The government’s export credit agency, UK Export Finance (UKEF), has provided  £5.24bn in a combination of loans and guarantees in the past three years to overseas energy and infrastructure projects linked to labour abuses and environmental damage.

Since 2019, UKEF has allocated money to projects with the potential to cause “significant adverse environmental and/or social impacts” in countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Oil refineries, power stations, and a large-scale liquified natural gas (LGN) project are among the high-risk “Category A projects”, to receive funding recently.

Despite recommendations to mitigate labour abuses, six migrant workers employed on Middle Eastern projects backed by UKEF have revealed low pay, safety hazards, excessive working hours, and the denial of freedom of movement as persistent issues.

“UKEF financing is very specific and usually funds very big, very damaging infrastructure projects,” said Daniel Willis, policy and campaigns manager at campaign group Global Justice Now. “Human rights considerations are an afterthought, and due diligence seems to be approached as if it is just a box to tick.”

A review of an oil refinery upgrade programme in Kuwait shows that UKEF knew of worker issues before it provided a $179m (£135m) support package in 2019. Employees and contractors were commonly working more than the maximum overtime hours allowed by legislation, and 87% of workers surveyed had not received an employment contract. 

About 90% of workers at Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) had also been charged illicit recruitment fees to secure their jobs. Some were living in sub-standard accommodation with no air-conditioning, despite summer temperatures reaching 54C in Kuwait, the review said.

Gulam Siddique who recently worked as an inspector at KNPC’s refineries, told the Guardian lower-skilled labourers were not treated well. “They are treated as slaves, working 12 hours a day in direct sunlight,” said Siddique. “There are health risks for those guys, from the gases released at the plant.”

Several of the UK-backed projects are based in Middle Eastern countries, where the labourers’ freedom of movement is controlled under the kafala sponsorship system, which has been deemed abusive and exploitative by Human Rights Watch.

Britain hands billions to projects linked to labour abuse and climate damage | Global development | The Guardian

 From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corporate profits soared to a record high in 2021

Data from the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that pre-tax profits over the whole year increased by 25 percent, reaching $2.8 trillion. 

The annualized rate of profit from the fourth quarter was even higher, at $2.94 trillion.

Meanwhile, hourly wages for U.S. workers increased by about 4.7 percent last year, which is equivalent to a pay cut of about 2.4 percent.

“Clearly, mega-corporations could easily absorb the higher costs of goods and services right now,” wrote Robert Reich, former labor secretary and economics professor at University of California, Berkeley. “They’re not raising prices because they have to. They’re doing it because – with so few competitors – they can. The problem, at its core, is corporate greed.”

Tyson’s CEO told shareholders that the company it’s only raising prices on meat products in order to cover inflation costs for the company. However, it posted profits of $1 billion in the first quarter of 2022, a 48 percent raise over the same period last year.

Corporate Profits Reached Record High of Nearly $3 Trillion in 2021 (truthout.org)

Marx and Engels, in the “Communist Manifesto,” appealed to the workers of all lands to unite for the overthrow of capitalism and the inauguration of Socialism, the workers of the world still stand divided by national frontiers. Sadly, socialism has not yet been achieved and the capitalist class are still strongly entrenched in possession of property and power.

What significance has the “fatherland” or the “motherland” for the wage-slave whose only guarantee of livelihood rests on the ability to sell one’s labour-power? None! save that it receives from political superstitions inculcated and carefully nurtured by agents of the dominant class. The class-conscious worker sees that “nationalism” is a snare in the path towards emancipation. Not only does it serve to cloud the class issue within the nation, but it also hinders the workers of the world from recognising and acting up to their unity of interest. War cannot be humanised. Its brutalities will cease only when capitalism, which is the cause of wars, has been brought to an end. That demands action by the international working class, the first step towards which is that the workers in each country should accept the existence of the class struggle as the basis of their organisation and line up in opposition to their own ruling class and its government. 

When the ruling class talk of war it is more than ever necessary for the workers in this country to remember that the workers in other countries have as little direct responsibility for their callous ruling class and bloody-minded military castes as we have for ours. The best help that the workers anywhere can give to their foreign comrades is to redouble their efforts to strengthen the socialist movement in their own country and hasten the day when the workers will control the affairs of society.  

The Socialist Party intends to build a world in which there will be neither exploiters nor exploited.

The Socialist Party, while extending the hand of fraternity to the workers of all lands, must on principle refuse to ally itself with the parties of capitalism.

With another war we say now as we did in the past:

“Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of socialism.”

True to our international socialist principles we seek contact with socialist workers in other countries who take their stand on the same principles, with a view to set on foot, at last, a genuine socialist International free from the national prejudices and compromise policies that up to the present have hindered the march of the workers’ movement.

The real division in the world is not between people of supposedly different “nationalities” but between two social classes both of which are international: a class of capitalists who own and control all that is in and on the Earth and a class of people who, excluded from such ownership and control. Proponents of patriotism seek to ensure the loyalty of its subjects by inculcating into them, from the cradle to the grave, the idea that they are members of a “nation” with a common interest against those of other “nations”. Socialists reject this mistaken and dangerous idea, regarding themselves not as British, Russian, Ukrainian, American or whatever but as members of the human race, as citizens of the world.

The world capitalist class are continually competing against each other. They also compete for strategic areas in order to protect the markets, trade routes, raw material sources and investment fields they have got or want. The various armed states into which the world is divided are used by rival groups of capitalists to protect and further their interests in these clashes. They represent, in other words, not the interest of the majority of their subjects, but that of the dominant section of the capitalist class established within their borders.

In these clashes of interest between the various national capitalist groups success greatly depends on the military might of the states involved. States, and the capitalists they represent, do not deliberately seek war; for them, this is often the last resort, when negotiations failed. But all states are obliged to maintain as powerful an army as they can afford, not necessarily to be used on every occasion, but to threaten and to be taken into account in the negotiations and manoeuvrings that continually arise from the underlying clashes of economic interest that are built into capitalism.

Capitalism, in other words, is a permanent powder-keg or rather, these days, a permanently-primed nuclear bomb. Its very structure as a competitive profit-seeking system generates preparations for war (and the waste this involves), the threat of war (which is ever-present) and actual wars (which are always going on somewhere in the world).

Socialism will see the abolition of frontiers and the dismantling of the various armed states into which the world is now divided. As classes will have been abolished, people really will become citizens of a united world of a class-free, money-free, state-free and leader-free world community

Marx and Engels, in the “Communist Manifesto,” appealed to the workers of all lands to unite for the overthrow of capitalism and the inauguration of Socialism, the workers of the world still stand divided by national frontiers. Sadly, socialism has not yet been achieved and the capitalist class are still strongly entrenched in possession of property and power.

What significance has the “fatherland” or the “motherland” for the wage-slave whose only guarantee of livelihood rests on the ability to sell one’s labour-power? None! save that it receives from political superstitions inculcated and carefully nurtured by agents of the dominant class. The class-conscious worker sees that “nationalism” is a snare in the path towards emancipation. Not only does it serve to cloud the class issue within the nation, but it also hinders the workers of the world from recognising and acting up to their unity of interest. War cannot be humanised. Its brutalities will cease only when capitalism, which is the cause of wars, has been brought to an end. That demands action by the international working class, the first step towards which is that the workers in each country should accept the existence of the class struggle as the basis of their organisation and line up in opposition to their own ruling class and its government. 

When the ruling class talk of war it is more than ever necessary for the workers in this country to remember that the workers in other countries have as little direct responsibility for their callous ruling class and bloody-minded military castes as we have for ours. The best help that the workers anywhere can give to their foreign comrades is to redouble their efforts to strengthen the socialist movement in their own country and hasten the day when the workers will control the affairs of society.  

The Socialist Party intends to build a world in which there will be neither exploiters nor exploited.

The Socialist Party, while extending the hand of fraternity to the workers of all lands, must on principle refuse to ally itself with the parties of capitalism.

With another war we say now as we did in the past:

“Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of socialism.”

True to our international socialist principles we seek contact with socialist workers in other countries who take their stand on the same principles, with a view to set on foot, at last, a genuine socialist International free from the national prejudices and compromise policies that up to the present have hindered the march of the workers’ movement.

The real division in the world is not between people of supposedly different “nationalities” but between two social classes both of which are international: a class of capitalists who own and control all that is in and on the Earth and a class of people who, excluded from such ownership and control. Proponents of patriotism seek to ensure the loyalty of its subjects by inculcating into them, from the cradle to the grave, the idea that they are members of a “nation” with a common interest against those of other “nations”. Socialists reject this mistaken and dangerous idea, regarding themselves not as British, Russian, Ukrainian, American or whatever but as members of the human race, as citizens of the world.

The world capitalist class are continually competing against each other. They also compete for strategic areas in order to protect the markets, trade routes, raw material sources and investment fields they have got or want. The various armed states into which the world is divided are used by rival groups of capitalists to protect and further their interests in these clashes. They represent, in other words, not the interest of the majority of their subjects, but that of the dominant section of the capitalist class established within their borders.

In these clashes of interest between the various national capitalist groups success greatly depends on the military might of the states involved. States, and the capitalists they represent, do not deliberately seek war; for them, this is often the last resort, when negotiations failed. But all states are obliged to maintain as powerful an army as they can afford, not necessarily to be used on every occasion, but to threaten and to be taken into account in the negotiations and manoeuvrings that continually arise from the underlying clashes of economic interest that are built into capitalism.

Capitalism, in other words, is a permanent powder-keg or rather, these days, a permanently-primed nuclear bomb. Its very structure as a competitive profit-seeking system generates preparations for war (and the waste this involves), the threat of war (which is ever-present) and actual wars (which are always going on somewhere in the world).

Socialism will see the abolition of frontiers and the dismantling of the various armed states into which the world is now divided. As classes will have been abolished, people really will become citizens of a united world of a class-free, money-free, state-free and leader-free world community

If Russia wants to occupy and run Britain, they may have it as far as the Socialist Party is concerned. Britain doesn’t belong to the British worker. Why should our fellow workers worry about preserving what belongs to others? If the others want it, let them fight for it.

The only thing that matters is the development of a consciousness of working-class solidarity, born of an appreciation of the common cause of working-class misery and its common remedy. Socialism is the answer to every question of working-class import, and— Socialism knows no frontier. It matters nothing that Britain may be peopled by Russians, or by any other nationality on the capitalist globe. That would make no difference to the movement of the working class towards the world-embracing cooperative commonwealth. The workers of all nations make common causes against the common or capitalist exploiter.  If an invasion is coming, let it come.

This impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But it has lent itself to exploitation. With the development of class rule, it was made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves. 

 Patriotism is usually defined as being devoted to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live in an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other peoples. The nation they call “ours” is the result of conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribespeople, we are hirelings; we possess no country. Nationality covers no real entity other than that of common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixed territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.

 Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can social cooperation find its highest and complete expression. Marx did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose, the only loss could be its national-coloured chains.

The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us today is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many on the left wing have fallen headlong into this trap.

Patriotism and nationalism are artificial restrictions of humanity’s sympathy and mutual aid; obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and cooperation; as shackles that chain men and women to slavery; as incentives that set each against the other. 

If Russia wants to occupy and run Britain, they may have it as far as the Socialist Party is concerned. Britain doesn’t belong to the British worker. Why should our fellow workers worry about preserving what belongs to others? If the others want it, let them fight for it.

The only thing that matters is the development of a consciousness of working-class solidarity, born of an appreciation of the common cause of working-class misery and its common remedy. Socialism is the answer to every question of working-class import, and— Socialism knows no frontier. It matters nothing that Britain may be peopled by Russians, or by any other nationality on the capitalist globe. That would make no difference to the movement of the working class towards the world-embracing cooperative commonwealth. The workers of all nations make common causes against the common or capitalist exploiter.  If an invasion is coming, let it come.

This impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But it has lent itself to exploitation. With the development of class rule, it was made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves. 

 Patriotism is usually defined as being devoted to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live in an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other peoples. The nation they call “ours” is the result of conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribespeople, we are hirelings; we possess no country. Nationality covers no real entity other than that of common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixed territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.

 Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can social cooperation find its highest and complete expression. Marx did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose, the only loss could be its national-coloured chains.

The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us today is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many on the left wing have fallen headlong into this trap.

Patriotism and nationalism are artificial restrictions of humanity’s sympathy and mutual aid; obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and cooperation; as shackles that chain men and women to slavery; as incentives that set each against the other. 

 World Socialist Movement online meetings