Two excellent articles this week – by Nesrine Malik (Hidden behind the celebration of Labour’s ‘landslide’ win is a depressing disfranchisement, 15 July) and by George Monbiot (Labour can end austerity at a stroke – by taxing the rich and taxing them hard, 14 July). But while they tease out the dire societal consequences of the economic assumption that making money and creating wealth are mutually supportive, they don’t nail this as the original crime. This is ironic since both articles demonstrate the effect of normalising such an assumption: its use in rightwing media to further vested interests, and being baked into public and political discourse.
Wealth creation is a broad concept: delivery of the things we need, want or enjoy. It includes things such as a healthy environment and secure social fabric, as well as goods and services. Making money is about establishing a personal claim on marketed wealth, whether produced by ourselves or others. Draw a Venn diagram of the activities in these two categories and it becomes clear that, while there is an overlap, it is very far from being an identity. A current example is provided by the water industry: lots of money is being made, but wealth less so.
Alan Wenban-Smith
Birmingham
• Nesrine Malik writes that the poorest have little voice in our politics, while George Monbiot talks of the need to break the grip of the ultra-rich. Before the next election, we need to revise the system that allowed a chancellor of the exchequer no less to give more than £100,000 of his personal fortune to his local office to boost his electoral chances, and to add a further large donation when the campaign was struggling. One doubts if any of his opponents could do likewise. It is nearly 200 years since the Great Reform Act started to make it harder for the rich to buy a seat in parliament, and it is extraordinary that a 21st-century politician can blithely do this.
Jennifer Highwood
Swallowfield, Berkshire
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