Taking Back Control

Reece Garcia

Description

We are led to believe that an endemic of overwork, debt, the underfunding of public services, gross inequality and poor mental health are sadly unavoidable. That welfare recipients must be cynically assessed for their worthiness of our hard-earned taxes and that migrants are competing for scarcely available jobs. That there is little alternative to the corrupt and unrepresentative politicians who are given license to make all the important decisions for, but effectively without, us.Taking Back Controldispels these myths through a provocative critique of work, money, politics, and the media.After establishing the scale of the tasks ahead and why people themselves need to be the vanguard for progressive change, alternatives are offered to break with any reluctant acquiescence to the spiralling inequality and divisions sustained among the populace.Our prize for taking on this task? A utopian Britain.

Sujets

• Reino Unido
• Political corruption
• United Kingdom
• Labour economics
• Great Britain
• Labour
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781915352736
• Langue: English

Extrait

‘An uplifting and passionate response to a government whose slogan of ‘taking back control’ lies in tatters, framing a hopeful programme of socialist liberation for the present.’

– Jeremy Seabrook, author of Cut Out: Living Without Welfare
and Pauperland: Poverty and the Poor in Britain


‘Taking Back Control is a meticulously evidenced and indispensable survey of the catastrophe of late British capitalism. Its searing analysis of the way that work, the economy, the political system, and the media is organised will have you reaching for your pitchfork.’

– David Whyte, author of Ecocide and How Corrupt is Britain?


‘This is an impassioned dissection of many of the important problems facing our society. It challenges most of the widespread and damaging preconceptions perpetuated by political, business, and media elites, and offers a hopeful vision of a different world. It deserves to be widely read.’

– Charles Umney, author of Class Matters






First published in Great Britain in 2022 by
The Book Guild Ltd
Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,
Harrison Road, Market Harborough,
Leicestershire. LE16 7UL
Tel: [phone]
www.bookguild.co.uk
Email: [e-mail]
Twitter: @bookguild

Copyright © 2022 Reece Garcia

The right of Reece Garcia to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without
a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 9781915352736

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.



For Maya

Your smile, playfulness, innocence, and unconditional trust
belies the version of human nature that is sold to us. I hope
that your future is everything that you deserve


Contents
Introduction

One: Work
Paid work is inherently exploitative
The illusion of choice
The wage-effort bargain
Most jobs are pointless
Robot Wars
The right to be lazy
Feckless, workshy scroungers
Not all rich people have worked hard for their wealth
The greatest myth of our time: we rely on the rich
Workers of the world, relax!
We are (nearly) all working class
Capitalist realism

Two: Money
Do governments have a magic money tree?
Debt as a means of control
Tax
Tax rates
Tax avoidance and evasion
Privatisation and the royal bank of taxpayer
Train wreck
Royal Fail
Jailhouse flop
Public office, private interests
Cronyism is real – and we pay for it
How these threads tie together

Three: Politics
NHS PLC
Our masters
Eton Mess
Austerity: who can be trusted with the economy?
The Tories as the party of fiscal responsibility
The housing crises (plural)
What Brexit signifies about British politics
Divide and conquer
Establishment-led populism
How (actually) democratic is our democracy?
Money wins elections
Do we need the House of Lords?
It does not matter who you vote for, the government always wins

Four: The Media
Who provides our news?
‘It’s the Sun wot won it’
Murdoch’s ‘deal’ with Maggie
Murdoch’s ‘incestuous’ relationship with Blair
Anti-Corbynism in the media
Anti-working class?
The pretence of objective news
Attracting and appeasing advertisers
Notions of professional journalism
The BBC
An open and free democracy

Five: An alternative, ‘great’ Britain is possible
Renationalising key services
Revolutionise work
Worker solidarity: unionise
Worker solidarity: co-operatives
Reducing pay inequality
Re-thinking what is important to us
Darling, I have no dream job. I do not dream of labour
A green revolution and ‘post-growth’ thinking
A universal basic income?
More stringent regulation to protectpublic interest
Actually recuperate owed tax
Make politicians accountable to the public
Is land ‘occupation’ ethical?
Defending billionaires won’t make you one

Nothing to lose but our chains

Afterword
Recommended reading


Introduction
You would be forgiven for having never heard the name Nick Hanauer. He is not a household name as some of his shrewd investments are, notably, a younger Jeff Bezos and Amazon, but he is a venture capitalist who can boast of being incredibly wealthy. He wrote a memo to ‘my fellow zillionaires’ that reads:

‘If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when. ’ 1

And yet, despite a further eight years of this upward trajectory in gross inequality the pitchforks have barely surfaced. For extended periods there has been very little sign of them. Curiously, not only do swathes of people generally seem quite accepting of this state of affairs, many actively defend those who are faring much better than themselves and continue to elect those who oversee it. Contemporary Britain is characterised by any number of things: a stutter in life expectancy (pre-Covid), increased numbers of children living in poverty, an almost tripling in the number of people who are homeless, insecure employment, long working hours yet a fall in ‘real’ terms income, undertaking roles wholly or partially made up of meaningless tasks, increased debt, exorbitant house prices, underfunded and worsening public services, tax avoidance for those financially positioned to contribute more, unprecedented wealth growth for the richest in our society, unrepresentative politicians, corporate greed, a loss in worker power, a media not fit for purpose, and an increase in the rates of suicides and those suffering from poor mental health. And yet, we continue to turn up to work exploited and exhausted, and to the ballot box misinformed or disillusioned.
The four chapters that follow establish just how worse off the majority of us have, and continue, to become. They aim to illustrate how this grossly unequal situation has arisen and how it is maintained. This is achieved by examining four key ‘pillars’ in our society: work, money, politics, and the media, recognising that these intersect in many different ways. In the process, it becomes clear that our governing elites will not be the vehicle for the progressive change we deserve and that a more proactive approach is required from people themselves. The book finishes by outlining alternative futures to the status quo in a bid to help break from any ideological impasse regarding what exactly it is that we can do. The structure of the book is as follows.
The first chapter provides answers to questions such as: how did the wealthy obtain their wealth? Is it possible for me to join their ranks? Do we rely on the Amazons of this world more than they rely on us? Who are today’s working class? In doing so, we dispel the mythology of work by exploring its roots as we currently engage in it. In essence, despite the illusion of choice when applying for jobs wage labour is essentially forced, partly due to historical processes of land enclosure and trade financed by colonial activities. We examine how work has transitioned from a means to an end, where it would stop once people’s needs were met and they could enjoy the fruits of their labour, into an end (in of itself). This is evidenced in the apparent ways that we have normalised taking little enjoyment from the first five days of each week, positing that the work ethic has effectively been ingrained into the masses ‘from above’. As such, we become unwilling philanthropists 2 to the rentier classes who are spared such toil by our exploitation. That jobs can be unfulfilling is made worse by the fact that many offer little, if any, utility to society. The chapter contends that we could solve the simultaneous problems of unemployment for some and overwork for others by abolishing pointless jobs, accelerating widespread automation, and striving for full employment on reduced hours, in a smaller number of occupations – those that perform a clear utility for society. This would enable us to join the real ‘idle classes’ by not being so work-focused and having time for leisure, more direct democratic participation, environmental conservation, and other pursuits.
Chapter 2 explores issues ascertaining to money. Beyond evidence of the continued accrual of money to the wealthiest in our society via corporate welfare, tax breaks, and more, there are discussions regarding how money is created via private debt, which is a wholly political choice. Relatedly, how the ‘government as household’ logic pedalled by politicians is remarkably effective in fuelling the cynicism and distrust people direct towards welfare recipients, migrants, and acceptance of key services being underfunded for fear of tax hikes. Further, how debt has become normalised and thus an effective means of controlling ostensibly free persons, before an account of various methods of tax avoidance and evasion tha