Unity! June 2018

CP BRiTAiN

CP BRiTAiN

communist-party.org.uk

June 2018

Only a left-wing Labour government can solve Britain’s social crisis BRITAIN

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he GReNfeLL scandal is the most dramatic illustration of Britain's housing crisis and grotesque levels of social inequality and injustice Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths told the party's May executive Committee meeting. he slammed both Dame Judith hackitt's review of building regulations in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster and the Tory response. She had stopped short of calling for a ban on combustible cladding, while housing and Communities secretary James Brokenshire offered ‘consultation’ on the hackitt report followed by unspecified legislation.

This then is the ‘British way’ to limit the reckless, anti-social, profiteering

Mike Quille NiTY! ReADeRS know all about economic struggle. it’s a constant struggle for many people nowadays to make ends meet on low incomes and inadequate benefits, because these have been deliberately frozen and even cut by governments of the rich and powerful. it’s hard work just to keep your job these days – let alone get more pay, win better terms and conditions, and get some satisfaction out of work. That’s why the trade union movement is vital to protecting workers’ economic interests, and why it has been attacked and obstructed by recent governments, which by and large act in the interests of owners, not workers.

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activities of big business. Guidance notes, voluntary codes of practice, toothless ombudspersons, light-touch regulation and – when things go horrendously wrong – committees of inquiry, judicial reviews, empty declarations and occasionally a royal commission he said. ‘In fact,’ said Griffiths, anything except legislative bans and powerful action to enforce them’.

Grenfell shows that Britain's social crisis is deepening and it confirms the urgent need to replace Theresa May's minority regime with a left-led Labour government, said the Communist Party.

The party condemned the sell-off of social housing to private developers, property speculators and ‘giant US multinational corporations such as Blackstone’ and attacked so-called 'socially affordable' housing clauses in

private sector housebuilding contracts as a ‘cruel hoax’.

Only a massive programme to build more public sector houses and apartments rather than the large-scale revival of the private rental sector will ensure decent, affordable and secure homes for all.

Robert Griffiths highlighted Britain's ‘institutionally racist’ immigration system and severe funding and staff shortages in the NhS as two other significant aspects of a wider and deeper social crisis.

The Communist Party executive reaffirmed its support for the election of a left-led Labour government and warned that only an upsurge in mass, extra-parliamentary campaigns will create the most favourable conditions for victory. H

And that’s why political struggle is so important for us in the labour movement. it’s why we need to campaign politically as well as economically, supporting and joining political parties which will genuinely try and change a system which is so obviously rigged against us.

There is another struggle, though – the cultural struggle. And culture is not just the arts, it is all the things we do to entertain, educate and enlighten ourselves, usually with others. it includes sport, television, eating and drinking, the internet, religious and spiritual activity – all those things which bring meaning, purpose, enjoyment and happiness into our lives. in each and every one of those activities, working people face a struggle. in the arts, it’s getting harder to become a musician or actor or writer without rich relatives to support you. in sport, the ticket prices for football matches, for example, exclude families on tight budgets from attending together. in the media, most of the press and broadcasters are blatantly biased against progressive politicians and labour leaders.

Culture Matters Co-Operative ltd has been set up to help the labour movement develop the cultural struggle, so that working people can join in and enjoy all cultural activities. We promote a democratic and socialist approach to art, culture and politics, which aims to assert our common humanity against divisions of class, gender, race and the other social divisions engendered by capitalism.

We run a website which publishes creative and critical material on politics and culture; we manage Bread and Roses arts awards; deliver cultural education workshops to trade unionists; publish books; and contribute to the development of culture policy in the labour movement.

Join us in the fight for a better world! H if you would like to help or contribute material to CultureMatters contact us at: info@culturematters.org.uk.

Culture Matters Co-Operative ltd culturematters.org.uk twitter.com/Culturesmatterfacebook.com/cult uremattersuk

Workers of all lands, unite!

TRADe UNION ORGANISeRS AND yOUNG wORkeRS in the zero hour contract, agency and casualised work sector packed the Marx library for the Communist Party/Young Communist league day school in May. John Hendy QC led on a Manifesto for Labour Law, which calls for a Ministry for labour and a new set of rights for workers especially aimed at pinning down gangmasters and ending bogus self employment.

RMT train driver Alex Gordon, opened on alternative ways of structuring employment and a political and economic programme to put the interests of workers first. Public service union officer Tony Conway (who convenes the party’s anti racist and anti fascist commission) launched a new pamphlet Workers of All Lands - a labour movement policy on migration, labour and refugees. in the afternoon it started to get tough! with a mix of training and policy sessions led by union organisers active in the sector. elly Baker led on recruiting and organising, Rhys McCarthy on organising and winning recognition and rights at work, Pierre Marshall led a youthful and combative session on using social media to organise unions and Ann Field on running effective meetings and union organisation. Daragh O’Neill for the YCl, winner of a TuC award for organising, reported on the Sheffield needs a pay rise campaign.

A lively final session decided to establish an online network to support those attending the school when organising and produce a pamphlet on the theme of the day for distribution to delegates at the 150th anniversary TuC in Manchester in September.

A series of video shorts are also being prepared to launch at the same time, covering organising, workers rights and an economic programme for the people. H INSeCURe wORk The Communist Party has backed the four-point plan proposed by Communication Workers’ leader Dave Ward which was outlined in the Morning Star on 12 May. The plan calls for a common bargaining agenda for unions to tackle insecure work.

This will be backed up with a labour movement summit to agree a charter of cooperation for organising non-union workers and a manifesto of policies that would provide a ‘new deal’ for workers.

Dave Ward called for this year’s TuC conference to agree a day of action and other initatives in 2019. H The COMMUNIST PARTy is mobilising for the 30 June NHS demonstration and in opposition at Tory Party conference in Birmingham on 30 September –3 October.

H The party will support protests against Trump’s visit while emphasising the class character uS administration and uS imperialism.

H The party’s Housing Commission – made up of tenant’s activists, construction workers and housing professionalsis – is to draw up a radical policy for the labour movement.

H The Communist Party has reiterated its opposition to second eu referendum before implementation of 2016 result. H The MASSACRe IN GAzA and the callous killings elsewhere urgently remind us of our duty to secure justice for the Palestinian people.

The actions of the governments of israel and of the united States now directly threaten world peace. Yet the British government continues to allow the sale of arms to the israeli army and British banks to supply credit.

Our country, allied through NATO with the uS, is directly complicit in these crimes.

The labour movement in Britain needs to act to: H Strengthen measures for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions H Demand the imposition of sanctions by the British government H Support the call for medical aid to hospitals in Palestine H Call for the release of Marwan Barghouti and other political prisoners H Call for an immediate resumption of peace negotiations on the basis of uN resolutions and the creation of a Palestinian state within its pre-1967 borders with its capital in east Jerusalem. H The party’s International Bulletin on Palestine can be read at https://issuu.com/communist_party docs/cpb_international_2018_no_2

Marx’s Das Kapital and capitalism today CAPITALISM

anticipated not only the 1929 Wall Street Crash, but also the Great Crash of 2007-08.

Capital’s analysis of capitalist centralisation ROBeRT GRiFFiTHS and concentration — accumulation of more and more capital in fewer and bigger monopolies — N 1867, MARx wrote to Johannes Becker that anticipated the rise of today’s corporations.

Das Kapital would be ‘without question the in 2017, monopoly corporations made up most terrible MiSSile that has yet been hurled more than half of the world’s biggest 150 at the heads of the bourgeoisie’. economic entities by Gross Domestic Product ever since, Capital has armed the working class with the theory of surplus value, explaining or sales revenue. each of the three biggest (WalMart, Toyota Motor and Volkswagen) had a why and how labour power is exploited. turnover bigger than the GDP of at least 150 of Since 1945, for example, the average the world’s countries. production worker in Britain or the uSA has While these companies straddle the spent anywhere between 2.4 and 3.3 hours of globalised economy, almost all of them have a an 8-hour working day performing unpaid labour, creating surplus value over and above the home country whose national state power is value of the commodities that can be purchased usually exercised in their interests. Thirty-eight N PlACe OF AuSTeRiTY, published by the of the biggest 100 transnational corporations by their daily wage.

Peoples Assembly, sets out a programme for are based in the uSA, with 12 in China (many of Together with Value, Price and Profit — the the people with solid, practical proposals for a range of government measures that would put text of Marx’s contribution to the debate within them in social ownership), 12 in Japan, eight in Germany, seven in France and six in Britain. an end to austerity policies and begin the task of the international Working Men’s Association in On the basis of Marxist political economy, 1865 — Capital explains why the wages struggle rebuilding a Britain fit for working people. lenin and others developed our understanding is both necessary and fruitful.

Speaking on behalf of the rich and of the new era of finance capital, stateVolumes One and Three show how — powerful, the Tories and almost all of the monopoly capitalism and imperialism. This alongside workers producing commodities for mass media have told us for nearly a decade deepened the struggle for national liberation capitalist profit — commercial and clerical that austerity is necessary for ‘economic struggles against colonialism, profoundly workers are exploited as well, performing recovery’ following the 2008 financial and affecting the course of world development. unpaid surplus labour even though they might economic crisis.

Thanks to Marx and Capital, too, many not be creating surplus value. Here is the basis They even tell us that the crash, and the millions of workers have come to understand for working class unity across every sector. recession that followed, were not caused by that they must fight not only the effects of their Capital also exposes the various ways in bankers and speculators, not by the big which employers seek to maximise surplus value exploitation, but its cause. As Value, Price and corporations nor by the politicians and their Profit put it, these ‘unavoidable guerilla fights’ will through longer hours, higher productivity, deregulation of the financial sector. They still always have to be waged against the insist the crisis was caused by too much public devalued wages and the super-exploitation of encroachments of capital and the market, for as female, migrant and foreign labour. spending, not least on public sector workers’ long as capitalism itself exists. Therefore, the echoing Robert Owen and karl Marx, the pay and pensions – local government staff, working class should not merely alleviate the First and Second internationals proclaimed the health visitors, carers, park attendants, ‘eight Hour Day’ as the main demand of world- symptoms — it should eradicate the disease, by firefighters, nurses, doctors, technicians and abolishing capitalism and constructing the new, all the other committed, hard-working staff… wide demonstrations on May 1. Today, the struggle to win or defend the 8-hour day or 40- communist mode of production. it was all their fault.

The subsequent overthrow of different Almost every year the government cuts the hour week continues around the world. forms of bourgeois power in Russia, eastern However, while improvements and reforms tax bill for the wealthiest few, reduces might be won, they will be sustained only by the europe, China, Se Asia and Cuba has had the corporation tax, squeezes income and economic and political strength of the organised most profound impact on world development. benefits for working people, for the Working class state power, economic working class. As Capital warned, capitalists are unemployed and disabled. The Tories tell us planning, social ownership and massive driven by competition, mechanisation and the ‘we’re all in it together’… but we all see investment in the means of production — as tendency of the rate of profit to fall to seek plainly that “austerity policies” always make the poor poorer and the filthy rich even richer ways of maximising the surplus labour and value advocated in Capital — enabled the Soviet union and eastern europe to achieve higher levels of extracted from workers. in terms of stated government objectives, economic growth, equality and social security Marxism has thus educated and inspired austerity policies have failed: there has been than in comparative capitalist countries, all generations of trade unionists, socialists and no national debt reduction – in fact it has communists to organise and mobilise millions of without the super-exploitation of colonies or steadily grown from under 40 per cent of workers for many thousands of battles over pay, semi-colonies; the Soviet union saved europe GDP in 2008 to just under 90 per cent in from capitalist-fascist barbarism; and the socialist hours and working conditions. The result has 2017. countries rendered invaluable support to national been a general rise in working class living But the real aim of austerity was to liberation movements around the world. Today, standards in the developed and developing restabilise the post crisis economy in favour on a similar economic and political basis, China is countries over the past 150 years. of the class of bankers and big business emerging as an economic superpower and Marx explained much else about capitalism billionaires, raising the rate of profit at the yesterday and today: about crisis, mechanisation, Cuba’s social and cultural achievements exceed expense of the working class. in that they those of almost all developing and many have succeeded, and will continue to do so, if alienation at work and the ‘disposable industrial developed capitalist countries. reserve army’ of labour. His treatment of we let them. H Working people can now learn from a wide ‘fictitious capital’ and the financial markets

Change is i coming How can we achieve and anti-austerity government?

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The National People's Assembly 2018 10am – 6pm Saturday 2 June 2018 St Pancras New Church euston Road NW1 2BA Book now! https://tinyurl.com/y8fno74z

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s Available now from the Peoples Assembly Against Austerity or at www.communist-party.org.uk/shop

range of experiences of winning state power and building socialism, as the lower stage of communism. These include immensely positive experiences as well as the failures to resolve problems of resource allocation, innovation, productivity and incentives.

Towards the end of Volume One of Capital, Marx laid bare capitalism’s fundamental contradiction, that between the vast social character of production and the private monopoly ownership of the means of production. Capitalism’s class system — dominated by the narrow interests of a small class of powerful shareholders — holds back further development of society’s productive forces, which could be deployed to resolve most if not all of humanity’s basic social, economic and environmental problems.

Hence Marx’s belief that the capitalist mode of production and its state power would be overthrown by the growing revolt of the working class, which he said was ‘a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself ’.

The working class has indeed grown since Capital was first published — from 300 million to around 3.4 billion today. We have 268 million workers in trade unions affiliated to the World Federation of Trade unions or the international Confederation of Trade unions, with another 322 million in the All-China Federation. That makes more than half a billion organised workers, more and more of them women whose additional exploitation was detailed in Volume One of Capital.

We have the international Communist movement and other parties and movements of the left.

Since 1867, the objective conditions have matured for abolishing a capitalist mode of production now characterised by global exploitation, grotesque inequality, parasitic ‘financialisation’, economic crisis, massive unemployment and under-employment, imperialist militarisation and war, forced mass migrations, food insecurity, under-nutrition, environmental degradation, corporate corruption, energy crisis, global warming and destabilised weather systems.

The urgent necessity for marxists and communists in the 21st century is to ensure that the subjective conditions — working class organisation, revolutionary leadership and strategy, political consciousness — are sufficient for the historic tasks ahead. H

s Marx’s Das Kapital and capitalism today

by Robert Griffiths Illustrated £8 €9 (plus £2 €2.5 pp)

s State Monopoly Capitalism

by Gretchen Binus, Beate Landefeld and Andreas Wehr.

Introduction by Jonathan White The 2007/8 worldwide banking collapse exposed – to a new generation – the cyclical nature of modern capitalism’s enduring crisis. With the collapse in bank confidence came the crisis of confidence in modern capitalism itself, and thus a resurgence of interest in Marxism. £4.95 www.manifestopress.org.uk

s The EU, Brexit and class politics Which way for the labour movement?

by Robert Griffiths £2

ROBeRT GRiFFiTHS iS GeNeRAl SeCReTARY OF THe COMMuNiST PARTY His new book Marx’s Das Kapital and capitalism today is available at www.manifestopress.org.uk

Jeremy Corbyn’s labour under attack ANTI-SeMITISM eT uS be clear. The current media offensive against labour and Jeremy Corbyn is not mobilised to root out such active antisemitism as exists in British society which is almost exclusively the work of the extreme right.

Opinion polls (and the Home Affairs Committee) show that labour is among the least susceptible to the anti-semitism that still maintains a certain currency in British society; or that there is “no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of anti-semitic attitudes within the labour Party than any other political party”. But the dominant media narrative has it that it is labour that has an anti-semitism problem.

Where anti-semitism exists in the labour movement it must be exposed. it mostly appears in social media where authorship is often obscure, is expressed in unwary formulations by the inexperienced or immature or fits into deeprooted and subterranean notions that Jews constitute an wealthy elite or a secret ruling cabal. Where these ideas appear in the labour movement the German social democrat Bebel called this the “socialism of fools”.

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THIRD EDITION

The central thrust of Zionist propaganda is to conflate criticism of the policies of what they describe as “the Jewish state” with anti-semitism as such. it is pretty clear that this campaign – backed by the establishment media, Atlanticist and pro-NATO elements inside and outside the labour Party, by Tories and other reactionaries in the Board of Deputies and the self appointed Jewish leadership Council – is not about defending Jewish people but about derailing solidarity with Palestine and reducing the chances of a labour government led by a convinced antiimperialist being elected.

The right-wing elements who historically targeted Jews are today more focused on Muslims. Many combine anti-semitism with support for uS foreign policy and the most reactionary elements in Zionism and the apartheid israeli state. The eDl’s Tommy Robinson armed and posed on an israeli tank!

The israeli labour Party ended its links with the labour Party in Britain after a speech by Jeremy Corbyn in which he criticised an earlier murder of Palestinian protestors (in which he also referred to protests by progressive israelis).

And that same israeli labour Party leader believes that the illegal settlements on occupied

Palestinian territory are, ”…the beautiful and devoted face of Zionism…”.

Jewish Voice for labour is very effectively challenging the deceptive nature of the offensive but a demonstration of the power of the narrative to tame even the most unruly of commentators is demonstrated by Frankie Boyle’s surrender to its essence in presenting labour as simultaneously anti-semitic, denuded of radicalism and thus facing inevitable electoral defeat. His fellow comic David Baddiel performed what he imagines as the ‘coup de grace’ in criticising Corbyn for coupling his opposition to anti-semitism with his abhorrence of racism. Baddiel managed to convey the impression that anti-semitism is to be somehow privileged above other forms of discrimination.

And that to bracket it with racism somehow weakened Corbyn’s credibility. Baddiel slyly suggested that he thought Corbyn was “probably” not anti-semitic himself.

Despite somewhat blunting labour’s advance it is possible that this mendacious offensive has reached close to its effective limits among the great majority of the British people. But it still has the capacity to demobilise some on the left and even confuse some in the labour leadership. H

Jeremy Corbyn “The Morning Star is the most precious and only voice we have in the daily media” £1 weekdays, £1.50 at weekends.

From newsagents or online at www.morningstaronline.co.uk

s Women & Class

by Mary Davis has become the standard text for the labour movement’s engagement with the issues. £2

s Workers of all lands, unite! sets out a labour movement policy on migration, labour and refugees. £2 www.communist-party.org.uk

Ruskin House 23 Coombe Road Croydon CR01BD Editorial team: Derek Kotz, Anita Halpin, Deirdre O’Neil, Nick Wright, Evan Pritchard