A one-party state for the rich

Shocked or surprised at Ed Miliband equating those struggling on benefits in the absence of jobs at decent wages with bankers and executives whose salaries resemble telephone numbers? You shouldn’t be.

Miliband’s speech on “responsibility” yesterday was only the latest in a long line of pronouncements and actions that marked the definitive end of Labour as a party dedicated to defending workers’ interests and reforming capitalism.

Even so, it was sickening to hear Miliband declaim: “To those entrepreneurs and business people who generate wealth, create jobs and deserve their top salaries, I’m not just relaxed about you getting rich, I applaud you.”

Joining in the open season on welfare claimants, Miliband couldn’t help himself and added: “We will be a party that rewards contribution, not worklessness.” People had to take work if it was on offer rather than claim benefits. And, in future, social housing should only go to those who “contribute” to society.

In over 3,000 words of his speech, he never once referred to unemployment as an issue at a time when the dole queue is heading for 10%. And, of course, he declined to use those two “C” words – class and capitalism. He did, however, find time to quote Blair on patriotism.

Worse, he invoked the wartime service of his father, Ralph, to whip up patriotic and nationalist sentiments about “community”. This is shockingly dishonest too because Ralph Miliband was regarded as a Marxist and wrote critiques of Labour and reformism in books like Parliamentary socialism. No doubt Ralph is turning in his proverbial grave this morning.

Ed Miliband is the latest in a long line of leaders of a party that made its unconditional peace with capitalism a long time ago. The die was cast as far back as the Callaghan government in the late 1970s, when the government went cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund. The attacks on wages that followed led to mass industrial action and the end of Old Labour as we knew it.

The context for parliamentary politics that enabled post-war Labour governments to create the health service and the welfare state changed in a qualitative way in this period. After prolonged class struggles, deregulated, free market globalisation emerged. This demanded flexible, cheap labour and shifting production from advanced to developing economies.

The basis for old-style reformist politics disappeared almost overnight. And out of this train crash came New Labour. The rise of Blairism was not therefore, as is often mistakenly assumed, simply a rightward move or a policy decision aimed at winning elections by capturing the “middle ground”.

More than that, it was a recognition and an acceptance that capitalism had changed and that the best could hoped for in future was for wealth to “trickle down” from the top to the bottom. Instead, cheap credit fuelled unsustainable consumption that globalisation called for. The rest, as we know, is history.

The Miliband speech was hailed by the miserable Fabian Society, whose research director Tim Horton said “some on the left may feel queasy about this. But they should understand its logic and cheer it.” Frank Field, the right-wing Labour MP who favours the break-up of the benefits system also hailed Miliband’s speech.

As one comment on Horton’s article, put it: “We now have a one party state, a political class which acts as an administrator of corporate excess, to facilitate resources from poor to rich.” A one-party state is a dictatorship in anyone’s language and that is what we have in a coalition of Tories, Lib Dems and Labourites. Overthrowing dictatorships, of course, is an entirely legitimate social activity.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

What a balls up

The degree to which Ed Balls, as a key Treasury minister in the last New Labour government, is responsible for the government’s massive budget deficit is subject to argument. But what is not in dispute is Balls’ undying support for the unbridled, unregulated expansion of the financial sector which, as we know, went down in flames in 2008.

Balls, newly promoted as shadow chancellor following the sudden resignation of Alan Johnson, claimed yesterday that having studied economics for over 25 years, he knew what it was all about. Subsequent events prove a) how useless bourgeois economics is and b) how arrogant Balls is.

New Labour, as we know, transformed itself into a party that cheer-led the rise of corporate-driven globalisation and, in particular, the parallel growth of a financial sector that fuelled consumerism and, more to the point, had with government support, evaded all known regulatory frameworks.

As chancellor, Gordon Brown couldn’t believe it. The financial sector’s tax revenues grew apace. And in September 2006, Balls, then economic secretary to the Treasury under Brown, went to Hong Kong to sing the praises of London as a financial centre and how easy it was to do business under New Labour.

Balls told a joint meeting of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce and the British Chamber of Commerce: “The UK’s financial tradition as a free, fair and open global market has resulted in tremendous growth in London’s international financial markets in the past decade – over-the-counter derivatives turnover up by 770%, foreign equities turnover up by 260%, cross-border bank lending up by 160% and foreign exchange turnover up by over 60%.”

After praising the growth of fantasy finance, Balls declared that central to London’s “success story” was “light-touch principle-based regulation” which New Labour was entirely responsible for. Giving the Bank of England independence was Brown’s first act in May 1997. Creating the toothless Financial Services Authority was act two.

Admiring the Big Bang of 1986, when the Thatcher government opened up the City to global competition as “decisive”, Balls went on to laud the FSA which had “confounded those who feared the FSA might become a heavy-handed and inflexible regulator.” In fact, Britain’s “regulatory regime continues to be the best in the world”.

Famous last words or what, considering there were queues outside Northern Rock branches 12 months later as people scrambled to withdrew their money from a bank that had failed in every respect?

The truth is that regulation was non-existent, not so much a light touch as light-headed. Bankers were running rings round the FSA and the Bank of England – and everyone knew it. “Products” like derivatives lay completely outside the scope of the regulators, yet Balls praised them as if they were a new form of gold.

At the time, this is how the political class and the financial elites saw it. Money could beget more money, profits would rise along with tax revenues, ordinary people could get as much credit as they wanted to buy commodities mostly made in other countries. Surely it could never end? As Brown himself said on the eve of the meltdown in July 2007, the City had entered a “new golden age”.

Then came the crash, an immediate recession and the crisis found its way into government finances, producing eye-watering deficits and interest payments on the debt heading towards £100 billion a year. So, yes, Balls does share political responsibility for the crisis. As he said in Hong Kong: “Government decisions … have an important role to play, for good or ill.”

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

The politics of the present

The case for hanging on to your vote in the general election, while exercising your democratic right to go beyond the present exhausted political system, has more to do with the way we look at the world than most other considerations.

What it boils down to is a choice between 1) a view that accepts that the world external to our thinking is in constant flux and change or 2) an outlook that bases itself on more or less eternal “truths”.

The first approach to analysing the real world acknowledges that all phenomena – including society and its component parts – eventually assume entirely new qualities, often within an old form. They are both the same and yet not the same at any given moment and this is the result of internal contradictions working themselves out as a process.

By contrast, the second outlook is inevitably rooted in the past. Although this view allows for changes, these are viewed as incremental and incidental. They are not allowed to invalidate previous assumptions. Needless to say, this empirical ideology predominates within contemporary capitalist society and helps to reinforce the status quo.

In our view, attitudes to the question of Parliament and the general election, which is likely to be called a week today and held on May 6, are dependent upon analysis. This must set out the qualitative changes that have taken place within the state and political system since working men won the vote in 1867. For example:

Is New Labour a modern form of the original Labour Party or an entirely new quality in the shape of a capitalist party produced by the corporate-led globalisation of the last 30 years? All the evidence and experience points to the second conclusion.

Is Parliament the centre of the political system? Was it ever? If so, it was a long time ago. As political scientist Anthony King notes in his recent book The British Constitution:

Commentators frequently refer to the decline of parliament – that is, the House of Commons – in recent decades, but parliament’s decline as a legislative assembly began in the middle of the 19^th century and was complete by, at the latest, the 1880s or 1890s. Nothing much of constitutional significance has happened [to parliament] since then… It goes without saying that the British House of Commons is now, and has been for a very long time, the archetypal arena assembly. It is simply not equipped to function as a transformative legislature, and of course governments of all political parties are anxious to ensure that it never, ever becomes so equipped.

Can voters influence the course of events by participating in local, European and parliamentary elections? That is no longer possible.

As a result of globalisation, the capitalist democratic process has been undermined further. There is now a seamless relationship between government, state, corporate and financial power as well as external undemocratic bodes like the European Union and the World Trade Organisation. The government is accountable not to Parliament but to the markets. MPs are reduced to various levels of corruption to fill in their time.

So the case for taking the right to vote into new territory is based on what has changed. It’s time to move democracy on, and give the right to vote a new significance and weight. We could do this by encouraging people to create their own democratic bodies like People’s Assemblies. This would challenge the power of the existing state to decide, for example, that ordinary people should bear the pain of a crisis of capitalism that is not of their making.

Above all, it means living and thinking in the present, while learning from the past, and acting to shape the future in our own interests. You can be sure that whatever government emerges out of the election will be doing exactly the opposite.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

'Human nature' is no barrier to change

There are few who can deny that the global economic system is in a tailspin of truly giant proportions. And the faltering nature of the climate change talks in Copenhagen add to the sense of crisis. Meanwhile, at the level of everyday life, jobs, pensions, and services are under threat.

Even as you read this, writers and thinkers of all descriptions are seeking ways out. Then there are others who love to tell us that humanity is simply doomed and it’s not worth getting worked up about things. The leading protagonist of that school of thought is philosopher John Gray.

He has made a living of telling all and sundry that they are suffering from delusive fantasies. Naturally, he has no problem getting column inches in leading newspapers and magazines. In “The End of a Dream” (New Statesman), for example, he accused a whole range of politicians, including Clinton, Bush and Blair, and the general public of “a chronic inability to engage with reality”. His latest rant against humanity and was in yesterday’s Observer.

Gray claims that “passionate activist” Raj Patel, whose new book The Value of Nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy, is unable to provide an alternative to the “hegemony of the market”. Gray says that Patel’s solutions are unviable because people, especially the oppressed, are too greedy to curb their desires for material wealth.

Well, whatever the merits or otherwise of Patel’s vision of a different, non-marketised approach, Gray, who likes to pose as the illusion-buster, is himself a complete prisoner of capitalist market dogmas. He cannot conceive of any kind of “value” that is not “price”. But even a child can point to values which cannot be priced – for example, mother love. And the value of something can remain the same while its price can vary wildly.

Humanist philosopher AC Grayling, has done a good job in dissecting the many sloppy errors in Gray’s book Black Mass, including the lumping together of Nazism, Bolshevism and Islamic theocracy and Gray’s dismissal of all progress in history.

The biggest illusion of all, and one that even well-meaning people who want change are prey to, is at the root of Gray’s philosophy. In his view, human action is first and foremost motivated by the satisfaction of individual needs and desires. And, human history is the story, in his opinion of “erroneous beliefs”.

But the real aim of Gray’s musings about the collapse of market worship is to promote his own ideology that human beings and human psychology can never change. We are prisoners of desire, delusion and what he calls “self-realisation”. In this view of things, there is only one outcome: humanity will destroy itself together with the planet in an unstoppable drive to extinction.

The fact is that Gray’s philosophy is nothing more than the flimsiest cover for an adulation of the capitalist status quo. He preaches that nothing can ever change because human nature is innately greedy and selfish. In the end, this is a fundamentalist, religious standpoint not a million miles away from all the nonsense about “original sin”.

Contemporary biology is showing more and more clearly how human beings are socially shaped and find that survival is essentially a collective, not an individual endeavour. For humans, self-interest is something that we share, not only with other human beings but with all life on the planet. More than that, humans are unique in their desire and ability to solve problems and challenges.

That is why A World to Win is working on a draft of a Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions. We invite you to take part in shaping the manifesto – and the future.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

The real issues behind the election campaign

As the countdown to the general election gets under way with New Labour’s conference at Brighton, there is a danger that politics in Britain will become so narrowly focussed that the real issues and challenges are consumed by a debate about which party to vote for.

Some political organisations on the Left, led by the rail union RMT, are even in a race to put together a new electoral coalition in time for the election, which is likely to be held in early May 2010. This would be a kind of “No2EU – Yes to Democracy” Mark II, which produced a nationalist programme for the recent European elections.

The election and what comes afterwards was also uppermost in the minds of most speakers at the Convention of the Left over the weekend, where there were repeated calls for “unity” alongside a reluctance to consider more fundamental issues.

But the impending disintegration of New Labour has far greater implications than those connected with mere voting intentions.

The emergence of New Labour was driven by the capitalist globalisation process and its demise is determined by the crisis now affecting the world economic and financial system.

Brown and Blair championed an economy subservient to the needs of the transnational corporations and banks.

Globalisation at the same time rendered Parliamentary democracy meaningless in an historic sense of being an arena where significant reforms could be established. Instead, the market has penetrated and undermined public services while MPs have been reduced to fiddling expenses.

The changed role of the capitalist state was underscored when no resources were spared by New Labour in propping up failed banks. Now the price for this is to be paid by ordinary working people, whoever wins the election.

However, we are not facing anything like a repeat of the early period of the 1979 Thatcher government, when public spending cuts roused fierce trade union opposition.

For one, the scale of the cuts now required is so immense that they would require a dictatorship of sorts to impose on the population. Whether the Tories or a coalition of the main parties is capable of this is another question.

But you can say with certainty that all the traditional parties are lying about the grave nature of the financial crisis and about the prospects for the economy, which is prevented from collapse only by pumping in increasing amounts of government debt.

Any hesitation on making savage cuts will produce a “strike” by international finance, which will refuse to fund further loans.

So what lies ahead goes far deeper than electoral considerations. Challenging the cuts will throw up the need not just for an alternative economic and financial set-up but bring on a challenge for power itself.

Under the threat of dictatorship, our aim is not the resurrection of a worn-out, limited and barely democratic political system but the total reconstruction of the state in a way that transfers essential power to ordinary people.

It would be a grave error, therefore, to waste time and resources just to focus on having something or someone to vote for without warning of the dangers ahead. If we don’t attend to the underlying processes at work, we will pay a heavy price.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Two years into the crisis and the human toll mounts

Two years ago this week, the global capitalist economy entered uncharted territory. It started with a crisis in the credit markets – the so-called “credit crunch” – and within a year it had led to a precipitate collapse in economic output in all sectors.

The collapse of inter-bank lending in August 2007 was bad enough to prompt senior, respected commentators to declare that “the system” – they only meant the unregulated system of institutions trading in credit-derived financial products – was broken beyond repair. These contagious sentiments expressed a mounting worldwide panic exemplified by the queues of customers outside Northern Rock in the middle of the following month.

Most of the attention then as now is focussed on the financial system. Attempts to prevent the financial crisis turning into a complete meltdown produced the second transformation in the role of the capitalist state since the 1970s.

The first transformation became known as globalisation. The irresistible need of capital for expansion resulted in transnational corporations dictating policy to national governments both directly and via global agencies like the International Monetary Fund and from 1995 the World Trade Organisation.

Lobbyists for corporate interests demanded that regulation and control on the movement of capital be eliminated for all practical purposes, accompanied by an assault on workers’ income and conditions. Civil war conditions were launched against British miners in 1984. The benchmark for wages was set by the transfer of much manufacturing to China where the rate was reduced to as little as a dollar a day. Profits soared.

A series of worsening crises from the mid-nineties onwards gave warning that the years of credit-led growth were reaching their limits and that overproduction was unsustainable. As we said in A House of Cards – from fantasy finance to global crash (free download) published in November 2007: “Then on 9 August 2007, the long period of corporate-driven globalisation of the world economy came to an abrupt end. That Thursday, major banks suddenly refused to lend to each other and a ‘credit crunch’ hardened the arteries of the global financial system.”

Losses from the financial crisis alone are colossal. Bank write-downs and losses currently total more than $1,500bn. The IMF has predicted losses across the financial services industry could eventually total $4,000bn, or nearly one-third the annual value of US production.

The effects on the real economy are more devastating. As the scale of the worsening crisis unfolds, millions more families are being driven from their repossessed homes, reclaimed by their owners, the banks and other mortgage lenders. Industry after industry is emulating the collapse of car-making worldwide because consumption has shrunk. Today will show that unemployment in the UK has soared to record levels, with young people making up more than a third of those without work.

This dramatic decline in the fortunes of capital changed the role of states once again, obliging them – those that aren’t yet bankrupt - and their central banks to launch a series of attempted rescue packages and the large-scale printing of money. The new bursts of credit designed to enable production to continue will have to repaid by as yet unborn generations of taxpayers, but the best that has been achieved is a temporary slowdown in the rate of deterioration.

The true cost of engineering a return to growth involves the elimination of not just failed banks, but huge swathes of no-longer, profitable credit-dependent factories, farms and software houses. Workers facing the consequences will find the cost too great to bear. The system – the capitalist system of production – is broken and the cost of fixing it would be counted not just in closed factories, but in the elimination of rights, of human lives and an inhospitable planet.

This is the moment to prepare the ground for a revolutionary transformation to a society where property is held in common and goods and services are produced to satisfy needs not profits, according to priorities determined through a new democratic process.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

A crisis beyond the power of prayer

When the leader of an organisation claiming a billion members decides to write a letter about the “complexity and gravity of the present economic situation” to the G8, the leaders of the world’s richest capitalist countries meeting in Italy, it’s worth considering what he has to say.

In his third encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI delivers a profound, historically-grounded analysis of the causes and consequences of the current crisis, taking in neo-liberalism, corporations, globalisation, the collapse of the Soviet-bloc countries, growing inequality, poverty and mass migration, terrorism associated with religious fanaticism – and points his critical ringed finger at the narrow pursuit of short-term profit. Here’s a sample of his analysis:

The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market. Consequently, the market has prompted new forms of competition between states as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centres, by means of a variety of instruments, including favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market. These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems ...Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organisations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers…

When it comes to prescriptions, he’s equally grounded and looking for change:

The human consequences of current tendencies towards a short-term economy — sometimes very short-term — need to be carefully evaluated. This requires further and deeper reflection on the meaning of the economy and its goals, as well as a profound and far-sighted revision of the current model of development, so as to correct its dysfunctions and deviations. This is demanded, in any case, by the earth's state of ecological health.

Warning of the new risks of enslavement and manipulation arising from the “cultural eclecticism” resulting from the "increased commercialisation of cultural exchange”, the Pope gets right to the heart of the matter – calling for a re-evaluation and remodelling of the state, leading to new forms of democracy, “an increase in the new forms of political participation, nationally and internationally, that have come about through the activity of organisations operating in civil society”.

And on the economy, to a degree he even puts himself alongside those calling for forms of common ownership, rejecting the “binary market-plus-state” and suggesting economic initiatives which “aim at a higher goal than the mere logic of the exchange of equivalents, of profit as an end in itself”. The encyclical declares that “there must be room for commercial entities based on mutualist principles and pursuing social ends to take root and express themselves”.

Before you get too excited, just like the many versions of Keynesian new dealers, so-called lefts, reformists and greens, the Pope is, naturally enough for the leader of one of the richest organisations on the planet, in favour of capitalism, albeit in a more civilised form.

When he says that “economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value”, he’s talking about the employment contract. People must have jobs so that when they sell their labour power to employers, profit, rent and interest can be extracted from the value they generate. That’s the essence of capitalism, and until those social relations have been replaced in their entirety there is no way out of the present global meltdown, not even through the power of prayer.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Seize the time in 2009

This was the year when the wheels came off the juggernaut of corporate-driven globalisation and revealed to a new generation that the capitalist economic and financial model is fundamentally flawed and unsustainable. An insoluble crisis centred at the heart of the system, in the United States and Britain, is certain to deepen in 2009.

In both countries, long-established financial institutions went to the wall or were put on state life-support. Mass unemployment looms from the subsequent collapse of production and consumption, creating the most significant crisis for capitalism since the Wall Street collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed.

During 2008, famous financial institutions like Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Washington Mutual, went to the wall in the United States. Events left the reputations of US banking giants in tatters, as the Financial Times, the bankers’ and employers’ broadsheet remarked under the banner: “The fallen giants of finance”. The US Federal Reserve had to bail out American International Group (AIG), the largest underwriters of commercial and industrial insurance in the United States and Citibank. An emergency rescue package rushed through Congress, with the threat of martial law in the background, made no difference.

Masters of the universe like Dick Fuld of the 158-year old Lehman Brothers bank, boss of some 26,000 employees, lost any connection whatsoever with business reality, according to banking insider Andrew Gowers, former Financial Times editor. Writing after Bear Stearns collapsed into the arms of JP Morgan Chase, he said: “On Wall Street blind panic had ensued and its focus was Lehman Brothers. The market has a phrase for this sort of event: the death spiral. Our freewheeling, globally integrated financial markets turn out to be built on sand.”

The sandcastle extended to Britain, where more than a decade of New Labour rule had encouraged the City of London to create its own fantasy world. Building societies became banks and banks built their profits through exploiting an exotic array of financial instruments. After the Wall Street debacle, the collapse of the British end of the casino could not be far behind. And so it proved in October, when the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS were within hours of total disintegration. The state bail-out totalled more than £600 billion. Now the British state’s finances are inextricably bound up with those of the banking sector, which shows absolutely no signs of recovery.

In fact, lending remains restricted and the banks are using government money to rebuild their balance sheets at the expense of borrowers and small businesses. Meanwhile, the UK stock market fell by a third during 2008 – it was down more than 40% in Japan - undermining the value of pensions dependent on the value of shares. The ruling elites have lost their confidence, as Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, said in his end-of-year review:

“The twin shocks [Mumbai terror attack and the global financial crisis] certainly challenge assumptions which had appeared unassailable since the fall of the Berlin Wall: the innate superiority of the western model of market capitalism and the inevitable progress of globalisation, powered by the free movement of goods, labour, capital and services.”

As unemployment grows by leaps and bounds, the weakest firms are going to the wall. Household names like Woolworths – which survived the 1930s – and MFI are in liquidation, along with a host of other companies such as Adams, the children’s retailer. At least 600,000 jobs could go in the UK in 2009, according to a report by a personnel managers' professional body. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says even those who escape redundancy face pay freezes.

In China, the global downturn meant that 10 million migrant workers lost their jobs during November. In addition it is estimated that 1.5 million Chinese graduates cannot find work. In Spain, unemployment stands at 11.3% for locals and around 17% amongst immigrant workers. In Greece, poor prospects and youth unemployment are in the background of ongoing unrest in Athens and elsewhere, which has seen weeks of confrontations between security forces, youth and workers.

Thousands of workers marched against job cuts through the Ukrainian capital Kiev just before Christmas. There were demonstrations throughout Russia as the economic crisis began to affect jobs and services. Migrant workers around the world are being hit first and hardest as the recession devours jobs and reduces pay. Unresolved self-determination struggles, such as in the North Caucasus, Georgia, Palestine, Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, became harsher as evidenced by the barbaric attack on Gaza by Israeli warplanes.

In Britain, we are experiencing an eerie calm before the storm, punctuated at present by outspoken warnings from high places – particularly the pulpits and altars of England’s cathedrals. These are strange times indeed when Roman Catholic Cardinals and Anglican Archbishops feel compelled to warn about the unravelling of the very fabric of capitalist society.

Over Christmas, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, spoke of “spectacular cases of bad behaviour” in the financial world and warned of lost trust as ordinary people felt that only bankers and speculators were benefiting from the economy. The bishops of Manchester, Durham, Winchester, Carlisle and Hulme warned that Britain was suffering from an addiction to debt, family breakdown and a widening gap between rich and poor. They accused ministers of pursuing "scandalous" policies and reneging on promises.

Dealing as they do with matters of the spirit, religious leaders are sensitive to the way in which the meltdown of the global economy is causing the dogmas and “self-evident” truths of the past decades to disintegrate. As people lose their jobs, pensions and many rights they took for granted, their confidence in the system and trust in the state that administers and defends it also breaks down, as the bishops and others are only too aware.

For the past year A World to Win’s blogs and web pages provided an account of the crash of 2008. We’ve pointed the finger at the bourgeois politicians and states who are spinning around as they try to stop up the dam of capitalism by offering more and more free money to the banks, as if feeding an ever more voracious monster. A World to Win has shown that if existing states and governments are left in power, the rest of us will be dragged down to economic disaster, living in authoritarian, surveillance states.

In the less precise science of economic analysis we are a bit like the group of German astronomers who this month confirmed that there is a giant black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. They reached their conclusion after 16 years of monitoring the motion of the stars surrounding the hole, which is known as Sagittarius A*.

In a comparable way, our team at A World to Win has been monitoring the warped movement of the global economy around its very own black hole. We dubbed this infinite pit of absolute gravity ”fantasy finance or “fictitious capital” as Karl Marx called it. And, as astro-physicists know, activity around the edge of the black hole is most perilous as those who go there tend to disappear forever.

There is of course, a major difference between events in the interstellar universe and those here on Earth. Here, history – including economic history – is the sum of the myriad activities of conscious human beings, each of whom pursues a life-path according to her or his interests, consciously or unconsciously. Under the present system most human beings have no power to decide which way society will go. But moments come in history, when masses of people do assert their power over their rulers and bring about decisive changes.

As we have outlined in our books, the change from the present order of things to a better one needs to take forward all the best aspects of the current system and use them as the foundation of a not-for-profit production and exchange economy where protection of people and the planet is fundamental to everything. Developing strategies for a not-for-profit economy and a truly democratic form of politics is the most urgent issue of the day. We cannot predict or choose exactly how people will act in defence of their rights and living standards. But they must and will do so. Our job is to be ready for this by building up discussion and support for a revolutionary change.

We can take confidence from the fact that many million people around the world have been inspired by the US election to strengthen the understanding that human beings have the power to better their circumstances collectively thereby making history. Barack Obama’s defeat of the Republican Party showed that far from being all-powerful, the Bush regime had lost credibility. The failed military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have brought disenchantment with the notion that the US could “spread democracy” throughout the world. The biggest military power in the world is being seen to fail yet again.

Obama clinched the presidency by involving hundreds of thousands of US citizens in their homes and localities. His slogans Yes we can and Change we can believe in, promised a different future than the one offered by Bush, as well as the Clinton group which had hitherto dominated the Democratic Party. Naturally Obama is riding a dangerous tiger of popular expectation which the economic crisis will make it impossible to fulfil. But he showed that people can and will organise themselves to make change possible.

To be successful in this, means making use of all the expertise that human beings have accumulated through science, art and technology, to end the rule of profit-crazed, war-mongering minorities. To bring about the change, the soft-soaping and back-pedalling of reformist trade union leaders and their ilk is worse than useless. Appealing to New Labour, or any parliamentary coalition that may succeed it in the event of an election, to change its policies is living in dreamland.

Instead we should seize the opportunity presented by the crisis and make A World to Win into a powerful movement, based on the People’s Charter for Democracy. The coming year will bring unprecedented challenges to members and supporters of A World to Win and all those who seek to bring about revolutionary political and social change. It’s a chance that we cannot afford to miss.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Warnings come thick and fast

First the financial crisis, followed by economic disintegration. Then the political and social crisis, which will probably lead to a military-style crackdown by the state. This is not my gloomy assessment but the view increasingly taken by right-wing commentators and aired in a recent report produced by the US Army War College’s Strategic Institute.

Civil unrest has already broken out in Greece, China and Russia as a consequence of the impact of the global economic recession. In Athens, young people hit hardest by unemployment have battled the police on the streets for more than two weeks. With the police patently unable to cope, only the hated army stands between the government and a political collapse.

Demonstrations have broken out – and been broken up – across Russia, whose fragile state finances are being devastated by plummeting oil prices. The rouble has lost 11% of its value in four months and unemployment is growing. Attempted protests have taken place in Moscow, Vladivostok, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. The Chinese authorities fear something similar as its export-led economy goes into free-fall. An estimated 40 million Chinese workers are expected to lose their jobs in the new few months and party officials have warned of "mass-scale social turmoil".

In less than a month, president-elect Obama will take office in the midst of the gravest crisis to hit the United States since the 1920s. The survival of major industries hangs by a thread. Loans given to the big carmakers are conditional on savage job cuts by the spring which the unions are opposing. Repossessions are running at record rates and some in the Pentagon are turning their minds to potential consequences for the military.

A recent report produced by the US Army War College’s Strategic Institute warns that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it has termed "strategic shock”. The report, titled Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defence Strategy Development, also suggests that the military may have to be used to quell domestic disorder. "Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defence establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security," the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, reads.

Freir also warns that the incoming Obama administration should prepare for a "first term crisis" that could act as a catalyst for such unrest. "The current administration confronted a game-changing ’strategic shock’ [9/11] inside its first eight months in office," the report reads. "The next administration would be well-advised to expect the same during the course of its first term. Indeed, the odds are very high against any of the challenges routinely at the top of the traditional defence agenda triggering the next watershed inside DoD [Department of Defence]."

The Washington Post last month reported that the US military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe. In a September 8 Army Times article, it was announced that the first wave of the troop deployment in Colorado Springs, would be aimed at tackling "civil unrest and crowd control".

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is an astute commentator for the right-wing Daily Telegraph who insists the financial and economic crisis has a long way to run. He has noted that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, has warned that if economic growth is not restored promptly, then “social unrest may happen in many countries, including advanced economies … . the people have reacted with feelings going from surprise to anger, and from anger to fear”.

Evans-Pritchard, who acknowledges that the Marxist phrase “a crisis of capitalism” has made a comeback, says the crisis may overturn the "New World Order" adding: “The last great era of globalisation peaked just before 1914. You know the rest of the story.”

You can’t say we haven’t been warned. One of the things you could consider between now and 2009 is getting hold of a copy of Unmasking the State and having a read about some democratic alternatives to capitalist war and dictatorship.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Please note that the next A World to Win blog will appear on December 31.

New unions need new leaders

The prospect of the first global trade union moved a step nearer last week when Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America, flew to London for merger talks with Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley, joint general secretaries of Unite, now the UK’s biggest union with two million members. Unfortunately, it's more a case of union leaders huddling together for warmth rather than getting ready to fight global corporate power.

Launched a year ago, the move is a much-belated response to the globalisation of production. Over more than three decades, foreign investment and cross-border mergers and acquisitions produced corporations able to move production from country to country in search of cheaper labour. The rules of the new global economy undermined union organisation and turned their leaders into glorified, but obliging gang masters, persuading their members to accept ever-worsening conditions. These were needed to make workers economically attractive for competing companies struggling to overcome falling rates of profit.

If the talks are successful, the new transatlantic union would have about three million members in Britain, America, Canada and the Caribbean. But within their existing outlooks and leaderships, it is difficult to imagine what more this new collaboration will achieve beyond, for example, the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), one of 13 international federations of unions. The IMF represents the collective interests of 25 million metalworkers from more than 200 unions in 100 countries. Founded in 1893, the federation’s timid objectives are to build a global metalworkers’ movement, strengthen international solidarity, engage with transnational corporations, secure workers’ rights, including the rights of women workers, and fight for sustainable economic development.

The leadership of Unite of Simpson and Woodley has even less to offer. The union bureaucracy has sat back and done very little while the corporations, aided and abetted by the New Labour government, has driven down conditions and exported jobs to cheaper labour areas. When, for example, Rover closed its Midlands car plant on the eve of the last general election, Simpson and Woodley made sure no action was taken to avoid rocking the boat.

They are grateful for crumbs – even if they are stale. Last week, the government announced a “compact” on agency workers which only kicks in after 12 weeks, by which time most would have left/been fired. Yet Woodley claimed it was “landmark deal”, hailing the much-despised government for having “listened, acted and paved the way to equal treatment in the workplace”.

The unravelling of the systemic financial and economic crisis worldwide is driving hundreds of millions of workers in all industries into unprecedented conflicts. As the cost of food and fuel soars, pensions and homes are threatened, and jobs disappear. A new kind of union organisation is urgently needed.

The last great campaign for a global union - the Industrial Workers of the World (aka the Wobblies) - was launched in 1905. Its constitution provides a more inspiring model than the one currently on the table:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth ... Instead of the conservative motto, “a fair day's wage for a fair day's work”, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wage system.' It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.

Today, “engaging with transnational corporations” must give way to moving beyond the market economy, ending corporate power and establishing 21st century models of social ownership. For that to happen, the old discredited leaderships of Unite and other unions, who have spent the last decade propping up New Labour, will also have to give way to those who are ready to follow in the revolutionary footsteps of the Wobblies.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Poverty not tribalism behind Kenya's crisis

Political leaders in the West expressing pious shock at the terrible events in Kenya are achieving new pinnacles of hypocrisy since for decades they have ignored the country’s growing crisis. They continued to support Mwai Kibaki’s rapacious and corrupt regime in return for Kenya’s full participation in the global market economy. The subjection of this formerly peaceful country of 40 ethnic groups to the requirements of capitalist globalisation, rather than “tribalism”, has driven on the current ethnic violence and social breakdown.

Kenyans swept Kibaki to power in 2002, their first opportunity to get rid of the kleptocracy of Daniel Arap Moi who had blatantly stolen billions of dollars in aid and investment. Kibaki promised an end to corruption but only three years later John Githongo, the man appointed by Kibaki to clean up corruption, fled to Britain. He brought with him papers and taped conversations with ministers, exposing deals that showed Kibaki and his cronies were skimming millions through fake contracts with non-existent companies.

The New Labour government knew exactly what was happening in Kenya but chose to ignore Githongo’s evidence – as did the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the US government. Kibaki was creating a comfortable home for global finance in Nairobi, a centre for tea and coffee trade and a transport hub for East Africa.

And so the UK increased aid to Kenya, from £30m in 2003-04 to £50m in 2005-06. But neither aid nor trade have prevented the massive growth of poverty and unemployment. In the past two years Kenya has achieved annual growth of 6%, whilst at the same time the gap between the wealthy elite and the poor has grown dramatically.

Kenya’s population has risen from 9 to 30 million since independence from Britain in 1963 and the average age in Kenya is 18. Unemployment amongst young people in both rural and urban areas has reached unbearable levels. There are thousands of young men who have literally nothing to lose. “It did take many, many people by surprise that things could get that bad that quickly,” admits Razia Khan, Africa analyst at Standard Chartered bank in London – demonstrating the extent to which capitalist globalisation is oblivious to its own impact.

About 80% of Kenyan land is arid and semi-arid, but huge swathes of productive land have been turned over to cash crops for the global supermarket chains, leaving rural people in landless poverty. The growth in tourism, bringing in £500 million a year, has brought little change but rather simply put more pressure on scarce resources. Terrible flooding in 2002 and 2006 destroyed many peoples’ livelihoods and they have never recovered.

The politicians from both sides whipped up tribal divisions during the election in order to win votes and now act surprised at the horror they unleashed. There is an alternative – and that is for Kenyans to unite in opposition to corporate-driven globalisation, and with fellow East Africans across tribes and borders, to regenerate the ideals of Pan-Africanism. It is only the unity of the African masses in opposition to globalisation and the corporations’ proxy regimes that can end poverty and create the conditions for dignity as well as economic and political self-determination.

Penny Cole

Throwing good money after bad

The government certainly has got its priorities right at this time of giving. Forget those on disability benefits or older people struggling to pay for their care. Don’t bother about hard-pressed commuters facing sharp fare rises in January or people who can’t pay their mortgages. Don’t even worry about soldiers doing your dirty work in Afghanistan with second-rate equipment. But do show a great deal of concern, backed by large sums of money, about bankers.

Yesterday New Labour gave another hand-out to Northern Rock in a desperate move to keep the failed mortgage bank going so that it can be sold on. Brown’s business government announced that guarantees to the beleaguered bank could rise to £57 billion - almost as much as the annual Whitehall education budget and twice as much as originally laid out. That means that each taxpayer has loaned – without being asked and without any guarantees of repayment - the equivalent of £1,800. Were it so easy for ordinary people to get such easy money from the state just when they need it!

The government clearly fears that the collapse of Northern Rock would be a calamity so is prepared to risk all to take on the bank’s liabilities without gaining any legal control through nationalisation. In fact, the government has handed out more money, this time to Goldman Sachs for advice on how it can avoid state ownership of Northern Rock! The problem for the government and the financial industry as a whole is that the sale of Northern Rock is being held up by the so-called credit crunch. Banks who are interested in acquiring Northern Rock will have to borrow money to carry through the purchase. But the money markets are somewhat paralysed at the moment.

Enter the Bank of England and its equally hard-pressed governor, Mervyn King. He is also offering cheap loans to bankers to encourage them to return to the good old days of lending freely to each other as well as the public. King was up before a Commons select committee to explain why the Bank of England had apparently not seen the credit crunch coming or had spotted that Northern Rock was in trouble before it was too late. The governor warned that if the banks continued to rein in lending, an economic recession was pretty much inevitable.

King said: "There is not a shortage of cash. The large banks are now awash with cash. The issue is not whether they have enough cash, it is whether they are inclined to lend." He added: "A painful adjustment faces the global banking sector over the next few months as losses are revealed and new capital is raised to repair bank balance sheets." They are concerned at the capital position of other banks and where debts related to the US housing market collapse would appear next, he explained. King is right to be concerned. Figures released yesterday show that permits to build new homes in America have fallen by almost a quarter in 12 months.

King tried to blame the credit squeeze on sheer greed, with financiers buying and selling debt packages in a bid to make greater and greater returns. This is a partial, one-sided account of the process. Corporate-driven globalisation of the last 30 years was founded on debt in a bid to overcome some basic contradictions built into the capitalist system. The credit crunch is only the surface of the unravelling of this arrangement at state, financial and personal levels. Instead of trying to prop up the bankers, society needs to think seriously about creating alternatives to the failing market economy, as we suggest in our new book, A House of Cards.


Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Let them eat cake

In the popular imagination, Queen Marie Antoinette is believed to have sparked the French Revolution when she said of the starving poor, “Let them eat cake”. True or not, the price of food is again a dangerous political issue. Warning signs are coming from around the world that food price increases will cause major social unrest in the poorest as well as the richest nations.

Yesterday the Russian government signed an agreement with food producers and retailers to freeze the price of bread, cheese, milk, eggs and vegetable oil until the end of the year. The Kremlin pretended that the controls were a voluntary measure by the food industry, but it is known that “they were told to fix prices voluntarily – or else”, according to observers in Moscow. Putin’s move is clearly an attempt to keep the electorate quiet in advance of December’s elections. Nevertheless, the move shocked many in the ruling oligarchy who have got rich from the free market capitalism introduced after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and who thought price controls were a thing of the past.

But it is not only Russia which is faced with a crisis. Speaking in London yesterday, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) chief Jacques Diouf said that rocketing food and energy prices could trigger political upheaval and riots in developing countries. The FAO’s food price index in July stood at its highest level since it was begun in 1990, and is almost 70% higher than in 2000.“If food prices continue to be high, there are risks of riots. If you combine the increase of oil prices and the increase of food prices, then you have the element of a very serious crisis in the future,” he said.

Food costs account for the bulk of people’s income in the world’s poorest countries, including Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Yemen and Mexico. Diouf estimates that 854 million people around the world are severely malnourished, most of them in Africa and Asia. Soaring prices are also causing hardship in North Korea, where the cost of rice has doubled from this time last year.

But wealthy food producing countries like the UK and Canada are also affected. This week, the leading Canadian economist Jeff Rubin warned that America’s policy of subsidising ethanol has led to a 60% rise in corn prices in the past two years. A bushel of corn now sells at nearly $4. High corn prices are disastrous for poor Latin Americans who use corn for tortillas. Corn is also a major animal feed so its price affects meat prices and derivatives like corn syrup used in processed foods. Nonetheless the Bush administration plans to raise US ethanol production from one billion gallons in 2000 to 35 billion in 2017 and the Canadian government has pledged a $1.5 billion investment over seven years to promote fuels like ethanol.

In Britain, the price of a loaf has gone up from 80p on average to 91p in the last year, while minced beef has increased from £1.08 a pound to £2.21 amidst warnings that the era of cheap food is over. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs admits that food security was becoming a “matter of concern”. The looming food crisis is the clearest indicator that unbridled capitalist globalisation under the free trade system enforced by the WTO and other global bodies is an unmitigated disaster.


Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary

Opposing the new EU treaty

The gathering storm over the new European Union treaty, focused on the growing demands for a referendum, raises deep issues about the nation-state and its place in the globalised market economy. At the heart of the proposed treaty is the further development of the EU as a regional bloc better able to compete in increasingly tough capitalist market conditions. This in any case is what the EU has been doing for some time, compelling member countries, for example, to open up industries and services to competition and ruling out hidden state subsidies. The British government, under both Tories and New Labour, has gone faster than the rest of EU in imposing what some call the neo-liberal agenda of free markets and a flexible labour force. Central to this is the continuing opt-out from the clauses which set out a minimum framework of social rights for employees. In fact, one of Blair’s last acts as prime minister was to ensure that this was carried over into the proposed new treaty and his successor is in full agreement with this approach.

So one strand of opposition to the new treaty comes from the trade unions, led by Bob Crow of the RMT rail workers and Paul Kenny, leader of the GMB. Crow says: “Whatever you call the EU Reform Treaty, it contains the same anti-democratic mix that was in the constitution supposedly killed off by French and Dutch votes in 2005. It is the back-door constitution which would still transform the EU into a state, and transfer power to an unelected EU government. For working people it would be a disaster, further institutionalising the mis-named economic ‘liberalisation’, forcing more privatisation of public services and abolishing vetoes over transport and a host of other areas.” Kenny says GMB “members are sick and tired of being treated as second class citizens in Europe. If these rights are good enough for French, German and Spanish workers then they should be good enough to apply to UK workers too”. Both unions have tabled resolutions against the treaty at next month’s TUC Congress.

Another strand of opposition comes from the Tory right-wing, led by the Daily Telegraph. This is a nationalist, anti-European trend that is based on days long gone when there was such a thing as “British capitalism” powerful enough to defend its own interests. The global point of view comes from the Financial Times, which yesterday declared: “Most generals avoid fighting the last war. The motley band calling for a referendum in Britain on the European Union’s constitutional treaty has failed to learn this.” The paper of global rather than national big business claimed that their ultimate goal was “either withdrawal or a do-nothing Union” and that neither “serves the national interest”.

The fact is that the British ruling elites have had to surrender large measure of political and economic sovereignty in the last 30 years, not just to the EU but to supra-national bodies like the World Trade Organisation. This is one of the main consequences of the corporate-driven globalisation process, which Gordon Brown in particular has embraced wholeheartedly and driven forward. The trade unions are right to oppose the new treaty and to join New Labour MPs demanding a referendum. But to distinguish themselves from Little Englanders, union leaders have to go further. Even a refomed British state – which itself is a highly unlikely prospect - would have little control over economic and financial processes that transcend borders and state bodies like central banks in their operation. In opposition to the corporate-dominated EU, unions have to adopt a perspective of a democratic alternative to the EU, based on shared common ownership of the region’s resources and new political structures that reflect the aspirations of the disenfranchised majority.

Paul Feldman, communications editor
A World to Win

Conscience and global poverty

If conscience alone could abolish world poverty, it would have happened many times over by now. Countless millions, especially in countries like Britain, have a sense of what is right and wrong. They are deeply concerned about disease, ill health, starvation and low wages in developing countries. They donate, they do voluntary work, they sign petitions, they go on marches, join vigils and pray for the poor of the world. And still the world is one of gross inequalities, at home and abroad. So Gordon Brown’s appeal to the conscience of the world in his “moral alliance” United Nations speech will make not a jot of difference because, unsurprisingly, it ignores the fundamental questions at stake which revolve around corporate power and profit.

Brown said: "I want to summon the greatest coalition of conscience in pursuit of the greatest of causes ... " He said he wanted to mobilise "people power", urging citizens to be "responsible consumers" and "active citizens". The fact that his “wake-up call” immediately won the backing of such progressive figures as George W. Bush and the bosses of 20 global corporations, including Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, tells its own story. They know a good thing when they see one and understand completely that having a conscience will not disturb the bottom line at all. In fact, it might do it some good.

The campaign, to be run through the UN, will be based on a new partnership between governments, the private sector and faith and pressure groups. The corporations and the UN have been travelling this road for some time. At the turn of the century the UN under Kofi Annan created a “global compact” with the major corporations. The UN website devoted to the compact explains: “Through the power of collective action, the Global Compact seeks to promote responsible corporate citizenship so that business can be part of the solution to the challenges of globalisation. In this way, the private sector – in partnership with other social actors – can help realise the secretary-general’s vision: a more sustainable and inclusive global economy.”

Annan may have had a dream in 2000 – in 2007 it resembles a nightmare. The UN’s millennium goals, as Brown had to admit, are as far from realisation as when they were set. The goal of halving infant mortality by 2015 won’t be met, if at all, until 2050, while the target of ensuring primary education for every child by 2015 would at best be achieved by 2100. Brown is clearly concerned lest people around the world for some unknown reason identify the corporations and the UN with broken promises and wants an “emergency” response. But his are just more empty words and semi-religious rhetoric at the expense of the world’s poor.

The fact remains that no amount of conscience will alter the fundamental nature of the causes of global inequalities. They are the outcome of a corporate-driven globalisation process, where the transnationals are in what they might describe as a “win-win situation going forward”. They can wring their hands, adopt a “corporate social responsibility” agenda and even give large sums of money, knowing that their profit-driven power is secure and given cover by the UN and its agencies. Overturning this power in order to allocate and use resources in the service of humanity as a whole is what we have a responsibility to place on the agenda throughout the world.

Paul Feldman, AWTW communications editor

Government 'greenwash' won't wash

Set targets, then rely on the market economy, an expanded nuclear industry and personal sacrifices to make them work. This is what lies at the heart of the government’s Climate Change Bill. All the evidence says this won’t wash when it comes to carbon emissions. Only recently, New Labour’s own inquiry, the Stern report, described global warming as the biggest market failure of all time. Relying on an expanded carbon trading market, which may include tradable personal "footprints", will make no serious impact on climate chaos. New Labour came to power in 1997 pledging a 20% cut in emissions by 2010. Not only has this target been missed, emissions are actually higher and continuing to rise. This is the reality of a global market economy dominated by the operations of profit-seeking transnational corporations, which nothing must be allowed to disturb. While Friends of the Earth and other lobby groups were falling over themselves in a rush to praise New Labour, others were more cautious. Edward Hanna, senior lecturer in climate change at the University of Sheffield, was unimpressed, saying: "(It) doesn't go far enough fast enough to confidently combat the significant threats posed by human-induced global warming. I fear that as we are closing the stable door, the horse has already bolted." Even Christian Aid, said the final legislation would have to be "significantly stronger".

In fact, a recent report by Christian Aid points out UK-quoted transnational corporations are responsible for far more of the world's CO2 emissions than they would like us to think. Christian Aid tried to find out whether leading companies were reporting their CO2 emissions in relation to their direct and indirect activities. It is hardly surprising that only one-sixth of bothered to disclose their direct emissions to Christian Aid. These alone amounted to 285.83 million tonnes CO2 which were emitted both in the UK and across the rest of the world. Christian Aid estimated this figure would increase to 477.35 million tonnes when the emissions from those who did not respond were included. This is equal to more than half of the UK's national emissions. The fourth annual report of the Carbon Disclosure Project found less than a quarter of the top companies were able to provide data for even direct emissions to an acceptable standard. The situation is even worse in respect to smaller companies, where only 10% were able to provide data on direct emissions! As Christian Aid, points out there is massive under-reporting of carbon emissions even in relation to companies' operations under their direct control.

But as the report discovered, the UK's global footprint extends well beyond its borders, through companies' supply chains spreading out across the rest of the world. Over a third of the top 500 companies reported their emissions were taking place in developing countries. Christian Aid estimated the extent of indirect emissions to be 911.06million tonnes. This makes the combined total for direct and indirect emissions from FTSE100 companies 1,388 million tonnes, two-and-a half times the UK national total and more than 5% of global emissions. These emissions are making a significant contribution towards global warming and climate change, with millions of the world's poor paying a heavy price. It also exposes the myth that all it will take to solve global warming is a change or shift in individual consumer choices. It is clear that capitalism's driving force, unrestrained profit growth, is responsible for the climate crisis we are facing and the globalisation of capital has intensified the problem. No amount of corporate social responsibility reports, or the provision of "transparent" emissions data, will alter the fact that we need to replace these planet destroying transnational corporations with not-for-profit companies. Only then can we evolve truly sustainable operating practices based on needs, both for people and the planet, rather than profit. In that context, New Labour’s proposals are more state "greenwash" than substance. You'd be better off reading Running a Temperature, a real action guide to the eco-crisis, which A World to Win published recently.

Stuart Barlow, environment co-editor

Democracy beyond the Bush regime

More and more American commentators are beginning to question whether the American political system can survive the Bush regime. Joe Conason, a columnist for the New York Observer and Salon, is blunt. In It Can Happen Here (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007), Conason says: "For the first time since the resignation of Richard M. Nixon more than three decades ago, Americans have had reason to doubt the future of democracy and the rule of law in our own country. Today we live in a state of tension between the enjoyment of traditional freedoms, including the protections afforded to speech and person by the Bill of Rights, and the disturbing realisation that those freedoms have been undermined and may be abrogated at any moment." Conason explains how Bush claims an authority that transcends the separation and balancing of power among the branches of government. His book cites evidence of widespread disenchantment and fear amongst the electorate, which led to the defeat for the Republicans in last autumn’s mid-term Congressional elections. Voters are fed up with what Conason describes as the lies, corruption and cronyism of the Bush administration seen from Iraq to the handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Conason writes: "The most obvious symptoms can be observed in the regime's style, which features an almost casual contempt for democratic and lawful norms; an expanding appetite for executive control at the expense of constitutional balances; a reckless impulse to corrupt national institutions with partisan ideology; and an ugly tendency to smear dissent as disloyalty. The most troubling effects are matters of substance, including the suspension of traditional legal rights for certain citizens; the imposition of secrecy and the inhibition of the free flow of information; the extension of domestic spying without legal sanction or warrant; the promotion of torture and other barbaric practices, in defiance of American and international law; and the collusion of government and party with corporate interests and religious fundamentalists."

The title of Conason’s book is drawn deliberately from the title of the novel by Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here, which was published 1935. Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, envisaged the USA in thrall to a fascist dictator. Buzz Windrip, a plainspoken, folksy Southern politician had risen to power during a period of profound unrest in America. Lewis, who had been expelled from Nazi Germany, had written: ""When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Conason sees striking resemblance between the demagogic villain of Lewis’s book, and the present White House incumbent. Yet the authoritarian regime in Washington is, as Conason acknowledges, not fascist. The American people are not cowed or defeated by the Bush regime. But it remains true that in many countries, including Britain, the political system that evolved in tandem with capitalism, with its democratic side the result of generational struggles, is indeed in profound crisis. Globalisation of the world economy, leading to the transfer of powers and decision-making out of the hands of national governments, has tied capitalist democratic structures to corporate power in a much more direct way. In 1992, the arch-conservative political theorist Francis Fukuyama, claimed that the end of the Soviet Union marked the ultimate triumph for the Western democracies, which were themselves the last word in history as far as political systems were concerned. How hollow and stupid his words sound today! Yet relying on liberal sentiment to resuscitate the façade of bourgeois democracy would be a major mistake and could lead to the outright fascist dictatorship that Conason and others fear. Bush enjoys as much power as he does partly as the result of the supine nature of Senate Democrats. Surely the next word in history has to be the extension of democratic principles and ideals in new ways and into new areas like the workplace, colleges and communities, replacing corporate power with a genuine people’s power.

Paul Feldman, communications editor

Corporate threat to farm-saved seeds

The handful of corporations that dominate the world seed industry are gearing up to remove remaining loopholes in the plant variety protection system, which was the alternative to patenting that they set up in the 1960s. European-based firms want to get rid of farmers’ limited entitlement to save seed. The Americans want to restrict the exemption by which breeders have the free use of each other’s commercial varieties for research purposes. In both cases, the point is to reduce competition and boost profits, according to GRAIN, which campaigns for biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge. Despite pressure from the transnational corporations, at least two-thirds of the global crop area is currently planted with farm-saved seed every year. In many developing countries, it represents 80-90% of all seed used. GRAIN warns that If farmers were legally forced to plant all of this area with commercial seed, it could easily mean a doubling of seed industry turnover, that is, an "extra $20 billion annually - all taken out of farmers' pockets and delivered to giants such as DuPont, Bayer, Syngenta, and Monsanto".

In many countries, seed laws already require farmers to use only certified seed of government-approved varieties. That seed is often available only from commercial seed companies. A rapidly increasing number of governments also grant legal monopoly rights for commercial seed, by means of industrial patents and so-called plant variety protection (PVP). Some developing countries have been persuaded to join the international PVP system. But this gives seed companies a monopoly on only the commercial multiplication and the marketing of seeds. Farmers have remained free to save seed from their own harvest to plant in the following year. Now the seed manufacturers want the monopoly that biotech firms like Monsanto have enjoyed through industrial patents on plants bred with genetic engineering (GE) and related techniques. These prevent farmers from saving seeds.

Another key industry demand will be to restrict or eliminate the freedom to use PVP-protected varieties for breeding. Says Grain: "The purpose is simply to block competition. If nobody else is allowed to improve on a variety until after the term of protection - 20 years or so - a seed company will be able to sell the unimproved variety for a much longer period, and postpone the cost of new research. The net effect: increased profits for the PVP owner, higher seed prices and fewer new varieties for farmers." GRAIN points out that monopolisation leads to fewer and fewer products of value to farmers. Major advance in yield and resistance improvement were made early in the 20th century, before any monopoly rights were available on seeds, it points out. Those improvements came mainly from selecting and crossing thousands of farmer varieties developed over centuries, not from any industry-sponsored research. The emergence of capitalism in the 18th century was marked by the enclosure of common land and clearances, by which people were driven out of the countryside into the towns. The growing corporate stranglehold over food systems that is revealed by organisations like GRAIN amounts to the enclosure of the global commons.

Paul Feldman, communications editor

Deficits point to inflation time-bomb

The US trade deficit widened to an all time record of $764bn last year, despite the falling value of the dollar on world markets. Meanwhile, data from the Office for National Statistics documented the worst year for the UK trade deficit since figures for imports and exports were first collected in 1697. Britain was just under £56bn in the red in 2006. It would have been a lot worse, but for the hugely profitable money-laundering activities they call financial services that go on in the City of London. Both deficits arise because imports are rising faster than exports – but imports and exports are rising as the pressure from global corporations for increased production and consumption intensifies.

So what is going on behind these figures? American and UK consumers like consumers everywhere are subjected to marketing campaigns and persuaded to spend like there’s no tomorrow. In doing so, they incur record-breaking debt, buying into credit deals and fake extended guarantees tied to ever-cheaper goods made in low-wage China. In the UK, with ever more liberal credit terms, personal debt breached £1 ¼ trillion in 2006 of which more than £1 trillion (£1,000 billion) is tied up in mortgages on massively overvalued property. Meanwhile in the US there is carnage in the housing market as prices fall, and interest rates increase, driving lenders out of business and hundreds of thousands of borrowers over the edge into bankruptcy. It’s a warning of what’s on the cards in Britain. The trade deficits and the mounting debt provide a measure of the inflation which is building up in the global economy, outstripping the attempts to control it by creeping increases in the base interest rates set by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank.

The US Democrats have noticed there’s a fundamental problem with these trade imbalances. In a letter they sent to President Bush they say that the "consequences of these persistent and massive trade deficits include not only failed businesses, displaced workers, lower real wages, and rising inequality, but also permanent devastation of our communities". But what the Democrats don’t see and can’t see is that these consequences don’t arise from the deficits themselves but from the global economic and social system which depends on them for its continued growth. Capitalism needs growth to sustain profits. If growth is stifled for any reason, profits fall. Any time now, the pent-up inflationary pressures that the deficits and debt contain will explode. And you only have to look at Zimbabwe’s eye-popping 1,600% annual inflation rate to get a flavour of what is to come. Prices there are expected soon to begin rising on an hourly basis. It is surely time to dismantle this failed system and start to take the profit-fuelled planetary emergency seriously.

Gerry Gold, economics editor