I am struck by the constant struggle for power of the so called ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ in western politics and have come to realise that these terms are largely meaningless, so tied up in the bias of their respective proponents that they are simply reduced to terms of abuse. ‘The Left’ has become associated with the excesses of powerful ideologues such as Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Potwhereas ‘The Right’ has been associated with Hitler, Mussolini and Juan and Eva Péron. These individuals, their philosophies and forms of government are more alike than they are different. They have at their root a kind of Social Darwinism and reliance on a totalitarian state. Both were reactions to the failure of Nation States to protect their populations from poverty. Both claimed to be the answer to the failures of capitalism (and serfdom ) whereas there roots lay in a struggle between the haves and the have-nots at times when hunger, poverty and want overcame the fear of the military and police used by the rich and powerful elite. Many in the west proclaimed the victory of capitalism over communism when the U.S.S.R. imploded yet this is simple propaganda, the failure of communism was due to a powerful elite oppressing the rest of society. It was not capitalism that the victor it was the failure of communism to provide for the needs and wants of its peoples.
Today we are experiencing the collapse of capitalism, it is failing to provide for the needs and wants of the majority, the powerful and rich elites that benefit from the laissez faire policies promulgated by Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher are still at work protecting their ill-gotten gains to the detriment of the wider public, but there is one crucial difference. The main stream media, long a supporter of the wealthy and the powerful, are losing their readership to the web; blogs, twitter and other social media tools are opening the doors to the widespread dissemination of views and values that directly challenge that of the ruling elites. Large sections of the media in the UK have been shown to be acting against the interests of the public as demonstrated by the revelations of the Leveson enquiry. At the beginning of the Arab Spring Western governments, led by the USA, lauded the developments as a democratic revolution made possible by social media and encouraged the overthrow of governments that they disapproved of. They failed to foresee the rise of extremist groups equally as dangerous as those who caused the Second World War who seem willing to exterminate, torture and imprison any who disagree with their views. Think tanks funded by the corporate elite promote policies to compliant governments, members of whom are also on the boards of those self-same corporate bodies and who benefit from investments in them. George Monbiot points out how these think tanks operate and subvert democracy. This is not a battle between right and left, it is a battle for profits and power at the expense of the majority to the benefit of elites.
Extremism from any source must be resisted, if we have learned anything from the Second World War, it is that inflicting poverty on masses of the public leads to extremism. The human costs of that war led to the post war consensus on full employment. “There were good reasons to seek security. The British people had just emerged from a war that had shown that, regardless of how high they were on the social ladder, they could fall to the bottom in an instant. The death and destruction of war were not the only threats; a serious illness could blight a family’s prospects. People wanted to be sure that they would not be on their own if disaster struck, and they were prepared to ensure this through taxes and insurance contributions. They were, literally, “all in it together,” accepting rationing of food and fuel to guarantee that in the face of austerity, everyone had access to the essentials.” The profits from enterprise were shared out across society with the creation of the welfare state in the UK and its glowing beacon, the NHS. The post war consensus and the West fully embraced this doctrine at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 which largely accepted the work of John Maynard Keynes, but western governments were concerned about the ideological challenge posed to them by communism as practiced by the USSR and China (the two largest state proponents). Thus began the “cold war” a battle for not only hearts and minds but a battle for resources. It is my opinion that the west worried too much about the ideological battle, communism (as practiced by those countries, not the true form) failed because central planning was not adequate to provide for the needs and the wants of its populace. It was the people of those countries, striving for a better life and putting pressure on their political masters that caused communism to fail. The price mechanism of the market has been proven to be a much better tool to improve the lot of people and yet that has also failed us. The seeds of that failure lay in Richard Nixon’s abandonment of the fixed exchange rate between gold and the dollar. That single act caused the breakdown of the Bretton Woods Agreement and was the result of the rising costs of the Vietnam War. In effect, because the dollar was the reserve currency of the world financial system, by breaking its link from gold and printing more money, he financed the Vietnam War by exporting inflation to the rest of the western world.
The inflation caused by this act caused great pressure on the old and the working classes in the UK and caused much of the industrial strife of the 1970’s as people strived to maintain their economic wellbeing by using the only weapon available to them, the withholding of their labour. Because of near full employment and the unionised nature of industrial Britain this tool was particularly effective but we could not ignore the world events out-with our control which meant that we were losing competitiveness to other countries. Capital and investment flowed out of the country to low wage economies that became more efficient because of better tooling and lower labour costs. The public in the UK saw this as the fault of the trade unions as the media began a concerted attack on them using the tools of the think tanks that had started to embrace the thoughts of Hayek and Milton Freidman of the Chicago School of Economics. Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher took the convenient parts of the academic thinking of these economists and allowed the market to let rip with a massive move towards laissez faire.
It is that move to laissez faire economics, the freeing of the market from regulation and constraints that had led us the present economic collapse. The market has been proven to be a good thing but not the FREE market. The market must be regulated to prevent its excesses. We cannot insulate ourselves from the rest of the world but we can seek to build a better society, the threat of war is real as populations around the world seek to improve their lot whilst increasing strains from the exponential rise in world population place more and more strain on the worlds resources and the capitalists who own the means of production seek to retain and increase their wealth. The evidence from history is clear; wealth must be shared equitably if strife is to be avoided. More than this there is overwhelming academic evidence that inequality is bad for all of us, the rich and the poor. The work of Richard Wilson and Kate Picket as published in The Spirit Level examines inequality in countries around the world and indisputable proves that more equal societies fair better and benefit all in society.
It is my experience that both Tory and Labour governments have abandoned the poor. Labour by abandoning the attempt at full employment and a living wage by seeking to redistribute the profits from the big banks through benefits. The Tories by removing benefits altogether from the neediest in society. It is only with the SNP that I see a drive to increase the employment opportunities available to our citizens by investing in our infrastructure which simultaneously creates assets for the future (which are more valuable than the costs incurred in creating them) and provides employment for our citizens who pay taxes, spent their wages in the community and thus create more jobs as demand increases. They seek to use our wealth of energy and natural resources to benefit the people of Scotland by investing its profits for the future growth of our economy. Both Labour and Tory governments have been proven to act against the interests of Scotland people when they buried theMcCrone report. The latest incarnation of these policies is the astonishing abandonment of universal benefits by Joanne Lamont of the Labour Party.
I support the SNP because they are a truly social democratic party, it is to my regret that the Labour Party seems to be abandoning its core principles and moving to the right. I suspect that they seek power more than they seek to improve the lot of the nation’s citizens. That is the route to political oblivion and I earnestly hope that they will turn back from this course.
It is for these reasons among many more that I support the Yes campaign for an independent Scotland. I see hope in the message that we can better target our resources to benefit our people, if we have the tools to do so. We need to be in control of our own destiny to improve our lot we should not abandon that responsibility to others that do not have our best interests at heart.
Vote YES for the opportunity for a better future.
Written by Bill Fraser. To see more of Bill's work, visit http://ofmenandmarkets.wordpress.com/author/ofmenandmarkets/
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