Keep It Dense, Keep It Futile, Yeah?

Given that we're about to embark on yet another round of quantitative easing combined with austerity, which has not for the past four times it's been tried, I thought it might be pertinent to talk about something which is rarely mentioned. First, though, I want to clear something up and I'm afraid that this is a rather boring economics post. The Pandemic is touted by many as being an instigator of a capitalist crisis. I don't believe this is the case and I can't honestly see how a socialist economy would have economically fared much better bar being better prepared and more liberal with spending on healthcare and safety. The UK governments have for once been pretty good economically but heinously shit with regards to everything else. However, this is beside the point. The point I'm making is that it wasn't an internal contradiction of capitalism that triggered the crisis. An internal contradiction is the only way by which a crisis of capitalism is triggered....

Although it was amazing to watch the tearing down of Colston's statue during the midst of a Black Lives Matter protest, something which should be historically significant, I can't help but feel that a lot of local councils and corporations are now being disingenuous about the issue. Council's are now suddenly saying that they will take down some of the more contentious statues, and streaming and broadcast services are removing literally anything that could be even remotely construed as racially offensive. Many people had been lobbying their local councils for the removal of the more contentious statues for quite some time, but almost no-one had been arguing for the removal of Gone With The Wind or The Mighty Boosh. It's all performative and vacuous and to appropriate right-wing terminology, it’s virtue-signalling. It's obvious that councils and other polities are trying to protect themselves and appear virtuous, it's obvious that Netflix et al are trying to prot...

Almost everyone in any well developed and industrialised nation is familiar with the concept of parliamentary party democracy, a system whereby you vote to elect a local candidate from your preferred political party to sit in parliament as a representative of your constituency every five years or so. Some countries do this a little differently, the US for example, but the basic concept is the same. In most countries with this system, a handful of political parties become minor players in the system whilst two dominate. Vote counting systems play a major role in the formation of parliaments, such as first past the post (FPTP) which often results in a two-party system whilst variants of proportional representation (PR) often result in parliamentary coalitions of minor parties which form a government. Although the party or parties in power might change each election cycle, the limitations of liberal democracy itself play a huge role in who can come to power and what they can do whilst in ...

I'd just like to make clear this blog's stance on freedom of speech. I do this with full awareness that I may be contradicting positions I may have held in older posts but I do so with the understanding that we all grow, change and shift our positions as we become better acquainted with them through our examined experience of them. Detractors may say I'm being hypocritical, I say I've at least learnt something. First off, it's an unfortunate consequence of the natural intersection of politics and class that some working class people may ally themselves with fascism, conservatism or even just plain capitalism. As socialists we must realise that we hold no special monopoly on the working class and that it'd be arrogant to presume to do so. Ultimately, the struggle for freedom of speech comes down to the same class antagonisms that have existed for centuries - a monopoly of control by the bourgeoisie against the working peoples. I fully believe in the right to free...

In the article linked below is an open letter from multiple UK manufacturers of PPE to the government https://medium.com/@change.orgUK/open-letter-to-uk-government-do-you-want-our-ppe-or-not-fce832e6e37a In England, most goods are bulk-purchased centrally and distributed to providers by NHS Supply Chain, which was established in 2016. Previously most goods were bought locally by hospitals and other health providers, but a government review found large inefficiencies as organisations paid variable prices for the same product.  However, the source market for these goods are often sourced from international markets, national and local suppliers are ignored. So much for our patriotic, UK business loving Tory government, right?  The Institute for Government has identified several issues with procurement as it currently operates: The UK’s national pandemic stockpile was designed to respond to an outbreak of pandemic influenza (a less infectious and virulent disease), but it was not...

Linked below is an article that is honestly and genuinely heartbreaking to read. Within it are the stories of some of the hard working people who lost their lives in a single day to Covid-19. Please read the article first before carrying on here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52463735 These are real, everyday people. They cared, they got angry, they loved and they cried. They were mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, and everything else. They were cleaners, nurses, doctors, carers, community leaders and tragically even mothers to be. They might have been Tory voters, UKippers, socialists, communists, anarchists liberals or anything in between - a countless and diverse intersectional array of all aspects of life. They were all just like you and I, in many ways. Yet they've all been subjected to the grotesque, unsubstantiated and unscientific whims of a party with a leader who has a head full of vain-glorious dreck and a cabinet with a disturbing lack of a conscience, som...

I recently had some conversations with proponents of capitalism regarding the meaning of economics and rather than engage in thoughtful processes of discussion and inquiry, they found it necessary to fling around anti-socialist dogma and doubled down on almost sociopathic concepts of economy. Typically when talking with so-called pro-capitalists, instead of engaging in good faith and inquiry, they’ll point at the USSR or Cuba etc. and sneer the usual banal dogma about how they had breadlines, or that they’re “dictatorships”, as if that somehow constitutes not only an argument, but also a full resolution of, or petty dismissal of the problems we socialists seek to address — the contradictions of capitalism. It’s childishly tedious and easily rebutted if you have the patience of a saint and aren’t dealing with the proverbial chess playing pigeon. I’ve digressed here already, so from here on I’ll refrain from further venting of my frustration. Although I couldn’t get a comprehensible ...