Why I started Literate Business as a place to challenge neoliberal propaganda

The undermining of Jeremy Corbyn by right wing and neoliberal elements within the Labour Party has its roots in the 2015 election. Not so much in the result itself but in the disastrous mixed messages of the campaign and then in the completely ass-backward way in which the result was interpreted.

In the aftermath of the previous UK general election in 2010 I decided to start learning enough economics and political history to let me cut through the lies of the Tory claims that austerity was now necessary.

Firstly, I wanted to understand why austerity appeared to mean slashing welfare while maintaining privileges and wealth for the rich and the corporations and the very bankers whose actions had caused the financial crisis that was the excuse for this attack on the weakest in our societies.

Secondly, I wanted to understand why the Labour Party had not called out the Tories — and the media — for their lies about the cause of the crisis and were now also seemingly committed to policies of austerity themselves. (It has been through my reading that I have uncovered the connection between this apparently absurd state of affairs and the attempts to subvert the message of hope brought by Corbyn and his supporters.)

And thirdly, I was keen to understand why so many people appear to believe the Tories are ‘a safe pair of hands’ when it comes to the economy when their policies undermined recovery, sold off national assets to foreign companies and foreign governments, and significantly increased the size of the national debt while claiming austerity — and widespread privatisation — was the only possible solution.

This was the background for Literate Business. I wanted to have somewhere to write about what I was learning. Unfortunately, it has taken me a long time to read what I needed to read and an even longer time to learn what I needed to learn, thanks to the restrictions on mental agility that come with age. Add to that the time it has taken me to become confident enough to discuss what I have learned and I’m running a few years behind schedule!

But the key thing is that everything I have read has simply reinforced what I sensed back in 2010 and 2011; that to ravage the welfare state and the public sector in the name of saving money was not only unnecessary but both counter-productive and, more importantly, driven by ideology rather than economics. (The fact that a great number of economists in the academy — rather than those entrenched within the financial sector — made this point at the time is indicative of the whole “we don’t need experts” approach of the Tories.)

And where was the Labour Party while this was happening? For the most part, they were keeping quiet, if not actually voting along with the coalition government. At best, they might abstain in some of the votes that would lead to the most punishing — to the underprivileged — policies.

When the election of 2015 came around, the Labour Party presented no real alternative to the Tories. After five years of coalition rule, despair led to (temporary) electoral apathy and protest and the Tories sneaked home — on a low percentage — as the Lib Dems collapsed. (It is worth noting how the Lib Dems were severely punished for their link up with the Tories and yet the majority of Labour MPs now believe that mimicking Tory policies is the way to win back power.)

So Labour’s right wing believed they had lost the election because the manifesto had been too left wing. In fact, it had simply had no wings; it couldn’t fly.

We were treated to a new leadership election and, in an upset akin to Leicester City’s capturing of the English Premier League, all Labour’s candidates for maintaining the status quo were well defeated and Jeremy Corbyn was elected. It was a victory for hope as well as proof that more and more people were finally realising that neoliberal economics were not going to lead to a better life for the majority.

I would suggest that this ability to finally see through the media lies when it comes to reporting economics and a state that promotes corporate welfare ahead that of its citizens is also why a majority voted to leave the EU.

I am old enough to remember life before Thatcher and the start of the neoliberal project so ably continued by Blair. I didn’t know the term neoliberal, however, until I started to read about the subject.

I’ll leave a list of my reading for another time but I started with Ill Fares The Land by Tony Judt, which, written in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, is a wonderful summary of what we have lost in the UK in the years between the establishment of the welfare state in the shadow of WWII and 2010. The shorthand version is that we have moved from a society that put a high premium on values and fairness to a nation beholden to transnational corporations whose sole function is to maximise profit while minimising taxes paid and who best thrive when society is fragmented and we become customers and consumers rather than citizens.

In the years since the book came out, none of the problems Judt describes has been addressed. Indeed, many have become more deeply entrenched, mainly through the attack on the poor in the name of austerity. At the same time, the power of corporations has increased, not only in terms of financial clout through state subsidies and tax evasion but also in terms of influence on the workings of democracy.

The last few years have shown that capitalism and democracy are not compatible. When money buys votes and politicians and the media that supports the ruling class and is ideology, what price the opinions and hopes of the electorate?

Capitalism requires continual growth to survive. It grows by finding new markets and by exploiting new workers. At the same time it pillages the planet and denudes it of resources. Globalisation is simply another term for corporate imperialism. Imperialism, in the end, is always enacted through force. As Rosa Luxemburg knew,

“Force is the only solution available to capitalism; the accumulation of capital employs force as a permanent weapon.”

Hence the endless wars since the turn of the century, the call to fear-based politics, and the scapegoating of Muslims externally and of immigrants internally.

So, what of the three topics I wished to understand? My reading in the last six years has helped me and with each passing day the political stage both here and in the US throws up more evidence of the way things are going. And things are not going well for ordinary people.

In my next piece I’ll tackle the first of the topics; the lie of austerity’s necessity and how that has masked nothing other than a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich.

Until then, doubt all you see, read, or hear on mainstream media.