Marxism, Zionism and the National Question - Opposition To Immigration Controls and The National Question (1/2)

Marxism, Zionism and the National Question

Opposition To Immigration Controls and The National Question (1/2)

The Third Campist Al Glotzer, in adopting the reactionary stance of Zionism, attacked the position of Mandel, in relation to Jewish immigration to Palestine, during the period when Zionists were attempting to construct a Jewish state there. Mandel argued against immigration controls in general, and for Jews to have the right to migrate anywhere, unrestricted, other than to Palestine. The reason is that this specific migration was intended as an organised migration from above, for the specific purpose of overwhelming the indigenous Palestinian population. It was taking place alongside an armed terror campaign conducted by Zionists, both against British imperialism and against the indigenous Palestinian population. It was an invasion and colonisation. Notably, however, those that made this argument for unrestricted Jewish migration to Palestine, when the situation was reversed, argued against unrestricted Palestinian migration back to Israel, i.e. against a right to return!

Glotzer wrote,

“Some of our readers may be aware that one of the main differences between us and the official Fourth International and the SWP is on the question of the right of the Jews to free immigration to Palestine. In advocating the right of free immigration to all countries, and in the first place to the United States, we advocate, at the same time, that democratic right for Palestine. The Fourth International and its adherents, however, are in favour of free immigration of Jews to all countries, the United States, Great Britain, France, Australia, etc., but ... not to Palestine — the one country to which they want to go! Mandel’s article seeks to give the theoretical and historical justification for this obviously contradictory position.”

( The Jewish problem After Hitler)

The present day Third Campist advocates of Zionism, by contrast, argue for unrestricted free migration, except when it comes to the right of Palestinians to free migration back to the lands that were dispossessed from them in Palestine!

In his Letter to the Secretary of the Socialist Propaganda League 1915, Lenin notes,

“In our struggle for true internationalism & against “jingo-socialism” we always quote in our press the example of the opportunist leaders of the S.P. in America, who are in favour of restrictions of the immigration of Chinese and Japanese workers (especially after the Congress of Stuttgart, 1907, & against the decisions of Stuttgart). We think that one can not be internationalist & be at the same time in favour of such restrictions. And we assert that Socialists in America, especially English Socialists, belonging to the ruling, and oppressing nation, who are not against any restrictions of immigration, against the possession of colonies (Hawaii) and for the entire freedom of colonies, that such Socialists are in reality jingoes.”

Again, as with the national question, in general, it is necessary to consider the question of immigration controls concretely. Why do Marxists oppose immigration controls? For the reason Lenin describes, here. That is, in developed capitalist economies, immigration controls amount only to another form of the chauvinistic demand of defence of the fatherland, which, in these cases, means defence of an established capitalist state, at the expense of other workers, and other states. For a Marxist, the principle is that the main enemy is at home, and the struggle is against that enemy, not other states, or foreign workers. This is the basis of revolutionary defeatism, and so it is not possible to be a revolutionary defeatist, and simultaneously in favour of defence of the fatherland, and hence its borders, particularly in peacetime! In a developed capitalist state, immigration controls – like import controls – are simply a means of blaming foreign workers, or foreign states for the problems of the capitalist economy in the given state.

Liberals argue for immigration controls in such states precisely on that basis, of a defence of the capitalist fatherland, and blaming foreigners for its ills. Reactionary nationalists will do so openly, whilst the liberal will try to clothe the reactionary sentiment in warm words about seeking only non-racist immigration controls, and fairness and so on. Left nationalists will also make similar arguments including the extension of this racist argument into the demand for import controls. They will base these two related demands on the idea that the workers of any country have shared interests with the capitalists of that country to develop its industry and so on – the basic line of argument simply being an extension of the theory of building Socialism In One Country – and will argue that immigration controls prevent an increase in the supply of labour so causing wages to rise and so on.

Marxists, of course, can have no truck with such arguments for the reason that Lenin describes above. But, does this mean that there are no conditions in which Marxists can support immigration controls, and does this mean that any state that does impose immigration controls, thereby, disqualifies itself as a state, and a right to self-determination?

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Deaths WITH Covid v Deaths FROM Covid

I came across an interesting piece of data from the ONS, yesterday, which illustrates the point I have made previously about the difference in the number of COVID deaths reported in the media, which is actually only deaths of people WITH Covid, as against the actual number of deaths of people FROM Covid.

The figure reported in the media is meaningless.  It includes anyone who dies, from whatever actual cause, including being hit by a bus, within 28 days of having had a positive COVID test.  In other words, the person may have been perfectly healthy, despite having been infected with COVID.  They may even have acquired immunity naturally as a result of being infected, and no longer have been suffering from Covid, but went out to do some training for a marathon and got run over by a bus.  Not many such cases, its true, but it illustrates how meaningless the data is.  Far more likely are thousands of people who die from heart attacks or other causes, conditions they had before contracting the virus.

Even more likely, given that more than 90% of people in those figures are people over 60, and the majority of them over 80, is that they died from a range of illnesses that afflict the elderly from heart disease to dementia, and that COVID was just a contributing factor, in the same way that in the past, many elderly people who were dying, came down with a chest infection, pneumonia.

Well, the data I came across, yesterday, enables us to quantify this distinction between those dying WITH Covid, and those dying FROM Covid.  It isn't data you would come across in the general media, and was the result of a Freedom of Information request made to the ONS back in November.  The request asked for a breakdown of deaths by age, the details of which I have given several times in previous posts, but it also asked how many of the deaths were due to COVID as against merely people who had died who were recorded as having COVID.

The ONS response is provided here.

In it the ONS, provides the data for England and Wales, including the links to the source data.  At the time of the reply on 30th November 2020, the ONS reports a total of 46,000 Covid related deaths.  However, the figure for deaths due to COVID, i.e. where COVID is the only thing on the death certificate, with no previous illnesses listed as the underlying cause of death, is just 4476!  That is less than 10% of the actual number of deaths reported as COVID related.

Now, it would be wrong to take this figure purely at face value too - though less wrong than the continual presentation of the inflated figure for COVID deaths put put out by the media incessantly - because, undoubtedly for some of these deaths, although the deceased may have had some terminal condition, which meant they were dying, they may have lived for some months longer had they also not been infected with COVID, so that it could at the least be seen as a contributory cause of death, and even the immediate cause of death.  That is why the failure of the NHS to protect the elderly, and those with serious conditions, which led to them becoming infected, whilst in its care, has been such a scandal.

But, what is apparent from this figure is that the actual number of deaths due to COVID is only a fraction of the headline figure, which has been used to convey the idea that COVID represents an existential threat to society, when, in fact, it is no such thing, though it does represent a serious threat to those over 60, and those with serious medical conditions.  The question then is why the NHS and the state has not protected that actual section of the population that was at serious risk, and instead has focussed on closing down large sections of society who were never at any serious risk, and has acted to criminalise them.  Why has it inflicted such unnecessary economic damage on society by these lockouts, which have disproportionately impacted the young, the section of society at the very least risk from COVID?

If we take the data provided above, then looking at the current headline figure of deaths of around 125,000, we would expect the actual number of deaths from COVID, as against WITH Covid, to be around 12,500, which is about the same as the average number of deaths each year from flu, and less than the 18,000 flu deaths in the UK in 2017.  It is significantly less than the population adjusted figure for flu deaths from the Honk Kong Flu in 1968.  So why is COVID being presented as some kind of existential threat to society, when in fact, the fata show it to be nothing of the kind?

The fact that the data is being used to present a picture that the actual facts do not support is fuelling the conspiracy nuts of the far-right, as seen by recent demonstrations, and so on.  But, the lunacy of the left is playing into their hands, by itself going along with the presentation of COVID as being an existential threat, and itself demanding that society be closed down, that workers be laid off, that protests and other social gatherings be banned and so on.

The worst affected sections of society rom the lockouts are the youth, and they are the ones most unaffected by the virus.  After a year of being banged up, and seeing their jobs go, seeing their ability to protest racist attacks by cops, and so on undermined, its inevitable that eruptions like that in Bristol yesterday are going to happen on a more frequent and larger basis.  Of course, the social-democrats, like Labour's Mayor in Bristol will not want to upset polite society, and will treat such eruptions differently to their response to the breaking up of the Sarah Everard vigil, as though the virus itself is supposed to be able to distinguish between one social gathering and another.  But, the Left itself, in large part, has lined up with the forces of reaction in relation to COVID, by peddling the myth of an existential threat, and demanding the harshest of measures.  Its no wonder that that large sections of the youth are then being driven into the hands of the conspiracists and the fascists.

The actual causes of death given in the ONS data is listed as follows:-

The Economic Content of Narodism, Chapter 4 - Part 1

Chapter 4 How Mr. Struve Explains Some Features of Russia’s Post-Reform Economy

“The last (sixth) chapter of Mr. Struve’s book is devoted to the most important problem, that of Russia’s economic development. Its theoretical contents are divided up into the following sections: 1) over-population in agricultural Russia, its character and causes; 2) the differentiation of the peasantry, its significance and causes; 3) the part played by industrial capitalism in ruining the peasantry; 4) private-landowner farming; the character of its development, and 5) the problem of markets for Russian capitalism.” (p 451) 

Before examining each of these, Lenin begins by looking at what Struve says in relation to the Reform. Struve criticises the Narodniks “idealistic” understanding of the Reform. The basis of the Reform, according to Struve, is the need of the state to raise productivity. This is the point made by Marx and Engels on the consequences for Russia of its defeat in the Crimean War. The other thing Struve points to is land redemption, and pressure “from below”. 

“It is a pity the author did not make his legitimate protest a thorough one.” (p 451) 

The Narodniks idealist explanation of the Reform is the growth of “humane” and “emancipatory” ideas in “society”. This is typical of the subjectivist sociology of the Narodniks, as discussed earlier, which does not address the question of what causes these “humane” and “emancipatory” ideas to develop. The fact is that the development of these ideas was inseparable from the rise in the social importance of the bourgeoisie. The measures introduced were all bourgeois measures, designed to further the development of the bourgeoisie and capitalist productive relations. That the bourgeoisie attaches to these reforms words suggesting that it is solely about the emancipation of the whole of society, about introducing greater civilisation and humane relations, for the whole of society, is nothing new, and the bourgeoisie is unable to conceive of anything other than its interests being simultaneously the interests of “society”. 

A materialist insists upon examining the actual content of the measures implemented, rather than looking solely at the words used to justify the Reform. The content was that some peasants simply lost the land they cultivated, but those that retained land were not gifted it. They had to “redeem” it, and they had to redeem it by buying it at prices around twice its market price. 

“Not only here in Russia, but also in the West, such reforms were invested with theories about “freedom” and “equality,” and it has already been shown in Capital that it was commodity production that provided the basis for the ideas of freedom and equality. At any rate, however complicated the bureaucratic machine that put the Reform into effect in Russia, however apparently distant it was from the bourgeoisie themselves, it remains an undoubted fact that only the bourgeois system could develop on the basis of such a reform.” (p 452) 

Lenin emphasises “apparently” distant, because, as described earlier, the foundation of the class nature of the state is not only that a given social class assumes dominance, and its form of property, and the ideas arising from it, form the ruling ideas upon which the fate of the state depends, but the personification of this is that the children of the ruling class take on the roles of teachers, professors, judges, civil servants, and so on, so that the state is directly imbued with these ideas, and tied to the ruling class by a thousand invisible threads. 

Its wrong, Struve says, to compare the process in Russia with that in Western Europe, on the grounds that, in Western Europe, the peasants were emancipated without land, whereas, in Russia, they were emancipated with land. Lenin says that “in a general form” this is correct, but only in a general form. It was undoubtedly the case, Lenin says, that, in Western Europe, the peasants were deprived of their land by legislation, such as the English Enclosure Acts. That was true wherever a peasant reform took place, but it is not universally true that this resulted in all the peasants being deprived of land. Some redeemed their land; some were able to rent or buy additional land; some former petty producers, who made money as part of a growing urban bourgeoisie, bought land, either to become capitalist farmers themselves or as rent farmers, renting out the land to capitalist farmers. In other words, there was a differentiation of the peasants and petty producers into a bourgeoisie and proletariat, and the same thing was happening in Russia. 

“Only the bourgeoisie are capable of hiding the fact of redemption and of asserting that the “emancipation of the peasants with land made a tabula rasa of Russia”” (p 452) 

As Lenin notes, 

“To speak the truth one should say: make it possible for part of the peasants to redeem part of their allotment land from the landlords at double the proper price. And even the words “make it possible” are no good, because the peasant who refused such “provision of an allotment” was faced with the threat of a flogging at the Volost Administration offices.” (Note **, p 452)

Back To Chapter 3

Forward To Part 2

Marxism, Zionism and the National Question - Three Time Periods (3/3)

Marxism, Zionism and the National Question

Three Time Periods (3/3)

In the era and dominance of capitalism, and of capitalist nation states, the idea that what should determine the attitude of Marxists is those conditions that existed at the time of its formation, out of feudalism, is reactionary nonsense. The whole point of the theory of historical materialism is that Marxists identify the path of social development determined by the changes in material conditions, and primarily the development o the productive forces, and social relations arising from them. Unlike the idealist, and the subjectivist driven by moral imperatives, the Marxist, having identified those processes, seeks to encourage their free development, and does so as a partisan of the progressive element within them, i.e. of the working-class. The idea, under these conditions, that every nation should have its own state is also reactionary and not at all the same thing as saying that each nation has an abstract right to such a state. It means dividing workers on national grounds, in a time when all of industrial development is driving towards their unification across national borders.

One of the means by which this was done was through the demand for cultural national autonomy, by which the different nations within a state would have control over things like their own education, and so on, thereby, undermining the existence of common standards across the state. Lenin discusses it in “Corrupting The Workers With Refined Nationalism”. A modern equivalent is things like faith schools, or demands for recognition of Sharia Law, and so on. On a wider basis, it is represented by the introduction of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which, instead of reducing separatist tendencies merely exacerbated them.

Devolution or cultural national autonomy is not the same thing as regional autonomy, by which regional administrative areas are given widespread autonomy, as to how to operate, given the specific conditions in that region, but within the confines of single rules, regulations and so on established at a state level, which are then merely implemented.

“The class-conscious workers fight hard against every kind of nationalism, both the crude, violent, Black-Hundred nationalism, and that most refined nationalism which preaches the equality of nations together with ... the splitting up of the workers’ cause, the workers’ organisations and the working-class movement according to nationality. Unlike all the varieties of the nationalist bourgeoisie, the class conscious workers, carrying out the decisions of the recent (summer 1913) conference of the Marxists, stand, not only for the most complete, consistent and fully applied equality of nations and languages, but also for the amalgamation of the workers of the different nationalities in united proletarian organisations of every kind.”

“To the bourgeoisie, however, the demand for national equality very often amounts in practice to advocating national exclusiveness and chauvinism; they very often couple it with advocacy of the division and estrangement of nations. This is absolutely incompatible with proletarian internationalism, which advocates, not only closer relations between nations, but the amalgamation of the workers of all nationalities in a given state in united proletarian organisations.”

In contrast to this Marxist approach Zionism promotes this idea of cultural autonomy, separation and exclusivity to its highest degree in the creation of a separate and exclusivist Jewish state, and the violent separation of Jewish workers from the rest of the working-class in that process.

In Socialism and War  Lenin notes, in relation to self-determination, in the context of seeking to create larger, multinational federations of states,

“The championing of this right, far from encouraging the formation of small states, leads, on the contrary, to the freer, fearless and therefore wider and more widespread formation of very big states and federations of states, which are more beneficial for the masses and more fully in keeping with economic development.

The Socialists of oppressed nations must, in their turn, unfailingly fight for the complete (including organisational) unity of the workers of the oppressed and oppressing nationalities. The idea of the juridical separation of one nation from another (so-called “cultural-national autonomy” advocated by Bauer and Renner) is reactionary.”

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Northern Soul Classics - That's The Way - The "Q"

 

Friday Night Disco - Rock The Boat - Hues Corporation

 

Greensill, Borrowing, Bail-Outs and Interest Rates

The media, particularly the financial media, has ben full of reports in the last few days of the collapse of Greensill Capital, and in the last 24 hours, of David Cameron's lobbying for it, to obtain COVID loans. What this illustrates is just a small glimpse of the corner of a rug under which a whole mountain of dust has been swept, and which is now about to escape into the air, choking everything in sight.

The huge amounts of liquidity pumped into circulation, over the last 30 years, has created a never ending series of examples of misallocations of capital. The most obvious one is one that has been deliberately fostered. That is the allocation of vast amounts of potential money-capital for the purchase of speculative rather than productive assets. In other words, the profits from companies, instead of being used for actual investment, the purchase of additional buildings, machinery, labour-power and so on, has been used just to buy existing shares in companies, or bonds, thereby inflating their prices, and the paper wealth, or fictitious capital, of those that own them. As John Weeks pointed out some time ago, read the financial press, or watch the financial media, and you will be told that this activity, which is nothing more than the same kind of gambling as betting on a horse race, or buying scratch card, is “investing”. It isn't, its a zero sum game, where some win the bets, and others lose.

At least, that is the case in the long-term. In the short-term – and that short-term has now lasted a very long time – the big players in the casino have had their losses refunded to them, and more besides, in order to keep gambling. Whenever asset prices have crashed, central banks have simply bailed out the gamblers by printing money tokens, and using them to buy assets to reflate the price. They have increasingly had to wreck the real economy, in order to do that, which simply makes the problem worse in the longer-term. The long-term reality can't be changed, only deferred, and, as I wrote in my book, in 2014, the longer the deferral the larger will be the crash, when it comes.

What government imposed lockouts and lock downs have now done is to make the conditions for that crash imminent. Cameron lobbied for lock down loans for Greensill, but it is governments that have made those loans available in the first place, as they have decided that its no longer necessary for anyone to undertake labour to produce new value, as it can instead be created by central banks simply “printing money”. Marx long ago demonstrated that any such proposal, as had been put forward by John Law and the Pereire Brothers, is simply "fraud".  Banks were sensible enough not to volunteer to hand over their own money to businesses in the near certain knowledge that, in conditions of lock downs, those businesses would not pay them back. But, when governments said that they would underwrite the loans, in the same way that central banks, over the last thirty years, have underwritten gambling on asset prices, the banks obviously took them up on the offer.

But, the consequence is inevitable. The Billions of pounds lent under these lock down loans will never be repaid, and so the state will have to pick up the tab, just as it has picked up the tab on all of the other debt it has created as a result of cratering the economy via the imposition of lock downs and lockouts. As I have pointed out in many previous posts, when the lockouts end, and people start to spend – its reported that there is £50 billion, in Britain alone, waiting to be spent just on holidays by consumers – firms, whose profits and working-capital has disappeared, will have to borrow to finance the expansion they will undertake to meet this rise in demand for their goods and services.

A recent story in City-AM, illustrates the point. Based upon research by Insider Pro, it reports that UK manufacturing firms, due to a combination of falling profits and revenues, and increased costs, now need to raise an average of £1.7m per firm. But the case with Greensill also shows another point here. Greensill provided loans amounting to £400 million under the lockdown loans scheme introduced by the government. In fact, it appears that loans to the extent of 8 times what should have been allowed were made, according to the Sunday Times. The state, meaning the taxpayer, backs these loans to the extent of 80%. The gamble undertaken by Gupta and Greensill, then turns into a gamble by us the taxpayers, who never had any say in the matter, and though we pick up the tab, would never have received any of the rewards. This is just a repetition of the corporate welfarism seen in 2008, used to bail out the rich after they made reckless gambles that turned out to be losing bets. At least all the mugs ploughing their hard earned savings into gambles on Bitcoin, or Gamestop and so on, are knowingly throwing their own money away in their own gambling, making the new casino owners at Robin Hood, or E-Toro rich, in the same way that gamblers have made William Hill and others rich in the past.

Gupta, of course, has been praised as a saviour of the British economy in the last few years, as he bought out the collapsing British steel industry, again having been given taxpayers money as an incentive to do so. Now that industry, increasingly under pressure due to the undermining of the UK economy as a result of Brexit, will be under the cosh again. The government, already seeing UK exports decimated due to Brexit, and keen to hang on to the votes in those “red wall” seats, in which these old industries tend to be concentrated, will no doubt be led to pour even more billions of pounds into propping them up, and encouraging some other big time gambler to take them over for a few years, just as in the past, they paid such gamblers to take on BL an other companies.

Spending billions on those bail-outs is just the start, because many of the other, actually viable, large businesses that have been crucified as a result of the government imposed lock-outs also need working-capital running into tens of billions of pounds. The state will end up stumping up for them too, rather than see the economy disappear completely down the pan. The current levels of borrowing by the state are being reported as “historic”, but compared to where that borrowing is going in the year ahead to cover all these bail-outs, to cover its underwriting of all the loans, to cover its loss of tax revenues and increased payments for welfare and so on, the current level is nothing. This is similar again to what happened in 2010 in Ireland, when the initial level of bail-out required for the Irish Banks was deliberately stated at only a fraction of what it was known it was going to be, as was described in a series of posts on the Irish Marxism blog.

But, its not just the state that is going to be engaged in this huge borrowing. As the City-AM report indicates, manufacturing firms are already known to need to raise billions in working-capital. The larger firms can raise money by issuing bonds, or additional shares. Some have already done so, reversing a trend over the last 20 years, during which the buy back of shares, to inflate their prices, was much more prevalent than new share issues. The issuing of new shares and bonds, of itself, reduces their price, as supply rises relative to demand. The ending of large scale share buybacks, has the same effect, by reducing demand for shares. That puts pressure on asset prices, at a time when the state is in no position to bail them out. Central banks continue to print money tokens, but now that is going to finance additional consumption, which is causing global inflation to rise, and leading to an even greater demand for working-capital, as firms face higher costs due to that inflation. As I wrote recently, in the last six months, prices of primary products have risen by around 50%, and all of this additional borrowing, along with rising inflation is causing global interest rates to rise.

The US 10 Year Treasury Yield has quadrupled in the last six months; the 10 Year UK Gilt Yield has risen by around 9 times. But, this is just the start. So far, many households have been cushioned. Furlough payments, at a time when large areas of consumption have been prevented, means that many households have been able to pay down some of their most expensive debt, for example, credit card debt. In reality, the debt hasn't gone away, its just been transferred to the state, reversing what has happened previously when the state reduced its debt by transferring it to households. But, when the lockouts end, and people are able to consume as they please, there seems little doubt that consumption is going to splurge. Its already been seen whenever lockouts have been eased. No longer in receipt of furlough payments, people will again resort to credit cards to fund much of that increased consumption, so that debt will again rise sharply.

Many small firms no longer in receipt of state support will go bust, or lay off workers. Other firms seeing a sharp rise in demand will need to take on additional workers. Both in different ways leading to increased borrowing, the first to cover a loss of income, the second to finance additional productive investment. So, the sharp rise in global interest rates seen over the last six months is going to continue and to intensify. A bear market is said to exist when the price of a class of asset falls by at least 20%. That is already the case with global bonds, as Ray Dalio at the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates has pointed out.

Of course, you can see why some people would buy government bonds. On the one hand, central banks, for the last 30 years have underpinned their price, making them a one-way bet, which is why we do have negative yields on them. But, look at some of the alternatives available to most people. If you have even just several thousand pounds of savings, you can't put it all into buying baked beans, to hedge against the inevitable rise in inflation that has started, and that further central bank printing of money tokens will lead to. You could buy gold, but you have to store it, and a large part of the gold price already contains an element of speculative price, though, as I wrote at Christmas, I expect the coming inflation and money flowing out of other speculative assets to raise the price to around $3,000 an ounce. You could buy a house, but house prices are themselves astronomically inflated, as a result of state sponsored speculation over the last thirty years. By all historic metrics, house prices, in Britain, are about four times what they should be meaning that, sooner or later, either by a big crash, a slow deflation relative to other prices, or a combination of the two, they will fall by around 80%, as part of a process of mean reversion.  Do you really want to spend £200,000 on a house at this moment, and see it fall in price to only £40,000, and not recover in your lifetime, whilst you are left with the mortgage debt and ever rising interest on it?

Or take the returns that you can get on savings deposits. Most banks and building societies pay you essentially nothing on your savings. The state's savings bank, National Savings and Investments is no better. It has sequentially reduced its interest rates to savers over the last year, even though, for the last six months, global interest rates have been rising. The yield on the US Ten Year is already at 1.7%, and seems likely to go above 2% in the next couple of weeks. That looks great compared to 0.001% on some of these other savings. Of course, if you buy a US 10 Year, and see yields rising fast, you might want to sell it, to move your money elsewhere. But, then the rising yields are the other side to falling bond prices, so that, to get your money out, means taking a large capital loss, which is Dalio's point. Its why the smart money is already getting out of those bonds before the deluge. You could get the face value of the bond back by holding it to maturity, but that means ten years, and who knows what conditions might exist then.

One answer is to buy 2 Year Bonds, so that you don't have your money tied up for so long, but the problem here is that with global inflation rising sharply, and set to rise even faster as economies come out of lockouts, and central banks continue to flood them with funny money, the real value of the money you get back will have been depreciated. The inflation adjusted return will be much less, and potentially zero. Even with just 5-10% inflation, you end up with a negative total return.  That's one reason that there has been a big rise in demand for inflation protected bonds or TIPS.

For the majority of people, however, what all this means is that there are no good options. The best option for most people is probably if you have cash hold on to it, because although you will get little in interest on it, that is going to change, and at least with cash, unless we get hyperinflation in the very near future, you will not suffer the kind of dramatic capital loss that is coming the way of people with money in shares, bonds, houses and other such speculative assets. After all, if an increasing number of people who are in a position to do so, move their savings out of bank deposits, out of NS&I, and so on, to buy inflation protected bonds, the banks and the state, as they are faced with rising demand for borrowing, will need to start raising their own deposit rates too.