CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE DEMOCRATIC OPTION.
********
Let's assume that a majority of people of a country have become convinced that capitalist economy must be replaced, and, consequently, an anti-capitalist political organisation with a program of drastic economic changes is democratically elected to government.
From historical experience, whenever this has happened in the past, several things are likely to happen:
first of all, while the anti-capitalist party in government has the nominal political power to formulate new laws to implement its programs, the real power still remains in the hands of capitalist business and its class.
Business still commands the important mechanisms of the economy, through the private ownership of the means of production, banking, transport and the Media, through their class influence over the commanding elements of the justice and legal system, through their influence over the command structure of the army and the police which for a long time have been trained and used more to defend private property and the establishment than the rights of the common people.
Therefore, a powerful minority in opposition can frustrate most attempts of a progressive government to implement the reforms for which it has been elected.
They will use any means at their disposal to protect their vested interests: withdraw their capital, close factories or curtail production, take the government to the High Court for infringement of the constitution, as most constitutions of capitalist democracies have been formulated with the main purpose in mind to enshrine the supremacy of the right of private property and free enterprise above all other rights.
Naturally all these actions are earnestly supported by the Media. Moreover, as the economy is connected to the international capitalist finance and commodities market, most foreign investment would soon be withdrawn causing even more disruption to the country.
The result of this strong opposition to a democratically elected government is that, while the existing capitalist economy is disrupted with consequent decline in production and increase in unemployment, the alternative economic reforms to replace the old economy are not being put in practice: they are compromised, delayed or halted all together; a part of the public becomes disillusioned, and the government, which was elected by a majority, now is only supported by a minority.
If the government still insists in trying to enforce the new laws and reforms, for which it was elected, by adopting strong measures against the opposition, then it is in real danger; it will be accused of being dictatorial, and the capitalist establishment in opposition, with the support of the courts, the police the army and the Media will have an excuse to overthrow the government. Their professed motive will be the rescue of democracy and the Nation.
This is what happened in the world nearly every time a progressive party was democratically elected to government. It shows that any establishment which controls the real avenues of power will never willingly relinquish those powers to their democratically elected opponents: when they direct the orchestra their opponents are expected to dance to their tune, but when it is their opponents who are directing they refuse to dance.
From this fact of life we must assume that it would be futile for any progressive organisation to try to change the capitalist system by trying to get elected to government unless it has the support of a very great majority of the population including the middle class, the police and the army; in addition all its supporters must have been made conscious of the difficulties and possible temporary hardships, its plans for reform must be ready in every detail and also there are practical plans to overcome all eventual economic, constitutional and foreign financial obstacles. Moreover, only a country which can be self sufficient in raw materials and have a fairly advanced industry and technology would have a chance of success.
How could a transformation begin?
Now let's assume that such organisation with a great support from all sections of society has been elected. Evidently there would be a lot of professional people amongst its supporters, people with experience in organisation and management, in all industries and the media; people capable of undertaking successfully a complex program of reform. During the years in opposition such organization, if smart enough, would have prepared detailed projects to be implemented without much delay.Contracts and agreements with farmers, food producers and transport organisations should have been explored.
First of all Schools, Universities and Technical colleges should be expanded to take care of all people that would be displaced by such great projects of reforms so that they would not suffer and they would be able to learn the new skills and experience needed in the new industries that will develop.
At the same time the new government should reform the media. Without involving the question of ownership, profits and competition, it should remove the political advantage that media ownership conveys to any particular class. To this effect the government should come out and say:
We are for real democracy, we are for a real political "level playing field; anybody can own media outlets, but, as the first requirement of real democracy is that the people should be fully informed about all facts and on all issues, each outlet must provide editorial space and discussion for all points of views in the society.
Next it should be made clear to capitalist businessmen that the new laws will be enforced in the same way as the business establishment enforced their own laws when they were in power; moreover, the Spirit not the letter of the Law will be enforced.
Next it should be made clear the fact that National public debt is better than National foreign debt.
There could be advantages in foreign investments in specific areas if it was guided by the consideration of the long term benefit to the whole of the society, and it was not allowed to take control of our industries and resources. Even if some of the profits would end up overseas, several benefits would accrue to the Nation.
It is sheer madness to relinquish all controls over foreign investment, to deregulate the banking system and let business entrepreneurs, who always will be motivated by narrow personal self interest, to take charge of our foreign investment and borrowing without any national guide or long term goal.
There is always somebody who benefit from any business deals and activities. Evidence are the billions of invested and borrowed money that have disappeared without trace in Australia during the eighties without having left any real benefit to the Nation as a whole: Switzerland and the Bahamas come to mind .
Some people have done very well: wheelers and dealers and all their expensive private bureaucracies, legal, managerial, logistic, public relation, advertising and general hangers on. These people do not care whether they make their fortunes buying or selling, selling foreign assets or selling their own country or their countrymen.
These are true international businessmen, they are monopoly players on the world's money and commodities markets; they can live as well in Sydney as in London or Paris. If they are caught cheating or if they go broke they still are left with a few millions in their pockets. What they lose is mostly their investors' savings, and these investors and the rest of the society are left carrying the debt.
All this really doesn't matters if we take the point of view of the modern businessman in the present world situation; the concept of nationality disappears completely in the play of the "global factory" and the "global marketplace".
When we depend on foreign borrowing or foreign investments to develop our economy we are mortgaging part of our heritage to foreign interests; we subject the destiny of our society to the unforeseen vagaries of the capitalist world economy. If the debt becomes so vast that we cannot service it, then we must sell out our land, our industries and our resources. We become a servant Nation or even a slave Nation: our social economic organism will be directed by outside interests; the interests of our society will become secondary to the interests of our foreign owners.
This unfortunately is what has happened to this country (1970-90). Our business and political leaders must have had a hidden agenda to throw this country into the global playing field of the world market and world finance, without asking, without having a mandate from the people. They joined in a big international game of poker, they borrowed heavily and they put up the skins of the Australian people as security. They gambled and we lost.
How much better it would have been if our Labour government had ignored the big game outside, if they had not heeded the advice of our international merchants. (1980s)
If we needed to borrow and get into debt to develop further, why not borrow from ourselves and be in debt with ourselves rather than with unknown foreign interests?
Australia is like a bank, a very rich bank. We have abundant natural resources, plus one million of unemployed labour power, plus another million of hidden unemployed people that could be utilised; moreover, our industries are working at seventy per cent capacity. This is real capital waiting to be utilised. We can borrow from ourselves the value of this capital and, as long as we use it to create real productive value, we cannot lose.
Here is a very simplistic but true example: if we borrow one billion from ourselves to utilize the idle capital of our country to build housing, when the project is completed, productive useful value has been created: the value created equals the debt; moreover, the rents will pay for the maintenance and will eventually in the long run even produce a profit, the scarcity of housing will be overcome and the cost of rent will be lower, therefore reducing the pressure of inflation, our young people would be employed and some of the causes for alienation, crime and drug addiction would have been reduced; on top of this, having finished the project, we would have again our idle capital of labour ready for another project.
This is a simplistic example but in fact, even if such operation would require great organisation and planning, it is quite possible. What we need is imagination and guts, we must believe in ourselves and in our young people. It is only the interested Machiavellian cunning and sophistry of our mercantile establishment that has brainwashed our society into believing that complexity is better than simplicity, that nothing can be done unless it is directed and motivated by private greed for profit.
It is obvious that any such public investment would create a gradual increase in demand in all section of the economy equal to the value of the money we would borrow from ourselves less the savings of public expense in unemployment benefits and other costs, and less the extra taxes that would be collected. This extra demand in commodities and labour would create a pressure for cost and demand inflation, therefore, both wages and prices must be put under control. If wages are regulated prices also must be regulated. There is no point in controlling wages to stop cost inflation if we do not also control prices to stop demand inflation.
Finally we must consider that even if we renege on our national debt our children would still own whatever we have created with it; this is not the case when we are in debt with foreigners.
This sort of activities could create a great expansion in our economy and such a demand for manpower that we may have to import labour from overseas. In this case we should engage foreign workers on a contract basis. Make clear the conditions of engagement; those who would like to stay permanently should be prepared to learn the English language and undergo a course to understand our laws and social values; therefore, they would become citizens and bring over their families. We could learn a lot from each other.
While the people elected to govern the country have the duty to put into action a plan of development that would benefit the whole of the society, the execution of the plan should be left as much as possible to private enterprise if they comply with the standards set by our new socio-economic philosophy.
The elected government should set the guidelines the standards and general specifications. It should provide the "level playing field" in which private enterprise could compete in producing what the society needs for its development and well being.
The elected government should set the guidelines either directly or indirectly by taxing any obnoxious activity out of existence and facilitating the growth of any activity that would bring benefits to the society and progress for the future. The principle behind this strategy is that any activity which may cause immediate or long term damage to the society should be charged in front for the cost of repairing such damage.
Those activities that private enterprise could not provide should be performed by public organisations. The confidence trick of the privatisation of social and public utilities should be exposed. How stupid the public has been to believe the interested advice of capitalist business; how can public ownership of utilities with public oversight be worst than private ownership with the pressure to provide good returns to their investors that will produce astronomical salaries and bonuses for the companies Ceo? Privatisation has become very desiderable for business when investment in the stock markets had become very risky and there is nothing more safe than investment in the necessities of life like health, education, electricity, water etc. when governments are corrupt and wash their hand of their responsibilities.
Private entrepreneurs may have many positive points like initiative, imagination, daring, determination, but all these qualities are directed mainly towards their own personal advantage, often regardless of the damage they may cause to the rest of society of which they are themselves part, damage from which themselves eventually will suffer.
Merchants and business entrepreneurs have a part to play in the economic life of the society, but they should not be the only class to determine the destiny of the rest as they have been able to do so far. We must call their bluff. If they cannot make fifty per cent profit, they will try to make ten or even five per cent rather than work for wages under somebody else, because this is the type of people they are. They will cry, scream, threaten, but in the end they will try to survive under any circumstance, the same as any other person with the prospect of becoming unemployed or redundant. If they can make more profit by their enterprises, good luck to them; it will mean that they have been successful in producing for the society the commodities required by the guidelines that have been set out, with the right standards and at the right price.
In the nature of the capitalist system of production it is not convenient to completely satisfy the needs of the society; to satisfy the demand it means to put capitalist enterprises out of business.
But it is essential for the real benefit of a society that its important needs be satisfied, in certain cases even over-satisfied, and this should be the aim of the elected government.
Let's take the housing industry for example; automatically as soon as profits fall, capital investment in the industry begin to fall as well, and yet there are still a lot of people in need of decent accommodation or forced to pay high rents. This is one of the big problems in capitalist society that causes a lot of unnecessary stresses in family life, especially young families. Also it is one of the causes why inflation seldom goes below the zero level. People and society in general should not suffer just for the sake of keeping an industry in business; the purpose of any industry is the complete satisfaction of the needs of the society, and, therefore its size should be proportioned to those needs. Any productive forces that may become redundant must be used somewhere else where they may be needed or in completely new enterprises.
A Nation to be really strong and independent must be self sufficient. This should be the aim of the elected government.
Being a Nation which exports raw materials we may have to import some manufactured goods, but we should keep this to the minimum that is possible.
While the world is divided and under the sway of the philosophy of greed and selfishness we should not destroy any of our manufacturing industries, we should maintain the capacity to be self sufficient in all vital light and heavy industries; the extra cost that we may have to pay is the cost of maintaining a decent standard of living and strength; this expense would be offset by the savings in the cost of unemployment benefits and in the cost of social degeneration.
What chance would we have, in case we may have to defend ourselves, if we depended on help from overseas because we had lost all our skills? Therefore besides promoting our scientists, inventors and technicians, we should use part of our export earnings to import the best knowledge and the best technology. We also should develop our own in completely new fields, looking at the future, at alternative ecologically safe sources of energy, forms of transport, new materials, preventive medicine, recycling of waste, etc.
We could Endeavour to export our new ecologically sound, modular, efficient and not wasteful products in the world market in competition with the polluting, complex, wasteful products of capitalist economy.
In our international outlook and relations we should be internationalists, but with common sense. We live on a small planet, the present social and ecological problems are affecting every nation in the world, and the solutions to these problems can only be resolved by international global efforts.
We should strive to give the good example to the rest of the world by being successful in putting our principles into practice, and joining forces with any other nation prepared to do the same. We should be generous but not suckers; open minded but not stupid. We should keep up our guard; there is no point in jumping into a "level playing field" unless we have made sure that the playing field is in fact level; we should not forego the national interest of our society just for the narrow global interest of the international business corporations.
In my opinion this country is one of the few countries in the world where such a progressive socio-economic organism could be successful and show the rest of the world a better way to the future. Australia is rich in resources, it has a relatively small population which is fairly well educated, it still has a skilled work force and industrial technological base left after the massacre of the last eight years (1990), the framework of a good education system is still in place, it has a long democratic tradition even if it is a capitalist tradition, moreover it has a mixture of all the races and cultures of the Earth, a positive factor which turns into a negative factor under capitalist competition and exploitation.