Workers at the National Gallery – who include; conservators,
curators, information assistants, librarians, information systems staff,
photographers and designers – are angry that the Treasury was almost 12 months
late in agreeing their 2007 pay remit. They have just staged their second
24-hour strike by Prospect members this year. This follows a campaign of action
short of a strike that reflects growing anger at management’s refusal to reopen
pay negotiations.
In 1922 Churchill
lost his seat in Dundee, probably because of his attitude to Russia. Then in
1924, with the Liberal Party sinking, he jumped ship once more and rejoined the
Conservatives: self interest and high office always took precedence over
political principles. Baldwin made him chancellor, a position he held until the
1929 General Election.
More than 1,000
railway workers are being balloted for industrial action in a row over pay. Staff at Arriva
Trains Wales, belonging to the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union and the
Transport Salaried Staffs Association, are being urged to back a campaign of
action after rejecting a two-year wage offer. The proposed deal of 4.75% this
year and the rate of inflation plus 0.75% in 2009 to non-driving grades is
worse than a pay rise given to other employees at the company
Marxist philosophy provides one with all the basic tools needed to
analyse and understand living reality, understood, not as a series of
dry, senseless unconnected "facts", but as a dynamic process, impelled
by its intenal contradictions, ever changing and with an infinitely
rich content. It is both materialist and dialectical.
Still flummoxed by the financial crisis? In this
classic comedy sketch, John Fortune and John Bird explain why we are in
such a mess.
“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).