tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post5371072437105760041..comments2024-03-29T09:14:53.583+00:00Comments on All That Is Solid ...: Theresa May and ThatcherismPhilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-27581914402699776642016-11-13T09:12:21.397+00:002016-11-13T09:12:21.397+00:00The mid seventies stagflation. Isn't that when...The mid seventies stagflation. Isn't that when credit cards started to appear? A sudden increase in consumer debt allows inflation without wage increases. Of course all parties kow tow to the interests of the lending banks.johnny conspiranoidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16999152579310845736noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-84226688239201710352016-10-27T17:03:31.973+01:002016-10-27T17:03:31.973+01:00«in the 1970's dividends accounted for 10% of ...«in the 1970's dividends accounted for 10% of company profits, today they amount to a whopping 70%, [ ... ] It rightly challenges the misconception that shareholders are the owners of companies,»<br /><br />The aim to distribute more earnings as dividends is in part (and perhaps largely) due to pensioners: existing "final salary" pension funds put a lot of pressure on boards to raise dividends out of which to pay pensions, and even individual "money purchase" pension savers tend to go for "income" based funds.Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-10015328484241635622016-10-27T16:57:21.107+01:002016-10-27T16:57:21.107+01:00«The city was deregulated, the nationalised indust...«The city was deregulated, the nationalised industries shut or privatised, council housing flogged off, and communities full of our people left to rot. The economy boomed and enough of the boats floated upwards»<br /><br />Written like this it seems that the argument is that thatcherism did lead to a booming economy. But the economy boomed because oil prices moderated as both scottish and alaskan oil come into production, and the revenue and export earnings from scottish oil financed thatcherism:<br /><br />Jim Rogers, a hedge fund speculator, in "Street smarts" wrote:<br />«The city was deregulated, the nationalised industries shut or privatised, council housing flogged off, and communities full of our people left to rot. The economy boomed and enough of the boats floated upwards»<br /><br />Written like this it seems that the argument is that thatcherism did lead to a booming economy. But the economy boomed because oil prices moderated as both scottish and alaskan oil come into production, and the revenue and export earnings from scottish oil financed thatcherism:<br /><br />Jim Rogers, a hedge fund speculator, in "Street smarts" wrote:<br />«Margaret Thatcher, elected in 1979, takes credit for the eventual British turnaround. And she is responsible for many positive changes. But the fact is that 1979 was also the year that North Sea oil started flowing. You find me an elephant oil field and I will show you a very good time, too.»<br /><br />And Tony Blair wrote in the LRB in 1987:<br />««Mrs Thatcher has enjoyed two advantages over any other post-war premier. First, her arrival in Downing Street coincided with North Sea oil. The importance of this windfall to the Government’s political survival is incalculable.<br />It has brought almost 70 billion pounds into the Treasury coffers since 1979, which is roughly equivalent to sevenpence on the standard rate of income tax for every year of Tory government. Without oil and asset sales, which themselves have totalled over £30 billion, Britain under the Tories could not have enjoyed tax cuts, nor could the Government have funded its commitments on public spending.<br />More critical has been the balance-of-payments effect of oil. The economy has been growing under the impetus of a consumer boom that would have made Lord Barber blush.»<br />«The fact that we have failed to use oil to build a productive and modern industry for the future is something historians will deplore.»<br /><br />This said, thatcherism did have some positive effects on the economy, mostly the reduction in trade union excesses, which it pains me to write, especially as it turned into an anti-trade-union stragegy rather than one against the excesses of some of them. Even today there is an unresolved tension between the power of trade unions in critical services and the interests of all workers.<br />Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-6805937842099408072016-10-25T18:54:23.646+01:002016-10-25T18:54:23.646+01:00Anonymous, it depends on where you are and what yo...Anonymous, it depends on where you are and what your sample size is. There are always some people who go against the grain of what demographics would 'expect' them to do. Consider, for example, that by November 8th there will have been thousands (although probably not millions) of African-Americans who voted for Trump. Lidl_Janusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-19314182259676794802016-10-25T08:22:16.663+01:002016-10-25T08:22:16.663+01:00"They resembled the push for public 'part..."They resembled the push for public 'participation' in state activities (for example local government) that effectively sought to tie disruptive citizen's movements (in the Bullock Report's case trade unions) into the existing institutional structure and give them more of the responsibility for what was effectively maintaining the status quo."<br /><br />That is exactly what social-democracy is!<br /><br />As Marx put it,<br /><br />"“The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie."Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-21484884213038331802016-10-24T19:46:43.835+01:002016-10-24T19:46:43.835+01:00Thank you for your optimism, Phil.
When I look at...Thank you for your optimism, Phil.<br /><br />When I look at my family & acquaintances, I see non-voting Brandites, Daily Heil brexiters, libertarian totalitarians, anti-virtue-signaller crusaders, /b/ sexists, and anti-intellectuals. All my generation (20 - 30).<br /><br />If it wasn't for people like you, I'd have given up hope.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-42155541747481267482016-10-24T19:21:57.881+01:002016-10-24T19:21:57.881+01:00"The social-democratic policies of the 1970&#..."The social-democratic policies of the 1970's, for example set out in the Bullock Report went half way to that"<br /><br />The proposals of the Bullock Report were hardly social-democratic, and nowhere near industrial democracy.<br /><br />They resembled the push for public 'participation' in state activities (for example local government) that effectively sought to tie disruptive citizen's movements (in the Bullock Report's case trade unions) into the existing institutional structure and give them more of the responsibility for what was effectively maintaining the status quo. Worker representation in countries like Germany was in effect a conservative move, whatever slight benefits it might have brought workforces. Igor Belanovnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-78158245503279304932016-10-24T13:31:15.611+01:002016-10-24T13:31:15.611+01:00There is an interesting post on the Co-op Party...<a href="http://party.coop/2016/10/24/inequality-is-a-choice-and-overcoming-it-means-re-writing-the-rules-by-which-businesses-operate/" rel="nofollow">There is an interesting post</a> on the Co-op Party's website today. It doesn't go far enough, but it recognises that where in the 1970's dividends accounted for 10% of company profits, today they amount to a whopping 70%, as I have discussed before.<br /><br />No wonder growth is sluggish, and the potential for growing profits out of which those dividends could be paid has been restricted.<br /><br />It rightly challenges the misconception that shareholders are the owners of companies, whereas in fact, they are only the lenders of money-capital to the company, no different than a bondholder, or a bank that gives a loan to the company.<br /><br />But, precisely for that reason, there is no reason that shareholders should have any right to control company boards, and thereby dictate company policies. Company boards should be wholly elected by the workers in the company, including the salaried day to day managers.<br /><br />The social-democratic policies of the 1970's, for example set out in the Bullock Report went half way to that, but now its time to push for a rational industrial democracy alongside a rational completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution.<br /><br />That is a necessary transitional stage on the road to socialism and the co-operative commonwealth.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-55388682756035792022016-10-24T08:05:47.837+01:002016-10-24T08:05:47.837+01:00Phil,
I agree with most of your account of the Th...Phil,<br /><br />I agree with most of your account of the Thatcher years and after. I have written the same accounts many times myself. However, there is one aspect of the standard history of the time and which you repeat, I have come to reject. It is the idea that in the 1970's, capitalism had come to an impasse that social democracy could not resolve, that the stalemate in the class struggle had to be resolved in the interest of capital, and that this task fell to Thatcher.<br /><br />The implication behind this logic is either that politics is driven by conspiracy, or else it was Thatcher or some kind of fascist coup. Either, capital is able to simply choose which governments are elected to best fit its purpose at any one time - an idea sometimes hinted at by Lenin who really didn't understand western democracy - or else the election of Thatcher in 1979 and after was just a fortunate circumstance for capital, and that had the electorate not acted to meet the needs of capital, it would have had to resort to a non-democratic solution, as happened in Germany in the 1930's, or Chile in 1973 etc.<br /><br />But, the reality is that Thatcher won in 1979, not because capital was able to choose what government was in office to serve its needs, but because a large enough proportion of workers didn't vote Labour. As often stated, had callaghan called the election in 1978, things would probably have been different. Thatcher looked likely to lose badly to a Foot led Labour Party during all the time from 1980, to the Falklands War. Thatcher was under pressure, from the "Wets", even into the mid 80's to abandon the Austrian economics, that was failing, and to go back to Keynesian intervention.<br /><br />What is right in the standard model is that given the economic conjuncture, social democracy could not keep its side of the bargain. But it was its bargain with the working-class not capital that it could not keep. The bargain required workers to accept the continuation of capitalist exploitation in return for annual improvements in their standard of living. Yet even that is not quite true.<br /><br />Social democracy could have kept its side of the bargain had it been prepared to fulfil its historic role consistently. That would have required it not to have attacked "capital" as the standard model claimed, but had it been prepared to attack the continued power of those sections of capital that the Tories represent, i.e. the owners of fictitious capital, the large owners of shares, bonds and property.<br /><br />But, it would also have required a further extension of the social-democratic restructuring, regulation and planning of capital that had proceeded since WWII, and whose basis had also been envisioned in the 1930's by people like MacMillan, now referenced by May.<br /><br />It would have required the two wings of Labour to have been combined. In other words, had the supporters of the AES abandoned their nationalism, and pushed forward with the support for an expansion of an internationalist policy based upon the EEC, not only would the SDP split have been avoided, but a model for meeting the needs of workers via a continued expansion of industrial capital on a more rational basis would have been laid.<br /><br />The basic ideas already existed. Germany already had aspects of industrial democracy, (resurrected by May), Wilson set up the Bullock Commission, the EU put forward new draft rules etc. A failure to press forward on these measures, enabled the owners of fictitious capital to continue to exercise power in the boardroom, and to drain resources from investment to pay interest. Money was printed to keep asset prices inflated, which led to stagflation. Workers then found no reason to vote Labour or Democrat in the US, and governments reflecting the interests of the owners of those financial assets were then elected. In fact, those governments acted against the long-term interests of real capital.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.com