GUEST BLOG: Dave Brownz – Disaster Capitalism or Survival Socialism

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The Daily Blog
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The coronavirus pandemic coming on top of a global economic slowdown fused with climate breakdown will be more than enough to tip the world into depression. And when it happens it will be the last depression. China which produced most of the goods to pull the rest of the world out of the GFC cannot do the same today. Central banks are already on close to zero negative interest rates. Bosses are in a panic and its about their survival, or ours, the working people.

So we are now down to scraping the bottom of the barrel. The global capitalist economy is on a drip feed of state spending printed money that we working people will ultimately pay for out of our labour. Unless we refuse.

All of this is glaring at us in the face. So why should we lie back in compulsory isolation and let the rotting capitalist system get transfused with our blood. If there ever was a Disaster Capitalism is it now. And that is saying something after several major depressions and world wars. Isn’t it time to say that there is a way out other than yet again bosses’ making working people pay with our livelihoods and our lives? We must say, no more!
We know that the bosses’ state will print money to bail out the corporates whose interests the state serves anyway. Parliament is a talk shop to keep the masses diverted from the real business behind the facade of democracy. But the real business is now bust and Parliament stands exposed.
So lets say NO. Your crisis is our opportunity. We will not die while you insulate yourselves in your bunkers. We will not pay for your luxury with our wages and taxes. Your profits are nothing more than our or accumulated surplus labour anyway. So we won’t be falling for disaster capitalism this time, we want survival socialism!
So when the assorted capitalist regimes from Boris to Donald to Modi to Jacinda all come out with rescue packages that will keep the bosses’ businesses alive we must reject handouts to the rich in our name since we will pay for it. The bosses’ and their political stooges have preached neoliberal doctrine at us for decades swearing by the market as our saviour.
Now they are turning around and saying, the state must save us all in the national interest. It doesn’t embarrass them in the slightest that this is the repudiation of their free market shibboleths and it is us workers who are paying for the bosses’ welfare state. So lets stick it to them.
In the place of rotten capitalism rooting us with its disaster capitalism, lets say no, we want survival socialism. So when business complains that the state must pay for their lost profits we say no, you are bankrupt. We won’t be fooled that the state subsidizing our wages makes your viable.  That goes out of our pockets into yours.
Prove that your deserve to exist by paying market wages, paying us for sick leave as long the pandemic threatens, or if your so fragile and can’t survive in a rotting capitalism which makes workers die for your profits, you should end in the scrap yard.
Instead of state spending to revive dying capitalism and the further destruction of nature, workers must demand that any state subsidies to business have to be on the terms of the majority of working people. If ‘public health’ is to mean anything but a healthy workforce to be exploited, let’s redefine it as a healthy publicly owned economy.
This means instead of handouts as bailouts, the state should take shares of the same value as public assets. But to qualify, firms must be productive of goods that we need, growth must be sustainable, carbon negative, and not at the expense of nature.
Moreover, since we, the workers make the wealth, part of which you claim as reward for your  failed entrepreneurial skills, we demand to set the terms for sharing our wealth with you. We will take over the running of the business and employ you as manager under our supervision.
If the bosses refuse our terms and close down the business, those that are viable we will take back its assets are our expropriated wealth, and run it under workers’ control. As we can’t run businesses without capital, we want to expropriate the assets of the shareholders of the big banks (not the working customers’ assets) and create one big development bank to fund social production.
If the business is worthless and we are left unemployed we demand that the state pays us redundancy and an unemployment benefit we can live on. By the way, we are the ones who know what our cost of living is, not some bureaucrat paid to make it up.
The current compounded disaster proves one thing: that the tiny minority of wealthy owners of capital have shown they cannot profit anymore by destroying nature, by making workers pay for their crisis, and by creating conditions that allow pandemics to rage through the working population, while the rich retreat to their resorts.
And since capitalism was build on centuries of stolen labour value produced by workers, we will take it back to finance survival socialism. This will allow us to scrap the market chaos which piles one disaster upon another, and were scarcity, poverty and misery is our fate.
It  will allow us to plan and build a socialist economy where assets are jointly owned and controlled by the working people, and were production for need rather than profit is the goal; where each works to their ability and gets what they need; where living conditions are sufficient for a healthy, good life, in harmony with nature.
Of course no capitalist government will do any of this as their loyalty is to the ruling class. So working people as the big majority need to build their own movements and parties to the point where they have the power to impose their control on the economy and have mass support for a working peoples’ government able to implement survival socialism.
We have to do this for humanity to survive all these crises now accumulating as a terminal crisis. We had better start building now.

Dave Brownz is TDBs guest Marxist blogger because every left wing blog needs a a Marxist blogger.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. Sell your property Dave… do the homeless thing and join the underclass… Marxist my f*cking arse… LMAO

  2. While the rich have been greedy & been a major factor in creating the mess we are in if the situation was reversed those who end up possessing the power will end up doing the same again as people are selfish, sure there are a few who are fair but they usually do not seek positions of control or if they do they do not last long.

    • Well you restructure things so there is less scope for abuse of power. Decentralise central Gov …distribute ministries to different regions to strengthen regions & put closer to the people. Limit power of central Gov & strengthen regional & local Gov. Give regions more power/more voice, Checks and balances …introduce Senate. Shorten terms of office to two years & overlap elections. Put elected boards in charge of all ministries not just DHB’s. UBI Universal non means tested guaranteed income for everyone as shareholders of economy superior to bolstered means-tested unemployment etc.

  4. Hello Dave, yes, as you sketched out, these will probably be two main development pathways for the future. There might be a few shades of grey in-between…..

    And.

    Most devastating will be a further possibility: warlordism, private (mercenary) armies and ‘failed’ states, ‘lost’ countries/territories.

    Acting organized is everything.

    Swimming Toward Utopia
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWTA1ny2ss

  5. We need a mixed market command economy that fights adapts to COVID-19 as its immediate aim, and climate change as its long term aim, whilst reducing hardship and poverty.

  6. The winner in this crisis is certainly not socialism nor capitalism

    The winner is NATIONALISM!

    The aspect of our global society that has been found to be weak and incapable of responding are the long supply lines and and total reliance on the manufacture of essential goods on distant countries. [would you believe the USA is 100% dependent on China to manufacture penicillin?]

    Over the last three decades individual companies have made decisions that made perfectly good sense to offshore manufacturing to reduce cost, but when viewed as a whole, make us vulnerable to supply chain disruption. NZ is an exception because we’re a small isolated island and will always depend on long supply lines but for the US and Europe this is a wake up call.

    The other boost for Nationalism is the realization that the virus was spread from China to Iran to Italy via migrant workers both legal and illegal. I’ll bet you won’t read about this in our local media:

    https://summit.news/2020/03/19/migrant-labor-was-to-blame-for-coronavirus-spread-in-both-iran-italy/?fbclid=IwAR2a0-c5jDpoAoiNkVdXCN7sdDe0_GfQEPoNqh9zn2njsibUC5ag5-IHmNQ

    So wave the flag and welcome the new world of defensive nationalism.

    • Fuck your a clown Andrew ,,, Hijacking the covid19 Pandemic to push Your and the christchurch killers flag waving Nationalist dross ,,

      The CORRECT word for local production is LOCALISM ,,,

      But do you Nationalists think we have all the raw materials,,, And technology,,, to produce everything from Silicon chips / computers / medical equipment ,,, to Heavy Industrial machinery ,,, and Everything else,,,, here.

      Next you’ll be saying the answer is Anti-miscegenation , Ban inter marriage,,,,,, with each country only for its own Nationalistic inbreeds / race. Like Israel bans intermarriage for instance. This will also stop the annihilation known as white genocide and Jewish Genocide, which white supremacists and Zionists warn the mixing of races and religions results in. ,,, Or the ‘second Holocaust’, as some Zionists describe intermarriage of Jews with other peoples, especially in the diaspora, after all intermarriage is banned by law in Israel.

      See how I’m hijacking your hijack Andrew … 😉

      The other part of your post which was full of shit ,,,, Is the Iran outbreak took hold in religious city ,, and stemmed from 150 odd Chinese Muslim Pilgrims ,,, Kissing and touching a venerated shrine when some were infected.

      Pilgrims could be described as Religious Tourists / Travelers ,,,

      After this pandemic has passed,, are you proposing to wipe out our tourist industry ?? ,,, and ban NZers from taking holidays overseas ,,,,gee I can see that working well you fool.,,, Or were you just talking about banning Chinese only from traveling ,,, and you Nationalists will stop them?.

      But but but , andy meant ‘ migrant workers’ …So is he suggesting the 500,000 kiwi migrant workers in Aussie,, and another 500,000 odd world wide, all be sent back here?? ,,, 1 million NZ born ‘immigrant workers’ being sent back here. … I mean That sounds, reasonable, ,,,if your a total dick head.

      No wonder Andrew looks up to that moron Ben Shapiro ,,, fools of a feather ,,,, squak shit together.,,, fly the flag you gimp 🙂

    • p.s I do agree that more local production is a good idea….

      A world wide minimum wage would stop our Corporations exploiting cheaper labor and moving production to where they can have sweat-shops.

      Failing that ,,, on a national level we could impose import tarriffs that would negate their profits that they make from exploiting overseas sweat shop labor.,,, and donate it as aid.

      There is one race ,,, the human race ,,, there is enough on this world for everyones need , ,,, but we are destroying it with greed.

      • There is not enough in the world for everyone to live and consume as we do.
        Total Non Renewable Natural Resources that existed at 1800 have been severely depleted with an increasing rate of consumption.
        To date we have used over two thirds of what existed and we are consuming the remains at a record rate that is increasing. The last remnants will be much harder to get.
        We may have less than ten years before the consumption we have known is no longer possible.
        This consumption is linked to our energy use directly.
        We may survive in much depleted number using a fraction of the energy consumed per capita today.

        Greed. Blind ignorant GREED that will be self terminating. Suicide.

    • p.p.s … there was a religous aspect to south Koreas initial spreading of Covid19 as well ,,, from a early article
      “In South Korea, more than half of the Covid-19 cases have been linked to a religious sect and its critics say the group’s secretive nature helped the virus go undetected.

      Why did the number of cases spike so suddenly?

      Authorities have identified the fringe Christian group Shincheonji Church as being at the heart of this outbreak.

      At their services in the south-eastern city of Daegu, members likely infected one another and then fanned out around the country, apparently undetected.”
      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51609840

    • Iran ,,,, Real info as compared to Andrews brain rotting link. ,,, no wonder he is so rabidly stupid.,,

      “Doctor: As Coronavirus Cases Spike Worldwide, We Need Global Cooperation to Halt Spread”
      Iran ,,, 19 mins 10 secs https://youtu.be/dAQF-Xo_628

      Watch the whole video as its very informative and discusses things like climate change , deforestation and our degraded environment which spawns and magnify s disease threats ,,, as does poverty.

      In other words the effects of neo – lib capatilisim.

      P. s The Capatilism versus Socialism argument ,,,, is as stupid as saying Red Blood Cells or White Blood cells, which ones do you want? Red or White ??

      I’d like a mix thanks ,,, thats how blood works , and having only one would kill me. ,,,, and its the same with our economy / society.

      As the poster Whisper and others have written ,,,, “A MIXED Economy” ,,,is the only one which works ,,, IF you want to keep civilization, humanity and the World alive.

      ‘Red Blood cells versus White blood Cells’ equates to ‘Capitalism versus Socialism’ ,,, and both statements = stupidity.

      • I think it is not as simple.

        What historically matters is the logic and rationality of

        “thesis vs antithesis : synthesis”

        So what is your synthesis then?

    • Nationalism cannot be a winner as it has genuinely not much to offer for climate resilience except the naive belief that you can lock yourself out of terrestrial processes that are already unfolding….

  7. Future is Left-Nationalist, Steady-State/RBE. Instead of continually rehashing capitalism vs socialism we need a formalised hybrid …Humanocentric/Humanity First Socialised Capitalism/Capitalised Socialism. Socialism & Capitalism can co-exist. All that is needed is for the Gov to have an ownership stake in all corporations/ companies over a certain size so that profits paid out by successful enterprises as a dividend into Gov’s coffers which then pays out a social/Freedom dividend to every citizen. Gov can turn away from relying on income tax/corporate/company tax as main revenue source & shift to earnings on shares/stocks & savings interest. GST takings can be directed towards a UBI while Removing GST on means of life goods, no tax below certain threshold, UBI, Financial Literacy taught from 5 years with school-based/Kiwibank-based saving/ investment programme launched so that kids can see their bank balance , health fund, education fund, housing fund, retirement fund grow as they progress through school …A Kiwisaver universalised to start at five with similar kickstart and co-contribution plan as for superannuation saver. A Sovereign Wealth Fund for the nation is a must going above & beyond the current funds for Super & ACC. At different life stages Gov could provide a universal Capital Grant at set amount or tied to how much saved by them through their from-5 kiwisaver at 18, 25, 40 (for example) to enable house buying, studying, business creation etc.
    Housing currently is a dichotomy between social state/council owned houses/community org & private market. Hybrid would be universalised rent-to-buy & co-equity model where opportunity to get into full private ownership enabled by Gov taking a 50% stake in house & offering rent to buy until equity built up enough by occupying family to achieve deposit amount buy outright (either that property or another in fully private portion of the market.

  8. Well you restructure things so there is less scope for abuse of power. Decentralise central Gov …distribute ministries to different regions to strengthen regions & put closer to the people. Limit power of central Gov & strengthen regional & local Gov. Give regions more power/more voice, Checks and balances …introduce Senate. Shorten terms of office to two years & overlap elections. Put elected boards in charge of all ministries not just DHB’s. UBI Universal non means tested guaranteed income for everyone as shareholders of economy superior to bolstered means-tested unemployment etc.

    • In all your comments above: many useful suggestions that can be realized with comparative ease, CrimzonGhost.

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