Economics and the powerful

The recent gathering of the power elite at Davos served only to reaffirm what we already knew - that too much is never enough for the rich and powerful.

Their intellectual and moral bankruptcy is exposed by their unoriginal, pompous statements about how "there's no alternative" to neoliberal austerity.

A new report by Oxfam shows that in 2012 the richest 100 billionaires added a colossal £150 billion net income to their existing wealth.

Between 1983 and 2002 sales at FTSE 100 businesses rose by an average of 2.7 per cent a year, slightly less than the growth of the economy.

FTSE company directors, on the other hand, filled their boots with their pay soaring 27 per cent a year above inflation, every year.

This has meant the richest 1 per cent now control more than 40 per cent of the world's wealth, and their share is increasing.

New research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) Piecing Together the Productivity Puzzles shows that low real wages have been encouraged by more robust labour supply - in other words the creation of mass unemployment.

Profits as a share of GDP in Europe and the US are at record highs and executive pay has gone beyond exorbitant.

At the same time real wages for workers are falling or stagnating, justified by an economic elite in Davos as the natural consequence of "structural adjustment."

No structural adjustment for Tony Blair, royal families, oligarchs and other Davos grandees, though.

David Harvey in his illuminating tract A Brief History of Neoliberalism reveals that wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top 1 per cent but to the top 10th of the top 1 per cent.

In the United States, for example, the upper 0.1 per cent has already regained the position it held in 1918.

The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to supposedly free us from the tyranny of the state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and welfare, deregulation, the breaking of unions - just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink.

Trade unions and activists need an antidote and corrective to Davos strategy and propaganda.

We urgently need a new manifesto for radical change, one that understands that neoliberalism is quintessentially a project to restore class dominance to the ultra-rich who saw their interests threatened by the ascent of working-class organisations and social democratic or socialist governments post-1945.

Although neoliberalism has proved ineffective as an engine for economic growth, it has succeeded in rapidly shifting wealth from workers to capital and from poorer to richer countries.

This process also undermined local, national and international institutions and crushed narratives that promoted fairer distributive measures.

Few remain blind to the massive transfer of public wealth into a few private hands.

There is a shared public understanding that neoliberalism has exacerbated inequality and sent unemployment levels soaring and debt spiralling while poverty rapidly expands.

However, other destructive aspects of this rapacious ideology are carefully hidden from the public gaze even though they drill deep into the institutions of civil, economic and political society. Many are unaware of the insidious penetration of corporate culture and values into all forms of democratic life.

Davos reminds us that it's a global phenomenon.

We are witnessing the systemic eradication of non-commercialised public spheres and institutions such as state schools, state health care, independent bookshops, public libraries and swimming pools.

All these social components are essential to meaningful participatory democracy as they bind individuals to communities and wider society, providing a robust mechanism for participation in public policy and democratic activism.

Neoliberalism is the most dangerous ideology infecting our society and politics today.

We must abandon the neoliberal economic and political logic of endlessly tweaking this failed system.

Unfortunately, most mainstream politicians are trapped in the erroneous belief that sooner or later recovery will somehow occur and that the neoliberal capitalist system - underpinned by profit maximisation - will be restored in full.

However the neoliberal agenda is so dominant and so creative that it can instil damaging habits of thought among trade unionists.

Trade unionists negotiate under such difficult conditions that it is easy to forget that we should not be here in the first place. It is often easiest to simply accept the least worst option.

A commonly heard expression of this mentality is the idea that we must vote Labour because they are not as bad as the Tories.

To get out of this current dilemma a new attitude must blossom, one of critically questioning all the options available and seeing beyond them all to a new and different future.

We should be more confident. An alternative world really is possible. It simply doesn't have to be like this. It's time to reject the second best.

Trade unions have produced brilliant materials and evidence to dispel the idea that only more misery would get the economy out of a tailspin.

But it's difficult for unions to get this message across so that it takes hold of the minds of workers. They need the confidence to lead to the kind of action that would, for example, save our pay, pensions and jobs.

So it's important to deliver materials that offer a concise account of why the coalition's neoliberal programme is so very wrong.

It is nothing more than an ideologically driven form of theft on behalf of the 1 per cent who rule the roost through a complex network of essentially criminal activities.

Trade unions need to adopt a long-term strategy of resistance. Instead of jumping from issue to issue or rising up only to sink back down, we need to build real solidarity by raising the political consciousness of members.

We need to be organising for a longer struggle, finding ways to create spaces for debate and change within a commitment to collective solutions.

There seems to be a failure of imagination in the trade union movement, an inability to see how other activists - Occupy, UK Uncut etc - are developing not just new tactics but also new approaches to organising and campaigning.

Adapting to an environment where constant change ensures that everything remains the same, they approach actions and demonstrations as components of a larger struggle requiring critical research, policy discussion, analysis and planning as well as the training and education of activists, organisers and, importantly, leaders.

The General Federation of Trade Unions is one interesting example of the deepening of the political education approach by unions and this is reflected in its exciting new range of 2013 courses.

The Centre For Labour and Social Studies (Class) publications and the PCS booklet series support this approach.

GFTU general secretary Doug Nicholls rightly argues: "It's about education - education in its fullest sense involves liberating our minds and developing new ways of seeing the world in order to change it.

"Trade union education has to help us understand techniques of negotiation, enhance our confidence and skill levels and engage us in knowledge. But this is simply not enough these days."

Cameron's coalition and the Davos cabal send their children off at six years old to prep school, then to misnamed "public" schools, then off to elite universities.

They study politics, philosophy, economics and above all they learn how to wield power over us.

The elite have think tanks in abundance and always seem to give senior managers plenty of time off to learn how to try to outmanoeuvre workers.

They also have most employment law on their side and of course the media.

To empower our members and get increased activism we need to deliver courses and events that allow members to step out of the daily grind and consider the bigger issues - or, as Naomi Klein powerfully argues, "information is shock resistance, arm yourself."

• Enrico Tortolano will be tutoring on GFTU 2013 courses. For a full list of courses visit www.gftu.org/content/3/1/13/) or contact Judith Jackson judith@gftu.org.uk