What did you make of the London Olympics?
Bread and circuses - of course - but it was both more and less than that. Leave aside all toe curling embarrassment of the 'this shows Britain can do it' brigade and the utter hypocrisy of Cameron's joy at the triumph of a small Ethiopian from Hackney - representing all that he was proud of about Britain, there was something about the opening and closing ceremonies - and some of the events - that touched a less cynical cord.
A friend who was an ill paid and badly treated temporary security guard made two observations. She said that the opening ceremony seemed to 'take away' the games from the corporations. Second she described how the the private security army came to loath the 70 000 'middle class and condescending' volunteers.
'It's just common sense dear' became a hated phrase. The 'paid' workforce, she said, were last summer's rioters. Class had again conquered all. Apparently turn up on time, every day, and you'll get a free TV! No negative marks for your shifts from mad, hysterical supervisors and you could get free tickets to Portugal. (Give us the tele! ) You can imagine the rolled up sleeve meetings in the security companies' boardrooms: - That's what they want: that's what they'll understand!
But there was a Dr Whoish optimism about the image of the country in Danny Boyle's opening. The best thing about Britain is the NHS; we'll all be mixed race soon; gotta' look after the kids; dump the pomp and circumstance. (Nothing about Britain's leading role in the slave trade; the greatest ever crime against humanity, or the battle for the NHS for that matter.) Never mind. It could have been immeasurably worse. (Think the Edinburgh military tattoo.)
I suppose in some great public events it is inevitable that the ordinary millions do find something of their voice. In the absence of a vibrant and growing TU movement, of great working class communities, welfare clubs, cooperatives, music making, worker's education, and the great informal sense of being a proud class of people who stood for something; in the absence of all that, there are still echoes of an alternative, still strong images of stuff that's important that we - not they - have made, often in the teeth of their opposition. Some of that surfaced - in the ordinariness of the athletes - in the party at the end - in the participation of local primary schools. It wasn't something that looked tailored just to the needs of the great and the good.
We know that the athletes housing will soon become a bitter wrangle over decaying buildings; that the vast shopping centre will nose-dive, like its counterparts, into a recessionary sea. We know that a two week spectacle designed to 'bring us all together' at a time when 99% of 'us' are under the most ferocious attack from the remaining 1% of 'us' since the 1920s and 1930s, is an expensive fake and a fraud.
But if you watched - I bet there was something that you applauded. Something of the spirit of one world playing together. I bet the kids felt good about that.
Thursday, 16 August 2012
Monday, 23 July 2012
Sunday, 22 July 2012
Thieves
The front page of the UK based newspaper, the Observer, splashes a report from from the Tax Justice Network compiled for them by James Henry. He was the former chief economist at the McKinsey consultancy. He is described by the Observer as 'a tax expert.' It would be worth simply sticking in the whole article for anybody who does not have access to the paper. But the headline says it all.
"£13 trillion: hoard hidden from taxman by global elite."
Apparently Henry has discovered that about £6.2 trillion of this stash (which might be as high as £20 Trillion) is owned by some 92 000 people.
The paper rightly denounces the lies about trickle down. (This pile has been growing fast - while the rest of us get poorer.) Even the TUC gets in on the act (although Brendon does not take the opportunity to mention his own march on October 20.) And, of course, there are many things to be said - and done about the evidence of this latest crime against humanity.
Because that is what it is. That loot represents the labour of millions. What would a sane world do with it? Prevent the third of the world going hungry tonight like they did last night? Repudiate all developing countries' debts? Establish a solar centre across North Africa to fuel the globe? What would the people of the world decide? Lets take our money back from the thieves, put them in jail and have a discussion and a vote about it.
"£13 trillion: hoard hidden from taxman by global elite."
Apparently Henry has discovered that about £6.2 trillion of this stash (which might be as high as £20 Trillion) is owned by some 92 000 people.
The paper rightly denounces the lies about trickle down. (This pile has been growing fast - while the rest of us get poorer.) Even the TUC gets in on the act (although Brendon does not take the opportunity to mention his own march on October 20.) And, of course, there are many things to be said - and done about the evidence of this latest crime against humanity.
Because that is what it is. That loot represents the labour of millions. What would a sane world do with it? Prevent the third of the world going hungry tonight like they did last night? Repudiate all developing countries' debts? Establish a solar centre across North Africa to fuel the globe? What would the people of the world decide? Lets take our money back from the thieves, put them in jail and have a discussion and a vote about it.
Thursday, 19 July 2012
Breaking the system.
Three
Nearly there.
Through the 1990s and the early 2000s it became popular across the west for a generation of old lefties to deny the possibility in the modern world of taking on capitalism - because it had gone global. Never an old leftie, the UK's Tony Blair built his (lucrative) career on it. Blair's ideological 'reconciliatiion' with capitalism (read, 'never had a problem with it - but now don't ya just adore the wealthy?') led the to the moral swamp that engulfed his cronies and their followers as they squeezed every penny out of their MPs expenses. New Labour MP? Two fingers up to the poor.
Moving from the dross to the big picture, we have already seen what the new 'global' capitalism meant. Finance capital in the west bet on western debt. Global corporations re-based themselves on Chinese and other BRIC countries' cheap labour. The City of London and New York led the first aspect and US, and EU corporations led the second. If western workers fought against their 30 year decline in living standards, the erosion of their social wage or the new 'flexibility' demanded of labour, why then big capital would take its assets and it tax payments elsewhere and leave the rest of us impoverished for good.
This view was always straight-forward political propaganda. Big capital never 'chose' to remain rooted in the UK or the US or anywhere else for that matter because the rest of us tip-toed around our increasing poverty hoping we would not be noticed. Big capital went where the bottom line took it. In the west's current recession, profits, on average, are still rising. Most major UK corporations, including 'household names' like Boots, already barely pay any tax. They live above brass plaques in villages in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. Anybody who could make a faster buck by re-locating to Asia has already gone there. The City of London pays (minimal) taxes to the British government because the (small) fee involved ensures a 'long term, stable and business friendly environment, including its tax regime.' Whichever party is in power!
The point here is that capital has already organised itself to exploit the new world. The deed is done. The question for the rest of us is; what can we do about it?
In the first place, inevitably following the shape of capitalist reorganisation, the fight back has become (unevenly) global. The energy centre of the world in the Middle East is surrounded by revolution and popular led change. China remains the country with most social turmoil according to UN figures. Movements of resistance are bubbling up in Southern Europe and in central Latin America. Resistance is futile droned the Daleks (and globalisation's new admirers.) But resistance is inevitable; and growing.
What have we discovered from the resistance so far? We have discovered that the 'new' global capitalism is weaker than it has been since the the first quarter of the twentieth century. Hundreds of millions of Chinese workers have just forced an increase of a third in their standard of life. Against Apple. Against Unilever and Nike. Against the power of the Chinese Communist Party. In Greece, 12 million people just forced the EU to liquidate half of the country's debts. And they have only just begun. Britain propped up the sick man of europe, Turkey, for a whole century against internal revolt and a Russian war. Today the west's combined forces cannot prop up a prime minister in Afghanistan; or Egypt.
The dominant political economy of the world is weaker and more split than it has ever been outside of World War. An anti-austerity government in Greece could use financial alliances with China over ports and shipping to break the power of the EU and IMF. Nothing could now stop any real pressure for a new, peoples bank carved out of the mess of Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC and Nat West in Britain. A serious Socialist government in Spain, Italy, France and even the UK would have no difficulty seizing assets from tax avoiders and shutting down the tax havens (most of which are European sovereign territory.)
What's missing? The fog of fear about the infinite capacity of capitalism is dissolving. What's missing are people and organisation who will stand and lead. All the old working class leaderships, both east and west, have compromised themselves into dust. It is a pretty pointless exercise trying to breath life into the dead. We have to start again. From the beginning. What sort of economics and what sort of politics do we need? We have time but history is speeding up and capitalism will find its new, nastier forms of rule and new vicious types of mastery based on its new decaying reality if we don't assist its exit in the coming months and years.
Moving from the dross to the big picture, we have already seen what the new 'global' capitalism meant. Finance capital in the west bet on western debt. Global corporations re-based themselves on Chinese and other BRIC countries' cheap labour. The City of London and New York led the first aspect and US, and EU corporations led the second. If western workers fought against their 30 year decline in living standards, the erosion of their social wage or the new 'flexibility' demanded of labour, why then big capital would take its assets and it tax payments elsewhere and leave the rest of us impoverished for good.
This view was always straight-forward political propaganda. Big capital never 'chose' to remain rooted in the UK or the US or anywhere else for that matter because the rest of us tip-toed around our increasing poverty hoping we would not be noticed. Big capital went where the bottom line took it. In the west's current recession, profits, on average, are still rising. Most major UK corporations, including 'household names' like Boots, already barely pay any tax. They live above brass plaques in villages in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. Anybody who could make a faster buck by re-locating to Asia has already gone there. The City of London pays (minimal) taxes to the British government because the (small) fee involved ensures a 'long term, stable and business friendly environment, including its tax regime.' Whichever party is in power!
The point here is that capital has already organised itself to exploit the new world. The deed is done. The question for the rest of us is; what can we do about it?
In the first place, inevitably following the shape of capitalist reorganisation, the fight back has become (unevenly) global. The energy centre of the world in the Middle East is surrounded by revolution and popular led change. China remains the country with most social turmoil according to UN figures. Movements of resistance are bubbling up in Southern Europe and in central Latin America. Resistance is futile droned the Daleks (and globalisation's new admirers.) But resistance is inevitable; and growing.
What have we discovered from the resistance so far? We have discovered that the 'new' global capitalism is weaker than it has been since the the first quarter of the twentieth century. Hundreds of millions of Chinese workers have just forced an increase of a third in their standard of life. Against Apple. Against Unilever and Nike. Against the power of the Chinese Communist Party. In Greece, 12 million people just forced the EU to liquidate half of the country's debts. And they have only just begun. Britain propped up the sick man of europe, Turkey, for a whole century against internal revolt and a Russian war. Today the west's combined forces cannot prop up a prime minister in Afghanistan; or Egypt.
The dominant political economy of the world is weaker and more split than it has ever been outside of World War. An anti-austerity government in Greece could use financial alliances with China over ports and shipping to break the power of the EU and IMF. Nothing could now stop any real pressure for a new, peoples bank carved out of the mess of Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC and Nat West in Britain. A serious Socialist government in Spain, Italy, France and even the UK would have no difficulty seizing assets from tax avoiders and shutting down the tax havens (most of which are European sovereign territory.)
What's missing? The fog of fear about the infinite capacity of capitalism is dissolving. What's missing are people and organisation who will stand and lead. All the old working class leaderships, both east and west, have compromised themselves into dust. It is a pretty pointless exercise trying to breath life into the dead. We have to start again. From the beginning. What sort of economics and what sort of politics do we need? We have time but history is speeding up and capitalism will find its new, nastier forms of rule and new vicious types of mastery based on its new decaying reality if we don't assist its exit in the coming months and years.
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
Breaking a system.
Two
The second claim for modern capitalism was summed up by Sir David King, the former chief scientific advisor to the government, at the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and Environment July 11 conference. He said, don't just look at current troubles in the west. Globally the real story of capitalism is that it is creating vast new middle classes, specially centred in India and China. He claimed that the middle classes (and those above) would be half the world's population by 2020. He noted that despite the recession in the west global commodity prices were still rising. Why? It was the sign that the 'new' economies were producing millions, perhaps billions, of new consumers - a new middle class - despite the west's retreat.Like many of Britain's official 'thinkers' Sir David starts by seizing a single dramatic appearance of something that has caught his attention and then turns it into his world view. The future will trundle, like a train, along its parallel lines and only in the one, certain direction. But, sadly, many people have versions of this half baked idea. The west is collapsing; the east is on the rise. Communism kept China poor and capitalism is making it rich.
Beneath the surface appearance of things there are indeed profound and new processes at work. First, if it was communism that kept China poor, what kept India poor? What kept communist China and capitalist India poor - at the same time? And, for that matter, why is capitalist Europe and the capitalist US getting poorer, especially in the middle classes as well as in the working class sectors? Perhaps Sir David, if we think a little more and react a little less, we will see there is a connection.
Let us put the question in a different way. What has unleashed the power of vast and backward countries to move into rapid development, when for decades they were all held back? Last time it happened was in 1917 when Russia broke out of the international market, which held it back, which had constantly produced its backwardness, as a direct consequence of its connections (read dependence) on western capitalism. The development in capitalist led India and communist led China is also a direct consequence - of the increasing weakness of western capitalism; of its inability to control the whole world any longer. The major power centres of capitalism have never been weaker. It has no way forward, no project for growth any more in the west. Production and productivity, scientific and medical advance, invention and long term growth are no longer available there. What big capital's ransackers need now is dirt cheap labour and the international money casino. Capitalism, a system that once drove the world and its peoples before it in a mad, dangerous and brutal drive to the future, has now become a parasite on human civilisation. It scoops the pot in the fantasy land of finance. It nestles in the 19th century style spaces in the world where wage slavery is the real deal.
Are we on Sir David's train to the future? I think that most believe our current economics and politics are more likely to lead to famine and war than a middle-class takeover of the world. Unless we understand its historic weakness and finish it off!
A system is breaking up. What next? (A short essay in three parts.)
One
There are three great arguments against a radical overturn of the political economy of the west. In one way or another versions of these old arguments filter into public discussions and form attitudes among millions, especially in the leading classes in society. But the current deep crisis means that these traditional arguments can be tested, once more, against the facts. Ultimately, the facts of our status quo will not be overthrown by the clash of ideas of course, but rather by other facts. New facts are being created by millions who fight for their lives; for a just and secure existence for themselves and their children. The facts of this new revolt will both create new arguments against all that already exists, and also, in time, resolve the debate over ideas, but through action and practice, in real life.The first major claim is that any actual alternatives to the present political economy, to capitalism, are invariably worse. Leaving aside the myriad of speculative utopias that get raised in late night student discussions, the target of this point is invariably the failure of the Soviet Union and the adoption of the capitalist market policy (with apparent great success) by the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
There are many weighty tomes on the collapse of the USSR. Their production became a minor industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, lots of our current crop of pundits owe their status to the 'leg up' they were given, by their various establishments, at that time. Poorly served in academic and media circles were the thinkers and writers who had predicted the collapse of the USSR in some cases decades before it occurred. And least of all was serious attention paid to participants in the creation of the USSR, seminal among which was Trotsky, who made a devastating critique of the politics and the economy that he himself had helped to create, from the late 1920s onwards.
We are all now some distance from the failure of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Eastern Europe. The first observation to make now is that the crushing effects of the collapse of the USSR belong to a previous generation. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that both the South African revolution and the incipient Brazilian revolution were partly snuffed out by the fact that, with end of the USSR came the extinction, at that time, of any global centre that could provide sustenance and support against the power of western capital and its corporations. The scope for an independent path, especially in an underdeveloped country, appeared to be closed. This contrasts dramatically with the international support for the progress of the Cuban revolution in the 1960s or the Vietnamese revolution in the 1970s.
While not so obvious in day to day life, the effects in the West of the collapse of the USSR were also profound. The massive offensive against organised labour ratcheted up. Socialist Parties shed any commitment to an alternative type of society to that of capitalism. They were both deep signals of capitalism triumphant.
Today, much of that old debate has dissolved into mist. Indeed, the last line of defense of the capitalist, 'free' market system when faced with the collapse of the banks is - to nationalise them! The system is forced to tear up all its old 'principles' to protect itself - from itself! Today, everybody in the West with common sense can see that western capitalism is in a state of collapse. It has immensely more resources of course that were ever available to the USSR - and all of them are in play - and yet collapse is still a serious and long term threat according to the world's leading bankers, including the ever mournful Mervyn King. The search for an alternative to capitalism in the west, especially among big sections of the youth, has begun.
Everybody in the west also understands that Chinese (and Indian) growth is based on their mountain of cheap labour and not the innate superiority of the market approach to economics. That recognition of reality as opposed to the fantasy of the never-ending energy of the capitalist system, is a worrying, fragile, even threatening premise for a stable, productive and secure future as far as many millions in the west are concerned.
Finally, most in the west are now deeply aware of who are the gainers and who loses from this 'best of all possible worlds' system. As the bankers and top bosses reveal themselves and their frauds and greed and self-serving arrogance, and the politicians who defended them while preparing their own future fortunes now bay for banker's blood, so our rulers become the common place thieves and hypocrites in the public's mind. Deep down, and sometimes producing apathy and withdrawal, here in the west the plebeian classes just do not believe in it any more.
So two profound ideas are emerging out of the turmoil. The first is that governments, or at least reformed political leaderships, should influence, should regulate, and in some cases should control, the insane economic system - for the benefit of us all rather than the few. And second, that a class of people have risen above the rest of us, and that this is a class whose greed and self interest has become the mechanism which has driven our whole world. These ideas, which are gathering strength and momentum, are the premise for any discussion about an alternative way of life. The way the argument is caste now, especially among the young in the west and the middle east is, of course there is an alternative, and we must find it!
Two follows
Saturday, 7 July 2012
Truth - is best avoided
I went to a meeting a few days ago. It was called to bring together the (selected) left in a small town. There were 4 or 5 speakers and they all, in various ways, with various witty twists, told us that now was the time to wind up the Labour Party machine again and to prepare for a Labour victory in 2015.
It was pointed out that Labour had lost 'nearly 6 million voters' since 1997. Its membership is still 'well under' 200 000. In government it had 'made mistakes.' In the past 'the left had been marginalised' but no longer! The election of Ed Milliband as leader, said one speaker, 'was the the sign that a reform of the labour Party' was underway. There was all this new thinking. Ed himself had said that we needed more working class people in Parliament.
There were about 150 people in the meeting. Average age maybe 55? As each speaker did their stuff the meeting got the 'old religion' and by the end it looked like most people had been revved up enough to 'get out there and give 'em the message!'
I could not believe it.
In an official submission to the Electoral Commission, Labour admitted that its membership at the end of 2007 was 176,891 and that was the lowest total since Labour was founded. It has barely moved since then. The 2010 results also showed the continuing collapse of the two party system in general elections, with the combined share for the biggest two parties (57 per cent) being the lowest ever in a British election. There has been no 'decisive shift in wealth and power' under Labour despite being being in government for 25 years since 1964. We are in the gravest crisis of capitalism for 100 years. Everything, everything, in the world is changing. Nothing will be the same in ten years.
How was it that a room full of apparently sensible people could swallow this guff? I think it was a reflex.
They cheered for what they know. Since 1964 Labour leaders have told us they are left and then defended the status quo when they got into government. The people in the room were good people. They believed there should be a fairer society. They want life to be better for the under-privileged. But most of all, they want to feel ok. They have done their bit. They have trusted the leaders. No matter that it is not the first time but is the twenty first time, they have renewed their pledge.
Inexorably history grinds their goodwill into dust. Re-affirmation to a lost cause is the saddest political act of all.
It is both awful and liberating to face the fact that 100 years of working class instinctual support for Labour is over. The new, hard truth, especially in the unions under threat of extinction, know this. Something new must be created.
It was pointed out that Labour had lost 'nearly 6 million voters' since 1997. Its membership is still 'well under' 200 000. In government it had 'made mistakes.' In the past 'the left had been marginalised' but no longer! The election of Ed Milliband as leader, said one speaker, 'was the the sign that a reform of the labour Party' was underway. There was all this new thinking. Ed himself had said that we needed more working class people in Parliament.
There were about 150 people in the meeting. Average age maybe 55? As each speaker did their stuff the meeting got the 'old religion' and by the end it looked like most people had been revved up enough to 'get out there and give 'em the message!'
I could not believe it.
In an official submission to the Electoral Commission, Labour admitted that its membership at the end of 2007 was 176,891 and that was the lowest total since Labour was founded. It has barely moved since then. The 2010 results also showed the continuing collapse of the two party system in general elections, with the combined share for the biggest two parties (57 per cent) being the lowest ever in a British election. There has been no 'decisive shift in wealth and power' under Labour despite being being in government for 25 years since 1964. We are in the gravest crisis of capitalism for 100 years. Everything, everything, in the world is changing. Nothing will be the same in ten years.
How was it that a room full of apparently sensible people could swallow this guff? I think it was a reflex.
They cheered for what they know. Since 1964 Labour leaders have told us they are left and then defended the status quo when they got into government. The people in the room were good people. They believed there should be a fairer society. They want life to be better for the under-privileged. But most of all, they want to feel ok. They have done their bit. They have trusted the leaders. No matter that it is not the first time but is the twenty first time, they have renewed their pledge.
Inexorably history grinds their goodwill into dust. Re-affirmation to a lost cause is the saddest political act of all.
It is both awful and liberating to face the fact that 100 years of working class instinctual support for Labour is over. The new, hard truth, especially in the unions under threat of extinction, know this. Something new must be created.
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