what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Saturday, November 4, 2023

My World View?

The last post conveyed the World View (WV) I had developed by 2014 – but warned that I was becoming more radical in my old age. Almost a decade later,  this is a better (and more detailed) outline of my WV. The “mixed economy” which existed from 1950-1990 was a healthy and effective system for us in the West

  • It worked because power was diffused. Each type of power – economic 
(companies/banks etc), political (citizens and workers) and legal/admin/military 
(the state) – balanced the other. None was dominant.
  • Deindustrialisation and economic globalisation have undermined the power 
which working class people were able to exercise in that period through votes and union activity
  • Privatisation has been a disaster – inflicting costs on the public and transferring 
wealth to the few
  • Neo-liberalism has supplied a thought system which justifies corporate greed 
and the privileging (through tax breaks and favourable legislation) of the large 
international company
  • All political parties and most media have been captured by that thought 
system which now rules the world
  • People have, as a result, become cynical and apathetic
  • Two elements of the “balanced system” (Political and legal power) are therefore 
now supine before the third (corporate and media power). The balance is broken 
and the dominant power ruthless in its exploitation of its new freedom
It is very difficult to see a “countervailing power” which would make 
these corporate elites pull back from the disasters they are inflicting on us
  • Social protest is marginalised
  • Not least by the combination of the media and an Orwellian “security state” 
ready to act against “dissidence”
  • But the beliefs which lie at the dark heart of the neo-liberal project do 
need more detailed exposure
  • as well as its continued efforts to undermine what little is left of state power
  • We need to be willing to express more vehemently the arguments against 
privatisation - existing and proposed
  • to feel less ashamed about arguing for “the commons” and for things like 
cooperatives and social enterprise (inasmuch as such endeavours are allowed)
In summer 2021 – with the Covid pandemic still raging – I made an attempt 
to update that statement by adding that we have  consistently underestimated the significance of global warming and what is now called the anthropogenic era – indeed there is now open talk of “facing extinction
  • Globalisation is in shreds
  • Societies are polarised
  • Thrust into narrow and selfish “bubbles”
  • Artificial intelligence threatens what we used to refer to as “employment 
prospects”
How, in such conditions, might social forces come together with a programme 
which stands a good chance of reforming the political and state systems of power 
- so that the wings of corporate power can be properly clipped??
And make no mistake – power is the central issue here. At the heart of our 
collective malaise is the imbalance of power. We quantify everything these days 
– talking for example of the 8 men who control half the planet’s wealth. But 
somehow this fails to galvanise any sort of collective action – reference to 
gini-coefficients leaves glazed eyes. The  manifestos of political parties are 
characterised by total irrelevance. Totally missing are the commitments to 
change the power structure eg
  • Break up monopolies
  • Tax the rich – who currently hide in tax havens
  • Reinstate media balance (including a requirement for interviewees to 
reveal their sources of income)
  • Develop Citizen juries
  • Stop money talking
  • Ensure that civil service advice is neutral
And why are such commitments missing? Because those in charge of political 
parties know they would then be the subject of highly aggressive attacks by 
journalists and academics in the pay of corporate power. We can no longer rely 
on political parties to be agents of change - we seem to be on our own
I’ve been trying to gather together some key books to skim for my conclusion 
and felt that Jeremy Gilbert’s Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in 
an age of individualism (2013) was one of the important texts whose very title 
recognises the basic problem we face.



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