Discussions about the way that the political Left became neoliberal

What does it mean for a nation to become bankrupt?

The reason I ask that question is because I read in the UK Guardian article yesterday (published August 11, 2025) – As dark financial clouds gather, Labour has to heed its past: when it chooses austerity, it loses elections – that “Britain is in danger of going bankrupt. It may happen slowly or quickly, but since Labour took office this possibility has increasingly been promoted and discussed in the press, by opposition parties and in the City of London”. And when the author of that article poses his own question: “What exact form will this bankruptcy take?” – he offers the rather tepid response that it will happen because the government is “spending too much, generally on people who have little”, which offers nothing by way of clarification or definitiveness. So it is useful to interrogate the notion of a nation going broke. Can it happen? Can Britain become insolvent?

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How to break out of the commodification of everything

Regular readers will know that I run a bit, like lots. Last week, while I was in Europe, I decided to stay on Australian time, given the brevity of the mission, so I found myself running at midnight or just after awaking at 22:00 or 23:00 (after going to sleep around 14:00). It turned out to be a good strategy because the abnormally (scary) high temperatures during the day last week in Europe gave way to warm nights with just a hint of crispness in the air – perfect running conditions. Yesterday morning, though, I was in Melbourne, Australia and set off on my early run (around 7:00 being Sunday) and I was a bit tired from yesterday’s Parkrun in Newcastle. Yes, I move around a bit. This morning though, I saw more than the usual numbers out and about on the familiar running areas in the park lands of Melbourne and soon came across Run Melbourne, a large event with screaming speakers, ridiculous geeing-up announcers on microphones, and thousands of people blocking the usual serene early morning paths along the Yarra River. I had earlier been re-reading Chapter 13 of Harry Braverman’s colossal book from 1974 (which everyone should read) – Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century – which was published by Monthly Review Press. The words of – Harry Braverman – came back to me as I tried to work out a way around yesterday morning’s mayhem down by the river.

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The concept of degrowth remains underspecified – reform or revolution?

I have done quite a number of podcast interviews with various hosts over the last few weeks and the discussions often turn to issues relating to the environment and what Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has to say about those issues. Inevitably, the discussions then meandered into debates about what is possible given that we humans are estimated to be using 1.7 times the regenerative capacity of our biosphere at present. At some unknown point, but sometime, that overuse will have to come to an end as the biosphere asserts its capacity constraints in one way or another. The question that seems to interest people now is whether the existing mode of production (Capitalism) is at all compatible with reducing that ratio. My answer is always the same. Those progressives who promote the notion of ‘green growth’, which is embedded in ‘green new deal’ proposals or their ilk, seem to think that we can make the shift away from fossil fuels and reduce the claim on the biosphere within a growth paradigm while retaining the Capitalist ownership relations. For me, a system where the logic is ever accumulation of capital via the creation and expropriation of surplus value and realisation of that value as profit, is incompatible with being able to live within the limits imposed by the biosphere. If we are to have any long-term future as a race, then we will have to embrace a degrowth strategy and radically alter the way we allocate resources and our patterns of production and consumption. In a sense, Marx’s long discredited notion of the – Tendency of the rate of profit to fall – as an intrinsic feature of Capitalism, which he believed would eventually bring the system asunder, is likely to be realised as the environmental constraints impinge on the accumulation system. Simply put, the logic of Capitalism requires growth and degrowth is the anathema of that logic.

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A 78 per cent tax on fossil fuel companies in Australia is not required to fund a Just Transition away from carbon

As I noted yesterday, last evening I accepted an invitation to speak on a panel at a – Rising Tide – event, which is part of the massive – People’s Blockade – of the port of Newcastle that is running from November 19-24, 2024. The Blockade is a threat to the mining corporations and the NSW State Government has introduced pernicious regulative structures in the last week to make it illegal to venture in into the shipping channel to block the coal ships. Heavy fines and an aggressive police force are waiting for any activist who tries. It is an extraordinary overreach by government, who are clearly siding with these corporations. The discussion last night was interesting if only to confirm that this important group of activists have been channelled by poor advice into adopting mainstream macroeconomic frames, which make it very hard for it to broaden its appeal to the rest of the population. Here is my advice to them which will allow them to break out of that straitjacket and become an important educative vehicle for the climate movement.

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The dislocation between the PMC and the rest of the working class – Part 2

I mentioned last week in this blog post – The dislocation between the PMC and the rest of the working class – Part 1 (November 11, 2024) – that I had been reading the 2021 book – Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class (published by Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) – written by US cultural theorist – Catherine Liu It is now an open access document. It provides a brutal critique of the professional-managerial class, which she thinks has become so associated with the aspirations of the capital class’ that it has lost any progressive force in society. Here is Part 2 of that discussion.

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The dislocation between the PMC and the rest of the working class – Part 1

A while ago, I caught up with an old friend who I was close to during our postgraduate studies. We hadn’t seen each other for some years as a result of pursuing different paths in different parts of the world and it was great to exchange notes. At one stage during the conversation, she said to me that I had become one of the ‘super elites’, a term that evaded definition but could be sort of teased out by referring to lifestyle choices etc. The most obvious manifestation was the fact that she was visiting my new home in an experimental sustainable housing estate, which apparently marked one demarcation between being an ordinary citizen and one of the ‘super elites’. That group also apparently doesn’t have any power in society like the real elites – the old and new money gang – but is privileged nonetheless. I understand the notion even if it somewhat amorphous. I was reflecting on that conversation as I have been trying to understand why the US voters chose Donald Trump over the seemingly more progressive and decent candidate Kamala Harris. I use that description of Harris guardedly, because if one digs below the surface, even just a bit, it becomes clear that the Democrats were not particularly progressive or decent (Gaza!) at all but more interested in lecturing people they look down on as to how they should behave and look. All that stuff about restoring joy – was really what ‘super elites’ think about and is far removed from the aspirations of the voters who went for Trump. Here are some additional thoughts on that topic.

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Class origins matter – but who are the agents of change?

The celebratory headlines in Australia today are about how the Federal government has just recorded two consecutive financial year fiscal surpluses, which the Treasurer lauded as an example of “responsible economic management” as the government removes from the economy a cumulative sum of $A172.3 billion since it was elected in May 2022. The headlines should have said “Federal government destroys non-government financial wealth over the last 2 years as more people are without work’, which is actually what has happened. Anyway, it is too depressing to see the media fawn over the Treasurer today. So I am going to go abstract and avoid talking about that any further. There was an interesting article in the UK Guardian the other day September 26, 2024) – Take it from me (and Keir Starmer) – you should never pretend to be more working class than you are. I don’t usually agree with the journalist but this article made me reflect on a lot of things.

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The green growth paradigm has a long tradition – which has never been supportable

In October 1987, the United Nations published a report – Our Common Future – (aka Brundland Report) which was the work of the then World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) – that was chaird by the then Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. It laid out a multilateral approach to dealing with climate change and establishing a path to sustainable development (growth). While the Report was published by Oxford University Press, you can access it via the UN – HERE. It is the foundation of the more recent ‘green growth’ and ‘green new deal’ movements that have besotted the progressives in the advanced nations. The problem is that the framework presented implies that we can maintain the capitalist market system with some tweaks and continue prioritising the pursuit of private profit as the main organising principle for resource allocation. I disagree with that approach and my current research is building the case for system change and the abandonment of the ‘growth paradigm’.

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Latest European Union rules provide no serious reform or increased capacity to meet the actual challenges ahead

It’s Wednesday and we have discussion on a few topics today. The first relates to the new agreement between the European Parliament and the European Council that was announced on February 10, 2024, which purports to reform the fiscal rules structure that has crippled the Member States of the EMU since inception. The reality is that the changes are minimal and actually will make matters worse. I keep reading progressives who claim the EU fiscal rules are no longer operative. Well, sorry, they are and the temporary respite during the pandemic is now over and the new agreement makes that very clear. I also express disappointment that high profile progressives continue to misrepresent Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as they advance their own agenda, which effectively provides support to the sound finance narratives. Then some updated health data which continues to support my perspective on Covid. And then some anti-fascist music. What’s not to like.

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Keynes was wrong because he failed to consider class conflict

I was asked during an interview the other day from Paris whether I was a Post Keynesian. I replied not at all and explained that I have never felt that my ideas fit into that category although in a facile sense we are all post keynesian in a temporal sense. Most progressive economists would answer yes if confronted with that question, even most of the economists involved in advancing Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). My point of departure is that while there was a lot of important analytical material in Keynes’ writing that is worth preserving and integrating into, say, MMT, where Keynes went astray was his antipathy to the insights provided by Karl Marx. In particular, I consider that Keynes seriously misunderstood what the dynamics of the class conflict were within a capitalist mode of production. Keynes made major errors in his predictions that one can directly attribute to this blinkered approach to capitalism. I was reminded of this when I read an Op Ed in the Japan Times this week (March 10, 2024) – The economic future of our overworked grandchildren. This blinkered approach, which has fed into the modern Post Keynesian literature – which examines capitalism as if it is an ahistorical, neutral system of production and distribution – is a major reason that I do not associate my work with that school of thought.

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