Three of us went to the “New
Three of us went to the "New Economy Workshop" last night in Putney. Together with 30 or so others we heard the speakers expound a combination of the views of Henry George and the Campaign for Interst-Free Money. As the meeting split up into 4 discussion groups we were able to put our view across in 3 of them.What emerged was that the speakers, apparently in the name of the London Occupy Economics Working Group, were advocating what the programme called a "land backed interest free currency — spent into the economy to create infrastructure, rental income to fund citizens income and public services". What this meant was that the government would raise money by a Single Tax on Land Values (as advocated by Henry George) and spend some of it directly and distributed the rest to everybody as a Basic Income. One of the speakers was a Henry Georgist we had met at St Pauls last year.Whn we pointed out that production for profit not banks lending at interest was the problem, we were met with the answer that profit was ok since an element of risk was involved while interest was not since it was a certain income and so was "usury" (they mentioned that this was what the sharia law taught too). These people are not opposed to capitalism even in words, which of course reflects Henry George's view that capitalism was ok and that all that was required was to tax away the rent of the land monopolists. When we mentioned common ownership and production for use without money we were told that this was "communism" and had been tried in China under Mao with terrible results.I have to say, though, that members of the audience were more hostile to "capitalism" (we got a round of applause when we said expropriate the 1% not tax them and when we denounced profit rather than interest). Which it is why it is worth our while being at these meetings.I agree with Alan that what seems to have happened is that the Working Groups have sort of been taken over by activists with their own agendas. On the other hand, their message (down with bankers and banking) and respect for the land (as part of Nature and ecology) have found an echo amongst the sort of people Occupy attracted. What we have to do of course is to point out that it is not bankers (or land monoplists) who are to blame and that therefore banking (and land reform) is not the solution.As to Socialist Punk's point, since they don't see themselves as a political party but still want laws to be passed they have effectively relegated themselves to being lobbyists of the government and the parliamentary parties to get the legislation they want (eg banking reform, reform of company law, closing tax loopholes, ending tax havens, etc, etc) even if they take "direct action" too.I think Occupy played a useful and important role last year in sparking off a wave of anti-capitalist sentiment (howver vague) but they should probably have left it at that instead of trying to continue as yet another campaigning (within capitalism) group.