Permanent austerity or change

The UK needs more austerity. The new Prime Minister (and the market) says so. And, after a decade-plus of austerity and five Tory Prime Ministers, apparently austerity is the proper answer for the future. Except the new Tory Chancellor adds that this time it has to be an eye-watering austerity, more awful than the previous years. Most of the UK's population are naturally worried to bits. And they have had enough. Quite rightly nobody, except the rich, really believes it will all be so much better, waiting for two years for a General Election.

The obvious first step is a General Election now. The Tories will try to carry on their 'eye-watering' for a while. But they are over. The UK's people largely want an election to get rid of the terrible, austerity-and the endless Tory government. A coming election today would also include the needs of the emerging, evolving nations in Scotland and Northern Ireland; the immense danger of the world's ecology; the war in Europe and most worrying at all, the scary future of 21st century capitalism. 

For the best part of the last 20 years capitalism has called itself 'globalisation'. In essence, globalisation was the domination of international capital, where the cheapest international goods, services and labour created immense volumes of wealth, mainly held by the US banks. This was run collectively by the largest nations, with the US holding the debts (Japan, China etc). What's happening now is the contradiction of international capitalism, increasing resistance by even the largest nations against growing international distribution. Now these nations demand their own particular goods - which more and more insist on the most serious goods made in local hands.

The outcomes of the declining areas of globalisation are not only the increasing demands of national goods and services, it is also increasing (or heightening) the beginnings of conflicts and wars. And the national political results, supported by new or changed political parties, are deepening into more and more rightwing nationalist politics. 

Meanwhile the conditions in the West for working class and lower middle class's peoples are dropping week by week. A radical response is emerging against governments. At the moment many people are polarising into two general directions (some combining opposite ideas.) The nationalist temptation for example deliberately promotes resistance to all immigrants, constantly spreading out in society deliberately, by the UK government. Yet again our richer government leaders are loathed by millions of people, who are unable to get their daily requirements. And a new core of the left has risen since 2016 in parts, particularly in Europe. As the increasing austerity evolves, so the left is emerging despite the deliberate contradictions put out by our leaders. 

The failing of globalisation-type capitalism, a capitalism that cannot re-establish as before, is also pressing the changes of the left. The absence of any other choice except socialism or the current declining capitalism is the only direction available now in the West. For more than a century it is only socialism that has offered a genuine society and welfare alternative to capitalism. This has become critical. Today, a green-socialist direction would therefore seem the most obvious step to take. But the failures in the past of both social democratic leaderships, or of most communist dictators, remain deeply in the West's people's history. SD in its century has always turned away from real socialism in order to support capitalism under key critical conditions. Communism crashed, after the dictator Stalin and Stalinism, which completely broke any acceptance of such horror and failure in the vast majority of the West's working classes.

At the moment, from what will become a thunderous period, the unions are battling in the UK and France. The next steps need to be the overthrow of the new anti-union legislation, designed to split workers in general. Already there are common Charters that bring together all the basic radical steps that support the rights of us all. The major political parties, including the leaders of the British Labour Party, are largely stepping aside from any actual action. The focus of the Labour leaders are explicitly working to get a majority in Parliament. And it is at this stage that the active left need to pass the Labour leaders - and begin the genuine next political battle. 

The next step that has to begin is the growth of dual political power in our society. The current, hated, Parliament, that is determined to carry on at all costs, is simply a barrier to any sort of progress for millions of people. The unions are rising, and now we need the people in the cities helping the food parcels, the towns supporting travel to hospitals, the refusal to accept desperate poverty, with thousands and thousands of people to march and to build our own local parliaments, the ones that will vote and act directly alongside. Supporting elected Mayors and even positive local councils can start a web of practical politics that stands against the rotten, failing Parliament. The new politics can have a hundred direct possibilities. In due course it can build up voting for real, basic, issues. Parties of the left can help, but first in practical ways. And finally our Lords, the party PMs, the huge money to get tricky votes at so called elections, the endless centuries of tradition, of domination, will fall. 

Five points and the UK's finished.

1. The Tory leadership (and membership) are unable to define the Tory's future. The recent previous idea, where some superman or women, like the historical Thatcher who, it turns out, won a poisonous war, or a 'ripping' public schoolboy like Boris, who was 'levelling up' despite the lack of any money - have already failed. 

The Tory MP Steve Baker is the only chance, with his block of super EU-leavers in Parliament who still wants Truss, as part of his new idea. Baker has been studying the 1900s when, among other horrors, there was little or no public health and welfare (unless you were rich). Perhaps surprisingly he does not mention the role of the UK's imperialism at that time, and all the countries that poured in the goods and money into the corporations and the UK's bank during that period. Perhaps Baker believes he can get modern equivalents from Singapore and the rest of the cheap labour nations. Baker is for the 19th century future. He's studying it and sees that there will be no money in 2045 to pay the old and ill. People have got to pay for themselves. The main money from the new tiny State has to be the army needed, we assume, to squash the starving. (Baker also doesn't mention the ecology of 2045.) 

2. and 3. The growing futures of both Northern Ireland and Scotland both hang on two major shifts in today's UK's politics. First there are, or will be, imminent numbers of the population of both sectors who are favouring separate countries other than the UK. Second, both have political organisations enabled to organise the shift to change into new potential nations. The weakness in the case of NI would undoubtedly be the minority block of Ulster. That is sharpening for sure but it is also dwindling. The bigger obstacle is more likely to be the resistance of the main Southern Irish parties (again minorities) in the South. But a different future (unlike the UK) is crystal clear and getting stronger in both populations.

In Scotland, because of the long-term and the better organisations in Scotland, and the dismal past and future apparent in the UK, the next two years are likely to finally (if reluctantly) decide Scottish nationhood. The failure of ecological and radical possibilities in Scotland, rather than the UK as a whole, is constantly increasing. The alternative political support in Scotland, against the UK, has become deeper and deeper. Moreover, the SNP party has placed its decision to present its Scottish referendum in the likely fast act of a new UK Election. 

4. Labour is very likely to win the next Election. This is as obvious - given the Tories. But that is the point. The Election will happen because of the Tories. The Labour leadership, who are undoubtedly able to pass by the Tories' crash, is, up close, not much different to the ideas, as such, that the majority of the Tory Party offer. Except for their dissolution. The Labour leadership has one, particular critical idea. They are utterly determined not to have anything to do with socialism. The current capitalist crisis, with its different aspects, has created a totally normal, would-be, Tory type answer, if they have not collapsed. No wonder that the main Labour Party Momentum leader, Michael Chessum, is now calling for a new left Party. 

Two vital questions about the crisis will blow up, upon the coming Election. Millions of workers are acting to win their wages, in order to keep themselves properly alive. The Labour leaders are hiding what Labour will say just now. In office they will act like the Tories - perhaps without some of the new Tory laws, although the last Labour governments maintained the anti-union laws by Thatcher.  Second, the large and well supported public utilities are a straightforward, necessary step against the current capitalist crises. Labour leaders frankly dump that direction. 

What is decisive in this particular turn is the understanding that a new period, certainly across the West, has begun. The evolution of capitalism has been more and more slicing through the capacity of social democracy to reconstruct social support as the requirement of privacy and wealth. It is not a matter of different questions. It is a system that is essential and deliberately and partly destructive. Even the state capitalist development of the Chinese nation, which is dominated by bureaucratic social, military state, is now facing a serious reduction of development, where figures of development are not being provided from the current 2022 Communist Conference because of the serious reductions. The politics of the Labour leaders are preparing for the decline of social state support.

5. The new period of history, politics and economics, is already calling its alarms in the European war in Ukraine and the decline of the West. As this is written the next UK Prime Minister has just been dumped. And it is not some personal or even political reason of the constant, catastrophic political failures. It is the fundamental shifts of a new time for capitalism and the different places that it requires; a system that is not working.  

Deep crises; false directions.

Since nearly a century gone by, the West has fought two world wars and accepted the rise of the USA, but has never seen the political and the economic convulsion that is being experienced today. The West is facing the possibility of losing its dominance, including the wider US world-wide leadership. Recessions and inflations are now regularly widespread across the West. Well before Putin's upheaval, there has been deep political shifts in the West. As a result, there are eruptions among the previous, traditional western political parties. They are dwindling or changing themselves, moving in favour for surface novelties, battling as dominant leaders, rather than connecting to large-scale, party memberships. Traditional politics is only playing with what it used to be - with the normal, albeit minimal, 'democracy'. And to top it all, the West is now fiddling with a war with Russia. 

Leaders, like the almost certainly dumped Prime Minister Truss in the UK, or the more solid President Macron in France, are continually offering apparently new brilliant but actually empty approaches, as a result of what is becoming yesterday's capitalism. In reality Macron (and most of the others) have already failed to deal with the beginning decline of twenty years of globalisation. Most capitalist major processes still continually remain out of the hands of many western countries - with the main exception of the US. Globalisation is not at all entirely gone. But now, various desperate efforts are being tried to establish national initiatives to rebuild more local capitalist developments, based on the nation’s creations of wealth - as try Truss did. 

The most immediately, half-baked idiocy was to be seen was the Truss's demand for local 'growth, growth and growth' (planned by possible alliances through Singapore and the South Eastern nations.) Truss nearly smashed the UK's economy when she started her first day 'growth' campaign. The UK is still wobbling. With her eyes on the labour conditions of Asia, Truss's so-called growth-based ideas remains old and dead. The UK is still failing regarding Truss's mini-imperialist efforts and the pretence that she could still win the failing glories of Ronald Reagan was always frankly fatuous. We wait to see if the likely next new UK PM and the already new Chancellor Hunt are properly kneeling to the market. This will increase the further decline of health and welfare, of education and benefits etc., as he did before the 2019s when he was minister of health.

The desperate conditions of the billions of people in the South continues. China is currently the major force for development in Africa. The US now mainly focuses on South America and, as much as they are able, to determine the Far East. But as life in the West gets more and more difficult, it means that what used to be the 'normal' traditional politics just doesn't work anymore - whether it's Macron or Truss or Italy, Scandinavia or even Germany. Traditional politics are breaking down. The failure of these connotations inevitably push new movements and actions, sometimes direct responses, that involve immediate anger towards the 'old status quo's, shaking the traditional Parties. In the UK (supposedly with the unchallenged political history) there have been four Tory PMs and two General Elections in five years. Two PMs failed in months and the last is likely to fall very soon, if not now! The UK population (and others) have never been more concerned and worried about their politics but have never been more angry because of the failures of politicians.

The empty, proud and swollen-headed PM Truss, is a clear example of all the decline of the pompous notions that rulers and leaders, particularly in Britain, as they imagined their dominance in their own nation. A handful of mainly old Tories thought Truss was a Thatcher part two and put her in as the UK's leader. This tiny rich group creating an enormous folly, which now shouts to the world of the desperate failure of the UKs democracy. Meanwhile the UK’s economic and political failures are found across the whole West, from Hungary to the US. The characters and conditions vary from parliaments to executives, but the wealth and power of the capitalist system continually blocks any requirements for essential change. Wealth and then its power smothers almost all that any real possible politics and real required democracy. 

What is a genuine democracy that will change the peoples’ anger, now rising across the working classes? It is the action of the people who are already pushing against the status quo. The total assumptions of the Truss's and the millionaires like Hunt, which are happily preparing the removal of the growing trade union strikes, are now going to clash with true democracy. The battle to come is an example of the creation of the possibility of a new democracy, when democratic workers are trying to vote for their wages and conditions. 

Then there comes the real barrier. Capitalism 'works' only for ruling classes. Its object is more and more obviously wealth and private possession. When Tory MPs will vote against strikes, the rich MPs are 'defending' their bit of capitalism. Despite the fact that they are a small minority in the country, they are already wealthy and they are frightened of the workers, in that they could lose their general domination. The battle with the strikes inevitably faces up to the possibility of real democracy. 

This direct moment is the coming-clash against classes in society in the UK. But it also could be the beginnings of a real democracy. The workers who are collectively organising to achieve better wages and conditions could further invite the same discussion and make the decisions regarding how, for example, with the utilities, that could be used, developed and widened, in the general public's ownership. This would be a clash of dramatic consequences. Moving on, small businesses ownerships, an immense proportion of UK labour, can equally build collective management and distributions. 

More widely, the core of capitalism in the UK, the banks and the trusts, will inevitably have to be broken down as more and more of workers, youth, the poorer, continue to fight back. The growing disaster of UK's capitalism - increasingly felt to different aspects across the West - has only one answer. Their answer is to do anything possible that ensures holding up the UK's capital and pushes down most of the population. 

The centuries of the UK's imperialism, of slavery, of class and wealth etc etc., is one particular of an example, of a very obvious example, across the whole declining West. Capitalism in the West is getting sharper and sharper. Societies are in trouble and some are already breaking down in the destruction of what was already the normal, minimal, democratic activity. The new actions and battles, marches and organisations, are the platform for the new democracy. 

Problems and Solutions 6

26 September

Problem 

It's now well known that Prime Minister Truss and Chancellor Kwarteng, among others, wrote a book, published in 2012 and called 'Britannia Unchanged'. Truss and Kwarteng said 'The British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor.' 

They are tricking us. What Truss and Kwarteng are doing is pretending that workers and small business people are the reason for the UK's 'poor productivity'. The reality is that big British corporations do not send their profits to pay for new developments, they spend them. They have been doing this since 1950 on and off - in order to gather their own, personal wealth. And the core of this 'system' is London banking and its tax-free attached nations.

Most daily work in the UK today has two aspects. First, there is the rise of small businesses, which now provides 3/5ths of all work. Second, small businesses and the workers who work in the public and private sectors, have had their wages and earnings mainly reduced for decades. 

Worse. T and W are actually planning to raise their productivity by using a Singapore version of work in the UK. This means removing and selling private organisations, applying drastic work- times, reducing wages and conditions for workers. (The average wage in Singapore in 2022 decreased. There are no minimum wages. Most workers live on £650 per month. Food etc is described as expensive compared with SE Asia in general.) Grinding work for millions is to be the secret for the TW version of productivity. 

Solution

Nothing can be done until this shaky government is thrown away or crashes. When T and K are dumped in the bin, to get productivity in the UK (and it is worse than most western countries) is to go public. The failure of privatisation is as plain to plain to see. The mighty corporations need to start by a legally set-up, 50% to 50% with the new government. Productivity therefore grows automatically in such alliances. If refused, our corporation and its wealth will be sequestered. Fully public, either by the genuine democratic government or by democratic overseen state capitalism, can push development to a dramatic result. Other contexts in the worlds' nations are already using such examples, and that is without the push that a new and collective democracy would propel forward a society with the benefits of a Western state. 

Brian Heron  

Problem and Solution 5

 Problem 5

21 September 

A block of continuous, eastern Ukrainian regions will now be setting up dubius elections under Russia's command, pulling together four intended would-be Russian sectors; Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia. The four easten sectors are combined wedges that are facing Russia in the East. They will hold 'referendums' to become a total and complete part of Russia, following the elections between September 23-27. 

Western nations have condemned Moscow's plans. But most of the Western comments focus on the vast Russian military movement, which Putin has decided to launch. The absence of full mobilisation is undoubtedly required to ensure that it is the military that will manage Putin's objectives. The full and total armies of Russia, pretending versions of the WW2 and the Nazi's, would raise the question of Putin's sanity.

But the equally stupid responses in the rest of the West, particularly those of Biden and Truss to this new context, has not yet been understood.

Putin will decide the election results, in order to state that the four combined sectors are now a part of the nation of Russia. This new part of the nation will be fighting for the nation of Russia. Not bits of Crimea. This is now the part of the Russian nation, defending its whole existence.

 Solution

When Kennedy 'won' his battle with Kruschev's missiles about to land in Cuba, it was not a victory. Kruschev wanted Turkey's US missiles entirely out of Russia's domain. A couple of months later, as with Cuba, they were all gone. 

The war in Ukraine cannot be won with the West's armaments. The deaths and destruction are  increasing, enjoyed only by building up stupendous weapons. Equally, Russia cannot control most of Ukraine. India and China are not jumping. It is NOT a world war. 

A silent offer on both sides, NATO and Russia, (hopefully noisier and noisier as the battles get more and more hideous) can accept the Russian plan, after their votes. An agreement where both sides commit for no nukes once again. An agreement for re-building across the whole of Ukraine; an agreement combined that both countries would seek common goals. 

Oh yes, Boris was a mini warmonger. Now get Truss out. 

Brian Heron

Problems and solutions 4

Problems and Solutions 4

Problem

15 September

Hundreds of thousands in the UK are actively focussed on the death of Queen Elizabeth. The Queen was a foremost person of wealth and her privileges were, together with her family, uniquely unavailable to every other UK citizen. She was nice to Corgis and enjoyed Horse Racing. She cried when she lost her yacht Britannia. PM Blair had to hastily dig out the Queen when another million went on the streets to laud Diana after her death. Otherwise, she enjoyed being treated as the lords and ladies, chatting down with the public, and the great banquets with the top knobs. 

The most important political importance of the Queen (and now the King) is the connection of the Royal Family to the Parliament, the Lords and the rest of the State. 

Solution

The royalty's history is mainly foul, stinking through its centuries of Empire. Today it still remains the largest single block to democracy. Not only do they have many of their own laws and rules over vast private lands for example, but Parliaments and the State often directly use royalty. A particular example is UK sales, offered by UK royalty, for weapons used by many other royals or/and dictators. As today, with our desperate conditions for millions who are short of heat, light and food, are smothered by hymns, soldiery, fake history, all to avoid the UK's real crisis. Another 'Brexit' might be in order now. 

At any point let this fatuous farce end. And now the current nonsense can start a direct response. In many parts of the UK they are desperate for their own democracy, that will decide for a rapid change regardless of any royalty. But for those who still feel a sentiment, an interim royal family that goes to work, that lives in houses that they pay for and that do not have a cincilla of a connection with state and governments, might enjoy bicycle tourism. 

Brian Heron

Problems and solutions - times 3

Problem 1 and Solution 1

28 August 2022

Here is problem 1. 

It’s clear that a class battle is immediately ahead, starting from the new Tory leaders’ attacks against the campaigns of the trade unions. The unions are ‘defensive’ which doesn’t at all mean that they are willing to fall back. ‘Defensive’ in this case means that the goals of the unions are designed to increase workers wages and defend or increase worker’s conditions. For example, although a General Strike has been raised when the new Tories set up their new terrible anti union laws, the TUC for one will do its best to smother any direct action. And the union leaders could split.

We are all aware that a real crisis of capitalism is developing fast, especially in the UK. And that there will be a major clash between workers and the government that will be supporting the government in different ways by the employers and major owners. 

Solution 1

At the moment most workers and the poor, even many middle class people, are supporting the unions and their claims. But this rackety government will decide that the central issue is to defeat the unions. Despite their weakness this is how they will try to do it: ‘the trade unionists are already reasonably well off .... they are taking their increases away from the real poor ... with our £billions of hand-outs, we are the ones who are fighting for the poor, not unions!

The step that has to be made as quickly as possible is the building of a mass coalition in society, centred by the fighting unions and all those who are struggling with day to day existence, really trying to push back poverty. Organisations like ‘Enough is Enough, and the People’s Assembly urgently need a conference or conferences to unite. The organisations above and others can bring together the new Ideas and charters that have already been spelled out -  how to redistribute wealth and the reorganisation of key companies whose vast profits block the real progress for the future and all the people. 

It is essential to act now. Otherwise the battle will be longer and harder. 

Problem 2 and solution 2

2 September 2022

Problem 2 and Solution 2 starts with the Trade Union Congress in September 11th.As we know the TUC is a policy-making body that votes and decides the motions that delegates offer to the Congress. Meanwhile the likely PM Truss has a set of drastic anti union laws, prepared very quickly. In reality this is the main policy for the Tory government - to destroy all organised movements fighting independently against all types of poverty. The TUC needs to be act decisively.

Solution  2
There are also two options emerging in the TUC. The first is the clear decision to reject the new Tory Union laws. They are already the worst in most of Europe. The second is attached to the views of the Labour leader, barrister Starmer, trying to use legal arguments to stop or mellow the new laws. This would be also done with a TUC panel, designed to put pressure on the Tories. No deal. A mix up pretending both arguments won’t work. It will break up the growing movements that are uniting and changing our rotten, weak government towards a real democracy.

Our solution is to support action both inside and outside the TUC. Unions lead for now. And they must carry on with the whole peoples‘ rights - the rights that most of us will need in the months to come.

Problem 3 and solution 3

10 September 2022

Prime Minister Truss is increasing heat and light costs in all households upto £2500 over 2 years - so long as you stay 'cool'. If you increase the light because you are getting blind, or it's a cold winter, the costs will go up in your house. If more money is needed you will lose your credit score - permanently. Truss thinks there should be costs at her certain level, which she decides for you. Meanwhile, a £2500 hike is already a disaster for a million or so. And increasing payment for food is not even mentioned.

The £100 to £150 billion will come from the State. But every penny will be taken back from the State and paid from the ordinary people over years.Truss does not believe in taxes used for the poor. That means a UK with a less NHS (if any at all), a less public education, the decline of all wages and many salaries - and the further drop of huge welfare needs.

The staggering increases of profit that have been made through both the Covid period in the West and now the Russian/West war, wrenches away all possibilities of UK social needs for years to come.

Solution 3

Prime Minister Truss, with 81,326 votes of Tory members, has to go as soon as possible. Instead we desperately need a new election and a new government. The answer to the Truss crises is for a new  government to take away the main private corporations that are bubbling up their incredible profits. Then the profits could be generally spread across us all. 

Many Tories see the coming debacle as a sort of renewal of Churchill, of 'pulling together' and of the marvelous British middle class family. It could not be more ridiculous. Although now is not (yet) in a direct war danger, as in 1939, the UK does indeed need drastic change. 

Basic food needs free rationing for all, available in supermarkets, free instead of the shameful food parcels. Meanwhile the expensive foods available will pay the costs to provide money for free rationing. Health and welfare come first to overthrow the utter mess of the current government. Key utilities, now speculating from their vast profits, need to be the first step in the making of new public industries.

To get here we need to combine the many so far separate organisations and movements to lead the way. 

UK collapse

The ridiculous bing/bang between the UK's would-be Prime Ministers is the biggest farce in the UK's politics, economics and Prime Ministers since the 1938 'Peace in Our Time'. On one side Truss says she will reduce taxes to prevent stagnation (increasing inflation). The other hand, Sunak will increase taxes to prevent inflation (increasing stagnation). Neither of them have any grip on the real UK's worst condition in comparison to all other of the West richer nations. Both of them are going to fail pretty quickly. Meanwhile millions will suffer.

Alas, the Labour leadership, who lost 91,000 members last year, are pretending that a universal six month 'gift' to the rich and poor for their heating will turn away the UK's woes. The next Tory leader will probably do the same with a different name as the popular fury rises. And this will continue, just the same as Labour's 'great' offer, to spin and crash. 

The waning structures of the UK's failings were already close to the most of the declining G7/8 nations well before 2010. (Russia got into the G8 in 1998, then was kicked out in 2014.) The UK has been wobbling for some time near the bottom of the G7. Now it dramatically stands out. 

Today's weakness of western capitalism in the UK context had been once its historical strength. However the UK's Slavery and its Empire were eventually defeated and then it drizzled away over a hundred years - except for the UK's banking centre of the capitalist world. London's web in the world-wide secrets of banking has the nation's main Gross Domestic Product (GDP), telling us our richness in the country. The UK's actual richness is almost the opposite of its real development. The UK's money does not have and rarely ever has been created by real new developments, except, marginally, like the building industry. Wealth in the UK comes mainly from the vast trade of money itself. Creation of new industries, of profits that provide development, rarely works in the UK. Globalisation was never a creation of world wide 'things' for the UK. In the UK it was and remains the worldwide sale of the use of money. Any particular steps that do pop up, as with the internet cartoons industry for example, are rapidly sold outside the UK for individual profit' for wealth. The international UK is dramatically and insanely and personally rich.

Many of the G7 countries are pulling back as the result of the current break-up of globalisation. This leads into smaller national constructions for local profit, using increasing potential for development in their own hands or in connection with specific local close nations to reorganise profit. These ideas do not resolve the breaking down of globalisation in the medium term. But as the G7 shows, the UK is the most vulnerable because it does not and cannot change their profits into major local development.

Truss, Sunak and Starmer are desperate to get going with the UK's over-dominated capitalism. But the UK is the west's weakest link that has failed continually in the last 12 decades. No UK Prime Minister has changed capitalist GDP into national and local development (except in WW2). And the new three would-be leaders are the worst yet.

Two giant steps are urgently needed. 

The dynamic and direct shift of the economy and politics are the only means to break through real development, dumping the GDP that simply increases the rich squeeze and the increasing wealthy. That enormous fact will need all major institutions, from water to heating to travel and to the banks and their associates, organising the requirements for the mass of the people.

Second, there has to be a growing movement of millions of people that simply and directly and united insisting, by action and by discussion, to begin the means of the new development in society. There are many shifts in the coming days and weeks that will open the road. Parties and movements fighting for particular demands need to join an independent unity as the first priority. The People's Assembly conference on November the 6th could be a good start. The most immediate danger as the Tories fail is the sectarian approach of most of the Labour leaders, whose main aim is to change the name of the Prime Minister in number 10. Most people, even those who see the need to stop the Tories, already see very well how the Labour leaders are definitely not the answer. There will be a clash with that particular pending movement no doubt so a new unity can be resolved. 

General Strike? National Government?

160,000 Tories are deciding who will be the next Prime Minister. Truss is most likely to win. She favours the new Tory right (a mini Thatcher) and Sunak isn't white enough. The very first decision of either of these two new PM's will be to try to smash the trade unions. Both PM candidates have sworn to increase the already extreme anti-union laws. The new laws are designed to demolish the already minimal rights of union voters. But millions of workers of all types are now battling against the bosses' resistance of the unions fighting for reasonable wages and conditions, following 2 decades of declining wages. The Tress-Sunak pair are both intending to crush organised workers into the dust. And this is meant to be the first success of whoever is the new PM. The key banner to define a conservative society. Thatcher made her first smashup over the miners. Reagan's earliest action was to break the aviation workers, ending them in chains. These were the symbols of the new governments. 

But today we face an entirely different context. The unsettled political leadership of the UK demonstrates the most obvious absence of any planning and an imminent crash. Boris was a 2 year glory that slipped away in, what was frankly, a joke. His only ability was his bellowing about his non-existence successes. His following about his half-done Brexit has not achieved anything other than make the UK appear more foolish. Boris's Brexit has barely started. His Covid decisions were a disaster, until the chemists told him about vaccines. The rest, from leveling up, to the Churchillian photos in the Ukraine, was not more than anything other than self aggrandisement. All this is daily more and more obvious.

What is less clear in society is the rapid shift from Boris, the apparent demi-hero to the 14 million voters for Boris in 2019, and now that are drifting away in their millions. We are also seeing the collapsing, previously dominant hard right which Truss hopes to lead. But instead of the far right we are facing a huge and deeply critical population who do not accept the new, fancy Tory PMs, but also neither do they turn to the adenoidal Blair, now Labour's Starmer. But what IS emerging is the day to day support for the new Trade Union leaders and their rights. 

Of course this is all still shifting. This includes the hints of a new type of society, partly started by the unions, and which ties in with the appalling disaster of the UK's economy. Virtually every day another shocking truth about the decades of rot that hits on millions already inside increasing wider and wider scales of the deep troubles. Most workers are overwhelmingly in work, but unable to live. The most recent example is Shell and Centrica who steal both £billions of profit while their gas and electricity costs fly higher every day. The axis of the unions and the day to day experience of the poorest people are cohering together with the unions - as against the Tory attempt to make the unions the problem. Our new Prime Minister will no doubt do her slavering best, but the Tories can't do their Thatcher 'thing' anymore. 

But even should there be an increasing hostility for the government and the possible combination of those battling for daily existence and those fighting for a decent working life, there is no obvious positive, wide scale movement to lead the 90% of the population. Current developments in the Labour Party leadership have managed to destroy the radical Corbyn program (which still stood for 10 million votes even in the 'Bust it with Boris' 2019 General Election). Starmer is simply another Tory. He is completely unable to understand the current political conditions, as the 10 million and more are standing up to fight. What pops up in the picket lines scares Starmer to death. No. The political conditions require a collection of forces that are able to form a leading bloc that can show, step by step, how each moment forward can solidify and then move forward to the next positive actions.

Which now begins with a possible new General Strike. The failure of the 1926 General Strike has been well studied. One part of its retreat was the absence of any agreed, forward, proposition; all was defence. This, and the domination of most trade union leaders, who were tied in a deep national support of the UK's Empire, broke the strike.

Today we have a significant political and economic melee that is already resisting a weak government. Those who fight for food and heat and those who demand decent work and wages are able, virtually immediately, to bring down a wobbly, tragic government. At least that proposal can gather the first objective, to build up the widespread for a General Strike. Alas, Corbyn's very welcomed, relatively radical programme, is now immediately unavailable. Starmer has little to offer. But as the crisis in Winter will gather, bringing the end of the government desperate to retain its class rule, there will be a likely offer for a National Government, 'to bring us all together in the crisis!' And, more frightened of a possible  General Strike, Starmer will likely agree. 

This particular scenario is just that. It is true that the UK's society is going through a massive class based clash. The elements of government and economy are fragile in the extreme and the vital response to that is a widespread action by the working classes. Truss or anybody else will not simply close it all down with a ferocious law. That far seems clear. And the only other alternative to the government's decision is an election. As this process unfolds it is essential to bring together all who are already battling away. A combined bloc, attached to active unions, to those working to get heat and food etc, could naturally develop a new Charter, a set of basic demands, from large scale wealth taxes, to insuring public service requirements, to peoples assemblies to decide progress and to the organisations we really need.   

Can the UK work for its people?

1. The very fine writer Tariq Ali recently published a blog on Boris's departure. (Read 'Adieu Boris, Adieu.') Both funny and revelatory, Tariq went through the Prime Ministers from WW2 to Boris. He pointed out that Boris's lies and pretences were relatively minimal in relation to the secret, guilty acts that PMs had previously carried out. 

Tariq's views of the character and role of the present ruling classes, including Prime Ministers, were not so accurate. Tariq was at pains to explain the distinct difference of Boris's political and economic plans compared with Trump's approach, with its signal, dominated party and its wildly right-wing ambitions. He does go through the declining changes of the British ruling classes and the break-away politics and economics via the UK's State, with its less and less international influence. But there are key aspects in respect of the UK ruling classes and their role in general that are increasingly significant in the direction of Trump and the similar Western and Eastern modern despots.

2. The increasing reality demonstrates the intense capitalist platform of the future of the UK but it is full of danger. For decades there has been minimal investment in the UK. The central part of the UK's wealth continues to be banking. The UK's main banking and other resources are held in a part of the world's offshore that amounts to $32 trillion. The UK itself holds £854 billion offshore and, as of the 24th of April 2022, the UK continues to top every other offshore tax haven. (See CITY AM.) But the UK is increasingly declining in relation to other financial nations that are emerging across the globe. The 2008 banking collapse both cut the UK based banks to smithereens and, at the same time the UK is reducing its wealth and strength in respect to all other capitalist activity including their offshore sector. 

The offshore, anti-tax, de-facto crime remains the key lever of the UK's vital capitalism - except more desperate after 2008. The UK's historic solid rock is seriously splintering. There are several new reasons for the increasingly rapid decline. Investment has longly continued as the lowest of all the main countries in the West. Beside the crisis of Covid, the UK faces the increasing revolt of West Indian and other nations that are determined to de-couple from their UK histories and the colonial shame involved, which directly cuts into offshore advantages. The UK is also internally removing from European markets for the time being and UK labour is largely working in local sales, marketing and building. As a result, in the absence of any real international production in the UK, the most drastic economic conditions apply, comparing badly with all of the rest of the West. 

3. The consequences of the UK's ruling classes over half a century is their very limited outlook, which is constantly narrowing. And now, most significantly, a huge social wave from other classes in the UK (not really touched in Tariq's comments) has boiled up. It includes immense strikes led by organised union workers, collective demands for massive food needs, large scale strikes against heating costs, possible windfall taxes and even the probability of rationing. All this is beginning to challenge the narrow capitalism of UK society. 

4. The initial use of Brexit as a racist social movement, led by Farage and UKIP, which went onto a far right definition of the initial referendum, was entirely incorporated by Boris and his new Tory Party, albeit underlined in Farage's terms. But by 2020 Brexit support had emerged into a more radical, democratic basis for the result of the referendum. By then the racist arguments had dropped in the polls to third or fourth place. But it was Boris and his minions that continued to open the racist argument again - for two reasons. First, the crucial win leading to racism in a Tory election, despite the previous decade of Tory impoverishment and secondly, to absorb this previous racist movement, now to be focussed on an imperial leader with a completely independent axis for his prepared UK politics to come. The content of Boris's apparent politics, like Trump, was not in his key requirement. His politics were used to assemble his dominance based on populist trends.

5. Now we pass Boris (and the would-be Thatchers and Boris's) but not abandoning his plans. What is really happening now is the beginning of a massive class war, which is going to change everything. 

The most globally dominant UK ruling class is deciding that it can dig in more of a new 'offshore' wealth; a future increasing away from the half-baked and often uninterested development, instead regarding society in the UK as entirely a means, which has only one substantial project, that is Banking 2. This is the (new) core of the forms of digital money now set to go by the Bank of England. The new goal passes by all the would-be digital monies already across the world, up to now, and which previously keep collapsing. The Bank of England, through the Financial Policy Committee will "create a wide range of 'Stakecoins' "which will initiate and overtake the new independent digit wealth - for all across our global UK!  

This is the central creation of a much wider financial scheme than previously launched; the sort that has brought Hull and other ports to allow their 'independence' i.e. non taxable, constantly moving shipping, with costs decided by private response. The surrounds of the new financial Stakecoins sweeps away from the previous necessity of building public, day to day investment for development and trade. Instead we face a 'free' Singapore topped by the new Stakecoin castles. It is the already dying globalisation now narrowed into instant wealth at all costs.  

6. In this rare and desperate context the class struggle arising in the UK has several dimensions. The first direct aspects are showing themselves in the organised unions refusing pay cuts. Coupled with huge collectives for free food, direct action to stop heat costs and combinations of local movements gathering to show public opposition over police failures, the failures of women's rights and the new racism, wide ideas are surfacing. A wealth tax proposal has arisen. Rationing of a modern time is surfacing. The redistribution of wealth is becoming a hard call. Self organisation sharing resources is changing parts of the country.

Surrounding the UK is the rising breaking away from English domination by the Scots, the Northern Irish (with both current acting parties that have agreed to offer democratic independence) and an irritated link by the Welsh when it comes to Tory provocation. These deep cracks in UK politics are now increasingly raw. The opportunities for large parts of the UK are obviously no longer rising and the new prospective financial diamonds are barely going to scratch even the highlights of London. The strain and weakness of the UK has never been more obvious. The breakdown of the UK has never felt more realistic. 

Brian Heron

Boris tries a Trump?

'14 million votes in the last UK General Election' was the call that Boris tried to win the argument and prevent himself from getting kicked out of 10 Downing Street. Thursday, 12 December 2019, the Conservatives made a net gain of 48 seats and won 43.6% of the popular vote, the highest percentage for any party since 1979. In his apparent last days Boris wailed that it was he and only he that had won the last General Election and that he was the only figure that could overcome the drastic economic debacle that was emerging into the Autumn UK. Trumpy eh? 

The UK's voting is more similar than the USA that most UK voters might think. Voters vote for parties and the choice of local state party leaders are voted in by all voters including party members. What is different, and novel for the UK, is the decline of the US political parties, following from the independence of the President once he or she has collected the national vote, which allows presidential, independent leadership of the whole nation beyond and ahead of the parties.

Boris has tried to go beyond his party. He has called on the 14 million voters from 2019 over the head of his party when his parliamentary party began to overthrow him. But he is not a President, yet. And Boris has not called for an upsurge of his 2019 voters as his own followers, yet. For the moment he is 'over'.

But Boris has fixed a trick. His Tory government contenders are already battling for the role of a new Prime Minister. Boris is currently and personally very low in the polls. But the new reality of the UK's politics is extremely volatile. And the future of the UK is about to go through another convulsion when it proportionally becomes the worst European nation for food, heat and services. Boris is 'serving as PM until his party chooses its successor.'  He'll be around when the real shocks hit. He's not chosen his continuation until October for no reason. By October most inclined Tory members, who choose their a hundred thousand votes and then the government's final twosome, will be sick as to who will seize the crown. And by then millions in the UK will be in a new type of desperate condition, annoyed and despairing with the endless mucking about, and quite possibly building up to a new possible movement for the full return of Boris. UK Trump returns? 

The 'good old boys' that still really run the Tories cannot imagine this sort of tricky palaver. Of course fellow Etonians, even those who provided Boris's pet name 'the Yeti, would find Trumpian activities not at all the thing. Boris has his own view. He's not interested in public school UK history - except as a background for his domination. He wants a Russian war, adoration from his supporting plebs, wealth, twinkling with top capitalists and a desperate fear of a public, social and political society. He functions because the serious worried rich are scared without him and he surely feels he can still do a Trump.    

A UK break-up close ahead

The agonising break-up of the UK is taking a further step into a trough. The pathetic Pincher affair sits in the PM's lap, but that is only the surface. Labour leader Keir Starmer has swallowed Brexit, hoping the Tory government will go for a quick election while dumping Boris, while Boris may pull an election to prove he's still able to lead. But again that is the shadow of the important UK matters. 

The real process starts with Tories who are in desperation as they review their leader and the disaster of empty food and fuel in the next months. Whatever lies and twists the Tories shout-out, the reality is more and more obvious. The government is dissolving. The example of the ridiculous Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Truss, deciding that the Ukraine will be provided with another Marshal Plan, is as fatuous as the UK's withering wealth - over the last months barely able to hold the sliding £pound. Coming from another source, Starmer is not just promising Brexit. He is trying to delay the many major strikes that are building up new directions. Really, Starmer is frightened by an early general election and terrified that the police send him back to the Law. Starmer openly thinks that Labour can only 'go to the centre' to win. In other words, to carry on more of the same. More idiocy that promises nothing of the enormous change that the UK is required to make. 

Nevertheless, the growing idea of a general election is hovering in the air. The Tories are breaking up and Labour has no serious ideas. What's next? Much depends on the strikes and strikers that Starmer wants to hide away. Meanwhile the possibility of an election will invariably show one thing. It will expose the lack of any substantial answer that the two main parties have to deal with the crisis; that is fundamentally the increasing uselessness of the UK's current Parliament. The most likely result of both the Tories and Labour's failures in the next year or so will initially create a National Government.

The standard, nervous, late and marginal politics that is running along with its failing English engine will stutter on. The dissolving UK will face hunger marches, the second modern collapse of public health and welfare, the desperate need for rations for essential food and, centre of it all, bringing down the continuing and increasing inequality. Politics will become less and less accepted as the regular histrionics in a deaf Parliament and more and more deciding, in action, for the many that need their basic needs. The search for a new real democratic politics is opening.

A new socialist movement in the West

Start with some 'socialist' fundamentals. 

The huge leftwing parties in the first half of the 20th century; the Communists led by Stalin's role in the Soviet bureaucracy; and the Social Democrats, who were constantly scared of revolution, leading instead towards efforts to link with capitalism, have both failed. In the second half of the 20th Century and the first quarter of the 21st, the mass working classes in the European west felt a deep suspicion of all these decaying parties despite even the various minor Trotskyite alternatives. The communist parties declined before the1980s and finally collapsed after the fall of the East German wall. Meanwhile the constant failures of social democracy became the desperate 'turn to middle ways', openly trying to support from mainly middle class political bases. Macron and Blair are still banging the hollow bell. Finally the remaining worker's movements had broken in the turn of the century, created by deliberate government decision in the case of the UK, leading to a rapid decline of large-scale industry in the West. The most significant working class industries were re-created by the development of nations that were defeated by the imperialist West, most significantly by China. 

The weakness of the socialist left was also undermined by the promise of Western democracy between 1914 and 1950. But the 'precious gem' of Western democracy and the parties that organised their votes, rapidly passed their peak after the full franchises were finally forced for the vote by women and trade unions. At the end of the second world war the franchise became mainly ruling class systems that were narrowed into what was 'the vote'. Instead 'democracy' was used by huge wealth to maintain the upper classes status quo avoiding all major aspects of the social system. Gradually, through world wars and a hundred years or so of the vote, the mechanisms of the West's 'democracy' is now also increasingly becoming unacceptable as a genuine advance among the majority of the new working classes in the West. The features of this are spreading and patently obvious as Berlusconi twirled his cheery stage in Italy, followed today with another clown in the UK, desperate for power and money. Fake democratic and fake political 'offers' are now presented to the new working classes. Even where the ruling class were stubbed by Brexit for example, there was no change at all of the 'ownership' of the UK and not the slightest concessions to the working class.

The old versions of socialism have broken down. But so have the means of Western democracy. Another working class is rising. In the West we are having to work out a new socialism. 

The beginnings of the new socialism in the west.

Significant risings from workers are growing in France and the UK. Several UK unions are organising for equal pay for the 10% price hike. Large and continued strikes are, de facto, assembling united actions. Serious pressure is being developed by governments against workers and vice versa, despite previous elections. Government promises were dumped after their elections in both the UK and France. 'Ensemble', the latest French parliament left combination, despite Macron's disappearing 'centre', is beginning to lead French society and challenging the right. 

Meanwhile, an enormous number of self-organised groups, attached from schools, from churches, from the streets and the local areas are directly managing the growing problem of food and heat, totally outside of government. 

The UK government and both the main parties in Parliament are facing the break-up of Britain.  There is the increasing role of the self style Welsh Labour leadership, the Scottish leadership that have decided to set up a new Scottish independence referendum and the UK Northern Irish Sinn Fein Party, elected by the NI voters, which is unable to carry on through supporting the people because the UK government is dropping its own treaties. 

Some immediate steps.

The new socialism has to first centre itself as a part of the actions of the new working class and its contexts. Those actions are the central necessities. For example, the gathering and combining of those who are supporting the unions and those working on providing food, heating, etc.  There are those who seek the support for social and medical difficulties. The more that combines - the more people will step ahead. We can build examples by pinning buttons for everyone, green with black lettering stating 'support the unions and communities'; making noise outside Number 10 with demands on party food; demanding rations across the most poverty areas and the most rich. Most significant, starting from France's 'Ensemble', socialism needs to help blocks that will be bringing together all those that act together. From there comes the new movement learning for a new society.

Socialism cannot simply reconstruct the roads of the old parties took, added with a few set of different theories, however genius, and to expect this or that leader in history that will really deliver the answers that will no longer fail. Socialism has, like the growing populace, to learn in the now, using our histories to change in the practice of the difference of now. The theory and practice of socialism with different ideas and different activity has only just begun.  

But don't be late!

The UK Secretary of State Truss has just explained why the UK should have got going earlier over the Ukraine war, and should now prepare a fight over the Chinese about Taiwan. This dangerous idiot (another minister who hasn't read, or has decided to dump the British - Chinese treaty) is the mad, half-baked leadership, declining at home and dangerous abroad, as the UK's bandit society is running itself down.

End of globalisation ... and capitalism?

Some investors that were settling in Davros Switzerland called for the distribution of windfall taxes. Why? Because social eruptions are beginning across the globe. The rich fear the instability of modern capitalism. The British Tory Members of Parliament have just sprayed £15 billion across the poor (and the rich) hoping to smother the beginnings of mass strikes and to maintain the continuation of the government itself. Across the West and the South and the East the countries, in different conditions, are rising against the effects of the end of globalisation's domination.

Economists see the demise of the three decades of the era of globalisation. 'It's going to reverse.' (Financial Times.) 'Grappling with vital (new) strategic decisions.' (Davos, World Economy Forum.)

Current political leaders blatantly see it is now that the governments are needed to hold back and cover up the overthrow of the drastic disintegration of globalisation. There are many versions of these exercises but all have the same purpose, from escalating wars, to offering older versions of apparent 'benefits' from previous histories. All of the new politics is used to turn peoples' directions away from their own, genuine, grievances that have actually arisen from the break up of global capitalism. For example Prime Minister Boris Johnson suddenly wants to use the Queen's ancient birthday to turn back metric EU measurements. Hurrah!? 

At the same time as Boris offers pints of beer in pubs there is to be a major review of all EU laws automatically kept on the statute book since Britain exited Europe. 'Brussels-made legislation will be improved or repealed if it is not to benefit the British people' booms the new future. (Government press release.) But the UK 'improvement' and its 'benefit' covers much more than beer and bananas. Along the governments list, tucked away, is the (already feeble) EU Trade Union laws. 

Boris and the UK government have been watching the postal workers strikes, the decisions for action from teachers and health and welfare workers. They are studying the enormous 'yes' union votes for strike actions. Railway workers are fighting against potential sacking of thousands, where the remaining railway workers will have their wages cut and where those that are facing pensions will be sliced up in old age. This is piling up for a massive clash with Boris's government. 

And here is the ticket. Boris is trying to use Brexit by turning the entirely legal union actions (that are already dealing with the worst labour laws in Europe) of the workers, particularly now on Railways, to smash these critical union decisions, which will affect all of the working class. The rail workers' battle is now the most critical. Here is the Boris's plan to use his version of Brexit. Boris's aim is to break all the remaining organised working class by using the removal of the EU's laws. The destruction of the remains of the unions will be smashed up by the UK taking its own way against European decisions. Boris intends to mobilise commuters, families with children at school, the public that is part of the six million or more seeking NHS requirements and many others, as the means to end what are already poor workers' legal rights.  

Already Boris and his cronies have been developing a new law to allow railway workers to continue certain work if the strike goes ahead. Already he and his ministers are considering the removal of unions among teachers replaced by 'professional' organisations. These and others will be presented as a big part of the potential success against the EU. 

Boris, who was called a new Berlusconi by EU officials and who had the doubtful pleasure of talking with him, is now desperately wanting to be a Thatcher. The wave of union votes is already raising the need of a collective, joint-action, which could provide the only means to prevent the intended new, crushing Thatcherite block of the current government and instead allow the reality to open out of its real conditions of and for the vast majority of a despairing society.  

These are some of the political mechanisms, particularly in the West, that are being used as the fundamental issues, pushing away the key questions of the dissolving of capitalist globalisation and the creation of new alternatives. Already the Trumps, the Bolsonaros, the Orbans, the Dudas, the Putins etc, respond entirely by using brutal force to deal with the crises through those who show any opposition to them. Other political actors, from Biden to Macron, spend their time insisting on the return of the 2000's, while trying to find means that might save time by a temporarily diverted society. 

But society cannot avoid the pretence that the previous 'success' of globalisation is collapsing by the day. Not one of the current political leaderships, whether initially subtle or openly violent, inevitably fiddle with the only perspectives that they really have; splitting up their 'dangerous' working classes and its allies and / or going to war. 

The real and possible response? Action for truth. Stop, or prepare to stop, wars resulting from the dying capitalist state competitions - as with the Russian/NATO proxy battle. Retrieve decided proportions of profit to the needy. Re-establish rations once more, starting with heat and food. Wages should rise at least with inflation. Creating direct public votes for key decisions. Starting a new peoples' society increases the rights of those who face drastic decline. Introduce the increasing power of the vast majority. Hidden change created by backward politics and politicians that pretend that they will give us an apparently previous status quo, has to be swept away, in favour of the new practical political reality.

Brian Heron

Ukraine; tragedy and farce.

The tragedy; the NATO proxy war between the Ukraine and Russia is creating swathes of the dead and dying, which, at worse, is pushing the eventual road to a possible nuclear death. And at its 'best' NATO will create yet another total collapse of Russia, the largest country in the world, as a result of a hollow, western 'victory'. The farce; well, just look at Boris and his clowns all firing away behind his own British type NATO called JEF. It was built after eight years of UK pressure. Boris is now apparently the leader of the 'anti-Russia coalition', and now has just overthrown seventy years of neutrality in Sweden and Finland. 

NATO has swollen drastically since the East German wall fell. The Russian leaders, including Gorbachev, agreed that the wall and East Germany would not be over-run, so long as NATO, then with 12 members, did not move across eastern and northern Europe. What happened? NATO rolled eastward and now northward and at present has 30 members. The new honour of Britain's JEFF will add 2 more. Britain's public-school gurus have always wanted a medium type war since the banking crisis of 2008 as a result of the utter military failures of the UK in the Middle East. A serious diversion is also called for in order to cover up the UK's increasing failure in their economy and between its increasingly separate nations.

The good old BBC offers daily summaries about the various results of the battles in the Ukraine. The corporation is careful to make it clear that the BBC cannot exactly offer a fully true description of the military movements, their 'successes' or their 'failures'. From time to time various speculations emerge about the wider canvass and huge considerations bubble up. These bubbles, like the 'withdrawn' of Putin in his speech on May 9 victory parade, when his war planes did not fly because of the rain, was an example. It caused a plethora of commentator sensations. Before the destruction of Mariupol, Ukraine was right, said the western pundits. Ukraine was going to win! Then the battle of Mariupol was over and those creeping but progressing Russians were going to make it a matter of years. Then some BBC 'experts' discovered that the Russians were 8% down on their economy but the Ukraine was 30 to 50% down. (The UK is on 9% inflation.) Oh no! More quick calculations discovered that for Ukraine's recovery it would require much more than the Marshall plan that the US re-built for Germany in 1945 - 8! A new hesitant wave in the West is now speculating about a possible truce.  

Boris's farce continues. He has his war and another battle with the EU. He desperately hopes that the war and the EU clatter will be enough to grab the next General Election. The real crisis in Britain is the shocking collapse of wages, of the millions that are now one and a half percent more declining than the pressure on the wealthy, of the collapsing health and welfare systems and of the mass poverty and hunger. 

The breakup of capitalist globalisation.

Recently President Biden asked the Saudis to open up more OPEC oil in order to reduce the staggering costs of fuel in the West and to reduce the role of the particular horde owned by Russia. Mohamed bin Salman, Saudi's Crown Prince (and known as the murderer of journalist Jamil Khashoggi) refused point blank. He is close to Jared Kushner, Trump's son in law. Notwithstanding Jared's lack of experience he has just recently invested $2 billion in his new investment firm. All of course incidental. And all another  small part of the increasing mangling of the greatest proposition of modern capitalism; that of globalisation.   

The collapse of globalisation and its results have been with us before Covid. But Covid and now an east-west war have rapidly increased the coming capitalist break up. Shell has just reported their largest quarter profit ever; $9 billion. BP, Shell bosses etc., are all hugely delighted. But they are also all frightened -  between the clink of champaign glasses and the scary future. For example BP has said that they were aching to offer a windfall tax! The British Tory government declined, so far stating that these companies are going to need their super pile for worthy investment when the oil runs out. Meanwhile Shell needs to increase their pile saying that it will be used as a windfall to buy back company shares, which will increase their company's stock. They are laughing but they smell a crash to come. We are no longer in the great, worldwide, constant, global miracle. Capitalism has always collapsed in its centuries of domination. But this time, after every means that have been used, a global economic catastrophe is the worst so far. And this particular collapse is already being threatened with nukes.

Look around. The 10 leading shipping lines in the world are in profit in 2021 to the record of $120 billion; the highest profits in 117 years. That is in Covid times. In February 2022, the 'investment monitor' tells us that 'the constraining supply and pushing prices up' and globalisation as we know it is gradually on the retreat and 'US-Chinese-trade tensions (are) rising levels of protectionism everywhere.' Shipping, the most important mechanism of globalisation, unstuck up to now from any particular country or tax, is declining fast.

Do you like bread? Global food crises are erupting. Tom Stevenson in the LRB explains the coming catastrophe. Just in case, as is often described by scared politicians, it was all Covid causing these crises. But it is just not so. While Ukraine and Russia account for huge parts of the export of grain, particularly Sudan, which in this case will double its acute hunger to 18 million in the next couple of months, more generally the Food, Agriculture Organisation states that the war 'revealed the fragility of the dominant global food system.' Egypt, Lebanon, Syria etc etc, are facing starvation in the millions. The World Food Program tells us 'an unparalleled global hunger crisis' is ahead.' Stevenson states 'an important part of the story has to do with the movements of poorly regulated commodities markets, dominated ... by a handful of financial institutions and corporations. Investor speculation drove the price of food out of the reach of most of the world's poor during the economic crisis of 2008.'  

Does any thinking person, somebody not already yet crushed by war and starvation, avoid the conditions to come? The portents are with us all. Of course 'nicer' leaders than Trump, or his extremely unpleasant echoes, can be found in abundance, but what are we understanding? The old 'nice' leaders have already failed. They failed because their decades of the status quo has failed. The leaders that have insisted on the status quo cannot believe that their domination cannot, anymore, set themselves in the history of Western capitalism because its history has gone and Jared Kushner grabs the wealth. It is particularly in the shrinking west, that the traditional leaderships have been creating their own downfall. 

There are now two roads in the current life of today's capitalism. China's The Belt and Road Initiative is a global infrastructure strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 70 countries and international organisations. A third of it has already been broken up by corruption. But the two great movements through Africa and the East, led by China, is an effective construction against the West's imperialist long histories. China, using their $ trillions-plus to create a Chinese led, state capitalism, development, strikes a new and positive capitalist turn in low and medium developed countries. The US, of a Biden or a Trump type basis will ultimately go to war to prevent China's new empire against US hegemony. 

The second path of late capitalism has already partly started. Centred in the crucible of the West, a thorough and essential destruction of all the social benefits in society is the only means of revivifying a new capitalism's increasing progress in respect of the ruling classes and their police, army etc.. Again, as with the China proposal, the result will be war, but internal of the sort that Trump began in his fight for the 'States'. Capitalism will not, despite the mechanical theorists that see inevitable stages that draw definitive lines in history, simply fade away. But its future is now much more limited in its possibilities.

The alternative? The second wave of socialism. Is there any other holistic alternative that is based on human needs and the right of self organisation, on the collective requirement of all equals, the control of all human discovery and a planet supported for life?    

    

From austerity to revolt

Friday, 29 April 2022

From austerity to revolt

Keir Starmer, the UK Labour leader, has recently said that, 'People don't want a revolution. They do want how I am going to pay my energy bill.' Sorry for your clunky speech Sir Starmer. Here is the clearer reality. A lot of people want to use energy, yes, and they are considering that they will need to do it by a revolution. 

Natural gas costs 20 times higher than the lowest point of the pandemic; a third more than January 2022. The government has lifted energy companies costs from 54% - using tax. But fuel bills are increasing another £700 per 6 months starting in October. Energy companies made £7 billion profits in the last 5 years. Time to open up a general wealth tax and the nationalisation of energy.

Apples are going up by 25%; Milk by 7%, Margarine 31%. Fertiliser is rising from £280 to £1000 per ton.  Guess what happens to crops. 

Meanwhile incomes are falling; so far by 2.2%; the steepest fall since records began. And that is today. 

Universal Credit is cut by £20. Meanwhile inflation is rising towards 8%. Households £1100 worse off and rising. Average annual spend on groceries is now more than £1300 per person. Those in the poverty line faced their food budget being wiped out. Additional 1.3 million people, including the additional half a million kids, are tipped into current poverty. We are now, this moment already, 60% below the median. 

And Britain is dropping alongside its neighbours? So the UK can feel bearable? The Food Foundation in 2017, compared with the EU, discovered that Britain has the highest proportions of children 'living in a severely food insecure household'. (And in 2020, 2500 kids were admitted to Hospital with malnutrition, twice as many as in the year before.)  

Billionaire Chancellor Sunak jollied with the press when they asked him what loaf he had in his family. His household has lots of loaves, he said.

Prime Minister Boris told the British people when he won the General Election in 2019 that the previous ten year austerity had been swept away. In fact a desperately worse austerity appears that it is here to stay in the UK, magnified this time by the whole general West's rapid decline. Traditional politics is beginning to shatter and has already broken down in the Western margins. Globalisation has lost its dynamic. Modern capitalism is depending on a decreasing US financial hordes and providing billionaire wealth rather than unacceptable, long term, would-be dodgy, investment. World wars are beginning and climate crises, despite heroic individual efforts, are going backward.

Looking at the overall West's picture, Sir Starmer's view of the world seems timid indeed. In reality this UK's Labour's Lord has already failed and is certain to hang-on to the more and more decrepit status quo than any change of a new society. He is much more frightened of any new revolution, much more than he worries that he won't replace Boris in the good old style.     

What would be a change; a new, developed, democratic, socialist revolution? 

In 2017 Labour leader Corbyn, following the largest Labour vote for decades, nearly won a radical program of reform which might have been a significant platform that could have prepared to win against the current crisis. Corbyn's failure over Brexit, by then focussed on its democratic demand and not led through racism, broke the potential social democratic left. Nevertheless, despite the most vicious attack on Corbyn, mostly led by Labour leaders, 10 million still voted for his program. If this huge population, (despite the 13 million that voted Boris) had been encouraged to have remained an active movement - with Corbyn's principles - then a real opening for a socialist change could well have taken the lead in society in today's increasingly desperate conditions. 

Alas, even Corbyn's social democracy is not socialist revolution. But the current conditions and the memory of the ideas of radical changes in the recent past can still play a part in a new turn towards genuine revolutionary conditions. 

How can that be?

The new thing across the West - and most apparent in the breaking up of the UK - is not only the shift of the anger at the wealthy self-serving, lying, 'democracy', it is the awkward day to day life that constantly irritates and causes annoying trouble. Everybody knows the big picture of increasing wealth and its connection with increasing poverty. Some imagine and hope that this will 'pass away.' But the unexpected things and the dangerous things constantly prick the failing government and the real problems in society. 

Passports don't work and planes don't fly. GPs are unavailable (and the UK is the lowest across all of the main European countries.) Potholes are opening and education is declining and closing. (Again, education is dropping compared with Europe in general.) The railways don't work and they cost a fortune when they do get going (like everything else.) You can't pay for your dog food. Your drive to work is more than half of your wages. You've decided not to go to Uni because you are going to pay for it, if necessary for the rest of your life. And yet the rich and the corporations still get richer and richer. Chucking out Boris is far and away not enough. Sir Starmer doesn't do much better. This is the beginning of the breakdown of a society - of many societies - still dominated by rulers who maintain relentless wealth.  

In these conditions new battles are already emerging. In the UK there are dozens and dozens of workplaces that are striking. Many of them are winning. (See News From the Frontline.) Nationalisation is becoming a deeply sensible response to private money grabbing - especially among the services, utilities and banks; and most significant is the new ideas and demands that are arising, aiming to 'sort out' the UK's ridiculous Parliament.

The 'mother of all Parliaments' is simply the most ridiculous 'democracy' in the world. The Lords who are solely chosen by Prime Ministers, and as is well known, they are the largest part of any Parliament in the world, except the Chinese Communist Party's annual conference. From time to time waves of corruption causes the notion that the Lords must go. Except they never do. The two main parties, Tory and Labour, are just as linked to these corruptions. Except, in the last few years, because Tory and Labour leaders are becoming more and more versions of the autocrats like Trump, Orban and Duda, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party and the Greens have begun to demand deep and wide changes. And, in the despair of Southern Ireland's ancient parties, a new democracy has erupted, which shows how ordinary people can decide the answers to key questions and the real democracy has begun.  

But there is a status quo in the UK and the West in general. It has worried about its regal, centuries, place.  There is no question that the current decaying politics will use every resource that they already hold to prevent the rise of a new root and branch for a new economy and a real democracy. The revolution will come out of the battles by ordinary people, who, as they push and then they battle for their rights, will start for the prospects of their future. The sooner the better it is vital to make that clear.

For that reason; the reason for the power needed for a real revolution, following France, a radical UK needs now to build a bloc. Melenchon recently led the left to a degree that it could lead the major part of French society in the direction of change, similar to the needs of the UK. The new French Popular Front is a proposal for a combined left; for wages and genuine social care; for the fight for ecology, for women, for people of colour and support for immigration; for a new socialist society. (It has nothing to do with the Popular Front of the 30s, which believed that fascism would be defeated if capitalism came in together. Fat chance!)  

Previous blogs in the past have theoretically suggested, after 10 million voted for Corbyn, that it would be possible to build such a step. The UK's servant, that bows to one of the worst Parliaments in the world, stopped dead the possibilities of a powerful left, and the millions were dumped. Now the results are so much more obvious. There is the possibility of a new leadership in society. Now it is not theoretical. 

Posted by Brian Heron at 17:22 

Labels: Chance for revolution?, Parliament is over?, What's next in politics?

The breakdown of the West and a new socialism

The destruction of the Ukraine, broken up by Russia's Czar-Putin, now in a battle with the previously sleepy, creepy NATO, is the fresh signal of the end of the Western's global monopoly. Germany is arming. NATO is expanding all over Europe (again) and the US/Biden has told us it's genocide. What is true is that tens of thousands have been killed. What is also true that the Yemen or even Syria have been faced with and are still facing, slaughter or 'genocide, but with faces of colour'. Regardless of the disgusting response of these particular unconsidered 'genocides', the military convulsion in and with the West remains a shift of the West's future. The core of the West is rotten, frightened and getting armed up. Putin smelt it first.  

We can return to this after some thoughts about the past and future of the meaning of socialism. 

V. I. Lenin spent his final thoughts focussed on three main items. The first was the developing success of state capitalism in Soviet Russia - particularly the new, partial ownership, of the land, of light industry and, in his own words, more in hope than any immediate success, the heavy industry yet to come. The New Economic Policy, or NEP nevertheless had born fruits from 1921 onwards. It started after the years of wars and famine. Capitalist initiatives, allowing profit and partial-shared ownership, drove the economic engine of the new, desperate, yet to be achieved, socialist economy.  

Lenin placed the NEP at the centre of his final speeches to the fourth congress of the Communist International and the Plenary Session of the Moscow Soviet. Lenin told his followers,'True, the sum have obtained so far barely exceeds twenty-million gold rubles; but, at any rate, the sum is available and it is earmarked exclusively for the purpose of reviving our heavy industry.'

After Lenin's increasing decline of his health, his notes still made the central role of NEP's future, but different concerns then emerged. He made a series of attacks on the revolutionary Russia's new state. 'We must strive to build up a state in which the workers retain the leadership of the peasants, in which they retain the confidence of the peasants ... and by exercising the greatest economy, remove every trace of extravagance from our social relations.' 'We must reduce our state apparatus to the utmost degree... We must banish for it all the traces of extravagance, of which so much has been left over from the tsarist Russia, from its bureaucratic capitalist state machine.' 'Only by thoroughly purging our government machine, by reducing to the utmost everything that is not absolutely essential in it shall we be certain of being able to keep going.' 'The most harmful thing would be to rely on the assumption that we know at least something ... for the building of a really new state apparatus, one really worthy to be called socialist, Soviet, etc. No, we are ridiculously deficient of such an apparatus, and even of the elements of it ...'

Then, thirdly, there was Lenin's focus on the Soviet Russian Communist Party and of the fate of  communism's future in general. 

It is well known that Lenin seriously criticised Stalin's leading secretary role and preferred Trotsky. The notes were written under Lenin's increasing alarm that the Russian CP might split. (And Lenin's words on this were released in 1956.) Lenin's comments on Stalin had a much wider aspect than simply preferring Trotsky. More historically significant, Lenin was insistent over two requirements that for him were crucial for any hope for genuine socialism in Russia's future. First because socialism, a socialist state, had not yet developed in Soviet Russia it required new, deep, reforms, even potential further revolutions. Overcoming (at least in part) the current weaknesses of the state and party meant the need for a Workers and Peasants Inspection. This would supposedly have the highest role (over both party and state) building a proper State and reforming the Party. But WPI was playing no such role. The actual politics of a vast, sprawling state apparatus was increasingly dominated by the party secretary Stalin - as Lenin himself discovered. 

Associated with Lenin's call for the WPI was his demand that the Party organisation should now be opened and expanded. Contrary, there should be the reduction of the constant bureaucratic expansion of the State. The increased numbers with different experiences in the Party membership and its wider leadership would thereby be learning how a socialist state might properly develop. And larger numbers would also be more likely to prevent any single Party domination, that centralised particular cliques clashing for possible total power over all. To that event, the widening of the Communist Party, the power that was supposed to be allowed to the WPI, also allowed Lenin to be calling for the Communist Party to be amalgamated with the Soviets, implying, in effect in necessary, the combination of an alternative State with a wider alternative regime  

Finally was his last essay that Lenin wrote over the future of communism. 

Being Lenin, his approach was absolutely concrete at the same time as his astonishing analysis of global trends. His view was that the defeat of Germany, resulting from the first war that covered most of the whole world, ultimately threw back the West's social and economic apparent victory against Germany. It was the German defeat in its widest sense that began to break the West's imperialism and the possibilities that could build socialism if not in Germany but primarily in the underdeveloped countries.

The failure of socialism in the West in the early 1920s was centred by socialism's defeat in the most developed country, Germany. This requires major consideration itself. But for the purpose of this article, the point of Lenin's view was that his understanding that a successful revolution after 1922 was now most likely to be dominated by the fight with a weaker Western imperialism rather than the main capitalist countries themselves, thereby creating the new revolutions from the underdeveloped nations. This was the combined and uneven process, they faced much more difficulty developing a new socialism compared with developed countries. Initiatives such as NEP and the particular character of politics, alongside an underdeveloped economy, required a completely different, complex, character which pushed for a type of socialism, similar to the early USSR. 

The new 20th century led by Czar Stalin had other ideas. He decided by 1928/9 that China would be immensely better for the right wing anti-socialist Kuomingtan to win China from their Royalty. Stalin argued for clear stages (except for Russia) and offered a lot of support accordingly. Lenin's view of those fighting revolution to defeat imperialism was exactly the opposite. The fight against imperialism was the new reality of socialist possibilities. However with Lenin away, Stalin followed his ideas. The Kuomingtan wiped out the socialists in the Chinese cities and were defeated by China's Royalty. 

Stalin's real role, which essentially succeeded from 1925 to 28, was the overthrow of the Russian revolution itself, let alone the spread of a genuine socialist society. The Stalinist counter Russian revolution was the spread and defined victory of the solid, untouchable bureaucratic State, combined with Stalin's mass murders and his gulag slavery. 

Lenin once said that socialist revolution for under-developed nations would be relatively easy to win but it would be desperately hard to establish the socialism that was meant to follow; and vice versa. Lenin himself considered the daily realities of Soviet Russia, the 1917 revolution and did not believe that the Soviet Russian Revolution had resulted in any sense a socialist society. Particularly in the case of the Russian State. He defined it, in 1922 and 3 as opposed to socialism in its bureaucratic, 'capitalist' nature. His fears of his understanding were rapidly confirmed. 

Conditions for socialism today?

Turning to the prospects of socialism; Western imperialism continues to decline mainly through its failure of imperialism. But the 20th century, would-be socialisms have also failed as an alternative - to western capitalism and, increasingly in the 21st century, to the other Continents. The Soviet Union destroyed itself by 1928. As a socialist society and as the chances of socialism that Lenin began to open up and that Trotsky tried to develop, were smashed by the Stalin Party/State. Stalin played no real socialism except the new Czar's insisting on the name. 

On the other hand the defeats over Western imperialism and the successes of some revolutions have highly developed China, Vietnam and partially Cuba etc.  Those mentioned present themselves as socialist but, with the partial exception of Cuba, are, in reality, bureaucratic state capitalist countries. Those traditional countries, now modern states, are dominated by a Party that is organically attached to State politics, which prevents any possibility of providing the leadership of society, that could be led by the majority of working class and peasants. State capitalism has become the engine of development.

The expansion of state capitalism is the main consequence of successful revolutions (if not socialist societies) and the defeats, partial and total, of Western imperialism. The enormous progress of the use of state capitalist type nations certainly defined a genuine great leap forward in their development. (Mao's 'great leap forward' that ultimately killed millions in the 1950s and 60s and achieved only poison until the later Chinese leadership turned to the use of organised state capitalism.) But, again, these forward movements of state capitalism, developed out of Western imperialism, still did not create an alternative society led by and in charge of the large majority working class.   

Social democratic type western 'socialisms' have also collapsed in the large majority in Western Europe. No western living socialism, despite titles, provides any actual, genuine socialist success in the West.  As the revolutions in the 1960s and 70s that were being fought in countries battling with imperialism and that seemed to succeed, had wide support from youth in the West. But, as the effects of the post revolutions were revealed, they were nevertheless largely rejected in the West as models for their own societies. 

We are however at a potential new road. As the West declines more each year and its inequality and poverty increases, so a new large-scale, mass-action potentially rises. It carries a serious potential and social reaction larger than the major crises in capitalism in the 1930s. Something huge will have to cover the new space.

As western imperialism hollows out, the failure to totally dominate the globe evokes new, marginal class leaders that are opening new tests in society, sometimes both militarily and economically. These are using the crises of western imperialism to provoke problems of the people because the traditional political and economic rulers were still trying to suggest that all that was remains fine, while the West gets worse. The growing scattered employment, of the self-paid workers, of the unemployed and over-employed, can hear a voice in that new leadership. It creates a version of an apparent success in a ritual past, based on a crooked notion of security and the danger of different peoples and centred on the sovereignty of nationalism. In a nutshell, this coming rock-solid cloud across the West favours what was believed to be the gains of the traditional imperialism, now somehow blown away by the rise of the newly developed nations.   

The significant importance of this theme in the West is not so much the likelyhood of a vast change of the working-class deciding for fascism, it is a new leadership that offers an untrue past in order to run a society installed above the people and for permanent pretence of a would-be security. It is another sign that the previous socialism no longer offers a different society and that there is an enormous hole in the future. 

New socialism?

The failing and insecure sections in western society show the stark reality that there is no other type of society or civilisation available, other than a decaying and increasingly dangerous capitalism.  Traditional versions of so called socialism have become unaccepted, or impossible, or an historic failure. Yet no other genuine system of societies applies. 

Socialism in the West will have to change. The current context reveals the direct opposite of traditional notions of western security. A large part of western nations, and probably a majority of the young, already do not accept current futures as they have been rolling out from their past leaders. The capitalist, Tzar-led Russia has demonstrated the West's future in his battle at the weak margin of NATO and which grabs the Ukraine's coal and oil, duly named a wider Russia. Small wars in marginal countries will follow. 

Meanwhile the US is close to political chaos, despite its slogans and dollars sent to Ukraine. Biden's desperate goal is to keep the Russia war on as far as he can, while he can try to break up the Republican Party (and Trump's Russian friend) that are heading for States and race wars at home. Connected in the background is the international fight about nukes that are starting again, more dangerous than ever. More of the new raft of the holocausts are surfacing in human society.

Ecological activity is equally deadly and immense, and closer, increasing as studies and events show the coming destruction on the planet and the particular, global responses to the mass movement across the earth. The western people will very soon face the centre of that movement. 

The West is now facing a drastic drop of money and resources especially among the lowest classes and simultaneously aware of the continuing rise of the wealthy. Millions are aware of what is an international failure of capitalism. This is a battle that will inevitably be fought socially, politically and on the streets.  

Who and what is socialist?

Lenin had to see imperialist owned, underdeveloped nations as the possible future for revolutions, given the failure of Germany (and other developed nations) after WW1. Now we see the breaking-up of the developed, but decaying imperialist nations, under the condition of wars, external and internal, facing nukes and climate disaster, and poverty, much of which can and will destroy humanity. The new socialism (the only alternative to any coherent system) has to fight in every pocket of possibility and their struggles, but understanding the global background that defines the international aspect of our lives. Socialism is the defence against our present systems, against the background grinding our lives with a vile capitalism and that transfigures the systems and the ordinary people who now change our lives.

Young people in the West are huge in numbers in the respect of interest in internationalism, of global activity and hostile to war in general. The working classes and all those in poverty will see the word capitalism now as the critical end for change. The creation to build vast movements that join up together into a current charter, underlining the great and common changes that are needed to live and to build a new way. 

And how does that happen? We need the main focus on the real dangers, a different democracy now, right away, wherever we can set it up, and new different states in a new international. How can this be organised? When we make action. When we throw down the classes who rule and the racists and sexists are fought to a finish. When we organise to discuss at doors, build our way to speak and question in the crowd, act on the beginnings of collective chosen decisions and present and work on real democracy, the peoples decisions here and now and the connections across the nations. Action and movement needed now to let people see what can be what is next in the world.