Workers' Liberty

"I don't want to be in the position where people are saying: 'Digby... the product isn't as good as it was'," said Digby Jones, trade and investment minister in the New Labour government and former head of the CBI. He was bemoaning the Government's plan to squeeze "non-domiciled" wealthy foreigners living in the UK ever so slightly for tax; and his comment sums up an entire philosophy of government.

Workers' Liberty 3/17 examines the facts about world trade, the arguments about fair trade, the lessons to be learned from the writings of Marx and Engels, and the outlines of a socialist policy. Download pdf here, or read online.

Last week I was in Budapest which is my first time in the former eastern block, and part of that experience has got me thinking about certain aspects of post stalinist societies.

Port – au – Prince ; le 11 Juillet 2007

Communiqué de Presse

Inquiétudes de la CTH face à la gestion du pays.

Après la bataille démocratique qu’ont menée les travailleurs et le peuple haïtien avec leurs bulletins de vote aux élections du 7 février 2007 ; où ils ont accouché un gouvernement dans l’idée d’éradiquer le chômage, la misère et l’insécurité.

Port-Au-Prince; July 11, 2007 Press Release Concerns of the CTH, regarding the management of the Country.

After the democratic battle, led by the Workers and the Haitian People through their voting ballots during the elections of February 7, 2007; where they gave birth to a government conceptually eradicating unemployment, poverty and insecurity.

Agence Haitïenne de Presse

At least 500 Téléco workers received termination letters Friday as part of the government's announced plan to privatize the company. Another thousand are expected to be fired on Monday.

Port-au-Prince le 28 juin 2007 (AHP)- Les employés de la compagnie nationale de téléphone (Téléco) ont repris leurs acitités jeudi à la suite d'une grève de 3 semaines pour protester contre des décisions jugées arbitraires prises par le directeur général de l'institution, Michel Présumé, dont la révocation d'employés, dans le cadre de la privatisation prochaine de la Téléco.

By: Jeb Sprague and Wadner Pierre

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jun 19 (IPS) - A two-day transport strike last week gripped Haiti's major cities and underscored a mounting crisis over fuel prices, which rose nearly 20 percent in just two weeks.

Port-au-Prince, le 12 juin 2007 &endash; (AHP)- La grève de 48 heures lancée par des syndicats de chauffeurs a paralysé ce mardi le transport en commun à Port-au-Prince et dans la plupart des villes de province.

Review of: Live working or die fighting: How the working class went global, Paul Mason, Harvill Secker £12.99

This book is an ambitious attempt to bring some of the great events from working class history to a new generation of youth. Paul Mason argues that as the working class in the “global south” has expanded, so new workers’ movements are emerging with strong similarities to those that arose during the first wave of globalisation, which began in the 1870s.

Financial Markets around the world continued to tumble again today, following sizeable drops last week. There are several reasons for the falls. They centre on China, Japan and the US. In addition, capitalism has attempted, in recent decades, to provide itself with insurance against its own chaos, against the causes of periodic crises. Whilst these have succeeded in part, – though only really for the truly big capitalists – they have not resolved the basic contradictions of capitalism, but simply pushed those contradictions to a new height.

By: Wadner Pierre - HaitiAnalysis.com

Port-au-Prince- On November 18, 2006 Haitian grassroots human rights organizations came together to found a coalition. CONODDH (National Coordination of Organizations Defending Human Rights) explains that it is a grouping of organizations all with deep experience working in the field of human rights.

Port-au-Prince, October 23, 2006 (AHP); Several thousand people, largely supporters of Fanmi Lavalas, demonstrated Monday in the streets of Port-au-Prince to ask the government authorities to work to re-hire the workers who were dismissed from the civil service by the interim government of Gérard Latortue

The Value of Labour-Power, The Theory

According to Marx, the Value of Labour Power is determined, as for any other commodity, by the amount of average, socially necessary labour required for its production. In terms of Marx’s Economic Theory, this aspect has always been probably the most contentious. For one thing, this distinction, between “labour-power” as a commodity, and “labour” as the source and “labour-time” as the measure of exchange value, is at the heart of Marx’s explanation of surplus value, an explanation which had evaded all the other Classical Economists such as Smith and Ricardo. But there is another aspect of the theory, which has always made it open to criticism from bourgeois economists. Marx says that included in the value of labour-power is an historical and moral component. In other words, as time goes on, and society generally raises its productive capacity, and along with it living standards, the minimum, that workers consider a minimum amount for them to survive and reproduce future generations of workers, necessarily rises. In addition, because different countries have different cultures, different rates of economic development, this level will vary from country to country. Bourgeois economists point to this as being necessarily vague, compared to the orthodox derivation of wage levels based on the demand and supply of labour, and further point to the fact that, because of the centrality of Marx’s definition of the value of labour-power, this weakness extends to the whole of his theory, and explanation of surplus value.

International Human Rights and Labor Delegation Protests Attacks on Civilians by MINUSTAH

PRESS CONFERENCE : Friday, August 25, 2006 - 2:00 p.m.
UNDP / MINUSTAH Headquarters, Avenue John Brown / Bourdon, Port-au-Prince

Cap-Haïtien, August 2, 2006 (AHP); The government workers in Cap-Haitian who were terminated declared Wednesday that they are setting a deadline of August 14 for the Haitian authorities to return them to their previous positions and pay them all back wages due since the day they were dismissed.

Review of Alfredo Saad-Filho and Deborah Johnston, eds Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, Pluto, 271 pages, paperback, £15.99

By Paul Hampton

Neoliberalism is the dominant ideology of the epoch and this book is the most comprehensive analysis of the subject by Marxist and radical political economists published to date.

Hilaire Prophete, Spokesman for Pa Ka Tann Operation (OPK), reiterates the demands for the reinstatement of former public administration employees, thousands of who were laid off for political reasons by the Interim government of Gerald Latortue (2004-2006).

BY Vicki Morris

FRESH from his PR appearance on the BBC, President Vladimir Putin of Russia is preparing to host the leaders of the new free world at the G8 summit at St Petersburg (15-17 July).

Haitian Civil servants unjustly fired take to streets of Port-au-prince to call for their reintegration and for the liberation of all political prisoners. The elected government of Rene Preval begins commission of inquiry into the massive lay offs that took place under the Latortue government, which had warm relations with the IMF and World Bank.

Reverse Solidarity: The Reactionary Role of US Labor in Haiti and Venezuela - FLASHPOINTS Interview with Kim Scipes and Jeb Sprague on International Labor Intervention in Haiti and Venezuela (June 2006)

More: http://www.aliscnetwork.org/index.html

By Josh Robinson, People & Planet East Anglia regional rep

LAST weekend, Oxford Brookes university hosted Shared Planet, the annual gathering of student activists from the campaigning network People & Planet.

On Saturday 22 October, from 14:00 at Sebbon St Community Centre, London N1, and re-run on Saturday 29 October, from 13:30 at the Swarthmore Centre, Woodhouse Square, Leeds. Click here for reading.

Reading material, discussion points, and activity notes for AWL day school on "Globalisation and imperialism".