Just a quickie on the Marple Supermarket situation (note the dropping of Tesco – my bad!)… anyway, a group has come about on Facebook that’s “Yes to Tesco”, essentially making the argument that cheaper food is better for low-income people and local businesses will continue anyway as only rich people can afford to shop in them thus shall continue to.[1] Now, I don’t want to be the sort of person that joins a group just to spout off – I believe that’s the sort of thing people call “trolling”, which doesn’t sound too flattering – so, y’know, this’ll just be between you and me my delicious imaginary reader.

My key argument against this stance comes from Mark Thomas. In terms of the movement of money, 70p in the pound stays in the local area when spent in local shops whilst 70p in the pound leaves the area when spent in a branch of a large corporation. The “velocity of money” created by simply having money in the area moved between local businesses creates growth within the local microeconomic climate – taking wages up with it and costs down. In terms of local entrepreneurs this makes small businesses more viable, increasing their number and exponentially increasing the velocity of money yet further. In terms of the working class there are not only better wages and a lower cost of living but also an increase in these jobs and more potential for progression upwards. It’s this kind of effect that contributed so much to the baby-boomers generation during the 1960s – not the “hard-work and nouse” line they enjoy spewing out with utmost entitlement.

The chances for someone to “work their way up” within a corporation is basically nil. Wages are fixed nationally, usually at the minimum wage without any extra benefits, and this will not change – especially with the millions corporations can spend on union-busting lawyers, company-managed unions and workplace intimidation. The outsourcing of admin coupled with low job security means that the positions to be “worked up” to are inevitably taken by graduates brought in fresh to the company. Similarly, this same lack of job security means that the minimum wage employees can be sacked at the drop of a hat. As there is no way to organise the labour force the corporation has full power (and economic resources) to conduct mass lay-offs, safe in the knowledge that there’s a million more to fill the vacancies.

Local businesses cannot afford to do this, which means they cherish their staff more and thus provide better opportunities and support. If they don’t, then the staff is small enough to organise effectively against them. The livelihood of the small-business owner is directly tied to their staff. Corporations have no connection to their staff and have been known to run an entire wing of their operation at a loss – purely to drive local competition out of business and cement their stranglehold upon the local working class.[2]

This is how capitalism and the free-market inevitably lead to monopolisation whilst all the while genuinely offering free choice. The trick is that it’s a forced choice – they know which card you’ll pick all along. Undercutting local businesses by running at a loss puts them out of business. The prices then go up, wages fall, and the sensible choice is then to work for the corporation as there is no where else to go – any surviving establishments will have to cut their wages too. The local economic microclimate is dominated by a single monopoly that drains the resources from the area, essentially creating a sink-hole to drain the finances of the entire community and spew them into the pockets of those at the top. These people don’t pay taxes by the way, nor do the companies. Everyone in the country suffers. Well, except for them I guess…

Anyway, I’ve gone on quite long enough for now. It’s late and I’m rather tired. In summation then, large corporations are not good for those on low incomes. They lower incomes in fact, whilst making those incomes unstable and increasing unemployment. In this sense, there are no true individuals as each individual choice is a choice regarding society.

Oh, and as to the proposed “replacement” of the swimming baths. A privately owned leisure centre may be better than a publically owned one – just as BUPA is “better” than the NHS, but we can’t all afford that – and no-one but the shareholders have any say on how it’s run. Again, the free choice involved here is the choice to surrender your own power. The loss of political and economic power within the working classes has been the prevailing trend within this country for decades – and it’s made all the more pernicious thanks to its ideological mantra of “free choice”. Supermarket chains offer you the choice to reduce your expenditure at the same moment they reduce your income and eliminate your workplace power. The price is cheap, yet the cost is great.

The fight against a monopolistic supermarket is only the beginning in the fight for working-class rights. We must organise, strike, and resist persecution in every workplace. We must express our solidarity with those doing the same elsewhere. Don’t ask for cheaper commodities – demand better pay! It seems to me that this is where all this organic energy should be spent.

[1] Having lived in West Didsbury where cupcakes are £3 I can see how this premise makes sense on an individualist, emotional basis

[2] See Tescos or Stagecoach for the most obvious examples, although the practice is rife. ASDA, or more rightly Walmart, is equally if not more vicious.

(Quick comment prior to this blog post - I wrote this during the heat of the riots and the vicious backlash. I did not place it upon my blog at that time due to a genuine fear that the publication of a dissenting voice may lead to state persecution, if not arrest. These fears remain, yet my cowardice doesn't. I apologise for such gross hypocrisy and also for the hyperbole here, but these are times wherein such things are rife - this is, however, no excuse.)

I am deeply shocked and morally sickened by this country following yesterday’s riots. Yet it is not the criminals that illicit this response in me but you, the British people. A more bloodthirsty gnashing of hysterical teeth I could not imagine from this nation that so often praises its own liberalism. Previously sane people are now calling for martial law, suspension of communications, rubber bullets and water-cannons, curfews, an end to human rights, a restoration of the death penalty, bringing back the cane, an outright genocide aimed at wiping out the entire working class. Yes, some of these are meant more seriously than others, but not one of these things should ever be meant any way but ironically by anyone with an ounce of sense and humanity. We should look on these things as the backward, totalitarian methods that they are. We should consider them on a par with thumbscrews – which, judging by the internet and the radio, some of you are probably in favour of, you Nazi bastards.

Wow, that’s a lot of hate in that paragraph. Well let me tell you that it’s a tense time for the person seeking freedom right now. Here’s a handy set of reasons why it’s not a good idea to demand the state conduct violence upon your behalf:

• The moment the state operates it sets a precedent. Today they may be rioters that are shot with rubber-bullets and hosed down with water-cannons (both weapons that are potentially lethal and often maim very seriously) but tomorrow they will be protesters. They will be trying to stop a war, or protect equal rights, or perhaps even complain about police shooting someone dead, and they will be treated with as much violence as you would wish upon these rioters.

• Once a liberty goes, it goes forever. It will not come back for many, many years and most likely it will take numerous deaths to get it back. Our freedoms are considerable (not perfect, however) in this country, yet each has been won through generations of suffering and struggle. What may seem a justifiable action now in emergency circumstances will erode a right that it will be incredibly difficult to win back. The basic rights to communication, fair trials, free association, free speech, free movement – these will go the moment a curfew or some other draconian measure is enforced. If you wish these stripped from other people, you do not deserve them yourself.

• If the police are not accountable to law then they are no better than the criminals they arrest. We, as a society, employ police so that they can exert the amount of force our laws have seen fit to grant them in order to maintain those same laws. A member of the police does not act as a free individual but as an organ of the state. To respond to extreme violence with extreme violence illegitimates power – it is a declaration of a fascist state, the act of fighting against which is in fact the only moral choice. According to many comments I’ve seen, a lot of people would welcome this state of lawless oppression. Just for this instance, you say? Oh, my wonderful imaginary reader, once you grant the police power, they will use it to its fullest extent – it is inherent in their nature.

But what good are these liberties? They don’t defend us from crime! No. They don’t. Yet they determine what crime is, and how we deal with it. In doing so, they determine what is not a crime – and what is not a crime is what makes up society. Like the prime minister of Norway, we must now ask for more democracy and more freedom, not less. We must refuse to move an inch when it comes to freedom – and we must demand more of it. Otherwise, the next person to be “mown down” or “strung up”[1] will be you.

You don’t have to be a Marxist to see that poverty caused these riots. Why would anyone do this unless they felt as if they had no place within society? How could they? It is inconceivable. That doesn’t make them right – it makes them very wrong in fact – but it does prove what decreasing our freedom leads to. These people are crushed beneath the weight of poverty and can only see a way of getting free through operating outside society, as criminals. They have as little respect for their own lives as they do for others’. How could someone consider themself so worthless? Only if all potential is lost, when they are a slave to conditions set entirely against them.

This is why we must demand more freedoms – freedom from poverty and disease, the rights to work, housing, food, healthcare, education, direct democracy and democracy within the workplace. Only by fighting for these freedoms can we bring an end to oppression, both physical and mental, and finally live in peace together. For until we have overcome jealousy and anger then we shall never conquer hate. Until we are all free to live in society then there shall always be those outside it, attacking it, and making life worse for all of us.

[1] Both things I’ve seen seriously posted online by serious people I used to respect.