Zac Tate writes an interesting article that as a critique of the current global model of capitalism, is short on detailed proposals but contains some interesting broad ideas. It develops some of the themes that have been discussed in our Democracy Cafes, namely, automation and nationalisation (the economic role of the state).
The assertion that in Germany automation has increased job security and globalisation has increased employment because of a process called Mitbestimmung, pacts between workers and employees, deserves further scrutiny.
Some of the ideas for a more sustainable and equitable capitalism that caught my eye are the Norwegian model of state ownership of oil and the role of sovereign wealth funds in investing in green technologies.
Making Capitalism Work
Interesting article as you say and rehearses several of the themes we have touched on the Democracy Cafes. Another interesting read on this subject is ’23 Things They Don’t Tell You About CAPITALISM’ by Ha-Joon Chang. Penguin books, 2010. Peter
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Hopeful! though the solutions to rampant capitalism that Corbyn espouses can be seen to have failed in Nordic countries, they may be the only hope at the moment for our class- ridden, politically obsolescent UK. Small democracies seem to have an advantage and to be more democratic.
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Yes, I agree with the general thrust of the article but I do take issue with the use of phrases like ‘free market’ and ‘small state’. There is an argument to say that we have never had a free market. As Martin Adams writes in his excellent little book Land: “Capitalism has prided itself on the efficiency of the free market for centuries, but because capitalism allows people to monopolize land and other gifts of nature, we need to realize that we may have never had true capitalism in the sense that the markets have never been truly free.” Furthermore, it could be argued that we only have a smaller state in the sense that it has withdrawn from the public sphere. Arguably, neoliberalism needed a big state to achieve its aims and neoliberals used it aggressively to realise them. All of which puts state socialism in its proper context – that is a powerful counter to the colonisation by neoliberalism of the market. An interesting development from this is the notion of the class war. I read somewhere in The Guardian, but I can no longer remember the author, that sometime during the 1990s New Labour signed a peace treaty declaring that the class war was over. Even that old class warrior John Prescott famously said something like ‘we are all middle class now’. But what New Labour didn’t realise was that the ruling clique (a phrase I prefer to ‘ruling elite’ because it warps the meaning of the word ‘elite’) did not sign the peace treaty. Indeed, in this sense the class war is alive and kicking and is being won hand over fist by the masters of neoliberalism.
Dickie Bellringer
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Depends what you mean by a free market. I agree that we have never had a completely free market with no state intervention and I for one, would not want to live in such a society. The operation of free markets does often result in monopoly power or some sort of producer influence and this is one reason why the market fails and requires intervention. I think what you are referring to is a perfectly competitive market where the consumer is sovereign and there is no monopoly power or producer influence. That we have certainly never experienced, nor are we likely to.
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