We need boldness to replace the weak timidity of the Coalition

When people are under pressure they often retreat into what they think they know, and what makes them feel safe. The global economic crisis, triggered by the banks and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, threatened to bring down the whole global economy and capitalist order. The response, lead by politicians in the UK, including Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling, was to use the power of the state to preserve the status quo. Losses were nationalised and profits remained in Wall Street and the City as taxpayers were required to bail out the private sector banking system. The aim was to restore "business as usual", as if nothing had ever happened.

Since the 2010 general election in the UK, David Cameron and George Osborne, have continued to use the British state to maintain "business a usual", playing the class war card and ensuring that corporations and the rich continue to be shielded by making the rest of us pay to reduce the structural deficit and prop up the banks. As long as the 'markets' and bondholders are safe, the rest of us can go hang. The recent budget provided ample evidence of this with the top rate of tax being reduced to 45% and Osborne later claiming that, even though he is a millionaire, that he didn't know that wealthy people pay lower taxes overall than the rest of us.

But its not just the ongoing economic crisis that we should be concerned about, we are facing a crisis of resource depletion and climate change. Far from being a sign of strength as, Cameron, Osborne, Brown and Darling have claimed, in 'protecting' 'our' economy they have shown weakness. Brown and Darling could have taken the opportunity of the crash to bring the banks under control, Cameron and Osborne could have taken the opportunity of election victory to re-engineer our economy to deal with the very real challenges we face. They all failed. The same mistakes have been reproduced by Sarkozy and Merkel in the EU, making the Eurozone crisis even worse, something which the economist Joseph Stiglitz has recently described as a "suicide pact".



What we need now is politicians like Caroline Lucas who have the courage to cast aside the failed 'free' market neoliberal ideology of business as usual and build an economy which can deal with the very real challenges which we face. Sadly, there is no hope of this happening with this government, Cameron and Osborne will continue to protect the interests of their class, and fiddle while Rome burns, but lets be clear - what they offer us, apart from years of hardship is, for all the posturing, not strength, but weakness in the face of adversity.

Globalisation and austerity - so many rotten apples!

A few years ago, after more than a decade of battling with Windows, with viruses, system crashes, obscure drivers and innumerable updates I decided to buy a Mac. Now Macs are outrageously expensive compared to PCs but they do what they say on the tin, quickly, efficiently and simply, and, since then, I've had trouble free access to the web and have even been able to edit my own videos! So it was worth it. But, and the but is - that I've become increasingly disillusioned by what Apple does, and how it operates. Thanks to the iPhone and other products,  Apple has become the biggest company in the world, with billions of dollars, reputed to amount to $100 billion, sloshing around in its back pocket, so much in fact that it didn't seem to know what to do with all that dosh. Hmmm? ... after some thought Apple decided to hand over some cash to its shareholders.

No surprise there then, but what is wrong with Apple? For some time there has been growing concern about the treatment of workers who make Apple products at Foxconn in China. Workers at Foxconn, who make iPhones and iPads,  have protested about working conditions and Reuters reported today that:

"Workers at a Chinese factory owned by Foxconn, Apple Inc's main manufacturer, threatened to jump off the roof of a building in a protest over wages just a month after the two firms announced a landmark agreement on improving working conditions."

But what's more is that Apple has a huge profit margin, something that most corporations would die for. A recent article by Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian revealed that:

"Assembled in China, the total cost of putting together just one phone was $178.45. Compare that with a sale price (including downloads) of $630 and Apple makes $452 on each phone: a whacking gross margin of 72%."

This is mind boggling enough, but what the article also showed was that if Apple made the same product in the USA it could still make a whacking 45% profit! So why bother to outsource production to China?

Its not just Apple, because Apple is doing what every other corporation is doing nowadays, screwing every last drop of profit out of consumers and workers for the benefit of a tiny minority - the 1%. This is what globalisation and neoliberal capitalism are all about, a global race to the bottom in environmental and labour standards which is threatening the prosperity of societies all over the world, and puts commercial interests above democratic sovereignty through organisations like the WTO. If you want to know more about how globalisation works I recommend you read the excellent essay by Michael Parenti called Globalisation and Democracy. As Parenti says:

"With international “free trade” agreements such as NAFTA, GATT, and FTAA, the giant transnationals have been elevated above the sovereign powers of nation states. These agreements endow anonymous international trade committees with the authority to prevent, overrule, or dilute any laws of any nation deemed to burden the investment and market prerogatives of transnational corporations."

Henry Ford - a capitalist who understood that workers have to be able to afford to consume

Now, the world economic barrel is full of capitalist rotten apples, corporations which are allowed to ride roughshod over social and environmental legislation whilst they devastate communities and economies. As I've pointed out in a previous post, neoliberalism is ultimately self-defeating because it is economically unsustainable, as well as being environmentally unsustainable. You can't have a consumer capitalist economic model if no one can afford to consume, and that is where we're headed -  Henry Ford realised that a hundred years ago. There is a big problem here because neoliberal globalisation and austerity are going to create a huge number of human casualties, and things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. We need an economic alternative now, with governments leading the way in Europe for investment and job creation, and providing social housing and healthcare, that is why we must hope that Hollande will become President of France and why you should vote for the Green Party in the forthcoming local elections.

A Green vote is a vote against austerity!

The savage cuts of £81 billion imposed by George Osborne in the Coalition's so-called emergency budget in 2010 were designed to make the ordinary people of the UK pay for the sovereign debt crisis which resulted from the financial crisis caused by banks. These are the very same banks that had already been bailed out to the extent of £1.2 trillion by the UK taxpayer. At the time, Osborne and David Cameron cynically claimed that "were all in it together" but they knew that the cuts would fall disproportionately on the low paid, unemployed and disabled, and would hit women particularly hard. The savage cuts imposed by the Coalition are unprecedented in the history of the UK and are driven by ideology, not by necessity, as has been claimed. The government cuts will lead to 700,000 job losses in the public sector, causing further hardship to those already bearing the brunt of the cuts and will probably lead to economic stagnation in the UK for at least a decade.




In our 2010 manifesto the Green Party provided the UK with a radical and positive economic alternative to this savage austerity programme. We planned to halve the deficit in five years without cutting public sector services or jobs and invest £44 billion in creating one million green jobs, and our programme, based on cutting unnecessary government projects like Trident, environmental taxes to cut pollution, and taxing the better off, was fully costed. This approach, if adopted, would have mitigated the worst effects of the financial crisis and created hope for millions in the UK.

The Coalition government have cynically left local councils to implement much of their cuts and councillors are left in a position where they will struggle to support vital local services and protect jobs. Despite this Green Party councillors and candidates in the forthcoming election are determined to do all they can to maintain the local services that people need. In Brighton and Hove, our first Green council is the the most democratic and open in the borough's history and has introduced the living wage for council staff, and is fighting to protect the victims of the cuts. If you want change there is a real alternative to the despair and destruction being wreaked on communities in the UK. On 3 May, vote Green!

Supermarket dinosaurs deserve to die

Tesco is in trouble. For the first time in many years sales at the supermarket behemoth are declining, and although I've been carrying out a one-man boycott of Tesco's for several years, unfortunately I can't claim the credit for this. When I say boycott, what I mean is that I never do my main weekly shop in Tesco. Sometimes I have had to buy something in a Tesco Express, partly because of expediency, but also because Tesco has now become so ubiquitous that it is hard to find an alternative store in many neighborhoods and city centres.


Why did I decide to boycott Tesco? There are two main reasons; Firstly, it is just way too big. Any company which takes £1 out of every £7 spent in the UK has to be a bad thing for the UK economy. This is monopoly capitalism at its worst, and much of the money made by Tesco is inevitably going to go out of the UK into the hands of foreign shareholders, but more of that later; The second reason is that I found Tesco poor value for money, and I didn't like the quality of the food much either.

Tesco, monopoly-capital Behemoth

It seems that I'm not the only one. Lots of other people have similar problems with Tesco. In fact, I'm sure that Tesco could learn a lot about why people don't like it by reading this article. Here is just one comment:

"The brand has been tainted by greed and cynical and exploitative practices. That means that no one has any feeling of affection or loyalty that could see it through a sticky patch. I actively avoid Tesco's and, like many others, would be pleased to see them cut down to size. So, I'm really not sure where they go from here as I can't imagine anything that they could do which would make me love them".

..... which I like because it took the words right out of my mouth. The problem with Tesco is that they epitomise all that is wrong with the over-mighty corporations which have arisen as a result of monopoly capitalism. We are told that these corporations are good for the economy because they are 'efficient' but this  so-called 'efficiency' means market domination (30% for Tesco), squeezing that market at both ends by shafting the supplier and customer, exploiting low paid workers to maximise profits, damaging the environment with megastores, and contributing to the devastation of local high streets by reducing diversity and putting small stores out of business.


This is what happens with monopoly capitalism, across the board not just in the food retail sector. When a few corporations dominate a mature market they don't compete on price anymore - though that's what they want you to believe - they focus on slashing costs and using advertising to maximise their profits, and this is at the expense of employees, customers and the environment. Corporations want you to believe the customer is king but to quote Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster:

"Under a mature monopoly-capitalist system, people serve the economy and not vice versa. The much ballyhooed "consumer sovereignty" is transformed, as John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out, into "producer sovereignty".

This is from their excellent book - 'What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism' - which explains how monopoly capitalism works, and a book I would recommend everyone to read.

Of course its not just Tesco which is the problem, its all of the giant monopoly capitalist corporations which are devouring our planet in their insatiable drive for capital accumulation. But in the UK Tesco embodies this destructive monopoly more than any other corporation, and many people are conscious of this, despite all the advertising and hype. Maybe Tesco will be able to turn it around. But that would be a pity because what we need is thriving local businesses selling locally grown good quality food, not corporate giants devouring the environment and our high streets. I won't be shopping there ever again, if I can help it. The best thing for Tesco would be for it to be broken up into local co-operatives that really served the communities they are based in.

Twenty first century corporate capitalism is about creating monopoly, about endless growth and capital accumulation, not efficiency or building a socially useful economy, and it lies at the heart of the sociopathic disease of neoliberalism which is damaging our economy and destroying our planet, and we would all be better off without it.

Is there a cure for homophobic Christians?

The recent furore about anti-gay ads on buses in London, has shone the spotlight on the shadowy activities of evangelical 'Christian' groups who claim to be able to 'cure' homosexuality. It all began when the gay group Stonewall paid for an advertising campaign on London buses with the slogan - " Some people are gay. Get over it!". So far so good, nothing wrong with challenging homophobia, but predictably, an evangelical Christian group - The Core Issues Trust ("God's heart in sexual and relational brokenness") - retaliated with a bus ad which read - "Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!". The ad was immediately banned by Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, who is obviously sensitive about such issues in an election period and doesn't want to alienate the gay vote in London. Predictably, The Core Issues Trust are now considering legal action.

What really matters about this story is the fact that ultra-conservative Christian groups have been peddling 'cures' for homosexuality for some time now. These bigots, who are clearly unable to cope with the reality that God created homosexuals, if you believe in God that is, are tormenting gay Christian men and women with the 'hope' that they can be heterosexual. This is not just extremely offensive, it is psychologically damaging to those who are subjected to this cure and and encourages prejudice against gay people. The American Psychological Association (APA), the world's largest association of psychologists has stated that:

“Homosexuality is not a mental disorder and the APA opposes all portrayals of lesbian, gay and bisexual people as mentally ill and in need of treatment due to their sexual orientation".

What should really concern us is whether there is a cure for so-called Christians who are prejudiced against gay people. I believe there is - they just need to follow the teachings of Jesus and start behaving like real Christians, leaving their bigotry behind them. In the meantime if you want to help diminish the malign influence of these 'Christian' groups please sign this petition which calls upon MPs to refuse to use the services of interns provided by the 'Christian' group CARE which sponsors 'gay cure' events.

Why capitalism won't exist in 50 years time

I've been reflecting on the Coalition government's claim that the market will make up for the 750,000 public sector jobs that are going to be lost under the austerity measures imposed by Chancellor George Osborne. In his first emergency budget, which introduced £81 billion of cuts, Osborne claimed that the private sector would take up the slack by creating 2.5 million jobs. Clearly that hasn't happened, but what if it never does? Why should the private sector create that number of jobs in the UK anyway? In a golbalised economy it may be that the market will provide jobs elsewhere instead, or maybe the jobs will just never materialise.

Of course, Osborne never mentioned what kind of jobs would be created, but its a fair bet that the jobs, if created won't be as good as the public sector jobs that have been culled by the government. Not all public sector jobs are well paid by any means but many are highly skilled, and nearly all offer better benefits than private sector equivalents. Its likely that many 'replacement' private sector jobs will be low skilled 'McJobs'. To add to the existing problems in the job market, Osborne is now trying to implement a long held dream of the Tories to 'regionalise' public sector pay in order to drive down wages still further, on the excuse that the private sector will be able to compete in the jobs market with their McJobs. This is likely to backfire on the government because public sector workers will seek to keep pace with those in similar jobs around the UK, leading to more disputes and industrial action.

There is still the question of whether any jobs will be created. The record is not good. Its worth reading this article by Larry Elliot which shows that in the past 100 years the private sector has failed to replace jobs in the North of England lost when heavy industries such as shipbuilding, cotton manufacture, steel-making, and coal mining went into terminal decline.The reality is that Osborne's approach is going to hit the North, which is already suffering, very hard. That is part of the reason for George Galloway's recent victory in Bradford West - people are fed up with a lack of jobs and opportunity and the fact that none of the three main parties are offering an alternative to austerity.

My view is that the oft promised jobs will never be created. For sure, as long as we follow the discredited 'free' market neoliberal ideology beloved of Mr Osborne. Why? -  because we have entered a different, and, I believe, final, phase of capitalism. There are a number of different factors working here to bring about the demise of capitalism as we know it;

Firstly, the rise of financial capitalism, fuelled by deregulation of the banking and finance sectors. If you want to get the best return and make money you invest in financial instruments, and property, that is the quickest and easiest way to make a buck. There are currently trillions of dollars flooding this financial system, and none of it is being invested in job creating industries. The problem for capitalists is that the 'real' economy is suffering from falling profitability;

Secondly, the model of consumer capitalism on which we currently rely for our prosperity is slowly breaking down. Consumer capitalism really started in the 1920s with Edward Bernays, and only really took off in the period of prosperity following WWII. Bernays, who is often called the father of Public Relations is credited with creating consumer 'wants' rather than the 'needs' that existed previously. Neoliberalism is undermining that consumer-lead model though globalisation by making people, particularly in the affluent west, poorer. You have to earn a decent amount of money to support the consumption that consumer capitalism needs. In the USA consumer spending is 70% of the economy. That is why neoliberal capitalism is relying increasingly on, the creation of debt to sustain consumerism, the cannibalising of the public sector, and corporate welfarism, to maintain its failing profitability;

Edward Bernays - the man who invented consumer capitalism

Thirdly, and most importantly, we are reaching the limits to growth. Resources, and oil in particular, are becoming depleted, which means that capitalist expansion is becoming impossible. capitalism relies upon compound growth, and you don't need to be a Nobel prize winning economist to understand that this kind of growth is unsustainable.

The fourth factor may prove to be the most important - climate change -  which is likely to damage the global economy further by extreme weather events like the recent tsunami in Japan, and damaging agriculture, thus limiting food production. That is an issue which I have covered extensively on this blog. Attempts to postpone the inevitable end of 'business as usual', such as the exploitation of shale gas and tar sands, are likely to be self-defeating.

If you want to know more about monopoly capitalism and how this crisis is being driven by factors one and two then you should read the excellent book 'The Great Financial Crisis' by Magdoff and Foster, which explains how capitalism has increasingly invested in finance, at the expense of the real economy.

I just want to finish this post with a prediction. Capitalism as we now know it won't exist in 50 years time. I won't be around to see it but I have no doubt that capitalism will reach its limits, economically and environmentally in the next 50 years or so. What we ought to be doing now is planning for the future. That future will inevitably mean more state intervention, not because of ideology, but because of necessity. In 2008, when the global economy was crashing, the state came to the rescue. There is no doubt that it will have to come to the rescue again because, by then, 'free' market fundamentalism will have brought the whole house of cards crashing down.

In Bradford Labour gets the kick in the pants it so richly deserves

I'm not exactly a fan of George Galloway, in fact I don't know anyone who is. Despite this, the man has a track record of causing upsets and getting himself elected. So, I wasn't wholly surprised when I woke up to find he had won the Bradford West byelection with a stunning victory. But I sure was pleased :D.

No wonder he's smiling

This result is exactly the kicking that the Labour Party richly deserves. At a time when we have a Coalition government which insists on implementing deeply unpopular policies such as the 'granny tax', cutting the top rate of tax, and has been caught out peddling influence for cash to the rich, Bradford West ought to have been a very easy win for Labour. So why didn't they win? The answer is simple - Labour has deserted its social democratic roots and people want a real alternative to austerity, not the Tory-lite version being offered by Ed Milliband and co.

So will Labour learn the real lessons of this humiliating defeat? I doubt it. The reality is that Labour is now a neoliberal party of the centre-right, populated by discredited Blairites who are itching to continue the process of privatising and destroying public services. A recent poll showed that the public think the Tories are the party of the rich, if they'd asked the same question about Labour, they might have got the same answer. After all, as Mandelson famously said Labour are intensely relaxed about people being filthy rich.

Like many people I'm angry about the fact that Labour abandoned being the party of social justice in the UK, for grovelling to big business and corporate capitalism. Although it is clear to many of us that Labour needs to discover its social democratic roots, Labour has bent over backwards since its election defeat to avoid doing just that, producing absurd alternative narratives such as Blue Labour. People want an alternative to neoliberalism business as usual, and at the moment to only mainstream party which offers that alternative is the Green Party.

Our government really is being run by idiots

Yesterday evening I went to our local garage to get some bread. I live in a village and we are lucky enough to have a garage and two good pubs. But, being a village, the main road is fairly narrow. I found I couldn't get near the garage for people queuing for petrol. Now I must admit that I'd taken my eye off the ball as far as the tanker driver's dispute is concerned but it was obvious what was happening - panic buying - when there is no reason to panic!

I now discover that the government has fueled this panic by telling people to stock up on petrol, and even store it at home - which is potentially a hazardous thing to do! I just can't believe the stupidity of this move. Obviously they are trying to undermine a strike which hasn't even been called yet, but causing panic buying is a wholly irresponsible thing to do, and may well backfire by annoying people and could even strengthen the position of the tanker drivers. Only idiots would provoke a panic and deliberately cause petrol shortages. This government has lost the plot - assuming it ever had it in the first place.

Unlike the government, the tanker drivers are involved in an industrial dispute with their employers for wholly responsible reasons. The big energy producers, Shell et al, used to employ tanker drivers but this work has now been outsourced and in the process pay and conditions are under attack, but so is safety. You get what you pay for, and if you try to do it on the cheap, corners get cut, and you end up with a worse service. This, of course, is all part of the race to the bottom globally in terms of pay and safety in order to increase profits for companies which already make billions, something this government heartily approves of. I wish the tanker drivers well and hope they win their dispute - for all our sakes. The tanker drivers can speak for themselves - watch this video and judge for yourself.

Lost cities of the moderns?

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

The Pyramids of Tucame

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

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

The government that nobody wanted is doing what nobody wants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Green Party must not repeat the mistakes of the Irish Greens

It is clear some people in the Green Party of England and Wales haven't learned any lessons from the blunders of the Irish Green Party. If you don't know the story you must read "A Deal with the Devil - the Green party in government" by Mary Minihan. In brief, the Irish Green Party, lured by the prospect of power, and a chance to implement green policies, entered into a coalition with Fianna Fail, and ended up imposing savage neoliberal cuts on the Irish People, which are causing huge damage to Irish society. As a result, activists left the party in droves and the Irish electorate, quite rightly, destroyed the party at a general election in 2011.

What did the Irish Greens gain from all of this? Er.... not much more than a watered down stag hunting bill. What is really scary about Minihan's account is that it describes the staggering capacity for self-deception in the Irish Green MPs, the ability to think you are doing good when you are actually doing the opposite, and gaining nothing useful in the process. The Greens even stayed in a rotten and reviled government long enough to push through an immensely damaging finance bill out of some kind of loyalty to Brian Cowen! Clearly the Green MPs, including the new party leader Eamon Ryan, were hopelessly naive, both economically and politically. Whilst Rome burned around them they kept on fiddling around with their hopes for a climate change bill.

All of which brings me to Brighton and Hove Council and the Green Party (GP) conference. I have been planning to write a full conference report but that will have to wait, this is too important. This weekend the GP spring conference has been dominated by the decisions made by Green councillors in Brighton. The council is run by a Green minority administration, the first Green council in the UK, and something of which the party has been rightly proud. Just before conference, on Thursday 23rd February, B&H council had its budget setting meeting. At that meeting an unholy alliance of Labour and the Tories cynically destroyed the Green budget by amending and removing a crucial part of it - a 3.5%  council tax rise. To their credit, Green councillors were the first in the country to propose such a rise in order to help alleviate the savage cuts of £17 million in Brighton demanded by the Coalition government.

Having had a key part of their budget removed, Green councillors, could have voted against the amended budget and left it to the Tories and Labour to administer that amended budget by stepping down. Instead they chose to vote for the amended budget and to carry on in 'power'. Only one Green councillor, Alex Phillips, voted against the budget. Clearly Green councillors were in a difficult position but they chose the easy way out, to remain in power, and that, as the Irish Greens learned to their cost, could have significant implications for the party nationally. And make no mistake, stepping down is a lot harder than staying on. Cuts are cuts are cuts, and arguing that green cuts are better won't wash. Even if they had voted against the budget and remained in power that would have been a better option than the one they chose.

Why is it that the Green councillors decision could be so damaging for the party? Its because we claim that we are a party of principle, that we are different to the other parties and that we oppose the cuts. If we had stood down as the council the Tories would have had to administer their cuts, supported by Labour, and this would have been hugely damaging to Labour, who are out to destroy us in Brighton. As it is we are left with implementing a cuts budget which is no longer our own and we can be picked off at a time of our opponents choosing. Now Labour can cynically claim that we are the party of cuts and use that to try and destroy us at the next election. As a party, we are at a crucial stage where thousands of people around the country are considering voting for us and joining us. Now, many of those people are going to look at us and think that we are no different to the other parties. We have already lost members over this issue. In addition, the actions of Green councillors in Brighton could rob us of our only MP, and greatest asset, Caroline Lucas.

I have no doubt that our councillors in Brighton are doing a great job in really difficult circumstances and that Greens can govern far better than Tories or Labour could ever do. I support them, but I don't agree with their decision. This is about politics, not a loyalty test. Some people in the Green Party seem to have become blinded by electoralism, as the Irish Greens were. They think that is 'grown up' politics and they are right - but only if you have the tactical nouse to make the right political decisions when you are in power. Some of the comments I heard from supporters of the Green councillors at conference sounded depressingly like the Liberal Democrats - our party right or wrong - and I've no doubt that exactly the same arguments were used by the Liberal Democrat leaders to keep party members in line to support the Coalition government.

The Green Party must not fall at the first political hurdle. So far we have done extremely well, punching above our weight, and we have a great asset, in our politically astute leader, Caroline Lucas. Now its time for our Green councillors to show the same political astuteness. In order to help to repair the damage done at last Thursday's budget meeting, Green Councillors in Brighton now need to seriously consider doing at least four things:

1. show that we are still at the head of the anti-cuts movement by hosting a national anti-cuts conference, inviting as many councils and groups as possible. The aim of this conference must be to explore alternatives to austerity such as those outlined below

2. explore every avenue possible for a radical party to alleviate the damage done by the cuts and raise revenue to fund services. This could include issuing local bonds and setting up a local currency

3. set a shadow needs budget which reflects the true cost of services that the people of Brighton and Hove need, consult on this and publicize it, and make sure that people understand we are not responsible for the cuts being imposed

4. hold a referendum in the autumn for a greater than 3.5% council tax rise and explain to the people of Brighton that this is necessary because of the cynical actions of Labour and the Tories, and essential to help maintain services, and  resign if they lose it

Sometimes people on the left like me are accused of being oppositional, that we don't want to exercise power, we just want to sit on the sidelines carping, and complaining about those who have to make the 'difficult decisions'. Well make no mistake, I want power, and I want a Green Party government. But not power at any price like the Irish Greens. I'm happy to make the difficult decisions but they have to be the right decisions.

'Free market' capitalism is just a racket

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fevered fantasies of the 'free' market fundamentalists

Yesterday the Greek people were betrayed by their political class, who put the bailing out of bond-holders and French and German banks above the needs of the Greek people. The madness of austerity continues and condemns the Greek people to years of pain and misery with a debt which can never be repaid. The Greek economy has contracted by 15% and unemployment has now reached 20%, homelessness is growing, and people are struggling to get access to healthcare. Undoubtedly, much of the pain which is being caused to delay the inevitable Greek default, is happening to enable the banks to get into a better state, and as we now know, banks are more important than people in neoliberal Europe.

But how did we get here? We have had 30 years of neoliberal economic failure. That is the real cause of this tragedy - a failed economic policy based on the triumphalism of the 'free' market, and a class war waged on the relatively  prosperous citizens of the west, as capitalism tries to maintain its failing profitability by taking away the healthcare, pensions, and livelihoods of western citizens. The origins of this neoliberal assault lie in the 1970's, in the Chicago School of economics and the Washington Consensus, implemented initially through Reaganomics in the USA and Thatcherism in the UK.

Despite the growing crisis caused by this ideology, and the recognition by many economists that neoliberalism doesn't work, the 'free' market right are telling the people of the west that the only cure is "more of the same". The prescription is killing the patient, but like mad scientists, the neoliberalists insist that yet harsher treatment is needed. Why is it that these 'free' market acolytes are so confident that their failed and discredited policies are the only way out of the crisis we are in? The answer is simple; these people are fanatics. Their 'economic' policy for rule by the market is not so much economic policy, nor even an ideology but much more a system of belief.

The supremacy of the 'free' market has become a fundamentalist cult, and its adherents represent a far greater threat to the safety and well-being of the global population than Al Qaeda or the Taliban. The origins of this fundamentalism were explained in All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, a documentary by Adam Curtis originally shown on BBC. The 'guru' of the 'free' market cult, who occupies a similar position in relation to the 'free' market fundamentalists, as L Ron Hubbard does to the Scientologists, is Ayn Rand. Rand espoused a philosophy of extreme selfishness, and was responsible for writing a best selling book which is the 'free' market bible, Atlas Shrugged. In this novel, which bears about as much relation to reality as Lord of the Rings, the 'most productive' members of society, who are entrepreneurs, naturally, decide to go on strike (on strike??) because they are being oppressed by high taxes, and regulations. The message is clear: society depends upon a small group of wealth creators, and without them we would all still be living in caves. Because of their obvious superiority such people ought to be treated differently to the rest of us and afforded the special privilege of great wealth and low taxes - does that sound familiar? Of course this fantasy is manna from heaven for the rich, and the apparatchicks of the Tea Party, which is why Atlas Shrugged is still a bestseller in the USA. But don't laugh, because Rand has been, and still is, very influential. One of her followers was Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the US Federal Reserve in the lead up to the 2008 crash. So, the next time you see one of the peddlers of 'free' market fundamentalism on Question Time, you need to understand that they represent a very real threat to your well-being and prosperity.

The 'free' market right continue their attack on renewable energy

I've posted recently about how the 'free' market right have been at the forefront of the climate change denial movement through shadowy groups like the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), and are actively undermining the fight against climate change. Now we hear from the Telegraph that more than 100 Tory MPs have written to the PM asking him to end subsidies for windfarms. Not only are these subsidies, which help the renewable energy sector to grow and compete, under attack, but there are also increasing objections to windfarms in the UK.

Lets deal with the subsidies first; because relatively cheap coal and gas are still available and the renewables energy sector is still developing, subsidies are needed to enable the widespread installation of energy derived from wind and solar. The solar industry recently created 25,000 much needed jobs in the UK, which are now under threat because the government has attempted to reduce subsidies. The irony is that none of those on the 'free' market right seem to have any objection to subsidies for nuclear power, which is not only uneconomic and produces a toxic waste problem, but has needed subsidies in the UK from day one. Research in the USA shows that all energy sources have received energy subsidies in the past hundred years with oil and gas receiving the highest subsidy of all. Wind power provides the cheapest form of renewable energy. Its critics claim it is intermittent and unreliable but these myths have been debunked according to this post by Damian Carrington in the Guardian. Furthermore, it has been calculated that;

"The best wind farms in the world already produce power as economically as coal, gas and nuclear generators; the average wind farm will be fully competitive by 2016".

And in the UK the costs of switching to low carbon energy will be no greater than continuing with business as usual.

I accept that people have a perfect right to object to wind farms being built in their locality, and there are some legitimate concerns about windfarms being built too close to dwellings, and the possible health risks form being subjected to noise. But we need to embrace this new cleaner technology for the sake of the future. I wonder how many people objected when the railways were being built in Britain?

Finally, you have to ask - why is it that climate change has become a left vs right issue over the past decade or so? Why do right-wingers like Nigel Lawson, of the GWPF, Tory MPs, and Ruth Lea seem to think that all environmentalists are lefties and climate change is a left-wing plot to bring about an eco-socialist world? Why do they object so strongly? The answer is simple - capitalism and corporate profits. The 'free' market right have recognised that climate change is a potential threat to established big businesses and capitalist accumulation, which relies on compound growth. They fear that adaptation to climate change and a low carbon, lower energy, lower consumption future will kill capitalist expansion, and they are probably right. If you want to find out more read Naomi Klein's excellent article on Capitalism vs the Climate. I'll just finish with this quote which sums up why this battle is being fought so fiercely:

"The bottom line is that an ecological crisis that has its roots in the overconsumption of natural resources must be addressed not just by improving the efficiency of our economies but by reducing the amount of material stuff we produce and consume. Yet that idea is anathema to the large corporations that dominate the global economy, which are controlled by footloose investors who demand ever greater profits year after year. We are therefore caught in the untenable bind of, as Jackson puts it, "trash the system or crash the planet."