Send a letter to the EU!

Copy of message sent to a friend.

Hello,

Not an easy subject to write about particularly with all the emotion and self interest attached to the UK’s interest in the EU. No need to reply and sorry to be a bit direct on occasions.

In a way, I was rather hoping that you did not mention the EU because it is not one of the simplest organisations to analyse. I do not expect you to agree, but I hope you will take a few minutes to write this offering and then perhaps we can agree to disagree. I am not expecting a full response, so no sweat.

The European Union has acted as an uncompromising vehicle of neoliberalism, both economically, in its forced imposition of austerity on Greece and several other member states, and institutionally, in its downgrading of the Democractic process. The situation in Catalonia and even the recent position on Venezuela has perhaps complicated any analysis, but outlines the EUs reactionary politics.

Meanwhile, the free movement of EU citizens across its internal borders has been accompanied by the increasing militarisation of its frontier. Those trying to reach the continent die in the thousands in the Mediterranean, or are forcibly removed to an increasingly authoritarian Turkey, in which they are often denied any possibility of refugee status. The role of the EU in the Middle East can hardly be called progressive. Even the progressive legislation and there has been some, as always been at a cost to Democracy. Does it not concern you that the right in the Labour Party, the tax dodging bosses and the bosses of the establishment and the rigged system are queueing with the remainers.

But what may seem a simple choice for the Left is complicated by the current political situation. This referendum was demanded by the Right and has been dominated by the Right, highlighting the degree of disunity on the left which can be rectified and should not be a reason for supporting the bosses union which is in deep crisis. The EU still has its own austerity measures and quantitative easing is still a tool, enabling the rich in acquire more wealth at the expense of most others. Both this country, the EU and the USA are economically and politically bankrupt owing trillions. One day a true international movement will be built uniting us all in both the EU and the world. In the meantime, plenty to do to bring about changes to support the environment and all those left behind. With a Socialist Government we should not be restricted by the EU and be free to legislate for even better laws than the EU has offered. This should give hope for a future where we are not manipulated and live in harmony and on an international basis.

This country is certainly run down economically, but the alternative as you see it, to getting into bed with the USA as been saught by the EU and we should not forget TTIP. We need a socialist alternative and only the struggle and Solidarity of the people can achieve this. Even the legal and protective forms of EU legislation we can legislate for and we should be more confident in achieving our goals. We built the NHS when we were broke and we built it with vigour, optimism and determination. Ye of little faith! Britains, neoliberal austerity is a mainly a home-grown product. As a result, the EU is popularly imagined not as the imposer of reactionary economics, but as an imposition on the sovereignty of a British state which could otherwise control its borders and keep out immigrants. This is clearly nonsense.

The immediate beneficiaries of the Leave vote have been the Tory right, the far-right UKIP and even more unsavory and openly racist forces. Migrants feel under threat, and rightly so the Left seems stuck between remaining within an institution authentically to our aims, and gambling that we can turn the period of crisis which would undoubtedly follow after leaving into a system for the many and not the few. We clearly should not be stuck like this and have a clearer perspective for the people who are already sick of the biased media and eststablment daily bombardment of innacurrencies and so often very blatant array, of a tissue of lies.

If this gamble is seen as too great, what does it say about the self-confidence, organisational capacity, and political horizons of the British left? Then Cold War factors come into play, in a sense France and West Germany were less inclined to threaten each other because both were directed against an external enemy in the shape of the Soviet regime. That now seems to have returned.

As this last point suggests, the United States was not in any sense opposed to or threatened by the EEC, indeed it saw western european integration as a necessary institutional compliment to NATO.

This point is important, as you seem to argue that the EU is a block against US interests; but while it is true that the major EU states compete economically with the United States, and that they do not always politically agree such as over Yugoslavia or Ukraine, they are united in the same imperialist alliance and against us all.

Given these origins it is scarcely surprising that the EU reproduces internally the structured unevenness of the capitalist system, in which the dominant members, namely Germany and some way behind, France, determine the fate of the weaker members.

This has been most obvious in the case of Greece, but also in those of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and even Italy who are moving to the right.

However, uneven though it is internally, the EU presents a unified face to the global south outside Europe, both economically, since it both dumps food exports there and blocks imports in return, and geopolitically, in the shape of the fortress Europe it presents to refugees and other migrants. Import controls that Trump seems to love and hate with his trade wars. Sound familiar!
It might be argued that these aspects of the EU could be subject to reform, but the mechanisms by which this could take place are never made clear and are so bureaucratic.
The dominant bodies in the EU are either unelected, like the Central Bank or the Commission, or like the Council, consist of government leaders from the member states, who are elected by their own voters, but not by those of the EU as a whole, even though they are making decisions which affect it.
The parliament, as is well known, cannot initiate legislation on its own behalf, but simply ratify or at best amend initiatives from the Commission.
In a way, the entire setup was invented by the right, in which he argued for an EU-type body which would be run primarily by bureaucrats, so that interfering voters, and by extension politicians, would be unable to make demands threatening to the market order, and that economic policy would be governed by a set of unbreakable rules, constitutive of what we now call neoliberalism. Sound familiar?
What happens if Jeremy Corbyns Labour Party wins the next election and then finds that its path to reform is blocked by the EU, do you at that point say,  sorry we didn’t mention this before, but the EU is actually a regime for imposing neoliberal austerity which we should maybe think about leaving? Why would anyone listen to us then? The situation would be worse.
Rather than relying on the EU, the Left needs to unite around a program of defense for migrants, whatever their status economic migrant, refugee, or asylum seekers which attempts to: one, end all restrictions on immigration, irrespective of EU membership; two, extend full rights of British citizenship to all migrants; three, unionise the workers, native and migrant, in the precarious sectors where the latter are most concentrated and close down the detention centres and establish new rights.

I think there is a very deep pessimism in your message which perhaps suggests matters about the prospects for socialism, and a belief that we have to restore capitalism to health before we can even think about moving beyond it.
The problem is that The problem is that capitalism isn’t going to be restored to health at least not to the kind of health it enjoyed in the West during the postwar so called boom.

This may well seem like a protracted response to your message, but it is only part of the analysis. I have tried to offer some alternatives to your gloom and despondency.  Sorry, but do cheer up and have hope. Although, I appreciate it is a difficult one to sell on the doorstep when canvassing.

Again given up waiting for the snow, but I will send you the photos of my dogs and I hope we do not fall out over the EU and interconnected matters.  I will just hope that we can agree to disagree. Do look after yourself. Ivor

As I post the political establishment struggle about to almost disregard the referendum result. The impact on the economy will be huge.

Ivor Timson.                February 2019

Economics in Crisis!

Success for the anti-austerity movement!

​New hope as anti- austerity parties gather momentum!​

​The continuing crisis ​and slump​ is still not over, but at least we are now told that we have ​slight improvements.​​ But​ do we?​

And​ at what cost, Zero hour contracts, many part employed and the richest simply get richer. ​The bedroom tax, the nightmare for disability claimants are just examples, to prove we are not ”all in it together”. ​We know the cuts by the coalition are for right wing ideological reasons alone. They care only for their own interests. And how many of us are, or indeed feel better off?

​Austerity does not work and simply enables the rich to become richer​. But the fightback is now beginning with the victory of Syriza in Greece and the Spanish demonstrations. And other counties are poised to follow.

​

This present system has made many desperate attempts to continue, but of those that stand out in the past century, it has to be quantitative easing, wars and almost zero interest rates; which have become the most desperate.​

In all this time, the real​ problems​ have​ eaten more than £12 trillion in public funds. It has been at the root of practically every major political argument in this country, and it affects every aspect of the way we live our lives. In fact, you will certainly see the consequences of this deep rooted problem unfold across the cities, towns and villages of Britain. No one will escape the fallout and pensioners and those vulnerable are likely to be the most affected. Our system needs to be repaired and much more than that, we need to search for alternatives and a new system.​ And as I type, new cuts are being planned for after our General Election​ and even more money is being printed in Europe.

The next phase in this crisis could threaten our very way of life. We know that printing mountains of money can only end in disaster. And, unlike most of the presenters on TV and in the mainstream press, some analysts understand what ​is​ really occurring, but it is in ​their own​ interests to deceive ​us.​

Together with tiny interest rates and fictitious capital it could again end in disaster. ​But the Bankers who were partly responsible for this crisis have no answers other than austerity. More desperate attempts to resolve matters. They avoid the interest rate dilemma and fictitious capital problems.​ And we still hang on to 0.5 percentage interest rate, as the fear of an increase causes trepidation, ​unclear signals and bungled and contradictory statements from the Bank of England.

That means the most important trend of the next twenty years is almost certainly rising interest rates, as I have now argued for years.​​Please do not misunderstand, I am not advocating an increase, but the present system needs to raise the rate, as I have previously explained. We are now facing an unprecedented crisis. As interest rates rise, our record ‘debts and interest’ will become impossible to bear. And at precisely the same time, we need to fund our services such as the NHS. Only a new model can achieve all this together with a fair economic and political system.

​We need to start real debates around the country, to prepare for a new and non speculative system and this is very possible and in the interests of us all. The dithering Bank of England have no answers and continue with their desperate ramblings about interest rates.​

The mainstream parties have failed.

There really are alternatives to austerity and our current system which is designed to protect the interests of the rich.

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Join us in the forthcoming campaigns around the world. We can make a difference and bring about real changes. Perhaps we need a new anti- austerity party in the UK?

Social Systems and Corruption

We now know, thanks to Edward Snowden that GCHQ knowingly perpetrated a mass surveillance programme for which there was no adequate legal authorisation and then sought to stifle any public debate which might generate a challenge under privacy laws.

GCHQ used a clandestine security electronic surveillance programme called Tempora to gain access to large amounts of internet users’ personal data. This is quite frankly appalling on it own. The main telecoms companies lied in response to the Tempora revelations by declaring they simply complied with the law, when in fact they far exceeded what the law provided for.

We now know that the Home Office and GCHQ campaigned to reject the use of intercepts as evidence and not as they said at the time, because of the risk to national security, but because it would expose how far they had gone beyond the law, including accessing communications networks abroad. The governance of Britain’s power institutions has all but collapsed as indeed George Orwell predicted. The ineffective intelligence and security committee should be swept away and replaced by a powerful select committee responsible to Parliament and the people.

But all is not lost a powerful movement is devolpoing lead by Students and the Pensioner movement. What a contrast, but united with ordinary people a force to be reckoned with.

We have all had enough of corruption and lies and a social system that simply does not work.

Spys and our NHS!

Over fifty thousand marched and joined the rally at Manchester on the 29th September 2013 in support of the NHS. Many of the Pensioners Convention members were in attendance, in what the Police described as the largest march seen in Manchester.

The demonstration aimed to highlight the impact of government policies on jobs and spending across the health service, as well as the “rapid selloff” of the most lucrative parts of the NHS to private healthcare companies.

They were in Manchester to protest against the privatisation of the NHS by the Tories and their Lib Dem partners. The growing mood of resistance was fully in evidence. The march wound through the streets for three hours. At its head was public-service Union Unison, a contingent which was itself thousands strong. A huge display of strength was shown by people of all ages. Following the march union leaders were due to address a rally alongside appearances by musicians.

Still lot’s more to say on spying including the news that British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.  And as I type, the UK is trying to block minor reforms of protection by the European Union. Again very frightening, but some organisations are working on solving the problem in our interests. More soon.

No return to the 1930’s!

Six years since the near collapse of the global financial system, we continue to face an economic and social crisis. Trillions of dollars have been poured into the private banks to stave off disaster and the result has been to transfer their debts onto the books of national governments causing an immense debt crisis. The response of governments, has been to adopt extreme and far reaching austerity policies. In this way, they have sought to make the poor pay for the current crisis whilst attempting to deal with the systemic crisis of the capitalism system by reverting to the form it achieved in the 1930s, without social policies. This meant for example, a visit to the doctor was often unaffordable. Recently discussions around these very topics have just been aired in the UK. Many of the less well of in our society are having to face the burden of this continuing crisis. Universal benefits for pensioners are also being threatened.

Let’s make the future demonstrations and meetings this year the largest ever. Our voice must be heard and acted upon.

And now we have the spectre of the so called ‘green shoots’ but it is only achieved by a pretentious economy, with it’s artificially low interests rates and the continuous printing of money. And there are interconnections with my recent surveillance article and I intend to expand upon this in my next post.

Sack the lot!

The corrupt and greedy bankers have clearly let down their very own system. So much for responsible capitalism. Surely, now the time has come for an accountable National Investment Bank and a People’s Bank aligned with all the Countrywide Credit Unions.

The system is in disarray and totally discredited and even the deficit reduction plan has failed. Time for a real campaign and genuine discussion on these alternatives and a new and fair system. We simply cannot allow our precious services to be further fragmented and privatised for the Banks incompetence and failure.

Economists and our bonkers system!

How can making millions unemployed make any economic sense? How can continuing wars make any sense? How can bailing out the Banks and Bankers make any sense? Is there any sense left! And there are still buffoons who still advocate- let the market prevail. There is a sound moral and economic case against the policies now unfolding. We must continue to develop radical alternatives to these ‘Tea Party’ politics, which will change the social and political landscape and scapegoat the poor and our services; in favour of the rich and the multi-corporations. The rich get richer as I type and the tax dodgers still dodge. Lets start a new society based upon grass root democracy, involving all communities. Perhaps, we can start with a huge campaign of resistance which is beginning to develop!

A New Banking System? – time for real change!

At long last there now does seem to be some debate about our society and the need for change. There was recently even a mention and a debate about real societal change, and fundamental changes to the banking system on the Jeremy Vine radio show. And the ‘occupation movement’ does seem to be having a positive impact. We are also seeing widespread opposition to our bankrupt and failed system.

As Marx once explained, a developed credit system both gives greater elasticity to capitalist production and accentuates capital’s tendencies to overproduction and overspeculation.

The crash of 2008 was big enough that governments had to nationalise or bail out major banks, “socialism for the rich”, as it was termed and world trade shrank sharply in 2009.

A crisis, as Marx explained, brings “a tremendous rush for means of payment, when credit suddenly ceases and only cash payments have validity”. Except that in today’s capitalism there is no real “hard” cash. Every form of “cash”, US dollars, British pounds, euros ,  are only IOU’s issued by one government or another.

The lurch of capitalist policy away from neo-liberalism which many predicted in 2008, has not happened and now surely will not happen.
Capital is still sunken on credit. The global amount outstanding on foreign exchange derivatives rose from $14 trillion in 1999 to $63 trillion in mid-2008, then fell back somewhat, but has risen again to $69 trillion plus in mid-2010.

Governments have more extensive credit than banks. They were able to intervene to save the banks in 2008. But that intervention strained their credit, and in a time when global credit markets were becoming tighter. At the same time governments’ incomes shrank because of the downturn in trade and production following the financial crash and political blunders.

Most governments now depend on getting credit in global financial markets, not on siphoning savings from their own citizens as they used to. For eurozone governments the discipline is especially tight, since they cannot print their own money, and the European Central Bank was set up with rules that limit its assistance to governments. They are trying to change the rules as I type.

Some eurozone governments were bound to run into credit difficulties. The first were Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. And most countries have had bail outs and are in deep trouble or indeed bankrupt.

The present and ongoing crisis could well lead to the collapse of the eurozone, and a retreat by European governments back to national currencies. The impact of that on European capital, which depends day to day on the low costs of doing business across Europe, will be huge. They will find some way to patch things up for a while. As the previous so-called “bail-outs” patched things up for a while, only to make them worse in the long term. We need a long term plan, for the future of us all.

We should however, not underestimate the power and resourcefulness of a system based upon capital. The cuts programmes in Ireland and Spain are brutal, but they are having an effect, so far, in capitalist terms. Since the EU’s leaders know that the crisis is so dangerous, it is possible they will do something more radical than expected. But radical enough to restabilise government is debatable and they are running out of options and getting very desperate. Unfortunately, wars have historically been a ‘solution’ and a consequence. Real progressive changes are however now possible.

The project of the European single currency was botched from the outset, in 1999-2000, hurried through on the wave of capitalist triumphalism typical of the time, and with questions about how it would deal with tricky imbalances glossed over. Credit and fictitious capital became the norm, but we were all living on borrowed time. The Eurozone crisis is only one part of the world wide crisis.

So back to today, Greece’s debt should be cancelled, and a new beginning made. Banks should be nationalised under democratic control and a Social- Worldwide Bank should be created. Social equality and workers’ rights should be levelled up across the continent. And new plans should be formulated, which draw upon the lessons of these disasters and create a fair and less greedy society. Again, I call for a real debate about a real change of society.

And on a completely different note the Birmingham March and Rally went very well, despite the pouring rain. Thanks for the considerable support.

Economy and our society!

Well that really was the very last one on this topic. Over the months we have seen politicians imprisoned, further wars, a continuing global economic crisis, high rates of unemployment and that is just for starters. But perhaps  one very important matter I have neglected is our precious NHS which now looks in danger. For example, 

• The Secretary of State’s legal duty to provide a health service will be scrapped. On top of that, a new “hands-off clause” removes the government’s powers to oversee local consortia and give some guarantee of the level of service wherever we live. We can expect increases in postcode lotteries  together with less ways to hold the government to account if the service deteriorates.
• The NHS will almost certainly be subject to UK and EU competition law. Private health companies will be able to take new NHS commissioning groups to court if they don’t win contracts. Scarce public money could be tied up in legal wrangles instead of hospital beds. Meanwhile, the legislation lifts the cap on NHS hospitals filling beds with private patients. We must avoid a US style system.

• And has we now know this bill has now been passed, with only a  handful of Lib Dems voting against. So it is now imperative to  lobby the members of the House of Lords and join in the  demonstrations planned for October.
• Enjoy your weekend and I hope you join me on my new Blog        planned for October.                        Ivor Timson  MSc (Econ)