Friday 19 April 19.30
QUESTIONING NATIONALISM (Zoom)
National identity is a nebulous concept that’s almost impervious to rational argument. For example, questioning Israeli nationalism triggers an automatic accusation of anti-semitism, closing the argument down. Nationalisms in the UK are seemingly more benign, but are they?
Speaker: Dave Alton
To connect to a meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305
This old guff has been churned out again recently, this time on behalf of the president of the EU Council (press release, 19 March).
But peace can never be guaranteed as long as the world’s productive resources remain in the hands of the capitalist minority. Because the factions within that minority will always be forced to vie for control of resources, markets and trade routes. And when it comes to it, out will come the weapons.
No point wishing things were otherwise. It’s the rule of their deadly game, a game prepared well in advance by their nationalist poison.
So if you want peace, you must prepare for socialism.
Clerical Errors
Clerical
men, lest God be offended
By a young
woman’s misplaced scarf, allowed
Her beating
to death. Repeatedly vowed
Righteous
destruction will not be blunted,
But visited
on the chosen people
Of the very
same God, who in their turn
Have striven
hard to dispossess and burn
Their
Abrahamic neighbours. They cripple
Their people’s
thinking with holy fallacies,
Flags and
lines drawn on maps. While, without qualms,
Nominal
Christendom supplies the arms,
With
political consciences at ease.
By and for
benefit of humankind,
A very
different world must be divined.
D. A.
The MailOnline, 16 April, reported that a National Conservatism meeting in Belgium featuring Nigel Farage, former leader of UKIP and the Brexit Party (Reform UK) and a former Tory Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, was ‘thrown into jeopardy following an order issued by Emir Kir, the mayor of Brussels district Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. He said he was banning the event from taking place in the Belgian capital 'to guarantee public safety'.’
An article commentator makes the interesting point that the obscure conference is now on main stream and social media everywhere.
It also gave Nigel Farage the opportunity to rage that, 'We are up against a new form of communism.' Read this Blog post Nigel and see that we disagree strongly with any attempts to prevent you putting across your pro-capitalism perspective but please don’t make such idiotic statements like that one.
In November 1977 the Socialist Standard laid out the consequences of banning individuals and organisations with whom the ‘authorities’ disagreed.
‘A ban on all public meetings and processions was imposed by the Greater Manchester Council in August. Other local authorities have considered such a measure and announced that their halls shall not be let to the National Front and “extreme left-wing” organizations. This reaction to the violent disturbances at Lewisham and Birmingham in August was not unexpected. The councils say they have a responsibility for public order and the protection of property, which take precedence over legal rights of speech and assembly. The ordinary apolitical citizen agrees, on the reasonable grounds that he doesn’t want to have his windows broken or be exposed to danger through rioting.
All right: grant the validity of that. What about “free speech”? The Manchester ban is on everyone, and the Salvation Army and the Scouts have complained that it is unfair to them. (Should the ban last several months, it will be interesting to see if it is applied to the annual Catholic procession in Manchester.) In London, local restrictions and authorities’ reactions have already obstructed the holding of socialist meetings. The position now is that the elbow-room to argue a case in public has seriously diminished.
This is precisely what socialists forecast as an outcome of efforts at “confrontation” by the Socialist Workers’ Party and other groups. In pursuing a policy of violent attack on the National Front meetings and demonstrations, and thereby opposing the law, they put existing facilities at risk. It is a lesson which advocates of violence for political purposes refuse to learn. Eugene Debs was once quoted as saying that when a policeman’s club struck a demonstrating worker’s head, if the worker listened carefully he would hear the echo of the vote he cast at the last election. More correctly stated, what should be heard is that the state has superior force to support legislation: confrontation cannot win.’
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/05/free-speech-official-cuts-1977.htm
The view taken by The Socialist Party, and to which it still adheres today, a view that free speech for all is the only one which is acceptable is still a contentious one forty five years after the following appeared.
From an Editorial in the Socialist Standard of January 1979
‘The Socialist Party of Great Britain is wholeheartedly in favour of the fullest freedom of speech. This is because we hold that out of full and free discussion of today’s social problems only one valid conclusion can emerge: that Socialism alone will provide the framework within which they can be solved.
Full free speech means exactly what it says: any and every view should be allowed expression so that it can be examined and shown to be wrong. One of the more obnoxious views current these days is racialism, the idea that some human beings are inferior to others and ought to be treated as such.
Many well-meaning people, appalled at the growing support for the National Front and determined that a racialist party should never again be permitted to gain political power anywhere, have been prepared to listen sympathetically to those who call for the NF and its views to be banned. This is an understandable gut reaction but a little dispassionate reflection will show it to be wrong.
Would banning the NF lead to a diminution in racialist sentiments and ideas? Indeed, have the various Race Relations Acts banning the expression of racialist ideas in their cruder forms led to this? The anti-racialist legislation on the statute book has only led to racialists being more careful about the words they use. Ideas cannot be suppressed by legislation.
The real problem is why do certain sections of the working class hold racialist views and how can they be got to abandon them. It is fairly clear why certain workers entertain anti-black prejudices. Suffering from bad housing, poor hospital services, poor schools, etc., and having seen an immigration of black people into their areas they mistakenly link the two together to conclude that it is the coming of black immigrants that is the cause of their problems.
The various racialist Immigration Acts which have been passed by both Conservative and Labour governments to keep black people out have done much to give respectability to the view that immigration rather than capitalism is the cause of today’s social problems.
So workers with racialist ideas are workers who, in their search for an explanation of and solution to their problems, have reached a mistaken conclusion. How can they be convinced that they are wrong? If they can’t be convinced by legislation they can be convinced even less by the tactic of the Socialist Workers Party and others of insulting and even physically assaulting them. The only way is to try to demonstrate to them that their conclusions are wrong.
This is the approach the Socialist Party has always adopted and why, rather than physically fighting with the British Union of Fascists, the Union Movement or the NF, we have exposed their dangerous racialist nonsense before an audience of interested workers.
People who deny the validity of our tactic of combating racialism in calm, open argument are in effect denying that workers are capable of being convinced rationally of the error of racialism. Many of these people have been influenced by Lenin and his contemptuous claim that left to themselves the working class is capable of evolving only a trade union consciousness. They believe that the working class is only fit to be led, in one direction or another, by some minority or other, and so need protection from those who like the NF seek to “mislead” them.
The ultimate basis of all arguments for censorship (and the call for the NF to be prevented from expressing its views is a call for censorship) is such an assumption that people are too stupid or irresponsible or immature to make up their own minds and that some superior body must therefore decide for them. For the SWP and others this superior body is themselves—the self-appointed vanguard of the working class. If they ever came to power the application of this claim to decide what the working class shall and shall not hear would mean the end of free speech for workers just as it did in Lenin and Trotsky’s Russia.’
Mere anti-racialist propaganda on its own, unlinked to propaganda for socialism, can’t be effective. It offers no solution to the problems and frustrations which drive some workers to embrace racialism. It leaves unchallenged the cause (capitalism) while trying to deal with the effect (racialism).
The only effective way to combat racialism, then, is to propagate socialism.’
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/02/on-banning-national-front-1979.html
SOYMB, 6 April, posted American Capitalism cries unfair to Chinese Capitalism.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2024/04/american-capitalism-cries-unfair-to.html
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Taken from the book of fairy stories, Ecclesiastes 1:9, but an appropriate quote under the circumstances.
American airlines capitalists are bemoaning the fact that because Chinese airline capitalists can route flights through Russian airspace they will increase their profits at the expense of American ones.
American capitalism is arguably one of the proponents of the most naked capitalism in a capitalist world begging the Executive which runs American capitalism on their behalf, to stop the Chinese from making further inroads into US airline profits. Boo, bwah, it’s so unfair they cry stamping their little feet. Global capitalism is an unfair social system where its beneficiaries will take every opportunity it can to get one over on its competitors. Their appeal to protect US aviation workers is one oozing crocodile tears as American capitalism will take every opportunity available to exploit the American producing working class at every chance it can.
‘US airlines have tried to fend off increased competition from Chinese rivals by appealing to the administration of President Joe Biden for help, arguing that Beijing has given its carriers unfair advantages through “anti-competitive” policies and by routing flights through Russian airspace.
Trade groups for the airlines and their employee unions have urged the Biden administration to halt approvals of additional flights to the US from China. Beijing halted inbound flights from overseas during the Covid-19 pandemic and imposed new requirements that continue to affect US carriers.
The Chinese government also provides “certain protections” to the country’s airlines, the US airline groups said on Thursday in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. “These actions demonstrated the clear need for the US government to establish a policy that protects US aviation workers, industry and air travellers.”
Air traffic between the countries remains far below pre-pandemic levels, even after the Biden administration increased the number of round trips that Chinese airlines can fly each week to 50 from 35, effective at the end of March. US carriers were given the same number of flights to and from China, but they are reportedly using only part of that approved capacity.
“If the growth of the Chinese aviation market is allowed to continue unchecked and without concern for equality of access in the market, flights will continue to be relinquished to Chinese carriers at the expense of US workers and businesses,” the airline groups said in their letter.
Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed during a summit last November in San Francisco to increase the number of direct flights between the countries, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. Boosting air traffic “will help the two peoples strengthen exchanges and enhance mutual understanding.”
The US carriers argued that their Chinese rivals have gained an “artificial” competitive advantage by continuing to fly through Russian airspace, which gives them shorter routes. US airlines stopped using Russian airspace after the Ukraine crisis escalated in February 2022.
An anti-China committee formed by the US House of Representatives also has urged Biden to stop giving Chinese airlines more flights. Like US airlines, the lawmakers lamented China’s Russia advantage in a letter to Blinken and Buttigieg this week.
Any approvals of new routes should require Chinese carriers to steer clear of Russia, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (sic) said in its letter. “US citizens travelling between the US and China should not unknowingly be subject to the risks associated with traveling through Russian airspace, and this practice should end,” the lawmakers argued.'
‘A textile factory in the western Turkish city of İzmir. Turkey is one of the world’s top garment and textile producers, with factories in its south-east amongst those supplying to major European and US brands. But workers in that region were largely left to fend for themselves after devastating February 2023 earthquakes and experienced the widespread violation of their rights, according to a new Clean Clothes Campaign report.’
'Turkey is one of the world’s top countries for garment and textile production, with US$16.2 billion in exports in 2021, according to a Turkish Ministry of Trade report cited in the Clean Clothes Campaign report, mostly to countries in the European Union and the United States. Suppliers in the earthquake-hit provinces played a significant role in the sector, producing goods for prominent global buyers including Benetton, H&M, Primark and Zara as well as large domestic brands such as LC Waikiki.
‘The provinces affected by the earthquake accounted for 15 per cent of Turkey’s garment and textile industry, with an estimated 350,000 workers at approximately 2,900 companies prior to the disaster.
In the year since the earthquake, employment in the ready-made clothing sector dropped by 40 per cent and production by 50 per cent, according to a press statement sent to Equal Times by the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers Association (TGSD) issued for the anniversary of the disaster. TGSD President Ramazan Kaya said in the statement that recovery has been hampered by a “loss of qualified employment” in the region and difficulties accessing finance and loans. Shortly after the disaster, the Turkish government instituted a temporary ban on layoffs across the stricken region.’
...’Turkey has consistently ranked amongst the world’s ten worst countries for workers’ rights in the International Trade Union Confederation’s Global Rights Index with the repression of strikes and systematic union busting listed amongst the violations.
With both freedom of association and the right to strike restricted in Turkey, 89 per cent of workers in the earthquake region’s textile and garment industry – even those who are unionised – do not have a collective bargaining agreement, according to the Clean Clothes Campaign report. In this climate, the layoff ban may have actually worsened the situation for some workers, as they would not receive severance or other benefits if they are forced out rather than officially laid off.
“A year after the earthquakes, we can see that employment in the region has not yet recovered,” says Haluk Deniz Medet, a spokesperson for the Turkish textile workers union DİSK Tekstil. “There is a serious contraction in exports and European brands, our most important customers, are shifting their orders to Asian countries.”
This kind of opportunism is all too common in the global garment and textile industry, according to Mayisha Begum, a researcher with the London-based Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC). “What we have seen during the Covid-19 pandemic and other crises is that brands can change their purchasing practices very quickly when it benefits them,” says Begum.
Only 4 per cent of textile and garment suppliers in south-eastern Turkey were able to resume production as usual after the earthquakes, according to a separate survey of regional suppliers that Göçer and a colleague carried out in June 2023. Yet only a handful said the brands they supply offered any support in the aftermath of the disaster; 69 per cent of respondents said they received no contact at all from buyers or brands.’
https://www.equaltimes.org/our-lives-are-very-worthless?lang=en
As Spandau Ballet had it, ‘Gold, you’re indestructible.’ It’s reported that the price of gold has reached an all-time high, moving above $2,400 per ounce.
‘Spot gold prices rose 2.4% to a record high of $2,431.52 per ounce before pairing some gains. Prices were up 4% for the week and 16% so far this year, exceeding the 13% advance registered for all of 2023.
“The positive factors for gold outweigh the negative. The heightened tensions in the Middle East are the main driver for gold’s recent surge,” Chris Gaffney, president of world markets at EverBank, was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Investors traditionally turn to gold in times of market uncertainty to hedge risks and as a store of value. For thousands of years, bullion has been seen as a safe haven during periods of economic instability, stock market crises, military conflicts, and pandemics.’
Other precious metals were also on the rise, with silver going up 4% to $29.60 per ounce, its highest price since early 2021. Palladium went up 2.7% to $1,075 and platinum rose above the key psychological level of $1,000 per ounce to its highest in nearly four months.’
From
the The Socialist Standard, May 2007, an exposition on when
gold was the money-commodity and some interesting suggestions aas to
the use of gold in a socialist society:
“Gold
prices could pass $850 record” read a headline in the Financial
Times(5 April), reporting a forecast by a metals consultancy of what
might happen over the next 12 months. As gold is currently selling at
around $670-80 an ounce, this would be a huge increase. If something
like this had happened a hundred years ago, it would have brought
about financial and economic chaos by causing a huge fall in the
general price level.
This was because at that time gold
was still the money-commodity, as the product of labour having its
own value in which the values of all other commodities were
expressed. Prices were expressed in units of currency, but these were
defined as a given weight of gold. A pound, for instance, was defined
as about ¼ oz of gold. This meant that anything taking the same
amount of socially necessary labour time to produce as an ounce of
gold would have a price of £4.
If the amount of socially
necessary labour needed to produce an ounce of gold fell, a rise in
the general price level would result since other commodities,
containing more value, would exchange for more gold. If, on the other
hand, the labour-time cost of producing gold increased, the result
was the opposite: a fall in the general price level. Which is why an
increase of the order of from $680 to $850 an ounce would have caused
chaos a hundred years ago.
The reason it won’t do so
today is that gold is no longer the money-commodity. Up to WW1 gold
was used to settle international payments. Also, there were gold
coins in circulation, along with paper notes that were convertible
into gold at a fixed rate. This system collapsed with the outbreak of
war in 1914 and, despite attempts to revive it between the wars,
never really worked again. Nearly all currencies became
“inconvertible”, i.e. no longer exchangeable on demand into a
given amount of gold, which has remained the case ever since.
At
the end of WW2 a new system for settling international payments was
established based on the dollar. The exchange rate between other
currencies and the dollar (and so between the other currencies) was
fixed, but, since the dollar was defined as 1/35 oz of gold, gold
still played an indirect role as the money-commodity as a standard of
price.
This system, with its repeated devaluations of the
different currencies, came to an end in 1971 when the US government
abandoned its commitment to pay $35 for an ounce of gold. After that,
all currencies floated and, though central banks still retained gold
reserves for a while, gold became an ordinary commodity, another
precious metal alongside silver and platinum, whose price
fluctuations have no effect, either way, on the general price
level.
The price of gold is still expressed in dollars
but, nowadays, rather than a change in the price of gold leading to a
change in the value of the dollar, it’s the other way round. One of
the reasons for the expected rise in the price of gold is the current
weakness of the dollar. Another is perceived future economic
insecurity in that gold, as a product of labour, is still a store of
value which, if the fears are realised, is better to be left holding
than a mere piece of paper.
When socialism, where of
course money will be redundant, has been established, there will be a
long-standing proposal as to what to do with gold waiting to be
considered. In his book Utopia in 1516 Thomas More proposed
it be used for making chamber pots. Some 400 years later Lenin moved
an amendment to replace the words “chamber pots” by “urinals”.
In the end, we’ll probably just use it for jewellery and other
ornaments.'
’https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/05/just-yellow-metal-2007.html