feeding the poor

Mary's Meals, a Scots-based and Argyll-based charity, provides school meals in 16 of the world's poorest countries is now feeding half a million children.

Founder, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, said "There are still one billion children living in poverty, so our work is not done yet."

Sad to say that the work will never be done.

The necessity and prevalence of charity in a world capable of producing a sufficiency of food, clothing and shelter to easily satisfy the needs of all, is an obvious indication that something, somehow, somewhere, is rotten to the core. The socialist claims that it is capitalism. Capitalism automatically produces poverty which in its turn perpetuates charity. Eliminate the cause, and you eradicate the disease. Rather than deal simply and directly by providing ready access to storehouses of goods, as would occur in a sensible world, there are those who prefer instead to deliver the great mass of wealth to the privileged minority and present tear-drenched appeals for charity for the impoverished majority.

Charity! Sweet charity! Upheld as evidence of the innate goodness of man. Providing an outlet for the energies of people who feel that something ought to be done and who might otherwise find time to think about doing things really helpful. Indecent, unwholesome charity! Preying on the natural willingness of ordinary people to help one another, even to the extent of depriving their own of needed things. Charity! Symbol of a society that neither intends nor desires to end the conditions that ensure its existence.

One day the means for producing and distributing the needs of life will become the common property of all the people and will be operated for no purpose other than to provide abundance to all the members of society. On that day a socialist society will be established, bringing an end finally to exploitation, along with all the other abominations of capitalism, including charity.

IT BEGGARS BELIEF

"Beggars are to be cleared from the streets in Bangladesh during the cricket World Cup, which starts next month. The poorest are to be compensated for loss of earnings but most will be put into "welfare camps" until the event is over. ... According to some estimates there are 700,000 beggars in Bangladesh." (Times, 1 February) RD

ROLLING IN THE STUFF

"By Forbes' count, 69 billionaires from 20 countries are expected to attend the annual World Economic Forum confab, which starts tomorrow in the Swiss Alps town of Davos. The helicopters whirring above this afternoon suggest that some may have already arrived.  It may well be the greatest concentration of wealth in any one place. Their total net worth, as tracked by Forbes: $427 billion, greater than the combined gross domestic product of Israel and Egypt. The U.S. has at least 20 billionaires expected to make the trip, more than any other country. (Forbes, 25 January) RD

Wealth gap widens between super rich and rest of us.

Alan Greenspan - the legendary chairman of the United States' Federal Reserve - is the high priest of free market capitalism.

As a young man he was even a devotee and acolyte of arch libertarian writer, Ayn Rand.

Keep that pedigree in mind when you consider the striking observation he made in a television interview last summer:

"Our problem basically is that we have a very distorted economy, in the sense that there has been a significant recovery in our limited area of the economy amongst high-income individuals...Read link

This ,of course, is no surprise to socialists who have been pointing it out as an inevitable concomitant of capitalist economics.

If you are born poor you will most likely die poor.Whether this is in actual real terms ,or in relative terms, in relation to the amount of wealth produced, is neither here nor there.

What is crazy is the notion that capitalism can be reformed or tamed,or have its rapacious appetite curbed in any way.

Its goal, as Marx pointed out so long ago is,to, "Accumulate, accumulate".

"Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! “Industry furnishes the material which saving accumulates.” ^[23] Therefore, save, save, i.e., reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value, or surplus-product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth. ^[24] But what avails lamentation in the face of historical necessity? If to classical economy, the proletarian is but a machine for the production of surplus-value; on the other hand, the capitalist is in its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this surplus-value into additional capital. " Link for above quote

Capitalist society is a parasitic economic system which sucks out the productive capacities of the vast majority,(working -class) to satisfy a minority class of owners of wealth(capitalist -class)..

The solution is to get rid of the monstrous system and replace it with socialism , a system of common ownership,democratic control and free access to all of society's wealth,everybody having the right to participate in decisions on how global resources will be used. It means nobody being able to take personal control of resources, beyond their own personal possessions.

This then,is in stark contrast to the reformism of the Left, S.S.P.,S.W.P., Solidarity, S.L.P.,or the Labour Party, (all of them result in a case of 'meet the new boss', same as the old one.) which leaves intact the waged- labour versus capital social system.

Socialism ,as we define it in its original context, before the Left besmirched the name in their failed experiments, is a revolutionary solution to capitalism's rationed access. Moreover, it is a real solution,one which ends wage-slavery, poverty, and war.

If a truly human society is to be created where we can relate to each other as members of a real community instead of as isolated atoms colliding on the market place, we need to create the conditions (common ownership of productive resources by the whole community) in which the market has no sense.

One where the organising tenet applied globally , instead of capitalistic, "..... "each man for himself, and the devil take the hindermost" ", is
replaced by, " From each according to their ability ..to each according to their needs".

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

As abominable and useless as locking people up in a cell is, the Canadian government is out to make it worse. Recently prison farms were shut down, including the one at Kingston that had a dairy herd ranking among the best in Ontario, an abattoir that served three hundred local farmers and supplied local shops with $3 million worth of farm produce, to say nothing of the accompanying rehabilitation value and skill development.
Prison building hit a new high (seven stories) or a new low as the latest jail in Ontario goes ahead with prefab modular building blocks that look like something out of a sci-fi picture. It's to cost $600 million in a time when crime is going down.
Finally, some sense coming from the phony war on drugs. The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy basically came to the conclusion that the war on drugs is lost and its time to move away from the punitive aspect and focus on policies based on public health, human rights and common sense. (Toronto Star, Jan 23, 2011). Of course, removing money from the mix would do the trick right away. John Ayers

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

In the review of a book dealing with the mysteries of price, the Toronto Star (Jan 1, 2011) revealed that the amount the US government offered in compensation for lives lost on 9/11 ranged from $6.4 million for the families of the wealthiest victims to $250 000 for the families of the poorest people who died that day.
In the same review we are told that installing seat belts on US school buses would cost the equivalent of $40 million for each child's life likely to be saved (which probably explains why it has not been done). As we say, capitalists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. John Ayers

ALL RIGHT FOR SOME

"Andy Warhol once remarked that he liked "money on the wall". ...While economies crashed and governments slashed spending, an unprecedented number of incredibly wealthy people all over the world were effectively taking Warhol at his word. What they actually hung on their walls and stood in their rooms were Picassos, Modiglianis and Giacomettis, but at the mind-bending prices they paid for them, the effect was almost the same as if they had displayed a bunch of dollar bills or or more pertinently a bunch of Chinese yuan. Their spending spree meant that Christies, the world's largest auction house, announced yesterday sales of £3.3 billion ($5 billion) last year, a jump of 53 per cent on its 2009 performance and the highest total in the company's 245-year history." (Times, 28 January) RD

MINISKIRT MADNESS

"Russian Orthodox Church calls for dress code, says miniskirts cause 'madness'. A top official of the increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church has triggered a storm of outrage by calling for a "national dress code" that would force women to dress modestly in public and require businesses to throw out "indecently" clad customers. Women, said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, can't be trusted to clothe themselves properly. "It is wrong to think that women should decide themselves what they can wear in public places or at work," he said Tuesday. "If a woman dresses like a prostitute, her colleagues must have the right to tell her that." "Moreover," Archpriest Chaplin added, "if a woman dresses and acts indecently, this is a direct route to unhappiness, one-night stands, brief marriages followed by rat-like divorces, ruined lives of children, and madness." (Christian Science Monitor, 20 January) RD

A SENSE OF VALUES

We live in a society where many are concerned about world hunger, homelessness and rising unemployment, but the British Government have much more important issues to concern themselves with - primogeniture. This deals with the perplexing problem of whether or not if Prince William has a daughter before a son she can become queen. "Luckily the Prime Minister has recognised that this a matter of the deepest seriousness ... It is, said his spokesman, " a complex and difficult matter that requires careful and thoughtful consideration..." (Observer, 23 January) A jobless father of several children might consider his unpaid mortgage a trifle more difficult a problem than primogeniture though. RD

UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE USA

"In California, former auto worker Maria Gregg was out of work five months last year before landing a new job - at a nearly 20% pay cut. In Massachusetts, Kevin Cronan, who lost his $150,000-a-year job as a money manager in early 2009, is now frothing cappuccinos at a Starbucks for $8.85 an hour. In Wisconsin, Dale Szabo, a former manufacturing manager with two master's degrees, has been searching years for a job comparable to the one he lost in 2003. He's now a school janitor. They are among the lucky. There are 14.5 million people on the unemployment rolls, including 6.4 million who have been jobless for more than six months." (Wall Street Journal, 11 January) RD

who owns the North Pole - Part 26

Canadians have adopted a confrontational stance. A new opinion poll finds that Canadians are generally far less receptive to negotiation and compromises on disputes than their American neighbours. More than 40 per cent of Canadians said the country should pursue a firm line in defending its sections of the North, compared to just 10 per cent of Americans.

The international survey – conducted by EKOS Research for the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation – found that a majority of Canadians see Arctic sovereignty as the country’s top foreign-policy priority; they also believe military resources should be shifted to the North, even if it means taking them away from global conflicts.

Harper has made the Arctic a major political platform, taking every opportunity to remind Canadians that his government is determined to defend this country’s sovereignty in the Far North. The poll’s findings would suggest that Canadians have embraced his rhetoric.

“It is something that allows him to play the nationalism card, particularly since it resonates with the population,” said Brian MacDonald, a senior defence analyst with the Conference of Defence Associations.

edinburgh-unequalled

The gap between rich and poor in Edinburgh is bigger than in most other UK cities. Centre for Cities analyst Paul Swinney said: "It shows that despite Edinburgh's very strong performance in the ten years before the recession, that prosperity was not necessarily shared equally."

It ranked eighth for earnings, with an average weekly wage of £516.70.

POVERTY IN FLORIDA

"Nearly 1 million South Floridians need food stamps to get by - an increase of almost 200,000 in the last year alone. That jump is more than the entire population of Fort Lauderdale. "It's been a steady increase occurring every month for the last three, four years," said Florida Department of Children & Families spokesman Joe Follick. "It's obviously dramatic." Numbers released Friday show that in April 2007, before widespread layoffs and record unemployment levels, 422,233 people in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties received food stamps. By December 2010, that number more than doubled to 965,823." (Palm Beach Post, 8 January) RD

BOOZE BONANZA

"He made his fortune through musicals such as Cats and Phantom of the Opera. And now Andrew Lloyd Webber has added an extra £3.5 million to his bank balance with the sale of some choice bottles from his vast wine collection. The eagerly-anticipated sale, held at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong, featured 8,837 bottles of classic French wines, including what experts regard as the finest white Burgundies ever for sale in the region. Pre-sale estimates suggested that the 746 lots (mainly cases of 12 or six bottles, but also some individual bottles) would fetch £2.6 million but the salesroom was filled to capacity with what Sotheby's said was spirited and jovial bidding from all over Asia. Buyers bid in person, over the internet or by telephone." (Sunday Telegraph, 23 January) RD

On January 22 - Bloody Sunday

1905: "Bloody Sunday" occurred in St. Petersburg, when the Czar's troops killed 500 protesting workers

Bloody Sunday: The Revolution of 1905 On January 22, 1905, about 200,000 workers and their families approached the czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

They carried a petition asking for better working conditions, more personal freedom, and an elected national legislature. Nicholas II was not at the palace. His generals and police chiefs were. They ordered the soldiers to fire on the crowd. Between 500 and 1,000 unarmed people were killed.

Russians quickly named the event “Bloody Sunday.”

Lenin called the incident a “dress rehearsal” for the later revolution that would usher in the state capitalist Bolshevik regime.

Bloody Sunday provoked a wave of strikes and violence that spread across the country. Though Nicholas still opposed reform, in October 1905 he reluctantly promised more freedom. He approved the creation of the Duma —Russia’s first parliament.

The first Duma met in May 1906. Its leaders were moderates who wanted Russia to become a constitutional monarchy similar to Britain. Hesitant to share his power, the czar dissolved the Duma after ten weeks. Other Dumas would meet later. Yet none would have real power to make sweeping reforms.

WAR IS BIG BUSINESS

"Iraq will buy armaments worth $13 billion from the United States by 2013 and will spend another $13 bn on weapons later, a Baghdad newspaper reported citing an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman. Al Ittihad quoted Major General Mohammed Al Askari as saying that Iraq has already concluded a contract worth more than $13 bn with the United States. The money will be used to buy aircraft, helicopters, tanks, other armored vehicles, warships and missiles, to enter service with the Iraqi defense and interior ministries." (RIA Novosti, 9 January) RD

A TALE OF ONE CITY

A trip through London is like a trip through two different cities. On the one hand you have the homeless, the desperate and the down-at-heel individuals that scuttle around the main railway stations like King's Cross asking for your spare change, and on the other you have the undoubted opulence of the extremely rich. Here is a particularly obvious example of the latter. "The £1 billion One Hyde Park building in Knightsbridge, overlooking the park and a stone's throw from Harrods, has become the most desirable address in the world. Each square foot with its polished Breccio Paradiso marble and European Oak woods, costs at least £6,000, a new high for residential property anywhere in the world that is expected to reframe global prices for the super-rich. The average UK salary of £26,000 would pay for only the space occupied by a fitted Gaggenau coffee maker - one of the many gadgets in the high-security residences, with their bomb-proofed windows and panic rooms. The success of the scheme - the four penthouses have already changed hands for as much as £135 million - confirms London as the favoured playground and tax haven of the international elite." (Times, 20 January) RD

one law for the rich ...

The millionaire owner of the House of Bruar retail complex escaped a driving ban and was allowed to stay on the road despite now having 14 points on his licence after persuading a court it would cause him exceptional hardship. Birkbeck claimed he would be forced to sack staff at the shopping complex if he was banned from the road as no-one else in the company was capable of buying the goods on display at the upmarket shopping centre. He was fined £300.

Birkbeck was driving a £70,000, 3.6 litre Range Rover Vogue TDV8 when he was detected by police speeding at 90mph on the M90 motorway.

“If he is disqualified for six months there will be a large number of redundancies at House of Bruar...He would have no option but to let people go – breadwinners who live in the local area." Solicitor David McKie, defending, said.

Actually, to Socialist Courier, that sounds very much like blackmail.

Hero no more..

Sheridan no socialist

“Sheridan told he faces years in prison for lies about sex and socialism”, so ran one newspaper headline the day after a jury found the former MSP guilty of perjury (Times, 24 December).

We don’t know, or care, if he told lies about his sex life to get at a scandal rag that was trying to entrap him. It’s only the political aspect of the case that interests us, and it’s true that, as a reformist politician, he had certainly told lies about socialism. But this is the first time we have heard of this being a crime punishable by imprisonment. If it was, the prisons would be full of journalists, politicians and academics. Of course the Times – like the News of the World, owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch – was merely trying to discredit socialism.

Sheridan was a Trotskyist, originally of the Militant Tendency variety, and although he could no doubt explain why the USSR had been a “degenerate workers state”, or why some common or garden reform was a “transitional demand” and so a stepping stone to “socialism”, he was not that kind of Trotskyist.

Trotskyists, being Leninists, hold that workers are incapable of evolving beyond a “trade union consciousness” (defined by Lenin as “the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.”). So, according to them, putting the straight socialist case for common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit to workers is to cast pearls before swine.

Instead, according to Trotskyists, what must be put before workers are demands that the government introduce this or that reform within capitalism. Getting workers to support such “transitional demands” is the only way they calculate they can get the mass support which, when the government fails to respond, can be used to catapult their vanguard party to power. But this requires people on the ground who are capable of winning a personal following. Normally, the Trotskyist gurus who direct their organisation from the shadows, are not up to this. They require front men. As it happens, Militant has been rather successful in this, with Derek Hatton in Liverpool, Joe Higgins at the moment in Dublin, and Tommy Sheridan in Glasgow.

Sheridan first came to prominence in the anti-Poll Tax campaign of the 1980s when he, along with the rest of the Militant Tendency, was still boring from within the Labour Party. Sheridan earned a reputation for being an indefatigable fighter, defending non-payers before the courts and himself getting a six-month sentence for contempt of court.

The trouble, from the point of view of the Trotskyist gurus in the background, is that such front men have, because of their following, a degree of independence and can prove difficult to control. Which is what happened in Sheridan’s case. When Kinnock clamped down on Militant – Sheridan himself was expelled from the Labour Party in 1989 – the group’s leaders didn’t want to change their tactics. They wanted to continue boring from within the Labour Party, in accordance with the argument they had used for years, that when the workers began to move against capitalism this would begin as a swing to the left by the Labour Party, so that’s where the vanguard cadres should be. Sheridan and most others disagreed. They wanted to form an independent party, opposed to Labour. They won out and a new party called “Militant Labour” was formed (the minority are still somewhere in the Labour Party, so deeply buried as to be invisible). In Scotland this became, in 1998, the “Scottish Socialist Party” with Sheridan as leader. It departed from traditional Trotskyism by embracing the idea of Scottish independence which of course is quite irrelevant from a working class and socialist perspective.

In 1999 Sheridan was elected a member of the Scottish Parliament. He was re-elected in 2003 with 5 other SSP members. This was the heyday of “Scottish socialism” (more properly, Tartan leftwing reformism). Under other circumstances they might have held the balance of power and given parliamentary support in exchange for some reforms to an SNP government. But it was not to be. In 2004 the News of the World published allegations about Sheridan’s sex life. He (apparently) told the SSP executive that there was some truth in them but that he was going to deny them. A majority disagreed and he eventually resigned as leader and, after winning a libel case against the Murdoch scandal-rag, left the SSP to form a new party, “Solidarity Scotland’s Socialist Movement”. In the 2007 elections to the Scottish Parliament both parties were wiped out,

Neither of them stood for socialism, only for reforms of capitalism and an independent Scotland (i.e. an independent capitalist republic like southern Ireland). Solidarity’s founding statement, for instance, declared that it was “a socialist movement that fights for the redistribution of wealth from big business and the millionaires to working class people and their families.” It does do this, but this has nothing to do with socialism, which is not about the redistribution of wealth within capitalism but about the common ownership of the means of wealth production.

Following the end of his career as an MSP Sheridan has only been involved in minor-league reformist politics, standing for Bob Crow’s petty nationalist “No2 Europe” list in the 2009 European elections and for the Militant/SWP TUSC in last year’s general election (the Militant and SWP Trotskyists, despite reservations about his views on Scottish independence, had followed him out of the SSP into Solidarity). On both occasions he stood on a reformist platform, a series of demands that the government must do this or not to do that which would have left capitalism, and its problems, intact.

ALB
From Socialist Standard January 2011

A bunch of cults the lot of 'em

The cult of leadership

In 1997 Britain emerged from the dark days of Tory rule, liberated by the Labour Party—their path to victory illuminated by the dazzling smile and radiant glow of sincerity from Tony Blair, who promised "Things Can Only Get Better!" If only the People would trust him to lead them. It was He, and He alone, with his charm and iron-willed leadership, that brought victory to the Labour Party. It was He, and He alone, who could save Britain. It was He, and He alone, who was fit to give us leadership.

The Cult of Tony was born!
And the members of the Labour Party, from the knockers-on-doors to the MPs in Westminster, to the people who owed their very jobs to Tony, saw how He and He alone brought them victory. And they believed. They believed it was Tony what won it, they believed that Tony could do it, they believed they owed it all to Leadership. And they looked out into the darkness in the world, the places where Tony's light—alas!—did not and could not shine, and they knew what was the one thing needful.

The Cult of Leadership was born!
MORE LEADERS! More leaders was the answer. Wherever the darkness of poverty, inefficiency, despair and degradation existed in the Land, leaders were the solution. Things can get better, things must get better, but only if the resolute will of a Leader can be brought to them. But, how to find these great leaders? How to bring the resolute will to bear? Then, the London Bells spoke, and all became clear: new elections were needed.

The Cult of Elected Mayors was born!
Don't quite buy it? Well, neither do we. It seems a nice idea—everything running smoothly, no hassles, no delays, no backroom haggling or party politicking, simply One Man charging through the wilderness solving problems at a stroke. It is, though, just a fantasy. Leaders spend a lot of time, money and effort, trying to persuade us that someone, someone at least, is in control, and that we have some real control in our own lives, through (of course) them.

The truth is that no elected politician can control the market—which operates for the private gain of a tiny number of owners. As long as the market exists we cannot have control of our own lives, run things in our own, and our own communities' interests, because that would threaten the profits of the tiny few. Leaders can't change that. Only we can, by acting together, without leaders, to end the whole profit-driven, market system.

From Socialist Standard Editorial October 1999