Part
3 - Investment
In general all of these proposals
cost money - a lot of money. The right wing will argue this programme
cannot be implemented because we don’t have the money; the state is
already up to its eyeballs in debt.
Corbyn has two answers to this,
which are good steps forward that we support. But in themselves they
do not go nearly far enough.
Firstly, Corbyn said in his speech
that we are “clear about how we would pay for it by asking the
richest and the largest corporations to start paying their fair
share.”
Quite right! The rich have only
gotten richer and richer at the expense of everyone else. The money
is there to pay for all these policies - in the rich’s pockets -
and they must pay.
But will they pay? We need to do
much more than simply to ask them. Even if we pass legislation
compelling higher taxes on the rich, they will hide their money,
something they are already adept at. We must expropriate the obscene
fortunes of the billionaires that treat Britain as their playground.
Corbyn has gone much further than
simply proposing higher taxes for the rich, however, and this is to
be applauded. In his speech he said Labour must argue
“Not simply to redistribute
within a system that isn’t delivering for most people but to
transform that system. So we set out not only how we would protect
public services but how we would rebuild and invest in our economy,
with a publicly-owned engine of sustainable growth, driven by
national and regional investment banks, to generate good jobs and
prosperity in every region and nation.”
This is a step in the right
direction, because it is a step towards planning production, rather
than leaving it in the hands of capitalists who we then tax a bit.
However, it is only a step in that direction.
A public investment bank will not
control what it is investing in, because that will be privately-owned
and operating on the basis of capitalism.
As China has recently experienced,
if the state funnels credit into capitalist businesses in an attempt
to keep employment up, in a situation of stagnant demand and
over-indebted consumers, these business will simply use the extra
cash for speculation. Why build new factories if there isn’t the
demand for their products, since the workers are too poor?
Hence to make a success of this
policy, we must also own the businesses that this investment bank
will be investing in “to generate good jobs and prosperity in
every region and nation”. Then we can make sure they provide
good jobs that make things that meet people’s needs.
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