The argument about who is to blame for the C0o-op's failings continues. With reason Labour and Conservatives blame each other for what has happened. Overall, it seems both can take blame, and let's not leave the Lib Dems out: they are in government right now.
But what this says is that politicians as a whole have not yet addressed any of the issues of substance in banking that need reform. All still quake in fear of the banking sector, the City of London and the business lobby. And even the timid reforms Osborne has proposed have no effect until 2018. It's as if 2008 never happened. Apparently it is still business as usual, corruption, incompetence and plain abuse of society at large included.
For that this government is responsible.
But so was the last.
And so is Labour in opposition for not making clear enough why they would be different, because there is little material evidence that they would be, hair splitting apart.
That's the problem we have. It is as if the world is paralysed into inaction because the monolith created between 1980 and 2008 is so fragile that the slightest touch will push it all over. Maybe that's true. But that's even more reason why courageous action is needed. I am waiting to see who will deliver it though.
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The cooperative movement should take responsibility for its own failures.
Institutional power is biased against any economic solutions that has democratic commons built into them, which spread benefits in an equitable way. Private property is overwhelmingly privileged, leading to the consequent enclosure of all that they can strip from the commons. Unfortunately the holding of commons (wealth and rights) has been dominated by a top down bureaucracy, and in a very unimaginative way which might have been justifiable just after the war. Many of the public have bought into the idea that they can buy a piece for themselves of what was held in trust for all(members or citizens), these assets have been fire sold into the market which is only “free” for those that can pay. You cannot trust institutional power which today is weakly democratically accountable, stuffed with placemen and women. This effect has spread into much of the corporate cooperatives mutuals and unions. They need to review their cultures of governance and try to revive membership engagement, curtail take-all effects, improve functionary accountability, transparency, introduce wage solidarity, human scale differentials of income, wealth and empowerment, not too much not too little. The same principles should apply to your proposed state.
Blame has its limitations. The disaster of the Cooperative Bank might be a great opportunity. There are some 4.5 million accounts.. Serious thought and effort might be made on how in the midterm a new Cooperative Bank can be built with healthy muti-stakeholder democracy . The pre Rochdale co-operators worked to build solutions that incorporated the ethos that prevailed then, doing it ourselves in a sharing way. They were sometimes dismissed as utopians but subsequent developments learned from their mistakes, we know more but need to recover the pioneering can-do ethos.
I do agree with that last sentiment
I think someone else, in an earlier blog, referred to Philip Mirowski’s recent book, ‘never let a Crisis Go to waste’ where the issue of why the 2008 crisis has not been followed by public outrage and structural change. The explanation of the crisis seems to have been in almost total neo-liberal terms. Morowski also points out that the neo-liberal thought collective has appropriated dodgy neuroscience and evolutionary psychology to ‘justify’ its hegemony.
I have come to think the ‘deficit crisis’ was to divert attention from the need for reform. Obviously there is a large deficit but we have forgotten the lesson of not cutting in a depression/recession-which Richard has explained many times.
Has there ever been a recession when the government has reduced its spending??
Taking from those with nothing, to enhance the power and finances of those with [almost] everything, is good conservatism, Even, if not especially, in a recession (which the banking system brought upon us all).
Never let a good disaster get in the way of making money.
http://tinyurl.com/qz7h5et