A good article in the Guardian about the way the planned cuts by the ConDem government in Britain will devastate women throughout the country:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/08/women-public-sector-cuts-pay-freeze
However, it doesn't go far enough, of course. As I try to make clear in my comment:
Look (as Thatcher said):
Unemployment, insecurity and poverty are endemic (part and parcel) of capitalist society, even under Welfare State concessions made to blunt the threat of socialist rebellion.
In 1963 it was impossible for me to get work in Middlesbrough - and they were the golden years! Want to dig ditches as a navvy - get on the short list first!
Splitting different parts of the working class against each other is endemic in capitalist society. You name it, they've done it. Ethnic origin, national origin, age, gender, religion, housing, region, neighbourhood, education, skills, unionization, industry, pay scale - individually and in every possible combination.
This is combined with scapegoating of the most vicious kind - first they create the victim through poverty and discrimination, then they blame the victim for problems they've caused themselves, and enforce this ferociously by means of the police, the courts and the jails - oh, and the sewer media
As if this wasn't enough, working people in different countries are split on the same lines - and they can be shredded to pieces and have their homes smashed by the military, and be forced to endure starvation and disease thanks to "sanctions" or just plain greed and brutal indifference.
All this is well-known, but just not talked about in public.
What isn't known at all, thanks to the demonization of free thought in economics, and in particular of Marxist theory, is that the public sector does produce value. It's work produces the most valuable commodity of all - namely, labour power - the only commodity that can generate more value than it takes to produce.
Which makes you think when you compare this kind of productive work with the work put into useless and destructive production like weapons, surveillance equipment and luxury crap of all kinds.
It isn't just this vicious government that needs to be turfed out like Churchill after world war 2. It's just one in a string of vicious governments. The whole system needs to be turned on its head, all the parasitical blood-suckers shaken out, and run by us for our own benefit and the benefit of those like us worldwide.
And the change needs to be permanent, not just temporary and vulnerable to claw-back by governments who first make concessions like the Welfare State (or New Deal) to save their own (s)kin, and then ratchet them back as the threat recedes.
1 August 2010
Therapy in Britain - healthier attitudes towards mental health
An article in the Observer reports on changed attitudes to mental ill-health and seeking therapy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/01/counselling-psychotherapy-survey
I commented:
Britain is a catastrophic place for kids to grow up in. Everything around you conspires to crush your spirit and warp your emotions. Fighting is the only healthy way to live in these conditions, and that's often wearing and leads to shell shock and PTSD. (That re pit villages in the 30s and world war 2.)
Education during the concessions to the working class known as the Welfare State has created a kind of free space for a lot of us to question what's going on. You've just got to read RD Laing to see how it developed - and to see how vicious the role of a "normal" family is in the authoritarian clampdown on young minds, bodies and emotions.
Freud laid out the outlines of successful therapy. You have to nurture trust and love in the patient, where none has been before. The patient must experience this and express it - which means the therapist has to accept it, and return it in a way that empowers the patient to relate to the outside world using these emotions as firm ground to stand on. There are terms for this, but they are a technicality compared to the essence of the process.
So, how many therapists are able to pull this off? Not many, obviously, cos most therapists are in the same boat as we are. BUT, what they often can do is remove some of the most painful and crippling nightmares by clearing out the pus from around the roots - we can't have firm teeth to bite back at the world until their roots have had the poison drained, and then been filled. Given the state of society, this isn't too bad. It's a start.
If you've sunk into an emotional cesspool, you stink when you're dragged out of it. If you're cleaned up, and feel you're clean, and realize that the cesspool isn't inside you as you imagined, but only something filthy engulfing you - then you're ready to step out on your own, with new clean friends, and enjoy the fight.
Emotionally healthy people in an emotionally healthy society must be the goal. And anything that gets us closer to that is valuable
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/01/counselling-psychotherapy-survey
I commented:
Britain is a catastrophic place for kids to grow up in. Everything around you conspires to crush your spirit and warp your emotions. Fighting is the only healthy way to live in these conditions, and that's often wearing and leads to shell shock and PTSD. (That re pit villages in the 30s and world war 2.)
Education during the concessions to the working class known as the Welfare State has created a kind of free space for a lot of us to question what's going on. You've just got to read RD Laing to see how it developed - and to see how vicious the role of a "normal" family is in the authoritarian clampdown on young minds, bodies and emotions.
Freud laid out the outlines of successful therapy. You have to nurture trust and love in the patient, where none has been before. The patient must experience this and express it - which means the therapist has to accept it, and return it in a way that empowers the patient to relate to the outside world using these emotions as firm ground to stand on. There are terms for this, but they are a technicality compared to the essence of the process.
So, how many therapists are able to pull this off? Not many, obviously, cos most therapists are in the same boat as we are. BUT, what they often can do is remove some of the most painful and crippling nightmares by clearing out the pus from around the roots - we can't have firm teeth to bite back at the world until their roots have had the poison drained, and then been filled. Given the state of society, this isn't too bad. It's a start.
If you've sunk into an emotional cesspool, you stink when you're dragged out of it. If you're cleaned up, and feel you're clean, and realize that the cesspool isn't inside you as you imagined, but only something filthy engulfing you - then you're ready to step out on your own, with new clean friends, and enjoy the fight.
Emotionally healthy people in an emotionally healthy society must be the goal. And anything that gets us closer to that is valuable
31 July 2010
A real feminist flays hypocritical US blather
Germaine Greer has written a militant and hard-hitting feminist blog in the Guardian about some feather-weight fools who won the Pulitzer Prize and made the New York Times best-seller list.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/31/half-the-sky-germaine-greer
I wrote my comment in the form of a letter:
Dear Germaine,
I love the punch of your articles - you get your point across. You own your own heart and mind.
That said, feminism will never solve anything globally or permanently unless it's part of a class-based revolutionary movement fighting to turf out capitalism country by country. Urban and rural working class, urban and rural poor, fighting national battles in a coordinated worldwide war.
Till then feminist agitation and mobilization will be as mutilated and powerless as the UN you flay.
You wield your bull whip well. With the strength of the world's women in your arm.
We wield ours beside you. With the strength of the world's working women AND men in ours.
Makes a good team.
Your dedicated but critical fan,
Xjy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/31/half-the-sky-germaine-greer
I wrote my comment in the form of a letter:
Dear Germaine,
I love the punch of your articles - you get your point across. You own your own heart and mind.
That said, feminism will never solve anything globally or permanently unless it's part of a class-based revolutionary movement fighting to turf out capitalism country by country. Urban and rural working class, urban and rural poor, fighting national battles in a coordinated worldwide war.
Till then feminist agitation and mobilization will be as mutilated and powerless as the UN you flay.
You wield your bull whip well. With the strength of the world's women in your arm.
We wield ours beside you. With the strength of the world's working women AND men in ours.
Makes a good team.
Your dedicated but critical fan,
Xjy
29 July 2010
Sharing ideas - and strangling them...
Here's a short article from Scientific American on sharing scientific ideas and work:
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=when-should-a-scientists-data-be-li-2010-07-22&sc=DD_20100723&posted=1#comments
Jul 22, 2010 02:01 PM in Basic Science | 15 comments
When should a scientist's data be liberated for all to see?
By Katherine Harmon
When researchers make an exciting discovery, the data behind it are often closely guarded until they can be examined, developed and then revealed—at least in part—in a peer-reviewed journal with all of the proverbial fanfare.
But that custom often leaves the public and most of the research world in the dark—sometimes for years, as some lamented in the case of the formal description of the hominid Ardipithecus ramidus, which came some 15 years after the original discovery. Publication usually involves sharing some data because the scientific method encourages others to review one's work so they can attempt to replicate it. But in a Web-driven era of rapidly moving and easily stored data, however, many researchers now argue forcefully for an open exchange of data and the wider use of so-called scientific commons.
Climate change, molecular chemistry and microbiology are just a few of the fields currently entertaining the idea of a better-connected repository to which data can (or must) be uploaded soon after discovery. And in the medical world, many researchers are looking hopefully toward a digital future in which masses of patient data can be examined for patterns of disease soon after they are gathered.
"It would be preferable, from a pure scientific advancement standpoint, to have every piece of data released immediately to the public," Jorge Contreras, deputy director of the Intellectual Property Program at Washington University's School of Law in St. Louis, Mo. and author of a new policy essay on the topic published online July 22 in Science, said in a prepared statement.
That idealistic approach, however, "doesn't give data-generating scientists the opportunity to publish and advance their careers through publication," he noted. Thus new findings and data sets are still usually held close to the vest in the harsh publish-or-perish world.
And the data dearth doesn't necessarily stop with publication. "Because of busy schedules, competitive pressures and other interpersonal vagaries, the sharing of scientific data can be inconsistent even after publication," Contreras observes in his essay.
Not every field has been so tight-fisted with its data. As an encouraging example, he points to the Human Genome Project's stipulation that all new data be made public within 24 hours of being generated. But, he concedes, not every discipline is primed to fall in line with such immediate free access. The genome "represented the common heritage of the human species and should not be encumbered by patents," he writes. But patents are precisely the point of many scientific endeavors, and showing your cards to the competition early on is a patently dim decision.
Thus Contreras proposes a balance of data access and data rights. "I think you must have a compromise," he said in a prepared statement. "Commons weighted too heavily in favor of data users are not likely to attract sufficient contributions from data generators, whereas commons weighted too heavily in favor of data generators" would be less helpful to other scientists and the public.
But that doesn't mean data should be held back. Instead, he argues, widely accepted lead times—after data are publicly released but before others can publish results on them—would allow "data generators a 'head start' on preparing publications based on their data, yet data are still broadly available for the general advancement of science."
Image courtesy of iStockphoto/AlexRaths
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I commented:
Humanity needs to own its own thoughts - we think, create, work and develop together. Everything around us is created collectively - but it's not owned collectively. Once products have been created they're legally in the hands of the profit-motivated people owning the system of production. They act as proxies for humanity.
And as we are seeing (Bhopal, BP, active non-prevention of starvation and disease -Big Pharma and HIV in Africa - and war) they're doing a really lousy job for the rest of us.
So all that crap about how capitalism (private ownership of ideas, culture and production) stands for progress and prosperity is just that - crap.
Ideas, sharing them and using them is for all of us, now. When this happens we'll be blown away by the force and rapidity of the development of human society. The prosperity created (and the safety and reason of the creative process) will soon make it possible to reward the most active creators well enough, while making life for the rest of us comfortable enough, to both encourage this approach and dispel envy and hatred towards those growing fat off the present system while others die because of it.
This is simple - but *not* easy!26 July 2010
Vae victis - woe to the vanquished
Or, Rule No 1 in War: Don't lose!
Mary B discusses the conduct of war, lies and leaks in relation to Afghanistan today, and puts it all in a historical - Roman and Greek - context.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/07/civilian-casualties-leaks-and-the-ancient-view.html
I added this comment:
I give you Clausewitz... I give you Macchiavelli. It's still a question of fighting as though you want to win at any cost, including deceit and "excessive" force (the adjective is superfluous ;-). The Mytilene example is a beautiful example of the transition from war mode to peace mode on the part of the combatants and especially the victors. You leave the vanquished some dignity and room for recuperation. Vae victis - but not too much.
Trotsky tells us about the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk between the new Bolshevik government and the Germans. The German generals, lolling around drinking schnapps with their boots on the table, were thunderstruck by the earnestness of the Bolsheviks, their unlaidback style and their refusal to envisage secret diplomacy. This wasn't the way it was done. And no one was supposed to know of the cynicism and intimacy of the victors and the vanquished during the horse-trading.
Must have been a bit like the Royalists negotiating with Cromwell and his New Model generals...
This, by the way, is a big reason why nuclear war is shunned... there's no one left to trade horses with, nothing to plunder now and for ever.
It's also a reason why the capitalists don't just exterminate the workers once and for all.
Hmm... it's also a reason why Mary's blog is both wicked and subversive... for some.
Mary B discusses the conduct of war, lies and leaks in relation to Afghanistan today, and puts it all in a historical - Roman and Greek - context.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/07/civilian-casualties-leaks-and-the-ancient-view.html
I added this comment:
I give you Clausewitz... I give you Macchiavelli. It's still a question of fighting as though you want to win at any cost, including deceit and "excessive" force (the adjective is superfluous ;-). The Mytilene example is a beautiful example of the transition from war mode to peace mode on the part of the combatants and especially the victors. You leave the vanquished some dignity and room for recuperation. Vae victis - but not too much.
Trotsky tells us about the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk between the new Bolshevik government and the Germans. The German generals, lolling around drinking schnapps with their boots on the table, were thunderstruck by the earnestness of the Bolsheviks, their unlaidback style and their refusal to envisage secret diplomacy. This wasn't the way it was done. And no one was supposed to know of the cynicism and intimacy of the victors and the vanquished during the horse-trading.
Must have been a bit like the Royalists negotiating with Cromwell and his New Model generals...
This, by the way, is a big reason why nuclear war is shunned... there's no one left to trade horses with, nothing to plunder now and for ever.
It's also a reason why the capitalists don't just exterminate the workers once and for all.
Hmm... it's also a reason why Mary's blog is both wicked and subversive... for some.
24 July 2010
Literacy and junk literature
In response to a reasonable article on the subject in today's Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/23/enid-blyton-zoe-williams-comment?
I wrote:
Books like these are fantastic for getting kids to devour books. So is Harry Potter, and the quality of the ideas and the plot is light-years from Enid B, for which we should be much more grateful than we are. However...
1) Enid B has no intrinsic literary merit whatever, except for yarn-spinning more-ishness. So if weird old expressions become sleeping policemen on the highway of literacy - dump 'em. JKR and Mark Twain can take us over the bumps - they take us on a magic carpet ride - or at the very least have great suspension, Enid can't cos she doesn't, and hasn't.
2) Maybe readers aren't aware of just how fast and loose publishers play with an author's text. They wield the machete just as savagely as any drama producer, only like Mac the Knife their work is invisible. And they don't just do it after the event, they do it before publication too, and half the time they tell the hack what to write in the first place. If translators are traitors, then publishers are parricides or paedophiles (take your pick). So the whole industry is doing all this all the time, and they're about as good at self-regulation as the cops. So Enid is lucky she's still being read, and that the publishers go to the trouble of keeping her turkey twizzles devourable.
3) Junk food is a phenomenon of mass culture in a sick society. So is junk writing. Cure society and you get healthier mass culture.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/23/enid-blyton-zoe-williams-comment?
I wrote:
Books like these are fantastic for getting kids to devour books. So is Harry Potter, and the quality of the ideas and the plot is light-years from Enid B, for which we should be much more grateful than we are. However...
1) Enid B has no intrinsic literary merit whatever, except for yarn-spinning more-ishness. So if weird old expressions become sleeping policemen on the highway of literacy - dump 'em. JKR and Mark Twain can take us over the bumps - they take us on a magic carpet ride - or at the very least have great suspension, Enid can't cos she doesn't, and hasn't.
2) Maybe readers aren't aware of just how fast and loose publishers play with an author's text. They wield the machete just as savagely as any drama producer, only like Mac the Knife their work is invisible. And they don't just do it after the event, they do it before publication too, and half the time they tell the hack what to write in the first place. If translators are traitors, then publishers are parricides or paedophiles (take your pick). So the whole industry is doing all this all the time, and they're about as good at self-regulation as the cops. So Enid is lucky she's still being read, and that the publishers go to the trouble of keeping her turkey twizzles devourable.
3) Junk food is a phenomenon of mass culture in a sick society. So is junk writing. Cure society and you get healthier mass culture.
"We've seen it all before" - Tory lies ("promises")
Mary B on political promises - "we've seen it all before..."
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/07/big-society-cassandra-speaks.html
My comment (first a language appetizer, then the meat):
@Oliver N: There was certainly a distinctive Home Counties rendering of French (Ed Heath speaking to De Gaulle).
Anyway, as far as Latin pronunciation is concerned Michael B points to the man who says it all, "Vox Latina, Sidney Allen" (Cantab).
As for rational politics, reason only occurs in public affairs if it forms part of the ruling ideology. During the long Social Democratic interregnum (ie Welfare State "Golden Years") in Sweden, there were umpteen inquiries commissioned in which well-balanced groups of serious people looked at evidence and made sensible decisions about education, pensions, etc. Since this worked well, and was a "Good Thing", it was trumpeted by good people I've translated for into a fixed star of the Swedish political system.
Then things got back to normal (ie bourgeois "democratic" hell) and the inquiry system was brought back to normal too. Single-sod inquiries paying lip service to principles plucked out of the PM's arse, and churning out unreasonable conclusions serving the rulers and their ideology.
Oh, and about money...
First, *of course* you can solve problems by throwing money at them, the only issue is which problems you choose to solve this way - ie nuclear development programmes, fat cat remuneration and banking crises, or health, education, welfare and classical studies.
Second, we can always afford what we need to afford. The Britain that introduced the Welfare State was a beggar in rags compared to today's bespoke-tailored and gleaming-fanged vampire, and yet...
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/07/big-society-cassandra-speaks.html
My comment (first a language appetizer, then the meat):
@Oliver N: There was certainly a distinctive Home Counties rendering of French (Ed Heath speaking to De Gaulle).
Anyway, as far as Latin pronunciation is concerned Michael B points to the man who says it all, "Vox Latina, Sidney Allen" (Cantab).
As for rational politics, reason only occurs in public affairs if it forms part of the ruling ideology. During the long Social Democratic interregnum (ie Welfare State "Golden Years") in Sweden, there were umpteen inquiries commissioned in which well-balanced groups of serious people looked at evidence and made sensible decisions about education, pensions, etc. Since this worked well, and was a "Good Thing", it was trumpeted by good people I've translated for into a fixed star of the Swedish political system.
Then things got back to normal (ie bourgeois "democratic" hell) and the inquiry system was brought back to normal too. Single-sod inquiries paying lip service to principles plucked out of the PM's arse, and churning out unreasonable conclusions serving the rulers and their ideology.
Oh, and about money...
First, *of course* you can solve problems by throwing money at them, the only issue is which problems you choose to solve this way - ie nuclear development programmes, fat cat remuneration and banking crises, or health, education, welfare and classical studies.
Second, we can always afford what we need to afford. The Britain that introduced the Welfare State was a beggar in rags compared to today's bespoke-tailored and gleaming-fanged vampire, and yet...
3 July 2010
Education in today's society (3)
Same discussion continued:
Paulo said...
xjy
I suggest that before you say any more about Samuel Johnson, you investigate his involvement in anti-slavery, and in some of the other matters you mention. In particular, the British use of slaves to fight the war in America.
Much more, if you're interested. His remark about Patriotism - the firat refuge of the hypocrite - is a start. By "patriotism" he meant the English interests in the American Empire. Windy, Latinate, but strong.
I responded:
@Paulo: The more Samuel Johnson contradicts himself, the better!
Meantime, here's a revelation for most of you - Edward Rushton, 1756-1814. A book telling his story was published in 2002. "Forgotten Hero. The Life and Times of Edward Rushton. Liverpool's Blind Poet, Revolutionary Republican, & Anti-Slavery Fighter" by Bill Hunter, Living History Library, Liverpool, 2002. (info: editor@livinghistory.org.uk) ISBN 0-9542077-0-X (all this detail cos - as you can imagine - it's not available at WH Smith's)
He went blind helping slaves (alone) on a slaver at the age of 18, during an epidemic of Malignant Opthalmia. And that was just the start. The book gives extracts from his poems, documented accounts of Liverpool as a city built on Slavery, of conditions in the Navy, the Press Gangs, the politics of abolition, the role of ex-slaves in the debates on Abolition, and Rushton's adventure's as an innkeeper. As well as his take on the American Revolution (a letter to Washington taking him to task for his pro-slavery), the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution (Spartacus!)
Our Scouser readers might be aware of Rushton. Few others will. Read 100 pages of Sam J and then the 100 pages of this little book. Think about the role of laws and kings in society, and the role of society in people's lives (including culture and education).
Decide for yourselves whether or not Samuel Johnson is a pompous windbag.
2 July 2010
West Germany fails in East Germany
From a discussion list.
July 1 marks the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the deutsche mark in East Germany in the runup to full reunification. But the economic benefits that West German politicians promised failed to materialize. What went wrong?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518, 703802,00.html
Fascinating.
But "What went wrong?" is not the right approach.
"Why has the whole project been such a miserable failure from beginning to end?" is better. With the follow-up questions: "Why do East Germans still miss the old East Germany after two decades, in spite of everything (and there are a LOT of in-spite-ofs)?", and "Why was the whole fiasco foreseeable from the start?"
It failed because it was trying to turn back the wheel of history. It's just as impossible to force socialism back into its capitalist womb as it was to force capitalism back into its feudal womb. Of feudalism back into slave-states. This is very paradoxical - the new states are "weaker" than the old states, but a thousand times more viable. The GDR, the Soviet Union, etc were getting on quite well enough thank you, in spite of the in-spite-ofs. It was the Nomenklatura bureaucrats who were most dissatisfied, not the workers. They sold the workers down the river to keep their power and privileges in the shape of capitalists.
One little example I saw in the paper today can illustrate this. The usual propaganda about Cuba, and the usual crap about the country being on the brink of collapse (all non-capitalist countries are always on the brink of collapse according to official capitalist doctrine)... BUT one tiny tell-tale detail... Things are getting so bad now that SOME workplaces are no longer going to provide free lunches to the workers. FREE LUNCHES FOR THE WORKERS! In a country on the brink of collapse, that has no right to exist according to capitalist propaganda. Way-hay! Give me that kind of poverty any day.
East Germany couldn't be integrated into West Germany without being torn down completely and built up from scratch. And the people didn't want this. And you can't say you're making a people more prosperous if you raze their lives to the ground (unless, of course, if you're the US in Iraq or Afghanistan, you can and do). It could be brought into the Western sphere of power as a reservoir of cheap labour and cheap land, and that's about it. Referring to Russia in 1990, Kissinger wrote that the West had one year to push its reforms through - while the "euphoria lasted". Before people woke up to the fact that they'd been lied to and were being ripped off.
Question two: Why the nostalgia? 5 years after 1917 (at the most) Russians had forgotten all about the Tsar and Tsarism. It was just a bad dream. Poof, gone. It took less than 5 years for the new state to seem natural, and the old state to be deep in the cesspool of history never to be retrieved. In East Germany 20 years have now passed since the return of the capitalism everyone was said to be dying to get back. And the new state is still not natural, and the old state has not been forgotten. Twenty years!! And the richest capitalist state in Europe has fucked up completely in bringing hope and prosperity to a country with the same language culture and (more or less) history. It has poured money into a bottomless historical pit. It just can't afford the requirements. It has neither the money, nor the moral, cultural or social authority for the task.
And if West Germany can't manage to restore capitalism successfully in East Germany, where the hell CAN capitalism be successfully restored?? And by who?
Cuba (In Spite Of) is a model in Latin America. East Germany is not a model in Europe. Europe has no models since Sweden lost its halo.
Question 3: "Foreseeable?" I'll dig up some old discussion contributions I made back in the day. You'll notice that the Kissinger remark fits in with an obvious scepticism towards the whole restoration project. And it should be obvious that no single part of a country can buy up that country's whole economy. Reformist socialists had this illusion in the late forties. And failed. That's not the way economies work or history works. Post-capitalist society - proto-socialism if you like - takes over what it finds and makes something viable of it. Restored capitalist society destroys what it finds and makes a squalid mess of it.
To force a vigorous baby back into the womb you have to chop it up first.
Capitalism and the Western way of life bring security, prosperity and happiness to all - except they don't.
And humanity won't have security, prosperity or happiness until Capitalism and the Western way of life have been tossed into the cesspool of history along with Tsarism. And we'll dump the In-Spite-Ofs too, while we're at it.
30 June 2010
Education in today's society (2)
PL commented on my contribution to yesterday's blog discussion:
I respect Brecht and deeply admire Shelley; but for wisdom in these matters give me good old Dr Johnson:
"How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part that laws or kings can cause or cure."
To which I responded:
@PL: Johnson was a pompous windbag.
He knew next to nothing about the human heart.
Just ask any slave (white, black, plantation, galley, salt mine); any starving, HIV-infected kid, any addict or convict from the ghettos of the richest country on earth; any crippled victim of landmines, bombs (working, unexploded, napalm, cluster, vacuum, sophisticated or improvized), snipers, flame-throwers, or gas attacks (military or civil); any indentured child labourer; any mega-city slum-dweller drinking sewage; any farmers thrown off their land by debt, violence, or ecological terrorism (dam projects, monoculture, man-made environmental disasters); any victim of flogging, keel-hauling, blinding, legal amputation; or any girl or woman violated, brutalized and broken by the sex industry.
Shall I go go on? There's more. And these are only the "lucky" ones still alive.
And take no account of lives stunted and emptied by the anxiety, frustration, stress, and illness of "privileged" societies. Or lack of educational opportunities like those Mary is fighting to preserve and generalize.
Johnson was a pompous windbag.
I respect Brecht and deeply admire Shelley; but for wisdom in these matters give me good old Dr Johnson:
"How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part that laws or kings can cause or cure."
To which I responded:
@PL: Johnson was a pompous windbag.
He knew next to nothing about the human heart.
Just ask any slave (white, black, plantation, galley, salt mine); any starving, HIV-infected kid, any addict or convict from the ghettos of the richest country on earth; any crippled victim of landmines, bombs (working, unexploded, napalm, cluster, vacuum, sophisticated or improvized), snipers, flame-throwers, or gas attacks (military or civil); any indentured child labourer; any mega-city slum-dweller drinking sewage; any farmers thrown off their land by debt, violence, or ecological terrorism (dam projects, monoculture, man-made environmental disasters); any victim of flogging, keel-hauling, blinding, legal amputation; or any girl or woman violated, brutalized and broken by the sex industry.
Shall I go go on? There's more. And these are only the "lucky" ones still alive.
And take no account of lives stunted and emptied by the anxiety, frustration, stress, and illness of "privileged" societies. Or lack of educational opportunities like those Mary is fighting to preserve and generalize.
Johnson was a pompous windbag.
29 June 2010
Education in today's society
Mary B's blog
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/06/escaping-exams.html
drew the following comment from me:
In a decent society, learning and education will be taken seriously. Social wealth (which will be greater than we can imagine today) will be distributed sensibly. As a result, the sharing and caring Mary and a few other lucky people dedicate themselves to will be the norm.
Till then Sweetness and Light will be beacons in the night, in stormy seas, near a jagged rocky coast. Most of us (humanity, that is) will be wrecked without seeing any beacons, a lot of us will be killed by wreckers using false beacons, some of us will reach the shore and find that the beacons are real but inaccessible, and a few will actually make it to the flame, enjoy its light and heat, and keep it alive.
And share snippets of hope with each other:
Die Nacht hat zwölf Stunden, dann kommt schon der Tag...
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
*
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/06/escaping-exams.html
drew the following comment from me:
In a decent society, learning and education will be taken seriously. Social wealth (which will be greater than we can imagine today) will be distributed sensibly. As a result, the sharing and caring Mary and a few other lucky people dedicate themselves to will be the norm.
Till then Sweetness and Light will be beacons in the night, in stormy seas, near a jagged rocky coast. Most of us (humanity, that is) will be wrecked without seeing any beacons, a lot of us will be killed by wreckers using false beacons, some of us will reach the shore and find that the beacons are real but inaccessible, and a few will actually make it to the flame, enjoy its light and heat, and keep it alive.
And share snippets of hope with each other:
Die Nacht hat zwölf Stunden, dann kommt schon der Tag...
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
*
15 June 2010
The place of Latin
A short piece in today's Guardian:
Latin: why we're better off with the ancient language
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jun/14/latin-language-in-schools)
My comment:
As anyone can tell you who has seen any of my comments on any blog relating to this subject I'm a huge fan of Latin.
Partly for cultural reasons and partly out of an unusual passion for languages - one that has overcome a lack of autistic proficiency to give me useful access to a number of different but related Indo-European languages (some alive and kicking, and some half-dead and flapping), and to a fundamentally different non-Indo-European language. The iconic Finnish mentioned here a couple of times.
Some languages I got at school as compulsory subjects, some I studied voluntarily at college level, and some I just picked up on a teach yourself, learning by doing, voluntary basis.
Compulsory French at school worked, compulsory German just about despite hopeless conditions. All the rest has been voluntary - whether formal or normal.
Formal helps, but opportunity and incentive helps more.
That's why Grabyrdy's comment bangs the button:
"I would add that it's not only Latin that helps brains develop. Teach every child in the country to play a musical instrument and participate in orchestras and choirs, and the IQ level of the whole country will rise within a generation."
Education has to provide opportunity and incentive, and needs to be polytechnical - intellectual, physical (sports, drama, music), practical (craft trades), interactive (politics, psychology).
So that's Britain oot the windae as far as Latin or any other language is concerned.
I regret none of my languages, except maybe Swedish for the way it's invaded and occupied my life far too obtrusively and disproportionately. I'd rather have had my life invaded and occupied by Russian, Chinese (yes please!) or Bengali (or Sanskrit. - I'm half-dead and flapping myself...)
So... anyone who gets a foot in the door, or even better makes it all the way into the rip-roaring party that's another language and its culture, feels more fully human for it and helps others feel better too. And the special thing about Latin here is that it offers a widely recognized currency standard for language, culture and civil fundamentals. (Special Drawing Rights if not Gold...)
My own favourite (with me everywhere, and more worn by the day) is Lucretius On the Nature of Things. Oh, and Tacitus. Mohammed Alis of culture -- deeply human, aware of their own value, no one's tool and no one's fool, unrepentantly nonconformist, dazzling masters of technique and harder hitting than anyone else alive.
And nothing prissy, bigoted, arse-licking, or demeaning about them.
I made a further comment:
MSGlendinning writes:
"I currently teach EFL. There is absolutely no coincidence that the students and people that I know that are non-native speakers that have the highest level of fluency and understanding of the nuances and other pecularities of English are the ones that have spent time immersed in an English-speaking country."
So if they're so good why do they need you to teach them?
How do you "immerse" yourself in a country? Burrow head down into the soil (or concrete)? If you immerse yourself in intercourse with people in that country (heh) how many people do you need to intercourse with? And how much and how? And what language and culture do the people you intercourse with use?
Maybe it's communication between people that's the important thing... So god help us given the dreadful communication skills of the average teacher, if teaching has got anything to do with it.
To communicate you need something to communicate about, and communicate with. And if you live somewhere you are forced to communicate with people there. But if you are well prepared to communicate about things that are common to humanity, and are skilled/trained at learning, you'll pick up a language like lightning - as I've seen in my teaching. If you aren't, and you're surrounded by your own culture and language (let's say you're Armenian or Russian in LA), then you're screwed. As I've seen with Kurds and Somalis in my teaching.
OK, so the thing about Latin is that a lot of it is one way communication - but a lot of it is communication about things common to humanity (sex, money, politics, war), done in ways common to humanity (writing, striking language, striking settings). And it communicates these things using a common cultural legacy, adding familiarity.
So why shouldn't acquiring Latin be more useful and attractive than acquiring pidgin Double Dutch? Should we force people to learn New Guinea Creole because living people use it and it has a thriving local culture?
If you read novels or follow the news, then you're into abstract, non-immediate, non-immersive communication. That is, you're in a good position to derive pleasure and stimulation from Latin.
The conditions for learning it aren't too good - but neither are the conditions for learning other languages in Britain. And Latin has one huge advantage - almost everyone involved with teaching it or using it is full of enthusiasm for the language, for the culture and for sharing this with others. But first let's have a decent society and a decent educational system, so non-local culture and communication mean something more than an old school tie.
Latin: why we're better off with the ancient language
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jun/14/latin-language-in-schools)
My comment:
As anyone can tell you who has seen any of my comments on any blog relating to this subject I'm a huge fan of Latin.
Partly for cultural reasons and partly out of an unusual passion for languages - one that has overcome a lack of autistic proficiency to give me useful access to a number of different but related Indo-European languages (some alive and kicking, and some half-dead and flapping), and to a fundamentally different non-Indo-European language. The iconic Finnish mentioned here a couple of times.
Some languages I got at school as compulsory subjects, some I studied voluntarily at college level, and some I just picked up on a teach yourself, learning by doing, voluntary basis.
Compulsory French at school worked, compulsory German just about despite hopeless conditions. All the rest has been voluntary - whether formal or normal.
Formal helps, but opportunity and incentive helps more.
That's why Grabyrdy's comment bangs the button:
"I would add that it's not only Latin that helps brains develop. Teach every child in the country to play a musical instrument and participate in orchestras and choirs, and the IQ level of the whole country will rise within a generation."
Education has to provide opportunity and incentive, and needs to be polytechnical - intellectual, physical (sports, drama, music), practical (craft trades), interactive (politics, psychology).
So that's Britain oot the windae as far as Latin or any other language is concerned.
I regret none of my languages, except maybe Swedish for the way it's invaded and occupied my life far too obtrusively and disproportionately. I'd rather have had my life invaded and occupied by Russian, Chinese (yes please!) or Bengali (or Sanskrit. - I'm half-dead and flapping myself...)
So... anyone who gets a foot in the door, or even better makes it all the way into the rip-roaring party that's another language and its culture, feels more fully human for it and helps others feel better too. And the special thing about Latin here is that it offers a widely recognized currency standard for language, culture and civil fundamentals. (Special Drawing Rights if not Gold...)
My own favourite (with me everywhere, and more worn by the day) is Lucretius On the Nature of Things. Oh, and Tacitus. Mohammed Alis of culture -- deeply human, aware of their own value, no one's tool and no one's fool, unrepentantly nonconformist, dazzling masters of technique and harder hitting than anyone else alive.
And nothing prissy, bigoted, arse-licking, or demeaning about them.
I made a further comment:
MSGlendinning writes:
"I currently teach EFL. There is absolutely no coincidence that the students and people that I know that are non-native speakers that have the highest level of fluency and understanding of the nuances and other pecularities of English are the ones that have spent time immersed in an English-speaking country."
So if they're so good why do they need you to teach them?
How do you "immerse" yourself in a country? Burrow head down into the soil (or concrete)? If you immerse yourself in intercourse with people in that country (heh) how many people do you need to intercourse with? And how much and how? And what language and culture do the people you intercourse with use?
Maybe it's communication between people that's the important thing... So god help us given the dreadful communication skills of the average teacher, if teaching has got anything to do with it.
To communicate you need something to communicate about, and communicate with. And if you live somewhere you are forced to communicate with people there. But if you are well prepared to communicate about things that are common to humanity, and are skilled/trained at learning, you'll pick up a language like lightning - as I've seen in my teaching. If you aren't, and you're surrounded by your own culture and language (let's say you're Armenian or Russian in LA), then you're screwed. As I've seen with Kurds and Somalis in my teaching.
OK, so the thing about Latin is that a lot of it is one way communication - but a lot of it is communication about things common to humanity (sex, money, politics, war), done in ways common to humanity (writing, striking language, striking settings). And it communicates these things using a common cultural legacy, adding familiarity.
So why shouldn't acquiring Latin be more useful and attractive than acquiring pidgin Double Dutch? Should we force people to learn New Guinea Creole because living people use it and it has a thriving local culture?
If you read novels or follow the news, then you're into abstract, non-immediate, non-immersive communication. That is, you're in a good position to derive pleasure and stimulation from Latin.
The conditions for learning it aren't too good - but neither are the conditions for learning other languages in Britain. And Latin has one huge advantage - almost everyone involved with teaching it or using it is full of enthusiasm for the language, for the culture and for sharing this with others. But first let's have a decent society and a decent educational system, so non-local culture and communication mean something more than an old school tie.
About class leadership
Some thoughts on the tube this morning
Given that imperialism is capitalism pregnant with socialism...
The history of the 20C shows that the objective preconditions for socm are far better than we realized, and conversely the leadership situation is far worse.
An important factor almost never taken into account is the enormous readiness of the working class to follow leadership even to death - provided it perceives the leadership as its own.
Examples are the Social Democrats in Germany China and Spain
On the positive side we have the objective victories of the class(es) in ww2, in China vs Japan and the KMT and the bourgeoisie, in Yugoslavia and Vietnam and Cuba , and in the creation of the DWSs in Eastern Europe and Korea
This is empirical evidence of the power, courage, discipline, loyalty of the mobilized working class and its allies.
If there are leadership struggles in the class, these can mobilize the same loyalty and courage in a civil war leading to self-destruction (examples above), plus generally speaking a condition of short-circuited paralysis if the war is "invisible" to the masses - as in the DWSs (including the degenerated SU) or in welfare states or imperialist states with traditionally large-scale concessions to strategic sections of the class (the US, Australia).
So, what are the conditions for winning leadership in the class, for getting the class to perceive us as its leaders?
EMPIRICAL - We must be vigorous and influential and viable and be seen to be so.
STRATEGIC - We must have objectives that are crystal clear, attainable, and attractive.
PSYCHOLOGICAL - We must be "charismatic", ie fulfil the empirical conditions with confidence, bravura and heroism.
None of these need be met to an absolute or ultimate degree (as is obvious given the support gained by bureaucratic and fundamentally treacherous leaderships). But they must be met well enough, and in particular to a degree strikingly superior to other contenders for leadership (eg the Maoist leadership of the CCP vs the Moscow-backed leadership, or the Castro leadership vs the Cuban CP, or Chavez vs other left forces in Venezuela
If you think these points are correct, learn them by heart! Impress them on your comrades and work your arse off to make practical use of them!!
C
1 June 2010
US-backed piracy and murder - Israel rapes the Gaza peace convoy
In response to a long and toothless thread on a discussion group I wrote:
Israel's arguments remind me of nothing so much as the justifications given by the Argentine junta and the South African apartheid racists for their brutal and inhuman actions. And however "sincere" individual South African whites might have been in their support for these arguments that doesn't make the slightest difference to their responsibility for these actions. I don't consider Argentine supporters of the junta to have been sincere in the least. And I think that any sincere Israeli supporters of the Israeli military and those giving them their orders in this murderous act of piracy on the high seas are either wilfully ignorant and indifferent ("they're only Arabs, and anyway they bring it on themselves" - I've heard it first hand) or completely numbed to any sense of proportionality in political interaction including acts of war.
(This animal is very evil -Attacked, it fights back like the devil.)
Israel's arguments remind me of nothing so much as the justifications given by the Argentine junta and the South African apartheid racists for their brutal and inhuman actions. And however "sincere" individual South African whites might have been in their support for these arguments that doesn't make the slightest difference to their responsibility for these actions. I don't consider Argentine supporters of the junta to have been sincere in the least. And I think that any sincere Israeli supporters of the Israeli military and those giving them their orders in this murderous act of piracy on the high seas are either wilfully ignorant and indifferent ("they're only Arabs, and anyway they bring it on themselves" - I've heard it first hand) or completely numbed to any sense of proportionality in political interaction including acts of war.
Israel exceeds the vileness of both the apartheid regime, the Argentine junta and (for what it's worth, the old East German regime) for several reasons. The first is the total support in words and actions and arms supplies by the most powerful nation on earth, the US. US support for the junta was less open, and the SA racists were only supported openly by a second-rate imperialist power - Britain. Every brazen Big Lie by Israel is swallowed whole (camels against gnats) by the States, and not a cent is withheld, not a carbine or bulldozer or bomb or helicopter or "adviser". Legions of university-trained, highly experienced, smooth-talking lawyers fill the newspapers and airwaves with sophistical gunk - brains targeting humanity like those of the American war industry, instead of working on solving problems of disease and poverty that kill thousands of people daily. The wall being erected (much of it already in place) between privileged Israeli areas and discriminated Palestinian areas is larger and more jealously guarded than the infamous Berlin Wall, and even than the much bigger wall the British occupying forces erected for similar reasons in Belfast. Oh, and Israel has the Bomb, which neither Argentina, nor racist South Africa (not quite), nor the GDR had.
All this makes me sympathize with those who refer to the rulers of Israel and their supporters as Zionazis. This is not the case, politically or historically - Israel is a very different kettle of rotten fish from Nazi Germany, as Aristotle would be able to tell us if he were around today. But the symptoms of callous degeneracy are there for all to see and ignore at their peril. Israel is the child of imperialism and is allowed to act out its bad boy tantrums by its indulgent parents (and by god I've seen Tantrums on the boardwalk at Coney Island). And all because it's an invaluable fortress for imperialism - locking the Eastern Mediterranean, keeping a lid on popular sentiment in its neighbouring Arab countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan), and constituting a gigantic military base for the US that allows it to threaten the whole of the Middle East by proxy - most recently by howling for a pre-emptive nuclear strike against a US bogeyman de jour, Iran, which the US can distance itself from (plausible deniability) on the basis that it's "just a tantrum". Not to mention the cataracts of pus pumped out by its propaganda machinery. Or the (unmentionable even by Israeli standards, and that's saying something!) deeds of the Israeli secret service Moshad - KGB, Stasi and Securitate eat your hearts out...
And the rot won't stop with a Two-State solution. We need a single, united Palestine, independent, secular, and democratic. But it won't happen given the current balance of power in the world. Divide and rule coupled with military intimidation and a lack of alternatives - too bad Iraq and Saudi don't do the job as well as Israel - will see to that.
And in the meantime, as Pete wrote:
Voltaire had a word for it:
Cet animal est très méchant,Quand on l'attaque il se défend.
(This animal is very evil -
Chops
27 May 2010
Education in Britain - a Brave New World
Some idiot gassing on about the need for slightly less elite schools for the increasingly sidelined petty-bourgeoisie and labour aristocracy. (He doesn't put it that way himself :-)
It's from the Guardian of course:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/26/selective-education-grammar-schools?
My comment:
If a school system isn't designed to raise the average standard of education/knowledge/joy of learning/solidarity, then it's going to reproduce all the old crap. Socialize our youngsters into well-off or destitute psychopaths, on class lines.
The British system is "designed" (ha-bloody-ha) - no, let's say structured - to ease the rich and powerful into rich and powerful positions, to let the would-be social climbers tear each other to pieces as they fight their way up the foothills through jungle and swamp, and to consign the wage-slaves and the poor to the factories and streets. At any price. Particularly at the cost of education/knowledge/joy of learning/solidarity and culture.
O Brave New World!
I was able to go to university because of a local government grant, not because of the school I went to. While there I decided I would only go into teaching as a last resort if half my brain went home. Since then things have got much much worse.
Britain is a democracy by the skin of its teeth, and the enamel is wearing away fast. The class divide is very visible once more, and class hatred is returning. Healthy signs for our future!
But the necessary change and renewal will owe next to nothing to our - sorry their - schools and universities. And the little owed will be in spite of and not because of the educational policies of servile governments that divide their time between licking the spittle and licking the boots of capital - when their heads aren't stuck up its arse.
It's from the Guardian of course:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/26/selective-education-grammar-schools?
My comment:
If a school system isn't designed to raise the average standard of education/knowledge/joy of learning/solidarity, then it's going to reproduce all the old crap. Socialize our youngsters into well-off or destitute psychopaths, on class lines.
The British system is "designed" (ha-bloody-ha) - no, let's say structured - to ease the rich and powerful into rich and powerful positions, to let the would-be social climbers tear each other to pieces as they fight their way up the foothills through jungle and swamp, and to consign the wage-slaves and the poor to the factories and streets. At any price. Particularly at the cost of education/knowledge/joy of learning/solidarity and culture.
O Brave New World!
I was able to go to university because of a local government grant, not because of the school I went to. While there I decided I would only go into teaching as a last resort if half my brain went home. Since then things have got much much worse.
Britain is a democracy by the skin of its teeth, and the enamel is wearing away fast. The class divide is very visible once more, and class hatred is returning. Healthy signs for our future!
But the necessary change and renewal will owe next to nothing to our - sorry their - schools and universities. And the little owed will be in spite of and not because of the educational policies of servile governments that divide their time between licking the spittle and licking the boots of capital - when their heads aren't stuck up its arse.
17 May 2010
The European Crisis - an outline
This is an article I drafted with additions suggested by comrades at a meeting last Wednesday in Liverpool.
Any comments or questions welcome!
THE EUROPEAN CRISIS
World crisis
This crisis isn’t a US crisis or a European crisis or an Asian crisis or a Latin American crisis. It’s a world crisis.
The Asian crisis of the late 90s brought Indonesia to its knees and then infected Argentina, and brought down Enron in the US. The Milken junk bond scandal of the mid-80s shook the US finance world. But neither crisis saw the bankruptcy of corporations at the very core of US capitalism like Ford and General Motors, or the fall of financial giants like Lehmann. Or the gutting of European nations like Iceland or the Ukraine. Or such a standstill in world trade or manufacturing. This crisis is not localized, or on-and-off, or sectoral. It’s a general world crisis affecting the imperialist metropolises and every country in their thrall. It’s an economic earthquake and tsunami in one, bringing down economic structures and drowning whole countries.
Overproduction crisis
The crisis is a classical overproduction crisis – of both commodities and capital
All credit is based on collateral. The bottom line here is the sale of real commodities. Regardless of the labyrinths, distorting mirrors, and smoke-and-mirrors illusions created by capitalist accounting wizards, and no matter how high the castles-in-the-air appear to tower above our heads, if the cars, TVs, clothes, machines and raw materials don’t get sold all these illusions will dissolve. And if there are more commodities in the shops than money to buy them, the market will choke. There will be a glut, and an overproduction crisis.
The reason too many goods can be produced is that there is too much capital throwing goods into the market. If one company can saturate a market, two companies will flood it. The only way out of this dead end is for one of the companies to disappear, for its capital to be destroyed. This is done by manufacturing being choked back, and weaker companies going to the wall. And if this isn’t enough, war has to step in to do the job.
These crises are recurrent, ruthless and deadly. And invisible to bourgeois economics, except in the after-the-event, “please don’t expropriate us and throw us away” shape of Keynesianism. That is to say, the large-scale concessions to the working class represented by the New Deal or the Welfare State.
Old powers falling
The US and Europe hollowed out
This crisis has seen US and European imperialism on the losing end of the competitive war. This is unprecedented. The bayonets usually skewer dependent countries or weaker imperialist nations. This time household names have been gone bankrupt – Ford, General Motors, Lehmann, the Royal Bank of Scotland. And huge conglomerates have been cannibalizing groups that aren’t quite huge enough – Cadbury’s has been swallowed by Kraft Foods, for instance.
New powers rising
More viable production meets remaining demand
If two companies compete to the death, the surviving company will emerge stronger. As Ford and General Motors fail, Chinese carmakers take their place. Geely steps in to take over Volvo from Ford, and BAIC makes the best offer for Saab as General Motors is forced to sell. However, GM refused to accept the Chinese as buyers for its new line of Saabs, and ended up selling to a Dutch sports car maker in the pocket of a Russian billionaire. British companies like the steel giant Corus, and the prestigious brands of Jaguar, Land Rover went down to the Indian juggernaut Tata Group.
Britain’s manufacturing sector now comprises only 13% of GDP. It’s little wonder that it is more vulnerable to credit collapse than countries with a strong manufacturing or natural resources sector that are able to hold out in markets where less competitive countries are swept away.
Rising countries are moving into the spaces left by declining imperialist powers. China, India and Russia are making themselves felt, and Brazil is picking up momentum in Latin America - even intervening in the Middle East with a recent visit to Iran by the Brazilian president.
The crisis is general and interlinked
Financial, commercial and manufacturing developments in one place immediately affect and are affected by developments in other places
When Ford and General Motors went bust, Volvo and Saab, with their R&D and manufacturing operations in Sweden, had to be auctioned off, and were on the brink of bankruptcy. If they had been liquidated this would have gutted the economy of the whole of western Sweden. Whole towns would have lost their livelihoods as their only major employers were Volvo or Saab, or companies producing parts or components for them. In the event both were saved, by Chinese and Russian capital. But this solved nothing as far as capitalism is concerned, because world capitalism needs capital to be destroyed, not saved.
The same futile scenario is being repeated around the world.
The EU is tearing apart
The interests of imperialist countries in the EU are savaging the interests of the weaker countries
While Sweden has been scrabbling to save its own skin, Swedish banks have been digging their claws into weaker countries. Sweden is, after all, an imperialist country in its own right. So although more and more of its economy has been bought up by foreign capital, its own capital has been sucking the blood of Latvia and the Ukraine. One of the major leeches being the cooperative and trade union owned Swedbank.
French banks are holding a knife to the throats of Portugal and Spain – and most dramatically of Greece. German capital is setting up shop everywhere in Europe. This process is very visible on the streets of Serbia, which has only recently been prised open to foreign capital. The same goes for new EU members from former Warsaw Pact countries like Romania and Bulgaria.
In this process Germany, France and Britain are all out for themselves. All the fine talk about European unity and solidarity evaporates when national interests are at stake.
The interests of the banks are savaging the lives of individuals
Insolvencies are at record levels and negative equity is sky-rocketing. Perhaps the most striking example of this is Latvia, where a whole stratum of starry-eyed conspicuous consumers suddenly couldn’t pay the loans they’d taken out to buy their flats or a Mercedes. The new material wealth they thought was theirs was repossessed, leaving them facing a lifetime of debt with nothing to show for it. Personal catastrophes of this kind will soon hammer Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and other countries on the sharpest end of the crisis.
Debtors and creditors
Payback time
The biggest imperialist countries are in debt on a huge scale to the Market. To cover this debt they need to enforce payment by their own debtors. But if they drive their debtors into bankruptcy they will lose all the unpaid debts. They desperately need to get their money back, but they also desperately need to have debtors able to keep paying, preferably for ever. To reduce debtor countries to complete servitude would be to turn them into colonies. This is a very inefficient form of exploitation. “Free” wage labour is a more efficient from of exploitation than slavery, and “free” nations offer greater profits than colonies – with far fewer overheads.
The Great Depression
The current crisis so far is the 1930s in slow motion
The Big Crash happened very fast. There were no bail-outs. The capitalist world economy stopped dead. Recovery was slow and painful. Our present recovery, if and when it happens, will be even slower and even more painful, but the crash is still happening. Bail-outs, international attempts to coordinate responses, all kinds of artificial resuscitation methods are being deployed to put off disaster for another few months. They might as well try to hold back the tide or use a wooden fence to stop a lava flow.
The big difference is that the working class is not defeated
The great difference between the current crisis and the 1930s is that the working class is not defeated. Capital has been unable to deal a decisive blow to the class, despite sluggers like Thatcher and Reagan. The class is still putting up resistance and making demands, despite pro-capitalist leadership in trade unions and labour parties.
And today the general standard of living is higher than it was in the 30s, and there is still a welfare state, however run-down. Purchasing power in Greece has fallen by a third, but people still survive. And although this cushions the first blows, it also means that the class is stronger and in a better condition to fight when it finally starts fighting.
War
This resistance means that the ultimate capitalist solution to the crisis of overproduction of capital -- war on a world scale -- is so far more of a threat than an immediate danger. This was not the case in the 1930s.
The capitalist response
Privatization of profits and socialization of losses
Normally sluggish governments become nimble and quick as soon as capital needs to be rescued. Red tape is ignored, there are no humiliating interrogations or insulting pittances involved.
The neo-liberal ideology of total market freedom has been unceremoniously dumped. It was fine to justify huge private profiteering when the circumstances allowed huge profits to be made. But as soon as losses appear the market is shoved aside and the capitalists run squealing to their governments. Corporate welfare is lavished on capitalists who have fallen on hard times. The losses are socialized. And this means that the billions handed over to failed capitalists by their governments will be paid for by the working class by way of higher taxes and slashed public services
Huge loans and crippling austerity
To extract payment, governments are imposing austerity programmes of unprecedented severity. The trillion dollar loan the Greek government needs to rescue capital has been granted by Germany, France and the IMF on condition that it drives through the cuts.
The working class response
The class response has so far been passive or unfocused
In the current crisis no working class organizations have demanded permanent public ownership of banks or companies that have gone bankrupt and been rescued with public money. With this kind of leadership it’s no wonder that the class response has been passive or unfocused. Treacherous political and union leaders are fighting desperately to keep the lid on discontent. They are fighting the workers they represent instead of the capitalists causing the crisis.
Governments are not as savage as their masters would like
Despite the treacherous manoeuvring of unions and parties, class anger has made itself felt. In Greece there have been massive and prolonged demonstrations, and violent confrontations. The austerity measures have been met by general strikes. This kind of response terrifies governments and means that although they are savagely attacking the working class, they are nowhere near as savage as their masters in the Market would like.
Great social problems like mass unemployment (for example the 20% unemployment in Spain, and the much higher figures for youth unemployment throughout Europe) are too dangerous for politicians to discuss. In parliamentary debates and during elections the real world is a million miles away. This silence is also caused by fear of the working class.
A powerful working class will undoubtedly fight back
Although there has been no great increase in working class mobilization in recent years, the working class remains undefeated and its potential power is greater than ever. Today’s developments will push the class forward to struggle. When it starts moving it will rise in many countries at once. The speed with which mobilizations spread from country to country in 1968 will be surpassed. There are fewer differences between countries today, there are more links, and communications are faster and easier.
From defence to attack
To do more than just defend itself the working class must consciously target its real enemy. To replace the political dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and set up a workers government the class must learn who its enemy is, and how to defeat it. In each country and in the world as a whole. But taking power nationally and creating a socialist world demands a completely different class leadership than we see around us today.
Building a new and conscious leadership is the only way to give the working class confidence in its own strength and in its ability to change the world. And it’s the only way to ensure that we never have to endure another catastrophic capitalist crisis.
Any comments or questions welcome!
THE EUROPEAN CRISIS
World crisis
This crisis isn’t a US crisis or a European crisis or an Asian crisis or a Latin American crisis. It’s a world crisis.
The Asian crisis of the late 90s brought Indonesia to its knees and then infected Argentina, and brought down Enron in the US. The Milken junk bond scandal of the mid-80s shook the US finance world. But neither crisis saw the bankruptcy of corporations at the very core of US capitalism like Ford and General Motors, or the fall of financial giants like Lehmann. Or the gutting of European nations like Iceland or the Ukraine. Or such a standstill in world trade or manufacturing. This crisis is not localized, or on-and-off, or sectoral. It’s a general world crisis affecting the imperialist metropolises and every country in their thrall. It’s an economic earthquake and tsunami in one, bringing down economic structures and drowning whole countries.
Overproduction crisis
The crisis is a classical overproduction crisis – of both commodities and capital
All credit is based on collateral. The bottom line here is the sale of real commodities. Regardless of the labyrinths, distorting mirrors, and smoke-and-mirrors illusions created by capitalist accounting wizards, and no matter how high the castles-in-the-air appear to tower above our heads, if the cars, TVs, clothes, machines and raw materials don’t get sold all these illusions will dissolve. And if there are more commodities in the shops than money to buy them, the market will choke. There will be a glut, and an overproduction crisis.
The reason too many goods can be produced is that there is too much capital throwing goods into the market. If one company can saturate a market, two companies will flood it. The only way out of this dead end is for one of the companies to disappear, for its capital to be destroyed. This is done by manufacturing being choked back, and weaker companies going to the wall. And if this isn’t enough, war has to step in to do the job.
These crises are recurrent, ruthless and deadly. And invisible to bourgeois economics, except in the after-the-event, “please don’t expropriate us and throw us away” shape of Keynesianism. That is to say, the large-scale concessions to the working class represented by the New Deal or the Welfare State.
Old powers falling
The US and Europe hollowed out
This crisis has seen US and European imperialism on the losing end of the competitive war. This is unprecedented. The bayonets usually skewer dependent countries or weaker imperialist nations. This time household names have been gone bankrupt – Ford, General Motors, Lehmann, the Royal Bank of Scotland. And huge conglomerates have been cannibalizing groups that aren’t quite huge enough – Cadbury’s has been swallowed by Kraft Foods, for instance.
New powers rising
More viable production meets remaining demand
If two companies compete to the death, the surviving company will emerge stronger. As Ford and General Motors fail, Chinese carmakers take their place. Geely steps in to take over Volvo from Ford, and BAIC makes the best offer for Saab as General Motors is forced to sell. However, GM refused to accept the Chinese as buyers for its new line of Saabs, and ended up selling to a Dutch sports car maker in the pocket of a Russian billionaire. British companies like the steel giant Corus, and the prestigious brands of Jaguar, Land Rover went down to the Indian juggernaut Tata Group.
Britain’s manufacturing sector now comprises only 13% of GDP. It’s little wonder that it is more vulnerable to credit collapse than countries with a strong manufacturing or natural resources sector that are able to hold out in markets where less competitive countries are swept away.
Rising countries are moving into the spaces left by declining imperialist powers. China, India and Russia are making themselves felt, and Brazil is picking up momentum in Latin America - even intervening in the Middle East with a recent visit to Iran by the Brazilian president.
The crisis is general and interlinked
Financial, commercial and manufacturing developments in one place immediately affect and are affected by developments in other places
When Ford and General Motors went bust, Volvo and Saab, with their R&D and manufacturing operations in Sweden, had to be auctioned off, and were on the brink of bankruptcy. If they had been liquidated this would have gutted the economy of the whole of western Sweden. Whole towns would have lost their livelihoods as their only major employers were Volvo or Saab, or companies producing parts or components for them. In the event both were saved, by Chinese and Russian capital. But this solved nothing as far as capitalism is concerned, because world capitalism needs capital to be destroyed, not saved.
The same futile scenario is being repeated around the world.
The EU is tearing apart
The interests of imperialist countries in the EU are savaging the interests of the weaker countries
While Sweden has been scrabbling to save its own skin, Swedish banks have been digging their claws into weaker countries. Sweden is, after all, an imperialist country in its own right. So although more and more of its economy has been bought up by foreign capital, its own capital has been sucking the blood of Latvia and the Ukraine. One of the major leeches being the cooperative and trade union owned Swedbank.
French banks are holding a knife to the throats of Portugal and Spain – and most dramatically of Greece. German capital is setting up shop everywhere in Europe. This process is very visible on the streets of Serbia, which has only recently been prised open to foreign capital. The same goes for new EU members from former Warsaw Pact countries like Romania and Bulgaria.
In this process Germany, France and Britain are all out for themselves. All the fine talk about European unity and solidarity evaporates when national interests are at stake.
The interests of the banks are savaging the lives of individuals
Insolvencies are at record levels and negative equity is sky-rocketing. Perhaps the most striking example of this is Latvia, where a whole stratum of starry-eyed conspicuous consumers suddenly couldn’t pay the loans they’d taken out to buy their flats or a Mercedes. The new material wealth they thought was theirs was repossessed, leaving them facing a lifetime of debt with nothing to show for it. Personal catastrophes of this kind will soon hammer Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and other countries on the sharpest end of the crisis.
Debtors and creditors
Payback time
The biggest imperialist countries are in debt on a huge scale to the Market. To cover this debt they need to enforce payment by their own debtors. But if they drive their debtors into bankruptcy they will lose all the unpaid debts. They desperately need to get their money back, but they also desperately need to have debtors able to keep paying, preferably for ever. To reduce debtor countries to complete servitude would be to turn them into colonies. This is a very inefficient form of exploitation. “Free” wage labour is a more efficient from of exploitation than slavery, and “free” nations offer greater profits than colonies – with far fewer overheads.
The Great Depression
The current crisis so far is the 1930s in slow motion
The Big Crash happened very fast. There were no bail-outs. The capitalist world economy stopped dead. Recovery was slow and painful. Our present recovery, if and when it happens, will be even slower and even more painful, but the crash is still happening. Bail-outs, international attempts to coordinate responses, all kinds of artificial resuscitation methods are being deployed to put off disaster for another few months. They might as well try to hold back the tide or use a wooden fence to stop a lava flow.
The big difference is that the working class is not defeated
The great difference between the current crisis and the 1930s is that the working class is not defeated. Capital has been unable to deal a decisive blow to the class, despite sluggers like Thatcher and Reagan. The class is still putting up resistance and making demands, despite pro-capitalist leadership in trade unions and labour parties.
And today the general standard of living is higher than it was in the 30s, and there is still a welfare state, however run-down. Purchasing power in Greece has fallen by a third, but people still survive. And although this cushions the first blows, it also means that the class is stronger and in a better condition to fight when it finally starts fighting.
War
This resistance means that the ultimate capitalist solution to the crisis of overproduction of capital -- war on a world scale -- is so far more of a threat than an immediate danger. This was not the case in the 1930s.
The capitalist response
Privatization of profits and socialization of losses
Normally sluggish governments become nimble and quick as soon as capital needs to be rescued. Red tape is ignored, there are no humiliating interrogations or insulting pittances involved.
The neo-liberal ideology of total market freedom has been unceremoniously dumped. It was fine to justify huge private profiteering when the circumstances allowed huge profits to be made. But as soon as losses appear the market is shoved aside and the capitalists run squealing to their governments. Corporate welfare is lavished on capitalists who have fallen on hard times. The losses are socialized. And this means that the billions handed over to failed capitalists by their governments will be paid for by the working class by way of higher taxes and slashed public services
Huge loans and crippling austerity
To extract payment, governments are imposing austerity programmes of unprecedented severity. The trillion dollar loan the Greek government needs to rescue capital has been granted by Germany, France and the IMF on condition that it drives through the cuts.
The working class response
The class response has so far been passive or unfocused
In the current crisis no working class organizations have demanded permanent public ownership of banks or companies that have gone bankrupt and been rescued with public money. With this kind of leadership it’s no wonder that the class response has been passive or unfocused. Treacherous political and union leaders are fighting desperately to keep the lid on discontent. They are fighting the workers they represent instead of the capitalists causing the crisis.
Governments are not as savage as their masters would like
Despite the treacherous manoeuvring of unions and parties, class anger has made itself felt. In Greece there have been massive and prolonged demonstrations, and violent confrontations. The austerity measures have been met by general strikes. This kind of response terrifies governments and means that although they are savagely attacking the working class, they are nowhere near as savage as their masters in the Market would like.
Great social problems like mass unemployment (for example the 20% unemployment in Spain, and the much higher figures for youth unemployment throughout Europe) are too dangerous for politicians to discuss. In parliamentary debates and during elections the real world is a million miles away. This silence is also caused by fear of the working class.
A powerful working class will undoubtedly fight back
Although there has been no great increase in working class mobilization in recent years, the working class remains undefeated and its potential power is greater than ever. Today’s developments will push the class forward to struggle. When it starts moving it will rise in many countries at once. The speed with which mobilizations spread from country to country in 1968 will be surpassed. There are fewer differences between countries today, there are more links, and communications are faster and easier.
From defence to attack
To do more than just defend itself the working class must consciously target its real enemy. To replace the political dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and set up a workers government the class must learn who its enemy is, and how to defeat it. In each country and in the world as a whole. But taking power nationally and creating a socialist world demands a completely different class leadership than we see around us today.
Building a new and conscious leadership is the only way to give the working class confidence in its own strength and in its ability to change the world. And it’s the only way to ensure that we never have to endure another catastrophic capitalist crisis.
29 April 2010
Posturing...
This is a short item about slouching and confidence from Scientific American:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=stop-slouching
"When you were growing up, your mother probably told you to sit up straight, because good posture helps you look confident and make a good impression. And now it turns out that sitting up straight can also improve how you feel about yourself, according to a study in the October 2009 issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Researchers asked college students to rate themselves on how good they would be as job candidates and employees. Those told to sit up straight with their chests out gave themselves higher ratings than those instructed to slouch while filling out the rating form. Once again, Mom was right".
So I commented:
There's a difference between a good healthy posture and an uptight ramrod.
The ramrod stiff, chest puffed out position is crippling. It creates enormous stress on the body, especially the spine, and blocks its relaxed natural functioning. Any athlete can tell you that. Wilhelm Reich - a much-maligned psychologist - worked all his life to loosen up what he called the "body armour" encasing most of his patients. This armour is a sure sign of an authoritarian social setting and rigid(ified) attitudes.
Good healthy posture is what our bodies are designed for. The body stands upright of its own accord if we let it. If we use the muscles of our lower back and chest to "consciously" hold ourselves up then this natural capability atrophies. Resulting in straightening followed either by sit-all-day slouching or the rigidity of a tin soldier.
The rich and royal, by the way, make sure their whelps get years of training in standing up straight and walking so they can a) project impressive confidence (as the article says) and b) subject their bodies to as little wear and tear as possible during all the walkabouts and hanging around at cocktail parties they have to do.
In Sweden, where I live, it's taken them 7 long years to train the common-as-muck personal trainer boyfriend of the heiress to the throne so he can walk properly as her consort.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=stop-slouching
Stop Slouching!
Good posture boosts self-esteem
By Harvey Black
"When you were growing up, your mother probably told you to sit up straight, because good posture helps you look confident and make a good impression. And now it turns out that sitting up straight can also improve how you feel about yourself, according to a study in the October 2009 issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Researchers asked college students to rate themselves on how good they would be as job candidates and employees. Those told to sit up straight with their chests out gave themselves higher ratings than those instructed to slouch while filling out the rating form. Once again, Mom was right".
So I commented:
There's a difference between a good healthy posture and an uptight ramrod.
The ramrod stiff, chest puffed out position is crippling. It creates enormous stress on the body, especially the spine, and blocks its relaxed natural functioning. Any athlete can tell you that. Wilhelm Reich - a much-maligned psychologist - worked all his life to loosen up what he called the "body armour" encasing most of his patients. This armour is a sure sign of an authoritarian social setting and rigid(ified) attitudes.
Good healthy posture is what our bodies are designed for. The body stands upright of its own accord if we let it. If we use the muscles of our lower back and chest to "consciously" hold ourselves up then this natural capability atrophies. Resulting in straightening followed either by sit-all-day slouching or the rigidity of a tin soldier.
The rich and royal, by the way, make sure their whelps get years of training in standing up straight and walking so they can a) project impressive confidence (as the article says) and b) subject their bodies to as little wear and tear as possible during all the walkabouts and hanging around at cocktail parties they have to do.
In Sweden, where I live, it's taken them 7 long years to train the common-as-muck personal trainer boyfriend of the heiress to the throne so he can walk properly as her consort.
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