Gordon Brown at Labour Party Conference: Trust Me

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Gordon Brown at Labour Party Conference: Trust Me

US Treasury Declares Force Majeure

That was how, against all the evidence, Brown’s speech at the Labour Party Conference could be summed up. He was the man to rescue New Labour, and this was the party of economic success. Should the working class and people go against their own experience and the facts of life? No! It is not Gordon Brown and New Labour that have any compass to find a way out of the crisis. It is precisely the programme and policies of New Labour that are throwing fuel on the fire of the all-round crisis, of the pay-the-rich outlook which is wrecking society, and for which working people are paying.

It is risible that this party should even bear the name of labour. It is indeed clutching at straws when this party, having set the pace for the bail out of the financial oligarchy with Northern Rock, should then be portrayed as having come down on the side of the working people and not the wreckers of the economy. It is clutching at straws when yet more calls are made to demand that the Labour Party adopt socialist policies.

What is necessary is that working people should reject everything that the big parties, including New Labour and the Conservatives, stand for. It is the working people, whose fight for what is just and for the renewal of the political system, who have the power to bring about a socialist Britain.

"I know what I believe. I know who I am. I know what I want to do in this job." This is what Gordon Brown said. Rest assured. The working people know full well who Gordon Brown is, what he believes in and what he wants to do as Prime Minister. And they reject it with contempt.

Brown’s speech was shot through with chauvinism and a desire to serve the rich. This is his being, and this is the direction in which he is attempting to take society, despite the contemptible rhetoric with which it is cloaked, the thin veneer of talk of "what angers me and inspires me to act is when people are treated unfairly". He is so sorry that people felt he "wasn't on the side of people on middle and modest incomes". For Gordon Brown the old certainties have been turned on their heads. This is the thanks he gets from the electorate.

It is important in these circumstances that the working class and people do not get diverted from their fight to be rid of Brown and New Labour, and to organise themselves as worker politicians, to ensure that there is no election without selection, and that the crisis of representative democracy in which it is parties not the people who come to power, is resolved, as a first step, by building and electing a workers’ opposition.

Gordon Brown is a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of the Third Way, a way which in which Britain is involved to the hilt in illegal and unjust wars, and in which the rights of all are trampled. This is the significance of his remark that "just as those who supported the dogma of big government were proved wrong, so too those who argue for the dogma of unbridled free market forces have been proved wrong". On the first point, the essence of his argument is that "the modern role of government is not to provide everything, but it must be to enable everyone". "Enable everyone" to do what? The modern role of government is to ensure that the claims of every human being on society are met, and Brown explicitly contradicts this. On the second point, it is convenient for Brown to speak as though we were living in a 19th century, laissez faire economy. It is the financial oligarchy which is today unbridled, and which insinuates itself into every cell of capitalist society, and which utilises the state in its favour. This is not a dogma. It is a reality which is in crisis, which is wrecking the economy, which is willing to take society to destruction only provided it enjoys its trillion pounds worth of flesh.

In these circumstances, the tinkering on the margins by New Labour, while shoring up finance capital at the centre and shovelling public funds in their direction, are no solution. What can be said about their solutions of "transparency", "sound banking", no excuse of lack of understanding, and "integrity"? Which century are Brown and Darling living in?

The working class and people in response must demand that it is they who have the right to decide, to own and control the economy, and put a block on monopoly right.

The New Labour agenda was and remains a right-wing agenda, and the programme of New Labour to pay the rich, commit aggression, attack the vulnerable and deny the rights of the people any guarantee must be defeated. It must be defeated by the might of the consciousness and organisation of the people themselves, with the working class taking the political lead. This is at the centre of all the fights of the working class and people. It is a fight along the path of democratic renewal and a socialist Britain, which recognises the social and national rights of all, and ends aggression, war and relations of exploitation, building a bright future for all.

The Marxist-Leninist, Daily On-Line Newspaper of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), September 23, 2008

President Bush has asked Congress for authority to buy $700 billion of bad debts held by the financial oligarchy and to increase the national debt for the second time in two weeks from $9.815 trillion to $10.615 trillion and now to $11.3 trillion. The US Treasury will also make $50 billion available to guarantee against losses in the $3.5 trillion money market sector. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will receive unprecedented executive power to manage these funds with impunity.

The rationale behind using public money to pay the rich is the now standard force majeure of exceptional circumstance. The US political elite, including Democratic candidate for President Barack Obama, business people, many economic experts, and the mass media declare in unison that no alternative to a bailout of the rich is possible. The Canadian ruling elite led by Stephen Harper and a fawning mass media likewise applaud the bailout. The people are told if Congress does not release public funds for this scheme, then a slide into dark economic depression and chaos is a certainty.

Central Banks within the imperialist system of states dominated by the United States gave their approval of the plan offering $248 billion in additional US dollar liquidity. The Bank of Canada pledged $10 billion with varying amounts coming from the Central Banks of Japan, Europe, England, Switzerland, Australia, India and Indonesia.

The declaration of force majeure is an economic coup by the most powerful US monopolies to seize public revenue with impunity. The working class and middle strata pay around $2 trillion of the total US Federal tax revenue of $2.5 trillion. With the latest Bush pay-the-rich scheme, the bulk of public revenue now goes to fund war and bailouts of the rich to compensate them for their failed economic system.

The war budget is approaching $1 trillion and the cumulative pay-the-rich schemes since last March are now over $1 trillion. Interest on the US national debt is $400 billion leaving $100 billion for all other government programmes, which require a minimum of $1.3 trillion, with discretionary spending an additional $500 billion. The federal deficit was projected at $400 billion but will obviously rise well beyond that figure unless the government cuts programme spending, which it most probably will do in the current anti-social atmosphere. As for borrowing abroad, the US financial oligarchy faces a growing rebellion to its dollar hegemony, as its national debt spirals out of control with seemingly no restrictions on its limits.

The situation is not good for the US, Canadian or world peoples. It is a grave danger, as a force majeure of this magnitude in federal spending will most likely be followed by a force majeure in US politics, which may entail a military coup d'état or some other form of open fascist rule by the rich.

Just as Canada has been caught up in the economic turmoil because we do not have an independent self-reliant economy that does not depend on exports to the United States, the country will be caught up in a US political force majeure. The Canadian working class and allies must view the situation soberly without preconceived notions that our civil society and economic and political institutions "as we know them" are secure and will continue without gross interference by the ruling elite under a similar hoax of a force majeure. The situation demands more urgency in organising for democratic and economic renewal, to defend the rights of all and to stop the right in the federal election and elect an anti-war government.

The neo-liberal agenda has reduced the US budget to war spending and bailouts for the rich. It is breathtaking how brazen the ruling elite have become in paying the financial oligarchy with public money. For the rich, a variant of the Bush plan is considered necessary to save their wealth, power and privilege but for the people it means greater impoverishment and the hopelessness of fending for oneself without the collective strength of society, the socialised economy and one's peers. It is immensely important that the working class and middle strata not capitulate to the propaganda that there is no other choice than war and to pay the rich. An alternative is not only possible but necessary. Workers must ask themselves: What positive role do the rich and their private monopolies play in serving nation-building, the socialised economy and the well-being of the people? The answer can only be, none! They are anachronistic and serve only to wreck not build. Spiritually, they are very backward spreading a culture of greed and anti-worker parasitism, teaching young workers the myth that their work to transform natural resources into use-value is a negative cost of production, and besides even without such necessary work, new use-value can somehow be expanded through usury and fees by merely circulating already-produced value.

It is in the act of rejecting the self-serving rhetoric of the ruling elite of no alternative to war and paying the rich that pro-social possibilities arise such as restricting monopoly right through public control of the wholesale sector, increased investments in social programmes, and a public banking system without private profit, which is chartered to serve nation-building, a self-reliant sustainable economy and the needs of the people and small business with interest free credit with only small administrative fees.

The key is to get together to discuss the situation without the preconceived capital-centred notions from the mass media, business-parties and experts who deny an alternative pro-social programme is possible. From getting together and discussing come great possibilities to act as an organised and effective force to renew democracy and the economy, fight for the rights of all and stop these schemes for war and to pay the rich.