text:
Above: Seumas (right) and his hero
Stalinists and far right make common cause to support pro-Russian forces
Lindsey German, Andrew Murray and members of 'Workers Power' at the last London meeting of Useful Idiots For Putin and His Fascist Friends
By Dale Street
In what is threatening to become an annual ritual, two conferences in solidarity with the Donetsk and Lugansk 'People's Republics' (DPR/LPR) – one aimed at the far right, and one at the (Stalinist) 'left' – took place last month.
Last year two such conferences – one for the right, one for the 'left' – were staged by the same organisation ('Novaya Rus'') in the same hotel (Hotel Intourist) in the same place (Yalta) in a matter of weeks.
This left hapless organisations such as the British 'Workers Power' group trying to explain why they had teamed up with Russian chauvinists, Stalinists and homophobes in an event staged by an organisation which collaborated with fascists and the far right.
This year's conferences were different. Although the rhetoric of the two conferences had much in common, they were not initiated by the same organisation.
The driving force behind the conference of the far right, held in Donetsk on 11th/12th May, was the French MEP Jean-Luc Schaffhauser. The conference had first been announced by Schaffhauser at a press conference held in March of this year.
Although never actually a member of the French National Front (FN), Schaffhauser has won local and Euro-elections as a candidate on FN slates.
He advocates lower business taxes, an anti-Muslim crackdown on multi-culturalism, workfare for the unemployed, and welfare benefits only for those who have lived in France "a long time" (code for: not immigrants).
Exploiting his longstanding links with Russian bankers and politicians, Schaffhauser played a central role in securing a loan for the FN from a Russian bank last September. Estimates of his commission on securing the loan – nearly 10 million euros – vary from 140,000 to 450,000 euros.
The three other speakers at Schaffhauser's press conference – who also attended the Donetsk conference itself – were Manuel Ochsenreiter, Alessandro Musolino and Alain Fragny.
Ochsenreiter has a long record of involvement in German far-right politics. He is currently editor of the neo-Nazi magazine "Zuerst!", which stands for "the preservation of German ethnic identity" and "the life and survival interests of the German people."
The magazine attacks the legacy of denazification, carries interviews with the Russian fascist Alexander Dugin, and denounces "welfare immigrants" and "gypsy pickpockets". Ochsenreiter also appears regularly on the pro-Putin "Russia Today" propaganda outlet.
Musolino is a prominent member of the right-wing Forza Italia party, originally founded by Silvio Berlusconi as a vehicle for his own personal political ambitions. Read the rest of this entry »
Neo-Nazis gather to support Russian imperialism in Ukraine
Putin's useful idiots on the so-called "left" seem to be wilfully blind to the company they're keeping:
By Dale Street
"The fascists are not in Ukraine, they're meeting here!", "Nazis licking Putin's ass, OMG!" and "We don't need foreign fascists here, we've nowhere to put our own!" read protestors' placards outside the St. Petersburg Holiday Inn on 22 March.
The hotel was hosting the "International Russian Conservative Forum", organised by the "Russian National Cultural Centre, The People's Home", a flag of convenience for members of the Russian "Motherland" party (Russian-nationalist, far-right and pro-Putin).
Organisations which sent official delegations to the conference included Golden Dawn (Greece), Ataka (Bulgaria), the National-Democratic Party of Germany, Forza Nuova (Italy), the Danish People's Party, the National-Democratic Party(Spain), Millenium (Italy), and the Party of the Swedes.
All of these organisations are either on the far right or overtly fascist.
The French National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party and the Serbian Radical Party were invited to attend but decided not to do so for tactical reasons: participating in a conference with openly neo-Nazi organisations would undermine their attempts to appear "respectable".
Other attendees included Nick Griffin (ex-BNP, now British Unity Party), Jim Dowson (ex-BNP, then Britain First and Protestant Coalition), Nate Smith(Texas National Movement), and Jared Taylor and Sam Dickson (American white supremacists).
Russian politicians and political activists who attended the event included members of "Motherland", Putin's "United Russia"party, the Russian Imperial Movement, the National Liberation Movement (slogans: "Motherland! Freedom!Putin!"), Battle for Donbas, Novorossiya, and the "social and patriotic club" Stalingrad.
Alexander Kofman ("Foreign Minister" of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic) pulled out of attending the conference at the last minute. But the Russian fascist Aleksei Milchakov, leader of the neo-Nazi Rusich brigade which has fought in the Donbas, made a point of turning up: "I've come direct from the front line, to make contact with European colleagues, to ensure that in Europe they know the truth about the Donbas, so that Europeans flood into Novorossiya (to fight), not into Ukraine."
Summing up speakers' contributions, one journalist wrote: "Overall, three things united the nationalists of the different countries: hatred of the US government, hatred of homosexuals, and hatred of the 'Kiev junta'."
All three themes were encapsulated in the contribution from Chris Roman, a Belgian active in the recently founded far-right "Alliance for Peace and Freedom" international federation: "In the West you'll soon be able to marry a dog or a penguin. From the age of five children are taught how to play with themselves, and that it is normal to be gay.
"I support the Russian army, the Russian rebels. I don't recognise the Kiev junta, a puppet of Wall Street. I don't recognise the liberal Russian opposition, a fifth column. Politkovskaya, Nemtsov and Berezovsky are now all in hell.
"Crimea is Russian. Alaska is Russian. Kosovo is Serbian. Russia is our friend, and America our enemy. Glory to Russia! Glory to Novorossiya!"
The Russian government was not directly represented at the conference. But the composition, location and themes of the conference underline a growing alliance between Putin and the European far right.
The conference also exposed, yet again, the spurious nature of the Kremlin's "anti-fascism" and the "anti-fascist struggle" of its puppet governments in Donetsk and Lugansk.
Letter to Seumas on Ukraine
This was written in October 30, 2014 · – six months before Seumas's latest pro-Putin apologia in the Graun. But it strikes me, now, as more apposite than ever:
A Letter to Seumas Milne (and much of the expertly British Left) regarding Ukraine
By Dmitri MacMillen
I have made little secret of my disappointment with much coverage and discussion of the ongoing developments in Ukraine this past year, but rarely more often so than when it is stirred by certain elements of the British left. Earlier this week I happened to see Seumas Milne, a Guardian editor and columnist, as well as a leading voice on the British left regarding capitalism and imperialism, at an event and thought it appropriate to approach him and confront him over his poor reporting on Ukraine; unfortunately, the opportunity did not arise. As an individual who sympathises with many of Milne's and the left's arguments, I find it disheartening when they fail to apply standards of moral consistency and objectivity for the likes of Ukraine and not only.
So I wrote him two emails of varying lengths, openly expressing my frustrations with his coverage of Ukraine, and also his chairing, days earlier, of a discussion featuring Putin at the Valdai conference. To a large degree, I can say that the impressions penned in these emails are an accurate summary of not only my dissatisfaction with Milne's politics, but also that of swathes of the left (John Pilger comes to mind) in this country and others, who refuse to contemplate embracing anything other than a 'tunnel vision' disproportionately suspicious of the West and its allies, consequently producing material which regrettably falls short of balanced and well-researched journalism. The correspondence is as follows:
Dear Seumas Milne,
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dmitri and I am a student at a London university. I was also present at the event last night at the Argentine embassy, but unfortunately I wasn't able to speak to you as I would have hoped to.
There is much that I admire about your work and writings, in particular that what you have written regarding the War on Terror, Palestine and the effects of capitalism in this country. However, and to be frank, I have begun to despair of your writing of late.
As a matter of disclosure, I am a Russian citizen, and one appalled by the events for over the past half year in Ukraine, to a very large extent instigated by my own government. Your writing on Ukraine has been unimpressive to put it mildly, almost entirely pinning the blame for the conflict on the West (funnily enough, not a word from you about Russia's own devastating intentions and actions – just mere apologism) as well as propagating the notion of swathes of fascists and neo-Nazis roaming in the Ukrainian establishment and society; the absurdity of your latter thesis was effectively laid to rest by the results of Sunday's parliamentary elections and the nature of their conduct.
As someone whose reputation as a campaigner and journalist is to a large extent seen as having been consistently grounded on anti-imperialism, to see you sharing a stage with Vladimir Putin just days ago was bewildering, if not exactly surprising by now. If you are serious on seeking out the dangerous forces of fascism, I politely advise you to reread a transcript of Putin's Q and A session at the session you moderated and look at his comments regarding ethnic Russians in Crimea, just for a start. If this does not incite concern in you, then that is unfortunate and equally inconsistent.
You are a powerful voice on the left and one which many read and look up to. You are a writer of considerable talents and one whose campaigning I have often admired. However, if moral consistency across the board is not something you wish to strive for, and your politics are really defined by an innate suspicion of the West, but not the rest, then so be it. If you want to exclusively judge the likes of Ukraine on the basis of a pre-conceived world view, rather than carefully examining the country's own circumstances, then so be it. But that is a tunnel vision, and it is rarely worthy of wider respect. And I, alongside many other erstwhile enthusiastic readers of yours, deeply regret that.
Best wishes,
A courteous reply promptly ensued, the exact contents of which I shall not publish here but instead paraphrase. In brief, Milne said he disagreed with my interpretation regarding responsibility for the events in Ukraine over the past year as well as my criticism of his portrayal of the far right's significance. He added that moderating Putin's speech in no way constituted endorsement of him, given that journalists are often asked to fulfil such a role. He did not accept that his politics are innately anti-Western, but underlined the imbalance in power between the West and its allies and that of powers such Russia and others in world affairs. I followed up with a reply.
Dear Seumas Milne,
Thank you for courteous reply, for which I am grateful considering how harsh some of what I may have said did sound. I hope you don't mind if I make a few points regarding the aforementioned.
Regarding the far right in Ukraine, I in no way dismiss it. I am of direct Ukrainian Jewish descent and my family have had their own experiences with Ukrainian nationalism, so I am more than aware and also wary of its potential dangers.
But the role of the far right in Ukraine, as you and others have put it, as it now stands, is too often exaggerated and overblown. You may insist otherwise, but the impression that many gathered from your readings was that Maidan was effectively a fascist coup (and no, I do not subscribe to the comfortable and simple narrative of a pro-Western, pro-democratic revolt against Russia). Maidan was complex, as were its origins – there is no straightforward interpretation. The nature of Ukrainian nationalism and the far right is also fairly complex and deserves scrutiny. But to describe it all with broad brushstrokes, often entirely ignoring the real significance to modern-day Ukrainian nationalism of basic figures such as Stepan Bandera, no matter how unpalatable to some like myself, is intellectually dishonest. Accusations of an astronomical surge in xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Ukraine, as a result of the protests, have time and again been disproved by public figures and protestors, many of them of the very ethnic backgrounds that you would believe are most at risk from marauding fascists. In fact, many of these communities have stated time and again that those most responsible for fascism in Ukraine are not the far-right, but Putin and his very actions in Ukraine.
At the beginning of the Maidan, the fascists were almost invisible. After the New Year, as the protests radicalised in the face of government intransigence and the subsequent crackdowns on the square, their presence grew (although they were still a minority). You suggest Yanukoyvch was overthrown in a coup. A figure as repulsive as Yanukoyvych, who in the face of popular pressure was prepared to resort to armed force on his own people, plundered the national budget in the billions and ran away to Russia of his own volition (a coup?) at a time when statesmanship was most needed (with the assistance of the Russian state, as you would have heard at Valdai), surely also merits some condemnation from you too.
To say the government that came after Maidan had many fascists is dishonest; there were at best a few. To see how badly the far-right did in this Sunday's elections (and this at a time when Ukraine is fighting a war with an external aggressor, that has historically been a catalyst for Ukrainian nationalism, struggling to retain its eastern provinces and fighting on so many other domestic fronts) is by and large a testament to the maturity of a great deal of the Ukrainian electorate and also the relative irrelevance of fascists in Ukrainian politics, at least on a substantive level.
Yes, the West no doubt bears some responsibility for what has taken place; but why cannot you bring yourself to recognise Russia's more than considerable role? If fascism is what you feel strongly about, why don't you also condemn Russia for fuelling some of its worst effects, especially in Ukraine? Why cannot you condemn the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea (especially when it is grounded on such spurious and equally disconcerting arguments such as a supposed threat to Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians – why is it neither imperialism)? Is it not fascism when Russian rule has led to thousands of Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians and others having to leave Crimea, or the abductions and murders of local pro-Ukrainian activists and Tatars (none of which have been investigated), coupled with attacks on local religious minorities or communities, all with Russian acquiescence? Or is the installation of puppet states in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, professing totalitarian and rabidly pro-Russian nationalistic narratives, ostracising and oppressing, with often murderous and gruesome consequences, locals supportive of Ukraine and its territorial integrity, not fascism? That is fascism and its real life consequences; overtly totalitarian and militaristic tendencies, insisting on dividing people on ethnic markers which until recently were of very little relevance on a daily basis, and now bearing devastating repercussions.
I am not advocating whataboutism; I am in no way blind to abuses committed by the Ukrainian establishment. But I ask for consistency – something which I have not felt apparent in your writings.
Regarding moderating the Putin event; I understand journalists might need to moderate these events, but where does the buck stop? You have accepted that he is authoritarian (although to leave it at there would be simplistic); but is it still acceptable? If you were invited, in the unlikely event, to moderate an event featuring Barack Obama, would you go? Would you reject an invitation by a certain government? Is there not a moral compromise in any case by involving oneself in these events in such a capacity?
I am happy to discuss this further.
Best wishes,
I rest my case.
Morning Star's 'anti-fascist' label for rebels in East Ukraine crass and niave
Ever since the Maidan uprising against Putin's stooge Yanukovych just over a year ago, the Morning Star (indirectly controlled by the British CP and funded by many UK trade unions) has persisted in referring to the Kiev government and its forces as "fascist" and the pro-Putin rebels as "anti-fascists." The M Star's circulation is small, but it carries some weight within the trade union movement and sections of the left. This makes its grotesque misrepresentation of what's going on in Ukraine, and its uncritical repetition of Putin's propaganda, so politically poisonous. No article or letter published in the paper has challenged their version of events, until this letter, published today. Shiraz Socialist has no idea who the author is; we're republishing here because we broadly (but not in every detail) agree with it and because letters published in the M Star's print edition do not appear on its website:
Naïve 'anti-fascist' label for rebel Russians breathtaking in its error
YOUR description of the eastern Ukrainian rebel soldiers as "anti-fascist fighters" is breathtaking in its crassness and naivety.
They're no more fighting fascism than Mussolini was.
As ethnic Russians whose ancestors were moved in during the Soviet era (and possibly before), they have simply spotted an opportunity to have the area they live in returned to Moscow's control.
In this we have seen the encouraging hand of Vladimir Putin, just as in Crimea and Georgia.
Please don't insult our intelligence by describing Putin as some sort of defender of the left — he is a dictator who maintains his position by imprisonment and assassination of political opponents and by strict control of the media to ensure re-election.
At least in the (later) Soviet era there was some sort of brake by the Communist Party on excesses by the leadership.
Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Pinochet and their like were fascists.
You are simply losing all credibility by desperately trying to tar the Ukraine government with the label. Shame on you.
I am considering ceasing to buy the Morning Star, despite your support (with which I agree) for the Jack Jones Square campaign in Madrid.
PETER CARR, Sawbridgeworth
The Anti-Imperialism of Fools: A Cautionary Tale for the Brit Anti-War Left
Above: about as "anti- imperialist"-foolish as you can get: Rees, Murray and Galloway
By Camilla Bassi
'The Anti-Imperialism of Fools'
The day after 9/11 I attended a local Socialist Alliance committee meeting in Sheffield, England, as a representative of the revolutionary socialist organisation, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty.The Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) comrades present discussed the 9/11 attack as regrettable in terms of the loss of life but as nonetheless understandable.They acknowledged the attack as tactically misguided, yet refused (when pressed to do so) to condemn it. Later, in November 2001, at a public meeting of the Sheffield Socialist Alliance, I shared a platform with a then national committee member of the SWP to debate the US and UK war in Afghanistan. Besides from agreeing on opposition to the imperialist war onslaught, I was alone on the platform in raising opposition to the Islamist Taliban rule and in arguing for labour movement solidarity with forces such as the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which resist both imperialism and Islamism and demand a rogressive, democratic secular alternative.
The SWP comrades present, both on the platform and from the floor, alleged a political error on my part and those who argued along with me. Their rationale was that, to fully oppose the War on Terror, we had a duty to oppose the main enemy and greater evil – US and UK imperialism – and this alone. Anything else, they argued, would alienate the masses of disillusioned, angry British Muslim youth that socialists needed to win over.
The SWP's dual camp of 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' (a socialistic inversion of imperialist war discourse of 'the status quo versus regression') came to dominate England's anti-war movement. They publicly launched their initiative the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) ten days after 9/11, with the aim of mobilising a broad political grouping against the War on Terror.
Since then the SWP vanguard of the StWC has, at critical moments, steered the political course that England's anti-war protests have taken. Read the rest of this entry »
The most important recent article on imperialism you'll read
Marxism and imperialism
Lenin's theory has been turned into dogma
By Martin Thomas
(First published in 1996)
We are not a government party; we are the party of irreconcilable opposition…. Our tasks… we realize not through the medium of bourgeois governments… but exclusively through the education of the masses through agitation, through explaining to the workers what they should defend and what they should overthrow. Such a 'defence' cannot give immediate miraculous results. But we do not even pretend to be miracle workers. As things stand, we are a revolutionary minority. Our work must be directed so that the workers on whom we have influence should correctly appraise events, not permit themselves to be caught unawares, and prepare the general sentiment of their own class for the revolutionary solution of the tasks confronting us.
Leon Trotsky
By the end of the '60s, what had once been 'the pride' of Marxism – the theory of imperialism – had become a 'Tower of Babel', in which not even Marxists knew any longer how to find their way.
Giovanni Arrighi [1]
There is not, nor can there be, such a thing as a 'negative' Social-Democratic slogan that serves only to 'sharpen proletarian consciousness against imperialism' without at the same time offering a positive answer to the question of how Social-Democracy will solve the problem when it assumes power. A 'negative' slogan unconnected with a definite positive solution will not sharpen, but dull, consciousness, for such a slogan is a hollow phrase, meaningless declamation.
V I Lenin [2]
If European capitalism needed colonies in the first half of this century, why has it not collapsed without them in the second half? If early 20th century imperialism marked 'the highest stage of capitalism', the 'epoch of capitalist decay' – as revolutionary Marxists wrote at the time – what is the late 20th century?
To answer these questions we must first clear away much confusion. Though Lenin's famous pamphlet on imperialism is one of the finest polemics in the whole of Marxist politics, the 'Leninist orthodoxy' which made it, or rather a garbled version of it, into the master-textbook of twentieth-century world politics and economics has confused rather than clarified. The concepts of 'export of capital', 'finance capital', or 'monopoly capital' as the essence of the matter are – so I shall argue – neither special theoretical innovations of Lenin, nor adequate keys for an understanding of imperialism in a broader view of history.
Imperialism and high finance: Kautsky builds on Engels to answer Bernstein
Maybe the first big classical-Marxist statement on imperialism was by Karl Kautsky, in 1899, replying to Eduard Bernstein's call for a 'Revision' of the perspective of Marx and Engels.
In the 1890s Engels had identified monopolies, cartels, credit and high finance as expressions that classic individual capitalism was decaying and becoming 'socialistic', but in an upside-down way which sharpened plunder, swindling, and crises. Colonialism was a profit-making venture of the new financial aristocracy. [4]
Bernstein argued, on the contrary, that the new trends made capitalism more open to peaceful and piecemeal progress. Credit gave the system more flexibility. Industrial cartels (associations of companies bound together by agreements on production levels, prices and sales) gave the capitalists more conscious control. They could avoid overproduction by mutual agreement. The growth of the world market, and improvements in communications and transport, also made the system more flexible. Capitalism could probably postpone 'general commercial crises' for a long time.
Bernstein criticised the way the German government pursued its imperialist policy, but argued that the trend was towards peace and harmony between nations. 'The workman who has equal rights as a voter… who… is a fellow owner of the common property of the nation, whose children the community educates, whose health it protects, whom it secures against injury, has a fatherland…', and so should oppose Germany being 'repressed in the council of the nations'. Moreover: 'Onlya conditional right of savages to the land occupied by them can be recognised. The higher civilisation ultimately can claim a higher right.'[5]
Bernstein's scenario of peace and free trade was an illusion, replied Kautsky. 'Protective tariffs are easier introduced than abolished, especially in a period of such raging competition on the world market… Free trade! For the capitalists that is an ideal of the past.' Bernstein claimed that speculation was a disease of capitalism's infancy. But infant capitalism was being promoted across the world by the 'overflowing capitals of the older countries… Argentinian and Transvaal speculation holds its 'wildest orgies' not only in Buenos Aires and Johannesburg, but equally in the venerable City of London.'
And colonialism, Kautsky insisted, was inseparable from militarism and the despoiling of colonial peoples for the benefit of 'the modern kings of finance [who] dominate nations directly through cartels and trusts and subject all production to their power'. [6]
'The financier,' Kautsky went on to argue, 'finds militarism and a strong active governmental policy, both external and internal, very agreeable. The kings of finance need not fear a strong governmental power, independent of people and Parliament, because they can rule such a power directly either as bondholders [i.e., as people who lend money to the government], or else through personal and social influences. In militarism, war and public debts they have a direct interest, not only as creditors, but also as government contractors…
'It is wholly different with industrial capital. Militarism, war and public debts signify high taxes… War signifies besides this… a break in trade… A strong governmental power arouses anxiety in [the industrial manager] because he cannot directly control it… he inclines rather to liberalism… [But] The opposition between finance and industry continually decreases… finance ever more and more dominates industry.'[7]
Much of Kautsky's argument was a Marxist conversion of ideas which were to be summed up with great verve by the English radical liberal, J A Hobson, in a book motivated by the Boer War (Imperialism, 1902).
'The Imperialism of the last three decades,' wrote Hobson, 'is clearly condemned as a business policy, in that at enormous expense it has procured a small, bad, unsafe increase of markets, and has jeopardised the entire wealth of the nation in rousing the strong resentment of other nations.' But imperialism continued because, 'the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests.'
Arms contractors, some exporters, the shipping trade, the military, and those who wanted jobs for their sons in the Indian Civil Service, all had an interest in imperialism. But 'the governor of the imperial engine' was 'the great financial houses', which were investing abroad at such a rate.
'The economic taproot of Imperialism' was overproduction and glut of capital. 'Messrs Rockefeller, Pierpoint Morgan [etc.] need Imperialism because they desire to use the public resources of their country to find profitable employment for the capital which would otherwise be superfluous.'
Imperialism was also parasitic. 'To a larger extent every year Great Britain is becoming a nation living upon tribute from abroad, and the classes who enjoy this tribute have an ever-increasing incentive to employ the public policy, the public purse and the public force to extend the field of their private investments, and to safeguard and improve their existing investments. This is, perhaps, the most important fact in modern politics.'[8]
The overproduction and glut were due to inequality of income. The workers could not consume much because of low wages; the capitalists could not possibly use all of their huge incomes on luxuries, and thus had vast amounts left seeking investment. Balance should be restored through social reform, higher wages, more spending on public services. This would lead to more balanced national economies and less searching for markets abroad.
Kautsky saw a similar permanent glut. 'If the capitalist mode of production raises the mass production of goods to the utmost, it also limits to a minimum the mass consumption of the workers who produce these goods, and therefore produces an ever greater surplus of goods for personal consumption…'[9] He differed from Hobson in arguing that this glut would be resolved by the collapse of capitalism and the socialist revolution, rather than by 'social reform', and in contending that finance-capital dominated, rather than being only a 'sectional interest' counterposed to 'the business interests of the nation as a whole'.
Another difference was that Hobson used the word 'imperialism', where the German Marxists at this stage would use a term like 'world policy'. 'Imperialism' was not special Marxist jargon: on the contrary. The Marxists took over the term from the common usage of British bourgeois politics – where some, like Rosebery, called themselves 'Liberal Imperialists', others, like Hobson, anti-imperialists. They used it in the same sense as common usage – the new aggressive colonial and world-economic policy of the big powers – and sought to uncover its economic roots in the rise of high finance.
Many of the core ideas of the whole literature were already expressed by 1902: militarism, colony-grabbing, conflict and an authoritarian state as the political trends; high finance, economic decadence and glut, and export of capital, as the economic underpinnings.
But what exactly was finance capital? This question was never properly resolved. And the recurrent idea of metropolitan capitalism having become 'glutted' would also cause confusion.
Effective demand depends not only on consumption but also on investment; and, in fact, fluctuations in demand for investment goods are generally the prime movers in crises. Demand for those investment goods can soar while final consumption stagnates – and, vice versa, the run-up to a crisis is generally a period of unusually high working-class consumption but sagging investment.
'Overproduction' is not a permanent condition; capitalism constantly sheds overproduction through crises and then builds it up again. The relation between supply and demand for money-capital is determined by the tempo of self-expansion of capital. It is a relation between profits accumulated from past capitalist exploitation, and profits available from present capitalist exploitation. The spasmodic nature of capitalist development means that this supply-and-demand relation is constantly falling out of balance and generating 'surpluses' of money-capital. But those surpluses are a function of the cycle of boom and slump, not of any absolute level at which an economy becomes 'full up' of capital.
The notion of an absolute level after which a capitalist economy will become permanently 'glutted' and awash with surplus capital is a recurrent theme in mainstream economics, from Adam Smith to Keynes. It has been attractive to socialists because it seems to show that capitalism must inevitably break down. It is misleading.
Break of Day in the Trenches by Isaac Rosenberg
The most famous World War One poets – Sassoon, Brook, Owen, Blunden and Binyon – were officers from the British middle and upper classes. Isaac Rosenberg (above) was different: he was from a working class background and, as his name suggests, was Jewish. He served in the ranks and turned down the opportunity to become a lance corporal.
Also unlike most of the better-known 1914-18 poets, he was critical of the war from the start, but enlisted in 1915 because he needed employment to support his mother.
He was killed on the Somme on 1 April 1918.
Break of Day in the Trenches
The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.
Critique of Patrick Cockburn's 'Whose Side is Turkey on?'
The November 6 London Review of Books has published Patrick Cockburn's latest article, 'Whose Side is Turkey On?'. Now, as I support the struggle of the Syrian Kurds, led by the PYD and its armed militia, the YPG, against ISIS' genocidal siege, I have no interest in defending Turkey's shabby role in this, even if I think both the US and Turkey, in their current difference on this issue are both being totally cynical in their different ways. So this critique will not deal with these issues.
Unfortunately, the angle from which Cockburn criticises Turkey is full of the same contradictions that significant parts of the left espouse, basked in an overall hostility to the Syrian revolution. Valid criticism of Turkey's sabotage of the defence of Kobani – connected to Turkey's own oppression of its Kurdish minority – is mixed in with criticism of Turkey for allegedly wanting to help overthrow the Syrian tyranny of Bashar Assad. As if there were something wrong with wanting the overthrow of a tyrant who has burnt his whole country, sending 1.5 million Syrian refugees into Turkey.
Indeed, the fact that Turkey plays an otherwise positive role (for its own reasons which I can't go into here) in allowing Syrian resistance fighters to cross the border is labelled "facilitating ISIS", as if the Syrian rebellion has anything to do with ISIS, its vicious enemy. Don't get me wrong – Turkey may well be facilitating ISIS around the Kurdish regions of the north-east for specifically anti-Kurdish regions, but that simply has nothing to with its *rightful* facilitation of the anti-Assad rebellion elsewhere.
Unless one held the view that only the Syrian Kurds had the right to resist massacre, torture, ethnic cleansing and so on. After all, the Syrian rebellion, based largely among the vast impoverished Sunni Arab majority, has faced a regime that makes ISIS' tyranny appear amateurish in comparison, and considering how barbaric ISIS is, this is a big claim, yet one that is simply empirically true.
Indeed, and I digress a little here – not understanding that it is the Syrian and Iraqi Sunni Arab populations that have been bombed to pieces, ethnically cleansed, dispossessed physically, politically and in every other way, by both the American invasion of Iraq and the Assad regime's burning of its whole country to keep a narrow mega-plutocracy in power, is one of the keys to the left's misunderstanding of many of these issues. It is the Sunni Arab populations of both countries that have suffered a decade-long apocalypse, not, overall, the Shia, Alawites or Kurds.
Who arms "jihadis"?
Referring to the "coalition" that the US has built to confront ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Cockburn writes:
"When the bombing of Syria began in September, Obama announced with pride that Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Turkey were all joining the US as military partners against Isis. But, as the Americans knew, these were all Sunni states which had played a central role in fostering the jihadis in Syria and Iraq."
Ah, no, they didn't actually. And just because Cockburn continues to make that assertion, always evidence-free, doesn't make a non-fact a fact. Actually, only less than 5 percent of ISIS funds came from outside donations at all, and of that, what came from the Gulf certainly didn't come from the regimes (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/23/231223/records-show-how-iraqi-extremists.html?sp=/99/117/). Read the rest of this entry »
ISIS horror forces a culture shift on the left
By Rhodri Evans (in the Workers Liberty paper Solidarity)
A "common sense" which has dominated much left thinking since the late 1980s or early 1990s is now breaking down. That's a good thing.
The old line was to support whomever battled the USA. By opposing the USA, they were "anti-imperialist", and therefore at least half-revolutionary.
So many leftists backed the Taliban. They sided with Khomeiny's Iran. They claimed "we are all Hezbollah".
But Syria's dictator, Assad? Some leftists have taken the US support for the Syrian opposition, and the US threats to bomb Syria, as mandating them to side with Assad. Most find that too much to swallow.
And ISIS? Leftists who have backed the Taliban are not now backing ISIS. Not even "critically".
The outcry about ISIS ceremonially beheading Western captives has, reasonably enough, deterred leftists. So has the threat from ISIS to the Kurds, whose national rights most leftists have learned to support.
And so, probably, has the fact that other forces previously reckoned "anti-imperialist" — Iran and its allies, for example — detest ISIS as much as the US does.
The Taliban converted Kabul's football stadium into a site for public executions, and chopped hands and feet off the victims before killing them. The Taliban persecuted the Hazara and other non-Sunni and non-Pushtoon peoples of Afghanistan.
Now the media coverage of ISIS has focused thinking. But leftists who now don't back ISIS must be aware that their criteria have shifted.
The old "common sense" was spelled out, for example, by the SWP in a 2001 pamphlet entitled No to Bush's War.
It portrayed world politics as shaped by a "drive for global economic and military dominance" by a force interchangeably named "the world system", "globalisation", "imperialism", "the West", or "the USA".
All other forces in the world were mere "products" of that drive. They were examples of the rule that "barbarity bred barbarity", "barbarism can only cause more counter-barbarism", or they were "terrorists the West has created".
The pamplet promoted a third and decisive idea, that we should side with the "counter-barbarism" against the "barbarism".
It was nowhere as explicit as the SWP had been in 1990: "The more US pressure builds up, the more Saddam will play an anti-imperialist role… In all of this Saddam should have the support of socialists… Socialists must hope that Iraq gives the US a bloody nose and that the US is frustrated in its attempt to force the Iraqis out of Kuwait" (SW, 18 August 1990).
But the idea in the 2001 pamphlet was the same. The SWP talked freely about how "horrifying" the 11 September attacks in the USA were. It refused to condemn them.
"The American government denounces the Taliban regime as 'barbaric' for its treatment of women", said the pamphlet. A true denunciation, or untrue? The SWP didn't say. Its answer was: "It was the Pakistani secret service, the Saudi royal family and American agents… that organised the Taliban's push for power".
Bin Laden was behind the 11 September attacks? Not his fault. "It was because of the rage he felt when he saw his former ally, the US, bomb Baghdad and back Israel".
Now Corey Oakley, in the Australian socialist paper Red Flag, which comes from the same political culture as the SWP, criticises "leftists [for whom] 'imperialism' simply means the US and its Saudi and Israeli allies.
"Syria, Iran and even Russia, whose strategic interests brought them into conflict with the US, are portrayed as playing a progressive role…
"Events in Iraq… leave such 'anti-imperialist' fantasies in ruins. The Saudis are conspiring with the Russians while US diplomats negotiate military tactics with their Iranian counterparts… Israel tries to derail a US alliance with Iran while simultaneously considering whether it needs to intervene in de facto alliance with Iran in Jordan.
"If your political approach boils down to putting a tick wherever the US and Israel put a cross, you will quickly find yourself tied in knots. The driving force behind the misery… is not an all-powerful US empire, but a complex system of conflict and shifting alliances between the ruling classes of states big and small…
"The British, Russian, French and US imperialists are no longer the only independent powers in the region. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – though all intertwined in alliances with other countries big and small – are powerful capitalist states in their own right, playing the imperialist game, not mere clients of bigger powers…" (1 July 2014).
The shift signifies an opening for discussion, rather than a reaching of new conclusions.
On ISIS, a frequent leftist "line" now is to deplore ISIS; say that the 2003 US invasion of Iraq contributed to the dislocation from which ISIS surged (true); express no confidence or trust in US bombing as a way to push back ISIS (correct); and slide into a "conclusion" that the main imperative is to campaign against US bombing.
The slide gives an illusion of having got back to familiar "auto-anti-imperialist" ground. But the illusion is thin.
The old argument was that if you oppose the US strongly enough, then you oppose the root of all evil, and hence you also effectively combat the bad features of the anti-imperialist force. But no-one can really believe that the US created ISIS, or that there were no local reactionary impulses with their own local dynamic and autonomy behind the rise of ISIS.
Our statement of basic ideas, in this paper, says: "Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal rights for all nations, against imperialists and predators big and small". We have a new opening to get discussion on that approach.
The US attack on ISIS and the inconsistencies of the 'anti imperialist' left
As ever, with a reblogged article, please do not assume that all of us at Shiraz agree with all the contents of this piece, which first appeared on the Australian GreenLeft discussion group:
Above: the US Answer anti-war coalition last year on Syria: what do they say now?
"Anti-imperialists" protesting US war on Iraq?
By Michael Karadjis
For days now, the US military has been launching air strikes against the reactionary Sunni-fascist group Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS, or just IS now) in Iraq. Yet, strangely, not only have I not seen any evidence of anti-war demonstrations, or organising for them, I have also not seen the entire faux-"left" cybersphere full of fulminating attacks on US imperialist intervention, with everyone repeating and slightly re-wording the same half-baked, evidence-free article, like we saw last August during the alleged build-up to an entirely imaginary US attack on the reactionary, secular-fascist regime of Bashar Assad in Syria.
The geopolitics is of course interesting. While the Syrian regime of Assad barely fired a shot at ISIS for an entire year (and vice versa), and instead both focused on crushing the Free Syrian Army (FSA, and its more moderate Islamist allies, and also Jabhat al-Nusra), often even directly and blatantly collaborating against the FSA, and in oil deals, and "the West", forever refusing to send even a bullet to the FSA under the bullshit rubric that such arms "might get into the hands of extremists", even though for the whole year, the only force in the entire region (apart from the Kurds) that were actually fighting ISIS (the worst extremists) were the FSA and its allies (and indeed are still furiously resisting ISIS in Syria right now); well now that the US is bombing ISIS, and bolstering and arming Assad's ally, the sectarian-Shia regime of Maliki, so now the Assad regime and ISIS have also FINALLY come to blows! What an amazing coincidence!
Anyway, let's try to figure out some differences for anti-war western leftists.
Perhaps we should only oppose US interventions when they are just a figment of our imaginations, as opposed to ones that are actually happening in our face.
Perhaps we should only oppose imaginary US interventions when the US shows that it is impossible to intervene without going around in a whole lot of circles like countless committee meetings, taking a war proposal to Congress for the first time in half a century etc, whereas when the US shows that you can order air strikes without all that pretense, then it is OK.
Perhaps it should depend on the degree of imaginary "anti-imperialism" of the reactionary tyrants under real or imaginary US attack. So apparently, since the Syrian Baath regime has collaborated with US imperialism for decades, right up to the rendition and torture program of "terror" suspects on behalf of the US in very recent times, and slaughtered Palestinians and their camps and organisations and militants with a passion rivalling the Zionist regime, we should defend such a well-intentioned regime, whereas a regime like ISIS which is totally, fundamentally anti-imperialist to the core (I don't use that as a compliment, rather it is a neutral statement), then we should not oppose a US attack.
Perhaps we should look at who has done the most slaughtering. Both of course are monstrous tyrants to the core and neither has any redeeming feature whatsoever. But since ISIS has probably killed several thousand, and Assad has pretty much levelled every city in Syria, turned the whole country to rubble, killed over 100,000 people to be generous, tortured tens of thousands to death in medieval dungeons, bombed hospitals and schools with a fury rivalling Israel in Gaza, and at that very time, last August, had bombed hundreds of children in their sleep with chemical weapons, of course we should defend only Assad, not ISIS.
Perhaps someone could offer some other suggestions.


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Daniel Saw the Stone
By K. Lee Scott
Detailed Description
Daniel Saw the Stone (Spiritual). Arranged by K. Lee Scott. For SATB choir (a cappella). Spiritual, Concert. K. Lee Scott Series. Main Key: C Major. Spiritual and Sacred. Difficulty: Medium (Jr. High/High School) or Easy (Adult). Octavo. 12 pages. Published by Hinshaw Music Inc. (HI.HMC908).


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Jack Boss had rejoined Honeywell in 2004 and most recently was vice president and general manager of Honeywell Specialty Products.
Honeywell has appointed Jack Boss as president for Honeywell Safety Products, which is a leading global provider of PPE and is part of the Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions' Life Safety business.
Boss had rejoined Honeywell in 2004 and most recently was vice president and general manager of Honeywell Specialty Products. He worked for AlliedSignal, a predecessor of Honeywell, from 1988 to 1996, in sales and marketing management positions. Honeywell's announcement said he received the Honeywell Premier Achievement Award in 2008 for his work to grow the Specialty Chemicals business.
Prior to rejoining Honeywell in 2004, Boss worked at Great Lakes Chemical, serving first as vice president and general manager of Fine Chemicals and then as vice president and general manager of Fluorines. He has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of West Virginia and an MBA in marketing and finance from Rutgers, according to the announcement.
Honeywell Safety Products' offerings include head, hearing, eye/face, respiratory, hand, footwear, clothing, and fall protection.
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7/23: By the Numbers: The facts and figures you need to know about fall protection
7/29: How much is your FR garment costing you really?
8/6: VPP Status – Continuous Process Improvement through Contractor Prequalification
8/12: Health & Safety: Breaking Down the Silos - Intermediate Level
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Scientists say that, for the first time, they have witnessed a black hole swallowing a distant star.
And you think you've got problems. Take a look at nearby galaxy Centaurus A, which is in a losing battle with a black hole nearly 55 million times bigger (in terms of mass) than our sun. As it dies, its guts are being sprayed out in a trail of carnage 2 million light-years long, and NASA has the intergalactic snuff film to prove it.
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It's not often that we pose questions like this to you, honored readers, and to be frank, we can't answer this one. However, some really smart physicists and their state-of-the-art machines are exploring the issue, and from the look of it this baffling notion might just be true.
Could a scientific experiment 14 years and $8 billion in the making produce a tiny black hole that could eat the Earth? Or reduce the planet to a dead mass of "strange matter"? Two critics say yes and have sued in federal court to stop the Large Hadron Collider from smashing protons together this summer.
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Mission Areas expand
The Georges River Region has created two new mission areas to help parishes minister and plan with other churches experiencing similar mission issues.
The change raises the total number of Mission Areas in the Diocese to 24.
In Georges River the Liverpool Mission Area remains the same, while Canterbury-Bankstown has been split into Bankstown and Marrickville, and St George has been divided to become St George and St George West.
The acting bishop of the region, the Rt Rev Peter Tasker, says this decision was made in consultation with the parishes for practical and missional reasons.
I think the constraints [of an area] ought to be effective mission rather than geography," he says.
"If a group of parishes are going to work together in mission, which is the aim, it works better if you've got a number of things in common with each other".
For example, Bankstown is an area rich in newer migrants, which means the churches in it are "working really hard to reach non-Commonwealth country people". St George, on the other hand, "has a real consciousness of itself as an area with a specific identity" and works well on that basis.
Each of the Mission Areas also has a serious focus on multiethnic issues, whether these relate to "new" or "old" migrants, a range of faiths or a changeover in the nationalities that call the area home.
"In the Georges River region you're dealing with multiethnic in every parish," Bishop Tasker says. "We're not a bit 'mono' like other parts of Sydney can be – and where lots of parishes might have things in common. Here, you move one suburb and you've got a completely different issue."
The Rev Gary Bennetts (Bankstown), the Rev Mat Yeo (St George West) and the Rev Stuart Milne (Liverpool) remain leaders of their Mission Areas, and are joined by Blakehurst rector the Rev Paul Lucas (St George).
Bishop Tasker will be, for the moment, the acting Mission Area leader in Marrickville, and says that amid these changes the prayer of those in the region "is that we remain true to 'the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints' and that the Lord of the harvest will continue to raise up the needed labourers for the work here".
Photo: Newer migrant area (Credit: Peter Hindmarsh)
Mission Areas expand
Vale Sir Harold Knight
23rd Jun 2015
Gong hosts SSM lecture
22nd Jun 2015
I need somebody
Not just anybody
Read about inter-church support in July Southern Cross. More info and downloads here.
Ministry to the disabled
Southern Cross
Find out what else is in June Southern Cross. Promo slides to download.


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At a time when most of my contemporaries are retired or about to retire, I am as busy as ever and have no intention of stopping.
After my boyfriend of 33 years passed away some 8 years ago, I'm looking for a new long term relationship.
Tend to like younger people - not surprising at my age!
Have relaxed liberal attitudes.
I value loyalty, expecting to give it and receive it.
Tend to have a leadership role in my work and public activities, so in my personal relationships I find it very relaxing to be submissive and let my partner take the lead, so someone who likes to be assertive and likes the idea of controlling an older man might be interested.