"This is a failure of a system where we relied on the markets and excluded government. And the markets failed." Tony Benn"The authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have demonstrated that they'll do all they can to protect and preserve institutions that directly touch the lives of millions of people." Robert Preston, BBC News
The events of this week are the final full-stop at the end of the long, rather tedious Thatcher-Blair era when free market dogma was seen to trump all other concerns and put an end to sensible political debates about how our economies should best be structured and run. Suddenly, it's all up for grabs again, and so much the better.
Trumpeted by Reagan and Thatcher and followed blindly ever since, the dogma that people's interests should be subordinated come what may to the whims of the free market rolled back some of the best achievements of the twentieth century. This flawed doctrine bequeathed us the evil inheritance of an ever widening gap between rich and poor, unviable economic prescriptions for developing nations, spiralling property prices, economies built on "industries" that produced nothing, increasing profits in the hands of Fat Cats and financiers, and ever more miserly wages for people who actually did the work and produced the goods. Even more seriously, it was this apparently unassailable idea which has brought the global environment to the brink of collapse. Finally, (finally!) the system has begun to implode.
This leaves an intellectual vacuum into which the new ecological thinking, hitherto dismissed as a heresy of the fringe, can begin to develop and mature in the arena of serious debate. Unfettered by a dogma which now looks as dated and irrelevant as the scholasticism of Medieval Christendom, people (and possibly even the less cautious politicians, when they eventually put down their hymn sheets and realise the world has moved on) will be able to debate green and sustainable solutions to the global problems of the new century without being shouted down. We can dare to imagine, for instance, repowering with wind and solar energy. We can now do better to provide a decent standard of living for everyone without relying on "trickle down". Once unthinkable, now that governments have shown they will actually intervene in the economic sphere, such completely affordable aspirations are now possible with a bit of political imagination and a whole lot of pressure from people on the streets.
We may be going through the birth pangs of a new era and it's been a long time - my whole adult life - coming. The battle of ideas is back on, and there's a whole world out there to be claimed. "For the many", Mr Blair, actually for the many. Good night free market fundamentalism. You won't be missed.
1 comment:
I heard a Radio 4 programme about the crisis, and ALL the financiers agreed that the market would give itself a shake, recover, and find ways round any new regulations. They also insisted that the west could now wave goodbye to anything more than token expenditure on renewable energy, as this would be far too expensive. Oil and nuclear fuel--that is our future.
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