As we stride forward into a global community of the 21st century, the state increasingly attempts to drag us backwards through overbearing surveillance and repressive laws that increasingly favour large corporate interests. This article from the Guardian tells it like it is.
“Fundamental issues of government and its reach into our lives are now bubbling away as never before, and may well reach boiling point over the next 12 months…
If you doubt this, consider what the essential functions of the modern state look like to any politicised person under 30. The state comes to the rescue of banks while snatching away benefits. It strides into sovereign countries, and commits serial human rights abuses. It subjects doctors, nurses and teachers to ludicrous targets. It watches us constantly via CCTV, and hacks our email and phone data. It farms out some of its dirtiest business to private firms. This is not a vision of modern government invented by the current lot: in Britain, it decisively came to life thanks to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Whether knowingly or not, they demonstrated an essential modern truth: that contrary to the vanities of the “free market”, neoliberal capitalism needs the big centralised state to clear its way and enforce its insanities…
The truth is that the arrogant, centralised state is as much of a problem as the out-of-control market, and the dominion of one is symbiotically related to the tyranny of the other.” Read full story here.
From The State of Business, chapter 13
If you doubt this, consider what the essential functions of the modern state look like to any politicised person under 30. The state comes to the rescue of banks while snatching away benefits. It strides into sovereign countries, and commits serial human rights abuses. It subjects doctors, nurses and teachers to ludicrous targets. It watches us constantly via CCTV, and hacks our email and phone data. It farms out some of its dirtiest business to private firms. This is not a vision of modern government invented by the current lot: in Britain, it decisively came to life thanks to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Whether knowingly or not, they demonstrated an essential modern truth: that contrary to the vanities of the “free market”, neoliberal capitalism needs the big centralised state to clear its way and enforce its insanities…
The truth is that the arrogant, centralised state is as much of a problem as the out-of-control market, and the dominion of one is symbiotically related to the tyranny of the other.” Read full story here.
From The State of Business, chapter 13
“Can we really hope that the state, disconnected from the feedback loop of our society, is going to make big business safer and more ethical, when we regularly witness the state exceeding the corruption of corporations, while aiding and abetting their worst abuses? In the dangerous combination of big business and the state, it is the agency of the state that usually creates or officially condones the damage. Only we can protect ourselves from the dangers posed by the growth of big corporations, and the sooner we empower ourselves with this awareness the better.”
Download the book now, or order a hard copy
Download the book now, or order a hard copy
