tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post7926370223934289910..comments2024-03-27T09:14:27.496+00:00Comments on All That Is Solid ...: The Class Politics of Levelling Up FailurePhilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-88422481720390657442022-02-04T09:55:31.913+00:002022-02-04T09:55:31.913+00:00«The building of housing and the sprucing up of to...«<i>The building of housing and the sprucing up of town centres threatens to increase the supply of residences and quality commercial properties, which is a direct threat to the rents they charge.</i>»<br /><br />But if housing was built and town centres were spruced up in places like Stoke, why would it matter to property rentiers? Property profits are extracted from wages (and from business profits) and thus more housing and nicer town centres in areas without jobs are pointless.<br /><br />What terrifies the tory base is that jobs may come to the "pushed behind" areas, and therefore the flow of new tenants and buyers into the golden tory areas may shrink.<br /><br />«<i>a mass coalition (at least before their current difficulties) more likely to vote than the rest of the population, but not replacing itself like-for-like. Even as assets are passed on and inherited by the families they leave behind.</i>»<br /><br />That is not quite how the shrinking of the property rentier base works though, because the number of properties is not shrinking, and typically typically when a tory property owners dies, their property is sold and the proceeds are split among the tory heirs, who use the cash as a deposit to buy their own property, their own tory means of screwing everybody else (actually everybody poorer than them).<br /><br />But while the number of properties is not shrinking, and the inheritance mechanism is not reducing the number of tory property owners, it is still deposits the mechanism that shrink the number of property owners: in areas where property prices are booming they are currently so huge that only existing property owners (by remortgaging) or their heirs (by selling the inherited property) can easily raise them.<br /><br />That means that property ownership will become ever more concentrated among those who already have a property portfolio to leverage to buy more property. It is a debt-property spiral, that the government not only does not want to stop, but does not dare to stop, as the spiral cannot be painlessly unwound or even just stopped.Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-17291622739719060782022-02-03T19:49:04.505+00:002022-02-03T19:49:04.505+00:00Anonymous says that the future of the UK as a rela...Anonymous says that the future of the UK as a relatively peaceful, (bourgeois) democratic society must be in considerable doubt. Peaceful of course if we ignore every bloody imperialist adventure, and ignore them we do!<br /><br />I would argue we are already witnessing the end of that (bourgeois) not so democratic society. This will of course be replaced by another not so democratic bourgeois society. The lurch toward authoritarianism is, I would argue, not really because of the growing gap between rich and poor but thanks to advances in technology that massively cheapens the cost of authoritarianism. In other words, the bourgeois at the imperialist centre tended to steer clear of authoritarianism because it was too costly, but that is now not the case.<br /><br />I will accept that Britain’s development toward Brazilification will necessitate certain authoritarian measures at certain times.<br /><br />“The point is if this is the core sectional concern of the Tory party, then what takes place in the rest of the country is largely irrelevant”<br /><br />The Tories always put their interests ahead of any other, and it has served them well in winning elections. As the saying goes if it isn’t broke don’t fix it!<br /><br />However, the other concern that every ruling class has and must have, and I would argue is their most overriding obsession, fanatical obsession, is what the producing classes are doing and thinking. They concern themselves with this more than everything else put together.<br /><br />It will be interesting how the various Tory parties manage to navigate the cost of living crisis (caused not by the pandemic, but by the very logic of exchange), the mass extinction event, and the climate destruction, along with the normal crisis conditions of capitalism. We already see a hint of this with woke hysteria, authoritarian state measures and divide and rule along every possible line, now including the old and young and healthy and unhealthy. <br /><br />The privatisation of health care, which has gone on without a murmur, will allow the state to really ramp up the divide and rule along those who are healthy and those who are not.<br /><br />Woke hysterics will ensure the focus is on what Claire Balding is paid by the BBC, and not tidal wave of mass destitution on the way.<br /><br />As I have argued before, the only logical solution to these problems is the end of exchange. Anything short of that is Toryism, but with probably less logic (this article is a prime example of less logical Toryism).<br /><br />Still, I would be very happy to see Corbynism at least being given the chance to succeed, or fail miserably. <br />BCFGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-31981887897952414812022-02-03T19:45:04.663+00:002022-02-03T19:45:04.663+00:00«The point is if this is the core sectional concer...«<i>The point is if this is the core sectional concern of the Tory party, then what takes place in the rest of the country is largely irrelevant. As long as the elite institutions keep churning out the next generation of brokers and city slickers, who cares whether unemployment is a problem in Bradford or not?</i>»<br /><br />And that is entirely legitimate politics, the problem is building a coalition that is opposed to that kind of politics and this point is relevant to that:<br /><br />«<i>A case of opposing their offsprings' future property-owning interests to their current interests as working people.</i>»<br /><br />There are two main reasons why property is "the truth and the way" in southern England, and many people think that their property is more important than their job, even for their children:<br /><br />* Big yearly (even when unrealized) profits.<br />* The security of knowing that property prices are government backstopped.<br /><br />For many, perhaps a significant minority, it is the security aspect that really matters: with insecure jobs, minimal social insurance, many people see the security of government backstopped property as its main attraction.<br /><br />The "left" cannot really attract the voters who just want to benefit from massive upward redistribution via property from the incomes of the lower classes, but I would think that it can attract those who mainly care about security:<br /><br />* By emphasizing how insecure property really is, with two huge crashes in 40 years, colossal debt leverage, and the state not having an unlimited ability to backstop against that.<br /><br />* By reminding security-seeking voters that a social-democratic state can provide security to them by backstopping the much smaller and cheaper risks of pensions and social insurance and public services.<br /><br />Sure, business and property rentier interests like it much more when voters are scared of losing their jobs, of being unable to rely on much reduced state pensions or public services, so it is going to be a struggle. But what alternatives are there?Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-21129870427583960592022-02-03T15:45:16.895+00:002022-02-03T15:45:16.895+00:00I don't think we are 'idealising the effec...I don't think we are 'idealising the effect' of the gigantic spending by the unified German government in the old GDR states, McIntosh. The harsh forces of global capitalism utterly destroyed the old protected East German industries as soon as reunification happened, and , accepting large population movement after reunification to the West happened , huge infrastructure improvements and financial support for new businesses undoubtedly has set the massively underdeveloped states of the old GDR on a much more healthy path than it would have faced without this massive support. I myself witnesses the huge road building/upgrading programmes underway to link the underdeveloped East with the West during visits to (western) colleagues in Baltic Northern Germany in the early 2000's. And of course West Germany, and now unified German, has avoided so far becoming a totally financialised economy, with a still thriving large and small business-based manufacturing sector - supporting a huge number of skilled, well paid jobs. And yes, I do know that Germany's relative prosperity and constant trade surpluses are achieved , via a , for them, undervalued Euro, at the expense of the less capital-intensive, less efficient, southern European economies. <br /><br />The destruction of the UK manufacturing base, from the Thatcher Era onwards in particular, was never inevitable - but a political, a financialised ruling class-based, choice.<br /><br />Reversing such a now long-term asset-stripping destruction of our manufacturing base, and introducing real , people-benefitting, regional planning and economic development , would be a formidable task. And the ever-accelerating break-up of the UK into devolved nations (can devolved English counties be far off ?) including elected mayoral fiefdoms, does make comprehensive economic planning much harder than it was in the half-hearted state-led planning efforts of the 1960's under Wilson's Labour government. But if the current 40 plus years trend to ever deepening massive economic decline in the North continues, with ever greater income and wealth inequality everywhere, the future of the UK as a relatively peaceful, (bourgeois) democratic society must be in considerable doubt. . <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-12518690134295319782022-02-03T12:07:13.519+00:002022-02-03T12:07:13.519+00:00Are we not idealising the effect of spending on Ea...Are we not idealising the effect of spending on East Germany? Isn't it still lagging behind the Western part in employment and haven't large sections of its skilled younger workers moved west? <br />Are there any examples in Europe or the US of a successful levelling up? The glass works are not going to reopen in St Helens, or ICI return to Widnes and Runcorn. I cannot imagine how much would have to be spent to make Winsford match Wimslow, or Burslem match Bath.<br />And who is going to occupy the shops in the derilct High Streets? There is no BHS, Woolworths, Dotty Ps, Debenhams, etc. to fill them.<br /><br />I look forward to seeing Labour's Covenant and how it proposes to turn back the tide of decline.<br /><br />McIntoshnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-64712168531681718852022-02-03T11:13:39.159+00:002022-02-03T11:13:39.159+00:00This is a good analysis by Phil of the utterly cyn...This is a good analysis by Phil of the utterly cynical slogan-rich, but new resource free, hype, of the Tory 'levelling up' con trick. But why should we be at all surprised ? The excellent BBC2 two-parter , last week, and this, on the post 2008 crisis massive extra enrichment of the rich (via quantitative easing powered asset value inflation), and the contrasting massive fall in the incomes of the lowest paid, and rise of the 'gig economy' gives the real picture of the impossibility of any 'levelling up' at all, not without a huge wealth tax on the rich, and state-led planned economic regional policy and German-style (Rebuilding of East Germany after reunification) - type redirection of resources . <br /><br />But as other posters have already said , there is now no chance at all of the, totally recaptured by the corrupt, careerist, neoliberal Right, Labour Party, offering a radical, high tax of the rich, renationalising, state-planning-led, policy offer , of even the extremely mild 2017 Corbyn Manifesto kind . Mind you , even the 2017 Manifesto was so mildly 'Left' (abandoning the need to nationalise the banks almost as soon as Corbyn was elected Leader in 2015 ) , with John McDonnel tacking rightwards so often to appease the Right, that the much promoted Corbyn/McDonnell 'Industrial Strategy' was really just the same empty hot air as with all the other parties and their common vague promises to 'rebalance the economy'. And as for the much loved by the middle class 'left', Corbyn 'Green New Deal', this was equally just a load of empty slogans too. Unfortunately the Starmerite Front Bench are not even offering the pale imitation 1960's sub-Harold Wilson 'National Plan' era , state interventionism , of the 2017 and 2019 Labour Manifestos (even to take the NHS back into 100% public ownership). Just extra Austerity (to 'restore the public finances ' - on the backs of the majority, not the superrich) , and a continued worship of the capitalist system's untrammelled market forces. <br /><br />We now have three entirely market forces worshipping major parties on offer to the voting public, all captive to the overriding desire to appease the billionaire-owned MSM, and therefore quite incapable of dealing in any way with ever-greater deindustrialisation, ever-greater regional disparity, and sectoral imbalance, and a over-large buccaneer financial sector calling the shots, and ever-greater income and wealth disparities across our social classes , the only 'offer' whatever Party the voters can choose. The current gigantic looming hike in the costs of electricity and gas , and other core cost of living commodities , shows the mass impoverishment for the many, versus ever greater enrichment for the few, this neoliberal agenda has brought us to. The eventual outcome will be the rise of a mass pseudo radical populist Far Right in the UK on the same lines as the divisive scapegoating Far Right across Europe today. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-83892126797164458442022-02-03T09:28:53.436+00:002022-02-03T09:28:53.436+00:00«“The Need for Policies,” and points to Labour’s “...«<i>“The Need for Policies,” and points to Labour’s “threadbare policies” on, for example, social care, energy , transport, youth education and training, housing.</i>»<br /><br />But New, New Labour has policies on all these points, they are the same policies as those of the Conservatives or the LibDems, with a few variants.<br /><br />The policies all three major parties propose are whichever policies are in the interests of affluent south-east voters, and they are doing very well indeed, with booming living standards for decades. Those voters don't feel any need for new ideas or new policies, except perhaps to boost property prices profits and to moderate wage costs.<br /><br />So New New Labour should making bold, "progressive" proposals for things like decreasing the pension of women to 60 paid by doubling NI on men, or making mortgage payments deductible from taxes or at least from taxable income, giving 20% of voters in a ward the right to veto developments in it, allowing voters to sponsor the immigration of foreign house help/carers on indenture contracts exempt from labour legislation, etc. etc. etc.; after all the claim is that winning elections is all that matter, not the politics, and winning elections means winning over tory voters.Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-83243695004583798352022-02-03T09:05:37.907+00:002022-02-03T09:05:37.907+00:00Lisa Nandy gestured toward some vague promises in ...Lisa Nandy gestured toward some vague promises in her response to this, yesterday. The weekend before last a new Blue Laboury piece was published called Labour's Covenant, which addresses this kind of stuff. Post on that coming soon.Philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-70957114651810615582022-02-03T08:39:04.022+00:002022-02-03T08:39:04.022+00:00Where is the Labour Party Levelling Up programme? ...Where is the Labour Party Levelling Up programme? Unfortunately the Labour Party is on an inexorable path of self-destruction - the theme of this month’s Labour Affairs’ Editorial 1: “The strange Death of Liberal England, “ a nod to George Dangerfield’s 1935 classic: “The strange Death of Liberal England,” on the decline of the Liberal Party. <br /><br />Labour’s current position can be personalised as the a lack of leadership, or, as Editorial 2 argues: “The Need for Policies,” and points to Labour’s “threadbare policies” on, for example, social care, energy , transport, youth education and training, housing.<br />More on this at https://labouraffairs.comCathyhttps://labouraffairs.comnoreply@blogger.com