Unemployment up, smoothie consumption down

So innocent smoothies are the latest casualties of the almost-recession, along with high-end supermarkets and organic food. There has, apparently, been a demographic shift towards Morrissons  and Cadbury’s Roses (other brands of poor-quality chocolates are available, as the BBC might say).

But of course there’s something else that’s on the rise – unemployment. The more Keynesian-minded economists have been demanding that the Bank of England lowers interest rates, which will allow businesses to borrow, maintaining economic growth and tackling unemployment. The orthodox economists have been resisting this since, high interest rates have been seen as a good way to tackle inflation which is their over-riding concern.

So why am I recounting the arguments currently being had on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee? I’ve never been much of an economist, but sometimes you have to make an effort, and a global financial crisis seems like a good time.

For 30 years, neoliberal economics have been the order of the day, a mantra of economic growth through deregulation, privatisation and low corporate taxes. Financial deregulation has been a big part of the recipe, the same financial deregulation that politicians are now rushing to condemn. Gordon Brown, though he said in his speech to Labour Party conference that “those who argue for the dogma of unbridled free market forces have been proved wrong again”, ensured during his 10 years as Chancellor that Britain remained second only to the US in the world in enthusiasm for neoliberalism.

He’s already rejected modest measures like a windfall tax on oil profits and nothing in his speech suggested he would do anything except slightly increase regulation of multinational banks (which didn’t stop the buffoon who jointly leads my union, Derek Simpson, from getting rather excited about him). Brown talks about an ‘interventionist state’, but only seems to apply the idea when it comes to the state intervening to lock people up for 42 days without charge. Unfortunately, both the Tories and Liberal Democrats are neoliberal parties too.

Thankfully, there are beginning to be alternatives on offer. The Green New Deal group, including Guardian economics editor Larry Elliot, the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas and the new economics foundation (who insist their name is spelt with lower case letters to prove how cool and progressive they are) have taken as their inspiration Roosevelt’s New Deal in 30s America to argue for government spending on climate friendly infrastructure, the break-up of big banks which need to be expensively bailed out because they are “too big to fail” and lower interest rates (hey! there’s my link back to the beginning of the post!).

This is a modest but important start to breaking the neoliberal monolith. It won’t get very far, however, if intellectuals are the only people who are mobilised. Some kind of wider social mobilisation is necessary to get opposition to neoliberalism off the ground (which is why the continued loyalty to Labour of the major trade unions is particularly disappointing).

Of course, with rocketing consumption a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, one could argue that a recession is actually a useful first step to a sustainable society. The the poorest would be hardest hit, though, and the global elite’s consumption barely touched. Plus the call for recession isn’t much of a rallying cry either.

What’s needed, then, is a popular movement around the kind of concrete demands of the Green New Deal which can do two things. The government intervention achieved can help make our society more sustainable, decrease the power of big business and reduce the obsession with ‘the market’. The mobilisation itself, meanwhile, could create the kind of social solidarity that lays the basis to go beyond a society reliant on ever-increasing economic growth. In other words, another world starts to be possible.

Hmm, I can hope anyway...