by Tarquin O’Flaherty 
Some time ago I wrote an essay for the blog outlining what I believed to be the root cause of the world’s present and sorry economic malaise. Generally the essay took the view that the democratic freedom afforded post-war society by Keynesian economics posed a huge threat to the Money side of town and therefore Money decided that something must be done about it.
Keynesian economics grew out of the Depression and the determination of sections of society that the appalling conditions the people were forced to endure during this Depression would not and could not be repeated. This determination resulted in the creation of a social system where the health, wealth and wellbeing of the people would, in the future, be protected by law, and the cause of the Depression, the speculative madness of the 1920s, be outlawed.
The ‘trickle down effect’ at work
Money was not amused. After all, the bulk of government revenues in the 60s came from industry and Money began to wonder why their money was being wasted on mollycoddling the lower orders. I suggested in the essay that resurgent Money, scared by the ‘Power to the People’ movements of the Sixties, decided amongst themselves that allowing this level of power into legitimate democratic hands was indeed a bridge too far. This ‘Power’, after all, had contributed to ending the enormously lucrative Vietnam War. It had also ended the State sanctioned discrimination, exploitation and murder of American blacks by giving them the right to vote.
The ‘Oil Crisis’ of the early seventies provided Money with the perfect opportunity to begin its propaganda war against the power of the people. Oil prices quadrupled, business stumbled, people were thrown out of work and the Unions, those powerful bodies representing workers were discovered by Money to be (well bless my soul) corrupt, incompetent and determined to bring the Industrial West to its financial knees through greed. They must be stopped!
The reality was that there was no ‘Oil Crisis’. None at all. ‘The ‘Oil Crisis’ of the 1970s was, simply put, a politically motivated invention designed to drive the first battering ram into the idea that democracy was for everyone. If there had been a legitimate, a real ‘Oil Crisis’, we’d all now be riding bikes. The Unions, upon examination, turned out to be no more corrupt than any comparable body. The Unions were however, legitimate bodies representing the legitimate interests of millions of the world’s peoples. Money viewed this Union power as a ‘clear and present danger’, a direct threat to its own correctly sensible, medieval view of the world. Luckily, Money’s coffers, for anti-Union propaganda, were huge.
Life without unions? As simple as 7/11
‘Break the power of the Unions!’ ‘Allow people to choose!’. Thatcher, Friedman, Fraser and Reagan screamed, cheered on by the Chicago School of Economics. Keynesian economics, according to the new and lunatic mantra, was dead, old fashioned and entirely at odds with modern economic thinking. Insidiously, terrifyingly, Moneyed propaganda began to suggest, with the considerable clout of the Murdoch press, that the Unions were at least, not to be trusted, and at worst, an absolutely corrupt enemy of the people. Essentially, the British Empire’s old strategy of divide and conquer began to take considerable effect.
None of this anti-union propaganda was true but, as we all know, if a lie is repeated often enough, it eventually becomes the truth.
In the 1980’s Keynes was demonised, his ideas ridiculed and all the brakes and stops he had brought in to prevent a repeat of the 1929 crash were gradually dismantled. Without these safeguards Money was going to have a field day and, as we have all seen, banking speculation, on a massively corrupt scale, particularly in the U.S., resulted very quickly in bankrupting North America and Western Europe as well.
For almost forty years now, despite the impoverished majority being in at least some possession of the facts; of being aware that, at the top of the scale and increasingly, individuals were making millions and companies were making trillions in profits, democracy, our democracy, our government has done nothing, absolutely nothing to protest this vastly unequal state of affairs. In America, people have lost their homes, their livelihoods, their dignity and their hope as a result of Money’s drive to profit. We have, by insidious increments, ceased to be citizens of a democracy, with the power and dignity that democracy bestows. Instead, and almost unbelievably we have been persuaded, by ruthless advertising campaigns, to abandon democracy and become instead, brand new type of citizen, a type never before seen in the history of humankind; ladies and gentlemen, I give you (blast of trumpets) THE CONSUMER!
The ‘consumer’, (like the Ploughman’s Lunch) is an invention of the advertising industry. It has taken about half a century for Money, through advertising to persuade us to abandon democracy in favour of consumerism. This has been quite cleverly done. Whether we are prepared to accept this or not does not make it any less true. The facts are that elected governments nowadays no longer represent the interests of the people. Governments may, for convention’s sake, still offer themselves as democratic, and a huge percentage of the populous still believe this to be true, but it is not true; it is absolutely false. Successive western governments have been subverted, diverted and perverted by Big Money. Governments, without regard for the needs of the people they represent, do Big Money’s bidding first. When democracy, real democracy happened post war, it filled our protesting streets with outraged citizens. Governmental reaction, instead of considering the cause of this citizen outrage, was swift and absolutely brutal. These people were (we were told) anarchists, Communists and dangerously irresponsible drug addicts. Demonised by the press as a threat to society, the people, exercising their democratic rights, were variously beaten up, incarcerated, shot, gassed and murdered. Thousands went to jail. Amazingly and upon examination these ‘anarchists’, these ‘Communists’, turned out to be young, normal, upright citizens exercising their democratic right to object. They were, not unreasonably, objecting to their government’s habit of declaring war on small Asian countries or bombing tiny (often neutral) foreign countries ‘back into the Stone Age’. The people were demanding that it be stopped. Money decided that this was a very bad idea. War, after all, had kept the US economy bouyantly rich for over a century. There were massive profits to be made and nothing, neither the people, nor governments nor indeed democracy itself must be allowed to interfere with that..
In February of this year (2016) Albert Woodfox was released from jail. He had just served 43 years in solitary confinement. His cell was six feet wide and nine feet long.
Woodfox was a member of the Black Panthers, a group of black activists who were all jailed in 1972. All these years later, Woodfox’s conviction was judged to be unconstitutional and was twice overturned by a federal court. He left jail an innocent man.
Other Panthers were Kenny Whitmore, Robert King and Herman Wallace. Whitmore spent thirty years in solitary confinement before being allowed out of isolation. He remains in prison. King was released in 2001. Wallace was released in 2013 and died two days later.
There are however rich rewards for those who suck up to money, (Ed.)
I mention the Black Panthers here because I see them as a perfect example of revenge, the vindictively unforgiving revenge of the system. Having the temerity to object is bad enough: having the temerity to be black and object is even worse; but having the temerity to be black, to call yourself a Black Panther and to offer a closed fist challenge to the world at large is absolutely the supreme ‘uppity nigger’ insult. How dare they even begin to think that they are equal? What absolute, presumptuous gall! Clap ‘em in irons for all eternity! That’ll teach them a lesson!
What a sad, dispiriting world we have allowed to develop around us. Money talks and governments listen. I think that a bit of revolution might help. It didn’t do the French any harm.