“The
Icelandic economy is prosperous and flexible” (IMF 4 July 2008)
(There
is) “a very real danger…that the Icelandic economy, in the worst case, could
be sucked with the banks into the whirlpool and the result could be national
bankruptcy.” (Iceland’s Prime Minister Geir Haarde – address to the nation 6
October 2008)
What happened to Iceland in the period of three
months to explain this change?
Communism is
suddenly back in fashion in Japan. The reason is not hard to seek. ‘Lifetime
employment’ is a thing of the past for young workers, who face a casualised and
insecure future. One in three is temping. Some 44% of country’s workforce are
part-time only, while a profusion of short-term contracts has created a
generation of freelancers who are often ‘between jobs’. They have already worked
out that, as recession bites, they will be first in the firing line. They are
drawing political conclusions in increasing numbers.
Unprecedented!
That was the mantra of the broadcasters, pundits and newspapers
throughout September, as the credit crisis took a dark turn. Credit markets (mortgages, loans for cars and
goods, company bonds and overdrafts) just dried up. Banks stopped lending even to each
other. Liquidity disappeared like water
into the Sahara desert. Interest rates
rocketed despite the best efforts of the central banks to provide unlimited
credit at almost any price. The
capitalist financial machine seized up.
Banks started to go bust and even countries went bankrupt
(Iceland). Nothing has ever been seen
like it – for the first time in the hyperbole of the news media, it really was
unprecedented.
Why should students
fight for socialism? The dominance of the market on all aspects of life is
crushing students and threatening the public nature of our education system.
This was a huge conquest of the working class against capital. Since the
government has been opening up education and student life to the market, the
crisis of capitalism will inevitably affect education. Of course, students now
have to take out loans, sucking them into debt and tying them up with the
credit system.
‘Oh this
delicious war!’ joyously exclaimed Winston Churchill, though historians will
argue that he was not a war lover. Let them try to explain the following:
‘Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared
up and happy. Is it not horrible to be made like this?’ Thus did the
so called ‘great man’ condemn himself with his own words in a letter to his
wife on the approach of WWI. He was also recorded as saying: ‘I think a
curse should rest on me, because I love this war. I know it’s smashing and
shattering the lives of thousands every moment – and yet I can’t help it – I
enjoy every second of it.’
China’s urbanization process has
reached a critical juncture. Inequality between town and country is producing
explosive revolts surrounding the cities. The problem of how to contain these
revolts is at the core of policy making and is reflected in conflicts inside
the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party.
The background to this is that rural
rebellions have escalated over recent years. Yu Jianrong director of the Rural
Development Institute’s Social Issues Research Center at the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences gave explicit warnings to the Chinese leadership of a revolutionary crisis developing in
the countryside and new proletarian zones in the interior provinces.
Over the past couple of weeks, Britain,
many other European countries and the US have announced plans to nationalise
large chunks of the financial sector, thereby taking a good proportion of the
commanding heights of the economy into public ownership. The British government
has been forced to effectively part-nationalise three of the country’s biggest
banks, RBS, Lloyds TSB and HBOS. The plan, which includes putting treasury-appointees
on the boards of all three banks, will cost the taxpayer in the region of £37
billion. Many of the major European powers are unveiling similar plans, and
even the US, the ideological bastion of free-market capitalism, has been forced
to invest $250 billion into buying stakes in nine of its banks (though these
‘non-voting preference shares’ mean the US government will have no direct control
over the running of these banks).
Nationalisation of the banks and financial institutions
is a corner stone of any plan by socialists to implement socialism. This idea
has been ridiculed and has always been hated by big business, capitalists and
economic commentators.
Yet within the last months, because money
that the banks don’t have has been lent to people, banks and companies which
they cannot pay back, the chickens have been coming home to roost. Bank after bank has been partly or totally
nationalised. What a turnaround in events! Does this mean that we have won the ideological
argument and socialism is around the corner?
Winston Churchill is one of the most famous figures in
British history and the official approach is that it would be unpatriotic not
to admire him. The purpose of this article is to draw aside the veils of myth
and legend which establishment historians and fawning admirers have spun around
him and look at the real Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. The facts reveal a
different man altogether.
New Labour’s nuclear ambitions suffered a setback in August when a
proposed deal to sell British Energy to EDF for £12 billion fell
through. Brown, Hutton, Darling and co. say that new nuclear power
plants are the only way to achieve "energy security" and reduce carbon
dioxide emissions, and they are determined to provide the right
incentives to EDF (or possibly another bidder, Centrica) to build and
operate them. Surely these wise men have impartially analysed all the
options and come up with the best solution to Britain’s energy needs?
New Labour has climbed down before big business again, on the issue of a windfall tax on the energy companies. Brown’s pathetic advice, that the elderly should wrap up warm and
switch off lights when prices go up, makes you wonder whether we voted
for Labour or the Big Six gas and electricity companies to run the
country in the last election.
New Labour is the bastard child of
Thatcherism. Blair, Brown and Mandelson inherited from the evil witch the
belief that the market (capitalism) was god and that the rich are the wealth
creators we must all bow down to.
As Marxists know, and as the present crisis
has shown, this is the opposite of the truth. But this has been the foundation
of all the policies carried out by New Labour over the past years.