Bankrupt Scots

The recent downward trend in the number of individuals and companies going bankrupt in Scotland has reversed dramatically in recent months, official figures show.

In the first quarter of 2013-14 (April to June) personal insolvencies were up 14.7 per cent and corporate insolvencies were up 28.7 per cent.

Bryan Jackson, business restructuring partner with BDO LLP, said the rise in payday and short-term lenders points to "serious financial problems among thousands of Scots".

Mr Jackson said: "Following recent falls, the increase in the number of personal insolvencies in the second quarter suggests that the pent-up indebtedness of many individuals has burst through.There is little doubt that many individuals have been living from month to month, or week to week, simply feeding the interest on their debts rather than reducing the debt itself. Until now, this has delayed some from falling into insolvency, but this quarter's figures suggest that their financial situation has deteriorated beyond the point where they could cope and this has resulted in their bankruptcy. Unfortunately, I would not be surprised to see continued increases in personal insolvencies in the months to come. The increase in the number of payday and short-term lenders is indicative of serious financial problems among thousands of Scots whose circumstances will only be exacerbated by such loans."

Facts of the Day

A global poll on religion and atheism has found that 59 percent of the people in the world think of themselves as religious and 13 percent see themselves as convinced atheists. The study found that worldwide the number of atheistsincreased by 3 percent in the same time period that the number who said they were religious dropped off by 9 percent.

Poor People More Religious

The bottom income groups are 17 percent more religious than those in the top income groups. Ghana leads the way among religious people with 96 percent of its respondents saying they think of themselves as religious. Nigeria was second at 93 percent, followed by Armenia and Fiji, which both came in at 92 percent. Macedonia rounded out the top five at 90 percent. 60 percent of the United States population considers itself to be religious, while 5 percent think of themselves as atheists.

China leads the way among atheist countries by far as 47 percent of the nation’s respondents think of themselves as convinced atheists. Japan was second at 31 percent followed by the Czech Republic at 30 percent. France came in fourth at 29 percent before another significant dropoff found South Korea and Germany tied at 15 percent.

Who Are the Rich?

The rich don’t really think they’re rich. In a new survey, the vast majority of investors in America with $1 million in assets don’t consider themselves wealthy.

A new report from UBS surveyed 4,450 participants, half had $1 million or more in investable assets, and  had at least $250,000 in investments. Compared with the huge portion of the population that barely has any savings. But do these people think they’re rich? For the most part, the answer is no. Of those with investable assets worth $1 million to $5 million, only 28% answered yes to the question “Do you consider yourself wealthy?”

 Just 60% answered yes to the question.of investors surveyed with $5 million or more in investable assets consider themselves wealthy. In other words, 4 in 10 Americans with assets of $5 million or more think they’re not truly rich.

The UBS asked what would have to happen for these individuals to consider themselves rich?  The most popular answer, selected by half of those surveyed, was “no financial constraints on activities.”

However the above pales into insignificance when Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire private equity tycoon and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, with only just 181 people richer than him (of which 56 are Americans) was deluded enough to say “I don’t feel like a wealthy person. Other people think of me as a wealthy person, but I don’t.”

About half of Americans don’t have an emergency fund that’d cover three months of expenses

Going Dutch

Netherlands based international humanitarian aid foundation Cordaid which is active in places such as Africa and Afghanistan, stated  they have now started to support the projects to fight against poverty in Netherlands. In last 20 years, the poverty rate in the country increased to 10% from 4%.

Another institution, which fights the poverty in the country are 'food allowance banks'. Throughout the country 140 'food allowance banks' are active,  which serves more than 70 thousand families

Food for thought

On June 10^th it was announced that the executive hired to fix health Ontario, after a spending scandal, is leaving with a golden handshake of over $400,000. Another reason why patients can't get beds, why hospitals are struggling for cash, why nurses are being let go. Somehow, money must be found to pay the thousands of chiefs in the system.
A June 1st article in The Toronto Star bemoaned the fact that, with the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, many locals are being left jobless. The military occupation has been 'good' for the Afghan workforce, providing thousands of jobs for interpreters, mechanics etc. Now they face an uncertain future that offers unemployment, under-employment or work for considerable less money. If war is the only measure to provide a reasonable measure of prosperity, then those looking around for another job should be looking for another economic system! For socialism, John Ayers

The Socialist Scientist

An extract from Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?”

“The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists’ requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”
1949

Einstein was not clear in his mind about the exact form a new society would take, but his essay suggests his reservations about the "actually existing socialism" of the USSR.

The Socialist Labor Party responded with an open letter to Einstein. The following is an extract

"WHAT KIND OF "PLANNED ECONOMY"?
Now where lies the critical distinction between the type of "planned economy" which totally enslaves a nation and a Socialist economy that will Insure freedom and well-being to everyone? Above all, It lies in the realm of government!
To seek to realize Socialism through the instrumentality of the existing machinery of government, to seek to adapt the present political mechanism to the requirements of Socialist society by even the most radical reforms conceivable -- must fatedly result in a totalitarian "planned economy." Events in Stalin's Russia (as well as elsewhere) speak volumes on this head.
WHAT IS THE "STATE"?
Why is this so? Why cannot the State be bent to Socialist purposes? For the fundamental reason that the political form of government was not designed to serve as the instrument of the popular will. On the contrary, the origin of the political State traces to the desire and the need of a ruling oligarchy to destroy the ancient influence of the people in communal affairs. And down through the centuries of what you aptly term "the predatory phase of human development" -- meaning the period since the advent of so-called civilization, private property and class rule -- the political State has, by a process of adaptation, continued unfailingly to perform its essential function, that of being the organized power through which the majority has been oppressed and a minority's self-interest imposed as the social law. Such has been its role, such will be its role as long as it survives, for such is its central principle.
So much for the State. Socialist society can make no more use of it than of the slavemaster's whip.”

Who owns the North Pole - Part 60

US  Congressman Don Young testified in front of Armed Services Committee in support of Alaska national defense priorities.“We must be able to project power into the Arctic environment and extensive Arctic training is needed to do that.”

Canada recently took over the leadership of the Arctic Council and will be succeeded by the U.S. in 2015. There are fears that the Arctic could become an arena for political and military competition. With potential new shipping routes and countries further staking their claims to the vast untapped natural resources, defending strategic and economic interests may lead to rivalries in the region. There is also the possibility that conflicts which originate in other parts of the world could spillover and affect the stability of the Arctic.

 “One issue that has not received much attention is the need to discuss the growing militarization of the Arctic. While the Arctic Council is formally forbidden from discussing military security in the Arctic, the time has arrived to rethink this policy.” Rob Huebert of the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute explained  , “The militaries of most Arctic states are taking on new and expanded roles in the region that go beyond their traditional responsibilities, which may create friction in the region.”

 In June, the Northern Chiefs of Defence Meeting was held in Greenland. It brought together representatives from the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Gen. Charles Jacoby, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) also attended the event. The second annual gathering was used as an, “opportunity for direct multilateral and bilateral discussions focused on Northern issues. Topics discussed included the sharing of knowledge and expertise about regional operational challenges; responsible stewardship of the North; and the role Northern militaries can play in support of their respective civil authorities.” The Northern Chiefs of Defence meeting has become an essential forum to address common Arctic safety and security concerns.

Ahead of Secretary of State John Kerry's trip to attend the Arctic Council Ministerial Session in May, the White House unveiled a National Strategy for the Arctic Region. It outlined strategic priorities including advancing U.S. security interests, pursuing responsible stewardship and strengthening international cooperation. The document acknowledged competing environmental and economic goals, but in the end sets an aggressive agenda for the exploitation of Arctic oil, gas and mineral reserves. In addition, the strategy recommended enhancing national defense, law enforcement, navigation systems, environmental response, as well as search-and-rescue capabilities in the Arctic. It also builds off of National Security Presidential Directive-66 issued by the Bush administration in 2009. In coordination with the new plan, the U.S. Coast Guard has released their Vision for Operating in the Arctic Region which will work towards improving awareness, modernizing governance and broadening partnerships. According to James Holmes, professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, the Coast Guard and Air Force could become the military's odd couple in defending America's Arctic front.

SEE MORE HERE

Food for thought

The shenanigans of Toronto mayor -- Another Day, Another Scandal --Ford are, for the most part, unworthy of comment by socialists and are best left for the tabloid press to deal with. An exception, though, is his dismissal from the Executive Committee of councillors who challenged him to be honest about his alleged substance abuse. Ford fired one councillor and demoted another, clearly indicating that democracy within capitalism is a sham and the only real
democracy is an administration of things by the peoples' representatives who are recallable, Socialism. John Ayers

In Memoriam Trayvon Martin

Trayvon was just the latest victim. 

Quote of the Day

The journalist Edward R Murrow shocked Americans with Harvest Of Shame, a television documentary about the bleak and underpaid lives of the workers who put food on their tables, famously stated in 1960

 "We used to own our slaves but now we just rent them,"

The Royal Brat

The Countess of Strathearn, The Duchess of Cambridge,  has given birth to a sprog, aka the Master of Strathearn, who is now third in line to the throne.

There is not the slightest doubt that he will live a pampered life of privilege. He certainly will not be one of the  2.3 million children in Britain (17 percent of the total) living in homes whose incomes fell substantially below the average for the country. When the data accounts for the payment of housing costs, the number climbs to 3.5 million children. Using the latter figure  in just one year alone, 300,000 children slipped into the ranks of poverty.

There are an estimated 4 in 10 children living in poverty in London

Government statistics indicate that at least one in six British children live in poverty – and this rate could reach one in five by the end of the decade. 

Enough is enough

We have within the United Nations:

General Comment 12 clarifies the rights related to food in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights similar obligations are stated in General Comment 15 in relation to the right to water.

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) (article 1,3,11,12). This treaty recognizes that "in no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.It requires states to take all steps within their ability to realize the rights set forth in the treaty”. The treaty asserts that men and women should have equal realization of all rights. The treaty defines the right of all people to an adequate standard of living, including food, and the right to be free from hunger. The treaty commits states to developing specific programs and obligations to the people to ensure these rights. In the treaty, states are obligated to work toward reducing infant and child mortality and disease control.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) (article 3, 21, 23, 25). The Universal Declaration not only asserts the human right to life, but also an adequate standard of living. This standard includes the right to food. Each person is also entitled to public services and social security.

Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).This treaty was drafted to identify and protect the best interests of the child. Article 24 of the treaty that recognizes "the right of the child to the highest attainable standard of health" is immensely important. State parties commit to taking steps toward ending child and infant mortality, and eliminate the circumstances that lead to child death including illness and malnutrition. Governments must provide children with food and water security. This treaty ties the rights of the mother to the well being of the child. Article 24 acknowledges the mother’s right to appropriate pre and post-natal health care, as well as access to information and education regarding child health and nutrition, the advantages of breastfeeding, hygiene and environmental sanitation.

Rome Declaration on World Food Security (1996). This declaration recognized the need to establish world food security. The participating heads of state reaffirmed "the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger." Following this affirmation the heads of state committed "an immediate view to reducing the number of undernourished people to half their present level no later than 2015."

World Food Summit Plan of Action (1996).The Plan of Action is comprised of seven commitments made by participating states to begin reducing the number of undernourished people in the world. Objective 7.4 of the plan calls for clarification and implementation of the right to adequate food in the CESCR.

The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food was appointed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2000. It is the Special Rapporteur’s job to receive information on violations of the right to food and identify emerging issues related to the right to food, including the right to clean drinking water. The Special Rapporteur visits countries, and makes reports to the High Commissioner for Human Rights and General Assembly every year. There is a Research Unit on the Right to Food that supports the Special Rapporteur with research and reports.

African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990) (article 14).This treaty commits state parties to realizing, to the best of their ability and with all available res ources, the child’s right to health, nutrition and safe water.

European Code of Social Security(1964) (article 42).This article ensures the provision of food to children. Addendum 1 (Division 5) stipulates that states will provide water and sanitary services.

Charter of the Organization of American States (1948) (article 34).This article guarantees access to proper nutrition by increasing production and availability, and diversifying production.
Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the area of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (Protocol of San Salvador) (1988) (article 12) Recognizes the human right to adequate nutrition. States must take steps to increase food supply through improved production and distribution.

Innocenti Declaration on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding (1990). This declaration asserts that women have the right to breastfeed their babies, and infants from birth to 4-6 months have the right to be breastfed. World Declaration and Plan of Action on Nutrition (1992) .This declaration promotes food security and disease prevention for infants through support of breastfeeding.

Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II) (1977) (article 14) .This protocol is part of humanitarian law, which protects people in situations of armed conflict. Article 14 prohibits "starvation of civilians as a method of combat".

Even, Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (1955) (article 20) recognizes prisoners’ rights to food and water provisions.

In addition to all those well-meaning laws and treaties we have international organisations funded to solve the problem food and water access.

World Health Organization. The World Health Organization (WHO) was established in 1948 as a branch of the UN specifically committed to promote good health. The WHO’s Constitution states the agency's objective as to help "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health." There are 192 states represented in the governing body of the WHO, the World Health Assembly. Since good nutrition is imperative in the attainment of good health, hunger, water and nutrition issues are a large concern of WHO.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was founded in 1945 to raise nutrition standards and the standard of living globally. There are 183 member countries of the FAO, dedicated to providing services such as technical assistance projects; nutrition, food, agriculture, forestry and fishery information; agricultural and development planning. The Committee for Food Security (CFS) is responsible for monitoring member states’ level of commitment of and follow through with the World Food Summit Plan of Action of 1996.

United Nations Children’s Fund. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is the UN agency dedicated to protecting the rights of the child. UNICEF has implemented specific programs to improve child nutrition, water quality environment and sanitation. UNICEF works to improve nutrition standards by forming community based programs that supply information and education, as well as emergency care to women and children.

World Food Program. The World Food Program (WFP) was established in 1963. The WFP is the UN agency that provides food aid and relief to victims of natural and manmade disasters.

International Fund for Agricultural Development. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) branch of the UN was established in 1977 as a direct result of the 1974 World Food Conference. IFAD was created to provide the means to implement rural agricultural development projects. The fund provides loans and grants to help small, struggling agriculturists stabilize, develop and help themselves.

International Committee of the Red Cross. The independent and neutral entity of The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a humanitarian organization that assists and protects victims of war. ICRC provides medical care to victims and also arrange exchanges of family messages. The ICRC provides protection and assistance to civilians, supervise visits to detainees, medical assistance, food aid and restoration of family links between persons separated by war.

CARE International. CARE is a non-governmental organization with a mission to reduce world poverty. CARE’s work includes programs that address issues that exacerbate poverty and attempt to identify sustainable solutions. They help families increase food production and proper management of resources, teach techniques and practices that help prevent malnutrition, provide food for relief in emergency situations and build and maintain clean water and sanitation systems.

Save the Children. Save the Children is a non-governmental organization that tries to fix the root causes of food insecurity to prevent hunger and malnutrition through increase in agricultural production, education and distribution of food in emergencies.

Foodfirst Information and Action Network. Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) is an NGO that works closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. FIAN receives and researches right to food violation claims. FIAN will intervene in cases of violations of the right to food. In doing so, FIAN holds governments accountable for ensuring the violation is rectified, and publicizes the violations.

Then, of course , all those other myriads numbers of charities from Oxfam to WorldVision.

 Plus all those telethon campaigns such as Red-Nose Days and pop concerts like Feed The World .

So it has not been from the lack of trying that society has been unable to end hunger and thirst.Isn’t it time to try a different approach? Isn’t it time for change?

Food for thought

Why capitalism will never be able to be green -- "When an American replaces the battery in a car, likely as not the old battery will be shipped to Mexico rather than to a modern US recycling plant. The reason? Its lead emissions standards are one tenth as stringent as US standards." (Toronto star, June 1, 2013). By the numbers – the number of tractor trailers that the dead batteries would have filled in 2011 = 17, 952; estimated increase in dead batteries to Mexico, 2004-2011 = 525%; lead smelting and refining plants in the US forty years ago = 154, today = 14; tons of lead emitted into the air by a single Mexican plant = 6 or 33 times expected for a cleaner plant in US. Capital beats all, don't it?
And here's another piece of environmental information that beggars belief -- The world's economy is being powered by China, and China is being powered by coal, a nineteenth century technology despite ads from Big Coal that tout the cleanliness of coal! (ever seen a miner?). In China, coal accounts for 70% of its energy production, January -- more than forty times the level deemed safe by The World Health Organization; 1.3 million square kilometers are regularly blanketed in China enveloping 600 million people: 750,000 people die from air pollution each year. Yet the capitalist system cries 'we must expand there'! about as much coal as is used by all other countries combined. As a result, ten billion tons of carbon dioxide are emitted annually; Beijing recorded one thousand micrograms of fine particle pollution in January -- more than forty times the level deemed safe by The World Health Organization; 1.3 million square kilometers are regularly blanketed in China enveloping 600 million people: 750,000 people die from air pollution each year. Yet the capitalist system cries 'we must expand there'! John Ayers

Lets Forget Differences and Talk of Similarities

World socialism the true cooperative commonwealth

“I look upon the whole world as my fatherland...I look upon true patriotism as the brotherhood of man and the service of all to all...National independence? That means the masters' independence...The flag? Does it wave over a country where you are free and have a home, or does it rather symbolize a country that meets you with clenched fists when you strike for better wages and shorter hours?" - Helen Keller

The modern nation state is defined as the product of merger of two concepts, namely the ‘nation’, which is a cultural and/or ethnic entity and the ‘state’, which is a political and geopolitical entity with jurisdiction or ‘sovereignty’ over a bounded territory. The state in its modern form is a relatively new institution emerging through the democratic revolutions that overthrew monarchies in England and France. There are many reasons for the rise of the modern nation-state, which has become the dominant form of state formation around the world today. One very important reason that comes to mind is the emergence of the idea of land as private property with clear ownership titles as against the notion of land as belonging to the monarch over which different people had only access for cultivation, grazing of animals or other uses. The modern idea of nation thus became closely tied to the notion of ownership of land and in many ways whether in Europe or the United States or Latin America the new nations that formed were essentially a coalition of many landowners who voluntarily agreed to have a common state apparatus to look after their welfare, security and governance. The fences that marked off private land were applied to language, culture, ethnicity and once fluid identities rendered into rigid, inflexible identities. The national identity, though it superseded all these other identities and helped unite diverse populations.

The process of recognition of new nations in recent times has been quite arbitrary and entirely dependent on the alignment of global or regional geopolitical forces in favor or against the struggle for independence. For example, why should  Kosovo be privileged over Kashmir or  South Sudan over Tamil Eelam in Sr Lanka when it comes to the “right to self-determination”?

 The idea of national sovereignty is a notional fraud. A nation-state is not sovereign in its affairs. In practice it means a mightier or the mightiest nation-state, regardless of law and ethics, may ‘sovereignly’ decide what is good for its own nation and by extension for the international community. In the world we live in today is there any nation that is truly “independent” or sovereign? Or is everyone just “inter-dependent” to varying degrees, with the idea of “sovereignty” just a chip for bargaining better terms and conditions in the world marketplace? The global capital flows determine the fate of even powerful nations. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report in 2010, the total value of the world’s financial stock, comprising equity market capitalization and outstanding bonds and loans, touched US$212 trillion and was more than three times as large as the total output of goods and services produced across the planet that year. The same year cross-border capital flows grew to US$4.4 trillion. Ninety percent of global capital flows run between three regions: the U.S., the United Kingdom and the European countries that use the euro. It is clear that as far as the world of global finance is concerned, outside these regions, the rest of the planet does not really exist at all! However these global capital flows have important consequences for all countries as each of them compete and chase the dream of attracting funds to their shores today. The erosion of sovereignty of nation states has occurred steadily in recent years as country after country brings down protective political and economic walls in their bid to woo global finance.

 When we still use the terms “homeland”, “motherland” or “fatherland” do we still believe that “land” is the primary basis of a nation and its economy? When corporations have become way larger than entire countries why should land and territory alone become synonymous with the idea of a nation?  If Wal-Mart were a country, its revenues would make it on par with the GDP of Norway the 25th largest economy in the world by, surpassing 157 smaller countries. In 2010 while Norway's GDP was $414.46 billion Walmart's revenue stood at $421.89 billion.  Exxon Mobil, with a revenue of $354.67 billion is bigger than Thailand with a GDP of $318.85 billion. Apple computers, with revenues of $65.23 billion, is bigger than Ecuador with a GDP of $58.91 billion. For quite some time now that the giant corporations of the world are on par with, or more powerful, than many countries in the world in terms of economic clout, even political clout in many parts of the world. The management systems they run are often as much or even more efficient than that of any state apparatus. What they lack in order to declare themselves nation-states and join the United Nations are essentially a national flag or an anthem, which any advertising agency can produce for them in a few days although some multi-nationals’ logos and advertising jingles are world recognisable and iconic plus their participation in global NGOs offer diplomatic influence. Security companies  already serve as proxy armies in conflicts. Today nation-states are being subordinated to global capital and the few powerful nations that act as their marketing agents. Corporations are the new empires of the globe and while nation-states are not about to disappear anytime soon they are a much weakened entity, shorn of genuine sovereignty and lacking independence of decision-making.

 An example of how nationalism has become obsolete look at the concept of Special Economic Zones which are common place all over the world today. While  armies are supposed to be jealously guarding every inch of national territory along the borders, the SEZs, created are deemed to be territory inside national borders but outside the jurisdiction of customs officersfor  the purposes of trade operations and duties and tariffs.

What does national identity of a nation really mean in today’s world? Are we not all citizens of the world, holding multiple identities (and in an increasing number of cases even multiple passports)? Our place of birth is accidental, but our duty to our class is worldwide. Socialism recognises no distinction between the various nations comprising the world. Socialism does not recognise national distinctions or the division of  humanity into nations and races. The position of the Socialist Party in every country is one of hostility to the existing political order. The socialist movement is global in sentiment and scope and the name, the World Socialist Movement, was deliberately chosen as an aspiration to be achieved. Capitalist production made giant strides towards internationalisation of the processes of production, distribution and exploitation of labour and this has made it easier for workers everywhere to see the necessity of organising ourselves on a world-wide scale.

Adapted from here 

A Murderous Society

Poverty, war and starvation are ever present social problems inside capitalism, but there is another one - murder. 'Almost 1.2 million people have been murdered in Brazil in the last three decades, making the country more deadly than some war zones, new figures show.' (Times, 20 July) Yet despite this murder rate of 27.4 per 100,000 inhabitants Brazil is only the seventh most dangerous country in the world. The Centre for Latin American Studies  claim that the most murderous was El Salvador, followed by the Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Colombia and Guatemala. RD

Food for thought

 

The world's capitalist class and politicians, who attempt to administer capitalism's day-to-day functioning, do anything to solve the problem when global warming promises rich profits. An article in The Toronto Star, May 4^th focused on interest in agriculture in Greenland. Potatoes, thyme, tomatoes, green peppers and strawberries are being grown there. In Southern Greenland hay is now being grown. Sheep farms have increased in size, and  supermarkets sell locally grown vegetables. Greenland's government set up a commission to study how climate change can help farmers increase production and replace expensive imported foods. Throughout the Arctic, the thawing of the ice sheets has seen a boost in oil and mining exploration. This is a much more sought after development by the profit makers, natural disasters be damned. If the owners and controllers of production will do nothing about global warming, then, of course, it is up to the world's working class to act politically to put an end to the capitalist system. John Ayers

Sleeping with the enemy

The Loony Left-Nationalists' flag

The Socialist Party argues that the important division is one of class, not of nation. We argue that the working class in Glasgow has much more in common with the workers of London than they do with the Highland lairds or the fund-managers in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Sq. Our goal is a socialist world without states or countries. We organise to overcome the capitalist system and  transform our economy – ridding ourselves of exploitation, environmental destruction, and oppression that comes with it.

The capitalist class is international – state borders do not divide them. The working class, on the other hand, are separated  by these borders. They prevent us from travelling freely, they restrict us to where we live and work. Borders hinder workers unity in resisting employers.  The capitalist class organises internationally. And it wants to obstruct our class from doing the same. The Scottish working class is exploited in the same way as the English working class, the same way as the German or French worker: by the Scottish, English, British , European and international capitalists and in many cases, by the very same multi-national corporation. The social evils experienced by the Scottish  people are the very same miseries shared by workers of all nations. Austerity doesn’t stop at the border. An independent government in Scotland  would make all the same cuts to working class living standards if the capitalist ruling class demanded it, and it would put corporations and profits before the needs of the people. And to counter the ensuing class conflict and to prevent the rapid disillusionment of many men and women workers, an independent Scottish government would exploit nationalistic feelings to the hilt. It would strongly encourage narrow-nationalism, pushing for “national unity”, extolling sacrifice for the “pride of the nation.”

All countries are quite ready to condemn “in the abstract” international suspicion and mistrust, while each one individually insists upon an absolute national sovereignty which makes international order impossible. Yet, the fact is, a  small insignificant independent nation-state can no longer remain isolated from the world-economy. This shapes our view on nationalism. There is no difference between a group of workers oppressed by a foreign power or corporation and those oppressed by domestic rulers. You are either the voice of the capitalist class or of the working class, you can’t be both. The Socialist Party of Great Britain want Scots and every other worker around the globe united for socialism not divided by nationalism. We want a world without borders. Supporting Scottish independence takes time and resources away from this far more worthy and pressing matter.

A good socialist will not say “you are independent” or “you should fight for independence”. A good socialist will say “you are not independent and you should not be. You are dependent on the working class of the world and they are dependent on you. We all depend on each other.”

Hungry for justice

The Scottish comedian,  Frankie Boyle, has joined campaigners who are attempting a symbolic  hunger strike for a combined total of 1,000 hours  to highlight the case of Shaker Aamer - the last UK resident being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Aamer, from London, has been detained in the military prison for 11 years without being charged or tried. Since February, 100 of the 166 prisoners still held have been refusing food in protest at their detention. Human rights campaigners Reprieve are supporting the hunger-strikers by encouraging supporters to give up food temporarily.

 Now in his second term as president, Barack Obama has still failed to make good on his election promise to close Guantanamo prison.

Food for thought

A report by the Norwegian Refugee Councils Displacement Monitoring Centre claims that in 2012 32 million people were forced to flee their homes because of floods, storms, and earthquakes, almost twice as many as in 2011. Gordon McBean, the director of research at Western University's Centre for Environment and Sustainability in London, Ontario commented on the report, " 32 Million people, that is the human cost of climate change. The impact of climate change
isn't small, that's what these numbers say." No part of this world is immune from floods -- India, Nigeria, The Philippines, Russia, Spain, China, Pakistan, and the US that led to 775,000 people fleeing their homes. Nor will things improve any time soon. According to the report, "Climate change is expected to influence
the frequency and intensity of weather extremes over the coming decades." John Ayers

Anti-Imperialism = Anti-Socialism

The concept of 'anti-imperialism' is rooted in nationalism, since it assumes that there is something unnatural about one 'country' exploiting the resources of another 'country'. All nations were created through an imperialist process that involved the homogenisation of an area under a particular local elite, and that involved the explotation of wage differences creaming off of surplus. Look at how industrial Italy dominated south, agrarian Italy.

Was the struggle by the US southern states anti-imperialist? Would the southern USA workers and slaves have been better off exploited by their local ruling class?

An anti-imperial analysis seems to get in the way of a class analysis too much -- especially since a useful class analysis should be rooted in immediate experience and struggle, not worked out using an economist's slide-rule.

 'Anti-Imperialism' is anti-socialist because it leads us to support smaller controlling elites, or ignore the damage they do, in favour of just concentrating on the USA or European powers, etc.

The concept of 'anti-imperialism' comes from Lenin's immediate political needs during the USSR's war against France and Britain in 1918-24, during which any defeat for the imperial powers was good for the USSR -- and thus the working class, of course -- and so the Bolsheviks championed nationalists in  Asia, Africa and elsewhere. Similarly, later during the Cold War the USSR supported local nationalisms in order to oppose US hegemony.

The Crisis

A crisis is caused by capitalists choosing not to buy, that is, not to invest profits because they judge they won't make any profits or not enough. Workers cannot be indifferent to a crisis, no matter how much we are disgusted by the predictable pendulum swing between “boom” and “bust”, because our lives can be directly influenced by today’s financial turbulence. But at the same time, we have no interest whatsoever in thinking up ways to put capitalism “back on track” or make it “healthy” again. Even when the system is in tip-top shape it works directly counter to the interests of workers. The crisis will not miraculously or mechanically turn every worker into a socialist, as some hope, but it does at least create a situation where socialists may find workers more willing to consider an alternative to capitalism. It is up to us, as socialists, to present that alternative in a convincing way based on our understanding of the essential nature and limitations of the capitalist system.

 Could the present slump really last for a decade or more? The truth is we don’t know and can’t know. The future course of capitalism is largely unpredictable. Economic forecasting is no more reliable than an astrological horoscope. All we can say with certainty is that it is an irrational system.

A number of quite distinct and separate things need to happen before a slump can run its course. Firstly, capital has to be wiped out if excess productive capacity is to be tackled with devalued capital being bought cheaply by those enterprises in the best position to survive the slump. Secondly, de-stocking needs to take place, with overproduced commodities bought up cheaply or written off entirely. Investment will not resume if overproduction still exists. Thirdly, after this has occurred there needs to be an increase in the rate of industrial profit helped both by real wage cuts and falling interest rates (which tail off naturally as the demand for more money capital eases off in the slump). This will help renew investment and increase accumulation. Also, if recovery is to be sustained, a large proportion of the debt built up during the boom years will need to be liquidated, if it is not to act as a drag on future accumulation. Through these mechanisms a slump helps build the conditions for future growth, ridding capitalism of inefficient units of production. When these processes have run their course, accumulation and growth can begin once more with capitalism again creating a boom situation, which will be inevitably followed by a crisis and slump. This has been the history of capitalism ever since it first developed. Far from being an aberration, this cycle of misery is the natural cycle of capitalism.

A Strange Sense Of Values

A study was carried out on behalf of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) by experts at Loughborough University. This being capitalism it concentrated on what the problem was costing local authorities. The figures taken city by city were hardly surprising. Birmingham £914 m per year, Manchester £446m and Glasgow £395m. 'An estimated 36,367 children in Glasgow live below the poverty line, according to the research. ....... Statistics from the Scottish government last month revealed 710,000 people north of the border - including 150,000 children - were living in relative poverty in 2011-12.' (BBC News) The figures may not be surprising but the "experts" emphasis on what it costs local authorities rather than what it costs in human misery tells us a lot about their sense of values. RD

Safety first?

There has been a large decline in the number of workplace inspections carried out by the Health and Safety Executive in Scotland over the past three years, according to new figures.

Despite significant numbers of fatal injuries in the agriculture, construction and service industries, checks have fallen in all three sectors.

Better futility than false roads

Our flag is the red flag

The capitalist class has managed society and its management has failed yet workers have not rallied to the red flag.

Will socialism benefit people, the Socialist Party is asked.  Will rest benefit the weary? Will food benefit the starving?  Will fresh air benefit the suffocating?

Some have convinced themselves that socialism is dead as a door nail.  We do not agree. Nor do we wholly accept that leaders have led the movement astray. The movement – that is to say the socialist movement – has not been led astray. But the general movement of the working class refused to support the socialist movement; and its leaders watched for what way to jump, and led their forces, not in the way the workers should have gone, but in the way they wished to go.

It seems rather inconsistent now however, to chide the workers for having preferred “Labourism” to socialism when, for they were advised to do so by all its present critics on the Left. They lost sight that if the wrong road be taken, every mile travelled takes us only farther from the right one and  after years of marching along the wrong road they now find themselves wallowing in the New Labour swamp. Socialists have never wearied in pointing out the right road; but the mass of the workers have preferred to take the wrong way, encouraged to do so by the Left-wingers.

 If they want socialism, they must join the Socialist Party, and agitate, educate, and organise for socialism.  Workers must rightly use their political power. But they have not done so.

 Capitalism leads to the bloodiest anarchy, to the destruction of the few cultural achievements which have been created, to the deepest misery of the masses and their literal enslavement, seared into the minds of the of the working class.

The “Communist” Parties have failed to offer the masses a substantial alternative. With a blindness which only shows how superficial their socialist knowledge has been and  miscalculating the distance which separated their countries from the situation in which the Russian Bolsheviks had found themselves they rejected the weapon of parliamentary agitation and education, and thereby, ruled themselves off the political stage, and condemned themselves to an existence in obscurity. Their repeated attempts at insurrection found no echo among the still unenlightened masses, and far from succeeding in becoming a political and social force, have now hopelessly split into several factions. Thus everything the Leninists advocated combined in preventing the development of the revolution from a political into a social one.

 The revolution cannot be vague uprising of a large mass of discontented and miserable people—a blind and instinctive knee-jerk reflex to hurt and suffering . On the contrary, it has to be intellectual; a movement based upon economic necessity and  in line with social evolution. Socialists are no starved slaves but working people who see the shambles waiting for them and  their children and recoil from the descent into barbarism.

AJJ

Principles And Profits

 

The British government likes to portray itself as an organisation of the highest moral standards on such issues as human rights. When it comes to making profits however such high principles are soon forgotten.'The UK government has approved more than 3,000 export licences for military sales to countries which it believes have questionable records on human rights, MPs say. The House of Commons Committees on Arms Export Controls says the value of the existing export licences to the 27 countries in question exceed £12bn. This includes significant sales to China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.' (BBC News, 17 July) Although the current policy states that they cannot issue licences where there is a clear risk that the proposed export might provoke or prolong internal conflicts or repression, this has not stopped them dealing with Egypt. When there is a £12bn business at risk principles count for little. RD

The N.H.S. Farce

The present government are blaming previous Labour governments for the current failure of care in the NHS. Needless to say the Labour Party are blaming them. None of them are blaming capitalism of course. 'The shocking conditions in Britain's hospitals have been laid bare by an official report which disclosed that failings uncovered in NHS wards were so bad that inspectors felt compelled to abandon their impartial roles and step in to alleviate patient suffering. ..... Eleven NHS trusts were put into "special measures" after an investigation found thousands of patients died needlessly because of poor care.' (Daily  Telegraph, 17 July) Medical care is like everything else inside capitalism. If you have the money you can get the best of care, if not you have to make do with the cheap and shoddy. RD

Facts of the Day

An estimated 36,367 children in the Glasgow City Council area are living below the poverty line, according to the research.

Statistics from the Scottish Government last month revealed 710,000 people north of the border - including 150,000 children - were living in relative poverty in 2011-12.

The number of people sleeping rough on the streets of Scotland exceeds 1,700. The highest numbers of rough sleepers are in the Edinburgh and Dundee council areas, Edinburgh had 363 rough sleeper cases and Dundee had 97.

Paranoid Politics

 Conspiracy theories are not new – far from it. But with the arrival of the internet offering easy dissemination and access to them conspiracy theories have proliferated and taken hold even amongst those who claim to be sophisticated and well-educated. Conspiracy theorists gain plausibility by taking established fact and embellishing it, so that one can’t tell where truth ends and fiction begins.

Major events cannot, in the popular mind, have trivial causes, because our world-view cannot allow it. Believing ourselves to be rational creatures in a supposedly ordered and rational universe, we shy away from the hideous tyranny of randomness, that force of Nature which defies our control and thus denies us our sense of meaning and “place” in the world. Thus, JFK, who ninety percent of Americans believe could not possibly have been killed by one lone fantasist with a rifle and some personal issues but with rather good eyesight and some luck. Princess Diana didn’t die because a driver got drunk, it was all a vast conspiracy involving the top echelons of power. Ditto John Lennon that the blame is again placed upon the "lone nutter" who had been receiving treatment for paranoid schizophrenia for his entire life since childhood but rather Chapman was being used as a "Manchuran Candidate" by Richard Nixon. Ditto 9/11, which clearly couldn’t have been simply the work of a few terrorists who got very, very lucky.

Conspiracy theorists take the view that the modern world must be controlled from the top – someone, somewhere must be pulling the strings, somehow. The conspiracy theorists interpret every event (even contradictory ones) as being evidence that everything is under some group’s secret control. The stock-in-trade of the conspiracy writers is rumour, innuendo, guilt-by-association and half-knowledge passed off as fact and a re-iteration of the inter-connection of some sections of the capitalists class (the Rothschilds, being an example).

The conspiratorial world-view is certainly not promoting an understanding of society. Those unfamiliar with the analysis of Marxian economics are yet to realise that at the heart of the capitalist economy is a genuine “anarchy of production”. Conspiracy theorists' assertions that a complex, technologically advanced society like capitalism cannot be at root “anarchic” in many of its operations, are misplaced. There are conspiracies all the time. Big ones tend to spring leaks however, and rarely last without being "outed". The capitalist class is not a conspiracy, not because it is democratic and transparent in its dealings which it very clearly isn’t but because it is not united, as the Illuminati presumably are. Because of the anarchic, competitive and contradictory nature of capitalism a conflict-free “New World Order” is practically impossible.

Scientific issues can be vulnerable to misinformation campaigns. Many people still believe that vaccines cause autism and that human-caused climate change is a hoax. Science has thoroughly debunked these myths, but the misinformation persists in the face of overwhelming evidence. Efforts to combat conspiracies can often backfire.

"You have to be careful when you correct misinformation that you don't inadvertently strengthen it. If the issues go to the heart of people's deeply held world views, they become more entrenched in their opinions if you try to update their thinking." says Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Western Australia.

Psychologists call this reaction “belief perseverance” - maintaining your original opinions in the face of overwhelming data that contradicts your beliefs. Everyone does it to a certain extent , but we are especially vulnerable when invalidated beliefs form a key part of how we understand and live our lives. Researchers have found that religious faiths  are especially vulnerable to belief perseverance but also how we view ourselves. A  study  found that people are more likely to continue believing incorrect information if it makes them look good by enhancing ones self-image.

For example, if an individual has become known in her community for purporting that vaccines cause autism, she might build her self-identity as someone who helps prevent autism by campaigning for parents to avoid vaccination. Admitting that the studies  linking autism to the MMR vaccine were mistaken would diminish her self-respect. In this circumstance, it is easier to continue believing that autism and vaccines are linked, according to Dartmouth College political science researcher Brendan Nyhan. "It's threatening to admit that you're wrong," he says. "It's threatening to your self-concept and your world-view."

We are more likely to believe a statement if it confirms our preexisting beliefs, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias. Accepting a statement also requires less cognitive effort than rejecting it. Even simple traits such as language can affect acceptance: Studies have found that the way a statement is printed or voiced (or even the accent) can make those statements more believable. Also hence the debate on how the question in the up-coming Scottish independence referendum should be exactly phrased.

Correcting misinformation, however, isn't as simple as presenting people with true facts. When someone reads views from the other side, they will create counter-arguments that support their initial viewpoint, bolstering their belief of the misinformation. Retracting information does not appear to be very effective either. Some researchers have published retractions, and at best, halved the number of individuals who believed misinformation.

But it is not all bad news. There is now near-universal agreement that smoking is addictive and can cause cancer. In the 1950s smoking was considered a largely safe lifestyle choice—so safe that it was allowed almost everywhere and physicians appeared in ads to promote it. The tobacco industry carried out a misinformation campaign for decades, reassuring smokers that it was okay to light up, offering biased scientific reports and suppressing research while discrediting whistle-blowers. Over time opinions began to shift as overwhelming evidence of ill effects was made public by more and more scientists and health administrators. Smokers could now personally understand and have the association of their individual hacking cough confirmed with its cause.

 The Food and Agriculture Organisation is convinced there is sufficient global capacity to produce enough food to adequately feed the world’s seven billion people and many more besides. But globally a billion people go to sleep every night without eating dinner, and extreme poverty, 1.2 billion people live on less than 1.25 dollars a day. A child dies every 10 seconds from malnutrition – not because their parents are reckless, stupid or lazy – but because they were unlucky enough to be born at a time and place where tragically,  people cannot afford to buy the food that is available. This is a known but socialists must break through the conspiracy that declares it an unavoidable condition and an inevitable situation.

Capitalism And Crime

Any TV viewer is aware that one of the most popular themes in dramas is crime and its solution. Super smart policemen solve baffling crimes inside the stipulated hour programme. It is all very reassuring but unfortunately it is complete nonsense. Britain's biggest police  force is "screening out" almost half of its crimes after deciding that they are too hard to solve. 'The Metropolitan Police stopped investigating 76 per cent of motor vehicle theft, 40 per cent of burglaries and 23 per cent of robberies at an early stage in the past year. Forty-five per cent of a total of 770,448 crimes in the Met's area were "screened out".' (Times, 16 July) Why don't they send for Miss Marples or Hercules Poirot? RD

Doom and Gloom Again

The pharmaceutical industry, like oil companies and arms manufacturers, isn’t viewed highly in the public imagination. And for good reason. There is growing awareness of an inherent conflict of interest in the testing of drugs by the companies that manufacture them — like Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly — and a steady stream of tales from journalists, researchers and doctors of deliberately dodgy trials, buried unfavorable results, and purchased academic journals.

Yet the greatest crime of the world’s major private pharmaceutical companies is not what they do, but what they don’t do.

Antibiotics revolutionized healthcare. In the ongoing war against bugs and infection, these companies have abandoned their posts at the most critical time: when the enemy is mounting its most ferocious attack in generations. As these firms continue to shirk their duties — effectively abandoning antibiotic research for some 30 years now — senior public health officials are warning that the world could soon return to the pre-antibiotic era, a miserable, fearful time that few people alive now remember. We have forgotten how common and deadly infectious disease once was. We’ve taken antibiotics for granted, but we can hardly blame ourselves for such complacency.

The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Frieden, warned authorities of their “limited window of opportunity” to deal with the “nightmare” presented by the rise of a family of bacteria highly resistant to what are often our last line of antibiotic defense: the suite of drugs known as carbapenems. A few months earlier, the UK’s chief medical officer, Sally Davies, used similar language to describe a future “apocalyptic scenario” in 20 years’ time, when people will be dying from infections that are currently understood to be trivial, “because we have run out of antibiotics.” Davies described how the phenomenon “poses a catastrophic threat” to humanity akin to that of climate change and imagined a scenario in the coming decades in which “we will find ourselves in a health system not dissimilar to the early 19th Century,” where any one of us could go to the hospital for minor surgery and die from an ordinary infection that can no longer be treated. Major interventions like organ transplants, chemotherapy, hip replacements and care for premature babies will become impossible.

What did the pre-antibiotic era look like? There was 30% mortality from pneumonia. Mortality from appendicitis or a ruptured bowel was at 100%. Before Alexander Fleming’s serendipitous discovery of the first antibiotic penicillin, hospitals were filled with people who had contracted blood poisoning through cuts and scratches. These scratches often developed into life-threatening infections. Using amputation or surgery as common medical responses for scraping out infected areas is not pleasant or preferred, but these were the only options for the doctors.

Reports in medical journals, charity organization analyses, government studies, and the pharmaceutical sector’s own assessments attribute the dangerous threat to insufficient market incentive - lack of profit. Unlike drugs that millions of people have to take for the rest of their lives to target chronic illnesses such as heart disease — drugs that suppress symptoms but do not cure — antibiotics are usually taken for a few weeks or months at most. This makes antibiotics unfavorable for capitalism.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2008 put it: “[Antibiotics] are less desirable to drug companies and venture capitalists because they are more successful than other drugs.” It is long-term therapy — not cures — that drives interest in drug development, the paper concluded.

Only four of the global Big Pharma 12 are engaged in antibiotic research. Capitalism encourages these firms to cherry-pick the products that make the most money for their shareholders, such as Viagra.  A common criticism from the Left of these companies has been that their profit-seeking hurts the poor of the developed and developing world, who can’t afford their drugs. This is true as far as it goes, but doesn’t tackle the scale of this problem. It is the capitalist command to accumulate profit that  pharmaceutical companies must obey that is the major threat to public health and needs to be done away with entirely.

See full article here

Socialism, the steady-state system

Capitalism  have given the top 1% of the population what they want, which is the opportunity to be the wealthiest and most powerful of the richest people ever seen. The present competitive exploitative system is  driven by increasing consumption of energy and resources. Competition works is the contest is to maximise wealth and power and to produce the most goods and services for the least cost. Capitalist economies are motivated and controlled with competition, which has replaced social needs as the motivator. Furthermore, as the competition and rivalry intensifies,  cooperation and caring decreases. Capitalism shifts the blame of a dysfunctional and unfair social system to people. The capitalists’ interest is their self-interest, which is why they are plutocrats; it is to be successful in capitalism. This means they are what they are. This also means ordinary people are not in charge of the economy or of the political system.

We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain are seeking a "steady-state economy" which corresponds to what Marx called "simple reproduction" - a situation where human needs were in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them.

The Lazy Worker Myth

From time to time newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express like to put all Britain's economic woes down to welfare grabbing lazy workers, but recent statistics give the lie to that notion. 'Workers feel less secure about their jobs and are taking fewer days off sick, according to two new surveys. The CBI said the number of days lost to absence in British workplaces had fallen to  a new low, while Law & General's monthly Job Security Index dipped to its lowest reading since its inception in January last year.' (Times, 15 July) How few days are taken off for sickness is shown by the figures. Down from 6.5 days per year in 2010 to 5.3 days at present. RD

Utopian Socialism

Is it possible to mobilise people to fight oppression without fashioning models for a socialist economy for people to fasten on to? The capitalist slogan ‘There is No Alternative’ was answered by ‘Another World is Possible’. We need to know and say much more about this other world.

Socialist thought has to deal in prediction, but only in broad terms. We live in dark days.  One often has to aim at objectives which one can only very dimly see. Socialism is a vision of the future, while its advocates are actively at work in the present. Socialists have typically avoided the tactic of the utopian blueprint. One reason for this was that no matter what your utopian vision is, you won’t be able to achieve it under capitalism. The other reason was that after capitalism is overthrown, it will be up to the people to determine how to run their society. Some people may prefer a return to Nature. Others may want robots tending to their every need.Why should one person’s utopian preference determine how society should be run for everybody else?

Charly's Profits

Prince Charles' tax exempt, capitalist property empire, the Duchy of Cornwall, is worth £847m and according to his top adviser it is a "force for social good".

It is definitely a force for his personal individual good, the scrounger gets around 19 million pounds a year from it! 

The National Ill-Health Service

From time to time British politicians like to boast about the NHS and claim it is the envy of the world. This is a hollow boast as these figures show. Five children die unnecessarily every day of conditions such as asthma, meningitis and pneumonia because NHS care for young people is badly organised and dangerously inadequate, the leader of Britain's 11,000 specialists in children's health warns. 'Around 2,000 children a year lose their lives because of an array of problems, which means the UK has some of the worst death rates among children up to the age of 14 in Europe, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health told the Observer.' (Observer, 14 July) RD

A Grim Choice

In the city of Asbest in Russia workers face a grim choice - work to produce asbestos, which will probably kill you or else move somewhere else. Valentin K. Zemskov, who worked in the asbestos factory and developed asbestosis, a respiratory illness caused by breathing in  asbestos fibres summed up the position of workers in Asbest. ' Still he said the city had no other choice. "If we didn't have the factory, how could we live?" he said gasping for air as he talked in the yard of a retirement home. "We need to keep it open so we have jobs." (New York Times, 13 July) Obviously inside a socialist society no one would have to endure such a hellish dilemma. RD

The Commonweal

According to the Herald, “the so-called Common Weal plan, which has been injected into the referendum debate by the left-wing Jimmy Reid Foundation.” The Common Weal model envisages a fundamental break with the UK's market-led economic and social model, with Scotland importing policies from Germany and Scandinavia designed to make the country wealthier, fairer and more equal. A key part would be an expanded welfare state providing "from-the-cradle-to-the-grave" services which are paid for through an overall higher tax take. But the Common Weal model would also entail a diverse, high-skill, high-pay economy in which Scots firms are supported by lending from state banks and favoured in state procurement.

Commonweal means the common welfare, a commonwealth. The commonweal  shall satisfy peoples’ material needs from the common storehouse, according to their desires. Everyone will be able to have what he or she desires in food, in clothing, books, music, education and travel facilities. The abundant production now possible, and which invention will constantly facilitate, will remove any need for rationing or limiting of consumption. Every individual, relying on the great common production, will be secure from material want and anxiety. There will be neither rich nor poor. Money will no longer exist. There will be no selling, because there will be no buyers, since everyone will be able to obtain everything desired without payment. The possession of private property, beyond that which is in actual personal use, will disappear. There will be neither masters nor servants.

This is the commonweal. Socialists are determined to work co-operatively for this commonweal.

No amount of sophistry can change commonweal to mean capitalism, no matter what variety claimed.

Taxation and its burden

Continuing our tedious but necessary economic education posts. This one on the subject of taxes.

When capitalist political parties are in disagreement, the issue of taxation usually looms large. Should income tax be reduced or increased?  The serious-minded worker who does his own thinking will probably at first be amazed at the dexterity exhibited by both the Labour and Tory sections of the capitalist class. We watch them handling figures and statistics in a way that must cause a circus juggler to turn green with envy, each proving that the poverty and misery is bound to increase if the proposals of the other side are adopted!

A Society Of Debtors

Politicians love to paint a picture of steadily improving living standards, but it is a complete illusion as a recent newspaper article by Christian Guy, Director of the Centre for Social Justice has revealed. 'Yesterday's grim figures revealed that more than 800,000 households will soon spend more than half their income on debt repayments. We already know that 274 people are declared insolvent or bankrupt every day, 88 properties are repossessed and average household debt, including mortgages, is almost £55,000.' (Times, 12 July) Hardly 'steadily improving living standards' is it? RD

Anarchism

Socialist Courier has had a couple of recent posts about the history of anarchism inn Aberdeen and Glasgow so before the blog is accused of being an anarchist one we should highlight the political differences between ourselves and anarchists.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain possess a clear definition of what we would describe socialism to be. The definition of "socialist" generally meant in the 1840s was anyone who wanted to reform society, in whatever way, so as to benefit Labour. That was indeed how it was used them and was of course one of the reasons why Marx and Engels called the manifesto they wrote for the Communist League of Germany in 1848 the "Communist Manifesto" and not the "Socialist Manifesto". Basically, it was much too broad a definition that included too many contradictory views that we suppose the more appropriate word (then as much as today) would be "social reformers". It is only on that basis that supporters of private property and the market such as Proudhon, could be called "socialist".

Banking 7/7

Socialists have no love for banks. A world without banks would be a wholly better place. However to blame the banks for creating our debt-ridden society is just too biblical, like a re-run of Christ expelling the money-changers from the temple. Even if the banks were state-owned, they would still have to lend. If they didn't there would be no point in them existing. Banks and interest are not the villain of the piece but capitalism and production for profit. We need to abolish money before we can get rid of banks. But to get rid of money we need an end to property. And you can't abolish property relations until you abolish capitalism.

The Housing Shortage

Housing is probably the one basic need which, were it properly satisfied, would be the most conductive to good emotional and mental health. It is, surely, very pleasant and soothing to relax among pleasant and agreeable surroundings. The fact remains that such a happy situation only applies to the small to the small minority of the population who have the means to buy beautiful homes. Housing is one problem of capitalism which has been a constant source of difficulty and is part and parcel of working class life. Few members of our class escape some aspect of housing trouble. Whether it is the crisis of homelessness or overcrowding, or the stress involved in keeping a roof over our heads through paying rent or the mortgage.

It could be more than 20 years before enough new homes are built in Scotland to meet the country's projected needs. Scotland requires 21,230 new homes each year between 2011 and 2035 to meet a projected 21% increase in the population to 2.9 million by 2035.

Councils and registered social landlords  have built 14,000 fewer homes since 2005 than the Scottish Government said were needed. Funding for housing fell by around one-quarter between 2008/09 and 2011/12 with further reductions to come, while the number of new private homes built has more than halved since 2007/08 when the economic crisis took hold. The Scottish Government’s Audit Scotland  blames the recession, along with constraints on lending, competing and increasing demands on capital resources, and reduced government subsidies. Changes to the benefit system, an ageing population and the rising number of single person households are creating further pressures.

There are more than 400,000 people currently on housing waiting lists. Audit Scotland said the housing supply was not keeping up with levels of need.

The first fallacy to dismiss is the belief that “housing shortage” is the beginning and end of the problem and is the source of the problem, because if it were, it could be logically assumed that there was some intrinsic inability of society to meet the housing needs of its population. It has had plenty of time and resources to do so, so this is clearly not the full story.

Another fallacy which tends to cloud our conception of the issue is that which suggests that the housing problem has its basis in the inefficiency and lack of organisation of the building industry. It is true that this industry is not generally well organised in relation to output and the workers employed there; it is also true that at times it can operate in an inefficient manner. The fallacy is however that this is a cause of the housing problem rather than, like the housing problem itself, an effect of an inefficient and unrealisable social system. How can the construction industry possible be efficient when it is subjected to the demands of profitability in a system which produces an uneven flow of work, conflict between employers and employees, and most importantly, the fact that buildings which create the greatest profit in construction are usually the least socially useful and therefore take preference over housing?

The facts tell us the industry suffers many problems which have been related to one thing: the contradictions and conflicts of the system of capitalism. Governments do initiate various housing reforms to try to solve these problems, but these always fail. Why is failure so total, especially when the materials, know -how and labour power exist to adequately deal with the problem of providing decent housing for all?

Is it because of stupid or corrupt politicians? Many people believe so and view a particular governments shortcoming’s in light of the various abilities and characters of its leading members. But in actual fact these factors play a very subsidiary part and make no fundamental difference. Some politicians and civil servants , assigned various tasks, may be very well-meaning and in some respects efficient, but in the final analysis fail because they cannot succeed.

Under capitalism all production, government-initiated or not, is with a view to profit, not the satisfaction of human needs, material and recreational. Since the profit motive is the very life-blood of the capitalist system, it logically follows that government housing programs will also be introduced with a view to providing a profit for some capitalist group or other. Whether or not the politicians involve be good guys or con-artists is immaterial, because the financial institutions putting up the money for these reforms want a return for their investment.