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Post by dodger on Sept 20, 2013 14:08:27 GMT
imarxman.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/the-tailor-the-devil-and-finance-capitalism/The Tailor, The Devil and Finance Capitalism
Posted on September 2, 2011 by imarxman
There is an old Lancashire folk tale about an idle, impecunious and bibulous tailor. Not surprisingly his long-suffering wife was reduced to cajoling and berating him for not making his own money and spending what she earned. He responded by whining about his miserable lot when there wasn’t cash available for him to drink away.
One day he was bemoaning his sad state of affairs rather than completing half finished tailoring jobs when the Devil appeared in his workshop. Very sympathetic he was too, agreeing no one should work hard, it was a man’s basic right to lead a prosperous life. To this end the Wiley-one offered three wishes, anything desired, interest free and no repayments for seven years. All that would be required was the tailor’s soul.
The tailor never thought seven days ahead, so the offer was too good to refuse. Firstly, he’d have a collop of bacon, which he devoured greedily as soon as it appeared. His wife came upon the scene (apparently not noticing the Father of Lies) and, smelling the bacon, upbraided her spouse for not sharing with her.
“I wish you’d disappear!” No sooner had the tailor spoken than he was single. But, how would he explain her sudden disappearance: too many times down the inn he’d drunkenly said he’d kill her. And anyway, underneath it all he loved her. “I wish she were back again.”
None too pleased at her treatment, his wife, on her return, stomped off, leaving her husband alone with Old Poker. The Lord of the Infernal Regions reminded his victim he’d had his three wishes and in seven years payment would be due. He then vanished.
The tailor had gained nothing, but had bartered away his soul. The lesson was salutary: he realised it was only by his own conscious efforts his lot could be improved. For the next seven years he became industrious; working with others his whole community began to prosper for their mutual benefit. The debt, though, remained outstanding.
The central element of this tale is the pre-eminence of the individual, the tyranny of “I”. The tailor focuses only on what he wants to the exclusion of others, even banishing one closest to him. He wants an easy life in which, despite producing nothing of value himself even though he has the skill to do so, his immediate wants are satisfied.
For the last three decades and more the Tempter has been finance capitalism. Rather than manufacturing commodities, producing real wealth, the prestidigitation of money markets has been promoted. The Father of Lies would be particularly pleased with such sleights of tongue by which borrowing and debt is called credit.
Just as the tailor quickly consumed his collop, so people are encouraged to think of themselves primarily as consumers. When they realise they are being left with little or nothing and consume less they make a terrible discovery. They are actually worse off than the tailor whose fiendish bargain left him with nothing. Individually and collectively people are realising they have less than nothing, just growing personal and national debt.
The price for this is the soul, the collective consciousness of belonging together as a class, the working class. Wishing, whether it is through the lottery or instant fame TV talent shows, does not offer a solution. Like the tailor, it is their productive capacity, their skills, which is the real source of wealth.
Anyone thinking the equation of the Devil with finance capitalism is fanciful, consider the following. The City of London holds $3.2 trillion (half the world’s total) in offshore (unaccountable) bank deposits. In 2000, the Labour government signed the UN Convention against corruption but exempted Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories. Around 830,000 companies are registered in the British Virgin Islands.
About half the world’s trade is through tax havens, with the IMF estimating in 2010 that $18 trillion, a third of the world’s GDP, is held in island financial centres. Developing countries, so often the focus for aid and charity appeals, lose $1.6 trillion annually to illegal capital transfers into Europe and the USA via tax havens.
These financial arrangements include tax evasion, bribery, money laundering, crime, drug dealing, arms dealing, terrorist deals and such like. Crime is an integral part of capitalism.
In 2007, a third of Britain’s top 700 businesses paid no tax at all in 2006. Capital does not flow into productive investments, preferring havens where it can avoid the law and tax.
Isn’t this diabolical?
As yet the price hasn’t been paid although the Devil, capitalism through its supine politicians, is clawing back previous gains workers made through their own efforts.
In the story the tailor, confronted by the Devil demanding his soul, responds by asserting the debt isn’t really his. He was tricked into the agreement and as he gained nothing from it he doesn’t believe Old Harry has power to deliver any benefits.
The Devil is outraged by this suggestion, but the tailor stands firm, saying he’ll only accede if the Evil One can grant a last wish as proof of his power. When this is reluctantly agreed the tailor wishes his tormentor on to the back of a wild horse that gallops him back to Hell never to return. Thus the Devil is vanquished and the tailor (and his wife) prosper.
The moral of this fable is that workers must take the initiative and responsibility for their own futures. Wishful thinking, such as voting for this or that diabolical politician, must result in their being possessed (or repossessed) by hellish schemes resulting in their destruction. Literally so, as the last major economic crisis of the 1930s was only resolved through world war. What would be the consequences of such a conflict and resolution today? Damnation in the inferno of modern diabolical weapons.
Far better that workers set the Devil, finance capitalism, on the wild horse of change, smacked its backside and sent it on its way.
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Post by dodger on Sept 21, 2013 18:44:29 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/opinion/opinion_0106/liveonce.htmlYou only live once
WORKERS, JAN 2006 ISSUE
Dignity at birth. Dignity in infancy, childhood, youth. Dignity at work. Dignity if needing support or in trouble. Dignity in retirement. You only live once. Might as well live a dignified existence on earth and earn good wages and pensions. And spare a thought for each other to be really dignified.
Think what we could do if our dignity were not so often under attack. Think how relieved we would be if there were no estate agents, landowners, or employers screwing us down. Think how much better it would be if politicians disappeared. We could run things in a dignified manner.
How can we be dignified in Britain when our elected spokesman Blair kills, maims and mistreats workers at home and abroad? He is but a cipher of our weakness, which allows him to act like a president. Rather than telling foreigners like Bush what to do, he – like them – is entirely dominated by the lust for profit.
A lot of people would like to replace Tony and Gordon with their own undignified leaders who want to change Parliament in their favour. The indignity of social democracy returns. We have resurrection and repeat of past mistakes. Biggest mistake workers have made? Creating a Labour Party to play with parliament.
Ego of course is very undignified. Individual ambitions mean nothing. Dignity and self esteem only really come about because of the collective. I help you, you help me. Now we are talking about real dignity.
To have a leader of Britain so opposed to workers at home and throughout the world is an embarrassment. Blair plays the "sheriff of Nottingham" to eastern European entrants to the EU, seeking to get those stifled by EU trade rules into even more debt. He seeks to squash British unions, break the country up into competing tribal factions, and undo the dignity of industry, agriculture, state education, free health services, and jobs in public service. He is neither worse nor better than the Tories. They all represent something else, a foreign body in our midst.
He seeks to destroy Britain as a nation and take us into decadence with 24-hour drinking and American casinos. He has become a flag of convenience for the rest of world capitalism, as Thatcher did in her time – only with more success. The pathetic thing is he cannot outdo China and the US. He cannot outdo British workers either. That is his Achilles heel and ours.
We don't need a new Labour character, parliamentary party or representation committee to repeat the near fatal mistakes of 100 years ago. That we are beginning to act un-dignified is a matter only we can address. Do the business where you work and in your union.
We need to establish class power.
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Post by dodger on Sept 21, 2013 19:44:27 GMT
Back up into the trees
WORKERS, FEB 2006 ISSUE
WITHOUT DARWIN, the Galapagos Islands would not be such a tourist magnet. But now, we hear, the manager of a resort on the Galapagos has told a guide not to bring up the topic of evolution, because of complaints, mainly from Americans convinced that Darwin is the devil.
The guide was told that if asked about evolution, he could have a drink with the passenger in the evening and discuss it privately. The passengers should just be told what they wanted to hear. The guide subsequently resigned.
And American tourists in London have also started to complain or hiss when guides mention Darwin while passing the Natural History Museum! Perhaps some of our species are regressing rather than evolving.
......................................................................................
Sad but true......one guide I knew used to, out of sheer cussedness, wax eloquently on and on and on , about the virtues of Darwin. Anecdote, personal history. One passenger obviously fearful of her child's soul covered his ears. A crescendo was reached cat-calls abated. A lone American asked "what else he had accomplished?" She once told them Darwin had started the Fire of London and introduced Bubonic Plague to the capital. That had them exchanging knowing looks. Vindication. A visiting history lecturer gave her a handsome tip, promised to play the tape he had made, to his students on his return. I said she should pack the job in--she had all the symptoms of battlefield trauma.
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Post by dodger on Sept 22, 2013 7:15:03 GMT
Sparkling, provocative science writing 20 July 2001
Reviewed by William Podmore
How the Mind Works (Penguin Press Science) [Paperback]
Steven Pinker (Author)
Steven Pinker is Professor of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the renowned books, 'The language instinct' (Penguin, 1995) and 'Words and rules: the ingredients of language' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000). In this book, described by one reviewer as 'the best book ever written on the human mind', he puts forward a general theory about how and why the human mind works the way it does. Yet it is not a ponderous book; it is beautifully written and full of jokes and stories.
Pinker marries Darwin's theory of evolution to the latest developments in neuroscience and computation. He shows in detail how the process of natural selection shaped our entire neurological networks; how the struggle for survival selects from among our genes those most fit to flourish in our environment. Nature has produced in us bodies, brains and minds attuned to coping intelligently with whatever our environment demands. Housed in our bodies, our minds structure neural networks into adaptive programmes for handling our perceptions. Pinker concludes, "The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life."
Our beliefs and desires are information, allowing us to create meaning. "Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying is executing operations triggered by a goal." Pinker writes that the mind has a 'design stance' for dealing with artefacts, a 'physical stance' for dealing with objects, and an 'intentional stance' for dealing with people.
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Post by dodger on Sept 22, 2013 7:23:39 GMT
Stimulating history of the TLS, 16 July 2002
By William Podmore
This review is from: Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement (Hardcover)
Founded in 1902, the TLS has sought to present the whole range of publishing and writing. Many of its contributors have shown great scholarship, imagination and independence of mind. May recalls that it has given us reviews of and by the 20th century's pre-eminent novelists writing in English, Henry James and Virginia Woolf. Recently it has opposed Critical Theory, and exposed the charlatans Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
But May also shows us the TLS's bad traits of 'gossip and gentility', the baleful effects of Eton, Oxford and clubbable 'literary London'. So it has all too often been a fashion victim, persistently overrating very minor novelists, like Kingsley Amis and George Orwell. May himself does not mention Tony Harrison, our greatest living poet, or Penelope Fitzgerald, possibly our finest recent novelist. The TLS also helped to inflate the reputations of idealist thinkers like Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Noam Chomsky, Terry Eagleton and Roger Scruton.
May, like many of his subjects, often uses words to avoid judgement, to veil, not reveal, reality. For instance, he notes of Paul de Man, the Yale Professor who founded 'deconstructionism' in the USA, that some of his work was 'judged to be fascist in character', but he does not explain why. De Man wrote 104 articles for pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic newspapers in Belgium during World War Two!
All too often the TLS propounded the conventional Cold War pieties, without seriously examining the rational kernel of Communism. Consequently, the study of literature substituted for intelligent politics; literary squabbles were given more attention than genuine conflicts of interest.
The TLS is now edited by Ferdinand Mount, "educated, like so many of the earlier figures on the Literary Supplement, at Eton and Christ Church." He became the Daily Mail's chief leader writer, then head of Thatcher's Policy Unit, and more recently a political columnist on the Daily Telegraph. So don't expect much TLS criticism of the present conservative government!
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Post by dodger on Sept 23, 2013 14:22:32 GMT
Fine study of our current plight, 2 Jun 2011
This William Podmore review is from: Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists (Hardcover)
In this fascinating book, Daniel Dorling, Professor of Human Geography in the University of Sheffield, explores the beliefs that uphold the huge injustice of the world. Beveridge's five giants - disease, idleness, ignorance, squalor and want - still live.
That the rich hold these beliefs is no surprise, but why should anyone else believe them? Dorling brings together evidence that proves that these beliefs are all unfounded.
He writes, "The five tenets of injustice are that: elitism is efficient, exclusion is necessary, prejudice is natural, greed is good and despair is inevitable." Elitism, exclusion, prejudice and greed foster inequality and despair. "Each belief also creates a distinct set of victims - the delinquents, the debarred, the discarded, the debtors and the depressed."
Those in power "believe that just a few children are sufficiently able to be fully educated and only a few of those are then able to govern; the rest must be led." Dorling looks at the notion of the `new delinquents', the `IQism' that is a rationale for putting a few on a pedestal, and apartheid schooling (faith schools, academies, private schools). He points out that Britain diverts more of its school spending (23 per cent) to private schools (which educate just 7 per cent of children) than does almost any other rich nation.
Blair's stress on social exclusion only worsened the problem. People are excluded through debt, by geneticist theories, by segregation of community from community, and by the escapism of the rich hiding behind walls and gates. Between 2000 and 2010 the rate of imprisoning children rose tenfold, despite there being no significant rise in criminality.
On class, Dorling notes the rationalising of class difference through prejudice, the new indenture of miserable labour for miserable rewards, the false Darwinism of thinking that different rewards are needed for different people, and the polarisation between regions.
Dorling scorns the dogma of `Greed is good'. The rich gained most from trade liberalisation, the internationalisation of debt, whereby bankers grow rich from others' debts. Half of Western Europe's credit card debt in 2006 was held by Britons. He studies the dismal discipline of economics, noting that only one dollar in 20 given by Americans to charity goes to the common good.
He explores the spread of anxiety, due to competition promoting insecurity, and its associated cult of celebrity. He quotes Nancy Shalek, President of Shalek Advertising Agency, "Advertising at its best is making people feel that without their product, you're a loser. Kids are very sensitive to that ... You open up emotional vulnerabilities, and it's very easy to do with kids because they're the most emotionally vulnerable."
The UN Research Institute for Social Development recently reported that spending significantly more on state healthcare, rather than private healthcare, brought high life expectancy and low infant mortality. "Spending on private or even charitable health services was counter-productive."
Dorling quotes Frances O'Grady, "Extreme social inequality is associated with higher levels of mental ill health, drugs use, crime and family breakdown." He concludes, "At home they sought to plaster over the wounds caused by inequality by building more prisons, hiring more police and prescribing more drugs."
The more unequal the society, the more illness, physical and mental. He observes pointedly, "It is when injustice is promoted at home to maintain inequality within a country that it also becomes easier to contemplate perpetrating wrongs abroad."
We need to build resistance: advance comes from millions of small actions, organising your workplace, going to your union meetings, speaking up against these wrong beliefs.
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Post by dodger on Sept 26, 2013 16:34:41 GMT
Spiritual - like Blair, 3 Jan 2008
By William Podmore
This review is from: Walk on: The Spiritual Journey of U2 (Paperback)
Bono is a master of self-promotion, another greedy businessman, like Richard Branson, parading his 'love-me' credentials. Like his rich buddy Geldof, he is forever fawning on the rich & powerful.
Celebrity is a drug - avoid it!
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Post by dodger on Oct 3, 2013 15:11:19 GMT
Superb account of a great reformer, 11 Jan 2001 By William Podmore This review is from: The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis (Hardcover)
Halliday's book tells the story of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, Chief Engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works (London's first metropolitan government) from 1856 to 1889.
His greatest achievement was building for London a sanitation system of unprecedented scale and complexity. Throughout history, the main cause of death has been the contamination of drinking water by sewage. In particular, cholera spread when the faeces of sufferers contaminated drinking water: cholera epidemics in London killed 6,536 people in 1831-32, 14,137 in 1848-49, and 10,738 in 1853-54.
In the long hot summer of 1858, the stench from rotting sewage in the Thames drove MPs from Westminster. The 'Great Stink' forced them, belatedly, to act. Bazalgette was charged with building a system to prevent sewage getting into Londoners' drinking water, which he did. The 1866 cholera epidemic killed 5,596 people in the East End, the sole part of London that had not yet been protected by Bazalgette's intercepting system. After the system was completed, cholera would never again kill Londoners. Bazalgette had turned the Thames from the filthiest to the cleanest metropolitan river in the world and added some twenty years to Londoners' lives.
But this was not Bazalgette's only success. He constructed the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea Embankments, where he introduced the use of Portland cement. He laid out Shaftesbury Avenue, Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross Road, the Embankment Gardens, Battersea Park and Clapham Common. He built the bridges at Hammersmith, Putney and Battersea. He introduced the Woolwich Free Ferry and designed the Blackwall Tunnel.
In 1889, the London County Council replaced the Board: Bazalgette's successes had proven the value of local government for great cities. Roy Porter wrote that Bazalgette stands with Wren and Nash 'as one of London's noblest builders'. John Doxat wrote, "this superb and farsighted engineer probably did more good, and saved more lives, than any single Victorian public official."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Crossness Pumping Station was built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette as part of Victorian London's urgently needed main sewerage system.
It was officially opened by the Prince of Wales in April 1865. It contains the four original pumping engines which are possibly the largest remaining rotative beam engines in the world, with 52 ton flywheels and 47 ton beams  
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Post by dodger on Oct 3, 2013 19:46:29 GMT
15 minutes behind the wheel. After 30 minutes. 
ويقول رجل دين سعودي النساء الذين يقودون خطر الإضرار مبيضاتهم
www.interaksyon.com/article/72030/saudi-cleric-says-women-who-drive-risk-damaging-their-ovariesSaudi cleric says women who drive risk damaging their ovaries As I have but the haziest knowledge of female reproductive organs--I shall reserve judgement. However the two diagrams above might help those of a more scientific frame of mind...The young lady driving seems quite oblivious to the danger. Her confidence is probably badly misplaced. He did not cite specific medical studies to support his arguments. However. After rotating the diagrams for the last two hours, the clerics findings are starting to make perfect sense....
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Post by dodger on Oct 4, 2013 12:21:16 GMT
Very poor level of argument, July 2, 2009
By William Podmore
This review is from: Retreat of Reason: Political Correctness & the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain (Paperback)
This question demands the kind of clear thinking that appears to be way beyond Browne's compass.
Yes, of course, Sharia law is a dangerous and backward practice, which should have no place in any civilised society. And yes the silly Trotskyists of the SWP seem to embrace a tolerant approach to Sharia law (as does the vain and foolish Archbishop of Canterbury). The SWP also seems to be very tolerant of the anti-semitism of some of its mullah allies.
But who does the SWP speak for? And how significant is it? For very few, and not very influential, might well be the answers.
In fact Nick Cohen, Melanie Phillips, Anthony Browne, Peter Hitchens, etc. have an interest in overestimating the SWP's importance. It justifies their obsessive opposition to what is really a very, very minority trend of opinion.
Their (justified) opposition to the SWP is a cover for their (unjustified)opposition to many broad popular modern movements, like the trade union movement, the civil rights movement and the women's movement.
But there are great gains that should be credited to the trade unions - who fought for the weekend? For equal pay for women? For better wages and conditions? The USA's civil rights movement did brilliantly in terms of moving towards equality of treatment and an end to discrimination. The women's movement also made great gains, in improving women's legal, social and economic positions.
Anyone really disagree with these statements?
Like the editors of the Sun newspaper, Browne always avoids the hard questions, preferring the easy sneer.
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Post by dodger on Oct 5, 2013 22:36:37 GMT
poland - health for some?
WORKERS, DEC 2004 ISSUE
A DOCUMENT on the EU's own website reveals that Rafal Nizankowski, Polish Undersecretary of State for Health, recently wrote the following to David Byrne at the European Commission's Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General.
"Dear Mr Byrne, Thank you for your document Enabling Good Health for all. A reflection process for a new EU Health Strategy. It is a very good paper and solid base for discussion. Since you suggest the initiation of the reflection process, I would like to make my personal comments.
"I do not like 'for all' for two reasons. First, it is unrealistic. It is impossible to offer good health for all citizens of Europe, because some of them do not want good health, they simply need to be ill to play their social roles; because others have very bad genes or are just not lucky enough. The reason for my dislike of phrase 'for all' is its close relation to communistic slogan."
Opposition to communism leads to some strange places!
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Post by dodger on Oct 6, 2013 11:18:36 GMT
A fascinating study of self-delusion, April 16, 2008
By William Podmore
This review is from: Blind Oracles: Intellectuals and War from Kennan to Kissinger (Paperback)
This fascinating book looks at the influence in government of intellectuals such as George Kennan, Paul Nitze, Walt Rostow, Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger. It also examines their shared myths, for example that US interventionism is necessary, that the USA is uniquely virtuous, and that war only comes from malevolent surprises by others.
Kuklick shows that their basic function was to provide politicians with justifications for doing what they were going to do anyway, to give them cover and act as defense counsel. He judges, "The accepted wisdom of the era fell short of what we might want." Their assessments of Soviet strengths and motives were `simplistic'. "Much of what strategists `knew' was wrongheaded or muddled, if not mistaken."
He notes that these civilian strategists showed an acute distrust of democracy and were committed to `a select management that would lead by exaggeration'. Proximity to power brought arrogance and ignorance.
After the US war against Vietnam, McNamara organised a conference at which he tried to make the Vietnamese participants accept that the war had been due to `mutual misunderstanding'. But Nguyen Thach, a former foreign minister, responded, "I would say, with all due respect to Mr. McNamara, that the U.S. mindset, as he says was incorrect, but that the Vietnamese mindset - our assessment of the U.S. - was essentially correct."
General Nguyen Giap, Vietnam's chief military strategist, said, "I don't believe we misunderstood you ... Excuse me, but we correctly understood you ... you are wrong to call the war a `tragedy' - to say that it came from missed opportunities. Maybe it was a tragedy for you, because yours was a war of aggression, in the neo-colonialist `style', or fashion, of the day for the Americans."
Kuklick concludes, "The men of knowledge did well by their societies, yet their actual knowledge was minimal while their sense of self-regard and scholarly hand-waving was maximal. They did their best work in constructing ways of thinking that absolved leadership of liability, deserved or not. Undoubtedly there was a symbiosis between the defense specialists and the nonintellectual elite that wanted their services in places of power, but the culture paid a pretty penny for the expertise, especially when so many intellectuals disdained a democratic republic."
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Post by dodger on Oct 16, 2013 21:14:07 GMT
Useful study of economic measurements, 16 Oct 2013
This William Podmore review is from: Mis-Measuring Our Lives (Paperback) Joseph E. Stiglitz (Author), Amartya Sen (Author)
This brilliant little book asks whether Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the most widely used measure of economic activity, is a reliable indicator of economic and social progress.
The authors point out, "GDP mainly measures market production, though it has often been treated as if it were a measure of economic well-being." They urge "the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people's well-being."
To do so, we need to look at households' incomes and consumption, and at the distribution of incomes and consumption; we need to broaden income measures to non-market activities; and we need to attend to subjective and objective dimensions of well-being.
The authors note, "many of the services people received from other family members in the past are now purchased on the market. This shift translates into a rise in income as measured in the national accounts and may give a false impression of a change in living standards, while it merely reflects a shift from non-market to market provision of services. Many services that households produce for themselves are not recognized in official income and production measures, yet they constitute an important aspect of economic activity."
They point out, "there are many reasons why market values cannot be trusted when addressing sustainability issues, and more specifically their environmental component." As they note, "market prices are non-existent for quite a large number of the assets that matter for future well-being."
They conclude that we do indeed need a monetary index of sustainability. But we also need an assessment of the stocks of natural and human resources, so that we can check whether we are adding to or depleting them.
The authors ask how, even whether, the economy serves our needs. They conclude that we cannot trust market values to guide our choices.
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Post by dodger on Oct 17, 2013 21:09:52 GMT
Podmore Reviews: The Battle of Ideas
imarxman.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/2-podmore-reviews-the-battle-of-ideas/
Posted on May 6, 2013 by imarxman The revenge of history: the battle for the twenty-first century, by Seumas Milne, hardback, 320 pages, ISBN 978-1-84467-963-8, Verso, 2012, £20. This is an excellent book, informative and passionate, which exposes capitalism’s responsibility for wars and crises.
Lord Ashdown told us in November 2001 warnings that invading Afghanistan would lead to a ‘long-drawn-out guerrilla campaign’ were ‘fanciful’. Jack Straw jeered at those who said that US and British troops might still be fighting there a year later.
Milne looks at the illegal Israeli occupation and siege of Palestine, backed by the USA and the EU. Between 2001 and 2008, 14 Israelis were killed and more than 5,000 Palestinians. Michael Ben-Yair, Israel’s attorney-general in the mid-1990s, called the Intifada a ‘war of national liberation’ and wrote, “We enthusiastically chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justifications for all these activities … we established an apartheid regime.”
Kosovo declared its independence against the wishes of the UN Security Council. Russia, China and Spain all deemed it illegal. NATO forces have occupied Kosovo since 1999. It is ‘an EU protectorate controlled by Nato troops’. But the Independent on Sunday called NATO’s war a ‘triumph of liberal interventionism’. By 2008 Kosovo had 50 per cent unemployment. It also housed a US military base which was a Guantanamo-style torture camp.
In March 2002 David Frost stated that Mugabe supporters had killed 100,000 people between 2000 and 2002. Actually, 160 people had been killed, by both sides. This was the typical wild inflation of numbers killed by official enemies.
Milne opposed the criminal wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Not one terrorist attack or plot against Britain has been sourced to Iraq or Afghanistan, but the ‘war on terrorism’ did not keep our streets safe from terrorism. But, as the CIA reported, the war and embargo against Iraq did kill one million civilians.
In 2003 Milne warned against US attacks on Syria and Iran. In 2005, he warned that rule by radical Islamists was the most likely alternative to Assad.
He points out that we are suffering the failure of capitalism, not of this or that type of capitalism. He argues that capitalism is to blame for war and depression.
Milne writes that the EU is ‘an undemocratic neoliberal superstate’ and remarks on “the economic ideology that has shaped the whole European Union for decades: of deregulation, privatisation and the privileging of corporate power.” He also notes, “The government has deliberately used the unregulated EU influx as a sort of twenty-first century incomes policy.” He points out that Greece needs an Argentina-style default and devaluation, which means that it needs to exit the euro.
In 2008 New Zealand renationalised its railways and ferry services. Here, British taxpayers give £2 billion a year to the train operating companies. We could renationalise them, at no cost, when their franchises expire.
Private Finance Initiative projects will cost the taxpayer £25 billion more than if the government had paid for them directly. A cross-party House of Commons committee found that PFI was expensive, inefficient, inflexible and unsustainable, but delivered ‘eye-watering profits’, the capitalist class’s only real criterion.
By the late 1990s, Russia’s national income had fallen by more than 50 per cent, (compared to the USA’s 27 per cent in the Great Depression), investment by 80 per cent, real wages by half, and meat and dairy herds by 75 per cent.
In 2010 there was a wave of strikes in China’s high-tech export sector, in which workers won 30 per cent wage rises at Foxcomm’s production centre in Shenzhen and at Honda’s factory in Foshan, and 25 per cent wage rises at the Hyundai supplier in Beijing.
China’s share of world manufacturing output has risen from 2 per cent to 20 per cent since 1993. Investment soared, so growth soared too, yet China’s deficit is only 2 per cent.
Between 2007 and 2011 US national income rose by just 0.6 per cent, the EU’s fell by 0.3 per cent and Japan’s by 5.2 per cent; China’s grew by more than 42 per cent. No wonder we so often hear wishful forecasts of a Chinese crash.
With capitalism’s failure so clear, the ruling class’s lies against socialism grew ever cruder. Stalin was ‘as much an aggressor as Hitler’, said Niall Ferguson (Guardian, 1 September 2009). Orlando Figes opined that the Non-aggression pact was ‘the licence for the Holocaust’ (BBC website, ‘Viewpoint: The Nazi-Soviet Pact’, 21 August 2009).
Louise Minchin on BBC Breakfast Time sneered that President Chavez was ‘famous for his promises of social change’ (5 January 2013). In the real world, Chavez’s policies nearly halved poverty in Venezuela, provided free health care and education, virtually ended illiteracy, set up thousands of cooperatives, got cheap food to poorer people, brought privatised utilities and oil production back under public ownership and control, raised pensions and the minimum wage, and redistributed land.
Britannia unchained: global lessons for growth and prosperity, by Kwasi Kwarteng MP, Priti Patel MP, Dominic Raab MP, Chris Skidmore MP and Elizabeth Truss MP, paperback, 144 pages, ISBN 978-1-137-03223-2, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, £12.99. The authors are a group of Conservative MPs, who urge even more savage attacks on the British people.They claim that economic problems have cultural causes, and therefore cultural cures. They confuse long hours with hard work. They discuss productivity without ever mentioning investment. They blame the lack of social mobility not on greater inequality but on lack of hard work. They slur that people are unemployed because they ‘are wilfully not working’.Canada’s banks have far higher capital requirements. They are banned from merging and protected from foreign competition. As a result, no Canadian bank has yet failed in the current great depression. But the authors sneer at ‘Canada’s supposedly superior system of financial regulation’ p. 34.Their account of Canada’s deficit is confused. They write on one page that Canada’s deficit in 1984 was more than 8 per cent and on another page that it was 1.2 per cent. They praise the Liberals’ 1993 pledge to cut the deficit to 3 per cent, yet also write that in 1993 the surplus was 0.3 per cent.Again, on page 14 they write, “Canadian debt had been high ever since the Second World War.” But on page 15 they write, “Canadian debt still remained comparatively low in international terms. In 1974 it had been just 18 per cent of GDP.”As they point out, countries “have discovered that it is far easier to simply stop paying than try to squeeze more revenue out of an overtaxed population.” They then demand a squeeze! Countries default in order not to go bust, but the authors equate default with going bust.Low-tech manufacturing produces 14 per cent of our manufactured exports. Britain’s hi-tech manufacturing produces a greater proportion of our manufactured exports than does either Germany’s or France’s.They have a good chapter on the needs for higher standards in education and for more engineering, maths and science graduates. But then they deplore ‘protracted education’ and increases in the number of full-time students. And their government attacks the teaching profession viciously and is wrecking our superb universities.Their policies would slash wages and living conditions for the huge majority of British people. |
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Post by dodger on Oct 20, 2013 1:07:30 GMT
Splendid study of history teaching in English schools, 2 Feb 2012
This Will Podmore review is from: The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth-Century England (Paperback)
This fascinating survey is based on a two-and-a-half year research project, based at London University's Institute of Historical Research. It looks at history as taught in 20th-century England's state schools, involving the history of education and the history of culture.
History as a subject has often suffered at the hands of our rulers. For example, Blair told the US Congress, "There has never been a time when ... a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day." This was true of himself.
Kenneth Clarke abandoned Baker's commitment to ensure history was compulsory till the age of 16. `Clarke's deeply unfortunate decision' wrecked the plan of an integrated curriculum which the History Working Group had designed to lead step by step from 5 to 16, culminating in two years devoted to 20th-century British and world history.
Clarke removed these two years from Key Stage 4 (15 and 16) and jammed them into Key Stage 3 (13 and 14). This decision disconnected the study of history from GCSE exams. In academies, the time given to history has fallen still further, as the Historical Association reports.
So, across the 20th-century, history teaching in England has finished at 14 or earlier. There was never a golden age of history teaching and learning.
The authors urge that history should be a compulsory subject up to the age of 16. This excellent book presents evidence and thought that should raise the level of discussion about education and about history in our schools.
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