By Viviane Forrester, 1999, Polity Press £9-99
Reviewed by
Mark Wainwright
THE INVESTMENT bank, Merrill Lynch, reported last
May that the world's six million millionaires are
now 'worth' - that is, they have got their hands on
- around $21,600 billion (£13,320bn). This makes
them $2,000 billion richer than was previously thought.
Apparently they had managed to 'shrug off' the effects
of the world financial turmoil that unfolded in 1997/98:
'The rich were, in general, able to survive the crisis
with their wealth intact'. The corollary of this,
of course, is that others, further down the league,
have paid the price.
This is the central point of Viviane Forrester's
book: the consequences of the market economy have
'such inattention that the inattention itself is
not even noticed'. In other words, a blind eye is being
turned to the inequalities created by the capitalist
system. She adds that, 'achieving general indifference
is more a victory for the system than gaining partial
support'. Her contention being that what is more
important to the representatives of capital is ensuring
that people do not question or care about what is going
on, rather than trying to win positive endorsement
for the way the system is run from the majority of the
population.
Whereas Will Hutton's, The State We're In, is a reasoned,
ammo-loaded engagement of small-arms fire - with
the occasional missile launched - Forrester's is
more of a one-off explosion. Without cataloguing
a mass of facts and figures, she rages against 'a defunct
and bankrupt system'. She says 'bankrupt' because
of the 'casino betting' at the heart of financial
investment. For example, the Wall Street index declined
in 1996 because of the 'bad news' that unemployment
had fallen: 'How many politicians and managing directors
swear that they are to create employment and boast
they are cutting jobs all within the same speech?'