New Year musings

 ‘Happy New Year!’ exhortations are beginning to fly around. What’s the ‘Happy’ you are trying to convey to whoever is on the receiving end of one of this time limited urges? Happiness is subjective anyway and whatever event provides it for one person may not do so for another. Money can’t necessarily provide happiness it’s said, but for those who don’t have enough of it the expression miserable but rich as opposed to happy and poor would win hands down. In a capitalist society, money, either the surfeit or the lack of it, goes a long way toward determining one’s mental make up. So do you really expect that the forthcoming new year will provide you with positive benefits over and above ones you already enjoy assuming you believe you have some?

At this period in time just before the calendar clicks over there will be lots of pundits, experts, influencers, media personalities and others, keen to suppose what may occur in the new months ahead. In the majority of cases one might as well take Mystic Meg seriously.

The crystal ball will be perused for ideas in various fields, sporting, economic, political, geopolitical, and cultural. Educated guesses based upon existing data may prove to be close to the mark. Some events will provide the kicking from the capitalist system, the football world cup for instance. Which not only distracts but also reinforces nationalist fervour. Double win for capitalism.

Propaganda machinery in the UK will have to work hard in May when local elections occur except a large number of voters have already been disenfranchised by the ruling Party who worry about the kicking it can expect there.

Internationally, there will be the continuance of existing conflicts and new conflicts exploding around the planet. These will likely be driven by the thirst for resources and profit made by carious capitalist entities. The race for hegemony in various spheres of the globe will continue.

Attacks on free speech and the imposition of more and more censorship will gain ground everywhere because capitalism can’t lose control of the peasants revolting.

What will be the response when, in twelve months time, the question is posed, what did 2026 ever do for us? Hopefully the answer may surprise us especially those who view its beginning through cynical and jaundiced eyes.

But without eschewing a plethora of cliches, each of which proves the point that nothing happens with effort, and whether you believe that making new year resolutions are helpful, the goal, the focus, the point has to be ‘make capitalism history.’ Let’s rid ourselves of capitalism before capitalism rids itself of all of us.