Make 2014 the year of a leap into the future

If last year witnessed the sudden and unexpected eruption of mass movements in countries from Brazil to Turkey, then 2014 is certain to see countless millions in many more countries become part of what is a global street upheaval.

We can be certain about this because the related causes of this tremendous revolt against the present order are universal in their nature. People around the world are no longer prepared to put up with rampant social and economic inequality, corruption and secret mass state surveillance.

They are struggling to cope with the consequences of climate change marked by increasingly frequent extreme weather. Above all, in every country, large numbers are sick and tired of undemocratic political-state systems that are partisan in their rule.

Anyone who give it a momentary thought senses that the interests of the corporations and the banks are put before those of ordinary working people, whoever is in government.

All these immediate causes of social turmoil have their origins in a single process –    profit-driven globalisation. So the challenge is create modern forms of democratic organisations that can articulate how to transform the common denominators that keep the system in place.

Fundamental social change – revolutionary change – cannot happen simply as the result of an intensification of existing forms of militancy or protest. People have to form a concept of what their lives as humans in the future could be - in nature, in society, economically and politically.

The task is to turn that concept into reality, by transforming the world around us through collective efforts. To achieve that, we must have an organisational framework that is open to these ideas.

We have to reach out to the future and to base ourselves on the premise that capitalism and its state form are not NOT eternal and that they MUST be replaced in a conscious way.

Without that perspective, we can miss new possibilities as they emerge, maybe where we least expect them.

People’s Assemblies can and should become the forum where we work out what we are FOR and begin to strive to put it into practice, in the teeth of all opposition from those who support the status quo. We should resist attempts to limit Assemblies simply to the role of resisting austerity or to protests against government policy, with a view to electing One Nation Labour in 2015.

Assemblies have to become rival sites of power to the capitalist state, which is the barrier to a real democracy. We have to work out how to dismantle the oppressive institutions that keep us in check and what to replace them with. Assemblies will need expert advice on what kind of co-operative ownership and control can take the place of shareholders and stock markets.

Assemblies could sponsor a People’s Convention to develop a democratic constitution for the 21^st century. At present, nationalists in England and Scotland are making the running on crucial issues of state rule. We have already proposed revolutionary self-determination to counter blind prejudice based on a spurious nationality as a starting point.

In the 19^th century, before working people won the vote, the Chartist movement rallied vast numbers in the demand for political change. In that tradition, we put forward a contemporary version of the original six demands which we will fight for in People’s Assemblies. They are:

1.      A real democracy from the ground up through, for example, Peoples’ Assemblies.

2.      The right to co-operative ownership in place of shareholder control; to democracy and self-management in all areas/activities of the workplace; to common land ownership.

3.      An economy and financial system that is motivated by meeting ordinary people’s needs and aspirations in place of the accumulation of profit.

4.      Social rights to affordable housing, public transport and energy; free continuing education and training; free health care at all levels; employment, paid training or an average wage; a pension that provides dignity in older age.

5.      Basic rights to organise, demonstrate and strike independently of the state; rights to justice, transparency and accountability; the right to self-determination within and without Britain and the right of minority communities to equality in all areas.   

6.      The right to live in a sustainable environment, including the production of food,  shaped by ecological care instead of profits as the basis for tackling the ecological crisis in all its forms.  

Let’s make 2014 the year of a great leap in human emancipation with the aim of freeing ourselves from the reactionary forces that have made it impossible to let things stay as they are.

A World to Win editors

December 31, 2013

NHS vote marks end of parliamentary road

While last night’s vote to approve the health bill marks the end of the parliamentary road – in more ways than one – the future of the NHS is far from being a done deal.

Only royal assent is needed to complete the legislation that brings competition right into the heart of the National Health Service and threatens its future.

And the gushing warmth of the parliamentary congratulations to the Queen on her diamond jubilee – with Ed Miliband suggesting to David Cameron that they should stand to applaud - ensures that happens very soon.

Living in the forlorn hope that Labour will repeal the bill is a waste of time. The ConDems actually built on what New Labour had done, especially in relation to virtually independent foundation trusts.

In any case, we can’t afford to wait until the general election of 2015. For the vast majority whose lives, literally, are bound up with the not-for-profit institution set up in 1948, defence of the principles of universal health care must be along a new path.

The same is true for pensions. Unions yesterday lost a legal battle to stop the government slashing up to 20% off public sector pensions by switching to the consumer price index instead of the normally faster-rising retail price index to calculate cost-of-living rises.

Siding with the Coalition, Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, put it like this: “The government clearly believed the state of the economy was grave, and that any savings which could properly be made should be made – as soon as possible.” Unions are considering an appeal, but they’ll be wasting their time, and their members’ money.

The state of the capitalist economy is worse than grave, and the UK government, like most throughout the world, is willingly submitting to the relentless logic of contraction expressed through the simple measure of the credit rating calculated by agencies representing investors on the global capital markets.

Two of the three - Fitch and Standard & Poor – have already threatened to downgrade Britain’s AAA rating if the Coalition’s intensifying drive to cuts and privatisation continues to fail to deliver. The growth promised in last year’s budget hasn’t materialised, so the austerity assault will be ramped up in today’s budget – despite it deepening the recession.

Everything that can be handed over to the for-profit sector will be, and the latest victim is the handling of emergency calls to ambulance, fire and police, soon to be joined by the roads.

Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, warned that the momentum towards outsourcing was gathering pace. “This is the drip, drip, drip of privatisation,” he said. “They move in on something that might look like a good idea, and before we know it they are working in vast areas of British policing.”

Just as in the revolts of the Arab Spring, the police will soon be faced with a three way choice: to side with the repressive state forces seeking to preserve the status quo; to stand aside as new democratic forces arise; or to join with them in people's assemblies formed from workers in factories and offices, the professions, school and college students the unemployed, pensioners, community groups.

With the state’s forces ranged against the interests of the majority, and the parliamentary process a cul de sac, these new assemblies will become the focus for the democratic process that makes and carries out decisions in the interests of the people and small businesses.

They will work to identify and satisfy the unmet needs of the local population with respect to nutrition, housing, clothing, health, energy, safety, communications, transport, education and self-development, culture, sport, recreation, arts, entertainment, social support including security in older age.

And, as the democratic expression of the majority, they will give themselves the power to acquire the resources, including land, from their present owners in order to satisfy needs. That’s the best way to respond to what happened in Parliament yesterday.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Power to the G7 billion, not the G20

The General Assembly of Occupy LSX has called for a global debate about a very different future to the one leaders gathering for the G20 in Cannes are planning.

As the G20 big nations discuss how to impose the full weight of the economic crisis on the backs of first Greek, and then all other working class people across the globe, LSX unanimously agreed these four points:

1. Our global system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust, driven by profit in the interest of the few.

2. An economic system based on infinite growth, but which relies on finite resources, is leading humanity and the environment to destruction. As long as this system remains in place, people of the world continue to suffer from an increasingly unfair share of income and wealth.

3. We seek a global system that is democratic, just and sustainable. The world’s resources must not go to the military or corporate profit, but instead go towards caring for people’s needs: water, food, housing, education, health, community.

4. An international, global collaboration has started, and is working on a statement that will unite the occupy movements across the world in their struggle for an alternative that is focused on and originates from people and their environment.

Ragnhild Dale, who was involved in drafting the statement, said: “We reject the G20 as a valid forum for decision making. It is unjust, unaccountable, lacks transparency and continues to promote a global economic system that is fundamentally unsustainable. We want to create real dialogue and debate, which isn’t happening at the G20. We invite everyone to join us in creating a global statement that reflects the combined voices of the 99 per cent who aren’t at the G20, so that we can realise real change.”

Jamie Arad, supporter of OccupyLSX, added: “We ask questions that the G20 will never ask, such as why are decisions that affect 7 billion people made by a powerful elite behind closed doors? Why do we rely on a global economic system based on infinite growth when we know that the world’s resources are finite? Why do we assume the G20 can be trusted to put people and sustainable living before profits and corporate interests?"

You might say, well so what? Just 500 people in a churchyard – more people work in just one of the arrogant skyscrapers that surround LSX's old tents and handmade banners. But they are 500 people showing leadership, pointing a way forward – not back to European war, mass unemployment and hunger as in the 1930s. They speak for the interests of millions.

And in the United States, similar messages are coming through. In Oakland, California, 15,000 people brought the entire city to a standstill yesterday. Demanding equality and an end to police brutality, the occupation movement not only took back space they were driven out of last week - they called for a General Strike and, broadly speaking, got it. Schools, businesses and even more important, Oakland's container port closed down. Workers coming on shift turned back, some parking up to join the occupation.

Oakland's police and politicians who unleashed terror on the citizens last week, were nowhere to be seen. Of course, that doesn't mean the fight is over - it is just beginning. But the decision of big unions to support the occupy movement gave them pause for thought.

Occupations run by Assemblies are test beds, showing what people can do when they are independent and liberated. A network of People’s Assemblies can widen this movement to the whole of society, giving it a concrete form that can appeal to all those under attack from capitalism.

Assemblies can facilitate a transition to a democratic society based on co-operation and self-determination instead of profit and corporate power. They will disprove in action the lie that there is no alternative to the capitalist system and the states/local government bodies that serve it. Go here to read more about People's Assemblies and how they can change the world.

Penny Cole
Contributing editor

Getting from A to B

A key discussion taking place within the global occupation movement is what kind of “demands” (if any) should be made and who they should be addressed to (if anyone). This conundrum gets to the heart of the matter.

Many drawn to the continuing actions on Wall Street and in the City of London, and to massive rallies in Madrid and other countries, have been driven to the streets precisely by the serial failure of existing political channels.

The self-evident convergence between the state, mainstream political parties, corporate and financial power has angered increasing numbers of people. What limited democracy there was has been sold to the highest bidder.

Banks form an orderly queue for state bail-outs, energy suppliers let prices rip, public services like health and education are turned into commodities, corporate lobbyists have direct access to ministers, pensions are reduced and employment rights undermined.

On the other side, the mounting grievances of ordinary people about their jobs, housing, incomes, education, health and human rights are ignored. This is the price we have to pay, we are told, for the economic crisis.

The crisis is, naturally, presented as an act of God, something beyond human control. This is deliberate mystification. It is intended to obscure the fact that the disaster is the product of an unstable, unsustainable, capitalist system of production for profit, fuelled by mountains of debt.

So as no one in authority is listening, the occupations and marches for real democracy are presented with an apparent contradiction. There is no point making “demands” of the existing powers, yet a statement of aims and aspirations is absolutely vital to garner support and build the movement.

The initial statement from the St Paul’s occupation in London reflects the dilemma. The starting point – “the current system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust” – is dead right. The system – political, economic and financial – is the problem, not the solution.

The focus is, or should be, entirely on changing the system and not appealing to existing power and governments to do what they can’t/won’t do. However, point 5 about appealing to regulators to regulate properly and part of point 8 about urging governments to stop oppressing people, tends towards a reform of a status quo which is well passed its use-by date.

Of course, incorporating system change into a set of demands wouldn’t by itself resolve the apparent impasse (although it would be a step forward). If we are to avoid placing demands on existing powers, we should try and suggest an alternative. One way forward is through People’s Assemblies as a transition to a new, real democracy (see details about an open event this Saturday, the 22nd).

Our new flyer says: “Occupations run by assemblies are test beds, showing what people can do when they are independent and liberated. A network of People’s Assemblies can widen this to the whole of society, giving it a concrete form that can appeal to all those under attack from capitalism.

“Assemblies can facilitate a transition to a democratic society based on co-operation and self-determination instead of profit and corporate power. They will disprove in action the lie that there is no alternative to the capitalist system and the states/local government bodies that serve it.”

In the end, it has to be about getting from A to B, transcending capitalism as a social system, replacing alienating, oppressive, undemocratic power structures with new democratic forms. Millions of people now see that there is something fundamentally wrong with the system. On October 15, their anger produced the first global day of action in the history of the world. Let’s take it on from there.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

System is 'unsustainable', says Occupy LSX

“This is what democracy looks like,” says the first statement agreed by the mass assembly of 500 held yesterday outside St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London.

Indeed, the camp in the heart of London’s financial district has become the site of a mass discussion about the way forward in the global struggle for democracy against corporate and financial power as well as the political system itself.

The London occupation began as one of thousands held around the world on October 15, including huge rallies and demonstrations in Madrid, Rome, across the United States, Israel and Palestine.

Inspired by the Wall Street occupation, a large green banner at St Paul’s pronounced “We are the 99%” and on Sunday a new banner appeared, saying “Capitalism is Crisis”. The tent village in front of the cathedral is now drawing into its third day, despite increasingly cold weather.

Young people from around Britain have joined with seasoned campaigners from across the world to go beyond one-off protests to assert an alternative to established political channels which they feel do not represent them. “They have cut off all our avenues for protest,” as one participant said.

The assembly on the cathedral steps collectively agreed on an initial nine point statement which emphasises the unsustainability of the current system and demands “structural change towards authentic global equality”.

A call for the setting up of People' Assemblies throughout the country, and directly for the aim of a new “constitutional settlement so that people were in control” put by democracy campaigner Mark Barrett was warmly received.

Saturday’s rally of around 2,500 was entirely peaceful as the occupiers tried to enter Paternoster Square where the stock exchange is located. Hundreds of police, including Forward Intelligence Teams and helicopters circling above, cordoned off access to the square.

In the event, the tree-shaded area in front of St Paul’s Cathedral has provided a dramatic and safe setting, thanks to the intervention of Canon Giles Fraser who appeared outside the church after a police cordon tried to force demonstrators away and told the police they were not needed.

The camp is now well-organised with neat streets of individual tents, many with handmade placards pinned on them. They are backed up by mobile toilets, a food station with piles of bananas, water bottles, donated tins, plus information, media, medical areas and even a “Starbooks” library tent.

Teams are responsible for cleanliness. The occupiers and passers are entertained by live music. Groups meet in circles to debate what the aims of the occupation are and how to achieve them.

Organisers include Facebook groups Occupy LSX, 15O Unite for Global Change, Occupy London Stock Exchange camp, Take the Square and it is supported by Spanish Real Democracy Now campaigners, People’s Assembly Network, UK Uncut, A World to Win, Right to Work campaign and People’s Assembly London.

A flyer issued by United for #global democracy demands “global governance by the people, for the people, inspired by our sisters and brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, New York, Palestine-Israel, Spain and Greece” and called for regime change.

The #OccupyLSX’s initial statement calls for support for the 30 November strike and student action on 9 November, but the trade unions, who are in the Coalition government’s firing line have been noticeable only by their total absence.

Going outside and beyond the existing political parties and trade unions to assert an independent democratic movement – and connecting it with the anti-dictatorship movements of the Arab Spring – is a huge step in the right direction.

Let the jaded cynics and dogmatists carp as they like. History is leaving them behind. As one demonstrator said: “We are going through a great awakening: everyone is waking up and discovering the true power of humanity. We don’t need to be treated like this any more - we are moving into a new age – and we want our futures back.”

How to achieve this aim is central to the event this Saturday, People’s Assemblies to People’s Power. Everyone is welcome to join in the dialogue at Passing Clouds Collective.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Reclaim democracy now!

Just because global elites are always harping on about “democracy”, claiming it as the ideal political system, doesn’t mean that we abstain from the question. The challenge is to fight for a more advanced democracy than society has achieved so far.

We shouldn’t accept the present democracy as the last word on the subject but see in its historical and social context. While the Russian Marxist and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin considered bourgeois democracy, a “great historical advance in comparison with medievalism”, he qualified this by adding:

But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich… in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.

Before him, Fred Engels, who collaborated with Karl Marx to produce ground-breaking analysis, wrote his seminal work on the origins of private property, family and the state. In it, Engels explained that however democratic the modern representative state was, its function was to maintain the rule of one class over another.

And that remains the case today in the democracies like Britain, the United States and France. Since Engels and Lenin, however, the fusion of capital with politics, particularly in the last 30 years, has further emasculated representative democracy. The Real Democracy Now movement that has flowered in Spain immediately and correctly identified the merging of the political system with corporate and financial power as the source of the problem.

So what should we struggle for? What about replacing democracy for the rich with a democracy for the dispossessed, the poor and the disenfranchised? What about extending democracy in new ways, by freeing people from the rule of the corporations and the banks, not to say the reactionary media? What about bringing democracy to the workplace, the school and the university through co-ownership and self-management?

Achieving these objectives will without doubt require the dismantling of the present state which in innumerable ways maintains and sustains the status quo. The is because, as others have shown, the present limited democracy is the political form that capitalism has assumed for itself.

It is both democratic and undemocratic at the same time, allowing certain freedoms while denying access to real power itself. You cannot imagine an advance in the nature and content of democracy within the present state because the two stand in contradiction to each other.

Opportunities for resolving this apparent puzzle are emerging through the movement of society itself in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and now Spain. We have to go beyond demands for participation and transparency. Important as they are, they sidestep the question of the nature of the state itself.

Arguing for and building people’s assemblies is a way forward in Britain and internationally. They can build on the growing resistance to the ConDem government on a range of issues and practice democracy by seeking to represent the widest range of social and political interests. They will challenge sectarian behaviour and undemocratic practices and discourage closed committees and pre-planning fixed agendas.

Assemblies established on a permanent basis can discuss the nature of the present democracy and what could be better; the nature of power – who’s got it and how do ordinary people win it. They can encourage sovereign decisions and direct action. They are both a means to bring people together across sectoral lines as well as the potential means by which we can democratically transform society and replace the state with a network of assemblies. Let’s reclaim democracy!

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

The time to move beyond resistance is now!

The right-wing leadership of the TUC sees tomorrow’s anti-cuts march as a one-off protest that merely “sends a message” to a government which has launched the most comprehensive attack on living standards, jobs and services since the 1930s. March 26 is, however, where the fight to bring down the Coalition gets under way in earnest.

TUC leaders have sat on their hands since the ConDem government took office and immediately went on the offensive. Local councils were allowed to implement cuts without any serious union-led opposition. General secretary Brendan Barber is desperate to find a compromise with the government where none exists.

He is also anxious to keep tomorrow’s turn-out under control, working closely with the police and hiring professional stewards to get people to march from A to B, listen to demagogic speeches and then go home. But this will not simply not do. The economic and political situation is far too grave for marches by themselves to have any significant impact.

That is why A World to Win supports the plans that activists have announced for, amongst other things, staying behind in Hyde Park for a day, holding a Constituent Assembly on Sunday, occupying Trafalgar Square in an echo of the take-over of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and for protests in Oxford Street against tax-dodging corporations.

Their merit is that they recognise in one way or another that challenging the authority of the government and the corporations they rule on behalf of, is necessary, even if the objectives are as yet unclear or not agreed upon.

If anyone doubts that the Cameron-Clegg-Osborne government is gripped by crisis, the budget revealed all. Their so-called Plan A of cutting the deficit to revive the economy can’t and won’t work. Ministers can’t even get fuel prices down by 1p a litre and the oil corporations have threatened to sack thousands in response to plans for a tax levy. Growth targets, which measure the health of the capitalist economy and nothing else, are looking decidedly terminal.

Inflation means the cuts will have to be larger than forecast to meet the aim of eliminating a budget deficit that arises out of the global crisis of capitalism, which is far from over (even if the TUC denies there is such a thing). Portugal’s Socialist Party-led government has collapsed over austerity measures and now faces paying 8.4% for loans (Ireland is paying 10% plus). Spain, also led by the “Socialists”, is where the next domino is scheduled to fall. As prices rise, interest rates on UK government borrowing (now 3.57%) will rise too, adding to the debt.

So the Coalition is not for turning, not least because the financial markets and the impact of the global recession say so. It is doing what capitalism demands in times of need – drive down living standards, put people out of work and declare that there is no alternative. There is certainly no alternative in Labour, which, as Ed Miliband says openly, favours a “more prosperous capitalism”, presumably achieved by cutting more slowly than the Tories.

We say “No” to the British, French and American attacks on Libya for many reasons. But an important one is the fact that the government wants to divert attention away from what’s going on in Britain. And of course, Miliband is helping out on that one too, wrapping himself and his party in the Union Jack to back the government’s illegal onslaught.

Let’s take our inspiration, instead, from the uprisings and revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, that began in Tunisia, swept through Egypt and found their way to Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and now Syria. We have to build a movement that stretches across every sector of the community to challenge the government, to bring it down and to build a revolutionary alternative to capitalism. After March 26, the movement has to organise itself in People’s Assemblies for this purpose. The planning event on April 9 is crucial in moving beyond resistance to liberation through self-determination.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

European politics at the cross-roads

A new survey shows that there is a “crisis in European democracy” as faith and trust in politicians plummets to new lows. No surprises there but, equally, an opportunity to create a different future.

The Guardian/ICM poll of five European Union countries confirms that the sharp decline in relations between the political class and people in Britain is, in fact, a near universal feature.

Bad enough during the credit-fuelled “boom years”, when governments were singing the praises of the seemingly invincible market economy, the recession precipitated by the 2008 meltdown has obviously accelerated negative attitudes to politicians and through them to state structures.

The survey reveals:

• Only 6% of people across Europe say they have a great deal of trust in their government. Overall, the percentage of those who think politicians are not at all, or not very, honest outweighs those who disagree by a massive 89%.

• Only 9% of Europeans think their politicians – in opposition or in power – act with honesty and integrity.

• The lack of trust in government is greatest in Poland and France, where distrust outweighs trust by a net 82 percentage points. In France, the net negative score is 78 points and in Germany 80 points, while in Britain it is 66 points.

• Some 78% of those questioned don’t trust the government to deal with their country’s problems, with the figure in Britain a huge 80%.

• Even fewer Europeans think their politicians are honest. In Poland, only 3% of those questioned agree; in Britain 12%. Overall, a mammoth 89% believe politicians are not honest.

• 40% of those polled think their economy will get worse over the next 12 months, against 20% who think it will improve. In France, pessimists outnumber optimists by 46%. In Britain, the difference is 40%

• Overall, only 42% of the 5,000 people questioned believe that governments should cut spending to reduce the national debt, while in Britain, more than two-thirds disagreed.

• In Britain, a majority think the next decade will either leave them poorer or, at best, no better off. Only a quarter think Britain will get richer over the next 10 years.

• Overall, 62% describe themselves as liberal on social issues - the highest percentage being in Germany.

The political vacuum that has appeared across Europe – and no doubt in the United States where one poll rated comedian Jon Stewart the country’s most trusted person – is going to be filled sooner or later.

The question is, by who and how? The poll findings can be seen as a reflection of the exhaustion of the present, bourgeois political process, with its limited, essentially superficial democracy. It provides for representation but without power, which stays firmly in the hands of the governing classes and, significantly, the financiers and corporations who dominate the economy.

Europe’s ruling classes are in general riding out the recessionary storm while ordinary people are heading for the dole queue, seeing their services smashed up and their incomes plummet as price inflation takes off. Bankers collect their bonuses while households in Britain collect their food parcels.

The survey actually reveals that the crisis is not in democracy itself but in what passes for democracy. Restoring faith and trust in an exhausted political system that is past its sell-by date is a fruitless task and would, in any case, still leave real power out of reach.

Creating more advanced forms of democracy such as People’s Assemblies that embrace the workplace and put citizens in control and charge of society’s resources, is the challenge that lies immediately in front.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Uniting theory and practice

At a recent meeting of students who had come together from a range of occupations against the rise in tuition fees, a proposal about creating People’s Assemblies (PAs) was described as a “deeply philosophical” question. The remark, which was not made in a derogatory way, was spot on.

Advancing a concept like PAs is both practical and theoretical at the same time, which appears as a philosophical conundrum. That’s a good sign because all revolutionary ideas – and PAs are just that – are rooted in both the present as well as the future. They are, therefore, a real contradiction.

But isn’t that bad? Aren’t contradictions harmful? Wouldn’t the world be better off without them? Can’t we come up with a simpler proposal that everyone can grasp immediately without further reflection and put into practice?

In the struggle against the Coalition’s draconian public spending cuts – made in a bid to rescue capitalism from itself – “simpler” proposals and plans have emerged spontaneously. Anti-cuts campaigns have spread throughout the country. Protests and lobbies take place on a nightly basis. Students and education workers reacted to the cuts with strikes, marches and occupations.

Now that movement is at a turning point. The cuts are going through town halls – many of them Labour controlled. Tuition fees rises have passed through Parliament along with the abolition of educational maintenance allowances. Planned cuts in higher education spending will devastate the universities.

The weakness of the direction of the movement so far is that it is largely restricted to the “present” situation. It is aimed at stopping, halting or reversing the cuts made by a government that has staked its existence on carrying through a massive reduction in the budget deficit. The deficit itself is a product of the global crisis of capitalism and the devastating way it has impacted on the British economy.

The government has made it clear that it is not for turning. Indeed, were it to collapse under the weight of events, a likely outcome would be a national government rather than some mythical formation that would immediately start on a programme of public spending. As we know, Labour is also committed to reducing the deficit and is doing so with gusto at local government level.


So where do we go from here? Putting all our hopes on the results of the March 26 demonstration called by the Trades Union Congress would be a mistake. One demonstration, however large, is not going to change the world. Ask those who took part in the two-million strong march against plans for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

That’s where PAs come in. They are connected to the present by presenting an opportunity to all those with grievances that the Parliamentary system tied to corporate and financial power is incapable of addressing. These include trade unionists, service users, students, the unemployed, minorities and climate change activists.

They also build on the struggle for democracy and representation that dates at least from the Levellers and Diggers of the English Revolution – and in other ways is traced back to the Peasants Revolt of 1381 and the Magna Carta of 1215. But PAs go further in proposing new forms of democracy beyond the existing capitalist state framework, which can then begin to transform how the economy is owned and run.

They are a philosophical question in the sense that PAs require a leap in thinking out of the present ideological framework which is dominated by impressions and acceptance of the capitalist status quo. But they are also deeply practical because they offer a way forward to an alternative, progressive future.


Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Let the sleeping giant speak in 2011

The leaders of the Trades Union Congress are not noted for dramatic statements or exaggerated, let alone rapid, reactions to political change. The TUC’s current general secretary, Brendan Barber, has spent his time in office promoting harmony between social classes and compromise not confrontation.

Therefore alarm bells should ring when Barber warns that 2011 is going to be a “horrible” year, with cuts in benefits and public services, and an increase in unemployment. And that it “could well be the year when the country starts to say no to government”.

Barber is sitting on a ticking time-bomb consisting of more than six million trade unionists, mostly in the public sector, who are about to bear the brunt of the Coalition government’s massive assault on spending. These workers are waiting for some leadership to resist the cuts – and none is, as yet, forthcoming. When their anger explodes, it will threaten men like Barber as well as the government.

The level of suffering will be enormous. A report by the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, predicts that unemployment will reach 2.7 million in the year to come, the highest leel in 17 years. The draconian cuts in public spending will push unemployment up rapidly, as the private sector fails to absorb the 330,000 public sector jobs due to disappear by 2015.

Job losses will coincide with rapidly rising prices of everything from basic foodstuffs to fuel and utility bills. Rail commuters in the south-east of England face fare rises of between 7.8% and 15% from Sunday for a second-rate service.

There is no question that last month’s unprecedented and militant action by school and university students and their families against soaring tuition fees foreshadows what is to come. Those cuts affected a relatively small section of the population – the middle classes and aspiring working class people. The next wave will touch almost everyone.

The most courageous amongst the union leaders, rail and tube workers’ leader Bob Crow has called for strikes: “We can expect to see workers in both public and private sectors out on the picket lines fighting for jobs and against savage attacks on pensions and standards of living. There is no reason for working people to pay the price for a crisis we didn’t create and which is wholly down to the banks, speculators and politicians.” Too right.

Barber and Labour leader Ed Miliband are fond of dismissing the government's deficit reduction plans as purely “ideological” or “politically motivated” and in so doing deliberately exempt the system known as capitalism. The Coalition’s cuts are, as we establish in our booklet Beyond Resistance, a desperate gamble to keep capitalism in Britain going under conditions of financial and economic crisis which threatens the break-up of the European Union itself.

No country, not even the much vaunted BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is exempt from the crisis. After the 2008 crash, China’s economic growth was artificially stimulated by what one globalisation analyst describes as a “violent domestic stimulus” of 4 trillion yuan ($580 billion) . . . about 13 per cent of gross domestic product in 2008 and constituted ‘probably the largest such programme in history, even including wars’.” (Charles Dumas, author of Globalization Fractures).

Those who have been studying the big global picture and the historic changes which are re-shaping our world are not mincing their words. Just listen to Jeffrey Garten, former US undersecretary of commerce under Bill Clinton. He warns of “exceptional turbulence as the waning days of the global economic order we have known plays out chaotically, possibly destructively.”

The fact is that the kind of corporate-driven, credit-fuelled capitalism we have known it for the past three decades has come to a shuddering halt. The prospects for 2011 are a deepening recession and further financial collapse.

We should seek a rebirth of human culture – and a decent life for ordinary people on the planet – arising out of the ashes of global capitalism’s “bonfire of the vanities”.

But it will certainly not be achieved through the TUC’s call for everyone to huddle together on a demonstration at the end of March, by which time tens of thousands of council workers will have lost their jobs as local authorities – many of them Labour controlled – implement the Coalition’s spending cuts.

Nor will plans for protest strike action aimed at forcing the government to change course and stop the cuts be adequate to the task. That is a key lesson from the general strikes in Greece, Spain and Portugal during 2010 where “socialist” governments have smashed public services and pensions.

There is a sleeping giant at the base of our society who has yet to speak. That is the vast majority of people who have everything to gain by throwing off not only the bankers, speculators and politicians who serve them, but the system of private ownership for profit over which they preside.

Let’s make 2011 the year to begin the struggle for power against the ruling political, financial and economic elites, building a network People’s Assemblies to complete this absolutely necessary transformation.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Irish budget won't stop the rot

The Irish Parliament’s vote to implement a further, more savage €6 billion programme of spending cuts and tax increases has done nothing to stop the worsening debt crisis transforming the political landscape throughout Europe and beyond.

Quite the opposite. As Ireland follows Greece, and with Portugal and Spain jostling for position in the queue for aid, the conditions of the Intenational Monetary Fund-sponsored package for the Irish Republic are reverberating throughout the continent. And the pressure is mounting across the Atlantic too.

In the United States, Democrats are in open revolt against President Obama’s deal with the Tea Party-inspired Republicans to continue Bush’s 10-year-old tax breaks for the wealthy, which were widely expected be allowed to expire at the end of the year.

This proposed new deal is part of the political price for agreement on a further debt-funded stimulus. But the markets are worried, and the cost of US borrowing has started to rise.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn the managing director of the IMF says the “piecemeal” country-by-country approach can’t solve the crisis but Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel is not alone in blocking proposals for a Europe wide rescue scheme. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders far-right Freedom party teamed up with the so-called Socialist Party to oppose the deal for Ireland.

For the Irish people, the new budget slashes social welfare benefits, public pensions and capital projects, whilst forcing the 45% of low wage earners to pay income tax for the first time in order to rescue the banks and pay the interest on government bonds.

Michael Noonan, finance spokesman for the centre-right Fine Gael party stated the obvious: "This budget is the budget of a puppet government who are doing what they have been told to do by the IMF, the EU Commission and the European Central Bank."

But what he didn’t say is that the demands of these agencies are themselves orchestrated and conducted by the much more powerful forces at work in the rapidly contracting global capitalist economy.

Even as the captive Irish government was applauding itself, warnings of further mass assaults could be detected in the absurdly optimistic growth forecasts underpinning the new budget.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan pins Irish hopes on gross domestic product national income (GDP) expanding by 1.7 percent next year, nearly double the European Commission's forecast of 0.9 percent.

The government is forecasting growth of 3.2 percent in 2012, 3.0 percent in 2013 and 2.8 percent in 2014, but Danny McCoy, head of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation said he saw little in the budget to help job creation or restore economic competitiveness.

In reality, governments throughout the world are in a competitive race to destroy living standards, driven by the needs of an economic system of global corporations competing for declining profits as markets shrink and collapse.

The crisis began when credit-funded stimulus reached its limits. Political parties of the left and right are ganging up together to design and implement “austerity” programmes that can only accelerate the process of contraction. Despite the rhetoric of recovery it is what they are required to do.

Campaigns to resist the assault on people’s lives must be brought together with the democratic and legislative means to replace the moribund capitalist system rather than patch it up. People’s Assemblies can begin to construct a richer form of democratic control based on social ownership and not-for-profit production and finance. Check out A World to Win’s proposals for transforming social relations in our new Beyond Resistance booklet.

Gerry Gold
Economics Editor

Students come up against a political brick wall

The explosion of anger on London’s streets yesterday was not confined just to the students who attacked the Tory Party HQ. It was also expressed in the fact that unexpectedly vast numbers of students and lecturers turned out to demonstrate against soaring tuition fees and education cuts.

Over 50,000 came to express their opposition to the Con-Lib government’s programme of cuts. It was the first major march against the Coalition and the biggest student turn-out for over a decade. Frustration and anger ran through the whole march. A common refrain was that “no one is listening” – reflecting the fact that the accepted political process is a dead end.

“Tory scum”, chanted students breaking in to the Millbank headquarters of the Tory party. They should have added “Liberal Democrat and Labour scum”. In fact the Tories are the only main party that are not fees turncoats. Before the election, every Liberal MP signed a pledge to oppose a rise in fees. And it was New Labour that first introduced top-up fees in 2001, against Blair’s specific election pledge not to do it.

New Labour commissioned the Browne review of higher education funding, which went even further than the Coalition to propose lifting the cap on fees altogether. Who can say they wouldn’t have accepted its proposals if they were in government?

NUS President Aaron Porter, a member of the Labour Party and like Ed Miliband a supporter of a graduate tax, cannot explain how a tax, rather than higher fees, would enable young people from less well off backgrounds to go to university in the first place.

Lord Browne’s proposals represent the completion of the marketisation of higher education, which is enthusiastically supported by all parties in parliament. It discusses university entirely in the narrow terms of economic growth and money. David Cameron was happy to be able to tell a Chinese student that raising fees for British students would mean fees for overseas students could be held down.

Public funding for universities is being slashed by 40%, to be replaced by 2012 with student fees of up to £9,000 a year at some universities. Students starting university this year will already leave with debts of at least £25,000 each and the new measures will push that even higher.

And when they graduate, they will enter a job market in slump. With 69 candidates chasing every graduate job, the 2010 graduate cohort joined thousands still unemployed from the previous two years. They are now part of a generation of young people, graduate and non-graduate, who are over-represented in the ranks of those unemployed for more than a year. Youth unemployment is nine times higher than the national average.

The reality is that universities are now part of the market state and unworthy of the passionate commitment that lecturers and students continue to give them. The answer to this massive problem is to go beyond protest against the Con-Lib government, and recognise the transformation of the state as a whole that has resulted from corporate-driven globalisation.

States provide education only insofar as it will benefit big business. Whichever party is in control they are ready to sacrifice the future of millions of young people – and everything they could achieve for human society – on the altar of the mighty market.

But using technology and networks that have been largely created by the younger generation, a global alliance of the young and older workers can facilitate a transfer of power away from these global elites, and their corporate masters, and into the hands of the majority.

In the end, neither marching nor extreme forms of protest like the attack on the Tory Party HQ by themselves will bring about the kind of social revolutionary change that will create a world free from profit and exploitation.

People’s Assemblies, with full representation of every part of the community including students, young people and the unemployed, are the way to make a start in the process of transforming society’s economic and political power structures. All students are invited to come to Liberation Beyond Resistance – Towards a People’s Assemblies Movement in London on December 11, to plan the next steps along this road.

Penny Cole

TUC's shameful betrayal

The Trades Union Congress decision, to hold a national demonstration against the spending cuts to take place over five months after they were announced and on the eve of their implementation is shameful.

Worse, it is scheduled to take place on a Saturday, on 26 March 2011, to avoid any idea that it is a call for mid-week strike action instead of gentle stroll through the streets of London.

The context of the decision announced by TUC leader Brendan Barber on Saturday, makes it an act of betrayal as great as any during its more than 140-year history.

With 500,000 public sector workers destined to lose their jobs as the result of the deepest spending cuts in the history of British capitalism, the TUC and its main members have abandoned any pretence of resistance. The decision to hold a march in five months was supported by the main public sector unions, Unison, GMB and Unite. Since the Spending Review was announced, these unions have stressed that they will not take action against the coalition.

A few hundred yards away, just as Barber spoke, striking London firefighters were on the march. They are threatened with the sack and the destruction of their union. The TUC is leaving the Fire Brigades Union to face destruction on its own.

Talk about the impact on jobs, pensions, wages, services etc - and that's it! It’s not simply sluggish – it’s deliberate inaction behind a smokescreen of consultation, education and protest. The TUC is acting like a focus group for the Coalition, promising to feed back public anger so that the government will "see sense".

On Saturday, Barber spouted pseudo-fiery words against the City rich:
“And the bankers who caused this mess,” he said, “will not be affected at all because the pathetically small banking levy will leave them popping the champagne corks right across the square mile.”

The real intention is to reinforce the fiction, that the Con-Dem cuts are simply “ideological”: "The impact of this brutal, ideological and cripplingly unfair [our italics] austerity will be truly devastating,” Barber told London Trades Councils representatives at Congress House.

In other words, there is no crisis of the capitalist system driving the cuts – simply a few greedy bankers.

And public service union GMB leader Paul Kenny continued the fake war by threatening the Coalition with a loss of votes: "As the plan unfolds and its impact is felt in homes and communities up and down the country, the Tory/Liberal authors will find life increasingly difficult at the ballot box," he said.

Some threat.

Some critics of the TUC want next year’s demonstration brought forward and for unions who want to fight the cuts to organise a one-day public sector general strike. But this is inadequate for a variety of reasons:

- it divides public from private sector workers (who will also lose jobs as a result of cuts)
- by limiting the strike to 24 hours turns a general strike, which has revolutionary potential, into a protest,
- it assumes that the government will capitulate under pressure.

Experiences on the Continent, most recently France, show the opposite is true. Several general strikes have failed to move Sarkozy over pensions. At the end of last week, state forces were used to end blockades of fuel depots while the Senate approved the changes. Sarkozy is not for turning and nor is the Cameron/Clegg coalition. At their backs is the global economic crisis and yawning budget deficits which grow larger by the day.

The strike weapon is limited when the issues are about a crisis of the economic system and the power of the state. Strikes need to be supplemented by wider actions. A revolutionary mobilisation is needed to unite communities in a way that challenges the authority and power of government and the state machine.

A strategy of developing People’s Assemblies offers a real way forward to unite all those fighting the cuts. The urgent need is to expose the treachery of the trade union leadership by campaigning for a transfer of power on to a democratically elected network of Peoples Assemblies.

Paul Feldman and Corinna Lotz
A World to Win

Let the battle commence

The £6.2 billion cuts package announced by chancellor George Osborne and his Lib Dem partner in crime David Laws will cost jobs and hit services, and are just the opening round in plans for savage reductions in public spending. The big issue is how workers and communities can defeat these plans.

Osborne claimed that the first tranche of cuts were aimed at eliminating “wasteful expenditure”. But the freeze on job recruitment in the civil service and the axing of a series of semi-government agencies can only result in fewer jobs and more intensive conditions for those who remain. The cancellation of private sector contracts will inevitably result in closure of medium-sized firms and send more people to the dole queue, which is already at its highest level since the early 1990s.

The immediate cuts will be followed by an emergency budget next month and a major programme of reductions lasting years will be announced in the autumn. These are certain to include effective pay cuts for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers.

To plan how to defeat the coalition and its plans, we have to be clear what the cuts aimed at reducing the state’s £150 billion plus budget deficit are about. The deficit is a result of the meltdown of the financial system in 2008, the bank bail-outs and the consequent recession.

The economic globalisation that began in the 1980s was driven by debt – the debt of individual households, corporations and governments. There is a reason for that and it’s called capitalism. As we explain in our Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions:

“Competition on price demands increases in the productivity of labour which reduces the hours needed for the production of a commodity. So the value, which is determined by the quantity of labour it contains, and hence the price of, and profit from each commodity tend to decline as a result. To offset the reducing profit derived from each ever-cheaper computer or car, more units of each type of commodity must be manufactured and sold.”

Because people’s income through wages can never be sufficient to buy all the goods produced globally, the financial system developed new ways to provide credit. This in turn got completely out of hand, as the Manifesto notes:

“The global cloud of credit expanded way beyond the value of productive capacity, goods and services it supposedly represented, engulfing the world in debt. By 2006, around 90% of the world’s credit was effectively worthless, sustained by and sustaining the fiction of endless growth ... The consumer boom gave way to a downward spiral that ended the dream of continuous credit-and-debt fuelled growth.”

The globalisation train is now running in reverse as global capitalism heads for an unparalleled slump. Countries with massive state debts are the weakest links in the chain. These include not just Greece and Spain but the United States and Britain.

The cuts are the expression of the destruction of capacity and assets by capitalism when it is in crisis and, of course, they only deepen the problems of the economy as more people become unemployed. The British coalition government has to make the cuts because that’s what the system demands, just as British Airways has to slash staff costs and benefits to survive.

So when Osborne says “we are in this together” and that today’s cuts are a first step to “improve the quality of people’s lives and build a better future” we know that he is simply lying. The immediate future is one of building an all-out struggle against the government, telling the trade union leaders that if they are at all serious, they will have to defy anti-union laws and lead immediate walk-outs.

Actions in Spain and Greece have already provided a significant lesson. Strikes, rallies and resistance must be part of a vision of a different society, one based on co-operation and co-ownership not competition and profit or they will not succeed. People’s Assemblies that take up the issue of power and an alternative to capitalist rule have a decisive role to play in the coming struggles.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

History points the way

The idea of organising independently of the state in order to challenge the established political order, which we put forward in the shape of People’s Assemblies, is not new or foreign to British social history.

From the Levellers in the English Revolution of the 17th century, to the Chartists of the 19th century, through to the trade unions in the period following World War One, ordinary people have combined to confront the state.

The Levellers were the left-wing of the New Model Army established by Oliver Cromwell in the Civil War with Charles I over who ruled England – the absolute monarch or Parliament. Regiments elected representatives or “agitators” to the Army Council and these were recognised by the commanders. Levellers took many of these positions.

In the famous Putney Debates held in October 1647, the Levellers challenged Cromwell with a draft Agreement of the People, which gave everyone the vote and insisted that Parliament should pass no laws “evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people”.

The Chartists, who campaigned for the vote for working men, held various Conventions during their struggle which began in the late 1830s when an estimated 300,000 people assembled at Kersal Moor near Manchester. Typical slogans on the day were “For Children and Wife we’ll War to the Knife” and “Bread and Revolution”.

In 1839, the Convention of the Industrious Classes met first in London and then Birmingham. It considered what to do in the event that Parliament rejected the Chartist petition signed by 1.2 million people. Delegates adopted the formula of “peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must”. A manifesto of “ulterior measures” included a month’s general strike, a resort to arms and a trade boycott.

In 1848, galvanised by a revolution in France, the Chartist movement made a final attempt to achieve its demands through a petition backed by a demonstration of over 200,000 at Kennington. The government feared a revolution and blocked the bridges across the Thames.

The Chartists then convened a National Assembly for May 1 as a would-be rival seat of power to Parliament. Its aim was to continue sitting until the Charter was law. The Assembly took on policies way beyond the Charter, including the severing of the connection between church and state, the repeal of the union between Britain and Ireland, the employment of poor on public works and even a recommendation of arming the people. An insurrection launched in August 1848 was defeated.

After the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia, which overthrew the Tsar, the idea of Soviets or Workers’ Councils, which had spearheaded the movement against autocracy, spread through Europe. The Labour and Socialist Convention held at Leeds on 3 June 1917 was held expressly “to follow Russia”.

The conference attended by 1,600 delegates adopted a resolution that called on the labour movement to establish councils of workers and soldiers' delegates to work for, among other things, the complete political and economic emancipation of international labour. During the brief General Strike of 1926, workers’ council were established in some towns and became the effective power in the area.

Now that the right to vote has been neutered by an undemocratic Parliamentary system in serious decay, the conditions are emerging to reassert more fundamental rights to do with power and control over our lives. That is why we not only say “Hang on to your vote” at the election but also urge the building of People’s Assemblies as a possible mechanism for carrying through revolutionary change in the traditions of the Levellers, Chartists and trade unionists of earlier eras.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor