Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Beware the new language of privatisation: state activity farmed out to profit making firms

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, June 22, 2012

Beware the new language of privatisation: state activity farmed out to profit making firms

Click here to access article by Stuart Weir from Open Democracy (UK).

As the government and business combine to expand the modern-day enclosure of the public sphere and state services by the private sector, the official talk is now of “outsourcing”, and of “partnerships” or “mutuals”, as private incursions into the police provoke political criticism and fears that private companies would be taking over frontline policing duties. Beware the new language of privatisation.