Responding to Paula Fidalgo's points, and also in relation to Alan Freeman's
second point re alternatives to neo-liberalism, a key issue for us should be
the commodification of public service delivery through the introduction of
market forces. In Britain the government is increasingly taking the more
back seat role of regulating and contracting out services. This has
developed particularly in the field of health care and is starting to unfold
in my own area of criminal justice. This is anything but a progressive move.
By forcing the public sector to compete for delivery contracts with the
private sector and charities, the public sector and its workers are degraded
to the status of being 'just another provider.' It is also far from
economically efficient to encourage a variety of 'providers' to compete with
each other for the government's shilling.
Richard Garside
Director
Crime and Society Foundation
26-29 Drury Lane London WC2B 5RL
020 7848 1685
[log in to unmask]
www.crimeandsociety.org.uk
A project of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, School of Law, King's
College London
-----Original Message-----
From: To complement the journal 'Capital and Class' (ISSN 0 309 8786)
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paulo Fidalgo
Sent: 26 April 2004 21:12
To:
Subject: Re: Another Economics is possible - appeal for volunteers for
Economics stream(s) at the European Social Forum
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paulo Fidalgo" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Alan Freeman" <[log in to unmask]>; <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 5:58 PM
Subject: Re: Another Economics is possible - appeal for volunteers for
Economics stream(s) at the European Social Forum
Dear Alan
Sorry to answer so late
I would like to raise a theme for discussion on the next forum
My main concern relates to public industries and as a physician I am moslty
concerned with the public Health care industry.
Until now the state, wich we can classify as a burgeois state, rules public
health care delivery as its backyard garden. They control it in a more or
less tight control from both health care ministers and finance ministers.
They support costs of health care delivery but do not accept to evolve the
system to a more value oriented payment. Wich leads to the perpetuation of
wage labour in most european public industries and to its profound labour
product alienation. They also avoid, at least in countries like Portugal,
that public institutions acquire autonomy, responsability, regarding
internal organization, development priorities and they donīt accept more
then symbolic association of health workers to the planning and ruling of
those public facilities.The sole autonomy a goverment accepts nowadays is
private health care. Only private capital owned hospitals and primary
private care centres are aloud to have autonomy. Otherwise I should add,
public institutions could became more competitive and defeat private
capitalism in health care. So, for me, health care workers movement and
educational workers movement are confronted with the goal of achieveing
autonomy, auto-organization and to acquire eficiency provided the governemt
steps back to a more regulating role and conctracting with public
institutions on a value based (and not cost based) finance system.
Furthermore, a government that buys health care at its value and do not only
porvides money to cover costs, is a prerequisite to negociate a new way of
paying labour outside the old wage system and to build a new system where
people apropriates surplus product, at least a part of it, and begins to
work for the maximum efficiency of their own institutions. So the discussion
leads to the idea that more then better wages is to get rid of the wage
system of paying labour.
I believe a round table discussion with both trade-unions and policy makers
in public industires could be succefully built in the next forum
BW
Paulo Fidalgo, Lisboa
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Freeman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2004 10:44 AM
Subject: Another Economics is possible - appeal for volunteers for Economics
stream(s) at the European Social Forum
> Dear C&C subscriber
>
> In October, the European Social Forum (www.ukesf.org, www.fse-esf.org)
will
> be hosted in London The 2003 social forum was in Paris and the 2002 forum
> in Florence; the Paris event was attended by about 50,000 people. The
> British proposal, endorsed by the Forum's European Assembly in March, is
to
> hold it at Alexandra Palace, probably with spinoff events in locations
> around Bloomsbury. I think this is a unique opportunity for Capital and
> Class to promote discussion and activity and link up with sister
> organisations.
>
> CSE's Executive Committee agreed it would be a good idea for Capital and
> Class to work with sister organisations and prepare proposals for
activities
> around a theme something like 'another economics is possible'.This would
> involve European organisations such as the post-autistic economics
movement
> in France, anti-Maastricth currents, EEAPE, etc and also in the UK
> Association for Heterodox Economics, Radstats, etc.
>
> I think there are two definite areas of activity to think about:
>
> a space for pluralism: 'official' economics is promoted as a
uniquely true
> vision of the world. A plethora
> of responses have challenged this focusing on teaching
(post-autistic
> movement, Cambridge initiative), but
> also research and publication, more generally on the way that
'official'
> economics suppresses the alternatives
> (AHE, contre la pensee unique, EAEPE etc). In the UK
preoccupations are eg
> the whole RAE process, the Royal
> Economics Society's refusal to countenance pluralistic selection
processes,
> etc. With material like Fred
> Lee's and David Harvie's I think that CSE has led on this and
should try to
> coordinate responses in Europe.
>
> an alternative to neo-liberalism: the IMF's policies are openly
> acknowledged to be a complete disaster. What
> are the concrete alternatives to structural adjustment? If we want
global
> justice, what should Europeans fight
> for? What does the global South need to pursue an independent
economic
> policy? What is the next step after
> Jubilee 2000 in the fight against debt enslavement? What
constitutes a just
> trade policy? Etc.
>
> There could be many more ideas: this is just a first stab.
>
> Also, it may well be that other proposals could emanate from Capital and
> Class eg Labour Process, Argentina, etc. If so, make your suggestions
known
> to the XC!
>
> Whether a given proposal works or not depends on two things:
>
> (1) can you do some work on it?
> (2) can you interest anyone else in it?
>
> The forum process is a grassroots one. On April 1 the forum will be open
for
> proposals. To get a good 'take-up', the most important thing is support
from
> a wide range of organisations. There are two types of event that we can be
> involved in:
>
> *Seminars - relatively large, more structured events with
> simultaneous translation
> *Workshops - smaller events without simultaneous translation
>
> The ESF process as a whole will also set up 'Plenaries'. The difference
> between Plenaries and seminars is that the Plenaries are organised by the
> ESF process but the seminars are self-organised by participants. This
year,
> following the Paris experience and the World Social Forum in Mumbai, there
> will be a strong emphasis on seminars and workshops and less priority to
the
> Plenaries, which will be shorter, less in number, and will contain less
> speakers.
>
> Although there is no formal structure for 'streams' with a succession of
> connected workshops and seminars, there will be overall 'themes' and
> obviously, if we find that there are a range of ideas that our sister
> organisations and ourselves want to discuss, there is scope to make more
> than one proposal.
>
> I'd like to suggest that people contact me if they can offer
>
> * suggestions for potential C&C initiatives (preferably accompanied
by
> an offer to work to bring it about)
> * help on the alternative economics proposal
>
> Regards
>
> Alan Freeman
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