First of all, we need to put our hands up and admit we need help. As anyone whose gone through tough times in their personal lives will know, help and support from friends and family can make a major difference when trying to overcome massive trials and tribulations. Why should Britain, a craggy, wind-swept, moss covered island in the North Sea go through this all alone? We might be part of a wider European community, but that’s as helpful as living next door to a family of drunkard reprobates right now. No, we’re not going to get help from the EU, which is full of nations with their own myriad of problems.

Nor can we rely on our American cousins to get us out of a pickle, as may have been the case following WW2. We don’t need to be flooded with free US Dollars, as was done during the Marshall plan, when the Bank of England is hosing down the City of London with free lucre. The US political system is currently so fucked, if you didn’t know David Icke was a mentalist, his theories would almost, sort of, kind of make sense. It’s that bad over there.

We need to look for help beyond our traditional international ‘partners’. We need to look further afield, we need to look East.

Cameron likes what he sees on a visit to China

If you were an alien, newly arrived on planet Earth today, from a brief perusal of media output you’d assume that GDP growth was as important to Human existence as our need to breath air and drink water. Our entire political system is geared toward endless GDP growth (even if, as currently, the policies being implemented in hope of achieving this are leading to the exact opposite outcome). Fuck real existing people, the unemployed, disabled, rape victims, those with the chutzpah to want to live in a house, the environment – what’s important is we sell and consume more needless junk, at an increased rate, from now until, well, eternity.

There’s surely only one group of people that can that can help us achieve such a goal, as quickly as possible – The Chinese Politiburo. According to almost everyone, everywhere, of every political persuasion, everything is rosy in The People’s Republic of China. OK  there may be the odd forced labour camp and YES, women (especially in the countryside) are still routinely forced to abort their unborn children to stay on the ‘right’ side of the one child policy and there’s more smog than in LA on a sweltering day in August, but BOY, have they got them some GDP growth!

PLA Marines: more cost-effective than outsourcing to G4S?

Why doesn’t the Coalition government actually ‘outsource’ its governing duties to people who can actually do the job, unlike G4S and Eric Pickles? We could formally invite the Chinese Liberation Army to invade the UK mainland. This could be done with minimal violence if most of the population can be brought on side (The Daily Mail has a track record of boosting support for the opposition and could play a vital role in this ‘PR’ campaign). There could be some ‘controlled’ destruction. Do we really need Nottingham city centre? Swindon’s a bit shit, isn’t it? If the PLA were to level these areas (with the residents removed beforehand, probably), it would provide massive new opportunities for growth following the invasion. Building a new city actually prepared for the 21st century where Bristol currently stands could spark up to 50% growth in the Southeast alone.

So that’s the easy part, but what about actually governing? We know we presently have a government in name only considering the number of hapless U-turns the Coalition have managed, so we’ll need even more help from the Chinese on that score. With a UN mandate for ‘nation building’, our Chinese brothers and sisters could take control of the British government and institutions by setting up and populating a politburo  Yes there’s corruption, yes there’s human rights and legal abuses…but that’s what we’d be putting a politburo in place to counteract for the current system at Westminster!

On the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t be so fast to throw out the baby with the bath-water. Perhaps there were and in places, still are, things about this country, its institutions and governmental system worth celebrating more than economic growth. What is economic growth without a fair and easily accessible justice system? What is economic growth without an environment we’d want our children’s children to enjoy? What is economic growth without equal political representation for all, not just the ultra-wealthy and corporations? We could continue to fight the government on its own terms, pushing ideas for more endless growth forever, or we can argue and fight for different kinds of growth – increased equality, a healthier population, greater protection for the natural habitat. It’s counter-intuitive, but these don’t all depend on GDP growth. In some cases (especially in environmental terms), GDP growth can only do more harm.

And wouldn’t you prefer to hang out in Bristol for a day than a city in China’s industrial heartland?

Football is a sport rich in artistry, creativity and a level of nuance that is unmatched by any other. The game has been described as a combination of chess and ballet, the former representing the tactical and strategic aspects of the game, the latter pointing to the mental and physical strength and mastery required at the top level of the sport.

There are roughly two groups who question football’s inherent beauty and ability to draw people together (instead of tear communities apart). These are the cultural snobs who only see beauty in what are regarded as high-brow art forms that use money as a barrier to mass participation and those who are rightly turned off by the lad culture, violence and aggression which, in parts, continue to surround much of the game. However, like anything, focusing on these aspects divert from a game that can bring billions of people together all over the world in their love, passion and joy for what they see on the pitch and experience together in the stands.

Below are a just a handful of examples of how poetry in motion can be created by an individual movement, taking place in mere seconds, or via slow build-up play and a team working in perfect harmony toward a common (literal) goal.

These clips shouldn’t create the illusion that one can only have one or the other – individual brilliance, or that created by an entire team. The Argentina goal exemplifies how the passing in the build-up play between a entire team, can culminate in a dash of brilliance (in that case, Cambiasso’s goal). The clips can also attest for the fact that football’s beauty comes from power and strength, mixed with finesse and nuance.

John Barnes once argued, soccer is the most socialistic sport.  I must admit to always having been quite turned-off by individual sports where individual ego reigns supreme. In the era of multimillionaire soccer stars, it’s a slight relief that no player, even the greatest on the planet, can win a game single-handed, apart from in the hyperbolic world of media punditry.

“Charity creates a multitude of sins”

-Oscar Wilde

How many times have you logged onto Facebook or some such social networking site and read a seemingly humble status update, with words to the following effect:

“I am running a marathon/going apple bobbing in shark-infested waters off the coast of Papa New Guinea with Lenny Henry/being shot out of a canon over the Irish Sea to raise money for very sick kiddie-winks or decrepit Spanish donkeys. Please donate whatever you can via x website…”

Discussing these life affirming (for the fundraiser) efforts cum charity feats with an equally cynical friend, we noticed a number of glaring intellectual and emotional holes in the rationale for these often very socially rewarding, individualistic efforts.

1) I want a refund!

What would happen if the person running the marathon, or entering the stratosphere in a bathtub full of baked beans didn’t actually complete their self-imposed challenge? Recently, in the company of someone (whose identity I won’t disclose) sponsoring another not to drink for one month asked plaintively, “but how would we know she’s gone through with the challenge and hasn’t had a drink?’ This mind-set highlights a major issue I have with this whole set-up. Do you only want money going to charity if someone is doing something fairly pointless, or often, outright ridiculous beforehand? Do those donating to the fundraiser and their cause want every last penny clawed back in the event the challenge is not satisfactorily complete? ‘Oh dear, Jessica blacked out from fear whilst strapped to Les Dennis before jumping out the plane during her sponsored sky-dive, I’ll ask her for a refund and ensure not a pound ends up with the sick kids.”

2) Timing

“I’ve got a charity run coming up in June, please donate ask much as you can now.”

What if it’s February when you read a sentence like this? Are you going to donate your money to this fundraising middleman/woman, withholding your money from a charity you could donate to immediately? What’s to be gained by waiting for a middle class thirty something to bumble around the London marathon, the culmination of their new fitness regime?

3) But Pete, it’s all about raising awareness for the cause!

Is it? Or are these personal challenges just that, very personal, individualistic and at their worst, egotistical social showboating? Personally, I donate to a couple of charities on a regular, or irregular basis depending on my income. I go online, send money electronically. No one tells me ‘well done mate, good work, what a great guy.’ That’s not what I’m donating money for, I’m donating to offer some tiny palliative effect on the worst effects of our socio-political system and often, its side-effects on our health and of course, because I often can’t be bothered to get off my ass and actually DO something for the cause, which would be far more helpful than donating cash.

4) Charity aint all that

I have many issues with the concept of charity in itself. As Oscar Wilde once said;

“Charity creates a multitude of sins.”

Charity accepts inequality and industrial scale destitution and ill-health as the norm. Personally, instead of throwing crumbs to the worst off, I’d prefer to see an egalitarian redistribution of wealth on a macro-societal level. We’d do a world of good more for the poor, sick and homeless forcing multinational corporations to pay taxes, funneling billions to fund social services that are now provided by very selective and often quite elitist charities. A very cold Saturday spent picketing Starbucks with UKUncut could be a far more charitable act than raising £5k for a privately run charity, whose existence depends on deprivation.

5) Maybe you could have spent the 1000 hours spent getting fit for the marathon helping in the local homeless shelter?

A lot of well-meaning people, spend hundreds of man or woman hours running around getting fit for a marathon to raise money for Shelter, when they could have spent that time offering help to their local shelter. However, whilst more helpful, the latter course of action may be less glamorous and may not have won you the adulation of your friends, family and that person at work you really fancy.

6) Don’t get me wrong, I believe some people approach these efforts in earnest

I’m in no way claiming that everyone who does a sponsored charity challenge/fundraiser is on an ego-trip, using the plight of others to big up their ‘altruistic’ side and make themselves appear far more attractive to the opposite sex. I’ve met people who have undertaken these kinds of challenges because they really believe in the cause and they’re working within a social framework in which people won’t always just give money to the homeless because they can’t bear the fact many, amidst great wealth, spend their nights resting their heads on sub-zero temperature concrete, facing perennial abuse from those a few paychecks away from a similarly dire situation.  It’s sadly a reality that to help the needy these days, people have to do something that removes all attention from said individuals and groups in need. Lots of very generous, determined and selfless people have raised huge sums of money for good causes and I hope they continue to do so.

7) But…

If you’re reading this and have been involved in some kind of fundraising event in the last few years (especially since the dawn of social networking) and got a warm buzz and social kudos from your efforts, maybe ask yourself if this is what aiding others is all about. Did you post all the pictures of the big event on your Facebook page? If so, why? Did you think this was raising awareness for the cause, or was it just because it made you look really good to other people? Could you have started that diet, got fit and managed 15k runs without connecting it with some Big Cause in the world and instead, written a cheque and offered your time down the local hospice?

Two men with very different political visions.

“Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we should judge America by that – counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

…Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

Cross-bench peer Lord Bichard claims that; “Pensioners are a “negative burden” on the state, which need to be “incentivized” into doing jobs that young people could do for a wage.”

Finally, someone has the guts to blow wide open the comfortable consensus which claims that after working and paying taxes dutifully for decades, old women shivering in the cold of their one bedroom apartments deserve some kind of recompense from the state. How exactly are these old duffers helping us compete with the Chinese economy? What value are they adding to ‘UK Plc’, sitting around at home, gulping in their final breaths? Something has to change and the following are just a few, extremely practical suggestions;

Pay on Death Pensions – This is a solution that would only work for those who believe in reincarnation. Instead of selfishly grabbing their pension in the present world, why can’t pensioners ‘defer’ it for when they return in a new celestial body*? This reduces the burden on the state, allowing pension payments to be spread over a longer duration, ensuring the government can continue to meet its obligations servicing global banking corporations. ‘What happens if I return to this world as a slug?’ I hear you ask. This eventuality could only be positive – slugs require less to feel comfortable than humans. The government will set you up in a top quality tank, full of lettuce and bits of bark to slide up and down. These modest surroundings will feel like paradise for you and will be far less costly than heating a whole human home. You’ll only require a 60Watt bulb to keep your tank well lit and warm.

*Payments cannot be paid to ghosts caught between our own world and the next. This was tried under New Labour, but it turns out ghosts are notoriously bad at using ATMs.

Every home a call centre – If pensioners are going to sit at home on their fat arses all day watching Cash in the Attic, why not spend at least a few hours wearing a headset and fielding calls for global corporations? These companies are always looking at ways to reduce overheads, so if you provide your own space (your home) and fill it with your friends for a few hours a day (increased body warmth, reducing the need for a Winter Fuel Allowance), they could pay you a competitive (with Indian call centre workers) wage for an honest days work. Training is minimal, you just need to learn how to cut people off, pretend to be transferring calls to other departments and placing customers on hold. DO YOU THINK YOU CAN MANAGE THAT DEAR?

Double Pension – Right, it’s clear that the government have fucked up that pension you worked thirty years to earn, blowing it on duck pond renovations, Trident missiles that will only be useful if the British military travel back in time to the political climate of 1965 and by misplacing a decimal point in the contract outsourcing all government services to Serco (paying them £1tn to run a leisure centre in Eastbourne instead of £1m). That first pension is gone, forget it, sorry. For the workers of today, there’s only one solution, working two jobs and accruing two pensions; one to cover future government deficits and one to cover your £65 per week and half the cost of employing a Latvian care worker. The government will happily cover the cost of the stimulants required to keep you awake during your second ‘working day’ of the day. You may forget your name, go grey at 28 and die before the pension is actually paid, but won’t you feel a sense of pride that you’re a member of ‘alarm clock Britain’, as Nick Clegg would say. You may want to buy a second alarm clock.

No more coffin dodging – So you’re going to die? It happens to us all – even that billionaire lunatic in America who has funnelled millions to scientists researching a real world ‘elixir of life’. Short of a breakthrough in cryogenics (that you probably wouldn’t be able to afford anyway), you’re going to have to plan for the after life. What better way to come to terms with your own mortality than build your own coffin? Now I realise Keynesian economics is WAY out of fashion these days, but by buying your own materials to build the box, you’re adding demand to the economy. You’re also freeing up your loved ones cash to be spent on the latest electronic consumables, plumping up dividends for Apple shareholders. Imagine the fun you’ll have sanding and painting that bad boy, even giving it the odd personal touch, such as scribbling ‘Vera waz ‘er’ along the side, giving your surviving family members a wry smile as you’re unceremoniously dumped into the bowels of Central Hull Anglican Church cemetery.

Of course, to those stuck in the old mindset of the 20^th century, some of these suggestions may seem mildly unpalatable. However, if we’re going to ‘pay off the debt’ and not saddle future generations with said debt (even though they could just pass it on to the next generation ad infinitum) , we’re going to have to take serious minded measures. It’s a new global economy and we all have to do our bit. For some, that will include dying quickly and quietly.

An old quote attributed to Dr Samuel Johnson is “A man [there were no women in those days] who is tired of London, is tired of life”. The contemporary re-write should be; “A man or woman who is tired of London, is tired of sweaty commutes, crap public services, overpriced food and rude bastards deaf to the world because of their overpriced Beats headphones.”

London is a toilet, everyone knows this. However, it’s a fascinating toilet with lots of cultural goings on, which tend to cost either nothing, or the wealth of Solomon. After spending a day in the city, I always breathe a sigh of relief as my train, packed with other grey looking members of the suburban bourgeoisie (who usually are quite literally tired of life, if they ever did enjoy it), strains its way out of the station – or sits, stuck at signals, creaking under the weight of decades of insufficient infrastructure spending.

London is only one small part of the UK, but it’s a bloody important small part. Generally, I would contend that whatever cultural, social, economic and political currents sprout up in the city on the Thames will tend to spread there way across the rest of the country, like fungi spores. These ‘spores’ sometimes even make their way to Norfolk.

Whenever I visit London, I feel that I’m visiting the future. It may be a future befitting a fairly mild dystopian novel, but dystopian nonetheless. The thick booted foot-fall of police on the pavement, police helicopters overhead (drones soon, surely?), gaggles of homeless folk, an underground warren of tunnels which poor souls spend much of their waking lives shuffling around to make a dollar for The Bastard Corporation and quite possibly, a sighting of the Queen – or Gary Barlow – something not even Winston Smith need fear.

Having said that, those of us living outside of the capital can learn from the city in a number of ways.

First – we can see that immigration and a mix of ethnic groups living side by side needn’t be a problem. People from all over the world can get on in a cockney cum Somalian cum Polish cultural melting pot and not regress to a state of raved barbarism (as many a Tory backbencher would have us believe). This is something the Royals could learn from – strength in genetic and cultural diversity, perhaps. Possibly the only reason to argue against mass immigration, is for the benefit of those relocating to our capital – do they know they’re assigning themselves to a life of workfare in Tescos under the political tutelage of a be-mopped Conservative absurdity in the shape of Boris Johnson?

Second – Protests can, and should, be a regular feature of urban life and where possible, big. It doesn’t matter if you and your mates organised the SWP Swindon branch to protest the military industrial complex on Chutney Street, protests should always involve more than 7 people. London is very good at big protests. These range from the annual packed-lunch jollies of the TUC, angry student tuition fee demonstrations, as well as the slightly more gritty riots of summer ’11 and Brixton twenty-five years prior. When did you (or for this article in particular, I) ever hear of thousands of fiercely passionate students waiting out a police kettle on a freezing January night in Newcastle (if this has happened, apologies to our Geordie comrades)? Never, that’s the last time! London is a key ‘hub’ in the neoliberal global political economy. Therefore, the pressures (including on its inhabitants) and contradictions of such can be felt there long before the same contradictions make themselves known elsewhere. Politically, this makes London an interesting and disturbing place of contestation for all kinds of battle, from economic inequality to the continued hold of patriarchy. The battles taking place there will need to be fought elsewhere.

Third – why doesn’t every city capitalise on the local nutty family to attract tourists? It’s sure as hell worked for London. Every year millions of tourists shuffle up to the gates of Buckingham Palace to get a good Facebook profile picture of them looking whacky next to a bloke in a fury hat, just because an oddball German family lives beyond the gates. Aside from this being merely one sign of humanity’s cultural and intellectual malaise, it could translate into a goldmine for any middle sized British town. Let’s take Dudley for the sake of our example. Instead of slapping ASBOs on, and vilifying, the trouble family living on the worst estate in town, why don’t the good people of Dudley put them up in a stately manor (or the biggest Premier Inn) the place has to offer, guarded by ‘troops’ dressed in the most outlandish costumes possible. A stern looking TA soldier in a 6ft hat with feather boas streaming down the side of it? You won’t be able to beat the American tourists off with a shitty stick.

Fourth – The London Olympics were a huge success. That woman ran round that thing in like 10 seconds. No one got to see her win, as it was all over so quickly, but it was definitely the feel good story of the year. George Osborne was even booed by thousands of people during one of the medal ceremonies. It’s victories like this that bring communities together.

In light of this, why limit the Olympics to London? Why only every four years? As Sky Television and the Premier League have proven, once you get a successful sporting ‘product’, you can flog it so hard and so long that the metaphorical dead horses’ corpse turns into liquid gold. Or something. So, who else is in on ‘Ipswich 2013’? What kind of boost to the country’s GDP will ‘Peterborough 2014’bring? Can we ‘inspire a generation’ (as the London 2012 tagline proclaimed) of Chesterfield residents? Not only would such events offer an opportunity to improve the nation’s sporting prowess, but they’d also be a means of experimenting with new off-the wall ways of outsourcing to private companies. Do the athletes involved really need to throw the javelin, or should they just do the training, then hand it over to a G4S ‘operatives’ who do the throwing for them? It may lead to parliamentary inquiries when a record number of spectators are injured, but these are the inevitable teething issues we should expect when ‘rationalising’ the wider economy.

These ‘thoughts’ and recommendations of what we could learn from our capital may sound like they’ve been written upon a keyboard located within a ‘secure facility’ for the mentally unbalanced now, but in a decade, they’ll read like prophecy. Possibly.

Last weekend news broke that stunned no one but the mainstream media that the Conservative Party tailor their policies to the needs of wealthy party donors. The Conservative Party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas was caught on film offering “premier league” access to the Prime Minister for a cool £250,000.

For years now Private Eye has been highlighting how the Conservative Party offer a range of ‘Donor Clubs’ granting differing levels of access to policy makers and the PM depending on the size of donation. Information about these shadowy secret clubs can be found hidden away on…the Conservative Party website. It’s understandable the mainstream media took so long to get on top of this highly elusive story.

In its bid to remain ‘balanced’, including at the cost of intellectual honesty, in its reports the BBC regularly highlighted the fact that while the Tories accept big money from wealthy individuals and large corporations, the Labour Party continue to be funded by the trade unions. The intellectual redundancy of this attempt to draw moral equivalence between money garnered from the wealthy and from democratic unions needs no further comment here, other than how symbolic it is of the BBC’s misunderstanding of its role to inform without bias.

Cameron has been very astute in publicly ‘reaching out’ to other parties to help reform party political funding. This he claims, must rely on Labour limiting funding from the trade unions. This is an excellent tactical move which puts the spotlight on Miliband and takes it off his own party. If such a reform were to take place, the Labour Party would seal its position as the British Democrats, a party of and for the wealthy alone.

However, can those of us on the Left offer a viable alternative to the current system? If we make a claim for state funding of political parties without detail, such an option will be easily knocked down by moneyed interests. We need concrete alternatives.

In his book ‘Envisioning Real Utopias’, US sociologist Erik Olin Wright details radical proposals for achieving democratic egalitarianism and socio-economic justice by drawing on purely theoretical and the more empirically grounded models. The book is a treasure trove of examples of what is currently possible and being achieved in some parts of the world, alongside more ambitious ideas which would require further finessing and real world democratisation before implementation. One idea Olin Wright discusses is the concept of a ‘democracy card’, developed by Bruce Ackermen which would allow for public funding of political parties in an innovative way;

“At the beginning of every year, every citizen would be given a special kind of debit card which Ackerman dubs a patriot card, but which I would prefer to call a democracy card. He proposes putting $50 on each card. In the US, with 220 million people above the age of eighteen, this would cost a total of roughly $11 billion per year. The funds on this card can be used exclusively for electoral campaigns: to contribute to a candidate for a specific electoral campaign or to a political party that participates in elections.

However- and this is the pivotal condition that makes this a radical egalitarian proposal – any candidate or party accepting funds from democracy cards cannot accept funds from any other source. But why should candidates and parties opt for this restriction? Why not still court the fat cats and rely on private funding? There are two reasons for this; First, if the funding level of the democracy cards is sufficiently high, it will swamp other sources of funding. There will simply be much more money to be had through the democracy card “political market” for funding than private funding market, and since the two sources of funding cannot be mixed, most candidates will find it advantageous to raise funds from voters. Second, once the system is in place and becomes part of the normative order of political life, the use of private funding itself is likely to become a political issue. Candidates who rely on the democratic mechanism of seeking funding from equally endowed citizens will have a potent weapon to raise against candidates who seek funding from corporations and wealthy individuals…”

- Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias p168-9.

Wright goes on to detail how fraud in the system would be countered, the electoral process involved (a split between a first stage involving parties recruiting democracy card money from citizens and a second stage where the funds are spent in the election) and the effect the system would have on citizen participation in elections and corporate control of the democratic process. Considering the scheme would likely cost $11bn to cover the entire US citizenry, we could probably cover everyone in the UK for a third of that cost. Or, we can stage the corporate feeding frenzy that is the London Olympics…for two weeks.

-This post also appears over at The Critical Edge

“The level of any civilization can be determined by the extent to which its women have been liberated.” –Charles Fourier

The outcome of the 2010 British general election may come to be viewed as the single worst political event to affect the progress of efforts to achieve gender equality in a generation. The coalition government’s tenure will reverse much of the progress so far made in the name of women’s hard won economic rights. This can be easily deduced by the cuts to the welfare system and public expenditure so far implemented, as well as those planned over the course of the current parliament.

David Cameron himself has made clear that dealing with the nation’s deficit is his top priority as part of his plan for economic recovery. However much Cameron claims his actions will free future generations of a burdensome debt mountain, he is happily overseeing wealth redistribution from (largely female) citizens to pay for the vast fraud committed by banks and their elaborate Ponzi schemes. Cameron’s top priority is to bail out the banks at the expense of women working in the home, the public and private sectors.

Unless we accept Margaret Thatcher’s claim that ‘There Is No Alternative’ to neoliberal economic restructuring and financial oligarchy, it would stand us in good stead to survey the global political economy for examples of pro-active and progressive approaches to female economic and political empowerment to disprove said claim. Whilst the UK enjoys an annual GDP of $2+ trillion (6^th largest economy in the world), Venezuela (GDP $344bn/35^th) is an economically developing country, overcoming decades of vast inequalities and domination by more powerful hemispheric neighbours with the acquiescence of a local oligarchy.

The government of Hugo Chavez (a self declared feminist) in Venezuela has taken a very different approach to the role of women in politics and the economy. Whilst his administration does not have a perfect record, the sentiment that women should have a greater role in the political economy and decision making is strong and has been followed by some major policy breakthroughs. The approaches of both governments will be contrasted, their differences being extremely stark, especially taking into account the relative position of each country in the global political economy and the major internal and external pressures the Venezuelan government has faced since taking office.

The Coalition’s Attack on Women

Without wishing to bamboozle or bore the reader with a string of facts and figures, the following figures are important if we are to fully gauge the breadth and depth of the austerity policies in their effects on women.

The ConDem government set the tone early into its administration when the chancellor George Osborne drew up an ‘emergency’ budget which ensured women were hardest hit. As part of the £8.5bn in cuts in welfare contributions announced, £5.7bn would come from women. With tax and benefit changes as a whole, £16bn was to be raised, £11bn of which would come from women.

Any cut in welfare, including tax credits, child benefit, childcare credits would hit women disproportionately considering they are the majority recipients of such payments (94% of child benefit, 70% of tax credit and 60% of housing benefit). The emergency budget alone resulted in a £1,500 a year cut in help with childcare costs.

Osborne’s very political austerity cuts are directly hitting public sector workers, including local government workers. 25% of all public workers are situated in local government (in England and Wales), 75% of which are women. In the third year of a pay freeze with inflation only recently dropping from the 5% mark, these workers have been reduced to pay levels of the early 1990s.

Hardest hit are classroom assistants, 90% of which are women, as well as care assistants, home care workers, school dinner ladies, social workers, cleaners and secretaries – all positions with a large or majority female presence.

Other cuts to largely hit women and families include;

• The abolition of the Health in Pregnancy Grant, a universal payment of £190 to pregnant women who are 25 weeks pregnant and have received health advice from a medical professional.
• A three year freeze in the value of Child Benefit, in addition to the withdrawal of Child Benefit from women living in a household where one adult is a higher rate taxpayer.
• The abolition of the Baby Element of Tax Credits (worth a maximum of £545 to eligible families) and a reversal of previous Government’s commitment to introduce a Toddler Tax Credit (worth a maximum of £208 for eligible families).
• A cut in the proportion of childcare costs that are covered for families eligible for Working Tax Credit, from 80 per cent of costs to 70 per cent of costs
• A three year freeze in the value of Working Tax Credit.
• Significant cuts to Housing Benefit, which the Department for Work and Pension’s own assessment has indicated will hit families the hardest.
• A cap on the total amount of out of work benefit that a family will be entitled to, which will mean that large families experience greater losses.

On top of these, changes to child tax credits will take £908m from women, with men losing £112m.

Not yet two years into the Coalition administration and the evidence is overwhelmingly damning. However, these kinds of figures do not offer a full understanding of the increasingly aggressive manner in which women and men alike will be treated in the welfare system. This includes increased the pressure and stress caused by means testing, removal of benefits and Victorian era style workfare schemes which see highly profitable multi-national corporations receive free labour from welfare claimants.

Women & the Bolivarian Revolution

“…everyone should be a feminist…to be socialist is to be feminist.” –Hugo Chavez

Let us head south and cast an eye over Venezuela, a country recovering from 500 years of imperialism, the deep social divides and inequality this created historically and the economic and political interventions of the United States.

A far cry from a social traditionalist who aims to offer tax breaks to heterosexual married couples with children (possibly totalling £100 per annum), Venezuela’s counterpart to Britain’s PM has been involved in radical politics for decades and is a self styled feminist. Whilst prone to the odd gaff or oddball statement, since election in 1998 (one of about 10 including re-election, recall votes and referenda) Chavez has gone some way to improving the lives of working and lower-middle class women in Venezuela, in the face of huge political, economic and cultural challenges. This has largely been facilitated by women themselves, pressuring the government as part of wider radical social movements and through the setting up of cooperatives and other alternative means of social organisation in opposition to patriarchy and purely capitalist social relations.

Crucial to the political project of ‘Chavismo’ is its intended aim to spearhead a notion of another democracy, distinct from liberal democracy, which it considers exhausted (Lander, 2007). In relation to female participation in this project, Courtney Frantz explains;

“One of the most important aspects of the Bolivarian Revolution is also the most overlooked: that the significant majority -often 90% or more- of its participants, its leaders, and the beneficiaries of its social programs are women…Their organizing strategy of fighting these aspects of poverty reflects an acute understanding of their own economic struggles as being gendered”

There has been a clear transformation in the political culture and in the process of inclusion, as subjects of political and organisational action, of the poor majority, had been increasingly excluded. This translates into the active presence of the ‘dangerous classes’ on the political scene, mobilised, informed, organised and unwilling to return to passivity (Lander 2007).

The Venezuelan government has re-written the constitution (ratified in an election) to give greater recognition to the role of women in the economy, including in the informal sectors. The new constitution is the first in the Global South to recognise women’s housework as a legitimate economic activity producing wealth and contributing to the social welfare of the population;

“The State will recognise household chores as an economic activity that creates added value, produces wealth and social welfare. Housewives have the right to social security according to the law.” (Article 88)

2007 saw the introduction of ‘organic laws’ enacted by the National Assembly of Venezuela offering women the right to live a life free of violence. Special courts and legal units have been set up covering all the country’s regions to handle cases of violence against women. The courts are able to temporarily arrest those perpetrating violence against women, restricting their ability to leave the country and ensuring trials are held within twenty days of the act of violence taking place, with an appeals process in place.

Of course, the government’s actions have not eradicated domestic and other forms of violence against women, which have actually increased in recent years. There are still major issues surrounding domestic abuse and the lack of police training regarding the issue and the need for more shelters where women can escape their abusers.

In 2009 The Ministry for Women’s Affairs and Gender Equality was created, its first activity to organise a congress of women to consult other women on the future work of the ministry

“A key objective of the Ministry is to advise the President on ‘human development with gender equality’ and the ‘active participation in the defence and guarantee of women’s rights in the revolutionary transformation of the country’. Linked to this a key task of the Ministry is to ‘design the criteria for allocating financial and social resources and investments targeting women, especially those who are marginalised and excluded, suffering discrimination, exploitation and violence … in order to promote a socialist production model with gender equity in the socialisation of the means of production’.”

The government has set up a range of ‘misiones’, each aimed at dealing with a specific social, economic and political issue. As Courtney Frantz outlines, some of the misiones deal exclusively with empowering women and overcoming many of the challenges they may face;

“…the government has created several programs exclusively for women. Nora Castañeda heads Banmujer, a low-interest microcredit bank that trains, supports, and funds women starting small cooperative businesses. Inamujer, which has recently become Minmujer, or the Ministry of Women, is a distinct branch of the government created for the sole purpose of generating and changing policy on behalf of women. The Venezuelan government is one of the first in the world to recognize explicitly the need to support women’s voices as a distinct political bloc.”

The setting up of co-operatives and commune councils has been a crucial means of bringing women into decision making processes. This involves direct democracy, not only the more distant form of representative democracy. 70% of commune councils in the country are headed by women.

However, a critical weakness of the Bolivarian Revolution is the fact that abortion remains illegal and frowned upon in Venezuela, this being an issue which undermines much of the government’s work with regard to political and economic rights. This is an issue currently being deliberated amongst women’s groups and in wider civil society (deeply influenced by Catholicism), including meetings involving the President of the National Assembly’s commission for family, women and youth in an attempt to re-write the country’s Penal Code to guarantee the right to abortion.

Conclusions

Whilst the Bolivarian Revolution has not solved the problems facing women in a poor country of the Global South, it has implemented and is exploring new means by which to do so. For these to be truly successful requires a step change in the population’s attitudes toward gender equality and improved economic and political rights and access to the means and mechanisms of power for the female population. Major campaigns and debates must be fought and won on the part of women and allied progressive social forces in order to win and secure the bare minimum reproductive rights, whilst also building on the political economic gains witnessed in recent years.

To bring us back to where we started, it is clear that women face both differing and similar challenges in both countries briefly studied in this article. The rights already won in either, whether they are reproductive rights in Britain, or economic rights in Venezuela are not set in stone and have and will continue to come under attack from reactionary social forces in the future. In the UK this can be witnessed by the recent attempts to change rules surrounding abortion rights. In Venezuela we still witness extremely retrograde views toward domestic violence (although it would be fair to say this can be said of the UK situation also).

What is absolutely clear is the differing intentions of the British and Venezuelan governments, their level of concern and interest in issues predominantly affecting women and what they intend to do about them. Whilst flawed in a number of areas, Venezuela’s government is taking a pro-active approach, whilst in the UK women are facing the single worst attack on many of their rights in generations. Activists in both countries can and should learn lessons from each other about effective means of challenging cultures which continue to treat women as second class citizens in the political economy and deny important rights over their bodies and reproductive health.

Lander, E (2007). ‘Chapter 3: Populism and the Left: Alternatives to Neo-Liberalism’, in Barrett, P et al (eds) The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn, London: Pluto Press

This article aims to question the reliance of those on the more radical left on what are often regarded as ‘legitimate’ economic authorities, those who question the efficacy of the more extreme forms of free market ideology. This would include policy-makers and economists in the vein of Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Jeffery Sachs and their British cousins.

Whilst making it their mission to debunk the ludicrous neoclassical economic paradigm, loosely classifiable as Keynesian economists continue to support, promote and prop up a broken economic system, irrational and destructive to its very core. The current moralising against austerity measures from these quarters is hypocritical considering their intellectual support for a system implicit in the degradation of people and planet.

Of course, those on the radical left can’t afford not to make alliances of convenience at times of great crisis. The construction of a popular ideological front against the worst forms and effects of austerity policies may be the best means at our disposal right now in the fight against a socially destructive neoliberal orthodoxy. However, it is important that the radical left does not come to rely too heavily on a strain of economic thought which is itself a means of ironing out capitalism’s kinks, solely in order to reproduce it ad infinitum.

In the face of the greatest economic crisis in generations, the legitimacy of the economic orthodoxy of the past thirty years is rightly being challenged by opponents from different political and economic hues. This is an important step toward a defeat of neoliberalism, the marketisation of everyday life and the commodification of life supporting and enhancing structures and services (such as the welfare state, including education, healthcare and so on) won from the economic and political elite in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Whilst the ideological legitimacy of neoliberalism is being challenged, the far-left need to challenge it on our own terms. Instead, we are seeing an overreliance on a kind of Keynesian critique which would happily re-impose the post-war or even pre-credit crunch orthodoxy. This would include the forms of hyper-globalisation and free trade lauded by Krugman, including support for the existence of cheap labour in the Global South and the global inequality it forments. While Krugman regards cheap labour in the South as a necessary to economic development, he happily overlooked the fact that wage repression has been a global phenomenon in recent decades, part of the very political logic of globalisations itself. The ‘boom’ years did not constitute a rising tide which would rise all ships, instead, it deepened and widened inequality and poverty.

At its core, Keynesian growth strategies assume and rely upon continuous economic growth, every year, forever, via the burning of fossil fuels and the utilisation of eco-systems as planetary sinks. David Harvey has highlighted that to avoid crisis and stagnation, 3% compound growth per annum globally is required. In the wake of the real critical dangers posed by global climate change, this is as much a recipe for doom as the neoclassical push for globally enforceable austerity and privatisation programmes. This would most likely entail more cars being produced, more coal burnt, more frequent air travel, increased movement of goods within and between nations and further squeezing workers for improved productivity and greater levels of surplus not returned in wages. As Harvey points out;

 If we are to get back to three percent growth, then this means finding new and profitable global investment opportunities for $1.6 trillion in 2010 rising to closer to $3 trillion by 2030. This contrasts with the $0.15 trillion new investment needed in 1950 and the $0.42 trillion needed in 1973 (the dollar figures are inflation adjusted). Real problems of finding adequate outlets for surplus capital began to emerge after 1980, even with the opening up of China and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. The difficulties were in part resolved by creation of fictitious markets where speculation in asset values could take off unhindered. Where will all this investment go now?

Leaving aside the undisputable constraints in the relation to nature (with global warming of paramount importance), the other potential barriers of effective demand in the market place, of technologies and of geographical/ geopolitical distributions are likely to be profound, even supposing, which is unlikely, that no serious active oppositions to continuous capital accumulation and further consolidation of class power materialize. What spaces are left in the global economy for new spatial fixes for capital surplus absorption? China and the ex-Soviet bloc have already been integrated. South and SouthEast Asia is filling up fast. Africa is not yet fully integrated but there is nowhere else with the capacity to absorb all this surplus capital. What new lines of production can be opened up to absorb growth?

It is clear that ‘growing’ our way out of the current crisis would not only be environmentally catastrophic, but probably isn’t even possible anymore. This is the case even with recourse to the stripping citizens of their hard fought rights and asset values such as pensions and healthcare. The over reliance and fetishishisation of technological fixes to problems and limits created by capitalism reveals a blinkered view of environmental destruction by those arguing in favour of everlasting growth. The attempt to wish away climate change via the development of new green technologies seriously underestimates the scale of the problem we’re facing as a species and the practical issues related to the development of such technologies. Can technology dig us out of this mess, or further entrench our dependence upon environmentally damaging global production and distributions processes?

In the face of long term economic stagnation, many of us fall prey to the wish to see an uptick and return to the ‘boom’ times. Although we may not believe this to be the case, many on the left (including myself) revert to a form of pragmatic Keynesianism in the face of the most insane growth limiting austerity. Growth in these terms translates into increased output of services and commodities. Do we really want a booming construction sector, endlessly building upon dwindling acres of currently free land? Would a return to good health on the part of the automobile industry improve our everyday lives, or more likely further pollute our air, damage our lungs and dangerously heat our planet?

What did the boom times involve for the great majority of the population in the Global North, let alone the South? Wildly inflated house prices, a more effective squeeze on wages, de-industrialisation, job insecurity, de-skilling, hedonistic polluting, and overreliance on easy credit in place of decent wages? The ‘golden age’ of capitalism in the Global North not only coincided with, but relied upon the existence of a strong patriarchy which gave women a role confined to the household concerned with the social reproduction of their family, creating a form of social surplus that went largely unrewarded in the public sphere.

The truth is, there has never been a golden age of capitalism, for anyone but the capitalist class (and even their benefit from such a society can be questioned). I for one do not wish to return to a softer form of capitalism that many of the mainstream critics hark back to, bearing in mind the inequalities required for its smoother (but never smooth) functioning and the environmental costs involved.

This is where we must depart with our mainstream allies in the attack on neoliberal austerity. Piggy-backing on their stature due to the offices they’ve held, or the awards they’ve one may be convenient in the choppy waters of an intellectual debate, but politically and morally, we cannot travel any further with these advocates of a slightly more generous exploitation of women and men’s minds, bodies and environment.