Dictionary Meanings

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Dear Sirs,

I recently bought a copy of The Collins Dictionary & Thesaurus in One Volume as a reference work for my studies. I would like to advise you of a significant factual and historical error it contains.

This concerns the entry under “socialism”. There are three definitions given: I refer to the third which states, “(in Marxist theory) a transitional stage in the development of a society from capitalism to communism”. This is incorrect. Nowhere in the writings of Marx, nor indeed in those of Engels, are the terms “socialism” or/and “communism” used to describe either a transitional stage or different stages of social development. In this sense Marx used the terms interchangeably to mean a society of common ownership and production for use, and therefore without buying and selling, an exchange economy, classes or the state.

As a matter of historical interest, this separation was first made by Lenin in an attempt to give credibility to the post-1917 situation in Russia, by frequently referring to that society, now generally acknowledged to be state capitalist, by the term “socialism”. As a student of Marx’s work for nearly fifty years, I assure you that the definition you give is derived from Leninist theory not Marx’s as you state.

BILL ROBERTSON

REPLY:

Dear Mr Robertson,

Thank you for your letter of 15 August. In it you state that the definition of SOCIALISM (sense 3) refers to Leninist and not Marxist theory. I agree with your assertion as Marx did not describe any intermediate “socialist” stage between the collapse of capitalism and the establishment of communism. He used the terms “communism” and “socialism” interchangeably. It was, as you rightly point out, Lenin who created this distinction to describe the situation in the Soviet Union after the Bolsheviks seized power. Subsequent Soviet leaders, as you are no doubt well aware, also used this distinction, most notably Khrushchev who in the early 1960s described the USSR as a “socialist state” that would “achieve Communism by 1980”.

Thank you for taking the trouble to point out this mistake.

Yours sincerely,

ANDREW HOLMES,

Assistant Lexicographer,

Collins English Dictionaries.

Working People – Sacrificial Lambs

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Whether Americans know it or not, their government is not working for them. Their government is working on behalf of capital. Humans are now a mere secondary factor to be considered based on how it affects capital. Capitalism must be protected and nurtured, and the State must draw resources from our entire society in order to help capital survive.  People can be sacrificed—capital is irreplaceable. 



 It is no exaggeration to say that tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans will die because the government is prematurely relaxing lockdowns to permit business to resume rather than prioritize human life. They will die because we did not dedicate resources before this pandemic to building an adequate system of public health care, and they will die because we made the decision during this pandemic to put the needs of capital first. Businesses did not keep working people on payrolls, because that would be less advantageous for the owners of capital. The government did not mobilize factories, nor pharmaceutical research, because that would be less advantageous to the owners of capital. And it did not release the prisoners in the jails being ravaged by this disease. What would that do for the stock market? Doctors are getting pay cuts because they are no longer making revenue for their employers with nonessential procedures; nurses are becoming sick and dying because we didn’t stockpile enough cheap plastic masks; grocery workers are forced to beg and plead and strike for a couple of dollars extra per hour, at the risk of their own lives. 



 The true beneficiaries of this crisis, from the perspective of those in charge, will be the private equity firms that rush in to buy up distressed businesses, and the hedge funds that pour money into cheap debt, and the investors that scoop up the homes that people will be evicted from. They are the ones that give a transfusion of investment the life-blood of capitalism.



 From

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/09/plan-save-capital-and-let-people-die?fbclid=IwAR1ennSKy62KFlAFBZqYfpDlmGFK7IEM8GWhJ9WqJBAQ61iPzAz1iao31fE

The Plutonomy

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Plutonomy  is a term used by Citigroup analysts and others to describe a system in which the wealthy (the 1 percent) are the driving force as well as the beneficiaries of economic growth. Basically, it means it only matters what the rich do—what they buy, what they sell, what they invest in, what they hump, and what they listen to. You and I simply don’t matter. The idea of the plutonomy was actually leaked out in a Citigroup analyst note several years ago. They accidentally said the quiet part out loud to their super rich clients. It read:

“The world is dividing into two blocs – the plutonomies, where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few, and the rest. …What are the common drivers of Plutonomy? Disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist-friendly cooperative governments, …and overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation, the rule of law, and patenting inventions.”

 In everyday language, “creative financial innovation” translates to “unique news ways to steal from people.” Then “capitalist-friendly cooperative governments,” should be read as “governments controlled by the rich designed to fuck the people at every turn.” That’s what it means when a government “cooperates” with Citibank. And finally, “overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation, the rule of law, and patenting inventions.” That gobbledygook means, “invading and taking over other nations and people and then stealing their resources.”



 The Citigroup note ends with, “Often these wealth waves involve great complexity, exploited best by the rich and educated of the time.” They’re saying that the plutonomy is too complicated for us ordinary mortals to comprehend. They are smarter, cleverer, more intuitive and show more initiative than anyone else, too. That’s why they’re billionaires and we’re not. That’s why they will always be billionaires and we will never be. In truth, they have nothing over your average person except: a) luck b) sometimes inheriting a fortune and c) being more sociopathic.  In a study covered in the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that higher social class predicted an increase in unethical behavior. They showed that the rich are more likely to make unethical decisions, steal from others, break the law while driving, and cheat in contests. They are more willing to crush other human beings to get what they want and thereby they are more able to get what they want.

Billionaires in the U.S. have seen their fortunes skyrocket, increasing by 12.5 percent since the pandemic began. The Institute for Policy Studies released a study “showing that, in the eight weeks between March 18 and May 14, the country’s super wealthy have added a further $368.8 billion to their already enormous fortunes.”


 Even before the pandemic, the vaults of the rich bulged with unbelievable wealth. Even before coronavirus the three richest Americans had more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of our country, that’s 164 million people.


Recent estimates are that only 20 percent of people have 85 percent of the wealth, so as long as the government serves those 20 percent, they can almost completely ignore the bottom 80 percent of people.


This explains why our government has not seen the need to truly bailout average people during this crisis. They have sent a check for $1,200 to regular citizens while giving 4.25 TRILLION dollars to big banks and corporate America. To put that figure into some perspective, if someone gave you a million dollars a year—just handed $1,000,000 to you—do you know how long it would take you to amass 4.25 trillion dollars? It would take you 4.25 million years. 


Abridged and adapted from here




The American government protect their masters

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 The United States administration abruptly withdrew from international negotiations over how best to tax the profits of multinational corporations such as U.S.-based tech giants Amazon and Google, leading European allies to accuse the White House of torpedoing years-long talks that were close to a resolution.



 Several European countries, led by France, have been rolling out digital services taxes, which would fall heavily on American internet companies. Italy, Spain, Austria, and Britain have all announced plans to levy digital services taxes, which impose duties on the online activity that takes place in those countries, regardless of whether the company has a physical presence



 U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said negotiations were at an “impasse” and threatened to retaliate “with appropriate commensurate measures” against any country that attempts to unilaterally move ahead digital services taxes on U.S.-based companies—a warning that sparked fears of a potentially devastating trans-Atlantic trade war.

Maria Jesus Montero, a spokesperson for the Spanish government, said Thursday that “neither Spain, nor France, nor Italy, nor Britain, no country will accept any type of threat from another country. We are not legislating to damage the interest of other countries,” said Montero. “We are legislating so that our tax system is orderly, fair, and adapted to current circumstances.”

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Thursday denounced Mnuchin’s letter as a “provocation for everyone who was negotiating in good faith” and said France will reimpose its currently suspended 3% tax on digital services if OECD nations can’t reach a deal on a fair tax system by the end of the year.


“We were inches away from an agreement on digital taxation at a time when the digital giants are the only ones in the world to have benefited immensely from the coronavirus crisis,” Le Maire said. “So it is a provocation to all the citizens of the world who say that it is still legitimate for all the digital giants to pay their taxes. It is also a provocation to the U.S. allies. What is this way of treating U.S. allies—the British, Spanish, Italians, French—by threatening us with sanctions?”


Current rules generally allocate corporate profit for tax purposes based on where value is created. But modern multinationals—particularly ones with digital offerings—can sell their products across borders in ways that leave little taxable profit in a country where those products are consumed. Many big European countries say that tech companies should pay more taxes in the countries where their products are consumed, something that could boost their tax revenues by billions of dollars. But the U.S. has opposed any solution that is too targeted at tech companies, where it has more to lose. Tech companies, for their part, have opposed national digital-services taxes like France’s, but have supported the OECD process, arguing that they would like to avoid a patchwork of overlapping national initiatives.

Pollutants permitted in water

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“We have among the cleanest and sharpest — crystal clean, you’ve heard me say, I want crystal clean — air and water anywhere on Earth…our air and water are the cleanest they’ve ever been by far,” Trump once said.



  On Thursday, the EPA finalized a rule to roll back regulations of a chemical found in rocket fuel that can cause brain damage in infants. The Associated Press noted, the chemical’s danger should not be underestimated to the 16 million Americans under threat of having the contaminant in their drinking water.



 Perchlorate can damage the development of fetuses and children and cause measurable drops in IQ in newborns, the American Academy of Pediatrics said last August in urging the “strongest possible” federal limits. Studies cited by the doctors’ group included one showing that 9 out of 13 breastfeeding infants were ingesting significant levels of the chemical.



 The decision to deregulate perchlorate in public drinking water was described as  “illegal, unscientific, and unconscionable,” by Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) senior strategic director for Health Erik D. Olson in a statement. “The Environmental Protection Agency is threatening the health of pregnant moms and young children with toxic chemicals in their drinking water at levels that literally can cause loss of IQ points,” said Olson. “Is this what the Environmental Protection Agency has come to?”



 https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/18/illegal-unscientific-and-unconscionable-despite-risk-brain-damage-infants-trump-epa

Not every worker is protected

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America’s 2.2 million domestic workers, the majority of them women of colour, the crisis is particularly acute.



 More than 70% saw their incomes cut or jobs eliminated at the start of the pandemic, according to a survey by the National Domestic Workers Alliance, an organisation that advocates for nannies, housecleaners and home health aides.



 With wages that average about $12 (£9.50) an hour, few have robust financial cushions. And because of informal work arrangements or immigration status, many are not eligible for the relief offered by the government.



 “We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of women who have absolutely no access to protection or support,” says Tatiana Bejar, a New York City-based organiser at Hand-in-Hand, a non-profit that advocates for domestic workers.  In the US, many shutdown orders didn’t think to address in-home help at all. Official guidance on how to handle return has also been sparse. Hand-in-Hand, which aims its actions at employers, has urged families to keep nannies at home at full pay, but the official ambiguity means figuring out what to do has often been a fraught family-by-family decision.

“Just because domestic work continues to be invisible, therefore employers of them were also invisible,” Ms Bejar says



 Kenya Williams worked as a nanny in New York for 22 years,  explained “Our profession, I found out during this time, we just don’t matter. We have to fight so hard for things that other people get easily,” she says. “I would just like to be able to be like, ‘Ok, I know I’ll be ok to some extent.”

The hardship faced by Ms Williams matches global patterns, which show women, minorities and people working in the informal economy have been hit particularly hard by the lockdowns. In the US, the unemployment rates among Hispanic and black women approached 20% last month – nearly double that of white men.
The uneven economic impact is likely to add “significantly to existing vulnerabilities and inequalities”, the International Labor Organization warned this spring. It called on governments to respond by increasing efforts to extend social protections to those people, like maids and nannies, whose work often occurs beyond the reach of government rules.
 Haeyoung Yoon, policy director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, pointed out that “The coronavirus pandemic has really put a spotlight on the structural inequities that workers were already living through,” Ms Yoon says. “We need to really address these issues at a structural level so that workers are able to have access to good wages and good working conditions. But just because working people are reminded, doesn’t mean that our policymakers are going to legislate and change policies to meet the needs,” she adds.

Japan wants to grow

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Much is made of China’s artificial islands constructed to lay claim to mineral-rich sea but less is said about other nations’ attempts to make use of so-called islands to extend their sovereignty.



  Okinotorishima is an atoll that is 1,740 kilometers (1,081 miles) south of Tokyo that has been reinforced with breakwaters to protect a patch of concrete that measures less than 10 square meters and is just 16 centimeters above the high tide level. This patch of concrete, however, permits Japan to claim an exclusive economic zone covering 400,000 square kilometers of the surrounding waters, which are rich in maritime resources. Surveys have indicated that deposits of valuable natural resources also lie just beneath the seabed.



 The UN convention that covers legal issues at sea says that “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life on their own shall have no exclusive economic zone.” China, South Korea and Taiwan all insist that Okinotorishima is just a rock that Japan cannot use to extend its EEZ. The Japanese government is also concerned at Chinese encroachment into Japanese waters, with Tokyo submitting a diplomatic complaint to Beijing in January 2019 after a Chinese government survey vessel was detected operating within Japan’s EEZ around Okinotorishima.  Operated by China’s State Oceanic Administration, the vessel may have been attempting to obtain data on natural resources, including oil and gas.



 https://www.dw.com/en/japan-takes-the-high-ground-over-its-outlying-islands/a-53617175

America and Organizing Workers

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The International Trade Union Confederation’s world map showing its rankings of the best and worst countries for working people.

Along with Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other countries with far fewer resources than the U.S., the nation was ranked as a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5, with the top-ranking countries reporting only “sporadic violations of rights.” Of countries with the rating of 4, the ITUC wrote, “The government and/or companies are engaged in serious efforts to crush the collective voice of workers, putting fundamental rights under threat.”


Every other G7 country ranked at least a 3 on the scale.


“In many countries, the existing repression of unions and the refusal of governments to respect rights and engage in social dialogue has exposed workers to illness and death and left countries unable to fight the pandemic effectively,” said the ITUC. Around the world, the ITUC found that violations of workers’ rights are at a seven year high. “The breakdown of the social contract is exposed in the 2020 ITUC Global Rights Index,” the report reads. “The trends by governments and employers to restrict the rights of workers through violations of collective bargaining and the right to strike, and excluding workers from unions, have been made worse in 2020 by an increase in the number of countries which impede the registration of unions—denying workers both representation and rights.”

The price of war

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 In 2019 alone (the last year for which worldwide spending figures are available), federal spending on the U.S. military soared to $732 billion.  (Other military analysts, who included military-related spending, put the figure at $1.25 trillion.)



   As a result, the United States, with about 4 percent of the world’s population, accounted for 38 percent of world military spending.  Although it’s certainly true that other nations engaged in military buildups as well, China

accounted for only 14 percent of global military spending that year, while Russia accounted for only 3 percent.  Indeed, the United States spent more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.



 In February 2020, the administration introduced a 2021 fiscal year budget proposal that would devote 55 percent of the federal government’s $1.3 trillion discretionary spending to the military.  By 2030, the military proportion of the federal budget would rise to 62 percent.



 While the COVID-19 pandemic continues with over 110,000 deaths thus far, a large portion of the economy has collapsed, unemployment has reached the catastrophic levels of the Great Depression, and American cities are torn by civil unrest Republican officials argue that  public assistance measures are “too expensive.” America cannot afford to address its deep problems in healthcare, educational opportunity, and decent housing. Military spending is affordable! America possesses 5,800 nuclear weapons, capable of being launched from land, sea, and air, and is presently involved in a vast “modernization” program to rebuild the entire nuclear arsenal.  The price tag for this enormous undertaking over the next three decades, has been estimated as at least $1.5 trillion.

Refugee Numbers Rise

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80 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide by the end of last year as a result of conflict, violence, persecution and human rights violations, according to the United Nations.



  26 million were refugees, 4.2 million asylum seekers and 45.7 million internally displaced people (IDPs) – those who fled to other parts of their own country.



 11 million more people fled their homes in 2019, almost doubling the total figure over the past decade. 



 People from Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar made up more than two-thirds of the refugee population.



 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/80-million-people-forcibly-displaced-worldwide-200617162524605.html

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