It is important to say first of all what this book isn't. It is not the story of Grenfell tower and its ill-fated residents. For those wanting firstIt is important to say first of all what this book isn't. It is not the story of Grenfell tower and its ill-fated residents. For those wanting first hand testimony of that night or analysis thereof they would be better directed to the public inquiry and its plethora of primary accounts https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/ ; alternatively the London Review of Books dedicated an entire issue to the incident which, while widely criticised by residents associations and campaign groups in its assignment of blame, does nevertheless contain some important information detailing the build up to 14th June 2017 https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n11/andrew-... . A full book form narrative from the residents point of view, survivors and the dead, is yet to be written and its right that someone embedded within the community should write this. What Stuart Hodkinson has written is a detailed and forensic critique of the political errors, negligence, cruelty and malfeasance that created the circumstances in which something like Grenfell Tower could happen.
The book begins by squarely pointing the finger at the government for bringing back what Engels called “Social Murder” in his seminal book The Condition of the Working Class in England, purely concerning the incident at Grenfell Tower. From there in clearly laid out and referenced chapters the book goes on to discuss the privatisation and death of quality public housing, beginning with the huge post-war construction project undertaken by Nye Bevan and even subscribed to by Harold MacMillan's Conservative administration of 1957; social housing was an accepted need for a healthy, working population. While the Tories built houses with less space and of less quality, this belief ran right through until the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher brought in the right to buy policy and neglected completely the remaining housing stock in the public sector. Tony Blair's administration continued the policy of neglect and privatised much of what remained to get the burden off of the government's books short-term.
The following chapters looks at “Outsourcing on steroids” and we are given the history of Private Finance Initiative (PFI), Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and the absolute horrors that residents faced when they were moved from having the council as effective landlord to these corporate, faceless entities. Not only is the neglect of properties and peoples well-being dissected, but what appears to be downright vindictiveness is perennially close to the surface. Gaslighting of complaining residents, ostracising them from residents meetings, taking legal action where none was necessary against their own tenants and even calling in psychiatrists to try and have serial complainants declared mad. There are case studies of some specific projects which are by no means extraordinary. Here we find the testimony of actual residents and it reads like something out of a Dickensian farce. A 40 year contract handed to E.ON to provide energy to socially housed and privately owned homes alike (there are examples elsewhere of 70-80 year energy contracts) – they put prices up immediately to unaffordable levels; where you and I would be able to switch energy supplier, this was not an option for those subject to being housed under PFI deals. Poorly fitted and unsafe wiring, sewage running down the walls, combustible material being used despite being identified, the list is an endless litany of carelessness and cost-cutting leading some people to the ultimate act of suicide at being forced to live in such situations, with no redress and no care for those involved.
The final chapters look at the level of accountability and the amount of money sloshing around the PFI sector, and just how much the public are being ripped off for having public housing taken off the public accounts in the short term. This final chapter is incredibly heavily detailed, showing how some projects ended up costing the taxpayer six or seven times what the original quote was from the private finance partners when the work was tendered. In terms of accountability the entire thing was essentially self-regulating with any government watchdog being severely limited in what they could actually do. Not only that but the “independent” assessors used by the partners had serious conflicts of interest which are laid bare in the penultimate chapter. At this point of looking at the money trail, various organisations involved in the PFI gravy train decided to attack the author and his line of income. They sent several letters to his employer, The University of Leeds, demanding they distance themselves from his work, and disbar him from using their logo on his work. Effectively these letters called into question when Hodkinson should still be employed at Leeds given his, as they saw it, clear bias toward PFI. To the University's credit they appeared to wholly back their employee and his work.
What this book shows is a clear and unobstructed path from public housing regeneration schemes under PFI to the Grenfell tragedy, and furthermore that it was no accident but a natural conclusion. It is also a plea that Grenfell will be the turning point from 40 years of dogmatic adherence to neo-liberal policies on social housing, and that the government will start putting social need, health, safety and well-being first as the key performance indicators of future housing developments. However, under current Conservative government this does not look hopeful. In the 15 months after Grenfell over 6000 high rise properties were inspected and the number found unsafe was 468; the government seem more interested in passing the buck on payment for repairs and upgrades than actually carrying the work out. Important to note that this survey only includes housing blocks over 18 metres high and ignores all other public buildings that have some form of cladding on them such as hospitals and schools. In terms of all housing, in 2015 there were 8.4 million unsafe homes which were said to have a detrimental effect on residents well-being.
The book ends with a series of proposals for improving the housing situation and the ticking bomb on the government's books, both in terms of preservation of life and the repair bill. While each point is expanded on in detail, these proposals are as follows: re-empower residents and restore accountability, reinstate residents rights to legal aid and security of tenure, create a new independent enforcement body, accountable to residents, re-regulate the building and landlord sectors, introduce more “green tape” to regulate building safety, end self regulation and re-empower independent building inspectors, push back the rentiers and reboot public housing, end the ongoing privatvisation of and bring council housing back in house by gradually ending PFI and outsourcing and finally – something very close to my heart - build public housing once again....more
"Fake news" and "main stream media" are epithets that are not really new but have been much more prominent in our collective lexicon over the last"Fake news" and "main stream media" are epithets that are not really new but have been much more prominent in our collective lexicon over the last couple of years. They are, as phrases, politically ambivalent until you understand the angle of the person taken to wield them and both, but moreso the former, have been misused greatly. The phrase became famous when Donald Trump used it to describe any and everything that he disagreed with, and his followers gleefully took up the catchphrase whereby it is now the go-to defence of the political right when faced with an inconvenient truth. However, we are now seeing this peculiar axiom being used by a wholly new interlocuter, and that is where the main stream media, or MSM come in.
Newspapers, particularly so-called quality newspapers, current / former broadsheets and such see themselves as papers of record, their integrity unquestionable and their honesty unimpeachable. On examination this high-minded self-promotion holds no water. Nowadays the vast majority of newspaper income comes not from sales but from advertising and affiliation space sold over to huge corporations to reach a wide audience. How can the Guardian’s credentials as a progressive organ on, say, climate change maintain alongside a willingness to hand over daily space to BP or Shell to tell us how wonderful they are. As soon as the Guardian wants to write a piece on the unethical behaviour of the oil industry, naming and shaming corporations involved, they are unable due to the threat of advertising revenue being pulled by those companies.
But something much darker is happening in media circles than underreporting, and it is the targeting of smaller independent minded organisations and journalists by the corporate media, and fake news is the route they are taking to do that at the behest of senior editors and the financial backers of these institutions. In response the fake news epidemic that has plagued large scale national and global campaigns in recent years Google released an update which was supposed to remove untrusted pages from the first set of results a user got back from a basic search; this new algorithm was programmed to promote “trusted” news sources, or to put it another way, mainstream media. A result of this was that progressive independent news organisations reported massive drops in the amount of people clicking on, and so seeing, their stories. World Socialist Web Site and Counterpunch feature award winning progressive journalists from around the world and their traffic dropped by hundreds of thousands as soon as this Google update was brought in; among the websites that remain in the “trusted” bracket are things like The Sun, The Express and the Daily Mail along with the other daily newspapers; their longevity should not signify trustworthiness.
If we look at the social media output of star columnists for the Times, Guardian etc we see that they are littered with slanderous comments aimed at small organisations that haven’t the budget to fight back. Journalists who work for MediaLens, Truthdig or any other progressive organisation are called out time and again by six-figure salaried writers who they dare to question. Doxing and gaslighting has been a part of this as has the denial of people’s qualifications to write in their chosen field, despite photographic evidence to the contrary, and it is with this chapter on the state of corporate media today, the BBC included, that this new book from Cromwell and Edwards of MediaLens shines. Much of it is an update on the previous two books about the latest in a long line of state propagandising on behalf of big business or the military industrial complex; very valuable in itself but what is new is this coordinated assault by the biggest companies in the world against small outfits that seek truth and justice and aren’t beholden to advertising revenue so can’t be bought. The corporate world is jumpy; they see how Momentum pushed Jeremy Corbyn to almost becoming British Prime Minister while the whole artillery of the press was opposed to him to almost no avail. They realised their smears were not sticking as people actually had the ability to find out for themselves what was true and what was not, they have started to be able to tell the fact from the fiction and if people start to do that the whole edifice of corporate / government / media threesome comes crashing down as they all exist to sustain one another, and a threat to one is a threat to all.
MediaLens is one of those vital parts of journalism; it watches the watchers and lets us know what the watchers aren’t telling us. This book is a collection of evidence against the more trusted side of the corporate media that they are just as bad, and at times worse in giving us the full picture. It Is hard to conclude at the end of this book that a rightist ideology has not grabbed our media, top to bottom, in a vice like grip of control; at times overt and at times subtle but always there but at no point does this theory enter conspiracy claims. The point of how our media sustains itself is that a conspiracy doesn’t need to take place; the ideology is already shared between the actors who just play their role as they always would have, but in doing so they advance more than those who don’t play by or understand “the rules”. This is a most valuable volume and critical at a time when our politicians seem to be able to lie with impunity without anyone holding them to account, when big business, quite literally in terms of Grenfell tower for instance, gets away with murder and when our hitherto most trusted news organisations have started drinking from the same well as those they are meant to hold to account. I would urge anyone who wants to understand how the media manipulate their readers and viewers to read this book. ...more
For anyone who doesn't know who the author is it is probably worth explaining he is one of the most listened to voices on commerical radion in the UK.For anyone who doesn't know who the author is it is probably worth explaining he is one of the most listened to voices on commerical radion in the UK. The national braodcaster, formerly London only, LBC features his show daily from 10am to 1pm and is regarded as a progressive outlier on a network whose usual target audience is the Daily Mail reading right wing constituency beloved of so much of talk radio. The format of his show is the traditional phone-in; a peramble or monologue on an issue of the day followed by an hour or two discussing that subject with callers who either agree or diagree with him on a sliding scale; it's very listenable and this book is very readable as it remains loyal to his radio format; the chapters read like a verbal monologue and for good measure some of the “greatest hits” calls are reprinted to give fans a comfortable feeling of fmiliarity; most of these have gone viral and can be found on various social media platforms, should you want to listen to them in all their jaw-dropping glory.
The full title, How To Be Right... In A World Gone Wrong, smacks of an arrogance which O'Brien freely concedes, although throughout he is keen to reference that he has changed his mind on several things such as state intervention in public health awareness and certain aspects of feminism, which he describes as a partially completed personal journey, as it is for most men who see themselves as allies of movements they don't have a racial, sexual or biological link to. The book structure is an introduction followed by chapters under straightforward headings upon which O'Brien gives us his opinion, these are (in order): Islam and Islamism, Brexit, LGBT, Political Correctness, Feminism, Nanny States and Classical Liberals, The Age Gap, and Trump followed by an Epilogue. I have to say I was quite surprised to see the absence of anti-Semitism or the Labour Party from the list of contents, as this is one of his favourite topics on his radio show. I wonder whether the publisher suggested that this might affect sales negatively as the market for this publication is surely a left-of-centre readership.
For a progressive, there is little to disagree with here. Some of the bombast of his phone-in show has been dropped in favour of careful consideration of the subject-matter. Any criticism comes more from what is not said than what is. Everything is written in the now, in a very casual way to make the tone almost conversational; there is very little of the history of each topic, no real dissection of how society got to where it currently resides, and how opinions became so polarised, and increasingly seem to diverge into sensibility and extremism, despite the education materials available at all of our fingertips. O'Brien highlights the pernicious elements of the media, often invoking Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, as the shadow behind our riven society, but surely this is too simplistic and takes no account of subversive elements within a wider information superstructure, currently being unravelled by the likes of Carol Cadwalladr and beforehand Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald. His critique of classical liberalism, or libertarianism which in itself is a confused and misplaced synonym, talks of the growth in selfish “I'm alright Jack” attitudes that pregnate modern rightist politics, but he fails to mention Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet, Friedmann or Hayek. It's like coming in late to a football match and it is 4-2 to one team or the other, a person tells you exactly what is happening now on the pitch, but you want to know how it got to 4-2 in the first place.
The second critique is a lack of solutions. Perhaps it is unfair to expect O'Brien to come up with workable fixes for all of the problems he hits upon. Each chapter finishes with the image of someone with a great deal of sense throwing their hands in the air (like they really do care) and going “but what can we do?”, almost pleading with the reader to give him the directions he needs. This is the curse of the radio phone-in host; they are brilliant at getting conversations started, keeping them going and provoking a perhaps reluctant interlocuter, but they are not very good at ending them and concluding; everything is open ended and able to return to deeper into the show or at a later date and it is this that makes the book feel somewhat incomplete. Listening to James O'Brien it doesn't take long to realise he is an intelligent man and probably has a lot of fresh ideas and solutions to the miriad issues he discusses here, and I feel it is a missed opportunity to not speak to these in this book; although I accept space is always an issue, especially for a first book and perhaps an overzealous publisher advised against making the book any longer, though at 218 pages it's hardly a tome.
For anyone wanting to know more about what James thinks this is clearly an excellent book; it would also appeal to people who want an introductory level publication on some of the issues discussed. Anyone who listens to his show will not be surprised to learn that he is most at home speaking about Brexit; a subject he clearly knows more about than the average Joe and an area I expect he will return to in more detail, in a future book when the debacle this country got itself into is over, one way or another. It is a grim reality that the way things are shaping up, a title of this future work will probably be “I Told You So”. ...more
There have been many histories of the Labour Party; Keith Laybourn, Brian Brivati, Andrew Thorpe and Henry Pelling to name a few. This appears to beThere have been many histories of the Labour Party; Keith Laybourn, Brian Brivati, Andrew Thorpe and Henry Pelling to name a few. This appears to be the first (or the first for quite some time) to focus on the Labour Party purely from the left wing angle and attempts to set the historic framework for the current leadership which is probably the most progressive in the party’s history, in the context of a post-Thatcherite local and post-Soviet global politics.
It is a fairly short book to focus on such a large period of history, and indeed such large personalities therein, so for those wanting more insight into what drove Ellen Wilkinson or what galvanised Nye Bevan they would be better off reading direct biographies of their targets. This is very broad brush and looks at how the left have consistently been marginalised by party and governmental machinery, how Labour looks outward and more progressive in opposition, but suddenly looks inward and conforms to establishment norms when in power. The lack of depth on certain key moments is my only real criticism of the book, but once the reader is aware of them, they can be researched more thoroughly elsewhere. Also, the author tires quickly of the early history of the party where much of the political philosophies going forward were enshrined; this is clearly the book of a political activist as opposed to historian.
Very few party leaders are praised (with the exception of Clement Attlee, with qualifications), with the right of the party usually in control of the major seats of power, from the leader himself (always a him) to NEC members and trade union general secretaries; only recently have trade unions had leaders moved somewhat to the left of their general membership with notable past exceptions, and have often been in conflict with the left of the Labour Party due to naked self-interest at times, and at others a narrow but well intentioned view on what is best for their members in the short term – this latter point is nothing new, Len McCluskey may be a died in the wool socialist but UNITE represent members working in the nuclear industry and will block any moves to abolish Trident. The book maintains a quick pace throughout and Hannah seems in his element when speaking of the splits in the 1970s and 80s. He breaks some sacred myths here about the IMF loan, Militant Tendency and the so-called “longest suicide note in history”; all these things have become millstones tied to the neck of the Labour left, unfairly in Hannah’s view and he explains why with great clarity and shows up the timidity of the late 80s / early 90s Labour leadership with passion, reserving full scorn for those in the party who refused to back the miners, dockers and printworkers in their various strike actions, which we know now (and some knew at the time) was part of a larger assault on workers’ rights under Thatcher and Major.
Moving forward, he details how left wing members of the party were deselected or not put forward for potential seats under John Smith briefly and Tony Blair more permanently. Here we see the centralisation of the party machine under Blair and his policy unit. How Party Conference was subdued and deliberately undermined to keep power within the grasp of the leadership and his cabal.
We finish of course chronologically with the defeat of 2015, with some sympathy for Ed Miliband who should have been given far more freedom to be himself, and the movement that gathered behind Jeremy Corbyn who was entered on to the leadership election ticket as a sop to the left but quickly grabbed the attention with his unfailingly human and compassionate responses to questions in debates.
Obviously this book is partial, as all political books are and indeed all histories of the Labour Party. Hannah clearly is a Corbyn supporter along with a huge number of other people and has become party of the army of dedicated activists pushing for a Labour government with a socialist face. However, despite his (twice made) democratic mandate there is a warning here that the right of the party are ideologically opposed to the politics of Jeremy Corbyn and the vast majority of members, they will come again in another coup attempt before long and those of us wanting to continue this project must be ready.
It is a vital read for anyone engaging with politics for the first time, particularly in Momentum or other Corbyn supporting movements to see how we got here, and to show them that they have the fight of their lives on their hand if they want to see a democratically elected socialist leader in this country. ...more
Knife crime is in the news a lot at the moment, understandably since the victims are all around us in every major city of the UK, the families mourn,Knife crime is in the news a lot at the moment, understandably since the victims are all around us in every major city of the UK, the families mourn, the perpetrators get locked up, revenge must be gained and the cycle repeats. Also less mentioned in the news is the story of a teenager called Joy who has been missing since Boxing Day. The former, when such things are reported are portrayed as “black on black” violence while the latter was barely reported and the missing girl happens to be black; I found out about her when a grassroots campaign organised a Twitter storm to raise awareness about her status, and at the same time that Scotland Yard are talking about increasing funding yet again to the tragic case of Madeleine McCann. Both of these are examples of the racism that permeate our systems of power in this country, from the authorities to the media and then filtered down to the people below. Knife crime is not “black on black” as a universal and nor is a black person more likely to commit knife crime than a white person; the key indicators for knife crime are poverty, social exclusion, school expulsion and poor parenting. London, a very ethnically diverse city has plenty of examples of black people committing crime, as well as white people and we see black faces when the knife crime problem is being discussed, because our news outlets are London-focussed. In Glasgow, knife crime until recently was an even bigger problem than in London, and the vast majority of those carrying it out were white people but this was never racialised as “white on white” crime, nor are the overwhelming amounts of football hooliganism that occur every Saturday up and down the land. Glasgow addressed knife crime relatively successfully by treating it as a public health issue first and a criminal one second. Now, I haven’t had some epiphany and awakening recently on this, aside from reading this book which has made me think more deeply, particularly about the stories around us which concern race, even as a secondary subject.
Akala for those that don’t know is a musician, in his first incarnation at any rate, but he is also a teacher, an academic, a writer and seemingly set to become one of our most important public intellectuals. His voice is special and almost unique in having made it through the societal filter since he can see important contemporary subjects from both sides, having had personal experience of the poverty-stricken side, and the scholarly, moneyed side in recent years. With this, his first major work, he takes us on a tour of racism in our apparently post-colonial society and how our history of conquest and conflict, often carved along racial lines, is at the heart of our current inability to place where we are in the modern world and what it means to be English, or British. Alongside this there is a partial biographical element which almost seems apologetic, as though it is somehow self-indulgent to discuss ones-self in conjunction with great themes of Empire, race and class, but these vignettes are vital as to why Akala is able to communicate to us the truth of our current condition. For instance we see how his racist high-school teacher who claimed that the “Ku Klux Klan stopped crime by killing black people” correlates with domestic policies in both the UK and the US, not through that becoming the modern way of doing things but how structuralised racism allowed that teacher to face no sanction just as global leaders who murder brown and black people on a massive scale overseas can also evade justice.
There is naturally a critique of Trump and of Brexit as outliers of a far-right resurgence, in the US in response to Barack Obama’s election in 2008; some right wing groups cheered that victory knowing there would be a white supremacist backlash. Akala is at his most effective though when he holds up those subtle mirrors to the reader, even one who considers himself to be a left wing progressive like myself, and shows us the things we may have done before that we should really have questioned at the time. Now, I never read the Hunger Games (possible spoiler ahead) so this wasn’t aimed at me thankfully, but there is a character in the books who readers adore, they laughed with her, loved her and cried when she died and a significant number of the fans of that series were outraged when the character was cast as black in the film (despite the book early on mentioning her dark skin apparently); they loved this character so much that they could not conceive of having the same care, and the same level of mourning in death, for a black fictional character as they could for a white one and while subtle, that’s about as racist as you can be. Throughout the book we pay several visits to the US as well as Southern Africa, China, the Caribbean, Australia and Latin America to see how colonial attitudes persist but are also being constantly challenged and the book builds in to a question of how the Anglo-centric world is going to cope when it realises that its time as leader of the pack is over (Akala’s answer is not hopeful of avoiding serious conflict). While everything is pulled back to race and class there are other themes here that are tied into the legacies of colonial enterprise; why is it not common knowledge that the only significant military assistance the ANC received in their struggle against the evil of apartheid was from Cuba? Many people seem to think a few concerts were held in London and South African racism disappeared. Much of the work on Latin America here should be read through the prism of the ongoing coup in Venezuela, and how it is being cheer-led by every arm of the British media; but we’re all supposed to believe we’re post-colonial now.
Throughout Akala is articulate, as he always is when he speaks and if he is coming to a town near you, go and see him and you’ll agree. His level of research and scholarship detailed in the select bibliography is deep and varied; he maintains a good sense of humour throughout, often breaking the literary equivalent of the fourth wall to address the reader directly. He knows when to throw in the stats to back the argument up and linguistically, for the most part, keeps things at a level that people can read which is important because for too long politics books have been written by and for the academic elite, as much as this is a worthy academic study of 21st Century British race relations, it is also a call to other working class people to get armed; not with knives or guns but with knowledge and to finally start challenging our structures of exploitation; so for a council estate lad like me who left school without any qualifications (although a confessed autodidact) it was easy to read and should be for anyone while it holds an academic rigour that many professional historians do not (I’m looking at you Niall Ferguson). If you want to be something don’t pick up a knife, pick up a book, preferably this one and to quote Akala from Fire in the Booth “read read read”. ...more
Although written before Brexit it is impossible to read this book without adding the post-Brexit filter to the text. Colours have been firmly tied toAlthough written before Brexit it is impossible to read this book without adding the post-Brexit filter to the text. Colours have been firmly tied to one of two masts, they being leave or remain - leavers will find much in this book they agree with and remainers will suffer inconvenient reminders of the flaws in the EU monetary system. However, this is more than throwing darts randomly at the EU board, these barbs are delivered with Phil Taylor like accuracy at the ludicrous fundamentals built into the EU and more specifically the eurozone. The deficit-phobia, the "rescue" packages of struggling states and the ever menacing shadow of fascism in the background, drawing post-Versailles parallels with post-crash Europe. Varoufakis is too cute to write a "tear down the walls" manifesto though. What he actually cries out for is a closer political Europe, a federal one that can squeeze itself out of the narrow national boundaries and self interest each member is still wedded to. That France will accept it's role as underdog and Germany accept it's responsibilities as the location of the central bank, with not onkybits trade surplus but it's political surplus too. At times it makes difficult reading but the three themes of Bretton Woods, Volcker Shock and the 2008 sub prime crash are shown to be more connected that we realised and how opportunities for change keep passing the European elite by - Brexit has to be included in this and perhaps is the wake up call the EU needs to be better, though a full federal united states would be even harder to convince publics of than monetary union....more
Very good autobio that lets you get close to the real Dennis Skinner. The book jumps about a bit in time frames and perhaps could have done with someVery good autobio that lets you get close to the real Dennis Skinner. The book jumps about a bit in time frames and perhaps could have done with some more editing but as a history of one of the great parliamentarians of the age it is a vital document. We find out how the "palace of varieties" works, what tricks MPs pull and what goes on behind closed doors. We know a little more about the author's own politics, though he's never hidden these under any kind of bushel and we are reminded of his integrity where his peers have sadly failed. Dennis is at his best when writing about the working class, and about his constituents who he understands fully, and who have returned him to represent them time and again. His health problems are laid out for us and his tenacity, and ability to speak truth to power remain at the forefront of this book. He is a great Labour figure; acquired the grudging respect of characters as diverse as Tony Blair, Enoch Powell and Tony Benn in his time at The House. Who knows how long he will still be around, casting his acerbic wit in the direction of the Conservative party, but however long it is, he should be treasured. ...more
This is a fairly digestible read for any lefty friends on here, which possibly describes most of my friends. It's a verbatim record of three lecturesThis is a fairly digestible read for any lefty friends on here, which possibly describes most of my friends. It's a verbatim record of three lectures given in San Francisco by the Marxist sociologist John Holloway.
He talks a lot about unity of the left and how we need to stop separating people in to different branches of disenfranchised and oppressed peoples and start thinking as a "we" not a "they" when discussing people of struggle.
He talks about acts of selflessness, from the small to the huge each create a tiny crack in capitalism and the more we create the more we undermine it.
He says honestly that he doesn't have the answers, and if anyone does claim to have all the answers it moves them in to an area of monologue where we need a politics of dialogue - some have ideas, so do some others - sit and talk and implement them.
The overriding message is that we need to stop viewing the crises of capitalism as something done to us, but rather embrace those crises and become them. Sack bankers, elect different politicians but they will still be another version of the capitalist that went before, before the whole philosophy of capital is one of exploitation and oppression. His message is summed up in the words "we are the crisis of capitalism". ...more
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