Warwick Farm Sat 20 October 2008.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE P.M. KEVIN RUDD AND THE MEMBERS OF THE LABOUR PARTY.
Over the last thirty five years, the Labour Party has been persuaded to adopt the philosophy of the Capitalist Market, Milton Friedman, Mrs. Thatcher, Mr. Reagan, small government, privatization and deregulation. As you have given up your early social economic platform, the two parties in Australia have become almost indistinguishable from one another and because the Capitalist Global Market is the same tyrant over all of you, you must react in similar way to the vagaries of the system; therefore you have created a virtual capitalist dictatorship and have left the Australian People with no alternative but to continue on an ecologically and socially destructive capitalist dead end road.
If you are deluding yourselves that you can harness the present merchant economy without the moderating influence of a Public National bank and also you are allowing the people whose greed and duplicity have created this collapse to still be in charge and to give you their interested advice, then you are fools… “vulpes pilum mutat, non mores…”. Let them pay for their mistakes and submit to the consequences of their gambles; with a more intelligent and honest statute the Public Bank can become the lender to the real productive economy.
Please do not try to save the system as is. ” Merchants should never be completely trusted…” and “...merchants should not be allowed to become the masters of mankind” (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations 1723-1790), it is not too late.
Have the courage to recreate a Public Bank as Labour did in 1911, and then you privatized in the 1980s. To this purpose use the Billions you intend risking to save the compromised financial system. Also use the out of work staff and deposits of those private banks that eventually will go into liquidation.
Allow only the honest and progressive sections of the Capitalist system to survive and prosper; the Public must provide the necessities that Private Enterprise is not willing or capable of providing. Food production and housing are the basis of life; therefore special consideration should be given to good farmers and good farming. Housing should not be just an investment for speculators, it is a Human necessity that should and can be completely satisfied. Eventually the industry can be directed to other productive necessities.
Promote the development that will provide employment in the production of clean energy, in reforestation, in recycling, in cleaning the pollution we have caused, in education, in research and more projects…
It should be evident that Capitalism has become incompatible with the new saturated environment that it has created: a planet under stress, Capitalism cannot be harnessed, it cannot be slowed down; slowing down means depression and unnecessary long lasting pain for the majority; Capitalism to survive requires continuous unbounded development, consumerism and waste: these are the main causes of the present Human and Ecological degeneration. Development without guidelines is as obnoxious as finance without regulation. Capitalism must continually expand “under pain of extinction” (Karl Marx 1850).
If the carbon that we have put in the atmosphere cannot be reduced, it means that every day, every ounce we produce will increase the amount of pollution; reducing emission only means reducing the amount of further accumulation: reducing emission by 20 % means sending up there 80 tons instead of 100 tons on top of what is already up there. Increasing economic development directed by the whims of selfish investors will only accelerate the degree of global warming that is increasing the temperature of the environment which was the condition for our evolution. Can we trust Capitalism in any form except in a straight jacket?
About forty years ago we started to realize that something never envisaged before was happening to the planet, but only last year the free marketers, deregulators and their political representatives were forced to admit that there was a problem. Now that almost everybody is convinced, they are still dragging the chain because their mercantile nature is incompatible with the present ecological requirements: they cannot comprehend anything that is not done for monetary profit. As we all are either businessmen or working for them we are all locked in a situation that if they go broke we soon all will be on a scrap heap; if we cannot change our capitalist mentality and continue polluting you are racing towards an unknown but very hot future. The planet Earth will survive, but will you?
This Labour Government has the one in a lifetime chance to start such a renewal as mentioned above and be an example to the rest of the World, if you let it pass you will be remembered as the greatest idiots or corrupted hypocrites in the last tragicomedy in the history of the Human Race; how Mr. Hawke and Mr. Keating the privatizing and deregulating Placido Domingos of the Australian economy look now?
You must take heart, if you have any left; you must institute a new Public Australian Bank that will be the best guaranty for keeping the private financiers honest and refrained from profiteering. They will hate this, the Media and the Coalition will be at your throat and you may have to have a referendum. Remember Labour of 1911; the Federal Government and eventually every State had their own banks and Insurance companies; those institutions were loved by the Australian Public. You seem to be mesmerized by the financial establishment and the Media, which after the mess they have created are completely discredited; can you still have faith in them?
In the present circumstances it would not be difficult to make a break, but as the Labour Party and the general Public have been convinced over the years that there are no alternatives to Capitalism, it is evident that to have any chance of success it is essential that the Public must be informed, convinced of the necessity for a real change.
For this, the DEMOCRATISATION OF THE MASS MEDIA is imperative: for a True Democratic Society full and universal information is essential. Unfortunately at present as in the past there is only the biased conservative capitalist Mass Media that is influencing the Public and is manipulating the politicians; the independence of the ABC and SBS having been eroded there is no voice for any alternatives to the present system. Therefore, the Mass Media must not be allowed to misinform and mislead the Public; to this purpose, it should be directed to provide space for alternative views that may be questioning or opposing their editorial vested interests; they have the right to their profits, but not the right to monopolize public opinion.
There is so much that you seem to have forgotten about the Real Labour Movement, it is enough to mention Mrs. Thatcher’s claim that “New Labour was her greatest achievement” and you seem to have adopted the same economic way of thinking. I will stop now because I am afraid that my effort will be wasted on your small minds; also because I imagine that those who would have managed to read to this point would probably laugh and think: who is this idiot? Trin Tragula?.... Please let me know if you have received this letter. I include also a letter that I sent to Mr. Hawke and the Members of the Labour Party in 1983, about three months after the elections.
Regards, ***” Trin Tragula”