The Whole Earth delusion

In a recent Guardian article environmentalist author Mark Lynas suggested that the green movement had lost its way. He had apparently experienced a 'eureka moment' reading hostile comments to an article he had written criticising GM foods. This was reinforced when he later read Stewart Brand's book Whole Earth Discipline. Like Brand, Lynas now argues that the green movement is actually a barrier to combating climate change and feeding the world. This, in a nutshell, is because we oppose nuclear power and GM technology.

Environmentalists such as Brand and Lynas have 'seen the light' and embraced capitalism as the mechanism to solve the worlds environmental problems. They believe that technology is the answer. I've read Whole Earth Discipline. Its a well argued and well written book, but it left me cold, so much so that I admit I didn't quite finish it, but by then I didn't need to. Of course it is full of hope, telling stories of how mobile phones, for example, have helped the poor to build businesses and make themselves better off. Does this mean that mobile phones are a good thing? Are they going to eliminate poverty? No, just that humans will use whatever tools at their disposal to help them overcome adversity. If it wasn't mobile phones it would be something else.

What Lynas and Brand want is for the green movement to embrace capitalism much like the way New Labour embraced the market. Lynas even talks about the green movement having its "clause four moment". New Labour tried to use market mechanisms to reduce inequality and poverty. It failed because those same mechanisms are the drivers of inequality and poverty. The proof of failure came in the fact that after 13 years of a New Labour government inequality in the UK had increased. Capitalism is the driver of environmental degradation and loss in biodiversity - see this recent example. It is capitalist accumulation that is devouring our planet. You cannot use the same mechanisms which are destroying the world to save it. Not only that but the green movement isn't just about saving our environment, its also about social justice, something which is incompatible with capitalism.

What Brand and Lynas in their naivety have failed to understand is that what GM food and nuclear power are about is profit for the big corporations, and not making a better environment, or feeding the world. There are millions hungry all over the world. They need access to land, cheap loans, basic tools and fair markets for their produce. The key solutions are low tech, not high tech. There would be no hunger if the existing food supply was distributed fairly. The big driver behind GM technology is that corporations like Monsanto can control the food chain and make massive profits - forever. Corporations like Monsanto want to control and monopolise all the food we eat - not feed the world - see here.

If we are going to save the planet for ourselves we need to build a socially just and sustainable society. We can build prosperous sustainable societies without growth. Capitalist accumulation based on endless debt fueled growth is the problem, not the answer. There are alternatives as I've shown in this blog. We have to get on with that task and leave Lynas and Brand to their delusions and play with their technological toys.

Cameron is wrong about the riots

Since last week, when the UK riots came to a halt, apart from the universal condemnation of the looters, there have been two responses: one from the political right; and another from the left. The right have sought to paint the riots as being all about criminality, and about individual bad behaviour. David Cameron has re-iterated this theme a number of times in the past week, also calling for the rioters to be hammered by the courts. Its typical of the right that they should portray the riots in such simplistic terms. Firstly, most right wingers don't want the riots to be viewed by people in a wider context - the context of poverty, joblessness, exclusion and social despair. That's understandable because if people were to see the wider context they would appreciate how damaging and destructive the right's neoliberal ideology is; Secondly, they know that such a response panders to the prejudices of many of our citizens; Thirdly, its crucial for Cameron and the political right that individuals be blamed because the government might not survive if it was widely believed that it was responsible for the troubles. At the very least re-election would be a remote possibility. So, its hardly surprising that Cameron has been seeking to monopolise the media with calls for 'tough' sentencing which amount to revenge, not justice, as two men in Cheshire discovered recently.

Unlike David Cameron, the left have looked for the causes of the rioting. This is not to excuse the behaviour of the rioters, just simply a recognition the we don't live in a vacuum, and that people's behaviour can be affected by the environment they live in. Part of that environment is that people see our society's leaders, including politicians and businessmen, with their fingers in the till, and getting away with it. Cameron himself was implicated in the expenses scandal as were other cabinet ministers. The phone hacking scandal has implicated the police and other senior people in the media, and then we have the bankers who crashed our economy and carried off big bonuses as a result. Naomi Klein has written a perceptive article about the wider global political context of the riots. Its not just here in the UK that people perceive that the rich elites are robbing us and getting away with it. She said:

"Of course London's riots weren't a political protest. But the people committing night-time robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. "

As said in a previous post, there is nothing new about the recent riots and academic research has shown that austerity measures of the kind we have seen in the UK, with £81 billion worth of ideological cuts imposed by George Osbourne on our society, can cause rioting. The researchers, Jacopo Ponticelli and Hans-Joachim Voth, concluded:

"Nobody knows where and when social unrest is going to happen again, nor the scale it will take. However, history suggests we should not underestimate the consequences of social chaos. Germans to the present day remember Heinrich Brüning, known as the "hunger chancellor", who led the country from 1929 to 1932. He presided over an unprecedented austerity programme. At the same time, the Weimar Republic, Germany's first attempt at democracy, disintegrated amid a wave of social unrest and political violence."

The fact is that David Cameron is wrong about the causes of the riots and wrong with his views on sentencing. Far from being squeaky clean Cameron has soiled hands. He has also flipped on this issue. Do you remember the infamous 'hug a hoodie' speech where Cameron said we should be understanding about young people who commit crime? If not read this. Cameron is the Tory's version of a Blairite poster boy who is not much more than a front for an extremist Tory Party whose favourites include Thatcherite monsters from the crypt like William Hague and Eric Pickles.

If you want to, you can choose to believe that the austerity measures in the UK have nothing whatsoever to do with the riots, or you can choose to say that despite austerity and poverty no one should ever be involved in looting and causing wanton damage to life and property, and that the people who have done this should have acted responsibly instead. So why didn't the bankers, politicians, phone hackers and corrupt cops, who are supposed to know better than the 'feral rats' who rioted, measure up to being responsible? Why didn't they set an example? Is it simply that they are too greedy or is it that they knew they would never properly be held to account and face the consequences of their actions? And don't forget, who was it who sought to excuse the actions of the bankers? Why non other than Mr David Cameron himself at the Tory Party conference.

Our anger should be directed against the real villains

After four nights of looting and violence like many other people in our society I'm angry. Very angry. My anger is directed at the people who are responsible for what has been described as mindless vandalism. Not just those who were directly responsible, but those who are really responsible for the crisis we are in. These real villains are the people I've been talking about in many posts on this blog for the past 3 years or so. The people who have imposed 30 years of Thatcherism on our society. The people who said they were going to make us better off when they knew damn well that most of us were going to end up poorer. These people are the privatisers, the deregulators, the people who have taken our pensions away whilst supporting bankers bonuses, the ones who pocketed the profits whilst the losses were being nationalised, the 'free' market fanatics who worship the winner-takes-all, beggar-my-neighbour capitalist economy which puts us all in thrall to the market.

We used to have a reasonable balance in this society. We used to believe in the public sector and the public good. Not any more. People have been seduced by the glitzy worship of celebrity and consumerism that has been rammed down our throats. Private good, public bad. The wanton destruction of good honest public institutions that served to public good. Those institutions weren't perfect. They had their faults. They needed improvement. But they were a bloody sight better than their profit-driven private sector replacements. I look back with nostalgia at British Rail. Yes it was tatty but that is because it was starved of investment. It was a damn sight better than the crowded 'luxury' cattle wagons we are crammed into nowadays at exorbitant prices whilst the likes of Richard Branson trouser millions of pounds worth profit every year.

The phenomenon we have witnessed in the past few days is the result of the chickens of Thatcherism coming home to roost. The underclasses have learnt the lesson from their betters in society - if its there for the taking - take it. The looting is the mirror image of the behaviour of the bankers and politicians. The bankers have looted our society to the tune of hundreds of billions and now the so called "feral rats" are taking their share from Top Shop and JD Sports to the tune of hundreds of millions. The difference is that the "rats" will end up in gaol. But what about the bankers and their politician chums? The message to society is - "If you wear a suit you can go out and loot" - with impunity.

I have seen some very good comments about what has been happening, particularly in today's Guardian letters and I just wanted to finish by quoting this wonderfully perceptive comment from Rick Osborn:

"While we all must condemn the violence and looting of recent nights, we must not allow those who lead our society to duck their roles in the conditions leading up to it. We find members of parliament fiddling expenses and only some of that deemed illegal. We see bankers plundering the public purse to cover their incompetence and still receiving ridiculous bonuses. Members of the press, that bulwark of our freedoms, pay criminals to get them stories and some of those criminals are members of the police force. Meanwhile, what happens to the law-abiding, decent citizens whom we would like our young people to become? They are told that they must pay more for their pensions, have certain health procedures denied to them, pay more for food, fuel and housing, and probably get made redundant to boot. Our young people are not fools. They see quite clearly that in modern Britain, being good brings no rewards; on the contrary, it is punished."

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.

Now we know for sure – Britain is a turnip republic

This week we discovered that Rupert Murdoch and his son James knew nothing about the criminal activities that took place in News International, the company they controlled, even though their chief protégé Rebekah Brooks had admitted to a parliamentary select committee as long ago as 2003 that the News of the World (NotW) had paid money to police officers. In fact, in a day of questioning by MPs for the Murdochs, and for ex-senior figures from the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, and John Yates, we learnt that not one of the people who appeared before the select committees was to blame for the failure to deal with the NotW phone hacking scandal – so that’s all right then.

But it isn’t all right. What we really learnt on Tuesday, including from David Cameron’s flapping speech in Nigeria, is that Britain is run by a collusive class of chums who are well paid to run things but don’t really appear to know what is going on - or is it rather that they choose not to know about certain goings on? Of course, not knowing about wrongdoing may be a defence against criminality but it isn’t a defence against incompetence, complacency, negligence and poor management.

These are the same people, the media moguls who have a corrupting influence on our democracy, the policemen who have lost their moral compass, and the spineless politicians, the very same people who meet at parties in Oxfordshire and posh restaurants in London. The hearings at the parliamentary select committees served to confirm what we already suspected, that Britain is a corrupt society, a turnip republic where people are on the make, driven by power and profit, a society dominated by banks and other capitalist corporations.

But hang on, that’s how it supposed to be isn’t it? This is UK Plc after all, go getting, ‘free’ market Britain, where private gain is good, the market is to be worshiped  and public welfare is old fashioned nonsense. A place where you are meant to trample over others to get to the top, where paying your fair share of taxes makes you some kind of sucker. This neoliberal enslavement of our society to the market, which is  being driven by our ruling capitalist class, and their tame politicians in the mainstream parties, is leading to inevitable economic decline. In other words -  the very people who tell us they can make us all richer are really making us all poorer. And, as we continue to become poorer our society will become more brutal, repressive, corrupt and unequal. As I said in a recent post about Thatcherism and the Arab Spring – as Egypt struggles to become more like us, we are becoming daily more like Egypt’

If we want to live a fair and more equal society we have to tame the market and make everyone pay their fair contribution to our common welfare. We can do this by re-asserting democracy and putting our people at the heart of our economy. To do the latter we need a strong public sector, and a mixed economy where capitalism has largely been replaced by a sustainable social market. The alternative is decline; morally, socially and economically. We have reached a moment in history which is akin to the time when the Roman Empire declined and collapsed. Then, as now, almost no one believed that the collapse was possible but the warning signs were there for all to see.

SS Titanic-Capitalism is still heading straight for the rocks

Perhaps I should have entitled this post the 'comedy of errors'? The problem with that title that I have, is that the current crisis of capitalism, which is manifesting itself in the sovereign debt crisis, is being so cack-handedly managed by our leading politicians that it is really a human tragedy, rather than a comedy.

In the UK, the NoW phone hacking scandal is moving so quickly that people are forgetting about the main event - the slow motion collapse of the world economy, and the feeble attempts of politicians in Europe to deal with it - see this. The reason for the failure of politicians in Europe to sort out the economic crisis is obvious; they are completely blinkered; they are so conditioned to neoliberal 'free' market fanaticism and looking after themselves and the rich, that they, like the Captain of the Titanic, are going down with the ship.

Its just a pity that there are many many hundreds of thousands of Europeans, and other millions of peoples around the world who are going to suffer in the process. They don't deserve to suffer - the politicians do.

Loony right trumpet the benefits of slavery

I just had to do a post on this. I have been wondering how long it would be before someone from the right in the USA started to bang on about the benefits of slavery. Well why not? Since the financial collapse caused by neoliberal 'economic' policies, which started in 2007, the capitalist class have been trying to make ordinary people pay the bill through a succession of bailouts. Look what has happened to workers in the USA. In places like Wisconsin workers pay, pensions and bargaining rights have come under attack. How long would it be before workers were expected to work for nothing? Why hang around? Why not just bring back slavery? It would be so much simpler, after all.

In the past few years, the loony rightists of the Tea Party have plumbed new depths for extreme 'free' market bullshit. So it comes as no surprise that Michelle Bachmann, their current darling, should have signed up to a pledge which said that children in the USA who were born to black slaves were better cared for than the modern day offspring of black Americans. Huh? The opening statement of the pledge actually read:

"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President"

This is the kind of racist extremist ignorance and prejudice that the lunatics of the Tea Party embody. Pledging in itself is just the kind of saddo activity which right-wing Americans love to indulge in. Of course, Bachmann has distanced herself from the statement, claiming she didn't read it, despite the fact she signed it - and, doh! - it was on the front page. The problem here is that Bachmann wants to be president of the USA. Ordinarily, we would look on people like Michelle Bachmann as a bunch of relatively harmless backwoods knuckle-draggers, but we should be more wary, because if let loose, the Michelle Bachmanns of this world pose a genuine threat to any decent society. As far as we know, unlike other female Tea Party nine day wonders,  she's not a witch, though being a witch would obviously be an improvement on being what she is.

We can win the economic argument - so lets do it!

"Its the economy stupid!" - it sure is. The economy is just about all we hear about these days, and its no wonder, because we are going through the biggest economic crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression. But the problem we have is that the neoliberal right are in the ascendancy, they have the power. This means that the response to the economic crisis is the same as it was during the Great Depression. Does this mean we have learnt nothing in the past 80 years? To some extent yes, but the real problem is that the same kind of people are in control now as were in control in the late 1920s - capitalist corporations and the politicians who support them. The Great Depression lead to immense hardship and deprivation for people around the world. In America, the slump, despite the uplift given by Roosevelt with the New Deal, lasted over a decade until the end of World War II. It was the massive US spending during the war economy that lifted the whole world out of the Great Depression. Without that lift the world economy would probably  have remained stagnant for many more years, possibly decades.

In the mid 1930s  the economist John Maynard Keynes explained that in a economic slump governments needed to take counter-cyclical measures to revive the economy. In other words, you don't cut spending in a recession - you increase it. But Keynes's ideas were ignored then - just as they are being ignored now. Then as now, for reasons of class, politicians preferred to cuts jobs and welfare rather than increase spending or increase taxes on the rich - who could have afforded to pay more. Belt tightening was, as usual, forced on the poorest in society.

So where does that leave us? The sovereign debt crisis which is now engulfing Europe and the USA is a direct result of the banking crisis known in the UK as the 'credit crunch'.  This crisis would have brought down the world economy, if it had not been for the fact that the state intervention, both here and abroad, propped up the faltering world private banking system. The resulting losses (costs) were nationalised and the gains (profits) remained in private hands. The people who caused the crisis got away free whilst ordinary people picked up the tab, bailing out the banks, and paying by losing their jobs, homes and pensions.

But that was only round one. The debt form the economic crisis didn't just  disappear - it became the sovereign debt which is crippling Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal, and which now threatens the USA itself with debt default. So, the people are  being made to pay for the crisis a second time around. The name of the game now is austerity. Yet more cuts in welfare and more jobs losses - all to protect the same people  - the private sector, the banks and bondholders - financial capitalism. But as Keynes showed more cuts and austerity won't fix the problem - it will make it worse. That means the best we can hope for in the UK and Europe is economic stagnation, continuing high unemployment, and increasing hardship and poverty. The result is that your children will inevitably be poorer than you are and your grandchildren will be poorer still, in a society blighted by homelessness and inequality.

In the UK we have our own austerity crisis. The Chancellor of the Exchequer,  George Osborne, has taken a reckless ideological and political gamble with our economy by instituting savage austerity cuts of £81 billion. His aim is to use the debt crisis as cover to slash the welfare state - which is something the right have always hated. He is hoping that the economy will recover enough so that he can announce tax cuts before the next election. he believes this will win the next election for the Tories. That is why the Tories wanted a fixed term five year parliament - because they need at least 5 years for this ideological economic gamble to have a chance to work.

So, if the economic policies being followed by the EU, in Greek debt crisis for example, and in the UK government aren't working, why are they being followed? The answer is simple - neoliberal ideology. This is class war politics. The lesson of the past thirty years is that the capitalist class and their politicians have allowed a world economic crisis to develop by following neoliberal 'free' market dogma, by deregulating financial capitalism (the banking and shadow banking system). Now they are exploiting the outcome of that crisis, and using it to roll back all the democratic gains made by working people in the last century. 

So what does the left do about this? Well, we have to win the economic argument. That is essential. We have to explain to people how the failed 'economic' policies of the neoliberalism got us here. We have to explain how the crisis has been exploited to benefit the people who caused it. We have to debunk the myths about the benefits of the unregulated 'free' market. But most of all, we have to show that we have an alternative which can create jobs and prosperity. That is what the Green Party did in its 2010 election manifesto. We showed that  by investing in creating one million green jobs, and by building housing, by improving public transport, by controlling the banks, and by growing our economy in a sustainable way, we could lift the UK out of the economic crisis it is in.

The reality is that Osborne's reckless ideological gamble with our economy won't work, and when it fails, we have to be ready to strike. The next UK quarter figures are due soon. All the indicators are that they will be very poor - either very low growth, or no growth at all. That is the time we must put the boot it - and hard. People in the UK are beginning to waver in their support for cuts. In the past year support for the cuts has fallen from 69% to 55%, with 45% now against Osborne's savage cuts. Once the British people realise that Osborne's economic 'policy' isn't working the Tories economic competency will be finished. It is then that the Coalition will be in real danger. The Coalition government is a weak and divided government which has only survived because the British people have been conned into believing that it was acting in the national interest, to tackle the economic crisis. Cameron has already been severely wounded by the phone hacking scandal. Its hard to see how the government could survive similar damage to Osborne.

The reality is this; pensions and the welfare state aren't unaffordable; low taxes only benefit the rich; the state is not inherently a bad thing - governments can and should intervene to create jobs, build houses and protect the vulnerable; we can only have a better health service if it is provided by the public sector; privatisation means that you pay more for less; banks can be nationalised and brought under democratic control; co-operation is much more important than competition.

These are the messages that all those who oppose this government; UK-uncut, the Coalition of Resistance; trade unionists, and all the other anti-cuts groups need to get across, and get across soon. The only way we can slay this neoliberal system and get rid of this government is by winning the economic argument. Until we get on with the task of doing that we won't have the power to change things for the better and we won't be able to stop the deliberate destruction by this government of all the things which make this a society worth living in.

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.

The phone hacking scandal exposes our sham democracy

I blogged a while ago about our sham democracy, the cosy carve up which means that whoever gets elected, the policies pursued by governments are always the same. The economic crisis caused by the collapse of the banks illustrated this really well, because that crisis lead directly to the sovereign debt crisis, and we have seen that successive governments in countries like Greece and Ireland have toed the party line, and swallowed the neoliberal medicine, to the detriment of the people who elected them. How ironic it is that the electorate in Greece should boot out an incredibly unpopular conservative government, only to replace it with a 'socialist' government which then proves to be even more unpopular, by kow-towing to the IMF and the ECB and introducing yet greater austerity.

So that's how it goes. You have an incredibly unpopular government, you boot it out and elect another government which then goes on to do exactly the same thing. There is only one way to break this cycle - vote for a party which is not neoliberal and has different policies. If that means voting socialist or green - do it!

So what has this all got to do with phone hacking? The essence is that the problems with the banks and Murdoch's media empire are the same - capitalist corporations which have too much power and are out of democratic control. Just as our politicians have ceded power to the banks, they have also ceded it to moguls like Murdoch. News International should never have been allowed to control 40% of the UK press. Sky should never have been allowed to build up a monopoly of satellite TV through exclusive rights to Premier League football. But it was allowed to happen, and in the process our democracy has been undermined and our body politic corrupted. This is what happens when you have unregulated capitalism and 'free' market fanatics in government. The sad reality is that there is no change in sight. Murdoch may have his wings clipped for a while, but the neoliberal juggernaut moves on, crushing decency, democracy and freedom in its path.

I'd just like to finish this post with two pertinent quotes from an article in today's Telegraph (my italics):

"There were those who believed that Murdoch had debased and debauched British public life, and there is indeed great evidence that this was the case. For example, the News of the World was a respectable – if racy – family newspaper before Murdoch brought it under his ownership. As we now know, it converted into a flourishing criminal concern that took an evil pleasure in destroying people’s lives."

"The bitter truth is that no major figure in British public life was prepared to take on and expose the Murdoch newspaper empire. Rival proprietors were silent. Senior public figures did not dare to speak out for fear of exposure and attack in the Murdoch newspapers. This is why, for more than a generation, Rupert Murdoch’s empire has been a spider at the heart of an intricate web that has poisoned British public life. "

Strange it is though that a paper which can see the shortcomings of Cameron and speak with loathing about Rupert Murdoch will be trumpeting the wonders of the 'free' market which is the real engine of inequality, poverty and the corruption it so rightly condemns.

What is the Labour Party for?

A lot of people are wondering what the Labour Party is for. Since Ed Milliband became leader its been hard to to tell. But at least we know what the Labour party is not for; its not for the working class, it abandoned them a long time ago, letting the BNP fill the vacuum; its not for decent public sector pensions; its not much interested in housing; or the poor; or trade unions. It is, we know, in the historic words of Peter Mandelson - "intensely relaxed about the filthy rich" and it seems to be pretty keen on the banks; Oh!, and privatisation of the NHS, education, and well, pretty much anything else that moves.

The Labour Party is a party that has lost its way completely. So much so that it doesn't really know what it is for, except perhaps a vehicle for its leaders to get elected and hold political power, a vehicle for career politicians, the political class that I blogged about in this post. That means that it is the job of party members, who presumably think they are part of a project to change things, merely to have a role of furthering the career aspirations of Milliband, Jowell, Balls, Alexander et al.

I'm sure that Ed would be horrified if he read what I'd just written. He'd protest that he believes in a progressive future and that he, and his colleagues, have been traduced by that statement. If he thinks that I'd like to suggest its his own fault, because I think I think those are perfectly reasonable conclusions for onlookers like me to draw, based on the statements, and behaviour of Ed and other leading Labour politicians.

For example, for him to state that the June 30th strike was wrong, on the basis that negotiations about public sector pensions were ongoing, was laughable. It was obvious to all but the most naive that the government wasn't involved  in meaningful negotiations and had no intention of compromising on terms remotely acceptable to the striking teachers and civil servants. Not only that, but it was clear that the government had been hiding the fact that the Hutton Report showed that public sector pensions were affordable, and this had been exposed on the Today programme.

The Labour party has become a right-wing reactionary neoliberal party and there is little to distinguish it from the other neoliberal parties; the Liberal Democrats and the Tories. The reason for this transformation is not difficult to discern. This transformation has happened to 'left' parties all over the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Social Democracy has been abandoned in favour of 'free' market globalisation, and the domination of democracies by the multinational corporations and the banks. In fact, this is little different to Fascism. It is only a matter of degree, because Fascism is the subjugation of democracy to capitalist corporations -  with some goose-stepping in uniform, and gratuitous violence, thrown in.

This is what is happening in Greece. Democracy has been openly replaced, under a 'Socialist' government,  by the control of financial technocrats from the EU and IMF, on behalf of their market masters. Our politicians, including Ed,  are complicit in this free market coup d'etat. There is only one way we can stop this. We must stop voting for these people. We need to vote for parties which can stop the rot. In the UK there is only one party of social justice left - the Green Party.

Cheshire West Against the Cuts: J30

On Thursday June 30th striking public sector workers and their supporters came together for a rally at the Town Hall in Chester. We had a  turnout of about 350 people and some very good speeches from trade unionists and CWAC supporters. All in all a very good day for the fightback against Cameron's class war government's attempt to make us pay for the failures of financial capitalism.



There is a lot more work to do but we are building resistance in an area which is hardly renowned for left or trade union activism. Long may it continue.

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!

J30: STRIKE!

Support the strike action by public sector workers on June 30th! You can visit this website to find out more about the actions planned next Thursday - http://www.j30strike.org

Everyone who is not capitalist class, unlike Cameron and Osborne, should support the public sector worker's strike action on Thursday June 30th. This isn't just an attack on pensions its part of a wider attack on the living standards of all of us - except the very wealthiest in our society. That means an attack on you!

You should support this strike action in any way you can because:

1. Decent public and private sector pensions are NOT unaffordable - see here.
For far too long the right have got away with using the demographic argument. The reality is that final salary pensions can be funded if there is the political will there to do it. 3.5 million public sector workers are in the Local Government Pension Scheme, which is well funded. A sustainable settlement for this scheme was agreed by the previous government in 2006.

2. The savage £81 billion worth of cuts are not designed to help our economy. They are ideologically driven, with the intention of destroying the welfare state and privatising public services, to the detriment of all except the very richest in our society. Under cover of the shock of the financial crisis, which they caused, capitalists are attempting to undo a century of progress for ordinary people.

3. Public and private sector workers must reject the attempts by this class war neo-liberal government and its supporters to divide them.There has been a concerted and effective campaign by the political right and its cheerleaders in the media to implement austerity by dividing public and private sector workers. If you are a private sector worker you should be supporting decent pensions for all - not expecting public sector workers to have their pensions destroyed as well.

4. This is a weak government with a weak argument for cutting pension benefits. Cameron and co. really do fear that the strikes could get up a momentum and majority public support. If this happens they are deep trouble.

I hope to see you at one of the protests next week. Not sure where I'll be yet but I'll probably be in Chester, solidarity!