I somehow knew that REM’s song had an air of inevitability about it particularly in relation to global economic markets and political change. Where once confident right-wing economists and politicians denounced Marx for getting capitalism woefully wrong, it’s time to eat that humble pie, or at least a portion of it. Sowing the seeds of one’s own destruction is an inherently nihilistic activity and the de-regulated financial market has done exactly that almost to a Marxist script. It’s perhaps ironic to think that perhaps if they’d only listened more attentively to Marx and many other writers on the left of such inevitability they may have just saved their own skins, but when a moth detects a light they just can’t help themselves can they?

You know something is afoot when such middle-of-the-road institutions such as the BBC begin to mention the word that they so often dare not mention … capitalism! For instance Newsnight (Wednesday, September 17th 2008) mentioned it on more than one occasion and even invited Naomi Klein, author of The Rise of Disaster Capitalism to engage in debate with frequent visitor to Newsnight Irwin Steltzer, who apparently is a bit of an authority on economic matters and a major source of information for Newsnight, which roughly translates into trustworthy. The debate took part under the title of ‘Does Capitalism Still Work?’ and poor old Steltzer looked quite deflated and the presenter of Newsnight Jeremy Paxman appeared to have lost all confidence in him as a voice of authority, due to the volatility of the market; how things change! Unfortunately Naomi Klein was totally lost for an answer when Paxman asked what alternative system would Klein like to see replace capitalism. Klein, so authoritative on reeling out statistics on the immoral earnings of high-end earners looked flummoxed. You see there is no point in complaining if you don’t have a clear vision of what socialism entails.

Not so a representative from the Marxist Socialist Party who was interviewed on the Jeremy Vine BBC radio two show the very next day (Thursday, September 18th). To be honest I thought I misheard Vine when he introduced Hannah Sell from the Socialist Party and on the BBC! Like Paxman, Vine mentioned the word capitalism also on more than one occasion and to be fair made some valid points regarding its inherent destructive nature when the market is deregulated, but I couldn’t help but wonder if we were experiencing some bizarre form of media moral panic, after all, even though the banking system has been shaken to its foundations, cool, rational analysis is required to assess the outcomes and what impact they may have on society.

It’s interesting to note that the US administration so often associated with its vehement rhetoric against state control in Cuba and social reforming policies in Europe, particularly in health, are now having to turn to nationalisation in order to bail out the now internationally known Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, plus the buying-up of housing stock. In Britain it’s called ‘Council Housing’; a decent provision for providing housing to people without having to take out a mortgage, although Thatcher, another cavalier of the free market, gave people the right to buy, thus limiting the state housing stock. It’s again perhaps ironic that market forces, and here it’s used as a euphemism for greed, not ideology is responsible for nationalisation. In the UK, the Northern Rock bank is already nationalised but the Chancellor of the Labour Government, Alistair Darling, suspended the competition laws to allow Lloyds TSB to buy out HBOS (Halifax and the Bank of Scotland). Lloyds by the way are cock-a-hoop about this because they have been trying to acquire a fair sized financial holding for some considerable time but were unable to do so because anti-competition laws, there in the public interest, stopped them from acquiring a monopoly position in the market. What Darling was faced with is what we call in media ethics and in legal circles, a conflict of interest: public interest versus monopoly. Darling, and the Labour government has sided with monopoly capitalism which automatically negates competition, but one can’t help but think of the great Woody Allen quote ‘you can’t stave off the inevitable’.

In the Conservative Daily Telegraph, article titled ‘Who’s next after the Lehman brothers’ (Tuesday, September 16th 2008) Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote ‘While the appearances of free market discipline have been upheld, the reality of the weekend events is a further lurch towards socialism, or state capitalism if you prefer’. Well not quite socialism yet perhaps and rather than the introduction of state capitalism as Evans-Pritchard suggests it’s simply the intensification of it, particularly in the USA and Britain with others to follow no doubt. The problem with Evans-Pritchard’s assessment is the delusion that a real free market actually exists, but the reality is that nation states actively promote an economic system that is inherently unfair, limited in free and fair competition and regulates through a system of legal provisions. In fact many socialists would agree with Evans-Pritchard of the horrors of state capitalism, it’s just the assessment of where it exists differs. The fact that many chief executives of banks have accrued huge financial gains because of a de-regulated sector is curiously a central element of state tolerance. The ill-fated Tony Blair in an interview with Jeremy Paxman once argued against capping the wealth of the well-off ‘what good would that achieve’ or words to that effect Blair famously said indicating that the gulf between rich and poor remains an integral part of state ideology irrespective of what government rules. So is capitalism slowly burning itself out, well open-democracy is certainly suggesting it is, but I don’t think so, not yet at least!

Newsnight debate featuring Klein and Steltzer here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/video/7623288.stm