Theoretical Meanderings

Critique of Capital

The petty bourgeoisie want to maintain huge capital gains through exploitation of capital and fundamentally the workers, including the whole ecological edifice. Within capitalism the consequences of such action is of course, by the powers that be, negated.

An implementation of Minskian economics – that being the regulatory reformation of market capitalism in order for capitals profit mongering to continue in a regulated system - may preserve the life of capital exploitation as we know it and be able to curb capitalist’s inevitable devaluation, however the systemic failures of capitalism still remain.

The emphasis on profit as opposed to people’s welfare will remain dominant. More poignantly the culture which has come out of capitalism symbolised through; a symptom which is more prominent than greed. Greed is championed as the main tendency of capitalism, I tend to disagree. I believe it to be ENVY. Envy is far worse than greed and does much more to fuel capitalism than greed could ever do. Envy creates and maintains the culture of competition, and the culture of accumulating material possession, which is achieved through two means;

Firstly the exploitation of some means of production i.e. workers, ecology, poor/corrupt states and such like, secondly living beyond our means.

Both instances are unsustainable and therefore degenerate. What is needed is to radically reform capitalist dynamics in favour of emancipatory mechanisms which should exist, but currently do not exists, on the levels needed to provide for global welfare. Such a dynamic is far from actuality. Radical alternatives can only be created through an understanding of the critiques of capitalism whilst at the same time understanding the contemporary road which lies ahead.

Failings of the UK factionary Left

The UK Left wing fractions, in particular, the SWP and Workers Power, claim to already hold the alternative to capitalism or rather they don’t care for how to construct alternatives to capitalism (never mind the anarchist left, anarchism seems flawed from the start – we have no need for organisation or leaders! Then how is it you get together to effect change?!). Rather, those groups merely surmise that they want a word, that being ‘Socialism’ to replace Capitalism. This is not a serious or viable alternative to capitalism and is part of the Lefts failing in efforts to attract serious demographic infiltration of the liberal capitalist’s edifice. The UK left claim to want ‘revolution’ without an understanding of what constructs would be put in place after revolutionary change.

As much as I too champion the Revolutions we are witnessing in the Middle East and North Africa, in; Tunisia and Egypt, with the possibility of similar revolutionary situations occurring in; Algeria, Yemen, Jordan and hopefully one day soon in Iran and Saudi Arabia. What we the UK Left can learn from these revolutionary moments is that an organised solid socio-political organisation with clear thought out goals would have served to fill the power vacuum we are witnessing in Egypt. Egypt was unable to construct such forces under Mubarak, due to his dictatorship oppression. We in the UK are under no such forces and have the ability to achieve what the Egyptians were unable to enact.

On a positive note Tunisia seems to have an established Trade Union movement which is gaining power and with whom my solidarity resides (see - http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2011/01/tunisian-unions-eclipsing-parties-as-democratizing-force-2/).

Although it may be said that spontaneous and impromptu uprisings in the Middle East have been crucial to their successes, it does no harm in trying to form true alternatives proposed by the, alienated, minority Left in the UK.

To succeed in opposing the British government the UK left needs real alternatives as opposed to scape-goating this company, this bank, this resource and so on. That is to say, our global problem is truly global, the crisis, the imbalances, and the corruption in our global civility are SYSTEMIC, the whole system is flawed and whilst it is easy to stigmatises individual flaws within the system, our efforts would be much better served if we tackled the whole system, and not just fragmentary instances of injustice, which we know go on and which we should, indeed, have the facts in front of us as Wikileaks has enabled. 


We need to do better than just shouting abuse at individual companies exposed by insiders. Just think of all those corrupt companies we do not know about! They will be sniggering and rejoicing at how their competitors are getting abused whilst they get away with, possibly, worse injustices.

We need viable alternatives!

Rather than arguing over foreign policy, the UK radical Left should be setting up think tanks, committees socio-political events, conferences and such like - on a united front! together in attempts to “think the world” before we change the world.

The alternatives we have at the moment are not good enough and obviously do not create the substantial numbers the Left requires - arguably for good reason.   

We need to come up with solutions so that we can formulate new social realities. Both internal and external and in conjunction with our fellow Europeans with the potentials to go beyond, possibly one day to South America, or perhaps the Middle East, providing the Left gains power there.

I am an advocate for globalisation, but a globalisation much more radical than the one we see today. A globalised world which is truly global, would only be possible if those excluded from the flows and junctures of globalisation had an empowered and involved role in the dynamics which have alienated those excluded from globalisation for too long; the globalisation of sociological, political, economic alternatives to globalisations’ current construct need to be formed.

This should be the only foreign policy the radical Left in the UK are concerned with. This would be a truly emancipatory mission, opposed to the current outdated opposition to imperialism and such like.   

My beliefs are that we should ban privatisation or anything which claims to have ownership over 'our' commons (see Hart and Negri), such a suggestion is farfetched but only through united substantial organisation could such radical reforms be implemented as opposed to fragmentary opposition over the fundamental message the radical Left shares... the emancipatory potentials of our global civility.