The following paragraphs were written as tweets. Each was, then, constrained to 280 characters. And as they were posted separately, and not as a thread, each has to stand in its own right. They are, nonetheless very obviously related so I offer them here in that way, with this necessary explanation as to their style:
–––
I wish I did not gave such an apocalyptic world view right now. It's no fun realising we're heading for a crisis that our government has helped develop, wants, and has no desire to ameliorate.
–––
There is no such thing as manageable creative destruction from which a guaranteed upside will emerge, except maybe in the head of Dominic Cummings. But, no sane person would want to go there.
–––
Destruction can only be a political tool for the unaccountable. That's what the Johnson team believe that they are. So far the Opposition has humoured their belief. If Parliament has not done enough to hold them to account it's Labour's fault.
–––
Labour sat out Brexit, believing they could rely on Napoleon's maxim that you should never interfere with your enemy whilst they're destroying themselves. The trouble is, they were tearing us apart as well. Labour cannot forget that this time and make the same mistake again.
–––
The Opposition (Labour, SNP, PC, Greens) can't sit out this crisis. It's going to be too painful to do that. They must have plans they can promote to deal with the immediate issues. But they have to also remember Beveridge: the best time to promote fundamental change will be soon
–––
Whatever was normal will have gone by the time this crisis is over. Whatever replaces it is not yet known. It could be fascism. And it could be something so much better. But the better route requires a willingness to imagine it. I only see that willingness in Scotland right now.
–––
Because Scotland has a vision of what it's future might be I have little doubt it will get it. That's because unlike the rest of the UK it will have a plan as the chaos of this crisis will continue to unfold.
–––
Survival always requires a will to do so. I don't think the UK, as a union of four nations, has that will any more. It's why I see independence for Scotland soon, Irish reunification thereafter, and then Wales also thinking there might be a better alternative to rule from London.
–––
The collapse of the UK will come because without having a role as an exploiter - whether by old fashioned land grab, or by financial capture of other country's economies by the City of London and it's tax havens - those ruling from London have no idea what role England has.
–––
It's easy to see the basis on which vision for Scotland and Wales can be created. They are, in a way most in England who have never been there can't comprehend, other countries. With care a united Ireland could also achieve that. But England? What is it? That is the hard question
–––
A post-colonial, post-financialised, non-exploitative vision of England as a separate country that can survive on its own rather than by extracting value from others is what is required if it is to make it through the long existential crisis that coronavirus is presenting it with.
–––
The politicians who can imagine an England that has its own role in the world, as a separate nation state, not dependent on the support of the other countries that have sustained it for centuries, are what are required to guide it now. And I can't see them, as yet.
–––
I have to live in hope. That hope includes a belief that England can find a future in which exploitation plays no part. That hope has limited foundations. But when the alternative is offered by the far right it is something I have to believe possible.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
I think that from Harold Wilson, England has been doing what the Americans have been doing and increasingly extracting value from the national common good in the name of share holder value law with management and banks working together seeking to take more of the share of the benefits of production – even committing econocide by financial cannibalism (closing down companies and selling their assets off and distributing the proceeds to investors, managers and bank fees).
The simple fact of the matter is that politicians have failed to reign these forces in and weakened resistance for example by undermining unions and worker rights. What we are seeing now is that last grab of what is left.
But now it is much more complex.
At the top of society, it is an amoral world where money is the only common factor – it does not matter if you are Russian or a criminal – it is the size of your wad that matters – money rules. And the internet is there to be used as those with money see fit to maintain the status quo. The worrying bit for me is that there seems no longer to be any concern that these things happen so bare facedly these days. This seems to have happened in plain sight, but too many of our eyes are looking down at our devices being distracted by Apps and god knows what else (gambling, porn, Facebook, etc.,).
I also think that 10 years of penal austerity has also left people used to expecting nothing better. We have now adapted to less. And we we could very well adapt to even less than that.
It is not that things have to get bad before we change; it is that they will need to become catastrophic I’m afraid. Worse than bad. Worse than you could ever imagine – the medieval world recreated but this time, there might be no way out. Instead of catapulting us into a better age, modernity in the form of Tech will now be used to keep us in this state – imprison us in a world made by the mega rich – by manipulating us to keep things exactly as they are.
And it’s happening right now in front of us.
If we head down the road of Neo-Feudalism there will be now “New World” out there this time to discover and exploit.
Without the “discovery” of America, we would still be living under the feaudal system.
Hopefully, socialism will prevail, but as you say PSR, people will adapt to the new realities, even if they are fascist in nature.
Maybe the general population are better informed than they were 600 years ago?
Vinnie
I’d say that the only thing that has improved is the ability to distract people from the issues that actually affect us all in common.
In the documentary ‘Social Dilemma’, it is pointed out that most of the recent investment in the world has gone into improving the processing power of algorithms and computing – it has outstripped investment and development in the fight for cancer, and science and technology elsewhere – all designed to predict even better how we will respond and then have us hanging in front of our devices, slobbering like Pavlov’s dogs for the next ‘impulse’.
That is what has been happening – more people are being manipulated – not informed.
PSR.
I guess the information is out there this time if people can be bothered to look.
600 years ago people were really in the dark.
Information technology is a double edged sword.
I can already see a scenario for the first days of 2021. The Government will allow Scotland to enjoy Hogmanay – and will call a national shutdown for three weeks on 2nd January. That way, the people of these islands will have to decide just how far they can go with avoiding the lockdown, and won’t notice the chaos that the first days of Brexit with a no-deal scenario will cause. And if they do, it’ll all be the EU’s fault, or those people who did a second panic-buy.
Clever thinking on your part
But of the evidence does not stack [eople will not deliver
And if they cannot eat they’ll riot
Sorry to intrude with an off-topic comment, but given the surfeit of “news” on COVID-19, Brexit, the Internal Market Bill and the US election I think one of the most important stories has been completely lost: the centralisation and privatisation of ‘Test and Trace’ at the expense of the local public health structure has not only failed completely to deliver, but it has been turned into an neoliberal driven opportunity to exploit profit-making from the public purseon a huge scale, without even adequate competitive tendering, with little return in terms of achievement of objectives, and no adequate audit. Indeed, who would carry out the audit?
Deloitte, which has participated in this centralisation and privatisation of public health, without the service delivering the promised ‘world-beating’ service, is offering its services to local authorities. The Guardian (30th October), said this:
“Deloitte, the consultancy giant hired by the government to help run the NHS test-and-trace programme, is involved in selling separate contact-tracing services directly to local health officials in the UK. Directors of public health have been invited to a demonstration of a local test-and-trace system developed by Deloitte and Salesforce, a US software company with which it has a business partnership.
It offers ‘a secure local contact-tracing solution which has been implemented by public authorities in the USA, Australia and New Zealand’. The pitch, circulated this week by a Salesforce salesperson, promises: ‘This solution can be deployed very quickly, is totally paperless, meets UK government security requirements and can be used by local partners too.’ It follows widespread criticism by directors of public health of the national test-and-trace system, which Deloitte has been a key part of. The contact-tracing part of the national system is carried out by Serco and Sitel.”
John Ashworth MP, a Labour shadow minister raised the matter in Parliament, identifying what seems to me a key issue: as a public health resource, instead of facilitating the opportunity for private contractors to benefit from public health contracts, and then the private contractors selling services to local authorities, the expenditure on public health resources should ensure the expertise funded by the public purse is provided without additional cost to local authorities.
We have now sunk so low in Britain, the Health Minister Matt Hancock defended this brazen neoliberal exploitation of publicly funded, public health provision for private profit, as if it was simply illustrative of a fair free market. There is no free market here. Covid-19 is a Public Health Government responsibility, government management and control issue, and there is no shirking it.
Nobody seems to care. Neoliberalism is fast becoming a new form of Communism: centralised, publicly funded and carefully Government patronised – rentierism.
I am appalled. We have completely lost all sense of the common good.
Noted and agreed
Exactly right John. Speaking as someone who started to get involved in outsourcing in the early 90s, and would still argue that there are some occasions where it has merit. However it has become a vehicle for fragmenting and weakening businesses through financial engineering – yes it damages business too. Meanwhile in the public sector it is driven by a combination of ideology (private good, public bad and shrink the state), financial engineering (get borrowing and heads off the state’s books) and increasingly a drive to put state funds into the pockets of friends of the government. No better than the gangster capitalism of today’s Russia.
20-30 years ago it was standard business strategy to ask ‘what is your core competence’. Now we have the bizarre situation where a SERCO can run ferries, train services …. and be deemed to also be the right people to tackle a public health emergency. Local public health organisations who have been run done over the years still seem to have done a better job and could have benefited from that funding with lasting benefits. SERCO and others’ core competence is being good at getting contracts from the government and then avoiding the blame when they go wrong. A standard problem with outsourcing is that organisations lose all the expertise that would enable them to take the tasks back in-house again, or even to manage the supplier properly.
Funnily enough HMRC having outsourced a lot of their IT (to EDS and others) brought much of it back in house. They are seen to have done a much better job in adapting their systems very quickly, notably the dreaded universal credit, to enable COVID related payments to be made.
The definition of the ‘common good’ now sits outside the reference framework on how one might view the structures for the provision of the ‘common good’. The Overton Window allows only for analysis of this in the context of the principles and exercise of the (not so) free market. Wither Socialism given that anything that challenges the concept of ‘capitalism’ is to be viewed as an anathema in the education of our children, in the news and current affairs presented to us everyday?
Corruption is rife. The ‘common good’ is dead and citizens in the main are completely unaware.
Exactly right John. Speaking as someone who started to get involved in outsourcing in the early 90s, and would argue that there are occasions where it has merit. However it has become a vehicle for fragmenting and weakening businesses through financial engineering – yes it damages business too. Meanwhile in the public sector it is driven by a combination of ideology (private good, public bad and shrink the state), financial engineering (get borrowing and heads off the state’s books) and increasingly a drive to put state funds into the pockets of friends of the government. No better than the gangster capitalism of today’s Russia.
20-30 years ago it was standard business strategy to ask ‘what is your core competence’. Now we have the bizarre situation where a SERCO can run ferries, train services …. and be deemed the right people too tackle a public health emergency. Their core competence is being good at getting contracts from the government and then avoiding the blame when they go wrong. A standard problem with outsourcing is that organisations lose all the expertise that would enable them to take the tasks back in-house again, or even to manage the supplier properly.
Time to reverse the process
Lest someone is unclear about what I mean by the ‘common good’, allow me to set this out briefly, which I have drawn from the magisterial statement of the concept presented by TH Green, ‘Prolegomena to Ethics’ (1883).
The common good underpins the relations among citizens, without which there would not be, for Green “intelligent co-operating subjects of law and custom”. Most perceptively, and relevant particularly for us in the age of Covid-19, Green understood clearly that without the security of the common good (as intelligent co-operation), no society could be sustained without coercion. The common good is therefore a necessary condition for the existence of real, practical freedom for citizens.
It looks like the only hope is for grass root movements to get more powerful, whether this is trade unions or other workers campaigns, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, mass student protests and solidarity from the general population all round. However we do have to be on guard for either fascist or extreme authoritarians replacing the present capitalist mess. This is no time for complacency or apathy, as has been said before, we have nothing to lose but our chains!
But this has to be non-violent
Remember the right do violence but claim it is all caused by the left
I refer to comments from Trump as evidence
The chains that bind too many of us are those of mass distraction – when you are sitting at a computer or using your mobile phone, the stuff coming down it at you is aimed at being familiar with your deepest hidden thoughts and simply reaffirming what you think you know – making your thoughts more concrete – your prejudices too.
Even those of us who come here need to be self aware of that.
As I mused many moons ago on this blog, if we had as much TV or online advertising about (say) using the bus – making it look desirable – as we do for cars, I think that you would see a change in behaviour.
Shoshana Zubhoff claims that most people who are being manipulated on line are simply ‘clueless’ that this is happening.
I fully agree with your reasoning Richard and the informed comments that follow. Some quotes by Louis Brandeis might be appropriate at present.
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both”
“Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the law breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”
Dean Acheson said in 1962: “Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.” This applies especially to England, the largest constituent of the Union, while the other 3 may be working towards a new role.
Many writers, such as Anthony Barnett, have pointed out that the problem with the Union is England and its politicians. It can never be a union of equals given the population difference and the attitude of so many Unionist politicians, some of whom come from the other nations, which appears to one of colonialism, indifference or outright hostility to the other 3 nations and their politicians and citizens, except when they think they can bribe them into compliance.
One of the many driving forces behind Brexit, it seems to me, was English/British exceptionalism, encapsulated in the winning slogan “Take back control”. We are different, we are unique, we are exceptional. No, we are a medium sized relatively unimportant country that has destroyed its manufacturing base in a Faustian pact with financial interests to become the money laundering “world beater” and the conduit of choice for tax evasion.
I cannot see how England can progress with current crop of (dangerous) mediocrities and fantasists in charge, as you have pointed out regarding the nonsensical idea of “creative destruction”. The opposition may do a bit better, but even they don’t seem to have a programme for government that bring about social fairness and steer England away from incipient fascism.
I, for one am not surprised. Feudal Britain seems a firmly held ambition in Government especially if you look back on Bojo’s statements. In 2013 he told the Centre for Policy Studies that inequality helped bring about a “spirit of envy” in turn leading to a “valuable spur to economic activity”. He also said in the same speech “The harder you shake the pack the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top.”
The Guardian 27 November 2013
It’s not an appetising prospect and seems certain to lead to conflict.
I fear the last is right
I think one of the biggest issues countries are going to have to face is the way capitalism has become trans-national and exploits the lack of global political cohesion. The following article illustrates this:-
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/619/2/20190924_bn_making_america_great_again_rn.pdf
I think it highly likely that Joe Biden will be the next American president. He has said he will bring global corporations of American origin to heel by increasing their taxes if they fail to manufacture in the United States but as the article referenced should make clear these American global corporations will make sure they’ll be re-registered if not already as non-American. All of which means that Biden if he’s genuinely concerned to increase jobs in the United States will have to seriously re-examine the level of tariffs the United States imposes on imports.
This cannot be a straightforward examination given that money is a “valuing” instrument which many countries seek to distort in order to gain price point advantage in global markets for their exports. The ability to distort “valuing” are numerous from currency rigging to state subsidies to standards manipulation and red-tape and not least tax breaks. In the case of the United States which is a huge agricultural production country (not least boosted by excessive fertiliser use) Biden will have to contend with farmers and their lobbyists who make good money from exports.
It will be interesting to see if Biden sees all of this as a global issue which has to be sorted out by global negotiation of all countries willing to compromise and establish new rules and enforcement to replace the WTO failure. Central to this obviously has to be that global corporations cannot continue to be allowed to run rampant and play one country off against another. There’s a slight hint Biden understands this unlike Trump, the not-so smart alpha male who’s ended up being the bull-in-a-china shop or the loud-mouthed drunk who’s turned up at the party and drives most people home to escape the oaf! We shall see. Interesting times for the global economy not only because of unrestrained global capitalism run wild but restraining it has to take place in a context also of climate change and Covid-19.
This article from Prospect magazine clearly explains how this duplicitous government seeks to avoid responsibility
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/how-the-government-tried-to-pin-the-plague-on-the-public-coronavirus-covid
My humble view is that if we wish to change anything we should first look to ourselves. If I want to change the world, then I can change my world to the way I think it needs to be. And then, I live in my changed world. It might serve as an example to others, it might not. It is one of the few means of power that I have. I have little trust in the ballot box given the electoral choices with which we are presented.
I do have some power to change things just by making a decision as to where I spend any money I have. After all, the ‘corporates’, whilst working on getting people to follow them, always follow the money. But I think the ‘corporates’ are far more persuasive than I.
Unless significant pressure can be brought to bear on the structures and systems that are designed to uphold and maintain power (in the interests of the wealthy elite) then there is really little that we, the ‘common people’ can do. For significant pressure to be brought to bear, we first ‘en masse’, need to recognise that these do not serve the masses and further, that they privilege the ‘few’. I cannot see that happening at this time. An awakening is needed but I profess to be blind and deaf as to how the masses can be awakened, other than that the message is conveyed to us by the means of a very short, sharp and deeply profound shock, which will be devastating for many and, no doubt, capitalised on by those who seek to divide us.
I think we have quite a way to go yet and that saddens me incredibly.
Thanks
Politics and Economics can’t be separate. Analysis of Political events is a necessary requirement for Economics. So it’s worth reading an analysis of the last election in https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/12/05/against-economics/&ved=2ahUKEwiI6_THr5jsAhWKT8AKHYVPCOQQFjAAegQIDRAC&usg=AOvVaw2k2ZvwfYI2FYv73KYhstuc
@ Alan Lafferty
Thanks for the link to the David Graeber article. Very good article. It reminds me of the article I’ve posted here before that the concept of “free market capitalism” with its so-called Invisible Hand self-balancing economy properties is actually a mask for the concentration of power in the hands of an elite:-
https://evonomics.com/why-free-market-ideology-is-a-double-lie
It reminds me to of the argument I’ve also posted here that money is a “valuing” instrument which can be unscrupulously manipulated to companies and nations advantage (often jointly) and this manipulation is the cause of the current breakdown in global trading relationships. The purpose of the manipulation is to reduce the “value” or more specifically “price” of goods and services so that they’ll achieve price point in global markets.
What David Graeber’s article also hints at is that in fact an elite can manipulate “value” or “prices” up by imposing taxation in a certain way so that those on low incomes associate taxes with pushing prices higher because they’re forced to push for higher income usually wages to compensate and the stress that pushing for higher wages induces. (Try being a shop steward during a strike trying to stop black-legging!)
Clearly, therefore, since a few of us know that money requires reflux to maintain par value it should also be obvious that how a society targets that reflux through taxation becomes politically and socially critical. Since the majority of British voters are ignorant about the credit or IOU way of money creation they are accordingly oblivious how a wealthy elite manipulates them through an inequitable taxation policy.
We’ve sort of been here before with Richard Murphy stressing the important role taxation should play in MMT but here David Graeber is adding to this by asking us to think about the way taxation is used as a political control tool or instrument by elites.
I could not agree more: this nuance to tax is rarely understood, but can be used in exactly the same way as a mortgage to achieve and even impose obedience
Both can, of course, be associated with deeply regressive and upwardly redistributive economic policy
I wish some in tax justice would get this, but far too many of them still just see it as ‘the way fund nurses’
Just re-reading the David Graeber article referenced above where he talks about the influence Friedrich Hayek’s Libertarian ideology has had on modern life and suddenly the irony leapt out after previously checking CNN news for an update on the state of Donald Trump’s health. Here’s the abbreviated section in the David Graeber article:-
“…. by the 1950s and 1960s almost every scholarly discipline in the business of preparing young people for positions of power (political science, international relations, etc.) had adopted some variant of “rational choice theory” …. that started from the assumption that humans were fundamentally selfish and greedy.”
Little did Donald Trump identify there was another entity in the world more “fundamentally selfish and greedy” than himself namely the Covid-19 virus!
🙂
Read the article without reading it was by David Garner.
He was such a great thinker.
Came across Of flying cars and the decline rate of profit.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit.
Another great and thoughtful essay.
Reading between the lines it’s starting to look like a climb-down by Boris Johnson has begun over Brexit with the EU’s task to devise a face saving formula for Johnson:-
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/03/johnson-and-von-der-leyen-extend-brexit-talks-by-a-month
No doubt sanity is starting to prevail in the government in regard to the future of the UK economy not to mention the Union in relationship to the effects of Brexit and Covid-19!
You’re an optimist
I hope you’re right
Graeber not Gardener.
Though he may have been a great gardener as well !