Socialist Resistance meeting with Farooq Tariq

Pakistan after the elections

Meeting with: Farooq Tariq (Labour Party Pakistan), Jane Shallice (Stop the War Coalition Officer) , Gilbert Achcar (author The Clash of Barbarisms)

Thursday 8 May, 7.30pm, ULU, Malet Street,WC1

The World Economy and the Credit Crisis

Andy Kilmister

1. Introduction

The significance of the current turmoil in global financial markets can be seen sharply in the following quote from the article `The rescue of Bear Sterns marks liberalisation’s limit’ by the chief economic commentator of the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, in the March 26 issue of that paper. Wolf, who is no radical, writes

Remember Friday March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free-market capitalism died. For three decades we have moved towards market-driven financial systems. By its decision to rescue Bear Sterns, the Federal Reserve, the institution responsible for monetary policy in the US, chief protagonist of free-market capitalism, declared this era over. It showed in deeds its agreement with the remark by Joseph Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, that “I no longer believe in the market’s self-healing power”. Deregulation has reached its limits…..even the recent past is a foreign country.

One of the most important parts of this statement is the reference to `three decades’. The current crisis has been compared to 1929. This is not really helpful as a guide to its significance. Much more useful in my view is to see what is happening as the unravelling of the set of institutional arrangements which have governed global capitalism since around the mid-1980s, which in turn emerged as a response to the breakdown of the long post-war boom a decade earlier. To understand what is happening now we need to go back to this period and to the emergence of this framework.

2. The Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s

Stable capitalist accumulation depends on two crucial conditions. Firstly, it requires the extraction of sufficient profits in the process of production. Secondly, it requires the realisation of those profits through sales on the market. This gives rise to a key contradiction – these two conditions are in conflict with one another. The successful extraction of profits depends on keeping wages down while the realisation of those profits depends on sufficient demand being available which in turn limits the ability of capital to lower wages. This conflict is a central reason for the periodic crises which characterise capitalist growth. It is worth noting here that two of the main Marxist theories of crisis result from adopting a partial view which focuses on just one side of this conflict; under-consumptionism (for example the work of the Monthly Review school in the USA) concentrates on the lack of demand which prevents realisation of profits while the profit-squeeze theory of writers like Andrew Glyn and Bob Sutcliffe focuses on rising labour costs which prevent the generation of profits in production. An adequate theory of crisis has to encompass both perspectives and to take account of the way in which capital can achieve a temporary resolution of the contradiction, which however inevitably stores up new problems for future accumulation.

The temporary resolution underlying the boom of the 1950s and 1960s depended on three main factors. First, state expenditure as a key source of additional demand. Second, the stable international economic environment provided by the `Bretton Woods’ system of fixed exchange rates which allowed for rapid growth of world trade. Third, the development of new consumer goods technologies and markets, notably in areas like the motor industry and consumer electronics (so-called `white’ goods).

For reasons which are still controversial amongst Marxists this boom broke down in the mid 1970s leading to a decade of economic turbulence and two major international recessions, in 1974-75 and 1979-82. However, from the mid-1980s onwards a new framework for accumulation began to take shape, in an unplanned and chaotic way, but embodying a measure of coherence.

3. The Temporary Resolution of this Crisis

This framework had three main components:

· The first was a massive explosion of debt – both household and (to a lesser extent) corporate debt. Debt has played a key role in mitigating the contradiction between the generation and realisation of profits, allowing for expanded demand even though wages have been kept down and a frontal assault on trade unions and organised labour has kept the working class on the defensive. However, there is an obvious contradiction here in that debt has to be repaid eventually and so the conflict between low wages and increased demand is likely to reassert itself with renewed ferocity at that point. Consequently, debt has only been able to play the role which it has because of the other two components listed below.

· The second component of accumulation has been a renewed stability in the international financial system, following on from the wild exchange rate swings of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s which resulted from the end of the Bretton Woods arrangements. This stability has allowed for strong growth in international trade but, more importantly, has underpinned dramatic financial deregulation and increased international investment. The key factor leading to this stability has been the informal but durable relationship between the USA and China (and to a lesser extent other Asian countries) whereby the US deficit has been funded by surplus countries, who have purchased US treasury bills, allowing those surplus countries to maintain the value of the dollar and keep their own currencies low in value, which in turn has underpinned their export drive. Linked with this, and important for both the US and UK, has been a rise in the returns earned by these countries on their investments abroad, which has helped them run large balance of payments deficits without their foreign liabilities escaping out of control.

· The third factor has been two decades of exceptionally low commodity prices. This has been a key factor in allowing central banks in the industrialised world, especially in the UK and USA, to let debt increase and to lower interest rates to boost demand, without worrying too much about inflation. A number of orthodox economists (most recently Brian Henry from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research) have argued that low commodity prices have been more significant in keeping inflation down since the 1980s than either central bank economic management or labour market developments.

It is important to recognise that, owing to the unplanned and chaotic nature of capitalism, this framework did not take root globally at a single point in time, but arose in a more spontaneous way. Notably, the second most important capitalist economy, Japan, followed a trajectory of its own, as a result of the specific characteristics of Japanese capitalism in the 1970s and 1980s, and has stagnated throughout most of the last two decades (though the Japanese trade surplus and Japanese purchases of American assets have been important for the second factor listed above). Western Europe remained unstable for longer than the USA, with a sharp recession in the UK in the late 1980s and 1990s (resulting from the especially sharp crisis of capitalism in the early 1980s in this country associated with the Thatcher government’s economic policies and the consequent weakness of the British economy in the years following) and exchange rate turbulence in the early 1990s across the region (resulting from the strains caused by German unification and the effect of this on German interest rates and on the value of the Deutsche mark). However, from the mid 1990s onwards Europe participated in the general framework outlined above and this provided an important basis for two key successes for the European capitalist class during this period – the absorption of Central and Eastern Europe into the capitalist world economy and the institution of a common currency, the euro. Particular regions continued to experience crises during this period, notably Latin America, South East Asia and Russia but these were successfully localised by capital and did not bring overall global expansion to an end, although the instability of 1997-98 briefly opened up such a possibility.

It is also important to realise that each of the three factors outlined above is integrally linked with the other two in a mutually reinforcing system. The growth of debt requires a low inflation environment and international financial deregulation, which in turn requires exchange rate stability. The export boom in China and elsewhere has depended on debt fuelled demand in the US and other countries. Low commodity prices have resulted in large measure from the process of `globalisation’ and imperialist expansion which has required deregulated debt finance and stable exchange rates.

4. The Current Crisis

The depth of the current crisis for capital arises because all three of the factors listed above have been thrown into question. The build-up of debt is extremely serious in itself, partly because of the size of the debt, partly because of the way in which `securitisation’ has spread it around the system so widely and partly because the amount of bad debt is so uncertain owing to that very securitisation. However, despite the over-valuation of the housing market in the US and other countries, problems in that market on their own would not threaten the system globally were it not for the role of debt in the current pattern of capitalist accumulation more generally. What is dangerous for capital is the conjunction of major problems in the credit markets with renewed exchange rate uncertainty, especially the fall in the value of the dollar (and also a steep decline for both the US and UK in returns on foreign investments) and with what appears to be the end of the era of low commodity prices – shown most clearly by increasing prices for oil and other fuels and for food. The difficulties are shown up most clearly in the key policy weapon which capital has depended on over the last three decades, control over interest rates. The US has cut interest rates sharply to deal with the build-up of bad debt, but such cuts run the risk both of speeding up the decline of the dollar and of raising inflation (which in turn will go up in the US if the dollar falls). In the Financial Times article referred to above Martin Wolf mentions a speech by the former chief IMF economist, Kenneth Rogoff (now at Harvard). Rogoff quoted the poet Robert Frost: `Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice’. For Rogoff, fire here is financial ruin, ice is inflation.

5. Can Capital Resolve the Crisis?

Discussion of the possible outcomes of the crisis runs the risk of being very speculative. However, it is important for socialists to consider some of the arguments now being used by capital which indicate possible resolutions of the crisis which might be attempted. Any attempt at such a resolution will involve some kind of distribution of the costs of the crisis. Clearly capital will try to shift as many of these costs as possible on to labour and its success or failure in doing so will depend on working class resistance both nationally and internationally. Within that general framework, however, there are also likely to be divisions between different fractions of capital (financial and industrial; importers, exporters and foreign investors etc) and also potentially differences between different kinds of workers (for example between homeowners and others).

Some of the key issues that have been raised are the following:

· Demand from China and elsewhere may substitute for US demand: One possible resolution of the crisis might be a slowdown in the US and similar countries and a shift towards internal growth in China and other surplus economies, based on domestic consumption and investment rather than exports. This would clearly be possible in principle in a globally planned economy. It is much harder to achieve in the unplanned, spontaneous world of contemporary capitalism. The attempt to carry out just this kind of shift in Japan from the mid 1980s onwards was a spectacular failure. Important problems here include internal inequalities and class tensions in the Asian economies and, perhaps most importantly, the ecological constraints which are already expressing themselves in higher food and fuel prices.

· The crisis may be just a crisis of liquidity not of solvency: A number of observers argue that the credit crisis results mainly from liquidity problems and panics in the financial markets and that the amount of `genuinely’ bad debt is still quite limited. In addition corporate profits in the non-financial sector remain high. This latter point is probably the most optimistic element for capital in the current situation. However, this argument neglects the extent to which non-financial profits have been dependent on a degree of debt-based consumption which now looks unsustainable. It also neglects the fact that if inflation does become more of a problem the low interest rates of recent years may not persist much longer.

· Commodity price rises may mainly be caused by speculation: There does seem to be a strong element of speculation in recent oil and raw materials price rises (with speculators fleeing from the dollar). To the extent that such speculation unwinds capital will have more room for manoeuvre. But the seriousness of the ecological crisis and the relatively long-term nature of recent price rises seem to indicate that speculation is only playing a minor role here. Also, any attempt to base future world economic growth on increased domestic growth in China and other Asian countries is likely to cause even larger commodity price increases.

· A fall in the dollar and sterling will raise US and British exports: It has been argued that exchange rate changes will restore balance to the world economy and that already US exports are rising as the dollar falls. Again, there is some truth to this. But reliance on this mechanism is very risky for capital because of (a) the substantial losses it would involve for countries like China which have purchased US dollar assets in recent years (b) the inflationary impact of such falls on the British and American economies (c) the possibility of renewed exchange rate turbulence of the kind seen in the 1970s and 1980s and (d) the fact that even balanced growth resulting from such exchange rate changes is likely to be at a much lower level than what we have seen in recent years.

· New surplus economies may emerge as saviours of the international financial system: This relates to the growth of so-called `sovereign wealth funds’, such as those run by China, Russia and other oil and natural resource exporters. But such funds are not immune to capitalist crisis in general – many of them have already lost significant amounts of money propping up US banks in recent weeks. There are also some important political tensions involved in their investment activities abroad.

· A better structure of regulation can solve the problem: One strand of thought in recent discussions sees an improvement in the regulatory structures of capitalism as key to solving the crisis. Martin Wolf in the article quoted above is an example of this. However, this is controversial; other analysts have strongly opposed responding to the crisis through increased regulation (see for example the article in the Financial Times by John Gapper the day after Wolf’s piece). There are a number of problems. Technological change and internationalisation have made financial regulations increasingly easy for banks and other institutions to bypass. Even if effective, such regulation really only deals with the financial aspects of the crisis, not with the problems of global payments imbalances or rising inflation. In addition, the ideological difficulties of reversing, even if only partially, two decades of neo-liberal attacks on any attempts to limit market imperatives, cannot be underestimated.

All of the above means that any attempt to resolve this crisis, at least in the short-run is fraught with dangers for capital – and consequently, the crisis opens up significant opportunities for socialists.

By the Socialist Resistance Steering Committee

Gordon Brown’s ‘U-turn’ on the abolition of the 10p tax threshold still leaves millions of low-paid workers and those on benefits without any compensation for what amounts to a doubling of their income tax.

The very same day – Monday 21 April – that Gordon Brown was forced into a special meeting with Labour MPs over the decision to abolish the 10p tax rate for the poor, an unlikely source - the supermarket chain Asda (owned by Walmart) - exposed the real economic situation facing the poor.

The Asda survey found the average family is £5 a week worse off than a year ago because of inflation, and that wages have not kept up with inflation. Government figures dispute this, but that is because of the stilted way government figures are worked out.

Official inflation figures include some very expensive items that poor families are unlikely to buy. The biggest rise in inflation has been in basic necessities that the poor spend a large percentage of their income on – like food, fuel, transport and housing. For the low paid and those on benefits the official inflation figure of 2.5% is a joke. Asda reckons it’s more like 5% - at a time when the government has been exerting strong downward pressure on the pay of low-paid public sector workers.

Pay increases, and pension and benefit increases, “in line with inflation” amount to a real cut in disposable income – the poor getting poorer. It is precisely at this time that the government wants to implement the budget’s abolition of the 10p in the pound tax band for the lowest paid.

Gordon Brown’s logic for doing this is clear: they were determined in the run up to a general election to reduce the income tax rate for better off workers and sections of the self employed from 22p in the pound to 20p in the pound. This mainly affects those on incomes of between £19,000 a year and £40,000 a year. This is hardly a fortune, especially for families with children, and no socialist should want to see better off workers – and £19,000 a year is ‘better off’ in a purely comparative sense – disadvantaged.

But of course there was no way that Brown and Chancellor Alasdair Darling were going to increase the taxes of the rich and the super rich, so the worst off have to pay. This is an outrageous scandal, and would have been unbelievable in the eyes of even right-wing Labourites in the 1960s and 70s. A regressive tax reform, taking from the worst off, is a caricature of New Labour’s groveling in front of the rich, a sick joke.

Of course it is widely known that the richest people in Britain pay little or no tax. Philip Green, owner of BHS, Top Shop and many other retail businesses pays nothing – on the spurious grounds that his wife is the real owner and she lives – allegedly – more than 6 months a year in Monaco. Rupert Murdoch’s News International contrives not to pay a penny in taxes in Britain. ‘International treatments’ are always available to those will millions (or billions) in the bank.

Such are the abject depths of New Labour’s capitulation to neoliberalism that once again New Labour allows the Tories to – apparently – outflank it to the left, as David Cameron cries crocodile tears for the poor. As a consequence Labour will get an even bigger drubbing than expected in the May 1^st local elections; the way is being prepared for a gigantic Labour collapse in the forthcoming general election. Never was the time to build a left alternative more obvious.

Last weekend’s campaigning was a big success. The bus runs were the best yet and there were stalls, leafleting  and other activities in many parts of London.

We had a good involvement of groups of SR comrades on the bus on both days and other comrades doing stalls in various places. A number of comrades came into London from various parts of the South East.

This coming weekend ­- the last before the voting ­ is even more important. The bus timings are the same: 12.00 from Club Row on Saturday and 11.00 from Club Row on Sunday. We need to make the bus a big success again. Comrades from outside of London are again important in this ­ in particular Oxford, Brighton, and Southend.
Comrades coming into London from the east may wish to help with the City and East campaign - they are concentrating on street activity this weekend - stalls and leafletting. For this go to the campaign office at 11.00 Saturday and Sunday at 13 Upton Park, off Green Street, nearest tube Upton Park. For contact ring Hanif on 07921256766.

Activity during the week is also important ­ every day until May 1st. The bus will be out every day from 12.00 till 7.00. Either turn up at Club Row at 12.00 or ring Kevin on 07930 532952.
Contact local campaigns for details of local evening campaigning.

The Colombia Solidarity Campaign is asking supporters and trade unionists to act in defence of Colombian miners facing death threats.

We reprint  Amnesty International’s Urgent Action below and encourage you to act on it immediately.

The small miners’ federation FEDEAGROMISBOL has been targeted with death threats. Its president Teófilo Manuel Acuña Ribón was one of the recipients. Teófilo has been in the UK this week in a visit organised by the Colombia Solidarity Campaign.

Teófilo’s visit has coincided with the AGM of the mining corporation Anglo American in London. A short statement was read out on Teófilo’s behalf to the shareholders, explaining the grave human rights situation in his home region of Sur de Bolivar.

Anglo American are 17% shareholders in AngloGold Ashanti, whose presence in this region is rejected by the Federation. Teófilo’s work, in exposing the negative impacts of British mining activity, has put him in great danger. He is seeking protection measures for when he returns in the coming days and the solidarity he receives this week could prove critical.

Colombia Solidarity Campaign

19 April

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Fear for safety/ Death threats
COLOMBIA
Members of the Magdelena Medio Peace and Development Programme ‘Programa de Desarrollo y Paz del Magdalena Medio’ Members of the human rights organization, Corporación SEMBRAR
Members of the trade union organization, The Agro- mining Federation of the South of Bolívar department, FEDEAGROMISBOL (La Federación Agrominera del Sur de Bolívar) Catholic priests working in the municipalities of Tiquisio, Arenal and Regidor, department of Bolívar.

On 10 April, an e-mailed death threat signed by the paramilitary group ‘Black Eagles’ (Aguilas Negras) was received by those mentioned above. They were informed that they were considered to be military targets and so would be killed.
The death threat stated that their names are on a list of undesirables who must be eliminated, “su nombre esta (sic.) en la lista de personas no deseadas …que deben ser eliminados”. It accuses those under threat of being guerrilla auxiliaries or guerrilla members and informs them that the aforementioned organizations and their members have been kept under surveillance in the municipalities of Tiquisio, Arenal, La Gloria and Regidor in the department of Bolívar as well as in Aguachica in the department of Cesar.
The e-mail continues by saying “Going down the list, you will be killed one by one for each criminal act that you organize against the ‘democratic security’ in these towns”, (Por cada acto delincuencial en contra de la seguridad democratica (sic.) que ustedes organicen dentro de estos pueblos, serán exterminados uno a uno por orden de lista). It concludes by saying “We won’t hesitate to kill you; start getting your loved ones ready so that they can bury you, (No vamos en vacilar en asesinarlos y vallan preparando a sus allegados para que empiecen a enterrarlos).
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The ‘Programa de Desarrollo y Paz del Magdalena Medio’ promotes economic, social, cultural and institutional development in the region, focusing on vulnerable and displaced communities. Corporación SEMBRAR is a human rights organization which in recent years has been monitoring the human rights situation in the region and which has repeatedly denounced human rights abuses.
FEDEAGROMISBOL is an organization which represents peasant farmers and the interests of artisanal gold miners in the South of Bolívar department. It has campaigned against the arrival of multinational gold mining companies in the area and in recent years, its members have regularly been threatened and labelled as subversive. On 19 September 2006, Alejandro Uribe, a FEDEAGROMISBOL leader was killed by members of the Batallón Nueva Granada of the Colombian army. He was presented by the security forces as a guerrilla killed in combat.
Human rights organizations, trade unions and other social organizations have often been labelled as guerrilla collaborators or supporters by government officials, as well as by the security forces and paramilitaries. Such accusations have often been followed by threats or attacks against human rights activists. The conflict provides a useful cover for those seeking to expand and protect economic interests and human rights violations are often committed in areas of economic interest.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in Spanish or your own language:

-expressing concern for the safety of members of FEDEAGROMISBOL, SEMBRAR, the ‘Programa de Desarrollo y Paz del Magdalena Medio’ and Catholic priests working in the municipalities of Tiquisio, Arenal and Regidor in the department of Bolivar.

-urging the authorities to ensure that all measures deemed appropriate by the individuals and organizations named in the threat received on 10 April, are taken to guarantee their safety;

-calling for full and impartial investigations into the death threat received on 10 April, the results of which should be made public and those responsible brought to justice;

-calling for decisive action to confront and dismantle paramilitary groups and investigate and break their links with the security forces, in line with repeated UN recommendations;

- calling on the authorities to produce policy and plans, in conjunction with human rights defenders, to guarantee their safety according to the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights and Responsibilities of Individuals, Groups and Institutions to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and to make these plans public.

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Colombia Solidarity Campaign adds

Example message in Spanish:

Estimado Autoridad,

Escribo expresar mi preoccupación por la seguridad de los miembros de las organizaciones SEMBRAR, FEDEAGROMISBOL y la Programa de Desarrollo y Paz  Magdelena Medio y los sacerdotes que estan trabajando en los municipios de Tiquisio, Arenal y Regidor en el departamento de Bolivar.

Solicito que se tomen medidas a guarantizar la seguridad de ellos que recibieron las amenazas del 10 Abril.

Llamo por una investigación completa y imparcial a las amenazas y que los resultados sean disponible publicamente y los que tengan responsibilidad sean castigado.

Por favor tome accion a confrontar a los grupos paramilitares y investique sus conneciones y sus vinculos con las fuerzas de seguridad - en acuerdo con recommendaciones hecho por las Naciones Unidas repetidamente.

También le solicito a producir planes y políticas, conjunto con defensores de DDHH a guarantizar su seguridad en acuerdo con los principios de la Declaracion de las Naciones Unidos en los Derechos y Responsibildades de Individuos, Grupos y Instituciones a Promover y Proteger los Derechos Humanos y Libertades Fundamentales Reconocidos Universalmente, y que sean públicos.

Sinceramente

Please send by E-MAIL to:

The Colombian Embassy in UK Email: mail@colombianembassy.co.uk  for attention of Mr A. Garcia.

Climate change is a working class issue. Try to get this resolution through your union branch. Amend it as appropriate.

This Association notes:
1) The contradiction between the Government’s stated aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and its practice of expanding roads and airports.

2) The devastating impact a proposed third runway at Heathrow Airport would have on local communities as a consequence of raised air and noise pollution, and on the world’s climate as a result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases.

This Association therefore demands that the UK government immediately abandons all plans to build a third runway at Heathrow airport.

This Association also agrees to:

1) Send a delegation and banner to the National Demonstration against the third runway at Heathrow at 12 noon on Saturday 31^st May 2008. (Assemble at Hatton Cross Tube Station.)

2) Affiliate to the Campaign against Climate Change (Affiliation fees: National Unions £250 per annum; Districts and Regions £100 per annum; local branches £25 per annum), and help its work with a further donation of £… (cheques payable to Campaign against Climate Change should be sent to Campaign against Climate Change , Top Floor, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX)

This is a big weekend for election campaigning in London! Respect’s campaign is going well but there are only two weekends left - this weekend the 19th and 20th and the weekend of 26th and 27th. It is crucial that we put everything possible into the campaign both at the weekends and during the week to maximise Respect’s vote.

This weekend

Every Socialist Resistance supporter should get involved in the campaign this weekend ­ either through local stalls and leafleting or by going out on the campaign bus.

On Saturday the bus will be in Tower Hamlets and Newham and will leave the Club Row office at 12,00 midday. Comrades should be there at that time to go on it.

On Sunday the bus will leave Club Row earlier at 11.00 and will go to a rally in Trafalgar Sq and then go campaigning from there. Be at Club Row by 11.00.

Birmingham

For Birmingham information, call:

or email: birminghamrespect@hotmail.com

salmacampaign@yahoo.co.uk or call us on: 07812172885

By blaming individuals, the ruling class aims to greenwash their intrinsically environmentally destructive economic and social system. We have borrowed this article from the indispensable Climate and Capitalism site.

(A talk to the Climate Change Social Change Conference held in Sydney from April 11 to 13. Thanks to Inhabitable Earth for the text. The subheads were added by Climate and Capitalism.)

by Terry Townsend,
Managing Editor, Links

I’m sure everybody here is aware of the basic facts of global warming and the likely consequences if rapid and serious action is not taken. There is virtually unanimous agreement among scientists and activists, and increasingly among millions of ordinary people, about the degree of the problem and the time frame we have to make fundamental changes to address it.

The main “solutions” being offered by the capitalist class, its politicians and the corporate-dominated mass media — and endorsed by some key peak environmental organizations — are consciously designed to shift the responsibility for, and the major costs of, addressing global warming away from the most polluting corporations and to preserve the basic structure and mechanisms of Western capitalist economies. They are also designed to delay the necessary political, economic and social changes for as long as possible, and to keep them to the minimum that are compatible (in their assessment) with both the survival of capitalist society and ameliorating the worst of climate change.

This is why major-party politicians and the corporate media — and again unfortunately some peak environment groups – do not place serious demands on big business, but endorse — even celebrate — big business’ preferred measures of emissions trading, “green” taxes, carbon offsetting projects in the Third World and capitalism-friendly publicly subsidized techno-fixes such as so-called clean coal and agro-fuels.

These false “solutions” are not only inadequate, they are counterproductive. However, since other speakers and workshops will be focusing on those, I’ll concentrate on another of the establishment’s favoured — and ultimately also counterproductive — “solution” — one that is intertwined with the others. The push for all individuals to voluntarily consume a little less, and “buy green” whenever they can. That the answer to global warming is for all of “us” — consumers, workers, residents, pensioners — to voluntarily change our wasteful behaviour.

Despite its benign aura of commonsense advice, this is a massive ideological campaign to drive home to “us” that it is ordinary working people who are ultimately to blame for climate change, and that it is “us who must pay for its solution. It is part of the ruling class’ overall offensive to shift the blame and cost of addressing global warming away from itself and its intrinsically environmentally destructive economic and social system.

As one commentator aptly noted in the usually system-friendly Grist e-zine “every time an activist or politician hectors the public to voluntarily reach for a new [fluro] bulb or spend extra on a Prius, Exxon Mobil heaves a big sigh of relief,” because it diverts people’s attention from what is really necessary to address the crisis, and from who is really responsible.

Death by a thousand tips

Another radical commentator, George Marshall, has described this ideological offensive as “death [by] a thousand tips.” He is referring to the literally tens of thousands of newspaper articles and web pages that, after having outlined the severe crisis we face and the sharply diminishing time society has to respond, direct the reader to a snappy, upbeat sidebar or list entitled “10 easy tips to save the planet” or some variation thereof. The same sort of lists have been the core of government-sponsored campaigns across the globe, including Australia.

Standard items include “change your light globes,” “turn off unnecessary lights,” “don’t leave your appliances on stand-by,” “adjust your thermostats,” recycle, compost, drive a fuel-efficient car, or drive less. Yet extremely rarely do these helpful hints mention political action, let alone make concrete demands on governments or business. On the odd occasion they do, it is vague and tokenistic – and tacked onto the end of the list.

Of course, there is a place for action by individuals, and it should not be discouraged. It does make sense in terms of saving energy and water, reducing waste and saving money. Educating and facilitating such behaviour on a mass scale is a significant part of what is needed to halt global warming. But such suggestions should not be counterposed to, or used to drown out calls for, the urgent need for mass political action to force the necessary cuts to emission demanded by the science. And they should not be cynically presented, as they are by the corporate media and capitalist politicians, as the way to save the planet.

In Britain, the government spent £22 million on a “Do your bit” campaign and had to admit that it produced no measurable change in personal habits. A poll in 2007 indicated that this campaign had miseducated people, with more than 40% saying that recycling household waste — which would result in a relatively small reduction of emissions — was the most important thing they could do. Only 10% nominated the far more effective regular use of public transport.

That £22 million would have been better spent to organize a movement to demand an end to the massive and wasteful packaging and advertising industries, or the mass expansion of public transport.

In Ireland, faced with greenhouse gas emissions that have increased 25% since 1990, the government’s response was to launch a multimillion euro “The Power on One” campaign, which provides — yes, you guessed it — “10 top tips” to “make a difference.” Among the revolutionary actions suggested were: don’t overfill your kettle, but fill your dishwasher before use, and unplug your mobile phone charger.

As George Marshall quips, all “that sounds much nicer than curtailing road building or industrial growth. They are not called `easy tips’ for nothing.”

On October 15, the UN Environment Program organised a “Blog Action Day” in which some 15,000 blog sites offered more “tips” to web surfers, from the inevitable changing light globes to one of Copyblogger.com’s “tiny actions [that] can save the world”: quit your job requiring a long commute and start up a home-based business! Copyblogger’s not alone in making “tips” that are simply beyond the means of most debt-strapped working people in these days of widespread “mortgage stress” and rising interest rates. Common “tips” include buying more expensive hybrid cars and building architect-designed “carbon neutral” houses.

Blaming working people

All such campaigns are premised on blaming working people for global warming. But as Dave Holmes, a veteran Australian socialist, points out in the latest Green Left Weekly, what real choice to do the mass of ordinary people have:

“the source of our current crisis is quite specific: it is the operations of modern capitalism. The drive for profits by the giant corporations has been relentless and has been pursued in complete disregard of any impact on the environment.

“The fundamental conditions under which we live — how we generate our power, how we get around, how our food is grown, etc. — are not decided by us but rather by the big corporations that control society’s means of production. Without the rule of corporate capital we could set in place radically different and ecologically sustainable arrangements.

“For example, the cars which most of us use are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions…The favouring of private motor vehicles over public transport hasn’t come about because we are innately a society of petrol-heads but is a consequence of the deliberate policies of a succession of capitalist governments loyally protecting the interests of their big business masters. The auto industry and its associated sectors make up a very large part of each national capitalist economy.”

However well intentioned, appeals to people to change their individual habits bring trivial results when measured against the problem, and if not coupled to the much more urgent task of politically mobilizing to demand serious government action to immediately reduce and rapidly halt greenhouse gas emissions, it derails mass concern about global warming from taking a political road.

The Earth Hour Greenwash

It also sells the damaging lie that “clean,” “green,” “natural” and “organic” commodities are the answer, when they are fundamentally no better for the planet than any other over-produced commodities under capitalism. It plays into the hands of the mega-financed “Greenwashing” by corporations and governments of an unsustainable economic system.

If anything sums up this sort of operation, it was the massively publicized “Earth Hour” on March 29. The brainchild in 2007 of the World Wildlife Fund, Fairfax newspapers and the Leo Burnett advertising agency, Earth Hour declares on its website: “Created to take a stand against the greatest threat our planet has ever faced, Earth Hour uses the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming.” But you will search in vain for any demands for political action, just boilerplate “tips.” It states:

“Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference — from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.”

There was more of the same in the 40-page, full-colour Earth Hour Magazine that was distributed “free” (free that is if you don’t consider the small forest and who knows how many tonnes of CO2 that were expended in its production and distribution) with the approximate 211,000 copies of the Sydney Morning Herald on March 17. Only one article, by Tim Flannery, made any serious attempt to point out the vested interests that need to be tackled and raised the issues of inadequate public transport, stopping new coal plants and setting adequate emission-reduction targets by 2050.

But his contribution was buried under an avalanche of yet more regurgitated “tips,” feel-good stories and gumph such as this:

“Many governments and communities have already made big changes to reduce emissions. The use of solar and wind power is on the increase. Other renewable energy sources are being investigated. Millions of dollars are being spent exploring ways to bury carbon dioxide or to produce cleaner coal. But more needs to be done and politicians need to be brave enough to make tough decisions. If those politicians know that a couple of million people in their homeland have joined Earth Hour, they can be confident that the people will support the hard decisions and will applaud leaders who have the will to act.”

Don’t expect Fairfax to support “hard decisions” that impact on the big end of town, though. “Hard decisions” is code for making you and me pay higher bills.

The supplement was festooned with full-page ads by electricity suppliers such as EnergyAustralia, Integral Energy and Country Energy — the ones that hawk all that coal power — car companies such as Toyota, Fiat and Hyundai (Volvo waited for 8-page post-Earth Hour “Souvenir edition” Sydney Morning Herald), and even Cascade beer (100% Carbon Offset!).

Corporate and government “greenwashing” was the central goal of the pre-hour hullabaloo. For all the talk of millions of Australians taking part, almost the sole yardstick of the night’s success was on corporate office blocks and huge neon advertising signs in the CBD switching off. The participation of major publicly owned landmarks is really what made the impact. Which begs the question, why aren’t all these lights and signs switched off every night?

Fossil fuel giant AGL loaned the giant WWF-logoed hot air balloon, which sailed over several capital cities beforehand, producing an estimated 378 kilograms of CO2 an hour. That’s the same AGL that is a shareholder in Victoria’s largest brown coal mine. Richard Branson gave his grin of approval, ever keen to “offset” the impact of his fleet of 38 747s. BP — the world’s third largest global energy company — also promised to turn off all its “non-essential lighting.” Let’s not mention that BP was named one of the “ten worst corporations” in both 2001 and 2005 based on its environmental and human rights records. Or that it is busy trying to mine the ultra-polluting tar sands oil in Canada.

McDonald’s turned off it Golden Arches for an hour nationally! So the literally millions on tonnes of useless packaging produced by this lot, not to mention the clearing of Amazonian rainforest for beef for Maccas, is forgiven. Not surprisingly, Channel Nine’s support did not extend to urging people to switch of the tellie or to refusing to air the ads of CO2 polluters. Behind the scenes, advertising industry magazine Campaign Brief in league with the SMH offered an incentive to copywriters who “demonstrate the most effective and/or inspirational way to leverage Earth Hour 2008” — two return trips to Cannes in France!

And last but certainly not least, the eco-friendly Department of Defence signed up to participate in Earth Hour. Federal Labor defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon announced: “Defence takes its obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions seriously and will have over 1330 buildings across Australia participating in Earth Hour.” The minister of war also reported that the department had launched the Combat Climate Change initiative (clever pun) to provide information and “tips” to defence staff in the “workplace” and home to reduce energy use. Here’s a “tip” Joel: get all troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and end all support for those wars for US imperialist control of energy sources.

In the end, despite the hype and PR, the results were hardly impressive. In the hour, electricity consumption across whole city and the Illawarra dropped just 2-3%, while in the CBD it was just over 8%. Nationwide figures put the drop at 3.6%. Based on a survey of 3000, WWF claimed 59% of Sydneysiders took part — a figure that doesn’t gel with the marginal power drop, if simply turning off lights is the way forward.

Anyway, it seems that the WWF and Fairfax were not going to let their advertisers down and were going to declare the night a success whatever the result. The Online Fairfax-owned Brisbane Times reported that “Brisbane made history this evening with the city’s first official Earth Hour going off without a hitch. Kellie Caught, of Earth Hour organiser World Wildlife Fund, said she was thrilled with the response.” Only problem was, this was published on March 28, 26 hours before Earth Hour had even taken place!

The last word on Earth Hour should go to Jimmy Yan, a member of the Glen Waverley Secondary College Eco-Committee, whose excellent critique was carried on the committee’s blog:

“Earth Hour rests on the assumption that the environmental movement can make any real progress without looking at the deeper social and political institutions and systems within our society that cause our environmental problems, one of them being a system that seeks to accumulate as much profit as possible for the sake of more accumulation and more competition irrespective of the human, environmental and social cost. Our environmental problems become another commodity that is bought and sold on the market …

“Ultimately, events like Earth Hour … rest on the idea that we can trust and work with those responsible for environmental destruction without holding them accountable for their crimes and the assumption that ordinary people are too stupid and naive to go beyond just turning off their lights for one hour.”

Mass movement needed

We have to convince millions of people and build a mass movement for emission-reductions that genuinely address the real problem. For Australia, that’s at least 90% by 2030 — not Labor’s anaemic 60% by 2050. A movement that demands that governments impose far-reaching measures that force giant industrial polluters to rapidly and massively slash their emissions, at the risk of massive fines. And if they refuse, they should be nationalized and run in the interests of the workers and consumers.

All public subsidies and tax concessions for the giant fossil fuel industries and resource corporations — which amount to billions — should be redirected to research the development of publicly owned renewable energy sources. We could help ordinary people implement individual actions, by supplying free or at a massive subsidy to all households solar waters heaters and water tanks. There should be a massive reorganization of society to move away from private-car-based transportation to free and frequent mass public transport, and, redesign our cities to put people’s homes close to work and shops.

We need to think about ways of linking these wider demands with our more immediate campaigns, for example as we fight to stop the Tasmanian pulp mill, oppose power privatization, end coal and uranium mining, and to stop the building of new freeways and toll roads, we have to also convince people that the workings of capitalism itself is both responsible for the crisis and also the main obstacle to its solution.

The real source of the problem

Through struggles for immediate and broader demands, masses of people can come to understand that the source of the problem lies with capitalism itself.

The scientific analysis of capitalism first made by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, illustrates how, despite the assertions of many environmental movement theorists over the years, Marxism not only provides essential insights into the fundamental cause of the environmental crisis ,but also offers a political guide to its solution.

Capitalism’s fundamentally anti-ecological trait is captured by Marx’s analysis of the working of capitalism. Capitalists buy or produce commodities only in order to sell them for a profit, and then buy or produce yet more to sell more again. There is no end to the process. Competition between capitalists ensures that each one must continue to increase their production of commodities and continue to expand in order to survive. Production tends to expand exponentially until interrupted by crises (depressions and wars) and it is this dynamic at the very core of capitalism that places enormous, unsustainable pressure on the environment.

Capitalism is a system that pursues growth for its own sake, whatever the consequences. This is why all schemes based on the hope of a no-growth, slow-growth or a sustainable-growth forms of capitalism are pipe dreams. As too are strategies based on a critical mass of individual consumers deciding to go “green” in order to reform the system.

People are not “consumers” by nature. A multi-billion-dollar capitalist industry called advertising constantly plays with our minds to convince us that happiness comes only through buying more and more “stuff,” to keep up with endless wasteful fads, fashions, upgrades, new models and built-in obsolescence. The desire for destructive and/or pointless goods is manufactured along with them. In 2008, an estimated $750 billion will be spent on corporate advertising and public relations in the US alone. In Australia, such spending is now well in excess of $12 billion a year.

Many in the environmental movement argue that with the right mix of taxes, incentives and regulations, everybody could be winners. Big business would have cheaper, more efficient production techniques, and therefore be more profitable, and consumers would have more environment-friendly products and energy sources.

In a rational society, such innovations would lower the overall environmental impact of production. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a rational society. Any energy and money savings made through efficiency are used to make and sell more commodities, cheaper than their competitors.

Capitalism approaches technology — in the production process or in the final product — in the same way as it does everything else. What will generate the most profits? Whether it is efficient, clean, safe, environmentally benign or rational has little to do with it. The technologies that could tackle global warming have long existed. Even though research into them has been massively underfunded, renewable energy sources are today competitive with coal and nuclear power (if the negative social and environmental costs are factored in). Public transport systems have been around since the late 1800s.

Fundamental to capitalism’s development has been its power to shift the cost of its ecological and social vandalism onto society as whole. More profits can accrue if the big capitalists don’t have to bother themselves with the elimination, neutralization or recycling of industrial wastes. It’s much cheaper to pour toxic waste into the air or the nearest river. Rather than pay for the real costs of production, society as a whole subsidizes corporate profit-making by cleaning up some of the mess or suffering the environmental and/or health costs. Or the whole messy business can simply be exported to the Third World.

It is becoming abundantly clear that the Earth cannot sustain this system’s plundering and poisoning without the humanity sooner or later experiencing a complete ecological catastrophe.

To have any chance of preventing this, within the 10- to 30-year window that we have in relation to global warming, humanity must take conscious, rational control of its interactions with the planet and its ecological processes, in ways that capitalism is inherently incapable of doing.

April 17, 2008

Pakistan after the elections

Socialist Resistance public meeting

with Farooq Tariq (Labour Party Pakistan)

and Gilbert Achcar (author of A clash of Barbarisms)

Thursday 8 May, 7.30pm

ULU Malet Street, WC1, (Warren St tube)

The elections of the 18th February were a severe sanction of General Musharaf and his alliance with US imperialism. Voters rejected his military dictatorship and the attacks on democracy. The US also find themselves in a weaker position without a reliable ally in its war without end.

The Labour Party Pakistan is well known and popular in Pakistan. It has over 100 councillors elected across the country. Its leaders have been arrested numerous times for their fight for democracy in a theocratic state run by a military dictatorship . The LPP campaigns on every issue affecting workers and the poor: land-rights, privatisation, women’s rights, child labour.

Well known leader of the Labour Party Pakistan, Farooq Tariq, is speaking at a meeting organised by Socialist Resistance on 8 May. The meeting is at ULU, Malet Street, London WC1 at 7.30pm. Other speakers include well known author Gilbert Achcar and Jane Shallice from the Stop the War Coalition.

On Wednesday 30 April Socialist Resistance is organising a forum on the US elections with Charles Post from Solidarity in the United States. The meeting is at 7.30pm at the Indian YMCA, Fitzroy Square, London W1. For map click here.