An extract from an interesting article on the Rabble site:
By Some London Foxes. (NB: This is a summarised version of the full pamphlet published here.)If we want to bring some life and anarchy to the streets of London, it helps to understand the terrain we’re fighting on. This article looks at London’s role in global capitalism, how this drives “social cleansing” and control, and at some seeds of resistance emerging in the last year. It is a shortened version of our full “London 2016” pamphlet, which expands on these points in more detail.
The enemyRead the full article HERE:
London now is not so much a nation-state capital as a money-laundering centre for the world elites.
The patterns of development we are seeing now go back to the 1970s, when the international economy began to “globalise”. The Soviet bloc and organised workers movements collapsed, and neoliberal “free market” economics was unchained. As the “developing world” opened to international capital, industry shifted “offshore” from the rich economies to Asia or South America where wages were much lower. In the UK and other rich countries, mines, factories and shipyards shut, unemployent and inequality soared.
The post-war social peace was under threat. In the 1980s, as the traditional working class was “dispossessed”, the miners’ strike brought parts of England close to insurrection, while riots raged in Brixton, Tottenham and other ghettos. The elites maintained control by increasing repression: expanding prison, surveillance, military-style policing. But, even more importantly, by finding ways to keep the majority “included” in the consumer dream. The main means to do this: debt. In a nutshell, China and other “productive” economies send their goods to us on credit, receiving back investment assets from bonds to real estate.
While other parts of the UK economy stagnate, London thrives from this flow of goods and debts. It has two power centres: the glass towers of “The City”, site of major banks, investment funds and financial exchanges; and the noble quarter of “The West End” (Mayfair, Knightsbridge, etc.), where the global elites – from hedge fund bosses to gulf oil sheikhs or Chinese party princelings – do more discrete deals, store and spend their wealth.
Enough wealth trickles down to employ many of us in their armies of servants, from accountants and tax lawyers down to baristas and dog-walkers. Although wages stagnate, low interest credit – mortgages and small-time property speculation, credit cards, pay day loans, etc. – keep us going.
