An economy as if people mattered

Andrew Fisher's speech for People's Budget at the Southampton People's Assembly

After a minute's applause for both Tony Benn and Bob Crow, these are the notes from which I made my speech (with a few ad libs!)at the Southampton People's Assembly on 20 March, responding to the Budget and arguing for an economy as if people mattered:

Well I hope you’re grateful.

Two years ago the Chancellor was taxing your pasties – that is what you people eat isn’t it?

And taxing your caravans – that is how you people holiday?

But now look:

You’re getting tax cuts on beer and bingo (or working class culture as the Chancellor calls it). See, tax cuts aren’t just for big business and millionaires, they’re for you – the little people – too!

Budget 2014

So aside from the Tories'  lame efforts to persuade us they're on our side, what were the main things we learned in the Budget?

• No end to austerity: because it’s ideological - by 2018 public spending will be lower than at any time since 1948 - the year in which the NHS was founded. "Rolling back the state", but going further than Thatcher ever managed. And if anything austerity is being ratcheted up. Public spending has risen by less than inflation (so a real terms cut), but his estimate for 2015-18 is for cuts to public spending in absolute terms 
• ISAs – who can save £15,000? Someone working full-time on the minimum wage doesn't even earn £15,000 a year.
• And what's underpinning Osborne's forecast for more growth? The assumption is more household debt - which will rise to the levels that precipitated the crisis. There's also some utterly delusional figures for business investment rising between 8-10% year-on-year for the next three years.
• An array of green taxes were scrapped or capped in the Budget, making more of a mockery of the Coalition's "greenest government ever" rhetoric.

What the Budget didn’t address

• Pay – it did nothing for people's wages and falling living standards. As Bob Crow said: 

• The Housing crisis – nothing in there that will build the homes our country needs, nothing to tackle rising homelessness or the rising costs of paying the rent. We are back to a pre-war situation where more of us are dependent on private landlords, with not enough council housing and fewer able to afford a mortgage.

• Jobs or industrial strategy – far from being a budget for 'doers', following his 'march of the makers' budget, OBR projections show UK exports falling in future years. This is a government - to be fair, like those before them for the last 35 years - without a serious labour market or industrial strategy. The recovery in unemployment is due to low wage, insecure jobs.

• And the energy crisis – nothing to tackle the fuel poverty which disproportionately affects the poorest pensioners; and nothing to address the UK's woeful investment in renewable energy, in which we lag behind the rest  of Europe.

What sort of economy we want

While Osborne rattles on about his modest and delayed economic growth, and the 24 hour news tells us every hour how the FTSE is doing, what would an economy look like as if people mattered?

Five questions, I think would matter to most people:

1. Are we reducing poverty and inequality?
2. Is unemployment falling?
3. Are people's living standards rising?
4. Is the tax gap - the £120bn of avoided, evaded and uncollected tax - reducing?
5. Is the economy stable and environmentally sustainable?

If we want that economy, an economy that acts in our interests, then we need greater economy democracy. Tony Benn said:

And you can see how that happened, we built the NHS, the welfare state, council housing, comprehensive education, and brought the utilities under public control. And sadly we can see how that has been reversed through privatisation - anti-democratically transferring power back from the ballot to the wallet, from the polling station to the marketplace.

For me anything too important to fail should be in public ownership - if we want an economy where people matter. And we need economic rights, individually and collectively. The right to a minimum income, protection from being made redundant - why on Earth are profitable companies allowed to make people redundant - taking away people's jobs to give bigger bonuses to directors or higher dividends to shareholders?

And trade union rights restored, so that we can protect our jobs, pay, pensions and fight for better working conditions.

I hope that's a good basis for discussion. Thank you.

• Andrew Fisher is LEAP Co-ordinator and author of the forthcoming book The Failed Experiment ... and how to build an economy that works

Democracy and Capitalism

A flagrant re-post from the Roe Valley Socialist blog:

I was recently reading over an excellent pamphlet published by the Left Economics Advisory Panel, a panel of economists linked to the Labour Representation Committee. The pamphlet, 'Building the new common sense: Social Ownership for the 21st century' discusses in a series of chapters the complete lack of democracy in the workplace and the disparity between the power of capital and labour.

As the pamphlet points out, citizens spend a significant period of time in their workplaces but leave their democratic rights at the door in the morning. When it comes to making serious strategic decisions about the direction of a company, decisions which could considerably affect conditions at work and even the direction of peoples' whole lives, workers are at the mercy of the tyranny of capital. Some firms obviously have a consultation process with their workforce but this is limited in the extreme; missing are the powers for workers to initiate reforms themselves, the ability to work outside an agenda already been determined by management, and the means to effectively challenge decisions short of industrial action.

Obviously, this comes down to the nature of private ownership of the means of production. Why, ask liberals, should workers have any say in what is in effect someone else's property; why, ask social democrats, should property owners wield such unaccountable power over the great majority of the population in a so-called democratic state; why, ask socialists, should production be in private hands in the first place, as private property is the foundation of this unbalance in democratic entitlements.

Beyond the micro-economics of the individual firm, the problem runs much deeper than this of course. The outcome of the next General Election might just be made by the currency markets rather than the electorate, if a Labour victory or a hung parliament is portrayed in the media to threaten the value of sterling. It might also be decided in marginal constituencies where the Tory tax-dodger and Belize-based businessman, Michael Ashcroft, is providing the cash for glossy leaflets and phonecall canvassing. On Newsnight on Tuesday, Justin Rowlatt followed a financial speculator who saw it as his rule to dictate to the Greek government how they should solve their fiscal crisis. His solutions were predictable- massive cuts and attacks on the standard of living of the Greek people. We can argue over whether this is necessary or not to ensure the survival of the Greek economy or not under capitalism but the boundaries of the debate are severely proscribed by the actions of those short-selling Greek debt. Unelected speculators have set the agenda for democratic governments; in a democracy it should be the other way around.

On an even deeper level this poses a fundamental challenge to reformist socialism. It was once the case that the state had strict controls over its currency; now, this control is shared with the financial markets who can decide to destroy any government they don't like the look of. Within the EU, fiscal policy is subject to numerous limitations, and nationalisation is technically subject to the dictates of competition law. In other words, there are great barriers to state intervention in the economic life of the country, especially when capitalism is not in crisis and capitalists resist such intervention politically through their support for neoliberalism.

Socialists must develop realistic and workable models to force democracy into the economic realm- through workers' co-operatives, trades unions and genuine democratic organs of the people. Otherwise, without redressing this balance between those who work and those who own, the latter will successfully resist any reforms which fundamentally risk the rule of capital. We saw it at Copenhagen where states came under pressure from entrenched economic interests, and during the bailout of the financial system where it was done on the banks' own terms despite their culpability in the precipitation of the economic crisis. It is a simple question of democracy and one which needs serious answers.

Workers take back rights at Lindsey

While Parliament has blocked previous attempts - led by John McDonnell MP - to unpick Thatcher's anti-trade union laws, workers at Lindsey and those taking solidarity action are tearing up the laws on the ground.

The right to work, and therefore the right to income, is a key economic right. Total may think it can walk all over its workforce, but the Lindsey workers and their supporters are proving where the real power lies if people act together in unity.

John McDonnell MP,LEAP Chair, said:

"We fully support the Lindsey workers who have taken strike action today and urge others to come out in support of those workers.

"We are calling on the employers to immediately come to the negotiating table to seek a just resolution of this dispute.

"The courage of the Lindsey workers has demonstrated that trade unionists are no longer willing to accept the anti-trade union laws. The Government should act now to scrap these laws which deny the basic right to strike."

There's also been excellent coverage in the Morning Star, by Professor Gregor Gall on Commment is Free, and on the A World to Win website.

Update 23/06: John McDonnell MP has tabled EDM 1718 'Lindsey Oil Refinery Industrial Action' calling on Total to negotiate with the GMB and Unite unions

And there's a new piece on Comment is Free by Gregor Gall