A TORTUROUS SYSTEM

Every country in the world that engages in military conflict always claims that they carry out engagements in an honourable and humane fashion. It is always their opponents who are accused of dirty tactics such as torture, but recent events have shown that Britain like ever other capitalist nation has dirty hands when engaged in military conflict. 'The Ministry of Defence last night confirmed it had paid out £14m in compensation to more than 200 Iraqis who claimed that British forces detained them illegally and tortured them. Human rights organisations and lawyers for former detainees described the abuse as systemic and said it was carried out by military interrogators who were following their UK training instructions and the orders given to them in Iraq. A total of £8.3m was paid to 162 Iraqis this year, while 17 received pay-outs last year and 26 in 2010, a national newspaper reported.' (Daily Telegraph, 21 December) In the struggle for markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials and political influence every country uses the most ruthless tactics. RD

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER

We should be used by now to the crazy indulgences of the the world's owning class but this takes a bit of beating. Forbes magazine ranked the Yoovidhaya family as the fourth richest family in Thailand this year, with an estimated net worth of $5.4 billion. But the grandson of Red Bull creator Chaleo Yoovidhya, is known for milking his family's deep pockets for all they are worth. 'In October of this year, 27-year-old Vorayud Yoovidhaya was accused in the hit-and-run death of a police officer and had his father pay the officer's family $97,000 to stall the civil lawsuit. The car involved in the accident was a Ferrari and is valued at about $1 million.' (Business Insider, 19 December) RD

NO HOUSING PROBLEM HERE

We are at present living during an economic recession and we are assured by politicians that we must all share the burden of this market downturn. It would seem, however that members of the capitalist class are determined that some of their favoured clique will manage to get by quite well during this period of hardship. 'Mark Carney, the new governor of the Bank of England, will receive a £5,000-a-week "accommodation allowance" on top of a salary worth £624,000 , it has been announced. ....The Canadian's £250,000 annual housing allowance was confirmed by the Bank of England's non-executive directors, who revealed that it was offered to him before he accepted the job last month. ....The size of the housing allowance will give Mr Carney the option of living in several of the most sought-after and expensive parts of London. In his price bracket, estate agents are currently listing properties including a 5-bedroom house on Oakley Street in Chelsea (£4,500 a week) or a five-bed house on Elm Tree Road in St John's Wood for a similar price.' (Daily Telegraph, 19 December) RD

A New Year’s Revolution

We wish all Socialist Courier readers a Happy New Year. We do so wish them that but at the present time the signs of it being happy are none too hopeful. At the dawn of another new year it behoves us to look backwards at the past. 2012 was the year in which world crisis of capitalism continued unabated and working people suffered attacks upon our living standards from the bosses in the public and private sectors. The world was shaken with wars and rumours of wars. 2013 bodes to be little different. The current crisis has highlighted the fact that the capitalist class are unable and unwilling to provide for the needs of working people.

While many have been carrying on the class struggle in their daily lives, we have nonetheless been steadily losing ground. Why is it that the potential majority for world-change, the proverbial 99%, are still working in relative isolation from one another? Why aren’t we joining the dots and bringing together the full power of our class into a single-focused movement for the revolutionary transformation of production and distribution so that all the fruits of the world can be shared by all of the world?  Why aren’t we united and up in arms against catastrophic global warming, resource depletion, endless war and mass starvation? How is it possible that tens of thousands of organisations and millions of environmental and justice-minded individuals have been thwarted by the capitalist few?

Let us ring in the new with a New Year resolution to strive to build the Socialist Party and to speed the Revolution. We will raise the red flag, sing the "Internationale" and celebrate the establishment of a free and humane society in the next new year. Let us show that our ideas are more than just ideas but a practical feasible future. Let us then stand together and enter the new year shoulder-to-shoulder.

Our demands are most moderate – we only want the Earth.

Best wishes for the New Year to all our class, and the liberation of humanity as a whole! 

Happy Hogmanay, comrades

NATIONAL ILL-HEALTH SERVICE (2)

If you are a member of the working class and find yourself in need of urgent medical attention let us hope you do not suffer the fate of the many tens of thousands of patients who are being kept on trolleys or in ambulances because there are not enough hospital beds. 'Some are 'warehoused' in corridors or side rooms for up to 12 hours before being taken to a ward. Others are parked outside in ambulances for up to 30 minutes until they are allowed to be admitted. Experts warn that such patients are liable to deteriorate without access to extra oxygen, monitoring equipment, call bells or even meal rounds. .......... Department of Health figures show that in the last 12 months a total of 125,887 patients have waited for between four and 12 hours to be transferred to a ward after being seen by a doctor in A&E.' (Daily Mail, 27 December) Needless to say you would not suffer this NHS treatment if you were a member of the owning class. RD

THE PROMISED LAND?

Capitalism is worldwide and it produces social problems no matter where it operates. Even in relatively economically advanced Israel the spectre of poverty and hunger is present. 'More families are going without food and more children are forced to go begging, according to a report from the Latet Israeli Humanitarian Aid organization, released on Monday. The 2012 Alternative Poverty Report from Latet, a non-government umbrella group for food aid organizations in Israel, found that 10 per cent of children who live in impoverished families receiving support resorted to begging, up from just three percent in 2011. The report also found that 50% of children from struggling families were required to work in order to help maintain the household.' (The Times of Israel, 17 December) This is hardly the land flowing with milk and honey dreamt of by all those zealous pioneers who struggled for a homeland for dispossessed Jewish refugees. RD

Forward to the past?

The economic crisis has provoked a number of "non-capitalist" schemes to ameliorate the reductions in workers' living standards. Co-operatives and "peoples banks" [credit unions] are being hailed as alternatives to capitalist businesses. These attempts, however, do not significantly challenge the status quo. Creating a "non-capitalist" sector is like reinventing the wheel. We have had the experience of the 19th century thrift movement of savings banks and building societies and the local Co-op yet some still have not learn the lessons of the past.

Some advocate that workers should create a "non-capitalist" economic sector that could compete with the big capitalist enterprises and gradually overturn the existing order. If workers co-ops function efficiently under self-management, surely all other industries could be run in this manner goes the argument. Theorists of the co-operative movement see it as a movement that will eventually outcompete and replace ordinary capitalist businesses, leading to the coming of “the Co-operative Commonwealth” (which is often used as an alternative name for socialism). They would constitute, as it were, little oases in the desert of capitalism. The movement would grown until finally the workers would have achieved their emancipation.

The creation of cooperatives may very well offer an example of self-management but they simply cannot compete with the economic might of modern capitalism. We cannot self-manage capitalism in our own interests and the only way we can really live without exploitation is by abolishing capitalism. The state can be counted on to represent and protect the interests of the privileged minority. A "non-capitalist" sector just do not have the same resources at its disposal and therefore cannot beat the capitalist sector at its own game. In any endeavour to challenge their capitalist rivals, co-operatives would require to hire wage labour, resulting in exploitation. History is littered with the experience of failed co-operatives or corrupted co-operatives. Either the cooperatives "sell-out" or they are "put-out" by market-forces. We know what happened. This was because they had to compete with ordinary capitalist businesses on the same terms as them and so were subject to the same competitive pressures, to keep costs down and to to maximise the difference between sales revenue and costs (called “profits” in ordinary businesses, but “surplus” by the co-op). The co-operative movement was outcompeted. Cooperatives in a capitalist economy are still capitalist enterprises. Co-ops facing competition have one option other than cutting wages which is to go for the niche market: make the co-op part of their brand and market themselves to people for whom that would be a selling point, aim for "ethical consumer" market.

As with our position on reforms, we do not oppose reforms per se if they are to the workers' advantage, but we do not support reformism, a political policy of proposing palliatives as half-way measures towards socialism and similarly we do not view setting up co-ops as a revolutionary strategy or one which advances the interests of the working class as a whole. It isn't something to be promoted as anything more than a mere coping mechanism to survive a bit better under capitalism. The Socialist Party have nothing against working in a 'workers' cooperative if it means better conditions at work under capitalism and not being treated like a piece of trash every single day. We'd all rather work for a boss who at least treats us like human beings. But we emphasise that co-operatives can only ever involve a minority of workers, and the more they are integrated into the capitalist economy and its profit- seeking, the more their members will have to discipline and pressurise themselves in the way the old bosses did - what is known as "self-managed exploitation". The fact is that there is no way out for workers within the capitalist system. At most, co-operatives can only make our situation a little less unbearable.

French poverty

A plea for help by the head of a French charity, struggling to cope with an “explosion” in demand, has highlighted the increase in poverty in France.

Olivier Berthe, president of Restos du Cœur (Restaurants with Heart), which hands out food parcels and hot dinners to those most in need, reported a 12 percent rise in the number of people coming through its doors, which, according to Berthe, represents an extra 100,000 compared to this time last year.  “We know that the situation we are in is going to deteriorate and we will have to take measures to manage it. If our donors do not react then we will not be able to cope,” Berthe said.

In the winter of 2011/2012 the charity distributed 115 million meals compared to just 8.5 million in 1985,

 

BEHIND THE GLAMOUR - THE REALITY

Every day you can see the adverts on television and in the newspapers telling you what an exciting life can be yours by joining the army, but here are some sobering statistics. 'As many as 12 active-duty soldiers committed suicide in November, pushing the Army above last year's record number of suicides with one month left to go in the year, officials said today. With the deaths in November, of which one has been confirmed as suicide, the Army has now had 177 suspected suicides among active-duty soldiers this year. Last year's total of confirmed suicides was 165. Of the deaths this year, 113 have been confirmed and 64 deaths are still under investigation. Typically, about 90 per cent of suspected suicides are confirmed.' (Army Times, 13 December) We would warn all unemployed workers who in desperation may be considering joining the army that the adverts might claim "It's a man's life in the army", but it can just as easy turn out to be a man's death. RD

The Last Poem

Eight former army lieutenants have been charged in the killing of Chilean singer and songwriter Victor Jara during the 1973 coup that toppled President Salvador Allende. His body was found riddled with bullets and bearing signs of torture.

 VICTOR JARA'S LAST POEM
(Written in the football stadium cum concentration camp, where the Scottish national side to their eternal shame ignobly chose to play at a few years later)

We are five thousand
Confined in this little part of town
We are five thousand
How many of us are there throughout the country?

Such a large portion of humanity
With hunger, cold, horror and pain
Six among us have already been lost
And have joined the stars in the sky.

One killed, another beaten
As I never imagined a human being
could be beaten
The other four just wanted to put an end
To their fears

One by jumping down to his death
The other smashing his head against a wall
But all of them
Looking straight into the eyes of death.

We are ten thousand hands
That can no longer work
How many of us are there
Throughout the country?

The blood shed by our comrade President
Has more power than bombs and machine guns
With that same strength our collective fist
Will strike again some day.

Song, How imperfect you are!
When I most need to sing, I cannot
I cannot because I am still alive
I cannot because I am dying

It terrifies me to find myself
Lost in infinite moments
On which silence and shouts
Are the objectives of my song

What I now see, I have never seen
What I feel and what I have felt
Will make the moment spring again. 

CRIME AND CAPITALISM

 

The world of entertainment whether on TV or film has a love affair with crime. Every day we can switch on our telly and see super-smart policemen solving major crimes, but most crime in capitalism is far from glamorous or sophisticated. 'In deprived areas like Rotherham, where crime has increased by 28 per cent in the last 12 months, the poor have been reduced to stealing groceries and other essential items just to survive. The claims come days after it was reported that the number of people turning to charity food banks this year is expected to double to almost 250,000, and charities said people were walking up to 20 miles to claim emergency handouts because they could not afford public transport. In Rotherham, many shoplifters are now targeting everyday items rather than luxury goods, according to the South Yorkshire Police, interviewed by the BBC.' (First Post, 18 December) This isn't clever bank robberies it is mothers nicking dried milk to feed their kids. Hardly prime time material for the telly. RD

DIPLOMACY AND DOUBLE DEALING

 

It has been said that "a diplomat is someone sent abroad to lie for his country", but Jack Straw has proved you can be a diplomat without leaving the country. 'Britain has agreed to pay £2.2 million to the family of a Libyan dissident who claimed that Jack Straw and M16 played a part in their kidnap and forced return to Colonel Gaddafi's Libya.' (Times, 14 December) Sami al-Saadi, who was tortured during six years of detention had been forced on a plane with his family from Hong Kong to Libya in March 2004. The former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is quoted as saying about the incident: "At all times I was scrupulous in carrying out my duties in accordance with the the law." So kidnap and torture are "in accordance with the law" are they? RD

Slavery statistics

Buying and selling people into forced labor is still a thriving business. Slavery is endemic to global capitalism.

There is a global slave population of between 20 million and 30 million people from South and Southeast Asia, along with China, Russia, Albania, Belarus, and Romania. There is a significant slave presence across North Africa and the Middle East. There is also a major slave trade in Africa. Slavery persists in Mauritania, where children of slaves are passed on to their slave-holders' children. And the North Korean gulag system, which holds 200,000 people, is essentially a constellation of slave-labor camps.  Most contemporary slavery is based on people-trafficking. There are likely more slaves in the world today than there have been at any other time in human history. For some quick perspective on that point: Over the entire 350 years of the transatlantic slave trade, 13.5 million people were taken out of Africa, meaning there are twice as many enslaved right now as there had been in that whole 350-year span.

 If the global slave population is 27 million, it's still 27 million out of a total of 7 billion, making it -- and here's the paradox -- the smallest fraction of the global population to be enslaved ever. If slavery generates between $30 billion and $45 billion a year to the global economy, it's a big industry, but it also amounts to the smallest ratio of the global economy ever represented by slave labor and slave output. While slavery has grown in absolute terms, it's shrunk in relative terms.

NATIONAL ILL-HEALTH SERVICE

 

From time to time various supporters of Britain's National Health Service will boast that it is the best in the world. If that is so we shudder at the fate of workers in other parts of the world. Between 2002 and 2011 there were 35 cases of mistreatment brought against the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch and three against the Worcester Royal reports the Sunday Telegraph. "It says Worcester Acute Hospital Trust is to pay out a total of £410,000 in compensation. According to the newspaper, instances of mistreatment at the Alexandra Hospital include the case of an 84-year-old man admitted to the hospital in June 20009 after a fall, who was prescribed a special diet but was not fed properly and starved to death. Among other allegations are claims that an elderly woman was left unwashed for 11 weeks and nurses taunted patients. (BBC News, 23 December) RD

THE HOMELESS PROBLEM

A walk through the streets of London would reveal thousands of empty houses. Many of these have been empty for months if not years but this is not a sign of a solution to the housing problem as these figures show. "Figures for the first six months of 2012 indicate that the housing crisis has worsened. They show that 1,910 families with children were forced to stay in B&B accommodation, compared with 1,020 in the same period in 2011. A record 820 families lived in such accommodation for more than six weeks in the same period – higher than the number for the whole of 2011." (Guardian, 24 December) What the working class suffer from is not a housing problem but a poverty problem. RD

Joe Corrie - Rebel Poems

Joe Corrie (1894-1968), poet and playwright, was a Fife miner, and his early poems were published in the left-wing paper, the 'Forward'. He has been described as "a class-consious poet." T. S. Eliot described him as "the greatest Scots poet since Burns". Many of his poems have now been set to music by such as the Battlefield Band. The Corrie Centre in Cardenden was named after him as belated recognition of his talents.

Corrie's first plays, The Shillin' a Week-Man and The Poacher, were performed by his group of fellow miners, the Bowhill Village Players, during the 1926 General Strike. In Time o' Strife Corrie dramatised the subsequent lockout. He wrote the play about the strike (which was heading to a bitter, protracted defeat) because he was on strike. Had he not been on strike, he couldn’t have written a full length play of any kind. The play itself is a family argument about how to make the best out of defeat. The last line will resonate with the defeated miners of the 84-85 strike. “Sing tho they hae ye crushed in the mire…you’ll win through yet, for there’s nae power on earth can crush the men who can sing on a day like this.”

Some of his poetry

I AM THE COMMON MAN

I am the Common Man
I am the brute and the slave
I am the fool, the despised
From the cradle to the grave

I am the hewer of coal
I am the tiller of soil
I am serf of the seas
Born to bear and to toil

I am the builder of halls
I am the dweller of slums
I am the filfth and the scourge
When winter's depression comes

I am the fighter of wars
I am the killer of men
Not for a day or an age
But again and again and again

I am the Common Man
But Masters of mine take heed
For you have put into my head
Oh! many a wicked deed


For other poems click read more

"Peace on Earth" means no more war

Capitalism pursues "war on earth." In 2012 the U.S. launched over 330 drone attacks in Afghanistan where over 1700 Afghan children have been killed or harmed in the conflict -- 85 times the number of the horrific Sandy Hook School massacre. The money spent funding wars and weaponry leaves millions in hunger. Extreme poverty, as defined by the World Bank, means living on less than $1.25 a day. More than 1 billion people struggle to get by on this paltry amount. They work hard but have little chance of escaping the poverty trap into which they were born. They have life expectancies up to 30 years less than we do. Their children die from diarrhea, pneumonia, measles and malaria, which no longer kill people in developed countries. UNICEF estimates that more than 8 million children die from avoidable, poverty-related causes each year. That's 22,000 child deaths every day from diseases that we already know how to prevent or cure. We need to provide the means to spread the most basic healthcare — and clean water, sanitation and bed nets to prevent malaria. On top of that, capitalist greed destroys the environment and catastrophic climate change is upon us.

To re-title John Lennon's song , Happy Xmas, the class war is not over

The class division of society is the main source of conflict. When the world's peoples stop using money and exchange and abandon private ownership of property, the following conditions will quickly be alleviated or come to an end: war; scarcity; poverty; inequality; slavery; wage-slavery; theft and criminality; most violence; hoarding, including the hoarding of ideas and inventions which is the the suppression of knowledge, learning, intelligence and wisdom; most lifestyle-related illnesses and many poverty-linked diseases; the repression of individuality and free expression; the mass mind-control of media propaganda; the destruction of family and community relationships; destruction of the environment; the separation of humans from nature - the denial of life and the joy of living.

What are we waiting for?

Merry Marxmas from Socialist Courier

Blue Xmas (To Whom It May Concern).

Merry Christmas
I hope you have a white one, but for me it’s blue

Blue Christmas, that’s the way you see it when you’re feeling blue
Blue Xmas, when you’re blue at Christmastime
you see right through,
All the waste, all the sham, all the haste
and plain old bad taste

Sidewalk Santy Clauses are much, much, much too thin
They’re wearing fancy rented costumes, false beards and big fat phony grins
And nearly everybody’s standing round holding out their empty hand or tin cup
Gimme gimme gimme gimme, gimme gimme gimme
Fill my stocking up.
All the way up.
It’s a time when the greedy

give a dime to the needy
Blue Christmas, all the paper, tinsel and the fal-de-ral
Blue Xmas, people trading gifts that matter not at all
What I call
Fal-de-ral
Bitter gall…….Fal-de-ral

Lots of hungry, homeless children in your own backyards
While you’re very, very busy addressing
Twenty zillion Christmas cards
Now, Yuletide is the season to receive and oh, to give and ahh, to share
But all you December do-gooders rush around and rant and rave and loudly blare
Merry Christmas
I hope yours is a bright one, but for me it’s blue.

Bob Dorough
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dorough

Tiny Tims

After the Celtic Tiger crash more than 18 per cent of children in the Irish Republic were at risk of, and almost 9 per cent were actually in, consistent poverty.

In 2009, the most up to date figures available, there were 233,192 people, or 5.5 per cent, in 'consistent poverty' and 579,819 people, or 14.1 per cent, 'at risk of poverty'. At risk means an income of €230 a week for an adult; consistent means unable to afford new clothes, meat or fish, or being unable to heat your home.

Xmas eve at the grotto

From the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Hello little boy, climb onto my knee and tell me what you would like for Xmas. A BMX bike? A computer? Or perhaps you'd like something more traditional like a train set?"
"Well actually Santa, what I'd really like is a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth".
"Hee hee, well, er, how about a nice Action Man instead hmmm?"
"But I don't like playing with dolls".
"Dolls? Dolls! Action Man isn't a doll. He's a real live, or rather real imitation live, bucho macho man. Why he's got muscles on his nostrils; he comes complete with all action SAS uniform, guns, grenades, knives, the lot. And for a little extra you can have a complete change of outfit. There's the riot-cops' gear with a super long club for clobbering pickets. Nothing namby-pamby about Action Man".
"Well, I still think that it's a doll, and anyway I don't fancy all that simulated violence".
"Hmm, okay then, how about something more sedate like the game of Monopoly?"
"But I want to abolish money".
"Okay, okay, look here's a good one. Hangman".
"What's that about then?"
"Eh, let me see. Oh yes, it's rather like one of those interminable game shows that are never off the telly. What happens is this: your opponent makes up a word which you have got to find out by guessing the letters one by one. Every time you guess wrong, that's another step up to the gallows. If you guess wrong too many times then your man is hanged, hee, hee hee".
"It's a bit reactionary isn't it?"
"Well, it is only a symbolic hanging you know. I mean they don't actually hang anyone . . . Wait a minute, these television producers are always looking for new ideas for telly shows, this could be the break I've been waiting for. Hey kid, how would you like to hold the throne for five minutes until I call my agent? . . . "
"Hey Santa, I'm not finished yet".
"What? Oh okay, another half an hour and I'll be on my break anyway. Right, where were we?"

"You were asking me what I wanted for Xmas and I've been trying to tell you that what I'd really like is to have socialism".
"Listen you little Commie runt, how would you like me to jam this plastic pixie right down your . . . Ulp!... here comes my boss. Quick - give me a big smile. C'mon you can do better than that. Wider, that's it. Now wave to him and I'll let go of your nuts. Phew! There he goes into Santa's workshop. Boy are Santa's helpers in for a shock. Now look son, let's be reasonable, there's a big queue forming. After all, if they all thought like you, well, where would we be?"
"In a happy sane society".
"I knew you were a pervert. Look son give me a break. I'm not really Santa Claus you know. I'm actually an out of work actor between engagements and I can tell you it's not easy sitting here all day like a white haired ventriloquist".
"Couldn't you get some work in television then?"
"If only I could. I did once manage to get a walk-on part in a soap opera or to be more accurate it was a sit-down part".
"What part did you play?"
(Sigh) "Santa Claus".
"Listen, socialism won't have Santa Claus, nor for that matter will there be such a thing as Xmas".
"But that would mean that I'd be out of a job".
"Everyone would be out of a job, at least in the sense that there would no longer be employment which is what people really mean when they talk about work. Since there will no longer be employers and employed, people will be free to do the kind of work they really enjoy doing and that includes acting, because people will still want to be entertained".
"Good grief, it's as if a veil has been lifted from my eyes, everything is so clear now . . . "
"You're overacting".
"Sorry, was it so obvious? I studied the Method you know. Anyway, I'm going to do something positive for a change, and to begin with I'll remove this stupid wig. There, I've done it. What a great feeling. Now I think I'll burn the wig. Hee hee".
"You mean that you've grasped the concept that I've been explaining as easily as that?"
"Of course dear boy, it's so simple that even a seven year old could grasp it".
"Well I'm certainly relieved to hear you say that".
"Oh, why?"
"Because now you can explain it to that long line of howling kids. Merry Xmas".

Tone