2 No 013 vem ber
We Are The 99% This is a publication of the Communist Youth Organization of the Workers Communist Party of Iran
Editor: Chia Barsen Assistant Editor : Arash Yazdan Four day general strike in Bangladesh
Erdogan's Islamization of mixed dorms: a fresh attack on secular rights
Amnesty International condemns Qatar's treatment of migrant workers
Thousands of Greek workers continue their protest against austerity
1.3 Million Wal-Mart workers won a National Labour Relations Board ruling
Bulgarians demand an end to the "reign of oligarchy".
Portuguese police officers protest austerity cuts
Million Mask March: why masks are counter-revolutionary
A protest against mainstream media and press credibility
Million Mask March: why masks are counter-revolutionary
David Cameron calls for permanent austerity: Never fear, the bourgeois tax cuts are here!
Workers protest Wal-Mart poverty wages
Cambodian garment workers protest in Phnom Penh
Iranian women defying the dress code
Students in Italy protest against austerity cut-backs to education
Anarchism
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Four day general strike in Bangladesh
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Activists clashed with police and the ruling party members on the first day of a 4 day general strike. The people called for the removal of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from office and for new elections. This is part of the larger protest that has surged in the last two weeks. People in Bangladesh suffer from extreme poverty, low wages, and horrid working conditions particularly in the garment industry. The garment industry alone brings 20 Billion dollars in export each year however this has not translated whatsoever to better wages, working conditions and economic security for the workers in the industry. Last year the world witnessed the carnage due to the collapse of garment industry buildings with the working people still inside them. The industry that employs more than 3 million people, mostly women, create products for large Western retailers such as H and M and Primark. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association warn the government of the "chaos" that the work stoppage will create for exports. This is at a time when the people of Bangladesh have demonstrated that they will no longer remain obediently silent as their labour is bought and sold at an incredibly cheap price to the Western retail giants. They have proven to the world that they are resilient and will fight and struggle until they are given the human working condition and the living wages that they deserve. Even if the garment industry comes to the brink of collapse or goes into the so called "chaos", it does not matter since the profits never reaches the working people of the factory.
2 Amnesty International condemns Qatar's treatment of migrant workers Amnesty International joined the long list of institutions that have condemned the Qatar abuse of migrant workers as it prepares itself for the 2022 World Cup. Migrant workers constitute 88% of Qatar's 2 million population.
Observers from world media and different human rights watch organization have documented horrid treatment of Qatar's migrant workers that are not only used as modern day slaves, but as one rights group describes it, like "animals". Workers are subjected to non-payment of wages, dangerous working conditions, passport confiscation, forced to live in overcrowded labour camps, denied the right to unionize, and denied access to clean drinking water in the extreme heat. Workers themselves describe their situation as "being treated like cattle".
The Kafala System is the institutionalized form of modern slavery. This form of sponsorship system is used in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and is used to import migrant and domestic worker by a in-country employer. In this system often the workers have their passports taken away by their sponsoring employer and are forced to work under abuse with little chance of legal defence.
In Qatar where migrant workers constitute 94% of the labour force, the Kafala system is used to its fullest potential for the enslavement of human beings. Human Rights Watch describes the condition of the workers as "nearfeudal" levels and "forced labour" and correctly labelling Qatar a "slave state".
The FIFA World Cup has now put the spot light on the Kafala system and it has put pressure on Qatar to end the human carnage. But the reality is clear. FIFA is a very large investment for Qatar and like all other investments of capital, the Qatari regime wants to keep the variable cost of its investment as low as possible at the price of the blood and bones of migrant workers: by the time the 2022 World Cup arrives 4000 migrant workers will have died.
3 1.3 Million Wal-Mart workers won a National Labour Relations Board ruling A small but significant victory for Wal-Mart employees, workers celebrated the ruling of the National Labour Relations Board as it stated that it will prosecute Wal-Mart for illegally firing and taking disciplinary actions against its workers (specifically more than 117 workers). This ruling by the federal agency will likely fuel the burgeoning protest movement against the corporate giant that has been ruthlessly standing firm against workers associations and unions. Wal-Mart has been well known for setting the industry standard for low pay, terrible benefits, arbitrary work schedules and part-time jobs. It has a long history of exploiting immigrants, paying women less than men for the same jobs, and breaking environmental laws. Further, Wal-Mart has also been a large contributor and propagator of the carnage in the Bangladesh sweatshops that produce clothes that are sold in its stores: one of these being the death of 1,100 workers due to the collapse of a factory in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The OUR Wal-Mart movement, a nationwide network of Wal-Mart workers, have been spear heading the protest and strikes against the corporate giant making international media impact often during Wal-Mart's busiest days such as Black Friday: another large protest is scheduled for the coming Black Friday this year. The NLRB ruling now requires Wal-Mart to rehire the workers that were illegally fired with full pay compensation. It has also required Wal-Mart to inform and educate all employees of their legally protected rights. These changes will take place in over 10 US states. The net worth of Wal-Mart stands at 144 billion dollars; this is more than the total wealth of 40% of all Americans. The CEO of Wal-Mart, Micheal Duke, received 20 million dollars in compensation last year while the average workers in Wal-Mart are near poverty level income.
4 Portuguese police officers protest austerity cuts When police officers' union is in strike over cutbacks and austerity it is one massive indicator of the kind of trouble the Portuguese government is in. 10,000 demonstrators on the streets protested the government's latest austerity measure which includes a 100 Euro cut from the police officers gross salary, leaving them with on average 900 Euros a month to live on.
This cut was part of the larger cutbacks in order for Portugal to produce the "efficiency" standard in its economy required by the European Central Bank to receive the loan of 78 Billion Euros which is almost one third of the GDP (245 Billion dollars). The current state of unemployment right now is 20% of the population (by conservative standard) which is largely youth.
The irony is that during a time when the government of Portugal is coming to the rescue of its banks and big business at the cost of radical cutbacks to social services and public spending, it needs its state coercive force the most: namely the police. The police having monopoly on violence with the duty to protect internal investment and corporate interests are the bourgeois state tool to break protests and strikes. It is for this reason that police officers usually have
better job security and wages than most workers in the country. Now the cutbacks have reached the shore of the police officers themselves, the protectors of the bourgeois interests in the country. Perhaps the dehumanizing job and role of a police officer may be shaken by a dose of bourgeois reality: that when it comes to profit and corporate interests it will shoot itself in the foot if necessary.
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“Revolutions are the locomotives of history�
MARX: Class Struggle in France (1850)
5 A protest against mainstream media and press credibility The March Against Mainstream Media organized protests across the United States and the United Kingdom against large media corporations including Fox news, BBC, NBS, CNN and many more. The protesters brought attention to the fact that these mainstream media corporations have a very narrow coverage of world affairs that really matters to the public. In direct challenge to the mainstream media the MAMM posted on its website that the mainstream media must either "report on the fact that thousands of people are currently protesting outside of their building because they are keeping important news from the public's eye, or ignore them". In the recent years the public have lost confidence in the mainstream media and have been looking elsewhere to find the news they need. In the US only 44 percent of the people trust the mass media which is a sharp decline over the years. The mainstream media is, and always has been one of the most crucial tools of the bourgeois. Since the bourgeois state is constantly trying to incapacitate the working class in its struggle for its rights and freedoms from the exploitative capitalist economic machinery, in a world where the working class impossibly outnumber and out strength the bourgeois, the use of media as the means for thought control is absolutely crucial. It is simply impossible to control millions of workers in each country and billions of workers worldwide without a systematic method of thought control and suppression. The mainstream media's functions as part of the bourgeois state to silence workers movement in several important ways. The mainstream media often does not give coverage to anti-establishment
6 David Cameron calls for permanent austerity: Never fear, the bourgeois tax cuts are here!
David Cameron, the Prime Minister of Britain in a speech during the annual Lord Mayor's Banquet called for continuous austerity if the conservatives are re-elected in 2015. Standing beside Lady Judge Lord Mayor Alderman Fiona Woolf who was sitting on a well decorated golden chair that would impress any royalist, the Prime Minister made it very clear to the British people that the cut backs implemented during his time in office will by no means be reversed: the public spending cuts that were implemented during his time such as in disabled care (being kicked out of their homes), cuts to elderly care, unemployment benefits, public servants cuts, and the privatization of healthcare and education would not be returned once the country's economy "recovered". David Cameron describes the government that he wants: a more "efficient" government. What this really translates to is a smaller government, meaning tax cuts and less government spending on social services. The tax cuts are often highlighted in the conservative speeches as a way to win support from the general working population who are already desperate for any small increases to their disposable income. However "tax cuts" is a dubious way to hide what is really happening, a method to elude the truth of what is happening to the working class.
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The social services, the welfare state was a post WW2 invention of the Western free market capitalism for two major reasons, one being the struggle of the working class over the century to attain it, and the other being the Cold War era competition with the Soviet Union state-capitalism planned economy that had nationalized important institutions such as education and healthcare. The NHS was the jewel diamond of the British welfare state and the likes of which was established, with some variations, all across the Western world.
7 Cambodian garment workers protest in Phnom Penh
Garment workers take to the streets to strike as they continue their strike against the low wages and horrid working conditions. The riot police crackdown on protesters in one of the most brutal and violent episodes killing one women, wounding eight and arresting 30 people as the people fought for their rights. The garment industry in Cambodia represents the largest portion of Cambodia's manufacturing sector that accounts for 80 percent of the country's exports worth 1.5 billion in just the first half of 2013. Since the Cambodian economy is only worth 13 billion dollars (GDP) the garment industry is one of the most important sectors of the Cambodian economy. The largest trading partner of Cambodia is the United States since their trade agreement. The exports from Cambodia are for giant US retails such as H&M and Gap Inc. In the last two years garment factory workers have fainted during work en masse due to over work. Since 2008 food costs in Cambodia has risen by 70 percent and wages have only increased by 56 percent as Cambodian factory owners continue to ignore national and international labour laws that demand proper ventilation, reasonable temperatures and access to clean water. The current minimum wage is 80 dollars a month. In addition workers are kept at fixed contracts or temporary contracts that allow the factory owners to fire with no cause or notice given making it difficult for workers to build the foundations to fight for better wages. In 2013 there has been over 83 strikes by the garment workers to fight against temporary contracts, poor wages and working conditions. The workers demand a minimum wage of 150 dollars a month. The crisis of US economy always hits the Cambodian economy due to the large exports to the US. This is coupled with the lowering of disposable income in the pockets of Westerners as they seek to buy goods at lower prices. The situation is that the factory owners are encouraged to keep wages low to attract foreign investments and to stop strikes at any cost. The riot police are geared to stop the workers at any cost necessary: ordered to send the starving workers back to the sweat shops to toil till they faint for virtually no pay. This is one of the most revealing faces of the capitalist mode of
8 Students in Italy protest against austerity cut-backs to education In Rome, Turin and all the way to Palermo in the south, Italian students came out in their thousands to protest against cuts to education. This protest is part of the on-going opposition to the proposed (and soon to be implemented) 2014 budget. The protesters demanded the dismantling and step down of the government that has continually supported the elite banksters and larger investors in Italy with the European Central Bank bailouts that has ruined the social services of the country via cutbacks. One of the major faces of austerity, in part meaning the privatization of institutions, is the privatization of education. We saw this month that students in Bulgaria also took to the streets in the capital city of Sofia, angry at their government's continued support for special interests at the cost of the working people of Bulgaria (one of Europe's underdeveloped economies). Further west, in Sweden, students in colleges are protesting the Swedish government's decision to privatize education. The government disguises this move as granting the universities more "autonomy" to manage themselves, which in fact means giving the universities the freedom run like corporation and increase the cost of post-secondary education at their own discretion. All European economies must oblige by the new budget deficit limits set by the European union and any bailout granted will be by these new economic standards . As students protest against their government locally, this is also a continental struggle against European Imperialism. This is critical since the local economies, no matter how they micro-manage their internal economies they must do so while fattening the pockets of the large investors, banksters and the European Central Bank, a situation that is impossible to do without cutbacks to social services: the parameters of capitalist economic growth. If any government chooses to stray from the economic hard line that has been set by the European Union, they risk being overthrown and replaced by special interest financial group that will "democratically" vote in favour of an austerity economy, as we saw very clearly in Greece. The Greek economy was classed as junk bond in 2010 and the IMF only agreed to the bailout of 110 Billion euros if the government privatized 50 billion euros in assets, implemented austerity measures, and restructured (privatized). The local struggle against austerity cuts, privatization and other restructuring must be side by side with a European wide struggle. The IMF and the European Central Bank will not stand by and let one country slip out of its imposed austerity measures since it will spell the possible collapse of the entire union.
9 Erdogan's Islamization of mixed dorms: a fresh attack on secular rights
It has not been too long now since the last attempt by Erodogan administration in Turkey to take away the people hard fought secular rights and take the Turkish society back a century into religious darkness. The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Edrogan, has been in power a decade now and in this time he has been able to intrude into the Turkish people's private lives as well as alienate a large secular and anti-religious population in Turkey. The world had really thought that the Edrogan government had received the necessary spanking in Gezi Park to understand that the Turkish people are not going to stand by while he attempts to cut away from their rights and freedoms: it seems as though he is in need of a fresh reminder. If banning abortions and adultery and limiting alcohol was not enough, Edrogan is now attempting to outlaw coed dormitories at state universities. This ban will be further extended to off-campus housing shared by male and female students. He has described situation of mixed dorms as giving rise to depravity, drugs, prostitution, and terrorism! Earlier this month Edrogan government lifted the decades old ban on female lawmakers and civil servants from wearing Islamic headscarves (an important component of a secular government: the removal religious symbols in the public domain). The Edrogan government is an Islamist party that is rooted in the Justice and Development Party (A.K.P). The government's agenda this entire decade has been to remove and to replace secular institutions in Turkey with Islamic institutions. The Erdogan government is considered the "Islamist Big Brother" in Turkey, a synonym for an Islamic authoritarian who has been seeking to Islamize people's private lives as well as to repaint the face of Turkey in green. To these right-wing Islamic reforms the people have demonstrated sweeping anti-government protests. To fight back against Edrogan must first begin by realizing where he stands in the socio-political arena of Europe and the Middle East. The actions that the Edrogan is taking in Turkey are by no means the actions of one man or one political party, but a social movement, namely political Islam. He is representing a growing menacing movement that has swept through North Africa leaving its foot print in the Arab Spring that has swept through the Middle East and is constantly kept aloof by countries such as the Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Turkey is more important for having one foot in each side of the world, both the East and the West and standing in the corridor of Europe. In effect, Turkey is the front door for Islam to enter Europe. In reality what Edrogan is doing is importing the sharia law from the dark holes in the Middle East and placing it in the homes of the Europeans, the implication of which will horrify the Western raised Islamic apologists that continue their ignorant struggle for "tolerance"! It is for this reason that the fight of every Turkish citizen for their human right for a secular society is the fight of every European citizen.
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Thousands of Greek workers continue their protest against austerity Greece's largest union shuts down school, interrupts flights and takes to the streets despite heavy rain. This protest continues the on-going people's struggle against the Greek economy being bought over by the European central bank at the cost of millions of Greeks. On November 12th the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund review the bailout that was given to the Greek banks. In short, the World Monetary Fund is checking on its Greek investments to ensure that the social service cut backs are being implemented accordingly. Even the conservative government of Greece right now has admitted that further cut backs are impossible since the population has lost 40 percent of its disposable income since 2009. 15,000 joined the rally including political parties, as well as social service workers including teachers, doctors, municipal and transport workers. People chanted "No more sacrifices" and "Don't bow down". The GSEE and the public sector union ADEDY have both brought people into protest since the beginning of the crisis. The turnouts in some of the rallies have been above 100,000. Currently Greece is in its 6th year of recession and is currently standing at unemployment of above 27 % (by conservative standards). The unfortunate fact is that Greece is now going head first into collapse without a workers’ party that can untangles the working class from the capitalist profit web. The communist party of Greece has simply not won the trust of the working people of Greece to stand toe to toe with the heavy weight right wing parties. The toll that the working people of Greece are paying now in terms of both unemployment and drastic loss of standard of living is purely a bourgeois market manifestation and does not have the correspondence in concrete reality. The fields of fruits, the fisheries, and all other industries remain as they were; it is only the private property laws of the bourgeois mode of production that separates the fruits and vegetables from the bellies of the working people in Greece. However it is during these times of protests that the line in sand becomes deeper and more pronounced that the fabricated bourgeois "democracy" loses it illusive character. While Greece is being negotiated on the bourgeois chopping block, it is up to the Greeks to shut down all and every possible bourgeois institutions through strikes and protests to reclaim their country and take back the fruits of their labour.
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Bulgarians demand an end to the "reign of oligarchy". In the capital city of Sofia 4000 people came to the streets to protest against the regime. Called the "March for Justice", protesters called for the government to step down and make for early elections. This protest was part of the larger antigovernment movement that was gripped Bulgaria this year. Labelled as the "sham democracy", the people accuse the government of shady business deals and not doing enough to bring the country out of poverty and solve the issues with unemployment. It has now been 24 years exactly since the collapse of the communist regime in the country that was led by Todor Zhivkov who ruled the country from 1954 to 1989. The current government only took office in May when the previous government in Bulgaria was taken down by popular protests. Bulgaria is one of EU's poorest economies with people's monthly wages as low as 400 euros and the average pension just 130 euros. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, countries such as Bulgaria overthrew their dictator with the hope of a better future under the so called Western "democracy". However, the promises of the better life that they have envisaged never became a realization. After separating from the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the loss of the Soviet market, the country collapsed. Standard of living fell 40% and it took over a decade and a half to recover. In 1996 the economy collapsed with the inflation as high as 311%and then was sold to the World Bank to become "stabilized". The BCP (The communist party of Bulgaria) changed its name to Bulgarian Socialist party and caved its politics towards market economy. Today Bulgaria shows us a good example of the anarchy of production under capitalism. The Bulgarian economy has been continuously going through the crisis waves of capitalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although the planned Soviet Economy was politically flawed and was not geared to move towards the communist planned economy, even within that flawed framework it provided Bulgaria with relative stability. Today, the Bulgarians are as discontent as ever with no economic sense of security as their country is tied the raging bull of the imperialist economy. Only a planned economy geared towards completing the economic goals of the socialist revolution (freedom from the economic exploitation of the working class) can save Bulgaria from its current crisis of anarchy in market economy.
12 Million Mask March: why masks are counter-revolutionary
In the wake of a global anti-austerity and anti-capitalist protests that took place in 400 cities around the world this week, the movement's methodology is worth discussing. The group that calls themselves "Anonymous" has been recently been piggy backing the Occupy movement from the first day of its inception. It has also been using hacktivisim (hacking government websites and shutting them down) as well as street protests to march against capitalism, more specifically, "corporate greed". The group itself does not have an independent ideology but falls squarely in the ideology of the Occupy movement with a large call for reform of capitalism structures such as larger control of corporations and banks by the government. However, within the Occupy movement exists a strong lefty anti-capitalism movement that united many important sectors of the working class across the globe. The Anonymous however adds an important element to the occupy movement with its methodology and the groups reach: which I will explain here as both important and in itself counter-revolutionary to the aims of the Occupy movement. The 5th of November is historically celebrated in the UK with fireworks and festivities. The fireworks date back to 1606 when a man called Guy Fawkes (also known as Guido Fawkes), a member of the English Catholics of the time, planned and failed at a Gunpowder Plot to blow up the British parliament. This story was later in 2005 used in part by the movie "V for Vendetta". It was from this movie "V for Vendetta" where the mask for the Anonymous movement was borrowed. The movie "V for Vendetta", if anyone has seen it, has an anti-authoritarian message. Where a man in a mask, representing the voice of the millions of people living in the closed state: attempts to overthrow the regime. At the end of the movie there is a million masked march of the people who are wearing the same mask. Present day in reality on planet earth we have a similar scenario, but with important differences. The authoritarian regime that was depicted in the movie is very much present in our lives in the complex (and shape shifting form) of present day capitalism. We have many corporations, and their lobbyists in government. We have an anarchy and competition within the capitalist regime itself with different groups attempting to forward the agenda of different corporate interests. There is installed a "democracy" that has eluded a large portion of the working class with lies, false hope, and the illusion of working class power. In essence the Black and White nature of an authoritarian regime, say even a king or a queen in a country, is not the same as the complexities of struggling against a financial system that possesses, almost like a demon, many heads: if one is cut off another will appear. It is here that the Anonymous group comes short. The million masked march is a real life attempt at the methodology of the movie to overthrow the so called "bad guys", with a million people walking towards the parliament with each wearing a mask (a metaphor used by the movie to show uniformity and unity) is a very poor attempt for change. In fact even if these people manage to step into the parliament they will be turned back by a simple sentence "you voted us into power, vote differently next time!". It is here the masks come off and the people go home, after all, that is the greatest trick of the capitalist regime, the illusion of legitimacy that it has ingrained into the working class with its 4 year cycles of "elections". It is here where the mask of the anonymous shows the short comings of the group and the movement it is attempting to lead. The last thing that people should do in a movement is to hide it! Wearing a mask takes away the credibility and the complexity of the fight against capitalism. The problem is not as simple as marching to the parliament and overthrowing a regime. By simply being angry at cut backs and austerity and any other aspects of capitalism does not cut it in today’s revolutionary movement anymore. There needs to be a replacement. Organizing a million people to come to streets to fight capitalism without any sort of ideas of a possible replacement is not the best route. The left has long understood and found the importance of revolutionary parties. It is here within the organization of the party that actions such as the million mask march can have meaning. The organized party without masks will show its face to the capitalist regime and promote itself to the people everywhere as an alternative. The mask is a tool, the anonymous is a tool, it can be used by a party at different stages of the struggle against the capitalist system, but it is not itself an alternative. It is the role of the revolutionary party to use groups such as anonymous and its flash mob tactics to create change. The revolutionary party needs to be as public and open as possible to embrace as much of the working class as it can into the revolution. The people must talk about change and speak about it openly and not hide behind a mask to discuss their discontent about the system. The openness of the revolutionary party is its biggest points of strength. The working class revolutionary party needs real faces and activists to identify with and to trust. It is the capitalist regime that hides its exploitation of the working class behind closed doors and in secret meetings. Only with an open door and a very clear and concrete road map for creating a better world can a revolutionary party win the trust of the working class and lead them to victory.
13 "Remember, Remember the 5th of November": the Million Mask March
Hundreds of protesters used Bonfire night, an annual fire festival in London, to protest against austerity cuts in Europe. This was part of the Million Mask March that took place in 400 cities around the world. In Parliament Square protesters gathered to protest cut backs and rise in energy prices. Protesters also gathered near the Buckingham Palace and burned energy bills to oppose hikes in fuel prices. In the US, protesters gathered in Washington DC and protested large scale surveillance, genetically modified foods and social spending cuts as well as unemployment. Other major cities where protests took place include Paris, Vancouver, Tel Aviv, Dublin, Chicago and Sydney. The groups such as Anonymous, WikiLeaks, the Pirate Party as well as the Occupy movement were called into action for the Million Mask March. Despite the mainstream media blackout of the event it was difficult to ignore. In Washington DC protesters chanted "show me what democracy looks like, this is what democracy looks like!" and "Whose Streets? Our streets!". Also protesters marched toward the Federal Reserve building chanting "End the Fed, end the Fed!", and in front of the White House chanting: "White House, Our House!" The Million Mask March has underscored the fact that the social media evolution has changed the face of streets protests. Today large scale global protests are organized over social media outlets such as Facebook. Welcome to the age of flash-protests.
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Workers protest Wal-Mart poverty wages Workers staged a sit in the middle of the road to raise awareness of Wal-Mart’s low wages in Los Angeles. Cesar Chavez Bioulevard was shut down during rush hour by a group of 50 protesters. This was one of the biggest acts of disobedience against the retail chain. Wal-Mart is the United States biggest employer and it has reaped a profit of 17 Billion this past year while paying 825,000 employees (out of 1.3 million) less than $25,000 a day. Wal-Mart has continuously been guilty of using dirty tactics such as firing workers and as far as shutting down entire stores to avoid workers unionizing. The Los Angeles protest was part of a larger call to action before the holiday season which is Wal-Mart's best months for sales, particularly Black Friday. In September of this year Wal-Mart workers in 15 cities protested for their right to unionize, and higher wages. Their protest urged for at least a $12/hour wages (currently 1.3 million Wal-Mart workers earn wages averaging $8.80/hour. Wal-Mart has "threatened" not to expand if it’s forced to pay $12 wages. This is at a time when the fast food industry workers have been struggling for $15 wages in 10 different major cities in the United States.
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Iranian women defying the dress code
The Iranian government is currently employing 27 different institutions to monitor and control what women where in public places including shopping areas, main squares and recreational centres. Often referred to as the morality police, the Basij (ironically translates as "The Organization for Mobilization of the Oppressed"), is a paramilitary volunteer militia that came to existence after the 1979 Islamic invasion of Iran. Created by the Islamic leader Ayatollah Khomeini, this organization, among its many foreign and domestic duties, is designed for enforcing Islamic law and policing "morals" in Iran. The Basij, hand in hand with the local police agencies, is one of the regime's most important tool for suppressing Iranian women and forcing the hijab upon the Iranian women. Living under the Islamic Sharia sword Iranian women are denied many of the rights and freedoms that are afforded to men. Legally women are considered half of men in court, including in testimony, any compensations, and inheritance. In this way, this has created a strong foundation for both domestic abuse and sexual violence and rape. Further, under the Islamic rule in Iran, women's role as it is defined by the regime is to be subservient to men inclusive of sex and food. Enforcing hijab in Iran is one of the daily and most invasive measures of the Islamic republic of Iran against Iranian women. Hijab in itself is a microcosm and a very defining characteristic of the Islamic republic of Iran. The Hijab represents almost all of the anti-women, gender apartheid, immorality, inhumanity, and oppression that are defined by Islam. In essence, the hijab is an attempt to totally eliminate women's agency from social and economic spheres and to reduce her to complete servitude to man. Physically covered from head to toe by the hijab, under Islam she is totally blacked out of vision: only kept indoors and out of sight.
Defiant, even when Iranian women are hunted by the basij and other tools of the surveillance regime, they have found creative ways to bending rules and breaking them anywhere possible. Wearing make-up, dying hair, wearing sandals, shorter than regulation pants, and wearing thin headscarves are some of the many ways Iranian women show their discontent and their yearning for freedom from Islam. For several years now the regime has been arresting young women in streets and has charged them with improper veiling. Criminal charges are made against these women for actions as little as having an inch of skin showing, or a top button of their cloaks (called manteaus) being open, or too much hair being exposed in the front of their headscarves. "Defying The Dress Code", artist Nathalie Debono uses her photographic talent to ridicules these Islamic practices. It was this cry for freedom shared by the millions of women in Iran, and in her last act of defiance against the Islamic regime, that the anti-regime protestor, Neda Agha-Soltan, shot in the chest by one of the regime's snipers during a rally, as she took her final breath: she pulled off her headscarf.
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Indonesian nationwide strike for better pay! Millions of Indonesians came to the streets as part of large industrial action for salary increase in 22 provinces. This protest took place at a time when the government continues it’s hand in hand cooperation with big business to put a cap on wages in Indonesia. Indonesian workers are one of the lowest paid workers in the area and are taking home only 123 dollars a month (after almost a 50% wage hike last year). Considering fuel and food costs that have continued to increase over the years, many Indonesian workers are made homeless.
Despite being the fastest growing economy in the region, one in ten Indonesians lives below the poverty line and there is a 6% unemployment rate (by conservative standards). Indonesia is selling itself to the Western world as the attractive low paid workforce. Corporations use the toils of millions of Indonesian workers to keep their labour costs dirt low in order to maximize the profit margins on commodities sold in Western markets. Obliged by shareholders to continually increase profits quarter by quarter, every corporation around the world tries to take advantage of countries with lower tax rates, low paid workers, and little to no regard to working conditions, job benefits and security. The pressure is further increased to keep wages low when workers in the home markets such as America and Europe are facing high unemployment and have little disposable income.
The two million workers on the streets of Jakarta demanded that the government increase wages by up to 50%. The government's response by deploying 17 000 police officers on the streets shows its fearful face towards the growing and unstoppable people's movement for liveable wages in Indonesia that has gripped the country for over a year the implications of which will have a long-term global impact on commodity prices.
Anarchism
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Marxism critiques anarchism in 3 major ways.
Marx has a scientific and revolutionary explanation of communism that is derived from his theory of value and materialist dialectics (the evolution of society via the advancements in the means of production). In a materialist explanation of history, he explains how society has progressed from one era to the next via tool production and the increase in surplus value as a result of it: a critique of the Hagel philosophy of consciousness.
His theory of materialism explains the alienating nature of production (for the worker) under capitalism mode of production. He explains in the bourgeois society, as in all other societies before it, the very production of a commodity creates man's consciousness, which is the social relations embodied in the production of a commodity cannot be separated from the human-beings personhood: we are what we do.
Marx also explains production under capitalism as unequal, competitive and anarchic: the anarchy of production. As each capitalist institution (corporation, trusts and syndicates) competes in the for a larger share of the market (labour and goods) in order to increase surplus value and profit which is a component part of the surplus value created. This is what Marx describes as the anarchy of production: do to each capitalist competing for a larger market share there is inevitably over production and chaos in the production of goods and services.
This Marxist critique of the anarchy in the bourgeois mode of production creates the foundations necessary to describe the next evolution in human society via his theory of materialist dialectics. Here he explains the difference between a bourgeois organization of production and society and a socialism central planned economy. The planned economy under socialism which does not have the element of the exploitation of labour and no longer for-profit mode of production, is engineered to meet the needs of all people living in society. It is necessary to plan the economy in order to share the resources of the economy which far more efficient, productive and humane: a glimpse of this can be seen in the Venus project which also describes a "Resource based economy" (which does have an actual plan to how to actually arrive in such a economy). Under the socialism the state has this important role (the planning of the economy) as well as the defence of the workers' interests against bourgeois state. Without this state power it will be impossible for the workers' state to survive the relentless attacks by bourgeois state. The end goal is to achieve Communism which will be stateless but this is pending on all other workers from all other bourgeois states to have their own revolutions and to overthrow their own class rulers.
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One common denominator to many of the Anarchist groups is for the removal of the state power, and all other oppressive institutions. However this theory does not account and have a response to the need for a socialist state for the defence of the workers interest. A workers' state is absolutely necessary until all capitalist elements in society, as well as the world have been removed. Although the end goal of the Anarchist groups is the emancipation of human-beings it is simply not realistic to do this without a state that implement and enforces the economic interests of the working class.
The other major reasons that Anarchism comes short are the personhood that is created as a result of the means of production. Marx himself clearly explains that an individual living in a bourgeois society is not capable of living in a communist society due to the personhood created during the alienation of labour and the social relation of production. If a person likes it or not he is a creation of the era s/he is living in and cannot be separated from it. It takes several generations of people living in a socialist society for it to slowly transform into complete communism (and the liquidation of the workers' state). This fact is also not explained in Anarchism. Even if the state was to be removed magically tomorrow morning, the people are still embodying all the value and norms of a bourgeois society, and have not developed the class consciousness necessary to critique it and to evolve out of it. Ironically this would be an easy realization given a very limited readings on Marx, however the anarchists themselves, like all other wage workers in our world, are limited to the amount of time they have for reading, namely the length and intensity of the working day (one of many methods for the prevention of a revolutionary class consciousness in a bourgeois society).
Worker associations of all shapes and forms are very important tools for waging class war against the bourgeois, however they are not enough. The workers' party is necessary to lead the working class through organization, planning and tactics against the very complex bourgeois sate coercive force for a workers' revolution to happen. Without a vanguard party the working class can revolt a thousand times and will not have the efficacy and organization and planning necessary to overthrow capitalism. This revolutionary vanguard party will become the socialist state for the protection and to continue the interests (economic and political) of the working class. This development in socialism (credited to Lenin) is also not realized under Anarchism who sees the revolutionary vanguard party as yet another authority that they need to do away with.
To the reader I would suggest to read Marx (or works that explain his ideas) before reading about Anarchism, this way it creates the good foundation necessary to understand Anarchism.
Chia Barsen
We Are The 99%
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