Solidarity 248, 6 June 2012

Maziar Razi, a leading member of the Iranian Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, visited Britain recently and spoke at an informal question-and-answer session organised by Workers’ Liberty on 31 May. Notes from Maziar’s presentation, taken by Daniel Rawnsley: Iran has a unique theocratic regime. Other states in the region have called themselves Islamic states, but in Iran, uniquely, the clergy is in power. How did it come to power? The industrialisation and urbanisation drive by the Shah’s regime, linked to the so-called White Revolution, fell into crisis. The clergy wanted concessions from the...

On January 1, 1962, wages were lowered by 30 to 35 per cent at the largest electrolocomotive plant in Novocherkassk. On the morning of 1 June the government radio announced that there would be a sharp “temporary” increase in the price of meat and dairy products (up to 35%). [Sparked by an insult from a manager, the workers struck]. There were about 14,000 workers at the plant. The workers went out to the plant grounds and filled the square near the plant management office. The square could not hold all the strikers. At about noon the word spread amongst the strikers: “The militia has come!”...

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a technique for getting methane gas out of shale rocks. The gas, which is a fossil fuel, can then be burnt to provide energy for power stations to generate electricity. Because methane has a lower proportion of carbon than coal and oil and can be burnt more efficiently, many see it as a transitional fuel, allowing continued use of fossil fuels but reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This would buy time while alternatives were developed. According to this model, fracking would help by increasing the availability of methane. There are two types of...

Spain is on the brink of an economic crash and bail-out because of the perversities of the eurozone banking system and the world financial markets. The answer is to take high finance across Europe into public ownership, establish workers’ control over the sector, and run it as a public service for banking, pensions, and insurance. But the EU leaders will not do anything like that. The crisis will worsen. Spain had a property-price boom in the run-up to the 2007-8 crash, like the USA and Britain and Ireland. At first its property prices fell much more slowly than prices in the USA (now down 33%...

In the run-up to Greece’s election on 17 June, the left-wing coalition Syriza and the conservative New Democracy are still neck-and-neck in the polls. But the EU leaders are trying to blackmail the Greek people into voting for the pro-cuts parties. A barrage of blackmailing has been directed against Greece from representatives of the capitalist class, both national and international, both elected and unelected. From the social democrats comes soft blackmailing — “comply, and we can sort out some concessions; but defy, and that means disaster”. That is the soft-cop accompaniment to the hard...

Senior Tory politicians have no trouble raising a bit of extra cash when they need it. Baroness Warsi, co-chair of the Tory party, is in trouble over failing to disclose a business interest in a spice manufacturing company in Pakistan when she visited the country on government business. She’s also in trouble for claiming up to £2,000 living allowance when she was actually staying rent-free in the home of a Tory donor. If only such options were available to us. Sleep over at a mate’s house a few nights a week, two grand. Easy. Unfortunately we don’t have the good Baroness’s privileges. Our only...

Documents revealed during Jeremy Hunt’s appearance at the Leveson Inquiry have implicated George Osborne. On the day the News Corp lackey Hunt was appointed to replace Vince Cable as Media Minister, Osborne sent a text to James Murdoch saying “hope you like our solution”. But how does Jeremy Hunt get away with it? Hunt told the Leveson Inquiry last week that he sacked his advisor Adam Smith “with a heavy heart” — code for admitting he was instructed to throw his underling to the wolves in the hope of saving himself and his leader. But now that we have heard Hunt’s evidence it’s no wonder he...

John Edwards was once the shining hope of American progressives; today, he’s a disgraced former politician. Last week, his trial in federal court ended with an acquittal. The trial, and the public reaction to it, showed yet again a very ugly side to American politics and culture. While it may seem ancient history to Americans, it was only four years ago that John Edwards ran for the Democratic nomination for President on a moderately social democratic platform. This put him far to the left of the two front runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. When the health care plans of the three...

On the face of it, there is some force to the SWP line that voting for the Freedom and Justice Party — the Muslim Brotherhood — in the final round of the Egyptian presidential election is preferable to allowing Ahmed Shafiq, the candidate of the old Mubarak regime, to win (Phil Marfleet, Socialist Worker 2 June). The argument is that a victory for the oldest and best organised opposition group would represent the continued forward movement of the revolution. Or at least a victory for Shafiq would be the opposite. The Brotherhood is unlikely immediately to crush all democratic forces. Over the...

Strike action by American workers increased dramatically over the past year. “Serious stoppages” (strikes involving more than 1,000 lasting at least one shift) rose from just five in 2009 to 19 in 2011. Days lost to strike action increased from 124,000 to over 1 million. The increase comes against the backdrop of a decade of pay stagnation for manufacturing workers, whose wages have mostly remained flat since 2000, despite a 50% increase in output. Racist attacks on African migrant workers in Tel Aviv Recent weeks have seen racist riots in working-class neighbourhoods of Tel Aviv as poor...