Knife at its throat, Greece yields to Troika brutality

Dick Nichols writes that with Knife at its throat, Greece yields to Troika brutality.

In this situation it is important to keep present that the basic reason for the signing of the Eurosummit deal was the SYRIZA-led government’s isolation. The energies of the left outside Greece are therefore best devoted to doing everything we can to strengthen understanding of Greece’s predicament and solidarity with its struggles, and to exposing the complicity of conservative and social-democratic governments in the European establishment’s ongoing war on the Greek threat to “There Is No Alternative”.

Greece has lost a battle—most probably unavoidably—but its courageous struggle against capitalist austerity continues. It must not be left to fight alone.

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Without a revolutionary movement, the Greece people were destined to be crushed. There are very few options under Capitalism for survival. Greece was given none.

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Conservatism with a Heart? It’s Called Socialism

Ted Rall writes that Conservatism with a Heart? It’s Called Socialism.

Boiled down to its essentials, the argument of would-be conservative reformers like Brooks is that it sure would be swell if capitalism could be made fairer. But the thing about capitalism is that unfairness isn’t an unfortunate side effect of this particular economic system. It’s a core feature.

Capitalism without unfairness and built-in inequality isn’t capitalism; it’s socialism. You don’t have to be Karl Marx to have been able to personally observe the tendency of power and money to aggregate into fewer and fewer hands over time, what we call monopolization, and to leverage those advantages in order to gather an even greater share.

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Redistribution of income. And wealth. That’s the ticket to solving income inequality. When the time comes, however, I’m going to trust my local Communists — who have been pushing for and thinking about it forever — a hell of a lot more than the reform conservatives who think Ronald Reagan, who trashed the social safety net, was some kind of hero.

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Not strictly true. The difference between Capitalism and Socialism is about who owns and controls the means of production: Capitalists or workers. In this advanced stage of Capitalism, the struggle is between the bankers and the workers.

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Greece Bailout: Selling Out to Scummy International Bankers

Ted Rall writes about Greece Bailout: Selling Out to Scummy International Bankers.

What is the point, from the standpoint of Greek voters, of electoral democracy, if elected “representatives” are elected with clear messages, reinforced by clear mandates delivered via referenda, who then ignore those popular directives when they feel squeezed by the so-called “great powers” in distant, fancy conference rooms?

If a national desire as clear-cut as that delivered by the Greek public — No. More. Austerity! — can be shrugged off just like that, it becomes clear that there is only one route left to effect real change: violence, revolution, violent revolution (which are one and the same).

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Revolution without a revolutionary party to guide it is likely to fail.

SYRIZA is not a revolutionary party. It wants to work within the system as do the majority of the Greeks.

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Former US Democrat Presidential Candidate Calls for Internment Camps for "Disloyal Americans" Americans

Mike Shedlock writes that Former US Democrat Presidential Candidate Calls for Internment Camps for "Disloyal Americans" Americans.

Idiotic "thought police" attacks on the constitution come from the right and the left.

Wesley Clark, like countless Republican constitutional hypocrites has just thrown his hat into the ring for perpetual war.

Don't like it? Then you belong in an internment camp until you do.

Is Clark's position any different from what happened in Nazi Germany or Iraq? What about China, or for that matter ISIS?

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Are the elites so wrapped up in themselves that they cannot see it is their actions and attitudes that are radicalising people?

All we need is someone to say Let them eat cake.

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Greece is not just a tragedy, but a lie

John Pilger writes that Greece is not just a tragedy, but a lie.

An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week's landslide "No" vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a "bailout" that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.

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For a small country such as Greece, the euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist ideology so extreme that even the Pope pronounces it "intolerable" and "the dung of the devil". The euro is to Greece what the US dollar is to remote territories in the Pacific, whose poverty and servility is guaranteed by their dependency.

…

The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind — but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's finance minister, an imperial thug. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as "liberal" or even "left", Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, "schooled in postmodernism", as Alex Lantier wrote.

For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings. Syriza's luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but "better terms" of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor. When merged with "identity politics" and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. "Mainstream" political life in Britain exemplifies this.

This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.

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Betrayal — that is a harsh word.

We must smash the lie of There Is No Alternative. We must do this daily through experience, reflection, and action. Then repeat.

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Britain's Left Unity on the struggle of the Greek people

Kate Hudson writes for Britain's Left Unity on the struggle of the Greek people.

Since its election in January, the SYRIZA-led government has been caught in a contradiction: it was elected by the people to oppose austerity but to keep Greece in the Eurozone. That has been a consistent theme throughout, even during and after the referendum which saw over 61% voting No to the terms of the bailout. The government has tried through negotiation to fulfil that mandate but that has clearly not been possible. The EU states and institutions will not allow a radical left government to succeed. A successful challenge to neoliberalism by Greece would have opened the door wide to further challenges across Europe, including Spain, which has seen recent electoral victories for left coalitions. TThe EU states and institutions have recognised the challenge and are waging class war, not only against Greece and its people but against all the peoples of Europe.

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Let no revolutionary misunderstand: there is no path to Socialism outside of revolution. The Capitalists have consistently demonstrated that they will ruthlessly and relentlessly defend Capitalism against all-comers.

Socialism is not won through the ballot-box. A socialist government, such as SYRIZA, can get into office, but the institutions of Capitalism will prevent it from implementing its election promises.

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Brutality towards Greece

Let no one misunderstand: the brutality shown to Greece is meant to be a lesson to everyone. There is no alternative to following the dictates of the bankers.

As Sinn Fein condemns treatment of Greece as 'alarming', says EU framework shattered, Gerry Adams says that:

“Today could well be the day when all pretence of a Europe of equal states and people was lost and replaced by a Europe of the powerful and the wealthy.”

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Kenneth Thomas, in Impending disaster in Greece, writes that:

The Germans, it would appear, have decided to push Greece from the eurozone. But demanding an end to Greek sovereignty and austerity as far as the eye can see is simply evil. Moreover, it negates the long-successful stand of European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi that the ECB would do “whatever it takes” to keep the eurozone intact. The ECB’s reputation would be damaged greatly should crisis recur in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc., now that the world knows the ECB will not do “whatever it takes.” This is a recipe for a new recession in Europe spreading from the EU periphery.

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Kevin O'Rourke says that 'Negotiating with Germany is a Waste of Time':

…I don’t suppose that any other left wing party that may come to power in the future seeking to challenge the current European economic policy mix will be as feckless as Syriza. The lesson that they will draw from this debacle is: negotiating with Germany is a waste of time; be willing to act unilaterally, be willing to default unilaterally, have a plan for achieving primary surplus if you haven’t already achieved it, have a hard default and euro exit (now possible, thanks to the Germans) option in your back pocket, and be willing to use it at the first sign of hassle from the ECB. A deal could have been done today that would have strengthened the Eurozone, but instead it has just become a lot more fragile.

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Bill McBride comments on Greek Deal:

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

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Greece Over the Brink

Mark Thoma posts an excerpt from Greece Over the Brink, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times.

Don’t be taken in by claims that troika officials are just technocrats explaining to the ignorant Greeks what must be done. These supposed technocrats are in fact fantasists who have disregarded everything we know about macroeconomics, and have been wrong every step of the way. This isn’t about analysis, it’s about power — the power of the creditors to pull the plug on the Greek economy, which persists as long as euro exit is considered unthinkable.

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Greece is witnessing a power struggle between an elected government and the unelected bureaucrats of international financial institutions. This is a proxy struggle between workers and the financial capitalists.

The Capitalists know that defeat in Greece almost assuredly means defeat in Spain. They will pull out all stops to make the expected 'NO' vote on Sunday to be irrelevant. Democracy must not allowed to prevail over the Capitalists.

Workers will have to realise that victory in Athens, or even in Madrid is not the end of the story. It is not even the beginning of the end. Only by joining the struggle to raise ours and others political consciousness can we make this the end of the beginning.

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Rojava fights off new Islamic State attack

Tony Iltis writes that Rojava fights off new Islamic State attack.

The Kurdish town of Kobane in northern Syria was attacked on June 25 by forces from the self-styled Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, which crossed from Turkey. This was the first significant IS attack on the town since a five-month siege was repulsed in January.

The attack appears to be a Turkish-backed response to recent military gains made by the Kurdish-led forces of the Women's Defence Units (YPJ) and People's Defence Units (YPG).

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The Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Kurdish-led forces as “terrorists”. Pro-government Turkish media has spread false allegations accusing the YPG of ethnic cleansing, which have been repeated by pro-Turkish Syrian opposition groups and some Western media.

Erdogan opposes the Administration of Democratic Autonomy-aligned forces because of their ideological ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a liberation struggle in Turkish Kurdistan, and to the left-wing Peoples Democratic Party (HDP).

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Once again, the Capitalists want the world to know that “There is No Alternative”. They are prepared to use their enemy, IS, in attempt to destroy what they see as a far-greater threat: that of an alternative, functioning society based on grass-roots democracy and socialist ideals.

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Greece: It’s the Politics, Stupid!

Mark Thoma excerpts from Francesco Saraceno writing about Greece: It’s the Politics, Stupid!.

What the past week made clear is that this, and only this was the objective of the creditors. This has been since the beginning about politics. Creditors cannot afford that an alternative to policies followed since 2010 in Greece and in the rest of the Eurozone materializes.

Austerity and structural reforms need to be the only way to go. Otherwise people could start asking questions; a risk you don’t want to run a few months before Spanish elections. Syriza needed to be made an example. You cannot survive in Europe, if you don’t embrace the Brussels-Berlin Consensus. Tsipras, like Papandreou, was left with the only option too ask for the Greek people’s opinion, because there has been no negotiation, just a huge smoke screen. Those of us who were discussing pros and cons of the different options on the table, well, we were wasting our time.

And if Greece needs to go down to prove it, so be it. If we transform the euro in a club in which countries come and go, so be it.

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The Capitalist's mantra is “There is no alternative”. They set the rules and we have to play by them.

Control is now all that matters to the Capitalists as the system crumbles around them.

Innovation means loss of control. Unions mean loss of control. Democracy means loss of control. All of these must be suppressed for the “Greater Good of Capitalism”.

Capitalism is a wounded giant lashing out in pain and agony as it feels the life-force drain away from it.

Are we ready to form a new society from the ruins of Capitalism? Or are we just going to die as well?

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Managerialism vs innovation

Chris Dillow writes about Managerialism vs innovation.

If this is the case, then perhaps secular stagnation is not so much an aberrant feature of hierarchical capitalism as its logical consequence. I've said that stagnation might be the result of firms' wising up to the fact that a lot of innovation doesn't pay. But it might also be due to managerialism squeezing out the slack space in which innovation can occur.

Perhaps, then, Marx was right: whereas for a long time capitalism promoted growth, it no longer does so. As he put it:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.

I say all this to endorse a point made by Mariana Mazzucato - that the Labour party can no longer assume that the economy will grow nicely but must instead put in place the policies and institutions that generate such growth. How compatible such institutions are with managerialist capitalism is, however, an open question — and one which Labour isn't even asking.

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In other words, the current structure of Capitalism is strangling itself through choosing control over innovation. The Capitalists are afraid of losing control as they have run out of ideas. The historic mission of Capitalism has reached its conclusion.

Capitalism is a spent force. Control is the only thing left. To maintain control, Capitalism must give birth to Fascism so the Capitalist class rules through naked force rather than the prosmise of ever-growing prosperity. They are running out of carrots—only sticks remain.

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Dvide and Rule

Stephanie McMillan writes about how Capitalists Divide And Rule.

Many on the petit bourgeois left, with their simplistic and reformist approaches, are slowly becoming the back-up singers for a political orientation that may lead to the realization of a race war as an initial stage of fascism. Progressives may find themselves regretting an orientation that substitutes identity politics and social justice campaigns for class struggle at the center of their strategy for social change. Though the former may gain temporary reforms (which will be inevitably wiped out again by the deepening crisis of capital), only the latter can open a path to the possibility of uprooting all forms of oppression. To wipe out the conditions for oppression, including racism, the fight against it must be situated in the context of class struggle.

Given the lack of an autonomous working class movement in the US, this will be a difficult task. Due to this lack, and making it even more difficult, is the populist tendency among the working class of many social formations (including the US)—a self-defeating right populism that leads workers to blame each other for concessions and losses imposed by capital.

The capitalists are extremely practiced at “divide and rule,” and invent fictional social categories (races, nations) to divide us. When workers accept these capitalist inventions and even base our political line and practice on them, then we are tightening our own chains. Instead of competing with one another for crumbs in a foolish dance choreographed by our exploiters, we must eradicate racism, identity politics, and other bourgeois ideological traps from our ranks, and unite to target the actual source of our exploitation and oppression, our common enemy: the capitalist class.

The act of this killer in Charleston must be denounced for what it is. He is a racist, of course—but he is not simply a racist. On his T-shirt, he had a fascist logo. We must clearly understand that his racism is for fascism, corresponding to the political objectives of specific fractions of capital as they attempt to resolve the current economic crisis in their favor.

For us, there is only one way that the crisis of capitalism can be resolved favorably: by the social force of an organized and united international working class fighting for its interests, which are fundamentally antagonistic to capital, toward the total global annihilation of capitalism. Genuine proletarian revolutionary militants need to strengthen and grow our ranks, construct disciplined, autonomous organizations capable of understanding what is going on under the surface of events and what is driving them, and constantly develop a political orientation (and corresponding line) to shift the balance of power in our favor.

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McMillan is right to be worried about Fascism in the USA and elsewhere. The revolutionary left is very weak. Trade unions are under continual attack and are weakening. And the discontent among the petite bourgeois is growing daily. This is especially seen in the growth of the Tea Party in the USA.

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Letter from the US: The racist Charleston massacre has clear political roots

Barry Sheppard writes a Letter from the US: The racist Charleston massacre has clear political roots.

Racism, as an idea, is not the cause of the oppression and exploitation of Blacks, with the result that it is not possible to simply solve problem by changing people's minds. Rather than the cause, racists ideas are the result of Black oppression — and its ideological justification.

Racism is a useful tool for the capitalist ruling class to divide and weaken the working class.

The government maintains the system of national oppression evident in the police, courts and jails enforcement of it, but at the same time it pretends the US is no longer a racist society. The result is apparently contradictory government stances.

It is this system that spawns the racism that grips the minds of the Dylann Roofs of this world.

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Since 2002, Right-wing White Terrorists have Killed More Americans Than Muslim Extremists

Cenk Uygur writes that Since 2002, Right-wing White Terrorists have Killed More Americans Than Muslim Extremists.

But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism

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Once again, a white gunman is a deranged individual while a non-white one is a terrorist. Thus, the media continues to construct racism.

And, yet, the threat is always from the non-white people. The objective reality of white terrorism stands in contrast to the subjective reality of non-white terrorism.

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The Education-Deficit Does Not Explain Rising Inequality

Mark Thoma posts an extract from Discussion of Matthew Rognlie: "Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share": The Honest Broker for the Week of June 14, 2015, b J. Bradford DeLong.

So what, then, is going on and driving the sharp rise in inequality, if not some interaction between our education policy on the one hand and the continued progress of technology on the other? Thomas Piketty (2014) has a guess. Piketty guesses that the real explanation is that 1914-1980 is the anomaly. Without great political disturbances, wealth accumulates, concentrates, and dominates. The inequality trends we have seen over the past generation are simply a return to the normal pattern of income distribution in an industrialized market economy in which productivity growth is not unusually fast and political, depression, and military shocks not unusually large and prevalent. …

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So, economists are rediscovering the key insights of Karl Marx about Capital.

What is also missing from Piketty's insight is that the period of 1917-89 was when an alternative political and economic system severely challenged the legitimacy and hegemony of Capitalism. This system crushed Nazi Fascism by destroying its armies at Stalingrad, Kursk, Belorussia, and Berlin.

While this system of Russian Socialism was fatally flawed through the dominance of the bureaucracy of the central planning, it was viable for over seventy (70) years. A feudal country of peasants was rapidly modernised to a point that it could crush the second largest industrialised country in the world: Nazi Germany.

The USSR also challenged the USA in the realm of scientific advance and research. Remember the space race!

The October Revolution was indeed one of the great political disturbances.

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The left, & social change

Chris Dillow writes about The left, & social change.

Perhaps another technology-induced social change is occuring. For example, the collapse in the cost of storing and transmitting information makes dencentralization — worker control — feasible where previously there was hierarchy. And lower capital requirements might be undermining the monopoly power of big capitalism in favour of smaller companies. We can encourage this for example by spending our money at indepedent coffee shops, craft breweries, worker coops or through P2P lending rather than at capitalist firms.  

What I'm saying here is that the transition to a better society might occur not (just) by protesting or waiting for a big bang revolution, but as a result of countless small individual actions, which might have echoes throughout society.  Obviously, I don't know what all these actions should be — but if the left can apply millions of brains to the question, it might find some answers.

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The technology-induced social change that is occurring in the complete automation of Department II. Workers who perform rote tasks are going to lose their livelihoods.

The workers who survive this purge are going to have skills and abilities are difficult to automate, or are of such a nature that automation devalues the product to the consumer. For example, an artist who paints by numbers can be replaced a machine, while an artist exceeds their customer's expectations is more likely to be employed. Another example is a programmer who codes through using Google, can be replaced by a program that does the same thing. Whereas a programmer who solves the problem that a customer has, is more likely to be employed.

I think that the sifting machine of Capitalism will favour the development of workers who think and see beyond their job. Besides being harder to replace by machines, they will develop the ability to stay ahead of the changing game.

The natural selection of the Capitalist workplace will workers develop their consciousness about the world around them as theories are rapidly destroyed in the furnace of Capitalism.

Workers who come together in revolutionary parties will be available to do develop faster through access to tested Marxist theory and practice. As these parties growth, the more ideas are generated and tested against reality until viable roads to Socialism are constructed.

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Liberal feminism's limits exposed

Meave Noonan writes that Liberal feminism's limits exposed.

A key weakness of the book is its relative silence around class, and failure to properly situate women’s oppression within the context of capitalism. A more sustained, overarching emphasis on the intersection of class with sexism, racism and other axes of oppression would help to illustrate the complex ways in which the system of capitalist accumulation benefits from the continued subjugation of women and other oppressed groups.

The changing nature of employment under neoliberalism is an issue which bears heavily on women, and it is therefore somewhat surprising that the book does not offer a more focused discussion of this issue.

Women are among those worst affected by the predominance of insecure work. The at-times outright contempt shown by both sides of Australian parliamentary politics for the disadvantage faced by single, working-class mothers casts the limits of liberal feminism into sharp relief.

The radical potential of feminist thought and action, if it is to achieve meaningful social change for all women, must be connected to the wider aim of creating a more just, egalitarian society.

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This requires the non-capitalists to see past the great national security swindle and be prepared to see why alliances for socialism must be built.

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Antonio Gramsci: Why alliances for socialism must be built

Bill Bonnar reflects on Antonio Gramsci: Why alliances for socialism must be built.

When Britain had an industrial economy this was a fairly straight forward question. Britain had a large working class centred on industry and organised through the trade union movement. This created the labour movement including a mass party of the working class; the Labour Party or in Italy; the Italian Communist Party.

For socialists the labour movement was the vehicle for socialism and their role was to work within that movement moving it to the left and resulting in the election of a left government. The only tactical discussion was whether socialists should work within the mass party of the working class or build a distinctive socialist party within the movement.

That was then. Today Britain is an archetypal post-industrial society. In Scotland the overwhelming majority of workers either work in the public sector or the retail and financial sectors. Manufacturing industry represents only a small proportion of the economy. The result is that the organised working class is much smaller and less influential than before and has largely lost its industrial base.

It alone can no longer be the same vehicle for socialist change it was in the past. It has to forge alliances with wider social forces seeking to build a broad based alliance against capitalism.

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The question is: how to build a revolutionary party without a proletariat? These days, the proletariat really exists in the developing world. Even there automation is dissolving the proletariat.

Automation is throwing up a new, but predicted, crisis in Capitalism: the extinguishment of profit. Without surplus value from exploited workers, there can be no profits. Without profits, Capitalism grinds to a halt.

Have we missed the revolutionary opportunity to create a Socialist society based on a viable working class? The means of production are becoming robots, and they are property that are owned by Capitalists.

Society has no future need for workers. Without workers, there can be no revolution. Without workers, there are no consumers.

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The great national security swindle

Tony Iltis debunks The great national security swindle.

The number of fatalities from terrorist attacks in Australia is tiny. Even taking into account Australians killed overseas, such as those killed in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing, there are far greater threats to Australian lives.

Safe Work Australia reported: “As at 26 May 2015, 65 Australian workers have been killed while at work” this year, and 38 women have been killed in domestic violence attacks since the start of the year.

The same state and federal governments that find unlimited resources to fund draconian “anti-terror” policing and prosecutions are unable to fund accommodation for women fleeing partner and ex-partner violence. “In March, there were 33,933 people on the Victorian public housing waiting list, with 9556 eligible for 'early' urgent housing, which includes many who have suffered family violence,” the May 22 Age said.

The Abbott government has responded to this threat to Australians' lives by further cutting funding to women's services and housing.

The government's response to the threat to Australians' lives from workplace accidents has been to foreshadow a further round of criminalisation of trade unions, particularly construction workers' unions, for attempting to protect occupational health and safety.

The Abbott government's attempts to convince Australians that they are threatened by terrorists was helped by the opening of the inquest into the deaths of Man Haron Monis and two hostages when he hijacked a Sydney cafe in December.

However, so far the evidence presented to the inquest suggests that Monis was an attention-seeking psychopath with a shotgun rather than an ideologically motivated terrorist.

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The issues of violence against women and the sacrifice of safety for profits do rank on the Capitalist agenda. The perpetrators are among the supporters of Capitalism: violent men and ruthless business owners. One does not attack one's own supporters.

Yet, the ruling class wants an enemy that we are all frightened of so that we need them to protect us.

We need to discover who the real enemy is.

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Introducing the Zero Labor Factory (90% Free Actually); Robots at Chili's, Applebees, Panera

Mike Shedlock writes about Introducing the Zero Labor Factory (90% Free Actually); Robots at Chili's, Applebees, Panera.

There is no shortage of labor. There is no shortage of skills either. Rather, there is a shortage of people willing to work for what factory owners are willing to pay.

And with cheap money everywhere you look, there is plenty of money at low rates to buy robots.

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Now, we are entering another crisis in Capitalism: the elimination of profits through the elimination of labour in Department II. Robots cannot be exploited to provide surplus value which is the origin of profit in a Capitalist system.

Robots work as fast as they are able. You cannot force robots to work faster or longer. Robots are unexploitable.

And the reduction in the labour forces means that there are less consumers able to buy the cheaper goods. Thus, Capitalists will find it harder to convert commodities into cash.

In a Communist society, all of these automated factories would be owned by the whole of society and the goods produced would be available to all as needed. Profit is no longer needed to keep the economy going.

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The vision thing

Chris Dillow writes about The vision thing.

One thing makes me hopeful — that this election was not a victory for austerity. The two main austerity parties — Tories and LibDems — saw their share of the vote fall by 14.4 percentage points whilst the two clearest anti-austerity parties (SNP and Greens) gained a combined 5.9 percentage points.  

On the other hand, though, I'm pessimistic. Ukip's success* shows that there is also public support for anti-market policies: Ukippers (and indeed many other voters) favour (pdf) controls on prices and rents as well as on immigration. And whilst a slogan "we'll put you in control" should in theory be a popular and coherent way of promoting worker democracy, I see very little public demand for it.

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I think the difference between austerity in Greece and the UK is that austerity in Greece was an existental crisis. Austerity there was threatening the idea of Greece. Whereas in the UK, austerity was a way of keeping the super-rich happy enough to stay there in order to spend enough to keep some of the people happy.

It is probably very early in the development of the workers' consciousness in places like the UK to talk about worker democracy. However, the workers in places like Venezuela can see the benefit of this through the nearness of Cuba and the effects in their daily lives. Thus, they are developing their consciousness at a faster pace.

This is probably due to that the effects of colonialism was never disguised in Venezuela as it was in the UK. Only a heavy hand of the military there kept things under control. Now that the military has aligned with the workers, there is an awakening of how society can be better organized.

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Guantanamo horrors shift military men's views

Phil Shannon writes that Guantanamo horrors shift military men's views.

The price Hicks was to pay for an end to his existence of fear, pain and despair, however, was the tag of “convicted terrorist”. This was despite Hicks’ guilty plea being coerced under extreme duress and, this year, ruled void in the US courts.

Mori, who retired from the military in 2012 and joined the social justice section of an Australian law firm, played a vital role in justice for Hicks. But he reminds the readers of his valuable book that “it was they, the Australian public, who got David Hicks out. I hope that the people of Australia never forget that.”

Like Mori, Sergeant Joe Hickman was “a patriotic American” and he was proud to finally get to “meet the enemy” as a guard in Guantanamo in 2006.

“Keeping terrorists locked up was an important job,” Hickman writes. But, like Mori, he also had standards, namely a belief in “basic American principles of decency”, even towards those he had been told were “evil men bent on destroying our country”.

Decency, however, was decidedly lacking in the “excessively punishing” detention conditions, cultural insults and “Rodney King-style beatings” of cuffed and shackled detainees.

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Here are two (2) US military men who defied the system because of their commitment to their principles. Their core values took them on a journey to the progressive side of politics. They had realized that the proclaimed conservative principles espoused by their superiors and government was a sham. They remembered that true conservatism is about the defence of rights. And they both paid a personal price for adherence to their principles.

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Rallies demand end to Aboriginal community closures

Rallies demand end to Aboriginal community closures.

Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance said: “These forced closures are indisputably an act of genocide that will have grave consequences for the people forced, under duress, to leave country. It is an act of cultural genocide that will damage vital cultural connections to country.

“It also signals an impending ecocide, resulting from the mining exploration and aggressive destruction of Aboriginal land that will inevitably ensue.”

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The mills of Capitalism grinds people down into autonomons shedding all identity: cultural; historical; personal. People should just be workers and consumers—nothing more.

Joining in this Aboriginal resistance helps us reclaim our own identity and humanity.

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"Serious" politics

Chris Dillow writes that "Serious" politics is flummery.

Politics has many ways of creating and sustaining what Paul Krugman calls "Very Serious People" and Nassim Nicholas Taleb "empty suits" — men (generally men) whose judgments (always judgments) are sensible, sober, and wrong. One reason why I'll be voting Green is to reject this flummery.

Another thing: one might ask why there is no political party with entirely sound economics — one that: is concerned about productivity; anti-austerian; pro-market (in the right institutional framework); and egalitarian. But that's another question. 

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Dillow writes that the mass media is complicit in framing the economic debate in terms that are acceptable to the Capitalist elite. The system cannot be questioned. Instead, the debate is about how to save the Capitalists from their own stupidity.

The idea of being pro-market is interesting. I suppose I am pro-market in that people should decide how the economy operates. It is ruled through the market of ideas and discussion.

Society, as a whole, should take responsibility for how the productive forces are used.

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Baltimore Riots Were Caused by Capitalism and Cops, Not Poverty

Ted Rall writes that the Baltimore Riots Were Caused by Capitalism and Cops, Not Poverty.

Liberals believe capitalism is a good system prone to excesses, which they propose to mitigate via reform and regulation: poverty, income inequality and racism associated with class are flaws in an otherwise laudable economic model.

But that’s not true. Poverty, and the racism that goes with it, are features, not bugs. The ruling classes require a permanent underclass to exploit directly, and serve as a warning to workers not to ask for big raises, shorter hours or other improvements in workplace conditions — be quiet, lest you wind up like them.

Emphasis Mine

Racism is also used to divide the working class against itself. Other sources of division are sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.

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Venezuela: Priorities of a Socialist Government

Venezuela shows what Socialism is like.

Venezuela slashes military budget by 34%

Social housing project delivers 700,000th home

This shows the priorities of a Socialist government.

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The Cops Have Met Their Enemies: They Are Us

Ted Rall writes that The Cops Have Met Their Enemies: They Are Us.

In many American cities, particularly those with majority white police forces in minority neighborhoods, the police are an occupying army. They view the locals not as citizens whose taxes pay their salaries, who are in fact their bosses, but as dangerous, troublesome rabble to be contained, controlled and suppressed. The militarization of domestic policing, which dates back to the 1950s and the establishment of the first SWAT team in Los Angeles, further separates gendarmes from civilians via training derived from warfare, heavy body armor and wildly excessive firearms.

Trust in the cops is at a record low, thanks in part to ubiquitous cell phone and security camera videos that document police abuse so meticulously that it’s no longer possible even for white law-and-order types to deny accusations by blacks that the cops are treating them like dirt. Look for the cop-citizen gap to widen further as the police increasingly treat whites — for example, during the crackdown against the Occupy movement — badly as well.

The cops have met their enemy, and he is us.

And now there’s no denying it.

Emphasis Mine

This is also known as 4GW. And also as Class Warfare.

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Heartless, clueless?

Chris Dillow asks if Capitalists are really Heartless, clueless?.

One is a form of naive cynicism which regards inequality and injustice as natural and inevitable, and so attempts to fight it must be futile and foolish whilst defenders of the system are hard-headed realists.

The other is a tendency to underweight the incompetence of those who are on the side of the rich.

Hostile portrayals of capitalists have for decades been of Gradgrindian figures grinding the faces of the poor rather than of bumbling oafs. And today bankers are routinely described as greedy when in fact what distinguishes them from the rest of us is their stupidity: most of us like a pound, but we didn't destroy an entire industry.

What this misses is the likelihood that a lot of success in business might be due to dumb luck.

In this sense, the claim that the the rich are heartless, by understating their stupidity, actually helps to legitimate inequality.

Emphasis Mine

What motivates the Capitalists is the defence of their class interests. And what defines their class is the control of the means of production. Thus, their class interest is to preserve that control.

How that control has evolved over time has been from direct control of personal property to the control of providing finance necessary for the operation of a business.

In the early days of Capitalism, the Capitalist was the man who owned and ran the business. This is the small businessman. This is the image that the petite bourgeoisie has of the Capitalist despite the radical changes over the past five (5) centuries. The confrontation between Capitalist and their enemies was at personal level and direct.

The capitalist then evolved to the stockholder who sat on the board of directors. Control and ownership was shared, but the Capitalist was still visible at the head of the firm. This started with the East India Company and its ilk in the seventeenth century and continued until the late nineteenth century with Andrew Carnegie, J.P.Morgan, etc.. The confrontation now evolved to be between masses of people: unions versus troops and police. The proxy war was waged throught the political system.

Nowadays, the Capitalist controls the finance provided to businesses. The control of businesses is indirect. Capital is owned—not the business. The political process has been subverted by international organisations such as the World Bank, IMF, ECB, WTO, and through treaties such as 'free-trade' deals. The Capitalist has vanished from the real world, yet their power is greater than before.

Now, the Capitalists dare to discipline entire nations: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Spain, Italy, Iran, China, North Korea, etc.. Anyone who defies the existing world order can expect to be attacked and destroyed.

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Productivity, Robots, China, Growth

Mike Shedlock writes about Productivity, Robots, China, Growth.

Congratulations. You are more productive than ever. Just don't expect to be paid more for it. In reality, some machine is doing all that for you.

Emphasis Mine

With China rapidly automating, the idea of cheap, replacable labour is in the dustbin of history.

This poses two (2) problems for Capitalism: reduction in the available surplus value; and reduction in the purchasing power of the working class. Without an income, workers cannot purchase goods and services, and profits cannot be materialised. Without workers, Capitalists cannot convert the surplus value of labour into profit.

Total automation is the death of Capitalism.

Workers can only survive in such a system by finding niches that are difficult to automate. This requires training and development. Workers will have to become self-directed because businesses are losing the profitability to do this for their workers.

In other words, workers will have to think like Communists in such a world. They will have to develop an appreciation of the Marxist critique of Capitalism so that they can understand how Capitalism works. They will have to develop their own abilities—they can no longer be passive receptables of corporate wisdom.

Economic survival means that workers cannot wait for governments to come to their aid. Workers have to develop their own abilities and solidarity.

But this only takes us part of the way towards a Communist revolution. Whether workers, in general, have the stomach for this remains to be seen.

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Syria, Yemen Conflicts only seem to be about Sunni-Shiite from 30,000 Feet

Juan Cole writes that Syria, Yemen Conflicts only seem to be about Sunni-Shiite from 30,000 Feet.

JUAN COLE: I see evidence of al-Qaeda thinkers, like Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was the number-two man for a long time, before bin Laden was killed, being influenced by Marxist thought, and radical Marxism. This is very clear in the technical terms that the Muslim far-right uses. They talk about a vanguard. This was a Leninist term. In some radical forms of Marxism, activists were impatient with the working class, which seemed not to want to fulfill its historical duty by rising up against the business classes, and so it engaged in sabotage—not everywhere all the time, but there were some groups that did that kind of thing in hopes of provoking a class war, because they knew the business classes would call upon their agents, the police, to crack down hard on sabotage and workers’ activism and so forth.

I think that al-Qaeda picked up this kind of thinking from the Marxist fringe in places like Egypt and so forth. I think that it is a deliberate strategy on their part, the sharpening of contradictions, or the heightening of contradictions, as it’s called. I think it explains everything that happened in Iraq.

I remember reading a New York Times piece in 2005 or so that al-Qaeda in Iraq had blown up a pet shop. There were pieces of rabbits and snakes wiggling on the ground. This author in The New York Times expressed himself with amazement. He said, “We should get out of Iraq now, because we can’t understand why you would do that. And if you don’t understand what your enemy is doing, then you should not be there.”

I understood exactly what they were doing. They were hitting soft targets. They were hitting businesses. It was a Shiite-owned pet shop. What they were trying to do was to get the Shiites’ goat in Iraq. They were trying to provoke a civil war, because they hoped that the Shiite clans who were being hit would go and attack Sunnis, and if they went and attacked the Sunnis, then al-Qaeda could go to the Sunnis and say, “Gee, you seem to be being attacked. We could protect you.”

So by provoking attacks on their own community, they actually could parlay that into power.

At the time, I was skeptical that they could succeed in this, but you come to last June, and they took over Mosul, the second-largest city in the country, in exactly this way—by continually provoking the Shia, getting reprisals going, and then going to the Sunnis against whom the reprisals were waged and saying, “You need protection.” By that time, the Mosulites said, “Yes, we do. Would you please come in,” even though Mosulites are cosmopolitan, secular-minded people. But they were willing to bring in this radical fundamentalist group just because they were tired of being targeted by the Shiite government.

Emphasis Mine

Marxists should always be sharpening the contradictions—but only through political means. We are offering an alternative political explanation for events. We want to show that there are Communist and Capitalist narratives at play in the world around us.

Marxists have rejected the terrorist mentality. Terrorism, as shown by events over the past twenty (20) years, has strengthen the Capitlist state through greater legal power, greater reliance on force, and the ready support of such measures by the population. Support for the government is almost reflexive once the terrorism aspect is highlighted.

The Capitalist is always willing to suppress the working class whenever it feels its interests are threatened. But it can, and has, retreat before determined resistance by a significant portion of the working class.

Marxists, at this stage of the struggle, are engaged in educating and radicalising the working class through mass actions, propaganda, and agitation. We join in the daily struggle to sharpen our political awareness of how the world works.

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Protests against racist police killings sweep US

Protests against racist police killings sweep US.

Protesters demanding widespread reform of the police took the streets on April 14, as killings of unarmed black men have become all-too frequent in US headlines.

Activists from various right groups rallied in different cities throughout the country. Signs carried by the protesters in New York read: “Stop Police brutality and mass murder.” Protesters spread the message on social media websites using hashtags, including the popular #BlackLivesMatter.

Emphasis Mine

The thinking behind these protests is mistaken: the police are not there to defend society against the criminals; but to defend the rich criminals against the poor members of society. This attitude determines the direction of police violence which is against the poor.

There are the misguided police officers who believe that they serve the community. It takes some time for the real situation to penetrate their thick skulls. Then they either leave or succumb to the pervasive corruption that the police are forced to immerse themselves.

In theoretical terms, the state serves the interests of the ruling class. And the police are merely the agents of violence in the service of the state. Everything flows from that.

In order to stop the police brutality, it is necessary to change the social order into a classless society.

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Huge rallies against WA community closures

Rachel Evans and Jemma Nott write that there were Huge rallies against WA community closures in Sydney and Melbourne.

Rebel Hanlon, assistant secretary of the NSW construction division of the CFMEU denounced capitalism’s role in the oppression of Indigenous people, including mining companies' land grabs and Deicorp, the developers threatening to move Indigenous people off the Block in Redfern.

He pledged the unions support for the campaign to maintain Aboriginal housing in Redfern. A contingent of Maori construction workers gave an energetic solidarity Haka.

Emphasis Mine

Here we have an advanced worker understanding and articulating the linkage between oppression of Aborigines and the engine of Capitalism. The building unions have a long history of workers educating themselves in the workings of Capitalism. This is why the governments have been keen to quash the militancy of the building unions.

The latest attempt to quash the CFEMU was commented on in Royal Commission 'prejudiced and biased':

Any defiance against the ruling class is a crime. A crime is defying the natural order of things.

And since Capitalism is currently the true natural order of things, workers who ask for and fight for decent working conditions and wages are against the natural order of things in which the Capitalists alone determine what is right and fair.

As I wrote in State governments share blame for (Not) Closing the Gap:

To really solve this problem requires all non-indigineous Australians to confront their racist attitudes towards Aborigines, and begin to redress the wrongs inflicted on them.

This requires that we acknowledge the racist basis for Capitalism and the invasion of Australia.

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Israeli Forces Target Journalists in West Bank

Mel Frykberg writes that Israeli Forces Target Journalists in West Bank.

On another occasion, I was accompanying a Palestinian ambulance which was trying to reach Jelazon camp to help Palestinian youths injured during clashes with the IDF.

Several military jeeps blocked the roads leading to the camp and refused to move when asked by the ambulance driver.

After I got out and spoke to the soldiers, showing them my credentials yet again, the jeep moved to the side and allowed the ambulance to continue.

The Israelis still appear to be sensitive to a certain degree to how they are portrayed in the Western media.

This has become apparent to me when covering violent clashes. As soon as it has been established that I am Australian, white and a woman, the aggression of the Israeli soldiers has abated and they have tried to get me on side by asking me if I am alright and warning me to take care,

However, I know that I too could easily fall prey to Israeli ammunition if I am not exceedingly careful so, on this basis, I choose to stay well away from the frontlines of clashes.

Emphasis Mine

Here is someone using their white privilege to benefit the oppressed, but they are acutely of the limits of that privilege as Rachel Corrie found to her cost.

Given the sensitivity of the Israeli government to pressure from Westerners, we should be our relative privilege to relieve the sufferings of the Palestinians through supporting the BDS campaign.

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Spain at 70% non-Carbon Electricity: Will it be 1st Net Carbon Zero G-20 State?

Juan Cole writes that Spain at 70% non-Carbon Electricity: Will it be 1st Net Carbon Zero G-20 State?.

If Spain doubles its wind generation from 22% of its energy mix to 40% in the next five years, as it plans, then that would take it to 87% of its electricity from renewables and nuclear. The other 13% may well be supplied by solar, allowing the decommissioning of the coal plants, assuming the government reverses its decision to remove solar subsidies, which has hurt investors in that sector. Note that fossil fuel industries typically get government subsidies, which the MSM doesn’t usually talk about, and that Spain is especially at risk from climate change effects such as desertification and sea level rise, so “subsidies” for clean energy would save the country trillions of dollars over time.

Spain, a country of 47 million people, has a gross domestic product of $1.4 trillion, making it the world’s 14th largest economy and ranging it with Australia and South Korea in that regard. If it can go completely to renewables and nuclear with regard to electricity generation, then it may well be the first large, economically consequential country to go entirely green.

In contrast, Australia gets 92% of its electricity from burning coal, petroleum and natural gas, even though the continent has abundant solar and wind. Its current prime minister, Tony Abbott, is closely tied to Big Oil and is a climate change denialist. Mexico, another country with a GDP similar to that of Spain, also is a major carbon polluter. Canada’s GDP is a bit larger than Spain’s but it is also a major dirty energy polluter, endangering the earth with its irresponsible dumping of C02, a dangerous and powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

Emphasis Mine

In the Capitalist scheme of things, Australia's role is to be a reliable supply of minerals, such as iron and uranium, as well as a major coal supplier.

Despite the success of the Renewable Energy Target program of the previous government, the Abbott government is doing all it can to discourage investment in renewable energy. Unfortunately, the political climate in Australia supports such a move. Coal is seen as more manly than wind and solar.

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Rand Paul Proves That the American Political System is Broken

Ted Rall writes that Rand Paul Proves That the American Political System is Broken.

I am tempted to argue that Paul is wrong, and that he would be better off personally as well as politically sticking to his guns. After all, he has, or at least has had, these popular positions all to himself. Why follow the lead of Al Gore, who foolishly decided not to emphasize his credibility as an environmentalist in 2000?

Be that as it may, let's focus on the big takeaway: the perception among the political class that, to be electable, you have to adjust your positions to conform to the banal, the uninspired, the illegal, with total disregard for the will or the greater good of the American people.

Broken.

Emphasis Mine

What better example of the corruption of the political system under Capitalism than that fomerly principled people like Rand Paul adjust their principles so that they can get enough money from the plutocrats in order to run for elected office. This is something his father never did.

Paul's principles may be wrong in their understanding of how society work, but he and his father fought for them against a hostile media and political machine of the Republican Party.

Those principles were the legitimate expression of the petite bourgeoisie. They were libertarian in nature because they were the yearning of a class who saw Capitalism as dynamic and inclusive. With the conversion of Paul on the road to Washington, these yearnings are no longer articulated by a national political figure. The petite bourgeoisie are now silenced like the working class.

This silencing of the petite bourgeoisie is dangerous in that they are more likely to turn to fascism in order to gain political expression to their economic yearnings. Although fascism has initially been a reaction against the plutocrats, the latter have always been successful into fashioning fascism to their own ends and destroying any residual resistance by the working class.

The reason for this relatively easy subversion of fascism is that fascism has a very poor understanding of how Capitalism works. Due to the ideological blindess, fascism totally rejects the Marxist critique of Capitalism. It is without this anchor in reality that Marxism provides, fascism eventually drifts into the maws of the hated Plutocrat.

The working class are the only ones who can correctly use Marxism to understand how Capitalism works and can be overthrown. The reason is that the working class daily lives the class conflict and experiences the exploitation and alienation under Capitalism. The petite bourgeoisie are blind to these things out of necessary for them to function in a Capitalist society.

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Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance burns butcher's apron in defiance of racist 'Reclaim Australia' rally

Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance burns butcher's apron in defiance of racist 'Reclaim Australia' rally.

In more recent times, this flag also represents the malicious and racist treatment of ethnic minorities. The flag represents a white nation, a nation built by white people for white people.

Members of WAR didn't just burn the Australian flag, we set fire to an expression of Australian racism in an act of anti-colonial resistance. Burning the Australian flag is an act of defiance against the colonial state, a symbolic gesture of our continual fight for freedom and a message that is hoped to reverberate outside of the monopolised media within this country.

Our ultimate goal is to end the colonial control of our lands and lives and to restore our tribal sovereignty. We want freedom and independence and we will continue to fight to rid our people and our communities of the interfering and oppressive hands of the colonial Australian state. We call on Australian government to cease violent domination of Aboriginal lives and immediately stop all destruction of Aboriginal land and culture across this continent.

Emphasis Mine

Other symbols of Australian nationalism, such as the Southern Cross and the Eureka Stockade, are also symbols of colonial oppression and racism. The miners at the Eureka Stockade raised the Southern Cross flag and went on a pogrom against the Chinese miners and merchants in a nearby settlement.

Even in the resistance to state oppression, the oppressed found time to oppress others.

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Movie Review: Home (2015)

The movie, Home, is Anti-American propaganda.

I have decoded the movie as follows:

• The Boov are the Americans
• The Gorg are the Muslims
• Oh is Edward Snowden
• Captain Smerk is the American Government

Captain Smerk steals a valuable artifact from the Gorg, This artifact is literally the future of the Gorg. Smerk does not understand why the Gorg want this artifact so badly, but uses his possession of it as his claim to power.

In a similar way, the American government steals the future of the Muslim Arabs from them by controlling their oil reserves. It is this control of oil that allows the USA to dominate the world's economy. The US government cannot understand why the Arabs want to use their oil for their own development rather than for the maintenance of US power.

In terror, the Boov flee the Gorg. The mere mention of the Gorg sends the Boov into panic. Captain Smerk proposes the invasion of Earth as the solution to their problem. He assures them that the population of Earth would be well taken care of, and would welcome the Boov as liberators. Since Boov technology is far superior to anything on Earth, the invasion is easily accomplished.

The panic after 11 September 2001 sent the US government on a series on invasions and interventions around the world: Afghanistan, the Phillipines, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc. The superiority of US weaponery made these easy for the US military. In Iraq, especially, the US troops were told that they would be welcomed as liberators.

What is striking about the movie is the Boov invade homes and snatch terrified people. The Boov round up all of the Earth's population and resettles them in refugee camps in the middle of the Australian desert. (This would infuriate any Australian government.) The population of Earth are understandably angry at the Boov for this rough treatment.

The Boov cannot understand why the population of Earth should be so angry with them. 'Tip' is especially angry at the descretion of cerished cultural artifacts by the Boov. Her main gripe is the turning the head of the Statue of Liberty into a likeness of Smerk.

Oh causes a crisis releases an e-mail to the entire universe. This causes Oh to become a furgitive.

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Anand Gopal: How to Create an Afghan Blackwater

Tom Englehardt posts an extract from Anand Gopal's book, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, in which Gopal relates How to Create an Afghan Blackwater.

Of course, even in the new Afghanistan there was no such thing as a free lunch. In return for privileged access to American dollars, Sherzai delivered the one thing U.S. forces felt they needed most: intelligence. His men became the Americans’ eyes and ears in their drive to eradicate the Taliban and al-Qaeda from Kandahar.

Yet here lay the contradiction. Following the Taliban’s collapse, al-Qaeda had fled the country, resettling in the tribal regions of Pakistan and in Iran. By April 2002, the group could no longer be found in Kandahar — or anywhere else in Afghanistan. The Taliban, meanwhile, had ceased to exist, its members having retired to their homes and surrendered their weapons. Save for a few lone wolf attacks, U.S. forces in Kandahar in 2002 faced no resistance at all. The terrorists had all decamped or abandoned the cause, yet U.S. special forces were on Afghan soil with a clear political mandate: defeat terrorism.

How do you fight a war without an adversary? Enter Gul Agha Sherzai — and men like him around the country. Eager to survive and prosper, he and his commanders followed the logic of the American presence to its obvious conclusion. They would create enemies where there were none, exploiting the perverse incentive mechanism that the Americans — without even realizing it — had put in place.

Sherzai’s enemies became America’s enemies, his battles its battles. His personal feuds and jealousies were repackaged as “counterterrorism,” his business interests as Washington’s. And where rivalries did not do the trick, the prospect of further profits did. (One American leaflet dropped by plane in the area read: “Get Wealth and Power Beyond Your Dreams. Help Anti-Taliban Forces Rid Afghanistan of Murderers and Terrorists.”)

Emphasis Mine

The Americans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They had defeated the Taliban and expelled Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in 2001.

Yet, the economic logic of Capitalism requires an on-going war against somebody. Whether it is the feudal monarchs of Europe, the native peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia, or the islands of the Pacific. Capitalism must always expand or face collapse.

Through the good offices of people, like Gul Agha Sherzai, the Americans now have their endless war. US and Afghan companies can suck the US Treasury dry for their own benefit. This is not immoral under Capitalism. Companies exist to make profits in legal ways.

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Counter-rallies challenge 'Reclaim Australia'

Chris Peterson & Sarah Hathway write that Counter-rallies challenge 'Reclaim Australia'.

Indigenous activists were prominent in the counter-mobilisations against Reclaim Australia.

Burgess's efforts to disguise his anti-Aboriginal racism are in line with the “Reclaim Australia” organisers strategy of denying their racism and framing their rallies in terms of opposition to “Islamic extremism”. This has been enabled by the increasing scaremongering around a much exagerated threat of terrorism and scapegoating of Muslims and asylum seekers by mainstream political parties and media — tactics used to diverrt attention from unpoular government policies and justify anti-democratic laws.

Their demands include preventing Sharia law from being enforced in Australia, to ban Halal certification, to introduce pride in the Australian flag and the national anthem at schools, and to ban the burqa (or equivalent). All of these demands, absurd or extremist as they are, can be regularly heard in federal parliament and in the opinion pages of the Murdoch press.

Despite claims that “Reclaim Australia” was not a racist or neo-nazi event, several participants had with visible SS and swastika tattoos.

The Melbourne counter-rally built on the success of the previous week's 15,000-strong rally for refugees, which the media largely ignored. In contrast, the media heavily reported “Reclaim Australia”.

Emphasis Mine

I especially love the slogan from the Aboriginal activists in the photograph below—Not Yours to Reclaim:

One could take the charitable view that the people at the “Reclaim Australia” rallies were completely unaware that they are swimming in a sea of racism: mass media; books; movies; official history; paintings; sculptures; television shows; political discourse; place names; etc.. This racism is so prevalent that it is invisible.

It only becomes visible and audible when someone takes the logical conclusion from this prevailing racism and ends up on YouTube sprewing a racist rant. Then they are shocked to learn what thought to be a reasonable conclusion based upon they know to be true, is virulently racist. You cannot build truth from lies.

I imagine it would be an extreme shock to them to learn that they are being lied to everyone they trust and respect. These people are only repeating what is received knowledge.

To even imagine that all of these nice and respectable people are propagandists for racism is frightening for most people to contemplate. To do would undercut their own rationality. Their world would collapse into a fog of helplessness.

It is safer to deny their own racism and lose empathy for the victims of racsim. Racism corrodes one's own humanity ever so subtlely until the swatiska is just a badge of honour:

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The Empty Feeling of McDonald's Pay Raise

Barry Ritholtz writes about The Empty Feeling of McDonald's Pay Raise.

But there are other issues worth discussing: Social media’s impact on consumers and competition for employees as the economy improves.

Both of these seem to have worked to the detriment of McDonald’s — especially among the millennial generation, which has voted with its dollars to eat at places that serve fresher, healthier food such as Chipotle. McDonald's also faces stiffening competition from burger upstarts such as Shake Shack, 5 Guys and Bobby Flay's Bobby’s Burger Palace.

Don’t underestimate the competition for quality workers at fast-food restaurants. The supply of people willing to do the difficult, dirty work of grilling greasy burgers and fries or interacting with drive-through customers is finite. Wal-Mart has similar issues finding qualified minimum-wage workers. And as the economy continues to slowly improve and unemployment declines, that pool of workers gets smaller. It really was just a matter of time before wages had to rise.

That is a positive development — especially for two companies with business models that are so dependent on government aid, tax breaks and Medicaid. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported in 2013, “Fast-Food wages come with a $7 billion side of public assistance.” Indeed, a higher portion of employees of fast-food restaurants receive taxpayer aid than in any other industry.

Wal-Mart isn't much better. As we noted, Wal-Mart employees receive $2.66 billion in government aid each year. That works out to $5,815 per worker, and $420,000 per store. Why private-sector employers require public assistance for their full- or part-time employees is beyond me. But it is why I've labeled these two corporate welfare queens.

Raising the minimum wage nationally to $12 would drive more of the employment costs back to the companies, which is where they belong. Estimates vary, but it would probably take a minimum wage of about $15 to make these companies' employees independent of state and federal aid.

It is worth watching to see what the tandem of social media and basic economics does to push these companies toward a higher minimum wage. With April 15th right around the corner, it would be nice to know that your tax dollars aren't going to subsidize huge for-profit, private enterprises.

Emphasis Mine

The limits of proletarisation have been reached. Basic jobs are being automated. Any job that can be learned by rote and through an instruction manual is one that can be done by a machine. Replacable workers have been replaced by machines.

Workers who can add value to the customer interaction are now needed. These workers do things that cannot be learnt by rote or through an instruction manual. They must be self-motivated to learn and try new things, and then to evaluate their own performance in order to improve.

In other words, they have to expand their consciousness about how the world works. They must educate themselves through study and interaction with other workers.

Economic survival is driving this expansion of worker consciousness. It is no longer adequate for a worker to be told what to think or what to do by a manager. The manager is now hopelessly lost in a rapidly changing environment.

A worker with a better understanding of how the political and economic system works is in a better position to see and take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

In my opinion, a worker with a Marxist understanding of the world is the one best able to survive in these turbulent economic. The primary reason is that Marxism gives the best description of how Capitalism works.

But it does not necessarily follow that a worker with a Marxist understanding will become a Communist.

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Kurdistan: Political and cultural revolution unfolds in Rojava

Evangelos Aretaios writes about how the Political and cultural revolution unfolds in Rojava, Kurdistan.

The Rojava model is based on two main pillars which may prove very efficient in the strengthening of democracy in the region. The first pillar is direct democracy as the basis of a communalist system in which citizens participate actively in decision-making and the management of the polis, from the neighborhood to the municipality and as far as the government. The second pillar, equally revolutionary, is the denial of the nation state structure and philosophy as such. In Rojava, many different religious and ethnic groups—Christians, Yezidis, Arabs, Turkmens, Chechens, Armenians—live together with the large Kurdish majority. By officially and insistently denying the nation state and by trying to create administrative structures that incorporate these different elements, the Rojava model gives to minorities a participatory role unprecedented in the Middle East — a role as equals in the management of the polis.

Emphasis Mine

Nationalism was the driving force behind Capitialism. It gave an identity to people who had thrown off the paternal relationships of Fedualism. A person was no longer defined by whom they owed service to, but by the nation they belonged to.

The creation of a nation expands the consciounsess of its citizens beyond that of the village. But the nation creates a new boundary that now restricts the growth of consciousness of humanity. We cling onto our nationality as fiercely as we once did with our feudal identity.

We need to burst this prison of nationalism, and embrace the universal humanity.

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Alienation: the non-issue

Chris Dillow writes about Alienation: the non-issue.

This poses the question: why isn't there more demand at the political level for fulfilling work?

The question gains force from two facts. First, autonomy at work is a big factor in life-satisfation. Politicians who want to improve well-being - as Cameron once claimed to - should therefore take an interest in working conditions. Secondly, workers who are happy - less alienated - are more productive. Less alienation should therefore help to close the productivity gap between the UK and other rich nations, which in turn should raise real wages.

Despite all this, working conditions are barely on the agenda at all in this election. Politically, the workplace is, as Marx said, a "hidden abode."

One reason for this is that politics has largely ceased to be a vehicle for improving lives. It is instead a form of narcissistic tribalism and low-grade celebrity tittle-tattle: when will Cameron resign? Who'll replace him? What does Miliband's kitchen look like?

And in this way, politics serves the interests of the boss class and not workers. Capitalist power is exercised not just consciously and explicitly, but by determining what becomes a political demand and what doesn't. Here's Steven Lukes:

Is it not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you want them to have - that is, to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires?...Is it not the supreme and most insidious use of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things?

Emphasis Mine

Workers should be struggling to make working the supreme achievement in life. It is through labour that we create a more just and harmonious society. Workers should determine what use the fruits of our labour are put to.

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Who Is This “Together” Starbucks’ Howard Schultz Is Talking About?

Ted Rall asks Who Is This “Together” Starbucks’ Howard Schultz Is Talking About?.

He’s considered a hero, and rightly so. Still, when French General Charles de Gaulle gave his most famous speech, the Appeal of 18 June 1940, not everyone was moved. “Nothing is lost for France!” the future leader of the Free French intoned into the BBC microphone to the people of France, who had just lost their country to the Nazi invasion. “The flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished!”

“Easy for him to say!” my grandfather raged. “He’s sitting over there in London, sipping tea! Here we’ve got the krauts up our ass!”

He changed his mind later. But still: terrible first communiqué.

Communications 101: If you hope others to follow you as a leader, remember who and where and what you are.

If you don’t, others will.

Emphasis Mine

This is a very important for Communists. Ww must be workers who share the struggles and privations of other workers.

It is very easy for me, a priviliged worker, to blog about Commmunism and Capitalism. But I can really talk to other privileged workers.

But this does not mean I should keep silent. All workers are needed to build the Communist society. It behoves us all, priviliged, skilled, non-skilled, and unemployed, to remember that we are all workers.

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Intergenerational report a dishonest weapon of the 1%

Alex Bainbridge writes that Intergenerational report a dishonest weapon of the 1%.

Further, Australia's GDP per capita — a rough measure of the country's wealth — continues to grow dramatically. In fact, per capita GDP growth has massively outpaced the growth in real wages, which is something every worker should remember next time the boss says there isn't enough money for a pay rise.

It is also something we should remember when the government says it cannot afford education or pensions.

The real alternative to Abbott's budget cuts — and the subtle or not so subtle media message that we cannot afford decent pensions, education and health care — is to take the money from the super rich through a fairer taxation system. The government now pays superannuation tax concessions to the very wealthiest that are comparable to the entire cost of the age pension.

A rich country like Australia should be talking about lowering the retirement age and raising pensions at the same time as we plan increased spending on renewable energy and other measures that will truly make lives better for future generations.

Emphasis Mine

I am two minds about retirement: escape from Capitalism; and exclusion from Communism.

The escape from Capitalism means that workers are no longer alienated from their labour. Retired workers are now free to pursue meaningful and fulfilling labour if their retirement benefits permit it.

Therein lies the paradox of retirement under Capitalism. Alienated labour is replaced by grinding poverty. But that is the tyranny of Capitalism: unless one contributes to the growth in profits, one is of no use and therefore denied sustenance.

Whereas, under Communism, retirement means exclusion from the economic and political system. Workers contribute to the growth of society and the spread of benefits to all people. Retirement means turning back on society.

One may do different jobs as one ages but the contributions are still valued because they are needed. Being a worker means being a citizen.

Through labour society is built and enhanced. Withdrawal from the labour means withdrawal from society.

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