End the Imperialist War in Afghanistan

Another month in the decade long imperialist war in Afghanistan, another high profile massacre of innocent Afghan civilians by an American soldier. This time Staff Sergeant Robert Bales of the 3^rd Stryker Brigade left the NATO military base in southern Kandahar province in the early hours of Sunday 11 March and broke into the homes of local Afghan villagers living near the base. He then calmly made his way through the hamlet and shot dead 16 people mostly women and children. It’s reported that the soldier hunted down members of a family like military targets and that some of his victims were found covered in burn marks inflicted by Bales.

This horrific incident, though astonishing, is not unprecedented. It was only in 2010 in the same province that three US Soldiers formed a ‘kill team’ which murdered three Afghan civilians. Last year a hungover British guardsmen stabbed a 10 year old boy in the kidney for no apparent reason. British soldiers are currently on trial for abusing Afghan children whilst US wikileaks files reported 21 separate incidents of British troops shooting dead or bombing Afghan civilians. The UN reported that last year NATO and its Afghan allies were responsible for 410 civilian deaths, a figure widely agreed to be a gross underestimate of the true number of civilians killed by the occupying forces. 

Nor is the murder of civilians limited to Afghanistan. The war in Iraq was punctuated by occupation massacres from the start: Haditha, where 24 men, women and children were murdered in cold blood by US marines in 2005, the killing of 17 by Blackwater military contractors in 2007, and another dozen by a US Apache crew in Baghdad the same year are among the more notorious.

NATO will no doubt blame the latest massacre on a mentally unstable Robert Bales and wash its hands of all responsibility for the atrocity. The fact though that such horrors occur time and time again during their imperialist occupations prove that they are endemic. Afghanistan is being occupied, not for the good of the Afghan people but due to the strategy of the U.S.A in maintaining it’s hegemony over the region. It props up  one of the most corrupt and unpopular regimes in the world, that of President Karzai, and bombs any opposition into the ground. As of going to press,  404 British soldiers, 1,827 American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Afghan civilians have lost their lives during the war. Many more will die before the planned withdrawal of NATO troops in 2014 but nothing will have been achieved, an incredibly sad loss of human life to feed the needs of imperialism.

Back to the workhouse

The methods that the rich are willing to use to squeeze every last bit of profit for themselves out of workers seemingly knows no limits. Not content with putting hundreds of thousands of people on the dole through sackings, the rich, capitalist classes now cry that these same people, who they put out of work, are lazy and undeserving of the paltry £53 a week that they receive to live off whilst having to search for non-existent jobs. The con-dem government has listened to the concerns of the rich and implemented a scheme whereby people will be forced to work for free or have their job seekers allowance stopped, in what certainly harps back to the infamous workhouses of Victorian Britian.

The scheme known unofficially as workfare is a way for big businesses such as Tesco, Asda, Mcdonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Primark, Boots, The Arcadia Group of stores which includes Topman and Burton amongst a host of others to add to their already enormous profits by effectively employing slave labour.

An unemployed person can now be told by the Job Centre that they must work 30 hours a week for a company such as Tesco that has offered them ‘work experience’. They will not be paid for this work, nor even guaranteed a permanent job with the company once they have completed the 26 week placement. If they refuse to perform unpaid labour for the company offering the placement then they will have their benefits stopped for 13 weeks the first time they refuse to participate, for six months the second time and for three years the third time, condemning them to possible homelessness and starvation.

Unemployed persons are thus forced to work for free and to produce value for the company employing their labour. Companies such as Asda which already make over £10 million profit in a single day benefit, while the workers who create this wealth get nothing. The scheme has already forced 24,000 people to work without pay whilst Tesco a company that made £1.9billion in the last six months exploited 1,400 of those working. Some of the workers employed in this way even have to do nightshifts and work in freezers without proper protective clothing.

Aside from the moral outrage this scheme provokes there is also the absurdity of it. Implemented by the champions of the free market, the conservative party, the scheme is actually using public funds to provide the job seekers allowance the person receives in lieu of any proper payment from the company. So the government is subsidizing large corporations’ labour costs.

The capitalists clearly think that they can get away with this robbery. If it were up to them they would have us all working for free, and unless the working class forcefully resists the workfare scheme then they will get their way, this can already be seen with permanent Tesco staff being sent home early from work as the company has people working for free.

Greece, The Achilles Heel of European Capitalism

Once again the Greek economy has hit the headlines. A new wave of austerity measures is sure to spell disaster for the working class in Greece. We have all seen the dramatic scenes of Greek workers taking to the streets, expressing their desperation through the only means they have. The reason for this reaction is clear. Overall unemployment currently stands at 20.9%, including half of all 16 to 24 year olds. Social spending and pensions have been slashed, and wages have been cut by up to a third, giving rise to greater poverty and homelessness. Bearing in mind that these figures were recorded before the new wave of austerity measures, you can see why it is so crucial for the working class in Greece to unify. They face the prospect of 150,000 job losses in the public sector alone, within the next two years, accompanied by further cuts to the minimum wage and a chaotic instability that darkens their lives.

The media bombard us with figures so huge they can be very difficult to really grasp the effects they have on real people. The focal point of the recent backlash has been the newly agreed package of loans, crudely disguised as an “aid package” by EU ministers. Without the consent of the people it directly affects, the package gives the Greek Government €130 billion to pay off a portion of its debt, which currently stands at €350 billion, on the assurance that the Greek government drive through yet another numbing wave of austerity measures. The assurance given by the Greek government, with the usual indifference towards workers, included a further €3 billion to be cut from government spending in a “timely and efficient manner.” This will have massive consequences for the workers of Greece. Health care, education, welfare and pensions will all suffer meaning a real drop in living standards for the people. The budget for Greek health care was set at €6.1 billion but is now facing a €1.8 billion cut, almost a third. That will mean fewer doctors, nurses, less access to vital medication and equipment as well as a drop in the overall standard of care. This cut, amongst a number of others, demonstrates just how the workers of Greece have been completely disregarded by their government in the face of capitalist interest. Even EU commissionaires privately acknowledge that this will not prevent a Greek default, but serves to delay it in the hope of protecting their own financial interests in Greece.

The Greek worker’s are made to pay the bill for the capitalists’ financial crisis and their own corrupt government. However the Greek working class was also on the forefront of giving the bosses and bankers a good fightback, with several massive strike actions and huge demonstrations on the street. It might not be long until there will be “Greek conditions” in other countries, like Britain. We could win a lot if we would learn from the example of our Greek friends and learn to speak Greek with our bosses.

Victory for the Sparks

The seven major Construction companies, such as Balfour Beatty and NG Bailey, been forced to abandon their plans to cut the pay of their workforce in the face of the threat of strike action. On Thursday 16 February Balfour Beatty failed to obtain an injunction against Unite, the union which had balloted its members employed by the company twice and on both occasions the members had overwhelmingly voted in favour of strike action.

Balfour Beatty has now, in face of a potential strike, scrapped its plans to force all its employees to sign up to the BESNA agreement and has instead caved in to the demands of the electricians and retained the Joint Industry Board Agreement (JIB). The other seven smaller construction firms quickly followed suit and threw in the towel. This will ensure that there is no further wholsesale de-skilling of the electricians’ trade and that previous rates of pay will be maintained for electricians employed by Balfour Beatty.

The victory of the sparks over the BESNA seven, as the offending construction companies have come to be known, is the first major example of a  successful struggle being waged by the working class since the current economic crisis began in 2007. The example of the electricians shows that the bosses fear nothing more than the workers deciding to fight back.

The electricians’ struggle began in August of last year when the eight largest construction companies announced that they would be withdrawing from the long standing JIB agreement, which guarantees pay and conditions in the industry. Instead, the companies wanted to bring in their own BESNA agreement with substantially worse pay and conditions. They announced that unless electricians signed up to the new agreement by December 7 2011 they would face the sack.

Unite’s bureaucracy however was slow to react. It was a group of activists, who had been fighting the blacklisting of unionists in the construction industry for years, which set up a rank and file committee. The committee coordinated actions to force the construction giants to back down. These activists had learnt from past experience that the union bureaucracy was slow to act because it was generally unwilling to lean out the window too much and that if the workers want something they have to get it themselves.

The rank and file committee organized protests at major construction sites around the country such as the Shard and Blackfirars station in London or the Town Hall refurbishment in Manchester. In Glasgow electricians picketed at construction industry bosses awards ceremony. These protests continued weekly nationwide, culminating in a national day of action on December 7 which saw wildcat strike action at construction sites across the country. It was due to this pressure from below that the Unite bureaucrats finally put some effort in to the dispute and balloted for strike action.

Unable to get an injunction, which would have made strike action illegal, the bosses of the BESNA seven finally backed down. This once again shows that the workers’ power is the strike. So, when the union bureaucracy is paralyzed by its own conservatism, we should organize ourselves along the lines of the rank and file committees and we could go on, not just defending previous gains made in struggle, but making new ones.

Leaving Goldman's

On the 14.th of March Greg Smith, an executive director of Goldman Sachs, resigned publicly in the New York Times. He described himself as appalled by the moral bankruptcy displayed by the Wall Street bank. In his letter he layed out how Goldman help themselves before their clients, how promotions are dished out for those who manage to persuade clients to invest in stock or productsthat they are trying to get rid of due to their unlikely profitability. Furthermore, he cited the blatant disrespect for anyone ‘not on board.’

The shadowy business practices of Goldman Sachs are well known. In April 2011 the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations accused Goldman of deliberately selling mortgage-linked derivatives at inflated prices after it realised that the housing market was about to crash. The report also alleged that Goldman had attempted to cause as much pain as possible to investors caught on the wrong side of their investments to maximise their own profits. So, there is nothing new there then. What was remarkable was his hark back to "the secret sauce that made this place great" – which had been about “teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients.” It is a commonly held belief that through reform it would be possible to create (or recreate, in the minds of certain capitalists) a friendly, ethical banking system. Unfortunately those who advocate reforming capitalism in the hope that it will bring an end to the selfish and greedy nature of business and provide prosperity for all will be left bitterly disappointed.

Due to the very nature of capitalism any reforms that are made can only provide short term benefits, sooner or later any improvements will be cut back in the march towards ever larger profits. The distinct interests of the ruling classes compared to those of workers ensures a conflict that can only be resolved by the working class taking things into their own hands. The initial demands of worker’s centre around three key demands. The raising of wages, the reduction of working hours without loss of pay and the freedom to organise-primarily to prevent workers from being forced to compete with each other in a race to the bottom. This directly contradicts the desire of the business owners’ who strive to ensure they obtain larger and larger profit margins.

The clear contradictions between workers fighting for more equal conditions and bosses trying to fight for greater personal wealth is just one of a number of contradictions inherent within capitalism. Reforms can help improve conditions in the short term but the unadulterated quest for profit means they will always be rescinded. Reforms won by the workers on one day will be taken from them by the capitalists on another, like those that can be seen today with the ConDem government’s onslaught on public services. It is for this reason that the eventual purpose of any workers struggle should be the complete removal of the capitalist system, and in its place a socialist economy that’s purpose is not mega profits for a privileged few, but a concerted effort to make the wealth of society available to all. Smith’s vision of a ‘secret sauce’ will do nothing for the lives of workers.

The real jobkillers

A new study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research suggests that 160,000 “British Jobs” have been lost to foreigners in the last 15 years. The tabloids quickly came up with loads of headlines saying things like “160,000 Brits lose jobs to migrants!(The Sun)”. This is utter nonsense. But like every time the capitalists get us in a big mess they try to blame it on someone else. Immigrants seem like an easy target. There are a lot of non-domestic workers in the UK, especially from the EU.

These workers however are not stealing anyone’s jobs. Freedom of the movement of labour is a fundamental and necessary right. After all, about 6 million Britons live and work abroad. Are these 6 million jobs ones the British have stolen from other people? As for wage dumping, who is it that discriminates against foreign workers by paying them lower wages? It is the bosses and capitalists! They want to use foreign workers as a tool of pressure to force down wages in Britain, to have lower costs for labour and more money in their pockets. So instead of blaming foreigners, wouldn’t it be more sensible to demand fair wages for all workers in Britain, no matter where they come from?

The real job killers are the capitalists! It is them outsourcing literally millions of jobs for the reason of a cheaper workforce abroad. It is also them and their Tory government who have slashed 376,000 public sector jobs since the general election in 2010. And Mr. Osborne in his review said that there will be a total of 710,000 public sector jobs cut by 2017! Unemployment in the UK is sky-rocketing (currently 2.62 million unemployed) and wages are dropping. Taking into account inflation workers in the UK had their wages cut by 4.5% last year!

The capitalists don’t want to take the blame for the misery they produced. So they and their media try to blame foreigners to split the workers and causing disunity. If the workers in the UK would take a united stand against the bosses, then they could really topple the roots of their problems and they would be a massive force. As long as the workers let themselves be disunited by divisions of nationality, they will be in a weak position and are easy targets in the capitalists’ hunt for profits. Workers in the UK-no matter what nationality-have a common opponent: the British capitalist class.

Issue 6 March/April 2012

Full Paper as PDF

Kony 2012? First and foremost; Imperialism out of Africa!

Leaving Goldman's

End the Imperialist War in Afghanistan

More people without home