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. 

N30: the struggle for pensions justice

On 30 November 2011 twenty nine public sector unions took joint strike action over savage cuts to their pensions. Over 2 million workers went on strike, the largest number in the UK since the General Strike in 1926. In Cheshire West Against the Cuts we organised a march and rally in Chester that was attended by over 1000 striking workers and supporters. The march started on Castle drive at 12.30 and as it progressed through the city centre spontaneous applause broke out from many on the onlookers. It was a day of mutual support and solidarity against the attacks of a reactionary class war government, which is making the public sector pay for the crisis we are in. The 3% pensions levy is unnecessary to sustain public sector pensions, and is being used to pay down the deficit.

We had a great day out. There was a lot of happiness in solidarity which is what the bedrock of the trade union movement is about, but there was also some sadness that people were having to do this in the face of a class war attack from their own government. People in the UK have been lead to believe that unions are a thing of the past, irrelevant in a 'modern' age, they are now beginning to realise that they need the support of their fellow workers to survive the onslaught of the capitalist class as the crisis deepens.

There is hope for the future and we can change things but we need to get this government replaced by one which acts in the interest of the people rather than the capitalist elite. That means getting out and voting for alternatives at elections. If you are a public sector worker reading this, consider the fact that the Green Party has a policy for a Citizen's Pension for all at £300 p.w. for a couple and £170 p.w. for single people.

There is a solution for the 99%

Growing economic inequality in the USA, and throughout the West, is something that I have commented on before in this blog, and it is well documented. The incomes of middle class Americans have been stagnant or falling since the 1970's whilst those of the capitalist class have been growing. According to Rupert Cornwell in today's Independent:

"Income disparities are wider than at any time since the Wall Street crash of 1929, and almost 50 per cent of financial wealth in the US is now in the hands of 1 per cent of the population."

The American middle classes are really suffering the impact of 30 years of neoliberalism, and the effects of the financial crash, which began with the sub-prime mortgage scandal. Its important to make a distinction because 'middle class' means something different in the USA and the UK. In the UK, the middle classes are well-off professionals such as doctors and lawyers, whereas in the USA the term 'middle class' includes working families that would be described as 'working class' in the UK. Middle class Americans are crucial to the USA because they are at the heart of America.

Because the USA has always had privatised healthcare and higher education and a weak welfare system, the American middle classes have always lead a potentially precarious existence. If you get ill, you get large health bills, if you can't work because of your illness you can lose your job and your house. In a short space of time you could go from a fairly comfortable lifestyle to being out on the street. In the past the US economy has been strong enough to ensure that this didn't happen to most Americans. That is no longer the case. Millions of Americans are now finding themselves in a situation where they are living hand to mouth, knowing that if they lose their job they will lose everything they had. They are living in fear of joining the millions of families who have already suffered this fate.

We are the 99% is a website which documents the fears and suffering of middle class Americans. Many of these people are hanging on just one paycheck away from disaster and shouldering thousands of dollars of debt.

This photo is typical of the plight of people on We are the 99%

We are the 99%, like occupywallst, which I have been following from its start in mid September, is a reaction against the bailout of Wall Street, and growing poverty, unemployment and economic inequality. The Tea Party was also a reaction to the bailout which came largely from the middle class right and which was rapidly absorbed, manipulated and funded by the capitalist class as I reported here:

"That is what the Tea Party is all about. Millions of Americans are angry, bewildered and frustrated at the recent crash and the fact they aren't getting richer anymore. But there is a huge problem here - they are directing their anger against the wrong enemy. The people who caused the crash - the financial capitalists and corporations of Wall Street aren't being blamed. Instead, the anger is being directed at the government." 

Unlike the Tea Party, the occupywallst movement is really about social justice. It is a recognition that the growing inequality has to be reversed, and that the neoliberalist policies pursued by successive governments have failed the American people. As yet the movement appears to be leaderless and doesn't have a coherent programme and specific demands for change. But it is growing and spreading to other cities in the USA. It is beginning to cause concern to politicians like Obama, who have begun to take notice.

What should the demands of the occupywallst movement be? Well, it's not for me to say, but if you read about the problems of the 99% the solutions are fairly obvious. What Americans need is freedom from fear through access to jobs and public provision - in health, education and social security. These are things that we have in the UK, but we are in the process of losing, due to the Coalitions government's austerity programme, if we don't fight for them. Like us, Americans need a Green New Deal to provide jobs and tackle climate change, they need a properly funded system of public healthcare and higher education. What they need is social security as a right, not welfare as a handout.

One of the greatest of Americans tried to ensure that Americans had all these things but was unable to complete his project before he died. His name was Franklin D. Roosevelt and he enshrined the freedom from fear in his economic second Bill of Rights. His bill of rights is what the American middle classes need. The occupywallst movement don't need to invent a programme because they already have a ready made one, now they have re-discover it and fight for it.

The Green Party Conference

Plenary session at Sheffield Hallam University

My report of the Green Party Conference has been delayed by work, but my head is still full of ideas after having three great days in Sheffield. One of the best things about visiting any political conference is meeting up with fellow troublemakers.  I met lots of people who I have been talking to online for ages, and it was really good to see all of them.

I arrived on Friday and departed on Sunday after a weekend of passionate debate and very stimulating fringe meetings. The fringe is always an important part of conference, where people come together to discuss ideas and ways forward. There is never really enough time to do much of the debate justice, often, speakers take up too much of the allotted time, and I'm afraid this was the case at conference this year. There were lots of excellent meetings but the two that stood out for me were the 'Living Wage' and 'Greens and Capitalism'.

Jean Lambert (right) speaking at the Living Wage fringe meeting

At the latter fringe meeting there was a rousing speech by Derek Wall, who narrowly missed out on becoming Party Chair this year. The speakers, who also included Jonathan Essex and Jane Ennis,  presented the meeting with a cogent criticism of the crisis of capitalism we are going through, in which ordinary people are being asked to pay twice for the failures of capitalism, first through the bank bailout, and now, through the sovereign debt crisis. The economic failures of neoliberalism are being compounded by the ongoing programme of privatisation and deregulation which is making all of us poorer. 

In the main hall there were a number of important debates on policy and organisational issues. Motions on a moratorium for Shale gas extraction (fracking) and against an immigration cap were passed, as were motions to support One Million climate change Jobs and the Coalition of Resistance. There was a very lively and tough debate about the motion on delegate conferences. The debate was complicated by the fact that the motion presented conference with four options. In the end, conference went for Option 4, which was to re-consider the position when the party membership reaches 25,000. In my view, this was the right result. There are powerful arguments for a delegate conference e.g. delegates represent the views of their local party thus widening representation at conference, which means that more members have a say. But we are still a small party, many local parties don't have the resources to support delegates, and, in my view, as an experienced union steward who attended two Unison conferences and two NUT conferences, delegates tend to be the same people every year, activists who may represent the view of the branch committee, not necessarily the wider membership. I look forward to the time when we will debate this issue again at conference.

Relaxing at conference

I need to mention two of the most contentious motions debated at conference . These were; the GPRC report; and the motion on the GP being a model employer. Both motions criticised the party executive, GPEx, over a contentious staffing change. There was heated discussion at the plenary because GPEx  were being censured for the way they had handled the change, and the way they had communicated their reasons for the change to the Party. In the end, the censure motions were passed. Lets hope that lessons will be learned and we can all move on.

There were also a number of excellent emergency motions on; Legal Aid and Justice for All; Robin Hood Tax; Anti – ATOS; Nuclear Waste Disposal; NHS Listening Exercise; Bombardier - Rail jobs; English Riots; ; and the National Planning Policy Framework.

Overall, it was a great conference, with rousing speeches defending the NHS from Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay which put the so-called Labour Party to shame and consolidated our position as the only mainstream party of the left in England and Wales.

London riots - here we go again!

If, like me, you are middle aged, you will have seen many riots in the UK. Brixton, Broadwater Farm, and Toxteth are some of the the better known examples in the past 30 years or so. These riots are always triggered by an incident involving the heavy handed policing of members of an ethnic minority community, usually black. The Broadwater Farm riot was triggered by the death of a black woman, Cynthia Jarrett, when the police were searching her home. The riots always occur in  communities that are characterised by high unemployment, poverty and poor housing. Tottenham has a history of these problems, Broadwater Farm is just one example, and we still have not heard the true facts about the mysterious death of Smiley Culture, who died whilst in police custody in his own home in April 2011. Allegedly he stabbed himself. A thousand people protested after that incident. What the riots show is the simmering resentment that exists in many inner city communities in the UK.

In the case of the Tottenham riot, which took place on Saturday, supporters of the  family of Mark Duggan, who was shot and killed by the police last week, staged a peaceful protest. The police failed to respond to requests from the family to speak to a senior officer. The family and their supporters were kept waiting for hours. The police clearly failed to deal reasonably with the family, sparking further anger. After the Duggan shooting incident, we heard that a police officer had been shot, implying that Duggan had fired on the police, now we hear that both the bullets that were fired came from police weapons. Did someone fire on the police? We don't know. But what we do know is that the police have a history of putting out misleading information in the aftermath of incidents of this kind. In the case of Jean Charles De Menezes, in 2005, the police said that he had behaved suspiciously, and had vaulted a barrier at Stockwell tube station. This turned out not to be true. Jean Charles De Menezes was just a man on his way to work. The police killed an innocent man, and eye-witnesses to the shooting later claimed that they had no need to shoot him dead.

There is a clear pattern here. Communities plagued by unemployment, poverty and poor housing. Heavy handed, inept and racially dubious policing. The police putting out misleading statements about what happened. The police being used to keep a lid on the simmering community resentment. The establishment mouthing platitudes and making token gestures about investment and regeneration.  And so it goes on and on and on. This is 21st century Britain, a place where institutional racism and poverty are still being swept under the carpet, where mass unemployment, and four million people needing housing, has become acceptable . Riot inquiry follows riot inquiry but the same old pattern is still repeated. Kack-handed responses by Home Secretaries like Theresa May, who today launched a tirade against the "criminals" who burned and looted. Yes, Theresa, it was wrong and should be condemned, but why did it happen on your watch? Why were so many people involved? Why did it spread so widely? Tell us the answers to that Theresa, instead of mouthing off the usual platitudes about criminality.

The people who really suffer in the end are the people of the afflicted communities themselves. They are the ones whose houses and businesses are destroyed. I wonder what would happen if people took their resentments, arson and riots to Kensington or Mayfair? What sort of police response would we see then? A very different one to one we saw in Tottenham on Saturday night I'm sure. The point is that nothing will ever change until we have an economic system that can provide decent housing and jobs for all, and a police force which is there to protect citizens, instead of helping to keep them under control. Clearly capitalism is not that economic system, and as long as it exists, so will these problems.

The European project is failing the European people

The Eurozone debacle continues. Now Italy, the third largest economy in the Eurozone, is having to pay much more to finance its debt. Yields, the interest that Italy has to pay on government bonds, have reached over 6% which is unsustainable. So that is Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and now Italy which are already in, or in grave danger of falling into, the sovereign debt crisis.

The people of Europe are being asked by the leaders of Europe to pay for a crisis which is not of their making, whilst the perpetrators of that crisis, the banks and financial capitalists, are being protected. This is not just a betrayal of the people of Europe, by their elected leaders, but of democracy itself. Politicians in Greece have recently sold out Greek sovereignty to the banks, bondholders, and the financial technocrats of the ECB and the IMF by agreeing to a second bailout.

We have been sold the story that the EU is a European creation with the countries of Europe coming together in solidarity after WWII. But the EU is fundamentally an American cold war creation foisted on a weakened Europe after the war, the aim being to create and ensure a capitalist 'free' market ideological and economic hegemony in Europe, at a time when Soviet communism was seen as a real threat. Despite strongish trade unions and a tradition of social democracy, the EU is now a neoliberal state - with neoliberal 'free' market policies enshrined in its constitution. The purpose of the Euro is to pave the way for a European superstate. The aim now of politicians and financial technocrats is to reduce the living standards of workers and the middle classes, in order to create a great big bonanza for western corporations and their capitalist owners. The only thing which distinguishes this capitalist corporatist European project from fascism is the use of suits instead of uniforms and jackboots.

Having created a crisis by building a casino financial capitalism out of democratic control, and nearly bringing down the world economy, politicians and bankers have used the crisis to cut welfare and workers terms and conditions in the USA and  Europe. This is straightforward class war, with ordinary people being made to pay for the failures of 'free' market capitalism. In the current circumstances the EU and its leaders are the enemies of the European people. In his excellent Guardian piece, Mark Weisbrot explains why the Euro deserves to fail. It is beginning to look like its failure may be the only hope for European democracy.

The EU may be a supertanker, but it will have to be turned round if the European people are going to be liberated from neoserfdom (neoliberal serfdom). That means a massive reform of the EU and re-writing of the constitution to remove the neoliberal shackles which bind the EU into this extreme right-wing project.

We are the economy

One of the things that I find utterly baffling and amusing, in a very darkly comic way, is the BBC's analysis of 'our' economy. I listen to Radio 4 because it is supposed to be a serious news station, with journalists who allegedly offer us a realistic analysis of the world we live in. I mean people like; Robert Peston, Stephanie Flanders and Nick Robinson. The problem I have with these people is that their analysis is fairly useless if you really want to understand the world we live in.

What we get offered is an 'orthodox' economic analysis. Just think -  "Middle Ages" and "Catholic Church" . Because that is really what it is like. If you think further you might even get to "Spanish Inquisition". Keep listening  to this stuff and you hear things like - blah IMF, blah blah, default, blah Euro, blah blah Mervyn King, blah blah the markets, etc etc - remember Bart Simpson and his teacher Ms Krabappel? That is what happens to me when I listen to this stuff. Is it because I am thick - or is it because I am hearing total bollox?

I'd like to argue it is the latter, and I'd like to argue that the BBC is little more than a propaganda station for the UK government, and the market. In fact, I'd like to argue that I know more about economics than Stephanie Flanders and  Robert Peston. Is that because I am a bighead? No, its because I am a worker. Remember them? Well, you probably are one if you are reading this.

All you need to know about economics is that all the wealth in the world is created by working people. By wealth I don't mean suitcases full of cash. What I mean is houses, cars, and iPods. I also mean services like teaching, passports, probation, and emptying the bins. This is stuff that we do. Without us, none of these things would happen. We are the world economy. Fuck the markets, they are irrelevant. We don't need them, but they need us, because they prey upon our labour like parasites. They contribute nothing that is socially or economically useful.

Tomorrow, public sector workers will go on strike. Without them there is no economy. Without teachers, our children won't be taught, without civil servants, you won't get a passport.  Whether private or public sector workers - without workers, as Marx explained, we have nothing, no wealth and no prosperity. We don't need bankers, or hedge fund mangers. We don't need the free market. These people and their gambling casino are irrelevant. This is our economy and its about time we took control of it. Support the public sectors workers pensions strike tomorrow, and make that the beginning of a peaceful revolution to bring us to a position where our economy really does belong to us.

Britain's new ruling class

I grew up in Britain in the 1960s. A that time, people used to talk about the ruling class. Nobody thought there was anything odd about that - such talk was common currency, on the bus, in the pub and in the workplace. This was because people wanted change, they wanted the ruling clique bust wide open. I have already referred to this in more detail in a recent post - about how things improved, and how people thought that power had become more accessible to all, largely through the opening up of our higher education system. How things have changed! Now you never hear anyone talk about the ruling class. There is a kind of tacit assumption that we all have equal access to the corridors of power - but I beg to differ. I think that the ruling class  is back, and with a vengeance.

There is no doubt that over the past 20 years or so we have seen the development of a political class of career politicians. Peter Oborne, the right wing polemicist wrote about this in his book, The Triumph of the Political Class, in 2007. In a nutshell, his argument was that a new self-serving political class had grown up, and become dominant in the UK. I have to say that, on the whole, I agree with him. Prior to the emergence of this class, politicians had often lived and worked in the real world before entering parliament. They had to work their way up the ladder. There were working class MPs. But this has changed. Many of the most important and influential of our politicians have jumped straight from higher education into parliament. Worst still, many are the appointees of our leaders, people who were chums of Tony Blair or are pals of Dave and George. These people are parachuted into safe seats knowing that they will be elected, and they owe their allegiance to the people who 'appointed' them.

This process means that more and more of the people who sit in parliament are hand-picked by a small ruling clique. No one else can get a look in. Its as if the House of Commons is set up like the House of Lords. Sure, you can vote for people, but only people chosen by Dave, or Nick, or Ed. Put like that, its a chilling thought, and what does it say about our democracy? I'm not suggesting this is the whole story because I don't believe that these politicians rule on their own. The new ruling class is an alliance of these leading politicians and big business leaders (capitalists, increasingly from the financial sector). What matters is that we are talking about a cabal of people who have things sewn up, and act in their interests - not the interests of the people in the UK. The resulting irony is that Britain is becoming more like Egypt, with a rotten self-perpetuating elite and a fraudulent democracy, just as Egypt struggles to become, more like how Britain is supposed to be.

What suits this ruling group is a narrow neo-liberal right wing ideology dressed up as economic necessity i.e. the usual suspects - privatisation, de-regulation, ending welfare and pensions etc. - which amounts to a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the elite - the rich and the big corporations. No wonder we are being told to tighten our belts, we are facing the biggest heist in history. 

Its not just the fact that our democracy has been subverted by this new ruling alliance that we should be concerned about. Its the fact that some of these 'chums' are unfit to be in positions of power, and never would have been, if they'd had to go through a normal selection process. One topical example that springs to mind is Michael Gove, Minister for Education, and chum of David Cameron, who was parachuted into parliament because Dave thought he was a good egg. But Gove is a deluded right-wing crank who draws his inspiration from Tom Brown's Schooldays. His latest potty idea, that parents should break the teachers strike on June 30th by taking over schools, shows exactly what sort of extremist he now is. Take a look at this priceless photo, which shows just what sort of 'extremist' he used to be.

We can end this  situation, but only by re-asserting control over our political parties and our democracy. By using our votes wisely and judiciously at election time and fighting for change. Its going to be a long hard struggle, and we need to get started now!

Cuts where they're needed, not where they hurt

There is an alternative

On March 26th 400,000 - 500,000 people marched in London for an alternative to the government's cuts programme. In the aftermath, political pundits sniped at the marchers claiming that protests don't work and that the marchers had no coherent alternative.

This blog is about the alternative. In over 200 posts I've laid out how we can create a different kind of economy which will create jobs, wealth and greater economic equality for people in the UK. I'm not a lone voice. The Green Party laid out such an economic plan in its election manifesto. Working with the New Economics Foundation, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas proposed a Green New Deal which would have revitalised our economy in the face the current economic crisis caused by financial capitalism.

This is the kind of fresh economic thinking that we need. It replaces the tired old neoliberal paradigm which has produced the economic stagnation and failure of the past thirty years. If you want economic progress, jobs and greater social equality you can't depend on the unfettered market to provide it. The market is an engine of inequality, producing extremes of wealth and poverty. This has been well demonstrated in the USA in the past thirty years where the rich have become the super-rich whilst the incomes of ordinary people have stagnated. Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote about this recently in Vanity fair and its worth quoting from his article - Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%:

"Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."

Neoliberalism has allowed the rich to grab an ever greater share of the economic cake, at the direct expense of the rest of us. Our politicians have cravenly submitted to the demands of capitalists and their huge corporations. We need an economics that is for everyone, not a tiny minority, and this is what the Green New Deal is about. Its time to put aside the failures of the past, but this can only happen when people wake up, realise what is being done to them and vote for genuinely progressive alternatives espoused by parties like the Green Party.

One law for the rich and another for the rest of us

I've been blogging since last May about how this is essentially a class war government. Tory governments usually are. The Tories have always had a very sharp sense of who their friends are and where their interests lie. They always look after the interests of their class by bashing workers, defending property rights, increasing privatisation and lowering taxes. These are all things which benefit the rich at the expense of the rest of us. They are of direct advantage to people like Cameron and Osborne.

These things are usually done under the guise of economic necessity, to "stimulate growth" or to appease "the market". If people really understood how unfair this all really is and how feather-bedded and protected the rich are the Tories would probably never get elected again - but so far they have got away with it by pretending there is a level playing field.

However, the Tories have recently made it quite clear that if you are rich - you get special treatment. No hint of a pretence of equality here. In the new immigration rules, announced this week, you can't come into the UK if you are poor, but if you are rich we'll now welcome you with open arms. If you have the odd £5 million you can stay here permanently after three years, if you have £10 million it only takes two years.

Apparently, estate agents in London are already getting interest in this cunning ruse from wealthy foreigners. Now we can expect a flood of immigrants, most of who will probably be escaping the dodgy dictatorships where they made their gains. But where will all these people be accommodated? Don't worry. The government's changes to housing benefit rules will ensure that the poor are socially cleansed from inner London, making room for this new influx. Once again, in their historic mission to benefit the rich, and increase inequality and social division, the Tories have triumphed.

Public good, private bad

I never thought I would be re-publishing a previous post on this blog, but David Cameron's statement this week that every public service should be privatised made me realise that this re-post was essential. This was posted in April 2009, when we had a new Labour government but it anticipates what a future Tory government would do:

People who have followed the posts on this blog will know that I have been explaining how privatisation benefits the rich at the expense of the poor but it is probably worth pulling it all together in one post so here goes.

Privatisation of public services has been a key part of the neoliberal Thatcherite project of the past thirty years. Privatisation of public services makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. This neoliberal project is all about dumping costs onto the poor whilst creaming off more of society's wealth for the rich.

So how does it work? Quite simple really but it has to be bolstered by one big crucial lie. The lie is that the private sector is always, but always, more efficient than the public sector alternative. No evidence is ever produced for this but it has been repeated so often over the last few decades that most people accept it as a fact. There is evidence though to show that the private sector is not more efficient than the public sector. Here is an example that comes from the International Monetary Fund! (IMF) - see this paper. Here is a quote you might find interesting:

“….the empirical evidence and the theoretical debates do not support this assumption. There is a consistent stream of empirical evidence consistently and repeatedly showing that there is no systematic significant difference between public and private operators in terms of efficiency or other performance measures. The theory behind the assumption of private sector superiority is also being shown to have serious flaws”.

But we do need to consider what is meant by 'efficiency'. Normally it is taken to mean that the private sector can deliver public services at a lower cost - as if that was all that mattered anyway. The fact that the private sector can deliver services at a lower cost is questionable to say the least. But let’s consider what happens when a public service is privatised. A private company moves in and takes over the service and the workforce that delivers it. The company needs to make a profit so the first thing it does is to cut the workforce and lower the terms and conditions of the remaining workers. Workers have their pay, holidays and pensions slashed. The cost of resulting unemployment and low pay is pushed onto the taxpayer and the cost of the profit is pushed onto the remaining workforce. In fact the employer is literally taking money out of the pockets of its new employees and giving it to shareholders - hence a direct transfer of money from the poor to the rich. This is not lower cost delivery it is dumping the costs onto workers and the wider society. Its not efficiency - it is legalised robbery.

But it’s much worse than just this. Because we don't have competing public services (i.e. you only have one waste collector in your local council area) - what you end up with is a private monopoly. Once the public sector alternative has gone what happens if the company providing the service goes bust? Well it has to be bailed out. Why? Because even if you wanted to you couldn't just bring in another company to take over at short notice – wheelie bins have to be emptied. We are also sold a lot of guff about competitive tendering as if hundreds of companies were competing for every public service contract. This simply isn't the case and contracts are awarded to one of a few usual suspects.

What we end up with is a very cosy private monopoly replacing the public service and easy money for the people who own the company. In time, costs can be hiked up to increase profits and all this is at the taxpayer’s expense. No private company could ever compete with an efficient public sector alternative. Why? Because the public sector alternative does not have to make a profit therefore it will always offer better value for money. In addition, the public sector can always borrow money for investment at a lower rate of interest then the private sector which again saves the taxpayer money. The reality is that the most cost effective way to deliver public services is the public sector option. That is the way services should be delivered, paid for collectively by all of us and delivered without the profit motive.

Of course, it is an essential part of the privatisation project that the public sector is excluded from competing with the private sector because it is unacceptable to the privatisers for the public sector to be seen to provide better value for money and competing successfully. That is why everything has to be privatised. And that is why the public sector is now being privatised by stealth - slowly but surely. Once the Tories get into power they will have the confidence to accelerate this process because they will claim that they are eliminating 'public sector waste' and delivering ‘better value’ in a time of budgetary restraint.

Privatisation of public services is basically a racket. Its hard for people to understand that their government would want to institute a system which costs them more, reduces their employment opportunities, dumps costs onto local communities and only benefits capitalists but that is the kind of government we have. That is what New Labour stands for. In the long run we will all have to pay more for less and those who benefit will be the better off.

How to beat capitalism

Historically socialists have followed the' Marxist' model. By that I mean capture the power of the state and use it to control the means of production. By doing this you can put power into the hands of the people and liberate them from exploitation by the capitalist class. There are basically two ways of doing this: Communism, and democratic socialism. Both have so far failed. Communism, in the Soviet Union, liberated workers and greatly improved the condition of women, but failed to find a successful alternative economic model and degenerated into a dictatorship rather than a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. Democratic socialism, whereby socialist parties have come to power through elections, has simply failed to control capitalism, again largely because the parties failed to pursue an alternative economic model and were content to 'manage' capitalism through social democracy. I know some people will argue those parties weren't socialist but that's another argument too complex to go into in this post.

There is a pattern here. The key thing is the economy and the creation of money. Having a capitalist economy and a socialist - or social democratic - government doesn't do much for most of the population apart from ameliorating the worst excesses of capitalism. It is certainly preferable to right-wing 'free' market alternatives but it doesn't solve the underlying problem. For a long time, capitalist entities like the big corporations have been more powerful than governments. Many corporations have turnovers which are larger than the GDPs of well-developed nations. Now, through global entities like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) - in which secretive panels of 'experts' are able to overturn national legislation, they have formally elevated commercial interests - the right to make money - above democracy, above all our democratic rights.

What the credit crunch has shown us is the true power of these capitalist entities. The mask has slipped. The 'free' market model has come unstuck through de-regulation, and selfishness and greed - the twin engines of capitalism. We, the poor, the unemployed, the disabled, the low paid, and the working and middle classes, have been forced to bail out capitalism. The losses have been nationalised and the gains are still in the pockets of the people who brought the system down. That is socialism for the rich and the market for the rest of us.

In his book, The Great Transformation, written in 1944, the socialist economic historian Karl Polanyi explained how economies work. He said that they are 'embedded' in society. By this, he meant that they are inseparable from the way we live. They are what we do. This may sound obvious but classical economists, such as Ricardo, have tried to separate the economy from society as if it exists separately in its own right. This is crucial because it allows conventional economists to ignore social and environmental concerns. They just don't figure on the balance sheet. Economists routinely ignore human suffering and environmental degradation caused by capitalism. This helps to give capitalism economic validity because it becomes simply about making money - forget about people and the environment. This is why economists are able to make ludicrous statements like - "It benefits all of us if production is moved to countries where labour costs are lower" - really? Does it? Who does it benefit? Not the people who have lost their jobs and the communities that are devastated. Of course, there have been dissident economists like Marx and E F Schumacher who wrote 'Small is Beautiful - a study of economics as if people mattered'. But Schumacher and Marx have been completely ignored by capitalist academia and media.

Karl Polayni: realised that society and economy are indivisible

Democratic socialists have made a similar error to the economists because they have assumed that politics is also separate from the economy. If you have political power you can change things. But as we have seen that is not true, not unless you change the fundamental basis of the economy. What socialists and progressives need if they are really going to change society is economic power. Capitalism can only be beaten economically. Therefore we need an alternative economic model and we need to start to build that model now. But what is an alternative economy? It is one where the means of production are owned and controlled by the people, and the creation of money is under democratic control.

For the means of production, there are basically two options: Nationalise industries or put them directly into the hands of workers to run and control themselves. Total nationalisation and state control, as in the Soviet Union hasn't worked well because people are not empowered and often they have little incentive to produce anything. They end up still as workers controlled by bosses. The real alternative is economic democracy. This is something that can be achieved through co-operatives. By co-operatives, I mean businesses owned and controlled by the people who work in them. Not possible? Think again. There are already many such successful businesses around. One example is the Unicorn Grocery, a worker-owned co-operative in Chorlton, which is thriving. There are many other examples.

Some cynics will no doubt say that this can only happen on a small scale but I don't believe it. There is nothing to stop larger scale businesses from being run in this way. The co-operatives in Mondragon in Spain provide us with an example of large-scale worker-owned and controlled businesses. Even models like John Lewis and Gore-Tex, which are not wholly worker-owned co-operatives in the sense that the Unicorn Grocery is, offer us a better alternative than voracious capitalists such as Tesco.

The beauty of the co-operative model is that we don't need a revolution or a socialist government to get started. There is nothing to stop people from starting co-operatives now. I have given examples in other posts such as the workers in Argentina who took over factories and started running them as going concerns during the economic crisis there.

In addition to this, we have to put the creation of money, and the control of its supply under democratic control. We need to ensure that only the state, through state-owned banks, rather than private sector banks, can create money. Alongside this, we also need to ensure that there are smaller local and regional banks. We also need a decentralised energy production system where locally owned companies generate energy from renewables and a centrally controlled energy distribution system.

None of this means that we shouldn't bother with socialist or political parties or be trying to get progressive governments elected. Changing our economic model isn't going to happen overnight. We need the support of governments who are friendly and can help with investment. In the shorter term nationalisation of the banks, railways, water, power generators, education, and health is essential for moving us away from a capitalist economy. It's a long haul but this is the only way forward. You cannot beat capitalism politically - it has to be done economically. Socialists and progressives need to start thinking seriously about building a new economy and making it happen - now.