In the late 1970s early 80s, due to being blacklisted, Labour Movement contacts often found me causal work at Congress House and in other trade union offices, helping out on this or that political campaign or industrial dispute. Almost religiously, no matter in which l office I was working, we would get two daily papers delivered for free, the Morning Star (the CPGB daily) and the Financial Times. My point being the left used to take economic matters seriously. OK we were certainly not Marx or Milton Keynes when it came to understanding economics, but we took a real interest and were encouraged to do so. We followed the ups and downs of commerce and industry and kept a check on the rate of the £ and other indicators of the nations economy.
Left intellectuals produced documents such as the Alternative Economic Strategy, (AES) which were then taken up by the left as a whole and debated vigorously; and via those leftists who worked in the trade unions such documents often ended up being debated at the LP and TUC conferences. True some of these documents had major shortcomings and were often far to conservative and at the time some of us had some harsh things to say about the AES. However the likes of the AES did two things which I feel were admirable, firstly at there core they had the best interest of working class people, secondly they provided an alternative argument to that of the mainstream politicians and their media gofers, city bankers and industrialists and thus they gave workers a starting point from which to confront their employers and the governments of the day.
Nothing like this is available today, when economics are discussed on the left, it is by using large brush strokes, the fine detail is rarely considered by most left groups. One reason is clearly our failure to win enough middle class academics and intellectuals to our cause. I wonder if amongst those who have recently graduated from university there are the political equivalent’s of an Andrew Glyn, the left wing Oxford economist who went on to advise the NUM during the great strike of 1984-5; or even the economic Professors Bob Rowthorn and the unfortunate Vic Allen.
Yet, even when taking into account this failure to attract enough intellectuals to the left, I have no doubt the main reason why it has proved so wanting when it has come to economics, is because it too became influenced by the sheer weight of certainty with which the advocates of neo liberal economics; and their media gofers pumped their wretched economic theories into the public consciousness. Anyone who challenged their voodoo economics was shot down in a howl of rage and accused of living in the past, unable to keep up with necessary and essential reforms. If one still refused to sup from the Neo-liberals poisoned chalice, they then buried their critics in a flood of unreliable and unverifiable statistics. Economics became a no go area and many left wing economists decided the best they could do was sit it out and await for the inevitable crash, when closed minds would be wedged open in a search for a solution.
When the sub prime collapse came and the economies of the world gradually moved into an economic depression, the Left viewpoint was almost absent from the national, let alone the international debate. The re-emergence of Keynesism was about the most progressive economic theory to raise its head and many socialists understandably welcomed this as a change for the better.
Now the advocates of Neo-liberal economics are regaining their feet after been blown over by the sheer scale of the sub prime crash they were responsible for creating. They are again making there reactionary demands and challenging the European politicians who are at the fore of the calls for re-inflating the worlds economies by government borrowing, instead of the neo-liberals preferred option of finding the cash for tax cuts etc by cutting public spending such as health care, education, benefits and pensions.
The howl of these economic retards in the coming period will grow all the louder; and the left must develop an alternative economic strategy for the 21st Century which will go way beyond Sarkozy, Brown, and Merkel’s tinkering at the edges; and which will be able to combat the revamped neo-liberal economics which will be designed to pauperize the masses, whilst keeping the 10% of the worlds population who currently own most of the worlds wealth and property, snug in their bug free sateen sheeted beds.
If any one doubts that this is their intention one need only listen to George Osborne, the Tory leader David Cameron’s economic point man, he has already been touring the editorial offices and TV studios demanding that Gordon Brown cease financing his attempts to re-inflate the economy by borrowing and instead start cutting existing state spending. One does not have to be a brain surgeon to understand his meaning. In an attempt to win back personal and political favor from the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the asset stripper and tax dodger Nathaniel Rothschild, he repeated the totally discredited mantra that the market always knows best, a statement had he said it two week previously would have finished his parliamentary career in a barrage of laughter..
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1 comments:
Amen.
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