Populism and the left - a response

In his first of two articles entitled "Populism and the Left" (The Sunday Times, July 22), Mike Briguglio, Sliema councillor for Alternattiva Demokratika, states that "Azzjoni Nazzjonali... is attempting to appropriate certain issues, which in my view should be better tackled by the political left". Further on he continues that "we (the left) should articulate a leftist discourse, which meets the aspirations of the masses. There are various issues that should be tackled, but I shall just mention four: work, welfare, housing and immigration."

Let's get one thing straight. Azzjoni Nazzjonali is not trying to appropriate anything. Rather, it was born because the genuine aspirations of hardworking and upright citizens have been appropriated and suffocated for far too long by myopic left-wing policies.

The public - especially the middle class - is feeling increasingly threatened by the ever-expanding Social Assistance State, as Papal documents call it. At least 60 per cent of the government's recurrent expenditure goes on social spending of one nature or another. The welfare state is creaking at the seams, yet not only has the government not reduced any of this spending, but the Prime Minister is on record boasting that in nearly two decades of power, his government has in fact doubled it while new bureaucratic institutions continue to sprout regularly.

Put on your thinking hats, people! You have thrown countless millions from your own pockets to help the 'needy'. Surely by this time, the result should have been fewer people needing benefits and not more. What we have is an admission that despite all the social security disbursed (not to mention the wasted millions required to prop up useless state bodies), the underclass is growing. It is an admission that despite doubling the tax required to support double the spending, the number of those who look to politicians for their means of livelihood has increased substantially. That anyone other than theoretical Marxists can consider this to be a success, and worse, agitate for more of the same, is, frankly, pathetic!

The truth is that the welfare state is a contraceptive to the generation of wealth. The high taxes required to sustain it deprive aspiring workers and the middle class from accumulating the capital required to launch new endeavours. The same high taxes are the primary reason why business is being outsourced to more dynamic and less regulated economies. We are being rendered uncompetitive not by our wages, but because of these high taxes and over-regulation.

If the government wants to help the 'underclass', it should provide it with the tools that encourage self-reliance rather than dependence on the state, and not by simply throwing money at it. The time for safety nets is over - it is tow-ropes that are needed. The underclass is not simply a product of economic poverty but of a breakdown of values where independence, responsibility and a sense of duty have been supplanted with an increased 'ethos' of selfishness and a culture of victimhood. This is the true legacy of the left.

There are only two parties which benefit from this irresponsible and immoral way of distributing the taxpayers' hard-earned money: the social parasite and the politician. The social parasite benefits by living off his hardworking neighbour, and the politician by promising the former more of the same in exchange for his vote, thus engaging in auction politics. And the auction has begun and is there for all but the wilfully blind to see.

More ominously, the welfare state has encouraged the concept that the state is there to solve everything for us, thus absolving us from our individual responsibilities and increasing our dependency on the state. That is the road to serfdom, and we are well on our way to it, and it needs to be addressed with urgency.

If the government wants to truly kick-start the economy, it has to make work profitable, and idleness unprofitable, thereby enabling hard-working citizens to save and accumulate capital that might be reinvested in the creation of new wealth. It has to do away with the incredible over-regulation and bureaucratic processes which are inevitably a contraceptive to any potential investment.

Azzjoni Nazzjonali seeks to represent those who believe it is high time to reap the fruits of their labour and who are now more than ever being denied this fundamental right by a coercive state's "wealth redistribution" policies - which in effect are nothing more than outright theft.

Mr Briguglio seems unable to comprehend that the generation of new wealth does not necessarily have to be at the cost of someone else, and that genuine prosperity can only be brought about by free trade and by safeguarding private enterprise and property and certainly not by protectionism or collectivist policies.

One thing he is right about though, is that, thanks to illegal immigration, a disordered mass influx of a low-skilled workers is not only creating a new slave class but also forcing the local low-skilled to engage in what he rightfully describes as a "race to the bottom". This in turn will eventually translate into an even greater burden on an already unsustainable welfare state, and possibly even social friction.

However, one fails to understand what the left's discourse is when it comes to the sovereign rights and aspirations of the Maltese for their own borders, customs, laws, tradition and identity. James Debono, Michael Briguglio's "former comrade" at AD and Graffitti, writing in the Green Left (www.greenleft.org.au/2001/442/26387) stated:

"We should fight to change the European Union into a green and social Europe and not fight a reactionary battle in the name of the nation state as the extreme right does. Hopefully one day there would be a world union (our emphasis) rather than a European Union! Let's criticise (sic) the frontiers set up between the European Union and the Third World but let's not return to the days when (sic) there were frontiers between European countries!"

I believe that - though it is conveniently not publicly stated - the left's true aims, far from safeguarding the rights of the 'masses' through representation, actually seek to rule them through a privileged elite with unaccountable supranational laws and government. This, after all, was the expressed aim of the Communist International.

Azzjoni Nazzjonali's core values are directly coupled with individual rights and responsibilities. If our policies come across as 'populist' to the left, it is because unlike those of the left, they stem from natural law and therefore take into account human nature which is ultimately God-given, and not a materialistic social construct.

Dr Muscat is leader of Azzjoni Nazzjonali