Food for thought

For the last few years, Alberta's economy hasn't been as badly hit as the rest of Canada, mainly due to the demand for oil by China and the US...now things are not so rosy. The break-even price at which extraction is profitable varies from $65 to $100 a barrel. In recent months it has dropped considerably due to lack of pipe-line capacity to get oil to market, new sources of cheaper shale oil from fracking, and China's demand falling off. None of this bodes well for the Canadian economy. Under crapitalism it's the same old story -- great today, lousy tomorrow.
We have all heard enough about the pope but the Toronto Star reported that among the high and mighty Catholics to attend the papal installation was Robert Mugabe, undoubtedly embarrassing the Vatican given that he will likely stand trial one day at The Hague for crimes against humanity. The same article also carries a quote from the 'red bishop' Camara of Brazil, " If I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. If I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
The same paper reported that that the largest religious group is those who come under the heading 'Atheism, Agnosticism, or no religious affiliation (if you divide the Christians into Catholics and others). We have to remember that a very large percentage of the so-called religious are not, do not attend their church, and likely only put down a religion to hedge their bets just in case! Probably Canada's most religious province, Quebec up to the 1960s, went
through the Quiet revolution, i.e. took charge of their lives from the Catholic Church and dropped church attendance from 90% down to 5%. Religion really is an anachronism and most people realize that today.
The same issue detailed the sorry economic run of Latvia. After its economy tanked in 2008 -- twenty per cent contraction -- it received a seven billion euro loan from the International Monetary Fund. The usual set of accompanying austerity measures produced praise from IMF managing Director, Christine Lagarde, " You have pulled through...you have returned to strong growth...you have lowered budget deficits and kept government debt ratios to some of the lowest in the EU..blah, blah, blah. The reality for the average Latvian worker does not match the praise for the economy. As of 2010, 31% are classified as 'severely materially deprived', 300 000 people have left Latvia since 2000 looking elsewhere for jobs, and in 2012 the City of Riga served 759,250 hot meals for those with government vouchers. I wonder if Lagarde is cheering those figures! John Ayers

Same Poison, Different Bottle

We have a regrettable tendency to see what we want to see and rationalise what we already want to do. Scottish nationalists attribute Scotland’s ills to the constitutional link to England. Both Left and Right see independence as a panacea. Those on the Scottish Left who have added their voices to the campaign for independence have succumbed to ideas incompatible with the socialist transformation of society.

The Left has long subscribed to the principle of “self-determination” that small nations ought by right – assuming the support of its people – be given the right to cede from larger states and claim autonomy over their affairs but over the decades socialists have seen the divisive character of such nationalist campaigns. No serious socialist can be a committed to nationalism.

 “Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so." the historian Eric Hobsbawm has said.

Nationalism is the ideology of always putting one's nation first, often at the expense of other nations. It is not necessary to be a wealthy and powerful nation to carry out nationalistic policies and practices. Governments and corporations of every stripe engage in nationalistic practices in the name of patriotism.

The Left who support independence believe that once it has been achieved, the real fight for the future of Scotland will commence. To-day’s Left take Scotland’s radicalism for granted but go back just fifty years and a majority of Scots voted Conservative and sectarian prejudice still divided many working class communities. Go back a further fifty years or so, we find that left-wingers like Keir Hardie had to move to England to get elected.
Pre-union Scotland had its own feudal monarchy and its own pro-capitalist Protestant revolution and after 1707 its capitalist landlords, merchants and mill-owners continued to use the separate Scottish systems of law, religion and education to exploit their own people. The union with England made the Scottish ruling class a junior partner in securing the profits of colonial empire.

And today the Scottish capitalist class continue to parasitically feed off workers blood sweat and tears through the hedge funds and financial institutions of the City of London’s Square Mile and its satellite Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square. Scottish employers as a class draws on the support of the British State and does so jointly with employers in England and Wales. The economic power does not lie in Scotland. It still lies at a UK level, in Europe and around the rest of the world. Its top 20 companies are dominated by energy, particularly oil and gas multinationals and financial services corporations. With the exception of the drinks giant William Grant & Sons which is family owned, and Scottish Water which is state-owned, all the rest are public limited companies listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The most recent figures show that amongst larger enterprises (defined as those employing 250 people or more) 64% of employment and 78% of turnover is in enterprises where ultimate ownership and control is outside Scotland. Amongst larger firms in the manufacturing sector alone the results are even starker with 72% of employment and as much as 87% of turnover in companies owned outside of Scotland. These figures are based on Scottish registered companies only. They do not include big supermarket chains like Tesco and Asda, or military industrial companies like Rolls Royce and BAE Systems which have a huge turnover, and are major employers in Scotland but do not separately register here. The once familiar old South of Scotland Electricity Board (the SSEB) is now owned by the Spanish corporation Iberdrola and the French corporation EDF. A separate Scotland does not weaken finance capital.

Business is global. Capital flows are global. The capitalist’s first loyalty is to acquiring and expanding wealth. By the nature of their business and their lives today capitalists are inevitably pulled into a globalized world. They have much less connection and fewer ties to their national community. And their rewards are in the global world. As we witness in the recent exposures of Amazon and Starbucks and a host of other multi-nationals, Big Business has slipped the leash of national government and are no longer captive of a nation state.

In a world of globalisation, where countries are so interdependent it is near impossible to see how Scotland could be genuinely independent. Profits would most definitely continue to be being exported to London, Paris, Madrid or wherever and commercial decision will be made in these cities. Businessmen “sell out” their nation to other businessmen from abroad simply because they have more in common, in every practical sense, with other members of their class rather than the workers of their particular nationality.

The Socialist Party support neither an independent Scotland nor the status quo. Instead of wanting to separate Scottish workers from the English working class and elsewhere, recognising our shared class interests, we seek to join with working people across the world in creating a socialist alternative. Socialism, like capitalism, should know no boundaries and should look to the day when workers of all countries would become one great organisation. The answer to all the problems facing working men and women is not a flag, or a border or if powers lies in Edinburgh or London; it is the weight of the labour and trade union movement, united behind a commitment to make the politics of class, not nationality, its driving force. The priority for socialists should be common class interests not an exclusive nationalism. Independence will be the same poison but drunk from a different bottle.

The Socialist Party can certainly ascribe to James Connolly’s words when he said “For our demands most moderate are. We only want the earth.”

We're All In This Together

The recent budget with its welfare cuts and austere forecasts for the economic future must have depressed the Deputy Prime Minister and probably prompted him to take a break. 'Three days earlier, he sat stern-faced through the Coalition's latest 'we're all in it together' Budget. But with a flatlining economy and the row raging over benefits cuts, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg knew exactly where he needed to be – at his family's £7million, 20-room, Swiss ski chalet. Leaving the stress of austerity Britain behind, he jetted out with his family for an Easter getaway at the luxury villa nestling between fashionable Klosters and the resort of Davos.' (Daily Mail, 5 April) Clegg's family ski chalet has 20 rooms and is worth £7million and he has been skiing there since infancy. We don't suppose there is a problem about bedroom tax there. RD

Saudi justice

24-year-old Ali al-Khawahir will be deliberately paralysis for stabbing his friend in the back 10 years ago unless he pays his victim 1m Saudi riyals (£177,000) in compensation. diyya, blood money is paid instead of the implementation of qisas – legal retribution. Originally, the religious prescription to seek diyya in lieu of punishment was seen as a way of preventing bad blood fomenting between communities and encouraging compromise. In the modern age it commodifies justice, where the price of crime is arbitrarily determined by the state. An eye for an eye … unless you can afford to be spared. In an another case in Saudi Arabia earlier this year, a father sexually molested and murdered his five-year-old daughter, but avoided jail by paying money to her mother. It has become a way for the rich and the powerful to purchase impunity.


JEREMY PAXMAN:
You called (Saudi Arabia) a friend of the civilised world.

TONY BLAIR:
It is. In my view, what it is doing in respect of the Middle East now...

JEREMY PAXMAN:
It chops people's arms off. It tortures people.

TONY BLAIR:
They have their culture, their way of life."

 And we have larned never to bite the hand that feeds us!

Salmond - apologist for organised crime

Speaking during his New York trip, Alex Salmond said HSBC "in many ways is the most Scottish bank in the world now. Founded by Scots, run by Scots, on the principles of Scottish banking. Hence one reason why it's survived the winds better than other institutions"


With the Scottish-based HBOS and RBS exposed as incompetent and failed banking institutions Salmond was required to look further afield for a positive example. But the HSBC?

This was the bank fined £1.2 billion for money laundering in the United States and Mexico, and embroiled in a fresh scandal with Argentine authorities accusing it of laundering $100 million. In India, in November 2012, anti-corruption crusaders Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan alleged that the bank was involved in black money and hawala transactions. They said that in July 2011, the Indian Government had received a list of about 700 people having bank accounts in HSBC, Geneva, in 2006. The Bank also was fined $1.4 billion by the U.K. for improper selling of its financial products, including interest-rate swaps to corporate customers.

According to the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development and Global Financial Integrity, HSBC Mexico’s Cayman Islands branch opened as many as $50,000-denominated accounts without adequate attention to customer identification. HSBC USA opened 2000 accounts with untraceable bearer share corporations as owner over the past decade. Between 2001 and 2007, it allowed 28,000 transactions involving countries, groups, or individuals against which the US had imposed financial sanctions. These include sale of $1billion of US banknotes to Al Rajhi, a Saudi bank with owners having ties to terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda. Transactions amounting to $881 million were routed on behalf of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel and Colombian Norte del Valle cartel. Then, wire transfers totalling $670 billion between HSBC Mexico and HSBC USA were unmonitored. Another $200 trillion went through HSBC USA without anti-money laundering controls or monitoring.

The bank became “the preferred financial institution of drug cartels and money launderers” and as Alex Salmond says, it successfully weathered the recession seemingly by being the bag-man for drug-dealers, terrorists and tax evaders. Proud Scottish banking principles for Salmond to preach?

Food for thought

A survey conducted in twenty-two countries by Globescan Radar, found that few people considered problems such as air and water pollution, species loss, auto emissions, water shortages, and climate change, to be very serious. As John Smol, chairman of Research into Environmental Change at Queen's University, put it. Concern for the environment has always been in competition with the economy. When economic times are bad, people's priorities shift. We have seen this before. When the economy falters, almost always the environment is asked to pay a price." This is mainly because the loss of one's job, or the fear of it happening, seem more immediate than the destruction of the environment, despite the fact that the latter certainly affects the former and, despite the fact that the latter is becoming closer to an immediate problem, both should be viewed as matters to be dealt with now and this can only be done with the establishment of socialism. John Ayers

Remembering our history

The SNP would allow American bases on Scottish soil after independence – as long as they were non-nuclear. And just who would be doing an inventory check in a military escalation and crisis?

Salmond said the SNP’s support for entry into Nato was “to send a signal to our friends and partners that we wanted to assume responsibility as a responsible friend and partner.” Whats that about who sups with the Devil sups should have a long spoon? Salmond wants him in our back-yard.

On his visit to the United States Salmond spoke at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, a New York-based group set up in memory of Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (see here and here for this despicable man's history), and said: “Both the Declaration of Arbroath, with its search for a Scottish legitimacy, and the Declaration of Independence, with its affirmation of popular sovereignty, were sealed in the force of arms and struggle."

All nationalism is based on mythical history and nations have to create their ideologies from whatever scraps come to hand. Scotland is no exception and is perhaps luckier than most with its many tales of romance. The 6th April marks the anniversary of the signing of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath.


"Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own right and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself." - Declaration of Arbroath or properly titled "Letter of Barons of Scotland to Pope John XXII".

Stirring patriotic stuff. That it had ever existed was soon entirely forgotten and it was only rediscovered when a version of it was published by Sir George Mackenzie in 1680. It then becomes influential, but not really as an expression of nationalism but as support for those who wished to curtail royal power. It was only later that the Declaration of Arbroath came to be seen in purely nationalistic terms.

Scotland in 1320 was a very different country to the Scotland we know today therefore we should not ahistorically give to a medieval mind-set the sensibilities of a later, modern age. So we should what did the signatories of the document actually mean by "we" and "freedom"? The "we" who attached their seals to the document were all noblemen. And it was their freedom that it concerned. The authors of the Arbroath declaration most likely used the word "people" to mean "people like us". There you have it. The “people” of Scotland were the nobles, the majority of whom at that time were still fairly much culturally Anglo-Norman, despite inter-marriage within the indigenous Scoto-Gaelic ruling families and their further integration in terms of land holding and property ownership. As for the common-folk of Scotland; they had no say in the matter. Or in anything for that matter. The idea that the peasant in the fields or labourer in the towns had any type of say is laughable. The Declaration signatories certainly had no concept of popular sovereignty.

Those medieval signatories to the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath were merely feudal barons asserting their claim to rule and lord it over their own tenants and serfs, not leading any "liberation struggle". In fact, John de Menteith, who turned William Wallace over to Edward of England put his seal to the Declaration of Arbroath.

The claims that the Declaration challenged the traditional belief in the Divine Right of Kings and promoting in its place the notion that the nation itself was foremost and the monarch merely its steward, is argued solely to justify Bruce usurping the rightful king John Balliol, who it should be remembered Wallace acted as Guardian for. The section of the Declaration reading “if this prince [Bruce] shall leave these principles he hath so nobly pursued, and consent that we or our kingdom be subjected to the king or people of England, we will immediately endeavour to expel him, as our enemy and as the subverter both of his own and our rights, and we will make another king, who will defend our liberties” should be read as a cautionary warning and a veiled threat to Robert the Bruce himself for he had switched his allegence several times in previous years.

In a propaganda war, the Scots were at a disadvantage . The Pope in Rome had excommunicated Bruce who had decided to hell being just an English lord, I’d rather be a Scottish king and to achieve that goal murdered his chief rival in a church. He sent three letters to the Pope. The first was a letter from himself, the second from the Scots clergy, and the third from the nobles of Scotland that became known as the Declaration of Arbroath.

The lesser-known earlier 1310 Declaration of the Clergy (the clergy being usually the younger sons of the nobles) proclaimed the Kingship of Robert. It begins by stating that John Balliol was made King of Scots by Edward Longshanks of England, but goes on to criticise Balliol’s status, because an English King does not have any authority to determine who will be the King of Scots. Such authority rests with the Scots themselves and alone, ignoring the fact that the Scottish nobles had given up that right in negotiations with Edward over twenty years beforehand.

The Declaration stated: “The people, therefore, and commons of the foresaid Kingdom of Scotland, ...agreed upon the said Lord Robert, the King who now is, in whom the rights of his father and grandfather to the foresaid kingdom, in the judgement of the people, still exist and flourish entire; and with the concurrence and consent of the said people he was chosen to be King, that he might reform the deformities of the kingdom, correct what required correction, and direct what needed direction; and having been by their authority set over the kingdom, he was solemnly made King of Scots... And if any one on the contrary claim right to the foresaid kingdom in virtue of letters of time past, sealed and containing the consent of the people and the commons, know ye that all this took place in fact by force and violence which could not at the time be resisted.”
Like a lot of such grandiose statements we've seen down through the ages, the Clergy's declaration was nothing more than misleading propaganda, which sought to disguise the facts of history.

A more modern myth connects the Declaration of Arbroath with the American Declaration of Independence because both enshrined in their declarations the principle that sovereignty rests with the people. Firstly, as noted already it was not a "declaration" in the sense of the American Declaration of Independence or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man but a plea to the Pope. The Act of Abjuration (1581), where the Dutch deposed their Spanish ruler for having violated the social contract with his subjects could be just as easily cited as the influence on the American Declaration of Independence. Or even the English Declaration of Rights, which deposed King James II and brought to power William and Mary of Orange can be said to have had an influence on the Founding Fathers.
Nor should we over-look that although the Declaration of Arbroath says that the King of Scotland can be deposed if he abuses his power one hundred and five years earlier than the Declaration of Arbroath, at Runnymede, King John was forced to sign Magna Carta, giving his English subjects rights including the right to establish a monarchs rule. Nor should it be forgotten that between 1320 and 1603, Scotland had 11 monarchs. 3 of those (James I, James III, and Mary) were removed through assassination, civil war or deposition. In the same period, England had 18 monarchs. Of which no fewer than 7 (Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, and Jane) were removed through civil war or deposition. So who, exactly, had the richer tradition of overthrowing monarchical power?

If heroes are required then instead of Wallace or Bruce, the Scottish workers should look to the likes of Wat Tyler and John Ball, commoners, who in the 1381 Peasants' Revolt took London and beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury. The true history of the exploited is about the resistnce of the Levellers and Diggers and the Chartists not the winners and losers of aristocratic family feuds for the throne of Scotland.

The Real Artfull Dodgers

In an effort to balance their books the British owning class have had their subservient government slash all sorts of welfare benefits. Putting limits on government employees wages and introducing the bedroom tax are just a couple of the measures they have dreamt up. There is one benefit recipient they seem unable to deal with though - the tax-dodging rich. Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world. 'The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens.' (Guardian, 3 April) We don't suppose these millionaires have to worry too much about trivialities like bedroom tax. RD

Not So Glamorous

Behind the High Street glamour of the fashion house Zara lurks the horror of slave labour in Bolivia. Kate Middleton is seen regularly shopping in the chain's branches and every Zara dress she has worn has sold out within hours. Both Kate and her sister Pippa stepped out in the Zara outfits the morning after the royal wedding, but the source of their trendy outfits is less than glamorous. 'High-street fashion store Zara is under investigation over the use of slave labour at factories in Argentina, it was reported today. Immigrant workers, including children, were discovered producing clothes for the label in 'degrading' sweatshop conditions, investigators said. The mostly Bolivian labourers claimed they were made to work more than 13-hour days and were prevented from leaving the factories without permission.' (Daily Mail, 3 April) Authorities moved in on the sweatshops in the outlying Mataderos, Liniers and Floresta districts of the Argentine capital after a tip-off from workers' rights NGO La Alameda. The charity's spokesman Gustavo Vera said people at the factory were made to start at 7am and work without a break until 11pm, from Monday to Saturday. He said: 'Their workplaces were also their homes, families were forced to share cramped quarters in a mess of sewing machines, needles, threads and children.'The places were dark without proper lighting to sew and no ventilation. RD

The Banksters

Fred Goodwin had his knightship removed. Shall we see the same for Sir James Crosby and Lord Stevenson being stripped of their honours.
The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards concluded the three men, who have since moved on to new positions, should never be allowed to work in the financial sector again. The report identified bad lending (when someone cannot repay a loan), inadequate liquidity (not enough ready cash) and a lack of risk management as the key factors behind HBOS’s fall

The report said: “The primary responsibility for the downfall of HBOS should rest with Sir James Crosby, architect of the strategy that set the course for disaster, with Andy Hornby, who proved unable or unwilling to change course, and Lord Stevenson, who presided over the bank’s board from its birth to its death...Lord Stevenson, in particular, has shown himself incapable of facing the realities of what placed the bank in jeopardy.” It said the former HBOS bosses had failed to admit their mistakes and should apologise for their “incompetent and reckless board strategy”. commission member, Lord Turnbull, pointed out that when Bank of Scotland and Halifax merged to create HBOS, the organisation had a market capitalisation of £30bn. “Just seven years later, all that value had been destroyed”

Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the commission, said: “The HBOS story is one of catastrophic failures of management, governance and regulatory oversight. Primary responsibility for these failures should lie with the former chairman of HBOS and its former chief executives Sir James Crosby and Andy Hornby.”

The report explained that “The lending approach of the corporate division would have been bad lending in any market. The crisis in financial markets was merely the catalyst to expose it.”

To illustrate the scale of the risks being taken on, the report said that in the corporate bank in 2001 the biggest exposure to one single borrower was less than £1m. By 2008 there were nine customers who had each been lent £1bn. One borrower had been advanced £3bn.

Crosby is now working in the City as a member of the European advisory board at private equity firm Bridgepoint. He was knighted for services to finance. He remains on the board at Compass.
Hornby is now chief executive of gaming group Gala Coral.
Stevenson, Baron Stevenson of Coddenham, has gone on to hold a number of non-executive board positions since leaving HBOS including Western Union and The Economist magazine.

The report added: "We are shocked and surprised that, even after the ship has run aground, so many of those who were on the bridge still seem so keen to congratulate themselves on their collective navigational skills."
Socialist Courier isn’t. It par for the course for the capitalist class.

More Nonsense About Class

There is more nonsense written about class than almost any other subject. Here is the latest contribution to that nonsense. 'People in the UK now fit into seven social classes, a major survey conducted by the BBC suggests. It says the traditional categories of working, middle and upper class are outdated, fitting 39% of people. It found a new model of seven social classes ranging from the elite at the top to a "precariat" - the poor, precarious proletariat - at the bottom.' (BBC News, 3 April) In fact in modern developed capitalism there are only two classes. The working class - all those who own little or nothing and are forced to work for a wage or a salary in order to live, and the owning class - the tiny minority who own and control all the means of production and distribution and therefore do not need to work but can live of the surplus value produced by the working class. RD

The Regal Con Game

Times are hard in British capitalism today so our rulers have had to cut costs. Slash welfare benefits, cap government workers wages and introduce a bedroom tax. There are some things of course that are sacrosanct. 'The Queen has received a £5m boost in the funds she receives from the taxpayer to carry out her official duties. The sovereign grant, which covers the running costs of the Queen's household, has been set at £36.1m for the 2013-14 financial year.' (Guardian, 2 April) Keep the workers thinking they are one nation and give them spectacular royal events. Essential to disguise their exploitation. Money well spent. RD

Bad News

A study in America found that over a three-year period, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN aired just 141 stories in which unions and the labor movement were either the primary or secondary topic. That's out of an estimated 16,000 news stories aired on the four networks, so less than 0.3 percent of all news stories. Not only were just the unions not getting much attention in the news their view was being ignored. CBS did not use even one union source in 24 percent of its stories on labor; NBC omitted union voices from 19 percent of the stories.
The pattern of portrayal of unions was negative, with workers critical of unions more likely to be heard. The report found that news about labor and unions related to the field of education and the automobile industry included more governmental sources than labor sources. “The news treatment thus presents the government as the organized party willing to provide solutions, but not the labor/union negotiators”.

These findings resemble those of past studies, such as the Glasgow Media Group which have found that media coverage is often slanted against collective economic action and toward business and elite interests. Unions are portrayed as hurting competitiveness, and thus costing jobs. The media serve their masters well. It has turned worker against worker, and particularly against the unions.

We Are all In This Together

One of the fond notions that supporters of capitalism like to espouse is that times may be hard, but we are all in this together. Indeed Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has insisted he knows what it is like to "live on the breadline". 'The comment comes after 250,000 people signed a petition urging Mr Duncan Smith to try living on £53 a week. He dismissed this as a "complete stunt", telling the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian he had been unemployed twice in his life. .......... Mr Duncan Smith told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday, the day the changes came into force, that he could survive on £53 a week.' (BBC News, 2 April) This was the amount another speaker on the show - market trader David Bennett - said he would be left with.' Dom Arvesano, who was behind the petition commented: '"This would mean a 97% reduction in his current income, which is £1,581.02 a week or £225 a day after tax." This is a gigantic fall in his present standard of living and we note despite his courageous boast of how he could survive on £53 a week he has declined the petitioners challenge to live for a year in such penury. RD

Ghost Town

37% of people buying property in the most expensive neighbourhoods of central London did not intend them to be primary residences.
"Belgravia is becoming a village with fewer people in it," said Alistair Boscawen, a local real estate agent. He works in "the nuts area" of London, as he put it, "where the house prices are bonkers" — anywhere from $7.5 million to $75 million. The buyers are super-wealthy foreigners. London is not the only city where the world's richest people leave their expensive properties vacant while they stay in their expensive properties someplace else; the same is true in parts of Manhattan.
Paul Dimoldenberg, leader of the Labour opposition in Westminster Council, said the situation had reached a tipping point. "They may live here for a fortnight in the summer, but for the rest of the year they're contributing nothing to the local economy. The spectre of new buildings where there are no lights on is a real problem."
One Hyde Park, an opulent $1.7 billion apartment building in Knightsbridge. It is rare to see anyone coming to or going from the complex.

Ending World Poverty

World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim called for a global drive to wipe out extreme poverty by 2030, acknowledging that reaching the goal will require extraordinary efforts. “A world free of poverty is within our grasp. It is time to help everyone across the globe secure a one-way ticket out of poverty and stay on the path toward prosperity,” Kim said
Not a very difficult goal nor a paticularly ambitious one to achieve if you happen to a member of the world’s super-rich capitalists.
Last year, the world's billionaires added $800 billion dollars to their wealth. According to the latest issue of Forbes, when all the money is counted, the 1,426 billionaires have a combined net worth of $5.4 trillion. That means the average billionaire is worth about $3.8 billion. Of those billionaires in the U.S. -- 442 of them -- the average net worth is about $4.2 billion.

That's a whole lot of money and according to the OECD, the total amount of aid given by the wealthy nations of the world to the developing countries was only 3% of the total wealth of the world's billionaires.
There are 1.1 billion people without access to clean drinking water, according to the World Health Organization, and as a result 1.6 million people die of cholera and other diarrhea-related diseases every year. World Vision provides clean drinking water to about 1 million people every year, and we do it for a rough average of $50 per person, depending on the country and other factors. Theoretically, for about $50 billion clean water could be brought to every person on the planet thereby saving 1.6 million lives every year. That would cost just 1% of the total wealth possessed by the mega-rich.
Lack of nutrition contributes to the deaths of 2.6 million school children. The World Food Program estimates that $3.2 billion is all it would take to make sure children stay alive and grow up fully nourished. For less than measly 0.6% of the wealth of the world's billionaires could end childhood deaths from hunger -- saving 4.2 million lives.
Socialist Courier is not suggesting that philanthropy will solve these problems, just putting the situation into perspective. Capitalism is the root cause of why the poor needlessly suffer and die. The world has the technical solutions and all the field-tested programs to end hunger and most disease. Advances in health, agriculture, education and technology has given the world the tools needed to make changes. These all exist and can be deployed by a rational society that declares peoples needs should be satisfied instead of being only resources employed to make profits for the few.

Life's good for some

Edinburgh-based Standard Life’s saw its top three directors share close to £10 million in bonuses in 2012 with the chief executive of the insurance giant, David Nish, nearly doubling his remuneration to £5m.


Keith Skeoch saw his pay rise to £4.3m from £2.6m, thanks mainly to a bonus from his role as head of Standard Life Investments (SLI), while finance director Jackie Hunt saw her overall pay rise to £2.5m from £1.4m.

65 per cent growth in operating profit before tax to £900m and 61 per cent growth in share price over the year.

What recession?

Who Are The Work-Shy?

Some sections of the media are fond of portraying the British working class as a feckless, work-shy bunch of state benefit scroungers but recent events expose that as complete nonsense. 'An astonishing 4,000 people braved the bitter cold to queue for work at a new £84million shopping centre. Long lines of desperate job seekers started to build up two hours before the jobs fair opened and the turnout was so big that organisers had to introduce a one-in one-out policy. The Whiteley Shopping Centre in Hampshire is set to open in May and will be home to 56 shops.' (Daily Express, 29 March) Feckless? Work-shy? That is an apt description of the British owning class. RD

The Battle Hymn of Cooperation

Next time you pop into your local co-op sing this song while you wait for your divi.

Battle Hymn of Cooperation

Oh, we are a mighty army, though we bear no sword and gun,
We’re enlisted ’till the struggle for cooperation’s won,
And beneath our banner blazoned “One for all and all for one,"
Consumers marching on!

Chorus:
Come and let us work together
Come and let us work together
Come and let us work together
Consumers marching on!

It was long ago in Rochdale that our cause saw first the light,
We were sadly few in numbers but our principles were right,
But today we count our millions as we girt ourselves to fight:

Consumers marching on!
Chorus

Oh, the world today is suffering filled with poverty and pain,
And the day has come for freedom from the curse of private gain,
For all may live in comfort ’neath Cooperation’s reign.

Consumers marching on!
Chorus

Oh we know our scheme is righteous and we know our cause is just;
For upon the brotherhood of man we firmly base our trust:
Let us strive to win the victory, for win we can and must.

Consumers marching on!
Chorus

Elizabeth Mead  and Carl Ferguson, 1932

I confess that i have not previously known about this little known song which like the more popular Solidarity Forever is based upon the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

If only we could substitute that word "consumers" for "communists" !

Being fed lies

An ever-shrinking number of mega-corporations controls an ever-expanding food industry, from seeds to equipment, from chemical inputs to processing, from the farm field to the supermarket shelf.


In America just four companies own approximately 84% of the U.S. beef market. Four firms control 66 percent of the pork-packing market and another four control 58 percent of poultry processing. Four companies own 43% of the world’s commercial seed market.Three companies control 90 % of the global grain trade. Four companies own 48% of grocery retailers. Monsanto, is the largest seed making company and DuPont the second biggest so they may technically be competitors yet a $1.75 billion deal between them ensures that Dupont gets access to Monsanto technology and Monsanto can access DuPont’s massive customer base. Much will be the same for the UK and Europe as in America. All those corporations appear to be recession-proof, having in recent years increased their profit margins.

Our food comes in vacuum-packed plastic bags, in boxes, bottles, jars and cans -- but it isn't really food. It's food stuff. It doesn't come from an animal or plant; it's made in a plant, rolled off an assembly line. It's processed with sugar salt and fat to be addictive. Its not just the manufacture of processed foods, it is us who are being processed too. Processed food tastes good and the added ingredients and chemicals ensure we keep coming back for more...and more.

The food industry just want to make money. Manufacturers and retailerswho sell junk food don't much care for the truth about food. The obesity, heart disease and diabetes epidemics they are causing is of no concern to them. There are now health experts predicting that our children will have shorter life expectancies that we have.

Land-grabbing by the multi-nationals is nothing new, the most obvious example being the fruit plantations of the Central American - the aptly nick-named - “banana republics.” Oxfam reports that in the past decade, an area of land equal to eight times the size of the U.K. has been sold in rapidly accelerating global land transactions. Nor is it the usual imperialist western powers which the Leninists love to blame. A Brazilian-Japanese venture is planning to farm 54,000 square miles of land in northern Mozambique for food exports. These agribusiness schemes exacerbate the problem in areas of chronic hunger and malnourishment and have farmers growing cash crops for export, rather than food crops for consumption. In Sudan the United Arab Emirates was growing sorghum – a Sudanese food staple — to feed camels. Indian corporations’ are active in Ethiopian land-grabs. Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute calls it a “new form of colonization.”

Meanwhile a French newspaper reports upon food scavenging from the garbage of the supermarkets. In France, 1.2 million tons of food is thrown away every year – about 20 kilos per person per year. Of these 20 kilos, seven kilos are still in their packaging, and 13 kilos are leftovers and fruits and vegetables.

Saudi Arabia back-pedals on women's freedom

Women in one of the West closest allies are still banned from driving cars or travelling alone but it is good to note that the British demands for more women’s rights in the Islamic fundamentalist state is being heeded and having an effect.

 Women can now ride bicycles! But only in parks and recreational areas, not as a means of transport, just for entertainment and pleasure. Of course, a male relative or guardian must still accompany them.

Socialist Courier spots a potential market and business opportunity in selling Saudi Arabia tandem bikes.

A Torturous Society

One of the great illusions that the British owning class love to spread is that although capitalism may be an awful society they at least behave in an honourable civilized fashion. 'British troops recount human rights abuses at US detention facility in Iraq. British soldiers and airmen tell of prisoners brought in by SAS and SBS snatch squads being hooded and given electric shocks. The abuses the soldiers and airmen say they saw included: Iraqi prisoners being held for prolonged periods in cells the size of large dog kennels. Prisoners being subjected to electric shocks. Prisoners being routinely hooded.' (Guardian, 1 April) Honourable, civilized? Does that include torture? RD

A re-newed class struggle

The capitalist logic says, “The economy is in a recession and the figures are all down this year. We’re all in it together and we all must tighten our belts” But the majority knows that this shared sacrifice is nonsense even if we don’t have the statistics. The company directors’ have been awarding themselves massive pay rises, the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and the tax evasion of the wealthy is becoming only too well-known. There is a general climate of anger and a feeling that we should take action.


Too often the left propose all sorts of ineffective options mostly on the basis that “the workers aren’t up for it” or “everyone is scared,” or even “we aren’t sure we can win.” But when people don’t seem up for it, it’s because they aren’t stupid and they aren’t up for ineffective action. Workers need to understand their union and their fight. Unions must present the truth. If it’ll take a six-month struggle to win, unions have to say so. Don’t patronizse; educate. Don’t become like the enemy. Solidarity is vital. This means other unions and other workers from different sectors and places supporting one another.

The working class face expanding global corporate power, massive inequality, a rapidly shifting and changing economy, less pay and more insecurity. We need a straight-forward trade unionism, which speaks to the experience of people which is based on the daily lives and culture of people to rebuild a union way of life. It is important to build industrial and international organisation, as opposed to sectional and national organisations. Even though many in the union movement are conservative with the small c , stuck in ideas and traditions of the past and stuck in the rut in in their structure, direction, culture and efficiency, some in the unions are, nevertheless, attempting change in their own way, independently of, and without reliance on political parties without adherence to any notions of a “party line” or generic “one-size-fits-all” class struggle. In recent years, ideas of the full democratic participation in all decision processes have become integrally part of the theory and practice of many workers’ movements.

Yet the basic social relationship of capitalism remains the same and the working class mission remains the same, to build a new form of society. It’s time for a radical, futuristic approach. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has come to understand that the people themselves can organise to provide for their needs and wants. Every revolution is impossible before it happens; afterwards it feels inevitable.

Quote of the Day

"We understood the Conservative government's determination to use the state machine against us. In order to dismember the welfare state, they had to break the trade union movement and they needed to break the miners first." - Mick McGahey, Vice President of the National Union of Mineworkers 1972-87.

One World Dreamers v World Socialism

The fact is we live in a capitalist world. One of the crucial elements of this capitalist system is the flow of capital, commodities, and labour around the world. While it might seem for a second that the removal of borders would better facilitate all this, the opposite is actually true. From the perspective of the ruling classes of the world, particularly those of the strongest nations, breaking down borders would be a disadvantage for a number of reasons.


Multi-national corporations often rely on tariffs and protective trade policies to protect their market share and profits. For all their love of the “free-market,” corporations will run to the protection of their government when they feel threatened by foreign competition and these corporations have the greatest influence in politics.

Capitalists need a world in which they can freely move capital around, yet at the same time have access to cheap labour as well. Immigration is a major source of cheap labor, and borders and immigration laws are a major part of keeping wages low. If there were no borders and immigration laws, these labourers could demand better conditions without fear of deportation. The leading capitalist nations, either for the purpose of exploiting immigrant labor or just cheap labour within those countries, rely on maintaining an imbalance in the world backed up by borders and their immigration laws.

Borders and sovereign governments also play an important role in providing cheap labour because these states embroil themselves in a race to the bottom, in order to attract multi-nationals by offering tax-holidays and free-trade zones, in addition to the cheapest, non-union labor. If all these territories are no longer sovereign nations, this competition would be greatly hindered if not eliminated entirely. Corporations benefit from having various governments out-bidding one another for the cheapest labor and facilities.

Let us also not forget that the ruling classes of many nations are indeed in competition with each other. Is the American ruling class willing to share profits, power, and influence with those of the other industrial nations? Are the rulers of the EU willing to do the same? Capitalist countries will cooperate so long as it is profitable and beneficial, but sooner or later every market gets snatched up and a war erupts to re-draw the lines on the globe.

No borders would spell the doom of many corporations, which would no longer be able to depend on their government and their trade policies to protect their interest. They could no longer rely on their government to use its military or economic leverage to open one market while denying it to others, or to domestic producers in that country. Why would they give up such power?

Once we come to understand that the idea of a unified one world under the current system of capitalism is simply just not feasible, we must then consider the practical possibility that it can be created by socialism.

a war of words

Language is a battleground that socialists are often called upon to enter. Calling a party, socialist or communist, or claiming to be one, does not mean that the party is really socialist or communist.

For Marx and ourselves socialism is the society succeeding capitalism and contrary to the widespread erroneous idea, socialism is not a transitional society towards an ultimate aim called communism. For Marx socialism is communism, refers to the same social formation, simply being another term, like the terms Republic of Labour, society of free and associated producers or simply Association, Co-operative Society, union of free individuals, are all equivalent terms for the same society.

The “dictatorship of the proletariat” is not synonymous with socialism. the conquest of political power by the proletariat is not the end of the proletarian revolution, it constitutes, in fact, only the “first step" in the revolution” (Manifesto) which continues through a prolonged period till the capitalist mode of production is replaced by the “associated mode of production”, the basis of socialism. This is the “revolutionary transformation period between capitalist and communist society” during which the proletariat exercises its dictatorship. Hence, by definition, proletarian dictatorship cannot be “synonymous” with socialism. socialism, according to Marx, the ‘‘organisation’’ of society is ‘‘essentially economic–the establishment of the conditions of the union of individual’’ (German Ideology). In the socialist society, which is classless by definition,

there is no political power. This is explicitly stated both in Marx’s 1847 polemic with Proudhon and in the 1848 Communist Manifesto. In fact Marx always thought that state and human freedom are irreconcilable. Only during what Marx called the ‘‘revolutionary transfomation period’’ preceding socialism, the new state arising after the destruction of the old state machine, as the class power (no Party power in the name of the class, of course) of the labouring class representing society’s ‘‘immense majority in the interest of the immense majority’’ (Manifesto 1848) is necessary to put down any attempted “slave-owner" rebellion. (See Civil War in France and Marx’s Bakunin Critique, 1874). It should be clear that this last state - as a kind of necessary evil-presided over by the ‘‘immense majority in the interest of the immense majority" is, by nature of things, also the least repressive state appearing so far in social evolution.

With the disappearance of classes, there is also no political power, no state, and so no “workers’ state” either in the new society. Indeed, the German Ideology emphasises that the “organisation” of the new society is “essentially economic”. Marx did not leave any "programme" for socialism but he left us a sufficient quantity of material to have a clear idea of who he thought should happen to capitalism.

According to Lenin’s reading of Critique of the Gotha Programme it is said it describes a two-phase division of communist society. a lower and a higher. The first Lenin calls socialism and the second, he describes as communism. He did not seem to have invented this nomenclature. But he is the one whose use of these terms was accepted and widely used first by the international communist movement and then even by the anti-Marxists all over the world. For Lenin there are now two transitions, one from capitalism to socialism, and an other from socialism to communism.

Lenin may not have originated the distinction that socialism is different from communism, declaring it to be only the first phase of and transition to communism, but he made it famous and popularised it. Marx's socialism is a society of free producers who abolished private ownership of the means of production, commercial relations, wage labour and the State. Lenin's “socialism”does not eliminate wage labour and is based on the State ownership of the means of production, identified as social property. So Lenin's socialism is extremely different from the perspective of Marx's emancipation based on association of producers. Lenin conceives socialism substantially in terms of juridical ownership rather than production relationships therefore ending separate individual ownership and turning the ownership over to the state was for him social ownership. Lenin’s “socialism” envisages the economy as one state syndicate, a single factory, where all citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state with equal wages (soon to abandoned, however). Lenin is talking about the “state itself as capitalist in so far it employs wage labour” and the total national capital constituting a single capital in the hands of a single capitalist" as described in Capital. There is a striking similarity between what Lenin is saying here and what Marx calls “crude or vulgar communismin his 1844 Paris manuscripts. In this latter type of communism, the “condition of the labourer is not abolished, it is extended to all individuals. It is a simple community of labour where prevails equality of wage paid by the universal capitalist.
Marx had already showed the rise of the "associated capitalists" in stock-holder companies where the property of private individuals is replaced by ownership of collective capitalist investors. However, this is not the most important thing about private property. If the means of production in a society remain in the hands of the minority and thereby separated from the majority, there exists private property in the form of "private property of a part of society", class private property. So it does not matter at all even if it is the state which owns the property in the means of production, as long as the majority is deprived of those means. The irrefutable demonstration is the existence of wage labour for the majority. The existence of wage / salaried earners representing the majority of the population is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of private property in the means of production. State property is in fact a variety of private property.

For Marx private property in the means of production exists whenever these
means of production, separated from the producers, belong to a minority in society, leaving the great majority nothing but labour power to sell. It does not require any specific historical research to prove that this was the lot of the majority in each and every 'socialist' regime. In other words these were all state capitalist regimes. It is not difficult to see that this socialism, even though governed by a group professing to be the authentic disciples of Marx, has little to do with what Marx envisaged as socialism following the disappearance of capitalism.

This is not merely a semantic disagreement on words and meanings. It has far reaching consequences. The idea that there was a difference was put to good use by the rulers of the state-capitalist countries which called themselves socialist. They legitimizing every repressive act of these regimes in the name of building socialism thereby relegating all the self-emancipatory aspects of Marx’s socialism to a never-never land of ‘communism’, a utopia never to be realised. What Lenin presents as socialism is far removed from what Marx meant by it. Lenin’s “socialism” is really state capitalism.

The Glasow-based academic Hillel Ticktin also writes that “The transition to what - socialism or communism? It is clear that Marx made no distinction between the two....What difference does this terminology make? Well, it has made a great deal of difference, because it allowed the Stalinists to say that socialism is the lower phase of communism and, while in this lower phase all sorts of dreadful things can happen, we are still advancing to a communist society...We should simply go back to Marx's use. The society we are striving to attain may be called communist or socialist, but in the transitional period it is neither. As far as I am concerned, 'socialist society' and 'communist society' refer to the same thing.”

So as regards socialism being the transition to communism, Marx nowhere says this. For Marx this distinction is non-existent. For him socialism is neither the transition to communism, nor the lower phase of communism. Socialism and communism being identical, one could as well speak of the lower and the higher phases of socialism In fact Marx calls capitalism itself the transitional point or transitional phase to communism. For Marx human history only begins with socialism, because only then will the human individual, till now subjugated by “false community” personally and materially, become free both from personal and material unfreedom.

Who Are The Work-Shy?

Some sections of the media are fond of portraying the British working class as a feckless, work-shy bunch of state benefit scroungers but recent events expose that as complete nonsense. 'An astonishing 4,000 people braved the bitter cold to queue for work at a new £84million shopping centre. Long lines of desperate job seekers started to build up two hours before the jobs fair opened and the turnout was so big that organisers had to introduce a one-in one-out policy. The Whiteley Shopping Centre in Hampshire is set to open in May and will be home to 56 shops.' (Daily Express, 29 March) Feckless? Work-shy? That is an apt description of the British owning class. RD

a bit of right history

Mussolini concluded his "march" to power in Italy in 1922, and Scottish imitations did not take long to formulate themselves. Many in the upper echelons of Scottish society had great respect for a man who had arrived in power having crushed the left following. It should therefore not be of any great surprise that it was an aristocratic figure, the Earl of Glasgow, who oversaw the establishment of the British Fascists (BF) in Scotland and provided them with a headquarters in Glasgow. Their membership card stated their basic principles, of opposition to communists who are ‘in the pay of the Soviets of Russia’ and determined to ‘murder’ the present ruling class and replace them with a cabal of ‘Jews and Fanatics’. A list of fascist ‘pledges’ is on the reverse side of the card, with members promising to ‘support the King and the British constitution’, ‘end class hatred’, act and think like ‘a Christian’ and ‘to join my fellow Fascists in opposing [communist] force by force if and when it becomes necessary’. the Earl of Glasgow led a split off in favour of co-operating with the OMS, the ‘quasi-fascist’ Scottish Loyalists, who claimed to possess 2000 supporters. The programme of the Scottish Loyalists was much the same as their previous incarnation. Billy Fullerton, leader of the 400-strong ‘Bridgeton Billy Boys’ Protestant razor gang, was a member and is alleged to have received ‘a medal for strike breaking’ from Glasgow city council.
Addressing a Glasgow public meeting in November 1933, the Communist Willie Gallagher, who would go on to become MP for West Fife, stated that ‘in Scotland, the fascists were not anti-Jewish but anti-Irish’. Cormack’s Edinburgh-based ‘Protestant Action’ ‘squadrist tactics… look far more ‘fascist’ than anything the BUF did in Scotland’ according to one commentator. He established his own paramilitary organisation in 1935, ominously named ‘Kormack’s Kaledonian Klan’, operating from headquarters in the Lawnmarket. In 1936 the PA managed to push Labour into third place in local elections, gaining nearly 31 percent of the vote.   The short-lived Scottish Democratic Fascist Party was spearheaded by William Weir Gilmour – who had come on a political journey via the ILP and then the New Party – and Major Hume Sleigh, but by the end of the year both would have joined the BUF and the SDFP disappeared. Based in Glasgow, the party was both Scottish nationalist and fervently anti-Catholic.

Frugality And Fancy Living

While the majority of the Chinese working class live a frugal existence the ruling elite of the Communist Party lead lives of luxury and opulence, but wary of the collapse of the Soviet Union party leaders are trying to curb the worst excesses of the elite. 'In the four months since he was anointed China's paramount leader and tastemaker-in-chief, President Xi Jinping has imposed a form of austerity on the nation's famously free-spending civil servants, military brass and provincial party bosses. Warning that graft and gluttony threaten to bring down the ruling Communists, Mr. Xi has ordered an end to boozy, taxpayer-financed banquets and the bribery that often takes the form of a gift-wrapped Louis Vuitton bag.' (New York Times, 27 March) RD

Picasso And Penury

The billionaire Steven A. Cohen was feeling a little depressed - he had just been fined $616 million - so he decided to cheer himself up a little. 'Less than two weeks after SAC Capital Advisors, the hedge fund owned by the billionaire trader Steven A. Cohen, agreed to pay the government $616 million to settle accusations of insider trading, Mr. Cohen has decided to buy a little something for himself. A renowned art collector, Mr. Cohen has bought Picasso's "Le Rêve" from the casino owner Stephen A. Wynn for $155 million, according to a person with direct knowledge of the sale who was not authorized to speak publicly.' (New York Times, 26 March) This obscene accumulation of wealth exists in the same society where kids are starving, dying for the lack of clean water and trying to exist on less than $2 a day. RD

Not so red

Ideas of reaction and bigotry can often be just as powerful as those of solidarity and class unity. The celebrated Forty Hours Strike in 1919, when English tanks occupied the centre of Glasgow and which culminated at the ‘Battle of George Square’ also witnessed violent anti-black rioting. On 23 January 1919, tensions among dock workers at the Broomielaw over the ‘employment of Chinese and alien coloured seamen on British ships’ spilled over into a battle with sailors from Sierra Leone, with ‘revolvers and knifes’ used. The role of the two seamen’s unions on the Broomielaw was essentially of deep seated hostility to immigrant labour, which they saw as driving down wages and conditions. Shipping companies did exploit the differentiation in wages between white and African workers, yet it’s unclear if much attempt was made to challenge this by the organised Left or from within the labour movement. The racist riots were ignored by Forward and the Socialist Labour Party’s The Socialist.


David Kirkwood was one of the men feared by an establishment which believed him capable of igniting a Bolshevik revolution in Britain and who once famously warned that "the socialist republic would be established at the point of a bayonet'. In the “Battle of George Square” Kirkwood had a policeman crack him on the head with a baton, knocking him unconscious. As chairman of the shop stewards committee at Beardmore's Kirkwood came to be forever linked with Red Clydeside through a series of war-time strikes against the introduction (dilution) of unskilled workers to do skilled engineers jobs. Nevertheless, Kirkwood took pride in the productivity records achieved by the Beardmore's workforce. He was able to say: "What a team! There never was anything like it in Great Britain. We organised a bonus system in which everyone benefited by high production. Records were made only to be broken. In six weeks we held the record for output in Great Britain, and we never lost our premier position.''

Kirkwood was one of 29 Labour MPs elected in Scotland at the 1922 election. He remained in Parliament until 1951. He then became Baron Kirkwood of Bearsden.

Local children would sing this ditty:
“Vote, vote, vote for Davie Kirkwood,
Vote, vote, vote for all his men,
Then we'll buy a tommy gun,
And we'll make the Tories run,
And you'll never see a Tory again."

The Dignity Of Labour

National and local politicians are always coming up with schemes to run capitalism more efficiently. Here is their latest brain wave. 'Most local authorities will offer new those who qualify for emergency assistance a one-off voucher redeemable for goods such as food and nappies. Many of the 150 local authorities in England running welfare schemes will issue the vouchers in the form of payment cards, which may be blocked to prevent the holder using them for alcohol, cigarettes or gambling. ........ Councils that will start using the scheme include Hampshire, Manchester, Bristol and Darlington.' (Daily Telegraph, 27 March) By "more efficiently" of course they mean cheaper. Is there no limit to the indignities that the working class must suffer? RD

They Call It Progress

The expansion of Chinese capitalism has led its owning class to search the world for sources of raw materials and markets. 'Ecuador plans to auction off more than three million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, angering indigenous groups and underlining the global environmental toll of China's insatiable thirst for energy. ...... Critics say national debt may be a large part of the Ecuadorean government's calculations. Ecuador owed China more than £4.6bn ($7bn) as of last summer, more than a tenth of its GDP. China began loaning billions of dollars to Ecuador in 2009 in exchange for oil shipments.' (Guardian, 26 March) The fact that indigenous people have lived undisturbed for thousands of years in the area means nothing to the Ecuador and Chinese capitalist class. Displacement and the destruction of a way of life for thousands means nothing compared to profit. RD

imagine no countries, no borders

Immigration has once again resurfaced as a headline grabbing issue, with the “fear" of a “flood" of Eastern Europeans arriving in Britain.


The movement of peoples for survival has been going on since the dawn of time. Even birds migrate. Human beings have been looking for a place where their basic needs will be met since the time when there were no countries, no borders. With the formation of countries as the result of the development of private property ownership migration has become even a greater struggle to survive.

The capitalst class have always sought migrant workers to fuel expansionary periods of economic growth, while saving upon the bill for reproducing and maintaining these workers. Migrant workers are a useful as part of the reserve army of labour because they can quickly be expelled when surplus to requirements. The state uses migrant workers to fill gaps in the labour market but does not pay any of the costs of them or their families settling. In some cases bosses will try to employ migrant workers even when indigenous workers are available because they assume that migrants’ status will make them easier to control. One section of the ruling class has been keen to defend the benefits of immigration while another section does not benefit from migrant workers and therefore does not want to bear the costs. This split is often evident in reports by the UK government. Tensions between different capitalists, with different labour market needs, creates difficulties for states as they attempt to manage migration. The “liberal" capitalist poses immigration in terms of benefiting a supposed ‘British interest’ and contribute to the GDP but there is no such thing as a ‘British interest’. Society is divided into different classes whose interests are at odds to one another. Capitalism’s profits come from exploiting the labour of working-class people. Nationality, immigrant or indigenous, is unimportant to the ledger book.

Capitalist states must constantly intervene to recast the relationship between the state and labour in the interests of capital accumulation. Capitalists need the constant movement of workers but also a degree of stability and embedded skills to compete with other capitalists.

Businesses are in competition with one another for market share and profits. If a business can cut its costs by paying lower wages and giving itself a competitive edge, then it will do just that. This forces competing businesses to follow suit. The result is the driving down of wages for all workers, which is not the fault of immigrant workers but down to the imperatives of the capitalist system itself. The fact is that big business will pay as little as it can get away with in the pursuit of profit.
Similarly, the claim that immigration is the cause of the problems with the welfare state is a fallacy. Immigration is used an excuse for cuts and under-investment in public services and tries placing the blame on anyone but the system. To place the blame on ‘immigrants’ for the sorry state of welfare provision does not address the causes of these problems. The problem is the capitalist system itself.

Between them, the capitalists carve the populations of the world, each person in principle being the subject of a single state, possessing the privilege of citizenship and the right to freedom of movement within its territory, in particular in order to sell his or her labour power within the corresponding labour market. The legitimate function of citizenship, for which its possessor should feel gratitude and pride, depends in part upon the de-privileging of non-citizens.
Solidarity between workers is not automatic. The existence of separate racial and ethnic differences can lead to either unity or fragmentation such as slogans of “British Jobs For British Workers”,
We know socialism is possible. We know that only the working class, together as one, can bring socialism about. We need to build a society where we commonly own the factories, the lands, the mines—a society where we are guaranteed housing, education, health-care and jobs. A society where there will be no borders for the working class. Socialism is the only answer for the working class and we must organize as a class to achieve it.
“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...”
John Lennon

National Liberation or libation

The division of the global population into entities called “nations” is overwhelmingly taken for granted. For the vast majority of people it is taken for granted that they are members of a nation-state; they take pride in its alleged accomplishments; they suffer when their nation is embarrassed or humiliated (and for Scottish football’s Tartan Army that is indeed a common occurance!) It rarely if ever occurs to them that the nation-state system is a recent creation in human history, that most human societies have had no concept of the nation whatsoever, and that the rise of the nation-state system corresponds to the international development of capitalism, a particular political form that regulates, controls and disciplines people in a way that facilitates their exploitation by capital. capitalism has stamped our sense of belonging, our need for community with others, with national state forms. In truth, the countryside, the culture and the language with which we are brought up is part of us. Love of these things is inevitable and universal, but it is not the same thing as nationalism. Capitalism constructed nations organised around symbols like flags and anthems, built largely upon artifical myths and histories.


Nationalism in the past centuries has been responsible for unprecedented barbarity and it has been crucial in preventing the victory of socialism. Nationalism upholds loyalty to a particular nation and support for it when there is a conflict with another nation, regardless of circumstance. Nationalism opposes international working class solidarity, where loyalty to ones class above that of national origin. Nationalist movements, under the banner of national liberation have failed. Countries which overthrew their colonial overlord have new symbols and can use their own languages in schools and on TV but life for the ordinary peasant or worker is little different and often harder while the local elites enriched themselves and established strict control over the population. National liberation struggles can be seen as attempts of sections of the native ruling classes to appropriate a larger share of the value generated in 'their own' countries.

The experience of the working class throughout the world is that national liberation is no solution. In the 19th century some liberation struggles led to the creation of new nation states which played a needed role in the development of world capitalism. This is no longer true of today where new rulers may perhaps achieve a measure of political independence from the great powers but they can never free their country from the grip of the world economy. For the working class in these countries "liberation" simply means exchanging one set of bosses for another - the new ones as violently opposed to working class struggle as the old ones. The nation state is the political organisation of capitalism. Socialists oppose every attempt to rally the working class to the cause of nationalism regardless if it is in the name of "national liberation”

Amazingly, much of the Left has supported these national liberation movements, resorting to distorting the truth through so-called solidarity committees, often long after it was clear that they were liberating only their own elite class and having usually wiped out their left opposition. The Leftist groups spend much of their time defending movements which have been as exploitative and oppressive, albeit in different forms, as the regimes that they overthrew. The fact that the majority of peoples obtained little or nothing from an apparent “victory” has to be driven home. The Left cannot forget that for the many the standard of living has gone down after the removal of the colonial overlord. Indeed in many countries it is even worse in that post-colonial wars have led to mass slaughter. However in some new countries higher consumption levels and welfare programmes may temporarily be established by these regimes. Those who can see no further than economistic steps to “socialism” usually quote this. But what is ‘gained’ at home is lost abroad. Castro supported the 1968 Russian Invasion of Czechoslovakia, as Ho Chi Minh earlier endorsed the tanks rolling into Budapest in 1956. Hugo Chavez gave his approval to Mugabe, Gaddaffi, Assad and the Ayatollahs. Even today we witness members of the Left supporting various Islamists such as Hezbullah. They ought to be denouncing them as reactionaries. The fact that they are opposing the foreign policy of the USA is neither here nor there.

 The Leftist myth that a successful national liberation will later unleash 'the real class struggle' is false. It is a rationalisation for the defence of new ruling classes in the process of formation. As historical evidence shows, those new elites usually become appendages of another existing capitalist/imperialist bloc. Class interests of the new emerging capitalist class never bring a break with the capitalist system. They simply seek for their rights of sovereignty to be recognized by the powerful ones. So, it is downright class collaboration to reduce opposition of the working class to imperialism to opposition to policies of this or that imperialist state or to the level of supporting the rights of sovereignty of “its own” bourgeoisie. Dominant capitalist countries (or if you prefer imperialist nations) dictate the economic terms on weaker capitalist countries. This situation is a general law of capitalist order. Under capitalism, he who pays the piper calls the tune! No matter how much the bourgeoisie of various capitalist states complain about unequal relations or interference with their “internal affairs,” this is their capitalist system as a whole. Why should the working class be concerned with their complaints? Sharing the grievance of the weaker bourgeoisie or preaching a fully independent and national order within capitalism to the working class suits only the national ruling class. In fact, the burning problem of the proletariat in all capitalist countries, no matter big or small, is not economic independence(!) of its “own” bourgeoisie, but emancipation from the capitalist order of exploitation. In short, the goal of the working class struggle against imperialism is to put an end to the bourgeois order, to seize political power, i.e. the proletarian revolution.

“The workers have no country,” declared Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. In this spirit, the International Workingmen’s Association ( the First International) was later launched to reflect the form of organization that fit this outlook: an international political movement of the working class. Yet almost 150 years later labour movements are still almost entirely national in organisation, with little thought for their fellow workers elsewhere. They are dominated by nationalist ideology and tend to support import controls (or other forms of protectionism) to protect “our jobs” and “our” way of life. Rosa Luxemburg claimed with the full internationalising of capitalism and so powerful had the world economy become national struggles were out-moded and that the idea of an economically independent nation-state had become ridiculous. She declared national struggles can serve only as a means of deception, of duping the masses and it was reactionary to support the creation of new nation-states. The task was to mobilise the international working class against world capitalism.

It is this desire to belong to a community and identify with others with some sense of common purpose that a world-wide socialist movement of the future will have to help develop. A truly internationalist feeling of community that connect with both local and global experiences, solidarity that go beyond the nation-state. A potent, united global workers’ movement makes nationalism and separatism unnecessary. We must never lose sight of one of the vital features of socialism: its commitment to a world community without nations and without capitalism. The international working class is one class.

Lots Of Potential

Another politician we are expected to revere, as he is a potential Prime Minister after all, is colourful Mayor of London Boris Johnson. He was exposed recently on TV by the interviewer Eddie Mair. '"You're a nasty piece of work, aren't you?" asked Mr Mair. Mr Johnson looked surprised and distinctly uncomfortable as the presenter asked him about his being fired by The Times newspaper for making up a quotation; being sacked from the Tory frontbench for telling "a bare-faced lie" to the party leader Michael Howard about his affair with the journalist Petronella Wyatt and the claim that he agreed to provide a reporter's address to his friend Darius Guppy, a convicted fraudster, so the journalist could be beaten up.' (Independent, 25 March) None of this was directly denied by Johnson. Lying, making up quotes and assisting in an assault threat? Sounds like good Prime Minister material to us. RD

His Lordship's Expertise

The media love to stress how complicated modern society is and how we need the expertise of the statesmen and politicians to guide us through its complexities. Lord Heseltine is a case in point, one of the Government's senior advisers, has been consulting with George Osborne on regenerating British cities. The majority of Lord Heseltine's recommendations in his regional growth report were accepted by the Chancellor in last week's budget. Listen to this "expert". 'Complacent British may not have 'national will' to secure economic recovery, Lord Heseltine suggests. British people may be so rich that they do not have the "national will" needed to lift the country out of the economic downturn, Lord Heseltine has suggested.' (Daily Telegraph, 25 March) All of you "rich" British surviving on dole money, pensions and minimum wages are considered by the wealthy peer too rich to care. Some expert! RD

Facts are chiels that winna ding

Poverty


630,000 individuals are in households experiencing absolute poverty
970,000 are living in households that are in “relative poverty”
160,000 children live in absolute poverty
260,000 children live in relative poverty
658,000 households livie in fuel poverty (defined as people using more than 10% of the family income to pay their energy bills)
2,000 more deaths of people aged 65 in Winter 2008/09 compared to the summer months (The Poverty Site)
143,000 Scottish people are claiming Job Seekers Allowance, 215,000 are officially unemployed; while 1.573m Scots are classified as ‘economically inactive’ (ONS, June 2012).

Results

 Poor health, poor education, bad housing, reduced social opportunities, higher rate of alcoholism, addiction and mental illness. Men living in the most deprived areas have 18.8 years lower life expectancy and women 17.1 years than for those in the least deprived areas. In Tayside 2011 saw a significant increase in malnutrition, with 182 reported cases.

'But facts are fellows that will not be overturned, And cannot be disputed.'

- Robert Burns, A Dream

the Independence Referendum

Nationalism and the referendum increasingly dominates Scottish politics and its newspapers. We now have the date of the referendum which will be the 18th September 2014when Scot voters will be asked the Yes/No question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"


By re-drawing the map the nationalists promise economic prosperity. The unionists prophesise economic catastrophe. Socialists say experience shows that either way, the working class will lose out.

Independence is nothing but a dead-end. It doesn’t bring us closer to socialism, only farther away from it. Separation is no stepping stone to socialism, despite what phony “Marxist” theoreticians may say. It maintains and reinforces the divisions within the working class – a real boon for the capitalist class which do their best to keep us divided. The people on the Left who are pushing this option fall right into class collaboration. Under capitalism there is necessarily a division between rich and poor, a ruling class and the ruled, the class of capital and the class of wage-workers, and any attempt at uniting them must involve the acceptance of exploitation and oppression. It is glossed over with much talk of the shared culture. The experience of the poor living in a slum council estate is very different from that of the rich living in their country estates. Anyone on the Scottish Left who, therefore, combines the working class with the ruling class, calling on capitalist and worker to unite and fight for independence is not a Marxist or a socialist. Nationalism places the working class under the control of its ruling class and this means that socialism is abandoned. This process has been observed many times resulting in the the conclusion that national feeling is somehow stronger than socialism. The repeated triumph of national consciousness does not however prove that class consciousness is incapable of transcending national consciousness.

Some Scots claim that the Scottish nation has been a victim of English rule but the working class throughout Britain has been the subject of capitalist oppression. Nationalism divides our forces before our common enemy. The fight against the bosses has been a united struggle with workers joining together across all the regions of the UK. Nationalism is about organising and mobilising people on the basis of their national identity. Socialism is about organising and mobilising people on the basis of their class identity. It is class war between employers and employees not Scottish versus English.

Those who say that the main enemy is the English ruling class mislead workers in Scotland into thinking we have less to fear from the Scottish capitalist class. But the truth of the matter is that Scotland’s capitalists have been an integral part of the British bourgeoisie ever since the Union, a union to advance the interests of the aristocratic land-owners and the developing merchant and capitalist class. The Scottish ruling class sold out the rights of the people in Scotland for a hare in the spoils of the Empire. Scottish capitalists, be they big or small, are not any less a part of the British bourgeoisie than English capitalists. Now they simply want a re-division of the pie by re-writing the constitution. Those who would subordinate the class struggle to the struggle for independence, those who counter-pose national unity to class unity, help keep capitalism alive. Independence divides the working class against the international bourgeoisie and it chains workers to the interests of “their” bourgeoisie. No-one seriously considers that the SSP or Sheridan’s Solidarity constitute in any sense an independent political force. They are, in effect, merely propagandists for the Scottish bourgeoisie and its chosen party, the SNP.

An independent parliament has no answers for the working class and would continue to be used by the millionaires and multi-nationals to control and rule.There are no common interests between workers and their exploiters, whatever flag is waved. Nationalism and class struggle are irreconcilably opposed. A nation is simply capitalism with all its exploitation and alienation, parcelled out in a single geographical unit. It doesn't matter whether the nation is 'small, 'colonial', 'semi-colonial' or 'non-imperialist'. In Scotland some businesses has found new roots, hoping to be effective in getting workers to sacrifice themselves for the false goal of “building the national economy” through independence from Whitehall. Multinational interests can just as much thrive on smaller centralised interdependent states, rather than through the old concept of the powerful nation. Separatism only reproduce the same problems on a smaller but no less savage scale.

All nationalisms are reactionary because they inevitably clash with class consciousness and poison it with chauvinism. Working class co-operation, especially in this global age of capital movement across all borders, is necessary for a real defence of our co-workers, neighbours and communities. Socialists have long maintained that people have the right to live, work and travel wherever they choose. As internationalists, socialists oppose national borders, which serve to divide and segregate people. It is important to remember that this view has always been central to the international labour movement from its very beginnings long ago. It is time for labour to remember this vital part of its history.

In the Scottish independence referendum there will be two different forms of nationalism on offer. The British nationalism of a “No” vote. The Scottish nationalism of a “Yes” vote. We will be advocating a third choice - a spoiled ballot with the words “world socialism” written on it. The Socialist Party is committed to destroying the capitalist system, the root cause of all oppression. It aims to unmask the irrationality of nationalism and work to show up the void that is national self-determination. Only by ending capitalism and building a democratic socialist future can we end the nightmare of war, environmental chaos, national and ethnic division, poverty and inequality that capitalism thrives on. The Socialist Party aspires to liberate all humanity, across the boundaries of national identity.

A CRUEL REALITY

Television advertisements delight in showing us the latest domestic electric and gas heaters with all the hi-tech gadgets. Behind this modern and comforting image there lurks a cruel reality however. 'Millions of Britons are facing fuel poverty due to soaring energy bills, experts warned today. More than nine million people will spend more than 10 per cent of their household income on fuel in three years, they said. ........... Annmarie Blomfield, of energy assessment company One Green Place, said fuel poverty kills thousands of people every year.She said almost 8,000 people die from living in cold homes with more than 1.6 million children in households which struggle to keep warm.' (Daily Express, 19 March) Dying in a cold home never features in those slick adverts. RD

Who's scoring?

Money counts as the Championship League last eight shows. It is a reflection of the Deloitte's Football Money League. Real Madrid (1st), Barcelona (2nd) and Bayern (4th). There's Juventus, 10th on the money list and Italy's biggest spenders, Galatasaray enough financial clout to "rent" Wesley Sneijder and Didier Drogba as short-term "ringers" – and Paris Saint-Germain, have spent more than anyone in football over the past 18 months. The exceptions are Borussia Dortmund founded on low ticket prices and a working man's club ethos and, especially, the fact that, apart from Marco Reus, nobody in the starting eleven cost more than £5 million. This status was somewhat forced upon them by the wild overspending that sent the club into administration a decade ago. Malaga also previously faced unpaid wages and lawsuits.
Football has reached the point where it must choose between becoming an elitist sport, dominated by a handful of rich clubs and leagues, or a universal one, according to former FIFA presidential advisor Jerome Champagne. Champagne said the concentration of wealth meant that competitions such as the Champions League had become predictable. "I remember when I was a teenager and we had the draw for European competition. When we drew a Polish club, when we drew Dundee United or Glasgow Rangers, or CSKA Sofia, we were scared. Now, you have a small group of clubs more or less guaranteed to reach the final stages."
"We tend to misrepresent the game by thinking the game is about the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo," Champagne told Reuters. "In reality, it is about players whose salaries are not paid and clubs who are on the verge of bankruptcy.The majority of football is today facing this crisis while the wealthy are becoming wealthier," added Champagne
Once managed by the Celtic legend Jock Stein, once boasting having had Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson as a player, twice winners of the Scottish Cup, semi-finalists in the European Cup Winners Cup, Dunfermline have just six days to come up with £134,000 or face being wound up after Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs took the 128-year-old club to court over an unpaid tax bill. Dunfermline are also understood to owe around £8 million to directors past and present and have repeatedly failed to pay their players on time this season. It was confirmed earlier this month that Jefferies' squad and other staff received just 20 per cent of their wages.