I look at the country of my birth these days as an utter and complete waste of time, the lap poodle of the USA, with blurts of irrationality and pining for lost empire and influence. It has fully succumbed to financial capitalism, the real name for neoliberalism of the Chicago school, which has led to the de-industrialization of a once mighty real economic manufacturing sector except for weapons, real estate landlords gettig rich on unearned income, free trade pacts where disputes are handled by supranational boards with authority beyond national law, and real producing economies for the citizenry replaced by people running around in circles attempting to get by on selling each other thin air services and speculative tech stocks. All powered by fake unbacked currency for an unfortunately real outcome of declining prosperity. Fatuously initially called the information society to excuse exporting productive jobs to principally China, but now to anywhere where people will work for two bowls of rice and two quid a day because they have no choice in order to merely survive. There our rulers make goods on the cheap for Western capitalists to flog to their subjects who finally now haven’t the money left over after rent and food to buy the stuff anyway. All foreseen as the race to the bottom and warned about, but ignored because it made corporate balance sheets look good in the here and now. Completely without any social mores whatsoever, the ultrarich have filled their pockets and now rule relative paupers. Where to strike out next to make some real loot? That’s the concern of the really rich. Opportunities are scarce.
So to set the stage for one last giant gasp, jingoism and patriotic chest-beating is reaching epic proportions these days. Hate is preached against any country that resists the neoliberal tide. The great landmass of Asia has untold natural wealth, well, twenty or thirty years worth of full scale messianic extraction activity anyway, to exploit in the manner the rest of the world has already been treated, particularly over the last forty or so years since Thatcher and Reagan appeared fully on scene. Not that those two goofs had the brainpower to really understand what they were up to, but were pushed by their innate anti-unionism bents and the burgeoning financial sector to put down the masses, proclaim the virtues of the rugged individual standing proud and free (to get rid of unions), and to end the welfare state for those incapable of looking after themselves in the new deeper rat race they promoted. Society? What’s that? it doesn’t exist, proclaimed the woman with the sprayed-in-place hair.
Austerity politics for the citizenry was enabled because “we were living beyond our means”, and without the public’s permission or even understanding, national resources in the form of public utilities like electricity and water and train travel and the Post Office were flogged off to private financial vultures for pennies on the pound. This, we were informed, would make things more efficient, because who ever thought “government” was efficient? I did, working at a Crown corporation, but the powers that be knew it would be easy to use popular prejudice for their real action to hoover up wealth on the cheap for themselves.
And so it has proved as big a ripoff as initially feared. There has been a distinct lack of investment in rail travel, for example, since the rich boys took over. The citizens known as the General Public were fleeced every which way to Sunday, and didn’t really raise a murmur. Various nitwit bought-and-paid-for pundits arose in the media to espouse the line: “the free market solves everything!” As if. Jackals of the Blair type arose to have their glory power days in the sun, while lying away like troopers on WMD. Iraq was the stand-in for Western wrath at high oil prices set by foreigners who should be bowing down in fealty, and were Muslims and Arabs like OPEC that prejudice could dun easily. Millions died for nothing but shock and awe criminality.
The essence of a productive economy that is lean and spare and competitive and pays a decent wage to workers is the provision of “free” public infrastructure and education. It seems to me that was the general if unspoken or understood plan about 125 years ago, both in the UK and USA. The extant capitalists of the time believed they were getting a free ride on the backs of citizens and so they were, but the rising tide of beneficial infrastructure lifted all boats. Plus in the US Teddy Roosevelt led the trustbusters, knocking over a few monopolies in his wake. Industrial capitalism it’s called these days — society at large provides the infrastructure which is relatively free for all to use, and the chief proponent of it is now China, which has also knocked down a few of its own billionaires like Jack Ma. So our own “betters” now call industrial capitalism communism to tar it with a barf brush as they now impose fees on the use of everything because they own it. Free roads and education? Perish the thought when you can charge for it!
To puff up our chests with righteousness, we’re told we all live in freedom-loving democracies concerned with human rights and the promotion of niche politics for the selected fad vulnerable of the month, which won’t affect the general tide of big brother’s hand in your pocket, so we can vehemently argue the toss about the latest caterwauling of some minor injustice without upsetting the true applecart of the real rulers’ greed. Deflection.
Hell, Orwell had worked out pre WW2 that the word democracy now stood for capitalism, and that patting ourselves on the back for being such wonderful fair people in our colonial treatment of third world countries was a complete joke. Bringing “enlightenment” to “savages” was the general line of nonsense we were all led to believe — I know that was how I was taught in the 1950s living in Portsmouth. And proselytizing missionaries spread the by-then highly modified original religion of Christianity on the back of the obviously stronger foreign militaries occupying countries — believe this dogma and thus be strong like us. Not now, later. Nobody from the West asked the subjected peoples whether they liked being ruled by foreigners, and we gave ourselves props for bringing modern thought and ways to them — it was for their own good. What a load of complete cobblers it all was, but it sold to the average punter at home, while resources were taken, shipped home and turned into manufactured goods. Gradually, average standards of living rose in what we now call the West, so in general the uninformed citizenry backed the policies of looting foreign lands; the Mrs Bucket kind of Tory flourished, along with retired grumpy Army colonels on half-pay who wrote to The Telegraph harumphing about low moral standards. But now in 2022, “stuff” is running out and the natural environment is reacting to the fast depletion of its own wealth.
I believe your focus is perhaps too narrow when you go on about the parochial UK Labour Party. Democratic socialism where government competes with business and provides infrastructure for all from our own tax base won’t occur with things set up the way they are now, no matter how many real Left people inhabit the hulk of Labour. Not that I disagree with your general viewpoint, but the way Labour has become just a philosophy-free political party is emblematic of Western society in general. All opposition to “free” markets has been methodically stamped out, we’ve cynically anointed ourselves as damn fine people whose way of life is incomparably and philosophically pure and wonderful, and watch out — the Asian hordes are coming to get us unless we’re damn careful to repel them or let them organize to become really powerful. This attitude presupposes they’re jealous of us and our supposed wealth and freedom and want to conquer us and steal our “treasure”. The paranoia of the super-rich knows no bounds. We’re not far off the days of yore in remote one-horse company towns where workers got paid in scrip instead of coin of the realm, and could only redeem the scrip at the company store at outrageous “prices”. Get ’em coming and going. The meme now is to make everything a per month rental fee to provide a nice even revenue stream to the big boys, and where nobody really ever gets ahead except for the odd genius here and there, or raises a word of opposition to “the way things are”.
I’d recommend you read some Michael Hudson on the way economics actually applies to the West, the scam involving lending third world countries or Greece more than enough paper credit so they are incapable of paying back the interest imposed, let alone the capital, and then ensues the private vultures moving in and buying up the country’s physical assets on the cheap to pay the “debt”. Having practised this form of economic colonialism on the world for decades, there’s nothing much left for financial capitalism to mine for quick profit but the citizen members of the marauding capitalist societies themselves. So homelessness, ripoff pricing, fines for not paying up on time on a myriad of gotcha who knew they existed fees and regulations, prohibition of mass demonstrations against the rulers, well it all portends the end of independent thought, really.
Not to worry, the environment has gone to the dogs, so the end of the world as we know it is knocking on our doorsteps anyway. Fire and flooding and famine is our immediate future. Well, I suppose it was enjoyable for some while it lasted. No wonder Musk wants to escape to Mars and drink his own recycled piss in a stately pressurized pleasure dome.
https://dissidentvoice.org/2022/07/forde-inquiry-exposes-labours-biggest-problem-keir-starmer/
]]>Thanks Ian. Yes, I had been informed. Very sad. Depending where it is I hope to be at the funeral. Someone is letting me know the details.
]]>2015 to 2020
The Neoliberal Neolabour Party Tories = 80% PLP
The Democratic Socialist UK Labour Party = 20% PLP
2021
The Neoliberal Neolabour Party Tories = 90/95% PLP
The Democratic Socialist UK Labour Party = 10/5% PLP
Just Imagine what could be achieved with a 100% UK Labour Party with absolutely 0% Internal Sabotaging, Conniving, Cheating, Lying, Couping, Smearing and their Direct Lines to The MSM and The Elites/Establishment/Machine. We could save our Nation before we lose absolutely everything and become The Peasants of Europe scrapping in the mud for Potatoes once Again!
]]>https://dissidentvoice.org/2021/04/starmer-isnt-too-cautious-he-is-ruthlessly-tearing-labour-apart/
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