'The Trouble With Capitalism' was written in 1998 by Harry Shutt (Zed Books). In a typical capitalist turn it's out again now with a new preface and a couple of new cases. The book exposes the monolithic commitment of the political mainstream to the state's propping up of profit-maximising interests which actually lead us more or less to a state of no real politics. Much argument in ME just never gets to grip with any of this, almost as if the concept is unknown. Profit would be fine if we could actually redistribute it into stuff that formed the real capital of life - decent safe housing, research and development and whatever. Instead, it probably just reinforces centralised power and imperialist stealing.
Levels of economic knowledge are dismal in the broad population. They vary from subsistence farmers who hide their crops and grow no more because it would only be stolen, to nationalisations done to try to stop corporate theft. It all gets complicated by whoever has control acting like King Mouse in keeping all others impoverished to maintain his own position (Chavez perhaps, Mugabe without doubt). All of it ends up with ideologies being used to justify those in power, or even the comfortable lives of some 'niche radicals'. Shutt calls for a radical change to the allocation of global resources if we are to have a humane future. Fine, but pissing in the wind. I can find versions of his book published in 1880. The arguments are not really about some kind of cosy and decent global communism. For a start, communism was really only ever a free table provided by slaves, for a few men who would give up competition with each other through shared affluence and wives to allow the examined life. They should be about the control of power and we do see this in a partial sense in the obviously unmeant stuff about restricting bwanker-bonus culture and our miserable western right to vote out one set of idiots to replace the personal with more of the same. Behind them is a power structure we are not allowed to shift at all and some kind of legal system that rarely does much other than for the powerful and is broadly unaccessible to the poor other than in limited but still expensive ways for the scrote. It would be a whole new experience for me to be able to vote for what I want to see happen, rather than the lesser of evils on offer. Traditionally, this was a Labour vote, but Nulabour is now just lying crud. The Tories seem pretty stupid, and I've found myself tempted to vote for them much as I voted Labour to get rid of them 12 years ago, which I now see as a vote for CIA-Blair. The Liberals make more sense than either now, but I really want much more substantial change and none is on offer. I want to be able to vote to stop our engagement in any more war. I want a new form of regional politics with focus on Westminster reduced by electronic voting and electronic debate we can all contribute to. I want to stop professional privilege and obscene wages and fees. I want to change the employment relationship so that jobs are guaranteed (with some safeguards about scrote behaviour) so that employers really have an interest in making jobs worthwhile .. and no doubt more. I don't want this as some kind of utopia - I want it based on what we know of human nature, not some dreaming dross about harmony. And more. Given I don't even hear any of this under discussion, whatever this democracy is, it ain't about what I want. This would be OK as I'm not very selfish, if at least there was dialogue. There ain't. Dialogue is broadly stopped by people who have already made up their minds on very little information. Action is stopped because we can't try genuinely new ways because the current system is assumed to work and anything else won't. We could do better and we could be trying smaller changes in our public sectors and new industries. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en.
