The power of nightmares

I have been meaning to comment on the 'war on terror' and its aftermath for a while and when I saw Gary Younge's excellent article in the Guardian recently it prompted me to write this post.

Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 people believed in ideologies. Politicians promised to create a better society and people believed that such a thing was possible. Nowadays people are disillusioned with ideologies. Politicians now promise to protect us from dangers - real or imagined. They have become simply the managers of a capitalist society. They tinker at the margins. They exploit and feed our fears in order to preserve their power.

That is what the 'war on terror' was really about. Following on from 9/11 President Bush announced the 'war on terror' and used the attack on the world trade centre to launch repressive legislation at home and a disastrous war in Iraq abroad. The result? We are in more danger from Islamic extremism than we have ever been before. A hornet's nest of fundamentalism and hatred has been stirred up. Our privacy and freedoms - which were supposed to be protected - have diminished.

The war on terror was never about protecting us. It was about maintaining power and control over us in a disillusioned world. Adam Curtis's excellent documentary - The Power of Nightmares - exposed all this. It showed that the terrorist threat was exaggerated and used cynically by politicians who had no positive ideological messages to give us. It showed that the very people who called for the 'war on terror' created the terrorists who threatened us. I can't recommend it strongly enough. It is essential viewing. The 'war on terror' was never anything more than a means of controlling us, and the end result is that we are less free and in more danger now than we were when it started.

The drinks industry is to blame for our alcohol problems

I started drinking when I was fifteen, in the early 1970s. The first drink I had in a pub was half a pint of mild - a bit embarrassing - when I got to the bar I realised I hadn't enough money for a pint of bitter. In a busy pub I had no difficulty getting served with my long hair and carefully cultivated sideburns. Once the initial nerves of getting served were over with I went into pubs regularly before I was eighteen.

I grew up in Middleton, a northern mill town. People worked hard in factories. On Friday they got their pay packets and went out to have a bloody good time after being cooped up all week. On Friday and Saturday nights they drank copious amounts of beer. There was the odd fight, the odd drunk falling over but guess what? - nobody was bothered about it.  There was no moral panic, no health police, no litigious culture and no paranoia about health and safety. And at that time - Britain had one of the lowest incidences of liver disease in the developed world.

So what has happened since? Well in the eighties the drinks industry started to increase the amount of alcohol in beer and wine. In the seventies people drank something called bitter and not a lot else and the alcohol content was about 3.5%. Now people drink beer - or lager. The varieties have multiplied - which is good - but now beer and lager are 4% or 5% or more. Wine has 14% alcohol when it used to have 9%. The brewers are capitalists, they want to make a profit - so they have a vested interest in getting us drinking more and largely they have succeeded. This is just what the much despised to cigarette makers did. They were castigated for increasing the strength of cigarettes. So have why have the drink's manufacturers got away with it scot free?

We live in a free market society. Making big profits is sacrosanct. The government hasn't the guts or the gumption to challenge the brewers. Much easier to dump the blame on to all of us. This is typical of a capitalist society - blame people for the ills of the market. They saddle you with debt, sell you crap obesity inducing food, try to get you hooked on stronger drinks create a massive social problem and its all your fault. Not theirs. That is the logic of free market capitalism.

I like drinking and I like being in pubs. I think drink has social benefits. It's still as much an escape valve for society as it was in the 1970s. People may now be cooped up in offices and supermarkets instead of factories but they need to escape and let off steam just as much as they ever did. Looking back I really enjoyed those nights. The town came alive. It was 99% good natured, social fun.

People then knew they were working class. They knew they depended on capitalists for a living. Most were trade unionists and were more politically aware than people are nowadays, and they had a political party which represented them. Nowadays, in the bright, shiny free market Uk Plc,  people have fallen for all that middle class guff. They are still as much wage slaves as their parents ever were. They just don't know it.

Anyway, that last paragraph was a bit off piste. The solution to the drinks problem is to compel the drinks industry to supply us with lower alcohol drinks. Every pub should sell at least one beer of 3.5%. The maximum should be restricted to 4.5% in pubs and bars. We need wine with a lower alcohol content. We wouldn't drink less - but we would drink a lot less alcohol.

Ed's not the only one with no balls

Its been an interesting few days. First there was Cameron's launch of the Tory election campaign - time for er... change apparently. As if we didn't know! It included his own goal on his marriage tax break pledge. As I've pointed out before this is a flawed policy which will only benefit the better off - what did you expect? How do I know? Well, Ian Duncan Smith (IDS), a former Tory leader, headed up some research into poverty. One of the 'findings' they seized on was that children were better off with married parents - therefore marriage is a good idea! Now that fits in nicely with Tory prejudices. But IDS et al made a schoolboy error. The real correlation wasn't with marriage it was with poverty. Better off people get married - poorer people don't. The real damage to children from broken relationships arises because of poverty - not because their parents aren't married. This Tory policy simply discriminates against co-habitees and benefits the middle classes and the rich.

The we had Ed Balls making a feeble attack on the Tories. Predictably feeble because their aren't any real ideological differences between New Labour and the Tories anyway - so there is nothing for him to attack. OK, Labour will make things marginally better for the worse off but they won't tackle the root causes of chronic low pay, inequality and poverty such as de-regulation and privatisation of public services.

Now we have Patricia Hewitt and Geoff 'Buff' Hoon launching a laughable coup attempt on Brown's premiership. They have no chance of dislodging Brown at this stage. The Party knows he's a disaster but there is no real appetite for change and no-one in the cabinet capable of challenging him. Perhaps Hewitt and Hoon should make their next project organising a piss up in a brewery. Who knows? They may even succeed.

Does anyone remember Factor Four?

Does anyone remember Factor Four? Its now a dozen years or so since this visionary book was published promising a revolution in the way we produce things. Subtitled - 'doubling wealth, halving resource use' - Factor Four offered a practical, profitable route to preserving the planet whilst improving our standard of living. It contains a wealth of examples of how we can do this by massively increasing resource efficiency, making more with less, and using massively less energy in the process. Factor Four isn't about some sort of wishful thinking. It showed that we had the technology and ideas then to make changes which would, if implemented, enable us to deal with the problems presented by climate change and peak oil.

One of key players behind the book is a guy called Amory Lovins who founded the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). Lovins is an environmentalist who advocates 'soft energy paths' which result in the much more efficient use of energy. He has been involved in the development of the 'hypercar' which is much more efficient than conventional models and runs on hydrogen. He followed up Factor Four with another revolutionary book called Natural Capitalism written with L Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken. if the ideas put forward by Lovins and his co-authors were followed it would amount to a change as significant as the industrial revolution.

Lovins and his co-authors may be revolutionaries in resource efficiency but they aren't revolutionaries in a political sense. They are using the profit motive to try and get capitalists to work in a way that is not environmentally destructive. There is no doubt that companies who follow the ideas in Factor Four will be more efficient and therefore more competitive than their rivals.

So what happened? Well the ideas in Factor Four and Natural Capitalism are just as valid and valuable as they ever were and the work of RMI continues. So why haven't capitalists adopted these ideas and why isn't the industrial revolution that could save the planet already well underway? Well, some companies have used these ideas but far too few and on too small a scale. The real reason why Factor Four hasn't happened is industrial conservatism, vested interests and the perverse incentives of our capitalist economic system. Its just still too easy for companies to continue to make profits by using the old wasteful ways. Billions of dollars have been, and are still being, invested in inefficient plants and technologies which are 'proven'. Companies are unwilling to make the changes when the present system suits them well. Why bother to make new investment when 'obsolete' technologies still enable you to compete anyway? General Motors in the USA is a prime example of this. Up until very recently they have continued to produce 'obsolete' cars because the system allowed them to and they could still make a profit. Governments have been slow to act and have done little to penalise inefficient ways.

Is anything going to change? Are we going to adopt the ideas of people like Amory Lovins? Its seems so obvious that we should. But it also seemed so obvious that Brown and Cameron should have promised real democratic reform after the expenses scandal - to revive our moribund political system. They haven't done it. The sad truth is that things will have to get worse before people like Lovins are listened to. Have you seen The Age of Stupid? Well now you know that we already have the solution to climate change in our hands. The question is will we choose to use it?

The 'free market' is ruining our economy

I've posted many times here about the 'credit crunch' crisis which has done so much damage to our economy. That crisis is still ongoing. The UK and the USA have suffered more than most other major economies as a result of the crisis. The latest figures show that the UK economy shrunk by 0.2% in the last quarter. That is now the longest recession in our history.

So why have we been hit harder than the French and Germans? The answer is the pursuit of free-market economics - or rather neoliberal politics dressed up as economics. The UK and USA follow a particular brand of 'free-market' economics known as 'anglo-saxon'. This is 'free-market' economics in its purest and most fanatical form. In this version, everything is up for grabs. Everything must be privatised and sold off to the highest bidder without any thought for the social consequences. Labour must be 'flexible' i.e. subject to restrictive anti-trade union legislation so that workers are reduced as near as possible to wage-slavery. We have been following this brand of economics since the late seventies, first under Thatcherism and then under er.. Thatcherism - now known as New Labour. In the USA the same policies were known as Reaganomics - after President Ronald Reagan - see my post here.

After forty years of this nonsense, our economy has been ruined. Manufacturing has become almost non-existent. Factories have closed and moved abroad - many to Europe where industries are supported by the governments there. The economy has become dominated by socially useless financial casino capitalism of precisely the kind which has got us into massive debt. On top of this our utilities, airports, banks, postal services etc are now controlled by foreign multinational companies. We don't even own key parts of our economy any more (not that 'we' ever did but I'm sure you know what I mean).

The French and Germans also pursue 'free-market' economics but of a different kind. They protect their companies and their economy. As a result, they have sheltered their people from the worst aspects of the recession and are recovering more quickly. Their economic approach has a social dimension that is completely lacking here.

So we have very little productive or useful economy left. Which leaves us in the mire. In the 1990s there were economic crashes in South America and Asia. At the time anglo-saxon 'free- market' economists lectured these people on how they should run their economies. These economists knew best. They had the superior model. Now that lecturing is starting to look very hollow.

If we continue to go down this path, privatisation, outsourcing, flogging off key parts of our economy as the anglo-saxon model dictates we will continue to decline as an economic power - just as the USA will. We will have increasing social problems of unemployment, crime, drug abuse that go with that decline, and we can only look forward to a Tory government which will exacerbate this situation.

We need to reject 'free-market' economics and build our economics around a social model. The very least our people should be able to expect is the same 'economics' that the French and Germans get.

Merry Xmas everybody.

This judgement is a disgrace to democracy

As UNITE said tonight the judgment to strike down the British Airways workers strike is a disgrace to democracy. According the BBC Judge Laura Cox said

"the timing of the strike would have been particularly painful for passengers and company alike. "A strike of this kind over the 12 days of Christmas is fundamentally more damaging to BA and the wider public than a strike taking place at almost any other time of the year."

Hmmm....but what does that have to do with the law on strike action? Not a lot as it happens. This comment shows that this class-biased verdict was entirely political.

New Labour never bothered to change the Thatcher anti-trade union laws introduced in the 1980s. These laws were designed to make it difficult for unions to take strike action with the intention preventing working class people from defending their livelihoods.

The judgement today was entirely predictable. Some of us can remember the judge Lord Denning striking down the Greater London Council's Fares Fair policy in the 1980s. Once again an unelected middle class judge has undermined the democratic choice of working people.

The free market fanatics

I caught a bit of a discussion on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning as I was travelling to work (held up by traffic jams and roadworks as usual). It was a debate between Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing who had some sensible ideas about the social implications of capitalism and Mark Littlewood a free market fanatic from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) . As you can probably guess the fanatic was going on about how the 'free' market can solve all our problems if only we would get rid of regulation, big government etc. etc.

Ok, so here is why that fanatic was wrong. Lets just imagine that the 'free' market did run everything. Take transport as an example. Start with roads. You would only be able to travel on main routes - busy motorways and A roads. All other roads would fall into disrepair. Why? - because they would be 'uneconomic'. Same with the railways. You might be able to travel on what they used to call 'Intercity' or mainline routes. All other lines would be closed - for the same reason as the roads.

The take the Royal Mail - its still a public service - just. But if that was left to the 'free market' you would lose the universal postal service. In large swathes of the UK you would be unable to post or receive any mail - apart, of course, from commercial junk mail and packages from Amazon and the like.

Take another example. Housing. We have a housing shortage in this country which has contributed to the house price boom and a crisis in accommodation. Why? Because successive governments have left housing supply up to the 'free' market. The market only wants to build the most profitable houses i.e. four bedroom detached houses with tiny gardens and double garages on greenfield sites. Not for them social (or 'affordable') housing or housing on brownfield sites which isn't as profitable. In fact if it wasn't for the fact that sometimes developers were compelled to build social housing we would never have any built at all. Result - yet more misery and deprivation for working people and the poor.

Then there is healthcare. If that was privatised we would go back to a situation like we had in the 1930's where people couldn't afford medical treatment. I could go on......and on.

Does anyone actually want any of this nonsense? Apart from the rich - who won't be affected - and twerps from the IEA like Mark Littlewood - I think not. Lets never forget that these fanatics are directly responsible for most of the social problems that we have in the this country today.

What we need to understand is that these fanatics for the 'free' market are impervious to any kind of commonsense or notions of social justice. They are are more akin to religious fundamentalists than economists - and just as dangerous. If the numpty (northern word meaning one who is stupid), Mark Littlewood, from the IEA wants to debate this with me anytime I am more than happy to demolish his potty arguments.

The Wave - 5th December 2009

I travelled to the climate change demo on Saturday from Stockport with The Co-op. Good to be journeying first class on Virgin Trains to London for £15. Thanks to the Co-op and their all volunteers for organising a really good trip.

But what of the demo? Well it was a really good day - long - but well worth it. There isn't a great deal of climate change activism in deepest Cheshire apart from a few pockets of stirling work like Ashton Hayes. I have been struggling to get a group going in my village so I went with some friends from a small local group a couple of miles away. I'm an experienced protestor and I hate to come across as churlish but there was a flaw - no final rally. A finish in Trafalgar Square with a few good speakers would have left everyone leaving on a high. As it was the demo ended in an anticlimax.

Those of us who believe in man-made climate change are having a tough time at the moment as I noted in this recent post. There is a backlash going on and there are two main reasons for it:

1. powerful vested interests in energy and other sectors feel they have much to lose if we adopt the measures necessary to combat climate change. They are working hard to prevent those changes from happening.

2. selfish individualism - this has become much more chronic in my lifetime. The more people have - the more they want. Its a form of addiction as serious as heroin or nicotine. All this has been fostered by governments and the media in the past 30 years - since the advent of Thatcherism. There's a large estate near me - four bedroom detached houses, gigantic TVs, four cars on every driveway, a Nintendo Wii in every house - no doubt. Its not that some of these people don't care but there is a terror of having to give some - in fact - any of this up. Public transport? Cycling to work? - not me thanks!

I won't labour the last point because I've dealt with it before - see the previous post I referred to. The reality is that we are living an unsustainable lifestyle. Things will have to change soon - whether we like it or not.

Interesting to see that Gordon Brown and David Milliband have been attacking the climate change deniers with some vigour. How do they square this with New Labour's deep love affair with the 'free' market and unsustainable growth?

Footnote: nice to have Gordon's approval for attending a demo. Was he there? I didn't see him - or David.

Public sector workers are the latest scapegoats

If you read the Daily Mail you might be tempted to believe that public sector workers are the new fat cats. The Daily Mail has waged a sustained campaign against 'gold plated' public sector pensions as its recent reporting here shows. Tory leader David Cameron has pledged to end the pensions 'apartheid' which separates public and private sector workers.

Do public sector workers have good pay and pensions? Well er... no we don't. The overwhelming majority of public sector workers are low paid. They may have final salary pensions but being low paid those pensions won't amount to much - we are talking a few thousand pounds a year - and most of these people will live in poverty in their old age.

Private sector workers have had their pensions shafted in the past decade or so. Final salary schemes - which offer the best pension and security on retirement - have been closed to millions of private sector workers and replaced with 'money purchase' or defined contribution schemes. These alternatives offer far less to workers and are based on the vagaries of the stockmarket which we know may well go down as well as up.

Why have private sector workers had their pensions reduced? Allegedly because they are no longer 'affordable'. Companies have deficits in their pension schemes. But these deficits arose because the companies took pension holidays where they paid no contributions into the pension fund - opting instead to hand out more money to shareholders and executives. Private sector workers are now paying the price for this. Of course Gordon Brown's decision to reduce tax breaks for pensions has contributed to this mess.

The right wing press, led by the Daily Mail, have exploited this situation to attack public sector pensions and we now hear regularly from disgruntled private sector workers grumbling about privileged ' fat cat' public sector workers. But what these workers ought to do is get off their backsides, like their parents did, join a trade union, and fight to restore better pensions for themselves - put up or shut up - rather than trying to do their fellow workers in the public sector down.

Public sector workers are now the scapegoats in an economic crisis entirely of the capitalist class's own making. The pensions issue is being used to drive a wedge between public and private sector workers.

We are facing a pensions crisis. The crisis is about millions of British workers spending their retirement in poverty. The real culprits are the capitalist corporations and their chums in New Labour and the Tory party. This is simple class war - transferring wealth created by workers back to capitalists and their cronies. They get more - we get less. Its about time workers in the private and public sector stood together to get better pensions for all. That is how we got decent pensions in the first place.

Privatisation of the Royal Mail is a con

We are being told that privatisation or part privatisation of the Royal Mail will make it more efficient and provide us with a better service. Apparently private sector companies can move in and give us all a better deal.

This is nonsense. Private sector companies have only made inroads into deliveries in the UK because the government has forced Royal Mail to allow them to cherry pick the most profitable parts of its business. That is one reason why it has problems. A while ago had a parcel delivered by TNT. I had to go and collect it because I wasn't in at the time. Instead of going to my local post office - 2 miles away - I had to travel to a bleak industrial estate 16 miles away. It looked like it was situated in crack alley - I didn't feel safe even though it was the middle of the day. The building was an anonymous fortress with an intercom - no one on 'reception'. When I was eventually, reluctantly, admitted I noticed that most of the notices on the walls were in Polish.

What this means is that these companies employ anyone they can get their hands on - at minimum wage rates. Can anyone explain how this 'efficiency' is better for me or workers in the postal industry? It isn't. Its naked exploitation of working people so that the shareholders can rake in the profits.

Give me Royal Mail as a public service anyday with postal workers paid a decent wage. Privatisation is a con. Neither the customers or the postal workers are better off. The only people who benefit are the rich - surprise, surprise. Customers and workers are being shafted. The Royal Mail should be run as a public service, publicly delivered. That is good value for customers and that is what most of us want.

Support the postal workers and public services!

Eyes wide shut

I'm beginning to feel a bit sorry for George Monbiot. Like many of us who are aware of the dangers of climate change he is doing his best to alert people to the problem and suggest positive solutions. But he appears to be banging his head against a brick wall. Whenever he puts up an article on Comment is Free he usually attracts plenty of invective. Eco-fascist is a common term used. It appears that the numbers of people who believe climate change is a fact are diminishing.

I know how George must feel. I've been trying to set up a local climate change group with little success so far. When I was delivering my flyers last week I handed one to a guy who lives down my street. As I turned to leave he called me back. "I'm not interested" he said. Not interested? How can anyone not be interested in climate change? I should have remonstrated with him but I had a schedule to meet.

It seems that many people feel those of us who want to move to a low carbon lifestyle are trying to impose a hair shirt lifestyle on them. Say goodbye to wandering around in your T-shirt and shorts with the central heating on full blast; no more gadgets; having to travel on a bus or train with your fellow citizens instead of luxuriating in the privacy of your own car; cycling to work in the rain etc etc.

I'm not a gadget fiend but like most of us I would be bereft without my Ipod and the internet. But as I pointed out in a previous post life in low carbon economy need not be hair shirt - if we make the changes in time. There are positive benefits too - such as leading healthier lifestyles that would help us deal with problems like obesity, and having stronger communities. We could all do with a bit more cycling and walking and getting to know our neighbours better instead of clinging to the selfish 'benefits' of the consumer age. Who knows I might even get to know the name of the guy down the street.

Consumer capitalism has encouraged us to be selfish individuals. We feel comfortable in our own little fortresses with our circle of family and friends. But things are going to have to change. It ought to be obvious that even if weren't for climate change we can't continue to consume to Earth's resources - including of course oil - and increase our population, as we are doing. There are no magic fixes. Our lifestyles will have to change so lets make the change positive. Transition offers us a way to do that. It offers a practical, common sense and achievable vision of how we can adapt without leading miserable lives. If we don't go down that sort of route the alternative is far, far bleaker - believe me.

Bye bye Tracey bye bye

I guess I'm a bit late on this one but that's because I've been busy. The government intends to impose a 50% tax rate on those who earn over £150,000. That sounds fair to me. The people who can most afford it should be prepared to make an extra contribution in these difficult times - well permanently actually . They, after all, are the ones who benefited most from the unsustainable boom, built on debt and the housing market, during the years of Gordon Brown's Chancellorship. As it is, ordinary hardworking families are being expected to pay for the excesses of the banks during the boom years, and the bankers already have their noses back in the trough to the tune of £6 billion after the £1.4 trillion taxpayers bailout.

But, as you might expect, those who benefited most have no intention of helping out. Tracey Emin, one of those beneficiaries, has threatened to quit the UK when the Tax is brought in in April next year. According to the Sunday Times she is likely to be joined by up to 25,000 others. Well, fine, if they want to go they should go. Some of us can remember that various members of the rich and famous, including Andrew Lloyd Webber, threatened to leave if Labour were elected in 1997. None of them did that I am aware of.

Would we be worse off without these people? The simple answer is no. The capitalist so-called 'free' press have been working hard over the years to persuade us that there is a magic band of people - chief executives and entrepreneurs - who we cannot do without. If we didn't have this master race to look after us we would all be starving. This is complete nonsense, and the excuse for those at the top to take an ever larger slice of the cake.

My Granny, who died at the age of 95, could have run RBS better than Fred Goodwin. She had a deal of common sense and was very good with money. Banking isn't rocket science. You borrow money at 5% and lend it at 6%. Simple as that. A fact that escaped most of the 'masters of the universe' who brought our economy down. There are plenty of able people in our society, many of whom's talents are wasted through deprivation and unemployment. There is no need for anyone to earn over £150,00 a year - period.

The simple truth is that it is the poorest people in our society who pay the most tax. Marginal tax rates for the poor are much higher than for the better off. Let these 25,000 people go. We can do perfectly well without them. In fact our society would be fairer and better if they weren't here at all.

New socialism: how to build a new socialism for the 21st century

If you've read previous posts on this blog, you'll know that I've been blogging about how we build a socialism that will work for the 21st century, just as the Communist Party tried to make socialism work in the 20th Century. In order for socialism to succeed, it's vital to create a viable economic alternative to capitalism, an issue I explored in a previous post. I've also looked at how a socialist government could drive lasting change in our society. Here I want to further explore two key requirements for building socialism. They are:

1. capitalism cannot be replaced politically, it must be overcome economically

2. socialism must empower individuals and social groups to take control of their own lives and communities. The key to this control is economic control.

Real power is economic power. If socialists want to transform society, they must gain economic power. Simply winning political power in elections is not enough. Historically, socialist and social democratic governments have been able to use the power of the state to ameliorate the excesses of capitalism without ever shaking its grip on society. Real power has always remained with those who own the means of production.

The traditional socialist answer to this has been to put the means of production in the hands of the state, thus ending the power of capitalists to dominate society. This didn't work in the Soviet Union - why? Because it didn't fulfill the requirement in 2. above. People weren't empowered economically. They swapped a capitalist employer for a state employer without ever gaining economic control over their own lives. They lacked the incentive to create real wealth for themselves and the communities they lived in.

To gain economic power, socialists need to start creating wealth. Workers create the world's wealth. Marx's development of the idea of surplus value in Das Kapital enabled socialists to understand how capitalists expropriate that wealth for themselves, leaving the crumbs from the cake of wealth creation for the rest of us. To gain economic power, socialists must enable workers to create wealth and keep it for themselves. How can workers do this without becoming capitalists? The answer is mutualism. There is nothing new about this. Robert Owen advocated this 150 years ago. In the UK there are over 4000 successful co-operatives with a turnover of £27 billion. This may be small beer compared to the whole economy but it has the potential to grow.

Co-operatives are socialism in action. They are democratically controlled enterprises in which the workers own the means of production. They create wealth for workers and communities instead of for capitalists. Co-operatives tend to have a greater success rate when started up than capitalist companies. Many socialists feel uncomfortable with the notion of making profits and commercialism of any kind but this is how economies work. Profits can be used to make co-operatives grow and benefit communities. Commercialism does not have to be of the rapacious, dehumanising capitalist variety. One of the historical weaknesses of socialism is that it has failed to meet the aspiration of people to improve their material condition. Co-operatives allow workers to do just that without the need for capitalism.

Co-operatives are social enterprises . They can be not-for-profit or explicitly for community benefit. The key is that workers have control over their own economic destiny, and are able to improve their own and their community's well-being. The beauty of this is that we can do it now. There is no need to wait for a general election or a socialist government. If you want to help to bring about socialism, go out and start up a co-op. Demonstrate that we can create wealth democratically and equitably without the need for capitalism. Co-operatives completely undermine many of the arguments of the right - that socialism doesn't reward individuals or encourage enterprise, and can't create wealth. Every successful co-op diminishes capitalism.

I'm not suggesting that we don't need socialist parties, or trade unions, or that we shouldn't be trying to create a socialist state. But doing those two things without creating a viable economic alternative to capitalism won't bring about a socialist society. I'm in the process of trying to set up a co-op for community benefit in Cheshire, and I'll keep you up to date with developments via this blog. As a socialist, I've no doubt it's one of the most important and useful things I've ever attempted.

Support the Communication Workers!

The recent news that the Communication Workers Union members had voted for a strike a Royal Mail came as no surprise. Support for industrial action was strong with three quarters voting in favour.

The Government has actively been undermining the Royal Mail for some years. Unfortunately, thanks to our so-called 'free' capitalist media the truth hasn't got out. Most people think that Royal Mail is in trouble because of a decline in the sending of letters now that increasing numbers people use electronic means. The real reason is that the government has been encouraging private operators to cherry pick the most profitable parts of the Royal Mail's business. In addition, Royal Mail has been forced to pay these operators peanuts to deliver their mail for them.

If you listened to Mandelson you would think that the gaping £9 billion hole in Royal Mail's pension fund was the fault of the postal workers. But the deficit was caused by the government taking a ten year pensions holiday in which it made no contributions to the fund.

The government intend to privatise the Royal Mail. Nobody except the private operators and bureaucrats in Brussels want them to. Neo-liberal EU legislation is driving the process. Ideology disguised as economics. The end result will be a poorer service, redundancies and pay cuts for postal workers and nice fat profits for the private operators. The costs will be dumped onto the workers - as usual. The communication workers are in a tough spot but they deserve out wholehearted support.

The Party's over

The reasons for the decline of New Labour are obvious. There is no room for two main parties of the right in British politics. The Tories are the party of the right and that leaves New Labour er.. nowhere. The Blairite clones are so addicted to neo-liberalism that they will continue to push the party in a rightward direction. They have no support amongst the electorate but still hold the reigns of power in New Labour. The Labour Party conference did them little good with Brown predictably trying to recover some core support with 'half promises' about scrapping ID cards and electoral reform - too little, too late.

The only logical thing to do is split the party a get rid of the Blairite rump - they can join the Tories if they want to. Only the trade unions can make this happen but they haven't the guts to do so. It is going to take a wipe out at the general election to make that seismic shift remotely possible - otherwise the unholy alliance will continue and leave NL at the margins.

Although New Labour did the right thing by 'big government' intervention to prop up the banks a year ago they are still paralysed by their worship of the market and are unable ideologically to do anything other than return banks that were bust to the private sector thus dumping the costs on taxpayers. They still labour under the illusion that what they are doing is progressive or even social democratic.

Nice to see that Clegg and Cable effed up the Lib Dems conference even more than Brown did New Labour's. Clegg's talk about savage cuts was a spectacular own goal. If Clegg and Cable had any real nouse they would have shifted the Lib Dems decisively to the left in an attempt to wipe out NL as the opposition. But they are just as ideologically trapped in neo-liberalism as New Labour.

If the Labour Party were able to throw off its New Labour shackles and move to the left it would still have a chance of beating the Tories - whose plans for cuts will shift the country even further into the economic mire - but its too late for that. Its a bleak prospect but we can only hope that in a wipe out the Blairites will go down with the sinking New Labour ship.