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Conservatives must reject capitalism

The Tory plan to tax non-doms is welcome - and should be just the start, says phillip blond

True conservatism is incompatible with capitalism. Conservatism means a tendency to preserve institutions, traditions and particular ways of life - and when and where has capitalism ever conserved anything?

Despite claims to the contrary, capitalism in its current form doesn't deliver affluence for all. Instead it has produced at the top of society a huge concentration of wealth. We now live in a world of oligarchs, a class who pay no tax but own most of the assets and extract a hugely disproportionate share of the wealth as a result.

In the US and Britain, the top one per cent have seen their share of national income rise by around 75 per cent, while in both countries some two-thirds of the workforce have seen real wages stagnate or fall over the same period. Little wonder that former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan

Family life is eroded by the fact that now it takes two parents working full-time to pay the bills

Greenspan has been worrying aloud that capitalism might lose its popularity unless more people share in its benefits.

For instance, in Britain half of the population hold about six per cent of the wealth. And it is increasingly difficult for ordinary people to make ends meet. Clearly we are very far from the dream of a shared economy and a people's capitalism.

Socially, contemporary capitalism is damaging in the extreme. High culture, family life, tradition and human association - things that real conservatives safeguard and hold dear - are all eroded by the fact that now it takes both parents working full-time to have any chance of paying the bills of a normal household.

Culturally, capitalism tends to speak to our lowest desires, producing a society where glamour and advertising go hand in hand with a kind of permanent dissatisfaction and anxiety. All of which creates a culture where people seem increasingly unable to form permanent human relationships.

In Britain, conservatives are now dimly