LEAP @ the Convention of the Left

LEAP held a session at the Convention of the Left on Monday lunchtime 'The Economic Crisis - how we got there and how to get out' . . . or at least we were due to.

We had a room that seated about 60 allocated to us, but by the start time there were already people standing and more trying to get in . . . meanwhile in the main hall, a meeting on globalisation was questioning why the two meetings could not merge as neither topic could be discussed without reference to the other.

After some swift negotiations, shuffling of papers, scraping of chairs and about 10 minutes, we were all sat in the main hall - about 150 of us to discuss globalisation and the economic crisis. There were contributions from a number of LEAP regulars: Prem Sikka, Gerry Gold, Rosamund Stock and Graham Turner who had articles published in both the Morning Star and the Guardian that day! I also said a few words about why LEAP was setup, what it is and what it is trying to do.

Raphie de Santos from the SSP also spoke from the (informal) platform, as did John Hilary of War on Want - from the session on globalisation. Like the LEAP speakers they explained the complexities of the economic system that had led to the current economic crisis, how that crisis would develop and what the effects have been and might be in the future. The contributions from around the packed hall proved that there is a real appetite to discuss economics at the moment.

The meeting was also attended by Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Kelvin Hopkins, John McDonnell and Austin Mitchell. Former MP Alice Mahon also attended and spoke about the corruption of former Ministers taking up lucrative positions with companies to which they had awarded contracts while in office.

The debate went on for over three hours, time which despite my burgeoning cold actually seemed to fly past - as the level of debate was so high, with a range of perspectives and prescriptions being aired. Both the Convention of the Left and LEAP will be taking forward some of the ideas raised in the debate.

If you were there, what do you think should be a campaign to come out of that meeting? And even if you weren't what areas do you think LEAP should focus on in the coming months?

Graham Turner @ Bookmarks tonight

Graham Turner will be discussing his new book 'The Credit Crunch' at Bookmarks bookshop in Bloomsbury Street, London.

The current financial crisis has shaken globalisation and challenged the free market economic model. This book shows that the housing bubbles in the West were deliberately created to mask the damage inflicted by companies shifting production abroad in an attempt to boost profits.

Bookmarks Bookshop, 1 Bloomsbury Street, WC1B 3QE

All these events are free with refreshment provided however we do ask that if you’re coming you reserve a place in advance if possible.

To book or for more info call 020 7637 1848, email enquiries@bookmarks.uk.com or see http://www.bookmarks.uk.com/

Read Graham Turner's article from Monday's Guardian.

It’s common sense! - Review of the new LEAP pamphlet

• Review by Mary Partington, which first appeared in the October issue of Labour Briefing.

New Labour's unprecedented assault on the public sector through privatisation and PFIs combined with their refusal to repeal the anti-trade union laws has set back the debate around social ownership years.

UK industries, workplaces and public infilstructure have become more and more unaccountable. The recent collapse of Northern Rock and the Metronet consortium on the London Underground show that the Government was only willing to spend public finance industries or services in order to bail out ventures that have not succeeded within the market. The public took on the risk involved in these projects without any democratisation of either structure. In the meantime the shareholders of Northern Rock and Metronet have, over the years, pocketed huge profits. Nevertheless, these examples – as LEAP Editor Andrew Fisher points out – obliterate the Government's own rhetoric that the market is always more efficient and therefore better.

Building the New Common Sense - Social Ownership for the 21st Century is a useful contribution to reigniting the discussion about the state and the role of workers in exercising control over their workplaces and society. From Gregor Gall's essay on the importance of workplace democracy to RMT General Secretary Bob Crow's piece on the public ownership of the railways, the pamphlet provides a space for alternative arguments about how democratic public ownership is more efficient in providing the needs of society. Rosamund Stock's essay is particularly valuable. She argues that the key component of public ownership is the collective culture of democracy. It is not enough to talk simply of nationalisation or co-operatives, we have to have industries and services that are fully democratically accountable.

As with other LEAP projects, this pamphlet doesn't claim to hold the definitive answer to one clear question. It is an inclusive and discursive contribution to promote rational and informed analysis of how society is run, in whose interest and how it could be run better. These are exactly the sort of intelligent discussions we need to foster.

• To obtain this 28 page pamphlet, send a cheque for £3, payable to Another World is Possible, to LEAP, PO Box 2378, London E5 9QU or order online from the LRC website.

The Economic Crisis

First of all a plug for another great article on Comment is Free by Prem Sikka, the standfirst for which is "Financial institutions have long devised ways of avoiding tax. Now they're relying on taxpayers to bail them out". Succinctly put.

Prem will be speaking at the LEAP fringe at the Convention of the Left/Labour Party conference - alongside Graham Turner, Raphie de Santos and John McDonnell MP.

The fringe meeting takes place on Monday 22nd September from 12:30pm-2:30pm, at Friends Meeting House, Mount Street, Manchester and will be discussing the Economic Crisis - how we got there and how to get out. I hope to see you there. You can download the flyer here

Beyond the conference

The "Beyond the Market Economy" conference in May was a great success. The workshops however were so good that many people wanted to go to all of them. In response to this we are prepared to organise workshops one each topic:
1) Securing housing for all;
2) Ending corporate power: 21st Century models of social ownership;
3) Drowning in Debt: Transforming the financial system;
4) Defending pay, pensions and jobs in a global market economy.

At preset the plan is to hold half day workshops at the London School of Economics on Saturdays between now and mid-November. If you are interested please contact: Rosamund Stock r.e.stock@lse.ac.uk.

Let us know which sessions you are interested in and which dates you could make.

Gerry Gold, who led the second workshop, has said he would be happy to lead another session, and in view of LEAP's recent publication on Social or Common Ownership this would be a good start.

New LEAP pamphlet out now!

This pamphlet is published at a time when the economy is faltering, and there is an urgent need to reconsider the role for workers in exercising control over their workplaces and their employers. With the recent collapse of Northern Rock and the Metronet consortium on the London Underground, the role of the state and public ownership has also been reignited.

Contributions in this pamphlet include: Gregor Gall looks at industrial democracy, RMT General Secretary Bob Crow considers the model of public ownership best suited to the railways, while CWU Executive members Maria Exall and Gary Heather argue the case for taking the telecommunications industry back into state control. Rosamund Stock argues that we need to create a culture of social ownership, while Jerry Jones considers what an economy based on social ownership would look like, and Gerry Gold considers how we might get there.

The conclusion by John McDonnell MP argues for a debate about how a campaign for social ownership can be fought.

You can order a copy of this 28 page pamphlet for just £3 (inc. p&p) online at http://www.l-r-c.org.uk/payments/default.asp#LEAP, or send a cheque for £3, payable to 'Another World is Possible' to: LEAP, PO Box 2378, London, E5 9QU.

A policy error too far

It’s good to see praise for the work of contributors to LEAP such as Andrew Fisher’s warm welcome to Graham Turner’s new book The Credit Crunch. But, in the spirit of comradely debate, here are some comments which show that Graham’s book raises as many questions as it answers.

The book correctly chastises the mainstream press for failing to address the underlying causes of the massive accumulation of debt that exploded in the sub-prime crisis of 2007 and the credit crunch that followed, and he is right to say that this is “out of fear that the contradictions and flaws with the economic philosophy they have espoused will be exposed”. Graham is right again in his critique of the neo-liberal philosophy of unrestricted free trade which has dominated the global policy agenda for the last period.

It’s also true, as Andrew points out, that Graham talks about the growing power of the corporations during the period of globalisation. But there’s hardly a mention of it in the main parts of the book, and any deeper analysis of the underlying causes of corporate growth is absent. Rather than tracing the ballooning of credit and debt as the necessary expression of, and complement to the relentless expansion of capital, as is shown in my book, A House of Cards, Graham’s subsequent interpretation claims the whole problem is the result of policy errors by governments.

While others have traced the growth of a global network of transnational corporations which have transformed the role of national governments, and some even, like Leslie Sklair, have shown the development of a transnational capitalist class, Graham tends to take an anti-historical view, preferring to see the world as it was when Keynes lived and breathed. His is a macroeconomic world of nations competing in a system of more or less free markets. If only they’d followed the interventionist theories and advice of the economist and Lord John Maynard Keynes, governments could have kept the corporations under control and sustained a nice balance between corporate power and workers’ interests.

Graham’s account of the historical build-up to the current crisis takes in the 1920s and 1930s Great Depression, but leaps over the Second World War and the destruction of capital made necessary by the investment frenzy that led to overproduction and the 1929 crash. The creation and elimination of surplus productive capacity is an essential component determining the boom-bust trajectory of the capitalist economy and Graham sidesteps this question.

In my view, seeing the present crisis as a result of “policy errors” is itself a profound error. Policy-makers and corporate power represent a division of labour within the capitalist system as a whole. The globalisation process propelled them into each other’s arms, transformed the roles of the IMF and World Bank, institutions created at the post-second world war Bretton Woods to manage relations between nations (in which Britain was represented by Keynes, but largely sidelined by US interests), and created a process which led to global institutions like the World Trade Organisation. All now became subject to legions of corporate lobbyists serving the self-developing expansion of capital. If mistakes were made their origin actually lies in the accumulation process of capital itself, an objective process reflected in the heads of policy-makers obliged to serve its interests.

Graham’s proposal to rebalance the power relationship as a way of keeping profit levels high assumes that governments are in control, when they are patently not. It’s why he ends his book with a despairing hope. Even as domestic and commercial property prices tumble around the world, Graham’s hope is that central banks and governments can prevent the debt-induced collapse of asset prices by issuing even more credit. He calls it ’quantitative easing’. In my view, this policy is not only unrealistic but also ties us into the retention of the fundamental, exploitative relationships of capitalism as the biggest economic disaster of all times looms. That indeed would be a major policy error when a bold leap to social ownership as the solution to the crisis seems a more progressive way forward.