One of the more memorable jokes in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the one about the supercomputer which, on being asked the meaning of life, supplied the answer ‘42’. One of capitalism’s most profound illogicalities is its constant need to render unquantifiable things – like knowledge – in monetary terms so that its beancounters can do their sums properly. It’s the same joke, only accountants don’t get the laughs. NASA is pulling out of its agreement with the European Space Agency over the planned ExoMars Rover programme, citing lack of funds. It has already ceased supplying...
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What started as a new political revolution in Zambia has proved to be a mere political hullabaloo. There can be nothing new under capitalism – except half meal political and economic reforms that in all respects only help to undermine working-class political and class solidarity. In every part of the world the workers have the class franchise to elect a political party into power. It is the inability by the workers to use their class franchise to utilise their political consciousness as a weapon for socialism. The election of Michael Sata of the Peoples Front (PF) as President is...
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Kenya’s public hospitals face a potentially devastating health worker shortage after the government fired 25,000 striking nurses. Luke K’Odambo, chairman of the National Nurses Association of Kenya, said that the sacking did ”not make sense in any way”, and that it was not possible to dismiss such a large part of the workforce. “We are ignoring the sacking threat.” Alex Orina, spokesman of the 40,000-strong Kenya Health Professionals Society, said. ”These are cat-and-mouse games, you cannot sack an entire workforce. It is a ploy to get us to rush back to work, but our strike continues until our demands are met,” ....
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Young workers see pay shrink in United States. The Economic Policy Institute think tank found that the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage for male college graduates aged 23 to 29 dropped 11% over the past decade to $21.68 in 2011. For female college graduates of the same age, the average wage is down 7.6% to $18.80. For the entire working population, average hourly wages have risen modestly over the past 10 years. But that is partly because many of the lowest-paid workers have lost their jobs and are no longer included in the average.”People who normally make below-average wages are...
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Recently, the New York Times praised Chelsea Clinton’s current successes and commitment to public service. Ms. Clinton is the daughter of current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton. The Times reported Ms. Clinton is making the sacrifice of leading us because she feels a responsibility to serve the public good and “hopes to make a positive, productive contribution.” Ms. Clinton’s newsworthy steps toward public service, noted by the NYT, include: meeting people such as Elton John and Richard Gere, taking a public role with her father’s Clinton Global Initiative, presenting an award to her...
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The World Socialist Party is frequently lambasted for its opposition to reformism. The workers clamor for something concrete now, it is claimed , not abstract socialist principles. They demand immediate improvements that can be obtained by campaigns for legislation it is argued. The World Socialist Party case that although some reforms may be of material benefit to the working class, advocating party policy to struggle for particular reforms hinders the struggle for socialism and diverts our energies into what often results in dead-ends. We found this article by Stephanie Luce on the Labor Notes website particularly relevant in that it offers some...
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Bankers are unpopular. Not the ordinary bank teller or the back-up IT staff, but the directors and top managers who award themselves huge salaries and big bonuses. They are so unpopular, in fact, that the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, Stephen Hester, has been forced to give up a bonus of nearly £1m while his predecessor, Sir Fred Goodwin, has been stripped of his knighthood. The banks defend themselves by arguing that they bring “wealth” into Britain, and pay a considerable amount of tax on it. Some even describe themselves as “wealth creators”. This is absurd. What...
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In 2008 we commented on the Nepali Maoist Party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, rise to state power and their simultaneous capitulation to any sort of pretense of being socialists. Like the “comrade” in this cartoon, it turns out they would much rather break-unions and shake down their members for money in order for their leader, Prachanda, to live in a home in Kathmandu’s exclusive Lazimpat befitting a “man of Prachanda’s stature” than carry the manure for the revolution. Yeah, not surprising at all for us. Maoism, as a form of Leninism, derives from the theories of Social-Democracy not marxism. In social-democracy,...
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"This is not to say that Marx's ideas can't be measured against experience. His predictions need to be compared with the history of capitalism over the last 200 years. From this perspective, Marx's ideas come off very well, as the main tendencies he predicted for capitalism – towards the supplanting of human labour by machinery, the concentration and centralisation of capital, the spread of wage labour, the tendency towards widescale unemployment, and above all the recurrence of periods of depression – have been realised. In fact, I would say that Marx's theory of the tendency of the rate of...
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Money and power bring privileges of many kinds. Not just command over goods and services, labor and other resources, but also social deference and very often immunity to legal penalties. As they say, there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. Let’s look at a few examples. Fraud is a good place to start. Rewarding business acumen Before going into politics in 2010, Rick Scott was CEO of the Hospital Corporation of America. In this capacity, he masterminded schemes to defraud Medicare of an estimated $7 billion. Without admitting guilt, he settled all claims against...
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