[PEN-L:28184] Re: big biz vs. big govt

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 18/07/02 13:15 -0400, Waistline2 wrote:

> Society is being polarized. Along with the economic polarization of our
> country comes its political realignment to the needs of capital. One
> expression of this is how the federal government, called "big govbermint"
> by the capitalist, is shedding its responsibility for ensuring the
> functioning of society.
>
> One after another, the state governments are turning public
> responsibilities over to private businesses -- whose "bottom line" is the
> bottom line, not care for the public - the various groups that make up the
> working class. There is a market price on all social concerns: Insurance
> companies determine standards for health care. Business gets its hands on
> the $300 billion education "industry." Privatization of the prisons makes
> the imprisonment of the population a profitable enterprise.
>
> As the governments abandon responsibility for ensuring the public
> interest, it turns that responsibility over to the "philanthropy" of
> private individuals and corporations. Society's well-being is at the mercy
> of the market and dependent on the whim of privileged individuals.
>
> The market is replacing due process and the will of the small electorate
> in social policy.

I have some sympathy with the view that socialism is a task of an
intelligentsia and that there are new forms of stuggle as well as new
relations of production.

But as far as the points above are concerned, I think that Bush, despite
himself is having to appear to support moves in Congress for greater
financial accountability. At this stage of the business cycle there is a
contradiction between insider trading and outsider trading and it has
become acutely focussed around certain individuals, who are then dneounced
as crooks.

But it is part of a wider process that is commericalising government
sectors. If you feel that this is happening in the USA, scan my post again
on the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer's comprehensive spending plans. This
makes a major move to reduce the Home Secretary to a CEO ultimately
responsible for performance targets in return for state income.

What we are moving to is turning the functionaries of capitalism into its
servants too, and requiring more in-process control of how capital is used
and managed. While the New Labour British government is embacing the
commerical ethic more and more deeply at the highest level it is pushing
for social monitoring and transparent auditing of how accumulated surplus
value is used.

Overtly nothing at all is said about class struggle, and this marks the
whole process out as utterly reformist, and the terms of reference to be
studiedly neutral.  However the groundswell appears to me to move
progessively towards more democratic accountability. In the UK Blair has
just seen his last major ally in the trade union movement defeated in a
controversial election by a former member of the communist party. Still
reformist but it is a signal of where things are moving.

Chris Burford

London