Solidarity 227, 1 December 2011

Eurozone on the brink

“The eurozone has ten days at most”, wrote Wolfgang Münchau, the sober, economically-orthodox commentator on European economics for the Financial Times, on 28 November. “Unless something very drastic happens, the eurozone could break up very soon”. Already, he says, with the rise in the interest rates that governments have to offer to sell bonds [IOUs repayable after a fixed period of years], and the banks finding it increasingly difficult to raise funds, “important parts of the eurozone economy are cut off from credit”. The European Summit deal of 27 October was no good. It was supposed to...

Next steps after 30 November

The immediate impact of the mass public sector strike on 30 November was to demonstrate the potential social power of the working class to a generation of workers who had not experienced it before. It gave a glimpse of the mass labour movement as a vital social force. But if the strike is to play a role in actually defeating the government, rank-and-file trade unionists need to fight for a different strategy from the one on offer from their leaders. In meetings and conversations on 30 November, strikers were clear that one day is not enough, and that they want further action and a faster-paced...

The failings of fiat money

By Martin Thomas I think Barry Finger ( Solidarity 226) exaggerates “the democratic openings made possible by fiat money”. True, the current crisis reveals states held in hock to banks and other financial institutions permanently holding vast stocks of government IOUs (bonds). To release that stranglehold, we should call for the expropriation of the banks, insurance companies, pension funds, etc., and their replacement by a common publicly-owned service under democratic control. Coupon payments on most bonds could then be cancelled, or become only a matter of internal book-keeping within...

Stalinism and Bolshevism: overcoming the myths

By Martyn Hudson Paul Hampton ( Solidarity 225) seems to have me down as some kind of Cold Warrior or Nouveaux Philosophe attempting to find in Marxism some kind of logic which inexorably leads to the Stalinist death camps. One does not have to abandon Marxism, in some kind of contemporary God that Failed attempt to conflate Marxism with dictatorship, in an effort to understand what actually happened and what the Bolsheviks could have done about the situation they were faced with. It just happens that I think the wrong choices were made in terrible circumstances and that the decisive break...

EDL electoral front

English Defence League leader Stephen Yaxley Lennon has announced an electoral pact with the British National Party splinter group, the British Freedom Party. In a report carried on the BFP website on 19 November, Yaxley Lennon is quoted as saying “the EDL needs to move up a notch — they cannot go on forever staging street demonstrations”. This is a significant move for both organisations. The BFP emerged after the split from the British National Party immediately before the last general election. During this split, the BNP’s webmaster pulled the plug on the party’s internet presence and shut...

Labour and 30 November

“Shadow Chancellor backs strikers”, headlined the Independent on 27 November, reporting an interview with Ed Balls. The small print of Balls’s comments about 30 November was more fudged. "I have huge sympathy with [the strikers]. The unions still need to give some ground, but I think what the Government is trying to impose is both unfair and very risky... The Government’s been determined to have a confrontation". In 2005-8 the Labour government negotiated with the public sector unions a deal on pensions which was supposed to settle the issue for decades ahead. Solidarity criticised the deal at...

Leveson Inquiry: village gossip in court

Evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, currently underway, has exposed the unscrupulousness of the press as it tries to win circulation by debasing news to the level of malicious village gossip. Even when the victims of phone-hacking and concocted revelations are rich and powerful, the debasement hurts us all, as pseudo-gossip drives out real news. Does the press have a right to hack people's phones and print personal details about people? Should there be controls on what the press can print? The question is whether controls motivated by privacy could then be used to suppress investigation of real...

Justice for Joe Paraskeva

Joe Paraskeva is in jail, on an indefinite sentence, essentially for being mentally ill. In October 2010, he was admitted to psychiatric hospital under section 2 of the Mental Health Act. Joe had a diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder and had had several admissions to hospital whilst he was a teenager. Joe attempted to escape from the ward by trying to burn down the locked entrance to the ward using a lighter and can of deodorant. He was remanded to prison. On 5 April 2011, Joe was sentenced to an IPP (Indeterminate imprisonment for Public Protection) for arson. The controversial IPP is...

Islamists gain in Morocco's elections

The 25 November elections in Morocco were won by a soft-Islamist party, the Party for Justice and Development, which models itself on the ruling Turkish Islamist party. The runner-up was Istiqlal, a conservative monarchist party. The elections took place amidst intensifying protests. Much of the left participated in a boycott of the elections. The Moroccan opposition movement has been split between a liberal right wing, regrouping social democrats, nationalists and Islamists, with its base in the centre of the country and the capital Rabat; a left wing of Marxist parties, trade unionists and...

Loumamba Mohsni, 1963-2011

At 1am on 24 November, Loumamba Mohsni — a long-time Tunisian Trotskyist activist — died of a heart attack following a long illness. Loumamba spent years in exile, and suffered spells in jail, where he was tortured. Acting in secrecy, living the nocturnal life of an underground agitator, Loumamba made a great contribution to keeping Trotskyism alive in a country where the Marxist left was dominated by Stalinist and nationalist ideas. After the long years of darkness, that organisation has burst out into the light as the Left Workers’ League (LGO). The emergence of a visible Trotskyist current...

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