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Showing posts with the label thatcher

UK: Parsing Trussonomics and Class War

“ It seems that today’s Tories – even (or perhaps especially) their most committed ideologues – are once again prepared to ‘pay up’ if it allows them to win a class fight. And let’s not delude ourselves: Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget … shows that a class fight is underway.” Sound money? “Class war is traditionally a term levelled at the left – typically when arguing for radical things such as housing or food – but it is clearer than ever that it is the Tories who wage it.” The class war is upon us

Britain: Wealth, Inequality, Meritocracy

The author has ignored exploitation of labour as a source of wealth. In fact, he ignored that even inherited wealth comes from past labour. Note that the word capitalism is not mention even once. As regarding why “ the belief that Britain is a meritocracy is ingrained in our collective psyche,” one has to include the role of ideology . Where does wealth comes from? Related The meritocrats shall inherit the earth What Does the Ruling Class Do When it Rules?
Vassal States "So Macron is worried that Britain might become a vassal state of the US. Which planet has he been on these last four decades and more? A process that began in 1956 after the Suez debacle was lovingly completed by Thatcher and Blair. Britain has been a fully-fledged vassal for a long time. And France, especially under Jospin and Hollande, was/is moving in the same way. Militarily, ideologically, culturally the US dominates most of Europe. Britain's vassal status is enshrined on many levels and partially explains the hysteria that greeted Corbyn's election as Leader of the Labour Party and the non-stop attempts to denigrate and defeat him, of which the 'anti-semitism' campaign is the most recent. Even Corbyn will find it very difficult to break the shackles." —Tariq Ali, 22 August 2019
Britain "A new political climate, perhaps less fearful of nationalisation and more suspicious of the notion that the private sector does everything better, may sow the seeds of change." A clever conclusion: one of the mouthpieces of the system is quite aware that some sort of a change is required/has to come to avoid a bigger crisis/to save the system from any potential threat. Thus even conservative governments, "neoliberals", might resort to "nationalisation" of some sectors of the economy.  How Thatcherism laid the foundations of the housing crisis A book review
Britain Michael Roberts reporting from a Labour Party conference Models of public ownership and   Why did Labour lose in 1983? "In a way, the myth that it was the 'hard Left' that cost Labour the election is an inverted form of Bennite optimism. It lays all the emphasis upon ideology, agency and leadership, albeit in a thin, polemical way that asks no searching questions of the Labour Right and Centre, long its dominant forces. But, then as now, agency and leadership turn out to depend on far bigger historical processes. And it's their obliviousness to those larger processes that leaves Corbyn's right-wing critics out in the cold, fantasising about re-staging the battles of the 1980s."
Britain’s university system now “serves a renewed patrimonial capitalism and its ever-widening inequalities.”  —  John Holmwood’s 2014 valedictory message as British Sociological Association president.      The Rise of the Corporate University in the UK