On The Russian Revolution

Today being the 93rd anniversary of the Bolshevik coup in Russia, I thought it fitting to reproduce this article from an 1973 SPGB socialist education bulletin.

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Russia before1914 was a country of big but inefficiently farmed landed estates, side by side with millions of peasants impoverished by the high rents they had to pay to the landlords, and a growing population of industrial workers. Capitalist industry had made big strides (largely by the investment of foreign capital) and railways had been built bringing Russian grain to the outside world. Further development was hindered by the lack of a home market where the industrial products could be sold. Apart from the minority of capitalist farmers and landlords, the rural population (peasants and labourers) were too poor to buy industrial products in large quantities. Discontent was rife among the peasants, and the prolonged industrial depression and consequent unemployment in the towns during the early years of the 20th century provided material for working-class trade union and political organisation. On top of this, the majority of the capitalists were also strongly opposed to the Tsarist regime, because its repressive methods and undemocratic structure were out of keeping with the needs of capitalist industry and commerce .

The Russian Social Democratic Party was divided into two sections which ultimately became separate parties – the “Mensheviks” (a word meaning “minority”) and the “Bolsheviks” (meaning “majority”). The Mensheviks believed that Russia must pass through the normal stage of capitalist development and democratic government. The Bolsheviks urged the need for illegal organisation and activities, and as early as 1905 believed that the conquest of power in Russia might precede and inspire revolution in the advanced countries of Western Europe. Both sections of the Party put forward a programme of reforms as their immediate demand.

The basis of the Bolshevik illegal organisation in the years before 1914 was the three “fundamental” slogans: a democratic republic; expropriation of the landowners; and the eight-hour day. Both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks believed in seeking seats in Parliament and were, in fact, represented in the “Dumas”, which the Tsar called as a promised step towards representative government.

When Russia entered the war in 1914,the Bolsheviks opposed it and voted against war credits. They strongly condemned all of the so-called socialists who supported the war on the one side or the other, and, indeed, they solicited the assistance of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to gain publicity in England for their manifesto protesting against this conduct (see Socialist Standard, March,1915).

After years of defeat at the front, Russia came to the stage where a continuance of the war became impossible. The backward industrial development of the country put it beyond her powers to conduct warfare in conflict with a highly industrialised power like Germany on the enormous scale of the 20th century. Another factor was pro- German influences at the Russian court. The hardships imposed both on the civilian population and on the troops through inadequate transport, defective equipment, scarcity of food, and high prices, together with the inefficiency and corruption of the ruling class, brought about conditions of revolt. There were constant strikes in the large towns, not only for higher wages, but also for peace. There were mutinies of troops at the front. Soldiers brought out against the workers at home openly sided with them. Crowds attacked the houses of Tsarist ministers .

In this situation the Tsar, on March 11th,19l71, ordered the dissolution of the Duma, but the Duma decided to carry on. After the revolt of a number of regiments and a few days of confused fighting in the streets, the Tsar abdicated on March 15th. A Provisional Government was formed by the Liberals and other capitalists’ and landowners’ representatives in the Duma, together with Kerensky, who, as Minister of Justice, was supposed to represent the workers and peasants. At the same time Councils of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers (“soviets”) were being formed. The Provisional Government was monarchist, although convinced that the Tsar must go, and was in favour of continuing the war.

At first the Soviets were largely controlled by delegates hostile to the Bolsheviks, and they gave general support to the openly capitalist Provisional Government. Kerensky, Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government, was vice-president of the Soviet, and was the connecting link between the Soviet and the Committee of the Duma, the two bodies by which the Provisional Government was organised. The Soviet of Workers and Soldiers had, from the first, established the right to hold its sittings in the Hall of the Duma, where the Duma Committee also met.

In May 1917 the government became a coalition, in which the avowedly capitalist parties had a majority. Then in July Kerensky became head of a government containing a majority of so-called socialists and supported by the Soviets. The fact that the Kerensky government had the backing of the Soviets was of decisive importance. Because of that the Bolsheviks were for the time being unable to make headway against the government. The position was entirely changed later on when the Bolsheviks obtained control of the Soviets, but until then the Soviets were used to suppress Bolshevik activities.

For example, in June 1917 the Bolshevik minority called for an armed demonstration of soldiers and workers with the slogan, “Down with the Capitalist Government! Down with the War! All Power to the Soviets!” The counter proclamation appealing to soldiers and workers to abstain was issued jointly by the Peasants’ Soviet., and the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet. The latter appeal was successful and the Bolsheviks called off their demonstration.

It was on the motion of the Mensheviks that a Joint Conference of the two Soviets (July 3rd-5th ) passed a resolution recognising the supreme authority of the Soviet, and denying membership to those who would repudiate or try to overthrow it. Troops called from the front to suppress a Bolshevik armed rising acted with the support of the Soviets. They claimed to be protecting the Government and the Soviets against the Bolshevik minority. Later, when the government had to deal with the revolt of Kornilov and his military supporters it was to the Soviets that Kerensky turned for help. .

During this period, with the war dragging on and with the former hardships aggravated by army officers attempting to seize power, the Bolshevik Party, in spite of persecution by the Kerensky government, was carrying on active propaganda in favour of peace, the giving of the land to the peasants, etc. At first the Bolsheviks had demanded the calling of a democratically-elected Constituent Assembly to decide on the future constitution of Russia. Then in April 1917 they were popularising the slogan “All Power to the Soviets”, although this would have meant at that time power falling into the hands of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who had a majority on the Soviets. In July the Bolsheviks, believing that there was no longer a chance of splitting these groups from the openly capitalist parties abandoned their slogan of “All Power to the Soviets”, only to revive it again two months later. In September they were even prepared to support a Menshevik and Social Revolutionary government responsible to the Soviets on the condition (in the words of Lenin) of “absolute liberty of agitation, and the calling of the Constituent Assembly at the date fixed, or even within a shorter period”. This offer came to nothing.

In the meantime, owing to the general discontent, Bolshevik propaganda made continual headway. The whole political situation was transformed when they managed to get the support of a majority of the Soviet delegates, thus coming into possession of the most representative political machinery of Russia at that time.

On September 9th a Bolshevik was elected President of the Krondstadt Soviet. On October 1st the Moscow Soviet elected a Bolshevik majority. On October 8th Trotsky was elected President of the Petrograd2 Soviet, which, on October 15th, demanded the transfer of all power to the Soviets, and the conclusion of an immediate peace. During October there were seizures of land by the peasants all over Russia. On October 22nd the Petrograd Soviet formed a Military Revolutionary Committee to control the Red guards of soldiers and armed workers. Faced with this new situation the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, on October 23rd, accepted a resolution moved by Lenin in favour of armed insurrection.

The All-Russian Soviet Congress was arranged to meet on November 7th. On that day the Petrograd Soviet (with a Bolshevik majority) declared in favour of the overthrow of the Provisional Government. At the All Russian Soviet Congress there were 670 delegates, of whom 390 (a clear majority) were Bolsheviks and 179 were Left Social Revolutionaries who in the main supported the Bolsheviks. The Congress passed resolutions moved by Lenin in favour of peace, the abolition of the right of landowners to possession of the land, and the setting up of a “temporary” workers and peasants government pending the summoning of a Constituent Assembly. The Congress approved the “victorious insurrection of the workers and the garrison of Petrograd” and declared that “the Congress takes all power into its hands". On November 9th a victorious rising took place in Moscow, inspired by the events in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks, within a comparatively short space of time, consolidated their position, based upon the support of majorities in the Soviets.

The significance of these episodes of Russian history in 1917 is the one Marx so constantly stressed, viz., the need to gain control of the political machinery. The Bolsheviks were enabled to do this through controlling the Soviets. The Duma, elected on a limited franchise, which excluded most of the workers and peasants, was less representative and less popular than the Soviets, and had accordingly fallen into the background soon after the overthrow of the Tsar.

Trotsky has brought out the point well in his Lessons of October3 Writing of the struggle during 1917 between the Bolshevik minority and the Kerensky government, he said:

“The struggle between us and the compromisers centred round the constitutional position of the Soviets. In the minds of the people the Soviets were the source of all power. Kerensky, Tseretelli, and Skobelev came from the Soviets. But we, too, were closely connected with the Soviets, for our cry was ‘All Power to the Soviets’. The Bourgeoisie considered that they inherited their rights from the State Duma. The compromisers inherited theirs from the Soviets, and so did we; but they wanted to get rid of the Soviets, and we wanted to transfer all power to the Soviets. The compromisers could not yet break the Soviets, and so they tried to make a bridge, as quickly as they could, from them to a parliamentary system. And this was why they convened the Democratic Conference and created the Preliminary Parliament . . .

“But it was our interest, too, to take advantage of the constitutional position of the Soviets. At the end of the Democratic Conference we forced the compromisers to agree to convene the Second Congress of Soviets. Convening the Congress embarrassed them very much; they could not oppose it, because then they would have given up the constitutional position of the Soviets; and yet they could not help seeing that this Congress – on account of the way it was composed – promised them very little good.

“...It was one thing to make an armed insurrection under the mere cry of seizing power for the party, and quite another thing to prepare an insurrection – and carry it out – under the cry of protecting the rights of the Congress of Soviets” (pp. 63-4, emphasis added).

With regard to the peculiar position of Russia, a backward country overwhelmed by the strain of the war, Trotsky said:

“The first necessity was an army that did not want to fight. The whole course of the revolution would have been changed, if at the moment of the revolution there had not been a broken and discontented peasant army of many millions, and this applies specially to the period from February to October . . . It is only because of this that the experiment with the Petrograd garrison was successful; and that experiment determined the October victory” (pp. 67-8. Note that Trotsky is using the old Russian calendar; the “October Revolution” actually took Place in November according to the modern calendar).

The “experiment” referred to by Trotsky was a decision of the Petrograd Soviet in October opposing the removal from Petrograd of troops garrisoned there. This was , said Trotsky, “really an armed insurrection . . .armed though bloodless . . . an insurrection of the Petrograd regiment against the provisional government . . . under the cry of defending and protecting the Second Congress of Soviets” (p.61).

Trotsky described this as an “almost constitutional insurrection”:

“We call this insurrection ‘constitutional’ because it grew from the ‘normal’ relations of the existing division of power. It happened more than once, even when the compromisers were in power, in the Petrograd Soviet, that the Soviet examined or amended decisions of the government. This was, as it were, part of the constitution under the regime named after Kerensky. When we Bolshevists got the upper hand in the Petrograd Soviet we only went on with the system of double power and widened its application. We took it on ourselves to revise the order sending the troops to the front, and so we disguised the actual fact of the insurrection of the Petrograd garrison under the tradition and precedents and technique of the constitutional duplication of authority” (p.62).

It only remains to add that when the Constituent Assembly met on January 5th,1918, a body which the Bolsheviks had themselves demanded, they promptly dissolved it on finding that a majority of its delegates were opposed to them.

THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP

The Mensheviks argued that a premature attempt to set up Socialism in Russia would fail and lead to privation and hardship for the working class. Although the Bolsheviks did not set out to realise Socialism immediately, the outbreak of the Civil War forced them in a direction which they thought was the immediate establishment of Socialism. So it is worth having a look at the first few years of Bolshevik rule to see how the Marxian theory of social development was confirmed.

Soon after gaining control of political power the Bolsheviks agreed to share it with their new allies, the Left Social Revolutionaries. This coalition lasted until the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. The Left Social Revolutionaries – and many Bolsheviks – opposed the treaty as a sell-out to Germany. Lenin argued that it was necessary in order to gain time, an argument he was to have to use many, many times later to explain why practice diverged from theory. .

One of the slogans raised by all the Russian revolutionaries was for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly. The Provisional Government had fixed the date of the elections. to this Assembly for November 1917. They took place on time, under the Bolshevik-Left Social Revolutionary government. The results for the 707 seats (that were still part of Russia) gave a majority to the Social Revolutionary Party with 410 seats; the Bolsheviks got 175; the Kadets (Constitutional Democrats, or liberals) 17 and the Mensheviks 16. The Bolsheviks were thus clearly in a minority. When they dissolved the Assembly in January 1918 they gave various excuses, notably that the Social Revolutionaries had split after the list of candidates had been drawn up. A more powerful argument was that they had a majority in the industrial centres and that to hand over power to the country-dominated Assembly would be to hold back the anti-Tsarist, anti-landlord revolution.

Soon after winning power the Bolsheviks had to face a Civil War with the forces of counter revolution, aided by the Allied Forces of Japan, France, Britain and the United States. To deal with counter-revolutionaries within the territory they controlled the Bolshevik-Left Social Revolutionary government set up in December 1917 the Cheka (to become in February 1922 the GPU, the forerunner of Stalin's secret police). Capitalists, landlords, Kadets and Right Social Revolutionaries were the first to be dealt with. Although the Mensheviks (or most of them) and the Left Social Revolutionaries supported the Bolsheviks in the Civil War, they too were subject to restrictions. Both maintained a semi-legal existence til11921,participating in trade union and Soviet meetings, when their leaders, including Martov, were “allowed” to go into exile.

At the same time as the opposition parties were done away with, the Bolshevik leaders took steps to curb opposition within the ranks of their own party. Since 1918 there had been a Left Opposition, opposed to Lenin's compromises, which had assumed various forms. What presented a particular threat in 1920-1 was the Workers Opposition which put forward demands mainly of a syndicalist nature. The 10th Congress of the Bolshevik Party which met in March 1921 – at the time of the Krondstadt affair – passed a resolution banning “fractionalism”, that is, organised opposition to party policy; opponents could still express their views but they were not to join together to try to change the Party's policy. The first man to be expelled under the new rules was one, Miasnikov, who had advocated freedom of the press for everybody, including Kadets. Miasnikov, incidentally, was one of the first Bolsheviks, or ex-Bolsheviks, to see that Russia was heading not for Socialism but for state capitalism. He later ended up in a concentration camp.

Krondstadt was a naval base outside Petrograd. Traditionally revolutionary, it set itself up as an independent Soviet republic in 1921,as it had done earlier under the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks were made of sterner stuff than Kerensky, and the Krondstadt Soviet was ruthlessly crushed.

Russia, as we saw, was basically an agrarian country. In 1917 some 80 per cent of the population was engaged in agriculture. So the Bolsheviks had to give some priority to settling the land question. One of their first decrees was that on Land. This abolished the rights of the landlords and rubber-stamped the peasants’ seizures of land that were going on. The land of the landowners was divided up amongst the peasants – more or less in line with the Social Revolutionaries' programme, as opposed to the Bolshevik’s pre-war programme of nationalisation and State farms – so that the predominant form of agriculture became the peasant and his family working his own land with perhaps one horse. Peasant proprietorship, in other words, became dominant. The Bolsheviks, who had some understanding of history, knew that this was the decisive stage in the revolution: Having got their land would the peasants be prepared to go any further? Before this question could be answered the Civil War broke out. To feed the towns, the Bolsheviks organised parties to go and take grain from the peasants. As part of this policy they set the poor, almost landless peasants, against the rich peasants, or kulaks. When, however, the war was almost over in 1921 the Bolsheviks had to back down-. To encourage agricultural production, they allowed the peasantry free trade and security of tenure.

Lenin had always been an admirer of the way the German war-machine had organised industry. He knew full well that Socialism was out of the question in Russia in 1917. As an immediate measure once the Bolsheviks had gained power, he advocated State capitalism on German lines. By which he meant that capitalist-owned industry should be controlled by the State. A few attempts were made by the Bolsheviks to reach agreement on this with the capitalists but the Civil War forced them into an extreme position. Industry was nationalised without compensation. So were the banks.

The Bolsheviks also faced the problem of re-imposing industrial discipline which had broken down under the Provisional Government, not without the encouragement of the Bolsheviks. They had supported the anarcho-syndicalist slogan of “workers control” and had urged the workers to take over and run the factories where they worked. Once in power themselves they took a different view and did their best to replace “workers control” by State control; they went even further and tried to impose “one-man management” Even the Bolshevik-dominated trade unions protested at this. During the Civil War the working class was subject to military discipline: labour books were introduced for all workers in 1919, and “labour desertion” became an offence. Some debate went on in the Bolshevik party over the relations of the unions to the State. All the participants were agreed on one point: that the role of the unions was different in a State run by a “socialist” party than under capitalism; they should strive for labour discipline and higher productivity. Only the Mensheviks and anarchists challenged this view. The Mensheviks, who refused to recognise the rule of the Bolsheviks as that of the working class, said that as the revolution was, and could only be, a bourgeois one the unions should keep their traditional role and independence of the State.

The period from 1918 to 1921 is known as “war communism”. It is clear that if it had not been for the Civil War the Bolsheviks would have acted in 1918 as they did after the introduction of the “New Economic Policy” in 1921. In any event, they seemed to have believed that the course on which the Civil War forced them was towards the immediate realisation of Socialism, as both Lenin and Zinoviev later admitted. For instance, during this period there was a galloping inflation so that money was little used and workers were paid in kind. This, the Bolsheviks theoreticians argued, was a prelude to an eventual moneyless society. Some went so far as to welcome the inflation as the beginning of the end of money, so what did it matter if the rouble was worthless!

The end of the Civil War soon brought the Bolshevik government face to face with social reality, and a halt was called to these policies. Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy and returned to the theme of State capitalism. The changes which NEP involved were far-reaching :

• The nationalised industries ceased to be run as government departments and were told to fend for themselves as independent concerns on strict commercial-accounting principles, aiming to make a profit.
• Some of the smaller nationalised industries were handed back to their former owners or to co-operatives .
• The peasants were, as we saw, given the right to sell their surpluses.
• Steps were taken to balance the budget and get a stable currency based on gold. The State Bank (Gosbank) set up in November 1921 pursued a conservative financial policy.
• A State loan was floated in 1922.

In other words, the Bolshevik government was trying to establish the political, economic and financial conditions in which capitalist industry could flourish. The larger industries were state capitalist trusts; the smaller industries and agriculture were in private hands; commerce in the lands of co-operatives and licensed (and unlicensed) private traders known as nepmen. By now, many Bolsheviks were becoming disillusioned (including, it can be argued, Lenin himself). Opposition groups appeared denouncing the growing state capitalism and the emergence of a new privileged bureaucracy.

At this time the Bolsheviks never claimed that the nationalised industries were examples of Socialism. As people with at least some understanding of Marxism they knew that Socialism was a complete system of society and that bits of it could not exist inside capitalism. Where they did use “socialist” they meant it in a political sense: that the party of the working class controlled political power. But this of course was not true either. While it is true that in order to abolish capitalism the working class must organise itself into a political party, in no sense was the Bolshevik party the working class of Russia organised for Socialism. They only claimed to be the vanguard of the working class and, according to Trotsky, only had 240,000 members at the time they came to power. It is true again that many of the members of the Bolshevik Party were well-versed in the literature of Marxism and knew what socialism meant. But this was true also of the Social Democratic parties of the rest of Europe and was not sufficient to make them the working class organised for Socialism. The Bolsheviks sought, and got, the support for their seizure of power not on a Socialist programme. As we saw, they also did have a reform programme, and those who supported them in November 1917 did not really want or understand Socialism; what had attracted them were the various slogans the Bolsheviks had advanced, such as “All Power to the Soviets!”, “Peace, Bread and Land!” and “Workers Control!”.

When they realised that they were wrong in having believed the world socialist revolution to have been imminent in 1917, the Bolsheviks saw their task as to develop large-scale production at the expense of petty industry and especially petty agriculture. Thus did material circumstances – the low level of the unproductive forces in Russia – force the Bolshevik government to take the only course open to them: to develop capitalism in Russia. That this took the form of state capitalism is to be explained by the ruthless determination of the Bolsheviks to hold on to power, come what may. This determination did ensure that the emerging private capitalist class in Russia (nepmen, kulaks and wealthy bondholders) never became strong enough, as at one time seemed possible, to oust the Bolshevik government, but at the expense of the leaders of the Bolshevik party and government gradually evolving into a new privileged class, monopolising the means of production and exploiting the working class.

Endnotes:

1 Dates according to the modern Western calendar not adopted in Russia till February 1918. The calendar in usebefore then was 13 days behind, a neat illustration of the backwardness of Tsarist Russia.

2 Formerly St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, then capital of Russia.

3 The quotations that follow are from the 1925 translation published by the Labour Publishing Co. A second translation was published in America in 1937.

Further Reading

The authoritative scholarly historical work on this period is E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik

Revolution 1917-1923.

The Russian Revolution

Joel Carmichael, A Short History of the Russian Revolution.

P. Sorokin, Leaves from a Russian Diary (Kerensky’s secretary).

N. N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917. “A Personal Record”.

L. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution.

L. Trotsky, Lessons of October 1917.

An Illustrated History of the Russian Revolution (Martin Lawrence, 1928).

The First Years of the Bolshevik Dictatorship

M. Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers Control.

A. Ciliga, The Russian Enigma.

D. and G. Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism. The Left-Wing Alternative (Part IV). K. Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

A. Kollontai, The Workers Opposition.

V. I. Lenin, Last Letters and Articles.

J. Martov, The State and the Socialist Revolution. I. Mett, The Krondstadt Commune.

Colonialist Canada

Canada is now a superpower in the African mining sector. According to the Ministry of Natural Resources Canada , only the Republic of South Africa, with over 35% of assets and investments, is just ahead of Canada in the African mining industry. But with South Africa’s assets concentrated on its own territory, Canada dominates the rest of the continent. In 2001, Canadian companies have operations in 35 countries. 91% of Canadian investments were concentrated in eight countries, with the order of countries’ importance being the following: South Africa (25.6%), DR Congo (17.8%), Madagascar (13.8%), Zambia (9.9%), Tanzania (9.5%), Ghana (6.5%), Burkina Faso (4.7%) and Mauritania (3%). Africa represented 11% of Canada’s US$25.8 billion in cumulative mining assets in 2001, a proportion which had risen to 17% of the total $85.9 billion in the same assets by 2007.

Canadian diplomacy is very much at the service of business interests . In this regard, the country at times pursues objectives seemingly at odds with its development agenda, some examples of which include:

-In 1996, the Canadian High Commissioner in Tanzania intervened on several occasions to influence revisions to mining legislation as a means of promoting Canadian business interests. And, specifically, in order to counter the legal claims of local miners questioning the legitimacy of the mining company Sutton and designs on Bulyanhulu deposits

- In June 2008, the staff of the very same High Commission energetically intervened in Tanzanian parliamentary affairs to ensure that the country’s politicians rejected the conclusions of the Presidential Mining Sector Review Committee on revisions of the mining sector. The Committee had recommended a greater proportion of profits generated by higher prices be kept for the
country itself

- In 2004, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations had criticized a part of a report produced by the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources in the DR Congo, in which nine Canadian companies were accused of violating OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) guidelines during the country’s protracted war.

Canada’s image as a moderate country and disinterested development partner in Africa is now thoroughly outdated.

Canada's Inequality

"This is the first generation in a long time that doesn't think its children will be better off..." declared economist Hugh Mackenzie, a Toronto CCPA research associate.

The median earnings of full-time Canadian workers increased by just $53 annually -- that's right, $53 annually -- between 1980 and 2005. This 25-year income stagnation contrasts dramatically with the 16.4 per cent income gain posted by the richest Canadians and amplifies the shocking 20.6 per cent income drop afflicting the poorest.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' 2007 Growing Gap project found "greater inequality isn't just a statistic...The income gap is being driven by the extreme gains the market is delivering to the richest among us -- and the richer they are the richer they are becoming. The share of total earnings going to the richest 10 per cent of families soared from 23 per cent in the late 1970s to almost 30 per cent in 2004."

More Canadians earn minimum wages, 4.7 per cent in 2000 rose to 5.2 per cent in 2008
In June 2009 Food Banks Canada reported a 20-per cent increase in the number turning to food banks each month.

Canadians with low-incomes have the highest mortality rates, the lowest life expectancy rates and the highest rates of hospitalization. 43 per cent of children from low-income families have some kind of psychiatric, schooling or social problem. One-in-seven Canadian children live in poverty. In Canada there is more inequality and poverty than most OECD countries. Canada ranked 15th out of 17 countries for working age poverty. SOYMB

Food For Thought

India’s ‘economic miracle’ has meant some improvement in the living standards of some sectors of the population. However, there are still 475 million living on less than $1.25 a day, or one in three people in the world living without basic necessities are Indian. Initiative at Oxford University puts the Indian poverty rate at 55% or 645 million. (Toronto Star 2/Oct/2010)

Not to worry, there is a game plan – soccer tournaments to keep the youth’s minds off rebellion. Apparently, Maoist guerrilla activity is prevalent with bombings and sabotaged roads. “When young men are idle, they get destructive thoughts in their minds. When you are loving a sport, you don’t have time to think about bad things.” Said a district officer in charge of education. (Toronto Star, 2/10/2010) Presumably bad things like living on $1.25 a day!).

Can a T-shirt save a country? Asks the Toronto Star (17/10/2010). The Haitian garment industry needs rebuilding but suffers from poverty-level wages (funny, I thought it was the worker that suffered from low wages!), an unreliable electric supply, and cut-throat competition. Remuneration for slaving for a day is now 150 gourdes (up from 125), or about $3.15 which will get you 3 cups of beans OR 5 cups of rice OR 6 tins of charcoal OR 3 bottles of Prestige beer OR 20 cell phone minutes OR ¾ of a gallon of gasoline OR 12 mangoes!

Behind the euphoria of the rescue of 33 Chilean miners lurk some disturbing details – across the globe, some 13 million of the world’s poorest people, including one million children, work in mining. “IN addition to the explosions, falling rock and entrapments that have killed thousands of people in recent years, miners experience among the highest rates of work-related illness and premature death of any industry.” (Toronto Star, 17/10/2010).The above is no mirage, it’s capitalist reality and the only reason is the profit motive to put more money in the pockets of people who cannot spend what they already have!

On the environmental front, the New York Times reports (24/10/2010) That the cradle of civilization, the fertile crescent is experiencing a drought (no pun intended) of biblical proportions. Climate scientists report that a four-year drought has turned much of it into barren land, ancient irrigation systems have collapsed, underground water sources have run dry and hundreds of villages have been abandoned. In Syria and Iraq, millions have been driven into poverty.

On the positive side, Syncrude has been fined $3 million (probably about two hours’ profit) for allowing those 1,600 birds to land and die in their tailing pond in 2008. The bad news is it just happened again. One radio wag reported that a syncrude spokesman said ” Not to worry, the ponds are not damaged!”Just to set your mind at rest, environmentally speaking, Matthew E. Khan in his book, “How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future” assures us that, “It was the capitalist machine that created the greenhouse gas epidemic and it will be capitalism that solves the problems; it’s the nature of the system. Whether it’s twitter(? My reaction) or solar panels, or the Tesla electric vehicle, the innovative capitalist culture will allow us to make a Houdini-style escape from climate change’s most devastating impacts.” (Toronto Star, 10/10/2010). Wow, that feels better already!

The Futility of Reform – French workers protested in Paris and around the country with the main focus being to stop government reform of pensions, increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62. French unions see retirement at 60 ‘as a firmly entrenched right in a country attached to generous state benefits’. (Toronto Star 3/10/10). France, like many countries is having to enforce cut backs to pay for its expenditures and avoid going deeper into debt. Guess who is going to win? Reforms take years to acquire and a second to take away.

The Toronto Star revealed (2/10/10) that the United States, with the full knowledge of the Guatemalan government, deliberately infected citizens of that country with syphilis by getting prison inmates to sleep with prostitutes who had been infected between 1946 and 1948. In addition, mentally ill patients were inoculated with the bacteria. None of those in the experiments gave consent. This was revealed by medical historian, Susan Reverby, who had earlier blown the whistle on similar experiments in Alabama on poor African-American men. Forty such studies were identified. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what your country can do TO you!

Apparently, Pope benedict has been on the attack against atheists, possibly to cover up the widening abuse scandals that continue to pop up everywhere the priests have been. (Gwyn Dyer in EMC newspaper 30/09/10). Benedict juxtaposes god, religion and virtue on the one side and nazis, communists and atheists on the other. Only the fear of god makes people act morally. But is that so? Researcher Gregory Paul says, “In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator coordinate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, venereal disease, teen pregnancy, and abortion. According to Benedict’s logic, the United States should be a crime free paradise and Sweden a vortex of crime and violence. Obviously, the opposite is true. Dwyer asks if people are more religious in low socio economic countries where crime is more prevalent, so the correlation might better be expressed as religion and poverty and ignorance, where religion has its strongest grip. Raise that bottom level and religious belief will gradually decline. Sounds like our argument.

The penny drops? In the midst of swirling anger with politicians in the US, the New York Times (17/110/10) reports the words of a retired soldier, “I don’t see us coming out of this recession any time soon, not for those of us who are middle class and below. I don’t even think there is a middle class anymore. It’s a two class system, and the gap between the classes is getting wider.” Let’s hope a few more pennies drop!