Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in   various ways. The point however is to change it.
Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions  - £20 p.a. [P&P  Bulletin Publications,  PO Box 50. London SW17 9NL| (Post Office Regd]
No 967   Tuesday  Sept   22  1998                                                                                                           10p

Redoubled propaganda blitz against socialist ideas reveals how catastrophic the capitalist crisis is rapidly becoming. The Blair 'Third Way' gimmick is just an appalling confidence-trick to sow working-class confusion. Blair's 'housing problem solution' propaganda is just farcical, — pure shallow conceit, and an insult to everyone concerned. The capitalist labour-exploitation rat-race cannot allow any 'people first' policy; and without secure lifetime career prospects for EVERYONE in society, Blair's posturing is just offensive. The capitalist system NEEDS an underclass, and it will always keep one. Class war is the only way forward, — as is already happening. Workers don't need 'reformist' apologetics but revolutionary leadership. World trade should SERVE people, not sack them.

Western leaders are now energetically peddling nonsense about 'the Third Way' because their capitalist system is in crisis.

A clearer diversion could not be imagined for trying to head the working class off from starting to think seriously again about the socialist revolution.

Such thoughts may seem premature at the moment, and not even on the horizon, — but the monopoly-imperialist system knows far more than is even being admitted about the insoluble problems which free-market anarchy is creating.

Bourgeois-imperialist circles fully understand that once the boom-spiral upwards is well and truly bust, worldwide, — then the 'fair, market competition' of the 'good' times must give way to the slump-spiral down, when the rival 'allied' powers start competing with each other by import controls, dumping, interest-rate wars, currency fluctuations, 'illegal' government subsidies, etc, etc, in order to drive each other into bankruptcy and closure.

Eventually, the entire aim becomes to put the burdens of the slump onto each other, spreading mass unemployment, poverty, and economic breakdown. 

It is already with all this mayhem and intolerable capitalist degeneracy in mind that Western leaders are immediately sowing confusion in workers minds by all suddenly pretending to be enthusiasts for the 'Third Way'.

There is no such thing, of course. Either the 'entrepreneurial spirit' of the 'free market' and the 'free world' drives society forward to 'better and better achievements for everyone' on a permanent basis; or wholly planned economic development must do so.

Either the motivating force best capable of providing enough economic affluence for all of society is individual self-interest, — private enterprise pioneering ever-new innovation and productivity efficiency, with the 'trickle-down effect', in the end, 'fabulously benefiting all who want to work'; — or else planned economic and social development is the best way of guaranteeing the biggest social cake for all to eventually share in, — to everyone's mutual benefit, — from a happier, more caring, and less collapse-prone society.

There is no 'Third' (alternative) 'best way' of inspiring society to collectively produce all the modern humanitarian attributes of society, — care for the elderly, massive education service, good health services, absence of crime, friendly cooperativeness in society generally (as opposed to rat-race bitchiness).

Either individualism is the only true driving force, in which case nothing must ever stand in the way of the capitalist 'free market' to hurl society wherever it will, in good times or bad times, soaring high or plunging down, but always in the end producing far more of everything for the greatest number.

Or else collective cooperative wisdom is the best driving force, - in the long run creating a far more stable and rational society, making people far happier by providing security for PERMANENT aspirations, not only not dependent on the vagaries of the market, but precisely more valuable because of being guaranteeable by plan.

The shallow pretence of the 'Third Way' is that the benefits of capitalist entrepreneurship do not have to be ruthless and uncontrollable in their effect, up and down; and that capitalist state intervention in economic and social matters (bogusly called 'reformism') does not have to always end up as stifling, heartless bureaucracy which merely deadens everything but solves nothing.

It is the purest propaganda, utterly insincere, and disgracefully deluged now onto millions of worried people solely to paralyse them in confusion so that no mass movement for a real socialist takeover of the economy should begin.

In the West, this 'Third Way' posturing conceals a double fraud. First, Blair, Clinton, & Co have not the slightest intention (or purely governmental ability within a capitalist state) to do anything to control the effects and influences of monopoly-imperialism, dominating the Western way of life. Second, nothing but capitalism has ever ruled in the West anyway. The collectivist motivation of society has NEVER been tried here. The periods of Labour 'reformist' government have usually been periods of more relentlessly far-reaching capitalist reaction (as far as historical philosophical trends were concerned) than the periods of Tory rule have been.

The postwar Attlee Labour governments are accepted as the 'highpoint' of the attempt to organise the country in the collectivist, government-interventionist spirit, sometimes laughably known as a period of 'socialism' in Britain.

But what crucially happened in Britain from 1945 to 1951 (and even more crucially in the rest of Western Europe under the domination of American imperialism) was the re-establishment of the discredited capitalist class as the ruling class, - a capitalist system which had become universally hated for the brutal catastrophe of the 1930s worldwide Depression and the open encouragement it had given to the Hitler 'solution' to the 'threat of Bolshevism'.

The actual historical effect of various 'nationalisation' measures was really only to revive industries which had been bankrupted by capitalism so that cheap services could be provided (rail, coal, electricity, water, air transport, etc) until the capitalist class was prepared to take them back into private profiteering ownership again, - a process now being completed under a Labour government once more, appropriately enough.

In terms of the international philosophical debate about a restored capitalist order postwar, or a completely new way of life under planned socialism, - the Attlee government's totally fictitious 'Second Way' attempt from 1945 to 1951 was even more ruthlessly and blatantly in the service of capitalism, - helping the US imperialists to erect the vicious Cold-War Iron Curtain around the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, and to threaten it every day thereafter with imminent nuclear devastation; plus non-stop counter-revolutionary intervention on behalf of East Europe's utterly degenerate and discredited capitalist class.

Nothing but the ethics and class-dominance of capitalism have ever held sway ANYWHERE in the West. The total economic and political disaster now staring the 'free world' in the face has come to the Western countries DIRECTLY from capitalism, which has ruled unbroken since the 16th century in West Europe, with no other form of class rule EVER having been tried, or even got close to it.

There has only ever been 'One Way' in the West, - society totally DOMINATED by the capitalist class and capitalism's ethics.

No 'Second Way' has ever been tried. Only the most utterly depraved crooks, shysters, and charlatans in the West would seriously pretend to be offering a 'Third Way' to the obviously already discredited 'First Way' (capitalism) and 'Second Way' (socialism) when nothing remotely resembling socialism has ever even got near to holding sway in the West.

The slimy deceitfulness, crookedness, and posturing of Blairism needs carefully noting. West Europe has known another period of terrifying capitalist economic turmoil this century when a bogus 'Third Way' was loudly touted as the obviously attractive 'alternative' to failed capitalism and to 'equally failed socialism' (meaning feared like the devil by all good petty-bourgeois, such as Blair represents).

And the propagandist of this imaginary 'Third Way' so appealing to the petty-bourgeoisie at the time? Adolf Hitler in the rise to prominence (courtesy of big-business backing) of his 'new movement' of the 1920s crisis-turmoil period,— the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis for short.

The rotten fraud of Blairism, vilely taking advantage of workers confusion with this 'New Labour' hokum which intends nothing good for the working class at all, — is clearly seen by examining one prominent 'cause' which this incessant government propaganda blitzkrieg has just taken up, — the housing problem.

Capitalist landlordism is justly hated (as it has always been). And so-called 'municipal socialism' has equally failed to transform the conditions in which vast sectors of the poorer working class still live, despite 50 years (and more) of trying.

Exploiting this apparently ideal 'Third Way' territory, the 'New Labour' conmen swarmed all over the media again last week with yet another all-round propaganda offensive which promises, —  if read carefully and taken seriously, — nothing short of a revolution in working-class life.

JOHN Prescott grandly called it the most ambitious government programme ever conceived to bridge the gap between rich and poor in Britain.

The Prime Minister invoked the memory of Benjamin Disraeli. He promised to harness the resources of all government departments in a co-ordinated drive to tackle inequality in the country's most deprived neighbourhoods.

Tony Blair reminded the comfortable middle classes that a "different nation" had been created in their midst. From inner city ghettos of modern, unwanted council housing to crumbling northern terraces and suburban high-rise estates, forgotten England was in crisis.

After two decades the divide between the "worst estates" and the rest of the country had grown to levels intolerable in any civilised society. "It shames us as a nation, it wastes lives, and we all have to pay the cost of dependency and social division," the Prime Minister said.

Launching an £800 million, three year New Deal for Communities programme, underpinned by a devastating report from the Government's Social Exclusion Unit on the deteriorating state of "two nation' Britain, Mr Blair was acknowledging the failure of past initiatives costing thousands of millions. Blair instead offered longer-term programmes stretching well into the next century, with substantial pump priming.

Centrepiece of the programme will be the initial concentration of the New Deal in 17 "pathfinder" districts, from Newcastle and Middlesbrough to Liverpool, Manchester, Leicester, Birmingham, Brighton and four London boroughs.

Selected by the Government, they will have to make bids speedily for community-based programmes to John Prescott's Department of the Environment — embracing not only housing improvement, and selective demolition, but also plans to improve education and health, create jobs and training opportunities, and reduce crime. It is what Mr Blair calls "joined up government". Other programmes will follow the 17 "showcase schemes". What role local councils will play in this process is far from clear.

But the Social Exclusion report goes much further by calling for 18 special action teams — quite distinct from the Pathfinders — each headed by a so-called "champion" minister. As well as civil servants drawn from 10 Whitehall departments, they will include many outside specialists — and their task, under the co-ordination of the Exclusion Unit, will be to tackle the most intractable problems in neighbourhoods around the country.

Five broad themes have been identified. These range from "investigating innovative approaches" to getting people into work, to providing a watertight framework for dealing with anti-social neighbours, while attempting to address the problem of the growing number of empty council homes, approaching 100,000. Relatively modern estates, in areas of low demand, could be demolished as a last resort.

Other themes include motivating children at school and providing the poorest people with better access for the services the middle classes take for granted. Local shops on problem estates often charge 60 per cent more than supermarkets. Yet tenants are often trapped with no cars.

The renewal task is daunting. Surveys suggest there are 3,000 neighbourhoods in England alone with deep-seated problems of run-down or derelict housing.

But 44 local authority districts have the worst problems. They contain 85 per cent of the country's most deprived wards. Compared with the rest of the country, they have two-thirds more unemployment, 1½ times the under-age pregnancy rate — with a similar proportion of lone parent households — extremely low educational attainment and mortality ratios 30 per cent higher than elsewhere. The level of vacant housing is also 1½ times above average.

The report pulls no punches about widening inequality. Between 1979 and 1995, net incomes (after housing costs) of the richest 10 per cent grew by almost 70 per cent; the poorest tenth saw their incomes drop by 8 per cent.

But the geography of poverty had also changed. The poorest have become more concentrated in small areas of "acute need". And whereas in the 1980s the sharpest economic differences were often between the old industrial areas of the North and the prosperous South-east, some of the most deprived neighbourhoods now lie only a mile or so from well-heeled areas around the country — poverty and plenty cheek by jowl.

With prosperous Britain riding high, the 'other nation' finds it impossible to get home insurance or open a bank account because people are deemed uncreditworthy. So they fell prey to unscrupulous money lenders sometimes charging 200 per cent interest the report says.

Yet in spite of multi-billion pound initiatives the condition of the most deprived areas, despite "one improvement programme after another", is worsening.

But of course, although only 16 months into this 'new' government, people have already stopped taking anything it says very seriously. It is all cosmetic idiocy,
and a complete insult to human intelligence. The vast majority of the country will not even have noticed last week's promised revolution in how the working class lives, and how the problem of 'two nation' Britain is at last to be overcome; — and their cynical unconcern will be completely justified because NOTHING AT ALL will be achieved. At the end of the paltry £800 million three-year cosmetic programme, the situation will be just three years worse than it is now, — guaranteed.

Why? Because the shallow pretence — (that all that has been lacking in previous attempts to raise standards in poorer working class areas (literally at a cost of billions over the decades) has been a bit of coordination) — is just ludicrous (as well as deeply insulting to the many dedicated professional workers in all the disciplines to do with living standards who often devote their lives to battle an uphill task against social degeneration, routinely coordinating the work as best as conditions allow).

Blair's other cheap slogan: "People must come first. This programme must be people-oriented, investing in people and not just buildings" is equally outrageous demagogy.

The circumstances which can make the welfare state seem cynically uncaring occasionally to many people, and all of the time to some people, are to do with issues far more profound than can be addressed in the slightest by Blair's Mickey-Mouse soundbites, suddenly pretending to have made the discovery that human welfare involved people, and that what good government has been lacking hitherto in history is coordinated policies.

What the real 'missing link' is becomes clearer from the commentary encouraging New Labour forward from the Blairista Guardian newspaper; — craftily angled to try and stress the lack of 'joined-up government' or the failure to put 'people first', but really only succeeding in proving that what is wrong is the capitalist system itself, — that the very nature of capitalist society (a grasping exploitative rat-race which affects the working class's conditions and mentality on the whole of life and not just via council housing estates where still only a minority live) is what is really poisoning people:

Time and again vast sums were squandered on buildings. Many of these estates now are not slums. They are physically in reasonable shape, but their inhabitants are not. Regeneration used to mean bricks and mortar, but from now on it will mean regenerating the people instead. Bricks and mortar were easy for planners—but people are far harder to change.

People aren't the only problem. Bad government has made matters worse. The Social Exclusion Unit counted up the millions of pounds that go into an estate and were horrified at the sums spent on failure. They looked at how a multitude of state agencies converge and collide, making no connection with one another, each trying to deal with one aspect of a family in trouble, but no problem soluble on its own. Imagine the resources a difficult family might use: a drug addict father is in the hands of the benefits office and a New Deal Adviser at the Job Centre and maybe a probation officer. They have a baby not thriving, in the hands of a health visitor. Their child in school arrives hungry every morning and causes trouble, but the teacher never sees the parents and can't begin to help.

A SOCIAL worker will only drop in occasionally to check they're all still alive if the children are on the at-risk register. Their teenager is regularly in trouble with the police, who keep arresting him at vast and useless expense. The housing department is eager to evict them for their bad behaviour. Their GP can only prescribe pills for the mother, nothing that she really needs.

Between them this family consumes a great deal of professional time and government money. Mountainous files on them have built up in all these offices, but their brushes with officialdom are hated and resented. It's unlikely that they consider any of it as "help", since it all comes with admonitions, threats and conditions. None of it has changed their life or their prospects. For all that money, they are still unemployed, uneducated, unhealthy, alienated and beyond hope.

Eighteen teams of Whitehall civil servants, each with 12 members, will be sent out to solve those problems that belong to no one, falling between departments. How do you bring shops back into an estate? How do you give access to credit unions or reputable banks to save them from debt to loan sharks? What do you do when there's no transport? Above all, how do you create jobs where there are none? Who is responsible for disaffected youth roaming around with nothing to do on estates? Can you breathe life into communities with local arts projects to regenerate people's minds and spirits?

Clearly, it is what people are made into by the system they live under that matters most, — and NOT the question of just the housing as such; or weak government as such; or uncoordinated policies as such; or the WORST problem families as such (there will always be others to take their place if one is cured or removed); or drug peddling as such; or poor health as such; or educational backwardness as such; or criminal influences as such; or poor diets as such; or a lack of social and community leadership as such; etc, etc.

And what people are made into is obviously governed, first and foremost, by what the dominant SYSTEM of society needs the working class for, and how it feels OBLIGED to treat them. Everything else flows from that.

And the overwhelmingly significant FACT about life, dominated by free-market capitalism, is that a GUARANTEED LIFETIME CAREER in socially WORTHWHILE EMPLOYMENT is not available to a single member of the working class, or to many skilled workers or members of petty-bourgeois professions either. For the vast mass of society, there is guaranteed only regularly recurring INSECURITY, which can only screw up everyone's hopes and aspirations at some point. 

Unbounded confidence and unbounded intellectual development are IMPOSSIBLE in such uncertain rat-race circumstances. 

A sense of responsibility to the community is even more out of the question. 

A thirst for rational development of any kind is unlikely in the hostile turmoil of such an irrational way of doing things, — leaving people's whole lives constantly at the mercy of the vagaries of the economic climate, or the stock market, or new take-over bid bosses, or a new manager with a chip on their shoulder, or other unserious or irresponsible conduct of the workplace by ever-shifting, ever-uncertain private capitalist arbitrariness or speculativeness.

And for the ordinary working class, this chaotic workplace jungle is a thousand times worse. The ruthless hire-and-fire in-and-out of menial job after menial job is simply soul-destroying. Repeated unemployment damages even more.

Daringly, the Blairista Guardian briefly mentions the problem of alienated or disaffected millions in the working class. It is the most criminal dishonesty to pretend that some imaginary lack of coordinated welfare-work is responsible for such grim and tragic phenomena under capitalism. Such 'social exclusion' is an inseparable part of not just how capitalism works in practice, (by vicious fire-and-fire, and exploitation) but of how capitalism WANTS to work ethically and philosophically as well. Capitalism WANTS there to be a complete social hierarchy the better to serve ruling class interests, — a socially-exclusive upper-bourgeois owning class and governing class; a dutiful middle-management class which runs the office or the shop; and a vast working class to serve as hired and fired factory hands whenever needed, and as servants in every other dimension too, — directly on estates or in nurseries or as personal chauffeurs, servants, and the like, or indirectly serving in restaurants, or in necessary public services, etc, street-cleaning, refuse collection, etc, etc.

And once the class pecking order is unalterably established by the chosen economic and social system (national dynamic and leadership through a capitalist ruling class), then everything else which condemns a vast working class to exist permanently just at the margins of cultural and educational development, follows on naturally. 

The poverty of social exclusion will always continue under capitalism, no matter how high the affluence soars of the entrepreneurially successful and the privileged, because economically, that is the way the forces and the influences of the free-market system WANT and NEED to operate. A biggish pool of unemployed, for example, is always desirable and frequently almost NECESSARY for the capitalist system to be able to function best because it is the PERFECT workplace and labour-market discipline, allowing scab labour to be recruited to defeat any strike or undermine any 'excessive' wage demands, over a long-enough period of time. With a level of permanent unemployment in the background, the working class can usually always be kept under control.

And once that domineering exploitation relationship is permanently established between the ruling class and the working class, utterly crushing the really vital part of all truly INDEPENDENT will and ambition that might develop in ordinary workers, — then the deliberate steady drip of cultural degeneration and impoverishment in every other aspect of human spirituality and ambition will effortlessly impose itself.

Educational underachievement slots—in immediately so as to take the majority of ordinary working-class people only as far as they really NEED to go to fit the never-ending treadmill of hire-and-fire menial jobs which the capitalist system insists on being always fulfilled as the employment-ambition limit of at least a fixed steady percentage of workers at the bottom of the social scale.

Ever since modern largescale capitalist technology, mobility, and social organisation felt that compulsory state education was necessary from the later 19th century onwards, the standards of numeracy and literacy at the less-needed fringes of universal education have ALWAYS remained embarrassingly poor. They are still poor today for millions of less-well-off working class children, despite the phenomenally greater affluence of the economy compared to 130 years ago when universal education began, and despite a vast increase in aids to education and in theoretical understanding of the learning process, and despite the failure of many fascist-eugenics attempts to prove that certain sections of the population are genetically and socially ineducable.

The potential for intelligence and aptitude are present in abundance THROUGHOUT the population. It is just the way that capitalist economy and society WANTS to be organised that perennially ends up with educational under-achievement within the unskilled working class in general. The deprived cultural and social pattern is FIXED BY CAPITALISM.

Family healthcare, housing conditions, and everything else listed by the oh-so-caring Blairistas, all follow suit, with nothing much better being needed (strictly in terms of keeping a capitalist economy and society still continuing).

Demoralisation and low achievement will then inevitably breed 'problem families' in plenty within the working class, exhibiting all manner of other social and personal disadvantages into the bargain. Criminal influences, drugs, violence, alcoholism, and the like, will not be far behind, — all kept going by a monopoly-capitalist-run 'popular culture' which deliberately dumbs down perpetually towards the lowest common denominator, — keeping backwardness of all kinds backward, especially political backwardness. Capitalism really likes it that way.

Facing this capitalist-system reality, it is a potentially tragically and dangerously-undermining confusion to get caught up in 'reformist' apologetics about the condition of the working class living within 'free market' illusions.

It falls for capitalism's 'reformist' trap to keep on arguing that all the phenomena listed by the Blairistas above would NOT occur "IF ONLY there were better schools; more teachers; better-paid and more-motivated teachers; better playing fields; more decent recreational facilities for youth on working-class housing estates; less crap on television;" etc, etc, etc.

The betrayal is in the "if only". OF COURSE it is true that the achievements of people from the working class would be at least equal to if not better than the achievements of everyone else, and in all spheres of life, — IF ONLY they could grow up in the same conditions as the bourgeoisie.

But the whole POINT of the capitalist class system is to keep things as they are, with a privileged owning class, and a menial-work-suited working class. And no kind of 'reformist' politics can EVER change that reality because capitalism could NOT FUNCTION in any other way.

And although the INTENTIONS of 'reformers' have always been totally irrelevant in the face of what the capitalist system can or CANNOT allow, none of these 'reformists' would ever really WANT to get rid of capitalism if the truth was known, — because their petty-bourgeois class is as dependent on the system as is the big bourgeoisie.

The 'reformist' mentality is close to excuse-making on behalf of the working class, — explaining why it cannot get on any better, why it falls down so often, why its behaviour can be its own worst enemy at times, etc. It is not far removed from a moralising approach to the working class which is always on the point of saying "why don't you pull your socks up; why don't you do better; why aren't you more ambitious for yourselves", etc, etc. And this is connected to the petty-bourgeoisie's own guilt-plagued feelings of unworthiness if they haven't got on better, a subservient mentality which religion is conveniently and specifically organised to sustain.

But the working class needs no explanations or excuses, or 'reformist' wheedling for a 'fairer deal'. All such approaches in fact only tend to prolong doubts about whether the working class people really COULD en masse equal or outshine the best of the bourgeoisie if given the chance.

But there IS no doubt about it. The privileged class system of capitalism is just a ludicrous inhuman anachronism, deeply insulting to all mankind, and disgustingly flawed to boot, never very far from the kind of crisis-catastrophe which is already sweeping the Far East, beginning to hit Latin America and Europe, and which within not many more months will be plunging the whole planet into the greatest political and economic chaos, and the worst suffering, and the most life-threatening disasters, that the world has ever known.

Workers should concentrate on one thing only: Let us get rid of this system before it gets rid of all of us. It is entering the deepest crisis, which is the ONLY time that it is vulnerable enough to be overthrown. So let's overthrow it.

The 'new' philosophy of Blair's 'Third Way' onslaught is the most imbecile gibberish where the guru Giddens simply cobbles together the same old pathetic moralising:

We have to make our lives in a more active way than was true of previous generations, and we need more actively to accept responsibility for the consequences of what we do.

Anthony Giddens goes on to argue that the old LeftlRight divide is unequal to the task of addressing modem problems. These include the globalisation of the economy, ecological questions and issues to do with the changing nature of family, work and personal and cultural identity.

How should we react to global warming? Should we accept nuclear energy? How far should work remain a central life value? Should we favour devolution? What should be the future of the European Union? None of these is a clear LeftlRight issue, which suggests that the centre holds the key.

THE RADICAL CENTRE

THE CENTRE, in the context, of Left and Right, can only mean compromise, but if Left and Right are less encompassing than they once were, this no longer follows. The idea of the 'active middle', or the 'radical centre', discussed quite widely among social democrats recently, should be taken seriously.

It implies that 'centre-left' isn't inevitably the same as 'moderate left'. Nearly all the questions mentioned above require radical solutions or suggest radical policies. All are potentially divisive, but the conditions and alliances required to cope with them don't necessarily follow those based upon divisions of economic interest.

The term 'centre-left' thus isn't an innocent label. A renewed social democracy has to be left of centre, because social justice and emancipatory politics remain at its core. But the 'centre' shouldn't be regarded as empty of substance. Rather, we are talking of the alliances that social democrats can weave from the threads of life-style diversity.

THIRD WAY POLITICS

THE OVERALL aim of third way politics should be to help citizens pilot their way through the major revolutions of our time: globalisation, transformations in personal life and our relationship to nature.

Having abandoned collectivism, third way politics looks for a new relationship between the individual and the community, a redefinition of rights and obligations.

One might suggest as a prime motto for the new politics, no rights without responsibilities.

'Civic liberalism' — the recapturing of public space — must be a basic part of an inclusive society at the top. How can this liberalism be renewed or sustained? The successful cultivation of the cosmopolitan nation is one way. People who feel themselves members of a national community are likely to acknowledge a commitment to others within it.

In terms of social solidarity, the most important groups are not only the new corporate rich but also the members of the professional and moneyed middle class, since they are closest to the dividing lines which threaten to pull away from public space. Improving the quality of public education, sustaining a well-resourced health service, promoting safe public amenities, and controlling levels of crime are all relevant.

Inclusion must stretch well beyond work, not only because there are many people at any one time not able to be in the labour force, but because a society too dominated by the work ethic would be a thoroughly unattractive place in which to live. An inclusive society must provide for the basic, needs of those who can't work and must recognise the wider diversity of goals life has to offer.

This mixture of fascist-chauvinism, charity, and a better class of dole is just a joke, especially in the light of open class-war struggles already breaking out across Russia and around the Far East as the criminal degeneracy of the capitalist system comes home to people. This bilge is so irrelevant that it is hard to believe that anyone can take it seriously.

Blair's foolish 'reformist' nonsense recited in New York this week drew the immediate embarrassing response it deserved from the real world of relentless capitalist trampling:

LEADING shares in London plunged below the 5000 level yesterday for the first time this year as dealers took fright at the darkening global outlook, fears of a British recession and continuing political vacuum in the US.

And his self-confessed idiocy of last week, — telling Fujitsu's doomed 600 workers at Newton Aycliffe that "nothing can be done about the world market", — deserves equal contempt. World trade is conducted solely in the interests of the capitalist class who own everything, and it fluctuates catastrophically because of their arbitrary and speculative class concerns.

Let the working class own everything, and let world trade be conducted in the interests of everyone, without seeking to profiteer, exploit, or drive each other out of business, — and a completely different perspective emerges.

And before much longer, it is ONLY this big picture which is going to make any sense at all as a demand for the working class to take up, — demanding the overthrow of the capitalist system. Nothing else makes any sense at all. Build Leninism. Royston Bull

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

BRAZIL'S WAR OF THE LANDLESS

TOWARDS the end of March, a right-wing Catholic sect called on Brazil's landowners to begin "armed reaction" to the campaign for land organised by the country's poor.

Tradition, Family & Property (TFP) issued their call in a 64-page booklet, of which 10,000 copies were printed and distributed nationwide.

The booklet recommended a series of measures that large landowners could implement in order to protect their vast estates from the poor: barbed wire, hired guns and the threat of violence would be enough to ward off even the most determined of the landless, Tradition, Family & Property said.

This "right to resist" was made imperative given the authorities' failure to control the activities of the millions in Brazil without land, it added.

The Catholic ultra-rightists characterised Movimiento de los Sin Tierra as a "subversive" organisation.

In many respects, they are correct. MST's stated aim is to procure land for Brazil's many millions of landless poor. In doing so, they are subverting a social order which has inequality at its heart.
 
The campaign tor land, which centres on the occupation of large estates and unused land, is organised by the Movement of the Landless (Movimiento de los Sin Tierra —MST).

Land distribution in Brazil is among the worst — if not the worst — in Latin America. An estimated 1% of the population owns some 46% of the country's arable land Carved up into large estates, the land is frequently underused, or not used at all by its owners.

In 1997, MST occupied a huge, unused estate that had been given to the General Motors corporation as a 'gift' by the Brazilian government. Such was the size of the estate that it was valued at $258 million dollars.

Ironically, police sent to evict the squatters refused to do so, as they themselves were on strike at the time.

The previous year, however, the security forces killed 70 unarmed civilians while evicting 500 families from land they had occupied.

Within days of the call to arms being issued by Tradition, Family & Property, Brazil's landed establishment had responded. On 30 March, landowners announced the formation of the National Association of Rural Producers, a quaint euphemistic title for the most entrenched section of Brazil's tiny, wealthy elite.

The association also announced their intention to establish armed militias in those areas most threatened by the poor. Initial recruitment of at least 500 gunmen was organised. One of the association's leaders also spelled out the agenda of the new grouping: they would teach the Movimiento de los Sin Tierra a lesson "they would not forget for the rest of their lives".

The Brazilian government, which is quick to meet MST occupations with violence, failed to respond to this overt threat of bloodshed  This despite the fact that MST occupations are peaceful exercises carried out by unarmed civilians. The MST tactic is to rely on the sheer weight of numbers without land to force official action on the issue. Its current campaign involves some 58,000 families — at least a quarter of a million people.

The MST said government failure to respond to such an explicit threat of violence merely confirmed official "paralysis" and the lack of resolve on the land issue.

Indeed, the authorities already had ample proof of the landlords' willingness to carry out their threat. Days before the latter announced the formation of their paramilitary bands, two MST leaders were murdered during the attempted occupation of a large estate in Para, northern Brazil.

By apparent way of response, the MST organised a massive campaign of occupations in Para, with more than 20,000 landless occupying a number of large estates in the  region. More than anything, the series of occupations demonstrated the MST's determination not to bow to, or be intimidated by hired killers.

Last month, a Catholic church commission published a study which showed slavery was a flourishing industry in Brazil. More than 80% of the cases cited by their report occurred in the same northern territory of Para.

The chief culprits were said to be large landowners, who lured the landless and urban poor to their estates with promises of high wages. Once there, the workers were told they owed the landlord money for travel and accommodation. The debt was paid off by working for nothing.

Shortly after the MST launched its occupations in Para, evidence of official complicity in the murder of the two MST leaders was uncovered. 

Public pressure and the threat of a bloody conflict between landed and landless had finally forced the authorities to respond. Troops were dispatched to Para, ostensibly to "restore calm". However, the troops were also charged with ending the MST's occupations in the area.

Simultaneously, eleven police officers were arrested and charged with the murder of the two MST leaders. Apparently, the officers had been indulging in a bit of moonlighting — working after hours for the local, landed mafia.

Indeed, nine of the eleven officers were also accused of participating in the infamous massacre of El Dorado de Carajas, in the territory of Para. The massacre occurred almost exactly two years ago, on 17 April 1996. On that occasion, 19 unarmed landless protestors were murdered.

It appears remarkable that after two years, the authorities had finally unearthed enough evidence to charge the nine officers. Remarkably co-incidental also that it occurred just as national and international attention was focused on the country, and the badlands of Para.

Equally remarkable is that even with the presence of armed troops in the area, the landowners have begun to move against the MST occupations. Most recently, some 80 armed members of the National Association of Rural Producers expelled 1,000 families from the estate they had been occupying.

The property in question — belonging to one individual — is some 17,000 hectares in size. That's 42,000 acres. 

Meanwhile the MST has announced it has every intention of carrying on its campaign of occupations. They also pointed out that the landowners' armed campaign has now taken on the characteristics of low-intensity warfare.

This war of attrition is intended, obviously, to discourage MST activists and landless families from future protests. However, according to MST spokesman Giimar Mauro, the campaign will continue: as long as there are millions of Brazilians without even a place to live and a tiny minority of landlords in control of gigantic, unproductive estates.

That much is certain.     •

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Bourgeois reaction still trying to distort the historical reality of the IRA/Sinn Féin national-liberation struggle victory by ignoring the need for defeated British colonialism to disarm, and making false 'decommissioning' propaganda instead.

HAS everybody forgotten that what this peace process is supposed to be about is conflict resolution? 

Take it step by step. There has been a political conflict with a violent armed dimension for 30 years. OK. it needs to be resolved. Agreed, if so then it must be accepted that there is more than one armed force in the conflict. Obviously. But the logic of much of the spurious political commentary of recent weeks is that there was only one armed force responsible for conflict and that was the IRA.

In the wake of the Omagh tragedy all kinds of political animals have come out of the woodwork and set off running with the old political agenda which places the blame for conflict on republicans. John Barton's speech in Leinster House last week was a sustained attack on republicans. He accused the IRA of having an "each" way bet strategy" with regard to the Good Friday Agreement.

"This each way bet strategy has created the political space in which the Real IRA can claim falsely a spurious sense of republican justification for bombing," he said.

Bruton based this assertion on the fact that neither the IRA nor Sinn Féin had said that the referendums on 22 May constituted an act of national self-determination by the Irish people. The Fine Gael leader argued that refusing to do so provided 'justification' for violence. 

He went on: "By any definition that vote was an act of national self-determination. It is criminally wrong for the IRA to deny that because in denying it it is providing implicit justification for the Real IRA. It is wrong for Sinn Féin to support or condone that continuing IRA position." 

It says much about the thinking of the Fine Gael leader when he can deem it criminally wrong to hold a particular point of view, and this on the day when the Dáil was processing repressive legislation. So much for the Fine Gael concept of democracy and free speech. But Bruton goes further than intolerance. He seeks to ideologically disable republicans. The thrust of his speech was essentially that Shin Féin had no right to hold the political views it espouses.

It is important that this is refuted. For the record, this is what Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said about the referendums in his Ard Fheis speech on 10 May last:

"It is clear that the referendums do not constitute the exercise of national self-determination. Self-determination is universally accepted to mean a nation's right to exercise the political freedom to determine its own social, economic, and cultural development without external influence and without partial or total disruption of the national unity or territorial integrity. These criteria are not observed in Ireland. British government involvement in our country is in contravention of the established international norms which create and sustain conditions for the establishment of internal peace, democracy, justice, stability and national freedom."

Of course Sinn Féin recognised that the outcome of the referendums represented the will of the electorate in both partitioned states. It was a positive outcome for an Agreement that has the potential to build peace and political progress. But partition still prevails and the referendums were held on a partitionist basis. National self-determination has yet to be achieved. It is for that very reason that Sinn Féin exists.

It was Bruton who as Taoiseach failed to confront the British government on the decommissioning issue at an early stage. He allowed it to get up and running and it has plagued the peace process ever since. Last week he put decommissioning up as a block to Sinn Féin participation in the new Executive.

The Omagh tragedy has allowed those determined to use decommissioning as a block to progress to up the ante once again. It needs to be remembered that this issue is essentially one of ideology and politics, not guns and bombs. What are the implications of the surrender of IRA arms which is sought by some sections of opinion? It is clearly that the responsibility for conflict in the past and for potential conflict in the future rests with republicans.

All IRA arms could be surrendered tomorrow and it would not alter two facts. One — if political progress, justice and equality are not realised, if the conditions for peace do not become firmly established, the potential for future armed conflict would remain. Two — the IRA could. without too much difficulty, re-arm relatively quickly.

Loyalists have shown themselves in the past to be volatile and reactive, there have been numerous breaches of their ceasefires and, without political progress, there is no guarantee that their ceasefires are permanent. They have previously found bountiful arms sources in the British forces and could do so again.

And what of those British forces? The armed RUC and the British Army constitute the largest group of combatants in the conflict. Even if the British Army was totally withdrawn from Ireland they would not be going as far as some are asking the IRA to go. They are asking the IRA, an indigenous guerrilla army, to surrender its weapons and effectively dissolve itself. The IRA has made clear that it is not prepared to do this.   

Now is the time to remind people of the responsibility of the British government for armed conflict in Ireland. Attempts to rewrite the history of the past 30 years cannot be allowed to succeed. Recognition of the responsibility of all who have used arms in the past three decades — including governments — is essential in the process of conflict resolution    •

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from variety of anti-imperialist struggles).
 
As usual, the really sick, vicious, and completely unjustifiable 'terrorist savagery' is by Western 'free-world' imperialism.

ON THURSDAY 20 August a force of 23,000 soldiers, 170 aircraft and 24 warships approaching the Red and Arabian Seas calculated their strike into the hearts of Afghanistan and Sudan. At precisely 1.30pm (Washington time), roughly 75 cruise missiles struck simultaneously more than 2,500 miles apart.

Was this an attack on "Islamic fundamentalist terrorism", as the US claimed, or a calculated diversion from Bill Clinton's' sexual improprieties? Or — more likely — it was an attack which would have happened no matter about the sex life of the President.

The people of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in which a chemical factory was razed to the ground, seem convinced. This was, in their opinion, an obvious effort to confuse a fickle American populace, so accustomed to the fictitious world of Hollywood screenplay that reality is viewed with apathy and moral indifference.

The chemical plant, Al Shifa Pharmaceuticals, had a staff of 300 and, according to manager Dr Alamaddin Shibli, was fortunate not to have been the site of a large number of human fatalities. The previous night, he claimed, 50 members of the staff had been working late on a special consignment and he had abnormally left the plant early on Thursday.

The factory had produced a wide range of antibiotics and medicines, which the staff claim filled 50% of Sudan's drug requirement. Medicines which were used in the treatment and cure of malaria, rheumatism, tuberculosis, diabetes and several other diseases, which in the developed world are easily cured, but in Africa are the direct cause of millions of deaths — needless deaths — were manufactured there.

America would possibly wish to characterise this country as a "haven for international terrorism", jam packed with surreptitious guerrillas intent on waging a religious war on all things American. This could not be further from the truth. The internal situation in Sudan is, according to Irish-based charity service Trócaire, "critical, and is getting worse by the day. The ongoing war and recent drought have caused appalling food shortages, famine and suffering". A possible two-million people are now facing malnutrition, hunger and death. Parents are suffering the indignity of digging through ant hills for seed for their children to eat. It is estimated that 85% of the population have been displaced.

Of course, Sudan is no stranger to the ravages of war. A civil war which has long hampered any progression towards peace and exacerbated the effects of drought and poverty has left the people accustomed to the sound of exploding bombs.

The 18 ft long Tomahawk Land-Attack cruise missiles launched by the Americans weigh 1,000 pounds each and fly up to 1,000 miles. At a cost of $1m a piece, it must surely be disillusioning to aid workers that such opulence be used to devastate the country rather than save its people from terrible disaster.
To the more cynical observer, the Nairobi bombings in Kenya were a godsend to Clinton's political life. "Wag the Dog" came to mind; a recently-released American film depicting an American President, confronted with a sex scandal, waging war in Albania. And, to put their metaphorical foot in it, the CIA justified the bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan with the information that the next "terrorist" attack would have targeted the American Embassy in... you guessed it, Albania.

The Sudanese bombing had arisen from American claims that the components manufactured in the Al Shifa plant were used in the manufacture of the deadly chemical weapon, VX gas.

But can we believe all the American President says simply because he is unopposed in Congress? Hiroshima, Nagasaki,  Vietnam were all supported as part of the general American belligerence towards the enemy. Sudanese officials have given open invitations for people to view the wrecked factory unhindered.

They have asked for the UN to inspect the plant but this is being blocked by the US. Company manager, Almaddin Shibii, spoke confidently of the Sudanese case against the Americans. "In those bottles are the reagents that will prove what we really produced here — and it wasn't chemical weapons."

The overseeing of police operations in the areas influenced by American forces is also of concern. Forty people, most of Middle Eastern extraction, have been arrested by Kenyan police, some of whom appear to have been interned on suspicion of involvement in the Nairobi bombing plot.

Last Thursday police arrested Jamil Hassan Abdi, a Kenyan native. The reported reason for his detainment was that he stayed at the Hilltop Hotel in Nairobi, from 4 - 7 August, when it is believed the bombing team also stayed there.

On Thursday also a raid in Albania, at Myslym Shyri Street was said by local residents to have been supervised by Americans. 

Back home in the States there seems to be an element of jingoism emerging from the shattered ruins of Nairobi. Madelene Albright commented this week that "this is unfortunately the war of the future" as she contemplated the prospect of further attacks allegedly from Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden.

In Gaza, Beirut, Tripoli and Khartoum chanting faces are lit by burning US flags. In Iran a 20-storey high flag on the side of an office block depicts the stars as skulls and the stripes as trails of blood. •