‘Dark lull’ in German energy transition sparks political debate


By AFP
December 20, 2024

Renewables have become an ever more important part of Germany's energy mix, accounting for an average 60 percent of its electricity production so far this year - Copyright AFP 

OSCAR DEL POZO

As Germany heads for February 23 elections the grey winter weather has become a hot campaign topic because of its impact on the country’s shaky green energy transition.

Twice in recent months electricity prices temporarily spiked in Europe’s top economy because of a lack of both sunlight and wind to power its solar panels and turbines.

The phenomenon — dubbed a “dark lull” — briefly sent the price soaring to 936 euros ($972) per megawatt hour on December 12, twelve times the average for the preceding weeks.

Conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz, whose CSU/CDU is widely expected to win the elections, seized on the issue to attack centre-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

In Europe’s interconnected energy market, Merz told Scholz that “your energy policies are setting teeth on edge across the European Union, which is very angry with Germany”.

The comment was rejected by the Greens, who have long been the political driving force behind Germany’s transition away from fossil fuel and nuclear power and toward clean renewables.

The Greens’ Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck hit back that previous CDU/CSU-led governments under Angela Merkel had been “blind” to Germany’s energy challenges.

To help fight climate change, Germany has pledged to phase out fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030 from 1990 levels, and become carbon-neutral by mid-century.

– ‘At the limit’ –

The recent price spikes prompted some of Germany’s most energy-intensive firms to temporarily limit or even halt production.

In the December 12 incident, Germany bought electricity at the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig, causing a spike in prices in neighbouring countries.

Meanwhile the German energy sector is ringing alarm bells.

Markus Kreber, head of the biggest energy supplier RWE, said the recent dips in renewable supply “would not have been manageable on another day with a higher peak load, for example in January”.

He warned that the system is currently operating “at its limits”.

The situation after the most recent dip soon stabilised as renewables production picked up again, and households and most businesses remain shielded from day-to-day price fluctuations by fixed tariffs.

The Scholz government defended the green energy transition despite the occasional “temporary phenomenon” of a dark lull that can drive up prices on the spot market.

“There are phases in which the sun shines a lot, the wind blows a lot, and electricity is produced very cheaply in Germany, which is then gladly exported and supplies our neighbouring countries with electricity,” said spokesman Steffen Hebestreit.

Renewables have become an ever more important part of Germany’s energy mix, accounting for an average 60 percent of its electricity production so far this year.

Traditional sources of energy are being wound down, with coal power stations gradually shutting down after the last three nuclear power stations were taken off the grid last year.

– Political paralysis –

But many experts say the world’s third biggest economy can ill afford such supply fluctuations when it’s already struggling with a lack of competitiveness in other areas.

Analysts say Germany needs to scale up energy storage capacity and also develop other sources of production, such as gas and hydrogen, to pick up the slack when necessary.

“If the state establishes a good regulatory framework, then it should be possible to avoid shortages through investing in storage and having flexibility in supply,” Georg Zachmann, energy and climate specialist at the Bruegel think tank, told AFP.

However, he said there was “a big concern that the framework will not be sufficient to quickly develop” the necessary infrastructure.

“It takes on average seven years to construct a wind power facility but just seven months to build a liquified natural gas terminal,” said Claudia Kemfert, energy expert at the DIW institute. “It ought to be the other way around.”

For now, Germany faces months of political paralysis after the collapse of Scholz’s three-way coalition government.

The coalition’s demise also means the scrapping of a key draft law for a project to build a network of gas and hydrogen power stations as part of the transition away from coal.

A new government will likely take several months to emerge after February’s election and then set out its own energy policy.

The frontrunner Merz has already pledged to study a return to nuclear power.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Credit Suisse collapse probe slams banking regulator


By AFP
December 20, 2024

Credit Suisse was hit by a string of scandals before being taken over by UBS

 - Copyright AFP TREVOR COLLENS

Nathalie OLOF-ORS

Switzerland’s financial regulator was ineffective in tackling the scandals at Credit Suisse, where executive mismanagement scuppered the bank and nearly triggered a global financial crisis, a Swiss inquiry concluded Friday.

However, after an 18-month investigation raking over the dramatic collapse of one of the world’s biggest banks, the rarely-used parliamentary commission of inquiry found no evidence that the implosion of Credit Suisse was caused by misconduct on the part of the authorities.

“Credit Suisse’s long-term mismanagement is the cause of the crisis,” the inquiry said.

“The board of directors and management of Credit Suisse in recent years are responsible for the loss of confidence in the bank.”

Credit Suisse was among 30 international banks deemed too big to fail due to their importance in the global banking architecture.

But the collapse of three US regional lenders in March 2023 left Credit Suisse looking like the weakest link in the chain and its share price plunged more than 30 percent on March 15 last year.

The Swiss government, the central bank and the Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) then strongarmed the country’s biggest bank UBS into a $3.25-billion takeover announced on March 19 before the markets reopened the following day.

The government feared Credit Suisse would have quickly defaulted and triggered a global banking crisis that would also have shredded Switzerland’s valuable reputation for sound banking.

– Global crisis avoided –

The authorities’ actions “avoided a global financial crisis”, according to the more than 500-page report.

The commission levelled numerous criticisms at the financial market regulators, saying it “deplores the partial ineffectiveness of FINMA’s supervisory activity”.

It said it did not understand why, back in 2017, FINMA granted “vast capital relief” without which Credit Suisse would have “had difficulty meeting regulatory requirements” four years later, and “would have been absolutely incapable of doing so from 2022”.

FINMA had issued several warnings and launched numerous procedures against the bank, the commission said, but found Credit Suisse’s managers had been “reticent” when the regulator intervened.

The inquiry regretted that at the time, FINMA did not withdraw the certificate that banks need to operate in Switzerland.

However, the inquiry “has not identified any misconduct by the authorities that caused the Credit Suisse crisis”.

– Merger raised concerns –

The merger raised serious concerns in Switzerland around jobs, competition and the size of the resulting bank relative to the Swiss economy.

The inquiry was set up in June 2023, tasked with tasked with investigating the role of Swiss authorities in the emergency merger of Switzerland’s second-biggest bank into its larger domestic rival UBS.

It was composed of 14 lawmakers — seven from each house of parliament — with all the major parties represented.

It was only the fifth parliamentary committee inquiry ever held in Switzerland and the first since 1995.

The commission looked at events from 2015 onwards to identify the factors that led to the bank’s downfall, and examined more than 30,000 pages.

– Recommendations on regulations –

The inquiry criticised the rules applicable to banks deemed too big to fail, finding that the government and parliament had placed “too much importance” on the demands of the big banks.

The commission made 20 recommendations to the government.

It said the regulations on “too big to fail” banks should be placed within an international framework, to clarify the rules for cooperation between the authorities responsible for financial stability in Switzerland.

In April, UBS chairman Colm Kelleher said he was concerned about a looming tightening of the rules, warning that the bank risked being penalised compared to its international competitors.

He said the fall of Credit Suisse was down to a crisis of confidence, but said trust in a bank was not something that could be regulated.

The Swiss Bank Employees Association has called for greater resources to supervise banks, saying the collapse of Credit Suisse was down to a few unscrupulous senior managers, with junior staff paying the price.

Ex-IMF chief Rato gets four-year jail term in Spain for tax crimes


ByAFP


PublishedDecember 20, 2024


Rato headed the IMF from 2004 to 2007 - Copyright AFP OSCAR DEL POZO
Imran Marashli

A Madrid court sentenced ex-IMF chief and Spanish economy minister Rodrigo Rato to more than four years in prison for tax crimes, money laundering and corruption, it said Friday.

The sentence comes after the disgraced former heavyweight of Spain’s conservative Popular Party was jailed for four and a half years in 2018 for misusing funds while working at lender Bankia.

Prosecutors had alleged that Rato defrauded the Spanish tax office and lined his own pockets to the tune of 8.5 million euros between 2005 and 2015.

Judges found Rato guilty of “three offences against the Treasury, one offence of money laundering and one offence of corruption between individuals”, the court said in a statement.

Rato was sentenced to four years, nine months and one day in jail and fined more than two million euros ($2.1 million), which he can appeal at the Supreme Court.

The court added that the “undue delays” in the proceedings, which lasted more than nine years, reduced the sentence.

Rato refused to comment on the decision, wishing journalists gathered outside the court “a very merry Christmas”, and said he would respond in a written message to court.

Rato spent eight years variously serving as economy minister and a deputy prime minister in the conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar before going on to lead the International Monetary Fund from 2004 to 2007.

– Economic crisis –

He later headed Spanish lender Bankia, where he misused company credit cards for personal expenses between 2010 and 2012.

That earned him the 2018 jail sentence before he was moved to a semi-open prison regime in late 2020.

That decision came just after he was acquitted in another case of fraud and falsifying the books during the 2011 flotation of Bankia.

The Bankia scandal came to light at the height of a severe economic crisis that left many people struggling financially.

It sparked outrage in Spain, which worsened when the government then spent 22 billion euros on a bailout for the failing lender that quickly won notoriety as a symbol of financial excess.

A second defendant, Domingo Plazas, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for money laundering and collaborating in two of Rato’s tax offences.

Another defendant, Alberto Portuondo, got three months and one day for colluding with Rato in a corruption scheme whereby they received kickbacks in return for securing Bankia contracts.

The court cleared the 13 other defendants in the trial.

Sierra Leone student tackles toxic air pollution


By AFP

December 21, 2024

Self-taught innovator James Samba stands in front of an eco-friendly electric vehicle he made from scrap metals in Sierra Leone's capital - Copyright AFP Saidu BAH
Saidu BAH

In his small Freetown workshop, engineering student James Samba tinkered with batteries and electrical parts he hoped could help clean up Sierra Leone’s polluting public transport system.

Rush hour in the West African country’s major cities is a frenetic medley of minibuses, mopeds, shared taxis and three-wheeled vehicles known as “kekehs” –- each spluttering toxic emissions into the atmosphere.

Samba said that his uncle died from a respiratory illness after years of inhaling roadside exhaust fumes, spurring the 23-year-old to develop his own model for an electric kekeh.

Assembled from recycled scrap metal and powered by batteries, the pink four-wheeled vehicle now roams the streets of the capital.

Although the project is still in its infancy, Samba aims to offer an eco-friendly alternative to traditional fuel-run models.

“I wanted to save others from dying of lung and respiratory disease due to air pollution… by manufacturing a prototype electric vehicle,” Samba said.

Worldwide, an estimated 4.2 million premature deaths per year are attributed to outdoor air pollution, the World Health Organization (WHO) says, with low- and middle-income countries overwhelmingly impacted.

Vehicle emissions are also a leading contributor to climate change.

Like in much of West Africa, lengthy traffic jams in Sierra Leone’s major cities and poorly maintained vehicles with inefficient exhausts exacerbate the emissions problem.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that in 2021, fine particle air pollution killed 1,200 people in Sierra Leone, a country of 8.5 million people.



– ‘Good for business, environment’ –



Samba first ventured into engineering when he built an electric wheelchair for his uncle, who had long struggled to access public transport.

He has since set up his own company, Sierra Electric, with the aim of eventually manufacturing a fleet of solar-powered kekehs and disability-friendly electric vehicles.

Lacking the immediate means to cover production costs, Samba has partnered with start-up NEEV Salone to develop a kekeh powered by a rooftop solar panel.

The Freetown-based firm already has a fleet of more than 100 solar tricycles, three charging stations and battery swapping cabinets for customers, according to co-founder and operations officer Emmanuella Sandy.

“Our e-kekeh products are thriving. We swap batteries to reduce waiting time for commercial riders and we have trained 60 university students from the mechanical engineering department on electric vehicle assembly and maintenance,” she said.

The development of electric vehicles faces numerous hurdles in Sierra Leone, where the national grid suffers from chronic underperformance and frequent outages, and a six-month rainy season hampers the functioning of solar panels.

Just over 20 percent of households have access to electricity via the national grid or mini-grids, according to a 2024 World Bank report.

NEEV Salone alternates between solar power, off-grid generators and the national grid to maintain supply to their charging points.

Samba says solar kekehs are cheaper to run than fuel-powered alternatives, as drivers face lower maintenance costs and no fuel bill.

The smallest of NEEV Salone’s solar kekehs sells for 120,000 new leones (around $5,270), a high price for those living in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Despite the cost, some drivers have already converted to renewables in the face of rising fuel prices.

“The solar tricycle is comfortable and a profitable business. I no longer worry about fuel scarcity in the country,” said 25-year-old driver Thomas Kanu.

“The solar kekeh is good for business and our environment.”

Revolution in Sudan was put under siege

Today is the six year anniversary of the protests that marked the beginning of the revolution in Sudan

Protesters on the train from Atbara to Khartoum in December 2018, Sudan

 (Picture: Osama Elfaki)

Comment

By Khalid Sidahmed
Tuesday 17 December 2024  

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2936

Six years ago this month, protests over lack of bread and fuel spread like wildfire across Sudan.

Within days, health workers had taken up the movement’s demands. This gave it a revolutionary momentum and transformed it into a challenge to the whole regime of then dictator Omar al-Bashir.

Over the following months, huge sections of Sudanese society would join protests. It culminated in mass sit-ins in the major cities and general strikes, leading to the downfall of the dictator in April 2019.

The current conflict in Sudan is a counter-revolutionary war, backed by imperialist and regional powers, to crush the Sudanese people’s struggle for freedom, peace and justice.

This violence is a reaction to the 2018 revolution, which was a bold attempt to dismantle over 60 years of military dictatorship. Two militias—the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—plunged the country into chaos.

Desperate to preserve a decaying system, these remnants of the old regime unleashed a war of devastation in 2023. Over 14 million have been displaced, more than 150,000 killed, and vital infrastructure, healthcare and education have been destroyed.

Both militias loot the country, hoarding Sudan’s wealth while the people bear the cost of their greed and brutality. The RSF profits from gold smuggling and hiring out mercenaries to Gulf states to fight wars in Yemen and Libya. The SAF enriches itself through state assets and deals with imperialist allies.

Sudan’s crises are rooted in the scars of colonisation and the exploitation that followed its 1956 independence. The British Empire divided regions and ethnicities to maintain control while looting Sudan’s resources. Decades of imperialist interference entrenched a system of corruption and dependency.

The major imperialist and regional powers continue to shape Sudan’s tragedy. Britain and the European Union (EU) facilitated the RSF’s creation through the “Khartoum Process”. This provided training for Sudanese security and border forces in order to control “illegal migration” from Sudan to Europe.

The US and EU, along with the African Union, pressurised civilian opposition forces to accept a power sharing government with the SAF and RSF in 2019 after the fall of al-Bashir. Israel’s complicity is clear—Israeli security officials met SAF and RSF leaders in 2021. They then carried out a coup against their civilian “partners” in government.

In February 2023, Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen and al-Burhan signed a “peace treaty” prioritising military cooperation, exposing the cynicism of “peace” as a tool to mask imperialist ambitions.

The regional powers, including the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are arming both sides in order to seize Sudan’s gold and wealth, but most importantly to crush the revolution. A victorious revolution would threaten their imperialist and capitalist order, inspiring millions worldwide to rise up.

Their corporate-controlled media frames Sudan’s war as an ethnic conflict or humanitarian crisis, obscuring its political roots.

Both militias are criminals. Condemning the RSF while ignoring the crimes of the SAF—or vice versa—serves only to divide and weaken the revolutionary forces.

Similarly, singling out the UAE as the sole villain distracts from the systemic issues that underpin Sudan’s crisis. The struggle is not against one militia or one foreign power but against the entire system.

But Sudan’s revolutionaries have already shown extraordinary courage and resilience. The revolution had the potential to become a fight for a new society, one in which the wealth of the nation serves the people, not warlords and imperialists.

Rebuilding a revolutionary movement requires international solidarity—not with governments, but with the resistance committees, unions and grassroots organisations that embody the spirit of the revolution.

The Rebecca movement—Welsh riots that heralded new wave of class anger

A storm raged in the countryside between 1839 and 1843. Poor farmers and workers united in uproar at the latest attempt to impose a capitalist order. Charlie Kimber explores a new book on the Rebecca Riots

Rebbeca’s Country by Rhian E Jones

In Depth
Tuesday 17 December 2024   

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2936

Rhian E Jones has written a story of riot and resistance that is a model of how to bring history alive and make it sing for today.

The Rebecca movement in 1830s and 40s Wales was part of a revolt from below against the enforcement of capitalist priorities and new state powers. It was inspiringly radical.

The target of their anger was tollgates set up by ­turnpike trusts dominated by the rich which prevented free access to the roads.

The Rebecca movement’s leaders summoned large groups of men to an assembly point with horns, rockets and flares.

Protesters painted their faces white, red and black. They wore high-crowned black hats, white lace caps, straw bonnets, white shirts, petticoats, shawls or animal hides.

The movement took its name from the owner of the dress worn by one of its first prominent figures. Or maybe it came from a passage in the bible where Rebecca talks of the need to “possess the gates of those who hate them”.

Such protest actions drew on traditions of folk rituals, ­carnival and popular reprisals.

Here people would dress up, bang drums and make other “rough music” outside the homes of overcharging ­shopkeepers or men who beat their wives.

But this was no mere ­performance. The Rebecca ­protesters were armed with guns or scythes, axes, pitchforks and reaping hooks. And they didn’t just demonstrate.

They smashed and set fire to the tollgates, sent bloodcurdling warnings to the owners and defied the authorities.

As one Rebeccaite statement said, “As for the constable and the policemen, Becca and her children heeds no more of them than the grasshoppers which fly in the summer.” Today they would be called terrorists.

Rural Wales was no paradise before the industrial revolution. But people reacted furiously against a new order that privatised and enclosed common land, tore away their meagre methods of mutual support and imposed extra rules and laws.

And they were incensed that this was done through a remote and wholly ­unaccountable authority speaking a language—English, not Welsh—they didn’t share.

Jones gives pulsating accounts of the resistance and doesn’t exclude, as many other accounts do, the role of women.

The Carmarthen protest in June 1843 included women marchers, and around two-thirds of street spectators were women and girls.

During the storming of Carmarthen workhouse, Frances Evans, a young servant, was observed urging the invading crowd onto the building’s upper floor.

Scandalously, she was also seen dancing on the dining hall table, for which she later found herself on trial.

Women turned out to witness and encourage the destruction of toll gates, and courtrooms were regularly packed with the mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and partners of arrested Rebeccaites.

Wales was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the capitalist class and Britain’s imperial project.

“From Merthyr at the ­northern tip, the advance of industrialisation swept through the valleys of Glamorganshire, spreading east into Monmouthshire and west to Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot,” writes Jones.

Merthyr, with a population of 8,000 in 1801, was by the 1830s a town of 50,000.

Regrettably for the ­capitalists, the explosive development of industry spawned a militant ­working class. It was drawn from the rural areas and included migrants from all over the world, particularly Ireland and Spain.

These workers organised and fought back over wages, and jobs—and for democracy. Riots, strikes and bigger challenges—such as the Merthyr Rising of 1831—convulsed towns and parts of the countryside.

Chartism, the world’s first great workers’ movement, had deep roots in Wales. In 1839 workers and the poor took over the town of Llanidloes for five days. Then came the much bigger Newport Uprising—an insurrectionary attempt. Welsh workers also joined the cross-Britain general strike of 1842.

The threat that rural-based movements such as Rebecca could fuse with the workers in the industrial areas terrified a ruling class that was all too aware of the revolutionary events in France. They replied with brutal repression.

Warned in advance, soldiers and police shot and arrested Rebeccaites who attacked ­tollgates in Pontarddulais and nearby Hendy in 1843. But their hopes this would crack the movement failed as huge crowds supported the arrested activists at their trial.

Miners threatened to use their industrial knowledge of explosives to blow up the roads—and to ambush the police.

By the autumn of 1843, Rebecca activists controlled some 2,000 square miles of territory across Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire.

In Swansea the combined revolt saw copper miners strike for five weeks against wage cuts and around the same time Rebecca activists burned the Ty Coch gate in St Thomas.

People flowed between strikes and riots with, for example, workers sacked during trade slumps joining the rural revolts.

The movement faded because of intense repression, with military rule in some places and 2,000 troops and police ­flooding south west Wales.

There were other factors. Railway building made it easier for people to move around and crucially most of the tollgates went.

But the central question was the actions of the Rebeccaites themselves. Just as in the wider Chartist movement, Wales saw a ­foretaste of the splits between liberals and workers that would burst into continent-wide focus during the revolutions of 1848.

Rebecca saw class differences and arguments about strategy. Some of its activists, mostly the better-off and those with land and property, wanted just to win over tolls and then settle into more mundane campaigns for reform.

Others demanded the ­movement move on to other issues such as tithes—money to the Church of England—and the poor law that penned up the unemployed in workhouses.

More fundamentally, some craved to find their niche in capitalism, others to tear up the structures that oppressed and exploited them, and to win by using all their strength whether it was legal or not.

As a poem in the great Chartist newspaper The Northern Star proclaimed:

Rebecca, that brave Amazon!

Comes rolling o’er your brows,

And like a mighty avalanche,

Destruction loud she vows

To your bastilles and your police, As fiercer on she rolls,

She wars against the system, now

She’s conquer’d all the tolls.

At a great ­meeting in August 1843 on the slopes of Mynydd Sylen, near Llanelli, up to 3,000 Rebeccaites met to discuss the way forward.

The crowd included small farmers, landless agricultural labourers, miners who had given up a day’s pay to attend. But also there was the Llanelli ­landowner and magistrate William Chambers.

The dominant group argued for an end to the night-time meetings that organised violence and a turn to ­respectable agitation.

The meeting agreed to a lengthy petition to queen Victoria and less radical measures. But other voices opposed the turn to “moderation”. At a meeting a few days later, one speaker said, “The great men are wanting us to hold no more midnight meetings. We will meet by day and by night also.

“They are fearing for their rents when they want us to give up our meetings at night. They feel our force and they fear us.” But the working class was too small, too inexperienced and without independent organisation. “Calmer” elements won out.

Jones says that the Rebecca movement has echoes for today. She writes, “Rather than a single-minded campaign against tollgates, this looked more like an 1840s version of the Occupy campaigns that arose after the 2008 financial crisis or, a decade later, the Gilets Jaunes of France.”

The Russian ­revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote in the 1920s, “The Chartist movement resembles a prelude which contains in an undeveloped form the musical theme of the whole opera.

In this sense the British working class can and must see in Chartism not only its past but also its future.” The defiance and class fury of the Rebecca movement is also part of that, and Jones has brought it to life.

Capitalism and ideology: Where do people get their ideas from?

A Marxist understanding of ideology can help us understand how the ruling class uses ideas, and how we can challenge reactionary ideas

The rich use their power to control the media

Teach Yourself Marxism
By Judy Cox
Monday 16 December 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2936

Why do people who are angry about inequality and insecurity sometimes turn to racist demagogues such as Donald Trump and Nigel Farage and not to socialist organisations?

The society we live in makes us vulnerable to fake solutions and misleading explanations of society.

At times of deep crisis there are huge contradictions between what the system promises to deliver and the realities of our lives. People reach for ways to explain this contradiction.

Often, the easiest explanations are those that fit with pre-existing prejudices.

These ideas do not emerge naturally. As Karl Marx put it, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas. The class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”

Marx’s concept of ideology revealed the truths hidden behind justifications for social inequality. Such “common sense” reflected the interests of and reinforced the power of the ruling class.

Marx understood that people learn how to think within a given social order. More fundamentally, workers’ position within capitalism can make them receptive to reactionary ideas. Workers have no choice but to compete with others for everything they need. This competition can open the door to prejudice, suspicion and hostility.

All class societies are ruled by a minority. The wealthy have always used force to repress us and encourage the poor to submit to their rule. But they also try to convince us that their rule is in our best interests. During the 19th century the emerging capitalist class was terrified of resistance and turned to manufacturing consent. They looked to parliament, the pulpit and the press to encourage nationalism, racism, colonialism and conservative ideas of gender to persuade workers to identify with their rulers instead of others from their own class.

The capitalist class developed a powerful ideology—a system of ideas and beliefs about the world.

Their ideology says we are all individuals, free to pursue our interests through the market, free to succeed or to fail. This ideology obscures the real forces driving society.

Within this general framework there are intense ideological and political debates. Some contradictions reflect tensions between groups within the capitalist class. For example, some demand greater border controls while others are in favour of migration. Other debates arise when changes in society clash with long-held ideas and beliefs about how we should live.

Rows within the ruling class can create an opening for socialist ideas.

But the mass media systematically excludes left wing voices and vilifies critics of the system. This is because the ruling class uses both its economic power and its political power to shape how people think. Wealth buys access to the media. Billionaire Elon Musk bought X and turned it into a cesspit of reactionary ideas.

GB News is jointly owned by hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall who has a personal wealth of £630 million.

The ruling class also shapes the ideas embedded in the state. The state’s institutions find multiple ways to justify the status quo and dismiss any radical voices.

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci developed an understanding of how classes compete to establish “hegemony” over society. Every class vies to establish “cultural, moral and ideological” leadership over other classes.

Gramsci also described how working class people often hold contradictory ideas. People accept some of the prejudices constantly repeated by the media and politicians.

But prejudices are challenged by the experience of diverse communities and workplace solidarity.

Capitalism makes working class people vulnerable to accepting its ideology. But workers are uniquely placed to see through that ideology and potentially join forces to challenge their bosses.

Such resistance could break down reactionary ideas and challenge capitalist common sense.

Wordpress.comkalamkopi.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/karl-marx-friedrich-engels-the-german-ideology.pdf

karl-marx-friedrich-engels-the-german-ideology.pdf - Kalamkopi

Here Marx wrote the manuscript for The German. Ideology (1845, co-authored by Friedrich Engels) and the polemic. The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) against ...

UK

Vauxhall workers in Luton stage second day of protests

Stellantis, owners of Vauxhall, is closing down its Luton factory—but hundreds of workers are opposing the closure to save their jobs

Workers at Vauxhall factory protest Stellantis’ closure (Picture: Alan Kenny)


By Arthur Townend
Wednesday 18 December 2024

  SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2936

Vehicle workers held their second day of protests against the closure of the Vauxhall plant in Luton on Wednesday.

The Unite union members protested the day before and held a mass meeting outside the plant on Monday.

Workers are angry that parent company Stellantis wants to shut the plant with 1,100 job losses. That would have a devastating impact not just on Vauxhall workers, but the whole area.

Unite member Lewis told Socialist Worker, “Former CEO Carlos Tavares pursued an aggressive cost cutting strategy, repressing workers’ wages. We believe this is just another development of that.


“Our position is let’s close the book on that era. It’s a profit-making plant so let’s get Stellantis back round the table.”

When Stellantis announced the closure of the Luton plant in November, it gave workers an “HR1” 45 day redundancy period that will end in January.

Workers are demanding that Stellantis withdraws the redundancy period so they can negotiate over the future of the factory.

The Luton plant produced over 93,000 vehicles last year. But to reduce costs, Stellantis has started to close the factory anyway.

Lewis said, “What Stellantis has done, crudely, is put this HR1 in over the Christmas period when production is lower”.

He said that bosses hope this will make it easier to stop workers from organising a fightback and shut the factory down.

Unite automotive researcher Ben Norman told Socialist Worker, “Today, we have to make the industrial demand on the company to withdraw the redundancy period. Workers can’t make a decision over the future of the site with a gun held to their head.”

Norman said it was a “test of Labour” as Unite and workers were set to meet business secretary Jonathan Reynolds on Tuesday afternoon. “We have no illusions in Reynolds, but Labour needs to support a rescue package for the site,” he said.

Bosses want to slow down production and shut the plant as quickly as possible. A ballot for strike would take time, but this should not be an alibi for the union leaders not to hold one and call strikes.

The unions’ strategy of “social partnership” with bosses has failed—it has seen bosses squeeze more from workers in the name of “productivity”. That strategy of “partnership working” with bosses did not save jobs whether at the Honda car plant in Swindon in 2009 or Port Talbot steel works earlier this year.

The only alternative lies with using workers’ collective power to stop the bosses’ plans.

In Luton, the company still has to wind down production and offload 1,200 vans at the plant—which means a strike could still be effective. If there were picket lines up outside the plant, they could become a focal point for solidarity.

We saw a glimpse of this on Monday. As Unite members held a protest outside the plant, lorry drivers coming to pick up vans turned around, slowing down Stellantis’s plan. A strike by Vauxhall workers would encourage much more of this solidarity.

Rank-and-file members of Unite should push officials for an immediate strike ballot.

But time is running out and the trade union laws put up a plethora of hoops for workers to jump through before they can strike. And there is an urgency in taking action now.

Workers have occupied their factories to save jobs and force bosses into retreat. In 2009, for example, Visteon factory occupations forced improved redundancy packages from multinational giant Ford which had tried to sack workers on the spot.

An occupation of the Luton plant calling for nationalisation—coupled with solidarity from Britain and internationally—could save jobs.

Northern Irish police illegally spied on journalists exposing Loyalist crimes

The British state tried to protect Loyalists who murdered six people in the Loughinisland killings in 1994

A court ruling has slammed the illegal actions of the PSNI and British state (Photo: Joshua Hayes)

By Tomáš Tengely-Evans
Wednesday 18 December 2024    

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2936

The police unlawfully spied on two journalists who were making a documentary about a Loyalist massacre in Northern Ireland, a tribunal has ruled.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) chief constable Sir George Hamilton authorised surveillance against Belfast journalists Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney in 2018. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) quashed this decision on Tuesday and awarded damages of £4,000 each to the two journalists.

The spying operation tried to reveal the source of a leaked police document, which McCaffrey and Birney used in No Stone Unturned. The documentary revealed police had protected Loyalist gunmen who murdered six people in the Loughinisland killings in 1994.

Loyalists massacred people as they watched a World Cup Match at the Heights Bar, which was packed with mainly Catholic football fans. Police informants were involved in the planning and execution of the massacre.

Cops raided McCaffrey’s and Birne’s homes and offices and arrested the two men.

The PSNI was later forced to apologise and agreed to pay £875,000 in damages to the journalists and the film company that produced the documentary. That only came after a court had ruled that the police’s warrants were “inappropriate”.

Subsequently, McCaffrey and Birney asked the IPT in 2019 to rule where police had carried out any unlawful surveillance.

The tribunal heard earlier this year that a detective requested a directed surveillance authorisation (DSA) from Hamilton. The detective wanted to see if McCaffrey and Birney would reach out to their source after being released from custody.

Hamilton green-lighted surveillance of a civilian worker whom they suspected of leaking the document from the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman.

Meanwhile, the tribunal looked at two separate police operations in 2012 and 2013. The PSNI unlawfully accessed McCaffrey’s phone data in 2012 and that the Metropolitan Police did so in 2013.

The tribunal quashed the authorisation for those two operations, but didn’t award any compensation in those cases.

On Tuesday, Birney said, “This landmark ruling underscores the crucial importance of protecting press freedom and confidential journalistic sources.

“We hope that the judgment today will protect and embolden other journalists pursuing stories that are in the public interest.

“The judgment serves as a warning that unlawful state surveillance targeting the media cannot and should not be justified by broad and vague police claims.

“The judgment raises serious concerns about police abuse of power and the law, and our case has exposed a lack of effective legal safeguards governing secret police operations.”

Mr McCaffrey told reporters, “For this court to have found that a Chief Constable has acted unlawfully, we think is a major embarrassment. It’s something that means there needs to be a public inquiry.”

The Special Branch intelligence unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary—the forerunner of the PSNI—had informers inside Loyalist death squads. The police were determined to protect them and hampered investigations into the Loughinisland massacre.

In 2016, Northern Ireland’s former police ombudsman Michael Maguire said he had “no hesitation” in concluding that “collusion is a significant feature in the Loughinisland murders”.

The police’s treatment of McCaffrey and Birney shows the British state is still determined to hide its filthy role in Loyalist paramilitary murders.

The struggle of unemployed workers in Argentina against the state

Eduardo 'Chiquito' Belliboni is one of the national leaders of the Polo Obrero in Argentina. It’s an organisation of the Piqueteros movement, which organises mainly unemployed workers against neoliberal policies. It has faced intensified state repression, including a case against Belliboni himself, since far right president Javier Milei’s election. He spoke to Camilla Royle and David Karvala.

Eduardo “Chiquito” Belliboni

SOCIALIST WORKER 

Friday 20 December 2024

The Piquetero movement has existed since the 1990s and was known for forming pickets or blockades on roads. Could you explain the movement at that time and why people took this action?

At that time, I was a rail worker and was sacked for fighting against privatisation. The government at the time had a neoliberal policy of privatisation and mass layoffs.

More than 20 percent of the working population were laid off and without work, an enormous social crisis that generated unemployed workers’ movements.

The first demands of the movement were for the right to work.

But organisations began to see the need to socially assist the members of the unemployed movements, and that is how popular soup kitchens were born.

We fought to establish an organisation in the neighbourhoods to sustain a great movement of unemployed people, as the Black Panther Party did in the United States with the Free Breakfast Programme they ran for children.

We formed an independent tendency in 2000, the Polo Obrero (PO) or Workers’ Pole. The idea was to concentrate on a class-based program of demands and also a revolutionary demand for a government of the workers.

At first the Argentine ruling class fought the organisations militarily. There were many deaths, many Piquetero organisations bear the names of those who were killed such as Darío Santillán, Maximiliano Costecchi and Teresa Rodríguez.

The Cristina Fernández de Kirchner government of 2007-2015 instead tried to ​​co-opt organisations so that they would be instruments of welfare and not a factor in the fight against the state or against the capitalist regime. But we in the PO and other organisations remained independent of the government.

Could you talk about the kind of tactics that you use and whether those tactics have changed in 30 years?

The picket or blockade of streets is a tactic used by the Piquetero movement because it is mainly a movement of unemployed people. That’s because these workers do not have a factory and they can’t go on strike.

The effect of capitalism and the industrial revolution was to concentrate the workers in a factory, while the process of unemployment disperses them into the poorest neighbourhoods.

The worker does not stop being a worker because he or she does not have a job. It is a historical error of many currents of the Argentine left that say, “Well, I am no longer interested in this person because he or she has stopped being in the productive part of capitalism.” This is not true in any case.

The movement had to go to where people lived, and that’s where the pickets or roadblocks began.

Lots of people assume that pickets and blockades are something new for the working class. Do you know when the first picket was? It was with the construction of the pyramids. There was a picket because they were given very bad food. So it is a 3,000 year old tactic.

The first pickets in Argentina involved perhaps 300 or 400 workers, but they grew to thousands.

And then we began to build a network of organisations across the country. On the national days of picketing, they can involve 100,000 people or more.

In Europe and elsewhere a key question for socialists is how to defend migrants against racism. Is that also part of the Piqueteros’ programme?

Yes, of course. There is fierce racism here, especially against the Bolivian and Peruvian communities, who are very easily identifiable.

The contempt and racism are expressed today when the presidential spokesman announces that migrants will not have the right to health or education in Argentina. We strongly defend the right to migrate and the right to live.

There should be no borders in Latin America. Someone who was born in La Quiaca, a city on the edge of Argentina’s northern border, for example, can live next to someone who was born in Villazon, which is over the border in Bolivia. They are exactly the same.

For us as revolutionary socialists, the border is there between exploiters and exploited. The differences are of class—never of race, religion or place of birth.

What role do women play in the Piquetero movement?

About 70 or 80 percent of the Piqueteros are women.

They play a leading role in the neighbourhoods because they are the organisers of the daily fight against hunger. And they are the great organisers of the struggle in the neighbourhoods.

In the early days of the Piquetero movement, the most affected by the layoffs were the men.

Many men left their homes. So it was the women who had to shoulder not only the material support of life, but the organisation in each neighbourhood.

What we did was also give a gender content to the politics of the working class. We discussed the particular problems of the women comrades, the fight against domestic violence, the fight for the right to abortion, the fight for equal pay.

Could you explain how the kitchens are organised as well?

Well, a lot of food is distributed. But the kitchens have also been points of organisation for workers for their rights.

Teachers come to the neighbourhoods to help with educating the kids.

We also do sports and social activities that integrate the neighbourhood and put a barrier to drug trafficking. If not, it is the drug traffickers who influence the families.

When there are many unemployed people, the unemployed can try to sell their labour very cheaply to the capitalist.

We organised the fight against layoffs. We explained to all workers that the unemployed should fight so they don’t have to beg for a job at the factory gate, offering themselves at a lower price than those in work.

It is not just a canteen, but a political struggle for workers’ rights and for organisation against the capitalist state.

You have been very critical of the trade union bureaucracy. Do you think there is any opportunity to work with ordinary trade union members?

It is not only possible, we do it all the time. We have national assemblies of employed and unemployed workers, where rank-and-file workers come as well as some combative, class-conscious union leaders.

We have common struggles for things like public works, the paving of streets, water provision, services that are not available in many neighbourhoods and we form alliances with students to fight for public education.

We have a policy of a united front from below and not with the union leaderships, like those of the CGT and the CTA union federations. They have totally given over to government policy.

Could you summarise the situation after a year of Javier Milei?

The Milei government is an offensive, counter-revolutionary government against the workers. But not only because of the specific measures it takes, such as its labour reforms that have rolled back workers’ rights.

The government’s underlying principle is a counter-revolutionary reaction against workers’ organisations. Not only revolutionary organisations like us, but also those that are centre left, or social democrats.

He does not want any kind of workers’ organisation because he intends to wipe out workers’ rights to allow the capitalist class to restore its rate of profit.

That is why he is supported in parliament by Peronists. That is to say, right wingers not as extreme as him. Even without a parliamentary majority, Milei has managed to pass laws in favour of these brutal measures against the workers.

The capitalist class as a whole fundamentally supports all the measures that the Milei government is taking in favour of the capitalist rate of profit. It is a rabidly capitalist government.

It has been 11 months since the food was cut off to the soup kitchens, it’s not sending any more food. And its intention is to destroy the neighbourhood organisations.

How would you characterise Javier Milei’s politics?

Milei is a fascist. There are people around him who are fascists. But that doesn’t mean that Argentina is now a fascist state.

There are still roadblocks and huge mobilisations. They have not crushed the working class, which is one of the central aims of fascism, the crushing of the physical and organisational forces of the workers’ movement.

He has not been able to destroy democratic freedoms and he has not managed to install a regime of exception, although he has that intention.

The Milei movement attacks LGBT+ people and women. That is, it is a reactionary movement along fascist lines. But it has not managed to impose itself and we continue fighting.

How are you going to respond to the repression that you personally and the movement have faced?

There are two levels of response. One is the one that the government brings to us, which is a struggle at the legal level, in which we will appeal the accusations against us.

We have a legal fight, which is always unequal because justice responds to political power.

But then there is the social struggle, the fight against the Milei government, in which we have taken up the slogan, “Milei out.”

The harm that Milei is doing to this society is irreparable. According to the United Nation’s children’s agency Unicef, over a million children in Argentina go to bed without eating. Milk consumption is falling, while the exorbitant profits that milk producers have in Argentina increase. Argentina is a country of cows. But workers’ children go without milk.

If I were to say as a leader of an organisation, “Okay, we are not fighting anymore, we are making a pact,” all the cases against us would be dropped. But we are not going to do that, so we are going to fight judicially and we are going to fight in the streets.

Do you think there is a possibility of a general strike?

Today we don’t see it because the rank and file in the unions don’t have enough strength yet. And there is a pact between the main CGT union federation and Milei to maintain the status quo.

The conditions are there for a general strike—which is what could end Milei—but the bureaucratic obstacle is also very important.

What can socialists do internationally to support the movement?

First, to distribute information about the Piqueteros. Sometimes we call for protests at Argentine embassies. And well, of course, in a materialistic world like capitalism, all the resources they can gather. We are doing solidarity campaigns, gathering funds, because the charges against us implies hiring lawyers and experts and that all costs money.

It is the capitalist state with all its force against the organisations of the workers.

Socialists around the world must be more united than ever before at such a difficult time for the cause of the socialist revolution. We need to confront this reactionary offensive in the world, which we see an extreme case of here in Argentina.David Karvala is a member of the revolutionary socialist network in the Spanish state, Marx21.net

UK

Equity urges government to act as arts and entertainment sector GDP shrinks by 15%

Olivia Barber 

18 December, 2024 

Left Foot Forward


The performing arts union has called the decline ‘alarming’

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Equity has noted a “worrying decline” in business activity in the creative arts and entertainment industry, which it said has shrunk by almost 15% since the general election in July.

Analysis of new Office of National Statistics (ONS) GDP data by Equity found that economic output in the arts and entertainment sector has reduced by an average of 3.7% a month in the last four months.

In July, the arts and entertainment sector’s gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 4.7%, with a further decline of 1.6% in August.

The sector experienced further drops of 4.5% in September and 4.6% in October.

Equity is calling on the government to take urgent action to address the decline and increase investment in the arts. The union explained that is also examining the factors contributing to the decline in business activity and working to understand the issue.

Research by the non-departmental government body Arts Council England identified that for every £1 of turnover directly generated by the arts and culture industry, an additional £1.23 worth of turnover is generated in the wider economy.

Responding to the ONS figures, Paul Fleming, general secretary at Equity, said: “The rapid and significant shrinking of the arts and entertainment industries since Labour took office is alarming”.

Fleming said the government must take urgent action and set out a roadmap to reach the European average of investing 0.5% of GDP in the arts, entertainment and culture.

He added: “But Equity will not be waiting for government – our claims for better pay, conditions and investment for our members will deliver the improvements creative workers need.”

“Investment in arts jobs and infrastructure, which focuses on the significant economic benefits that UK film, TV, live performance and productions bring to the whole country, will pay dividends.

“Across the UK we’re seeing mixed responses, with Holyrood making a welcome budget investment, but Wales not reversing significant arts cuts, and Stormont making their decisions early next year. With creative industries rightly identified as ‘growth driving’ sectors by the government, that’s just not good enough.”

Fleming said that “irrespective of trends in the GDP data” Equity will continue to push for improvements in pay, terms and conditions.

“Our members can’t wait for a serious industrial strategy from government – the only one of their key areas which has had no extra money committed to it.

“With AI threatening creative jobs, government must take action to boost our creative industries, ensuring well paid jobs exist in a thriving UK arts and entertainment sector which benefits the wider economy.”

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has been approached for comment.

Image credit: Equity

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward