Author: ajohnstone

Racism Facts

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The income of the median African American household is about 60% that of the median white household and this income gap, after narrowing a bit over the first couple of decades after World War II, is now wider than it was in 1970.  



 One in five African Americans live in poverty (more than twice the rate for whites) and a third of African American children live in poverty. 



 The unemployment rate among African Americans in the US is about twice as high as unemployment among whites, and this has been true for as long as we have been measuring US unemployment rates by race. 



 The wealth of the median African American household is one tenth that of the median white household. 



  And—as is painfully evident these days – racial inequality manifests itself in other realms of social life as well: education, health care, life expectancy, infant mortality, housing, access to capital, exposure to toxins, and more. 



  COVID-19 is killing African Americans at more than twice the rate of whites.  And “law enforcement” and “criminal justice” in the US systematically victimize and brutalize people of color.

The economist Darrick Hamilton, in his “Racial Equality is Economic Equality,” conveys succinctly that this racist history is essential for understanding racial inequality in 2020:
“The racial wealth gap is an inheritance that began with chattel slavery, when blacks were literally the capital assets for a white landowning plantation class. The gap continued after Emancipation, when discriminatory laws and institutions established insurmountable barriers to the American middle class for black families. 
Today, hundreds of years removed from chattel slavery, there has virtually never been a substantive black middle class when defined by wealth. In contrast, the implementation of FDR’s New Deal and post-war vision facilitated an asset-based white middle class to cumulatively build wealth and pass it on to their heirs.”


Over the course of the 20th Century, millions of American families, through home ownership, accumulated wealth as never before. African Americans were, overwhelming, excluded from this bonanza. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro get it just right in their book, Black Wealth/White Wealth: African Americans were “locked out of the greatest mass-based opportunity for wealth accumulation in American history.” 

The Tax Fiddlers

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Researchers from Warwick University and the London School of Economics (LSE) analysed HMRC tax returns of higher earners and found that the average person with £10m in total remuneration had an effective tax rate of just 21 per cent – less than someone on median earnings of £30,000.

And a tenth of people receiving more than £1m paid a lower rate than someone earning just £15,000.
The very rich are able to – entirely legally – reduce their taxes by structuring their affairs to take their remuneration as capital gains and corporate dividends. These are forms of remuneration that attract a significantly lower tax rate than income tax.
“Instead of asking, can the rich pay more?, a better question may be: who amongst the rich is not paying their fair share?,” they write.
Other research this year by the Warwick and LSE authors shows that, if capital gains are included, the total remuneration share of the top 1 per cent has been growing faster than previously thought over the past decade, rising from 15 per cent to 17 per cent.
Some tax experts argue that attempts to increase taxes on the very wealthy, regardless of the fairness question, are unlikely to raise much additional income, partly because people would move their assets offshore in response.
Opponents of higher tax rates on the wealthiest point out that an estimated 30 per cent of total UK income tax was paid by the top 1 per cent in 2019-20, up from 25 per cent before the 2008-09 financial crisis, while their share of income has been constant at around 14 per cent. Yet such calculations do not include capital gains.

A General Strike for Hong Kong

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Last June, Hong Kong protesters took to the streets against a proposed extradition bill and started a year-long protest movement. 



 Since June 2019, police have fired more than 16,000 rounds of teargas, over 7,000 rubber bullets and made nearly 9,000 arrests. Police are accused of excessive use of force and conducting arbitrary arrests.



 “Because of police brutality, the COVID-19 social gathering ban and the national security law, many people are afraid to speak out. That’s why we want to provide a safe channel for our members to express their opinions,” said Vic Tse, who is  the chairperson of Hong Kong Public Relations and Communications Union that was formed in December 2019, during the protests and also a representative of a new coalition of labor unions. The coalition, which comprises 24 unions across 20 different industries, recently called for a referendum on whether to go on strike against the proposed national security law.



 According to Hong Kong’s Labor Department, 1,578 applications for union registration were submitted over the first three months of 2020, compared with 142 across all of 2019 and 13 in 2018. As police are increasingly rejecting applications to hold rallies, those who protest anyway are now at greater risk of being arrested for “illegal assembly.” Large-scale, organized union actions such as general strikes thus provide an alternative to the traditional protest movement.

Tse’s coalition hopes that the referendum will gather over 60,000 votes. If over 60% of the votes support the motion, they will go ahead with a three-phase general strike, with the first phase lasting for three days in order to first warn Beijing against the consequences of implementing the law in Hong Kong. A general strike in August last year against the now-withdrawn extradition bill sent the city into chaos, leading to the cancellation of more than 200 flights, as well as the disruption of train and bus services. But subsequent strikes haven’t created as much momentum, and in many cases, Tse said, have led to serious repercussions for the few people who participated in them. A referendum, she said, would ensure that enough people take part in order to minimize overall risk for participants.
“The paradox of strikes is that the more people participate, the less dangerous it is because the chance of repercussions is lower. They can’t just fire everyone,” said Tse. 


Dairy and Climate Change

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The biggest dairy companies in the world have the same combined greenhouse gas emissions as the UK, the sixth biggest economy in the world, according to a new report. The analysis shows the impact of the 13 firms on the climate crisis is growing, with an 11% increase in emissions in the two years after the 2015 Paris climate change agreement. Research shows all plant-based milks, such as soya and oat, result in far fewer emissions than dairy milk.



 The report, by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in the US, also says the growth of giant dairy companies has helped force milk prices below the cost of production for the last decade, causing a crisis in rural livelihoods and requiring taxpayer subsidies to keep farmers afloat. The researchers say caps on production should be reintroduced to protect both the climate and small farmers.



 The IATP report found emissions from the big companies rose from 306m tonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2015 to 338m tonnes in 2017. The UK’s annual emissions are 350m tonnes a year.



 A 2019 joint report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Global Dairy Platform said: “In order to limit temperature rise, the dairy sector must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and work towards a low-carbon future … There is a clear case for immediate and more ambitious action.”



 It said: “The [dairy] sector’s emissions have increased by 18% between 2005 and 2015 because overall milk production has grown substantially by 30%. The good news is that there are many opportunities within the sector to limit climate change by reducing emissions. While there is some uncertainty about the size and timing of changes, it is certain that it is happening.” The report did not consider reducing production.



 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/15/emissions-from-13-dairy-firms-match-those-of-entire-uk-says-report

Iran’s falling fertility rate

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Iran has restricted family planning services at state-run hospitals as it tries to boost its population size. Vasectomies will no longer be carried out at state-run medical centres and contraceptives will only be offered to women whose health might be at risk.
The Iranian government has become concerned about fewer births and an increasingly ageing population. Annual population growth has dropped below 1%.  Just two years ago, the country was recorded as having population growth of 1.4% and, now, if no action is taken, Iran could become one of the world’s oldest countries in the next 30 years. The Ministry of Health explained, “We have controlled mortality under age five, and life expectancy increased by 20 years, however, delay in marriage and childbearing, and the gap between the first child and the second one are issues that need to be addressed.”
Over the past four decades, life expectancy has increased from 50 years to more than 70 years, 21.4 years for men and 23.4 years for women.
Marriage and children within marriage are both in decline. The marriage rate had dropped by 40% in a decade.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been calling for people to have more children, saying he wants the current population population of 80 million to grow to 150 million.

Meet the Chinese Capitalists

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China’s third richest man is one of the country’s youngest billionaire entrepreneurs. Colin Zheng Huang, age 40, founded online discount platform Pinduoduo in 2015 and took the e-commerce firm public on the Nasdaq in 2018. Following a 14.5% surge in share price that boosted Huang’s fortune by $4.5 billion, Huang is now worth $35.6 billion, according to Forbes — becoming the 25th richest person in the world.



 In net worth terms, that puts him behind two giant Chinese internet titans: Tencent chairman Ma Huateng (worth $46.4 billion) and Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma (worth $41.3 billion.)



Planning and Big Pharma?

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A study published by global consultancy EY on Monday shows that last year the bulk of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies focused on the development of anti-cancer drugs. A total of 2,586 active agents were reported to be in the stage of clinical development  while “only” 605 anti-virus agents reached the same phase in 2019.
During the same time, cancer-related activities secured the biggest revenues for Big Pharma. Companies were able to boost their turnover by one-fifth last year to €174 billion ($196 billion), also driven by big blockbuster drugs generating revenues of at least $1 billion each. Medication for the treatment of infections accounted for “only” €46 billion in revenues in 2019.
” The largest pharmaceutical firms are unlikely to stop their long-term programs and will hardly focus solely on COVID-19.”  Siegfried Bialojan, head of the EY Life Science Center in Mannheim, Germany, says the reason for this is simple. “Pandemics are not predictable as a business factor, because you just don’t know when and in which form they may occur.”
With COVID-19 “There are too many imponderables right now and too much insecurity, meaning that potential buyers and sellers really don’t see eye to eye on the transaction price.” says Alexander Nuyken, EY’s head of Life Science, Transaction Advisory for Europe, Middle East, India & Africa. “We estimate that 97% of the vaccines being tested right now will not be approved, meaning that a lot of companies will just have burned big amounts of R&D money at the end of the day.”

The Path to a Socialist Future

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We live in a world torn by economic crises, environmental emergencies and wars. We see little future in this society. We live in a society which puts a price tag on everything. But now, working people seek new paths, new roads forward. We search for social change. New movements are being formed, new directions are being tried. The world can be changed. For humanity’s future it has to be changed. As socialists we believe that all this ferment can be harnessed to the great task of transforming society and building a new world. 


The Socialist Party stands for a world which can eliminate poverty and hunger and war; a world in which freedom is more than a word in a textbook; a world in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the producers themselves and the products of man are available to all. We stand for socialism! Around the world working people are saying “Enough” and are beginning to move. Though our lives and conditions might differ; though we live in different parts of the world; though our struggles take different forms; ours is a common goal—to end exploitation of man by man. Only when we have economic democracy, when production is planned for use and not for profit, when the right of all to share in the abundance of our planet is established – only then will democracy be truly established.


Those who doubt that socialism will ever come about are challenged today by the existence of anti--capitalist movements, The world’s peoples are clearly on the road to accomplishing social change. A new world is being created—a world which will put people before profit, which will create a participatory democracy at every level. The potential of mankind is virtually limitless, if it is freed from economic and social oppression.


The Socialist Party is not a reform party, but a revolutionary party. It does not propose to modify the capitalist system, but abolish it. An examination of its Declaration of Principles shows that it stands unequivocally for the common ownership and democratic control of all the means of production and distribution — in a word, socialism.

The Socialist Party is necessarily an world party. It is everywhere and always stands for the same aim, first, last, and always for the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution, and will press forward unceasingly until they secure them, thereby liberating humanity.

There was only one way to destroy the wage system, and that is the determination of the workers never to sell their labour for wages. Let  workers stop political action that is aimed merely at mitigating the evils of capitalism. The Socialist Party, wishes to advance the Socialist Co-operative Commonwealth, by which we mean, the common ownership of all the agencies of wealth production for the common good.

 The Socialist Party has no intermediate nor immediate demands. Socialism is not state ownership or government control of industry, two things that are purely capitalist. The kind of “socialism” is not what the Socialist Party means by socialism. Not at all. What the advocates of nationalisation mean is that the capitalist governments will have to make themselves responsible for the organization of production. The workers will remain just where they are – sweating in the factories and toiling in the fields and piling up the profits for their masters. The language of “socialism” is only a manoeuvre to fool the working class. Socialism struggles for the abolition of the state, not the enlarging of its functions. Socialism, in the words of Engels, is not the government of persons, but the administration of things. The state disappears. It is time for workers to organise themselves into a socialist party for the purpose of ending private and state property. The path to socialism is not through “public” ownership but through a fundamental change in class relations. The Socialist Party is opposed to all forms of reformism and “gradualism” or “evolutionary socialism.”

The Socialist Party is a party of revolutionary socialism. The Socialist Party believes in the organisation of the working class for the overthrow of capitalist society as the only cure for the problems of capitalism. Socialism will not fall from the skies. Neither will it be gained by any appeals to the good will and compassion of the capitalist exploiters,  as some people still seem to think. Socialism can be achieved only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. The Socialist Party has declared over and over again its sense of the futility of socialists wasting their time in getting such palliative measures passed, which, if desirable to be passed as temporarily useful, will be passed much more readily if they do not mix themselves up in the matter, and which are at least intended by our masters to hinder Socialism and not to further it. Over and over again it has deprecated socialists mixing themselves up in political intrigues; and it believes no useful purpose can be served by their running after the votes of those who do not understand the principles of socialism, and who therefore must be attracted by promises which could not be fulfilled by the candidates if by any chance such candidates were returned to Parliament.  

We are part of the world community of socialists. We have no illusions that the way will be easy, no visions of quick success. But the future belongs to humanity and socialism.




Child Labour Facts

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Here are some more facts about child labour:
– Almost a tenth of all children worldwide are engaged in child labour.
– Of the 152 million victims globally, about half are engaged in dangerous work in sectors such as construction, agriculture, mining and brick and stone manufacturing.
– About 70% work in agriculture – including fishing, forestry and livestock herding – while 17% are in the service industry and 12% are in the industrial sector, including mining.
– Boys account for 58% of all victims of child labour. But this statistic could reflect an underreporting of girls’ work as many of those in domestic servitude are thought to go uncounted.
– About 72.1 million child labourers are in Africa, 62.1 million in Asia and the Pacific, 10.7 million in the Americas, 5.5 million in Europe and Central Asia, and 1.2 million in the Arab states.
– The prevalence of child labour is 77 percent higher in countries where there is conflict.

Race and Sweat-shops

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The fashion industry makes huge profits from the exploitation of black and brown women. Racism in fashion runs to the very core of the industry. It is the millions of black and brown people making our clothes in factories thousands of miles away who bear the heaviest burden.





The fast fashion industry has been reliant on the exploitation of garment workers since its conception. The UK spends billions on clothes every year and yet some garment workers only take home £20 a week.

Of the 74 million textile workers worldwide, 80% are women of colour. 
Brands have created a production model that keeps garment workers poor and working in unsafe conditions to maximise their own profits. The buying practices of fast fashion include turning a blind eye to illegal subcontracting and allowing forced and unpaid overtime. These practices have incentivised the erosion of garment worker rights by manufacturers and government. 
The economic exploitation that fast fashion is reliant upon is a legacy of colonialism. From the 1500s until the middle of the 20th century, European imperialism was a way to create extractive states and oppress non-white people. 
The legacies continue to this day. Western consumers want cheaper clothes and brands want to make larger profit margins. The knock-on injustices and exploitation in fashion’s supply chains are either accepted by consumers or obscured by conscious marketing campaigns peddling female empowerment.
With the Covid-19 epidemic  we have seen the fashion industry abandon these same workers. n many countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia, brands are refusing to pay for billions of pounds worth of orders they had already placed with suppliers. What that means is manufacturers that purchased material destined for our high streets are now stuck with piles and piles of unwanted clothes. They are also unable to pay their workers. Hundreds of thousands of garment workers will lose their jobs because of this refusal to pay up.

Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN.

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