The Free Market

Margaret Thatcher famously said there is no alternative to the free market, likewise her friend Augusto Pinochet, the then fascist President of Chile, could have echoed similar sentiments. If he would have said there is no alternative to massacring communists, it would be no less absurd than Thatcher’s words.  Thatcher’s principle, or rather, one of her principles, was to destroy socialism. The Thatcherite free market fundamentalist extremists of the 1980’s evolved into the fanaticism of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the late 1990’s and beyond.  Britain and every country in Europe and indeed almost every country in the entire world has the free market as their financial structure. Yet the free market is seldom discussed, many do not have the slightest idea what it is, and those that do tell epic lies without knowing it.  

When free market faithful enthusiasts discuss this they often cite Adam Smith, shamefully misusing his name in their web of lies and deceit.  A few truths, here, should be pointed out about Adam Smith. It was Adam Smith who said “principal architects” in England were “merchants and manufacturers” who went on to use the state for their own interests.  Interestingly he labelled “the national interest” as a total and absolute fraud, saying it was a delusion.  For Adam Smith, one key principle is that individuals ought to be free.  He did not believe in the division of labour, being subjected to such things, destroys people, Smith says, but free market fundamentalists would have you believe otherwise.  The underlying question is was Smith in favour of free markets? That is not such an easy question to answer because he was only in favour of markets that led to total liberty, equality, freedom and so forth; what Adam Smith foresaw was not the terrifying model of the free market we have today, far from it.  So was he in favour of this sort of free market?  Certainly not.  What he believed in was the total opposite of capitalism.  Yet his name is still used, subverting his message.  

Of course the free market is all about bartering, buying and selling produce, but the free market is free from government interference and people too, it must be added.  This  sounds harmless.  It is extremely harmful.  What happens here is that, and this has been a concerted effort by western imperial powers, the poor countries remain poor while the rich ones expand their wealth.  The wealth of the rich countries remains in the hands of the select few: multinational corporations, private investors, CEO's and so on while much of the country suffers from mild poverty, others from absolute poverty.  There is homelessness in their tens of thousands in developed countries all over the world, slums have been created, prostitutes are forced into desperate acts, in many countries people can not afford healthcare, they even struggle to pay their household bills.  

When the words “in the national interest” is used, it is interesting to define what is meant here, when politicians of various ilk use this abominable phrase, they know precisely what they are talking about; the general population do not.  One other group who know what they are talking about is private power, because this language is aimed at them, in the free market system, not one that Smith envisioned, but what we have today, totally eliminates people: the worker, the student, the professional and so forth.  It is interesting to discuss what kind of system or framework does this.

The framework must be called a fascist one.  It is firstly important to understand what fascism is. A definition of fascism is not butchering people, forcing women and children into gas chambers and death camps, no fascism is something more clearly defined than that.  Fascism then is when you move an entire people from an  arena of sorts and reduce their liberty, freedom and living standards, and the free market certainly does that.  I am not arguing the free market is fascist, just the structure of it is.  The rest of government policy is aimed at gaining power.  For no sane person would issue such backward policies in a developed country.  Wealth and power come first, if the government create policies favourable to you, all that means is you are fortunate enough to be within a group  of people where government’s self interest lies, but it is nothing more than that.  Otherwise, the government have nothing to lose.  

Yet the free market and its devastatingly  fascist framework is not even debated in the capitalist press or media.  Mainstream political parties do not discuss it and people are totally unaware of its evils because they believe they have lavish freedoms when they do not.  For the nations, or rather the governments that do not submit to this free market fundamentalism are met with the bludgeon, nations that have met with this with a particular imperial power have been Cuba, Nicaragua, Indonesia, just to name some.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr, the former Kennedy aide, said that “the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hands”.  He was, of course, speaking about the former President of Cuba, Fidel Castro. What Schlesinger did not go on to say was what his Government and future U.S governments have been subjecting Cuba to because of “Castro taking matters into one’s own hands”.  It is all fair and well to say Castro was a demagogue and that he was never democratically elected and so forth, while that is true, much of Cuba’s history is deliberately missed out.  In the 1820's those in power in the U.S spoke of invading Cuba for reasons of self-interest and doing unspeakable things there.  People like Benjamin Franklin and John Quincey Adams, after the British forbade such actions, agreed that in a hundred years or so, such a thing would be possible.  They did not have to wait that long.  It was in 1898 when the U.S were able to treat Cuba as their “backyard”, controlling their economy, in other words, stealing Cuba’s  wealth and putting it in the hands of American conglomerates, while many Cubans were just virtual slaves, working in heinous conditions to serve U.S interests.  From 1898 to the revolution in 1953-59 Washington installed dictator after dictator.  They were absolutely brutal, but had Washington’s support from the outset.

Misery in Cuba was so widespread that people started to rise up.  The Castro brothers, Che Guevara and others overthrew Fulgencio Batista.  During the revolution, Castro was supported by his North american neighbours but when Castro initiated his agrarian reforms and the other things he planned, they changed tact.  Castro, on becoming President of Cuba, did what any decent person would do.  He threw out the American corporations who were literally thieving billions from the Cuban economy, and instead launched impressive social programs in Cuba which were lauded all over the world.  This was the threat, nothing to do with communism, that is just a fraud, a delusion to justify in launching terror campaigns against Cuba, which the Kennedy “liberals” did.  John.F.Kennedy launched a terror campaign against the Cuban people in the early 1960's. He appointed his brother, Robert, as the person to lead the terror campaign.  Over a period of decades Cuba was subjected to a systematic terror campaign by America.  During Kennedy’s short reign, chemical weapons were used, a factory was bombed, killing 400 workers, huge damage was done to Cuban infrastructure, including crop destruction, not to mention the economic strangulation of Cuba.  If it was not for Cuba’s impressive health care system, tens of thousands would have died as a consequence of U.S-imposed sanctions.  This systematic terror was because Castro refused to adopt to free market fundamentalism, in other words, refusing to permit U.S corporations from bleeding Cuba dry, while Cubans remain in total penury.  It was nothing to do with communism.

Nicaragua had adopted the U.S framework since 1933, when Washington instituted a brutal dictator, the most notorious family in the whole of Nicaragua: the Somoza's.  Every American President since Roosevelt had supported this barbarism. But in 1979, Nicaraguans rose up, overthrew Anastasio Somoza, the Sandinista's took power and announced free and fair democratic elections. The then President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, was beside himself, he supported Somoza right up to the end, or there abouts, so instead he supported terror against the ruling party, this was extended all throughout the 1980's by Ronald Reagan.  Under Reagan’s two-terms at the White House , he had blood on his hands: at least 50,000 were slaughtered in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, the ruling party, built social programs for the poor and refused to sign up to Reagan’s free market fundamentalism.  The terror Reagan and his recidivist colleagues subjected Nicaragua to is both heinous and outrageous, but will be omitted here.  Adopt our fascist framework or perish, that is the option countries like Cuba and Nicaragua face.  

Indonesia is another story completely, and it is a world away from Latin america.  Indonesia is in South-East asia and from 1945 until 1967, was led by the nationalist, Sukarno.  He did not care so much for neo-liberal, fascistic monetary institutions and asked the World Bank and the IMF to leave the country; in 1957-8 Britain started a covert war with Indonesia and began arming insurgents and opposition groups, a coup was plotted, with direct U.S and British involvement but it failed.  A second coup in 1965 was successful, Sukarno was overthrown and General Suharto was declared President. He, to Washington’s relief, embraced the World Bank and the IMF, he opened up Indonesian markets to foreign investment.  Washington and its European allies did not care that Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and wiped out a third of the entire population.  The massacres were akin to Nazi war crimes, around a million people in Indonesia were also murdered, all in favour of opening up foreign investment with the west.

The European Union in the 21st century, now prefers free market enterprise to democracy, Greece and Italy are models which are likely to follow.  One prominent journalist at the Financial times, Gillian Tett, has already argued that Britain needs a Prime minister to deal with the markets, suggesting it should bypass democracy altogether.  Germany, and others impose fiscal austerity programs, as they like to call them, and expect whoever is elected to adopt their decisions which have already been made for them.  If democracy ever did exist in the European Union, it is certainly being undermined because of the markets, everybody goes on about the markets but never give clear definitions what they are.  

Ever since the infamous financial crash of 2008 a barbaric sort of fascism has been established in Europe.  The people who are paying the price for banking fraudsters are the people with the least money: public sector workers, the unemployed, and those on the minimum wage, while the powerful and rich are feeding into the free market machine and are seeing stupendous profits, and British banks, who are known to have committed grotesque crimes in their fraudulent activities around the world; their connections with murderous drug cartels and terror groups, being given fines instead of life sentences.  The people paying these fines are not the banks but the wretched, the poverty-stricken and destitute worker.

This is a clear example of the free market.  That it is only interested in helping people who really need it: the rich, the powerful and so forth.  The crash justified in extending the fascist framework across Europe: increasing taxes on the poor; decreasing wages for the lowest paid workers and for those that do not work at all, finding new and creative ways to suspend benefit payments, introducing furtive taxes on the poor and defenceless, while at the same time empowering the rich and powerful.  Presently it has turned into a dystopia for many. People who once lived comfortable lives and now living on the streets, people are forced to give their children away because they no longer can afford to feed them.  These cuts to public spending are applauded everywhere.  Yet if the whole of Europe imposed the law onto the rich into paying taxes, instead of paying nothing, the debt would be wiped out overnight. 

What has indeed taken place is shock therapy.  Shock therapy is a system where a country has experienced a shock, in this case a global recession, so many countries are affected.  The shock therapy then begins.  Public services are privatised, taxes are reduced for the rich, funding to public services are then slashed and this becomes the norm.  It will continue without people even realising it.  Politicians of all parties will be complicit in all of it, as will the media, only a few voices will be openly opposed to it and such people are vetted from reaching the mainstream media.  And so it goes.  

The free market serves only the interests of the rich and powerful.  The media are aware of such practices but refuse to report it, intellectuals are aware of these practices but refuse to discuss it, politicians are also aware of these same practices, and lie outright when asked about it. There is only so much misery and suffering people can take, and governments ought to realise when people have nothing to lose fear that is when the savage actions of government will really become regretful.

4th February, 2013

Bludgeoning the Welfare State

 

Aristotle, one of the first political theorists we know of - has as much relevance today than perhaps two-thousand three-hundred years ago. As everyone should know he was the pupil of Plato, who went on to teach Alexander the Great, the then youth, son of king Philip of Macedon. In 1998 the political thinker and linguist, Noam Chomsky, said the following about the great philosopher:

“Aristotle also made the point that if you have, in a perfect democracy, a small number of very rich people and a large number of very poor people, the poor will use their democratic rights to take property away from the rich. Aristotle regarded that as unjust, and proposed two possible solutions: reducing poverty (which is what he recommended) or reducing democracy.”

Unfortunately Britain has decided to go for the latter rather than the former, just as most societies have, but Britain is an extreme example, not as extreme as the United States but extreme enough.

In 21st century Britain, the government and shadow government, whoever they may be, and evidently change from time to time, but in name only, would prefer the welfare state to be abolished outright. The government of its day would willingly wish to see the poor and abused homeless, dying in the gutter. The welfare state is slowly being privatised to private companies, and the social and human costs are terrifying. Private companies dream about making stupendous profits each night, they do not dream about what other people dream of, these people are dysfunctional, psychopathic and amoral. They look into people’s eyes and see large pound signs, euro signs, dollar signs or whatever. Getting people jobs in the most obnoxious and shocking places of work is of no significance to them. People must slave away for profits, profits, profits! And this is the rub; if the individual refuses to work in such barbaric conditions, any money they receive is taken away from them for a large period of time, forcing the poor into petty crime and prostitution. 

The economy is structured around the free market, that is, towards, largely wealthy capitalists who enjoy using sweatshops in the third world to accrue their vast profits, then complain they pay too much tax. They further complain their well-earned money, that is paying third-world microscopic wages, is wasted on “benefit scroungers”. Such venture capitalists, as they like to call themselves, do not speak openly about such disparagement about the Royal family and politicians in the House of Commons, and members in the House of Lords, but benefit claimants of another kind. These two groups of people differ indeed.

It is generally accepted people on the welfare state do not work, or indeed, are incapable of work, which is why they are on the welfare state. The Queen and her sordid family, on the other hand, are a different matter entirely. The Queen, it maybe argued, is too old to work, so in theory, she should receive a pension instead. It is very well known this does not happen, far from it. The Government is literally robbing money from people’s bank accounts and handing it over to the imperial family. It is not £150 a week either; the Government are robbing billions of pounds from working people, and much of it is going to the imperial family. This is known as proceeds to crime. It is one of the imperial families lesser crimes; it is a crime nonetheless.

Dealing with those tiresome and thuggish politicians is a far more serious and grievous matter. For the people, if we may use that term, are working and claiming benefits. First and foremost the members of Parliament should not be paid a penny. After all, they are representatives of the people, at least that is what we are told. They ought to be paid expenses, and they should be glad of it. It is true they are representatives of something more unpleasant than the people they claim to represent, and that is corporate fascism. It is these so-called men and women who remove billions of pounds from the welfare state and give it to the rich in windfall taxes as well as other conniving schemes; tax havens; reductions in taxes for stupendously rich, supine, and avaricious individuals; the reduction in capital gains tax and corporation tax. This is following the Reaganite “reforms”. Reagan, in the 1980s, took billions of dollars out of the welfare state and put it into the Military Industry Complex. So, naturally, politicians of all types have to use a kind of a scapegoat; people to abuse in public; the downtrodden; the people nobody cares about; the people Orwell would describe as ‘unpeople’. They do not exist, they are of no significance, they do not matter. The is the attitude to the poor and needy in 21st century Britain. It is something of nightmares.

The days of Tony Benn and Barbara Castle are over. James Purnell, a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, toyed with the idea of having people who take out emergency loans for the unemployed pay 50% interest back. These are called crisis loans, and the name of them elucidates what they are for. They are for people, and families, who have no food, sometimes no home, no hope, many have lived tormented lives, tolerated untold abuse, experienced homelessness and whatever else they have endured. This, coming from a former Labour Minister. He also proposed jobseeker’s ought to be forced to work for nothing, or rather, for their benefits, Mr. Purnell, it was found, was “fiddling his expenses”, such a man should have been convicted in a court of law, but Mr, Purnell, so it appears, is well above the law, just as many of his former colleagues are. 

In the mainstream media, and this is not even restricted to the tabloid press, the word “benefits” always comes with a suffix: “benefits scroungers” or “ benefit cheats”, they have even taken to calling them “benefit scum”, and so on. Rupert Murdoch, that crazed lunatic, who surveilles his victims, destroys his enemies and roots out and destroys his competitors; he is the worst offender in this regard. When his newspapers talk of these “benefit scroungers”, the reason for this is very simple. It is looking away from the real criminals, like Rupert Murdoch himself. Such a man, and his newspapers do not concentrate their energy on “tax dodgers” or “tax cheats”, if he did we may read how much the British Government are losing every year through tax evasion and tax avoidance. Just to clarify the difference between the two: tax evasion is the one which is illegal and tax avoidance is the one which the state long ago made legal, that is allowing millionaires to pay less than 1% tax, but makes it compulsory for the poor, bruised and battered to pay much more. The Murdoch press leaves information like this out. 

It is not just the Murdoch press either; they are all at it. The Government have devised an ingenious tactic and it appears to be working. They have created a chasm between welfare recipients and those on the minimum wage, prostituting their bodies for an absolute pittance: is it right these scroungers ought to get this money, when you have to work hard for yours? So instead of working people being infuriated at the real criminals that run the country: bankers, lord's, company executives, business leaders who exploit their workers in countries with weak labour laws, they are venting their fury who are the very weakest in society.

20th October, 2012