There has
been no levelling off of the global economy, as economists predicted. Although
industrialisation has expanded to lesser-developed countries, it has generally
been along lines determined by global corporations based in advanced capitalist
countries. From colonialism, we have moved into the age of multinational
corporate domination. Will Roche looks at the rise of monopoly capitalism.
From 7th to 18th December
2009, delegates from 192 countries will be gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark,
in order to create a new, “legally-binding”, global treaty on climate change.
The UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (known
as COP15) marks the culmination of two-years of negotiation to try and generate
a replacement for the Kyoto
protocol, which is due to expire in 2012.
Stock
exchanges and commodity prices are on their way up. The world economy is
showing faltering signs of recovery. There’s no doubt that it’ll be a long
haul. Millions of people all over the world have had their lives devastated by
the economic tsunami. It will take years to clean up all the mess. But one
major national economy after another has announced that the recession is
officially over – France, Germany, Japan
and even the USA.
All except Britain.
Why is British capitalism still stubbornly stuck in the mire?
Well over
250,000 Irish workers in the public sector were on strike on the 24th
of this month. There would have been many more, but the unions
guaranteed emergency cover including flood relief in the west, the
midlands and the Shannon area and in Cork City. It’s a feature of every
major strike, not just here, but throughout the world, that the well
fed representatives of the bourgeois and particularly the mean
spirited and greedy petty bourgeois attempt to criticise and attack the
worker’s movement. These fine gentlemen and ladies are always the first
to reach for the box of tissues as they weep crocodile tears about the
poor and the vulnerable who they claim (wringing their hands in woe)
are being let down by the strikers. The fact that the government have
been slashing and burning public services for the last year and
attacking the vulnerable seems conveniently to have been forgotten.
At the opening session of the PSUV
congress Chavez made a very radical left-wing speech, calling for the
setting up of a new international, explaining that it was necessary to
destroy the bourgeois state and replace it with a revolutionary state,
but also referring to the bureaucracy within the Bolivarian movement
itself. It was clearly a speech that reflects the enormous pressure
from the masses below who are getting tired of talk about socialism,
while real progress towards genuine change appears to be frustratingly
slow. Alan Woods reports on the start of the PSUV congress in Venezuela.
At a recent meeting of a local Labour Party
Branch in Worcester,
a slick high tech presentation was given by a group called Transition Worcester,
who said they had the answer to the environmental crisis. It is to turn the
clock back 200 years to a mythical age where all trade was local and people
enjoyed the benefit of locally grown meat, fruit & veg. Within this presentation were ideas such as we
should no longer trade with developing countries and we should therefore export
our unemployment to the third world.
Striking refuse workers in Leeds have voted to return to work after nearly three
months on the picket line. The all-out industrial action, which ran from
September 7th to November 25th, was in response to savage
pay-cuts that would have slashed individual wages by thousands of pounds per
year. Workers attending a mass meeting at the suitably flamboyant Jongleurs Comedy Club voted by nearly
four to one to return to work, endorsing a deal which benefitted many workers
but raised concerns for some.
2009 has been a momentous year for
Socialist Appeal. The move from a magazine to a full colour tabloid format was
without a doubt the biggest step we have taken since we started publishing in
1992. Through the years we have made a number of advances but this was the one
which carried the most risks since it was dependant on us firstly raising the
funds to go ahead and then increasing the sales to make it worthwhile and cost
effective. The prize was being able to reach more people with a higher quality
paper that still had the highest quality content within it. But we need your support…
The situation at the University of Arts London is part of the bigger picture of course cuts,
redundancies and deficits across the whole of the public sector in
Britain. Why should students and staff pay for the economic crisis with
their jobs and education? UAL Marxists have organised a meeting for Tuesday 24th (6pm at the student
hub, 65 Davies Street) to discuss the course cuts and redundancies that
are taking place in UAL. A serious situation is emerging, which
ultimately could affect all the students and staff at the university.
Your education, your job, the quality of your work, all are under
threat.
Ireland: Thousands of Nurses, teachers, civil servants, local
government workers and other hard pressed public sector workers will no doubt
shed a tear today after hearing how disappointed Mr Cowen is that they are
going to be on strike. For sure the Taoiseach wasn’t just disappointed
according to RTÉ he was indeed “deeply disappointed.”
Ireland might be out of the World Cup, but
the Irish working class is at the forefront of the struggle against the
bosses crisis. It’ll take much more than a dodgy hand ball to take the
heat out of this situation. Earlier today yet another major union voted
massively to join the public sector strikes on November 24th. SIPTU’s 70,000 members voted by 85% in favour of participating in what is becoming more or less a de facto Public Sector General Strike.