Solidarity 144, 15 January 2009

An appeal: unite for "two states"!

In the Gaza demonstrations, rational, nuanced, coherent politics has been eclipsed in an eruption of Arab and Islamic chauvinism that is only in part to be accounted for by the horror at Israel's onslaught on Gaza and a possibly healthy gut identification with the Palestinians and their organisations. Young people, previously non-political - including young people of Muslim background - drawn to demonstrations because they want to do something about Gaza find the political space occupied already by Arab and Islamic chauvinists. The biggest forces on the "left" are on this question...

£20 billion more "socialism for bosses and bankers" shows market breakdown

First, the Government semi-nationalised the banks. Now, it is quarter-nationalising the everyday process of trade credit, with the announcement on 14 January of Government guarantees for some £20 billion on loans made by banks to firms for "working capital", i.e. the cash they need to be able to pay wages and bills before their sales income comes in. This version of the article is longer than the one in the printed paper. The package announced by the Government is complicated. It wants to get the banks to lend by giving them some insurance against losses, but at the same time to keep some...

The reactionary right-wing politics of the Gaza demonstrations

[For those who have been directed to this article in reference to why the AWL opposes boycotts of Israel, see 'Why left-wing students should not support boycotting Israel' .] The demonstrations all over Britain since the Israeli offensive on Gaza began on 27 December [2008] have been heavily fuelled by justified raw outrage at the human cost to the Palestinians of what Israel is doing. Israel's offensive in Gaza is in the tradition of the US-British slaughter of Iraqi conscript soldiers retreating from their occupation of Kuwait at the end of the first Gulf war in 1991. An American soldier...

Against job cuts: occupy, demand public ownership and shorter hours!

Thousands of jobs are being cut each week. Two recent struggles show that even when bosses are determined to shut down operations, workers can still fight back. In December, workers at Republic Windows and Doors, in Chicago, occupied their factory for six days. In late November, workers at the Calcast car parts factory in Northern Ireland also occupied after the bosses had said the factory was closing down. In both cases, the workers won better pay-offs rather than reversal of the closures. But both cases show that workers have bargaining power even in the endgame. Even if bosses want to shut...

"Che": Revolution as icon

Review of "Che: Part One" This is a war film with a political backdrop. The action follows the revolutionaries’ landing in Cuba in December 1956, their trekking covertly through forests, taking of military bases, gaining support of the locals, street-fighting in Santa Clara to being days from taking Havana in January 1959. (The taking of Havana will come in Part Two). The scenes of fighting are spliced with documentary-style ‘footage’ of Che’s 1964 speech to the UN and Che and Castro’s first meeting, strengthening this war film with an injection of revolutionary ideals. From Che and Castro’s...

While millions take pay cuts, union leaders rake it in

According to the website of the Certification Officer, the government official responsible for registering trade unions and employers' organisations, the payments made to the general secretaries of the ten unions representing the big majority of British trade unionists in 2007 averaged almost £80,000 a year - not counting generous benefits. The median wage for a full-time worker last year was £24,908, a figure inflated by "high earners" ie non-workers at the top end. The various general secretaries' salaries cannot be exactly compared, since the unions list expenses in different ways, some...

Israel must withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank!

“An individual, a group, a party or a class that is capable of ‘objectively’ picking its nose while it watches men drunk with blood, and incited from above, massacring defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become worm-eaten while it is still alive. On the other hand, a party or a class that rises up against every abominable action wherever it has occurred, as vigorously and unhesitatingly as a living organism reacts to protect its eyes when they are threatened with external injury — such a party or class is sound at heart.” L D Trotsky, February 1913 ( On the Balkan Atrocities...

Marxist economists comment again on the crisis: 2. Fred Moseley - The bondholders and the taxpayers

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews , March-July 2008, have commented again. No.2: Fred Moseley. 1. Do you think that the recent extensive measures of nationalisation and bailing-out, and talk by governments of increased regulation of the financial sector, mark a serious change in the shape of capitalist development? What sort of new regimes might emerge from the crisis? I think we should nationalise the banks , and really and truly nationalise them, not the...

Israeli elections, 10 February: "Toothache, migraine or backache"?

February's national elections are coming 18 months early. They were set in motion in September when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced he would resign to fight corruption charges. Before the assault on Gaza opinion polling indicated that Tzipi Livni’s Kadima was closing the gap with Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party. The survey showed Likud winning 29 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, up from its current 12, followed by Kadima with 25. Kadima currently has 29 seats. The poll forecast that Labour, headed by current Defense Minister Ehud Barak, will win just 10 seats, becoming the fifth...

Lessons from three workers' struggles in the USA

Every now and again, American workers issue a blunt reminder to the bosses, and to themselves, that the steady and moderate tone transmitted by their nation's great public-relations dream-machine can never fully lull them to sleep. The factory occupation at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago on December 5th emerged as the most salient of recent reminders, no doubt owing to the widespread opposition to the federal bailout of Wall Street. For radicals and trade-unionists and the 260 rank and filers of UE Local 1110 who, to be sure, lost their jobs, the sit-in must be counted a victory. After...

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