Author: cynical but optimistic

India: Nationalism 1932

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 From the October 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Flimsy Bond of Nationalism

Some of the supporters of the movement for Indian independence cherish the illusion that the brutal treatment meted out to them by the British authorities is peculiar to British rule over subject countries, and that such brutality will disappear when Indians govern in India. A wider knowledge would teach them that brutality marks the actions of every ruling class defending its privileges against uprisings from below.



Some of the Irish Nationalists used to talk in similar strain when the Irish movement was being suppressed by the British Government. In their minds the brutalities of the Black and Tans and other British forces were regarded as characteristics of alien rule. In due course, however, the Irish movement split into the Free State Party (the Government) and the Republicans. It was then found that the methods of the Black and Tans were fairly faithfully copied by the Irish in their treatment of each other. When an Indian ruling class gets hold of the reins of government, the Indian workers will find that there is little to choose between the brutality of Indian and English authorities.



A Nationalist publication, the India Bulletin, gives publicity to accounts of the harsh treatment of Indian political prisoners in Indian jails. Quite unintentionally these accounts support our argument and show what the Indian workers may expect at the hands of these wealthy Indians who finance and lead the Nationalist movement.



Like all national movements, the Indian nationalists make use of the cant that the idea of independence is one which binds all Indians in a close fraternity against the foreign tyrant. Yet one of the most persistent notes in the complaints of the political prisoners is that the wicked British authorities actually compel them to associate with their own fellow countrymen, the criminals. One lady writes as follows (Bulletin, June, 1932): —

  The fundamental fault lies with the (jail) system, and with a Government which can fling hundreds upon hundreds of well-bred ladies into the class assigned to the lowest criminals of the land.It is no doubt unpleasant for “well-bred ladies” to have to mix with their less fortunate Indian sisters. But there is nothing to prevent these Nationalists, with their boasted sympathy for the victims of British rule from demanding better treatment for the non-politicals as well as for themselves. But no; the letters in the Bulletin betray not the slightest hint of fellow feeling for the victims of the social system, many of whom have no prospect before them except the choice between harsh treatment in prison and treatment hardly less harsh outside. Gandhi and the other nationalist leaders are as vigorous as the British ruling class in upholding private ownership of the means of life, so the political prisoners make the claim for special treatment as befits the members of a privileged class. They resent having their precious bodies brought into proximity with the victims of the social system from which their privilege is derived, and of which they are defenders.



The Indian workers will discover this when the Indian capitalists enter into unrestricted or less restricted control. The capitalist ladies and their men-folk who have no sympathy for non-political prisoners will not find it difficult to adopt towards the workers the brutality inseparable from the suppression of one class by another. By that time they will have finished using the Indian workers as tools in the campaign against the British Government, and the mask will be taken off.


What the non-political prisoners think of the well-bred inhumanity of the arrogant ladies we do not know.
P. S.
Reposted  from SOYMB.   7 July 2018


India: New Boss, Same Old.

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Fifty years of “independence” (1997)

From the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard



In August Indians celebrated fifty years of independence from Britain, or at least some of them did. Socialists in India didn’t, as Binay Sarkar of the World Socialist Party (India) explains



There were festivities down to the village level with flying colours displaying the logo to rekindle nationalism as “a people’s event”. Fifty years previously, our class-elders had paid a high bloody price for the “Independence” that couldn’t end their dependence.


National independence is a capitalist business. Feuding factions of the selfsame class that win and control territories for profit, their politicians, media chiefs and paid hacks—Indian, Pakistani as well as “the imperialist” British, and maybe their global compatriots—got the show in motion on Friday 15 August 1997 to celebrate the occasion that occurred on a Friday fifty years ago.



Colonialism

In the middle of the present millennium the search for markets, sources of raw materials, cheap labour power and most profitable locations for business gave rise to “colonialism”, having transcontinental ramifications into all pre-capitalist formations. This indicated capitalism’s global dimensions right from the beginning. It was British merchant capital which navigated Job Charnock. who on 24 August 1690 arrived at the village of Sutanuti that later developed into the capitalist city of Calcutta, the first capital of British India.



Capitalism in India began to spread with the building of harbours, roads, railways, mills factories and banks—no matter what race, religion, language and territory capitalists and workers originated from. For capital is not a personal but a social force. Its movement in India accorded to its intrinsic alienating, uneven and competitive laws of motion. Battles, mutinies, marches and proclamations have well recorded this course in India as elsewhere.



Two centuries later in an atmosphere of great unrest due to poverty, famine and oppression, a populist platform became necessary to channel people’s wrath. Indian capitalists, intellectuals and their associations were encouraged by some British officials. Hume, Wedderburn and others with support from The Statesmen’s founder-editor Robert Knight in inaugurating the annual gathering of the nationalist movement called the Indian National Congress on 28 December 1885. The British government required it to work as a safety-valve, because by then a more confident and secure British capitalist class were learning to rule more with words than with swords.



In the 1906 Congress a group led by Tilak which favoured self-government secured a majority. Meanwhile on 30 December 1906 the Muslim League was founded by a group of well-to-do Indians claiming to represent the Indian Muslims with their “Pakistan” plan for separate states.



By 1920 the Communist Party of India was formed in Tashkent. On 15 May 1922 it launched its organ The Vanguard of Indian Independence, later changed to The Masses of India, on I January 1925. Right from its inception the CPI clearly accepted Lenin’s fatal reversal of the class position of Marx and Engels—that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself, and that proletarians have no country—to the ideology that workers are to be led by a minority vanguard party, that workers are the true patriots, and that “socialism” secures nation-states, and further that the struggle in the world is not between workers and capitalists but between imperialist and anti-imperialist states. However, “No party can serve two masters,” as the saying goes: a party serves the interests of one class or another.



Strikes and riots

Two lak [200,000] Bombay workers went into the first Indian general strike on 2 January 1919. Later the Great Depression caused strikes in industrial India—in Bombay textile mills (16 April to 5 October 1928), Tata Iron and Steel. South India Railways, Lillooah Railway workshops, Bengal Jute Mills. Calcutta Scavengers, etc. The Calcutta scavengers’ strike (April 1928) showed that the nationalist City Council could be as repressive an exploiter as the British nationalists. The lesson of the Tata Strike (January 1928) was that leaders would do anything to end strikes on terms to their own gains. Subhas Bose, the nationalist leader, assumed chairmanship of one union and then betrayed workers by accepting the very terms which he had described impossible in an opening speech. This leader once declared “Give me blood: I promise you freedom.”



In the Burma Oil Works in Bombay on 5 December 1928 a strike began and kept going with mass pickets. The owners began bringing in Pathans (backward peasants and hillmen) as strike-breakers. Bitter and bloody conflict eventually led as many as 100.000 workers to come out in a massive demonstration on Bombay streets. Meantime efforts where made to rouse antagonism between Muslims and Hindus. Whenever there was a strike capitalists’ agents started quarrels between Hindus and Muslims so as to turn struggles between classes—workers and owners—into strife between religious crowds, the old rulers’ policy of “Divide and Rule”.



In 1930 Peshawar was in the hands of the people for 10 days.Two platoons of a Hindu regiment refused to fire on the Muslim crowd and fraternised with the people. In May 1930 Sholapur town was in the hands of the people for a week and in July Bombay witnessed large demonstrations. But all were to fall, under the sway of nationalist illusions. At the same time the Bombay Mill-owners’ Association and the Chamber of Commerce (British and Indian businessmen) demanded “self- government” for India.



Famine

In 1943 The Great Bengal Famine took “some two to four million lives” (FAO calculation). However, the per capita availability (rice and wheat) index for 1943 was higher by about nine percent than that for 1941. Bengal was producing its largest rice crop in history in 1943. The biggest section of those killed in the famine were landless agricultural labourers. They produced the food, but couldn’t buy it back to consume, for they had no money to buy it with, because they only worked, but didn’t own.



Transfer of power

The Viceroy signed the “Indian Independence Order and International Arrangements” on 14 August 1947 dividing “British India” into two: the Dominion of India with Mountbatten as Governor-general and Nehru as Prime Minister; and the Dominion of Pakistan with Jinnah as Governor-general and Liaquat Ali Khan as Prime Minister. At a special midnight session the Constituent Assembly passed the Oath resolution promising “common prosperity”. Rajendra Prased, President of the Indian Constituent Assembly pledged an endeavour “to end poverty . . . hunger and disease, to abolish distinctions and exploitation, and to ensure decent conditions of living”. Nehru said. “When the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new.”



But “the new” had no problem now with “the old”, as Nehru expressed “grateful thanks” and assured the continuation of the “closest co-operation” with the British government in reply to Attlee’s “greetings and good wishes to the Government and people of India”.



Festivities followed: “volunteer rallies”, “route marches”, “flag hoisting”, “gun-salutes”, while Gandhi and Suhrawardy went to fast and pray after their joint peace mission in Beliaghate. Calcutta.



“The mass of India” got “lndependence’’.The public of Calcutta were ordered to enjoy “freedom” under curfew “due to disturbed conditions”. And The Statesman (15 August 1947) headlined: “Political Freedom For One-Fifth of Human Race”—”Joyful scenes in Calcutta”. Comment would be superfluous.



Pakistan was created comprising separate territories in NW and NE India on the notion of religious homogeneity. Yet India and Pakistan went to war in 1965 on the “Kashmir question” and in December 1971 on the “Bangladesh” issue. East Pakistan became “independent” Bangladesh in 1972 on the notion of linguistic homogeneity. Both were in ill accord with social reality. Then Bangladesh gave workers a famine in 1974.



The propaganda that “freedom” gave us the vote in 1948 is untrue. Workers had to achieve it.



In India the process started under working-class pressure with the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909. In 1935 the British government passed the Government of India Act—called the New Constitution—enacting the right to vote for more than 30 million people (about 12 percent of the population). Provincial elections were held in 1937. It was thus that arrived the ballot. But democracy for revolutionaries isn’t just the ballot, but the participatory democracy, revocable—delegated—socialist democracy based on a world co-operative commonwealth.



From “Go back” to “come back” 

In 1942 Indian leaders shouted: “Quit India”—”Go back.” Today they invite: “Catch India”—”Come back”. Of course, not to rule, but to invest, in Indo-British, Indo-Japanese, Indo-American “joint ventures.”



Again there are round table talks. But this time to talk “international interdependence” and not “national independence”. Talk they must; they are talkers, because they are owners. They needn’t work, but talk—to tell us not to talk, but to work.Theirs is “talk-culture”, and they are true to their ideology. But when they make a showpiece with profit-hungry gangsters who say they gear international investments around concern for our children’s upbringing and “decent conditions of living”, we observe that they are being deceptive and fear the truth.



“Now the youth must be the focus of the drive”—goes the central celebration call. The leftists asked youngsters to fight for “the right to work”, just a “right” to be exploited!



Socialists cannot encourage the youth to ask for “rights”. Instead we urge them to forget the crumbs from the dishes of their masters’ feast, but instead organise to take the whole feast for themselves by replacing the capitalist logo: “One Nation—One State” with the socialist one: “One World—One People”. The obstacle only lies in our minds—the “fear of freedom”. Remove fear. Be free to be one to the Movement. Don’t feel you need to be led.


Binay Sarkar







SPGB Summer School Retrospective

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The Socialist party’s (World Socialist Movement) Summer School happened over the long weekend of 21st to 23rd July taking place at a new venue, the Woodbrooke Centre in Selly Oak, Birmingham.

Attendees were there from all across the UK and, through the miracle of technology that is the internet, overseas visitants were also able to access the various talks.

The theme of the 2023 event was ‘Work’.

Talks given by members of the SPGB were: ‘The need for work – and how to avoid it’; ‘The Mysteries of the Pyramids’; ‘AI and the future of work’ and ‘Work, paid and unpaid’.

As is usual at Summer School each of these was followed by a lively question and answers ‘seminar’.

The breadth of erudition and knowledge displayed both by the speakers and contributors from the floor was of the highest standard.

The Summer School is always not only an educational experience, one from a wholly socialist perspective, but is also an opportunity for socialists, and non-socialists alike, to enjoy the social aspects of the occasion. Topics in the free hours within the Grade Two listed venue, where Mahatma Ghandi stayed in 1931, and in the local hostelry, were wide and far reaching.

‘Bonuses’ included two exclusive publications, an exhibition around work drawn from previous pieces in the Socialist Standard and an extremely well stocked bookstall offering a wide eclectic mix of various items.

The spacious lecture hall contained a grand piano and this was put to stunning use by one of the participants. The weekend experience was enhanced by live music played by a professional.

Tempus fugit, when you’re enjoying yourself as they say and the long weekend passed far too quickly. Some days are just better than others. Some experiences, when remembered, bring a smile to the face and a search of the calendar to see how long before the next occurs to bring positivity into one’s life.

The putting together of such an event entails a lot of hard graft and the appreciation of that fact was volubly demonstrated.

For the record, the SPGB is more than capable of organising a party in a brewery.

When socialism comes to us all across the globe it will be the mother of all parties. With each passing day as capitalism inflicts even more horrors upon the world that day needs to be much sooner than later.


The City: A short story from August 1938

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THE CITY

He was very proud of his city. As one of its honoured citizens he had an “ open sesame ” to most of its places of interest and he had invited me to spend a few days in examining its treasures. There it lay, bathed in sunshine, on a beautiful morning in early summer. Magnificent. Glorious. Wonderful was the view it presented on both banks of a famous river. Our first visit was to the Cathedral for, as he said, “ It was most fitting that we pay our respects to the House of God before we went further afield to the houses of man.”

Presently we emerged from a long avenue of delightful trees which were already showing well in their new dress and, Oh! what a poem in stone confronted us with the sunshine lighting up its delicate traceries.

It would take a facile pen and a ready writer to describe its many charms and the marvel of its fashioning. Even its gargoyles were pleasant to look upon, whilst the entrance and its towers were extractors of cries of sheer delight. We entered, and as the light fell softly through the stained-glass windows on the eastern side one felt a delicious calm and restfulness in the joy of it.

Here was a masterpiece of Art which put to shame the crudities of Nature. A pile of splendour raised to an Idea. “ What say you of it?” cried he with rapture. “ Exquisite,” said I, “ but lead on.”

From the House of God to the palace of the reigning monarch was but a few moments’ journey, and my friend having secured permission to enter passed with me into the splendidly laid-out grounds, and later into various parts of the palace itself.

The whole ensemble of palace and its environs were gorgeous in the extreme. Acres upon acres of grassy and well-kept lawns.

Flowers rich in colour and delicate in perfume. Plants and vegetables fit to adorn a king’s table and apartments grew in profusion in their allotted beds. Thousands of rooms filled with works of art from the world over. The artistry and intelligence of thousands of human beings resulting in the production of articles to gladden the eye and staggering in their multiplicity and range. What stupendous efforts had been made to build and maintain this wonder palace. A king and queen lived there.

What an auspicious opening to a round of sight-seeing. There was just a promise that one might have a surfeit of good things from the city’s store before one had finished. The princely houses. The ducal mansions. The luxurious abodes of the financiers. The delightful villas of the merchants. The enormous and stately hotels. The towering stores and shopping centres, displaying costly dresses and brilliant gems, were there in enormous number. Of other institutions and buildings which claimed our attention there were many, all of which paid eloquent tribute to the people of the city in their desire to make it the greatest of its kind and a standing challenge to the world.

There were libraries, replete with books and manuscripts, which were a pleasure to its citizens and a source of deep learning to scholars from the rest of the world. Art galleries from which in serried rows spoke the masterpieces of the centuries. Museums which told on their shelves and in their cases the history of the earth and the gambols of the dinosaurs. Zoological gardens which were stocked with animals from every clime, showing their natural habits in conditions as near as possible to the country of their birth. Wooded parks and extensive open spaces in plenty, and sweet gardens were there without stint. Educational facilities were many and eagerly sought after.

Three whole days had been occupied in visiting these places of interest and charm, and what ecstacy one had felt in the doing of it. My friend beamed with pride as he saw my marked appreciation of it all. “What do you think of it ? Does it not exceed your wildest dreams?” he enquired elatedly. “ It does,” I replied, “ but have you shown me all of your city?” “Well! Yes! All that is really of importance,” he said rather hastily. “ Then suppose we spend a day or two in exploring the unimportant,” I answered.

Accordingly, on the following morning we set out on a visit to No-matter-land, and this is what rolled before our eyes.

Slummy sites which made one feel sick at the mere passing. Mean streets, filthy hovels, awful abodes, smoke, stench, grime and grit. Miserable-looking brick boxes with a few small compartments, more or less weatherproof, which were called homes and which were fearfully overcrowded. Here and there buildings which aimed at a more respectable status, but which bore without and within them signs of a fierce struggle against poverty and penury. Cheap musical instruments and tawdry furniture. Rubbishy pictures and trashy books, common ornaments, tinsel and glass. Cheap cotton cloth, shoddy dresses. Silks which had never known a worm. Grubby food. Fly-blown meat. Dust and disease-germ-covered eatables of every description attracted your attention as they were exposed in the shops for sale.

Miles and miles of these streets in which underfed and ill-clad boys and girls, dirty arid muck-covered, disported themselves. Graceless women in evident despair, disgust or distress, their pale faces and attenuated forms showing dearly the long one-sided fight against illness, child-bearing and domestic economy.

Men whose heavy labours had sapped their last ounce of energy and intellectual appetite sought escape from the tedium of their lot in many diverse and unedifying ways.

Hospitals and charitable institutions working to limit endeavouring to give adequate amelioration and convenience to humans whose whole existence was united to the demon pain.

Prisons, workhouses, mental homes and semi-State-aided philanthropies all busy administering to the needs of a vast community living perpetually in economic distress. My friend was dumb as we passed through these places, and he was relieved when the journey was over.

I had not forgotten the fashioning of the House of God, nor the aesthetic splendours of the Palace, nor the hundred and one pleasing things which had been our first delight.

Turning to him, I said: “ Who are the people who spend their lives amid all this squalor and poverty?”

Lowering his head to hide his pain-stricken face he answered: “ These people, my friend, are they who have built the House for God, the Palace for the King, and filled The City with its treasures.

E.F.L.



https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1930s/1938/no-408-august-1938/the-city/

Nagasaki: War is The Failure Of Humanity

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America dropped a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan on 9th August, 1945.

This is a repost from SOYMB, 8th February, 2015, There is no good war but the Class War.

War Is The Failure Of Humanity

There are no “good” wars!


Despite what Tom Brokaw writes, there was no “greatest generation” that fought World War II. (IMO, the generation of the 60s, that protested the Vietnam War, was far more aware, and, in that sense, “greater.”)
Every war is a failure—of leadership; common sense; “policy”; concepts of “manhood” or “courage”; of “loyalty” and “patriotism; of imagination.
Despite what the court historians like Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, … propagate on PBS, etc., there are no great leaders—Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt, Wilson—who agonize over the best ways to conduct warfare and invariably choose what’s best for their nations… and prevail.


Every war is a failure of empathy, a triumph of dehumanization: we cannot identify with our enemy. He (and, increasingly, she) is “barbaric,” “an animal,” “savage.” (“They” rape, pillage, torture, brainwash—even their kids. “We,” the techno-wizards of the centuries, would never stoop that low!) Every war represents a failure of our species to free itself from the shackles of expansionism, greed, colonization, exploitation, ignorance and violence. Every war is a failure of humanity.


There are no good wars, but there are an abundance of bad “peace treaties.” This should surprise no one since the men—mostly men—who write and sign the treaties are basically the same ones who prosecute the wars. The most infamous of “peace treaties,” perhaps, was the Versailles Treaty that ended the “Great War,” (or—take your pick—“The War to End All Wars”), raging yesterday—i.e., a mere 100 years ago. In various ways, the Versailles Treaty merely provided a brief hiatus between Great War I and Even Greater Great War II—followed by all the sputtering cataclysms we’ve “enjoyed” ever since.


Americans have been “sold” on war since our colonial days. We were happy to help our Mother Country—the British Empire—fight the French Empire during the so-called “French and Indian War” (1754-1763). We were even happier to turn on our “Mother Country” and ally with our former enemies during our so-called “War of Independence.” Most Americans know as much about our Revolutionary War as they know about the wars and “revolutions” now devastating the Middle East. (I put a lot in quotes these days to signify that things are seldom what they’re called. Defense Secretary McNamara deemed his own and his country’s confusion about the Vietnam War a result of the “fog of war.” Today, we might talk about the “fog of memes.”)


If you’re a “war-baby” or younger, you’ve grown up with a fog of memes. Coca-Cola: “It’s the real thing.” “America, the Beautiful.” “The Red Menace.” “The Yellow Peril.” “We must fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” Madison Avenue. TV (“the guest in the living room”… who took over the living room and everything else—often with guns!). “The American Dream.” Davy Crockett—“king of the wild frontier.” The New Deal. The Fair Deal. The New Frontier. Reaganomics. The Cold War. Blah, blah, blah.


When the French and Indian War ended in 1763, the population of the 13 American colonies was 1.6 million—almost 1/3 of whom were black slaves. The figure does not include “Indians”—who were deemed “savages” in the US Declaration of Independence—only worth mentioning derogatively. By the time the “Revolution” began, some 13 years later, the population had swelled to 2.9 million—an extraordinary increase of 50 percent –the greatest percentage increase in American history! Most of these newcomers were English, some were wealthy Scotsmen, a fair number were Germans. Moravians and other strange sects came seeking religious freedom. Many sought to establish themselves in the opening western territories of the colonies—i.e., the “Indian” territories!


Most Americans don’t know the extent to which “westward expansion” played a major role in our “Revolution.” It was, in fact, a Civil War as much as a Revolution, with more liberal (expansionist) Whigs against more conservative (non-expansionist) Torries to begin with, soon replaced by “Patriots” vs. “Loyalists.”
 It was also a generational war: most of the “patriots” in Washington’s Continental Army or the various militia groups were teenage boys who were “third wheels” on unproductive farms, or could not be apprenticed in the burgeoning “cities” of the time; they had nothing better to do and they sought a pay-check (usually delayed or cancelled), food and provisions, and “adventure.” Most of the Loyalists were older men and women of some property, with established means of support. The “Indians” were caught in the middle!


“Indians” were Cherokees, Choctaw, Shawnee, Oneida, Tuscarora, Mohicans, Mohawks, Iroquois, Chickamauga and others—poetic names lost to history; hardly worth mentioning in the stories of the “great men,” the “founding fathers.” Both Loyalists and Patriots solicited the support of the Indian tribes: they bribed the chiefs; threatened, ambushed, killed, imprisoned the “braves,” the older men and women. And the various tribes took sides; allied with one group of whites or the other according to who offered the best bribes, or threatened the most. When formerly friendly tribes attacked each other at the behest of the whites, scalps were taken and a circle of vengeance was created. The biggest losers of the American Revolution were not the Loyalists and the British, but the Indians, whose tribes were scattered, whose land was confiscated despite all the “treaties” made with the manipulative, deceptive whites on one side or the other.


The names we hear now are also poetic: Sunni, Shiite, Kurds, Syrians, Palestinians, Gazans, Iranian, Persian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Ukrainian. The wars fought in North America centuries ago were proxy wars between the French and British Empires. Wars fought now are proxy wars and limited total wars between the Global Empire (US, Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the EU) and those who resist its hegemony—chiefly, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Eastern Ukraine—and the tribal groups on the ground—the Islamic State (or ISIL or Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda in Iraq or Yemen or whatever the designation of the moment). What should be clear is that the supposed reasons for the conflict are strands in a complex tapestry.


Individuals rarely rise above the prejudices of their tribe, rarely perceive beyond the tribal framing. This was true in ancient Israel and it is true in contemporary America. Tribes are organized to maintain the power structure of those at the top. A pilot is burned alive by ISIL—a horrendous crime that leads to the immediate execution of prisoners in Jordan and a pledge of “revenge” from the king of Jordan.


Torture begets torture. The US sanctions torture to end the “War on Terror.” Isn’t torture, terror? Where does it end, where does it begin?
One wonders: how many civilians have been burned alive by illegal white phosphorous weapons during Israel’s recent wars in Gaza?
For that matter: how many civilians of a prostrate, eager-to-surrender Japan were burned alive when bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—during what was surely the worst 3-day period in the history of warfare on our weeping Mother Earth? (Hundreds of thousands died immediately and in the aftermath of the years.)


So… every war is a failure of humanity—a triumph of prejudices and ignorance; the innocents caught in the vises and machinations of the more clever, the more manipulative, the more immoral; the more “savage.”
As Pete Seeger used to sing, “When will we ever learn?” 

 

by Gary Corseri from here



And the wars that are fought now have absolutely nothing to do with the interests of the vast majority of the populations of the world who have much more in common with each other than they have differences. No, they are waged in the interests of those who covet control of valuable resources and increasing arms sales for vast profits.  

The one and only war worth fighting is the war for humanity, the whole of humanity and that should be a war of words, a war of mass understanding and acceptance of our need to end the subservience to the controllers of the capitalist system – the class war.

B of E says 17.3%: Suck It Up.

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A foreign news source reports, ‘Surging inflation which has been crippling the British economy may slow but food will remain more expensive than before the cost-of-living crisis, the Bank of England’s chief economist, Huw Pill, has warned.

Official figures show that food inflation in the world’s tenth-largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) remained stubbornly high at 17.3% in the 12 months to June.

“Unfortunately, the days of seeing food prices fall, that does seem to be something that we may not be seeing for a little while yet, if in the future at all,” Pill was quoted as saying by Sky News on Monday.

According to the leading economist, the impact on food prices in the UK has been “a little bit more long-lasting than would have been expected.”

Pill cited uncertainty over the supply chain for staples such as wheat and sunflower oil as a result of the Ukraine conflict and Western sanctions on Russia, which has increased the cost of raw materials and basic food.

British companies have responded by locking themselves into expensive contracts, Pill argued, adding that price rises will begin to slow as those contracts come to an end and food sub-processors in the UK adjust to the end of supply disruption.

Consumer price growth in Britain has remained persistently high despite government efforts to tame inflation, with officials and trade unions accusing supermarkets of “greedflation” and profiteering at the expense of consumers. Pill previously stated that British households and businesses need to accept that they are now poorer, and should stop asking for wage increases and pushing prices higher.

“Some firms decided to sort of lock in their purchases of commodities in international markets in order to reduce that uncertainty, but potentially locked in at quite high levels of prices and they’re still passing that through the system into what ultimately we’re paying for in shops,” he explained’.






Hiroshima, August 1945

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Hiroshima, August 1945 (1985)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist


Forty years ago the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan. The following poem was written by a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain shortly after he heard the news of the bombing.

Like a blast from hell the atom bomb came,

And a city in ruins was hurled;

On wings of fear, it thundered its name,

Through a shocked and war torn world;

This atomic force with transmutable breath,

Its first warning sign we see,

Garden of plenty, or desert of death;

What is this world to be?

The challenge is vital, and urgent the hour;

When this Capitalist era must pass,

And workers control this atomic power,

So misused by the ruling class;

This nuclear power from the atom was wrought,

It evolved in the womb of time,

Born of the labour of man’s social thought,

Its baptism, Fire, blood and crime;

Dark is the future if our governments command

This scientific genie of might,

Secret diplomacy knows no remand,

From chaos and abysmal night;

The Capitalist powers are still planning our fate,

And with their lies seek to stifle our fears,

Turning worker against worker, in blind bonds of hate,

For their new orgy of blood sweat and tears;

A Socialist world, no other solution,

Presents itself to mankind;

The workers must strive for a world revolution,

And cast off those fetters that bind;

This atomic force with transmutable breath,

For good or for ill must abide,

Garden of plenty or desert of death?

The workers themselves must decide.



Walter Atkinson (Britain)


Hiroshima background

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Reposted from SOYMB 6 August, 2009


Hiroshima in the making
On the 6th August 1945 at 0816 local time an atom bomb was dropped over the city of Hiroshima. The 40th anniversary of this event was marked by the following essay in our journal.



The idea that the material world is composed of enormous numbers of exceedingly small entities called atoms was first propounded about 450 BC by the Greek philosopher Leucippus and his pupil Democritus. It was not until 1911, however, when Ernest (later Lord) Rutherford published a paper putting forward the nuclear model of the atom, that the proposition gained general acceptance. It may seem hard today to realise that the paper caused no commotion in the world of physics – Rutherford himself does not appear to have considered this discovery as the epoch-making event it tumed out to be. In fact, this is not surprislng since no commercial application could be envisaged for the work, unlike x-rays and radium which had obvious medical uses and were soon seen as potential sources of profit. 



Where no such profitable application appeared the research was funded largely out of universities’ private resources and co-ordination between researchers .depended largely on their own individual efforts. This situation was not to change until the stage had been reached when it began to look as though this decomposition of matter, occurring naturalIy in the radioactive materials, could be achieved artificially in a controlled manner to the extent required for a large explosion. The relevant work between the two world wars led to the discovery of the fission process and the possibility of a chain reaction. 



It would be too long a story to detail the steps by which these discoveries were made, but it is worth noting that the whole process, even jf unco-ordinated, involved a large number of scientists of many nationalities. En route the dream of the old alchemists, of transmuting one element into another, was realised although the end product was not as they had envisaged, By 1939 it had been shown that nuclear combustion, releasing a million times the energv of chemical combustion, was indeed possible. 



When war broke out the scientists involved expressed considerable scepticism about whether an atomic bomb was feasibie. The politicians were even more doubtful. – Margaret Gowring recalls that Churchill at this time was more concerned that the so-called “fifih column” might exploit fears about “a terrible new uranium explosive” to force Britain to accept a surrender! (Britain and Atomic Energy, 1939-45, Macmillan, 1964.) Many scientists were directed to other vital war work at places such as the Royal Aircraft Establishment, although some uranium research continued at a very slow pace. A change in attitude was brought about as much by the fear that Germany might get a head start as any more rational consideration. A number of scientists who had fIed from Nazi persecution gave assistance to the Allied powers and the teams competing in this grim race were truIy international both in the sense of their composition and in the debt they owed to past knowledge. 



Eventually, in early 1940, the British government set up a small sub-comrnittee under the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Warfare – which was to be known by its code name of the Maud Committee – to examine the available evidence and report back to the government on the chances of success. Their report, issued in July 1941, gave a positive answer and was remarkable in its prescience. Only in two respects was it deficient: it was two years early in its foreeast of when a bomb would be ready and it erred in its assessment of the prospects of plutonium as a fuel (the Nagasaki bomb used this method). 



The stage had now been reached when uranium research was no longer the exclusive concern of a few individuaIs in universities. The horrors of atomic warfare could be envisaged fairly clearly, even though practical demonstration was still some way off. The Maud Committee were able accurately to compare the devastation expected from an A-bomb with known effects of TNT and they also had a reasonable understanding of the effects of radiation. They commented: . 



“It is very difficult to estimate the extent of their [fission products] effect especially as the most important substances would be those of long life, which are the hardest to study under laboratory conditions. It does however seem certain that the area devastated by the explosion would be dangerous to life for a considerable time.”



The conclusions of the Maud Committee and similar work in America led to a decision to manufacture. After Pearl Harbour, America went onto a full war footing, and they no longer saw any need to share their secrets with the British. Already they were looking ahead to the post-war world and resurned industrial competition – an attitude which led to considerable friction within the Alliance. The American capitalists saw the chance to supplant British interests in the latter’s erstwhile colonies and Roosevelt appeared to side with Stalin against Churchill at some of the wartirne conferences. The British reluctantly had to accept a very junior role in the A-bomb project, and virtually none in the dedsions about dropping one in anger. 



Before any bombs were ready, however, Germany and Italy had surrendered and so the question was whether the weapon should be used against Japan. The politicians and militarists were still riddled with sceptidsm and it did not therefore figure prorninently in their strategy. At first the British and Americans wanted Russia to enter the war with Japan. There were obvious problems about Russian entry, as clearly Stalin wanted to strengthen Soviet influence in Manchuria and in the territories lost to Japan in the 1904-05 wars. The Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek was party to negotiations over these issues and any agreements reached at the Yalta conference were cLearly of an unstable nature. 



The first successful test on 16 july 1945 caused a change in the attitude to Russia, as the possibilitv of forcing Japan to surrender without help now loomed. Considerable disagreements surfaced over how Japanese resistance could best be ended. As early as September 1944, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that “when a bomb is finalIy available it might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese who should be warned that this bombardrnent will be repeated unill they surrender .” (Gowring, M., op. cit., p.370). In May 1945 a brief but heated debate began in America, involving scientists as well as politicians and the arrned forces, The case for warning Japan was argued in front of President Truman himself, A “harrnless” demonstration of the bomb’s power, perhaps with Japanese observers present, was proposed but the idea foundered on two main counts: there was still no certainty that the bomb would work, or that if it did it would induce surrender.



Deep divisions still existed after the successful test and it was impossible to get a consensus view in the necessary time. This may have been the reason why Trurnan later came to exaggerate and indeed to glory in the personal part he played. When Robert Oppenheirner regretted his part in the project, saying that he felt he had “blood on his hands”, Truman told Dean Acheson. “Don’t you bring that fellow around here again. After all, all he did was to make the bomb. I’m the guy who fired it off’ (Pringle, P. & J. Spiegelman. The Nuclear Barons, Sphere 1985, p.95). 



One factor that is often understandably underplayed by official accounts was the strength of the “Peace Party” in Japan. It is quite incorrect to think of the country as completely dorninated by a military caste headed by an autocratic Emperor. Gowring reports: 



“The Peace Party had ernerged within the Japanese Cabinet as early as April 1945, but it had to move with extreme circumspection in the face of fierce opposition from the military. However in ]uly, whlle the Allied leaders were assembling at Potsdam, the Japanese Emperor himself authorised peace feelers through Russia. Japan, it was ernphasised, would never accept unconditional surrender but was anxious for discussions about a negotiated peace. Stalin gave Mr Churchill an accurate account of these approaches … “



Deterrnined efforts to encourage the Peace Party were hindered by disunity in the Allied camp, and the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan, following the conference of that name, was a solernn warning of the destruction to comeijf they did not surrender forthwith. However it did not describe the new weapon and when Trurnan, after yet more intemal debate, informed Stalin he merely said that America now had “a weapon of unusually destructive force”. The Russians and Japanese, through their intelligence networks, probably had a good idea what was meant, but they could not say so openly. The Russians had in fact already started work on their own atom bomb. 



Three days after the Potsdam Proclamation, on 29 July, the Japanese Prime Minister announced that his government would ignore it, but four days later further peace feelers were sent through Moscow with “qualilled adrnission of the Potsdam Proclamation as a basis of discussion”. This however brought no response before the Hiroshima bomb was dropped on the now infamous 6 August a further appeal for surrender followed, failing which more bombs would be dropped 



The Japanese militarists had in the past been accustomed to dictate terms to the Emperor; now however Hirohito sided with the Peace Party against the influence of the arrned forces. The Japanese cabinet was hopelessly split, and even Hiroshima did not break the deadlock. Communications had been cut and the hawks refused to believe what they had been told and had to visit the area themselves to be convinced. No agreed statement could be made. The Allies responded by advandng the date for the bombing of Nagasaki, which coincided with the entry of Russia into the war. The last stand of the armed forces was at an end. The atornic bomb which fell on Hiroshima killed 64,000 people within four months and the bomb on Nagaski 39,OOO people.In addition, 72,000 people were injuted in Hiroshima and 25,000 in Nagasaki. At Hiroshima four square miles were totally devastated and nine square miles were very badly damaged. 



It is futile to speculate on how the destruction compares with what might have occurred had non-nuclear options been adopted – all the altematives were terrible in terms of the killing and mairning of workers on both sides. Such conjecture would merely encourage the notion that saving lives was a major consideration. 



E C EDGE



Further reading:



Hiroshima and after!



Why they dropped the bombs

American Auto Workers seeking bit more of the cake

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The President of the American United Auto Workers (UAW) has been ‘”talking about capitalism and the nature of capitalism and how it’s really hurt workers.”’

Recently elected Fain, made a speech highlighting members’ demands for ‘a significant pay raise to make up for years of concessions by the union following the Great Recession, the rising cost of living and inflation, and to match pay increases enjoyed by the CEOs of the Big Three’.

He’s quoted as saying ,’”Big Three CEOS saw their pay spike 40% on average over the last four years,” said Fain. “We know our members are worth the same and more”.

‘Ahead of a September 14 deadline, after which the UAW could go on strike, the union is demanding an immediate 20% pay raise followed by an additional 5% raise in each year of the four-year contract’.

‘According to the union, most new workers start out making $16 per hour, but if cost-of-living increases had been maintained since the Great Recession, the starting wage would be $28.68—about $21,000 more per year’.

The union also wants ‘a return of the defined benefit pension, which would give retired workers a set amount of money each month; the right to strike if a company threatens to close a plant; more paid time off; restored cost-of-living allowance increases; and other provisions’.

The Union President ‘spoke about the potential to shift to a 32-hour work-week to allow workers to spend more time with their families’.

‘”Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet—that’s not a living. We have to work longer and harder to maintain the same standard of living… That means missing Little League games and family reunions. That’s barely surviving, and it needs to stop,” he said.

Shawn Fain would seem to very well know that capitalism’s profits come from the surplus value extracted from workers: The car companies can ‘ “easily” afford to substantially increase workers’ wages. The companies have made a quarter of a trillion dollars in North American profits over the past 10 years, and reported a combined $21 billion in profits in the first half of this year. Record profits mean record contracts. They’ve been competitive on our backs and it’s time they pay up”.’

An apologist for capitalism, a former hedge fund manager, hosting a CNBC programme is apparently shocked at workers demanding even a slighter bigger slice of the cake. He has called the demands ‘“frightening” for advocating for a wage increase to reflect the record profits the companies have reported in recent years’.

The anchor has refuted ‘Fain’s suggestion that Big Three shareholders and CEOs have been “overly rewarded” and scoffed at the notion that shareholders are “fat cats.” ‘

‘”That’s class warfare and it’s very shocking to hear class warfare,” said Cramer’.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/uaw-contract

Sounds like someone should have a conversation with the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS). And that includes the President and the members of the UAW too.

It’s commendable that workers should use their collective strength to improve their living standards under capitalism but it is, as best, a short term solution to the exploitation of the working class.

The real, and only, solution is the collective working toward the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with socialism.


































Idlers of the World Unite! Especially Over Fifties!

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From The Guardian, 3 August, 2023, ‘Over-50s looking for work should consider delivering takeaways and other flexible jobs typically occupied by younger people, the work and pensions secretary has said.



On the recently introduced digital “mid-life MOTs”, which are designed to help older workers with financial planning, health guidance and career skills, Stride said: “You really do need to sensibly stop, take where you are in life, and assess whether, for example, you’ve got enough money to get you through with the kind of lifestyle and living standards that you’re expecting.”

Since the pandemic there has been a sharp rise in the number of economically inactive people, those who are neither working nor looking for work. About 8.6 million people in the UK – equivalent to one in five working adults – are classed as economically inactive, according to the Office for National Statistics. More than 3.4 million of them are over 50 but under the retirement age’.


Below is a repost from SOYMB 16 April, 2017


Monotonous, manual work can be done by machines, freeing humans up to do creative, activities. So we’re told. The truth is there has been an explosion in what anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs”. 



And, as individuals come under pressure to stand out from the crowd, there emerges what sociologist David Frayne calls a “culture of gratitude” where labour is given without charge in return for “profile” or imagined networking benefits. “In this hyper-competitive context,” he writes, “it has almost become a matter of bad taste to fuss about issues like contracts, payment, and working conditions. You should just be grateful to have an opportunity in the first place.”



He says, “Society is presently organised so that work is people’s main source of income, social contact, and recognition. Living without work means somehow reinventing the ways to access these things, and that is no easy task. Depending on how far people want to go, resisting work means overcoming some significant barriers. The most obvious one is our reliance on work as a source of income. If you do not have the luxury of inherited wealth or a contingent source of money, this might be overcome to some degree by consuming less. A person can spend more carefully, repair and self-produce things, privilege more inexpensive pleasures, and perhaps even discover new and alternative forms of enjoyment in the process. All of these things are also easier to do when you work less and have more free-time, but spending less is still no easy feat in a society where so many of our needs are conventionally met via commercial transactions.”



He continues,  “We must refashion society so that people can remain connected, active, and valued, even when their labour is not required by the formal economy. As automated technologies continue to replace the need for human workers, the need to do this refashioning will become increasingly urgent.”



The issue of work is one that socialists have addressed for well over a century. Karl Marx’s son-in-law wrote a pamphlet called the “Right to be Lazy.”



The majority of the population is not engaged in productive work. The greater part of the non-producers is employed in the buying and selling plus all the related occupations. Any system by which the buying and selling system is retained means the employment of vast sections of the population in unproductive work. It leaves the productive work to be done by one portion of the people whilst the other portion is spending its energies in keeping shop, banking, and all the other various developments of commerce which employ probably more than two-thirds of the people today. It is the elimination of such activities and institutions, essential though they may be to a functioning market economy but unproductive in themselves from the standpoint of producing use values or meeting human needs, that constitutes perhaps the most important productive advantage that a socialist economy would have over a capitalist economy. The elimination of this structural waste intrinsic to capitalism will free up a vast amount of labour and materials for socially useful production in socialism.

 In socialist society, productive activity would take the form of freely chosen activity undertaken by human beings with a view to producing the things they needed to live and enjoy life. The necessary productive work of society would not be done by a class of hired wage workers but by all members of society, each according to their particular skills and abilities, cooperating to produce the things required to satisfy their needs both as individuals and as communities. Work i a socialist society could only be voluntary since there would be no group or organ in a position to force people to work against their will.



“… in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” – Karl Marx 



And it was Marx who said in communism it will be society’s free (disposable) time and no longer labour time that becomes the true measure of society’s wealth.


Work should not really be equated with employment. Employment is wage labour.  William Morris regarded work as a basic, natural human need. His main criticism of capitalism was that it denied the vast majority of humans satisfying and enjoyable work. Under capitalism work, instead of being the enjoyable activity of creating or doing something useful, became a boring and often unhealthy and dangerous burden imposed on those who were forced to get a living by selling their mental and physical energies for a wage Morris’s concept of “art”. Which he defined, not as some specialised activity engaged in by some fringe group of “artists”, but as ”the expression of a person’s joy in their work”; people who enjoyed their work would produce beautiful things. And when he realised that the nature of capitalism meant that most producers were denied any enjoyment in their work – or, put another way, that it meant the “death of art”.


In a socialist society, the distinction between work and leisure will diminish—perhaps even disappear. People will have an opportunity to use their hobbies and enthusiasms for the social good: to enjoy being useful.


Most of us want to work. What we hate is employment. We want to work for ourselves, our families and friends, our community, not for some thieving parasite employer!


  



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