Friday, October 22, 2010
ARE YOU SUPRISED?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
CONSPICIOUS CONSUMPTION
"Christopher Kane's silk-embroidered cashmere jumpers could look a bit prim. But they're the coolest thing in knitwear right now. Price: £930." (Independent, 4 October) RD
SAINTS AND EMPTY TILLS
OUR BETTERS?
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
PAY UP OR BURN DOWN
A SUICIDAL ARMY
Monday, October 18, 2010
MIND THE GAP
AN INSANE SOCIETY
COLD AND SKINT
Friday, October 15, 2010
DOLLARS AND DEMOCRACY
REFORM FAILS AGAIN
GRIM PROSPECTS
Thursday, October 14, 2010
HUNGER INCREASES
THIS IS PROGRESS?
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
WHAT IS REVOLUTION?
THE WORD REVOLUTION is almost as misused as the word Socialism. If a government is changed, a political leader is replaced, a coup takes place, and the media shout "revolution!" Indeed, if this usage of the word were correct, then revolutions occur every year and sometimes every month!
What is meant by "revolution" and why is this concept so important to the future of the working class? Revolution means a transformation in the object to which the term is being applied. If it is being used about society, then it means a total change in economic relations. The easiest example to understand is the revolution that took place to transform feudalism to capitalism. In feudal society the majority were tied to their superiors. Over and above what they produced for themselves and their families in order to live, the serfs were compelled to produce for their feudal masters and the Church. That form of society was transformed by a revolution into a societycapitalism--where there is no direct ownership of the lives of people by other people in the same way.
Capitalist society is organized on the basis that the worker sells his labour-power voluntarily to an employer for a wage or salary. In theory, no one is compelled to work for another. In practice, the majority must do so. They have no other means of living, since legally they do not own sufficient of the means of wealth production to enable them to live without this form of selling known as wage-labour.
In all forms of society, minorities have owned the means of living, with the result that the other classes have had to submit to the dictates of the minority whilst that particular form of society existed. Feudalism depended on agricultural production and personal subservience by the majority to clearly defined groups. Privilege in capitalism depends not on accidents of birth (though these can be of importance to the individual) but on the ownership of capital. Whilst in feudal society by and large it was birth that determined into which class one fell, in capitalist society it is purely a question of ownership of wealth however obtained.
The revolution that will change capitalism into socialism will involve the replacement of all the relationships of capitalism. Instead of the primary characteristics of, capitalism--production for profit, the buying and selling of all things including labour-power, and private (or state) ownership of wealth, society will be characterised by common ownership and of free access to that wealth. Production will be for human satisfaction only, hence neither money nor all the paraphernalia that goes with it, and will be based upon voluntary co-operation by all in the interests of all. To get to that form of society involves a transformation---a revolution. It is only in Socialism that man will solve the major problems he now faces. That is why the SPGB is a revolutionary party.
Because the next revolution must be the work of the majority consciously co-operating in the work that it will entail, a transformation in men's ideas is the pre-requisite to its successful implementation.
RAW
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
ALL RIGHT FOR SOME
Monday, October 11, 2010
Failure of Reformism
41 per cent of permanent exclusions were among pupils from the 20 per cent of areas in Scotland with the highest levels of deprivation.
Scotland's suicide rate is higher than that for the UK as a whole, with a figure of 12.6 per 100,000 population compared with 9.51 per 100,000 population. Men are more likely to kill themselves than women, with rates particularly high for men aged 25-34 and those aged 35-44. Men and women living in the most deprived areas are twice as likely to take their own life as those in less deprived areas.
KICK 'EM WHEN THEY ARE DOWN
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Food for thought
In a survey, Working Less and Earning More' the Toronto Star reported (4/Sept/2010) that the average wage is $23.10 per hour ($19.93 in 2005) and average hours are 33.24 per week (down from 34.69 in 2000). The largest job increases came in the service sector where hardly anyone is offered a full week to save on benefit payments, and 82% said they would take a pay cut to work at a job that guaranteed a work-life balance.
Reading Notes
Continuing from above (the prevailing ideas
) Charles C. Mann in "1491" shows how rulers change history to create allegiance to their cause, "Tlacaelel (ruler of the Mexica in ancient Mexico) insisted that in addition to destroying the codices (picture histories) of their former oppressors, the Mexica should set fire to their own codices. His explanation for this idea can only be described as Orwellian: "It is not fitting that our people/ Should know these pictures/ Our people, our subjects will be lost/ And our land destroyed/ For these pictures are full of lies". The lies were the inconvenient fact that the Mexica past was one of poverty and humiliation. To motivate the people properly, Tlacaelel said, the priesthood should rewrite Mexica history by creating new codices, adding in the great deeds whose lack now seemed embarrassing and adorning their ancestry with ties to the Toltecs and Teotihuacan." i.e. the Ministry of Truth is established to tell lies. Sounds familiar!
Further on, Mann describes how loyalty to the ruling class can be achieved, "In their penchant for ceremonial public slaughter, the Alliance (of Mexican tribes) and Europe were much more alike than either side grasped. In both places the public death was accompanied by the reading of ritual scripts. And in both the goal was to create a cathartic paroxysm of loyalty to the government in the Mexica case, by recalling the spiritual justification for the empire; in the European case, to reassert the sovereign's divine power after it had been injured by a criminal act."
For socialism and meaningful reading, John Ayers
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