InstituteOfRaceRelations: "The market state is antithetical to the good society. The market has always been with us. But what has changed in the last three decades is the relationship between the market and the state. What has instigated this change is itself the changed relationship between capital and labour brought about by the technological revolution and, its concomitant, globalisation. Whereas under industrial capitalism, the tension between capital and labour was mediated by the state through social policies that alleviated the inequalities generic to capital, under electronic capitalism, capital, freed from the exigencies of time and place and the strictures of organised labour, has the world for its playing field and the state as its servitor.
The function of the state, therefore, is to unfetter the market through a raft of neoliberal policies such as deregulation, denationalisation, financialisation and the like – and get out of the way. And a market so freed will offer up efficiency, growth and widespread prosperity. The tectonic plates beneath the state had shifted from serving the nation to serving the market – which in effect meant serving big business and the banks. Or, as Bobbitt puts it, ‘such a state depends on the international capital markets and, to a lesser degree, on the modern multinational business network to create stability in the world economy.’ In sum, the market drives society, and global capital that drives the market drives the state.
Inequality is structured into the market society, hardships of the recession fall unequally on the poor, and cuts in benefit cut the ground from under their feet. The ‘widespread prosperity’, that the free market promises, stops with the middle classes. ... The only thing that trickles down is poverty. And nothing ‘trickles up’ because the infrastructure of education, housing, jobs, social assistance is being steadily eroded.
The hubris, the mealy-mouthed apology, the self-righteousness, the risible ‘punishment’ – they leave no room for accountability or shame from which at least some justice could spring and act as exemplar. Instead, non-accountability and brass are seeping through our business culture, especially among the firms that have grown fat on the privatisation of public services.
Privatisation has already taken over crucial functions in policing, criminal justice, education, health, welfare, asylum, immigration and military – and, aided by further denationalisation will soon have taken the running of the country out of the hands of the people and put it in the ‘care’ of transnational corporations. ... And deregulation, under the guise of liberalising the economy, has set the banking and financial systems free to ruin the nation’s economy through ‘speculation, predation, fraud and thievery’ while demanding, at the same time, that they themselves be saved from ruin by the people’s money.
But the green shoots of an alternative have already begun to sprout – in the Occupy movement that has taken on the banks and financial systems; in the less spectacular resistances right across the country, among the rank and file, in health, education, welfare, housing, community services etc; in the protests against the cuts, against the corporatisation of key services, against the increasing criminalisation of the unwanted and the encroachments of the state into civil society.
Neoliberalism has failed. Deregulation and privatisation cannot deliver prosperity across the board. Cuts cannot get the government out of debt. Further dependency on the financial sector can only lead to government of the banks, by the banks, for the banks – and end in social dislocation and rebellion."