Pakistan Trade Union solidarity rally against "slaughterhouses of workers."

Press Release
 
‘Stop factories from becoming slaughterhouses of workers ‘

Karachi workers stage rally to express solidarity with Baldia, Dhaka garment factories martyrs
 
Karachi, May 24: The governments and International Brands are directly responsible for the gory incidents in Ali Enterprises Baldia Karachi and garment factories of Dhaka, Bangladesh, as their criminal negligence resulted in loss of lives of thousands of innocent workers. Strict steps should be taken to ensure proper safety of workers and stop turning the factories into slaughterhouses of workers.
 
This was said by labor leaders, addressing a large rally in front of Karachi Press Club (KPC) here Friday, staged by National Trade Unions Federation Pakistan (NTUFP) to express solidarity with the martyrs of garment workers of Bangladesh.
 
They said to avoid repetition of Karachi and Dhaka tragedies it is necessary that local and international labor laws be strictly applied in all textile and garment factories. The international industrial safety standards for labor should be implemented to save the lives of workers.
 
A large number of workers, trade union activists, political leaders, representatives of human rights organizations, intellectuals and students attended the rally. Carrying banners and placards they chanted slogans demanding safety measures for the factory workers.
 
The speakers said millions of Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers are related to textile and garment industries; however, in both countries these workers are even deprived of the rights guaranteed to them under the local constitutions and labor laws. They said working conditions for these labors are very poor and they have to work 12 to 14 hours a day. They said hardly 3percent of these workers are registered with social security institutions. In their factories trade unions and collective bargaining agents are virtually non-existent. Many big factories, working for decades, have not even bothered to get themselves registered.
 
They said due to the pressure of influential industrialists, the process of labor inspection is put on the back burner. Resultantly, the number of industrial accidents has risen sharply. Three major human tragedies in such factories in short span of eight months have diverted the world attention to this sensitive issue. These incidents started with a huge fire in Ali Enterprises, Balida Karachi, burning alive more than 300 garment workers. Then in November 2012 more than 150 workers perished in fire in a Dhaka factory and recently more than 1200 workers died in collapse of a building in Dhaka, housing garments factories. All these incidents took place in the garment factories that make garments for renowned international brands. These international brands in order to maximize their profits through the use of cheap labor are violating all local and international laws.
 
They said it is a misfortune that in the 21st century after death of thousands of workers in these industrial accidents a discussion on the basic rights of workers has started. They said it is inevitable that the local and international labor laws should be implemented in consultation with the labor unions and workers’ organizations, and all international brands be made bound not to begin production till ensuring adherence to local and international labour standards and laws.
 
Paying glowing tributes to these martyrs, the speakers said their sacrifices would give a new spur to the international workers movement, and the repetition of these incidents would not be allowed. They welcomed the agreements between international brands and labor organizations especially "IndustriALL Global Union" after the Dhaka incidents and demanded that the sphere of these agreements should be extended to Pakistan and other countries. They demanded to give legal cover to these agreements and make bound the international brands to follow them. They criticized some international brands like Wal-Mart and GAP who have opposed these pacts and termed it anti-labor attitude.
 
The rally demanded adequate safety measures in all industries and factories. The use of social audit institute certification and code of conduct as substitute to labor laws should be declared illegal. The bereaved families of victims of Ali Enterprises Karachi and Rana Plaza Dhaka should be given compensation as per demands of the labor unions. The process of labor inspection should be revived and made further effective. All factories should be registered as per laws. All workers should be given appointment letters and social security cards. Labors should be given their rights of trade union and collective bargaining agent. The minimum wages should be fixed at Rs20000 per month. All international brands should be made bound to follow international labor standard.
 
Those spoke the rally include NTUF president Muhammad Rafiq Baloch, general secretary Ghani Zaman Awan, deputy general secretary Nasir Mansoor, labor leader Usman Baloch, Gul Rehman of Workers Rights Movement, Riaz Abbasi of Atlas Battery, NTUF Balochistan president Allah Warraya Lassi, president of Gadani Ship Breaking Labor Union Bashir Ahmed Mahmoodani, Ghulam Muhammad of Landhi Action Committee, Muhammad Aslam of Kohinoor Employees Union, president Al-Ettehad Power Looms Workers Union Abdul Muhammad, Shaikh Majeed of PIA, Muhammad Mubeen of Mactor Pharma, Razaq Kachelo, Rashid Abbasi and others
 
Issued by: 
Nasir Mansoor
National Trade Unions Federation Pakistan
+92300 3587211

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600 Bangladeshi workers killed by capitalism. Only workers control will prevent further catastrophe.

Profit comes first

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

By all accounts the number of workers killed when a building housing garment factories collapsed in Bangladesh has topped 600.  The decrepit building had the charming name of Rana Plaza. The feudal working conditions for Bangladesh garment workers is widely known and workers, mostly women but including children, have waged pitched battles with police and company thugs over the years. 

Western capitalists like the Wal Mart heirs have done very well out of the Bangladeshi workers.  These six wasters accumulated more wealth than the bottom 41.5% of American families as of 2010, more than 100 million Americans.  This breed of do nothings are all on the Forbes 400 of richest individuals and earned their money the hard way as Alter Net put it, "They inherited it."

Forbes 400
No 6 Christy Walton $25.3 billion
No. 9: Jim Walton, $23.7 billion
No. 10: Alice Walton, $23.3 billion
No. 11: S. Robson Walton, oldest son of Sam Walton, $23.1 billion
No. 103: Ann Walton Kroenke, $3.9 billion
No. 139: Nancy Walton Laurie, $3.4 billion

Coupon Clippers like the Walton's don't invest money in places like Bangladesh or China to improve living standards in these countries. Like all big capitalists, they have no allegiance to any country, they are global predators and it is the cheap price of doing business, especially the low cost of and limited rights of labor power.

The death toll in Bangladesh has caused some concern among the wealthy US elite whose existence is dependent on driving down the living standards of US workers and in the meantime turning a blind eye to the 18th century conditions that exist in the factories of their suppliers. Profit is the great persuader.

There is a need now to appear to be doing something in the aftermath of this horrific catastrophe where 600 or more workers have lost their lives on the altar of profit. The NGO's and other so-called non-profits want some standards put in place and demand some improvements. It's likely after this that the real power behind the process, the western multinationals, will be open to some new ideas. After all, the non profits won't deny the Waltons their blood money.

From what we read in the corporate media raising prices seem the way to go. Americans have benefited from the super exploitation of Bangladeshi women and children in the form of cheap prices for what we wear. We import more than 97% of what we wear according to Bloomberg Businessweek pointing out that in the era of increased capitalist globalization women's clothing costs have fallen 7% and men's 8%.  In the UK apparel prices have fallen 20% in the last 8 years.

Businessweek points out that the "Worker Rights Consortium", described as an "independent" labor rights monitoring group estimates it would cost $600,000 to bring Bangladesh's 5000 factories up to western safety standards for a total cost of $3 billion.  According to WRC, this would add less than 10c to the price of the 7 billion garments the country sells to the western retailers.  Business Week likes that idea confident that the Bangladeshi factory owner could pass that on to the retailer and the retailer to the US consumer adding only 25c to the cost of an item.

Problem solved? I don't think so.

Possible obstacles to such a revolutionary solution to the plight of the Bangladeshi worker like market forces, supply and demand and a brutal police state, are absent.  But an even more important omission is profits.  Profits are always absent.  They just seem to forget about this aspect of production.  I am not questioning the cost estimates of making a factory"western" grade when it comes to safety, feeding the world's people would be easily accomplished were it not for the capitalist economic system that directs the production of human needs and I should add that western grade is nothing to boast about, I've worked in factories.   The UN's World Health Organization itself estimates that access for all to improved water and sanitation services would cost around US$22.6 billion per year.  This is a paltry sum in the overall sphere of things and only 25% of the Walton family's total wealth. It is a drop in the ocean when compared to the $26 to $32 trillion believed to be stashed in offshore accounts by the richest percentage of the global population. We must abandon this Neo Malthusian nonsense that hunger and starvation is a product of overpopulation as opposed to the system of production where food is a commodity, if you can pay for it you eat, if you can't you starve.

To ensure these "upgrades" are met, BusinessWeek suggests  factory owners can "sign on" to the "Bangladesh Fire and Safety Agreement" which is a program the Workers' Rights Advocates promote.  To ensure effectiveness,  the program advises, the agreement would "establish" a chief inspector.  This inspector would be, and here's why Business Week is OK with it, "independent of companies, trade unions and factories to execute a safety program."

Here's how BW describes the process:
"Audits of hazards would be made public. Corrective actions recommended by the inspector would be mandatory. Retailers would agree to pay factories enough so that they could afford renovations, and retailers would be forbidden from doing business with noncompliant facilities."

This would all be enforced through the courts in "retailers home countries" which means here in the US or in Europe for most of them.

Coupon clippers like the Waltons and the other heads of the major players among the western retailers are very happy with such a toothless agreement that may cost them a few cents and rid them of negative publicity like the deaths of 600 workers. 

It is the same old story.  Eliminate any indication of workers control at the shop floor and rank and file level.  The idea that an individual like the program's inspector is actually independent is nonsense.  The whole idea is to strengthen the control of the capitalists class.  The only independence this individual will have is from the influence of the workers and our organization while representing the interests of the capitalist class.   Workers cannot rely on bourgeois justice, legal system or political parties to defend our interests. 

This attempt to pacify the giant multinationals and weaken the independence of workers organizations should come as no surprise. The Worker Rights Consortium is composed of liberal representatives from academia, including students and the trade Union bureaucracy that is cooperating hand over fist with the coupon clippers in their efforts to drive US workers living standards down to the levels of Mexico and China.  The trade Union leadership's behavior in the face of the vicious and brutal attacks is nothing less than criminal. They are completely wedded to the market and the profit system.

What will eliminate prevent events like the Bangladesh tragedy from happening in the future is a global united movement of the working class coordinating unity in action, mass industrial and political action against the capitalist offensive.

We cannot make production safe until we control production.

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Capitalism at work: More Bangladeshi workers die as factory collapses

Workers mourn the death of their comrades

by Richard Mellor

As I write, Bangladeshi authorities are trying to figure out how many workers have been killed in the latest factory disaster there.  So far, the death toll as a building housing workers collapsed according to the Wall Street Journal is 145, but it is expected to climb much higher. 700 workers have been killed in factory fires in the last decade in this Dickensian world of manufacture and mass mayhem.

Most of the workers are women according to reports and this catastrophe comes on the heels of the Tazreen factory fire last year where 100 workers died. This is capitalism at work. These killings are not accidents and the guilty are not simply the small fry that run these outfits but the executives in the board rooms of Wall Street and the western retailers that demand cheap labor to keep the profits rolling in. These workers have died so that consumers in the west can purchase items under such colorful brand names as "Joe Fresh" or from the the likes of Spanish apparel giant "Mango."

Like electricity that seeks the line of least resistance so do capitalists in their rapacious quest for profits.  As if Chinese wages and conditions aren't abysmal enough, as Chinese workers have fought to raise wages foreign manufacturers flee in search of human beings more desperate for work and survival and preferably living under more repressive conditions.  Vietnam and Bangladesh have become more lucrative markets for human Labor power, "Foreign companies have flooded in to Bangladesh in recent years..." to escape the higher cost of Chinese workers the WSJ points out.  This is as natural to the capitalist mode of production as the air we breath is to life, no amount of regulation will stop it. 

If we should learn one thing as workers it is the need to build international solidarity with all workers, those that make the decisions at US corporations don't move production to low wage countries to improve living standards, just the opposite.  We must reject the idea that we should compete with foreign workers that the bosses claim are "willing" to work for less and under more inhumane conditions.  Acceding to one's oppressor under coercion is not being a "willing" partner in the arrangement. We must not blame them and be driven in to competition with them for the necessities of life.  Our allegiance must be not to a nation state but to our class across such national boundary's. The existence of low waged areas is a threat to all of us, whether in Mississippi or Bangladesh, the bosses will always be drawn to them.  The way to combat it is to build international working class solidarity against international capitalism.

The investors and other thugs that run the likes of Wal Mart and Nike cry crocodile tears for the dead and throw a million bucks here and a million bucks there to satisfy western non profits and human rights groups who are constantly raising the conditions in these factories.  After the last fire, Wal Mart has been paying for fire inspections at the factories that supply it with cheap goods and has donated $1.6 million for training in fire safety according to the Journal.  We should remind ourselves that the Wal Mart heirs are worth some $100 billion, made off the backs of these women in Bangladesh, many of whom now lay dead.

A huge crack was seen in the building a day before the collapse and workers were evacuated. The bosses had a meeting that evening and the owner of the factory told workers that "The building will stand for another hundred years", according to Selina Aktar, a 24 year old worker who survived.  She told the WSJ that as workers were gathered outside the next day, bosses through megaphones warned them that if they didn't return to work their pay would be docked. Shortly after they did, the place collapsed. "I was trapped in the darkness" she told the Journal, "There was choking dust. There was a big slab of concrete. I couldn't get out."

Bosses coerced workers in to returning after defects were found

according to reports.

No amount of regulation or intervention on the part of western non-profits will prevent the continued savagery of capitalist production.  As I pointed out in recent commentaries, US capitalism has driven wages and conditions in the US to such a low level that this country is becoming an attractive place to do business as it already has fairly decent infrastructure compared to many other countries.  Caterpillar shifted production from its London Ontario plant to Indiana where wages are 50% lower and the Union leaders more cooperative.  As Marx once said, workers have no country.

The same forces that we bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars are at work here.  Capitalism was saved from collapse through the intervention of public funds.  We should have helped it over the cliff.  The austerity agenda that is being imposed on workers here in the US, the savage conditions imposed on workers and peasants throughout the Third (former colonial) World is the natural order of things for the so-called free market.  Workers can only rely on our own strength, our own organizations, both economic and political.  The women and men, and children that die everyday as a result of business decisions are our brothers and sisters.

At the 1994 California State Labor Federation Convention to which I was a delegate, then Executive Director, Jack Henning stated in his opening address: "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."

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Although Henning had no intention of using his office to fight for such a development, it is advice we can all agree with.  Only a united global movement of workers can drive back the global capitalist offensive and would be a step to preventing disasters like yesterday's factory collapse in Bangladesh. We must break the barrier in our own minds of nationalism and patriotism and build such global solidarity among workers, not motivated by some notion of morality in defense of those less fortunate than ourselves, but to defend out own class interests.   "United We Stand" is a good slogan.  Who we unite and stand with is the crux of the matter.  The coupon clippers that have driven Americans from our homes, denied our youth education, our sick health care are as responsible for the deaths of our class brothers and sisters in Bangladesh.  They call themselves Americans too, but we must not be fooled by that, there are Americans and Americans.

There will be no manhunt in the offices or board rooms of Wall Street for these criminals, just like those whose decisions led to the deaths in West Texas. They know too well the conditions that are necessary for them to make their millions and they make their choices accordingly. 

Such a movement is necessary, but what we stand for is crucial.  Taking in to public ownership the finance industry and banks is crucial because workers cannot change this situation if we don't own capital and control its allocation in society, not the individual savings of workers and the middle class, but a collective accounting of how this capital is used in  production.  Taking under workers control and management  the dominant sectors of the economy is what will change this situation, not having illusions in capitalism regulating itself.

The usual crocodile tears will flow for these victims of the market from the apologists of capital.  The US capitalist class will blame it on their junior partners in Bangladesh.  We will hear their usual arguments that it is "crony capitalism" that is at fault as if the US isn't the home of "crony capitalism".

Our future can only be guaranteed if we end this madness, end capitalism as a means of producing human needs and replace it with a world federation of democratic socialist states.

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Hong Kong Dockworker's Strike

Thanks to Richard Chen for the work he's done on this and for sharing it.


I've finished translating and captioning a video of the Hong Kong Dockworker's Strike. If you haven't heard me going on about it the last few weeks, the strike started on March 29, 2013 and has been going on for three weeks. It is probably the most important strike to have happened in Hong Kong in my lifetime. It wasn't the largest - there was a steelworker's strike six years ago where I think 800 workers walked out - but this one is happening on the docks.

Hong Kong has the third largest container port in the world. Shenzhen, which is right across the border, is the fourth largest. When I was a kid my dad worked as a foreman at a factory next to the Kwai Tsing terminal where the strike is happening. I used to see the terminal from the MTR (subway) on the way to school . . . they're huge. After I became political I used to look at the docks and wonder what it would look like if a strike were to break out, and now it finally has.

The container terminal is owned by Li Ka Shing, the robber baron who owns huge swaths of real estate in Hong Kong and China, and has monopoly control of many industries in Hong Kong, including telecommunications and food distribution. He is THE symbol of the "get rich quick" ethos that infected the city in the 80s after the unions were decimated and that I grew up in. Li has a large stake in the container terminal in Shenzhen, too.

The video has a lot of good stories by the dockers talking about why they're going on strike and what they work conditions are like. If you know anything about what port truckers in the Bay go through it won't be surprising to you. Crane operators don't get bathroom breaks and have to defecate on newspapers up in the cranes. It's 80-plus degrees up in the cranes. They are on call for 24, 48 and even 72 hours at a stretch. And if you remember my "pook gai" story from last week . . . there's some of that going on in this video too.

In solidarity
Richard Chen

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US escalating tensions in Asia, wants regime change in N Korea

Here is a review  of the situation on The Korean Peninsula from reprinted from Global Research (see link to the right).  Much of this information is unknown to the US public except those that keep abreast of the history of this region.  The US mass media as we  know, is severely censored and controlled, perhaps the most controlled of all the advanced capitalist countries. We share this for the interest of our readers.  We would not, as the author does, refer to North Korea as a "socialist" state.

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The Dangers of War: What is Behind the US-North Korea Conflict?

By Jack A. Smith

Global Research, April 01, 2013

What’s happening between the U.S. and North Korea to produce such headlines this week as “Korean Tensions Escalate,” and  “North Korea Threatens U.S.”?
The New York Times reported March 30:

“This week, North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jung-un, ordered his underlings to prepare for a missile attack on the United States. He appeared at a command center in front of a wall map with the bold, unlikely title, ‘Plans to Attack the Mainland U.S.’ Earlier in the month, his generals boasted of developing a ‘Korean-style’ nuclear warhead that could be fitted atop a long-range missile.”

The U.S. is well aware North Korea’s statements are not backed up by sufficient military power to implement its rhetorical threats, but appears to be escalating tensions all the same. What’s up? I’ll have to go back a bit to explain the situation.
Since the end of the Korean War 60 years ago, the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) has repeatedly put forward virtually the same four proposals to the United States. They are:

1. A peace treaty to end the Korean War.

2. The reunification of Korea, which has been “temporarily” divided into North and South since 1945.

3. An end to the U.S. occupation of South Korea and a discontinuation of annual month-long U.S-South Korean war games.

4. Bilateral talks between Washington and Pyongyang to end tensions on the Korean peninsula.

The U.S. and its South Korean protectorate have rejected each proposal over the years. As a consequence, the peninsula has remained extremely unstable since the 1950s. It has now reached the point where Washington has used this year’s war games, which began in early March, as a vehicle for staging a mock nuclear attack on North Korea by flying two nuclear-capable B-2 Stealth bombers over the region March 28. Three days later, the White House ordered F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets to South Korea, a further escalation of tensions.
Here is what is behind the four proposals.

1. The U.S. refuses to sign a peace treaty to end the Korean War. It has only agreed to an armistice. An armistice is a temporary cessation of fighting by mutual consent. The armistice signed July 27, 1953, was supposed to transform into a peace treaty when “a final peaceful settlement is achieved.” The lack of a treaty means war could resume at any moment.  North Korea does not want a war with the U.S., history’s most powerful military state. It wants a peace treaty.

 2. Two Koreas exist as the product of an agreement between the USSR (which borderd Korea and helped to liberate the northern part of country from Japan in World War II) and the U.S., which occupied the southern half.  Although socialism prevailed in the north and capitalism in the south, it was not to be a permanent split. The two big powers were to withdraw after a couple of years, allowing the country to reunify. Russia did so; the U.S. didn’t. Then came the devastating three-year war in 1950. Since then, North Korea has made several different proposals to end the separation that has lasted since 1945. The most recent proposal, I believe, is “one country two systems.” This means that while both halves unify, the south remains capitalist and the north remains socialist. It will be difficult but not impossible. Washington does not want this. It seeks the whole peninsula, bringing its military apparatus directly to the border with China, and Russia as well.

3. Washington has kept between 25,000 and over 40,000 troops in South Korea since the end of the war. They remain — along with America’s fleets, nuclear bomber bases and troop installations in close proximity to the peninsula — a reminder of two things. One is that “We can crush the north.” The other is “We own South Korea.” Pyongyang sees it that way — all the more so since President Obama decided to “pivot” to Asia. While the pivot contains an economic and trade aspect, its primary purpose is to increase America’s already substantial military power in the region in order to intensify the threat to China and North Korea.

4. The Korean War was basically a conflict between the DPRK and the U.S. That is, while a number of UN countries fought in the war, the U.S. was in charge, dominated the fighting against North Korea and was responsible for the deaths of millions of Koreans north of the 38^th parallel dividing line. It is entirely logical that Pyongyang seeks talks directly with Washington to resolve differences and reach a peaceful settlement leading toward a treaty. The U.S. has consistently refused.

These four points are not new. They were put forward in the 1950s. I visited the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a journalist for the (U.S.) Guardian newspaper three times during the 1970s for a total of eight weeks. Time after time, in discussions with officials, I was asked about a peace treaty, reunification, withdrawal of U.S. troops from the south, and face-to-face talks. The situation is the same today. The U.S. won’t budge.

Why not? Washington wants to get rid of the communist regime before allowing peace to prevail on the peninsula. No “one state, two systems” for Uncle Sam, by jingo! He wants one state that pledges allegiance to — guess who?

In the interim, the existence of a “bellicose” North Korea justifies Washington’s surrounding the north with a veritable ring of firepower in the northwest Pacific close enough to almost, but not quite, singe China. A “dangerous” DPRK is also useful in keeping Japan well within the U.S. orbit. It also is another excuse for once-pacifist Japan to boost its already formidable arsenal.

In this connection I’ll quote from a Feb. 15 article from Foreign Policy in Focus byChristine Hong and Hyun Le: “Framing of North Korea as the region’s foremost security threat obscures the disingenuous nature of U.S. President Barack Obama’s policy in the region, specifically the identity between what his advisers dub ‘strategic patience,’ on the one hand, and his forward-deployed military posture and alliance with regional hawks on the other. Examining Obama’s aggressive North Korea policy and its consequences is crucial to understanding why demonstrations of military might — of politics by other means, to borrow from Carl von Clausewitz — are the only avenues of communication North Korea appears to have with the United States at this juncture.” Here’s another quote from ANSWER Coalition leader Brian Becker:

“The Pentagon and the South Korean military today —and throughout the past year — have been staging massive war games that simulate the invasion and bombing of North Korea. Few people in the United States know the real situation. The work of the war propaganda machine is designed to make sure that the American people do not join together to demand an end to the dangerous and threatening actions of the Pentagon on the Korean Peninsula.
“The propaganda campaign is in full swing now as the Pentagon climbs the escalation ladder in the most militarized part of the planet. North Korea is depicted as the provocateur and aggressor whenever it asserts that they have the right and capability to defend their country. Even as the Pentagon simulates the nuclear destruction of a country that it had already tried to bomb into the Stone Age, the corporate-owned media characterizes this extremely provocative act as a sign of resolve and a measure of self-defense.”

And from Stratfor, the private intelligence service that is often in the know:

“Much of North Korea’s behavior can be considered rhetorical, but it is nonetheless unclear how far Pyongyang is willing to go if it still cannot force negotiations through belligerence.”

The objective of initiating negotiations is here taken for granted.

Pyongyang’s “bellicosity” is almost entirely verbal — several decibels too loud for our ears, perhaps — but North Korea is a small country in difficult circumstances that well remembers the extraordinary brutality Washington visited up the territory in the 1950s. Millions of Koreans died. TheU.S. carpet bombings were criminal. North Korea is determined to go down fighting if it happens again, but hope their preparedness will avoid war and lead to talks and a treatry. Their large and well-trained army is for defense. The purpose of the rockets they are building and their talk about nuclear weapons is principally to scare away the wolf at the door.

In the short run, the recent inflammatory rhetoric from Kim Jong-un is in direct response to this year’s month-long U.S.-South Korea war games, which he interprets as a possible prelude for another war. Kim’s longer run purpose is to create a sufficiently worrisome crisis that the U.S. finally agrees to bilateral talks and possibly a peace treaty and removal of foreign troops. Some form of reunification could come later in talks between north and south.

I suspect the present confrontations will simmer down after the war games end. The Obama Administration has no intention to create the conditions leading to a peace treaty — especially now that White House attention seems riveted on East Asia where it perceives an eventual risk to its global geopolitical supremacy. Jack A. Smith, editor of Activist Newsletter

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Cambodians clash with cops over land grabs

Like China, there are repeated clashes between authorities and the population over the government's seizure of land for developers. There is undoubtedly an increased global struggle against capitalist globalization and all its by products, from the factories of Bangladesh, to the indigenous communities of Latin America and here we see it in Cambodia. The US mass media, more than the mass media of any other industrialized nation does a very good job of keeping the news simple, provincial and demoralizingly mind numbing. The Kardashians, sports, murders etc.

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Japan, currency wars and the falling yen

I was reading in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the currency wars that could develop  in response to Japan's aggressive attempt at weakening its currency makes its exports cheaper in the world market.    The Yen has fallen 20% in the last four months.  The dollar bought 79 yen last November and 93 yen this week.  For those of us who make our living through wage labor we tend not to think about what this means in terms of global trade, or trade between nations.  But for investors, owners of capital it can have huge consequences as Japanese imports fall in price and US manufacturers are squeezed.  All the talk of free or fair trade is nonsense, the capitalist class of competing nation states use all resources though its state apparatus to drive its competitors from the marketplace.  The coupon clippers, hedge fund managers and other wasters are on a roll though.  George Soros' firm has raked in $1 billion since mid November betting against the Yen as have other coupon clippers like the folks that run the Blackstone group. 

The consequences for working people from this sort of gambling can be dire.  Whole national economies can be wrecked by these activities.  Everlasting insecurity, instability and uncertainty is the norm for the capitalist system as Marx warned.  The Wall Street Journal warns also:  "As quickly as investors raced to short the yen, they could just as easily rush to end this trade sending the currency higher again..."  What madness.

Michael Roberts writes on the state of the Japanese economy below. RM

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Japan’s lost decades – unpacked and repacked

by Michael Roberts

Japan’s GDP figure for Q4 2012 was out today.  It showed that Japan’s economy unexpectedly shrank last quarter as falling exports and a business investment slump outweighed slightly improved consumption. GDP contracted an annualized 0.4%, following a revised 3.8% fall in the previous quarter.  Business investment dropped 2.6% on the quarter, the fourth quarterly contraction in a row.  Japan’s depression continues.

That’s why the newly elected right-wing government launched its great experiment in applying all Keynesian remedies at once – monetary and fiscal stimulus along with a very sharp depreciation of the currency against its major trading rivals.  The fast devaluation of the yen has provoked objections from other major capitalist countries.  The G7 meeting let it be leaked that it was not amused and considered that Japan was taking advantage.  And last week, French president Francois Hollande also complained and showed concern about the relative appreciation of the euro hitting French export growth.  So the Keynesian experiment in Japan is already causing worries elsewhere.  But, more important, will the experiment work?

Noah Smith had a new post last week (http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-koizumi-years-macroeconomic-puzzle.html) in which he asked the question: what caused Japan’s growth speed-up from 2000-07? There is a good reason, at least for Smith, why he wants to know.  That’s because the economic performance of Japan is a mystery to him and does not seem to fit any Keynesian explanations.  You see, as Smith points out, during that period, Japan remained in a Keynesian ‘liquidity trap’ with interest rates near zero, while prices were deflating.  According to Keynesian theory, Japan should have been in another decade of depression.  But it was not really.

Instead, Japan picked up its growth rate in the 2000s compared to the ‘lost decade’ of the 1990s.   Indeed, it partially reversed the decline in GDP per capita relative to the US that it experienced in the 1990s.  This improvement has been highlighted also by Paul Krugman in his blog (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/japanese-relative-performance/).  Smith trawled through the possible explanations of this relative recovery which took place during the so-called Koizumi era (‘neo-liberal’ regime of pro-capitalist Japanese PM, Jinichori Koizumi), again hardly fitting in with Keynesian policies.

The improvement was only relative.  Real GDP growth averaged 4.6% between 1981-90 in the so-called ‘bubble’ years.  The bubble was followed by a crash in the 1990s, and average growth dropped to just 0.7% a year between 1993-99 (I have excluded the slump years of 1991 and 1992).  Then after the slump years of 1998 and 1999, annual average growth improved to 1.5% between 2000 and 2007.  This was double the rate of the 1990s, if still way below the bubble 1980s years.  In the last five years of the Long Depression, Japan’s economy has contracted by an average of 0.2% a year.

Smith notes that Japan continued to be in a Keynesian-style liquidity trap and in deflation throughout the 2000s.  Also, the relative recovery cannot be explained by Keynesian-style fiscal stimulus, because government spending fell in both absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP , while budget deficits as a share of GDP also narrowed.  As I have shown before, in the 1990s, in contrast, there was considerable extra government spending and rising budget deficits, but these Keynesian prescriptions failed to revive the Japanese economy.  Then in the 2000s, there was fiscal austerity under Koizumi and yet economic growth was faster!  Of course, part of this paradox is that poor growth in the 1990s meant that the ratio of government spending and deficits to GDP rose, but remember even in absolute terms, government spending and deficits rose – to little effect it seems.

The contribution from net exports did not seem to contribute much either in the 2000s.  But Smith did note that bank lending ,which had collapsed in the 1990s when banks were deleveraging their debts from the bubble years, rose in the 2000s.  I reckon this is significant and a lesson for the current depression in the major economies.  But Smith is at a loss to explain this.

Indeed, he sums up his analysis of Japan in the 2000s as follows: “during the years of 2000-07, Japan grew quite quickly when measured properly (as GDP/working age population), substantially faster than the United States after accounting for demographics. However, during this entire time, it was stuck deep in a liquidity trap, with government spending decreasing and banks and companies deleveraging. Also, Japan did not experience a major improvement in its balance of trade, nor a large currency depreciation, nor an increase in inflation or inflation expectations. Additionally, Japanese services TFP remained flat.  And he concludes: “I regularly say things like “Japan confounds macroeconomic analysis.” Now you know what I mean…”

Well, I had a little think about this ‘mystery’ from a Marxist point of view.  If growth and investment picked up in the 2000s, then the main reason must be a recovery in profitability.  And that’s exactly what the data show, as I portrayed in a recent post (http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/japan-election-lowest-turnout-since-records-began/).  In that post, I explained how Japan’s rate of profit was held up during the 1980s by a massive credit and property boom.  But that could not last.  After the great credit bubble burst in 1989, the average rate of profit in the Japanese economy fell nearly 20% during the 1990s.  But from 1998 to 2007, it rose nearly 30%.  And we can analyse why, using Marxist categories.  The organic composition of capital (the value of plant, equipments and raw materials relative to the cost of labour employed) fell for the first time since the second world war, while the rate of exploitation of the labour force rose nearly 25%.  In other words, Japaneses devalaued its old assets, reduced the labour force and boosted profits per unit of labour.  This was the classic way out for capitalist production – at the expense of labour.

And Japanese capital also devalued and ‘deleveraged’ much of the debt (fictitious capital) that it had built up during the bubble decade of the 1980s, when non-financial corporate debt rose nearly 25% as a share of GDP  and household debt (financial and property) jumped by 37%.  During the 1990s, the corporate sector deleveraged by 15%, laying the basis for profitability to recover.

We can see in the graph below that Japanese corporations had much higher debt levels (relative to GDP) compared to German, British and American corporations.  But they began deleveraging that debt during the 1990s, with the bulk of that done by 2002. The opposite was happening in the other countries.

So I reckon the mystery of Japan’s economic recovery in the 2000s can be explained best in Marxist terms.  Average real GDP growth came back (relatively) because Japanese capital had written off old capital enough, both tangible and fictitious, and banks were in better shape to lend again – of course at the expense of a lost decade of income and jobs for its population in the 1990s, culminating in the dire deflationary slump of 1998.  The global slump of 2008-9 hit Japan hard, as much of its profitability and growth depend on world markets, as I showed in another post
(http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/japan-and-the-race-to-the-bottom/).

Why do we care what the reason was for Japan’s relative improvement in the 2000s?  Well, it shows up the weakness of mainstream economics as it does not know why the 2000s were better and, in contrast, it shows the explanatory power of the Marxist analysis.  It’s a mystery explained.  And it will have lessons for the current ‘experiment’ in Keynesian polices by the right-wing Japanese government.

And that lesson could be learned in this current decade.  Japan’s economic growth has been pretty much non-existent since the trough of the Great Recession and the current right-wing government is now throwing the kitchen sink of Keynesian policies at the problem.  But the experiment will probably not last beyond the end of this year.  Fiscal stimulus is supposed to end in 2014 when the sales tax is planned to increase to 8% and then 10% from October 2015 from the current 5%.  By then, yen devaluation will be over and “monetary policy will probably be the only thing left to support the economy next year,” as Masaaki Kanno, chief economist at JPMorgan says. “The moment of truth for the recovery will probably come in fiscal 2014.”

And this time, not only does Japanese capital still have large debts and lower profitability, it also has a declining population.  So the ability to generate more value and surplus value from the work force is limited by a contraction in labour supply.  That means capital must exploit the workforce even more intensively or invest more in more in costly new technology to try and raise relative surplus value to boost profitability.

Keynesian policies in the 1990s did not work for Japan and they probably won’t work in this decade either.  The 2010s will be the next ‘lost decade’.

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Bangladeshi workers brutal conditions: The market at work

garment workers in Bangladesh

by Richard Mellor

If there is one simple thing we should think about when some workers attack Chinese workers or any workers in other countries for taking “our “ jobs it should be that the US corporations that shift production abroad don’t do it to raise the wages of workers in other countries but to brutally exploit them.    So obviously we have a lot in common with these workers; our problems are the same no matter what language they speak, what their religion is how they look or what food they eat.  It’s just a matter of degree and in most cases they receive far worse treatment than we do.  No dictator or regime is unacceptable to the global capitalists as long as Labor comes cheap and Unions are out of the picture and profit margins high.

Chinese workers have fought huge battlers of late, which have resulted in surging wages.  Couple this with inflation and that hurts profits.  Consequently, factories like Foxconn are shifting production to Vietnam.  Militarized borders and 20-foot walls don’t stop capital from traversing the globe.

Escaping rising costs, much of the apparel manufacturing industry has pulled up roots and landed in Bangladesh.  As I write this I can’t help thinking of the Caterpillar plant in London Ontario that did the same thing when the workers refused a 50% pay cut.  The plant moved abroad where wages were half what they were in Ontario and Unions were more cooperative, Joliet Indiana in the good old USA.

So Bangladesh now has an $18 billion apparel manufacturing industry that has “sprung up” says Bloomberg Business Week.  The problem with the “sprung up” method of producing human needs is that the facilities and structure for absorbing all this labor power is inadequate. It is not unlike the development of capitalism in Britain when the peasantry were thrown off the land but industrial society was not yet mature enough to absorb them.

More than 700 Bangladehsi garment workers have died since 2005according to the Labor Rights Forum.  There have been some horrendous factory fires, 112 workers died in a garment factory fire in Bangladesh in November last year and 262 workers died in a garment factory fire in Pakistan last September. A recent ILRF report also claims that these apparel companies are, “Putting workers’ lives at risk by covering up fire safety hazards and other dangerous working conditions using confidential audits and ignoring known solutions.”  The truth is that these workers were murdered.  Then we have the workers that have been shot on picket lines and during protests about the inhumane conditions in these plants.

And it is not simply the suppliers.  The western retailers are also murderers.  Because corporations have the same rights of people here in the US we hear only that Wal Mart said this or Target says that.  Caterpillar says it had to move the plant etc. etc.  The human element is removed, there’s never a guilty party.

One of the ways the western retailers add to the problems the suppliers complain is the demands the retailers pout on them.  They often change the design or request changes to their orders with very short notice forcing the suppliers, with already antiquated infrastructure, no meddling Unions and generally a repressive regime in power, to intensify already brutal working conditions.  The problem is that, “The American consumer wants the widest variety possible and they want it now”, Nate Herman, VP of the Association that represents the interests of the apparel capitalists.  The retailers are only responding to consumer demand.  So it’s our fault. The Walton family that runs Wal-Mart and has more wealth than 90 million Americans is in business out of their humane desire to clothe the masses in the way we want to be clothed.

I watched about two hours of TV this evening and I faced an assault of advertisements reminding me what I need to do on February 14^th to show my partner how much I love her.  It was nonstop and will get even worse the closer we get to Valentine’s Day.  I urge people not to buy any of their stuff on Valentine’s Day.  Don’t let an advertising pimp determine when and how you show your partner you love them. In addition, I was told a few times to call my doctor and ask him if “Crestor” is right for me, that I can be happy if I buy a Honda and other useless bits of information.

So I challenge the executive who is head of the group that represents apparel capitalists.  I do not believe that the consumer drives this train. The owner of capital does. Scott Nova, CEO of the Worker Rights Consortium agrees, it’s not that the consumer is hooked,  “It’s an expectation retailers have created”, he tells BW.  The way young people dress, what we buy and what we think we need, is very much influenced by the media through ads, shows that are directed at young men and women, and movies. And the reason fashion is what it is and the consumer “wants it now” or is convinced to think they need it now or need it at all, is that wealth is created through the process of producing these items, added value above that spent on their production but only realized through their sale.  The producer needs the consumption, it cannot slow, and it cannot cease otherwise society for them ceases also.  Chaos ensues.

The piece in Bloomberg BW that spurred me to write about this points out that the largest of the buyers of Bangladeshi garments “posted” margins of 50% for the past ten years. The Gap and Urban Outfitters posted margins of 40%. I am not familiar with this economic term to explain what it means, all I know is that it puts a lot of money in some coupon clippers’ bank account, probably part of that more than $26 trillion stashed away in tax havens.

There are numerous non-profits and social justice organizations like the ones referred to here that speak out against these injustices and the inhuman conditions that people work under.  But their approach is to appeal to the retailers, the Wal-Marts and Targets and other global giants to change their behavior, to be nice. “If they can allow some sort of margin (added payments) for the improvement of working conditions and some other things, maybe that can help us.” says Bangladesh Commerce Minister, Ghulam Muhammed Quader.

The worker advocate groups may be full of well-intentioned people and their cause just.  But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is interesting that Unions are not mentioned in this article in BW. Independent Unions are the first step in changing these conditions and Bangladesh and there are Unions there but Union leaders risk their lives and have lost them.   Workers on strike have been shot and killed including children. The minimum wage for a garment worker in Bangladesh is $37 a month it is no wonder they fall prey to labor traffickers and end up doing slave labor under even worse conditions in places like Dubai as we pointed out in a previous blog.  Appealing to the suppliers and more so the retailers to change this situation is pointless. These conditions are not a product of bad individuals but a rotten social system.  Caterpillar moved to Joliet Indiana, GM moves to China and FoxConn moves to Vietnam because they are driven to by the laws of the system, it is a market necessity----it is capitalism. 

It is in all workers’ interests to build links with workers in Bangladesh, Bolivia and throughout the world.  To compete with each other in order to assist our own bosses’ drive their rivals from the global marketplace is against our self-interest, makes solidarity virtually impossible and is a race to the bottom.

Socialist globalization is what will change these conditions

Global Unionism to fight global capitalism. Divided we fall, united we stand it’s that simple. 

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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       



"Like" the FFWP page of Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/FactsForWorkingPeople

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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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Burmese days*

by Michael Roberts

Santa took a holiday in Burma this year.  It’s become the trendy place to visit for the middle classes now that the military regime has opened, freed the democratic opposition leaders and allowed (on the whole) freedom of speech etc – although there are still political prisoners and the army is conducting wars against ethnic groups in the north and muslim terrorists in the south.  Tourists are now beginning to flood in, one million this year, to look at thousands of pagodas, Buddhist monks and temples.  But I have to say, if you’ve seen one pagoda, you seen nearly all of them.  So let me look at Burma from an economic viewpoint in this post.

Burma is still a predominantly rural economy, with 70% of the population on the land and 60% employed there.  And agriculture is still the largest contributor to GDP at 36%, compared to industry and services.  These ratios are way higher than anywhere else in Asia or most of the rest of the world.  It shows that Burma is one of the most backward and ‘undeveloped’ economies, and certainly the most undeveloped with such a large population – now about 60m.  And it’s the second largest country in south-east Asia by area.

The countryside is dotted with paddy fields in the south and sugar cane and even wheat fields in the north.  The teak forests have been badly erased by excessive logging, but it remains a major export.  And now there is oil and gas potential with proven reserves of 7.8trn cubic feet, sufficient to allow natural gas exports.  But Burma remains the poorest country in Asia, cut off as it has been from international trade and investment because of the partly deliberate isolation of the military regime that ruled the country from 1962.

The countryside reveals millions toiling in the field under temperatures of 40C, while slightly more fortunate others work a 12 hour day, six day week in rural factories to make tourist garments and trinkets.  And millions of others scrape a living in the dusty, polluted cities of Yangon and Mandalay.  The dysfunctional nature of the economy is summed up by the sight of Burmese taxi drivers with cars that have the driving wheel on the right hand side while traffic also drives on the right, not the left!  Only the very latest Japanese imports (now allowed) have left side wheels.

The military has crushed various protests and opposition movements over the years, culminating in the arrest of long-time opposition leader and Nobel peace prize holder Aung San Suu Kyi (called ‘the Lady’) after the opposition won a landslide election victory in 1990.  But this did not stop further revolts and the military finally decided that they needed to ‘open up’.  In 2010, Thein Sein, one of the generals, renounced his military role and became the first civilian president in 2011 after rigged elections.  However, he then freed The Lady from house arrest and she and the opposition leaders agreed to walk ‘hand in hand’ with the president until free elections are called in 2015.
Since then, the major capitalist powers have started to open up their embassies and renew trade with and investment in Burma.  Hilary Clinton and President Obama have visited with much fanfare.  And Aung Sang visited Europe, to much acclaim.  Burma is back on the imperialist map.  For a view on the motivations of US leaders on Burma, have a look at Richard Mellor’s blog, Facts for working people http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2011/12/hillary-clinton-in-myanmar-nice-place.html

Of course, this ‘opening up’ is really the start of capitalist development through a partnership between the generals and the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) to form a pro-capitalist government that will negotiate terms with international agencies and multi-nationals to ‘develop’ Burma.  Already, a new foreign investment law has been passed allowing multi-nationals to start up businesses without a Burmese partner.  The president summed up the strategy of the military: “Our reforms are irreversible,” he promised. “Our goal is still to build a multi-party democratic system and a market economy.”

Will this ‘partnership’ succeed in taking Burma out poverty and backwardness, where the majority earn no more than $4 a day and roads, power and infrastructure are in a state of decaying decrepitude?  Well, the Burmese people (like the Vietnamese and others in Asia) are very hard working.  And they also have the advantage of English speaking (unlike China or Vietnam) from their days under the British raj.  But this is a small advantage given that most Asian countries have dramatically expanded their education in English, with a growing middle class that can fill skilled jobs, unlike Burma.

In some ways Burma leans more to India to the west, at least culturally, than to the ASEAN states to the south, although Burma is a member of ASEAN.  There is longstanding antagonism between Burma and its neighbour, Thailand.  Burmese TV has Indian, Malaysian and Indonesian channels but not Thai.  Even so, the model for growth will probably be that of Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, and not India.  That means growth through exports and fixed investment and not through consumer-led domestic demand and government spending as in India.  A problem remains:  the most productive parts of the economy are in the hands of the military and their families through the state-owned companies, Chinese style.  But that is a problem for capitalist development that can be circumvented as it has been in China and Vietnam, at least for a while.

And between the vast rural poverty of the paddy fields and the military control of the key industries, there are gaps for capitalist development in retailing and wholesaling.  Budding entrepreneurs are springing up.  These Burmese are the sons of the rich and military, educated abroad and now coming back to make a fortune.  They are funded by their families to build empires in domestic industries like pharma, hi-tech, electronics, mobiles etc (see the recent FT report of 21 december 2012).  Here is the start of a rising national capitalist class that, in the words of one, has “little emotional attachment to politics – we are here to do business… many of us basically support any government that will help business”.

The British relinquished colonial power after over one hundred years of rule in 1948 to a democratic government after the ravages of the second world war.  But independent government was soon riven apart by regional and tribal schisms and imperialist machinations.  The democratic leaders were assassinated and a military that had been trained by the British and the Japanese then seized power.  This military caste looked to the Chinese under Mao as their model for development but soon descended into Cambodian Pol Pot-style nationalist isolation.  It locked up or killed any opposition, it conducted vicious repression of the many minority ethnic groups in the country and it imposed forced labour to carry out constructions (just stopping short of the worst genocidal excesses of the Pol Pot regime).

The generals nationalised all the key industries and forests.  But their rule was a million miles from the ‘socialism’ they claimed to support.  The generals under Ne Win ruled more through Asian oracles and magic, than by the tenets of socialist planning.  For example, they decided to build a new capital because an oracle said they should and they issued a 45 kyat note instead of a 50 because any multiple of the number nine is lucky!  In 1992, they began to drop their ‘socialist’ creed as the generals and their families looked to secure their wealth through building family dynasties over industry and resources, just as China’s ‘princelings’.

The current generation of military leaders seems to have accepted that they cannot survive through direct control of the economy and political institutions.  So they have opted for Plan B, where Turkish-style, they stay in the background allowing a pro-capitalist democratic party to assume office from 2015, in return for which the military get to keep their wealth and privileges and some of their power as the final arbiters of Burma’s destiny.  They won’t be able to sustain this compromise indefinitely as the military in Turkey and Egypt have found recently.  The Turkish generals have been crippled by their capitalist class that now feels strong enough to restore direct control without fear of a coup because they are backed by working-class muslims.  In Egypt, the battle between the military and the people has only just begun.  The Muslim Brothers hope that they can do the same as Turkey’s Islamist party.

A truly democratic Burma where the wealth and value of the toil of its people are controlled by the people and distributed fairly is still a long way off.  And it is not the intention of any of the major players: the military, the opposition and the ‘international community’ to allow it.   Sustained democracy will depend on how long the temporary compromise between the military and the pro-capitalist democratic opposition can hold.  And it will depend on the vagaries of the world economy and ability of Burma’s small working class to develop an independent voice from the middle-class leaders of the NLD.  In turn, that depends on much stronger working class organisation to resist the march of capitalism as Burma comes under the tentacles of globalisation.

*Burmese Days by George Orwell: “It is a world in which every word and every thought is censored… even friendship can hardly exist when man is a cog in the wheels of despotism.  Free speech is unthinkable.”  Orwell’s character John Flory on Burma in the 1920s under British rule.

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Pakistan: Farooq Tariq comments on the Awami Workers' Party.

We reprint below the comments of Farooq Tariq on the formation of the Awami Workers' Party in Pakistan.  The Awami Party came about through the unification of three left parties, The Awami Party, the Labour Party Pakistan, and Workers Party Pakistan. Reprinted from Viewpoint

AWP founded: Will it sustain itself?

Thursday, 29 November 2012 23:33by Farooq Tariq

The merger will survive because it has more positives and no negatives. The cementing phenomenon is the ideology of Socialism that all three parties have agreed upon

The merger of three left wing parties---Awami Party, Labour Party Pakistan, and Workers Party Pakistan---has generated a lot of discussion among the political intelligentsia and activists. While it has been hailed as a trend setting exercise by many in and outside Pakistan, there are quite a few asking the question: will it sustain itself? The merger undoubtedly has lifted many aspirations of those wanting a just and equitable society. It has been welcomed all over despite a few relating sarcastically and instinctively with some of the failed attempts of the Left to forge unity among organizations over the past 30 years.

Four articles within a week of merger were printed in the editorial pages of commercial media including Dawn, Pakistan Today and Daily Times, written by well respected writers like I. A. Rehman and Professor Aziz-ud-din Ahmad, welcoming the merger on the theme of the “Left reborn” . Several Urdu papers also followed the English papers to welcome the most intelligent move by the Left in decades to expand its social basis in a society dominated by political Islam.
The arguments put forward by some questioning the sustainability of this merger are based mainly on lack of information within the left of Pakistan and are short of understanding the objective and subjective realities under which this bold initiative was taken. Let us look some of the starting points for this merger.

The merger was simply a local act. It was not taken because someone from outside had done this. It was not a mechanical imitation but a dialectical response to some of the successful recent experiences on the Left internationally. Many on the Left in Pakistan were inspired by the success of SYRISA of Greece (The Coalition of the Radical Left –a United Social Front). It won nearly 27 percent popular votes in the general elections in Greece and became the second largest and main opposition party. It brought together several different socialist and political trends to form the party in 2004. Within 8 years, it became the talk of the whole world. However, the merger in Pakistan is not a carbon copy of SYRISA. It has its unique features.

The beginning of merger process was purely a product of the young revolutionaries within the three parties who finally decided to unite in one single platform. The desire of the young revolutionaries for a bold and creative action for the uplift of the Left forces had all the foundations of a success story. It was not a hasty impatience of some “young petty bourgeoisie youth” to build a party overnight as described by some sceptical analysts. It was a painstaking long overdue strategy put into reality.
The merger would sustain and help to develop a radical left party in a short space of time. The main reason is the ideological basis for this process. It is done at a time when the very existence of the Left was in question because of the continuous growth of religious fanaticisms in all spheres of life. The insecurity among the left activists has been halted by this merger process.

The ideological differences in the history of the Left were long overtaken by the extraordinary events of the past 25 years. The collapse of the Soviet Union and euphoria among the capitalist class led them to go for an all out war against the working class in the shape of the brutal implementation of the neoliberal agenda.  The result was, as expected, the growth of poverty at an unprecedented level and the gap among poor and rich widened to an historical high point. The international capitalist crisis worsened this situation even further.

However, Pakistan was a special case. Here, the growth of abhorrence against the “system” was not translated in the progress of progressive forces. On the contrary, the extreme right wing forces with their anti-imperialist demagogy were the main beneficiaries. They were better prepared with over 80,000 Madrassas and a whole range of social work they were involved in coloring with religious sentiments.

The Left was left out by political commentators as mere spectators from outside the mainstream political arena.  However, the slow and patient work of some Left groups and parties in building social and labour movements paved the way for the present merger. One of the main aims of this merger strategy was to strengthen the labour and peasant movement that they were able to build in parts of the country over the years. The movements were in some confusion about the three parties pursuing similar ideology and tactics with three different names. The merger has eased their lives.
One of the main beneficiaries of this merger will be the National Students Federation, a traditional left organization which saw splits among its ranks whenever the Left split for any reason. That was the main consideration among the leadership of the three parties who left their year’s long hard work building their parties to adopt a new name. It was the NSF leadership that initiated the merger process and it is the youth who are in the forefront of joining the new party.

The merger will survive because it has more positives and no negatives. The cementing phenomenon is the ideology of Socialism that all three parties have agreed upon. They agree that the commanding heights of economy be nationalized [under democratic workers’ control and management???]Nations [and national groups?] must have a right of self determination with a voluntary choice of succession. An end of debt with an audit of all the local and foreign loans is the high point agreed to tackle the worsening economic crisis. At least 10 percent of the national budget spent on education and five percent on health with drastic cuts in military spending will ease the life of millions once put in practice.

With a radical programme, committed and experienced self sacrificing leadership and whole hearted support of all the members of the three parties have put the merger formula on the road of guaranteed success.

Farooq Tariq is General Secretry of Awami Workers Party Pakistan. Email: farooqtariq@hotmail.com

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