“Free markets and “free trade” = elite propaganda”

Note: I wrote this long eassay  in 2005. The financial crash and recession since provide added grist to my arguments as the rich get richer, most people get steadily poorer, public provision shrinks and the inequality between people swells. The lessons of economic history tell this story: a strong domestic economy is necessary for sustained economic [...]

What should be public and what should be private?

Robert Henderson Since 1979 every British government has perpetually tinkered with the balance  between private or state provision. Despite the Thatcherite cry for small government the state has has spent  a very large slice of GDP t throughout that time, In 1979 the percentage was 42.75% and in 2010 45.45% The lowest in the period was 34.25%  in 1989 (http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_20th_century_chart.html).  However, [...]

The credit crunch: an effect not a cause

Robert Henderson  How did we get  into this economic hole? What we are experiencing is a direct consequence of the dominant economic ideology of the age, laissez faire, an ideology which underpins the general political ideology of political elites in the West, the form of liberal internationalism we call globalism. This neo-Liberal mentality has brought [...]

It isn’t a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of globalism

It isn’t a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of globalism Robert Henderson Contents 1. Turning a blind eye 2. What is capitalism? 3. Globalisation and the developed world 4. The suppression of dissent 5. The developing world 6. The loss of  national control 7. The undeveloping world 8. Supra-national  politics 9. Just another outbreak [...]

Margaret Thatcher: the most useful of idiots

With his mixture of vaulting intellectual ambition and howling mediocrity of mind, Lenin is the MaGonagal of  philosophers. (Connoisseurs of intellectual incompetence and pretension should browse through Lenin’s ‘Materialism and  Empririo-Criticism’ for an especial treat). Nonetheless,  like Hitler, the man possessed a certain low animal cunning  and a complete absence of moral restraint, which qualities  permitted [...]

1984 and the internationalist warmongers

In George Orwell’s great political novel 1984 the world is in a state of perpetual war between three political blocs:  Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceana.   It is never clear why the protagonists are at war with one another, a fact made even more opaque by the frequent changing  of  allies and enemies. One day Eurasia and Eastasia  may be [...]

Too big to bail-out? Spain and the future of the Eurozone

Open Europe  and FAES panel debate 11 July 2011,  Bishopsgate meeting room, Liverpool Street. Chaired by Matts Person, Director of Open Europe Panel Alvaro Nadal Spanish MP (Secretary of Economy and Employment of Partido Popular) Vick Ford MEP (East of England) Anonio Garcia Pascual  (Chief Southern European Economist, Barclays Capital, ex-IMF) David Oakley (Capital Markets Correspondent, Financial Times) Megan Green [...]

Robotics and the real (sorry, Karl, you got it wrong) final crisis of capitalism

Robert Henderson Humans and Robots Robotics is advancing rapidly. Probably within the lifetime of most people now living – and conceivably within the next ten years – there will be general purpose robots (GPRs) capable of doing the vast majority of the work now undertaken by human beings. When that happens international free trade and [...]

Foreign Aid – A Danegeld extracted by the Liberal Internationalists

“Aid – an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries”. — Peter Bauer  (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/globalDimensions/research/aidTradeDevelopment/Default.htm) The UK has been pumping Aid into the Third World since the 1950s.  At present day values several hundred billion pounds of British taxpayers’ money has been given to foreigners.   Despite [...]

The wages of globalism

There is a New World Order, but it is not the one envisaged by conspiracy theorists. Far from being covert, it is out in the open, a vast network of ideologues occupying the positions of power and influence in the Western world whose declared intent since 1945 has been to create a world fit for [...]