Our elite isn't up to the job

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Our elite isn't up to the job

(Friday 26 December 2008)

ANDREW MURRAY


If those in power were in any other line of work, they'd have been sacked long ago, argues ANDREW MURRAY.

THE ruling class is miserable at the moment. We have this on the authority of Robert Peston of the BBC, who is to the economic crisis the soothing broadcast voice that Des Lynam has been to England's regular penalty shoot-out traumas.

Peston wrote on his blog earlier this month: "I dread this time of year because, if you're in my trade, it's an exhausting season of parties hosted by chief executives, ministers, editors, ambassadors, even prelates.


"They are an excellent place to test the climate of opinion of those with the economic or political power to influence most of our lives. And right now, the climate is grim and the forecast is worse." So no festive cheer for the elite.


As Oscar Wilde might have said, you would need a heart of stone not to laugh.


But, once we pause in our merriment, a serious question remains. Just why do these folk still have "the economic or political power to influence most of our lives?"


After all, the credit crunch and consequent recession represents the most almighty cock-up by almost the entirety of the establishment.


Running down the list of Peston's party posse, I'm not sure that the bishops bear much of the blame, since, as a group, they are clearly well to the left of the parliamentary Labour Party.


And the diplomats got their calamity moment a few years ago with the Iraq war, the other great catastrophe foisted on the world so far this century by the masters of the universe.


But the capitalists, the politicians and the pundits are getting off lightly.
If they had any job other than generally being the Establishment, they would long ago have been booed off the stage, dropped from the team or sent on gardening leave.


However, come the new year, the same retinue who brought us "no more boom and bust," credit default swaps, light-touch regulation and "how to spend it" colour supplements - not to mention Saddam's phantom weapons and the "blood price" for keeping in with George Bush - will still be in charge, albeit humming a modified tune and hoping that everyone has short memories.


Had this monumental failure of economic management happened 20 or more years ago - or to be more exact, when it did - there would have been at least a significant body of opinion arguing that our ruling elite had entirely failed and should be kicked out, to be replaced by some form of socialism.
Mysteriously, this does not seem to be happening now. But it should.


While it is good news that copies of Marx's Capital are apparently flying off the shelves, it would be still better if the second address that Marx wrote for the First International on the Franco-Prussian war of 1871 also gained a wider readership, with its concluding warning that, if working people remain passive, all these problems will simply recur time and again.


With unwinnable wars raging and economies crumbling, if we can't make the case for a wholesale change at the top now, when can we?


Put it this way. Would we be better off today if the trade unions had been running the Treasury, the Stop the War Coalition the Foreign Office, Liberty the Home Office, a committee of passenger and workforce representatives the railways and if the main mortgage lenders had still been building societies? We could not possibly be worse.


As for the banks, having worked on union campaigns to organise their lowest-paid employees, I can state categorically that, if major investment decisions at HBOS and Lloyds TSB had been taken by their cleaners, they would all still be solvent, albeit not as spruce, since most of the boardroom bonus kings don't look like they would be much use with a mop.


So here is a seasonal solution to the woes of Peston's glum party-goers.
Let's put them out of their misery and lift the burden of being our rulers off their shoulders.


As it happens, the legislation is to hand, since national security laws have now been deployed against such an improbable seat of terrorism as feckless Icelandic banks, they could surely be used for one last hurrah to clap handcuffs on the self-serving elite who have caused much greater damage to the country and the world, before being repealed.


But it would be best not to rely on the ministrations of the Metropolitan Police, which may harbour a sneaking belief that the answer to our problems is a good dose of government by men in uniforms.


No, socialism is something we have to do for ourselves.


A wild fantasy? Of course, just like George Bush nationalising banks, Peter Mandelson promoting an industrial policy and the US electing a liberal black man as president.


Live the dream, as they say on X Factor.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Who will profit from Brown's £10bn spree?

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

A lecture by Nick Beams
The World Economic Crisis: A Marxist Analysis
In PDF
http://www.wsws.org/media/nb-lecture-1208.pdf

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Letter: Fight for communism
Across the world, people are resisting the tyranny of capitalism and making a stand for their human rights: the right to a job, a home, education, health care and culture; the right to be heard.
www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art= 468