We Are The
99%
This is a publication of the Communist Youth Organization of the Workers Communist Party of Iran
ISSUE 00 MONTH YEAR
April 2015
This issue
Bourgeois elections – a sham
Why is Egypt building a new capital city?
Thousands protest against austerity in Montreal
Where are the secular revolutionary humanists in the Australian protests?
The world must never forget the 147 murdered Kenyan students
Only fighting for $15/h is not a working-class solution
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Editor: Chia Barsen Assistant Editor : Hossein Ali Yazdani javanan.tamas@gmail.com http://cyo-iran.blogspot.co youtube.com/user/sjkiran1
Bourgeois elections – a sham The working class of the UK are to have their say about the Government by voting in the General Election. Sadly, voting in the UK election this week only serves to legitimize the bourgeois hegemony of society. Bourgeois elections are vacuous and are meticulously structured to keep out the left and to encapsulate the statusquo. “Democracy� is assiduously showcased to create the illusion of choice, where working people have unbridled control of their life and society. However, in this election there are only two major neoliberal political parties, which only represent business interests, and have the financial power and the media presence. This leaves 22 lefty parties without finance and given no major media coverage. Further, the working class is sent one at a time into singular polling booths to think and decide alone about individualistic issues, only then does their vote count, and not when millions turn out in the streets in protest: that social force does not count for a single vote in bourgeois democracy. It is only in a bourgeois democracy, where capitalism allocation of social wealth is ossified and unquestioned, where one finds the universal human rights to housing, education and healthcare are flouted and actually put to a vote and made redundant. And finally it is in these elections that wage slavery (the economic exploitation of labour during production of social wealth) is never discussed and the working class is left to flounder from one bourgeois election to the next. Voting every 4 years, the working class are sent home and effectively kept out of politics and negated from revolutionary praxis of daily social and economic engagement. Even though all major neoliberal bourgeois parties emphatically claim to uphold the best interests of the working people, this election is a continuation of the neoliberal agenda of cutbacks to social services for the 99% (the working people) and the reduction of taxes for the 1%. Capital continues with its aim to reduce the social responsibility for subsidizing the reproduction of labour through public education, NHS, and social housing and to relay that cost on to the
working class itself. Moreover, by augmenting the pressure on the unions and working class associations, wages and benefits will continue to remain stagnant (real wages will decrease against the rate of inflation) and the gap between the social wealth of the business elite and the working people will become staggering in the years to come. The confluence between major bourgeois parties such UKIP, Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrats is in their realization of the tumultuous and revolutionary character of the working class today. Only through continuous manufacturing of consent via public media, and the monopoly on violence (the police and the army) has the bourgeois been able to legitimize and control such a vast amount of social wealth without a revolutionary working class opposition movement. During elections, bourgeois parties are especially aware of working class power and it is during these times that the bourgeois hides its real character and pretends to accede to some of the working class demands: only after the election does it put itself back into an invidious position against the working class. Pillaging the working class of all social wealth and quelling uprisings and protests with state power is not a long-term solution for capitalism. Neoliberal cutbacks to social services and the reduction of wages and benefits has and will continue to deepen the economic cycles. Capitalism, as global system, functions through the realization of profits which predicates on the economic demand of the working people (mainly): by cutting away the disposable income of the working people (through wage cuts, social benefits and offshoring jobs) capital is also damaging the habitat for its own existence. Simply put, the economic, political difference between capital and labour is insoluble. Any politics orchestrated by the bourgeois during elections will always occlude the interests of the working people.
Why is Egypt building a new capital city? Egypt is planning to build a new capital city costing 30 billion pounds in the desert. The new city which remains nameless will have 660 hospitals, nearly three thousand churches and mosques, and a theme park four times the size of Disneyland. This project is set to be built in seven years. The question remains as to why Egypt, in its current economic situation, has made the decision to build such a city? Currently the unemployment rate in Egypt remains at 13%, one of the highest in the world, with 25% of Egypt’s nearly 90 million population living in abject poverty. With these figures, and two heads of state already rejected by the Egyptian society, president El-Sisi can feel the incipient revolutionary discontent in the Egyptian people. His plans for building this new city is precisely to mitigate this situation and consolidate his place as the head of state. By building a new city with a superfluity of money borrowed from the Arab states, president El-Sisi is using the Keynesian economic model for restarting the Egyptian economy. Keynesian economics that began in the 1930’s and dominated world’s economic thinking in the 1960’s, pre-neoliberalism, is all about demand management. Demand management and Keynesian economics was an attempt at alleviating one of the most central internal contradictions within capital. Without state management of the economy it is in the interest of capital to reduce the worker’s wages (variable capital), and increase the rate of exploitation (through the use of more productive technology) in order to increase surplus and profit through the natural circulation of capital. However, the workers (the producers) as one of the main consumers of the commodities produced, create a large portion of the demand necessary for the circulation of capital to take place. The crux of this issue is that without the necessary demand in the economy via the worker’s wages, the system will be saturated with excess surplus capital and surplus labour (excessive unemployment): a crisis. The Keynesian economic model was a way to dampen the economic crisis cycles by controlling the demand in the economy via high taxation of the capitalists, state ownership of main industries, allowing for strong unions, higher wages, job security and benefits. Where today workers are being paid pittance in the market, in the 1960’s the division between the rich and the poor war far less prominent. The El-Sisi government in Egypt is by no means the only country to rewind the clock to employ a watered down Keynesian economic model. China used urbanization to pull itself out of the last global economic crisis by using half of the world’s steel and cement supplies to build new cities: employing 27 million people in this way. The El-Sisi government as well as China and countries such as Russia (the spectacle of Sochi Olympics) that are using and have used urbanization to “solve”
unemployment have not in essence solved the problem of enormous inequality at all. The new jobs created in building the new city will adhere to the neoliberalism low standard for working-class wages and benefits, and will not in any way reduce the level of inequality in Egypt, but will buy El-Sisi more time in office by temporarily reducing unemployment. Just as neoliberalism forces the borrowing state to liquidate and sell nationalized (state owned) industry to pay for its loans, in Egypt it will be the case that the glittering new city financed by Arab states, will come at a high price to the Egyptian people who will eventually swallow the cost through an even lower standard of living. Capitalism will always find a way to solve its own crisis, either by urbanization or by using draconian methods of wealth extraction from the working poor, through accumulation and dispossession via austerity, and privatization of basic social services. President ElSisi treading a murky path of generating employment through a watered down Keynesian approach, is another of capitalism’s methods for mitigating and ameliorating its own internal contradictions. It is not a working class solution, and in this way it will only serve the interests of the capitalist class and is not remedial to the deep crisis-generating inequality inherent in the system. Only a working class organizational form that acknowledges the internal contradictions within capitalism and its latent forms (such as the urbanization “solution” in Egypt) can militate against it. As long as capitalism is left to find its own solutions to its own self-generated crisis, it will leave ruinous effects on every aspect of humanity. Now that the Egyptian society is seething for change, it is at this precipice that the Egyptian working class organizational form must debase capitalism’s solutions to its own contradictions and carve its own path out of capitalism towards a society economically built to be inoculated against economic inequality and wage slavery as the basic foundation of human society.
Thousands protest against austerity in Montreal
The Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard is staying earnest to the draconian neoliberal austerity economics of tax breaks for the rich and structural adjustment for the poor. With 75, 000 people in attendance, the people of Quebec consisting of mostly students and members of unions, held their fists at the vacuous promises of a secure future made by the Liberal bourgeois party in office. The crux of the matter is the hegemonic neoliberal narrative being reinforced in the Canadian media, as well as major media networks the world over. This narrative is the genial story that by giving tax breaks to the rich (accumulated from the tax dollars of the working people and businesses) it will make a “business friendly” environment so that corporations will invest in the country and in turn generate employment. This theory, often labelled as “trickle-down economics”, which is a fascistic engineered method to raise people’s hope that their boat will rise with the tide of new business. However this theory, in praxis, is discordant with the ideas it has embroiled in the minds of the working people. The cost of social reproduction of labour is at the heart of this issue. Before the rise of neoliberalism which began in Chile, US, Argentina, and Britain, spreading to a large portion of the world, Keynesian economics (demand control) ensured that the cost of social reproduction of labour (i.e. rent, food, healthcare, education, urbanization, etc…) was supported by the taxation of the rich bourgeois (up to 90% corporate tax in the US). However, over three decades of neoliberalism (since the 1980’s), corporate taxation has decreased to nearly a quarter of what it once was (26% in the UK) and wages have remained stagnant: putting a benign smile on the face of all the fat cats. Of course the working people, precluded from the bourgeois government decisions regarding their faith, were the most affected by these tax cuts: leaving the working people to increasingly pay for the cost of their social reproduction thus raising the government deficit. It is important to mention that other bourgeois led initiatives such as wars abroad also added to the general deficit. Today neoliberalism is accumulating wealth through dispossessing the working people of their already cash starved basic social services: turning hospitals and schools into private enterprises, while continuing to attack the minds of the working people to think that what is good for business is also good for them. Protests in Quebec have now lasted two weeks with no clear end in sight. The students on the streets represent an inflexion point in the neoliberal class assault, attempting to bar further encroachments of capital. The remedial solution to a crisis prone capitalist economy is not through further “ameliorative” actions of the Liberal bourgeois government conducting a fire-sale of working class social services, but step by step out of an exchange-value system of capitalism towards a society tailored to the needs of its citizens.
Where are the secular revolutionary humanists in the Australian protests?
Protests in Melbourne turned violent this week when two groups clashed. On one side were the “Reclaim Australia” supporters, and on the other side their divided opposition. This protest was by no means propitious for either side, however it did well to highlight the hegemonic “Islamophobia” narrative that has become the hair in the nose of every secular humanist. These protests also illuminated the convolutedness of the arguments on both side of the struggle, where secular atheists, like minnows, are being washed away by the insidious current of the fascistic right wing. On the one side of the demonstrations in Melbourne, the protesters held posters reading “Penrith says no to mosques”, “No Islam, No Sharia, No Halal”, and “Islam=Brainwashed political cult, not a Religion”. This “anti-Islam” group is under the flag of right wing antiimmigration racist ideology and not chanting from a heart of atheism or secularism. The antiIslamic slogans and chants of this group are lodged within a racist fascistic ideology that does not differentiate between a believer and a belief system, the right of a person to have free consciousness and thought, and an oppressive system of ideas. Most importantly, this “antiIslam” flag is wrapped around the draconian anti-working class package that is hidden directly beneath it. The only idea that is precious to this group when it comes to Australia is the narcissism that is embedded in nationalism that is fraught with sectarianism of the working class. Meanwhile, the opposing group of protesters hold posters reading “Stand up to racist scapegoating”, “Islamophobes go home” and “No room for racism”. Whereas the ultra-right wing groups are dressing their old nationalist agendas with current populist ideas, this group is lost choosing between a misogynistic and suppressive ideology on the one side and avoiding sectarianism via racism on the other. Islam as an ideology on one side, and 21st century feminism as well as secular revolutionary humanist views on the other, the two sides are insoluble:
an acquiesced pro-Islamic view has emerged. The only poster held that perhaps represented some of the base arguments of the secularist left wing read as: “you can’t be racist against an ideology!” This poster was held by a man standing side by side with the ultra-right wing groups. This speaks volumes about the devastated state of the left in the politics of Australia. This may seem as a brash argument, but considering that the secularist and atheist people, that correctly see Islam as reactionary misogynistic ideology, are left to choose between ultra-right wing groups on the one side or to be called “racist” and “Islamophobes” on the other, paints a grim picture of the left wing parties in Australia whose role is to be the flag bearer of a third alternative to these two groups. The traditional left has spent an inordinate amount of time apologizing for Islam for the sake of the unity of the working class. For the sake of avoiding “sectarianism” the traditional left has taken up a populist view that tramples women’s right, gay rights and opens the door for a gargantuan basic human rights and freedoms violations. Now this left is lost and confused to respond to the gaining momentum of political Islam around the world: beheadings on the beaches of North Africa and executions of gay men by being thrown from rooftops. The only argument left in their depleted political line is to say that it is not “true Islam”: a view that every secular man and women in the West is reluctant to follow due to the vacuous nature of this political line. The only political line that represents the 21st century secularist humanists is the one that says a resounding no to both Islam and fascism. The third option represents the salient difference between religion, as inherently repressive and dangerous institution, and the right of a person to free conscious thought and belief. A true left wing political group is not built to ameliorate between the “good” and the “bad” in a religion, the “moderate” and the “extremist”, but instead to firmly hold the values of secularism and militate against all ideolo-
The world must never forget the 147 murdered Kenyan students People around the world were shocked to discover the deaths of 147 Kenyan students in Garissa University, where heavily armed Islamic terrorists entered the Garissa University, located in the outskirts of Garissa in Kenya near Somalia, firing indiscriminately on unsuspecting university students. In addition to the scores of dead students, 79 others were also injured and only 500 students managed to escape unharmed. Al-shabab, a Somalia based Islamic group, has taken responsibility for
this calamitous and abhorrent attack on innocent Kenyan students. This group was also behind the recent Westgate shopping mall attack where 67 people were murdered. Recent history has been fraught with abject horror and gargantuan human rights violations at the hands of political Islam and Islamists. Despite local governments, that of Kenya and Somalia, attempting to ameliorate the growth of terrorism, groups such as Al-shabab have become even more powerful and ruinous. In the context of a world where humanity is driven to the ground by the abject poverty imposed by the capitalism’s draconian standard of living: groups such as Al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda and Islamic State emerge and are recruiting from the scores of impoverished and illiterate rural populations. We, the secular revolutionary humanists must become the spokespersons for the people of Kenya and not the mullah apologist government of Kenya. We must militate against Islamists and terrorists by recognizing that Islam, as a religion, is both dangerous and inhuman. We must, as a civil society, fight against narratives that occlude the reality of Islam and have us believe that there is a “good� within a religion pillared on misogyny, child abuse and homophobia. During such times we must assiduously protect and promote human rights and freedoms and struggle for a society where only secularism, and not religion, is hegemonic.
Only fighting for $15/h is not a working-class solution Workers from 200 cities are currently walking out on jobs, in places such as Atlanta, New York, Boston and Los Angeles, joined by workers in Brazil, New Zealand and the UK, and including workers in fast-food chains such as McDonalds. This has become the largest recent protest against corporate greed. The current minimum wage in the US remains at $7.25, less than half of what the workers are demanding. With over three decades of neoliberal privatizations, the working-class in the US and South America are impelled by financial difficulties and poverty to take matters into their own hands, and no longer rely on false bourgeois party promises for reform. The gap between the rich and the poor in the US has reached gargantuan levels as the working-class is forced, through privatization of social services, to pay for their own social reproduction through their stagnant wages. Capital wants to remove all of its responsibility and costs of the social reproduction of labour and to force the working class to pay for this cost through their wages: such as the cost of housing, health care, and education. What was once a high taxation (over 70%), is now a tax haven for corporations (26% in the UK). The Keynesian demand management of the economy, which temporarily dampened the economic crisis cycles, came to a crashing end with Thatcher and Regan, and replaced with ubiquitous privatization and globalization: both of which breaks the back of organized labour and drives wages and benefits to the ground. In the absence of nationalized institutions, state planning and some social appropriation of common wealth of the liberal era, the contradictions of capital are now in full display in the US. The exchange value system of capitalism can no longer even provide the basic use-values necessary for the working class to survive, let alone generate the demand for the realization of profit in the market. The credit card solution to close the gap between real wages, disposable income and the demand in the economy only proved to deepen the unfolding crisis of capitalism: a major cause of the credit crisis in housing. The only remedial solution for the working-class in the US, in the face of a congress that is vacuous of any working-class organizational form, is to militate in the streets, through strikes and walk-outs: which is happening today in the streets of US. However, the struggle of the working-class in the US for the exaction of higher wages becomes a defeated cause if it is not supported by route towards a systemic change. The bourgeois may be forced to spend more on variable-cost (labour) but it will get back what it has lost through the higher cost of living. For example
a worker may get an increase of $5 dollars/hour in wages, but s/he will pay it back through higher cell-phone costs, water bills, electricity bills, or through general inflation. Capitalism wins in the end. Discursive struggles for wages and benefits through walkouts and strikes must turn into worker take-over of sectors where value is produced (industrial sector) and where the profit is realized in the market (the service sector). A conscious working-class, immune to the hegemonic ideology of neoliberalism, which realizes that it is the primary producer of social wealth, and that it is entitled to what it produces, only then is a threat to the fat cats of the capitalist class. Otherwise capitalism will make small adjustments to the cost of production and reclaim its losses in other ways. In this way, only fighting for wages, and not targeting capitalism’s mode of production and appropriation of common wealth, is not a working-class solution at all. Today’s working-class struggle is an urban struggle. Traditional and literal Marxist readers have for years banked on the industrial proletariat (the value producers in society) to be the revolutionary group to overthrow capitalism. However today, with three decades of neoliberal export of industrial jobs from the West to Asia, where labour is cheap and none unionized, the urban service workers in the West have gained a revolutionary character. Surplus-value production and profit necessitates both production and realization: for example without Primark and Walmart workers, capital would not be able to realize value that was produced by the sweatshop workers of Cambodia and Thailand. Further, urban service workers in the West are at the crux of the class struggle and they have an enormous power to put a halt to capital circulation. For example it will only take a general bus strike to shut down an entire city such as London or Paris. If the city workers such as garbage collectors stopped working for only a few days, the entire city will stop functioning. Truck drivers and taxi drivers can block highways and major roads that would paralyze a city. However, all these actions and demonstrations of power can only be revolutionary praxis if it is supported ideologically via a revolutionary party that aims for structural change and not settle for short term gains. Otherwise, it will be business as usual for capitalism: using state power to make each strike illegal and to use its media and its monopoly on violence to crush the workingclass.