Food for thought

It used to be that if a job applicant had young children, it was a plus because an employer knew if someone had young mouths to feed they wouldn't make waves. But not any more -- a recent program on TV's 20/20 focused on how that is now a drawback. In job interviews the applicant is asked if they have children at home. Some times the interviewer will have photographs of children on his/her desk to lure the applicant into admitting that they do. Once they answer in the affirmative, it's a matter of 'we'll call you'. The thinking is that if the children are sick or involved in any trouble, the parent won't be at work. This is just another example of the insecurity under the capitalist mode of production.

On Remembrance Day, Thomas Walkom's article In the Toronto Star was on how much the government appreciates the soldiers who have fought for its capitalist class. His thesis is that the government lauds its soldiers in the abstract while giving them a boot in the side when it comes to benefits. This squares well with our view that the ceremonies, monuments etc. are all about propaganda, jingoism and much less about caring. For example, the Canadian government has spent millions promoting the War of 1812 in which the British and a few Canadian troops prevented the Americans from invading Canada. The same week, veterans and their widows demonstrated on Parliament Hill to protest the clawback of their pensions. Another group is taking the government to court on its decision to give veterans a one-time payment in lieu of a pension. It works out much cheaper for the government, of course. How long will the
working class be duped into going to war? John Ayers

Wal-Mac

McDonald's sells more than 75 hamburgers every second. McDonald's' daily customer traffic 62 million, that's about 1 percent of the world's population. McDonald's' $27 billion in revenue makes it the 90th-largest economy in the world. The $8.7 billion in revenue from franchise stores alone, makes McDonald's richer than Mongolia. McDonald's hires around 1 million workers in the US every year ( a 700,000 domestic workforce with 150% turnover rate.) According to company estimates, one in every eight American workers has been employed by McDonald's. Americans alone consume one billion pounds of beef at McDonald's in a year – five and a half million head of cattle. McDonald's has 761,000 employees worldwide, that's more than the population of Luxembourg. From 2011 to 2013, McDonald's plans to open one restaurant every day in China. McDonald's is the world's largest distributor of toys, with one included in 20% of all sales. McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner receives $8.75 million a year. Twenty years ago the CEO’s compensation was about 230 times that of a full-time worker paid the federal minimum wage now its 580 times.  Profit growth for period 2007 - 2011 was 135%. Dividends and stock buybacks last fiscal year $6 billion, the equivalent of $14,286 per restaurant worker employed by the company.

But guess what, there's an even bigger and more important company.

In  2012, Wal-Mart registered approximately $444 billion in sales, which is $20 billion more than Austria's GDP. If Walmart were a country, it would be the 26th largest economy in the world. Walmart has more employees worldwide — 2.2 million — than the population of Houston. The mega-retailer employs 1.4 million people in the U.S. alone. f Wal-Mart was an army, it would have the second largest military in the world, behind China. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot, Kroger, Target, Sears, Costco, and K-Mart combined. The average family of four spends over $4,000 a year at Walmart. One of every four dollars Americans spend on groceries is spent at Walmart. Each week, Walmart serves more than 200 million customers at more than 10,400 stores in 27 countries. In 2010, CEO Michael Duke's annual salary of $35 million earned him more in an hour than a full-time employee makes in an entire year. The Walton family has given away about 2 percent of its net worth to charity — Bill Gates is giving away 48 percent of his net worth and Warren Buffet 78 percent of his net worth. An additional Walmart Supercenter per 100,000 residents increases the obesity rate by 2.4 percent. Roughly 4,700 (about 90 percent) of international stores operate under a banner other than Walmart, including Walmex in Mexico, Asda in the UK, Seiyu in Japan, and Best Price in India. Dividends and stock buybacks last fiscal year $11.3 billion. The Walton family has  some $93 billion in wealth, just under 0.14% of all US wealth, more than bottom 30% of Americans (49 million)

The total number of people employed in the U.S. at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and McDonald’s and Yum Brands restaurants exceeds the entire 2.7 million population of Chicago. Net income at those three companies has jumped by at least 22 percent from four years ago. Shareholders, not employees, have reaped the rewards. At the same time, companies have formed an effort to freeze the minimum wage, whose purchasing power is 20 percent less than in 1968. Minimum-wage earners have less power to demand higher pay because so many adults are willing to take low-wage positions.

 25% of Americans (or bottom 75 million) don’t have any net wealth at all. Their debts are higher than their assets.

The 1.2 million households whose incomes put them in the top 1 percent of the U.S. saw their earnings increase 5.5 percent last year, according to census estimates. Earnings fell 1.7 percent for the 97 million households in the bottom 80 percent -- those who made less than $101,583.

Food for thought

The Toronto Star of October 27 reported that the Chinese government blocked the web site of the New York Times because an article focused on the 2.7 billion wealth of the family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. This shows two things -- that through the control of the media the capitalist class can decide what news we do and don't hear, and where there is great disparity of wealth, capitalism prevails whatever a government calls itself. Some may remember that in Stalin's heyday a British communist called Reg Bishop wrote a book called "Soviet Millionaires".

The Vancouver Sun recently reported that four new coal mines in British Columbia are bringing in two thousand Chinese migrant workers to do most of the work. A spokesman for Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Inc. said that not enough Canadians are skilled enough to do the work. You can bet that unemployed miners are glad to know that. You can also bet the mine owners know that the Chinese will work for less money than the local lads so profits will be greater. There is nothing new in this. In the early nineteenth century, when British capitalists were making roads smoother so they could more easily move their products to market, they brought in Irish workers who would work for less -- hence the racist expression, 'an Irish penny'. This type of tactic alienates
workers from each other. The capitalists can't lose, they get more profits and keep the workers divided. Class-consciousness and a knowledge of socialism is the only antidote to capitalism's tricks. John Ayers

Scottish health apartheid

New figures revealed men in the wealthiest areas live 11 years longer than those in the most deprived parts of the country. For women, the gap is 7.5 years between the poorest areas and the most affluent. Deprived area residents have higher rates of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and drug and alcohol abuse as well as poorer mental health.

There is enough food to feed the world

Some attendees at a conference in London’s Chatham House to debate how to feed the planet’s growing population without degrading the earth’s resources argued that current levels of food production - if better managed - could accommodate everyone. They acknowledge that many people around the world are already going hungry, but contend this is not an issue of food shortage. Instead, they point out that vast quantities of edible produce are used for animal feed or biofuel production, or are allowed to spoil in storage or otherwise go to waste. 

The President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Kanayo Nwanze, explained “There is enough food in the world to feed every man, woman and child. Yet one-third of the food that is produced goes to waste. Fifty-seven per cent of food produced is not used for consumption. There is enough food to feed every mouth. The issue is access to food.”

The issue is indeed access to food - free access.

The outlook is bleak

Some 26 of 30 countries covered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have shown a falling labor share of national income since 1990. International Labor Organization (ILO) data show the gap between the top 10% of earners and bottom 10% increased in 23 of 31 nations since 1995. Between 1999 and 2011, average labor productivity in developed economies worldwide increased more than twice as much as average wages. Real average monthly wage growth worldwide, excluding China, fell to 0.2% last year from 2.3% in 2007. Unemployment might have been higher than it might had it not been for reduction in working hours, shorter working weeks, cuts in overtime and even job sharing in exchange for keeping jobs.

The United Nations bodY focuses on how the shrinking share of the pie going to workers was one cause behind the credit bubble. The falling share of national output going to workers in the decade before the crisis ended up boosting household debt as workers tried to maintain consumption via ever-easier credit. Had falling labor shares of the bottom 99% in the United States not been compensated for by debt-led consumption, it is likely that world economic growth would have slowed or halted much earlier," the report said. The same phenomenon was seen in Britain, Australia,Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain. The pressure to rebuild national balance sheets or sustain corporate [profit] margins with further pressure on wages is all too clear.

 Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who owns the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Adelson invested more than $100 million in the election, mostly on Republicans who lost -- including $20 million that went to Romney's super PAC "Restore Our Future," $15 million to another super PAC that almost single-handedly kept Newt Gingrich's Republican primary campaign going and about $50 million to nonprofit Republican fronts such as Karl Rove's Crossroads.
Adelson tells the Wall Street Journal he's ready to double his 2012 investment next time around. "I happen to be in a unique business where winning and losing is the basis of the entire business," he says, "so I don't cry when I lose. There's always a new hand coming up." He isn't looking back at his losses.
 Adelson says he has many friends in Washington, "but the reasons aren't my good looks and charm. It's my pocket personality," referring to his political investments. Adelson recently met with three Republican governors said to be eying the 2016 presidential race. This week he met separately with Republicans, House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor. 

Warfare against Workfare

Neither Edinburgh or Glasgow branches of the SPGB participate in these examples of resistance but we do sympathise with the purpose.

Glasgow
On Saturday 8th December as part of the Boycott Workfare Week Of Action a couple of dozen people from Clydeside Industrial Workers Of The World, the Crutch Collective, Glasgow Anarchist Federation, Glasgow Solidarity Federation, the Right To Work Campaign and other individuals leafleted a branch of Superdrug in one of the city centre's busiest streets. The one thousand leaflets given out highlighted Superdrug taking on even more people on the Government's 'Work Experience' workfare scheme for the Christmas period. The extra people on workfare means less holiday pay for the regular staff. There was a lot of police about and Superdrug had hired extra security for the day. However the combination of the picket, the leaflet saying, 'Don't Shop At Superdrug' and the added security costs meant we succeeded in our objective of costing Superdrug money for using Workfare.

 'Work Experience' is not voluntary in practice. All workfare companies have to sign a contract saying that they will report anyone who does not show up for the schemes, which automatically results in benefit claimants having their benefits cut. Job Centre Plus and third party workfare profiteers like A4E bully benefit claimants on to the scheme. Benefit claimants can have their benefits cut if they do not not continue to 'volunteer' to stay on the scheme, after they have been on the scheme for a week. Only a tiny number of people on workfare get jobs afterwards. For example it is 3.5% for the 'Work Programme' and that includes participants getting jobs with other companies and very short-term jobs. Stacking shelves for Superdrug is not learning a skill. Argos state that 'Work Experience' people work alongside paid colleagues, but don't replace them, but the permanent staff lose out on holiday pay. Why aren't all of their temporary staff paid? Of the 25% Poundland say left their 'work experience' early, because they received a job offer elsewhere, how many were going to get offered a job anyhow? Poundland also put a positive spin on 10% going on to get jobs with them, but that means 90% do not, while Poundland continue to make profits from all the unpaid labour.

Dundee
The traffic of people churning in and out of the Overgate mall in Dundee’s city centre seemed more intense then the usual Saturday afternoon – likely the beginning of this season’s Christmas shopping spree. We gathered near the entrance and reflected on the themes of workfare, the state and social community response to such threats. Those participating included myself and two comrades from the Anarchist Federation Dundee branch, a member of the independent Dundee Anarchists group and an activist from the Scottish Unemployed Worker’s Network. We were also joined by members of other left-wing groups, gathered under the event named ‘Name and Shame: The Dundee Workfare Provider Tour’.

Whilst the event was relatively small from a headcount perspective, the public response, though moderate, was exclusively positive. It was an important opportunity to answer frequently asked questions such as whether or not organised anarchist groups are a hypocritical phenomenon, and how the manner with which these organisations are structured created an alternative to hierarchy and centralism. We were in turn provided with the opportunity to meet individuals, their relations and co-workers who have endured the literal consequences of the government’s Workfare project. Whilst we didn’t encounter any staff contracted under Workfare, our touring of companies such as Primark, Tesco, McDonalds and the local casino, revealed an active participation in workfare schemes – with most of the managers and staff either denying involvement or redirecting our questions to ‘higher command’. One member of staff, however, broke the pattern by informing us of a Workfare employee that worked with her on certain days of the week. It was confirmed that many under the Workfare scheme fell through the employment net.

The event lasted three hours overall, and left those participating with food for thought. Reaching out and networking with individuals under Workfare contracts is becoming an increasingly pressing matter for social response to the government’s policy. It has become apparent that the greater majority are either unaware or unconvinced of the presence of social resistance and platform movements against Workfare.

Taken from Libcom

Drug Legalisation?

The Home Affairs Committee recently released a report on drugs use in Britain. After a year of research the committee concluded that "the international drugs control policy has failed to curtail consumption," and that our government should consider a major shift in policy.

In 2005 (largely based on 2003 data) the UN estimated that the illegal drug trade is worth more than $320 billion, 0.9 per cent of global GDP. According to the UN 2012 World Drug Report the total retail market for cocaine amounts to some $85 billion and the opiate market amounts to some $68 billion (figures for 2009).  According to IMF data, a nation with a net worth equivalent to that of the global drugs industry would be the 34th largest economy in the world, just above Denmark and below Venezuela. Scotland's GDP is $177 billion

'bread and water'

The letter was sent out by Mauchline Primary, in East Ayrshire, was issued after around 21 families collectively failed to pay almost £90 of their children’s school meals fees. Those pupils affected would be made to wait until all the other pupils had been served before being able to get their own meals. Those “who have not brought money to pay for meals will be provided with a plain sandwich and water to drink until the backdated debt has been paid”

A hard but true lesson about capitalism for the pupils...can't pay - can't have

The Poor Rich

Europe's richest families are suffering, the poor wee souls. Having had returns on investments of 8 percent in 2011 and nearly 12 percent in 2010 the annual return dropped to 3.6 percent. They could have performed better if they hadn't held so much low-performing cash, or real estate, because some stock markets and asset classes such as government bonds moved ahead strongly. Rather than speculate in shares, the rich have hoarded in the safety of bank deposits and land.

The old and the lonely

10,000 over-75s in Scotland will spend Christmas Day alone because their children are too busy to visit them, a new report claimed today. Across the UK, the survey found a total of 363,176 older people had children too busy to see them. The study by the older people’s charity WRVS said many elderly people were left isolated and lonely because their families had moved away, often to find work. But almost two-thirds of older people said they would not tell their children they were lonely because they did not want to “bother them”. In the Lothians, around 1700 over-75s will be on their own on Christmas Day.

Earlier research from the WRVS showed 27 per cent of Scots over-75s feel lonely – more than in any other part of the UK. 11 per cent of older people in Scotland lived at least one hour’s drive away from their nearest child, which meant almost half were visited just once every two to six months. The survey found lack of job security and changes in the labour market had increased the pressure on families, with 82 per cent of children who moved away from their older parents having done so for work reasons. Margaret Paterson, head of operations for WRVS Scotland, said: “Many children have no choice but to move away from their older parents, and really regret the fact they aren’t close enough for more regular visits.”

Only 28 per cent of older people in Scotland spoke to their children on the phone every day, compared with 40 per cent across the UK. Most older people did not use Skype to talk to their children, many because they did not know how BUT OF those who do 85 per cent said it helped them feel more connected. The regularity of Skype in Scotland is that 75 per cent of those who use Skype do so weekly,

A separate report warned lonely people are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s. Researchers found it was not so much the fact of living alone as feelings of loneliness which increased the risk of having the degenerative brain disease.

Meanwhile average train fares have increased by more than 26 per cent since the start of the recession, almost three times faster than wages, new research revealed today, making even harder for families to visit. Fare rises will outpace wages and inflation again in 2013, with the cost of some fares set to soar by ten per cent, while pay is forecast to rise by an average of 2.5 per cent.

Food for thought

Scandinavia is often cited as the shining example of good capitalism where the safety net protects everybody and capitalists and their corporations look after workers and the environment. But recently furniture giant, Ikea, was forced to apologize for using political prisoners in East Germany as forced labour to produce some of their furniture. Must have been a good profit margin that couldn't be turned down. Scratch the surface and they are all the same!

On television's "Pawn Stars", a guy sold the Stars! -- a colt 45 revolver of Western movie fame. The authenticator said, "Two hundred thousand were produced for use during the Civil War. Afterwards, they maintained production because so many people were moving out West and everybody had to have one." A real indictment of a private property based society.

The famous photographer, Fran Leibowitz, was asked to comment on some of America's leading political figures. As for New York Mayor, Blumberg, he said, " He was the only one who could end New York's financial woes. Well, maybe if he signed over all if his wealth.". On Mitt Romney, " He seems very eager to go to war in every place where we are not already at war." On Sarah Palin, " She was a cartoon character and the fact that people treated her seriously shows how sick America's political system is." John Ayers

Screwing the workers

Just four years after the worst shock to the economy since the Great Recession, U.S. corporate profits are stronger than ever. In the third quarter, corporate earnings were $1.75 trillion, up 18.6% from a year ago, according to last week'si gross domestic product report. That took after-tax profits to their greatest percentage of GDP in history.  How is that possible? It’s simple: profits have surged because wages and other labor benefits are down.

Today’s economy is a market. The 1% populariSe the view that today’s economy is a fair and argue, as Margaret Thatcher put it, There Is No Alternative (TINA). The market's real invisible hands are at work insider dealing and anti-union maneuvering plus outright looting and fraud. What they all seek is power is hire strike-breakers, lobby for special favors and backing politicians pledged to act on behalf of the 1%. Firms use political leverage to make sure that anti-labour laws determine employment and working conditions. Capital-intensive industries out-source low-skill jobs to small-scale providers using non-union labor and advocate privatising public utilities largely aimed at breaking trade union power. 

Why are capitalists uninterested in the jobs crisis? The indifference to the jobs crisis isn’t simply a matter of being out-of-touch. Businesses oppose employment creation policies in order to keep wages low, even though this may limit the market for their own output. After all, without a mass reserve army of labour to decrease the demand for labor and bully the workforce into a more pliant state of submission, profitability becomes imperiled by the threat of enhanced worker power and the ensuing demand for higher wages. This is a process one can clearly see in the wake of the present crisis. Rising financial profits have reduced workers' wages and squeezed profits across the rest of the economy, according to a new TUC report. Worker wages have fallen to historic lows. Such are the true splendors of the “market"

Of course, the role of mass unemployment in suppressing wages and ensuring continued profitability necessarily extends to the global capitalist system as a whole. In 2011 the global reserve army of labour stood at some 2.4 billion people, as opposed to the 1.4 billion found in the active labour market. That is, the global reserve army of labor stood 70 percent larger than the active world labour market. “The existence of an enormous global reserve army of labour forces income deflation on the world’s workers,” Foster and McChesney explained in their book The Endless Crisis. Where labour is on the defensive, capital is on the offensive. Hence, amid rising corporate profits we see a varied global attack on labour—stretching from Brooklyn to Broxburn to Bangladesh and beyond. The class struggle must be international. The international dimension of economic power is the IMF, the World Bank and the ECB through which the U.S. and E.U. imposes imposes austerity on Greece, Spain and the rest of the world, targeting families, the elderly, the sick and the poor, as governments slash benefits. People are being pushed into poverty and no longer can afford the basics such as food, heating and education. The "invisible hand" of the market is unable, or unwilling, to satisfy the needs of society.

 Some political activists call for mobilisation against the bankers and the billionaires but socialists say don’t hate the players, hate the game.

Based on this article

Boycott Trumps

Bill Elliott, editor-at-large of Golf Monthly (readership around 500,000) and chairman of the Association of Golf Writers, is calling for a boycott of Donald Trump’s Scottish course.

Elliot explains " it was impossible not to be shocked by the tactics used to try to intimidate a few local residents who refused to sell their homes. This intimidation apparently goes on.”

Aberdeenshire farmer Michael Forbes, a neighbour and campaigner against the golf course, recently received the Top Scot prize at the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland ceremony.

Socialist Courier hopes that the vulture Trump gets a birdie, to use the golfing term, for his business venture - a dead duck.

A NOT SO MERRY XMAS

Behind the facade of the Merry Christmas spectacle lurks the sordid reality of how capitalism really operates. 75 per cent of the world's toys are manufactured in sweat shops in China. "Human rights campaigners have frequently raised concerns over the conditions of Chinese factory workers who make an estimated £150 a month A report in 2010 reported that the average monthly salary, including overtime, for a migrant worker was estimated to be just £150. Across China there are an estimated 8,000 toy-making factories employing 3.5 million people. According to New York-based China Labour Watch Chinese factory workers often work an extra 36.5 hours a week but are paid only 59 per cent of the minimum wage." (Daily Mail, 8 December) In its mad drive for more and more profits capitalism shows no mercy to the working class. RD

BIG BUCKS AND BIG BUNGS

Politicians love courting big businesses like Rolls Royce so it was no surprise to learn both the Conservatives and Labourites were lavish in their praise. "David Cameron and Ed Miliband have lauded the derby company, with the prime minister describing it as a business "of which the whole country can be proud"." ....It is likely that their praise will be somewhat muted at the following news however. .... "Rolls Royce have been accused of paying a $20 m bribe to Tommy Suharto, son of the former president of Indonesia, to win a giant contract in Asia. The British aero-engine maker also allegedly gave a blue Rolls-Royce to Suharto, who was convicted in 2002 of ordering the murder of a judge. In return, it is claimed, he persuaded Garuda, the Indonesian national airline to buy Rolls-Royce engines for Airbus planes." (Sunday Times, 9 December) Bribery? Murder? A strange source of national pride surely! RD

Without the Rose-tinted Glasses

This rather unsympathetic article by Gary Girod about Red Clydeside is of interest and a rich source of facts and details.

The Background

For many years, the Left have painted a picture of Glasgow and Red Clydeside as a revolution that almost was. Some have argued that the unrest in Glasgow during WWI and the immediate post-war period was a prelude to the establishment of a workers' republic in Scotland. Willie Gallacher's said of the 40 Hours' Movement that "we were carrying on a strike when we ought to have been making a revolution." Memoirs written decades after the 1914-1919 period and the government's hysteria paint a picture of Clydeside which was far more revolutionary in hindsight than it ever was in reality. In 1983 Iain McLean's "The Legend of the Red Clydeside" asserted that Red Clydeside was neither a revolution nor "a class movement; it was an interest-group movement." Glasgow was not Petrograd and it never could have been. Its goal to maintain the standard of living in Glasgow as the war strained the economy. According to the 1916 STUC report, the cost of living between July 1914 to July 1915 increased by 35% while food prices increased by 17% in small towns and 19% in cities.This would prove to be but a mere taste of the war's costs for the lower class. By December 1917, food prices had increased 106% while the cost of living increased by 85% to 90% as compared with pre-war levels. Workers' wages did not even come close to keeping up with this inflation. By April 1917, skilled laborers' wage increased by only 50%.

In 1913, for the first time in the history of Great Britain, a census of production catalogued the wealth of Great Britain. According to the report the £712,000,000 that formed the net output of Great Britain was divided between 6,984,976 workers, which would mean that if this wealth was divided evenly, each person would make  £102 per year. However, the average wage of workers in Great Britain was "officially stated to be not more than 24 shillings per week, or  £62 4/- per annum. Thus in 1907, the British worker was generous enough to pay the manufacturer  £40 per annum for the privilege of working to produce wealth. The Scottish Trades Union Congress uses the findings of the report to calculate the inequality amongst engineers and determined that the "net output per person employed [was]  £108." Meanwhile, the average annual wage of engineers was £67. "There is the simple answer, £41 per employed person to the capitalist." The 1920 Manifesto of the Socialist Labour Party notes that "of the wealth produced in this country, roughly £1,700,000,000 per annum, the workers' share is, according to capitalist authorities, less than £665,000,000 so that the working class gets little more than a third of the wealth produced." The manifesto would conclude that "this is wage-slavery."

NATIONALIST NONSENSE

Nationalism is a horrendous condition that has been used by the owning class to turn worker against worker in wars and has led to millions of death. A particularly stupid manifestation of nationalism was displayed in Belfast recently. Because the union jack flag was only going to be displayed on designated days at the city hall so-called British patriots rioted in the streets."Eight police officers have been injured and 12 people arrested following clashes between loyalists and riot police in Belfast. Six officers were injured in the Crumlin Road and Ligoneill Road area of north Belfast and two at Shaftesbury Square in the city centre." (BBC News, 8 December) If it wasn't so tragic it might be called comical that workers, many of them without a job, should take to the streets to support "their" country. RD

Fracking Gas

More than 20,000 square kilometres (7800 square miles), A quarter of Scotland, covering the entire central belt and a part of the southwest, have been earmarked by the UK Government for possible exploitation by controversial technologies such as fracking to extract gas from wells dug deep into the ground. Scotland is rich in coalbed methane gas because of its coal reserves. Plans are afoot to drill 22 wells to tap the methane gas in coal seams near Falkirk and Stirling. Some 16 exploratory wells have been dug.

One recent study published in an international scientific journal found that 632 chemicals were used to extract underground gas in the US. Of the 353 on which there was detailed information, more than three-quarters were potentially hazardous to health, with over one-third being gender-benders (chemicals that can disrupt sexuality) and one-quarter capable of causing cancer. "These results indicate many chemicals used during the fracturing and drilling stages may have long-term health effects that are not immediately expressed," concluded the researchers from The Endocrine Disruption Exchange in Paonia, Colorado.

 Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) warns that fracking for gas is "very likely" to bring radioactive wastes to the surface in fluids. The radioactivity is naturally present in the ground, but is released by the process. Sepa also points out that, in addition to the climate pollution caused by burning the gas, there could be accidental emissions. Releasing methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon, would help accelerate global warming, it says. Mary Church, a spokesperson for Friends of the Earth said  "Communities around the world are seeing the devastating impacts of coalbed methane and shale gas expansion. We need to learn from these experiences and ensure the same doesn't happen here."


The UK Government suspended fracking after it was blamed for causing small earthquakes near Blackpool last year, though it is now expected to give it the go-ahead.

1: Fracking, hydraulic or ballistic: This frees the gas by deliberately fracturing the rock by drilling down and then pumping in high-pressure liquids, or even detonating explosive charges. Fracking can be used to extract the gas from shale, a type of rock, or to free "tight gas" held in deeper, denser rock formations. It can also be used to help mine the methane that inhabits coal seams.

2: Tapping "coalbed methane": This involves drilling into and along the seams, and then pumping out and disposing of large quantities of water, a process known as dewatering. The removal of water may be enough to stimulate the flow of gas, though sometimes fracking may also be necessary.

A reality check

All working-age benefits, including tax credits and child benefit, will only go up by 1% a year – less than half the rate of inflation – for the next three years. A cut, in other words, that will be worth £3.75 billion a year to the Treasury, in addition to all the previously announced cuts and freezes. The poorest 30% will be made to bear most of Osborne's budget cuts in the age of austerity.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation explained that as things stand – which is to say, before the next round of cuts – out-of-work benefits cover 60% of the minimum income standard for couples with children, and 40% for single adults.  It is calculated simply by asking ordinary members of the public what they think is "an essential minimum standard of living".

28% of workers engaged in the Scottish private sector earn less than £7.20 an hour. 17% of Scots are stuck in relative poverty – defined as having a household income of less than 60% of median household income. 

Six out of 10 children in Scotland belong to families enduring the contradiction known as in-work poverty. 57% of children in poverty had at least one parent in work.

Oxfam claims, however, that four million of the 13.5 million poor in Britain are in work, of sorts. Meanwhile, the Child Poverty Action Group points out that a couple with two kids would need to find 58 hours of work a week on the minimum wage – if work could be had – simply to be out of poverty.

Zero-hours contracts are spreading. One million workers, by the latest estimate, are stuck in part-time jobs, hoping for more hours.

 In November 2011, the Trussell Trust established a food bank in the south-east of Glasgow. During the Christmas period last year, it helped 168 people, including 103 children. The Trust estimates that up to 60,000 Scots will need its help every year.

 To some, "recession" means a little more prudence when managing the monthly finances. But others, those who can least afford any further cuts in their household budgets will suffer long-term job losses and find it more difficult to feed and clothe their families. They will be much more susceptible to mental and physical ill health and another couple of years will be deducted from their life expectancy. Many will turn to alcoholism and drug misuse as a pitiful means to get to the end of the day in one piece. A particularly cold winter will carry off the vulnerable and elderly people.
The vast majority of those who rely on benefits and tax credits are either in work, have worked, or will be in work in the near future. Families are scraping by in low-paid work, or being bounced from insecure jobs to benefits and back again. The means testing is being de facto deployed by Atos, the inquisitors of the disabled with the presumption of benefit fraud before any claimant is given a single penny of welfare.

The richest 10% in Scotland have incomes equal to the earnings of the poorest 50%. The sheer greedy, corrupt and rapacious bankers and hedge fund managers who caused the recession tell us that they shouldn't be punished for their avarice because the country need their expertise too much but that we the victims should pay the price of their failures and to just knuckle under.

The poor are being blamed for being poor.

BILLIONAIRES AND PAUPERS

We live in a crazy society wherein children die for the lack of fresh water and billionaires have so much wealth it is almost impossible for their minions to account the totals. Here is a recent example. "One of Germany's richest men - heir to an estimated £11 billion fortune - died last month but his secretive family only leaked details of his passing today. Berthold Albrecht was the son of Aldi's co-founder - the discount supermarket chain that holds the majority share of the grocery market in Germany and much of Europe." (Daily Mail, 7 December) Albrecht was 58 when he died yet he managed to accrue £11 billion during his exploitive life - how many millions died during that fifty eight years of poverty and hunger? Capitalism sucks! RD

Who owns the north pole - Part 54

No-one and Everyone!! 

Greenpeace declares sanctuary around North Pole to protect Arctic. 

Greenpeace isn’t going to stand by while greedy companies and selfish politicians destroy the Arctic. – We need to act now, before it’s too late. ‘So here’s the plan. We’re declaring a global sanctuary around the pole, to become enforceable by international law, that will mean a ban on oil drilling and other activities that threaten the Arctic.

Tough at the top? Not really

Capitalists love touting the benefits of trickle-down economics. It is a rationalization of inequality. By linking the welfare of the working-class  directly to the prosperity of the rich, they can protect the interests of corporations and the wealthy without the fear of backlash.

The investment banking hierarchy is essentially a large bureaucracy. At the bottom are the manual unskilled maintenance staff like security guards, the janitors and the cleaners who keep the offices safe and warm and clean. Then there are the administrative assistants, who support several bankers at one time and make about $35,000 a year. Above them are the analysts, college graduates whose life consists of 120-hour work weeks and an endless stream of menial tasks for $65,000 to $90,000 a year. Next up, and supported by the analysts, are the associates -- freshly minted MBAs with more than a $100,000 in school loans hanging over them -- who can look forward to taking home between $100,000 and $175,000 a year. If these young men and women, who work 90-hour weeks while trying to juggle a family, survive long enough to become vice presidents, their compensation can rise to $200,000-$300,000 per year.

Above the vice presidents are the directors, which is a training zone for the next pay grade (or a graveyard for those who don't have what it takes). Directors rely on the workers below them to do all the grunt work, including research, financial analysis, and client presentations, while they mainly babysit clients and occasionally come up with ideas to pitch to them. Their pay for these relatively cushy tasks ranges from $350,000 to $500,000 per year; but even this is meager compared to what their superiors make. Managing directors, who work even less and spend more time golfing instead, can make anywhere from a million to several million dollars a year.

Finally you have the really big fish -- the CEOs, presidents, executive vice presidents, and others who manage the entire circus, think deep thoughts, and schmooze with politicians to get regulations loosened. What makes these gigs so coveted is not just the fact that few ever manage to join that echelon but that the pay-scale jumps to tens of millions of dollars (even hundreds of millions) per year for work that is only moderately more challenging than that of the managing directors. It may be lonely at the top, but it's  lucrative.

It should be clear from the above that the wealth generated in these organizations gathers mainly at the top of the pyramid, while the people at the bottom, who do a lot of the heavy lifting and are instrumental in building that wealth, receive only a fraction of those riches. Sure, the pay scales in investment banking are pretty good by the standards of other industries, but it is the proportional difference between the compensation at the top and the bottom that makes a difference. This large income gap leads to an exponentially faster accumulation of wealth in a few hands, which in turn widens the prosperity gap even more. In other words, prosperity is not really trickling down but trickling up.

The more wealth trickles up in the capitalist system, the more it frustrates those at the bottom -- without whose efforts that wealth could not be created in the first place.

Taken from here

Fact of the Day

Nearly half the French people consider themselves poor or fear they soon will be, said a survey.

Salaried employees, manual labourers and independent workers felt the most exposed to poverty, while executives and professionals felt the least exposed.

 Unemployment numbers stand 10%—the worst since 1999. Youth unemployment hit 24.9%, the highest since the data series began in 1996.

Increasing misery

Jérôme Sainte-Marie, director of the political opinion department at the market research firm CSA, which had conducted the survey, was worried that France has “entered a new era.” This was now no longer a question of “lowered status but of pauperization.” Many French people not only had the impression of being “worse off than their parents or worse off than hoped,” but they worried “that they could be thrown into misery, if they aren’t already in it.”

Henry George

Green MP Caroline Lucas is supporting an annual land value tax, based on its market price, but, of course, with many "new" ideas this one has been proposed before. Henry George, a nineteenth-century writer who had popularized the notion that no single person could claim to “own” land. In his book Progress and Poverty (1879), George called private land ownership an “erroneous and destructive principle” and argued that land should be held in common, with members of society acting collectively as “the general landlord.”

Henry George's book "Progress and Poverty" was very popular. The book's starting point was man's God-given right to the land. Private property in land was unjust as it restricted access to the land. As technological progress increased industrial production, the benefits, George argued, went not to the labourers or even to the capitalists but to the landlords in the form of increased rent. The remedy proposed in Progress and Poverty was the raising by the state of a tax equivalent to the rental value of the land. Not only would this "single" tax compensate the poor labourer for his lost birth right to the land, but it would obviate the need for other forms of taxation and be politically more acceptable than full land nationalisation.

Scotland proved the most receptive to his message. It was here after all with the Crofters' Revolt raging and the cities crowded with Highland and Irish exiles that the unacceptable face of landlordism was most apparent and keenly resented. The Presbyterian Scots also responded to the religious strain in Georgism. The Scottish Land Restoration League, a purely Georgite body was established in Glasgow with branches in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. "The land question" Henry George wrote to an English friend, "will never go to sleep in Auchtermuchty."

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

 

The owning class are fond of boasting about their obscene wealth but even by their excessive behaviour the following Christmas dinner menu takes a bit of beating. "Costing £125,000 for four people, or £31, 250 per person, the menu for what will be the world's most expensive Christmas dinner menu has been devised by London chef Ben Spalding, who has completed residencies at restaurants including The Fat Duck in Bray, Gordon Ramsay's Royal Hospital Road and Per Se in New York. Among the ingredients being used are a Yubari King melon costing £2,500, in addition the the £2,600 Densuke watermelon; 150-year-old balsamic vinegar costing £1,030; whole white Alba truffle costing £3,500; and gold leaf coming in at £6,000. To drink, a £37,000 bottle of Piper Heidsieck 1907 champagne will be served in diamond-studded flutes; diners who prefer spirits can sip from a £2,000 stock of DIVA vodka, described as a "diamond-sand-filtered vodka" and served in a bottle that is filled with Swarovski crystals." (Daily Telegraph, 7 December) All of this excess is taking place in a society where millions are trying to eke out an existence on less than $2 a day. RD

Food for thought

Egyptian President, Mohammed Morsi, has given himself sweeping powers that, in effect, make him a dictator. The people are calling him 'the pharaoh' and are taking to the streets again to demand the democracy that they supposedly won last year. That it can all be lost so quickly emphasizes the need for class consciousness and a knowledge of socialism in order to carry out the revolution. Otherwise the people simply hand power to the next dictator, as has happened here. John Ayers

How Clydebank stitched up Singers

The 1911 Clydebank Singers strike is considered the first battle between labour and international capital in Scotland if not in the UK. It was also the biggest single firm strike in Scotland up to 1914. The strike lasted three weeks.

In 1867/8 the American company Singer Sewing Machine Co. expanded into Scotland. It first opened a small sewing machine factory in Glasgow near John St. However growing demand forced the company to expand to a larger factory in the Bridgeton area of Glasgow. In 1882 they moved again, to a greenfield site at Kilbowie in Clydebank. It was a very anti-union company. Tom Bell, an activist during the 1911 strike, in his book “Pioneering Days” states; “The firm refuses to recognise any union, and those union men that were employed had to keep it quiet.”

Food for thought

Will this coal or any other resource bonanza, mean a better life for the workers of that region? For the answer to that we go to Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in the world, torn by war and failed 'Marxist' economic policies (this is the New York Times reporting). Now, however, due to the discovery of large coal and gas reserves it has become an African Lion. World Bank estimates run to $70 billion for the gas alone. Far from the expected 'good' jobs in mining, the local workers were moved 40 kilometres away, housed in leaky buildings, and given barren plots from which to eke out a living. Just a bump on the road to prosperity you say? The rising tide will raise all boats? In Gabon and Angola, two more countries experiencing the curse of high growth, poverty has spiked. Probably the worst thing for an underdeveloped country is the discovery of something valuable to capitalism. Primitive accumulation -- moving people out of the way, by force if necessary and with government compliance, and the theft of those resources -- is a precondition of capitalism. John Ayers

Nationalisation is not social ownership

These are not good times. We have an economy with no stability, no guarantees that hard work will provide a consistent living, and a constant possibility of being cast aside simply because we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And there is little people can do in their personal lives or behavior to change this. Many well-intentioned people say “We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.” and recommend all manner of reforms and palliatives. The Socialist Party in its stand against such cure-all solutions is accused of standing aloof and doing nothing but abstract talk of a future revolution.

Many have come to identify socialism with state ownership, government intervention, state subsidies and expenditure on ‘public’ services. This has nothing to do with socialism. Support for nationalisation as a "socialist" measure is a short-cut, a short-cut to nowhere. Marx and Engels while in favour of many reforms to the capitalist system, saw the purpose of such reforms as to place the working class in a better position to carry out the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. It was not because such reforms of themselves were the means to bring socialism into effect.

Today calls on the state to do good are presented as the means to win workers’ votes, which will ultimately lead to socialism, while the goal is considered too advanced to be put forward clearly, put to them as something that they must do and only they can achieve. The avoidance of socialism and its real content today goes under the name of anti-capitalism or under the banner of broad left parties and alliances which hide what its sponsors claim they really stand for. Today some demands for nationalisation and state redistributive policies are designed to manoeuvre workers into a movement for socialism without even mentioning the word never mind misrepresenting its real content! The Trotskyist demands for widespread nationalisation and defence of the welfare state imposes demands on the capitalist state to do things it simply will not and often cannot do.

Fact of the Day

One in five women in Scotland will experience domestic violence at some point in their lives.

PRODUCTION FOR PROFIT IS UNHEALTHY

Socialists are often told by supporters of capitalism that it is the most efficient way to run society but recent event in Germany would seem to deny that notion. "Cancer experts have warned of a 'frightening' crisis as pharmaceutical companies abandon production of one of the most widely used chemotherapy drugs because it is not profitable enough. Fluorouracil - also known as 5-FU - is one of the most frequently used components in chemo combinations used to treat bowel and breast cancer in the UK and worldwide. But cancer specialists in Germany have warned that the drug has become increasingly difficult to obtain as producers turn to newer, more profitable treatments." (Daily Mail, 12 November) Production for profit is the basis of capitalism in contrast to world socialism's production solely for use. RD

ROUGH SLEEPING IN THE ROUGH SOCIETY

Politicians like to pose as supporters of families but young people and families with children are increasingly facing homelessness, according to a study, which says rising numbers of people are finding themselves without a roof over their heads. "The report, by academics from Heriot-Watt University and the University of York, says all forms of homelessness are continuing to rise in England, and argues that "deepening benefit cuts are likely to have a much more dramatic impact on homelessness". .... The report says national rough sleeper numbers rose by 23% in the year to autumn 2011, from 1,768 to 2,181 – "a more dramatic growth dynamic than anything seen since the 1990s". The number of families who end up asking for assistance from local authorities because they are about to lose their homes rose from 40,020 in 2009/10 to 50,290 in 2011/12. (Guardian, 4 December) This is the madness of capitalism in action - houses lying empty while people are forced to sleep in the street. RD

We are all Spartacus - political football

Celtic come face to face with Spartak in the Champions League.  Moscow is the home of Spartak as well as Dynamo, CSKA, Torpedo-Luzhniki, Lokomotiv and Torpedo-ZIL but historically, the main Moscow grudge derby-match is between Spartak and Dynamo

Sport has always had a political dimension, especially football.

In the early days of Soviet football many government agencies such as the police, army and railroads created their own clubs. So many statesmen saw in the wins of their teams the superiority over the opponents patronizing other teams. Almost all the teams had such kind of patrons such as  CSKA – The Red Army team. Dynamo Moscow were a creation of the Interior Ministry, then essentially a euphemism for the secret police. The de facto founder of Dynamo was Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the OGPU (forerunner to the KGB). Spartak were created as an independent football team, with no affiliations to one or other part of the state machine and considered to be the "people's team". The name Spartak that was derived from Spartacus, the gladiator-slave who led a rebellion against Rome.

In the Soviet Union millions attended matches and obsessed about their favorite club, and their rowdiness on game day stood out as a moment of relative freedom in a society that demanded rigid conformity and control. Fans of Spartak Moscow would have you believe that their club almost single-handedly defied the state machine.

Spartak emerged from the rough proletarian Presnia district of Moscow and spent much of its history in fierce rivalry with Dinamo. To cheer for Spartak, Edelman shows, was a small and safe way of saying "no" to the fears and absurdities of Stalinism.

Spartak was for seven decades by the four Starostin brothers, the most visible of whom were Nikolai and Andrei. Perhaps because of Spartak's too frequent success against state-sponsored teams, they were arrested in 1942 and spent twelve years in the gulag. Instead of facing hard labor and likely death, they were spared the harshness of their places of exile when they were asked by local camp commandants to coach the prisoners' football teams. Beria, the secret police chief, was possibly fuelled by a personal vendetta. As left-back for a Geor­gian side in the early 1920s, Beria had turn­ed out against Nikolai Starostin, who had completely played him off the park. Beria, Stalin's henchman, was not a man to forgive and forget. In 1942  branded “en­emies of the people”, with Nikolai and Andrei initially accused of plotting with the German Embassy to kill Stalin and set up a Fascist state but instead charg­ed with stealing a consignment of clothing,embezzlement and bribery. Returning from the camps after Stalin's death, they took back the reins of a club whose mystique as the "people's team" was only enhanced by its status as a victim of Stalinist tyranny.*

Like the Rangers Ibrox Disaster, Spartak has suffered tragedies. 30 years ago in a game against HFC Haarlem in a UEFA Cup one section of Spartak fans started streaming out to get to the Metro but a late goal in injury time caused some fans to turn back and the two streams collided with the tragic result of 66 dead according to official figures but probably many more.

Sadly the club like so many others these days is under the ownership of an oligarch, Leonid Fedun, estimated wealth of over $6 billion, and its fans have been associated with racist chanting.

* See here for more

Food for thought

So now that everyone agrees on global warming, how is the response going? As one would expect in a profit driven economy, not very well. For example, The New York Times (Nov.25, 2012) reported that coal demand in China is so great that in 2010 a traffic jam of coal trucks coming out of Mongolia was 120 kilometres long and involved 10 000 trucks. India relies on coal for 55% of its electric power and, of course, the US is a big user (although, according to industry advert on TV, they only use 'clean' coal! Having used coal in the 1940s in England, I can personally vouch for the fact that there is nothing clean about coal.) World demand for this cheap source of energy is growing fast and is expected to reach 8.1 billion metric tons by 2016, increase fifty per cent by 2035, and coal will surpass oil as the leading source of energy in the world in the next two years. So much for working on a looming major catastrophe. Money and profit trump all. John Ayers

Is Lending the Solution?

The Grameen Scotland Foundation will oversee the running of a microfinance-style lending in Scotland. Tesco Bank will provide £500,000 of the loan capital for what will be Grameen’s first venture in the UK. The Scottish Government have donated £100,000, and supporters such as businesswoman Ann Gloag, who has also given £100,000. The original Grameen bank, founded more than 20 years ago in Bangladesh to offer small loans to those excluded by the traditional banking system. The borrowers are almost exclusively women. They are required to organise themselves into groups of five, which creates a support system for repaying the loan. The average loan is around £1,000 and repayment rates are high, often close to 100%. Grameen now has around 8 million borrowers and has issued more than £3.5bn in small loans in the past two decades. Grameen Glasgow will be based in a community-run centre in the Sighthill area of the city, where more than 59% of children live in workless households with up to four generations unemployed.

Has microfinance genuinely benefited the world's poor? Held up for decades as a "miracle cure" for global poverty, microfinance became one of the world's most high-profile and generously funded development interventions. Everyone was talking about how small loans could unlock endless opportunities for the world's poorest people.

New studies began to challenge the promise of microfinance to bring about an unprecedented reduction in poverty that prompted parallels with the US sub-prime mortgage collapse. Reports of skyrocketing interest rates and suicides among indebted borrowers in Andhra Pradesh, India, suggested a sinister side to the microcredit boom. Last year, a sweeping review of the evidence, funded by the UK government, concluded that the "enthusiasm [for microcredit] is built on … foundations of sand". It was unclear when, and for whom, microfinance had been "of real, rather than imagined, benefit to poor people", it said. A further study commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DfID) advised against lending to the poorest of the poor, who are more vulnerable to the dangers of debt. A study on microcredit in Bosnia found a substantial increase in child labour in businesses opened through microloans, raising concerns about the unintended consequences of increasing access to credit and self-employment. Norway says it will stop funding microfinance due to changes in the sector, including more competition and the addition of commercial capital. A recent Deutsche Bank report describes microfinance as "a development programme turning commercial". Banks and other for-profit organisations are taking the lead, it notes, as "NGOs seem to have lost their role as the primary vehicle for microlending". Private funding is on the rise. Last week – in the largest deal of its kind – Luxembourg-based fund Bamboo Finance announced its $105m (£66m) acquisition of a controlling stake in Accion Investments in Microfinance, a powerful for-profit equity fund, which counted some of the biggest development finance institutions among its founding shareholders.


"Microcredit is not a 'silver bullet' to end all poverty … The leaders of the microfinance industry have known this for some time." said the CEOs of eight Mictofinance organisations.

Cambridge University economist Ha-Joon Chang puts part of its popularity down to a "strange alliance" between a financial industry that "does nasty things to make money, and people who genuinely wanted to help the poor but were against the collective approach". What's more, it enabled some institutions to say they cared about the poor without having to spend on social welfare, he argues.

 Why aren't we all wealthy? The wealthy have an answer: the poor are ignorant and lazy. The rich say they have nothing to do with our poverty. But a necessary part of becoming wealthy and staying wealthy is keeping your neighbor poor. There are a large number of relationships in capitalist society that keep the rich wealthy and the poor in poverty. The whole goal of the self-interested actor in the marketplace is buying low and selling high, hoping to profit. Working for wages that pay the worker less money than the value his work creates for the owner is one such transaction. Usually, the owner will not even hire a worker unless they believe they can make a profit. A person renting from a landlord, whether an apartment, house, or piece of land pay for landlords to make a profit over and above their costs. Banks and others loan money to borrowers and collect interest. The wealthy work to protect their wealth.

Food for thought

Recently released data shows that white people in the US without much
schooling are dying faster than they did twenty years ago. The trends
were five years of lost life for white men and three years for men
without a high school diploma between 1990 and 2008. Life expectancy for
them was 67.5 years compared to 80.4 years for white men with a college
degree. In the UN international life expectancy rankings, US women
ranked 41st . in 2010, down from 14th in 1985. Even so, the white
people in the US ranked higher than the black people, possibly due to
higher drug and smoking rates for blacks according to demographics
expert, John Haaga. The conclusions are that neo liberal policies have
been applied more in the US than elsewhere, and poverty is a huge factor
in health, especially where there is no universal health coverage. John Ayers

Wage slavery or liberation from toil

Overall real wages have scarcely budged in the 1990s in America, and earnings for college-educated workers actually declined by more than 6 percent. Productivity per person-hour increased by 5 percent between 2009 and 2010. 

These days, workers are expected to be on call 24/7—24 hours per day, seven days per week. Seen in this light, innovations like flexi-time or working from home are in fact strategies to bring new sorts of workers—mostly women—into the job market and to subject them to a new set of (frequently electronic) rules and controls.

Think about it. Fifteen years ago, would you have taken a job if you had to be available every day, respond to messages from your boss late at night, and maintain contact with the office while on vacation?  But today just about any job, especially the good ones, exhibit precisely this oppressive 24/7 character. At the same time technology has redefined labor into assembly-line piecework and new gadgets have allowed our less inviting piecework tasks to follow us home, filling family time, distracting our leisure time. Innovative machines bind us more tightly to our jobs while forcing us to work longer hours.

Historian Jackson Lears said in a recent interview, “Whatever the color of your collar, your job may still be ‘proletarian’ to the extent that management controls the pace, process, and output of your work.”

Corporate executives urge a drive toward efficiency—efficiency that can be best defined as low wages. Technology in the workplace holds out the promise of more time, but as we have seen, increased productivity— more output; fewer hours—benefits only the bottom lines of corporate profits wrung from the decreased cost of labor. High-tech machines enable fewer workers to do more while transforming complex artisanal tasks into piecework. Americans love to shop for bargain commodities, of course, but corporations also shop for labor, and modern technology and communication force workers to compete with lower-paid counterparts in Singapore, India, and China. Even here in the United States, an auto assembly job that pays $28 an hour in Michigan will pay half that in South Carolina. The workplace is being transformed by technologies deployed by corporations in the pursuit of efficiencies, increased productivity, and increased profit. “Productivity Hits All-Time High” may be a pleasing headline to the employing class , but Less-in/More-out is scarcely good news for workers.

Automation not only displaces jobs but change the very character of work itself. This may result in the alienated working class taking revolt but, fearful and discontented, they may also well turn toward authoritarian, simple-solution demagogue leaders expousing contempt for democracy and nationalistic xenophobia. This is already happening in the United States where state legislatures are bearing down on workers' rights and immigrants. 

Socialists have to counter with a real alternative to wage-slavery. John Ruskin wrote, “In order that people may be happy in their work, three things are needed. They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.”

Taken from here 

A nation again is not the solution but the problem

A Socialist World

The Basque and Catalans want to break from Spain. The Flemish want an end to Belgium for an independent Flanders. Even some American states are again talking of seceding from the union. Salmond's SNP and the SSP seek Scottish independence. Socialists oppose the scapegoating, the type-casting, and divisive language of "us" against "them". There is a myriad of politicians on both sides of the spectrum that use the debate on Scottish independence to vent their prejudices and ignorance; and unfortunately people tend to heed what confirms their own biases. While the majority of the people - nationalist or not - do not hold animosity against those who do not think like them, but who hasn't heard someone at work or in the pub talk about the “fucking English”. The United Kingdom share centuries of common history, so to describe the Scots and the English as two separate ethnic groups is simply not true. No one can deny that Scotland has its own history but to try to rewrite history to fit a political agenda is dishonest and dangerous.

BABY ITS COLD INSIDE

While major stores of High Street Santas "Ho, Ho, Ho ..." in mock joviality the harsh realities of working class life are revealed by a website. "The price comparison website uSwitch.com warned that nine in ten Britons are expecting to ration their energy use this winter to save money - a frightening prospect amid warnings of sub-zero temperatures. Three quarters of households went without heating at some point last winter to keep energy costs down and 15 per cent said that this had affected their quality of life or health." (Times, 1 December) So, remember when you are wishing your next door neighbour a "Happy New Year" keep on your gloves, scarf and thermal underwear! RD

FIGURES DO NOT LIE

Newspapers are fond of depicting a Britain with a steadily improving standard of living, but occasionally even they have to confess about the realities of modern capitalism. "The cost of heating a home has rocketed by 63 per cent since the summer of 2008, while essentials such as potatoes and minced beef have surged by 30 per cent and 50 per cent respectively. Over the same period wages have grown by only 6.8 per cent." (Times, 1 December) They then go on to report that during this period wages have been corroded by a 14 per cent rise in inflation. RD

Facts, statistics and lies

Data from the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) 2012 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings shows the median weekly earnings of Scots, at £497.60, were higher in any part of the UK outside London and the southeast, growing 2.6% year on year. This figure represents a real terms fall, in light of CPI inflation of 3% during that period. Women's waages were significantly under at a 0.6% increase, the slowest rise in the UK other than in northeast England, where women's wages actually fell by 0.5%.

David Bell, professor of economics at Stirling University, warned that the rise may be a symptom of an increased loss of lower-paid jobs, pushing the median figure further up the scale. He said: "What might have happened is that a lot of the people who lost their jobs in Scotland are at the bottom end of the wage distribution, and if falling employment is concentrated in the bottom, that moves the median up. Our labour market performance hasn't been that great lately and the unemployment trend has been going in the wrong direction for a few months. Paradoxically, rising median rates may be consistent with that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the economy is booming. I don't think there is evidence of great upward wage pressure in the Scottish economy."
STUC assistant secretary Stephen Boyd explained "Most workers are still experiencing what [Bank of England governor] Mervyn King has described as the longest period of falling real wages since the 1920s."

Hitting the vulnerable

Tens of thousands of sick and disabled people in Scotland face being forced on to unpaid work programmes under threat of losing their benefits from tomorrow. People with a range of physical or mental health conditions could find themselves stacking shelves in high-street stores such as Tesco and Poundland, or cleaning private homes, under the new proposals. They are to be told that they must take unpaid positions or risk losing up to 70% of their employment support allowance. 

 Across the UK, some 340,000 disabled people have been placed in the work related activity group (WRAG), which means they must undertake a range of activities to help them get back to work, including training, job-hunting – and now mandatory work placements.

 Most disabled people welcome support to get into the labour market, but compulsory placements rarely work, says Richard Hamer, director of external affairs at Capability Scotland. "When disabled people get forced into jobs, they tend to be unsuccessful jobs," Hamer said. "It can be very difficult, not just because of physical difficulties, but also mental impairments – poor mental health for example – for people to adapt to the labour market. If we start simply forcing people into jobs then there's a high likelihood that the employer won't be the best solution for them."

 Susan Archibald, a disability rights campaigner based in Fife, branded the proposed plans "a disgrace" that "will put disabled workers at risk".  Archibald estimates that around 30,000 work-capacity assessments are being carried out each week on disability claimants by Atos.

 Disabled and elderly protestors plan to disrupt the showpiece relay at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, forcing up security costs, if the "fit-for-work" benefits test company Atos is not dropped as a sponsor. Campaigners plan to turn the Queen's Baton Relay, the equivalent of the Olympic Torch relay, into a public-relations disaster if Atos is involved when the Games start, with pensioners and wheelchair-users potentially being arrested for blocking the route.

 Atos Healthcare has a £110m-a-year contract with the Department for Work and Pensions to run Work Capability Assessments to see if sick and disabled people are fit to work. Critics say the tests are flawed, degrading, and meant to cut benefit spending. Next year the firm begins work on a second £400m contract to assess mobility benefits.

The price of clothes

Edinburgh Woollen Mill had contracts with the Tazreen Fashion factory in Bangladesh where a fire killed at least 112 workers. So did C&As

Bangladesh, the world's second-largest producer of clothes, has secured this position only by offering workers the lowest wages in the world and having some of the worst safety regulations in the industry. Before last week's disaster, more than 500 garment workers had died in fires and accidents since 2006. Land is at a premium in the country, and it is common for factories to have eight or nine floors. And although factories may have escape gates, owners often prefer to lock them, supposedly to stop staff stealing merchandise. In 2006, 65 workers died in a garment factory fire in the southern city of Chittagong after management ordered gates to be locked.

 By most accounts, the Bangladesh tragedy could have been prevented by management simply spending more money on safety.  Money for new fire extinguishers, money for more access, money for additional fire escapes, money for conducting regular evacuation drills, and money for old-fashioned fire prevention measures

"All these fires in Bangladesh, if you look at why so many die and are injured, in most cases it is because you find that the doors are locked," said a Bangladeshi architect, Bashirul Huq. "The companies want to control the workers..."

 Bangladesh has about 4,000 garment factories and earns about £12.5bn a year from clothes exports. The body responsible for enforcing workplace safety laws has only 20 government inspectors for all the factories in Bangladesh.

£23 is the salary of an assistant sewer for working a 48-hour week at the Tazreen factory. £20 is the price of a pair of ‘Driftwood’ shorts made on the hip-hop star Sean Combs’ ENYCE label, which were made at the factory.

 As for those companies like Edinburgh Woolen Mills who, while having no direct ownership, rely on Bangladesh for their textile products, they continue to plead their ignorance. They say they had no knowledge of the woeful safety conditions.  Like those upstanding German citizens who lived in towns adjacent to Nazi death camps, they claim to have had no idea what was going on.

Crimes of Carnegie

In the land of his birth Andrew Carnegie is commemorated by statues and grand buildings named in his honour. In Dunfermline, where he was born, there is a museum to remember him. This article expresses a different view of the Scottish "benefactor".

Condoning Crime in the Name of Philanthropy

Many thousands of misguided people are applauding the alleged philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie and of these by far the larger number are
workingmen. Manifestly they have forgotten, or they have never heard of the horrors of Homestead — or perhaps they are too ignorant to understand or too cowardly to profit by the bloody lesson.

The reckless prodigality of Carnegie with the plunder of his victims brings into boldest prominencethe crimes he committed when they protested
against his monstrous rapacity. Then what? An army of 300 Pinkerton mercenaries were hired by this bloody benefactor to kill the men whose
labor had made him a millionaire. He did not have the courage to execute his own murderous designs so he commissioned another monster, Frick, by name, with bloodless veins and a heart of steel, to commit the crimes while he went to Europe and held high carnival with the titled snobs there until the ghastly work was done. It was one of the foulest conspiracies ever concocted against the working class and the very though of its atrocities, after nearly 10 years, fires the blood and crimsons the cheek with righteous indignation. Not only were the Pinkerton murderers hired by Carnegie to kill his employees, but he had his steel works surrounded by wires charged with deadly electric currents and by pipes filled with boiling water so that in the event of a strike or lockout he could shock the life out of their wretched bodies or scald the flesh from their miserable bones.

And this is the man who proposes to erect libraries for the benefit of the working class — and incidentally for the glory of Carnegie.

Will the workingmen of this country accept any gift from the hands of Andrew Carnegie, red with the blood of their slain comrades? That some of them have already done so is to their everlasting shame. The employees who a few days ago received, with expressions of gratitude, the bonded booty, to be held in trust for them until they become paupers, have debased themselves beyond expression. They may have to work for Carnegie, but they are not compelled to recognize as a gift the pennies he throws them in return for the dollars he stole from them, and when they do they are guilty of treason to their murdered brothers, and are better described as spineless poltroons than as self-respecting workingmen.

Some years ago, when Carnegie endowed the first library for the alleged benefit of workingmen, I objected. And I object now with increased
emphasis.

Such a library is monumental of the degeneracy of the working class. It is a lasting rebuke to their intelligence and their integrity.

 The workingmen of New Castle have led the revolt. Let their splendid example be followed wherever a Carnegie library is suggested. Let mass
meetings of workingmen be held and let the horrifying scenes of the Homestead massacre be sented to stir them to a sense of indignation at
the vulgar and insulting display of the spoil exploited from their class.

 Let honest workingmen everywhere protest against the acceptance of a gift which condones crime in the name of philanthropy. Let them put themselves upon record in terms that appeal to the honor of their class and the respect of all mankind.

 We want libraries and we will have them in glorious abundance when capitalism is abolished and the workingmen are no longer robbed by the philanthropic pirates of the Carnegie class.

Then the library will be as it should be, a noble temple dedicated to culture and symbolizing the virtues of the people.

Eugene Debs.
March 30, 1901. 
Taken from here 


For more on Carnegie see an earlier post on Socialist Courier

Facts of the Day

The world's 1,226 billionaires have more combined wealth than 3.5 billion people - half the entire planet's population. The richest 10 per cent of the world's population takes 90 per cent of the world's income.
$21 trillion is estimated to have been transferred in the tax havens - 10 per cent of all the world's privately held wealth. This is also more than 10 times the total value of development aid given to the world's poorer nations in the past 20 years.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/11/20121126134721926547.html

God and the Socialist Party

The quest for the supernatural does not stem from an excessive imagination but from a limited one constrained by years of exploitation and oppression.

Being opposed to religion is not the same as trying to prevent people from practising religion. We're not interested in setting up an enlightened dictatorship. Socialists don't want to police peoples thoughts - rather, we seek to change peoples ideas by engaging with them. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. To put it another way, rational argument alone will not convince people to abandon religion because religious conviction is not primarily arrived at through a rational process (people don't generally become religious because they've sat down and thought through the issues but due to indoctrination, spiritual experiences, etc.) We understand that ideas and consciousness come from our interaction with the real world, not from some outside force or god. From our perspective, people 's ideas change as a result of the struggles they engage in. If that were not the case there would be little point in our engaging in propaganda or activism - we simply would be unable to convince the huge number of people in the world of our ideas.

Likewise it is obvious the workers of the world won't just wake up one fine morning, decide religion is bollox and go out and wreck the avenues where the wealthy live. So it is certainly worth engaging with these sorts of beliefs through propaganda. Of course ideas are always produced by the material and social conditions of the day. We'd be very poor materialists if we failed to spot that! But even so, ideas themselves do carry weight and are worth engaging with, or opposing, both individually and as part of an overall belief system that is equally a product of the times. We should strive to educate people, not ignore their ignorance.