Joe Guinan Profile picture
Nov 24, 2019 4 tweets 2 min read Read on X
This is the most hopeful, radical, practical and achievable programme for national economic transformation put forward by a major political party in a generation. #VoteLabour2019 labour.org.uk/wp-content/upl… Image
The UK helped lead the way into the long nightmare of neoliberalism. Now we can help lead the way out.

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming” — Pablo Neruda

#VoteLabour12December
History says, don’t hope,
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

— Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy

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More from @joecguinan

Jul 4
A thread with a few eve-of-poll thoughts about the politics of this British general election and where it is likely to leave those of us committed to transformative political-economic change both ideologically and as a practical necessity. 🧵👇🏼
So ends the most delusional general election campaign in modern British history.
The vote seems largely a foregone conclusion, with a collapsing Conservative Party barely capable of going through the motions, able to summon only enough energy to place a few insider bets on their own impending demise.
Read 49 tweets
Jun 29
The idea that the problem with Starmer is insufficient ‘boldness,’ rather than that he has the wrong policies in the wrong interests, is a failure of analysis and understanding that will become apparent very quickly. His commitments aren’t right but insufficient, they are wrong!
Starmer’s positions are:
-Privatisation
-Financialisation
-Derisking
-Authoritarian policing
-Atlanticist foreign policy
-Austerity
-Trickle-down economics
-Growth
-Constitutional status quo/unionism
-British nationalism
-Purge the left
There is nothing in this programme that most of the Conservative Party of the past 14 years couldn’t agree with. The remarkable thing is selling it (again!) to most of the Labour Party.
Read 4 tweets
May 24
We’re in a time of decay and slow-motion system collapse that looks something like crisis-punctuated stagnation. In the in-between times the ‘normal’ rules of neoliberalism apply—or are reapplied—like a force of gravity, a dead weight on the present that prevents new departures.
But periodic crisis interruptions force new interventions—bailouts, QE, furlough payments, etc.—that are outside the bounds of the ‘normal’ operations of the system, sudden lurches or interventions that then have to be closed down and the genie reinterred in the systemic bottle.
Needless to say, this is an unstable and unsustainable state. So while stagnation reigns, and political exits are blocked off as best can be managed by and within the system, a dynamic process of decay and dissolution is also at work.
Read 22 tweets
Feb 12
We are living through a decomposition of the ideological apparatus into its most basic commitments. For liberalism, these turn out not to be justice or democracy or the rule of law but the protection of power and the preservation of capitalism. As for social democracy, it’s dead.
The social democratic method of using mass democracy to wring concessions from capital and the state doesn’t work when social democratic politics has been taken over by fractions who are unprepared to do any wringing of anything from those with power except for their own careers.
Triangulation did for social democracy, a trick that could only work once. The message has traveled all the way down to the base now; the deal is off.
Read 5 tweets
Jun 19, 2023
Some possible “iron rules” for an incoming government that took climate action, the cost of living crisis, and inequality seriously rather than just bending the knee to the established order:
The financial economy of money, debt, and interest will be fully subordinated to real needs, be it the imperative to reduce emissions and observe hard biophysical limits or the real economy of production and consumption.
After more than four decades of neoliberalism and exploding economic inequality, the gap between the richest and the poorest will be narrowed rather than extended—as a matter of democracy, equity, and sustainability.
Read 7 tweets
May 11, 2023
Quite apart from the inadequacy of current policy proposals we also need a conversation in Britain about policy itself, and the limits of policy in driving change. Too much debate hinges on this or that policy, as if there’s a 1:1 correlation between policy intent and outcomes.
Policy is important—and in some cases can be transformative. But only insofar as it alters the underlying structural conditions of our political economy. Policy within the existing structures can tweak or adjust, but it rarely transforms.
The economic problems we face are not just the result of this or that policy by this or that government—although things can certainly be worsened by government policy, as we saw with Truss/Kwarteng.
Read 22 tweets

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