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Volume 3, No. 121, November 8, 2007

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Volume 3, No. 121, November 8, 2007 An injury to one is an injury to all Volume 3 No. 121 8 November 2007 S& WoORlKiEdRS’a LIBrERiTtY y 30p/80p British, migrant, white, black: WORKERS, UNITE! BY GERRY BATES RITISH jobs for British workers”. A UK Independence Party slogan? British National Party? National Front? Right now it comes from Labour prime minister Gordon Brown. “BAt the TUC conference in September, Brown talked about “British workers”, “British jobs” and “British living standards” (don’t mention the 2% public sector pay limit...) with such unashamed nationalism that even a few union general secretaries felt compelled to rebuke him. Now he has upped the ante. At the end of last month, after the Government admitted that it had underestimated the number of migrant workers in Britain by hundreds of thousands, Brown tried to fight back with a straightfor- ward appeal to xenophobic bigotry. “British jobs for British workers”, a slogan used by the BNP in the 1980s and the NF in the 1970s, became an official part of Government policy. Continued on page 2 Don’t let Brown and the Tories divide us 2 NEWS World credit spiral hits nemesis BY MARTIN THOMAS in Capital volume 3: purest and most colossal form of gambling ratio of global financial assets to annual The credit system appears as the main lever and swindling... world output rose from 109% in 1980 to 316% OU can expect”, writes US econ- of over-production and over-speculation in The recent background is a strategic choice in 2005 (and 405% in the USA). omist Nouriel Roubini, “that the commerce solely because the reproduction made by world capital in the late 1970s and The processes are more complicated and ongoing credit crunch will get process, which is elastic by nature, is here early 1980s. We explained in Solidarity 3/118: opaque — and have become still more “Y forced to its extreme limits, and is so forced As a reaction to the crises of the 1930s, up complicated and opaque in recent years. A much worse in the year ahead and its fallout will spread from the US to Europe and because a large part of the social capital is to the 1970s credit and banking was quite new sort of bit of paper, called “credit deriva- throughout Asia and the globe. Trillions of employed by people who do not own it and closely regulated in the big capitalist tives”, has expanded from zero ten years ago dollars of securitised assets that were sliced who consequently tackle things quite differ- economies. That was the era of “managed to $26 trillion today. and diced in the long food chain of securitisa- ently than the owner, who anxiously weighs capitalism”, the era when social-democrats The mortgage lenders do not just hold on to tion are now at some risk. The first crisis of the limitations of his private capital in so far smugly imagined that capitalism was becom- your mortgage agreement and wait for your financial globalisation and securitisation is as he handles it himself... ing more and more “socialistic” every year. repayments. They convert a bundle of mort- only at its beginning stage”. The self-expansion of capital based on the The crises of the 1970s produced the oppo- gage agreements into a “financial asset” and At one end — the starting end of this crisis contradictory nature of capitalist production site reaction to those of the 1930s. Economies sell it on, thus getting their cash quicker. — two million poorer US households are permits an actual free development only up to were deregulated and privatised — initially, This is the world, as journalist Martin Wolf likely to lose their homes in the coming a certain point, so that in fact it constitutes an mostly, as a ploy to meet more intense global puts it, of the “clever intermediaries, who months because, with interest rates higher and immanent fetter and barrier to production, competition and to turn the blade of that persuaded [some people] to borrow what they credit tighter, they can no longer meet the which are continually broken through by the competition against the working class. could not afford, and [others] to invest in payments on their mortgages. credit system. Those measures “worked”, as slicker credit what they did not understand”. (Solidarity At another end, the bosses of Merrill Lynch Hence, the credit system accelerates the set-up generally does for capital, to make the 3/118). and Citigroup have lost their jobs (though material development of the productive forces system more flexible and agile. But they also And who — and this is what matters for they, unlike the people losing their homes, get and the establishment of the world-market. It store up vast instabilities. them — collect fat fees from the process. As a huge pay-offs). Their companies have had to is the historical mission of the capitalist Financial crises like those of 1987, 1991-2, result, nobody knows today how much of the “write down” billions — admit that a lot of system of production to raise these material 1997, and 2001 made many experts demand financial paper that financiers are holding is the financial paper they are holding is worth foundations of the new mode of production to re-regulation. But by then there were vast worthless, and where the worthless paper is. only a fraction of what they had previously a certain degree of perfection. At the same vested interests tied to deregulation, and vast As a further result, the whole credit system valued it at. And the Government is still pour- time credit accelerates the violent eruptions of amounts of brain and computer power being tends to seize up. ing billions into a big hole in Northern Rock's this contradiction — crises — and thereby the put by high finance into getting round what Pundits started talking about capital having finances. elements of disintegration of the old mode of regulations did exist. miraculously developed a “Goldilocks econ- According to Roubini, and many others, production. The rich do a lot more trading of bits of omy” just after the 1991-2 crisis. Wrong, that process of “writing down” has a long way The credit system... develops the incentive of paper representing (ultimately) entitlements to wrong, wrong! to go yet. capitalist production, enrichment through future profits or interest payments than they Karl Marx identified the core paradox here exploitation of the labour of others, to the used to, and they do it more globally. The Workers Rally against BNP invite! unite! BY MIKE ROWLEY, RUSKIN COLLEGE, Under normal circumstances socialists are From front page for the fullest freedom of speech — censor- The Queen’s Speech (6 November) OXFORD ship is inimical to the workers’ movement. announced a new “points system” for And we do not favour laws or government migrants from outside the European Union. HE “Oxford Union Society” — a debat- decrees to ban even fascists. But the Oxford This means that people with wealth, or ing society which was once the stamp- Union’s invite raises other issues. advanced qualifications of the sort more Ting ground of Tony Benn, Michael Foot Firstly, fascists use any opportunity to speak easily gained by those from a well-off family and Paul Foot, but now populated by upper- as part of their ongoing campaign to violently background, get in. The less well-off are class adolescent morons whose idea of a high- smash the workers’ movement and all progres- kept out. There will be a compulsory English profile speaker is the model Jordan — has sive organisations, along with freedom of test. You will be tested if you come from organised a “free speech debate” on Monday speech itself. Colombia or India, but not if you come from 26 November. The people whom they have Secondly, when fascists are allowed to France or Sweden. This has rightly been invited to speak in favour of “freedom of disseminate their propaganda the level of dubbed “lace curtain racism”. (It also comes speech” are Britain’s two best-known neo- racist and homophobic incidents, including at a time when the Government is cutting Nazis: Nick Griffin, leader of the British violent ones, always rises, and the fascists English as a Second Language provision.) National Party, and David Irving, the “histo- themselves often commit acts of violence. The left must condemn Brown’s appeal to rian” and convicted Holocaust denier. The last time fascists spoke at a university, in bigotry. But it is also important to grasp New Such a “debate” would be more of a fascist Manchester, the Student Union Equalities Labour’s lying and hypocrisy. rally than an argument for genuine freedom of Officer and several visibly Muslim students As a party which serves the British capi- speech. Its organisers seem to see it as an were physically assaulted. talist class, New Labour wants more migrant entertaining freak-show that might attract The BNP must not be allowed to get a labour in Britain — skilled and unskilled. them a bit of publicity. foothold in our colleges. That is why most new jobs created here The BNP, which is currently trying to estab- Thankfully there is a general determination since 1997 have gone to migrant workers. lish a presence in colleges across the country, to stop Griffin and Irving speaking here. An “British jobs for British workers” is dema- gogy. It would be illegal under EU law, as is of course delighted. We are not, of course, organising meeting on Monday was supported Nick Griffin overly concerned that any of the audience will by Oxford University Students’ Union, the the Tories and others have pointed out, and be converted by Griffin and Irving’s absurd university Jewish and Islamic Societies, the anyway impossible to implement without and hateful rhetoric; but they will use the university Labour Club, Oxford and District organisations, councillors and even Andrew reverting to a siege economy.
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