CAPITALISM IN INDIA (ZOOM)
Speaker: Andy Thomas
To connect to a Zoom meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305
Friday, March 21, 2025
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Overseas non-development
‘Why are western governments suddenly slashing overseas aid budgets? Partly because it plays well with right-wing voters, who are told it’s all spent on things like transgender mouse research. Partly, in Europe, because states are scrambling to find money for armaments now that Trump seems to be pulling the plug on NATO.
It’s an open secret in aid circles that overseas development aid can very often result in ‘an inverse correlation between aid and per capita growth‘, ie, the more aid a country gets, the poorer the people become.
So much for capitalism’s ‘noble’ aspiration to abolish poverty. Most aid is not for that anyway, but for self-serving reasons. Abolish capitalism however, and there’d be no poverty.’
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Socialist Sonnet No. 186
Not Peace
There are
ceasefires and rumours of ceasefires:
Behind the
scenes diplomacy takes place,
With
everyone desperate to save face,
Even as
another deadline expires.
Arms
industry profits continue to soar,
While the
attrition rate’s unforgiving,
As also the rising
cost of living
For the many
dispossessed, who’re still poor.
And it’s the
self-same poor’s sons and daughters
Who’ll make
the munitions and build the tanks,
As well as
being recruited to the ranks,
Then
dispatched to the various slaughters.
Meanwhile,
grandiose leaders strut around
On what they
claim as their moral high ground.
D. A.
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Ein Volk-swagen
Do you own, have owned, a BMW, a Mercedes, or a Volkswagen?
If the answer is yes does that mean that you support the NSDAP, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ?
Of course not, stupid question, right?
Volkswagen, or the peoples car, was the 'brainchild' of Adolf Hitler and Ferdinand Porsche. In 1934 Hitler decreed that production should begin of the original 'beetle'.
During World War Two all of the three German vehicle manufacturers were involved in producing war materials and slave labour was employed by them.
Karl Marx said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
History is again on the verge of repeating itself – tragic or farcical?
In a capitalist system Volkswagen will have no problem in offering up justification for their resorting back to war production. Well, you know we've got to increase our declining profits, then there's the shareholders, and our executives bonuses of course.
How would German car workers feel about making tanks or guns or whatever would be used to kill other workers with who they have no quarrel?
Note that in the article below the EU move toward a war economy has sent the share prices of arms manufacturers soaring.
Capitalism was long ago on the wrong side of history, how much longer before the working class majority which runs it, and supports it, says enough is enough?
'Struggling German auto maker, Volkswagen, is open to producing weapons and military equipment, CEO Oliver Blume has said. He made the remarks in response to a recent EU announcement of a plan to spend up to $870 billion on its defence sector.
The automotive giant posted declining sales and profits last year and was forced announce plant closures and mass layoffs in Germany for the first time.
Germany’s was the worst-performing major economy globally in 2023 posting a 0.3% contraction, followed by minimal growth in 2024 leading to recession. The economic crisis is partly due to the loss of affordable Russian energy following Ukraine-related sanctions.
Speaking to German state broadcaster NDR Blume announced that the carmaker was closely examining the needs of the defence industry.
All options are on the table, he said, including repurposing some factories from civilian to military production. “We are fundamentally open to such topics,” Blume claimed.
The idea has been supported by Germany’s largest arms manufacturer Rheinmetall. Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger said on Wednesday that the VW facility in Osnabrueck would be a good fit for a conversion.
VW previously produced military vehicles for the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany, during World War II, including lightweight transporter Kübelwagen and amphibious four-wheel-drive vehicle Schwimmwagen.
A VW plant was involved in manufacturing components for the V-1 flying bomb, a type of early cruise missile used to devastating effect by the Nazis.
The EU intensified its efforts to militarize after US President Donald Trump repeatedly criticized European NATO members for failing to meet the bloc’s defence spending commitments.
In response Brussels announced a large militarization initiative proposed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Dubbed ReArm Europe, the plan could divert €800 billion ($870 billion) into the defence sector over the next four years. While the announcement sent share prices of Europe’s largest weapons producers soaring, the plan has been rejected by Dutch lawmakers, citing fiscal concerns.'
Monday, March 17, 2025
Capitalism health warning.
The MailOnline carried a piece titled, ‘Death of the work ethic: With Labour at war over benefits cuts, ONE IN FOUR young people consider quitting workforce entirely.’
‘... one in ten workers is said to be actively considering leaving the workforce, equivalent to 4.4million Britons. This rises to a quarter of 18 to 24-year-olds, who are 40 per cent more likely than older generations to give poor mental health as a reason for quitting work.
A third of those classed as 'economically inactive' are 'not interested' in returning to jobs – with 37 per cent saying low 'self-esteem and confidence' acts as a barrier, a report from accounting firm PwC reveals. It concludes that considering leaving work has 'gone mainstream'.
The nub of the piece is the Labour government’s intention to cut welfare payments.’
As the Socialist Standard article below makes explicit, ‘Governments are elected to run capitalism. They don’t like paying "benefit" to people who could be employed turning capital investment into profit. Men and women who receive "benefit” (whether unemployment, sickness, invalidity, or whatever) are a drain on the profit system.’
Knowledge of socialism would reinforce their desire not to be burdened by useless unnecessary work that benefits only the capitalist class and not the wider society.
For involvement in the production of quality services and goods for free use and access by all they, like everyone, needs socialism. Not a guarantee but we are willing to lay a serious bet that the happiness engendered by doing so would see personal satisfaction from living in a socialist society would increase dramatically.
From the Socialist Standard October 1997.
‘Governments
are elected to run capitalism. They don’t like paying "benefit"
to people who could be employed turning capital investment into
profit. Men and women who receive "benefit” (whether
unemployment, sickness, invalidity, or whatever) are a drain on the
profit system. Never mind that the owners of the means of wealth
production are themselves a drain on the rest of us who do all the
world's useful work.
To save money for the taxpayer the previous government introduced a test to weed out what it called benefit cheats. According to an unpublished report quoted in the Big Issue (2-8 June), 198,500 out of 785,000 people examined were denied benefit between April 1995 and September 1996. Many claimants failed the “all work" test.
In capitalism there are three kinds of work, only one of which will be needed in socialism. First there is work that is harmful to those who do it or against whom it is done. Second there is work that is "useful" to the profit system but useless in any human need sense. And third there is work that has a purpose, whose result does meet some human need.
There are, unfortunately, plenty of examples today of the first kind of work. There is the legally authorised killing and injuring of "the enemy" by members of the armed forces and the whole paraphernalia of occupations and "enterprises" which have violence as their end product or reason for existence: the arms manufacturers, the arms dealers, the plotters and planners, the spies and counter-spies, the propagandists, the war correspondents, and so on. Apart from a few psychopaths drawn to such destructive occupations, the people involved are mostly ordinary, respectable citizens, honest, law-abiding, kind to children and animals. It is the profit system, organised within potentially if not actually hostile nation-states, that requires such work to be done.
Besides work that is harmful to others, there is work that causes harm to those who engage in it. Coal-mining is a greatly reduced industry in Britain, but many miners in other countries still have to risk their lives and their health in dangerous working environments. Ironically, some work undertaken by members of the ruling class can be harmful to them if indulged in excessively. The Evening Standard (25 June) reported that the Duke of Westminster, with his estimate £1.65 billion mega-fortune, had been ordered by his doctors to take three months off from "running his business affairs and his work for 160 charities". Of course the big difference between the Duke and the millions of real workers is that they have to find an employer or rely on state charity, whereas he can choose whether or not to work shuffling money around.
The third kind of work is that which is really useful, producing goods or services which people actually need: producing and distributing food, making clothes and furniture, building and repairing homes, schools and hospitals, teaching, healing the sick, and so on. It is difficult to estimate what proportion of all employment in capitalism is useful—work that would still be done in a socialist world. A generous estimate would be half, but the true figure may be 20 percent or less. In our pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative we discuss how we can eliminate the waste of capitalism and choose productive methods appropriate to socialism.
People who have to do harmful or useless work for a living are encouraged to believe that they have no choice in the "real world", dominated by the system that is endorsed by the voters at periodic elections. A first step towards socialism is to stop believing that this capitalist “real world" is inevitable. It’s a good idea to make the best of any job you have to work at, whether its end-product or service is worthy or worthless. But it's not a good idea to pretend that a "nothing" job—doing it only in the service of capital—is any better than it is.
Some years ago— 1968 to be precise— Ronald Fraser edited a book on Work: Twenty Personal Accounts. The accounts make fascinating reading, many of them offering a powerful indictment of the waste of life involved in capitalist employment. Take the night-watchman, for example. He describes his job as "guarding the sleep of capital". Producing nothing, this labour exists to make nothing happen, its aim is emptiness. The night-watchman has the sensation of being turned into an object, a labouring material thing. Demanding no part of himself, the job in fact demands everything, on the lowest possible level.
Studs Terkel, an American writer, is best known for his book on Working, subtitled "people talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do". Listen to the automobile salesman: "The public thinks the automobile salesman is a rat. Some of the customers arc the real animals . . . They don’t have to be animals. It's the whole system that makes 'em animals".
The productive potential of modern industry is immense, and so is its potentiality for human liberation. In a rationally and humanly organised socialist world it could be used not only to meet basic and imaginative human needs but also to create more humane and satisfying conditions of work.
Capitalist employment offers much work that is at best useless and time-wasting and at worst harmful and destructive. The profit system treats the working abilities of men and women as commodities useful only to create marketable goods and services. It pays for workers’ skills, but everything also they are or have or want is subordinated to their "efficient” employment. It wastes them in unemployment—when no profit can be seen from employing them—and it wastes them in much of what they have to do only in the service of capital.
There is. however, an alternative. Today we have to be employed or unemployed, but tomorrow—or at least as soon as we can dissuade our fellow workers from continuing to support capitalism—we can have truly human work. As Ray Pahl put it in his book On Work: "the value system that encourages competition or greed at the expense of collaboration and altruism may not ultimately succeed”.[
Stan Parker
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-work-test-1997.html
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Capitalism crumbling?
Two American economists discuss whether capitalism is crumbling
Their idea as to what socialism really is is erroneous but they they do make some interesting points. Twenty six minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3qLvgyRSKc
Friday, March 14, 2025
Marx, God and the Devil (Humour)
'When
Karl Marx arrived at the Pearly Gates, St Peter had a problem: Marx
was listed in the Big Book. St Peter gave God a quick call to explain
that Marx had turned up and what he should do about it.
”Marx!”
said God “How did he get
on the list. He’s been bad-mouthing me for years. 'Opium of the
masses’ indeed! Give Old Nick down below a call and see if he’ll
take him, he owes me a favour or two.”
St
Peter dutifully rang Satan. ”Yeah, go on, we’ll take him.”
replied Satan ”Don't know how he didn’t get sent here in the
first place given all the trouble he’s caused.”
So
Marx was sent to Hell.
Two
weeks later, Satan rang God. ”See that Marx, its really not working
out. All the demons are out on strike, there’s protests and
demonstrations everyday with Marx keep urging people to cast off
their chains. He’s causing absolute chaos. He was on your list so
you need to take him back.”
Eventually
God reluctantly agreed that Marx could be admitted to Heaven after
all.
After
a couple of weeks went by and Satan rang God to see whether
everything was working out, but an angel answered the phone. “Hey,
Gabriel”, said Satan “can I speak to your boss?”
”Boss?”
said the angel
”Yeah,
you know, God” said Satan, impatiently
“Oh,
him! Ah, no, not any more”, replied Gabriel “No bosses here,
we’re all comrades now!”'
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