Boyd Kellner, Newrybar
‘The Old is Dying, and the New Cannot be Born’ – Antonio Gramsci, Italian Philosopher
Helena Norberg-Hodge, (October 1), writes ‘There is a clear cultural turning, visible now even in the mainstream’. To imply that the mainstream is now cognisant of the malaise of Neoliberalism is simplistic and dangerously naïve. To conflate individual personal freedoms with the current pandemic and global economic crisis is lacking any understanding of ‘power’ in the economic/political context of how and why humanity has reached this critical juncture.
To speak of crises, Ms Norberg-Hodge risks being dismissed as a bloviator, given the term’s banalisation through endless loose talk. Maybe, Ms Norberg-Hodge still believes that ‘localisation’ offers a solution to these global crises, and that the hollowed out middle classes will provide the agency for change?
Unsurprisingly, Ms Norberg -Hodge has been banging on about this for years, providing no realistic alternative, other than fanciful middleclass Utopian nonsense.
Since the early 1970s, Neoliberal capitalism placed the ‘market’ on the altar of economic orthodoxy above all, by providing mechanisms for economic prosperity. ‘Individual’ freedoms have been a demonstrated unequivocal failure for the majority and the global ecology – socialism for the rich, austerity for the rest.
Decades later this global politicoeconomic hegemony has spawned ugly populist and nationalist [far right] racial politics, resulting in societal divisions with increasing social inequalities and alienation, and the further commodification of life. Then, to cite 5G, social media and the ‘big picture’, which are all manifestations of the Neoliberalist global agenda – without acknowledging the structural forces that underpin these phenomena speaks volumes of the remiss and foolhardy nature of Ms Norberg-Hodge’s attempted critique.
Political agency remains crucial to replacing Neoliberalism, providing a realistic alternative based on inclusive, self-managed from ‘below’ democracy that is transparent and accountable, with an ecologically centred economy.
To achieve this objective is to wrest power, non-violently, from the few who own and surreptitiously control the majority. This multifaceted task remains the overriding challenge for us, to justly transform societies towards a better future for all and restore ecological integrity.
Those few who own and surreptitiously control the majority, intend to permanently prevent anyone from resting power from them, by eliminating cash, limiting gatherings, instituting Travel/Vaccination Cards linked to all one’s personal and financial data and without which one can not buy nothing and travel no-where. The IMF calls this the “New Bretton Woods” and the World Economic Forum calls it the “Great Reset”.
Providing a realistic alternative based on a self managed from below democracy that is transparent and accountable, with an ecologically centered economy, is what we urgently need, and what democracy is supposed to be.
But how can this be achieved when the majority of voters are proudly disengaged and show little interest in what politicians are doing on our behalf, with our money, ( spending billions locking refugees up on Pacific Islands, sports rorts, $30m land purchases from mates rorts, holidays in Hawaii while the country burns rorts, no action on climate change, privatising/selling off public assets cheaply to mates rorts) and continue voting for the same dodgy lot?
Well put Louise. The country’s full of ‘brain drain’ people too lazy to get out
of their own way. What’s brought this about… instant wants & expectations.
Those who genuinely care are in the minority. Is it the pandemic that’s
exposed so much ignorance? If that’s so we are in for a rough time of it.
Maybe we can slip ‘innovation’ into the water supply before we find a way
to sack the all forms of governments.