Hi Selma! yesterday you wrote...
<I am currently reading some of Anthony Giddens' work which appears to support
<much of the policy direction of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. I haven't
read much
<of it so I don't know whether Giddens deals with the issue of corporate power
<very well, but I suspect he does not.
Your intuition is spot on Selma; forget ' Professor ' Giddens, he is part
of the problem - one of those "ensconced in well-rewarded sinecures". His
(latest) ' theory ' forms just part of the raft of ideological
baggage/garbage used to confuse and obfuscate the (dangerous) masses (of
'ordinary'/'common' people), whose incessant, never-ending clamourings for
a just return on their labour, decent and affordable accommodation of their
own, better healthcare and education for their children and themselves in
their old age, an unpolluted natural environment and so on, threaten ' the
end of civilisation ', as the privileged elites of the world know it!
For the extending of such basic human needs (and rights) to what Marx
referred to as ' the Proletariat' and the ' Lumpen-Proletariat' would
necessitate the SHARING of the earths bountiful resources and the fruits of
our (collective) labours with those whose labour actually transforms such
resources into public 'goods' (and WITHOUT whose labour remain just ' rocks
in the ground ', for example!) That is why the Capitalist press/media
pursue and vilify striking workers at EVERY opportunity, but tend to remain
strangely mute regarding the appalling injustices and inequalities
artificially imposed upon the ' lower ' classes around the
world....including, of course, in "the rich countries"!
There are today some 357 ' billionaires' around the world - some of whom
possess SEVERAL TENS OF BILLIONS of $$$$s worth of ' private' Capital
wealth. In ' The world`s greatest Democracy' (the U$A), there are some 5
million ' millionaires', ie, individuals/families whose ' private'
accumulated Capital wealth is US$1 million OR MORE...lots of them have TENS
of millions of dollars and many others have HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS
worth of accumulated ' private' wealth...stocks & bonds, one or more luxury
homes/mansions/penthouses/condos, luxury yachts, private jets, 'private'
companies/corporations and so on. All of these people will assure you that
they have ' worked hard' for all that they have. What they will very
conveniently FORGET to tell you is that significant amounts of their '
hard-earned ' Capital was either inherited or came in the form of vast sums
of public monies handed over to their ' private enterprise' firm or
corporation by venal politicians and sychophantic public officials in the
form of ' industry assistance', ' tax breaks', ' development grants' and
so on. Another term for such public generosity is ' Corporate Welfare'!
At the same time, however, there are some 44 million American citizens who
do not have any Health Insurance cover, an untold number of ' The
Homeless', and millions being forced to raise their families in
sub-standard rental accommodation. And despite the hype about the U$A`s
alleged current low level of unemployment, there are tens of millions of
the newly re-emerged class of ' Working Poor'...people whose rate of pay
and conditions are so low (McJobs) that many are forced to turn to the
burgeoning 'charities' for assistance to survive in the wealthiest and most
powerful Capitalist ' democracy' on Earth.
There can surely be little doubt that our fragile planet is today more
divided than ever into ' The Haves' and ' The Have-nots'! Indeed we are in
the midst of a global socio-economic revolution, wherein the
post-Enlightenment/post-industrial class structures and relationships are
being transformed or " Re-Structured". Technological innovation is
enabling those who own and/or control (manage) the means of production to
displace/replace 'workers' in the 'advanced' and 'civilised' Western
democracies with automation or, where it can be achieved at a lesser cost
(which means of course even MORE profits for them), by transferring the '
work' to the sweat-shops, maquiladores and Special Economic Zones of
so-called Third World or ' Poor Countries '....which tend to be ruled by
fabulously wealthy and dictatorial individuals, families or elite, military
backed, regimes.
This applies also, of course, to what Ed Weick believes was " Soviet
communism"....where the wealthy (and thus powerful) elites of the so-called
'Communist' Party/State....(in effect, the ruling/Capitalist
class) wasted/AND CONTINUE TO WASTE countless billions of Roubles/dollars
on the incestuously-related military and 'Space' industries, whilst tens of
millions of their fellow citizens were and CONTINUE to be forced to endure
un-necessary deprivation and hardship....JUST LIKE IN CAPITALIST
AMERICA...now that the ' Communist' facade has been torn down.
As Marx`s vast and eclectic studies/research revealed, the history of
'civilisation' (ie of people living and working together in significant
numbers) is a history of class struggle between ' the haves' on the one
hand and those being denied ' a fair go' or social justice. Indeed it has
only been through such prolonged efforts by 'ordinary' people to win for
themselves and their loved ones a better existence that many of us in the
West today enjoy the quality of life we do. However as history and current
events clearly demonstrate, the gains of the working classes (which
includes of course those pretentious members of the so-called ' middle
class ' who have to attend for work every day of their often unhappy
lives) can be very easily rolled back to some lesser standards of working
and living conditions or circumstances.
Denied a comprehensive, historically-informed ' education' by a combination
of their ' lower-class ' status (which relegates them to poorly funded and
resourced public/state/government-run schools, and curriculae determined by
ambitious, ' upwardly-mobile ' politicians and senior education bureaucrats
AND key ' players' or ' captains' of industry and commerce ( in former
times, members of the military and priestly classes), who are keen to
ensure an adequate supply of young and inexperienced ' labor ' , whose '
education ' has been structured in such a way as to " meet the needs of
industry', the great majority of us go through life in a carefully
orchestrated state of instutionalised ignorance.
However as always, there emerge true ' leaders ' of the working class
movement who urge the 'dangerous' masses to throw off their chains and
claim their just entitlement to the fruits of their labour and the
bountiful Earth.
Thus, with Western ' education' systems designed to constrain rather than
liberate us, it is incumbent upon each of us to educate both ourselves and
those around us as to the (often hidden) realities of life in a ' modern
Capitalist Democracy'.......ie, the iniquitous class structure,
marginalisation of millions through involuntary un(der)-employment,
industrial ' accidents ', war and so on, and the resultant alienation and
host of related social pathologies such as substance abuse, mental illness,
suicide and so on.
The current ruling classes know full well the importance of the old
strategies employed by their Roman and other forebears of dividing the
working classes in order to conquer and keep them subjugated. That is why
they are at present seriously concerned by the global coming-together of
the disparate groups of oppressed citizens everywhere (workers, students,
environmentalists, 'The Unemployed ' and so on) to form loose but highly
organised and determined coalitions of people whose one common bond is
their shared concern for social justice and the future of our planet.
Given that the world`s rich and now ' SUPER-RICH ' will not voluntarily
give up their privileged lifestyles (indeed their sole raison d`etre
appears to go on accumulating even MORE ' private' Capital), the better
world so many of us can envision will not come about other than through
concerted class struggle.
So if you are not already involved in one or more of the thousands of
local, national and global struggles, you might like to reflect upon the
suggestion by some that if you`re not part of the struggle, you`re part of
the problem.
john
