Independence - No Solution

Alex Salmon's argument for independence is that devolution had failed to solve the problems facing people in Scotland and that an independent Scotland was the only framework within which these problems can be solved.

Of course devolution has failed. But that's because people's problems in Scotland were never caused by a lack of devolution in the first place. They were, and still are, caused by capitalism as the system of class ownership and production for profit. This is why independence is no solution either. As capitalism would continue in an independent Scotland, so would the problems. These problems are not caused by the form of government, and any government of an independent Scotland would still be compelled by the economic laws of capitalism to put profits before people, just as UK governments have been.

The SSP would then no doubt come along and say "independence has failed because capitalism has been kept" and that what is needed an "independent socialist Scotland" and that then the problems will be solved. But they won't be. First, because socialism cannot be established in one country (we are living in an interdependent world and capitalism is a world system) and, secondly, because what the SSP mean by "socialism" isn't real socialism but only a national state-capitalism.

The only framework within which these problems can be solved -- which don't just exist in Scotland but are basically the same in all the countries of the world -- is a world community without frontiers based on natural and industrial resources of the world being the common heritage of all humanity so allowing production directly for use instead of for profit. In other words, world socialism not narrow nationalism. That's the issue we will be raising in this referendum.

All that glitters is not gold

Gold Supplement made from pure gold leaf inside a coated gold capsule. Does ingesting gold have any health benefit?  Nope. Gold is a metal that is not used by the body and is toxic in high doses. So, in the end it is a $425.00 glittery shit.

From here

A happy new year?

A third of young people in Scotland feel down or depressed either always or often, a youth charity claimed. 

One in ten young people feels unable to cope with day-to-day life.

28 per cent of young people believe their prospects have been permanently damaged by the recession.

21 per cent feel they have no  future as a result of the economic crisis.

"Send them Back"

Professor Tom Devine, director of the Scottish Centre of Diaspora Studies at Edinburgh University, welcomed plans for a planned monument in Glasgow to commemerate the 100,000 who fled to the city to escape starvation in Ireland in the 1840s. But he warned that it must not be "founded on comforting myth and unproven beliefs".

Far from highlighting Glasgow's generosity, almost 50,000 immigrants were sent back to Ireland.

A bank-rupted new year for many

60 Scots a day will become insolvent this year. The total is the equivalent of almost 400 people going bust a week – or about 20,000 this year. That rate has more than doubled within a decade and increased nearly five-fold over the last 15 years. In addition, there are believed to be hundreds of thousands of others in Scotland mired in debt because they can only afford to meet interest payments.

Bryan Jackson, accountancy and business advisory firm PKF’s corporate recovery partner, said the economic slump meant the “very high” level of insolvencies was not expected to come down for some time. He said: “With no improvement in the economy, employment insecurity rife and rising living costs, there is little sign of this level of personal insolvency reducing over the next three to four years. This means that another 80,000 to 100,000 Scots will go bust in the next four to five years. Given that personal insolvencies are at the extreme end of financial distress, it should be noted that there will be hundreds of thousands of Scots simply treading water and meeting interest rate payments, but with little hope of repaying their debts in the near future.”

With an enormous dependence on the public sector for employment, it is unfortunate that Scotland looks likely to have a less-than-happy new year in 2013. He attributed this to the higher proportion of public-sector jobs being cut, wage freezes in the public sector and possibly an over-reliance on the housing “bubble” to fund lifestyles.

Consumer Credit Counselling Service, said about 150,000 Scottish households were spending more than half their income on repaying debts. A spokeswoman said: “There is still a lot of pain out there. People’s budgets are really bursting at the seams. They do not have the disposable income to repay their debts or the ability to manage them.”

Citizens Advice Scotland urged people not to take out high-interest “pay-day loans” to avoid insolvency. Concern has increased that such lenders are cashing in on Scotland’s debt problems, with the number of clients north of the Border having soared by nearly four-fold since 2009. Head of policy Susan McPhee said: “Every such case is a personal tragedy and a family whose finances have been wrecked – with all the stress and misery that comes with that...Some pay-day lenders have rates of over 4,000 per cent. That sort of rate can be devastating for those whose incomes are low or unstable. Our evidence suggests they are being used by more and more households, and can often turn a problem debt into a crisis one.”

OWNERS AND NON-OWNERS

The development of the oil industry in the Middle East has led to immense wealth for the ruling class there. 'In just seven decades as a nation, Saudi Arabia has grown from an impoverished backwater of desert nomads to an economic powerhouse with an oil industry that brought in $300bn last year. Forbes magazine estimates King Abdullah's personal fortune at $18bn, making him the world's third-richest royal, behind the rulers of Thailand and Brunei.' (Guardian, 1 January) The report goes on to record that the Saudi government discloses little official data about its poorest citizens. But press reports and private estimates suggest that between 2 million and 4 million of the country's native Saudis live on less than about $530 a month – about $17 a day – considered the poverty line in Saudi Arabia. So we have up to a quarter of the population living in poverty and hunger while the owning clique luxuriate in obscene wealth. This is capitalism in action. RD

Workers of the world unite to overthrow capitalism

National identity and nationalism is a modern phenomena rooted in the 18th and early 19th century. The age of nationalism saw a national heritage fostered by the foundation of national monuments and museums. Myth and fiction are the very things for creating a country. In Scotland we had Walter Scott penning romantic accounts of an imaginary Scotland.

The independence movement seek to persuade all those who live here that a better Scotland is possible. Nationalists endeavour to prove an independent Scotland would make everyone better off yet political power lies with a global elite and the economics is inter-linked across borders. Multi-national companies lobby and fund political parties across the world. No nation in a capitalist world has economic independence, they are all interconnected though obviously the more powerful economies dominate the rest. Given the growing globalisation and unification of the world – contrary to the will of nations and governments – some people cling to what is familiar.

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.