Privatising Natural And National Assets

German philosopher Karl Marx states in 'Critique of the Gotha programme' (1875) that 'labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values as labour.' After industrialisation, the colonial powers needed manpower to run their profit-driven exploitative economic system, for which they relied upon slavery. But after its abolition under the Slave Trade Act of 1807, the UK resorted to the indenture system whereby not only locals but also their lands and natural resources were exploited.

World War I had destroyed the global economic order (the Pax Britannica), exposing colonialism and causing the Great Depression. Then US President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced several state-regulated initiatives benefiting people under his New Deal. World War II saw the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's defeat in the 1945 General Elections - who was campaigning over his war successes - by Labour Party's Clement Richard Attlee who proposed socialist programmes for reconstructing the war-ravaged country.

Fast forward half a century, and the former colonial masters had failed to learn from the past and celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall as a victory of the market system in the Cold War. In the 1980s, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Regan initiated neoliberalism's first wave. However, Roosevelt's Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 - regulating banking practices responsible for the Great Depression, and separating commercial and investment banking while creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation - was repealed by the US President Bill Clinton in 1999, contributing to the 2008 financial crisis, the largest economic recession since the Great Depression.

Pakistan's National Security Depends On Religious And Cultural Reforms

Henry Kissinger's 'Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century' (2002), praised the American economic model and the push for globalisation. But he also predicted the 2008 financial crisis, leading to bailouts using taxpayers' money and state intervention in a 'free market' under US President George W. Bush's Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act of 2008. This exposed the flawed market system's fragility and hypocrisy.

Thatcher had led a fire-sale, privatising British Aerospace, British Telecom, Jaguar, British Airways, British Steel etc. The underlying idealogy was that tax cuts for the rich and promising competition would breed efficiency and lower prices in critical services for the public. However, after privatising British Gas under the Gas Act 1986, and introducing 'Popular Capitalism,' prices rose and in 2022. Citizens protested increases in energy and gas prices by burning their bills. The promise that competition would lead to increased efficiency and lower prices never materialised, as monopolisation by giants never allowed new companies to enter the so-called competitive market. People are now trying to save the National Health Service, still consumed by Thatcherism and neoliberalism.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto nationalised major industries, under the Nationalisation and Economic Reforms Order, to break the undue concentration of economic power, but faced criticism for derailing Pakistan's economic development

The incumbent Labour government plans to create a new organisation, 'GB Energy' which is similar to the 'Green Investment Bank' of the past. Besides investing in renewable energy projects, it plans to coordinate and build........

© The Friday Times