A blast from the past - Maggie Thatcher's legacy

I've been sorting out some old files this afternoon. Like your average socialist, I keep just about everything …....somewhere. I found a copy of a letter I typed, before I had a pc, to the local Shields Gazette and which was never published and I copy it below. This was written before I came across the SPGB. It dates from December 28th 1990 (Christ, I never even took time out over Xmas back then). I find it an insightful re-read, as I sound like a bloody Trot!! I wrote this a year after joining the Labour Party, and from which I resigned after six-months, having just attended my first branch meeting. I must have learned a lot in that intervening year. I had a lot of similar, and lengthy, stuff published by the Gazette back then, before the buggers started heavily censoring my letters....before MI5 flagged me up :-) I wonder if Gordon Brown ever comes across old articles and speeches...like this stuff...and says: "Christ, I don't 'alf sound like a friggin' socialist"?

I digress. That letter...

Dear Sir,

Although I welcome the observations of Mr GC in his letter about the ‘Thatcher Legacy’ (27th December), I think there is space for one very important addition – the defeat of labourism.

One of the Tories’ greatest achievements in the past ten years has been the whittling away of union status. In ten years the unions have lost one-third of their membership and working days lost through strikes have been reduced from 29m to 4m. Although she left the economy in a shambles, Thatcher can at least boast of having brought the unions to heel on behalf of her capitalist cronies.

She owed her success not solely to defeating Labour in three consecutive elections, but also to forcing Neil Kinnock and co. into accepting her policies. In the past ten years, Labour has abandoned nationalisation, unilateral disarmament and opposition to Europe, and Neil Kinnock now accepts the necessity of unemployment, anti-union legislation and heavier law and order measures.

This said, we can hardly blame the present-day labourites for the Tory ascendancy. As Labour promoted the advantages of consensus politics in the 1960s, they unwittingly paved the way for Thatcher. For instance, it was Wilson who first attacked the unions, blaming them for Britain’s poor economic performance. By introducing cuts in public spending, Labour further created the political climate which nourished questions concerning the legitimacy of state intervention in welfare. 1974 saw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, used, as we know, to torment the lives of thousands of Irish people, and in 1977 Labour drew up a green paper advocating stricter immigration controls (which Thatcher went on to implement as the 1981 Nationality Act). Also that year, Callaghan announced he would “strengthen the stability and quality of family life”, which presumably gave Thatcher the idea for her obsession with Victorian family values – a recent manifestation being the proposed witch hunt for errant fathers.

Years into her autocracy, the working class having been already mollified before she took office, Thatcher began exploiting the fears and anxieties caused by her recession. Now she could rally support around her favourite issues – trade union power, left-wing extremism, law and order, chauvinism (or rather jingoism) and family values. Consequently she succeeded in fostering reaction around her favourite issues.

Although Thatcher faced widespread condemnation, she rested on her laurels because she feared no coherent alternative. Labour failed to make unemployment and welfare cuts a political issue and any criticisms of Thatcher were lacking in clout because Wilson and Callaghan had gone to similar lengths as Thatcher and with the same results. And in the absence of a political alternative to Thatcherism. her policies became like the common cold – plain facts of life.

Labour knew they could not fight, only compromise. It has been said that British politics of consensus changed to an overt style of domination overnight. I’d argue that consensus politics never left us. Although the consensus politics of the Wilson/Heath era may be long gone, there is now a recognisable new consensus – that in which all parties bow with suppliant knee as market forces take the throne from state intervention, acknowledging that unemployment is unavoidable and that there is a growing dichotomy between rich and poor, that trade union militancy needs to be crushed, that Britain must show a brave militaristic and chauvinistic face, intervening anywhere from the South Atlantic to the Middle East….the list goes on.

Speaking in 1985, Thatcher announced that she always regarded her job as “killing socialism in Britain”. She might not have destroyed socialism, but she can at least take the credit for having educated labourism, endowing it with a bourgeois mentality.

Britain finances the Taliban

The Independent ran a story today entitled: Five men jailed for aiding 21/7 bombers which reassures you, if you’re that way inclined, that the British government is doing its bit in the war on terror. But then you read another headline in the same paper -Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan - and you wonder just what the hell is going on. Aren’t the Taliban also terrorists? Yes, so we are told. Well? Well the piece commences:

“Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.

“The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

The British response is that the Aghan government knew all along which, on the face of it is neither here nor there. But there's more. There’s method in Downing Street’s madness. Seemingly these are the more affable type of Taliban, the ones that can be befriended and turned against the nastier brand.

The Independent reports: “An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders," he said.

I seem to recall it was not that many years ago that the US financed ant-Soviet forces, many the modern day Taliban , to the tune of $6 billion. The training they were given and the weapons they were provided with have killed many an allied soldier.

The real logic behind all of this is that with NATO casualties unacceptable, what better way to keep British deaths low than to train Afghans to fight Afghans. Divide and rule, and its much cheaper!

You can just see a Tory Party election campaign poster saying : "If you want a terrorist for a neighbour, vote Labour!"

Gordon Brown does it again

Sent to the local Shields Gazette

"Immigrants should be required to do community service as a condition of becoming British citizens", Gordon Brown said yesterday

This follows his proposal that we should all display a coloured rag on the end of an idiot stick, also known as the Union Jack, on the Monarch's Birthday or some special "National" day he has hinted he would like to introduce (as long as it's not a working day -- the business interests he has catered for as Chancellor of the Exchequer wouldn't like that).

"Britishness" has become something of an obsession with him. Psychologists have suggested that it might have something to do with, being from Scotland, him being unsure of his "Britishness" and so over-compensating in the same sort of what that Hitler, an Austrian, did with "Germanness". More probably, his spin-doctors have detected that voters in England might not be too keen to vote for a party led by a dour Scotsman whose father was a Presbyterian Minister and so have told him to play up his Britishness. In other words, usual political opportunism. Or maybe he wants to steal votes as well as policies from the British National Party.

But it also serves a purpose. The capitalist class rules in the end only with the consent of the ruled class and nationalism is one of the means they use to try to con us that we have a common interest with them as against the inhabitants of other capitalist states. Brown perhaps feels that liberal and cynical attitudes have gone too far and that we need an increased dose of nationalism to keep us ideologically bound to our masters.

Whatever the reason, he has now come up with the outrageous proposal that workers who come to Britain and want to settle here should first have to undergo a spell of forced labour before being entitled to the "privileges" of being a legal subject of the British State. The Labour Party used to pose as a champion of civil liberties and the like. Not any more. They are now an openly authoritarian as well as an openly capitalist party.

Primeministers come and go

Sent to the local Shields Gazette

In his notorious militarist speech of 12, January aboard HMS Albion, Blair compared Islamic terrorism to "revolutionary communism in its early and most militant phase", and said it should be dealt with in the same way.

In his pre-prime-ministerial tour of India, Brown declared that "Islamic extremism had to be fought at all levels, 'just as we learnt we had to fight communism at all levels'" (Times, 19 January).

What can they have in mind? Of course by "communism" they don't mean communism in the proper sense (which is just another name for what I call socialism), even if, as faithful servitors of UK Capitalism PLC, they are just as much opposed to this. What they meant was the ideology under which state-capitalist Russia and China sought to challenge the world hegemony of the Western capitalist powers.

In referring to "revolutionary communism in its early and most militant phase", Blair is going back even further -- to the period before Lenin's death when the Bolshevik regime still hoped to be saved by the world revolution Lenin had mistakenly thought was on the cards. The one good thing that the Bolsheviks did was to try to stop the slaughter on the Eastern Front in WWI by taking Russia out of the war. How did the Western powers react? By themselves invading Russia.

So, what Blair and Brown are in effect proposing is to maintain and build up Britain's armed forces, to send them to do battle whenever needed, to bribe "moderate Muslims", and to generally employ dirty tricks in a bid to beat off the latest challenge to the world hegemony (and oil supplies) of the Western capitalist powers. To such an extent have they assimilated themselves to the job of running a capitalist state and furthering the interest of its capitalist class.

While in India, Brown revealed that he can be just as hypocritical as Blair. He was photographed laying a wreath in memory of Gandhi. As he could himself see the contradiction between advocating the build-up and use of armed forces and Gandhi's reputation as an apostle of non-violence, he explained that it was not Gandhi's non-violence that inspired him but the way he dealt with the challenge he faced (as if he didn't do so non-violently). What a hypocrite! But this is only par for the course from the canting Christian that he is. In any event, he only did it to curry favour with the Indian government to try to get contracts for British capitalist firms to make a profit by selling their goods in India.

"Blair Must Go!" proclaims the current SWP poster given away free on demonstrations. No doubt they are already preparing new ones saying "Brown Must Go!" just as before they had "Major Must Go!" and "Thatcher Must Go!". Meanwhile, as we know that prime ministers come and go but it makes no difference as they're not the cause of the problem but the capitalist system of competitive struggle for profits is, we offer the only logical socialist slogan: CAPITALISM MUST GO!

Tony Blair - Iraq is a disaster

Only those suffering from selective amnesia will not recall the nauseating lengths to which Tony Blair went in promoting the case for the invasion of Iraq, how he used 10-year-old information gleaned from the internet, and some student’ dissertation, to argue that Saddam Hussein was quite capable of lobbing a missile at Britain within 45 minutes.

Prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, well over a million people took part in a mass protest in London - people fully aware at the time that the events of 9/11 had no link to Saddam Hussein (something George Bush promoted and later denied) and that he posed no military threat to the West. Likewise, the many who marched to Hyde Park that day were right in believing that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction—a fact that was proved within months—and that any war in Iraq would fully destabilise the country (ex-president George Bush Snr. in fact cautioned Dubya that invasion would lead to destabilisation). And you would have been in a minority had you not realised the link between the intended war and the fact that beneath the sands of Iraq lay huge oil resources.

Three years after the invasion, with 650,000 Iraqis dead, the country’s infrastructure in total tatters, the country racked by a civil-war that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands more Iraqis, global terrorism far more of a reality than before the invasion, Blair has admitted that the whole damned episode is a ginormous cock-up.

Interviewed by David Frost on Al-Jazeera on Friday night, Blair sent a shock-wave through Westminster when, responding to Frost’s querying whether the Western invasion of the country had "so far been pretty much of a disaster", Mr Blair said, firmly: "It has."

However, rather than locating the problem in the invasion, the toppling of Saddam, the setting up of a stooge pro-Western government, Blair continued: "You see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy - al Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

And who trained Al-Qaeda? British and US special forces, Mr Blair. And what has always been the will of the majority in Iraq, Mr Blair? That the Western occupying armies get the hell out of Iraq.

Notwithstanding the carnage engulfing Baghdad and British-controlled Basra, Blair maintained that British troops were not ready to cut and run.

"We are not walking away from Iraq," he said. "We will stay for as long as the government needs us to stay.” Or rather British and American forces will stay until the country’s oil wealth is secured for Western interests.

"And the reason for that is that what is happening in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, as elsewhere in parts of the Middle East, is a struggle between the decent majority of people, who want to live in peace together, and those who have an extreme and perverted and warped view of Islam, who want to create war.”

One wonders whether Blair gets his political weltanschauung from the same sources as his war-mongering counterpart across the pond. Nowhere do the politics of oil enter the equation – the real reason for the invasion.

Jut one day after the Frost interview and Blair was back-pedalling – for sure his telephone hotline buzzing all night with concerned messages from the jingoistic fraternity in Washington and the oil cartel at home – and his spokesman adamant that his apparent concession was a "straightforward slip of the tongue" – perhaps the kind is slip Mr Bush is so famous for! Blair’s spokesman continued: "He doesn't think that a democratically-elected government in Iraq is a disaster; he doesn't think that getting rid of Saddam was a disaster, but he does acknowledge there are difficulties, and he doesn't try to downplay those."

We wonder just what “difficulties” Mr Blair is thinking of. That in securing the ‘world’s richest prize’ people have to be killed and democratic elections – as in Iraq – have to be subverted. What, the elections were democratic, Mr Blair? Then why did all candidates first have to be cleared by the White House?

How can an election be construed as legitimate when it is carried out under foreign military occupation and when the country is apparently ruled by, and the election will be officially run by, a stooge government installed and kept in power by the army of occupation? Where the democracy in holding an election that is to be orchestrated from the US Embassy and which will be under the ultimate control of US forces? Where the democracy and freedom of expression when a raging civil war prevents large sections of the population casting a vote and when the election is so tailored as to bring into being a new assembly responsible for drafting a Washington–vetted constitution and selecting a government that will be allowed to exist only so long as it functions under the conditions of military occupation?

Toppling Saddam was not a disaster? The very reason Saddam was not toppled in the wake of the first Gulf War - when the US prompted northern Kurds and the southern Marsh Arabs to rebel against Baghdad, offering they would come to their aid, and then sat back as Saddam annihilated them – was exactly because it was recognised an unstable Iraq was not in US interests, that it was safer to keep Saddam in power. Saddam might have been an utter bastard, but as far as Washington was concerned in 1991 he was holding the country together. This is not to say that we, as socialists, believe Saddam should have been left in power, but it is instructive to point to glaring changes in US policy.

As socialists we do maintain that it is dangerous to listen to leaders of any party and from any country, regardless of their flower cant, and insist that anything they say is taken with a pinch of salt and that workers should organise against them and in their ilk and in our own interests. The concept of leadership has emerged with class society and will end when we abolish class society, when we abolish the profit system and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living and by virtue of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we posses are our class unity, our intelligence, our ability to question every corrupt word that is uttered by politicians, and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency – not least of these methods is to further lie to us at every opportunity. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness question everything they say, to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

When it comes to commenting on Iraq, on would have thought that Blair would have learnt his lesson and kept his ill-informed mouth shut. For over 3 years he has lied incessantly about Iraq. It is staggering that anyone in Britain still finds anything he says believable. Just to remind visitors to this blog of some of his untruths we’re listing a sample few of his Iraq-related porkies. If you think anything Blair says is trustworthy, consider the following:

1) "The assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt … that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons" (Tony Blair’s foreword to the dossier on Iraq, 24 September 2002)

Fact: After over three months of inspections, the UN weapons inspectors reported on 6 March that "No proscribed activities, or the result of such activities from the period of 1998-2002 have, so far, been detected through inspections”.

2) "There is no doubt about the chemical programme, the biological programme, indeed the nuclear weapons programme. All that is well documented by the United Nations." (Tony Blair, 30 May 2003)

Fact: The UN had found no evidence of any on-going programmes since the mid-1990s. Dr Hans Blix said on 23 May that "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not."

3) "The reason why the inspectors couldn't do their job in the end was that Saddam wouldn't co-operate." (Tony Blair, interview on 4 April 2003)

Fact: Hans Blix told the Security Council on 7 March 2003 that "the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as 'active', or even 'proactive'".

4) "the UN has tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully." (Tony Blair, interview in the Independent on Sunday, 2 March 2003)

Fact: In 1999, the Security Council set up a panel to assess the UN's achievements in the peaceful disarmament of Iraq. It concluded that: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated."

5) "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons" (Tony Blair, press conference in Poland on 30 May 2003)

Fact: Government experts believed that the trailers were used for the production of hydrogen for artillery guidance balloons - a system, incidentally, sold by the UK to Iraq in the 1980s.

6) “There is some intelligence evidence about linkages between members of al-Qaeda and people in Iraq." (Tony Blair to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, 21 January 2003)

Fact: In early February, a classified British intelligence report, written by defence intelligence staff in mid-January and presented to Tony Blair just prior to his 21 January presentation at the Liaison Committee, stated that there were no current links between the two, and that Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq".

7) "As the Foreign Secretary has pointed out, resolution 1441 gives the legal basis for this [war]" (Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 12 March 2003)

Fact: Resolution 1441 was secured on the British assurance that it did not authorise military action, even if the UK or US believed it was being violated by Iraq. Britain's UN ambassador Jeremy Greenstock informed the Security Council on 8 November 2002 that "There is no 'automaticity' in this Resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion".

8) "On Monday night, France said it would veto a second Resolution whatever the circumstances." (Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 18 March 2003)

Fact: President Chirac said that France would vote against any resolution that authorised force whilst inspections were still working. Chirac said that he "considers this evening that there are no grounds for waging war in order to ... disarm Iraq.

9) "The oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN." (Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 18 March 2003)

Fact: Britain co-sponsored a resolution to the Security Council, which was passed in May as Resolution 1483, that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues.

10) "Our aim has not been regime change; our aim has been the elimination of weapons of mass destruction" (Tony Blair, press conference, 25 March 2003 )

Fact: UN weapons inspectors were reporting Iraq's "proactive" cooperation, and were offering that Iraq could be confirmed as fully disarmed within three months if that assistance continued. If Mr Blair's aim was the elimination of prohibited weapons, why terminate the inspection process just when it was most effective?

Today, meanwhile, Gordon Brown is in Iraq and no doubt the trip will be used as a damage limitation exercise in the wake of Blair’s unwitting confession. Brown’s remit? To visit and placate British troops who may have thought this was Blair saying they were going home, and announce at least £100 million in new aid for reconstruction. For what it’s worth, the figure is peanuts. On July 18th of this year US government's top auditor told Congress that the new Iraqi government would require at least $50 billion in aid just to rebuild the country's oil facilities and electrical grids to pre-invasion levels. Brown’s £100 million would not cover the damage that is done to Iraq as a direct result of the ongoing civil war each week.
This piece is also posted here.

Too late" to stop global catastrophe?

“At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing over nature – but that we, with flesh and blood and brain, belong to nature and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly. We are gradually learning to get a clear view of the indirect, more remote social effects of our productive activity, and so are afforded the opportunity to control and regulate these effects well. This regulation, however, requires a complete revolution in our existing mode of production…in our whole contemporary social order”

You could be forgiven for thinking the above quotation came from a modern day ecologist or environmentalist, commenting on impending global ecological catastrophe and drawing upon the myriad reports currently in existence, written by scientists that portend cataclysmic changes to our life styles if we don’t stop abusing our natural environment immediately. The quote is in fact 131 years old and is taken from Dialectics of Nature, written by Frederic Engels (1875).

So let’s get one thing straight from the outset. Socialists have been warning about the effects of capitalism’s penny-pinching production methods for well over a hundred years, and how they impact on the wider environment, and it is often with despair that we reiterate the Engels message from the latter 19th century, more so now that state of the art technology exists that provides hard evidence as to the dire effects of capitalist production.

So it is not with any great sigh of relief, or shock and disbelief, that socialist’s would have read the lead story in today’s Independent, which covered the findings of Sir Nicholas Stern’s long awaited report on climatic change and indeed the government’s reaction to it. It does make for grim reading, suggesting that time is running out to really address the environment question – previous opportunities having been pathetically squandered at the Hague and Kyoto Summits – and that the possibility of preventing a global disaster is "already almost out of reach".

The Independent informs us: “With world temperatures on course to rise by two to three degrees in 50 years, rainfall could be catastrophically reduced in some of the world's poorest countries, while others grapple with floods from melting glaciers. The result could be the largest migration of refugees in history.”

Amongst the reports shocking revelations, writes Andy McSmith, is “that changes in weather patterns could drive down the output of the world's economies by an amount equivalent to up to £6 trillion a year by 2050, almost the entire output of the EU.”The 700 page report, commissioned by the Treasury and carried out by the former World Bank chief economist (Nicholas Stern) argues environmental problems will be "difficult or impossible to reverse" unless something is done now. It says: "Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century."

All is not lost, believe Chancellor Gordon Brown and Environment Secretary David Miliband. They point to the “positive message” arising from the report; this being that the world has the means to avoid the awaiting cataclysm. Money can be thrown at the problem – the earth shattering sum of 1 per cent of Global GDP (£0.3 trillion dollars); a figure, incidentally, which is dwarfed by global military spending.

Labour’s elite would have it that Sir Nick is something of a drama queen, but there again the government is first and foremost the executive of the capitalist class, with powerful interests to defend, so is not wont to panic their pals in big business with hints at environmental legislation that might eat into their profits. Milliband sounded quite optimistic being interviewed by The Independent. He said: "The second half of his message is that the technology does exist, the financing, public and private, does exist, and the international mechanisms also exist to get to grips with this problem - so I don't think it's a catastrophe that he puts forward. It's a challenging message.”

And what are offered are capitalist remedies, and to make it all the more attractive there are profits to be had – well, the master class have to have some damned incentive before they act. As The Independent reported:

“Combating climate change could become one of the world's biggest growth industries, generating around £250bn of business globally by 2050.” Providing, that is, that we still have a planet worth saving in 50 years time.

Governments appear oblivious to the fact that oil production will shortly peak, that half the earth’s available oil is estimated to by used within 10 years , and within another 20 years countries like China and India will have huge demands that will outstrip supply. Consider the global conflicts this will create.

Far worse than a shortage of oil is a shortage of water. We already know that 500 million live in regions prone to chronic drought. Scientists have forewarned us that within 20 years that figure is expected to increase fivefold to between 2.5bn and 3.5bn people. Already over 5 million people die annually - including 2 million children - from diseases caused by drinking contaminated water. Again, what desolation does this portend for the human race?

In the oceans, almost 50% of fish stocks are fully exploited, 20% are over-exploited, and only 2% are recovering. On land, soil erosion and degradation mean that half a billion people live in countries whose arable land can no longer support their own populations. The natural habitats of many animal species are being lost on an alarming scale, which with the decline of bird species, plants, forests - on which, ultimately, the human race depends – signals a crisis for biodiversity.
And the best capitalist politicians can think up is to tempt the master class with the whiff of profits to come if they agree to mend their ways. The very people who have disregarded the effects of their production methods on the natural environment for hundreds of years are now being asked to show it some mercy! Global environmental catastrophe can be halted by throwing money at the problem!

Right across the planet the economic system that governments defend plunders and squanders the Earth’s non-renewable mineral and energy resources and with one object in mind – profit. All over the world it pollutes the seas, the air we breathe, the forests, rivers and lakes, upsetting natural balances, eco-systems and defying the laws of ecology. Clearly, this destruction and waste cannot continue indefinitely. It should not and must not and no amount of money is going to redress the delicate balance.

Socialists have long argued that it is quite possible to meet the material needs of every person on this planet without destroying the natural systems on which we depend and on which we are party. So what stands in the way? Why isn’t this done? The simpler answer, which we must not get tired of reiterating, is that under the present economic system, production is not geared to meeting human needs but rather to accumulating profits for a few. Consequently, what we produce and the methods and the materials we employ are not decided rationally and democratically, but are dictated by market forces.

Production today is in the hands of business enterprises of one sort or another, all competing to sell their products at a profit. All of them – and it does not matter whether they are privately owned or state-owned – aim to maximise their profits. This is not the result of the greed of the owners or managers, as some Greens claim, but an economic necessity, imposed by the forces of the market. If a business does not make a profit it goes out of business. “Make a profit or die” is the law of the capitalist jungle.

Under the demands of the market, businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interests, ignoring wider social and ecological considerations. The whole of production, from the process employed to the choice of what to produce, is distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by anarchic market forces which compel decision-makers, however selected and whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder, pollute and waste.

So it’s no wonder that nature’s balances are upset today, and that we face problems like global warming, acid rain and the widening hole in the ozone layer, to name just a few. It’s no wonder that the Earth’s easily accessible resources are plundered without a thought for the future; that the power stations and factories release all sorts of dangerous and noxious substances into the air and water; that chemical fertiliser and pesticides that get into the food chain are used in agriculture; that animals are injected with hormones, fed unnatural diets; that human waste is not recycled back to the land; that non-biodegradable plastics and textiles are produced; that lead is put into petrol; that goods are made so as not to last, etc. The list of anti-ecological practises imposed by market forces is endless.

The conclusion is clear: If our needs are to be met while at the same time respecting the laws of nature, the present market-driven profit system must go and be replaced with a system capable of producing the essentials humans need, but in an ecologically friendly way.

Most Greens believe that things could be put right with a change of government policy, which is exactly what Labour now proposes. What is needed, they say, is a government that will pass laws and impose taxes – on air travel, motoring and high emission vehicles - to protect the environment. But experience shows that no government, however well meaning or determined, can protect the environment. Governments exist to run the political side of the profit system. They do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They can only act within the narrow limits imposed by the market system. This is why the reformist policy advocated by the Green Party, Friends of the Earth etc. is not working. At most it could only succeed in slowing down the speed of decay, not in making the profit system work in an environmentally friendly way. Those who want a clean and safe environment are up against a well entrenched economic and social system, based on class privilege and property and governed by the overriding law of profits first. What Greens should work towards is not a change of government, but a change of society.

If we are to meet our needs in an ecologically acceptable way, we humans must first be in a position to control production or, to put it another way, to consciously regulate our interaction with the rest of nature – and the only basis on which this can be done is the common ownership of productive resources.

Once the Earth’s natural and industrial resources have become the common heritage of all humanity, then production can be geared to meeting needs in an ecologically acceptable way, instead of making profits without consideration for the environment. These include types of farming that preserve and enhance the natural fertility of the soil, the systematic recycling of materials obtained from non-renewable energy sources while developing alternative sources that continually renew themselves (i.e. solar energy and wind power); industrial processes that avoid releasing poisonous chemicals or radioactivity into the biosphere; the manufacture of solid good made to last, not planned to break down after a period of time.

We are talking about a system of society based on common ownership and democratic control of productive resources. That is the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature. And it’s the only basis on which we can begin to successfully reverse the degradation of the environment caused by the profit system. The only effective strategy for achieving a free and democratic society, in harmony with nature it to build up a movement which has the achievement of such a society as its sole aim.

Thisa posting can also be found here

The Labour Party Leadership Battle

Countless column inches and seemingly endless hours of news reports have been given over to the leadership crisis the Labour Party is currently engulfed in. Speaking up for Prime Minister Tony Blair, Home Secretary Charles Clark said Blair would stand down when he was good and ready to do so and he accused Chancellor Gordon Brown of “absolutely stupid” behaviour in challenging Blair, commenting that Brown needed first to prove his fitness to lead.

Fitness to lead? Now there’s a thing. It assumes leaders have some special qualification acquired over years of study and self-sacrifice when the only real qualification is the ability to hoodwink others into thinking you possess knowledge and qualities they do not. Unlike other professions – doctors, surgeons, architects, physicists – whose skills come via many years of hard slog – politicians require none whatsoever. The only requisite credentials needed when standing for election are that you are over 21 years of age, not insane and with no recent prison record.

Despite this, many workers think we cannot function without leaders. This is a fallacy and one perpetuated by the master class to help them maintain their rule over our lives. Indeed, so prevalent is this philosophy, that from the cradle to the grave we are taught to mistrust our own intelligence and to feel somewhat inadequate, to look up to our ‘betters and superiors’ (schools, church, politicians, parents etc) for their expert guidance and to accept without question the plans they draw up for our future.

Moreover, the whole concept of leadership and the need to choose the candidate most fitted for the post of leader is keenly promoted by aspiring leaders. In truth, history confirms them to be pitiable exemplars of honesty, integrity and compassion, forever paying lip service to truth and justice and other grand notions equated with leadership.

Blair has proved to be just as deceitful, dishonest and corrupt as every British prime minister that preceded him, ready always to defend power and privilege over the real needs of the people who elected him. From the moment he won a fourteen minute standing ovation from a CBI Conference just prior to the 1997 Labour victory, through the myriad scandals his Party has been caught up in, and right through to his perfidious reasoning to invade and occupy an immiserated but oil rich country, he has constantly lied to the electorate, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and bullied anyone bold enough to stand up to him.

Nothing Brown has said or done inclines us to consider he will act any differently. As Prime Minister he will lead the executive of the capitalist class – what else are governments but the national administrative arm of capital? - and as leader he had better be seen to be “batting for Britain”, defending the interests of big business at home and abroad. This is the real remit of the leader in capitalist society.

It is assumed by many that leaders run the world. Well, I rather think it is we, the workers, who run the world. Politicians might make government policy, which becomes law, but it is we who build and work the hospitals and schools. It is we who build the bridges, roads and railways, ports and airports; all the products that humans need to survive. It is we who produce everything from a pin to an oil-rig and provide humanity with all the services it requires – we the working class! We don’t depend on leaders for these skills or for their guidance. They have no monopoly on our knowledge and intelligence or on the inventions we dream up to enhance the quality of life. If all the worlds’ leaders died tomorrow, few would really miss them and society would function just as before.

The concept of leadership has emerged with class society and will end when we abolish class society, when we abolish the capitalist mode of production and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living and by virtue of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other and information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we posses are our class unity, our intelligence, and our ability to question the status quo and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

Remember this as the battle for leadership of the Labour Party hots up.

Brown's...errr...Brown Shirts?

At a time when British troops are coming in for stern criticism following newspaper revelations that a gang of these uniformed brutes beat the shit out of four young Iraqi teenagers, the last thing I expected to read in a newspaper today was a story about Chancellor Gordon Brown’s plans to introduce state school cadets.

The story was the headlines of the right-wing Daily Mail – a paper I rather prefer not to be seen buying, like one of those glossy porno mags off the top shelf – but the story cried out “read me, read me”, so I coughed up the necessary 40p, furtively stuffed the paper inside my coat and hurried outside the shop. But I digress…

The Mail reports that Brown “wants tens of thousands of state school pupils to volunteer for uniformed army, naval or air force training.” His plan is to “teach young people discipline and pride in their country.”

Way to go, Mr. Brown. Spoken like a true future prime minister. Violent crime on the rise, British troops yet again proving the army brings the worst out in people, patriotism linked to xenophobia, narrow mindedness and bigotry and you want to inculcate our kids to the art of murder! And you want to spend £millions on this project too!

At the moment there are over 90,000 army and air cadets in Britain along with 42,000 school cadets and you want this figure doubled? Got a few wars planned have we? Nationwide social control on the fuckin’ agenda?

I wonder how long it will be before the new generation of brain-washed khaki-clad school kids are given medals for informing on their parents and neighbours. How long before the union jack is flying from the roofs of schools and God Save the Queen is sung at morning assembly?

Schools have the opportunity to turn kids into wonderful humans, caring, considerate
and with a first rate social consciousness, devoid of any prejudice and swearing blind allegiance to nobody. And what to you want Mr Brown? To turn them into the breeding grounds of flag-waving nationalists, their brains pumped with tales of Britain’s glorious military exploits.

What was is it Dr Johnson said about patriots and scoundrels?

British Day

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”, wrote Dr. Johnson. Indeed! - nowadays it is one of the cries of the Labour Party as it tries to rescue itself from the corner it has been battered into by the press in the wake of a series of scandals.

Chancellor Gordon Brown wants Remembrance Sunday turned into “British Day” – a sentiment no doubt supported by Nick Griffin and his band of trustee bone-headed lobotomismos in the BNP who, like Brown, are very keen to promote British history, culture and identity at every opportunity.

The problem with Remembrance Day is that we are supposed to remember the dead of the two World Wars, seemingly forgetting why those wars were fought, who profited from them and the true cost paid by the working class. The proposed ‘British Day’ will be another day for collective historical amnesia when no mention will be made of the tens of millions killed as Britain expanded its empire around the world, of the battles fought protecting the spoils from far off countries, the mayhem unleashed in those countries and the mess Britain left them in after “independence”. And the British history that will be celebrated on ‘British Day’ will definitely not remember 1000 years of bloodshed and murder on British soil in defence of ruling class interests.

Speaking to a Fabian Society Conference, Brown said: "In any survey our most popular institutions range from the monarchy to the army to the NHS. But think: what is our Fourth of July? What is our Independence Day? Where is our declaration of rights? What is our equivalent of a flag in every garden? Perhaps Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday are the nearest we have come to a British day - unifying, commemorative, dignified and an expression of British ideas of standing firm for the world in the name of liberty."

The monarchy, the army and the NHS are our most popular institutions? Really? Fifteen years ago a survey of foreign tourists found that 1 in 10 expressed an interest in catching a glimpse of the Queen when they came to London. A similar recent survey found that figure had changed to 1 in 1000. The army is popular? So that is why they are inundated with requests to enlist and why only a handful of people turned out to protest against the British army being sent to Iraq. The NHS? Would this be the one that New Labour has kicked the shit out of, the remains of which Blair is slowly handing over to the private sector?

Brown asks: “what is our Declaration of Rights?” Are you taking the piss, bonny lad? If the Labour Party had its way we would live in a Big Brother state, our every move monitored every moment of the day, each of us carrying biometric ID cards, afraid to think outside of the box. A declaration of rights would mean no more in Britain than in the US, where it has been recently replaced by Patriotic Acts 1 and 2.

Brown cites the patriotism of the US – a country where selective amnesia should be a UN recognised mental illness – as a model to emulate. But, when did you ever see poor America wave the flag? Do they fly from the windows in downtown Chicago, New York or Washington? Hardly. In general, flag waving in the US is the orgasm of affluent right-wing suburbanites.
Countries like the USA and France may well have their national days – but here they celebrate the overthrow of tyranny. Other countries have national days too; a fair few call them Independence Days, and celebrate freedom from oppressive colonial rule when the union jack was removed from government buildings.

Brown believes the British flag should be recaptured from the far-right - an interesting statement considering the Labour Party is nowadays to the right of the historically right-wing Conservative Party. Moreover, Brown should learn from History – Thatcher’s nationalistic rants, far more than the anti-fascist activities of the left, resulted in the drop of the National Front vote at the 1979 and 1983 elections. People who had previously voted NF simply voted for the Tories. I wonder if Brown is after the BNP vote? The way he is going he will certainly get it.

In truth, your average Briton does spend much time pondering British achievements, history or culture. The most popular foods are big Macs, pizzas and pasta – none of them British in origin. England’s patron Saint George was actually a Turk who seems to have risen to fame slaughtering a crocodile and who never set foot on British soil and perhaps never spoke a word of English. No one sings or even knows more than one verse of “God Save the Queen” and only the desperately sad can tell when the Union jack is upside down (I lived over thirty years before finding out there was actually a “right way up”). And, I wager that there are more people in Britain that have the union jack on their underpants than have the flag neatly folded away to be waved on cue.

Fuck all flags, Gordon. The union jack is nothing but an imperialist, blood-drenched rag that should be burned along with every other prop of nationalism. It is a hindrance to human progress, not an aide. No doubt, though, you’ll get your way and Parliament will move that we have a British Day. I’m just wondering if a Patriot Act will bring it into being.

Promises, Promises - Gordon Brown and World Poverty

No doubt aware that the myriad promises made at World Summits and UN conferences - called to address the pressing problem of global poverty - amount to zilch, Chancellor Gordon Brown conceded in mid February that the world is still 150 years off set targets for tackling world poverty.

Brown, addressing a conference of diplomats and aid organisations in London, warned that immediate action was needed to have any chance of hitting the millennium goals for halving poverty, cutting child deaths and improving education in the Third World by 2015.

Mr Brown said that steps towards key millennium development targets for 2015 were so slow that in some parts of the world they would take more than a century to attain at existing rates. He said: "On current forecasts, sub-Saharan Africa will achieve our target for reducing child mortality not by 2015 but by 2165. This is not good enough. The promise we made was for 2015, not 2165."

He continued: "If we let things slip, the millennium goals will become just another dream we once had, and we will indeed be sitting back on our sofas and switching on our TVs and, I am afraid, watching people die on our screens for the rest of our lives. We will be the generation that betrayed its own heart." And further observed that the first target of the millennium development goals - to ensure by 2005 that girls are given the same opportunities in education as boys - would be missed, while aims to establish universal primary education by 2015 would not be met until 2129 at present rates.

As someone chosen to defend the interests of the British capitalist class and to ensure the cogs of profit machine remain well lubricated, Brown was no about to advocate class war and the abolition of the profit system. Instead, he called on the international community to support British plans for a new international finance facility (IFF), to double aid from $50bn (£26bn) to $100bn a year, and urged developed nations to take action on international trade. $100 billion?.

Although Mr Brown’s speech was welcomed by campaigners, opposition MPs and aid groups warned that Britain must do more to increase aid spending and open world markets to developing countries.

Irish rock star Bono called on delegates, inclusive of the Live Aid founder Bob Geldof, to "dramatise" the cause of world poverty just as Geldof had alerted the world to the plight of Africa in the mind 1980s. "We need to get people on to the streets asking why we are breaking these promises," he said.To Chancellor Brown, Bono said, "At a moment like this we need some very big ideas. You and Tony need to be the Lennon and McCartney of progressive geopolitics. What we need here is not love. All we need here is cash."

John Bercow, the shadow International Development Secretary, commented : "While the developed world practises protectionism on a grotesque scale it is hardly surprising that the poorest countries in the world cannot compete. It is time for the OECD to slash distorting subsidies, cut trade barriers and offer the poorest people on the planet a decent deal."

Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, who hosted the event at the Treasury, contrasted the £2.3bn spent in England on pet food and pet care merchandise in 2002 and the $700bn spent by Americans on beverages with the money set aside for poverty reduction programmes. Fair point. Is Brown really asking that much? An astronomical amount? Perhaps not where governments are concerned. The US military budget for 2004 alone is $400.1 billion, or to put it another way, the US spends $1,093,169,398 on the military every single day, or if you like figures, $759,145 every minute. Indeed, the figure considered, shared out amongst the world, what Brown is really asking the global executive of capitalism for its loose change. In truth, all Brown wants to save millions of people is the figure the US would otherwise spend in three months killing them.

While it is something of an upturn to see politicians admitting that promises to help the world’s poor are utter bollocks, it comes as no surprise to note that they still fail to address the real root of the problem – the way the world is organised for production. Their answer is always to throw money at the problem, like some modern-day shaman trying to exercise a demon. Whilst they promote ideas of fair trade, allowing less wealthy countries access to overseas markets, they know full well that as servants of capital it would be more than their lives were worth to promote polices that effected British exports, profits and jobs, and just how do they plan to get such an idea past the US corporate elite , who would mobilise a rapid deployment force if a barrel of oil was threatened?

In truth their charitable solution - using capitalist remedies to address a problem inherent to the capitalist system - amounts to little more than placing a sticking plaster over a gun shot wound. The system they defend is decrepit, anarchic and outdated. In a world of abundance, with so much science, technology and an advanced means of communication at our disposal, what is needed is the total abolition of the money system, the freeing of production from the artificial constraints of profit, and the establishment of a system in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation.

UN goals for 2015 and the progress so far:

To halve the number living on $1 a day or starving. Verdict: A little progress.

To ensure all children finish primary schooling. Verdict: failing

To end disparity in education between boys and girls. Verdict: failing

To cut death rate in under 5s by two-thirds. Verdict: failing
To reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters. Verdict: failing
To halt the spread of Aids and other diseases. Verdict: failing
To halve the number with no access to clean drinking water. Verdict: failing
To develop global partnership fordevelopment. Verdict: failing