We don't micro-credit it

Glasgow and surrounding parts of western Scotland have some of the worst pockets of poverty in Britain. Life expectancy is below the national average and some families have been on welfare for three or four generations.

Mohamed Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winning economist, hopes to raise £1m ($1.56m) in coming months to open the first European branch of his Grameen Bank in Glasgow by the end of the summer. Under its business plan for Glasgow, which will be overseen by experienced managers from Bangladesh, Grameen expects to raise £3m over three years and lend an average of £1,000 to 1,500 borrowers at an interest rate of 19.8% a year.

Rushanara Ali, the Labour Party’s spokeswoman for international development, welcomed the symbolism of experts coming from a developing country to share their knowledge “If they’ve got solutions that work somewhere else, it doesn’t do us any harm to look at how we adapt them,”

Unfortunately Yunis mico-credit schemes are NOT the panacea for poverty. Thomas Dichter of the Cato Institute - “In Bangladesh, 30 years after Yunus’s invention, poverty statistics are worse than they’ve ever been, so something else is the source of the problem and micro-credit is not helping.”

And Socialist Courier asserts that the source of the problem is property, not the lack of riches. Private property and poverty are twins born of the division of society into classes. To end poverty you have to end private property and wage-slavery.

See our companion blogs related posts.

http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2010/11/yunis-and-micro-credit-myths.html http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2011/08/microfinance-fails-poor.html http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2011/05/poverty-of-micro-finance.html http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2012/03/micro-credit-bubble.html
http://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/2007/12/can-ethical-capitalism-work.html
http://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/2012/01/micro-debt-slavery.html

WHOSE LAND?

453 acres of King's Park below Stirling Castle – the last significant ancient property of the Scottish Crown not controlled by Scottish Ministers – is being sold off by the Crown Estate Commissioners for £1 million. The people of Stirling will pay for more than half the sale price to secure the site for the town's golf club, despite the public having effectively owned the land since the 12th century. Over the past years the CEC has managed the park as just another part of their commercial rural estate. In 2006, it began secret negotiations to sell Stirling Golf Club lands they already leased. Stirling Council stepped in and agreed to acquire the parkland and land at the back of the castle funded by £567,000 Stirling common good fund (60% of its reserves) and £450,000 from the golf club, which would then be granted a 175-year lease.

Andy Wightman, an authority on land-ownership in Scotland, is calling for answers from ministers and the local council. "This land is crown land. It is Scottish public land. It should be administered by Scottish ministers, as nearly all other historic castles, palaces and royal parks are. No public money should be needed to acquire control of this land, least of all the bulk of Stirling's common good fund. Why...is the Scottish Government sitting idly by while a common good fund is raided to pay for public land that already belongs to us, to be given away to a private golf club for 175 years? It is time to stop this madness."

King's Park Community Council wrote to the council: "In our opinion this is a serious mistake given that the recommendations about to be published in the Scotland Bill give every indication that Crown Estate management in Scotland will be returned to Scottish ministers."

$250 MILLION? CHICKENFEED!

The arrogance of the owning class knows no bounds. Take the case of Mitt Romney who is estimated to have a fortune worth about $250 million. "Mitt Romney's wife says she doesn't consider herself to be wealthy. In an interview Monday on Fox News, the wife of the Republican presidential front-runner, Ann Romney, was asked about criticism that her husband can seem out of touch with average Americans. .... She added: "How I measure riches is by the friends I have and the loved ones I have and the people that I care about in my life, and that's where my values are and that's where my riches are. ... Mitt Romney has drawn criticism for offhand remarks that point to the wide economic divide separating him and nearly all other Americans. ....While campaigning in Michigan, Romney referred to his wife driving "a couple of Cadillacs" as he pointed to his longstanding support of American automakers." (Washington Post, 6 March) RD

GROWING OLD DISGRACEFULLY

When workers are in employment they are often treated like the wage slaves they are, but retirement will bring no improvement to their conditions. "More than half of elderly and disabled people in care homes are being denied basic health services while staff are failing to to do enough to preserve their dignity, according to an official review. Some older people routinely have to wait up to three months for formal checks for painful conditions such as bed sores, according to figures from the health care watchdog. A quarter were not given a choice of male or female staff to help them use the lavatory and more than a third of care homes surveyed admitted delays in getting medication to residents. " (Daily Telegraph, 7 March) In times of economic crisis the owning class must look for ways to reduce overheads. An obvious sources of savings is in cutting the cost of care for old workers. RD

THE OLYMPIAN SPIRIT?

We shall shortly be hearing a lot of nationalistic rubbish from the media about the Olympian spirit and how it is better "to compete than to win" and other such nonsense, but capitalism is just not like that. "Bangladeshi workers producing sportswear for Puma, Nike and Adidas are being physically abused, a British newspaper claimed on Sunday. Bangladeshis working in factories making clothing for the brands, all three of which sponsor the Olympic Games that begin in London on July 27, reported being beaten, verbally abused and sexually harassed, The Observer said." (Himalyan, 5 March) All three companies intend to compete AND win, no matter how much their workers suffer. RD

NHS rationing

What is the value of a few precious extra months of life? It's a very difficult question to answer, but if Scottish Medicines Consortium's is to be believed then, it is not worth £2.5 million.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in Scotland, with 2700 cases diagnosed every year. It kills two men every day. There are 19,000 Scottish men currently living with the disease.

Last October, Alex Salmond, the First Minister, signed up to a charter calling for better treatment for patients.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium has denied Scottish men a drug that prolongs life. It said the cost of abiraterone at £3000 a month did not justify the health benefits – even though it can extend lives by more that three months .

In a letter to the Scottish government, sufferer John Thomson writes "It is a disgraceful decision, cruel and unjust, that abiraterone is not available simply because of cost. How do you evaluate the cost of drugs against someone’s life?...This drug not only gives men an extra few months but also some quality to those last few months...It is unfair for some people to access the drug and not others. Money should not be an issue."

AN EXPENSIVE ROUND

The owning class are very concerned about the drinking habits of the working class. The government is attempting to put through legislation that would limit cut-rate drink offers at supermarkets and pubs. It would have little effect on the following boozers. "A businessman blew £125,000 on a single bottle of the world's most expensive champagne while buying a round of drinks for more than £200,000 in a night club. The financier ordered a 30-litre double Nebuchadnezzar-size bottle of Armand de Brignac Midas bubbly along with £60,408 on other beverages for his 10-man entourage." (Daily Mail, 5 March) RD

HUNGER IN THE USA

When world hunger is mentioned it is usually assumed that the problem is peculiar to Africa or Asia, but this is not the case. "Here in the United States, growing numbers of people can't afford that most basic of necessities: food. More Americans said they struggled to buy food in 2011 than in any year since the financial crisis, according to a recent report from the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit research group. About 18.6 percent of people -- almost one out of every five -- told Gallup pollsters that they couldn't always afford to feed everyone in their family in 2011." (Huffington Post, 29 February) The USA may well be the most powerful country in the world but that doesn't stop sections of its working class suffering hunger. RD

Reading Notes

As the mining industry gets set to blow the top off Blair Mountain, archaeologists and activists join together to stop it. Archaeologists are there to record the evidence of the 'Battle of Blair Mountain' in 1921. Some 10 000 miners, marched to the courthouse in Logan to protest martial law and heavy- handed treatment of strikers. They were opposed by 3 000 volunteers under anti-union sheriff, Don Chafin. The archaeologists, from the pattern of ammunition distribution, have determined that the miners fought cleverly in guerrilla fashion, not the undisciplined mob that they were thought to be. One million rounds were fired in five days and estimates of the dead range from twenty to one hundred. Now the archaeologists have been told to pack up and get off the land by the owners, the mining company, of course. It was a fairly major battle, probably bigger than some of the small skirmishes in the War of Independence, but, unlike them, remains almost completely forgotten. Another example of the manipulation of facts and the media to deny labour history.(Archaeology magazine, Jan/Feb, 2012) John Ayers

CAPITALISM IS INTERNATIONAL

The Daily Mail has a long history of fanatical nationalism but even by its standards it went over the top with this story. "How Qatar bought Britain: They own the Shard. They own the Olympic Village. And they don't care if their Lamborghinis get clamped when they shop at Harrods (which is theirs, too)". (Daily Mail, 10 March) So how come this backward Gulf state has become so powerful? The answer is simple. In the last two years Qatar has become Britain's biggest supplier of imported liquefied natural gas. When profits are to be made the owning class are truly international. Only mis-informed workers imagine they are British. Do you know the nationality of the people who own the company you work for? RD

OCEANIC POLLUTION

Changing something as fundamental as the pH of seawater - a measurement of how acid or alkaline it is - has profound effects. Ocean acidification threatens the corals and every other species that makes its living on the reefs. "According to a new research review by paleoceanographers at Columbia University, published in Science, the oceans may be turning acid far faster than at any time in the past 300 million years. .... The authors tried to determine which past acidification events offer the best comparison to what is happening now. The closest analogies are catastrophic events, often associated with intense volcanic activity resulting in major extinctions. The difference is that those events covered thousands of years. We have acidified the oceans in a matter of decades, with no signs that we have the political will to slow, much less halt, the process." (New York Times, 9 March) With its mad drive for profits the capitalist system is destroying the oceans and all its diverse life forms. RD

REGRETTABLE FOR SOME

Modern capitalism is a complicated system but it seems it has even complicated the English language. "UK Asset Resolution (UKAR), which is in charge of running the bad loans of failed lenders Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, repossessed 8,800 properties last year, an increase of 10pc on the 7,980 the state-backed body repossessed in 2010. Richard Banks, chief executive of UKAR, said the repossessions were "regrettable" and that "multiple forbearance assistance" was given to people before their properties were seized by the organisation. "Regrettably, repossession is the final answer,"said Mr Banks. Last year, UKAR's profits increased by 145pc to £1.09bn, from £444m in 2010, enabling the "bad bank" to hand a total of £2.8bn over to the government in the form of repaid loans, interest, fees and corporation tax." (Daily Telegraph, 2 March) So let us get this straight "regrettable" can mean losing your home or an increase of 145pc in profits. Confused? We are. RD

INVISIBLE UNDER-CONSUMPTION

Whilst the owning class of capitalist society gorge themselves in every known form of over-indulgence millions of poor people suffer the horror of watching their children die from lack of food and clean water. Oxfam has recently been highlighting the latest African horror story. "The British charity said tens of thousands of people in the Sahel region of west and central Africa could die in the coming months if the international community did not distribute much needed aid immediately. The charity said western governments and aid agencies risked making the mistakes of last year in the Horn of Africa, where the famine may have been far less severe had there been a swifter response to the crisis as it developed. In parts of Chad, Mali and Niger, the malnutrition rates have exceeded 15 per cent, with more than one million children at risk of starvation." (Daily Telegraph, 9 March) RD

glasgow public meeting

8-00 pm Maryhill community central halls 304 Maryhill Road

In the red, Whyte and blue

A "large number" of players at struggling football club Rangers have agreed pay cuts of between 25% to 75% to save the jobs of non-playing staff, administrators have said. It is understood senior players like captain Steven Davis and Scotland internationals Allan McGregor, Steven Naismith and Steven Whittaker have accepted the largest wage cuts.

In a statement, joint administrator Paul Clark said: “The agreement on very substantial wage reductions and voluntary departures from the club represents a major sacrifice by the Rangers players."

Socialist Courier takes this opportunity to clarify why footballers earn so much.

Footballers at least start from the same position as the rest of us: not owning any wealth from which to obtain an unearned income, to obtain what they need to live they have to go out on to the labour market and offer their mental and physical energies for sale. Most professional footballers, working for clubs in the lower divisions or for non-league clubs, never earn anything more than the average worker.

But some, those who play for the top clubs, are paid fabulous amounts of money, by working class standards. What is their income? Is it wages? Not really. It’s more like rent. Rent is paid whenever there is a natural monopoly in something that cannot be increased, normally land, mineral deposits and other natural features that can be employed in production. The rent of land and natural resources is essentially fixed by the paying demand for it. The higher the demand, the higher the rent.

As Arsène Wenger pointed out, “you normally need special qualities to be a strong footballer”. It is these “special qualities – which are a sort of natural resource that cannot be increased – that enable the best footballers to command so high an income, but as rent rather than as the price for the mere sale of their labour power. Their income is so high because the demand for their talents is so high.

MORE BANGS FOR YOUR BUCKS

While more and more manufacturers find it difficult to increase sales of their products there is one branch of manufacture that is experiencing a boom. "Sales of weapons and services by the world's biggest arms companies have continued to rise during the downturn and now exceed $400bn (£250bn), a leading independent research body has reported. Though the increase has slowed, just 1% year-on-year in 2010, the rise in sales has been 60% in real terms since 2002, figures released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) showed. The total sales, including military services, of the top 100 arms companies, reached $ 411.1bn (£257.6bn) in 2010, Sipri said." (Guardian, 29 February) It is difficult at present to make profitable the sale of food, clothing, shelter and medicines but selling weapons of destruction has never been easier. That is capitalism for you! RD

Rangers Blues

The woes of Rangers grows by the day. The insolvency firm Duff and Phelps have set a 48-hour deadline over the sale of the club after cost-cutting talks involving slashing players' salaries to prevent redundancies broke down and are already considering the possibility of liquidation if they cannot reach a deal. They also said Rangers may not be able to fulfil their remaining SPL fixtures without the promise of new income or drastic measures to reduce costs while also confirming Rangers had no chance of competing in Europe next season as they would not be able to submit fully audited accounts by a March 31 deadline. .

Asked if Rangers was in a state to be sold, an administrators source admitted: "There's an awful lot still to be resolved. It is all about who owns what. It doesn't matter whether you are selling a house, or a football club, or a company, you have to know what you're buying."

Scottish Football Association chief executive Stewart Regan has described the prospect of Rangers going into liquidation as "a disaster...[and] the news that the club is running out of cash and may be unable to fulfil their fixtures is the final piece of news that will send Rangers fans into despair."

The popularity of football inside capitalism made it an activity much adored by workers often too unfit to play it themselves, but keen to follow the efforts of their local sporting heroes. With the development of capitalism football has just become another business opportunity. Its development more likely to be followed by financial journalists rather than football ones. Football used to be about watching the match, buying a greasy pie and a cup of bovril. But now stadiums are like shopping malls. It is a truism - if not a cliché - that football today is big business.

Every activity that capitalism touches it turns into commodities.

As Rangers football club ails, vultures circle. In a society where common and shared identity count for little when there is a quick buck to be made, it can be no surprise that football has become infested by the sort of parasites whose idea of of a pastime is making money, especially at other people's expense. The market economy creates the conditions in which they can prosper and seize control of assets that communities often mistakenly think are theirs already.

It is time to take the money out of football altogether. And that means abolishing money in all other areas of life.

We live in a world of inequality. That is a natural consequence of the workings of capitalism. Socialists want a world of equality where everybody would have an equal say in the way things are run including our local sporting associations and where there would still be football, but no bankers or stockbrokers dealing in a football club's future, that being determined solely by the players skills on the field.

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

The press have recently made great play of how a rich woman, former beauty queen Kirsty Bertarelli and her husband Swiss-Italian pharmaceutical tycoon Ernesto Bertarelli have purchased a yacht for £100 million. "Britain's richest woman may have set a new benchmark in floating status symbols with a new boat that costs £250,000 just to fill up with fuel." (Metro, 5 March) The yacht is 315 foot long - an improvement on their old 154 foot one, but it is dwarfed by Roman Abramovich's 538 foot yacht. Such reports of conspicuous consumption are circulating at a time while millions of people are starving. RD

Safe Motoring

Scottish towns and cities had the worst rates for major MoT failures in the UK last year, figures have shown. Motoring groups expressed alarm at the news, which they said suggested there were more unsafe cars on Scottish roads than elsewhere.

Dundee topped the test table for “major failures”, with 15.3 per cent of vehicles not getting an MoT certificate

Halfords Autocentres said the cost of repairs following failed tests had nearly doubled to an average of £143 compared with £82 some 18 months ago. The firm said that added up to a total bill of £1.44 billion for motorists. A survey found nearly a quarter of drivers just “keep their fingers crossed” and hope their car will pass.

Edmund King, president of the Automobile Association said: “It is of concern that a higher proportion of cars in Scotland are failing the MoT as this indicates that there are more unsafe cars on the roads in Scotland.” He said: “We have also found that 10 per cent of drivers are cutting back on servicing their cars as a result of record fuel prices at the pumps. This means that many safety faults will only be picked up at the annual test.”

Neil Greig, the Scotland-based policy and research director of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, said: “However, the garage trade as a whole has a poor reputation...Until drivers can be confident they are not being ripped off, many will continue to worry the MoT is a sales opportunity rather than a safety check.”

http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/mot-failures-show-scotland-has-most-unsafe-cars-in-uk-1-2159169

Food for thought

The way of capitalism -- Resilient Technologies of Wassau, Wisconsin, have produced, after five years work, an automobile tire that won't go flat. Great, does that mean savings for all, less social labour expended? Not likely, it was developed for army humvees to transport troops and their necessities for war!
When the Honeywell plant closed in Scarborough, 250 people, many of whom had worked there for decades, were unemployed. That was through the early months of last year. Only 18 have found work. Most are chasing jobs that pay about half the $20 an hour, plus benefits,  that they earned on the assembly line. An all too familiar tale for far too long -- time to act.
Re the environment -- we have just had an incredible year – dust storms in Arizona, drought and fires in Texas, towns like Goderich, Ontario flattened, tornadoes, massive floods, yet, according to Dailyclimate.org (The Toronto Star, Jan 15 2010) mention of climate change in newspapers dropped 20% from 2010 and 40% from 2009. It asks is it climate change fatigue? I ask, is it a deliberate attempt to put it on the back-burner. John Ayers

THE DAY TO DAY STRUGGLE

Politicians like to paint a picture of Britain as a country of happy, contented citizens going about their day to day life in a carefree manner. The reality however is much grimmer."One in five Britons are borrowing money for groceries because of the soaring cost of living, research reveals. One in four said they have had to dip into their savings to buy food or other daily essentials, while 19 per cent have gone into debt to do this. Another 10 per cent said they could envisage borrowing money to buy food in the future. The survey by consumer group Which? found that only 43 per cent of consumers feel they can afford to live on their income, while 36 per cent admitted to finding things difficult - twice the proportion who were struggling in 2006." (Daily Mail, 5 March) Having to borrow money in order to buy the groceries is hardly a recipe for contentment. RD

A JUBILEE OF NONSENSE

The British press is going insane about the sixtieth year of Queen Betty's rule. Socialists are absolutely opposed to the privileged position of emperors, kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, lords, princes, princesses and all their useless and confused children. We are also opposed to the present owning class of capitalists who lord it over us. We want world socialism wherein every human being on earth works to the best of their ability and takes according to their needs. In such a society our children will learn of the awfulness of kings, queens, dictators and capitalism. Speed that day! RD

A BLEAK FUTURE

It is the constant hope of members of the working class that no matter how bad things may seem at present the future will somehow improve their economic and social position. "A generation of pensioners face lives of poverty and loneliness, without enough money even to heat their own homes, says the first report on life for the over-60s in austerity Britain. The future for many of the country's older people is bleak, according to the Age UK report Agenda for Later Life, to be published this week. Sixteen per cent, or 1.8 million, of people over state pension age are living in poverty; 3.3 million are unable to warm their homes (an increase of more than half a million in the past two years); and 800,000 are not receiving the care they need." (Independent on Sunday, 4 March) According to the experts on the subject the future looks far from bright! RD

Food for thought

Republican presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich, got it right. He said,
"If we identify capitalism with rich guys looting companies, we're going to have a very hard time protecting it." (Toronto Star, Jan 21, 2012). If he just changed 'companies' to 'workers', he would be there.
The same article, though, shows just how dazed and confused the press is. Gingrich was defending himself against 'anti-capitalism charges'. That's because he attacked opponent, Mitt Romney for his leadership of a private equity firm known for plundering floundering companies and tossing workers into the streets and walking away with $250 million. Later on the article says, " Was Karl Marx correct? Is the boom and bust cycle about to go bust forever?" Something he never supported, of course. And this, "socialism is for tycoons and capitalism is for the rest of us." Go figure where that one came from. Dazed and confused!

The National Post, the mouthpiece of laissez faire (unfair) capitalism Reported that the capsizing of the Costa Concordia would cost the owners $90 million US not counting the impact on bookings. Shares in the cruise company are down 16% reducing the company's value by $1.09 billion. Wow, the social good we could do with that kind of value!
The Toronto star reports that 297 000 UK firms folded in 2010 – 813 everyday. On the same page it is remarked that Ekaterina Ribolovlev, 22 year-old daughter of Russian billionaire. Dymitri, bought a New York apartment for $88 million -- 10 rooms, 6 744 square feet. The
differences in human fortunes are truly staggering. Surely there will be a call for the end of this nonsense.
Well, it seems there is one alternative -- 'System D', the black market, the lemonade stands, flea market vendors, etc. About 1.8 billion people are counted in this class with an economy as large as that of the US. It's all cash and no taxes. Apparently, System D outperformed the regular economy as the recession hit. John Ayers

dirty capitalism

he Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has warned that revised targets to reduce air pollution – already postponed for up to a decade – will be breached because not enough is being done to curb vehicle exhaust emissions.

As a result, people in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and other urban areas will keep breathing in toxic gases, which can damage their lungs, blood and immune systems. According to the Institute of Occupational Medicine, air pollution kills more than 600 people a year in the Scottish central belt.

An analysis by the Sunday Herald has revealed that European Union (EU) safety limits for nitrogen dioxide, one of the main vehicle exhaust fumes, were breached at 12 sites in urban areas across Scotland in 2011. As well as the four big cities, they included Perth, Paisley, Kirkintilloch, East Kilbride and Broxburn. By far the worst pollution was measured in the centre of Glasgow on Hope Street, followed by Corstorphine in Edinburgh and Atholl Street in Perth.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/environment/revealed-traffic-fumes-safety-limits-set-to-be-breached.1330830213

Food for thought

Alan Greenspan, former golden boy of the monetarist camp until that is, the recent financial meltdown, advises us in all his glorious wisdom that capitalism is not to blame for the growing and obscene income inequality. No, what is to blame is innovation and globalization (?). As if all the capitalist class, or any of them, were great innovators or workers. George Soros reputedly made $3 billion in a recent year, that's just $1.5 million per hour on the average forty-hour week, or about two minutes to earn the average worker's wage! That's some innovation! Some hard worker!

Our local country paper out in the sticks here reported on hospital CEO's Salaries. The CEO of Toronto Sunnybrook receives $750 000 per year including bonuses like, health club membership, parking, transit passes, and car allowances up to $1 500 per month. Meanwhile the average Joe, earning some $40 000 has to pay his own way for everything. Makes sense?

Of course, as we all know, don't expect capitalism to be fair or just. That's the big mistake of the Left Wing. The locking out of the workers at the Caterpillar plant in London, Ont. shows that. The workers held a rally on January 22nd . Prime Minister Harper was invited to show his support for the workers but was a no show. London mayor, Tom Fontana said, "We need you down here to support the workers. Get your ass down here!" (Toronto Star, Jan 22, 2012) Nice sentiment but it's going to take more than that. Caterpillar just reported record profits. John Ayers

EXPLOITATION IS INTERNATIONAL

The nature of capitalism is such that many mis-informed observers imagine that it is one of imperialists exploiting underdeveloped countries, but that view is due for a re-appraisal. "It used to be that European carmakers opened plants to assemble their cars in China. Now the Chinese have turned the tables with the opening of their first factory in Bulgaria, an EU country with low labor costs and taxes. Increasingly, Chinese carmakers are setting their sights on the European and American automobile markets." (Spiegel, 22 February) Irrespective of which section of the owning class gain in this competition - one thing is true the working class remain an exploited class. RD

No worker is illegal

Phil Taylor, regional director of the UK Border Agency in Scotland and Northern Ireland, said: "We will not tolerate illegal working which threatens to damage our communities - it undercuts wages and exploits vulnerable workers."

Simple solution - make them legal. Cracking down on illegal immigration only leads to the creation of an underclass of undocumented migrants

It is all too easy to blame immigrants for causing or at least aggravating problems such as unemployment and low wages. The socialist response to this is simply to point out that poverty and social disruption are caused by capitalism. All those people seeking migration, whether legal or illegal, are simply obeying the imperative that they must try to find a place to work; and no amount of government restrictions will change that fact.

Food for thought

Surprise! The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that in Canada a small group of winners was reaping a disproportionate share of global wealth and noted that we were the country with the sharpest increase in income inequality. Wonder where these guys have been for the last one hundred and fifty years! There are other winners too. The Star article, "Yes, Virginia, You Can Contract Out Christmas reports that the owner of Emblem Florists put up a fourteen foot Christmas tree in his home on Toronto's prestigious Bridle Path and adorned it with three thousand lights at a cost of $7000. A client requested six trees done for $25 000. One has to think how many starving children could be fed with that money.

The banks, of course, are managing quite well. The Royal Bank of Canada reported fourth quarter profits of $1.6 billion, up 43% and the Bank of Nova Scotia did OK, too at $1.24 billion in profits. That's only about $15.5 million a day. Just wondering if they are among the 'small group of winners reaping a disproportionate share of global wealth?

Finally, the environment -- As expected, representatives of the Canadian and American capitalists clearly showed their disdain for the Kyoto Accord or any post-Kyoto Accord at the recent UN climate meetings in Durban. Any attempts to help poor countries of the Southern hemisphere to preserve their ecologically vital rain forests were snubbed. Presumably, any whiff of making a profit out of the resource would bring them running back. The drive for profit is merely a short term and blind point of view but thoroughly consistent with the needs of capitalism. When Canada and the US experience coastal flooding, desertification, and
massive crop losses, these people who ignore climate action might wonder if there is a better system after all. John Ayers

THE HUMAN NATURE ARGUMENT

One of the commonest arguments against world socialism is that it is against human nature. According to that view there is something intrinsically basic about human behaviour that makes it impossible for people to behave in a co-operative, social fashion. This old defense of capitalism has recently received a body blow from recent scientific research."Biological research is increasingly debunking the view of humanity as competitive, aggressive and brutish. "Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies," Frans de Waal, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Monday. New research on higher animals from primates and elephants to mice shows there is a biological basis for behavior such as co-operation, said de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. Until just 12 years ago, the common view among scientists was that humans were "nasty" at the core but had developed a veneer of morality - albeit a thin one, de Waal told scientists and journalists from some 50 countries at the conference in Vancouver, Canada. But human children - and most higher animals - are "moral" in a scientific sense, because they need to co-operate with each other to reproduce and pass on their genes, he said." (Aljazeera, 21 February) RD

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIFE

The owning class inside capitalism lead lives completely divorced from that of the working class who produce all their wealth. The multi-millionaire Ted Turner is a case in point. "Turner and his third wife Jane Fonda divorced in 2001, after 10 years of marriage, and the Oscar-winning actress has been replaced in his personal life by a complicated arrangement involving a quartet of other women. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter the media mogul and philanthropist, who owns 28 homes including 14 ranches, said a week per month for each girlfriend was "pretty much the general rule." (Daily Telegraph, 1 March) Not content with a different house every fortnight he swops wifes every week. RD

Bleak Times

One in ten working-age people in Scotland will be on the dole by the end of the year, according to a new report.

Professor Brian Ashcroft, the editor of the commentary, blames in part the UK government’s austerity measures for choking off growth, describing it as a “serious economic policy mistake” which will be remembered for “generations”.

The core problem, the commentary suggests, is that the supply of labour is rising too fast compared to the number of jobs on offer. This mis-match between people and available jobs is now “identical to the trough of the recession”.

ECONOMIC REALITY

Many workers may imagine in the present economic downturn all the news is bad, but it is not all doom and gloom. "The world's largest advertising group, WPP, has reported record profits, and says events such as the Olympics should boost business this year. Pre-tax profits were £1.008bn in 2011, up 18.5% on the previous year, with revenues topping £10bn." (BBC News, 1 March) The truth is that even in the worst economic times sections of the owning class keep coining it in. RD

COLD REALITY

The recent extremely cold spell in Eastern Europe left many workers in peril of their lives with many homeless workers dying of the cold. This was not the fate of the wealthy minority however. "Monaco-based potash tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlyev has bought the priciest piece of residential real estate in New York City, paying $88 million for a Manhattan penthouse, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Rybolovlyev purchased the apartment from a former head of Citigroup in the name of a trust for his daughter Yekaterina, a 22-year-old college student, the newspaper reported." (The MoscowTimes , 17 February) The demise of state capitalism in the former USSR has certainly ensured the warmth and comfort of the minority capitalist class in that country. RD

BABY ITS COLD INSIDE

One of the illusions that supporters of capitalism like to foster is that although capitalism may not be perfect it is improving. This seems like an idle boast when we consider the absolute necessity of staying warm. "More than nine million households will be living in fuel poverty within four years unless the Government directs £4bn a year from carbon taxes to families in greatest need, campaigners warn. More Britons die every year from living in a cold home than on the roads, they said, with the situation expected to worsen sharply because of soaring utility bills. A new study has revealed that there are a million more households already living in fuel poverty compared with previous estimates, taking the total to 6.4 million. The study, by energy efficiency experts Camco, suggests that the total will hit 9.1 million by 2016." (Independent, 27 February) The old pop song used to declare in order to stay a little longer with a girl friend "Baby Its Cold Outside", but now it seems with "improving" capitalism it is cold inside too! RD

The last volunteer

The last Scottish veteran of Spanish Civil War has died. Thomas Watters was a Glasgow Corporation bus driver who took his first-aid skills to Spain in the Scottish Ambulance Unit. He said the people who made up the International Brigades were not fighting men, but individuals who felt strongly about the need to combat the spread of fascism. "They went out there in ones and twos and the whole body was formed from all sorts of nationalities and languages. It was a huge job but they became very effective."

Socialist Courier takes the opportunity of his passing away to remind its readers of the Socialist Party's attitude to The Spanish Civil War.

Socialists are on the side of the exploited in their struggles against the landed and monied classes. This is true whether the workers concerned are socialist or not, organised or unorganised, and whether the struggle is a strike or a lock-out, or whether it is concerned with gaining "elbow room" for the working class movement, i. e., the right to organise, to carry on propaganda, to secure the franchise and parliamentary government. If there is no democracy, how could socialist ideas be spread? These struggles are all expressions of the class struggle and are in the line of development towards socialism. It is the plain duty of the organised workers in the more advanced countries to support and encourage such struggles, both at home and in the less advanced countries. While our members individually take part in struggles for objects other than Socialism the SPGB as a party does not. It exists and seeks support solely for Socialism, i.e. for activities which the non-Socialist organisations, including the reformist political parties, do not and cannot undertake. Therefore the SPGB only gives material support to socialist organisations.

Whether the Spanish workers were wise in participating in a struggle so costly in human lives may be debatable, but as they have decided to take the plunge, and as they have the most violent partisans of capitalism against them, socialists are, of course, on their side. It must be assumed that the Spanish workers weighed up the situation and counted the cost before deciding their course of action. That is a matter upon which their judgement should be better than that of people outside the country. It is difficult to blame anarchists who took up arms to defend themselves and their unions from murderous bosses; but we can perhaps look to the rejection of political democracy that preceded the civil war and gave the armed authoritarians the support they needed to break cover and launch their assault.

One thing shown is that is the difficulty or the impossibility of achieving real unity by merging together in a Popular Front parties and individuals who differ fundamentally in aim, outlook, and method. It was obvious in 1936 that it would be an enormous task to secure unity between long standing opponents like the Spanish Labourites, Anarchist-Syndicalists, Communists, Trotskyists, Liberal Republicans, Catholic Basque Separatists, etc. The frequent inability to secure effective and loyal co-operation, show that, even the stress of war will not make men who think differently work to a common programme. Neither in war nor revolution has anti-fascist Spain had a worse enemy than Stalinism. The Communist Party can best be summed up by the slogan "Better lose the war than allow the Revolution".

The simple truth was that at the time there never existed the basis for unity on the Republican side.

A war within capitalism could only be fought on capitalist terms. You can't have a democratic army, as the anarchists in the CNT found out. Party rivalries made it impossible to build up an efficient army. There was not one view of what kind of army to build, but three incompatible views—a revolutionary popular army like that of the French after the revolution, a "political" army like that of Russia, or a non-political army like the British. The Anarchists favoured the first, the Communists the second, and the army officers and Liberal-Republicans the third.

"Arming of the people is meaningless. The nature of military warfare is determined by the class directing it. An army fighting in defence of a bourgeois state, even if it should be antifascist, is an army in the service of capitalism . . . War between a fascist state and an antifascist state is not a revolutionary class war. The proletariat's intervention on one side is an indication that it has already been defeated. Insuperable technical and professional inferiority on the part of the popular or militia-based army was implicit in military struggle on a military front" - Agustin Guillamon, Friends of Durruti.

If you have an overwhelming majority, you don't need any army anyway. No amount of oppression can be made to work against it, as the Communist Party found out in Moscow in 1989. But that overwhelming majority has to know what it is about. And that is what the Friends of Durruti concluded:
"What happened was what had to happen. The CNT was utterly devoid of revolutionary theory. We did not have a concrete programme. We had no idea where we were going . . . By not knowing what to do we handed the revolution on a platter to the bourgeoisie and the Communists who support the farce of yesterday."

Murray Bookchin also writes "Not only did the CNT lack the support of a majority of the Spanish people, they argued, but it lacked the support of the majority of the Spanish working class. Anarchosyndicalists were a minority within a minority. Even within the CNT membership, a large number of workers and peasants shared only a nominal allegiance to libertarian ideals. They were members of the CNT because the union was strong in their localities and work places. If these people, and the Spaniards generally, were not educated in Anarchist principles, warned the moderates, the revolution would simply degenerate into an abhorrent dictatorship of ideologues." - Spanish Anarchists.

The International Brigades to this day hold a place of honour for many, who revere them as defenders of democracy and anti-fascists leading the way in a war that could have stopped fascism before the great slaughter of world war two. Many died, bravely; and their defence of Madrid reads like something from an epic poem. Their enthusiasm was not enough to actually save political democracy in Spain. Heroism is not enough, although there was plenty of that. We, in the Socialist Party, nevertheless, hold that it was not in the best interests of the socialist movement, or democracy, or of the conditions of the workers, to participate in wars such as the Spanish Civil, taking into account the consequences of these wars, participation could not be justified either by the hope of achieving socialism, the safeguarding of democracy or the improvement in the conditions of the working class. We could make the World Socialist Movement very much more popular by not constantly challenging popular working class thinking. We could adopt popular concerns as or own and jump on any number of bandwagons. We could quickly grow in numbers by lying and deceiving our fellow workers. But it almost goes without saying that by doing so we would abandon the struggle for socialism.

The "anarchist revolution" was first stopped by the Republican government with the Stalinist "Communists" in the lead and then savagely crushed by the Franco fascists. The losers, as always, were the common people, pawns in a struggle between power brokers. Those who weren't killed were crammed into Franco's concentration camps, penal labour battalions, or settled down to a hungry future. The country swarmed with 57 varieties of police. The Spanish Civil War cost 600,000 lives, ended with a Franco victory in March 1939, and the fascist dictatorship lasted until his death in 1975. Rubble doesn't make a good basis for building socialism.

The World Bank

Glasgow branch is at present conducting a series of meetings on British banking so it maybe useful to add an international dimension.

The World Bank was established in 1944 to promote economic development and virtually every country is now a member. This spring the bank's 187 member countries choose a new president to succeed Robert Zoellick, whose term ends in July.

Until now, the unwritten rule has been that the US government simply designates each new president: all 11 have been Americans, and not one has been an expert in economic development, the bank's core responsibility, or had a career in fighting poverty or promoting environmental sustainability. Instead, the US has selected Wall Street bankers and politicians, presumably to ensure that the bank's policies are suitably friendly to US interests. US officials have traditionally viewed the World Bank as an extension of US foreign policy and commercial interests. With the bank just two blocks away from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, it has been all too easy for the US to dominate the institution.

For too long, its leadership has imposed US concepts that are often utterly inappropriate for the poorest countries and their poorest people. It completely fumbled the exploding pandemics of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria during the 1990's, failing to get help to where it was needed to save millions of lives. Even worse, the bank advocated user fees and "cost recovery" for health services, thereby putting life-saving health care beyond the reach of the poorest of the poor - precisely those most in need of it. In 2000, at the Durban AIDS Summit, [it was] recommended a new "Global Fund" to fight these diseases, precisely on the grounds that the World Bank was not doing its job. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria emerged, and has since saved millions of lives, with malaria deaths in Africa alone falling by at least 30 per cent.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/economics/resource-wars-and-other-crises-await-if-global-cooperation-fails

A GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND?

One of the great illusions shared by nut case nationalists and religious freaks alike is that England unlike the rest of the world is something special and is in the words of William Blake " a green and pleasant land"."New data has revealed the number of people sleeping rough in England has risen by 23 per cent in a year. The figures were gathered by local authorities in a single night last autumn, and compared with an assessment 12 months earlier. The statistics show that on one night in 2011 there were 2,181 rough sleepers in England, up 413 from 1,768 on the same night the previous year. London and the South East had the highest number of rough sleepers with more than 400 in each region." (Independent, 23 February) Surely the concept of "pleasant" should at least include a pillow, a blanket and a mattress? RD

COMIC BOOK CAPITALISM

It has been recently reported that millions of workers are trying to exist on the equivalent of $1.25 a day, so what have we to make of the following news item? "A "jaw dropping" collection of early comic books has sold for $3.5m (£2.2m) at auction in New York. The trove of 345 comics had been bought by the late Billy Wright from Virginia when he was a boy. A copy of Detective Comics No. 27, which sold for 10 cents in 1939 and featured Batman's debut, got the top bid on Wednesday - raising $523,000." (BBC News, 23 February) It speaks volumes for the values of capitalism that a couple of comic books are of more value than human lives. RD

Heart care 'more likely for rich'

An estimated 182,000 people in Scotland have coronary heart disease (CHD), around 3.3% of the population. Rates of heart disease in Scotland remain the highest in Western Europe, despite new cases falling by nearly a third in the last 10 years.

There is evidence that rich people are more likely to receive NHS treatment for heart disease than poor people, according to the public spending watchdog.

In some more deprived areas around 25% of men over 75 have CHD but, according to Audit Scotland, people in deprived communities "are not always getting the same level of treatment as the rest of the population"

Treatments such as angioplasty, which widens the arteries, or heart bypass surgery, are over 20% less than expected in deprived areas. The least deprived areas saw over 60% more than expected. Audit Scotland said this "implies a lower level of access to these treatments for people in more deprived areas".

A WONDERFUL TOWN?

The USA is undoubtedly the wealthiest country in the world and New York is probably the home to some of the richest capitalists in the world, but that is poor consolation for members of the working class trying to get by on the minimum wage. "New York is an expensive place to live, and unaffordable for workers struggling on $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage. Nineteen other states, recognizing that the federal minimum is too low for survival, even with food stamps or other government assistance, have increased their minimum above that level. Lawmakers in Massachusetts raised it to $8 an hour. Connecticut's is $8.25, and it is $9.04 an hour in Washington State. It is time for New York to raise its minimum wage enough to help more than 600,000 struggling workers." (New York Times, 12 February) RD

Targetting the vulnerable

Sick and disabled Scots and their families will lose out under UK Government benefit reforms, according to new figures published by Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS).

CAS says 115,000 Scots will lose out on sickness benefits over the next three years. Of these, 36,000 will only be eligible for Jobseeker's Allowance. They will face a drop in income of at least £27 a week, and will have to seek work. Another 65,000 will drop out of the benefits system altogether – either because it is deemed a partner can support them, or because they have not paid sufficient contributions having been out of work for a lengthy period. This group faces a loss of at least £99 a week.

22,500 people in Glasgow will lose entitlement to a total of £73.7 million, with 19,600 told they are not eligible for Employment and Support Allowance. Meanwhile, in West Dunbartonshire, 2800 people will lose entitlement, saving the Government £9.1m, but will be plunged into an employment hunt in an area where there are 20.6 people looking for every post advertised through a Jobcentre.

CAS says the only way for people to replace the income they will lose under the scheme is to find a job, but Ms McPhee, CAS Head of Policy, said this was unrealistic. "With unemployment at a 16-year high, the economy struggling to grow, and former sickness benefit claimants facing discrimination from employers, many of these people will struggle to find a job."

Scottish independence?

American billionaire Donald Trump is to throw the full might of the Trump organisation behind a Scottish anti-wind farm group.

The tycoon's staff, based at Trump Towers in New York, are to work on a daily basis with Communities Against Turbines Scotland (Cats). Trump is also sending his executive vice-president and legal counsel, George Sorial, to an anti-wind farm meeting to be held by the group in St Andrews, Fife, next Thursday. Sorial said the billionaire would use all of the resources at his disposal to do "whatever it takes" to prevent Scotland being "encircled by these monstrous turbines". He went on to state "We have agreed to provide financial support to Cats. We have agreed to assist them with marketing and PR. We have agreed to provide them with staff, with some of our team at our New York office working with them on a daily basis."Nothing to do with Trump's £750 million Balmedie golf resort, of course.

Work on the hotel has stopped while there is still a chance the offshore wind farm will be approved. Sorial added: "No sane developer would build a hotel that looks into what is essentially an industrial plant. Until this issue is resolved, as much as we would like to build the hotel, we will not."

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/trump-to-bankroll-scots-wind-farm-war.16833920

THE REAL WORLD

As financial TV experts pontificate on the worsening economic European turndown it is worth reflecting on what it means to the workers who have to suffer its effects far from the comforts of the TV studio. "In the heart of central Athens, a stone's throw from the city's glorious ancient sites, another face of today's Greece is on show. Hundreds weave their way around the small, bare courtyard of the municipal soup kitchen, queuing patiently. Visitors have gone up by a quarter in the past few months as homelessness here reaches new heights. .... Homelessness has soared by an estimated 25% since 2009 as Greece spirals further into its worst post-war economic crisis." (BBC News, 4 February) RD

A DISASTROUS SYSTEM

Disasters like earthquake will occur in any social system, even world socialism, but at least once we are free from the production for profit motive of capitalism we will be better able to deal with such catastrophes. "A six-storey building that collapsed and killed 115 people during last year's earthquake did not meet construction standards, according to a government report. The report, which called it "technically inadequate", was contested by the building's designer. The Canterbury Television (CTV) building in Christchurch collapsed during the magnitude-6.1 earthquake on 22 February. It accounted for nearly two-thirds of the quake's 184 victims." (Guardian 8 February) In order to create the biggest possible profits production costs like building material has to be of the cheapest available as over a hundred grieving families now know to their cost. RD

you are being watched

Britain has 20% of the world's CCTV cameras, says a study, despite having only 1% of the world's population. There are at least 51,600 CCTV cameras controlled by local authorities in the UK – costing a total of £515m between 2007 and 2011.

Fife has the second-highest number of cameras in the UK and Aberdeen is sixth highest. Fife has 1420 cameras, which cost just under £1 million between 2007 and 2011. Aberdeen has 942 cameras, which cost £1.78m. Edinburgh City Council was the biggest spender in Scotland over the same period, amassing costs of £6.3m for just 232 cameras.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties at Big Brother Watch said "Britain has an out-of-control surveillance culture that is doing little to improve public safety but has made our cities the most watched in the world...There is no credible evidence that more cameras will reduce crime"

Some Sottish business news

The number of customers in Scottish stores plummeted compared to the rest of the UK according to a new report that warns of “troubled times” ahead for Scotland.
The Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) has reported an 8.5 per cent drop in footfall in the three months to January 2012, which included the peak Christmas period, compared with the same three months to January 2011.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/troubled_times_for_shops_as_customers_fall_1_2126645

Industry confidence in the embattled construction sector took a further hit today as a major survey of employers flagged low expectations for jobs and profits. Two out of three Scottish building firms predicted publicly-funded construction activity will drop in 2012, and a third expect construction employment to fall. Most anticipate another difficult year for housebuilding within the private sector, with nine out of ten companies warning that the area would be stagnant or in decline in the next 12 months.
http://www.scotsman.com/business/construction_sector_fears_another_hard_as_nails_year_in_prospect_1_2126667

Heineken have dented hopes of better conditions for Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) pensioners after a three-year battle. Heineken, makers of Deuchars IPA, Newcastle Brown Ale and John Smiths have a refused to peg annual pension increases to inflation. A commitment to the Scottish brewer’s tradition of paying inflation-linked annual rises was made in March 2008, before the joint takeover by Heineken and Carlsberg.
http://www.scotsman.com/business/heineken_has_done_its_fair_share_on_s_n_pensions_1_2126664

THE OLYMPIAN SPIRIT

This year sees the start of the Olympic Games, it will be a period of excessive nationalist nonsense in the world's media and the re-iteration of endless balderdash about fine sporting ideals. But, this is capitalism and sporting tradition comes a poor second to making a few bob out of a business opportunity. "London landlords are evicting tenants to cash in on the Olympic Games by charging tourists fortunes. Homes in the east London boroughs where many events are to be held are fetching between five and 15 times their typical rates as properties are rebranded as short-term Olympic lets." (Daily Mail, 3 February) RD

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Take a stroll through certain streets in New York and you are almost certain to be approached by some homeless down-and-out looking for a few dollars. A similar stroll through Mumbai's streets will be even more likely to produce the same destitution. This of course is not the lot of all citizens of these mega-cities."The property market may be in poor shape in many parts of the world, but the super rich continue to spend eye-watering sums on new homes. The latest deal to grab headlines is a penthouse apartment with panoramic views of New York's central park, sold to a Russian fertiliser magnate for $88m (£56m). .... It is widely believed that the world's most expensive private dwelling is in Mumbai, India. The 27-storey Antilla tower, which boasts three helipads, six floors of parking and a series of floating gardens, was built at a cost of $1bn (£0.63bn) for India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani." (BBC News, 18 February) RD

Imperial Caledonia

The SNP's choice for the referendum date 2014 cannot be a simply a coincidence but a ploy on its symbolism. However, t he Scottish Wars of Independence and the 1314 Battle of Bannockburn were in reality a fight between two sets of Norman knights, English Norman and Scottish Norman, as in those days the ruling class in both countries was actually Norman.

The Act of Union was on behalf of the Scottish wealthy - a bailout. The disastrous Darien Scheme was backed by about a quarter of the money circulating in Scotland and its failure left the nobles and landowners – who had already been suffering a run of bad harvests – practically ruined. The Scottish ruling class voted to end its own parliament in Edinburgh. Did the Scottish ruling class, those "parcel of rogues", betray their country by accepting the Union? The hypothesis is only valid if we accept that those lords and merchants were somehow obliged to place "Scotland" above their own socio-economic interests. The surrender of Scottish sovereignty did not threaten the interest of them but indeed it specifically protected them. Scotland kept its own legal, church and education systems. More importantly, the Act of Union also gave the bankrupt Scottish ruling class access to the money markets of London. The Union was a very good deal for the Scottish ruling class. Most importantly, Scottish commerce got access to the growing empire that the English were carving out. Historically, the Scots were partners in the British empire, not an oppressed nation within it.

"It was not 'English capitalism' which caused the bones of countless Bengalis to bleach in the sun, but a fully integrated British capitalism in which the Scots played a leading role. Indeed, the capitalist class in Scotland was at the forefront, not only of colonial expansion, but also of the overseas investment characteristic of the imperialist stage of capitalism: during the late Victorian period Scotland invested abroad on a scale per head with no parallel among the other nations of the United Kingdom." - Neil Davidson (Scottish Imperialism and National Identity)

Today, the independence movement is again fundamentally a question of members of the capitalist class promoting their own particular self-interest.

The Scottish National Party represent the section of the Scottish elite which feels it could do better in negotiating with international financiers as a separate entity than as a part the United Kingdom. As an ex-Royal Bank of Scotland oil consultant, Alex Salmond no doubt intends cashing in Scotland's on North Sea oil reserves. Those oil and gas reserves play a large role in the opposition of the UK and unionist parties to separation. The major international oil corporations would have little problem with North Sea Oil being transferred from UK to Scottish political control, particularly if any new Scottish government was prepared to cut corporation tax even further. The SNP has been courting the oil companies, opposing both the Con-Dems’ proposed one-off windfall tax on their profits and downplaying the effects of potential oil pollution and spillage. However, North Sea oil still provides substantial tax revenues for the UK government. Therefore, any British government will strongly oppose such a move.

There exists a section of the “business community” like fund-manager Angus Tulloch and transport operator, Brian Souter, who fund the SNP, and they do so not because they want to raise Glasgow’s life expectancy from the lowest in Britain, but because they believe that Scotland’s super-rich will benefit.

The Scots are not an oppressed minority. Indeed, the idea that the Duke of Buccleuch is oppressed because he is Scottish is laughable. A worker in Glasgow or Edinburgh has more in common with his or her counterpart in Liverpool or Birmingham that he or she does with a landed Scottish aristocrat.

But even if it is likely that the Scottish working class will be promised a share of the oil revenues should they vote yes in 2014, like all politicians, Salmond will fail to make good on any pledge to increase working class living standards. And if the unionists prevail, Westminster politicians will also want to continue reaping the rewards for increased exploitation of the Scottish working class, not because they are Scottish, but because they are working class.

Many foreign corporations would quite happy if Scotland became a low tax haven as planned for by the SNP but it would probably lead to an economic "race-to-the-bottom" between the different nations and regions of the UK, with the promotion of competitive tax-cutting to benefit the corporations and the rich.

The wannabe Scottish ruling class will cooperate with the British ruling class and big business to prevent a too radical break-up of the UK and ensure that as much as possible remains of the UK state machinery by upholding the Crown Powers and protecting the City of London's economic control by retention of sterling. It leaves the Scottish ruling class in control within Scotland, but also free to profit from the existing global corporate economic order.

There was no golden age, not for the Scottish working class. Freedom is not intended for the people of Scotland, but for big business. The only independence is for corporations to maximise profits

TWO TYPES OF JUSTICE

I was once fined £50 for breach of the peace. An offence that still uses the term "causes alarm to the Queen's lieges". "Merrill Lynch, broker has been fined £350,000 by the Financial Services Authority for engaging in "market abuse" ahead of a fundraising by Punch Taverns. Andrew Osborne, who was managing director of corporate broking at Merrill Lynch International and described by the FSA as a "trusted gatekeeper of inside information", disclosed information ahead of the £375m cash call by the pubs group in June 2009." (Guardian, 16 February) Obviously Mr Lynch's defence " I am a greedy bastard and will do anything to make a couple of bob", was more powerful than my apology. "Your honour I may have been a little pissed at the time and I should not have said to the arresting officer I deny everything - including the law of gravity". With more money you get better lawyers and in this case bigger fines. RD

AN OLD REALITY FOR THE ELDERLY

Workers are having to delay their retirement plans because they cannot afford to leave their jobs, a worrying report warns today. "One in ten of those who were planning to retire this year said they have ditched the plan, with the majority blaming the fact that they simply do not have the money. The report, from the insurance giant Prudential, urged Britons to accept that there is "a new retirement reality"." (Daily Mail,15 February) The insurance company might imagine that this is a "new reality", but for many workers being too skint to stop working is a very old reality indeed. RD

Scottish Slavery

"It wisnae us"

At the beginning of the 18th century, Glasgow was a poor town and Scotland, an isolated country. The 1707 Act of Union opened up trading opportunities and entrepreneurs seized their opportunity. The economic boom in the 18th and 19th century was built on profits from the West Indies, "...ultimately, profits built from slavery." according to James Cant, a Scottish historian re-examining the emergence of Scotland as an economic powerhouse. "We look at the agrarian revolution in Scotland, the scientific development, and we look at entrepreneurial excellence in Scotland. We never looked at the other side of the ocean to where the raw material and the wealth were truly coming from."

Iain Whyte, author of Scotland and the Abolition of Slavery, insists we have at times ignored our guilty past. He said: "For many years Scotland's historians harboured the illusion that our nation had little to do with the slave trade or plantation slavery. We swept it under the carpet. This was remarkable in the light of Glasgow's wealth coming from tobacco, sugar and cotton, and Jamaica Streets being found in a number of Scottish towns and cities. For many years, the goods and profits from West Indian slavery were unloaded at Kingston docks in Glasgow."

One of Scotland's foremost philosophers of the Enlightenment, David Hume, declared:
"I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences."

Slavery has been dubbed "the most profitable evil in the world". It is estimated that 20,000,000 African people were bought or captured in Africa and transported into New World slavery. 75% of all Africa's exports in 18th century were enslaved human beings. Only about half survived to work on the plantations, with a slave's life expectancy averaging a mere four years. Young Scotsmen rushed to the West Indies to make quick fortunes as slave masters and administrators. Many Scots overseers were considered among the most brutal. There are many examples of mistreatment and abuse of enslaved Africans by Scots. The conduct of these Scots was often shocking – but this should not be surprising because we know that "under certain conditions and social pressures, ordinary people can commit acts that would otherwise be unthinkable".

It did not become illegal to own a slave in Scotland until 1778. Until then it had been fashionable for wealthy families to have a young black boy or girl servant. Scottish newspapers, such as the Edinburgh Evening Courant and the Caledonian Mercury from the 1740s to the 1770s, carried adverts offering slaves for sale or rewards for the capture of escaped slaves.

Many of our industries, our schools and our churches were founded from the profits of African slavery. Scottish capitalists reaped the fruits of their labour in the colonies in the sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations. These industries saw Glasgow and much of the country flourish, were built on the backs of slaves. The profits slaves helped to create kick-started the industrial revolution in Scotland and brought it's merchants and traders great wealth. Familiar names such as Tate and Lyle was built on slavery. James Ewing of Glasgow who owned Caymanas sugar plantation in Jamaica built the Necropolis.

Scotland dominated the Virginian tobacco market. By 1720 Glasgow imported over half of all the American slave-grown tobacco. The "Tobacco Lords" made their fortunes in the colonies before returning to Scotland, many building large mansions. Tobacco made up over one third of Scotland’s imports and over half its exports. This trade was fantastically profitable and tobacco traders became some of the richest men in the world. Landowners had an interest in the tobacco trade and had the money to invest in ships. The noveau riche behaved outrageously with their new-found fortune. The Trongate in Glasgow’s Merchant City was their own private street. It was paved. They did not want to walk on muddy roads with the riff-raff as it would ruin their outfits. Poor people were beaten if they used the Trongate. Buchanan Street was named after a tobacco merchant called Andrew Buchanan.

The "Wee" Free Church was founded in 1843 . It raised some funds from slave-owning Presbyterian churches in the United States. Many people felt that the Free Church was therefore sympathetic to the slave-owners and opposed to the emancipation of the slaves. "Send back the money" became a popular rallying cry. The Church of Scotland did not petition Parliament to end the Slave Trade or Slavery.

Even schools have a dark history. Bathgate Academy was built from money willed by John Newland, a renowned slave master and Dollar and Inverness Academies had a similar foundation of being funded by West Indies profits.

A host of other buildings and institutions Glasgow The Gallery of Modern Art (Stirling Library) was originally built by tobacco merchant William Cunningham as his home. Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Harmony House, Inveresk Lodge, were either bought or built using money acquired from slavery.

In St Andrew Square in Edinburgh there is a monument toHenry Dundas, who prolonged British slavery in the Caribbean by stopping MPs voting for its abolition. He also tried to reverse the independence process in Haiti as he feared similar rebellions damaging the economics of British slavery. He selected governors for the slave islands and, as governor of the Bank of Scotland, loaned money to shore up the slave business of his friends. When Wilberforce tried to secure the abolition of the slave trade, Dundas frustrated the process and forced him to add two notorious words to his Bill "gradually abolished". These two words ensured that slavery lasted 31 more years. To achieve abolition,£20 million was also paid in compensation to slave plantation owners in the West Indies - over 40% of the national budget, the equivalent of around £1.12 billion.

Alexander Allerdyce of Aberdeenshire was a slave trader. He took more African slaves to Jamaica than the entire population of Aberdeen at the time.

John Glassford owned 25 ships in nine trading posts in Maryland and eleven in Virginia. By 1775, Glassford controlled more than half the Clyde. He helped finance the Forth and Clyde canal. He set up the Fowlis Academy, a school for art and design.

By 1800 there were 10,000 Scots in Jamaica. Scottish surnames such as Douglas, Robinson, Reid, Russell, Lewis, McFarlane, McKenzie, McDonald, Grant, Gordon, Graham, Stewart, Simpson, Scott, Ferguson, Frazer and Farquharson are common in Jamaica. Many of the slave plantations were given Scottish names such as Monymusk, Hermitage, Hampden, Glasgow, Argyle, Glen Islay, Dundee, Fort William, Montrose, Roxbro, Dumbarton, Old Monklands and Mount Stewart. In 1817 Scots owned almost a third of all the slaves in Jamaica.

Enslaved Scots

Startling as it may sound, the slavery of the native Scot continued longer than that of the black slave. In 1606, an Act was passed, which ordained that no person should fee, hire, or conduce any salters, colliers, or coal-bearers without a sufficient testimonial from the master whom they had last served, and that any one hiring them without such testimonial was bound, upon challenge within a year and a day by their late master, to deliver them up to him, under a penalty of £100 for each person and each act of contravention, the colliers, bearers, and salters so transgressing and receiving wages to be held as thieves and punished accordingly. The colliers and salters were unquestionably slaves. They were bound to continue their service during their lives, were fixed to their places of employment, and sold with the works to which they belonged. It had been the rule for the collier and his family to live and be cared for and die on the estate on which he was born. Up till the year 1661, colliers and salters were the only workers to whom the Act applied, but in that year an addition made embracing other colliery workers - named watermen, windsmen, and gatesmen. An Act passed in 1672, for the establishment of correction-houses for idle beggars and vagabonds, authorized "coal-masters, salt-masters, and others, who have manufactories in this kingdom, to seize upon any vagabonds or beggars wherever they can find them, and to put them to work in the coal-heughs or other manufactories, who are to have the same power of correcting them and the benefit of their work as the masters of the correction-houses.

So completely did the law of Scotland regard them as a distinct class, not entitled to the same liberties as their fellow-subjects, that they were excepted from the Scotch Habeas Corpus Act of 1701. In 1775 their condition attracted the notice of the legislature, and an act was passed for their relief . Its preamble stated that "many colliers and salters are in a state of slavery and bondage" and that their emancipation "would remove the reproach of allowing such a state of servitude to exist in a free country." But so deeply rooted was this hateful custom, that Parliament did not venture to condemn it as illegal. It was provided that colliers and salters commencing work after the 1st of July 1775, should not become slaves; and that those already in a state of slavery might obtain their freedom in seven years, if under twenty-one years of age; in ten years, if under thirty-five. The Act imposed so many conditions to be observed by those to be freed, such as they were obliged to obtain a decree of the Sheriff's Court that little advantage was taken of it. Moreover, many of the masters were not disposed to give up their old rights without a struggle, and they sought to retain their hold on the workers by advancing money which the poor colliers were too ready to accept and with the advances being kept up as debts against them the colliers were rarely in a condition to press their claims to freedom. Hence the act was practically inoperative. But eventually in 1799, their freedom was established by law


The White Slave Cargo

White servants came to the Colonies and the Caribbean before most of the African slaves. Large numbers of Scottish people were sent to the colonies largely against their will in the 17th and 18th centuries. Mainstream histories refer to these labourers as indentured or bonded servants, not slaves, because many agreed to work for a set period of time in exchange for land and rights. However, the term slavery applies to any person who is bought and sold, chained and abused, whether for a decade or a lifetime. Excerpts from wills show how white servants would be passed down along with livestock and furniture. During that indenture period the servants were not paid wages, but they were provided food, room, clothing. Indentures could not marry without the permission of their owner, were subject to physical punishment (like many young ordinary servants), and saw their obligation to labour enforced by the courts. To ensure uninterrupted work by the female servants, the law lengthened the term of their indenture if they became pregnant. One could buy and sell indentured servants' contracts, and the right to their labour would change hands.

Many early settlers died long before their indenture ended or found that no court would back them when their owners failed to deliver on promises. And many never achieved their freedom with many of the labourers dying before their 4 to 7 years were complete due to the harsh conditions and the often brutal treatment by the plantation owners. Those that survived often remained in the Caribbean and became managers and overseers.

Convicted criminals and political prisoners, including religious nonconformists, were also sent to the colonies as a workforce. In the late 17th century the religious turmoil in Scotland produced a regular supply of indentured labourers.Covenanters and Scottish royalists captured by Cromwell after battle were sold as indentured labourers to the West Indies. In 1666 the city fathers of Edinburgh shipped off "beggars, vagabonds and others not fitt to stay in the kingdome" to Virginia in the Phoenix of Leith under Captain James Gibson. The Scots Privy Council also saw indentured labour as an opportunity to get rid of undesirables and those guilty of certain crimes, and they regularly sent people to Virginia as a punishment rather than keep them in jail.

Ultimately indentured labour did not bring the profit desired. For example, the cost of indentured labor rose by nearly 60 percent throughout the 1680s in some colonial regions. A cheaper source of labour was sought and the plantation owners quickly realised the potential profit that could be made from buying and selling Africans, grasping the opportunity of using a malleable renewable labour force. When slaves arrived in greater numbers after 1700, white labourers became a privileged status and assigned to lighter work and more skilled tasks.

Wage Slavery

It was only when economists like Adam Smith suggested slavery hampered freedom of enterprise that the argument took hold that it was no longer financially viable. It was about economics. Now it was the turn of wage slavery to chain people.

Those who defended the slavery and indentured labour described how owners had to feed, clothe and shelter their enslaved workers and how this made them better off than labourers in the factories in Europe since the factory workers' very small wages hardly kept them in food and clothes and shelter. Capitalist factory-owners needed a flexible labour force and a reserve of workers they could draw on in times of expansion and who could be discarded in times of slump. They did not want to own their workers, precisely because they wanted, when business took a downturn, to be free of any obligation to maintain them as they would have had to with chattel slaves. They favoured “free” labour. They were only interested in buying their workers’ ability to work for a limited period. “Free” labour meant more than that the worker was just not a chattel slave. It meant that he or she was also not tied to the land either as a peasant or a serf. It means that the only productive resource they own is their ability to work, their labour-power, which they are “free” to sell to some capitalist employer or other. Socialists regard labour as free only where the labourers themselves individually or collectively own and control the means by which they labour (land, tools, machinery, etc.).

The legal, social and political status of wage-slaves is superior to that of chattel slaves. However, when we compare their position in the labour process itself, we see that here the difference between them is not a fundamental one. A wage or a salary is the price of the human commodity labour power, the capacity to work. Because workers are compelled to work for their employers for a duration of time, being exploited, the wages system is literally a form of slavery and the working class are wage slaves. We are all compelled to obey the orders of the “boss” who owns the instruments of production with which we work or who represents those who own them. In a small enterprise the boss may convey his orders directly, while in a large enterprise orders are passed down through a managerial hierarchy - overseers. But in all cases it is ultimately the boss who decides what to produce and how to produce it. The products of the labour of the (chattel or wage) slaves do not belong to us. Nor, indeed, does our own activity.

Another obvious difference between chattel slavery and wage slavery is that as a chattel slave you are enslaved – totally subjected to another’s will – at every moment from birth to death, in every aspect of your life. As a wage-slave, you are enslaved only at those times when your labour power is at the disposal of your employer. At other times, in other aspects of your life you enjoy a certain measure of freedom. The wage-slave has some scope for self-development and self-realisation that is denied the chattel slave. Limited to be sure, for the wage-slave must regularly return to the world of wage labour.

According to Engels: "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence."

It is sometimes objected that wage workers are not slaves because they have the legal right to leave a particular employer, even if in practice they may be reluctant to use that right out of fear of not finding another job. All that this proves, however, is that the wage worker is not the slave of any particular employer. For Marxists, the owner of the wage-slave is not the individual capitalist but the capitalist class. Whether we choose the wages system or not, we are in reality bound to it. We are not by law bound to a single individual, but, in fact, to the capitalist class as a whole. You can leave one employer, but only in order to look for a new one. What you cannot do, lacking as you do access to the means of life, is escape from the thrall of employers as a class – that is, cease to be a wage-slave.

Frederick Douglass, a former slave, born on a Maryland plantation in 1817 makes it clear in his book My Bondage and My Freedom:
"In the country, this conflict is not so apparent; but, in cities, such as Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile etc; it is seen pretty clearly. The slave-holder with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor, labouring white men against the blacks, succeeds in making the said white men almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from his, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers"

With slavery the workers themselves become commodities, they have no rights and are legally the property of the person who controls them. With the wage system the labour power of the worker becomes one of the main commodities in the marketplace. Capitalist social relations emerged with the expropriation of common land by the aristocracy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Enclosures destroyed the lives of thousands of peasant families, turning them into propertyless vagabonds. Deprived of their land, their homes, their traditional surroundings and the protection of the law, the expropriated peasantry were left to sell the one thing they possessed - their ability to work.

The Chartist, Ernest Jones, dismissed the demand for "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work", which was to ask for:
"...a golden slavery instead of an iron one. But that golden chain would soon be turned to iron again, for if you still allow the system of wages slavery to exist, labour must be still subject to capital, and if so, capital being its master, will possess the power and never lack the will to reduce the slave from his fat diet down to fast-day fare!"

The law grants us personal liberties, and we therefore have the right to make our own decisions: where to live; who to work for; or whether to work at all. But underlying this veil of freedom are the real, material, physical facts, and they run as such: you can only live where you can afford to live; you can only work for someone who will willingly employ you; and while you are under no legal obligation to work for anyone at all, you will find it a struggle to live while not doing so.

Noam Chomsky has explained that “the effort to overcome ‘wage-slavery’ has been going on since the beginnings of the industrial revolution, and we haven’t advanced an inch. In fact, we’re worse off than we were a hundred years ago in terms of understanding the issues.”

The Socialist Party appears to be the only political organisation in this country to take this task at all seriously. The Socialist Party do not just want to win a better deal for wage-slaves. We want to abolish slavery. We are the wage-slavery abolitionists! The influence of the capitalist system has ensured that many do not yet understand the necessity for the working class to free itself from slavery. It is a slavery not only of the body but of the mind too and that must be the worst enslavement of all.

AN OLD REALITY FOR THE ELDERLY

Workers are having to delay their retirement plans because they cannot afford to leave their jobs, a worrying report warns today. "One in ten of those who were planning to retire this year said they have ditched the plan, with the majority blaming the fact that they simply do not have the money. The report, from the insurance giant Prudential, urged Britons to accept that there is "a new retirement reality"." (Daily Mail,15 February) The insurance company might imagine that this is a "new reality", but for many workers being too skint to stop working is a very old reality indeed. RD