Sweet Commerce: Mau Mau, Ireland and the British peasantry

by Richard Mellor

It is not easy to understand the processes that take place in society, not because it’s hard to understand but because the process are deliberately obscured. Why is there is so much strife, poverty, violence and war? “Human nature is just selfish, naturally greedy” is one explanation we hear all the time.  The pope in Rome and most other religious figures will claim it’s due to rejection of or failure to become closer to god; their god of course. We are sinners, Christians are even born bad.

As a young man in the 1960’s and 70’s during the troubles in Northern Ireland and subsequent bombings in England, the discussions in the workplaces and pubs were about how the Catholics and Protestants just couldn’t get along.  The same with Muslims and Jews in Israel/Palestine, “Jews and Muslims have been killing each other like this for centuries” one guy told me recently.  This is not so, and in certain circles among political people, the discussions may well be about the underlying causes of these conflicts, but I am talking about the propaganda in the mass media and how this shapes the views of millions of workers. The main thing is that religion, race and other social divisions are used to obscure the dominant antagonism in society, the class question-----the exploitation of those who sell their labor power to live by those that buy it.  This is particularly so in the US where there are no classes apparently and identity politics is rife.

Dedan Kimathi, Mau Mau fighter

I am thinking of this as I just finished a book about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya that took place between 1952 and 1960, The Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson and I strongly recommend it.  It was a brutal and violent conflict.  As a child I recall it being portrayed as a violent assault on white settlers but very few whites died although some did die horrific deaths.  But hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu were displaced, thrown from their land and resettled or unable to find work in the cities.  Over 1000 were hanged and many more killed in the conflict with settlers and British troops.  It was the land question that lay behind the revolt, a revolt that was never termed a rebellion by the British because to do so would have given the “terrorists”rights under the rules of war.  The US refers to these people as “enemy combatants” for the same reason.

Toward the end of the conflict Anderson gives an account of the attitude of the colonial authorities to Mau Mau prisoners who they called Mickeys:

“….while we were waiting for the sub-inspector to come back I decided to question the Mickeys.  They wouldn’t say a thing of course and one of them, a tall coal-black bastard, kept grinning at me, real insolent. I slapped him hard, but he kept on grinning at me, so I kicked him in the balls as hard as I could ... When he finally got up on his feet he grinned at me again and I snapped. I really did. I stuck my revolver right in his grinning mouth ... And I pulled the trigger. His brains went all over the side of the police station. The other two (suspects) were standing there looking blank ... so I shot them both ... when the sub-inspector drove up, I told him the (suspects) tried to escape. He didn't believe me but all he said was 'bury them and see the wall is cleaned up'."   

A Young friend of mine, a black guy from the Midwest was talking to me about racism and what that has meant for black people throughout US history, from the kidnappings that brought them here to the racist justice system that incarcerates them at alarming rates and everything in between.  He felt racial war would be more likely than genuine racial harmony. The US media tended to see the Mau Mau revolt as a race war at the time and I can hardly blame my young friend from drawing the conclusions he did although how strongly he held them I’m not sure. But I reminded him of the conclusions about social conflict that Malcolm X drew from his experiences when he said:

“I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing….” he said, “….I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...”

While skin color, gender and religious affiliation can lead to conflict, and are also additional forms of social oppression that we have to address----I don’t feel discriminated against by the society in which I live due to the color of my skin for example----the motive force for driving colonial people’s off their land was not a hatred for their color or religion, it is driven by the need for free labor and the expansion of the capitalist mode of production throughout the world.  Wealth in capitalist society is created during the labor process so people that have a means of subsistence from the land have to be separated from it in order to drive them in to the hands of the capitalist class who will willingly pay them a wage for their labor time.

Before the British capitalist class liberated Kikuyu farmers from their means of subsistence, they freed the British peasants, white people, from theirs. The taking of common land that fed and clothed these peasants sped up after the English revolution becoming private land through legal decree (the peasants having no political voice of course) and violence. But the capitalist mode of production was not yet advanced enough to employ all this Labor power, these “free” laborers, so the possessors of it having lost their means of subsistence, were driven in to extreme poverty and were forced to beg, poach or steal to survive.  The punishment for such immoral behavior was death or if you were lucky, the workhouse. 

Marx described the removal of one entire community in Scotland to make way for capitalist agriculture in the six years between 1814 and 1820:

“From 1814 to 1820 these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3,000 families, were systematically hunted and rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned into pasturage. British soldiers enforced this eviction, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of the hut, which she refused to leave.

The perpetrator, the Duchess of Sutherland he points out; 

“…appropriated 794,000 acres of land that had from time immemorial belonged to the clan. She assigned to the expelled inhabitants about 6,000 acres on the sea-shore — 2 acres per family. The 6,000 acres had until this time lain waste, and brought in no income to their owners. The Duchess, in the nobility of her heart, actually went so far as to let these at an average rent of 2s. 6d. per acre to the clansmen, who for centuries had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the stolen clanland she divided into 29 great sheep farms, each inhabited by a single family, for the most part imported English farm-servants. In the year 1835 the 15,000 Gaels were already replaced by 131,000 sheep.”

The same situation began in Ireland long before capitalist expansion reached the shores of present day Kenya.  But my point here is that the capitalist class is not driven by race or religious hatred, it is the necessity for free labor that motivates their actions described here.  But a ruling class, feudal or capitalist, must justify its right to govern society and rule over others. It must demonize them, portray them as lesser beings. Why else would they be the rulers and the others ruled?  They must be more intelligent, more industrious, more motivated, otherwise why would they not be the conquered instead of the conquerors?

Throughout history there is resistance to this process which is what the Mau Mau rebellion was. It is met by direct violence and legislation to back it up and Irish history documents this well.  In England from the reign of Henry VIII beggars and the poor were whipped, branded, and executed for their crimes. Their land was taken from them along with their lives if they resisted; “Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.” writes Marx.

If we read of the colonizing of Mexico or any other land, the process is similar, the Yaquii were driven off their land for the same reason, private property in land is paramount. The capitalist class, “…compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”

The British ruling class and its intellectual warriors not only demonized its own working class, peasant or industrial worker, it portrayed other races as mere animals, but finds the necessity to convince its own working class that they are not so low and provide them with just a little more to prove it. Super exploitation of the foreigner could provide some extra loot for this task. Racism is the best tool for the justification of oppression and religion is a handy enabler, "How godly a deed it is to overthrow so wicked a race the world may judge: for my part I think there cannot be a greater sacrifice to God” wrote one British chronicler during a colonial expedition in to Ulster in Northern Ireland in 1574.

The Times of London wrote in the midst of the Irish famine as hundreds of thousands of them died: "They are going. They are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the streets of Manhattan...Law has ridden through, it has been taught with bayonets, and interpreted with ruin. Townships levelled to the ground, straggling columns of exiles, workhouses multiplied, and still crowded, express the determination of the Legislature to rescue Ireland from its slovenly old barbarism, and to plant there the institutions of this more civilized land."

James Froud was an English professor at Oxford, one of the historic training schools of the British and world bourgeois. He was a proponent of Anglo Saxon superiority and wrote of the Irish peasants at the time as "more like squalid apes than human beings.".

In the British press they were pictured as apes and were often described as “White Chimpanzees”, a step up from the “negro”. This had to be the case as the Irish have white skin, the same color as the British ruling class. Some said that the arrival of people of a different color in to Britain gave the Irish some breathing room.*

Racism has been a very useful tool in securing the aims of the capitalist class as they are forced by the laws of their system to seek new markets, raw material and Labor power and it is not the only tactic used to divide and weaken the working class, sexism and religious division is also useful to them. But it would be a mistake to attribute the motive for the exploitation by one nation of another to be a personal hatred of their culture, their color or their religion. Behind the racism and the violence and the expropriation of land and property is economics.

I was in Ireland recently and saw that there are efforts there to lay to rest in one place or commemorate the martyrs who died fighting for Irish freedom from British occupation.  Many of them that died at the hands of the occupying forces either in combat or through execution, were buried in unmarked graves or simply discarded. (For centuries, Irish revolutionists were sent to Australia as were the poor, political and religious dissidents).

In Kenya too there is an attempt to find the bones of those heroic Mau Mau buried in unmarked plots or simply discarded.  It is no accident that this took place in two different parts of the world.  The object is not to leave a people a place to visit their heroes; those that fought for their independence and freedom from colonial rule, all conquerors do it.  Bin Laden, though I would not place him in the same company as heroic figures like Che Guevara, Lumumba, and others, was dumped in the sea for the same reason.  The hatred of the occupier of one’s land of the ruling class that oppresses, is deep rooted and it is this hatred that must find no outlet, must not take organizational form or have any heroes.

The Mau Mau were presented by British colonialism as insane psychopaths, monkeys and incapable of living in a modern world just like the Irish.  They recently won a major victory in a British court that allows the few remaining Mau Mau fighters to sue the British government for compensation for the torture and brutality they faced under British rule.  It’s not going to amount to much bet even so, the British government opposed it. 

They blamed the Kenyans.

*The quotes on Ireland come from a document from the Irish Famine Society.  To receive this in pdf form send an e mail to: we_know_whats_up@yahoo.com

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UK: National Shop Stewards Network News

NSSN ebulletin 127

Firstly, the NSSN website has had problems over the last week, bear with us. Meantime please use our Facebook group National Shop Stewards Network’ & ‘Stop the cuts’ and/or follow us on twitter NSSN_Anticuts

Defend the NHS; health unions should call a national demonstration to stop all cuts and closures!

Con-Dem cuts and privatisation plans put the NHS's whole future in jeopardy. But there is a growing resistance to this onslaught on our right to decent healthcare. 25,000 people marched in Lewisham on 26 January against the threat of losing the A&E and other vital services - and the hospital itself. Key to the struggle to defend our NHS is the
role of health workers.

On Monday 28 February, low-paid admin and clerical workers at the Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust began five days of strike action against down-banding (meaning thousands of pounds in pay cuts). This follows four days of strike action in late 2012. NSSN national chair Rob Williams visited picket lines on Tuesday.
120 strikers joined picket lines across the three sites. The determined mood was spurred on by the dismissal and re-engagement notices sent by the Trust in an attempt to bully workers.

During the last strike Trust chief executive Stephen Eames said that he would meet the strikers 'anywhere, anytime'. But he's not been in a single negotiation with representatives of the strike committee.

On 31 January the Trust board is due to meet, with Eames in attendance. The strikers asked for speaking rights but were told it wasn't 'appropriate' for workers to address the meeting. The strikers were furious. They intend to make their voices heard, lobbying the meeting at the Trust headquarters at Pinderfields at 8am. If the Trust doesn't back down after this action, the Unison branch is discussing balloting the rest of the workforce, as it is clear that they will follow this up by down-banding them too.
More attacks are in the pipeline - admin and clerical workers face another 'review phase', ie cuts. The Trust is also severely cutting back on services at Dewsbury hospital, where Socialist Party members have also been leading a campaign.

Pay cuts, department closures and privatisations are taking place up and down the country. In the South West an employers' cartel has been formed in an attempt to drive down pay and conditions. Clearly the action taken by the clerical staff in Mid Yorkshire is inspiring other workers - so far £23,000 has been donated to the strike fund, mostly by Unison branches. And it is showing what the union can do to defend workers when these attacks come - locally hundreds have joined since the start of the action.
As elsewhere in the public and private sector, the bosses at Mid Yorkshire Trust are saying workers must pay for the economic crisis. But there's plenty of money to avoid these and other NHS cuts - but private healthcare and big business are leeching it out of our health service.

For example, Mid Yorkshire Trust pays 'consultants' Ernst & Young £3 million a year, and £40 million a year goes on repayments for PFI privatisation contracts.
It is urgent that a mass movement is built, taking inspiration from the determination of the Mid Yorks workers, to kick the profiteers out of the NHS and defend all our jobs, pay and public services. Please send messages of support to midyorksunison@aol.co.uk

25,000 march to save Lewisham hospital On 26 January a massive mobilisation of 25,000 people marched against proposals to close the A&E and other major facilities at University College Hospital, Lewisham. On Thursday, Tory Health Minister Jeremy Hunt announced that the A&E would be downgraded. A stepping back from total closure shows that if the campaign is maintained and stepped up, a total victory can be won.

This was a real community demo. The scale of support for the campaign was shown by the presence of the local football team Millwall's bus at the closing rally.
Such was size of the march that it had to move off about half an hour early so that everyone could join. Among the many union banners was the National Shop Stewards Network.

This was the second demo organised against recommendations in a paper authored by Special Administrator Matthew Kershaw who was commissioned by the Con-Dem government to do a hatchet job on NHS services in South London. It was in anticipation of 1 February when Kershaw will submit his plans to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt for rubber-stamping. Petitions, letters and marches have been organised, but these alone will not save Lewisham Hospital.
NSSN members on the demo raised the idea that our strategy must be based on the health trade unions and pressure on them to ballot their members for strike action to save the NHS, solidly backed by the community. A workers' occupation of Lewisham Hospital could be organised to stop equipment being removed and facilities run down.
This attempt to attack jobs and services at Lewisham Hospital is not the first. During 2006 the then Labour government proposed the closure of A&E, maternity and paediatric services. Hundreds of NSSN placards were carried by marchers. They recognised that we need to save all NHS services and not allow the campaign to be just about defending Lewisham A&E at the expense of other NHS services in south London. Unite’s view on Hunt decision – ‘Hunt’s announcement on Lewisham hospital ‘a kick in the teeth’

Heatherwood hospital campaign - Eighteen months ago a group of activists met to discuss how best to resist plans by NHS bosses to close our local hospital. Terry Pearce


UNION NEWS

FBU
The Fire Brigades Union condemns decision by London mayor to overrule LFEPA and press ahead with cuts.  The FBU has condemned a decision by the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to overrule his own fire authority and press ahead with plans to close 12 fire stations, remove 18 engines and slash 520 firefighter posts in the capital. The mayor announced the unprecedented move this afternoon (January 30th)

POA
National demonstration against Prison Closures – February 13th The union will be protesting opposite Parliament on 13th February 2013. It has been arranged for a drop in Surgery at the House of Commons to brief Members of Parliament and for a demonstration opposite, which would be the (Old Palace Yard).

PCS
Courts fines collection workers strike to stop sell-off
PCS Education Department members ballot over office closures and 1000 job cuts - On January 28th members of the PCS Union working in the Department for Education started balloting for strike action and action short of a strike, in opposition to plans to close 6 out of 12 departmental offices and slash 1000 jobs (25% of the workforce)
PCS calls off tomorrow’s strike after jobs win

Unite
One Housing faces historic strike ballot over massive pay cuts!  Sign the petition to support the campaign.
interview by Sparks with Union News on the BESNA victory and the importance of solidarity.

Howdens drivers picket company’s HQ
More than sixty DHL drivers and supporters picketed the headquarters of Howdens on Thursday January 31. DHL distributes for Howdens who earlier this month announced they were moving their transport operation from Merseyside to Yorkshire. This will leave 53 drivers facing redundancies. Today’s noisy protest aimed at bringing Howdens back to the negotiating table, to stop ignoring the dispute and to stop all 53 of the redundancies due to come into effect on 4th February. Drivers have been refusing to deliver to Northampton and Runcorn, to which Managers responded by employing bouncers to intimidate the drivers. An agreement was reached to withdraw the bouncers but staff discovered managers spying on them from the canteen with binoculars! All 8 outlets as well as the company and shareholder offices are being hit by nightly noise protests. Unite has been watching the share price fall as a result of these protests, while large sums of money have been pumped into the company to keep the share-price up.

While the bosses have been told these protests will be over in 30 days that is not the intention of the drivers. Some have given 24 years of service only to be faced with redundancy. The mood of the workers is defiant and determined to get DHL to back down.

Picket at Greencore as 500 workers strike for a living wage! Messages of support can be sent to: ford.petem@yahoo.com

Weekend protests at threat to Agricultural Wages Board
Unite members are staging two protests this weekend – outside posh people’s hotel, the Savoy and at the Somerset constituency ‘surgery’ of the farm minister – to ratchet up the pressure to save the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB).

"Asda Wal-Mart: Change decision to de list welsh country foods from their supply chain " and need your help to get it off the ground. The future of 350 workers/unite members depend on Asda to reverse their decision and put ethics before profits/ Jamie Pritchard - Unite Rural and Agricultural

RMT
LUL 33 Agency workers struggle for justice goes on – sacked Trainspeople workers lobbied Boris Johnson’s Question Time on Wednesday
Latest RMT London Calling Newsletter February 2013 Edition FIGHT AGAINST JOB CUTS Review: Unity is Strength - 100 Years Of The National Union Of Railwaymen by Alex Gordon – RMT President 2010-12
Rail union RMT warns of skills shortage threat to high-speed and rail modernisation plans
Rail franchising racket rolls on as Government hand out two year extensions to worst performing train companies

UCU
Birmingham University UCU  ballots members for strike action over "forced redundancies and aggressive management tactics" The University and College Union (UCU) is balloting its almost 1,000 members at the University of Birmingham for strike action next month. The branch committee is threatening industrial action in response to "the University management’s campaign of forced redundancies and aggressive management tactics that many of our members perceive to be of a bullying nature".

NUT
If we don't act soon, Gove will have won his ‘war’ on teachers without teaching unions even having put up a serious fight.  The latest issue of Classroom Teacher. The overwhelming mood of NUT members at the NUT Briefings in both London and Sheffield tonight was one of anger and frustration at the continued delay in calling action. Both briefings called on the NUT Executive to vote for strike action to start before Easter - when it meets again. It’s now vital that, in every region of the country, NUT members lobby their Executive members to vote for that action. As part of that lobbying, five London NUT Associations (so far) are backing a call for a LOBBY OF THE NUT NATIONAL EXECUTIVE on WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 27 at 5 pm, outside NUT HQ, Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9BD ( Kings X / Euston tubes ). Martin Powell-Davies NUT NEC (personal capacity) & NSSN Steering Group.

UNISON
Bromley Council sent out 4500 letters today asking workers to volunteer to give up national terms and conditions. Next stage of fight is a mass non sign up campaign.

UCATT
Chris Murphy R.I.P. “Sorry to hear the sad news of the passing of Chris Murphy a member of the UCATT Executive Council, lifelong trade union activist, a blacklisted building worker and a friend.
At last TUC Congress, Chris gave a memorable speech in favour of a General Strike. Chris appeared on the top platform of Blacklist Support Group, Construction Safety Campaign and Defend Council Housing public events. Chris Murphy was convener on London Underground and on London Borough of Islington DLOs, an example of a trade unionist that supported his class with a conscience. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones.” Dave Smith Blacklist Support Group

GMB
GMB Ballot At Pilkington Glass over job losses and pension changes.
GMB No Vote In Aberdeenshire. GMB has notified Aberdeenshire Council that members have yet again voted today to reject council’s proposed changes to their terms and conditions of employment

Victimisation

GMB PUBLISH UK MAP SHOWING WHERE 3,213 WORKERS ON CONSTRUCTION BLACKLIST LIVED OR WORKED  GMB is calling on local councils not to award any new public work to the companies that operated the blacklist till they compensate those they damaged Please download it and circulate widely as less than 10% of the 3,213 on the blacklist know they are on it.

Select Committee investigation into blacklisting continues: Witness: Jack Winder - Director of CAPRIM Ltd  1:30pm Tuesday 5th Feb
Committee Room 6 Houses of parliament.  CAPRIM Limited are the company set up after the demise of the Economic League by Jack Winder and Stan Hardy. As the Chief Exec and Head of Research of the League, they had possession of the entire Economic League database and sold the construction industry section of it to the Consulting Association to allow them to set-up an run the building industry blacklist. CAPRIM Limited went into voluntary liquidation a few weeks after the raid on the Consulting Association. The directors have never spoken in public before: this could be very interesting (or very dull, if they refuse to answer questions). Blacklist Support Group Video blog:
Ministers are not running a campaign against trade unions, according to immigration minister Mark Harper.

Re-instate the Halesowen 4

INTERNATIONAL
Layoffs spark protests in Belgium

The ITUC has condemned the Greek government’s use of wartime emergency powers to break a week-long strike by metro transit workers in the capital city of Athens. & More on the details on government unions role.

Korea: Public sector union president on indefinite hunger strike

South Africa - Battle for control of mining sector

DIARY

Feb 2
Women& Austerity conference (Brighton Women Against Cuts) Art and activism; using the media; benefits; safety; the public sector; Setting up women’s network; NHS – building the campaign. Brighthelm Centre, North Road, 1pm – 4pm Crèche available
Halifax Town hall protest against cuts 10.15am
March to protest the threats on Chase Farm Hospital are planning to march through Enfield 1pm

7
Ruckus at Liverpool Mutual Homes

9
Protest against South West NHS pay Cartel! 10am Great Field Poundry.

13
POA national demonstration against Prison Closures – opposite Parliament

14
Bromley trades council relaunched; next meeting 14 February, AGM 14 March; Steve Leggett the_legman_69@yahoo.co.uk

15
Stop the great Fuel Robbery – National Weekend of Action!

16
Newcastle Stop the cuts and save services march
Greater Manchester Emergency open conference
Northampton Defend Welfare Public Meeting 2pm Friends Meeting House, NN1

23
National Construction Rank & File Meeting 1pm-4pm; Jury's Inn, Jamaica Street, Glasgow.

March
13/14 EUROPEAN DAY OF ACTION – NSSN SUPPORT THIS EUROPE WIDE CALL OF ACTION AGAINST CUTS & BOGUS AUSTERITY FOR US! (Also join our FB event)

16
RESISTING AUSTERITY in Europe and in the UK 10.00 am-6.00 pm, Congress House, WC1 3LS. Key discussions on: International crisis, International resistance/Austerity in Britain, there IS an alternative & How trade unions can fight austerity. Book your place on 020 7467 1218, JAdams@tuc.org.uk

23
Barnet spring march over sell off of services. 1pm Finchley station

June 29 
7th annual conference of the NSSN – Camden Centre, London.


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CONTACT US
Twitter NSSN_Anticuts
Facebook main group ‘National Shop Stewards Network’ & ‘Stop the cuts’
Website: www.shopstewards.net Hopefully working soon
Email: info@shopstewards.net  Hopefully working soon

Phone: 07952 283 558



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US Economy Still Crawling Along

US – still crawling

by Michael Roberts

The US released its figures of real GDP growth in Q4’2012.  Against all economic forecasts (the consensus had been for a 1.1% rise), real GDP fell 0.1% at an annualised rate in Q4 2012 after increasing 3.1% in Q3. It was the first quarterly contraction since the Great Recession ended in mid-2009.

However, this could all be revised.  And the detail of the GDP release shows that things are not as bad as the headline figure suggests.  The quarterly decline was mainly due to a sharp drop in inventories.  Companies usually produce more to stock up in case of a rush in demand.  But in the last quarter they did the opposite and cut back on stocks.  The reason was probably a worry that the US Congress was about to unleash a severe austerity package (the so-called fiscal cliff) that would hit consumer spending, and thus sales, hard.  So they cut back on stock building.   Also, government spending on defence dropped sharply, possibly because the troops are starting to come back from Afghanistan and Iraq.  And US exporters failed to deliver enough sales to boost growth – see the graph below for a breakdown of the GDP.

Moreover, in Q4 the private domestic sector of the US economy did better.  Real personal consumption expenditures were up 2.2% (annualised) in Q4 compared to 1.6% in Q3.  And residential investment (property purchases) were up by an annual rate of 15.3% qoq compared 13.5% in Q3 – so the US housing market is making a recovery from very low levels.  Most important of all, real non residential fixed investment was up to an 8.4% annual rate from a contraction of 1.8% in Q3.   So it would appear that corporate investment in new equipment picked up.

But it would be misleading to conclude from this that the main productive sector of US capitalism was beginning to expand faster.  The figure below (from Doug Short) shows that while personal consumption as a share of US GDP is near its all-time high of 71% (blue line), private investment (both in property and productive equipment and plant) is still well below its peak before the crisis, and as a share of GDP is only at the level of 1996 (red line).
Indeed, if you isolate productive investment only, the latest quarterly figure suggests a slowing of growth on a year-on-year basis.

If we look at the annual growth figures for real GDP, the picture emerges of an economy that contracted by over 3% in 2008 and 2009  and then recovered to trundle along at an average of almost exactly 2% a year for the last three years, even slower than the very poor 2.6% a year achieved between 2002-07 in the credit boom.

And this Q4 figure, if confirmed in subsequent revisions, shows that the growth rate is struggling to get above 2% and may even get slower.  That does not auger well for getting unemployment down much, as that requires a real GDP growth rate of 3%-plus  a year.


The US economy is doing better than the UK, Japan or Europe.  But it is still crawling.

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Workers Intl. Network on the crisis in the British SWP

Dear Comrades,

We believe there are serious lessons to learn from recent events in the SWP. These lessons are of common value to all socialists seriously looking for a means to break out of our isolation and connect with the mass movement against capitalism sweeping the world. Nothing could be more futile than to gloat or score cheap debating points about it.

We condemn the process by which an accusation of rape involving an SWP CC member was handled: the judgement of the case by fellow CC members and friends of the accused; the humiliating treatment of the two women involved; harassment of their supporters and the suppression of factions and dissent. However, the revolt against this is a tribute to the membership of your party and their commitment to socialism. It is in light of this principled position and in response to the clear loss of political authority by the SWP leadership that we write to you to share our perspectives with the hope that it might prove useful. And we hope to learn from your experience.

In the past, Marxist organisations have been able to influence the great events of their eras. No socialist groups can claim to have emerged with any great honour or glory from the struggles of the last few years sweeping the world from Egypt, to Greece, to South Africa. What useful lessons may be learned?

The SWP was clearly able to provide socialist ideas and organisation to many of the most militant and talented young people radicalised in the student mobilisations of recent years, amongst others. This has left you in the position of being one of the largest and most serious socialist organisations in the UK. Yet the SWP is sadly a party for whom one tactic after another has collapsed – Stop The War, the Socialist Alliance, and Respect – and whose “united fronts” are often left as simply fronts for the party, excluding serious class politics, as in the UAF. None of these initiatives can be seriously said to have given a lead to the working class in the face of the worst attacks we have seen in more than three generations.

There is not just a lack of confidence in the leadership of the SWP: it affects all the left groups. Why, when the workers are under attack as never before, and when tens of thousands have been demonstrating against capitalism, are the left groups still marginalised and stagnating? Even in those places where left organisations, such as SYRIZA, are finding support in the polls, they lack deep and penetrating roots in the working class. Where is the political expression and self-organisation of the working class in this crisis?

It is our observation that problems of sectarianism are endemic in left organisations of all kinds, to the point that this is almost a truism. All serious socialists will be able to recall situations in which one organisation or another has hindered the serious work of comrades for its own ends.  We argue that this trend finds its cause in the messianic leadership complex which has developed within the organisations of the left. Furthermore, this comes from a false assessment of the tasks facing socialists today, and has its own historical roots.

What was correct for Trotsky is not necessarily correct in the world today. For the revolutionaries in whose tradition many of us stand (Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg) the working class could mobilize great battalions against our rulers, and possessed valued traditions of struggle, political parties and unions, of whatever character, in their millions. It could, once, seriously be said that the proletariat existed for-itself, what we needed was the right leaders and the right ideas.

Times have changed. The class lacks in many cases some of the most basic weapons against exploitation; only 15% of our class in the UK’s private sector are in unions, wages are down by 20% as a share of GDP and inequality is unprecedented; no Left party can seriously claim mass membership or even support. Clearly, it can no longer be socialists’ priority to build a “vanguard” party and claim leadership of the working class.

Paradoxically, the class has never had more serious need of a revolutionary cadre to argue for socialism and become, as Lenin put it, “tribunes of the class”.  It is necessary to draw together the forces fighting capitalism the world over into a broad anti-capitalist front, to build an international forum in which a new programme, strategy and tactics, but above all solidarity within the working class can be thrashed out democratically, in the traditions of Marx and Engels at the time of the First International.

The proletariat is for the first time a majority of the world population. The centre of the world proletariat has shifted away from Europe and America. For every worker in the old metropolitan countries there are now five more spread across the globe. China has twice as many industrial workers as all the G7 countries combined. In this titanic class, women are represented in unprecedented numbers and the crisis facing women arising from austerity imposed by the ruling class has not been so fierce in 60 years.

That being so, we disagree fundamentally with the SWP's long-time insistence that Marxism and feminism are somehow antithetical and thus condemn their recent denunciation of all references to feminism. At this time, we cannot afford to reject the organic ideas generated by the working class within the feminist movement, nor any other, simply because they do not come ready packaged as ‘Marxist™’.

It is now impossible to escape the public scandal within the active left and women’s organisations in Britain. All activists will in some way or other be forced to take a position on the SWP and rape. Sadly, the public line of the party at large does nothing to assuage anyone’s concerns or criticisms. The pained looks of party faithful on paper sales when faced with questions of a cover up or rape apologise and half-hearted assertions that is “not quite what you think” frankly make the matter worse.

We feel that this is symptomatic of dangerous messianic ideas that we touch on above. We ask why your CC does not trust the class to provide any solutions to this crisis? Your leadership, as with many other left groups, seems to think the only ‘correct’ ideas can come from the SWP down to the class, from whom you have nothing to learn. Their policy of not “arguing in front of the children” does not show a united party capable of leadership, rather they seem out of touch, unable to relate to the real conditions and aping the old Stalinists.

In this vein, we also condemn the attempts by the CC to shut down public dissent. However grave a mistake you leaders are making, the principled commitment by “the opposition” speaks to a clarity of political thought and a more proper relationship to the movement and class.

The leadership is also strategically wrong to disregard the membership and fob them off with bureaucratic Stalinist answers. If the leadership does not listen and react to the positions of oppositionists it will condemn the SWP to irrelevance, something no one looking to build a powerful left wishes to see.

Internal democracy is essential in any organisation trying to learn from the experiences of their members in the struggle and of the experiences of the class in these rapidly changing times; democracy is not a just a moral issue it is an essential tool for the struggle.

We reject the “small mass party” approach and anyone viewing themselves as the future revolutionary party in miniature, already hegemonic over all others. Not only is it simply not true of any existing party, but it leads directly to the mistakes such as those of the SWP Central committee. Now is not the time for a select group to give polemics to a class that is not listening. Instead Marxists should study carefully the tasks we face and work in solidarity, despite the inevitable strife and pain that this will entail, with the rest of the class.  

It is urgent that we build a force capable of overthrowing capitalism and saving the world from extinction through war and ecological catastrophe, but for now calls for “unity” are at best abstract. Solidarity is the order of the day. We invite anyone searching for a serious solution as to how to rebuild the socialist traditions of the twentieth century into a force capable of changing the world to contact us, but also one another.

Members of our network are active in different organisations and struggles around the world and we as yet have no pretence to form even the embryo of a new mass organisation. We have tried to draw conclusions from the successes of the class and our common mistakes of the past and have produced documents laying out our position. We meet regularly to develop our ideas and discuss daily online at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/socialistdiscussion/.

If you would like to join this discussion, please contact us.

In solidarity,

Workers’ International Network

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Pakistan Garment Factory Lays off 1000

Garment Workers protest in Pakistan

Press Statement by National Trade Union Federation Pakistan (NTUF)

From Nasir Mansoor Deputy general secretary National Trade Union Federation Pakistan (NTUF

International exporter renders 1,000 workers jobless

‘Joe’s Fashion’ likely to render 4,000 more workers jobless by closing anther factory 

A garment factory, Joe’s Fashion Export situated in Korangi Industrial Area (KIA) has shut down business and rendered around 1,000 employees jobless without taking labour department functionaries on board which was mandatory formality to be fulfilled.

Most of the workers had served this garment factory for more than 20 years and they are getting panicky now as to how to get their legal dues. Out of these 1,000 employees there are 650 female workers who have served this factory for so many years.

This is pertinent to mention here that all these workers were registered with Social Security Institute and Employees Old-Age Benefits Institute (EOBI). These workers have factory’s cards but their appointment letters are in possession of the factory’s management and they were never handed over these letters. However, the factory had no labour union in it which might have pleaded the workers’ case to get them justice accordingly.

The factory was closed on January 17 without fulfilling legal procedure. For closing down any factory the management is required to inform the workers besides intimating Labour Department about it letting this institute know the reasons of closure.
Afterward the owners are required to submit the details of dues in Labour Court which it owes to the workers. In the labour court final settlement is made but nothing like it was done before locking the factory.

The factory in question is one of the major exporters of garments to European Union and some known international brands like H&M, Tom Tailors, C&A, Zara, ST-Magor, Orchestra and some others had been buying finished products from this company.
This factory was also certified by ISO 9001 and Bureau Veritos had awarded it with the certificate of Quality Management. 

Generally international brands claim to buy merchandise from only those manufacturers who fulfill all standards including provision of due rights of workers at their workplaces. However, in this case they did not bother to probe whether the manufacturer, Mohsim Ayoub Mirza was fulfilling his duties or not. The factory in question is situated in the sector 27 of KIA and currently its finished products, raw material and machinery is being shifted to some other factory under the supervision of armed guards. The products and machinery is being shifted to Rija Fashion, a factory which is owned by the brother of Mirza.

Uzma is affected employee who has served Joe’s Fashion for around 31 years as helper whereas Abdul Jabbar has worked as storekeeper for nearly 25 years in this factory. Likewise, another worker Hanif has served this factory for 23 years as Fabric Incharge.
All these workers are running from post to pillar to know about their dues’ clearance and their status at the moment.

The owner of the factory has many more branches of the factory under different names in international cities like Madrid, Paris, Sharja, UAE and in Sri Lanka besides owning three subsidiaries branches in Karachi.

The same owner is also shutting another of his factory today (January 31) which is situated in Export Processing Zone (EPZ) where the livelihood of around 4,000 workers is associated.

The representative of workers, National Trade Union Federation (NTUF) has moved an application to Labour Department on Wednesday and sought justice for the affected employees. The NTUF is of the opinion generally the industrialists shut down some industry to get rid of their debts or to wave off banks’ loans. THE NTUF has demanded from the government to seal the assets of the owner of the factory due to his noncompliance of labour laws and ditching them thoroughly. The NTUF also demanded from international brands to take notice of the situation and make the owner bound to follow international labour standards.

This move of the owner has also disturbed the local suppliers and they are also wandering where to get their pending dues. A female Chinese supplier is also looking here and there to about the whereabouts of the owner to get clear her dues.       

Nasir Mansoor
Deputy General Secretary
National Trade Union Federation, Pakistan
03003587211
ntufpak@gmail.com
www.ntufpak.org       



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Support Garfield High (Seattle) Boycott of High Stakes Tests

By Jack Gerson

A boycott of standardized tests -- launched earlier this month when teachers at Seattle's Garfield High voted unanimously to refuse to administer the districtwide Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test -- has attracted national attention as well as support from parent and teacher groups locally and nationally.  Teachers at some other Seattle schools have joined the boycott, while many others have sent letters of support.  The Seattle Parent Teacher Student Association, the Seattle Student Senate, and many leading education activists and researchers have also issued support statements.

Today -- Wednesday, January 30 -- is a national call/phone/fax day to tell Seattle Public Schools that you, your organization and / or your union stand with the Garfield test boycotters. Send your message to Seattle Schools Superintendent José Banda:

Phone: (206) 252-0180
Fax: (206) 252-0209
Email: superintendent@seattleschools.org

 The MAP tests were created by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a non-profit corporation with ties to Bill Gates and Eli Broad, billionaire architects of the corporate assault on education.  They were brought to Seattle by former schools superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, herself a graduation of Eli Broad’s Urban Superintendents Academy, who spent more than $4 million of public school funds for them. This was a blatant conflict of interest: Goodloe-Johnson never even bothered to disclose that she was on the board of NWEA before, during, and after she contracted to buy the MAP tests. 

Far worse, though, are the tests themselves.  Teachers and schools are held accountable for student test scores on MAP – in fact, the district wants to use MAP scores in teacher evaluations – but Garfield teachers say that these tests don’t test what they’re supposed to – they are not aligned to curricula.  They penalize low-income and special education students:  the tests are administered on computers; low-income students in under-resourced schools have far less access to computers than students from affluent families, while MAP testing denies special education students the accommodations they often need to effectively interact with computers.

This is an old story:  deny resources to those who need them the most, increasing inequality. Then use poorly designed and arbitrarily applied tests to “measure” student achievement, and blame students, teachers, and "low-achieving" schools for their “failure”.  Naturally, the students who score lowest are those who suffer most from social inequality – children from low-income families, and especially those from black and Latino families. And, of course, the overtesting mania rewards rote learning and spitting out the “right” answer – blind obedience --over concepts, creativity, and independent thinking.

Rather than provide what’s really needed -- more resources for schools and, most importantly, massive public programs to combat the effects of poverty and reduce social inequality – schools are told to “do more with less” while essential public services are cut or eliminated.  And then schools are closed, experienced teachers are laid off, destabilizing neighborhoods and increasing social inequality.  More schools closed, more neighborhoods destabilized, more young people consigned to the streets, the military, or prison. In this way, high stakes testing reproduces and deepens the class and racial divisions and inequality that are at the heart of the problem.

Teachers, parents, and education activists have come out strongly in support of the Garfield teachers and their test boycott.  What about the leaders of the two huge national teacher unions, the 3 million member National Education Association (NEA) and the 1.7 million member American Federation of Teachers (AFT)?  Well, in fact, the presidents of the NEA (Dennis van Roekel) and the AFT (Randi Weingarten) have each said that they support the teachers boycott. But they haven’t lifted a finger to demonstrate real support. Teachers – and parents – across the country are fed up with overtesting. With an investment of some of their massive resources, NEA and AFT could spread the boycott to thousands of schools, organize mass support rallies, and make the simple and direct connections between the fight against high stakes testing and the fight against the cuts to education and other essential public programs. In other words: they could use the fight against high stakes testing as a springboard to kick off a national campaign against austerity. But they’re not about to do that – at least not on their own initiative. They’re not about to break with Barack Obama and the Democrats. They’re not about to clash with “responsible business leaders”. Instead, they’re going to continue to embrace the “team concept” of labor / corporate / government collaboration – the same policy that accelerated the decimation of U.S. private sector unions.

But that doesn’t mean that these fights aren’t coming.  Parents and community can now see the corporate “reform” for what it is: shutting down schools and overall downsizing of public education; charter schools, test prep mills, consultants and contractors and overall privatization; forcing out experienced teachers and overall union-busting.  And in many communities, it’s understood that the corporate assault on education is an integral part of “shared sacrifice” austerity, and that the only ones sacrificing are working and unemployed families.  And we’re fighting back: three years ago, in the California movement against cuts to education; two years ago, in the massive struggle in Wisconsin against cuts and union-busting, kicked off by students and teachers in Madison high schools; last year, in the massive and groundshaking Occupy movement; and just four months ago, in the powerful teacher and  community alliance manifested in the Chicago teacher strike.

So, let’s make those phone calls, send those faxes, post those emails to let Seattle Schools Superintendent José Banda know that there’s massive support out here for the Garfield teachers and their boycott of Seattle’s high stakes MAP tests. Here’s Banda’s contact info:

Phone:  (206) 252-0180

Fax:       (206)  252-0209

Email:   superintendent@seattleschools.org

It’s a start. It can lead to more. 

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Malians exact revenge on Muslim shopkeepers as French and Gov't troops enter Timbuktu

Malians in Timbuktu exacting revenge on Arab or Muslim stores after French and Malian troops take control of the city from Islamic forces. There are considerable mining and resource ventures that imperialist forces need to defend in what is yet another NATO war fought in defense of corporations like French nuclear energy firm Areva’s uranium mines in neighboring Niger. The Islamic fundamentalists that US capitalism nurtured and helped strengthen in its struggle with the old Soviet regime have come back to haunt them as the struggle to contain their old allies has shifted from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Saharan Africa. And Iraq is far from finished.

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Korean union official on hunger strike needs your support

From: LabourStart

Subject: Call to action - Korean public sector union president on indefinite hunger strike
The President of the Korean Government Employees' Union (KGEU), Kim Jungnam, launched a hunger strike in the streets of Seoul outside the offices of the Presidential transition committee on 15 January.

He is protesting the sacking of 137 workers, among them the union president and general secretary, who are being punished for their union activities. They are accused of being leaders of an "illegal organization" -- the KGEU.

President-elect Park Guenhye, who will take office on 25 February, has pledged to achieve social integration. The KGEU is demanding that she recognize the union and reinstate the sacked employees.

Kim will continue his hunger strike until these issues are resolved.

We call upon trade unionists around the world to show their solidarity by sending off messages of protest and solidarity today.

Click here to send off your message:

http://bit.ly/Vl9fLP

Please spread the word - share this message with your friends, family, co-workers and fellow union members.

Thank you!

Eric Lee

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Bradley Manning's fight for justice at Ft. Meade

Bradley Manning's fight for justice at Ft. Meade
From Courage to Resist

Recent rulings in Bradley’s pre-trial hearings–Trial delayed until June

By the Bradley Manning Support Network.  January 23, 2013.

Bradley Manning, a 24-year-old Army intelligence analyst, is accused of releasing the Collateral Murder video, which shows the killing of unarmed civilians and two Reuters journalists by a US Apache helicopter crew in Iraq. He is also accused of sharing the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and series of embarrassing US diplomatic cables. These documents were published by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, and they have illuminated such issues as the true number and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq, along with a number of human rights abuses by U.S.-funded contractors and foreign militaries, and the role that spying and bribes play in international diplomacy. He has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his heroic and noble actions. For over 960 days he has been imprisoned without trial, 11 months of which were spent in solitary confinement at Quantico prison, where his treatment has since been judged to have amounted to unlawful pretrial punishment.

Winter recap: torture hearings, trial delays, motive debates, and more
Pre-trial hearings at Ft. Meade brought new developments for Pfc. Bradley Manning’s defense, including four months of sentencing credit, another three-month trial delay, debates over the failure to try Manning within reasonable time, and an effort to make whistle-blowing treasonous.
Bradley Manning has been to Ft. Meade for three hearings in the last two months, including the marathon Article 13 motion surrounding Bradley’s torturous nine months in Quantico, a 112-day reduction in a potential sentence, speedy trial litigation, arguments over how motive will play into the ‘aiding the enemy’ charge, and another court-martial delay. The trial is now scheduled to start June 3, 2013, with pretrial hearings set for February 26 – March 1 and May 21-24.

Judge ruled abusive treatment at Quantico was unlawful, awards sentencing credit
Following over two weeks of testimony from Quantico guards and higher officers about keeping Bradley in a 6×8 cell for 23 hours a day and denying him exercise time and easy access to basic hygiene items Judge Denise Lind ruled that Bradley was treated harshly and awarded him 112 days off of a potential sentence. This is a meager rebuke and a scant reduction when compared to the life sentence Bradley could face, but it is an important symbolic vindication for those who fought so hard to raise awareness of the disturbing treatment and to move Bradley from Quantico.
Read more: Bradley takes the stand, puts military captors on trial and
Judge rules Manning was illegally treated, awards 112 days credit

Three years is not a speedy trial
On Bradley Manning’s 964^th day in prison without trial, both parties argued over the defense’s motion to dismiss charges for lack of a speedy trial. Under Rule for Court Martial 707, the military was supposed to arraign Bradley in 120 days, but it took over 600. Under Uniform Code for Military Justice Article 10, prosecutors are obligated to maintain diligence in trying the accused. Defense lawyer David Coombs explained to the court that rather than being proactive, the military was reactive, waiting for months and months for other agencies to complete classification reviews, when it should have been hurrying those processes along to get to court-martial as quickly as possible. If Judge Lind finds Article 10 was violated, she must dismiss charges. If she dismisses charges “with prejudice,” meaning she finds that the military was prejudicial in denying Bradley a speedy trial, then Bradley will walk free. However, if she dismisses “without prejudice,” finding the delays were negligent but not malicious, the military could simply re-charge Bradley with all of the same offenses. She’ll rule at the next hearing, February 26 through March 1.

Turning whistle-blowing into treason
Meanwhile, in an attempt to curtail the defense’s ability to show Bradley Manning is a whistle-blower, the government moved to preclude discussion of his motive in determining his guilt or innocence. Judge Lind granted this motion in part: the defense will not be allowed to show Bradley’s motive, such as chatlog quotes showing that he wanted information to be free, in debating whether he knew Al Qaeda would have access to the cables he released (but it will be allowed to discuss motive during a potential sentencing portion). The military will have to prove that Bradley knew he was “dealing with the enemy” in passing information to WikiLeaks. The defense will be allowed to show that Bradley selected certain cables or types of cables to prove he knew which information would not cause harm to U.S. national security if made public. The government also moved to preclude discussion of over-classification, trying to prevent the defense from arguing that documents released needn’t have been classified in the first place. Judge Lind decided to defer that ruling, and will make it at a later hearing. In this hearing, the military also said that it would still charge Bradley Manning with “aiding the enemy” if he’d released information to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, an argument that would effectively turn whistle-blowing into treason and one which troubled many journalists following the proceedings.

Read more: Judge limits Manning’s whistle-blower defense, pretrial confinement nears 1,000 days and Transparency isn’t treason: New York Times journalists criticize “aiding the enemy” charge
The defense is currently determining which classification information it will need to present during the court-martial. Once it notifies the government of that information, prosecutors have 60 days to determine how to handle those documents in court. They can redact, substitute, or summarize them, or they can ask the court to hold closed sections, open only to the judge, defense, prosecution, and security experts with sufficient clearances. Therefore, the trial is tentatively scheduled to begin June 3, 2013.

Read more: Court-martial delayed again, expected to start June 3
Remaining proceedings:

• 26 February – 1 March, 2013: Accused plea and anticipated speedy trial ruling
• 10 April – 12 April, 2013: Issues regarding evidence for trial
  
• 21 May – 24 May, 2013: How to deal with classified information during trial (either substituting or redacting documents or closing portions of the trial to the press and public)
• 3 June, 2013: Tentative trial start date; trial expected to last about six weeks

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Ireland: ULA statement on SP leaving the Alliance

I Just returned from Ireland where I had the pleasure of spending some time with the comrades in the United Labor Alliance.  Along with that, a number of members of the ULA attended a meeting in Dublin of the Workers International Network where Roger Silverman spoke on our past, and the need for a new approach from the left in the changing world situation.  The meeting was sponsored by Clare Daly and Joan Collins, two members of the Irish parliament and the ULA

Some groups have left the ULA including the Socialist Party to which many ULA members once belonged.  The Socialist Party took the decision to leave the ULA when I was still in Ireland and the statement below is a response to that and is signed by three members of Parliament. Facts For Working People agrees with this statement.

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

 "The United Left Alliance regrets the decision taken by Joe Higgins TD and the Socialist Party to leave the Alliance. We believe that they have made a serious mistake. The need for a new, broad and inclusive left, which will not on principle enter right wing governments with either Fine Gael or Fianna Fail is today more urgent than ever.
...
Faced with a massive attack on jobs, pay, pensions, working conditions, welfare payments and entitlements, health and education and other essential social services, working people need an independent and radical political movement which will seek to represent them, help organise them, and above all, fight on their behalf.

The ULA was formed with the intention to bring together existing left groups along with individual members to help lay the basis over time to enable a new party of the left to come into existence. It was inevitable that there would be difficulties in bringing together groups who have had a long period of independent activity and indeed rivalry.

We believe it is necessary to work to overcome such problems and to create the conditions in which the ULA can achieve its undoubted potential.

It is unfortunate that the Socialist Party feels it necessary to create or exaggerate political differences to justify their action in leaving the Alliance. In reality their decision reflects an inability to put the urgent task of building a broader movement to more effectively represent working people before the narrow interests of their own small grouping.

Richard Boyd Barrett TD. Clare Daly TD. Joan Collins TD."

Joan Collins

Clare Daly

Richard Boyd Barrett

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South Africa: DLF statement on Farm Workers' Struggles

DEMOCRATIC LEFT FRONT

www.democraticleft.za.net

PRESS STATEMENT ON FARM WORKER STRUGGLES

ORGANISE FOR R150 PER DAY! OUR STRUGGLE CONTINUES

29 January 2013

The Democratic Left Front (DLF) salutes farm workers for their historic stand against exploitation and calls on progressive forces to intensify efforts to organise, mobilise and advance the struggle for R150 per day.

The struggle of the Western Cape farm workers is not only against starvation wages but the system of baasskap oppression that has remained since Apartheid.

This has been more than a strike, it has been a popular rebellion and the demand for R150 per day is symbolic of a greater struggle to transform the rural countryside and for radical agrarian transformation including redistribution of land.

The strike represents a huge step forward in the morale, confidence, organisation and spirit of farm workers and farm dwellers.

The strike on the farms, like the mines before, reflects a growing preparedness of the working class of South Africa to challenge the system of profit, low wages and economic apartheid.

Organising amongst farm workers is a herculean task. Farms are separated by great distances and owners prevent unionists from gaining access to workers. They threaten those that take a stand with physical violence, eviction and legal harassment. There is total disregard for labour regulations and the constitutional right to organise. Famers use labour brokers and casualisation to weaken the power of workers. The police have colluded in this - arresting and brutalising worker leaders and closing roads to prevent the free movement of organisers.

Despite these obstacles farm workers have mobilised, blocked national roads and shut down production in a number of areas - in defiance of the police who have responded with excessive brutality. Three workers have now been killed. The responsibility for the violence lies at the police's feet. Some of our activists have been denied the due process of the law and remain in jail. Several activists, local leaders from Mawubuye and CSAAWU have been detained since 9th January.

Throughout these three months of protests and strikes, commercial farmers have remained intransigent and arrogant refusing to engage with the unions and farm workers committees. This is an indication of the complete lack of transformation in the countryside. It is clear that apartheid is alive and well in many parts of South Africa.

The strike over the last three months is all the more remarkable because of this.  But the struggle is not over. The farmers claim they cannot afford R150 per day. In fact, most can and must pay now. The desire for high profits cannot be used to deny decent wages. If farms cannot pay they must be expropriated and placed under workers control.

The government has failed outright to deliver on land reform. They have made no effort to assist workers and have provided cover for the farmer's intransigence. A government that served the poor and exploited would institute immediate radical agrarian transformation. It would redistribute land and provide assistance to farm workers and small farmers to create an agricultural system based on human need, food security and ecological sustainability instead of profit maximisation.

It would end disastrous liberalisation and deregulation policies, provide subsidies to small farmers and curtail the monopoly power of retailers that are appropriating most of value in the sector.

The DLF demands, at the very least, that the government institute a minimum wage of R150 at its sectoral determination in March and take measures to enforce the labour law on farms!

The DLF demands an investigation into all acts of police brutality; we demand the demilitarisation of the police! We demand the immediate, unconditional release of all workers and the dropping of charges! Legitimate struggles are being criminalised.

Finally, the DLF also demands the right of farm workers to mobilise themselves, join unions and political organisations of their choice without victimisation. We commit to continuing the struggle for radical agrarian transformation that prioritises food sovereignty over profits.

For comments, contact:

KAREL SWARTZ  (072) 991 3371

BRIAN ASHLEY  (082) 085 7088

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Meningitis pharmacy bosses looted firm before declaring bankruptcy

by Richard Mellor

The Meningitis scandal that broke out last year at the New England Compounding Center is yet another example of the complete bankruptcy of the private for profit medical industry in the US.  As I commented in a blog back then, the deaths associated with this outbreak are not an accident.  Compounding pharmacists are businesses that mix certain drugs for people that might be allergic to a compound in the regular prescription.  There were warnings about the dangers due to the lack of regulation in these small drug companies and Congress passed legislation to treat them more like regular drug companies, but the lobbyists for the industry successfully curbed the FDA's interference in their profit making enterprise and the law was repealed.

Now, after afflicting almost 700 people and killing 44, the New England Compounding Pharmacy is back in the news as its victims seek a court order that will allow them to receive compensation.  The problem is that before seeking bankruptcy protection, the "company", which speaks for itself as a company has the same rights as an individual in US law, doled out millions of dollars to company insiders, including the owners Barry and Lisa Cadden. "The company's assets are little or nothing and we know why" says an attorney representing creditors also seeking recompense.

As the deaths, those murdered by the market, have stabilized, this episode is not as newsworthy as it was, but it is yet another small example of the corruption and waste in a market driven social health care system. "Anything of any value was distributed to its owners in the period leading to its demise" the attorney adds.

The company paid $16.3 million in "salary and shareholder distributions" to the Cadden family in a one year period up to Nov. 2012, including a one time $500,000 payment in October of that year five days after the first recall of the tainted compounds, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Caddens received $90,000 from the company for American Express charges that were described by creditors as, "Ordinary living expenses".   The sickness industry in the US provides its owners with a very comfortable lifestyle, not for nothing do we refer to it on this blog as the "Sickness Industrial Complex."

So the company claims only $400,000 in assets after the owners and other coupon clippers looted it knowing full well it was time to jump ship.  Creditors, victims and relatives of the 44 that have died so far may be able to recoup some of the assets back through lawsuits but that's not the main point here.  These capitalists always emerge from these cases secure and the system is set up to offer them many different ways to hide and secure their ill gotten gains.

Very rarely do they go to prison, even when their actions cause death as they have in this case because it's hard to prove intent isn't it?  It is more likely that they can do some time when they steal off each other than when they cause death and misery to members of the general public. There is supposed to be honor among thieves after all.

Not only that, it is not illegal to bribe (what they refer to as lobbying in the US) politicians to ensure that a state agency that would give the public some level of protection does not interfere in the business, does not hamper profit taking and capital accumulation. All lobbying should be banned.

The mass media applauds the market and its efficiency.  The private sector is king but the reality is different.  The US has the worst and most expensive medical system of the advanced capitalist countries consuming almost 18% of GDP.   Thousand of people die each year for lack of basic medical care.  It is an extremely expensive and wasteful system of providing social health care but for the coupon clippers and the CEOS and corporate elite in the drug, hospital care and general health care industry, profits flow freely, profits from sickness.  The example of the Compounding Pharmacies is a small example of the inefficiency and waste of the US health care system.  The drug industry, research, all aspects of this industry is one huge corrupt conglomerate that holds the public hostage over what should be a natural right, a social service accessible to all.

Just like the military industrial complex, the medicine business relies to a great extent on public money and public universities and institutions for its development and research and then appropriates the results for profit.

While its likely the people involved in this relatively small but tragic episode will not be prosecuted for the deaths and misery they have caused, it's the tip of the iceberg and  there is a bigger issue here. In a civilized society, health can't be left to the savagery and insecurity of market forces. Public ownership of the means by which a society cares (or doesn't care) for the health of its citizens is the answer.  This is the case even in a capitalist economy.  But ultimately, the only solution is the public ownership and control of all these socially crucial industries by the workers, scientists, and others that provide them and those that use them. This would include the financial institutions of society that determine how capital is allocated, where our collective financial resources go. Human needs and the general health of society must replace profits as the end goal. 

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Union officialdom responsible for decline in membership

11-02-11. Occupy Oakland shuts down the port. More pics

by Richard Mellor

"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable.  Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves.  It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich." (1)

The response from the heads of organized Labor to the war on public workers and services has been the same as the war on all workers----do nothing.  Well, that’s not exactly true, they offer concessions, just slightly less aggressive ones and in some instances have cooperated with the bosses in terminating local leaders who fight back as in the case of the Freightliner plant in Cleveland NC.  To attain fewer concessions, they throw more workers’ money and full time staff at Democratic Party politicians in the hope of alleviating the worst.

During the height of the assault here in California where workers were forced to take unpaid time off that amounted to 20% pay cuts, the teachers Union, the largest in the country with more than 300,000 members in the state, held a few rallies and at some of them encouraged their members to show their opposition and “wear red”on Fridays as symbols of the pink slips (layoff notices) they were receiving. Needless to say, the bosses weren’t cowed and public services and jobs have been slashed. So it should come as no surprise that almost half of the 400,000 members organized Labor lost last year were in the public sector according to the BLS.

The public sector has a much higher Union density than the private and fresh from significant victories over the once proud UAW, the benchmark group for the American workers’ advance in to the “middle class”, the owners of capital need to get the public sector Unionization rate down to size.  This would coincide with their privatization agenda which will give them greater access to public projects and increase flexibility in hiring which means the ability to fire at will.  The latest figures from the BLS show the public sector declining to 35.9% from 37% and the private sector to 6.6% from 6.9% in 2012 with a 2.8% decline overall. (WSJ 1-24-13)

This is at a time when we saw 100,000 people in the streets of Madison Wisconsin, a huge work stoppage at Verizon and other actions.  The Labor leaders’ strategy of getting a friendly Democrat elected is a catastrophe as Jerry Brown’s assault on workers and the middle class in California shows. In the Wisconsin protests against a political assault on trade Union rights, both the Labor leadership and their Democratic allies supported the economic concessions the bosses were demanding.

The Union officialdom is blaming the decline on “the economy, the state level collective bargaining battles and outdated federal labor laws that they say make organizing too difficult.”, according to the Wall Street Journal.  The Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein reckons it’s like a dog chasing its tail if the WSJ is to be believed, “The decline in membership generates a weaker political position and that leads to a situation where membership declines even more” he’s quoted as saying.

The weaker political position stems not from the declining number of voters the Labor hierarchy can turn out for the Democrats but from the fact that they continue to support this Wall Street Party with our money and resources rather than use them to build an independent party of working people based on our organizations and communities and the myriad of groups that have arisen in the wake of the crash. I am referring to groups fighting foreclosures, school closings, evictions, racism and police abuse for example.  During Jimmy Carter’s four years in the White House not one major bill important to Labor was passed despite the Democrats controlling both houses and the presidency and he used the Taft Hartley against the miners. The same situation existed during Clinton’s first two years and he brought us NAFTA and threw working class women off welfare during his time in the White House.

The failure to organize workers and the drastic decline in our living standards over the past 50 years is the result of the heads of organized Labor’s policies. The law is never on our side and any gains we’ve made politically have been won first in the streets, they are a response to mass action.  The objective conditions were far worse for us in the 1930’s.  But we saw in that period a massive uprising of the working class that not only broke the back of the mighty GM and built the UAW but brought about most of the social reforms we still enjoy today that they are in the process of reversing. Millions joined the trade Union movement in that period. The civil rights movement also brought progressive legislation.

The heads of organized Labor are wedded to the market and capitalism.  They agree that workers have to compete with each other in order to assist either their individual employers in driving their rivals from the market place, or at least increasing their market share, what is referred to as the Team Concept, Labor/Management partnerships and other nice sounding titles.  They apply the same philosophy internationally; siding with US corporations against foreign ones therefore pitting workers in one country against those in another. In his opening address to the 20th biennial convention of the California State Labor Federation in 1994 at which I was a delegate and at which I introduced a resolution for the formation of an independent Labor Party, Executive Secretary Jack Henning said:

"The two party system can't give relief because capitalism in large finances both parties in one way or another.  We may say it finances the Republican Party more.  But have you ever known Democrats en masse to turn down the enticements of capitalism?

"There should originate, in the leadership of the AFL-CIO, a call to the unions for the only answer that is noble: global unionism is the answer to global capitalism.

"We were never meant to be beggars at the table of wealth.  We were never meant to be the apostles of labor cannibalism on the world stage.  We were meant for a higher destiny.  We were never meant to be the lieutenants of capitalism.  We were never meant to be the pall bearers of the workers of the world."

Unfortunately Henning didn’t go beyond the fiery rhetoric and ensured my local’s resolution went down.

In response to the recent BLS figures Labor tops, are taking radical steps indeed calling for, ”stronger labor laws and an end to attacks on collective bargaining rights.” The legal right to bargain is important to them as they wouldn’t have a job without it; they want a seat at the table in order to participate in the destruction of our living standards.  They want their rightful place as junior partners-------as members of the team. Their policy of winning lower paid workers is based on increasing numbers for the purpose of pressuring Democrats at the polls.

The problem is that the bosses are forever discussing, planning and orchestrating new offensives as the strategists of organized Labor continue to hold out the olive branch.  The state is being used more. The courts (bankruptcy is used more frequently to throw out Union contracts and renege on pension agreements) and the police are being beefed up with more advanced weaponry and technology as unmanned drones are seen more in our communities.  All these measure will be used against workers in the struggles ahead including ant-terrorism laws.  From the bosses’ point of view, stopping production is interfering with commerce and that’s terrorism, mass terrorism.

In Wisconsin union membership fell 13.5% last year; in Indiana it fell 18.5%.  Caterpillar shut down its plant in London Ontario where workers refused to take a 50% pay cut shifting production to Muncie Indiana.  Wages at the Ontario plant were $35 an hour, in Muncie Caterpillar is offering $12 to $18. (see hereand hereand the WSJ  here) The US is becoming attractive to global capitalists as a low wage, Union free place to do business. Where they can they will move production, close the plants as they do in manufacturing seeking cheaper Labor power elsewhere.  It shows that the issue of nationalization, of public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy is crucial or we will never win.  Even public ownership in a capitalist economy is preferable along the road to workers control and management.

When every opportunity has arisen that could open up an offensive of our own, the heads of organized Labor have successfully derailed it. They undermined the movement that followed the Battle in Seattle when the youth shut down the WTO and thousands of workers praised them.  In Wisconsin they channeled it in to an electoral movement for Democrats.  Here in California, they ensured the student movement against the fee hikes in 2010, the Occupy Movement that followed and numerous strikes here and throughout the country went nowhere. As ardent supporters of the free market they avoid a victory like the plague, after all, where will it lead? Where will it stop? For them a movement of the working class can only lead to chaos and it is from this world -view that all their betrayals arise. Corruption and their obscene salaries, their lifetime positions and other perks, these are secondary factors.

The policies of the present trade Union leadership are a complete failure. They are responsible for the decline. Building opposition caucuses in our Unions around a program that rejects the bosses’ austerity agenda, reject the Team Concept, fights for what workers need on the job and in our communities, jobs (not prisons) wages, increased leisure time, maternity leave, (see some of the US statistics compared to Europe in a previous blog)
a national minimum wage of $15 to $20 an hour and for affordable housing, free federally funded education, health care, transportation etc.  All of these are affordable and can be paid for by the rich and the ending of the wars and dismantling of hundreds of bases to facilitate them. These necessities and a mass direct action campaign to win them is what will swell the ranks of organized Labor, not low interest credit cards and talk of “shared sacrifice”.  Why support your Union when your wages and living standards continue to decline as dues continue to rise?

While the main responsibility lies with the trade Union hierarchy, I have to raise the issue of what we call the “left” in this country as we have many times before on this blog.  In the years I was active in some of the higher bodies of the AFL-CIO, members that considered themselves leftists, socialists or were members of left groups of one type or another were indistinguishable from the right wing bureaucracy despite militant sounding phrases outside of the movement. In the Labor Council I was a delegate to they refused to openly campaign against their failed policies and acted as a left cover for them; this continues today.  By functioning in this way, some of the best workers, and those looking for an understanding of why things are like they are or where they can go to change them have nowhere to turn.  The left has to reflect on why we have never built a left current in the workers’ movement or outside of it in the working class a s a whole. We have not drawn the most combative workers to our ideas.  The left is absent in local and municipal elections unable to unite around a basic program that connects with the most pressing issues that are on worker’s minds.

Things will change as resistance to the offensive grows and organized Labor will be engulfed in turmoil in the struggles ahead.  But the slow decline may not have reached bottom yet.

“Unions are seeking innovative ways to organize workers” says AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka.  Here’s a suggestion---- an innovative beginning---fight for them.

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

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