and constitutes an implied purchase of government services. In other words, I have just spent £50 or so on something from government, though not necessarily for me, personally, or directly, and in all probability to be predominantly consumed by others.

The extraordinary thing is that this transaction is quite opaque. The good is not only sight unseen, but unspecified; the identity of the provider is unknown; I have bought 'blind' in the most extreme way. Is it any wonder that state services are so poor?