Permanent Austerity.

Bound in white tie, but not gagged, merely primed for performance as always, the Prime Minister finally admitted what some of us had suspected from before the beginning. In his speech David Cameron came out with the rhetoric of small government, that we have to do more with less and shrink the state to a more effective role. So the point of the austerity measures is not to reduce the deficit necessarily, it is to slim down the size of the state. Of course, it is worth saying that the ideological mission of a shrunken state is one and the same with the claims to 'necessity'. It is no coincidence that the claim that the spending cuts are 'necessary' comes with added promises of greater 'productivity', 'innovation' and 'efficiency'. In fact, a government euphemism for cuts is 'efficiency savings'. This is the lexicon of neoliberal managerialism.

If we are to take David Cameron on his word then we might say that the austerity is meant to be perpetual and never ending. The key part being when he said "We are sticking to the task. But that doesn't just mean making difficult decisions on public spending. It also means something more profound, it means building a leaner, more efficient state.  We need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently." The sight of the Prime Minister in his white little frock at the throne dripping gold and these words coming out of his mouth was something to be seen. Unfortunately the irony of the Head of Her Majesty's Government proselytising on the virtues of 'small government' is lost on conservative opinion. Meanwhile the handful of liberal and leftish rags immediately seized on the words of the Prime Minister. But no one should be so surprised really.
 

Just observe the fact that the original proposals by George Osborne were meant to reduce the deficit to naught by 2015 and now the plans to wipe the deficit have been extended to 2020. To this picture we may add the claims that the NHS is facing a shortfall of £10 billion, that was back in 2010, it was Andrew Lansley, who used the figure to justify the cuts he was making at the time. Now there is talk of a coming shortfall by the end of the decade of £30 billion. One wonders if Cameron's lot will ever feel they have lowered the rate of spending far enough. Every problem of the public services and welfare state are seized on by these vultures as proof of the need for deep cuts. The various scandals to be endured by the NHS of late fit the example perfectly. Hunt will make a statement on the problem at hand (which is no doubt real) to buttress his position as a competent Health Secretary coming up with the prescription for a better health service. Cuts and more cuts.

The examples the Prime Minister reaches for are quite interesting for this reason. He singled out for praise the accomplishments of Michael Gove, the 40% cuts to administrative staff at the Education Department to be specific. Then there are the 3,000 'free schools' and academies set up under the watch of Gove. He lumps in the shrinkage of the department with the use of public assets and money to ensure education for the children of sharp-elbowed middle-class parents. 'Free schools' are established at the expense of the tax-payer and even at a cost to comprehensive and other state schools in terms of resources. This is the same ministry to rearrange the pensions system for teachers with the hopes of devaluing their retirement funds by 15% and raising their payments by 50%. Over the same timeline you'll find tuition fees introduced and raised almost at every university to £9,000, apparently to reduce the deficit when HE funding accounts for 0.7% of GDP.


This is the manifest reality of what Cameron means when he speaks of a "leaner, more efficient state". The idealised slim-line state of libertarian imaginations is not to be taken seriously as a realistic prospect. Really we're looking at the possibility of living in a society where the social safety-nets is non-existent while the state intervenes to create markets, boost supply and ensure vast profits. There will be plenty of bailouts to come. In some respects the neoliberal period seems much more like a state of flux than a rigidly set social order. It is partly identifiable by its oscillations, the sudden shift in gears from taking a chainsaw to financial regulations to diving into the public purse to save the lemmings before they go over the cliff. Though it is a very narrow and restricted spectrum with serious limitations. There is only so many regulations to burn and so far the taxes can be cut.

Jumping each hurdle might become much more difficult as we go long. Crises will offer opportunities to reconstitute the economic formations as they were prior to them. Schumpeter called it 'creative destruction': the field of competitors is wiped clear for old forces to go from strength to strength. A better diagnosis from Naomi Klein would be economic 'shock therapy' whereby the crisis provides a cover for a series of assaults to be launched on the living standards of working-class people. It's worth bearing in mind that the current order took shape in the way that the Thatcherites circumvented the crisis of social democracy: 1) cutting public expenditure, 2) privatising state industries, 3) smashing the unions and 4) deregulation of finance. Incidentally the average rate of growth in the 70s was 2.5% and it remained the same in the Thatcher decade. So those who think the austerity is about high rates of growth are sadly mistaken, at best.

Not surprisingly then 0.8% of growth is enough for George Osborne to declare a great victory, a strange position given that there has been no opposition in Parliament to his agenda. Only a brat as expensively educated as the Chancellor could perceive competition in a game rigged in his favour. The Cameron lot want to patch up this sorry set-up, not to fundamentally alter its trajectory. The failures of the past are accentuated, and framed in a certain way, by the abstract principles of today. A high-rate of public expenditure is measured by a criterion not of the social democratic era. The 1970s was a terrible time in British history not because it necessarily was so awful, but because the conditions differ so greatly to today. To be specific, the scope of the state - particularly in the ways that helped poor people - in those days is what outrages conservative-minded people.

The standard of a high level of government debt was changed by the Thatcher-Major era. Suddenly it was set at a benchmark of 40% when this country has seen rates as high as 250% in the wake of World War Two. And that was a well managed economic situation. The Labour government of 1945 established a social democracy complete with the trimmings of a welfare state and universal health-care. The story of how the social democratic post-war consensus developed systemic problems and crises is a long one and a subject for a different article. What may be said is that the failures of that epoch have been accentuated in the years since. The abstract principles of today are applied to those yesteryears with the self-serving results one would expect. The rightward trend of discourse leaves the state-led settlement of the 50s and 60s looking almost Soviet to too many people today. This is the death of social democracy.

Capitalism is Dead.

The Monstrosity of Capital.

To report the death of capitalism is to exaggerate, to say the least, given we find ourselves subject to austerity measures as the global economy stumbles from one crisis to another in a little under 4 years. In the past capital has been likened to a vampire insofar as it is parasitic in its relation to labour. But it is no longer a suave count as capital is seemingly dead when it comes to the suffering of ordinary people. At the same time it is still capable of violent bursts of energy and it is mindlessly destructive in the pursuit of it's sustenance. So it seems appropriate to describe the current order as zombie capitalism, it requires a minimum of 3% compound growth in order to continue and that translates into a need for profitable investments of $1.5 trillion. In the future the system might demand even more, maybe $3 trillion in growth and we are struggling to find $1.5 trillion right now. One day the banking sector could be so big that it cannot be saved and we will be dragged into the abyss as it collapses. For us to gauge where we are today, and where we might be heading, it is important to remember the causes of the Crash of 2008.

A Popular Capitalism?

As David Harvey has noted, this crisis can be understood if we go back to the crises of the 1970s when organised labour posed a threat to capital. To the extent that the workers' share of GDP peaked in 1967. The unions had demonstrated a capacity to undermine the Establishment in Britain with the fall of the Heath administration in 1974. So the need for a broken labour movement emerged, which gave rise to Thatcher and Reagan to impose such discipline on the working-class. With the full-on assault on organised labour and its political allies came the mobilisation of a global labour surplus; the development of labour-saving technology and increased competition as neoliberalism emerged. The consequence was a sharp decline in the share of wages in total GDP almost everywhere, an enormous disposable labour reserve emerged and survived under marginal conditions. In fact some of the biggest wage-cuts in the world were endured in the US in 1985 and the UK in 1990 which was a direct consequence of the way trade unions were crushed.

The structures of monopoly power was undermined, with the state-monopoly capitalism being displaced in the meantime as the system was opened up to fearsome international competition. Ultimately the intensity of global competition led to lower corporate profits in non-financial domains. The early signs of a hegemonic shift of power towards East Asia came as uneven geographical development and inter-territorial competition had become key factors in capitalist development. The most fluid and mobile form of capital was utilised to reallocate capital resources at a global level, which led to the deindustrialisation in traditional heartlands of industry whilst new forms of industrialisation and resource extraction began in emergent markets. The character of these new forms might be labelled appropriately as ultra-oppressive, for instance in the Congo around 4 million people have been killed for the extraction of coltan. The ultimate aim was to enhance the profitability of financial corporations, thus the need for new ways to absorb risks through the creation of fictitious capital markets.

There is No such Thing as Society.

Accumulation by dispossession became a means to increase class power for the ultra-rich and so a new round of primitive accumulation - against indigenous and peasant populations - was in order to augment the asset losses of the working-classes in the developed world. We have only to turn to the African-American victims of the sub-prime housing crash. The mass-privatisation of social housing in Britain, which took place in the 1980s, appeared as a gift to the working-classes as it enabled them to convert from rental ownership at a relatively low cost to the control of a valuable asset which might make them rich. Speculation soon took over the housing market, eventually pushing low-income earners out to the outskirts of cities. David Cameron is about to further this process as part of a bid to recreate the property boom. It used to be that the capitalist invested in production. But for the last 30 years the economy has underwent financialisation as the capitalist has invested heavily in making money out of money rather than out of anything productive.

The increase of sagging effective demand was accomplished by pushing the debt economy - in governmental, corporate and household spheres - to its limits. This became standard method in the West, so it should be no surprise that in the US the household debt relative to income doubled from 1982 to 2007. By 2007 the ratio of financial assets to GDP had doubled since the early 80s. Incidentally the household debt in the UK was around £1,560 billion in 2010 and may rise to £2,126 billion by 2015 as a result of the cuts. The compensation for anemic rates of return in production came in the construction of a whole series of asset market bubbles and culminated in the property bubble that burst around 2007. Each of these asset bubbles drew upon finance capital and were facilitated by extensive financial innovations, specifically derivatives. The control of assets and resources at the heart of international finance became central to the system in the last 30 years. We no longer make things, we just make money out of money.

There is no Alternative.

The way that the crisis of the 1970s was circumvented led to nearly 16 years of growth in Britain from 1992 to 2008. It led to Gordon Brown claiming that Boom and Bust had been abolished. The current crisis has to be circumvented somehow, in the past that has required the enforced destruction of productive forces, the conquest of new markets and an even more thorough exploitation of old ones. So British manufacturing went into a decline from which it has yet to recover under Thatcher, employment in that area plummeted by 30 years from 1979 to 1990. The very means by which the system regenerates itself typically paves the way for even more extensive and destructive crises, as the means whereby crises are averted are diminished in doing so. The financialisation of the economy led to the financial crises of the last 30 years. The infinite capacity of capitalism to regenerate itself at the expense of the majority of the population should not be underestimated, but with each recovery the foundations for another crisis are laid.

The pressure is on for the ruling class to crank out profitable investments for $1.5 trillion, so it can meet that minimum of 3% growth for the time being. The state's reaction to the crises has opened a door which we're being led through and we don't yet know what is on the other side, it is just a mysterious darkness to us right now. This is nothing new, with the Crash of 1929 came such an opening and we all know what happened in Europe as Germans were marched into the darkness. Then there was the crisis of 1973 in Britain as a result of the oil crisis, which led to the collapse of the Heath government then the pathetic reign of a weak Labour government and then the emergence in 1979 of Thatcherism. This is not cheap fear-mongering, it doesn't seem realistic that either of these will emerge but we have to keep in mind what is possible. We might take comfort in the fact that when the Americans were marched into the same abyss it was the New Deal which emerged and not National Socialism. But it is not necessarily the case that history is on our side.

We're All in this Together.

A Crisis of Ideology.

Apart from the dire socio-economic consequences of the ongoing crisis the endemic contradictions of capitalism has led to a crisis of the prevailing ideology and the dust has yet to settle. As Terry Eagleton notes the tendency of market rationality runs towards the rationalist and materialist, as well as secular plurality, relativism and pragmatism. Naturally the forces of the market exert a subversive force on the metaphysical and ideological superstructure. Rather than question whether or not what we're saying meshes with what we're doing we might have to invoke the Virgin Mary at the World Bank. In the same way that Alan Greenspan took refuge as the crisis hit in the claim that it all down to human frailty, predatory instincts and so on. It is true that it was human behaviour which led to the crisis, but Greenspan resorted to this explanation only to protect the immaculate conception of free-market capitalism. The irony being that Alan Greenspan is an Objectivist dinosaur - a devotee of Ayn Rand - who buys into the virtues of selfishness.

The criminal assault on Vietnam and Indochina was a case in which there was an enormous gulf between the political justifications of the war and the grotesque details of the actions undertaken to devastate a country. It was claimed that the war was to combat and contain the spread of Communism, as the red flag was flying in North Vietnam and so the US embarked on a noble mission to fend off the tentacles of Communism - it then began bombing South Vietnam. The US had blocked every attempt at a peaceful settlement in the 1950s and installed the Diem regime in South Vietnam. As the Diem regime aroused resistance to it as it slaughtered around 70,000 people and in reaction to the resistance the Kennedy administration invaded South Vietnam. Even though he knew better Lyndon B Johnson continued with the line that "We have to stop the Communists over there [Vietnam] or we'll soon be fighting them in California." This was not enough after so many years spent bombing the country the ideological fissure was torn open with the wave of student activism.


A ideological crisis can emerge in the midst of a performative contradiction between what you're doing and how you explain those actions to yourself. To account for the gap there is a need for a new discourse complete with a theoretical understanding of the situation and the potential to establish a new orthodoxy. As the system requires new theories to justify itself and strengthen the ideological apparatus it seems to be struggling in it's desperate search for any such means of defence. The media has yet to find a narrative which could fill the void which has been opened up as political power came to the rescue of the financial colossus to which David Cameron and Barack Obama are bound almost as slaves. It was unthinkable that the banks should be allowed to collapse, it was a forced decision which no one can rightly oppose. But it seems that the system has lost it's sheath of market fundamentalism out of its own pragmatism. The utopia of the market has been stripped down for all to see, it is difficult to see how the system could ever double back on itself.

Today it is still rare to hear of the horrific details of the Vietnam War in spite of the memory of the demonstrations against it lives on. The objectives of the war will never be acknowledged in the media. The virus of independence and development in Vietnam had to be killed, and the region had to be inoculated, in order to preserve the accomplishments of the US in the Second World War. The virus might have spread to Thailand and Indonesia, then Japan might have to accommodate to an independent East Asian bloc and would no doubt become it's industrial heartland. The US aimed to maintain the Japanese empire under American control, the rise of Communism in China and Korea undermined these aims. The wars in Vietnam and Korea were fought for the same reason that the US installed Suharto in Indonesia. There are no apologies for the crimes, certainly no reparations and not even any recognition of the barbarism unleashed upon Indochina. Rather it has been swept under the rug as a noble quest which went awry and possibly an atrocity necessary in the Cold War which we will not repeat in this post-political world.

The system has lost the automatic claim to legitimacy, as Slavoj Žižek points out, the field is open in this time of crisis as the prevailing ideology has been disturbed. The limitations and perversions of the system can be seen publicly, we can see the desperate need for an alternative and we know not of an alternative. But this is not the basis for the system's legitimacy as the Thatcherites claimed. The greatest utopian belief is that the system of capitalism can go on indefinitely. Infinite growth in a world of finite resources is a fantasy even if you believe global warming is a liberal hoax cooked up to sell carbon credits to corporations and make you pay the congestion charge. There is a need for another kind of utopianism, not in the sense of the ideal society which ca never be realised but as a new space created out of the innermost urgency for survival. It is the way out we are forced to imagine by the impossibility of circumstances, which cannot be resolved within the coordinates of the possible. As Lenin said "There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." Right now, we need to make decades to happen!

Crisis, Change and Progress.

"Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change." - Milton Friedman

In the midst of the revolutionary contagion currently sweeping Africa and the Middle East, the Obama administration actively opposed calls for new elections in Haiti. This is consistent with the neoliberal understanding of 'progress' as the constant and rapid accumulation of capital without an end in sight - or as described by Hayek change for the sake of change. In accordance with this understanding of progress, people have to be coerced into accepting privatisation, deregulation and huge public spending cuts. This is in line with Hayek's influences from the radical Right, from where an authoritarian regime can be seen as justifiable along pragmatic lines, which was the reasoning Hayek used to defend Pinochet. The values of civil society, moral values and civic duties can disregarded in the pursuit of self-interest. Through the blind obedience to the artificial rules of the marketplace - e.g. price signals - 'progress' can be ensured. In the name of such 'progress' the Austrian economists called for us all to embrace inequality, and so it is being enforced in the developing world.

So naturally the US jumped on the opportunity, the earthquake last year, to further it's influence over Haiti. The unofficial branch of the US Treasury Department, formerly known as the IMF, did not waste any time to offer a loan of $100 million to Haiti with some very interesting stipulations that included: raise the price of electricity, refuse pay rises to all public sector workers (except those making minimum wage) and keep inflation low. The funds were needed in Haiti desperately and the stipulations were accepted for this reason. The Haitian people have had to put up with these new economic changes, let alone the earthquake and an outbreak of cholera, and the new American military base being built on the island. The repression in the developing world is partly to crush any signs of independence, but also to secure economic interests as the system requires 3% compound growth every year in order to perpetuate itself.

The neoliberal project is global in scale and not confined to the developing world. We see similar instances in the West, with the US and UK beginning to pursue austerity measures after the Crash of 2008. To further globalisation as led by the US there requires even greater repression in the developing world, countries like Haiti are a prime target. There are concerted efforts to crush the mass-demonstrations which have sprung up across the Middle East. As the people have risen up in Libya and Gaddafi reacted with horrifying ultra-violence, the West responded with sanctions (which left Libyan banks exempt) and has stepped up to a full blown intervention in the country. Meanwhile the GCC is active in exporting Libyan oil from the rebel-controlled east, as well as providing the rebels with arms whilst crushing rebellions in Bahrain and elsewhere. The recent crisis of capitalism and the ongoing military 'misadventures' in the Middle East demand repression and violence in order to reassert the dominant ideology. It was the Falklands war which did so for Britain in the 1980s.

In this context we can understand that the US has seized on the opportunity to build a military base in Haiti and suppress the activities of trade unions, it is partly to prevent any currents of independence from succeeding and to beat back the tide of independence in the region. In the long-term it is about making a grab for resources in Latin America. So it should not be surprise us that the Haitian election in 2010 were rigged to produce a government submissive to these objectives. The US have blocked Aristide from returning to the country and  have let "Baby Doc" Duvalier return instead. The Duvaliers who ruled Haiti for almost 30 years with black nationalist rhetoric and vicious repression of all opposition. The dictatorship kept the republic in a state of subservience to US penetration and racked up huge amounts of debt. In 1990 a truly free election produced a government led by Aristide, but the US did not approve of the radical theologian who had once won 67% of the vote.

Haiti is the first and only case of a slave society which liberated itself from the Europeans. The Haitian revolutionaries had humiliated the French, though not by the standards that the French had humiliated the Haitian people through slavery. The French retaliated with demands for $21 billion in "reparations" to the former slave-masters. The "reparations" were paid by accepting loans from European and American banks, which led to a huge accumulation of debt in the country. Any attempt made by the republic to free itself of foreign interference have been crushed, with the US formally occupying the country and propping up the Duvaliers. The revenge of the white man on the first republic of freed slaves is evident today, which is the reason that Haiti is considered a "failed state" and often described as "cursed" in the media. The murky history of interventions in Haiti by the US are commonly ignored, along with the real reparations owed to Haiti. Instead the media prefer to tell feel good stories about Haiti and humanitarian efforts by the West.

Elsewhere in the developing world we find the same practices. The reactionary regime headed by Pepe Lobo was installed in Honduras in 2010 by the military in a suspect election last year. It was the military which "resolved" the constitutional crisis of 2009 and exiled Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected President of Honduras. Since then there have been infringements on the rights of Honduran citizens, which have gone as far as state-sanctioned rape and murder, used particularly against the opposition to the coup. Since he took office in January 2010, Lobo has initiated the process of smashing the teachers' unions and soon after seizing power, with the support of the US, $100 million was stolen from the teachers' pension fund leaving many on long waiting lists. Pepe Lobo signed an agreement with the IMF to secure a $200 million loan, the stipulations of which included a slashed education budget.

There were wage cuts for Honduran teachers by October 2010 and as the teachers began to resort to industrial action, the right to strike was suspended and the control of education has since been devolved to municipalities. The regime has been working to redirect funds from schools to the military and the police. This is a deliberate move to create the pre-conditions, a crisis of schooling, in order to privatise education later. A similar process destroyed the supply of drinkable water to the majority of Hondurans. Now a neighbourhood which cannot be provided with drinkable water at a profit it will not be provided at all. We have seen similar disasters of privatisation across the region. The response from the teachers have been further strikes and occupations across the country. Other sectors of society have also joined in the demonstrations against the government.

The Honduran government has declared that the strikes "illegal and has moved to repress the unions with ultra-violence that has killed and injured strikers. The repression of the strikes are imperative to the neoliberal project as the movement to defend education has become the backbone of resistance to the Lobo regime. The security apparatus of the state has ignored the laws which bar police and soldiers from entering university campuses, which was introduced to prevent the kind of 'disappearances' of student leaders seen in the 1980s. Students have resorted to hurling rocks at police officers trying to enter campuses. The media has become subject to an intense campaign by the state, with journalists sympathetic to the dissidents being threatened and even killed. In some cases entire media outlets have been shut down by the government.

All judges who opposed the coup have been fired and the regime has been keen to see that any teachers taking part in strikes are to be jailed for 'sedition' and denied bail after participating in a strike. The threat to fire all strikers on mass has led to strikes being called to a stop. The endemic corruption of the political class, a total disregard for human rights and civil liberties is nothing new to Latin America. In the 1980s over 200 people were 'disappeared' in Honduras by another US-backed regime. The return of Manuel Zelaya to Honduras, along with other exiles, should not be interpreted as a sign of the return of democracy to Honduras. It is the result of an agreement between Hugo Chavez, Pepe Lobo and Juan Manuel Santos. The regime that has killed around 100 dissidents and 40 leaders is still in place with the support of Washington. Let alone 8 homophobic murders and the killing of 11 journalists, with no sign of investigation from the police.


The teachers continue to protest against the effective privatisation of schools, suspension of hundreds of teachers and the theft of pensions. Some are now camped out in front of the National Congress on a hunger strike for more than 20 days in spite of harassment - which went as far as threats of rape - by the police and the military. Within hours that the agreement was signed by Lobo to secure the return of Manuel Zelaya to Honduras, the regime attacked a group of students who were protesting against the suspension of their teachers. The security forces used live rounds and tear gas against the students. But the resistance to the regime remains active and organised. Sadly the reactionary forces of the state are backed by the US and that would mean only a thorough overhaul of the regime would secure public services in Honduras. But it looks as though this could be the beginning of a repression on an international scale to defend further neoliberal reforms.

A Rally for Cuts and Debt.

The TaxPayers' Alliance have pledged to lend the Rally Against Debt the 'debt clock' it paraded through the streets of London last year in a bid to secure a Conservative victory at the General Election. Ironically this populist rally for less government debt is effectively a rally for more debt per household. The household debt is set to rise from £1,560 billion in 2010 to £2,126 billion in 2015 which would represent an increase of 36%. Since the decline of the workers' share of GDP began in the late 1970s and social mobility has stagnated, the loss in wages had to be substituted for in debt by a great deal of working-people. By 2015 it is projected that public debt will be reduced by £43 billion whilst household debt will have skyrocketed by £245 billion. This should not be a surprise given the situation in the economy, the process of financialisation which was undertaken in the 70s and has intensified over the years. With the 'Big Bang' of 1986 in which Thatcher liberated the financial markets from regulations and taxes, of which UKIP and the TaxPayers' Alliance are admirers.

The fall in aggregate demand created by the financial collapse of 2008 will be made up for through an even greater reliance on debt. Credit is the only way for consumption to increase in a time when there is mass-unemployment, high inflation, stagnant wages and a VAT hike. The cuts will dispossess millions of people of an adequate safety-net which has the potential to force a lot of people to fall back on credit and take on even more debt. Since the financialisation of the economy began in the late 1970s and early 80s debt has been used to substitute for the losses in wages. The economic crises over the last 30 years have been a result of this process of financialisation. The austerity measures are part of an attempt to ensure the survival of the financialised economy we had before the Crash of '08. The prevention of a turn to social democracy, or worse socialism, along with the destruction of the welfare state are a part of this process. The public has to flip the bill for this process at a time when the population has been left jobless by the recession.

The current line about the national debt and the budget deficit exacerbated by the recession blames New Labour for "irresponsible" spending and giving "too much" to benefit claimants. This line reeks of bullshit. Even though public spending is low when compared to the rate of expenditure in the social democratic era which spanned from the 40s to the 70s. The amount of debt is also small compared to the immediate aftermath of WWII, when it was around 260% of GDP and today the debt is 70% of GDP. As right-wingers like to point out, in a war the national debt and budget deficit increases due to the impact of war on a country. This is often used to defend the position that the amount of spending under New Labour was unusual and irresponsible. It is conveniently left out that it is the norm in a recession for a deficit to emerge as public spending, which would normally be sustainable, becomes unsustainable as tax-revenues fall due to the economic collapse. The amount of debt incurred by such crises is then used to justify a series of deep cuts, this has been standard practice for over 30 years.

The joke about tuition fees and cuts to higher education is that the national debt is 70% of GDP and spending on higher education is 0.7% of GDP. So to pay-off less than 1% of the debt students are expected to take on around £30,000 in personal debt. Naturally, the subjects - science and math - prioritised are potentially valuable in Canary Wharf and Wall Street. Similarly absurd are the cuts to benefits which amount to £18 billion over 5 years, supposedly to deter benefit fraud (which costs £500 million a year) and to reduce the deficit. All the while defence has been essentially ring-fenced and the Trident missile programme is being renewed, even though it is under the control of the American nuclear command system and will cost £80 billion to renew. All the while there are billions being accumulated in offshore accounts at the expense of the public, various loopholes in the tax system allow the ultra-rich to get away without paying their full share. The estimates range from £25 billion to £125 billion as to how much this costs the Treasury.

Not that the Labour Party offers an alternative to cuts, it is totally on board with the cuts agenda in a less extreme form. Ed Miliband has only jumped on the back of the anti-cuts movement and sought to use it to further his own political career. Labour stands for across-the-board cuts of 10% rather than 12%, which would hit front-line services and working-people. It should also be remembered that it was New Labour under which the financial crisis came about, as a result of policies which are supported by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as well. If there had been a Conservative administration in office the Crash would have still occurred. Down to the disillusionment with Labour, as well as the Establishment in general, and the usual herd behaviour amongst voters the outcome of the election was a hung Parliament. Those who claim there is a democratic mandate for a Con-Dem Coalition along these grounds are mistaken, a minority Conservative government maybe but not a coalition.

There may not be an alternative promised among the political class, but there is an actual alternatives to the cuts. At the Glasgow Media Group, Greg Philo has researched the possibilities of a one-off wealth tax of 20% which could wipe the deficit and replenish the government's coffers. It could rake in £800 billion to the Treasury from the £4 trillion in wealth accumulated by the richest 10% in this country. It would stabilise the stock market and the 10% would get their money back in the long-term. Even without this tax public spending can be used to supplement the fall in consumption and investment. Once the economy has recovered and growth is rising, tax-revenues would recover as employment increases and businesses recover. The country's debt could be paid off over time as spending which was temporarily unsustainable once again becomes sustainable. These are just two alternatives to the cuts, which do not exist according to the BBC and the mass-media.

Sickness unto Debt.

Another government, another politician called Brown(e) and someone else who wants to shaft anyone who would favour stupid things such as intellectual growth or the advancement of British academia over good business acumen. While we at the Lion applaud Lord Browne for his novel and outside-the-box approach to higher education, one can’t help but wonder if he happened to learn joined up thinking in his own time at university.

Lord Browne (played by the love-child of George W Bush and Pierce Brosnan, assuming George Bush could get it up without starting a war), has announced his plan to cut funding for the education of what he considers are not “priority subjects”. But don’t worry, John Browne is not like George Bush in the sense that ol’ Dubya is a cynical playboy descendent of crypto-fascist senators, born with a silver spoon in every orifice, the Bible one hand and a bottle of Johnny Walker in the other, rather Lord Browne is just a nasty little neo-Thatcherite with a reputation for firing people who disagree with him and ruthlessly cutting costs. The esteemed peer of Her Majesty’s government has no experience in education and is an entrepreneur who has over 40 years of experience at BP, that same company which, earlier this year, broke the world.

Browne’s plans to remove limits on how much a university may charge students in tuition fees could lead to fees being hiked up to £90,000 over 3 years. Read that number again. Ninety thousand pounds. That’s enough for a house in the suburbs. Or enough Johnny Walker to sink the Belfast. Lord Browne has defended his proposals claiming that “These reforms will put students in the driving seat of a revolutionary new system.” Although it is technically true, not all students will be empowered by these ‘reforms’ and the system is only ‘revolutionary’ in the Thatcherite sense of the word. As I recall, Wat Tyler was a revolutionary, and things didn’t go so well for him. These proposals are a part of the cuts agenda that could decimate the welfare state and reinforce a system of affirmative action for rich-white-men.

The kind of educational system favoured by Browne could have been drawn up by Allan Bloom, an elitist system where intellectuals pump out ‘great ideas’ which everyone else just memorises. If one considers where Lord Browne’s cuts and ‘Glorious Revolutionary Ideas’ may take the education system, one ends up with a dystopia that Orwell would have killed to dream up. David Cameron has given full backing to this proposal. It’s nice to have a Prime Minister who will do the best thing for the downtrodden common man while sipping brandy at the Bullingdon and braying like a newly neutered pony.

It’s ironic that the government is supposedly dedicated to cutting the deficit so that our children won’t have to live with the burden of our actions. While Con-Dem policy on education appears to be “Let’s ensure that our children have to live with the burden of our actions.” This eases us gently into the main point of this bilious tirade. To ensure that you don’t have to live with this little scheme of Browne’s (which our Paramount Leader James Johnston detailed in the last issue) then you’re going to need to do a little walking. This communal stroll will take place on the 10th of November, to enjoy the London sunshine, take in some sites on the way, and to kick arse all around the room and down the stairs.

This is a short interlude to let our heads break the surface of hatred for a moment, to add the perfunctory note that Lord Browne’s report does have some good bits. Like the Curate’s Egg. On the other hand, the Curate’s Egg was still rotten, and it doesn’t matter how good the good bits are, you still throw a rotten egg away. Or at someone. Like Lord Browne. In fact, if any readers happen to have any rotten eggs, by all means bring them along on the march.



On a more serious note, it is important to remember our status in this. When one mentions the word ‘students’ a whole list of pejorative phrases and negative images float into the mind of the public in general. This kind of activism is the kind of gesture that shows that students in London and across the nation are not going to take these cuts lying down. In a time when political apathy is almost a badge of honour in many circles, showing that university students have a social conscience and are prepared to march and declare their opposition to unfair or unjust proposals. It is, if not an obligation, then most definitely your right as a student and a British citizen to protest. Change in government policies should come from the affected making their stance known. If the government is out of line, then you need to tell them so. If they will not police themselves, it falls to the public to express their dissent.

No good can come of this government, as it espouses the maxim “From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed”. Lord Browne proposes to treat institutions of learning and high thought as a business. He pays no heed to the importance of the arts or culture in our society. Short of actually calling him a bellowing philistine ninny, we will instead simply say that Lord Browne intends to take institutions like Cambridge, Oxford and the towering latter-day Athens of Heythrop and treat them as a business because the cocaine barrel happens to be running low. It is interesting to note that Lord Browne (whose title, I just noticed, makes him sound like a Brummie pimp) put Physics as one of the “priority” subjects, as this happens to be the degree that he read at Cambridge. It also happens to be a favourite of predatory recruiters into the City, who will snap up scientific types like a vulture over carrion. Strange, then, that Philosophy, a subject that promotes individual thought and betterment of oneself and the world, has been relegated to the status of secondary priority and would, under Lord Browne’s proposal, have its funding cut. As Nietzsche once wrote “The Philistine detests all education that makes for loneliness, has an aim above money-making and requires a long time.”

The Browne report on its own merits could be deemed barbaric in its aggression towards the arts, but when considered as part of the cuts agenda of the Con-Dems it is constitutive of the ongoing annihilation of remnants of social democracy which began in 1979. Since Browne’s proposals carry the potential to hike tuition fees for medical students well over £100,000 we should think of our position at this point as defending what remains of an exemplary system of higher education. If Browne’s report becomes reality (not just a hideous speculative fantasy) then a new age of debt-ridden life of wage-slavery for students is ushered in. The deficit is cut, well done, jolly good show boys, now it’s the people who are carrying the strain.

At the risk of sounding like a thundering demagogue, I would say that it is your duty to attend this demonstration. It’s relevant to you; yes YOU holding this paper in your sweaty little hand, because you don’t want to see yourself in debt for the next 40 years. It’s important for the country and for the university you attend. I do, of course, hate to think in such callous terms, but think of the money. The f*cking debt you would be in would be bloody outrageous. Nobody likes being in debt. Especially not to David Cameron, that simpering toff gleefully rubbing his palms together and salivating, all the while perspiring with pleasure at the thought of a system that rations education according to affluence rather than intelligence.

And furthermore, if sticking it to the Conservative Party doesn’t make you want to attend, then nothing will. Just conjure up an image of Lord Browne sharing a sweaty roll in the hay with David Cameron in a pile of banknotes paid by students toiling endlessly to pay off their debt, and feel your social conscience grow proud and erect. (Writer’s note: That is the worst sentence I have ever written in my whole life and I hate myself) It is absolutely vital to the core of education, the furthering of intellectual pursuits and the struggle for knowledge, that these proposals be opposed with the utmost sincerity and tenacity by students across the country.

Written by JT White and Joshua Ferguson, October 24th 2010, for Heythrop's student newspaper the Lion originally.

The Cuts Agenda - What lies beneath?

The government's cuts agenda has the potential to finish off the welfare state, as it was constructed after WW2 in much worse conditions than we face today and based on a progressive state, redistributive taxes and social justice. It's important to remember that the social democratic era from 1945 to 1975 was marked by high rates of economic growth and productivity, historically low levels of unemployment and high wages. During this era government debt was high, often higher than it is today. But since these austerity measures are soon to be announced we should consider the logic behind the savage cuts that the Con-Dems are about to ram down our throats. As these cuts will significantly reduce the spending that helped drive the economy out of recession we should consider the notion of "creative destruction".


What is creative destruction? It was the brainchild of Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist and political scientist, as a way of taking advantage of crises and subsequent recessions to strive for radical innovation in the economy. For Schumpeter believed that long-term economic growth would be sustained by this endogenous process. Schumpeter was deeply opposed to Keynesian economics and an important figure in evolutionary economics, he saw the Great Depression as a "cooling off" period which could enable surviving firms to take-over firms that were insufficiently competitive. So avoiding a double-dip recession might not be high on the Coalition's priorities, as it could arguably allow the most successful entrepreneurs to buy-out rivals who are less efficient and productive. Arguably it's similar to the corporate raids of the 1980s that tore apart old bureaucratic monopolies, theoretically leaving the most successful firms unscathed.

It's likely that this approach to the economy would have dire social consequences, leading to greater inequality as unemployment rises. Though the cabinet consists of around 22 white people 19 of which are male and 18 of which are millionaires, which might lead us to conclude that they do not hold the interests of the common man at heart. Especially as most come from a background of wealth and privilege, attended the finest private schools and universities in our country. Take David Cameron, he's descendant of King William IV and is the fifth cousin of the Queen twice removed. At Oxford Cameron was a member of the Bullingdon Club and spent over £3,000 on his "uniform". Cameron's first job was at the Conservative Research Department, which he was given thanks to the intervention of a Royal equerry.

Considering that David Cameron is essentially a product of affirmative action for rich-white-men, it would seem that he may not be acting for the Common Good. We can tell more about who he represents from his record as Conservative leader. As Conservative leader he raised £16 million in funding from the City of London over 4 years. Cameron also won over the support of Rupert Murdoch, and by extension 40% of the British media. In short the government has a dual constituency, the uber-rich and the rest of society, through a precarious balancing act - trying to appease both classes - the Con-Dems will try to stay in power. It will end badly of course, as it did with New Labour. Creative destruction, as leading to rapid deflation, could enable the richest of the rich to take-over smaller firms and purge the markets of competition. 

It could also be that the government is currently acting to initiate a sort of economic "shock therapy" that will dissolve the welfare state and the last remnants of social democracy over a short period of time. We may be kept in a state of "shock" by the financial crisis of 2008, the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the growing threat of terrorism. Naturally, the Conservative Party is brandishing the Union Jack on their logo and talking of the "national interest". The idea being to use exaggerated threats to justify oppression at home, to push through unpopular policies whilst the public is still in a state of "shock". We saw the same tactics under Thatcher. The Falklands war of 1982 gave Thatcher a boost in the polls as hundreds died. This gave her administration the opportunity to push through legislation against trade unions and to privatise vast sectors of British industry.


The Conservatives promised us "change" during the campaigns and "change" they will deliver unto us. But it will only be the continued shift in paradigm that began under Thatcher and was furthered by Blair. The Liberals have not "diluted" the Conservative Party and were on board for the cuts the second the Conservatives tried to forge an alliance with them. As the Lib Dems try to put a "progressive" face on the Coalition the Conservatives will appeal to Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant tendencies in the working-class for support. All the while the economic programme has been drawn up for the richest of the rich, to insulate them from the harshest of recessions and the austere follow-up to it. Time will tell if the Con-Dems will succeed, as the cuts agenda has yet to be revealed for all to inspect.