Facts For Working People

Capitalism's legacy: sexual abuse of children, and violence

2012-01-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

The piece below is reprinted from The Ruckus. It is an appeal to the on line advice columnist named Sugar from a woman who lost her 6 month old baby due to a miscarriage. Sugar, responds to the appeal and includes a very powerful and moving description of events in her own life. The original is here.

Sugar's description of the brutal and horrific conditions these poor young women were forced to endure is not a personal problem, it is also and economic and political problem. Capitalism, the system we live under affects every aspect of our lives. It rewards individualism and selfishness. it brutalizes and crushes all that is positive and kind and generous in us. Not only are we alienated from the product of our Labor power, we are alienated from each other, from the collective that should nurture us. Every relationship is to be seen from the perspective of the businessperson-----how can people best be exploited. As Marx pointed, out the rule of capital "hasleft remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, thancallous “cash payment”. In today's language of course we would phrase this differently to include women and children, the nexus between humans.

Alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, the sexual abuse of children and crisis in personal relations in general underlies the need for us to change society. What seem to be to be an inordinate number of miscarriages and various cancers are also clearly connected to environmental causes due to the pollution of our air, food and water by industrial production including the production of food. (See other blogs under the label food production). Sugar talks of the lack of resources to help the young girls she worked with but according to the Transnational Institute Just 10.9 million people control $42.7 trillion dollars or two thirds of world GDP. There is no shortage of wealth in society; which class owns and allocates it is the issue. This is not civilization.

Here is the appeal and answer from Sugar:

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #44: How You Get Unstuck

Sugar bio ↓ · July 15th, 2010 · filed under Dear Sugar, rumpus original
Dear Sugar,

About eighteen months ago, I got pregnant. In a move that surprised both my boyfriend and me, we decided we wanted to keep the baby. Though the pregnancy was unplanned, we were really excited to become parents and the child was very much loved and wanted. When I was six and a half months pregnant, I miscarried. Since then, I’ve struggled to get out of bed.

Not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about who that child would have been. It was a girl. She had a name. Everyday I wake up and think, “My daughter would be six months old,” or “My daughter would maybe have started crawling today.” Sometimes, all I can think is the word daughter over and over and over.

Of course, it seems that everyone around me is having a baby and everywhere I go all I see are babies, so I have to force myself to be happy for them and swallow how empty I feel. The truth is, I don’t feel much of anything anymore and yet, everything hurts. Most of the people in my life expect me to be over my sorrow by now. As one person pointed out, “It was only a miscarriage.” So I also feel guilty about being so stuck, grieving for a child that never was when I should just walk it off or something.

I don’t talk very much about it. I pretend it never happened. I go to work and hang out and smile and act like everything is fine. My boyfriend has been fantastic and supportive, though I don’t think he understands how badly I’m actually doing. He wants us to get married and try for another child. He thinks this should cheer me up. It doesn’t. It makes me want to punch him in the head for not feeling the way I do.

Then there is the reason I lost the baby. In the hospital, my doctor said he wasn’t surprised I lost the baby because my pregnancy was high risk because I was overweight. It was not an easy thing to hear that the miscarriage was my fault. Part of me thinks the doctor was a real asshole but another part of me thinks, “Maybe he was right.” It kills me to think that this was my fault, that I brought the miscarriage on myself. I can’t even breathe sometimes, I feel so guilty. When I got out of the hospital, I got a personal trainer and went on a diet and started losing weight but I’m totally out of control now. Sometimes, I don’t eat for days and then sometimes, I eat everything in sight and throw it all up. I spend hours at the gym, walking on the treadmill until I can’t lift my legs.

My friends and family think I’m doing just fine, Sugar, but nothing could be further from the truth. All I can think about is how I fucked up. Everything feels like it is more than I can handle. The rational part of me understands that if I don’t pull myself out of this, I’ll do serious damage to myself. I know this, and yet I just don’t care.

I want to know how to care again. I want to know how to not feel so guilty, how to not feel like I killed my baby.

My daughter, she had a name. She was loved. I feel like the only one who cares. Then I feel like shit for mourning “just a miscarriage” after nearly a year. I’m stuck.

Best,
Stuck

Dear Stuck,

I’m so sorry that your baby girl died, sweet pea. So terribly sorry. I can feel your suffering vibrating right through my computer screen. This is to be expected. It is as it should be. Though we live in a time and place and culture that tries to tell us otherwise, suffering is what happens when truly horrible things happen to us.

Don’t listen to those people who suggest you should be “over” your daughter’s death by now. The people who squawk the loudest about such things have almost never had to get over any thing. Or at least not any thing that was genuinely, mind-fuckingly, soul-crushingly life altering. Some of those people believe they’re being helpful by minimizing your pain. Others are scared of the intensity of your loss and so they use their words to push your grief away. Many of those people love you and are worthy of your love, but they are not the people who will be helpful to you when it comes to healing the pain of your daughter’s death.

They live on Planet Earth. You live on Planet My Baby Died.

It seems to me that you feel like you’re all alone there. You aren’t. There are women reading this right now who have tears in their eyes. There are women who have spent their days chanting daughter, daughter or son, son silently to themselves. Women who have been privately tormented about the things they did or didn’t do that they fear caused the deaths of their babies. You need to find those women, darling. They’re your tribe.

I know because I’ve lived on a few planets that aren’t Planet Earth myself.

The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you’re talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be over-estimated. Call your local hospitals and birth centers and inquire about support groups for people who’ve lost babies at or before or shortly after birth. Read Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. Find online communities where you can have conversations with people during which you don’t have to pretend a thing.

And stop pretending with your sweet boyfriend too. Tell him you’d like to punch him in the head and explain to him precisely why. Ask him what he has to say about the death of your daughter and do your very best to listen to his experience without comparing it to your own. I think you should see a therapist—both alone and with your boyfriend—and I strongly encourage you to call and make an appointment today. A therapist will help you air and examine the complex grief you’re holding so tightly inside of you and he or she will also help you manage your (probably situational) depression.

This is how you get unstuck, Stuck. You reach. Not so you can walk away from the daughter you loved, but so you can live the life that is yours—the one that includes the sad loss of your daughter, but is not arrested by it. The one that eventually leads you to a place in which you not only grieve her, but also feel lucky to have had the privilege of loving her. That place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really fucking hard to get there, but you can do it, honey. You’re a woman who can travel that far. I know it. Your ability to get there is evident to me in every word of your bright shining grief star of a letter.

To be Sugar is at times a haunting thing. It’s fun and it’s funny; it’s intriguing and interesting, but every now and then one of the questions I get seeps its way into my mind in the same way characters or scenes or situations in the other sorts of writing I do seep into my mind and I am haunted by it. I can’t let it go. I answer the question, but there is something else and I know it and I can’t finish my reply until I figure out what it is. I can feel it there the way the princess can feel the pea under her twenty mattresses and twenty featherbeds. Until it’s removed, I simply cannot rest. This is the case when it comes to your question, my dear. And so while it’s true that you should find your tribe and talk to your boyfriend and make an appointment with a therapist, there is something truer that I have to tell you and it is this.

Several years ago I worked with barely teenage girls in a middle school. Most of them were poor white kids in seventh and eighth grade. Not one of them had a decent father. Their dads were in prison or unknown to them or roving the streets of our city strung out on drugs or fucking them. Their moms were young used and abused drug-and-alcohol addled women who were often abusive themselves. The twenty some girls who were assigned to meet with me as a group and also individually were deemed “at highest risk” by the faculty at the school.

My job title was youth advocate. My approach was unconditional positive regard. My mission was to help the girl youth succeed in spite of the unspeakably harrowing crap stew they’d been simmering in all of their lives. Succeeding in this context meant getting neither pregnant nor locked up before graduating high school. It meant eventually holding down a job at Taco Bell or Wal-Mart. It was only that! It was such a small thing and yet it was enormous. It was like trying to push an eighteen wheeler with your pinkie finger.

I was not technically qualified to be a youth advocate. I’d never worked with youth or counseled anyone. I had degrees in neither education nor psychology. I’d been a waitress who wrote stories every chance I got for most of the preceding years. But for some reason, I wanted this job and so I talked my way into it.

I wasn’t meant to let the girls know I was trying to help them succeed. I was meant to silently, secretly, covertly empower them by taking them to do things they’d never done at places they’d never been. I took them to a rock-climbing gym and to the ballet and to a poetry reading at an independent bookstore. The theory was that if they liked to pull the weight of their blossoming girl bodies up a faux boulder with little pebble-esque plastic hand-and-foot-holds then perhaps they would not get knocked up. If they glommed on to the beauty of art witnessed live—made before their very eyes—they would not become tweakers and steal someone’s wallet and go to jail at the age of fifteen.

Instead, they’d grow up and get a job at Wal-Mart. That was the hope, the goal, the reason I was being paid a salary. And while we did those empowering things, I was meant to talk to them about sex and drugs and boys and mothers and relationships and healthy homework habits and the importance of self-esteem and answer every question they had with honesty and affirm every story they told with unconditional positive regard.

I was scared of them at first. Intimidated. They were thirteen and I was twenty-eight. Almost all of them had one of three names: Crystal, Brittany or Desire. They were distant and scoffing, self-conscious and surly. They were varnished in layers upon layers of girl lotions and potions and hair products that all smelled faintly like watermelon gum. They hated everything and everything was boring and stupid and either totally cool or totally gay and I had to forbid them from using the word gay in that context and explain to them why they shouldn’t say the word gay to mean stupid and they thought I was a total fag for thinking by gay they actually meant gay and then I had to tell them not to say fag and we laughed and after a while I passed around journals I’d purchased for them.

“Do we get to keep these? Do we get to keep these?” they clamored in a great, desperate joyous girl chorus.

“Yes,” I said. “Open them.”

I asked them each to write down three true things about themselves and one lie and then we read them out loud, going around in the circle, guessing which one was the lie, and by the time we were about halfway around the room they all loved me intensely.

Not me. But who I was. Not who I was, but how I held them: with unconditional positive regard.

I had never been the recipient of so much desire. If I had a flower clip in my hair, they wanted to remove the flower clip and put it in their own hair. If I had a pen, they asked if I would give it to them. If I had a sandwich, they wondered if they could have a bite. If I had a purse, they wanted to see what was inside. And most of all they wanted to tell me everything. Everything. Every last thing about their lives. And they did.

Ghastly, horrible, shocking, sad, merciless things. Things that would compel me to squint my eyes as I listened, as if by squinting I could protect myself by hearing it less distinctly. Things that would make me close the door of my office after they left and cry my heart out. Endless stories of abuse and betrayal and absence and devastation and the sort of sorrow that spirals so tightly into an impossible clusterfuck of eternal despair that it doesn’t even look like a spiral anymore.

One of the girls was truly beautiful. She resembled a young Elizabeth Taylor without the curvy hips. Flawlessly luminescent skin. Water blue eyes. Long shimmering black hair. A D-cup rack and the rest of her model thin. She’d just turned 13 when I met her. She’d already fucked five guys and blown ten. She’d lost her virginity at eleven to her mother’s ex-boyfriend, who was now in jail for stealing a TV. Her current lover was thirty-two. He picked her up most days on the edge of the school parking lot. I convinced her to let me take her to Planned Parenthood so she could get a Depo-Provera shot, but when we got there, she did not get the shot. She refused to let the female doctor give her a pelvic exam and the doctor would not give her the shot without one. She cried and cried and cried. She cried with such sharp fear and pain that it was like someone had walked into the room and pressed a hot iron against her gorgeous ass. I said a million consoling, inspiring, empowering things. The female doctor spoke in comforting yet commanding tones. But that girl who had fucked five guys and blown ten by the time she turned thirteen would not recline for three minutes on the examining table in a well-lit room in the company of two women with good intentions.

One girl wore an enormous hooded sweatshirt that went down to her knees with the hood pulled up over her head no matter the temperature. Across her face hung a dense curtain of punk-rock colored hair. It looked like she had two backs of her head and no face. To get around, she tilted her head discreetly in various ways and peeked out the bottom of her hair curtain. She refused to speak for weeks. She was the last person who asked if she could have my pen. Getting to know her was like trying to ingratiate oneself to a feral cat. Nearly impossible. One step forward and a thousand steps back. But when I did—when I tamed her, when she parted her hair and I saw her pale and fragile and acne-covered face—she told me that she slept most nights in a falling down wooden shed near the alley behind the apartment building where she lived with her mom. She did this because she couldn’t take staying inside, where her mother ranted and raved, alcoholic and mentally ill and off her meds and occasionally physically violent. She pulled the sleeves of her hoodie up and showed me the slashes on her arms where she’d repeatedly cut herself with a razor blade because it felt so good.

One girl told me that when her mom’s boyfriend got mad he dragged her into the back yard and turned on the hose and held her face up to the ice cold running water until she almost drowned and then he locked her outside for two hours. It was November. Fortysome degrees. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this. Or the last.

I told the girls that these sorts of things were not okay. That they were unacceptable. Illegal. That I would call someone and that someone would intervene and this would stop. I called the police. I called the state’s child protection services. I called them every day and no one did one thing. Not one person. Not one thing. Ever. No matter how many times that man almost drowned that little girl with a garden hose in the back yard or how many times the thirty-two year old picked up the thirteen-year old with the great rack in the school parking lot or how many times the hooded girl with no face slept in the falling down wood shed in the alley while her mother raged.

I had not lived a sheltered life. I’d had my share of hardships and sorrows. I thought I knew how the world worked, but this I could not believe. I thought that if it was known that bad things were happening to children, those bad things would be stopped. But that is not the sort of society we live in, I realized. There is no such society.

One day when I called child protective services I asked the woman who answered the phone to explain to me exactly why no one was protecting the children and she told me that there was no funding for teenagers who were not in imminent danger because the state was broke and so the thing the child protective services did was make priorities. They intervened quickly with kids under the age of twelve, but for those over twelve they wrote reports when people called and put the reports in a file and put the child’s name on a long list of children who someone would someday perhaps check up on when there was time and money, if there ever was time and money. The good thing about teens, she told me confidentially, was that if it got bad enough at home they usually ran away and there was more funding for runaways.

I hung up the phone feeling like my sternum had cracked open. Before I could even take a breath, in walked the girl whose mother’s boyfriend repeatedly almost drowned her with the garden hose in the back yard. She sat down in the chair near my desk where all the girls sat narrating their horrible stories and she told me another horrible story and I told her something different this time.

I told her it was not okay, that it was unacceptable, that it was illegal and that I would call and report this latest, horrible thing. But I did not tell her it would stop. I did not promise that anyone would intervene. I told her it would likely go on and she’d have to survive it. That she’d have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn’t able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever. I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.

She seemed to listen, in that desultory and dismissive way that teens do. I said it to every girl who came into my office and sat in the horrible story chair. It became my gospel. It became the thing I said most because it was the thing that was most true.

It is also the most true for you, Stuck, and for any one who has ever had any thing truly horrible happen to them.

You will never stop loving your daughter. You will never forget her. You will always know her name. But she will always be dead. Nobody can intervene and make that right and nobody will. Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words. Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live though it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. Therapists and friends and other people who live on Planet My Baby Died can help you along the way, but the healing—the genuine healing, the actual real deal down-on-your-knees-in-the-mud change—is entirely and absolutely up to you.

That job at the middle school was the best job I ever had, but I only stayed for a year. It was a heavy gig and I was a writer and so I left it for less emotionally taxing forms of employment so I could write. One day seven years after I quit, I ate lunch at a Taco Bell not far from the school where I’d worked with the girls. Just as I was gathering my things to leave, a woman in a Taco Bell uniform approached and said my name. It was the faceless girl who’d lived in the falling down shed. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail now. She was grown up. She was twenty and I was thirty-five.

“Is that you?” I exclaimed and we embraced.

We talked about how she was soon to be promoted to assistant manager at the Taco Bell, about which of the girls from our group she was still in touch with and what they were doing, about how I’d taken her rock climbing and to the ballet and to a poetry reading at an independent bookstore and how she hadn’t done any of those things again.

“I never forgot you, even after all these years,” she told me.

“I’m so proud of you,” I said, squeezing her shoulder.

“I made it,” she said. “Didn’t I?”

“You did,” I said. “You absolutely did.”

I never forgot her either. Her name was Desire.

Yours,
Sugar

Occupy Oakland Move in Day

2012-01-27T07:12:00.000-08:00

Occupy Oakland will be moving in to its new home base on Saturday Jan. 28th (tomorrow) beginning at noon at Oscar Grant Plaza and marching to the as yet unnamed home at 1 pm. Here's some details in OO's promo video. Read more here

Indiana right to work law practically a done deal

2012-01-27T00:30:00.000-08:00

I'm confused. If there's a war on workers, whose the middle class?

Some important history is being made as I write thesewords. Indiana is about to become the 23^rdright-to-to work state in the U.S., as the first such law in over a decade isalmost certain to become law. The law bans Union contracts from requiring thatemployees pay Union dues and after passing in the Indiana House, thelegislation now moves to the Republican controlled Senate.

Right to work of course actually means the right to work forless and under whatever conditions the boss imposes on you. It’s theway they spin this stuff in the media just like they use the term “willing” when it comes to workers likeimmigrants and other economic refugees of the market or the women of Bangladeshor Vietnam for example who have no rights and are forced to work for worthlesswages and in brutal conditions.

I always had real battles with some of the worthless andlazy right wing workers in my place that opted out of paying Union dues although there weren't many of them. It would be one thing if they weren’t coveredby the contract and never received the rights, benefits and other gifts thecollective struggle of workers had won. It would be one thing if we didn’t have to represent their sorry assesor if they had to negotiate their own individual contract with the boss.

The bosses’ politicians say that the law will attract jobs,that capitalists won’t invest capital in Indiana and create jobs if they can goto other right to work states like Arizona or Texas. They’re right, it makes perfect sense fromthe bosses’ point of view that if they can get workers cheaper and a Laborprocess and profit making will not be slowed by disruptive Union safety rulesand other obstacles in Texas as opposed to Indiana, they’llchoose Texas.

These developments are the culmination of years of class collaborationon the part of the Union officialdom offering concession after concession tothe bosses in their efforts to prop up their system and to keep their profitsflowing in. Every attempt by the ranksof organized Labor to drive back this offensive of capitalism and build anoffensive of our own, has been suppressed by the Labor hierarchy and its hugefull-time apparatus as it threatens their world-view and the relationship theyhave built with the employers based on Labor peace.

The employers are naturally emboldened by the opencollaboration on the part of Labor’s leadership and every concession hasincreased their confidence; weakness breeds aggression as they say. As thepoliticians of one of the two capitalist parties go on the offensive with anti-Unionlegislation, what does the other party do? What do these guardians of the workers’ interests in the DemocraticParty do as right-to work legislation is pending in another nine states?

In Indiana the Democrats fled to Illinois for five weeks soa quorum couldn’t be reached which delayed the bill for a while but realizedthat it wasn’t possible “to kill it through endless delay” DemocratScott Pelath tells the Wall Street Journal. The Democrats are forced to engage in such charades like fleeing town asthe Party receives hundreds of millions, in fact billions of dollars over theyears not to mention thousands of volunteer foot soldiers from organized Laborfor their election campaigns. The Democrats and Republican’s play the same gamethe cops do, one beats you the other gives you a cigarette but they both wantthe same thing

It is as clear as a bell that the Democratic Party, even ifthere are sincere individuals within it and there probably is, is incapable ofdefending workers. The Democratic Partyis a capitalist party, a party of big business, of the 1%, of Wall Street. It cannot serve our interests. It is the original party of the slave ownersand the only political party in history to have dropped nuclear bombs onheavily populated civilian centers. It is the party of the Labor hierarchy who cling to it indesperation, in the hope that the bosses will please, please return to the goodold days and just be a little nicer.

US capitalism is mired in crisis, economically, politicallyand culturally. US capitalism is broken and has to make workers pay. The wars it is engaged in to defendthe profits of corporations are so unpopular at home that it cannot risk losingtoo many young American lives and is planning to reduce troop levels andreplace them with unmanned armed drones and “huntand kill” special ops in conjunction with regimes it can bribe and cajolein to supporting it as back up. Thesespecial teams are the types that the bosses will want to use against UScitizens as the class war at home heats up.

As we repeatedly point out, the leaders of the AFL-CIO andthe Charge to Win Coalition are shameful and the blame for the success of thebosses’ offensive lies squarely on their shoulders. These overpaid bureaucratscomplain that the members aren’t active. For every defeat they blame the folks who pay the dues. They claim that the movement doesn’t getenough support and their answer to that is to spend a million or two on adsshowing images of responsible workers. Nothing contentious, no images of strikes because Unions aren’t aboutconflict, we must never be seen hitting back. This is a reflection of their own cowardice not the timidity of the USworking class.

Yet we have had a situation in Longview Washington whereworkers, members of ILWU local 21 have used direct action tactics in a struggleto prevent the bosses from weakening the ILWU with the help of another Union,the Operating Engineers. Local 21 hashad an open declaration of support from the Occupy Wall Street Movement thathas made it clear that the attempt to break Local 21 will be met with a massiveresponse through direct action and a community picket line. As previous blogs have pointed out, the ILWUInternational has done all it could to undermine the militant actions of thislocal and break the community Labor link that was strengthening. The Union leadership at the highest levelshas intervened to ensure that the bosses’ interests were not threatened and avictory made possible through the power of Labor and community action averted.

No matter the mistakes, the Occupy movement has in it somevery serious, committed and courageous individuals and the conservative Laborhierarchy is terrified of this movement linking with Labor. For any victory, even small ones, willembolden workers to take further action and for the strategists of Labor aconscious and active membership can only lead to chaos; for them, capitalrules.

In Indiana, James Hoffa, the lawyer that heads the TeamstersUnion tries to frighten the bosses saying that there will be a “tremendous backlash” from the voters ifthe bill passes. In other words, a recall or another big drive to replaceRepublicans with Democrats. The bosses are not afraid; they control bothparties.

We have seen hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Madison,thousands upon thousands of workers in Ohio working on a successful effort todefeat anti-Union bills and replace republicans with Democrats. And we have witnessed the rise of the Occupymovement. This is tremendous workingclass power and these results in Wisconsin and elsewhere, show that we have theresources and organizational ability to run independent workers candidates inopposition to both parties of Wall Street. That we can through runningindividual candidates on a program of jobs, housing, education, health care,and end to the wars etc. that we can build a national working people’s massparty that can change the balance of class forces in US society and linked withmass direct action change society for the better.

Instead, as the Wall Street Journal points out, these “bruising fights” over right to work legislationin the states, “…sap time and resourcesthat labor leaders would rather use to help re-elect President Barack Obama.” This is the strategy of those at the helm oforganized Labor------rely on the courts and the Democrats and we can rely onneither. We can only rely on ourselves.

ILWU International Clamps Lid on Longview

2012-01-26T15:52:00.000-08:00

Local 21 and supporters blocking train tracks

The ILWU International has clearly taken complete control of the Longview negotiations. They muzzled the Longview longshore local (Local 21) more than two weeks ago, drawing a line in the sand between the ILWU and the Occupy movement. Dribs and drabs about the negotiations leak out of Longview, but mainly the ILWU International has been able to clamp a lid on (it's not even clear how much the Longview rank and file are being told about what's been agreed to, what's in the works, etc.)

On January 6, as I believe has been reported to this list, the ILWU local presidents from Seattle, Portland, Vancouver (Washington state), and (I think) Tacoma, together with about a dozen of their supporters, disrupted an Occupy Seattle meeting where several ILWU supporters of the planned Occupy convergence on Longview were speaking. Within a few days, the Seattle ILWU Local 19 passed a resolution ordering Occupy off the waterfront and claiming that Occupy initiated violence against them. Let's be clear: These local presidents are closely tied to the ILWU International, and this was all premeditated. They deliberately disrupted this meeting to provoke a confrontation, with the intention of drawing the line in the sand between them and the Occupy movement.

Years back, the ILWU had fish-bowl negotiations: any ILWU member could attend and observe. Now it's the opposite. The ILWU International has managed to retain a reputation as a militant, combative, independent force. They're not. If there's even a partial victory in Longview, the International will try to take credit for it, but they will deserve none. It will be thanks to the militancy of the rank and file, the courage of Local 21, and the demonstrated ability to organize mass militant port shutdowns by their supporters in the Occupy movement.

Davos dilemma

2012-01-26T12:19:00.000-08:00

No solutions to the crisis

by Michael Roberts

The strategists of capital are attending their annual jamboree in the snow playground of the super-rich in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. Many of the top 0.1% of income earners are there. And this year the main theme is whether capitalism works and is fair. Capitalism is in crisis – and this time the word ‘crisis’ is not hyperbole. Even the 2600 attendees at Davos recognise that. According to a survey by the financial broadcaster, Bloomberg, almost 70% of those asked believed that the capitalist system is in trouble, with 32% saying it needs “radical reworking”. Less than 20% reckoned ‘free enterprise’ is working. Most Davos 0.1 percenters are really worried that this failure of capitalism to work could lead to ‘social instability’ in one form or another.

And more than half who were asked at Davos thought that inequality of income and wealth under capitalism was damaging economic growth. But only one in five wanted any urgent action on the issue! It seems that greed triumphs over economic logic – or should we say, class interest rules   According to a new study by the OECD, the top 10% of income earners in the world have on average nine times as much income as the bottom 10%. You can imagine the ratio between the top 0.1% and the bottom 10%. One of those top 0.1%, Mitt Romney, the main contender for the Republican nomination for the US presidency,was obliged to reveal how much he earned each year and what tax he paid out. Romney is head of one of the biggest private equity companies (Bain Capital) and one of the highest earners in the US, making over $20m a year. But he paid only 13.9% of his declared income in tax, way less than the average earner pays as a proportion. It’s another example of how class rules under ‘free enterprise’.

Take income inequality in the UK. It has been growing faster than in any other rich country, according to the OECD. And is this based on reward for successful profit-making? No. As Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England has pointed out, when referring to the US, if bankers’ pay were linked to return on assets (ROA) a figure based on profits, it would be much closer to median household incomes than if based on return on equity (ROE), a figure based on the stock market. Haldane calculated that, if the CEOs of the seven largest US banks had in 1989 agreed to index their salaries not to ROE, but to ROA, by 2007, their compensation would not have grown tenfold. Instead, it would have risen (only) from $2.8 million to $3.4 million. Rather than rising to 500 times median US household income, it would have fallen to (only) around 68 times.

Nevertheless, the world’s second richest man in wealth (a Mexican telecoms tycoon is the richest), Bill Gates of Microsoft told the Davos faithful that capitalism was a “phenomenal system” because there is no other system that has improved humanity. He left aside the question of whether all humanity has benefited from capitalism or the role of capitalism in wars, pollution, global warming, unemployment etc. Despite these things, Gates supported capitalism because “it has generated so much innovation – it gave me the chance I had as a young boy to start Microsoft and hire my friends. Other systems don’t allow that to happen”.

Thus Gates promotes the myth that innovation is only possible through the incentive of profit. Marx too recognised that the capitalist system was a mode of production that drove technology and raised the productivity of labour more than any previous mode of human organisation. But he reckoned that a socialist, collective mode of production that melded cooperative labour to social need would be even more productive and would not generate the huge inequalities and economic destruction.
Indeed, many, if not most, key innovations that have benefited humanity in the last hundred years were more the result of the incentive of public funding for research in genetics, satellites, health and the environment, much of it done in publicly-owned institutions where profit played no role. The internet, after all, was invented in the military sector as a form of communication. And many other innovations like radar came through military funding by the state.    The software basics of Microsoft were already developed in academic circles. Gates was an entrepreneur who came up with a model to capture those innovations in a profit-making operation. Indeed, there is much better software available free as ‘open source’ material. But Microsoft’s monopoly in marketing and links with hardware have kept such free alternatives from being used globally. Publicly-funded research would just as well have developed such software innovations without the need for a mega corporation that has made a few people super rich by charging for what could be free to all.

Francis Fukuyama once wrote a famous book in the 1990s called The end of history, in which he argued that Western capitalist democracy was the conclusion of all human development.   Now after the Great Recession and the revelations about the extreme inequalities that exist under ‘liberal democracy’, Fukuyama obviously thought he should do something more. This week he wrote another article called “The Future of History” in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He mused that if some “obscure scribbler … in a garret somewhere (is this him?)” would “outline an ideology of the future that could provide a realistic path toward a world with healthy middle-class societies and robust democracies“… he “could not begin with a denunciation of capitalism as such, as if old-fashioned socialism were still a viable alternative. It is more the variety of capitalism that is at stake and the degree to which governments should help societies adjust to change. The new ideology would not see markets as an end in themselves; instead, it would value them to the extent that they contributed to a flourishing middle class, not just to greater aggregate national wealth.”

Fukuyama uses the word ‘middle-class’ as all apologists for capital now use it, as a euphemism for ‘working-class’, a word that no longer exists to describe the majority of people. There are either the rich, the middle-class or the poor (see my post, The working poor, 7 June 2011). But whatever word you use, the 99% are not flourishing under modern capitalism. Both the IMF and the World Bank have now presented reports that show that the major capitalist economies are struggling to sustain any recovery out of the Great Recession (see my post, The world economy – where are we now?, 18 January 2012). The IMF reckons the Eurozone will contract by 0.5% in 2012, with southern Europe dropping by around 2% or more. Emerging capitalist economies will grow at a slower pace (5.4%) than the IMF thought back last September. American capitalism looks a little better, but only with growth at 1.8% in 2012, hardly a rate that can get unemployment down or raise real incomes. Indeed, Christian Lagarde, the head of the IMF, commented that “It is not about saving any one country or any one region. It is about saving the world from a downward economic spiral. It is about avoiding a 1930s moment … in which a combination of inaction, insularity and rigid ideology could cause a collapse of global demand.’

The figures for the UK economy were released this week. In the last quarter of 2011, the UK economy contracted by 0.2% qoq after growing 0.6% in Q3’2011. For the whole of 2011, real GDP rose just 0.9%, half the already paltry rise achieved in 2010. Another quarter of contraction and the UK economy will be back in a ‘technical recession’, two consecutive quarters of decline. This is still way short of the slump during the Great Recession of 2008-9, when British capitalism contracted 7.1%. But it ain’t good. While the government sector managed a small rise in Q4 of o.4%, the private sector declined, with manufacturing down 0.9%, the biggest drop in over two years. The recovery from the trough of the Great Recession is stuttering, with only 45% of the output lost in the slump recouped so far.

The chief economist at the IMF, Oliver Blanchard, commented that the global economy is driving “with the brakes on”. What are those brakes? Well, one is the draconian measures of fiscal austerity being imposed on households and the public sector across Europe, but soon in the US and Japan. This is squeezing back the only areas of growth in the economy since the Great Recession, the public sector. But the other brake is the size and level of debt, both private and public, that capital is burdened with. A recent report by the McKinsey Institute shows that debt relative to GDP in the major capitalist economies rocketed prior to the credit crunch in 2007. But since then, ‘deleveraging’ that debt has made only limited progress in the major economies (MGI_Debt_and_deleveraging_Uneven_progress_to_growth_Report).

Now there are those who argue that debt does not matter and the burden of servicing it will fall when economic growth is restored to a sufficient level or, alternatively the real burden can be reduced by higher inflation. Well, neither of these options is happening. So the real burden of debt servicing is high. The other argument is that one man’s debt is another’s credit. So the size of debt does not matter because it just means that assets are up too. But that assumes that debts are honoured and there is no default. If there are defaults, then the reckoning comes. We have already seen the impact of that when the housing market in the US collapsed and defaults on mortgages rocketed. The banks found that their assets were worth way less than they thought. Similarly, there is every possibility that the Greek government will default on its debt to the banks in Europe. Indeed, it is currently negotiating a 60% ‘voluntary haircut’ on the value of its bonds held by those banks. That entails huge losses to the banks.

Debt does matter and this form of deleveraging is a severely damaging to the real economy. In effect, as debt or credit rises, the value it represents gets out of line with real value. Its value becomes the buyer or seller’s expectation of its real value. The value is thus fictitious, as Marx called it, which at a certain point will be exposed as such and forced to its real value through deleverage, ie liquidation, bankruptcy and, of course, job losses.

It is not debt as such that is the issue; it is what credit is used for. Government borrowing used to invest in new industries and employment could pay for itself. But borrowing to bail out banks that have taken losses on fictitious capital is clearly not productive, but a deduction of resources available for productive investment. In the 13th century,at the beginning of capitalism, it was bankers bankrupting banks. In the 21st century, in modern mature capitalism, bankers are still bankrupting banks. But it is no longer just banks. In the UK, over half a million individuals and nearly 100,000 businesses have found themselves in insolvency since 2007.

What is clear is that the UK economy, along with other major capitalist economies, is suffering from a long depression similar to that experienced by Japanese capitalism after the collapse of its credit bubble in the late 1980s. During the decade of the 1990s, Japan’s economy could only grow in real terms by 0.8% a year. The huge private sector debt mountain was only written down very slowly to avoid a major slump. The banks were bailed out by the taxpayer and Japanese households had to take the pain in a stagnation of real living standards. Public sector debt rocketed to over 200% of GDP and household savings fell.

Japanese capitalism did not adopt the policies of fiscal austerity that are advocated by mainstream economics and implemented now. So Japan avoided a significant rise in unemployment, but the economy stagnated and profitability remained in the doldrums. Japan’s example shows that the option of fiscal austerity can be avoided, but without deleveraging to cleanse the corporate books of ‘dead capital’ and restore profitability, economic recovery will be weak. Without profitability restored, capitalism stays in depression.

According to a new report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the world faces a challenge of creating 600 million jobs over the next decade. Global unemployment is now 200 million – an increase of 27 million since the start of the crisis. In addition, more than 400 million new jobs will be needed over the next decade to avoid a further increase in unemployment. Even if those jobs were created, it would still leave 900 million workers living with their families below the US$2 a day poverty line, largely in developing countries. Young people are nearly three times as likely as adults to be unemployed. Even those young people who are employed are increasingly likely to find themselves in part-time employment and often on temporary contracts.

Falling labour force participation masks an even worse global unemployment situation. In the world as a whole, there were nearly 29 million fewer people in the labour force in 2011 than expected based on pre-crisis trends, with 6.4 million fewer youth and 22.3 million fewer adults. This is equal to nearly 1 per cent of the actual global labour force in 2011, and nearly 15 per cent of the total number of unemployed in the world. If all of these potential workers were available to work and sought work, the number of unemployed would swell to over 225 million, or to a rate of 6.9 per cent, versus the actual rate of 6 per cent. Globally, the employment-to-population ratio declined sharply during the crisis, from 61.2 per cent in 2007 to 60.2 per cent in 2010. This represents the largest such decline on record (since 1991).

Those meeting at Davos who defend capitalism as the only or best system of human social organisation have no answer to this appalling mess.

Lock outs. Bosses offensive rolls on. Union leaders keep retreating.

2012-01-26T10:07:00.000-08:00

We have always explained on this blog that we live in a period of a capitalist offensive when capitalism is trying to take back what was won by the working class over the past 70 to 100 years. We have explained that the union leaders, rather than cooperating with this bosses' offensive, which is what they do through the team concept and concession contracts, should be mobilizing the working class to halt and throw back this offensive.

To do this the union leaders need a program of increasing wages and benefits, free education and health care for all, a guaranteed job for all at union wages and benefits, a $20 minimum wage or a $5.00 and hour raise whichever is the greater, affordable housing, no foreclosures, an end to all wars and occupations, make the rich and the corporations pay and end the dictatorship of big business over society. We have argued that the battle for such a program has to be carried out by mass direct action, that is mass strikes, occupations of workplaces and business and government centers and mass militant street actions. And also by breaking from the big business party the Democrats and building a mass workers party to fight to change society.

Our position that the bosses are on the offensive is confirmed in the New York Times of January 23rd, 2012. In a front page article headed: "More lockouts as companies battle unions." they explain how they see things. This heading is a bit inaccurate as the union leaders will not "battle" the bosses, but it is accurate in the sense that the bosses are on the offensive and attacking the unions and the working class.

The article lists lock out after lock out from the Cooper Tire Factory in Ohio, to a country club in California to the New York City Opera. The article quotes a professor of some kind as saying that the lock outs are a :"sign of increased employer militancy." I wonder how long he had to study to be able to come to this conclusion. A labor lawyer explains:"Employers are using lockouts because unions are reluctant to do what the employers consider reasonable in terms of compromising. Employers are looking to reset their collective bargaining relations." That is cut workers living standards and break the unions.

One of the most intense battles is being fought at American Crystal the nations biggest sugar beet processor. In spite of the fact that the company was making record profits it demanded that the 1,300 unionized workers pay more for health care, accept more outsourcing and other concessions. The workers voted no and the company locked them out. This is more than five months ago and many of the workers locked out now face foreclosures and utility disconnection. The scab American Crystal company has hired 900 workers to keep their plants going.

Last year at least 17 different employers locked out their workers. You did not hear anything about this or the employers offensive or the US working class being put on rations in Obama's state of the union address. No it was all the old crap, let us work together all will be great.

The US employer class have $2 trillion dollars which they are hoarding. They are refusing to spend it to rebuild the economy and provide jobs. They are on a strike of capital. Locking out workers and holding on to their capital and this after they had to be bailed out by tax payers at the time they took the economy to the brink in the crash of 2008.

The Union leaders have to get a grip on themselves. They are a disgrace. They are forfeiting the right to be in leading positions. They hold the working class down while the employers rob them. They cooperate with the employers offensive. What is needed is an offensive of the working class to halt and throw back the employers offensive and open up a new mass working class movement which would put all the issues of inequality, ownership, capitalism, socialism back on the agenda of the working class once again. As I say the union leaders have to get a grip. And at the same time as raising this we on the left and the radical and activist movement have to build fighting united fronts in the work places, the unions at all levels and in the communities.

Sean.

State of the Union.

2012-01-26T04:55:00.001-08:00

The state of the union is a big deal for US capitalism. All the muckety mucks are there and the president gives a sort of a perspective. Well that is supposed to be what happens. More realistically what happens especially in an election year is that the president lays out his or her strategy for winning that election. This address was very much orientated to the coming elections. But this does not mean there is nothing to be learned from thinking about what was said.

Obama started and finished with the heroic deeds of US imperialism abroad. Bin Laden etc. He was announcing that US imperialism had no intention of taking any step back from its imperialist role. In fact it is stepping up its presence in South East Asia and trying to strengthen its presence in Central Asia. The problem is US imperialism is financially broke. It is fighting its wars with other countries money. And along with this there is the rising class anger at home which will eventually be reflected in rebellions in the military and undermine the recruiting of hundreds of thousands of young people to fight the wars.

Over 90%, an unprecedented figure, supported Obama's call in his speech for the rich to pay their fair share of taxes. He was laying out the attack he will make on the Republicans in November and especially Romney if he is the candidate. While boasting about the pulling of GM back from the brink of collapse by cutting workers wages and benefits Obama did not mention the falling living standards of the majority of US workers. His theme was that all was pretty much well in America, we just needed a little tightening up here and there, a little more fairness in the system, a little more attention to investment in the economy and all would be right. And of course he was the man for the job.

Obama is developing experience. He delivers his speeches with more confidence now. He has finally decided that licking the boots of the Republicans cannot be his only strategy. He still of course licks the boots of the major corporations in spite of his talk of more fair taxes. However US capitalism is in a major crisis, economically, militarily and politically. Whether this explodes before or after November we cannot say. But explode it will and if Obama is still in power all his glib talk and rhetoric will count for little.

The Occupy movement, the battles of the long shore workers on the West coast, the movement against the attacks on union rights in Wisconsin and Ohio, the movement against foreclosures, all these are signs of the coming upsurge in struggle. All his oratory, or all the speechifying of the coming president whoever he or she is will not prevent the class battles that are now developing beneath the surface from coming to the fore. A period of great class struggle lies ahead.

Activists must not take their eye of this reality. A period of great struggle lies ahead because US capitalism is moving to put its own working class on rations. Of course there will be ebbs and flows in the struggle, their will be defeats as well as victories, there will be the rise of great progressive movements which will include all kinds of confusion, there will also be the rise of reactionary movements of significant power. US capitalism has not been putting together its reactionary forces, has not been laying down its reactionary propaganda, has not had a monopoly over politics for all this time to lie down and surrender without a fight. Major conflict between the classes lies ahead.

The workers movement must be helped to its feet and the first step in this is to take up the role of the union leaders who refuse to lead. Their abdication in the face of the opportunities that now exist is a disgrace. Not only is it a case of abdication the bulk of the trade union leadership are afraid of the rising movement of struggle and are trying to put it down or at the very least distance its self from it and cling on for dear life to the capitalist Democratic Party.

But it is not only the role of the union leaders. There is also the role of the left and activist movement. We have made our share of mistakes also. It was new forces that led the Occupy movement and the whatever we say and whatever criticisms we have about the movements in Wisconsin and Ohio the union structures were what this movement developed around. We have to look at our past role and mistakes. We have to see the damaging role that the left and radical movement's sectarianism, ultra left ism and opportunism has played in the workers movement. We have to attempt to see that the now upsurge in working class struggle is defended against opportunism, sectarianism and ultra leftism.

Sean.

ILWU and EGT still negotiating

2012-01-25T12:13:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from TDN.com

EGT labor settlement postpones NLRB hearing on illegal picketing

Negotiators are staying mum on how many jobs at the Port ofLongview's EGT grain terminal will be filled by union longshoremen,but a tentative settlement has already compelled the longshoreunion and EGT to push back a key labor hearing at the heart of thedispute.

The National Labor Relations Board postponed a hearing scheduledfor Monday on whether the International Longshore and WarehouseUnion engaged in illegal picketing during last summer's protests,according to Frank Randolph, Port of Longview attorney.

The first day of the hearing, expected to last at least a month,has been rescheduled for Feb. 6. According to the labor board, thePacific Maritime Association also is listed as a party because ofthe lost time incurred by shippers due to longshore walkouts inLongview, Seattle and Tacoma in September in protest of EGT'shiring policies.

Attorneys for EGT, the ILWU and the Port of Longview arediscussing ways to modify the company's lease and the port'sworking agreement with the ILWU to create the legal framework toget union workers in the terminal, Randolph said Tuesday, addingthat the parties are also trying to settle a federal lawsuit fileda year ago over the staffing of the terminal.

"It sounded like everyone was excited to move forward," saidRandolph, who is not directly involved in the discussions.

Meanwhile, negotiators for the company and the union areexpected to hammer out the final details of the tentativeagreement, which was announced Monday by Washington Gov. ChrisGregoire. The final version must then be ratified by a vote of allILWU members on the West Coast. Both sides have declined to commenton contract details before a final agreement has been reached.
The original talks broke down almost exactly one year ago, withboth sides later saying they had conducted almost no realbargaining.

A few key disagreements emerged last January that will need tobe resolved:
• EGT's central control room: Company officialshad insisted that their own management staff run what they term astate-of-art control room, which monitors the terminal's grainunloading systems, conveyor belts, the 140-foot tall silos andother operations. ILWU officials demanded that at least onelongshoreman staff the control room to ensure the safety of workersin the terminal, citing the union's 80-year history working in WestCoast grain terminals.

• Overtime pay: ILWU officials objected to anEGT proposal to structure 12-hour shifts over two weeks withoutpaying overtime to workers on the job for more than eight hours aday. A longshore union rule requires overtime pay whenever anemployee exceeds eight hours on a shift. Company officials saidthey wanted to operate 12-hour shifts to run the terminal asefficiently as possible.

• Number of shift jobs: According to the union,EGT last year offered the ILWU seven jobs per shift for two,12-hour shifts, which the union said was insufficient without anagreement to work in the control room. The two parties also haveyet to announce whether contractor General Construction would stillhave unionized operating engineers working in the terminal.

The ILWU and EGT had been locked in a protracted dispute overjobs at the terminal, which hit an abrupt cease fire Monday withGregoire's announcement. The union has maintained that its contractwith the Port of Longview requires EGT to hire Longview-based Local21 longshore labor on the 35-acre site the company leases from theport.

EGT had disagreed and instead retained General Construction,which employed members of the International Union of OperatingEngineers Local 701, based in Gladstone, Ore., for the 25 to 35jobs at the terminal.

Port of Longview Commissioner Lou Johnson, a marine clerk andILWU member, said Tuesday he thinks an agreement will help soothetensions between the port and longshoremen.
"It's going to start a healing process. It's probably not goingto be instantaneous. As far as Local 21 and the port goes, thatprocess has already started," he said.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan attacks women's rights. No suprise there

2012-01-25T09:29:00.000-08:00

Opulence and wealth. WWJD

Timothy Dolan, the rather elaborately dressed gentleman to your left, is very upset. Dolan is the archbishop of New York and president of the US conference of Catholic Bishops. He's the Catholic equivalent of the leading Iranian Imam or Afghani Mullah but the political climate he finds himself in restrains his power.

He's mad at the Obama administration for refusing to exempt religious institutions that "serve the common good" such as Catholic schools, charities and hospitals from the provisions in his health care plan that "require employers to to provide all forms of contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration without co-payments or deductibles..." the Wall Street Journal reports today.

Dolan called the decision "a literally unconscionable" attack on religious freedom. "The Catholic Church defends religious liberty, including freedom of conscience." Dolan writes in his WSJ op-ed piece. The Catholic Church is one of the main organizations that has been an obstacle to human development. It was the religion of the feudal aristocracy that capitalism jettisoned. It has historically opposed religious freedom and responded to threats to its prestige and power with unconscionable violence. The Catholic Church is the only religion that has its own state and through its network of clerics throughout the world promotes free market policies and the interests of capitalism and the bankers. It is an undemocratic male dominated organization whose chief executives have covered up for a massive epidemic of child abuse on the part of pedophiles within its ranks, even to the point of sending these criminals to fresh hunting grounds when their activities became apparent.

This global corporation has its home base in the small state called the Vatican in Rome. As a haven for pedophiles this corporation has been forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to the victims but for the most part the perpetrators of the crimes have gone unpunished including the head of the organization, Benedict, the former Nazi youth member.

And what is all this religious freedom nonsense? Even here in the US, religious freedom is tolerated as long as the Christian religion is dominant. If Islam continues to grow apace you'll see how popular religious freedom is in this country and which religion is the right one. The Jews, a small percentage of the population here will find that out too if Israel for some reason becomes less of important Middle East foothold for US capitalism than it is now.

We are all restricted by society in one way or another, some good, many bad. In capitalist society by laws that protect the rights of capital to exploit Labor power; after all, the revered first amendment to the US constitution doesn't apply in the workplace. Yet when I raised with a friend that I supported efforts here in San Francisco to ban circumcision, a form of genital mutilation, I was stepping on the right of religious freedom. What sort of freedom is that? The child having a part of his body cut off without anaesthetic doesn't have the right to object. But why should I expect these religious figures that communicate with the supernatural to respect human rights? Why would I expect them as employers to offer their workers birth control that gives women more control over the reproductive process?

The esteemed archbishop and the organization he represents doesn't have much credibility, historically or in more recent times. He objects to a law that forces Catholics to treat "Pregnancy like a disease". Dolan's organization has wallowed in centuries of male dominance and social power. It refused to excommunicate Hitler while it excommunicates women for practicing mass. This representative of an undemocratic institution run by a group of aged misogynists rambles on about morality as it denies the right of women to control their own bodies. The archbishop cares about human life, you see. But he doesn't care enough about it to wage a public campaign against the violence waged against the people of the world or against American workers by US capitalism. His love of morality and "conscience" doesn't compel him to comment on the need to address those efficient destroyers of human life and liberty Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld or the war monger Obama, point out an "immoral" justice system that sentences a man who murdered 24 Iraqi's to three months in prison as hundreds of thousands of US workers languish in US jails, the American Gulag.

These religious institutions are not supposed to be political and yet that's exactly what they are. Here in Oakland the archbishop's organization just built a new cathedral by Lake Merritt that costs million of dollars. It is built on prime lakeside land and as a tax exempt organization will no doubt pay no taxes on it. This is as slumlords exploit the poor and the taxpayers renting out decrepit lodgings. That is one thing that must change, the tax exempt status of political organizations like the Catholic Church.

I would like to say that the archbishop, like the Emperor, has no clothes, but as we can see, he clearly has a considerable wardrobe. Dolan is rising up the ranks of the church hierarchy and is expected to be "elevated to the rank of cardinal next month.." writes the Wall Street Journal.

I believe in religious freedom but like all freedom it has its limits, and like all worldly organizations, the catholic church has its members who may be genuine although I can't understand why someone would associate with such an organization. Workers more often than not are sincere about their religious beliefs, people like Dolan are manipulators and propagandists for capitalism and Wall Street. As a committed atheist and therefore persecuted minority I can't say I wish the archbishop luck in his new job. Perhaps his god might "elevate" him home sooner than later and do us all a favor before he does more damage to humanity.

US Marine Sgt. gets 3 months for the murder of 24 Iraqi's

2012-01-24T21:51:00.000-08:00

Three months for ordering the slaughter of 24 Iraqi civilians. All he had to do was make the right plea, dereliction of duty. The other 8 were let of. We have people locked in cells 23 hours a day for the rest of their lives here in the US for killing a cop as one comment points out. Kill 24 Iraqi's--no problem, and because your mad an unidentified Iraqi killed a soldier of an invading army that had no right being there. And Bradley Manning, who we as Americans owe a great debt to is facing life or the death penalty for telling Americans the truth. Another smart decision and prime recruiting tool for any force that vows to make Americans pay, whether a backward and reactionary religious movement or otherwise.

It took 40 years for the British government to admit that it actually ordered its troops to murder Irish Catholics in Derry on Bloody Sunday. It'll take a revolution here in the US before the brutal US bourgeois are made to pay for their murderous ventures around the world.

MARCH 1ST - MARCH 5TH STATE-WIDE MASS MOBILIZATION TO SACRAMENTO

2012-01-24T19:12:00.000-08:00

MARCH 1ST - MARCH 5TH STATE-WIDE MASS MOBILIZATION TO SACRAMENTO FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

KICK-OFF MEETING TO PLAN SAN FRANCISCO MARCH 1ST ACTION AND MORE

WHAT: Occupy San Francisco Action Council Meeting to Kick-Off Planning for San Francisco Participation in the March 1 day of Action followed by March 5th Mass Mobilization to Sacramento

(http://occupysf.org/2011/12/04/occupysf-action-council-intro, http://www.occupyeducationca.org)

WHEN: Sunday January 29th, 2:45 -- 4:00 p.m.

WHERE: Unite Here Local 2, 209 Golden Gate
@ Leavenworth, Just North of 7th and Market (Near Civic Center Bart)

MARCH 1: SAN FRANCISCO PARTICIPATION IN A NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION IN DEFENSE PUBLIC EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES
MARCH 2-5: 99 MILE MARCH FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
MARCH 5: OCCUPY THE STATE CAPITOL

**A Broad-Based Call to Action for the 99%!
**No Cuts! No Concessions! Fully fund education and social services
**Tax the rich
**Support the Millionaires Tax
**Support the Oil Tax to Fund Education (Prop. 1522)
**Reject Jerry Brown’s budget
**Defend Free Speech and the Right of Assembly
**End police attacks on Occupy
**Health care for the 99%
**Support workers' rights
**End immigrant scapegoating to cover-up economic injustice

ENDORSEMENTS FOR THE MASS MARCH MOBILIZATION (NOT A COMPLETE LIST):
AFT 2121
Alameda Central Labor Council
Berkeley Faculty Association
Berkeley Federation of Teachers
California Federation of Teachers
International Socialist Organization (Northern California)
La Raza Centro Legal
Oakland Education Association
Occupy SF Action Council
Occupy Solidarity Network Community Labor and Faith Groups
Occupy Bernal
Occupy CAL
Occupy Education NorCal
Occupy UC Santa Cruz_
Peralta Association of Teacher_
San Lorenzo Education
San Francisco Labor Council Executive Committee
San Mateo Federation of Teachers'
SEIU 1021
UAW 2865
United Educators of San Francisco
UPTE

Abandon the Team Concept.

2012-01-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

I was having a chat with a worker the other day and he wascomplaining to me about the trade Union leadership and how rotten they are. “They’re corrupt”, he said, “In bed with the boss, the 1%”. Some workers are so disgusted with theheads of organized Labor that they believe that Mafia control is at the root ofthe problem. Their salaries, lifestylesand other such perks are often given as the reasons for why they refuse tofight. Then there is the simplest of all the explanations;“they’re evil”. This is often the description given by theLabor officials to the GOP candidates for president; they’re simply “evil”.

While the behavior of the trade Union leadership can be attributed in part totheir obscene salaries and lifestyles that put them in a different world thanthe members they are supposed to represent; these are not the crux of thematter. And as far as “evil” goes; what the hell does thatmean?

When I mentioned to this worker that it was their support of the Team Conceptthat was at the root of their collaboration with the employers, he didn’t knowwhat I was referring to. Even manygenuine rank and file activists in the workplace, or to use a betterexpression, where the “rubber meets theroad” are not familiar with this term although they are well aware of itsramifications.

The Team Concept is the idea that the capitalist class, orbosses---those that buy Labor power (hire workers) and those that sell theirLabor power to a particular employer (workers who sell our life activity over aperiod of time for a price or wages) have the same economic interests. This would contradict the view that therelationship between bosses and workers is inherently an exploitive one whichis something almost all workers understand in our gut. This is not to say there aren’t individualemployers that are decent within this system of exploitation or that someworkers don’t justify their bosses’ right to their role in society for variousreasons. This is natural given thepropaganda dished out through the capitalist media. Slaves justified slavery and peasantsbelieved in the rights of the feudal Lords at times. The Royal Prerogative and the Divine Right ofKings was not something to be taken lightly. The capitalist class own the meansof production as well as the means of producing the dominant ideas in societyso it’s only natural we have in our consciousness views that are against ourown self interest. But in the last analysis, ideas have a material base.

These policies from the Labor leadership at the highestlevels stem from this worldview; that bosses and workers are on the same team.We are told that in order to keep a job and an income we must help ourindividual employer compete in the marketplace, we must help them in their lifeand death struggle to win market share from their rivals whether they are inthe same state or province, the same country or throughout the world. Capitalismis a competitive system and we must help our boss compete. We hear this all thetime from Labor officials backed up by their friends in academia.

Unionized workers in the retail industry are too expensive, have too manyworkplace rules and protections that make them uncompetitive compared to thenon-Union stores they are told. Theanswer to this of course would be to organize the non-Union stores and wage ageneralized struggle against the retail bosses for higher wages, betterconditions more jobs etc. etc. But how can that be done if you start from aposition that the boss’s and our economic interests are inextricably linked? It can’t, and instead, the Labor officialdomoffers concessions to the boss to help them out. The members naturally rejectthis and from this dynamic arises the suppression of democratic rights, thestrengthening of a bureaucracy and the efforts to crush any movement from belowthat threatens this world-view.

I was a member and rank and file activist in AFSCME for manyyears. The Team Concept was known in our Union as “Competitive Bidding”. We were always in a struggle with ouremployer over the contracting out of our work. The building trades Union officials would always be competing for thiswork and a political struggle would ensue within the elected board of directorsof the water district where I worked as the competition between public andprivate sector Unions heated up. The building trades officials in unity withthe developers and contractors would be vying for contracts and we would betrying to keep work in house.

Competitive Bidding meant that we in the public sector put forward a bid forwork that would undercut the private sector. In other words, we were thrown into competition with these brothers and sisters showing that we could do thework more efficiently and at a lower cost. AFSCME in its internal bulleting, “What’s Your Bid” (1) which was a self-described guide to “public privatecompetition”, informed us that AFSCME didn’t “endorse” competitive bidding and was even so bold to warn us thatthe “process is rarely unbiased” butthat when the “only other alternative is certain job loss” and “When competitive bidding can’t be avoided,the Union should demand that the process be impartial and fair.” Theleadership had to say they didn’t endorse it as most workers know that ourinterests and the bosses are not the same.

In order to ensure our bid was “serious”, in other words, that it would be taken seriously by theboss as a real attempt to cut costs, the best way to prepare it the geniuses atopthe international said was for “Labor andmanagement to work together as a team.” Naturally, the workers that wereour competition in the private sector were working with their bosses “as a team” in their effort to undercutus. Any worker knows in our gut thatthis is a disaster and we cannot build solidarity and a generalized offensiveagainst the bosses in this way. Theheroic figures in the history of our movement built Unions to protect us fromcompetition not help facilitate it.

The insanity of this position from a workers organization isobvious. AFSCME’s position was that “Competitionis a two-way street” and that we should even be able to submit bids to win workalready performed by outside contractors. AFSCME ‘s solution if we weren’t able to win the competition for theright to a job was to either to rely on the courts to stop the contracting outof work or negotiate “successorhipclauses” that “obliged” thenew bosses to recognize the existing Union and/or contract in the new privatecompany. It’s hard to force the boss to do anything when the position you havefrom the beginning is a defensive one, a position of damage control.

The same Team Concept was introduced between Kaiser and its Unions. In the late 1990’s John Sweeney, who was then head of the SEIU contactedKaiser CEO David Lawrence offering to build a partnership between Kaisermanagement and the Unions to “rebuild theatmosphere of trust” that apparently existed at one time. Naturally, theexistence of this atmosphere of trust is unknown to many Kaiser workers on theshop floor. According to Sweeney, the boss wasn’t too responsive. But Sweeney tried again after he was electedpresident of the AFL-CIO and Kaiser management saw a real opportunity and “responded positively” says Sweeney.

The result of this love fest between the head of the AFL-CIOand the head of Kaiser was a proposal for a Labor/management partnership thatthe Kaiser workers’ had to vote on. A glossy brochure produced by the AFL-CIOindustrial department that included an appeal for a yes vote from Sweeney wassent to every Union member. (2) This“unique” historical proposal would give the workers a “real voice in the decisions being made” the brochure claimed andwill help Kaiser workers, ”compete as aunion endorsed health plan workers and their families can depend on.”

I remember talking to some workers at Kaiser at this wasgoing on and they were not pleased, they did not think that management was ontheir side as the Union hierarchy was claiming. So the brochure from the AFL-CIO which included a letter appealing for ayes vote from Sweeney himself had to convince workers to vote against their ownclass interests, had to vote against their gut feelings. If the workers didn’t vote yes, what would be“The worst that could happen?” the brochure asks the members. This communication from the leadershipof the national organization of the working class in the US supported by the leadership of the AFL-CIO Unions at Kaiser (to the best of myrecollection CNA opposed it which led to SEIU 250 telling its members to crossCNA picket lines at one point) answers its own question:

“The worst that couldhappen? The worst that could happenwould be for us not to give this ambitious and groundbreaking partnership atry, because things are bad and getting worse.”

Well there you have it. The position of the AFSCME leadership to its members is that they arenot officially for competition because there’s no such thing as a faircompetition in this instance but have to engage in it when there’s no otheralternative to job losses The SEIU leadership tells it’s members that theyshould go against their class instincts and join a partnership with the bossbecause the alternative is that things will only get worse. Naturally, in any struggle there are times due to the balance of class forces when we are forced to retreat and regroup to fight again which means we may accept a concession. But we do not start from this position, that job losses are inevitable or that the worst is assured. We would only start from that position if we felt struggle was pointless as change is impossible which is exactly what the Union hierarchy believes and the predominant reason for their capitulation form the off.

In all these cases there is never another alternative. How can you have an alternative when the onlydirection you can go is backwards? Rather than mobilize the potential power oftheir members and the working class as a whole in a generalized struggle against concessions, for ashorter workweek, more jobs, independent political action etc. etc. It’s, relyon the courts and if that doesn’t work undermine your potential allies bycompeting with them for who can win the bosses' favor.

This scenario is played out throughout Labor managementrelations and has brought us to the present situation where US unionized workersare among the most exploited and low paid in the industrialized world. Sure you can out produce workers in othercountries when you spend two months more a year at work than they do.

It is their world-view, their acceptance of capitalism and worship of themarket that is at the root of this problem and why the present leaders refuseto fight. The building of genuinemilitant rank and file opposition caucuses within organized Labor based on aprogram aimed at driving back this offensive of capital and rejecting theso-called realism of the market is what is necessary to change this situation.

But no individual activists or reform group can reverse thissituation if they do not openly and aggressively condemn and campaign againstthe Team Concept and the idea that the boss is our friend. No matter what such a group claims to standfor, without openly rejecting this philosophy of the employers they will carryout the same policies and bureaucratic maneuvers as the leaders they claim tooppose. We would do well to heed the advice of some of the heroic figures inUS working class history when they warned us that:

"Brethren weconjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interestsand those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in anature of things, hostile and irreconcilable. Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through theblessing of God, come from ourselves. Itis useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich." (3)

(1) What’s Your Bid? AFSCME’s Guide To Public-PrivateCompetition

(2) Quality Care Quality Jobs A National Partnership AFL-CIOIndustrial Dept. Kaiser Coordinating Committee

(3) 1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellowsto abandon the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people'sproblems. Philip Foner History of theLabor Movement Vol. 1 p192

San Francisco columnists blaming Occupy Oakland for layoffs

2012-01-23T19:27:00.000-08:00

Two regular San Francisco Chronicle columnists Philip Matier and Andrew Ross have suddenly become concerned about the plight of working people. They write in today's column that the city of Oakland "continues to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for the Occupy protests." The city has been providing 100 cops or a fifth of the force every week for the last month to work the Saturday night Occupy demo that is held downtown.

The cost of policing this demo they say is $50,000 a week and that city officials estimate the total cost to the city of Occupy Oakland is "$3 million and counting". These two are offended at the outlay of such a huge sum of money, "...at a time when up to 400 city workers will likely be laid off Feb. 1 for lack of money."

If Occupy Oakland did not exist we are supposed to believe that these workers would not be laid off. Matier and Ross are simply doing their job, in a sneaky way of course, as propagandists for the 1%. They are pretending that they care about workers losing our jobs and that Occupy Oakland and its activities are to blame. If the city wasn't spending money on these cops they could be in the working class communities of Oakland protecting residents and particularly black youth no doubt, from the criminals that lurk in the alleyways and dark corners of this city. The criminals that lurk in the office buildings downtown across the bay are not in Mattier and Ross' sights, after all, they own the paper they write for.

The money spent by the city due to Occupy Oakland's expensive and irresponsible behavior would put youth to work I suppose. The ex Maoist mayor of Oakland Jean Quan as well as the former Business Agent for the molders Union and one time darling of the liberals at the Alameda Labor Council, Ignacio De La Fuente have presided over vicious assaults on the workers, youth and tenants of Oakland way before Occupy Oakland arrived on the scene.

Public sector workers that drive our AC Transit buses and those that operate our rapid transit system as well as the workers that keep the streets clean and educate working class children without the proper tools and under extreme circumstances have faced vicious cuts from the politicians that run the city on behalf of the 1% as have all public sector workers under the banner of "shared sacrifice". Where have Matier and Ross been all that time?

Then there is the hidden plunder on the part of the developers, speculators, moneylenders and others who have their snouts in the public trough. We don't get to see the books, the details of economic activity on the part of the 1%. No, Matier and Ross don't fool us.

These two pimps of the corporations are simply trying to undermine a movement that has changed the debate in US society and pointed the finger at those who bear responsibility for the crisis that exists. They want us to blame this movement for making the situation worse. Like any movement that is rising to its feet it is not perfect and it has and will make mistakes. But this assault on it from the leading mass circulation paper of the capitalist class in the area doesn't fool this writer. I know who my enemies are.

Behind Mattier and Ross' liberal facade is the Tea Party message itching to come out.

ILWU and EGT reach tentative agreement according to WA Governor's office

2012-01-23T16:51:00.000-08:00

Well this is interesting and throws a bit of a spanner in the works. It will be interesting to see what concessions the ILWU international have come up with. The ILWU International president calls it a win win. There's an example of Team Concept talk. How can workers and the bosses of a multinational corporation win equally?

Richard

Gov. Gregoire statement on settlement

Governor's Office press release | Posted: Monday, January 23, 2012 1:50 pm

Gov. Gregoire announces tentative settlement between EGT and theInternational Longshore and Warehouse Union

OLYMPIA — Gov. Chris Gregoire today (Jan. 23, 2012) announcedthat EGT and the International Longshore and Warehouse Unionreached a tentative settlement on pending legal issues surroundinglabor disputes at EGT's grain export facility in Longview.

"I asked EGT and ILWU to come together in a good faith effort toovercome their differences," Gregoire said. "Both parties should becommended for their willingness to work together and compromise.This framework reflects considerable effort to put the interests ofthe Longview community and the entire Columbia River basin first. Iam confident an agreement can be reached that will satisfy bothparties and allow the new grain terminal to become fullyoperational."

"We are pleased to announce that after a series of discussionsconvened by Governor Gregoire, the ILWU and EGT have reached atentative settlement to resolve the pending legal matters betweenthe parties and the Port of Longview," said EGT CEO Larry Clarke."While the parties are still working to finalize certain conditionsover the next several days, we are optimistic we can resolve thedispute and get on with the business of operating the facility.From the beginning, we had two core goals — to operate this 21stCentury facility safely and efficiently and to ensure the entireLongview Community shares in the economic benefits this facilitywill provide. We are optimistic this process will help us reachboth of these objectives."

"This is a win for the ILWU, EGT, and the Longview community,"said ILWU President Robert McEllrath. "I want to thank GovernorGregoire for her leadership in working with both parties to findcommon ground. The ILWU has eight decades of grain exportexperience in the Northwest, and we look forward to the opportunityto develop a positive working relationship with EGT."

US military enforcing safety zone around grain elevator in Longview

2012-01-23T15:59:00.000-08:00

Homeland security and the Obama Administration fulfilling their domestic obligations: protecting a multi-national corporation and attacking a major Union in the process. These agenciies unfortunately are helped in this venture by a scab Union, the Operating Engineers who are providing the scab Labor.

Richard

Publication Title       Federal Register Volume 77, Issue 14 (January 23, 2012)
Category         Regulatory Information
Collection      Federal Register
SuDoc Class Number      AE 2.7:
GS 4.107:
AE 2.106:

Publisher       Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration
Section Rules and Regulations

Action Temporary interim rule; request for comments.

Dates   This rule is effective from 12:01 a.m. on January 23, 2012 until 12:01 a.m. on April 1, 2012. Comments must be received on or before March 1, 2012.

Contact If you have questions on this temporary rule, call or email BM1 Sylvestre Suga, Waterways Management Division, Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Portland; telephone (503) 240- 9319, email Sylvestre.G.Suga@uscg.mil. If you have questions on viewing the docket, call Renee V. Wright, Program Manager, Docket Operations, telephone (202) 366-9826.

Summary
The Coast Guard is establishing a temporary safety zone around the Export Grain Terminal located on the Columbia River in Longview, WA. This safety zone extends to waters of the Columbia River approximately between the navigable channel and the Export Grain Terminal in Longview, WA. This safety zone is being implemented to ensure that protest activities associated with the opening of the Export Grain Terminal to maritime traffic does not result in hazardous navigation conditions in the area of the terminal's piers and wharves.

Agency Names    Coast Guard
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

A ‘class’ rate of profit

2012-01-23T12:39:00.000-08:00

by Michael Roberts

I recently attended a presentation by Simon Mohun as part of the London Seminar on Contemporary Marxist Theory at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Simon Mohun (SM) is Emeritus Professor at Queen Mary College, London and has made many important contributions to Marxist economics. His presentation was entitled, The rate of profit, crisis and periodisation in the US economy. SM said he aimed to try apply Marxist economic theory to the facts so that we could understand better the causes of capitalist crisis after the Great Recession.

SM’s presentation was similar to one that he made at the recent HM conference ( see my post, Measuring the rate of profit, up or down?, 20 November 2011).   SM looked at the data for the US rate of profit and found that the rate of profit had not fallen but risen, although punctuated by downturns leading to economic crises in 1929, 1979 and 2007-8. How could he reach this conclusion when nearly everybody else, including me, had found a long-term trend decline in the US rate of profit, at least in the post WW2 period?

Well, the answer is that SM redefines what he calls the ‘conventional’ rate of profit into a ‘class’ rate of profit. SM argues that the conventional measure of profits, based on net added value less employee compensation, does not express the true class relations under modern capitalism. Modern capitalism can no longer be defined by a class that owns the means of production but must be defined by a class that ‘controls’ investment, employment and the workplace. SM quoted John Kay, the Oxford economist, who had just written a piece on the crisis of capitalism in the FT (see my post, Capitalism in crisis – the apologia, 13 January 2012), in which Kay argued capitalism had moved on from Marx’s day and the ownership of the means of production was no longer the criterion of class.

Instead it was “control” of production. Now managers rule and shareholders don’t in modern capitalist companies. So the wages of managers who “control” the workers should be added to surplus value because they are “agents of capital”.

In the US data, SM applied this definition of a managerial class to the category of ‘supervisory’ workers (19% of the workforce) i.e workers who boss or supervise others, to be found in the official US data. By doing so, between 15-35% of all wages that goes to supervisory workers is then transferred to profits.   When SM does that (not surprisingly) , he finds that there has been a rising, not falling, rate of profit in the US since 1890! This leads Mohun to the conclusion that capitalism is really a ‘vibrant and dynamic’ mode of production, just interspersed with the occasional crises (a much overused word, in his opinion). And this class rate of profit is a better indicator of crisis than the conventional one, as when it fell on three occasions, a crisis ensued, while the conventional rate was not such a good indicator.

I have big problems with this approach. First, I don’t accept the thesis that ownership of the means of production is now an irrelevant criterion for the class nature of capitalism. Marx’s original key category for class rule still seems on the spot to me. In a past post, I showed a recent study found that ownership through interlocking shareholdings was key to the control of global investment (see my post, It’s a not so funny old world, 5 November 2011). And anyway, Marx was perfectly aware of ‘joint stock’ companies and the growing ‘arms length’ control that shareholders allowed to managers. Sure, chief executives of the big banks and corporations have been able to get away with huge increases in bonuses, share options etc at the expense of shareholders. But if they eventually don’t deliver on profits, dividends and the share price, they will find themselves out of a job (even if it is with a large ‘golden handshake’).

Also, on SM’s workings, nearly one on five US workers are apparently ‘agents of capital’ whose incomes are really profit. This would include a manager or supervisor on an office floor who might have, say, two employees to manage. Does this ‘agent of capital’ have any say on the distribution of profits or investment in a company, on hiring and firing, or even his own remuneration? I don’t think so.   SM recognised that his category of suprevisory workers was too large and included people who were clearly not ‘agents of capital’. But he argued that most of the income earned by these ‘supervisory workers’ went to the top layers, in other words, income was skewed to the top. So reducing the 19% to a lower figure would make little difference to the amount to transfer from wages to profits.

Well, I have had a look at that. I think it is more likely that just 1% of those 19% supervisory workers are really ‘agents of capital’ (the top 1% of income earners, if you like). These are the managers who occupy the boardrooms, the CEOs and very senior management who make decisions on behalf of the shareholders and other managers. Indeed, an excellent study of where the top 1% of income earners get their money (J Bakija, A Cole and Bradley Heim, Jobs and income growth of top earners, November 2010), found that the majority of the top 1% of earners were top executives in corporations. On Mohun’s workings, supervisory workers are 19% of the workforce and currently receive some 35% of all wage income (2007). That’s a ratio of about 2 to 1.

Now, according to Piketty and Saez’s recent study of US incomes (Atkinson, Piketty and Saez, Top incomes in the long run of history, 2011), the top 1% of income earners took 23.5% of all income in 2007. But this includes all income (dividends, capital gains etc) and not just income from work. Income from work (excluding capital gains and other capital incomes) was only one-quarter of that. So the top 1% took just 6% of all wage income, as against 35% taken by the 19%. And if you switch only 6% of wage income into profit, then SM’s ‘class’ rate of profit is unlikely to be much different from the ‘conventional’ rate. Even if this is still underestimates the proportion and 10% of that 35% went to the top echelons, that is still less one-third of SM’s estimate.

Interestingly, SM produced a ‘conventional’ rate of profit measure (based on current costs of fixed assets, of course! ) for the US that totally matches mine. It showed a fall just before the current crisis and at most key turns. It looks fine to me. Indeed, SM originally presented this conventional rate in a paper to an earlier HM conference (see SimonMohun-Trends). He concluded then that “US capitalism is characterised by long secular periods of falling profitability and long secular periods of rising profitability and crises are associated with major turning points” (see his figure 7 in that paper). I see no need to change (or support) that view with the invention of a class rate of profit.

Getting Stuck in the Medicaid Matrix

2012-01-23T09:24:00.000-08:00

by Margaret Collins
member, CWI USA

Poverty is ugly. Really. All around us we are bombarded with images of trim, beautiful people with smiling mouths filled with white straight teeth. The reality amongst the working class and poor are mouths with gaps from missing teeth and amputations resulting from rampant diabetes.
The poor rely on fast foods and cheap stomach filling starches. Budget cuts have killed physical education classes in many public schools. As a result, children are now recommended for cholesterol screening and the "diabesity" epidemic has prompted the World Health Organization to say that 1 in 10 people will suffer from diabetes in the next 20 years.

So what is this government doing about it? Both parties want to viciously slash Medicaid and Medicare. This would be a healthcare holocaust. Do you want an example? Let's take asthma. Asthma is the leading cause of childhood hospitalization and school absences. You would think that treating an illness like asthma would be a top priority for the school system and the government. Nearly a quarter of African Americans and Latino children depend on Medicaid to treat chronic asthma. If Medicaid is slashed the damage to the poor and people of color will be irreparable.

Who depends on Medicaid? All you need to do is wait on a Medicaid line and see who is waiting with you. Elderly, immigrants, working people. And yourself.

In my case my son had a cough for a few weeks so I took him to the doctor's office on Saturday morning. The computer which is used to check in patients first and foremost checks payment status. My son's Medicaid coverage was discontinued and we were awaiting a hearing on the matter. The lone medical assistant barred us from seeing the doctor and since no supervisor was in the building I couldn't convince her to bill us later. When I asked what to do if the situation got worse she said "I don't know go to the emergency room I guess".

When I went back to the Medicaid office on the Monday, and complained that my son was supposed to get aid continuing until a hearing took place, the Medicaid worker, clearly bored with my story said without looking up, "Write your politician if you don't like it" I said "That doesn't seem to work too well, that is why people are camping out in the streets"

Then nearly a month ago after I applied for Child Health Plus, I received a letter saying that my documents were missing. Where were the documents verifying my status as a veteran? And the documents about child support and why was my name missing on the application. None of these things were true. Somebody in the head office must have switched my application with an amnesiac veteran seeking child support.

Now I had to have an additional meeting with a facilitated enroller who promised she will correct mistakes and expedite the process. I meet her and redo the application. A few days later I get a call again. Some other box was not checked by the worker . This extends the 60 day waiting period further. Flu season is in full swing and I have my fingers crossed. I hope my son doesn't get sick before the coverage kicks in. Unless another box needs to be checked off. Then the process could begin all over again. A sick society denies health care to its people. So much for Obama care. I'm stuck in the Medicaid Matrix.

capitalism and religion - insufficiently nuanced.

2012-01-23T06:12:00.000-08:00

I would like to add a small piece to the recent post I put on this blog on capitalism and religion. In this I said that organized religion was not personal it was political. I feel that this is still correct. But on thinking more about this I feel that perhaps my post was insufficiently nuanced.

Take the black churches here in the USA. Ford was infamous for using these to try and recruit non union workers for his factories in the days when the unions were openly racist. However in the 1950's and 1960's the black churches played a major role in the civil rights movement and this movement had a world wide progressive affect. It changed my own life.

Also the alienation of US society today is still so great and the racism still so present that black people still go to the black churches in large numbers for solidarity and support and to hear and create their music which is so much part of these.

Of course nothing exists in a vacuum. And the capitalist offensive of the past forty years has had a big affect on the black churches here in the US. Well especially the mega churches and especially in the major cities such as Chicago where the leaders of these churches are drawn into the circles of the ruling cliques of these cities and given various perks in return for which they are expected to keep their "flock" in order, accepting capitalism and the status quo.

All in all organized religion is political and part of the ruling classes in society, but on occasion certain churches can get pulled by their working class base into struggle and play a progressive role for a while. But in the last analysis unless capitalism is overthrown organized religion like all the major forces in society is forced to bow the knee.

Sean.

GOP Primary. US capitalism's political contradictions.

2012-01-22T05:39:00.001-08:00

With god on his side.

Gingrich has won the Republican race in South Carolina. This causes a major headache for what the capitalist mass media call the Republican "establishment." By this is meant the top capitalists, top 1%, element in the Party. These people do not want Gingrich, they are afraid of what he might do. They are like a person who has a mad watch dog and while this is okay as long as the watchdog is chained they are afraid of what might happen if it broke loose. And Gingrich's ego is so big, his willingness to whip up racism with coded language so prevalent the big capitalist powers in and out of the Republican party are worried about him.

But they have a serious problem. To get the Republicans into power in the past they whipped up the born again christian right vote. (See Friday's blog) These christian right voters are mainly middle or working class. And they do not respond well to Romneys glorification of capitalism. 6 out of 10 voters in the SC primary were born again or evangelical Christians. It is this base that gives the mad dog his base and which drives him to his extreme racists codes and anti poor rants.

Romney undoubtedly still looks better to the big capitalist forces, the 1%, as he defends so called private enterprise. Gingrich also frightens the 1% with his willingness to attack Romney on his capitalist swindles in order to get votes. However Romney's stupidity seems to know no bounds. At a time like this when capitalism is so unpopular to make himself the candidate of capitalism is just about unthinkable. With the reluctant support of the Republican establishment Romney may still win the nomination but if he does he will be badly battered. His tax returns are still to come out. Of course Gingrich's ethics reports from when he was kicked out of his leadership role in congress and fined $300,000 are still to come out. Whoever the Republican candidate is will most likely come limping into the battle with Obama well bruised.

Of course Obama could come into the general election with an economy plunging into a new downturn and this could undermine him.

As we have said in this blog in the past US capitalism is in a weak position politically. But what it still has is its political monopoly. This is intact because the union leaders will not break from the Democrats and build a mass workers party and this allows US capitalism to maintain its political monopoly. But that monopoly is increasingly frayed and tattered and threatens to spin out of control or act in a way that will mobilize forces that are not useful to it - such as openly mass racists forces or openly pro-capitalist or openly anti capitalist propaganda.

It is likely the big capitalist powers will now move to try and stop Gingrich. But can they reign in their mad dog and his born again racist base? If they do they will most likely be left with the extreme right Romney who is popular with about nobody. It is going to be a hard slog for capitalism to get somebody they trust from the Republican Party into the White House. They might have to stop talking in their racist code about "getting their country back" and support Obama after all. He has been serving them pretty good so far.

Sean.

GOP Primary. US capitalism's political dilema.

2012-01-22T05:39:00.000-08:00

On the shoulders of the Kurnatovsky's the revolution marches forward

2012-01-20T20:40:00.000-08:00

Someone once asked me where I got the name Kurnatovsky. I misspelled it with a U but no matter. I know that everything I have, every freedom, every advantage in the rotten system we live in was won for me by someone I don't know, most of them probably couldn't read or write. I know this: Merrill Lynch didn't build America. More accurately, the freedoms I have were won by the collective efforts of many people. But while social advancement is made through collective struggle this doesn't mean that there is no such thing as individual effort, that certain individuals don't sacrifice more or contribute more to the social well being of all of us.

One of these people was Mother Jones of course, the great American fighter for workers' rights. Or Eugene Debs, an American who is among the greatest of heroic American political figures. Lenin called him a true revolutionary. Big Mary Septak is another. I first learned of Big Mary Septak in Mother Jones' Biography. She ran a boarding house there in Pennsylvania. I would have to return to the book to tell you more.

But Kurnatovsky, or the description of his life by Leon Trotsky in his biography of Stalin epitomizes for me the sacrifice that millions of people have made for the collective good. Here is how I first heard of Kurnatovsky from Trotsky's biography of Stalin, Kurnatovsky's demise is described to him by Lenin's wife Krupskaya:

Itis pertinent here, and only fair, to complete the story of the engineerKurnatovsky, who really inspired the revolutionary movement at Tiflis at thebeginning of the century. After two years in the military prison, he wasbanished to the Yakut Region, from which escapes were immeasurably moredifficult than from the Irkutsk Government. At Yakutsk, on the road,Kurnatovsky participated in the armed resistance of the exiles against theoutrages of the authorities, and was sentenced by the court to twelve years athard labor. Amnestied in the fall of 1905, he reached Chita, which was then delugedwith combatants of the Russo-Japanese War. There he became chairman of theSoviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Cossaks’ Deputies—the head of the so-called“Chita Republic”.

At the beginning of 1906 Kurnatovsky was again arrested andsentenced to death. General Rennenkampt, the pacifier of Siberia, carried thecondemned man in his train so that he might witness with his own eyes theexecutions of workers at every railway station. Because of the new liberaltendency in connection with elections to the First Duma, his death sentence wascommuted to life-long banishment to Siberia. Kurnatovsky managed to escape fromNerchinsk to Japan. From there he went to Australia, where he was in greatneed, worked as a lumberjack and strained himself.

Ill, with inflammation inhis ears, he somehow managed to make his way to Paris. “An exceptionallydifficult lot,” relates Krupskaya, “finally undermined him. In the autumn of1910, after his arrival, Ilyitch and I called on him at the hospital.” Twoyears later, when Lenin and Krupskaya were already living at Cracow,Kurnatovsky died. On the shoulders of the Kurnatovskies and over their corpsesthe revolution marched forward.

I cried when I first read this. History is full of Kurnatovsky's and we thank them all. We owe it to them to fight on.

Police arrests at San Francisco protests

2012-01-20T17:06:00.000-08:00

Capitalism and one nation under god.

2012-01-20T15:54:00.000-08:00

The phrase one nation under god was first used by Lincoln at Gettysburg. He actually said, "this nation under god." After that it largely disappeared from common usage. Until that is in the mid 20th century when capitalism was under pressure and it re-emerged under a different guise. This time it was used by the owners of the major corporations and their paid clergy to try and discredit the new deal.

With the great depression the prestige of the capitalists sank to new lows. In a desperate panic they scrambled to rebuild their image and beat back the new deal. The American Liberty League was one of the main front organizations they used. This was financed by the criminal capitalists such as Du Ponts and General Motors. This Liberty league, so called, was not too successful as it was seen as a front for the corporations. So the capitalists took a different road.

They shelled out big money to buy clergymen and recruit them to their cause. They said: "of all the groups in America, ministers have more to do with molding public opinion than any other." If this was true then, and it was, imagine what it is now with these mega churches and mass media. But to go back.

A minister in Los Angeles, James Fifield, head of the elite first congregational church led the way in making the propaganda for the idea that;"The blessings of capitalism come from God." And "A system that provides so much for the common good and happiness must flourish under the favor of the almighty." The new deal violated the ten commandments according to this capitalist mouthpiece. It made a "false idol" of the federal government, "encouraged Americans to covet their neighbors possessions, stole from the wealthy and ultimately bore false witness by promising what it could not deliver."

Throughout the 1930's and 1940's Fifield and his cronies made propaganda for a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that was dubbed by some as:"Christian libertarianism." The whole anti working class pro capitalist class propaganda was refined down to one slogan: "Freedom under god." Huge support was thrown behind the campaign to get this idea accepted. The chamber of commerce, other business lobbies, corporate sponsors, spread this propaganda of godly capitalism throughout the country with personal lectures, radio broadcasts and a monthly magazine.

In 1951 the campaign culminated in a huge 4th of July celebration on this theme. Former president Hoover, of Hooverville fame no less, and General Douglas MacArthur headed a committee of right wing big shots including Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, but largely dominated by top capitalist powers such as Conrad Hilton, J.C. Penney, Harvey Firestone Jr. and J. Howard Pew.

In a huge public relations, that is propaganda drive, full page ads were taken out in papers nationwide to encourage "freedom under god" ceremonies throughout the country. These all connected "faith and free enterprise." There was also a nationwide sermon contest with ministers competing for cash. Myriad local events were organized by a national "Freedom Under God" radio program, produced with the help of Cecil B. DeMille, hosted by Jimmy Stewart and broadcast on CBS.

These capitalist propagandists then decided they had prepared the ground sufficiently and could take another step forward, go in for the kill. Freedom under god was sufficiently brainwashed into the mass consciousness. In 1954 as this "under god" propaganda swept the nation they added the phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance. By doing so this 1% of this earlier era has written into the US pledge of allegiance that there are no classes in US society, only one nation under god and freedom.

Meanwhile they make their billions, stash their loot in the Cayman islands, get the working class to fight their wars, only one candidate of the warmongering Republican candidates ever went to war.

Hypocrites. Liars. Propagandists who lie and lie and use their mass media and education and churches to keep the 1% in power and the 99% out of power. But things are changing. More and more people are seeing through these lies.

Sean.

SF 49ers move to Santa Clara will cost taxpayers plenty

2012-01-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

Source

Taxpayersin California are about to provide more welfare to members of the 1% if the49ers move to Santa Clara from San Francisco as planned. A new stadium is projected to cost $1 billionincluding $850 million of debt according to the Wall Street Journal and by most accounts, atypical sports facility costs local taxpayers more than $10 million a year.

Thecoupon clippers that choose to invest in professional sports teams froth at themouth at the chance as invariably the taxpayers insure their investments arepretty secure. As the crisis ofcapitalism continues and the real economy falters, the politicians of the 1%that run our municipalities have their friends throw some money their way asthey assure the rest of us that it will bring economic prosperity and jobs butthese ventures are a safe bet for the 1%.

Mosteconomists and others who have researched the economics of the sports industryargue that there is no benefit to the rest of us through these uses of publicfunds and that such expenditure is in fact destructive in that it diverts fundsthat could be used to build schools, improve social services or other usefulpublic ventures. Even small local momand pops suffer as funds or subsidies that could promote them are used forspeculators and investors from the 1% as well as franchise owners who couldreside anywhere from Long Island to Hong Kong. Then there is the tax-exempt interest we pay moneylenders on the bondsmunicipalities purchase on our behalf. To attract the 49ers, the city of SantaClara is dedicating 14 acres of land to the project. We have to ask ourselves if there might bemore productive uses for this---schools, cultural centers, youth clubs to namea couple.

ReasonPublic Policy Institute researchers Samuel Staley and LeonardGilroy notedthat, "More than 20 years ofacademic research has failed to find a significant relationship between aninvestment in a sports stadium and significant job or income growth.".Taxpayer money spent on sports franchises, stadiums or subsidized gambling isnot a productive use of our resources.

Theactual costs or benefits are never really known in the initial stages. In the case of Santa Clara, supporters of thedeal claim that it will bring $43 million worth of economic activity to thecity. What that really means is anyone’s business. The financial plan forpaying off some of the debt ($450 million) that will be assumed to build thestadium is relying on corporations coughing up cash for the right to name itand the right to buy season tickets. The one per centers that own the 49ers saythat they will charge fans between $20,000 and $30,000 for the “right to buy season tickets” for 9000of the stadiums seats. Some of the seats will cost as much as $80,000.

The49ers management has also agreed to pay enough rent to cover the stadium’s debtpayments but, as the WSJ points out, that rent, estimated at $5 million in2010, has grown to $30 million today. The figure will be set in stone before the stadium is up and operatingand “locked in place for 40 years”. “The city (taxpayer) won’t be able torenegotiate if revenue comes up short”, the WSJ adds. One can just imaginewhat the costs to the taxpayer will be in 40 years when an estimate that wentfrom $5 million to $30 million in 18 months is considered. You’d have to have a very rosy view ofcapitalism’s ability to provide a decent life and public services in the futureto accept that deal.

These investments are a no win situation for the taxpayers and more welfare forthe one percent. “The averageworking person is asked to put a tax on their home, or pay sales or some otherconsumer tax, to build luxury boxes in which they cannot afford to sit.’ Thisis playing Robin Hood in reverse: Using government's taxing authority to takefrom the poor and give to the rich.” Houston Mayor Bob Lanier commented.

Theseventures, if they produce jobs at all produce low waged jobs. Many of the food franchises at sportingevents may employ Union labor in the form of waiters and hot dog vendors buteven unionized workers in the hotel and restaurant industry earn base pay thatamounts to poverty wages relying more often on tips. The bureaucracy that heads the constructionunions are very short sighted and many of us who have spent our lives in theranks of organized Labor would say that they would support the building ofprisons that the 1% will put us in as long as they were built Union.

Sportin one form or another has been a healthy and social for of competition as longas humans have walked this earth. Like music and art, it is an expression ofour way of life, a healthy expression. Sport in a capitalist economy is managed from above; it is a businessventure, a commodity and like all commodities it must be sold and sold at aprofit. Each part of the year is dividedin to sections so that the investors in each sport can divvy up the profitsbetween them. We are not encouraged toengage in healthy competition with each other as a social function but in thehope our 10 year olds might end up on some professional team. Parents pressuretheir children to succeed at all costs and fights and even deaths have occurredin these contests. Apart from this, who has the time in an industrial society?

Theplayers in the games are offered to our children as gods and heroes to beemulated. They are walking billboards, pimps for the corporations peddlingtheir wares from shoes to jerseys, hats, candy clothes and other items. I used to watch football as a kid in Englandbut cannot tell which team is which these days, as it appears from the jerseysthat the Vodaphone team is playing O2.

Prior to the English revolution that took the head of King Charles, there was ahuge social debate about sports on Sundays. There were at the time a hundred orso holy days that were holidays when no work was done, not good for the newindustrial economic system we know as capitalism that was slowly emerging froma decaying feudal regime. Many wereopposed for different reasons to playing sports on the holy day of the weekwhich Christian mythology set aside for us to rest. But the king and othersthat supported the status quo saw the advantages in it. Traditional sports, oneof the King’s advisors advised him, “Willamuse the people’s thoughts and keep them in harmless action, which will freeyour majesty from faction and rebellion.”*

Thingshaven’t changed, they’ve gotten worse. King Charles would marvel at the methods the ruling class uses today to “amuse the people’s thoughts and keep themin harmless action” free of “factionand rebellion.” Workers that claim they have not time to read the news orparticipate in active politics in their Unions or community organizations cansit over a beer at the pub and rattle of statistic after statistic about thisteam or that and the various players. They know every play, every formation andthe intricate science of the games.

Thegenuine enjoyment of and participation in sport as a human cultural interactionjust like music, art, science or anything else cannot be seen independent ofsociety---no more than the study of individuals and our behavior can. Sport is connected to work, leisure or thelack of it, which in turn is connected to the struggle for a shorter workweekand the control over the resources of society including the media and the Laborprocess.

Thereare and always will be more urban centers than sports teams as it means thatdemand is greater than the supply. Thedominance of demand over supply favors the seller and this is no exception. It allows the seller to command a higherprice amid greater competition and it allows them to blackmail communities asthey can demand greater profits under threat of fleeing. It is no different than how the owners ofcapital set communities against each other in order to attract capital. Lower taxes, lower wages, free land, inexchange for jobs and production over which we have no real say.

“It’s fiscally irresponsibleto own a stadium, and not a core city service” says Deborah Bress, a spokespersonfor a group trying to gain enough signatures in Santa Clara for a referendumtells the WSJ, “if this is such a gooddeal why don’t they have private investors lined up to do it.”

SorryDeborah, it’s not as profitable. In the meantimeI’ll cheer for the Green Bay Packers.

* Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution P 85-86

Irresponsible capitalism

2012-01-20T06:36:00.000-08:00

by Michael Roberts

Back in 1973, the then UK prime minister Edward Heath condemned what he called the “unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism”. Heath was referring to the bribery and corruption conducted by the then head of a leading British company, Lonrho.

This condemnatory term for capitalism metamorphosed into the “ugly face of capitalism” during the first great worldwide capitalist slump of 1974-5, which led to the decimation of Britain’s manufacturing and mining industry. In the aftermath of the recession, several financial companies sprang up to buy manufacturing enterprises and asset-strip them before selling them on or closing them down. It led to tens of thousands of job losses. Heath was forced to condemn this practice as “ugly”. Of course, it made no difference. This cleansing process is necessary under the capitalist cycle of boom and slump. Indeed, asset stripping became very acceptable in the ‘neo-liberal’ era that followed, with so-called private equity firms like Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital raising funds to do just the same thing: stripping assets and supposedly making failing or low profit businesses ‘more efficient’ i.e. profitable.

Now the current UK prime minister David Cameron has announced today that he wants no part of what he describes as the “irresponsible capitalism” that contributed to the Great Recession.   Instead, he espoused a “popular capitalism” that should allow “everyone to share in the success of the market” and criticised an “out of control” bonus culture in the City. He wanted to encourage firms to show “social responsibility”. ‘Popular capitalism’ was based on two principles: “The first is a vision of social responsibility, which recognises that people are not just atomised individuals, and that companies have obligations too. And the second is a genuinely popular capitalism, which allows everyone to share in the success of the market.” Cameron said that “where they work properly (assumption made here, I think!), open markets and free enterprise can actually promote morality” by creating “a direct link between contribution and reward; between effort and outcome”.   So we should use this crisis of capitalism to improve markets, not undermine them, because I believe that out of this current adversity we can build a better economy, one that is truly fair and worthwhile.”
Cameron argued that social responsibility must be just an important objective of corporations as profit maximisation.

This is a step away from the statements of that hero of British conservatism and the free market, Margaret Thatcher, who infamously said that there was “no society” and therefore no social responsibility to be adopted by companies or individuals alike. This was the ‘pure’ ideology of capital, asserted by the likes of the American philosopher, Ayn Rand. Rand said the individual should “exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself… there was virtue in selfishness rather than altruism”. Rand’s ideas were widely acclaimed by the likes of Alan Greenspan, head of the US Fed during the great credit boom. Then “greed is good’ was the aphorism of the fictional Gordon Gekko in the film, Wall Street. But now, apparently, greed, huge salaries and bonuses and asset stripping are ugly, irresponsible and above all, not popular.

Ironically, the ideological father of the ‘free market’, the Scottish enlightenment figure, Adam Smith, never espoused profit maximisation alone. On the contrary, he thought that capitalism could only flourish on moral principles. He reckoned that both self-interest and regard for others were natural in homo sapiens. So he had the utopian belief that a ‘free market’ for trade would generate both a profitable and moral life for all.    In this vein, 250 years later, we get the grotesque ideology of Lloyd Blankfein , the CEO of Goldman Sachs, the great vampire squid of finance capital, who proclaims that he and his investment bank are doing “God’s work” (see my post, Doing God’s work, 19 April 2010)! GS is a representative of God, it seems. Unfortunately, God seems to want to have very large salaries, bonuses and pensions, while engaging in nefarious financial tricks and trying (successfully) to evade tax.

And even after the banking crash, it’s business as usual. Goldman Sachs had a bad 2011 doing God’s work. Profits fell sharply to $28.8bn in 2011 and ‘employee compensation’ dropped 21% to $12.2bn from $15.4bn in 2010. But that meant employee compensation as a share of profits actually rose from 39.3% in 2010 to 42.4% in 2011, even though the workforce was 7% smaller! More money to fewer people after making less profit. God’s largesse.   It’s the same story with the large UK banks that are now state-owned. The 83% taxpayer-owned RBS is set to pay its chief executive Stephen Hester a bonus of £1m on top of his £1.2m salary, while the man who brought RBS to its knees, the former chief executive, Sir Reg Goodwin (knighted for his services to the banking community) is still set to pick up his huge pension entitlements (£700,000-plus a year).

The opposition Labour party in Britain has also taken a principled stand on these issues. After the financial collapse, Peter Mandelson, then business secretary, attacked the CEO of Barclays Bank, the American Bob Diamond as the “unacceptable face of banking” for taking a huge salary and bonus at the time of crisis. This is the same Peter Mandelson who at the height of the neo-liberal boom back in 1998, embraced ‘greed’ as a force for good, declaring he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long they paid their taxes”. Well, both those relaxations have not proved to be a force for good.

The current Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has joined Cameron in condemning “irresponsible capitalism”, implying, of course, that there is a responsible version. Being responsible for capitalists means paying their taxes and not taking such big wage packets, but apparently the rest of us also have to be responsible under responsible capitalism. That means accepting the draconian fiscal austerity being imposed by the government on public sector jobs, wages and social benefits to meet the needs of the bankers. The Labour leader has signed up to this policy for the life of this parliament and beyond and even proposed going further in saying that perhaps those in work should take a pay cut to keep others in jobs. Now that really is responsible capitalism. Miliband’s finance spokesperson Ed Balls has also backed this call for workers to be responsible for the crisis caused by the bankers by accepting pay cuts and job losses. This is the same Ed Balls who back in 2007 said that ‘light touch regulation’ of the City of Lonfon was the way forward and any attempt to curb the free activities of the likes of Lloyd Blankfein was wrong.

So there we have it. What we need is beautiful or pleasant (not ugly or unpleasant) capitalism; or moral (not immoral) capitalism; or godly (not ungodly) capitalism; fair (not predatory or crony) capitalism; and now responsible (not irresponsible) capitalism. But apparently, we still need capitalism.

Capitalist criminals rob poor countries blind.

2012-01-19T05:51:00.000-08:00

This is a staggering fact below. And this is only tax evasion. This does not take into account the "legal" looting of the resources and wealth of the former colonial countries. Sean.

From Al Jazeera's Peter Greste in nairobi.

Money taken illegally from the developing world is worth 10 times annual global aid budgets, according to a recent study by a Swedish agency, Forum Syd.

Tax evasions by multinational companies in Africa is so vast that one tax analyst believes that if the money were paid, most of the continent would be "developed" by now.

But, lacking a sophisticated tax code, or the people qualified to enforce tax laws, many African countries continue to lose money that could solve most of its financial problems.

Republicans fight over capitalism as Union leaders remain mute.

2012-01-18T22:11:00.000-08:00

Open letter to Union Leaders, Union activists and Union members.

The fight for the Republican Party Presidential nominee has taken a very unexpected turn. The front-runner, Romney is being accused by his fellow right wing competitors of being a "Vulture capitalist," a "predator capitalist," and as having veered from "traditional capitalism." He is being accused, correctly of buying up companies, cutting them to shreds, then either selling them off for huge profits or closing them down and firing workers by the thousands; in other words what most capitalists do.

What is new and amazing here is that these attacks on Romney and his "Vulture Capitalism" are coming from opponents in his own capitalist Republican Party, especially the extreme right winger and racist Gingrich. There is now a swing of more of the top traditional Republican Party bigwigs to get behind Romney so they can lock up the nomination and stop these attacks before they go any further. This might help Romney to get the nomination but the attacks about his vulture capitalism will hurt in in the general election.

The capitalists in general are extremely concerned at this discussion about capitalism. It is not so long ago when the Wall Street Journal scolded a journalist for using the word "capitalism" as it said that this made people think about "systems" and the next thing would happen would be they would be thinking about alternative systems to capitalism. A secondary aspect to this is that the top capitalists who mainly support the Republicans do not want to give too much ammunition to Obama to use against Romney if he is the candidate in the fall.

But most important of all is for us to understand why Gingrich and even Perry are attacking Romney in this way. The reason is the mood of anger against the rich and Wall Street and their representatives in the Republican and Democratic parties. Working class people are increasingly challenging and questioning the system. 60% of Americans believe that the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes. It is no accident that Romney is under attack from Gingrich on this also. The Occupy movement took to the streets, at one time covering over 90 cities. It put the word capitalism and inequality back at the top of the agenda and and working peoples' consciousness once again. Opinion polls show up to 50% of the population is favorably inclined towards the Occupy movement. At the same time opinion polls conducted amongst 18 to 34 year olds have shown that a majority favor socialism over capitalism.

Union leaders, union activists, union members, we must recognize the change that has taken place. US society in spite of all its censorship and capitalism's control of the mass media and education system is now hearing daily the idea that there is a system called capitalism, This is a major step forward. This opening and opportunity must be recognized and seized. Capitalism must not be allowed to close this opening again and put the genie back in the bottle. This is where the union leaders, union activists and union members come in. But most of all it is where the union leaders come in.

Union leaders, you control organizations with over 12 million members, with members in tens of thousands of workplaces throughout the country. You control the AFL-CIO, you sit atop the individual unions, the State and regional and local federations, the central labor councils. This is a gigantic network which exists throughout the country. It is potentially the most powerful force in the country. It can determine whether the country goes or stops, works or does not work. In this context let us look at the role you are playing as the capitalist mass media is convulsed with discussing "capitalism". As far as we can see you have completely absented yourself from this discussion. You have, with the greatest determination, said not a word. You seem more afraid of this discussion then even the capitalists. We have to say with all due respect that your silence is an absolute disgrace.

Instead here is what we consider you should have been doing and should do now. You should organize meetings in every sector of the union movement, each Union, state, and central labor council and workplaces to discuss capitalism. Welcome the discussion on capitalism that is taking place in society. State clearly that you are against vulture capitalism but also against capitalism as a whole which puts profits above people’s lives and the health of the planet. Open up a discussion for an alternative and put forward as a starting point democratic socialism in the USA and internationally. This is what we call upon you to do. We have the incredible situation at the moment where the capitalist Republican party are arguing about capitalism and the capitalist mass media are arguing about capitalism but the leaders of the mass workers’ organizations are not saying a word about capitalism. This has to end. You have to intervene in this discussion and take a stand against capitalism.

We know this is not easy for you. You believe there is no alternative to capitalism; you do not believe the working class can build a new society. And so you have locked yourself and the working class into the so-called team concept approach where you support your own capitalists against other workers and unconditionally support the existing system. You must jettison the team concept approach. On the political front you also have the team concept approach. You collaborate with and support the capitalist Democratic Party. You must stop supporting this Party. In the place of this team concept approach you must put the movement’s resources to building independent mass unions, organizing the unorganized and building a mass workers' party based on these unions and working class communities. Break the capitalists control over your policies and their monopoly over politics.

We know this will be hard for you in another way. We are addressing ourselves here to the top union leaders. You have allowed yourself to be sucked into the world of the employers. Both ideologically in the sense that you have the same world view as these capitalists; you believe capitalism is the only system possible. But there is also your material position. Your jobs are secure, your salaries and benefits are much greater than those of the majority of your membership. These perks have to go if you are to see things straight, to see things from your membership’s point of view. You have to be put on the average wage of the members you represent, all your expenses have to be openly available to be examined by all your membership and you have to be able to be recalled at any time by the membership.

Some peculiar features in the present situation in the US have opened up this discussion where we hear capitalism talked about at every turn. The opportunity this presents to us must not be missed. Also it will not last forever. Unfortunately your adherence to capitalism and working with the capitalists paralyzes you in front of this situation. You are even more afraid of the situation than the capitalists. Your responsibility is to play a different role, that is to stop capitulating to the employers and their capitalist system, to stop pouring hundreds of millions of the union membership's money into the capitalist Democratic Party. This opportunity to discuss the rotten nature of capitalism and how a much better life for all can be built under a democratic socialist system has to be seized.

As we the activists and rank and file in the movement call on the union leaders to take this action we must act ourselves. Put down motions at our locals, regional councils, central labor bodies, etc., and call for special discussion sessions, conferences, meetings in the workplaces and union structures, schools and colleges, to discuss this subject. Put our opposition to capitalism on the agenda of the mass of the population and into the mass consciousness. Yes call on the trade union leaders to act but also take action ourselves so that this opportunity is not missed.

The right wing academic Irwin Stelzer wrote the following in the Weekly Standard of Jan. 16th: “America’s more or less free market capitalism is not under threat from Marxism-Lenninism”, he wrote, adding that it was not under threat from China either. It is not under threat from “socialism” he affirms meaning Stalinism. It faces a “far more subtle enemy, the gradual loss of acceptance of the idea that markets more efficiently allocate resources than governments do… ". He fears the consequences when “broad consensus erodes that capitalism as practiced in America is better at creating wealth than any other system…”

Stelzer is correct about capitalism; it is better at creating wealth---for a minority that appropriate it from the majority. That this discussion is only taking place in the Wall Street Journal, other capitalist journals and the mass capitalist media and not in the unions, workplaces and working class communities is shameful and due to the failure of the trade union leadership at the highest levels to lead.

Sean O'Torrain
Richard Mellor

From hero to "serial killer" US Marine charged with murder of homeless

2012-01-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

Itzcoatl Ocampo

So they have caught the person who has been stalking and killing homeless people in Santa Ana California. The media says the following:
"The Iraq War veteran was charged Tuesday with four counts of murder and special allegations of multiple murders and lying in wait and use of a deadly weapon. Three victims were stabbed more than 40 times each. If convicted, Ocampo faces a minimum sentence of life in prison without parole. Authorities have not decided whether to seek the death penalty."

The young guy used the skills the US military taught him quite efficiently. "Lying in wait" "use of a deadly weapon" treating a human being like an object so it is easier to kill them without question. The question is: was he like this before the 23 year old joined the Marines and went to Iraq? "I walked in, he was curled up in a blanket.....He looked like a wet puppy dog." said the young man's lawyer when he visited him in a mental ward. He's doing what he was trained to do but now he's described as a "serial killer". I would think the Iraqi's considered a serial killer too when the people now prosecuting him described him as a hero.

I remember watching that movie, The Ground Truth. One vet says talks of his encounter with the police after a violent domestic outburst. Vet's in that movie describe what it was like to run over a child in your Humvee or see your friends blown to bits next to you. My recollection is one guy describing the bumps as they drove over the young child's body. Can't take any chances though. The vet describes the insanity of coming back home after that and the bastards that created the problem and sent them there expecting these guys to go down the mall with the wife and kids as if nothing's happened.

There is a collective bunch of murderers here, war criminals par excellence. These include the imbecile Bush, Rumsfeld, Obama, Cheney, Powell and Wolfowitz, and all those politicians that support these criminal ventures. The Marine Corp and their entire military machine is guilty, a machine that has nothing to do with defense but plunder on a world scale. Watch the way they brainwash these young and impressionable working class men and women who deserve a better opportunity from society, my recollection is that The Ground Truth shows that in some detail.

We do not have to be brainwashed and other human beings dehumanized in order for us to defend our rights and what freedoms we have that the working class has won for us. This young man's killing spree is what they trained him for and he wss coninuing his job. Imagine how the Iraqi's have suffered as young US men and women lose their humanity in an inhumane environment.

The system is guilty and those that support and perpetuate it are guilty. The few thousand unelected people that rule society are guilty. But eliminating them, imprisoning them would still not prevent these sort of occurrences because the system itself creates them. Capitalism is system of social organization that is hostile to humanity and the natural world that birthed us. If you plant flowers in rotten solid they will, if they grow at all be deformed. This is what capitalism does to humans, it destroys us, poisons our food, pollutes our oceans and the very air we breath.

This young man deserved better. I do not blame him. They took him and destroyed him. The same system that produces homelessness, his victims, produced Itzcoatl Ocampo. We pointed out on this blog today that the crisis of the economic system we call capitalism is becoming ever more acute as shown by the Republican politicians savaging each other and attacking the very economic system that they worship. It is positive that the ruling class talks of "systems" because they only used to do that when they spoke of planned economies like the brutal Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union.

But capitalism has not always existed. It hasn't been the only "system" but was borne in the womb of a previous and different system we call Feudalism which the capitlsit class relegated to the garbage can of history. Now it's our turn to hand Rumsfeld and co and their system that same fate as we build a collective, humane economic system and the politics that arises from it, a democratic socialist world federation of states.

We owe it to Itzcoatl Ocampo, his victims and millions like them throughout the world.

World economy: where are we now?

2012-01-18T12:19:00.000-08:00

by Michael Roberts

The World Bank published its economic growth forecasts for 2012 and beyond today. The bank has lowered its forecast for 2012 from its estimate back last summer. Now it expects the world economy to grow at just 2.5% this year compared to 2.7% in 2011 and 4.1% in 2010. So the recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-9 is beginning to slow down. The bank’s forecast confirms that the world is not slipping back into a ‘double dip’ recession (see my post, Double dips, deficit and debt, 24 August 2011), but even so economic growth is so slow that capitalism is really in a long depression (see my post, It feels like a depression, 18 September 2011) where unemployment will continue to rise or, at the very best, stay at highs since the world collapsed in 2009.

When you break down the growth forecasts by region, the bank expects that the advanced capitalist economies of the OECD will grow just 1.3% this year, down from a poor 1.4% in 2011 and 2.8% in 2010. There will be a small pick-up to 1.9% in 2013. So by the end of 2013, the advanced capitalist economies will have grown by less than 2% a year in real terms on average since 2009, a rate that cannot restore jobs or losses in living standards from the Great Recession. Indeed, in 2012, the bank predicts that the Eurozone will fall into recession, while Japan will make a mild recovery from the damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011. Only the US economy will achieve a higher growth rate this year (2.2%) than last year, but even so, its average growth rate of about 2.3% for the four years from 2010-13 is way lower than in previous recoveries from capitalist slumps.

Even more worrying is that growth in the developing capitalist economies, the so-called emerging markets, will drop to just 5.4% this year, down from 7.3% in 2010. That means that unemployment in the poor capitalist economies will rise because these economies need at least 6% real growth a year to absorb the growth in the workforce and the influx into the cities of rural workers. The World Bank also expects world trade growth to slow sharply to 4.7% this year from 12.4% in 2010, forcing exporters to cut their prices by up to 4.5% on average. At the same time, international capital flows will rise only 3.3% , one of the lowest rates on record. All this means is that globalisation of capital has been paralysed. Profitability for capitalist investment abroad will fall, squeezing overall profitability.

Indeed, if we look at corporate profit growth in the major capitalist economies, we can see that it has slowed sharply from the high rates achieved in the immediate recovery from the Great Recession. US corporate profit growth has slowed to 7.5% a year rate, while corporate profits in the UK, Germany and Japan are contracting. This suggests that investment growth will stay weak and employment will hardly recover over the next year or so.

The latest unemployment data for the UK confirm that prospect. Unemployment has reached its highest level in 17 years and it’s going to get worse this year. As well as the Eurozone, the UK economy is contracting again. This may not last more than a couple of quarters, but the downward pressure of fiscal austerity, weak corporate profit growth and poor export growth has pushed the UK economy down (see my post, The best laid plans of mice and George Osborne, 29 November 2011). And the UK economy was weakened by the Great Recession more than most. On his blog, John Ross(http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsinglobalisation/2012/01/the-incredible-shrinking-uk-economy.html) shows the UK nominal GDP (measured in dollars) has fallen more than any other European economy up to 2010 except Iceland, as a contraction in real national output was combined with a very sharp fall in the value of sterling.

So the UK’s standing in the capitalist world (as measured in market dollars) dropped the most. Indeed, as I have mentioned before in this blog (The weakest recovery since 1918, 18 October 2011), the UK’s recovery from the slump of 2008-9 has been the weakest in over 100 years. The UK’s NIESR think-tank produces a nice graphic showing the weakness of the UK recovery since 2009.

Having said all this, we must not go too far in the direction of expecting a new slump now. The world economy may be growing very slowly, but it is growing. Indeed, if we look at the indicators of activity in the US, the US economy has marginally improved from last summer. The combined ISM index of manufacturing and services activity (my invention) shows that the US economy is well above recession levels, but not in the boom area.

The highest frequency indicator of the state of the US economy is the ECRI’s weekly leading indicator. This is a useful forecaster of future growth by about six months or so. It shows that the US financial conditoons have slipped from the end of 2010, but they are still well above the depths reached at the end of 2008. So it seems to confirm the World Bank’s forecasts for US economic growth.

Capitalism is weak, but the patient is not having a relapse and going back into intensive care.

Wisconsin and Michigan, Gingrich and Romney, US capitalism mired in crisis

2012-01-18T07:20:00.000-08:00

Lets not let the Democrats coopt this. Build a party for working people

The Wall Street Journal reported that in the last two months there were 30,000 volunteers, working from 44 offices with 100 paid staff collecting the 1.3 million signatures to recall Governor Walker. This is a serious movement. Socialists have to be careful not to think we can put conditions on such a movement or not participate in it unless it adopts our demands. In my opinion we unreservedly support and get involved in the recall movement and this will then allow us to take on the Democrats and get a hearing for building a workers party. If we stand back and say we are only involved on our terms we will be standing very much alone. A defeat for the recall would throw back the movement overall and temporarily disappoint many workers. A victory on the other hand would raise the workers heads higher and encourage them to take on more fights.

Other movements are beginning to develop over further attacks on democratic rights. There is a move afoot on the part of the 1% to bring in what they are calling emergency management bureaucrats to take over cities and remove the city councils and mayors and implement in a dictatorial fashion major cuts, These people have the right to demolish all union contracts. This has been done in a number of Michigan cities. Lansing and Detroit are in the firing line. If these are taken over, half of the African American population of the state would be living under these dictatorships. These emergency management steps sound like where the troika are putting in so called technocrats to run Greece. The good thing is that yesterday there was a march of thousands to the Michigan state governors home, not the state capital, his home to protest. This is an escalation of the fight back.

We have argued that US capitalism is in a terrible crises on all fronts, economic, military and political. This is what we can see here. Politically the bourgeois do not have political parties which can successfully do their job for them. So they put in these emergency management dictators. This will further undermine the capitalists political system. Their political crisis is also seen in the chaos of the Republican nomination debates. They are tearing at each other like wild racist dogs. The robotic multi-millionaire Romney looks to be winning with the racists and sexists yapping at his heels. The Democrats are carrying out the same policies only with incremental differences.

US capitalism is moving more and more to put its own working class on rations. As it does so it faces the Occupy movement, the movements such as in Wisconsin, Ohio, Maine and Michigan, the movement on the docks in Longview on the west coast, the movement against foreclosures and the removal of its dictators abroad. The class struggle with all its confusions and immaturity is intensifying. It is our challenge to defend this movement from reformism, opportunism and ultra
leftism.
Sean

China. Urban population a majority. First time in history.

2012-01-18T06:39:00.000-08:00

In a major development for the working class struggle internationally it has just now been announced that China for the first time in its history has a majority of its population in urban areas. While some of these no doubt are middle class people the overwhelming majority are working class working in huge factories in this new workshop of the world. Tens of millions of these are women workers. This will add a whole new dimension to the strength and diversity of the proletariat.

Hundreds of thousands of struggles and skirmishes with the Chinese elite have been going on between the working class and the peasantry on the one side and this elite on the other. These struggles are certain to continue. In the process the Chinese working class will rise to its feet in a decisive fashion, building its own independent unions and its own mass party or parties. US imperialism, and all the imperialist powers think they have troubles today. It is nothing to what they will have on their plates when the greatest working class in history rises to its feet.

Sean.

Over one million signatures to recall Wisconsin's Walker

2012-01-17T20:55:00.000-08:00

by Sean
750,000 signatures were needed to start the recall of Wisconsin governor Walker and over 1.3 million have been collected. This is a staggering figure in a couple of months. Not only that. But this has been done by tens of thousands of workers on the ground, rank and file union workers in the main. Chicago television just now showed the most active workers carrying box after box of recall forms into the collecting area and being cheered on and greeted by thousands of workers. The people carrying the boxes were overwhelmingly in their 30's 40's and 50's. And they were just beaming with pleasure and excitement and the feeling of having fought well and won. It was such a pleasure to see these workers proud and triumphant. We (the left) have to draw conclusions from this. Not to say negative things about the recall, not to make all our focus on the Democrats are no good, not to say this is all right but what we need is a general strike. We on the left need to be totally supportive of this movement to recall Walker.

What do we say to this, to get an ear of this movement, to intervene in this movement? I believe that we have to unconditionally support and involve ourselves in the recall movement. Not just pay lip service to the recall effort. But unconditionally stand and verbally stand and work for Walker's recall. It will be a victory against the extreme right if he is recalled. It will be a defeat for the left and workers movement if he defeats the recall.
Having made clear our total support for the recall movement then we will get an echo for question of what should take his place. The Democrats are lining up just automatically presuming that it is one of them. We have to strongly stand against this. This is where we can get the ear of just about everybody involved but in particular the most advanced and thinking workers. This is where we raise the need to have no illusions in the Democrats but the need to build our own party a workers party. I feel that being too dismissive of the recall movement, of putting the main emphasis on the Democrats are just as bad, or putting our main emphasis on a general strike will not get the ear of either the most advanced and thinking workers or the mass of the workers. i am inclined to think that either of these approaches by the left would be ultra left and would make it very difficult for us to connect with and influence the mass movement. It is extremely positive that tens of thousands of Wisconsin workers, (the Wall Street Journal estimates that 30,000, were involved actively in collecting these signatures. This along with the 100,000 who marched against Walker last year is a huge movement. This movement has collected 1.3 million signatures to recall Walker who is the puppet of the Koch brothers and extreme right wing corporations. We have to make sure we are heard to to say that is is a very positive development.

AFL-CIO leadership's ad campaign: another waste of members' money.

2012-01-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

Richard Trumka and friend

In yet another miserable attempt to reverse the disastrous decline in the power and membership of organized Labor, the strategists atop the AFL-CIO are coming out with a major ad campaign aimed at boosting its image. The AFL-CIO spent $53 million of its members' hard earned dues money getting one of the 1 percent's candidates elected president in 2008 and will spend millions more this year. The Labor hierarchy will increase their efforts to distance themselves from the Occupy movement and co opt it when they can in order to support the other Wall Street Party.

The ads will be rolled out initially in three cities at a cost of $1.5 million the Wall Street reports . The ads will "avoid contentious images of strikes" says the Journal. Such images would offend the employers and would be a breach of the agreement the heads of organized Labor has with them that workers and employers have the same economic interests. This is cemented in the Team Concept philosophy that drives the concessionary policies of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win leadership that are so disastrous for workers and our material well being.

Elizabeth Shuler, the secretary treasurer of the AFL-CIO doesn't think that workers see Unions as "fresh and innovative" and sees the campaign as an effort "to reach out to all Americans whether they're in a union or not.". The AFL-CIO has paid a well known marketing firm which also does work for the likes of GM and and the Gates Foundation.

Although the AFL-CIO leadership denies it, it is pretty obvious that it is part of the elect Obama campaign that these allies of capital will ramp up as the election draws closer. Millions more of their members dues money will be spent on electing pro-business candidates including the president. Past betrayals like the public option in health care, EFCA or ending as opposed to expanding predatory wars as Obama has done, are all shoved under the rug never to be mentioned in a union hall. The Labor hierarchy wanted EFCA bad as it was a way they could get more members in to Unions therefore more revenue without actually doing any organizing. It amounted to asking the capitalist state to ensure capitalists stayed neutral in Union elections. The limit of their organizing for EFCA was:
"Ask your senators and representative whether they are cosponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act. If they are, thank them. If they are not, urge them to co-sponsor and vote for this vital bill. Call them and write them right away" The emphasis is the AFL-CIO's, its the limits of their militancy, urging your Senator (or their Senator) in bold means shouting at them I suppose.

The Labor hierarchy is in a bit of a crisis. There have been some serious attempts by the bosses' to eliminate their jobs entirely as heads of the Labor organizations which they see as employment agencies with them as the CEO's; a branch of "Labor Ready". In Wisconsin it took a major effort to reverse legislation that denied them the right to sit at the table with the employers and negotiate away their members' wages and benefits. The only two demands on the table during the huge and unprecedented uprising of workers in Madison were dues checkoff (revenue) and the right to sit at the table. Concessions for their members was not an issue.

This blatant class collaboration on the part of the heads of organized labor, which is a product of their world view, has brought organized Labor's numbers to the lowest level in years. Last year, only 7.1 million private sector workers were organized (6.9%) and 7.6 million in the public sector (36.2%) for a combined total of 11.9% compared to 20% in the early 1980's. Along with this decline, the figures showing popularity of Unions among the general public are pretty dismal. Last August, a Gallup poll found that 52% of Americans claimed they supported Unions with 42% disapproving of them. There are numerous reasons for this including the obscene salaries of the top officials and their disconnectedness from the average working person. And obviously the class warfare directed against workers and our organizations by the employers on a daily basis is another reason.

But workers are not stupid. Strike after strike that goes down in defeat is clearly not the fault of the rank and file. I was just on the American Licorice picket lines here in Union City CA and there was no demand on the table for wages or anything offensive. The trade Union leadership have nothing but a damage control strategy that results in defeat after defeat. It's hard to mobilize the potential power of Labor if you believe the boss is on your team and needs help. In every aspect of our lives, the message from the trade Union hierarchy through the huge full-time apparatus that enforces their concessionary policies on the ranks is that we concessions are the only option. Then they spend our money and resources on electing candidates of a Wall Street Party that most workers long ago abandoned. It is their refusal to fight for workers that brings these poll results and ecline in membership.

The trade Union leadership is so terrified of a victory, so terrified of the potential power within the ranks of the organization that their full-time staff are almost never pulled out of the ranks unless they have previously made it clear where their loyalty lies. In general, they are hired outsiders who have no base within the ranks from which to challenge the leadership and its class collaboration; open your mouth and your fired. We are seeing as the capitalist offensive heats up, further rightward shifts by the bureaucracy and an attempt to distance themselves further from the Occupy Movement. In Washington state we saw the disruption of an Occupy panel with ILWU speakers on the attempts to break that Union. The scabs in this case is another Union, the International Union of Operating Engineers.

I do not agree with those that see the present Unions as irrelevant. While I once thought that a mass movement would develop first within these traditional organizations I think that the present stifling hold the bureaucracy has on the apparatus and the driving in to the far recesses of our consciousness the great militant traditions of the US working class has made this less likely. In fact, recent events have shown this not to be the case. However, I am absolutely convinced that organized Labor will be convulsed by the rising opposition to the capitalist offensive led by the Occupy Movement as splits and fissures open up as a result of it. The ILWU situation in Longview Washington and the response of the state to the Occupy Wall Street movement is already doing that.

But there is one simple solution to the decline in Union membership and the loss of favor that Unions have in the eyes of many workers. Demand what we need not what the bosses' and their representatives in the Democratic Party says is "realistic" and mobilize and fight to win these demands. Abandon the Team Concept and attack capitalism as vehemently as, er, Newt Gingrich.

Murder by US/Israel axis.

2012-01-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

This appears today in the Guardian newspaper produced in England: "An investigation by Reuters last October noted how, under the Obama administration, US citizens accused of involvement in terrorism can now be "placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions … There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel … Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate."

So the US is murdering people, including its own citizens and this is not being told to the US people. THis is a secret terrorist panel. This "panel" which decides on who should be murdered can designate anybody it likes as a "terrorist" and order them to be killed. It can designate a strike leader, an Occupy activist, in the US or abroad, anybody and order them killed. Remember it was one such government panel that organized the murder of Martin Luther King.

Let us consider another aspect that follows from this. If this unelected panel can decide who should be murdered it must have somebody to do the murdering. That is the US government under Obama and through this panel are running death squads. Just imagine the reaction if the Iranian government was running death squads and murdering US scientists in the US.

The people of the middle east are not stupid they know what is going on. The US government on behalf of its big oil companies and to try and tighten its grip on Central Asia are running death squads and murdering whoever it wishes in the region. Talk about who is the top recruiter for organizations who hate the US government and US capitalism and its allies in the region. These policies of the US government are the top recruiters.

One after another of the top US capitalist politicians say they have no problem with this murder campaign. These representatives of US capitalism are so arrogant they think they can go to any country in the world and murder whom they wish with no blow back. These people endanger the lives of all Americans not to mention endanger the lives of people everywhere whom they wish to designate as terrorists. These people are murderers.

I heard one of these people yesterday justifying the urinating by US marines on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters. He said that was the way things went in war. US capitalism carries out water boarding on prisoners in its custody, it designates whom it wishes as terrorists and murders them, including US citizens. US capitalism is a barbaric regime. And it does all this in the name of the US people. The US working class must stand up and disown these criminal policies and reach out a hand of unity to the working class people of the world and campaign for the withdrawal of all US forces of occupation and and end to all wars.

Sean.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Democracy

2012-01-16T12:57:00.000-08:00

We are publishing these excerpts as the readers of this blog might find the views expressed interesting. The author is Israeli, Yacov Ben Efrat who is Secretary-General of Da'am – the Workers Party. This blog is not affiliated with the Da'am. You can read more about this author and events in Israel/Palestine at Challenge Magazine here.

*******************

Two movements impelled the revolution onwards: the one dubbed the “Facebook youth,” and the other consisting of the workers who had waged union struggles for three years prior to the uprising. These workers opposed the official state union and insisted on setting up alternative, democratic unions. The regime was afraid of independent organizing and suppressed the strikes with great force, using the secret police and the official union. Nonetheless, the workers’ movement gained strength until, on April 6, 2008, a workers’ intifada broke out in one of the state-owned textile factories in the Nile Delta, in the city of al-Mahala al-Kubra.

When we saw the workers tearing up posters of Mubarak, we understood that something serious was taking place, that the barrier of fear had been breached. We sent two of our members to Egypt to understand what was happening from close up. We said to ourselves, this is the moment we have been waiting for, something new is taking shape here. Until that moment, the political game in Egypt had been played on a narrow stage, sandwiched between pro-American Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Arab Left was captive to the view that any opposition to Mubarak would strengthen the Muslim movement. This false equation led the Egyptian Left to support Mubarak, the Palestinian Left to support Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and the Syrian Left to support Assad. A third option was nowhere to be seen. Yet suddenly, in Egypt, the workers rose up and came out against Mubarak and against the Muslim Brotherhood, demanding tangible solutions. The intellectuals called their movement “April 6,” after the workers’ intifada in al-Mahala al-Kubra, and thus the two movements flowed together.

However, after so many years of dictatorship, and after the disappointment in the Left, in Egypt as in Israel, the youth preferred to define themselves as “apolitical.” They thought the state could be managed from Tahrir Square through demonstrations. But they soon learned this wouldn’t work: we can’t declare ourselves to be the people, and we can’t force ourselves upon the people; the people must choose us. Then, when the Tahrir youth understood their electoral weakness, they did all they could to prevent elections. They knew that since they had no party, they couldn’t succeed in elections and they would lose to the old regime or the Muslim Brotherhood, who were both well organized and prepared.

The attempts to prevent elections and continue the demonstrations without proposing an alternative created a vacuum. This vacuum was filled by the army, whose status in the eyes of the public grew stronger. We did not agree with the Tahrir youth. We called on them to run in the elections. The elections, which were born out of the strength of the uprising, offered them – for the first time – the opportunity to organize and present themselves freely before the people. We also claimed that free elections – regardless of who won – are the revolution’s greatest achievement.

The disagreements over the elections divided the revolutionary factions in Egypt. The communist party and the Trotskyist organizations boycotted the elections. A new leftist bloc, “the 'Revolution Continues' Coalition”, with whom we share a common language, decided to field candidates. Then something amazing happened: the turnout, which had been less than 20% in Mubarak's days reached 62%. Thousands stood in line before the voting places. This fact cannot be erased. These people felt that the revolution had brought them tangible results and were not willing to give them up.

The problem is not the vote for the Muslim Brotherhood. For most of the electorate, there wasn’t an alternative. The Muslim Brotherhood is present in every tiny village and every dark alley, via the mosques. Even before the revolution the movement provided essential services and worked among the people. Without a functioning education system, and with illiteracy affecting almost half the population, it is not surprising that religion became a decisive factor in the lives of Egyptians. Thus, when the Muslim Brotherhood presented itself in the elections, the people decided to reward it and give it a chance. This is how the Egyptian elections must be understood.

It would be a mistake to conclude from the Brotherhood’s success that we are going back to the Sudanese or Afghan model. Radical Islam, which tried to enforce Sharia, has stopped being popular and its place is being taken by a more moderate model. The success of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as in Tunisia, is not due to a revival of Islamic fundamentalism, but the loathing felt towards the dictatorships. Even Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, who declared ten years ago that suicide bombing was a way to vanquish Zionism, acknowledges today that the democratic model must be adopted.

There are claims that the Muslim Brotherhood will suppress tourism, forbid the wearing of bikinis or the drinking of beer, and thus strangle the Egyptian economy. To these claims the Brotherhood replies: “All will be permitted! It won’t be the sheikh who decides what’s forbidden. We will act democratically.” Maybe the time has come for the Islamists to take over the regime and prove whether they are able to deliver the solutions for which the Egyptian and Tunisian peoples fought. Now, when they are no longer in opposition, the people won’t buy their ardent speeches on the Great Satan or the Zionist Entity as an alternative for a decent life. The people demands work, health, education, and housing – real answers to pressing issues. The Muslim Brotherhood does not have the answers, yet it doesn't want to remain exposed. That’s why it's busy establishing coalitions with bourgeois parties, such as the New Wafd, to share responsibility. Managing a state is not like managing a charitable organization, and funds from Qatar are not sufficient.

On the other hand, the Left will not be able to establish itself unless it begins working among the people. Disappointment with the Muslim Brotherhood will lead people to seek another option, and the Left’s task is to offer this. The Muslim Brotherhood needs to know that the revolutionaries will not disappear – and in fact it already understands as much. The leftist organizations have moral strength on their side because they led the revolution, and the Egyptian people gives them credit for this. They have the power to criticize any regime which tries to steal the revolution's achievements.
In short, the Egyptian revolution is not just dependent on what happens in Egypt or the Arab world.

The Arab states are poor; most of their financial resources are held by multinational companies and local tycoons. The Egyptian government must feed 80 million citizens, and it can’t rely on oil or coal – it has only the waters of the Nile, the Suez Canal and tourism. It can’t work miracles. In addition, what happens in Egypt depends on what happens in the western world and also on what happens here in Israel. The situation in Egypt is only a symptom of the collapsing global system. In Spain, for example, unemployment has reached the record figure of 21.3%. Young people who emigrated there from South America are going back home to seek work.

We too have responsibility – toward the Palestinians, toward those mired in poverty here, toward the Egyptians… Every change here has the potential to assist them, and vice versa. If we do nothing except moan about the Muslim Brotherhood, the Brotherhood will continue to rule. To get out of this crisis we must unite: either we all change the system, or we all drown. True, it’s not easy, and we have to contend with Bibi, who is no better than the Muslim Brotherhood, not to mention the Occupation. But last summer’s protests are a fact, and our presence here is a fact. We must act, and we can act. The fate of the Muslim Brotherhood is in the hands of the Egyptians and indirectly in our hands too. We all share the same fate.

Miss America Pageant: A hotbed of radicalism?

2012-01-16T12:26:00.000-08:00

There has been a crucial development here in the United States that could change the global political landscape and in the immediate term play a role in defeating US capitalism's efforts to break the ILWU up in Washington not to mention help the unemployed and get foreclosed homeowners back in their homes. Laura Kaeppeler, who was crowned Miss America Saturday night is from Wisconsin and she announced during the pageant that she would like Aaron Rogers, the Green Bay Packers quarterback to call her. For our readers overseas Green Bay is in Wisconsin and the American football team lost a chance at the Superbowl yesterday in its defeat at the hands of the New York Giants. Thank heavens for our courageous news media in the US for getting this story out to the public.

Apparently, Ms Kaeppler has a platform ( I guess the Miss USA event is like a political convention) which is to "support children of incarcerated parents" according to Yahoo News. Hopefully, Ms Kaeppler might even ask why the parents are incarcerated in the first place as well, after all, there are two million in prison in the US, more than any other country.

It is rumored that Ms Kaeppler wants to discuss with quarterback Rodgers the state of society and the ongoing predatory wars being run out of Washington as well as the situation in Longview where Wall Street and the Obama Administration are attempting to break a Union using the US military to do so. "We will mobilize the masses" Ms Kaeppler is reported to have said adding, "With Aaron's good looks and my leadership skills, workers will flock to our cause."

I always loathed that Miss America stuff and that pimp Donald Trump's involvement in it but it looks like the mood in society has finally begun to take effect in a way we would never have dreamed. Is there a new "Occupy" in our midst? "Occupy Miss America" Let's hope so.

New study: Corporations evade trillions in taxes in underdeveloped world

2012-01-16T09:49:00.000-08:00

This short report touches the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the plunder of society by the multinational corporations, in this case, the former colonial world. While they do the same in the industrial countries, the state structure in the former colonial world is weaker and unable to restrain the rapacious thirst for profits of the giant global corporations. It's a perfect example of the inability of the capitalist class in the former colonial world to develop in the wake of imperialism.

The capitalist class in the former colonial world is not only incapable of developing the infrastructure of society, roads, water supply, power, sewage etc., but politics and economics as well.

UA Local 393 resolution in support of ILWU Local 21 Longview

2012-01-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

U.A. Local 393 Resolution adopted by unanimous vote January 11, 2012

Condemn Use of U.S. Military to Escort Scab Grain Ship in Longview Washington

Whereas, EGT, a joint venture led by multinational grain giant Bunge, agreed to hire union Longshoremen when accepting millions in taxpayer funds to build a huge new grain exporting terminal at the Port of Longview WA, but once the terminal was built has tried to void its contract and refused to hire ILWU labor. With the use of brutal police and courts and 220 arrests in the 225 member ILWU Local 21, EGT has managed to get enough scab grain across picket lines into the new terminal that EGT appears poised to load a ship soon in violation of their agreement with the port; and

Whereas, a solidarity caravan of thousands of union members and community activists -- endorsed by ILWU Locals 10 and 21, the S.F. and Cowlitz County (Longview) labor councils and many others -- is being organized to support our brothers and sisters in Longview, for an emergency mass protest when requested to do so, to confront union-busting by Wall Street on the Waterfront; and

Whereas, according to Longshore & Shipping News, within a month, the empty grain ship will be escorted by armed U.S. Coast Guard vessels and helicopters, from the mouth of the Columbia River to the EGT facility. The Coast Guard is an integral part of the US Armed Forces, operating under the Department of Homeland Security (except when engaged in combat operations abroad, as it did in Iraq, when it operates under the Navy); and

Whereas, this is the first known use of the US military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years -- not since the Great 1970 Postal Strike when President Nixon called out the Army and National Guard in an (unsuccessful) attempt to break the strike. The use of the Armed Forces against labor unions is something you expect to see in a police state. This is part of a disturbing trend where the US military, acting as enforcers for the 1%, is poised to be used against our own people, as exemplified by the new law allowing the military to imprison US citizens indefinitely without trial; and

Whereas, the US military, which has been oppressing, bombing and threatening other nations [a military that's paid for with the workers' taxes] is now being used against us, against American working people and our unions. To quote ILWU international President Robert McEllrath: "ILWU's labor dispute with EGT is symbolic of what is wrong in the United States today. Corporations, no matter how harmful the conduct to society, enjoy full state and federal protection while workers and the middle class get treated as criminals for trying to protect their jobs and communities."

Therefore be it Resolved, that Plumbers and Fitters Local 393 in San Jose, California condemns in the strongest terms the announced use of US Armed Forces (Coast Guard) to provide an armed sea and air escort for the empty grain ship, which is due to call at the new EGT grain terminal, Port of Longview, Washington, to load scab grain for export to Asia. We condemn this use of the military as part of a union-busting campaign to lower the cost of labor on the waterfront and destroy the union;

And be it further Resolved, that Plumbers and Fitters Local 393 join with allies in other cities on the West Coast to participate in any press conferences and demonstrations that are organized to denounce this use of the military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of Wall Street on the Waterfront;

And be it finally Resolved, that Plumbers and Fitters Local 393 circulate this resolution to U.A. Locals on the West Coast, to the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, the California Labor Federation, as well as state labor bodies in Oregon and Washington, for concurrence and action, and urge labor leaders including Richard Trumka and Mary Kay Henry to take a strong stand against this brazen assault on our labor rights and civil liberties.

Occupy Oakland resolution to support ILWU Local 21 Longview

2012-01-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

Passed by Occupy Oakland GA 1.15.12 (Also passed by Occupy Portland and Occupy Longview)

Resolution of Occupies Longview, Portland, and Oakland: A Call to InterOccupy Action

WHEREAS, Longshore workers' jurisdiction is under an unprecedented attack; and,

WHEREAS, West Coast dockworkers fought and died to establish that jurisdiction; and,

WHEREAS, Longshore workers have always been at the forefront in the struggle for social justice and better working conditions for all; and,

WHEREAS, Longshore workers have inspired working people across North America and around the world; and,

WHEREAS, EGT is engaged in a race-to-the-bottom that works to destroy a long history of good family wage jobs throughout the region and around the world; and,

WHEREAS, it is also known that Bunge, Ltd., a multinational conglomerate and majority shareholder of EGT, with direct ties to Wall Street, has used its power in the grain trade to manipulate global grain prices, to evade taxes in Argentina, to terrorize the people of the Amazon through deforestation, to force Brazilian workers into near slave conditions while their indigenous populations are starved out over soybean pricing, and to violate the Clean Air Act, among other offenses; and,

WHEREAS, Occupies Longview, Portland, and Oakland recognize the blatant union-busting tactics of EGT and its parent company Bunge, as well as its attack on the Longshore workers, who are powerful allies for workers around the world; and,

WHEREAS, according to Longshore workers the empty grain ship will be escorted by armed U.S. Coast Guard vessels and helicopters to the Port of Longview, Washington on the Columbia River; and,

WHEREAS, this is the first known use of the U.S. military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years; and,

WHEREAS, the U.S. Armed Forces, which have been oppressing other nations for the interests of the 1%, is now being used against the same workers whose tax money sponsors those forces; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that Occupies Longview, Portland, and Oakland call on EGT to immediately cease its attacks on our communities, our food supply and the jurisdiction of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union; and be it further

RESOLVED, that Occupies Longview, Portland, and Oakland call on all Occupy General Assemblies, the working class, and the “99%” everywhere to come to the aid of Longshore workers, and to support them in any way possible in their fight against the EGT and Bunge; and be it further

RESOLVED, that Occupies Longview, Portland, and Oakland request that anyone willing to participate in a community blockade of the first EGT grain ship in Longview, Washington, do so when alerted that the ship will arrive; and be it further

RESOLVED, that all General Assemblies, any group of their members, as well as workers around the world who cannot physically join the community blockade in Longview, Washington, mobilize in solidarity through direct action in their communities—especially those located in the Midwest, the Delta, Occupies along the Mississippi River, and all other international locations where Bunge's growth and operations are located, and be it further

RESOLVED, that General Assemblies across the country and the mobilized 99% across the globe condemn any state or private-sponsored efforts to arrest direct action against EGT, or workers participating in those actions; and be it further

RESOLVED, that General Assemblies challenge any charges brought against workers or comrades struggling for economic, social, and envrionmental justice; and finally be it

RESOLVED, that Occupies Longview, Portland, and Oakland forward this resolution to all Occupy General Assemblies, the working people of the 99% in their communities, and comrades in the Occupy Movement around the world.

In solidarity,

Occupy Longview, Occupy Portland, and Occupy Oakland

Huge protests against cuts in Romania as global resistance to capitalist crisis spreads

2012-01-15T12:24:00.000-08:00

Will the euro survive in 2012?

2012-01-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

by michael roberts

The decision of the American credit rating agency, S&P, to downgrade the bonds of eight Eurozone governments has reopened the euro crisis. Credit ratings agencies are used by bond investors (banks, pension funds, insurance companies and hedge funds) to tell them what is the risk on a particular bond that borrower will default on repayment of the money invested. If a credit agency gives a bond its top rate of 'Triple-A', it regards that bond as having a negligible risk. So investors will pay the highest price for it and be willing to accept a low rate of interest as income. So when a bond is downgraded, the borrower will have to pay more interest on the bond and the price of the bond is likely to fall.

Usually, the bonds of governments in the major capitalist economies are regarded as ultra-safe and get a triple A rating. But now French government bonds have been downgraded to a lower level than Triple A and Italian and Spanish bonds to one grade above what is called 'junk', a level which means you should not buy them if you are sane. Only Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and tiny Luxembourg are now Triple-A.

The S&P is saying that it does not think the Eurozone governments' current policies of fiscal austerity are working to get the level of government debt down. The S&P says that just imposing public spending cuts and raising taxes is not enough. Indeed, it is making things worse, because it is contributing to driving many Eurozone economies into a new recession. Indeed, if we look at the forecasts for economic growth in 2012 in the region, it makes dismal reading. Greece is declining at a 7% rate: Italy and Spain are contracting at least at a 1% rate; while Portugal is falling faster. Even Ireland of the three 'bailout states', which has been held up a success model for fiscal austerity policies, is being dragged down by the rest of region. As a result, budget deficit targets set by the IMF and by governments are not being met in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. And without economic growth, the denominator in the debt to GDP ratio will just make the task of reducing public sector debt more difficult. More fiscal austerity causes economic recession. Economic recession raises debt levels. It's a Catch 22 situation.

What is the S&P's answer?: more policies to encourage economic growth. And what are they? According to the S&P, the IMF, the EU and the bankers who are now in the political leadership of government in Greece and Italy (see my post, Italy and Greece, rule by the bankers, 10 November 2011); and the right-wing leaders in Portugal, Spain and Ireland, it is 'liberalisation' of the economy to improve 'competitiveness'. By that, they mean ending workers and trade union rights to protect jobs; ending 'restrictive practices' in various professions that apparently stop people getting into a sector; deregulation of 'red tape' and the privatisation of the remaining public sector assets to boost profits. In other words, it is more of the same 'neo-liberal' policies that have been put in play by successive governments across the major economies for the last 30 years and got these economies into this mess in the first place! The IMF, the S&P, various right-wing and social democratic governments and all the rest of the mainstream parrot on that you can't solve the debt problem by taking on more debt. But they don't say also that you can't solve the problem of the lack of economic growth by more of the same neo-liberal policies that contributed to the Great Recession in 2008-9. Moreover, if everybody is trying to raise their competitiveness and sell more exports, then nobody gets an edge!

So what is going to happen? Well, the downgrading of the bonds also means the downgrading of the bonds of the EU's emergency fund, the EFSF. That means it won't have enough money to fund anything more than the bailouts it is already committed to for Ireland, Portugal and Greece (twice). But it didn't have enough money guaranteed by the likes of 'safe' Germany and France anyway. The new permanent funding mechanism, the ESM, is due to take over in the summer, but that's six months away at least and even then it too won't have enough money.

So either the likes of Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain will have to convince bond investors that they can finance what they need to borrow over the next year, or credit will dry up and the cost of borrowing will become prohibitive. It is increasingly becoming clear that Greece cannot do this. Its public debt to GDP level is already 160%. So bad is this that the EU and the IMF agreed that private sector bond investors (mainly European banks and hedge funds) would have to accept a 50% 'haircut' on their holdings of Greek debt to get that debt level down. The banks and hedge funds have been very reluctant to do this without huge 'sweeteners' in cash payouts and new Greek bonds guaranteed by the EFSF with a high rate of interest.

Even with a deal on this, the Greek public sector debt would still be at 120% of GDP in 2020, assuming that the Greek people is prepared to put up with crippling cuts in their living standards for the rest of the decade. Given that most historical studies show that debt levels over 90% of GDP are not sustainable without default or an economic slump, Greece's debt maths just don't add up, even after the sacrifices of the people. Default on its debt is the only way out for Greece, something I have advocated in this blog on many occasions. But it won't be a default negotiated by a government looking to defend the living standards of the majority, but a 'disorderly default' that pushes Greek capitalism into a pit. If Greece goes down, the focus will turn to Portugal and then Italy and Spain. Bond investors will fear that they too will default and the cost of credit will rocket, pushing these economies further downwards.

Is there any way out of this? Well, there is one entity that can provide the necessary funding to pick up the bonds of these distressed Eurozone governments: the European Central Bank (ECB). As a central bank, the ECB can print as much money as it needs to fund anything it wants. However, under the statutes of the ECB, it is not allowed to print money to fund government debt. That's because there was a fear such 'monetisation' of government debt would eventually lead to raging inflation. The Germans are adamantly against monetisation, partly because it was the policy of Hitler in the 1930s and it caused hyperinflation in the 1920s. Indeed, such monetisation can only meet the debt commitments of governments by cutting the real value of that credit for the investors. It is in effect another haircut on the value of the debt.

So the ECB has not acted. Instead it has decided to provide unlimited funds to Europe's banks through unprecedented three-year loans on the grounds that it must support the stability of the financial sector. And Eurozone banks are really squeezed of liquidity because no good bank wants to lend to a bad one. The ECB loans will help keep the banks afloat but the banks won't use this 'free cash' to buy government bonds, especially if the likes of the S&P now considers them highly risky. Instead the banks are cutting back on their lending both to governments and industry in order to make their balance sheets look better to regulators and shareholders.

In the meantime, the ECB plans to sit on its hands and expect that Eurozone governments can resolve the crisis by just imposing their policies of fiscal austerity. That is why it welcomed the decision of last December's EU summit to sign up to a new treaty that committed governments to balance their budgets and reduce their debt levels under automatic threat of penalties and court action. Now the ECB is worried that the final treaty terms, due to be agreed at the next EU summit at the end of this month, have been so watered down as to be useless in that task.

So we have an impasse. The ECB will not provide funds to bail out governments; and governments are refusing to introduce draconian fiscal penalties that might convince markets that the debt problem can be solved. That's why the S&P has acted as it has. If this impasse continues and European economies go deeper into recession, their fiscal targets won't be met and the risk of default will reach tipping point. It is possible that the Eurozone leaders can engineer an 'orderly' default by Greece, perhaps with that country leaving the euro and yet convince markets that nobody else will follow. But that will require more official funding. If not, then Greece will default and perhaps be followed by others, leading to chaos and the eventual establishment of a euro just based on the stronger northern European economies.

There is an alternative to this. Elections in Greece are planned for April. If the Greek people elected a government dedicated to negotiating a writing off of its debt with the bankers and hedge funds; and launched a programme for growth and jobs based on public sector investment, funded by proper taxation of the rich and public ownership of the major profitable industries, then there would be a possibility of turning things round in Greece. Such a government could campaign for similar pan-European policies for growth aimed at cutting unilaterally the debt to the bankers and investing in public programmes for jobs and growth, rather than adopting neo-liberal measures of privatisation and deregulation.

According to recent polls, 56% of Greeks who were asked want radical change and 33% want a revolution. There is a body of support for an alternative policy. However, the leaders of the major parties in Greece are following the dictates of Greece's banker prime minister and the demands of the dreaded troika of the EU Commission, the IMF and the ECB. That leads to a generation of misery and probable exit from the Eurozone. The choice is stark.

Who are the hoodlums in Nigeria?

2012-01-15T11:02:00.000-08:00

By Baba Aye

In the past few days, the Federal and state governments have tried to find a straw man to bear the responsibility for the turbulence they stirred, in ways and manners to break the collective of citizens rising against the system they represent and its insensitive policies such as “deregulation” & “removal of fuel subsidy”. The straw man’s other name is “vagabond”. Several top functionaries of the Federal Government have cried themselves hoarse that the streets have been seized by hoodlums.

Mohammed Bello Adoke, the Attorney-General, has threatened to bring the full force of the law to bear on them for causing breakdown of law and order. Anyim Pius Anyim, Secretary to the Government of the Federation went a step further, demanding that organised labour condemns these “vandals”. In a number of states, including Kano, Kaduna, Edo & Oyo states, curfews ranging from dusk to dawn to 24 hours have been declared ostensibly to forestall further violence by these same hoodlums.

Who are these hoodlums and how can they be explained as anything but cancerous outgrowths of otherwise peaceful processes of protest, that we are made to believe they are? Are they Martians or simply deranged? Is it possible to make any sense of their activities? Are they some different species from other more peaceful demonstrators?

It is important in my view to point out quite clearly that, first and foremost, they are citizens and no less so than the rulers of this country. They are the wretched of the earth who have lost faith in the system and hold only a thin line of faith in themselves. They are not a species particular to the unfolding revolutionary situation in Nigeria. No revolution has or can occur, in modern urban society without these sans culottes or if you like in the Nigerian parlance, area boys, as –in their own way- players. Their own way, no doubt could come with destruction. Revolutions though are by nature, both destructive and creative.

Is this to glorify destruction, vandalism, or hooliganism? Definitely not! It is rather to face the reality of the whirlwind that the ruling class-sown wind harvests and how in real life, this harvest plays itself out. Is this also to join in seeing these “hooligans” as being merely destructive, thieves and extortionists? Again, definitely not! They are human beings like the most genteel of us and often bear much more noble spirits than many in high places. I fought with a number by my side, when coordinating Campaign for Democracy actions at Mushin during the heady days of revolt that marked the early days of the June 12 revolution. Many of these “area boys” won my highest respect, not only as fighters, but as well with their sincerity and singular sense of commitment to the tasks at hand, which with many of the more gentlemen fighters often come with that veneer of posturing and make-belief.

I watched Comrade Peter Esele, President of the Trade Union Congress on TV telling the SGF to his face that even when protesters lost their phones during the rally with 100,000 citizens at Area 1 roundabout on the General Strike’s day 3, these were brought to designated points and returned to the owners. I could confirm even more than this personally. As I hastily jumped over a gutter to go and control a break away group of “hooligans”, my phone fell out of the pocket I’d tucked it in & I was not aware. It was someone who looked every inch of what our genteel SGF would have called a “hooligan” who picked it and shouted “oga, come take your phone, e don fall”. Many a “hooligan” might be hungry and disillusioned, but that does not necessarily turn such citizens into a thieves.

“But some of them just like “feral” rioters in the UK barely five months ago, looted and vandalised property in some of the states of the federation”, some could argue. What of the thirty cars burnt in Kano, according to the police? These luxurious items confronted the “hooligans” and not the other way round. These inanimate objects confronted living souls with how beautiful life could be for an infinitesimal few, and just how they, like the bulk of the 99%, could never taste of such beauty. In property and ostentatious wealth they saw theft and not wrongly too. These lumpen wretched of the earth that the “hooligans” are, are as much products as they are victims of the degenerate capitalist system with its sickening consumerism which they are mere window shoppers of, when all is calm and quiet. They hate the rich and his/her wealth because they hate their own poverty and disillusionment.

It is however instructive that the different governments at both the federal and state levels that have condemned elements of hooliganism in the course of the General Strike and Mass Protests, or even taken actions such as declaring curfews, have not limited their grouse to the actions of vagabonds. They have quite slyly with the states and much more explicitly with the Federal Government tried their utmost to tie such side events, so to speak, to the main show which is people’s power on the streets and in the workplaces.

The SGF and ministers who have condemned the real and perceived vagabondage on the sidelines of the struggle thus far have equally demanded that NLC & TUC call off the strike, in the same breath. Their claim has always been the same thing; the atmosphere of General Strikes provides vintage opportunity for vagabonds to roam the land. Organised labour is thus to call off the strike so that such violence and hooliganism stops and then like gentlemen, its executives would negotiate with government on the fuel price hike.

In the case of the states governments, they equally in every case did try to get the strike called off, to which the NLC State Councils’ officers made it clear that it is a national action which they have to stand by. The next best thing which they insisted on thus, was for the workers to call off mass protests on the streets. Considering the fact that live ammunition had been used to quell “hooliganism”, resulting in deaths, in a number of states made it commonsensical for the labour leaders to accept this option in their bid to save the blood of more Nigerians from being senselessly spilled.

There are however critical fault lines in the governments’ argumentations. First, the Federal Government and not organised labour created the atmosphere of crisis in the country, very much like those whom the gods want to kill and first run mad. And it did this, not just with its eyes wide open, but with the utmost sense of contempt for the views of the people and without the slightest shred of honour or dignity that one would expect even from vagabonds. A government that gave the impression that it would still pursue the path of dialogue and consultation, assuring the nation that any change in price would not be until April and a few days later with the sneakiness of a thief jacked up fuel pump price is one devoid of shame. Beyond even shame, the National Assembly had extended the 2011 budget implementation to March. It thus acted illegally, as the “removal of fuel subsidy” was built into the 2012 budget which as of now has not yet become operational.

How would such a government expect the citizenry to have anything close to trust in it when it slyly says “call off the strike and we will then negotiate”? Negotiate what? Nigerians, including “hooligans” on the streets are nobody’s fools, with or without shoes.

Second, it is instructive that no single case of “hooliganism” took place during the processions and rallies organised by labour and its allies in the course of the last few days. The house of labour is very much like that of the great man which Chinua Achebe wrote about. It has room for all and sundry persons. The lumpen wretched of the earth are no less welcome than the entertainment celebrities and politicians who have graced our podiums. But within the chaos of the birth pangs of rebirth, people’s order is maintained with mutual respect. In all the NLC & TUC state councils, the strike committees have arrangements and persons responsible for crowd control. That much however can hardly be said for the police. Why should bullets be used on protesters, even if they be hooligans? Are there no means of crowd control that could be used in those fringe cases of riotous protests by some citizens in the penumbra of organised labour’s mass actions?

Third, the FGN misses the point totally if it thinks calling off the strike, without heeding the rather simple demand of reverting the pump price of petrol to N65, would like a magic wand cause riotous protests to disappear from the streets. Indeed, if the memories of our self-declared rulers were not as short as not to remember the events of last week, they would have recalled the fact that protests were much more riotous before labour stepped into the fray, to give organised leadership to the anger seeping through every single pore of the land. And even at that, government must also be reminded that the first of the eighteen martyrs that have fallen in these past dozen days of 2012 were killed in the course of peaceful demonstrations last week in Ilorin and Kano.

The bottom line is that while despite its inevitability “hooliganism” must be eschewed by the movement of protesters as it has done –being at best a side show of sorts- the leading hooligans in this country are not on the streets, they are far from being the wretched of the earth who have been naught. They are to be found in the cosy interiors of government houses and flashy cars. They are those who point one accusing finger while three and a thumb rightly point back at them. They are VIPs, those whom Fela aptly described as vagabonds in power. They are the lumpen capitalists, whom the Yoruba would consider as omo ale a ko ti ‘le ta (bastards who sell off the common patrimony), in the service of imperialism and their wanton gluttony, for which they would steal the poor blind to subsidize their blatant thievery.

The world can't afford to keep wasting soil

2012-01-14T13:19:00.000-08:00

This is a good article from by Stan Cox reprinted from Al Jazeeera, although the author uses the term "western" or "industrial" farming to describe the cause of the problem. It is Capitalist farming that is the problem. Bangladesh's trees are 90% gone, same with Scotland and Europe with the rise of capitalism. The author makes good suggestions except to mention that capitalism, a free market, for profit economy, cannot implement the solutions. I have just finished Too Many People and halfway through Ecology and Socialism by Ian Angus and Chris Williams respectively, they are worth checking out. This article also confirms that too many people are not the cause of this degradation but how social production is organized.

Salina, Kansas Late last year, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) released a hair-raising report on the state of the world's soil and water resources. The bottomline: 25per cent of the world's food-producing soils are highly degraded or arerapidly being degraded. Add to that other soils which they say are degrading "moderately", and the area under threat amounts to one-third of the Earth's endowment of cropland.

Loss of productive soil, FAO reported, is most severe in the Himalayan and Andean regions; semi-arid tropical regions of Africa and India; rice-growing lands of Southeast Asia and areas of intensive and industrialised farming in Western Europe, North America, eastern China, India, Brazil and New Zealand.

According to the most recent Global Land Degradation Assessment, 18 countries - nine of them in sub-Saharan Africa and four in Southeast Asia - now see more than half of their entire land area going downhill rapidly. Countries whose land is in the worst trouble are often, but not always, countries where large numbers of people live in poverty. In just 10 countries - India, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Thailand, Mexico, Philippines, Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam and Burma - more than 530 million people are feeling the impact of land degradation directly. Worldwide, 1.5bn people are feeling it.

We humans now grow two-and-a-half to three times as much food as we did in 1960 while cultivating only 12 per cent more land area. It's an extraordinary achievement, but the cost has been high. Tilling, fertilising and irrigating year after year damages the soil's native structure, and the water that runs off into streams or percolates into groundwater can be laced with dangerous quantities of nitrates, pesticides or other pollutants.

The fate of the Earth's agricultural lands is closely tied to the fate of its waters. Expansion of irrigation has been the biggest factor in increasing food production over the past half-century, and improving irrigation will be a key to boosting yields between now and 2050. But irrigation can deplete local water resources and disrupt the soil's chemical balance. Furthermore, flooding of reservoirs has already driven tens of millions of people off of perfectly good forest and cropland around the world.

Back to traditional methods
While declining soil health is a global problem, many of the soils in critical condition are in the global South. Tropical soils are especially vulnerable, and when they're farmed, all kinds of problems can be expected: loss of essential nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and micronutrients; washing away of already-thin topsoil; carbon depletion; crippling of the soil's ability to store water; buildup of salts and aluminum toxicity; acidification and perhaps most importantly, destruction of the many species of microorganisms needed for a robust soil ecosystem.
When that has happened, farmers have still managed to produce harvests by pouring on synthetic fertilisers (if they can afford them.) Instead of restoring the soil, that renders it a more-or-less inert growth medium.

The cost of producing sufficient food between now and 2050, while retaining soil's productive capacity on the global scale, was estimated by FAO at US $1tn for irrigation improvements plus $160bn for soil conservation. Governments of the global North could easily pay for that; such sums are not huge at all when viewed alongside the North's expenditures on, say, armaments or corporate bailouts. But the cheque's decidedly not in the mail.

And many farmers are not waiting to see that cheque before pushing back against erosion and loss of fertility. Using resources at hand, they've built terraces; planted rows of trees and shrubs; built water-breaks with crop residues or brush; interplanted nitrogen-fixing legume crops with cereals, root crops or perennial forage grasses; returned manure or nitrogen-rich leaves and stems to the soil and built field-scale rainwater-harvesting systems.

Researchers who've been working for years to improve food production on tropical soils say it will take more than cash to reverse the damage, and that what farm communities lack in the form of money and labour power they can make up for with "social capital" - their capacity to act collectively to protect their common life-support system, the soil.

Given sufficient social capital, communities have taken on even more ambitious soil-conserving projects that bring long-lived, deep-rooted trees and shrubs into agricultural plots - a group of techniques known as agroforestry. Examples can be seen on every continent.

Soil-friendly systems
Farmers are interplanting rows of fodder-producing trees and food crops in Africa's Sahel region; incorporating nitrogen-fixing leguminous trees into crop and grazing lands in Asia and Latin America; popularising a broad array of agroecological techniques through the "campesino-to-campesino" method in Nicaragua and Cuba and establishing "home garden" plots in South Asia that contain a wide diversity of food-producing trees along with traditional crops. (In Bangladesh, where 90 per cent of natural forest cover has been stripped away, more than 20 million home gardens are bringing at least some trees back to the landscape.)

Modern, industrialised farming methods do not allow the soil to naturally replenish in between harvests [GALLO/GETTY]

Still, such practices will have to proliferate rapidly if they are to make a difference in holding back soil degradation at the global scale. And room for expansion is limited; farmers are often reluctant to have trees taking up space on the often small plots of land where they must grow all of their staple crops.
And no matter how soil-friendly the cropping system, each year's harvest pulls essential nutrients off the land. Even back in the nineteenth century, it was becoming clear that the way food systems worked - harvesting food grains rich in essential elements, carting them away to villages and cities and then failing to return human and animal wastes to the land - could not be sustained indefinitely. The soil would gradually be depleted of nutrients, and crop yields would drop.

Justus von Liebeg, who first figured out the chemistry of soil fertility, referred to such removal of nutrients through crop harvest as "robbery". Karl Marx viewed it as a stark example of the "metabolic rift" between humans and nature that had come with industrialisation and urbanisation.

One effort to heal that rift is being carried out in Haiti, home to some of the most badly deforested and degraded soils on Earth. An organisation known as SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods) is building networks that connect growing numbers of community toilets (ones that segregate liquid and solid wastes) with eco-sanitary composting facilities and fertiliser production and distribution. SOIL now operates the largest waste-treatment operation of any kind in Haiti while helping restore the country's ravaged farmland and increase food production.

Achieving ecological strength
Still, a big hindrance to creating agricultural systems that maintain or improve soil health is humanity's dependence on weak-rooted annual plants for most of our food. Given that dependence, the strategies of nutrient recycling, agroforestry and agroecology will not be sufficient. Therefore, groups of plant breeders in several countries are working to develop soil-conserving perennial cereal and grain-legume crops.

"Ecological benefits... were lost when natural landscapes were converted into croplands growing chiefly annual monocultures."

That work will take time, so "semi-perennial" systems are being pursued as interim measures. For example, a wide array of bean and pea species are typically treated as single-season crops in the tropics, but they can also be maintained for several years as nitrogen-fixing perennial shrubs or vines. In trials on hundreds of farms across the nation of Malawi over the past dozen years, a shrubby edible legume called pigeon pea and a viny one, velvet bean, have been intercropped with maize as multi-year semi-perennials. The intercropped plots were superior in maintaining soil fertility and stabilising food production while providing a combination of high-energy maize and high-protein legume grain.

Intercropping, tree-planting, managing water and restoring nutrients to the land are all efforts to recover ecological benefits that were lost when natural landscapes (mostly mixtures of perennial species) were converted into croplands growing chiefly annual monocultures. But it's not just this component or that characteristic of a natural ecosystem that makes it erosion-proof, watertight and frugal with nutrients. Natural ecosystems came to be that way over evolutionary time thanks to vast networks of interdependent microbes, plants, animals and mineral substances.

Simply adjusting the way soils are farmed can slow soil loss, but it cannot achieve that kind of ecological strength - just as installation of new, efficient air-conditioning in a thousand-square-metre mansion may save some energy, but can't make the house "green". If we are to have a global soil base that can sustain human civilisation over the long term, we will have to create entirely new ways of farming that emulate natural ecosystems to achieve their degree of resilience.

A 'global priority'
That transformation will become especially important as the world's farming communities, especially those in the tropics, face the unpredictable risks that will come with greenhouse warming. But in tackling climate disruption, it will also be essential not to conflate those looming risks with agriculture's widely promoted potential for burying carbon safely in the soil.

In particular, we must not take the quest for soil-conserving food production and reduce it to a matter of "carbon farming" to produce emissions credits. Certainly, the practices for curbing soil degradation outlined above can, to varying degrees, keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But the world needs to spend whatever is required to get all of those measures in place anyway, for the sake of the landscapes where the food is grown and the communities who grow it. Soil-saving by some should not provide others with a licence to pollute.

To value everything in terms of carbon and treat the myriad benefits of ecologically sound agriculture as mere byproducts of climate protection is to invite all kinds of threats to soil and food. Perhaps the most menacing threats are those posed by connecting food and soil more tightly to global capital markets through carbon-trading schemes and tying them more closely to volatile energy markets by putting already fragile soils to work growing biofuels.

In countries with ample land, it should be possible for farmers to produce just enough biofuel to fill the needs of agriculture, and it makes thoroughly good sense to have farming become energy self-sufficient in that way. But to grow energy crops or strip plant residues from the soil in order to fill the fuel tanks of the world's much larger non-farm transport systems would impose an impossible burden. There is not enough good soil on the whole planet to satisfy humanity's vast and growing car-and-cargo cult.

As fossil fuels become more deeply depleted and (perhaps) their use becomes more restricted, we will become more and more dependent once again on soil, water and sunshine for our lives and livelihoods. And we should be ready for the more modest way of life they are able to provide.
We still have the means and the ability to ensure that as the decades pass, there will still be enough good soils and good farmers to keep civilisation going. But if that's to happen, healthy soils and intact ecosystems must be shifted into the top tier of global priorities, and fast.

Stan Cox is research coordinator at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, USA. His most recent book is Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World

UK Labor Party leaders: support austerity, save capitalism

2012-01-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

The British Labour Party has given us renewed proof that reformism inexorably leads to betrayal of the interests of the working class. Starting from the acceptance of the capitalist system, the Labour leadership has now agreed not to reverse the austerity cuts of the ConDem government coalition. Facing "reality", the leaders hope to restore "people's trust" in theír party by moving its policies closer to those of the government. Union leaders naturally have already begun to protest loudly at this perspective, feeling the pressure from below already starting to build against the cuts in services. A group of more militant unions has already disaffiliated from the Labour Party. The crucial question is whether the rightward swing of the leadership will push more unions to follow the course of separating themselves from the LP or whether the voice of the working class base can find expression inside regional and also the national Labour Party.

Walter Held

US/Israel assassinations in Iran.

2012-01-14T06:28:00.000-08:00

We print below an article from the Irish Times. Five Iranian nuclear scientists have now been assassinated in the last 2 years. Nobody with any iota of sense can deny that this is the work of the US/Israel axis. We are already at a low level war against Iran.

We do not support in any way the vicious regime in Iran. But we wish to point out that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, the US hundreds of nuclear weapons and only the US has used nuclear weapons. The position of the US/Israel axis is that the only regimes that should have nuclear weapons is themselves and their trusted friends. On top of this we should remember that the US organized the coup against the Iranian Mossadeq regime in 1953 because it was going to keep more of that country's oil for its own people. Now we have the video of the US troops urinating on Afghanistan bodies,

These assassinations and other events I mention above will be the source of huge numbers of new fighters against the US worldwide and an increase in the hatred of the US worldwide. Rather than making the US safer they are making it more insecure. When the Irish Republican Army was a small group in Ireland in 1971 the British Army and the Unionist state brought in internment without trial. That is they just arrested whoever they wished and jailed them. Then in 1972 the British state shot and killed 13 people who were taking part in a peaceful civil rights parade. The result was that after each event so many people rushed to join the IRA that this organization had to close its doors because it could not take them all in. These assassinations and other vicious attacks by the US/Israel axis will have similar affects.

The talking heads of the censored US mass capitalist media of all strains are twisting themselves in knots to avoid admitting that the US/Israel axis are behind this campaign of assassinations. Imagine if Iran was assassinating US nuclear scientists. This US policy of assassination and repression and brutalization in the MIddle East and Central Asia will further fill the ranks of the militant Islamic forces and put the lives and security of the US people and all people more insecure.

Sean.

Here's the piece from the Irish Times

Iranian state television said today Tehran had evidence Washington was behind the latest assassination of one of its nuclear scientists. In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb was attached to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan's car during the Wednesday morning rush-hour in the capital. His driver was also killed.

The United States has denied involvement in the killing and condemned it. Israel has declined to comment. "We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA," the Iranian foreign ministry said in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, state TV reported.

"The documents clearly show that this terrorist act was carried out with the direct involvement of CIA-linked agents. "The Swiss Embassy has represented US interests in Iran since Tehran and Washington cut diplomatic ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

State TV said a "letter of condemnation" had also been sent to the British government, saying the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists had "started exactly after the British official John Sawers declared the beginning of intelligence operations against Iran".

In 2010, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service Sawers said one of the agency's roles was to investigate efforts by states to build nuclear weapons in violation of their international legal obligations and identify ways to slow down their access to vital materials and technology. Tehran has urged the UN Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the latest killing, which Tehran says is aimed at undermining its nuclear work, which the West and Israel say is aimed at building bombs. Tehran says its nuclear programme is purely civilian.

Tension has mounted between Iran and the West as the United States and European Union prepare measures aimed at imposing sanctions on the Iran's oil exports, its economic lifeblood.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute.

Politicians of the 1% changing laws to crush Occupy Movement: It's just the beginning

2012-01-13T19:45:00.000-08:00

Oakland Docks: hoonored to have been there

It's interesting the way the 1% mass media reports things; the spin if you like. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the one percent's political leaders want to "minimize violence at high profile events' this year after "violent protests erupted in cities across the globe" in 2011.

Throwing people out of their homes (shelter) or jobs (means of subsistence); having 2 million people in the nation's prisons and others in Guantanamo (ever wondered why the US has a base in Cuba?) without a trial or being accused of anything for almost a decade is not violence in the extreme?

The violence at protests is brought about by the state imposing austerity measures on working people and the people resisting. The way the unelected rulers of society want to minimize violence is not by allocating the collective wealth of society in a different way like providing a secure, safe and productive existence for people as opposed to making society and the world safe for profit making. No, they want to increase punitive laws against free speech and protests so that they can justify violence on their part when you break their laws. This is a society of laws after all.

In Chicago Obama's friend Mayor Rahm Emanuel is proposing limited permits for protests as well as the hours of the day that protests are allowed at all and increasing fines for violating these laws. The fine for violating parade rules will go from $50 to $1000. To deal with the increase in criminals this will cause, the chief of police will be allowed to "deputize" cops form other agencies. They'll be "deputizing" security guards as well, the new Pinkertons.

"People will have their First Amendment rights protected and the law will be enforced. Those two aren't in conflict" says Rahm. The First Amendment is important but there is a catch. It's OK to say what you think but you must not act on it other than through channels that the 1% know are ineffective. It's like Rand Paul's support of workers' right to organize. We can get together but we shouldn't be allowed to force business to do anything that it finds objectionable.

The Democratic National Convention is taking place in Charlotte NC in September and the one percent's politicians there will be banning anything that might be considered a terrorist weapon like felt tip markers, 18 different categories of items in all like wearing armor for example. There will be an all out ban on throwing anything, camping and fires on public property. The new laws will also allow cops to arbitrarily decide, what or who should be taken away much like the Arizona anti-immigrant law. If a person is carrying backpacks or scarves, then the cops "will have to decide whether protesters are carrying them with malicious intent". The history of cops on picket lines and protests is full of examples where they make the correct decision about intent isn't it? You're all guilty.

At the general strike here in Oakland I was driving closer to the docks so I could park and not walk so far. A cop was in the road on his bike and I asked him if I could pass. He said I could but "they might not let you" pointing to the marchers going through the intersection ahead. "They'll let me through" I replied. "They might turn your car over with you in it" he shot back. This is their mentality. Charlotte's City Attorney says that "respecting and protecting legitimate First Amendment rights" is a must but cops deciding what "intent" a person has allows them to "'engage' suspect protesters."

Florida is actually easing laws against protesting by making some minor changes to administrative rules. The cops will kick ass though if anything beyond expressing yourself in a way they consider is proper occurs we know that.

It will be interesting to see how the state responds to our blocking the loading of a ship up in Longview Washington. The ship is coming in under military escort with helicopters and all. It is quite possible that there will be massive police presence up there including Federal Marshals. The bosses are determined to crush the Occupy Movement and any attempts by the organized workers to fight back against the austerity plans they have for us and our families. The ILWU has the ability to close the West Coast docks entirely and California alone is among the top ten economies in the world. The shutting down of shipping trade in a state that is about 12% of US GDP is not something the bosses will allow without a fight and I am sure the ILWU international leadership is coming under massive pressure to get any local leaders and dissenting voices to back off. You know Homeland Security has been in touch with them.

The use of the military in a Labor dispute is an ominous sign of things to come as the crisis of capitalism ripens. But we have been here before. The bosses may have the money but we have the numbers and the social power. Unions were illegal at one point, even workers getting together to discuss increasing wages violated conspiracy laws.

These laws are just the beginning. The strategists of capital read history, they are aware of the revolutionary and militant history of the US working class but they are driven by the laws of their own system to drive us further and further backwards and they will use violence, the courts, the police etc. The Occupy Movement has shown that you can defy their laws, laws that protect their interests, the interests of the minority 1% in society, not our interests. The Occupy movement has a lot of passive support. But working class people must join it, bring our class issues in to it and our ideas. Is this movement pretty, without confusion? It is not. It is difficult and time consuming and a political struggle of ideas, some we don't agree with and some that may seem absurd. But movement's don't come ready made and movements in the US have traditionally been full of different and unusual forces--we come to movements with a lot of baggage, some of it we keep and some we discard to make room for new ideas and methods.

What is true is that this movement is made in America, it is full of a lot of courageous and dedicated people, many of them young people, some of them older, some of them homeless and other that have only recently lost their homes. The bosses want to crush it, we must not let them. Some of us have waited a long time for this.

US Marines urinate on dead Taliban fighters

2012-01-13T12:24:00.000-08:00

We are putting this video back up (different video same issue) because the original and the comments were taken off the site but not by us. The talk of how reprehensible, inexcusable and all that nonsense from the likes of Hilary Clinton and the generals and Pentagon spokespersons do not fool us. And what about the CNN newscaster talking about US troops might have been responsible for committing a "war crime". The whole war is a war crime. The US invasion of Iraq is a war crime and these guys urinating on dead bodies didn't make the decisions to embark on these massive war crimes.

As we wrote yesterday, they brainwash these Marines and instruct them to kill without question and train them how to do that efficiently and then send them off to do it. Rumsfeld, Obama, Cheney, Bush etc. These are the real war criminals. These young men have been dehumanized by it all. This doesn't excuse what they are doing but what do we expect? The real criminals are over here in the US walking free and getting rich. As we mentioned in the previous blog that was removed, it reminds us of two things. One was the movie Breaker Morant where British troops soldiers were sacrificed as the end of the Boer war was approaching. US capitalism is trying to make a deal with the Taliban and this incident might not help. The other similarity is the prosecution of Lyndie England for Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld and Bush walk free and they prosecute a working class white woman who grew up in a trailer park; a victim all her life. And we are supposed to accept that she is at the core of what is wrong with the US military. This incident represents another 10,000 recruits for al Qaeda.

Capitalism in crisis – the apologia

2012-01-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

by Michael Roberts

The Financial Times recently launched a series of articles on “Capitalism in Crisis”. As we enter the fourth year of the global banking collapse and the long depression in real output for the major capitalist economies, the strategists of capital are trying to understand what went wrong with capitalism and what to do about it. They realise that confidence in the capitalist mode of production has plummeted, whether that is expressed in the global “we are the 99% campaign” or in the opposition of many Greeks to the austerity packages of the IMF – according to a recent poll, around one in three Greeks asked now want a social revolution.

So the FT decided to kick off a campaign to defend the capitalist system with articles by various apologists. It started with Lawrence Summers (FT,8 January). Summers, is a former employee of Goldman Sachs and was US Treasury Secretary under Clinton before he became a university professor at Harvard. Summers tells us that disillusionment with capitalism had reached highs even in the bastion of the ‘free market’: America. A recent poll, he tells us, found that 40% of Americans asked no longer felt positive about capitalism and there was majority against capitalism among young people, ethnic minorities and the poor. Summers asked the question: are these negative attitudes justified? His answer was that it depends on whether the current crisis is due to the nature of capitalism and on whether there are any solutions within the capitalist system. For Summers, the answer to the first question is no and to the second, yes. Surprise!

Summers admitted that the Great Recession has created such a level of unemployment that the hope of getting everybody who has lost a job or seeks one back into work over the next five years is low as “the economies of US or Europe are likely to be constrained for a long time”.   But nevertheless, having admitted that we are in a long depression, he argues that this slump is not due to an “inherent flaw in capitalism”. It is due to what Keynes called a “magneto problem”, like a failure of a car part that can be fixed and then the car will spring back into life. Just give the current economic policies more time and all our concerns wil soon fade. It is unclear what these policies are that will work: is it fiscal stimulus or austerity?; printing money and bailing out the banks or not?

Summers knows that one in six Americans aged between 25 and 54 years are out of work while the top 0.1% have been living the good life.   And, “unlike cyclical concerns (ie the recession), there is no obvious solution at hand”. But apparently, this is nothing to do with the failure of capitalist mode of production but due to problems “deep within the evolution of technology”. You see, agriculture gave way to industry in the 19th century and as it did so, people lost their livelihoods in the transition and inequality rose. Then in 20th century, industry gave way to services and the same thing happened. Now in the 21st century, all the jobs and incomes are to be found in the sectors raising the quality of human capital, namely health, education (where Summers now plies his trade) and housing and not in goods or other low-value services.   The problem is, says Summers, is that these jobs are found mainly in the public sector and are not subject to the profit motive. Thus “in many of these new areas, the traditional case for market capitalism is weaker”. His conclusion is that we need to “shrink or at least slow the growth of the public sector” to allow the provision of these services for profit. Summers implies that profitability is no longer good enough in the existing private sector and so, to save capitalism, we must destroy public services and marketise them. It’s not a good advert for the capitalist mode.

John Plender is a regular columnist in the FT (FT, 8 January). He is worried about the growing inequality of wealth and incomes over the last three decades in the major OECD economies. We have documented the evidence for this in many posts in this blog (see Inequality, poverty and riots, 6 December 2011 and Inequality in Britain, 28 January 2010). But Plender cites a new book by Stewart Lansley (The cost of inequality) that reveals the fast track rise for the super-rich and the stalled track for everyone else. Led by the financial sector, capitalism has become “a cash cow for a global super elite”. Plender points out that this development is nothing new – indeed capitalism has an inherent tendency to increase inequality (see my post, 1% versus 99%, 21 October 2011). But Plender is optimistic – at least in this current slump, we don’t have soup queues and degradation as we did in the 1930s. Unemployment in the US may be near 9% officially or even 15% on fairer measures, but it is nowhere near 25% as in the Great Depression. There’s thanks for small mercies!

What’s wrong with capitalism is not the capitalist mode of production for profit, says Plender, but the particular form it has taken with the dominance of the banking sector. The bankers have become pirates or profiteers stealing from the decent capitalists. Thus we hear the usual argument of the Keynesians that it is the finance sector that is the problem, not capitalism. This idea of robber barons has been taken up opportunistically by the Republican rivals to Mitt Romney, the favourite for the US presidential nomination. Romney is accused by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry of being such a ‘profiteer’ because he ran one of the largest private equity companies in America. Bain Capital was engaged in buying out companies, stripping their assets, sacking much of the workforce and then selling them on. Apparently 22 out of the 77 companies that Romney bought were put out of business. And yet what Bain Capital did is nothing more than capitalism at work: the strong win and the weak fail. It is an illusion perpetuated by Keynes, echoed by Plender, that there is a capitalism that can operate without speculation and without ‘profiteering’ and thus deliver economic growth, jobs and incomes without inequality or slumps.

Plender argues that the problem with capitalism is that shareholders have lost power to the management of companies. This is called the “agency problem”, which means that managers enrich themselves at the expense of employees and shareholders alike and productive investment. The answer is to restore the power of the shareholders. Unfortunately, even if this were true, Plender does not offer us any way of doing this. He recognises that regulating the banking system has failed and the role of ‘entrepreneurs’ as opposed to ‘get-rich quick’ managers has not been restored. But anyway, this is a myth. Even back in the days of 19th century capitalism, when shareholders were supposedly in full charge, economic crises were just as rife and so were banking crises. Plender ends up with an argument in favour of capitalism that is often trotted out; reformulating Winston Churchill’s aphorism on democracy, “capitalism is the worst form of economic management except for all those other forms that have been tried”. Or as Margaret Thatcher once said, “there is no alternative”.

John Kay (FT, 10 January) is an Oxford economist who regularly writes for the FT. He points out that Marx never used the word ‘capitalism’ and what Marx attacked as a mode of production in the 19th century has disappeared or metamorphosed into something else. And here we go again. The owners of the means of production (now pension funds, insurance companies, banks etc) no longer control their companies or hire or fire people. That’s left up to the managers now. Ownership and control are now “divorced”. So business leaders are “no longer capitalist” in the sense that Marx described them.   So the answer to the current crisis is not to end the private ownership of the means of production, as the Marxists say, but to find ways of making control of companies more democratic.

This is pretty much the same argument as Plender. What is wrong with capitalism is that there is not enough of it. If the owners of capital took more control, things would be better. Apart from the fact that there is no evidence in the past that this was the case, for what purpose would owners do this but to boost profits and in particular dividends? How would that help growth and jobs, unless you reckon that in some way owners would invest more than the managerial elite?   And anyway, that does not explain why there a regular cycles of boom and slump, whether companies are ‘controlled’ by their shareholders or not, whether they are multinational or not, or whether executives are overpaid or not. The private ownership of the means of production matters because, in the last analysis, the owners decide investment, employment and incomes paid to the top and the bottom. No top manager survives if he or she cannot deliver an increased dividend (or higher share price) to the shareholders and that means making higher profits. That is literally the bottom line.

Samuel Brittan is a long-time FT columnist and closet Keynesian (FT, 13 January). Brittan tells us that market capitalism fails to reward on “personal merit” i.e. you don’t get paid a lot of money or have a lot of wealth under capitalism because you are clever or work hard. However, capitalism is the best system because “it promotes personal and political freedom” as the “individual is free to use his abilities in line with his own choices”. Really! Tell that to the majority of people toiling away in a very modestly paid jobs in an office or shop, working long hours, with limited holidays and a poor pension. Would they agree that they have plenty of life choices as a result? What would the poor of Africa, Asia and elsewhere make of the idea that they are free to make their own choices?

Yet Brittan tells us that, under capitalism, we can choose whether to spend our incomes in “personal pleasure or social service at home or the relief of poverty abroad” as we wish. The individual makes the decision, not the government. Brittan quotes the liberal apologist for capitalism of the mid-19th century, John Stuart Mill, who argued that if everything was in state hands, there would be no personal freedoms. Thus Brittan invokes the alternative to capitalism with its ‘free personal choices’ against the model of Stalinism and state authoritarianism. There are no other models, according to him. Yes, a few cooperatives might be more democratic, but that’s it.

To end his piece, Brittan tells us that he is shocked at the role of the financial sector and how its “activities could undermine the capitalist order”. Yet again, there is nothing wrong with the capitalist mode of production in its production sphere; it’s the monetary or financial sector that is flawed and causes instability and inequality. As if economic cycles of boom and slump and inequality did not exist before the financial sector became a hegemonic force in modern capitalism. So the answer, for Brittan, is international regulation of the financial sector and “the retention for quite a long time in public ownership of the banks and other institutions that have had to be rescued by government”. Thus the financial sector must remain under the ‘authoritarian’ grip of the dreaded state sector, but not the rest of ‘productive’ capitalism.

To sum up, Marx was wrong. Capitalism is the best of alternative systems of human organisation; and it has changed significantly since Marx criticised it. Unfortunately, some of those changes are for the worse (managers stealing profits; the finance sector undermining stability). Apparently, we can correct those flaws either by going back to 19th century capitalism where owners not managers ruled (Plender and Kay); or by having state control of the financial sector (Brittan); or by increasing the role of private sector in running public services for a profit (Summers).   Not very convincing, is it?

Defend ILWU Local 21: Come to Longview Washington

2012-01-12T11:08:00.000-08:00

Thugs disrupt Occupy Seattle Labor solidarity forum

2012-01-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

A panel forum organized by Occupy Seattle in support of Local 21 in Longview Washington was disrupted by right wing supporters of the Labor bureaucracy according to reports. I was not present at it but it does seem this issue is heating up and the attempt to stop scabs from loading a ship due to arrive at the port will face some resistance. Armed US Coast Guard vessels and helicopters, in other words, Homeland Security is escorting the ship in to port. The scabs in this case are members of the Operating Engineers whose leadership is directing the scabbing efforts.

It is hard to say what will happen or how many will turn up to support ILWU local 21 but the Occupy movement has surprised many of its critics with its staying power and ability to turn people out. Protesters will face stiff opposition up there from the police and possibly hired thugs of the bureaucracy. It is important to get to Longview if you can. It would be important if ILWU Local 21 president Dan Coffman and the entire leadership of that local as well as other locals that have supported Local 21 to officially come out and condemn the disruption of this meeting (if they haven't already) and reaffirm that the locals support the Occupy movement and want its support in Longview when this ship comes in.

Bosses' squeezing more out of workers as wages decline

2012-01-12T09:57:00.000-08:00

If you work in manufacturing and are still lucky enough to have a job but find that being at work is more and more of a drain, you are not imagining things and it's not simply old age. US factory output the Wall Street Journal reports today is up 4% over the last decade as payrolls have declined 25%. The heads of the industrial Unions, steel, auto, etc. have been very helpful getting the bosses to this point. Wages for some auto workers have been cut in half.

On top of that, productivity or output per hour worked is up 40%. This is what capitalists call an improvement and the bedrock of a civilized society. We need that productivity so that the coupon clippers can realize their dreams of another mansion alongside Central Park or in the Hamptons. Carlyle's three founders shared $400 million between them last year for their efforts. Carlyle is a private equity company that people like George HW Bush are connected to and the feuding that raged prior to the crash between the private equity capitalists and those poor folks who operate within the confines of the exchanges and are less dependent on finance capital is beginning to reemerge particularly with regard to Romney, who has some history in that industry with Bain capital.

They all do pretty good though in these "difficult times" that require "shared sacrifice" on the part of all of us if we are to help the system get back on a more solid footing.

US workers must oppose an attack on Iran.

2012-01-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about this situation with Iran. One of the by-products of US imperialism's destructive and disastrous failure in Iraq is that it has strengthened Iran. Washington, with it's European allies on the one hand and its Saudi allies on the other has to now try to curb Iran's influence that they created. US imperialism wants to maintain its plunder of the region's main resource and is intent on protecting the energy corporations' profits and it has to have a compliant Iranian state in order to do that without much hindrance.

The Iranian regime is a theocratic dictatorship that has a brutal record towards workers and especially women. But this wouldn't bother the folks in Washington if Iran was willing to be a trusted servant of the energy corporations in the area.

Iran of course is part of the original axis of evil that included Iraq and North Korea. Now I guess there are two members as Iraq has been saved. Matthew Kroenig writing in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs* says the US must seize the time and attack Iran. It's is madness but the capitalist class is not driven by personal likes or dislikes as witnessed by the US government's parleying with the hated Taliban in Doha. It's almost like a return to the old pre-1999 relationship when every Taliban official was on the payroll of the US government. Politics makes strange bedfellow as they say.

The US or any other country has no real credibility telling Iran it can't have nuclear power, or nuclear weapons. The Israeli's are armed to the teeth and refuse not only to allow inspections but to even discuss the issue. The Iranians are not stupid. Apart from the historical meddling in Iran's political and economic life on the part of British and US imperialism, including orchestrating the coup that overthrew the secular democratic regime of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and installing the murderous Shah, the Iranians see the devastation and horror US capitalism has inflicted on the Iraqi people and their country and don't feel like going through the same experience. The Mullahs happened to notice that the US never invaded North Korea. No matter what we think of the religious nuts that run Iran, they owe their overblown presence to outside interference on the part of western capital.

Those opposing attacking Iran for no reason "fail to appreciate the true danger" writes Kroenig, a former adviser to the US Secretary of Defense. The "danger" Kroenig is referring to is not that Iran will launch an attack on the infidels, meaning you and me or that it will invade its neighbors simply for the pleasure of it; the danger as Kroenig so rightly puts it is that "A nuclear armed Iran would immediately limit US freedom of action in the Middle East." The danger is that with atomic power meaning possibly nuclear weapons it would force "Washington to think twice before acting in the region". It would hurt western oil companies ability to plunder the wealth of the region.

It is not an accident that US imperialism didn't lay waste to North Korea, a pathetically poor country that was devastated in the war we call the Korean War but that possesses nuclear weapons. When the US invaded Iraq without provocation it invaded a country already devastated by years of war and sanctions. An unarmed opponent is the most preferable as you lose the least possible number of your own cannon fodder.

Kroenig admits that the Iranians are not so stupid as to "...intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear war." But he is concerned that the "volatile nuclear balance between Iran and Israel could easily spiral out of control as a crisis unfolds.". There is absolutely no reason for Iran to launch a nuclear war. It is the predatory actions of US capitalism and its proxy Israel that is driving the crisis in the Middle East along with the Saudi's who also fear losing their share of the plunder of the region's natural resource. At the behest of Washington, the Saudi's (among the most barbaric of US capitalism's allies that recently beheaded a woman for sorcery) sent troops in to Bahrain to suppress a movement for democratic reforms and religious freedom in that absolute monarchy. Tell me, is that what the American revolution was about, defending monarchists?

Kroenig says that containing Iran, whether combined with a direct attack on its facilities or simply through sanctions and other means would be a costly and long-term venture. It would mean the US taxpayer would have to "devote perhaps billions of dollars to improving its allies' capability to defend themselves." and that these costs would need to remain in place "as long as Iran remained hostile to U.S. interests, which could mean decades or longer." As workers we should consider who we are arming here with our tax dollars; the Saudi beheaders who also have religious police that come round to your home to make sure you are practicing the right brand of religion. The kings of Jordan and Bahrain, the new dictator of Yemen if Washington can install a new one over the objections of the mass of the population and so on. Kroenig does have his preference and has faith in our weaponry that Iran's air defenses would not "survive an attack from from the US military's new bunker-busting bomb, the 30,000 pound Massive Ordinance Penetrator..." Thirty thousand pounds; what sort of damage does an object of that size do to a community? And if we support this foreign policy, we can't complain about the loss of social services, jobs, living standards and the collapse of our social infrastructure here at home.

Kroenig is a product of the system of which he is a dominant theoretician. He is driven to such conclusions by the laws of the system. There are differences between sections of the capitalist class on how to proceed, just as there are differences between them on how to win the war against US workers at home, but in the last analysis, the military might and power of a nation state will be used to protect the economic interests of the class that governs. It's hard to imagine how Kroenig, no doubt a well educated fellow, can even argue that the Iraq war is "winding down.". The mess the US has created in Iraq is beginning to mature further in to a struggle between three major factions threatening to split the nation.

Iran undoubtedly has imperialist and expansionist intentions, all capitalist nations do. But it is not Iran we need fear in the Middle East. It is US foreign policy, a foreign policy that is driving not only the growth of what are referred to as terrorist groups but also the arms race internationally. The US has some 70 bases surrounding various countries throughout the world, including Russia and China. Is this in our interest as workers? Does it endear the workers of other nations to us? I don't think so, just the opposite, it makes it easier for the governments of those nations to win their workers to their side---the Team Concept at the national level.

For most workers we understand in our gut that there are two sides in society. When we see picket lines we know which side is ours even when people cross them. I remember when I was getting a fair bit of flack at work for refusing (and ripping off) "United We Stand" flags from my backhoe asking a guy if he would use such a slogan in the event of strike, that the workers and bosses should stand united. He agreed not of course---he would choose his side, the side of his class.

Well this is what we have to do when we consider the actions of US capitalism in Iran or throughout the world. We have to stand with the Iranian workers, not the Mullahs and not the thugs in Washington who are far more dangerous and have caused much more death and destruction than the Mullahs, only for the reason that they have a bigger stick.

The difficulty for us is that we have no independent political voice. We have no party of our own and there is no significant social force that can provide a real alternative, a working class alternative based on class solidarity domestically and internationally. The Iranian workers want to live a decent life as do the Saudi's and all workers throughout the Middle East including Israel. The Union leadership does this in a limited way but in the last analysis they support capitalism and the market and defend the interests of the capitalist class of our own nation states in their rapacious and murderous struggle with their global rivals for world dominance and control of global resources---- just like they support the bosses at home. They make protectionist arguments that we should "buy American" in other words, side with our bosses rather than unite with workers internationally against all bosses, theirs and ours. They have the same view of the world as the bosses'; this is the basis for their disastrous policies.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has threatened this world view. With whatever faults this movement may have (aversion to political struggle for example) it has challenged the dominant bourgeois ideology in society. It has shifted the focus away from the poor, the immigrants, workers like myself (Heavens forbid that I should have a retirement I can live on) and the costs of public services etc. The Occupy Movement has raised a clear class slogan on its banner, the 99% versus the 1%. Some have criticized this as people they don't feel should be in the 99% are claiming to be in it. But while it may not be the most clear expression of class difference it is a giant leap from what we have been experiencing for the last 40 years. The OWS movement has put our enemies on the defensive.

Building a mass movement on the ground based on direct action tactics and mass defiance of their laws as well as building a political alternative to the two Wall Street Parties that can throw back this offensive of capital is crucial if we are to win. Such a development would also allow us to speak to the workers of the world in our own voice, expressing our own class interests as opposed to having representatives of Wall Street like Obama, Cheney, Romney or anyone of them. The Arab and Iranian workers have oil under their feet; they can't eat it, but they justifiably want a say in how this resource is used and distributed. The inherent competitive nature of the capitalist system does not allow for the free and equal association of producers to determine how this is to be done. If we do not liberate the productive forces from the clique that control them we cannot survive.

* Time to Attack Iran: Foreign Affairs Jan/Feb 2012

North Carolina and forced sterilizations

2012-01-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

It's funny that this sort of thing always happens to poor people. The imbecile Bush wasn't sterilized.

USA. A sign of the times.

2012-01-10T06:42:00.000-08:00

The capitalists themselves cannot believe it. But now we have the Republican nomination race being dominated by Romney the front runner and swindler so-called venture capitalist being attacked by his Republican rivals for firing workers. But this is an essential part of capitalism, firing workers and getting more work out of the rest and intimidating workers in general. It is a powerful sign of the times that Romney's rivals think this is the way to weaken him, to attack him for being a successful capitalist. This bears out what we have been saying on this blog. That is that there is a huge section of the population in this country who are not happy with capitalism. Recent polls show that half of those under 34 are more in favor of socialism than capitalism.

Along with the Republicans attack on Romney for his laying off workers we have Obama moving incrementally towards the left with his attacks on Wall Street. He too feels the way the wind is blowing and what could best take him back to the White house. The squeezing out of Daley and Emmanuel from his staff are signs of this. He is going to try and run against Wall Street and its "excesses" in the November election.

Then back to Richard's blog of yesterday which shows the top union leaders sitting down with and boot licking the most despicable of the capitalists. The top union leaders never mention about the lay offs and firings. It is hard not to conclude now that in their fight for the nomination the non Romney pack of candidates in the Republican Party are to the left of the top union leaders. Incredible. And this is all going on when the Occupy movement refuses to go away and in fact is increasingly orientating to the workers struggles such as against foreclosures.

In the old days we used to be very nuanced about how we took up the union leaders. They were not all the same. The extreme right wing bunch we were much harder and more direct when we spoke of them. Here in the US there are very few, I cannot think of one of the top union leaders, who openly criticizes capitalism and they are equally adamantly opposed to making any criticism of the capitalist Democratic Party.

This lack of a mass alternative voice will mean that the alternative movement that arises will be confused, have many sides to it, will be fragmented, will go back every now and then before it goes forward again. But the overall process in the US in the years ahead will be US capitalism moving to put its own working class on rations and this whip of the counter revolution raising the US working class to its feet with a new and higher and increasingly anti capitalist consciousness.

Sean.

The Breakfast Club: Finance capital and Labor officials

2012-01-09T21:11:00.000-08:00

Ross will pick up Northern real cheap

Wilbur Ross is one of those parasitic individuals who haveaccumulated billions of dollars off the backs of working people. He is a Private Equity investor with his ownfirm. He describes himself as, “A guy who likes to run in to burningbuildings.” He uses this term as heis what the capitalist class calls a “bottomfeeder”, picking up the remains of destroyed companies. He is a “vulture, writes Bloomberg Business Week,“albeit, a well dressed one”.

The difference between Ross, and firefighters, or regularhuman beings running in to a burning building to save the residents, is thatRoss would run in to pick the pockets of the dead or those incapacitated bysmoke inhalation. In the aftermath ofthe 2007 crash and subsequent bailout by workers and the middle class, Ross,and those like him look for opportunities to make some money out of the ashesand destroyed lives of a bankrupt economic system.

Ross is worth some $2 billion, stolen from workers in thecourse of his activities. Much of this is due to his contacts of course. It’s not what you know but who you know asthey say and Ross, like all of them, takes that to heart. Him and another waster, Richard Branson ofVirgin Airways fame, have bought Northern Rock, the failed British bank thatwas nationalized by the government. Hisclass comrades in the British Conservative Party have offered him a great dealenabling him to buy the bank very cheaply and at a loss to the Britishgovernment. But hey, it’s taxpayers money so what the hell.

Ross has scooped up some good deals in the smoldering ashesof the Irish economy that was once the pride of the capitalist world, theCeltic Tiger. With four other coupon clippers Ross bought a 35% stake in theBank of Ireland at 36% of book value. Ross considers this a “steal”. Ross just loves Ireland and “Applauds its citizens for supporting theausterity without taking to the streets.”, adds Business Week. “There have been no riots, no picketing, nocar burning, no nothing.” Says an ecstatic Ross.

Ross made a lot of money, some $2 billion buying up steelproducers in the recession that followed the 2000 tech bubble bust. Ross bought Bethlehem Steel that went in tobankruptcy. As an aside, the Bureau ofLabor Statistics points out that “Overthe past 25-30 years, steel producers have, in some cases, reduced the number ofwork-hours required to produce a ton of steel by 90 percent.” This is an incredibleincrease in the productivity of Labor which shows how easily it would be toreduce the working hours were those of us that do the work actually in controlof the Labor process and the collective owners of the means of production.

Thistime it was not friends in a British capitalist party that helped him out butthe trade Union leadership who are the agents of the capitalist class in theworkers’ organizations. Ross was able to“snatch up“ the beleaguered steelcompanies and able to cut costs “byworking closely with union leaders.” Says Business Week. Ross, “Hadan open mind…he recognized that workers had more to contribute than just theirbacks and arms”, says Leo Gerard, the international president of the UnitedSteelworkers. At the time of Ross' venture in to the steel industry, Gerard said of him that “Wilbur and his peopleactually caredabout what we had to say” (Business Week, 22 December 2003). The chairman of Ross’ firm pocketed $300 million.

Afterthe Great Recession of 2007 Ross and other coupon clippers went after failed USbanks with the help this time of their political representatives inWashington. They bought BankUnited whichhad been taken over by the government and got a great deal. The taxpayer picked up 80% of the bank’slosses. This was almost too good to be true and Ross and others “were scooping up banks taking advantage ofthe FDIC’s safeguards” says BW. Butthe hatred of the bankers in the aftermath of the crash was too intense and asthe pressure mounted, politicians had to take some steps to curb theirrapacious appetite for thievery.

Theythrew a bone to the taxpayer in the form of new FDIC rules requiring that buyoutfirms like Ross’s or the Carlyle Group that invested in banks keep them for atleast three years before flipping them as well as requiring them to maintainwhat Business Week refers to as “profitcrimping” amounts of capital. They do not like any restriction on theirability to move capital at will. Allthis meant was that Ross and the others went round scooping up failed banksquicker than the FDIC could.

Throughhis close relationship with the Union hierarchy Ross invested money inAmalgamated Bank which is Union owned. Even the staff at Amalgamated is Union. According to Business Week,Amalgamated and other small banks have increased their business as workers,disgusted with the big banks and their role in the crash and as recipients ofthe bailout, have pulled their money out in favor of the little guys. Amalgamatedhas become known as the guardian of the deposits of Occupy Wall Streetapparently and that doesn’t bother Ross as servicing the OWS crowd brings anincrease in customers with “no marketing”says the banks manager.

TheLabor leadership at the highest levels have become fully integrated with Rossand the lords of finance capital. Withthe ongoing crisis of capitalism there is little room for them to maneuver,they can’t pretend anymore. Theycooperate openly with the employers in their efforts to drive down the wagesand conditions of US workers in order to help US capitalists compete in theglobal marketplace.

EdwardGrebow, the president of the Union owned Bank welcomed Ross as the bank’ssavior. “Grebow knew Ross had good relationships with labor leaders representingsteel and textile workers” says Business Week.

Rossis proud of his record with the heads of organized Labor; “We never had a strike at any of our facilities” he says, adding, “For us there is nothing strange abouthaving breakfast with a labor leader. Wedo it all the time.” The top bourgeois and their breakfasts with the headsof organized Labor is a good investment for the Labor bureaucracy and theunelected rulers of society.

There’sour problem right there. The crisis ofthe working class is a crisis of leadership as the Russian revolutionary leaderLeon Trotsky once pointed out some 70 years ago.

US censorship and propaganda.

2012-01-09T04:59:00.000-08:00

We have always argued on this blog that US society is one of the most censored capitalist societies in the world. There was an article in the New York Times, January 8th, which confirms this. We would all be familiar with a couple of more or less accepted "truths" in the US mass capitalist media. One is that the US is the most dynamic and healthy of the world economies and that poor Japan has been struggling for years now in a "lost decade." This article in the NYT was a kind of wake up call to its capitalist backers. It gave some interesting statistics.

Japan's life expectancy at birth grew by 4.2 years - to 83 years from 78.8 years between 1989 and 2009. Some lost decade. This means that Japanese now typically live 4.8 years longer than Americans. The NYT stated that the key factor was better health care. Here in the US the health care is worse and less accessible.

Internet infrastructure? Of the 50 cities with the fastest internet service in the world 38 are in Japan while only 3 are in the US. From the end of 1989 the Yen has risen 87% against the US dollar. Unemployment rate is 4.2% about half that of the US. 81 high rise buildings, that is above 500 feet, have been constructed in Tokyo since the "lost decade" began. That figure compares with 64 in New York, 48 in Chicago and 7 in Los Angeles.

Japan's current account surplus totaled $196 billion in 2010 up more than three fold since 1989. By comparison America's current account deficit ballooned to $471 billion from $99 billion over that same time span.

The NYT goes on: "Japan has not missed a beat in building an ever more sophisticated industrial base. That this is not more obvious is a tribute in part to the fact that manufacturers have graduated to making so-called producers goods. These typically consist of advanced components or materials or precision production equipment. They may be invisible to the consumer , yet without them the modern world literally would not exist. This sort of manufacturing, which is both highly capital intensive and know-how-intensive, was virtually monopolized by the US in the 1950's and 1960's and constituted the essence of American economic leadership."

This achievement of Japan is even more impressive when we see the rise of the South East Asian nations especially China. US imperialism is steaming its high tech aircraft carriers around the China sea while Japanese capitalism is wiping the floor with it in the heart of its industrial and technological base. This is not to say Japanese capitalism is wonderful by any means. We only have to think of the recent earthquake/tsunami and the building of the nuclear plants in extremely dangerous areas. But what it is to say is that US capitalism is in a weaker and weaker position and tries to hide this with its mass censorship. But it cannot do so because in the real day to day lives of working class people in the US the crisis of US capitalism is being felt daily in cuts and more cuts on living standards.

On top of the economic crisis it faces, on top of loosing grounds to its rivals such as Japanese and also the Chinese economy, US capitalism is just now beginning to face a rising movement of its own youth and working class and doing so with a political system which is decrepit and rotten and corrupt and discredited. There will be very dangerous times ahead, but also very great opportunities for the US working class to rise to its feet. In doing so it will seek to throw off the confusion it faces from the censorship of the capitalist mass media and the refusal of its own leaders to lead and put an alternative.

Sean.

Caterpillar locks out CAW workers: threatens to move production to cheaper U.S.

2012-01-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

CAW members out in the cold

I wrote recently of the Fiat bosses threatening workers in Italythat if they didn’t accept concessions that would make them more competitive inthe global marketplace they would move production overseas. One of the suggested locations was NorthAmerica.

The Fiat bosses weren’t talking about Canada either. The country for cheaper and more pliant Laborthey were talking about is the United States. After years of concessions, cutbacks and elimination of wages, rightsand benefits that took years of heroic struggle to win, US manufacturingworkers are becoming the apple in the global capitalists’ eye. From Greece to Indonesia, Nigeria to Ecuador,workers and powerful indigenous movements are confronting the global offensiveof capital with an offensive of our own, by comparison, there’s relative Laborpeace.

So US workers, at the moment anyway, are a more securebet. With the help of the Laborhierarchy and under the banner of free competition, the US bosses have indeeddriven the living standards of US workers closer to our brothers and sisters inthe former colonial world and below that of workers in other industrializedeconomies. In the US there is now a low paid, fairly well educated workingclass by global standards. The bosses, with the help of a trade Unionleadership who are on their team have convinced many of us against our gutinstincts that we must lower our expectations and our costs if we are to helpthem win market share from their global rivals. The heads of organized Labor have gone so far as to help them terminateunion activists who dared stand in the way of this race to the bottom.

In Canada, Caterpillar has locked members of the UAW out oftheir workplace for refusing to accept major concessions demanded by the heavyequipment manufacturer. The company isthreatening to move and it won’t have to move too far. Wage and benefit costs at a Caterpillar plantin LaGrange Illinois are less than half of those at Caterpillar’s plant inLondon Ontario.

The US “has becomemuch more efficient, making it more attractive for global manufacturers.” theWallStreet Journal reports. In 2010, US unit Labor costs in manufacturing were13% lower than in 2000. There arenumerous commentaries on this blog under the “label” UAW to the right that explain how the bosses, with theblatant collaboration of the heads of organized Labor at the highest levels,have accomplished this.

Kudos to US workers and the middle class. We bailed out the bankers and the auto bosses to the tune of trillionsof dollars and now we have accepted with barely a peep the driving our wagesand conditions back to the level of the thirties before the great uprising thatlead to the formation of the CIO. Incontrast to the US decline, German unit Labor costs have risen 2.3%, Canada 18%and South Korea 15%. “Manufacturing in the US is more and moreattractive,” an economist for the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivityand Innovation tells the Wall Street Journal. It is not all wages; a business friendlyenvironment and tax system as well as total domination of the political processby the two Wall Street parties and a weak dollar has helped. The inequality gap in the US though is welldocumented.

If the Canadians want to be as “attractive” as us then they need to put their thinking capson. All Caterpillar wants to do is cuttheir wages in half as auto manufacturers have done here in the US and thosepesky Canadians are opposed to it. Buthow can the boss make profit if the Canadians don’t agree? Caterpillar says that it has to do this tobe “cost competitive” in the globalmarketplace.

“The United Auto Workers in the US showedmore flexibility” says Dan Ustian, CEO of Navistar International after thecompany shut down a Canadian plant and moved production elsewhere. Wages andwork rule concessions were not forthcoming which prevented Navistar from comingto an agreement with the Canadians. Electrolux, the Swedish manufacturer isabout to shut down its Quebec plant and move production to its new facility inMemphis, Tenn. The German manufacturer,Siemens closed a turbine plant in Hamilton Ontario and has moved production toNorth Carolina. The owners of the meansof production hold communities and entire countries for ransom, cheap loans,cheaper, no union Labor power, compliant Labor leaders and tax incentiveshelped Siemens bosses make up their minds to move to NC. Cities, states and countries offer the globalcapitalists all sorts of taxpayer subsidies in order to convince them to investas the rightful owners of capital. Competition between workers over wages, or ourcommunities over the level of tax and other subsidies, or between workers inthe different nation states is a sure road to ruin for us.

Here in the US since the beginning of the decade andespecially in the aftermath of the Great Recession and subsequent rise inunemployment, bosses have managed to squeeze more out of the existing and waryworkforce. As hiring pretty muchlanguishes, US business has increased spending on fixed capital with spendingon equipment and software at an all time high in the third quarter of 2011according to BloombergBusiness Week. US bosses get almost25% more goods and services out of us than they did in 1999 with the samenumber of workers and as wages have declined. “It’s as if $2.5 trillion worth ofstuff---the equivalent of the entire U.S. economy circa 1958—materialized outof thin air” Business Week adds. It’s interesting how this magazine of theUS bourgeois describes the products of human sweat and blood, of our lifeactivity as “materializing out of thinair”. It materialized out ofincreased exploitation of Labor power.

It’s quite possible that the products that comprise this$2.5 trillion might be worthless as far as their use value goes, but it is anexample of the increased exploitation of Labor power by capital as the price ofour Labor power has declined and the conditions under which it is used haveworsened. What is it like to have yourwages cut by 50%? When you go to the store, pay the landlord or mortgage bankeror go out to eat (not that you can do that anymore) they don’t lower prices toaccommodate your new situation do they? There’s no sliding scale ofprices. Even if you rely on publicsubsidies like food stamps or any other social service these monies just likeour wages is the value we have created returned to us in the form of money. As Marx says of the wages of the worker, “It is the labor of last week, or of lastyear, that pays for his labor-power (wages) this week or this year.”

We cannot win if we accept that we have to compete under theterms the capitalist class sets for us. We built Unions to protects us from competition not facilitate it, notto compete against each other for who can work cheapest, fastest and underconditions most favorable to profit taking. It’s obvious to anyone that by competition we simply find ourselves in arace to the bottom. And while theCanadian Auto Workers leadership may be a little more aggressive and militantthan their US counterparts they still function within the confines of the marketand its laws which means their members must lose ground.

The Canadian Auto Workers president, Ken Lewenza has made itclear that “his union is willing to be flexible” the WSJ reports, so from theoutset, the workers are doomed. Flexibility “issimply a code word for falling wages” wrote Lester Thurow in his 1996 book,The Future of Capitalism. So theresponse of the workers’ leaders in Canada is to be more “flexible” than us here in the US and we in the US have to be more “flexible” than the workers in Mexico orChina. There is no end to it.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession they nationalized,or took under conservatorship as the journals of capital call it, huge sectionsof US industry including auto and housing. They also rescued the market from the edge of the abyss through massive infusionsof public funds. Capitalists took these publicfunds and speculated, bought other banks with them and stuff. It is obvious that the only answer to thisoffensive of global capitalism and its inefficiency and waste is a globaloffensive of a united and conscious workers’ movement.

Globalization has made the world smaller. Workers migrate from country to country. Agricultural production must liberated from the clutches of the cliquethat controls it and the production of food, as with the production oftransportation and all the necessities of life, must be produced in a rational,planned way under the collective ownership, control and management of those ofus whose Labor produces the wealth and the needs of human society.

There’s only one way outa here as they say.

Richard Mellor

Chicago. US Politics. The big picture. Bully, Thug. Emmanuel.

2012-01-08T06:26:00.000-08:00

The mayor of Chicago Emmanuel is a bully and a thug. He was kicked out of Washington because his head was too big and he was too arrogant to fit into the Obama bourgeois machine. Now he is back in Chicago as a consolation prize. And what is he doing?

Chicago is one of the richest capitalist cities in the world. It is a world city. It has the board of trade, it has the stock exchange, it is head quarters to many transport and retail corporations, it has high tech. In other words its capitalist class has great wealth. However it also has massive poverty and directly related to this it is one of the most segregated cities in the country. Segregation is part of divide and rule, keep working class people divided, weak to try and fight for their interests and the rich can carry their profits to the banks by the truck load.

So the bully, thug Emmanuel, in the interests of his rich corporate backers is going after working people and the Occupy movement. He is going after the union workers in all the public sectors. Library workers and hours are under attack at the moment. Demonstrations against all attacks by this thug are to be limited in time, fines are to be increased on demonstrators, increased numbers of cops are to be put on the streets against demonstrations. Meanwhile Emmanuel makes clear he intends to continue to support the epidemic of foreclosures, wage and benefit cuts that are taking place. .

This Emmanuel is a crude bully and thug, a creature of the corporations. The Chicago Federation of labor has the affiliation of hundreds of thousands of trade unionists in the area. It is potentially the most powerful force in the area. It can close down the economy. It is the responsibility of the Chicago Fed to take on this Emmanuel and his corporate criminal backers. It should call a conference to launch a mass direct action campaign for a better life for all working people and to confront and bring down Emmanuel and his corporate backers. This campaign should carry out the tactic of mass direct action, strikes, occupations etc., and should be the basis for the building of a mass workers party in the area to replace the corporations' monopoly of politics through the Democrats and the Republicans.

The left and activist movement should also come together in a united front of struggle with mass direct action tactics, should take action itself and at the same time work to mobilize the federation of labor. In this way the corporate thug Emmanuel can be defeated.

Sean.

Bosses' attacks on child labor laws intensify as part of their offensive against all workers

2012-01-06T21:29:00.000-08:00

Mike Kussow is such a kind-hearted and productive humanbeing. He is a lobbyist for theWisconsin Grocery Association and it is retailers, the service industry and thegrocery chains that are behind the efforts, some successful, to weaken childLabor laws. In Wisconsin, the bribery strategy worked as an amendmentwas inserted in to the state budget bill days before Walker signed it thatwould relax protections for young ‘uns.

Before the amendment, 16 and 17 year olds couldn’t work morethan 26 hours during a school week and more than 50 hours a week duringvacations---not exactly strict child Labor laws. The passing of the amendment has eliminatedthose restrictions. Kussow makes itclear that the members of the Grocery Association have no intention of overworkingthe kids or creating a “sweatshop”, they“Just want to give kids that great firstopportunity you get in a grocery store.”

Bless their grocery store owner little hearts. I’m sure they were influenced by NewtGingrich’s statement at a meeting at Harvard last year that he would do awaywith “truly stupid” child Labor lawsthat prevent kids in poor neighborhoods from being put to work. * Business Week points out that old Newt one upped himself inDecember during a GOP debate saying that “Poorkids could learn the value of a hard days work by taking the jobs of Unionjanitors at New York public schools.” You have to hand it to these folks, people whodo no productive Labor, he earned lots of money as a consultant to Freddie Mac,$1.6 million to be exact and another $800,000 as a consultant to the US chamberof Commerce for “thinking” about the economy. These people know nothing abouthard work, workers and poor workers especially know about hard work when theycan find it.

It’s not just Wisconsin either where child Labor laws areunder attack. In Maine a bill wasintroduced last year to increase the number of hours 16 and 17 year olds canwork in a week from 20 to 32 and to allow the bosses’ to pay them $5.25 anhour, $2.25 less than the state’s minimum wage. The president of the Mainerestaurant Association believes its wrong to prevent a young teenager who“wants” to or who “needs” to workfrom doing so. Freedom, that’s what it’sall about. A compromise was reached at 24 hours and they have to punch out by10.15 pm says BW.

The legislation that is supposed to protect children is theFair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Under the FLSA, children must be at least 14to get a job and when school is in session, 14 and 15 year olds are barred fromworking before 7 a.m. and after 7 p.m. according to BW.

It's easier to get at them in the global south

The bosses have always used children, prisoners, andimmigrants as a means of undercutting higher paid and organized workers; themore vulnerable, the better---that’s why prisoners and soldiers should haveUnions---that’s why we should join forces with all immigrant worker,undocumented as well. It is in our classinterests to do so. It is no accidentthat the FLSA was passed in 1938 when only a couple of years before half amillion or so US workers occupied the factories and workplaces of this countryin the great upsurge that led to the formation of the CIO. Much of the legislation favorable to workerswas passed in this period, it was simply the politicians of the bossescodifying in legislation what had already been won in the streets andworkplaces of America.

I was with some grocery workers tonight who are facingattacks by the same grocery bosses on their pensions and rights. These samegrocery bosses who are driving the efforts to weaken child Labor laws are attackingUnionized workers at the other end of the age scale. It is a disgrace and a reflection of thecrisis in the leadership of organized Labor that a grocery worker with 41 yearson the job is earning $21 an hour. $21 is close to poverty wages in the stateof California. We pointed out in an earlier blog how the heads of the UFCW herein California chose as their person of the year in 2009, the CEO of one of the majorgrocery chains; the guy who is waging war on their members and our children andwho belongs to two or three country clubs with fees over $100,000 a year.

It was the rise of industrial unionism, the workplaceoccupations, the strikes, the mass picketing and defiance of the law thatforced FDR and the Democratic Party to pass legislation favorable to workers andour families in the 1930’s. The OccupyWall Street Movement is resurrecting these great traditions of the US workingclass and it is to these traditions that the working class of today, the 99% mustreturn.

* It’s not just Newt who wants kids to work. Business Week1-09-12

OccupyOakland Activist Looking at Three Strikes: please call.

2012-01-06T10:55:00.000-08:00

Occupy Oakland activist Marcel Johnson (also known as Khali) is facing the possibility of life imprisonment having been arrested by the Oakland cops. There is a call out to flood the DA's with calls about the treatment of Marcel. I don't have time at the moment to write more but please call the DA Nancy O'Malley at 510-268-7500 and also who I believe is the Contra Costa County DA, Eileen McAndrew, (925) 803 7171.

Here are some details of Marcel's plight form the East Bay Express:

The threat of life imprisonment looms for Occupy Oakland activist Marcel Johnson - better known by his alias, Khali - after a third-strike arrest during the demonstration. Having spent about 15 years incarcerated already, 38 year-old Khali said he was trying to turn his life around by distributing food to the needy at the Occupy Oakland encampment, where he was a frequent, vocal, sometimes endearing presence.

On December 16 he was arrested outside City Hall for violating anti-encroachment laws — namely, for a dispute about a blanket — which normally wouldn't have warranted more than a few hours jail time. Since Khali was in fact violating his probation terms for a different case in Sacramento, he was taken to Santa Rita and made to serve some jail time in lieu of going to trial, his attorney Dan Siegel explained. There, Khali was held in solitary confinement and not given his psychiatric medications, which might explain why he got into an altercation with a peace officer — the exact circumstances of which are still widely disputed. Now, Khali faces a felony assault charge in place of his original misdemeanor. As of Friday, December 23, Khali's bail was set at $580,000, according his attorney, Dan Siegel.

"So he's basically arrested for littering, and a week later he's facing felony charges," Siegel said, in an interview on December 23. Siegel isn't representing Khali in the assault case, but he helped persuade a judge to order a medical evaluation of Khali, in the hope that it will explain the altercation. Members of the "Free Khali Committee" at Occupy Oakland claimed that Khali received no evaluation or medication for ten days after his arrest, and that he showed evidence of physical abuse on December 22, when he appeared in court for arraignment on the original misdemeanor (it's now been dwarfed by the assault case). Khali's next court date is January 9th, 9 a.m., at the California Courthouse in Pleasanton. He now faces a potential third strike, and insurmountable bail. And if the Senior Deputy District Attorney Eileen McAndrew doesn't drop the assault charge, the future looks grim, Siegel said: "[Khali] is homeless. He has no money. He has no anything."