My son Steve Wallis wants to submit the following article for publication in this week's weekly worker: - his words not mine, I am just the typist!
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Marxists have been predicting a catastrophic collapse in the world's stock markets, presenting massive opportunities for the masses to seize power, for decades. I was a member of the militant tendency in Manchester (becoming the socialist party) from 1990 - 1998, and our 'perspectives' for the world economy consistently predicted such a collapse in the near future.
Capitalist economic models ignore the role of the masses (working in middle classes) unlike Marxist economic theory. However Marxist economics is flawed too, because it does not take into account the effect individuals can have. A holistic approach, modelling the behaviour of masses and key individuals in the world, is necessary to make accurate predictions of what is likely to happen and what can be done to influence world events in a positive direction. This is far from straightforward, but I believe this has been and is being done by conspiratorial infiltrating organisations - good ones striving for a more ethical world, and bad ones trying to preserve the status quo or making it worse (perhaps moving towards Fascism). I also believe that my artificial intelligence/simulation language SDML is one of the languages being used for this task.
In 2007, stock market investors have started to panic. An article entitled "Prepare for financial meltdown" appeared in the 16th of March issue of Money Week. It quoted an article in Time magazine by Niall Ferguson, Scottish Professor of history at Harvard, pointing out similarities between today's markets and those prior to the outbreak of World War I.
Ferguson argued that investors were ignoring 'geopolitical risk' in 1914 and are doing so today. He pointed out that selling of shares in 1914 happened so suddenly and on such a scale that stock exchanges had to be closed to avoid a complete meltdown. The London exchange was closed from July 1914 until January 1915. Ferguson predicted that a 'geopolitical shock' such as more conflict in the Middle East could cause a 'liquidity crunch' forcing stock markets to close.
The current stock market volatility, which has forced the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank to pump in large sums of money to try to stabilise the markets, is supposedly entirely due to bad housing debts that cannot be repaid - 'sub-prime' mortgages sold to people with poor credit records.
Consider however that the crisis started on the 26th of July with a crash in the U.S.A. on the same scale as on 9\11, triggering the largest fall ever of FTSE-250 companies (in terms of points but probably not percentages) - the 250 biggest companies on the U.K stock market.
Is it a coincidence that a letter of mine, entitled "Radicalisation" appeared in the Weekly Worker published on that day. Since it has around 14,000 on-line readers per week, that newspaper and its contributors can play a massive role in the world situation.
My letter may in itself have seemed fairly harmless, mainly talking about the radicalisation of Labour Party members which led to the most left-wing of the six deputy leadership challengers, Harriet Harman, being elected, as well as pointing out the fascist nature of the "stop and question" proposal. However, some readers may well have searched the internet for my name (Steve Wallis), perhaps including the city in which I live (Glasgow).
Searching for "Steve Wallis Glasgow" would have found an issue of my Revolutionary Platform News newsletter on why the Scottish Socialist Party split, which reveals quite a bit about how conspiracies work. Some of those browsers would have gravitated towards my Revolutionary Platform Network web-based forum, on which I sent several messages that contained the lyrics of a song I wrote called "The world is planned". At the time I wrote the song (in March) I believed that the world was entirely planned by at least one conspiratorial organisation. Whether or not that viewpoint was correct, it certainly is not now - everybody's free will can make a difference to what happens in the world.
Searching for "Steve Wallis" would have found my socialist web-site, containing many of my conspiratorial views. Some browsers would have gravitated towards my Foundation for PR based socialism forum. some of my recent messages on that forum mentioned my understanding that an anarchist ally of mine called Priya Reddy (sometimes known as "warcry") was (and probably still is) in a psychiatric institution in the U.S.A. that she has compared to Auschwitz Concentration Camp! Priya is a particularly important activist having interviewed delegates to the 2004 Republican Convention out-thinking and exposing them as I saw on a brilliant War Cry Cinema DVD, she presented at the 2005 Earth First! Gathering. I had already predicted (in my song "Belly of he Beast") that she would have been targeted by the F.B.I., and that they may tried to wreck her mind as well as spy on her, due to the brilliant role she has played.
Quality is important as well as quantity - one key investor who browsed the internet and sold all his or her shares could have influenced many others to sell their shares, starting panic selling.
The current stock market crisis is far from over. On the 17th August the Guardian City Editor Julia Finch quoted fund manager Ken Murray as saying " banks will go bust and stock markets will fall".
Millions of working and middle class people will be hit hard by these developments. On the 16th August, pension funds lost £27 million. Those with endowment mortgages or money invested in shares or in bank accounts could lose a lot of money. I strongly urge those reading this to move their savings into mutual Building Society accounts urgently, being secured on property and not subject to the stock market should mean that they are safe. Many workers could also lose their jobs.
The meltdown will provoke mass movement of ordinary people demanding huge changes to the capitalist society in which we live. So what strategy should revolutionary socialists adopt?
I think the most urgent priority is to demand a more ethical form of capitalism: making rich people, and companies pay tax (currently avoided through tax loopholes and tax havens), with their assets nationalised if they refuse or try to shift production to sweat-shops overseas. I am drafting an ethical capitalist manifesto, which also contains other proposals - such ethical farming practices, getting power from the tides around our coastline rather than nuclear power stations (vulnerable to a terrorist attack that may be allowed to happen by a desperate MI5, just like the CIA allowed 9\11), defence of civil liberties and withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
An ethical capitalist world which is not dominated by conspiratorial organisations on the side of big business like the CIA and MI5, would permit residents of countries who wanted to, to experiment with socialist or communist societies, if they voted accordingly. A truly democratic electoral system is vital for an ethical society, whether capitalist, socialist or communist - and I advocate proportional representation by single transferable vote, to avoid the need for tactical voting, and to reduce the power of the party machines. Voters would be able to specify preferences between different ethical parties and candidates from the same party, with votes transferred to second and later preferences if the first choice is eliminated or gets more votes than necessary to be elected. Votes must be counted manually rather by computers to avoid electoral fraud.
What kind of political party should we advocate?
I propose the formation of an ethical capitalist party arising out of the split in the established mainstream parties, or setup by revolutionaries to encourage such splits to take place. I also propose an openly revolutionary socialist, (but not explicitly marxist) party to prepare the ground for democratic socialist change in an ethical capitalist world. Perhaps "Democratic Socialist Alliance" is the best name for such a party, distinguishing it from undemocratic forms of "socialism", and being less centralised than mainstream parties which tend to be organised in a top-down manner. I was one the founders of an organisation with that name, set up at a meeting in Manchester in 2005. Both of these parties need a very democratic internal structure, and I suggest that they are organised like the Scottish Socialist Party, with the right of members to organise themselves into platforms, and with those platforms allowed to submit resolutions to conference.
Steve Wallis, Glasgow.
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PS. from Jenny Corbett. Steve lost his tribunal on Tuesday so is still in Lever Hospital, but I have requested him to be moved to a different hospital and a second psychiatric opinion.
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