[Campaignforrealdemocracy] The Times Onslaught

[marknbarrett at googlemail.com]

+1 to that banner Shimri, although it's a bit wordy. but would prefer or to go alongside ( the criticism part ) the answer too ie ' The Solution is Real Democracy!
-----Original Message-----
From: Shimri <shimriz at gmail.com>
Sender: strikersassembly at googlegroups.com
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:26:51 
To: <strikersassembly at googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: strikersassembly at googlegroups.com
Cc: <noii-uk at lists.riseup.net>; <diggers350 at yahoogroups.com>; <democracyvillage at googlegroups.com>; <campaignforrealdemocracy at lists.aktivix.org>; <project2012 at googlegroups.com>; <peopleincommon at lists.riseup.net>; <trafalgar-square-assembly at googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: The Times Onslaught

sorry that meant to read - (and maybe put down that sign after
further discussion)

On 22 October 2011 12:24, Shimri <shimriz at gmail.com> wrote:

> actually there was a discussion and at least in my 10 people's group we had
> consensus we DO NOT want to be called anti-capitalists.
>
> There was a vote about removing the sign, and desicion was half-half.
>
> Suggestion: We should come up with a new, additional sign, I proposed the
> "our system is unsustainable, undemocratic and unjust", that is the first
> sentence in the London statement, therfore it will be very democratic act to
> put it up (and maybe put down that sign).
>
> xx
> Shimri
>
>
> On 22 October 2011 10:44, Virginia Lopez Calvo <
> virginialopezcalvo at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> I think these articles have a point. Our Tent City claims to be
>> anti-capitalist, or so the banner at the entrance say, when this issue has
>> not been discussed democratically in the general assembly. It was once in
>> the agenda of the day, on Wednesday, but instead of a dialogue where
>> opinions from across the board can be heard and there is space for debate,
>> we only dedicated 10 minutes to the issue during which, rather than
>> exploring it and trying to come up with a common message, a few of those who
>> are not scared of public speaking grabbed the mike, gave the usual
>> ideological speech, a few cheered, a few booed and the discussion was over.
>>
>> I think we should bring this (again) to the attention of the general
>> assembly and have a truly democratic assembly where space of debate exist,
>> where people can learn from each other, where there is an attitude for
>> consensus, rather than a battle of ideas, and where the outcome can be said
>> to be 'the voice of the camp'. And most importantly, we wouldn't be
>> alienating millions who, like me, haven't made up their minds yet on whether
>> they want capitalism or not, and what model they want if they do. If we are
>> about real democracy we should get discussing this topic and until then
>> convey clearly to media that we are not an anti-capitalist movement (at
>> least just yet).
>>
>>
>> Virginia.
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 6:25 AM, Mark Barrett <
>> marknbarrett at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> See below for more info.
>>>
>>> Suffice to say it is galvanising a response from the Occupy LSX Media
>>> team. Hopefully we can turn this into a full blown statement of in tent
>>> (sic).
>>>
>>> Real Democracy Now!
>>>
>>> Love and Solidarity
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>> *Phillip Collins 21/10 Editorial (FYI Collins is also a Times Leader
>>> writer) *
>>> Keep your new Jerusalem. I’ll take capitalism*Philip Collins*
>>>
>>> The Dale Farm and St Paul’s protesters are deluded. Law and commerce have
>>> made Britain a much more pleasant land
>>> ‘Here ye. This is Rooster Byron, telling all you Kennet  and Avon, South
>>> Wiltshire bandits and Salisbury white wigs. Bang your  gavels. Issue your
>>> warrants. You can’t make the wind blow ... Take your  leaflets and your
>>> borstal and your beatings and your health and [naughty  word] safety and
>>> pack your whole poxy, sham-faced plot and get.”
>>>
>>> This is the dissenting defiance of the exuberant fabulist of Jez
>>> Butterworth’s remarkable play, *Jerusalem.*  Rooster Byron is a Romany
>>> squatter fighting the intention of the  authorities to evict him from his
>>> mobile home in the forest. Where is  the beauty, he wails, of the F99
>>> enforcement notice under the terms of  the Pollution Control and Local
>>> Government Order 1974 set against the  cherubs and elves of English
>>> folklore? As the new-build estate creeps  closer, Byron breathes fire
>>> against the paradise he is losing and  asserts the right of every free-born
>>> Englishman to have a party on his  green and pleasant land.
>>>
>>> *Jerusalem* is too subtle a play to  be agitprop and Byron too complex a
>>> character to be a cipher for a crude  philosophy. But he does speak for an
>>> idyll of the common wealth in  which occupation is the law of the land. And
>>> he does call up a mythical  past that we are invited to believe has been
>>> degraded by modernity. As  the police stormed Dale Farm in Basildon in a
>>> violent struggle, and as  protesters camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral, it
>>> was impossible not to  hear echoes of Byron’s monologues.
>>> In claiming Dale Farm, where  they have lived without permission since
>>> 2001, the travellers are making  the very moral demand that defines Rooster
>>> Byron. The land, they say,  is part of the ancient common wealth of the
>>> nation. It is the property  of all, a gift of the landscape we all share.
>>> The police force that  confronts them upholds the law in a way that they,
>>> along with Rooster  Byron, dismiss as officious and unfeeling.
>>>
>>> Travellers can live  however they like for all I care, but the judgment
>>> from the High Court  was unanswerable: the desire to live in caravans does
>>> not license a  breach of the criminal law. It is frivolous to pretend, as
>>> Byron and the  travellers both do, that an illegal encampment has any
>>> superior moral  force.
>>> It is also odd to behold a group of travellers who will do  anything to
>>> make sure they don’t have to travel. And when they are  urinating on the
>>> police from 40ft-high scaffolding (remarkably there is a  similar scene in
>>> *Jerusalem*), it is clear that they will do  anything. William Blake
>>> once said that “the road of excess leads to the  palace of wisdom”. As
>>> usual, he was wrong. It doesn’t. The road of  excess leads to excess. Both
>>> Byron’s forest and Dale Farm are policed by  the threat of violence rather
>>> than the law. It is not fair to say that  Tony Ball, the leader of Basildon
>>> Council, has been the small-minded  enemy of the common wealth. He has, in
>>> fact, been the brave and  reasonable spokesman of the common law.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, outside St  Paul’s Cathedral, anti-capitalist protesters have
>>> begun a vigil under  tarpaulin to dramatise their case that the avarice of
>>> investment bankers  has ruined the global economy. There is no need to
>>> minimise our  economic problems to make a mockery of this. There was —
>>> indeed is — a  crisis in banking. Credit was too freely available and
>>> regulation was  too crude for the complexity of today’s financial products.
>>> But that’s  not pithy enough to make a slogan. So, instead, the banner that
>>> stands  above the tent village announces baldly that “capitalism is crisis”.
>>>
>>> It  is notable that more than one British newspaper has solemnly
>>> declared  that, though the protesters may be a ragged bunch, they do have a
>>> point.  To which it needs to be retorted: no, they don’t. Or rather, yes
>>> they  do, but they’re hopelessly wrong. The notion that we should look back
>>> before the time of capitalism for a gentler era in which machines had  not
>>> turned men into commodities — the shared vision of Rooster Byron,  the Dale
>>> Farm travellers and the happy campers of St Paul’s — is  dangerous rubbish.
>>> We can’t all live, like Byron does, off the proceeds  of selling our rare
>>> blood. Some of us have to work.
>>>
>>> It needs to be  said that the era of capitalist accumulation, to adopt
>>> their lingo, has  been the most prosperous time in the history of humankind.
>>> In the 800  years before 1820, income per head across the world was static
>>> and so  was life expectancy. Life wasn’t much more than a matter of
>>> choosing  which noxious disease to die from. In the 200 years of industrial
>>> capitalism, income per head has risen by 800 per cent. Life expectancy  has
>>> tripled and back- breaking work has declined, especially for  children, who
>>> now do something unheard of in both the medieval era and *Jerusalem,*namely go to school.
>>> It  is therefore silly to suppose that something called “capitalism” or
>>> some malign mechanisms known as “markets” failed in 2008. There was a
>>> serious failure in one part of the banking sector and, because the
>>> wholesale lending market ties banks together, an obvious risk of  contagion.
>>> It was hugely serious and it’s not over yet. But none of this  justifies the
>>> egregious, almost incomprehensible claim from the St  Paul’s protest that
>>> global commerce is “our global Assad, our global  Gaddafi”. To use one of
>>> Blake’s better phrases, thoughts like these are  “reptiles of the mind”.
>>>
>>> The thing to remember about the new  Jerusalem is that we will never get
>>> there. Rooster Byron is an engaging  charlatan. “Who cares about asses like
>>> Blake or bores like Byron?” wrote  Philip Larkin. There is no idyll in the
>>> forest and the better world  won’t be the stuff of great drama. The prosaic
>>> truth is that the  solution to bad capitalism is better capitalism. If we
>>> want to build  Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land, we’ll need
>>> some builders  and they’ll need to turn a decent profit.
>>> As long as he lived,  Blake struggled to hold an audience. It is only
>>> later generations,  yearning for the comfort of a golden past, who have
>>> fallen for his  euphonious silliness. When we are tempted to declare the
>>> natural common  wealth of all men, in an age before property rights, and
>>> when we find  ourselves lamenting the loss of a prior paradise, we are
>>> always, without  exception, talking mystical Blake-guff.
>>>
>>> Evict the travellers and  ignore the protesters. Capitalism under the
>>> rule of law will never take  us to the garden of earthly delights, but it is
>>> as close as we will ever  get. “You can see, then,” said W.H. Auden in *
>>> Vespers*, “why, between my Eden and his New Jerusalem, no treaty is
>>> negotiable.”
>>>
>>> *Times Saturday 22/10 Leader  ( my highlights ) *
>>> The protesters camped outside St Paul’s for the last week are vague about
>>> what  they are for. But given what we know they are against, we could assume
>>> that  in the age-old contest between God and Mammon such avowed
>>> anti-capitalists  might favour the spiritual over the material.
>>>
>>> Yet in seeking to shut down a stock exchange, these would-be
>>> revolutionaries  have instead shut down a cathedral. As attempts to topple
>>> the global  financial system go, turning a war against the supposedly evil
>>> pinstripe  into a conflict with the saintly cassock is a pretty hopeless
>>> outcome.
>>>
>>> With no little presumption, the protesters have renamed the piazza
>>> Tahrir  Square. Drawing further spurious parallels with the Arab Spring, the
>>> few  hundred occupants seek to characterise themselves as the true voice of
>>> the  people. They are not “the people”, however, but quite a small group of
>>> people, just as those who toil in the Stock Exchange, or worship at St
>>> Paul’s, or come to appreciate its architectural glory, or trade from
>>> premises in the area, or navigate their way through the added traffic
>>> congestion, are also groups of people. Rather larger groups of people,
>>> indeed.
>>>
>>> The freedom to protest is a vital part of our democracy. But so is the
>>> freedom  to religious assembly in the place of one’s choosing and the
>>> freedom to go  unhindered about one’s daily business. *The protesters
>>> should reflect on  these competing freedoms, one of which they are abusing,
>>> the others  curtailing.  *
>>> *Having so reflected, if they are the passionate democrats they claim to
>>> be*,  they should leave St Paul’s in peace, and instead devote such
>>> energy and  talent as they possess towards improving the world in more
>>> practical ways.
>>>
>>> *Times Leader  Oct 18*
>>>
>>> *Profits and Protest *
>>>
>>> Critics of capitalism misjudge the causes of the financial crisis and
>>> the
>>>  recuperative power and potential of markets
>>>
>>> The global economy remains in a crisis sparked by the collapse of the
>>>  Western banking system three years ago. A movement has arisen that
>>> believes
>>>  it has the answers, or at least the right diagnosis. The problem, it
>>>  maintains, is corporate greed, the bankers and government austerity
>>>  programmes. This protest is wrong-headed and there is little purpose in
>>>  being polite about it.
>>>
>>> Protesters gathered in more than 900 cities in America, Europe and Asia
>>> this
>>>  weekend. Their inspiration was a protest that started in New York a
>>> month
>>>  ago under the name Occupy Wall Street. Among the rallies was one in
>>> London.
>>>  Several hundred demonstrators have now set up camp outside St Paul’s
>>>  Cathedral. It is unclear when they might leave. The ground immediately
>>>  outside the building is owned by the cathedral, whose staff have been
>>>  cautiously sympathetic to the protesters while requiring that
>>> worshippers
>>>  and tourists be able to pass freely.
>>>
>>> The right of assembly is integral to a free society, but on the evidence
>>> of
>>>  recent history there is little danger of its being overlooked.
>>> Protection of
>>>  that liberty has recently made Parliament Square a semi-permanent and
>>>  squalid place of protest. St Paul’s should not become another.
>>>
>>> There are two weaknesses in the demands of the anti-capitalist
>>> protesters:
>>>  their analysis of what has gone wrong and their recommendation of how to
>>> put
>>>  it right. Bankers have not helped their case with some grievously
>>>  insensitive public relations, but it is flatly wrong to explain the
>>>  financial collapse as a tale simply about avarice.
>>>
>>> The crisis happened, first, because monetary policy was too loose for
>>> too
>>>  long, which fuelled a bubble in credit, and, second, because of a
>>>  misconceived shift to financial deregulation. Banks are not like other
>>>  industries: they have wider obligations than to their shareholders
>>> alone.
>>>  They have responsibilities to their depositors and to the stability of
>>> the
>>>  financial system. They failed in both respects, not only because
>>> bankers
>>>  themselves wanted quick ways to make lots of money, but also owing to a
>>>  perverse system of incentives in which it made sense to take on debt
>>> and
>>>  deplete capital reserves to boost shareholder returns.
>>>
>>> The errors were catastrophic. Reforms in regulation and in the mandate
>>> of
>>>  central bankers are essential. This demonstrates not the immorality of
>>> the
>>>  system but the inherent cyclical instability of a complex economy. There
>>> is
>>>  always a risk of financial contagion because banks are tied to each
>>> other in
>>>  the wholesale lending market. But great economic gains are achieved
>>> through
>>>  a system that allocates capital to businesses that can make profitable
>>> use
>>>  of it. Britain’s economy is closely tied to the fortunes of the
>>> financial
>>>  services sector, and it makes no sense to hamper this.
>>>
>>> What makes even less sense is the programme of the protesters. It takes
>>> not
>>>  only a lack of proportion but a lack of moral seriousness to maintain
>>> that
>>>  global commerce is “our global Assad, our global Gaddafi”. The
>>> movement’s
>>>  supporters would do well to consider John Maynard Keynes’s maxim that it
>>> is
>>>  better a man should tyrannise over his bank balance than over his
>>> fellow
>>>  citizens.
>>>
>>> In reality, such supranational bodies as the World Trade Organisation
>>> and
>>>  the IMF are fallible but important means of creating a system of rules
>>> that
>>>  limit arbitrary power and serve popular needs. The expansion of trade
>>> and
>>>  economic integration enable poor nations to better themselves. Gains in
>>>  productivity allow growth in wages and economic development. That is
>>> how
>>>  scores of millions of peasants in China have been lifted out of poverty
>>> in a
>>>  generation. The protesters think that they are standing up for the
>>> little
>>>  guy; in fact their mish-mash of proposals makes for a muddled charter
>>> of
>>>  stagnation in which he would suffer most. The fact is that economic
>>> liberty
>>>  enables the little guy to stand up for himself.
>>>
>>
>>
>

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