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Issue Number 19

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ISSN 1758-5708

SocialistTheTheSocialistCorrespondentCorrespondentIssue Number 19Winter 2013-14

£2.00

Winter 2013-14

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ContentsISSUE NO. 19 WINTER 2013-14

2 The Socialist Correspondent Winter 2013-2014

The hungry planet- climate crisisGREG KASER

Page 14

Myth: the “West”is the good guysGINA NICHOLSON

Page 19

Egypt’s recent andturbulent historyPAT TURNBULL

0

Snippets from the world of capitalismQUESTOR

Page 22

For the Union Dead, by Robert LowellSIMON KORNER

Page 23

Reader’s LetterFRIEDA PARK

Page 27

Discussion, debate and authors’ opinions: To encourage the broadest possible discussion and debate around the aims of exposing capitalism and promoting socialism, we hope our readers appreciate that not all the opinions expressed by individual authors are necessarily those of The Socialist Correspondent.

CommentaryPage 3

Finance Capital rules BritanniaALEX DAVIDSON

Page 4

After Ineos: what now for the unions?ALEX DAVIDSON AND MARTIN S. GIBSON

Page 5

American fast-food workers take actionALEX DAVIDSON

Page 8

Scotland’s economyand independencePAUL SUTTON

Page 10

Syria: cynical lies, false intelligencePAT TURNBULL

Page 13

Pictures: Unless otherwise stated all pictures are courtesy of Commons Wikimedia. Some of these will be attributed to an individualphotographer. This does not mean that these individuals agree with theopinions expressed by individual authors or The Socialist Correspondent. Further information: http://commons.wikimedia.org

Winter 2013-14 The Socialist Correspondent 3

Finance Capital rules BritanniaThe financial collapse of 2007brought about by the banks, whichwe are still being made to pay for,was followed by the LIBOR (theLondon Interbank Offered Rate)scandal, when the manipulation ofrates by the banks was revealed, andas Alex Davidson reports “we areabout to get the FOREX (foreign ex-change rates) scandal” in his article,“Finance Capital rules Britannia”.

It would appear that many of thebig banks have been involved in therigging of currency rates. With bil-lions of dollars of currency being ex-changed daily a difference of afraction of a cent can add a “nicesum to the bonus pool”, writes AlexDavidson.

London is the biggest foreign cur-rency trading market and is numberone in the Global Financial CentresIndex. The current wooing of Chinais intended to keep it there.

George Osborne’s announcementthat he would be making it easier forChinese investment banks to set up inthe City is a reflection of this.

Finance Capital dominates theBritish capitalist economy and so, nomatter the corruption and scandals,the City will continue to be defendedby Cameron’s government. Mean-while British industry is allowed tocontinue in its decades long decline.

Ineos“The recent dispute at Ineos,Grangemouth brought into sharp re-lief the vulnerability and precariousnature of what remains of British in-

SocialistCorrespondentdustry”, write Alex Davidson and Mar-tin S. Gibson in their piece, “What liesahead for Britain’s unions?”

Ratcliffe, the owner of Ineos, threat-ened to close the complex if the work-ers did not accept his ultimatum. Inaccepting the so-called Survival Planthe workers at Ineos now face muchworse terms and conditions.

Their pension scheme has beenchanged for the worse, they will haveto endure a three year pay freeze, lessholidays and the trade union organisa-tion has been weakened.

But it doesn’t end there, as Davidsonand Gibson argue, Cameron’s Coalitiongovernment is now using the Ineosvictory platform to further turn thescrew against trade unions generallyand UNITE in particular.

Scotland’s economyand independenceIf the Grangemouth plant had closedthat would have been the end of oil re-fining in Scotland.

Alex Salmond was worried as thatwould have meant importing oil fromEngland, not a good argument for anindependent Scotland, and so his gov-ernment gave £10m of taxpayers’money to Ratcliffe.

Given, Ratcliffe’s strategy of openingup plants in the US and China to makeuse of cheaper shale oil, he may baleout of Grangemouth in 2017. A newbuyer may well demand even more oftaxpayers’ money.

In his article, “Scotland’s economyand independence”, Paul Sutton re-

views the UK government’s ScotlandAnalysis reports, dealing with eco-nomic questions.

He discusses the currency optionsof an independent Scotland, the ef-fects on the financial sector, businessand government policy.

The conclusion is that independ-ence will come with costs as essen-tially Scotland will still be run byBritish Finance Capital.

Hungry planetGreg Kaser in his “Hungry Planet –climate crisis”, writes that food pro-duction is highly vulnerable to climatechange.

He explains the importance of thesoil and its vulnerability. Soil erosioncan be brought about by a number of

factors including drought, which canaccelerate the process as happened inthe American prairies leading to itbecoming a dust bowl in the 1930s.

He quotes from the Organisationfor Economic Cooperation andDevelopment (OECD): “over thepast several decades…land classifiedas very dry has more than doubledglobally…”

He concludes, “Our future - aworld suffering from acute food andwater shortages - is already apparent”and adds, “As socialists we sharemany values with the Green move-ment … but we have a class perspec-tive as well … Tackling climatechange will require the mobilisationof people, technology and capital andsince most technology and capital isin private hands this will not just bedifficult, it may prove impossible inthe absence of the public ownershipof economic assets.”

The To contact The Socialist Correspondent

email the editor: editor@thesocialistcorrespondent.org.ukwww.thesocialistcorrespondent.org.uk

Commentary

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Finance Capital rules Britannia

Investigations have begun into the ma-nipulation of FOREX (Foreign Ex-change Market). Regulatory authoritiesin several countries including those ofthe UK, Switzerland and the US areconducting investigations into at leasteight banks thought to have been in-volved in the rigging of currency rates.The banks include RBS, Barclays,HSBC, JP Morgan and Citigroup.

Regulators’ concerns reportedly cen-tre around abnormal movements aheadof a widely-used daily snapshot of ex-change rates, known as the 4pm “Lon-don fix”. It represents the average ofprices agreed during 60 seconds trading,and is used as a reference rate to exe-cute a much larger set of currency deals.

Bankers have huge incentives tonudge the price of a given currencypairing ahead of the fix. With billions ofdollars changing hands, a difference of afraction of a cent can add a nice sum tothe bonus pool. By moving the marketsahead of the fix the dealers alter the rateto their profit and their clients’ loss.

Regulators are looking at instant mes-sages written by dealers including JPMorgan’s chief London-based dealer,Richard Usher. Usher formerly workedat the Royal Bank of Scotland beforejoining JP Morgan in 2010.

Incidentally, JP Morgan is set to pay arecord £8 billion to settle US investiga-tions into its sale of bad mortgage loansto investors. It follows the sale of securi-ties based on home loans in the run upto the financial crisis. Investors whobought them saw the value plunge whenthe US housing bubble burst. Althoughthe payment will settle all civil claims, thebank could still face criminal charges.

Following the financial crisis of2007/2008, there was the LIBOR (Lon-don Interbank Offered Rate) scandalwhen the manipulation of rates by the

banks was revealed and now we areabout to get the FOREX scandal.

Finance Capital RulesThe British Government continues todefend the City and that’s becauseBritain is run by Finance Capital.

It was not surprising that the Chan-cellor, George Osborne, during his re-cent visit to China, announced that hewould be making it easier for Chineseinvestment banks to set up in the City.

Chinese banks will be allowed to reg-ister as branches with the British finan-cial regulator, meaning they will notneed to hold as much capital within theUK to operate. At present, major Chi-nese banks must establish UK-basedsubsidiaries that are regulated locally todo business, making it more expensivein terms of capital and regulatory coststo set up London offices.

Allowing Chinese banks to operatethrough branches will put them on anequal footing with banks from othermajor economies, such as, US invest-ment banks, Goldman Sachs andMorgan Stanley.

George Osborne has claimed thatChina and Britain “are the two countrieswho stand up most for free trade whenthese things are talked about around thetable…so you know we have a hugeshared interest, there is a very complexstory of the Chinese Communist Partyand how it came to run a very capitalistsystem but we have to engage with thiscountry because it’s a fifth of the world’spopulation. (Daily Telegraph, 17 Octo-ber 2013)

One recent high profile example ofthis UK-Chinese collaboration is theUK owned Ineos Refining business,which operates the Oil Refinery andPetro-Chemical Plant at Grangemouthon the south bank of the river Forth in

Scotland. Ineos entered into a 50/50joint venture with the Chinese state oilcompany, Petrochina, to form Petroi-neos. (see article on next Page)

Britain has been transformed from amanufacturing and industrial countryinto a service economy dominated by fi-nance capital. The enormous run-downand effective closure of the coal-min-ing, steel and shipbuilding industries inthe 1980s has had a grave effect on livesand communities in Britain.

This industrial decline is reflected in avariety of ways. For example, in the lownumber and poor quality of apprentice-ships in Britain compared to othercountries. In England there were only61,000 new apprenticeships starts foryoung people, while in Germany, therewere 570,000 new apprenticeships. 50%of employers in Germany offer appren-ticeships, while in England only 20% ofemployers offer new apprenticeships,according to research conducted by theSutton Trust.

And, Chinese companies are movingin. For example, the Chinese telecom-munications giant firm, Huawei, made adeal with British Telecommunications(BT) in 2005 to upgrade its copperbroadband service and its equipment isalso being used to build the 4G mobilephone network.

Osborne also announced a “super-pri-ority” visa system for Chinese visitors.This pilot scheme will allow them toapply using the “Schengen form” – thesingle application accepted by Europe.

The UK accounts for only 7% of thetotal number of Chinese visitors to Eu-rope, principally because it is difficultfor them to secure a UK visa, comparedwith the ease of obtaining a Schenganvisa allowing them to visit 26 Europeancountries.

In 2012 Chinese visitors spent £262min the so-called London Luxury Quar-ter, the high-end shopping area aroundBond Street in central London. Thiswas a 31% increase over 2011. The av-erage spend was £1,656 per transaction- only Qatari visitors spent more.

One reason China is being wooed byBritain is to retain London as thepre-eminent global financial centre.

£3.3 trillion ($5.3 trillion) is the size of the daily global tradein currencies. 41% of this trade is conducted in the City ofLondon, the world’s biggest foreign currency trading market.New York has less than half that figure.

By ALEX DAVIDSON

Finance Capitalrules Britannia££


After Ineos: what now for the unions?

In 2004 British Petroleum (BP) divestedsome of its business and the sale in-cluded that of the Grangemouth Refin-ery and the connected petrochemicalscomplex, excluding the Kinneil terminal,which was retained by BP.

In 2005 the new company created wasInnovene and later that year it was pur-chased by Ineos.

In 2011 the Ineos Refining business,which included both the Grangemouthand Lavera (near Marseilles, France)Refineries entered into a 50/50 joint ven-ture with the Chinese state oil company,Petrochina, to form Petroineos.

Grangemouth and Lavera bothprocess 210,000 barrels of crude oildaily. Grangemouth is the only oil refin-ery in Scotland. It supplies most of Scot-land’s fuel and much of NorthernEngland. Along with the petro-chemicalplants at Grangemouth it is the largestindustrial complex in Scotland, con-tributing some £2 billion to the Scottisheconomy.

Ineos is a young company (establishedin 1998) but it has grown into a largecompany straddling the continents as thetable and diagram, from Ineos’ website,opposite show.

Ineos operates 51 manufacturing facil-ities in 11 countries supplying marketsaround the world. The very broadgeographic earnings base is shown in thediagram opposite.

Ineos borrowed $9 billion from threebanks for its acquisitions and to effectgrowth. With the banking crash of2007/2008 the 3 banks, led by Barclays,called in $1 million and Ineos broke thecovenant. “Tripped” is the word used byowner, Jim Ratcliffe.

Ineos had been based in England be-fore the credit crunch but, when it brokethe bank covenant and was also facing alarge VAT bill, the company asked for ayear’s postponement and when that wasnot forthcoming Ineos moved to

issue. This led to David Cameron usingPrime Minister’s Question Time to at-tack Ed Milliband and the Labour Partyover its relationship to UNITE and tradeunions in general. Milliband gave a knee-jerk reaction and stated that the fundingrelationship between the trade unionsand the Labour Party would change.

Karie Murphy and Steven Deans,Constituency chair and also Convener ofshop stewards at Grangemouth weresuspended and a Labour Party investi-gation was opened.

The investigation found there were noquestions to answer as did the Police in-vestigation. Murphy and Deans were re-instated. Milliband also qualified hisproposed change in the funding rela-tionship with the trade unions. He indi-cated that it would now be reviewed afterthe General Election. One presumes hewas told the funding could not be re-placed between now and the election.

Ineos had begun its own investigationinto Deans’s Labour Party activitieswhilst acting as Convener at the plant.UNITE called a strike over this. Ineosclosed the plant citing safety reasons andwhen the talks at ACAS broke downthey said that they would permanentlyshut the plant unless the workforceaccepted the management’s Survival Plan.

In justification of their Survival PlanIneos claimed that Grangemouth waslosing £10 million every month and hadlost some £579 million in the last fouryears. UNITE disputed these figures.

Switzerland and a rather more attractivetax regime.

Jim Ratcliffe, the owner of Ineos, doesnot present his Swiss domicile as max-imising profits but as maximising thecash available to re-invest.

At the same time as Ratcliffe moved toSwitzerland Ineos proposed to changethe pension terms of the workforce atGrangemouth and this led to a two-daystrike in 2008.

In October 2013 the media reportedaccusations that UNITE the union waspacking the Falkirk Constituency LabourParty with supporters to ensure the se-lection of Karie Murphy as the LabourParty candidate.

Jim Murphy MP and other right-wingers in the Labour Party took up the

Turnover $43 billion

Employees 15,000

Production 60 million tonnes

Sites 51 manufacturingplants in 11 countries

Ineos: a large company thatstraddles the continents

The recent dispute at Ineos, Grangemouth brought intosharp relief the vulnerability and precarious nature of whatremains of industry in Britain.

By ALEX DAVIDSON and MARTIN S. GIBSON

After Ineos: whatnow for the unions?

Geographicspread ofIneos’earningsbase



This £579 million “loss” claim is nota loss in conventional terms. Most of it iscapital expenditure. Capital expenditureis only usually committed if profits areexpected to flow from it in the future.But Ineos claims that it doesn’t expect tomake profits in the next five years atGrangemouth and so it has written downthe petro-chemical plant’s valuation fromnearly £400 million to zero.

UNITE’s analysis is that a tax deferralof £117million in the most recent ac-counts implied £1/2 billion in profitsover the next few years.

Ineos’s reponse was, such is the struc-ture of the company’s operations thatthose profits can be made in other Ineosplants around Britain. Even if the sub-sidiary is called Ineos Grangemouth Ltd,its tax deferrals can be applied to anyone of another 20-plus subsidiaries ofIneos.

However, “getting to the bottom ofIneos’ accounts would be impossible”commented the economist, Alf Young(Scotland Tonight, STV, 22 October2013). This was also the conclusion ofDouglas Fraser, BBC Business Editor,when he wrote, “…there’s not muchpoint in an outsider trying to fathom theaccounts.” (18 October 2013)

Those workers voting to accept theSurvival Plan would receive £2,500 -£15,000 in compensation. About halfthe workforce are members of UNITE

and some 65% voted to reject the Plan. During the 11th hour discussions with

the Scottish and British Governments,Ineos secured £10 million as investmentfrom the Scottish Government and some£125 million of a guaranteed loan fromthe British Government.

Closure of the plant would have meantthat Scotland would not have a single oilrefinery (see map opposite of Refineriesin Britain). Alex Salmond was wellaware that would settle the question ofIndependence and not in his favour.

With the threatened closure of theplant and the loss of some 1400 jobsplus up to 10,000 related jobs UNITEaccepted the ultimatum.

The Survival Plan includes a threeyear pay freeze, the end of the finalsalary pension scheme, reduced holidaysand no more full-time trade union con-veners of shop stewards.

It was a heavy defeat for the union andthe workforce.

What now for the unions?While the dispute is over its industrialand political ramifications are far fromconcluded.

On Sunday 17 Novemebr, 2013,Prime Minister, David Cameronlaunched an inquiry into the so-called“leverage” actions employed by UNITEactivists during the dispute. Cameron’sinquiry will be headed by Bruce Carr

QC and its remit is to examine whetherthe law needs to be tightened to preventthose actions which Cameron describedon 31 October as “quite shocking.”

Cameron said, “No-one has a right tointimidate. Nobody has a right to bully.Nobody has a right to threaten people’sfamilies. No-one has a right to threatenpeople in their homes. If these thingshave happened, it is very serious. Itneeds to be properly examined.” (BBCNews 31 October 2013).

This from the Tory leader who zeal-ously sent British war planes to bully andbomb the state of Libya into its currentchaotic state of violence and submissionto the will of imperialism, and whowishes he could do the same to Syria.

UNITE has said it will not cooperatewith Cameron’s inquiry describing it as aTory stunt. It has also defended itsleverage tactics of targeting employers,arguing that bad employers should havenowhere to hide. It further claims thatits tactics are legitimate and legal.

The fact that Cameron has launchedan inquiry to change the law suggests theunion is absolutely right on this count.But for how long? His inquiry willreport in six months time and no doubtits proceedings will result in plenty ofTory press union-bashing and sacks fullof grist to Cameron’s mill of more anti-trades union legislation.

And you can bet your mortgage on the

The Ineos oil refinery and petro-chemicals plantat Grangemouth on the Firth of Forth.



certainty that Cameron won’t kick thisinquiry’s recommendations into the samelong grass as he booted the Leveson in-quiry’s into our Tory-dominated press.

Joining a trades union is still the bestway for all workers to defend themselvesat their place of work, improve their rights,pay and conditions and generally resist theravages of capitalist economic crises.

According to the new Bank of EnglandGovernor, Mark Carney Britain’s econ-

omy is growing again. The last thingCameron and the Tories want is forBritish workers to stir themselves intostruggles that might just seriously chal-lenge the Government’s economicausterity measures and public sectorcuts: measures and cuts that still haveseveral years to run and very much moredamage to do.

As with Margaret Thatcher’s victoryover the miners a generation ago,

Cameron now seeks to consolidate theIneos owners’ and British state monop-oly capitalism’s victory over the workersand their union at Grangemouth.

He will do that with his inquiry andlaws to further fetter working class strug-gle and solidarity. Stand by for “quiteshocking” tales of how UNITE’s big badbogey men frightened Ineos’s innocentbosses in the sanctuary of their mansionsand yacht clubs.


American fast-food workers take action

The Fight for $15 per hour (FF15)campaign started in November 2012,then erupted in the spring of 2013, asworkers walked off the job in New York,then Chicago, then St. Louis, Milwau-kee, Detroit, and Seattle. Seven citiesorganised a second week of one-daystrikes at the end of July.

Then, on August 29, there werestrikes in 62 cities around two principaldemands: $15 an hour minimum wageand the right to form a union withoutretaliation.

The strikes at fast-food companies in-cluding McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC,Subway, Burger King and Wendy’s in-volved many workers who had never beenon strike before and most of whom priorto the strikes were not in a union. Thestrikes achieved nationwide publicity.

The average wage for fast-food work-

ers is $8.69 and an estimated 87% offast-food workers do not receive healthbenefits. 68% of fast-food workers arethe main earners in their families andmore than 25% have children.

As a result of the action gains havebeen made with some of the workerswinning pay increases and improvedconditions. Perhaps the biggest gain hasbeen the confidence and organisationthat has come through their struggle.

Some recent reports(1) have shed lighton the high cost of low wages in the fastfood industry. The reports argue thatlow wages in the fast food industry costUS taxpayers nearly $7billion annually.

Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’sHealth Insurance Program) account formore than half of the $7 billion.

In addition, fast-food workers’ fami-lies also receive an annual average of

American fast-foodworkers take action

$1.04 billion in food stamp benefits and$1.91 billion in Earned Income TaxCredit payments.

According to the report, Fast-food,Poverty Wages, “fast-food jobs pay solittle that 52% of families of front-linefast-food workers rely on public assis-tance programs”.

This means that US taxpayers are di-rectly subsidising the enormous profitsof the fast-food companies.

The ten largest food companies mademore than $7.4 billion in profits in 2012and paid their top executives more than$53 million in salaries. The industry isdominated by McDonalds, which madea profit of $5.4 billion in 2012.

Footnote1. Super Sizing Public Costs: How LowWages at Top Fast-Food Chains LeaveTaxpayers Footing the Bill was publishedby the National Employment Law Projectand Fast-Food, Poverty Wages:The Public Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in theFast-Food Industry was published by theUniversity of California Labor Center.

As Occupy Wall Street did in 2011, strik-ers have focused the national narrativeon the appalling inequality of 21st cen-tury America and the evaporation of well-paying jobs with benefits. But as the campaign - backed by the

Service Employees International Union(SEIU) - has advanced, some in laborhave worried that the strikes focus en-tirely on shifting the narrative aroundlow-wage work while giving long-term or-ganizing among low-wage workers them-selves short shrift.To discuss the campaign, In These

Times turned to Peter Olney, organizingdirector of the International Longshoreand Warehouse Union, and a formerSEIU organizer; Jane McAlevey, formerSEIU national deputy director of strate-

gic campaigns and SEIU Nevada ex-ex-ecutive director, who chronicled her ex-periences in Raising Expectations (AndRaising Hell): My Decade Fighting for theLabor Movement (Verso); and TrishKahle, a worker at Whole Foods and amember of the SEIU-backed Workers Or-ganizing Committee of Chicago, a newunion that is leading the Fight for 15campaign. Representatives of SEIU wereinvited to participate in this discussionbut declined.

What has the campaign accomplishedso far?Trish: We had been trying to organize

at Whole Foods for at least five monthsin Chicago, but no unions thought it wasworth investing in a campaign.

Fight for 15 gave us resources to ac-tually organize at work. After the April 24strike, the organizers at our store andmany other stores got raises - I got a$1.50 raise and other people got smallpromotions. We also got managementto agree to a new attendance policy.And now we actually have a water coolerand a place where we can take breaks. Fight for 15 is giving people an idea of

how organizing works.Jane: Any time we’re talking about in-

equality nationally, it’s a good thing.Many people have long argued that thelabor movement needs to act on behalfof the entire working class. SEIU is doingthat here.

Some say Fight for 15 is little morethan a PR campaign - do you agree?Trish: Among organizers, the cam-

paign’s purpose is debated. For exam-ple, on August 29, staff were making

Low-wage fast-food and retail workers in the United Stateshave been taking unprecedented action over the last year.

By ALEX DAVIDSON

MICAH UETRICHT of the In These Times publicationquestions three union organisers. (Posted by Portside on September 20, 2013)

Is the US fast-food workers’ action effective?


American fast-food workers take action

sure as many cities struck as possible,regardless of the level of organization—rather than actually organizing and ex-erting more power in certain workplaces. At the same time, the “minority strike”

has brought a lot of organizing into theopen. That has to translate into deep-ening the organizing and developingrank-and-file leaders.Peter: At the Bay Area August 29 rally,

there was a huge turnout of supporters,but a negligible number of fast-foodworkers. An organizer told me that 72workers were present at a meeting toauthorize a strike in 40 fast-food outletsand that about 40 workers walked. The action got tremendous press, but

I’m concerned about actual participationby workers and what kind of organizationis built in the long run.Trish: The organization is extremely

uneven—across the country and even inChicago. At places like Whole Foods,Subway and Dunkin Donuts, there is ahigh level of worker organization.Chicago Dunkin Donuts workers’ air

conditioning went off during a heat wave,and they phoned the union office andsaid, “We are going on strike. We put apadlock on the door. We need you tocome down and support us.” That shows a level of worker driven ac-

tivity that is not present at every work-place. And so the question for me is howwe actually get to that level. I’m not surethe PR tactic that relies on the goodwillof politicians and community organiza-tions is the best or most direct way.In Chicago, half of our staff is in re-

search, communications and outreach,and half is dedicated to turf organizing.We would want to see that shift towardmore organizing in the stores.Jane: Nationally, some of the bigger

unions are tending toward advocacywork, and to me that is the wrongdirection.

In the last 15 years, a lot of moneyhas been donated to PR and research.But we need money and resources de-voted to teaching workers about how touse their own power - city by city, shopby shop - to win real gains.

In Salon, Josh Eidelson reported thatacademics and SEIU leaders have dis-cussed two potential endgames forthe campaign - reaching some kind ofagreement with fast-food companies,and launching city-level campaigns topass living-wage laws. Your reaction?Jane: For a decade, SEIU was making

top-down deals with little or no rank and-file involvement, like deals with nursinghomes that exchanged unionization fora legislative push to prevent patientsfrom suing nursing homes. Those arethe kind of deals we don’t need withfast-food chains.Not all deals are bad. But the question

is, “Who’s involved in making them?” Isthere actually a structure where fast-food workers are significantly involved? It’s not clear from the description

Peter gave of the Bay Area, or here inNew York - though it may be more clearin Chicago, it sounds like from Trish -that there is a structure that involvesworkers in making smart decisions.Trish: I think the legislative approach

would be too fast-track. We need somesort of city-wide organization, where, forexample, every organized fast-food storecould be covered by the same contract. And any sort of deal we get has to in-

clude the right to strike. With the widevariation among shops, that’s really theonly way for us to be able to effectivelyenforce a deal.

What specific challenges does organizing the fast-food sector pose?Peter: Unlike SEIU’s previous victories

with janitors—where the union already

had a mighty fortress of organized com-mercial janitor locals in NY, Chicago andSF as a base to organize from - and withhomecare workers - where you had pub-lic financing and could mobilize publicpower - in Wal-Mart, or the fast food in-dustry, you’re starting with a blank slateand doing pure private sector organizing.That will require a long-term commit-

ment of resources, and particularly acommitment of creative and bright or-ganizers like Trish who are willing to ded-icate their lives to building power fromthe bottom up, and creating networksacross a city and a region. The organization of the West Coast

Waterfront took at least 12 years of or-ganizing by Harry Bridges and others. Itinvolved failed strikes and failed organ-izing drives, but culminated in 1934 withthe West Coast waterfront strike and thegeneral strike in San Francisco. And thatrequired incredible fortitude.Jane: We still have 14 million union

members in this country. A more strate-gic approach to this would be a rela-tional model, where you start with yourmembers, and you chart all the organicrelationships that your members have,and you begin with the workers them-selves building off of existing social net-works.

Final thoughts?Peter: Workers are walking out on

strike and going back to work with im-punity, at least initially. But then whatwe’re seeing on the Wal-Mart campaign,and certainly we’ll see it in the fast foodcampaign, is firings six months later forabsenteeism or some other trumped-upinfraction. How can we defend these workers?

And how do we prevent a chilling effecton the rest of the workforce if we don’thave the organization necessary to de-fend the fired workers?Jane: Anything that encourages direct

action is good. It’d be good if otherunions were at least attempting newstuff like SEIU is currently doing. If or-ganizers in every city, every region, everypart of the country put their heads to-gether, there could be a strategy to worktogether with the existing rank-and-filemembership and go for power.Trish: What Fight for 15 has taught us

is that if we fight we can win. We alreadystarted making gains at work. We’veunited when no one thought we could. So if any low wage workers see this, I

would encourage them to join us. Themore united we are, the stronger we are.This is a historic moment, and I thinkwhen people look back, they’re going tosay we did something amazing that noone believed we could do.

Chicago31 July 2013. Employees andunion activistsprotest outside a Whole Foodsstore.


Scotland’s economy and independence

economy as a small vulnerable state. In these circumstances the claim of

the pro-independence camp that itcould reach an agreement with the RUKthat would be equally advantageous andbeneficial to both is not convincing.

It will also be increasingly difficult tomanage. At present, the Scottish econ-omy is similar in many ways to that ofthe RUK, including its business cycle.

An independent Scotland with its ownpowers of spending and taxation (fiscalpolicy), among other things, would in-creasingly diverge from the RUK mean-ing that economic integration isweakened and that ultimately what theRUK decides is in its best interests forsterling may not be in the best interestsof Scotland.

The recent crisis in the Eurozonebetween the smaller southern countriesand stronger northern countries imme-diately comes to mind.

In fact, even if matters at the begin-ning were somehow to be beneficial toScotland it is likely that over time itwould end up in position (b) of de facto‘sterlingisation’ i.e. where it had no con-trol over its monetary policy and sowould be constrained in both its fiscalpolicy and its ability to market itself as afinancial centre.

Scotland could seek to join the euro.That cannot be ruled out as a future op-tion given the problems identified above.But at present that is unattractive givenits integration with and similarity to theRUK economy and would require Scot-

To date, six reports have been issued,four of which analyse the economic ar-guments (www.gov.uk/scotlandanalysis).

The CurrencyThe first, and in many ways the mostimportant symbolically, dealt with thecurrency. An independent Scotlandwould have four choices: (a) continue touse sterling with a formal agreementwith the RUK (a sterling currencyunion); (b) use sterling unilaterally, withno formal agreement with the RUK(‘sterlingisation’); (c) join the euro; (d)introduce a new Scottish currency.

The Scottish National Party (SNP),which is the core of the pro-indepen-dence campaign, once favoured both (c)and (d), but has now moved to (a).

In so doing, however, it leaves itself a‘hostage to fortune’. All would dependon negotiations with the RUK followinga ‘yes’ for independence in the referen-dum and it is by no means clear whatthe position of the RUK would be.

At the same time it is clear that Scot-land would be negotiating from a posi-tion of weakness given both the relativesize of its economy (at one tenth that ofthe RUK) and the increased risk to its

The main fact to emerge was that opin-ion had remained remarkably consistentat around 33% for independence, 50%opposed and 17% undecided (see theWhat Scotland Thinks website).

What also emerged was that the eco-nomic costs or benefits of independencewill be the key factor in determininghow people vote.

An ICM poll found that 47% wouldsupport independence if they thoughtthey would be £500 a year better offwhile only 18% would support inde-pendence if they thought they would be£500 a year worse off.

In more general terms, 48% thoughtindependence would be bad for theeconomy as against 31% who thought itwould be good, with 6% saying it wouldmake no difference and 14% saying theydid not know (The Herald, 16 Septem-ber 2013).

In the referendum battle ‘economics’will be crucial and on this subject the‘no to independence’ has a head start.In February 2013 the UK governmentlaunched its Scotland Analysis reportswhich present the case for the continuedunion of Scotland with the rest of theUnited Kingdom (RUK).

Scotland’s economyand independenceThe referendum on independence for Scotland will be heldon 18 September 2014. In anticipation of this event a seriesof polls were published reporting current opinion in Scotland.

By PAUL SUTTON

Oct. 2013Mar. 2013 Apr. 2013 May. 2013 Jun. 2013 Jul. 2013 Aug. 2013 Sep. 2013

75%

50%

25%

Should Scotland be an independent country?Source: What Scotland Thinks website

No Yes Don’tknow

Poll of 16 Polls

Nov.



Scotland could continue as a major fi-nancial centre. The Scotland Analysis re-port on finance throws this into doubt.

The financial sectorIn 2010 the financial services sector con-tributed £8.8 billion to the Scottisheconomy and employed directly 85,000people and indirectly 100,000. It in-volves large banks such as the Bank ofScotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland(RBS) and insurance providers such asStandard Life. In 2009 the finance sec-tor sold nearly half (47%) of its output tothe RUK.

With independence this would have tochange. Scotland would need to estab-lish its own regulatory mechanisms forthe financial sector, including financialconsumer protection and its owndeposits guarantee fund to compensatesavers if a bank failed.

RBS almost failed in 2008 and wasessentially taken over by the UKgovernment. It provided some £320 bil-lion to stabilise the bank, equivalent to211% of the Scottish GDP that year.The question must be asked as towhether an independent Scotland couldhave financed such a rescue plan out ofits own resources.

This becomes even more problematicif the total size of the financial sector isconsidered. Scottish banks have assetstotalling around 1254% of an independ-ent Scotland’s GDP. This is well above afigure of 700% for Cyprus and 880% forIceland where financial crises resulted in

major bank failures. In September 2012 banking sector

contingent liabilities were around£30,000 per capita for the UK but in anindependent Scotland they are £65,000.This could be the cost to a Scottish tax-payer of a future banking crisis.

In short, there is considerable uncer-tainty as to whether a Scottish financialsector can be viable outside the currentUK framework and whether an inde-pendent Scotland will still retain the con-fidence of financial markets withoutpaying a ‘risk premium’ on finance it ac-cesses from them.

There have been rumours that Stan-dard Life, the largest financial companyin Scotland still under Scottish control,would move its headquarters to Londonif Scotland opted for independence. Itwould not be surprising given that 90%of its customers are south of the border(Scotland Business, BBC News, 7 Sep-tember 2013).

BusinessIn Scotland, the services sector accountsfor around three-quarters of GDP and82% of employment. In general the per-formance of the Scottish economy issimilar to that of the RUK with levels ofproductivity in line with the UK averageand levels of employment (around 71%)much the same.

The Scotland Analysis report on busi-ness attributes much of this to the factthat the UK is a true domestic singlemarket with no significant barriers be-

land to negotiate with the Eurozone forentry, including acceptance of the termsunderlying the fiscal and stability pacts.

These would place limits on govern-ment spending in Scotland driving a‘coach and horses’ through the muchtouted SNP proposals for more and bet-ter government services than in theRUK.

Lastly Scotland could adopt its owncurrency. This was once the real symbolof independence but it would come withcosts.

One would be the simple one of‘transaction costs’ i.e. the costs of ex-changing the ‘wallace’ (or whatever itwould be called) for the ‘pound’ andback-again with its main trading partner,the RUK.

Inevitably this would make Scotlandless competitive in what it sells to theRUK i.e. all goods and services wouldbear a currency transaction cost, while atthe same time increasing the costs of itsimports from the RUK.

Another cost would be the higher costsof servicing its share of the national debtinherited at independence given thesmallness and associated volatility of itseconomy which would increase the costof borrowing via higher interest ratescharged by the international capitalmarkets.

In turn, this would impact on fiscalpolicy and plans for government spend-ing. It could also mean higher mortgage,pension and insurance costs. The pro-independence camp has asserted that

The “Old Bank”, the Bank of Scotland, The Mound,Edinburgh, now part of the Lloyds Banking group, wasestablished in 1695 by an Act of the Scottish Parlia-ment a year after the Bank of England was founded.

The “New Bank”, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS),St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh received its royal charter in 1727. The UK Goverrnment has in recenttimes provided £320 billion to stabilise RBS.



tween Scotland and the RUK. It argues this is of considerable bene-

fit to both Scotland and the RUK. In2011 Scotland ‘exported’ £36 billionworth of goods and services to the RUK,around double what it exported to therest of the world, and ‘imported’ £49billion. Among the leading export sectorswere financial and professional services,food and drink, and energy.

In support of this activity is a sharedbusiness framework that allows for thedevelopment of effective common regu-lations, a unified labour market, a sharedknowledge base and an integrated infra-structure.

An example is the free movement oflabour between Scotland and the RUK,with around 34,000 people of workingage moving in each direction in 2011. Inall, some 700,000 people born in Scot-land now live in the RUK while around500,000 born in the RUK now live inScotland.

Another example is foreign direct in-vestment (FDI) with Scotland in 2012the recipient of just under 11% of theFDI in the UK, which is in line with itsshare of GDP.

In sum, the current business frame-work provides ‘economies of scale’which reduce the costs on doing busi-ness. Independence, it is argued, willerode these through the creation of newbarriers in the form of differences in reg-ulations and their enforcement, whichwill increase the costs to business andhouseholds.

One estimate is that this ‘border effect’will reduce the level of real income in theScottish economy by about 4% after 30years.

Government policyUnder devolution the Scottish govern-ment were given some limited powers todevelop an economic policy. These werefurther enhanced with the Scotland Actof 2012, including additional tax raisingand borrowing powers.

The major part of Scottish govern-ment spending, however, is by way of ablock grant from the UK government ofaround £30 billion annually.

The fourth Scotland Analysis reporton macroeconomic policy claims thatpublic spending per person in Scotlandhas been around 10% higher than theUK average. The pro-independencecampaign claim that the revenues Scot-land generates, onshore and offshore viaNorth Sea oil and gas, more than coverits expenditure and are large enough tosupport independence.

Much of this revolves around NorthSea oil. Since devolution, Scotland’s ge-ographical share of North Sea oil and gas

receipts has fluctuated between £2 bil-lion and £12 billion (from 2.4% to 8.3%of Scottish GDP). This demonstrates itsvolatility as a revenue source.

Under the current funding arrange-ments of the block grant derived fromUK wide taxation this volatility is ac-commodated and smoothed out to pro-vide a stable source of funds year onyear. Under independence greatervolatility would apply. In some years thiswould deliver a bonanza and in others adeficit in revenues.

This was admitted in a leaked reportwritten for the Scottish governmentwhich anticipated problems and forecastthat in 2016-17 it would, on attainingfull independence, experience problemsthat would make it worse off than theRUK (The Guardian, 6 March 2013).

The response to this has been the pro-posal to create an oil fund, similar to thatin Norway, which would act to smoothout oil and gas revenues by saving ingood years and spending in bad years.However, such a fund is expensive toestablish.

A study cited in the Scotland Analysisreport suggests that starting from a bal-anced budget in 2016-17 (by no meansa certainty as noted in the previous para-graph) an independent Scotland wouldneed to raise £8.4 billion in real terms,which implies either spending cuts of13% from current levels or onshore taxrises of 18% for that year.

So much for the prosperity and feel-good factor the first year of independ-ence would bring! And who knows howmuch oil and gas is left out there any-way? Most estimates suggest that taxrevenues from North Sea oil and gas areon a long-term downward trend.

SNP ignore reportsThe four Scotland Analysis reports donot consider the question of whether anindependent Scotland would be viable ornot.

Instead they make the claim, repeateda number of times in the reports, thatScotland currently gets ‘the best of bothworlds’ i.e. the economic benefits ofunion with the RUK plus a degree of po-litical and economic autonomy that allowit to fashion policies in the economic in-terests of the Scottish people. The mes-sage that emerges is thus ‘better together’– the name of the ‘no to independence’campaign.

They thus directly serve the interestsof this campaign. But they do so in away which is hard to refute. The reportsare written in an academic style andpresent carefully researched argumentssupported by official statistics. They willnot be easy to refute.

Perhaps that is why the policy of theSNP and the pro-independence cam-paign until now has largely been to ig-nore them.

For example, when the report on fi-nance appeared, John Swinney, the SNPFinance minister, dismissed it with thecomment that “the Treasury’s creativeaccounting on behalf of the no campaignsimply does not add up. It does not re-flect the reality of how financial servicesoperate or stand up to expert scrutiny”(The Guardian, 20 May 2013).

Scrutiny by whom, we may ask? Theunbiased SNP? However, there is onekey consideration that is essential. Thefour reports present windows on distinctparts of the economy - they need to bebrought together in a common frame-work if sense is to be made of them.That involves consideration of theoryand policy judgement.

The theory infusing the reports is notsurprisingly ‘neo-liberal’ and makes thecase that a capitalist Scotland works bestwithin a united UK.

The four reports do present coherentarguments and more crucially providefacts and raise questions which are es-sential to the debate on independence.They make it clear that independencewill come with costs.

In an interview with The Observer (14July 2013) Alex Salmond, the leader ofthe SNP and First minister for Scotland,stated: “Independence will come to Scot-land on a rising tide of expecta-tions…..for decency, and the reasonablysecure belief that the country will be allright economically. This, coupled with abelief that we will be better socially, is anirresistible combination”. In other words,this is the winning formulae for the ‘yesto independence’ campaign.

Prosperity must be guaranteed. Theeconomic facts, however, do not bearthis out. Rising expectations will not bemet. Independence by itself will not doso - rather the reverse.

North Sea oil rig in the Cromarty Firth, Scotland.


Syria: cynical lies, false intelligence

On 28th June ‘leaked CIA plans’ indi-cated that ‘the United States plans tostart supplying arms directly to Syrianrebels within a month … as it emergedthat the CIA has begun shippingweapons to a secret network of ware-houses in neighbouring Jordan. … Thearms supplies are intended to be in thehands of the rebels before an offensiveagainst Bashar al-Assad’s regime islaunched in early August, according to theWall Street Journal. … Saudi Arabia haspromised to dispatch up to 20 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, capable oftaking down regime fighter jets.’

On 31st July Shashank Joshi, in apiece entitled ‘Syria lies in pieces and itwill not be fixed’, wrote: ‘About 5,000Sunni fighters from 60 countries havejoined the rebellion, making it the sec-ond-largest destination for foreign fight-ers in modern history. (In first place iseighties Afghanistan, but Syria maysoon beat those numbers.)’

On 8th August the Daily Telegraphreported ‘the fall of the largest air-basein the north after a year-long siege …Al-Menagh airbase was taken on Mon-day by the group Jaish al-Muhajireen waAnsar, which is made up almost exclu-sively of foreigners, including Britons,other Europeans and North Americans.The faction is led by Abu Omar al-Shis-tani, a veteran jihadist from Georgiawho cut his teeth in the Caucasus fight-ing Russian troops.’ According to CharlesLister, an analyst with IHS Jane’s Terror-ism and Insurgency Centre, this was “the

Syria: cynical lies,false intelligenceThere is ample evidence of outside interference in the war inSyria. The Daily Telegraph has covered some of it.

By PAT TURNBULLfirst big base seizure by the opposition forseveral months. But because it is under thecontrol of the jihadist groups it shows theimportance of their role in the fighting.”

At the same time there have beenreports indicating the growing success ofthe Syrian government and army.

On 24th July under the heading ‘Dis-illusioned and exhausted, rebels driftback to Assad’ the Daily Telegraphreported ‘growing numbers of rebels aresigning up to a negotiated amnestyoffered by the Assad regime. At thesame time, the families of retreatingfighters have begun quietly moving backto government-controlled territory, seenas a safer place to live … the regime ...has established a so-called “ministry ofreconciliation” with the task of easing theway for former opponents to return tothe government side.’

Minister Ali Haider, ‘who has a repu-tation as a moderate within the regime,has established a system in which the op-position fighters give up their weaponsin exchange for safe passage to govern-ment-held areas … In the days beforethe regime took the town of Qusayr lastmonth, the Daily Telegraph saw media-tors on the Lebanese border work withthe Syrian army to secure an amnesty forfighters wanting to surrender. Thephone rang with desperate calls from theparents of the rebels. “These mothersknow that this is the last chance for theirsons. If they don’t give up their weaponsnow they will die because they are los-ing the battle,” said Ali Fayez Uwad, the

mediator.’ Eye-witness report secured inJune – but only published in late July!

6th August: ‘In past months the Syrianarmy, supported by militias funded byIran and Iraq, has made a series of mili-tary gains, pushing rebel groups frommuch of the centre of the country.’

8th August: ‘Syrian government troopskilled 62 rebels in a dawn ambush on akey opposition smuggling route intoDamascus. ... The capture of the smug-gling route is a coup for the Syrianregime, which has stepped up the cam-paign in recent months to crush opposi-tion cells that have held some suburbs inDamascus for more than a year.’

This is the context in which the 22ndAugust report appears under the head-line, ‘Assad regime is accused of killinghundreds in Syrian gas attacks.’ Contin-uing it said, ‘The alleged attack came justthree days after UN experts arrived inDamascus to establish whether Syria hasused chemical weapons. ... The regimeadamantly denied that gas had beenused, calling these reports “baseless” – adenial that has been repeated ever since.’

On 28th August Sqn Ldr TomMitcham (Retd) wrote a letter to theDaily Telegraph: ‘In 2003 I was a mem-ber of the team searching in vain forWeapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq…There are probably elements withinthe rebel coalition who would be pre-pared to sacrifice citizens to achieve theirobjectives. I have no wish to defendAssad, but I do hope that the same sortof cynical lies and false intelligence thatled American and British forces to de-stroy the government, army, law en-forcement and infrastructure of Iraq, willnot be the agent for similar precipitate,drastic action in Syria.’

n Paul Farrell, US columnist and finan-cial analyst, stated last April that theUnited States needed a new war, inorder for capital to thrive. He ironicallycommented then, in a brief note whichappeared in Russia Today, “Didn’t WWII

get us out of the Great Depression?” Hecapped this statement off with datawhich informs his thesis that wars ben-efit capitalists above all. The Forbes listof world billionaires skyrocketed from322 in 2000 to 1,426 recently, 31%

of them being American.

n Marcelo Colossi, Argentine psycholo-gist, professor, writer, journalist and full-time activist for social justice and globaldignity …passes his verdict that today,US power is based on wars, always

On 12 September 2013 Granma International printed an article by Oscar Sanchez Serra, entitled ‘Why is the United States attacking Syria?’ Excerpts from Serra’s article appear below.

Continued on page 18


The hungry planet - climate crisis

Many of the world’s most productiveagricultural regions are at risk and with-out socialist solutions to plan their waterresources and support farmers adapt,there is bound to be more hungeraround the world in the years ahead.

Little has improved since the failureof the Copenhagen summit to agree atreaty to supplement the Kyoto protocolon climate change.

In The Socialist Correspondent issueNo. 8 (2010) I wrote that “the so-calleddeal” reached at Copenhagen wasunlikely to prevent global warmingexceeding 2oC. The aim of the climatetalks was to limit the concentration ofgreenhouse gasses (GHGs) in the

atmosphere to 450 parts per million. Today the Intergovernmental Panel

on Climate Change (IPCC) appears toaccept that the pledges subsequentlymade by governments “are broadly con-sistent with stabilisation at 550 ppmCO2 equivalent” – an increase of morethan 20% over the original target.

If those pledges are not translated intoaction, and emissions continue to growunder a ‘business as usual’ scenario,then the IPCC expect GHG concentra-tions to reach 850 ppm by the end ofthe century.

This puts the planet on a trajectoryfor a 4o rise in average temperature. TheNew York Times reported recently (21

January 2013) that “in the coming cen-tury, the earth is expected to warm fouror five degrees” making “a hugeincrease of sea level inevitable”.

The report adds that “experts fearthat because the world’s coasts are sodensely settled, the rising oceans willlead to a humanitarian crisis lastingmany hundreds of years”.

A rise of several metres in the sea levelis not our biggest problem however.Many cities can be rebuilt on higherground and the rise will be slow, withthe poorest being displaced first as theytend to live nearest the water’s edge. Butthere is time for local councils to plan.The bigger problem lies at ground level– in the soil beneath our feet.

The importance of soilsThe soil is loose rock infused with or-ganic materials, water and gasses. It islike the planet’s skin and stores the nu-trients and moisture critical for plant

The hungry planet - climate crisisThe future is written in the present suggests Alex Mitchell,and it is already clear how global warming will affect us.Food production is highly vulnerable to climate change.

By GREG KASER

Lake Hume on the Upper Murray River, Australia.Picture: Tim Keegan



life. It is one of the most abundantecosystems on Earth but it also vulnera-ble to the weather. Soil erosion can beintensified by poor land managementpractices such as over-grazing or deep-ploughing that allow high water run-off,or the wind, to reduce the topsoil.

Without the topsoil plants will die andit can take 500 years for the soil to re-form. Droughts may accelerate soil ero-sion, which is how the American prairiebecame a dust bowl in the 1930s.

Under President Roosevelt, the gov-ernment trained farmers in soil conser-vation techniques, and then paid them toadopt these methods. A huge wind breakof trees from the Canadian border toTexas was created to shelter the plains.

Soil fertility may also be damagedthrough acidification or salination, whichnormally arises from a combination ofinappropriate cultivation and adverseweather conditions.

High agricultural yields require healthyplant growth which is dependent ongood soils and watering. Farmers re-plenish the soil’s fertility by compostingand introducing mineral fertilisers thatadd ammonium and nitrates.

But these leave residues that accumu-late in the ground water, rivers and lakes,impacting fisheries, and can also acidifythe soils to reduce agricultural potentialover the longer term.

The true extent of soil degradation hasnot been mapped comprehensively. TheFood and Agriculture Organisation(FAO) cited a study published in 1991that classified 1.96 billion hectares asbeing degraded, 910 million hectares(Mha) being moderately degraded, withgreatly reduced agricultural productivity,and 314 Mha as un-reclaimable land. (Ahectare is 10,000 square metres or a bitless than 2 ½ acres.)

Water erosion was the most commonproblem, affecting almost 1.1 billionhectares, while wind erosion affected al-most 600 Mha. The same report esti-mated that total cropland in use in 2000amounted to 1.61 billion hectares.

A map of degraded zones showed thatthe most degraded soils were also themost intensively cultivated. The FAOcommented that “as degradation is nor-mally a slow and almost invisibleprocess, rising yields caused by higherinputs [of water and fertilisers] can maskthe impact of degradation until yields areclose to their ceiling”.(1)

As with many environmental problemswe will not know how troublesome thismay turn out to be until it is too late todo anything about it.

In the absence of good information,complacency reigns. Each local area hasto be analysed as to its vulnerability tosoil degradation, whether this is likely to

arise from inappropriate agriculture orfrom climate change. The fact is that thisis not being done.

As yet, there is no proper communitycontrol over land use and insufficientcapacity for managing land sustainably.It is possible that crop yields can con-tinue to improve and be sufficient to feedthe world’s rising population. But it isalso possible that an agricultural collapseis around the corner.

The Murray-Darling River basinWhat has happened in the Murray-Dar-ling River basin in Australia is an exam-ple of how catastrophe strikes. The basinis known as Australia’s food bowl and isthe most irrigated area of the continent.

It covers a million square kilometres,is home to two million people and pro-duces over half Australia’s cereals, rice,cotton, fruit and livestock.

But after a decade of drought and in-effectual subsidy, many farmers arepacking it in, in some cases with tragicconsequences. At its worst stage, onefarmer was taking his own life every fourdays.

The river has a history of large varia-tion in its flow, sometimes drying upcompletely. This is part of the naturalcycle and the timescale for climatechange will permit the ecology to adapt.

The complicating factor has beenhuman intervention, with its dams, waterstorage ponds and large-scale water off-take for irrigation. By the 1980s, half ofthe original vegetation cover had beencleared. This reduced the river system’snatural resilience leading to soil erosion,rising salinity, loss of habitats and pestinvasions. Even the hardy eucalyptustrees died off in the long drought of 1997to 2009.

Finally the rains arrived. But the floodsin 2010-11 caused extensive damage,mobilised 2.5 million tonnes of salt andreleased highly oxygenated ‘blackwater’that killed many river and pond fish.

We can catch a glimpse of what the fu-ture holds from examples such as this.The water crisis prompted protests byfarmers whose supplies were rationed.

The government recognised that thenatural resource had to be managed sus-tainably. In 2008 the Murray-DarlingBasin Authority was established as a sin-gle agency responsible for the integratedmanagement of water resources, to reg-ulate water trading and to ensure thelong-term health of the rivers.

Farmers are required to pay for theirwater usage through a market scheme fortake-off permits, which means that itsvalue to different crops becomes trans-parent.

Cotton and rice require much more

Dustbowl 1936: Cimarron County, Oklahoma, USA.

water than wheat and this must be re-flected in their price. This adds to theircosts, of course, and further water pricerises could put farmers out of business.

Other ‘at risk’ basinsMurray-Darling is just one river basinfacing major environmental stress. It justso happens to have been a river systemmore frequently prone to drought thanothers, so the consequences of globalwarming showed up there earlier.

I have identified a number of otherriver systems that are at risk in Table 1.

Dryland ecosystems cover 41% of theEarth’s land surface and are home toone-third of the world’s population.River basins with a high proportion ofdryland are prone to drought.

Regions with sandy soils are most atrisk as they hold moisture less effectivelythan clay. If we then group the riverbasins with the highest proportion ofdryland (second and third columns ofTable 1) according to their soil charac-teristics, we get the results shown inTable 2.

The analysis indicates that highly irri-gated agricultural regions such as thePunjab, part of the Indus River Basin,and the veld fed by the Orange River inSouth Africa are very much at risk fromclimate change.

Given the points already made, it isunsurprising that the Murray-DarlingBasin is also at the highest level of risk.At lesser risk are the bread baskets ofDon, Volga and Yellow Rivers and LasPampas of Argentina and Uruguay.

If the global average temperature risesby 4oC over pre-industrial levels, the UKMet Office has estimated that inlandtemperatures away from coasts will riseby a further 2o to 3o.(2)

That would put further river basins atrisk including the Ganges, the Nile andthe Mississippi-Missouri. To be sure,with our current state of knowledge, it isnot clear which regions of the world willreceive more rain and which less.

A government sponsored report fromthe Organization for Economic Co-op-eration and Development nonethelesssummarises the situation in a recent pub-lication: “In general, regions with highrainfall are projected to receive moreprecipitation, while arid and semi-aridregions are projected to become drier. …Over the past several decades … landclassified as very dry has more than dou-bled globally. … Many semi-arid andarid areas (e.g. the Mediterranean basin,western USA, southern Africa andnorth-eastern Brazil) are particularly vul-nerable to the impacts of climate changeand are projected to suffer a decrease inwater resources.”(3)



Between 25%-50% Dryland

AFRICA

Table 1

River Basins with a High Concentration of Dryland

Between 50%-75% Over 75%

Nile Chari Galan-Sagan

Zambezi Niger Limpopo

Orange

Volta

ASIA

Amur Ganges Amu Darya

Indus Syr Darya

Ob Ural

Yellow (Huang He)

AUSTRALIA

Murray-Darling

EUROPE

Dnieper Don

Volga

NORTH AMERICA

Mississippi-Missouri Columbia Colorado

Mackenzie Nelson

Rio Grande

SOUTH AMERICA

Orinoco

Source: World Resource Institute

Colorado-Desaguadero

Sandy Soils

Table 2

River Basins according to soil type

Silty Soils Clay Soils

Chari Amu Darya Dnieper

Columbia Colorado Ganges

Galan-Sagan Colorado-Desaguadero

Indus Don

Murray-Darling Limpopo

Orange Lower Volta

Rio Grande Mackenzie

Upper Volta Nelson

Niger

Ob

Syr Darya

Ural

Volga

Yellow (Huang He)

N.B. TheAmazon andthe CongoRiver Basinshave a lowproportion ofdryland andflow throughclay soils, soare notshown here.



To an extent farmers are able to com-pensate for variability in rainfall bypumping water from underground reser-voirs, or aquifers.

But in a recent survey by the EarthPolicy Institute, Lester Brown highlightsthe over-exploitation of these water re-serves in 18 countries, including theMiddle East, China, India, Mexico andthe USA. “In India, 175 million peopleare being fed with grain produced byover-pumping, in China 130 million.The water table under the North ChinaPlain, an area that produces half of thecountry’s wheat and a third of its maizeis falling fast. In the United States the ir-rigated area is shrinking in leading farmstates with rapid population growth,such as California and Texas, as aquifersare depleted.”(4)

Farmers have to pump water fromever-deeper aquifers, up to a kilometredown in some cases, at a faster rate thanthe reservoirs can replenish themselvesfrom rainfall.

Dangers aheadFor every 1oC rise in temperature, plantsmove between 200 to 300 km north-wards in the northern hemisphere (andsouthwards in the southern hemisphere).This is called polar retreat of plant life.

Global warming is shifting whole eco-logical zones. Although plant cover willexpand with global warming, as more

rainfall offsets higher moisture evapora-tion from soils, the type of plants willchange. (Extra CO2 in the atmospherewill also encourage photosynthesis).

It is important to realise that theconsequences of climate change are am-plified by the built environment, agricul-tural practices and institutional factors.

We have to ask the question, of eachlocality, what happens if there is flood-ing, or a drought? What do we do next?It is not just about how much water ar-rives one year compared to another.

There are profound social impacts andthe capitalist system often prevents usfrom dealing with these – and usuallymakes things worse.

Our future – a world suffering fromacute food and water shortages – is al-ready apparent, unfortunately. In thecoming months and years, as the sciencebecomes ever clearer, the debate overhow to reverse the trends will intensify.

As socialists we share many valueswith the Green movement, including acommitment to community-organisedaction to protect the planet and the lo-cality as a place to live and work. But wehave a class perspective as well.

Tackling climate change will requirethe mobilisation of people, technologyand capital. Since most technology andcapital is in private hands this will notjust be difficult, it may prove impossiblein the absence of the public ownership

of economic assets. Governments around the world are

providing subsidies and other incentives,like loan guarantees, to entice the privatesector to invest in technologies that havea smaller carbon footprint.

And while we should not write off theimpact of these measures, it is clear thatthey are pretty ineffective as presentlydeployed. In essence taxpayers are try-ing to bribe capitalists into polluting lessand, without harming profitability, intodoing what should be done in any caseto save our planet.

Global warming is a clear and presentdanger and socialist solutions are funda-mental to stem the risk of a foodcatastrophe.

FOOTNOTES1. FAO, 2003, World Agriculture: To-wards 2015/2030: An FAO perspec-tive, London: Earthscan: pp.341-342. 2. The Independent, 27 October2009, p. 25. 3. OECD, 2013, Water and ClimateChange Adaptation: Policies to navi-gate uncharted waters – A changingand uncertain future for freshwater,Paris: OECD: pp. 23-24. 4. John Vidal, Global threat to foodsupply as water wells dry up, warnstop environment expert, The Observer, 7 July 2013, p. 23.

those in other nations, never on its ownterritory. In any event, war is its axis: itsdomestic economy is nourished to alarge extent by the arms industry and itsplanetary hegemony (appropriation ofraw material and imposition of the rulesof the economic and political game on aglobal scale, with primacy of the dollar).Today, Washington needs wars. Withoutwars, the power would not be a power.

n What we are seeing now with a be-sieged Syria is not a chance operation.

n The objectives of the project are theopening up, stability, control and global-ization of markets, as well as securityand freedom of trade; unrestricted ac-cess to energy sources and raw materi-als needed to dynamize the US economyand those of its allies; the monitoringand control in real time of people and all

significant political and social move-ments opposed to its interests; the ex-pansion and domination of the financialand industrial capital of its companiesand transnational corporations; and theassuring of control over the means ofcommunication and world information.

n To that end it has not even stinted onmercenaries, who abound in Syria – wellpaid and armed – nor in the deploymentof US military might, as well as creatingsituations within nations, such as themanufacture and unveiling of the so-called Arab Spring in North Africa, whichended with the assassination, recordedlive, of Libyan President Muammar al-Gaddafi.

n A variant of the Arab Spring was al-ready tested out in Syria, but failed indestabilizing the country, hence the re-course of destroying the nation and leav-ing it without a government, and withoutorder, because social anarchy there

would justify a US presence, plus that ofits allies with all their troops and even acoalition. This would provide a gatewayto Iran, additionally keeping a closewatch on the dangerous Hezbollah inLebanon, and a commitment to Israelwhich, since its defeat by this force in2006, has not been able to heal itswounds.

n Who can be left in any doubt that allof this is an orchestrated plot, and thatthe United States and its allies are notbothered as to whether or not chemicalweapons enter the equation?

n What does interest it is the geo-strategic situation of Damascus and im-perial power, even if this involves abloodbath in this nation of heroic peo-ple, and world peace is again trampledby the nation and government whichsets itself up as the paradigm of humanrights. But it should be careful. Thosewho live by the sword, die by the sword.

Continued from page 13

Syria: cynical lies, false intelligence


Myth: the “West” is the good guys

And early British imperialism, spreadingover the world until the majority wascoloured red, saw no reason to hidefrom the truth.

But these days, and especially sincethe Russian revolution of 1917, the stateof the world is not exactly to our rulers’liking. The battle of ideas is as desper-ately important as bloodier confronta-tions.

And because the truth is that peopleall over the world would be better offwithout exploitation, the truth has to behidden, glossed over, misrepresentedand denied. This necessitates the foster-ing of certain myths.

One is the imperialist myth of theWest.

The West is no longer, not merely,and not mainly, a geographical concept.It stands for justice, freedom anddemocracy, all three of which, as pre-sented by capitalism, are myths in them-selves.

The West is the good guys; the East isthe bad guys. This idea was particularlyuseful during the days when socialismexisted in a third of the world, and themain socialist governments were in thegeographical east. It continues today asthe various imperialist countries strivefor domination in the Middle East.

On 4 September, after the chemicalattack (origin unclear) in August inSyria in which a disputed number ofpeople died, and while the United Stateswas trying to get together a militaryforce to attack the Syrian government,the British Daily Mail wrote: “Thetruth remains that the Russian Presidentis absolutely key to any hopes of con-certed international action . . . This iswhy it is so vital that the West does all itcan to persuade him to . . . use his pow-erful influence in the Middle East to ef-fect a settlement.”.

So the implication was that the ‘West’

was speaking with one voice.The Daily Mail was not the only part

of the media writing about ‘the West’ inthis way. Most of the British newspa-pers, and most importantly, the BBC,presented the problem as one aboutwhich ‘the West’ was united.

What countries did the Daily Mailand others have in mind as constituting‘the West’?

Wikipedia offers this definition: ‘In thecontemporary cultural meaning, thephrase "Western world" includes Europe,as well as many countries of Europeancolonial origin with substantial Euro-

pean ancestral populations in the Amer-icas and Oceania.’

Obviously the United States led thepack. A few days earlier, on 29 August,the UK House of Commons had deci-sively voted against military interven-tion, so that ruled us out. In the rest ofEurope, France with its ‘socialist’ Presi-dent was firmly in favour; other coun-tries were not so sure.

Italy's leader cautioned that a strikemight lead to wider conflict. PopeFrancis urged leaders of the world'slargest economies to avoid the "futile

pursuit" of military action. The Spanish government ruled out

military intervention as a possibilitywhile broadly supporting the US stance.

The German government said that itwasn't considering joining military ac-tion against Syria and hadn't been askedby others to do so.

“Poland will not participate in anytype of military intervention in Syria,”Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

A military strike against Syria was op-posed by 80% of Portuguese people, ac-cording to the international inquiry‘Transatlantic Trends 2013’ which alsorevealed that the majority of Europeanand American citizens preferred apeaceful solution to the Syrian dispute.

So Europe was hardly united in sup-port of the military adventure. But whatabout the ‘countries of European colo-nial origin’?

Australian Foreign Minister BobCarr's spokesman Patrick Low said thatAustralia supported the US taking ac-tion but the US hadn't asked for militaryassistance and Australia hadn't offeredit. New Zealand was more cautious.Prime Minister John Key said that NewZealand wanted to assess all steps takenahead of a strike before stating its posi-tion.

Brazil rejected military intervention.So did Peru, Chile, Argentina andVenezuela. So no joy for the US in itsbackyard.

However you look at it, about the Syr-ian dispute, ‘the West’ was remarkablydisunited in its response.

Other countries in the world? Well,for example, India and Pakistan, In-donesia and China were against theidea. Taking a democratic view of thematter, it is instructive to look at num-bers. These four countries alone accountfor just under three billion people. Thecountries the US claimed to be on itsside (Australia, Albania, Kosovo,Canada, Denmark, France, Poland, Ro-mania and Turkey) and the US itself,including also Israel and Saudi Arabia,which the US didn’t care to mention(not exactly ‘the West?), only containjust over half a billion people(556,396,245).

Myth: the “West”is the good guysCapitalism in its earlier days delighted in calling a spade aspade. Industrialisation, fuelled in part by pirated Spanishgold (originally looted from the people of the Americas) demanded precision and accuracy in thought as well as deed.

By GINA NICHOLSON

The West is no longer, not

merely, and not mainly,

a geographical concept.

It stands for justice,

freedom and democracy,

all three of which, as

presented by capitalism,

are myths in themselves.


Egypt’s recent and turbulent history

These nations inhabit an area largerthan Europe, bordering three continents,Asia, Africa and Europe, covering thewhole southern Mediterranean coast,adjoining the Atlantic and IndianOceans, surrounding the Red Sea, andwith Egypt’s Suez Canal as the sea linkin the middle.

Add to that immense oil reserves, pluslarge gas reserves in Egypt itself, and itis easy to see why imperialism wants tokeep the Arab nations divided andcompliant.

Egypt’s recent history, however, hasbeen a turbulent one. On 25 January2011 widespread protests began againstMubarak’s government, which had ruledEgypt for 30 years. On 11 February2011 Mubarak resigned and fled Cairo.The military assumed power.

The first idea was to keep Mubaraknominally in office but this had to beabandoned because the millions on thestreets would not go home, increasedtheir protests, and were joined by a waveof industrial action.

In early February 2011 a deal wasstruck – with American help – for apower sharing accommodation betweenthe military – closely tied to the UnitedStates – and the Muslim Brotherhood,regarded as acceptable, ‘moderate’Islamists. Old dignitaries of theNational Democratic Party – rulingparty of Mubarak and his predecessorAnwar Sadat – could find a place as‘independents’ or as representatives ofnew parties.

Through 2011 street protests contin-ued, with many killed and injured. Togive but one example: in the four-dayMohamed Mahmoud street confronta-tion in November 2011, 50 protesterswere killed and hundreds injured; manylost one or both eyes, which were par-ticularly targeted by police shooters.But people refused to be intimidated.

Political debate, which had beenalmost shut down under Mubarak,exploded on the streets, in graffiti on the

Egypt’s recent andturbulent historyEgypt, with a population of 84 million, is the most populousof the Arab nations.

By PAT TURNBULLwalls, and through social networks onthe web.

On 28 November 2011 there was aparliamentary election won by theMuslim Brotherhood. On 24 June 2012Mohamed Morsi, leader of the MuslimBrotherhood, was elected President. Hewon by two percentage points overMajor General (retired) Ahmed Shafiq,who had been the last prime ministerunder President Mubarak.

However, Morsi’s voters were to bedisappointed. Morsi and the MuslimBrotherhood continued to protect theinterests of capital, at home and abroad.

Unemployment reached 32%. Theforeign debt rose from $34 billion to $45billion. During 2012 the domestic debtrose by 365 billion Egyptian pounds.The proportion of people living belowthe poverty line increased to more than50% of the population.

Privatisation continued, prices wereliberalised. The minimum wage was notraised even though it was one of the firstdemands of the people who took to thestreets in January 2011.

The health insurance programme wasnot implemented. The Muslim Broth-erhood refused to pass the law to guar-antee freedom to form trade unions,which they had agreed to beforehand.They put their own men in to control theGeneral Union of Egyptian Workers.

In June 2013 Morsi said that he hadcut all diplomatic ties with Damascusand backed a no-fly zone over Syria,pitching the most populous Arab statemore firmly against President Assad.This policy worried the people and thearmy.

Morsi took over the Mubarak/NationalDemocratic Party state machine andthen handed posts to the Muslim Broth-erhood and their allies at all levels.Finally, on 17 June, Morsi issued asweeping decree appointing 17 newgovernors, three months before parlia-mentary elections were due, in otherwords, to control the elections.

In March 2013, Hassan Shahin, ex-media studies student, called on theEgyptian people – through social net-works – to come together and oustMorsi. He, with others, was the founderof the ‘Tamarod’ (Rebel) youth move-ment.

Tamarod started collecting signatureson a petition in Tahrir Square on May1st, Labour Day. This was finally tolead to the mass protests on 30 June, onthe anniversary of Morsi’s inauguration.

The Tamarod movement collectedmore than 22 million signatures for thewithdrawal of confidence in Morsi andin support of calling for early presiden-tial elections.

This is far more than their original aim– to collect 15 million to exceed Morsi’s13.2 million votes in the 2012 presiden-tial runoff. The petition contained thesignatory’s name, national ID numberand the name of the province, written byhand rather than on the Internet.

Parties, trade unions and other organ-isations participated in collecting signa-tures, in cities, factories, schools anduniversities, and in villages in all the gov-ernorates of Egypt.

At the same time they called fordemonstrations in all the main squares ofEgypt on 30 June. More than 27 mil-lion demonstrators came out all overEgypt for four consecutive days, repre-senting various classes and strata ofEgyptian society. This is many morethan demonstrated in 2011.

Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram wrote:‘…military helicopters flew before the

... Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhoodcontinued to protect theinterests of capital athome and abroad. Unemployment reached32%. Foreign debt rosefrom $34bn to $45bn.


Egypt’s recent and turbulent history

official dismissal of Morsi [on 3 July]over Tahrir Square, throwing nationalflags to the cheering crowd. On 5 July,two days after the overthrow of the pres-ident, military aircraft drew a heart in thesky in Tahrir ..’

People want a leader, a hero. Portraitsof army chief and Defence MinisterGeneral Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi have beenrecently held in Tahrir next to portraitsof Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Egypt’s greatnationalist leader from 1952 to 1970 (seepictures above).

But General Sisi is not Nasser and welive in different times. General Sisi, nowFirst Deputy Prime Minister, was ap-pointed to replace Tantawi as head ofthe Egyptian Armed Forces and Ministerof Defence by Mohamed Morsi on 12August 2012.

Under President Mubarak, he had be-come Commander of the Northern Mil-itary Region – Alexandria in 2008 andthen Director of Military Intelligence andReconnaissance.

On 8 July the interim governmentpassed a constitutional decree imple-menting a transitional roadmap whichincludes a referendum on an amendedconstitution, as well as parliamentary andpresidential elections, all to be heldwithin one year.

The head of Egypt’s constitution com-mittee, Amr Moussa, planned for the ini-tial draft charter to be ready fordiscussion in late October. A referen-dum is expected to take place on theamended charter by the end of 2013.

Two members of Tamarod are amongthe 50 members of the constitutionalcommittee formed in September toamend the 2012 constitution which wassuspended following Morsi’s removal.

The committee was appointed by thepresident following nominations bypolitical parties, professional unions andvarious state bodies, for example, farm-ers, workers, lawyers, journalists, writers,artists, university professors.

A 10-member committee of expertshad already removed articles and ex-pressions strengthening the role of

Islamic Sharia in politics and society. Ithad, however, kept Article 2, dating fromthe 1971 constitution, drawn up underNasser’s successor Anwar Sadat, whichstates that the “principles” of Sharia arethe main source of legislation.

To meet the people’s real needs theconstitution would have to be replaced,not amended. And a social and eco-nomic plan would need to be imple-mented which, among other things,reversed the process of privatisation andopening up of the economy to foreignbig capital which has been going on forthe past forty years.

Tamarod planned to begin holdingelection rallies and was seeking to estab-lish a large electoral coalition whichwould reflect the hopes of Egyptianswho demonstrated on 25 January 2011and 30 June 2013.

It would be important that the nationaland democratic forces agree on a singlecandidate for President, and that the left-ist forces, Nasserites, youth movementsand trade union organisations form afront and fight elections on a joint basis.This is no easy task, and disagreementswere already coming to the fore inOctober.

On 14 October Al Ahram reported an-other worrying sign. A draft protest lawwas being reviewed by interim PresidentAdly Mansour. It had already been ap-proved by the interim cabinet. Mansourwas expected to review the draft beforeissuing it through presidential decree.

Critics said that it restricted freedomof assembly and was not supported byserious initiatives to reform the police orcarry out transitional justice. Among itsmost controversial measures was theright given to the interior minister orsenior police officials to cancel, postponeor change the location of a protest. Thelaw also entitled governors to designate“protest-free” areas near state buildings,including presidential palaces.

The moves were being justified tofight “terrorism” from the MuslimBrotherhood and its allies. But these aredangerous signs, considering that it has

been popular street protest that has beena main mover in such changes as theEgyptian people have achieved so far.

A problem with the protest movementis that, though workers have been in-volved in most of the protests that haveescalated since 2006, the working classis not represented as a force for itself andits own interests.

In general since the death of Nasser in1970 the progressive forces have beenweakened. The working class itself haschanged as big industries have beenliquidated and workers have been dis-placed. Years of government repression,as well as economic policies, haveseverely weakened trade union andworking class political organisation.

Violent clashes continue. On Sunday6 October, the fortieth anniversary of theArab-Israeli war, 57 protesters werekilled during clashes between Morsi sup-porters, opponents and security forces.

What influence will the rejection ofMorsi by masses of the Egyptian peoplehave on the US’s strategy of supportingIslamist organisations like the MuslimBrotherhood as an acceptable alternativeto the decaying authoritarian regimes likethat of Mubarak?

In any case, despite violent repression,the Muslim Brotherhood has not goneaway. 30-year-old Mohamed El-Hadidy,a third-generation Muslim Brotherhoodmember, in mid-August established thepolitical movement QAWEM.

The word in Arabic means ‘resist’ andits composite letters are also the initialsof four words: strength, faith, patriotismand Egypt. QAWEM was established afew days after the violent dispersal oftwo Islamist sit-ins at Rabaa Al-Adawayaand Nahda Square, which resulted in thedeaths of 600 Brotherhood supportersand 40 police and security personnel.

There is a long way to go. In thewords of Angelo Alves of the PortugueseCommunist Party: ‘the Egyptian peopleare gaining mass experience and con-sciousness of their own real power. Theobjective is real change in politicalpower, a real revolution.’

Egypt’s great nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel-Nasser: 1. 1960: Before he speaks to a huge rally in Hama, Egypt.2. 1963: pictured with his three sons. 3. 1966: Along with Egypt’s Prime Minister, Ali Sabri (centre), Nasser welcomes Cuban revolutionary, Che Guevara. 4. 1969: Nasser with Libyan revolutionary, Muammar al-Gaddhafi.

1 2 3 4


Snippets from the world of capitalism

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By QuestorBy QuestorDiageoPaul Walsh, the former chief executive of Diageo who went

on to serve on the board as an adviser, sold portions of

his stake in the drinks company two weeks in a row in Au-

gust of this year. He chose a good time to sell as shares in the company

had risen by 18% in the year. He exercised options over

100,000 shares then sold 95,000 of them at £21.40p

each, raising £2 million. The 5000 shares left increased his holding to 784,660

shares. The previous week, he made £3.9 million by sell-

ing a tranche of shares.Walsh will retire from the Guinness maker in June 2014.

Poverty in the UKThe Guardian (14 October 2013) reportedthat 28% of Londoners are living inpoverty, and of these, over half are inwork. These facts give the lie toCameron’s statement that: “You don’thelp people by leaving them stuck on welfare… Because the best way out ofpoverty is work.” In 2012, 20% of Londoners earned

below the London living wage of £8.55 anhour. There has been a rise of 440,000 inlow paid jobs in London over the past 5years. The geography of London’s poverty is

changing. 10 years ago, poor areas weresplit evenly between inner and outer Lon-don, but now 58% of the 2.1 million Lon-doners in poverty live in outer London, asign of the ‘economic ‘cleansing’ takingplace. The London Evening Standard blames

soaring house prices in the capital for therise in poverty, as well as low pay. A New Policy thinktank report quoted by

the Standard says that 830,000 peoplerenting privately are now in poverty com-pared to 700,000 in social housing –using the government’s official measure of60% below the national median income.610,000 owner occupiers are also living inpoverty – so much for the nation of self-satisfied homeowners. Rough sleeping has nearly doubled to

6,400 since Boris Johnson took over asMayor. In the UK as a whole, 350,000 people

received a 3-day food package from theTrussell Trust between April and Septem-ber this year – three times as many as inthe same period last year.The Red Cross is planning to set up

soup kitchens in Britain for the first timesince WW2.

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In July 2013Aviad Kobrine, finance

chief of 888, the onlinepoker and casino operator,made £1.1 million with the saleof 685,390 shares. Kabrinetook advantage of recentgrowth arising from recordhalf-year revenues.

888

Renishaw

Bill Whiteley, soon to

step down as the senior independent

non-executive director of Renishaw, disposed of

some of his shares in October. He made close to

£4 million after selling at £19.44 per share.

Renishaw, which makes industrial and health-

care measuring devices, has made strong

gains since the full-year results were

released at the end of July.

VodaphoneAndy Halford, chieffinancial director ofVodaphone, tradedin 1.2 millionshares at 213.2pearning £2.6 mil-lion in September.His shareholding inthe company wasreduced to 2.4 mil-lion shares.Stepen Pusey,

chief technology of-ficer, sold 854,000shares at 213.2pmaking £1.4 mil-lion.The Vodaphone

duo sold theirshares in the weekthat Vodaphone ac-quired 76.48% ofKabel Deutschlandshares following its£6 billion offer atthe end of July.

St James’s PlacePeter Lamb, the managing director of St James’s Place,sold nearly £1.2 million of shares in the wealth managerin August. The move followed a 50% jump in the stocklast year.

InformaPeter Rigby, chief executiveof Informa, the business in-formation and publishinggroup, cut his stake in thecompany in September. Heis due to retire in July 2014.Since he announced his

retiral, he has halved hisholding in the company fromabout 1.2 million shares to523,524.Informa posted a 2.7%

rise in 2013 first-half oper-ating profits to £162 mil-lion. The share price hasrisen more than 20% sincethe start of the year.Rigby’s sale, in one week

in September, of 285,372shares at 532.4p each,gave him a gain of £1.2 million. Lord Carter will succeed

Rigby as chief executive.He is the former chief

executive of Ofcomand adviser to

Gordon Brown.

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For the Union Dead, by Robert Lowell

The abolitionist Frederick Douglass said in a speech in 1852that to the American slave Independence Day was “a day thatreveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the grossinjustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. Tohim, your celebration is a sham […] a thin veil to cover upcrimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

In spite of his denunciation, Douglass’s speech went on toexpress faith in the “genius of the American Institutions” andthe “great principles” contained in the Declaration ofIndependence, as well as the growing abolitionist movementwhich would end slavery a decade or so later.

The “great principles” were undermined by, among otherthings, the slaveocracy in the south which, until the civil wardefeated it, threatened to expand north and westwards in orderthat its economy could survive.

A century after Douglass’s speech, Robert Lowell (pictured,1917-1967) – one of the 20th century’s leading American poets– wrote his famous poem For the Union Dead, exposing thegap between the bourgeois revolutionary ideals, for which theYankees ostensibly fought, and the reality ofhis own era which he felt was oblivious to itsown, or any other, history, in particular theabolitionist cause of a century before.

In a letter written in 1964, he stated: “Inmy poem [For] the Union Dead, I lamentthe loss of the old Abolitionist spirit; the ter-rible injustice, in the past and the present, ofthe American treatment of the Negro is thegreatest urgency to me as a man and as awriter.”

The epigraph Relinquunt Omnia ServareRem Publicam (“they gave up all to serve thestate”) announces a public poem, an ode.Thus the autobiographical opening stanzasstrike us as unexpected, inauspicious even, and we wait forthem to connect to something more interesting.

The old South Boston Aquarium standsin a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales. The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass; my hand tingledto burst the bubbles drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

The image of desolation in a waste of snow is a nostalgicone, but already something more complex than mere nostalgiais taking place. As well as the grand expectations raised by theepigraph, we notice other details. The glass barrier constrainsboth boy and fish equally, pointing up the boy’s inability toconnect with the natural world and undermining any simple

For the Union Dead,by Robert LowellBy SIMON KORNER celebration of idyllic childhood. His reaction to the fish is in-

tense and sympathetic (the physical word “tingled”) to thepoint of identification, as if the derelict aquarium embodies thenarrator’s own lifeless state of mind in adulthood, from whichstandpoint he is recalling his boyhood attempts to reach outand touch life.

In the manner of a film edit, we cut to the narrator’s con-sciousness in the present.

My hand draws back. I often sigh stillfor the dark downward vegetating kingdom of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,yellow dinosaur steamshovels were gruntingas they cropped up tons of mush and grassto gouge their underworld garage.

The hand “draws back” from the memory. The narratorlongs for the “dark downward vegetating kingdom of the fish

and reptile”, that is, for a purer, preconsciousstate than he can attain in the present world.But as we have seen, this is no simple pas-toral; even during childhood, the yearned forthing was unreachable, the natural worldtamed into compliance.

The caesura after “fish and reptile”switches us in time once again, but onlybriefly, to a specific “morning last March”.Echoing the boy leaning against the glass, thenarrator presses against the jagged steel fenc-ing round Boston Common in his hopelessdesire for the “vegetating kingdom”.

The hard sounds of “barbed and galva-nized” and the penal/bellicose associations of

“barbed” (with its trace of ‘barbarian’ savagery) provide astrong contrast to the organic softness of the earth which thediggers are mauling, digging downwards as he himself wouldlike to do, but in their case doing so destructively rather thansearching for life.

The steamshovels seem wild behind “their cage”. Thoughthey are compared to dinosaurs, reptiles – that is, part of na-ture – they are the opposite of natural. The external form con-tains a destructive content, inimical to life.

Surveying the scene, the narrator pictures the city as a kindof plaything for infantile modern developers, who give nothought to the consequences of their actions, like the childlikeconsumerist culture altogether, without depth, purpose or re-sponsibility.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civicsandpiles in the heart of Boston.

Given free rein (“ Parking spaces luxuriate”), consumerism



engulfs even the Statehouse, that symbol of the founding fa-thers’ state power, which is hedged in and literally underminedby the new destructive forces. Again the word “tingling” ap-pears, but now evoking not a feeling for life’s intensity but thefrailty of the old order.

A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girdersbraces the tingling Statehouse,

The statue of a civil war officer, Colonel Shaw, and his“Negro infantry” is equally vulnerable, the “plank splint” a pa-thetic defence against the “earthquake”, whose man-madepower is emphasised by the proliferation of hard ‘g’ sounds:galvanized, grunting, gouge, girdle, girders, garage.

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shawand his bell-cheeked Negro infantryon St. Gaudens’ shaking Civil War relief,propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.

Now we revolve backwards into history. Indeed, the poemitself enacts a growing historical awareness, with its various dif-ferent timeframes linking past to present and back again, sothat our relation to history becomes one of its main themes.

Two months after marching through Boston,half the regiment was dead;at the dedication,William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbonein the city’s throat.Its Colonel is as leanas a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance, a greyhound’s gentle tautness;he seems to wince at pleasure, and suffocate for privacy.

In focusing on the monument, the poem at last takes on amonumental quality itself, outgrowing its own autobiographicalbeginnings the way a child develops. The autobiographical hasbeen woven into a historical context and gained gravitas, hav-ing been understood as part of a wider world.

The epigraph, we realise, is the inscription on the statue – ex-cept that Lowell has changed the original Latin verb “Relin-quit” singular to “Relinquunt” plural, at a stroke broadeningout the sacrifice from that of the Colonel alone to encompassthe black soldiers too, all of whom laid down their lives for therepublic.

The anger of “sticks like a fishbone/in the city’s throat” hasalready been prefigured by the tone change of: “Two monthsafter marching through Boston/half the regiment was dead”,whose stark brevity strikes a cold note after the satirical“Puritan-pumpkin coloured girders” and the “civic/sandpiles”.

The fishbone image suggests that the men’s sacrifice for free-dom cannot be swallowed, assimilated and forgotten; it refusesto go away. The Colonel points, like a compass, to the truth,which he protects with the vigilance of a wren, a tiny creature,yet fiercely alive.

Puritanical, he “seems to wince at pleasure” and longs for“privacy”, for which he “suffocates” because his deeds weredone not for public praise but for deeper moral and politicalreasons. The notion of suffocation picks up the breathing motifwhich began with the fish in the aquarium emitting bubbles asthey comply with the public gaze, in direct contrast to the

Colonel’s desire for privacy. We see the same motif in the apparent breathing of the “Ne-

groes” which William James, philosopher and brother to thewriter Henry – members of another Brahmin Boston family likethe Lowells – found so lifelike.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man’s lovely,peculiar power to choose life and die –when he leads his black soldiers to death,he cannot bend his back.

Apart from the fact that the statue has been fenced off, theColonel is also “out of bounds” ideologically, the modern erainsulated from his values. He “rejoices in man’s lovely/pecu-liar power to choose life and die”. This one joyful phrase in theentire poem surprises the reader after the depiction of thecolonel as puritanically upright.

The strange diction (“rejoices”, “lovely”) to describe self-sacrifice suggests a kind of secular saint, whose happiness isderived from promulgating the public good. Life becomesmeaningful when devoted to the betterment of humankind;dying for a noble cause can be a greater contribution to lifethan living.

The viewpoint now moves further up and out, sweeping likean aerial cinematic shot over New England:

On a thousand small town New England greens,the old white churches hold their airof sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flagsquilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldiergrow slimmer and younger each year –wasp-waisted, they doze over musketsAnd muse through their sideburns…

The old revolutionary spirit is now “sparse”, its flags“frayed”, its vigour gone. The “Grand Army of the Republic”– the influential British Legion-type organisation of civil warveterans – with its capital letters has an ironic as well as an ele-giac tinge, its grandiosity anachronistic.

What America once stood for has been eroded, like the stat-ues of the war dead. The echoing sounds of “doze” and“muse” stress the quietude and impotence of the once vigorousfighter now regressing “each year” to boyhood (“grow slimmerand younger”).

Once more we are reminded of the yearning, passive boy atthe poem’s start, now linked to the notion of a society kept per-petually infantile by having been deprived of a knowledge of itsown history.

Shaw’s father wanted no monumentexcept the ditch,where his son’s body was thrownand lost with his “niggers.”

The mass grave integrates officer and men, white and black,but this is no liberal tokenism. Colonel Shaw (1837-1863)commanded the first enlisted black regiment in the civil war,one of the few white men who believed in the African Ameri-can’s right to fight and die under the US flag. The father’sabolitionist understanding of the purpose of his son’s death isdeeply felt and moving.

Now the poem’s connections speed up, shifting once more –from the civil war to more recent warfare. It is a naturalthought progression from the mass grave of the ditch to themass annihilation of WW2.



The ditch is nearer.There are no statues for the last war here.

The mass grave is closer than ever now, an integral part ofthe unremitting savagery that is modern life. Remembrancehas become debased, taking the form not of statues but of ad-vertisements:

On Boylston Street, a commercial photographshows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler safe, the “Rock of Ages”that survived the blast. Space is nearer.When I crouch to my television set,the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

The attenuated and forgotten memorials to the best spirit ofAmerica are less robust than the Mosler bank vault that sur-vived the Hiroshima blast. Lowell made up the brand nameRock of Ages, referencing the hymn title so emblematic ofAmerican sincerity and twisting it out of recognition.

He links banking, epitomised by the indestructible safe, towar, which destroys life but not the profit system. The inter-nal rhyme of Boylston, a major commercial thoroughfare inBoston, with “boiling” reinforces the connection.

The obscene image of mass murder exploited for commer-cial purposes, of capitalism boasting of its durability amidst theruins it itself has created, carries a great satirical charge. Thefurious disgust here is a long way from the memory of theaquarium, of the dreamy imaginative world in which the boy,his nose soft and wet as a snail, could feel almost fishy himself.

The matching lines “The ditch is nearer” and “Space isnearer” frame the contradiction between the primitive and thesophisticated poles of the modern era.

The same jarring disjunction appears again when the“drained faces of Negro school-children” – still struggling forbasic civil rights which their forebears failed to secure after thecivil war – appear on a modern appliance, a TV. The narra-tor’s own sense of impotence is revealed by his posture, crouch-ing at the television like his boyish self transfixed by the fishbehind glass.

However, the schoolchildren,suffering for their cause, are notsubmissive like the fish – Lowellis referring to the protests for in-tegrated education at Little RockCentral High school in 1957-8 –and instead suggest the onwardmarch of history, even if sealedoff from the narrator behindglass.

The balloons imply helpless-ness, rising off the edge of theTV screen – perhaps literally asthe vertical hold goes awry – farfrom the world they mightchange. And yet their ascent(once again the breath/air motif)remains unstoppable, like strug-gle, like hope.

Immediately following comesthe equally ambiguous image ofthe Colonel “riding on his bub-ble”:

Colonel Shaw is riding on his bubble,

he waitsfor the blessèd break.The picture is again one of being carried upwards helplessly,

away from reality. But at the same time, he is “riding on hisbubble” as if on a steed, carried forward by it through time,until the moment his vision might bear fruit. The “break” (thebursting of the bubble, bringing him back into the world – likethe boy wishing to connect with the fish) is “blessèd” – the ar-chaic, biblical accent lends a millenarist note – because it willat last free the Colonel from historical irrelevance.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywheregiant finned cars nose forward like fish;

a savage servility slides by on grease.

The aquarium, once the repository of his childhood musings,represents not hope exactly but the possibility of imagination.In that sense, it is an equivalent of the democratic spirit nowlost.

The cars recall the fish, but the meekness has been replacedby “savage servility”, the seemingly paradoxical phrase hissingat us angrily with its ‘s’ sounds, which carry through the finalline.

Epitomising the individualistic, asocial sense of privacy thatcame with postwar affluence, car culture here conjures a peo-ple blindly obedient to the forces that rule them. This sealed-off privacy is in sharp contrast to the deeply felt inwardness ofthe colonel, whose heroism was the public act of a private man.

No longer confined to their tank, the fish are “Everywhere”,grotesque in their size, mechanised versions of the natural, likethe reptilian diggers. They slide by, friction-free, sustained byoil, disengaged from the real, history forgotten, meaning lost.

Though there is no political solution being offered here, thereis a clear sense of something important being at stake. Theconstant reminder of the continuity between the helpless boyand the helplessly despairing adult man might have given thewhole work an overly depressive outlook, except that its ragelifts it beyond despair to something like a yearning for revolu-tion – as evinced by the visionary quality of the colonel await-ing “the blessèd break”.

Lowell’s poem wrestles withthe excision from American lifeof any historical awareness ofslavery and racism, of its ownrevolutionary traditions, ofdemocracy. Yet while denounc-ing the frictionless present, thepoem nevertheless reveals thathistory is happening all the same.

As James Baldwin put it:“People are trapped in historyand history is trapped in them.”The poem, which takes us fromthe contemplation of a world lostto an expansive, visionary con-demnation of society, is itself aprocess, involving the reader, anhonest scrutiny of the limits ofbourgeois decency overcome bycapitalist rapacity.

The very absence of friction,as exemplified by the world ofadvertising, is primitive, “sav-age” in trying to smooth away“man’s lovely,/peculiar power” toaffect history.

Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachu-setts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Boston Common,Boston, Mass, USA. The sculpture was created in 1887 by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907).



The old South Boston Aquarium standsin a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales. The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass; my hand tingledto burst the bubbles drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh stillfor the dark downward vegetating kingdom of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,yellow dinosaur steamshovels were gruntingas they cropped up tons of mush and grassto gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civicsandpiles in the heart of Boston.A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girdersbraces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shawand his bell-cheeked Negro infantryon St. Gaudens’ shaking Civil War relief,propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,half the regiment was dead;at the dedication,William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbonein the city’s throat.Its Colonel is as leanas a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance, a greyhound’s gentle tautness;he seems to wince at pleasure, and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man’s lovely,peculiar power to choose life and die –when he leads his black soldiers to death,he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,the old white churches hold their airof sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flagsquilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldiergrow slimmer and younger each year –wasp-waisted, they doze over musketsAad muse through their sideburns…

Shaw’s father wanted no monumentexcept the ditch,where his son’s body was thrownand lost with his “niggers.”

The ditch is nearer.There are no statues for the last war here.On Boylston Street, a commercial photographshows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler safe, the “Rock of Ages”that survived the blast. Space is nearer.When I crouch to my television set,the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw is riding on his bubble,he waitsfor the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere, giant finned cars nose forward like fish;a savage servilityslides by on grease.

For the Union Deadby Robert Lowell

Selected Poems, Robert Lowell, Farrar, Straus & Giroux


Reader’s Letter

The 18th Brumaireof Louis Bonaparteby Karl Marx

Dear Socialist Correspondent,

Two articles in the last issue of TheSocialist Correspondent (Issue 18) refer-enced the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bona-parte by Karl Marx (1852). What wasstriking was that these articles dealt withcontemporary events in Cyprus andSouth Africa and they both reachedrather different conclusions about thepossible way forward for the working-class.

Leslie Masters argues that “...anyworkers’ party that takes power withinthe context of capitalism is doomed toend up gaining no more than conces-sions to the workers from the ruling-class.” (p13)

Joel Netshitenzhe on the other handstates that “The time has come, in addi-tion to all the other programmes of eco-nomic transformation, for the politicalruling elite and the ruling class, togetherto contribute to forging a stakeholdercapitalism in which the working class is areal beneficiary.” (p25) To be fair Joel quotes the 18thBrumaire in connection with history repeating itself, ratherthan in relation to the nature of power, but once quoted itis difficult to read the article without thinking about therest of the text.

The 18th Brumaire is an analysis of events in Francefrom 24th February 1848 to 2nd December 1851 andchronicles the triumph of counter-revolution and the dicta-torship of Louis Bonaparte over parliament and the defeatof the working class. As Engelspoints out in his preface to thethird German Edition, Marxapplied his theoretical under-standing of class-struggle andthe nature of class power to theunfolding events of the time.

Marx differentiates betweenstate power and parliamentarypower. The ruling class exercisespower through more than simplyparliament and he identifies thecrucial role of the armed forcesreferring also to the press andthe church. The power of parlia-ment is limited and to believeotherwise he colourfullydescribes as “parliamentarycretinism”.

Nevertheless his analysis treatsthe struggles in and around par-liament as a key part of the un-folding events. There is much inLeslie Master’s analysis that re-

READER’S LETTER toREADER’S LETTER to The Socialist CorrespondentThe Socialist Correspondentflects Marx views, however, he some-what overstates the case when he seemsto suggest that aiming for parliamentarypower is a pointless exercise for theworking class. In the 18th BrumaireMarx is critical of the representatives ofthe French working-class not so muchfor participating in parliament but forfailing to use their strength to act in theirown interests. Instead he describes themfollowing behind the petty-bourgeoisieand being led to defeat.

The participation of the working-classin elections, parliament and governmentare questions of tactics rather than prin-ciple. What will advance the struggle?Leslie rightly identifies that it was rea-sonable for the AKEL President inCyprus to have stood for election, takenup his post, but also to have resignedwhen he could no longer act in the inter-ests of the Cypriot people.

He cites the overthrow of the Allendegovernment in Chile in support of hisview. The Chilean Communist Party’scritique (1977) agrees that too muchstore was set by Popular Unity in theparliamentary process at the expense ofhaving a strategy to take on other ele-

ments of state power such as the armed forces, however,this is still not the same as saying that the working-classshould not aim for parliamentary power. It is an argumentfor saying that the working class should not only aim forparliamentary power.

What about the situation inVenezuela in relation to theclass-struggle, parliamentaryand state power? There theworking-class hold parliamen-tary power, but not state power.

Venezuela is not yet a socialistcountry. Yet you could not saythat the working-class has“gained no more than conces-sions ... from the ruling-class.”The tremendous achievementsof the Bolivarian Revolutionhave been in part possible be-cause the Venezuelans have notsuffered from “parliamentarycretinism”, but have understoodthat elections, parliament and

government provide one area for struggle andpower; one which will be contested while capi-talism remains.

The revolution encompasses not only thegovernment, but also civil society movementsand missions routed in communities. Cruciallythere is also an alliance with the progressivesections of the armed forces, which is de-scribed in Venezuela as a pillar of the revolu-tion.

All of this has been actively pursued as a

The cavalryof Generald’Allonville in the streets of Paris, December1851.

Louis-NapoleonBonaparte,Presidentof theFrenchSecond Republic in 1851.


Reader’s Letter

strategy by the Venezuelan Socialist Party and its allies. Inaddition they have addressed other aspects of state powersuch as the media, promoting local community media andestablishing Telesur which broadcasts internationally as wellas in Venezuela. They have learned much from the defeatsof the working-class in the past, perhaps in 19th centuryFrance, but definitely from the coup against Allende inChile in the 20th century.

In the first part of his address Joel Netshitenzie describeswell how the replication of capitalistnorms has recreated similar stratifica-tions and conflicts in South African soci-ety as existed before the demise ofapartheid.

He recognises also many of the out-standing problems which exist in SouthAfrica due to the legacy of apartheid andcontinued inequality. However, havingidentified some of the problems in thesecond part of the address Joel seems toseek a remedy to these in appealing tothe South African ruling class to estab-lish stakeholder capitalism.

This has a number of tragic flaws as aconcept. At best it would seek to “gainconcessions” from the capitalists to theworkers. At worst, and more likely, itseeks to co-opt the working-class intobelieving that it actually does have a stake in capitalism.

Joel also argues for the South African state to become a“distributive state”. To me this sounds similar to dirigisme,a term which was used to describe third world countrieswhere the state played an interventionist role in the econ-omy.

Again he places his hopes in the different fractions of theruling class getting together to promote this in the interestsof the greater South African good and points to the possi-bilities of such a nation as well as the threats if social injus-tice is not addressed.

Of course the strands of the ruling-class that his analysispicks out may go down the route of the developmentalstate and stakeholder capitalism. This might or might notbenefit the working class, in the short term.

However, any concessions won from capitalism for fearof social unrest or to manage the economy better to makeSouth Africa more competitive can be taken away as easilyas they were given. Even what seemed almost essentiallyBritish, the welfare state, comprising the NHS, welfare ben-efits, a roof over your head and universal education arecurrently being demolished.

These were the concessions made by capitalism inBritain where working class people demanded more afterthe defeat of fascism in the second world war and the rul-ing class feared the example of the socialist world, particu-larly the Soviet Union which had played such a heroic partin that struggle.

It also recognised that the economy could benefit fromstate intervention to prop up the failures of capitalism andto invest in industry, hence the reason for nationalisation.

Capitalism now sees all of this as an un-necessary cost where in fact they shouldbe making money out of schemes likethe Private Finance Initiative, movingpeople into the private rented sector etc.- or if they cannot make money out of it,like welfare benefits, then let’s not have itall.

The working class in South Africa,Cyprus, Venezuela, Britain – throughoutthe world - will have to make many diffi-cult decisions about tactics and strategy:about how to forge unity, the demandsthey make, the fights they pick and whothey ally with and on what terms. How-ever, their liberation will not be deliv-ered, nor even their advancementguaranteed, by relying on the capitalistclass to do the right thing.

In the 18th Brumaire Marx also says that “Men maketheir own history, but they do not make it just as theyplease; they do not make it under circumstances chosen bythemselves, but in circumstance directly encountered, givenand transmitted from the past.” (p96)

We cannot pre-determine our road to socialism, but withthat strategic goal in mind we will constantly have to makejudgements about whether what we do is principled and re-alistic in taking us towards our goal.

In comradeship - Frieda Park

n Marx, Karl The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon in Se-lected Works of Marx and Engles Lawrence and Wishart1977.n Masters, Leslie Cyprus: Meltdown and EU Bailout in TheSocialist Correspondent, Issue 18, Summer 2013n Netshitnenzhe, Joel The State of the State in SouthAfrica 10th Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture 2012 re-printedin The Socialist Correspondent Issue 18 Summer 2013.n Corvalan, Luis The Chilean Revolution, The Fascist Dicta-torship and the Struggle to Overthrow it and Create a NewDemocracy. Communist Party of Chile August 1977.

READER’S LETTER to READER’S LETTER to The Socialist CorrespondentThe Socialist Correspondent

“Men make their ownhistory, but they do notmake it just as theyplease; they do not makeit under circumstanceschosen by themselves,but in circumstances directly encountered,given and transmittedfrom the past.”

SocialistCorrespondentThe To contact

The Socialist Correspondentemail the editor:

editor@thesocialistcorrespondent.org.ukwww.thesocialistcorrespondent.org.uk

Discussion, debate and authors’ opinions to encouragethe broadest possible discussion and debate around theaims of exposing capitalism and promoting socialism.

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