British capitalism is in big trouble. The official annual inflation rate has hit 3.3%, its highest level for 16 years. The governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has been forced to send a letter to the Chancellor of Exchequer, Alastair Darling, to explain why the Bank has been unable to keep inflation from rising at more than 2%, which is the target set by the government for the Bank.
The political landscape in Britain is changing before our
very eyes. This morning’s prominent TV news is of the tanker drivers’ strike,
showing scenes of pickets with Red Flags turning away lorries at Shell
refineries. The next item is the deepening government crisis, followed by a
warning from Gazprom that oil prices could reach $250 a barrel. It was like a
typical news bulletin of the 1970s.
In any historical period, the dominant ideas are those of the ruling
class. In 1989 the world was treated to the words of Francis Fukuyama,
who published an essay with the title 'The end of history?' His
argument was not that historical events had literally stopped happening
but that the collapse of so-called 'communism' in the Soviet union
meant that western liberal democracy had successfully established
itself as the ultimate and ideal form of government. Marxism lay totally discredited he declared, gloatingly.