Politics of Live Aid

Twenty-four years ago today Bob Geldof asked "..why do people starve on one side of the world while on the other people are paid not to produce food, or "surpluses" are allowed to rot?" He said that no-one had yet answered that question for him satisfactorily. And he still does not have a clue. The contemporary article below, taken from the September 1985 Socialist Standard, explains why such suffering is endemic to capitalism.

I confess to being one of the millions of people throughout the world who watched the Live Aid concert, and one of the smaller nurnber of Bob Dylan devotees who sat up half the night and saw it through to the bitter (as it turned out, in view of Dylan's abject performance) end. And I admit to having enjoved watching all those super-stars strut and stagger, prance and pose on my TV sereen. But this was supposed to be more than just entertainment, and to remind us there was, during the sixteen hour concert, repeated showings of a particularly haunting and harrowing film of Ethiopian famine victims. Bob Geldof, the concert's moving force, also continually reminded us that the purpose of the programme was to raise money, and he succeeded. Forty million pounds is a lot of money for a charity to raise in one go...

On the surface the answer to "what causes famine?" may seem obvious. Shortage of food causes famine, and the present food shortage in Africa is the resuIt of drought. But is this really true? Why, when the world can be tumed into a "global village" for the purposes of transmitting pop music, can it not be tumed into a "global vtllage" for the purposes of distributing food?

In fact the immediate cause of famine is a combination of events, which includes such things as successive years of drought and crop failures leading to the creation of deserts. But there is no ineviteble relationship between even a number of crop failures in successive years and famine. The latter is more likely to be due, not to an absolute shortage of food, but rather to its unequal distribution both between countries and within a country. So for example:

"it is rarely the urban poor who suffer famine (because of access to wage labour) which is usually confined to rural populations which in many under-developed countries have little direct relationship with centres of political power, and therefore little influence." (Frances D'Souza and Jeremy Shoham, 'The spread of famine in Africa", Third World Quarterly, July, 1985).

And besides the environmental causes of famine there are also political causes such as warfare.

The immediate effect of food scarcity is rapidly rising prices and the movement of men to urban areas in search of paid work that will enable them to buy food for their families. At the same time farmers begin to seil their live-stock like goats and sheep in order to raise money. This leads to a fall in meat prices and hence in the purchasing power of the farmers, who are then forced to seil more valuable assets like plough oxen. When all these options have been exhausted, whole households and villages are forced to move to towns or relief centres in search of food aid.

"Mass migration, usually taken as the first sign of a famine, is in fact a terminal sign of distress, and at this stage it is almost impossible to prevent mass deaths, however great the relief effort." (D'Souza and Shoham, op.cit.)

The situation in much of Africa is clearly now in this terminal phase. And yet as long ago as December 1982 the Food and Agricultural Organisation said that Ethiopia would need 400,000 tonnes of food aid in 1983; no action was taken and the country needed 1.5 million tonnes by 1985. So why did the world not respond earlier? One answer is politics.

"If countries supplying food aid want to ignore famine wamings they will. One reason why the famine was so bad in Ethiopia was that America, which is now supplying half of all Africa's food aid, was sending only a trickle of aid until October 1984. Ethtopia's government has few friends in Washington." (The Economist, 20 ]u1y, 1985)

The famine-stricken countries themselves may also, for domestic political reasons, not wish to acknowledge the existence of the problem. In Sudan for example, as late as mid-1984 the government claimed that there was no famine in the country for fear of the political consequences of adrnitting that people were starving.

But even when the existence of the problem is admitted and a decision is taken to do something about it, politics intrudes. The aid "industry" has vested interests: people who rely on the aid agencies for their jobs may be unwilling to co-operate fully with representatives from other organisations, which leads to pointless duplication of effort. For example, in 1983 Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) received over 300 fact-finding missions from aid donors. They got so fed up with escorting people round the country that they are now refusing all international aid.

Most aid comes from national aid programmes rather than international relief agencies, and much of it is "tied". This means that the recipient government gets money provided it spends it on goods produced in the donor country. Clearly if the motive is to increase exports the interests of the starving in Africa are likely to come a very poor second to those of the rich in the donor country.

Another form of aid is "prograrnme aid" whereby food is given to governments to be sold on the market, About a third of all America's 3.1 million tonnes of food aid and 60 per cent of that given by the EEC takes this form. 1n theory it enables recipient governments to buy seed and agricultural implements from the proceeds of food sales, in practice the proceeds are just as like1y to be spent on maintaining the armed forces.

Within the recipient country politics frequentIy affects the distribution of food aid. In Ethiopia the government has tried to prevent food from being distributed in the provinces of Tigre and Eritrea in an attempt to literally starve the rebels in those areas into submission and to force them to leave the region for feeding centres in other areas.

So in entering the aid business Bob Geldof should tread warily: it is a minefield of national and corporate interests, political manipulation and profit-seeking which is Iikely to destroy the good intentions of the politically naive.

For the sad truth is that despite the razzamatazz that surrounded the Live Aid concert the amount raised, though enormous by the standards of most charitable appeaIs, was a pittance when compared with the scale of the suffering. Workers who gave money to the Live Aid appeal cannot afford to give enough to make a significant impact on the farnine, since most of us rely only on a wage, salary or state benefits to provide for ourselves and our children. We do not own the wealth of the world; it is not ours to give.

Aid is in any case a contentious issue: some have argued that it has damaging effects for the recipients since it has the long term effect of weakening the capacity of communities to survive independently. Certainly it has been used for political and economic ends by the international capitalist class to create spheres of influence in the "Third World" and to maintain client states.

But a more important limitation of aid is the effect it has on the donors. Whether it is individuals giving to charities like Live Aid or governments making pious statements about the amount of aid they have provided, a dangerous illusion is created. The illusion, firstly, that something is being done to solve the problem of famine and, secondly, that something can be done, that we really can "feed the world" through charity and the efforts of a few dynarnic and well intentioned individuals like Bob Geldof. Both have politically disastrous consequences.

Famine is not a temporary upset in an otherwise harmonious world order which can be put right by a quick injection of money and sacks of grain: it is an endemic feature of a world system of society which dictates that those who have money to buy food can eat, and those who have no money must starve; that unsold food produced in one part of the world will not, in general, be transported to where it is needed because no profit would be made. For in our society food is not produced because people need it, but because those who own the farms and the land can make a profit from it. And if it cannot be sold profitably then it is left to rot.

So while it mav be cornforting to believe that Live Aid has significantlv helped those suffering in Africa from the insanity of capitalism, it is dangerous because it ignores the real causes of world hunger. To perpetuate the myth that charity can solve the problem obscures the urgent need for political action to get rid of capitalism. We can eradicate farnine: we have the technology, knowledge and productive capadty to produce enough food for everyone and to transport it to wherever in the world it might be needed. There is no need for people to starve but they will continue to do so as long as we produce goods for profit. To remove capitalism requires a much bigger commnitment on the part of the working class than it takes to give a fiver to the Live Aid appeal. But whereas giving money to charity might give you a feeling of having "done sornething" to help the hungry (which lasts until the next awful pictures of unnecessary suffering are flashed onto your TV screen), working for socialisrn will bring the reward of knowing that you are helping to create a truly humanitarian society in which no-one, wherever they live, will die of hunger. And then we can all listen to pop music without feeling guilty.

JPS

Here Comes The Robots - Speech Text

The aim of this talk is to explore the effects of a particlular form of technology on the state of society. It will examine the concepts of robotics and artificial intelligence; the concept of the technological singularity; what such an event would mean for the labour market; and, because of the central role of the labour market to capitalism, what this would mean for capitalist society as a whole. It will also take in the contradictions in capitalisms need for labour; and how, ultimately, socialism is essentially the emancipation of labour.

Near future science fiction frequently explores the possibilities of imminent technologies. Gadgets that haven’t been designed yet, but could be given recent real advances in technology and design. Whilst its track record on such predictions as us getting to Mars by 1977 and everyone having rocket cars by 2002 are a bit wide of the mark, others have been much closer – and in fact actively conservative compared to the real historical record.

Authors such as Charles Stross in his Halting State or Ken Macleod in his Night Sessions explore a future where mobile phone technology linked up to glasses which display information to the wearer can link up with technology like google Earth and GPS systems to tell them, just by looking, who lives in a house and what criminal records they have and other known details. They explore the expanding pace of technology, as the machine intelligence of computers begins to exceed that of the living human beings. Iain M. Banks in his Culture novels explores the after effects of that process, where humans served by loyal robots live in a post scarcity anarcho communist space faring society.

We need to pause here to discuss some terms. Much of this will be familiar. The difference, for one, between a machine and a tool. A tool enables a human to do a job, while a machine effectively replaces human labour. A robot is a sort of machine. The word itself is Czech, coming from a play about automatons, and it means worker, but with connotations of slavery. The international standards organisation defines a robot as: “an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose, manipulator programmable in three or more axes, which may be either fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial automation applications." Which more or less means the same thing.

Robots do not have to be physical, and many expert systems can be described as a robot of sorts. When your word-processor corrects your spelling, that is a type of robot.

A singularity represents an "event horizon" in the predictability of human technological development past which present models of the future cease to give reliable or accurate answers, following the creation of strong artificial intelligence or the amplification of human intelligence. Futurists predict that after the Singularity, humans as they exist presently will cease to be the dominating force in scientific and technological progress, replaced with posthumans, strong AI, or both, and therefore all models of change based on past trends in human behavior will be obsolete.

The technological singularity refers to a situation in which technological advancement begins to accelerate to the point where new designs are produced, basically, before old ones are implemented: where super intelligence exists. More prosaicly, when the robots begin to be able to do our thinking for us. Proponents of such an eventuality point to growth of computer processing power and the growth of communications and transport technology. The mark how the time taken for products to reach ubiquity and obsolesence is falling – it took 70 years for telephones to become ubiquitous, the iPod has managed it in about 8. For example.

We’ve even reported such trends ourselves, in the Socialist Standard. We told how 3D printers have been developed that can make models and parts out of sillicon and plastic – and how that will lead to faster development of prototypes. Those 3D printers can also produce 60% of their own parts. If they get to 100% we’d have multipurpose machines that could reproduce themselves, and maybe even adapt for diffferent tasks.

Machines making machines. This would have drastic effects on the labour market. Robin Hanson writes in the IEEE Spectrum:

The relative advantages of humans and machines vary from one task to the next. Imagine a chart resembling a topographic cross section, with the tasks that are ”most human” forming a human advantage curve on the higher ground. Here you find chores best done by humans, like gourmet cooking or elite hairdressing. Then there is a ”shore” consisting of tasks that humans and machines are equally able to perform and, beyond them an ”ocean” of tasks best done by machines. When machines get cheaper or smarter or both, the water level rises, as it were, and the shore moves inland.

Depending on how these contours actually lie, this could mean mass displacement for millions of workers: redundancy on a grand scale. From shop staff to clerks, essentially human posts could be done away with by “simple” intelligences or machine expertese.

Of course, this trend has been continuing since capitalism began. As Hanson notes:

The […] proliferation of machine-assembled cars raised the value of related human tasks, such as designing those cars, because the financial stakes were now much higher. Sure enough, automobiles raised the wages of machinists and designers

Throughout history, the labour market has had winners and losers, swings as well as roundabouts. New workers have always been recruited to replace those throw on the scrapheap; but in this scenario, new workers can be designed, trained up and introduced faster through machinery that it would take to breed and train a new generation of humans.

The suggestion throughout discussion of a technological singularity is that productivity would soar. In essence, it would herald an abundance economy. For some radical “trans humanists” this would mean the end of capitalism.

The capitalist mode of production carries with it a strong impulse for this sort of increasing :

The battle of competition is fought by cheapening of commodities. The cheapness of commodities demands, caeteris paribus, on the productiveness of labour, and this again on the scale of production. Therefore, the larger capitals beat the smaller. It will further be remembered that, with the development of the capitalist mode of production, there is an increase in the minimum amount of individual capital necessary to carry on a business under its normal conditions. The smaller capitals, therefore, crowd into spheres of production which Modern Industry has only sporadically or incompletely got hold of. Here competition rages in direct proportion to the number, and in inverse proportion to the magnitudes, of the antagonistic capitals. It always ends in the ruin of many small capitalists, whose capitals partly pass into the hands of their conquerors, partly vanish.

The result of which is the fact that:

…the growing extent of the means of production, as compared with the labour-power incorporated with them, is an expression of the growing productiveness of labour. The increase of the latter appears, therefore, in the diminution of the mass of labour in proportion to the mass of means of production moved by it, or in the diminution of the subjective factor of the labour-process as compared with the objective factor.
The additional capitals formed in the normal course of accumulation serve particularly as vehicles for the exploitation of new inventions and discoveries, and industrial improvements in general. But in time the old capital also reaches the moment of renewal from top to toe, when it sheds its skin and is reborn like the others in a perfected technical form, in which a smaller quantity of labour will suffice to set in motion a larger quantity of machinery and raw materials. (Marx, Capital vol 1, Chapter 25)

While 90% of what socialists discuss, from inequality to exploitation and unemployment, can be defended without needing recourse to the labour theory of value, (and some writers have suggested Marx should be dealt with in this way) not doing so robs our theories of their explicitly political dimension. As can be seen from the preceeding, the capitalist mode of production is as much about drawing in the command of labouring humans as it is about making profits – it is a source of social control.

Capitalism is in a bind – it wants to use as much labour as it can as little as possible. That is, while it on the one hand sets its production goals as limitless, an infinity of riches and products, it wants to spare the precious labour that gives it an edge in the competetive battle. This is what the shackles of capital mean to labour, that goals and activities that are within the practical bounds of human endeavour are left unsurmounted because it is not capitalistically efficient to do so. Capitalism prefers the increasing refinement of the productive process to the actual attainment of any specific outcomes or goods.

This brings us to an important factor. As EP Thompson noted in his The Making of the English Working Class – the working class made themselves. Workers, and their demands for waged labour as compared with the previous forms of bonded labour, were, if you’ll forgive, in the vanguard of promoting market relations. Professor Robert Allen of Nuffield College, Oxford, an economic historian, goes so far as to suggest that a significant contributing factor to the Industrial Revolution occuring in Britain was the relatively high (at that time and in the world) Real wages of the workers here. Particularly, they were high relative to fuel costs and capital costs. The importance of this is that it incentivised innovation and mechanisation. Similar features have been attributed to American industrialisation. The high costs of labour, and capitalism’s drive to spare labour if at all possible is a key motor of capital accumulation.

This, then, presents us with a bind. Capitalism spares labour, cuts labour and labour costs, while it grows. Further, as we’ve seen above, whilst it accumulates, it cheapens the products of industry. This presents us with a situation in which fewer people are employed, and in which the cost of employing people actually falls. The mass of use values they can command may well increase, but the value of their pay declines. We can see this in the recent history of the United States “Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households” – that’s from the CIA world factbook.

This raises the prospect, as the tides of technology rise and surplus population increases and real wages fall, of a natural limit to technological growth – the point at which the labour market ceases incentivise intensive exploitation of capital, and it becomes cheaper to simply exploit labour extensively. The Socialist Party has never emphasised a theory of “decadence” like some Marxist groups, but these conditions would be as close to a decadence situation as you could find. Hanson sees a situation in which we would all have to become capitalists, because labour would not longer pay, but if what I have suggested above comes to pass, then we simply wouldn’t have that option, and a form of labour feudalism could emerge.

In response to a questionaire, when Marx was asked what were his goals, he simply replied “The emancipation of labour.” This brings us to the crux of the matter - technology emancipates us from labour, but so long as a vast swathe of humanity depends on the sale of its ability to work labour will be in the chains of capital. Socialism, the emancipation of labour, would see a situation in which rather than try at all costs to spare labour, we will freely chuck it at problems because we would be working towards definite ends, rather than an ever increasing size of profit.

It would be nice to think that technological progress would simply evolve capitalism away. If we believed that, we could shut up shop and simply become cheer-leaders for advancing bleeding edge technology. The dangers of the alternative, a kind of stagnant capitalism based on cheap super abundant labour unable to fight back, is quite terrifying. We've seen how capitalism does have a drive to advance technology, but one that may be undercut by its dependence on wages labour. Waged labour has not been the passive tool of capital, but an active and essential participant in driving capitalism onwards. I'd suggest that we as workers cannot sit by and hope that a magic bullet will solve our social problems, and our active organisation remains essential to attaining socialism.

Thus, I'd like to finally touch on an old debate we once had at conference - the question was whether socialism was possible in 1904. The arguments tonight may make it sound like it was not so, that we're still waiting for the robotic productive forces that will make it possible; I would argue, though, that productive forces encompases more than technological capacity, and includes the organisational and mental capacities required for a given form of society. The friction between capital and labour was a source of technological innovation, that friction was a productive force. As I said just before, socialism will free up labour, irrespective of technological capacity, to use whatever technological powers are available. Socialism is not a byproduct of technology but of social consciousness.

Thank you.

Bill Martin
Notes:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/robotics-software/economics-of-the-singularity

http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/members/robert.allen/Presentations/leyden-2.pdf

http://www.doktorsleepless.com/index.php/Singularity

Are you a human or a robot?

This evening there will be a talk and discussion about social revolution and technological change. The venue is our Head Office at 52 Clapham High Street, London. Below you can read a not unrelated essay, taken from a collection of 40 titled A WORLD TORN APART.

Do you too get annoyed at unsolicited and unwelcome calls from telemarketers? Not only do they call at the most inconvenient moments. They always start with a tedious verification of your identity, so it takes a while before you’re sure what kind of call it is.

Unless, that is, you interrupt and ask: “Excuse me, are you an advertisement?” If you’re from Britain they probably won’t understand the question because you’ve forgotten to stress the third syllable instead of the second. But even if they do understand you won’t get a straight answer. They are following a prepared script that doesn’t make provision for impertinent interruptions.

Anyway, by this time you know it isn’t a long-lost friend or relative trying to trace you. The easiest thing is to hang up. That’s what I did – usually.

Unless I happened to be in an especially irritable mood. Then I would tell the hapless telemarketer off for invading my privacy, demand an immediate apology, and urge him or her to stop bothering people. I might even inquire: “Are you a human or a robot?” Reactions varied. The most common one was to terminate the call. Sometimes the caller would turn nasty. Once the poor woman at the other end was clearly upset.

That stopped me short. I really didn’t want to upset or antagonize anyone. After all, they were only members of the working class trying to earn a living by selling their labor power – their talking power in this case. They were not robots, but neither were they allowed to be fully human. They were robotized, alienated human beings. One man said: “I’m doing my job. If you can get me another job I’ll give it up.” I reflected that it was largely a matter of luck that I wasn’t in the same plight myself.

Since then I’ve tried not to be too rude to telemarketers. On occasions I’ve been quite nice. But that too is problematic. You see, even when I’m trying to be nice I can’t bring myself to stick to the script. Once I made a joke about the spiel. The talk-seller laughed and responded in kind. That was pleasant for us both, but if a monitor had been listening in she would have got into trouble for abandoning the script. And it would have been my fault.

I decided that I did, after all, want to complain. But I would direct my complaint higher up. I would call the company CEO or, failing that, the marketing director. At home. At 3 a.m.

But I got no further than the telemarketer’s immediate supervisor, who adamantly refused to put me in touch with anyone above her. Those responsible for bothering so many people make damn sure they don’t get bothered themselves – cowardly hypocrites that they are!

Well, here’s my new line. “I don’t like getting your call, but rest assured I understand your position. You don’t really want to bother strangers all day and endlessly repeat this crap, but you can’t find a better way of earning a living. I really sympathize.”

I wonder what response that will get. An eloquent silence, I expect. They have to stick to the script.

And yet what a futile waste all this advertising is – not only of material resources, but of human time, energy, talent, nerves and good feeling! All those thousands of people employed as robots and robot-controllers to do nothing better than pester and manipulate millions of other people into buying things they don’t want or need. Just one part of the waste constantly generated by the money system.

capitalism's justice

The Sunday Herald runs this story :-
Shortly after midnight on December 3, 1984, a cloud of poisonous gas escaped from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the city. It has been dubbed the "Hiroshima of the chemical industry". Investigations into the 1984 disaster revealed that something had gone fundamentally wrong with a tank that stored methyl isocyanate. During the early hours of December 3, large amounts of water entered tank 610, containing the highly toxic chemical. The resulting reaction increased the temperature inside the tank to more than 200C, raising the pressure to a level it was not designed to withstand and eventually releasing a large volume of toxic gases.
The accidental release of 42 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) from the factory exposed more than 500,000 people to toxic gases and up to 10,000 inhabitants are thought to have died within the first 72 hours after the leak. At least 25,000 people exposed to the gas have since died, and today in Bhopal tens of thousands more Indians suffer from a variety of debilitating gas-related illnesses such as respiratory and psychiatric problems, joint pains, menstrual irregularities, tuberculosis and cancers. More disturbingly, the escalating number of birth defects in children include cleft palates, webbed feet and hands, twisted limbs, brain damage and heart problems.

In 1999, a Greenpeace investigation found severe chemical contamination of the environment surrounding the former Union Carbide factory, including pollution with heavy metals and chemical compounds. Amnesty International's 2004 Clouds Of Injustice report said: "Toxic wastes continue to pollute the environment and water supply and it is appalling that no-one has been held account for the leak and its appalling consequences."
The Supreme Court of India in May 2004 ordered that clean, safe water be piped into the communities, but to date the state government has ignored this order. Researcher Santosh Kshatria said 22 different communities near the factory site were believed to be drinking from a contaminated water supply. "So far I have surveyed 5000 people and found more than 200 cases of children with congenital defects. Many have twisted limbs and many have mental health issues."
Lead, mercury and organochlorines have been found in the milk of nursing mothers living near the factory with the result that women are terrified to breastfeed their babies in case they are giving them poison.

In 1991, however, Bhopal's authorities charged Union Carbide's chief executive, Warren Andersen, with manslaughter. To date the retired American has avoided an international arrest warrant and a US court summons. Andersen was declared a fugitive from justice by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal in 1992 for failing to appear at court. Although orders were passed to the Indian government to press for his extradition from America ministers have not pushed the case, fearing a backlash from foreign investors.

Back in December 1999 , the Socialist Standard remembered the tragedy of Bhopal and said :-
"The story of Bhopal is not a story of a wicked cabal of corporates viciously conspiring against the people of India, but, rather, a story of the Mad-Blind Machine God of the market crushing all in its heedless path. All along the way, profits and property were put before the needs of people. Humans were subordinated to the drives of the commerce. 8,000 were slaughtered and quickly forgotten, and capitalists were given a green light to exploit the artificial divisions of national boundaries to escape any form of responsibility for their actions."

Don't recyle capitalism - Bin it

The global economic crisis can be an opportunity for positive social change, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said

"This economic crisis suddenly awakens us to the fact that this system is not working. When the system is not working that is the best time to undo it and redo it in a new way," he said. "The financial crisis on top of the food crisis, the energy crisis, the environment crisis, the social crisis — all these are combined. Isn't it time to wake up and redo things?"

Yunus focussed on how wealth can be generated and poverty eradicated through more socially conscious investment. He said social businesses — like his bank and other companies he has created — can be used to bring health care to the sick, safe drinking water to villages and nutrition to poor children. "Whenever I see a problem, I immediately go and create a company," he said

It has been pointed out that Grameen banks could not survive without subsidies from aid donors otherwise the interest rates they would have to charge would be prohibitive . And where do these subsidies come from ? From the sum of global profit created by the collective working class of the world and placed at the disposal of of the collective capitalist class of the world. In the 1980s and '90s, the bank received nearly $150 million in grants. Meanwhile, George Soros has given some $12 million plus to all sorts of Grameen spin-offs, including gifts to expand "banking" in other countries , and , of course , the other well known philanthropists Bill Gates has donated money .

At the same time, Yunus and Grameen started borrowing at low interest rates from governments around the world, and lending out the same money at higher rates. His institution keeps the difference. Without these subsidies , Yunus and his Grameen bank scheme would collapse through the intrinsic logic of capitalism - concentration and centralisation .

At the cost of the poor a large number of NGOs have benefited; banks have found a convenient route to increase lendings; and corporations have got a growing consumer market to target. The myth that micro-credit will empower women or enable poverty alleviation has been propagated by international agencies to draw people into a market economy based on cash or credit. It is also a ‘win-win’ scheme promoted by a State that is increasingly withdrawing from its development and welfare responsibilities. The micro-credit approach implies that it is people’s own responsibility to lift themselves out of poverty – an impossible goal

The Women's Micro-credit Accountability Network (WOMAN) writes that “the cumulative effect of rising costs, declining demand, and competition from both cheap imports and increased entrants into the sector leads to shrinking profits in informal-sector trade”. In other words, the initial success of micro-enterprises can lead to subsequent over-competition problems, especially when international trade liberalisation is factored into the equation. A few micro-entrepreneurs in a given area may be able to turn a profit. A large number cannot.

In other words , recycled capitalism !!

Let's simply BIN capitalism , not re-do it

IRAQ: More cracks appear

As the “alliance of the willing” prepares to withdraw from its six year military occupations of Iraq concerns remain regarding the stability of the state they leave behind. Cracks are again appearing in the shaky political amalgam of Iraq’s various Kurdish, Arab and Turkoman ethnic groups.

In the country’s northern “Kurdistan” claims are being made to a range of disputed areas considered by some to be part of the historical Kurdish homeland. All this comes against a backdrop of already high ethnic tensions and desperate U.S. attempts to stabilise Iraq as it prepares for a gradual withdrawal.

Kurdish parliamentarians in the northern city of Irbil have proclaimed several key areas such as oil-rich Kirkuk, Khanaqin and districts around Mosul part of the "historical-geographical entity of Iraqi Kurdistan". This has caused outrage among other political factions in Iraq. Arab members of the Kirkuk provincial council called on national authorities and the "Iraqi people" to "intervene seriously so that everyone knows Kirkuk is a national Iraqi issue and no one can decide on it on their own for their political gains."

According to an Inter Press Service report: “Under former President Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi government expelled large numbers of Kurds and Turkomans from those areas in what is commonly referred to as "Arabisation". The strategic goal was to tilt the demographic balance in favour of the country’s Arab majority in those areas rich with natural resources like oil and gas…… there are deep differences between the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdish government over their respective powers on oil exploration and foreign policy, as well as territory.”

Here we see the makings of another civil war over the world’s natural resources. Shorn of the oil rich northern region the rest of Iraq will find it very difficult to rebuild a war shattered economy and infrastructure anything like as quickly as it might otherwise do. As a result Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken a tough stance toward what he and many in Baghdad see as dangerous Kurdish expansionism. While his Shia-led government has uneasy relations with Sunni Arabs, Maliki is said to be indulging in a classic back the minority move by propping up Sunni Arabs in the north in their disputes with Kurds.

Although officially part of Iraq, the Kurdish government signs oil deals with international firms, establishes diplomatic relations with foreign countries, controls a 100,000 strong army and has forces in all disputed areas.

The war aims of the withdrawing allies – assured access to oil supplies from a politically stable region – may yet not come to fruition.

GT

Blue-blood socialist?

Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned an audience of industrialists and environmentalists at St James's Palace

A SPGB membership application A form will be shortly despatched to Prince Charles

Ooops , perhaps too prematurely , it appears .

Charles said that without "coherent financial incentives and disincentives" we have just 96 months to avert "irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it."

Ah , our monarch in waiting is still mentally bound by the capitalist ideology in seeking within the capitalist system solutions to problems that are inherent to capitalism .

Production today is in the hands of business enterprises, all competing to sell their products at a profit. All of them aim to maximise their profits. This is 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 jungle economics that prevails today. Under the competitive pressures of the market businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interest, ignoring wider social or ecological considerations. All they look to is their own balance sheet and in particular the bottom line which shows whether or not they are making a profit.The whole of production, from the materials used to the methods employed to transform them, is distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by uncontrollable market forces which compel decision-makers, however selected and whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder, pollute and waste. Governments do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They can only act within the narrow limits imposed by the profit-driven market system whose rules are “profits first” and “you can’t buck the market”.

Prince Charles is not against the market and is not against profit-making. He imagines that, by firm government action, these can be tamed and prevented from harming the environment. This is an illusion. You can’t impose other priorities on the profit system other than making profits. That’s why our heir to the throne's pleas will fail.

If the environmental crisis is to be solved, the system must go. What is required is action, yes, but political action aimed at replacing this system by a new and different one which will allow us to meet our needs in an environmentally-friendly way. To do this we must control production—the way we interact with the rest of nature .That’s 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 already caused by the profit system.

What Charles should be struggling for is not a change in what he considers the short-comings of capitalism , but a change of society - the abolition of capitalism .

Here Come the Robots.

Sunday, 12 July 6.00pm

Title is "Here come the Robots? Speaker: Bill Martin. Chair:
Jacqueline Shodeke

"Is the Socialist Party wrong? Is a social revolution actually
unnecessary? Does the increasing pace of technological advancement
mean that capitalism will abolish itself? Exploring the theme of the
technological singularity in the light of Marx's version of the Labour
Theory of Value, Bill Martin will discuss what rapid changes in
technology in the coming years may do to the class struggle."

To Remember

A £1m permanent memorial to the victims of the 7 July 2005 London bombings is to be unveiled in the city's Hyde Park. Fifty-two people were killed and hundreds more injured when suicide bombers detonated backpacks on board three Underground trains and a bus.

What we said and also here and here too

An extract

"It’s a tragic irony of humanity that the statues and memorials for military murderers are almost invariably bigger, better and more splendid than others. Battles – like Trafalgar – are commemorated, whereas anniversaries on the first use of anaesthetic would pass us by unmarked except by ultra-enthusiasts. The glorification of those who die in battle is a near constant of any military society. London is disfigured with a war memorial dedicated ‘To the glorious dead’ – as if there was ever anything glorious about a nineteen-year old boy hanging on the barbed wire. To die nobly is often rewarded with a Victoria Cross. Dying in action is always referred to as sacrifice, a gift from the soldier to the community. The actions, then, of the four young men, three of them from Leeds, in callously slaughtering over fifty fellow humans, are not so alien as some would think at first. Shehad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain, Mohammed Sadiq Khan, from Leeds, were all described by their stunned friends and relatives, as perfectly ordinary, nice and polite young men. Not bug-eyed ranting fanatics.

Religion is the heart’s cry of the oppressed, soul of a soulless world, it inspires utopian and thus reactionary politics. It cannot be stopped by suppression, harassment, the silencing of radical preachers – that would only aid and abet the feeling of persecution. It must be defeated by reason, by practical action to demonstrate that there are prospects for taking control of their own lives. This means an open movement desperately needs to be built to create a real prospect of change, not just in the UK but in the world. We cannot rely on military force, or the state, the great and the good bullying moderate Muslims to speak out, it needs to come from the massed ranks of workers, set on using their creative industry to take real control of the world around us. An end to oppression, and an end to ambitious elites using human corpses as stepping stones to wealth and power.

Scapegoating

There is no evidence that new arrivals in the UK are able to jump council housing queues, an Equality and Human Rights Commission report says. The prime minister told MPs he wants to allow councils in England to give additional preference to locals over migrant workers , pandering to prejudice .

After five years, when many immigrants are able to get residency and become entitled to government help, one in six live in social housing - exactly the same proportion as those who were born in Britain. 64% of people who arrived in the UK within the last five years live in private rented accommodation.

EHRC chairman Trevor Phillips blamed a "failure of social housing supply" for concerns that migrants jumped queues. "Much of the public concern about the impact of migration on social housing has, at its heart, the failure of social housing supply to meet the demands of the population. The poorer the area, the longer the waiting lists, therefore the greater the tension."

Mr Phillips said the government and social housing providers needed to work together to address the issues that resulted in perceptions about immigrants benefitting unfairly.

Ruth Davison, director of the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, said just 4% of housing association properties were let to non-UK residents last year.

But we know that it is easier to find sections of the population to blame for the problems of capitalism than in solving them . Labour and the rest have a long history of seeking out scapegoats for the faults of the system and their own incapability of redressing them . The Labour Party wants to harvest all votes they can, come what may but you don't win friends and supporters by disagreeing with people and likewise you don't change their minds by agreeing with them. When capitalism fails to deliver, when despondency and shattered hopes arise from the stench of the failed promises and expectations that litter the political landscape, is it any wonder that workers fall for the scapegoating lies . It's a matter of record that those who are in possession of little are easily frightened by the threat of some other coming to take it away – hence all the medieval tales of færies and witches and gypsies trying to steal children from impoverished peasants. The appearance of homes going to these “foreigners” whilst their “own” go without reinforces the illusion that migration causes the housing . However, a government so minded could choose to argue against these illusions, and pour resources into propaganda to that end [ which EHRC demand ]. That they choose not to indicates another reason – that governments rely upon apparent homogeneity of culture and population to secure support for their actions and policies. How else, otherwise, to spread the message that “we are all in this together” if the “we” cannot communicate in the same language, with the same set of meanings and values? The growth of capitalism has occurred alongside the growth of the culturally homogenous state – usually through forced population migrations – wherein the owners and rulers of a land could pretend to some sort of common identity with the ruled. So far as socialists are concerned, this attempt to try and make a common appearance of an interest with our exploiters is like a burglar playing on their support for the same football team as their victim. It does not change the relationship one iota. We see the harm that is done by national boundaries, that prevent workers from moving to be with whom they want to be with; prevent them from sharing their skills and their knowledge as they see fit; prevent them from seeing their common cause.

The problems we face , such as inadequate housing, are not caused by workers from other parts of the world migrating to this part, but by the capitalist system of class ownership and production for profit instead of the common ownership and production geared to satisfying people's needs which will be the case in socialism. We understand that the thing which makes workers leave behind their communities, and go to a place where their language is not spoken, is the wages system itself . This underlies the need for us to recognise our identical position with regards to the wages system, and work together, as workers across the world, across boundaries, to create a commonly owned planet where all can live in security and all live in decent homes .