The Big Society - I agree with David!

I am happy to echo Cameron's calls for the shrinking of the State and the development of the Big Society.

In fact I would go further - let's get rid of the State all together!

Of course anyone who knows their Marx knows that the Big Society is the ultimate aim of the Progressive Left, along of course with the withering away of the State.

The difference is however, that we actually mean it. The representatives of global capital can not allow the abolition of the repressive structures of the State, existing as they do to protect the thieves and charlatans of International Capital from the attempts of the workers to regain what is rightfully theirs.

In the absence of the police etc. then the people of Egypt would, last week, have wrested the stolen billions from Mubarak and his cronies, along with the political freedoms they seem to have won.

No, the only parts of the State that Cameron wants to abolish are those which provide socialised Healthcare, Education, Housing and Welfare, the very reforms hard won by the working class after the murderous global conflicts that Capitalism plunged them into in the first part of the 19th Century. From the Capitalists' point of view these reforms, whilst expensive, have at least blunted the anger felt by the working class and prevented the sort of revolutionary upheavals felt in other societies where the money is spent instead on oppression to the same aim.

The reality is, of course, that it is actually cheaper to spend billions on repressing people, than it is to provide decent Healthcare, Education, Housing and Welfare, and that is why it is the preferred course of Capital in countries like Egypt, Tunisia etc. and why, in the face of dwindling returns and the global crisis of Capital, that even in the UK we see cutbacks on Social provision and an increase in the repressive apparatus of the state along with Police Tactics of Kettling, calls for Water Canon etc.

If Cameron can talk about sweeping aside the laws protecting children from Paedophiles and breaches of Health and Safety, "if someone wants to help out with children, we'll sweep away criminal record checks & health & safety" (fifth paragraph), then how much easier will it be to ignore the laws protecting demonstrators from police excesses and to deal with the unrest resulting from the abolition of social provision?

The reality of Cameron's Big Society will be a return to Victorian England so well described by Dickens, where only the wealthy can afford unfettered access to the Law, Healthcare, Housing and Education, and Charitable provision by do-gooders, with the time and wherewithal to salve their consciences, was all that was available to the poor and dispossessed. At the same time the oppression of the poor, the criminalising of the desperate, and the crime of deportation will be echoed by the growth of repression.

The alternative is for the real beneficiaries of the putative Big Society to organise it - the workers taking control, running society and the engine of the economy for the benefit of all. Only when we have reached this truly Big Society will the State be unnecessary and can finally be abolished.

Forward to the Socialist Revolution and the real transformation of Society.