Editorial – Burnham’s plan to rearrange the chairs
The new Prime Minister seems to have borrowed the argument for his flagship policy from the Welsh and Scots Nationalists. Their mantra is that the problems faced by workers living in their geographical area are due to political decisions being made in London rather than in Cardiff or Edinburgh. Burnham’s variation is that the way to solve the problems that workers in England face is to transfer more decision-making powers from London to regional mayors.
These proposals are based on the assumption that governments are able to control the way the capitalist economy works. All the evidence shows that this is not the case. Governments don’t, and can’t, control how capitalism works. It is, rather, the other way round. The capitalist economy generates economic laws which limit what governments can do in that the only choice they have is between giving priority to profits or provoking an economic slowdown.
If you believe that governments can control the economy you will mistakenly conclude that solving the problems facing workers is a matter of government policy and that the policy pursued by those who decide what governments do is the key factor. But, as in fact governments can’t control the way the economy works — can’t overcome its basic economic law that profits must come first — then who makes or where the decision is made to give priority to profit-making is unimportant. Whether this decision is made in London or Cardiff or Edinburgh or Manchester or Midsomer Norton is not going to make any difference. Capitalism will get its way, and as capitalism is the cause of the problems workers face, wherever they live, those problems will continue.
In any event, most decisions concerning the economy are not made by governments, national or regional, but by private enterprises whose goal is to maximise profits for their owners. None of the conventional parties challenge this. So their policies have to be ‘business friendly’ as it is private enterprises in pursuit of profits that decide what is produced.
Burnham’s claim isn’t even that devolving powers to regional mayors would directly benefit workers. It is only that it would, supposedly, benefit them by promoting ‘growth’ which would provide more jobs and extra tax revenue to improve education, the health services and public amenities (after paying more for ‘defence’). Growth, in the sense of the accumulation out of profits of more capital, is what capitalism is all about but it is not something that a government can make happen. The most that a government can do is to maintain or create favourable conditions for profit-making for whenever those in charge of private enterprises see a prospect of making a profit.
It’s not who makes decisions or where they make them but what they decide that is important, and what they decide is imposed by the economic laws of capitalism. We confidently predict that Burnham’s ‘Manchesterism’ won’t work, either to bring about capitalist growth or to solve workers’ problems. It’s no more than rearranging the chairs.