Monday, 24 August 2015

Closing the gap on winners and looser's




The rise of Jermy Corbyn,from being included into the Labour Party contest for the leadership of the party as a sop to the left, to now leading in the contest is causing much excitement and soul searching. Many are up in arms, ridiculing the concept of a non centrist taking over the leadership on the basis that unless he courts Middle England then the party will never again win an election.
We are blinded, day in and day out by the views of the pundits and general factotums who present the television programs, projecting  their opinions in all kinds of ways.
It's important to understand that virtually all of them come from the kind of background which we would describe as middle to upper class. They are university trained some  having been to boarding school they are a product of that section of society we call the Establishment.
For a number of years there has been an attempt to synthesise the opportunities which are essential to the 'better off' with the underlaying assumption that the 'less well off' can if they pull their socks up, obtain the same advantages.
The product of all this is a person who has a fear of centralisation and a planned economy and they throw up the stigma of failed economies as if the failure were inevitable.
It could be argued, as Corbyn would, that Capitalism has failed, if the aim were to secure the best economic outcome for the most people.
The world is ravaged with poverty and inequality. In places where it was always so it is made worse by introducing the spectre of dismantling tribal sureties and encouraging some sort of universality of purpose. The seeds of opportunity are planted but invariably the seeds do not flourish and having broken the link with the tribal expectations the young people are left destitute.
Capitalism which represents amongst other things a global market has at its root 'the trade' in which often there are winners and losers but winners and losers in societies where there is no fat to absorb the loss, the gap between the winners and losers is likened to that between life and death.
In mature societies like our own the gap between rich and poor is less acute but it is growing non the less and it is this growth in inequality which people like Corbyn fight to prevent. They fight it because they know that it is wrong. They know that better organised, the wealth of a country is not wholly the product of a few and that in many many ways a healthy society recognises the contribution of the many.
Winners and losers are acceptable if the winner doesn't take virtually the whole of the pot since living amongst the people who, to varying degrees are partaking in a contest one has to recognise that humanity is at its best when no one is made to feel an out and out loser !!


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