Socialist on BBC Radio 4 Feedback

[ALB]

Following failure to get on the phone-in on Rethinking things after the experience of the lockdown. in frustration a comrade wrote to the BBC Radio 4 Feedback programme and, to her surprise, got a response asking her to record her message for them so that it could be used for the coming programme (this Friday at 4.30 and Sunday at 8.00). It is also on the Discord site on the ‘Useful Links’ page, so it can also be heard there.

[rodshaw]

I recorded and listened to the programme but didn’t hear any socialist message.

[ALB]

It was the last comment (I think) from someone called Joy. Here’s what she originally sent. All that got through was a comment that the re-think wasn’t radical enough without being able to go on to say what a radical rethink would be.

“There’s never been a better time to ‘rethink’, but the rethinking has got to be truly radical. It has taken a blip in capitalism for millions of people worldwide to be thrown on the scrapheap and be plunged into despair, for people who never thought it would be possible to have to resort to foodbanks in this country and to face starvation elsewhere. That’s how precarious capitalism is for nearly all of us with its imperative to sell, sell, sell, to consume, consume, consume. Once something happens to prevent that, all hell breaks loose. But, if we don’t do something significant now, the regime we live under will just carry on and all the well meaning attempts to make things better – for example the green movement, the feminist movement, the BLM movement – will just be co-opted by the system, absorbed into it and there won’t be that fundamental change that’s necessary. By fundamental change I mean looking beyond producing things for profit and instead producing for need via a collective, voluntary effort by humanity as a whole. In that sense the Covid crisis has pointed the way. It’s shown that we can get together collectively and help one another in a constructive organized way. The lesson we need to take from this is that we can and have to organise society in just this way. It’s the need we all have to make money to survive that has caused Covid-19 and that, even without any virus crisis, causes wars and poverty. If we don’t move to a rational, resource-based organisation of society where we are all economically equal, we can ‘rethink’ till we’re blue in the face, but it will be the same old same old.”

[rodshaw]

Ah well, at least whoever edited it down will have heard the full message. We can’t really hope for anything to get through when they cut each contribution down to about 5 seconds.

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