poverty in UK

A fifth of British seven-year-olds live in "severe poverty" with both parents together earning less than half the average national income, a major report reveals. The government-sponsored Millennium Cohort Study has tracked 14,000 children born at the start of the century to build a picture of how family circumstances determine a young person's education, health and happiness in Britain. The latest findings are from two years ago, when the children were seven years old.

The London University's Institute of Education researchers found that despite governments having spent billions to eliminate child poverty since 1999:

• Almost one-fifth of seven-year-olds live in severe poverty – homes where the total income, including benefits, is less than £254 a week. The UK average income for a family with one child is a £563 a week, say researchers.

• Almost three-quarters of children whose parents are of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin live in poverty – homes where the total income for a family with one child is under £330 a week. This is largely because of high unemployment rates for mothers and fathers, the researchers say.

• Just over half (51%) of black seven-year-olds and just over a quarter of white seven-year-olds live in poverty, with three-fifths from these groups in single-parent families.

• Seven-year-olds are most likely to live in poverty in the north-east (40%) and least likely in the south-west (22%). The figure for London was 36%.

• Just under 7% of seven-year-olds living in poverty do not have two pairs of all-weather shoes, according to parents. Just under 50% do not get pocket money.

Also The number of families and pensioners struggling to stay warm and keep the lights on has more than doubled in five years, according to official figures published today. The amount of households in fuel poverty leapt from two million to 4.5 million between 2003 and 2008.

Dave Timms, Friends of the Earth's climate campaigner, said: "It's a national disgrace that over four million people are still living in fuel poverty in the 21st century, as a result huge numbers of vulnerable families, pensioners and children are suffering from ill health and high energy bills."

death sentence

The 10th of October was World Day against the Death Penalty.

More than 1,200 men and women have been put to death in the USA since executions resumed in 1977 after a decade without them. Three jurisdictions – Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma – account for more than half of the country's executions.

Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International explained "The death penalty is cruel, degrading, ineffective and entirely incompatible with any concept of human dignity. Its use in the USA is marked by arbitrariness, discrimination and error." More than 130 prisoners have been released from death rows around the USA since 1976 after being found innocent – nine were freed in 2009 alone. Others have been put to death despite serious doubts over their guilt. Studies have shown that race plays a part in who receives the death penalty in the USA, with murders involving white victims more likely to result in death sentences than those involving black victims.

"Race, geography, electoral politics, local finances, jury composition, and the quality of legal representation are all problematic factors in capital cases in the USA. Being tried for a capital crime is like taking part in a lethal lottery, and it should have no place in any justice system," said Widney Brown.

There is no proof that the death penalty deters violent crime more effectively than imprisonment.

Commonwealth is home to 64% malnourished kids

India may rank second in the Commonwealth Games medal league but India leads Commonwealth tally in underweight children. Bangladesh and Pakistan with malnutrition rate of 41 percent and 31 percent respectively.

About 43% of India's children are underweight, and 7 million under fives are severely malnourished, says a new report "Commonwealth or Common Hunger", released by Save the Children.

The report reveals that 64% of the world's underweight children live in 54 Commonwealth countries, and India has both the highest number and the highest proportion of underweight children. More than two-thirds of stunted children (88.5 million or 68.6%) and nearly half of those who are underweight (95 million or 48.7%) live in just seven Commonwealth countries.

The critical period when malnutrition can have the most irrevocable impact is during the 33 months from conception to a child's second birthday, says the report. After this period, it is much harder to reverse the effects of chronic malnutrition, and the effects are life-long or life-threatening.

Death in the mines

News that the last of the 33 men trapped in the Chilean mine have been rescued is as welcome as it is unusual. Given that countless lives have been lost in mining's long and dark history, it is worth remebering the candid remark of one government appointed Inspector of Mines from 100 years ago:

"Practically every risk which exists could be eliminated if cost were no object."

On this day in 1913, hundreds of workers at the Sengenhydd colliery in Wales perished in a huge explosion. The related article below from the November Socialist Standard of that year remains relevant nearly a century later.

The Lancaster Pit of the Universal' Colliery at Senghenydd was again the scene of a fearful explosion, in which 435 of our fellow workers have perished - sacrificed to the greed of that butcher, King Capital. Although on the occasion of the last disaster (1901) in this mine the coroner's jury found that the mine was not sufficiently watered, and Professor Galloway, the Government Inspector of Mines, reported that the necessary precautions in watering the roadways had not been attended to, yet the mine owners allow conditions to prevail that send to their doom435 miners. '

Every time coal dust has caused a mine explosion the warning has been given, but it has passed unheeded. When the toilers were entornbed at West Stanley in 1909, the Government investigators reported that "unless the grave danger which exists at many collieries owing to the pressure of coal dust is attacked with much greater earnestness than it has been in the past, disasters of a similar nature will occur from time to time." At Whitehaven in 1910 the inspector proclaimed the precautions against the accumulation of coal dust were of a haphazard and unsystematic character," and he also stated that "the ventilation of the working face was inadequate for the needs of the mine having in view the gassy nature of the coal." Following upon this the same inspector made this sinister statement to a Press Agency representative:

"Practically every risk which exists could be eliminated if cost were no object."

These burning words could be backed up by plenty of other quotations from leading agents of capitalism, but let these suffice. The plain fact emerges from every disaster that the toilers' lives are sacrificed to dividends and interest. Mines Acts are passed, as that of 1911, with special provisions excluding mines which do not "pay" well from adopting precautions. As for the others, the owners please themselves. The Mines Inspectors are so few, and their powers so meagre, that the regulations are broken with impunity. Last August a fire occurred at the Carron Co's. pit at Cadder, and 22 miners who went down to earn their pittauce on Sunday perished. And notwithstanding that the Mines Act of two years previous enjoins every mine to have complete rescue apparatus, the rescue men had to travel forty miles to obtain live saving apparatus!

Second time as tragedy

History repeats itself, Marx once said, first as tragedy, then as farce. On this occasion, why then are we not laughing?

In 1973, twelve months before the February 1974 general election called by the Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath took place an episode of ‘The Likely Lads’ called ‘No Hiding Place’ was broadcast. The episode centered on the efforts of Bob and Terry to avoid knowing the result of the football game between England and Bulgaria until the televised evening highlights. A mate bet them otherwise and so they spent the whole day trying to stay away from any situation which would spoil the outcome of the match for them before they had seen it.

In 1974 the Tories lost to Labour by four seats. The Liberals won fourteen seats. Following unsuccessful attempts to persuade the Liberals to take part in a coalition government Heath resigned and a minority Labour Government took power with Wilson becoming Prime Minister for the second time.

‘You have got what you voted for’ proclaimed the front page of that May 1974 Socialist Standard:
“In the last few weeks the politicians and commentators have been disputing about what the electors wanted, what the new Government will do, what will be in its next budget, will the polices work…They are wasting their time and yours. The main outlines of your future in the next few years are already determined, and it would be just the same with a Tory Government, a Tory-Lib coalition, or a three-party government – a little more there, a little less here but nothing essentially different.”

Every time I drive along Oystermouth Road toward Swansea University I pass Swansea prison I imagine what is happening behind those walls and what it must be like for the individuals locked into a repressive system there. I can never avoid the following words flying into my mind: ‘Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court, and it is now my duty to pass sentence…you will go to prison for five years.’ Not for one moment do I think that reality is anything like Ronnie Barker’s humorous television portrayal of incarceration, ‘Porridge’. Five years is now going to be a fixed parliamentary term too apparently. Metaphorically speaking we are all still ‘banged up’ by capitalism until the majority gain socialist understanding and decide to set everyone free.

6 May, 2010, no political party reaches the 326 seat target required to form a government and ‘run’ British capitalism.

The working class majority may not have declared decisively in favour of one or three of the political parties which aspire to run capitalism on behalf of Great Britain plc but certainly, in May, they chose not to vote for themselves. So what were they voting for? It has been suggested that if voting actually achieved anything it would be made illegal or abolished – unless you keep on voting for the continuation of the present social system.

The Socialist Standard of May 1974 provides an explanation: “On a superficial view the electors who voted…wanted different policies, Tory, Labour, Liberal; or Scottish, Welsh and Irish Nationalism. What in fact they voted for is capitalism with small variations of no importance. Capitalism with a face lift; capitalism inside or outside Europe; capitalism with a degree of autonomy in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The voters wanted capitalism not Socialism. They have got what they voted for.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the French say. Despite their efforts Terry and Bob discovered that the game had been called off. Their efforts had been for nowt. The result of the 2010 election was impossible to avoid. The working class chose not to abolish the wages system this time around. The question is how long it is going to be before you vote for real change. Vote for yourselves. Vote for Socialism!
DAVE COGGAN

saying like it is

Democracy Now carries an interesting interview with the novelist John Le Carre which is well worth a listen to. Here are some extracts.

JOHN LE CARRÉ: I have a column, yeah. I wish I had the figures in my head. This is from the International Herald Tribune, and I guess that means it also comes from the New York Times of Monday, September the 13th, not so long ago. Barclays, a British bank, paid $298 million "for conducting transactions with Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar and Sudan in violation of United States trade sanctions. Barclays was discovered to have systematically disguised the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars through wire transfers that were stripped of the critical information required by law.
"Last May, when ABN Amro Bank (now largely part of the Royal Bank of Scotland) was caught funneling money for the benefit of Iran, Libya and Sudan, it was fined $500 million, and no one went to jail. Last December, Credit Suisse Group agreed to pay a $536 million fine for doing the same. In recent years, Union Bank of California, American Express Bank International, BankAtlantic and Wachovia have all been caught moving huge sums of drug money, but no one went to jail. The banks just admitted to criminal conduct and paid the government a cut of their profits."
The thing is, it is very undemocratic, because if you or I go to one of these banks along here somewhere with a few thousand dollars in a briefcase, if I’m a Brit and do it, I have to give a really thorough explanation. Bank manager may call in the police. I have to produce my passport. If I want to open an account, I have to produce a utilities bill and all of that. But, if Mr. Orloff comes to a bank here and says, "I am from Russia. I have millions and millions of dollars, please. And here is a letter from a reputable lawyer in Moscow. And here is evidence that I run hotels, casinos, whatnot," bank manager says, "What are you doing for lunch?" And we’re away. So, the bigger the sum, the easier the crime. Now, that is of course something that afflicts us through life. But it’s the case here.

AMY GOODMAN: And the critics—I know you don’t read reviews, but the critics who say, "Oh, come on. This is so exaggerated. The legitimate economy does not rest on the illegitimate one, the illegal one."
JOHN LE CARRÉ: Well, alas, those critics don’t read their own newspapers, and nor perhaps have they noticed that a former head of MI5, our security service, who was translated to the House of Lords, was recently denied the senior post on a security committee on account of her connections with oligarchs in the Ukraine. These oligarchs were supposedly connected with criminal conspiracy.
We also have a charming case, which we look back on with embarrassment, where a leading member of the Rothschild family and our present Chancellor of the Exchequer—that’s finance minister—and the éminence grise of the Labour Party at that time, Lord Mandelson, were all found holidaying together off the coast of Corfu, sitting on the boat of a man called Deripaska, who at that time, I believe, was wanted in the United States for—on money laundering charges. So we have a certain amount of evidence before us which you would think would silence critics who say we’re all in perfect shape....

AMY GOODMAN: Can we talk about corporations, because it’s an issue you have taken on in your later books in a huge way? And interestingly, particularly corporate power in Africa—

JOHN LE CARRÉ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: whether we’re talking The Constant Gardener, which took place in Kenya, or we’re talking The Mission Song, which took place in Congo, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

JOHN LE CARRÉ: Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s where I have seen globalization at work on the ground. It’s a pretty ugly sight. It’s a boardroom fantasy. What it actually means is the exploitation of very cheap labor, very often the ecological disaster that comes with it, the creation of mega-cities, the depletion of agrarian cultures and tribal cultures. It’s about—the effect of globalization, again, where I have seen it, has been negative, as far as the local population is concerned. It’s enriched the very few in the country where it takes place. And it has totally dismayed the inhabitants otherwise. So, ask me what corporate power means to me, it means the ability of the individual to sacrifice his own instincts, his own decent instincts, in the name of the corporation, that people will do things to—on behalf of the corporation, to a group of people, which they would never do to their next-door neighbor, so that all the decent humanity seems to be set aside the moment they walk through the corporate doors.
In The Constant Gardener, in particular, it was quite extraordinary to go to Basel, to get among the young pharmaceutical executives in a private way, promise them that I would never tell—divulge their names, and listen to them pouring out their rage against the work they were doing, at the people who were making them do it. But they were still taking the penny, and they were still doing what they were doing. They were still contributing to the invention of diseases. They were fiddling with compounds, turn them into new patents, when they actually had no greater effect than the previous patent. They were joining the lie that every new compound put on the market cost six or eight hundred million dollars, which is pretty good nonsense when you think that many of the main health life-saving drugs that go on the market have been developed, for instance, in your own federal laboratories and then sold by some strange method to the pharmaceutical company, so they didn’t do the hard work themselves very often.
So, when we think, supposedly with pride, that many corporations have the budgets, which are larger—have budgets which are larger than the many small nations, I find that most alarming. And, of course, in our country, we’re up against the fact that huge corporations are effective here, control the super markets, whatever they do, and they pay virtually no tax. We’re back to how they launder their money, or, if it’s a more polite way of saying it, how they apply sophisticated taxation arrangements so that they don’t pay tax...
...The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done—dare I say it—in the name of God. Montesquieu said, "There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of God." And I begin to feel that’s true. The shareholder is the excuse for everything.

Easily Forgotten

Remember that Haiti earthquake disaster?

Nine months after the quake, over a million people are still homeless.

Only 2 percent of the rubble has been removed.

Only 13,000 temporary shelters have been constructed.

Not a single cent of the US aid pledged for rebuilding has arrived in Haiti.(In the last few days the US pledged it would put up 10% of the billion dollars in reconstruction aid promised.)

Only 15 percent of the aid pledged by countries and organizations around the world has reached the country so far.

A million Haitians are slowly dying from starvation, illness, lack of security and neglect. Nine months after the quake.

failure of reformism

The total net household wealth of the top 10 per cent of the population is £853,000, almost 100 times more than the net wealth of the poorest 10 per cent, which is at most £8,800. , while one in five people lived in a household with less than 60 per cent of average income.The report says: “People on lower incomes are more likely to live in over-crowded housing, and those living in social housing, in particular, are more likely to say that their local neighbourhood has problems with crime.” One in ten people lived in polluted and grimy neighbourhoods, with crime, violence and vandalism more likely to affect women with children and many ethnic minority groups.

Equality and Human Rights Commission chairman Trevor Phillips said: "For some, the gateways to opportunity appear permanently closed, no matter how hard they try; while others seems to have been issued with an 'access all areas' pass at birth."

Men and women in the highest socio-economic group can expect to live up to seven years more than those in the lower socio-economic groups. The rich also enjoy significantly better health while they are alive.

Voting in the Toronto Mayor Elections

“Why isn’t anyone in this election talking about children and about how many of them are going to school hungry?” Toronto single mother of four young children Amy O’Neil asks. “I can’t believe this election. What about poverty? What about hunger? What about affordable housing?”

After the all-candidates meeting at the Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre, the 40-year-old unemployed food services manager reveals that since her divorce five years ago her family has been living on money from family and friends, federal and provincial child benefits and food bank hampers.

Voters are hearing nothing about how to help the 75,000 households waiting for affordable housing or the 17,000 children waiting for child care subsidies. There’s barely any mention of the staggering 1.1 million hampers of groceries Toronto food banks handed out in the past year, an unprecedented 14 per cent increase over 2008.

Politicians won't talk about such issues because they don't have the solutions. The truth is that no elected politician can control the market—which operates for the private gain of a tiny number of owners. As long as the market exists we cannot have control of our own lives, run things in our own, and our own communities' interests, because that would threaten the profits of the tiny few. Mayors can't change that. Only we can, by acting together, without leaders, to end the whole profit-driven, market system.

Reflections on Violence

Socialism won’t mean the end of all forms of violence – but nearly all

Violence takes many forms and has a long history. The surpassing of the class, money and profit system worldwide will see the end of most forms of violence.

War
The type of violence most destructive of people and property is of course war. International war between the armed forces of nation states is endemic in capitalism. It arises because of competition for markets, raw materials and trade routes, although other reasons may be given to gain popular support. Civil war – an unfortunate oxymoron – occurs when rival armed forces, employed by and representing the interests of rival groups of capitalists, struggle for power within nation states.

Supporters of capitalism believe that some types of violence are legal and others illegal. If you kill the enemy (people rather like yourself on the ‘other side’) you can be a hero. If you try to solve your money problems by committing robbery with violence you can be sent to prison. The difference between the reasonable use of force (not violence) and its unreasonable use (violence) is disputable and hence a source of income for the legal profession.

Homicide
William Morris, in News from Nowhere, raises the question of homicide in socialism. “Hot blood will err sometimes. A man may strike another, and the stricken strike back again…” Morris believes that the encouragement of remorse, not punishment, is the answer. “If the ill-doer is not sick or mad (in which case he must be restrained till his sickness or madness is cured) it is clear that grief and humiliation must follow the ill-deed…”

Sport is another area is which violence can be a problem. Without going into the pros and cons of blood sports, we may foresee that, without buying and selling, there will be a big drop in sports involving deliberate, as opposed to accidental, violence. Boxing and forms of martial arts, though deplored by some, may still be engaged in by others.

Entertainment
There is a lot of violence, sometimes called ‘gratuitous’, in capitalist-provided entertainment – films, theatre, videos, commercials etc. defenders claim that most of the punters seem to like it. But how far does their appetite grow by what it feeds on? Capitalism is a violent society, so it isn’t surprising that its entertainment is only being ‘realistic’ in reflecting that violence.

Open the pages of any newspaper and you will see much more about murder and mayhem than you usually experience in everyday domestic, street and work life. Reporting and discussing episodes of violence is the meat and drink of both tabloids and broadsheets.

Nature
And then there is the violence of nature. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, droughts, plagues have long been part of life on earth. Capitalism doesn’t do as much as it could to alleviate these problems. The bottom line is too often given priority over human health and welfare.

Violent natural disasters won’t disappear in socialism. But much more will be done to reduce their harmful consequences. More resources will be put into predicting when and where disasters will occur, so that potential victims can be moved to safety or be prepared. People won’t be forced to live in disaster-prone areas by lack of alternatives. And those deprived of sustenance, shelter or clothing will get immediate help not dependent on money raised by charities or other sources.
STAN PARKER

getting poorer

"Millions of Americans at all income levels moved to the suburbs looking for better schools, better jobs, affordable housing, and a sense of security, but in recent years, as incomes have fallen, people had a harder and harder time making ends meet," said Scott Allard, a University of Chicago professor "As a result, Americans who never imagined becoming poor are now asking for assistance, and many are not getting the help they need."

Cities still have higher poverty rates -- about 19.5 percent, compared with 10.4 percent in the suburbs. But the gap has been steadily narrowing. The study of census data finds that since 2000, the number of poor people in the suburbs jumped by 37.4 percent to 13.7 million. The growth rate of suburban poverty is more than double that of cities and higher than the national rate of 26.5 percent.

Poor people's requests to nonprofit groups for help buying food, paying bills and making housing payments generally jumped 30 percent between 2008 and 2009. About 3 out of 4 nonprofit groups reported more requests from people who had never sought help before.

greenwashing

Climate Change Social Change is an Australian-based "eco-socialist" blog that expresses some of the same ideas of the WSM case, this blog entry in particular.

The September 5 earthquake that hit the city of Christchurch, New Zealand caused vast damage and up to half the buildings in the region may need repairing. A comment a local resident made to reporters half jokingly said the good news was that the rebuilding effort would help pull New Zealand out of recession.

Without realising, he pointed to a key feature of the present economic system. Capitalism thrives on crisis and destruction. Half of Christchurch is wrecked, but that translates into more jobs, more economic activity and, most of all, more growth.The point is that capitalist growth does not have to serve any social need or useful purpose. Capital must expand. Profits must rise. That’s all that matters.

And if the growth machine falters, it’s thrown into crisis — a recession. Capitalism’s growth drive is what makes it so radically unsustainable. To survive, it needs ever-higher resource use. It needs an obedient workforce, on the lowest wages it can get away with. And it needs those same workers to be high consumers. It has to convince us to buy more and more stuff. A healthy, expanding capitalist system is unhealthy for people and the planet.

The growth economy is also a waste economy: it has to treat the Earth as a giant trash can. Just one example: a study by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation estimated there was about six times more plastic waste, by mass, in the Pacific Ocean than zooplankton. A floating rubbish heap, roughly twice the size of Texas, spans an area of the north Pacific.

It’s not that most people don’t care. They do. Concern about these issues has probably never been higher. But corporate interests exploit and distort this concern. They try to convince us we can consume our way to a sustainable world. Sustainability is repackaged and sold back to us as merchandise. Being “green” is a good marketing strategy.

Green capitalism allows industry to give the impression it is changing, even as it continues with business as usual. At the same time, a relentless cultural message has been hammered home, telling us high individual consumption is the real problem. So we are left with two ideas, which sum up the philosophy of green capitalism. Bad consumer choices are supposed to be the source of the crisis, while good consumer choices are said to be the path to salvation.

The idea that consumers cause environmental problems obscures the fact that production is dominated by huge corporations. They are the ones pushing unsustainable growth. Collectively, they spend billions on advertising to create new consumer “needs”. They are the vested interests standing in the way of real sustainable change. The free market won’t allow us to buy the things we really need. We need solar thermal power stations and wind farms. We need a redesign of our entire food system. But the system will not deliver these things in the short time we have left. And capitalism doesn’t allow most of the world’s people to fulfil their basic needs at all. It excludes them. It leaves 1 billion people without enough food simply because it’s not profitable to have them eat.

SOYMB can only say, well put.

Another "eco-socialist" blog echoes the above. Climate and Capitalism is an online journal. The idea that consumers control corporate behaviour is ideology, not fact. Immensely wealthy corporations decide what to produce and how to produce it. They spend billions to promote specific products and to protect their power. They allow us to choose – but only among the narrow range of options that they believe will be profitable.

In the Gulf, BP did what every capitalist corporation does – it kept costs down to keep profits up. Its irresponsible actions were bound to cause a disaster eventually – but if the company had lucked out this time, if the explosion hadn’t happened, BP’s executives and shareholders would have been rewarded for producing offshore oil more cheaply than more cautious competitors. That’s the way capitalism works. The immediate cause of this particular disaster was BP’s greed for short-term profits. The long-term cause, of this and many other disasters, is an irrational grow-or-die economic system that is totally dependent on oil, on “the stuff without which nothing else happens.” A system in which private profit always takes precedence over the environment and human lives. The journalists, pale greens and others who blame individual consumers are trivializing the problem and distracting attention from the social roots of environmental destruction. No matter how sincere they may be, they are making it harder to achieve real solutions.

hidden hunger

While the idea of food parcels has echoes of Dickensian London or a famine-struck corner of the developing world, they are becoming more common in 21st Century Britain. The Trussell Trust charity, which operates dozens of foodbanks across the country, says it is serving Britain's "hidden hungry". It mainly helps people who are not receiving benefits they would normally be entitled to, but also sees many families who fall into financial difficulty after the main breadwinner loses work.

Chris Mould, executive director of the Trussell Trust, says one reason for people running out of food is because many have their benefits suspended while they are being re-assessed.
"The Department for Work and Pensions will say people's benefits are not stopped while a re-assessment is taking place. That is not true. Our foodbanks are increasingly helping people who are having their benefits stopped during reassessment.The DWP might say this only happens for three weeks or so, and what's the problem? But if you're living week to week then that's a long gap to cover when you're trying to feed yourself and a family."

Of the 41,000 people fed by foodbanks last year, he says 35-40% had problems with benefits. Last year's figures sees a sharp increase on the 26,000 people fed during the financial year 2008/09, and the charity has just opened its 71st UK foodbank, up from 44 last year. Some 378 tonnes of food were collected by the foodbank network in 2009/10. Some 60,000 people are predicted to be fed nationwide in 2010/11, with the Trust aiming to have 86 foodbanks open by end of March 2011.

A saturday afternoon invitation

THE YOM KIPPUR WAR

This contemporary analysis of the Yom Kippur war, which stated on this day in 1973, is taken from The Western Socialist No. 6 - 1973..

There are several ways of looking at a problem, depending upon one's point of view. Take an example such as the latest Arab-Israeli War, the so called Yom Kippur War. The case for the Arabs rests upon their assertion that Israel is a nation of Europeans and Americans that has taken possession of Arab territories in the Middle East and has dispossessed and driven Arabs from their former homes. Further, that the present nation of Israel should be abolished and a new, secular state instituted that would give equal authority to all resident peoples regardless of religion. At least that is their story.

The Israelis and all who support them, on the other hand, argue that the Jewish people have a right to exist as a nation; that their homeland rightfully must be located in what is called the Holy Land; and that the State of Israel must continue to exist. They insist that this is all they ask and that if their borders have expanded beyond the original ones of 1948 this is not because of imperialist activity on their part but because of Arab defeats in the previous wars against them and the need for Israel to maintain buffer territories against further Arab aggression. And that is their story.

There are, to be sure, variations on this general theme. Those who see the Arab world - at least that part of it which proclaims itself socialist - as a Third World progressive force against the capitalist west and the so-called communist bloc in the east are able to see through Israeli hypocrisy and correctly view it as a puppet of U.S. Imperialism. The friends of Israel, on the other hand, and there are many professed socialists among these, too, see the Arab nations as mere puppets of the Soviet Union and a force for reaction, rather than progress.

The main problem with most of the analysts is that they fail to see the entire picture because they are either ignorant of the fact that society is divided into rival economic classes or, knowing it, fail to apply such knowledge in this instance. There is no homogeneous Israeli people with common interests. Nor is there an Arab people in that sense. The Israelis are divided on the basis of a tiny owning class and a vast class of propertyless wage slaves and there is not one single nation in the Arab bloc - nor any place else in the world - where the same divislon does not exist, In the Arab world there are even conflicts among rival national ruling classes that pit them against one another in open warfare.

True, in a large sense, all of the nations of the Middle East are puppets of one or the other of the super powers desprte the clout same of them carry because of their oil deposits. After three earlier wars and now this latest one, it should be apparent that neither Israel nor any of the Arab nations 'can afford to carry on late 20th Century warfare without continual supply from the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R. And it is equally apparent that neither the U.S.A. nor the U.S.S.R. is ready to relinquish control of the strings. But this in no way justifies the argument that the workers in the Middle East, or any place else in the world, have any real stake in saving Israel from the Arab nations are saving any of the Arab nations from Israel.

For about three quarters of a century the Zionist movement has pleaded the case for a Jewish Homeland as the answer to the problems of Jewish working people everywhere. After 25 years of this Homeland, those who have settled there have been subjected to continuous warfare, violent "incidents," and continuing poverty - unless they happen to have friendly and wealthy relatives. Arab nationalists have given and still give out the same nonsense to their working people. The World Socialist Movement has but one answer:

Workers of the world unite far world socialism. You have a world to gain.