A Future That Works

A Future That Works
NO2aTory/Liberal coalition - Vote with your feet for an alternative to a neo-liberal economy and neo-conservative state Yes2aLeftFront and a Red/Green Left Alliance

Thursday 21 April 2011

What approach might alter the present balance of power in favour of those who have to sell their labour?

Even now Cubans are having to introduce reforms allowing buying and selling of private property and we have seen multinationals moving into China in recent years. Cuban socialism in recent years has shown the way forward for an eco-socialist model of development and was a great admirer of the Yugoslavian model of worker co-operatives and self-management as a model for a workers democracy. Neither system can/could survive and develop in a hostile capitalist world. The only way we counteract this process of retreat is as international socialist, this means as a matter of urgency we need to develop closer ties with European and global labour movements in the economic struggle and with Left/Green parties in Europe and internationally, but specifically the European Union, we have no other realistic option. Some on the left may disagree but we can fight global capitalism in one country alone, so what’s to be done?

4 comments:

  1. Is It time for a new ‘‘historic bloc’’ of the broad left?

    Gordon Brown was less enthusiastic a protagonist of the neo-liberal and neo-conservative project than Tony Blair but he had accepted the idea that capitalism had reached a stage where the cycle of boom and bust had been abolished and had to learn the hard way that economic crisis is a feature of the capitalist system. Which moves in economic cycles of about sixty years from what Kondratiev called the ‘expansionary period’, leading to ‘Peak’ then a ‘primary recession’, and ‘plateau’ and then a ‘secondary recession’ leading to the ‘depression’. If we take the last period as starting in the 1940’s peaking in the 1970’s followed by a recession in the 1980’s and 90’s and now we are experiencing the secondary recession which is likely to develop into a full blown depression on the scale of the 1930’s.

    I would argue that like the policies of the 1920’s the current economic policies of the British government and those being imposed by the IMF, World Bank and European Central Bank on countries like Ireland, Turkey and Greece will make the ‘vortex’ that leads recession into deep depression more likely. And Tory/Liberal government are moving much faster along the road of privatization and marketization of health and education than new-labour did, they are also using the crisis of global finance capital to further their ideological objectives of dismantling the welfare state much more vigorously than new-labour dared.

    This is where the Labour Party and Ed Miliband’s lack of Marxian and Keynesian economic theoretical understand is a problem for the British left and labour movement. This is the weakness of new-labour ideology it has accepted the neo-liberal view of how the market works and only sees the state in neo-conservative terms as controlling labour and material resources to facilitate the market mechanism and abandoning any social dimension to the role of the state. So what are the options for the British broad left and labour movement?

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  2. Crisis hits but profits are rising!

    Economist Michael Burke examines the distribution of national income between wages and profits. In Greece & Ireland, profits are rising even with economic contraction. This highlights the content of ‘austerity’ policies- driving up profits by driving down wages. In countries like Britain, where the economy is stagnating not yet contracting, the ‘austerity’ policy is also designed to drive up profits at the expense of wages. It may also have the same effect on economic activity, driving it lower while increasing profits.

    http://www.europeagainstausterity...isis-hits-but-profits-are-rising/

    how do we build resistance and fightback?

    Looking for the Left Bloc that can coordinate a broad fightback,

    Eurozone in meltdown - Coalition of Resistance public meeting

    Speakers:
    Tony Benn
    John McDonnell MP
    Ntina Tzouvala (Synaspismos youth, Greece)
    Arianna Tassinari (Co-President, SOAS Students Union)
    James Meadway (senior economist, New Economics Foundation)
    Kate Hudson (Coalition of Resistance)

    Monday 28 November, 6:30pm
    University of London Union, malet Street, London WC1E 7HY

    http://www.coalitionofresistance....eting-with-tony-benn-28-november/

    this has to be the group most worth supporting.

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  3. Communist Party of Britain, Socialist Party and Alliance for Green Socialism should be allied with in the fightback against the capitalist offensive against the people of Britain and Europe, if not why not?

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  4. Join the Europe Left Bloc built around Pierre Laurent's leadership against austerity and privatization and form what Antonio Gramsci called a new historic bloc, rather than retreating into the national bolshevism of Stalinism.

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