Food for thought

The Toronto gravy issue that newly elected mayor Ford promised to get
rid of but can't seem to find, is back in the news. Ford's mouthpiece on
city council, Giorgio Mammoliti set up a Facebook page to support the
mayor. On it he promised to ban whining communists such as those
citizens who spoke against city budget cuts (libraries, day care, and
other such 'gravy' items). He warned that he could 'smell out'
communists among the Facebook members and defined them as 'anyone who is
able to work, doesn't want to work and wants everything for free.' More
than one thousand anti-Mammoliti complaints immediately filled his
bulleting board. This is the level that our so-called leaders have
dropped. Time to get rid of leaders? Yes! John Ayers

THE US CLASS SYSTEM

A popular myth about the USA is that it is less class-divided than Europe but a glance at recent developments in the housing market should bury that piece of nonsense. At a time when many workers in the USA are losing their homes in re-possessions the owning class is on a spending spree. "Try telling billionaires the U.S. housing market is in the dumps. Many of the world's richest have eagerly been snapping up lavish properties from coast to coast this year. Venture capitalist Yuri Milner broke price records with his $100 million Silicon Valley home purchase, Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone shelled out $85 million on Los Angeles Spelling Manor, and industrialist scion Alexander Rovt rescued Manhattan Henry T. Sloane Mansion out of foreclosure for $33 million, to name but a few." (Forbes. com, 7 September) RD

Not so cool

Almost a million households in Scotland will now be in fuel poverty after the last of the major suppliers announced a second price rise in less than a year.
Tom Lyon, energy expert at uSwitch.com, said: “We are in danger of seeing energy becoming an unaffordable luxury for the few instead of a household basic for the many. As a result many households are being forced to make unpalatable and sometimes even dangerous choices."

COOL BUT AT A PRICE

"Wow, what do you think sweetheart, don't I look fabulous in this" some workers may say, but behind their delight lurks the awful exploitation of other workers. "More than two dozen global clothing brands on Tuesday pledged to investigate a spate of mass faintings among Cambodian garment workers, the UN's labour agency said. The retailers said they would provide resources and international expertise to find out why hundreds of their suppliers' employees have collapsed recently, the International Labour Organisation said after a meeting in Phnom Penh. Among the retailers who supported the initiative were Gap, H&M, Walmart and Target, a source who attended the gathering but wished to remain anonymous told AFP." (Yahoo News, 6 September) Who cares about fainting Cambodians, don't I look cool. That is capitalism for you. RD

young and jobless

The number of 16 to 24-year-olds claiming Job-seeker’s Allowance last month leapt by 4500 from the previous year – a 10% rise to 46,300.

Leading children’s charity Barnardo’s warned that many of the young may be left on the employment scrapheap forever.

Food for thought

There will be no relief any time soon. David Olive writes in his
article, "A New World of Work, An Old Way of Working"(Toronto Star, July 30, 2011), "Imagine a world that is entirely materially insecure...scramble for whatever jobs they can get...labour long hours, with no assured wage. Their jobs are always at risk. Others are always prepared to do the same for less...jobs are inevitably of short duration...no benefits, or pensions. In most cases minimum wage laws don't apply...the sheer struggle for existence dominates. Culture, education, holidays? Forget it...

Students of history will recognize this world. It is industrializing England during the 19^th century, or parts of Latin America in the 20^th. -- The world that Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Freidrich Engels and later Che Guevara described and critiqued. But amazingly and tragically, it is also Canada in the 21^st  century."

 

Olive goes on to point out that the 'golden age' of work with fulltime jobs and benefits is being replaced by a stark world of work we thought we had conquered. The futility of reform! Only the establishment of a socialist society can put the boots to this nonsense. How about it? John Ayers

The same old story - same socialist answer

Scottish Socialist Party and its split, Sheridan's Solidarity, stand for an independent Scotland and a workers republic. Socialist Courier can only answer them the same as the Socialist Party replied to John Maclean's Scottish Workers' Republican Party call for the same back in 1925.

"The chief fallacy of their position is their insistence upon a Scottish Workers' Republic. This demand is both reactionary and Utopian. The struggle of the workers of the United Kingdom must be a united one. The workers are under the domination of a class who rule by the use of a political machine which is the chief governing instrument for England, Scotland, Wales, etc. To appeal to the workers of Scotland for a Scottish Workers' Republic is to arouse and foster the narrow spirit of Nationalism, so well used by our masters. Economically the demand is Utopian, as the development of capitalism has made countries more and more dependent on each other, both through the specialisation of industry or agriculture, and also by the force controlled by the Great Powers to suppress or control the smaller nations.

The history of " independent " Hungary, Poland, and the Balkan States shows that the realisation of " political independence " by a country leaves the workers' conditions untouched and actually worsens them in many cases.

The appeal to the worker in this Manifesto to "rally to the cause of a Workers' Republic for Scotland" is made "so that we might win you away from the service of the imperialist gang who direct their activities from London" If the worker is to be won for Socialism, it is by getting him to understand the principles of Socialism, and not by appealing to him to concentrate on Scottish affairs. Socialism is international.”

This is still our position in face of those today who seek to revive the idea of a “Scottish Workers’ Republic”

Rich Scotland

Scotland's million-pound-plus property market is bucking the trend as wealthy foreign buyers snap up prime residential homes across the country. Georgian townhouses in Edinburgh, properties within putting distance of a golf course in St Andrews and Highland sporting estates are particularly in demand by international buyers.

Figures released by the selling agents Savills yesterday show the top end of the property market performing well, with 146 high-value homes costing £1 million or more selling in 2010, compared with 106 in 2009. Sales at £1 million and more during the first six months of this year were up by a third on last year, from 50 to almost 70.

Food for thought

Austerity riots have been experienced all over the world and it is at least part of the cause of the Arab Spring. According to David Olive (Toronto Star, Aug 13, 2011) the American austerity measures have left 46 million Americans (15%) reliant on food stamps – a staggering figure in the richest nation ever on earth! Surely these workers will figure out what is happening to all that wealth. Will they find the socialist answer? John Ayers

Under-employed

While Scotland’s official unemployment rate is 7.7%, combined with people seen as “economically inactive” and “underemployed”, then what it terms as the “full-time unemployment deficit” rises to 17.25% or 468,301 Scots the STUC has said.

Grahame Smith, STUC general secretary, said:
“There are simply far too many people in Scotland at this time unable to access the quality, full-time work opportunities necessary to provide for a decent standard of living for themselves and their families.” He added: “Of course, the UK Government is continuing down the road of austerity, cutting jobs when they are most needed. There is little sign of hope for the half-million people in Scotland who are unemployed, inactive or underemployed.”

Food for thought

Capitalism being capitalism, poverty raises its ugly head with an alarming regularity. A group of well meaning advocates for the poor are proposing a new Ontario Housing Benefit to help the poor with housing costs (Toronto Star, Aug 26, 2011). On in five renters in the province spend more than half their income on housing, and for food bank users, that percentage is seventy-two. Renter's incomes fell by $6 396 between 1981 and 2006. More than 152 000 Ontario households are now waiting up to fifteen years for affordable housing. Successive governments have chopped subsidized housing programs or sold them off as liabilities. Astounding, when we have the materials to hand, and construction workers looking for employment. The proposed benefit would give $100 per month to 200,000 low-income tenants. The cost would be $240 million against poverty costs in health care, social assistance, and foregone tax revenue of $38 billion. Of course, government, constrained by short term goals and budgets will never go for the idea just as they had no intention in making good on an all- party promise in 2006 to reduce poverty by 25% in five years. It grew. John Ayers

Who owns the North Pole Part 41- No-one says Greenpeace

Greenpeace director John Sauven he plans to save the North Pole from big oil by building a legal wall, an international prohibition, which will prevent the countries surrounding the Arctic from claiming the top of the world for themselves, in order to exploit the mineral riches which lie under its seabed.

The melting of the Arctic ice, as the global climate warms, is opening up the great frozen wilderness, the world's most untouched ecosystem; indeed, this week a new record minimum for the ice is likely to be reached, surpassing even the record low of September 2007, which was such a plunge downwards it astonished polar scientists. It means that climate change is having its most unmistakable effect so far on the fabric of the Earth. Yet it also means that gluttonous eyes are being cast on the Arctic for what it holds, not least its 160bn barrels of oil, both by the "supermajor" oil companies such as Shell and Exxon Mobil, and the countries by which the Arctic Ocean is surrounded – Canada, Russia, the US, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland). They are looking to extend their territorial waters and consequent sovereignty of the seabed out to 90 degrees North.

"And what we want do," says John Sauven, who is executive director of Greenpeace UK, "is say that this area, which is currently not national territory, this area of sea ice around the North Pole, should be a 'global commons', collectively owned by humanity under the auspices of the United Nations. It has huge symbolic importance as a pristine ecosystem. Yet the oil companies and the surrounding nations are saying, this might be at the ends of the earth, but we're just going to go in and carve it up. The Arctic sums up the complete and utter madness, the bankruptcy of their strategy. They will go to these extreme lengths to dig up the last bit of fossil fuels because they cannot be bothered to deal with energy efficiency and find alternatives, and they're prepared to suffer all the consequences, the impacts on wildlife and the fact that you can't do anything about them. It's insanity."

So now Greenpeace is planning a global campaign to make the North Pole off-limits. Internalionalised. No development. No oil drilling. No territorial claims.

"The Arctic is an iconic part of the global commons, rather like the Amazon for the rainforest," Mr Sauven says. "Is it just to be a grab by these huge corporations to extract the resources, which will have a calamitous impact on the world?"

GOVERNMENT PAYMASTERS

Recent proposed legislation by the government to allow house building on previously designated green areas has aroused some opposition, but the background to the proposals is likely to cause even more resentment. "Dozens of property firms have given a total of £3.3 million to the party over the past three years, including large gifts from companies seeking to develop rural land. Developers are also paying thousands of pounds for access to senior Tories through the Conservative Property Forum, a club of elite donors which sets up breakfast meetings to discuss planning and property issues. The disclosures are likely to provoke a new "cash-for-access"row and will give rise to fears that planning policies could have been influenced by powerful figures from the property industry." (Daily Telegraph, 10 September) The newspapers fears about "powerful figures" influencing the government seems somewhat naive. The whole purpose of legislation inside capitalism is to accommodate the wishes of the owning class. RD

Snouts in the trough

One-third of Scotland’s “double-jobbing” MSPs are continuing to collect salaries from council jobs, four months after being elected to £58,000-a-year posts at Holyrood.

Unions have criticised those still collecting the salaries, which comes at a time of unprecedented redundancies and reductions in workers’ terms and conditions.

Martin Doran, who heads the GMB union in Glasgow, said: “...my feeling is that this is an obscenity. If these people had any decency they would stand down.”

VILLAINS AND MORE VILLAINS

The use of torture or the mistreating of prisoners is completely unlawful and would never be countenanced by the British Army we are assured by our politicians. So how do they explain the following discovery? "An Iraqi man died after suffering an "appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence" in a "very serious breach of discipline" by UK soldiers, a year-long inquiry has found. Its chairman, Sir William Gage, condemned "corporate failure" at the Ministry of Defense over the use of banned interrogation methods in Iraq. Baha Mousa died with 93 injuries in British army custody in Basra in 2003." (BBC News, 8 September) It is surely significant that the authorities have dragged their feet on this enquiry. Eight years and a year long investigation have helped to blunt the events - or so they hope. His widow and children might think differently. Baha Mousi was found to be innocent. RD

HEROES AND VILLAINS

British newspapers are fond of depicting capitalism as a struggle between the good guys and the bad guys with the British always being the good guys. This is a complete fantasy of course. Whenever it suits their political and economic interests they will side with mass murders, torturers and dictators. "The Security Service MI5 asked Colonel Gadaffi's secret service for regular updates on what terrorist suspects were revealing under interrogation in Libyan prisons, where torture was routine. MI5 also agreed to trade information with Libyan spymasters on 50 British based Libyans judged to be a threat to Gadaffi's regime." (Sunday Times, 4 September) These disclosures only became public when documents were found in the ruins of the British Embassy in Tripoli. RD

Scotland the Brave?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, part of the World Socialist Movement, argue that every nation state is by its very nature anti-working class. The “nation” is a myth as there can be no community of interests between two classes in antagonism with one another, the non-owners in society and the owners (the workers and the capitalists). The state ultimately exists only to defend the property interests of the owning class at any given point in history – which is why modern states across the world send the police and army in to break strikes and otherwise seek to protect the interests of the capitalists and “business” at every turn.

The goal of the socialist movement is not to assist in the creation of even more states but to establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible – but nation states will be consigned to the history books where they belong.

Constitutional reform such as Scottish independence is of no benefit or relevance to us. It leaves our lives and the problems the profit system causes completely unchanged. Exploitation through the wages system continues. Unemployment continues. A crumbling health service, a chaotic transport system, a polluted environment, failing schools, rising crime and drug addiction and the general breakdown of society all continue. As far as solving these problems is concerned, constitutional reform is just a useless irrelevancy.

We are told by the nationalists that it would be an extension of democracy, bringing power nearer to the people, so how can socialists not be in favour of this? Yes, Socialists are in favour of democracy, and socialism will be a fully democratic society, but full democracy is not possible under capitalism. Supporters of capitalism who talk about “democracy” always mean only political democracy since economic democracy--where people would democratically run the places where they work--is out of the question under capitalism, based as it is on these workplaces being owned and controlled by and for the benefit of a privileged minority. An independent Scotland can have the most democratic constitution imaginable but this won’t make any difference to the fact that profits have to come before meeting needs under capitalism. The people’s will to have their needs met properly is frustrated all the time by the operation of the economic laws of the capitalist system which no political structure, however democratic, can control.

But socialists are just as much opposed to British nationalism as we are to Scottish nationalism. Just because we are not prepared to back the efforts of Scottish nationalists to break away from the United Kingdom--and vigorously oppose their efforts to split the trade union movement--does not mean that we are Unionists. We don’t support the Union. We just put up with it while we get on with our work of convincing people to reject world capitalism in favour of world socialism.

HOME OF THE BRAVE?

It is the most developed capitalist nation in the world, but there is more to the USA than shiny cadillacs, penthouses and luxury swimming pools. Behind the Hollywood luxury of the owning class lurks the reality for many members of the American working class. "A long way down the US housing ladder, beneath the grisly 'projects' of The Wire and the trailer parks hymned by Eminem, beneath the slums of New Orleans and the ghettos of Detroit, you'll find the long-stay hotel. Cheap, not very cheerful, and pretty much a last resort, these institutions provide four walls and a roof, for a few hundred bucks a month. It's some of the cheapest accommodation you'll find anywhere in the US, aside from a cardboard box. Long-stay hotels can be found in almost every major American city." (Independent, 3 September) RD

THE PRICE OF PROGRESS

The development of capitalism in Western Europe led to the displacement of thousands of farm workers, pollution and human misery. The same development is now taking place in China. "In the dust-blown mountains of China's coal belt, locals have lived for years with choking clouds of soot and the continual roar of mines that never sleep, digging for 24 hours a day. Now they face being buried alive as China tries to extract every last nugget of coal from beneath them. Shanxi Huang Jia Po is a village on the edge. For centuries, 500 farmers have lived here, carving stepped fields into the side of their mountain and planting corn, marrows and aubergines in the fertile yellow soil that covers Shanxi province. But the children of the farmers will have to live somewhere else, because it is only a matter of time before the village falls into the honeycomb of mining tunnels below." (Daily Telegraph, 3 September) In its relentless drive for more and more profit capitalism pays scant heed to the needs and aspirations of the working class. RD

FINANCIAL WIZARDS

The supporters of capitalism are always telling socialists that the owning class enjoy their elevated social status because of their masterful abilities to operate the financial and commercial system. The news that US authorities are to sue 17 major banks for losses on mortgage-backed investments that cost tens of billions of dollars seems to contradict that notion. "The Federal Housing Finance Agency said it was taking action against banks including Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and HSBC. The agency says they misrepresented the quality of the mortgages they sold during the housing bubble. The values plunged as the US was engulfed in the financial crisis. The FHFA oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.The two firms lost more than $30bn (£18.5bn), partly because of their investments in the subprime mortgages, and were bailed out by the US government. Since the rescues, US taxpayers have spent more than $140bn to keep the firms afloat." (BBC News, 2 September) $140 billions - some masterful ability! RD