Left Wing Politics

Heroes of the Working Class, Manchester, 1983

I picked this up from America's National Public Radio. It's a poet's response to the banking crisis.

$700 billion is more than enough money to buy every able-bodied American a chain saw, a solar-powered generator and a stake in a communal well and windmill. Also, red dirt and plum trees.

That would probably only cost about $100 billion, and you can use the other $600 billion to buy everybody their house outright.

Now everybody can own their house and be green and self-sufficient, and can go back to whatever they were doing before the world ended: watching TV.

Except for me. I was sharpening my chain saw.

It's an idyllic vision, worthy of Thoreau and Walt Whitman. There's only one thing I don't like about it: the assumption that Americans are all stupid sub-prime rednecks who contribute nothing to the world.

Doesn't that exclude most of the honest working class?

Or maybe the idea is that America should just give up on capitalism and allow the Asians to run the world from now on?


Okay, I get it now.

Meanwhile, back in jolly old Blighty...

Last week, on a day when the British government seized the assets of Icelandic banks, shares continued to fall, and inflation in Zimbabwe reached 231 million percent, the most frequently accessed article on The Guardian website was about local councils' attitudes to lap-dancing clubs.

• Where are the ideas?
• Where are the debates?
• Where are the leaders?

“Every generation needs a new revolution.”
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence
(picture posed by model)