Protest Report: A Future That Doesn’t Work

We attended the TUC’s Future That Works rally in London at the weekend, to stand with those that oppose the Tories’ relentless austerity measures, and to take a few photos of what went on. Hampered by injuries and fatigue, we maybe weren’t pumped into our usual revolutionary fervor, but I couldn’t help but notice it wasn’t just us that seemed subdued. There can be no doubt that the turnout was good (estimates range from 100,000 to 250,000 participants), there was a lot of good drumming, placards and chants – but that’s where it seemed to end. It’s not that the mood was defeatist, it was more that the methods were conservative and the aims watered-down. While there were many calls for a General Strike amongst protesters on the street, there was little in the way of direct action, anger or real dissent. I’ve noticed that TUC rallies tend to me more populist and ‘middle-of-the-road’ than Occupy and UK Uncut et al, maybe necessarily so, but the real revolutionary contingent seemed missing this time around. What with Ed “One Nation Tory” Milliband speaking at the rally, with what basically amounted to a watered-down version of the Condem’s view on cutting the deficit, and a march that seemed more like a procession – it did appear that the movement had lost a little momentum, and was beginning to settle for ‘the lesser of two evils’.

This seems particularly strange in the current climate, as austerity begins to bite across the globe, with riots, general strikes and murmurs of revolutionary ideas beginning to appear in Greece and other European countries, my initial thought was maybe there just isn’t an appetite for that sort of conflict here in the UK.

But, on doing some reading when I got home, about what went on running up to the march on the 20th of October, it seems that the TUC were complicit in making the march as passive as possible. Read The TUC collaborate with the Met to sew up October 20 for more info on this. Further commentary on how the TUC handed the Met a list of 150 “violent activists” – from Libcom.org

If the trade unions are pushing to get Labour re-elected, and want to improve their image with the powers that be in order to do so, then this sort of conformity is to be expected, and their ‘Future that Works’ amounts to nothing more than ‘we’ll shut up for a promise of slightly less austerity’.

Another good post from Libcom.org, on the ‘state of the movement’ seems to confirm my suspicions that the right wing of the left was laying down the rules of engagement on the 20th of October. Read it here.

Clay and the Collective Body

Just read a really interesting interview with sculptor Antony Gormley (in New Scientist magazine, of all places) that had a surprisingly political slant.

His recent installation Clay and the Collective Body explores “conversations between people – through objects or through the process of creating” by locking 100 random people in a stark white environment, with only a monolithic block of clay for entertainment. This “gave rise to an extraordinary and explosive outpouring of, you could say, collective unconciousness.”

This alien place seemed to trigger something in the participants, something primal that if I was more of a “yogurt-weaver”, I may be tempted to call a universal human connection – certainly the only familiar sight were other people, and the only way of killing time was to create.

“What’s absolutely beautiful is the way that people have occupied that space and become the absolute opposite of what capitalism wants us to be – passive consumers of spectacle, of information, of entertainment, of objects of desire – they become participatory and productive and cross-fertilising.” I thought it was particularly apt that Gormley chose to use the word occupy in that context.

Although Gormley goes on to state that he never intends to make overt political statements with his work, he lets slip that “…there’s no question that many of my works, in different ways, are asking about the connection between humans and our environment. And I think that all my installations in cities of the naked human animal in effigy form – surrogate fossils, industrialised fossils – are asking, where does humankind fit? Now that we seem to be well into the sixth great extinction, how long are we going to contribute to the evolution of life? Those are very big issues”  – and undoubtedly political ones.

Another subject that Gormley brings up in the interview, that is also a favourite of my own, is that of Easter Island.

This ‘ghost island’ captured my imagination from a very young age, as it seems to encapsulate the power that art and iconography can hold over people, our self-destructive tendencies, the damage that can be caused by a flawed belief system and the folly of excess that human civilization seems prone to follow.

“What was in the mind of the man or woman on Rapa Nui who cut down the last tree? It seems the answer to that question is “Well, I cut down this tree because that was what my father did and that was what my father’s father did.” I think we’re in the same position, but we are running on the myth of progress. My work is there to ask pretty serious questions about how we can shift our perception of what constitutes viable human actions or viable human behaviour.”

I always thought there was an eerie connection between Gormley’s sculpture and the statues on Easter Island, and I’m pleased to learn my instincts were close to the mark. Both signify mankind’s strange detachment from the world that bore him, and the lonely marks left on the land after he has gone.

Gormley also goes on to criticise elitism and the determinism of scientific progress – it is a thoroughly thought provoking and enlightened article, that has once again piqued my enthusiasm for art’s potential to induce change, by making us take a long, hard, look in the collective mirror.

Read the whole interview in New Scientist

Earning a Living is Bollocks

Shape on Austerity

“Are you wondering what is going on among the leaders of the Euro Zone of the European Union? Do you, along with British Prime Minister Cameron and his Tory colleagues, put the whole thing down to their stubborn refusal to act! Or do you decide that all such efforts to rationalise our World (including the lauded United Nations) are doomed to failure from the outset. Yet what is really happening is certainly none of these things! It is the final Dissolution of the Fictitious Value on which Capitalism rests. It is the regularly occurring and inevitable Crisis of Capitalism!”

More articles on Socialism and the collapse of Capitalism have recently been published on Shape Blog:

Austerity: The Rape of the Poor

The Major Crisis in World Capitalism

The latest in the Why Socialism series: The Essential Development of Marxist Theory 1

The Absurd Contradictions of Capitalism

Why Socialism VII: How are Decisions Made Within Capitalist Democracy

Read the latest instalment of Jim Schofield’s series on the Shape Blog.

Why Socialism IV: Can It Be Established?

The latest instalment of Jim Schofield’s series on socialism is on the SHAPE Blog

Why Socialism III: Why Nationalisation Failed

The latest instalment of Jim Schofield’s series on socialism is on the Shape blog.

The True Value of Money

This Charlie Brooker article had missed me by…

“Money is broken, and until we admit that, any attempts to fix the economy seem doomed to fail. We’re like passengers on a nosediving plane thinking if we all fart hard enough, we can lift it back into the sky. So should we be storming the cockpit or hunting for parachutes instead? I don’t know: I ran out of metaphor after the fart gag. You’re on your own from hereon in.

Banknotes aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. If they were, they’d all have identical value. Money’s only worth what the City thinks it’s worth. Or, perhaps more accurately, hopes it’s worth. Coins should really be called “wish-discs” instead. That name alone would give a truer sense of their value than the speculative number embossed on them.”

Read the rest

 

Why Socialism II: Socialism within Capitalism?

Is it possible?

Find out in the latest instalment of Jim Schofield’s new series about Socialism on SHAPE 

Why Socialism I: Primitive Accumulation

This is the first part of a new series on Socialism to be published collaboratively with Shape Journal

Primitive Accumulation:
How Investors First Got Their Capital

At such a time as this, when Capitalism is being exposed for what it really is – it becomes increasingly important to recall just how it came to be – how our “entrepreneurs” accrued the wherewithall “to invest” and “support” money-making ventures of all sorts.

In other words, what forms of Primitive Accumulation produced the necessary Capital to fund a growing Capitalism?

Of course, it wasn’t anything like how it is portrayed today.

It was only possible via an accelerating concentration of available social wealth into much fewer hands, and this was first achieved by the regular application of bullying, violence and even war.

Causes

What were the motive forces behind these regrettably emergent systems?

One could easily say that it was simply down to the push for profits. Though this is certainly true, it doesn’t tell us much about what was done to achieve it. A profit motive has been around for a long time, yet these phenomena (at least as the prevailing dominant form) are quite recent.

What is it, therefore, that has brought about this significant change in mode?

The two most obvious starting points are globalism and technology.

Historical Constraints – Transport

After the start of the Industrial Revolution, which emerged wholly in the richer western countries like Great Britain, the work in manufacture had to be carried out at, or closely adjacent to, where the raw materials could be easily obtained.

Why? Because transport was the limiting factor – the price of a sack of coal could be doubled in moving it just a few miles! Also, the market had also to be within easy reach of the places of manufacture, and for the same reasons!

Such constraints were so dominant for thousands of years, that the vast majority of commodities that were traded over long distances had to be both small, and extremely valuable to make the process at all profitable.

Even with the post-industrial revolution development of empires, and the consequent procurement of both more distant sources of materials, AND new, expanding markets, the factor of transport still strangled the growth of trade to a major degree.

Historical Constraints – Primitive Accumulation

NOTE: It has always fascinated me that the most important factor in getting such processes off the ground, was the necessity for the centralisation, and concentration of wealth, and in particular the major role of direct theft in this process.

It did not surprise me that the result of the fall of the economies of Eastern Europe led to the emergence of gangster groups such as the Russian Mafia, and the direct stealing of state-owned resources to put into the hands of private individuals to re-establish capitalism.

Such methods of primitive accumulation were indeed the only ones open to the local, and potentially national ruling class. Otherwise such a re-establishment would have had to be funded externally, probably by the USA.

The same thing, of course was universal at the beginning of the modern era. Everybody has heard of the “enclosures”, where rich landowners simply stole the “common” land from the peasants, put a fence around it and used it for producing sheep and wool. Also similar sources were used to initially fund pirates and “privateers” to steal enough from the Spaniards (who themselves stole their gold from the civilisations of South and Central America), to allow new “capitalist” undertakings to be initiated.

Does it surprise you what the Zionists do to obtain Palestinian land in the Middle East?

It is essentially the same process – but given a more “legal” look by the fact that the forces of the state of Israel make these processes happen, and even buying up some such properties well below market value, much easier. Earthmovers, Tanks, Tractors and guns can easily change the rules of the game can’t they?

The biggest contradiction in the early years of the industrial revolution was the concentration of wealth at the same time as the reduction in the standards of life of the “required” local working class.

NOTE: Let me make an important point about the myths of rural deprivation that are usually put forward in this context. It is suggested that the concentration of rural peasants into an urban working class “rescued” them from acute deprivation in the countryside. The response must be, “NO!” But, in saying that it does not mean that there wasn’t any rural deprivation, indeed there was.

But it was NOT a feature of rural life. It was a feature also of nascent capitalism, in its first real theatre of operations – agriculture. The process started with the “enclosures” – the stealing of the common land, and the impoverishment of the rural peasants, who were then forced to work for the “thieves” who had stolen their livelihood – the rural aristocracy. The great impoverishment and degradation of the rural work force preceded the main rampant growth of urban industrialisation, but was generated by the same source of primitive accumulation – the wealthy landowners. AND these complementary processes overlapped to some extent.

At one particular period it was to the owners’ advantage to drive the peasants from the countryside, and drive them into the cities as factory fodder. They were an important source of extra wealth at both stages of the primitive accumulation of capital.

It is not for nothing that the “dark, satanic mills” and degradation were contrasted by privileged dreamers, with the idyllic lives of those in the pre-industrial societies such as South Sea Islanders.

Globalisation

Of course, to talk about globalisation as being entirely new is also incorrect.

The need to find raw materials, at low prices, and new markets for the ever-increasing supply of goods, drove the expansion of the capitalist system from its outset, and dramatically changed the world. But transport developments and technological innovations accelerated the pace and content of these changes, and led ultimately to the export of the manufacturing process itself, AND the import of food and products in an altogether new scale. Quantity changes led to changes in quality, and NEW upheavals became regular, and indeed, almost continuous.

I well remember the “reason” for shutting many viable coal mines in the UK, was given as the impossibility of competing with cheap imports from abroad (e.g. Poland), whereas, only a few years later, the very same Polish mines are being shut with the same kind of excuse.

NOTE: The Polish experience is somewhat different, as the nationalised industries had somehow to be got into private hands for a song (primitive accumulation) in order to re-establish capitalism in Poland.

Transport has radically changed many aspects of the sources of perishables such as food. Coupled with refrigeration and wide-bodied jets, it is possible to import certain food stuffs CHEAPER than getting them locally. In addition climates more conducive to mass production in agriculture, plus powerful and large machinery (impossible to use in many traditional contexts), and sophisticated bulk transport systems, have brought prices down.

Small scale personal-use production in many developing countries, has been largely (and sometimes forcibly) replaced by large scale production of single crops (sugar, cotton, cocoa etc.) at very low prices and exclusively for export. This process has moved so far that such subsistence farming has almost vanished, and the population (when they don’t get jobs on the plantations as workers) find that they cannot feed themselves and have to rely on bought-in produce, when they can afford it, and foreign aid, when they cannot, or most likely of all, move into the fast growing cities to increase their chances on all these fronts.

Finally, the constant march of technology (particularly information technology) has led to automated, computer controlled manufacture, such that, with the appropriate machinery, cheap labour can easily be trained to do what once was only possible by skilled workers (on a much higher wage) in the so-called advanced countries.

Even Help and Advice services are now incessantly exported to “cheap-labour” countries. Almost all the cold-call phone salesmen and help lines for many products are now abroad – first in Ireland, but latterly in India, and other ex-colonial countries where English is widely used.

The sort of advice that you can get from these sources is of a characteristic and very narrow type!

What the workers are “trained” to deal with is wholly determined by the frequency with which the set of questions is generally asked. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are even automated via the Internet so that they require no human interface at all, and even when you do get hold of an “advisor” on the phone, in Bombay or wherever, you will many times only get help on the very commonest problems – those encountered by the largest number of ill-informed callers

Specialist, detailed and unusual queries are often NOT addressed by these systems. Statistics is the base, and the excuse!

“80% of our callers get immediate help!”, we are told. Yes, help like, “Have you turned on?”, or “Have you checked the fuse”, plus a full set of similar and occasionally slightly more ambitious levels. Complex problems are attempted (sometimes), but only on phone lines that are extremely expensive (some would say prohibitively expensive!).

It is, as I said at the beginning of this section, determined by profit, but the situation has substantially changed, and the employers have been extensively empowered in the last few decades.

There was a time when my stepfather could legitimately hold his employer to ransom with his irreplaceable skills, and demand good wages for the work of his “gang” (he worked in a major foundry in Manchester). They would regularly sack him, then re-employ him, on his own terms, when they couldn’t do what he could do. But, those days are gone!

The skills are replaced by technology, both in methods, control and materials, and the availability of, and access to, adequate (and cheap) labour forces across the world, means that bargaining power by workers with something significant to sell has been well nigh extinguished, if only organised locally.

Primitive Accumulation:
The Chicken-and-the-Egg

Capitalism is sometimes hard for people to grasp, because it has an inherent contradiction at its very heart. As distinct from prior economic systems, where individuals, small groups or even states gathered sufficient funds to finance various types of scheme, the new feature of Capitalism was to draw in initial funding from a much wider area of subscribers on the basis of regular, and where possible, lucrative returns.

When economic activity was essentially local, such centralisation of funding was not necessary due to the smallness of the potential market, but the extending reach of markets elicited larger scale production, and such undertakings required substantial capital investment to initiate the process.

Early on (really in a pre-capitalist era) investments were in daring trading voyages to exotic sources of luxury goods, but as the wherewithall for wider scale production and distribution became available, the classic capitalist form of investment in manufacture gradually emerged.

By the time of the industrial revolution the requirements for manufacture grew at an alarming pace. Buildings, tools, machinery, raw materials and labour were all necessary, in a particular place at a particular time. And all these things must be in place prior to a final acquisition of payment for the resultant goods. Without mechanisms to concentrate the required Capital to finance such undertakings, it became the famous impossible case of “pulling you up by your own bootlaces”. A classic chicken-and-egg situation!

It is therefore not surprising that pre–capital seats of accumulated wealth were the first ports of call for acquiring financial backing.

Feudal Focuses

The landowning aristocracy and royalty were initially often the only suppliers of capital, via their established means of wealth accumulation – via rents or taxes!

But this was a very limited source, and could only finance a tiny fraction of the possible set of profitable enterprises. It is not surprising that the supporters of the new, capitalist way of gathering the required funds should in their day have been quite revolutionary.

They considered the old feudal system to be the major brake on the development of enterprise, and were an important part of the forces that coalesced into the English Revolution in the 17^th century, which not only overthrew the old system, but also separated the King’s head from his body!

New Methods of Accumulation?

Another source of funding was certainly required.

It was clear what it should be. It required sufficient investment to initiate the process, and then the return on such investments, to re-invest into the next stage. Successive and widening iterations of this process would multiply up the funds available, and vastly increase the amount of enterprise and production. But, it wasn’t simply an alternative mode of economy that people with money to invest could simply choose to use.

The old economic system directly intervened to prohibit such an independent process. The old powers of royalty and aristocracy had a stranglehold on trade (and, of course, on the accumulation of wealth). And such a small number of privileged sources, or well-connected entrepreneurs were always going to be insufficient. “

If we don’t do it, someone else, perhaps in another country, will!” (.. and presumably “We, will have missed the opportunity!”). To significantly increase the amount of capital available AND the number of people with sufficient disposable resources to “risk” on a much wider range of enterprises – new methods were clearly necessary. In addition to breaking the stranglehold of the old aristocracy on wealth, other independent methods of “primitive accumulation” had to be developed.

The most important such method was what it had always been for millennia – THEFT!

Killing people and stealing their wealth was a very efficient method of primitive accumulation. From mounted hordes of nomads out of the steppes, to Viking raiders and Elizabethan privateers, the really effective method had always been “robbery with violence”. Most of the early historical regimes in the Middle East were the result of warlike conquering of the productive farmers and civilisations of the so-called Fertile Crescent. Hittites, Assyrians, Persians and the rest were all successful accumulators, but they knew nothing of using their ill-gotten gains as a primer for further acquisitions and enterprises. It was, on the contrary, simply a matter of dividing the spoils.

The result of their accumulation was simply consumption.

It always amazes me how the uses that these people put their wealth to are universally commended as “civilisation”. The “consumption” of these resources in the building of palaces, country residences, and even “Hanging Gardens” etc., could only move forward if the robbery was ongoing.

So the building of empires was necessary to continue the process. Once this was no longer possible, some form of collapse was inevitable.

In the more modern era we are considering, the primitive accumulation was used in a different way.

Of course, we cannot leave Primitive Accumulation without including what was probably the most important contribution over a considerable period – the crucial and highly lucrative role of Slavery in the process. It too is a form of robbery with violence, but of people who were then sold and put to work (without pay), to ensure a substantial return upon their cost when bought.

And these slaves even reproduced to deliver an ever-growing slave population at absolutely zero extra cost. And, to complete the picture, the real giants of the rise of Capitalism were substantially funded by the accumulation provided by the Slave Trade, for these slaves, in the main, produced highly saleable products.

The triangular Route from Britain to West Africa (for slaves), then crossing the Atlantic to the West Indies and America (to sell their living assets) and also to pick up valuable cotton and sugar, to take back and sell in Britain. And this was a major generating engine for colossal wealth, and available for investments in the burgeoning Industrial Revolution back home in Europe.

Theft – for investment

A good and revealing story to consider is the use of identical mechanisms by organised crime in the USA. Once more we have “robbery with violence” as a means of primitive accumulation, but then the crime bosses realised that a great multiplication of wealth would be involved if these resources were not simply consumed, but used to accumulate at an ever increasing rate. So they invested in legitimate enterprises.

Crime gave them the necessary wherewithall to buy into Capitalism.

Now, such a consideration of the effects of Primitive Accumulation on the growth of Capitalism, cannot be sufficient, when addressing the situation as we are experiencing it today. For, there are now no longer any such “easy” means of pump-priming this system, that ever needs such injections, never actually reaching a self-sustaining level, as its incentive is always to increase profit. And, the impossibility of such an objective shows itself at regular intervals, as the system runs out of steam and suffers unavoidable recessions. The modern methods have always involved the extraction of surplus value (profit) from the actual producers of the traded wealth – the workers in the factories and in the fields, but the unavoidable contradiction between necessary repression and the need for ever bigger markets, not to mention the ever deceasing rate-of-profit, has meant that NO permanent solution within Capitalism will ever be possible. It consumes its own resources, and hence must continually lay waste to a greater proportion of the planet, until the final, fatal slump occurs.

Jim Schofield

If capitalism has failed, how the hell do we pay for our Shreddies?

I’ve just noticed this bleakly joyous article written by Red Eye favourite Charlie Brooker, and it’s a couple of months old now, revealing the shameful truth that we haven’t been devouring with relish, our recommended five portions of satire and pessimism a day. This will be remedied, mark our words… If attack is the best form of defence, then humour is our weapon of choice. And Brooker can be our chosen arms dealer!

I might be an economic dunce, but if our failing currencies are replaced by a medieval bartering system, what will we have to do to get our favourite breakfast cereals?

Will we still have checkouts? Or Shreddies themselves? Even if we do, I bet we won’t have the “Frosted” and “Coco” varieties any more. Just plain standard Shreddies, eaten from a bowl fashioned from a dented hubcap, purchased in exchange for a hand job during a massive global war.

Now, that’s a vision of the future we can all enjoy!

Read more

Violence and Occupation

The crackdown on the Occupy protesters in the US has been a violent, coordinated and federal attack on a largely peaceful, mainstream movement. Were they really that much of a threat to those in power?

Naomi Wolf writes in the Guardian on the shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

Very much worth a read, although I’m not as shocked, maybe, as she is. The Occupy movement is not just challenging the unregulated banking system and profiteers on Wall Street, it is challenging the right to excessive wealth in itself, it is effectively declaring war on the rich – and sadly, these bastards run the planet for their own profit, and historically, will gladly go to war to defend their vast fortunes against the rabble. The rich just struck first.

Save the Internet!

The internet is the most powerful tool for true democracy humankind has ever possessed. It allows people to communicate, collaborate, mobilise, express themselves, publish their own work and undermine “the construct” in myriad unforeseen ways. The Internet has changed our planet and how we perceive it and it has changed what we believe is possible. International borders and social boundaries are rendered permeable. Information is now free. The floodgates are wide open! Would the Arab Spring Revolutions have happened so quickly (if at all) without social networks? Would the global Occupy Movement ever have got off the ground without Twitter and Livestream?

Corporations and governments see this as a threat to their system, as capitalism teeters in the balance, such “digital anarchy” can no longer be tolerated. Their fightback begins as the worst bill in internet history is about to become law.

More information

PROTECT IP (S. 968)/SOPA (HR. 3261) creates the first system for Internet censorship – this bill has sweeping provisions that give the government and corporations leeway and legal cover for taking down sites “by accident,” mistakenly, or for NOT doing “enough” to protect the interests of Hollywood. These bills that are moving very quickly through Congress and can pass before Christmas aim to give the US government and corporations the ability to block sites over infringing links posted by their users and give ISPs the release to take any means to block peoples’ sites, including slowing down your connection. That’s right, some say this bill is a workaround to net neutrality and is bigger than net neutrality.

We need to fight to keep the internet free from top-down control. Fight for our right to freedom of speech. Fight for YouTube and WordPress and for WikiLeaks. Fight for Red Eye! 😉

If you wish to express your dismay at these draconian plans, the US congress is currently debating this bill… let them know we aint happy. Sign the Avaaz petition below

“As concerned global citizens, we call on on you to stand for a free and open Internet and vote both against the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act. The Internet is a crucial tool for people around the world to exchange ideas and work collectively to build the world we all want. We urge you to show true global leadership and do all you can to protect this basic pillar of our democracies worldwide.”

SIGN

Conspiracy Theorists are the Enemy of the Resistance

Agree with him or not Charlie Veitch has become a legend.
Sadly he is wrapping up his Love Police project 

You can still watch all his previous work on his blog and youtube accounts
Some of it is hilarious, and most of it is bang on the money 😉

Protest Report: Occupy Westminster Bridge

I’m beginning to get a bit fucked off at the mainstream media in this country (and the rest of the world for that matter). The BBC may as well rename itself the Tory Propaganda Network. The Occupy movement in the USA is still going largely unreported, and now British protesters are getting equally ignored. I would have thought thousands of people illegally occupying Westminster Bridge, right under the noses of Parliament, would have been worthy of a news report. A small footnote at least. Especially when you consider the protesters are trying to save one of the UK’s most precious and important institutions (the NHS), which is in practically everyone’s interest. The news is being filtered. Fact. Why aren’t they reporting these protests?

As far as I am aware, Channel 4 news was the only program to feature proper coverage of this event – please feel free to correct me in the comments section if I am wrong (I hope I am). Their report claimed only 2000 thousand people were on the bridge during the “Block the Bridge, Block the Bill” occupation – it seemed at least treble that to me, but of course it is hard to judge these things from the ground. Suffice it say when we first arrived at the bridge it was full. From end to end. Admittedly, within an hour or so this number had dropped considerably.

Still, a significant number of people stayed all afternoon, and it was a great occasion by all accounts. The atmosphere was positive and defiant and the tactics playful and imaginative. A large assembly was held where anyone could speak out and get involved, and this was followed by comedians and live music on the bridge. Spirits were high for the whole event, and the police were wise enough to let it all happen without confrontation. More protests and occupations were planned for the near future and everyone was home in time for tea!

But what will come of all this? Will the protest go unheard? Is the NHS doomed to privatisation??

The effectiveness of protest politics is indeed questionable. I lost faith in it myself after the Anti War movement failed to stop thousands being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know many others that felt the same. But the climate is changing. Millions of people are very angry. They are sick of austerity measures, banks and corporations calling the shots, the destruction of public services and the environment. They want real democracy, where people’s needs are put before corporate profits. From Tahir Square, to Wall Street, to Westminster Bridge – people are taking action, occupying public spaces and refusing to leave. A new people’s movement seems to be beginning… not that you’d have any idea from watching the news.

Can we do more to help save the NHS?

What’s next for UK Uncut? 

Channel 4 News bucks the trend

Capitalism: A Hate Crime

Despite being released in 2009, we’ve only just got around to watching Moore’s latest polemic (Capitalism, A Love Story), which is perhaps his most overtly political film yet. Moore is routinely criticised for over-simplifying issues, not backing up all his points with rigorous research, narcissism and plain old-fashioned partisan politics. While many of these criticisms are often true of his work, that is not why he is routinely criticised. It is because he is a genuine threat to those in power. He speaks emotionally in plain English about important issues and encourages people to stand up for themselves. This is why he receives so much flack. His latest film is hard to criticise on these grounds as it is much more thoroughly researched than previous outings and goes straight for the jugular. Capitalism itself.

There is often something rather jarring about Moore’s documentaries. Unlike much mass-media produced treatise on the structures we call society, Moore’s offerings are ribboned with emotion and dramatic protest that can sometimes seem circus-like, theatrical. ‘Capitalism, A love story’, is in some ways no exception, with Moore playing at performing a citizen’s arrest and draping police tape around major banks. But there is also a simple and hard-hitting breakdown of the facts around global financial crisis, accompanied by archive footage, and a rather predictable yet occasionally effective soundtrack. The call-to-arms here seems a lot more tangible. The disgust you are lead to feel in the plight of families evicted from their homes, at children jailed by a for-profit prison system, is counteracted by pure elation at the footage of strike action at Republic Windows and Doors, and at a community whose peaceful action supported an evicted family squatting their own home.

While I agree that Moore can be a little crass, the accusations of manipulation by the right are utterly laughable. What Moore does (and what the right fears) is to simplify and explain the means by which the super-rich are managing to routinely rob the 95% of the population with little economic power. A good analogy for the way in which the public are usually systematically obfuscated by the financial elite is the formula shown in the documentary for ‘derivatives’. The muddier the explanation for financial catastrophe, the easier it is for those in power to capitalise and exploit the rest of us for their own profit. Moore clears the waters for us, and what strikes me time and time again is how blatant the robbery of the working class has become. This so-called recession amounts to the biggest heist of public money in recorded history, and so far the thieves have gotten away with it.

One point the film makes very well is that we do not live in a democracy, and cannot while the world is still run from Wall Street. Moore talks with Democrat senators who feel that what took place was a “financial coup d’etat”, where power was irrevocably shifted from elected representatives to the CEOs of banks and other financial institutions, by the back door. This is backed up by good evidence. When our governments’ now talk about budget deficits they neglect to mention how much of OUR money they “gave” to the banks. They suggest that these current times of austerity are somehow OUR responsibility, and we must take these CUTS to our vital front line services on the chin, like good loyal citizens to the church of capitalism, and sit by and watch as our most precious institutions are dismantled in the name of efficiency, while private companies rake in the profits.

Yet again we sit in the aftermath of another depressing expose of the system that robs us of our wealth and opportunity. We write in the wake of yet more cuts to services, including proposed cuts to legal aid, a 30% cut for NHS cancer scans, 25% youth unemployment… the list is endless. It is very difficult not to get despondent in the face of all this, difficult not to either block our disgust with distraction- or even give up completely and attempt to suck at the sour teat of the system as if there is no choice or escape. But not so. A point which drove these almost invariably united authors to heated debate was the idea that there is nothing left to do in the face of all this save violent revolution, a forced seizure of what rightly belongs to the people of this planet for the benefit of all. Yet look again… all of the successful protest portrayed within this documentary was peaceful, and a good reminder of the most powerful weapon we have- the right to withhold labour. Without our continued co-operation, this parasitic system can, and WILL fail. Let us not be complacent. We have a responsibility to each other, and the more of us care to remember that, the less powerful that top 1% can be.

Micolagist & Floatfly

8 Billion Year Sentence for Bankers

“One way to deal with this would be to make the rules consistent. So after an inquiry into the riots, the gangs would be given eight years to separate their regular mooches round shopping centres from their time looting Dixons. Or we could apply the same sentence to bankers as to looters for each pound’s worth stolen. So as one looter was given four months for stealing two bottles of water, the average banker would be jailed for around eight billion years, though obviously they could be out in four billion for good behaviour.”

Mark Steel writing in The Independent.

Funny and a good idea!

Read the rest here

Who are the real thieves?

The uniform condemnation of these rampages through the Shopping Malls insisted that the youth involved were criminals. But why did it happen now?

For to ignore this last essential part of the question changes what is meant into a general characterisation of those involved to being always appropriate. “They are always bad!” You can’t do that! The current situation must have precipitated it, and caused some to go and get what they seemingly couldn’t have, and would never have!

For the Youth are an unusual section of Society to be dispossessed, but that’s what they are today. And even more than that, they are also excluded from access to such things even later, for they are also being deprived of a future too! They have taken away their access to skills that was always their right, and even the chance of an education by the Higher Education fees going through the roof. And even those who have managed to get through to what they thought would be an assured future, now find themselves unemployed. And all this while the boys at Eton can still go exploring in Arctic Svalbard, while others can holiday in the Canadian Rockies, and call for tax cuts for the rich.

When you cut off all possible progress, the ideas of the lumpen proletariat (the thieves and bullies) seem the only way out.

And remember, the legal thieves who normally get away with “taking away”, do it on a vastly more massive scale. Why has no-one called the PPI scheme (Payment Protection Insurance) exactly what it was – thieving – “You pay us to protect you when in financial difficulties (and then in the fine print) and we wont do it!”

Some of the Big Banks not only caused the catastrophe of 2008, and were bailed out by US, but within a couple of years they were pulling this new scam to get something for nothing – and one particular bank had to pay 1 billion pounds back in a single year.

Meanwhile large numbers of MPs were stealing by fiddling their parliamentary expenses. And at the same time the pensioner who had saved all his life to get an income from the interest on his savings was getting 0.5%, while inflation was romping along at 4.5 %. He was getting poorer by the day and the interest would not even cover his gas bills. And if he (as he is constantly urged) were to switch his savings to shares, in the present climate, he risks losing the LOT!

Come on! Don’t let these people tell YOU how to behave!

For those who run things steal, one way or another, as their modus operandi. When you are at work and make things – who thereafter owns them, sells them and makes a profit from them? Is it YOU – the maker? You know the answer!

Just listen to the politicians talking about the riots. Ed Milliband says the same as David Cameron, who says the same as the Police Chiefs. And while these kids are rampaging (yes, KIDS!), the elderly wealthy are pressing for water cannon and rubber bullets and even the bringing of the military onto the streets.

Come on! Turn the clock back to when we fought back: when Scargill has a hero.

Remember those who run the show are all TORIES – whatever they call themselves! They were in power in the 50s, the 70s and the 80s, and precipitated riots then too.

Do you subscribe to the Big Society, where you do things for nothing, and they continue to sit on top?

Do you remember Socialism? Or have they removed your politics too?

Anger for Doomed Youth

On April 11th 2010, Nick Clegg predicted in interview that if the Tories were brought to power, there would be rioting on the streets of London, to great derision by Cameron and the media. It was, of course, a transparent attempt to win votes. I wonder, however, if that moment went through his mind yesterday as he was confronted by the citizens of Hackney, desperate for answers as their homes and shops burnt. ‘Is this how England is going to be now, after the cuts?’ asked one man. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ was his weak, soft-voiced retort. The folk on the ground know it; even shopkeepers whose reactionary views are only to be expected have been heard to suggest it is the disenfranchisement of our youth that is behind this wanton destruction of property. This depth of thought seems to end, however, when the situation is interpreted by the media and those in power. Like the desperate children they so fear, the right only call for retribution, for an end to a situation they despise, without dissecting the reasons why it has escalated to this point.

Capitalism is in crisis. The evidence is all around us. Famine kills thousands while we reinforce hospital beds to deal with the obesity crisis. Oil wars rape the middle-east. Revolution and repression reign in Syria, Egypt and Lybia. There is so much international upheaval that following global politics is a full-time job. Governments around the world are cutting services because of deficits caused by greed. The poor are being made to pay for the mistakes of the super rich and unemployment is sky-high. In the UK, youth centres, sure-start centres, are closed down. Schemes offering books for disadvantaged children and subsidising food for young mothers are slashed. Many communities are in dire straights. Police morale is at an all-time low after too many cuts and too much corruption. The markets slump again in what is now being coined a double-dip recession and teenagers take to the streets in the worst riots for a generation. It all begs the question: what the fuck is going on?

The right-leaning media appears to offer few answers. Talks of ‘pure criminality’ (whatever that is) and swift ‘justice for the perpetrators’ wear thin. Can we really be so short-sighted as to think these kids just appear, evil, intent on destruction? How can we so universally, so ruthlessly condemn children who are behaving in the exact way society has trained them to behave? They value what we trained them to value: wealth, power and materialism – they are children of capitalism. Our society created this underclass, and kept them quiet with material aspiration… now there is no hope for material aspiration, this is the only place they have to go…

This is not Egypt, this is not Sudan. Our poor are not starving, our prisons (at least the ones based in the UK) are not places of torture and systematic abuse. During the Arab Spring, many of us were discussing exactly why such an uprising was impossible in this country. We cited our advantageous economic condition, the relative comfort and high living standards of our poor, stating that it would take much more then a little economic hardship to push the British over the edge. In hindsight, I think we neglected to address the potency of extreme inequality in this equation. As the gap widens, and the capitalist machine continues to push excess as an indicator of success, such anger is inevitable. Universal hardship unites us, but when we scrape together pennies for a loaf of bread, and pass six audis on the way to the shop, hatred and hopelessness begin to take hold. In their hopelessness, why should these children care about the repercussions of their looting and arson?

These riots have not been a grass roots rebellion, and they have been universally condemned from both left and right, but since when was vandalism labeled violence? Why are we only outraged now they are destroying property and not each other, in their quest for unattainable material possessions? It is this right-wing division of “us and them” which causes these sorts of problems in the first place. Continuing with this attitude towards our country’s disadvantaged youth will only help perpetuate this division. Reaction provokes reaction and the powers that be seem unwilling to address the bigger picture only talking in terms of short-term solutions. If these kids believe they are not part of society it is because they aren’t. Not the blasting of water-cannon nor the shooting of rubber bullets will solve that problem. Let us not forget, it was a shooting at a stop and search incident which provided a catalyst for these events in the first place.

In our gang culture it is viewed that there is an on-going war with the police, and these kids must feel they have had their first decisive victory in that war. In a battle for London’s streets last night, it is laughable to conceive that the police did anything other than lose.

Floatfly & Micolagist

The Century of the Self

We’re big fans of Adam Curtis here at Red Eye. He is quite possibly one of the most important documentary filmmakers of our time. He uses historical news footage, interviews and a powerful narrative to draw lateral connections and reveal hidden trajectories in our recent past – trajectories that have shaped our present world and the way we think about it. His new series All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, recently aired on the BBC, and is well worth watching, giving as it does, a unique angle on how computers have changed the way we think about the world. More on this soon…

The Century of the Self is now a cult classic, and probably the best introduction to his work. It was originally a four part documentary, but is included here as one file… I hope this doesn’t put people off watching it in full, as it is a work that really needs watching in it’s entirety. It draws a huge arc across the 20th century starting with Freud and how psychoanalysis began to be used by advertisers and the propaganda machine to control the population, the illusion of democracy, the rise of consumerism and individualism and the death of socialism. It is our history in the raw perfectly told. Essential viewing for all.