Tough at the top? Not really

Capitalists love touting the benefits of trickle-down economics. It is a rationalization of inequality. By linking the welfare of the working-class  directly to the prosperity of the rich, they can protect the interests of corporations and the wealthy without the fear of backlash.

The investment banking hierarchy is essentially a large bureaucracy. At the bottom are the manual unskilled maintenance staff like security guards, the janitors and the cleaners who keep the offices safe and warm and clean. Then there are the administrative assistants, who support several bankers at one time and make about $35,000 a year. Above them are the analysts, college graduates whose life consists of 120-hour work weeks and an endless stream of menial tasks for $65,000 to $90,000 a year. Next up, and supported by the analysts, are the associates -- freshly minted MBAs with more than a $100,000 in school loans hanging over them -- who can look forward to taking home between $100,000 and $175,000 a year. If these young men and women, who work 90-hour weeks while trying to juggle a family, survive long enough to become vice presidents, their compensation can rise to $200,000-$300,000 per year.

Above the vice presidents are the directors, which is a training zone for the next pay grade (or a graveyard for those who don't have what it takes). Directors rely on the workers below them to do all the grunt work, including research, financial analysis, and client presentations, while they mainly babysit clients and occasionally come up with ideas to pitch to them. Their pay for these relatively cushy tasks ranges from $350,000 to $500,000 per year; but even this is meager compared to what their superiors make. Managing directors, who work even less and spend more time golfing instead, can make anywhere from a million to several million dollars a year.

Finally you have the really big fish -- the CEOs, presidents, executive vice presidents, and others who manage the entire circus, think deep thoughts, and schmooze with politicians to get regulations loosened. What makes these gigs so coveted is not just the fact that few ever manage to join that echelon but that the pay-scale jumps to tens of millions of dollars (even hundreds of millions) per year for work that is only moderately more challenging than that of the managing directors. It may be lonely at the top, but it's  lucrative.

It should be clear from the above that the wealth generated in these organizations gathers mainly at the top of the pyramid, while the people at the bottom, who do a lot of the heavy lifting and are instrumental in building that wealth, receive only a fraction of those riches. Sure, the pay scales in investment banking are pretty good by the standards of other industries, but it is the proportional difference between the compensation at the top and the bottom that makes a difference. This large income gap leads to an exponentially faster accumulation of wealth in a few hands, which in turn widens the prosperity gap even more. In other words, prosperity is not really trickling down but trickling up.

The more wealth trickles up in the capitalist system, the more it frustrates those at the bottom -- without whose efforts that wealth could not be created in the first place.

Taken from here

Fact of the Day

Nearly half the French people consider themselves poor or fear they soon will be, said a survey.

Salaried employees, manual labourers and independent workers felt the most exposed to poverty, while executives and professionals felt the least exposed.

 Unemployment numbers stand 10%—the worst since 1999. Youth unemployment hit 24.9%, the highest since the data series began in 1996.

Increasing misery

Jérôme Sainte-Marie, director of the political opinion department at the market research firm CSA, which had conducted the survey, was worried that France has “entered a new era.” This was now no longer a question of “lowered status but of pauperization.” Many French people not only had the impression of being “worse off than their parents or worse off than hoped,” but they worried “that they could be thrown into misery, if they aren’t already in it.”

Henry George

Green MP Caroline Lucas is supporting an annual land value tax, based on its market price, but, of course, with many "new" ideas this one has been proposed before. Henry George, a nineteenth-century writer who had popularized the notion that no single person could claim to “own” land. In his book Progress and Poverty (1879), George called private land ownership an “erroneous and destructive principle” and argued that land should be held in common, with members of society acting collectively as “the general landlord.”

Henry George's book "Progress and Poverty" was very popular. The book's starting point was man's God-given right to the land. Private property in land was unjust as it restricted access to the land. As technological progress increased industrial production, the benefits, George argued, went not to the labourers or even to the capitalists but to the landlords in the form of increased rent. The remedy proposed in Progress and Poverty was the raising by the state of a tax equivalent to the rental value of the land. Not only would this "single" tax compensate the poor labourer for his lost birth right to the land, but it would obviate the need for other forms of taxation and be politically more acceptable than full land nationalisation.

Scotland proved the most receptive to his message. It was here after all with the Crofters' Revolt raging and the cities crowded with Highland and Irish exiles that the unacceptable face of landlordism was most apparent and keenly resented. The Presbyterian Scots also responded to the religious strain in Georgism. The Scottish Land Restoration League, a purely Georgite body was established in Glasgow with branches in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. "The land question" Henry George wrote to an English friend, "will never go to sleep in Auchtermuchty."

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

 

The owning class are fond of boasting about their obscene wealth but even by their excessive behaviour the following Christmas dinner menu takes a bit of beating. "Costing £125,000 for four people, or £31, 250 per person, the menu for what will be the world's most expensive Christmas dinner menu has been devised by London chef Ben Spalding, who has completed residencies at restaurants including The Fat Duck in Bray, Gordon Ramsay's Royal Hospital Road and Per Se in New York. Among the ingredients being used are a Yubari King melon costing £2,500, in addition the the £2,600 Densuke watermelon; 150-year-old balsamic vinegar costing £1,030; whole white Alba truffle costing £3,500; and gold leaf coming in at £6,000. To drink, a £37,000 bottle of Piper Heidsieck 1907 champagne will be served in diamond-studded flutes; diners who prefer spirits can sip from a £2,000 stock of DIVA vodka, described as a "diamond-sand-filtered vodka" and served in a bottle that is filled with Swarovski crystals." (Daily Telegraph, 7 December) All of this excess is taking place in a society where millions are trying to eke out an existence on less than $2 a day. RD

Food for thought

Egyptian President, Mohammed Morsi, has given himself sweeping powers that, in effect, make him a dictator. The people are calling him 'the pharaoh' and are taking to the streets again to demand the democracy that they supposedly won last year. That it can all be lost so quickly emphasizes the need for class consciousness and a knowledge of socialism in order to carry out the revolution. Otherwise the people simply hand power to the next dictator, as has happened here. John Ayers

How Clydebank stitched up Singers

The 1911 Clydebank Singers strike is considered the first battle between labour and international capital in Scotland if not in the UK. It was also the biggest single firm strike in Scotland up to 1914. The strike lasted three weeks.

In 1867/8 the American company Singer Sewing Machine Co. expanded into Scotland. It first opened a small sewing machine factory in Glasgow near John St. However growing demand forced the company to expand to a larger factory in the Bridgeton area of Glasgow. In 1882 they moved again, to a greenfield site at Kilbowie in Clydebank. It was a very anti-union company. Tom Bell, an activist during the 1911 strike, in his book “Pioneering Days” states; “The firm refuses to recognise any union, and those union men that were employed had to keep it quiet.”

Food for thought

Will this coal or any other resource bonanza, mean a better life for the workers of that region? For the answer to that we go to Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in the world, torn by war and failed 'Marxist' economic policies (this is the New York Times reporting). Now, however, due to the discovery of large coal and gas reserves it has become an African Lion. World Bank estimates run to $70 billion for the gas alone. Far from the expected 'good' jobs in mining, the local workers were moved 40 kilometres away, housed in leaky buildings, and given barren plots from which to eke out a living. Just a bump on the road to prosperity you say? The rising tide will raise all boats? In Gabon and Angola, two more countries experiencing the curse of high growth, poverty has spiked. Probably the worst thing for an underdeveloped country is the discovery of something valuable to capitalism. Primitive accumulation -- moving people out of the way, by force if necessary and with government compliance, and the theft of those resources -- is a precondition of capitalism. John Ayers

Nationalisation is not social ownership

These are not good times. We have an economy with no stability, no guarantees that hard work will provide a consistent living, and a constant possibility of being cast aside simply because we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And there is little people can do in their personal lives or behavior to change this. Many well-intentioned people say “We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.” and recommend all manner of reforms and palliatives. The Socialist Party in its stand against such cure-all solutions is accused of standing aloof and doing nothing but abstract talk of a future revolution.

Many have come to identify socialism with state ownership, government intervention, state subsidies and expenditure on ‘public’ services. This has nothing to do with socialism. Support for nationalisation as a "socialist" measure is a short-cut, a short-cut to nowhere. Marx and Engels while in favour of many reforms to the capitalist system, saw the purpose of such reforms as to place the working class in a better position to carry out the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. It was not because such reforms of themselves were the means to bring socialism into effect.

Today calls on the state to do good are presented as the means to win workers’ votes, which will ultimately lead to socialism, while the goal is considered too advanced to be put forward clearly, put to them as something that they must do and only they can achieve. The avoidance of socialism and its real content today goes under the name of anti-capitalism or under the banner of broad left parties and alliances which hide what its sponsors claim they really stand for. Today some demands for nationalisation and state redistributive policies are designed to manoeuvre workers into a movement for socialism without even mentioning the word never mind misrepresenting its real content! The Trotskyist demands for widespread nationalisation and defence of the welfare state imposes demands on the capitalist state to do things it simply will not and often cannot do.

Fact of the Day

One in five women in Scotland will experience domestic violence at some point in their lives.

PRODUCTION FOR PROFIT IS UNHEALTHY

Socialists are often told by supporters of capitalism that it is the most efficient way to run society but recent event in Germany would seem to deny that notion. "Cancer experts have warned of a 'frightening' crisis as pharmaceutical companies abandon production of one of the most widely used chemotherapy drugs because it is not profitable enough. Fluorouracil - also known as 5-FU - is one of the most frequently used components in chemo combinations used to treat bowel and breast cancer in the UK and worldwide. But cancer specialists in Germany have warned that the drug has become increasingly difficult to obtain as producers turn to newer, more profitable treatments." (Daily Mail, 12 November) Production for profit is the basis of capitalism in contrast to world socialism's production solely for use. RD

ROUGH SLEEPING IN THE ROUGH SOCIETY

Politicians like to pose as supporters of families but young people and families with children are increasingly facing homelessness, according to a study, which says rising numbers of people are finding themselves without a roof over their heads. "The report, by academics from Heriot-Watt University and the University of York, says all forms of homelessness are continuing to rise in England, and argues that "deepening benefit cuts are likely to have a much more dramatic impact on homelessness". .... The report says national rough sleeper numbers rose by 23% in the year to autumn 2011, from 1,768 to 2,181 – "a more dramatic growth dynamic than anything seen since the 1990s". The number of families who end up asking for assistance from local authorities because they are about to lose their homes rose from 40,020 in 2009/10 to 50,290 in 2011/12. (Guardian, 4 December) This is the madness of capitalism in action - houses lying empty while people are forced to sleep in the street. RD

We are all Spartacus - political football

Celtic come face to face with Spartak in the Champions League.  Moscow is the home of Spartak as well as Dynamo, CSKA, Torpedo-Luzhniki, Lokomotiv and Torpedo-ZIL but historically, the main Moscow grudge derby-match is between Spartak and Dynamo

Sport has always had a political dimension, especially football.

In the early days of Soviet football many government agencies such as the police, army and railroads created their own clubs. So many statesmen saw in the wins of their teams the superiority over the opponents patronizing other teams. Almost all the teams had such kind of patrons such as  CSKA – The Red Army team. Dynamo Moscow were a creation of the Interior Ministry, then essentially a euphemism for the secret police. The de facto founder of Dynamo was Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the OGPU (forerunner to the KGB). Spartak were created as an independent football team, with no affiliations to one or other part of the state machine and considered to be the "people's team". The name Spartak that was derived from Spartacus, the gladiator-slave who led a rebellion against Rome.

In the Soviet Union millions attended matches and obsessed about their favorite club, and their rowdiness on game day stood out as a moment of relative freedom in a society that demanded rigid conformity and control. Fans of Spartak Moscow would have you believe that their club almost single-handedly defied the state machine.

Spartak emerged from the rough proletarian Presnia district of Moscow and spent much of its history in fierce rivalry with Dinamo. To cheer for Spartak, Edelman shows, was a small and safe way of saying "no" to the fears and absurdities of Stalinism.

Spartak was for seven decades by the four Starostin brothers, the most visible of whom were Nikolai and Andrei. Perhaps because of Spartak's too frequent success against state-sponsored teams, they were arrested in 1942 and spent twelve years in the gulag. Instead of facing hard labor and likely death, they were spared the harshness of their places of exile when they were asked by local camp commandants to coach the prisoners' football teams. Beria, the secret police chief, was possibly fuelled by a personal vendetta. As left-back for a Geor­gian side in the early 1920s, Beria had turn­ed out against Nikolai Starostin, who had completely played him off the park. Beria, Stalin's henchman, was not a man to forgive and forget. In 1942  branded “en­emies of the people”, with Nikolai and Andrei initially accused of plotting with the German Embassy to kill Stalin and set up a Fascist state but instead charg­ed with stealing a consignment of clothing,embezzlement and bribery. Returning from the camps after Stalin's death, they took back the reins of a club whose mystique as the "people's team" was only enhanced by its status as a victim of Stalinist tyranny.*

Like the Rangers Ibrox Disaster, Spartak has suffered tragedies. 30 years ago in a game against HFC Haarlem in a UEFA Cup one section of Spartak fans started streaming out to get to the Metro but a late goal in injury time caused some fans to turn back and the two streams collided with the tragic result of 66 dead according to official figures but probably many more.

Sadly the club like so many others these days is under the ownership of an oligarch, Leonid Fedun, estimated wealth of over $6 billion, and its fans have been associated with racist chanting.

* See here for more

Food for thought

So now that everyone agrees on global warming, how is the response going? As one would expect in a profit driven economy, not very well. For example, The New York Times (Nov.25, 2012) reported that coal demand in China is so great that in 2010 a traffic jam of coal trucks coming out of Mongolia was 120 kilometres long and involved 10 000 trucks. India relies on coal for 55% of its electric power and, of course, the US is a big user (although, according to industry advert on TV, they only use 'clean' coal! Having used coal in the 1940s in England, I can personally vouch for the fact that there is nothing clean about coal.) World demand for this cheap source of energy is growing fast and is expected to reach 8.1 billion metric tons by 2016, increase fifty per cent by 2035, and coal will surpass oil as the leading source of energy in the world in the next two years. So much for working on a looming major catastrophe. Money and profit trump all. John Ayers

Is Lending the Solution?

The Grameen Scotland Foundation will oversee the running of a microfinance-style lending in Scotland. Tesco Bank will provide £500,000 of the loan capital for what will be Grameen’s first venture in the UK. The Scottish Government have donated £100,000, and supporters such as businesswoman Ann Gloag, who has also given £100,000. The original Grameen bank, founded more than 20 years ago in Bangladesh to offer small loans to those excluded by the traditional banking system. The borrowers are almost exclusively women. They are required to organise themselves into groups of five, which creates a support system for repaying the loan. The average loan is around £1,000 and repayment rates are high, often close to 100%. Grameen now has around 8 million borrowers and has issued more than £3.5bn in small loans in the past two decades. Grameen Glasgow will be based in a community-run centre in the Sighthill area of the city, where more than 59% of children live in workless households with up to four generations unemployed.

Has microfinance genuinely benefited the world's poor? Held up for decades as a "miracle cure" for global poverty, microfinance became one of the world's most high-profile and generously funded development interventions. Everyone was talking about how small loans could unlock endless opportunities for the world's poorest people.

New studies began to challenge the promise of microfinance to bring about an unprecedented reduction in poverty that prompted parallels with the US sub-prime mortgage collapse. Reports of skyrocketing interest rates and suicides among indebted borrowers in Andhra Pradesh, India, suggested a sinister side to the microcredit boom. Last year, a sweeping review of the evidence, funded by the UK government, concluded that the "enthusiasm [for microcredit] is built on … foundations of sand". It was unclear when, and for whom, microfinance had been "of real, rather than imagined, benefit to poor people", it said. A further study commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DfID) advised against lending to the poorest of the poor, who are more vulnerable to the dangers of debt. A study on microcredit in Bosnia found a substantial increase in child labour in businesses opened through microloans, raising concerns about the unintended consequences of increasing access to credit and self-employment. Norway says it will stop funding microfinance due to changes in the sector, including more competition and the addition of commercial capital. A recent Deutsche Bank report describes microfinance as "a development programme turning commercial". Banks and other for-profit organisations are taking the lead, it notes, as "NGOs seem to have lost their role as the primary vehicle for microlending". Private funding is on the rise. Last week – in the largest deal of its kind – Luxembourg-based fund Bamboo Finance announced its $105m (£66m) acquisition of a controlling stake in Accion Investments in Microfinance, a powerful for-profit equity fund, which counted some of the biggest development finance institutions among its founding shareholders.


"Microcredit is not a 'silver bullet' to end all poverty … The leaders of the microfinance industry have known this for some time." said the CEOs of eight Mictofinance organisations.

Cambridge University economist Ha-Joon Chang puts part of its popularity down to a "strange alliance" between a financial industry that "does nasty things to make money, and people who genuinely wanted to help the poor but were against the collective approach". What's more, it enabled some institutions to say they cared about the poor without having to spend on social welfare, he argues.

 Why aren't we all wealthy? The wealthy have an answer: the poor are ignorant and lazy. The rich say they have nothing to do with our poverty. But a necessary part of becoming wealthy and staying wealthy is keeping your neighbor poor. There are a large number of relationships in capitalist society that keep the rich wealthy and the poor in poverty. The whole goal of the self-interested actor in the marketplace is buying low and selling high, hoping to profit. Working for wages that pay the worker less money than the value his work creates for the owner is one such transaction. Usually, the owner will not even hire a worker unless they believe they can make a profit. A person renting from a landlord, whether an apartment, house, or piece of land pay for landlords to make a profit over and above their costs. Banks and others loan money to borrowers and collect interest. The wealthy work to protect their wealth.

Food for thought

Recently released data shows that white people in the US without much
schooling are dying faster than they did twenty years ago. The trends
were five years of lost life for white men and three years for men
without a high school diploma between 1990 and 2008. Life expectancy for
them was 67.5 years compared to 80.4 years for white men with a college
degree. In the UN international life expectancy rankings, US women
ranked 41st . in 2010, down from 14th in 1985. Even so, the white
people in the US ranked higher than the black people, possibly due to
higher drug and smoking rates for blacks according to demographics
expert, John Haaga. The conclusions are that neo liberal policies have
been applied more in the US than elsewhere, and poverty is a huge factor
in health, especially where there is no universal health coverage. John Ayers

Wage slavery or liberation from toil

Overall real wages have scarcely budged in the 1990s in America, and earnings for college-educated workers actually declined by more than 6 percent. Productivity per person-hour increased by 5 percent between 2009 and 2010. 

These days, workers are expected to be on call 24/7—24 hours per day, seven days per week. Seen in this light, innovations like flexi-time or working from home are in fact strategies to bring new sorts of workers—mostly women—into the job market and to subject them to a new set of (frequently electronic) rules and controls.

Think about it. Fifteen years ago, would you have taken a job if you had to be available every day, respond to messages from your boss late at night, and maintain contact with the office while on vacation?  But today just about any job, especially the good ones, exhibit precisely this oppressive 24/7 character. At the same time technology has redefined labor into assembly-line piecework and new gadgets have allowed our less inviting piecework tasks to follow us home, filling family time, distracting our leisure time. Innovative machines bind us more tightly to our jobs while forcing us to work longer hours.

Historian Jackson Lears said in a recent interview, “Whatever the color of your collar, your job may still be ‘proletarian’ to the extent that management controls the pace, process, and output of your work.”

Corporate executives urge a drive toward efficiency—efficiency that can be best defined as low wages. Technology in the workplace holds out the promise of more time, but as we have seen, increased productivity— more output; fewer hours—benefits only the bottom lines of corporate profits wrung from the decreased cost of labor. High-tech machines enable fewer workers to do more while transforming complex artisanal tasks into piecework. Americans love to shop for bargain commodities, of course, but corporations also shop for labor, and modern technology and communication force workers to compete with lower-paid counterparts in Singapore, India, and China. Even here in the United States, an auto assembly job that pays $28 an hour in Michigan will pay half that in South Carolina. The workplace is being transformed by technologies deployed by corporations in the pursuit of efficiencies, increased productivity, and increased profit. “Productivity Hits All-Time High” may be a pleasing headline to the employing class , but Less-in/More-out is scarcely good news for workers.

Automation not only displaces jobs but change the very character of work itself. This may result in the alienated working class taking revolt but, fearful and discontented, they may also well turn toward authoritarian, simple-solution demagogue leaders expousing contempt for democracy and nationalistic xenophobia. This is already happening in the United States where state legislatures are bearing down on workers' rights and immigrants. 

Socialists have to counter with a real alternative to wage-slavery. John Ruskin wrote, “In order that people may be happy in their work, three things are needed. They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.”

Taken from here 

A nation again is not the solution but the problem

A Socialist World

The Basque and Catalans want to break from Spain. The Flemish want an end to Belgium for an independent Flanders. Even some American states are again talking of seceding from the union. Salmond's SNP and the SSP seek Scottish independence. Socialists oppose the scapegoating, the type-casting, and divisive language of "us" against "them". There is a myriad of politicians on both sides of the spectrum that use the debate on Scottish independence to vent their prejudices and ignorance; and unfortunately people tend to heed what confirms their own biases. While the majority of the people - nationalist or not - do not hold animosity against those who do not think like them, but who hasn't heard someone at work or in the pub talk about the “fucking English”. The United Kingdom share centuries of common history, so to describe the Scots and the English as two separate ethnic groups is simply not true. No one can deny that Scotland has its own history but to try to rewrite history to fit a political agenda is dishonest and dangerous.

BABY ITS COLD INSIDE

While major stores of High Street Santas "Ho, Ho, Ho ..." in mock joviality the harsh realities of working class life are revealed by a website. "The price comparison website uSwitch.com warned that nine in ten Britons are expecting to ration their energy use this winter to save money - a frightening prospect amid warnings of sub-zero temperatures. Three quarters of households went without heating at some point last winter to keep energy costs down and 15 per cent said that this had affected their quality of life or health." (Times, 1 December) So, remember when you are wishing your next door neighbour a "Happy New Year" keep on your gloves, scarf and thermal underwear! RD

FIGURES DO NOT LIE

Newspapers are fond of depicting a Britain with a steadily improving standard of living, but occasionally even they have to confess about the realities of modern capitalism. "The cost of heating a home has rocketed by 63 per cent since the summer of 2008, while essentials such as potatoes and minced beef have surged by 30 per cent and 50 per cent respectively. Over the same period wages have grown by only 6.8 per cent." (Times, 1 December) They then go on to report that during this period wages have been corroded by a 14 per cent rise in inflation. RD

Facts, statistics and lies

Data from the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) 2012 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings shows the median weekly earnings of Scots, at £497.60, were higher in any part of the UK outside London and the southeast, growing 2.6% year on year. This figure represents a real terms fall, in light of CPI inflation of 3% during that period. Women's waages were significantly under at a 0.6% increase, the slowest rise in the UK other than in northeast England, where women's wages actually fell by 0.5%.

David Bell, professor of economics at Stirling University, warned that the rise may be a symptom of an increased loss of lower-paid jobs, pushing the median figure further up the scale. He said: "What might have happened is that a lot of the people who lost their jobs in Scotland are at the bottom end of the wage distribution, and if falling employment is concentrated in the bottom, that moves the median up. Our labour market performance hasn't been that great lately and the unemployment trend has been going in the wrong direction for a few months. Paradoxically, rising median rates may be consistent with that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the economy is booming. I don't think there is evidence of great upward wage pressure in the Scottish economy."
STUC assistant secretary Stephen Boyd explained "Most workers are still experiencing what [Bank of England governor] Mervyn King has described as the longest period of falling real wages since the 1920s."

Hitting the vulnerable

Tens of thousands of sick and disabled people in Scotland face being forced on to unpaid work programmes under threat of losing their benefits from tomorrow. People with a range of physical or mental health conditions could find themselves stacking shelves in high-street stores such as Tesco and Poundland, or cleaning private homes, under the new proposals. They are to be told that they must take unpaid positions or risk losing up to 70% of their employment support allowance. 

 Across the UK, some 340,000 disabled people have been placed in the work related activity group (WRAG), which means they must undertake a range of activities to help them get back to work, including training, job-hunting – and now mandatory work placements.

 Most disabled people welcome support to get into the labour market, but compulsory placements rarely work, says Richard Hamer, director of external affairs at Capability Scotland. "When disabled people get forced into jobs, they tend to be unsuccessful jobs," Hamer said. "It can be very difficult, not just because of physical difficulties, but also mental impairments – poor mental health for example – for people to adapt to the labour market. If we start simply forcing people into jobs then there's a high likelihood that the employer won't be the best solution for them."

 Susan Archibald, a disability rights campaigner based in Fife, branded the proposed plans "a disgrace" that "will put disabled workers at risk".  Archibald estimates that around 30,000 work-capacity assessments are being carried out each week on disability claimants by Atos.

 Disabled and elderly protestors plan to disrupt the showpiece relay at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, forcing up security costs, if the "fit-for-work" benefits test company Atos is not dropped as a sponsor. Campaigners plan to turn the Queen's Baton Relay, the equivalent of the Olympic Torch relay, into a public-relations disaster if Atos is involved when the Games start, with pensioners and wheelchair-users potentially being arrested for blocking the route.

 Atos Healthcare has a £110m-a-year contract with the Department for Work and Pensions to run Work Capability Assessments to see if sick and disabled people are fit to work. Critics say the tests are flawed, degrading, and meant to cut benefit spending. Next year the firm begins work on a second £400m contract to assess mobility benefits.

The price of clothes

Edinburgh Woollen Mill had contracts with the Tazreen Fashion factory in Bangladesh where a fire killed at least 112 workers. So did C&As

Bangladesh, the world's second-largest producer of clothes, has secured this position only by offering workers the lowest wages in the world and having some of the worst safety regulations in the industry. Before last week's disaster, more than 500 garment workers had died in fires and accidents since 2006. Land is at a premium in the country, and it is common for factories to have eight or nine floors. And although factories may have escape gates, owners often prefer to lock them, supposedly to stop staff stealing merchandise. In 2006, 65 workers died in a garment factory fire in the southern city of Chittagong after management ordered gates to be locked.

 By most accounts, the Bangladesh tragedy could have been prevented by management simply spending more money on safety.  Money for new fire extinguishers, money for more access, money for additional fire escapes, money for conducting regular evacuation drills, and money for old-fashioned fire prevention measures

"All these fires in Bangladesh, if you look at why so many die and are injured, in most cases it is because you find that the doors are locked," said a Bangladeshi architect, Bashirul Huq. "The companies want to control the workers..."

 Bangladesh has about 4,000 garment factories and earns about £12.5bn a year from clothes exports. The body responsible for enforcing workplace safety laws has only 20 government inspectors for all the factories in Bangladesh.

£23 is the salary of an assistant sewer for working a 48-hour week at the Tazreen factory. £20 is the price of a pair of ‘Driftwood’ shorts made on the hip-hop star Sean Combs’ ENYCE label, which were made at the factory.

 As for those companies like Edinburgh Woolen Mills who, while having no direct ownership, rely on Bangladesh for their textile products, they continue to plead their ignorance. They say they had no knowledge of the woeful safety conditions.  Like those upstanding German citizens who lived in towns adjacent to Nazi death camps, they claim to have had no idea what was going on.

Crimes of Carnegie

In the land of his birth Andrew Carnegie is commemorated by statues and grand buildings named in his honour. In Dunfermline, where he was born, there is a museum to remember him. This article expresses a different view of the Scottish "benefactor".

Condoning Crime in the Name of Philanthropy

Many thousands of misguided people are applauding the alleged philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie and of these by far the larger number are
workingmen. Manifestly they have forgotten, or they have never heard of the horrors of Homestead — or perhaps they are too ignorant to understand or too cowardly to profit by the bloody lesson.

The reckless prodigality of Carnegie with the plunder of his victims brings into boldest prominencethe crimes he committed when they protested
against his monstrous rapacity. Then what? An army of 300 Pinkerton mercenaries were hired by this bloody benefactor to kill the men whose
labor had made him a millionaire. He did not have the courage to execute his own murderous designs so he commissioned another monster, Frick, by name, with bloodless veins and a heart of steel, to commit the crimes while he went to Europe and held high carnival with the titled snobs there until the ghastly work was done. It was one of the foulest conspiracies ever concocted against the working class and the very though of its atrocities, after nearly 10 years, fires the blood and crimsons the cheek with righteous indignation. Not only were the Pinkerton murderers hired by Carnegie to kill his employees, but he had his steel works surrounded by wires charged with deadly electric currents and by pipes filled with boiling water so that in the event of a strike or lockout he could shock the life out of their wretched bodies or scald the flesh from their miserable bones.

And this is the man who proposes to erect libraries for the benefit of the working class — and incidentally for the glory of Carnegie.

Will the workingmen of this country accept any gift from the hands of Andrew Carnegie, red with the blood of their slain comrades? That some of them have already done so is to their everlasting shame. The employees who a few days ago received, with expressions of gratitude, the bonded booty, to be held in trust for them until they become paupers, have debased themselves beyond expression. They may have to work for Carnegie, but they are not compelled to recognize as a gift the pennies he throws them in return for the dollars he stole from them, and when they do they are guilty of treason to their murdered brothers, and are better described as spineless poltroons than as self-respecting workingmen.

Some years ago, when Carnegie endowed the first library for the alleged benefit of workingmen, I objected. And I object now with increased
emphasis.

Such a library is monumental of the degeneracy of the working class. It is a lasting rebuke to their intelligence and their integrity.

 The workingmen of New Castle have led the revolt. Let their splendid example be followed wherever a Carnegie library is suggested. Let mass
meetings of workingmen be held and let the horrifying scenes of the Homestead massacre be sented to stir them to a sense of indignation at
the vulgar and insulting display of the spoil exploited from their class.

 Let honest workingmen everywhere protest against the acceptance of a gift which condones crime in the name of philanthropy. Let them put themselves upon record in terms that appeal to the honor of their class and the respect of all mankind.

 We want libraries and we will have them in glorious abundance when capitalism is abolished and the workingmen are no longer robbed by the philanthropic pirates of the Carnegie class.

Then the library will be as it should be, a noble temple dedicated to culture and symbolizing the virtues of the people.

Eugene Debs.
March 30, 1901. 
Taken from here 


For more on Carnegie see an earlier post on Socialist Courier

Facts of the Day

The world's 1,226 billionaires have more combined wealth than 3.5 billion people - half the entire planet's population. The richest 10 per cent of the world's population takes 90 per cent of the world's income.
$21 trillion is estimated to have been transferred in the tax havens - 10 per cent of all the world's privately held wealth. This is also more than 10 times the total value of development aid given to the world's poorer nations in the past 20 years.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/11/20121126134721926547.html

God and the Socialist Party

The quest for the supernatural does not stem from an excessive imagination but from a limited one constrained by years of exploitation and oppression.

Being opposed to religion is not the same as trying to prevent people from practising religion. We're not interested in setting up an enlightened dictatorship. Socialists don't want to police peoples thoughts - rather, we seek to change peoples ideas by engaging with them. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. To put it another way, rational argument alone will not convince people to abandon religion because religious conviction is not primarily arrived at through a rational process (people don't generally become religious because they've sat down and thought through the issues but due to indoctrination, spiritual experiences, etc.) We understand that ideas and consciousness come from our interaction with the real world, not from some outside force or god. From our perspective, people 's ideas change as a result of the struggles they engage in. If that were not the case there would be little point in our engaging in propaganda or activism - we simply would be unable to convince the huge number of people in the world of our ideas.

Likewise it is obvious the workers of the world won't just wake up one fine morning, decide religion is bollox and go out and wreck the avenues where the wealthy live. So it is certainly worth engaging with these sorts of beliefs through propaganda. Of course ideas are always produced by the material and social conditions of the day. We'd be very poor materialists if we failed to spot that! But even so, ideas themselves do carry weight and are worth engaging with, or opposing, both individually and as part of an overall belief system that is equally a product of the times. We should strive to educate people, not ignore their ignorance.

Learning to organise

Shining shoes, mining and herding animals among the many jobs done by an estimated 750,000 children between five and 17 in Bolivia. Rodrigo Medrano Calle is a Bolivian labour leader who meets and lobbies top government officials. That's not surprising in a country where pay is often low, working conditions harsh and unions play a powerful role in society. Rodrigo is just 14 years old, and his union's members are all children, the Bolivian Union of Child and Adolescent Workers (Unatsbo), which represents thousands of under-18s.  In Bolivia, its successes include organising pay rises for children who sell newspapers on the city streets of Potosí from 6 cents (½p) to 12 cents a paper, using negotiations and the threat of strikes. And it's not just a Bolivian phenomenon: there are similar organisations in Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru and Colombia.

Bolivia's informal economy includes everyone from bricklayers to farmers to shoeshiners, who work without contracts and set schedules. Many adults are part of this market, as are the great majority of child and adolescent workers. Child workers are in a legal blindspot: their work is prohibited and so they have very little defence if employers exploit them through long hours, physical or verbal abuse or refusing to pay a decent wage. "If you have to work, then you have to work exploited,"  Luz Rivera Daza, an adult counsellor for Unatsbo, said . "This just makes you more vulnerable."

In a country where poverty is widespread and the minimum wage is $150 a month, living expenses can overwhelm a family. Young workers seem to be everywhere. In the countryside they help their parents in the fields, herd sheep and llamas, or do the brutal work of mining or the sugar cane harvest.

Rodrigo believes that instead of attempting to end many forms of child and adolescent work, the goal should be ending exploitation by creating part-time, safe and better paying jobs for young people who want them. "Why should there be a minimum age if the work is voluntary?" he asked. "The work of a child or adolescent is not bad – it helps society, it helps a family, and it helps us grow as people."

In Marx's time, working class children spent the greater part of each day slaving in factories. Clearly, this had to cease immediately. However, Marx did not believe that all this time was better devoted to classroom learning. This, too, would stunt the child's development. Instead he favoured an education that "will in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive labor with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings." In capitalism, parents have considerable control over their children's health, education, work but, given the parents' own problems and limitations, this power is seldom used as well as it should. In Capital Marx quotes approvingly John Bellers a 17th century English writer, on this subject: "An idle learning is being little better than the learning of idleness... Labor being as proper for the body's health as eating is for its living; A childish silly employ... leaves the children's minds silly." In the Gotha Programme Marx writes that "technical instruction, both theoretical and practical, will take its proper place in working class schools." (our emphasis)

Fact of the day

One hundred and ninety million – that’s more than the populations of Germany, France and Poland combined - is also the number of children affected by vitamin A deficiency around the world. India represents 37 percent of victims, including roughly 80 million children.

An insufficient intake of this vital nutrient – found in foods like liver, carrots and kale – can be fatal and causes blindness in 250,000 to 500,000 children every year.

 Solving the problem of hunger does not necessarily tackle the question of nutrition. For instance, rice can represent up to 70 percent of caloric intake in many Asian countries, while cassava – rich in calories but also poor in nutrients – is the main food source for many Africans.

The SPC and OBU

The establishment of the Socialist Party of Canada in January 1905 was the product of a merger between the Canadian Socialist League and the Socialist Party of British Columbia. Other provincial socialist parties later joined. The new party adopted a programme of uncompromising class struggle. The party platform described an "irrepressible conflict" between capitalist and worker which was "rapidly culminating in a struggle for possession of the reins of government." The party platform specified no immediate demands, but called on workers to unite under the party banner in order to achieve three goals:
1. The transformation, as rapidly as possible, of capitalist property in the means of wealth production (natural resources, factories, mills, railroads, etc) into the collective property of the working class.
2. The democratic organization and management of industry by the workers.
3. The establishment, as speedily as possible, of production for use instead of production for profit.
The party regarded its " impossiblist" position as the most revolutionary in the world and refused to join the Second International on the grounds that the International was a reformist body.

It is not generally recognized that the Socialist Party of Canada patterned itself after the Socialist Party of Great Britain, a sister "impossibilist" party formed in 1904. The SPGB was dedicated to "making socialists," and its Declaration of Principles was drawn from the writings of William Morris and the French Impossiblist Guesde. The SPGB provided some of the SPC's most famous speakers, including Moses Baritz and Adolphe Kohn.

The Socialist Party of Canada was small and carefully organized. Its members were well-informed and had been required to pass an examination in socialist principles before admission. Organized by means of constant correspondence with headquarters in Vancouver, the few thousand party members studied the writings of Marx and Engels and Liebknecht and Kautsky and others in weekly educational meetings of their locals.  The SPC's 'class-struggle college' on Pender Street in Vancouver, introduced members to the main currents of Marxist theory as they developed out of the First and Second Internationals." SPC 'worker-students,' were immersed in Marx's economic writings (reprints of Capital, Volume ! and Value, Price and Profit being the textbooks of choice) and other texts of the 19th-century.

KEEP IT QUIET

In order to boost profits the capitalist class have got to cut overheads anyway they can. A favourite with big-time high street retailers like C&A is to out-source production to Asian countries where the workers are unorganised, poorly paid and safety conditions are lax. "Survivors have described how a fire tore through a multi-storey garment factory just outside Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, killing more than 100 of their colleagues in one of the worst such incidents in recent years. ......Witnesses said many workers leapt from upper stories in a bid to escape the flames. Twelve workers died in hospital from injuries sustained in falls, officials said, bringing the overall toll to 123 dead and more than 150 injured. The blaze will focus attention once more on the conditions in which workers producing clothes for sale in the west work. Fires in textiles and garments factories across south Asia have killed hundreds in recent months. More than 280 died in one at a site in Karachi, Pakistan, in September." (Guardian, 25 November) The report goes on to say "there was no immediate response from C&A." Surprise, surprise. RD

Independent class struggle not independence

Such words as "Independence", "My country", "Sovereignty"and  "Self-determination" all pertain to the ideology of nationalism that forestalls class-consciousness. All definitions are confusing. In fact what capitalism needs for its continual reproduction is not so much "a nation" as "a state". A "separatist" is bound to appeal to the prejudiced emotions of his "people" over a territory at all times in the name of a national "story" – christened "history" – invariably told about "the heroes". Winning "national independence" is a capitalist objective.

This ideology speaks in terms of "common bonds" – race, religion, language, economic interests – to define the nation-state. But such homogeneity is conspicuously absent in almost all the 195 countries1 on our planet. And all nations are class-divided. A change of capital's capital city does not make workers "independent". The transfer of political power takes place between two rival "nationalist" minorities but belonging to the same exploiting and ruling class who own and control the means of production and distribution all over the world. It is not "independence" but "interdependence" that is the order of the day. Nationalism is not a thing that ought to concern the working class. Wherever we live and work, our only concern ought to be socialism.

All nationalistic ideas simply seek to turn back the wheel of history by fettering the ongoing and inevitable process of capitalist globalisation. “Re-structuring”, “down-sizing”, “rationalising”, “re-engineering” and "out-sourcing" are the euphemistic labels under which big corporations are shrinking the world over. New ideas, beliefs, fashions, attitudes and opinions are formed, reformed, challenged and  defied almost every minute. Shifts in consumer demand, new technologies, and new distribution methods that change their markets, are giving challenging times to the corporate giants. Nation-states which played a predominant role in human affairs in the past few centuries have lost their old importance.

William J. Amelio explained "I live the worldsourced life. As CEO of Lenovo ..., I am an American CEO based in Singapore. Our chairman, who is Chinese, works from North Carolina. Other top executives are based around the globe. A meeting of my company's senior managers looks like the United Nations General Assembly. My company is like some of the world's most popular consumer products. It may say "Made in China" on the outside, but the key components are designed and manufactured by innovative people and companies spread across six continents. ... The products of companies that practice worldsourcing may be labeled "Made in Switzerland," or "Made in the U.S.A." or "Made in China," but in the new world in which we all now live, they should more truthfully be labeled, "Made Globally". ... In today's world, assessing companies by their nation of origin misses the point." (Forbes Magazine 17 August 2007)

However, capitalist globalisation  is not synonymous with globalisation of the interests of capitalism.

 It is now crystal clear that as capitalism is a universal and cosmopolitan phenomenon but so also is the working class. The working class cannot emancipate itself nationally. The world is a “global village”. Each region may have its own particular and distinct customs, but they are part of a greater system of society that is world-wide. This system of society is capitalism and every region and nation operates within this system of society in one way or another. One country cannot establish socialism. No country is completely self-sufficient in the resources people need to satisfy their needs. No country can really isolate itself from the rest of the world in a peaceful manner, so a peaceful “socialist nation” would be easy prey for the outside capitalist world. Just as capitalism is a world system, socialism will have to be a world system. Socialism will be a world without countries. Borders are just artificial barriers that belong to a past and present that is best left behind. Socialism is not an island in the middle of capitalism, but a global system of society that will replace capitalism.

That "the emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries" (IWMA Rules) should be the guiding principle of the working class of the world.

William Morris Again

News from Nowhere is an account by William Morris of a socialist returning home from a branch meeting of the Hammersmith Socialist League to fall into a deep sleep. When he awakes, he is in the socialist future. People are living in equality, and there is no money, no government, no marriage and no politics. The people live in harmony with nature, and work because they enjoy it, take pleasure in crafts, and have few conflicts with one another. Morris’s vision echoes Marx’s idea that under communism people would be able "to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner."

William Morris could be so easily dismissed as utopian if it were not for the amount of time, effort and money he expended on what he called ‘practical socialism’: printing newspapers, leaflets and pamphlets, organising meetings, giving lectures and building socialism as a political force. . He called himself a ‘dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time.’ Yet he was also every bit as much a political organiser as Keir Hardie. His socialism was imbued with environmentalism and an understanding of the brutalising nature of the modern city. He railed against pollution, the destruction of ancient buildings, shoddy goods and poor design. He was a ‘green’ long before the term was invented.  His vision is inspiring. His politics are uncompromising.

Socialist Courier suggests the following for further reading, an article by Colin Skelly written for the Morris Society.
http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/SU03.15.2.Skelly.pdf

A Revolutionary Socialist by Adam Buick
 http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/SU84.6.1.Buick.pdf
A critique of Paul Meiers biography of Morris by Adam Buick
 http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/SU76.3.2.Buick.pdf

Stephen Coleman,
 "The Economics of Utopia: Morris and Bellamy Contrasted." 
http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/SP89.8.2.Coleman.pdf
 "What Can We Learn from William Morris?" http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/SU85.6.3.Coleman.pdf
"William Morris and 'Education Towards Revolution': 'Making Socialists' versus 'Putting Them In Their Place.'" 
http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/AU94.11.1.Coleman.pdf

Exposing the ethics of the Co-op

On Thursday 22nd a dozen people, including members of benefit claimants' groups Black Triangle and the Crutch Collective, Clydeside Industrial Workers Of The World, Glasgow Anarchist Federation, Glasgow Solidarity Federation as well as other individuals took part in the hour long picket of the Co-Op Bank and supermarket on the same street in central Glasgow.

They gave out leaflets to Co-Op customers and the hundreds of people going pass on their way home from work. The leaflet highlighted the Co-Op's four year occupational health contract with Atos. Atos continue to make huge profits by continuing to assess most sick and disabled benefit claimants as fit for work, ignoring contrary medical evidence, to comply with Government targets for benefit cuts. The cuts are being imposed to make the poor pay again for the latest crisis in capitalism caused by the rich. They asked people to contact the Co-Op to tell the company, that sells itself as ethical, that they will be losing their custom until they cancel their contract with Atos.

Most interest came from older women who perhaps know from experience what the Co-Op is really about. Maybe they know the reality of the Co-Op's claim that they have always been ethical, because they have always provided affordable prices to those in need. In past generations the Co-Op mostly employed women. Their exploitative employment practices are still the same as any other business. Historically the Co-Op has played a significant role in the daily lives of many working class people. But it's contribution to working class emancipation has been marginal at best and at worst has added to illusion that such an aim can be achieved within the capitalist system. Like any other business it is open to the pressures that come with the fluctuations of the marketplace and has made workers redundant when the markets are down. Like any other bosses the Co-Op management have made older workers redundant, using the excuse that they would be incapable of coping with the introduction of new technology, that was never introduced, because managers had nothing better to do than manage workers like cogs in a machine.

Co-Op management tried to placate the protesters with more empty words about ethics, rather than taking action against Atos. They have refused to rule out Atos from the bidding process for their new occupational contract, that starts next year, despite the unethical behaviour of Atos being well documented. If the Co-Op were interested in ethics they would have already publicly rejected an Atos bid. Their decision on who to award the new contract to will be based primarily on cheapness even though the profitable Co-Op do not have to do this out of economic necessity.

Atos and the police have been monitoring anti-Atos activity to try to manage dissent towards ineffectiveness. Now the Co-Op are up to it as well to help their Atos partners. The communications from Co-Op management, the hiring of extra security staff and the ludicrous number of police present for the picket show that the Co-Op are extremely worried about their ethical image, no matter how fake, even from the dent that can be caused to it by a relatively small group and one action. We must be doing something right. Just imagine what actions against the Atos contract by larger groups in more that one place could do.

From here

The Legal Class Struggle

Defence lawyers are protesting against a change to the legal aid system contained in the Scottish Civil Justice Council and Criminal Legal Assistance Bill, which will not only force anyone with a disposable income of more than £68 a week to contribute to the cost of their representation in summary cases, but will make lawyers responsible for collecting the money. "Due to the nature of criminal law, a huge number of the people you are dealing with have substance abuse problems, alcohol problems, mental health problems or learning difficulties,” says Cameron Tait, the president of the Edinburgh Bar Association “Trying to get these people to play ball, to turn up at court and to engage with the criminal justice system can be difficult enough, but when you are trying to get them to pay part of a fee they can’t afford, it’s going to cause an impossible situation. The underlying point is that the Scottish Government knows most of these contributions will not be paid and they want the profession to take the hit." Unlike in England, those contributions will not be refunded in the event of an acquittal.

Andrew Houston of McSporrans explained “We are concerned that people on relatively modest incomes are going to have to make that contribution in straitened economic times,” Houston says. “Will they think: ‘Instead of paying I’ll just plead guilty to get it over and done with’? Then they’d be forfeiting the right to challenge the prosecution.”

If defence lawyers decide it is no longer worth their while to take on summary legal aid cases, those accused of crimes will either have to defend themselves or be represented by the Public Defence ­Solicitors Office. The problem with that is the PDSO is run by the state, it’s not independent – so you would have the situation where the state was prosecuting and effectively the state was defending as well and that is not a fair and equal system of justice. Reports also suggest that more guilty pleas are proferred by PDSO clients.

14 firms in Scotland last year received more than £1m in legal aid payments and reports showing the country’s legal aid bill is higher than that of Italy, a country with a population of 61 million, it’s little wonder people find it difficult to believe they are motivated by anything other than concerns for their own profit margins. Scandals involving lawyers who have made “false” or “excessive” claims have helped perpetuate the image of legal aid as a giant racket. Law Society president Austin Lafferty accepted the industrial action was a “hard-sell”. “People don’t think of lawyers being any kind of deserving case,” he said. “But the moment you get a call from the police saying your 19-year-old son has been caught up in a fight and he’s going to be in a police cell until Monday, when he’ll be in court charged with breach of the peace, then we are one of the emergency services – then you want the best lawyer you can get.”

While defence lawyers are aware the public sees them as belonging to the wealthiest section of society, they claim the cuts mean that – when it comes to summary cases (which make up the bulk of their work) – they may be paid a lower hourly rate than a plumber. Defence lawyers receive a fixed rate of £485 in the sheriff court and £295 in the district court, which covers all preparation and court attendances up to and including the first half hour of any trial (their fee is halved if their client later changes his plea to guilty). Every time a case is adjourned they lose out because they are being paid a fixed fee. On the first day of the trial the lawyer is paid just £100 in the sheriff court. The daily rate rises if the trial runs to a second or third day but few do. The fee was frozen from 1998 to 2008 and then cut to the £485 figure. Few professions anywhere that has had a pay freeze for a decade followed by a pay cut.

Cameron Tait said  “There are proposals to shut down sheriff courts around the country, so people in rural areas will have to travel far to get to court, the Procurator Fiscal’s office is understaffed and underfinanced – ­justice is in crisis.”
Oliver Adair, the Law Society’s Legal Aid convener says the non-payment of legal aid contributions will disproportionately affect rural firms which are already operating on tight profit margins and don’t have the volume of the business to make up for any loss of revenue. If those firms go to the wall, people in rural areas will find it more difficult to find representation.

Not only have they been asked to stomach a succession of cuts but they are being ignored on matters of fundamental importance, such as whether or not the need for corroboration – the historic requirement for two separate sources of evidence to secure a conviction – should be scrapped.

Tait believes if lawyers don’t take a stand now, the weakest people will suffer most. “We need to protect the independent criminal bar because we are the safety net for the most vulnerable people in society – people who can’t speak up for themselves, people who can’t represent themselves,” he says. “That’s such an important part of the criminal justice and such an important part of democracy as a whole – and it’s being eroded.”

GROWING OLD DISGRACEFULLY

Having spent a lifetime working for wages with all its stresses and strains even retirement brings no relief to the working class. "Tens of thousands of older people are condemned to care homes where they are not fed properly and are neglected by untrained staff, a health watchdog has found. .... In the most comprehensive study of its kind, the Care Quality Commission found a care system over-whelmed by sick patients and in need of radical change." (Times, 23 November) The study revealed that there are 500,000 people in nursing and care homes and that one in five is not even being fed properly. RD

bank nationalisation (2)

It appears that some still see a future in the banks to solve the problems of the recession - state-owned banks, of course. Alf Young of the Scotsman appears to be a a convert and waxes lyrically about the Bank of North Dakota which is owned by the state. He appears to infer that the low impact of the crisis on the state had something to do with the this bank. Young then nostalgically recalled the widespread trustee savings bank that once existed but fails to mention that at least one still remains.

It is a shame that he never read the Socialist Courier or he would have come across this post which would have enlightened him a bit more to dead-end hope of bank nationalisation. 

HYPOCRISY AND WEAPON SALES

The journalist Finian Cunningham highlights a piece of hypocrisy by the UK and USA governments. Whilst officially condemning dictatorship and praising democracy they do not let that deter them from a bit of billion dollar business in the sale of armaments. "Moreover, the Persian Gulf Arab dictatorships are a lucrative destination for the American and British weapons industries. The latter vital interest was underscored last week by the visit of British prime minister to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia -- whose sole mission was to sell $9 billion-worth of fighter jets to these regimes. The Pentagon is also planning to sell Saudi Arabia $6.7 billion-worth of military transport planes, on top of the $60 billion deal signed off last year. In an age of debt-ridden American and British capitalism, the Arab dictators are vital sources of cash." (PRESS TV, 12 November) RD

WHAT HOUSING PROBLEM?

Many workers are facing the problem of either having their house re-possessed for non-payment of mortgage arrears or cannot get enough money together to put up a deposit on a first home. No such problem exist for the international capitalist class. "A luxury Hong Kong apartment in a Frank Gehry-designed building has sold for an eye-popping price of nearly $60 million, the property developer said Tuesday, the latest sign of the city's overheated housing market. ..... The sale comes amid growing concern over surging property prices in Hong Kong driven by ultra-low interest rates and an influx of wealthy mainland Chinese buyers. Prices have doubled since the end of the global financial crisis in 2009, according to a widely watched index." (Associated Press, 13 November) RD

Facts for today

Two out of five households across the country are either in or close to 'fuel poverty'

One in 10 people has suffered some form of "food poverty" in the last 12 months.

Around 400,000 families in low-paid work will be worse off as a result of universal credit

James Connolly Commemoration, 1949

 The following is the text of a leaflet that dates from 1949, and was produced by the Dublin Socialist Group for distribution at events organised in the city to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the execution of James Connolly. The socialists who made up the Dublin Socialist Group later helped form the World Socialist Party of Ireland.



FELLOW-WORKERS ! TRADE UNIONISTS !

May the 15th, 1949 – thirty-three years after his death which you now commemorate, and less than thirty-three days after the roar of guns ushered in “The Republic of Ireland”. What relationship is there between these two events? That is the question which, on this day, it is only fitting that you should ask yourselves. Once a year you can march through the streets in your thousands to commemorate his death yet every other day of the year your actions – your very ideas – are, apparently, in violent conflict with all that the man lived for. Is that an unwarranted assumption? Emphatically, we reply: NO. The truth remains the truth, however unpalatable it may be.

We have not the least desire to advance any claim to James Connolly, nor do we consider ourselves the especial inheritors of all of his ideas. But to-day, when everybody acclaims him and sings his praise, we think it very necessary to re-state the simple but vital fact, namely, that JAMES CONNOLLY WAS OF THE WORKING CLASS. His ideas are not, and never will be, the sole preserve, nor in the custody, of any particular section BUT THE WORKING CLASS. Here it is as well to recall – when many are clamouring to bask in the light of the but recently-discovered glory of Connolly – that his ideas were vehemently denounced, and his very person attacked, by the representatives of those interests who, to-day, so anxiously press their claim to his name. We would not be so much concerned at this were it not for the fact that the workers have been “taken in” by these spurious claims. You, fellow-workers, have been duped; for you have supported political parties which have acted in the interests of any and every class in and out of this county but the working class. And you have supported them and placed them in power mainly on the strength of their nationalism and Republicanism. You, who now march to-day in memory of James Connolly, have you forgotten his “Labour in Irish History”? Have you forgotten the thoughts he put on paper in order that you might the better be able to wage your struggle against a social system which condemns you to poverty and insecurity? We think you have forgotten. At the cost of remembering the symbolic moment of his death in a national struggle you’ve forgotten the toiling years of his life on behalf of the working class. Connolly didn’t struggle, and write and speak, and organise, in order that the workers might adhere to this or that Republican constitutional formula; no, not for that. There was no James Connolly if such a man did not desire and work to change the world, not its paper constitutions.

And you, fellow-workers, who, in your Trade Unions and political parties stoutly maintain that you strive to follow in his footsteps, do you direct your efforts towards changing the world? Evidence that you do is certainly very much lacking; for on every occasion you’ve entered the polling-booth you’ve either returned you out-going set of masters or merely changed them for a new set. Not yet have you evinced any great desire to get rid of the master class AS A WHOLE. And that, simply, is what is meant by “changing the world”.

FELLOW-WORKERS ! As you may march, as you may stand at the meeting-place, to-day, why not summarise your present position in your own mind – after twenty-seven years of native government, and after twenty-seven days of “The Republic of Ireland”? Line up your wage-packet (assuming you’re not one of “the 75,000”) alongside the cost-of-living figure: which is higher? Dwell a little on the plight of the thousands “living” in the tenements – that is, of course, if you happen to be blessed (!) with a suburban (!!) “working class house”. Recall the thousands who are unemployed (if you’re not one of them, of course), and remember they’re the ever-present threat of capitalism which hangs over your head – you may join their ranks to-morrow. Again, tuberculosis and other medically-classified poverty diseases are capitalism’s constant threat to the health and happiness of your children. And topping these and the other social evils you know only too well the experience is the threat of another capitalist war – yes, another, and promising to be everything (and much more) that all the previous wars of history weren’t together.

That is the real world you live in. Say – if you wish – that you reside in a portion of that world known as “The Republic of Ireland”. So what? Does that alter your position one bit? Of course not. And that world, reflected in the capitalist system of that country and the conditions of the Irish working class, surely deserves to go. And it will go WHEN THE WORKING CLASS WILLS IT. If James Connolly can be said to have left a message for the working class, it is this: THE WORKING CLASS MUST ACHIEVE ITS EMANCIPATION ITSELF AND IT CAN ONLY DO SO THROUGH THE ABOLITION OF THE CAPITALIST SOCIAL SYSTEM.

We are not given to lip-service, and much (judicious) quoting of Connolly, but the following, we think, is by no means out of place, and we especially commend it, on this particular occasion, to those who – to put it bluntly – have made a good thing out of such practices.

 “Ireland as distinct from her people is nothing to me; and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for ‘Ireland’ and yet can pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and suffering and the shame and the degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland: aye, wrought by Irishmen upon Irishmen and women ithout burning to end it, is a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements he is pleased to call ‘Ireland’”. 'The Coming Generation' 1900 [our emphasis]


Fellow-workers, there is but one way to really commemorate Connolly, and all those – whoever and wherever they may been – who have fought and died for and on behalf of the world’s workers, and that is by striving to abolish capitalism and establish SOCIALISM, THE COMMON OWNERSHIP AND DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION (the factories, mills, mines, railways, etc.), BY AND IN THE INTERESTS OF THE WHOLE OF THE COMMUNITY WITHOUT ANY DISTINCTION WHATSOEVER. By devoting your time and energy to the achieving of such an aim you will be truly commemorating Connolly and all those of his kind every day.

THE DUBLIN SOCIALIST GROUP

Grey Granite

 Book Review from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Grey Granite by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Canongate Press)

The novel Grey Granite, the third volume of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's trilogy A Scots Quair, is a text that fits rather snugly within the canon of twentieth-century literary modernism, even though it is rarely to be found on a university syllabus, at least outside Scotland.

 The plot primarily involves Chris Colquohoun and her son Ewan Tavendale, making a "new life" for themselves after moving to the industrial city of Duncairn from the country. While Chris works in a boarding house, Ewan goes to work at Gowans, the local steel works. The general relationships between these and other characters are obviously one of the main elements of the plot, but these relationships and the other events presented in the text are heavily coloured, if not determined, by Ewan's movement from an apparently self-reliant and individualist conception of his "self" to a more collective and class-conscious position. From an encounter (and argument) with an English socialist school teacher (who is largely, it seems, inspired by William Morris), Ewan comes first to an objective and rational recognition of a collective working-class interest which then develops through sympathy and empathy into a deeper subjective and emotional recognition of his shared experience with, and inclusion in, the working class. It is important to recognise that this movement from an exclusive individualist conception of his self to an inclusive class-conscious conception of self does not entail any loss of individuality. Rather it is in some sense a dialectical process in which the individual ego is lifted up, surpassed and preserved in the intersubjective collectively.

Later, though, Ewan's individuality, preserved in the initial movement into class-consciousness, suffers some loss on his entry into and identification with the Communist Party, after which everything else is subordinated to their interests and aims. Part of the reason for this is the Communist Party's own identification of itself as "the working class" - that is, they substitute themselves for the class they see themselves as representing. This is, of course, an inevitable result of their vanguardism. Placing themselves in a position of leadership over the workers they then come to substitute themselves for the workers. As such, while ostensibly working for the overthrow of a hierarchical capitalist system, they come to institute a new hierarchy (quite apart from the fact that they would only bring about state capitalism rather than socialism if they succeeded in their aims); instead of serving the interests of the workers, they use the workers to serve the interest of the Party. This means that the workers remain in a subservient, subaltern position in relation to the Communists even while apparently struggling to free themselves from all hierarchical domination.

Structurally, any vanguardist party, whatever its explicit intentions, is doomed to repeat this process, so betraying the revolutionary project it espouses. All this is made abundantly clear within the novel, in episodes in which the Communists lie to the workers in order to try and manipulate them for the Party's own ends as well as in the clearly-stated attitude of Jim Trease, a Communist leader: "For it's you and me are the working class, not the poor Bulgars gone back to Gowans."

This is a novel with plenty to interest socialists, as should be clear from the above. It provides ample illustration of the hopelessness of the ideologies and strategies of both Labourist and Leninist parties and, by implication at least, of the necessity for the working class to organise and educate themselves for socialism, without leaders or hierarchies and against the constant capitulations and and political myopia that are the necessary results of reformism. I must finally state, though, that this is not simply a historical document or a political treatise. It is a wonderful example of literary modernism offering as much aesthetic pleasure as it does anything else, with great believable characters, full of human ambiguity, and a use of language that is simultaneously down to earth and poetic.
Jonathan Clay

Even the lawyers are striking

Lawyers in Edinburgh caused chaos in a court as they staged a walkout in a dispute over changes to the legal aid system.

Anyone with more than £68 of disposable income each week or with £750 in the bank will be expected to pay all or part of the cost of their defence in court under the plans, designed to cut £3.9 million a year from Scotland's legal aid bill. Solicitors say the move will risk miscarriages of justice and deny access to legal representation for all.

Edinburgh Bar Association and Glasgow Bar Association have already voted to take industrial action over the issue and in the first round of action, members at Edinburgh Sheriff Court walked out of the custody court at 11.45am yesterday and protested outside.

Sick Scotland

Scotland has had the worst mortality rates in Western European among working age men and women for more than three decades, a report revealed.

 The study, Still 'The Sick Man of Europe'? by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH), stated: "Mortality in the working-age population remains comparatively high and mortality for circulatory diseases and many cancer-related diseases is higher than in most other Western European countries."

Violent Scotland

Scotland is still the violent crime capital of Europe, despite offending falling as a whole. A quarter of crime is violent. The report found violent crime is higher per head of population in Scotland, than elsewhere in Europe.

 Domestic abuse, in particular, rose sharply in 2011/12 to almost 120 incidents per 10,000 population.

"Every society has the criminals it deserves.” ― Emma Goldman

The Capitalist Game

The biggest football story recently has been the financial collapse of  Rangers and now a similar impending fate for Hearts. This is not just a sporting story but involves many of the failings that have been played out in the wider economy. Corporate failure, greed, arrogance, criminality and cheating are included in the list of accusations.

Jock Stein said that “football without fans is nothing”. Capitalist ideology tells us that the consumer is king and that the decisions of millions of consumers decide what production takes place. If companies fail it is because they don’t sell goods or services that people want or at a price they are prepared to pay. There is just enough truth in this to give it the credibility to make it widely accepted. What it leaves out, among other things, is that production also has to make a profit and that indeed this is the main reason any production takes place at all. Given the ownership of the means of production in the hands of only one group of people, these people thereby being called capitalists, and the exclusion of others, who must be required to provide workers for these owners, it is the relations of this production that, more than anything else, determines the wealth and income of the respective classes. This in turn determines to a large degree the pattern of consumption, which is further conditioned by advertising and monopoly suppliers etc.

Commodification and all its contradictions have since spread over an increasing variety of human activities. Sport has for some time become a global industry, more and more determined by the demand for profit. Sport must have room for chance, accident, unexpected triumph and unexpected failure while sporting contest subject to the requirement for profitability more and more implies certainty and the elimination of the possibility of monetary loss.

Adapted from here