As I suggested I would be, I have been reflecting this week. Some has been personal reflection. Empty nesting without even having a dog around the house will take some getting used to.
I have also been considering work that needs doing. I seem to have a long list of issues that I would love to give attention to.
Maybe more important was the time to think about the bigger picture. Much concerns me here.
I hardly need to provide evidence of the growing chaos in our economy.
Food shortages are very apparent, and the logistics issues that are creating that problem appear to be getting worse, and not better.
We have short term price pressure because of Brexit, Covid and climate change, but when iron ore prices can fall by 20% in a week, as they gave done in the last week, this can be seen as the price of disrupted markets and not the consequence of any underlying monetary trend that can be tackled by central banks.
Then we have chaos on Covid. The Westminster government's supposed winter plan for this refused to accept any responsibility for containment of this disease, passing the whole burden on to individuals. No effective protection has been provided in schools or universities. Noises are now being made about the cost of testing becoming an individual responsibility. Most legal measures to tackle the pandemic are being relaxed. It is as if we must go through another winter of excess deaths just to prove that the lessons of last winter have not been learned, or are being deliberately ignored.
The government's response to the economy is as confused. They are also open all on those on lower pay.
And whilst there remain reasonable concerns that no one still has much idea what the Labour Party is proposing the reality is that the government is very much more confused with no one having a clue what ‘Build Back Better' or ‘Levelling Up' actually means, including (I am sure) all those in new ministerial offices this week.
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The question is, what to make of all this? My suggestion is that what we might be witnessing is the breakdown in systems. Much of this is deliberate. Brexit was chosen, after all. So too were the politics of austerity that laid the foundation for the crises in the NHS, social care, education, justice and other systems over the last decade, all of which are teetering on collapse. The attitude, all too apparent in Westminster and in other populist governments, that this crisis has nothing to do with anything government can do, is also chosen. But, put indifference, lacked of preparedness, unplanned stress from both chosen and externally imposed change, and a lack of direction together and the recipe for chaos is created.
It has been true for a some time that society has been increasingly finely tuned to just about deliver, with some degree of failure having been tacitly accepted, at great cost to those who have suffered as a result. What has been eliminated from the economy that has underpinned that society has been slack. In the pursuit of growth there has been a desire to increase productivity. Every margin possible has been eliminated as a result. But as anyone who knows anything about design of just about any system knows, you can only do that for so long.
There were undoubtedly some gains to be made in society from the situation we were in during the 1970s, when tolerances were too high. But the reality is that the relentless pursuit of financial gains has now driven society to the polar opposite position: there is now almost no slack at all. Margins for error have disappeared. At the same time the pressure on systems - and more importantly, the people working those systems - has grown so significantly that the risk of error and outright failure has grown. That's not least because those working those systems can no longer face the stress of doing so.
The biggest stress to the NHS is not a shortage of beds or blood sample bottles this winter, although both appear to be acute; it is instead that those working in the NHS will simply not be able to stand the pressure of another winter and will themselves be sick, or simply leave.
The same is true in education. And care. And social services. And the justice system. And so on, and on.
When the humanity is taken out of the demands made on people systems can collapse.
When people can no longer see why they are being asked to deliver what is demanded of them by a government that so obviously has no plans at all, but which is more than willing to financially punish many of those from whom demand is made, then the likelihood of failure grows.
That is where we are. And it's not just in public services, of course. Truck drivers tell the same story, for example. When employers have put almost impossible demands on them, and ceased to care about their wellbeing, those who can have left that occupation. Just in time is failing as a result, unsurprisingly.
Worryingly, it is happening when there is great need. The Covid crisis is far from over. The stresses from Brexit have still hardly begun, and the political ramifications are only going to grow. Rishi Sunak and the Treasury, probably backed by the Treasury, are intent on imposing austerity. And then there is climate change to address. The tipping points have all arrived, seemingly simultaneously.
Of course, it could just be said that this is the inevitable outcome of neoliberalism. If financialisation is the model then leveraging by gearing business and downgrading government until, and beyond, breaking point in search of returns for a few is what was always going to happen, and that is where we have arrived. But whilst I think that is the case that provides little comfort, because this is not some academic exercise. This is a matter of having to live through this.
What is the way forward? With this post already 1,000 words long this is not the moment to address that in detail. But there is one over-riding message, which is that nothing will change until it is accepted that what we have had is broken, irreparably. Whilst we hanker for what was, and the idea that we can ‘get back to normal' remains a dominant narrative, we remain in trouble.
What was has, I rather strongly suspect, gone. What we have to do now is build what comes next. It does not matter whether we want to or not. We have no option. The way we were was not sustainable in any sense, whether politically, economically or socially. When that is recognised we can move forward. My big concern is that I doubt that we are there yet. At the same time, I also think that awareness is coming. And that's my basis for hope.
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“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
…
… what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?“
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
Indeed
I suppose it would also be apposite to mention Gramsci and “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms.”
Food for thought here: https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiz254 – published last year, but presumably written before the pandemic – but also before the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The wheels are turning, but the destination is not yet deterimined.
Thanks
And the last most definitely agreed
I have had similar feelings for quite a while Richard. The USA are in a similar mess.
It all needs a redesign, but I think we need Electoral systemic change first, otherwise the same establishment parties will be doing the redesign.
I think that you are right about the Tory motive.
They have just ran out of ideas and are caged by their own ideology as well as the ideology of their funders.
They don’t know what to do, so they just do what makes them feel empowered, makes them feel in control so we have austerity and more deregulation.
‘Poor us’ I say.
But this does not excuse them either because ignorance has never been a defence has it?
It seems that awareness of the problems may hit home when people find they can’t afford to feed their families, heat their homes, or get toys for Xmas. Will there be more famous footballers to come to the rescue to force the U-turns that the government needs to make to prevent the system breaks-downs of economy, society, and ecology?
Cheer up Richard.
Many of us must feel the same Yeatsian sentiments.
One tries to cling on to any hint of positivity – such as that even this appalling govt did actually spend orders of magnitude more than they ever imagined any government would ever do , even as their backwoodsmen were more or less advocating actually culling people ‘we cant abolish death’.
But then out of the blue – yet another dire development. The main reservation I had about Biden vis the madness of Trump , was his apparent instinct to re-simplify the world back to bipolar cold war days, and encircle China as a latter day Soviet Union. But didnt anticipate such a grotesque development as this stupid nuclear- ploriferating provocative tension-building Aussie subs treaty. So more gloom there.
As you seem to suggest, we are invited to choose one or both quasi fascist populist politics and global quasi-monoplies owning and controlling all our productive resources and means of communication and information sources.
All we can do is to do more of what you are already doing – thinking, analysing, discussing and promoting and campaigning practical, workable ways forward.
This is bound to involve some kind of Picketty ‘war like’ re-ordering of power and ownership relations – destruction of fossil fuel based capital and replacement with ‘sustainable’ capital .
Not easy. The UK has no year by year operable 10-year plan to reduce use /production of carbon by 3-5% per year or whatever it should be.
Keep going RIchard.
I will
Maybe we are witnessing the end of neoliberalism/capitalism.
An ever expanding economy is unsustainable, so by definition, must end sometime.
Growth is what keeps the show on the road. Without it, things are going to be really very different from now.
I agree with you Vinnie and have held this view for some time.
Our Thatcherite/North American neo-liberal way of life ended effectively in 2008 with the globalised banking failure and its consequences. That should have been the big wake up call. That was the big ‘denouement’ .
From then on, neo-liberals have tried to keep things going but global warming has also begun to change that way of life too because it is directly related to the consumption patterns enabled by neo-liberalism (Thatcher’s so-called ‘great car economy’ and the expansion of air travel for example).
All we’ve seen is powerful vested interests kicking the can down the road and avoiding change as they panic at losing what they had, what they are addicted to.
The other consequence of course with all of this is the corrosive effect North American neo-liberalism has had on democracy. The hollowing out of pay and conditions has created political instability everywhere as the real beneficiaries of neo-liberal thought (the rich) have been revealed. Neo-liberalism does not enable the sharing of wealth.
Thus we have seen the return of the very thing we did not want: Fascism born of poverty and instability in society created by neo-liberal policies. And the neo-liberals – as neo-liberals do – have used the growth of fascism opportunistically too.
The thing that is really frightening though and also earns grudging respect is the way the neo-liberals stick together and hold the line and fight back with out restraint. They pull every dirty trick they can – create false enemies and crises, lie, spread rumours and dissent to put people off the scent. Their ‘black ops’ are supremely effective at obfuscating the truth.
Yes – the neo-liberal way of life is dying – but they are not going to go down without a fight and before they’ve taken a lot of us with them. Proof if ever it was needed that the Randian pursuit of self realisation was always nihilistic. Always. Because they never asked the question about the cost of that self realisation – to others and to our life-giving planet
But also, it puts the onus on the Left or progressives now.
How organised are they?
How tight are they as a group? How effective?
Not very I think – because they too are befuddled and infected with neo-liberal ideas – or should I say ‘ignorance’.
We have learnt that North American neo-liberalism theory (and I’m being generous when I use that word – ‘bull-shit’ would suffice) does not work.
But we must surely realise that the way they propagate their lies does.
When are those who want change going to learn – because I lot of us are relying on them to do something – fast?
And if the opposition does not get its act together – then what should we do?
How are we going fill the gap and fight? How do we shove aside the no hoper left and so-called progressives? How low are we prepared to go in order to scale the heights of change and a brighter future?
That’s what is exercising my brain at the moment. Maybe yours too?
What comes next after capitalism and the growth economy is an interesting one.
I think we will limp on for a while yet, burning fossil fuels but eventually climate reality will kick in.
Those in power will hang on to what they have to the bitter end. I can see a kind of neo-feudalism replacing capitalism. After all, it’s what was around before capitalism when there was virtually no growth.
Or a total collapse of the “state”. Neither are particularly appealing .
We are in a strange pickle. We have got to keep the remaining fissile fuels in the ground, but if we do, the human world will be so totally different to today. The extent of that difference is quite overwhelming.
Small Farm Future is an interesting read on the possible roads we may go down. The 10 crisis facing humanity are a sobering read just on their own.
They have just the one idea and that is to leave everything to the market, however badly those markets fail. That is the only coherent explanation for their behaviour.
One could also argue that it is a combination of laziness and incompetence, self-evident in a number of cabinet members but the ideology of leaving it to the market whilst shrinking the state runs deep.
If you are looking for a very thin thread of optimism, in two years time or so when a general election is in the offing it is possible (just possible) that the public will realise that things have got to a stage similar to what it must have felt like after World War 2 – that what is needed is a government to build back the sort of country they aspire to.
The difficulty is imagining who could conjure up that vision and a credible national pathway there. Obviously not the Conservatives, even if they changed leader there isn’t a single Tory politician who isn’t tainted. But what chance is there of the Labour party recovering from the stupor they have fallen into? The vision could conceivably be created by a Green-Liberal alliance, but with their starting point of only a few MPs could putting anything into action be credible?
I agree – clutching at straws right now
It would help to have a Labour leader who was able to present a coherent vision of an alternative future. Sir Kier seems to have disappointingly little to say. Perhaps Clive Lewis or Andy Burnham could do better.
I wanted Clive last time
It is difficult to remain positive in these times. Recently, my boat broke down, I came back to a wasps nest and builders and last night managed to “domino” my cello of its stand rather catastrophically. With everything going on around brexit, covid and the injustice of this government on top it is definitely difficult to remain in a positive state of mind. But nothing stays still – my wasps are now gone – I have a resolution for the broken down boat, builders appear to be doing a good job. On a more macro level – people know we have taken a bad turn – that we have leaders that cannot lead and little more able than themselves – We all want action on climate change and inequality – lately I hear that acknowledgement from people I never expected to acknowledge it. Your message is out there, it is getting through and difficult as it is to keep going, you are needed more than ever. We have to drive these corrupt politicians out into space along with the wealthy leaches to search for their new planet. Leave the earth to those who can share with each other and other species fairly and without exploitation.
No need for the nation state to survive when it’s due (in the eyes of the Tories) to be replaced by a group of city states, all with their own constitutions. I imagine they’ll be like contemporary pockets of the Middle Ages, with what’s left of the UK existing as a mere shell around them, an interface with international entities. Whether they’ll pull this off or not remains to be seen but I imagine that’s the thinking.
I have to say Bill that I really do not think this is where they are going
Well, Richard. You’ve done it! You have won over Johnson to the idea that really fundamental change is the only way forward. How do I know this? Simple. Today’s Sunday Express clearly states that Boris has a plan to “level up the world”. Congratulations. Job done.
It’s true that the report was short on detail, but visionaries like Johnson must be allowed to delegate the finer points, surely.
🙂
The Sunday Express!!!!!
Good joke Fletcher.
The Express…the newspaper for those who find the DM too much of an intellectual challenge.
Given that you are in reflective mood I recommend “Leo Strauss and the American Right” by Shadia Drury which explains where our current neoconservatives are coming from.
It convincingly explains to me that for all Johnsons right wing libertarianism it masks a fundamentally anti-democratic stance and a return to corporatism.
Traditional conservatism based on religion, family and flag has been replaced with populism, nationalism and consumerism. Bourgeois values based on small scale, competitive enterprise have been replaced by the hidden hand of the big corporations requiring obedience and the undermining of democracy.
The best recent example of what this means is in how covid was managed.
It has pinned responsibility on the individual for managing risks, while giving out huge contracts to friends and corporations. It has decried the role of science and experts and public provision of essential services in favour of an individualistic ideology, and a capitalism knows best attitude.
The fact that the book was written 25 years ago only proves how important the battle of ideas is.
I agree with that argument
[…] this feels like another part in the systemic failure I mentioned a few days ago: we have constructed a wholly artificial market in energy that cannot […]
People readily allow themselves to be drawn into debates that talk in circles, never admitting that the over-riding factors are the same now as they were before the last war, and only when government intervenes in earnest that things can change.
We are driven by forces that maintain a system that suits them at the expense of everyone else, and poverty or the threat of makes for a compliant society that is too frightened to think for themselves.
So rather than talking in circles, we need to address the actual, whether it relates to the EU or here at home we have exactly the same problems, Global Neo-Liberalism, that is killing the planet as well as the world economy.
The remedy is and always has been that governments should put at ordinary peoples disposal the ability to shape the future. People create the wealth not the wealth exploiters. What is always forgotten is that whether in the public or private sector, nothing happens if people are not employed to create things.
The job of government is to create the opportunities for people to be creative, as we witness today, the private sector is only interested in the bottom line and not how they actually get there. Public investment has been the major driver for research in most of the things that matter, (computers) which are then given to private profiteers to exploit until something else comes along. Innovation never comes from Venture Capitalism the just asset strip and sell on.
If we want society to work for everyone we need society to be in control, planning and investment, you can tell that capitalists understand this because of the terminology they use, such as “Team Working” only in practice they do the opposite and set worker against worker. They of course know socialism works because whenever they want to encourage workers, they steal socialist terminology.
Ha Joon Chang makes the profound observation, that economics is 95% common sense and 5% academic study. So lets all look for the common sense solutions, education for learning not just passing exams, co-operation and collaboration, not competition.
Good guy Ha Joon Chang….
[…] this feels like another part in the systemic failure I mentioned a few days ago: we have constructed a wholly artificial market in energy that cannot […]