That rabid, rascally, racist rag the Daily Express has on its front page yet another story attacking people on Benefits. Better still for it, the person cocnerned is originally from Nigeria, though has lived in Britain for ten years. Better still for it she is a single mother with five kids. No doubt it is the kind of story to get the kind of rabid, rascally, racist readers of the rag riled into a rage.
See: Racist Rag
The poor woman concerned lost her previous accommodation after a conflict with the Landlord. Now to add to her problems she has to face all of the hassle whipped up against her for no fault of her own. Having lost her previous accommodation her local Council could provide her with no adequate Counci Housing. So she found a house to rent, and corectly claimed her Housing Benefit. The Express is in a righteous rage over the fact that the house concerned is a £1 million - looks overpriced to me from the picture - house in a leafy suburb. What really is the gripe here?
This poor woman's problem really comes down to the fact that there are insufficient Council houses. But hang on, the main reason for that is that egged on by papers like the Express, Maggie Thatcher, in the 1980s forced Council's to sell their Council houses at give away prices!!! Now having helped cause the problem, the Express wants to whip up a moral panic against the very people who are the victims of the situation Thatcher and the Express created!!!!
Its amazing that the Express can feel that it can continue to appeal to its small-minded readers with such stories about trivial matters like this affecting disadvantaged people given the fact that over the last few weeks the capitalist State in Britain along with Capitalist States hroughout the world have paid out hundreds of billions of pounds in benefits to the rich bankers and their shareholders. They quote someone from the taxpayers Alliance saying that Housing Benefit should be only a stop-gap while people get back on their feet not a lifelong commitment. If it were possible for everyone to get a decent paid job in such a short period of time that might be fair enough, but, of course the reality is different. Especially if you face the likely probles of this poor woman of having to deal with a society in which racial discrimination in employment is rampant, and especially given the problem of trying to cover the cost of childcare. Moreover, they might want to consider that the chances of employment have just got a whole lot worse, and not for any mistakes made by those on benefits or other workers. No, it is the greed of Capitalism that led to the reckless decisions of Bankers and Capitalist States that led to the Credit Crunch and its effects on the real economy.
The answer to the Express's righteous indignation is simple. If they object to the cost of the rent for houses like the one in question then the State should simply take them over as it has done with the Banks. The Express doesn't complain about the Housing Benefit paid to the Queen to enable her to stay in the rented accommodation at Buckingham Palace - whose value I'm sure is much more than a million, and hte annual rent would be a lot more than £25,000. What about taking that over for more efficient use along with all the other udner-occupied palaces and large houses, and converting them to flats for the homeless to make up for all those Council houses Thatcher forced Councils to sell.
Of course, the Capitalist State won't do that, and its pointless socialists demanding that it did, or misleading workers into the belief that it might. The job of marxists is to provide workers with real solutions to their problems, solutions they can bring about thesmelves here and now through their own activity not playing games in trying to make the State and its agents look bad - no effort is required for that it does it itself. The answer comes both from Marx and Engels and from the experience of workers own activity in the past. Marx and Engels argued that workers should not look to the bosses or their State to provide them with solutions. Instead they had to rely now and in the future on their own self-activity, in their own collective and co-operative efforts. That was true wheter it was in defending their wages and conditions through their Trade Unions, in building their own economic and social position through the creation of Co-operatives, or fighting the attempts of the bosses to frustrate them politically, by building their own political party. Workers and small farmers in the US did that. They had a thing called "Barn Raising". When a new small farm started up, all the neighbours would club together and build the barn and other buildings. Through, their collective, co-operative effort not only could they build a barn quickly, and efficiently - often within a day - but they could do it cheaply.
Today, tat perhaps, is not a possibility in the literal sense - although there are examples of peple working co-operatively udner the guidance of skilled craftsmen tobuild their own houses - but we do have the possibility of creating Co-operative construction companies, we do have Co-operative and Mutual Banks and fianncial institutions such as the Co-op and Unity Trust Banks, and e do have the experience of building Tenants and residents Association to bring about some measure of co-operative control over local estates. If instead of wasting its time in futile battles with the Capitaist State sapping its energy and strength the Labour Movement set itself the task of developing such solutions, of bringing the Co-op Bank etc. properly under workers control ensuring that funds were dircted accordingly and so on workers could begin to build worker owned an controlled estates throughout the country desigtnd to meet the needs of the people living there, not the whims of some bureaucrat sitting in a planning office at the local Council or in Whitehall. Not only could the cost of such communities be reduced, for those living there considerably, but they would be under their direct control with no fear that at some point the Council will icnrease rents, introduce some new edict, try to sell off the houses to some private company or fail to maintain them for years on end. In place of the huge sums that go just to cover the bloated expenses of State Capitalist bureaucrats that run Housing departments in local Councils or in the Housing Associations, the administration cost would be slashed with the consequent benefit for tenants.
In so doing and bringing back a large amount of property int the ownership and control of workers a start would be being amde in constructing a different type of society. A society workers could begin to understand and believe in in place of the anrarchy and madnesss of Capitalism, a society where the great inequalities in wealth and income create the lunacy of a surfeit of million pound homes amidst a shortage of decent homes for the vast majority.
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Christmas Presents
Its coming up to Christmas and all the main parties are falling over themselves to hand out presents in the form of Tax Cuts. The Tories in Britain are setting out today their plans for cutting tax - offset by cuts in Public Spending, which they no doubt won't specify - the Liberals have proposed Tax Cuts to be matched by Tax increases on what they claim will be the Rich, but will probably actually be aimed at the Middle Class leaving the real owners of Capital untouched, whilst Gordon Brown and the Labour Party are to set out their proposals next week. Brown who has now found a new confidence in appearing to lead the global response to te Financial Crisis is even proposing a global Keynesian stimulus package be adopted by the G20.
In the US Barack Obama and the Democrats are proposing a new Keyensian stimulus to the flagging US economy. On CNN the other day leading Democrat Barney Frank confronted Republican Ben Stein - perhaps better known by film buffs as the Economics teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Stein was trying already to blame the economic mess on Obama, even before he has taken office, and was saying that given the size of the US economy even the $300 billion stimulus the Democrats were proposing would not be enough citing the $1/2 trillion package the Chinese had announced. This, of course, from the Party that used to be known for its Conservative "Balance the Books" policy!
If Capitalist Governments really wanted to stimulate their economies, the simplest way would be to simply hand out more money to the poorest in society, because they would be likely to spend it. They could massively increase the Minimum Wage so that the poorest paid workers didn't lose out. They won't do that because Capital needs to keep that pressure on the lowest paid workers in order to keep the pressure on those just above them. Such measures would strengthen workers hand against Capital, and the Capitalist State is not in the business of doing that. That is why they prefer Tax Cuts, which keep them sweet with the Middle Class, and Government Programmes of varying kind, which line the pockets of the State's bureaucrats and hangers on in various quangos.
In short, the Capitalist State will use whatever measures are necessary to stabilise its economies, and if some workers benefit from those measures such benefit will be accidental, not by design. Workers should not waste their time beleiving that this State will work in their interest or waste their time placing demands upon it. As Frederick Engels once set out the Marxist attitude to that State of the Capitalists, "We ask them for nothing. If they give us something we will take it, but we will show them no thanks."
The reason for Engels attitude is simple. He and Marx beleived that workers should not place their faith in the Capitalist State, and Marxists should not miseducate workers into beleiving it would act in their interests or even impartially. Workers could only resolve their problems by looking to their own self-activity, now and in the future, through their own collective action whether that was defensive action to defend their wages through their Trade Unions, through collective action to build up their own economic and social position, by developing their own Co-operative property, or their collective action, to challenge the power of the bosses to frustrate their progress, in the Parliamentary institutions, by developing their own Workers Parties. No better advice could be given to workers today.
In the US Barack Obama and the Democrats are proposing a new Keyensian stimulus to the flagging US economy. On CNN the other day leading Democrat Barney Frank confronted Republican Ben Stein - perhaps better known by film buffs as the Economics teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Stein was trying already to blame the economic mess on Obama, even before he has taken office, and was saying that given the size of the US economy even the $300 billion stimulus the Democrats were proposing would not be enough citing the $1/2 trillion package the Chinese had announced. This, of course, from the Party that used to be known for its Conservative "Balance the Books" policy!
If Capitalist Governments really wanted to stimulate their economies, the simplest way would be to simply hand out more money to the poorest in society, because they would be likely to spend it. They could massively increase the Minimum Wage so that the poorest paid workers didn't lose out. They won't do that because Capital needs to keep that pressure on the lowest paid workers in order to keep the pressure on those just above them. Such measures would strengthen workers hand against Capital, and the Capitalist State is not in the business of doing that. That is why they prefer Tax Cuts, which keep them sweet with the Middle Class, and Government Programmes of varying kind, which line the pockets of the State's bureaucrats and hangers on in various quangos.
In short, the Capitalist State will use whatever measures are necessary to stabilise its economies, and if some workers benefit from those measures such benefit will be accidental, not by design. Workers should not waste their time beleiving that this State will work in their interest or waste their time placing demands upon it. As Frederick Engels once set out the Marxist attitude to that State of the Capitalists, "We ask them for nothing. If they give us something we will take it, but we will show them no thanks."
The reason for Engels attitude is simple. He and Marx beleived that workers should not place their faith in the Capitalist State, and Marxists should not miseducate workers into beleiving it would act in their interests or even impartially. Workers could only resolve their problems by looking to their own self-activity, now and in the future, through their own collective action whether that was defensive action to defend their wages through their Trade Unions, through collective action to build up their own economic and social position, by developing their own Co-operative property, or their collective action, to challenge the power of the bosses to frustrate their progress, in the Parliamentary institutions, by developing their own Workers Parties. No better advice could be given to workers today.
Monday, 10 November 2008
Remember This
This weekend BBC News 24, in particular, went overboard in its coverage of the Remembrance Day celebrations. Every hour for several hours we were treated to about 25 minutes of the same footage repeated over and over again, with ten miniutes of actual News squeezed in between. Its not just Remembrance Day that gets such treatment, of course, whenever some live event is occurring 24 hour News means we get endless loops of the same video interspersed with reporters trying to think of saying to say to cover the fact that actually nothing is happening, and we could be getting some News of something else. There seems to be no thought of the fact that a 24 hours news Channel could actually deal with issues IN DEPTH to use the vast amount of time available rather than simply repeating the same superficialities every 15 minutes.
Of course, the overriding message of the remembrance Day celebrations was that we should all be grateful for the sacrifices millions of brave soldiers made for “our” freedom. Of course, its all bunk. In the First World War, in particular, there was no threat to British freedom, Britain joined in ostensibly not because of a threat to it, but in defence of its allies. Well its not entirely true to say that there was no threat to British freedom. There was a threat to the freedom of British bosses and bankers to continue oppressing and exploiting millions of people in the British Empire. In large part that was what the War was all about, Germany wanted a share of those colonies for itself. But, the interests of British workers lay not with their bosses in maintaining those colonies, but with those millions of people living in them who were oppressed by the same British ruling class. The other freedom at stake was the freedom of those same bosses and bankers to have a privileged position in the world’s markets based on British gunboat diplomacy, and the role of the Pound as reserve world currency. Similar in fact, to the position the United States holds now.
And, of course, the celebrations we are told are not to glorify war or to gloat about the fact that “our” side won. Oh no. No, they are to remind us of the tragedy of war, and what we should avoid it in future. In that case, of course, it has failed because Britain has had troops fighting somewhere in the World every year since the end of WWII. And if that is the real message, then why is it that so many of the people taking part turn up in their MEDALS. After all, those medals by and large were handed out precisely for being more efficient at killing people. That doesn’t seem to be a signal of a desire for peace to me.
Better actually, were the words cited in one of the episodes of the Documentary 1914-18, of Russian soldiers to their German counterparts in 1917. Having overthrown
The Tsar the soldiers called out across the trenches “We’ve got rid of our Tsar. Get rid of your Kaiser, and then we can all go home.”
There were, in fact two better commentaries on War last week one factual the other a piece of fiction. Michael Palin’s “The last Day of World War I” on BBC told the story of all those poor soldiers who died on the last day even after it was known that the Armistice was to come into effect, and where therefore there was no need for further fighting. Soldiers like those under the American General Pershing who continued his offensive because he wanted to ensure that as much German territory was taken before the Armistice came into effect, or of the three hundred soldiers who lost their lives because their commanding officer sent them in to attack a town, for the simple reason that he had heard there were bathing facilities there. That is the lack of concern that Capitalism shows for human life when it is the lives of workers at stake, the same concern it has shown in the millions of workers lives lost in industry over the last 200 years turning a profit for the bosses.
The second was in the concluding part of the latest production of “Sharpe” about the life of a rank and file soldier at the beginning of the 19th century who worked his way up the ranks of the Essex Rifles. In Sharpe’s peril Sharpe is asked about the men he has killed. “They must have deserved it? It was a just cause.”
To which Sharpe replies, “Most of them were just me like me doing what they were told to do. Wars are the business of Kings and Governments, and whatever the reasons they give for them in the end the reason always comes down to the same thing, loot.”
Marxists might want to take issue to some extent. There are some wars that Marxists would support Wars to free an oppressed nation from the clutches of an imperialist nation for instance. But, Sharpe’s comments in relation to imperialist wars like WWI and II is spot on.
Of course, no socialist can be dismissive of the millions of ordinary working men of all nations who died, but we should not let our rulers and their media get away with the idea that they died for US. They didn’t they died protecting the interests of their respective ruling classes. To paraphrase the comments of the American socialist James Cannon speaking about the loss of life of Finnish workers we might say, “If we could we would summon their spirits from the grave and bring them back to life. But, having done so our suggestion to them now should be what it was of socialists to them back then. Turn your guns on your real enemy, your own ruling classes.”
Of course, the overriding message of the remembrance Day celebrations was that we should all be grateful for the sacrifices millions of brave soldiers made for “our” freedom. Of course, its all bunk. In the First World War, in particular, there was no threat to British freedom, Britain joined in ostensibly not because of a threat to it, but in defence of its allies. Well its not entirely true to say that there was no threat to British freedom. There was a threat to the freedom of British bosses and bankers to continue oppressing and exploiting millions of people in the British Empire. In large part that was what the War was all about, Germany wanted a share of those colonies for itself. But, the interests of British workers lay not with their bosses in maintaining those colonies, but with those millions of people living in them who were oppressed by the same British ruling class. The other freedom at stake was the freedom of those same bosses and bankers to have a privileged position in the world’s markets based on British gunboat diplomacy, and the role of the Pound as reserve world currency. Similar in fact, to the position the United States holds now.
And, of course, the celebrations we are told are not to glorify war or to gloat about the fact that “our” side won. Oh no. No, they are to remind us of the tragedy of war, and what we should avoid it in future. In that case, of course, it has failed because Britain has had troops fighting somewhere in the World every year since the end of WWII. And if that is the real message, then why is it that so many of the people taking part turn up in their MEDALS. After all, those medals by and large were handed out precisely for being more efficient at killing people. That doesn’t seem to be a signal of a desire for peace to me.
Better actually, were the words cited in one of the episodes of the Documentary 1914-18, of Russian soldiers to their German counterparts in 1917. Having overthrown
The Tsar the soldiers called out across the trenches “We’ve got rid of our Tsar. Get rid of your Kaiser, and then we can all go home.”
There were, in fact two better commentaries on War last week one factual the other a piece of fiction. Michael Palin’s “The last Day of World War I” on BBC told the story of all those poor soldiers who died on the last day even after it was known that the Armistice was to come into effect, and where therefore there was no need for further fighting. Soldiers like those under the American General Pershing who continued his offensive because he wanted to ensure that as much German territory was taken before the Armistice came into effect, or of the three hundred soldiers who lost their lives because their commanding officer sent them in to attack a town, for the simple reason that he had heard there were bathing facilities there. That is the lack of concern that Capitalism shows for human life when it is the lives of workers at stake, the same concern it has shown in the millions of workers lives lost in industry over the last 200 years turning a profit for the bosses.
The second was in the concluding part of the latest production of “Sharpe” about the life of a rank and file soldier at the beginning of the 19th century who worked his way up the ranks of the Essex Rifles. In Sharpe’s peril Sharpe is asked about the men he has killed. “They must have deserved it? It was a just cause.”
To which Sharpe replies, “Most of them were just me like me doing what they were told to do. Wars are the business of Kings and Governments, and whatever the reasons they give for them in the end the reason always comes down to the same thing, loot.”
Marxists might want to take issue to some extent. There are some wars that Marxists would support Wars to free an oppressed nation from the clutches of an imperialist nation for instance. But, Sharpe’s comments in relation to imperialist wars like WWI and II is spot on.
Of course, no socialist can be dismissive of the millions of ordinary working men of all nations who died, but we should not let our rulers and their media get away with the idea that they died for US. They didn’t they died protecting the interests of their respective ruling classes. To paraphrase the comments of the American socialist James Cannon speaking about the loss of life of Finnish workers we might say, “If we could we would summon their spirits from the grave and bring them back to life. But, having done so our suggestion to them now should be what it was of socialists to them back then. Turn your guns on your real enemy, your own ruling classes.”
Sunday, 9 November 2008
The New Great Game
The article here sets out how the representaties of Capital see current economic and political trends including the strategic importance of Georgia, Iraq, Central Asia and Africa. Worth a read.
The Fleet Street Letter
The Fleet Street Letter
God Working in Mysterious Ways at the Vatican
The Economic downturn is affecting everything. Even the Pope is cutting back. According to a report by Bloomberg:
“For the first time in almost half a century, Vatican administration staff will clock in for work as part of a clampdown on slackers, a sign that the global financial crisis has also spread to the world’s smallest state.
“Timekeeping was scrapped in 1960 under Pope John XXIII. Starting Jan. 1, the practice returns. All Holy See employees will be given magnetic badges and forced to clock in and out in an effort to track their movements and ensure they’re working a full day, said a Vatican spokesman who declined to be named.
“‘We can’t afford any waste,’ Bishop Renato Boccardo, secretary of the Governatorate of Vatican City State, told La Stampa newspaper. ‘There is a lot of work that needs doing, and the financial situation doesn’t allow us to hire more staff.’”
But, hang on isn't God supposed to be omnipresent and omniscient??? Don't all these staffers know that they can't escape HIS gaze while they nip off for a quick fag or a natter, whilst they are working on HIS time. And what about, God's foreman the Pope, has he lost confidence in his bosses supernatural powers and ability to call to account any slackers at that Great Disciplinary hearing in the sky, where you get no Trade Union steward to defrend your rights???? Or, perhaps the Pope thinks his boss too is slacking on the job!
“For the first time in almost half a century, Vatican administration staff will clock in for work as part of a clampdown on slackers, a sign that the global financial crisis has also spread to the world’s smallest state.
“Timekeeping was scrapped in 1960 under Pope John XXIII. Starting Jan. 1, the practice returns. All Holy See employees will be given magnetic badges and forced to clock in and out in an effort to track their movements and ensure they’re working a full day, said a Vatican spokesman who declined to be named.
“‘We can’t afford any waste,’ Bishop Renato Boccardo, secretary of the Governatorate of Vatican City State, told La Stampa newspaper. ‘There is a lot of work that needs doing, and the financial situation doesn’t allow us to hire more staff.’”
But, hang on isn't God supposed to be omnipresent and omniscient??? Don't all these staffers know that they can't escape HIS gaze while they nip off for a quick fag or a natter, whilst they are working on HIS time. And what about, God's foreman the Pope, has he lost confidence in his bosses supernatural powers and ability to call to account any slackers at that Great Disciplinary hearing in the sky, where you get no Trade Union steward to defrend your rights???? Or, perhaps the Pope thinks his boss too is slacking on the job!
Saturday, 8 November 2008
A New Indictment of Georgia
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Tim Whewell's Newsnight report on Georgian War Crimes . In a further report Whewell backs up his account of Georgian atrocities in South Ossetia, that provoked the invasion by Russian troops, with evidence from the OSCE observers in Ossetia.
One of the top OSCE officers in South Ossetia, a former British Army officer, told how the OSCE base itself had 40-50 shells land around it, and it was, he said, nowhere near anything that could have been described as a military target. He told how they had been warning the OSCE that something was brewing for several weeks, because the Georgians had been stepping up their military attacks.
Only a couple of weeks before, the Georgians had fired several mortars into the town, but nothing had been done to put pressure on the Georgians to prevent such an attack. The reason appeared to be, firstly, a feeling that Russia would not respond, and secondly that, if it did, the West could represent it as the bogeyman.
Of course, that is what the West has done. It is difficult not to see this alongside the West's involvement in Kosovo, its promotion of sympathetic regimes in Georgia in the Ukraine, its provocative siting of weapons systems on the Russian border - remember how the US responded to Soviet missiles in Cuba! - its construction of a ring of steel with military bases in Iraq, and throughout Central Asia, where it is in league with all kinds of nasty dictators, as part of a strategic drive for strategic hegemony, and control of the world's most important resources when the time comes.
As I wrote at the time, that doesn't justify the Russian response, and socialists can have no more sympathy, in this, for the Russian Stalinists than the Western imperialists. Only workers - the people who always are the losers in any war - can provide a lasting and progressive solution to such conflicts, which ultimately come down to the need of capitalism to promote inequality and division.
But, the tragedy, in Ossetia, as much as in Kosovo, or in Tibet, or anywhere else where workers are led down the route of nationalism rather than proletarian internationalism, is that the very unity of workers across borders needed to provide such a solution has been terribly set back, as the atrocities committed, after the Georgians were repulsed, by Ossetians against Georgians in their midst demonstrate. Once again the main essential reason for that is the absence of Workers' Parties based on the principles of Proletarian Internationalism that could have been forging the necessary unity between Georgian, Russian and Ossetian workers to have prevented this calamity. The sectarian stance of Marxists over the last 100 years in failing to build such parties due to their obsession with building their own tiny sects bears the responsibility for that failure.
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