Bad News

A study in America found that over a three-year period, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN aired just 141 stories in which unions and the labor movement were either the primary or secondary topic. That's out of an estimated 16,000 news stories aired on the four networks, so less than 0.3 percent of all news stories. Not only were just the unions not getting much attention in the news their view was being ignored. CBS did not use even one union source in 24 percent of its stories on labor; NBC omitted union voices from 19 percent of the stories.
The pattern of portrayal of unions was negative, with workers critical of unions more likely to be heard. The report found that news about labor and unions related to the field of education and the automobile industry included more governmental sources than labor sources. “The news treatment thus presents the government as the organized party willing to provide solutions, but not the labor/union negotiators”.

These findings resemble those of past studies, such as the Glasgow Media Group which have found that media coverage is often slanted against collective economic action and toward business and elite interests. Unions are portrayed as hurting competitiveness, and thus costing jobs. The media serve their masters well. It has turned worker against worker, and particularly against the unions.

We Are all In This Together

One of the fond notions that supporters of capitalism like to espouse is that times may be hard, but we are all in this together. Indeed Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has insisted he knows what it is like to "live on the breadline". 'The comment comes after 250,000 people signed a petition urging Mr Duncan Smith to try living on £53 a week. He dismissed this as a "complete stunt", telling the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian he had been unemployed twice in his life. .......... Mr Duncan Smith told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday, the day the changes came into force, that he could survive on £53 a week.' (BBC News, 2 April) This was the amount another speaker on the show - market trader David Bennett - said he would be left with.' Dom Arvesano, who was behind the petition commented: '"This would mean a 97% reduction in his current income, which is £1,581.02 a week or £225 a day after tax." This is a gigantic fall in his present standard of living and we note despite his courageous boast of how he could survive on £53 a week he has declined the petitioners challenge to live for a year in such penury. RD

Ghost Town

37% of people buying property in the most expensive neighbourhoods of central London did not intend them to be primary residences.
"Belgravia is becoming a village with fewer people in it," said Alistair Boscawen, a local real estate agent. He works in "the nuts area" of London, as he put it, "where the house prices are bonkers" — anywhere from $7.5 million to $75 million. The buyers are super-wealthy foreigners. London is not the only city where the world's richest people leave their expensive properties vacant while they stay in their expensive properties someplace else; the same is true in parts of Manhattan.
Paul Dimoldenberg, leader of the Labour opposition in Westminster Council, said the situation had reached a tipping point. "They may live here for a fortnight in the summer, but for the rest of the year they're contributing nothing to the local economy. The spectre of new buildings where there are no lights on is a real problem."
One Hyde Park, an opulent $1.7 billion apartment building in Knightsbridge. It is rare to see anyone coming to or going from the complex.

Ending World Poverty

World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim called for a global drive to wipe out extreme poverty by 2030, acknowledging that reaching the goal will require extraordinary efforts. “A world free of poverty is within our grasp. It is time to help everyone across the globe secure a one-way ticket out of poverty and stay on the path toward prosperity,” Kim said
Not a very difficult goal nor a paticularly ambitious one to achieve if you happen to a member of the world’s super-rich capitalists.
Last year, the world's billionaires added $800 billion dollars to their wealth. According to the latest issue of Forbes, when all the money is counted, the 1,426 billionaires have a combined net worth of $5.4 trillion. That means the average billionaire is worth about $3.8 billion. Of those billionaires in the U.S. -- 442 of them -- the average net worth is about $4.2 billion.

That's a whole lot of money and according to the OECD, the total amount of aid given by the wealthy nations of the world to the developing countries was only 3% of the total wealth of the world's billionaires.
There are 1.1 billion people without access to clean drinking water, according to the World Health Organization, and as a result 1.6 million people die of cholera and other diarrhea-related diseases every year. World Vision provides clean drinking water to about 1 million people every year, and we do it for a rough average of $50 per person, depending on the country and other factors. Theoretically, for about $50 billion clean water could be brought to every person on the planet thereby saving 1.6 million lives every year. That would cost just 1% of the total wealth possessed by the mega-rich.
Lack of nutrition contributes to the deaths of 2.6 million school children. The World Food Program estimates that $3.2 billion is all it would take to make sure children stay alive and grow up fully nourished. For less than measly 0.6% of the wealth of the world's billionaires could end childhood deaths from hunger -- saving 4.2 million lives.
Socialist Courier is not suggesting that philanthropy will solve these problems, just putting the situation into perspective. Capitalism is the root cause of why the poor needlessly suffer and die. The world has the technical solutions and all the field-tested programs to end hunger and most disease. Advances in health, agriculture, education and technology has given the world the tools needed to make changes. These all exist and can be deployed by a rational society that declares peoples needs should be satisfied instead of being only resources employed to make profits for the few.

Life's good for some

Edinburgh-based Standard Life’s saw its top three directors share close to £10 million in bonuses in 2012 with the chief executive of the insurance giant, David Nish, nearly doubling his remuneration to £5m.


Keith Skeoch saw his pay rise to £4.3m from £2.6m, thanks mainly to a bonus from his role as head of Standard Life Investments (SLI), while finance director Jackie Hunt saw her overall pay rise to £2.5m from £1.4m.

65 per cent growth in operating profit before tax to £900m and 61 per cent growth in share price over the year.

What recession?

Who Are The Work-Shy?

Some sections of the media are fond of portraying the British working class as a feckless, work-shy bunch of state benefit scroungers but recent events expose that as complete nonsense. 'An astonishing 4,000 people braved the bitter cold to queue for work at a new £84million shopping centre. Long lines of desperate job seekers started to build up two hours before the jobs fair opened and the turnout was so big that organisers had to introduce a one-in one-out policy. The Whiteley Shopping Centre in Hampshire is set to open in May and will be home to 56 shops.' (Daily Express, 29 March) Feckless? Work-shy? That is an apt description of the British owning class. RD

The Battle Hymn of Cooperation

Next time you pop into your local co-op sing this song while you wait for your divi.

Battle Hymn of Cooperation

Oh, we are a mighty army, though we bear no sword and gun,
We’re enlisted ’till the struggle for cooperation’s won,
And beneath our banner blazoned “One for all and all for one,"
Consumers marching on!

Chorus:
Come and let us work together
Come and let us work together
Come and let us work together
Consumers marching on!

It was long ago in Rochdale that our cause saw first the light,
We were sadly few in numbers but our principles were right,
But today we count our millions as we girt ourselves to fight:

Consumers marching on!
Chorus

Oh, the world today is suffering filled with poverty and pain,
And the day has come for freedom from the curse of private gain,
For all may live in comfort ’neath Cooperation’s reign.

Consumers marching on!
Chorus

Oh we know our scheme is righteous and we know our cause is just;
For upon the brotherhood of man we firmly base our trust:
Let us strive to win the victory, for win we can and must.

Consumers marching on!
Chorus

Elizabeth Mead  and Carl Ferguson, 1932

I confess that i have not previously known about this little known song which like the more popular Solidarity Forever is based upon the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

If only we could substitute that word "consumers" for "communists" !

Being fed lies

An ever-shrinking number of mega-corporations controls an ever-expanding food industry, from seeds to equipment, from chemical inputs to processing, from the farm field to the supermarket shelf.


In America just four companies own approximately 84% of the U.S. beef market. Four firms control 66 percent of the pork-packing market and another four control 58 percent of poultry processing. Four companies own 43% of the world’s commercial seed market.Three companies control 90 % of the global grain trade. Four companies own 48% of grocery retailers. Monsanto, is the largest seed making company and DuPont the second biggest so they may technically be competitors yet a $1.75 billion deal between them ensures that Dupont gets access to Monsanto technology and Monsanto can access DuPont’s massive customer base. Much will be the same for the UK and Europe as in America. All those corporations appear to be recession-proof, having in recent years increased their profit margins.

Our food comes in vacuum-packed plastic bags, in boxes, bottles, jars and cans -- but it isn't really food. It's food stuff. It doesn't come from an animal or plant; it's made in a plant, rolled off an assembly line. It's processed with sugar salt and fat to be addictive. Its not just the manufacture of processed foods, it is us who are being processed too. Processed food tastes good and the added ingredients and chemicals ensure we keep coming back for more...and more.

The food industry just want to make money. Manufacturers and retailerswho sell junk food don't much care for the truth about food. The obesity, heart disease and diabetes epidemics they are causing is of no concern to them. There are now health experts predicting that our children will have shorter life expectancies that we have.

Land-grabbing by the multi-nationals is nothing new, the most obvious example being the fruit plantations of the Central American - the aptly nick-named - “banana republics.” Oxfam reports that in the past decade, an area of land equal to eight times the size of the U.K. has been sold in rapidly accelerating global land transactions. Nor is it the usual imperialist western powers which the Leninists love to blame. A Brazilian-Japanese venture is planning to farm 54,000 square miles of land in northern Mozambique for food exports. These agribusiness schemes exacerbate the problem in areas of chronic hunger and malnourishment and have farmers growing cash crops for export, rather than food crops for consumption. In Sudan the United Arab Emirates was growing sorghum – a Sudanese food staple — to feed camels. Indian corporations’ are active in Ethiopian land-grabs. Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute calls it a “new form of colonization.”

Meanwhile a French newspaper reports upon food scavenging from the garbage of the supermarkets. In France, 1.2 million tons of food is thrown away every year – about 20 kilos per person per year. Of these 20 kilos, seven kilos are still in their packaging, and 13 kilos are leftovers and fruits and vegetables.

Saudi Arabia back-pedals on women's freedom

Women in one of the West closest allies are still banned from driving cars or travelling alone but it is good to note that the British demands for more women’s rights in the Islamic fundamentalist state is being heeded and having an effect.

 Women can now ride bicycles! But only in parks and recreational areas, not as a means of transport, just for entertainment and pleasure. Of course, a male relative or guardian must still accompany them.

Socialist Courier spots a potential market and business opportunity in selling Saudi Arabia tandem bikes.

A Torturous Society

One of the great illusions that the British owning class love to spread is that although capitalism may be an awful society they at least behave in an honourable civilized fashion. 'British troops recount human rights abuses at US detention facility in Iraq. British soldiers and airmen tell of prisoners brought in by SAS and SBS snatch squads being hooded and given electric shocks. The abuses the soldiers and airmen say they saw included: Iraqi prisoners being held for prolonged periods in cells the size of large dog kennels. Prisoners being subjected to electric shocks. Prisoners being routinely hooded.' (Guardian, 1 April) Honourable, civilized? Does that include torture? RD

A re-newed class struggle

The capitalist logic says, “The economy is in a recession and the figures are all down this year. We’re all in it together and we all must tighten our belts” But the majority knows that this shared sacrifice is nonsense even if we don’t have the statistics. The company directors’ have been awarding themselves massive pay rises, the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and the tax evasion of the wealthy is becoming only too well-known. There is a general climate of anger and a feeling that we should take action.


Too often the left propose all sorts of ineffective options mostly on the basis that “the workers aren’t up for it” or “everyone is scared,” or even “we aren’t sure we can win.” But when people don’t seem up for it, it’s because they aren’t stupid and they aren’t up for ineffective action. Workers need to understand their union and their fight. Unions must present the truth. If it’ll take a six-month struggle to win, unions have to say so. Don’t patronizse; educate. Don’t become like the enemy. Solidarity is vital. This means other unions and other workers from different sectors and places supporting one another.

The working class face expanding global corporate power, massive inequality, a rapidly shifting and changing economy, less pay and more insecurity. We need a straight-forward trade unionism, which speaks to the experience of people which is based on the daily lives and culture of people to rebuild a union way of life. It is important to build industrial and international organisation, as opposed to sectional and national organisations. Even though many in the union movement are conservative with the small c , stuck in ideas and traditions of the past and stuck in the rut in in their structure, direction, culture and efficiency, some in the unions are, nevertheless, attempting change in their own way, independently of, and without reliance on political parties without adherence to any notions of a “party line” or generic “one-size-fits-all” class struggle. In recent years, ideas of the full democratic participation in all decision processes have become integrally part of the theory and practice of many workers’ movements.

Yet the basic social relationship of capitalism remains the same and the working class mission remains the same, to build a new form of society. It’s time for a radical, futuristic approach. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has come to understand that the people themselves can organise to provide for their needs and wants. Every revolution is impossible before it happens; afterwards it feels inevitable.

Quote of the Day

"We understood the Conservative government's determination to use the state machine against us. In order to dismember the welfare state, they had to break the trade union movement and they needed to break the miners first." - Mick McGahey, Vice President of the National Union of Mineworkers 1972-87.

One World Dreamers v World Socialism

The fact is we live in a capitalist world. One of the crucial elements of this capitalist system is the flow of capital, commodities, and labour around the world. While it might seem for a second that the removal of borders would better facilitate all this, the opposite is actually true. From the perspective of the ruling classes of the world, particularly those of the strongest nations, breaking down borders would be a disadvantage for a number of reasons.


Multi-national corporations often rely on tariffs and protective trade policies to protect their market share and profits. For all their love of the “free-market,” corporations will run to the protection of their government when they feel threatened by foreign competition and these corporations have the greatest influence in politics.

Capitalists need a world in which they can freely move capital around, yet at the same time have access to cheap labour as well. Immigration is a major source of cheap labor, and borders and immigration laws are a major part of keeping wages low. If there were no borders and immigration laws, these labourers could demand better conditions without fear of deportation. The leading capitalist nations, either for the purpose of exploiting immigrant labor or just cheap labour within those countries, rely on maintaining an imbalance in the world backed up by borders and their immigration laws.

Borders and sovereign governments also play an important role in providing cheap labour because these states embroil themselves in a race to the bottom, in order to attract multi-nationals by offering tax-holidays and free-trade zones, in addition to the cheapest, non-union labor. If all these territories are no longer sovereign nations, this competition would be greatly hindered if not eliminated entirely. Corporations benefit from having various governments out-bidding one another for the cheapest labor and facilities.

Let us also not forget that the ruling classes of many nations are indeed in competition with each other. Is the American ruling class willing to share profits, power, and influence with those of the other industrial nations? Are the rulers of the EU willing to do the same? Capitalist countries will cooperate so long as it is profitable and beneficial, but sooner or later every market gets snatched up and a war erupts to re-draw the lines on the globe.

No borders would spell the doom of many corporations, which would no longer be able to depend on their government and their trade policies to protect their interest. They could no longer rely on their government to use its military or economic leverage to open one market while denying it to others, or to domestic producers in that country. Why would they give up such power?

Once we come to understand that the idea of a unified one world under the current system of capitalism is simply just not feasible, we must then consider the practical possibility that it can be created by socialism.

a war of words

Language is a battleground that socialists are often called upon to enter. Calling a party, socialist or communist, or claiming to be one, does not mean that the party is really socialist or communist.

For Marx and ourselves socialism is the society succeeding capitalism and contrary to the widespread erroneous idea, socialism is not a transitional society towards an ultimate aim called communism. For Marx socialism is communism, refers to the same social formation, simply being another term, like the terms Republic of Labour, society of free and associated producers or simply Association, Co-operative Society, union of free individuals, are all equivalent terms for the same society.

The “dictatorship of the proletariat” is not synonymous with socialism. the conquest of political power by the proletariat is not the end of the proletarian revolution, it constitutes, in fact, only the “first step" in the revolution” (Manifesto) which continues through a prolonged period till the capitalist mode of production is replaced by the “associated mode of production”, the basis of socialism. This is the “revolutionary transformation period between capitalist and communist society” during which the proletariat exercises its dictatorship. Hence, by definition, proletarian dictatorship cannot be “synonymous” with socialism. socialism, according to Marx, the ‘‘organisation’’ of society is ‘‘essentially economic–the establishment of the conditions of the union of individual’’ (German Ideology). In the socialist society, which is classless by definition,

there is no political power. This is explicitly stated both in Marx’s 1847 polemic with Proudhon and in the 1848 Communist Manifesto. In fact Marx always thought that state and human freedom are irreconcilable. Only during what Marx called the ‘‘revolutionary transfomation period’’ preceding socialism, the new state arising after the destruction of the old state machine, as the class power (no Party power in the name of the class, of course) of the labouring class representing society’s ‘‘immense majority in the interest of the immense majority’’ (Manifesto 1848) is necessary to put down any attempted “slave-owner" rebellion. (See Civil War in France and Marx’s Bakunin Critique, 1874). It should be clear that this last state - as a kind of necessary evil-presided over by the ‘‘immense majority in the interest of the immense majority" is, by nature of things, also the least repressive state appearing so far in social evolution.

With the disappearance of classes, there is also no political power, no state, and so no “workers’ state” either in the new society. Indeed, the German Ideology emphasises that the “organisation” of the new society is “essentially economic”. Marx did not leave any "programme" for socialism but he left us a sufficient quantity of material to have a clear idea of who he thought should happen to capitalism.

According to Lenin’s reading of Critique of the Gotha Programme it is said it describes a two-phase division of communist society. a lower and a higher. The first Lenin calls socialism and the second, he describes as communism. He did not seem to have invented this nomenclature. But he is the one whose use of these terms was accepted and widely used first by the international communist movement and then even by the anti-Marxists all over the world. For Lenin there are now two transitions, one from capitalism to socialism, and an other from socialism to communism.

Lenin may not have originated the distinction that socialism is different from communism, declaring it to be only the first phase of and transition to communism, but he made it famous and popularised it. Marx's socialism is a society of free producers who abolished private ownership of the means of production, commercial relations, wage labour and the State. Lenin's “socialism”does not eliminate wage labour and is based on the State ownership of the means of production, identified as social property. So Lenin's socialism is extremely different from the perspective of Marx's emancipation based on association of producers. Lenin conceives socialism substantially in terms of juridical ownership rather than production relationships therefore ending separate individual ownership and turning the ownership over to the state was for him social ownership. Lenin’s “socialism” envisages the economy as one state syndicate, a single factory, where all citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state with equal wages (soon to abandoned, however). Lenin is talking about the “state itself as capitalist in so far it employs wage labour” and the total national capital constituting a single capital in the hands of a single capitalist" as described in Capital. There is a striking similarity between what Lenin is saying here and what Marx calls “crude or vulgar communismin his 1844 Paris manuscripts. In this latter type of communism, the “condition of the labourer is not abolished, it is extended to all individuals. It is a simple community of labour where prevails equality of wage paid by the universal capitalist.
Marx had already showed the rise of the "associated capitalists" in stock-holder companies where the property of private individuals is replaced by ownership of collective capitalist investors. However, this is not the most important thing about private property. If the means of production in a society remain in the hands of the minority and thereby separated from the majority, there exists private property in the form of "private property of a part of society", class private property. So it does not matter at all even if it is the state which owns the property in the means of production, as long as the majority is deprived of those means. The irrefutable demonstration is the existence of wage labour for the majority. The existence of wage / salaried earners representing the majority of the population is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of private property in the means of production. State property is in fact a variety of private property.

For Marx private property in the means of production exists whenever these
means of production, separated from the producers, belong to a minority in society, leaving the great majority nothing but labour power to sell. It does not require any specific historical research to prove that this was the lot of the majority in each and every 'socialist' regime. In other words these were all state capitalist regimes. It is not difficult to see that this socialism, even though governed by a group professing to be the authentic disciples of Marx, has little to do with what Marx envisaged as socialism following the disappearance of capitalism.

This is not merely a semantic disagreement on words and meanings. It has far reaching consequences. The idea that there was a difference was put to good use by the rulers of the state-capitalist countries which called themselves socialist. They legitimizing every repressive act of these regimes in the name of building socialism thereby relegating all the self-emancipatory aspects of Marx’s socialism to a never-never land of ‘communism’, a utopia never to be realised. What Lenin presents as socialism is far removed from what Marx meant by it. Lenin’s “socialism” is really state capitalism.

The Glasow-based academic Hillel Ticktin also writes that “The transition to what - socialism or communism? It is clear that Marx made no distinction between the two....What difference does this terminology make? Well, it has made a great deal of difference, because it allowed the Stalinists to say that socialism is the lower phase of communism and, while in this lower phase all sorts of dreadful things can happen, we are still advancing to a communist society...We should simply go back to Marx's use. The society we are striving to attain may be called communist or socialist, but in the transitional period it is neither. As far as I am concerned, 'socialist society' and 'communist society' refer to the same thing.”

So as regards socialism being the transition to communism, Marx nowhere says this. For Marx this distinction is non-existent. For him socialism is neither the transition to communism, nor the lower phase of communism. Socialism and communism being identical, one could as well speak of the lower and the higher phases of socialism In fact Marx calls capitalism itself the transitional point or transitional phase to communism. For Marx human history only begins with socialism, because only then will the human individual, till now subjugated by “false community” personally and materially, become free both from personal and material unfreedom.

Who Are The Work-Shy?

Some sections of the media are fond of portraying the British working class as a feckless, work-shy bunch of state benefit scroungers but recent events expose that as complete nonsense. 'An astonishing 4,000 people braved the bitter cold to queue for work at a new £84million shopping centre. Long lines of desperate job seekers started to build up two hours before the jobs fair opened and the turnout was so big that organisers had to introduce a one-in one-out policy. The Whiteley Shopping Centre in Hampshire is set to open in May and will be home to 56 shops.' (Daily Express, 29 March) Feckless? Work-shy? That is an apt description of the British owning class. RD

a bit of right history

Mussolini concluded his "march" to power in Italy in 1922, and Scottish imitations did not take long to formulate themselves. Many in the upper echelons of Scottish society had great respect for a man who had arrived in power having crushed the left following. It should therefore not be of any great surprise that it was an aristocratic figure, the Earl of Glasgow, who oversaw the establishment of the British Fascists (BF) in Scotland and provided them with a headquarters in Glasgow. Their membership card stated their basic principles, of opposition to communists who are ‘in the pay of the Soviets of Russia’ and determined to ‘murder’ the present ruling class and replace them with a cabal of ‘Jews and Fanatics’. A list of fascist ‘pledges’ is on the reverse side of the card, with members promising to ‘support the King and the British constitution’, ‘end class hatred’, act and think like ‘a Christian’ and ‘to join my fellow Fascists in opposing [communist] force by force if and when it becomes necessary’. the Earl of Glasgow led a split off in favour of co-operating with the OMS, the ‘quasi-fascist’ Scottish Loyalists, who claimed to possess 2000 supporters. The programme of the Scottish Loyalists was much the same as their previous incarnation. Billy Fullerton, leader of the 400-strong ‘Bridgeton Billy Boys’ Protestant razor gang, was a member and is alleged to have received ‘a medal for strike breaking’ from Glasgow city council.
Addressing a Glasgow public meeting in November 1933, the Communist Willie Gallagher, who would go on to become MP for West Fife, stated that ‘in Scotland, the fascists were not anti-Jewish but anti-Irish’. Cormack’s Edinburgh-based ‘Protestant Action’ ‘squadrist tactics… look far more ‘fascist’ than anything the BUF did in Scotland’ according to one commentator. He established his own paramilitary organisation in 1935, ominously named ‘Kormack’s Kaledonian Klan’, operating from headquarters in the Lawnmarket. In 1936 the PA managed to push Labour into third place in local elections, gaining nearly 31 percent of the vote.   The short-lived Scottish Democratic Fascist Party was spearheaded by William Weir Gilmour – who had come on a political journey via the ILP and then the New Party – and Major Hume Sleigh, but by the end of the year both would have joined the BUF and the SDFP disappeared. Based in Glasgow, the party was both Scottish nationalist and fervently anti-Catholic.

Frugality And Fancy Living

While the majority of the Chinese working class live a frugal existence the ruling elite of the Communist Party lead lives of luxury and opulence, but wary of the collapse of the Soviet Union party leaders are trying to curb the worst excesses of the elite. 'In the four months since he was anointed China's paramount leader and tastemaker-in-chief, President Xi Jinping has imposed a form of austerity on the nation's famously free-spending civil servants, military brass and provincial party bosses. Warning that graft and gluttony threaten to bring down the ruling Communists, Mr. Xi has ordered an end to boozy, taxpayer-financed banquets and the bribery that often takes the form of a gift-wrapped Louis Vuitton bag.' (New York Times, 27 March) RD

Picasso And Penury

The billionaire Steven A. Cohen was feeling a little depressed - he had just been fined $616 million - so he decided to cheer himself up a little. 'Less than two weeks after SAC Capital Advisors, the hedge fund owned by the billionaire trader Steven A. Cohen, agreed to pay the government $616 million to settle accusations of insider trading, Mr. Cohen has decided to buy a little something for himself. A renowned art collector, Mr. Cohen has bought Picasso's "Le Rêve" from the casino owner Stephen A. Wynn for $155 million, according to a person with direct knowledge of the sale who was not authorized to speak publicly.' (New York Times, 26 March) This obscene accumulation of wealth exists in the same society where kids are starving, dying for the lack of clean water and trying to exist on less than $2 a day. RD

Not so red

Ideas of reaction and bigotry can often be just as powerful as those of solidarity and class unity. The celebrated Forty Hours Strike in 1919, when English tanks occupied the centre of Glasgow and which culminated at the ‘Battle of George Square’ also witnessed violent anti-black rioting. On 23 January 1919, tensions among dock workers at the Broomielaw over the ‘employment of Chinese and alien coloured seamen on British ships’ spilled over into a battle with sailors from Sierra Leone, with ‘revolvers and knifes’ used. The role of the two seamen’s unions on the Broomielaw was essentially of deep seated hostility to immigrant labour, which they saw as driving down wages and conditions. Shipping companies did exploit the differentiation in wages between white and African workers, yet it’s unclear if much attempt was made to challenge this by the organised Left or from within the labour movement. The racist riots were ignored by Forward and the Socialist Labour Party’s The Socialist.


David Kirkwood was one of the men feared by an establishment which believed him capable of igniting a Bolshevik revolution in Britain and who once famously warned that "the socialist republic would be established at the point of a bayonet'. In the “Battle of George Square” Kirkwood had a policeman crack him on the head with a baton, knocking him unconscious. As chairman of the shop stewards committee at Beardmore's Kirkwood came to be forever linked with Red Clydeside through a series of war-time strikes against the introduction (dilution) of unskilled workers to do skilled engineers jobs. Nevertheless, Kirkwood took pride in the productivity records achieved by the Beardmore's workforce. He was able to say: "What a team! There never was anything like it in Great Britain. We organised a bonus system in which everyone benefited by high production. Records were made only to be broken. In six weeks we held the record for output in Great Britain, and we never lost our premier position.''

Kirkwood was one of 29 Labour MPs elected in Scotland at the 1922 election. He remained in Parliament until 1951. He then became Baron Kirkwood of Bearsden.

Local children would sing this ditty:
“Vote, vote, vote for Davie Kirkwood,
Vote, vote, vote for all his men,
Then we'll buy a tommy gun,
And we'll make the Tories run,
And you'll never see a Tory again."

The Dignity Of Labour

National and local politicians are always coming up with schemes to run capitalism more efficiently. Here is their latest brain wave. 'Most local authorities will offer new those who qualify for emergency assistance a one-off voucher redeemable for goods such as food and nappies. Many of the 150 local authorities in England running welfare schemes will issue the vouchers in the form of payment cards, which may be blocked to prevent the holder using them for alcohol, cigarettes or gambling. ........ Councils that will start using the scheme include Hampshire, Manchester, Bristol and Darlington.' (Daily Telegraph, 27 March) By "more efficiently" of course they mean cheaper. Is there no limit to the indignities that the working class must suffer? RD

They Call It Progress

The expansion of Chinese capitalism has led its owning class to search the world for sources of raw materials and markets. 'Ecuador plans to auction off more than three million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, angering indigenous groups and underlining the global environmental toll of China's insatiable thirst for energy. ...... Critics say national debt may be a large part of the Ecuadorean government's calculations. Ecuador owed China more than £4.6bn ($7bn) as of last summer, more than a tenth of its GDP. China began loaning billions of dollars to Ecuador in 2009 in exchange for oil shipments.' (Guardian, 26 March) The fact that indigenous people have lived undisturbed for thousands of years in the area means nothing to the Ecuador and Chinese capitalist class. Displacement and the destruction of a way of life for thousands means nothing compared to profit. RD

imagine no countries, no borders

Immigration has once again resurfaced as a headline grabbing issue, with the “fear" of a “flood" of Eastern Europeans arriving in Britain.


The movement of peoples for survival has been going on since the dawn of time. Even birds migrate. Human beings have been looking for a place where their basic needs will be met since the time when there were no countries, no borders. With the formation of countries as the result of the development of private property ownership migration has become even a greater struggle to survive.

The capitalst class have always sought migrant workers to fuel expansionary periods of economic growth, while saving upon the bill for reproducing and maintaining these workers. Migrant workers are a useful as part of the reserve army of labour because they can quickly be expelled when surplus to requirements. The state uses migrant workers to fill gaps in the labour market but does not pay any of the costs of them or their families settling. In some cases bosses will try to employ migrant workers even when indigenous workers are available because they assume that migrants’ status will make them easier to control. One section of the ruling class has been keen to defend the benefits of immigration while another section does not benefit from migrant workers and therefore does not want to bear the costs. This split is often evident in reports by the UK government. Tensions between different capitalists, with different labour market needs, creates difficulties for states as they attempt to manage migration. The “liberal" capitalist poses immigration in terms of benefiting a supposed ‘British interest’ and contribute to the GDP but there is no such thing as a ‘British interest’. Society is divided into different classes whose interests are at odds to one another. Capitalism’s profits come from exploiting the labour of working-class people. Nationality, immigrant or indigenous, is unimportant to the ledger book.

Capitalist states must constantly intervene to recast the relationship between the state and labour in the interests of capital accumulation. Capitalists need the constant movement of workers but also a degree of stability and embedded skills to compete with other capitalists.

Businesses are in competition with one another for market share and profits. If a business can cut its costs by paying lower wages and giving itself a competitive edge, then it will do just that. This forces competing businesses to follow suit. The result is the driving down of wages for all workers, which is not the fault of immigrant workers but down to the imperatives of the capitalist system itself. The fact is that big business will pay as little as it can get away with in the pursuit of profit.
Similarly, the claim that immigration is the cause of the problems with the welfare state is a fallacy. Immigration is used an excuse for cuts and under-investment in public services and tries placing the blame on anyone but the system. To place the blame on ‘immigrants’ for the sorry state of welfare provision does not address the causes of these problems. The problem is the capitalist system itself.

Between them, the capitalists carve the populations of the world, each person in principle being the subject of a single state, possessing the privilege of citizenship and the right to freedom of movement within its territory, in particular in order to sell his or her labour power within the corresponding labour market. The legitimate function of citizenship, for which its possessor should feel gratitude and pride, depends in part upon the de-privileging of non-citizens.
Solidarity between workers is not automatic. The existence of separate racial and ethnic differences can lead to either unity or fragmentation such as slogans of “British Jobs For British Workers”,
We know socialism is possible. We know that only the working class, together as one, can bring socialism about. We need to build a society where we commonly own the factories, the lands, the mines—a society where we are guaranteed housing, education, health-care and jobs. A society where there will be no borders for the working class. Socialism is the only answer for the working class and we must organize as a class to achieve it.
“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...”
John Lennon

National Liberation or libation

The division of the global population into entities called “nations” is overwhelmingly taken for granted. For the vast majority of people it is taken for granted that they are members of a nation-state; they take pride in its alleged accomplishments; they suffer when their nation is embarrassed or humiliated (and for Scottish football’s Tartan Army that is indeed a common occurance!) It rarely if ever occurs to them that the nation-state system is a recent creation in human history, that most human societies have had no concept of the nation whatsoever, and that the rise of the nation-state system corresponds to the international development of capitalism, a particular political form that regulates, controls and disciplines people in a way that facilitates their exploitation by capital. capitalism has stamped our sense of belonging, our need for community with others, with national state forms. In truth, the countryside, the culture and the language with which we are brought up is part of us. Love of these things is inevitable and universal, but it is not the same thing as nationalism. Capitalism constructed nations organised around symbols like flags and anthems, built largely upon artifical myths and histories.


Nationalism in the past centuries has been responsible for unprecedented barbarity and it has been crucial in preventing the victory of socialism. Nationalism upholds loyalty to a particular nation and support for it when there is a conflict with another nation, regardless of circumstance. Nationalism opposes international working class solidarity, where loyalty to ones class above that of national origin. Nationalist movements, under the banner of national liberation have failed. Countries which overthrew their colonial overlord have new symbols and can use their own languages in schools and on TV but life for the ordinary peasant or worker is little different and often harder while the local elites enriched themselves and established strict control over the population. National liberation struggles can be seen as attempts of sections of the native ruling classes to appropriate a larger share of the value generated in 'their own' countries.

The experience of the working class throughout the world is that national liberation is no solution. In the 19th century some liberation struggles led to the creation of new nation states which played a needed role in the development of world capitalism. This is no longer true of today where new rulers may perhaps achieve a measure of political independence from the great powers but they can never free their country from the grip of the world economy. For the working class in these countries "liberation" simply means exchanging one set of bosses for another - the new ones as violently opposed to working class struggle as the old ones. The nation state is the political organisation of capitalism. Socialists oppose every attempt to rally the working class to the cause of nationalism regardless if it is in the name of "national liberation”

Amazingly, much of the Left has supported these national liberation movements, resorting to distorting the truth through so-called solidarity committees, often long after it was clear that they were liberating only their own elite class and having usually wiped out their left opposition. The Leftist groups spend much of their time defending movements which have been as exploitative and oppressive, albeit in different forms, as the regimes that they overthrew. The fact that the majority of peoples obtained little or nothing from an apparent “victory” has to be driven home. The Left cannot forget that for the many the standard of living has gone down after the removal of the colonial overlord. Indeed in many countries it is even worse in that post-colonial wars have led to mass slaughter. However in some new countries higher consumption levels and welfare programmes may temporarily be established by these regimes. Those who can see no further than economistic steps to “socialism” usually quote this. But what is ‘gained’ at home is lost abroad. Castro supported the 1968 Russian Invasion of Czechoslovakia, as Ho Chi Minh earlier endorsed the tanks rolling into Budapest in 1956. Hugo Chavez gave his approval to Mugabe, Gaddaffi, Assad and the Ayatollahs. Even today we witness members of the Left supporting various Islamists such as Hezbullah. They ought to be denouncing them as reactionaries. The fact that they are opposing the foreign policy of the USA is neither here nor there.

 The Leftist myth that a successful national liberation will later unleash 'the real class struggle' is false. It is a rationalisation for the defence of new ruling classes in the process of formation. As historical evidence shows, those new elites usually become appendages of another existing capitalist/imperialist bloc. Class interests of the new emerging capitalist class never bring a break with the capitalist system. They simply seek for their rights of sovereignty to be recognized by the powerful ones. So, it is downright class collaboration to reduce opposition of the working class to imperialism to opposition to policies of this or that imperialist state or to the level of supporting the rights of sovereignty of “its own” bourgeoisie. Dominant capitalist countries (or if you prefer imperialist nations) dictate the economic terms on weaker capitalist countries. This situation is a general law of capitalist order. Under capitalism, he who pays the piper calls the tune! No matter how much the bourgeoisie of various capitalist states complain about unequal relations or interference with their “internal affairs,” this is their capitalist system as a whole. Why should the working class be concerned with their complaints? Sharing the grievance of the weaker bourgeoisie or preaching a fully independent and national order within capitalism to the working class suits only the national ruling class. In fact, the burning problem of the proletariat in all capitalist countries, no matter big or small, is not economic independence(!) of its “own” bourgeoisie, but emancipation from the capitalist order of exploitation. In short, the goal of the working class struggle against imperialism is to put an end to the bourgeois order, to seize political power, i.e. the proletarian revolution.

“The workers have no country,” declared Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. In this spirit, the International Workingmen’s Association ( the First International) was later launched to reflect the form of organization that fit this outlook: an international political movement of the working class. Yet almost 150 years later labour movements are still almost entirely national in organisation, with little thought for their fellow workers elsewhere. They are dominated by nationalist ideology and tend to support import controls (or other forms of protectionism) to protect “our jobs” and “our” way of life. Rosa Luxemburg claimed with the full internationalising of capitalism and so powerful had the world economy become national struggles were out-moded and that the idea of an economically independent nation-state had become ridiculous. She declared national struggles can serve only as a means of deception, of duping the masses and it was reactionary to support the creation of new nation-states. The task was to mobilise the international working class against world capitalism.

It is this desire to belong to a community and identify with others with some sense of common purpose that a world-wide socialist movement of the future will have to help develop. A truly internationalist feeling of community that connect with both local and global experiences, solidarity that go beyond the nation-state. A potent, united global workers’ movement makes nationalism and separatism unnecessary. We must never lose sight of one of the vital features of socialism: its commitment to a world community without nations and without capitalism. The international working class is one class.

Lots Of Potential

Another politician we are expected to revere, as he is a potential Prime Minister after all, is colourful Mayor of London Boris Johnson. He was exposed recently on TV by the interviewer Eddie Mair. '"You're a nasty piece of work, aren't you?" asked Mr Mair. Mr Johnson looked surprised and distinctly uncomfortable as the presenter asked him about his being fired by The Times newspaper for making up a quotation; being sacked from the Tory frontbench for telling "a bare-faced lie" to the party leader Michael Howard about his affair with the journalist Petronella Wyatt and the claim that he agreed to provide a reporter's address to his friend Darius Guppy, a convicted fraudster, so the journalist could be beaten up.' (Independent, 25 March) None of this was directly denied by Johnson. Lying, making up quotes and assisting in an assault threat? Sounds like good Prime Minister material to us. RD

His Lordship's Expertise

The media love to stress how complicated modern society is and how we need the expertise of the statesmen and politicians to guide us through its complexities. Lord Heseltine is a case in point, one of the Government's senior advisers, has been consulting with George Osborne on regenerating British cities. The majority of Lord Heseltine's recommendations in his regional growth report were accepted by the Chancellor in last week's budget. Listen to this "expert". 'Complacent British may not have 'national will' to secure economic recovery, Lord Heseltine suggests. British people may be so rich that they do not have the "national will" needed to lift the country out of the economic downturn, Lord Heseltine has suggested.' (Daily Telegraph, 25 March) All of you "rich" British surviving on dole money, pensions and minimum wages are considered by the wealthy peer too rich to care. Some expert! RD

Facts are chiels that winna ding

Poverty


630,000 individuals are in households experiencing absolute poverty
970,000 are living in households that are in “relative poverty”
160,000 children live in absolute poverty
260,000 children live in relative poverty
658,000 households livie in fuel poverty (defined as people using more than 10% of the family income to pay their energy bills)
2,000 more deaths of people aged 65 in Winter 2008/09 compared to the summer months (The Poverty Site)
143,000 Scottish people are claiming Job Seekers Allowance, 215,000 are officially unemployed; while 1.573m Scots are classified as ‘economically inactive’ (ONS, June 2012).

Results

 Poor health, poor education, bad housing, reduced social opportunities, higher rate of alcoholism, addiction and mental illness. Men living in the most deprived areas have 18.8 years lower life expectancy and women 17.1 years than for those in the least deprived areas. In Tayside 2011 saw a significant increase in malnutrition, with 182 reported cases.

'But facts are fellows that will not be overturned, And cannot be disputed.'

- Robert Burns, A Dream

the Independence Referendum

Nationalism and the referendum increasingly dominates Scottish politics and its newspapers. We now have the date of the referendum which will be the 18th September 2014when Scot voters will be asked the Yes/No question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"


By re-drawing the map the nationalists promise economic prosperity. The unionists prophesise economic catastrophe. Socialists say experience shows that either way, the working class will lose out.

Independence is nothing but a dead-end. It doesn’t bring us closer to socialism, only farther away from it. Separation is no stepping stone to socialism, despite what phony “Marxist” theoreticians may say. It maintains and reinforces the divisions within the working class – a real boon for the capitalist class which do their best to keep us divided. The people on the Left who are pushing this option fall right into class collaboration. Under capitalism there is necessarily a division between rich and poor, a ruling class and the ruled, the class of capital and the class of wage-workers, and any attempt at uniting them must involve the acceptance of exploitation and oppression. It is glossed over with much talk of the shared culture. The experience of the poor living in a slum council estate is very different from that of the rich living in their country estates. Anyone on the Scottish Left who, therefore, combines the working class with the ruling class, calling on capitalist and worker to unite and fight for independence is not a Marxist or a socialist. Nationalism places the working class under the control of its ruling class and this means that socialism is abandoned. This process has been observed many times resulting in the the conclusion that national feeling is somehow stronger than socialism. The repeated triumph of national consciousness does not however prove that class consciousness is incapable of transcending national consciousness.

Some Scots claim that the Scottish nation has been a victim of English rule but the working class throughout Britain has been the subject of capitalist oppression. Nationalism divides our forces before our common enemy. The fight against the bosses has been a united struggle with workers joining together across all the regions of the UK. Nationalism is about organising and mobilising people on the basis of their national identity. Socialism is about organising and mobilising people on the basis of their class identity. It is class war between employers and employees not Scottish versus English.

Those who say that the main enemy is the English ruling class mislead workers in Scotland into thinking we have less to fear from the Scottish capitalist class. But the truth of the matter is that Scotland’s capitalists have been an integral part of the British bourgeoisie ever since the Union, a union to advance the interests of the aristocratic land-owners and the developing merchant and capitalist class. The Scottish ruling class sold out the rights of the people in Scotland for a hare in the spoils of the Empire. Scottish capitalists, be they big or small, are not any less a part of the British bourgeoisie than English capitalists. Now they simply want a re-division of the pie by re-writing the constitution. Those who would subordinate the class struggle to the struggle for independence, those who counter-pose national unity to class unity, help keep capitalism alive. Independence divides the working class against the international bourgeoisie and it chains workers to the interests of “their” bourgeoisie. No-one seriously considers that the SSP or Sheridan’s Solidarity constitute in any sense an independent political force. They are, in effect, merely propagandists for the Scottish bourgeoisie and its chosen party, the SNP.

An independent parliament has no answers for the working class and would continue to be used by the millionaires and multi-nationals to control and rule.There are no common interests between workers and their exploiters, whatever flag is waved. Nationalism and class struggle are irreconcilably opposed. A nation is simply capitalism with all its exploitation and alienation, parcelled out in a single geographical unit. It doesn't matter whether the nation is 'small, 'colonial', 'semi-colonial' or 'non-imperialist'. In Scotland some businesses has found new roots, hoping to be effective in getting workers to sacrifice themselves for the false goal of “building the national economy” through independence from Whitehall. Multinational interests can just as much thrive on smaller centralised interdependent states, rather than through the old concept of the powerful nation. Separatism only reproduce the same problems on a smaller but no less savage scale.

All nationalisms are reactionary because they inevitably clash with class consciousness and poison it with chauvinism. Working class co-operation, especially in this global age of capital movement across all borders, is necessary for a real defence of our co-workers, neighbours and communities. Socialists have long maintained that people have the right to live, work and travel wherever they choose. As internationalists, socialists oppose national borders, which serve to divide and segregate people. It is important to remember that this view has always been central to the international labour movement from its very beginnings long ago. It is time for labour to remember this vital part of its history.

In the Scottish independence referendum there will be two different forms of nationalism on offer. The British nationalism of a “No” vote. The Scottish nationalism of a “Yes” vote. We will be advocating a third choice - a spoiled ballot with the words “world socialism” written on it. The Socialist Party is committed to destroying the capitalist system, the root cause of all oppression. It aims to unmask the irrationality of nationalism and work to show up the void that is national self-determination. Only by ending capitalism and building a democratic socialist future can we end the nightmare of war, environmental chaos, national and ethnic division, poverty and inequality that capitalism thrives on. The Socialist Party aspires to liberate all humanity, across the boundaries of national identity.

A CRUEL REALITY

Television advertisements delight in showing us the latest domestic electric and gas heaters with all the hi-tech gadgets. Behind this modern and comforting image there lurks a cruel reality however. 'Millions of Britons are facing fuel poverty due to soaring energy bills, experts warned today. More than nine million people will spend more than 10 per cent of their household income on fuel in three years, they said. ........... Annmarie Blomfield, of energy assessment company One Green Place, said fuel poverty kills thousands of people every year.She said almost 8,000 people die from living in cold homes with more than 1.6 million children in households which struggle to keep warm.' (Daily Express, 19 March) Dying in a cold home never features in those slick adverts. RD

Who's scoring?

Money counts as the Championship League last eight shows. It is a reflection of the Deloitte's Football Money League. Real Madrid (1st), Barcelona (2nd) and Bayern (4th). There's Juventus, 10th on the money list and Italy's biggest spenders, Galatasaray enough financial clout to "rent" Wesley Sneijder and Didier Drogba as short-term "ringers" – and Paris Saint-Germain, have spent more than anyone in football over the past 18 months. The exceptions are Borussia Dortmund founded on low ticket prices and a working man's club ethos and, especially, the fact that, apart from Marco Reus, nobody in the starting eleven cost more than £5 million. This status was somewhat forced upon them by the wild overspending that sent the club into administration a decade ago. Malaga also previously faced unpaid wages and lawsuits.
Football has reached the point where it must choose between becoming an elitist sport, dominated by a handful of rich clubs and leagues, or a universal one, according to former FIFA presidential advisor Jerome Champagne. Champagne said the concentration of wealth meant that competitions such as the Champions League had become predictable. "I remember when I was a teenager and we had the draw for European competition. When we drew a Polish club, when we drew Dundee United or Glasgow Rangers, or CSKA Sofia, we were scared. Now, you have a small group of clubs more or less guaranteed to reach the final stages."
"We tend to misrepresent the game by thinking the game is about the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo," Champagne told Reuters. "In reality, it is about players whose salaries are not paid and clubs who are on the verge of bankruptcy.The majority of football is today facing this crisis while the wealthy are becoming wealthier," added Champagne
Once managed by the Celtic legend Jock Stein, once boasting having had Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson as a player, twice winners of the Scottish Cup, semi-finalists in the European Cup Winners Cup, Dunfermline have just six days to come up with £134,000 or face being wound up after Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs took the 128-year-old club to court over an unpaid tax bill. Dunfermline are also understood to owe around £8 million to directors past and present and have repeatedly failed to pay their players on time this season. It was confirmed earlier this month that Jefferies' squad and other staff received just 20 per cent of their wages.

Food for thought

A report by McMaster University (Hamilton) and the United Way tells us that barely half the adults in the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton have full time jobs with benefits and expect to be working for the same employer in one year's time. The rest work either full or part-time with no benefits or job security or in temporary, casual or contract positions. Insecure or precarious' work has increased fifty per cent in the last twenty years. There has been a forty per cent increase in temporary work since 1997 and a forty-five per cent increase in self- employment. This is causing major life decisions like moving in with a partner, having children etc. increasingly difficult. This, of course, is due to the squeeze on workers to make the workforce more 'flexible' to suit the profit makers that is the neo-liberal agenda. We need to educate these people that they do not have to drop living standards to the lowest common denominator and make them class conscious socialists. John Ayers

No Forgiveness for Blair’s Useful Idiots

Making up a reason to invade a country was the easy part for Tony Blair. Sticking to a pretend story for ten years — that is truly the sign of a sociopathic statesman.


Ten years ago, between January and April 2003, it is estimated that an unprecedented 36 million people around the world took to the streets in protest against the Iraq War. 50, 000 of them marched in Glasgow. Scottish Labour Party leader Johann Lamont was not one of them. Instead she was part of those political cheer-leaders who supported Tony Blair and voted for the invasion of Iraq. In her own words she “voted on the grounds of listening to the evidence in front of me and on my conscience.”


She was one of many “useful idiots,” who willfully played along with preposterous WMD claims and allowed themselves to get carried away with the imperialistic fervor surrounding a new call to war, abdicating their responsibilities to humanity. How can we believe her pleas of ignorance when millions of us screamed the facts until our voices were hoarse? Why should we place our trust in someone who failed to accurately analyse “the evidence” placed before her? She abdicated her responsibility to ask basic questions to verify the truth of WMD claims. Those politicians who voted for the Iraq War should be held accountable for their decision. In our own day-to-day lives, if we were a party to such horrifically wrong and deliberately destructive decisions, we would face punishing consequences, especially if we still tried to justify ourselves. We would face public scorn and humiliation. We would probably get demoted or fired. We might even face criminal prosecution. Why is the same standard not applied to Johann Lamont?

Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement (MoMD), say there is 1.1 million other Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Iraq today. UNHCR estimates show that the greatest number of IDP’s to be in the Baghdad governorate, and puts the number at 200,000 Iraqis.

Nevertheless some stil argue it was a price worth paying to remove a dictator.
An Amnesty International report refers to as "a grim cycle of human rights abuses" in Iraq today. The report exposes a long chronology of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees committed by Iraqi security forces, as well as by foreign troops, in the wake of the US-led 2003 invasion. "Death sentences and executions are being used on a horrendous scale," Amnesty International's Hadj Sahraoui said in the groups recent report. "It is particularly abhorrent that many prisoners have been sentenced to death after unfair trials and on the basis of confessions they say they were forced to make under torture."

“We have no future, and neither does Iraq have a future. My children have no future. We are only living day by day.” said Marwa Ali,  mother of two.


 Johann Lamont could have joined the millions of people in the UK and across the world denouncing Blair for waging a needless, illegal and immoral war of aggression without even the fig leaf of United Nations support. Lamont instead voted with her conscience - the blood of innocent millions are on Lamont’s conscience. Shame on her.

One or None

It is 200 years since the birth of David Livingstone, perhaps the most famous of missionaries. One biography describes David Livingstone as "Africa's Greatest Missionary".

An interesting claim considering that estimates of the number of people he converted in the course of his 30-year career vary between one and none. Livingstone himself later wrote off his sole convert as a backslider within months of his baptism.

Preaching revolution

The only reasonable position to adopt towards any religion is one of unbelief. For secular humanists, criticism of religion is a process towards the eventual "triumph of reason". But they ignore the material circumstances which give rise to superstition. The socialist analysis of religion derives from our basic materialism that traces how religions have evolved, from their possible beginnings in ancestor worship in primitive societies to established social institutions. Under capitalism people feel, rightly, that they are governed by forces they can't control but attribute this, wrongly, to forces operating from outside the world of experience. Churches of all types are then at hand for the sustaining of fear and superstition. For the socialist alternative to our lives being controlled by impersonal forces we must bring about a society in which humans consciously control the forces of production.
Humans made God in their image and attributed to him the powers which they collectively possessed, and then bowed down and worshiped this figment of their imagination. The first premise of historical materialism is that all man's thinking is social thinking; that there is no idea that man discusses, no interest that he fights for, and no ideal that he aspires to, that is not derived from social origins. If humans were to realise this and take their own destiny in hand there would be no need for God or religion. Where the working class accepts allegiance to religion, to royalty or the nation-state, or accepts a false ideology or economic subservience to the capitalist class, it denies itself the realisation of its own interests. The poverty of the modern proletariat still results from the fact that its labour operates in commodity form, is bought for wages and exploited by capitalists with a view to profit. To buy a man's labour power and set him to work is to reduce his existence to a commercial transaction and alienate his individuality.
Despite the attempts by churchmen to modify the image of the Church and alter its social role, it will retain one enduring characteristic, that of an anti-working class institution. The Church supports the present method of producing and distributing wealth--capitalism. The ideas that it disseminates, its concepts about society, and the universe it trades in, are either irrelevant or hostile to the ideas that the working class requires to achieve its economic emancipation. Socialists seek the universal brotherhood of men, but for the Church to sloganise ideals and in practice support a system that precludes their realisation, is worse than hollow gesture, it erects a barrier to their practical achievement. Churches arrogated to themselves the role of arbiter in things appertaining not only to matters of what it called ‘morality’ but to all forms of human behaviour and even juridical practice. If the Church genuinely aspires to social harmony on a world scale what it should do is relate to specific social situations within actual experience and explain the reasons why men now behave in a manner contrary to their mutual interests. It should argue a valid social theory and advocate a practical course for political action that offer the sure prospect of the unity of all men based on relations of genuine social equality. Only Socialists do this.
Many anti-religious writers see themselves as defenders of the Enlightenment tradition of reason against its traditional foe, religion. But they see nothing wrong in capitalism. Socialists recognise that the main source of irrationality in the modern world is to be found in the capitalist system of society. For socialists, therefore, the struggle against religion cannot be separated from the struggle for socialism. We fight religious superstition whenever it is an obstacle to socialism that keeps the gaze of the masses fixed upon the sky where they cannot investigate the real material world and see how they are robbed and oppressed.

The Preacher and the Slave
Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
CHORUS:

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

The starvation army they play,
They sing and they clap and they pray
Till they get all your coin on the drum
Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum:
Holy Rollers and jumpers come out,
They holler, they jump and they shout.
Give your money to Jesus they say,
He will cure all diseases today.
If you fight hard for children and wife -
Try to get something good in this life -
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:

FINAL CHORUS:

You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good,
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye

Joe Hill

Food for thought

According to Canada's finance minister, Jim Flaherty, leaders from the G20 nations have made progress in balancing fiscal discipline and economic growth in their Moscow meeting. He said, "Refrain from competitive devaluation and resist all forms of protectionism and keep our markets open." That should make capitalism work. However, some fear that some are deliberately trying to weaken their currencies to appear more competitive starting a currency war that could derail the global recovery. Japan, the world's third largest economy, has been accused of trying to lower the yen to stimulate its economy. Doesn't it make more sense to abolish the system that requires currencies at all? John Ayers

MODERNITY AND OLD PROBLEMS

 

If any area in the world seemed to sum up modernity and progress it would probably be Silicon Valley in California with its high technology industries, but behind that modernity lurks an old problem - poverty and homelessness. 'A shanty town of tents and shacks stretches over 28 acres near the airport at San Jose, the area's second city, and one Silicone Valley chief executive said he had seen advertisements in San Francisco for people to rent floor space on the condition that they brought their own sleeping bags.' (Times, 16 March) RD

Nationalism - where does it end?

Socialist Courier has already drawn attention to the unintended consequences for the nationalists in that where does separation stop in this post and here too.

The Guardian now reports, that politicians in Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles have begun talks among themselves about their own "home rule". The councils are investigating plans to model themselves on the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands or the Falklands, which are crown dependencies and largely independent from the UK government, or to mimic the self-rule deal struck by the Faroe Islands with Denmark in 1948. Other less radical options include pressing for control over all their local fisheries, merging local health and social services, and taking control of the sea bed from the Crown Estates in London to help the islands profit from the boom in windfarms, on land and offshore, and marine energy projects about to start off northern and western Scotland. The three island groups are poised for a huge growth in investment by global energy companies: major tidal and wave energy parks are planned around their shorelines, while Shetland and Orkney are already seeing hundreds of millions of pounds spent on extra oil and gas terminals to service new fields being opened up in the Atlantic and North Sea.

Shetland council officials have drafted a detailed strategy on how to investigate Shetland's constitutional options. Shetland Council recently held a seminar to discuss the continuing loss of powers to Holyrood, the council tax freeze and various remedies including a bid for self-governing crown dependency status as currently enjoyed by the Isle of Man.Orkney council officials have compiled a 300-page briefing paper on the constitutional and political options which is being discussed by councillors.

Their alliance conjures up parallels with a campaign by rebellious Shetland islanders in the 1970s, when the Shetland Movement was formed to demand much greater autonomy for the islands as oil companies set up bases for the first wave of North Sea oil rigs.

Malcolm Bell, the convenor of Shetland Islands council, said the independence referendum offered an opportunity for the islands to carve out a new political settlement. "There's no point in Westminster devolving powers to Edinburgh if they are going to stop in Edinburgh. When you're 300 miles from Edinburgh, or 700 from London, at those kind of distances, Edinburgh feels as remote as London."

Central-belt Scots have relatively little contact with Orcadians and Shetlanders

Steven Heddle, Orkney's council leader, said: "We need to do this on a proactive basis because, if we don't do something ourselves, we're going to find the nationalists and the unionists pursue their aspirations, which don't necessarily tally with what we want."

The SNP’s Angus Brendan MacNeil, the MP for the Hebrides, said last year the islands might remain part of the UK “if there was a big enough drive for self-determination among their residents”,

Tavish Scott, the MSP for Shetland and former Scottish Liberal Democrat leader said there had been a "remorseless pattern of centralisation" under Salmond's Scottish National party government. "For me, this is about home rule; our islands being able to assert their natural and local identity, their distinctiveness, and get the powers and responsibilities they need to make the best of the modern world. If we don't set out our position, we will be subsumed into Greater Grampian or Greater Highlands. As night follows day, both Labour and the Scottish National party are centralising parties. They won't talk about public sector reform, but we know discussions are going on behind the scenes that Scotland is too big infrastructurally."

If more autonomy for Orkney and Shetland is a good thing, isn’t it a good thing for every community?

CITY OF LUXURY AND SLUMS

 

Capitalism is a social system that cruelly contrasts wealth and poverty but probably no city in the world illustrates that conflict more than Mumbai in India. The world's tallest block of flats entitled World One, a 117-storey complex offering flats at £10 million has recently been completed there. 'On the streets below, about 4 million of Bombay's inhabitants defecate in the open because they have no lavatory. ....... Mumbai has the seventh largest number of billionaires of any city but by 2025 the World Bank predicts they will share it with 22.5 million slum-dwellers.' (Times, 16 March) RD

DEATH AND THE NHS

Many supporters of the National Health Service in the UK argue that the NHS is envied throughout the world. If so it doesn't say much for how those countries treat their workers when they are sick.'More than 20,000 hospital deaths could have been prevented if warnings about high mortality rates had been acted on quickly, a government adviser has said. Professor Sir Brian Jarman has accused ministers and officials of ignoring data on high death rates for a decade. Sir Brian is working on the government review of 14 hospital trusts with higher-than-average death rates in the wake of the Stafford Hospital inquiry.' (BBC News, 16 March) RD

Food for thought

In Guatemala City, cemetery space is so scarce that mummified bodies are exhumed over unpaid cemetery rents. Should a relative come to claim them, they are placed in a mass grave. Even dead, you can be evicted! What a system!
Recent flooding in Bangladesh and the eastern coast of the US has hammered home to many what we face in the years to come, unless we act on climate change now (don't hold your breath). Experts expect about 250 million people will be forced to move by 2015. Think of the problems that will cause. Why not prevent it now?
Ontario's new premier, Kathleen Wynne (Liberal) said she hopes for cooperation from her rivals Tim Hudak (Conservative) and Andrea Horvath (NDP) in her attempts to solve problems in running the province. She said, "I believe that there is a lot of common ground with the Tories and the NDP..." Sure, the common ground they are all committed to is running the day to day affairs of the capitalist system in the interests of the owning class so no matter who is elected it still spells disaster for the working class, unless it's the Socialist Party. John Ayers

The Blair Legacy

As the 10th anniversary of the Iraq Invasion approaches what was the cost?
In dollars and cents it is estimated that the war cost the United States $1.7 trillion (£1.1tn). Its involvement in Iraq according to other sources has so far cost the US $810 billion (625 billion euros) and could eventually reach $3 trillion.
But in the cost of lives the war killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have led to the deaths of four times that number, said the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Another estimate quoted is at least 116,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,800 coalition troops died in Iraq between the outbreak of war in 2003 and the US withdrawal in 2011 (31,000 US military personnel were injured).

About five million Iraqis were displaced.
In 2006, estimates by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, published in The Lancet, said 655,000 people had died in the first 40 months of the war.
In 2008, a study by the Iraqi government and World Health Organisation (WHO), published in The New England Journal of Medicine, said between 104,000 and 223,000 Iraqis had died violent deaths between March 2003 and June 2006.

The Walking Dead

The Orange Order endeavours to dismiss any suggestion of class struggle as the following ditty demonstrates:


"Let not the poor man hate the rich
Nor rich on poor look down
But each join each true Orange Order
For God and the Crown."

Food for thought After thought

Speaking of television, another SPCer read Sid Caesar's autobiography. Originally, Admiral Television sponsored his, "Your Show of Shows" and, because it was a smash, the demand for Admiral TV sets skyrocketed. So Admiral dropped its sponsorship as they needed the money to pay for the production of more TV sets. That's what I like about capitalism; it's so sane! John Ayers

Food for thought

Defenders of capitalism argue that competition results in improvements in products and certainly one can point to many examples. However there is another side to capitalism's tarnished medal. An SPCer recently found his television set had broken down and it was cheaper to buy a new one than get it fixed. Here again, it can be said that improvements have been made. Today, for a price, one can buy TV sets that do just about anything except cook meals. The problem is that the TV had only lasted ten years, which is average these days. TV, like cars and many other products, are not made to last, so one will be compelled to buy a new one; in other words, planned obsolescence. In fact, competition drives the manufacturers to cheapen any product as far as possible in order to compete and we wind up with advanced technology made out of garbage. If you want quality, go for socialism! John Ayers

Nationalism? No change

One of our companion blogs, Patience and Perseverance, writes:


“ It seems as if Salmond & Co are losing their enthusiasm for Independence? They intend to continue to use the £ sterling, hang on to the coat tails of the Windsors as head of state, and now: dual citizenship, what next? Given the foregoing, it would seem that the pursuit of Scottish Independence is going to be a pointless exercise” [we can add also the continued membership of the EU and Nato]

Indeed, the blog highlights how its alleged radicalism has become more and more watered down by the day as the SNP become more and more desperate for a “yes” vote.
The nationalisms that divide the world at present are the byproducts of fairly recent historical developments. Usually, they grew up as a particular section of the capitalist class sought to establish its dominance over the economic activities of the territory it inhabited. To do so successfully, it had to subordinate the state power to its own ‘national’ interests. The Scottish wealthy swung behind support for the 1707 union after a colonial adventure of their own failed and they prospered during the hey-days of the Empire. Today, many sectors of industry have experienced a decline so the notion of an independent Scottish parliament has arisen among sections of the Scottish bourgeoisie. North Sea oil has given this some credibility and is offered up as the panacea to the problems of the people of Scotland without any need for class war against capitalist interests. Scottish workers are led to identify with Scottish landowners and capitalists on the basis of a ‘shared nationality’ and through them with Scottish capitalism.

Some on the Left argue that the Scottish people are more advanced in political consciousness than their English equivalents, therefore there would be a ‘leftist’ majority in a Scottish parliament and moves towards socialism would be easier. Even accepting such a questionable premise, it is simply delusional and ignores the realities of power under modern capitalism. The ruling class has at its disposal massive economic wealth, which is concentrated on an all-Britain and on an international, scale. A Scottish parliament as envisaged by its ‘left-wing’ proponents would have no means of breaking either sort of power.  ‘Socialism in one country’ was impossible in Russia; it will not be any more possible in Scotland.  A Scottish parliament would represent no more than a bit of tartan frill to one part of the state machine of British and world capitalism. Certainly it would not be able to impede the real workings of the major capitalist institutions.The struggle to wrest the means of production from the ruling class is of necessity a global struggle.

Nationalism does not strengthen the real force for socialism, a united, class-conscious working class, but fragments and weakens it. The social revolution is a global event. Glasgow and Edinburgh branches of the Socialist Party give no support to encouraging separatist trends in Scotland. There is only one real alternative to the present capitalist state – a united and determined revolutionary workers’ movement organising for socialism.

HARSH REALITY

Politicians love to paint a picture of a Britain of steadily improving standards of living and a gradually more equitable society, but recent statistics show that this is a complete fraud. 'Millions of families will be no better off in 2015 than they were in 2000 due to a devastating attack on household finances, according to Britain's leading think tank. The average worker will have suffered the worst squeeze on incomes in memory by the time of the next General Election, warns the Institute for Fiscal Studies.' (Daily Mail, 14 March) RD

A new Pope

Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping was named president Thursday after a vote at its parliamentary meeting in Beijing.

Food for thought

Last year the government announced that those Canadians born after March, 1958, will have a longer wait for Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS). Instead of collecting at 65, it will be at 67 years of age (even guaranteed pensions are not guaranteed in capitalism!) The government said the changes are necessary because the number of seniors will almost double by 2030 to 9.4 million. So, if you are in a low-income bracket and coming up
for retirement in ten years, you may have to work a little longer. Another example of a reform disappearing. John Ayers