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Roger Warren Evans
Roger Warren Evans
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You are in the company
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item0040C 704, 705 28 April 2003"Anti-racism" is not enough For Quakers, perhaps more explicitly than for any other "protestant" denomination, the rejection of status differentiation goes to the very core of their religious perception, to their very forms of religious organisation, practices and procedures. And the lessons for the political cadres is an intimidating one. For a real, substantive commitment to equality has huge ramifications for every aspect of policy - in terms of racial and gender equality, and constructive engagement with the challenges of disability, and social discrimination, of all kinds. If a Party takes equality seriously, the commitment interpenetrates every aspect of its programme, informs its every value. That is why "anti-racism" is not enough. Nor is it enough to identify the racist elements in our society as mere political opponents (as does the symbolism of the Anti-Nazi League). The need is to re-state our political philosophies (whether categorised as socialist or liberal democrat) - asserting individual equality at their very core. On the Left, every manifesto, every programme, every speech, should be subject to an Equality Audit, however informal.
How do you think about this central political issue? Drop me a line
28 April 2003 Baghdad
The sudden and complete collapse of the Iraqi "system" is taking place before our very eyes. The long and painful reconstruction of post-War Germany went largely unseen, before the days of TV. And in re-building the economy, it is governmental services that must be reinstated first - the hospitals must be re-supplied and policed, the schools must re-start, the buses must run again.
The rightwing model of the economy
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But there's more. Because
it is also Government that sets
all the important ground-rules for the operation of markets within the
economy. Company law constitutes one of the key
management-systems, specified exclusively by Government. Anti-trust
law, competition law, restrictive trade practices, price-fixing,
insider-trading - these all interpenetrate the daily operation of markets,
within the wider system.
Indeed, it is entirely misleading to speak of - and to think in terms of
- a "market economy". There is no such
thing. There are only managed systems which are
more-or-less dirigiste, more-or-less efficient, more-or-less
permissive, more-or-less lax, more-or-less venal, more-or-less corrupt -
more-or-less socialist.
This perspective places heavy responsibility upon socialists like me. Do you think I have got it right? Drop me a line
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New
In the
chaos of post-war Baghdad, the sinews of the modern economy are laid
dramatically and painfully bare. It is quite clear,
for those who wish to
see, that all the basic institutions of our society are
governmental.
The primacy of
public order is brutally self-evident. The much vaunted "market" can only
operate, if all the necessary public institutions are already firmly in
place. Indeed, all transactions (including governmental transactions)
are clearly integral to the overall economy. Rightwing economic theory
("...it is business that creates the wealth, which the public sector
spends...") is shown up as a sham.
What matters to the people of Baghdad
is, first and foremost, public order - policing, the protection of public
and private property, the provision of water and electricity supplies.
Small traders can bring in vegetables and staple foods from the countryside,
but that is not sufficient for the reinstatement of a contemporary ordered
civic life. It is even suggested that a majority of the citizens of
Baghdad were actually on the Government payroll - as their functions are not
being organised, they have no pay and their savings are running out.