John Clayden

There is a recent very worthwhile edition of The Duran with Michael Hudson, Alexander Mercouris and Glen Diesen which discusses the likely prospects of economic change in the West in favour of the working class. It concludes that it will be only possible if there is a revolution here in favour of the East 

http://Youtu.be/OFrxgMFbN8c?si=siHnoaak8bi-12My

This is their argument:

There is a civilizational split in the world.  In the newly emerging east, we see a new non-financialized sector with governments keeping control of their banking systems and restricting the power of their self-grown billionaires to stop them becoming oligarchs with influence over government.  They have banking systems which are capable of excluding the financial influence of the West especially of the USA. This area of political power is detaching itself from the power of the USA with its dollar hegemony and its MIT under the control of the super-rich. This process is finding its way, to quote a Chinese leader, through “Crossing the river by feeling the stones”. In the West, money made by generating debt is considered to be productive and a contribution to GDP. According to the West’s economic dogma it functions best if unhindered by the government but surprise surprise guess who gains the wealth you’ve guessed it – the super-rich.

This Western finance driven development has resulted in a housing bubble, student debt which is bankrupt proof, high health insurance and credit card debt at 20% rising to a 35% penalty for failures to keep and up payments and for those maxed out a huge growth in pawnshops. Also a 40% vacancy rate for property and various other delights. This results in Western labour having such expensive overheads it cannot compete with the rest of the world.   Europe is especially hobbled because unlike the USA and China and Russia it has no digital giants such as Google, YouTube and Twitter which can be a source of many benefits and control. As well a monopoly source of money from rent from things like copywriting computing programs etc.

Meanwhile the West has done Russia a huge favour by applying sanctions which have forced it to be self-reliant in its productive development. The result – a booming economy no longer reliant on the West.  It has used reverse engineering to develop aircraft and electric cars and it had a head start due to its highly developed scientific education. It has also forced Russia to become self-sufficient in food production and it now even exports grain and other agricultural products.
(Protection  methods, to ensure non-interference by Britain, were consciously employed by both the USA and Germany to ensure their own industrial development but because Western universities have removed study of the Political Economists Friedrich List and Marx from their  economic curricula and since these were the theorists on which these decisions were made, they ensure their own ignorance).

Some seek to refute the thesis presented by Hudson and Mercouris by alluding to the housing bubble in China and maintaining China will become a new hegemon just like the USA by  using  its own economic power. On the first point, China’s housing development was devolved to the regions which was a mistake, they often raised funding by selling land to large American real estate companies. However unlike in the West the central government has the power to cancel any debt. Should this happen, it would have serious consequences for the US and Western economies. This potential danger is one of the reasons China is enemy number one. 

As far as the threat of a new Chinese hegemony is concerned Hudson points out that the new financial institutions that are being built by Russia, China and the BRICS will offer alternatives to the World Bank and the IMF; they cannot be coercive because countries will have the option of joining only if they consider it is in their own interests to do so and it is here that keeping to international law, treaties and agreements are of importance. It should be noted that the West is now considered by many, to be  non-agreement capable.
What Keynes originally proposed at Bretton Woods (which had been called to decide the economic strategy after the war), i.e. an alternative to a single trading currency,  would have been  more desirable than the dollar (which was decided upon under US pressure); had his ideas been adopted, it would have deprived the USA of the hegemony it developed, especially in the cold war period. This hegemony was reinforced after the collapse of the Soviet Union which then  convinced the elites of the  European powers to unconditionally throw in their lot with the US and this attitude  still dominates their thinking and accounts for their acceptance of the Nordstream Pipeline destruction.
Meanwhile, it is only these super-rich in the economies of the West who are favoured; while wages and  public services are stagnant or  in decline.

The prospect is that before long, for the first time ever, it will be obvious to the workers of the West that their fellows in the east are much better off than them. (In the past, as I noticed working in Poland in 1962, the West was seen as a land of milk and honey and this contributed to the lack of support for the Communists.)

As this future discontent builds, it will become more and more apparent that the oligarchs are not going to do anything about it. In the past you had some help provided by One Nation Tories and Social Democrats but these can no longer be applied due to US influence and especially as this task would have to be much more drastic today, something more along the lines of Labour in 1945 or what Corbyn and the Workers Party have in mind. Anyhow, as the response to Nordstream illustrates, Europe and the UK now have to do what they are told and seem pathetically unaware that the USA has essentially a malevolence towards them. And always has had.

In the opinion of Hudson and Mercouris all these developments can only be ameliorated by a revolution however remote this may seem at present and I think they are right. 
For the present time the revolutionary franchise is in the hands of a small minority with a chip on their shoulder about what happened in Russia over 100 years ago, they would have a great difficulty recognising a genuine pre-revolutionary situation even  if it got up and  bit them in the face. Anyway they would be too pure and holier than thou to throw in their lot with the likes of Iran, South Africa, China, Russia and Brazil.

A note on Gaza:

“Israeli quadcopters are employing a “bizarre” new tactic of playing audio recordings of crying infants and women in order to lure Palestinians to locations where they can be targeted.

“On Sunday and Monday night, residents of the northern parts of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp woke up to the sounds of babies crying and women calling out for help.

“When they went outside to locate the source of the cries and provide aid, Israeli quadcopters reportedly opened fire directly at them.

“Samira Abu al-Leil, a resident of the refugee camp, told Middle East Eye that she heard Israeli quadcopters opening fire during and shortly after playing the recorded sounds, which lasted for several minutes and recurred multiple times on Monday night.

“I heard a woman crying and screaming for help, saying, ‘Help me, my son was martyred’. The sounds were coming from the street and they were bizarre,” the 49-year-old said.

“Some men rushed out to the rescue, only to be shot by the quadcopters that kept roaming all night long.”…”

<https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/in-gaza-the-sniper-drones-are-crying>

There are many, noticeably young people of all walks of life, who are outraged and disgusted by what passes for normality today. They see no normal to which they can hope to return. I met some of them on the recent Gaza march and I am constantly surprised by the reception the Palestinian flag on my cap arouses. When strangers break into spontaneous conversation that surely must indicate something.