Author: ajohnstone

Peru’s Community Pot

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The ’’community pot,” is a phenomenon that’s spread across Peru in recent months as coronavirus quarantines and shutdowns have left millions of poor people with no way to feed their families.

 Soup kitchens and community pots have become a symbol of the conundrum facing a region where most of the working population labors outside the formal economy.
Economic shutdowns have forced poor Peruvians, Argentines and tens of millions of others to fall back on community-based efforts unseen in large numbers since crises like Peru’s 1990s civil war or Argentina’s financial crash two decades ago.
“I barely have anything to eat at home,” Clara Arango, a single mother of two, she lost her job as a janitor when her employer closed his shopping mall in Lima’s wealthiest neighborhood due to the antivirus shutdown that began on March 16.  said. ’’Here I have a community pot and I can pool my resources with my neighbors and we can support each other and work together.
In Peru, thousands of community pots are steaming at breakfast and lunch in neighborhoods at levels not seen since inflation topped 7,000% in 1990 in the middle of the civil war with Shining Path Maoist guerrillas. More than a third of Peru’s 32 million people have had to engage in some form of community cooking due to lack of money, 
Without unemployment benefits or the ability to work from home, a cut-price  bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, some lentil stew or noodles in tomato sauce for lunch, and leftovers for dinner aren’t proving enough to keep poor Latin Americans from leaving their homes each day to earn a living as construction workers, street vendors or other types of day laborers. The inability to keep people at home is proving a major factor in the spread of the coronavirus around the continent, where new cases and deaths are rising unchecked as an unbent curve of infection pushes intensive care wards to their limits.
Despite some of the strictest antivirus measures in the region, Peru has diagnosed 237,000 cases of coronavirus and counted 7,000 deaths, the highest number of cases per capita in the region and the second-highest per capita count of deaths.
At the same time, Peru is facing a 12% drop in gross domestic product this year, one of the worst recessions in the hemisphere, according to the World Bank.  2.3 million other Lima residents also lost their jobs by April, out of a working population of roughly 16 million nationwide. The figure is expected to leap again when May numbers are released.
 Estéfany Aquiño, 11, who is helping her mother raise her 2-month-old sister after a cesarean section that left the woman unable to leave her house to look for food. Estéfany said the community pot is her only defense against a hunger that’s become a constant feature of life.
“Your stomach starts to hurt, to grumble, and then to talk to you,” the girl said.

Remember the economic victims of COVID-19

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As fashion outlets have re-opened across England and Northern Ireland, on the other side of the world the workers who stitch and sew the clothes hanging on their racks are losing their jobs and facing starvation.  As shops shut and countries went into lockdown, fashion brands cancelled billions of dollars of clothing orders with their suppliers in the global south, including clothing boxed and ready to be shipped or already on cutting and sewing lines. In Bangladesh, although factories are now reopening, orders are still down by almost 80%. According to the Workers Rights Consortium, British retail brands including Arcadia, Primark and Edinburgh Woollen Mill are among those yet to make a commitment to pay in full for all orders completed and in production with overseas suppliers.
Nazmin Nahar, a 26-year-old garment worker and mother of two in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is living on borrowed rice. She hasn’t had the wages to pay for food or rent for more than two months.
Even though the hours were long and the targets relentless, Nahar had been working at Magpie Knitwear, where she earned £150 a month, making clothes for UK brands such as Burton and H&M. Then, in late March, Bangladesh went into lockdown and the factory closed. When it reopened on 4 April, Nahar was told she had no job to go back to.
“They told us that the foreign buyers are cancelling all our orders,” she says. “That’s why there’s no new work. We haven’t had our salaries for two months now. Our house rent is due. We are buying all our groceries on credit but they won’t give us any more food until we pay our bill. So our landlord managed to get a sack of rice for us and we’re surviving on that.” 
In Bangladesh alone, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers Export Association (BGMEA) estimates that fashion brands have recalled around £3bn of orders they had already placed with suppliers. Rubana Huq, the president of the BGMEA, says that in the last month more than 25,000 workers have lost their jobs. If overseas orders don’t pick up, she says that this could rise to 500,000 in the next six months.
Rojina Begum, who worked at the Ultimate Fashion Ltd factory that supplies Matalan and other western brands, lost her job and her monthly salary of 8,000 taka (£75) after being sacked along with 300 other workers at her factory when Covid-19 hit. Her trade union claims that management told them it was due to cancelled orders from foreign buyers.
“If the fear of the virus wasn’t there, we could have protested strongly,” she says, “but because of the coronavirus, we couldn’t gather our workers and make a strong protest. Whenever four or five workers gathered in front of the factory, they dispersed us. And you can’t build a strong protest alone.”
Akhi Akther, who was paid 9,300 taka a month at Sterling Styles, a factory supplying Gap, said she was sacked when she fell ill with Covid symptoms and is now finding it impossible to get another job. She says she is yet to be paid two months of owed wages.
“We can’t go back to our village because we don’t have anything there, what will we do? Our jobs are our only source of earnings. Orders have shrunk, factories are getting rid of workers left and right. I am emotionally and mentally devastated.”
The workers say now shops have reopened, it is crucial that brands honour their financial obligations to their suppliers. 
“We all saw the pictures of queues outside fast fashion stores last week, but these are the same companies that abandoned their workers when they needed them the most,” says Meg Lewis, a campaigner at the Clean Clothes Campaign. “Brands have simply not been held to account for their behaviour over the pandemic. Paying for the orders you placed with a factory isn’t an act of charity. They have protected their profits at the expense of millions of people’s lives.”

Speculating on Health

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A company set up by a hedge fund, with no background or expertise in pharmacology, arranged to get rights to a drug that was developed by researchers at Emory University on a $16 million contract with the government. 



 The drug, EIDD-2801, is thought to be a potential treatment for the coronavirus. 



 Shortly after arranging to buy the rights to the drug, the company turned around and sold them to Merck, presumably for a substantial profit. 



 Neither the United States of America nor the United Kingdom have agreed to share the fruits of research with the world, leaving open the possibility that one or more of their drug companies will take advantage of research that was widely shared to develop a vaccine or treatment on which they will claim a patent monopoly, and then charge very high prices.



 https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/06/20/patents-and-pandemic-again

Stealing the vote

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 A federal judge denied an effort to expand the number of polling places in Kentucky.



 There will be fewer than 200 polling places, down from 3,700 in a typical election year.



 Most of the state’s 120 counties will have just one polling location. 



 That includes the most populous county, Jefferson, home to Louisville. About 1 in 5 residents in the county is African American, the largest black population in the state. Jefferson County has a population of roughly 767,000 and will have just one polling location. It is 54 miles long with poor public transit so how will people get to vote?



 https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/20/voting-rights-advocates-warn-impending-disaster-kentucky-after-bid-increase-slashed

The Pandemic Changed India

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 “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi



 The monsoon officially arrived in Mumbai, India last weekend.



 The men who cleared the drains so that the rains don’t cause flooding and water-borne diseases. The electricians who came to fix blackouts caused by wind and rain. The sanitation workers who used to spray neighbourhoods with mosquito repellent before the monsoon to prevent vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and chikungunya. All are missing. Many of these workers and handymen were migrant labourers. For the first time in 125 years, most of the 5,000 dabbawallas have gone home to their villages, defeated by the virus and the lockdown. 1.2 million migrant workers left the city during lockdown.



 They fled the city when the pandemic left them destitute and hungry. Before their mass exodus, well-heeled residents had never noticed them. They were always there, cheap cogs labour, their presence visible only when needed to fix a blocked toilet or deliver pizzas, and instantly forgotten. Now their absence is felt. A city already buckling under coronavirus and facing the annual ritual of catastrophic flooding from the rains is realising its dependence on daily wage labourers and informal casual workers.



The labour shortage means business cannot find technicians, electricians, sweepers, packers or assembly-line workers. Foundries, mills, shops and malls are looking for labour. Construction of roads, flyovers and metro lines is delayed. Half-built buildings need to be finished. A survey carried out  for the Economic Times newspaper estimates a labour shortfall of 40–50%.  Employers have sent out “contractors” who, for a commission, scour villages in the states around Mumbai for skilled and semi-skilled workers to work for daily wages.



 The chief minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray,  has urged employers to hire local workers rather than those from other states. Few want to take him up on this suggestion.



 “Migrant workers accept less pay, longer hours and harsher working conditions. Local people will not tolerate this – they have a sense of justice, are rooted in society and enjoy social support. Migrant labourers are herded into factories and hostels and feel cut off and isolated from the society around them,” said DL Karad, national vice-president of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions. “Most of them aren’t coming back. First they were treated like slaves by employers and then they were treated like stray dogs by society during the lockdown. Some, perhaps, may return. But only if they are starving,” said Karad.



 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jun/19/mumbai-discovers-life-isnt-so-sweet-without-the-workers-it-once-ignored



To Extinction Rebellion

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I hope all is well with you. Thank you for keeping me in touch with XR.



I have been to a few of Kington’s meetings and also Brecon, Cardigan and other groups. Whilst I absolutely understand and agree with the aims of XR what seems to be missing, to me at least, is when XR says ‘system change’ what exactly does this mean; that is to say what system does the movement intend to put in its place?


I have occasionally tried to raise this issue but have been met with blank looks, if I had to guess it would seem that there is no clear idea of what this new system would be.


The idea that to continue with Capitalism is a non-starter as a system predicated on growth and profit at the expense of the environment and people is destined to destroy itself and probably any reasonable form of life. (as can now be clearly seen as the government are pushing to restore the economy despite scientists warning against this, proves the point – the economy will, under Capitalism, always come first).


The answer is World wide change and this will only happen when the majority of people want to end Capitalism and, more to the point, know why it will fail us and be clear about what to put in its place.


In the early 1900’s the World Socialist Party was founded and they, since then, have been unwavering in their aims to rid the World of Capitalism and not try to reform it. With climate breakdown and the Covid outbreak if ever there was a time to change things it is now. Please check this website out, I think the word ‘socialism’ is problematic, not because of the true meaning but because most people think of China or Russia when, in fact, true socialism has never existed but that tends to be lack of knowledge and the pressure of the media/governments to encourage people to think otherwise.


Climate breakdown, like species loss, warfare, starvation, homelessness, poverty and even Covid 19 are all symptoms of this dreadful society (Capitalism) Reformism just will not work. I think that if XR members were to read very carefully the aims of the World Socialist Party they would realise that all of XR’s aims and more would be met with true socialism.


I would respectfully ask you to read this email at your meeting please.



Kind regards to all,

Glenn Morris.

Law and Order and the Police

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Instead of cities spending a lion’s share of their budgets on their police departments, Defund the Police advocates argue that money should support affordable housing, healthcare, child care, mental health treatment and other services. There has been calls for reform following the 1967 uprisings in cities across the US and as a response to the police beating of Rodney King in 1991 as well as to the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014.
The Minneapolis City Council unanimously supported a resolution to determine a community-supported replacement for the city’s police force. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti also announced his intention to strip $250 million from the city’s police department budget, which tops $1.8 billion, and redirect funds into youth programs, healthcare and other areas. New York City police commissioner Dermot Shea also dissolved a plainclothes unit that has been criticised for pitting police against communities it serves. Following New York’s passage of a massive legislative package with sweeping reforms, Governor Andrew Cuomo told protesters: “You won.” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, following the police killing of Rayshard Brooks, also ordered her city’s police department to “immediately adopt” deescalation policies, including holding officers accountable for their “duty to intervene” against another officer’s use of deadly force.
Mariama Kaba argues that commissions, studies and the “best practices” that emerge from police abuse investigations from as early as 1894 only “served as a kind of counterinsurgent function each time police violence led to protests.” “The philosophy undergirding these reforms is that more rules will mean less violence,” Kaba writes. “Why on earth would we think the same reforms would work now? We need to change our demands. The surest way of reducing police violence is to reduce the power of the police, by cutting budgets and the number of officers.”
A 2017 report from the Centre for Popular Democracy, Black Youth Project 100 and Law for Black Lives found that several major cities have “stripped funds from mental health services, housing subsidies, youth programs, and food benefits programs, while pouring money into police forces, military grade weapons, high-tech surveillance, jails, and prisons”.
A 2018 report from the National Institutes of Health determined that a “combined investment in a public health, community-based approach to violence prevention and a criminal justice approach focused on deterrence can achieve more to reduce population-level rates of urban violence than either can in isolation.”
Critical Resistance member Kamau Walton  says. “When communities are stable, healthy and thriving, we know there’s a lot less harm and violence.”
The Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, for example, shifted from thinking about transformative justice within “communities” to “pods”, which are “made up of the people that you would call on if violence, harm or abuse happened to you”, had witnessed, or wanted accountability for.
“Why can’t we be the ones taking care of each other, instead of police, who tend to escalate and further traumatise people when that doesn’t need to happen?” Walton argues. “Why not invest in people who are going to see you as a neighbour, a cousin, a friend, a loved one, that they care for and want to take care of? That’s the idea behind the solutions we want to see, that they need to be based in communities that see people as people, people connected to them and that they’re accountable to.”
Abolitionists argue that police don’t actually stop violence from happening, and that a better administration of justice should come from communities holding people accountable. Addressing the conditions that lead to people committing violence would prevent it from happening in the first place, they argue, while prisons don’t inherently repair the health or harms that lead to a person’s imprisonment, including their mental health, addiction or abuse.
Rather than public safety spearheaded by police, abolitionists call for the communities themselves to take the lead. Neighbours can learn to de-escalate incidents, respond to mental health issues and hold one another accountable for their communities. Most conflicts could be disrupted through mediation, or defused by social workers or mental health workers and other care providers.
The United States is the world’s incarceration capital, housing a quarter of the world’s prisoners in a nation that represents only 5 per cent of the global population.
Reformers seek to end its prison system’s legacy of racism, from its roots in plantation-era America to its echoes in mass incarceration today. The USA disproportionately jails black people — African Americans make up 13 per cent of the US but more than 40 per cent of prison populations. Following the ending of enslavement at the end of the US Civil War, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery except for those convicted of a crime, allowing the adoption of “black codes” in economically devastated southern states at the end of the war to impose harsh penalties against newly freed black Americans for minor crimes, ensuring their continued “free” labour in prison. “Convict leasing” would go on to provide labour for massive private infrastructure, while legalised segregation and Jim Crow-era terror criminalised black Americans.

Racial Inequality

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Data shows that people of colour are worse off than white counterparts and black households face the biggest deficit.



 The ethnicity gap does not stop at pay – the inequality that begins there runs through everything involving money. Almost across the board people of colour are worse off than their white counterparts and, typically, black households face the biggest deficit. Compared with white households they have lower earnings and less cash in private pensions, investments or other assets to draw on.



 Data shows that in the last year for which figures are available, black people had the highest unemployment rate of all groups; were most likely to have a household income below £400 a week; and, after Bangladeshi households, were most likely to claim income-related benefits. Only 8% of black pensioner families drew any income from a personal pension.



 Research from the Runnymede Trust shows the vast differences in wealth and assets between households of different ethnicity. The figures show that that for every £1 a white British family has, black Caribbean households have about 20p and black African and Bangladeshi households approximately 10p. Accumulated assets offer a safety net when things go wrong and can be passed down through generations.

Some of the issues are explained by the demographics of the community: black people are generally younger and live in cities, so may have higher living costs and have had less time to build up wealth. Plus, some pay gap figures reflect inequalities around education and opportunity.
However, two years ago, the Resolution Foundation thinktank found black male graduates were being paid 17% less than white male graduates – the equivalent of £3.90 an hour or £7,000 over a year. For black women, the “pay penalty” was 9%, or £3,000 over a year.
Otegha Uwagba is a writer and the founder of Women Who. She is working on a book called We Need To Talk About Money, which will be published next year. She says people often make the argument that the pay difference is a result of people clustering around low-paid industries. “But even when you compare people with identical qualifications doing identical jobs in the same geographical area, there is still a difference in pay,” she says. “It’s hard to find any other reason for that beyond racism.” She adds: “Why aren’t we doing the same thing with mandatory disclosures around the ethnicity pay gap as we have around the gender pay gap? Racism is a really ugly part of British history that people just don’t want to face up to.”
Most people’s biggest asset is their home and Uwagba says she was shocked when she saw figures showing the low level of property ownership among black Africans. While 63% of families across England own homes, the figure is only 20% among black Africans. “When you think about how people are buying homes, especially in London, and how many are relying on the bank of Mum and Dad, you can see how income disparities are perpetuated through the generations,” she says. “Money begets more money. Discrimination compounds things and wealth and income gaps are passed on to the next generation.” Even when the inequalities in pay are ironed out, it will be some time before all the other gaps are closed. With fewer assets to pass down, the problem grows. It is not only the wealth that accumulates, but also the knowledge about how to make the most of your money.
Among FTSE 100 companies, 62.% of board members are white males and they occupy 84% of executive directorships, according to the DiversityQ FTSE 100 board diversity report 2020. Fewer than one in 10 directors is black, Asian or minority ethnicity.
Cheryl Cole, the editor of DiversityQ says, “People continue to hire in their likeness – they recruit from the same small pool of candidates who went to the same small pool of universities and have the same background.” 
Things are “dire” in fund management, says Cole. Of 100,000 employees, 10% identify as Asian and only 1% as black, and the industry has only 13 black portfolio managers, according to a Diversity Project report.

The Real Jungle

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Three large food factories have closed in England and Wales after about 250 workers tested positive for coronavirus, as the Unite union said it was aware of suspected outbreaks at five other sites across the UK.



 The confined working conditions and long periods spent by workers in close proximity – often 10 to 12 hours a shift – mean meat factories are at substantially heightened risk of spreading the coronavirus through human-to-human transmission, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.



 Unions have said the living conditions of many low-paid workers in the factories is another contributing factor, as is time spent by colleagues in communal spaces such as in locker rooms and on shuttle buses.



 Bev Clarkson, a national officer at Unite, said there were “major issues” with the health and safety of workers in the meat processing industry and urged employers to implement proper physical distancing and provide adequate protective equipment “to stop further spikes within the sector”.



 “Unite has warned time and again that coronavirus outbreaks at meat processing factories throughout the UK were likely,” she said. “The union has been in touch with the management of all three closed factories to insist that staff only return to work when it is safe to do so and when further outbreaks can be prevented.”



 The United Food and Commercial Workers union said recently that at least 44 slaughterhouse workers in the US had died from the virus and another 3,000 had tested positive.



 Public health officials in Germany are grappling with an outbreak among hundreds of workers at a meatpacking plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. At least 730 workers have tested positive at the Tönnies Group plant, it emerged. Germany’s agriculture minister called for an official investigation into the outbreak. Labor adviser Elena Strato says meatpacker Tönnies is cynically trying to pin blame for a coronavirus outbreak on foreign workers. Rather, the problem stems from a network of major companies and their subcontractors, who run a well-oiled system designed to let them shirk their own responsibilities as to the dangerous work and living environments they subject their employees to.



  What adjective best describes a person who will risk someone else’s life just to get richer? Ruthless? Unscrupulous? Hungry for money? Willing to disregard human rights, even? The management of Tönnies, Germany’s and Europe’s largest meat-processing company, could certainly be labeled as such. Why? Because it has known for months how vulnerable its workers, like so many others in the meat-processing industry, are to a potential coronavirus outbreak. Yet, it did nothing to reduce the risk. Workers in this industry, who tend to hail from eastern and southern Europe and are employed by sub-contractors, often endure dismal working and living conditions. It’s common for laborers butchering dead animals to work side by side, standing close to each other all day, and to share cramped living quarters, where social distancing is impossible.



 Unlike their German colleagues, meat-processing workers from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria earn a pittance — albeit a little more than they would make in most jobs back home. Nevertheless, the dire working and living conditions they have to put up with in Germany effectively make them modern-day slaves.  Tönnies is exploiting these desperate people to turn a profit. More than half the 6,000 workers at its main headquarters are employed by sub-contractors. This allows Tönnies to save labor costs, maximize profits, and enhance its competitiveness. The company has outpriced many global competitors and even exports meat to countries like Romania and China. In the past, the company has exerted considerable influence on regional and local lawmakers, who turned a blind eye to the mistreatment of foreign workers.



  20,000 pigs are slaughtered and cut up each day at Tönnies and when measured by the number of animals slaughtered  a 30.3% market share. The number of animals per farm is increasing, which indicates a growth in factory farming in Germany. Farms with 100,000 hens laying eggs are not rare. EU regulations stipulate that a pig weighing 50 kilograms (110 pounds) to 110 kilograms (242 pounds) needs just 0.75 square meters (8 square feet) of space.



 “The purely economic view and the associated intensive farming systems in animal farming are ethically questionable and no longer tolerable,” said Thomas Schröder, president of the German Animal Welfare Association.



 Meat processing is an important economic sector in Germany. According to the Federal Statistic Office, the turnover for the meat processing industry in 2019 was €42.5 billion ($47.5 billion). Tönnies had by far the highest turnover — with around €6.9 billion ($7.7 billion) — from slaughtering 17 million pigs. In 2019, 59.7 million pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and horses were slaughtered in Germany. Including poultry, companies produced almost 8 million tons of meat. Much more meat is produced in Germany than is eaten. Almost half of it is exported. German pork, offal and poultry are particularly sought after. The biggest buyer of German pork is Italy at 17%, followed by the Netherlands, China and Poland with 9% each.

There have been a number of outbreaks among employees of German meat companies in recent months.  Virologist Isabella Eckerle gives several reasons why. First, working conditions in slaughterhouses are not compatible with the hygiene measures necessary to prevent a virus from being transmitted to others. People work in closed rooms, with no possibility of maintaining social distancing guidelines. Second, the accommodation for foreign laborers is often in cramped apartments, with multiple people sleeping in the same room, meaning the virus can easily spread there as well. Another factor could be the physical strain of the work. Damp hands, gloves, aprons and clothing could promote transmission through smear infections. Many of the workers in German slaughterhouses come from outside the country. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but according to the German government, answering a question from The Left Party, in 2018 almost 50% of workers in slaughterhouses did not hold German passports. Trade unions estimate the migrant workforce currently stands at around 80%. Workers are rarely hired by the meat processing companies themselves, but instead by subcontractors, which mostly hire people in Romania and Hungary before bringing them to work in Germany. Workers received time-limited, labor-specific contracts, which means they receive fewer employment rights than long-term employees. According to the 2018 government figures, they were much likely to work evenings, nights and weekends than employees in other industries.
Officially they are paid the minimum wage, which was introduced to the meat industry in 2014 and is currently set at €8.75 ($9.81) per hour — but unions and campaign groups say workers rarely receive that much. Instead, costs are deducted from their pay for multiple reasons.
“Opaque recording of working hours, unclear costs for accommodation, transport and material leave the impression of being cheated,” summarizes Armin Wiese, an executive at Germany’s Food, Beverages and Catering Union (NGG).  “They realize they are defenseless against the arbitrariness of their employers.”



 https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-coronavirus-outbreak-in-german-slaughterhouse-was-preventable/a-53866979

Theory and Practice

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TOWARDS A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD, IN ORDER TO CHANGE IT.
The world we live in is a world of contradictions. The environment is in a state of decline, yet industry continues to pump pollutants into the atmosphere whilst non-polluting technologies are neglected. Thousands starve, while food stocks remain unused. We can communicate with strangers from all around the globe, yet no-one knows their neighbour. Automation could free us from labour, yet we are chained to the machine. We live amongst vast material possibilities, yet poverty is the universal experience – not just in the narrow economic sense but also in terms of the quality of lived experience.  “Never in history has there been such a glaring contrast between what could be and what actually exists.” [1]
Central to all these contradictions and reshaping all previous antagonisms is the global commodity-capitalist system. A system characterised by the production of commodities, wage labour and the market economy. A commodity is what is produced by the worker under capitalist conditions, its purpose to reproduce and enlarge capital (stored-up labour). The pursuit of ever increasing profits is the driving force behind the whole process – the fulfilment of peoples needs is a secondary and not always occurring result.
Commodities are only available in exchange for other commodities, money being the universal commodity and measure of all others. Since all goods have been turned into commodities and access to non-commodified materials restricted [2], those without the means of producing anything to exchange must sell the only thing they have, their physical or mental labour-power. The logic of the market economy treats this labour like any other commodity; to be bought, sold and discarded as the market dictates. In effect the worker becomes a commodity. This transformation of living activity into an object creates an alienated or estranged world in which humankind does not recognize or fulfil itself, but is overpowered by the dead things and social relations of its own making.
Capitalist society is therefore split into two camps, the bourgeois or capitalist class (those who own and control the means of production – the land, equipment, machinery, buildings and raw materials necessary to create the things we need and use every day) and the proletariat [3] (those with “nothing to lose but their chains”). However, both classes are subject to the laws of the market economy [4] – our concern is with the social relation capital not the individual capitalist – the functionaries of capitalism are more and more disposable as individuals. While the rag wearing classical proletariat of Marx’s time has all but disappeared, at least in the developed countries, the fundamental division remains; power and wealth are becoming more rather than less concentrated under the control of a small minority. The modern proletariat is almost everyone; it is the working class which must destroy both alienated work and class.
The “official” history of the working class’s struggle against capitalism is an inversion, what is presented as its greatest triumphs are in reality its most bitter defeats; Leninist “Communism” in the east and reformist “Socialism” in the west where both expressions of a general movement towards state-capitalism. The greatest tragedy of these times is that in the minds of the vast majority of workers the project for the dissolution of the commodity economy became associated with its exact opposite. “So the light darkened that had illuminated the world; the masses that had hailed it were left in blacker night… By usurping the name communism for its system of workers’ exploitation and its policy of often cruel persecution of adversaries, it made this name, till then expression of lofty ideals, a byword, an object of aversion and hatred even among workers.”[5]
Though the call for a new society was never thoroughly extinguished; small and often profoundly isolated groups and individuals argued the case for a social reorganization to bring free access and control of the means of production into the hands of the whole of humanity. “From each according to ability, to each according to need!” [6]
The creation of such a society has two preconditions; firstly that technological production techniques have been sufficiently developed to be able to fulfill the material needs of the whole of society and secondly, that the majority of the population have an understanding of what needs to be done and want to carry it through. Revolutionaries are painfully aware that the first requirement has long since been reached but that the second is still far from being realized.
If we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past it will be necessary to develop a theory of revolutionary practice, a theory which seeks to “get to the root of all things” and improve them. It is not a matter of choosing from one of the pre-existing ideologies of the old workers movement and basing our world view around it, but a matter of finding the “moment of truth” in all the theories of the past and synthesising this with our experience of the present.
“Theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses.”[7]
DJP October 2008
FOOTNOTES
1. Ken Knabb – “The Joy of Revolution”
2. For a description of how this came to be see Karl Marx – “Capital Vol. 1” Chapter 26
3. “Proletarian”: broadly speaking “modern working class” including the un-employed and unemployable. However the proletariat is not to be understood as a sociological category of people in such-and-such income group and such-and-such occupations, but as a social relation of capitalism. It is all those who have little or no means of support other than selling their physical and mental labour-power. The proletariat is the only class capable of ending class society, as it produces the material conditions of its own enchainment.
4. “The propertied class and the proletarian class express the same human alienation. But the former feels comfortable and confirmed in it, recognises this self alienation as its own power and this has the semblance of human existence. The latter feels itself crushed by this alienation, sees in it its own impotence and the reality of an inhuman existence.” Karl Marx – “The Holy Family“
5. Anton Pannekoek – “Workers Councils“
6. Often attributed to Marx‘s 1875 “Critique of the Gotha Programme” though it appears that this phrase was in usage years before. The subtitle to Etienne Cabet’s 1840 work “Travel and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria” read “From each according to his capacity, to each according to his work”.
DJP

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