How Blairite MPs can destroy the Labour Party

In a week which has seen yet another attack on Jeremy Corbyn by a Labour MP it's clear that those who oppose Corbyn have learnt nothing from the Blairite years or the destruction of the Party in Scotland. John Woodcock may be right that Corbyn didn't make the most of his opportunity to attack Cameron and Osborne over the recent disastrous 2016 budget but he is missing the point. Corbyn may not be the best possible Labour leader but he does have important qualities - he is a decent man who says what he thinks, a man with principles, a rare quality in politicians, and something that should be valued. Add to that, the fact that there there is no obvious alternative to Corbyn - don't tell me Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham or Dan jarvis! - and it becomes pretty obvious that Labour MPs should get behind their leader and turn their fire on the Tories.

Jeremy Corbyn

So why the problem? Blairite MPs need to wake up and smell the coffee because Blairism is dead and politics have moved on. There is hunger for real change and a leadership challenge would do more to scupper Labour's chances in 2020 than a united party fighting the Tories on their many weak points including the destruction of the NHS and our education system.  

These Labour MPs suffer from exactly the same malaise that destroyed Labour in Scotland - a complete inability to see that their Blairite, pro-'free' market and anti-public sector politics has got right up the noses of a large segment of the electorate, a segment large enough to get them a majority in 2020. Like Scottish Labour they are completely oblivious to this fact. No doubt the special circumstances of the referendum hastened Labour's demise in Scotland, but they were in serious decline anyway because they allowed the SNP to move into, and occupy, a huge vacant space on the left of politics that they had created by sticking to unpopular centre right neoliberal politics.   

How does this happen? Its almost certainly the result of the groupthink that afflicts most politicians in the EU and the wider western world, resulting in a belief system that only markets matter and that they can provide solutions to everything. As a Green Party member I ought to be celebrating the death-wish that Blairite MPs are embracing but I don't. We have to get the Tories out in 2020 and Labour are the only Party that can do it. I hope we will gain MPs but we need a strong opposition from Labour that offers real alternatives to the asset stripping of the public sector rather than a timid, watered-down version of Tory policy. If Labour MPs succeed in ousting Corbyn and continuing with 'business as usual' I expect the Labour Party in England and Wales to suffer the same decline as the Party did in Scotland.

Baffled by Trump's popularity? - neither am I

Donald J Trump appears to be sweeping all before him in the GOP primary, so much so, that pundits are claiming he has the party nomination nailed on. This has lead to shock and surprise from many on the left, centre and even centre-right. How can some one who spouts offensive bigoted views, refuses to condemn the KKK, and appears to have little in policy other than making Mexico pay for a 1000 mile border wall possibly do so well? Why has he got so much support?

Here's why. It can be explained in a word - Neoliberalism. I've blogged extensively about neoliberalism on here but this is a very brief summary: in the 1970s a combination of falling profits and a resurgent 'free' market ideology led to the crushing of organised labour in the West and an all out attack on welfare. In addition, the public sector was asset stripped by corporations and the population burdened with debt.

Wages in the USA for most workers - the 'Middle Class' have remained stagnant for decades and jobs have been outsourced abroad creating a situation where most Americans are a couple of paychecks away from destitution. This destruction of the 'American Dream' has lead to fear, anger and resentment in a large section of the population and a disillusionment with the democratic political process, because whoever you vote for nothing changes, you just get more cuts and greater poverty. Does this sound familiar to people in the UK?

So, all that anger has to be directed somewhere and the triumph of the political right has been to make sure it's focused on the wrong targets. Instead of blaming the real culprits - the super-rich, corporations and their tame politicians - many people have been blaming just about anything else - the most obvious example being 'economic' migrants.

Then along comes Trump. He's an anti-establishment figure, a 'strong' leader who shows contempt for his rivals and articulates the fears and prejudices of his supporters. He says he will make America great again and proposes simplistic solutions. He identifies himself with his supporters. In addition, the harsh reality is that there are many people in every society who want an authority figure. They want simple answers to complex issues. Don't believe me? Then read Chris Roses's excellent book 'What makes People Tick' which is based on years of research. It doesn't have all the answers but it will give you an important insight into what people's values are and how they think

Is it surprising that Trump is doing very well and that he appears immune to attacks from the establishment? Not at all because many people have stopped listening to the establishment. Trump is playing a clever game and I don't believe he's as extreme as he makes himself out to be. Also, I don't think he'll win the Presidency.  I hope I'm right about that. But the key to this is if you want to influence people you have to understand their values and 'what makes them tick'. As the book says:

'If you want to communicate effectively with people - especially if you want to persuade them to act - you need to start from where they are, not from where you are.'

This has always been a failing of the left because we think our better analysis and arguments will win the day. We communicate in policies not values and always start from where we are. We don't take into account the feelings of people we want to mobilise. History shows that this approach has failed. Things need to change very soon.

The 'Free' market is damaging our economy and well-being

About 18 months ago I was listening to one of those capitalist puff piece programmes which have become so commonplace on BBC Radio 4. A presenter, probably Evan Davies, was busy sucking up to group of 'captains of industry', who were telling the listeners what a great bunch of wealth creators they were. Amidst the general congratulatory backslapping they were talking about India and one of them, clearly a fully paid up 'free' market fundamentalist, said that  the reason why there was so much poverty in India was due to the fact that there weren't enough entrepreneurs. Well obviously... not! I can remember thinking that the problem that lay behind massive poverty in India was in fact the capitalist 'free' market economy so enamored of the speaker.

In India there are millions of people who live a hand-to-mouth existence and survive only because they have created jobs for themselves.  If they could I'm sure most would take a decent paid job. They can't because there aren't any. They have to create their own jobs because the capitalist 'free' market economic system is a failure. It has failed them. Its a system which creates massive fortunes for a few, loots the natural resources of the country, exports vast wealth, and leaves poverty and deprivation for the many, and environmental degradation, behind in its wake.

We are used to the idea that capitalism creates jobs because it used to but it doesn't have to. In the 21st Century arguably the most important sector of the capitalist economy - the financial sector - makes billions in profits yet does nothing which is socially useful and creates relatively few jobs. It is by far the largest part of the global economy. Since the crash in 2008 - 80% of net new jobs created in the UK have been through self employment by people who have had to create jobs because capitalism has failed them also. As Larry Elliot says in the article:

"A feature of the labour market is the increasing role played by the self-employed, who account for more than 80% of the net rise in employment since 2008. A large number of the self-employed may be former full-time staff in well-paid jobs in, say, the public sector or construction, who are now scratching a living where they can"

Note the 'scratching a living'. Sound familiar? The UK is becoming more like India with fewer jobs and increasing poverty. Much of this is thanks to the Coalition government with its class-war austerity attack on the public sector, low-paid, poor and disabled. Real wages have fallen 8.4% in real terms since 2008. As more of the public sector is asset stripped - i.e. privatised - and the market insinuates itself further into our lives and our economy we can expect the trend to accelerate. 

In the week in which Robin Williams died there has been a lot of talk about people suffering from depression and the inadequacy of support and treatment in the UK has been highlighted. How much of this depression is due to the desperation and anxiety of poverty and the lack of a future in the UK's failing 'free' market economy? Capitalism doesn't just cause poverty it causes alienation and despair. The triumph of the 'free' market is that it is making the UK daily more like India, a society with massive inequality, mass poverty with a vast reservoir of low-paid workers available to churn out ever greater profits for foreign shareholders. A society run for the benefit of the few rather than the majority. There is only one solution, to turn away from the marketisation and commodification of our lives to the commons and the mutualisation of wealth creation.

Welcome to Western Neoliberal Totalitarian 'Democracy'

I am old enough to remember the Soviet Union. I grew up with it and I'm glad I did. Why? because it meant that I lived in a time when there was an alternative to capitalism and it was an alternative that was taken very seriously. It was taken particularly seriously by American capitalism, to the extent that there were show trials of communists  and 'communist sympathisers' in the USA in the 1950s, and there was a relentless tide of ant-Soviet propaganda both in the USA and the other 'Western Liberal Democracies' (known then as 'the West') in Europe and Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

We were told that while the West was free, the Soviet Union was a totalitarian one-party state, characterised by a rigid ideology, an all-pervasive propaganda machine, the brutal suppression of dissent, that people were imprisoned on trumped-up charges in terrible conditions and you couldn't fart in your own toilet without the authorities knowing about it because the KGB had an all pervasive system of spies and snoopers recording everything you did - and heaven help you if it was the wrong kind of fart.

Of course there was more than a grain of truth in the anti-Soviet propaganda though it was no doubt played up as far as possible by the capitalist propagandists. But anyway this isn't a post about the Soviet Union, neither is it a defence of the Soviet Union, its a post about those 'Western liberal democracies' I referred to earlier and what has become of them since the demise of the USSR.

The fact that I've had direct experience of living at a time when the Soviet Union existed enables me to put the current situation we find ourselves in here in the 'West' in perspective. Because as far as I can see in 'the West' we are now living in a one-party state with a regime of rigid ideology, an all pervasive propaganda machine and the brutal suppression of dissent, where people are imprisoned on trumped-up charges in terrible conditions and you can't fart in your own toilet without the regime knowing about it. Now where does that remind you of?

"Imprisoned on trumped-up charges in terrible conditions"

Every major party in the 'West' is now a neoliberal party following the same rigid 'free' market ideology. In the UK, Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are simply the left, right, and centre wings of the UK 'neoliberal party'. The same is true in the USA with the Republicans and Democrats and the pattern is repeated in all the other 'Western' democracies. The result is that whoever you vote for in Western democracies you get more of the same, and whichever major media outlet you use you get the same narrow ideological view of the world. 

A classic example of the way this stitch-up works is austerity. Since the 2008 global economic crash, every 'Western' government has had its own version of austerity, dumping the costs of the crash onto workers, the poor and the unemployed. When voters have rejected those governments at the ballot box and voted for the opposition, wanting real economic change, they have been faced with more of the same - yet more austerity. So what used to be called 'Western Liberal Democracy' could perhaps now be more accurately described as 'Western Totalitarian Democracy', or since our 'democracy' is now largely controlled by corporations and the rich perhaps simply fascism would be a more accurate description. 

It may well be that things in the 'West' are not yet as 'bad' as they were in the Soviet Union. But a quarter of a century after its demise the parallels between what happened there and what is happening here must be taken seriously. All who want a genuinely open, democratic and plural society, and want to bring about real change and sweep away the growing threat to our prosperity and freedom that is being driven by the corporations and neoliberal 'free' market right, need to organise, protest and vote for parties that oppose the corporate takeover of our lives. 

Postscript: today (20/08/14) I came across an interesting passage in David Harvey's latest book Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism:

 " ....in other words, and intensification of the totalitarian police-state surveillance and and militarised control system and the totalitarian democracy we are now largely experiencing" [p220 -my italics].

RIP Labour: The day the Labour Party finally died

I'm not the only one who noticed but today marks the end of any useful life that the Labour Party had left in it. I've posted about the impending demise of the Labour Party before but now its finally arrived. The Party's had its problems for a long time but the rot really set in with the advent of Tony Blair and New Labour in the 1990s, followed by the black farce of the premiership of Gordon 'end of boom and bust' Brown. Since then the Party has been on life support and it looks like the feeble efforts of Ed Miliband to resuscitate it have finally failed, for today Chris Leslie, who is apparently the shadow chief secretary to the treasury, will announce that:

"We won't be able to undo the cuts that have been felt in recent years, and I know that this will be disappointing for many people. A more limited pot of money will have to be spent on a smaller number of priorities. Lower priorities will get less."

f this is what Labour has to offer no wonder so many people do not vote. Labour is offering the politics of despair and not hope. It is the politics and economics of reckless irresponsibility. And it is the economics  of those without the courage to deliver change, most especially for those who are dependent upon that change happening in this country. - See more at: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/05/30/why-vote-labour-when-their-economic-policy-is-based-on-cuts-and-appeasing-bankers/#sthash.pSmFECAZ.U3EKrhD4.dpuf

So that's it. Labour has completely capitulated to the 'free' market. It is the party of the corporations and bankers. Labour can no longer make even the vaguest claim to be a party of labour and the people. Many of us knew that but this statement makes it official. Labour are finally committed to permanent austerity and even a "budget surplus". 

RIP Labour: The rot set in long ago with New Labour

Whats really sad about this is not just the end of a once great party but that its demise is through its own doing - its suicide because there is absolutely no need to do this - its political and economic nonsense. The cuts can be undone and spending can be raised. As Richard Murphy has pointed out on his blog today there is no need for a budget surplus and, as a nation, we can afford debt. Murphy hits the nail on the head when he says:

"If this is what Labour have to offer no wonder so many people do not vote. Labour is offering the politics of despair and not hope. It is the politics and economics of reckless irresponsibility."

If this is what Labour has to offer no wonder so many people do not vote. Labour is offering the politics of despair and not hope. - See more at: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/05/30/why-vote-labour-when-their-economic-policy-is-based-on-cuts-and-appeasing-bankers/#sthash.pSmFECAZ.U3EKrhD4.dpuft as Richard Murphy has pointed out on his blog there is no need for a budget surplus and, as a nation, we can afford debt. Murphy hit the nail on the head when he said:

 I agree with every word of that but there's more - it is the politics of a party which no longer has a useful purpose or anything to offer the British people and has reached the end of the line.

If this is what Labour has to offer no wonder so many people do not vote. Labour is offering the politics of despair and not hope. It is the politics and economics of reckless irresponsibility. And it is the economics  of those without the courage to deliver change, most especially for those who are dependent upon that change happening in this country. - See more at: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/05/30/why-vote-labour-when-their-economic-policy-is-based-on-cuts-and-appeasing-bankers/#sthash.pSmFECAZ.U3EKrhD4.dpuf

f this is what Labour has to offer no wonder so many people do not vote. Labour is offering the politics of despair and not hope. It is the politics and economics of reckless irresponsibility. And it is the economics  of those without the courage to deliver change, most especially for those who are dependent upon that change happening in this country. - See more at: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/05/30/why-vote-labour-when-their-economic-policy-is-based-on-cuts-and-appeasing-bankers/#sthash.pSmFECAZ.U3EKrhD4.dpuf

If this is what Labour has to offer no wonder so many people do not vote. Labour is offering the politics of despair and not hope. It is the politics and economics of reckless irresponsibility. And it is the economics  of those without the courage to deliver change, most especially for those who are dependent upon that change happening in this country. - See more at: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/05/30/why-vote-labour-when-their-economic-policy-is-based-on-cuts-and-appeasing-bankers/#sthash.pSmFECAZ.U3EKrhD4.dpuf

If this is what Labour has to offer no wonder so many people do not vote. Labour is offering the politics of despair and not hope. It is the politics and economics of reckless irresponsibility. And it is the economics  of those without the courage to deliver change, most especially for those who are dependent upon that change happening in this country. - See more at: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/05/30/why-vote-labour-when-their-economic-policy-is-based-on-cuts-and-appeasing-bankers/#sthash.pSmFECAZ.U3EKrhD4.dpuf

If this is what Labour has to offer no wonder so many people do not vote. Labour is offering the politics of despair and not hope. It is the politics and economics of reckless irresponsibility. And it is the economics  of those without the courage to deliver change, most especially for those who are dependent upon that change happening in this country. - See more at: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/05/30/why-vote-labour-when-their-economic-policy-is-based-on-cuts-and-appeasing-bankers/#sthash.pSmFECAZ.U3EKrhD4.dpu

The strange slow death of the Labour Party

Do all political parties have a lifespan? I think so. Its hard to imagine the Tory Party coming to an end, because it represents the interests of a particular class very effectively, and has done for 200 years or more. But even the Tories are vulnerable, not so much because of UKIP, but because they now really only represent a very narrow sectional interest consisting of the corporations and the very wealthy. The 'free' market and globalisation is set to grind down their middle class support, narrowing their political base still further. The latest manifestation of this is the sacrifice of the legal profession on the altar of the market to promote the interests of big business who are eying up what's left of the funding for legal aid. The fact is that the Tory vote has been in decline since 1931, and there is no sign of this changing.

But this post is meant to be about Labour, why is Labour heading into irreversible decline? The answer is simple - the party has abandoned its base, just like the Tories. The only reason so many people still vote for it is that it is seen as the only viable alternative to the Tories, and it is still funded by the trade unions. Of course its true that Labour's base has changed anyway in the past 30 years or so. The bedrock of working class support that could once rely upon has diminished, but Labour still ought to be able to rely on the support of the progressive majority in the UK, but now, it no longer can.

I believe Labour will win the next election and that it will probably win outright, but it will win by default, because enough people want to see the end of the Coalition, not because of any great enthusiasm for its leader or policies. Labour will win purely because it is the lesser of two evils and represents a little hope where now there is none. Labour ought to storm back into power on a positive anti-austerity platform. But it seems the Party has been so rotted by its embrace of the market that despite the mistakes of the Blair/Brown era it has really learnt nothing. Its leadership is incapable of making the break with neoliberalism.

The latest manifestation of this came only recently when shadow chancellor Ed Balls made yet another break with universal benefits by means testing the pensioners' winter fuel allowance. This is pretty poor stuff, which can only serve to weaken the whole welfare state further, and follows on from Labour's embrace of workfare, amongst other things. But it gets even worse because Labour are now likely to adopt the Coalition's spending plans after 2015 and yet further deep cuts are in the pipeline. The acid test will come if Labour forms the next government. Expect protests to grow not diminish. More people will drift away from the party and the decisive point will come if unions decide to make the break. If the Labour leadership continue on their current course they will be leading the party to oblivion. The question is not when, but how long it will take for the crunch to come?

Why we must all bow down to "The Market"

Sometime ago I posted on here about the people of the remote Lambayeque Valley in Peru who were threatened by a series of environmental crises, and who sacrificed some of their number and destroyed pyramids they had built to appease the gods in an attempt to save themselves. You see, they believed that the gods were angry and must be appeased if they were to be saved from catastrophe. Needless to say they were wrong and after lasting for 450 years their civilisation was destroyed.

I was reminded of this when I watched Question Time last week. In fact I am reminded of it almost every time I open a newspaper or switch on a radio or television these days. On Question Time the redoubtable Melanie Phillips was one of the pundits telling anyone who could be bothered to listen that there was only one answer to the economic crisis we are in - we must appease "The Market". Like so many others she believes that "The Market" can only be appeased by a few selected actions, the favourite of which appears to be "tax cuts". Cut taxes and all will be well. The crisis will come to an end. There are of course other things which appease "The Market"; they include "privatisation", "flexibility of labour" and another important cut known as "cutting red tape". In fact there are lots of cuts which appease the market. Cutting benefits and cutting public expenditure also keep "The Market" happy.

Of course there is never any acknowledgement by supporters of "The Market" that the great economic crisis we are in might have been caused by "The Market", or even that it is in fact just the latest and greatest in a series of crises caused by "The Market", because "The Market" can never be blamed for anything. We can though, blame everything else, the government, trade unions, public sector, regulators, benefit scroungers, or even the weather. If anything goes wrong the inevitable answer that we get is that we need more of "The Market", not less. Because "The Market" is there to be admired and worshipped by the devout. Its not difficult to imagine Melanie as a Lambayeque priestess administering cuts to the unfortunate sacrificial victims on a Peruvian pyramid. But have no doubt; faith in "The Market" is just that; faith. Its not economics or policy or even ideology, it is a belief system as strong and irrational as the beliefs of the high priests of the Lambayeque Valley. On the day that a new Pope was elected let us not forget that the believers in the true faith are people who believe in "The Market".

Antibiotics - another failure of "The Market"

At the moment, millions of people are being sacrificed on the altar of austerity because that is what "The Market" wants. Not only that but the planet and the people that depend upon it are in danger of being destroyed like the Lambayeque people to suit the needs of "The Market". Yesterday we heard of another failure of "The Market". We are facing a crisis in healthcare due to a lack of effective new antibiotics. This is because "The Market" deems it is not profitable to produce them so they aren't going to be made. Could this be the same "Market" which is feeding antibiotics to farmed animals to make them fatter, rendering the antibiotics we need less effective in the process? Or is it the same "Market" that can't provide us with houses to live in, or vaguely ethical financial services or fairly priced utilities, or was responsible for BSE, or can't provide two billion people with an income of more than $2 a day? The list goes on and on, and so does the madness of  "The Market" and its disciples. But let's make no mistake, if we don't end the tyranny of this mad belief system the fate that befell the people of Lambayeque awaits all of us too.

One thing the 'free' market is brilliant at - generating bullshit

One of the cornerstones of 'free' market capitalism is 'confidence'. 'Confidence' is of course a code word. What is really means is that capitalists need to know the governments will ensure that everything is stitched up in their favour. Another way of putting this is - privatising the profits and nationalising the losses - that whatever happens, they can't lose. This is because capitalists, contrary to 'free' market mythology are not really risk-takers at all. That myth is a good example of 'free' market bullshit. What capitalists really want is no-risk-at-all guaranteed profits of the kind they can get from the privatisation of the public sector.

But its really another kind of confidence I want to focus on. This is the key confidence of 'entrepreneurship'. This is the bullshit that is really at the heart of neoliberal 'free' market capitalism, and comes straight out of the 'free' market fantasises of Ayn Rand. The mythology goes like this; all wealth is created by dynamic, risk-taking individuals we call entrepreneurs. Becuase of the dynamism and creativity of these special individuals the Earth continues to orbit the Sun, and we should all be eternally grateful to these people. And, because they are so magical they deserve special treatment - like not paying taxes - and must enjoy great wealth and, of course, power.

Poeple like Bill Gates and Richard Branson are cited as examples of these thrusting god-like individuals. The problem is that the idols have feet of clay. Gates's Microsoft empire was built on MS-DoS, a piece of software he bought off someone else, and grew through the ruthless destruction of rival companies by establishing a monopoly position for his key products; Windows and Microsoft Office. Branson has done extremely well out of government handouts as shown by his risk-free 'enterprise' Virgin Rail. No risk when you run a private monopoly, just guaranteed profits from the taxpayer. Much to Branson's chagrin this was ruthlessly exposed  by Aditya Chakrabortty in this Guardian article. But the myth of the entrepreneur continues to be crucial to the belief-system that is neoliberal 'free' market capitalism. That is not to say that there aren't dynamic and innovative individuals, it just that very few of those people are capitalists, or even want to be. For those few capitalists that are there is a fatal problem - the wealth that 'they generate' is actually created by workers, not by them.

Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake". But the entrepreneurs of Davos want us only to have the cake crumbs.

This week my 'free' market bullshit detector has been pointing in the direction of that heart of darkness known as the World Economic Forum in Davos. This is the home of the really confident ones, the capitalists with their luxury yachts who ride on the crest of the wave of 'free' market bullshit. These grossly overpaid, overrated and over-confident individuals, their sycophantic hangers on, and tame politicians who serve them, are beginning to look more and more like the Marie Antoinettes of the modern world. You can tell this by the fact that even Will Hutton, who likes capitalism, is getting very pissed off with the Davos crowd. and wants them sorted out. But, for the time being, while the entrepreneurs of Davos feast on the fruits of our labours we will have to be satisfied with the crumbs of cake that fall from their table.

Osborne's cuts have nothing to do with the deficit

In my last post I blogged about how the 'free' market was working - for the banks, corporations and the capitalist media (if that seems contradictory to the title of the that post - you 'll have to read the post).  Now I have to follow that up with the simple fact that austerity is working. Its working for the 1%, for the George Osbornes of this world, that is why it is being imposed on the people of Europe and the USA. The real aim of austerity is not to solve the 'problem' of the deficit, or to revive our economy. The real aim is to destroy the welfare state, and to reduce the unemployed, and the working poor to third world levels of destitution, and to destroy collective provision.

The poorest and most vulnerable people in our society, the disabled, the unemployed, and the working poor, are the first targets of austerity, The middle classes come next. The aim of austerity is to return the UK to the nineteenth century, and to roll back all the gains in pensions, conditions of employment, living standards, and healthcare, which we have obtained through the trade unions and our democratic process in the past 100 years.

George Osborne - destroying the welfare state in the UK

Osborne is a bare-faced liar. He knows very well that his description of the UK economy as some sort of household budget is a complete fiction. Either that or he is stupid. National economies are not like household economies. National economies can live with high levels of debt for long periods. Governments can borrow far more cheaply than companies or families. They can also create money. Not one penny of Osborne's original £81 billion of cuts was necessary. The structural deficit is convenient cover for an ideologically driven Tory class war on the British people. Its something that they have dreamed of for years - destroy the welfare state and privatise the NHS and the public sector. Now, under the cover of an economic crisis their friends in the banks created they have the opportunity to inflict their 'free' market ideology on the UK. Don't believe me? The read this quote from Michael Burke in the Guardian today:

"The stated aim of "austerity" is not growth but fiscal balance. According to its supporters it is self-evident that, like any household, if you cut your spending you will have more money left at the end of each month. For governments, this is reflected in current spending not capital spending – any fool can cut needed investment on school buildings, rail and roads and claim that things are improving. In official projections, the deficit on the current budget was expected to be falling to £80bn in the current financial year, down £34bn in two years. Is this current deficit falling? [no]. If not, austerity is failing in its stated objective, and persisting with it implies there is actually a different policy objective of lowering wages and benefits, which is what has happened.

Don't be fooled by this Coalition government. Austerity is working very well indeed because the Chancellor's cuts programme is a direct attack on the living standards of you and your family. It is designed to make the rich richer and the rest of us poorer. If it succeeds your children will be poorer than you are and your grandchildren will be poorer than your children. You only have one option and that is to join together with people who are fighting the cuts and stop the greatest heist in history in its tracks.

The 'free' market has failed, now for the alternative

Unfortunately the title of this post is not really true, the first part anyway. The 'free' market has succeeded. It has succeded in transferring huge amounts of wealth from ordinary working people to the very richest people on the planet. And it has done this by reducing wages and destroying pensions, social healthcare and social security. Because that transfer of wealth always was the aim of 'free' market neoliberalism - making the 99% (workers) poorer and 1% (capitalists) richer. 

Of course, most people don't like to think in terms of 'capitalist and worker', that, after all, is old hat isn't it? Well, no its not, its just that in the 30 year period after the Second World War, with strong trade unions, social security and decent pensions, the ongoing struggle between worker and capitalist was offset by rising prosperity. With hindsight we can now see that period for what it was - an anomaly. We are now back to capitalism as usual, capitalism as it has been for most of its 200 year history, with sluggish growth and poor welfare provision for the victims of capitalism - the poor and the unemployed. The fact that it took an economic crash to return us to 'normality' should really be no surprise to anyone (though when it happens it always is). The history of capitalism is a succession of economic crises, of which this one is only the latest and possibly the greatest. The capitalist media has worked hard to persuade us that the distinction between capitalist and worker no longer has any relevance, that we are all in it together, but that has been exposed as a fiction by recent events.

The lesson we should learn from the latest crisis is that only the nation state can prevent complete economic chaos and disaster. Without state intervention in the economies of Europe and the USA the crisis would have been very much worse. Neoliberals like to label the state as the enemy of freedom, enterprise and innovation, but without it we would all probably be living in shanty towns and could possibly have slid into barbarism. The reality is that the democratic nation state can be our friend and it is the only existing institution which can turn things around in times of crisis. That is why we must not turn our back on state intervention in the economy, and nationalisation of the railways and the utilities. People of my generation look back on the nationalised utilities with affection. They weren't perfect but they weren't the preserve of foreign corporations with footloose 'investors' who care nothing about energy and water provision in the UK.

It doesn't have to be like this. There is a sound economic alternative, but there is a problem because if we continue to elect political parties which follow neoliberal policies the misery will continue. For example, as Larry Elliot in the Guardian showed today new jobs have been created in the UK during the crisis but the bad news is that these are low-paid part time jobs, replacing the better jobs which have been lost. Here is a telling quote:

"The UK is turning into an old-style third world country with low pay growth for most workers below managerial level, widening pay differentials and poor levels of capital investment"

Of the mainstream political parties in the UK all but one adhere to the tenets of 'free' market neoliberalism, despite the fact that it is clearly unpopular with the electorate, as the by-elections last Thursday showed. The Coalition parties got hammered with the Liberal Democrats polling only 415 votes in Rotherham and coming eighth. UKIP did well, but they are a single-issue party trading on the unpopularity of the EU. If people understood better UKIP's other policies they would soon be exposed. Labour, who most voters are looking to as an alternative to the Coalition are neoliberal-lite at best and are unlikely to reverse many of the damaging changes made by the Coalition. The only party which has an alternative economic policy is the Green Party, as we showed in our manifesto, which is still as relevant now as it was in 2010 .

'Free' market neoliberalism has failed those who it was meant to fail, the ordinary people of  Europe and the USA, the 99%. The alternative is now needed more urgently than ever. But you can only get that alternative by voting for a political party which has an alternative. If you want to find out more take a look at our vision. Never has voting for an alternative been more important. Come and join us in turning things around.

'Free' market myths no. 5: competition works

Competition is an essential part of  our economy. The fact that companies compete with each other to provide us with better goods and services means that the goods and services on offer constantly improve and we get better value for money. It means that companies that don't perform well go to the wall and the best run companies thrive, and it also means that individuals work harder to do better and achieve higher rewards right? Wrong!

The idea that much vaunted 'free' market competition does all these things and is essential to the well-being of our economy just happens to be nonsense. Of course this is hard for many people to accept because we have been told this is the case all our lives, and most of us believe it. But the idea of competition that most of us have is based on real competition of the kind that you find in the Olympics where individuals and teams do battle to win prizes. This kind of striving for ever greater excellence is not the same thing as competition in a capitalist economy. In fact its possible to make a case that in some sectors there is little or no competition at all. Mature markets are where particular markets are dominated by a few major players, all the smaller operators having been squeezed out, usually by acquisition rather than competition. An obvious example of this which has been making the headlines recently is the energy sector, which has been accused of making excessive profits at the expense of hard pressed bill payers. And we have witnessed the neoliberal Coalition government's feeble attempts to 'regulate' energy prices for consumers. As the Guardian editorial said:

"But all Mr Davey is proposing is a change in billing, not pricing. And he is certainly not proposing to change the mechanics that place 85% of the retail market in the hands of the big six suppliers, and which mean that when one raises prices the rest follow soon afterwards. If it looks like an oligopoly, and acts like an oligopoly, then it probably is an oligopoly"

It was accepted, until fairly recently, by economists, that such 'mature markets' were examples of monopoly capitalism, until neoliberal 'free' market dogma came to dominate in the 1980's, and monopoly capitalism was conveniently 'forgotten'. Its well worth reading this article by Bellamy Foster, McChesney and Jamil Jonna, which describes how monopoly - not oligopoly by the way - is increasing and competition is decreasing, on a global scale. here is a telling quote:

"The desirability of monopoly, from the perspective of a capitalist, is self-evident: it lowers risk and increases profits. No sane owner or business wishes more competition; the rational move is always to seek as much monopoly power as possible and carefully avoid the nightmare world of the powerless competitive firm of economics textbooks. Once a firm achieves economic concentration and monopoly power, it is maintained through barriers to entry that make it prohibitively costly and risky for would-be competitors successfully to invade an oligopolistic or monopolistic industry—though such barriers to entry remain relative rather than absolute. Creating and maintaining barriers to entry is essential work for any corporation."

The reality is that competition in the capitalist global economy is just another 'free' market myth, slavishly maintained and adhered to by the capitalist media we all know and love so well.

The 'free' market Taliban pose a very real threat to our society

There can hardly be a person in the UK who has not heard of the 'terrorist threat' or the 'war on terror'. We have become used to living with heightened security. If you travel by train as I do you will have heard automated Orwellian announcements which refer to "unattended luggage being removed and destroyed by the security services" - whoever they are supposed to be. Some people have argued that all this security has gone way over the top and that the 'terrorist threat' has been deliberately exaggerated by politicians to suit their own purposes. Adam Curtis, in his excellent documentary, The Power of Nightmares, argued that politicians play on our fears and use the terrorist threat to get us to vote for them, and ultimately, to control us. I am sympathetic to this view, but that is not what this post is about. It is about a very real threat which is causing enormous economic damage, human misery and death in the West on a scale that terrorist groups like Al Qaeda could never hope to emulate.

Ayn Rand - prophet of the 'free' market right

But the real threat doesn't come from outside, from some foreign power or terrorist group it comes from within. Those who a perpetrating very real damage to our society are not terrorists or even idealists -  they, like the Taliban, are fundamentalists. These people are neoliberal 'free' market fundamentalists whose views are not economic, nor even really ideological, they are more a belief system. If you wanted to compare these 'free' market fundamentalists with other groups you would find they had more in common with extremist religiously inspired groups like the extreme evangelicals in the USA or the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The holy tenets of this 'free' market religion are not to be found in one holy book, though if they had a bible it would probably have to be Atlas Shrugged, and their prophet would be its author, Ayn Rand. The 'free' market fundamentalists claim to be the descendants of Adam (Smith) though their views are a distorted and selective extract from his writings. They believe in deregulation, privatisation, in outsourcing, downsizing, austerity and small government. They believe that there are magic beings called entrepreneurs who we all depend upon for wealth and  prosperity. And make no mistakes these are beliefs, which when examined closely, turn out to have about as much validity as the beliefs of the Creationists and other flat-earthers. Do they care about that? Not at all! -  because they have faith.

The 'free' market fundamentalists are the very people who brought you the greatest economic crisis in capitalism, a near collapse of the world economic system, featuring the credit crunch, the sovereign debt crisis, and the Eurozone crisis. These are the people who have deepened and made worse those same crises by their belief in austerity, and, as things continue to get worse, as economies crumble, mass unemployment grows and people's living standards are destroyed, what is their answer? Why - of course - more of the same! They are like the mad medieval doctors who while bleeding the patient to death - call for yet more blood to be spilt. Believe me, these people are a far greater threat to the planet, your family and your community than the Taliban or Al Qaeda ever could be. They need to be stopped, for all our sakes, before they bring the whole world down in ruin.

Lost cities of the moderns?

You are probably going to think that this is an odd post but bear with me. Last week I watched an episode of 'Lost Cities of the Ancients' on BBC Four. 500 years ago and more the people of the remote Lambayeque Valley in the Andes in Peru, built 250 Pyramids. The programme told the story of three periods of pyramid building, each of which lasted over 100 years, ending in the 1500s. Archeologists think that the people of the valley believed that  they could appease the gods by building pyramids, and by having a priesthood which engaged in rituals to keep the gods happy. Unfortunately the first stage of this civilisation was swept away by a flood, and the people set fire to the pyramids because they had failed to appease the gods. They then started again and built more pyramids but an another ecological disaster struck, and again the new pyramids were burned. In the final phase, at a place called Tucame, they built 26 pyramids, and it was invasion of Peru by the Spanish which struck terror into the people of the valley, even though the Spaniards never actually came to the valley. The priesthood embarked on a series of desperate rituals including human sacrifice but this failed to drive the invaders away, and finally, having failed, the people burned the pyramids. After that, the civilisation disappeared.

The Pyramids of Tucame

Watching that programme made me think of neoliberalism and the current crisis of capitalism. Capitalism has only been around 200 years or so, about half the time of the civilisation of the Lambayeque Valley. In that time there have been a number of major crises and each time the priests of the 'free' market have decreed that the only solution is 'more of the same', more and more 'free' market. That is where we are now. As we are threatened by the ecological crisis of climate change, our leaders are repeating the mistakes of the past just like the Lambayeque people did, and the faith of our economic and political 'priesthood' in the market is driving our civilisation towards an ecological catastrophe. In the current economic crisis of capitalism, it is the poor, disabled, sick and unemployed, and working and middle classes who are the sacrificial victims of the market.

I just wonder if, in a hundred years time, our descendants will gaze upon the ruins of New York, Moscow and London, and wonder at the stupidity of the leaders who repeated the same mistakes over and over again and drove our civilisation to destruction.

The government that nobody wanted is doing what nobody wants

We have just had two very grim days in succession. First, from this reactionary government, we get Black Tuesday, the dismantling of the NHS, something that the Tories have dreamed about for decades. Now, today, we have had yet another class war budget which benefits the rich and corporations at the expense of the rest of UK society. A budget which contains £20 billion of disguised cuts for corporations.

But this is a government that nobody voted for,and has no mandate to make these changes. Much has been said about the role of the Liberal Democrats in propping up a Tory government, and despite the fact that people should feel betrayed and angry about that, the real problem is Cameron and Osborne, they are the architects of destruction of the public sector, and the 'free' market fundamentalist approach which is damaging our economic, environmental and social fabric.

What we have witnessed is a crisis of capitalism, caused by the market, and now being used as a weapon to destroy all the democratic gains made by ordinary people in the past century. This is the 'shock doctrine' in action.These measures are taking us backwards in time to 19th Century capitalism, an age in which the most vulnerable people, the sick, the unemployed, the disabled, and the low paid, will, like then, be abandoned to the vagaries of the market. In the USA, there are  already shanty towns and tented villages, and make no mistake, that will happen here. We will see slums in the UK, where the poor and disadvantaged, live in abject Third World levels of poverty. Don't believe it? These things are already happening in Greece, which is the front line of  'free; market austerity. The British people need to wake up and smell the very bitter taste of Coalition coffee.

What's the solution? We have to make use of the democratic process and get out on the streets and protest peacefully to bring about change. The Egyptians have shown us the way. We need to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square. We need to work and agitate in the trade unions to build this protest movement, and we need to make sure that the Liberal Democrats get wiped out in the next round of local government elections in May. There is hope, and protest groups like UK Uncut have shown the way forward. We need to work together use this pressure to crack open the Coalition, and force an election at which we can persuade people to vote for anti-austerity parties like the Green Party and TUSC. We are in the fight of our lives and we need to make this fight count. 

'Free' market myths no.3: entrepreneurs create wealth

It seems that wherever you go these days you are subjected to neoliberal propaganda. The media is full of 'free' market pundits endlessly repeating the mantras of "red tape" and "privatisation", and no matter how bad things get, as a result of the economic crisis created by neoliberal 'free' market fundamentalists, we are told we need more and more of the same. As I've said before this is because the 'free' market fundamentalism of the neoliberalists is not just a mere ideology - its more a system of belief. The advocates of the market have more in common with the fanaticism of the Taliban than they do those who have historically been on the political and economic right.

Which brings me to the third post in my series about 'free' market mythology - entrepreneurship. In the mythology of the market, entrepreneurs, who start out with small businesses and end up with empires, have been elevated to the role of magicians, they are the Gandalfs and Harry Potters of capitalism, individuals possessed of exceptional powers, and without them, you would think that we would all still be living in caves. If you do an internet search on 'wealth creation' you will find many dozens of evangelical articles which extol the virtues of entrepreneurship, and the vital role of entrepreneurs as wealth creators.

The fact is that the magical powers of the entrepreneur have been greatly exaggerated because they are not responsible for wealth creation. But if not them, who is? Step forward the humble worker. All the wealth that has been created in the history of the world has been created by working people, and workers were creating wealth well before entrepreneurs were ever thought of. It is a fact that this iPad I am now using was made by workers not entrepreneurs. The iPad itself was made by Chinese workers in China and was designed by workers at Apple in the USA. No entrepreneurs were involved. The same is true not only of every other product you buy, but the house you live in and the food you put on your table each day. The problem with this reality is that it doesn't fit with the market belief system.

But is not just ecosocialists like me who think that very little if any real wealth is created by entrepreneurs. Even Scott Shane, Professor of Entrepreneurial studies at Case University in the USA, doesn't think entrepreneurs create wealth. He thinks that large established businesses can create more jobs in the USA than entrepreneurs. The fact is that the plucky entrepreneur who sets up a small business that becomes a successful corporation is actually the real myth. The chances of it happening are very small indeed. An article in the New York Times also debunks many of the myths about the small number of entrepreneurs who do make it. Far from being the plucky barrow boys of 'free' market mythology they are well educated individuals who come from middle-class or wealthy backgrounds. These people are usually older than the myth-makers would have you believe and have a track record which often includes business failure. In fact, co-operatives, which are run democratically by workers, have a far better track record of success than businesses set up by entrepreneurs.

'Free' market propaganda has penetrated so far into our media that statements such as "entrepreneurs create wealth" have become almost accepted as axiomatic. I was listening to Radio 4 recently and caught part of one of the business programs which are becoming all the more common these days. The format is that a presenter sycophantically 'interviews' 'successful' businessmen and women and gushes about how rich and talented they are. On this programme I heard one of the 'interviewees' say that poverty could be eliminated in India if there were more entrepreneurs. But this is arrant nonsense. There are already millions of people running their own small businesses in India and the Third World. They are all poor and will remain so. They run these businesses because they have no choice, because 'free' market capitalism has failed to find them a job or a decent living. If they could get a decent job as an employee, they would jump at the chance. This is explained by the economist Ha-joon Chang in this excellent post on poverty in the 'developing' world. And what's more as capitalism fails in the west, more and more people are having to create their own jobs. This isn't a success as some would have you believe, its a failure. A failure of capitalism create decent jobs that people want. In fact, as the 'free' market fundamentalists gain more influence, so the number of real, decent jobs that people would want to have, continues to decline.

The simple truth is the the myth of the entrepreneur is an important pillar of 'free' market fundamentalist belief and propaganda. It enables those who are successful capitalists, who bask in the glory of wealth, to promote an image of plucky success. Don't they richly deserve their vast riches? Didn't they do it on merit? Er....well actually no. Capitalists are overwhelmingly people who inherit wealth, they don't create it. Those that are successful like Gates and Murdoch usually rely on creating a monopoly for success, as Gates did with Windows, and Murdoch did with Sky, not brilliance and dynamism. But don't be fooled, capitalists get wealthy by exploiting the efforts of workers through the mechanism of 'surplus value' as Marx described in Capital. But for the purposes of the 'free' market fundamentalists it is essential that you think otherwise.

'Free market' capitalism is just a racket

As the 'free' market fundamentalists of the neoliberal right continue their class war mission to drag us all back to nineteenth century conditions its becoming clearer that the 'economic policy' they support is little more than a racket. Before I describe this, its worth considering one of the central problems of capitalism - the falling rate of profit. In the nineteenth century many economists accepted that there was a tendency of the rate of profit to fall over time and Marx explained how that worked in Capital. Of course, Marx's theory has since been disputed, but not disproved. Nevertheless, by the 1970's, after the post WW2 boom profits were beginning to fall. The solution? - neoliberalism. Neoliberalism works by screwing workers, including middle class workers, harder, and reducing their living standards. Quite simply capitalists take a bigger slice of the cake, leaving ever fewer crumbs for the rest of us.

That is why our pensions, wages, and working conditions have been under attack for the past 30 years. The politicians who have been doing this to us have invented a series of plausible 'excuses' for doing so. In the case of pensions the 'excuse' is demographics, people are living longer, and so they are, but decent pensions are still affordable, the real reason they are being removed from us is to increase profits for corporations.

This is also the reason why our current reactionary neoliberal coalition government are so keen on privatising the NHS and public services - guaranteed profits. The corporations know very well that public services are an easy risk-free way of making guaranteed profits and they have long wanted to take control of them. With austerity and the most reactionary government in half a century in power their chance has come. In the UK this privatisation drive began with Thatcherism in the 1980's well before the current government, with the 'excuse' that the private sector was more efficient and would deliver better services. We have seen what has happened with the railways and energy. Large corporations making vast profits out of the taxpayer and customers (who used to be stakeholders) with none of the promised improvements. The economic crisis we are in, created by neoliberal 'economic policy' has now enabled the whole project to be pushed further and harder than it ever has been in the past 30 years.

We have reached the stage whereby public services are being handed over by our politicians to profit makers without any regard for supposed efficiency. This is nothing more than the imposition of 'free' market ideology and has become a racket, with guaranteed profits for the corporate winners. Here are a couple of examples I have recently come across, but there are many more. In the USA corporations are 'offering' to take over publicly run prisons as long as there is a minimum of a 90% occupancy rate. Just think about that. That means that the public bodies are going to have to find more prisoners to fill those jails! I guess they will just have to search harder for lawbreakers, and find sympathetic judges.

Meanwhile, in the UK A4e, a company which is supposed to help people back into work, is now under investigation for fraud, for allegedly fiddling its figures to get taxpayers money. The founder, Emma Harrison, paid herself £8.6 million last year. But this person is the darling of government, held up as an example of entrepreneurship to us all. A4e is built entirely around government contracts, that is taxpayers money, at least £8.6 million of which has been wasted in my view. That money could have been used to create jobs.

As long as our politicians are hand in glove with the corporations, we can expect more corporate welfarism and cosy deals carving up public services to continue. No risk-taking and no efficiencies -  except for lower wages and worse conditions for the workers who are expected to deliver. Even Tory MP David Davis has condemned 'crony' capitalism, but In fact, this is barely capitalism, its more akin to a form of neo-feudalism where the political barons and capitalist kings conspire to keep the rest of us in perpetual wage serfdom.