What is 'aspiration'?

Everybody has heard of 'aspiration'. It's the word on all our politician's lips. Every political party in the UK must appeal to 'aspirational voters' otherwise it is doomed to permanent opposition. That is a fact - isn't it? At least it is what we are frequently told. The problem is that we first need to understand what aspiration is before we can determine how important it is as a measure of how people intend to vote.

For the political class who have swallowed the idea that appealing to aspiration is essential to win elections, aspiration means 'getting on' - or that is how my parents' generation would have described it. It means you want to earn more, live in a bigger house in a more desirable area, have more foreign holidays, and generally get richer, and richer. In a conference speech in 2012 David Cameron sought to present himself  as the leader of the 'aspiration nation'. Here is a quote from the Guardian:

"In a sometimes defensive speech to his party conference in Birmingham, he sought to fend off the image of his party as a defender of the rich, saying: "We are the party of the want to be better off," and insisting his goal was to spread, not defend, privilege." [my italics].

David Cameron - has the wrong values

But there is a problem with all his.  For a start, how many people don't want to be better off? Not many by my reckoning, and that applies across the spectrum of people in society, from rich to poor. So you could argue that saying you are the party of people who want to be better off is stating the bleeding obvious, or not saying anything much at all. But this is politics and of course there is an agenda here. People who 'want to be better off' are a particular group - they are in Tory terms the 'strivers' and, as we know, in Tory Britain, if you are not a 'striver', you must be a 'skiver'. 

So the word 'aspiration' has become a particular neoliberal framing of those who 'aspire'. It divides the nation into those who are worth something and those who are worthless. The 'hard-working families' on the one hand and the 'benefit scroungers' on the other. And 'hard-working families' are those that the share Tory values of 'getting on' even if it means trampling on others to be 'better off'. The poor, the low paid and the unemployed, public sector workers - who are of course just a bunch of jobsworths - can be written off. 

A perfect example of an 'aspirational' person trampling on others to 'get on' would be someone who took up the right-to-buy their council house. They get a public asset at a knock-down price, and by doing so they deny the right to live in that house to others who need social housing. They can then go on to sell the house at a handsome profit and when they do, it will almost certainly be bought by a landlord who rents out the property at an exorbitant rent. And that is exactly what has happened with many thousands of council houses sold as a result of this Tory policy, and the outcome is a housing crisis. So much for the 'aspirations' of these Tory voters.

Aspiration means a lot more to me, and many others in the UK, than simply 'getting on' and personal gain, because my aspiration is to live in a better society, one which has genuine equality and one in which we don't live beyond our means environmentally. A society in which everyone has access to decent housing, meaningful and rewarding work, and is able to live in a wholesome environment. That kind of society will make everyone better off, and that's what aspiration ought to be about, something which reflects the right values rather than the narrow, materialistic and selfish values of David Cameron, the Tory Party - and Blairite Labour. It's not the kind of society that can be built by making a few more people 'better off' by policies like right-to-buy. What's more, it's the kind of society that lots of people would like to vote for if they were given the chance. 

We need to reject the neoliberal framing of 'aspiration' and replace it with one which reflects the values of social, economic, and environmental justice. And if you aspire to these values like I do, you can help to realise them by voting for candidates that support environmental, economic and social justice. 

Why Owen Jones is wrong to urge people to vote for Labour

I've got a confession to make - I'm an Owen Jones fan. I've read Chavs and The Establishment and I think they're both good books, not groundbreaking perhaps, but a timely reminder of the way in which our stitched up sham democracy works and the central importance of class - the issue which dare not speak its name in 21st century Britain. But I do have a problem with Owens Jones's politics because although he's a worthy fighter for social justice, public services and the welfare state, and an enemy of neoliberalism, he has chosen the wrong vehicle to further his political aims in the UK - namely the Labour Party.

As far as this election is concerned he has become a fully paid up member of the Polly Toynbee 'hold your nose and vote for Labour' faction. Polly recently repeated almost exactly the same call to 'hold your nose' in The Guardian as she did in the 2010 election. The problem is if you hold your nose for long enough you are certain to suffocate, and you are going to have to hold it for a very long time if you expect any change from the neoliberal Labour Party of 'red' Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.

So Owen urges us to vote Labour to keep the Tories out, and when a Labour government is in power, we can all put it under pressure to do the nice things instead of the nasty things - like continuing to implement cuts and austerity, applying a token plaster to the semi-privatised NHS and 'balancing the budget' - which is at best an economically illiterate policy. Its a bit like asking someone to vote for Terminator instead of Godzilla on the basis that there will be marginally less collateral damage. 

The problem is that many of us have gone beyond that stage and have no interest in the lesser of two evils. Despite the rotten electoral system we have to contend with with we want to vote for something we can believe in, a Party that is capable of delivering real change, even if that is not at the next election, or the one after that, because we are in it for the long haul. Its clear that the only Party that can deliver that change is the Green Party, the party that espouses the politics of Owen Jones himself, even if he can't yet bring himself to vote for it.

Both Labour and the Tories increasingly resemble zombie parties in a hollowed out democracy. Both have abandoned their traditional base for the corporations and super rich and both have been complicit in the drastic decline in our democracy in the past 30 years or so. No wonder fewer and fewer people can be bothered to vote for either of them. But more and more people are seeking out a progressive alternative to Labour and that is why the Green vote is growing and why Green Party membership passed 61,000 today, and will continue to grow. After neoliberal Labour have failed to win a majority I hope that Owen will fight to move a Labour-led government to the left - as a member of the Green Party.

Ukip are using the oldest trick in the book: the scapegoating of 'other'

One of the tricks of the neoliberal 'free market' right has been to try and convince the millions who have no stake in the system - 'free market' capitalism - that they have something to gain from it. We were told in the 1980s that cutting taxes for the rich would result in a 'trickle down' of wealth to everyone in society, that their gain would be our gain. What they didn't say is that neoliberalism - then known as Reaganomics - is really about transferring wealth from the 99% to the 1% - its a one-way process. As the 1% gain from tax cuts, and lower wages for workers, social spending on health, education and housing is slashed to the detriment of the majority, and people have to go into debt to maintain a half decent standard of living. So they take away our wealth and then still make us pay by forcing us into debt-slavery. In the UK and USA one of the most potent examples of debt-slavery is student loans.

So far so good, for them, but what happens when the wheels come off the neoliberal casino capitalist bonanza, and the crash comes, as it did in 2008, and people can see their living standards falling before their very eyes? Who to blame for the crisis? Not the real culprits obviously - not the super-rich, the bankers and their tame politicians. Step forward the perennial scapegoat, someone who is 'other' and can easily be recognised as 'not one of us'. This is a trick which has long been used to great effect by the political right. In Nazi Germany it was the Jews who were singled out, and in today in 'Ukip Britain' its 'immigrants'. And for Farage and Ukip, the beauty of blaming immigrants is not just about deflecting attention from the people who are really responsible for unemployment, low pay and poor housing but also Europe bashing, because of the influx of EU citizens into the UK.

The natural supporters of Ukip are those who have been 'left behind', those whose pay has fallen or stagnated and who are trapped in poor housing and can't see much of a future for themselves. They are people with a grievance, often members of the white working class who once would have been natural working class Tories or Labour supporters. I've commented in this blog before about how New Labour have much to answer for in the rise of the far right in Britain. A few years ago it was the BNP who benefited from a protest vote by largely white working class people resulting in Nick Griffin being elected as an MEP. With the implosion of the BNP, Ukip have moved to fill that political space, promoted by the corporate media. Of course Farage's latest outburst, about the scrapping of equality legislation, and talk of Ukip being 'colour blind' is just another racist appeal to shore up Ukip support ahead of the election. What's wrong with employers giving jobs to 'English people' instead of 'foreigners'? Quite a lot actually - its called racial discrimination - that's why we have the legislation.

The solution? End austerity; allow councils to build social housing; make corporations and the rich pay their taxes; scrap student loans; bring in a living wage; use green QE to create meaningful jobs, get people back to work, and tackle climate change in the process. All pretty obvious stuff but apparently a step too for for the Labour Party. That's why Labour are failing in Scotland and aren't going to win the next election. Only one mainstream party has those values and policies and that is the Green Party. That's why they are now the third biggest Party in England and Wales.

The Green Party is the workers party

What do Greens know about workers and workers' rights? Aren't we just a bunch of tree-huggers and middle class do-gooders? That's what some of our political enemies would like to have you believe but the reality is quite different. Green Party members, along with most of the population, are workers themselves and face the same daily struggles that all workers do in austerity Britain. The Green Party has demonstrated its commitment to supporting and working with workers organisations by creating the post of Trade Union Liaison Officer on the national executive, and The Green Party Trade Union Group has existed for many years.

Our relations with trade unions are improving all the time and its hardly surprising that this is the case when our MP Caroline Lucas and our Leader Natalie Bennett, along with many of our members have shown solidarity with striking workers on the picket line. But what really matters is the Party's approach to workers rights and work itself. If you want to look at all of our policies on Workers rights and employment follow the link to our policy website. 

For this post I've picked out three policy sections which I think will interest most workers because they cover the fact that we recognise that work doesn't just take place in the formal economy, support the right to join a trade union and the right to take industrial action - "without the threat of dismissal and discrimination':

WR101 We define work in the full sense, not the traditional limited definition as employment in the formal economy. Green thinking recognises the latter as one part of the whole - a large part, but not the only one. Work exists in a variety of forms, each related to and often affecting others, like species in an ecosystem. Work covers all the activities people undertake to support themselves, their families and communities.

WR410 We support the right to join a trade union, and condemn discrimination by employers against union members. We shall enact a statutory right to join a union, which shall apply to all workers of any occupation or profession; this will include members of the police, security and armed services. We support unions taking the unwaged and unemployed into membership. Discrimination against union members, and in particular refusal of employment or dismissal on grounds of union membership, shall be illegal.

WR432 The Green Party recognises the right to take industrial action without being in breach of contract and without the threat of dismissal or discrimination, in accordance with ILO Convention 87 and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. We will ensure this right is protected in UK legislation.

Green Party members supporting striking workers

But that's not all, because the Green Party believes in economic democracy - the right of workers to own and democratically control the businesses they work in - and what's more we intend to provide workers with the means to own those businesses:

WR610 We will grant employees the legal right to buy out their companies and turn them into workers co-operatives. Buy outs would be funded by a Green National Investment Bank and contingent on the co-ops following green and ethical policies. These co-operatives would localise economic decision-making and give employees incentives for greater productivity.

A Green Party government would aim to make a fundamental shift in the way our economy works, to empower workers and ensure that the economy is embedded in local communities and not at the mercy of remote 'investors' simply seeking to profit from their labour. There's lots more, so why not take a look at our policy website and help us make these changes a reality? - join.greenparty.org.uk.

A Yes vote in Scotland will be a massive boost for democracy

Have you noticed how politicians in the West like Barack Obama and David Cameron are always banging on about how good democracy is? There's a problem though. In the West the 'powers that be' - the establishment or ruling class if you prefer - like democracy when it serves their purposes, and that means getting the result they want.

One of the classic examples in recent times was the Irish referendum on the EU constitution. The Irish had the good sense to vote against. Was the constitution killed off?... er no ..  but twelve months later they were made to vote again - and this time they delivered the 'correct result'. It was a travesty of the democratic process but it suited the purposes of the Euro-ruling class. So, democracy is OK as long as the voters get it right. In neoliberal Europe and the USA it hardly matters which party you vote for because you will always get the same result - neoliberalism.

Of course all was going smoothly in the Scottish referendum on independence until The YouGov poll put the Yes campaign in the lead, then all hell let loose with a barrage of threats about pensions and mortgages and doom from banks such as Deutsche Bank, followed by the cancelling of PMQs and a dash to Scotland by Clegg, Cameron and Miliband, and resolute pro-union bias from the BBC. The Scots were in danger of doing the unthinkable - voting for something they wanted rather than the 'correct result'. And a 'correct result' has to be obtained so that any danger of a progressive alternative to neoliberal austerity emerging in Scotland can be squashed.

A Yes vote in Scotland will be a massive boost for democracy

In less than two days time Scots will be going to the polls to vote in the independence referendum. The outcome, despite the fear-mongering and bullying of  British capital and their tame politicians, is too close to call. Whatever the result, it will cause an earthquake in British politics. A yes vote will tear asunder the UK, and even a narrow win for no will shatter the political set-up in the UK. But how did we get here? You've guessed it - New Labour. If the Labour Party hadn't betrayed everything it ever stood for and embraced Thatcherism there never would have been an SNP government in Scotland or a referendum on independence.

What's done is done. The purpose of this post isn't to put the boot into Labour, only to explain why I think we are where we are. But the behaviour of Labour should act as a warning. The UK needs a political party of the progressive left which will act in the interests of the 99%. Without that people will look for alternatives and often those alternatives will be distasteful. The rise of both the BNP, and now UKIP in England are due to anger and disillusionment with a system that acts only in the interests of corporations and the rich.

I wish the Scots well. I don't believe a yes vote is about nationalism, I think its about the triumph of hope over fear and I support the Yes campaign because I think the Scots have a perfectly good chance of building a successful economy and a progressive society which works for the benefit of the many not the few. I also believe the rest of the UK will have a better chance of doing the same once people can see that democracy can work and overcome the interests of the ruling class. Whatever the result, the complacency, arrogance and incompetence of our so-called leaders and their friends in business has been painfully exposed. Hopefully things will never be quite the same again.

The Green Party must be a radical party if it is to make real electoral progress

I started this post with an Internet search for the meaning of the word 'radical'. One of the first definitions I found was this: a radical is - "One who advocates fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions". In Caroline Lucas the Green Party has a fine radical campaigning MP who is trying to bring about real fundamental change in our society. One of the recent examples of this is her introduction of a bill into parliament which would bring about the re-nationalisation of the railways. Speaking about the bill she said:

 "Britain was once world famous for our trailblazing and hugely successful railways, but today’s privatised system is ripping off passengers, harming the economy and failing the environment. From my inbox, it’s clear that poor rail services and overpriced fares are amongst the biggest concerns for my constituents".

This is just one of many radical changes that Caroline has tried to bring about since she became an MP, and this has made her deservedly popular, so much so that she was awarded the title of MP of the Year. She was also willing to challenge the conventions of parliament by wearing a "No More Page Three" T-shirt at a select committee hearing.Like many people I think that Caroline Lucas is the best MP we have in the UK and that, if she is re-elected in 2015, as she deserves to be, it will be because of her radical approach.

If you spend any time watching the BBC, you might be tempted to think that all is well in the UK but is isn't. The savage cuts introduced by the government, increasing privatisation, and failure to tackle climate change or tax dodging by corporations have left many people in despair. The Labour Party has failed to challenge the Coalition government on any of these issues, and pledges to maintain the cuts if it wins the next election. Only the Green Party offers a real and radical alternative to "business as usual", to use Caroline Lucas's own words, and this alternative gives the party an historic opportunity to make a real electoral breakthrough in the next two years.

However, the Party won't achieve electoral success if it doesn't present itself as a radical party of change, and implement radical change when it gets the opportunity to exercise power. Simply being a slightly greener version of the Liberal Democrats, or promoting a bit more social justice than Labour just won't cut it with an electorate that wants real change. I've posted before about how the Irish Green Party followed the road to self-destruction by going into a disastrous coalition with Fianna Fail and collaborating with a neoliberal austerity cuts agenda. Why would any of the millions of progressive voters bother to vote for a party that offers little more than the alternatives, especially if you don't think that party can get elected anyway? You have to have a really good reason to take the plunge and vote Green, and that good reason can only be that you are confident in the radicalism the party stands for, and that it will be delivered. That is where the Irish Green Party manifestly failed.

If the Green Party is serious about getting into government, it has to be serious about radical reform of the UK's economy, institutions and infrastructure, and pursuing much much more than an ecological agenda, otherwise it will remain a niche party on the fringe of the British political scene. The Green Party has the right policies for radical change and Caroline Lucas is leading the way, now the rest of the party needs to follow her.

What is work and what is it really for?

What is work, what is it for, and what is it going to look like in the future? Do we need to work and how much work should we do? These are increasingly important questions, particularly in an age when we have to build a sustainable economy, adjust to climate change, and capitalism is unable to provide people with work. It's worth enlarging on that last point, what exactly do I mean by 'unable'? We can see that capitalism is unable to provide work for millions of people in Europe and America because of the failure of austerity. But austerity itself is simply a means of making the 99% pay for the failures of financial capitalism which culminated in the great crash of 2008.  Western Governments, the implementers of austerity, are working in the interests of the capitalist class, the 1%, and have no intention of returning to 'full employment', which was the policy of governments in the 1960s. Nowadays, we have to hope we can get a job, however, low paid, or we have to create one for ourselves, or we have to suffer the indignity of being treated like a scrounger, on benefits, because governments aren't actively going to intervene to create jobs like they used to. Given this current neoliberal approach to employment, we could end up with high levels of unemployment, and underemployment indefinitely, and there are good reasons for thinking that this will be the case. In other words, there will never be a return to the days of full employment and decent pay and pensions - unless we do something about it.

Neoliberal austerity is a response by the capitalist class, and their supporters in government, to the falling profitability of capitalism. So was the massive financial boom, fueled by deregulation, which started in the 1980s. The global economy is now dominated by financial capitalism and there is still an ocean of debt and dodgy bust banks. In addition, there is the tendency in modern monopoly capitalism towards economic stagnation. In short, the system is bust, and without deep-seated reform, there will be no real recovery.

So let's get back to the subject of work itself. What is it? Put simply work is what people do. It is all the things that we do to maintain our existence, build and make the things we need, and make our lives fulfilling. It includes the raising of children, housework, gardening, and caring for others. Raising children, for example, creates the next generation of workers and consumers, that is 'work' that we do for capitalists unpaid - for free. Work should not be slavery, wage slavery or drudgery. Even hard physical work can be rewarding and satisfying if it produces useful things that we need. So why is so much work that we do dull and filled with drudgery? Karl Marx had a compelling explanation. He said that work in a capitalist mode of production created alienation. A succinct explanation can be found here:

"In a capitalist society, the worker’s alienation from his and her humanity occurs because the worker can only express labour — a fundamental social aspect of personal individuality — through a privately owned system of industrial production in which each worker is an instrument, a thing, not a person."

Karl Marx: understood the alienation of workers

There is nothing natural about working in an office or factory from 9 to 5. In the early days of industrial capitalism, workers had to be schooled into working hours and into conditions they had never experienced. We have all been trained to believe that this, or some modern variant, is what 'work' is. But work should be satisfying, creative and produce useful things, and be an activity that we can enjoy with a strong measure of control over what we do. In a capitalist economy, only a relatively few people are able to produce things that they own. The abandonment of the full employment policies of the past is driving more people to create their own work. 'Free' market ideologists would have us believe that this is a success and that people are be becoming more 'enterprising'' but it is really a failure of the system.

If there is less 'work' available, can we divide it up? There has long been a debate about the amount of work there is to go around, and some people have proposed that the available work should be shared out, with people working a shorter week. The New Economics Foundation has suggested in a report that the normal working week should be reduced to 21 hours, which the average amount of time people in the UK work. One of the key findings of the paper was that -  "If time devoted to unpaid housework and childcare in 2005 was valued in terms of the minimum wage, it would be worth the equivalent of 21% of UK GDP" - which would account for a lot of the unpaid work that is carried out.

There are no easy answers, but at least three things need to happen; we have to build a green, sustainable economy which can help us adapt to climate change; we must give people control over what they produce through economic democracy and we must recognise all the socially necessary unpaid work which people do, and that means paying people to raise their children. As for the latter, there is a way of doing this which is fair and equitable and helps to deal with issues of social security which people face - pay everyone a basic income. I'm not going to discuss how a basic income would work in great detail here because that would be a post in itself but it has been successfully tried as this example from India shows. There are various ideas about how it would work and be funded but essentially it is an unconditional payment to every adult in society. But it must not be used to replace benefits. One sensible way of paying for it would be via a land value tax. 

Finally, I was interested to read an article in the Guardian by Guy Standing about job insecurity in a global economy. He suggests that job security is a thing of the past and that we need a better welfare system. Whilst I wouldn't disagree that we need a better welfare system the real answer is to take the economy out of the hands of capitalists and put it into the hands of the people through economic democracy. That is the way to create job security. We can do that by 'occupying' our economy as I have suggested in this post. And for a start, we need a Green New Deal to create one million climate jobs, a national investment bank to fund co-operatives and we need to look at providing people with a basic income. 

Real change is possible if you vote for the Green Party, and now is the time to start

Would you like to see the return of British Rail and the end of rip-off rail fares? How about an end to tuition fees so that young people can go into higher education without massive debt? And what about a Citizen's Income, so that people can live in dignity if they are disabled or become unemployed, and a financial transaction tax and an end to tax dodging? How about investment in housing and a  Green New Deal to end the misery of poor housing, homelessness and unemployment?  These are all things that millions of people in the UK want, a real change to the endless austerity, economic stagnation and pandering to the rich and corporations which is the stock-in-trade of the Coalition government.

But to bring about these changes those people will have to vote for the Green Party locally, and in the European and general elections. Now is your chance to make a start down that road to positive change. Vote for the Green Party in the local elections on May 2nd! Watch our party political broadcast to find out more, and to help us build a better future visit - join.greenparty.org.uk

There is a real alternative plan for the economy and RBS

Today I came across two news items which struck me as absurd. In the first David Cameron was making a speech in which he defended the government's economic 'policy of deficit reduction', which is better known as austerity. In his speech he came out with all the usual stuff, including the fact that reducing government spending was the only way to cut the deficit, and that there was no alternative. But clearly he is wrong. As others, including even Vince Cable have stated, there are very real alternatives. In a shrinking or stagnant economy its more difficult to reduce a deficit, and that, after three years of austerity is where we are now. 

The problem in our economy is lack of demand caused by high levels of unemployment, and falling living standards for the 99%. In those conditions people can't afford to buy, and tax revenues fall, especially when commodity prices are rising. If governments increase spending on much needed infrastructure projects such as social housing that stimulus creates jobs, raises tax revenues and revives the economy. You don't have to be a Keynesian to subscribe to this view. The key point though, is that it has never been cheaper to borrow money, so this is the time for governments to spend. Furthermore, there is really no need for our government to borrow, it can create money through quantitative easing (QE). The Bank of England (BoE) has created £375 billion of dosh through QE without any beneficial outcome because it has been wasted on buying bonds. In effect all this has done is benefit the very banks which caused the crisis in the first place by increasing their profits! What we really need is green QE, which means spending money created by the BoE on building environmentally friendly homes, investing in renewables and creating a million green jobs. This will revive our economy, help end the misery of unemployment, create the renewable energy we so desperately need, and move us towards  a green economy for the future.

The second bit of news was as priceless as Cameron's failed analysis of the 'need' for austerity; Mervyn King who is still governor of the BoE today put forward a cunning plan to sell off the infamous Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). This consisted of splitting RBS into a 'good bank', with all the profitable bits, and a 'bad bank' containing loads of nasty debt. There is a huge problem with this plan because the private sector gets the good bits and we, i.e. muggins the taxpayer, gets to pick up the bill for all the nasty stuff, which we will no doubt be paying off for the next generation or so. But there is a much better plan. Split RBS and give the 'good' parts to the taxpayer to create a green national investment bank, and give the 'bad' bits back to the people who created the problem in the first place -  the bankers and their shareholders.

These two news items speak volumes about the people who run our country. They live in the past. They have no idea of what is good for the UK and the people who live here. They serve the interests of a narrow and privileged elite. These are the real benefit scroungers - to use their own terminology. They leach off the state to the tune of £billions whilst seeking to deny the poorest and most disadvantaged people in our country the tiny amounts of money needed to keep them going. They also haven't a clue about the restructuring our economy needs to undergo if we are going to create a green economy to deal with climate change. We deserve much better than his, and the only way to achieve real change is to campaign, agitate, and ultimately vote for a positive alternative. That alternative is the Green Party. Join us and help make that change happen. There is no time to lose.

Are there Green red lines? - You bet, its time to fight the bedroom tax!

Since the general election in 2010 the Coalition government has been waging class war against the people of the UK. In his 'emergency' budget in 2010 Chancellor George Osborne inflicted £81 billion of austerity cuts on the poorest and most vulnerable people in our country, including the low paid, the unemployed and disabled people. Women have been disproportionately hit by these cuts and 700,000 public sector workers have lost or will lose their jobs as a result. And all this after those very people helped to bail out the banks and financial capitalism with their hard earned taxes.

We are told that the purpose of the austerity cuts is to 'reduce the deficit' and save the economy. But that is a lie, and austerity hasn't reduced the deficit. The real aim of austerity is to use the economic crisis to destroy the welfare state, and privatize the NHS and public services for the benefit of capitalists and their corporations. Austerity is working, and working very well for the richest, who are gaining wealth whilst living standards for the rest of us have fallen. Austerity is class war. Those who have read the book 'The Shock Doctrine', by Naomi Klein, will know that, in times of crisis, capitalists and their tame politicians use the crisis to roll back the social and economic gains made by the 99% by imposing 'free' market 'policies' such as welfare cuts, privatisation and deregulation.

In the UK, the Coalition government has tried to deflect blame for the cuts by making councils impose them at a local level. Councils have already had to impose cuts but we are now at a stage where some of the most savage cuts in benefits are being introduced, including changes to council tax and the so-called 'bedroom tax', affecting the disabled, unemployed and low paid. I have always opposed all of the government's austerity cuts but now, as more and more people are becoming aware of the brutal nature of the cuts, we have reached a stage where it is possible to launch a real fightback and make the 'bedroom tax' into this government's poll tax. 

As far as the Green Party is concerned we have opposed the cuts from day one, and we showed in our 2010 manifesto how the crisis could be resolved without privatization or cutting public services. Our Green council in Brighton and Hove has worked hard to do its best for the local people in very difficult circumstances and has been supported by the Party. The question is - are there any red lines for our councillors? When do we reach a point where we can no longer impose austerity cuts on the poorest? The answer to that has to be now, with the advent of the 'bedroom tax' in a months time.

We need to resist the bedroom tax with all the peaceful democratic means at our disposal. We need to learn from the successes of UKUncut, by using protest action and direct action, including supporting victims of these benefit changes whom councils try to evict. We also need to look at all the measures that councils can use to mitigate the effects of the bedroom tax, including the re-classification of rooms in social housing. Its heartening to see that a recent meeting of B&H Green Party passed a motion on the bedroom tax, supported by our MP Caroline Lucas, which stated:

"The Green Party of Brighton and Hove therefore resolves to:

   1. Publicly condemn the 'Bedroom Tax' as an ideologically-driven attack
   on the least well-off in our society.
   2. Request that the Convenor of the Green Group makes a clear public
   statement that no household will be evicted from a Brighton and Hove   City Council owned home as a result of rent arrears accrued solely as a result of this cut to Housing Benefit
   3. Request that the Chair of the council's Housing Committee instructs
   officers accordingly.
   4. Publicise this position, externally and in our own publications and
   websites."

Its time for our councillors to grasp the nettle and lead the fight against this pernicious bedroom tax. If they fail to do so we will lose credibility as a Party nationally. Parties which support austerity get rightly punished by the electorate as recent elections in Europe have shown. As a Party, we have to make a breakthrough to make a real difference in UK politics. We can only do this by leading the resistance to further cuts and providing people in England and Wales with hope for the future with our positive alternatives to austerity.

Neoliberal Labour fail the social justice test - again!

Neoliberal Labour are at it again. This time pandering to the Coalition's class-war driven attack on the unemployed with their own version of Workfare. Labour's new plan - or should that be New Labour's plan? - announced by Ed Balls, is that people who are unemployed for more than two years would be forced to work in some sort of government backed scheme for at least 6 months. And Labour have repeated the Tory mantra that work must pay more than benefits.

So what is wrong with this you may ask? Well there is plenty wrong with it. For a start, unemployment is a failure of Labour's beloved 'free' market to provide meaningful jobs for people. But this can't be admitted, so the unemployed must be blamed for their own predicament, including the 660,000 public sector workers who have lost their jobs under the Coalition. In 'free' market la la land you must always blame the victims never the culprits - i.e. the banks, the tax dodging corporations and the tame politicians who support them, the very people who created the economic crisis we are now all paying for. Secondly, if people on benefits get more money than those in work that tells us the simple truth that those in work are not earning enough. Under the previous New Labour government, Gordon Brown's tax credits for working families simply subsidised cheap labour for the tax dodging corporations. It was a form of corporate welfarism. Thirdly, the unemployed and low paid are exactly the sort of people who ought to expect and allegedly 'progressive' party like Labour to give them some support in difficult times. Instead of this reactionary nonsense, Labour should be committed to full employment, as it used to be, and guarantee every unemployed person a meaningful job. But Labour doesn't have the 'Balls' to do that.

What is the answer? At the last general election in its 2010 manifesto, the Green Party came up with policies to halve the deficit and create one million new jobs in the green sector - in areas like home insulation - to tackle the crisis in the economy and fight climate change. This carefully costed programme, paid for by shelving wasteful and unnecessary projects like Trident, and taxes on environmental pollution and the rich, would have put the UK in a much stronger position than it is now. There would not have been swinging cuts in the public sector and no privatisation of the NHS. There is a real alternative of hope to the despair and destruction that neoliberal austerity is wreaking on the people of Europe and the UK. We can bring about positive change if people vote for us. Do you want to be part of a positive future? Then come and join us.

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.

Bringing back Laws shows the desperation of a failing Coalition

Austerity isn't working. George Osborne's economic policy is in ruins, and he is now a lame-duck Chancellor. Last month the government had to borrow £600 million more, so much for debt reduction. Panic is beginning to grip a failing and fractured government. So it has now been signalled, that David Cameron will re-arrange the deckchairs on the titanic - better known as a cabinet re-shuffle. One of the highlights, we are told, is the expected return to government of the darling of the neoliberal right, David Laws. Laws, who is a millionaire, managed only 17 days in the original Coalition cabinet before having to resign due to a dodgy expenses claim of £40,000, more than many people earn in a two year period.

David Laws

As you might expect, the 'free' market fundamentalists in the Coalition will be delighted by the return of Laws who is a fervent tax-cutter and privatiser. Laws recently called for deeper tax cuts, and the shrinking of the state, in a continuation of the failed neoliberal market 'economic' policies which caused the so-called deficit crisis (the deficit is not really a crisis and is being used as an excuse to destroy welfare) in the first place. All this shows the desperation of a Coalition government which has nowhere to go, the moral bankruptcy of allowing Laws to return, and the growing realisation for Cameron that he will be a one term premier unless he can salvage his sinking ship.

The problem for the market fundamentalists dominating the Coalition is that because they don't believe the state should plan or intervene, by creating jobs for example, they have no levers to pull to revive the economy. Interest rates cannot be reduced, quantitative easing has failed, there is no room for tax cuts, and the economy is still, at best, stagnating. That is why we have suddenly begun to hear calls for big infrastructure projects such as a third runway at Heathrow and a projected £30 billion Severn barrage. Predictably, these are the wrong projects, and even if adopted now, they will come too late to have any effect before the next election. It would have been better for Cameron and Osborne  to begin those projects soon after the 2010 election.

Of course, there are some very real options to get people working and rebuild our economy and you can find them in the Green Party manifesto. But those green solutions are beyond the blinkered ideology of the government. One of the government's key priorities ought to be the building of hundreds of thousands of social homes to boost the economy, create thousands of jobs, and help alleviate our appalling housing crisis, the origins of which lie in the Thatcher government's infamous 'right to buy' policy of 1979. But there is no chance of the government adopting such a common-sense solution. Trapped by their own fundamentalist belief system, government ministers are like the lunatics doomed to repeat the same failed policies over and over again, and each time expecting a different result.

What is the Green Party leader for?

What is the Green Party Leader for? That might seem like an odd question to ask at a time when the Party is just about to elect a new leader, but it has never been clear what the role of the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) really is, and the leadership election has raised issues about the role and position of leader. In fact the Party has only had a leader for four years. Before that, the closest thing to a leader the Party had was the post of Principal Speaker, and there were two of those, one male, one female. We need to ask the question and find the answer for the new leader.

In 2007 the Party members voted for a leader and deputy leader to replace the old system of Principal Speakers. In the end, after fierce debate, the vote to change to leadership secured 73% in favour. Those who supported the change included Caroline Lucas who said:

"This is a fantastic day for the Green party and will help ensure we have a party that is understandable, recognisable and effective" 

At the time, I was against the change, and I still am. But we have to work with what we've got and make the best of it. The problem is that the party isn't sure what it has got and what the role of the leader should be.

What we haven't got is what the other 'grey' neoliberal parties have; a leader who is essentially an elected dictator, someone who lays down policies and has a veto on anything the party wants to do. The Tory party has never pretended to be democratic, always electing its leader from a ruling class cabal until the 1960s. Not that electing a leader has made much difference to the way it works. In Labour, Tony Blair managed to destroy the last vestiges of democracy in the party in the 1990s turning conferences into stage managed media events. I have no doubt that these are not the leadership models that most GPEW members want the party to follow.

So what does that leave us with? What should our leader be doing? Well, there is no doubt that the leader must be a strong advocate for the Party and seek to promote its policies as widely as possible. I believe the leader should be a campaigning leader, and one who holds a dialogue with other groups, such as the trade unions, on behalf of the party. Whoever wins will have to contend with the media spotlight and all the brings with it, including hacks rummaging through your dustbins.

One of the key issues that has arisen during the campaign is the question of whether the leader should be paid. This was not an issue while Caroline was leader, but now it is. It would have been good if the Party had made this decision at the conference in Liverpool, before the election started, but this will now be decided at the conference in September, after the leader is elected. Is the role a full-time job? And what would we expect a Green Party leader to earn - the median wage? My view is that it probably shouldn't be full-time but that might prevent good candidates from standing in future elections. For a small party with very little money, it is difficult to justify spending on full-time posts.

Those who argued for a leader said that the public, the electorate, and the media wouldn't understand a party that had no leader. But there are obvious dangers to having a leader for a radical party. They - the media and ruling class - want us to have a leader. A leader can be co-opted, they can be 'persuaded', they can be vilified, caricatured, but ultimately - they can be made to conform - and ditch policies voted for by their members. The beauty of the old GPEW system was precisely the fact that the media didn't understand it. Just like with Occupy, the powers that be were frustrated that there wasn't an individual they could single out and blame, or coerce, or prosecute and imprison. That gave the movement strength, and it sent out an important signal, that it is possible to organise without a leader.  We are here to bring about change, not just simply play by their rules, and I hope that whoever is elected will show the same determination that Caroline showed, to set the agenda, and not have the agenda set by our political enemies.

Why I will be voting for Romayne and Will

Very soon Green Party members will be receiving ballot papers for the election for Leader, Deputy Leader and GPEx posts. Understandably, most attention will be focused on the election for Party Leader. The leadership election was precipitated by the decision of our MP Caroline Lucas not to stand again after completing a two year term. As I said in a previous post on this issue:

"..party leader Caroline played a blinder as an advocate for the Party's policies of social justice, economic regeneration, fighting climate change, and support for the public sector. As leader, she is going to be sorely missed, and hard to replace..."

I don't want to get bogged down in the leadership election rules but the rules state that for the leader and the deputy, each post must be filled by a person of the opposite gender. So if a male wins the leadership, the deputy must be female and vice versa. Voting is by STV so that does make it possible to support one candidate of either gender for either position. In this post I want to focus on the leadership election.

There are four candidates; Peter Cranie, Natalie Bennett, Pippa Bartolotti and Romayne Phoenix. All of the candidates have put their case, both on their own websites, Facebook, and through party hustings. As far as the latter is concerned, arrangements for hustings were haphazard to say the least, and little account was made by the organisers of the fact that some of the candidates might not be able to attend. In fact, not all the candidates could attend all of the hustings. Next time we need to do much better in ensuring we have a coordinated and organised programme of hustings, including online hustings.

I have made no bones in this blog about the fact that I am an ecosocialist and that I believe that the Green Party must be a radical party or otherwise it has very little useful purpose. We are not here to tinker with the current system. We are fighting against economic and an ecological crises, both of which are linked, and an increasing democratic deficit. 'Business as usual' is no longer an option and the Party needs to be able to get its radical message for change across in an effective way. This is not the time to simply pick a leader who we think will appeal to disaffected Liberal Democrats as some in the Party have suggested. We need to make an electoral breakthrough to bring about change, and we can only do that by having a leader who, like Caroline, can argue our radical case and make their voice heard.

So it will come as no surprise that I believe that Romayne is best placed to do this. Romayne fits the bill very well as an experienced and active, campaigning Party member, who has been an elected councillor, GPEx member, and a very effective platform speaker through her role as chair of the Coalition of Resistance. Like Caroline, she is also well aware of the kind of message we need to get across to a disillusioned electorate, and has clearly put herself at the front of the fight against austerity nationally, in a way that none of the other candidates has been able to do.

Having said that, I have taken time to study the statements and views of the other candidates, and there can be no doubt that they are making all the right noises in terms of growing the membership, improving party organisation and getting more Greens elected. Nothing wrong with that, all good stuff. Peter Cranie has a very good, relaxed, media presence which will be popular amongst many Party members, and is probably seen as a safe pair of hands, and the favourite to win. My problem is that I'm not hearing enough from any of them about that radical edge that I have been talking about, how to promote the real alternative that the Green Party has to offer, and crucially, the kind of policies that support that alternative.

I also like that fact that Romayne and Will are standing as a team on the same platform, and I believe that if they are both elected that will greatly strengthen the Party. I have met Will and I was very impressed both by his down-to-earth approach and the key role he has played in the electoral success the Party has had in the West Midlands. I'd urge you to vote for both of them and as you can see from the video they have made they are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. If you want to know more about their views visit their website here.

Talking about a revolution!

Did you know there was a revolution going on? If you had been watching and reading the corporate media you might have got some inkling but hardly the full picture. But lets look at some of the examples; the Arab Spring; Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain, and even Saudi Arabia; Occupy in the USA; Protests in Russia; in Greece with SYRIZA; and in Spain, Italy, Ireland and the UK; Massive student protests in Chile and Canada. Many of these protests have been ignored by the media but this is a real revolution, and it is happening before our eyes if we care to look for it.

There is a revolution going on!

Why is this happening? - it is because the mass of ordinary people globally are sick and tired of  poverty, unemployment, and the cosy neoliberal stitch-up between commercial interests and tame 'free' market fundamentalist politicians and economists, which is destroying our economies and the planet. In our own small way, as individuals, we are all part of this revolution, but we need to come together as part of a wider international movement which can throw-off the sham democracies we live in, and bring about real and lasting change.That change must include democratic control of our economies and decent housing, healthcare, jobs and education for all.

In the UK, we have the "let them eat cake" politics of David Cameron, his banker friends, and his rotten, discredited Coalition government. In the USA, we have a battle between Obama and Romney, the former is marginally less bad than the latter but both are corporate creatures, dependent on big money to get elected. In Europe, we have Merkel and the sterile dead end of austerity, designed to protect the banks at the expense of the European taxpayers. People have had enough!

It is time for radical democratic change,  and the only way that change can happen is for people to channel their anger and throw off their apathy with the 'system', take to the streets, protest, and vote for parties that can bring about that change. The people of Egypt have shown us the way. In the UK, the Green Party is the only mainstream party which opposes the neoliberal paradigm and has the policies to make the breakthrough that people want. But the Party can only do that if it maintains its radical edge, engages with and works with the wider movement, and campaigns hard for change. Simply seeking electoral success is not enough. To make that breakthrough, we need to demonstrate that we are serious about the changes people want, and we must be able to take them with us. In Romayne Phoenix and Will Duckworth I think we have two leadership candidates for the Green Party who can accomplish that task.


Footnote: I will give my detailed views about the Green Party leadership contest in a later post.

After Caroline - what next?

I'm guessing most Green Party members were shocked by the news last night that Caroline Lucas is not seeking re-election as the Party leader. I also suspect that our political opponents will be relieved. As party leader Caroline played a blinder as an advocate for the Party's policies of social justice, economic regeneration, fighting climate change, and support for the public sector. As leader, she is going to be sorely missed, and hard to replace, so perhaps I should have said - "who next?"

Caroline Lucas

After the local elections, and the news of Caroline's departure as leader, Green Party members need to take stock of where we are, before thinking about what they want from a new leader. We are still a minority party and, although we punch well above our weight, we have a long way to go before we can get into government, even as part of a coalition. We keep making gains in local elections but we have failed to make a national breakthrough despite our anti-austerity message and support for jobs and public services. Many people in the party are committed to plugging away, doing the hard work of leaflet delivering and canvassing, and, whilst this is necessary and commendable, on its own it is not enough.

What the Green Party needs is a strategy which will increase both membership and support in the country as well as energising many of our less active members. What's worrying about the GPEW statement about Caroline (link above) is the talk about attracting disillusioned Liberal Democrats, because that is not the best way forward for GPEW. Why? because the Liberal Democrat Party is neither radical nor green, despite what many of its current and ex-members might like to think. It is an entirely conventional, grey, neoliberal party committed to austerity and the 'business as usual approach' so often condemned by Caroline Lucas herself.

Depressingly, there are those in GPEW who think entirely in conventional political terms and would like to see GPEW replace the Liberal Democrats in Westminster. This is delusional politics for two main reasons: Firstly, the last thing the UK needs is another Liberal Democrat Party, even if it was a fairer, greener version, and the voters won't be fooled by any attempt to do this; Secondly, this is a potentially a move to the right, to what some people would see as the centre ground, though centre-right would be more accurate, and risks the GPEW falling into the same trap as the Irish Greens did - I posted previously about this trap here.

The way forward is for the Green Party to strengthen its position as a party of social justice and radical economic change. By the latter I mean an explicit rejection of neoliberalism, austerity, corporate domination, and the democratic deficit in the EU, and a commitment to the alternatives such as the Green New Deal, ending privatisation and de-regulation, saving the NHS, ending tuition fees, government planning, and control of the banks.  What we should be aiming to do is to attract support from the huge pool of young people, many of whom have never voted, and who want real change, and access to jobs. We should also be attracting support from the millions of ex-Labour voters who believe in the public sector and social justice. And we need to do much better in attracting support from the ethnic minorities. These are all potential supporters who are more likely to be attracted by a party offering a radical alternative than many of the disillusioned Liberal Democrats.

As things stand, Ed Millband is likely to be Prime Minister in 2015, if not before. But this will be a victory by default. People will vote Labour to get the Tories out, not because they love Labour, but in the hope that things will be less worse than they are now. There is still plenty of room for a radical party of social justice at the next general election. We are more likely to make gains then, by going down the route I have described, than the dead-end advocated by those who see replacing the Liberal Democrats as the best bet.

One of the things those on the right of GPEW, who oppose a more radical Party direction, need to come to terms with, is that that green, environmental politics and 'free' market capitalism are ultimately incompatible. This is the elephant in the room, and is central to the whole debate about what kind of Party the GPEW should be. The kind of society we Greens want, is more democratic, more fairly regulated, more local, more community based and truly sustainable, and this is anathema to the corporations, because they understand fully that such a green economy would exclude both them and their destructive practices. That is why people like Nigel Lawson of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) expend so much energy and cash railing against climate change. And that is why so many commenters in CiF rage about Greens being eco-fascists. They get it even if some Greens don't. As I said in a previous post:

".....you have to ask - why is it that climate change has become a left vs right issue over the past decade or so? Why do right-wingers like Nigel Lawson, of the GWPF, Tory MPs, and Ruth Lea seem to think that all environmentalists are lefties and climate change is a left-wing plot to bring about an eco-socialist world? Why do they object so strongly? The answer is simple - capitalism and corporate profits. The 'free' market right have recognised that climate change is a potential threat to established big businesses and capitalist accumulation, which relies on compound growth."

If Ruth Lea and co. think like that, then it makes Green politics radical and anti-capitalist whether you like it or not. Don't believe me? Then read this excellent article by Naomi Klein, "Climate vs Capitalism", which sums up why capitalists are out to kill climate change and green politics. Here is a telling quote:

"The [climate change] deniers did not decide that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy by uncovering some covert socialist plot. They arrived at this analysis by taking a hard look at what it would take to lower global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands. They have concluded that this can be done only by radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their “free market” belief system."

There is no route to a green future in going down the same political cul-de-sac as the Liberal Democrats, and no point in wasting time with the illusion that capitalists will 'see the light' and suddenly become socially and environmentally responsible. In addition, as I've made clear in previous posts, neoliberal capitalism will never revive our economy, and those that believe that existing economic systems can be made to work in the face of climate change are doomed to disappointment and failure.

Finally, there was an interesting post in the Guardian today by party colleague Jim Jepps entitled "Caroline Lucas stepping down is good for the Greens". I do hope he is right. For my money there is only one Party member who has the track record and credibility to replace Caroline Lucas as leader. I just hope he is willing and able to stand.

Footnote:

I just wanted to update this post to clarify some of the points I made in the light of comments I have received here and elsewhere. As for Lib Dems:

1. Lib Dems may be active and disillusioned but do they really share our values? - I don't think so. I'm sure that many ex-Labour supporters and members have values which are closer to our own. I can't pretend this is scientific but it is based on my 40 years of involvement in politics. I am, of course, not opposed to ex-Lib Dem supporters or members who share our values joining GPEW -  In fact I would welcome them.

2. Following on from 1; Five million voters deserted Labour from 2005 onwards, there are over 1 million unemployed people under 25, and many others who are politically disengaged. We also need to reach out to ethnic minority voters. This is a much larger pool of people than disillusioned Lib Dems and these are people we should be targeting. Targeting Lib Dems is a very limited approach for a party that wants to make a breakthrough and shows a lack of ambition as far as I'm concerned.

On Capitalism:

If you have read other posts on this blog you will know that I have been careful to distinguish between "capitalism" and the "private sector". By capitalists I mean people who own the means of production such as Branson, Murdoch etc, people who control and own the the corporations. However, I have no problem with the "private sector". Your local newsagent, pub landlord, tenant farmer, co-operative, and numerous other small businesses etc etc are not capitalists. I welcome the contribution these people make to our economy, in fact, I think it is essential. The problem of "capitalism" centres around the power and sheer social, economic, and environmental destructive capacity of corporations and financial capitalism, including the banking sector. If we want social justice and to fight climate change and deal with resource depletion we will have to move away from the current "capitalist" model which is unsustainable in any case, as I have argued above, and in other posts.

A key part of the purpose of this blog as far as I am concerned is to share ideas and stimulate debate so I welcome both comments that are supportive, and those that are critical, the latter as long as they are constructive and deal with the arguments. I don't publish comments from people who are simply out to slag me off or be abusive.