Sunday 16 May 2010

THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER CAPITALISIM


The
Labour Party manifesto for the recent election sounded as if it had been written by an elderly spinster on a state pension, no, hold on, it might have been more radical if it had been written by an elderly spinster on a state pension, this imaginary person may have had a strong opinion on the inadequate level of the current pension. It was so polite, lacking in bite, lacking in any attempt to deal with the glaring inequalities that have been increased during the Labour administration and had a complete lack of anything resembling a coherent ideology.
Nothing remotely challenged the Capitalist market led orthodoxy has so spectacularly failed and hung itself with its own gilded petard while the false rhetoric of the banking / City cabal was left to its own vice - ridden devices. Dont get me on to the Masons. Even the Queen, not widely known as a radical thinker, asked the question why did'nt the LSE forsee anything ? BBC ? LSE ? PriceWaterhouse ? What are they paid to do ?
I thought it was to interogate and make clear the gross mechanicals.

Famously the Conservatives at their most arrogant and free market obsessed said there was no such thing as society. Now even a nominaly Socialist party effecetive says there is no such thing as ideology. All parties seem pathologicaly fearful of using any language, let alone ideas, that spring from a broad and coherent ideology and, remarkably, the so called left of centre party, Labour, has been least likely to say anything that appears to stem from an ideology that is critical of Capitalisim. And that does not have to be an off the shelf existing ideology, surely that worrying post-ideological position that was mooted by certain academics after the fall of Communisim, ' the end of history ' cannot be accepted as an adequate response for the clear and present deficiency and malfunctioning of the hands-off , the market knows best approach that has been given free reign for at least thirty years now.
And its not good enough to replace the ideology-free stance of the last government with an ideology - lite that tip-toes around the fact that if governments and non-commercial institutions that are ment to represent the greater good do not take decisions that come from ideas about how things can be better organised, that aim for more equitable distribution of wealth and fuller involvement and integration of all members of society, then nothing will realy change and all problems will be exacerbated.
Ideas form an ideology, it need not be dogmatic and absolutist, as was Communism as practiced, but this retreat from anything that remotely resembles an ideology has to be checked.
Oscar Wilde once argued eloquently that the soul of man would not survive under Socialisim, substitute Communism and he was absolutely right, but equally the soul of man is unlikey to survive under Capitalisim and his suggestion that the problem was that Socialism would take too many evenings, although amusing, needs now to be revised : it will take as long as many evenings as it takes, and whatever 'ism' you call it, Socialism is good enough for me, surely it has to be done, the time has come, bring back ideology, almost all is forgiven.