Sunday, September 18, 2005

China: The Truimph of State Capitalism

If It walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck

READING BUKHARIN IN LIGHT OF MODERN CHINA

Anyone out there that still believes that China is a 'communist' nation please leave the room immediately what I am about to say will upset your whole ideological perspective.

Now if you are a right winger blinded by your post cold war reds under the beds paranoia, no matter what the facts are you will deny them. Instead you will see China's move into the world marketplace of capitalism as some sort of incideous conspiracy of the 13th Communist International.

If you are a die hard bolshevik tendency all unto yourself, like the Spartacus League or the Marxist Leninists, you will see China as a truimph of Stalinism, and so called socialism in one state, which it is not.

Rather it is in transition from State Capitalism to Monopoly Capitalism,( ala Baran &Swezzy of Monthly Review). To misquote Lenin, though Bukharin would approve;

State Capitalism is the highest form of Monopoly Capitalism.

Being a very large shareholder in the state capitalist trust, the modern state is the highest and all-embracing organisational culmination of the latter. Hence its colossal, almost monstrous, power. N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter XI

Thus the principles of class antagonisms reach a height that could not have been attained hitherto. Relations between classes become most clear, most lucid; the mythical conception of a "state elevated above classes" disappears from the peoples' consciousness, once the state becomes a direct entrepreneur and an organiser of production. Property relations, obscured by a number of intermediary links, now appear in their pristine nakedness.
N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter XIV

State Capitalism emerged during the post War era and the Great Depression and continued after as an inevitable outgrowth of both a national and global expansion of post-WWII capitalist reconstruction, it is now mobilizing regional and national captials around monopolies. Whether they are American Transnational Corporations which are bound hand and foot to the American State by being part of the military industrial complex, or if it is large State funded corporations that are being privatized like those in China, it is still capitalism.

There is class struggle and class war, but there has never been a workers paradise. The fatal illusion of the Soviet Union and later the Chinese Revolution under Mao, is that they were some how socialist revolutions. The fact is that they were not working class revolutions at all since they were national revolutions. Socialism was the ideology but the practice was State Capitalism no different than its other manifetations, The New Deal in the U.S. and Facism in Italy, Spain, Germany, and Japan.

In the third world the attempted National Liberation Struggles either ended up a failure of capitalist developement, such as we are witnessing in the Congo or were successful in moving from a peasant economy to a proletarian economy, such as Lesotho and Angola, and of course South Afica.

The Marxist Leninist Gueveraist Third World struggles of the Sixties while ideologically were supposedly left wing, they in fact were needed for capitalism to develop a marketplace and a working class in these countries.

The role of the ML movement was to modernize their economies through National Liberation. No differently than previous National Liberation revolutions like the American, French and Haitian.

They existed to create a bourgoise revolution, to create a bourgoise class and a working class out of the peasant and colonial conditions they were burdened with.

China is now a full blown capitalist and Imperialist state, capable now of challenging the hegemony of the United States. With the successful launch of its first space flight, it has joined the great powers of Russia and the US.
While Russia is weakend a wounded bear suffering the indignities of privatization and criminal capitalism, China remains a solidly Monopoly Capitalist economy on where the reforms to its State Capitalist regime do not endanger it's national capitals and their monopolies.

Simply put you can't have a banking crisis in a workers paradise, cause the struggle against capitalism is about abolishing wage slavery. There are no banks in a workers paradise.


Bad debt sale delayed by ICBC loan bungle

The delay comes amid mounting evidence that the whole loan-disposal program is in disarray. The four AMCs were set up in 1999 to get rid of 1.4 trillion yuan of bad loans accumulated by the big four state-owned banks - Bank of China, Construction Bank, ICBC and Agricultural Bank. Yet they have managed so far to sell off a paltry US$6 billion (HK$46.8 billion) in bad debts - just 3 percent of the total - via open auctions to foreign and domestic bidders. The rest have merely been transferred between AMCs at inflated prices or sold off privately to domestic bidders for less than their true worth. Meanwhile China's banking system remains saddled with bad loans estimated at US$300 billion.



Nikolai Bukharin

Imperialism and World Economy

Introduction by V.I. Lenin


Written: 1915 and 1917
Source: Nikolai Bukharin "Imperialism and World Economy", Monthly Review Press, no date
First Published in English: Nikolai Bukharin "Imperialism and World Economy", International Publishers 1929
Online Version: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2001
Transcription/Markup: Mathias Bismo



N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter III

It is a profound error to think, as the bourgeois economists do, that the elimination of free competition and its replacement by capitalist monopolies would do away with industrial crises. Such economists forget one "trifle," namely, that the economic activities of a "national" economy are now conducted with a view towards world economy. As to the latter, it is by no means an arithmetical total of "national" economies, just as a "national" economy is by no means an arithmetical total of individual economies within the boundaries of the state territory. In either case, there is a very substantial element supplementing all the others, namely, connections, reciprocal action, a specific medium which Rodbertus called "economic communication," without which there is no "real entity," no "system," no social economy, only isolated economic units. This is why, even if free competition were entirely eliminated within the boundaries of "national economies," crises would still continue, as there would remain the anarchically established connections between the "national" bodies, i. e., there would still remain the anarchic structure of world economy.)

The perspectives of development can be pointed out only after analysing all the main tendencies of capitalism. And since the internationalisation of capitalist interests expresses only one side of the internationalisation of economic life, it is necessary to review also its other side, namely, that process of the nationalisation of capitalist interests which most strikingly expresses the anarchy of capitalist competition within the boundaries of world economy, a process that leads to the greatest convulsions and catastrophes, to the greatest waste of human energy, and most forcefully raises the problem of establishing new forms of social life."


N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter IV

World economy, as we have seen above, represents a complex network of economic connections of the most diverse nature; the basis of this are production relations on a world scale. Economic connections uniting a great number of individual economies are found to become more numerous and more frequent as we proceed, within the framework of world economy, to analyse "national" economies, i.e., economic connections existing within the boundaries of individual states. There is nothing mysterious about this; we must not attribute that fact to an alleged creative role of the "state principle" that is supposed to create from within itself special forms of national economic existence; neither is there a predestined harmony between society and state. The matter has a much simpler explanation. The fact is that the very foundation of modern states as definite political entities was caused by economic needs and requirements. The state grew on the economic foundation; it was only an expression of economic connections; state ties appeared only as an expression of economic ties. Like all living forms, "national economy" was, and is, engaged in a continuous process of internal regeneration; molecular movements going on parallel with the growth of productive forces, were continually changing the position of individual "national" economic bodies in their relation to each other, i.e., they influenced the interrelations of the individual parts of the growing world economy. Our time produces highly significant relations. The destruction, from top to bottom, of old, conservative, economic forms that was begun with the initial stages of capitalism, has triumphed all along the line. At the same time, however, this "organic" elimination of weak competitors inside the framework of "national economies" (the ruin of artisanship, the disappearance of intermediary forms, the growth of large‑scale production, etc.) is now being superseded by the "critical" period of a sharpening struggle among stupendous opponents on the world market. The causes of this phenomenon must be sought first of all in the internal changes that have taken place in the structure of "national capitalisms," causing a revolution in their mutual relations.

Those changes appear, first of all, as the formation and the unusually rapid spread of capitalist monopoly organisations: cartels, syndicates, trusts, bank syndicates. We have seen above how strong this process is in the international sphere. It is immeasurably greater within the framework of "national economies." As we shall see below, the "national" carteling of industry serves as one of the most potent factors making for the national interdependence of capital.

We have seen in the preceding chapters what tremendous significance is attached to participation in and financing of industrial enterprises. The latter is one of the functions of modern banks.

An increasingly large section of industrial capital does not belong to the industrialists who apply it. The right to manipulate the capital is obtained by them only through the bank which, in relaiton to them, appears as the owner of that capital. On the other hand, the bank is compelled to place an ever growing part of its capital in industry. In this way the bank becomes to an ever increasing degree an industrial capitalist. Bank capital, i.e., capital in money form, which has thus been in reality transformed into industrial capital, I call finance capital.

Thus by means of various forms of credit, by owning stocks and bonds, and by directly promoting enterprises, banking capital appears in the role of an organiser of industry. This organisation of the combined production of a whole country is the stronger, the greater; on the one hand, the concentration of industry, on the other, the concentration of banking.

Mention must be made here also of the important part played by state and communal enterprises, which enter into the general system of "national economy." Among state enterprises we find, first of all, mining (in Germany, e.g., out of 309 coal mines with an output of 149 million tons, 27 mines with an output of 20.5 million tons belonged to the state in agog; the total value of state production amounted to 235 million marks; salt mines and others also belong to this category; the gross income from all state enterprises of Germany in 1910 amounted to 349 million marks, while the net income was 25 million marks); next to mining are state railroads (only in England, and only prior to the war, were the railroads exclusively in the hands of private owners); then the post office, the telegraph, etc., also forestry. Among communal enterprises of great economical importance are mainly the water system, the gas system, and the electric constructions, with all their ramifications.The powerful state banks also form part of this system. The interrelation between those "public" enterprises and the enterprises of a purely private character assumes various forms; the economic connections, in general, are numerous and variegated, and credit is not the least among them. Very close relations arise on the basis of the so‑called mixed system (gemischte Unternehmungen) where a certain enterprise is composed of both "public" and private elements (participation of large‑scale, usually monopolistic, firms)‑a phenomenon not infrequent in the realm of communal economy. The example of the German Empire Bank (Reichsbank) is of particular interest. This bank, whose part in the economic life of Germany is tremendous, appears so closely connected with "private economy" that there is an unsettled dispute going on as to whether it is a stock company or a state institution, whether it is subject to the laws governing private or public undertakings.

All parts of this considerably organised system, cartels, banks, state enterprises, are in the process of growing together; the process is becoming ever faster with the growth of capitalist concentration; the formation of cartels and combines creates forthwith a community of interest among the financing banks; on the other hand, banks are interested in checking competition between enterprises financed by them; similarly, every understanding between the banks helps to tie together the industrial groups; state enterprises also become ever more dependent upon large‑scale financial‑industrial formations, and vice versa. Thus various spheres of the concentration and organisation process stimulate each other, creating a very strong tendency towards transforming the entire national economy into one gigantic combined enterprise under the tutelage of the financial kings and the capitalist state, an enterprise which monopolises the national market and forms the prerequisite for organised production on a higher noncapitalist level.

N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter V

It is thus obvious that not the impossibility of doing business at home, but the race for higher rates of profit is the motive power of world capitalism. Even present-day "capitalist plethora" is no absolute limit. A lower rate of profit drives commodities and capital further and further from their "home." This process is going on simultaneously in various sections of world economy. The capitalists of various "national economies" clash here as competitors; and the more vigorous the expansion of the productive forces of world capitalism, the more intensive the growth of foreign trade, the sharper is the competitive struggle. During the last decades quantitative changes of such magnitude have taken place in this realm that the very quality of the phenomenon has assumed a new form.

Those changes proceed, so to speak, from two ends. On the one hand, the process of mass production is becoming extremely accelerated, i.e., the volume of commodities seeking for a foreign market is increasing-a phenomenon highly characteristic of recent times; on the other hand, the free market, i.e., that section of it which has not been seized by the "great power" monopolies, becomes ever narrower.

N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter VII

Two sets of causes have been and are operating here. In the first place, the accumulation of capital proceeds with an unusually rapid tempo, due to large-scale capitalist production accompanied by incessant technical progress which makes gigantic strides and increases the productive power of labour, and to the unusual increase in the means of transportation and the perfection of means of circulation in general, which also hastens the turn-over of capital. The volumes of capital that seek employment have reached unheard of dimensions. On the other hand, the cartels and trusts, as the modern organisation of capital, tend to put certain limits to the employment of capital by fixing the volume of production. As to the non-trustified sections of industry, it becomes ever more unprofitable to invest capital in them. For monopoly organisations can overcome the tendency towards lowering the rate of profit by receiving monopoly superprofits at the expense of the non-trustified industries. Out of the surplus value created every year, one portion, that which has been created in the nontrustified branches of industry, is being transferred to the coowners of capitalist monopolies, whereas the share of the outsiders continually decreases. Thus the entire process drives capital beyond the frontiers of the country.

In the second place, high tariffs put tremendous obstacles in the way of commodities seeking to enter a foreign country. Mass production and mass overproduction make the growth of foreign trade necessary, but foreign trade meets with a barrier in the form of high tariffs. It is true that foreign trade keeps on developing, foreign sales grow, but this is taking place notwithstanding the difficulties and in spite of them. This does not mean, however, that the tariffs do not make themselves felt. Their influence is, first of all, expressed in the rate of profit. Tariff barriers, making the export of commodities very difficult, do not interfere in any way with the export of capital. Obviously, the higher the wave of duties, the larger, other conditions being equal, is the flight of capital from its home country.

N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter VIII

To sum up: the development of the productive forces of world capitalism has made gigantic strides in the last decades. The upper hand in the competitive struggle has everywhere been gained by large-scale production; it has consolidated the "magnates of capital" into an ironclad organisation, which has taken possession of the entire economic life. State power has become the domain of a financial oligarchy; the latter manages production which is tied up by the banks into one knot. This process of the organisation of production has proceeded from below; it has fortified itself within the framework of modern states, which have become an exact expression of the interests of finance capital. Every one of the capitalistically advanced "national economies" has turned into some kind of a "national" trust. This process of the organisation of the economically advanced sections of world economy, on the other hand, has been accompanied by an extraordinary sharpening of their mutual competition. The overproduction of commodities, which is connected with the growth of large enterprises; the export policy of the cartels, and the narrowing of the sales markets in connection with the colonial and tariff policy of the capitalist powers; the growing disproportion between tremendously developed industry and backward agriculture; the gigantic growth of capital export and the economic subjugation of entire regions by "national" banking combinesall this has thrown into the sharpest possible relief the clash of interests between the "national" groups of capital. Those groups find their final argument in the force and power of the state organisation, first of all in its army and navy. A mighty state military power is the last trump in the struggle of the powers. The fighting force in the world market thus depends upon the power and consolidation of the "nation," upon its financial and military resources. A self-sufficient national state, and an economic unit limitlessly expending its great power until it becomes a world kingdom - a world-wide empire - such is the ideal built up by finance capital.

N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter XI

When competition has finally reached its highest stage, when it has become competition between state capitalist trusts, then the use of state power, and the possibilities connected with it, begin to play a very large part. The state apparatus has always served as a tool in the hands of the ruling classes of its country, and it has always acted as their "defender and protector" in the world market; at no time, however, did it have the colossal importance that it has in the epoch of finance capital and imperialist politics. With the formation of state capitalist trusts, competition is being almost entirely shifted to foreign countries; obviously, the organs of the struggle that is to be waged abroad, primarily state power, must therefore grow tremendously. The significance for capitalism of high tariffs, which increase the fighting capacity of the state capitalist trust in the world market, must increase still more; the various forms of "protecting national industry" become more pronounced; state orders are placed only with "national" firms; income is guaranteed to all sorts of enterprises, which present great risks but are "useful" from a social point of view; the activities of "foreigners" are hampered in various ways. (Compare, for instance, the stock exchange policy of the French government as mentioned in Chapter II). Whenever a question arises about changing commercial treaties, the state power of the contracting groups of capitalists appears on .the scene, and the mutual relations of those states-reduced in the final analysis to the relations between their military forces-determine the treaty. When a loan is to be granted to one or the other country, the government, basing itself on military power, secures the highest possible rate of interest for its nationals, guarantees obligatory orders, stipulates concessions, struggles against foreign competitors. When the struggle begins for the exploitation by finance capital of a territory that has not been formally occupied by anybody, again the military power of the state decides who will possess that territory. In "peaceful" times the military state apparatus is hidden behind the scenes where it never stops functioning; in war times it appears on the scene most directly. The more strained the situation in the world sphere of struggle-and our epoch is characterised by the greatest intensity of competition between "national" groups of finance capitalthe oftener an appeal is made to the mailed fist of state power. The remnants of the old laissez faire, laissez passer ideology disappear, the epoch of the new "mercantilism," of imperialism, begins.

N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter XII

It follows from the above that the actual process of economic development will proceed in the midst of a sharpened struggle between the state capitalist trusts and the backward economic formations. A series of wars is unavoidable. In the historic process which we are to witness in the near future, world capitalism will move in the direction of a universal state capitalist trust by absorbing the weaker formations

We have seen in the second section the peculiarities in the structure of modern capitalism and the formation of state capitalist trusts. This economic structure, however, is connected with a certain policy, namely, the imperialist policy. This not only in the sense that imperialism is a product of finance capitalism, but also in the sense that finance capital cannot pursue any other policy than an imperialist one, as we characterised it above. The state capitalist trust cannot become an adherent of free trade for thereby it would lose a considerable part of its capitalist raison d'être. We have already pointed out that protectionism allows the acquisition of additional profits on the one hand, facilitates competition in the world market on the other. In the same way finance capital, expressing as it does capitalist monopoly organisations, cannot relinquish the policy of monopolising "spheres of influence," of seizing sales markets and markets for raw materials, or spheres of capital investment. If one state capitalist trust fails to get hold of an unoccupied territory, it will be occupied by another. Peaceful rivalry, which corresponded to the epoch of free competition and of the absence of any organisation of production at home, is absolutely inconceivable in the epoch of an entirely different production structure and of the struggle among state capitalist trusts. Those imperialist interests are of such magnitude for the finance capitalise groups, and they are so connected with the very foundations of their existence, that the governments do not shrink before the most colossal military expenditures only to secure for themselves a stable position in the world market. The idea of "disarmament" within the framework of capitalism is particularly absurd as far as the state capitalist trusts that occupy the foremost positions in the world market are concerned. Before their eyes there always shines the picture of subjugating the whole world, of acquiring an unheard of field for exploitation-a thing termed by the French imperialists l'organisation d'économie mondiale and by the German imperialists, Organisierung der Weltwirtschaft Would the bourgeoisie exchange this "high" ideal for the pot of porridge of disarmament? Where is the guarantee for a given state capitalist trust that a pernicious rival will not continue the "abandoned" policy in spite of all formal agreements and guarantees? Everyone acquainted with the history of the struggle among cartels even within the boundaries of one country knows how often, when the situation changed, when the market conditions changed, agreements dissolved like soap bubbles. Imagine a strong state capitalist trust like the U. S. waging war against a union of all other trusts-the "agreement" will then be shattered to pieces in no time. (In the latter case we would have a tremendous formation constructed after the type of an ordinary syndicate, and having the state capitalist trusts as its component parts. Such an agreement between the state capitalist trusts would not be able at once to skip all intermediary stages, to become a real centralised trust. A type of agreement, however, that implies intense internal struggle is easily amenable to the influence of changing conditions.) We have taken a hypothetical case where formal unification is a fact. However, this unification cannot take place because the bourgeoisie of every country is by no means as naïve as many of its bona fide pacifists who wish nothing more than to persuade the bourgeoisie and to "prove" to it that it does not understand its own advantages....


N.I. Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy Chapter XIII

The entire structure of world economy in our times forces the bourgeoisie to pursue an imperialist policy. As the colonial policy is inevitably connected with violent methods, so every capitalist expansion leads sooner or later to a bloody climax. "Violent methods," says Hilferding, "are inseparably bound up with the very essence of colonial policy, which without them would lose its capitalist meaning; they are so much an integral element of the colonial policy as the existence of a proletariat divorced from all ownership is generally a conditio sine qua non of capitalism. To be in favour of a colonial policy and at the same time to talk about eliminating its violent methods, is a dream which cannot be treated with more earnestness than the illusion that one can eliminate the proletariat while retaining capitalism."

The same thing may be said about imperialism. It is an integral element of finance capitalism without which the latter would lose its capitalist meaning.

It follows from the above that (as far as capitalism will retain its foothold) the future belongs to economic forms that are close to state capitalism. This further evolution of the state capitalist trusts, highly accelerated by the war, is reflected, in its turn, in the worldwide struggle among state capitalist trusts. We have seen above how the tendency to turn capitalist states into state capitalist trusts found its reflection in the mutual relations of the states. Monopoly tendencies within the "national" body have called forth tendencies to monopolise territories outside the home state by means of annexations; this has sharpened competition and its forms terrifically. With the further progress of internal centralisation, this acute situation will become more acute by leaps and bounds. Added to this is the rapid narrowing of the free field for capital activities. There is, therefore, not the slightest doubt that the near future will be fraught with the most cruel conflicts, and that the social atmosphere will not cease being saturated with war electricity. One of the outward expressions of this circumstance is the extraordinary growth of militarism and of imperialist sentiment. England, the land of "freedom" and "individualism," has already established a tariff and is organising a standing army; its state budget is being militarised. America is preparing war activities on a truly grandiose scale. The same thing is going on in Germany, in France, in Japan, and everywhere. The period of an idyllic "peaceful" existence has sunk into Lethe; capitalist society is whirling in the mad hurricane of world wars.

Chapter 14: World Economy and Proletarian Socialism

The first period of the war has brought about, not a crisis of capitalism (the germs of which were visible only to the most penetrating minds of both the bourgeois and proletarian camps), but a collapse of the "Socialist" International. This phenomenon, which many have attempted to explain by proceeding solely from the analysis of the internal relations in every country, cannot be more or less satisfactorily explained from this angle. For the collapse of the proletarian movement is a result of the unequal situation of the "state capitalist trusts" within the boundaries of world economy. Just as it is impossible to understand modern capitalism and its imperialist policy without analysing the tendencies of world capitalism, so the basic tendencies in the proletarian movement cannot be understood without analysing world capitalism.

Capital implies the existence of labour. Labour implies the existence of capital. The capitalist mode of production is a certain relation between people, between social classes, each of which implies the existence of the other. Viewed from this angle, both capitalists and workers are members, component parts, poles of the same capitalist society. In so far as capitalist society exists, there exists also an interdependence of these opposing classes, a mutual dependence, expressing itself in a relative solidarity of interests that are opposed in substance. This "solidarity" of interests is the solidarity of a moment, it is not that lasting solidarity which welds together the members of the same class. Bourgeois political economy, and together with it its "Socialist" followers, present that which is passing, momentary, accidental for the class struggle on a social scale as essential; they do not see the trees for the forest, and they inevitably sink to the rôle of simple satellites of finance capital.

Here is an example. Everybody knows that at the beginning of the capitalist era, when the working class had just begun to emerge and to separate itself from the small entrepreneurs, when so-called patriarchal relations prevailed between master and worker, the latter to a considerable degree identified his interests with the interests of his exploiter.

This identification of interests that are in substance totally opposed to one another, was, to be sure, not suspended in the air. It had a very real basis. "The better the business of our shop, the better for me," the worker of that time used to reason. This reasoning was based on the possibility of raising wages with the increase of the sum total of values realised by a given enterprise.

We find the same psychology in other variations. What, in fact, is, let us say, the so-called "craft ideology" of the English trade unionists? We find here substantially the same idea: our production, they say, our sphere of production, which embraces both workers and industrialists, must prosper before anything else. No interference of outside elements must be tolerated.

In recent times we find an analogy to this purely local patriotism in enterprises with highly skilled labour. Such enterprises, for instance, are the plants of the well-known American pacifist (and, incidentally, war contractor) Ford. The workers are carefully selected for the plant. They receive higher wages, they are granted various premiums and profit sharing under the condition that they be bound to the plant. As a result, the bamboozled workers are "devoted" to their masters.

On a larger scale the same phenomenon may be observed in the so-called working class protectionism with its policy of safeguarding "national industry," "national labour," etc. This ideology permeates a considerable part of the Australian and American workers: "We" (i.e., both capitalists and workers), they say, are equally interested in our national industry, for, the higher the profits of our employers, the higher will our wages rise.

In the process of competitive struggle between the various enterprises, their situation is not everywhere the same. Enterprises with highly skilled labour always occupy the first ranks, always enjoy exceptional privileges. Their share in the surplus value that is being produced in society as a whole is disproportionately large, for they receive differential profits on the one hand, cartel rents (as far as we deal with modern times) on the other. Thus a basis is created for a momentary interlinking of the interests of capital and labour in a given production branch, a circumstance which expresses itself in the workers giving capital, not the labour of duty, but the labour of love.

It is perfectly obvious that such a "solidarity of interests" between the capitalist and the worker is of a temporary character, and (from the point of view of what "ought to be") it cannot determine the conduct of the proletariat. Were the workers eternally to hang on to the coat tails of their masters, they would never be able to conduct a single strike, and the employers, bribing them individually, would be able individually to defeat them.

However, because the proletariat has not learned yet to distinguish local and temporary interests from general and lasting ones, it is permeated with such a narrow conception. The latter is overcome only when the class struggle achieves great scope, destroying local bigotry, welding the workers together, and throwing them into sharp opposition as a class to the class of the capitalists. In this way the psychology of the patriarchal period was overcome when the bond of unity between the workers and the master of an individual enterprise was severed. In this way the "craft ideology" of the unions organising skilled workers was overcome.

However, the end of the nineteenth century, which to a large degree destroyed the bond of unity between capitalists and workers, which placed against each other those classes and their organisations as classes and organisations hostile to each other in principle, has not yet destroyed the bond of unity between the working class and the greatest organisation of the bourgeoisie, the capitalist state.

The working class connection with this organisation was expressed in the ideology of workers' patriotism ("social-patriotism"), in the idea of a "fatherland," which the working class is supposed to serve.

After what has been presented above, the material basis of this phenomenon will become clear if we turn our attention to the whole sphere of world economy.

We have seen that the competitive struggle was, by the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, to a large extent transferred to the foreign markets, i.e., it became a competition in the world market. Thus the state organisation of capital, the "fatherland," having turned into a state capitalist trust, took the place of the individual enterprise and appeared on the world arena with all its heavy and ponderous apparatus.

From this angle we must first of all view the colonial policy of the imperialist states.

There is an opinion current among many moderate internationalists to the effect that the colonial policy brings nothing but harm to the working class and that therefore it must be rejected. Hence the natural desire to prove that colonies yield no profit at all, that they represent a liability even from the point of view of the bourgeoisie, etc. Such a point of view is being propounded, for instance, by Kautsky.

The theory unfortunately suffers from one shortcoming, namely, it is out and out incorrect. The colonial policy yields a colossal income to the great powers, i.e., to their ruling classes, to the "state capitalist trust." This is why the bourgeoisie pursues a colonial policy. This being the case, there is a possibility for raising the workers' wages at the expense of the exploited colonial savages and conquered peoples.

Such are exactly the results of the great powers' colonial policy. The bill for this policy is paid, not by the continental workers, and not by the workers of England, but by the little peoples of the colonies. It is in the colonies that all the blood and the filth, all the horror and the shame of capitalism, all the cynicism, greed and bestiality of modern democracy are concentrated. The European workers, considered from the point of view of the moment, are the winners, because they receive increments to their wages due to "industrial prosperity."

All the relative "prosperity" of the European-American industry was conditioned by nothing but the fact that a safety valve was opened in the form of colonial policy. In this way the exploitation of "third persons" (pre-capitalist producers) and colonial labour led to a rise in the wages of the European and American workers.

One highly important circumstance must here be noted: in their struggle for colonies, for sales markets, and markets for raw materials, for capital investment spheres, for cheap labour, not all the "state capitalist trusts" achieve an equal success. While England, Germany and the United States of America forged ahead in their triumphal march over the world market, Russia and Italy, all the strenuous efforts of the imperialists notwithstanding, proved too weak. It was in this way that a few great imperialist powers came to the forefront as pretenders to world monopoly. They have proved, as far as the others are concerned, "above competition."

Economically the situation is this. World surplus value is being divided in the struggle for the world market. As is the case within the framework of "national economy," so also within the boundaries of world economy, the stronger competitor (whose strength is increased by multifarious factors, like the structure of production, the strength of the state militarist apparatus, convenient location due to the presence of "natural monopolies," etc.) receives super-profits, a kind of differential profit (due to the superior structure of production) and a kind of cartel rent (due to the pressure of the militarist apparatus that fortifies monopolies).

Super-profits obtained by the imperialist state are accompanied by a rise in the wages of the respective strata of the working class, primarily the skilled workers.

Such a phenomenon could also be observed in olden times. It was pointed out by Friedrich Engels who referred to the monopoly situation of England in the world market and to the conservatism of the English proletariat that resulted therefrom.

It was on the basis of this relative interest of the proletariat in colonial plunders that its connection with the masters' organisation of the bourgeois imperialist state grew and became strong. In Socialist literature this psychology found expression in the "national" point of view of the Social-Democratic opportunists. This "national wisdom," emphasised on every occasion, signified a complete abandonment of the point of view of revolutionary Marxism.

Marx and Engels viewed the state as an organisation of the ruling class that crushes the oppressed class with blood and iron. They assumed that future society would have no state at all, for the simple reason that there would be no classes. It is true that, for the transition period of proletarian dictatorship, when the proletariat is the temporary ruling class, they most correctly demanded a strong apparatus of working class state power to keep the overthrown classes in leash. Still, their attitude towards the oppressing state apparatus of the bourgeoisie was that of furious hatred, and from this point of view they mercilessly criticised the Lassalleans and other "statesmen." And a connection undoubtedly exists between this revolutionary point of view and the well-known thesis of the Communist Manifesto that the workers have no fatherland.

The Socialist epigones of Marxism have relegated this revolutionary opposition of Marx and Engels to the archives. In its place there emerge the theories of "true patriotism" and "true statesmanship," which, however, are in no way distinguishable from the most ordinary patriotism and the most ordinary statesmanship of the ruling bourgeoisie. Such an ideology was an organic outgrowth of the proletariat's partaking in the "great-nation policy" of the state capitalist trusts.

No wonder if after the outbreak of the great war, the working class of the foremost capitalist countries, chained to the chariot of the bourgeois state power, came to the aid of the latter. The proletariat was prepared for this by the whole preceding development; it was brought to this by its connection with the state organisation of finance capital.

However, the war itself, which could be waged only because the proletariat gave its tacit consent or showed insufficient indignation, has proven to it that its share in the imperialist policy is nothing compared with the wounds inflicted by the war.

It is in this way that there comes the crisis of imperialism and the rebirth of proletarian Socialism. Imperialism has turned its true face to the working class of Europe. Hitherto its barbarous, destructive, wasteful activities were almost entirely confined to the savages; now it thrusts itself upon the toilers of Europe with all the horrifying impact of a bloodthirsty elemental power let loose. The additional pennies received by the European workers from the colonial policy of imperialism-what do they count compared to millions of butchered workers, to billions devoured by the war, to the monstrous pressure of brazen militarism, to the vandalism of plundered productive forces, to high cost of living and starvation!

The war severs the last chain that binds the workers to the masters, their slavish submission to the imperialist state. The last limitation of the proletariat's philosophy is being overcome: its clinging to the narrowness of the national state, its patriotism. The interests of the moment, the temporary advantage accruing to it from the imperialist robberies and from its connections with the imperialist state, become of secondary importance compared with the lasting and general interests of the class as a whole, with the idea of a social revolution of the international proletariat which overthrows the dictatorship of finance capital with an armed hand, destroys its state apparatus and builds up a new power, a power of the workers against the bourgeoisie. In place of the idea of defending or extending the boundaries of the bourgeois state that bind the productive forces of world economy hand and foot, this power advances the slogan of abolishing state boundaries and merging all the peoples into one Socialist family. In this way the proletariat, after painful searching, succeeds in grasping its true interests that lead it through revolution to Socialism.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Katrina: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

See my other blog postings on Katrina:

A Paradox called Katrina

Katrina: It's a Dog-gone Crime

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina blasted the hell out of the Gulf Coast of the US what can we say about this. Well there was the good, the bad and the ugly.

THE GOOD: The thousands of people, ordinary citizens who helped each other and volunteered to bring food and supplies to the Gulf Coast without the help of the state or so called civil society; NGO's and humanitarian bueraucrats. I will even give credit here to a San Diegeo Oil magnate and a movie star who both filled private airplanes with supplies and without media fanfare delivered the goods to those in need. To the thousands of people who are currently rescuing animals that the state forced to be left behind in their hasty post Katrina evacuation. The expressions of genuine mutual aid and self organiziation that is the hallmark of Anarchy.

New Orleans has been governed throughout this entire debacle. Don't blame anarchy for government's failures. If anything, this helps illustrate the case for self-government.
Enjoy Every Sandwich

Yep it was Anarchy in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, chaos was created mnot by the storm but by the disorganization of the agents of law and order, but real anarchy arose in the actions of citizens. Self government was created in the disaster areas, to deal with the disaster.

Dhalgren in New Orleans
What an old science-fiction novel can tell us about the Big Easy
Bidisha Banerjee

Like Kid, who leaves the city after losing Lanya and other friends in the fire and confusion resulting from a race riot, those who choose to stay in New Orleans will, in all likelihood, come to harm. But, I hope, not before glimpsing more than the city's nightmares. About two dozen people in New Orleans refused to accept the cancellation of the Southern Decadence gay pride parade scheduled for last weekend. They donned wigs and beads, and celebrated in the streets. A restaurant started giving away $20,000 worth of free food, and two bars in the (mostly dry) French Quarter remained open through the hurricane. In the absence of any controlling legal authority, residents even formed ad hoc defense committees. You wouldn't know it from the blathering of countless columnists, but while Katrina was busy disproving some non-existent policy of "small government," private citizens from Wal-Mart to New Orleans hoteliers proved their ability to keep functioning in an unreal city. It's a start—not only for the city's will to rebuild itself, but also for the inhabitants who hope to stick it out until then. There are many stories about the bodies still afloat in New Orleans, but this one, with its detail about a corpse with one shoe on and one shoe off (an image that haunts Samuel Delany's work, Dhalgren) stands apart.


THE BAD: The State, NGO's and humanitarian agencies that percipitated this disaster by not evacuating everyone or having a plan of evacuating everyone, or a plan period. Reacting too late to a crisis which had they evacuated on Friday before Katrina hit would have had lots of time to get everyone out of New Orleans at least. The Greyhound bus company that removed its buses from New Orleans on Saturday before the hurricane.

The STATE at all levels failed, the limited government created by the neo-cons created a STATE which cannot govern in times when it is needed most, during disasters. The reduction in taxes, in the rational governing of resources, and the increasing authoritarian Securtiy State of the Bush Administration met their Waterloo in Katrina.

And all this could have been avoided if the STATE had listened to the government, in this case the Hurricane Emergency Adisory agency in Louisiana which do its duty, understaffed and underpaid, warned all STATE agencies, local, state and federal, of the pending disaster. But nobody listened.

Fed Response to Katrina Gets Thumbs Down
September 4, 2005--Just 28% of Americans give say that the federal government has done a good or an excellent job responding to Hurricane Katrina. Another 25% say the government has done a fair job while 45% say poor.

Poll: Respondents dissatisfied with Katrina response
Tuesday, September 13, 2005 Posted: 1546 GMT (2346 HKT)
(CNN) -- A majority of Americans surveyed in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday said they disapproved of President Bush's handling of the response to Hurricane Katrina

THE UGLY: Gretna, Louisiana across the bridge from New Oreleans, armed racist police refused access to survivors from NO. The police guarding the bridge between Gretna and NO generously refered to the evacuee's as 'looters'.

This should be no surprize, except to those 70% of white Americans polled who said that race was not a factor in the failure to evacuate or rescue victims of Katrina.

Poll shows wide racial divide on views of Katrina
Six in 10 African-Americans say the fact that most hurricane victims were poor and black was one reason the federal government failed to come to the rescue more quickly. Whites reject that idea; nearly 9 in 10 say those weren't factors. In New Orleans, Bush on Monday said race played no role.

The New York Times Leads the Pack in Scapegoating Black Americans
Race, Katrina and the Media By ISHMAEL REED

Of course there was no racism, this is the gentile land of Southern Gentlemen and Southern Belles after all.


A Guide to Southern Hospitality The Deep South has always taken great pride in its reputation for “Southern Hospitality”. Yet Jefferson Parish, a suburban bedroom community of New Orleans, Louisiana, harbors a dark and shameful culture of racism. Throughout its history, from the prolific lynchings in the 1890's to the senseless diatribes of its extremist politicians in the 1980's, Jefferson Parish is gifted with the ignoble distinction of “America’s Johannesburg.”

Nope no racism in the Deep South.

When Hate Came to Town: New Orleans' Jews and George Lincoln Rockwell,

Gretna is the stomping grounds of white supremascist/neo-nazi and former Klansman, David Duke.

David Duke a Biography

David Duke on Stormfront-Neo Nazi Site.

There's an old sheriff in town: The legacy of racism in the parish that blocked N.O. from fleeing Hell
"If there are some young blacks driving a car late at night in a predominantly white area, they will be stopped. If you live in a predominantly white neighborhood and two blacks are in a car behind you, there's a pretty good chance they're up to no good. It's obvious two young blacks driving a rinky-dink car in a predominately white neighborhood - I'm not talking about on the main thoroughfare, but if they're on one of the side streets and they're cruising around - they'll be stopped."

-- Jefferson Parish, La., Sheriff Harry Lee in 1986.

In 2005, Harry Lee is still the sheriff of Jefferson Parish -- a county that also once sent David Duke to the statehouse and tried to erect physical barriers from a mostly black New Orleans community. And last week, his deputies took part in what may become the most notorious racial incident of our young new millennium.

After Blocking the Bridge, Gretna Circles the Wagons

City of Gretna Louisiana-The most evil, racist city in America.

Police Trapped Thousands in New Orleans

13 Sep 2005 23:56:54 GMT
Source: Reuters
GRETNA, Louisiana, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Three suburbs of New Orleans announced they will reopen on Wednesday, saying residents have safe water, electricity and sewer service 15 days after Katrina struck. The cities of Gretna, Westwego and Lafitte, Louisiana, said residents could come back starting at 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning but cautioned that they would face a strict curfew "The city now is open for business," Westwego mayor Robert Billiot told WWL radio. "We are going to rebuild Westwego. We look forward to you coming home." The three cities are all in Jefferson Parish, a county of suburbs that borders New Orleans on both sides of the Mississippi River. They are on the south side of the river, the so-called West Bank, and did not suffer the widespread, continued flooding that other areas hav

Friday, September 16, 2005

Alberta's Tar Sands Gamble

Alberta regulator releases report on province's oil and gas reserves

Alberta has 1.6 billion barrels of remaining conventional oil reserves with 2004 production declining five per cent from 2003 levels to 224 million barrels per day. The EUB report also found an increase in marketable natural gas reserves with current levels at 40 trillion cubic feet or roughly an eight year supply. Alberta produced 4.9 trillion cubic feet in 2004.

Note well that Alberta's NON-RENEWABLE stocks of Oil and Gas are declining. This is where the Alberta bumper surplus comes from, however we still have the lowest royalty and tax rate on oil profits in the World. While our conventional supplies are in a serious decline. The reliance on the Oil Sands currently is one of an long term investment, oil factories are being built, which is creating a temporary job boom, and extraction processing is underway but it is not producing royalties or taxes yet. And probably won't for a decade.

The same can be said about the new kid on the block; Coal Bed Methane production of gas. It's being pushed due to our declining gas stocks, and it too is a gamble that can only pay off in the far future.

Coalbed gas production set to take off
AEUB predicts 25-fold increase by 2014


Gordon Jaremko
The Edmonton Journal

September 16, 2005

Canadian energy firms have extra motivation, on top of strong gas prices, to accelerate coalbed methane development, the board observed. Conventional gas reserves are poised to run down after almost 50 years of almost continuous production growth, due to depletion of aging wells.

The board forecasts Alberta's conventional gas production will remain flat at its recent annual level of about five trillion cubic feet in 2005 then decline at a rate of 2.5 per cent per year.

"CBM production is forecast to supplement the supply of conventional gas in the province," the AEUB said.

But with coal gas development still in its infancy, the board makes no attempt to predict whether coal gas will make up for all the forecast decline in conventional wells or even cause total production to resume growing.

Meahwhile the Tories deliberate underestimation of the cost of gas and oil has allowed them to avoid having any real budget plan based on a realistic estimation of the province's real earnings on the increase price of oil and gas.

Energy windfalls may last decade

Gordon Jaremko
The Edmonton Journal

September 16, 2005

EDMONTON - Alberta's energy boom -- and consumers' pain at the gas pumps -- will last at least 10 years, a radically revised government forecast says.

Oil prices of $50 US per barrel and corresponding high values for natural gas are no temporary windfall, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board said Thursday in a state-of-the-industry report.

The AEUB's 2005 reserves review double its '04 forecasts, predicting oil will average $55 to $60 a barrel this year and next, then take until 2009 to settle back down to $50 as consumers cut back and supply grows.

The board predicts $50 oil will last at least until the end of its current 10-year projection through 2014. Natural gas is expected to average $7.50 to $8 per gigajoule this year and next, then drop no lower than $7 for the rest of the forecast period.

Although the new AEUB expectations are higher than Alberta Finance's budget projections, the board outlook is within the price zones of industry forecasters, such as FirstEnergy Capital Corp. and Gilberg Laustsen Jung Associates.

But even annual average oil prices of $30 US per barrel and corresponding values for natural gas are high enough to sustain Alberta's oilsands development wave and current record drilling activity, the CERI economist said.

The AEUB echoes industry forecasts that oilsands production will double into a range of two million barrels daily over the next 10 years, while gas drilling continues at record levels and coalbed methane development accelerates.

Alberta Finance and Alberta Energy officials could not be reached to say whether provincial budget and savings policies should change to manage repeated huge annual energy revenue surpluses.

Instead they act like its Christmas every quarter, with that 'aw shucks I never expected to get that,' attitude. Which avoids the actuality of what those earnings are or could be planned and budgeted for.

Leaving the rest of Canada wondering about just what the heck is going on in Alberta. And when the gas price at the pump rises, that what the heck becomes, what the hell lets nationalize. Which makes Calgary Oil Boys very jumpy, and Ralph responds in kind on their behalf.


'Conflict' looms over Alberta's oil wealth
Revenue sharing a potentially explosive campaign issue, survey results indicate

From Friday's Globe and Mail

Asked, for example, whether provincial resources should belong to all Canadians or only to those living in the province where the resource is found, 76 per cent said they belong to all. Even in Alberta, 55 per cent of respondents said the resources belong to the country. And on the more general question of whether provinces should share royalty payments from resources, 42 per cent said at least part of the money should go to other Canadians. Forty-seven per cent of Albertans also felt this way.

This is the reason we need Public ownership of Oil/Gas and the Oil/Gas industry under community and workers control as I blogged here.

The harmony, however, appears to break down when the more specific question on the oil windfall is asked. Mr. Gregg suggested that may be because leaders in Alberta tend to inflame rhetoric by arguing that the surplus belongs solely to the province. "Once you get a political exhortation, like Ralph Klein saying 'keep your hands off it,' I think that's when you get regional interest overarching the national interest," he said.


Alta. won't share energy windfall: Klein
Canadian Press
Friday, September 16, 2005
CALGARY -- Alberta Premier Ralph Klein says the rest of Canada can forget about getting an extra slice of the province's energy windfall.

"It's not in the cards," Klein told reporters Friday after a poll suggested Canadians outside the oil-rich province want to share the wealth being generated by soaring energy prices.

"When you have money, everyone wants some, including the rest of Canada," he said, adding that the current situation is no different than when Alberta was booming in 1980.

"The rest of Canada was saying the same thing: 'Give me, give me, give me,"' said the premier. "Then the price of oil went down and the rest of Canada was wringing their hands in glee saying, 'You deserved it."'

He noted the rest of Canada didn't send economic aid to Alberta when the oil boom collapsed and Alberta was thrown into economic turmoil.

While the rest of the country looks on Alberta's record surpluses with envy they are as much based on sin taxes; tobbacco and VLT's as they are on the royalties and taxes from oil and gas. And those taxes and royalties are on limited conventional reserves, which have around a decade of life left in them.

The Tar Sands are not yet at production levels to match the conventional reserves. The government is tossing the dice in the hopes that by the time the conventional reserves dry out they will be replaced with the equivalent in Tar Sands production.


Ralph and the oil boys have the high hopes of the Riverboat gambler.

Which is why Ralph plays the NEP card, because he knows that this province is gambling on living off declining resources while waiting for the Tar Sands to pay back their investment.

It's all a bit of slight of hand to avoid the real issue of the need to increase taxes and royalties on the current conventional reserves.

And Albertan's recognize that, they too support the public ownership of the oil and gas resources in Alberta. And if the royalties and taxes were at the level of Venezuala's for instance then Albertan's would be overwhelmingly in favour of sharing them.

Which is why the Tories have NOT changed the royalty/tax relief they gave Big Oil back after the last market crash in 1984 which coincided with the NEP.

Of course the 'rest of Canada' did not bail out Alberta when we crashed, because we had boomed during the crash in the rest of Canada, and we simply joined the declining economy of the day.


To put it into perspective, the oilsands are estimated to contain 174.1 billion barrels of bitumen reserves."The size of that reserve would put Canada in about second place in the world behind Saudi Arabia in terms of total oil reserves," said Curran."At current production rates, that's about 400 years of supply," he said. The forecast for bitumen production closely mirrors figures from the Canadian Energy Research Institute. CERI is forecasting production to be 2.5 million barrels per day by 2014 said global energy analyst Vincent Lauerman.


Tar Sands production is of bitumen, shale based oil, the production is not through conventional oil and gas extraction but costly factories that literarly dredge the tar sands of their oil. Its the largest open pit mining operation in the world. And those factories do not employ the same amount of workers as it takes to construct them. The current boom in Alberta is a 'construction boom' not an 'oil' boom! We have yet to have the production levels of extraction out of the Tar Sands that would match our conventional oil production!

"Despite improving technologies, costs (of production) are going up to turn this stuff into usable product," said Lauerman. "The cost is about $30 per barrel and a year before it was about $25 per barrel. The main thing that has changed that is driving this thing forward is light oil prices have increased quite a bit," he said. Higher natural gas prices and higher costs for labour has added to production costs said Lauerman. ........"Mostly because it's a mining operation more than anything else. There's not a lot in it in terms of finding and development costs - it's more on how much does it cost to build a factory," he said.

Teck Cominco pays $475 M for stake in oilsands project
VANCOUVER (CP) -- Teck Cominco Ltd. made a splash in the Alberta oilsands Tuesday with a $475-million deal for a 15 per cent stake in the Fort Hills Energy project owned by Petro-Canada and UTS Energy Corp. -- bringing with it a wealth of experience in open-pit mining.

It takes energy to make energy in the Tar Sands. Part of the cost is the use of water and steam extraction. For thirty years the Tories have tried to find a way to use Nuclear powered steam injection to get the oil out of the Tar Sands. Scary thought that.

Oil sands players eye nuclear option
Soaring price of natural gas has producers looking for an alternative


Tar Sands oil is energy intensive, hence capital intensive. It is NOT an economical production model unless oil prices are high, alot higher than they are even now. At $80 a barrel Tar Sands oil only becomes feasible due to its energy inputs cost.

Oil sands trigger race for diluent supply
EnCana secures imports of little-known commodity needed to dilute bitumen

Diluent is a mostly unknown commodity outside the oil business and had a low profile even in Alberta until last winter when the industry was slammed hard by severe shortage. Roughly one barrel of diluent is needed to move two barrels of bitumen through a pipeline, a significant cost, and high diluent prices actually made bitumen production briefly unprofitable. "It became clear that we were not just facing a long-term diluent shortage but we were already pretty much on the doorstep of one," Mr. Bird said.EnCana has not yet secured a supply of diluent but the company believes it can probably get it on the spot market from countries that export liquefied natural gas.Not all oil sands production requires diluent. EnCana drills for its bitumen. Others, like Suncor Energy Inc., mine bitumen and then upgrade the heavy oil into synthetic oil, which flows through a pipeline without problem.

The Alberta economy is a game of three card monty; time limited construction jobs created due to the building oil sands factories, reliance on limited reserves of conventional oil and gas while the Tar Sands comes into operation, wait for 25 years before the Tar Sands companies begin to pay back taxes and royalties.

Don't believe little old left winger me, then here it is from the horses mouth:

Reality check needed

By NEIL WAUGH, EDMONTON SUN

The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (EUB) issued its energy supply-and-demand outlook document last week.

"While non-renewable energy sources and more efficient energy use are increasingly contributing to lower the global demand," the EUB reported, "oil is still the dominant fuel."

As a result the board is upping its long-range price forecast from $28 to $50 US a barrel. Natural gas prices are expected to stay at $7.50 to $8 a gigajoule for the next two years.

That alone should sent Alberta royalties revenues through the roof.

Even though the EUB noted that natural gas production peaked in 2001.

But what's also of note - although scary might be a better word - is the radical shift from conventional oil produced from a pumpjack to synthetic crude manufactured by an oilsands plant.

"Last year synthetic crude oil production equalled light and medium crude oil production for the first time," the report said.

By 2014 it will make up 83% of Alberta's oil production. There's no doubt that oilsands plant construction is a massive engine for the Alberta and Canadian economies.

But it's happening under a royalty regime of a token 1% until the capital costs are fully paid out.

And with conventional oil and gas declining, Albertans could soon find themselves in a revenue squeeze.

Unlike the bubble in the 1980's this is a serious crisis in oil and gas stock and refining capacity. We are hitting the peak oil in reserves of conventional oil and the price will only go up. While good for Alberta in the short term, it will quickly become a burden as we wait for Tar Sands and Coal Bed Gas production to take up the slack. And we have only a decade.

Focus: Oil

It is the great liberator that has changed the course of history. But it has brought misery as well as wealth, and the latest global convulsions triggered by this corrupting substance show how perilous is the world's dependence on it. By Adrian Hamilton

The end of the oil era is upon us. Soon oil output from conventional sources will peak. The strain will then have to be taken by other fuel sources and changes in demand. What we don't know is how high the price will have to go and how great the supply shocks will be before we get there; whether the market alone will effect a solution or whether governments will have to act to suppress demand and preserve supplies.


Crude slips on forecasts of slowing global growth; Venezuela predicts higher prices
Canadian Press
September 16, 2005

Although crude oil prices are more than $6 US lower than the record of $70.85 US set Aug. 30, prices remain nearly 50 per cent higher compared to this time last year. Yet South America's biggest producer, Venezuela, warned that oil prices could reach $100 US a barrel because of the world's limited reserves. Venezuela - an OPEC member and South America's largest producer - said prices could rise to $100 US per barrel because members of the 11-country cartel are pumping at near capacity, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday. "OPEC is practically already at its production ceiling," Chavez told reporters at a UN summit in New York. "The problem is the oil reserves are running out," said Chavez, whose comments were carried by Venezuelan state television. "It is a true crisis." Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, a major fuel supplier to the United States and one of few countries with proven reserves. Rising demand, primarily from the United States and China, has been blamed for the tight supplies worldwide.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Katrina: It's a Dog-Gone Crime


Coming to the rescue in a dog-eat-dog world
Gary Mason, Globe and Mail, Sept. 12, 2005

This Online article needs a subscription, so I thought I would provide a transcript of some of the major points it makes,about animal resuce in the Aftermath of Katrina.

If the rescue of humans was completely disorganized the rescue of companion animals was even more so.

Add to that the refusal of Buses and other evacuation transportation to take companion animals on board, what's with that?

Another question is, while a lot of focus has been on dogs, what about the other companion animals, cats, birds, etc.



Ethan Gurney on a seperate boat climbs into the putrid water and heads toward the open window. He hoists himself inside while the pit bulls snarl viciously inside. "They had them locked in a room with no water, no food. It had to be 90 degrees in there." the two men bring the dogs onto the front porch where we have placed a bowl of water and some dog food, which are devoured in less than a minute. The rescuers slowly and cautiously begin petting them and eventually scratch behind their ears while whispering, "that a boy", "good doggie","yeah that tastes good, doesn't it?" Soon both the dogs, both of them bearing disfiguring scars that suggest they had been used to fight, are licking the hands and faces of their rescuerers. They are no longer aggressive but instead two scared animals profoundly thankfullfor the kindness they have been shown.


For those of you from Ontario please note that the appreciation two pit bulls used in dog fights, gave to their rescuers, sort of makes you wonder about that Anti-Pit Bull legislation Ontario passed. There are no Bad Breeds just Bad Owners (as in this animal is my property, chattel slave, etc.). Ontario Bans Pit Bulls

Ten thousands have died, not people but pets, companion animals and the death toll can only go up because the rescue operations have been bogged down by bueracracy and the negligence and incompetance at all levels of government. There was no animal rescue plan, and in the aftermath of this disaster there still is no plan! In fact the old bureacratic machinery of local, state and federal agencies are blocking rescue attempts with red tape .

Because of Katreina many have already died or will soon if not rescued. It's a number that Paul Berry, who is directing the Best Friends operation here, estimates will be in the tens of thousands. And as poorly organized as the rescue operation to save humans here was, the one to save animals has been worse. You see there wasn't a plan. "It's a disaster and a national disgrace" says Mr. Berry. "The national agencies FEMA, the Humane Society, someone should have been in control of animal welfare but it didn't happen."

Imagine this many people who evacuated their homes brought along their pets. But when the buses arrived to take the residents to shelters they were told they had to leave their animals behind---right there on the highway. Consequently , there were upward of 1,000 pets, mostly dogs, roaming the freeway there. Several were hit by cars and killed. There have also been reports of dogs being rounded up and shot by the authorities.

The emergency response NOW, two weeks late, to the plight of animals left behind has even gotten local humane soicities involved.
City animal shelter workers to join animal rescue effort
Gordon Kent The Edmonton Journal
Wednesday, September 14, 2005


Ontario women rescue Louisiana dogs




CAMBRIDGE, Ont.-- Fifteen dogs that survived hurricane Katrina are still alive thanks to two southwestern Ontario women.

Bonnie Deekon and her friend Meg Brubacher rescued the dogs from an Alexandria, La., shelter this week, north of New Orleans.

The women left for the devastated area in a van, donated by the University of Guelph, on Sept. 7 and just returned to Cambridge.

The pups don't know how close they came to death.

Shelters are so packed with animals left homeless from hurricane Katrina that several are euthanized every hour.

The dogs - seven puppies and eight adults - are now being put up for adoption.


And stupid red tape of the United States Department of Agriculture is NOT helping.

Humane Society of Louisiana president helps pet-rescue efforts from afar

Animals another component in need of hurricane relief

Dogfight brewing over Katrina's furry victims

NEW ORLEANS — If Cindy Healer has her way, 50 dogs and cats rescued from the homes and streets of this devastated city will be loaded into a moving van and driven to Texas, where they'll find refuge at the Humane Society/SPCA of Bexar County.



Animal rescue volunteer Larry Roberts, of Atlanta, carries a dog out of a yard in New Orleans. The animal was suffering from dehydration.

Many of the animals, trapped in homes, have gone two weeks without nourishment. Some, in dire need of medical care, barely cling to life.

"Half these animals were locked in homes and they're emaciated," said Healer, director of operations at the Humane Society. "They need to get out of the state."

It's not clear if authorities will permit that. A spokesman with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said authorities are becoming increasingly concerned some rescue groups are taking animals across state lines without regard for whether the animals were someone's beloved pets.

"They're picking up people's pets and assuming that, because the animals were loose, they were abandoned, but that's not (necessarily) the case," said Larry Hawkins, a USDA spokesman.

Hawkins said transporting animals out of state would complicate efforts to reunite animals with their owners.

He said his agency, working with the Humane Society of the United States and the Louisiana Society for the Protection Against Cruelty to Animals, is deciding how much time to allow evacuated residents to claim their animals from shelters before they're allowed to be put up for adoption.


To help out with the rescue of Katrina's forgotten victims contact:

www.bestfriends.org

www.noahswish.org

And if the treatment of companion animals has been outrageous well there was no plan to evacuate confined sea mammals from the Aquarium in New Orleans.

Swept from aquarium pool, dolphins found alive offshore

Eight bottlenose dolphins that were washed out of their Mississippi aquarium pool during Hurricane Katrina have been found alive, huddled together in the fetid waters off Gulfport, Miss. Now, deeply worried about the dolphins' chances of survival, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials and aquarium biologists are racing to rescue the weak and wounded animals -- some of which have never before ventured into the wild.

''These animals found us, they came back after Katrina . . . they came home," said Moby Solangi, director of the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport. ''All eight are together. It's the most wonderful news."

Established in 1956, the facility suffered catastrophic damage in the storm. Along with the dolphins, 19 sea lions were swept out of their pools when a giant storm surge engulfed the Oceanarium. Five of them are missing.

On the other hand to give credit where credit is due the New Orleans Zoo had a plan, one that was even better than the one the city had for it's citizens!

04 Sep 2005 21:40:59 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Mark BabineckNEW ORLEANS, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Thousands of people are feared dead in the rubble of storm-shattered New Orleans, but at the New Orleans zoo only three of its 1,400 animals died in the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. The famous Audubon Zoo has the good fortune of being located on some of the city's highest ground, but it also had a disaster plan for the animals that worked better than the city's plan for humans. It suffered no serious flooding, but the storm's fierce winds toppled several large trees and knocked down branches throughout the 52-acre (21-hectare) grounds. The only fatalities so far were two otters and a raccoon, zoo curator Dan Maloney said on Sunday. Fourteen staffers stayed at the zoo to care for the animals throughout the storm and the aftermath that has left New Orleans in ruins. "We stayed here because the animals can't leave," he said. "We were almost done with our ark and were training the animals to march in two-by-two, but we just didn't make it."

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The Return of Right To Work

With the usual predictability the right wing corporate think tank the Fraser Institute blows the dust off their old humbug of right to work labour law reform.
In 1997 they published the usual right wing attack on unions accusing them for declines in productivity:
Unionization and Economic Performance: Evidence on Productivity, Profits, Investment, and Growth

In 1999 they published the usual attack on minimum wages: The Economics of Minimum Wage Laws

They have released yet another study comparing apples and oranges.

In this case the labour relations in Canada which are Rand Formula, and the labour relations in the US which are Taft Hartely. No freeriders in Canadian unions, everyone pays dues, while in the US its all right to work, sic, which does not mean full employment, but rather favours the bosses in keeping unions out of the workplace.


Yet another American foibel that the Fraser Institute would like to ship north of the border.

This is supposedly a think tank and policy wonk institute for the right wing business interests in Canada, and they can do no better than come up with Canada Bad USA Good.

So it should be no surprize that these simpiltons come up with Unions Bad, Bosses Good
.

The Fraser Institute: Media Release; 
Unbalanced Labour Laws and a Large Public Sector
Key Reasons for Canada's High Unionization Rate

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(CCNMatthews - Aug. 31, 2005) - A larger
public sector and biased labour laws are key reasons for Canada's high
unionization rate, which is more than twice that of the United States,
according to Explaining Canada's High Unionization Rates, released today
by The Fraser Institute.

In 2004, the unionization rate in Canada was 31.8 percent, significantly
higher than the United States' 13.8 percent.

According to the authors, differences in labour relations law-the
regulations that govern the interactions between employers and their
employees and union representatives-have a particularly strong influence
on unionization rates.

The second aspect of labour laws seen to influence unionization rates
was allowing mandatory dues payments to be part of collective
agreements. All Canadian provinces, in one way or another, allow the
inclusion of mandatory union dues in collective agreements. This
provides unions with a secure source of revenue and the ongoing
resources needed to promote collective representation.

Clemens pointed out that the United States, on the other hand, only
allows partial mandatory dues payments; U.S. workers covered by
collective agreements cannot be required to pay union dues for political
and social initiatives that are unrelated to representation under the
collective agreement. In addition, 22 U.S. states-the so-called
Right-to-Work states-have expanded the U.S. law to prohibit any
mandatory dues payment as a condition of employment.

The Right-to-Work states maintain much lower average rates of
unionization (8.2 percent), than other states (16.2 percent) and the
Canadian total (31.8 percent).

"There are stark differences in unionization rates between not only
Canada and the U.S. but also between Right-to-Work and non-RTW states,"
commented Clemens. "Clearly, the ability of workers to voluntarily
choose to financially support union activities has a dramatic impact on
unionization rates."

The final area of labour laws reviewed in the study was mandatory union
membership clauses; no Canadian jurisdiction prohibits mandatory union
membership clauses while all U.S. states prohibit such requirements.


In 1996 the Fraser Institute and the National Citizens Coalition (NCC) jointly launched a campaign in Alberta to try and get Right To Work instituted into the provincial labour code. The resistance of unions and unionized employers defeated their efforts. Not before they created Canadians Against Forced Unionization, sic, CAFU. I like the FU part, it really says it all. The Fraser Institute provided a former intern student as chair of CAFU, which was funded by and a lobbying arm of the NCC, he is thecurrent Conservative MP Rob Anders from Calgary. The RTW study doen by the Fraser Institute in 95 was by Fasil Mahil who is currently an Editor with the National Post. And the past director of the NCC is no stranger to Canadians, its Stephen Harper leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

If these guys say one more thing about the liberal left dominating politics and media in Canada I think I will vomit.

I produced this poster at the time in response to CAFU.


RIGHT TO WORK?

NO THANKS.


ABOLISH WORK!

WORKERS AGAINST FORCED LABOUR





Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Time For The Four Hour Day


And the Four Day Week.


While surfing I came across this interesting site on an alternative to downsizing workers, downsizing the work day. See links below.

Not a new idea but one that resurfaces when whenever capitalism adopts new technology to reduce labour costs. As Dr. Marx pointed out the class struggle is all about reducing the work day.

This began with the 10 hour movement during the late 19th Century, and quickly grew into the 8 hour movement. You know the saying, "The Weekend,brought to you by the Labour Movement".

The Syndicalist movement in North America called for a 4 hour work day. This was advanced by the IWW in the 1920's!!!. In the 1920's folks. 75 years ago. And today folks are working two jobs and most are working 44-50 hours a week to make ends meet.

Work time has increased, while wages have decreased in real money, and work has become contracted out and precarious.

In the 1930's the Progressive Labour Party and others in the labour movement called for a 32 hour work week, in otherwords a four day week. Even this revisionist demand was met with capitalist distain. Today France has a 35 hour work week which was not without controversy.

Today as more workers are laid off, the Canadian Autoworkers Union has fought and bargianed against forced overtime in favour of increased jobs.

We still hear from folks who offer the 32 hour week as their minimum demand, and thats the problem, its a minimum, and even then capitalism has not embraced it with anymore enthusiaism than the 4 hour day and the 4 day week.

Reducing Working Time


The European Union (EU) Directive on working time (Directive 93/104/EC) required member states to introduce national legislation that would reduce working time to a weekly average of forty eight (48) hours in a year. The 'Organisation of Working Time Act, 1997' has transposed the EU Directive into law in Ireland. This new law has impacted on the dependence that enterprises can have on excessive overtime working. It also reduces the maximum number of hours that employees are allowed to work. In this context both employers and unions are exploring the possible potential of combining changes in work organisation with changes in the pattern of working hours. While employers and unions can have different aims for any reorganisation of work and working time, a recognition of the interdependence of these aims should provide a basis for joint examination of what can be done. In short, the chances for employees to improve guaranteed earnings while working fewer hours are likely to be better if working time can be more effectively matched with the actual needs of the enterprise.


Another group influenced by the IWW and North American Syndicalism was Technocracy Inc. which also adopted the idea that the MAXIMUM labour required to maintain an advanced industrial society is wait for it, yep, a 4 hour day, 4 days a week.

The Price System be abolished, and be replaced with an Energy Credit”-system. The Energy Credit is an electronic distribution unit of which the value is determined by the resources which the system could distribute to it’s clients, and the costs is equivalent with the production costs – because profit is eliminated. The investments could instead be developed through the total independence and autarchy of the system, and in time, the system will be impossible to destroy. The Energy Credit could never be bartered, loaned, speculated, inflated, stolen or be misused for corrupt purposes, because it’s value and areas of legitimacy is fixated. All inhabitants within the borders of the Technate are given a standard income of energy credits, free residence of living, free means of communication, free clothes, free food, free healthcare, free education, and free recreation. The work time is 4 hours a day, 4 days a week, but it will in each case be a hard task to give everyone a job, but that is not a problem, because everyone will prosper and survive, work or no work. “Machines work, humans play”, as one of the mottos sound.





For a larger picture of this chart click here.

The Passing Of The Wage Slave

The Mystery of Money G. D. KOE, CHQ • 1938

The machine is here to stay. It is emancipating the wage slaves who in ever increasing numbers are becoming like the lilies of the field: they toil not, neither do they spin. The machine does not strike nor talk back and it requires no relief when unemployed. If you wish to continue your Price System you will have to breed a new race of men, men that can lie fallow for a season, or can be stored away in warehouses till they are required.

Human labor means wages. Wages means purchasing power. Purchasing power means profits and profits means savings. Savings mean more and more means of production. And so round and round the endless chain of the Price System. Men work so that they may consume, and consume so that they may have strength to work some more so that they may continue to consume, while close behind comes the grim spectre of scarcity. To protect themselves they saved themselves into the jaws of unemployment. Savings built machines.

When electric power came, human labor lost. Electric power works twenty-four hours and it draws no wages, but the owners pile up savings. More savings, more machines, more production, more machines, less wages, less purchasing power, less employment, larger relief rolls, over production. Still more dividends are being paid and still more savings are being added to the debt structure. A considerable part of the population have become paupers but they have to be clothed and fed that the Price System might still be operated and savings steadily increased. Production slowed down. Fewer new machines for a time and a steadily increasing liquidity in the banks and financial institutions.

Today, liquidity is approaching its maximum and soon the banks, insurance companies, and financial houses will fade quietly away, except as governmental institutions. They cannot earn enough to pay their overhead and must go into voluntary liquidation or they will fail. Any industrialist that does not modernize his equipment (and that means mechanize) must shut up shop. With an ever increasing velocity the Price System approaches its inevitable end. The Price System is a gigantic debt system and the cancellation of debt is but the foundations of that System crumbling into dust. It is wisdom to make your choice now, before you come to the parting of the ways. Then it may-be too late. Which will you have? Chaos or Science? Scarcity or abundance? Disorder or order? Death or life? The choice is yours; but the necessity for the choice cannot long be delayed. Technocracy alone, offers life.

Note this was written in 1938 when automobile production, called Fordism, was rapidly industrializing America as it is now doing in China and has done in the newly developing industrial economies of Korea and the post war development of Japan.

And speaking of Ford he already introduced the idea of increased wages for less work with his new mode of production, of course to encourage increased consumption of his product, and to control his workers by keeping the unions out.

From World's Work, October 1926 pp. 613-616.
HENRY FORD: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay
The automobile manufacturer in this authorized interview tells Mr. Crowther why he reduced the working week in Ford plants all over the world to forty hours with no cut in pay*
We now face a political economy of outsourcing and contracting out work, flexible working conditions where you are expected to 'multi-task', which is deskilling of the workforce yet making us pliable for being multi use cogs in the machine of capital production. And yet we still have unemployment, and we are working more for less, and for longer hours.

Yet the society in which we live could provide abundance for all. Strange that.

As Dr. Marx points out in his work the Grundrisse, as automation increases, and allows for greater freedom of the worker, the capitalist system cannot adapt fast enough forcing the workers to give up their lesisure time, in favour of either wage slavery or unemployment.

Surplus value in general is value in excess of the equivalent
. The equivalent, by definition, is only the identity of value with itself. Hence surplus value can never sprout out of the equivalent; nor can it do so originally out of circulation; it has to arise from the production process of capital itself. The matter can also be expressed in this way: if the worker needs only half a working day in order to live a whole day, then, in order to keep alive as a worker, he needs to work only half a day. The second half of the labour day is forced labour; surplus-labour. What appears as surplus value on capital's side appears identically on the worker's side as surplus labour in excess of his requirements as worker, hence in excess of his immediate requirements for keeping himself alive. The great historic quality of capital is to create this surplus labour, superfluous labour from the standpoint of mere use value, mere subsistence; and its historic destiny [Bestimmung] is fulfilled as soon as, on one side, there has been such a development of needs that surplus labour above and beyond necessity has itself become a general need arising out of individual needs themselves—and, on the other side, when the severe discipline of capital, acting on succeeding generations [Geschlechter], has developed general industriousness as the general property of the new species [Geschlecht]—and, finally, when the development of the productive powers of labour, which capital incessantly whips onward with its unlimited mania for wealth, and of the sole conditions in which this mania can be realized, have flourished to the stage where the possession and preservation of general wealth require a lesser labour time of society as a whole, and where the labouring society relates scientifically to the process of its progressive reproduction, its reproduction in a constantly greater abundance; hence where labour in which a human being does what a thing could do has ceased. Accordingly, capital and labour relate to each other here like money and commodity; the former is the general form of wealth, the other only the substance destined for immediate consumption. Capital's ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness [Naturbedürftigkeit], and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one. This is why capital is productive; i.e. an essential relation for the development of the social productive forces. It ceases to exist as such only where the development of these productive forces themselves encounters its barrier in capital itself.

The Times of November 1857 contains an utterly delightful cry of outrage on the part of a West-Indian plantation owner. This advocate analyses with great moral indignation—as a plea for the re-introduction of Negro slavery—how the Quashees (the free blacks of Jamaica) content themselves with producing only what is strictly necessary for their own consumption, and, alongside this 'use value', regard loafing (indulgence and idleness) as the real luxury good; how they do not care a damn for the sugar and the fixed capital invested in the plantations, but rather observe the planters' impending bankruptcy with an ironic grin of malicious pleasure, and even exploit their acquired Christianity as an embellishment for this mood of malicious glee and indolence. They have ceased to be slaves, but not in order to become wage labourers, but, instead, self-sustaining peasants working for their own consumption. As far as they are concerned, capital does not exist as capital, because autonomous wealth as such can exist only either on the basis of direct forced labour, slavery, or indirect forced labour, wage labour. Wealth confronts direct forced labour not as capital, but rather as relation of domination [Herrschaftsverhältnis]; thus, the relation of domination is the only thing which is reproduced on this basis, for which wealth itself has value only as gratification, not as wealth itself, and which can therefore never create general industriousness. (We shall return to this relation of slavery and wage labour.)


It is time to take back our time from the machine, not through reforms like increased paternity leaves paid for out of EI, but in actual time to be with our families and friends by reducing our work time. Not adapting to flexible organisation of the workplace, where we 'job shre', that is share our poverty, our waged work. But rather the fight for the 4 hour day in the 4 hour week for 40 hours pay, is not a utopian ideal but a radical demand upon the system of capitalism.

Capital adapts such demands with its illusionary flexible working conditions for the professional classes. These are based on salaried wages, and give the illusion of a beneficient and paternalistic management in the workplace. In reality it is NOT the reduction of work time, nor its radical transformation into playtime. It is simply the sharing of surplus value time, at our own expense.

Or in the case of working from home, here the benefits of daycare, etc. are absorbed by the worker, costs that would normally acrue to the capitalist and his state.

Just as in self employment, the very basis of the wage slavery of the mercantile classes, which includes trades men, white collar managers, owners of fast food franchises, etc. the classic petit-bourgoise, here we now have the contracting out and privatization of public sector jobs to a sector that now must pay the burden of benefits and insurance, and pensions, out of their own pocket with not employer contribution. Hence most don't and end up destitute later on due to accidents, health problems, or catastrophic personal financial burderns. Thus the self employed are the self deluded, thinking they are no longer wage slaves.

This is one of the consequences of downsizing. The other is the quick capitalization and valorization of the business as the workers are disposed of but their surplus value is kept. Wages, benefits, pension funds, all are disposed of as liquid capital, which is why after downsizing corporations see their share price rise on Wall Street. Regardless of the socio economic grouping that gets laid off, waged employees, salaried employees, white collar, blue collar, support staff, production staff, distribution staff, or management.

All are one class; the wage slaves to the machine of capital.

New Study Reveals One in Three Americans Are Chronically Overworked
Triggers for Overwork and Solutions for Workplace Stress are Explored


Key Study Data

  • One in three American employees are chronically overworked.
  • 54 percent of American employees have felt overwhelmed at some time in the past month by how much work they had to complete.
  • 29 percent of employees spend a lot of time doing work that they consider a waste of time. These employees are more likely to be overworked.
  • 79 percent of employees had access to paid vacations in 2004.
  • More than one-third of employees (36 percent) had not and were not planning to take their full vacation.
  • On average, American workers take 14.6 vacation days annually.
  • Most employees take short vacations, with 37 percent taking fewer than seven days.
  • Only 14 percent of employees take vacations of two weeks or more.
  • Among employees who take one to three days off (including weekends), 68 percent return feeling relaxed compared with 85 percent who take seven or more days (including weekends).
  • Only 8 percent of employees who are not overworked experience symptoms of clinical depression compared with 21 percent of those who are highly overworked.

Study: Reducing hours isn’t always a career killer

By Kathy Gurchiek

Choosing to cut your workload to three or four days a week is not a career killer for top-level employees, according to Crafting Lives that Work: A Six-Year Retrospective on Reduced-Load Work in the Careers and Lives of Professionals and Managers, a study that was released Feb. 16. 2005

“Many leading employers have been formally and informally offering alternative work arrangements such as reduced-load work for many years,” according to the executive summary of the report by McGill State University, Canada’s leading research-intensive university, and Michigan State University (MSU).

“However, little research has been conducted on how choosing to use these new ways of working affects individuals, their careers, and their families over time.”

The study followed up with 81 of the original 87 salaried, nonunionized participants interviewed in 1996 to 1998 who voluntarily cut back from full-time to part-time status at 43 companies in the United States and Canada. Ages ranged from 33 to 58. Men were included, but most participants were women, and the typical one was 45, married, a manager, and had reduced her workload to 66 percent of full time.

Nearly half of those working part time were still doing so six years later, and most of those no longer working a reduced schedule wanted to return to it, according to the study, funded by the nonprofit philanthropic Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

In addition, it found that a significantly higher percentage of those working reduced work schedules had elder care responsibilities, family health problems or major personal health problems compared to those working full time. A high commitment to family and the need or desire to spend time with their children were the reasons why more than half of the participants continued working a reduced schedule.

Timesizing versus Downsizing
we address the two biggest questions of our times:

(1) When introducing technology, how, without makework, can CEOs avoid downsizing employees & the consumer markets they represent? (2) Then how do we shift from maximizing consumption to save the economy, to minimizing consumption to save the planet?
Two answers, two 'gears'. (1) Timesizing = trim workweeks, not workforce & consumer base; make not taxpayer-support but self-support easier; re-employ & re-activate all marginalized consumers. (2) Once everyone is included in the worksharing system, economic growth becomes optional instead of desperately needed, because for the first time growth can be limited without starving the now well-employed 'poor'. So we then cut the workweek further to downshift production & consumption and "save the planet," that is, ecosystems and the whole biosphere.

The big picture & the-time-trilogy

We had a lot of help, but not from standard economists. They hate people like us. We're mavericks. Most of us are indeed dreaded "autodidacts" - self-taught people with no particular stake in any particular economic conclusion - except that maybe our whole economic juggernaut could be a lot more "win-win" than it is. Charlie Kindleberger, despite being personally a nice Ray Bolger-type of guy and a bit of an outsider himself (an American historical economist is a rare bird), said, with reference to Jane Jacobs, "All of us hate these autodidacts." (Warsh, Economic Principles, 396.) One of us autodidacts didn't get translated into English for 162 years (Sismondi).

OK, part of our problem is that we're not win-win with standard economists. We badmouth them. Jane Jacobs says economics is a "fool's paradise" and what's needed now is a wholesale rethinking of the field, a "trip back to reality." (Warsh, 396.) Joan Robinson called economics a branch of theology! And Sismondi opposed economic systems and all forms of dogmatism. But let's face it, standard economists deserve it.

We discovered that over the years, indeed the centuries, there were other autodidacts and mavericks who went over much of the same ground as us ("us" is maverick-correct here, an English disjunctive attested in Chaucer) and they laid down a pretty good foundation. In the last 20 years, Ben Hunnicutt. In the 1950s, Nobel-reject John Kenneth Galbraith. Art Dahlberg and Ed Filene in the 1930s. Lord Leverhulme (a "Lever Brother") and Stephen Leacock (a Canadian Mark Twain) in the nineteen-teens. Thorstein Veblen in the 1890s. Jean-Charles Sismondi in the early 1800s and Sir William Petty in the 1600s - see our bibliography. There are probably a lot more but they're tough to find because the mainstream does little or nothing to publicize them. None of these people get Nobels. Guess they make in-the-box thinkers uneasy. Kindleberger went on to say, "We are in the business of teaching people, and we want them to learn our stuff, not make it up." Sounds like primitive territoriality.

Another Canadian Site is:

Welcome to the TimeWork Web: the limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive.

And of course they have created a Workless Party, Parteee..the site is located in BC which is a wonderful land to want to work less in and play more.

I could party for that.


"Workers of the world - RELAX !!!!"

Work Less Party

Work Less, Consume Less, Live More!!!



240-Minute Man

Gabe Sinclair Has Seen the Future, and It Includes a Four-Hour Workday

By Michael Anft

Baltimore City Paper: 240-Minute Man (March 21 - March 27, 2001)




THE IDEA

At the beginning of the last century, the tractor and the assembly line revolutionized the American economy. The eight-hour workday and the forty-hour week soon prevailed as a natural consequence of these innovations.

The computer and other minor miracles have since opened glorious opportunities for a further reduction of our drudgery, yet nothing of the kind has happened. Modern life remains a headlong rush into long commutes, two-income families, late nights at work, and exhausting recreation. How could this be? What is it about our collective personality that drives us over this cliff of endless rat race?

The Four-hour Day Foundation exists to assemble a particular coalition of people prepared to question the fundamental assumptions of how we labor and how we distribute our immense wealth. Two percent of Americans now grow all of our food and then some. Another thirty million or so do all the mining, manufacturing, and construction. If this minority can produce our modern cornucopia, then the four-hour day is within easy reach. If we can rearrange world politics so as to honestly collaborate with other nations, anything is possib


Sunday, September 11, 2005

DeBeers versus the Bushmen

Diamonds are not a Bushmans best friend.



Away from the prying eyes of the world, the last remaining Kalahari Bushmen, or San people of Botswana, are being starved of food and water in a bid to force them off the land their forefathers have roamed for the past 30,000 years.
This is the final chapter in a 17-year saga which has seen the relocation of some 2,200 San out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) into resettlement camps by the Botswana Government.

According to
the Reporters segment BBC World Report DeBeers and diamonds have been responsible for the forceable removal of all but 200 Kalahari Deseert Bushmen from their land by the Botsawana Government.

Bushmen fight for homeland

If you have ever taken an introductory Anthropolgy course, the Kalahari Bushmen are the first case study you read about. The Kung and San are stone age peoples who live in the South African Desert. For that time they have lived as hunters and gathers and give us an insight into our ancestors.

Now the Botswana government has forcely removed them from their ancestoral lands, lands they own, in order to "modernize" them, you know make them consumers and landless workers under capitalism.

Bushmen mourn lost lifestyle

The Government is claiming it wants to protect the Desert Wildlife preserve where the Bushmen live.
However that reserve is also the Bushmen's territorial land, whats left of it. They are of course claiming that this area should be free from human habitation, even the humans who have lived there for the past 30,000 years. As for environmental concerns, the Bushmen using traditional methods of hunting and gathering are an important part of the ecology of the desert. With them present animal life has increased, through proper human culling. Without them well that should be obvious even to the Botswana government.

And like other aboriginal peoples those who have been forced into the new concrete concentration camps the Botswana reserves the Bushmen have been introduced to modernization through forced schooling, unemployment, and hanging at the local bar. So AIDs and Alcholism the diseases of modern capitlaism are now running rampant through the community, a community that had never known these diseases mere years ago.



And it all has to do with DeBeers and their lust for diamonds. For under the much needed to be protected wildlife preserve of the the Kalahari lays a vast store house of diamonds.

Bushmen 'moved for diamonds'

And rather than deal with the inconvincance of dealing with the real owners of the land, the Bushmen, they deal with the State and allow their pals in the Botswana government do the dirty work.

Yep ain't capitalism grand.



Living as part of nature-The hunter gatherer lifestyle of the Kalahari Bushmen epitomises what many consider to be the closest relationship with nature that humans can have. Laurens van der Post made the Bushmen famous in his book the Lost World of the Kalahari in which he depicted them as living in some idyllic Eden. He even ate with them from a tree he called the tree of knowledge.



The Kalahari Bushmen

The Bushmen are a group of nomadic hunter-gatherers who are believed to be descendents of the first inhabitants of South Africa, with records dating back 30,000 years. Also known as the San or Basarwa, the Bushmen are a unique group of people with a distinct culture, language, and lifestyle.

Life of the Bushmen
The hardiness of the Bushmen has allowed them to adapt to various changes. They have had to deal with the encroachment of modern civilization with its huge cities, large farms, and grazing cattle as well as the persecution of governments attempting to relocate and "educate" the Bushmen. This hardiness has allowed the Bushmen to survive in the harsh conditions of the Kalahari, where some still reside today.

Being hunter-gatherers, the Bushmen were mainly concerned with survival. They are renowned for being master trackers and hunters, using cleverly designed bows and arrows to kill animals. As trackers, the Bushmen are able to follow the tracks of an animal across virtually any terrain, and they are able to distinguish the tracks of a wounded animal. Traditionally, men hunted while the women gathered, but it is not uncommon for women to assist in the hunt and men to help in the gathering of edible plants.

Since the Bushmen lived off the land, they were unable to stay in one place. They needed to move constantly from one place to another, but they were never reckless in their wandering. The Bushmen carefully mapped out their annual route, plotting a course that would take them to areas where the food had recently ripened.

Art and Dance of the Bushmen
The Bushmen love to draw. They have created rock paintings all over southern Africa, in an estimated 50,000 sites. Early historians believed the paintings depicted everyday life but, on the contrary, the paintings held a deep spiritual and religious meaning.

Experts now believe that many of the paintings were closely associated with the Bushmen medicine man, also known as a shaman. A shaman is someone who enters a trance in order to perform a variety of functions, such as healing the sick and wounded and ensuring good hunting. The rock paintings were a result of these trances, as the shamans sought to depict their visions.



Dancing also plays a big part in the Bushmen culture. The trance dance is a ritual dance performed only when someone is ill. A fire is lit and the women sit around it in a circle. The dancers, mostly men, then start dancing in a circle around the women while the women sing, clap and tend to the fire. The first few hours are relaxed and sociable, but once a dancer enters a trance, the clapping and singing intensify and the shaman begins the healing process.

The rain dance is similar to the trance dance, but the whole event is much more relaxed. If you're lucky, you may be able to witness one of these spectacular events, or you may even be asked to join.

Visiting the Bushmen
Today, many of the Bushmen have been driven off their native lands to make room for mining and farming operations. A majority of the population are no longer hunter-gatherers. Instead, they work on farms or ranches, but all is not lost. People working for the preservation of the Bushmen culture have realized that tourism may be their path to salvation. Tours are available that allow you to visit the Bushmen and experience the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. You will be able to participate in hunts, gather edible plants, and witness the wonder of a ritual dance. And with that money, the Bushmen hope to be able to keep their land, preserve their culture and continue their historical survival.



some photos from: Kalahari by Dennis White