The Precariat

“It is working class people organising a bottom-up and leaderless campaign that is setting the agenda in Liverpool, not the opportunist snake oil salesmen from the Labour Party. It is the grassroots campaign that will support a non-payment campaign, occupy housing associations, occupy Bailiffs offices, defend communities, and prevent Bailiffs from evicting people. The involvement of the Labour Party is being seen for exactly what it is - feeble tokenism and faux outrage, which is more concerned with giving a platform to the ‘chosen faces’ and to enable them to climb the party ladder on their way to a safe council seat - than genuinely fighting a pernicious tax, that let’s not forget was introduced by Labour in 2008, and that they intend on keeping albeit with some modifications. “

What large organizations are really more efficient at is control. The giant corporation is much better than a cottage producer at obtaining subsidies from the state, externalizing its operating costs on the taxpayer, and lobbying for regulations to cartelize the industry. It’s much better at strong-arming its suppliers and outlets. This latter is sometimes called “market power,” but that’s a misnomer. If size were the legitimate outcome of superior effectiveness in the free market, it would be accurate to call this “market power” and say it was a well-earned payoff from past performance. But when the large size results from government cartelization, government subsidies to the inefficiency costs of large-scale organization, and government subsidies to accumulation, R&D and technical training that promote large size and capital-intensiveness, and thus artificially raise market entry barriers–why, in that case, such “market power” is just another form of ill-gotten gain.

“It’s like a Flash Mob of stupidity.”

The United States has always had an ambivalent attitude toward Europe. It wanted Europe to be unified, so it could serve as a more efficient market for U.S. corporations, offering great advantages of scale; but it was always concerned about the threat that Europe might move off in another direction. Many of the issues about accession of the eastern countries to the EU are related to this. The United States is strongly in favor of this accession process, because it is hoping that these countries will be able to undermine the core of Europe, which is France and Germany, big industrial countries that could move in a somewhat more independent direction. Also in the background is a long-standing U.S. hatred of the European social system, which provides decent wages, working conditions, and benefits. The United States doesn’t want that model to exist, because it’s a dangerous one. People may get funny ideas. And it’s understood that the accession of eastern European countries, with economies based on low wages and repression of labor, may help to undermine the social standards in western Europe. That would be a big benefit for the United States.