by Peter Allen
Following the success of the Convention of The Left , and given the urgency of the moment, I think it is essential that we formulate a coherent response to the actual and growing crisis of capitalism. I think it should not be beyond the recall event on Nov 29th to produce a statement around which we could all unite. We might call it an emergency programme. If we are to achieve this though we need to start discussion and debate now, on this blog and elsewhere.
Emergency Programme
The capitalist system is in crisis and is reliant on financial handouts from the government. The financial deregulation that began in the mid seventies, with Labour in power, accelerated under Thatcher and Major, and continued under New Labour, has run it's brutal course.
If capitalism requires huge amounts of taxpayers money to bail it out then it is reasonable for taxpayers to make some demands of capitalism. There is an opportunity for socialists to get a hearing, and a responsibility for us to formulate a series of practical, reasonable and realisable set of proposals, which will try and tame the beast, and in doing so will help build a movement ultimately capable of killing it. The following is offered as a contribution to a debate about the nature of the programme we need to formulate.
Fuel Poverty
Reduction of gas and electricity prices to January 2008 prices and freezing prices at that level. Commitment to nationalise all utility companies (including water companies) during 2009 to enable proper planning of energy use to be achieved, removing the profit motive from this essential service and prioritising energy and water conservation measures and the replacement of fossil fuel burning with the use of renewables.
Housing Crisis
An immediate ban on all repossessions until measures are in place to allow homeowners to extend the terms of their mortgages, receive immediate help with mortgage costs in the event of unemployment or to have the option of becoming secure tenants of social landlords without the need to move out of their homes. Councils to be given immediate powers and sufficient resources to build,renovate or purchase sufficient homes for all their residents, working in conjunction with other registered social landlords. The right to housing to be recognised as a universal right, equivalent to the right to education and healthcare.
Unemployment Benefits
An immediate increase in the basic allowance paid to single people or couples who are unable to work due to sickness or caring responsibilities or are unable to find employment. This basic allowance should be increased to reflect increases in average earnings since 1997.
The above to be paid for by increased taxation of the wealthy and a reduction in military spending involving the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
6 comments:
Very soft, very soft indeed. I think we need to go a lot further, and unity cannot be formed on an action programme, it has to be on a socialist programme which takes up the immediate tasks we face alongside our more general tasks over the next period.
Things have definitely got bitter
Half hour watching TV since the £400 Billion gift yesterday.
-60 local authorites 'lost'£100-m+in Iceland banks
-Barclay's capital to buy a lump of Lehman brothers. Diamond last year had his bonus severly cut from £22m to £21m.
Problem is people will switch off as I did. Need to explain the real causes very soon.
Thanks redfront - any idea what you actually mean by that? It sounds like the same stuff the left have been saying for years - with very few peope listening.
I'm genuinely interested in what the step by step activities actually are when you refer to 'immediate tasks' and 'general tasks'.
What are they? Who does them? How do you win them? Being 'hard' is no substitute for a real strategy. So let's discuss that rather than timeless rhetoric.
Whilst few socialists would actively disagree with anything in this programme, it was said at the convention that there are at least four 'ten point lists' of demands out there already. Assembling a list is fairly straightforward. What is important is how that process and the resulting programme is used to build the movement.
If a broad alliance of organisations sign up to a joint 'emergency programme' then it might mean something. If it only comes from the recall conference without a commitment for existing groups to fight for its adoption in the wider movement it will mean little.
What Pete says is spot on, of course it is important to get some good points but they need to arise not from the minds of a few but from a real process involving people across the movements.
Perhaps a roll for the proposed left forums would be to develop this?
Capitalism is the economic system in which the means of production are owned by private persons, and operated for profit and where investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are predominantly determined through the operation of a free market.
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Adam
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