The past is a distant land

There is the past and there is history and in-between there lies the historian though this is no longer simply the preserve of historians whatever academe suggests. The argument goes as follows. People in the past left traces, wittingly or unwittingly, of their lives and experiences in the form of sources material that historians trawl to obtain the evidence that forms the foundations on which they built their construction, reconstruction or deconstruction of the past. The aim in this process is to get ‘as close’ as possible to narrating and explaining what actually happened in the past and, as a result, to establish some sort of true meaning of the past.  Others suggest that historians are story-tellers involved in an essentially literary activity interrogating texts to construct their view of the past.  Let me be clear, I do not see myself as a historian in a postmodernist context, not because I object to the postmodernist perspective even though it is frequently expressed in language that hides more than it reveals but because I am not convinced that postmodernism had added much that is valuable to the practical ‘craft of history’.  Few if any historians today would claim that their work is the definitive answer or that they are doing more than expressing their own view of what happened in the past.  They do not seek ‘the truth’ but merely seek to explain what happened recognising that their explanation will itself be subject to review and revision by others.  In that respect we are perhaps all postmodernists!

The problem it seems to me lies less in what historians do but their failure to address the issue of what the past actually is.  At one level, the past never actually existed.  People do not live in the past, they live in their presents with all the chaos that this implies.  Neither did people in the past live in history; they did not spent their lives thinking what the causes and consequences of their actions and thoughts would be.  Historians impose rationality on lives that are generally far from rational or logical.  It is historians who ‘make’ history with all the ambiguity that this implies and we interrogate history to provide an explanation for our presents…what Marwick called ‘history as a social necessity’.  Our views of our presents are partial and generally partisan in some form or another and so were people who lived a hundred years ago in their own presents and so on.  We/they cannot/could not ‘know’ that our actions could/did have particular consequences.  We look back to our pasts through the refracting mirror of our presents and our perceived (and invariably wrong) perceptions of our possible futures.  Unlike the newspaper announcing that next week’s fortune-tellers conference is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, our hindsight and foresight are limited by our understanding or our presents.  The past may well by a distant land but so are/were our/their presents. 

Birth, death and taxes

The chapter on tax rebellion in my forthcoming Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980,  begins in the following way:

‘In late 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote:

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. [1]

….From when taxes were first levied, people have found ways to evade paying for reasons that have been honourable, ideological, greedy and selfish. People have evaded taxes illegally, some have resisted paying taxes and others have simply refused. Taxation is almost by definition unfair. It is imposed on people by government generally without consultation and is frequently used to pay for things of which people do not approve or do not need. Getting the level of taxation in society right, or at least politically acceptable, has always been a problem for government. If the level of taxation is set too low then it may have insufficient funds to rule effectively with the likelihood of the same consequences as setting taxes too high; anger, discontent and even resistance. ‘

How many of us if asked whether we would like to pay less tax would say no!  How many of us if asked whether we would like to pay less tax in a scheme recognised by HMRC would say no!  Most of us of course have no option but to pay our taxes since we cannot afford the fees paid by tax revenue experts who know the vagaries of taxation law to do this.  But given the option, most of us would and it’s hypocritical to say we wouldn’t.  Let us be clear, the amount of tax we pay is a legal question and if we use taxation law to avoid paying taxation that is legally acceptable.  But is it morally acceptable or more accurately should taxation be subject to moral as well as legal rules?  The past few years have seen the growth of moral pressure on individuals and institutions to ensure that they do not have unacceptably high levels of income or pay their ‘right’ level of taxation.  Should we, as a society, ensure that people do not have unacceptably high incomes or avoid paying tax?  Certainly.  If so, how should we do this?  Well not by moral pressure since it ensure that individuals and institutions are effectively shamed into earning less or paying more taxes.  Moral pressure is arbitrary, generally ill-defined if defined at all and resembled the charivaris of the past, its scapegoats individuals and institutions.   It makes good headlines in the media but does not address the real issue: if the law allows me to avoid paying tax or to earn exorbitant sums of money why should I not do so?  If you don’t like taxation law as it stands, change the taxation law and stop whingeing when individuals and institutions act within the rules to pay less tax.  We’d all do it given the opportunity. 

 

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[1] Franklin to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, 13 November 1789, Sparks, Jared, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, with Notes and a Life of the Author, 10 Vols. (Hilliard, Gray and Company), 1836-1840, Vol. 10, pp. 409-410. Daniel Defoe was the first author to use words to this effect in The Political History of the Devil, (T. Warner), 1726, p. 246, ‘Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.’