Real Freedom

Some of our critics never miss an opportunity to sneer at the Socialist Party with the accusation of how we can claim to be socialist when we do not support the cause of "freedom" for the Scots. Our credentials for being a Marxist party are questioned as they point out that Marx himself supported nationalist causes.

 Marxism is a method of assessing what, at any particular time, is in the best interest of the working class and should be done to hasten the establishment of socialism. The  victory of capitalist production was a progressive aspiration in Marx's day. With the triumph of capitalism came political democracy, the numerical growth of the working class and its concentration in large enterprises, trade unions, workers' parties. In other words, the triumph of capitalism opened the way for the struggle for socialism. National movements were to be supported as a means to an end, NOT as an end in themselves. The fact that Marx supported campaigns (but also opposed them in respect of the Czechs and Slav nationalism )such as to establish independence for Ireland in order to weaken the power of the English landed aristocracy, who were an obstacle to the development of political democracy in Britain, and Polish independence in order to set up a buffer state between Tsarist Russia and the rest of Europe so as to give political democracy a chance to develop there does not mean that in the changed circumstance of the 21st Century it is still necessary to assist the development of capitalism with support for nationalism to prepare the way for socialism. Once capitalism had performed its historically progressive function, nationalism became reactionary. By 1871, Marx argued this point had been reached in western Europe: "Class rule is no longer able to disguise itself in a national uniform; the national governments are one as against the proletariat!"

 It is futile to think that creation of new states will solve the crises of our society which is essentially based on our economic structure. Nevertheless, some of the Scottish nationalists even go as far as to say when independence comes all our problems would get resolved. Nationalism needs to be challenged everywhere. Nationalism is in fact an obstacle to the human progress towards socialism.The reality is that the nationalists have become prisoner of an imaginary past. We need to erase political boundaries of the mind and  geographic boundaries to enjoy our great shared history and culture so that the conflict created by economic interests are buried forever and we all feel proud of our togetherness. With nationalism real world problems do not vanish but become confused with muddled national solutions. The answer to cqpitalist crises is not nationalism, it is social revolution. Unlike those on the Left we have learnt from our history !

Nationalists argue that people long to have their very own nation state and that their struggle to get it should be supported. This leaves little space for those without a territory. The Roma (gypsies) suffer increased persecution in Romania, Hungary and the Czech and Slovak Republics, with very little complaint from advocates of national liberation. As nationality is the criterion for belonging, a non-national is untrustworthy by definition. Socialists embrace diversity and acknowledge the right of all to choose their own culture, language and beliefs but this can only be achieved by ending the fundamental division of our society, the class division. Nationalism can never deliver freedom to the working class.

The anarchist Rudolf Rocker put it this way "We speak of national interests, national capital, national spheres of interest, national honour, and national spirit; but we forget that behind all this there are hidden merely the selfish interests of power-loving politicians and money-loving business men for whom the nation is a convenient cover to hide their personal greed and their schemes for political power from the eyes of the world...The national flag covers every injustice, every unhumanity, every lie, every outrage, every crime. The collective responsibility of the nation kills the sense of justice of the individual and brings man to the point where he overlooks injustice done; where, indeed, it may appear to him a meritorious act if committed in the interests of the nation."

The Socialist Party of Great Britain strives to turn the principle that the workers have no country into a living reality and to create a genuine human community. The working class come from many countries and speaks many languages but it is one universal class with the historic responsibility to confront the system of capitalist exploitation and oppression.

Food for thought

India's economy is on target to grow just five per cent in the year ending in March, a far cry from the nine per cent plus of the last decade. The country's per capita income will grow by 2.9% and the slow down and lack of investment will hurt those struggling to get out of poverty the most, as usual. Nothing really changes.
Due to overfishing of the oceans, humans, at some time this year will, for the first time, begin consuming more farmed fish than wild fish, a sad commentary on the mismanagement of the world's resources. John Ayers

One law for rich , another law for the poor

The son of Stagecoach tycoon Brian Souter who already has convictions for assault and joy-riding escaped a jail sentence for a drunken attack on two men after writing a private letter to a sheriff. He was fined £600 after paying £700 to his victims from a very understanding and sympathetic Sheriff.

 His defence lawyer said a psychiatrist had ruled that "there may well have been a hypoglycaemic episode because of the sheer quantity of alcohol taken".

If only every drunk thug could use the same excuse!

alright for some

David Beckham was applauded when he announced that he would be donating his Paris St Germain salary to a local children's charity.  However while in the city he stays in the £15,000-a-night luxurious Imperial Suite at Le Bristol hotel in a 3,475 sq ft suite, the largest at the hotel. The suite can house up to twelve guests with various bedrooms, a dining area and sitting room, the main bedroom also its own sitting room as well as a large dressing room and a 325 sq ft bathroom.

Who owns the North Pole Part 57

The loss of sea ice in the Arctic will allow ships to navigate freely across the North Pole by the middle of the century and could lead to unprecedented geopolitical tensions between countries that have territorial claims in the region, scientists said. New routes will open up between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans which will allow shipping companies to abandon traditional courses through the Panama and Suez canals. Instead, they will be able to sail unhindered over the top of the world for much of the summer. “We're talking about a future in which open-water vessels will, at least during some years, be able to navigate unescorted through the Arctic , which at the moment is inconceivable,” said the study's co-author, Scott Stephenson of UCLA. “Nobody's ever talked about shipping over the top of the North Pole. This is an entirely unexpected possibility,”

However, long-standing tensions between the Arctic nations, even between traditional allies such as Canada and the US , will surface as nations vie for political and economic control of the new shipping lanes, said Laurance Smith, professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles,  co-author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc050313A.htm

Fact of the Day

0.1% of the world population hold 81% of the wealth and the ratio of poverty to wealthy statistic went from 3:1 in 1820 to 35:1 in 1950 to nearly 80:1 today.

A BILLIONAIRE GETS ANGRY

You would think it would be in the best interests of billionaires to keep quiet about their immense riches, but not a bit of it. 'One of the world's richest men, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has severed ties with the Forbes rich list, claiming it understated his wealth.The Saudi investor, ranked 26th in the billionaires' list released on Monday, accused Forbes of a "flawed" valuation method that undervalued his assets and "seemed designed to disadvantage Middle Eastern investors and institutions".' (Guardian, 5 March) It seems that Forbes have upset this billionaire. They estimated that Alwaleed – a nephew of the Saudi king with investments in everything from News Corp to the Savoy hotel – is worth $20bn (£13bn), putting him behind Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Alwaleed estimates his own wealth at $29.6bn. C'mon why get so upset? What's a mere $9.6bn to the likes of him? RD

THE GREAT DIVIDE

The class division in capitalism is well summed up by the millions trying to survive on less than $2 a day and the following news item. 'Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim has topped Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest billionaires for a fourth year. The magazine estimates that Mr Slim, whose business interests range from telecommunications to construction, is worth $73bn (£49bn). He is followed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates on $67bn.' (BBC News, 4 March) RD

Here to work, here to stay, here to fight !

 As the global crisis reduces living standards and conditions throughout the world the everyday reality for millions of people is to flee its effects by migration. It goes without saying that socialists are opposed to all borders and frontiers. Migration has always been a part of human history and population border controls are relatively new. Only in 1905 did the UK pass an Aliens Act, and only during the First World War were passports first introduced. Immigration controls are by their nature racist in that they always aim to exclude particular distinct groups and in doing so promotes racism. It causes massive human suffering and tragedies. The newspaper headlines that men and women would arduously travel thousands of miles, sometimes risking their lives, pay over every penny they have to the people-smugglers just to "milk" our benefits system hardly merits serious discussion. Immigration, for sure, generates problems and can strain the social services but it isn't the cause of the indigenous population's poverty.

The UK population density is 650 people per square mile, well below Japan (836), Belgium (889), the Netherlands (1259) and utterly dwarfed by places like Hong Kong or Singapore (18,000+). The issue of shortage of housing is a completely red herring. There is already a housing shortage and widespread homelessness, and there always has been, regardless of the population. This is due to housing being constructed largely for profit than for need. It is not profitable to build housing for people who can't afford it! And of course scarcity of housing is vital for the profitability of house building as it pushes prices up.

And what about jobs? The working class is global, so we can't just look at its effect in one country. Immigration is not a one-way system because an immigrant is an emigrant from somewhere else. Immigration cannot be assessed or addressed in terms of merely its impact directly on the host population. Workers in the host countries feel their wages are being devalued by immigrants but it is surely in their interests firstly to argue for full union membership and to fight for equal terms and conditions and also border controls that results in the situation where people can be made "illegal" and subjected to sweatshop conditions. Those who are criminalised in this way are forced to operate in working conditions well below legal requirements. If you threaten to start to organise against this, your employer can sack you and you have no recourse to unfair dismissal. And if you actually got anything organised, a quick call to immigration gets you jailed to await deportation.

People who say they want what's best for the working class are only thinking about the native host working class. When Algeria gained independence in 1962 - 900,000 white settlers moved back to France. Unemployment in Marseille rose to 20% within in months but was back down to 6% within a year and 4% in two years.

It is better to see immigration as a trend or contradiction developed though processes of globalisation. Any attempt to simply curtail those forces leads to a lot of hardship and draconian politics. In todays society we are told its acceptable that investment and goods can pass from poor to rich countries without burden, enriching capitalists but poor foreign people can't do likewise. Capital will move to areas where it can maximise profit. It's always done this and the capitalist of any nation or colour can live wherever they choose so, in practice. immigration is essentially a class issue. If international capital can cross borders, so too should labour.

Capital chooses when it needs one’s labor. The ruling class relies upon immigrant workers, legal and illegal, to fill low paid jobs that are not attractive to native workers, to serve as a reserve army of unemployed and underemployed workers to depress wages for the entire working class and to fill workforce shortages created by aging populations and declining native birth rates. Immigration controls currently are largely set out in the interests of businesses.  In 2011 the OECD calculate that by 2050 the ratio of working people to over 65s will be 2:1 to keep this ratio at its current level of around 4:1 Italy would need 2.2 million immigrants - Germany 3.4 million. But we should not talk about the capitalist economic benefits of immigration, because immigration can indeed have a negative economic impact. It should be about right to migrate and to live where we wish.

The people that benefit from the anti-refugee and anti-migrant campaigns are the same people that benefit from the real causes of bad housing, long hospital waiting-lists and declining education standards. It is the financiers and industrialists. They support running down public services and selling them off . They want to limit and reduce government spending. So they make scapegoats of migrants. They did the same thing in the 1900s when they blamed the Chinese, in the 20s and 30s when they blamed the Jews, in the 1970s when they blamed black and Asian people, and today, they blame asylum seekers and the influx of Eastern Europeans.

From a traditional working-class perspective, workers from another country are little different from female workers or younger and unskilled workers, or even workers from a different area of the same country. In the past, letting women into the workforce was questioned and challenged. They were accused of working for "pin-money" depriving the traditionally male provider of jobs by working for less pay. Younger workers were also accused of undermining pay since they would work for less since they had no family to support. Incomers from the countryside or another region of the country were also accused of stealing locals jobs. The point is, as socalists, we do not set the interests of one part of the working class against another. Socialists try to improve the lot of the working class as a whole. We fight against descrimination and pay differentials based on sex, age and nationality or race. We organise together to fight the bosses for better wages for all and better conditions for all. A united working class is in our own interest as opposed to one that is divided along national/gender/racial lines.

The socialist argument on immigration is always to get together with migrants to fight together for decent working conditions but we must go beyond the demand for the right to work or fair pay, but fight for the right to a decent life. We demand freedom from the market, not a free market.

The slogan is "workers of the world unite!", not "workers of the world unite unless you're a foreigner".

In the directors box

We are all accustomed to stories of over-paid and under-played footballers but recent figures show that SPL directors pay and benefits increased by 16.5%, despite a 6% fall in revenues.

Of course, the way Scottish football is heading, they might as well be funeral directors. 

Dunfermline now joins Hearts as another football club that can't pay its team's wages on time. Players at that level are not highly paid therefore any delay in wages can lead to inconvenience and even hardship. They pay travel costs to training and then put themselves at risk of injury on a weekly basis without being paid.

facts to digest

Bono now considers himself a factivist, boasting of how statistics confirms his approach to combatting poverty and hunger. So be it.

Diarrhoea still kills more children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

Over 900 million, particularly women and young people, still suffer from chronic hunger. They go hungry not because of insufficient food production, but because they suffer from insufficient social protection. Michel Forst on behalf the group of 72 independent experts charged by the UN Human Rights Council  explained.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank said is home to more than 50 percent of the world's uncultivated agriculture land, with as much as 450 million hectares that is not forested, protected or densely populated. The 2008-2009 global food price crisis prompted a scramble for land in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and widespread fears of land grabbing. Madagascar's president was toppled in 2009 after he negotiated a deal with a South Korean company to lease half the island's arable land to grow food and ship it to Asia.

Crime does pay

Despite being fined for money-laundering for drug cartels and paying compensation for cheating customers over payment protection insurance HSBC rewarded shareholders with an increased dividend and its chief executive Stuart Gulliver took £7.4 million in pay. it paid 204 of its staff more than £1m in the year, with 78 of those based in the UK. Underlying profits were up 18 per cent to £10.9bn.

Crime after all does pay.

INFALLIBLE NONSENSE

As children we were always taught to respect maybe even fear the righteousness of our religious teachers. Where are we now though? 'Three priests and a former priest have said that they felt "vindicated" after Scotland's Cardinal Keith O'Brien admitted sexual misconduct. The group had accused the senior Roman Catholic clergyman of "inappropriate behaviour" towards them in the 1980s.' (BBC News, 4 March) This is the Cardinal who earlier decried homosexualism. Where are we now? Growing up we hope. RD

Food for thought

" As hundreds fled the advancing armoured cars of riot police officers, Mohammed Mokbel ran forward. A veteran of two years of violent street protests, he pulled on his gas mask and charred protective gloves for another long night at his current vocation:throwing tear-gas canisters back at the riot police" (New York Times, Feb 17 2013). Such is life after the Arab Spring. Another revolution must be won to get rid of the new dictator who replaced the old one. The Arab Spring was a mighty and brave revolution but these results show that it lacked class-consciousness and a socialist understanding that would have showed the path to take to get rid of all dictators once and for all. John Ayers

A socialist poem

We are the ones who knead and yet we have no bread,
we are the ones who dig for coal and yet we are cold.

We are the ones who have nothing,
 and we are coming to take the world.

  Tassos Livaditis (Greek poet, 1922-1988)

The failure of reformism

50 years of educational reforms have failed to make a significant improvement to the exam results of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, says a major new report.

 An estimated one in five school leavers has few or no qualifications and poor skills in basic literacy and numeracy. No school in a disadvantaged area has ever matched the performance of a school in a more affluent area.

Many children begin to fall behind in early secondary: "This has been apparent for at least 40 years. Yet decisive action has never been taken."

The greedy thieving lying cheats

Four Psychology professors from the University of California at Berkeley and a Business professor from the University of Toronto—conducted two “naturalistic” field studies to determine if the rich were more likely to break the law while driving, and five laboratory studies gauging upper-class attitudes and propensities toward unethical decision-making. In all seven studies, the rich subjects behaved more unethically and harbored positive opinions of greed that helped justify their selfishness.

The results were that the rich are more likely to break traffic laws, to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies, to take things of value from others, to lie in a negotiation, to cheat to win a game, and to endorse unethical behavior at work, than were lower-class individuals. Moreover, the data showed that a positive attitude toward greed was the main driver for the wealthy’s tolerance of and participation in unethical conduct.

Independence - A bosses buy-out

Of the top 100 economies on the planet, 40 are corporations, the wealth of certain corporations dwarf the economies of some nations. Another little known fact is that less than 1% of corporations, mainly banks, control the shares of more than 40% of all global businesses. When it comes to who is big in this corporate world it is oil and gas, 7 out of the top 10 companies in the world are oil and gas.

The Scottish economy is controlled by the same hedge funds the same banks and the same multinational giants as the rest of Britain. Edinburgh is the UK's second financial centre after London and Europe's fourth by equity assets. Glasgow also has the third highest GDP Per capita of any city in the UK (after London and Edinburgh) Glasgow is now one of Europe's sixteen largest financial centres. The Financial Services Sector provides employment for 1 in 10 of the population and the Scottish economy is hugely dependant on it.  Scotland' GDP is £124 billion (excluding revenues from North Sea oil). Prior to the 2008 financial crisis Scotland ranked second only to London in the European league of headquarters locations of the 30 largest banks in Europe as measured by market value. Scotland is one of the world's biggest fund management centres with over £300bn worth of assets directly serviced or managed in the country.

Patents or Patients

When HIV/Aids took hold around the world and antiretroviral (ARV) drugs became available from 1987, the  drug treatments required then cost $15,000 a year, which very clearly limited their use to well-insured or relatively rich western patients. Prices for AZT3 officially started at $25 per pill in South Africa. Although HIV/Aids was the scourge of Africa in the 1980s, its management ad treatment was initially completely out of reach of  those hit by "slim" disease as it was then known as locallywho were just expected to go away and die. And millions, denied medication, did die. An estimated 10 million people perished between 1996 and 2003 thanks to denial of drugs by Big Pharma. And all the while the medicines were just sitting there ... out of the financial reach of the inflicted. Big Pharma was quite happy to see millions of deaths in order to keep patent law - and its profits.

 Thanks to India's 1970 patent law, drugs could be made to the highest technical standards (a fact often denied by a propaganda campaign of the western drugs companies) .The Pfizer patent for fluconazole (used for treating Aids-related fungal infections) in South Africa was deliberately broken by importing it from India. The price per capsule in South Africa stood at $40, while in Asia it was 5 cents. With Africa hosting two-thirds of the world’s HIV/Aids cases, this kind of action made an impact politically. In 2000, Yusuf Hamied’s Cipla generic pharmaceuticals company agreed to produce  a three-ARV combination that would cost patients $1 a day - at $350 a year this was less than a 40th of the cost demanded by western drugs companies.

Big Pharma's argues the expense of its products is due to development costs: in fact, marketing budgets in drugs companies are very much higher than those for research and development, which averages a risory 1.3% of expenditure across top pharmaceutical companies. In fact, 84% of research and development worldwide is carried out by government and public bodies, whereas pharmaceutical companies contribute only 12% and account for only three out of every 10 new drugs invented.

 The Executive Director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, Michel Sidibé, said “It is outrageous that in 2013, when we have all the tools we need to beat this epidemic, 1.7 million people still die each year because they cannot access treatment.”

Now with India’s government adopted the WTO’s Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) patent regulations it may well be all over for generic medicines. The pharmaceutical companies will be able to continue to grossly overprice its drugs. People are going to die needlessly once again.

Scotland built on slavery

When the British Government passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 – 26 years after the trade itself had been done away with. it paid  the equivalent to £2 billion today which  was said to be equal to 40% of the government's entire budget in compensation to slave-owners.

Colonel John Gordon of Cluny, who in 1851 forced some 3000 of his tenants on the Outer Hebrides to emigrate to Canada. Cluny died in 185 received a total of £24,964 in compensation, relating to 1383 slaves across six plantations in Tobago, in the southern Caribbean.

Other Scots include James Cheyne, who cleared tenants from the Isle of Lismore in the 1840s and 1850s; the Malcolms of Poltalloch, who were involved in clearances in Argyll; Sir Archibald Alison, a noted social commentator; James McCall and Patrick Maxwell Stewart, who both had substantial holdings in railways; the Marquis of Breadalbane, and Sir William Forbes.

The figure was £6 for a child, an average of £50 for an able fieldworker, or between £18 and £20 if the fieldworker didn't have any specific skills to offer. For the top craftsmen within the slave population, like the sugar-boilers, who had a dangerous job and were particularly well sought-after, the figure might be £100. Slave-owners were allowed to claim compensation according to the composition of their workforce. A white artisan worker in Scotland would have been paid 25 shillings, of £1.25, a week, which is an instructive comparison.

 Scottish historian Professor Tom Devine "The list is mainly, perhaps even exclusively, concerned with the Caribbean. The great Tobacco Trade of the 18th century in Glasgow could not have existed without un-free labour.These are people on the list who were compensated for owning slaves but it does not include professional people, such as physicians, overseers, merchants and military people, who all gained from the plantation economies. Glasgow is usually the place that is cited as having a colonial connection, but if you look at the range of names and locations on the database, it is everywhere in Scotland, particularly in rural areas. This is why some people have argued that these monies were very important in terms of such things as agricultural improvement and the like."

Prof Devine said: “The myth has always been that Glasgow, for example, didn’t dirty its hands with the great transatlantic trade in blacks. Scotland was deeply involved in this but we are still in a degree of denial.” http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/scotlandfeatures/4816510/Prof-Tom-Devine-Scotland-has-washed-its-hands-of-slavery-past.html

Historians believe that much of Glasgow was built on slavery. Merchants earned huge fortunes from trading and so-called ‘Tobacco Lords’ — including John Glassford, Andrew Buchanan, James Dunlop and Archibald Ingram — all had streets named after them.

Professor Catherine Hall said it was "very striking" how many slave-owners there were in Scotland. She said: "The empire offered opportunities to the Scots on a very significant scale and working on the plantations was a favoured choice for Scots seeking their fortunes in the late 18th and early 19th century."



Nor should it be forgotten that during the American Civil War much of Scottish business – including the owners of the Glasgow Herald newspaper – was firmly pro-South. Scottish shipyards, then at the cutting edge of marine technology, built the only fast steamers capable of evading the Union blockade of Confederate harbours and supplying the rebellion. Vast fortunes were being made by Clydeside shipbuilders and brokers building ships to beat the blockade. At the height of this boom in 1864, Warner Underwood, the US consul in Glasgow, complained that 27 Clyde yards were building no fewer than 42 large blockade runners. Early 1860s Scotland was the scene of a cat-and-mouse game between Confederate agents and Federal spies, the latter operating from a safe house in the sedate dormitory village of Bridge of Allan.  The cash rewards for the Scots involved in this illicit trade were phenomenal. The sum total spent on building and refitting runners up to 1864 was £1.4 million (about £140m in today's money) – one-third of which was pure profit. These blockade-runners made up no less than one-third of the vessels that ran the Union blockade – more than half the British-built tonnage. The South had few of the industries needed to equip and support armies of half a million men and acquiring modern (mainly British-made) weaponry was vital to the war effort.

Nor was it exclusively an elite preference. Scots coal miners, unlike Lancashire cotton workers, were working-class supporters of the slave-owning South. The South's morale was sustained by romantic 19th-century nationalist mythology partly derived from the novels of Sir Walter Scott. Many Victorian Scots made the link between the Confederate armies with those other glamorised underdogs of Scott's novels, the Jacobites, while the daring victories of Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson were won by quasi-guerrilla tactics overpowering stronger armies, offering Scots parallels with the victories of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. For the American South, romantic nationalism and chivalry were, of course, no more than sugar coatings on an economic system based on slavery, but they played a big part in causing the rebellion and keeping it going

Capitalism - Flogging a dead horse

Most people are several generations away from the actual hands-on experience of producing their own food and this leads to many misconceptions such as over-romanticizing it but armers have a CEO mentality. They make decisions based on return on investment. The food system is in a crisis because of the way that food is produced. Most people's food budget is spent on processed food, which is where the big food processing conglomerates like PepsiCo, Nestle and Kraft make their money. The industry has worked with food scientists to develop foods using fat, sugar and salt that affect brain chemistry and are literally addicting, making people continually crave junk food. The ingredients that give junk food their taste and texture are relatively cheap. These sweeteners, oils and chemicals are big business. When food becomes a commodity, it goes where profits can be made.

 Today, twenty food corporations produce most of the food eaten by Americans, even organic brands. Four large chains, including Walmart, control more than half of all US grocery store sales. One company dominates the organic grocery industry, and one distribution company has a stranglehold on getting organic products into communities around the country. Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke recently said higher food prices and food price speculation should be welcomed. Big supermarkets have squeezed farmer’s margins and much of the retail competition has been eliminated. The type of ‘long life’, ‘always available’ food on display has been pumped full of chemicals from field to shelf, or is shipped half way around the world from poorer countries that produce cash mono-crops for export to rich nations, which in turn impacts their own agriculture and contributes to poverty and hunger and the destruction of local, bio-diverse, self-sustaining communities.

 Since 2008, through the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, the big 4 – Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s have made over £26.5 billions profit. Tesco takes £1 out of every £7 spent in the UK. Capitalist  'efficiency' means market domination (30% for Tesco), squeezing that market at both ends by shafting the supplier and customer, exploiting low paid workers to maximise profits, damaging the environment with megastores, and contributing to the devastation of local high streets by reducing diversity and putting small stores out of business.

The super profits of Walmart and indeed giant supermarkets like Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons in the UK are made on the backs of their low paid workers. Justin king, the CEO of Sainsbury’s, receives £3.2m a year; Tesco’s Philip Clarke gets £6.9m; Dalton Philips of Morrisons receives £4m.

 In the early days of capitalism workers’ food was frequently adulterated to lower costs and increase profits. Karl Marx wrote of the ‘incredible adulteration of bread’ in Victorian London, and used a report of a Royal Commission of Inquiry to reveal that the London worker, ‘had to eat daily in his bread a certain quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge of abscesses, cobwebs, dead cockroaches, and putrid German yeast, without counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral ingredients’. It was the same story in America. A committee  in 1859 launched one of the first studies of American food purity and their findings make for less-than-appetizing reading: candy was found to contain arsenic and dyed with copper chloride; conniving brewers mixed extracts of “nux vomica,” a tree that yields strychnine, to simulate the bitter taste of hops. Pickles contained copper sulphate, and custard powders yielded traces of lead. Sugar was blended with plaster of Paris, as was flour. Milk had been watered down, then bulked up with chalk and sheep’s brains. Hundred-pound bags of coffee labeled “Fine Old Java” turned out to consist of three-fifths dried peas, one-fifth chicory, and only one-fifth coffee. Though there was the occasional clumsy attempt at domestic reform by midcentury — most famously in response to the practice of selling “swill milk” taken from diseased cows force-fed a diet of toxic refuse produced by liquor distilleries — little changed.  “Oleo-margarine,” a butter substitute originally made from an alchemical process involving beef fat, cattle stomach, and for good measure, finely diced cow, hog, and ewe udders.  This “greasy counterfeit,” as one critic called it, was shipped to Europe as genuine butter.

Capitalism is presently demonstrating that nothing has changed. Whether it’s best beefsteak or a horsemeat burger it is a commodity produced for the sole purpose of making a profit. If it takes adulteration to do so, then so be it. We live in a capitalist country, within a global capitalist economy, where the pursuit of ever-greater profit is all that matters, even in relation to food, one of humanities basic needs. The cause of the ‘horsemeat crisis’ is the capitalist economic system and its core principle of making as much money as possible. Capitalism only works for a very small group of people and they are called capitalists. Those capitalists make a lot of money, and they can only do that by exploiting the rest of us – they pay us less than the value of our labour, they sell us products for more than their actual worth, and they sell us ‘beef’ that is actually horsemeat. During a recession wage levels are held down as a matter of course, which means costs must be trimmed elsewhere in the production process. The capitalists have forced-down supplier costs to maximise their own profits, which means the cheapest, least nutritious contents go into the supposedly "value" meals sold in such large quantities in areas of poverty and deprivation.

Humanity faces serious, highly interconnected environmental problems. The American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that drugmakers sold about 30 million pounds of antibiotics in 2011 for use in food animals such as pigs, chickens, and cows. This was a record high and nearly four times the amount sold to treat sick people. Using antibiotics to make food animals grow faster and to compensate for the overcrowded conditions in which they are raised breeds drug-resistant bacteria. These "superbugs" can end up in our air and water, in our meat and poultry and, ultimately, in us. If they cause infections, the diseases can be more difficult and costly to treat and more likely to result in death. Each year, antibiotic-resistant infections are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations.

Imagine going to the grocery store and buying 10 bags full of food. Now imagine throwing four of those bags into the trash. Seems crazy, right? But this is what’s happening every day in homes, businesses, and institutions throughout the United States. Forty percent of the food produced in the US is wasted every year, according to a Natural Resources Defense Council report. It’s happening at all levels – on the farm, during processing, in restaurants, and in the home – due to cosmetic preferences, misleading date labels, over-purchasing, and excessive portion sizes. This unnecessary waste is destructive to the environment.

It doesn’t really matter what you call it, capitalism is about money. Everything people need to live – homes, household appliances such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners, TVs and smart phones, clothes and the car at the door – are all commodities. Quite simply, a commodity is anything made for human use. Commodities are produced in order to make profit, and are bought by people wanting to make use of them. This system of production and sale for profit is called capitalism. The one and only purpose for producing anything is profit. It’s what commodities are primarily for, to supply a human need only so a profit can be made.

Let them eat coco-pops

Kelloggs vice President Jodi Gibson says one in eight people around the world face food insecurity issues every day.

 The company is pledging to provide one and a half billion servings of their cereals to children and families in need through an anti-hunger program by the end of 2016.

A nice piece of advertising and product placement. Perhaps it may counter the negative publicity it received when Oxfam named them among the worst offenders of 10 multinational companies, lacking in efforts to ensure rights of workers and farmers, protect women, ease climate change and provide transparency of their supply chains.

 The hundreds of brands lining supermarket shelves are predominantly owned by just 10 huge companies, which have combined revenues of more than $1bn a day. 80% of the world's hungry people work in food production, and these companies employ millions of people in developing countries to grow their ingredients.

THE PLIGHT OF THE AGED

After a life of wage slavery in the factory or office many workers imagine that retirement will ease the burdens of poverty and anxiety , but alas capitalism doesn't work that way. 'Pensioners are at increasing risk of spending their old age in poverty, with living costs for the over-75s rising by more than a quarter in just five years. Research by AXA, the insurance group, found that people between 65 and 74 faced cost-of-living increases 5.2 per cent a year - significantly higher than the 0.3 per cent rise experienced by those between 50 and 64.' (Times, 25 February) Michelle Mitchell, director general of Age UK's Charity summed up their plight with these words. 'Steep hikes in the cost of living in recent years have left many older people on low incomes feeling forced to cut back on essential items such as food, heating and clothes.' RD

MacCapitalism

In a mock independence referendum students at Glasgow university voted "No" by a margin of nearly two to one. Just 967 votes (37 per cent) were cast in favour of independence, with 1,614 (62 per cent) against. There were eight spoiled ballots. In the actual debate, according to an Al-jazeera report, nationalists chanted “in-de-pendence”, while some at the back of the hall responded with cries of “the workers have no country.”

 The Socialist Party of Great Britain seeks to abolish all nation states and we stand firmly against the proponents of nationalism in Scotland and in other parts of the world. We make a call for workers of the world to unite. We do not think this demand is some utopian hope. Capitalism itself is leading the world in that direction of  breaking down national barriers with globalisation driving workers towards a potential of integrate and fuse.  Will socialism be achieved as the product of a big bang, a simultaneous, worldwide revolt of the working class and the oppressed? Or, because of differing national conditions and traditions, will social change be more fragmented and disjointed? The Socialist Party suggests the former. The global development of capitalism and the subsequent increasingly common conditions encountered by the international working class would support such a proposition. Do the pro-nationalist "socialists" believe an independent Scottish state will be socialist? If yes why do they not believe that England, Wales and countries beyond will move to socialism simultaneously. For if all those other countries do become socialist at the same time why would an independent Scotland differ from its neighbours? The working class in Scotland (and in England and Wales and elewhere) will remain on its knees and will remain so until workers around the world are effectively united effectively as a class and not by nationality. We are arguing that the only way forward for workers in Scotland, across Britain and the world is through their struggle and unity in the fight for socialism.

Ice wars

The Arctic is home to unique human communities whose livelihoods and communities are increasingly challenged by the effects of climate change. Melting ice, stronger storms, growing erosion, thawing permafrost, more unpredictable weather and other direct effects of climate change are already impacting indigenous communities. But warming temperatures and melting ice are also making possible more commercial, transport and military initiatives in the region. New sea routes are being opened, new enterprises are being planned, new drilling and mining licenses are being issued and new tourist destinations are opening up. The movement of more people to the Arctic region will have significant effects on indigenous populations, cultures and livelihoods.

The Arctic is inhabited by approximately 4 million people of whom 400,000 are considered indigenous. Approximately two-thirds of the total population in the Arctic lives in relatively large settlements, although indigenous peoples living in circumpolar countries is characterized by small, widely separated communities. With “longer ice-free periods now available to explore for hydrocarbons, a new scramble for oil and gas could occur” especially if the price of oil and gas increase and new technological developments take place. In 2009, 15 percent of petroleum production came from onshore Arctic production. But 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13 percent of world’s undiscovered oil is in the Arctic. New maritime routes in the Arctic raise new issues about sovereignty and offer expanded opportunities for military operations. The stakes are getting higher for control of territory in the Arctic. Greenland is thought to sit on vast mineral deposits but previous efforts at large-scale mining were unsuccessful because of the expense of working in the bitterly cold climate.

The question is who in the Arctic will make these choices.

The UN estimates that there are about 5000 different indigenous peoples, with a population of about 370 million and occupy 20 percent of the world’s territory. The Arctic peoples make up 2%. Like other nomadic peoples, mobility has long been recognized as characteristic of Arctic communities as they have traditionally moved in response to seasonal changes and to support of livelihoods, whether hunting, reindeer herding, fishing or foraging. Also like nomadic peoples in other parts of the world, there have been increasing pressures on Arctic indigenous communities to settle in villages rather than to move continually.

Inuit Circumpolar Council which represents the Inuit of Denmark, Canada, the US and Russia launched its Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Arctic Sovereignty on 28 April 2009, stating “it is our right to freely determine our political status, freely pursue our economic, social, cultural and linguistic development, and freely dispose of our natural wealth and resources.” The ICC represents all 155,000 Inuit – from Russia to Greenland -- on matters of international concern.  In fact, article 26 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples enshrines their right to own, use, develop and control the lands they have traditionally occupied.

Trade Wars

The Pacific War against Japan was never a contest between democracy and fascism, as we have been taught. Neither the British nor the U.S. or the Dutch had ever entertained democracy for Asian peoples. Chiang Kai-shek remained a U.S. ally throughout the war and British historian Christopher Thorne has commented that, “if the term ‘fascist’ is to be employed in a non-European context for the 1930s, to no regime is it more appropriate to attach it than that of the Kuomintang in China.”

Leaving aside the conspiracy theory that the American government knew of the Pearl Harbor attack would take place and chose to allow it to happen, there is no question that an attack from Japan was probable. Contrary to U.S. political folklore, Japan’s subsequent attack was launched on a U.S. naval colony in Polynesia not U.S. territory (Hawaii only became a US state in 1959). And it cannot properly be described as a surprise.

In 1932, the Ottawa Conference cut off Japanese trade with the British Commonwealth, including India. Three years later Japan was forced to curtail shipments of cotton textiles to the Philippines while U.S. imports there remained duty free. (At the same time, U.S. tariffs on many Japanese goods surpassed 100%.) Japan protested about American, British, Chinese, and Dutch encirclement strangling its economy. So in 1937 Tokyo began its conquest of China in earnest, wiping out 140,000 Chinese civilians at Nanking while proclaiming a desire to promote economic development and prevent Communist domination of Asia.

Four years later negotiations between Admiral Nomura and Secretary of State Cordell Hull broke down over the Japanese request for equal trading rights in Latin America in return for allowing U.S. capital penetration of China.

On July 2, 1941 the Japanese decided to move troops into southern Indochina. Washington, having broken Tokyo’s purple code, immediately knew of the decision. On July 21, 1941 Japan signed a preliminary agreement with the Vichy government of Marshal Henri Petain, leading to Japanese occupation of airfields and naval bases in Indochina. Almost immediately, the U.S. and Britain froze all Japanese assets in their countries. Radhabinod Pal, one of the judges in the post-war Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, later noted that the U.S. embargo presented a “clear and potent threat to Japan’s very existence.”

On July 24, 1941 FDR informed the Japanese Ambassador that if Japan would refrain from putting troops in southern Indochina Roosevelt would use his influence to have Indochina neutralized. But this message failed to reach the Japanese Foreign Ministry until July 27.

On July 26, 1941 Tokyo disclosed its intention to move troops into southern Indochina. The U.S. promptly froze all Japanese assets in the U.S. With Japan importing 90% of its oil, half of that from the United States, Admiral Richmond Turner, Director of the War Plans Division of the Navy Department, stated that it was “generally believed that shutting off the American supply petroleum [to Japan] will lead promptly to an invasion [by Japan] of the Netherlands East Indies.” FDR publicly stated that this reaction would be a justification for war. The New York Times characterized the U.S. move as “the most drastic blow short of war.”

For the Japanese military, it was “now or never.” The Western powers controlled and were choking off access to the raw materials on which Japan's national existence depended. With Washington refusing to lift its embargo unless Tokyo surrendered Chinese territory it had fought for years to conquer (Note: Washington objected to being shut out of the China market, not Tokyo's atrocities there), Japan was left to choose between submitting to U.S. demands or going to war to obtain the oil and other vital raw materials available in the East Indies and Southeast Asia.

YOU LUCKY WORKERS

Capitalism is a complex society with apparently inexplicable booms and slumps, so it is good that we have experts like the following genius in charge. Lord Lipsey, a Labour member of the House of Lords economic affairs committee recently came up with this gem. 'The employment figures mean that, whether or not the recession is working, it is not really hurting — at least not really hurting the people who still have jobs and don't claim benefits," he said. "An unemployment-lite recession has nothing like the social impact of a job-crushing one." He said it is much better to be poor with a job than without one.' (Daily Telegraph, 22 February) Better with a job than on the dole? Wow, we wonder what years of economic study lie behind that profundity.RD

Talking socialism

Cde Donnelly will open the March 20th Branch talk with the subject The Rise of Chinese Capitalism

Cde Cumming will open the April 17th Branch talk with the subject The Curse of Capitalism

The proposed Day School programme
Saturday, 11th May

 POLITICS TODAY

1pm to 2.15pm The Rise of Scottish Nationalism Vic Vanni
2.15pm to 3.30pm The Occupy Movement John Cumming
3,45pm to 5pm The Threat of War Brian Gardner

Patriotism? No thanks!

“Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.” - Henry David Thoreau

Nation-states have a logic of their own. So insidiously is the logic purveyed through the state’s institutions that it becomes common-sense. Like religion, it encourages devotion to a vague and ill-defined abstraction. Even in its most innocuous forms, patriotism is irrational. The World Cup and the Olympics are known for their unabashed displays of nationalism. Flags, patriotic chants, and cross-national rivalries are the order of the day. Football is the quintessential illustration of sociologist Benedict Anderson’s argument that nationhood itself represents an “imagined community”  –  an affinity between strangers who will never meet or hear of one another, but are bound by a mental image of shared history, often mythologized, and of common destiny. Nowhere is that community imagined more fiercely than in the football stadium, and among the hundreds of thousands gathered in pubs and living rooms across the country communing with those in the stadium urging their national team forward against those of other countries. Do hundreds of thousands of Scots gather in front of their TV sets on St Andrews Day to celebrate their nation by singing “Flower of Scotland”? No chance. But that’s exactly what happens when Scotland takes the field in a World Cup or Euro match. However, so eroded are national boundaries in the modern game that it mocks the very idea of a flag, anthem and passport that distinguishes between “us” and “them.” FIFA, recognizing the reality of massive and constant migration accelerated by economic globalization, allows a player to effectively “choose” a country to represent at senior level, even if they’d played for a different one all the way up to Under-21 level. The  cosmopolitan make-up of today’s football teams also negates the idea of a shared history lionized in national flags and anthems.*

The world moves on and nationalism is becoming less and less relevant in face of increasing globalisation. National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life.

 Many a good Scot do not consider themselves as nationalist, instead they much  prefer the more noble label ‘Scottish patriot’. A patriot, so the idea goes, does not look down on other nations, but ‘instead only’ loves his own. The "Scottish nation" is meaningless: all "nations" are mongrel, a mixture of so many immigrations and mixings of peoples over time that the idea of a Scot is largely comical. Nation-hood is not the same as culture. There are many varied cultures within Scotland which is not some homogenised whole but like most countries, is a diverse and complex tapestry. If you take a person from Berwickshire and someone from Northumberland, separated by only a few miles and introduce them to a German, he's not going to be able to tell the difference, by looks, by dress, by accent, by mannerisms. Take somebody from Glasgow and Thurso and i am sure the German will recognise a difference in at least the accents.

Nationalism is the egg that hatches fascism it has been said. And patriotism is but the begetter of nationalism. Patriotism is highly toxic. When ingested, it corrodes the rational faculties. It gulls people into believing their leaders. It’s  wheeled out whenever a leader needs to improve his ratings. It masks those who benefit most from state policy. And it destroys the ability of people to come together across boundaries, to take on those with the most power: the multinationals.

All borders are fabricated myths, and with them the false concepts of immigration, emigration, nationality, national pride and patriotism. It is not the rich who ascribe topatriotism. They are perfectly at home in every land. Russian and Indian oligarchs living the high life in London. Celebrated Scots like Sean Connery and Jackie Stewart take up residence in foreign climes. Patriotism is not for the likes of wealthy.

The lottery of place of birth should not be used to cloud judgement. One cannot feel pride for being born Scottish, that was just the luck of the draw, you might well have been born Welsh. Patriotism is a fraud whereby would-be rulers "self-determine" to impose their vision of nationhood on an entire community. Nationalism is an ideology of separation, of hatred for the ‘other.’ It is a creed of oppression. What is necessary is to develop human solidarity, the instincts of mutual aid that enable us to survive and which have fueled all human progres. Throughout history, governments incessantly brainwash the minds of men, women and children with the evils of past foreign masters. The struggle against alienation is inherently a struggle against patriotism.

The Socialist Party doesn’t believe in patriotism. Our critics can call us unpatriotic but we will take pride in being unpatriotic. We never identify ourselves as Scots (or British) first and foremost, instead we define ourselves in terms of our socialist politics. Patriotism was born with the one and sole purpose: to control the masses; and so far it had done a very fine job.The process of creating the "Scotland" was awash in the blood of Scot slaughtering Scot. Nation-states can only be authoritarian and geared to the interests of a tiny elite. The working class is manipulated into identifying their well-being with the aims and ambitions of the ruling class. As classes within the nation disappear, the hostility of one nation to another will also come to an end.  Socialists work for the day "patriotism" will simply means being proud to be part of humanity. Or to perhaps adopt Eloise Bell's word, socialists are "matriots" those who loves Mother Earth.

"Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot." -  Emma Goldman. 

* List of Scotland international players not born in Scotland 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scotland_international_footballers_born_outside_Scotland
2009 data-list of foreign born players in the SPL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_Scottish_Premier_League_players
2011-12 season data list of 603 foreign SPL players
http://www.myfootballfacts.com/SPL_Foreign_Players_by_Club_and_Country.html

DESPERATE FOR A JOB

Some politicians have a twisted way of defending capitalism. If unemployment grows it is not because of the slumps and booms of the system but because of the "workshy" unemployed. The following news item seems to contradict that view. 'But when Costa Coffee advertised for three full-time and five part-time baristas to staff a new shop in the Mapperley area of the city, the company never could have imagined it would get 1,701 applicants in two months, some with 10 to 15 years' experience in retail behind them.' (Guardian, 20 February) Serving coffee in a Costa Coffee shop is hardly a wonderful job but 1,701 desperate workers showed that they were not workshy. RD

The UN at the North Pole

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 15 percent of oil is in the Arctic. Several companies, including Russia's Rosneft, Norway's Statoil and U.S.-based Exxon Mobil are getting ready to drill in areas of melting sea ice, despite the risks, technological difficulties and costs. Some countries have estimated that the Northern Sea Route would be turned into a shipping highway, with a 40-fold increase in shipping by 2020. There is also likely to be a boom in fisheries. A widely predicted northward shift in sub-arctic fish species, including Atlantic and Pacific cod, is now being detected. It is estimated that fish catches in the high latitudes, including the Arctic, could increase by 30 to 70 percent by 2055.

Last September, Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level in the satellite record, which dates back to 1979, and scientists say there could be an ice-free summer by 2030-2040. The Greenland ice cap has also been melting, permafrost on the tundra has thawed and there is less snow on land and on glaciers. As ice and snow retreats, more shipping routes are opened and access is easier for oil and gas exploration and mining companies.

"What we are seeing is that the melting of ice is prompting a rush for exactly the fossil fuel resources that fuelled the melt in the first place," said Achim Steiner, U.N. Under-Secretary-General and  United Nations' Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director.

The U.N. body advises that no steps to exploit the Arctic environment are taken without first assessing how activities would affect ecosystems and populations.

China at the South Pole

China is boosting its presence in Antarctica with an eye on the icy continent’s vast untapped resources, even though it could take 35 years to start exploiting them. Antarctic Treaty members, which include China, have agreed not to exploit Antarctic resources until 2048, but there is nothing to stop them doing geographical surveys.  China already has as many permanent research stations as the U.S. in Antarctica — including the Great Wall Station on King George Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, Zhongshan (Sun Yat-Sen) Station in the east and Kunlun Station in the interior. Now the Chinese appear poised to start work on a fourth station close to the main U.S. base — McMurdo Station — in a part of Antarctica known as the Ross Dependency that is administered by New Zealand.

 Anne-Marie Brady, a political science professor at New Zealand’s Canterbury University and editor of The Polar Journal, wrote in a recently published research paper that China is clearly interested in Antarctic resources, which range from minerals to meteorites, intellectual property from bio-prospecting, locations for scientific bases, fisheries and tourism access. “As an energy-hungry nation, China is extremely interested in the resources of Antarctica (and the Arctic) and any possibilities for their exploitation,” Brady wrote. Chinese-language polar social science discussions are dominated by debates about Antarctic resources and how China might gain its share, she wrote. “Such discussions are virtually taboo in the scholarly research of more established Antarctic powers,” she wrote. Numerous newspaper reports in Chinese have alleged that some countries are already prospecting in Antarctica under the cover of scientific research, Brady said. In Chinese-language debates, scholars, government officials and journalists appear to agree that the exploitation of Antarctica is only a matter of time and that China be ready, she said.

Texas A&M University oceanographer and Antarctic researcher Chuck Kennicutt II said it would be expensive to recover oil and gas from Antarctica but that a spike in oil prices could make it economically viable.

 The increased Antarctic research activity by developing nations is partly driven by interest in the Arctic, which could soon be ice-free in summer, Kennicutt said. Many nations, not just those with northern territories, are interested in the economic and security potential of northeast and northwest passages, he said. “It is not just economic but also in regard to the whole balance of power and the military implications in terms of national security and homeland security,” he said.

In January, The Associated Press reported that the icebreaker Xuelong (Snow Dragon) had become the first Chinese vessel to cross the Arctic Ocean. According to the state-controlled China Daily newspaper, China will launch its second icebreaker in 2014. In summer, Arctic shipping routes between China and Europe are 40 percent faster than those through the Indian Ocean, Suez Canal and Mediterranean Sea.

A crazy world

There are 870 million hungry people in the world today, experts estimate, yet around the world 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year.

Millions of tons of food, particularly perishable fresh produce, also go to waste in the developing world as a result of poor transport networks or lack of markets, storage facilities, and processing equipment.

“I have witnessed people throwing away tomatoes, vegetables, and fruits, among other produce, simply because they did not find a market for it, and they have nowhere to keep it,” said Jane Kathure Biashara, a Kenyan community development expert

HARD TIMES?

 

The idea that the present economic downturn is affecting everyone from the richest to the poorest was recently given credence by this report. 'Britain's richest man took a small cut in pay last year. Lakshmi Mittal, chairman and chief executive of Arcelor Mittal, banked $3.87m (£2.49) in pay and perks from the steel giant, down from $4m previously. .... Lakshmi Mittal's 40% stake in Arcelor Mittal is worth $10.3bn (£6.6bn). The Sunday Times Rich List estimates his fortune at £12.7 bn.' (Sunday Times, 17 February) Wow, a fall from $4m to a mere $3.87m. It's tough at the top! RD

Weans in need

One in five children is living in poverty in parts of almost every local council area in Scotland. Nearly all of Scotland’s local authorities – 27 out of 32 – have council wards where more than 20 per cent of their children live in poverty, according to the Campaign to End Child Poverty. Children were classed as being in poverty if their family is forced to live on 60 per cent or less of median UK income.

Children in the Glasgow North East constituency have 43 per cent classed as poor. A third of children live in poverty in Scotland’s biggest city of Glasgow, while Dundee had more than a quarter classed as poor. Edinburgh had almost one in five children in poverty, with a similar figure for Fife, East Ayrshire and North Lanarkshire.

 Recent forecasts indicate that at least 65,000 more children in Scotland will be living below the breadline by the end of the decade – a far cry from promises made in 1999 to end child poverty by 2020.


Percentage of children living in poverty
By local authority
Aberdeenshire 9%
Angus 14%
Argyll & Bute 14%
Clackmannanshire 23%
Dumfries & Galloway 17%
Dundee City 26%
East Ayrshire 22%
East Dunbartonshire 10%
East Lothian 14%
East Renfrewshire 10%
Edinburgh, City of 19%
Western Isles 11%
Falkirk 17%
Fife 20%
Glasgow City 33%
Highland 15%
Inverclyde 24%
Midlothian 18%
Moray 12%
North Ayrshire 25%
North Lanarkshire 21%
Orkney Islands 8%

Socialism is the antidote

Some say the world is divided into independent, territorially-based states representing and pursuing the interests of capitalists from within their borders, and that the world economy is characterised by competing separate national capitals only. Others view the capitalist system as a single economy, even if divided politically and geographically, into separate “nation states”, and that the recent globalisation represents the emergence of a global capitalist class not tied to a particular national state. Those holding the latter idea fully understand that national states have not disappeared and are still powerful players in the capitalist economy but argue that the transnational capitalist class uses them, through favourable politicians and governments, to pursue its transnational interests (rather than them being used by a national capitalist class to pursue its national interests).

However, any transnational capitalist class would only be a section of the capitalist class of the world. There are still plenty of national capitalists, actual and would-be, whose interests are not the same as those of the transnational section. So, although political power in the advanced capitalist countries, may be in the hands of politicians favourable to transnational capitalists, there is still opposition to them. From the point of view of the transnational corporations, states no longer have important policy-making functions. It is enough if they enforce property rights and maintain basic infrastructure in areas important for business. Small states can do these jobs as well as large ones. In fact, they have definite advantages. They are more easily controlled, less likely to develop the will or capacity to challenge the prerogatives of global capital.

The ideology of national capitalism, reflecting the interests of small-scale capitalists, is still strong and finds support both from the “right” and the “left” who beat the same nationalist drum during the referendum debate. Being against capitalist globalisation is not the same as being against capitalism in general. We have ample past experience of a world of competing national capitalisms – quite enough to demonstrate that there is no good reason for preferring such a world to a world under the sway of global capital. Leftists such as the SSP in effect argue that workers should support national as opposed to transnational capitalism. Socialists, on the other hand, don’t take sides in this conflict between different sections of the capitalist class. Socialism will do away with all national oppression, because it removes the class interests that furnish the driving force of such oppression. Nor do we have any reason to assume that the nation, in socialist society, will form the basic politico-economic unit.

The Socialist Party is part of the World Socialist Movement which didn't get its name for nothing. Unique amongst all political parties left and right we have no national axe to grind. We side with no particular state, no government. We have no time for border controls. The world over, workers must do what they can to survive and resist capitalism. In many parts of the world that means escaping the tyranny of political terror or economic poverty. Workers should resist taking sides in the battles of the economic entities named on your passport.

One World Socialists

The Greeks in the 4th Century BCE  coined the term “cosmopolitan” – meaning citizen of the world and that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community.   Diogenes it is said was asked where he came from and he answered: "'I am a citizen of the world". Eugene Debs of the American Socialist Party at the turn of the 20th Century said "I have no country to fight for; my country is the Earth, and I am a citizen of the World."

The importance of local democracy has to be seen in the context of the modern world. People aren't just concerned about whether a piece of local land should be used for housing, growing food, a cricket pitch or left as it is. People are engaged with issues affecting them which extend far beyond their local areas. So, as well as being citizens of their parish or district they would also be citizens of the world with all the opportunities for, and responsibilities of decision making and action in every sphere of life. Some of the problems which face mankind are "whole-world" problems. People are beginning to think in world terms. More and more people are coming to appreciate world music and world theatre. Millions more follow world sporting events, and there is a growing consciousness that all humans are part of one world, that we share a common planet. As more than one astronaut has remarked, when looking down on the Earth you can't see any frontiers. Millions of people throughout the world are concerned about world poverty and world hunger and problems such as global warming and tropical deforestation.Think globally, act locally.

We are all one species. Our world is the only one we've got and we must share it with everybody. Socialists do not stand for world government because we are opposed to governments everywhere. One World represents an entirely different vision of the future to the "United Nations" or "Internationalism" which, as their names imply, are attempts to improvise a patchwork from the fragments which capitalism makes of the world. We are for the planned production and distribution of wealth on a world scale to meet human needs. To move forward the dispossessed of the world must now look beyond the artificial barriers of nation-states and regional blocs, to perceive a common identity and purpose. We seek a global community with no private property beyond immediate possessions, no need for money, no racism or sexism, no enslavement of children, no profit motive to drive the oppression of working people, no battles over personal interpretations of spirituality, and no disrespect for the 'other'.

The socialist aim is a world where we peacefully cohabit our home planet. There never has been, and never can be, socialism in just one country. No longer will there be governments and their state machinery, or national frontiers. Instead of government over people there would be various levels of democratic administration, from the local up to regional and world levels, with responsibility being delegated if necessary to groups or individuals. A united humanity, sharing a world of common interests, would also share world administration. It is sometimes said that world administration would mean power of central control over local democracy. We, however, envisage an integrated system that would be adaptable and could be used for decision-making and action on any scale between the local and the world. In socialism, for the first time, local communities will be free to make decisions about the development of their areas. These would be decisions about local services such as health, education and transport; public facilities such as parks, libraries, leisure centres and sports grounds; local housing, the siting of production units, management of farming, care of the local environment, cultural events, and so on. The principle of local democracy would be that decisions affecting just local populations would be made by them and not for them by any larger or outside body. Local communities, nevertheless, cannot be completely independent or self-reliant as far as meeting their material needs goes; they are interdependent. People in small communities aren't able to produce all they need, or anything like it. The final stage of the production of a range of goods for everyday use could be done locally -- food, clothes, shoes, furniture -- as well as repairs but most of the raw materials cannot be produced locally. It is a question of them being interlinked in a single network of production which in the end embraces the whole world.

There is in reality only one world. Capitalism brought into being the one world. It is high time we reclaimed it. We have no country but have a world to win. Socialists aren't dreaming up a “perfect” or an “ideal” world. What we struggle to establish is a better world. Why we should prefer Scottish rather than British police to be used against strikes and pickets? Why we should want the government that presides over the operation of capitalism in Britain to be situated in Edinburgh rather than London? We remain unconvinced that we should take sides in the referendum debate about the political structure for running capitalism today.

A Thieves Den

"Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen." - Woody Guthrie

It has been described as the biggest banking fraud in history yet no-one has been prosecuted for the Libor fixing scandal. The financial rewards of rigging rates were, and are, immense. For example RBS’s rates, currencies and commodities group — the one where Libor rigging and other forms of market manipulation are believed to be commonplace — saw its income rise by 87% in the half year to June 2008, at a time when the overall income RBS Global Banking and Markets fell 10%. Royal Bank of Scotland admitted that between 2006 and 2010 staff based in London, Singapore, Tokyo and the US conspired to manipulate the global financial benchmark, the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) calculated in both Swiss Francs and Japanese Yen. By pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud in its Japanese arm, RBS managed to avoid having its US operations shut down by the US Department of Justice.  Libor is a global benchmark used to price some $300 trillion of contracts, ranging from mortgages to student loans to interest-rate swaps, calculated by averaging out submissions from up to 40 global banks.  Two other global banks have reached settlements along similar lines over Libor crimes. UBS was fined $1.5 billion (£950m) in December, and Barclays was fined $451m (£287m) in June 2012. A further 20 or so global banks are have yet to reach settlements. In the UK they are thought to include Lloyds Banking Group and HSBC.

“This is the biggest scandal, the biggest anti-trust felony, in the history of the world, and it continued for years,” said Bill Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and a world leading expert on financial crime. “Even after the investigation became public knowledge, the felony continued, and it continued with greater efforts being made to cover it up, with people being instructed to no longer to use instant messages and such like in order to make it harder for the regulators What is most stunning is that these traders and submitters were willing to say these things, knowing that there was a verbatim record being kept. What does that tell you not just about the institution itself, but also about the FSA and the Serious Fraud Office? That is the one of the most important and revealing fact that comes out of this. The perception inside the bank was ‘we don’t need to worry about those clowns’.” He added "The bank is too big to prosecute, it’s too big to run honestly... it’s created catastrophic harm to the British people. RBS holds the British economy and the British people hostage."


Since being found out by regulators, RBS’s strategy has been to blame junior and middle-ranking people for the scandal, claiming that no one at the top of the bank knew it was going on. This is surprising, given that in September 2007, the Financial Times’s Gillian Tett highlighted concerns that Libor was “a bit of a fiction” [FT 25 September 2007], and that in April 2008 the British Bankers’ Association sent a memo to ‘panel’ banks including RBS asking them to check their Libor submission processes and ensure they were “submitting honest rates” after the Wall Street Journal’s Carrick Mollenkamp highlighted “growing suspicions about Libor’s veracity” [WSJ 16 April 2008]. Some RBS traders who have been dismissed for Libor rigging argue that they are being used as scapegoats, claiming that their superiors  ‘condoned collusion’. Tan Chi Min, RBS’s ex-head of Japanese Yen interest-rate trading, declared that Libor rigging was a well-known and common practice at the bank in 2006-11. The FSA said that, in March 2011, RBS misled the regulator, indicating that it had put proper systems and controls in place when it had not.

Many believe the government and  authorities are being too soft on financial crimes, seeing mollycoddling miscreant financial institutions that it majority owns as more important than seeking justice. The fact that RBS’s share price rose on the day of its settlement suggests investors believe it got off lightly.  Neil Barofsky, former special inspector-general of the Troubled Asset Relief Programme and author of Bailout, said: "...each settlement on favourable terms reinforces the perception that, for a select group of executives and institutions, crime pays. It is only rational. They know that they will get to keep all of the ill-gotten profits if they go undetected, and on the small chance that they’re caught, most probably only the shareholders will pay – and only a relatively minor fine at that. The lack of meaningful consequences for those committing these frauds encourages future fraudulent conduct."



Adapted from here

More Food for thought

The recent news has brought forward another horrific fire at a nightclub in Brazil as you have probably heard. These fires rival those at clothing factories for highlighting the sheer stupidity or outright nastiness of the system. Allegations from this latest one include security staff stopping patrons from fleeing from the fire as they hadn't paid their tabs (apparently it is the custom there to run up a tab and pay at the end of the night); fire extinguishers that do not work; allowing pyrotechnics by the band members to create a spectacle; expired fire permits; locked doors. Some may not be true but all of these things pop up regularly in these continuing tragedies. There must be thousands of places like this one just waiting for an accident to happen. One must ask why the system allows it. Where are the inspections, the licences, the authorities responsible? Obviously to demand a safe environment and proper supervision would cost money, drive investors away, and lose a large source of tourism dollars. Some system that engenders and accepts such madness for the only sure thing is that
it will happen again!  
John Ayers

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

It is popular for politicians to pretend that workers in Britain are enjoying steadily improving living standards, but from time to time the truth leaks out. 'Food prices are rising more than three times faster than the average worker's pay package as the cost of living 'crisis' continues, official figures revealed yesterday. While the average private sector worker's pay has risen by just 1.4 per cent - and millions of State workers are subject to a pay freeze - food prices have risen by 4.5 per cent in the last year, according to the Office for National Statistics. The crippling cost of the weekly trip to the supermarket is the most striking figure in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) for January.' (Daily Mail, 13 February) A food price rise of 4.5 per cent against a 1.4 per cent wage rise? It doesn't take a master statistician to see the flaw in the "steadily improving standard of living" argument. RD

Food for thought

The level of paranoia in the US regarding guns and bad people around every corner has spawned some crazy solutions. In a small town in Texas, the local council elected to let teachers carry concealed weapons in the school. School Superintendent Thweatt commented, " We don't have money for a security guard, but this is a better solution. A shooter could take out a guard or officer with a visible holstered weapon, but our teachers have master's degrees and are older and have extensive training. And their guns are hidden. We can protect our children."
Better still, why not arm all the children, then you would have a couple of hundred shooters ready to blast away! John Ayers

worth every penny?

Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, asserts that its cheif executive, Stephen Hester,  is only “modestly paid” - at £7.8 million a year. “Stephen is doing one of the most difficult, demanding and challenging jobs in world business. He has been paid well below the market rate compared to others in the same job.” Hampton explained.

Hester’s £7.8m package is made up of a basic salary of £1.2m, plus a maximum annual bonus of £2.4m and a further £4.2m that can be earned through the bank’s long term incentive schemes.

Food for thought

In 1994 when South Africans voted in Nelson Mandela's government in the country's first democratic election, education was the way to raise the level of the black population. Now, as South Africa grapples with poverty, economic inequality, crime, and soaring youth unemployment (welcome to the capitalist norm), the education system, which is training for a job, hasn't done anything to change South Africa. Of the 1.1 million born since 1994, less than half have taken the Graduation Exam and the ones who take it and pass (75%) are receiving something less than valid as pass marks hover around the 30-40% range, something that probably wouldn't get them a job if any were available. This is a failure of capitalist education that is job oriented and not to develop one's knowledge and person to the fullest. John Ayers

They never learn

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the fighters France is battling in northern Mali are some of the very same ones it helped arm in Libya.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he favored the idea of arming Syrian militants.

Food for thought

The International Energy Agency has said that the US will become energy self-sufficient by 2035 and is counting on massive expansion of the technique of fracking shale to get oil and gas. Sounds good but, as usual, it comes with a price. In this case environmental -- what happens to water tables, for example? The drilling industry refuses to disclose the toxins included in the fluid injected into the shale but it is known (Toronto Star, Dec 8, 2012) that it contains the carcinogens benzene and formaldehyde. This and a host of other problems will not stop the mad search for more oil and gas (and profit) as long as we tolerate this system. John Ayers

Global Govanhill

Govanhill on the south side of Glasgow is home to some 15,000 has people from an estimated 42 different nationalities living within one square mile. Why Govanhill?  The availability of cheap, private-let housing is one practical reason. Also, immigration is self-perpetuating – the presence of an established community makes it more likely others will come and settle. Govanhill was at one time a mining village outside Glasgow. It started to expand significantly from 1837 with the foundation of the Govan Iron Works, known to this day, even though it is long gone, as Dixon’s Blazes. The Irish also began to arrive in Glasgow in large numbers at around this time, estimated at more than 1,000 people a week during 1848 – escaping the famine and seeking employment. In the 1960s, with the demolition of the Gorbals tenements, a second wave of Irish moved to Govanhill. At the end of the 19th century, heavy industry began to draw Jews from Poland and Lithuania. Significant immigration from the Indian sub-continent, in particular from Pakistan, was a phenomenon first observed in the 1960s and 1970s. The sheer numbers of Irish and Asians living in Govanhill during this period led to the area being nicknamed Bengal/Donegal.

Along Allison Street you can daunder up and down and hear not a word of Glaswegian, spoken. It’s all Urdu, Romani, Slovak, Polish, Czech, Somali, Igbo and more. Much of the shop front signage is in Arabic. Completely dominant is the presence of food and drink. A smell of spice and other aromas so strong you can taste it: haleem; nihari; fried fish; dried fish; chana chat; chips; and, of course from the pubs the reek of beer. Available is lado, barfi and gulab jamun (balls of dough, deep-fried and dipped in syrup) or ewa agoyin – a Nigerian dish of beans and stew. Italian Scots  established so many beloved chippies and ice-cream parlours. The Asian immigrants started to arrive in the 1970s. Pakistan was the main country of origin, very few Indians.  There are  biryanis, daal, mustard-leaf saag and curry options, about half of which include meat on the bone – the traditional way of doing it, with way more flavour and naan bread. Also now on the multi-cultural menu is goja, a Romani word, the bowel of a pig stuffed with potatoes and garlic, then boiled or fried.

Since 2004, when Slovakia and the Czech Republic joined the EU, another ingredient has added flavour to the Govanhill melting pot – the Roma people. There are thought to be around 3,000 in the area, and in some parts of the district they appear to be the most populous group; one local primary school has a majority eastern European population and very few English-speaking pupils. The first Roma in Glasgow were asylum seekers from Slovakia, escaping racial hatred. Most, now, are economic migrants, coming from villages in the region of Michalovce. In Glasgow, they have found casual work in potato and chicken processing factories, though, increasingly, jobs are hard to come by. Romanian nationals have very restricted access to the benefits system, and there is anecdotal evidence that some Roma from that country, now living in Govanhill, cannot afford to feed themselves and thus go through the bins of private residences and shops, looking for food.

Kelly’s is one of a number of pubs in the area which cater to those remnants of the Irish population once so dominant here. Tony Mai Gallagher, 71, from Kincasslagh, Donegal moved to Glasgow in 1954 at the age of 12. He well remembers the anti-Irish, anti-Catholic prejudice of his earlier years, and this experience softens him towards the Roma. "Harmony is what we need.” he says

Taken from here

Food for thought

lLast month I reported on the expanding military deployments of Japan.
This month it is the German's turn. Chancellor, Angela Merkle, recently
told a military gathering that German deployment overseas, "will soon
encompass the entire globe." The German defence minister concurred, "Now
we are in a position and have the duty, even, to make our impact felt."
This emphasizes yet again that capitalism is a competitive system where
everybody must look out for themselves and he who has the biggest club
wins. Not too far from our caveman days are we? John Ayers