Refugees - sharing the burden?

END CAPITALISM

Our media spreads poison about refugees and other migrants, day after day, year after year. “We” have a refugee crisis.

But the world's wealthiest nations have been accused by Amnesty International of leaving poorer countries to bear the brunt of global refugee crisis.

Just ten countries - which account for just 2.5 percent of the global economy - are hosting more than half the world's refugees, the human rights group said. 56 percent of the world's 21 million refugees are being hosted in countries which are all in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

Jordan, which has taken in more than 2.7 million people, was named as the top refugee hosting country, followed by Turkey, over 2.5 million; Pakistan, 1.6 million; and Lebanon, more than 1.5 million. The other top six nations were Iran, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad.

Amnesty said many of the world's wealthiest nations "host the fewest and do the least". Britain, for example, has taken in fewer than 8,000 Syrians since 2011, while Jordan - with a population almost 10 times smaller than Britain and just 1.2 percent of its GDP - hosts more than 655,000 refugees from its war-torn neighbor. It singled out Canada, which has resettled some 30,000 Syrian refugees in the past year, as a wealthy country doing its part.

"It is not simply a matter of sending aid money. Rich countries cannot pay to keep people 'over there'," Amnesty said.

Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary-general, explained, "It is time for leaders to enter into a serious, constructive debate about how our societies are going to help people forced to leave their homes by war and persecution. They need to explain why the world can bail out banks, develop new technologies and fight wars, but cannot find safe homes for 21 million refugees, just 0.3 percent of the world's population."

Kathleen Newland, cofounder of the Migration Policy Institute, said unless more countries step up their response, the refugees will continue to flee using dangerous routes, "I think we'll see more people trying to move through clandestine channels using smugglers, putting themselves in great danger to try to reach a place where they can restart their lives," she told Al Jazeera. "The more governments try to close off those routes, the more dangerous the alternatives become."

The worst off of the worst off

Nearly a fifth of children in developing countries are living in extreme poverty, the World Bank and the UN's children's agency say. The children - nearly 385m in total - were in households making $1.90 (£1.45) a day or less, the report said. They include half the children in sub-Saharan Africa and more than a third of those in South Asia.

Anthony Lake of Unicef said, "They are the worst off of the worst off and the youngest children are the worst off of all, because the deprivations they suffer affect the development of their bodies and their minds."

Why money? (animation)

WE MUST REFORM THE HOUSE OF LORDS (weekly poem)

WE MUST REFORM THE HOUSE OF LORDS

The abolition of the House of Lords has been discussed for decades.

We must reform the House of Lords,

And thus promote ‘democracy’;

Bring in the unhygienic hordes,

But leave the old Theocracy! (1)

Let’s multiply its membership,

And double it to make it huge;

So all can have acquaintanceship,

With the odd friendly party stooge.

One doesn’t need some private means,

As one will get a fair day’s pay;

A fee for each time it convenes,

Around three-hundred quid a day! (2)

Let’s all pretend the Lords are there,

To keep the Lower House in check;

To keep its legislation fair,

And not just there to rubberneck.

Let’s make these changes to show we’ve,

Abolished privilege and class;

Reforms which when completed leave,

An even bigger, useless, farce!

(1) There are 26 Bishops in the House of Lords.

(2) Members of the House of Lords can claim an attendance fee

of £300 per day—even if they only attend for 45 minutes or so.

© Richard Layton 

Robot Truck-Drivers

Robots could replace 1.7 million American truck-drivers in the next decade

“We are going to see a wave and an acceleration in automation, and it will affect job markets,” said Jerry Kaplan, a Stanford lecturer and the author of “Humans Need Not Apply” and “Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know,” which chronicle the effect of robotics on labor. Robots’ march into vehicles, factories, stores and offices could also profoundly deepen inequality. Research has shown that artificial intelligence helps erase jobs that require basic skills and creates more roles for highly educated people.

“Automation tends to replace low-wage jobs with high-wage jobs,” said James Bessen, a lecturer at the Boston University School of Law who researches the effect of innovation on labor. “The people whose skills become obsolete are low-wage workers, and to the extent that it’s difficult for them to acquire new skills, it affects inequality.”

Trucking will probably be the first type of driving to be fully automated — meaning there will be no one at the wheel. One reason is that long-haul big rigs spend most of their time on highways, which are the easiest roads to navigate without human intervention. But there’s also a sweeter financial incentive for automating trucks. Trucking is a $700 billion industry, in which a third of costs are spent on compensating drivers.

“If you can get rid of the drivers, those people are out of jobs, but the cost of moving all those goods goes down significantly,” Kaplan said.

Several states are already laying the groundwork for a future with fewer truckers. In September, the Michigan state Senate approved a law allowing trucks to drive autonomously in “platoons,” in which two or more big rigs drive together and synchronize their movements. That bill follows laws in California, Florida and Utah that set regulations for testing truck platoons. Wirelessly connected trucks made their European debut in April, when trucks from six major carmakers successfully drove in platoons through Sweden, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Olympic Costs

The 2020 Tokyo Games were initially costed at $7.3 billion, but recent estimates suggest the final sum could exceed $30 billion.

A non-tech approach to fighting world hunger

                                                   

The intention to ‘fight world hunger’ by beefing up our ‘biotech, genetic, and chemical approaches’ to increasing crop yield sounds well-meaning; even noble: Close to one billion people (1) around the world suffer from this life-sapping, life-threatening predicament, and the situation is unlikely to improve; what with population growth, the rapid depletion of resources, global warming and a host of other Armageddon-beckoning factors. Hence, the urge to uncover a technological fix is completely understandable.

Understandable, but completely misguided.  Not only is such an approach unlikely to resolve the issue; it may even make matters worse. This may seem an unbefitting assertion to make in the context of this ‘crop yield idea jam’, and more than likely rules me out as a recipient of the prize money! But that really is neither here nor there. The issues are far more important than filthy lucre. Although ‘filthy lucre’, ironically enough, is really at the heart of the problem, as I shall explain in due course.

What I wish to propose therefore is not just ‘outside the box’ but also a considerable distance from the box. Nevertheless, I would ask your indulgence because I believe that what I’m about to suggest addresses the problem of world hunger in the only realistic way available to humankind. I would also ask you to suspend judgment in regard to some of the terms I may employ as the meaning I have in mind for them may possibly differ radically from the meaning you attach to them; terms like ‘capitalism’ and ‘communism’.

I should like to submit for your consideration the following propositions:

1.  World hunger is entirely attributable to the socioeconomic arrangements that obtain in every part of the world today

2.  We already possess the potential to feed every man, woman and child in the world today.

3.   Focussing exclusively on technological solutions to the problem of world hunger at best is likely to have very limited impact; at worst may obfuscate the issue and set in train a number of counterproductive trends.

4.  The solution to the problem of world hunger (and indeed a host of other interlinking problems) is the creation of a worldwide system in which the means of production are commonly owned and all goods and services are freely available. This is the solution that I should like to draw the attention of everyone participating in this ‘jam’.

CLICK READ MORE 

The Industrial-Military Complex

Since taking office in 2009, Obama has made 42 arms deals with Saudi Arabia, worth a staggering $115 billion.

The defense industry sponsors “think tanks” that obligingly issue alarming reports warning of increasing peril everywhere. Many are run by former diplomats or military commanders and are aimed at persuading Americans and foreign governments to spend more billions of dollars on weaponry.

“We must respond to the rise of ISIS terrorism, Russian aggression on NATO’s doorstep, provocative moves by Iran and North Korea, and an increasingly powerful China,” the Aerospace Industry Association recently declared.

The misnamed United States Institute for Peace, for example, is run by Stephen Hadley, a former national security adviser who also earns hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for his service on the board of Raytheon, a leading arms maker. Another arms maker, Lockheed Martin, which has just sold Poland an air-to-surface missile system and wants to sell more, has given the institute $1 million. It’s been a good investment. Hadley has urged that the United States “raise the cost for what Russia is doing in Ukraine” because “even President [Vladimir] Putin is sensitive to body bags.” The Institute of Peace wants European countries to double their military spending and also favors sending more weapons into the Ukraine powder keg.

The US Committee on NATO was founded by a former Lockheed executive and pushed successfully to expand the NATO alliance onto Russia’s doorstep. That sharply increased tension in Europe, which produces a handsome profit for the arms industry.

Another influential think tank, the Atlantic Council, is funded by Raytheon and Lockheed. It faithfully produces articles with headlines like “Why Peace is Impossible With Putin,” and urges the United States and European countries to “commit to greater defense spending” and confront “a revanchist Russia.”

Critics of wasteful military spending have bitterly denounced the trillion-dollar project to produce a new fighter jet, the F-35, arguing that it is already obsolete in the age of drone warfare. Nonsense, replied the director of the Lexington Institute. In a recent article he called the F-35 “a revolutionary platform” with “capabilities that far exceed any current Western fighter.” Left unspoken was the fact that the Lexington Institute is another front for the arms industry, supported by contributions from Lockheed — the manufacturer of the F-35 — and from Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and other “defense” contractors.

Think tanks are only part of the matrix that promotes the American weapons industry. The roughly 50 companies that make up the industry shower members of Congress with millions of dollars in campaign contributions. They also parcel out contracts across the country, in order to employ people in as many congressional districts as possible. Components for the F-35, for example, are being made in 46 states. This practice is fiendishly effective in assuring that members of Congress continue to support new weapons projects, no matter how ill conceived.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/09/14/frustrating-war-lobby/QfNg1ugyyEL4dMmkedzzDO/story.html

Children and mental illness

Almost a quarter of a million children and young people are receiving help from NHS mental health services for problems such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders, figures show. Children’s services are struggling to cope with demand. Research shows 28% of children referred for support in England – including some who had attempted suicide – received no help in 2015. 

11,849 boys and girls aged five and under, and 53,659 aged between six and 10. Just over 100,000 patients were 11 to 15, and 69,505 were 16 to 18.

Experts blame growing pressures on the young, including the need to excel academically, look good and be popular, as well as poverty and family breakdown for the growing burden of mental illness in school-age children and young adults. An NHS inquiry found last week that self-harm and post-traumatic stress disorder had risen sharply in young women aged 16 to 24 in recent years.

The Children's Society suggests that an estimated 2.4 million children in England and Wales live in households with problem debt. They were at greater risk of having poor mental health than those in debt-free homes, the charity said.

Children's mental health has hit crisis point.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/03/quarter-of-a-million-children-receiving-mental-health-care-in-england

The Pension Rip-off

The reason younger workers are poorer is the stripping away of pension wealth. Business Insider reported in August, every younger private-sector worker today is earning on average £6,329 less per year than older workers with Defined Benefit (DB) pension schemes.

DB pension schemes are nearly extinct, thanks to a little-noticed law passed by prime minister Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in 1986. The law, intended to create a standard legal framework for private pensions, has been used by companies to ditch Defined Benefit schemes and replace them with private "Defined Contribution" (DC) plans, which are a ripoff by comparison. Under DB schemes, workers receive cash pension benefits equivalent to 20% of their salaries. Under DC schemes, they get less than 5%, according to the ONS. In the 1960s, 40% of workers were in DB schemes. Today less than 10% are.

To put that in terms of money, older DB workers today receive about £7,389 per year in pension compensation but younger DC workers get only £1,071 on average. That's a pay cut of £6,318 per year.

Think about your salary. Now add £6,318.

That is how much cash you're missing every year simply because you entered the workforce after 1986.

In total, British workers lose a total of £36 billion a year because they have been barred from DB schemes.

‘Waste not and want not’.

Despite India producing sufficient food to feed its population, it is unable to provide access to food to a large number of people. India is home to the largest under-nourished and hungry population in the world. Its gross domestic product has increased 4.5 times and per capita consumption has increased threefold. Similarly, food grain production has nearly doubled. However, despite the phenomenal industrial and economic growth and while India produces sufficient food to feed its population, the nation is unable to provide access to food to a large number of people, especially women and children.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in a 2015 report said 194.6 million people in India are under-nourished.  By this measure, India accounts for a quarter of undernourished population in the world.

Also, 51 per cent of women between 15 years and 59 years are anaemic and 44 per cent of children under five are under-weight. Malnourished children have higher risk of death from common childhood illnesses like diarrohea, pneumonia, and malaria. Fifteen per cent of its population is under-nourished;; 30 per cent of children under five are under-weight;  58 per cent of children stunted before they turn two; one in four children malnourished; 3,000 children in India die every day from poor diet-related illness; twenty-four per cent of under-five deaths in India; 30 per cent of neo-natal deaths in India.

The Global Hunger Index 2014 ranks India at 55 out of 76 countries on the basis of three leading indicators — prevalence of under-weight children under five years, under-five child mortality rate, and the proportion of undernourished in the population.

 On food wastage, despite being a food surplus country, food is wasted. It is estimated that nearly 40 per cent of the fruits and vegetables and 20 per cent of the food grains that are produced, are lost due to inefficient supply chain management. Food grains do not reach the consumer market. A report revealed that each year, wheat equivalent to Australia’s annual grain production is wasted in India. 67 million tonnes of food every year is wasted. That is more than the national output of countries such as Britain and, is possibly, enough food for Bihar, which is one of India’s larger States.

One million tonnes of onions vanish on their way from farms to markets, as do 2.2 million tonnes of tomatoes. Overall, five million eggs crack or go bad due to lack of cold storage. A report published in a leading national daily of Punjab sometime back said, “Over 95,000 bags of rotten wheat lying in the storehouse of the Haryana State Warehousing Corporation (HSWC) at Bani village will fetch the corporation much less than one rupee per kg. The highest bid received by the corporation for the disposal of the decayed wheat is 62 paise per kg.”

As many as 1,70,000 bags of wheat, belonging to the HSWC, was submerged in 10 ft to 12 ft of water when floodwaters from the Ghaggar entered Bani village. The authorities claimed that, depending on the percentage of sound grain, the wheat would be classified as “sound, feed-one, feed-two, feed-three, industrial, manure and dumping”. The Food Corporation of India’s norms state that wheat with less than two per cent damage is  “sound”. The lot with 85 per cent to 90 per cent sound grain is categorised as feed-one, and that with 70 per cent to 85 per cent sound grain as feed-two. Both are used as animal feed. Category feed-three with 55 to 70 per cent sound grain, is used for poultry, that with 30 per cent to 55 per cent sound grain, to make starch, with 10 per cent to 30 per cent sound grain, for manure. That with less than 10 per cent sound grain, is placed in the ‘dumping’ category. After sorting the rotten wheat, the authorities found that 95,340 bags (4,767 tonnes) out of a total 1,70,000 were of ‘dumping’ category, for which the highest bid received by them was 0.62 paisa per kg. Only 2,280 bags were found of ‘feed one’ quality, for which the highest bid was Rs 940 per quintal. The 4,920 bags with more than 60 per cent damage to the grain attracted a maximum bid of Rs 216 per quintal.

 It is a sad truth that the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India’s report on food grain management in the country says that out of 29 States and 7 Union Territories, eight have storage capacities of 120 days. Most States like Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Assam do not have the capacity to handle stocks for more than 13-75 days. Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Assam cannot even handle their stocks for a month.

If you seek a society with a rational and egalitarian food policy contact:

The World Socialist Party (India): 257 Baghajatin ‘E’ Block (East), Kolkata – 700086,

Tel: 2425-0208,

E-mail: wspindia@hotmail.com

Website: http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org/

Jharkhand Police Kill Five

Jharkhand Police opened fire on protesting villagers against the forcible land acquisition for a thermal power plant. The firing has left five people dead, 12 critically injured and nearly 50 injured. There is a curfew in the area, outsiders can’t go and many missing are yet to be traced.

The protests against the NTPC plant have been going on since 2010, when the project was announced. NTPC till date has forcibly and fraudulently acquired 8,056 acres of land. However, many issues even on the acquired land remains to be resolved, including higher compensation, employment and so on. Without meeting any of the promises and resolving the outstanding issues, attempts continue to be made to forcibly acquire more land, completely violating many provisions of the Land Act 2013. Protests have been ongoing at the site and in last ten days thousands from different villages of the Barkagaon had been staging Kafan (shroud) satyagrah. Government rather than trying to resolve the situation tried to arrest one of the leaders and after resistance from the villagers resorted to police firing leading to death of five people.

The National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) supports the demand of the people asserting their rights over their land, water, forests and minerals and stand in solidarity with their struggle.

If you think people should share in the common ownership the means of production and all the natural resources, then contact:

The World Socialist Party (India): 257 Baghajatin ‘E’ Block (East), Kolkata – 700086,

Tel: 2425-0208,

E-mail: wspindia@hotmail.com

Website: http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org/

One People, One Planet, One Future

“Falsehood is a recognised and extremely useful weapon in warfare, and every country uses it quite deliberately to deceive its own people, to attract neutrals, and to mislead the enemy…the fraud, hypocrisy, and humbug on which all war rests, and the blatant and vulgar devices which have been used for so long to prevent the poor ignorant people from realising the true meaning of war.” Arthur Ponsonby, 1928.

Facts must be distorted, relevant circumstances concealed, and a picture presented which by its crude colouring will persuade the ignorant people that their Government is blameless, their cause is righteous, and the indisputable wickedness of the enemy has been proved beyond question. Has any country – in modern times ever gone to war for other than noble reasons? As a nation consists of millions of people and the absurd analogy of an individual criminal and a nation may become apparent even to moderately intelligent people, it is necessary to detach an individual on whom may be concentrated all the vitriol and venom of an innocent people who are only defending themselves from ‘unprovoked aggression’. Naturally, the country’s leader is chosen as that individual. Prominent people of repute, who would have shrunk from condemning their bitterest personal enemy on the evidence, or rather lack of evidence, they had before them, do not hesitate to lead the way in charging a whole nation with every conceivable atrocity and crime. For every one person who noticed the denial, there are a thousand who only heard the lie. The most upright men honestly believe that there is no depth of duplicity to which they may legitimately stoop. They have got to do it. In war-time, failure to lie is negligence, the doubting of a lie a misdemeanor, the declaration of the truth a crime. If the truth were told from the outset, there would be no reason and no will for war.

Wars are always profitable for a few. General Smedley Butler, twice awarded the Medal of Honor, said: War is a racket.

 Wars will persist as long as some people see them as a business opportunity.  In capitalism, the profit motive is amoral; greed is good, even when it feeds war. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is willing to play along.  It always sees “vulnerabilities” and always wants more money. The business aspect of this is selling the idea the U.S. Army isn’t prepared and therefore needs yet another new generation of expensive high-tech weaponry. It’s like convincing high-end consumers their three-year-old Audi or Lexus is obsolete so they must buy the latest model else lose face. The Pentagon mantra is always for more and better, which often turns out to be for less and much more expensive.  

It’s a version of planned or artificial obsolescence. Consider the Air Force.  It could easily defeat its enemies with updated versions of A-10s, F-15s, and F-16s, but instead, the Pentagon plans to spend as much as $1.4 trillion on the shiny new and under-performing F-35. The Army has an enormous surplus of tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, but the call goes forth for a “new generation.” No other navy comes close to the U.S. Navy, yet the call goes out for a new generation of ships.

The economic processes of capitalism lead to war. The political processes of capitalism, based upon its national and territorially structured State, cannot create peace. The fight to control the oil-producing  regions of the world, by the various countries is but a further indication of the impossibility of peace under capitalism.

War in terms of the slaughter of human beings, of military personnel and civilians, in the destruction of property and wealth and in the dislocation of the lives of tens of millions of peoples, is impossible to calculate now. Science is organized and chained to the war machine, with the result that the most devastating weapons of destruction are devised to slaughter human beings. The good that science can do to elevate the living standards of a whole world is subjected to the control of the profit-greedy capitalist class. Gigantic weapons of destruction are part of the war machinery of all countries. They reveal how capitalism devours the people during war just as it devours them in peacetime through poverty and starvation. Millions die a slow death in peacetime as a result of this system. Millions die quicker in wartime from much more direct means. But the net result is the same.

One can see that there is no real hope for future peace except through the abolition of capitalism which is the evil breeder of militarism and war. Is peace worth struggling for? If you think so, then the Socialist Party needs you. It needs volunteers for the class war and world revolution. The sole hope for humanity, the hope of civilisation, lies in the establishment of a socialist society of production for use, of genuine freedom and equality.

Re-writing history

Remember the Alamo? 

Children are taught never to forget the Alamo and can readily account for the bold deeds of its champions, most notably Jim Bowie, Davey Crocket and Colonel Travis who defiantly defended the Alamo, actually a church, against the uncivilised Mexicans. Just who these gallant defenders really were and what was at stake is something Texan kids will never have the fortune to find out from their brow-beating school masters.

Davy Crockett, ethnic cleanser and slave owner. Jim Bowie, land speculator, slave owner and slave trader.  And what were our heroes doing in the Alamo mission in the first place?

In 1835, there were about twenty thousand Americans and four thousand slaves living in the Mexican state of Texas, most of the slaves engaged in making their owners wealthier by the cultivation of cotton. In December of 1835, the Mexican government effectively banned slavery in Texas. Always keen to defend freedom and liberty, the American settlers attempted to secede and steal Texas from Mexico in order to maintain slavery and the wealth and power they derived from it. Mexican Santa Anna arrived with troops and laid siege to the Alamo, which the slave-owners had seized. At the end of a thirteen day siege, all the inhabitants of the Alamo, with the exception of women, children, and slaves, were dead.

The siege of the Alamo is then re-invented, the truth turned upside down, becoming yet another of the great lies of American “history”, spread through a host of movies, television programs, books and articles.”

What is then hidden from Texas history is the extermination of the Lipan Apaches, Aranamas, Karankawas, Tonkawas, Kohanis, Cocos, Bidais, Nacisis, Koasatis, Eyeishes, Nabedachies, Nacogdoches, Kichais, Hainais, Anadarkos, Yowanes, Tawakonis, Wacos, Caddos, Kickapoos, Kiowas, Kiowa Apaches, Tawehashes, Comanches, and more. All these Indian peoples were wiped from the face of the earth forever after Texas won its ”freedom”.

Lincoln revisited

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.” so said Abraham Lincoln

The real reasons for the slaughter of more than six hundred thousand ordinary Americans on both sides were, in fact, just the same two old reasons for each and every war from the dawn of time until today: the insatiable greed of the ruling class for ever more wealth and power. The northern ruling class, represented by Lincoln, drooling at the prospect of the cash to be made in the kind of large-scale industrialization occurring in Britain, wanted economic expansion, free land, free labour, a "free" market surrounded by high tariffs to protect their own operations and a central bank which would operate strictly in their interests: a nineteenth century New World Order, in fact. The southern ruling class, sitting on their porches sipping their mint juleps as generations of slaves toiled and died to make them ever richer, simply wanted to maintain the status quo.

The "emancipation" of the slaves was a tactic which had the effect of destroying the power base which the southern ruling class derived from slavery and "freeing" millions of slaves who then became available as a cheap labour for northern factories and mills.

Just as George “all men are created equal” Washington owned slave plantations and didn’t give a give a bollocks for the true conception of freedom, and just like Davey Crocket and Jim Bowie, the legends of the Alamo, who profited from slavery and in fact died defending their right to continue profiting from that noxious trade, so too with Abe Lincoln:

 He opposed integration and intermarriage, did not think that freed slaves should be given full legal and voting rights, and forcefully advocated both before and during the Civil War that all blacks should be deported to Africa or the West Indies.

Lincoln’s armies committed countless war crimes and atrocities, burning and looting civilian property, destroying entire cities and laying waste vast areas of countryside. Lincoln imposed a fascist regime within the Union States, making a farce of the Constitution. His regime arrested thousands of critics of his war policies, including dozens of newspaper editors and publishers. Under Lincoln, the writ of habeas corpus, a fundamental characteristic of a democratic society, was revoked, and mail and press censorship was imposed.

Only after the Confederate states refused Lincoln’s offer to leave the slaves in chains if they stopped fighting did he issue the Emancipation Proclamation which purported to free slaves in states not under Union control. Slaves in states controlled by Lincoln remained in slavery.”’

'I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favour of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favour of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favour of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.' Lincoln said in the fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858 

'My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the coloured race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.' from a letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862. Also readable here.

Within one month of writing this letter, Lincoln issued his first Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that at the beginning of 1863 he would use his war powers to free all slaves in states still in rebellion (as they came under Union control). 

Significantly, one year later, in a letter  to James C. Conkling of August 26, 1863, Lincoln would write:

'I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us our most important successes believe the emancipation policy and the use of the colored troops constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the Rebellion, and that at least one of these important successes could not have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black soldiers….I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union.

 I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do any thing for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.'

With emancipation, the lot of the freed slave did not fair much better. They became not only cannon fodder for the warring capitalists the moment their chains were removed and lowest of the wage slaves in the American industrial proletariat and to an extent still are, often to be used as a bargaining chip by employers during industrial unrest to keep wages low and still denied many of the rights enjoyed by whites and which sparked the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.

In April, 1865, during his second term as president, Lincoln gave a speech supporting a form of limited suffrage, for those he described as the more "intelligent" blacks and those blacks who had rendered special services to the nation. One hundred and forty years later that same limited suffrage could be found in the US elections where tens of thousands of black voters in Florida were disenfranchised in the presidential elections that brought George W Bush to power. Federal hearings would later investigate allegations of widespread voting irregularities, with many witnesses described being intimidated by police roadblocks near polling stations and being asked to produce several identity documents before being allowed to vote. Others spoke of being wrongly listed as convicted criminals and thus being barred from voting Moreover, an estimated one million black voters allegedly cast votes that were never even counted.

The Alamo was part and parcel of a battle in reality fought so that Black people could be legally bought and sold as pieces of property! Celebrating the Alamo means glorifying the arrest of over 100 enslaved Black people in 1835 - when many were murdered for planning a slave uprising - Just as these Texan slave owners were planning their uprising against Mexico. It means glorifying the Jim Crow system, the terror of the Ku Klux Klan, and the lynching of countless Black people in Texas history.

If you’re studying history, there’s one thing you have to be always cautious of - it’s the victors that get to write the damned history. It is the duty, therefore, of every revolutionary to tell it like it was, and is, at every opportunity.

As Orwell said: “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future” 

In the battle of ideas, the real war we wage against the master class, we must not concede them one inch in interpreting the past – they have so much to lose and we have so much to gain.

Can you imagine any school teacher imparting these facts to kids and keeping their jobs?

Wasted money, wasted lives

In fiscal 2015, the federal government engaged in $1.1 trillion of discretionary spending, but relatively small amounts went for things like education (6 percent), veterans' benefits (6 percent), energy and the environment (4 percent), and transportation (2 percent). The biggest item, by far, in the U.S. budget was military spending: roughly $600 billion (54 percent).

China, the world's #2 military power, spends only about a third of what the United States does on the military. Russia spends about a ninth.

Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs put the cost to U.S. taxpayers of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at nearly $5 trillion thus far.

Over the course of the next thirty years: $1 trillion for the rebuilding of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, plus the construction of new nuclear missiles, nuclear submarines, and nuclear-armed aircraft. Aside from the vast cost, an obvious problem with this expenditure is that these weapons will either never be used or, if they are used, will destroy the world.

Erase Israel (and Palestine)

Israel is something of a hot potato in the Labour Party these days, with accusations of anti-semitism being bandied about for being the least bit critical of Israel even though the Israeli government has just approved the construction of nearly 100 new housing units with an additional 200 units slated to be approved by the authority at a later date in the West Bank settlement of Shiloh to compensate homeowners of the nearby outpost of Amona ahead of its court-ordered evacuation and demolition. The Supreme Court has on several occasions ordered Amona built illegally on private Palestinian land to be dismantled. However, the government has repeatedly put off razing the community, despite court-ordered deadlines.

The Socialist Party wishes to state for the record that we stand for the abolition of Israel and wiping its borders from the map.

Before the cries of protest that we are anti-semitic, may we also point out that we do not support the creation of a Palestinian state, nor endorse the One-state/Two state solution. We also support the abolition of the UK, Ireland, Canada and every other damn country in the world. We choose the No-State alternative

We are “One-World Socialists” who are opposed to nationalism and national “liberation”.  Consequently, we are not singling out the Israeli nation-state for any specific opposition, but maintaining our consistent approach to refuting the idea that national independence is of benefit to oppressed groups.

We take the class line. That in the end, a nation state is a unit of property, and that Jewish people do not own Israel, Jewish capitalists do, the rest remaining wage slaves who are exploited by them as own and control the state. Changing national boundaries just means a change in ownership and management, the wage slaves remain wages slaves nonetheless. Hitching a ride with the new owners does not guarantee any safety for these wage-slaves, no extra protection, merely the opportunity to be dragooned into the defense of their masters’ property. Only the struggle for common and democratic ownership of the world by the human race can alleviate the suffering caused by oppression and power. In any conflict, we are on the side of the workers. Thus, in Israel and Palestine, the cause of the working class, is diminished by every worker slain by a suicide bomber or bomber jet. Every child blown up, every person killed by a rocket attack or missile strike, are losses to the army of socialism.

War itself is a noxious evil for the workers, an anti-democratic machine that saps our productive strength and our capacity to work together and co-operate - a fact learnt in every workplace. Hence why we take the position, of peace at any price. Capitalist peace, that is, when the organised slaughter is suspended, and the workers have the opportunity to organise and build consciously and directly to take power, peacefully, in their own interest. Better an 'unjust' peace, with one bunch of capitalists screwed over by the other, with the boundary drawn in the wrong place, with the military position emasculated, than to fight in the capitalists' wars. The position is to oppose the conflict in Israel/Palestine as such, and figure the workers' movement as a world-wide force, as the only thing capable of bringing a 'just' resolution, one in which the interests and divisions of capitalist conflict are eradicated.

Workers have no country and it is senseless that Palestinian and Israeli workers continue to butcher one another in a senseless round of tit-for-tat atrocities. Many on the Left will argue that Palestinian nationalism is somehow progressive and different to Israeli nationalism and should therefore be supported. As socialists,  we say that this is a dangerous poison that is being spread by the Left and that no side engaged in such conflict can either speak for the working class as a whole or be an example to it.

History is replete with minorities in existing states using terrorist methods so that a new state may be formed or territory transferred from the “ownership” of one state to another. The working class is never in a position to benefit from this process; it is only in a position to suffer. The working class – by definition the class that does not possess any significant titles to land or private property, including capital – has quite literally nothing to gain from a situation where one group of rulers and owners is replaced by another group.

In the 19th century, when the modern capitalist system was expanding across the globe, national “liberation” struggles, typically led by a local growing capitalist class against the old autocratic empires, were part of the process which swept away the old political arrangements and opened the way forward for liberal democracy and the development of capitalist methods of production. It was often argued that it was in the interests of the working class during this time to take the side of the capitalists against the old autocracies like the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, etc. It was said that this process would open the way up for working class organisation and for the development of an advanced industrial system which is a prerequisite for a socialist society of abundance and free access to available wealth.

Since then, the capitalist system has become a world system. The alleged justification for the working class taking sides in 'national liberation' struggles has now gone if ever it existed and today all such struggles are just deadly battles between sections of the capitalist class, even though it is the workers – imbued with nationalist poison – that naturally enough end up doing the fighting and dying.

The goal of the socialist movement is not to assist in the creation of even more states and more nationalities, but to establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society, communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible – but the 'imagined communities' that are nation states will be consigned to the history books where they belong.

Bill Martin/John Bissett

Toxic Thoughts

“Reason writes history but passion makes it.” Feuerbach

What will tomorrow bring? Our view of the world around is one based upon capitalist accumulation and of human beings being exploited. In all fields of science, both natural and social, the task of apologists for capitalist society is to “prove” that the existing form of society, its class relationships, are eternal. We are taught to believe that capitalism is the natural and only way for people to live. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is now required reading in school syllabuses all over the world that depicts a tropical paradise turned into a living hell by the ‘nature’ of the boys themselves. But there are alternative, more egalitarian ways of running society. Socialism means that the means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to people’s needs. Human ‘nature’, it is said, is fundamentally opposed to such a system, since men and women are inherently lazy, selfish and greedy. You can’t change human nature, they tell us. People always have been and always will be, aggressive, war-like, selfish, religious, superstitious, etc.  But how people behave depends very much on the kind of society they live in. Even in this dog-eat-dog rat-race world there are as many examples in everyday life of generosity and self-sacrifice as there are of selfishness and greed. The question is fairly simple. Either human nature is fixed and unchanging, in which case it will tend broadly to reproduce itself and its conditions unchanged over generations, or human nature is ever-shifting, ever-evolving, in which case it will constantly be caught up in remaking and rebuilding itself and its conditions, its culture and its habits. The general conclusion of socialists is inescapable: Many of the problems and social ills of modern society are not accidental, neither are they due to the evil of human nature or decreed by God’s punishment upon Adam and his descendants. Previous minority-ruling-class societies relied on religion as the rationale for their existence. Whenever conservatives are confronted with the consequences of exploitation and oppression, they invariably turn to the human nature argument. The professors and the intellectuals keep telling us socialism is a fruitless experiment doomed to failure. More recently we have the experts in genetics that our traits are inborn but the Socialist Party’s “Are we Prisoners of our Genes?” pamphlet allays our fears of some pre-destination at our birth. 

For sure people do need to survive and so we all need air, food, water, etc. We also have sexual and emotional needs. To live happy lives we seek out physical contact, affection and love. All these features of human nature will be met in socialism and be immeasurably better than now under capitalism. But this is not what people mean when they say socialism is incompatible with human nature and makes such a society impossible. Our present social system, alas, is poorly prepared to grant happiness. Often we must do somebody harm in order to do a good deed for another, and vice versa. The socialist solution to the problem is by making the conditions and circumstances of our daily life humane by re-organising the entire network of economic and social relationships so that the problem itself disappears, so that no-one ever has to choose between the demands of the “conscience” and the dictates of “reason”.  

We are told by our ‘betters’ that workers are too stupid to run industry. Someone always has to be boss. But we do run it, from top to bottom. The capitalist class are an idle and parasite class who if the wished could sit back and simply live off the stocks and shares that they own and whose dividends are paid fo by the toil, sweat and , yes, the blood, of the working class. The main function of overseers, foremen, supervisors, managers, etc. is not to tell workers how to do the job, but to ensure that they do it for the simple reason that for the simple reason that for workers it is an entirely reasonable inclination to do as little as possible when the work is unpleasant, unnecessary and unappreciated. Marx called it alienated labour.  Those say socialism would not “work” because people would have no incentives to invent, to be innovative, to risk and gamble really have a low opinion of the human race. Just look at those impoverished artists in their garrets creating masterpieces that the galleries decline, or the poor unrewarded inventor whose designs were never taken up until later. Incentives will not be lacking. But they will be different. There will be the desire to be meet the approval by one’s peers. There will competition and rivalry to advance the general good of all but also collaboration and cooperation as we witness today with such projects as the internet’s Wikipedia and open-sourcing in the development of computer soft-ware. Why would we not imagine that there would not exist in socialism ambition to explore the great universe and to unlock its secrets, and to extract from their knowledge new resources for the betterment of all the people? Is it too difficult for us to comprehend, even though we live in a society where the smallest child is taught to fight and claw in a hostile world that we cannot visualise a society without violence. But that’s what socialism means. Men and women will acquire the virtues of solidarity and cooperation, then develop and improve upon them.  The socialist world we aspire to is based upon the free association of completely free men and women, where no separation between private and common interest exists. 

Peru's Oil Spills

Seven oil spills have taken place in the Peruvian Amazon in 2016 alone. This is directly harming biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous people. The Amazon represents more than 60 percent of Peruvian territory, and is home to some 28 million people. Whether the fish in spill zones are still safe to eat, and how to get clean water, are now daily questions for inhabitants of the region.

 "Oil spills are destroying our communities," said Wilmer Chávez, president of the Interethnic Organization of Alto Pastaza-Andoas (ORIAP). "We don't even have clean water. We will keep up the fight indefinitely, using all necessary means to defend our land," he told DW. "We want the oil companies to leave our land and stop polluting our rivers. We just want to live in peace and harmony with nature, as our ancestors did," Chávez stated. Chávez said oil companies have exploited the land for 40 years, consistently damaging the environment. But the situation appears to have worsened since the beginning of 2016. http://www.dw.com/en/repeated-oil-spills-threaten-perus-amazon/a-35934538

Most of these occurred across the Northern Peruvian Pipeline, in operation since 1977, which transports crude from the Peruvian Amazon to the Pacific Coast along 854 kilometers (530 miles) and is under the control of state-owned Petroperu. Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazonia have suffered the impact of oil spills and pollution for decades - more than 190 oil spills have been recorded in Peru since 1997, according to Peru's energy and mining agency. When2016’s third oil spill occurred in June - of 600 barrels - then-Minister of Environment, Manuel Pulgar Vidal, accused Petroperu of pumping crude illegally through the pipeline. The president of Petroperu was ousted, and a $3.5-million (around 3-million-euro) fine was levied. But the disaster continued: During August and September, four additional oil spills were recorded in the area. The last two occurred while thousands of indigenous people were demonstrating for withdrawal of the oil companies. Petroperu is responsible for at least five of the seven oil spills - the company has already been penalized more than $7 million. Petroperu continues to insist, however, that the oil spills were a result of extreme weather.

The amount of oil spilled 2016 in the Peruvian Amazon - less than 10,000 barrels in seven spills - is a relatively small amount, compared for instance to the 650,000 barrels of oil that have fouls parts of the Amazon of Ecuador since the 1960s.  Even though such accidents can have catastrophic impacts on the local ecosystems, biodiversity and human health, studies to evaluate the impact of oil spills in the Amazon are scarce, and the long-term consequences remain virtually unknown. A study from January 2016 by Peru's National Institute of Health showed blood lead levels in children of Amazon villages that could affect their cognitive and motor development, and cadmium and mercury higher than allowed in adults.

The government is planning to extend oil company licenses for 30 years, he said. "But once the oil is gone, what will remain for us? Our fish will be gone, our water as well," Chávez said. "We will keep fighting for our land. We are just asking for life!"

Times have not changed

In 1880, John Swinton, then the pre-eminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

WSP(India) 2016 Autumn Meeting

WSP(India) 2016 Autumn Meeting

AUTUMN SCHOOL: 

22 October, Saturday, 

2 PM – 7 PM (with breaks):

Subject: History of Economics, Speaker: B. Sarkar

 Will be held at:

Head Office,

257 Baghajatin ‘E’ Block (East), Kolkata – 700086,

Tel: +91 33 2425 0208,

E-mail: wspindia@hotmail.com

Website: www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org

AUTUMN MEMBERSHIP MEETING:

23 October, Sunday:

1 PM to 7 PM (with breaks):

Discussion: History of Economics.

ALL OUR MEETINGS ALLOW ADEQUATE TIME FOR QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION. ALL OUR MEETINGS ARE OPEN. VISITORS ARE WELCOME!

Why waste time? Visit us to know more about our organization and activities

More UK kids in poverty

Data released by HM Revenue and Customs shows the number of children in low-income families rose from 2.5million to 2.75million. It means the overall proportion of kids in struggling households has now hit 20% - or one in five of all children.

Imran Hussain, director of policy for the Child Poverty Action Group, said: “Child poverty figures are the best measure we have for whether we really are ‘all in it together’. “What’s clear from these grim figures is that more and more children are being left behind in poverty, missing out on the childhoods and life chances other kids take for granted.”

The HMRC report classes children in low-income families as those either in receipt of out-of-work benefits, or those in receipt of tax credits with an income less than 60% of the national average. HMRC said the results were down to poorer people’s incomes failing to keep up with those enjoying pay rises

Doing Porridge, US-Style

The soaring US prison and jail population – which has hit a record 2.2 million and is the highest per capita in the world – is putting a huge strain on state and federal budgets, costing more than $8.5bn a year. Wardens and prison managers are under intense pressure to cut costs across the board, including the food provided to inmates, some of whom are thought to be fed for less than $1.20 a day. In many prisons across the US, inmates only rarely receive eggs, dairy or meat and fresh fruit and vegetables are sometimes banned altogether.

Many prisons’ food service has been outsourced to private companies offering big cost savings and making big profits for their shareholders. One of the biggest, Philadelphia-based Aramark, a company with annual sales of $14.3bn, continues to serve up 380m meals a year as the sole food provider to more than 600 prisons and other correctional institutions despite repeated fines over scandals including serving food tainted by maggots and rats. Riots have erupted at several prisons with Aramark-provided food leading the company to lose contracts in Michigan and Florida. Aramark, which also supplies hospitals, schools and event arenas around the world, made a $236m profit last year, a 56% increase on 2014, on sales of $14.3bn. The company’s chief executive, Eric Foss, was paid $21m last year and $32.4m in 2014.

Tom Roy, Minnesota’s commissioner for corrections, said in an interview. “Being in prison is punishment enough, they don’t have to be tortured by bad food.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/30/prison-food-spending-budget-cuts-minnesota

How Should Socialists Organise?

Workers self-emancipation and leadership contradict each other, and this has caused much Leninist ink to be spilt on the dangers of "substitutionalism" — the party substituting its own wishes for those of the masses because the party knows best. This totalitarian strategy can be avoided if the majority of workers know what they are doing before the socialist revolution takes place, in which case leadership becomes irrelevant. Democratic centralism has become a cornerstone of numerous Leninist parties, a  concept entailing being more centralist than democratic. To a certain extent centralism is compatible with democracy, indeed is often necessary to make it effective. But often the problem arises that it didn’t give the leadership a free enough hand since, at least on paper, it is still subject to some degree of membership control. Democratic centralism is a structure which institutionalises the principle of leadership. Most existing political parties and trade unions do operate on this basis, where those at the top make all the keys decisions and generally control the organisation instead of being controlled by their members Leninism makes a virtue of this by not accepting that it is desirable that a political organisation of the sort they want should be organised on the basis of democratic control, and maximum participation in decision-making, by the membership.

Many left-wing political parties are unashamedly leadership organisations, not just in the sense that they seeks to lead the working class but also in the sense that it is organised internally on a leadership basis; in fact on a hierarchical basis where each layer of leadership has power over the levels below it, with the party’s national leadership – the members of its central committee – at the top. The national leadership decides everything important and then seeks to get the membership to follow their lead. This is not necessarily a difficult task since the membership, who also believe in the organisational principle of ‘democratic centralism’, accept the leading role of the leadership and are generally prepared to follow. So Lenin’s ‘democratic centralism’ places an enormous power in the hands of the leaders and in practice reduces the rank-and-file members to a merely consultative role. In Lenin’s scheme, the supreme policy-making body is the Party Congress; this decides the general line which the Central Committee has to follow until the next Congress. This is the theory; the practice is that the Central Committee completely dominates the Conference. The main item on the agenda is a report by the Central Committee on the political ‘perspectives’ which is usually a document of pamphlet-length. The Central Committee also submits other reports – on work in special areas of activity (industry, students, women), internal organisation, finance – for the Conference to discuss. What this means is that it is the Central Committee – the leadership – which quite literally sets the agenda for the Conference. The branch delegates meet, therefore, to discuss only what is put before them by the Central Committee. Not that the delegates are delegates in the proper sense of the term as instructed representatives of the branches sending them. Within the Socialist Workers Party, for instance, Delegates should not be mandated. Voting on motions submitted by branches is dismissed as a ‘trade union practice. Another open to manipulation by the leadership, is operated by the SWP:

‘At the end of each session of conference commissions are elected to draw up a report on the session detailing the points made. In the event of disagreement two or more commissions can be elected by the opposing delegates. The reports are submitted to conference and delegates then vote in favour of one of the commissions. The advantage of this procedure is that conference does not have to proceed by resolution like a trade union conference.’

No branch motions, no mandated delegates, No ballots of the entire membership.

In fact, no official of the SWP above branch level is directly elected by a vote of the members. One power that the branches do retain is the right to nominate members for election, by the Conference delegates, to the National Committee, but, as over presenting motions, they are discouraged from nominating people who do not accept the “perspectives” espoused by the Central Committee. So elections do take place to the National Committee but on the basis of personalities rather than politics. However, it is the way that the Central Committee is elected that is really novel: the nominations for election to new central committee are proposed not by branches but . . . by the outgoing central committee! Once again, in theory, branches can present other names but they never do.

It is easy to see how this means that the central committee – the supreme leadership of the organisation – is a self-perpetuating body renewed in effect only by co-optation. This is justified on the grounds of continuity and efficiency – it takes a time to gain the experience necessary to become a good leader so that it would be a waste of the experience gained if some leader were to be voted off by the vagaries of a democratic vote. Choosing the leadership by a competitive vote is evidently something else ‘with no place in a revolutionary party’ any more than in an army. The fact remains that “democratic centralism” can allow dictators to rise to power and all openly pro-capitalist political parties have a similar structure which can allow the leadership to act undemocratically.

It is not much different with other Trotskyist groups. Take Socialist Unity. In their version of democratic centralism, conference delegates elect a central committee (on a slate, that is for or against the entire committee, not a vote for individual members, this slate is normally put forward by the outgoing committee).  The central committee can put motions to conference as well (whereas our Executive Committee may not). Subject to the sovereignty of Conference, decisions taken by the Central Committee (CC), National Committee (NC) and Party Council are binding on caucuses, districts and branches, and individual party members. Branches and/or district select delegates to Conference on a basis proportional to their membership, as determined by the Central Committee. The CC appoints the full-time organisers. Again the difference with ourselves is that our principle officers are directly elected (Gen Sec, treasurer, organiser). Our EC is directly elected. All our EC can only do is appoint people to a committee on the nomination of a branch.  So there is at most just one layer between members and functionaries of the party.

Where has ‘democratic centralism’ ever allowed factions for long? Where has ‘democratic centralism’ allowed challenging incumbent leaderships? Where has ‘democratic centralism’ allowed public dissent? Trotsky answered at a Bolshevik party congress in 1924:

 ‘Comrades, none of us wants to be or can be right against the party. In the last analysis, the party is always right, because the party is the sole historical instrument that the working class possesses for the solution of its fundamental tasks. I have already said that nothing would be simpler than to say before the party that all these criticisms, all these declarations, warnings, and protests – all were mistaken from beginning to end. I cannot say so, however, comrades, because I do not think it. I know that no one can be right against the party. It is only possible to be right with the party and through it since history has not created any other way to determine the correct position.’ And ‘We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right’.