‘The Need For Work – And How To Avoid It’

Speaker Richard Field

 Despite current global warming doom impending upon us, we see companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron report record-high earnings. Not only is this alarming in an ecological sense, but as workers and as people struggling in a time of inflation and poverty, we see $11.4 Billion made by Exxon alone.

They exploit their workers, particularly in the Global South, pay below minimum wage, place workers in unsafe conditions and deny them their basic labour rights. Yet they still continue despite activists campaigning for years. False promises and years of fake greenwashing are truly apparent now. You can plainly see that these companies have not been taxed more, stopped nor prevented from destroying the planet. You can practically hear how giddy they are that they’ve been pulling this off for so long.

In 2018, the UK seemingly forgot about the Paris Agreement when trying to extend Gatwick Airport. The sentiment is still the same. We haven’t seen any actual environmental change since their Climate Change Act of 2008 – which hasn’t been followed – and the Environmental Act of 2021 which ClientEarth has said will ‘not protect people’s health from particulate pollution’.

It’s painfully clear that the government is not taking these issues seriously. They are rather more worried about illegal immigration – ‘Why let refugees enter our country and cause what is obviously going to be havoc?’ – because that’s what’s the most pressing issue at the moment of course. I suppose if you compare them to the religious pilgrims who fled persecution in Britain to colonise the US, you would think they’re armed with guns and smallpox.

There’s ways we could try to make changes, we could make a petition, which will get taken to parliament and then immediately get shot down. We could protest, and slowly get arrested and silenced as our leaders pass a Public Order Act basically outlawing all effective means of protest that XR and Greenpeace love to use.

What can we do? It’s easy to feel hopeless in a time like this, when corrupt feeds corrupt and we are left to suffer at the bottom. Within this system, there’s not much we can do other than vote. But we still have the ability to make ourselves heard. As long as we continue support a capitalist system we continue to support the heartless and soulless greed of these companies. We have to continue to show our opposition. 

JAMES WITKOWSKI

Olive oil is a staple cooking ingredient for many around the world. The fall in production and the escalating prices, along with pricier and pricier global food commodities, are having an adverse affect on many millions.

Consumers will have seen the results in their local food outlets and supermarkets.

Perhaps a social system based upon production for use not profit would be more able to alleviate the effects upon many.

Time to revert to cooking breakfast bacon and eggs in lard?

‘Olive oil prices have surged to record levels due to a prolonged drought in Spain, the world’s largest producer and exporter of the product.

Prices have surged more than 60% since June.  Consumers will have to brace themselves for further increases. The severe drought that Spain has been experiencing since last summer is now threatening the global olive oil supply, causing prices to spike around the world.

Data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) showed that global olive oil prices have hit $5,989.8 per metric ton, marking a 26-year high.

The recent October-to-February olive harvest produced a yield 50% less than usual due to exceedingly poor weather conditions. According to Spain’s Ecology Ministry, the country has experienced 36 straight months of below-average rainfall. 

CNBC quoted a Mintec analyst who said, Spain produced an olive oil crop of around 630,000 metric tons, down from the usual 1.4 to 1.5 million metric tons harvest.’

Nb. Twelve months ago price was $4398.57

 The United Nations body, The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has reported that that global food prices grew in April for the first time in a year.

The price index, which tracks the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 127.2 points last month, compared to 126.5 for March.

“The slight rebound in the FFPI (FAO Food Price Index) in April was led by a steep increase in the sugar price index, along with an upturn in the meat price index, while the cereals, dairy and vegetable oil price indices continued to drop,” the FAO said.

 The sugar price index soared 17.6% from March, hitting its highest level since October 2011. The rise was reportedly linked to concerns over tighter supplies following downward revisions to production forecasts for India and China, along with lower-than-expected output in Thailand and the European Union.

The meat price index was up 1.3% from March, while dairy prices fell 1.7%. Vegetable oil prices were also down 1.3%, marking the fifth consecutive monthly decline.

The cereal price index dropped 1.7%, with a decline in world prices of all major grains outweighing an increase in rice prices.

“The increase in rice prices is extremely worrisome and it is essential that the Black Sea initiative is renewed to avoid any other spikes in wheat and maize,” said FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero.

The FAO  indicated that international wheat prices declined by 2.3% in April to their lowest level since July 2021, principally driven by large exportable availabilities in Russia and Australia.

The UN said favourable crop conditions in Europe, along with an agreement at the end of April allowing Ukrainian grains to transit through European Union countries that had imposed import restrictions earlier in the month, also contributed to the “overall softer tone in markets.”

Meanwhile, Torero projected that as global economies “recover from significant slowdowns, demand will increase, exerting upward pressure on food prices.”

An earlier CNBC report, quoting Fitch Solutions, highlighted the global  shortage of rice in two decades,  According to the agency’s estimates, the 2022-23 crop year will see an 8.7-million-ton shortage in the global supply, the largest shortfall since 2003-04, when it was 18.6 million tons.

Data from Statista.com shows that global rice production last year was 502.9 million tons, making it the third-most produced grain after corn and wheat. However, production has been dropping in recent months as a result of bad weather in rice-producing countries like China and Pakistan. 

Severe weather conditions affected China, largest global producer, which supplied over 148 million metric tons of milled rice to the market in 2021-22, s Currently, the country is “experiencing the highest level of drought in its rice growing regions in over two decades.” Both situations could be dire for the vulnerable crop, analysts say.

As  a result of severe flooding Pakistan, with nearly 8% of global rice trade, also saw its annual production drop 31%.

It is claimed that India, the world’s second-largest rice producer, may suffer from intense heat in the second and third quarters of 2023, which could also endanger its crop yield. European rice-growing countries such as France, Germany, and the UK have also been suffering from the highest level of drought in 20 years, which may further endanger this year’s supply.

Due to the shortages,  rice prices are expected to remain around their current highs – from $16-18 per cwt (50.8kg), which is more than double that of 2020 – for the remainder of the year. Apart from supply constraints, rice prices are also affected by Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. The conflict has jeopardized both Ukrainian and Russian grain supplies to the global market, driving up wheat prices, which has made rice an increasingly attractive alternative and boosted demand.

“Given that rice is the staple food commodity across multiple markets,” its price is expected to drive up global food price inflation.

https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/the-measure-of-world-food-prices-rose-in-april-for-first-time-in-a-year/en/

 Almost half of the 4,800 banks in the US are nearly insolvent, as they have burned through their capital buffers, The Telegraph reported earlier this week, citing a group of banking experts.

According to Professor Amit Seru, a banking expert at Stanford University, around half of US lenders are underwater.

“Let’s not pretend that this is just about Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic,” he said. “A lot of the US banking system is potentially insolvent.”

Last week, First Republic was seized by US financial regulators and acquired by JPMorgan, the country’s biggest bank. The San Francisco-based lender had previously received a $30-billion rescue shot from a group of Wall Street banks in the form of deposits. The sale of First Republic Bank followed massive deposit runs in March, which caused two regional lenders, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, to fail within days.

On Thursday, shares of Los Angeles-based PacWest and Arizona’s Western Alliance were suspended after their prices fell dramatically. Earlier in the week, shares of several regional US lenders plunged by at least 15%, triggering investor concerns about the financial health of other mid-sized banks.

Around 2,315 banks across the US are currently sitting on assets worth less than their liabilities, according to a Hoover Institution report by Professor Seru and a group of banking experts, as cited by the media.

The market value of the loan portfolios of these lenders is reportedly $2 trillion lower than the stated book value.

Professor Seru raised questions over the steps taken by US financial watchdogs to tackle the problems faced by crisis-hit mid-sized lenders. The regulators can contain the immediate liquidity crisis by guaranteeing all deposits temporarily, according to Seru, who said, however, that this would not address the greater solvency crisis.

RT 6/5/23

  The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that the world is on the edge of geo-economic fragmentation, which she believes could add more “cold water” to already anemic global growth.

Speaking by video-link at the Brussels Economic Forum on Wednesday, Kristalina Georgieva called for cooperation at a time when growth across the globe is extremely weak by historical standards.

“After decades of increasing global integration, there is a growing risk that the world may split into rival economic blocs,” the IMF chief said. “And that’s a scenario that would be bad for everyone, including for people in Europe.”

She warned that growth prospects were increasingly bleak at a time when the global outlook is weak both in the near and medium term. The IMF projects growth to remain around 3% over the next five years, the lowest medium-term forecast in more than three decades.

“And yet, central bankers cannot take their eyes off the ball until stubborn inflation is firmly under control,” Georgieva pointed out. “The required monetary tightening is weighing on growth and exposing some financial vulnerabilities.”

Reviving multilateral cooperation is vital for long-term growth everywhere, according to the official, who warned that trade fragmentation could cost up to 7% to the global economy in the long term.

That’s “roughly equivalent to the combined annual output of Germany and Japan,” she said, adding that some nations could see GDP losses of up to 12% if technological decoupling is added.

“We cannot ignore these costs,” Georgieva stressed.

The IMF boss had previously said that the shocks of the past few years, including the Covid pandemic, Russia-Ukraine conflict, and spike in interest rates after years of loose monetary policy, have been a drag on the global economy. 

RT 7/5/23

 The scenes shown on May 6th of people displaying fawning obsequiousness to an elite with a long vested interest in perpetuating the myth that governance is beneficial to the majority. Many disavowed their support but whether for the institution of monarchy or merely for the person now occupying the role of head of it is difficult to say.

It is painful for socialists to contemplate this toadying. Socialists not only want a class-free, money-free society, but a leader-free, state-free one too.

Karl Marx pointed out that, “One man is king only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him. They, on the contrary, imagine that they are subjects because he is king.”

DHLawrence wrote a poem highlighting the absurdity of putting one’s faith in any kind of leader. Because they will use you for their own ends or that of the ideology they represent.

A King is to be crowned

In the presence of our Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Premiers of the five dominions of “our” mighty Empire, arid the assembled monarchs of many lands, and the Lord God of Israel and the Stock Exchange himself.

The Crown, and the Sceptre, and the Sword of State, and the Cap of Maintenance, and the Rod with the Dove, and the Monkey on the Stick, and all the other symbolical insignia and regalia which have come downto us from barbarism, along with ye Ancient Order of Foresters and ye game of skittles, are to be brought from their dungeon in the Tower (where they have rivalled a pawnbroker’s window) and taken to the House of God at Westminster, there to be used in the great ceremony.

And there, before a vast concourse of gentlemen who have won the same distinction in the divorce court that their forefathers gained in piratical, slave-hunting, and other plundering forays of the past, and of high born dames whose “Sir Joshua Reynolds” peach-bloom cheeks are veritable triumphs of the house-decorator’s art, and other high-born dames whose ancient lineage goes back to the mighty Pork Kings of Chicago, one George Wettin, a most cosmopolitan British gentleman, will swear great oaths to be faithful to certain hoary superstitions, and to uphold certain important and worthy institutions, and to lay hold of eternal life, and to do it all for the dirt-cheap, upset-competition price of a million a year or nearest offer.

And then another gentleman, who makes a point of doing the job in his nightshirt, scabs on and scandalises every tiddle-wig in the Kingdom by giving the said G. Wettin a dry shampoo with consecrated hair oil, in the full blaze of the public eye, and to the evident perturbation of the Unicorn, who claims affinity with the barbers by virtue of the pole sticking out of his forehead.

What does it all mean; the Crown, and the Orb, and the Sceptre and the Sword of State, and the Cap of Maintenance, and the rest of the jewelled symbols?

What does it mean: the swelling Anthem, the mumbled prayer, the intoned exhortation, the anointing with oil, the Crowning and Enthronisation?

What does it mean: the barbaric pomp and splendour, the lavish display of wealth, the clank of arms and armour and the jingle of spurs, the foregathering from the ends of the earth of the Empire’s rulers?

What does it mean: the flaunting flags, the streets lined with police and military, the hoarse acclamation of pallid millions whose rags flutter a significant reply to the bunting overhead, the bestowing of a meal upon thousands of little children whom hunger makes glad to accept even such a trifle from hands so heavy-laden with wealth that they cannot feel the weight of the charitable grains they scatter?

We are told that these gaudy jewels, this “impressive service”, are full of symbolism and historic significance. They are indeed. To the worker who will think it is very obvious that the Crown and the Sceptre and the rest are the symbols of ruling power. But who it is that rules, and who it is that are ruled, are matters less generally understood.

It is commonly believed that “royal” power is the attribute of the monarch of a constitutional country, but nothing could be farther from the truth. That question our capitalist masters in this country fought out many years ago. They have left the King his name and his robes, his Crown and his palaces, but they have stripped him of every vestige of power. The “Crown” is not the King, in any capacity, but the capitalist State. The King’s Speech to Parliament is written by his Ministers, even the prerogative of mercy is not the King’s, but belongs to the capitalist Cabinet.

The subservience of the royalty of capitalist countries to their capitalist paymasters is shown in such acts as that of the present King’s father (then Prince of Wales) in publicly associating himself, at the time of the “trial” of the Jameson raiders, with Cecil Rhodes, the arch-fiend in that disgusting business, who was even then busy engineering the war which was to give the cosmopolitan mine-owners £4,000,000 a year in extra profits, at the cost of so many thousands of workingmen’s lives.

Even the swearing to uphold the institutions of capitalism is all bunkum and make-believe, There is today, in this country at all events, no institution of capitalism that the capitalists themselves are not fully able to maintain, or that they trust to other hands than their own. Why, this man whom they swear to uphold the very walls of capitalism, they do not trust even with the command of one of the fleets of his own (!) navy, for fear he might be in a position to dictate terms to them, or act detrimentally to their interests.

The King as such is a nonentity, a dummy, a convenient cloak behind which the capitalist class carry on their operations of robbing the workers of the fruits of their toil. As a private individual, the landlord of vast estates, George Wettin may make himself feared, but no one trembles at his royal word, or quakes at the thunder of his anointed brow. If the great ones of the capitalist world bow and scrape before him, it is only because he is the incarnation of capitalism, the symbol of the domination of a class of parasites and thieves, the image of themselves triumphant. They know that while the workers will flock in millions to cheer this straw man of theirs, dragged through the streets like a fifth of November guy, they and their plunder are safe. Hence they set the example of deification, knowing well they will be followed by their sheep.

The aim of the master class is to keep the workers ignorant, for an ignorant subject class, not knowing how to act in their own interests, can be more easily and inexpensively kept in subjection than an educated one. In fostering this ignorance the first thing to be done is to preserve the inertia of the mind – the tendency of the mind to run in an unchanging direction.

The capitalists know, as well as we do, that it is changing environment that causes the alteration in the mental outlook of the people. Their great endeavour, therefore, is to oppose to that ceaseless evolution in the world about them, over which they have no control, counteracting conditions and influences. Hence they cling with the tenacity of desperation, to the empty husks and decaying forms of the past.

This can be seen in every dominant interest, since every interest, when it has become dominant, becomes conservative and reactionary. It explains why the Catholic Church clings so frantically to its out-of-date forms, why the Anglican and other Churches set their faces so relentlessly against innovation, and why capitalist countries would rather convert their monarchies to their own ends than abolish them.

A king, in the popular mind, rules by divine sanction and in accordance with grey and hoary custom – as the Archbishop will remind the world at the great shampooing in the words: “Be thou anointed with holy oil, as kings, priests, and prophets were anointed. And as Solomon was appointed king by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet, so be you anointed, blessed and consecrated king over this people, whom the Lord thy God has given you to govern.”

The capitalists, on the other hand, have no ancient usage behind them, no special appointment from heaven. Unless they can disguise the fact of their dominance, they are clearly seen to rule by might alone – a perpetual challenge to might. A ruling class which has to confess that it rules because it possesses the means of life, already has one foot in the grave, for it holds a lamp to the line of class cleavage that all men may see.

This is the real use of monarchs in capitalist States. Behind the person of the King the capitalists can hide the fact that it is they in reality who rule. By parading their kings before the workers at every possible opportunity, and with every circumstance of pomp and display that their ingenuity can invent, by investing them with divine right and something of divinity itself, the capitalists awaken and stimulate and nurture that spirit of reverence which is so deadly an enemy to the growth of revolutionary ideas, and so detract attention from themselves.

As it is to the interest of the capitalist class to represent that they, together with the working class, are subservient to a greater power, and to set the example of loyalty to their king, it becomes the imperative duty of Socialists to strip the sham of all its disguising tinsel, and to expose the grim, sordid, unromantic, iron form of tyrant Capital beneath it all. No kingly power exists today in Western Europe. Everywhere the owners of the means of production have either bent the monarchy to their will or broken it. Power lies alone with the class of property-owners. They rule who “buzz” us to the check-board at dawn, who tell us we are “sacked” at dusk; they rule who grind our faces on the factory mill-stones; and rob us at the pay-box; they rule who lock us out of the workshops and quarries and mines, in order to convince us by starvation that their view of the value of our labour is correct; they rule who make mockery of their own laws, and bury our poor fellows alive in blazing coal seams in the bowels of the earth. They rule who own.

Clear your minds, fellow workers, of any idea that these Prime Ministers of the Dominions of the Empire have gathered together to render homage to the house of Hanover. They come to celebrate the dominion of their class and to take steps in conference assembled, to ensure the continued crucifixion of Labour. The whole of this inglorious show, indeed, is subordinate to this object. It is not an effort to solidify and make more stable the monarchy, but to blind the workers to their true position, and make capitalist domination more secure.

It is for this reason that the impudent thieves mock your poverty by flaunting in your faces the wealth they have stolen from you. They wish you to believe that you are sharers in the stupendous opulence all their efforts could not hide from your vision. The late Lord Salisbury, wise in his generation, once cynically said that what the working class wanted was not education but a circus. They are giving us a circus, in order to make our minds less receptive of education.

Fellow workers, there is but one meaning attaching to class rule, and that is class plunder. No man wishes to rule over another except to plunder him. Consider whence comes all this wealth and luxury which is to riot before your weary eyes? Is there one jot or tittle of it that you have not made? You, the workers of the world are the true Atlas. You carry the world upon your shoulders. Your strong arms sow, and reap, and gather the harvest of the field, your stout hearts face the terrors of the mine and battle with the dangers of the deep; your virile brains conquer natural forces, and turn the tyrants of the Cosmic System into agents of wealth production. And what is your portion of it all?

This question is answered by the ranks of armed men who press your serried masses into the gutters, by the gaudy regimental banners whose last glorious inscriptions are “Belfast” and “Tonypandy”, by the proposal to compel you to pay to ensure that you shall have 6s. a week to keep wife and family on when you are unemployed.

As long as you are ruled starvation will be your lot, for those who rule over you can always plunder you and always will. You are ruled, not by kings, but by those who possess the land, mines, factories, machinery, railways, and other means of production and distribution, and just because they possess those things. Since you are denied access to those things all the doors of life are shut against you except that of the labour market. You must become wage slaves – must sell your energies to those who own the productive forces. This means that goods are produced for profit, and that profit, that wealth you produce but which is taken away from you, goes to glut the market and to throw you out of work, so that you and your children starve when the warehouses are fullest.

The remedy for all this is to take these means of production and distribution away from their present owners and make them the property of the whole community. Bread will then be produced to feed people, not for profit, and clothes to clothe them, and houses to shelter them. All able-bodied adults will take part in the necessary social labour, and all will partake freely of the wealth produced.

To do this the workers must first study Socialism and organise to capture political power, in order that the political machinery may be used to end for ever the class domination which political power alone upholds.

A. E. Jacomb

Reprinted from the “Socialist Standard,” June, 1911.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/09/king-capitals-coronation-1964.html

 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wrote a letter to King Charles III on Friday, calling on the monarch to visit His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh and observe the “world class” conditions within its walls.

Writing in sarcastic and florid language, Assange described the maximum security lockup as being “just a short foxhunt from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich,” telling the King that it must be “delightful” to have “such an esteemed establishment bear your name.”

“As a political prisoner, held at Your Majesty’s pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign, I am honoured to reside within the walls of this world class institution,” Assange continued. “Truly, your kingdom knows no bounds.”

The jailed journalist described the “culinary delights” served to inmates alone in their cells, the prisoners’ recreational use of prescription drugs, the prohibition on the playing of chess for “healthcare” reasons, rodent infestations, and the suicide of one of his friends – a gay man who hung himself before his deportation to Brazil.

“I implore you, King Charles, to visit His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, for it is an honour befitting a king,” Assange’s letter concluded. “As you embark upon your reign, may you always remember the words of the King James Bible: ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy’ (Matthew 5:7). And may mercy be the guiding light of your kingdom, both within and without the walls of B

Assange was arrested by British authorities in 2019, after Ecuador revoked his asylum status and allowed police officers to remove him from the country’s embassy in London, where he had been sheltered since 2012. On the day of his arrest, the US Department of Justice unsealed a multi-count indictment against Assange, slapping him with 17 charges under the Espionage Act, which can potentially carry the death penalty.

Assange is currently fighting an extradition request from Washington, and his lawyers have appealed a prior ruling authorizing extradition, on the grounds of his declining health.

The charges against Assange stemmed from his communications with whistleblowers, most importantly Chelsea Manning, who in 2010 gave WikiLeaks classified materials alleging US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Assange did not personally hack these materials, he was still charged for his role in publishing them.

News outlets, celebrities, free speech activists, and some US and international politicians  have all called on US President Joe Biden to drop the charges against Assange.

RT 5/5/23

DC

 Most people are almost totally disinterested in local politics. Many people don’t bother to vote in local elections; most probably couldn’t tell you who their councillor is. or which tier of local government is responsible for which services, or which political party runs their local council.

The only exceptions are the London boroughs which attract sensational and distorted media coverage because of their so- called “loony left” policies. The tabloid newspapers are, in general, not the slightest bit interested in what councils do or don’t do about council housing or social services, but let any council give a few pounds to a gay or lesbian group and it becomes front page news. It is little wonder, therefore, that Kin- nock is doing all that he can to dissociate himself from them since his overriding concern is the achievement of political power no matter what policies he has to ditch on the way to Number Ten.



In fact local authorities do affect our lives in important ways. They are responsible for providing education, social services, housing, home helps and day centres. They maintain the roads and remove the rubbish. They provide leisure and recreational facilities — parks, swimming pools, libraries and community centres. They regulate the environment in which we live by granting planning permission to builders.



But local authorities are important for another reason: they are the only other elected authority besides central government. This does not mean that they are especially democratic however. Most councils are out of touch with the needs of workers; they are dominated by representatives of the business community and operate in their interests. It is little wonder that most people are not interested in local politics, since it makes very little difference which party controls the council — life will go on pretty much as before…