Public Meeting: world economy in crisis: who pays the price and how can we resist? 22 April 2009

from email, 16 April 2009:

World Economy in Crisis: Who Pays the Price?
And How Can We Resist?

Wednesday 22nd April 2009 – 7pm
Calthorpe Arms
252 Grays Inn Road WC1

Nearest tube: Kings Cross or Chancery Lane

CO-ORGANISED BY
ANARCHIST FEDERATION (London Branch)
& SOLIDARITY FEDERATION (North East & South London SF)

The world economy is entering a deep recession, and it’s even more serious in Britain than in other parts of the world. The IMF is predicting that the recession will last longer in the UK than in any of the world’s other large economies. The effects are already being felt, and the working class are bearing the brunt as usual. Economists and politicians like to use a lot of jargon, to make out that economic problems are so complicated that ordinary people can’t understand them. But the truth is the bankers and politicians themselves don’t really understand how capitalism works. That’s why they never saw this recession coming. And that’s why their so-called solutions to the crisis aren’t working.

The government’s massive bank bailout was supposed to “rescue” the economy. But there have been no tangible results for ordinary people, despite the fact that it was our money in the first place. The bailout plan was a ridiculous idea in any case. They gave our money to the banks to get the economy moving again by making the banks more willing to lend to individuals and businesses. But if we are losing our jobs, getting our houses repossessed or having our wages frozen, why are we going to be stupid enough to start borrowing money and getting into more debt? It’s absurd!

Now the public is angry that bankers are using the bailout money to pay themselves fat bonuses and million-pound pensions. The government has been quick to jump on the bandwagon, denouncing Sir Fred Goodwin and his ilk as “greedy” and “unacceptable”, and promising to curb such “excesses” in the future. Meanwhile the Bank of England is placing its hopes in something called “quantitative easing” – which sounds very fancy and sophisticated, but is basically just the Bank of England pretending to suddenly have more money by writing itself a big IOU!

G20 leaders have been talking about something they call “new capitalism” – which is just the same “old” capitalism with some tighter regulation for financial markets. But the real cause of this crisis was not just the greed of bankers or financial traders who have been “abusing” the system to make themselves rich at our expense. The cause of this crisis was the capitalist system itself. The whole point of capitalism is that it is a brilliant way for a few to make their profits at the expense of the rest of us. The boom-and-bust cycle is a normal part of the system. In the boom, it’s the rich who profit; in the bust, it’s the working class who suffer.

Politicians and bosses want to keep the capitalist system going at any expense – at our expense – because they’re the ones who are still doing well out of it. But that means enduring a recession which the capitalists themselves have already admitted is going to last for years. That’s years of job losses, wage cuts, house repossessions and ruined lives that working class people just can’t afford.

We have to take action to defend ourselves and our communities from the devastation. The way to do that is not to “rescue” the capitalist economy, but to replace it altogether. To build a society organised around human needs and desires, not money – a society based on co-operation and solidarity, not the profit motive. That’s what anarchism is all about, and that’s why we believe that anarchism can provide the only real lasting solution to the economic crisis. Come and join in our discussion about why anarchism is necessary and how we can make it happen.

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