How the hell did we get here and how the hell do we get out?
By Emma.
I’ve tried to be pretty reasonable about the Jubilee. I recognise that as a republican, this wasn’t going to be my weekend. I’ve watched DVDs and drunk wine and stayed away from as much of the nonsense as possible.
But this story about the disgusting treatment of “workfare” stewards, juxtaposed with the four day celebration of institutionalised wealth, power and privilege has made it impossible not to scream through my fingertips, down the keyboard at anyone still willing to listen.
Our society is collapsing. It’s been happening slowly for a very long time but now seems to be in free-fall. We do not have answers to the most basic of questions such as how to we ensure that everyone in society is able to clothe, feed and house themselves and their dependents.
When Workfare was first talked about the argument seemed to rage between those who believed that the experience of work on these schemes was valuable in and of itself and those who believed that the enforcing of unpaid work with threats of the reduction of withholding of benefits was tantamount to slavery.
How have we got into a situation where it is essential to have experience to stack shelves? How have we moved in two generations from jobs for life to insecurity for most? Are the profits that are earned through the model of capitalism that is encouraging this behaviour being redirected into changing this for the better or into further perpetuating the difference?
I’m not a supporter of UK Uncut. I find their tactics off-putting and their aims vague. I believe that the best solutions are implemented politically through elected representatives as I believe they have the best chance at long term legitimacy. I’m an evolutionary not revolutionary Socialist. I don’t want to enforce Socialism at the point of a gun but persuade through the force of my arguments.
But when we have people coerced into sleeping on cold, wet concrete without the facilities you need to live a life of basic human dignity, there something going seriously wrong here. When complaints about the treatment of those people is shrugged off as lefty-whining, there’s something seriously wrong.
These people matter not because of the juxtaposition of their poverty with the wealth of those they are being asked to serve. They matter because they are people. They are worth just as much as the Queen, or Gary Barlow or Pippa Middleton or me. They have a basic right to dignity which is being abused by a company and a charity that are just bigger cogs in the wheel of a system that is failing us all.
As I watch the news at night I see the coverage of the situation in Greece and in Spain which has a basic sense of “well thank God we aren’t them”. But those people sleeping under London Bridge probably weren’t desperately trying to sleep safe in the knowledge that our bond market is a little more secure than Greece’s. The massively increased numbers of rough sleepers on the streets and the mothers skipping meals to be able to better feed their children are not feeling a sense of relief that capital markets were marginally more likely to invest in the UK than in Spain.
It is certainly true that we need (and do not currently have) a sustainably growing economy to be able to function. But we need so much more than that. At present, our definition of that seems to be one that appeals to the markets at the expense of its people. That is attempting to claw back credibility with the very people who caused such a disastrous contraction by proving how much we can hurt those that don’t matter to them.
Forget the economic lunacy of austerity during a contraction, that too is a question for the now. It too is a question that assumes the outcome is the same system running better in the future. Changing course, bringing in Plan B is all very well, for now.
But there must be better answers than just returning to running this broken down system better. There must be ways of managing our economy that don’t leave so many people behind. There must be answers that include dignity and humanity for everyone.
There must be answers that don’t leave people out in the cold. I don’t know these answers, I’m not an economist. But if someone can show me how it’s done, I’ll damn well dedicate my talents to being the implementer of such change. Because all I do know, is that we cannot go on like this.
Tags: capitalism, Jubilee
Tuesday, June 5th 2012 at 16:53
We won’t go on like this. The neo-liberal economic philosophy is dependent on pushing to ever greater extremes. Every properly educated or thinking person realises that if one doe that, eventually things snap. This is precisely the type of historical context in which revolutions happen. And I don’t say that as a fan. Revolutions are, by and large, hugely destructive things. For that reason, it is in all or interests to prevent one. The question is not how do we end the current mess, because it will end regardless; it is how do we end the current mess with minimal damage?
There are, basically, two ways to get wealth. The first is to create it (through economic growth, new technology etc.), which has the potential to be just lovely but which tends to be slow. The second is to take it from other people. Where socio-political problems hinge on a disparity in wealth, as in this case, one has the option of redistributing it amicably through tax, charity etc.; or of waiting for that revolution to do it through cruder means. It is imperative for their well-being (as much as anyone else’s) that the rich recognise redistribution of wealth through taxation as being in everyone’s interests. Indeed, some, like Warren Buffett, already do. People like him didn’t get rich by being stupid; they are actually well placed to recognise the current dangers.
Redistribution doesn’t have to rob people of incentives to work hard etc. There’s plenty of wealth in our society to enable the maintenance of a decent basic standard of living for everybody and still let a few become millionaires. But there’s the thing. Being a millionaire used to be, in terms of personal wealth, quite enough for anyone to dream of. Now the super rich have much more than that; money has lost its meaning to them and has become a number that affords status rather than a means to live as others understand it. The key to fixing this is to establish new status symbols and to undermine the all too successful principle that greed is good. We need to stop blaming the poor for not being selfish enough (as we often do when, say, they support family members rather than saving for a rainy day) and we need to start socially rewarding altruism. It’s ideas, in the end, that can tip the balance.
Tuesday, June 5th 2012 at 17:29
Excellent article.
The divide between the haves & have-nots gets ever wider. The current Tory regime (& the Lib-Dems in the so-called coalition are acting as Tories) is appallingly ultra right-wing. Cameron & Co are making Thatcher look like Mother Theresa and that’s not a good thing.
Listening to the St Paul’s service this morning, there was much talk, in the sermons, of duty and dedication to public service. The thing is, our current government, much of the establishment and far too many of the rest of us wouldn’t understand the concept of public service even if slapped about the face with a very large wet fish when being told what it really means. All that matters to the Tories and too many others is personal wealth for the few generated through corporate & private business pushing for ever higher profits to end up in the pockets of those very few. It’s a giant pyramid scheme and is unsustainable. Indeed, in business, pyramid schemes are illegal, and how the right-wingers can’t grasp how this drive for ever more profit to the few built on the backs of the many nothing more than an unsustainable pyramid scheme shocks me. There’s nothing wrong with making a profit, but it has to be sustainable. What we have now is greed driving the system and it really can’t go on: greed by attempting to build ever higher profit for the few at the top by inflicting ever worse conditions on those below is absolutely the wrong way to go.
As said above, we need to be changing society to understand that corporate & private financial greed is not the true measure of success and it is not sustainable as that way lies chaos and revolution. Much better to have a system where society really is viewed as one where we truly depend on each other and treat each other with respect. Yes, businesses have to be able to succeed and make a profit, to be able to employ people and provide jobs, but the ethos of ever more growth of profit by cutting costs (meaning cutting wages, increasing hours and making people redundant) is completely short-sighted. We need a business mind-set where the long-term and sustainability is what is looked at to measure success, not the current view where everything is about short-term profits and ever increased ‘growth’
We do need to stop blaming to poor, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed and viewing them as nothing more than a drain on resources, a waste of space, useless and some form of sub-human. The current view being spread by our right-wingers and too much of the media is not a million miles from those held in fascist Germany in the middle of the twentieth century. It scares me.
Tuesday, June 5th 2012 at 18:09
Let me do it again, lol.
*Spot on. Be good to meet up again soon.
James:)
Tuesday, June 5th 2012 at 18:13
It would indeed.
Thursday, June 7th 2012 at 22:48
Hi Emma.
Hmm. I disagree.
A problem with 2 coachloads of stewards who were brought in 2 hours too early by mistake, who – far from ‘spending the night under a bridge’ – actually didn’t get there until most of the night was over anyway, even though they were early.
Or rather a complaint by a couple of people, now contradicted by some of the colleagues.
In an event with 1.2m people on the river banks, and however many hundreds of thousands elsewhere. And heaven knows how many thousands of stewards.
With complaints that loos were not available for 24 hours – except, of course for all the same loos available to all the members of the public.
This strikes me as a small storm in an even smaller teacup being whipped into a frenzy for transparently political reasons.
I’m not going to assess workfare purely on the basis of this single incident, since no one knows enough to comment sensibly.
On the Constitutional angle. Our constitutional monarchy works very well, and nearly all of us continue to like it. If you can point to a system that works better *in practice* (not in theory) then I’m interested.
On the economics, I simply disagree with you. A country cannot continue to spend £4 for every £3 of income, however painful the correction. Without the ‘asterity’ (which the TUC were telling us a few days ago hasn’t actually happened yet) it would be a far worse position.
Friday, June 8th 2012 at 09:11
The real reasons for Austerity.
http://hipcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/what-if-collapse-happened-and-nobody.html
http://rkmdocs.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html
It’s not going to get better because our rulers are psychopaths.