Enough is enough

We have within the United Nations:

General Comment 12 clarifies the rights related to food in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights similar obligations are stated in General Comment 15 in relation to the right to water.

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) (article 1,3,11,12). This treaty recognizes that "in no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.It requires states to take all steps within their ability to realize the rights set forth in the treaty”. The treaty asserts that men and women should have equal realization of all rights. The treaty defines the right of all people to an adequate standard of living, including food, and the right to be free from hunger. The treaty commits states to developing specific programs and obligations to the people to ensure these rights. In the treaty, states are obligated to work toward reducing infant and child mortality and disease control.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) (article 3, 21, 23, 25). The Universal Declaration not only asserts the human right to life, but also an adequate standard of living. This standard includes the right to food. Each person is also entitled to public services and social security.

Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).This treaty was drafted to identify and protect the best interests of the child. Article 24 of the treaty that recognizes "the right of the child to the highest attainable standard of health" is immensely important. State parties commit to taking steps toward ending child and infant mortality, and eliminate the circumstances that lead to child death including illness and malnutrition. Governments must provide children with food and water security. This treaty ties the rights of the mother to the well being of the child. Article 24 acknowledges the mother’s right to appropriate pre and post-natal health care, as well as access to information and education regarding child health and nutrition, the advantages of breastfeeding, hygiene and environmental sanitation.

Rome Declaration on World Food Security (1996). This declaration recognized the need to establish world food security. The participating heads of state reaffirmed "the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger." Following this affirmation the heads of state committed "an immediate view to reducing the number of undernourished people to half their present level no later than 2015."

World Food Summit Plan of Action (1996).The Plan of Action is comprised of seven commitments made by participating states to begin reducing the number of undernourished people in the world. Objective 7.4 of the plan calls for clarification and implementation of the right to adequate food in the CESCR.

The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food was appointed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2000. It is the Special Rapporteur’s job to receive information on violations of the right to food and identify emerging issues related to the right to food, including the right to clean drinking water. The Special Rapporteur visits countries, and makes reports to the High Commissioner for Human Rights and General Assembly every year. There is a Research Unit on the Right to Food that supports the Special Rapporteur with research and reports.

African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990) (article 14).This treaty commits state parties to realizing, to the best of their ability and with all available res ources, the child’s right to health, nutrition and safe water.

European Code of Social Security(1964) (article 42).This article ensures the provision of food to children. Addendum 1 (Division 5) stipulates that states will provide water and sanitary services.

Charter of the Organization of American States (1948) (article 34).This article guarantees access to proper nutrition by increasing production and availability, and diversifying production.
Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the area of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (Protocol of San Salvador) (1988) (article 12) Recognizes the human right to adequate nutrition. States must take steps to increase food supply through improved production and distribution.

Innocenti Declaration on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding (1990). This declaration asserts that women have the right to breastfeed their babies, and infants from birth to 4-6 months have the right to be breastfed. World Declaration and Plan of Action on Nutrition (1992) .This declaration promotes food security and disease prevention for infants through support of breastfeeding.

Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II) (1977) (article 14) .This protocol is part of humanitarian law, which protects people in situations of armed conflict. Article 14 prohibits "starvation of civilians as a method of combat".

Even, Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (1955) (article 20) recognizes prisoners’ rights to food and water provisions.

In addition to all those well-meaning laws and treaties we have international organisations funded to solve the problem food and water access.

World Health Organization. The World Health Organization (WHO) was established in 1948 as a branch of the UN specifically committed to promote good health. The WHO’s Constitution states the agency's objective as to help "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health." There are 192 states represented in the governing body of the WHO, the World Health Assembly. Since good nutrition is imperative in the attainment of good health, hunger, water and nutrition issues are a large concern of WHO.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was founded in 1945 to raise nutrition standards and the standard of living globally. There are 183 member countries of the FAO, dedicated to providing services such as technical assistance projects; nutrition, food, agriculture, forestry and fishery information; agricultural and development planning. The Committee for Food Security (CFS) is responsible for monitoring member states’ level of commitment of and follow through with the World Food Summit Plan of Action of 1996.

United Nations Children’s Fund. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is the UN agency dedicated to protecting the rights of the child. UNICEF has implemented specific programs to improve child nutrition, water quality environment and sanitation. UNICEF works to improve nutrition standards by forming community based programs that supply information and education, as well as emergency care to women and children.

World Food Program. The World Food Program (WFP) was established in 1963. The WFP is the UN agency that provides food aid and relief to victims of natural and manmade disasters.

International Fund for Agricultural Development. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) branch of the UN was established in 1977 as a direct result of the 1974 World Food Conference. IFAD was created to provide the means to implement rural agricultural development projects. The fund provides loans and grants to help small, struggling agriculturists stabilize, develop and help themselves.

International Committee of the Red Cross. The independent and neutral entity of The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a humanitarian organization that assists and protects victims of war. ICRC provides medical care to victims and also arrange exchanges of family messages. The ICRC provides protection and assistance to civilians, supervise visits to detainees, medical assistance, food aid and restoration of family links between persons separated by war.

CARE International. CARE is a non-governmental organization with a mission to reduce world poverty. CARE’s work includes programs that address issues that exacerbate poverty and attempt to identify sustainable solutions. They help families increase food production and proper management of resources, teach techniques and practices that help prevent malnutrition, provide food for relief in emergency situations and build and maintain clean water and sanitation systems.

Save the Children. Save the Children is a non-governmental organization that tries to fix the root causes of food insecurity to prevent hunger and malnutrition through increase in agricultural production, education and distribution of food in emergencies.

Foodfirst Information and Action Network. Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) is an NGO that works closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. FIAN receives and researches right to food violation claims. FIAN will intervene in cases of violations of the right to food. In doing so, FIAN holds governments accountable for ensuring the violation is rectified, and publicizes the violations.

Then, of course , all those other myriads numbers of charities from Oxfam to WorldVision.

 Plus all those telethon campaigns such as Red-Nose Days and pop concerts like Feed The World .

So it has not been from the lack of trying that society has been unable to end hunger and thirst.Isn’t it time to try a different approach? Isn’t it time for change?

Food for thought

Why capitalism will never be able to be green -- "When an American replaces the battery in a car, likely as not the old battery will be shipped to Mexico rather than to a modern US recycling plant. The reason? Its lead emissions standards are one tenth as stringent as US standards." (Toronto star, June 1, 2013). By the numbers – the number of tractor trailers that the dead batteries would have filled in 2011 = 17, 952; estimated increase in dead batteries to Mexico, 2004-2011 = 525%; lead smelting and refining plants in the US forty years ago = 154, today = 14; tons of lead emitted into the air by a single Mexican plant = 6 or 33 times expected for a cleaner plant in US. Capital beats all, don't it?
And here's another piece of environmental information that beggars belief -- The world's economy is being powered by China, and China is being powered by coal, a nineteenth century technology despite ads from Big Coal that tout the cleanliness of coal! (ever seen a miner?). In China, coal accounts for 70% of its energy production, January -- more than forty times the level deemed safe by The World Health Organization; 1.3 million square kilometers are regularly blanketed in China enveloping 600 million people: 750,000 people die from air pollution each year. Yet the capitalist system cries 'we must expand there'! about as much coal as is used by all other countries combined. As a result, ten billion tons of carbon dioxide are emitted annually; Beijing recorded one thousand micrograms of fine particle pollution in January -- more than forty times the level deemed safe by The World Health Organization; 1.3 million square kilometers are regularly blanketed in China enveloping 600 million people: 750,000 people die from air pollution each year. Yet the capitalist system cries 'we must expand there'! John Ayers

Lets Forget Differences and Talk of Similarities

World socialism the true cooperative commonwealth

“I look upon the whole world as my fatherland...I look upon true patriotism as the brotherhood of man and the service of all to all...National independence? That means the masters' independence...The flag? Does it wave over a country where you are free and have a home, or does it rather symbolize a country that meets you with clenched fists when you strike for better wages and shorter hours?" - Helen Keller

The modern nation state is defined as the product of merger of two concepts, namely the ‘nation’, which is a cultural and/or ethnic entity and the ‘state’, which is a political and geopolitical entity with jurisdiction or ‘sovereignty’ over a bounded territory. The state in its modern form is a relatively new institution emerging through the democratic revolutions that overthrew monarchies in England and France. There are many reasons for the rise of the modern nation-state, which has become the dominant form of state formation around the world today. One very important reason that comes to mind is the emergence of the idea of land as private property with clear ownership titles as against the notion of land as belonging to the monarch over which different people had only access for cultivation, grazing of animals or other uses. The modern idea of nation thus became closely tied to the notion of ownership of land and in many ways whether in Europe or the United States or Latin America the new nations that formed were essentially a coalition of many landowners who voluntarily agreed to have a common state apparatus to look after their welfare, security and governance. The fences that marked off private land were applied to language, culture, ethnicity and once fluid identities rendered into rigid, inflexible identities. The national identity, though it superseded all these other identities and helped unite diverse populations.

The process of recognition of new nations in recent times has been quite arbitrary and entirely dependent on the alignment of global or regional geopolitical forces in favor or against the struggle for independence. For example, why should  Kosovo be privileged over Kashmir or  South Sudan over Tamil Eelam in Sr Lanka when it comes to the “right to self-determination”?

 The idea of national sovereignty is a notional fraud. A nation-state is not sovereign in its affairs. In practice it means a mightier or the mightiest nation-state, regardless of law and ethics, may ‘sovereignly’ decide what is good for its own nation and by extension for the international community. In the world we live in today is there any nation that is truly “independent” or sovereign? Or is everyone just “inter-dependent” to varying degrees, with the idea of “sovereignty” just a chip for bargaining better terms and conditions in the world marketplace? The global capital flows determine the fate of even powerful nations. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report in 2010, the total value of the world’s financial stock, comprising equity market capitalization and outstanding bonds and loans, touched US$212 trillion and was more than three times as large as the total output of goods and services produced across the planet that year. The same year cross-border capital flows grew to US$4.4 trillion. Ninety percent of global capital flows run between three regions: the U.S., the United Kingdom and the European countries that use the euro. It is clear that as far as the world of global finance is concerned, outside these regions, the rest of the planet does not really exist at all! However these global capital flows have important consequences for all countries as each of them compete and chase the dream of attracting funds to their shores today. The erosion of sovereignty of nation states has occurred steadily in recent years as country after country brings down protective political and economic walls in their bid to woo global finance.

 When we still use the terms “homeland”, “motherland” or “fatherland” do we still believe that “land” is the primary basis of a nation and its economy? When corporations have become way larger than entire countries why should land and territory alone become synonymous with the idea of a nation?  If Wal-Mart were a country, its revenues would make it on par with the GDP of Norway the 25th largest economy in the world by, surpassing 157 smaller countries. In 2010 while Norway's GDP was $414.46 billion Walmart's revenue stood at $421.89 billion.  Exxon Mobil, with a revenue of $354.67 billion is bigger than Thailand with a GDP of $318.85 billion. Apple computers, with revenues of $65.23 billion, is bigger than Ecuador with a GDP of $58.91 billion. For quite some time now that the giant corporations of the world are on par with, or more powerful, than many countries in the world in terms of economic clout, even political clout in many parts of the world. The management systems they run are often as much or even more efficient than that of any state apparatus. What they lack in order to declare themselves nation-states and join the United Nations are essentially a national flag or an anthem, which any advertising agency can produce for them in a few days although some multi-nationals’ logos and advertising jingles are world recognisable and iconic plus their participation in global NGOs offer diplomatic influence. Security companies  already serve as proxy armies in conflicts. Today nation-states are being subordinated to global capital and the few powerful nations that act as their marketing agents. Corporations are the new empires of the globe and while nation-states are not about to disappear anytime soon they are a much weakened entity, shorn of genuine sovereignty and lacking independence of decision-making.

 An example of how nationalism has become obsolete look at the concept of Special Economic Zones which are common place all over the world today. While  armies are supposed to be jealously guarding every inch of national territory along the borders, the SEZs, created are deemed to be territory inside national borders but outside the jurisdiction of customs officersfor  the purposes of trade operations and duties and tariffs.

What does national identity of a nation really mean in today’s world? Are we not all citizens of the world, holding multiple identities (and in an increasing number of cases even multiple passports)? Our place of birth is accidental, but our duty to our class is worldwide. Socialism recognises no distinction between the various nations comprising the world. Socialism does not recognise national distinctions or the division of  humanity into nations and races. The position of the Socialist Party in every country is one of hostility to the existing political order. The socialist movement is global in sentiment and scope and the name, the World Socialist Movement, was deliberately chosen as an aspiration to be achieved. Capitalist production made giant strides towards internationalisation of the processes of production, distribution and exploitation of labour and this has made it easier for workers everywhere to see the necessity of organising ourselves on a world-wide scale.

Adapted from here 

A Murderous Society

Poverty, war and starvation are ever present social problems inside capitalism, but there is another one - murder. 'Almost 1.2 million people have been murdered in Brazil in the last three decades, making the country more deadly than some war zones, new figures show.' (Times, 20 July) Yet despite this murder rate of 27.4 per 100,000 inhabitants Brazil is only the seventh most dangerous country in the world. The Centre for Latin American Studies  claim that the most murderous was El Salvador, followed by the Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Colombia and Guatemala. RD

Food for thought

 

The world's capitalist class and politicians, who attempt to administer capitalism's day-to-day functioning, do anything to solve the problem when global warming promises rich profits. An article in The Toronto Star, May 4^th focused on interest in agriculture in Greenland. Potatoes, thyme, tomatoes, green peppers and strawberries are being grown there. In Southern Greenland hay is now being grown. Sheep farms have increased in size, and  supermarkets sell locally grown vegetables. Greenland's government set up a commission to study how climate change can help farmers increase production and replace expensive imported foods. Throughout the Arctic, the thawing of the ice sheets has seen a boost in oil and mining exploration. This is a much more sought after development by the profit makers, natural disasters be damned. If the owners and controllers of production will do nothing about global warming, then, of course, it is up to the world's working class to act politically to put an end to the capitalist system. John Ayers

Sleeping with the enemy

The Loony Left-Nationalists' flag

The Socialist Party argues that the important division is one of class, not of nation. We argue that the working class in Glasgow has much more in common with the workers of London than they do with the Highland lairds or the fund-managers in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Sq. Our goal is a socialist world without states or countries. We organise to overcome the capitalist system and  transform our economy – ridding ourselves of exploitation, environmental destruction, and oppression that comes with it.

The capitalist class is international – state borders do not divide them. The working class, on the other hand, are separated  by these borders. They prevent us from travelling freely, they restrict us to where we live and work. Borders hinder workers unity in resisting employers.  The capitalist class organises internationally. And it wants to obstruct our class from doing the same. The Scottish working class is exploited in the same way as the English working class, the same way as the German or French worker: by the Scottish, English, British , European and international capitalists and in many cases, by the very same multi-national corporation. The social evils experienced by the Scottish  people are the very same miseries shared by workers of all nations. Austerity doesn’t stop at the border. An independent government in Scotland  would make all the same cuts to working class living standards if the capitalist ruling class demanded it, and it would put corporations and profits before the needs of the people. And to counter the ensuing class conflict and to prevent the rapid disillusionment of many men and women workers, an independent Scottish government would exploit nationalistic feelings to the hilt. It would strongly encourage narrow-nationalism, pushing for “national unity”, extolling sacrifice for the “pride of the nation.”

All countries are quite ready to condemn “in the abstract” international suspicion and mistrust, while each one individually insists upon an absolute national sovereignty which makes international order impossible. Yet, the fact is, a  small insignificant independent nation-state can no longer remain isolated from the world-economy. This shapes our view on nationalism. There is no difference between a group of workers oppressed by a foreign power or corporation and those oppressed by domestic rulers. You are either the voice of the capitalist class or of the working class, you can’t be both. The Socialist Party of Great Britain want Scots and every other worker around the globe united for socialism not divided by nationalism. We want a world without borders. Supporting Scottish independence takes time and resources away from this far more worthy and pressing matter.

A good socialist will not say “you are independent” or “you should fight for independence”. A good socialist will say “you are not independent and you should not be. You are dependent on the working class of the world and they are dependent on you. We all depend on each other.”

Hungry for justice

The Scottish comedian,  Frankie Boyle, has joined campaigners who are attempting a symbolic  hunger strike for a combined total of 1,000 hours  to highlight the case of Shaker Aamer - the last UK resident being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Aamer, from London, has been detained in the military prison for 11 years without being charged or tried. Since February, 100 of the 166 prisoners still held have been refusing food in protest at their detention. Human rights campaigners Reprieve are supporting the hunger-strikers by encouraging supporters to give up food temporarily.

 Now in his second term as president, Barack Obama has still failed to make good on his election promise to close Guantanamo prison.

Food for thought

A report by the Norwegian Refugee Councils Displacement Monitoring Centre claims that in 2012 32 million people were forced to flee their homes because of floods, storms, and earthquakes, almost twice as many as in 2011. Gordon McBean, the director of research at Western University's Centre for Environment and Sustainability in London, Ontario commented on the report, " 32 Million people, that is the human cost of climate change. The impact of climate change
isn't small, that's what these numbers say." No part of this world is immune from floods -- India, Nigeria, The Philippines, Russia, Spain, China, Pakistan, and the US that led to 775,000 people fleeing their homes. Nor will things improve any time soon. According to the report, "Climate change is expected to influence
the frequency and intensity of weather extremes over the coming decades." John Ayers

Anti-Imperialism = Anti-Socialism

The concept of 'anti-imperialism' is rooted in nationalism, since it assumes that there is something unnatural about one 'country' exploiting the resources of another 'country'. All nations were created through an imperialist process that involved the homogenisation of an area under a particular local elite, and that involved the explotation of wage differences creaming off of surplus. Look at how industrial Italy dominated south, agrarian Italy.

Was the struggle by the US southern states anti-imperialist? Would the southern USA workers and slaves have been better off exploited by their local ruling class?

An anti-imperial analysis seems to get in the way of a class analysis too much -- especially since a useful class analysis should be rooted in immediate experience and struggle, not worked out using an economist's slide-rule.

 'Anti-Imperialism' is anti-socialist because it leads us to support smaller controlling elites, or ignore the damage they do, in favour of just concentrating on the USA or European powers, etc.

The concept of 'anti-imperialism' comes from Lenin's immediate political needs during the USSR's war against France and Britain in 1918-24, during which any defeat for the imperial powers was good for the USSR -- and thus the working class, of course -- and so the Bolsheviks championed nationalists in  Asia, Africa and elsewhere. Similarly, later during the Cold War the USSR supported local nationalisms in order to oppose US hegemony.

The Crisis

A crisis is caused by capitalists choosing not to buy, that is, not to invest profits because they judge they won't make any profits or not enough. Workers cannot be indifferent to a crisis, no matter how much we are disgusted by the predictable pendulum swing between “boom” and “bust”, because our lives can be directly influenced by today’s financial turbulence. But at the same time, we have no interest whatsoever in thinking up ways to put capitalism “back on track” or make it “healthy” again. Even when the system is in tip-top shape it works directly counter to the interests of workers. The crisis will not miraculously or mechanically turn every worker into a socialist, as some hope, but it does at least create a situation where socialists may find workers more willing to consider an alternative to capitalism. It is up to us, as socialists, to present that alternative in a convincing way based on our understanding of the essential nature and limitations of the capitalist system.

 Could the present slump really last for a decade or more? The truth is we don’t know and can’t know. The future course of capitalism is largely unpredictable. Economic forecasting is no more reliable than an astrological horoscope. All we can say with certainty is that it is an irrational system.

A number of quite distinct and separate things need to happen before a slump can run its course. Firstly, capital has to be wiped out if excess productive capacity is to be tackled with devalued capital being bought cheaply by those enterprises in the best position to survive the slump. Secondly, de-stocking needs to take place, with overproduced commodities bought up cheaply or written off entirely. Investment will not resume if overproduction still exists. Thirdly, after this has occurred there needs to be an increase in the rate of industrial profit helped both by real wage cuts and falling interest rates (which tail off naturally as the demand for more money capital eases off in the slump). This will help renew investment and increase accumulation. Also, if recovery is to be sustained, a large proportion of the debt built up during the boom years will need to be liquidated, if it is not to act as a drag on future accumulation. Through these mechanisms a slump helps build the conditions for future growth, ridding capitalism of inefficient units of production. When these processes have run their course, accumulation and growth can begin once more with capitalism again creating a boom situation, which will be inevitably followed by a crisis and slump. This has been the history of capitalism ever since it first developed. Far from being an aberration, this cycle of misery is the natural cycle of capitalism.

A Strange Sense Of Values

A study was carried out on behalf of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) by experts at Loughborough University. This being capitalism it concentrated on what the problem was costing local authorities. The figures taken city by city were hardly surprising. Birmingham £914 m per year, Manchester £446m and Glasgow £395m. 'An estimated 36,367 children in Glasgow live below the poverty line, according to the research. ....... Statistics from the Scottish government last month revealed 710,000 people north of the border - including 150,000 children - were living in relative poverty in 2011-12.' (BBC News) The figures may not be surprising but the "experts" emphasis on what it costs local authorities rather than what it costs in human misery tells us a lot about their sense of values. RD

Safety first?

There has been a large decline in the number of workplace inspections carried out by the Health and Safety Executive in Scotland over the past three years, according to new figures.

Despite significant numbers of fatal injuries in the agriculture, construction and service industries, checks have fallen in all three sectors.

Better futility than false roads

Our flag is the red flag

The capitalist class has managed society and its management has failed yet workers have not rallied to the red flag.

Will socialism benefit people, the Socialist Party is asked.  Will rest benefit the weary? Will food benefit the starving?  Will fresh air benefit the suffocating?

Some have convinced themselves that socialism is dead as a door nail.  We do not agree. Nor do we wholly accept that leaders have led the movement astray. The movement – that is to say the socialist movement – has not been led astray. But the general movement of the working class refused to support the socialist movement; and its leaders watched for what way to jump, and led their forces, not in the way the workers should have gone, but in the way they wished to go.

It seems rather inconsistent now however, to chide the workers for having preferred “Labourism” to socialism when, for they were advised to do so by all its present critics on the Left. They lost sight that if the wrong road be taken, every mile travelled takes us only farther from the right one and  after years of marching along the wrong road they now find themselves wallowing in the New Labour swamp. Socialists have never wearied in pointing out the right road; but the mass of the workers have preferred to take the wrong way, encouraged to do so by the Left-wingers.

 If they want socialism, they must join the Socialist Party, and agitate, educate, and organise for socialism.  Workers must rightly use their political power. But they have not done so.

 Capitalism leads to the bloodiest anarchy, to the destruction of the few cultural achievements which have been created, to the deepest misery of the masses and their literal enslavement, seared into the minds of the of the working class.

The “Communist” Parties have failed to offer the masses a substantial alternative. With a blindness which only shows how superficial their socialist knowledge has been and  miscalculating the distance which separated their countries from the situation in which the Russian Bolsheviks had found themselves they rejected the weapon of parliamentary agitation and education, and thereby, ruled themselves off the political stage, and condemned themselves to an existence in obscurity. Their repeated attempts at insurrection found no echo among the still unenlightened masses, and far from succeeding in becoming a political and social force, have now hopelessly split into several factions. Thus everything the Leninists advocated combined in preventing the development of the revolution from a political into a social one.

 The revolution cannot be vague uprising of a large mass of discontented and miserable people—a blind and instinctive knee-jerk reflex to hurt and suffering . On the contrary, it has to be intellectual; a movement based upon economic necessity and  in line with social evolution. Socialists are no starved slaves but working people who see the shambles waiting for them and  their children and recoil from the descent into barbarism.

AJJ

Principles And Profits

 

The British government likes to portray itself as an organisation of the highest moral standards on such issues as human rights. When it comes to making profits however such high principles are soon forgotten.'The UK government has approved more than 3,000 export licences for military sales to countries which it believes have questionable records on human rights, MPs say. The House of Commons Committees on Arms Export Controls says the value of the existing export licences to the 27 countries in question exceed £12bn. This includes significant sales to China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.' (BBC News, 17 July) Although the current policy states that they cannot issue licences where there is a clear risk that the proposed export might provoke or prolong internal conflicts or repression, this has not stopped them dealing with Egypt. When there is a £12bn business at risk principles count for little. RD

The N.H.S. Farce

The present government are blaming previous Labour governments for the current failure of care in the NHS. Needless to say the Labour Party are blaming them. None of them are blaming capitalism of course. 'The shocking conditions in Britain's hospitals have been laid bare by an official report which disclosed that failings uncovered in NHS wards were so bad that inspectors felt compelled to abandon their impartial roles and step in to alleviate patient suffering. ..... Eleven NHS trusts were put into "special measures" after an investigation found thousands of patients died needlessly because of poor care.' (Daily  Telegraph, 17 July) Medical care is like everything else inside capitalism. If you have the money you can get the best of care, if not you have to make do with the cheap and shoddy. RD

Facts of the Day

An estimated 36,367 children in the Glasgow City Council area are living below the poverty line, according to the research.

Statistics from the Scottish Government last month revealed 710,000 people north of the border - including 150,000 children - were living in relative poverty in 2011-12.

The number of people sleeping rough on the streets of Scotland exceeds 1,700. The highest numbers of rough sleepers are in the Edinburgh and Dundee council areas, Edinburgh had 363 rough sleeper cases and Dundee had 97.

Paranoid Politics

 Conspiracy theories are not new – far from it. But with the arrival of the internet offering easy dissemination and access to them conspiracy theories have proliferated and taken hold even amongst those who claim to be sophisticated and well-educated. Conspiracy theorists gain plausibility by taking established fact and embellishing it, so that one can’t tell where truth ends and fiction begins.

Major events cannot, in the popular mind, have trivial causes, because our world-view cannot allow it. Believing ourselves to be rational creatures in a supposedly ordered and rational universe, we shy away from the hideous tyranny of randomness, that force of Nature which defies our control and thus denies us our sense of meaning and “place” in the world. Thus, JFK, who ninety percent of Americans believe could not possibly have been killed by one lone fantasist with a rifle and some personal issues but with rather good eyesight and some luck. Princess Diana didn’t die because a driver got drunk, it was all a vast conspiracy involving the top echelons of power. Ditto John Lennon that the blame is again placed upon the "lone nutter" who had been receiving treatment for paranoid schizophrenia for his entire life since childhood but rather Chapman was being used as a "Manchuran Candidate" by Richard Nixon. Ditto 9/11, which clearly couldn’t have been simply the work of a few terrorists who got very, very lucky.

Conspiracy theorists take the view that the modern world must be controlled from the top – someone, somewhere must be pulling the strings, somehow. The conspiracy theorists interpret every event (even contradictory ones) as being evidence that everything is under some group’s secret control. The stock-in-trade of the conspiracy writers is rumour, innuendo, guilt-by-association and half-knowledge passed off as fact and a re-iteration of the inter-connection of some sections of the capitalists class (the Rothschilds, being an example).

The conspiratorial world-view is certainly not promoting an understanding of society. Those unfamiliar with the analysis of Marxian economics are yet to realise that at the heart of the capitalist economy is a genuine “anarchy of production”. Conspiracy theorists' assertions that a complex, technologically advanced society like capitalism cannot be at root “anarchic” in many of its operations, are misplaced. There are conspiracies all the time. Big ones tend to spring leaks however, and rarely last without being "outed". The capitalist class is not a conspiracy, not because it is democratic and transparent in its dealings which it very clearly isn’t but because it is not united, as the Illuminati presumably are. Because of the anarchic, competitive and contradictory nature of capitalism a conflict-free “New World Order” is practically impossible.

Scientific issues can be vulnerable to misinformation campaigns. Many people still believe that vaccines cause autism and that human-caused climate change is a hoax. Science has thoroughly debunked these myths, but the misinformation persists in the face of overwhelming evidence. Efforts to combat conspiracies can often backfire.

"You have to be careful when you correct misinformation that you don't inadvertently strengthen it. If the issues go to the heart of people's deeply held world views, they become more entrenched in their opinions if you try to update their thinking." says Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Western Australia.

Psychologists call this reaction “belief perseverance” - maintaining your original opinions in the face of overwhelming data that contradicts your beliefs. Everyone does it to a certain extent , but we are especially vulnerable when invalidated beliefs form a key part of how we understand and live our lives. Researchers have found that religious faiths  are especially vulnerable to belief perseverance but also how we view ourselves. A  study  found that people are more likely to continue believing incorrect information if it makes them look good by enhancing ones self-image.

For example, if an individual has become known in her community for purporting that vaccines cause autism, she might build her self-identity as someone who helps prevent autism by campaigning for parents to avoid vaccination. Admitting that the studies  linking autism to the MMR vaccine were mistaken would diminish her self-respect. In this circumstance, it is easier to continue believing that autism and vaccines are linked, according to Dartmouth College political science researcher Brendan Nyhan. "It's threatening to admit that you're wrong," he says. "It's threatening to your self-concept and your world-view."

We are more likely to believe a statement if it confirms our preexisting beliefs, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias. Accepting a statement also requires less cognitive effort than rejecting it. Even simple traits such as language can affect acceptance: Studies have found that the way a statement is printed or voiced (or even the accent) can make those statements more believable. Also hence the debate on how the question in the up-coming Scottish independence referendum should be exactly phrased.

Correcting misinformation, however, isn't as simple as presenting people with true facts. When someone reads views from the other side, they will create counter-arguments that support their initial viewpoint, bolstering their belief of the misinformation. Retracting information does not appear to be very effective either. Some researchers have published retractions, and at best, halved the number of individuals who believed misinformation.

But it is not all bad news. There is now near-universal agreement that smoking is addictive and can cause cancer. In the 1950s smoking was considered a largely safe lifestyle choice—so safe that it was allowed almost everywhere and physicians appeared in ads to promote it. The tobacco industry carried out a misinformation campaign for decades, reassuring smokers that it was okay to light up, offering biased scientific reports and suppressing research while discrediting whistle-blowers. Over time opinions began to shift as overwhelming evidence of ill effects was made public by more and more scientists and health administrators. Smokers could now personally understand and have the association of their individual hacking cough confirmed with its cause.

 The Food and Agriculture Organisation is convinced there is sufficient global capacity to produce enough food to adequately feed the world’s seven billion people and many more besides. But globally a billion people go to sleep every night without eating dinner, and extreme poverty, 1.2 billion people live on less than 1.25 dollars a day. A child dies every 10 seconds from malnutrition – not because their parents are reckless, stupid or lazy – but because they were unlucky enough to be born at a time and place where tragically,  people cannot afford to buy the food that is available. This is a known but socialists must break through the conspiracy that declares it an unavoidable condition and an inevitable situation.

Capitalism And Crime

Any TV viewer is aware that one of the most popular themes in dramas is crime and its solution. Super smart policemen solve baffling crimes inside the stipulated hour programme. It is all very reassuring but unfortunately it is complete nonsense. Britain's biggest police  force is "screening out" almost half of its crimes after deciding that they are too hard to solve. 'The Metropolitan Police stopped investigating 76 per cent of motor vehicle theft, 40 per cent of burglaries and 23 per cent of robberies at an early stage in the past year. Forty-five per cent of a total of 770,448 crimes in the Met's area were "screened out".' (Times, 16 July) Why don't they send for Miss Marples or Hercules Poirot? RD

Doom and Gloom Again

The pharmaceutical industry, like oil companies and arms manufacturers, isn’t viewed highly in the public imagination. And for good reason. There is growing awareness of an inherent conflict of interest in the testing of drugs by the companies that manufacture them — like Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly — and a steady stream of tales from journalists, researchers and doctors of deliberately dodgy trials, buried unfavorable results, and purchased academic journals.

Yet the greatest crime of the world’s major private pharmaceutical companies is not what they do, but what they don’t do.

Antibiotics revolutionized healthcare. In the ongoing war against bugs and infection, these companies have abandoned their posts at the most critical time: when the enemy is mounting its most ferocious attack in generations. As these firms continue to shirk their duties — effectively abandoning antibiotic research for some 30 years now — senior public health officials are warning that the world could soon return to the pre-antibiotic era, a miserable, fearful time that few people alive now remember. We have forgotten how common and deadly infectious disease once was. We’ve taken antibiotics for granted, but we can hardly blame ourselves for such complacency.

The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Frieden, warned authorities of their “limited window of opportunity” to deal with the “nightmare” presented by the rise of a family of bacteria highly resistant to what are often our last line of antibiotic defense: the suite of drugs known as carbapenems. A few months earlier, the UK’s chief medical officer, Sally Davies, used similar language to describe a future “apocalyptic scenario” in 20 years’ time, when people will be dying from infections that are currently understood to be trivial, “because we have run out of antibiotics.” Davies described how the phenomenon “poses a catastrophic threat” to humanity akin to that of climate change and imagined a scenario in the coming decades in which “we will find ourselves in a health system not dissimilar to the early 19th Century,” where any one of us could go to the hospital for minor surgery and die from an ordinary infection that can no longer be treated. Major interventions like organ transplants, chemotherapy, hip replacements and care for premature babies will become impossible.

What did the pre-antibiotic era look like? There was 30% mortality from pneumonia. Mortality from appendicitis or a ruptured bowel was at 100%. Before Alexander Fleming’s serendipitous discovery of the first antibiotic penicillin, hospitals were filled with people who had contracted blood poisoning through cuts and scratches. These scratches often developed into life-threatening infections. Using amputation or surgery as common medical responses for scraping out infected areas is not pleasant or preferred, but these were the only options for the doctors.

Reports in medical journals, charity organization analyses, government studies, and the pharmaceutical sector’s own assessments attribute the dangerous threat to insufficient market incentive - lack of profit. Unlike drugs that millions of people have to take for the rest of their lives to target chronic illnesses such as heart disease — drugs that suppress symptoms but do not cure — antibiotics are usually taken for a few weeks or months at most. This makes antibiotics unfavorable for capitalism.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2008 put it: “[Antibiotics] are less desirable to drug companies and venture capitalists because they are more successful than other drugs.” It is long-term therapy — not cures — that drives interest in drug development, the paper concluded.

Only four of the global Big Pharma 12 are engaged in antibiotic research. Capitalism encourages these firms to cherry-pick the products that make the most money for their shareholders, such as Viagra.  A common criticism from the Left of these companies has been that their profit-seeking hurts the poor of the developed and developing world, who can’t afford their drugs. This is true as far as it goes, but doesn’t tackle the scale of this problem. It is the capitalist command to accumulate profit that  pharmaceutical companies must obey that is the major threat to public health and needs to be done away with entirely.

See full article here

Socialism, the steady-state system

Capitalism  have given the top 1% of the population what they want, which is the opportunity to be the wealthiest and most powerful of the richest people ever seen. The present competitive exploitative system is  driven by increasing consumption of energy and resources. Competition works is the contest is to maximise wealth and power and to produce the most goods and services for the least cost. Capitalist economies are motivated and controlled with competition, which has replaced social needs as the motivator. Furthermore, as the competition and rivalry intensifies,  cooperation and caring decreases. Capitalism shifts the blame of a dysfunctional and unfair social system to people. The capitalists’ interest is their self-interest, which is why they are plutocrats; it is to be successful in capitalism. This means they are what they are. This also means ordinary people are not in charge of the economy or of the political system.

We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain are seeking a "steady-state economy" which corresponds to what Marx called "simple reproduction" - a situation where human needs were in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them.

The Lazy Worker Myth

From time to time newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express like to put all Britain's economic woes down to welfare grabbing lazy workers, but recent statistics give the lie to that notion. 'Workers feel less secure about their jobs and are taking fewer days off sick, according to two new surveys. The CBI said the number of days lost to absence in British workplaces had fallen to  a new low, while Law & General's monthly Job Security Index dipped to its lowest reading since its inception in January last year.' (Times, 15 July) How few days are taken off for sickness is shown by the figures. Down from 6.5 days per year in 2010 to 5.3 days at present. RD

Utopian Socialism

Is it possible to mobilise people to fight oppression without fashioning models for a socialist economy for people to fasten on to? The capitalist slogan ‘There is No Alternative’ was answered by ‘Another World is Possible’. We need to know and say much more about this other world.

Socialist thought has to deal in prediction, but only in broad terms. We live in dark days.  One often has to aim at objectives which one can only very dimly see. Socialism is a vision of the future, while its advocates are actively at work in the present. Socialists have typically avoided the tactic of the utopian blueprint. One reason for this was that no matter what your utopian vision is, you won’t be able to achieve it under capitalism. The other reason was that after capitalism is overthrown, it will be up to the people to determine how to run their society. Some people may prefer a return to Nature. Others may want robots tending to their every need.Why should one person’s utopian preference determine how society should be run for everybody else?

Charly's Profits

Prince Charles' tax exempt, capitalist property empire, the Duchy of Cornwall, is worth £847m and according to his top adviser it is a "force for social good".

It is definitely a force for his personal individual good, the scrounger gets around 19 million pounds a year from it! 

The National Ill-Health Service

From time to time British politicians like to boast about the NHS and claim it is the envy of the world. This is a hollow boast as these figures show. Five children die unnecessarily every day of conditions such as asthma, meningitis and pneumonia because NHS care for young people is badly organised and dangerously inadequate, the leader of Britain's 11,000 specialists in children's health warns. 'Around 2,000 children a year lose their lives because of an array of problems, which means the UK has some of the worst death rates among children up to the age of 14 in Europe, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health told the Observer.' (Observer, 14 July) RD

A Grim Choice

In the city of Asbest in Russia workers face a grim choice - work to produce asbestos, which will probably kill you or else move somewhere else. Valentin K. Zemskov, who worked in the asbestos factory and developed asbestosis, a respiratory illness caused by breathing in  asbestos fibres summed up the position of workers in Asbest. ' Still he said the city had no other choice. "If we didn't have the factory, how could we live?" he said gasping for air as he talked in the yard of a retirement home. "We need to keep it open so we have jobs." (New York Times, 13 July) Obviously inside a socialist society no one would have to endure such a hellish dilemma. RD

The Commonweal

According to the Herald, “the so-called Common Weal plan, which has been injected into the referendum debate by the left-wing Jimmy Reid Foundation.” The Common Weal model envisages a fundamental break with the UK's market-led economic and social model, with Scotland importing policies from Germany and Scandinavia designed to make the country wealthier, fairer and more equal. A key part would be an expanded welfare state providing "from-the-cradle-to-the-grave" services which are paid for through an overall higher tax take. But the Common Weal model would also entail a diverse, high-skill, high-pay economy in which Scots firms are supported by lending from state banks and favoured in state procurement.

Commonweal means the common welfare, a commonwealth. The commonweal  shall satisfy peoples’ material needs from the common storehouse, according to their desires. Everyone will be able to have what he or she desires in food, in clothing, books, music, education and travel facilities. The abundant production now possible, and which invention will constantly facilitate, will remove any need for rationing or limiting of consumption. Every individual, relying on the great common production, will be secure from material want and anxiety. There will be neither rich nor poor. Money will no longer exist. There will be no selling, because there will be no buyers, since everyone will be able to obtain everything desired without payment. The possession of private property, beyond that which is in actual personal use, will disappear. There will be neither masters nor servants.

This is the commonweal. Socialists are determined to work co-operatively for this commonweal.

No amount of sophistry can change commonweal to mean capitalism, no matter what variety claimed.

Taxation and its burden

Continuing our tedious but necessary economic education posts. This one on the subject of taxes.

When capitalist political parties are in disagreement, the issue of taxation usually looms large. Should income tax be reduced or increased?  The serious-minded worker who does his own thinking will probably at first be amazed at the dexterity exhibited by both the Labour and Tory sections of the capitalist class. We watch them handling figures and statistics in a way that must cause a circus juggler to turn green with envy, each proving that the poverty and misery is bound to increase if the proposals of the other side are adopted!

A Society Of Debtors

Politicians love to paint a picture of steadily improving living standards, but it is a complete illusion as a recent newspaper article by Christian Guy, Director of the Centre for Social Justice has revealed. 'Yesterday's grim figures revealed that more than 800,000 households will soon spend more than half their income on debt repayments. We already know that 274 people are declared insolvent or bankrupt every day, 88 properties are repossessed and average household debt, including mortgages, is almost £55,000.' (Times, 12 July) Hardly 'steadily improving living standards' is it? RD

Anarchism

Socialist Courier has had a couple of recent posts about the history of anarchism inn Aberdeen and Glasgow so before the blog is accused of being an anarchist one we should highlight the political differences between ourselves and anarchists.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain possess a clear definition of what we would describe socialism to be. The definition of "socialist" generally meant in the 1840s was anyone who wanted to reform society, in whatever way, so as to benefit Labour. That was indeed how it was used them and was of course one of the reasons why Marx and Engels called the manifesto they wrote for the Communist League of Germany in 1848 the "Communist Manifesto" and not the "Socialist Manifesto". Basically, it was much too broad a definition that included too many contradictory views that we suppose the more appropriate word (then as much as today) would be "social reformers". It is only on that basis that supporters of private property and the market such as Proudhon, could be called "socialist".

Banking 7/7

Socialists have no love for banks. A world without banks would be a wholly better place. However to blame the banks for creating our debt-ridden society is just too biblical, like a re-run of Christ expelling the money-changers from the temple. Even if the banks were state-owned, they would still have to lend. If they didn't there would be no point in them existing. Banks and interest are not the villain of the piece but capitalism and production for profit. We need to abolish money before we can get rid of banks. But to get rid of money we need an end to property. And you can't abolish property relations until you abolish capitalism.

The Housing Shortage

Housing is probably the one basic need which, were it properly satisfied, would be the most conductive to good emotional and mental health. It is, surely, very pleasant and soothing to relax among pleasant and agreeable surroundings. The fact remains that such a happy situation only applies to the small to the small minority of the population who have the means to buy beautiful homes. Housing is one problem of capitalism which has been a constant source of difficulty and is part and parcel of working class life. Few members of our class escape some aspect of housing trouble. Whether it is the crisis of homelessness or overcrowding, or the stress involved in keeping a roof over our heads through paying rent or the mortgage.

It could be more than 20 years before enough new homes are built in Scotland to meet the country's projected needs. Scotland requires 21,230 new homes each year between 2011 and 2035 to meet a projected 21% increase in the population to 2.9 million by 2035.

Councils and registered social landlords  have built 14,000 fewer homes since 2005 than the Scottish Government said were needed. Funding for housing fell by around one-quarter between 2008/09 and 2011/12 with further reductions to come, while the number of new private homes built has more than halved since 2007/08 when the economic crisis took hold. The Scottish Government’s Audit Scotland  blames the recession, along with constraints on lending, competing and increasing demands on capital resources, and reduced government subsidies. Changes to the benefit system, an ageing population and the rising number of single person households are creating further pressures.

There are more than 400,000 people currently on housing waiting lists. Audit Scotland said the housing supply was not keeping up with levels of need.

The first fallacy to dismiss is the belief that “housing shortage” is the beginning and end of the problem and is the source of the problem, because if it were, it could be logically assumed that there was some intrinsic inability of society to meet the housing needs of its population. It has had plenty of time and resources to do so, so this is clearly not the full story.

Another fallacy which tends to cloud our conception of the issue is that which suggests that the housing problem has its basis in the inefficiency and lack of organisation of the building industry. It is true that this industry is not generally well organised in relation to output and the workers employed there; it is also true that at times it can operate in an inefficient manner. The fallacy is however that this is a cause of the housing problem rather than, like the housing problem itself, an effect of an inefficient and unrealisable social system. How can the construction industry possible be efficient when it is subjected to the demands of profitability in a system which produces an uneven flow of work, conflict between employers and employees, and most importantly, the fact that buildings which create the greatest profit in construction are usually the least socially useful and therefore take preference over housing?

The facts tell us the industry suffers many problems which have been related to one thing: the contradictions and conflicts of the system of capitalism. Governments do initiate various housing reforms to try to solve these problems, but these always fail. Why is failure so total, especially when the materials, know -how and labour power exist to adequately deal with the problem of providing decent housing for all?

Is it because of stupid or corrupt politicians? Many people believe so and view a particular governments shortcoming’s in light of the various abilities and characters of its leading members. But in actual fact these factors play a very subsidiary part and make no fundamental difference. Some politicians and civil servants , assigned various tasks, may be very well-meaning and in some respects efficient, but in the final analysis fail because they cannot succeed.

Under capitalism all production, government-initiated or not, is with a view to profit, not the satisfaction of human needs, material and recreational. Since the profit motive is the very life-blood of the capitalist system, it logically follows that government housing programs will also be introduced with a view to providing a profit for some capitalist group or other. Whether or not the politicians involve be good guys or con-artists is immaterial, because the financial institutions putting up the money for these reforms want a return for their investment.

Banking 6/7

Surely, the current banking crisis has exploded the myth about banks being able to create credit, i.e. money to lend out at interest, by a mere stroke of the pen but apparently not. Financial crises always spark interest in critics of the system. They see the problems of capitalism—like its vulnerability to crises—as primarily financial in origin. The whole point of production under capitalism is not the satisfaction of needs, but the accumulation of money. In other words, it’s impossible to separate the economic world into a good productive side and a bad financial side; the two are inseparable. The monetary surpluses generated in production—the profits of capitalist businesses—accumulate over time and demand some sort of outlet: bank deposits, bonds, stocks, whatever. It’s going to be that way until we replace capitalism with something radically different. What we need to ask is why people today tend to blame banks rather than capitalism as a whole.

Anarchism in Glasgow

Some may find this article on the history of anarchist and socialist activity in Glasgow of interest.

The earliest known Glasgow anarchist history centres around the figure of Duncan Dundonald, a Clydeside-based engineering worker who is said to have met Mikhail Bakunin in Geneva in 1869, translated the Revolutionary Catechism in 1870, and then returned to Scotland to carry out anarchist propaganda and revolutionary sabotage. His obscurity to later generations of Glasgow anarchists could be related to the fact that he emigrated to Australia, possibly in the 1890s, where he settled in Melbourne and continued his activities under the assumed name of Donald Duncan.

In 1884 was the founding of the Social Democratic Federation branch in Glasgow. Many of those involved in the SDF had been members of the Democratic Club and/or the Republican Club in the city, and were in the main ardently anti-parliamentarian. This caused divisions as happened elsewhere, and when William Morris broke away to form the more vibrant Socialist League, most Glasgow SDF members simply de-camped to the new body. Branches then quickly appeared in other parts of Scotland.

In 1886 there was the visit to Glasgow of Peter Kropotkin. In 1888,  Lucy Parsons, partner of Albert Parsons, one of the executed Haymarket martyrs. Emma Goldman made her firstvisit in 1894. Voltairine de Cleyre in 1897 and 1903

By 1937, there were 3 groups of libertarians in Glasgow, Aldred's United Socialist Movement, Wm McDougall's Anti-Parlimentarian Communist Federation and Anarchist Federation of Frank Leech.

breathing is bad for you

More than two million deaths occur globally each year as a direct result of air pollution from human activity, scientists have said.  

2.1 million people die after inhaling fine sooty particles called PM 2.5s generated by diesel engines, power plants and coal fires. Another 470,000 are thought to be killed by high levels of ozone, created when vehicle exhaust gases react with oxygen.

Banking 5/7

Dealing with the conspiracists

The oft-given explanation circulating around the internet is that banking originated from goldsmiths is misleading as it suggests that this was widespread when there may only have been the odd example of this. There is one film (Money As Debt) which gives the impression that every mediaeval and early capitalist town had goldsmiths who did this. Currency cranks  use the goldsmith argument fairly extensively to show that a bank can lend more than has been deposited with it. It is also strange that this historical theory should be widespread in the US where there would ever have been any goldsmiths who did this (if only because the money-commodity there was silver to start with) and where paper money originated from the states printing it and making it legal tender for paying taxes.

Adam Smith makes no mention of "goldsmith bankers". His description of how the Bank of Amsterdam operated confirms that the currency cranks have not been able to produce any example of a bank that issued more certificates of receipts than the gold it had (and survived). Only a state or state-guaranteed bank can issue "fiat" money as money not backed by anything.

It would be much more likely that banking originated from moneylending, which would have been more widespread, when people with money to lend began issuing trade bills to factory owners and merchants to cover the period between production and sales. And if they started issuing more bills than they could honour (as goldsmiths are supposed to have done) they'd go bankrupt fairly quickly.

There were some goldsmith-bankers in London in the 17th century (but not in every town). Here's an example of how the currency cranks interpret what they say happened:

But the goldsmith-bankers seem rather to have been more like pawnbrokers for the idle rich according to this article.

A contemporary account of how goldsmith bankers actually operated can be in Richard Cantillon's "Essai sur la nature du Commerce en General" (it's in English) written in 1730. Here's what he wrote:

"If a hundred economical gentlemen or proprietors of land, who put by every year money from their savings to buy land on occasion, deposit each one 10,000 ounces of silver with a goldsmith or banker in London, to avoid the trouble of keeping this money in their houses and the thefts which might be made of it, they will take from them notes payable on demand. Often they will leave their money there a long time, and even when they have made some purchase they will give notice to the banker some time in advance to have their money ready when the formalities and legal documents are complete. In these circumstances the banker will often be able to lend 90,000 ounces of the 100,000 he owes throughout the year and will only need to keep in hand 10,000 ounces to meet all the withdrawals. He has to do with wealthy and economical persons; as fast as one thousand ounces are demanded of him in one direction, a thousand are brought to him from another. It is enough as a rule for him to keep in hand the tenth part of his deposits. There have been examples and experiences of this in London. Instead of the individuals in question keeping in hand all the year round the greatest part of 100,000 ounces the custom of depositing it with a banker causes 90,000 ounces of the 100,000 to be put into circulation. This is primarily the idea one can form of the utility of banks of this sort. The bankers or goldsmiths contribute to accelerate the circulation of money. They lend it out at interest at their own risk and peril, and yet they are or ought to be always ready to cash their notes when desired on demand. If an individual has 1000 ounces to pay to another he will give him in payment the banker's note for that amount. This other will perhaps not go and demand the money of the banker. He will keep the note and give it on occasion to a third person in payment, and this note may pass through
several hands in large payments without any one going for a long time to demand the money from the banker. It will be only some one who has not complete confidence or has several small sums to pay who will demand the amount of it. In this first example the cash of a banker is only the tenth part of his trade."

Nothing here about the goldsmith banker being able (or even trying) to lend more than the 100,000 ounces of silver deposited with them, as in the fairy tales of the currency cranks.

Cantillon's full account of how the banks of his time operated can be found in Chapter VI

Being poor = poor reading

Scotland had the worst record of the 32 nations taking part in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) international PISA reading tests. Bright boys from poorer backgrounds in Scotland’s schools are nearly three years behind their rich, clever male classmates in reading, a study has suggested.

The Uncaring Society

Carers are being forced to cut back on essentials such as food and electricity because of the so-called bedroom tax. 'Despite Government promises to protect them from the under-occupancy charge, one in six carers forced to pay it are falling behind on their rent and face eviction, research by Carer UK shows. .... Ministers pledged £25m in discretionary payments to protect carers and disabled people when the policy was introduced in April, but campaigners warned it would be only enough to support around 40,000 of the 420,000 disabled people affected by the cuts.' (Independent, 9 July) Just one in ten cases are receiving these discretionary payments on an on going basis, this latest research shows. When it comes to cutting welfare payments capitalism is ruthless even if you are disabled. RD

Child Labour

With the advent of the industrial revolution British capitalism made its fortune on the exploitation of child labour, but the advent of the trade union movement, after a long hard struggle, saw that ended. Ever ready to make profits the British capitalist class have shifted their source of child exploitation to Asia. The British sugar giant Tate & Lyle has imported large volumes of sugar from Cambodia through a supplier that is accused of using child labour. 'Tate & Lyle - which is the EU's largest cane producer and whose ingredients are used in a wide range of foods around the world - has used the Thai KSL group since 2011 for its supplies from Cambodia. However KSL is alleged to have been complicit along with the Cambodian government, in the eviction of people from the land, arson and theft. ..... Children as young as nine years of age work on Cambodian plantations run by KSL.' (Guardian, 9 July) RD

Hungry children in Scotland

Some children may be going hungry over the school holidays because their parents cannot afford to feed them properly, the Church of Scotland has warned.

"There is the real possibility that many children from all parts of Scotland will spend the summer break not getting enough to eat," said the Rev Sally Foster-Fulton Convener of the Church and Society Council. "People may jokingly mock school dinners but they provide essential basic nutrition and for many children they are the one substantial cooked meal they will get."

It was recently reported that the number of people using food banks has more than doubled in Scotland in the past year. The Trussell Trust said 14,318 people were helped during 2012-13; up 5726 on the previous year.

The rewards of owning Scotland

Wealthy landowners are qualifying for state hand-outs of £12,000 a week, according to a new report.

The report claims that with just 432 owners controlling 50% of all the privately owned land, Scotland has "the most concentrated pattern of land ownership in the developed world".

The report notes "the ready access estate ownership gives to the public purse" is a key attraction of land ownership to "the rich and super-rich".

It points to the £600,000-plus a year in government subsidies available to the future purchaser of a £11.4m Argyll property – the Auch and Invermearan Estate near Bridge of Orchy, that is on the market, a fact which is highlighted in the sales brochure.

See also this post on our companion blog.

Banking 4/7

Money! What is money? Money is a ticket that enables one to buy goods with, just as a railway ticket enables one to ride on the train goes the argument. The more tickets one has in one’s pockets, the more someone can buy. These tickets are, therefore, merely media of circulation, purchasing power. They may be made of anything. The material is of no consequence. What is of consequence, though, is the quantity of money in circulation. The mortal sin of the banks is that they refuse to issue enough money, or credit, to enable the “common man” to procure the necessities of life. Therefore, the power to issue money and credit based on social wealth must be taken over by a state-owned, claim the advocates of reforms and panaceas. Money, they explain, causes commodities to circulate, but herein they are certainly deceived by appearances. In reality, the movement of money is simply the reflex of the circulation of commodities. Money only realises the prices of commodities. Given the velocity of money, among other things, the quantity of money required in a community is just the amount sufficient to realise the prices of the goods to be exchanged. More than this the system cannot and will not absorb. For money, in the sphere of circulation is an effect not a cause. Hence, there is nothing seriously wrong with money, as such. Consequently, to increase the quantity of money will not put more goods into the hands of the people. Such an increase, in place of causing a greater quantity of commodities to circulate, can only have the effect of cluttering up the machinery of exchange. To advance as an argument for such an increase that many people are suffering because they have not the money with which to buy the necessities of life is not an argument for the relief of distress. Many are deeply moved because many are scarcity amidst plenty. It is a condition the reason for which baffles them. They can see easily enough that the products of labour are not properly distributed. That does not require much brain work . But they do not have sufficient insight into the capitalist system to be able to understand that this condition arises from the fundamental contradiction of the system. This fundamental contradiction is that goods are socially produced, but individually appropriated by the private owners of the means of wealth production. The profit system, albeit appropriately modified, must be maintained at all costs. Hence, they want to retain the capitalist system, but at the time escape the inequalities and distress which it produces. So when they speak of changing the system, what they have in mind is an indefinite idea of correcting some of its faults. Yet those faults will only end when the means of production are brought into common ownership and democratic control so that they can be oriented towards directly satisfying people’s needs – when banks, money and all the rest of the buying and selling system will have become redundant.

Graduates on the dole

As youth unemployment figures soar many workers think the solution is for a better education, but that often proves a futile move. 'This summer's university leavers face a tougher jobs market, with a forecast of a 4% fall in graduate vacancies. The Association of Graduate Recruiter (AGR) annual summer survey shows that leading UK employers are receiving 85 applications for each job.' (BBC News, 10 July) With 85 applicants for each vacancy the old notion of "lazy workers" looks a bit foolish. RD

A Bleak Future

The following grim findings emerged from a poll carried out for the Association of British Insurers. YouGov asked 2,506 employees questions relating to retirement and welfare. 'One in five working people believe that they will never retire. According to a survey being published today, of those who believe they will stop working full-time, more than four out of ten reckon they will have to keep a part-time job. Two thirds of those polled said they would struggle to meet the cost of paying for long-term care as they became infirm.' (Times, 9 July) Having suffered a lifetime of exploitation workers cannot even see some relief in old age. RD

Anarchism in Aberdeen

"You sing about your bonnie Scotland and your heather hills. It's not your bonnie Scotland. It's not your heather hills. It’s the landlord’s Bonnie Scotland. It’s the landlord’s heather hills. And if you want enough earth to set a geranium in, you’ve got to pinch it" declared J.L Mahon  a socialist who visited Aberdeen in 1887 and started a series of open air meetings and helped in the setting up of the Aberdeen Socialist Society, a branch of the Scottish Land and Labour League. 

The anti-parliamentarians broke in early 1891 to form the Aberdeen Revolutionary Socialist Federation. In 1893 the group changed its name to the Aberdeen Anarchist Communist Group.

The Aberdeen Anarchist Communist Group hosted the third conference of Scottish anarchists on January 1st 1895 and welcomed the delegates from Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hamilton and Motherwell.  Aberdeen had a membership of 100, with sympathisers “not less than one thousand” and was asserted to be the greatest socialist force in the city.

Full article on Libcom link 

The earliest Socialist Party of Great Britain branch in Scotland was in the North East of Scotland (Fraserburgh or Peterhead?) In the 1970s a Socialist Party group in Aberdeen existed for a brief time.

socialist sport?

 The Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland was founded in 1884 with now over 1 million members in 2,600 clubs .

Its players are amateurs, the grass roots are as important as the top echelons, and the majority of big games remain on free-to-air TV. And unlike football, clubs cannot be bought and sold and there are no private club owners. On the administrative side, club members elect an executive committee to carry out the running of the club on an annual basis. At the higher echelons of the GAA, such members must vacate their post after four years.

But Dr David Hassan of the University of Ulster denies that running the game with volunteers at grass-roots level means off-field activities are also "amateur". "At a community level, local competent professional people who are sympathetic to the GAA often do administrative jobs, such as a local accountant becoming club treasurer."

"The clubs and games are based in the community and operate on behalf of those people who are based in the community. If the grass roots say some policy proposal is a move in the wrong direction, the administrators cannot just say - as may be the case in English soccer - 'This is just business'."