Solidarity 264, 14 November 2012

Debating Gramsci's legacy

Toby Abse reviews Martin Thomas (ed.) Antonio Gramsci: Working-Class Revolutionary: Essays and Interviews, Workers’ Liberty, 2012, pp. 76. This booklet performs an extremely valuable role in both reasserting Antonio Gramsci’s historic significance as a revolutionary anti-Stalinist Marxist and arguing that his ideas have a continuing relevance for activists in the contemporary labour movement. The very fact that both of these propositions actually need to be argued for in the first place is an indication of the huge extent to which Gramsci’s legacy has been hijacked for decades by forces for...

Return for GYBE!

After re-forming in 2010 for a series of live shows, Godspeed You Black Emperor! (GYBE!) returned to the recorded music scene following a decade of silence, slipping their latest album “Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!” on to the merchandise table at a gig in Boston on 1 October. This gesture, a refusal to play the commercial game, is symptomatic of the band’s approach to the music industry and capitalism in general, balancing somewhere between sullen indifference and outright contempt. The band, formed in 1994 in Montreal, operates as a democratic unit, working on its instrumental music without...

What is happening in China?

One in five of the world’s populace will soon have new leaders for a decade’s term. This will be delivered via the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an assembly of the bureaucracy so regulated that all that China’s people and the rest of the world will be presented with is a well-orchestrated display of unified power. At the time of writing this article, who the new leaders are has yet to be formally announced, but behind the scene faction fights and scraps between the powerful elite in the Party have already been settled for the sake of unity for survival. The current Vice...

Nationalise pharmaceuticals!

After the success of Bad Science, Ben Goldacre (doctor and debunker*) has now taken on the pharmaceuticals industry (“big pharma”) in his latest book Bad Pharma. While admitting that “without medicines, there is no medicine”, he shows that the science behind new drugs is consistently distorted to further the interests of the industry. The main way this is done is to routinely hide much of the data relevant to judging the efficacy and safety of new drugs. Over a quarter of the 365 pages of text is devoted to this missing data. The gold standard behind any effective medicine is the randomised...

Greece: the coalition is crumbling

Despite persistent rain, pre-demo arrests, blockage of roads, and the threat of police truncheons and gas, the protest outside parliament at Syntagma Square on the 7 November, the second day of a 48-hour general strike, was one of Greece’s biggest ever demonstrations. Tuesday 6th started with the whole of Greece being brought to a halt. Taxis, buses, trams, and underground railways were stationary. The ships were tied up at the ports. At airports dozens of flights were cancelled and delayed. On Wednesday 7th, hundreds of thousands of protesters besieged parliament. By early afternoon, long...

Help us raise £15,000

The Apprentice, Dragon’s Den, classes on “enterprise” in schools... the British establishment is doing its best to push a UK version of the American dream. If you work hard enough, or have a bright enough idea, you can “make it” (i.e. get rich). In the context of the cuts, the idea is to create the illusion of the equality of opportunity at the same time as slashing and burning the educational and social opportunities available to (particularly young) people in working-class communities. It teaches young people to have a reverential relationship to money. To believe that the rich must have it...

The first European general strike in history

Wednesday 14 November, the day this paper goes to press, will see the first Europe-wide general strike in history. There will be strikes in Spain, Portugal, Greece (for three hours) and Italy (by CGIL, for four hours). The common demand proclaimed by the European TUC is “For jobs and solidarity in Europe: no to austerity”. In many other countries unions will organise demonstrations: France, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Romania, Belgium. In Lithuania, unions are organising a transport strike in Vilnius. Outside the borders of the European Union, the Turkish union DISK is...

The genetics of the ANC

In her criticism of my article on South Africa (“ANC and the working class”, Solidarity 263) Jayne Edwards notes that I think the ANC had no choice but to govern in the name of capital because the movement was not yet ripe, and points to the misuse of an Engels quote from 1850. I do broadly agree with her analysis, but perhaps there are nuances here. In the original version of the article, I point to the fact that it was Neville Alexander who originally used Engels quote to understand what was happening in South Africa from 1994. I accept that Jayne is absolutely correct that the key question...

Plan B for Greece

John Grahl ( Solidarity 263) establishes, I think, two things. Firstly, that Greece switching back to the drachma would be costly to Greek workers and has no advantages over a Greek government from within the eurozone cancelling the Memorandum and refusing to service its debt. Second, that the argument from some on the left for a switch back to the drachma rests on a sleight-of-hand. The book which Grahl reviews, Crisis in the Eurozone, admits that a “conservative” Greek exit from the drachma is equally possible. But it persistently slides into assuming that a stance where the left’s headline...

Lewisham Hospital: Paying for PFI

The South London Trust Special Administrator report takes some wading through but it turns up some scary facts. Lewisham Hospital is set to become a centre that deals only with some elective procedures, and minor injuries such as fractures. The Administrator says that if Lewisham Hospital provides planned non-complex surgery, such as joint replacements, and does not have to deal with emergency cases, uncertainty about the timing of surgery would be reduced. Planned surgery is sometimes delayed because of emergency cases. But even routine elective surgery can be unpredictable, and emergencies...

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