Thursday 18 September 2008

Capitalism's 1989

Neil Clark writes:

I am a fairly optimistic person by nature, but if you had told me earlier this year when I co-founded the Campaign For Public Ownership, that just a few months later, George Bush's neo-conservative administration in the U.S. would be following the CPO's pro-nationalisation agenda, I really wouldn't have believed it. As Simon English, writing in The Evening Standard puts it, "Large chunks of Wall Street, supposedly the home of capitalism, are now under government control". We've had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and now AIG, passing into state ownership. The 'free-market', anti-public ownership fanatics, normally so loud on the blogosphere, have gone strangely quiet. Little wonder.

We are now back in 1989- but the system that is collapsing before our very eyes is not Soviet communism, but Anglo-Saxon turbo-capitalism. In the end, this most rapacious of economic models was destroyed by its own greed. It's time for everyone who believes that people should always come before profit- and that a mixed economy is far preferable to a turbo-capitalist 'free market' one, to pop the champagne corks.


I heard that Sheila Lawlor on the radio today, still banging on like some 1990s broken record about how the "free" market was necessary for democracy and vice versa. Tell that to the Chinese.

A relative of mine who teaches Politics to Sixth Formers is convinced that China is only still described as "Communist" because the people writing the textbooks, setting and marking the exams, and conducting the inspections were active Trotskyists back when it really was. Funny, that.

6 comments:

  1. Why do you have Trotskyists on the brain? You are simply sticking a scare label on secularists you do not like or substituting the term in the phrase 'always a Catholic' so that you can consider people heretics.

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  2. Is Neil Clark still BPA candidate for Wantage? You announced that he is. Was this a mistake?

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  3. Questions for Neil should be addressed to Neil, and your persistent attempts to post them here are rapidly approaching the criminal offence of Internet harassment. URLs will be tracked down in future, in relation to this and several other matters.

    Philip, if there were any evidence that the old Trots had changed their views. But there isn't. They are as entryist as ever, and as committed as ever to the permanent revolution, in the same old cause of destroying the family, private property and the State.

    And there is still the fact that something as tiny as British Trotskyism has somehow ended up running the country.

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  4. "And there is still the fact that something as tiny as British Trotskyism has somehow ended up running the country."

    A contentious view to say the least. You assert it rather then demonstrate it to be true.

    "Destroying the
    family, private property and the State" is always the best explanation you can offer. Really this is a sign of your illiberalism, rather than disguised trotting on the part of NuLabour. Of cause, "family" is your code for divorce and abortion and "state" is a reference to devolution and pro-EU policies among other things, but I do not know what to make of "private property" in this context; your autarkist tendencies propel you to an advocacy of nationalisation.

    On you response to the point anonymous makes, we know Neil Clark failed in his attempt to demonstrate a case of 'harassment' with the Thames Valley constabulary. And aside from a posting by Oliver Kamm, we have heard nothing more on the subject. So David Lindsay, I would learn from Mr Clark's embarrassment. Since he is silent on the subject of his BPA candidacy, it seems quite appropriate to raise the issue with his putative party leader.

    This is the third time I have posted these comments. A pity I have silenced you in to submission, or do you always want the last word?

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  5. Really? You prove my point. It was not off-topic for you the other day.

    I will wait a day or so for your reference to Communists and Trotskyists in this government to be made again.

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