Wolff on Brexit

Socialists against BREXIT

Who shouts loudest for BREXIT? It is the most right-wing Tories and UKIP!

WHY do they want it, exactly? They don't want alliance.

HOW do they put their case? They want to be rid of European "red tape" - by which they mean legislation that defends worker's rights. They want free rein to do as they like as they used to! They want to beat their international competitors by foul means if necessary.

What would an even more right-wing Tory Britain be like?

Two groups are arguing loud and long about the forthcoming Referendum. Both groups are essentially lead by Tories who are only really concerned with profit.

Neither side of this argument is remotely concerned about you. They don't care about the state of the Working Class after 8 long years of depression and cuts. If anything they want to turn the screw even harder. Something is holding them back. 

So why should we support either group of Tories? We shouldn't of course! Many voices on the left are calling for a boycott of the EU Referendum. A plague on both their houses!

Yet, we must defend our class.

WHY are the most right-wing, anti-worker, racist, nationalist groups for BREXIT? They want to Leave to end EU laws which protect the worker, which have slowly been won by left-leaning politicians in the European Union. They see the easiest way to exploit the working class is to leave Europe and set their own laws.

Such laws would almost certainly be PRO-employer, PRO-capitalist and ANTI-worker, ANTI-human rights, with a new far-right Tory-lead cabal in charge, post-referendum. Do you doubt it?

But staying in the EU won't make any difference either. It won't mean the end of capitalism! No indeed! But it will allow Europe-wide alliances of Workers to oppose austerity, to oppose ever-more attacks on their jobs and living standards.

Do you really believe that an newly independent Britain, run by unleashed right-wing politicians will be better for working people in this country? It will be considerably WORSE.

Workers must vote NO to leaving the EU. It shouldn't be seen as a vote for the capitalist EU and all of the things we agree are wrong with it, but a vote against the right, a vote against even worse situations for British workers, isolated from hundreds of millions of potential comrades, with the very same problems across the continent. 

Many socialists, including myself, were against the Common Market when joining it was first suggested - for all the right, pro-working class reasons. But that isn't what this vote is really about.

The worst elements of the Tory Party are manoeuvring to bring even more repressive laws against ordinary people. They reckon they could do whatever they wanted unshackled from EU regulation. And maybe they could.

That is the pressing issue we face at the ballot box.

Please don't misunderstand my position: the EU is no friend of the working class, I am fully aware of this. They have done terrible things recently in Greece. But its parliament does make laws which protect people. Occasional majorities of left-of-centre parties have allowed protective laws to get onto the statute book which the Tories cannot currently get around or overthrow. 

Have you noticed the increase in socialist parties in Europe recently, in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal? In a crisis of Capitalism (which this certainly is) we will need to be able to ally with fellow anti-capitalists all over Europe. Freedom of movement is vital. We need to unite the working class across Europe, not isolate ourselves under perpetual Tory rule! 

This capitalist European Union is not OUR Europe, granted. But a United Socialist States of Europe could be! And we need strength to fight capitalism, we need to be in the best position we can be. That isn't on our own.

Many bigger fights are on the horizon. We will need the freedom to unite to win those fights. 

VOTE NO TO LEAVING. 

VOTE REMAIN!

PS. I wrote this piece as a response to increasing socialist voices calling for Brexit. I think this is a mistake. I also think people on the left are confused about this question, and what it might mean for working people. I hope this elucidates on some of the issues. 

Bravo Varoufakis!

The Greeks move on

Having won the Referendum on rejecting the creditors' terms for continuing financial help, the socialist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis turn up the heat yet another notch.

Just as their creditors' are clearly trying to demonise self-confessed Marxist Varoufakis for his strident condemnation of their tactics, he resigns out of the blue.

These Greek leaders are not falling for it. With Varoufakis tactically excluding himself from the negotiating team, the capitalists can no longer use him as the damning "fly in the ointment", and the intended mudslinging has been undermined.

I wonder why the BBC took 4 hours to announce his resignation. Didn't they know what to say?

The restructuring of the debts now becomes the key demand of the Greeks, and with some others and the IMF beginning to rethink the situation, they can fight hard to stop further Austerity.

Also, Spain is moving towards a general election later this year, and a party not unlike Syriza (Podemos) is in the running, and growing in strength with every gain made in the Greek battle. 

Clearly the credit-based capitalist union is being severely questioned. Why should the poorest pay for its evident and recurring weaknesses?

The fight-back has begun. 

Bravo Varoufakis!

Victory for the Greek people!

Greece: On the threshold of revolution?

Significant things are happening in Greece. Could the country that gave the World Democracy, now establish a European Socialist State?

The 2008 Slump was a clear indicator of the bankruptcy of Capitalism. Even its usual methods of exporting all their problems to the Third World isn’t working as it used to. Now, we will have a return to Nation-State rivalries and even war in Europe.

The "West versus Russia" confrontation is between Capitalist States. No easy Communist targets remain!

So, once more, the Working Class is the major target for regaining some sort of re-establishment of the Old Regime. They will be made to pay!

Greece proves it!

The pensioners and the youth are increasingly being made to pay by enforced poverty. The first break in the Phalanx of Pro-capitalist parties, including those saying they are socialist, is NOW occurring in that great Cradle of Civilisation.

Victory to the People of Greece!

Kick out Capitalism for the only rule for and by The People: S O C I A L I S M!

Quantitative Easing – Printing Money

How long can they get away with it?

Recently, on this blog, we have been revealing the essential role of inflation in capitalism, and how remunerative it is to business, both in borrowing money and in paying wages. But, that general principle exists within a context of production. So, something useable and buyable gets produced – value is added to primary resources to deliver more valuable products. So, how does Quantitative Easing fit into the picture?

For Quantitative Easing is merely another name for printing money! And, doing that with absolutely NO real capital to back it: so, absolutely no existing value or created value is involved. It has merely been invented out of nothing. No one lent previously acquired value to finance things. It is just printed out of paper and ink, and expected to be useable as if it was a holder of real value.

So, what was the intention of those who did it, in the midst of a capitalist crisis?

In the 1930s, Public Works were the suggested answer, for though the wages involved were just printed paper; it put unemployed workers back to work, and produced something of value in the process.

But, that is not the case with Quantitative Easing!

Now, by merely printing money and lending it to people at very low interest from actual governments, you would expect to merely debase the currency. But how would that normally show itself? In a global slump, such as the one they are still attempting to extricate themselves from, the relations in value between the currencies will not immediately and generally reflect devaluing actions. Individual countries will exploit any temporary gains, at the expense of other countries, and the Money Markets will deliver confusing indicators of what is going on.

But, the rival nations won’t sit back bemoaning how they are being treated: they will retaliate.

Indeed, having initially refused to follow the Americans and the British, the European Union, has now decided to do likewise. Quantitative Easing is being tried by more and more countries.

The eventual results will not need a genius to predict! An eventual return to real value will cause an avalanche of devaluations. The essential “confidence” in the power of the dominant capitalists will inevitably evaporate!

In the past there has always been another area of the world to exploit, to re-steady the boat, but where are they to turn now?

This crisis occurred when they finally decided to try their usual tricks, but this time directly upon the working classes, via bound-to-fail mortgages to the poor, and the then deceitful repackaging and selling of these, worldwide, as lucrative investments. They expected to reclaim the properties many times as the short-time owners failed to fulfil their financial commitments, but when they tried to foreclose, they found they didn’t have the property: it had been wrecked! The bottom fell out of the whole scheme and the 2008 slump worldwide ensued.

So, who was left to screw? There simply wasn’t anybody! So, a more subtle means had to be both devised and employed.

One effective trick was to keep wages below inflation for FIVE years, which made ordinary workers everywhere pay significantly to help capitalism out of its crisis.

Also, by sacking vast numbers of public service workers, and then hiring them back into privately owned firms, at zero hours contracts, part-time jobs, and even encouraging “black economy” self-employment, the lie of the working class being safeguarded was erected.

But such tricks cannot be said to have worked globally. Indeed, we have been forced back into the rivalry between capitalist states, to get national advantages of one country over another. The anti Russian clamour is part of this (remember Russia is now back in the capitalist fold), but ploughing it’s own furrow in opposition to the old dominators of world capitalism, especially, of course, the USA.

Also, the cheap labour advantages of China and other capitalist or neo-capitalist economies must wane with the demands for appropriate wages in these countries, so the globalisation trick of getting your manufacturing done where labour is cheap cannot be maintained indefinitely, especially as it has also been necessary to impoverish and de-skill the western working classes, sometimes producing echoes of the past with sub-classes even in countries like the USA and the UK.

And the importation of ex-colonial and ex-communist-bloc workers to the West, as a cheap labour alternative to their own indigenous working classes, has led to increasing hostility among the native unemployed, and consequently the immigrants being blamed for the situations in the metropolitan countries. The radical Islamist movement, both in the ex-colonial countries and in immigrant populations is a symptom of the failure of this ploy.

And, there has been another crucial problem.

The middle class investors are getting little or no interest from their savings, and small or even no dividends from their investments, so a major source of investment capital is gradually drying up.

Another way of re-building a source for such investments is by diverting as much profit as possible to the already very rich. So, at the time when the poor are getting poorer, the rich must be made richer, or they too will just sit upon their cash.

Never has the gulf between rich and poor been this big – as 1% of the population now own as much as the other 99%.

But, the dynamics involved in all this are not planned. They are needed in various ways, to constantly re-steady the floundering boat. But, nothing seems to be solving the crisis!

Take the Euro Zone, the UK’s biggest market, it is teetering on the edge of a new deflationary recession once again, and the right-wing Tories and UKIP want to blame the slump on them, and hence want to leave the European Union (while keeping all the trading privileges, of course).

The methods now being used are getting exceptionally desperate.

The economic blockade of Russian capitalism has been stepped up to enormous proportions, and has been possible because of Russia's dependence upon selling Gas and Oil to other countries. But, on top of this, the price of oil has tumbled due to US Fracking and Saudi Arabian full-throttle selling, and these, along with the World Crisis have caused there to be more oil than is needed to be bought.

You can see that this is still a major crisis, with no end in sight.

So, what will Quantitative Easing do in the long term? The Americans have got away with it because of their dominance in world trade, while the UK also managed to employ it, because of their dominance in world finance.

But now the Europeans are about to try it too.

If it becomes universally applied, any advantages so far seen will vanish for everybody

Printing money on a global scale can only have one outcome. The value of all currencies will tumble – shown not in exchange rates, but in roaring inflation.

The crisis will get worse.

Socialism for the Ukraine

It is now abundantly clear from the attention the SHAPE Marxist websites are getting, that there are still many socialists in the Ukraine, and citizens, with arms in hand, are taking control of many key buildings in a range of cities and towns.

Whether they know it or not, they are on the threshold of a Revolution! They do not want the further encroachment of European Capitalism, nor do they want the oligarcs that took the people’s institutions for their own, when the Stalinists were no longer able to keep control.

They want their country back, but this time run for its people!

Though the SHAPE sites are accessed all over the World, the current leading contenders are the Ukraine and Russia itself! What does that tell you about the people of these countries? And, these sites are avowedly Marxist, and do not hide their opposition both to Putin, AND to the Stalinists that preceded him.

But, these new activists must NOT be diverted into Russian Nationalism.

 The Ukraine is yours!

Russia is currently a capitalist country, run by ex-stalinists who are now capitalist oligarcs!

The current “Cold War” is no longer between the Capitalists and the Socialists, but between different Capitalist powers and their sought-for hegemony worldwide. Yet, behind the false leaders, in Russia and the Ukraine are many who were, and still are, socialists, and want their country back!

Unite for a Socialist Ukraine!

All genuine socialists must support the rebelling citizens of the Eastern Ukraine!

Oppose the Ukrainian middle class who want capitalist advantages purely for themselves.

For a Socialist Revolution!

Victory to the Ukrainian People!

Austerity: The Rape of the Poor

 The Dissolution of Fictitious Value

Are you wondering what is going on among the leaders of the Euro Zone of the European Union? Do you, along with British Prime Minister Cameron and his Tory colleagues, put the whole thing down to their stubborn refusal to act! Or do you decide that all such efforts to rationalise our World (including the lauded United Nations) are doomed to failure from the outset. Yet what is really happening is certainly none of these things! It is the final Dissolution of the Fictitious Value on which Capitalism rests. It is the regularly occurring and inevitable Crisis of Capitalism!

This isn’t just about Greece, or even the sorely threatened Euro Zone. It is about the failure of the capitalists final throw – to generate yet another fictitious bubble, this time out of the “Own Your Own Home Myth” for the very poorest layers in capitalist society. It not only didn’t work, it was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. Its failure put ALL value in question. And the answer that came back was that such “growing” value rested ONLY on an agreed and regularly inflated figure, so that in the end all apparent gains were shown to be an illusion. Value poured away in one avalanche after another and in the last few days it has become clear that the mightiest banks were fiddling the interest rates to give the appearance of their getting out of their own self-made mire.

Now, this is not, as some might think, just what we have been waiting for, so, that finally we will be rid of this cancerous growth upon society. For, the perpetrators do have alternatives. They have done it before, and they will do it again. They contract back into their own national bases and oppose all others. And in such circumstances the ultimate “solution” is always the same. It is war!

And all supra-national organisations, such as the old League of Nations and the present UN, are shown to be toothless and useless in any global responsibilities. They can never act against powers in ultimate crisis. They can’t even cope with tiny Syria! Why, for example, is Russia still the enemy? It has returned to the capitalist fold. Indeed, if you listen to the current crop of Tory backbenchers in the UK parliament, it is clear that all foreigners are a threat. “We must struggle for the best opportunities to win what advantages we can”, is their ever-clearer standpoint.

Now, you may with justice dismiss such a “final decline” analysis, by referring to the regular past crises and their apparent, just as regular, “resolutions”. And all that is accurate, but to reveal the nature of such past recessions and Slumps, and to compare the nature of the current crisis with all of those, you must attend to the Theory of Emergences (slowly developed concerning Stability & Change in all systems of whatever kind), wherein crises ultimately will occur to any Stability, and when they do almost nothing can stem an impending calamity. Indeed, in such circumstances something painfully calamitous is unavoidable.

There is, of course, a crucial period in which ever-developing swings downward are countered by often repressive and restorative built-in reactions opposing them. In a society approaching a Revolution, this always takes the form of ever more violent police and even military actions, which can, and often do, become Civil Wars (as in Syria currently). And these counter actions can win – if only for a time.

The suppression of the 1905 revolution in Russia was just such a “success” for the powers that be. Indeed, repression of nascent change of whatever kind is the natural, built-in reaction of any system in crisis, not as in a revolution, by intention, of course, but as part of its very stability-imposing nature.

For, to achieve stability in the first place against many contending alternatives, any successful protosystem had to include what I call “policemen processes” – destructive processes that could actually become part of such a proto-system to oppose all dissociators of, and competitors to, that system. There can never be any stability without such elements! Stability is not merely a new arrangement that is better than a prior one (a happy medium?), but one which can extensively and effectively suppress opposing processes whether dissolutory or as competing proto-systems. These winning elements exist in ever more strength until the mix of multiple conducive processes and defensive/aggressive policemen processes is unstoppable, and totally dominating. That is how new stabilities are always established.

So, in a crisis, the restorative weapons, for both defence and attack, are always available, and in a dissolutory swoop naturally grow in strength: they join the ever-present independent dissolutory processes (usually collectively termed The Second Law of Thermodynamics) in the melee, and, in so doing, ultimately remove everything that both the Second Law forces and themselves act upon. The situation appears to be careering down to total Chaos!

Now, in natural systems, such crises are unstoppable, but in revolutions that is NOT the case! For such involves thinking human beings, and the defenders will always find many and various policemen processes to stem the cataclysm. The fulfilment of a revolution is many times more difficult than a natural Emergence. Now, this reminder of The Theory of Emergences has been necessary because of the economic crisis of Capitalism made inevitable by the latest defensive measure, another of the kind that has succeeded in the past in hauling the system back from complete collapse. And that is the ever-new ways of “creating” fictitious value in all things! As always, the dominance of some towering component, in this case the United States of America, could maintain the fiction by threat of, and even actual use of, war (and even the threat of the nuclear demise of humanity). But, as always, these methods are not sufficient alone to maintain a system, which has used up literally all its potentials. In spite of the demise of the Stalinist Empire (with its appearance of the “dreaded” Socialism), things have not got better overall, but actually much worse.

So, what was the EU about, and why did it have to move towards monetary union? And, of course, why was it bound to fail? It seemed so obvious as a solution. Develop a counter to American dominance by a unified Europe to challenge its hegemony and compete on equal terms. It had succeeded in America via the union of a continent-wide set of separate states, but it was, like Australia, an expansion into a “relative void” by a more advanced and equipped people, who mercilessly removed the meagre sprinkling of indigenous hunter/gatherers. And all these “states” were very young and with odd and much weaker dominances. The task then was much easier. In Europe, in the 20th century, very old and well-established nation states, with strong internal dominances, and even diminishing global empires, were a much more difficult problem. The unification was first achieved in the fairly narrow area of Iron and Steel production, and only much later as a Common Market, but without political union. Each country maintained its own political set up and governance, and, of course, their dominances established in each due to its own history and institutions. They could NOT be unified! Indeed, nascent attempts like the so-called European Parliament were necessarily toothless and certainly did NOT govern. All nationally dominant parties continued to act as before, and hence in a crisis would do what they had always done only more so!

The current crisis in the Euro Zone is not due to the inadequacies of the European leaders, but to undiminished National Interests and their embodiment in national ruling elites. The Nation State is the natural Modus operandus of an established capitalist dominance. Within the overarching, though decidedly partial system that is the European Union (and within it the Euro Zone) the naturally dominant country is Germany, and the weaker states have tried to milk the wealth of that super state to finance their own growth using the usual capitalist mechanism of long term and fictitious credit. As long as everyone, and especially the rich investors in this enterprise were confident of large returns, the system seemed entirely stable. And without internal-national changes of any significant kind, states like Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and even Spain borrowed at a vast rate to “build a bigger economy” things would work out. But, where were all the enormous sums to come from to finance these remarkable developments?

The final US trick to fund all of this was in the seemingly never-ending increase in value of houses. They would lend to truly vast numbers of the very poorest in the US, with the plan of getting at least some repayments, and then on the inevitable defaults they would take re-possession at, as usual, an inflated value of the property. Continual cycling of this sort would retain ownership of properties with increasing value, while getting non-returnable repayments on every cycle. The poor could supply the resources needed, if the exercise was done on a sufficiently large scale. And that was attempted! But, the plan failed everywhere, because the repossessions, were NOT of properties of increasing value, but of wrecks, as the dispossessed took their revenge, and values swooped very quickly down. The plan failed in a very big way. Now, it didn’t only stretch to this particular sector, for the bottom fell out of the property market in general, and there was no way back!

In such a scenario, it has always been the same, someone has to pay, and if it is not to be everybody, then the fight begins – not only between rich and poor, but also between countries as the natural states of Capitalism. For the canny perpetrators of this gigantic scam didn’t carry it through. They instead sold-it-on worldwide as Triple A rated investments, and banks all over the world bought into it as a very profitable scheme. Indeed, many of the original perpetrators had “got out” of the scheme early with a profit, and it was the duped buyers of such “value” that were taken to the cleaners.

This was the origin of the now infamous 2008 crash. Does anyone even remember it now? The crisis hit the European Banks, who had bought in for a quick and easy profit, and instead had vast debts, which they couldn’t pay for as these assets were worthless. National political leaderships tried to stop a total collapse by using vast borrowings to cover the bankrupt banks, and in the UK several major banks were either partially or even majorly nationalised to transfer the losses to the nation. Now, you can’t invent value, so no matter what any country did, the crisis never went away, and individual countries made their own arrangements to try to redirect the damage elsewhere, to other countries. And the crisis just rumbled on and got worse. Now four years later it threatens not just the Euro Zone, or even the European Union, but worldwide Capitalism itself.

Now, the question is posed, “How can you get a cooperation of the different national bourgeoisie to aid the ones so weak as to find it impossible to cope?” To answer that question I can only repeat my favourite story of 2008, when Iceland’s financial sector bit the dust. The very same day the British businessman Green was filmed in Reykjavik “looking for businesses to buy for a song”. And even now in 2012 in the midst of the crisis, the rich buy at the bottom of a diurnal swing – convincing the uninitiated that an upswing is in the offing, only to almost immediately sell to take a profit, and thus causing the market to plunge again. Can you expect such sharks (or their advocates - politicians) to bother about those being fleeced to fill their own pockets? Of course not!

Let us be crystal clear. In what is usually a periodic slump, those who can make the rest pay, and actually buy while living off their accrued fat until a turn-around occurs. Do you want proof? Why is the remuneration of the rich accelerating, while the systems crumble (including publicly owned services)? Paying them bonuses for their “failure” is necessary, so that they at least will survive in the manner to which they have become accustomed. So, with their belief in Capitalism, they expect to cruise the South Seas in their yachts, until the turn round gets going again and they can return with pockets full of money, to once again milk their sacred cow. The question is, “Can they do this for ever? Or is their system running out of lies?” For, if this is the case, the disenfranchised will need to tool up for the coming revolution. The Arab Spring is only the precursor!