Long ago poverty was solved in principle by using modern technological innovations to replace hard work and provide for all. War was made unnecessary since these conflicts are always an expression of economic competition between countries trying to control resources, and we no longer needed that because of global trade where any country could sell its goods for a fair price. Human suffering has been minimised now that we have effective medicine and pharmaceuticals that are cheap and easy to produce. The environment will again flourish since we are making clothes out of bamboo and driving electric cars fueled from wind and tide and sunshine, and we’re replacing plastics with bio-alternatives, glass bottles that can be used again and again and paper bags from sustainable forestry….
No wait, none of that actually happened, or is happening, or is likely to happen anytime soon, because nearly every country in the world is run by self interested arseholes that enjoy the way things happen to be now. The power that widespread inequality and future-fear gives is not to be given up lightly. For there to be the social stresses that lead to conflict there must be this skewed competition between powerful people who allow their corporate sponsored governments and their corporate owned media to inject into the public the idea that what is good for them (the wealthy) is good for us (the ordinary), that the measure of the social world is the measure of how wealthy the wealthy are, and how much they are growing and accelerating that wealth.
Capitalism, as understood by the many not the few, is a quaint idea, where people use the money they earn, by educating themselves to a certain level, then choosing who is suitable to sell their labour value to, so as to then vote for the best products, and therefore the best society, through their purchasing power. However, this would require a free market that responded to the demands of those with credit. That didn’t happen either. The financiers, the capital men, are the most likely influencers of the market force that puts goods on shelves, they are also the most likely to control the mediums whereby those goods that you believe you want are advertised to you. They are the ones that it serves best for the market to supply disposable goods to the masses. The environment, and the wellbeing of the people are stumbling blocks to be handled, problems to be mitigated.
The greatest coup the money men performed was to make ordinary citizens buy into the idea that the market could solve social ills, and that nationalised industry was inefficient and unproductive. After this victory it didn’t matter that the exclusionary force, that the need to generate a large profit for a small number of people creates, would manifest as it has always done. Healthcare as a business has fared no better than water as a business, social services as a business, transport as a business, or sewage as a business. Yet people still believe it can, 40 years after Thatcher put those items on the road to their privatised destruction. We can all see that capitalism simply doesn’t work for the social world, because we can witness it clearly not working all around us. As councils go bankrupt and working people call at the food bank on the way home. But the idea is so ingrained in all of us that it should work that we are now incapable of imagining any alternative. The inner feeling of the ordinary citizen is that Capitalism does work, but we just keep doing it wrong. This is why successive governments have leaned further into the capitalism first aid kit, because it is their belief that it is the application of the bandage or the cream, not being applied thickly enough to the wound, that is the reason for it not healing.
You see that’s the reason why everything is just shit, it’s the E**** business model ( I only pick them because everyone that hears their purchase is being delivered by them, must have a slight puckering of the arse moment of fear), where you don’t need to be any good because you’re cheap and you turn a profit for those that matter, the shareholders. It really makes no difference to the people who own the public service contract whether they provide a good service at all, the bosses will get their coin and that is the point. The media that should drive the investigation into the whole business are likely owned by he same people who have captured the public service. In many cases, such as public healthcare, to do it right is to lose value and it always will be because it cannot be otherwise. In truth what needs to happen is that your government steps in and makes it otherwise, but that is unlikely because they (your MPs) are most commonly closely linked to the companies that are operating the levers of public services. That’s not some wild conspiracy, they did it in front of you in the pandemic of 2020, they just poured your money toward their pals, called it a necessity, and made it legal overnight, the current political class has no interest in chasing them for it either because they serve the same interests. People who can influence, will influence, and we have a house full of people who got there because of influence. The leaders and their opposition being described by George Galloway quite fittingly as “different cheeks of the same backside”.
Picture the influence this way: we might rightly assume that ordinary folks living ordinary lives, concerned with the day to day things that matter to ordinary folks, like food and shelter and maybe a laugh now and then, have no notion of going towards a conflict that would never enrich them, or turning back a boat full of unfortunate souls looking for a decent life, if they are getting by just fine and not under immediate threat. Only the public perception of an enemy at the gate, a possibility of losing something like a freedom or something financial, regularly created by the media on behalf of the tired old men we elected kings, can garner the fear and the anger that achieves the level of distraction needed for them to concentrate on the robbery. It is rarely in the interest of the peasant to fight another peasant to decide who owns the land they get to remain a peasant on, they will still be a peasant in the end so what is in it for them? Yet it is so often a story repeated in history books, King Harold marched his troops to Stamford Bridge, well who were those troops? Ordinary men, motivated by a duty created by those that ruled over them, to preserve the way of life of those Kings and their relatives as decided by whatever deity they have imposed on the troops.
The whole point of this piece is to say one thing, that people don’t need better weapons to make the world safer, they don’t need the resources they really own to be in the hands of the rich and being exploited to make them work properly, they don’t need competition between greedy people to make a product better, they just need better examples of how it can be done better. The history of the NHS from 1948 until thatcher is an example of how something can be a spectacular success, exist in a capitalist society, progress and develop, yet not be capitalist in any way. In the future I don’t know who I will vote for, there really is none that will represent the politics I hold, but if a single party were to stand on a platform of …
“We, a bunch of self interested toffs and aspirational nitwits, having emerged from the ugliest and least trustworthy spheres of this society, law, media, and finance, and having been imbued by our peer group and family with a sense of confidence that is ill deserved, will gleefully rob you the people, of all your resources. Taking every ounce of value from your insignificant lives, while working our bought and paid for corporate media hard to make you believe that you are actually lucky to merely survive in a world of never ending volatility, one that is not our fault regardless that we are quite obviously the shapers of all things. While you repeat our ideals in conversation, defend us, and even thank us for the small amount of protection we provide from the monsters that we nurtured, we will subsidise our lives and the lives of our friends on your coin, sparing no expense and letting no opportunity pass by unmolested to tell you that it is your belt that must be tightened. We will continue to feel and act that providence, and the will of Henry VIII and his descendants, has entitled us to reap the rewards of your very best efforts, yet we will sympathise with you and act like there is nothing we can do. We will make every effort to stop the laws that protect us from true democracy from being changed, enact new laws to prevent challenge, and as new science and new technology fosters a sense of hope and possibility, as it always does, we will act to capture these in laws that prevent their realisation as social force. We will bind you within a financial framework that serves our interests and not yours, akin to a game of monopoly, one where you start with very little and are intended to stay that way. If you do, by some miracle, manage to accumulate anything at all beyond your survival as a tool for the continuation of our wealth and our power, we will then make the necessary changes to the rules of the game (society), that ensure you again find your way down to where you belong. If, and this is a slim if, you make yourself our financial equal and inherit the power that comes with that condition, we will make you into one of us, though the shaping of you will not be a difficult task because we could already assume that if you triumphed in a society as cruel as this one you must likely already be the sort of person we are. For the rest you will know your place, you are ours, docile bodies” – Paul S Wilson
.. then they may have my cross on their ballot simply for bringing a modicum of honesty into politics for the first time in a long time. To quote Yanis Varoufakis “I prefer to have bastards in power who claim to be bastards representing the aristocracy, than to have bastards in power who claim to be representing the working class“
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