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Post by dodger on Jul 29, 2013 15:42:54 GMT
The Corporate State and Incorporation
Posted on November 15, 2012 by imarxman
Early manifestations of the corporate state were not subtle: black/brown shirts, paramilitary parading, a preening demagogic leader and little pretence of even vestiges of democracy. It vaingloriously styled itself fascism. It was obvious and of itself roused opposition.
Capitalism learned a lesson when fascism proved to be not a baulk against communism but rather its proving ground in the Soviet Union. Not withstanding the heroic efforts of workers in the uniforms of the western allies, it was the Red Army that definitively crushed the forces of Nazism.
Unfortunately, that did not mean the decisive defeat of the underlying corporate ideology of fascism, which reincarnated initially as industrial pacts between Germany and France, on through the Common Market to today’s European Union. Even the euro, a common European currency, was a stated Nazi aspiration.
Rather than invading armies it is directives and bureaucrats insistently eroding national sovereignty, even filling nominally elective offices of state with compliant, unelected placemen.
While the euro, rather than creating a community of equals, has incorporated the subservient poor, Greece, Italy, Ireland et al into a corporate dominion ruled from Brussels and Strasburg.
Due to the palpable opposition of its people Britain could not be coerced into the euro despite the wishes of leading politicians such as Blair and Brown. This does not mean, however, that the EU has little effect here.
Its baleful influence, alongside the finance capital bias of our own political leaders of all parties from Thatcher onwards, has had a dire effect on Britain in general and the labour movement in particular.
For example, workers with grievances are encouraged to pursue claims through courts and even sue their own unions for being tardy. Rather than take on an active collective role in the union, a culture of individualism is encouraged.
Unwittingly, such legal actions, appearing easier and much less risky than taking on apparently vested interests in the unions, incorporate them into the European state machinery. At the same time the unions, eager to avoid legal penalties, are also incorporated.
On a larger scale, anti-union legislation has had the effect, apart from the overtly stated one, of also incorporating them into the state’s legal procedures. What constitutes allowable union action, such as a strike, is more likely to be decided by judges, not the will of the membership.
This has had the effect of unions becoming de facto administrators of industrial relations for capitalism. Action may well be discussed and voted on by the membership, but it then is taken through lengthy legal procedures giving forewarning aplenty to employers, making disputes difficult to pursue effectively and siphoning authority away from the workers.
Occasionally, there are set pieces such as days of action when massed ranks parade through London and other city centres. Often these are arranged for weekends so as not to inconvenience capitalism unduly. Whenever they are held, with impressive support belying the notion the workers don’t really support their unions these days, once the banners have been furled there remains the question, what next?
Too often there is no “next”: a few would be revolutionaries shout loudly for a general strike, union leaders express pious hopes the size of turn out will have the moral effect of forcing concessions and everyone returns to work perhaps a little more disillusioned.
If a day of action involved a strike day there will be a welter of negative media comment, no tangible gains and the loss of a day’s pay. Come the proposal for the next one there is waning enthusiasm, lack of commitment and a growing cynicism regarding unions.
It is too simplistic though to simply blame union leaders for this. Quite correctly they are trying to protect union assets from sequestration by the legal arm of the corporate state. To do this those leaders, however unwillingly, are virtually co-opted as agents of that state.
For this situation to change, workers need to play full active roles in their unions. Attending meetings, discussing and determining policy and actions, campaigning for the full support of all. Recruitment then becomes an issue for the whole membership as the real way of strengthening collective action.
It also means workers determining demands according to their collective will, disregarding whichever party is in government. Action in support of such demands must be what is deemed most likely to be effective, not pseudo-militant calls for all-out or general strikes.
There is a developing trend to form ever-larger general unions, with take over bids being launched. If ever there needed to be an illustration of how the labour movement can by incorporated into capitalist practises this pursuit of mergers is surely it.
This is a reflection of corporate mentality within the labour movement as is the passive nature of the members. Rather than branches being the forums where issues are discussed and decisions taken, a postal ballot at home is the closest many, perhaps most, members get to active participation: another example of the vote disenfranchising workers.
If it is allowed to happen, the EU will become a super corporate state in which all national sovereignty will be subsumed. The British working class can prevent this by ensuring it firstly defends its own sovereignty through being active members of their own organisations, the trade unions.
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Post by dodger on Aug 18, 2013 9:14:09 GMT
The Corporate StatePosted on October 31, 2012 by imarxman
imarxman.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/the-corporate-state/Much is frequently claimed in the name of democracy by politicians and the media for Britain’s multi-party system, usually contrasted with what are declared one party despotisms elsewhere.
However, is there a substantial difference between the two? Those labelled as being one party states have, on closer examination, multiple factions struggling for power to implement their particular programme.
Differences between these competing programmes are usually one of emphasis rather than profound disagreement. There is also often a clash of political personalities in pursuit of personal ambition to secure the prominent state positions.
Holding top offices of state brings access to procurement of wealth; either directly through corruption, or subsequently by securing lucrative positions in companies and corporations, even exaggerated remuneration for speaking at corporate events, offering spurious expertise.
This surely confirms the view that Britain benefits from avoiding such corrupting influences through being multi-party: the politicians have to answer to the electorate through the ballot box.But, is there really such a difference? The reality is that Britain is a corporate state, the political lynchpin of capitalism.
In the early nineteenth century, the heyday of private enterprise, individuals borrowed money from banks to finance the buying of steam engines and machinery. The industrial revolution was so dynamic though that as the nineteenth century progressed so did technology at a rapid rate.
Each advance made recent developments redundant and produced machinery that was increasingly expensive to buy. This required banks to furnish larger amounts of capital to the point they began to dominate manufacturing.
The increasingly complex nature of what was becoming finance capitalism required evermore involvement of the state. It had to act as arbiter between competing capitals to prevent cutthroat competition bringing about total mutual ruination.
It also had to act as pacifier of the working class, achieved through the gradual extension of the franchise, and guardian of society through such things as public health schemes.
Public health actually is a good example of the corporate state in action. Famously, the death of the prince consort to Queen Victoria demonstrated that when typhus or cholera struck it wasn’t only the poor who died.
No individual capitalist or group of capitalists was either willing or able to fund such large-scale projects required to significantly improve public health even though they’d directly benefit. The state had to take on corporate responsibility on behalf of capitalism.
The same is true of education. Ever-increasing complexity of technology demanded an educated workforce. Again, it was the state that had to exercise corporate responsibility.
Through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first the social, economic and political demands of capitalism continued to outstrip the ability of individual enterprises to meet them. The corporate state continues to fulfil this vital role.
Even when governments claim to be acting to reduce the state by outsourcing (privatising), all this means is its corporate needs are met through private enterprises financed from the public purse.
Britain today is run by the corporate state acting as a single entity, essentially one party: those groupings in parliament styling themselves as competing parties are, in fact, organised factions within the corporate state.
This does not mean there are no differences between them; if that was the case there’d be no need for there to be various factions. However, they are all committed to serving and preserving the corporate state in the interests of capitalism: it is merely how this might best be achieved which divides them.
Recently Labour announced its intention to promote a greater number of manual workers as members of parliament. What this means is those workers will be carefully selected and schooled to conform to the requirements of the Labour Faction within the corporate state.
One of the main functions of the state is to induce a corporate mentality in the people at large, the working class. The vast majority of people in Britain depend on selling their labour power in return for a wage or salary (or a deferred wage known as a pension).
While they continue to accept that their interests are being served, at least in part, by the corporate state, they will continue to vote for the various factions, ensuring its continuing perseverance.
This insulates capitalism, for all its crises, inefficiencies, continuing wars and general exploitation, from being directly challenged by those whose best interests would be served by doing so.
Capitalism must exploit workers as the only source of profit. Workers can only hope to take control of their own destiny by developing true democracy through which they can express their ideas, organise society on their own behalf and take control of the wealth of which they are the sole producers.
The corporate state can appear to be benign, especially when capitalism is in a period of prosperity. It will also organise the systematic impoverishment of workers (austerity) and the plundering of the public purse through privatisations to bolster finance capitalism when the crises strike. At worst, the corporate state will adopt its most vicious guise, fascism, which has mainly arisen in Europe in apparently multi-party systems. |
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Post by dodger on Aug 31, 2013 7:07:26 GMT
Dark shadows
WORKERS, JAN 2013 ISSUE
The government says it is reducing the scope of the state. Of course, it is doing no such thing. Instead of the public state, run by an independent civil service and accountable (in theory) to the electorate, the government is creating a private state.
To see just how far it is going, take a look at The Shadow State, a new report on privatisation and outsourcing of public services and assets by the organisation Social Enterprise UK. The shadow state strips out Britain’s public sector wealth and assets and places them in the control of multinational companies that operate outside of all democratic accountability.
A recent example is the London Borough of Barnet, which has transferred assets and services worth over £750 million to a private company, Capita. A second tranche of contracts worth a further £275 million due to go out in January 2013.
The contracts are for ten years with a initial possible extension of a further five years. Local democracy is destroyed in one fell swoop as accountability and control is removed from the local electorate to Capita’s boardroom.
Of the 520 staff in transferred December 2012, 57 per cent will be made redundant as work is transferred from North London to Belfast, Carlisle, Southampton, to name but a few of Capita’s outsourcing centres. More face a similar future in January 2013.
And it’s not just this government that has been creating this dark shadow. “We believe that the way outsourcing has been done in the last couple of decades has created a major problem,” says the report – which adds, rightly, that the way public spending is done, and therefore who suffers most from cuts, is an “even bigger” issue than the cuts themselves
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Post by dodger on Aug 31, 2013 14:53:58 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/opinion/opinion_0913/neofascism.html
Neofascism in WestminsterWORKERS, SEP 2013 ISSUE When the TUC denounces something as “an outrageous attack on freedom of speech worthy of an authoritarian dictatorship”, you know things are bad. The TUC is referring to the ‘Transparency of Lobbying, non-party campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill’, recently published. In particular, three clauses in that Bill draw the TUC’s fire:
First, the Bill changes the definition of what counts as campaigning. Current law only regulates activities designed with the intent of influencing an election result. The Bill will instead regulate activity that might be deemed to affect the result of an election. All sorts of organisations, not just unions, would be hit by this, as virtually any political activity on virtually any subject could be ruled unlawful in the year before a general election.
Second, it reduces the spending limit of third party campaigners to £390,000, more than halving the amount organisations can spend on issues which may be under discussion at elections (not a short list, one might think).
Third, it includes staff time and office costs in expenditure limits, thereby hoping to eradicate support given, for example by unions, but which is hard to separate from election-related party-political support.
“[The Bill] has been drawn so widely that its chilling effect will be to shut down dissent for the year before an election,” said TUC General secretary Frances O’Grady.
If this Bill became law as it stands, not only would any trade union demonstration be illegal within 12 months of an election – but so would holding of a TUC Congress!
Those who have allowed union rights to be described as privileges are now reaping the whirlwind. This neofascist legislation must be eradicated before it gets to the statute books. ■
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Post by dodger on Sept 15, 2013 14:46:36 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/features/feat_0611/corporate.htmlBenito Mussolini said, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” It’s that – rather than numbers of blackshirted thugs on the streets – that defined fascism then, and does so now...The rise and rise of the corporate state: the bankers’ dream of eternal ruleWORKERS, JUNE 2011 ISSUE BACK IN 2006 the CPBML spoke about the sheer breathtaking speed of decay in Britain, warning “The ruling class has a horrifying future in mind for us: abandonment of Britain as a nation, which means abandonment of this working class.” Only now are we beginning to see exactly what this future means.
As we move seamlessly from Blair to Brown to Cameron and Clegg, what if anything has changed politically? Cameron models himself on Blair, Gove tries to accelerate Blair’s policy of privatising schools by turning them into academies and Osborne steals Darling’s public sector cuts policy and cranks it up a bit.
Former Labour Cabinet ministers John Hutton, now mysteriously metamorphosed as Lord Hutton, and Frank Field reappear as pensions (how to cut them) and poverty (how to cut benefits) tsars for Cameron, with Hutton already producing a report telling the government how to attack public sector pensions, while Alan Milburn, former Blair health secretary, is Cameron’s “social mobility” tsar. They will be joined by billionaire Top Shop boss Sir Philip Green, advising Cameron on “efficiency savings” (cutting public expenditure). This is where politics in Britain is going – straight to the horse’s mouth.
But there’s more – what is changing in the media? The News of the World phone hacking scandal has let us have a glimpse of how British MPs live in fear of the Murdoch media empire in case one of his publications does a job on them. It is reckoned by those involved that at least 6,000 phones were hacked into, while Murdoch’s emissary and the man at the heart of the hacking scandal, Andy Coulson, was later employed as Cameron’s Director of Communications. This minor setback doesn’t detract from the fact that Murdoch wants total control of Sky TV and a slimmed-down, tame BBC. He wants control of Britain’s media to dictate what information we receive. So, an end to any semblance of independent news media looks increasingly likely.
The City of London: home to finance capital of all kinds – and the heart of reaction.
What of the future for trade unions? Organised workers are now about the only check on capitalism’s operations, if they choose to be. The CBI announced at the Tory conference in October its demands for more anti-union laws and was parroted by the Mayor of London. The CBI wants employers to be entitled to employ agency workers to break a strike and to be given 14 days’ notice to enable them to recruit agency scabs. It wants strikes to be illegal unless 40 per cent of the total of union members vote in favour. If they get their way, we will have an end to automatic union recognition, employers to determine who is a union member, steeper fines for unions and more power for the Certification Officer. The Cameron–Clegg Government act for the CBI and it will be impossible to have a legal strike. Why would they do this? It’s certainly not because capitalism has had a big strike problem recently. No, it is solely to screw down further our ability to organise as a class.
A pattern is emerging. No political parties which are even ostensibly different from each other, no free news media, no freedom to organise in trade unions.
Fascism
Finance capitalism brought many things to the 20th century but the worst by far was fascism.
Today, many find it difficult to define fascism, preferring to point to the British National Party rather than look at a developing structure throughout society, including Parliament. The early 20th- century Italians, who invented the word “fascism”, had a more descriptive term for the concept – “estato corporativo”, the corporate state.
Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Communists defined fascism as “the dictatorship of finance capitalism”.
Of course the situation in the 1920s and 1930s was very different from today. In Italy there was the fascist march on Rome that effectively put Mussolini into power. And there was the revolutionary USSR. Terrified of this, and in the midst of the chaos and the widespread inspiration of revolutionary ideas following the First World War, finance capitalism would stop at nothing to control the working class. It had to lead to war.
Today, the ruling class tries to be much more sophisticated. But, try though it may, it cannot stop us seeing what is happening. We can see the coming together of corporate power and government, and we can see some of what they have in store for us. Having had the birth of trade unionism airbrushed out of the history syllabus, much of our history rewritten, academy schools run by businesses or religious institutions pushed on us, we can see how they want the young to become citizens with no knowledge of class struggle.
The National Minimum Wage will become the norm, especially those young people who can find work. Higher education is to be all but destroyed, except for the privileged few. The NHS, for which many of us have fought so hard, is to be privatised by the back door by means of GP Commissioning. Wages are now being depressed in real terms and occupational pension schemes may become a thing of the past in many areas. Benefits are to be cut to try to force people back to nonexistent work whilst potential parents are told not to have children unless they can afford them. Volunteers will take over from paid workers in our “communities” in the “Big Society” – or this is what we are told.
All of this is happening to pay for the bailout of the banking system with our money. In other words, the finance capitalists have such a powerful hold over government that it will pauperise the British working class so that they can continue with the reckless financial gambling that is at the heart of finance capitalism.
But as – or maybe more – significant is the European Union effect. The EU’s purpose has always been to slow down the absolute decline of capitalism by organising capitalism on a continental scale. The Commissioners are handpicked from those who will protect capitalism, brutally if needed.
The EU directives and laws, such as “free” movement of labour, are intended to prop up capitalism by providing rootless low paid workers with no allegiance to any national working class. The EU plans to gobble up the Balkan mini states next and has its eyes on Ukraine, Turkey and Georgia, giving it a vast pool of much lower paid workers to let loose on the rest of us, depressing wages further and at the same time getting control of the Black Sea and confronting Russia.
That marriage between the European Union and the forces of finance capital is the lifeblood for the dark heart of fascism, Hitler’s vision becoming a reality. It is in the boardrooms and stock exchanges – and, yes, parliaments – that our true enemy resides.
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Post by dodger on Sept 18, 2013 16:11:56 GMT
The fascist pipedream was obliterated in the victories of the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War. But the concepts of the corporate state and a united Europe have remained...
The corporate state and a united Europe - the line from fascism to Thatcher, and BlairWORKERS, JAN 2007 ISSUE It is now commonly said that Blair's policies and legislation continue Thatcherism. This is to ignore, at our peril, the much longer and more sinister capitalist tradition in politics which he represents.
In 1970 when Edward Heath became Tory Prime Minister his intention was to introduce a radical reformation of British politics. His remit was to do away with the consensus politics dating back to 1945 and introduce a greater submerging of Britain into the then forerunner of the European Union. Heath, dating back to before the Second World War when he met Nazi leaders in Germany, was a loyal supporter of the fascist concept of a united Europe. Hitler, Mussolini, Mosley, Franco – all were adherents of a united Europe – united against the working class and at that time the Soviet Union.
Like the wretched Mosley, who was beaten by the British working class, all three fascist dictators were adherents of, in slightly differing forms, the Corporate State. All opposition was to be submerged in one unifying state to serve capitalism, ignoring national boundaries. The fascism's answer to working class opposition was to physically destroy or emasculate all centres of opposition, independence, aspiration and assertion of class power.
The fascist pipedream was obliterated in the victories of the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War. But the concepts of the corporate state and a united Europe remained.
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Mussolini and Hitler: their legacy lives on in the European Union.
The creation of the forerunners of the European Union from the early 1950s, originally funded by US interests, was a 50-year programme to gradually return to the basic fascist ideals: one capitalist Europe – not destroying themselves by war and competition, capital to be in unfettered power, the working class to be in its place.
Heath, originally elected on a "no U turning" manifesto, was shattered within four years by working class resistance. Enter Thatcher, who took up Heath's gauntlet and set about brutally ending the consensus politics of Britain that had lasted from 1945 to 1979. If the Thatcherite years 1979 to 1997 were one phase of a counter-revolution against the working class, then the Blair years have been a second phase.
During both phases all roads have led to and from Brussels and the EU. The opposition to the concept of a united Europe – so strongly rooted in the British working class and trade unions – had therefore to be destroyed. An ideological fight ensued within the trade unions, spearheaded by the TUC under the years of Thatcher. "There is an alternative – it rests in the Social Charter of Euroland," was the siren call to the trade unions. So Thatcher and her creatures were dumped. Enter Blair.
The blueprint for Thatcherism was made up of the myriad EU directives promoting privatisation, break-up of the public sector, industrial zoning across Europe – not for the interests of the nations of Europe but for the interests of capital in Europe, free movement of goods and trade, free movement of capital, free movement of people (mass migration).
What Thatcher and Blair and their governments – irrespective of the personnel changes – have done has been to implement the EU blueprint first and unswervingly in Britain in comparison with other EU countries. The mistake made by the working class in Britain was to think Thatcherism was an aberration. It wasn't: it was and is a policy pushed through the EU from here and back on to us.
To betray Britain's sovereignty and national interests has meant a fundamental breaking up of 1,000 years of British history and society. What is being put in its place is a regionalised, de-industrialised, section of the wider corporate state of the European Union.
To prevent opposition to a strategy which has deliberately overseen the destruction of Britain, a systematic, piecemeal and secretive reformation of its structures and institutions has been under way. The first stage of this process was the attack on manufacturing industry, started under the Tories and exacerbated under Blair.
The destruction of traditional core industries – coal, steel, engineering, shipbuilding, textiles, agriculture, fishing etc – all undermined identity, community and collectivity. The destruction of social institutions – such as civic pride, civic responsibility, local and national democratic institutions, community, housing, health, education, pensions etc – was a second step in trying to replace belonging, purpose, aspiration and expectation with cynicism, corruption, deceit and one false mantra: the market and only the market is the answer. The rules of the jungle and barbarism are elevated as the only acceptable norm.
Repression
The third step, which has always been inherent to capital since capitalism first successfully emerged in Britain over three centuries ago, is repression. There has been a long series of repressive and punitive laws against trade unionism – the working class's only answer so far to capitalism – and against working class interests.
The legislation and legal precedents are in the history books: Master and Servant Act, Combination Acts, Taff Vale, In Place of Strife, Industrial Relations Act – all codified in the Tory legislation of the 80s and 90s – and then the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, which has been strengthened under the Labour government, making it almost impossible to hold a "legal" strike.
A torrent of employment-related industrial legislation has followed, strengthening the most draconian anti-worker legislation in Europe but also setting an agenda which has further emasculated trade unionism.
A further 16 Acts and proscriptive laws have been enacted or proposed since 1997 by this government (including the Terrorism Act 2000, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Criminal Justice Act 2003, Extradition Act 2003, Civil Contingencies Act 2004, Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, Inquiries Bill 2005, Racial & Religious Hatred Act 2006, Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2006, European Arrest Warrant, Identity Card Bill, Police and Justice Bill, etc).
Much of this legislation, under the guise of tackling terrorism, limits free speech, limits the right to protest, limits freedom of association, removes the right to silence, removes the right to trial by jury, undermines the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and undermines parliamentary supervision and sovereignty.
On a day-to-day basis this legislation underlines the fear this government has of the people of Britain. CCTV, ID cards, DNA registers, ASBOs, eye-scanning, fingerprinting, computerised NHS records, vehicle registration plate scanning, all embracing criminal records and non-criminal records – a constant monitoring. Now the government is proposing in London to link Oyster card usage(for travel on public transport), congestion zone charging and withdrawals from individuals' bank accounts of all sums over £200 to police databases – all to spy on movement, communication, behaviour.
All this reflects a deep paranoia. What is being trialled in London and Britain is to be rolled out across Europe, and is leading to a European-wide police state. Such is the fear of the people of Britain by this government. Not a fear of criminals or terrorists but a fear of every single citizen: even babes in arms are to be monitored from the day they are born.
In addition to the undermining of economic and political institutions and the continuous expansion of repressive legislation, goes the falsification of history and language. The history of Britain is that of the people who have made Britain. It is not the history of wealth, MPs, kings and queens, foreign billionaires et al. The use of mass migration to expunge the history of Britain by ghettoisation and division in the name of freedom, equality and diversity will have to be resisted by unity, class and nation.
The double-speak and spin of the government (both aberrations to the English language) need to be understood and resisted. When they speak of freedom it is freedom to exploit and it is freedom to suffer the longest working hours in Europe on some of the lowest wages. When they talk of skill they mean generations of debt for students trying to gain said skills. When they talk of health they mean Dickensian privatised squalor unless you have wealth. When they talk of education they mean medievalism.
The trade unions in partnership are to be absorbed into the state. "Social enterprise" is needed because capitalism couldn't run a whelk stall, they need our brains and expertise but they steal the takings. Equality means institutionalised division. Participation means state funding for dead political parties. Reform agenda means counter-revolution – world-wide. The list is endless: when a capitalist politician speaks the sewer spews forth.
The collapse of bourgeois democracy in Britain – the Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Box and Cox of parliamentarianism, the collapse of illusions that capital can be reformed through elections, the disillusionment, the distrust and shunning of MPs, councillors and 'community leaders' is not accidental. It is not going to produce a turning to the Tories, or wannabe Tories called Liberal Democrats, or fascist and Nazi parties.
The charade which has existed in Britain for the last 100 years, that capitalism always wins the election and continues under a new hue, is no longer enough for them.
Capitalism on its last legs cannot brook any opposition or dissent. In extremis it turns to authoritarian and repressive measures – the corporate state. For example it is illegal to oppose the European Union – how long before prosecutions follow?
Capitalism continuing on its present road will mean the death of working class aspirations and hopes. Aspirations to build a society free from exploitation, to create employment for all, housing, health, education and dignity for all. Something has to give and it cannot be the 60 million people who constitute the creators of wealth in Britain – the working class. |
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Post by dodger on Sept 25, 2013 3:15:42 GMT
imarxman.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/big-society-big-government-big-business-the-corporate-state/
Big Society, Big Government, Big Business – The Corporate State
Posted on April 16, 2012 by imarxman On the 3rd May local elections take place: already propaganda leaflets and newsletters are tumbling through letterboxes on their way to the recycling bins. The three main parties desperately strive to maintain the fiction of genuine differences between them.
Local councils are being effectively emasculated by central government bent on ensuring the state has no effective counter to its operation. What municipal responsibilities remain are hedged around with regulations preventing independent action.
Whichever party wins control of a local authority gains kudos and little more. It will be expected to enact policies in line with national diktats. The burgeoning academy/free school programme, often in the teeth of parental, student and council opposition, is an example of the primacy of state power.
The electorate is perfectly free to vote for whosoever it wills, but must do so in the knowledge that it can make no substantive difference. There may well be local issues presently beyond the scope of government concern, but council action will be circumscribed by economic necessity.
The ConDem coalition government, and PM Cameron in particular, have promoted the concept of the Big Society. This is portrayed as the state stepping back to allow civil society to willing shoulder social responsibilities.
Libraries run by volunteers, charities providing services for the elderly, concerned parents setting up their own free schools, whatever – the dead hand of public bureaucracy is to be amputated.
Only, this is not the state voluntarily withering away; quite the contrary. In the phrase, “The Big Society”, the key word is not “Society”, but “Big”. For it sits alongside other crucial “bigs”, such as big business, big government and big media: it is the social expression of the corporate state.
The corporate state first manifested itself most obviously in Mussolini’s Italy of the 1920s. There the state concerned itself with every aspect of economic life, setting wage levels and working conditions, regulating and licensing commercial activities and closely controlling political activity.
Mussolini’s rather blunt and belligerent approach was refined in the 1930s USA by President Roosevelt who gave a democratic façade to very similar economic policies. The New Deal was the corporate state of big government working with big business in the context of the great depression.
Of course, the reality is that governments and business have been interacting since capitalism became the dominant economic system. The Anti-Combination Acts of 1799/1800 was the British government acting on behalf of industry against the working class and its trade unions.
Today, the corporate state is so effective many don’t even realise it exists. When people vote for a party they become disillusioned when, on assuming office, it acts against their wishes, usually in much the same manner as the previous government or council of a different party.
This is often cynically dismissed by electors regarding politicians as, “in the end they’re all the same just in it for themselves”. This may well be true, but not crucially so, because it suggests all that is required is to find honest politicians.
If every MP was obviously scrupulous at all times fundamentally nothing would change. The problems facing everyone in society arise not from corrupt or corrupted politicians and officials, but capitalism itself.
The on-going issue of extravagant boardroom bonuses has been recently joined by many of the very rich using charitable giving as a way of reducing their tax liabilities to 20% or so, rather less than their very much more modestly paid employees are expected to pay.
Even the present Tory Chancellor has spoken out against such fiscal sleight of hand and attempted, be it in an apparently ham-fisted way, to counter it. He could be being disingenuous, of course, but even if his disquiet if genuine and his policy works, the few extra millions to the treasury, though welcome, again changes nothing fundamentally.
Indeed, it would be a demonstration of the corporate state in action, defending the broader interests of capitalism against the personal greed of some individual capitalists. It could also have an ideological spin off, demonstrating how capitalism is being run fairly in the common interest.
The big media will certainly propagate such notions. It may well be highly critical of government and greedy businessmen, exposing scandals and corruption, but always in the interests of preserving capitalism.
Come the possibility of the working class organising itself to take action on its own behalf and a united front of media vilification can be guaranteed. Big business and big government can rely on the media’s support should any significant confrontation with a trade union be in the offing.
Not that labour relations have been left to the self determination of union members. The corporate state has regulated trade unions to the point where action is legally hedged around to the point of being almost ineffectual. This has resulted in a dramatic fall in union membership.
The reaction has been for unions to construct amalgamations to form multi-occupation super or big unions. Perhaps without realising it, big unions providing a multiplicity of services and insurance to their members become enmeshed in the corporate state. Maybe they did so once they began to bankroll one of the major constituent parts of the corporate state, the Labour Party.
By the 4th May most of the votes will have been counted and the results announced. Actually, and exclusively, the overall result can be revealed here: the corporate state will continue in power and will remain there in perpetuity.
Unless, of course, the working class of Britain can find its voice and make itself heard, outside and beyond the stifling ballot booths. That would be the voice of the people – Democracy!
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