Rob Killick, CEO of cScape, is so worried about the limp responses to the recession; he started a website that tries to develop good ideas about it through discussion. He presented his thoughts to The Brighton Salon.

“I want to focus on the political side of the recession and I realise that might seem a bit odd. Perhaps it is,” said Rob. An economic crisis at the same time as a political crisis is something outside of most people’s experience.

“The political establishment doesn’t have a clue,” he said. Nearly two years after the toxic debts in banks were first identified and they are still trying to solve the problem.

The political crisis has its roots in the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the left. Without any alternative to capitalism, politics lost its edge and, during the eighties and nineties, Thatcher’s famous line “there is no alternative” or TINA became the cultural norm. Even those most critical of the system will struggle to come up with a n alternative for the future.

“If I shut my eyes myself and try to imagine an alternative in the future, I can’t without going back to the past. I struggle myself to imagine an alternative,” said Rob.

While the scale of the problems facing us is huge, there is little discussion within the political class about what to do beyond more regulation and ruthlessness. The disappearance of any alternative left behind the view that the market was a given. People came to believe that because there was no alternative to the market then there must be no problem with the market.

Gordon Brown claimed that he had abolished the cycle of boom and bust once. Politicians just left the market to do what it did and the parties are now little different from each other. The consequence of that is that political parties were completely unprepared for the recession.

“Last year I became more and more afraid of how they were responding,” said Rob. He saw the difficulties the US faced in simply trying to pass measures that save their banking system. As he watched the TV news channels he realised that no-one had any idea what to do about the crisis. Nobody knew how to get out of the mess we’re in.

During the recessions of the seventies and eighties, there was much debate about the future of Britain and where it needed to go. The economy was in a bad way and the manufacturing and productive industries were running down. “Then the financial sector took off. Britain became the centre for moving money about the world,” said Rob.

On that basis, the economy took off again and many people experienced prosperity. The problem was that the prosperity we enjoyed was not made by us. We allowed our industries and productive sectors to run down while the financial sector became more and more important. That sector accounted for about 10% of the total economy and the services associated with it accounted for another big percentage.

The taxes that the government collected from financial activities are extremely important, equivalent to the entire wage bill of the NHS. This is a worrying aspect for the public sector over the next two years. The NHS is the third biggest employer in the entire world, after the Indian railways and the Chinese army. It was paid for by the taxes that were collected from those bankers that everyone now blames for the crisis.

“There were fundamental imbalances in the economy and the growth we experienced was built upon those imbalances,” Rob said. A huge number of the new jobs created in the last decade in the public sector, were mostly for women and mostly part-time. “I do worry about these jobs in the years to come,” Rob said.

In the past years there has been a huge increase in the use of credit and growth of personal credit. But the money we borrowed depended on countries such as China and India creating value. We have thrown about £740 billion at the crisis so far. That’s still a lot of money even though it looks small when compared to the rest of the world. That figure represents about half of what we would all produce in the whole country over a year, if we consumed nothing.

In Britain and the US we have been living off somebody else’s products. We were able to because China and India had huge amounts of cash to lend us. They lent us the money and we bought their goods. There’s clearly a limit to paying people to come and buy things from your shop. It is not sustainable.

The basic problems with the economy are not being addressed, however. With the bank problems still not fixed it is as if the political establishment is in a state of denial. There is little discussion about public spending when we know we have no money. Political parties are unwilling to address this but the problem will not go away. We must look at ways of rebalancing the economy with its financial sector. We cannot just go back to how it was before.

There has been a huge change in the economic world order but there has been no recognition of this politically. The old organisations of international affairs are still there and no longer reflect any reality. This is a big problem as well. “I have adopted as a slogan something Obama’s Chief of Staff said: ‘A crisis is too good an opportunity to miss’,” said Rob.

“When nobody knows what to do there’s space for other people to get involved and come up with ideas and even be influential”, said Rob. But another problem is that there is a risk-averse culture we are all affected by. It is a state of mind we carry in our heads. One of the most difficult things we must do is challenge this culture of risk-aversion if we are to find different approaches to the problems we face.

As an example Rob cited the way that the public sector cossets young people aged 16-24. Perhaps that group should have its social security safety net removed so that they could make their way in the world. Rob did not want cut funds for the genuinely deserving, but felt that teaching these youngsters to be dependent on the state at that age was counterproductive. He also wanted to see an enterprise zone opened in east London after the Olympics.

John F. Kennedy made his moon shot speech nearly 50 years ago. One of the main points about that project was that it was supposed to galvanise the American people behind a big and difficult project. It was supposed to inspire and it did.

The difference between then and now is obvious if you think about what would happen if Obama announced a mission to Mars by 2020! But the same good reasons for doing such a thing apply now as then. It would inspire people because there would be huge technical problems to solve and new forms of energy to invent.

“The key thing is to make our ideas inspiring and face the real problems we have,” said Rob.

The discussion
While many welcomed Rob’s approach and saw that opportunities were indeed up for grabs, there were caveats.
Isn’t one of the reasons that we’re in this mess is we have been too risky already?
Why did the political establishment become naïve?
Surely, after all its problems, the capitalist system will die out eventually, won’t it?
Bankers must bear responsibility for the banking crisis. Let’s stop messing about and nationalise the banks!
The New Deal got the US out of the Great Depression and what we need now is a Green New Deal that is eco-friendly and takes into account the problems of the rising population.
Why do we still talk about ‘capitalism’? Why even try regress back to the times of politics when ism fought ism and little was achieved? I would halve the budget for the Olympics and I would never put an enterprise zone in London!
We have lost a great deal of trust in ourselves and each other and that affects our ability to solve problems and work together.
We are no longer used to working together collectively and have become very individualistic.
Why did Brown think he had solved boom and bust?
A New New Deal is surely the best way to ensure that jobs are saved and the economy can pick up again.
In the sixties when we had a great economy and we had socialism. Now we have a bad economy and no socialism. Have we all given up on an alternative to capitalism? Is there any such thing as benign capitalism?
Won’t young people with no safety net just resort to crime?
Brighton Council has no way to pay its pensions so we have to face problems like that right now in the near term.
We have lost faith in ourselves to overcome problems, but we have come a long way since the caves and we can go further.

Rob said that capitalism, as a set of property relations, can have awful disasters but it always comes back. His project was to try to work out what to do. One could not wait for things to go wrong and then magic up an alternative. You have to do things and try stuff before you gain new ideas. We are at an early stage of human development and modern society is only 100 years old. Sadly, an alternative to capitalism is not currently on the agenda.

When no one has answers it’s an opportunity to discuss things and work out some new ideas. “Speaking to politicians recently it became clear to me that they really do not have a clue what to do,” said Rob. Ideas do not just come out of a vacuum. What kind of productive society do we want to have?

Rob believed that new energy forms need to be found and new technical advances made, but some who call for a Green New Deal are inclined to think small. They are against growth and are in favour of going backwards with the economy and not developing industries.

Recession affects the poorest and weakest in society the most. Because of the property relations, whatever happens, the same kind of society will return. The worst recession would be long-term with no investment taking place and have terrible consequences for the world. Africa is already suffering as its trade has collapsed.

“I really agree with what was said about faith in ourselves,” said Rob. He called for us to come up with inspiring and positive ideas.

The Brighton Salon would like to thank: Rob Killick for his presentation (and for giving up the chance to appear on Al Jazeera English TV to fulfil his commitment to speak.); and The Friends’ Meeting House, Ship Street, for being our hosts.
This is a personal report by Sean Bell, who was busy chairing the discussion, and any similarity between what people actually said and what I said they said is purely coincidental.