TANIT

By Mick Brooks

The purpose of this article is to show the explanatory power of Marxist analysis in looking at the dynamics of capitalism. The laws of motion of the system affect all our daily lives profoundly. Having a basic grasp of these laws of motion helps us to understand how changes in social being produce changes in consciousness and thus to participate in the fight for a better society – socialism.

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Our Congress took place in the biggest hall in Rawalpindi, the Liaquat auditorium. This is located exactly at the place where Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s ex-prime minister and chairperson of the Peoples Party, was assassinated. 700 Comrades registered for both days. The comrades came from all over the country, from Karachi to Kashmir, Pakhtoonkhwa to Baluchistan and from the Gilgit and Baltistan. The workers who participated in the conference came from all walks of life including the Steel Mills, Port Qasim, Pakistan International Airlines, Paramedical, Railways, Civil Aviation Authority, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, Capital Development Authority, Banking and various other private sector areas. Also represented at the Conference were youth, students and lawyers organizations: Peoples Students’ Federation, the Pakhtoonkhwa Students’ Federation, JKNSF, JKPSF, the Peoples Lawyers’ Forum and the Peoples Youth Organization. Read the rest of this entry »

This article was written by  Mick Brooks in 2006 but remains a valuable explanation of Marxist theory in opposition to a new trend in the theoretical defence of capitalism.

The dominant idea of contemporary bourgeois thinking is that increasing international integration of economic activity, or “globalisation” will lead to prosperity and peace for all. But globalisation is not a concept that helps us understand the world around us. It is an ideological construct used to trumpet capitalist victory – to conceal the crisis-ridden nature of the system and its perpetual failure to meet the needs of the world’s working class.

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German Regional Elections

by Walter Held

The coalition government of Angela Merkel of CDU, CSU and FDP in Berlin, known by the colours of these parties as black-yellow, has lost a significant amount of its support since the election victory of September 2009. Four Regional Land elections in 2011 have documented the melting away of the coalition’s voting strength signalled mainly by the huge decline in the suport for the more rightwing FDP, first in the northern metropolis of Hamburg in February, then in the south-eastern Sachsen-Anhalt  and now in two south-western states, the Rheinland Palatinate (RP) and Baden-Wuerttemberg (BW) on Sunday 27th March.

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War and Resistance is a translation of the Swedish book Draksådd, originally published in 2004 and in the light of current events is as relevant as ever. It analyzes the most important wars of the past hundred years. It examines the role of the United Nations, civil disobedience and many other failed attempts to stop war. And as a contrast explains why other forms of resistance to war have been successful. This is the final chapter, all the others are available here as previous posts.

We did not conquer India for the benefit of the Indians.

We conquered India as the outlet for the goods of Great Britain.

We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we should hold it.1

Lord Brentford, former British government minister, speaking in 1930

It must be clear from everything that we have written in this book that we think that imperialism is the fundamental cause of war in the 20th and 21th century. Of course, there are many different factors behind every individual war, but imperialism underlies them all. Yet, so far we have not defined what exactly we mean by the term imperialism. In this conclud­ing chapter we want explain what we mean by imperialism. And what the alternative is.

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by Michael Roberts

http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com

In several posts in 2010, I argued that the people of Europe were going to have to pay for the bailout of the banking system in the Europe through a significant reduction in their living standards (by higher taxation and inflation, lower incomes, rising unemployment and reduced public services.

It started with the Greeks (see my post, Greek countdown, 1 February 2010).  The socialist government there agreed to take a E110bn in loans from the European Union and IMF to fund the buyback of its maturing government bonds and future government borrowing.  It had to do so because capitalist bond investors (who are mainly Greek and European banks and pension funds) were refusing to buy any more Greek government debt unless the prices they paid were slashed.  In other words, the government would have to pay an 8-10% interest rate on their borrowing, a level that was just way too much forcing the government to borrow even more to pay for it!

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By Heiko Khoo

http://www.karlmarx.net

The imposition of a no fly zone over Libya, backed primarily by France, Britain and the United States, and the invasion of Bahrain by Saudi Armed forces, mark a new stage in the tumultuous revolutionary events in the Arab world. The joyous revolutionary victories secured by mass protests on the streets and squares of Egypt and Tunisia have given way to bloody and ferocious conflict drawing in national and international military forces.

In the past the Imperialist powers were happy to see dictators in power throughout the region, provided they appeared to serve the economic, political, military and strategic interests of European and US capitalist states. It was European powers that colonised, plundered and divided the peoples of the region; leaving a legacy of artificial lines from which nations were carved out of the sand.

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by Nadim Mahjoub

http://www.karlmarx.net

Are the Islamists “ready for their close-up”? In an article published on Al-Jazeera.net (10.3.11) the writer D. Parvaz, extensively quoting observers on Islamism and the Arab world like Ed Hussain, Tareq Ramadan, George Joffe, and Amina Elbendary, poses this question and points to the misrepresentation of the Islamists by the West. A West, he says, that tends to “put all the people in the same box.”

He distinguishes Al-Nahda in Tunisia and the Muslim Bortherhood (MB) in Egypt among the Islamist movements to assert that they played no role in the revolutions in both countries. And also to paint the features which reflect that they are moderate organisations. He concludes that even if these two countries end up with Islamist governments, it would not be “a catastrophe” as people do not want a religious-based system.

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by Jonas Ryberg,  Socialisten (Sweden)

http://www.socialisten.se/

This article was written before the agreement between Fine Gael and the Labour Party to form a coalition government but it’s general argument remains valid.

Ireland is one of the countries that has been hit hardest by the
capitalist crisis. In the late 90s the country became known as the
“Celtic Tiger”. The political leaders of the traditionally biggest party
in the country, liberal Fianna Fáil, turned the country into a neo-
liberal experiment shop. The bank and finance sector was completely
deregulated, big parts of the welfare system was privatized and an
unprecedented campaign for loaning was launched, where ordinary wage
earners were convinced to loan up both on the house and car.

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Wojciech Figiel and Bojan Stanisławski of Polish Labour Notes speak to Leszek Miętek , the president of the Confederation of Railway Trade Unions.

http://english.zwiazkowiec.info/

Could you please tell our readers how the process of restructuring the Polish State Railways was done?

The railway company was functioning as one state company up to September 2000 when the commercialization, restructuring and privatisation of Polish State Railways law came into force. In accordance with this law Polish State Railways S.A. was created along with its subsidiaries. It was all about that PKP S.A. take over the railway debts and the whole burden of restructuring. The “sick mother” was supposed to give birth to healthy unindebted children. Let us add that this law lobbied for a foreign consulting company that gave advice in the privatisation process of British Railways. It was a fiasco. The British paid a lot of money for this re-nationalisation than they did in World War II.

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