When Cait Reilly refused to work for free at Poundland, the tabloids had a field day. How lazy and idealist are the youth of today! Fancy being on the dole and turning down work! Wasn’t like she had anything better to do, she just couldn’t be arsed… Dossing about, expecting handouts from the state and giving nothing in return, good god, in my day we would have had her belted. Worse than the damn foreigners these young people.

Etc. Etc., you know the script.

Cait’s refusal was not out of a snobbery for Poundland, the retail sector, or those who work in retail. It was out of disdain for a system that thinks young people’s labour is worth less than other people’s, and which has now deemed it worthless. The government’s compulsory ‘work experience’ schemes, in which young people on unemployment benefit are ordered to give their labour to large corporations for free, are becoming the status-quo and have massive swathes of public support behind them. The more well-meaning of these misguided supporters think the government are doing us a favour, making us more employable. These tend to be the same people who believe that if you want a job, you will get one, and if you don;t have one, it must be due to laziness and unwillingness to work. Today’s news tells us that of the 231,000 people currently unemployed in Scotland, over 88,000 are aged 18 to 24. So 38% of Scots on the dole are youth (and these figures don’t even take the 16-17 group into consideration).

It is simply untrue that young people do not want to work. In Scotland, many young people have part-time jobs while still in high school, and rely on part-time work to see them through university. Tuition fees might remain free for Scots studying in their home countries, but rent and food are not. The student who does nothing but party is an archaic stereotype, and a myth. The student who must fit in classes around part time jobs – in many cases students have more than one of these – is an increasing commonality, especially in the case of lower-paid working-class families who simply cannot afford to support their children while they are away at university. Graduates who are unable to find jobs in their sector due to ‘lack of experience’ or a simple lack of jobs are being turned away from lower-paid jobs on the grounds that they are ‘over-qualified’, creating a widing graduate employment gulf. And young people who do not go to university, preferring to leave education in order to make a wage sooner, are increasingly finding that there are no jobs for them. Where even minimum-wage jobs demand extensive ‘experience’, school-leavers increasingly find themselves at a loose end in a system that refuses to accomodate them. Clearly the factors leading to youth unemployment are much more multifarious than unwillingness to work or idealist attitudes.

So is this huge number, this 38% of Scotland’s unemployed being youth, a crazy coincidence? Or is it symptomatic of a system that consistently works against the interests of young people?

Either way, free labour presents no solution, and it works against everyone’s interests, not just those of the youth. Why would a company employ someone to do labour for them when they could have a young person do it for free? The Tories are notorious for acting in the interests of big business and ‘the city’ rather in the interests of the people, and no more so than here. In a Britain where young people’s labour is worthless, unemployment increases for every age category, since the workforce is increasingly made up of unpaid people on unemployment benefit. This scheme does not make young people more employable, it makes them work for dole – and even if we are to see unemployment benefit as a substitute for the wages they would otherwise earn from this labour (which it categorically isn’t, but humour me for a second) – we are still expecting young people to work for a fraction of the minimum wage – a fraction of what an employee would be paid to do the same job. And this fraction of the minimum wage is paid for by the taxpayer, rather than by the company that gets the benefit of this virtually free labour.

As usual, we can find some guidance here in Marx. The theory of surplus value tells us that profit is created from workers being paid the lowest possible wage for their labour – necessarily this must be less than the products of their labour are worth to a buyer. The lower the wage, the higher the profit margin. Free labour – or, at best, dole-priced labour – results in a widespread acceptance of the assumption that labour isn’t worth wages, thus devaluing everyone’s labour. People are paid less as a result, thus company profiits go up, and the unemployment statistics are worse than ever due to unemployed people being used as virtual slaves. This is a super-capitalist plot devised to increase company profit using the poorest members of our society, relying on the prejudice many have for young people in order to quell any resistance to a scheme that devalues everyone’s labour, and makes the unemployment problem worse. Classic Tory strategy, whereby the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Cait Reilly simply refused to be a dole slave. The system demands she works. She demands it gives her a job. She demands her labour – and by extension everyone’s – be worth at least minimum wage.

The internet is a relatively new conception, being invented in the mid-20th century, some of us remember before it was developed (and most of us remember it not being a part of our lives). Like most inventions, it has been used by both the ‘Establishment’ or ‘The Powers That Be’ and by ordinary people. The internet and computers in general have both empowered people to take control of their own lives and created a whole new level of surveillance and ‘The Big Brother State’.

Ever since the personal computer has been in mainstream use and since Microsoft bought the DOS operating system, Microsoft has had an iron grip on the computer market. Their vision was that everyone would have a personal computer and they would be the ones to let them use it (for their price and under their control), while IBM envisioned great servers around the world that would be controlled by individuals’ terminals, they would not need Microsoft’s software and so hardware was where the money was. As we know, Microsoft were correct in their analysis and the idea that people could have their own computer that they thought they could control was popular. But some people didn’t like that they had to pay £100 just to use their computer and that if they wanted to do useful tasks such as write letters or store information for an organisation or group they would have to pay yet more. Microsoft have made it harder and harder for anyone to use software other than their own and increased the price accordingly.

Some have turned away from Microsoft’s model of “every extra thing you want to do costs extra” and turned to Apple who will give you most things that you need but you have to buy everything from them. Others have created a community where people make software for themselves. The idea is that if ordinary people all around the world make our own software, it can be as good and even better than its commercial counterpart. This software does not have its code encrypted like Microsoft’s and Apple’s but is open for all to see, this is the world of open source software.

For many years this movement has been small and its products have been pale in comparison to their mainstream version. For years after most people were using a mouse to control their computer through a graphical user interface, these people were still typing out commands. But over that last decade their numbers have grown and their progress accelerated, most open source operating systems now use advanced graphical user interfaces and have more and more advanced programs to match. Linux is the most common type of software within this world and its browser ‘Firefox’ has become quite famous for its ‘Port’ to Microsoft Windows and is accepted by most to be better than Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer, even on its native Windows. This is just an example of the powerful software that is produced by the open source movement and now that the UN has chosen ‘Ubuntu’ (a Linux operating system) for its under $100 computer, to distribute in underdeveloped countries. A lot, if not most, of the movements resources are now focused on Ubuntu’s code.

Compatibility has long been an issue as with all non Microsoft software and OpenOffice has had problems creating Microsoft Office documents due to Microsoft office’s closed source nature (Microsoft obviously made no effort to read any file other than their own). The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) worked with Sun Microsystems to create a standard format for word processing documents and came up with the Open Document Format, which was then accepted as the standard word processing and office suite file format by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Microsoft refused to accept the new standardisation and Microsoft Office was still not even able to open, never mind create OpenDocument Format files. They were inundated with complaints by angry customers who were not able to use any of the standard files they were receiving and so Microsoft relented and Microsoft Office is now able to read and write OpenDocuments from Microsoft Office 2007 (from service pack 2).

People within this moment have mainly been technical in nature and have mostly let companies hold the copyrights to the names of their software, due to there being no individual creator to hold such rights. OpenOffice’s copyright was held by Sun Microsystems but when Sun were purchased by Oracle, a company with a history of commercialising and tampering with open source software, without permission from the community. The leading creators of OpenOffice became worried that the same would happen to OpenOffice so they created the document foundation to hold the copyright of OpenOffice and any other open source software that wishes to use it. Anyone can join the document foundation who agrees with its values and can take part in its democracy (based on a meritocratic, skill based division of labour). After which the developers continued to improve the software although they no longer had rights to the OpenOffice name, then owned by Oracle. The name LibreOffice was chosen for the continuation of the project until such time that the copyright of the OpenOffice name be reacquired. Oracle decided to keep offering OpenOffice and have even posted updates, but have since donated the name to Apache.

It will be interesting to see how many other software projects go down the same route and hold their copyrights in the document foundation or form similar structures. If projects continue to allow commercial entities to own and sway their products, they will likely be pushed and assimilated into commercial software such as Windows and the war will be lost.

Freedom of information goes further than just source code in this war, Wikipedia has become the largest encyclopaedia in the world and is created by specialists and knowledgeable people all around the world. Its accuracy is doubted by many due to the lack of credentials needed to modify or create an article. However Wikipedia and its users routinely remove false, unreferenced material and lock pages that have been continuously changed to the most accountable, previous state. Pages go through a hierarchy or locked states, where only the most certified users can request a change. While vandalism and incorrect posts do occur, it is a very good source of information where cross-referenced properly, as with any other source. Wikipedia recently undertook a ‘Blackout’ on the English portion of its site in protest to bills going through the US Congress. It was not designed to block users from information as they were shown how to bypass the blackout but meant that users read about the bills that implicated any site, with a link rout to illegal copyright material, as liable. Google also showed its support for the campaign by censoring its logo on Google.com.

With Google web search using a version of the Linux kernel, the engine behind Linux operating systems, and Android phones using another version of the Linux kernel, the future looks bright for open source software. It is now very possible to move away from Microsoft’s empire. Ubuntu has a very nice interface and integrates social networking far better than Windows; while those who are less techno savvy might like Linux Mint which is simpler than Ubuntu or Windows. Office files can be created by the powerful LibreOffice and free programs like Gimp can be used instead of Photoshop. Maybe one day, if this revolution is won, taxation will pay for the effort that people put into these projects, but until then, they rely upon donations based on the ability to pay and give time, from its users. The Future is ours, if we just choose to take it.

After almost a year since the SNP’s landslide victory we have a  date – Autumn 2014. The most important referendum in Scottish history, on whether or not we stay in a Union dominated by the right-wing, a state that invaded Iraq, imposes nuclear weapons on the Clyde, destroyed Scotland’s industrial base, or whether we become an independent nation with the power to fundamentally change Scotland for the better and which reflects the left of centre political terrain instead of being dominated by the Tory home counties.

The referendum date has been announced after months of whining from the Unionist parties, all of which have been in disarray since the SNP’s victory. Labour, the Libdems and the Tories all called for a referendum to be held as soon as possible after the SNP’s victory – ignoring that when the SNP was a minority administration they all refused to support the SNP’s call for an independence referendum in 2011.

They must be kicking themselves now – the poll on Scotland’s future will now take place after 2 years of a vicious Tory austerity package that will disproportionately affect Scotland’s economy, which itself has a higher than average public sector employment due to destruction of Scottish industry in the 80’s by Thatcher. If it comes down to choosing between a Government led by Alex Salmond in Holyrood and many years of continued Tory rule in Westminster even non-nationalist Scots may vote Yes as an “exit strategy” from Tory misrule.

This fear of a referendum being held at the height of Tory cuts is probably what motivated Cameron – along with typical Unionist arrogance – to try to bring the referendum under the control of Westminster. After 300 years of Scotland having no say in whether or not we stayed in the Union Westminster is now very concerned that Scots should have a fair say in it, even going as far as to say a referendum held by the Scottish Parliament would be “illegal” and “unconstitutional”. A bit ironic given that the UK has no written constitution – it has Kings, Queens, Princes, Dukes, but no constitution.

At the end of the day, no referendum carried out is “binding” under UK law – all of them are advisory. And if there’s a majority yes vote for independence, it does not matter whether it’s in 2012 or 2014 – politically, the Union is finished. After years of snidey slagging of Scots as “subsidy junkies”, “dole scum”, too wee to go it alone etc, Conservatives in England are beginning to wake up to the reality of Scottish Independence – the British state would be “Shorn of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and relegated to minnow status in Nato”.

Unfortunately for the Tories who have less MP’s in Scotland than there are Panda’s, they’re unlikely to have any impact in stopping the breakup of the UK. Cameron’s intervention into the timing of the referendum shows he has zero tactical knowledge of the Scottish political scene. The Unionist pillar of political strength in Scotland is the Labour Party, who have still not recovered from their defeat of 2007 let alone last year’s humiliating rout.

Despite the disparity in political strength between the SNP and it’s Unionist opponents, by 2014 you can expect the Honeymoon between the Scottish media and the SNP to be over, if not at least on hiatus for the duration of an Independence Referendum campaign. Expect predictions of the apocalypse if Scotland decides to go it alone.

That’s why we need to organise a grassroots Independence campaign to ensure we have our own media to promote the case for Independence – with Socialists adovcating a Republic, public ownership of oil, and taxes on the super-rich, in contradiction to the SNP’s model of Scotland as a Celtic Tiger like, er, Ireland.

Pro-Independence left-wingers don’t just need to organise to win the referendum, but also to shape the future of a post Independence Scotland – to oppose any moves to keep Scotland inside a “Union lite” with British bases kept in Scotland on lease, or where our economy is run along the same Thatcherite lines that condemns a quarter of Scottish children to poverty.

For the first time in decades we have a chance to fundamentally change Scotland and Scottish politics for the better. Lets get organised to build the Socialist Republic.

The Russian revolutionary Lenin said there were “decades where nothing happens; and there were weeks when decades happen”. If there was a time that saw decades of political conservatism, stagnancy, and immobility swept away in mere weeks, it was 2011. Last year began with the resignation of the Tunisian despot Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in January, in response to protests by Tunisian youth SSY covered here. Few people could have imagined the tidal wave of the protest that would follow as Egyptian youth inspired by the overthrow of Ben Ali organised a Day of Rage for the 25th of January in Egypt (which coincided with the “police day” public holiday).

What might have been small and manageable in the past decade proved to be very different in the first major recession of the 21st century. After decades of police brutality, corruption, dictatorship and political repression the call to action struck with popular consciousness not just in Egypt but all around the world. Millions watched glued to their screens, the first major revolution of the 21st century. After decades of rule and with no previously obvious signs of collapse the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was forced from office in the space of two weeks and now faces the death penalty for his crimes against the Egyptian people.
Egypt’s revolution took the rulers of that region completely unaware – Israel today is absolutely terrified they will no longer have a partner to keep Gaza under siege and whose new Parliament may put it’s peace treaty with Israel to a popular referendum, and the US tried hopelessly to maintain Mubarak’s rule in Egypt even as it looked impossible to most observers.
This wave of popular protest wasn’t limited to Egypt either – it has now spread to every Arab country, both pro and anti-US but with the common goal of overthrowing dictatorship and corruption.
This meant the West took very different attitudes to different parts of the Arab Spring. In Bahrain, the USA turned a blind eye as one of it’s most important allies, Saudi Arabia sent hundreds of troops to crush a popular uprising in Bahrain and to preserve the sectarian monarchy that hosts a large US military base on the Island. However when it came to Libya, a bizarre dictatorship which shared many characteristics with other Arab regimes – with the exception that it wasn’t completely in the pockets of the West – a different attitude was taken, with military action conducted by NATO to overthrow the regime.

Not a good year for these guys

This made Libya the third Muslim country in 10 years bombed by the West, after Afghanistan and Iraq. While the campaign in Libya was, from the viewpoint of London, Paris and Washington, a quite easy affair there was one war that finally seems to have drawn to a close – at least for Washington. The 8 year nightmare of Iraq for the USA ended with a formal troop withdrawal from Iraq earlier last year, as Obama redeployed US soldiers from Iraq to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Iraq war, so critical in radicalizing millions of people across the world ended not with a bang but a whimper as the USA has been forced to leave with many of it’s desires – permanent military bases, proxy for strikes on Iran and Syria, dirt cheap oil – unfulfilled. If Iraq has been a disaster, Afghanistan hasn’t turned out much better as it’s Taliban guerillas continue to make the ISAF occupation of the country as pointless, ineffective and bloody as all the previous occupations of Afghanistan have been. The Vice President of the USA, Joe Biden even went as far as to say “The Taliban are not our enemy” – an admission that the USA will negotiate and involve the Taliban in Afghan politics at some point.

The solid decade of occupation and war in Afghanistan and Iraq has proved so costly for the USA that US President Barack Obama has carried out the biggest reform of the US military “since WW2″. Moving it’s forces away from Europe and the Middle East to Asia and the Pacific (hello China) it’s a massive climbdown from the previously almost invincible US military power in the 90’s. But what other choice does Obama have, particularly when in 2011 the US faced a historic first time downgrading of it’s credit rating. When the most powerful nation in human history hasn’t got the best possible record at debt management, it’s a damning indictment of the cost of occupation and war – and may fortunately dissuade the USA from any attack on Iran, at least for the time being.
Many of the historic events we saw in 2011 – such as the resignation of Mubarak – weren’t from our sofas or bedrooms, but with other activists in comrades in the longest running student occupation in UK history. From February to September, Hetherington House a former postgraduate club, was occupied by anti-cuts students at Glasgow University. For 6 months we were able to hold a non-commercial space on Glasgow Uni campus, open to a variety of campaigns – from the protests to stop cuts to nursing, modern languages and adult education at Glasgow University, to the campaign to save the Accord Centre in the East End of Glasgow. This occupation succeeded in acting as a focal point for the anti-cuts movement across the whole of the city, as well as attracting a variety of speakers like Ken O’Keefe and Owen Jones.

While the occupation of the Hetherington House ended, the networks and connections built up between different activists and groups hasn’t disappeared. There’s now a vibrant anti-cuts group for the whole of Glasgow that many of the former occupiers are involved in – the Coalition of Resistance. COR’s been in existence since May and has already become the largest and most active anti-cuts group in Glasgow, organising strike buses for J3O and N30, building the October 1st demonstration, the march to save the accord and providing a space for anyone from any political background who wants to fight the cuts to come to. COR will be an important part of anti-cuts activism in the next year, and a vital space for Socialists to operate in.
Another front that will be opening in the next few years is the Independence campaign in Scotland. After 4 years of SNP minority rule, alongside a Tory Government in Westminster many Labour Party members must have thought they were a shoe in for the Holyrood elections held in May of last year. What they actually faced was the biggest defeat for Labour and Unionism imaginable – central belt seats where the Labour party had majorities you’d normally find in one party states were seized by the SNP for the first time in it’s history, producing a revolutionary result in Scottish politics – a pro-independence majority in Holyrood for the first time ever.

This means after 300 years of unionist misrule, the Scottish population will finally have a choice over our constitutional future. And for Unionism, it couldn’t come at a worse time, where a Tory party that has less MP’s in Scotland than Pandas is trying to force through a brutal package of austerity. This is Scotland’s gain from the revolutionary year that was 2011 – the chance to take our nation out of the world’s oldest empire, and a possibility for the Radical Left to shape that debate and the Scotland that emerges. 2011 will be remembered as the year that saw arrogant, embedded and reactionary power crumble fall – from Cairo to Tunis to Pollok – lets organise to make sure 2012 continues in the same vein.

Originally published in the August 2010 issue of Leftfield, we today republish the following article  in tribute to the dearly departed, friend of the people and bullwark against imperialism, Kim Jong Il. Long live Juche!

The Dear Bieber: JBiebz hangin at some crazy procession thing in downtown Pyongyang

Earlier this year, users of cult online messageboard 4Chan struck a strategic alliance with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. In return for a supply of tactical nuclear weapons, the internet memesters rigged a competition on the website of teen popstar Justin Bieber. The competition invited fans to vote for the country that they wanted Bieber to tour nexact, and in proof of the glorious success of the Democratic People’s Republic, North Korea won out top! Here, Leftfield brings you an exclusive look at Justin’s tour diary in the land of the Dear Leader:

“Yo, what up, this is JB, live from my tour of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. I arrived in through a place called the DMZ, don’t know what it stands for but it sounds street. Probably NK is doing what I do and just calling things names or saying stuff for their credibility, so it’s cool with me. I know how hard it is to convince people that you really are straight street, when you come from somewhere like Ontario or NK.

The border guards were all tense and straight, they could do with a lesson or two from my swagger coach, and maybe Usher telling them how to act.

We went to meet the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il, and I was like woah, cos the North Korean shorties be going wild for him, just like they do for me back home. I explained to KJI that I believe if I stay humble and keep following the right path, I will achieve my goals and keep reaching success. He said that he believes the same thing, and calls it the Juche ideology, which apparently a whole philosophy that he came up with by himself with a little help from his Dad!

Then we went to see some Korean mass games, which made me think that KJI must have caught Bieber-fever, the way they straight took my love of hot choreography to the next level. KJI asked if I’d perform with his 10,000 personal dance crew, and I was like “Whatever you want, JBiebz will give it to you.”

KJI was so happy he told me that alongside his Dad (the Great Leader) and himself (the Dear Leader), I was going to get the honorary title of the Dear Bieber of the DPRK.

So now, after 6 months of intense rehearsals at gunpoint, I think I’m bout ready to represent for the people’s homeland. I think the true North Korean Beliebers are going to have a Biebergasm when they see what we’ve put together.

Hopefully KJI will be satisfied, I been trying to get him to say when we can actually end the tour, but he never really answers the question and starts talking about rice harvests instead. I love the paradise on Earth that is North Korea, but I can’t wait to touchdown for all my sweet fans on the next stops of the tour, Afghanistan and Somalia. Plus I’ve been wondering what’s happened to Usher, I haven’t seen him since KJI told me he’d gone to a holiday camp for a relaxing vacation breaking rocks and making rifles.

Until then, I’m going to leave you, live here in North Korea. Peace! (But never with the American Imperialist Pig Dog Aggressors Who Will Be Crushed by the United Efforts of the Heroic Korean People, Juche is Invincible!)”

(JBiebz was speaking to Jack)

Where the internet and protests collide

Political activism has been in the news more in the last year than in all the years since the 2003 Iraq war. Revolutions in the Arab world, occupations in America and beyond, and student protests and social unrest in the UK have all been hailed as ’social networking revolutions’. To understand the importance of information and communication technologies to these examples of political activism, we must examine the extent to which these events were actively driven by new technologies.  By discussing these cases, we can see that increased use of social networking software and other technological advances is not necessarily a root cause of these events, but rather simply an aspect of them.

There can be no denying that, in the West, if your political event is not advertised on the internet, it is probably not going to be considered much of a success in 2011. In terms of promoting activism through the internet, a small number of websites have basically cornered the market, most prominently Facebook and Twitter. Almost every political event, from protests to organising meetings, to even attempted riots, now comes with a promotional Facebook event. Twitter updates followers in real time of what is happening in volatile situations, and provides a new media platform to activists as it becomes journalists’ first stop for ready-made quotes. Twitter has even spawned its own new form of activism, sometimes called the ‘Twittermob‘, where users can come out of seemingly nowhere to force action from previously near untouchable institutions such as the courts or powerful newspaper outlets. This has been seen prominently in the News of the World hacking controversy, the anger at offensive newspaper articles such as Jan Moir’s homophobic Stephen Gately treasure or the Sunday Express’ insensitive Dunblane article, and the Trafigura oil spill/Ryan Giggs being a mad shagger super-injunction cases.

It is important however not to overstate the importance of websites such as Twitter in recent political events. Reading newspapers and watching television news, it would seem like Twitter is incredibly important to modern day political activism, or indeed pretty much any mundane news story about anything ever. However, we shouldn’t mistake media portrayals of social networking software for reality. The traditional media frequently hype social networking in their reports, but in part this is because they are convenient to access, easy to understand, and important for news output in a world where traditional media is fighting to maintain its relevance and readership. Twitter provides user-generated content for traditional media to exploit while simultaneously cutting the number of paid journalists on their staff, and in this sense it can feed a capitalist agenda.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now less than a week away from the largest co-ordinated  industrial action the UK has seen for decades – perhaps since the General Strike of 1926. Around three million workers will be out on strike next Wednesday – in effect, most of the public sector, from over twenty different trade unions.

That’s over twenty different groups of workers who’ve collectively said they’ve had enough of the government’s constant attacks on wages and conditions, and have now balloted for action – with the strikes  in most cases winning big majorities. A strike of this scale is virtually unprecedented: nearly every school in Scotland will be shut, as will large sections of the NHS, council services, universities and colleges, job centres and tax and benefit offices, courts and other public services.

30 November has huge potential to be a big show of strength. It will not, by itself, bring down the government, but an effective day of action can place enormous pressure on them, and hopefully lead to more. This is absolutely crucial – so far the government have offered only token concessions in the dispute over pensions, with new proposals on line to make employees work longer, pay 3 percent more in contributions AND receive a lower pension at the end of it. But the strike is about much more than just pensions – sparked by years of relentless attacks on public sector pay and conditions, compounded by a three year pay freeze.

So what can you do on the day?

Next Wednesday can be a mass day of resistance for everyone in the public sector and beyond. Walkouts, occupations, pickets, demonstrations and marches – all are useful tactics in turning the struggle into Every school, uni and college is likely to be shut on the day, giving students the opportunity to pour onto the streets in support of the strikes. Student feeder marches have been organised in both Glasgow and Edinburgh on the day, ahead of the main trade union organised rallies.

Picket! If you work somewhere going on strike that day, effective picketing can be hugely important in shutting down a workplace and ensuring the day is a success. If you’re not striking, you can still go and show your support – UK Uncut have made a national call out for people to go and show some solidaritea at their local picket lines.

Demonstrate! March, rallies and events are happening across the country. Find a local action here: http://www.n30strike.org/

Walk out! Most schools, colleges and unis will be shut due to staff striking – but in the even of your classes running, organise a walkout and head to the nearest rally or picket line.

Retweet! Share! Propagandise! The Tories and their chums in the media have already gone on the offensive, trying to create a fake division between public sector workers and those in the private sector. Speak to everyone you know and tell them the facts about the strikes.

GLASGOW

via Moh Kohn

Wednesday of this week marked exactly a year since the glorious day in November 2010 when thousands of students charged into and smashed up the Conservative Party headquarters at Millbank. A year on -- and 11 months since Parliament voted through the £9k tuition fee rise -- the student movement was out to prove that it’s still a force to be reckoned with. Despite only token backing from the National Union of Students, upwards of 10,000 students came from across the country to march on London’s financial district in a demo organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC).

A lot has changed since last November -- from the Arab revolutions to the huge anti-cuts demonstration on March 26th to the riots that hit English cities in August. And you could tell as much from the police presence: while the 50,000 strong ‘Millbank demo’ last year was initially policed by around 250 officers, this week’s demo had the much-vaunted figure of 4,000. Not to mention the horses, armoured vehicles, two helicopters, dogs, FIT teams, rubber bullets, intimidation letters sent the previous day and the thousands of twelve page glossy booklets that the police handed out at the starting point warning everyone not to fuck with them -- as if that much wasn’t obvious from the aforementioned 4000 cops, rubber bullets, cavalry… you get the picture. All justified by a bit of the usual pre-demo hysterics about anarcho-extremist infliltrators intent on causing a riot, nevermind that it was a totally legit demo organised in co-operation with the police, well stewarded and with a planned route ETC ETC.

Normally a demo of this size would barely get a mention from the media -- but Wednesday had it all: rolling news coverage, TV helicopters, hundreds of photographers -- all clamouring for things to kick off. And the police were trying their hardest to make sure things did as well: charging around in full Robocop get-up, shields out, and with plain-clothes occasionally jumping folk and dragging them off just cause they got a bit bored.

Elsewhere in London, thousands of electricians -- currently engaged in a huge struggle against the tearing up of their national pay and conditions agreement -- were at a Unite the Union organised demo, having blockaded building sites earlier in the day. While most then marched to Parliament to lobby MPs, a rank and file break-off of a couple of hundred sparks tried to march to join the student demo. Hundreds of militant private sector workers engaged in a frontline struggle uniting with the big student demo would’ve been a powerful image. With the media all over the student demo this would’ve then been hard to ignore, and something that wouldn’t have fit comfortably with the media narrative of middle class students just out to defend their own interests. And this is precisely why the state were determined to stop it from happening, with the sparks’ batoned and beaten up by the cops until being contained in a kettle away from the student demo. News quickly reached the student demo, and there was a bit of a stand-off  at one street when it was found out that the electricians were being blockaded in that direction. Such were the police numbers though that the demo was more akin to a walking kettle, and any attempt to break-off would’ve been verging towards kamikaze.

Electricians blockading sites before rallying later in the day and getting attacked by cops

The march picked up though, with a massive soundsystem emerging and some innovative chants, ‘You can shove your rubber bullets up your arse’ among them. It was a long route, and eventually wound its way to the end point sometime after 3pm, where the police decided to form an impromptu kettle before letting everyone go in a pretty chaotic fashion. A dispersal order was issued for 5.31pm, but most people were well away by that point.

Moving forward, NCAFC have -- much like last year -- called a follow-up day of action for Wednesday 23 November. While it’s unlikely to get as much momentum behind it as last year, given the totally different circumstances -- the HE White Paper is unlikely to garner as much opposition as the brazen, headline-grabbing £9k fees rise - it can be a way of buildng student and anti-austerity activity ahead of what is looking set to be a mass day of action on November 30, when three million public sector workers will be on strike. On that day, let’s meet “total policing” with total resistance.

David Icke. Alex Jones. Ron Paul. The Zeigeist Movement. President Andrew Jackson. What do all these people have in common? No, they’re unfortunately not the next line up of Celebrity Big Brother. They are however a series of individuals and “movements” who despite having little sway over most political thought in the world today, have made a disturbing encroachment into movements against austerity, cuts and for social justice. This blog has already covered a few of these individuals before. And we’d be lying if we didn’t find the occasional presence of Alex Jones or David Icke amongst the internets a comedy joy we’ve all indulged in frequently.

But there is a time and a place for Alex Jones and David Icke, and that time is 3o’clock in the morning, pished, going on you tube -- NOT inside movements for real, radical social change in the UK or anywhere else. This isn’t a call that everyone inside these movements must be 100% Marxists or Socialists. Far from it, we need to engage with people who are not already activists. It’s about recognising that the ideas promoted by the groups and individuals outlined in the beginning of this post aren’t just misguided and wrong -- they’re actively dangerous to any real success over the economic misrule and capitalism.

David Icke knows Boyzone will destroy the lizard people

The groups and individuals are quite diverse, ranging from a US Democratic President in the 1800’s, a Republican Congressman standing for President and a former Grandstand presenter who thinks he is Jesus and that the world is run by lizards. What could possibly unite such a disparate group? The answer is that they are all people who have argued against the forces of the wealthy and powerful in society -- generally the banks and financial institutions. So how are they any different from socialists?

The difference lies in their analysis of what problems the bankers cause, what should replace them and how they go about trying to enact that change. Their analysis ranges from completely insane to explicitly racist, and their solutions from ineffective to backwards and reactionary. The base of their analysis is that the world economic crisis is a problem inflicted by specific forms of banking (such as fractional reserve banking) and financial management, and that ultimately it is bankers and not capitalism and class society that is to blame.

These individuals obviously don’t agree on everything -- Ron Paul’s not mentioned Lizard control over the Royal Family in the GOP debates, at least not yet -- but what they basically agree on runs something like this; Banks developed their wealth and power at the expense of hardworking people (typically small businesses and artisans). They now use this wealth and power to enslave governments and control culture, media, politics, and social attitudes in a range of countries, as well as initiating wars for their own benefit. Often the phrase “International Bankers” is used interchangeably with Jews, or “Zionists”, alleging that the world is in the thrall of a gigantic Jewish-Banker conspiracy.

Alex Jones rocks out against the globalists

These theories have been able to make some headway on the left because there is a grain of truth in what they say about bankers, if not Jews. Bankers have historically used their economic power to influence society, and have a long history of exploitation of both the developing world and the working class in the West. The problem is that banks are just one part of a system of exploitation called capitalism. In capitalism the work people do to produce commodities is sold on at a profit to the employer. These employers are not just bankers, but range from retailers, oil companies, mines, factories, restaurants and so on. Banks are a fundamental part of that system, as the profit is invested in banks which then use this money to make more money, to invest in other industries and to lend so people can continue to buy products without having to raise wages.

This is the real cause of the economic crisis, and properly identifies what role the bankers played. In the past, if people wanted to buy stuff -- like cars, clothes or houses -- they either had to save up for it, or get a modest loan that was based on their ability to repay it. This meant working class people had to be paid enough so they could buy the things capitalism produced -- whether it was trainers or tellies. Karl Marx identified the problem with this a hundred years ago -- the companies which want to sell the working class trainers at £50 a pop are the same companies who want to pay them 10p an hour. Recessions come and go in capitalism because inevitably companies end up producing goods at the same time they try to keep wages down, so the working class cannot buy their goods and the companies end up going bankrupt.

For the past 30 years capitalism thought it had a way out of this problem -- make it easier for working class people to borrow lots of money, so that way they can still buy the products without having to increase wages. This kept capitalism booming, even though for the past 30 years wages in the USA have been stagnating. It also meant as well as having money to pay for consumer goods, working class people now had to pay money to banks in interest. This is what the banks have done -- lending billions of the profits working people made, so that the same people would keep buying and capitalism would stay afloat. This was not just a system endorsed by the banks, it was in the interests of  capitalism as system -- every corporation, company, and business now had a market of indebted workers to sell to, and could continue to depress the wages of their workers safe in the knowledge that they could borrow money to buy their products.

Sensible and accurate version of why capitalism and the banks have collapsed

Eventually this illusion, that people could continue to afford things that were way beyond the wages they earned, came to a dramatic end with the economic crisis in 2008. This crisis began with the collapse of the housing bubble in the USA -- where banks like Freddie Mae had offered loans to people with poor credit ratings, so they could own their own houses and keep capitalism afloat. When it became clear that the Emperor had no clothes, and the housing repayments couldn’t be made, banks in the western world collapsed requiring the bailouts we’ve all heard about.  The banks loaned money they couldn’t repay -- using a system called fractional reserve banking -- where they only had a fraction of the deposits people made to the banks in their accounts, while the rest was loaned out. In order to stop people losing billions of their savings, governments stepped in to guarantee these funds.

So there’s plenty of very real criticism to be made of the banks -- the fact they recklessly lent to boost their own profits, and when the shit hit the fan instead of taxing the super-rich to plug the gap, they were bailed out with public money. What should have been done is something similar to what Greg Philo and Glasgow Uni Media Group have argued for -- a one off 10% wealth tax on the richest (who made their money predominantly through the financial bubble) to pay for the mess they caused.

Unfortunately this is not what Alex Jones, Ron Paul et al call for. They won’t argue for wealth redistribution, because by their own admission they aren’t Socialists -- they are paleo-conservative Republicans. They may be Republicans who oppose the War on Terror, the developing attack on civil liberties in the USA or ongoing funding to Israel, but they all absolutely believe in capitalism -- and that the problem with the economic crash of 2008 is not the free market, but bizarrely, “socialism”. Jones says big corporations and big government are the same, in contradiction to everything that the right-wing in the USA and Europe actually rolled back. People like Jones, Ron Paul, Icke etc draw many of their ideas from a very reactionary period of US political history during the 1800’s in which the United States of America was half-feudal and half-industrial -- or as Abraham Lincoln described it “half slave and half free”.

The United States was divided in two -- the North, in which slavery was abolished and an industrial revolution was starting, and the South where the economy was based on slavery, and was backwards and feudal. In this topsy turvy time it was the Democrat Party which was racist and pro-slavery, and it was the Republican Party that wanted to ultimately abolish the institution of slavery. At that time the Republican Party correctly saw that slavery would keep the United States trapped in a backward, medieval economy. The profits made by keeping slavery going would make an industrial revolution impossible. Slavery stopped the development of a paid working class, that is necessary to consume the products of industrialisation.  The South was at that time a massive producer of cotton on the backs of slave labour, and was in practice a colony of European powers who wanted to buy cotton for use in their Industrial Revolution.

US Civil War

There were many honest Republicans at that time who found slavery morally abhorrent, but the alterior motivation for Republican opposition to slavery was their backing from the new American capitalist class. This class wanted the abolition of slavery so they could compete against the Southern economy, and so white Southern workers could be paid to do the jobs of the slaves. In short they wanted to develop the United States into a modern capitalist country like Britain or France, knowing that the untapped resources of the North American continent would make them a superpower.

The Democrats position was based on “states rights” -- which meant defending the rights of states to uphold slavery. Their arguments were based on racist opposition to the emancipation of slaves, and the desire to keep large parts of the USA in a feudal state. As part of this outlook, many Democrats had a crude, populist opposition to capitalism. They opposed banks and the expansion of big business, believing it would enslave white Americans. Instead they promoted a vision of  the USA as a continent where all whites would be able to own their own farms and businesses as independent artisans, farmers, shop keepers and craftsmen -- with slaves to assist them.

Democrats were hostile to the industrial revolution and the development of modern capitalism because they saw (correctly) that capitalism would eliminate this parochial economic system -- replacing farmers with agrobusiness, shopowners with department stores, gold whittlers with mines etc. This process was no picnic. Capitalism was ruthless in destroying feudal opposition to it’s development, and the working conditions -- most notoriously those of Victorian Britain -- are infamous for their depravity.

BUT… capitalism was a massive improvement on what had preceded it, which was the rule of Kings and Queens, and an economy run along the whims of unelected noblemen. Capitalism produced economic growth on a scale unheard of in human history -- the development of modern industry, the mass production of consumer goods, the move from the country to the city, and most importantly, the rise of the working class. This is the most important part for socialists as now the group of people who produced clothes, dug the mines, ran the railways etc could be organised, and could eventually become the rulers of a new society -- a socialist one.

One Democrat who owned slaves at  this time, President Andrew Jackson, became infamous for his opposition to any central bank for the USA using his veto power to overrule it. Jackson today is heralded by many anti-banking Occupy activists for this stance. But Jacksons opposition to banking was not based on any socialist or even progressive desire for the working class to rule society -- it was about defending small businesses and the institution of slavery against this massively powerful and dynamic economic system, that threatened to overpower all religious, nationalist and feudal opposition to it

President Andrew Jackson

Writing at the time Karl Marx identified these kind of “anti-capitalists” as feudal socialists,

“In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history”

Put simply, while many anti-banking forces in the 1800’s had legitimate points about the unaccountability of these financial institutions, their opposition fundamentally came from a desire to maintain an unfair, feudal and backward society. At that time Marx identified Capitalism as a brutal, but progressive force -- one of the reasons why he wrote a letter of congratulations to Lincoln during the US Civil War for crushing feudalism and the slave economy of the South.

This radical transformation of society, from feudalism to capitalism terrified and alarmed many people in Europe and the USA. These societies existed during a time when the theories of race were commonly accepted and discussed as a science -- to justify both slavery and the imperial exploitation of Africa and other colonies. As well as racist prejudice one other common bigotry was anti-Semitism, the hatred of Jews. As capitalism developed, producing transnational, global insitutions many racists alarmed at this transformation identified the enemy behind it -- that of the Jew. As part of anti-semitic prejudice throughout Europe, Jews were forced into jobs in the financial sector that Christians deemed immoral -- like banking. So when the industrial revolution was financed by and empowered banks with Jewish owners anti-semites saw a conspiracy by the Jewish race to enslave the white Christian race.

So much wrong in just one picture

The most notorious subject of these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was the Rothschild Family. The Rothschilds were an extremely wealthy and powerful banking family during the 1800’s, who exercised massive influence over the developing capitalist economies of Europe and North America. This combination of power and Judaism made them the frequent target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. As a major banking institution there’s no question the Rothschild’s would have been involved in underhand and conspiratorial plans to influence governments and secure their markets -- but the accusations labelled at the Rothschilds go way beyond criticism of bankers influence, and into conspiracy nonsense about world Jewish plots to enslave the world. For example, the Rothschilds were accused of both funding American Capitalism and Russian Bolsheviks, a ridiculous allegation that had it’s base in anti-socialist racist sentiment. Many anti-Semites were disturbed at the challenge global capitalism posed to nation states sovereignty and could not understand the power of the economic system they faced, so instead chose to blame it on conspiratorial groups.

These ideas -- anti-banking sentiment of small business Democrats, and anti-semitic opposition to the Rothschilds -- unfortunately haven’t remained in the past. They continue to be advocated by people like Zeitgeist, Alex Jones and David Icke. This piece by Norfolk Community Action Group criticizes the influence these forces have in the occupy movement,

“The populist narrative is also an integral part of the political views of conspiracy theorists, far right activists, and anti-Semites. For anti-Semites, the elites are the Jews; for David Icke, the elites are the reptilians; for nationalists, they are members of minority ethnic, racial, or religious groups; for others, they are the “globalists,” the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, the Federal Reserve, etc. All of these various conspiracy theories also tend to blend in and borrow from each other. Additionally, the focus on “Wall Street” also has specific appeal to those who see the elite as represented by finance capital, a particular obsession of the anti-Semites, Larouchites, followers of David Icke, etc. “The Rothschilds” are the favorite stand-in codeword of choice to refer to the supposed Jewish control of the banking system.”

The “Rothschild Zionists” feature in both Alex Jones and Icke’s material -- which blame a 200 year old banking institution for conspiratorial involvement in global capitalism. The reality is that the Rothschilds influence declined by the early 1900s -- blaming them for the financial crisis is like blaming the British East India company for the ongoing exploitation of Asia. The Rothschilds have been surpassed and overtaken by new financial institutions.

So why do they continue to be prevalent in conspiracy theories related to banking? Because in the USA, when people are discontent and angry at the banks instead of looking to socialism -- which has historically been weak in the USA -- they go back to the most prominent anti-banking ideas and figures, which unfortunately are anti-semitic. Likewise many bankers are identified as “Rothschild Zionists” by Icke who clearly have no familial connection to the Rothschild family at all -- like David Miliband and DSK. But it’s ok, as Icke explains:

“I should also stress that when I say ‘Rothschild’, I don’t only mean those called ‘Rothschild’, nor even all of the people who are known by that name. There are many in the Rothschild family and its offshoots who have no idea what the hierarchy is doing and there are many ‘Rothschilds’ who don’t carry the name itself.

When I say ‘Rothschild’, I am referring to the Rothschild bloodline because, as I have detailed in my books, they have long had breeding programmes that produce offspring that are brought up under other names.”

This is effectively an excuse to link all Jewish people in areas of power together, based on racist ideas of “bloodlines”, and using the code “Zionist” instead of what people really mean, which is Jew. Whatever crimes have been committed in the Zionist enterprise of the State of Israel against the Palestinians, the idea a country of five million Israelis control international finance is absurd and only makes sense if you believe in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Last year SSY wrote about how an internet documentary called Zeitgeist played upon many of these conspiracy theories around finance, with reference to the banks. As well as the Zeitgeist movement another video has been doing the rounds -- this one was posted by Occupy Glasgow:

The documentary is nowhere near as anti-Semitic as Icke’s rants. But it does have the same disturbing focus on the Rothschilds -- along with lizardesque imagery for bankers -- and puts slaveowner and Native American killer President Jackson in a good light. It makes its focus the inequities of the banking system -- many of its criticisms have a point, such as the fact that the US Federal Reserve isn’t actually publically owned, but controlled by unaccountable and unelected bankers who have the power to control the US currency. However all of it stems from the same Jacksonian fear of big business and banking and not capitalism itself. Taking a look at its website -- called “The American Dream” -- it identifies the “good guys” as Alex Jones, The Cato Institute, The Drudge Report and other right-wing sites. They also link to Ron Paul, a Libertarian Republican who thinks someone dying from lack of medical care is choosing ‘freedom’.

The 99% can fuck off and die if they don’t have health insurance

Elsewhere on its website it calls for less government intervention in medicare, social security and federal spending. In short, a demand that the Government’s debt should be cut so we aren’t slaves to evil bankers -- regardless of the massive job cuts entailed. They also ask you to be more like your grandfather, and not get into debt -- ignoring that consumer debt would not be as  massive if peoples wages went up at the same rate as profits in the USA.  There’s also consideration to reintroduce the gold standard -- that is link the value of your currency to the amount of gold you have. It’s very popular amongst the headbanger right, particularly with Glenn Beck fans, who like the idea as if you have gold the bankers can’t control you with their easily printed “fiat” money. But why would you want to organise a society’s currency on the value of a base metal, and have it fluctuate depending on mining rates? And why is it people who are demanding a rush to the gold standard are quite happy to sell you lots of precious gold for your useless fiat money?

The new Shitegeist

Jones, Ron Paul and the libertarian US right don’t call for the debt to be paid by taxing the rich, or for the economy to be restructured on need. This is because they’ve picked anti banking sentiment from a time when small scale traders were trying to survive against the onslaught of capitalism -- a hopeless and reactionary struggle. Trying to solve the world economic crisis by trying to resurrect an economic system from 200 years ago is doomed to failure -- it couldn’t withstand the force of capitalism then, in its progressive phase and it can’t stand against it now even if it’s clearly dying. What’s neccessary is a movement which organises not in the interests of small businesses vs banks, but workers and the poor vs all strands of capitalism. Only then will the interests of the 99% genuinely be enforced.