tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72182883108603999492024-03-13T17:06:41.727-07:00Communist PerspectiveThis blog has been started to provide an alternative media outlet and information centre for those people interested in and concerned about democracy and justice around the globe.
Its aim is to bring to people a communist perspective on global events with a particular emphasis on Ireland.Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.comBlogger1058125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-31305434183037022192017-02-16T11:52:00.004-08:002017-02-16T11:54:09.724-08:00New Blog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://communistperspective.ie/"><span style="font-size: x-large;">http://communistperspective.ie</span></a>Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-26375502670788486872016-11-29T14:08:00.001-08:002016-11-29T14:08:14.328-08:00The ‘Worker President’ and the Banker Regime: Brazil under Lula DaSilva 2003-2010<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRzngvC_wMZ5VcZkw_UEazzNo2g6MUCCLmmJfqQXVMAh8Ct8Bxp7afrqh7Gm_NDfKO4yLGbLzqNK-8o8tHKLzcuY6o8nvNoFe70ggbQRHfVEaCgr1ghq-4rF6ohBb5PDkKS87oPGT4NE0/s1600/INBOX%2529662.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRzngvC_wMZ5VcZkw_UEazzNo2g6MUCCLmmJfqQXVMAh8Ct8Bxp7afrqh7Gm_NDfKO4yLGbLzqNK-8o8tHKLzcuY6o8nvNoFe70ggbQRHfVEaCgr1ghq-4rF6ohBb5PDkKS87oPGT4NE0/s320/INBOX%2529662.jpeg" width="206" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<div class="WordSection1">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">James
Petras<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><u><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Introduction</span></u></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Leftwing academics, writers and journalists have written
tendentious articles where they manage to transform
reactionary political leaders into working class heroes and
present their dreadful policies as progressive advances.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Recently, leftist pundits throughout US and Latin America
have plagued the reading public with gross distortions of
historical events contributing, in their own way, to the
demise of the left and the rise of the right.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
The leading international figures in this deceptive leftwing
punditry include the famous Noam Chomsky, once eulogized by
the <u>New York Times</u> (NYT) as ‘<i>America’s most
important public intellectual’</i>. Such effusion is not
surprising: Professor Chomsky and the NYT both <u>supported</u>
the presidential candidacy of the warmongering Hillary
Clinton, the perpetrator of seven wars that uprooted 20
million people from Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen,
sub-Sahara Africa (Is this any different from Stalin in the
‘30’s?) and author/supporter of numerous coups and attempted
‘regime changes’ in Brazil, Honduras, Venezuela, Paraguay
and Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
The same MIT intellectual turned his prestige-laden ire on
the authors of the definitive critique of the pro-Israel
lobby (<u>The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy</u>,
Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (2007)) and
slandered the most effective activist group <u>against</u>
Israeli colonial land grabbers – the <i>Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions movement</i> (BDS). So much for America’s
most ‘prominent intellectual’ – a crypto-warmonger, who not
only supported the candidacy of the blood-gorged war goddess
Clinton, but has become a leader of the post-election
propaganda and ‘regime change’ campaign to overthrow the
buffoonish President-Elect Donald Trump. Chomsky’s wild,
hysterical diatribe against Trump claimed nothing less than
the world now faced the gravest danger in all its history
with the election of the real estate-casino King Donald.
Noam deftly papered over his defeated candidate Hillary’s
vow to unleash possible nuclear war by shooting down Russian
planes over Syria – in opposition to Trump’s reasoned
proposal to work with Putin in ending the brutal war in
Syria.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
There are different versions of the
‘leftist’-imperial-collaborator apologist Chomsky throughout
Latin America. One is Emir Sader.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Emir Sader, professor of Political Science at the University
of Rio de Janeiro and author of the book celebrating the
first ‘workers’ President of Brazil, Lula DaSilva (<u>Without
Fear of Being Happy: Lula, The Workers Party and Brazil</u>
(1991)) is a frequent contributor to the leading
‘progressive’ daily newspapers throughout Latin America,
including <u>La Jornada</u> of Mexico, as well as the
influential bi-monthly <u>The New Left Review</u> in Great
Britain.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Needless to say, Sader never cited any inconvenient facts
when praising the leadership of Lula Da Silva and Dilma
Rousseff, Brazil’s last two elected presidents from the
Workers Party. For example, Sader omitted the fact that
President Da Silva implemented an IMF-mandated austerity
program upon taking office. He tiptoed around the Wall
Street Bankers’ awarding Lula a “Man of the Year” prize.
Professor Sader forgot to cite the abrupt drop in farmland
expropriations (guaranteed under Brazil’s Constitution) for
rural landless workers movement (MST) – leaving hundreds of
thousands of landless peasant families under thin plastic
tents. His ‘Worker President’ Lula appointed neo-liberal
economists and central bank directors to his cabinet. Lula
supported the interests of big agro-business, big oil and
big mining oligarchs who slashed and burned the Amazon rain
forest murdering indigenous leaders, peasants and ecologists
who resisted the devastation and displacement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Sader lauded, as ‘generous’, the monthly ‘food baskets’,
equivalent to $60 dollars, which the local Workers Party
operative passed out to about 30 million destitute families
to create a rural client-base. Sader and his string of
leftist followers in North and South America, England and
France never attacked the high level bribery, fraud and
corruption linking Workers Party leaders to construction
multi-nationals and Petrobras, the state oil company and
billions of state contracts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Sader and his international acolytes celebrated Brazil’s
ascent to world power as a member of the BRICS (Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South Africa) with Lula as a leader
in bringing the poor into the ‘middle class’. He never
stopped to analyze how Lula managed to balance the interests
of the IMF, Wall Street, agro-business, bankers while
enticing a huge voting majority among the poor and workers.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lula’s
‘<i>miracle’</i> was a temporary mirage, its reality evident
to only a few critics who pointed to the reliance on a
prolong commodity export boom. The business elites backed
Lula because of state subsidies and tax incentives.
Hundreds of rightwing Congress people and cabinet members
jumped on the Workers Party bandwagon to enjoy the payola
payoffs from contractors. But by the end of Lula’s eight
year term, exports of primary commodities to China sharply
declined, commodity prices collapsed and the business elites
and bankers turned their backs on the ‘Worker President’ as
they looked for a new regime to rescue them by sacrificing
the poor. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
rest of the story is well known: Former PT allies launched
corruption investigations to pull down the PT government.
Twice-elected President Dilma Rouseff was impeached in a
bizarre legislative coup, orchestrated by a corrupt PT ally
from a rightwing party, Congressional head Eduardo Cunhal;
Rouseff’s corrupt Vice President Temer took over and Lula
was indicted for corruption by rightwing prosecutors
appointed by the PT. The House of Cards in Brasilia became
a grotesque comic opera with all the major players waltzing
in and out of jail (except the impeached Rouseff). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
But Professor Sader did not looked back in contemplation,
let alone class analysis, at the 13 years of Worker Party
power in coalition with the worst of Brazil’s crooks.
Instead, he bellowed that Lula’s former <u>allies</u>, the
corrupt politicians from the rightwing parties, had <u>unjustly</u>
ousted the PT. These ‘traitors’ were the same politicians
that Professor Sader embraced as ‘strategic allies’ from
2003 to 2014. Any serious observer could understand why
Lula’s was first embraced <u>and</u> then divorced by the
financial elite – for its own class interest.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><u><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lula
and Dilma’s ‘Three-Cornered Ménage’ with Bankers<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Contrary to Sader’s PT propaganda and the predictably
ill-informed kudos of Chomsky, et al, the Workers Party
policies benefited the banks and the agro-business elites
above all others, to the detriment of the popular movements
and the Brazilian people. Brazilian investment bank
revenues rose from $200 million dollars in 2004 to $1.6
billion dollars in 2007 and remained close to the peak until
the commodity crash reduced bank revenues drastically.
Likewise, the financial speculators and corporate monopolies
took part in the capitalist bonanza under Presidents Lula
and Dilma. Merger and acquisitions (M & A’s) rose from
$40 billion in 2007 to $140 billion in 2010 but then sharply
declined with the drop in world commodity prices down to $25
billion in 2015. The banks made billions of dollars in
management fees for arranging the M&A’s over the
eight-year period (2007-2015).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><u><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
Fall of Banking Revenues and the Rise of Corporate
Activists<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
If we examine Brazilian merger and acquisitions activity and
investment bank revenues, one sees a close correlation with
the rise and fall of the PT regime. In other words, when
the bankers, speculators and monopolists flourished under
the PT policies, they supported the government of Lula and
Dilma. When the export agro-mining commodity boom
collapsed, slashing profits, management fees and interest,
the financial sector immediately mobilized their rightwing
allies in congress, allied prosecutors and judges and
successfully pushed for Dilma’s impeachment, Lula’s
indictment, the arrest of former PT allies and the
appointment of Vice President Temer to the Presidency.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
With the recession fully underway, the business and banking
elite demanded large-scale, long-term cuts in public
expenditures, slashing budgets for the poor, education,
health, housing and pensions, severe wage reduction and a
sharp limit on consumer credit. At the same time they
pushed through the privatization of the multi-billion dollar
petroleum industry (Petrobras) and related state industries,
as well as public ports, airlines and airfields, highways
and whatever else among Brazil’s public jewels could
compensate for their drop in investment bank revenues and
management fees for M&As. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For
the finance sector, Lula and Dilma’s main crime lay in their
reluctance to impose the brutal ‘new austerity policies’
fast enough or totally privatize public enterprises, reverse
subsidies to the destitute, freeze wages and slash social
budgets for the next two decades.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
As soon as the economic elite successfully ousted President
Dilma Rousseff through a legislative ‘coup’, their newly
enthroned (Vice) President Michel Temer rose to the task: He
immediately announced the privatization of Petrobras and
froze health and educational budget for the next twenty
years. Instead of recognizing the true nature of the ruling
<u>class interests</u> behind the coup against Dilma and the
arrest of Lula, the PT party hacks and writers denounced
political ‘plotters’ and “traitors” and imperialist agents .
. . puppets who were only following orders from the banking
and export elite.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
After the fall of Dilma and faced with resounding defeats in
the 2016 municipal elections wiping out almost all of the PT
big city mayors and city officials, Lula finally called for
a ‘<i><u>Left Front’</u></i> – fifteen years after having
pursued an allied bankers’ . . . front!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><u><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Reflections
on a Debacle<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
What stands out is how pro-PT <u>intellectuals</u> and
writers have failed to understand that the party’s
vulnerability, opportunism and corruption were present early
on and reflected the class composition, policy decisions and
lack of ethical principles among the PT leadership.
Wide-eyed and seduced at their warm reception at PT
functions and international conferences, the ill-informed
US, Canadian and European intellectuals understood nothing
about the real structural and strategic flaws within the
party and instead published hundreds of shallow ‘puff
pieces’ about Lula’s poverty reduction, minimum wage
increases, and consumer credit – ignoring the real nature of
class power in Brazil.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Apparently, they threw out two centuries of even the most
basic grammar school level history lessons describing the
cyclical boom and bust nature of commodity export
economies. They ignored a half-century of left-right
‘populist front’ governments, which collapsed into coups
once bourgeois support was withdrawn – and instead whined
about ‘betrayals’ – as if the elite were capable of anything
else.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
The fundamental problem was not the stratospheric
intellectual pronouncements – the key was the economic and
political strategies and policies under Lula and Dilma<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
The PT Presidents failed to diversify the economy, institute
an industrial program, impose content regulations on foreign
producers, nationalize the banks and monopolies, <u>prosecute</u>
corrupt political officials (including PT leaders) and stop
the practice of funding political campaigns through
kick-back rewards for rotten deals with construction
contractor-cronies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Once in power, the PT ran expensive campaigns with heavy
mass media saturation, while rejecting their own twenty
years of effective class struggle that had built the
political party with a strong working class cadre.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
By the time it was elected to the presidency, the PT
membership had shifted dramatically – from workers to middle
class professionals. By 2002, 70% of active party members
were professionals. They formed the leadership base running
for office, designed the new strategies and forged new
allies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
The PT discarded its popular class allies in order to gain
short-term capitalist alliances based on the export
commodity boom economy. During the height of the ‘boom’
they managed to satisfy the bankers and stockbrokers, while
providing some subsidies to workers and the poor. When the
budgets and the boom economy crashed, the business allies
turned against the PT. Meanwhile, the PT had also lost its
mass base, which was experiencing double-digit
unemployment. The once reliable PT voters knew that, while
they suffered, some of their ‘Workers Party’ leaders had
become millionaires through corruption and were living in
‘soap-opera’-style luxury. They could imagine them
consulting their gold Rolex watches so not to miss an
appointment with the corrupt contractors…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Lacking critical and knowledgeable advisers, depending on
allies and ministers from the capitalist elite, abandoning
the politics of class struggle, and failing to implement any
national industrial strategy - including the most basic
processing of Brazil’s agro-mineral products, the Left
disintegrated losing Latin America’s historic best
opportunity to build a workers’ and peasant government from
below.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
The fiasco of left intellectuals and politicos is not
confined to the case of Brazil. The same capitulation to
the hard-right keeps happening: In the US, France, England,
Greece and Portugal, there were the Bernie Sanders, Noam
Chomskys and a small army of left journalists and identity
activists rushing to support the candidacy of Hillary
Clinton--the most bellicose imperial politician in recent
memory. Despite her record of supporting or launching
seven wars, creating twenty-million refugees and over one
million deaths, despite her reckless advocacy of nuclear war
with Russia over Syria, the self-declared ‘anti-fascists’
joined hands to support a recidivist catastrophe-candidate,
whose only real success would be her million-dollar speeches
before the financial elite and speculators! But then
again, the famously furious Greek Left voted for Syriza’s
Alexis Tsipras who then imposed history’s worst peacetime
austerity program on the people of Greece. It must console
Lula and Dilma to know they have plenty of company among the
left politicians who speak to the workers and work for the
bankers.</span></span></div>
</div>
Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-68980688096389953732016-11-21T13:47:00.001-08:002016-11-21T13:56:57.059-08:00Presidential Elections: Myths and Deceits<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA62kcVj1xd4W0-Ryurf8eoRCbWLcUhxTBc_WHPSYVajkEYHhjxYkXJQiTqOp88t1pXv-ci4er2e7XzqiuJ4fPy1ia9wAlC03bpzXvYa_yi7UDGdDNRFVsM4r8tqpnKOdmc4qIUwkVpQI/s1600/29335_obusinessesstayinlanemultiplergbf.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA62kcVj1xd4W0-Ryurf8eoRCbWLcUhxTBc_WHPSYVajkEYHhjxYkXJQiTqOp88t1pXv-ci4er2e7XzqiuJ4fPy1ia9wAlC03bpzXvYa_yi7UDGdDNRFVsM4r8tqpnKOdmc4qIUwkVpQI/s400/29335_obusinessesstayinlanemultiplergbf.png" width="400" /></a><br /><b style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">James Petras</b></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b>Every aspect of this year's US Presidential election has been<br /><br />fraught with myths, distortions, fabrications, wishful thinking and invented</span><br />
<pre style="text-align: left;" wrap=""><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">fears.
We will proceed to discuss facts and fictions.
Electoral Participation
The mass media, parties and candidates emphasized the 'unprecedented voter
turnout' in the elections. In fact, 48% of the eligible voters abstained.
In other words, nearly half of the electorate did not vote.
There were many reasons, including widespread disgust at both major party
candidates and the weakness of 'third parties'. This includes disappointed
Bernie Sanders supporters angry over the Democratic Party's cynical
manipulation of the primary nomination process. Others were unable to vote
in their neighborhoods because US elections are held on a regular workday,
unlike in other countries. Others cast protest votes against economic
programs or candidates reflecting their distrust and sense of impotence over
policy. Eligible voters generally expressed reservations over the gap
between campaign promises and post campaign policies. These political
attitudes toward elections and candidates are deep-seated among those who
'stayed home'.
In contrast among registered voters (53% of the electorate) over
90% cast their ballot. Ultimately, the presidential elections were decided
by just half of the eligible voters with the winning candidate receiving
about 25% eligible votes. This is not a robust mandate. Furthermore,
Clinton may have 'lost' with the plurality of popular votes, since the US
Presidency is ultimately decided by the 'Electoral College'. In this case,
Trump secured more states earning substantially more Electoral College
votes, while the losing candidate's votes were more concentrated in big
cities and large coastal states.
The Myth of the Trump Revolution
Trump's campaign displayed the typical demagogy of US
politicians. In previous campaigns Barack Obama's promised to work for
peace, domestic prosperity, social justice and immigration reform. Once
elected, Obama reneged on his pledge and continued to wage the old wars and
launched new ones (seven altogether for the 'peace candidate'). He approved
a $2 trillion dollars Wall Street and bank 'bailout', while leaving over 3
million family home mortgages in foreclosure. He rounded up and deported
two million immigrant workers. Meanwhile wage inequality between black and
white workers actually widened; and overt police violence against black
youth increased. We can expect Trump to follow Obama's pattern of double
speak and reverse his campaign promises.
So far, Trump seems to have appointed conventional Republicans
to his Cabinet posts. Treasury and Commerce Secretaries will remain in the
hands of Wall Street insiders. Prominent Republican warmongers will manage
foreign policy.
Meanwhile, Trump has been on a post-election charm offensive to
woo traditional conservative Republican Congressional leaders who had
opposed his candidacy during the primaries. They will work with Trump in
lowering taxes while eliminating government regulations and environmental
controls - policies that have long been on their agenda. On the other hand,
Trump's populist pledge to 'reindustrialize' America will be opposed by
Congressional Republicans with ties to Wall Street and financial
speculators. Trump's promise to persuade US multi-nationals to repatriate
their billions and headquarters to the US will be opposed by the majority
Republican Congressional leadership. Even a Trump Republican majority on
the Supreme Court, will veto any Trump initiative to 'force' big business to
sacrifice its tax-free overseas profits to come home and 'Make America Great
Again'.
In other words, Trump will implement only policies that coincide
with the traditional Republican agenda and will continue some version of
Obama's pro-Wall Street policy. Instead of Obama's executive tax loopholes
benefiting big business, Trump will do it through legislation. Where Obama
made pronouncement about supporting Civil rights and justice for
African-Americans but actually ended up increasing police power and
impunity, Trump will simply make modifications directly favoring the police
state via Congressional legislation or Presidential decree. Whereas Obama
rounded up and expelled 2 million immigrant workers, Trump will go after an
additional 2 million Latinos on the basis of 'criminality'. Obama relied on
border police; Trump will beef up border patrols and concoct some agreement
with Mexico's conservative counterpart - short of erecting 'the Great Wall'.
Obama and his Democratic predecessor, President 'Bill' Clinton
cut the proportion of unionized workers in the private sector to 8%, through
economic and labor policies backed by millionaire trade union bureaucrats.
Trump, on the other hand, will crudely dismiss these impotent 'union'
functionaries and hacks while slashing whatever remains of worker rights.
Presidents Obama and Clinton linked 'identity groups' with the
interests of bankers, billionaires and militarists, but Trump will toss out
'identity politics' in favor of populist appeals to construction workers and
infrastructure contractors while attracting the same Wall Street executives,
billionaires and militarists that had worked closely with previous
administrations.
Trump's Wall Street appeal was clear after his victory when the
stock market broke new highs, jumping 1,000 points between November 4 and
10th.
The pro-Clinton Wall Streeter boosters were smartly outflanked
by the 'silent majority' of financial CEO's who applauded Trump's promises
of deregulation and corporate tax cuts.
Despite the certainty of President Trump's reneging on all his
promises to American workers, he will still retain the support of small and
medium businesses and professionals, who outnumber and outvote the so-called
'white worker vote'.
Trump Complies with Rightwing Republican Agenda
To unify the Republican Party and gratify the rightwing
electoral base Trump will offer up some symbolic gratification, such as:
1. Increase frontier security - He will triple the number of border
patrol officers and extend the Obama-Clinton's search and expel formula. His
PR machines will crank out timely reports of mass deportations of Latino
workers to titillate the Anglo voters - while reassuring agribusiness and
other industries that their access to cheap imported labor will continue.
2. He will appoint a rightwing WASP (first in a long time) to the
Supreme Court after decades of 'identity appointments'. His court will try
to reverse Roe versus Wade on access to abortion- satisfying Catholics,
fundamentalists, orthodox Jews and Protestants - sending the issue back to
the reactionary states. Women in the urban centers and large population
coastal states will retain reproductive health rights while poor and rural
women will see significant regression.
3. Trump will 'renegotiate NAFTA' without reversing current free trade
provisions, offering tax incentives and tax penalties to discourage future
flight but with little effect.
4. Trump will force a repeal of the multi-party nuclear agreement with
Iran, but he will not re-impose international sanctions because of Russian
and Chinese vetoes in the UN Security Council and the lucrative billion-
dollar trade deals signed between Iran and Germany and France. Trump's Iran
caper may pleasure Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby,
but this would force him to violate his own stated pledge to avoid more
Middle East entanglements.
5. Trump's anti-Muslim policy will be reduced to writing tighter
immigration rules for Muslims from the Middle East and South Asia, but not
include total exclusion. These watered-down policies will quell opposition
and satisfy Islamo-phobes.
6. President Trump's deregulation of environmental protections will
alienate ecologists and the science community but will appeal to big energy
corporations and their employees, workers and gas property leasers.
However, the rest of the world will continue to treat climate change as real
and Trump will end up isolated in a climate-denial corner with the
reactionary presidents of Poland and kleptocratic-Ukraine.
7. Trump will face stiff opposition when he tries to break the newly
restored diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba to please his rightwing
Cuban exile supporters. But the deals will go thru: On December 1, 2016
Delta Airlines will begin three daily flights, joining a dozen other
airlines to the delight of thousands of travel agency owners and employees
as well as tens of thousands of tourists and visitors. US business and agro
exporters will object to any re-imposition of trade sanctions. Trump will
probably end up tossing some bones to the rightwing exile community in the
way of rhetoric while maintaining diplomatic ties and Obama's embargo. He
may expand the US base in Guantanamo.
8. Trump will continue to support the right-wing 'golpistas' in
Venezuela but will not commit US troops for an invasion. He will make deals
with right wing and center-left regimes in the Latin America without pushing
for coups or exclusionary regional trade pacts.
9. Trump will end economic sanctions against Russia and then negotiate
some cooperation agreement with Putin to bomb Syria's Islamist terrorists
'into the stone age' and withdraw US commitments to the Saudis, Gulf
Monarchies and its jihadi mercenaries on regional 'regime change'. He will
renegotiate trade relations with China to encourage greater reciprocity,
investments and exchange rates (if necessary).
Conclusion
On vital economic policies, Trump will pursue traditional
Republican business policies - the linchpin being lower taxes and fewer
regulations.
On identity politics (as well as human rights), Trump will
tighten restrictions on access to abortion and immigration to satisfy the
right-wing moralists and religious fundamentalists.
Trump will not confront Wall Street, the multi-nationals, the
military industrial complex or the pro-Israel billionaires and lobbies. US
workers will find very few new well- paying jobs except in select
infrastructure projects. The industrial rust belt will continue to rust.
The tens of thousands of public sector workers and professional slashed by
Trump's pledge to cut government will not find decent jobs in the private
sector. Over time, Trump supporters who flocked to his promises for
economic change will be replaced by a motley collection of Bible thumpers of
all colors and faiths. There will emerge a new groundswell of frustrated
workers, employees and professionals -- but where will they turn? Certainly
they must not return to the increasingly discredited 'progressive' Bernie
Sander, who perfected his role as political 'Judas Goat' herding his
reluctant supporters into the blood-stained Wall Street Corral of the War
Goddess Hillary Clinton - known as the Democratic Party.</span></pre>
Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-27718977489719125422016-11-18T12:56:00.000-08:002016-11-21T13:49:32.726-08:00Freedom Rider: Dump the Democrats for Good<div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">
</span></span></span>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Margaret
Kimberley</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
</span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This columnist
did not see a Donald Trump victory coming.
The degree of disgust directed at an awful
candidate was more than I had predicted.
Neither the corporate media, nor Wall Street
nor the pundits nor the pollsters saw this
coming either. Their defeat and proof of
their uselessness is total. Those of us who
rejected the elite consensus and didn’t
support Hillary Clinton should be proud.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Black people
are now in fear and in shock when we ought
to be spoiling for a fight. All is not lost.
Even the victory of the openly bigoted Trump
poses an opportunity to right our political
ship. Not the electoral ship, the political
one. For decades black Americans have been
voting for people who have done them wrong.
Bill Clinton got rid of public assistance as
a right, and undid regulations that kept
Wall Street in check. He put black people in
jail and yet black people didn’t turn on him
until he and his wife tried to defeat Obama.
But Obama gave us more of the same. Bailouts
of Wall Street, interventions and death for
people all over the world, and a beat down
of black people who still loved him. Despite
the fear of Republican victory we end up
losing whenever a Democratic presidential
candidate wins.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i>“Obama
bailed out banks, insurance companies,
Big Pharma and even Ukraine.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Victory is
ours if we dump the Democrat Party and their
black misleaders. The Democrats were so
entrenched in their corruption and
self-dealing that they didn’t see the Bernie
Sanders campaign for modest reform as the
savior it might have been. Instead they
marched in lock step with a woman who was
heartily disliked. Sanders went along as the
sheep dog who led his flock straight over
the cliff. The Democrats inadvertently
galvanized people who had stopped
participating in the system and who want
change from top to bottom.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of our
biggest problems lies not in facts but in
perceptions. What did Democrats do for black
people? The Democrats ship living wage jobs
off shore in corrupt trade deals like NAFTA
and TTP. They don’t prosecute killer cops or
raise the minimum wage. Trump will be hard
pressed to deport more people than Obama
did. The list of treachery is very long.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When Donald
Trump asked black people, “What have you got
to lose?” his words were met with derision.
But in reality he posed a good question.
What do we have to show for years of
Democratic votes? Obama bailed out banks,
insurance companies, Big Pharma and even
Ukraine. But he didn’t rebuild Detroit or
New Orleans. The water in Flint, Michigan is
still poisoned and the prisons are still
full.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-weight: 700;"><em><span style="font-family: inherit;">“There may
be opportunity in this crisis if we dare
to seize it.”</span></em></span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The outpouring
of love for Barack Obama was purely
symbolic. In state after state, black people
who gave him victory in 2008 and 2012 stayed
home. They loved seeing him and his wife
dressed up at state dinners but they were
never fully engaged in politics because that
is not what Democrats want. The love was
phony and void of any political intent.
Donald Trump will be president because of
that veneer of political activism.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As for white
people who voted for Trump, of course many
of them are racists. However they are not
without valid complaints. They don’t want
neoliberalism but black people don’t either.
They don’t want wars around the world and
neither do black people. We corrupt our own
heritage of radicalism in favor of shallow
symbolism. While we slept walk in foolish
nostalgia for Obama and cried at the thought
of him leaving office, white people kept
their hatred of Hillary to themselves or
lied to pollsters. They want America to be
great again, great for them. White nostalgic
yearnings are dangerous for black people,
and we must be vigilant. But there may be
opportunity in this crisis if we dare to
seize it.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Republicans
have been the white people’s party for
nearly 50 years. Trump just made it more
obvious. He didn’t tell us anything we
didn’t already know. We don’t have to be the
losers in this election. Let us remember
what we have achieved in our history. Half
of black Americans didn’t even have the
right to vote in the 1960s yet made earth
shattering progress in a short time. But we
must understand the source of that progress.
It came from struggle and daring to create
the crises that always bring about change.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-weight: 700;"><em><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The dread
of redneck celebration should not be our
primary motivation right now.”</span></em></span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yes white
people will strut for president Trump but
that doesn’t mean we must submit as if we
are in the Jim Crow days of old. We have
ourselves to rely on and we can reclaim our
history of fighting for self-determination.
The dread of redneck celebration should not
be our primary motivation right now. Before
we quake in fear at white America we must
send the scoundrels packing.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The black
politicians and the Democratic National
Committee and the civil rights organizations
that don’t help the masses must all be
kicked to the proverbial curb. The rejection
must be complete and blame must be laid
squarely at their feet.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Those of us
who voted for the green party ticket of Jill
Stein and Ajamu Baraka must stand firmly and
proudly for our choice. We must strategize
on building a progressive party to replace
the Democrats who never help us. We must
applaud Julian Assange and Wikileaks for
exposing their corruption. There should be
no back tracking on the fight to build left
wing political power.</span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-weight: 700;"><em><span style="font-family: inherit;">“We must
strategize on building a progressive
party to replace the Democrats who never
help us.”</span></em></span></div>
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The black
people who didn’t return to the polls
shouldn’t be blamed either. Those
individuals must have personal introspection
that is meaningful and political. Their lack
of enthusiasm speaks to Democratic Party and
black misleadership incompetence. We should
refrain from personal blame and help one
another in this process as we fight for
justice and peace.</span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">
</span><br />
<div style="color: #2e2e2e; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The end of the
duopoly is the first step in liberation.
Staying with a party that literally did
nothing was a slow and agonizing death.
Sometimes shock therapy is needed to improve
one’s condition. If we don’t take the
necessary steps to free ourselves this
election outcome will be a disaster.
Instead, why not bring the disaster to the
people who made it happen? The destruction
of the Democratic Party and creation of a
truly progressive political movement is the
only ho</span>pe for black America.</span></div>
Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-62005385359921390112016-11-08T10:58:00.003-08:002016-11-08T11:02:41.539-08:00KKE - Theoretical Issues of Our Program<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<pre wrap=""></pre>
<br />
The struggle of the working class against the capitalist class in order to be complete, i.e. a struggle of class against class, must foremost be revolutionary.
The struggle should be against both individual capitalists and the capitalist class as a whole, and their power as well. The Communist Party, through its activity, organizes the workers and transforms the struggle against the exploiters into "whole class struggle, of a determined political party for definite political and socialist ideals"<br />
<br />
Lenin argued: "....only the political party of the working class, the Communist Party can unite, educate and organize as the vanguard of the proletariat and the working class. This vanguard is capable alone to oppose the inevitable petty bourgeois' vacillations, the inevitable traditions and relapses of professional paucity or superstition within the proletariat and guide the action of the whole proletariat, namely to guide it politically and through the proletariat to lead the working masses"<br />
<br />
<div>
In the history of revolutionary workers' movement, the communist identity-the characterization and incorporation into the Communist International- emerged in conditions of conflict with the opportunist social-democratic wing, which acted treacherously towards the interests of the working class during the European imperialist war (World War 1) 1914-1918, and in the revolutionary conditions that followed in countries such as Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, etc.<br />
<br />
It was a result of the Socialist Revolution's victory in Russia(1917) and its influence on the revolutionary workers' movement. The characterisation of the workers' parties as Communist has its roots in the "Union of Communists" and the Communist Manifesto by Marx-Engels.<br />
<br />
Later, during the final decades of 19th century and in the early 20th century, the worker's parties were characterized as social-democratic or socialist, a characterization that expressed to a great extent prevailing reality in these parties. In April 1917, Lenin proposed the need to change the names of the workers' parties and to adopt the term communist and establish a new International.<br />
<br />
In this direction the Communist International (3rd International) was founded in 1919. Over the years, under the influence of the new changes in the correlation of forces in the class struggle worldwide (the retreat of the revolutionary upsurge in the second half of the 1920s, World War II and the Nazi's attack against USSR in 1941, the "Cold War" and nuclear threat, as well as due to post-war capitalist development) new opportunist currents were formed, such as eurocommunism.
<br />
<br />
Opportunist currents also developed inside the Communist Parties of the socialist countries, with the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956) as a milestone in this process. The transformation of the Communist Parties that exercised state power into treacherous parties of the counter-revolution was a catalyst for the deep, ideological-political and organizational crisis of the international communist movement.
<br />
<br />
It is not sufficient for the Communist Party today in order to be the vanguard of the working class to affirm its communist identity(title), to generally accept the Marxist-Leninist theory of scientific communism and recognize the vanguard role of working class. All the above are preconditions.
<br />
<br />
In order to be a vanguard, it must have a revolutionary political programme, it must have the ability to act in all conditions, namely in conditions of the movement's retreat or rise. It must develop and regenerate the ability to face the objective pressures that are formed by the negative correlation of forces in the class struggle.
<br />
<br />
A criterion for the character of a Communist Party is its programme and its political line: "To understand the meaning of the struggle of the parties, we shouldn't believe the words that are spoken, but we should study the history of the parties, probe the actions of a party and how they solve the different political issues, what is their stance towards the issues that affect the crucial interests of the different classes in the society..."<br />
<br />
What is the main issue that determines the character of a party's programme, and what is the precondition for its revolutionary content?<br />
<br />
The most important question that determines the revolutionary content of the programme of the communist party is the clarification of the revolution's character, i.e. the answer to the question: "Which contradiction will be solved by the impending social revolution, which class will take power?"<br />
<br />
Based on this position, the line for the concentration of social forces is formed (motor forces), which have an objective interest in the revolution.</div>
Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-86053413597952150672016-11-01T14:47:00.002-07:002016-11-01T14:47:34.399-07:00Inside the invisible government: War, Propaganda, Clinton & Trump<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">This text is adapted from an address to the Sheffield Festival of Words, Sheffield, England.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term “public relations” as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade – behaviour then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!” Bernays’ influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The secret, he said, was “engineering the consent” of people in order to “control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it”. He described this as “the true ruling power in our society” and called it an “invisible government”. Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less understood. In my career as a journalist and film-maker, I have never known propaganda to insinuate our lives as it does now and to go unchallenged.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Imagine two cities. Both are under siege by the forces of the government of that country. Both cities are occupied by fanatics, who commit terrible atrocities, such as beheading people. But there is a vital difference. In one siege, the government soldiers are described as liberators by Western reporters embedded with them, who enthusiastically report their battles and air strikes. There are front page pictures of these heroic soldiers giving a V-sign for victory. There is scant mention of civilian casualties.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">In the second city – in another country nearby – almost exactly the same is happening. Government forces are laying siege to a city controlled by the same breed of fanatics. The difference is that these fanatics are supported, supplied and armed by “us” – by the United States and Britain. They even have a media centre that is funded by Britain and America. Another difference is that the government soldiers laying siege to this city are the bad guys, condemned for assaulting and bombing the city – which is exactly what the good soldiers do in the first city.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Confusing? Not really. Such is the basic double standard that is the essence of propaganda. I am referring, of course, to the current siege of the city of Mosul by the government forces of Iraq, who are backed by the United States and Britain and to the siege of Aleppo by the government forces of Syria, backed by Russia. One is good; the other is bad.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">What is seldom reported is that both cities would not be occupied by fanatics and ravaged by war if Britain and the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003. That criminal enterprise was launched on lies strikingly similar to the propaganda that now distorts our understanding of the civil war in Syria. Without this drumbeat of propaganda dressed up as news, the monstrous ISIS and Al-Qaida and al-Nusra and the rest of the jihadist gang might not exist, and the people of Syria might not be fighting for their lives today.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Some may remember in 2003 a succession of BBC reporters turning to the camera and telling us that Blair was “vindicated” for what turned out to be the crime of the century. The US television networks produced the same validation for George W. Bush. Fox News brought on Henry Kissinger to effuse over Colin Powell’s fabrications. The same year, soon after the invasion, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the renowned American investigative journalist. I asked him, “What would have happened if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged what turned out to be crude propaganda?” He replied that if journalists had done their job, “there is a very, very good chance we would not have gone to war in Iraq”.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">It was a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question — Dan Rather of CBS, David Rose of the Observer and journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous. In other words, had journalists done their job, had they challenged and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today, and there would be no ISIS and no siege of Aleppo or Mosul. There would have been no atrocity on the London Underground on 7th July 2005. There would have been no flight of millions of refugees; there would be no miserable camps.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">When the terrorist atrocity happened in Paris last November, President Francoi Hollande immediately sent planes to bomb Syria – and more terrorism followed, predictably, the product of Hollande’s bombast about France being “at war” and “showing no mercy”. That state violence and jihadist violence feed off each other is the truth that no national leader has the courage to speak. “When the truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an “agreement” that demanded the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable. As WikLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2009 rejected an oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics – the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage. Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official Carne Ross, who was responsible for operating sanctions against Iraq, told me: “We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence, or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked.”</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The West’s medieval client, Saudi Arabia – to which the US and Britain sell billions of dollars’ worth of arms – is at present destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half the children are malnourished. Look on YouTube and you will see the kind of massive bombs – “our” bombs – that the Saudis use against dirt-poor villages, and against weddings, and funerals. The explosions look like small atomic bombs. The bomb aimers in Saudi Arabia work side-by-side with British officers. This fact is not on the evening news.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by those with a fine education – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia — and with careers on the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post. These organisations are known as the liberal media. They present themselves as enlightened, progressive tribunes of the moral zeitgeist. They are anti-racist, pro-feminist and pro-LGBT. And they love war.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">While they speak up for feminism, they support rapacious wars that deny the rights of countless women, including the right to life. In 2011, Libya, then a modern state, was destroyed on the pretext that Muammar Gaddafi was about to commit genocide on his own people. That was the incessant news; and there was no evidence. It was a lie.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">In fact, Britain, Europe and the United States wanted what they like to call “regime change” in Libya, the biggest oil producer in Africa. Gaddafi’s influence in the continent and, above all, his independence were intolerable. So he was murdered with a knife in his rear by fanatics, backed by America, Britain and France. Hillary Clinton cheered his gruesome death for the camera, declaring, “We came, we saw, he died!”</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The destruction of Libya was a media triumph. As the war drums were beaten, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian: “Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong.” Intervention — what a polite, benign, Guardian word, whose real meaning, for Libya, was death and destruction.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. The Unicef report on the children killed says, “most [of them] under the age of ten”. As a direct consequence, Sirte became the capital of ISIS.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Ukraine is another media triumph. Respectable liberal newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN have played a critical role in conditioning their viewers to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia when, in fact, the coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato. This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington’s military intimidation of Russia is not news; it is suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew up withduring the first cold war. Once again, the Ruskies are coming to get us, led by another Stalin, whom The Economist depicts as the devil.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember. The fascists who engineered the coup in Kiev are the same breed that backed the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Of all the scares about the rise of fascist anti-Semitism in Europe, no leader ever mentions the fascists in Ukraine – except Vladimir Putin, but he does not count.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Many in the Western media have worked hard to present the ethnic Russian-speaking population of Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, as agents of Moscow, almost never as Ukrainians seeking a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">There is almost the joie d’esprit of a class reunion of warmongers. The drum-beaters of the Washington Post inciting war with Russia are the very same editorial writers who published the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"> To most of us, the American presidential campaign is a media freak show, in which Donald Trump is the arch villain. But Trump is loathed by those with power in the United States for reasons that have little to do with his obnoxious behaviour and opinions. To the invisible government in Washington, the unpredictable Trump is an obstacle to America’s design for the 21st century.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">This is to maintain the dominance of the United States and to subjugate Russia, and, if possible, China.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">To the militarists in Washington, the real problem with Trump is that, in his lucid moments, he seems not to want a war with Russia; he wants to talk with the Russian president, not fight him; he says he wants to talk with the president of China. In the first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump promised not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict. He said, “I would certainly not do first strike. Once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over.” That was not news.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Did he really mean it? Who knows? He often contradicts himself. But what is clear is that Trump is considered a serious threat to the status quo maintained by the vast national security machine that runs the United States, regardless of who is in the White House. The CIA wants him beaten. The Pentagon wants him beaten. The media wants him beaten. Even his own party wants him beaten. He is a threat to the rulers of the world – unlike Clinton who has left no doubt she is prepared to go to war with nuclear-armed Russia and China.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Clinton has the form, as she often boasts. Indeed, her record is proven. As a senator, she backed the bloodbath in Iraq. When she ran against Obama in 2008, she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran. As Secretary of State, she colluded in the destruction of governments in Libya and Honduras and set in train the baiting of China. She has now pledged to support a No Fly Zone in Syria — a direct provocation for war with Russia. Clinton may well become the most dangerous president of the United States in my lifetime –a distinction for which the competition is fierce.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Without a shred of evidence, she has accused Russia of supporting Trump and hacking her emails. Released by WikiLeaks, these emails tell us that what Clinton says in private, in speeches to the rich and powerful, is the opposite of what she says in public. That is why silencing and threatening Julian Assange is so important. As the editor of WikiLeaks, Assange knows the truth. And let me assure those who are concerned, he is well, and WikiLeaks is operating on all cylinders.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Today, the greatest build-up of American-led forces since World War Two is under way – in the Caucasus and eastern Europe, on the border with Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, where China is the target. Keep that in mind when the presidential election circus reaches its finale on November 8th, If the winner is Clinton, a Greek chorus of witless commentators will celebrate her coronation as a great step forward for women. None will mention Clinton’s victims: the women of Syria, the women of Iraq, the women of Libya. None will mention the civil defence drills being conducted in Russia. None will recall Edward Bernays’ “torches of freedom”.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">George Bush’s press spokesman once called the media “complicit enablers”. Coming from a senior official in an administration whose lies, enabled by the media, caused such suffering, that description is a warning from history.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: “Before every major aggression, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack. In the propaganda system, it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.”</span>Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-25522360292732097592016-10-31T15:16:00.003-07:002016-10-31T15:17:07.182-07:0018th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties<h1 0.1em="" 0.2em="" 1.25="" center="" ejavu="" font-family:="" line-height:="" margin-bottom:="" margin-top:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" style="text-align: center;" text-align:="" verdana="">
<span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">18th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties</span></h1>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hanoi, October 2016</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Eddie Glackin<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">National Executive Committee, Communist Party of Ireland</span></span></h3>
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<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Comrades,</span><br />
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<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">This year marks a notable anniversary in the history of our people’s struggle against imperialism: the Centenary of the 1916 Rising in Dublin. In the middle of the first Imperialist World War the Rising, at the heart of what was at that time the greatest empire the world had seen, sent shock waves throughout the empire “on which the sun never set” (or, as the more cynical have said, “on which the blood never dried”). A year later the Bolshevik Revolution broke the chain of imperialism at its weakest link and marked the onset of the general crisis of capitalism.</span><br />
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<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">The world has changed greatly in that past century: we witnessed the victory of the first socialist revolution, the rise and subsequent defeat of fascism and Japanese militarism, the development of the national liberation movement, and the victory of socialist revolutions in Europe, Asia, and America. The defeat of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has been a huge and bitter defeat for us. According to the apologists for capitalism, this represented the “end of history”: capitalism had triumphed, and the troubling Spectre of Communism was no more.</span><br />
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<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Yet within a few short years the crisis of 2007–8 hit and shook capitalism to its core, shattering illusions of endless, crisis-free, growth and development. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Now in 2016 the crisis of the system continues to deepen, and the various “solutions” imposed by monopoly capitalism serve only to intensify the crisis. Each alleged solution creates new problems. Quantitative easing was to have been the solution to the banking crisis, but, as recent developments around Deutsche Bank and the Italian banks have shown, quantitative easing has boosted share prices but has not addressed the economic problems. </span><br />
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<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">The recent EU summit in Bratislava sent a clear signal that working people need to be aware of. The European Council president, Donald Tusk, stated that “all of Europe expects that the EU will again be a guarantee of stability, security and protection—protection in the widest meaning, including social and economic protection.” This is clearly coded language for further and deeper integration and consolidation of power at the centre. Shaken by the vote of the British people in favour of leaving the EU, the response of the major powers, Germany and France, is to accelerate centralisation, further enhancing their power and influence. </span><br />
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<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">They want to tighten fiscal and budgetary control, which can only mean further undermining any notions of democracy and sovereignty at the national level, taking further powers from individual states and weakening the ability of working people to affect “their” government’s policy. This will be felt even more profoundly in the heavily indebted countries at the periphery of Europe, of which Ireland is one. </span><br />
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<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">This theme echoes that of a “resilient Europe” put forward in the new global strategy by the EU’s chief diplomat, Federica Mogherini. Europe needs to pro-actively prepare itself for future shocks and threats rather than just reactively respond when they happen. This means a continuation of the “European project”—a greater concentration of powers in the centre. This trend is already evident, as shown by supervision of fiscal policy to ensure that national governments comply with the rules and dictates of the EU, by the co-ordination of policing with Europol, and by the EU military units. The centralisers want to advance this process towards an EU fiscal policy, an EU police force, and an EU army. </span><br />
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<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">In fact they are quite open about their aims: Mogherini said last month that “defence is one of the great building blocks to relaunch the process of European integration. Europe was built up in waves: the single market came first, then the currency and the freedom of movement. It is now time to lay the foundations of a common defence.” They seek to ensure that every step in this direction is difficult if not impossible to reverse. </span><br />
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<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Yet there are those on the so-called left, the raggle-taggle army of failed social democracy, who believe that the EU can be reformed, that somehow the mirage of a “Social Europe” can still materialise. And this while the EU is increasingly militarised and interfering openly for example in Ukraine, and whilst the decrepit old imperialist powers of Britain and France try to reassert themselves in Libya and Syria. These social democrats, of the left and right variety, are still in denial that the EU is anything other than an aggressive, reactionary superstate in the making, the reforming of which into a “better, fairer capitalism” would go against the very nature of the beast. As ever, they provide succour to, and a fig leaf, for imperialism and capitalism. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">The assault on the working class, and the drive to privatise state enterprises, natural resources and social services in the interests of monopoly capital, have been conducted by national governments in tandem with the EU institutions. The Irish government and the Irish bourgeoisie, North and South, and the Stormont administration in the North of Ireland are willing partners in this process, happy to ally themselves with the imperialist powers, the USA and the EU. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">The decision of the people of Britain to leave the European Union is posing great difficulties for the EU and has caused panic in the Irish ruling class. Their subservience to the three centres of power, in London, Brussels, and Washington, has them in a state of extreme confusion. Also the Sinn Féin party, which previously opposed European integration, opportunistically campaigned in the North of Ireland on the “Remain” side, thereby allowing themselves to be co-opted into the strategies of the Irish establishment and the European Union. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Working-class resistance has been, in general, slow to assert itself but now is growing in intensity throughout Europe. In this context it must be recognised that the Greek working class led the way, putting up a heroic resistance at an earlier stage of this assault. It is the task of the Communist Parties to give ideological clarity and direction to this new militancy. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">The Irish working class too is now beginning to rediscover its fighting traditions after years of kowtowing to their class enemies through the process of “Social Partnership”—in fact class collaboration. Bus and tram workers have recently won important victories after strike action to restore pay levels and undo pay cuts imposed over the past number of years. Teachers and the police have served notice of industrial action over the next few weeks. It is unprecedented to see the Garda Síochána, the national police force, taking strike action. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Working people have been driven into a campaign of mass resistance by the imposition of a water tax which they see as a prelude to privatisation. The scale of the resistance from trade unions and especially community groups forced the Government to back down on the collection of this unjust tax. The demand is now for a referendum to enshrine the people's ownership and control of our water in the Constitution of the State. This, if carried, would be a major obstacle to the plans of the Irish ruling class, the EU, and TTIP. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">These important struggles must be used to help working people understand, especially in this Centenary year of the 1916 Rising, that the fight against imperialism is not something belonging to the past but must be consciously at the heart of their daily struggles. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">We have just witnessed in Ireland a scandal involving the giant Apple Corporation, who flushed its global profits through an Irish address to avoid paying taxes; this with the connivance and support of the Irish government. These profits were derived from the super-exploitation of the lowest-paid workers across the globe. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">B</span><span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">y looking at Apple and at transnational corporations (TNCs) in general we can discern the broader interconnecting trends that are shaping the economics of both the powerful core of imperialist states and the peripheral weaker states. In the periphery we see the super-exploitation of low-waged workers and the capture of imperial rent by means of financial and structured incentives, and tax-dodging, resulting in massive corporate profits. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">In the imperialist core we see declining wages, lower nominal taxes on capital, and lower corporate taxes, again resulting in massive corporate profits. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">In both cases we see a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to TNCs and the shifting of the tax burden from TNCs onto the shoulders of working people, resulting in the scaling back of socialised public services and their replacement with privatised, commodified services for profit. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">According to a recent report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), there has been a global decline in wage share from 64 per cent in 1980 to 54 per cent in 2008, signifying a huge transfer of money from workers, communities and society at large to the owners of capital, this amounting to the staggering figure of $7 trillion in 2013. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">The report also shows that the assets held by foreign affiliates of transnational corporations rose from $3.9 trillion in 1990 to $102 trillion in 2014. Global sales by foreign affiliates of transnationals rose from $4.7 trillion in 1990 to $36.4 trillion in 2014. In 2013 UNCTAD estimated that 80 per cent of global trade took place between and within transnational corporations, i.e. affiliate companies conducting business with one another within a corporate conglomerate. This is one of the means that TNCs use to dodge tax. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Since the 1970s we have witnessed a new international division of labour, seeing corporations move production from high-wage to low-wage economies in order to lower production costs and increase profits. These developments are part of a global neo-liberal programme of accelerated policies, with capitalist states around the world pursuing strategies of deregulation, liberalisation, and privatisation. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">The secret negotiations by the EU with Canada and the United States on CETA and TTIP will, if ratified, further increase the dependence of individual states on both the EU and TNCs, with the power of national governments to conduct trade deals and to enact legislation being severely curtailed. Under the terms of these proposed treaties, TNCs will be able to sue states through private courts, administered by corporate lawyers. The threat of these courts will curtail any action by governments to improve the lot of their people, including minimum wages, health and safety, the environment, and financial regulation. Indeed the pursuit of profit will formally and legally take precedence over any consideration of the well-being of the people. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">The three interlinked characteristics that define this period of capitalism—neo- liberalism, financialisation, and global labour arbitrage—are shaping the 21st-century form of imperialism. Imperialist hegemony is entrenched in the core capitalist economies, while it is extending into regions where it has previously not been as strong. Trade agreements such as NAFTA, CETA, TTP, TTIP and TISA have been designed to copperfasten that hegemony and to further centralise economic and political control in the imperialist core and away from peripheral states. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">The worst excesses of monopoly capitalism are played out in the global periphery. High levels of unemployment, greater precariousness in employment, wage reductions, higher and more taxes, the loss of public services, increasing inequality and massive transfers of wealth from workers to the capitalist class are the main features. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Capitalism is by its nature polarising and imperialist. Uneven development is one of the laws of capitalism. Many peripheral economies have become partially industrialised, but these economies are subordinated to the interests of the core imperialist economies. The methods of production, componentisation of production, contract production and monopolistic control over distribution and retail networks, in tandem with the huge burdens of increasing national and personal debt, militate against the ability of the peripheral economies to emerge from the shadow of the imperialist centre and become fully capitalist economies in their own right. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Imperialism itself has become centralised. Although dominated by the United States, the imperialist core of North America, Europe and Japan are no longer in serious dispute with each other. They have developed global management tools, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, NATO, the IMF, the OECD, and G8, as a means of ensuring continued imperialist hegemony and managing inter-imperialist rivalry, thereby preventing the possibility of most peripheral economies breaking out of the imperialist orbit. Even China, with its massive economy, is vulnerable and is under attack through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">How are we to challenge this capitalist onslaught? It is necessary to go beyond reacting to each cut and each outrage: we must go beyond defensive reactions, which leaves the initiative with the capitalist class. Our struggles must be framed within a purposeful strategy of breaking with capitalism. </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana=""> </span><br />
<span ejavu="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif="" sans="" verdana="">Despite the claims of bourgeois sociologists that there is no longer a working class, the working class in fact is growing and now is also globalised. More nations are proletarianised, more women have joined the work force; the proletariat more closely resembles the face of humanity than ever before. The challenge facing the Communist movement is to unite the struggles of the working people and all anti-imperialist forces on a global scale and organise them for the defeat of capital and for socialism.</span>Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-82583186126390090322016-10-28T12:35:00.001-07:002016-10-28T12:35:58.133-07:00Spinning Liberal Tales<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.524px; margin-bottom: 0.04in;">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><b>Zoltan Zigedy</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">It comes as no surprise that </span><span style="color: black;"><b>The Nation</b></span><span style="color: black;"> magazine endorses Hillary Clinton for President (10-24-16). As the leading left-liberal publication, </span><span style="color: black;"><b>The Nation</b></span><span style="color: black;"> huffs and puffs high-minded principles before surrendering to the Democratic Party establishment. Nonetheless, it’s always interesting to see how they arrive at their submission.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">Of course, it’s all about Trump. He’s not on our side. As a statement of the obvious, that conviction is unmatched. But is Clinton on our side?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><b>The Nation</b></span><span style="color: black;">’s editors assemble a tortured list of Clinton positives and Trump negatives that stretch the truth, shrug off uncomfortable facts, and hail irrelevancies. She exhibits “grace under pressure,” they tell us. She has been a “forceful advocate of health-care reform” since 1992. And for wild-eyed fantasy: She “is running on the most progressive platform in the modern history of the Democratic Party.”</span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">Trump’s charge that the elections are “rigged,” on the other hand, is “an assault on the very basis of democratic governance itself.” So the elections are not rigged in favor of the rich, white, and powerful?</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">With amazing audacity, the editors simply dismiss Clinton’s obscene bond with corporations and foreign tyrants, a bond that is sealed with tens of millions of dollars of barely-concealed quid pro quos. They assert that “progressives will have to continue to push her” away from these rich and powerful benefactors.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">As for her super-hawk foreign policy, </span><span style="color: black;"><b>The Nation</b></span><span style="color: black;">concedes that Clinton is wrong on everything from Palestine to Russia and Syria. Though she is seemingly “intent on deepening a New Cold War,” we are invited to “break her hawkish habits,” as though her role in killing tens of thousands is akin to curbing a smoking habit or losing weight.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">Presidential candidate Jill Stein is the fly in </span><span style="color: black;"><b>The Nation</b></span><span style="color: black;">’s ointment. She is all the progressive things that Ms. Clinton is not. She stands against the corporate, war-mongering tide and not with it. Here, </span><span style="color: black;"><b>The Nation</b></span><span style="color: black;"> engages in a remarkably clumsy dance around the Stein option, laying alleged failings of the Green Party at her feet: “...her cause has not been helped by the Green Party’s reluctance, or inability, to seek, share, and build power, with all the messy compromise this often entails. Instead of the patient-- and Sisyphean-- task of building an authentic grassroots alternative, the Greens offer a top-down vehicle for protest.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">But isn’t building an “authentic grassroots alternative” exactly what the Stein candidacy is all about? Isn’t Stein reaching out to </span><span style="color: black;"><b>The Nation</b></span><span style="color: black;"> readers, Sisyphus, or anyone else interested in changing the bankrupt political scene in order to build precisely the power that the editors claim to want to see? The apparent truth is that </span><span style="color: black;"><b>The Nation</b></span><span style="color: black;"> would like Jill Stein to go away and take her principled positions with her, clearing the way for a heavy dose of lesser-of-two-evil scare tactics.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">The most-tenured </span><span style="color: black;"><b>Nation</b></span><span style="color: black;"> columnist, Katha Pollitt, bats clean-up on the magazine’s Hillary team. She relishes the opportunity, entitling her column </span><span style="color: black;"><i>The Case for Hillary</i></span><span style="color: black;">. In offering her brief, she gives a list of 12 reasons, beginning with reproductive rights: “I’m putting this first because they’re crucial to </span><span style="color: black;"><i>everything you care about…</i></span><span style="color: black;">” [my italics]. Everything we care about? As important as reproductive rights are, does Pollitt really believe that reproductive rights trump all concerns? Did she consider African American mothers whose sons have been murdered by police? Did she even weigh the daily slaughter of hundreds if not thousands throughout the world at the hands of US weapons or the weapons of its surrogates? Does poverty, lack of health care, and inferior education count in her reproductive-rights calculus?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">Pollitt, like far too many upper-middle class white liberals, is blind to class and race. Those from other classes or races are not part of “us,” and the concerns of the “other,” though real, are not significant barriers to the “simple human happiness” that she argues flows from reproductive rights. Like the Evangelicals standing on the other side of the abortion barricades, she is incapable of imagining anything more important to others than that battle. She, like the right-wing fanatics, trivializes all other wrongs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"><b>Against the Big Lie</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">Pollitt’s defense of Ms. Clinton reaches disturbing dimensions when she raises oft-repeated lies about Communist sectarianism leading to the empowerment of Hitler. She references a supposed moment when “...German communists scorned the weak-tea socialists in the 1932 election with the slogan ‘After Hitler, us.’” Like other similar red-baiting slanders that circulate on the left in every election cycle, this one bears little or no relation to the truth. Defenders of lesser-of-two-evilism assert that the German Communists stood in the way of working class anti-fascist unity, that they welcomed Hitler’s rise, that they spurned joint action. These charges are meant to apply supposed lessons from history to the politics of our time, suggesting that independent militancy and principles stand in the way of unity against the specter of extremism. If disaffected voters would throw their votes at the feet of the slightly-lesser-evil, like the German Communists should have done, we could avoid the specter of a greater evil.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">While there are many for-hire historians who will affirm these claims, they are based on fiction.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">The “1932 election” that Pollitt cites was, in fact, five critical elections: a first-round presidential election in March, the second and final round, the important Prussian Landtag election in April, a Reichstag election in July, and another-- the last relatively legitimate Reichstag election-- in November.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">One surely unimpeachable perspective on these elections was that of journalist Carl von Ossietzky. Ossietzky was a prominent and respected left-wing commentator associated with the left wing of social democracy and often critical of the Communists (KPD). From a family of fallen aristocrats, Ossietzky’s anti-fascist credentials and integrity were impeccable-- he received the Nobel Prize in 1935 and died in a Gestapo prison hospital in 1938.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">In his newspaper columns in </span><span style="color: black;"><b>Die Weltbühne</b></span><span style="color: black;">, Ossietzky tells a story far removed from the fantastic anti-Communist narrative. In the lead-up to the first round of the Presidential elections, the Social Democratic Party, despite being Germany’s largest party at the time, chose not to run a candidate against both the reactionary incumbent President, von Hindenburg, and Adolf Hitler. It argued that the party’s stance was not pro-Hindenburg, but anti-fascist, a splitting of hairs that did not impress Ossietzky: “It is not that fascism is winning, but that the others are adapting it… A passing insult tossed by the demagogues of the Berlin Sports Palast jerks ten Socialist deputies from their seats, and forces them to prove themselves as fatherland-lovers… the initiative lies with the right.” Ossietzky writes: “Readers continually ask me for whom one should vote on March 13th. Is there really nothing better, they ask, than pursuing this fateful and discouraging policy of the ‘lesser evil’?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">He goes on:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">As a non-party man of the left I would have been happy to vote for an acceptable Social Democrat… Since there is no Social Democratic candidate then I will have to vote for the Communist… It must be emphasized that a vote for Thälmann means neither a vote of confidence for the Communist Party, nor major expectations. To make left-wing politics it is necessary to concentrate strength where a man of the left stands in the battle. Thälmann is the only one; all the others are various shades of reaction. That makes the choice easier.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">The Social Democrats say: “Hindenburg means struggle against fascism.” From which source do the gentlemen draw this knowledge?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">It is nonsense to describe Thälmann’s candidature as simply a gain of numbers. Thälmann will probably receive a surprisingly high number of votes… The better that Thälmann does, the clearer it will be what a success could have been won with a united socialist candidate…</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">Within a week of his election, Hindenburg-- designated the “anti-fascist” candidate by the Social Democrats-- called for the banning of all left-wing party-affiliated mass organizations. Before nine months passed, the Reich President had appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor and handed rule to the Nazis. Ossietzky knew at that time what a colossal mistake it was for the Social Democrats to refuse to run a candidate, to support Hindenburg, and to refuse to support Thälmann: “Invisible hands are at work in the web and woof of official policy, trying to bring Hitler, thrown out through the front door, in again up the back stairs.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">In January of 1933, immediately after von Schleicher was deposed as Chancellor and prior to Hindenburg appointing Hitler, the German Communists suggested a united general strike; the Social Democrats rejected the offer to collaborate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">Ossietzky urged unity between Communists and Social Democrats as early as April of 1932. After the Nazis made major gains in the important Prussian Landtag election, Ossietzky saw only two effective responses: either the Social Democrats invite the KPD into the existing Prussian government (something that they had refused to do) or the two parties form a united front. The KPD had already raised the second option one day after the election. The Central Committee called for “mass meetings of the workers in every factory and every mine… in all trade unions…[to] compile a list of joint demands, elect action committees and strike committees composed of Communist, Social Democratic, Christian, and non-party workers…” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">Despite the negative portrait painted of KPD tactics by liberal commentators, the German people showed their growing confidence in the KPD in the two Reichstag elections. Of the three major parties, only the KPD made gains in both elections, adding nearly 30% to its deputies while the SPD lost nearly 16%. Clearly, the KPD’s militant anti-fascism was growing in popularity with the working class.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">It is probably too much to hope that liberals will retire the red-baiting canard of Communism ushering in fascism, any more than there is hope that partisan Democrats will cease blaming Ralph Nader for their pathetic surrender to the right in the 2000 election.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">Clearly, the lesser-of-two-evils approach will not go away anytime soon, though it has failed to halt the many decades of the rightward drift of the political center. Could it be that those who own the two parties are sponsoring this persistent shift to the right in order to gauge just how long liberals, labor, and the left will tolerate it without making a break with the Democratic Party establishment?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">One would do well to put aside Cold War textbooks and liberal smugness and take a long look at the dynamics of oppositional politics in the Weimar era leading up to Hitler’s ascension to power. There are lessons from that period beyond desperately collaborating with bourgeois and reactionary parties. The severe economic crisis of that time was only answered by a demagogic and extreme nationalist movement and by the militantly anti-capitalist, revolutionary movement. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">The Social Democratic Party chose a different path: it sought to manage capitalism along with its bourgeois parliamentary counterparts. They failed. Disaster ensued.</span></span></div>
Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-30491707267961656162016-10-23T13:01:00.001-07:002016-10-23T13:01:58.301-07:00Organize a European referendum, and you'll see that the Walloons are not alone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Bert De Belder</h3>
In the story about the Walloons blocking the free trade agreement with Canada, the so-called Ceta, several analysts are discussing the role of the emerging PTB-PVDA (Workers' Party of Belgium). We asked the chairman of the left party how he sees things.<!--break--><br />
<h4 class="interview-question">
PTB-PVDA Chairman Peter Mertens on the free trade agreement with Canada (Ceta)</h4>
<strong>Peter Mertens. </strong>“The European Union was already preparing to sign the free trade agreement with Canada with much fanfare. While this agreement would have far-reaching consequences for Europe, for its people and for the climate, the European establishment was not really planning to mince many words on the treaty. Until the government of the Walloon Region spoiled the party. A debate was held there, and immediately the international media touched down in Namur (the seat of the Walloon government) and Brussels. Belgium in the eye of the storm, with at its helm the social-democratic prime minister Paul Magnette.”<br />
“This tells a lot about how the European Union functions. At first months of secret negotiations, then in a hurry and top-down a take-it-or-leave-it agreement, and finally blackmail and political pressure. For what fundamental debate did we get in Flanders (another Belgian region) on this treaty? None at all. Neither in other countries. We should be glad that the Walloon regional government sounded the alarm, and by doing so rendered a democratic debate possible.”<br />
“The fear of the establishment parties for this debate is apparent. They want to impose an economic herd behaviour: 'because they are all doing it, it means it must be good'. Not so. From the very beginning thousands of NGOs, trade unions, consumers and environment organizations have put serious criticisms on the table. Throughout Europe, millions have demonstrated against Ceta and its big brother TTIP, the free trade treaty with the United States. And because today suddenly a real debate is on the table, as a result of the Walloon blockade, the establishment is crying foul.”<br />
<h4 class="interview-question">
How do you evaluate this political blockade?</h4>
<strong>Peter Mertens</strong>. “The position of the Walloon regional government is correct and courageous. Our PTB representatives in the Walloon parliament support this resistance and the essential criticisms on the Ceta treaty. Minister President Magnette and the Walloon regional government are now insulted and put under pressure by the puppets of big industry from Belgium, the entire European Union and Canada. This is a mockery of a democratic process. Flemish nationalists have always pleaded for more powers to be accorded to the regions. But once a region uses those powers, they don't like it either. They shouldn't complain. Among the population, there is no support base for this agreement, not in Wallonia, not in the rest of the country, and neither in Europe.”<br />
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In other countries though, a political agreement on the free trade deal has been reached.</h4>
<strong>Peter Mertens</strong>. “Indeed, among the political caste. There you have a large unity of thought. But this unity of thought is confined within the four walls of some parliaments. That does not mean there is one among the people, of course. That's an error of judgment we should avoid. In fact, a European referendum should be organized whenever agreements with such an impact are concerned. But they don't. Instead they engage in arm-twisting and other attacks against the Walloon government. The disrespect of regional and national democratic processes in Europe is enormous. We had observed this earlier already, when the French 'no' against the European Constitution was simply relegated to the trash can. The constitution was imposed anyhow, be it with another name. We likewise observed this in Greece, that was in no way allowed to make its own choices for its economy. Ultimately, they even decided to starve the Greek banks in order to push through the absurd austerity and privatization policies. Now they want to do the same with Wallonia. They are already pondering an 'interpretative declaration' to be attached to the treaty. Yeah, great, they will have a good laugh with that in the headquarters of big industry. Such a declaration has no legal value whatsoever, all experts in international law and trade agree on this. Over the next hours and days, we may expect more of the same type of fake solutions to offer Magnette a fake way out.”<br />
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In Belgium your party is surging, in the country's three regions, but mainly in Wallonia. Foreign Minister Didier Reynders of the neo-liberal MR says without hesitation that the PTB's increase in the polls is the reason behind the resistance of the Parti Socialiste (PS) against Ceta. This would force the PS to position itself more to the Left. Is that so?</h4>
<strong>Peter Mertens</strong>. “Certain political commentators like to draw a picture of Wallonia as a big exception in Europe. The Flemish parties in government cry foul and describe it as harassment against the Rightist federal government, in which the PS is not represented. But again: let a European referendum be held. Let the people speak out. In September 2016 in Germany, 320,000 people demonstrated against the free trade agreements with the US (TTIP) and Canada (Ceta), in Brussels on 20 September there were 10,000. The majority of French are of the opinion that the TTIP negotiations should be stopped. Apart from the Walloon and Brussels regional governments and the government of the French community in Belgium, also the Irish Senate gave its government the advice to vote against Ceta. And in Austria, Slovenia, Poland and Germany, no final green light has yet been given. A Europe-wide petition gathered more than 3 million signatures, a European record.”<br />
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The question was whether your party is the reason behind the Walloon 'no' against Ceta.</h4>
<strong>Peter Mertens</strong>. “No, we are not the reason. The protest movement against Ceta and TTIP in our country is very broad: mutual social insurance organizations, North-South solidarity movements, trade unions, consumer groups, small and medium enterprises, peasants, women's movements, climate activists, judges, you name it. Of course with the PTB-PVDA we have always supported the resistance, as has done the group of the GUE/NGL (European United Left/Nordic Green Left) in the European Parliament.<br />
And of course you cannot deny the particular situation in Wallonia and in Brussels where our party, according to the latest opinion polls, could become the third party, in Wallonia even reaching 16 percent. This naturally influences the positioning of the Parti Socialiste, having a hard time to play a dual role. For the previous federal government, led by this same PS, didn't have any problem giving our country a mandate for negotiations on free trade deals with the US and Canada. Prime Minister Di Rupo himself attached his signature to it. This the Socialist Party cannot do today, which may be partly because of the pressure from the PTB. But more essential is that the resistance has a broad basis. Pressure is coming bottom-up, which is of course very well.”<br />
<h4 class="interview-question">
Why should we reject free trade agreements such as Ceta (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) and TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, between the European Union and the United States)?</h4>
<strong>Peter Mertens</strong>. “They will not help us overcome the European crisis. That's an illusion, a fake solution, a wild rush forward. One of the major elements in the European crisis is the policy of low salaries and austerity that is being implemented everywhere in Europe, as demanded by Germany. The result is a catastrophe. Who can seriously think that we will solve the problem with a free trade agreement with Canada? The American Tufts University did research into the consequences of Ceta on jobs, and found a loss of 200,000 jobs. The phenomenon of social dumping, which we are already observing in Europe, will increase. Instead of harmonizing norms and rules upwards, to protect workers, health and the environment, we risk to slip further down the slope. Canadian civil movements and trade unions are warning us for such risks, as they have experienced those themselves, when they concluded a free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico, the so-called Nafta. The results: closures, restructurings, lower wages and worse working conditions. The downward spiral. The Canadian Caterpillar plant was closed and moved to the US, where lower wages were paid. Next: yet another closure and a move to Mexico, with yet lower wages. Without any hindrance. Is that what we want? The same goes for the standards we apply regarding the environment and health. Behind these treaties, you'll find the harsh logic of competition, something that cannot be denied by neoliberals as (former EU Trade Commissioner) De Gucht. This means that all standards will be pushed downwards instead of upwards.”<br />
<h4 class="interview-question">
The campaign against Ceta and TTIP also warns for the special court system that is part of the agreements ('Investment Court System' for Ceta, Investor State Dispute Settlement for TTIP).</h4>
<strong>Peter Mertens</strong>. “Transnational corporations can sue a country before a special court when national laws are considered to harm the big industry's interests. On the basis of similar trade treaties, the Egyptian government got sued by the multinational Veolia for having introduced a minimum wage. The Swedish company Vattenfall demanded from Germany a compensation of 4.7 billion euro because the Germans had decided to exit from nuclear energy, after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. And the US company Ethyl Corporation sued the Canadian government because it wanted to prohibit the use of the toxic additive MMT in gasoline. All in all, worldwide we have already seen some 700 court cases in which a company sued a government, costing the latter billions of euros in legal expenses and tenfold that amount in compensation payments for the corporations. Special courts for big industry are courts of exception, and they don't have their place in a democracy. You cannot give in one inch on this issue, unless of course you want common people not to have any say at all anymore.”Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-70398385716573255082016-10-22T13:43:00.001-07:002016-10-22T13:44:29.526-07:00 Biting into a rotten Apple<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="8" style="width: 84%px;"><tbody>
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<i>Eoghan M. Ó Néill</i></div>
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There has been a bit of an outcry over the EU’s decision to rule against the Government’s sweetheart deal with Apple, which if upheld will mean Apple paying €13 billion, with interest, into the Irish exchequer. <br />
The greatest portion of this was generated by super-exploited labour in the global south and rightfully belongs to them. <br />
Both Apple and the Government are appealing the EU decision, much to the derision of the Irish left, and indeed the Irish people, who see the €13 billion and change as a windfall that could be used to pay for social projects such as housing, job creation, etc., thereby to some extent assuaging the damage done to the working class after eight years of austerity and the crippling criminal debt burden of European bankers imposed on the Irish people. <br />
Of course it will do nothing of the kind. <br />
This fracture within the capitalist camp bears further examination and with even a cursory analysis exposes a number of areas of imperialist exploitation. <br />
Whether or not Apple pays the €13 billion, it is the duty of the left to pull apart this fracture and to emphasise the extent of exploitation perpetrated by Apple and all transnational corporations. We need to go further than just populist posturing over how we might spend this windfall and dig down to expose the roots of Apple’s super-profits, how Apple and other transnational corporations accumulate such profits, and who are the real generators of such wealth. <br />
We need to expose the super-exploitation of our comrades in the global south and demonstrate that Apple is not a one-off: such super-exploitation is endemic to the operation of all transnational corporations. <br />
Neither is the Irish sweetheart deal unique to Apple. The Irish corporate tax rate of 12½ per cent is more myth than real. We need also to expose the many ways by which TNCs use Ireland to support their super-exploitation of global labour and to deny states their rightful taxes. <br />
This rift between the EU, Ireland and Apple uncovers the dependence of the Irish economy on transnational corporations, revealing the imperialist grip on the Irish state, raising questions about our sovereignty and democracy. It further reveals the shifting of the tax burden from transnational corporations to the working class, and the huge transfers of wealth from those without to the top 1 per cent. <br />
Nor is the EU an innocent in this. The action of the EU Commission in declaring against Ireland and Apple must also be subjected to analysis. The EU is not concerned with Apple’s super-exploitation of workers, only with the dividing up of the imperialist rent (in the form of taxes). <br />
This falling out between capitalists has opened a small chink in the armour of imperialism. The left has to be careful that it does not get sidetracked into concentrating all its attention and energy on the issue of the €13 billion, attractive as that is, but must use this opportunity to expose the extent of imperialist subjugation of the international working class. <br />
The politicians and the media would have us concentrate on the €13 billion, encouraging us to dream of what we could do with it, and to argue over the rights and wrongs of whether we should accept it or not. It is our purpose instead to expose the fault lines that are emanating from this tiny chink, and in that exposure to contribute to the raising of the consciousness of our class. <br />
The debacle over Irish Water, the debt burden, austerity, the growing shelter crisis and the imposing of exploitative trade agreements are all helping to lift the scales from the eyes of the Irish working class. This self-inflicted wound of capitalism can help further move those scales, but only if we are capable of seeing beyond the captivating aura of the robbers’ gold. <br />
<h3>
Dependence and the transnational corporations</h3>
Apple is not the only transnational corporation in Ireland. Nor is it the only one with some kind of sweetheart deal with the Government. Google, Dell, Metronic, Pfizer, Actaris, Oracle and CRH are only a few of the thousand-plus transnational corporations based in Ireland. They dominate our export trade, pay 40 per cent of corporate taxes, and have created a dependence among many of Ireland’s indigenous industries. <br />
The Government is also dependent upon them. As a comprador government, it seeks to disguise this dependence behind a screen of easy job-creation options, showing that the employees of TNCs pay taxes and are consumers. While TNCs pay only a small portion of the corporation tax they are supposed to pay, at the same time they artificially inflate Ireland’s GDP and growth figures, making the economy appear wealthier than it really is. This plays into the Government’s illusion of Ireland having a wealthy economy. <br />
The Government would have us believe that TNCs are attracted to Ireland because we have a young, well-educated population with direct access to Europe. Until Brexit, Britain offered all these, only more so. <br />
So what else has Ireland to offer? Natural resources?—not unless you count magnificent scenic views as a natural resource. What Ireland does have is the lowest corporate tax rate in the EU. <br />
The Matheson Ormsby Prentice index of foreign direct investment states: “Ireland scored the best when it came to corporate tax rates, corporate tax regime, interest rates, government incentives, physical infrastructure and IT environment and access to a pool of local skilled labour at appropriate levels.” <br />
Access to Continental Europe and English-speaking workers were also in there; but the incentive to TNCs locating in Ireland was more economically grounded than the demographic of Ireland’s young population. Not satisfied with the lowest level of corporation tax in the EU, TNCs have sought sweetheart deals whereby they pay corporation tax as low as 2.2 per cent. Last year Apple paid only 0.005 per cent, or €50 for every million of profit. <br />
TNCs do not even have to produce anything in Ireland. Dell, for example, ceased production in Ireland in 2009, with the loss of 1,900 jobs, and moved production to Poland. However, the corporation retained an office in Ireland, and profits produced in Poland and elsewhere were trafficked through here in order to benefit from Irish tax laws. <br />
Big Pharma, some of which do still produce some products in Ireland, also set up here to benefit from Ireland’s tax laws, making super-profits by locating patents in Ireland. Writing on the pharmaceutical TNCs based in Ireland, Chris van Egeraat and Frank Barry, in their report “The Irish Pharmaceutical Industry over the Boom Period and Beyond,” stated: “Apart from the import of raw and intermediate materials, all of Ireland’s foreign-owned manufacturing sectors make substantial payments to their overseas parent companies in the form of royalties and licence fees and payments for miscellaneous business services.” <br />
These internal licence fees, royalties and payments for miscellaneous services are a tactic employed by all TNCs to further reduce their tax liability. Data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis demonstrates that, on average, American TNCs make an annual profit of $970,000 from each of their Irish employees, while they paid corporation tax in Ireland of only about $25,000. Apple, for example, with income of a little less than €200 billion, employs only 5,000 people in Ireland. <br />
At present, TNCs make up only 9.4 per cent of the Irish manufacturing sector but account for 83.4 per cent of value added. It is a similar tale in the services sector, where TNCs represent only 1.9 per cent of the sector yet command 42.9 per cent of the value added. Furthermore—depending on the statistics you use—TNCs control between 75 and 90 per cent of Irish exports. Either figure is a serious cause for concern. <br />
These figures are an indication of the level of dependence that the Irish economy has on TNCs. This is worrying, for two reasons. Firstly, TNCs are very fluid. They come and, when it is more profitable to move elsewhere, they go. One of the reasons the Government has given for challenging the EU Commission’s decision on Apple is the fear that Apple and other TNCs might leave for more compliant countries, and that others would be deterred from setting up here. Turkey has already invited Apple to set up there, promising that in doing so Apple would not be disturbed by interference from the EU. <br />
<h3>
Foreign direct investment</h3>
The second concern is the shift from inward foreign direct investment to contract production. Inward FDI is declining, not only in Ireland but in the EU. The Government recognised this in its Policy Statement on Foreign Direct Investment (July 2014). In this statement it notes the “substantial reduction” in FDI into Ireland and the EU. In 2007, FDI stood at a record $859 billion, which fell to $286 billion in 2013. Inward FDI to the EU has fallen to just over a quarter of what it was a mere six years earlier. <br />
This is a worrying trend for a small open economy such as Ireland’s, which is so heavily dependent upon inward FDI. It is difficult to be certain, because the data is not there, but the assumption is that a good portion of the missing FDI can be accounted for by the movement by TNCs away from FDI towards contract production, a relatively recent phenomenon that John Smith describes in his book <i>Imperialism in the 21st Century</i> as becoming increasingly important to TNCs. <br />
The example of Dell above is one demonstration of how contract production works. Contract production is most prominent in the pharmaceutical and technology sectors. <br />
In the 2016 edition of <i>Pharmaceutical Manufacturing</i> the magazine states that global contract pharmaceutical manufacturing (contract production) would grow to $79.24 billion by 2019, from a base of $54.54 billion in 2013. Given that pharmaceutical TNCs account for 58 per cent of Irish exports, this is not good news for the Irish economy. <br />
Such is the extent of TNC contract production that the Government’s Fiscal Advisory Council reported that it accounts for 43 per cent of Irish GDP in 2014. In other words, 43 per cent of the country’s GDP was not based on solid trade produced in Ireland but on the repatriated profits moving through Ireland. This fact alone illustrates the precariousness of the Irish economy in its dependence on TNCs. <br />
As TNCs move from FDI to contract production, this will have a detrimental effect on the Irish economy, resulting in job losses. Most of the indigenous industries that rely on TNCs’ production in Ireland will be sacrificed. Consumption will drop, as will revenue in the form of PRSI and VAT. <br />
Those special deals with TNCs that the Government has been engaging in since 2007 are a last-ditch effort to retain some form of TNC presence in Ireland. Having failed to develop a strong base for indigenous industries and instead becoming increasingly dependent upon TNCs, the Government is bereft of ideas for planning a sustainable indigenous industrial base. <br />
Apple is the biggest of the TNCs in Ireland. Its rise embodies the global rise of all TNCs. An analysis of Apple will expose the capitalising of the super-exploitation of workers in the global south, the tax havens, such as Ireland, and the accumulation of record profits and cash reserves. As with all TNCs, the beneficiaries are the company’s management and shareholders. Indeed never before have TNCs been awash with so much cash. The rest of the world, the workers who create the wealth, citizens and even national governments hardly get a look in. <br />
<b>Essentially, Apple’s and the other TNCs’ massive accumulation of wealth is based on two interconnected strategies: the exploitation of workers, and dodging tax.</b> <br />
This massive accumulation of wealth by TNCs has a flip side, with trends in high unemployment, the increasing precariousness of labour, increasing inequality, fiscal austerity, increasing taxes (often in the form of new taxes), reduced public services and the privatisation of those same services, lower wages, and consumption fuelled by debt. This is unsustainable. On one side, TNCs continue to make profits they cannot reinvest in the real economy, so instead they inflate the financial sector; on the other side, there is rising public and personal debt. <br />
We have been here before, and the outcome will differ only in its intensity and devastation. <br />
By looking at Apple and at TNCs in general we can discern the broader interconnecting trends that are shaping the economics of both the global north and the global south. In the global south we see (1) the super-exploitation of low-waged workers and (2) the capture of imperial rent by means of financial and structured incentives, and tax-dodging, resulting in massive corporate profits. <br />
In the global north we see (1) declining wages, (2) lower nominal taxes on capital, and (3) lower corporate taxes, again resulting in massive corporate profits. <br />
In both cases we see (1) a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to TNCs and (2) the movement of the tax burden from TNCs onto the shoulders of the working class, resulting in the scaling back of socialised public services and their replacement with privatised, commodified services for profit. <br />
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development there has been a global decline in wage share from 64 per cent in 1980 to 54 per cent in 2008, signifying a huge transfer of money from workers, communities and societies at large to the owners of capital amounting to $7 trillion in 2013. <br />
The report also shows that the assets held by foreign affiliates of transnational corporations rose from $3.9 trillion in 1990 to $102 trillion in 2014. Global sales by foreign affiliates of transnationals rose from $4.7 trillion in 1990 to $36.4 trillion in 2014. In 2013 UNCTAD estimated that 80 per cent of global trade took place between and within transnational corporations, i.e. affiliate companies conducting business with one another within a corporate conglomerate. This is one of the means that TNCs use to dodge tax. <br />
Since the 1970s we have witnessed a new international division of labour, seeing corporations move production from high-wage to low-wage economies in order to lower production costs and increase profits. These developments are part of a global neo-liberal programme of accelerated policies, with states around the world enacting policies of deregulation, liberalisation, and privatisation. <br />
<h3>
The European Union</h3>
The EU appears to be quite upset with Ireland and Apple. It claims that Ireland gave Apple a deal that is not available to other TNCs and therefore breaches the EU rules on competition and state aid. <br />
This is a dubious concern of the EU. Ireland has separate deals with a number of the thousand and more TNCs established here. The Government allows them to repatriate profits produced in Ireland, to channel profits from contract production through Ireland, and likewise with profits from patents located in Ireland and other means, such as transfer-pricing, by which TNCs can dodge paying taxes due in other countries, and indeed in Ireland. <br />
But Ireland is not the only EU state to do this. The Netherlands and Luxembourg also have deals with Apple whereby little or no tax is paid. France, which has a stated corporation tax of over 30 per cent, has deals whereby TNCs pay only 8 per cent. So what is behind the EU problem with Apple’s Irish deal? <br />
Basically, the EU is an imperialist entity, largely controlled by Germany and France. For some time it has wanted to extend its control over member-states, particularly in the economic arena. Centralised fiscal policies have been on the agenda since the Lisbon Treaty of 2009. The EU already exercises some control over VAT, and tariffs for external trade; and there is the Stability and Growth Pact, which restricts the amount a member-state can borrow to spend on social policies. <br />
The EU summit in Bratislava in September 2016 has on its agenda proposals for greater economic and fiscal centralisation. Could perhaps the hue and cry over Apple be a mere coincidence, given that the Commission’s decision came immediately before the Bratislava summit and has forced the issue onto the summit’s agenda? The centralisation of tax, and in particular corporation tax, will be discussed in Bratislava. The debacle over Ireland and Apple will set the tone of the debate—no doubt strengthening the hands of the central European powers of Germany and France. <br />
The secret negotiations by the EU with Canada and the United States on CETA and TTIP will, if ratified, further increase the dependence of EU national states on both the EU and TNCs, with the power of national governments to conduct trade deals and to enact legislation being severely curtailed. National parliaments will be reduced to grandiose county councils. Even the national judiciary will be sidestepped, with TNCs being able to sue states through private courts, administered by corporate lawyers. The threat of these courts will curtail any action by governments to improve the lot of their people, including minimum wages, health and safety, the environment, and financial regulation. Indeed the pursuit of profit will take precedence over the well-being of the people. <br />
A question that has to be addressed is, Is this dispute between Ireland and Apple on one side the EU on the other part of a power play between the imperial powers of the United States and the EU? <br />
<h3>
Conclusion</h3>
The questions surrounding Ireland and Apple are not simply about EU rules, or the repayment of €13 billion. They are about the nature of global monopoly capitalism, about TNCs’ production processes and financialisation and their monopolistic control of the markets; they are about the manoeuvres of the imperialist triad of North America, Europe and Japan for hegemonic control; they are about the economic and political sovereignty of states; and they are about the accumulation of wealth and the exploitation of workers. <br />
The three interlinked characteristics that define this period of capitalism—neo-liberalism, financialisation, and globalisation—have shaped the 21st-century form of imperialism. Imperial hegemony is becoming entrenched in the core capitalist economies, while it is extending into regions where it has previously not been as strong. Trade agreements such as NAFTA, CETA, TTP, TTIP and TISA have been designed to copperfasten that hegemony and to further centralise economic and political control in the imperialist core and away from peripheral states. <br />
We are seeing the results of this imperial strategy unfold before us: the concentration of wealth in fewer hands. In Apple we see the massive accumulation of wealth by TNCs and the growing subjugation of national economies to the interests of TNCs in their pursuit of greater profit. <br />
This dichotomy is particularly seen in the peripheral states. The worst excesses of monopoly capitalism are played out in the periphery. We are witnessing high levels of unemployment, greater precariousness in employment, wage reductions, higher and more taxes, the loss of public services, increasing inequality, and massive transfers of wealth from workers to the capitalist class. <br />
How are we to challenge this capitalist onslaught? It is necessary to go beyond reacting to each cut and each outrage: we must go beyond defensive reactions, which leaves the initiative with the capitalist class. Our struggles must be framed within a purposeful strategy of breaking the link with capitalism. <br />
Capitalism is by its nature polarising and imperialist. This must raise the question whether peripheral countries can catch up. Can peripheral economies become fully capitalist? If not, this in turn raises the question whether globalised monopoly capitalism has shut off the possibility of peripheral economies becoming fully capitalist as a stage towards socialism. <br />
Many peripheral economies have become industrialised and some financialised, but these economies are subordinated to the interests of the core imperialist economies. The methods of production, componentisation of production, contract production and monopolistic control over distribution and retail networks, in tandem with the huge burdens of increasing national and personal debt, militate against the ability of the peripheral economies to emerge from the shadow of the imperialist centre and become fully capitalist economies in their own right. <br />
Imperialism itself has become centralised. Although dominated by the United States, the imperialist core of North America, Europe and Japan are no longer in serious dispute with each other. They have developed global management tools, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, NATO, the IMF, the OECD, and G8, as a means of ensuring continued imperialist hegemony, thereby preventing the possibility of most peripheral economies going it alone. Even China, with its massive economy, is vulnerable and is under attack through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP). <br />
Modern capitalism is a globalised system. It is no longer a number of independent capitalist systems living side by side and in constant competition with each other. As John Smith stresses in his book <i>Imperialism in the 21st Century,</i> the capitalist core is no longer in competition within itself. Instead it encourages competition between peripheral economies, both as a means of lowering production costs and as a means of control. <br />
The Marxist economist Samir Amin argues that it will take the concerted effort of workers in both the global north and the global south to make the break with capitalism. That much is self-evident. Amin also argues for the de-linking of peripheral states from capitalism. His argument is that underdeveloped peripheral economies cannot progress under capitalism, let alone catch up. Monopolistic control of the markets by TNCs, increasing government and personal debt, along with downward pressure on wages and the marginalisation of national governments in the economic sphere, prevent emerging economies from catching up. Nor is it in the interests of the imperialist core that they do so. <br />
Peripheral states in Europe may be more developed economically, at least on the surface. However, economies such as those of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy are in hock to the TNCs. Wages are depressed, debt is increasing, and the ability of national governments to control their economies has been eroded by the EU, the fear of not satisfying the interests of TNCs, and the proposed trade agreement of CETA, TTIP, and TISA. <br />
We need look no further than recent history to see what happens to peripheral economies that try to fight back while remaining within the capitalist fold: the destruction of Greek democracy and economy, the technocratic government put into Italy, and the dictating of Ireland’s economy, even to the point of placing the lion’s share of private bankers’ debt onto the shoulders of the Irish working class. <br />
The economic policies of the EU peripheral states are increasingly being dictated by the EU, the ECB, the EU Commission, and international capitalist tools of dominance: the IMF, the World Bank, and of course the TNCs. As long as the peripheral states remain in the EU and the capitalist camp they will remain as appendages to the imperialist core. De-linking from the EU and from capitalism and pursuing a socialist path is the only option. <br />
De-linking is both a national and an international struggle. It requires fighting on the home front while building international alliances with comrades in other states. It means building a shared programme for de-linking. Such a programme is not a vision but the cold application of the tools of Marxist analysis. We need to build the economic and political models that de-linking would entail. <br />
Inward foreign direct investment to Europe is falling as TNCs move towards contract production, and exports are dominated by TNCs that repatriate the profits. Overall, the future for European peripheral economies is not bright. They will stagnate before collapsing. One thing they will not do is progress. <br />
The Apple model of extracting massive surplus value while dodging taxes will continue to weaken economies as debt increases and consumption falls. Such a model is unsustainable. The only solution is socialism. The de-linking of the European peripheral economies from the EU and from capitalism offers an alternative of a new core of socialised economies, designed on need rather than on profit. <br />
Such a project would challenge the myth of the capitalist “end of history” and forge new links among the international working class.</td></tr>
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Source: Rodrigo Fernandez and Reijer Hendrikse, <i>Rich Corporations, Poor Societies: The Financialization of Apple.</i></div>
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<tr><td bgcolor="#ffeeee"><big><b>How Apple works</b></big> <br />
In their report “The Financialization of Apple,” Rodrigo Fernandez and Reijer Hendrikse state: “Besides offshoring production to low-wage countries to minimize costs, the accounting behind Apple’s global product sales, profits and cash reserves has been reorganized to minimize the company’s tax returns. Apple’s Irish operations located in Cork initially included production, but since the late-1990s reorganization of Apple this is no longer the case.” <br />
Ireland is the centre for Apple’s financialisation (see the attached graph). It has two companies registered at the same Cork address: Apple Operations International and Apple Sales International. According to the US Senate, AOI “has not declared tax residency in Ireland and has not paid any corporate tax to any national government in the past five years.” <br />
Apple has in effect used AOI to exploit a difference between US and Irish residence rules to avoid paying tax. To complicate things, AOI does not employ any staff: it is in fact managed by another Apple subsidiary, Braeburn Capital, based in Reno, Nevada. Nevada has 0 per cent corporation tax. <br />
“Apple has assigned partial ownership of its Irish subsidiaries to Baldwin Holdings Unlimited in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven, according to documents filed there and in Ireland. Baldwin Holdings has no listed offices or telephone number, and its only listed director is Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, who lives and works in Cupertino.” <br />
The second Apple affiliate in Ireland, Apple Sales International, is a subsidiary of Apple Operations Europe, which is owned by AOI—a circle that begins and ends in Ireland. ASI also operates without being tax-resident (see the graph). Between 2009 and 2012 ASI accumulated $74 billion, paying little or no tax. <br />
As with AOI, ASI did not employ anyone, at least until 2012, when 250 employees of AOE were assigned to ASI. Apple continues to claim that ASI is managed outside Ireland, and that it is not tax-resident in either Ireland or the United States. <br />
Commenting on Apple’s labyrinthine tax-dodging, the US Senate states: “In addition to shielding income from taxation by declining to declare tax residency in any country, Apple Inc.’s Irish affiliates have also helped Apple to avoid U.S. taxes in another way, through utilization of a cost-sharing agreement and related transfer-pricing practices.” <br />
Of course Apple has other affiliates in Europe and throughout the world, including the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Singapore—not counting its worldwide network of retail affiliates. However, as Apple transfers its economic rights in Apple products to Ireland, many countries are seeing little if any tax returns from the company. For example, in 2011 Apple recorded 84 per cent of its non-US operating income through ASI in Ireland, resulting in a tax liability of nil for Apple’s French and German retail affiliates. <br />
John Smith in <i>Imperialism in the 21st Century</i> argues that contract production hides the wealth that is being extracted from workers in the global south. All Apple’s production is done through contract production, in numerous factories in numerous countries. In some cases these are subcontracted by European affiliates to industries in the global south, adding another layer to the Apple labyrinth. This surplus value is trafficked through Ireland, hiding the level of exploitation and allowing Apple to dodge tax in the counties of production and minimise tax paid in Ireland.</td></tr>
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Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-50678313485674401602016-10-19T10:34:00.002-07:002016-10-19T10:34:46.280-07:00Washington’s Global Economic Wars <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Washington’s
Global Economic Wars <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">James
Petras<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Introduction<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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During most of the past two decades Washington has
aggressively launched military and economic wars against at
least nine countries, either directly or through its
military aid to regional allies and proxies. US air and
ground troops have bombed or invaded Afghanistan, Iraq,
Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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More recently Washington has escalated its global economic
war against major economic rivals as well as against
weaker countries. The US no longer confines its aggressive
impulses to peripheral economic countries in the Middle
East, Latin America and Southern Asia: It has declared
trade wars against world powers in Asia, Eastern and Central
Europe and the Gulf states.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The targets of the US economic aggression include economic
powerhouses like Russia, China, Germany, Iran and Saudi
Arabia, as well as Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba and the
Donbas region of Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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There is an increasingly thinner distinction between
military and economic warfare, as the US has frequently
moved from one to the other, particularly when economic
aggression has not resulted in ‘regime change’ – as in the
case of the sanctions campaign against Iraq leading up to
the devastating invasion and destruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In this essay, we propose to examine the strategies and
tactics underlying Washington’s economic warfare, their
successes and failures, and the political and economic
consequences to target nations and to world stability.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Washington’s
Economic Warfare and Global Power<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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The US has used different tactical weapons as it pursues its
economic campaigns against targeted adversaries and even
against its long-time allies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Two supposed allies, Germany and Saudi Arabia, have been
attacked by the Obama Administration and US Congress via
‘legal’ manipulations aimed at their financial systems and
overseas holdings. This level of aggression against
sovereign powers is remarkable and reckless. In 2016 the US
Justice Department slapped a $14 billion dollar penalty on
Germany’s leading international bank, Deutsche Bank,
throwing the German stock market into chaos, driving the
bank’s shares down 40% and destabilizing Germany’s
financial system. This unprecedented attack on an ally’s
major bank was in direct retaliation for Germany’s support
of the European Commission’s $13 billion tax levy against
the US-tax evading Apple Corporation for its notorious
financial shenanigans in Ireland. German political and
business leaders immediately dismissed Washington’s
legalistic rhetoric for what it was: the Obama
Administration’s retaliation in order to protect America’s
tax evading and money laundering multinationals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The chairman of the German parliament’s economic committee
stated that the gross US attempt to extort Deutsche Bank
had all the elements of an economic war. He noted that
Washington had a “<i>long tradition of using every available
opportunity to wage what amounted to a trade war if it
benefits their own economy</i>” and the “<i>extortionate
damages claim</i>” against Deutsche Bank were a punitive
example. US economic sanctions against some of Germany’s
major trade partners, like Russia, China and Iran,
constitute another tactic to undermine Germany’s huge export
economy. Ironically, Germany is still considered “<i>a
valued ally</i>” when it comes to the US wars against
Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, which have driven millions of
refugees to Europe creating havoc with Germany’s political,
economic and social system and threatening to overthrow the
government of ‘ally’ Angela Merkel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The US Congress launched an economic-judicial war against
its closest ally in the Gulf region when it approved
legislation granting US victims of Islamist terrorism,
especially related to the attacks on September 11, 2001,the
right to sue the government of Saudi Arabia and seize its
overseas assets. This included the Kingdom’s immense
‘sovereign funds’ and constitutes an arbitrary and blatant
violation of Saudi sovereignty. This opens the Pandora’s
Box of economic warfare by allowing victims to sue any
government for sponsoring terrorism, including the United
States! Saudi leaders immediately reacted by threatening
to withdraw billions of dollars of assets in US Treasuries
and investments. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
The US economic sanctions against Russia are designed to
strengthen its stranglehold on the economies of Europe which
rely on trade with Russia. These have especially weakened
German and Polish trade relations with Russia, a major
market for German industrial exports and Polish agriculture
products. Originally, the US-imposed economic sanctions
against Moscow were supposed to harm Russian consumers,
provoke political unrest and lead to ‘regime change’. In
reality, the unrest it provoked has been mainly among
European exporters, whose contracts with Russia were
shredded and billions of Euros were lost. Furthermore, the
political and diplomatic climate between Europe and Russia
has deteriorated while Washington has ‘pivoted’ toward a
more militaristic approach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Results in Asia have been even more questionable:
Washington’s economic campaign against China has moved
awkwardly in two directions: Prejudicial trade deals with
Asian-Pacific countries and a growing US military
encirclement of China’s maritime trade routes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
The Obama regime dispatched Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to
promote the Trans- Pacific Partnership (TPP) among a dozen
regional governments, which would blatantly exclude China,
Asia’s largest economic power. In a slap to the outgoing
Obama Administration, the US Congress rejected his showpiece
economic weapon against China, the TPP. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Meanwhile,
Obama ‘encouraged’ his erstwhile ‘allies’ in the Philippines
and Vietnam to sue China for maritime violations over the
disputed ‘Spratly Islands’ before the Permanent Court of
Arbitration. Japan and Australia signed military pacts and
base agreements with the Pentagon aimed at disrupting
China’s trade routes. Obama’s so-called <i>‘Pivot to Asia’</i>
is a transparent campaign to block China from its markets
and trading partners in Southeast Asia and Pacific countries
of Latin American. Washington’s flagrant economic warfare
resulted in slapping harsh import tariffs on Chinese
industrial exports, especially steel and tires. The US also
sent a ‘beefed up’ air and sea armada for ‘joint exercises’
along China’s regional trade routes and its access to
critical Persian Gulf oil, setting off a ‘war of tension’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
In response to Washington’s ham-fisted aggression, the
Chinese government deftly rolled out the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with over fifty
countries eagerly signing on for lucrative trade and
investment deals with Beijing. The AIIB’s startling success
does not bode well for Obama’s ‘Pivot to Pacific Hegemony’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
The so-called US-EU-Iran accord did not end Washington’s
trade war against Teheran. Despite Iran’s agreement to
dismantle its peaceful uranium enrichment and nuclear
research programs, Washington has blocked investors and
tried to undermine trade relations, while still holding
billions of dollars of Iranian state assets, frozen since
the overthrow of the Shah in 1979<span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;">.</span>
Nevertheless, a German trade mission signed on a three
billion trade agreement with Iran in early October 2016 and
called on the US to fulfill its side of the agreement with
Teheran – so far to no avail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
The US stands alone in sending its nuclear naval armada to
the Persian Gulf and threatens commercial relations. Even
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the longstanding enemy of the
Iranian Islamic Republic, has agreed to a cooperative oil
production arrangement at a recent OPEC meeting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Washington’s declaration of economic warfare against two of
its most strategic powerful allies, Germany and Saudi Arabia
and three rising competitor world powers, has eroded US
economic competitiveness, undermined its access to lucrative
markets and increased its reliance on aggressive military
strategies over diplomacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
What is striking and perplexing about Washington’s style of
economic warfare is how costly this has been for the US
economy and for US allies, with so little concrete benefit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
US oil companies have lost billions in joint exploitation
deals with Russia because of Obama’s sanctions. US bankers,
agro-exporters, high-tech companies are missing out on
lucrative sales just to ‘punish’ Russia over the incredibly
corrupt and bankrupt US coup regime in Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
US multi-national corporations, especially those involved in
Pacific Coast transport and shipyards, Silicon Valley high
tech industry and Washington State’s agro-export producers
are threatened by the US trade agreements that exclude
China.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Iran’s billion dollar market is looking for everything from
commercial airplanes to mining machinery. Huge trade deals
have has been lost to US companies because Obama continues
to impose de facto sanctions. Meanwhile, European and Asian
competitors are signing contracts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Despite Washington’s dependence on German technical knowhow
and Saudi petro-dollar investments as key to its global
ambitions, Obama’s irrational policies continue to undermine
US trade. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Washington has engaged in economic warfare against ‘lesser
economic powers’ that nevertheless play significant
political roles in their regions. The US retains the
economic boycott of Cuba; it wages economic aggression
against Venezuela and imposes economic sanctions against
Syria, Yemen and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
While these countries are not costly in terms of economic
loss to US business interests, they exercise significant
political and ideological influence in their regions, which
undermine US ambitions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Washington’s resort to economic warfare complements its
military fueled empire building.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
But economic and military warfare are losing propositions.
While the US may extract a few billion dollars from Deutsch
Bank, it will have lost much more in long-term, large-scale
relations with German industrialists, politicians and
financiers. This is critical because Germany plays the key
role in shaping economic policy in the European Union. The
practice of US multi-national corporations seeking off-shore
tax havens in the EU may come to a grinding halt when the
European Commission finishes its current investigations.
The Germans may not be too sympathetic to their American
competitors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Obama’s
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has not only collapse, it
has compelled China to open new avenues for trade and
cooperation with Asian-Pacific nations – exactly the
opposite of its original goal of isolating Beijing. China’s
Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) has attracted
4 time more participants than Washington’s TPP and massive
infrastructure projects are being financed to further bind
ASEAN countries to China. China’s economic growth at 6.7%
more than three times that of the US at 2%. Worse, for the
Obama Administration, Washington has alienated its
historically most reliable allies, as China, deepens
economic ties and cooperation agreements with Thailand,
Philippines, Pakistan, Cambodia and Laos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Iran, despite US sanctions, is gaining markets and trade
with Germany, Russia, China and the EU.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
The Saudi-US conflict has yet to play-out but any escalation
of law suits against the kingdom will result in the flight
of hundreds of billions of investment dollars from the US.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
In effect, Obama’s campaign of economic warfare may lead to
the infinitely more costly military warfare and the massive
loss of jobs and profits for the US economy. Washington is
increasingly isolated. The only allies supporting its
campaign of economic sanctions are second and third rate
powers, like Poland and current corrupt parasites in
Ukraine. As long as the Poles and Ukrainians can ‘mooch’
off of the IMF and grab EU and US ‘loans’, they will
cheerlead Obama’s charge against Russia. Israel, as long as
it can gobble up an additional $38 billion dollars in ‘aid’
from Washington, remains the biggest advocate for war
against Iran.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Washington spends billions of US tax-payer dollars on its
military bases in Japan, Philippines and Australia to
maintain its hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. Its
allies, though, are salivating at the prospect for greater
trade and infrastructure investment deals with China.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Economic warfare doesn’t work for the Washington because the
US economy cannot compete, especially when it attacks its
own allies and traditional partners. Its regional allies
are keen to join the ‘forbidden’ markets and share in major
investment projects funded by China. Asian leaders
increasingly view Washington, with its ‘pivot to militarism’
as politically unreliable, unstable and dangerous. After
the Philippine government economic mission to China, expect
more to ‘jump ship’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Economic warfare against declared adversaries can only
succeed if the US is committed to free trade with its
allies, ends punitive sanctions and stops pushing for
exclusive trade treaties that undermine its allies’
economies. Furthermore, Washington should stop catering to
the whims of special domestic interests. Absent these
changes, its losing campaign of economic warfare can only
turn into military warfare – a prospect devastating to the
US economy and to world peace.</span></div>
Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-14324468048561083282016-10-16T10:42:00.000-07:002016-10-16T10:55:47.856-07:00Karl Marx: The Most Worldly Philosopher<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Karl Marx turns up in the most unlikely places. Two and a half decades after most US and European public intellectuals gleefully announced Marx’s ideas henceforth irrelevant, <b>The Wall Street Journal</b> offers a surprisingly measured discussion of his thought under the title <i>The Most Worldly Philosopher</i> (10-1&2-2016). The author, Jonathan Steinberg, an emeritus fellow of Cambridge and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, closes with: “Marx left a legacy of powerful ideas that cannot be dismissed as an obsolete creation of a vanished intellectual climate…” and that stimulated “...the growth of Marxist parties and the millions who accepted that ideology over the course of the 20th century. That was worldly philosophy indeed.”<br /><br />I would like to believe that the <b>WSJ </b>editors, who displayed the following banner over the full-page article, are enjoying a droll moment in this pathetic electoral season: “<b>The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.</b>” The welcome quote, attributed to Marx by Lenin (more likely a paraphrase of Engels), is never permitted into the conversation by our lesser-of-two-evil friends who screech every four years that this is the election that changes everything.<br /><br />Professor Steinberg uses the opportunity afforded by a review of a current book on Karl Marx by Gareth Stedman Jones to share some of his own views on Marx. And, judging by some of his attributions to Jones’ book, that’s a good thing. Stedman Jones, like so many of his academic contemporaries, once counted himself a kind of Marxist, but only while Marx remained in fashion. With changing times, identities quickly fall in line, a sorry reflection on the integrity of the discipline of the humanities in academe. It’s no wonder that few students are fighting for a humanities-rich curriculum.<br /><br />While no follower of Marx’s ideas, Steinberg shows a healthy respect for them and a willingness to differ with them honestly; there are no <b>Black Book of Communism</b> tallies of the “victims” of Marx’s ideas; no denigration of the personal lives and morality of Marxists; and no paeans to the glory of capitalism that one would expect in <b>The Wall Street Journal</b>. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: medium;"><b>Confronting Ideas</b></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><br />Steinberg offers a collection of challenges to Marxism that, while neither new nor original, have been at the core of many intellectual critiques:<br /><br /><i>The so-called “transformation problem.”</i> Steinberg writes that “Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, one of the main figures in the Austrian School of economics, declared that it [Marx’s <b>Capital</b>] failed to produce ‘a satisfactory theory of the relation between values and prices’...” The period after Marx’s death, after the publication of volume three of <b>Capital</b>, coincided with the decline of classical political economy and the rise of economics based upon formal and mathematical reconstructions of immediate economic relationships and a grounding of market relations in psychological dispositions and attributed individual choices.<br /><br />Many Marxists (including Engels), perhaps overly impressed with the professed rigor of the new economics, took up the challenge, constructing “proofs” of the quantitative relation between Marx’s value calculations and real-world prices. That debate between “proofs” and “counter-proofs” continues to obsess academic Marxists to this day, particularly among those trained in bourgeois economics.<br /><br />But Marx sought only to demonstrate a reasonably approximate quantitative relationship between commodity values and commodity prices. Values and prices are like the contrast between shared moral standards (values) and a common legal system (real-world jurisprudence); it is not necessary to show a formal derivation or rigid correlation between a moral value and a counterpart law in order to know that one is grounded in the other. Indeed, it would be absurd to argue that legal systems are not decisively shaped by underlying moral codes, but rather that they have a remarkable independent existence based solely upon judicial whimsy or individual preference. Arguing in this fashion is the legacy of a discredited positivism.<br /><br />The search for a rigorous proof that prices can be derived from values is a scholastic exercise that occupies academics, but is of little relevance to the Marxist project. That values underlie prices is as certain as the belief that the moral prescription against unwarranted killing is the basis for all laws against murder. Imagine, in the same vein, that the scientific status of psychology were shackled to a formal demonstration of the relation between psychological dispositions and physical behavior. Psychology as a discipline would disappear. And if Böhm-Bawerk and his foolishness were heeded, Marxism as a science might disappear as well!<br /><br /><i>The so-called “immiseration thesis.”</i> Steinberg writes: “In 1899 even Eduard Bernstein, one of Engel’s closest colleagues, attacked the so-called immiseration theory, which claimed the working class was destined to get poorer and the concentration of industry greater.”<br /><br />Professor Steinberg, like Bernstein and others, misinterpret Marx on this point. In <b>Capital</b>, <b>Theories of Surplus Value</b>, and <b>Wage-labor and Capital</b>, Marx is unequivocal: “A notable advance in the amount paid as wages presupposes a rapid increase of productive capital… Therefore, although the comforts of the laborer have risen, the social satisfaction which they give has fallen in comparison with these augmented comforts of the capitalist, which are unattainable for the laborer, and in comparison with the scale of general development society has reached… Since their nature is social, it is therefore<i>relative</i>.”[my italics]<br /><br />Marx clearly sees workers’ misery as relative to the advances of living standards in higher reaches of society. When productivity advances, working class living standards may advance as well, though less so, relative to the gains of the capitalist class. The immediate period after the Second World War was one such time when productivity advances brought a general, but unequal rise in the standard of living. Liberals and social democrats celebrate this era as the golden age of capitalism-with-a human-face, conveniently ignoring the relative impoverishment of the working class, the increase in the exploitation of workers.<br /><br />However, for most of the last four decades, the impoverishment of the working class has been both relative and absolute, with workers’ standards of living stagnant or declining. Thus, we are living in a period even more dire, more miserable than Marx’s prediction.<br /><br />The engine for the relative impoverishment of the working class is the growth of what Marx called the “reserve army of the unemployed” (unemployment), a process that diminishes the bargaining power of labor as a result of a readily available and desperate labor source. This pressure on working class standards of living has been muted dramatically in our time by the mass incarceration of potential workers (vastly over represented by minorities) throughout the last decades. While the mass imprisonment of over two million people forcibly reduces the potential unemployment (“reserve army”) and its accompanying pressure on wages and benefits, it represents recognition by the ruling class of the explosive, even revolutionary possibilities of many young, rebellious people without hope of employment in the late twentieth-century de-industrialized economy. Thus, they have been kept out of the “reserve army” through imprisonment.<br /><br /><i>Historical materialism.</i> Professor Steinberg is perplexed by Marx’s view that the socio-economic conditions within which people are immersed largely determine the parameters of their behavior. Or as Marx so simply and more eloquently put it in the <b>Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte</b>: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” Steinberg quotes the more cryptic, but concurring statement to the same effect in the preface to <b>Capital</b>.<br /><br />But, Steinberg ponders: “When, if ever, would workers know what was happening to them? If the preface to “Das Kapital” is right-- that humans act out laws of economics without awareness or intent-- how will the system change?”<br /><br />The Professor confuses the recognition of historic processes with surrender to fatalism.<br /><br />As the quote from the <b>Eighteenth Brumaire</b> affirms, workers will change the system when the historically evolved socio-economic conditions are ripe, and not before. The nineteenth-century English Luddites fought fervently, but futilely against capitalism’s devastation of their living conditions. But nascent industrial capitalism emerged with the vitality to crush a sincere movement associated with the old order. Twenty-first century capitalism, like the order clung to by the Luddites, is the old order, a decaying, untenable system carrying on a successful, but doomed struggle against its demise. Marx argued that as the system exhausted its potential, the socio-economic conditions sufficient for the workers to overthrow it would also arise.<br /><br />It is precisely when the conditions for revolutionary change are apparent that workers may “know what is happening to them.” To insure that workers understand and seize the revolutionary moment, Marx-- and especially Lenin-- emphasized the need for a revolutionary party, a party of Communists. That party will bring forward the ideas of a new order.<br /><br /><i>Marxist Humanism. </i>Professor Steinberg alludes to the “vast literature” on what has come to be called “Marxist Humanism.” Spurred by the publication and popularization of Marx’s early, unpublished notebooks (<b>Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844</b>), many leftists fashioned an idealized Marx believed to be the embodiment of liberal values. At the height of the Cold War, anti-Communist leftists embraced the tentative thinking of a youthful Marx-- a Marx three years removed from his graduate degree, filled with social reformism, still new to the working class movement and only recently seriously studying political economy-- and represented it as the true Marx.<br /><br />Central to the “humanist” turn was the key concept of “alienation,” a term that Marx borrowed from Feuerbach. For the young Marx, the term served as a provisional expression marking the social distances standing in the way of individuals achieving their “nature.” As a crude philosophical tool, the concept cried out for the elaboration and refinement realized by the mature Marx. Historical materialism replaced the veiled teleology of “species-being.” Concepts like “class” and “exploitation” replaced the vagueness and generality of “alienation.” As Dirk Struik explains: ‘When we study Marx’s exposition [in the <b>Manuscripts</b>] in detail, we find the <i>beginning</i> of his mature analysis of capitalist society…” [my italics] Only the beginning!<br /><br />But many writers, like Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, grasped the opportunity to shape “alienation” into a class-free concept serving as an expression for every form of social separation-- from the most trivial offense to the most dreadful cruelties. Liberals heralded the new Marxism since it elevated the <i>ennui</i> of the pampered bourgeoisie to the level of the greatest injustices of class and race. Accordingly, the capitalist exploitation nexus was lost in a sea of social alienations. Today’s politics of the personal owes much to this contorted, unbridled abuse of the concept of alienation.<br /><br />The Marxism of “the millions who accepted that ideology over the course of the 20th century,” as Professor Steinberg so felicitously put it, was not the Marxism of misspent youth or failed romance, but the Marxism of low wages, brutal working conditions, and bloody wars. Inspired by the mature Marx, the struggle against these conditions and for a new social order was true “Marxist humanism.”<br /><br />These and other criticisms of Marxism-- based sometimes on honest mistakes, more often upon willful distortion-- remain a constant to be challenged. But that is surely a tribute to the timeless relevance of Marxism. </span>Communist Perspectivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10272639843728955824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-43166013326442438372015-12-04T05:56:00.003-08:002015-12-04T05:56:36.891-08:00Danish government and the EU defeated by “No” vote<pre style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 15px/21.3px "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web Regular", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Helvetica Neue", "BBAlpha Sans", "S60 Sans", Arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;">Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland</pre>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6w-dzSWOtdSqymhJ-tYH83PQvgtbN10cJimqDa4SrBvWDzIL3Vi7mOrmbp7cGXz_4WZNGuAkIsd1yT9sMoLHI_NvTGnLjZ7VANLvOcLI8XjFSziSDrbvIl7hSOjgevNpDqO3IyUe4qmY/s1600/CPI.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6w-dzSWOtdSqymhJ-tYH83PQvgtbN10cJimqDa4SrBvWDzIL3Vi7mOrmbp7cGXz_4WZNGuAkIsd1yT9sMoLHI_NvTGnLjZ7VANLvOcLI8XjFSziSDrbvIl7hSOjgevNpDqO3IyUe4qmY/s1600/CPI.png" /></a><br style="line-height: 21.3px;" /><br style="line-height: 21.3px;" />3 December 2015<br style="line-height: 21.3px;" /><br style="line-height: 21.3px;" />The Communist Party of Ireland congratulates the people of Denmark on their resounding victory in voting down the proposition from the Danish government on the repeal of Denmark’s opt-out on justice and home affairs. Despite numerous threats, blackmail and scaremongering from the Danish government, all the main parties, and the EU itself, the people voted No to defend democracy and sovereignty.</div>
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<br style="line-height: 21.3px;" />If the people had supported the proposition put forward by the Danish government, all the main political parties and big business they would have handed over control immediately to the EU, which would take over important sections of Danish policy and law on matters relating to justice and home affairs.</div>
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<br style="line-height: 21.3px;" />With decision-making transferred to Brussels, the twin threats to Danish democracy and sovereignty become glaringly obvious. Laws governing divorce, crime, child custody, policing and much more would in future be determined by the EU. A total of twenty-two EU regulations covering justice and home affairs would have become law in Denmark overnight.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-89894347441042562912015-12-04T05:49:00.002-08:002015-12-04T05:49:42.737-08:00CPI NEC Statement<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 15px/21.3px Calibri, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 1.35em; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;">
CPI NEC November 2015</div>
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Political Statement.</div>
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As we approach the end of 2015 and face into 2016, the challenges facing our people grow. In 2016 our people will celebrate the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of the seminal events of twentieth-century Irish history as well as a very important event in the worldwide anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles of the oppressed peoples and nations.</div>
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Today we face renewed domination and mechanisms of control over our people’s future, posing grave threats to the very limited political and economic sovereignty we have achieved. Our people in the North of Ireland have fared even worse, and their situation is becoming ever more precarious, having experienced decades of mass discrimination and repression, gerrymandering, poverty, economic dependence, and continued external domination and control by the British state.</div>
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The centenary celebrations should be an opportunity to re-evaluate the experience of our people over the past century, how far we have travelled and how much more of the journey needs to be taken if we are to achieve the goals and aspirations laid out in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1916 and the Democratic Programme of Dáil Éireann in 1919.</div>
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It is clear that the imposed partitionist settlement has failed our people, while it secured the interests of British imperialism and the Irish ruling class.</div>
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The most recent expression of external control is the “Fresh Start” agreement, which is to facilitate the implementation of various aspects of the Stormont House Agreement of December 2014. Unionism and both the British and Irish states have used the continued alleged existence of the IRA and the active paramilitarism of unionist paramilitaries to extract political concessions in the hope of neutralising continued opposition to “welfare reform” from local political and social forces.</div>
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The economy and therefore the social and material basis of people’s lives is becoming more and more precarious. With the marginalisation from the centres of decision-making that so directly affect their lives, the relationship between London, Brussels and Dublin comes into stark relief. The handing back to the British state of the devolved responsibilities over welfare is but a reflection of this marginalisation and powerlessness. Overall economic and financial instruments and power still lie with the British state.</div>
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The cuts in welfare will bear heaviest on the unemployed and the working poor, and will have a serious effect on the lives of all working people. The social damage involved will be greater than in any part of Britain, owing to the large part of the economy involved. The organised working class needs to develop an effective response.</div>
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The false belief that a reduction in corporation tax to the same level as that obtaining in the South will boost the economy is the politics of illusion. It can only further expose the people’s well-being and future to the whims of monopoly capitalism.</div>
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Both the Stormont House Agreement and “A Fresh Start” show clearly the limits of the Belfast Agreement. It is clear that we cannot go back: we cannot go back to majority Orange rule, nor should we allow our people to be dragged back into the quagmire and paralysis of militarism and violence.</div>
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There is an urgent need for an open dialogue and debate about where the people of the North of Ireland need to go. The CPI will work towards establishing a dialogue for this necessary discussion.</div>
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In the South the people will be facing a general election in early 2016. The choice facing them is clear: to support parties that are committed to the economic and political strategy of the troika and the European Union or to begin to take the difficult but necessary steps in a different direction, a direction guided by the fundamental and central demand contained in the 1916 Proclamation: the assertion of the right of the Irish people to the unfettered control of their destiny, to the fulfilment of the struggle for national political and economic sovereignty—demands and challenges long since abandoned by the Irish ruling class.</div>
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In the short term, working people need to focus on the struggle for the ownership and control of water. The election must not be allowed to distract us from the necessary struggle to win a constitutional amendment enshrining the people’s ownership of this vital human resource. The Communist Party of Ireland reaffirms its active political support for the Right2Water campaign as well as acknowledging the positive development of the Right2Change initiative, sponsored by a number of the trade unions that have been central to the vital struggle for water.</div>
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Working people should not be distracted by the noise of elections but should remain focused on the goal of defeating water charges and securing a constitutional amendment. The securing of that victory would embolden and empower working people to push further.</div>
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New allies can be won to the demand for a constitutional amendment. We need to broaden the forces in this central demand and narrow the ground for those who wish to impose water charges as a prerequisite for privatisation.</div>
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Working people enter 2016 with new forces and with more strength than when we entered 2015, but we need to build further, to build the people’s organisations of resistance in the community, trade union and electoral spheres.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-47745004663889157852015-10-31T04:49:00.000-07:002015-10-31T04:49:07.635-07:00Greek workers’ resistance and the EU<div class="MsoNormal">
On Wednesday 21 October a successful public meeting was held
in Swords, Co. Dublin, on the theme “Greek workers’ resistance and the EU.” The
meeting was addressed by Sotirios Zarianopoulos (Communist Party of Greece), a
member of the EU Parliament, and Eoin McDonnell, Dublin district chairperson,
CPI.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Interview with Sotirios available at <a href="http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/v/sotirios.mp4">http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/v/sotirios.mp4</a>
<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-61107029376918929732015-10-31T04:46:00.001-07:002015-10-31T04:46:58.696-07:0017th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties<h3 style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-top: 0.3em; text-align: center;">
Ankara, November 2015</h3>
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Eugene McCartan<br />General Secretary, Communist Party of Ireland</h3>
<br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;">Dear comrades, </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> We are moving into a period of change as well as a period of great danger to world peace. The US-EU imperialist bloc is deepening its permanent war strategy in its continuing struggle to maintain its global domination. They cynically use the Islamic terrorist groups operating both in the Middle East and in North Africa, just as they use fascist groups in Ukraine. The atrocities committed in their own territories are regarded as “blow-back,” a price worth paying. This is coupled with the real dangers posed to the planet by the destruction of the global environment by monopoly capitalism. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> We can see this permanent war strategy being played out today in the Middle East, with its war against Syria and its support for despotic regimes, like the Zionist settler-colonial state of Israel, now slipping into fascism, and the neo-mediaevalist Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Their brutal wars against the people of Palestine and Yemen have the full support of their patrons. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> Russia has been provoked into intervening in the Syrian crisis, an intervention that may shift the balance of forces within that country. The Russian intervention does not fit so easily into the neat box of inter-imperialist rivalry. We need to study developments in the very real concrete conditions. It is important that ISIS and the other forces of reaction promoted by US-EU imperialism are defeated in the region. This would be a strategic defeat for the imperialist powers. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> The United States has not abandoned the megalomaniac project of “full-spectrum dominance.” With its partners, the EU and Japan, it is now attempting to encircle Russia and China. In fact this is its main strategic objective; the interference in Ukraine and the South China Sea can only be understood in this context. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> The drive for global domination is accompanied by a continuing assault on working people. This is now facing a growing but largely confused and disjointed resistance. The “austerity” measures have met with a large protest movement; however, the majority of protesters are not yet ready to challenge the system itself and are open to opportunist forces promising an easy solution, a return to social democracy—a solution that is not available. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> Nevertheless, we can see throughout Europe and in many developed capitalist countries the emergence of new social forces, albeit forces that come from a petit-bourgeois background and understanding, a movement of protest against austerity, with large numbers but without a clear strategy. Without an understanding of the nature of capitalism, this movement is open to manipulation and is headed for defeat, as the recent experience of SYRIZA in Greece has shown. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><br />
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The weakening of ideological hegemony</h4>
<span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;">It is clear that the ideological hegemony is weakening. Throughout the European Union more and more workers are taking the first step towards asking whose interests the EU serves. There are small shoots of questioning of the very legitimacy of the EU itself. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> We need to continue to step up our ideological attacks against the EU and also to expose opportunism, to show that this talk of “reforming” the EU weakens and confuses workers, blunting the resistance of the workers’ movement throughout Europe. The struggle against TTIP can also be used to expose not only the nature of that treaty but also the forces behind it and the EU itself. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> The possible emergence of political fractures gives us more scope for engaging in and intensifying the ideological struggle among this strata. While many are imbued with the bankrupt ideology of social democracy, and have been fed on decades of vicious anti-worker anti-communism, and while some of this resistance is ideologically and organisationally confused, we should distinguish between those who are genuinely confused by the crisis and those who are spreading confusion. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> It is clear that these movements have not, and will not, spontaneously or automatically come to the same understanding as communists or the workers’ movement; our class has decades of experience in resistance to draw upon. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> We may have come to different conclusions and solutions from that resistance, but we need to find the ways and the means, as well as the political courage and, most importantly, the confidence in our ideology, to engage with these forces. Without a good defence there is little chance of a successful counter-offensive. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><br />
<h4 style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
Growing resistance in Ireland</h4>
<span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;">After many years of imposed austerity—cuts in wages, pensions, health and education services—we are now experiencing in Ireland the emergence of mass resistance to the introduction of water charges, under the unifying banner of Right2Water. This is one of the most positive developments since the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, which shattered unionism—British imperialism’s main ally in the north of our country. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> Water charges, along with other charges and levies, form part of the agreed “Programme for Ireland” imposed upon the Irish people by the external troika, in alliance with the internal troika of the main Irish establishment parties. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> The people in the northern part of our country, still under British control, also experience some of the same brutal social and economic realities and policies of the British state as well as those flowing from the EU. The current attempt to impose “welfare reform” demanded by the British state lies at the heart of the present political crisis within the institutions established under the Belfast Agreement. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> We characterise the situation facing the people in the North of Ireland as one in which they are triply marginalised: they have little if any influence on British government policy that so directly affects their lives; they certainly have no ability to effect change in or to oppose policies imposed by the EU; and they have little influence on the Irish government. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> What is clear is that there is no lasting solution within the existing political institutions and continued British imperialist control. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> In the south of Ireland what has now emerged is a mass movement of resistance against the imposition of water charges, which has had a significant impact politically. What began as a small resistance in one housing estate has grown into a national movement. This movement has had a significant impact on sections of the trade union movement, a movement demoralised and greatly weakened by decades of “social partnership” and class collaboration. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> A number of trade unions came together and formally established Right2Water. Within this movement are three pillars: trade unions, communities, and political parties. Trade unions play a central role in sustaining the unity of the movement, and in keeping political opportunism in check. It has allowed for the reconnecting of community-based struggles with trade unions, and vice versa. What lessons have Irish communists drawn from this mass struggle? Firstly, it has reaffirmed that the active involvement of working people in direct, mobilising struggles is the only real basis on which political and class consciousness can be developed. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> Secondly, it is essential that the trade union movement is centrally engaged and involved in the wider people’s struggles. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> Thirdly, that mass struggle can force the government to retreat far more successfully than endless parliamentary procedural debates. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> Fourthly, during the course of this struggle those trade unions have also developed politically. Recently four of the trade unions involved in Right2Water launched a political initiative, called Right2Change. We consider this an important development, even if we have concerns about some of the formulations and positions, an over-emphasis on elections, and a lack of understanding of the central necessity for mobilising the working class independently of the controlling institutions and mechanisms of the state. The electoral campaigns of the political parties involved could take the emphasis away from the issue of water charges and privatisation. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> Our experience has also shown us that nothing emerges from decades of class collaboration that is fully formed and class-conscious. The name of Right2Change is itself also interesting, because it presents the possibility of change; it extends the hand of hope and solidarity. This runs counter to the other, demoralised sections of the labour movement and of itself is a challenge to the dominant ideology of “There is no alternative.” </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> As part of the wider debate and engagement with the forces within Right2Change, our party issued a discussion paper entitled “Democratic Programme for the 21st Century,” in recognition of the Democratic Programme of the Irish independence struggle. We presented a radical transformative strategy, a strategy that presents a different way forward for the Irish working class and working people. It is a strategy for challenging imperialism, for challenging the European Union and its mechanisms of control, such as the euro and the many treaty obligations. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> Our strategy is one that is radical in content and that has the potential to challenge EU-US-British imperialism’s triple-lock grip on our people. We believe it presents positions that will appear to working people to be winnable and reasonable. It is a strategy for shifting the balance of forces away from capital to labour, for building the consciousness and unity of the class in the course of the struggle. That is the lesson we have learnt: to advance demands and strategies that are not so far ahead of where the people are but advanced enough to bring them forward and allow them to grow politically and ideologically and, most importantly, to grow in confidence about where they need to go. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> While our ultimate goal is socialism, the stage or phase of struggle that we understand where our people are at today, given the concrete material conditions and balance of forces, is one that is centred around the reassertion of the struggle for national independence under the leadership of the working class—the only class that can bring that struggle to its final victory: in other words, linking the struggle for national freedom, for political and economic sovereignty with social emancipation, led by the Irish working class. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> We also argue for a political and economic strategy that is on an all-Ireland basis. This is the only way to break the marginalisation experienced by our people and to weaken, undermine and challenge the continued imperialist control and interference in the affairs of the Irish people. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> What we are campaigning and mobilising for is to present a vision of an alternative social and economic system and a way forward that can inspire hope and that is rooted in the people’s own experiences, to challenge the narrow and limited version of democracy on offer and to bring forms of democracy into all spheres of life: political, economic, social, and cultural.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-42158843366175300382015-10-15T23:54:00.000-07:002015-10-15T23:54:12.319-07:00Greek Communist MEP meeting in Swords, Co Dublin <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6OATFfXyqOWtgtCtAwcKYpyg2oD1e_AHbc80Ky96Z2FdR8yKPUUT2OH0sVKU4PKPyix3OnvLzgc2ouafU0RKhp4V7id_Dkwt9tUIUjOOWMB7cisYNGD69vz9ujbm4gW-M9CCSAxxpsAE/s1600/kke_sord.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6OATFfXyqOWtgtCtAwcKYpyg2oD1e_AHbc80Ky96Z2FdR8yKPUUT2OH0sVKU4PKPyix3OnvLzgc2ouafU0RKhp4V7id_Dkwt9tUIUjOOWMB7cisYNGD69vz9ujbm4gW-M9CCSAxxpsAE/s400/kke_sord.png" width="277" /></a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-62809268150682160902015-10-15T23:51:00.003-07:002015-10-15T23:51:57.810-07:00Greek KKE MEP visiting IrelandPRESS NOTICE:<br />
<br /> Greek MEP on speaking tour of Ireland<br />
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The Communist Party of Ireland will be hosting a visit to Ireland by Kostas Papadakis of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), a member of the EU Parliament. As you are aware, Greek communists have been one of the most consistent political forces inside Greece in opposing the “memorandums” imposed by the European Union and of the harsh effects those policies have had on the lives of the Greek people.<br />
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The KKE was deeply critical of SYRIZA and accurately predicted that it would capitulate in the face of pressure from the European Union. For many years the Greek communists have been been to the fore in the struggles of the Greek people, organising numerous general strikes and other forms of social resistance.<br />
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The KKE, like the Communist Party of Ireland, does not adhere to the view that a “social European Union” has any credibility.<br />
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Mr Papadakis will be addressing meetings in, Swords (Co. Dublin), Galway, and Belfast, as well as meeting activists of the campaign against water charges.<br />
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He is visiting Ireland from the 20th to the 22nd of October.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-9071579254899665362015-10-11T12:05:00.001-07:002015-10-11T12:05:42.048-07:00October Socialist Voice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj14ZO6fZmL3UVMc2ACum7avWu6fV5FiJh7qhYUo00ywm_FshmQMuyGGBIoq66R6tqGfyqCVa8v5d-_ycT4ZofPlCbls6n2xf-YJwnC_1zf0bbX5rgxj6nlzcw02BfXZ8YfIIGQTdPeGyg/s1600/sv-a.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj14ZO6fZmL3UVMc2ACum7avWu6fV5FiJh7qhYUo00ywm_FshmQMuyGGBIoq66R6tqGfyqCVa8v5d-_ycT4ZofPlCbls6n2xf-YJwnC_1zf0bbX5rgxj6nlzcw02BfXZ8YfIIGQTdPeGyg/s1600/sv-a.png" /></a></div>
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The refugee crisis, housing and the IMF.<br />
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Check out October's Socialist Voice<br />
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http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/index.htmlUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-50659712429001874082015-10-04T05:00:00.001-07:002015-10-04T05:00:07.868-07:00Putin kicks Obama's ass<h2 style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">
<strong>Freedom Rider: Putin Trumps Obama at the U.N.</strong></h2>
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<strong>by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley</strong></h3>
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“<em><strong>Obama can no longer expect to carry out his international dirty work without effective opposition.”</strong></em></div>
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If the peevish expression on Barack Obama’s face was any indication, Vladimir Putin is a force in the world who cannot be ignored. Ever since Russia annexed Crimea in response to the United States- and NATO-backed coup in Ukraine, Obama and the corporate media have falsely declared that Putin is isolated from the rest of the world. They claim he is a monster, a despot and an irrelevance on the world stage.</div>
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While the G8 member nations turned themselves into the G7 in order to snub Russia, president Putin was making friends elsewhere. He may have been isolated from the United States and its clique, but not from China and the other BRICS nations or Syria or Iran or Iraq. While western nations use the Islamic State (ISIS) as a ruse to exact regime change in Syria, Putin has formed an alliance to carry out the task of eradicating that danger which was created by western intervention.</div>
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Presidents <u><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/28/remarks-president-obama-united-nations-general-assembly" style="color: black;">Obama</a> <span class="print-footnote" style="font-size: xx-small;">[3]</span></u> and <u><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/28/read-putins-u-n-general-assembly-speech/" style="color: black;">Putin</a> <span class="print-footnote" style="font-size: xx-small;">[4]</span></u> both made their respective cases before the United Nations General Assembly at its annual meeting. Obama’s speech was an apologia for imperialism and American aggressions. He repeated the lies which no one except uninformed Americans believe. If he calls a leader a tyrant he claims the right to destroy a nation and kill and displace its people.<strong> </strong>Despite the living hell that the United States made out of Libya, Obama continues to defend his crime. He blandly adds that “our coalition could have and should have done more to fill a vacuum left behind.” Apparently he hopes that no one is paying attention to the horrors inflicted on Libya or the ripple effect which created numerous other humanitarian crises.</div>
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“<em><strong>If Obama calls a leader a tyrant he claims the right to destroy a nation and kill and displace its people.”</strong></em></div>
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Not content to defend the indefensible, the president made it clear that the Obama doctrine of regime change and terror is alive and well. “I lead the strongest military that the world has ever known, and I will never hesitate to protect my country or our allies, unilaterally and by force where necessary.”</div>
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In contrast, the man labeled a dictator acknowledged the importance of respecting every nation’s sovereignty. “Rather than bringing about reforms, an aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions and life itself. Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.” Making good use of his time in the spotlight, he made clear that he wasn’t fooled or cowed by the United States. “I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realize now what you've done?<strong> </strong>But I am afraid no one is going to answer that. Indeed, policies based on self-conceit and belief in one's exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned.”</div>
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Obviously Putin has self-interest in supporting his allies in Syria and for fighting ISIS. He acknowledged that his country is at risk from some of its own citizens who have sworn an allegiance to that group. Nonetheless,<strong> </strong>it is important that at least one nation in the world is capable of standing up to American state sponsored destruction and is willing to take action in that effort. Before the United Nations proceedings took place, Russia announced that it would share intelligence with Iran, Iraq and Syria in order to combat ISIS. If the United States were true to its word, that alliance would be welcomed instead of scorned.</div>
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“<em><strong>It is important that at least one nation in the world is capable of standing up to American state sponsored destruction.”</strong></em></div>
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Not since the late Hugo Chavez declared that George W. Bush left a “smell of sulfur” has an American president been so openly confronted at the United Nations. Putin’s presence makes it clear that Obama can no longer expect to carry out his international dirty work without effective opposition.</div>
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While the corporate media noted the tense photo opportunity between the two presidents they neglected to mention the real issues behind the bad feelings. At a press conference after his address Putin was asked about French president Hollande’s insistence that <u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7jqjGTkyXc" style="color: black;">Assad leave</a> <span class="print-footnote" style="font-size: xx-small;">[5]</span></u> the Syrian presidency. "I relate to my colleagues the American and French presidents with great respect but they aren't citizens of Syria and so should not be involved in choosing the leadership of another country.”</div>
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That simple statement explains the totality of American enmity towards Russia. The NATO nations claim a right to choose leaders, create and support their own terrorist groups and destroy anyone who doesn’t do what they want. Putin is making a case for non-interference and that makes him persona non grata in the eyes of the supposedly more democratic West.</div>
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The world ought to fear pax Americana, not a Russian military presence in Syria. There cannot be true peace and stability unless nations and peoples are left to their own devices. The helping hand of United States democracy is anything but. It is a recipe for disaster and requires forceful opposition. If Russia can be a reliable counterforce the whole world will benefit, even if Barack Obama frowns before the cameras.</div>
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<em>Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at </em><a href="http://freedomrider.blogspot.com/" style="color: black;"><u><strong>http://freedomrider.blogspot.com.</strong></u></a> <span class="print-footnote" style="font-size: xx-small;">[6]</span><em> Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.</em></h5>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-53696582890392341042015-10-04T04:56:00.000-07:002015-10-04T04:56:13.195-07:00Trade Union School on TTIP this Saturday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPBSIi_a4kyemw8usn9MuVkA6t8UH5UpOiEo10u3-ERtE99NFAiekqJ_wjImWjlEwnSsSVzXOBsl6H70n1H5MCXQTI0zFyZaBnsHoDZpArIJsmUt-NIL8Iy7BZ2jQYWitWWUIsMr05ryg/s1600/TTIP+Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPBSIi_a4kyemw8usn9MuVkA6t8UH5UpOiEo10u3-ERtE99NFAiekqJ_wjImWjlEwnSsSVzXOBsl6H70n1H5MCXQTI0zFyZaBnsHoDZpArIJsmUt-NIL8Iy7BZ2jQYWitWWUIsMr05ryg/s640/TTIP+Poster.jpg" width="452" /></a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-44627499706070416942015-10-04T04:54:00.002-07:002015-10-04T04:54:59.672-07:00An establishment figure speaks about inequality<span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;">Last months television programme on the state-controlled RTE dealing with inequality in Ireland, presented by David McWilliams, was of interest by virtue of the fact that an establishment figure spoke about inequality. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> Any regular reader of </span><i style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;">Socialist Voice,</i><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> the monthly paper of the CPI, would have been well aware of the nature of the economic crisis and the strategy of past and present governments: of making working people pay for the crisis of the system. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> We would like to remind people that the CPI was alone of </span><i style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;">all</i><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> political parties and “alliances,” represented in the Dáil or otherwise, to argue the following: </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 1. That austerity </span><i style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;">is</i><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> working. It was imposed to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It was for the transfer of wealth upwards to the rich and outwards to the coffers of the international finance houses. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 2. That the debt was the weapon of choice for attacking workers’ rights, terms and conditions and their living standards; that austerity would be permanent for working people. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 3. That the Irish ruling class and Irish governments are gatekeepers for the interests of the EU, transnational corporations, and the rich and powerful. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 4. That NAMA was for socialising toxic assets, and that the people would pay the debt while the rich and powerful would get away scot-free. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 5. That NAMA was for re-establishing the Golden Circle. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 6. That the strategy of both the government and the EU was to socialise debt and risk, while profits would remain firmly in private or corporate hands. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 7. That the majority of economic and social policies are skewed in favour of transnational companies. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 8. That repudiation of the debt was necessary to make those who created the debt pay for it, and not the people. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 9. That membership of the EU, and in particular of the euro zone, is a political straitjacket, the means of imposing external political and fiscal controls, to make austerity permanent. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 10. That water charges were primarily for establishing the means of privatising this resource. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> 11. That precarious employment would become the norm throughout large sections of the economy. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> To quote James Connolly, “governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.” </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> We could go on. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> The battle of ideas is a central part of the intense class struggle that is going on in our country. This ideological struggle is for shaping how people understand the world around them. </span><br style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;" /><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;"> The role of the elite’s mass media is to weave the illusion that we all partied so we all must share the burden. Their role is to protect the system, not to present objective news or to enhance your understanding.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.8px;">Communist Party of Ireland</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-77675639596380421532015-10-04T04:53:00.002-07:002015-10-04T04:53:44.380-07:00October issue of SV out now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj14ZO6fZmL3UVMc2ACum7avWu6fV5FiJh7qhYUo00ywm_FshmQMuyGGBIoq66R6tqGfyqCVa8v5d-_ycT4ZofPlCbls6n2xf-YJwnC_1zf0bbX5rgxj6nlzcw02BfXZ8YfIIGQTdPeGyg/s1600/sv-a.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj14ZO6fZmL3UVMc2ACum7avWu6fV5FiJh7qhYUo00ywm_FshmQMuyGGBIoq66R6tqGfyqCVa8v5d-_ycT4ZofPlCbls6n2xf-YJwnC_1zf0bbX5rgxj6nlzcw02BfXZ8YfIIGQTdPeGyg/s1600/sv-a.png" /></a></div>
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http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/index.html</div>
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October's Socialist Voice out now and available online.</div>
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This issues looks at precarious work, the irish language, right2change and the homeless crisis amongst other issues of concern to the working class.</div>
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Check it out and share it amongst your family and friends.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-3925491424527102402015-09-25T01:31:00.003-07:002015-09-25T01:31:40.612-07:00Hope for a Left Revival?Full post available here:<br />
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http://zzs-blg.blogspot.ie/2015/09/hope-for-left-revival.html<br />
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To any sober observer, capitalism is in the throes of a
deep, profound, multi-faceted crisis. The celebration of fifteen years ago was
a hollow and unwarranted declaration of the unstoppable success of capitalism.
War, deprivation, and uncertainty are the legacy of those hailing that moment.
Few alive today know a time when the future looked so unsure.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Read on at http://zzs-blg.blogspot.ie/2015/09/hope-for-left-revival.html</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7218288310860399949.post-67432928023036831702015-09-06T08:33:00.003-07:002015-09-06T08:33:29.306-07:00 EXODUS OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">GERMANY’S NEW REFUGEE POLICY IS TARGETTING
IN PARTICULAR TEACHERS, CHEMISTS, ENGINEERS AND DOCTORS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">GERMAN LEFT-WING DAILY, JUNGE WELT, REPORTS
FROM SYRIA<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Everyday, buses with emigrants are leaving the
Syrian capital Damascus. A ticket can be got from any travel agency. Depending
on the destination the cost will be between $300 and $400. The cheaper option
is to travel across the border to the Lebanese port city of Tripoli, from there
one can connect with a ferry to the western Turkish Izmir. Pay a little more
and one can also take a flight from Beirut Airport to Istanbul. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">From Turkey, the route continues across the
sea to Greece, some refugees make two, three or four attempts to reach a Greek
island by boat. The refugees perform this task themselves. The boat is
skippered by one of their number, who in return does not have to pay for the
dangerous voyage. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">For such a journey it can cost up to €10,000.
The money for this voyage the refugees get either from their families or by
selling property. It is mainly the middle class who can afford it. The new
refugee policy of Germany attracts mainly teachers, pharmacists, engineers and
physicians from Syria. Magically nationwide
courses in German are all the rage. In the past few years many have tried
unsuccessfully to get a visa from the German embassy in Beirut. Now they are
embarking on the dangerous and expensive escape route.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">There is a rumour circulating in Instabul
and even in Baghdad that the German government is planning to send ships to the
coast of Turkey to accommodate the refugees and bring them to Germany, in order
to avoid any more tragic images of dead children on the Mediterranean coast.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The misery being endured by the Syrian poor
and Palestinian refugees from Syria remains very much in the background of the
media coverage. More than 150,000 Syrian Palestinians now share their cramped
living quarters with relatives and friends in the Palestinian refugee camps in
Lebanon. Living conditions are catastrophic in the mafia controlled Zaatari camp
in northern Jordan and even more so in the Jordanian cities. The situation is so disastrous that more than
120,000 people have returned from there to Syria. In July alone, the United
Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) registered more than 1,300 Syrian returnees. The
people return to Syria due to the lack of security and the complete hopelessness
of finding work in Jordan. In addition, back in Syria the children are able to
return to school.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Meanwhile, the fighting continues on many
fronts in Syria. Neither side has made any breakthroughs. The Lebanese channel
Al-Mayadeen reported this week that two villages in the northern Syrian
province of Idlib have literally been colonised by Turkish Uyghur units, who are
defending them. Back in 2013 it was reported that Chinese Uyghur came to Syria via
Turkey and joined the Jihadi Al-Nusra Front and later the "Islamic
State" (IS). Through this colonisation policy, Turkey is obviously trying to
bring parts of northern Syria under its influence. Earlier this year the Idlib
province was attacked by the "Army of Conquest" militia, which is
financed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">On Thursday allegations were made that
IS-combat forces had repeatedly used poison gas again in northern Syria. A
spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said reports from various sources had
been received and the UN Security Council would have to take “appropriate
action” to deal with this danger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Meanwhile in Damascus, the Iranian Deputy
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian met with Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad and reaffirmed his country’s political, economic and military support
for its war-torn neighbour. In particular, they would cooperate in the fight
against terrorism. Syria is a sovereign state and has the right to decide
"its own future". At a joint press conference with his Syrian
counterpart Faisal Mekdad Abdollahian stressed that both Iran and Russia were
united in their view the Syrian president must play a central role in any
political resolution of the conflict. An Iranian peace plan was being discussed
with Damascus. Tehran is seeking the United Nations involvement in making the
following proposals a reality: ceasefire, national unity government,
constitutional changes, parliamentary elections
In Beirut Abdollahian had already spoken with the UN special envoy for
Syria, Staffan de Mistura, and the Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0