SAINTS AND EMPTY TILLS

For hundreds of years the Pope ruled supreme in the Vatican and never ventured beyond its sacred environs. In recent times though less and less people are swallowing the medieval nonsense that is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and he is forced to become a sort of Thomas Cook tourist. The current holy father looks like beating all records in air miles as he tries to whip up enthusiasm for a growingly unattractive organisation. He recently visited Britain and declared the prospect of sainthood for an English convert. Now concerned about falling attendances in North America he is about to canonise a Canadian doorman. "A Canadian monk who began life as a sickly, illiterate orphan before becoming a porter is to be canonised at the Vatican on Sunday. Alfred Bessette was renowned in the late 19th century as the diminutive doorman of Montreal's College of Notre Dame, whose hands were said to have powers of healing. ... He began his life at the college in 1870 as a porter. "Our superiors put me at the door, and I remained there for 40 years," he said later." (Daily Telegraph, 15 October) As an organisation that claim to have the keys to heaven they could do worse than make a doorman a saint. They have got to get those empty collection bags full somehow. RD

OUR BETTERS?

"Three peers should be suspended and repay expenses, A parliament."committee-report-on-conduct/" a House of Lords committee has recommended after investigating their claims. Baroness Uddin should be suspended until Easter 2012 and told to repay £125,349, the committee said. It also recommended Lord Paul be suspended for four months and cross bencher Lord Bhatia for eight months.Baroness Uddin has been suspended from the Labour Party and Lord Paul has resigned his party membership Lord Paul has already paid £41,982 and Lord Bhatia has paid back £27,446." (BBC News, 18 October) RD

PAY UP OR BURN DOWN

"A small rural community in western Tennessee is outraged and the fire chief is nursing a black eye after firefighters stood by and watched a mobile home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 municipal fee. South Fulton city firefighters -- equipped with trucks, hoses and other firefighting equipment -- didn't intervene to save Gene Cranick's doublewide trailer home when it caught fire last week. But they did arrive on the scene to protect the house of a neighbor, who had paid his fire subscription fee. "I just forgot to pay my $75," said Cranick. "I did it last year, the year before. ... It slipped my mind." Later that day, Cranick's son Timothy went to the fire station to complain, and punched the fire chief in the face." (AOL News, 6 October) RD

A SUICIDAL ARMY

"Specialist Aguilar was one of 20 soldiers connected to Fort Hood who are believed to have committed suicide this year. The Army has confirmed 14 of those, and is completing the official investigations of six other soldiers who appear to have taken their own lives - four of them in one week in September. The deaths have made this the worst year at the sprawling fort since the military began keeping track in 2003. The spate of suicides in Texas reflects a chilling reality: nearly 20 months after the Army began strengthening its suicide prevention program and working to remove the stigma attached to seeking psychological counseling, the suicide rate among active service members remains high and shows little sign of improvement. Through August, at least 125 active members of the Army had ended their own lives, exceeding the morbid pace of last year, when there were a record 162 suicides." (New York Times, 10 October) RD

MIND THE GAP

"The billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani will soon take up residence at his recently completed Mumbai abode, a £1.2 billion glass tower said to have been inspired by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Looking over a city where more than half the population lives in slums, it is a soaring monument to the growing chasm dividing India's rich and poor. ...For many, however, the gleaming tower will be an uncomfortable reminder that India's economic renaissance has delivered extraordinary benefits to a handful of hugely wealthy "Bollygarchs" but little to the 800 million Indians who live on not much more than £1 a day." (Times, 14 October) RD

AN INSANE SOCIETY

"Hundreds of millions of people in poor countries suffer from untreated mental health disorders that could be helped with inexpensive care, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. The United Nations agency launched guidelines for primary care doctors and nurses to treat patients debilitated by depression and psychosis as well as neurological ailments including epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias." (Yahoo News, 7 October) RD

COLD AND SKINT

"The number of households struggling to afford to stay warm has more than doubled in the past six years according to official figures. An extra 2.5 million homes have gone into fuel poverty since 2004, a report by the Department of Energy and Climate Change said. Homes are defined as living in fuel poverty if they have to spend more than 10 per cent of their income to maintain a minimum temperature of 21C in their main living area." (Times, 15 October) RD

DOLLARS AND DEMOCRACY

One of the illusions that supporters of capitalism like to boast of is the notion that whatever the failings of the profit system at least it is thoroughly democratic. This is a complete fabrication as by the expenditure of million of dollars, euros and yen the owning class completely distort any pretence to democracy that capitalism may possess. A recent example of this manipulation by the power of money has emerged in the USA.

 "It likes to present itself as a grassroots insurgency made up of hundreds of local groups intent on toppling the Washington elite. But the Tea Party movement, which is threatening to cause an upset in next month's midterm elections, would not be where it is today without the backing of that most traditional of US political supporters - Big Oil. The billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, a private company with 70,000 employees and annual revenues of $100bn (£62bn), used to joke that they controlled the biggest company nobody had ever heard of. Not any more. After decades during which their fortune grew exponentially and they channelled millions of dollars to rightwing causes, Charles and David Koch are finally getting noticed for their part in the extraordinary growth of the Tea Party movement. The two, 74-year-old Charles and David, 70, have invested widely in the outcome of the 2 November elections. One Koch subsidiary has pumped $1m into the campaign to repeal California's global warming law, according to state records." (Guardian, 14 October) Like Bob Dylan once wrote - "Money doesn't talk, it swears." RD

REFORM FAILS AGAIN

"West Africa's cocoa industry is still trafficking children and using forced child labour despite nearly a decade of efforts to eliminate the practices, according to an independent audit published by Tulane University. A U.S.-sponsored solution called the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed in 2001 by cocoa industry members to identify and eliminate cocoa grown using forced child labour. A child-labour-free certification process was supposed to cover 50 per cent of cocoa growing regions in West Africa by 2005 and 100 per cent by the end of 2010. But independent auditors at Tulane University's Payson Center for International Development said in a late September report that efforts have not even come close to these targets." (Globe and Mail, 8 October) RD

GRIM PROSPECTS

"A million people are expected to lose their jobs in the next four years as a result of the Government's decision to cut public spending by £83 billion, according to a report out today. Nearly 500,000 jobs are likely to be cut in the private sector as the Government stops building schools, hospitals and roads and cancels other contracts. This is on top of about 500,000 job losses in the public sector as employers reduce budgets by about a third and lay off civil servants, town hall staff, nurses, teachers and police officers." (Times, 13 October) RD

HUNGER INCREASES

"U.N. food agencies said Wednesday that 166 million people in 22 countries suffer chronic hunger or difficulty finding enough to eat as a result of what they called protracted food crises. Wars, natural disasters and poor government institutions have contributed to a continuous state of undernourishment in some 22 nations, including Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan, the Food and Agriculture Operation and the World Food Program said in a new report." (Associated Press, 6 October) RD

THIS IS PROGRESS?

When the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed away back in 1904 we were told by reformers in the Liberal Party and later the Labour Party that by a series of reforms capitalism could be made more fair and that the inequalities between the classes could be eradicated by a programme of reformist legislation. More than a hundred years of such legislation has led to what? According to a survey produced by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission set up in 2007 to produce a three yearly report on the "state of the nation", it has led to abject failure. "Today's report How Fair Is Britain?, shows that health inequalities remain stark between rich and poor, with men and women from the highest income groups living seven years longer on average than the lower." (Times, 11 October) All the ingenuity of the reformers has merely led to the continuation of the same stinking inequalities of capitalism. RD

WHAT IS REVOLUTION?

THE WORD REVOLUTION is almost as misused as the word Socialism. If a government is changed, a political leader is replaced, a coup takes place, and the media shout "revolution!" Indeed, if this usage of the word were correct, then revolutions occur every year and sometimes every month!
     What is meant by "revolution" and why is this concept so important to the future of the working class? Revolution means a transformation in the object to which the term is being applied. If it is being used about society, then it means a total change in economic relations. The easiest example to understand is the revolution that took place to transform feudalism to capitalism. In feudal society the majority were tied to their superiors. Over and above what they produced for themselves and their families in order to live, the serfs were compelled to produce for their feudal masters and the Church. That form of society was transformed by a revolution into a society—capitalism--where there is no direct ownership of the lives of people by other people in the same way.
     Capitalist society is organized on the basis that the worker sells his labour-power voluntarily to an employer for a wage or salary. In theory, no one is compelled to work for another. In practice, the majority must do so. They have no other means of living, since legally they do not own sufficient of the means of wealth production to enable them to live without this form of selling known as wage-labour.
     In all forms of society, minorities have owned the means of living, with the result that the other classes have had to submit to the dictates of the minority whilst that particular form of society existed. Feudalism depended on agricultural production and personal subservience by the majority to clearly defined groups. Privilege in capitalism depends not on accidents of birth (though these can be of importance to the individual) but on the ownership of capital. Whilst in feudal society by and large it was birth that determined into which class one fell, in capitalist society it is purely a question of ownership of wealth however obtained.
     The revolution that will change capitalism into socialism will involve the replacement of all the relationships of capitalism. Instead of the primary characteristics of, capitalism--production for profit, the buying and selling of all things including labour-power, and private (or state) ownership of wealth, society will be characterised by common ownership and of free access to that wealth. Production will be for human satisfaction only, hence neither money nor all the paraphernalia that goes with it, and will be based upon voluntary co-operation by all in the interests of all. To get to that form of society involves a transformation---a revolution. It is only in Socialism that man will solve the major problems he now faces. That is why the SPGB is a revolutionary party.
     Because the next revolution must be the work of the majority consciously co-operating in the work that it will entail, a transformation in men's ideas is the pre-requisite to its successful implementation.

RAW

ALL RIGHT FOR SOME

"A rare pink diamond that goes on sale next month could fetch up to $38 million, according to auctioneers Sotheby's. The fancy intense pink 24.78 carat gem is being sold by an unidentified private collector, the auction house said. "We are able to say its been in the possession of the same owner for 60 years, but beyond that, we are not able to reveal more", Sotheby's spokesman Matthew Weigman said Tuesday. The diamond was last sold by New York jeweler Harry Winston and has a classic emerald cut with gently rounded corners, the company said." (Associated Press, 8 October) RD

Failure of Reformism

"Yet despite this significant progress, our ambitions still exceed our achievements and it is clear that we have some distance still to go. Despite all our advances, we have unfinished business and new social and economic faultlines to contend with." Kaliani Lyle, Scotland Commissioner, Equality and Human Rights Commission said

41 per cent of permanent exclusions were among pupils from the 20 per cent of areas in Scotland with the highest levels of deprivation.

Scotland's suicide rate is higher than that for the UK as a whole, with a figure of 12.6 per 100,000 population compared with 9.51 per 100,000 population. Men are more likely to kill themselves than women, with rates particularly high for men aged 25-34 and those aged 35-44. Men and women living in the most deprived areas are twice as likely to take their own life as those in less deprived areas.

KICK 'EM WHEN THEY ARE DOWN

"Disabled people will be hit with more than £9bn in welfare cuts over the next five years, a think tank has warned. Demos suggests the government's plans will see 3.6m disabled people and carers lose about £9.2bn by 2015. It said moving those on incapacity benefit who were reassessed as fit to work to jobseeker's allowance would account for half of the losses." (BBC News, 9 October) RD

Food for thought

In a survey, Working Less and Earning More' the Toronto Star reported (4/Sept/2010) that the average wage is $23.10 per hour ($19.93 in 2005) and average hours are 33.24 per week (down from 34.69 in 2000). The largest job increases came in the service sector where hardly anyone is offered a full week to save on benefit payments, and 82% said they would take a pay cut to work at a job that guaranteed a work-life balance.

Reading Notes
Continuing from above (the prevailing ideas…) Charles C. Mann in "1491" shows how rulers change history to create allegiance to their cause, "Tlacaelel (ruler of the Mexica in ancient Mexico) insisted that in addition to destroying the codices (picture histories) of their former oppressors, the Mexica should set fire to their own codices. His explanation for this idea can only be described as Orwellian: "It is not fitting that our people/ Should know these pictures/ Our people, our subjects will be lost/ And our land destroyed/ For these pictures are full of lies". The lies were the inconvenient fact that the Mexica past was one of poverty and humiliation. To motivate the people properly, Tlacaelel said, the priesthood should rewrite Mexica history by creating new codices, adding in the great deeds whose lack now seemed embarrassing and adorning their ancestry with ties to the Toltecs and Teotihuacan." i.e. the Ministry of Truth is established to tell lies. Sounds familiar!
Further on, Mann describes how loyalty to the ruling class can be achieved, "In their penchant for ceremonial public slaughter, the Alliance (of Mexican tribes) and Europe were much more alike than either side grasped. In both places the public death was accompanied by the reading of ritual scripts. And in both the goal was to create a cathartic paroxysm of loyalty to the government – in the Mexica case, by recalling the spiritual justification for the empire; in the European case, to reassert the sovereign's divine power after it had been injured by a criminal act."

For socialism and meaningful reading, John Ayers

WORKING FOR NOTHING

"Nurses are being asked to work extra shifts for free to save their jobs as health boards across Scotland spend up to £30million hiring agency staff. Almost 4,000 NHS jobs, including more than 1,500 nursing and midwifery posts, will be axed this year due to cutbacks, according to Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon. But last night it emerged that the country's 14 health boards have set aside a combined £30million for temporary nurses and theatre staff over the next four years. Grampian hopes to save £385,000 by asking staff at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary's surgical unit to take on one more shift each month for no extra money." (Press and Journal, 6 October) RD

Food for thought

Churchill had freedom of speech and used it to his own ends and those of the capitalist class. In a new book by Richard Toye, "Churchill's Empire", the author reveals a side of Churchill not usually shown but well known to oppressed peoples of the Third World. Toyne details Churchill's part in replacing the democratic government of Iran with the Shah after the
Iranian government had the audacity to demand a fair share of the profits of their oil, "The idea that leaders of poor countries would stand up and claim control of their own resources was something that Churchill could never grasp or sympathize with. The mere fact that some valuable resource was sitting under the soil of another country instead of British soil did
not mean that Britain shouldn't have it." Sounds just like a dozen other imperialist powers! John Ayers

Food for thought

The prevailing ideas of a society are those of the ruling class, Marx stated. Here is one small example of how that happens. The University of Toronto, like all educational institutes, solicits donations from anyone and everyone. Many wealthy businessmen have donated to get their names on plaques, auditoriums, or even whole buildings, depending on the donation.
Those so commemorated are the likes of merchant banker Joseph Rotman, pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Leslie Dan, and businessman, Peter Monk, chairman of Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold mining company. Unfortunately, those without money, even icons such as Tommy Douglas, recently voted the Greatest Canadian of All Time, and considered the
father of Canada's public health care system, do not get their names on walls as a group of professors found out when they proposed naming the Health Studies Program after Douglas. Presumably, being dead, he was unable to contribute hard cash, and didn't meet the requirements for potential fund raising. Peter Monk donated $35 million to help set up the
Monk school of Global Affairs. Linda McQuaig and Neil Brook reveal in their new book, "The Trouble with Billionaires" (reviewed in Toronto Star 12/Sept/2010) that Monk would receive a tax refund of $16 million on the donation, more if he donated the money in the form of shares, reducing his donation to about half. Various levels of government contributed $66million but that didn't count for anything when it came to naming the building. It gets worse. Monk's donation will be spread out over many years and will be subject to his family's approval of the school, i.e. socialist professors need not apply. The school's director will be required to report annually to a board appointed by Munk 'to discuss the programs, activities, and initiatives of the school in greater detail.' Obviously, the school will have to reflect the views of Munk, not those of taxpayer John Ayers, even though I contributed much more (without my consultation, of course.) It is fine to have freedom of speech, but that right to get your ideas and opinions heard depends on how much money you have, as all elections show. John Ayers