“Failure to plan,
Is planning to fail.”
The mantra for all things,
Except governing.
Where we find endless ways to monetise,
Ever looking to depoliticise.
Creative schemes to do nothing,
Power ever deferring.
Markets, our faith, will meet demand,
Even as we watch them ravage the land.
So afraid to take control,
We can’t escape capital’s hold.
It is too dangerous we feel,
To lay our hands upon the wheel.
We cannot ever master our fate,
Why act at all when we can leave it too late?
Those who deliver our doom,
Will save us then, we assume.
Don’t think, don’t act,
Calamity assured in unspoken pact.
So this quarter’s ALE theme is “planning”. However, rather than point out the merits of planned economies, or pointing to how companies do on the microscale what we should do on the macro, I’ve opted to point out what shirking the responsibility is doing for us. Much of the inaction I describe is borne of capitalist realism; “there can be no other way to deliver change”. We’re so locked in with our tormentor that we develop a Stockholm syndrome that prevents us from considering an alternative. It’s also more than that; it’s a serious failure of western democracy.
Whether it’s climate, healthcare, equality or any other worthy demand from the electorate we rarely, if ever, get offered a serious choice. Mainstream parties are very good at offering just enough lip service to appease the majority and, with the help of the media, anyone threatening real action get’s pushed to the periphery. In the case of climate this has resulted in us wasting decades with Fabian-like non-solutions, 5p charges for plastic bags, trading carbon credits and kidding ourselves that we’ve got a whole lot greener even as we offshore our pollution and waste. This is a failure to plan writ large, sleep walking into collapse because the show must go on as it is, like it is all we’ve ever known.
