An injury to one is an injury to all Volume 3 No. 124 10 January 2008 S& WoORlKiEdRS’a LIBrERiTtY y 30p/80p Since 2005 the Unite union in New Zealand has run a “Super Size My Pay” campaign focussing on fast food and coffee shop workers. Starbucks workers have gone on strike. Unite has won wage increases for young workers. An organiser from Unite will be touring the UK in February to tell us how they did it. More, page 3. How young workers can organise NZ unionist’s tour will tell how it’s done turn to page 3 2 NEWS US: pick-the-millionaire time BY SACHA ISMAIL like the 44 million Americans with no health insurance, let alone tackling the deep and grow- UNDREDS and even thousands of ing inequalities of US society. enthusiastic supporters have turned out In any case, even genuinely left-wing Hat rallies and actions for the various Democrats like Jesse Jackson and, today, candidates in the “primary” elections currently primary candidate Dennis Kucinich, are underway to select the two main parties’ candi- supporters of a bourgeois political party that is dates for the November 2008 US presidential an essential part of the machinery through election. It is a striking contrast with the now which the US ruling class maintains its political almost universal apathy surrounding elections in power. Socialists cannot support any the UK: even if Gordon Brown had allowed a Democratic candidate, because doing so means contest for the Labour leadership, can you imag- giving up on the task of building an independent ine crowds of thousands turning out to support voice for the US working class. him? In the primaries, the US unions have func- The reality behind the crowd scenes in the tioned as clients of the various Democratic US is, however, far from democratic. In place of candidates (the public sector union SEIU, for the kind of membership-controlled, more-or-less instance, supports Edwards, while the local democratic, class-based party that the Labour government union AFSCME supports Clinton Party (to a certain extent) used to be, both and the firefighters’ union supported Conneticut Republicans and Democrats are not only almost senator Chris Dodd). In November, they will all identical in policy terms, but function as politi- line up behind whoever the Democrats eventu- ally select, but the relationship will be essen- cal cartels through which different factions of Barack Obama the American ruling class manipulate the public. tially the same. What is needed, above all, is for (Even Britain’s bourgeois parties are more instance, Clinton’s most senior adviser is Mark pushing the same agenda for the same compa- a significant section of the labour movement to democratic in how they function.) Through Penn, a corporate PR man whose clients have nies. There’s no difference.” break with the Democrats and client-patron these two parties, public funding of them and included Shell, the Argentine junta and Union Although he is to the left of Obama and politics, and to establish a democratic party of the primary system, the state and big business Carbide in the wake of the thousands of deaths Clinton, however, Edwards is clearly part of the its own. are strikingly intertwined. its negligence caused in Bhopal in India. same corporate elite. Contrary to myth, there have been many proj- The degree of control from below exercised There has also been a certain amount of fuss His working-class background (his father was ects for workers’ representation in the United in the primaries is almost zero: this is a process about John Edwards, the former North Carolina a millworker and his mother a postalworker) is, States – from Henry George’s trade union-spon- in which an atomised electorate picks from a list senator who was John Kerry’s vice-presidential of course, irrelevant here, except in so far as it sored campaign for mayor of New York in of millionaires whom corporate funding has candidate in 2004. Edwards finished second in brings into relief the platinum-spoon upbring- 1886, which Engels hailed despite its inadequate allowed to get a hearing in the corporate media. the Iowa caucuses (the first primary of 2008), ings of most US politicians. Edwards is himself programme as a step towards working-class This is true of both parties. In the case of the beating Clinton into third place with populist a millionaire, a former corporate lawyer who, in political independence, to the Farmer-Labour Republicans, it goes without saying; in the case rhetoric about ending poverty and reclaiming addition to notoriously spending $400 on a hair- Parties of the 1920s and the political discussions of the Democrats, it should go without saying, American democracy from control by the cut, earns many hundreds of thousands consult- in the new industrial unions of the 1930s. All but doesn’t, due to the demagogic, populist rhet- corporations. In terms of his critique, Edwards ing for companies, including private equity firm these initiatives remained in embryo or died oric through which sections of the party main- is willing to be quite radical: Fortress Investment. In 2006, the latter paid him quickly, in part due to the inadequate (or in the tain their support from the US unions. “I have seen the seamy underbelly of what $479,000 as a consultant; in 2007, the press case of the 30s, treacherous, Stalinist) politics of The British liberal press has made a big fuss happens in Washington every day. If you’re reported that it owned part of a company the socialists involved, but they show there is about how the Democrats’ candidate for presi- Exxon Mobil and you want to influence what’s responsible for preying on poor home owners, nothing “exceptional” about the US. dent will almost certainly be black (Barack happening with the government, you go and including by foreclosing on the homes of many Nor is this just ancient history. In 1996, an Obama) or a woman (Hillary Clinton); but hire one of these big lobbying firms. This is Hurricane Katrina victims. Edwards divested independent Labor Party with over two million neither represents even the kind of “rainbow what you find. About half the lobbyists are and spent a lot of his own money to create a affiliated trade unionists was established, but it coalition”, left-populist politics which fuelled Republicans, and about half the lobbyists are fund for those who had lost their homes, but the failed to break completely with the Democrats Jesse Jackson’s insurgency in the 1984 Democrats. If the Republicans are in power, the contrast is instructive. and eventually withered. Reviving such initia- Democratic primaries. The corporate connec- Republican lobbyists take the lead, passing the Unsurprisingly, then, Edwards’ policies are a tives is the key task for socialists, and all those tions and unambiguously pro-corporate politics money around. If the Democrats are in power, left-leaning version of the standard Democratic who want to see something more like real of both Obama and Clinton are well known: for the Democratic lobbyists take the lead. They’re fare. They go nowhere near solving problems democracy in the US. Labour and Tories race to attack benefits BY DAVID BRODER Gordon Brown told viewers of the BBC’s just a half-hearted imitation of their own idea could be better spent on strengthening the insti- Andrew Marr Show that New Labour’s plans to that what people on incapacity benefit really tution of marriage. AVID Cameron has launched a fresh get people to work were “far more revolution- need is not benefits but… training. But it is not our only argument that benefit offensive against single parents, unem- ary” than the Tories’ suggestions. “Today the Indeed, this row serves as part of a gener- claimants really are unable to work, or that Dployed and disabled people with plans issue is people don’t have the skills, even when alised attempt to undermine the welfare state. maybe they don’t much like living on a to force them into work. The Tory leader’s there are 600,000 vacancies in the economy… The Tories have also proposed compulsory pittance. We also contest the idea of compul- proposals include making the unemployed the next stage is not what the Conservatives are (privately or voluntary-sector organised) sory employment, when most of the jobs out participate in “community work”, penalties for talking about but giving people the skills to get “community work” projects for those on JSA there are alienating, tedious and badly paid — those who turn down “reasonable” job offers into work.” for two years and removing JSA for up to three why should anyone have to do a demoralising and cutting the number of people receiving Rather than presenting the Tories’ plans to years for those who turn down three job offers. job where they get bossed around for £5.50 an incapacity benefit by 600,000 over the next five slash incapacity benefit by billions of pounds as The bourgeois parties’ “welfare into work” hour? We oppose any plans which make bene- years. an outrageous attack on the ill and disabled, agenda is a thinly veiled attack on the disabled, fits dependent on claimants’ willingness to At the heart of the Tories’ plans is a vast New Labour claim that the Tories’ plans are are scapegoating them for ‘wasting money’ that work. overhaul of the incapacity benefit system, which caters for 2.6 million ill and disabled people, most of whom suffer from either mental disorders or musculo-skeletal diseases. Further curbs on freedom of assembly Writing for the News of the World, David Cameron claimed that “I don’t believe that BY REUBEN GREEN Gordon Brown wants to “harmonise” punch of the complex and confusing array there are nearly half a million young people in police powers to control marches and of arrestable laws.