A co-operative networked Labour movement

Following on from my Eureka post of the other day I saw this article on openDemocracy entitled, The revolution will be networked, by Paul Hilder. It offers some very good arguments as to how the left needs to organise going forward. I urge you to read it.

We can take back control by building a popular progressive network, a movement built from the ground up. Now is not the time to give up hope. A people's network can help establish true democracy and put real power in the hands of the people. It will require action and enthusiasm action to make a start on some of the practical issues that need addressing, and action to start projects that will help to improve working people's lives. We need to educate people and help them to help themselves. Enough is enough.

It will mean a lot of work at grass roots level. Improving and expanding the foundations that we need to build upon. We have to build socialism, we have to build Jerusalem from below upwards. It cannot and will not be imposed from above. As the article says:

Rather than simply seizing the broken machinery of top-down control from the old right, the Corbynite left should be leading Labour towards a networked party. It is time to build a base of millions of active and empowered supporters, to fundamentally reshape our country’s culture as well as our politics. Only then will Labour grow strong enough to win; only then will Labour truly deserve to.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone that feels of a same mind and wants to get things done.

Eureka!

Or is it an epiphany?

I retired at the end of June this year and so far I’m enjoying it. For the first few months it all felt like a very long holiday and then I started to feel like I was wasting a lot of time. I’d been doing art but that didn’t feel like enough. One needs an active and interesting life to be able to draw inspiration for creating. The older I get the more aware I am of my days being numbered, of time running out. I had just started to look around for something to do when the election was called. Whilst I thought it was a pretty stupid time to call an election I was keen to do my bit. It was quite pleasurable going, what felt like, back to work. Despite it often being monotonous in its process the conversations were interesting and mostly good humoured, and I enjoyed the taking part as part of a team again. Obviously I was gutted by the result but the key now is to go forward.

I don’t really celebrate Christmas, so no obscenely oversized meal for me, just an ordinary sized light snack for me at lunchtime. It was accompanied by a little light reading; I happened upon an article on the openDemocracy website entitled Labour should focus on building a new co-operative economy from the ground up. A very interesting read. It seemed to be saying things that chimed with me. Ideas that equated to the way I had been thinking for quite some time. It’s always pleasing when you come across people that think the same as you, especially when it’s around ideas that perhaps deviate from the orthordox.

One disadvantage that the left has in politics is that the right wing have all the infrastructure, the mainstream media outlets and money. We can be well organised and have a large membership, but if we can’t get our message across we can’t make progress. We also need to challenge many of our traditional ways of thinking. Given that it’s going to be five years before the next general election we have to perhaps consider that there are other ways of radically changing this country. Centralised control and planning might not be the way forward. We need to think this unthinkable thought. Perhaps the way forward is to develop an alternative economy. This Tory government doesn’t give a shit about the working classes. Do we just drop to our knees and let them do their worst or do we fight back? If they won’t help the working classes then we should just blinking well help ourselves. The Labour movement needs to reorganise, modernise and rebuild its network and reach out to people. We need to restore trust in our movement, we need to help people to improve their lives; co-operation is the key.

An alternative economy, a new commonwealth, will enable us to take back control, build in sustainability, reinvest in local economies, establish co-operatives to tender for local and national government contracts, starve traditional capitalist businesses of custom and generally shift the balance of power. Also if we shift the power base away from London and develop a network of co-operative economic cells it will make it much more difficult for the right to divide us. Economic and political devolution needs to be strived for. Public ownership doesn't necessarily mean government ownership.

We also need to help educate people. Take over the running of schools. Set up colleges. A highly educated working class would be a powerful force. Now when I say educated I don’t mean trained as in the current tick box regime, I mean educated with the power of critical thinking and able to apply logic. As a movement we definitely need to take the moral high ground. We also need to present a more positive approach; less of a protest group more of can do organisation for change. We all need to moderate our language. It's okay to be angry but it's not acceptable to be aggressive, to wish people ill etc. That's fascism. We need to be smart. We need to prove we are better than the right. Robustly arguing our beliefs but politely. Aggression prevents equality. Aggression is oppression.

For me starting to work on some of these initiatives is far more important than who our next party leader is. Not that it’s not important. The real power of the party is in its members and that’s how it needs to stay. Yes it’s important to win back power on a national level, because that way we can put so many beneficial changes into place, but in the meantime there is much we can do to show the world that we are a credible political movement and that we practice what we preach. We need to take back control from the elite and enable a transition of power to the people in a way that no government can take it away again.

These arguments need to be refined but for me they form the basis of something I can work on and discuss with other people.I for one have found my occupation, my cause célèbre, and something I can dedicate time to in a bid to try and help others.

We're all doomed. Here's why.

Are we all doomed? Is the end is nigh?

The only way that the human race will survive is by cooperation. So there you go, we are all fucked!

It's probably about a minute to midnight on the clock of human existence. We don't have long before the endangered species known as the human race starts to die out. For all we know it might have already started.

Pretty soon there’ll be no more people left on Earth. That, I don’t think we can doubt. I would imagine very little can be done to stop our extinction. But what can be done is to delay our demise for as long as possible. But that won't be easy. It won't happen if we carry on doing business as usual. We can all try and do our bit and some can do it better than others. It's not easy to lower the impact one has on our environment as we are pulled this way and that purely in order to survive. The biggest effect will be if governments take action.

Extreme wealth is killing our environment. Neoliberalist capitalism is the enemy of the people, the enemy of the human race, and until we can eradicate it we are on a downward spiral of death and destruction. There will no doubt be many that won't be able to grasp this concept. They won't see that capitalism is a cancer that's now quite rapidly killing us all.

We need a new form of economics. One not driven by growth. But by sustainability. Not by capital but by need. The market won’t sort the problems with our environment. Competition and the push for growing consumption only quickens the pace of our destruction. It’s not in capitalism’s interest to claw back on it’s continued abuse of our life-support system. Selfishness and greed will kill us all.

When I wrote this post a little while back I knew nothing of Extinction Rebellion. I may have heard a reference or two but hadn't really registered what it was all about. Obviously I’ve heard of them now. Their message is a bold one, and one I mostly agree with.

All the recycling by well meaning bike riders who knit their own jumpers is but a drop in the ocean. There’s no reason not to do it as it all helps but alone the conscientious people can't compensate for the nerdowells . We can also help by not having children, stop owning pets, stop flying and stop eating meat in any great quantity (I will turn to this subject in a subsequent post). But it still wouldn’t be enough. Governments need to change things to make any real impact.But not just our government, all governments. Cooperation is the key to our survival.

I'm not the best example of an environmentally friendly human. I know I could do better, and many others could too. But not all of us. Yes our environment is important but if you’re living in poverty, struggling to make ends meet, waiting in the ever extending queue for NHS healthcare quite frankly the aims and ambitions of Extinction Rebellion are not going to figure on your radar much at all. It’s more of an issue for those a little further up the socio-economic scale. If you’re living in poverty you are going to be more worried about where your next meal is coming from or how to pay the next bill that comes in. You’re not going to be worrying about what’s going to be happening in ten or fifteen years time. And quite understandably so. But in reality the solution to lifting people out of poverty is going to be the same as slowing down the climate catastrophe.

We live on a planet of finite resources which we are squandering at an alarming rate. We obviously need to cut right back on overall consumption. But if those resources are not shared out equitably we are doomed to failure. We can only save our environment if we cooperate, rather than competing with each other. That means we need to change the way we govern ourselves, because if we don’t we can change nothing. It’s all very well shouting about how we are killing our planet but unless we’re all prepared to become less greedy, less selfish and vote for change, our days are numbered. Now you can call the new equitable, co-operative form of government that will be needed to address these issues what you like, as labels really aren’t that important, but what you’ll end up with is socialism. It is the only system that can do the job. Pure democracy. Pure co-operation.

So the first priority for people across the world is to establish true socialist governments. Their priority would be to lift people out of poverty whilst at the same time reducing overall consumption of those elements which are the cause of the climate catastrophe.

We can't adopt a siege mentality either. There is only one world and we can't live in isolation, hoping that the problems will go away because they won't. We are going to see mass migration, and on a scale that we’ve never seen before. If we don’t welcome environmental refugees then that will be our loss, and they will come anyway. We won’t be able to stop them. After all, they will have nothing to lose.

If we don't act soon it will be too late. Technology isn't going to save us. It'll be too late for that.

My own personal view is that we will not be able to slow the speed of our destruction as quite frankly we are too stupid to do such a thing. I'm not a pessimist. I'm not an optimist. I consider myself a realist.

Welcome

#compassion

Friends lovers mothers fathers sisters brothers daughters sons grandparents cousins nieces nephews aunts uncles wives husbands just because we are victims of geography doesn't make us different. We are all human we are all connected we all bleed. To be civilised is to be compassionate to be civilised is to offer our brethren shelter from the storm to be civilised is to welcome.

on a wall in Amsterdam

Stewart Lee chats to Oliver Cromwell

Stewart Lee chats to Oliver Cromwell about Christmas:

The man who temporarily freed us from the tyranny of monarchy would have been horrified at what Christmas has become. He would no doubt also have been horrified at our stupidity in retaining a monarchy.

"Comedian Stewart Lee, who will be guest editing the Today programme on New Year's Eve, brought puritan Oliver Cromwell back to life to find out whether he is as disproving of modern Christmas shopping as he was when he was Lord Protector."