Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn I will begin travelling with my children for a respite after two years of my (it seems somehow personal) Great Recession.

We will be moving through some places that are less connected than others, so I will be posting irregularly for some time.

For this reason I wanted to say something  about  the South African Communist Party’s special conference in Polokwane before I go and before it finishes on Sunday.

Our red brethren have been meeting since Thursday and it seems they have been having an interesting and boisterous time.

Much of the media coverage has centred around a visit by Julius Malema, Billy Masetlha and Tony Yengeni during which the ANC Youth League president was booed and reportedly walked out in a huff, threatening to ‘tell on’ to the president.

But the underlying conflict that is playing itself out between the SACP and a powerful faction of the ANC is the main show in town.

And the SACP leadership is ‘on message’, constantly attacking what it sees as emerging black capitalists whose primary method of accumulation is tender abuse and looting of the state. It appears that the communists believe this “project” is THE real and immediate danger.

The coordinated attack emerges from even a cursory reading of (most importantly) the political report to the conference, but also from the opening address (some of these links are a little dicky – it seems to be a problem with the SACP’s site) by SACP chairman, Gwede Mantashe, a speech by Cosatu’s Zwelenzima Vavi and an address by the Young Communist’s Buti Manamela.

The political report says it most clearly (it’s a longish quote, but it gives one an excellent idea of the main issues in our politics):

This new tendency has its roots in what we might call “Kebble-ism” – in which some of the more roguish elements of capital, lumpen-white capitalists, handed out largesse and favours and generally sought to corrupt elements within our movement in order to secure their own personal accumulation agendas. Some of this largesse helped elements within our movement to emerge as capitalists in their own right.

(…)
In particular, these elements of BEE capital have been exploring a class axis between themselves and the great mass of marginalized, alienated, often unemployed black youth. The material glue of this axis is the politics of patronage, of messiahs, and its tentative ideological form is a demagogic African chauvinism. Because of its rhetorical militancy the media often portrays it as “radical” and “left-wing” – but it is fundamentally right-wing, even proto-fascist. While it is easy to dismiss the buffoonery of some of the leading lieutenants, we should not underestimate the resources made available to them, and the huge challenge we all have when it comes to millions of increasingly alienated, often unemployed youth who are potentially available for all kinds of demagogic mobilization.

We do not use the term proto-fascist lightly, nor for the moment should we exaggerate it. However, there are worrying tell-tale characteristics that need to be nipped in the bud. They include the demagogic appeal to ordinary people’s baser instincts (male chauvinism, paramilitary solutions to social problems, and racialised identity politics).

Now  I disagree with a host of the economic solutions that the communists seem to take as gospel and I am convinced that left to their own devices they would kill creativity and diminish personal liberty without commensurate social gains. However, it is the communists who appear to be most clearly identifying where we are going and what the dangers that confront us are.

They might be full of economic nonsense (i.e. stuff with which one disagrees) but you can always trust the reds to spot the fascists before even the fascists themselves know what they have become!

Turbulence

TURBULENCE 5

OUT NOW!

TURBULENCE 5

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT?

Until recently, anyone who suggested nationalising the banks would have been derided as a ‘quack’ and a ‘crank’, as lacking the most basic understanding of the functioning of a ‘complex, globalised world’. The grip of ‘orthodoxy’ disqualified the idea, and many more, without the need even to offer a counter-argument.

And yet, in this time of intersecting crises, when it seems like everything could, and should, have changed, it paradoxically feels as though very little has. Individuals and companies have hunkered down to try and ride out the crisis. Nationalisations and government spending have been used to prevent change, not initiate it. Anger and protest have erupted around different aspects of the crises, but no common or consistent reaction has seemed able to cohere. We appear unable to move on.

For many years, social movements could meet and recognise one another on the *common ground* of rejecting neoliberalism, society’s old *middle ground* — those discourses and practices that defined the centre of the political field. The crisis of the middle has meant a crumbling of the common.

And what now? Will neoliberalism continue to stumble on without direction, zombie-like? Or, is it time for something completely different?

CONTENTS:

Turbulence: ‘Life in limbo?’

Gifford Hartman, ‘California in Crisis: Everything touched by capital turns toxic’

Bini Adamczak and Anna Dost, ‘What would it mean to lose? On the history of actually-existing failure’

Frieder Otto Wolf and Tadzio Mueller, ‘Green New Deal: Dead end or pathway beyond capitalism?’

p.m., ‘It’s all about potatoes and computers: Recipes for the cook-shops of the future’

Colectivo Situaciones, ‘Disquiet in the impasse’

George Caffentzis, ‘‘Everything must change so that everything can stay the same’: Notes on Obama’s Energy Plan’

Walter Mignolo, ‘The communal and the decolonial’

Massimo De Angelis, ‘The tragedy of the capitalist commons’

Rebecca Solnit, ‘Falling Together’

Rodrigo Nunes, ‘What were you wrong about ten years ago?’

ALSO FEATURING…

…a collection of texts, ten years after the protests against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle, asking people from across the global movement, ‘What were you wrong about ten years ago?’, at t-10.

Contributors to the feature are: David Solnit, Gustavo Esteva, Emir Sader, Phil McLeish, Rubia Salgado, João Pedro Stédile, A CrimethInc ex-Worker, Precarias a la Deriva, Trevor Ngwane, Marcela and Oscar Olivera, Heloisa Primavera, Chris Carlsson, The Free Association, David Bleakney, Olivier de Marcellus, Go Hirasawa and Sabu Kohso, John Clarke, Guy Taylor, Thomas Seibert, Dr Simon Lewis, Amador Fernández-Savater.

The Issue is illustrated by the photo series ‘Flat Horizon’ by Marcos Vilas Boas.

Turbulence: Ideas for Movement are: David Harvie, Keir Milburn, Tadzio Mueller, Rodrigo Nunes, Michal Osterweil, Kay Summer, Ben Trott.

http://www.turbulence.org.uk

ORDER A COPY

Copies can be ordered from editors@turbulence.org.uk

Turbulence is free, but we ask that you make a donation towards postage: http://turbulence.org.uk/donate/ (any additional donations greatly appreciated!)

All texts are also freely available via our website as of today.

HELP OUT

A collection of resources to help publicise the issue (posters, flyers, web-banners, etc…) can be found here:
http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-5/turbulence-5-resources/

Get in touch if you can help out translating any of the articles in this issue: editors@turbulence.org.uk

Order a bundle of the magazine to distribute in your part of the world.

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It’s getting a little like a tennis match. Eventually you can do well to watch the audience, heads swinging from-side-to-side to the sharp “pok” of the shots, to get a sense of how things are going.

As I was reading the article by Cronin, again from Umsebenzi Online, that came out today I groaned. It seemed the deputy secretary general of the SACP who also wears the hat of the deputy minister of Transport was going to kowtow to Malema’s racial bullying and appeals to authority, which in turn was a response to Cronin’s take on the ANC Youth League’s call for the nationalisation of mines that I cover here.

It was difficult to hold out through the comrade’s niceties, etiquette  and jargon – it’s exhausting at the best of times.

But lo! Just in time. If you can plough through the forelock tugging and coded jousting* to the end of paragraph seventeen:

If you disconnect a class analysis from a race analysis you run the danger of wittingly or unwittingly serving the interests of monopoly capital in SA and its comprador and parasitic allies – many of whom have been close to, or actually within our movement.

Well, no guessing which interests Cronin is suggesting Malema is serving – wittingly or unwittingly.

The long and the short of Cronin’s newest contribution is he still thinks that nationalisation of the mines (as he argued in his original critique) is a bad idea; but that more onerous and creative “beneficiation” obligations should be linked to the licences.

His argument is – as always – useful and rational.

My problem remains that the poles of the debate are being defined by the ANC Youth League president and the deputy secretary general of the South African Communist Party.

Hello? – as a 13 year old girl I know might say. Our mining sector has been shrinking for ten years while the equivalent sector internationally has been growing about 5% a year (in response to the so called Commodity Super-Cycle).

The communists and the crony-capitalist aspirants can only extract so much value (for their different, perhaps opposite, purposes) from the sector before investment flows to where the return is better.

Didn’t anyone ever tell them the parable of the goose and the golden egg?

There was this couple. They had a goose. It laid a single golden egg every day. After some years they became disatisfied and wanted more gold. So they cut the goose open to get at the motherload. But it was just a goose on the inside. So they starved to death … and then burned in purgatory forever. (Actually I added that last bit -  it was more a hope on my part.)

* I don’t know what I am doing sneering at Cronin’s writing style! Just read a collection of his poetry (like: Inside) and you will realise that Cronin is unique amongst the comrades in that he has a laconic and comely turn of phrase. My irritation was actually about the fact that I thought – incorrectly – that he had bowed to Malema’s populist and racist assault.

La Banque d’Angleterre (BoE) a révélé mardi avoir secouru l’an dernier les banques britanniques RBS et HBOS, en leur fournissant des prêts d’urgence au plus fort de la crise financière, et avoir agit délibérément en secret afin de ne pas déstabiliser le secteur financier.

La banque centrale britannique a fait cette révélation à l’occasion d’une audition de son gouverneur Mervyn King devant des parlementaires.

Dans un document publié sur son site internet, la BoE a précisé qu’elle avait agi en sa qualité de “prêteur en dernier ressort” à l’automne 2008, en procurant des prêts d’urgence à Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) et à Halifax-Bank of Scotland (HBOS).

Elle a commencé à leur prêter début octobre, peu après la chute de la banque américaine Lehman Brothers. Les prêts fournis ont culminé à 61,6 milliards de livres (environ 68 milliards d’euros) à la mi-octobre, et ces sommes ont été totalement remboursées en décembre pour RBS, et en janvier pour HBOS.

HBOS a fusionné depuis avec sa rivale Lloyds TSB, avec l’appui du gouvernement, pour former Lloyds Banking Group (LBG).

LBG et RBS ont été les principales bénéficiaires du plan de sauvetage bancaire du gouvernement britannique, et ont, dans ce cadre, été partiellement nationalisées. L’Etat détient depuis 70% de RBS (un pourcentage qui doit monter prochainement à 84%), et 43% de LBG.

La Banque d’Angleterre a expliqué qu’elle avait choisi à l’époque, compte tenu des circonstances exceptionnelles régnant sur les marchés financiers, de ne pas révéler l’existence de ces prêts de secours, tant que leur connaissance risquait de provoquer une crise “systémique”.

Mais elle a considéré qu’après l’adhésion de RBS au plan gouvernemental de protection contre les actifs toxiques, et le lancement par LBG d’une levée de fonds massive, il n’était plus nécessaire de garder le secret sur ces prêts.
romandie

Elle est bonne celle la !
Un an après, ils nous disent la vérité !!! Laissez tombez la confiance lors de la prochaine crise !!
Plus personne ne croira les autorités anglaises.
Sortir près de 70 milliards d’euros pour sauver les banques et ensuite les nationaliser partiellement, ils font tout à l’envers les anglais.

Enfin bref, une preuve de plus que les gouvernements nous mentent quotidiennement.

David Davis

Tim Evans has kindly drawn my attention to this which I missed earlier:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225503/300-residents-hire-private-police-force-clean-lawless-streets.html

If one neighbourhood can do it, why not everywhere? We could soon make “The [State] Police” as redundant as the State Phone company, the State “Post Office”, and the State “hospitals”.

Moreover…

…history teaches us that it is very dangerous to allow “modern” “big” States, such as Russia, Prussia and the UK, to get involved in the minutiae and provision of policing services. Any sort of lefty mountebank could subvert their objectives.

Il y a trois choses que l’on peut observer dans l’histoire du communisme: des surplus de ce dont la population n’a pas besoin (armement / militarisme), des pénuries de ce dont la population a vraiment de besoin et de la corruption généralisée.

Au Venezuela, c’est de l’eau et de l’électricité dont on manque présentement. Chavez peut bien blâmer la sécheresse causée par El Nino, qui a résulté en une faible hydrologie au principal barrage du pays, il n’en demeure pas moins que le réel coupable est le sous-investissement dans les infrastructures. Cette installation hydroélectrique fournit 60% de l’électricité du pays et la sécheresse a réduit sa production d’environ 10%; pas de quoi causer autant de problèmes. Plusieurs centrales thermiques du pays, supposées prendre le relais lorsque l’hydrologie est mauvaise, sont hors-fonction, puisqu’elles n’ont pas été entretenues adéquatement.

En 2007, Chavez a nationalisé l’industrie de l’électricité. Depuis ce temps, le pays a connu six “blackouts” nationaux. Les budgets alloués à l’entretien et l’expansion des infrastructures électriques du pays n’ont été dépensés qu’à 25%, l’argent ayant été alloué à d’autres postes et dérouté dans les poches des fonctionnaires. Le gouvernement a sous-investi et ses infrastructures sont maintenant inadéquates. Pendant ce temps, les tarifs ont été gelés (trop bas) ce qui fait en sorte que la demande d’électricité demeure élevée et croissante.

Voici ce que M. Chavez propose pour remédier à la situation (tiré d’une récente rencontre du cabinet):

“Il y a des gens qui chantent sous la douche pendant 30 minutes; quel mauvais communisme! Trois minutes, c’est plus qu’assez!”

Pendant ce temps, Chavez a récemment dépensé US$3 milliards en armement, notamment pour “montrer les dents” face à la Colombie. Il a d’ailleurs déployé 15,000 soldats à sa frontière cette semaine.

Pas surprenant que la population soit en rogne et que le taux d’approbation de Chavez soit en chute libre. Il y a néanmoins une chose qui pourra aider Chavez à traverser cette tempête politique: il pourra continuer à utiliser les dizaines de stations de télévision et de radio qu’il a fait fermer ces derniers mois pour diffuser sa propagande communiste et “démontrer hors de tout doute” que les problèmes sont liés à El Nino!

The recent Ambani Gas Dispute has raised many questions regarding privatization of national assets and competition law. The whole controversy mainly concerns with supply and pricing of natural gas between Anil Ambani and Mukesh Ambani. The dispute has its origins in Reliance Industries split in 2005, where a family agreement was reached between two brothers, brokered by their mother Kokilaben. According to the family pact, Mukesh Ambani headed Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) agreed to supply natural gas at the price of 2.34$ per unit to Reliance Natural Resource Limited, headed by Anil Ambani. Now after five years of the family pact, RIL says it can only sell natural gas for $4.20 per unit, claiming this is the price approved by the government. The core issue of the whole dispute is the legality of the family pact reached between two brothers during Reliance Industries split. In June, the Mumbai High Court upheld the claim by the younger brother Anil Ambani’s group, which was challenged by Reliance Industries in the apex court. The government too has intervened in the matter as an interested party, saying ‘gas’ was the property of State and cannot be fought between rival Corporate Houses.

This leaves us with a big question of privatization of national assets. It is important to delve into this question because in assets like natural gas and oil, any slight price fluctuation can have repercussions in the whole economy. I intend to provide a brief economic analysis of how and when it is feasible to privatize national assets, especially natural resources. As far as Reliance Dispute is concerned, this analysis is very important to understand the possible consequences of the outcome of pending litigation.

The choice of private or national form of institution depends on many factors like economic conditions, human capital, political regime etc. Normally, in developing countries the institutional choices are “volatile” and keep changing from one form to another. Among many other factors, this cyclic transition is mainly determined by economic conditions of the country.  After economic recession hitting the economies across the world, we can easily see the transition from one form of institution, i.e. privatized, to another form, i.e. nationalized. This back and forth movement is natural and as mentioned earlier depends on many factors.

The choice of private or national form of institutions is mainly stated as a trade off between equality and efficiency. On a simpler note, nationalized form is preferred when the commodity is scarce and prices are high. The vice-versa of this is true for privatized form of institution. Apart from the type of commodity and price, other factors like tax regime, risk aversion and other exogenous costs determine which model is to be preferred. Globally, in natural resource and utilities sector, nationalization and privatization cyclic change are more frequent.

Developing countries like India are largely dependent on imported oil because of poor natural resources to manufacture oil. Due to this problem, generally, tax system proves to be inadequate because of fluctuating prices; therefore, all the more it is advisable to have nationalized form of institution to govern such sectors. The inadequacy of the tax regime along with poor human capital can be chiefly attributed as the reason for preferring the nationalized form. Privatization of natural resources in a country like India would only increase the existing inequality. Latin American countries and South East Asian countries are live example and have already witnessed problems due to privatization of natural resources in the past. In my opinion, privatizing, as of now, will only worsen the conditions, and increase misery in the poorly diversified productive structure.

By saying that, I am not proposing that “nationalization” is the solution of all problems in a growing economy and privatization is not required at all, but I am stating that in this cyclic transition, at this given point of time, privatization of national assets is not required.

In Reliance Gas Dispute, privatization would have grave repercussions if two companies were allowed to deal with each other in a manner to determine prices of national assets by private agreements. Not only is there the danger of worsening inequality, as mentioned earlier, but also of competition between corporates.  In view of this, many private companies have intervened in the pending litigation in Supreme Court. Needless to say, that the Mumbai High Court Judgment is of little help in this regard when it ordered RIL to supply natural gas at the price settled in family pact after assigning NTPC certain quantity at the same price.

Taking all the above points into considerations, allowing the Ambani brothers to carry on with family pact would not be a feasible decision in existing conditions. This would not only increase the competition between the two entities but also affect the economy of the country adversely.

Since the matter is pending before Supreme Court, we can expect that the court would take a strong stance on the same keeping in mind the social justice point of view. The oil found in Krishna-Godavari basin is one of the major and biggest discoveries not only in India but also in Asia. Any sort of dispute concerning oil distribution between the two rival corporate houses will only delay the national progress. Moreover, at present, when the prices of commodities are zooming high, resolving this dispute should be of high priority for corporates, government, and the Supreme Court.

Nationalisation of mines was prescribed in the Freedom Charter and therefore a prerequisite for leadership in the ANC, says ANC Youth League president Julius Malema.

The man keeps calling for nationalisation of the mines. ANC policy does not support it, yet Malema sticks to his guns. President Zuma, over the weekend, ‘praised youth firebrand Julius Malema as a good leader worthy of “inheriting the ANC”’.

Something is in the wind here.

Today Britain’s postal workers are going out on a 24 hour strike in protest about pay, working conditions and plans to transform (in other words privatise) the service. Naturally enough it is front page news and will no doubt be covered by all the national news bulletins. Public opinion does not seem as divided as might be expected in such circumstances as the majority of people seem to feel that the strike is unlawful, disloyal, almost unnatural somehow.

The strike has been ordered by the Communication Worker’s Union, which automatically means there is not actually anything illegal about it. If talks between an organisation and the representative union of that organisation’s workers do not reach agreement it is the right of the union to order a walkout as a sort of last-ditch attempt to make themselves heard. Workers, it must be remembered, are on much smaller scale salaries than the CEOs and upper scale management who make decisions concerning their industry and their minions entire working future. When talking fails to impress the workers’ needs upon the fat cats, should they then just lie down and meekly accept whatever corporate decisions are being made? Doesn’t every worker have the right to withdraw their labour if they feel they are being ridden roughshod on and badly paid?

In the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution workers were worked to death by unscrupulous factory owners. Over the course of the nineteenth century working conditions were gradually improved as fledgling unions began to be formed. At first they had to fight to be legally recognised as legitimate voices of the workers, not because working people in Britain denied them that status but because the industrialists resisted any unifying structure amongst the workers which would force them to improve conditions and therefore eat into their own profits. By the beginning of the twentieth century unions were universally recognised as the representative voice of the working person.

Of course there have been times when specific unions have been under the control of fairly unscrupulous persons themselves but on the whole unions have been there to ensure fair working conditions and decent levels of pay for workers whenever corporations have tried to keep profits high by keeping wages low. Enter Margaret Thatcher and the coal industry in the mid nineteen eighties. The leader of the National Union of Mineworkers at that time was Arthur Scargill, unloved by Conservatives and moderate Labour supporters alike because of his radical Socialist politics and his use of illegal flying pickets during the Miner’s strike. More than anyone, Scargill damaged the reputation of unions in this country because of his underhand and often aggressive strike tactics. Some might argue that, as the coal industry was facing wholesale closure in the face of Thatcherite policies, they had no option but to take the fight to the enemy. Others say that the industry would have died of its own accord anyway, with little help from Thatcher and that Scargill and his followers were tilting at windmills.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the illegality of Scargill’s tactics and the widespread media obsession with the conflict – the closest we’d come to civil war in three centuries, some observers called it – gave the government enough public support for them to usher in various measures which crippled the unions as a political force in this country. Civil servants in Whitehall were no longer allowed to join unions. If they did so they could lose their job! And across the country measures were taken, union influence curbed and controlled so that the unions of Britain were effectively castrated. The only voices still loudly attempting to champion worker’s rights were the voices of extremist groups such as the Socialist Worker’s Party, whose rhetoric and aggression provided ample evidence for the case against trades unions altogether.

In recent years some unions have remembered that the people they are answerable to are not politicians but the workers they represent. Strike action has once again become part of the process, usually as a threat when unions feel workers are being unfairly treated. But the lack of widespread support for the postal workers proves that Thatcher’s legacy thrives to this day, proves that the majority of people in this country seem to believe strike action is somehow unethical. The ones complaining most loudly are those who claim their businesses or aspects of their personal life depend upon the delivery of the mail. All I can think is, if a daily mail delivery is so important to them they ought to support the postal workers in their fight for better working conditions and improved pay. The alternative is to see the Royal Mail wither and die, much like the coal industry did twenty odd years ago. Deliveries will then be handled solely by private companies and anyone who believes that private industry can deliver a better service than Royal Mail has not been paying attention to the after-effects of privatisation on other key service industries in Britain over the past three decades. British Gas, for example, have increased their profits by hiking up their prices again and again but can anyone truthfully say the service they provide is superior to the one they offered before privatisation?

Those arguing that the postal workers ought to be grateful to have a job in today’s climate should perhaps consider the unsociable hours and poor pay most of those postal employees experience in order to make sure that letters and parcels arrive on your doorstep every day. Would the complainers want to do the job for the same rewards currently offered to Royal Mail frontliners? The simple fact of the matter is, in this country we do not pay those at the front line of vital service industries enough – nurses, firemen, the police, schoolteachers are all undervalued and underpaid while upper management types, bank directors, stock brokers and the like award themselves huge bonuses on a whim, on top of the disproportionately high salaries they receive in the first place..

The future of privatisation?

That it should be a Labour government overseeing what are potentially the last days of nationalised postal services is ironic in the extreme, given that they were once the party most dedicated to ensuring workers’ rights were at the forefront of British politics. Just more proof that Thatcherite politics did not end with the last Conservative government twelve years ago. So personally I am rooting for those men and women who have taken strike action today, if only because a successful outcome for them would prove that the working classes still have a voice in this country, and that some unions still possess a pair of testicles

So it would seem that the postal strike is on like Donkey Kong, and the news forums are filled to the brim with people decrying the notion that their Christmas gifts won’t arrive on time. The bigwigs at the top are saying that they’ll hire over 30,000 temps and the CWU are stubbornly refusing to budge. Of course the main debate amongst us little people is whether or not the strike is a good idea, but that’s really rather beside the point because it certainly looks like it’s going to happen regardless. What is striking (excuse the pun) is that the entire situation is frankly ridiculous. The country’s in the middle of a massive economic recession, companies are already siphoning off their Christmas deliveries to private couriers, I’m perfectly sure that the posties have legitimate grievances with their management who probably don’t really give a flying fuck – Chief Executive Adam Crozier being one of the highest paid civil servants in the land after receiving a pay packet of £3million last year for closing 2,500 post offices in order to ’save money’.

It all smacks a bit of commercial suicide: The CWU is doing the only thing it can but it’s not really going to hugely affect their superiors who’ve somehow slyly circumnavigated the law that states you can’t simply bring in temps to replace a striking workforce. In striking, the Union is massively losing face. No-one on the street knows who the hell Adam Crozier and his suited lackeys are, but you can bet Postman Pat is getting a right earful over this malarkey. And it’s not really his fault. The CWU are rapidly proving themselves to be a PR nightmare and a national nuisance, destroying the image of Royal Mail in the eyes of businesses and Mr. and Mrs. Joe Bloggs alike. The sad thing is that it’s almost reached the stage whereby it doesn’t matter if their claims are justified. Management don’t give a shit…those fat cats will be sitting pretty on their sweet sweet bonuses for a little while, safe in a luxury liner of their choice whilst Royal Mail drowns in an ugly fashion. It is a shame that one of the last national institutions – one which I consider to be rather good, I’ve always had thing delivered reliably and on time, and I’ve never lost anything with RM which is more than can be said for some of its competitors – is about to shoot itself in both feet and play into the hands of those clamouring for privatisation. If we do have to bid farewell to the little red van and a legion of knobbly-kneed posties on bikes, I reckon it won’t be long before those fickle denizens of middle-England who raged so eloquently at the CWU for striking are lamenting the loss of the good old days.

There are lots of big impact words like ‘modernisation’ and ‘change’ being thrown around, but this is all bollocks really. Both sides manage to carefully dodge interview questions by repeating their own stale mantras, which lends more weight to the notion that RM is doomed, and any clarity this argument once had gets lost in a media frenzy of name calling and finger-pointing. Essentially the dilapidated business structure of Royal Mail – which if we’re honest has been crying out for an overhaul for a long time, particularly at the higher end – has boiled down to a hideous impasse in which no-one can really win.

So the strike happens….then what? Well the scorned customers turn their backs on Royal Mail, they kick the posties or feed Jess the Cat salmon spiked with AIDS because the little man on the street can’t see past the villainous CWU. They’re the ones directly responsible for the strike after all; they could have talked to their superiors, goes the discussion. There’s a lot of righteous indignation and lots of people blather on about the recession and how The Unemployed would love to have the opportunity to have a job like this. The CWU big hitters develop hunchbacks and only go out at night to feed on raw animal carcasses like proper villains whilst Adam Crozier sits in his office on high with a megaphone on repeat that bares ‘I told you so!’ smiling an oily and unctious little smile to himself as he counts through his pot of gold for the 87th time that day. Postage costs go through the roof and deliveries get abandoned as the newly enriched privatised companies decide to treat their customers like crap and fine them for not having tickets or issuing draconian punishments to toilet dwellers who spend too much time doing a number two……hang on……nope, that’s trains.

It’s all a little too neat. The CWU find themselves backed into a corner and instead of shutting up for six months and consolidating a position quietly or so they’ve chosen to open fire at the worst possible time playing right into the hands of a management that has lost the trust of the majority of their workforce. But what else is there to be done? The workforce have been failed by both those above them and the institutional union professing to protect them: Postman Pat has, in effect, and I do hope you’ll excuse my graphic imagery, been royally spitroasted by puppet-masters and an expectant public.

The nationalisation of mines in South Africa is going to happen, ANC Youth League president Julius Malema said yesterday.

Is that so?

Regardez le scénario suivant.

Situation de récession au Canada.

Le dollar canadien  vient d’atteindre les 95 cents américains.

Déficit giganteste du gouvernement canadien.

Le pétrole est à $72 et ce en pleine à récession mondiale.

Les taux d’intérêt (donc ceux hypothécaire aussi) sont bas.

L’inflation est sous les 3%.

Qu’est-ce qui se dessine au Canada ?

Scénario très simple.  Une répétition de la fin des années 70.

Un dollar a parité, qui va même monté à 1,10$…

Un pétrole à $150 le baril alors que la Chine et l’Inde recommenceront à consommer, la demande mondiale explosera…

L’or atteint de nouveaux sommets comme à la fin des années 70.

Le taux directeur va dépasser les 7% donc les taux hypothécaires frôleront les 13 à 14%…

L’inflation sera près sinon supérieure à 10%.

Mais qu’est ce qui arrivera après ce scénario qui se dessine? Voilà pourquoi les … après chacune des expressions précédentes.  Là ça ne sera pas beau.

Un dollar canadien qui retournera près des 65 sous américains.  Car le Canada ne sera plus dutout attrayant pour les investisseurs.  C’est même la Banque du Canada qui sera forcer d’intervenir pour baisser le dollar tellement que le pétrole sera haut (la prochaine hausse ira au-dessus des $250 le baril).  La situation du dollar canadien sera largement surévalué face à l’état de l’économie canadienne.  En fait le Canada aura le même attrait que les États-Unis version 2009.  Alors imaginez.

Regarder bien les prix immobiliers tomberont comme vous n’aurez jamais vu.

Un taux de chômage qui pourrait atteindre les 12%.  De grosse entreprises de l’ampleur de Bombardier pourraient vivre de grosses difficultés financières.  Enfin c’est la capacité de la Banque du Canada a ajusté la monnaie canadienne afin qu’elle réflète véritablement son économie qui dictera la vie ou la mort des grandes entreprises exportatrices canadiennes.  Dans un article précédent j’ai déjà dis que le gouverneur du Canada, Mark Carney, s’il avait des couilles, dévaluerait dès cette année la devise canadienne.  Surtout afin d’éviter cette catastrophe économique.

Je ne parle pas d’un scénario qui se prépare pour les 2020…

…Ho que non.  Contrairement à ce que tout analyste à la Banque du Canada vous dira, le Canada n’est pas en train de se sortir de la récession à la fin 2009, ho que non.  Il est en train de se sortir la tête de l’eau pour replonger comme vous ne le verrez jamais et replongez tête première dans un marasme incroyable.  Dès la mi-2010 on verra de gros changement au Canada.

Un seul moyen de se préparer à cela et c’est le scénario suivant:
- Épargner.  Je ne dis pas de mettre votre argent sous votre matelas.  Allez y dans les commodités ou si vous tenez à achetez des fonds d’actions ou des actions, allez-y avec des fonds ou actions japonaises.

- louer au lieu d’acheter votre résidence.  Laisser faire les gens qui vous diront que c’est bon d’acheter son chez soi que c’est le temps d’investir dans l’immobilier que c’est une valeur sûre.  Des bobbards.  C’est bon pour la qualité de vie mais ça ne l’est pas pour le porte-monnaie.  Laissez faire les gens qui diront que vous payez dans le vide avec une location.  C’est faux.  Le proprio engraisse la banqueà coups de dizaines de milliers en intérêts.  Alors que le locataire s’enrichiera en épargnant l’argent qu’il ne paie pas en intérêts et taxes.  L’immobilier n’a plus aucun avenir au Québec à moins que la population du Québec se remettre en mode croissance à vitesse grand V.  Au mieux ceux qui achèteront cette année pourront revendre au même prix dans 25 ans et ce, s’ils sont chanceux.  Moins les rénovations effectuées et les intérêts payées, pas certains dutout qu’ils seront gagnants.

- payer vos dettes

- si vous pouvez vous en passer n’acheter pas de voiture

Voilà, je veux pas être oiseau de malheur mais ça ne tourne pas rond au Canada, encore moins au Québec.  La devise n’arrête pas de monter, l’économie est mal en point, le gouvernement fait des déficits et l’inflation est sous les 3% en une période ou les taux d’intérêts sont à un plancher historique.

Pauvre Canada, pauvres Canadiens !  Je dis pauvres parce que le Canada a les cartes de crédits bien loadés et la limite ne peut plus être augmentés.  Quand un tel scénario se passe au niveau d’ un individu il n’a que deux options valables.  La faillite ou la proposition du consommateur.  C’est ce quoi aura à dealer le Canada dans les années à venir.  S’entendre avec ses créanciers.   On en presque rendu là.  Mais peut-être que Mark Carney a l’intention d’imprimer de l’argent comme le fait si bien la Chine à moins que le premier ministre du Canada ait en tête de grands projets de nationalisations de nos ressources naturelles pour qu’enfin le Canada s’enrichisse et non qu’ils enrichissent les entreprises étrangères qui viennent en quelque sorte nous voler nos richesses.  Qui sait…

Pour l’instant, le seul scénario que je vois où le Canada pourrait prospérer serait de nationaliser ces ressources naturelles.  Je ne parle pas de devenir un pays communiste.  Aucunement.  Je parle qu’au lieu d’avoir une télé d’État qui coûte près d’un milliard et demi aux contribuables à chaque année, de nationaliser les mines d’or.  Les mines d’uranium.  De nationaliser l’exploitation gazière et pétrolière.  Je propose ici que le Canada s’appropie de ses richesses naturelles et non qu’ils les vendent à rabais aux entreprises étrangères qui s’enrichissent sur le dos des contribuables canadiens.  Imaginez un pays sans dette avec presque sans impôts à payer et sans aucune taxes de ventes et une essence bon marché.

Pensez-y !

En passant j’ai longtemps crû que l’or pourrait redescendre sous les $250.  Mais maintenant ajouter un zéro à cette prédiction et je crois de plus en plus qu’avec le scénario hyperinflationniste ou hyperdéflationniste sont en train de créer, bref que la devise américaine soit abandonnée, que l’or pourrait atteindre les $2 500 l’once et j’ai même lu des prédictions à $5 000 l’once.

La Grande Soif. Le 5 septembre, la télé de Radio-Canada lançait sa série documentaire de 10 épisodes sur les enjeux auxquels le Canada doit faire face en matière d’eau. Autrefois réservée à la science fiction, la guerre de l’eau est à nos portes.

« Déjà, plus de la moitié des gens des pays en développement souffrent d’au moins une des six principales maladies associées à l’eau, qui tuent, chaque année, plus de cinq millions de personnes, dont près de onze mille enfants tous les jours, soit trois à quatre fois le nombre de victimes des attentats du World Trade Center! » ¹

Pénurie, difficulté d’accès, mauvaise qualité, pollution : l’eau souffre en silence de tous les maux. Et dans un pays où l’on perçoit l’abondance, elle n’a pas encore obtenu l’attention politique qu’elle mérite. Plus qu’une législation défaillante, c’est une réflexion de société qui n’a pas encore eu lieu au Québec et au Canada.

Au niveau international, « les États ont convenu, au sommet de Johannesburg (2002), de donner à la moitié des populations qui en sont privées un accès à l’eau potable et aux services sanitaires de base d’ici 2015, mais cela s’est fait au prix de la

non-reconnaissance du droit humain fondamental qu’est un accès à l’eau, contribuant ainsi à transformer ce bien commun en marchandise au profit du cartel de l’eau. » ²

Du fait du caractère insubstituable de l’eau et de sa nature sans frontière, il faudra bien partager. Or le ferons-nous dans une logique marchande ou dans une logique de bien commun ? Tout est là.

Certains font confiance à la main invisible du marché pour répartir cette richesse selon sa juste valeur à ceux qui pourront se la payer, et comptent, comme toujours, sur « l’effet de ruissellement ».

Au Québec, certains proposent la nationalisation de l’eau, afin de permettre un commerce qui respecte avant tout les besoins des Québécois. On comprend rapidement qu’ils considèrent l’eau comme une ressource économique.

D’autres enfin, certainement plus sages, comme Ricardo Petrella et les signataires du Manifeste de l’eau, invitent le monde entier à déclarer l’eau bien commun de l’humanité.

Mais saurons-nous comment faire ? L’humain est-il trop territorial et trop économique pour partager une grâce irremplaçable comme l’eau ? Le défi est séduisant : L’eau, qui risque de devenir l’un des principaux objets de conflit, pourrait aussi être l’un des plus grands exercices de fraternité de l’histoire humaine.

Si nous arrivons à sortir l’eau des griffes de la logique marchande et à nous y relier dans une logique fraternelle nous aurons une véritable mesure de ce que la civilisation peut apporter. Ce serait le début d’une toute nouvelle sorte de mondialisation…
¹MAUDE BARLOW et TONY CLARKE, L’Or bleu

²MAUDE BARLOW et TONY CLARKE, L’Or bleu

Petit florilège de choses lues ou entendues cette semaine. Si le ridicule tuait, nos cimetières seraient bien encombrés…

A tout seigneur, tout honneur. Commençons par Navin Ramgoolam, Mécontent de la presse en général ‑ de « l’express » et du « Mauricien » en particulier – le Premier ministre s’est encore laissé aller ce jeudi. Fielleux, il a attaqué avec véhémence la presse et les « semi-intellectuels » qui, selon lui, y pullulent. Sauf que Ramgoolam s’est sérieusement et lamentablement emmêlé les idées. En nous servant un argumentaire approximatif. Que son voisin de River Walk, Paul Bérenger, qualifierait volontiers « d’intellectuellement limité ».

« Ils écrivent sur le Parti travailliste (PTr) alors qu’ils n’étaient même pas nés quand ce parti avait été créé », a tancé Ramgoolam en faisant référence aux journalistes. Un peu d’arithmétique s’impose. Navin Ramgoolam est né en 1947. Le PTr, lui, a été fondé en 1936. Du coup, si l’on suit la logique – bancale – du Premier ministre, il faudrait qu’il cesse dès à présent de parler de tout ce qui s’est passé au PTr avant 1947. Avouons-le, ce principe, s’il était appliqué aurait ses avantages. Cela nous épargnerait le culte de ce passé que James Burty David et Ramgoolam nous ressassent ad nauseam.

***

En parlant de passé, intéressons-nous à celui du MMM. C’est étrange, plus un parti vieillit et plus il devient croulant, plus ses leaders se mettent à glorifier le passé. Paul Bérenger s’est pris à ce jeu cette semaine. C’est une déclaration à vous embarrasser un Rajesh Bhagwan, qui ne manque pas une seule occasion de nous rappeler que « le MMM est un parti tourné vers l’avenir ».

Ainsi, ce mardi, le leader mauve s’est lui aussi laissé aller au ridicule. Cherchez l’erreur dans la phrase suivante : « Nous voulons une équipe solide, sincère, propre et un programme fondamentalement identique à celui que nous avons défendu depuis 1969. » Vous avez trouvé ? Bien entendu, l’allusion au programme de 1969 est des plus incongrus. Car il contenait des notions qui sont devenus obsolètes. Le mot « nationalisation » figurait à profusion dans le manifeste électoral du MMM de 1976. Il était aussi question de fiscalité lourde envers les suppôts du capitalisme. Ces penchants en 2009, feraient froid dans le dos aux Chinois – ces vrais libéraux déguisés en faux communistes.

On attend désespérément du MMM qu’il nous dise ce qu’il va faire à l’avenir. Mais malheureusement, l’obsession actuelle du parti c’est de ressasser son passé. En guise de vision d’avenir, les mauves nous sortent de leur tiroir cinq thèmes prévisibles. Autour desquels tous les partis politiques décents des grandes démocraties articulent invariablement leurs programmes électoraux.

***

Pour terminer, parlons justement de la démocratie. Cette semaine nous avons assisté au démarrage des travaux du plus gros projet d’investissement étranger jamais réalisé sur notre sol. Les Rs 25 milliards investies par JinFei font tourner des têtes et soulever des suspicions. Pourtant, cette somme est ridicule. Elle représente 0,8 % du commerce extérieur chinois vers les 53 pays africains en 2008. Une valeur presque insignifiante pour l’empire du milieu.

Ce qui est moins insignifiant toutefois, c’est que la Chine bien que devenue une économie libérale, demeure un régime répressif. Certains parmi les milliers de travailleurs chinois qui viendront à Maurice connaîtront peut-être personnellement une personne qui aura été exécutée en Chine. Parce qu’elle a eu le malheur de croire en la liberté d’expression. Ou d’avoir une opinion contraire à celle imposée par le régime. Le ridicule des exécutions sommaires et arbitraires en Chine, Ramgoolam, Sarkozy, Obama ou Brown, ne le voient pas. Et pour cause, quelques « menues » entorses aux libertés fondamentales, ce sont finalement des contreparties bien ridicules comparées aux avantages du commerce avec la Chine. Oui, le ridicule ne tue pas. Sauf peut-être en Chine…

D’autres commentaires sur cet éditorial

À Thedford Mine, et ailleurs au Québec, des débats ont lieu pour défendre et pour contrer l’installation d’éoliennes, par des entreprises privées. Les débats tournent surtout autour du fait qu’au Québec, nous ayons déjà choisi de nationaliser notre électricité et que nous ayons déjà dit «non» au privé dans ce secteur. Seulement, pressés de faire plaisir à leurs copains bourgeois, desquels ils servent les intérêts, les libéraux ont torpillé ce principe –comme ils ont fait avec la santé-, permettant au privé de faire compétition à notre monopole bien à nous, et permettant à une classe d’individus, de s’enrichir sur la demande d’autrui, ce qui revient bien sûr, à de l’embourgeoisement.

C’est que, l’entreprise privée voulant installer des éoliennes, doit le faire sur des terres appropriées, et celles-ci, souvent, appartiennent à ceux et celles qui pouvaient et/ou peuvent se les permettre. Il y a donc absence d’équité. Donc, encore une fois, une analyse marxiste sera nécessaire, étant donné que les idéalistes n’en feront rien avec leur habitude de mettre ce genre de débat, sous le tapis, comme ce qu’ils font avec le «privé en santé».

Par exemple, un simple travailleur ne gagnant pas son 40 000 dollars annuellement, ne possédant qu’une petite maison, sur un petit terrain, ne se verra pas offert d’y installer une éolienne, ce qui pourtant, si c’était possible, l’avantagerait financièrement. De plus, toutes ententes sont signées en privé, avec l’entreprise, ce qui certes, choque certains militants, puisque des ententes similaires, pourraient devenir plus avantageuses pour celui ou celle qui sait négocier.

Dans un souci de faire paraître le gouvernement plus transparent et plus nationaliste surtout, sinon de faire étouffer le vrai débat, madame Normandeau dit à Radio-Canada, en réponse, qu’il doit y avoir du «contenu québécois» dans les ententes. Sauf que cela ne permet pas à l’auditoire de Radio-Canada de comprendre qu’il s’agit de bourgeoisie québécoise, et non plus, de simples québécois. Le «maître chez nous» ne vise guère le prolétariat, mais bel et bien la bourgeoisie québécoise, qui ne représente qu’une mince minorité de notre «nation».  Par exemple, et cela n’est que le plus clair des exemples, si je ne possède pas de terre, il n’y a aucune chance pour moi d’en sortir gagnant, je ne tirerai aucun profit d’une éolienne qui remplierait une offre, à la demande d’un de mes voisins. Et donc, une fois de plus, l’idéalisme l’emporte et brise toute possibilité de débattre des enjeux réels, de l’exploitation des uns, par les autres… Car en permettant par exemple la pose d’éoliennes sur un terrain, le propriétaire de ce dernier fera instantanément des profits, sur la demande de ses voisins. Et c’est ce droit que les québécois se sont brimés, il y a déjà plusieurs années, par souci d’équité et de justice sociale. Certains me diront jaloux, mais je n’aspire pas à vivre de la demande d’autrui, je n’aspire pas à profiter du besoin d’autrui surtout, encore moins de faire des profits sur le labeur d’autrui. Et cette insulte, sincèrement, ne briserait aucunement mes arguments. Elle n’expliquerait pas le processus et le conditionnement par lesquels sont passés tels bourgeois, ou tels prolétaires, pour argumenter leur position actuelle dans la sphère sociale, elle-même dictée par le système économique en place.

C’est donc, une fois de plus, une avancée pour les capitalistes, au détriment de la nation, mais surtout, des prolétaires du Québec, qui pourtant, sont les véritables créateurs de richesses. Et cela mes chers, sans débat de fond! D’ailleurs, même ces éoliennes auront été fabriquées par le labeur de prolétaires, qu’exploiteront à leur tour, les bourgeois propriétaires de ces moyens de production qui permettent de fabriquer des éoliennes. C’est finalement, un pas de plus dans le régime d’exploitation des masses que tente de faire le gouvernement québécois des libéraux –capitaliste nous le savons-, un pas de plus dans le système capitaliste, ce système incapable de partager les richesses et incapable de tenir sans l’aide prolétarienne -l’État-, plus de 30 ou 40 ans…, et qui permet surtout, l’exploitation des uns, par les autres, celle des prolétaires, par la bourgeoisie minoritaire et parasitaire.

J’ai toujours été pour qu’on développe le réseau éolien, mais pas à n’importe quel prix! Et pourquoi pas, Éole-Québec? Oui, il existe des alternatives, mais elles sont tues, par les capitalistes…

This was originally posted last month on my old blog, but due to the continued lies and bullshit being spread about socialised healthcare in America, I felt it was about time I posted it again. Whatever you think about Obama and his policies is immaterial on this one, because no-one should die because they cannot afford healthcare and no-one should go broke because they get sick. It’s as simple as that.

Read, learn and inwardly digest, Americans. Your bitter and twisted Republican politicians are lying to you. This is the truth about socialised healthcare from one who has worked in and received much medical treatment from Britain’s ‘evil’ NHS. Many of you know full well that 99.95% of what the conservative news networks and Republican politicians have been spouting on the subject is simply lies and spin. But such lies and spin should not be left unremarked, especially when they reveal such appalling levels of ignorance and prejudice.

So, Republicans – are you sitting comfortably? Well, you won’t be by the time I’m through here. Time for a history lesson….

Despite its many imperfections, the NHS has managed to survive for more than sixty years without exploding or turning into an ‘evil and Orwellian’ communist/Nazi system (honestly Republicans, what do they teach you in Politics 101?). Prior to World War Two, healthcare provision was actually very different in Britain, and was seen by many as symptomatic of a long-standing and much wider social inequality. In fact, I suspect the current GOP crew would probably approve of the pre-NHS system in Britain, as it was overly complex, provided under a number of different systems and skewed towards those with money – which meant that a very large percentage of the population either could not afford or were not entitled to decent healthcare. Hmmm. Oddly familiar, all that.

Then along came an arrogant and self-obsessed upper class senior civil servant called William Beveridge; perhaps the last person you would expect to advocate universal social security and universal health care. But that is exactly what he did, in the Beveridge Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services of 1942. The Report’s suggestions extended welfare reforms (like old age pensions) introduced by pre-World War One Liberal governments to their logical conclusions. It also reflected the experience of the de facto nationalization of Britain’s hospitals during the horror of the war on the home front in the early 1940s – a necessary process in order to provide a decent level of healthcare for the huge and increasing numbers of wounded civilians and servicemen and women of all social classes needing treatment. In the words of the historian Arthur Marwick: “only by making the state services open to all could it be ensured that the highest standards would be available to all; only by having a universal service could the stigma be removed from those who had to make use of state services” (1990, p.47).

Despite a great deal of political debate, the fact that post-war Britain was close to bankruptcy (mainly due to the sudden US withdrawal of the Lend-Lease programme), and a spectacular sulk over money and prestige from the British Medical Association which nearly scuppered the whole thing at its inception, the NHS finally came into being on 5th July 1948. Right from the start it wasn’t perfect (and it still isn’t), but it immeasurably improved the lives of millions of British people previously unable to access the treatments they needed. Yes, Republicans, it was indeed eventually introduced by a Labour government (oooh, Socialism, run for the hills!!), and yes, the NHS has always involved a great deal of government expenditure funded by tax payers’ money – but have you looked in the mirror lately?

No, really, you should. You’d be surprised. Didn’t you know that the American government already pays more for healthcare per head per annum than even that evil-NHS-socialised-healthcare-Britain does? A lot more. In fact, in 2007, US government spending on healthcare accounted for 16.2% of GDP – not far off twice the average spend of other OECD countries. Figures from 2004 are even more specific, showing that for every American, the government spends $6,102 on healthcare every year (this figure has probably risen since then), compared to a measly $2,546 per capita spent by the British government.

How do you account for that, Republicans? Oh, I know, it doesn’t fit in with your crazy, delusional worldview, so you’ll probably just ignore it. Or start lying about it, just like you’ve already been telling lies about the NHS. Your ignorance will show through – in fact, it already has. Who, I wonder, failed to fact-check that Investors Business Daily article this week which brazenly announced that: “people such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless”? A quick trawl through Google or Wikipedia would turn up the astounding fact that Stephen Hawking is actually British (shock, horror!) and has gone on record as saying that he, like so many, “wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS”. Just because some random renegade Tory MEP has nailed his colours to the mast in opposition to the NHS, it doesn’t mean it is a failed system which lacks the support of the British people, as you lot seem to assume. Honestly, Republicans, go get yourselves some IT classes and read a few British newspapers, blogs and websites – you’ll soon discover that the NHS is not perfect, but it is still much loved and appreciated by many (even to the extent of crashing Twitter on Wednesday due to the sheer volume of Brits defending the NHS), including a huge number of people who would, like at least fifty million Americans, be unable to afford healthcare if they also lived in the US.

I am exactly this type of low-income individual who would have fallen through the cracks in the American health care system. Recently, I was found to have a large pre-cancerous abnormality on my cervix after a smear test. Within a couple of weeks of the smear test results coming back, I had been referred for further tests at a local hospital – and within less than two months the tests had been taken, I had received treatment, and been given the all-clear. I doubt I’d have been able to afford any of that under the American system, and I’d now be well on my way to… well, dying, actually. Then there’s my dad, in his late sixties and retired, who had serious heart valve surgery two years ago – according to the Republican lies, the NHS doesn’t perform surgery like that on anyone over the age of 59. Then there’s a friend of mine who gave birth to her twin daughters prematurely, with all the risks to mother and babies that entails – her adorable little girls are now four years old and fit and healthy, all thanks to the NHS. Or there’s even another friend of mine who had a heart and lung transplant as a child and is now, in her thirties, one of the longest-surviving transplant patients in the country – again, all because of the NHS and the groundbreaking healthcare they have provided over the last two decades. All of this life-saving surgery and treatment has been carried out according to a need, not a price or a profit – and that is how healthcare should be. And if that requires government intervention and funding, then so be it. What’s so scary about that, Republicans?

I will keep on saying this until I am blue in the face: the NHS saved my life. And I am only one of thousands upon thousands of British people who can say the same thing. Lying about the British health service for Republican political ends won’t change this simple truth; in fact nothing will change in American healthcare until those in power, the disproportionately influential, reactionary conservative forces in American society and the hugely wealthy pharmaceutical industry start to realise that healthcare is about people, not profits. And fifty million uninsured and uncovered Americans deserve a decent and universal ’socialised’ health system. They deserve better than Republican lies.

by Allan Armstrong

Neo-liberalism and neo-Keynesianism – two options for capitalism

In the face of the deepening economic crisis enveloping the US and world economy, Alan Greenspan, former Chair of the US Federal Reserve and prime architect of Republican neo-liberalism was summonsed to a Congressional hearing on October 23^rd 2008.  Asked to account for the failures of the ‘free market’ he shamefacedly admitted, “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

Greenspan’s embarrassed admission highlighted the fact that unregulated ‘free market’ capitalism does not bring continued economic growth and prosperity in its wake.  For every upturn, there is a downturn.  Therefore, even before the final demise of the ailing Bush Presidency, his Republican administration, and the following Democrat President Obama, have been forced to adopt a programme of massive government bail-outs of failed companies, first banks, followed by key industries, such as Chrysler.Greenspan is not the first capitalist spokesmen to discover we live in a fundamentally crisis-ridden system. As the ‘Roaring Twenties’ gave way to the ‘Great Crash’ in 1929, an earlier Republican President, Henry Hoover and many business leaders were unable to accept that their economic system was off-course and heading for the rocks.  However, as production plummeted and unemployment soared in the early 1930’s, a new economic guru, Maynard Keynes, tried to persuade reluctant bosses and politicians, brought-up on the sureties of the Gold Standard and the ‘Free Market’ that without government intervention their beloved capitalism was going to fail.

Keynesianism offered a political economy for a crisis-prone capitalism.  A few capitalists might have leapt to their deaths out of top-storey windows, but many others became convinced  enough that their system faced terminal crisis, to give their backing to the new Democrat President Roosevelt, and his Keynesian inspired New Deal.

Of course, just as the Republican Party majority in the 1930s did not accept that Keynesian state intervention was necessary if capitalism was to survive, neither has the infuriated Republican Right rump in the USA today.  However, today’s political division, between the neo-liberal fundamentalists and the neo-Keynesian pragmatists, should not disguise the fact that capitalism, in both its upswing and downswing phases, represents a single unified system.  Neo-liberalism and neo-Keynesianism represent two alternative capitalist strategies, one more suited to ‘boom’, the other to ‘bust’.

Crisis has not been part of the experience of the ‘masters of the universe’ in recent years.  After a prolonged period of boom, grudging acceptance of state intervention in their businesses is very much a reluctant second choice. However, despite the partisan attachment of particular politicians and economists to Freidmanite ‘free markets’. most business leaders’ deep-seated survival instincts soon kicked in, when the economic crisis enveloped them in the wake of the ‘Credit Crunch’.  A reluctant second choice, or neo-Keynesian state interventionism, is still a better bet than the prospect of economic and social oblivion.

Left and Right united on what constitutes capitalism and socialism

However, it is not only the neo-liberal Right which has been wrong-footed in the wake of the current economic crisis.  Many socialists, particularly from Left Social Democratic, orthodox and dissident (e.g Trotskyist) Communist traditions, share a common understanding with the neo-liberal Right of what constitutes capitalism – ‘free markets’ – and what constitutes socialism – nationalised property. The difference lies in that neo-liberals put a + sign against free markets and a – sign against nationalised property, whereas these socialists reverse this particular assessment.

Therefore, after two decades of workers, their families and communities facing the woeful consequences of successive deregulations and privatizations, many socialists have been quick to acclaim the new state promoted interventions in the economy.  “We are all socialists now”.  Criticisms have largely been confined to calls for more state nationalizations and direct government control, rather than the current half-hearted government measures, which still leave the new nationalized concerns in the hands of failed bankers and their friends.

Furthermore, such views have much deeper roots. After the impact of the Great Depression and the Second World War, Keynesianism eventually became economic orthodoxy amongst the leading western powers. Even Republican President Nixon could declare in 1971, “We are all Keynesians now”.  Government intervention in the national economy, and the provision of welfare measures, were then accepted by all but the most marginal Right-wing ‘free marketeers’.

There was opposition to Keynesianism on the Left, but this was focused on the limited scope of its government interventions, compared to the wholesale nationalization founded in the ‘Communist Bloc’.  Nevertheless, the existing British national economy and the growing state economic ‘achievements’ were seen as the basis for the more thoroughgoing statist measures. These were advocated by the official Communists, in a British Road to Socialism, and by the Trotskyist Militant with its support for the nationalization of the top 200 British companies.

Many socialists still look back to these post-war decades with some nostalgia. The Welfare State provided from the ‘cradle to the grave’, trade unions had some real influence, and the Labour Party still talked in class terms and had at least a nominal commitment to ‘Clause 4 socialism’.  Today, battered by two and a half decades of neo-liberal assaults, and chastened by the collapse of their USSR-inspired statist economic alternative in 1989, these sentimental socialists are to be found earnestly hoping that the current economic crisis will permit a return of the ‘old days’. They think that the current greater acceptance of neo-Keynesian measures could provide new possibilities for socialists to be heard once again. The latest Left campaign, backed not surprisingly by the CPB and the Socialist Party, No2EU/Yes to Democracy (No to the nasty European capitalist conspiracy/Yes to 1975 independent Labour Britain) is a good example of Left nostalgia and national Keynesian revivalism.

Of course, many socialists have been quick to highlight the very limited scope of current government interventions. They have thrown their hands up in horror at New Labour’s recycling of failed bankers, who have returned to the trough, fattening their bellies once more on bonuses, only now provided directly at public expense.  A completely unrepentent Lord Mandelson has made it quite clear that he sees his main job as restoring the economic standing of the crooks responsible for the current crisis.  He wants to ensure that New Labour continues to be at the beck and call of the rich and powerful.

What would full-blooded Keynesianism and nationalization bring about in practice?

But just what would it mean for the working class today if a future Left government did take full control of the economy? We can get some idea by looking at the much more extensive Keynesian-inspired interventions taken in the 1930’s, including the New Deal in the USA.  Despite large increases in government spending, economic regulation and innovative state backed projects (e.g. the Tennessee Valley Authority), which did provide some boosts to the economy, there were still continued downturns in the ‘30’s and a further much deeper one was anticipated for 1939-40.  Only the Second World War, with its massive destruction of capital in Europe and the Far East, prevented this.  It was this war, not Keynesianism, which brought about economic recovery, but at what a cost.

Today, the prospects for a full neo-Keynesian recovery are even slimmer.  Since the 1980’s, more sophisticated, and even more fraudulent financial products and policies have allowed finance capital to preside over a considerably longer boom (up until 2008) in the US and Western Europe, compared to that of the ‘Roaring Twenties’.  The only problem is, since this recent and longer credit-induced boom was not based on any commensurate expansion of real wealth, so the consequent economic necessity for a ‘clear-out’ of unprofitable capital is even greater, before any real recovery can take place.

Any government adopting more full-blooded national neo-Keynesian measures would soon be involved in competitive ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ policies to maintain its economy’s position in a shrinking world market. Thus, if any national state took over the running of particular industries, it would soon be forced into imposing austerity measures on their workforces – unemployment, short-time working, wage and pension cuts and the undermining of working conditions.  The massive attack on Chrysler workers’ jobs, pay and conditions, under Obama’s new regime, is a warning of what nationalization under capitalism can mean.

There is the additional problem that whereas, in the 1930s, the collapse of the Gold Standard, the guaranteed currency exchange rates, and the remaining ‘free trade’ policies, together brought about a decline in international trade with shrinking markets, at least most national industries were made up of largely integrated enterprises, making useable completed products. Of course, they were still largely dependent on imported raw materials, so competition for these limited resources still contributed to in inbuilt tendency to war, which broke out in 1939.

However, since the mid-1970s, the major corporations have pushed for the globalization of production to break the power of the militant workers in places like Paris, London, Turin and Detroit. Major car companies, for example, ended integrated production so that components could be produced in many different countries, with more than one source of supply.  Effective strikes became much harder to organise.  As a consequence, in today’s situation, the nationalization of most companies would not necessarily provide the opportunity to make a useful finished product.  Instead of producing cars, you might end up only with clutch linings, windscreen wiper blades and tyres!  Therefore, any commitment to a nationally-based ‘socialist’ economy would have an even greater inbuilt tendency to war, to try to overcome the limitations of such fragmented production.

A vision to inspire rooted in the reality of our living labour

So, what does all this mean for socialist or communists today? We should be using the opportunity of the current crisis to point out that this is as good as it gets under capitalism. Neo-Keynesianism only leads to further dead-ends for our class. Any economic recoveries will be short.  They will be followed by deeper recessions.  Furthermore, the shallow recoveries will all be made at our expense, with ever more calls for cutbacks and greater austerity. Moves to national protectionism (or further entrenched EU protectionism) will be accompanied by ever shriller anti-immigrant calls, racism, homophobia and attacks on women’s rights.  Far Right thinking and personnel will become increasingly accepted into the mainstream (as can already seen in Berlusconi’s Italy). The current curtailment of democratic and civil rights will be accelerated. The endemic wars on imperialism’s periphery will move closer to its centres.

That capital, which today’s corporate executives need to write-off or destroy, in order to restore their profits, is the product of our labour. They use our living labour to create their ‘dead labour’. This is stored up in plant, machinery and raw materials. Our living labour also provides the surplus value they convert into the profits to undertake further rounds of production. Thus, the product of our living labour is constantly being used against us.  In this manner, the capitalist appropriators and controllers of our labour appear to be the initiators of all production in society, a factor that enables them to claim much of their political power too.

As long as our living labour is used to produce their dead labour, or capital, we remain wage slaves. Wage slavery is the real essence of capitalism. Capital rules us in the daily grind at work, by constantly trying to limit our needs to their socially-necessary minimum, and then by throwing us on the scrapheap when no longer required. Thus the controllers of capital constantly restrict and blight our lives.

Furthermore, when deep-seated economic crises, like the present one arise, the competing controllers of capital have only one ultimate get-out – war.  Then they demand sacrifices of an altogether different order, hoping they will be the ones to emerge as the victors presiding over the next ‘recovery’. The First World War cost 15 million lives, the Second World War cost 55 million. Rosa Luxemburg’s prediction of barbarism turned out to be very well founded, if socialists fail to completely uproot capitalism.  Today, Istvan Meszaros has written that the choice lies between, “Socialism, or barbarism if we are lucky”!

Whilst we remain wage slaves, unable to think beyond merely better terms of exploitation, higher wages and better conditions, then our potential power remains crippled.  Marx was quite clear in his opposition to the limited trade union demand, “A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”, insisting on the necessity of “The abolition of the wages system”.  As the only truly economically creative body in society, we have the power to use the ongoing crisis, not as an opportunity to cheer on and push the neo-Keynesians further, but to begin to explain the pressing need for a new social order.  We need to point out that our living labour is indeed the real creative force in the economy.  Only if this power is organized directly, through new forms of associated labour, can we move beyond ever-deepening and potentially catastrophic crises, which continued capitalist imperialism has in store for us.

Furthermore, our living labour doesn’t just have the capacity to take full responsibility for economic production in the future, it also provides the basis for our independent class organization in the here and now.  Today, New Labour represents one wing of the UK Business Party. Under ’social partnership’, trade union leaders offer a cheap personnel management service for the employers. However, trying to revive ‘Old Labour’, either from within (e.g. Socialist Appeal and the Labour Representation Committee), or by starting all over again (e.g. Campaign for a New Workers Party), or trying to capture the ‘commanding heights’ of the union bureaucracy (Broad Leftism) can only lead us back to the failures of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

The pages of The Commune provide the opportunity to debate our internationalist alternative, integrating our economic, political and cultural challenges to their crisis-torn order. We need to further develop revolutionary democratic methods of debate and organization. ‘Another world is possible’, but call it International Socialism, World Communism, or the Global Commune, the vision informing all our activity should be the abolition of wage slavery and the creation of a world based on the principle of ‘From each according to their ability and to each according to their needs”, where, “the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all”.

La nécessité des gens d’affaires

La nécessité des gens d’affaires est-elle une réalité, ou une simple relativité due à la concentration de la richesse dans les mains de la bourgeoisie que représentent ces gens d’affaires? Par ce questionnement, j’entends répondre aux argumentaires des militants capitalistes, dont entre autres, à ceux des ex-députés débattant avec monsieur Durivage à Radio-Canada. Je peux aisément démontrer qu’il y a une raison pour laquelle des gens sont plus riches que d’autres, et que cette richesse, peut ensuite servir à les enrichir d’avantage, jouant l’intermédiaire, puisque possible, entre l’offre et la demande.

De fait, nous savons qu’une maigre partie de la population emploie, et qu’une autre, bien plus grande, est la salariée de cette première. De ces 2 classes, l’une se nomme la bourgeoisie, l’autre, le prolétariat. On distingue le prolétariat par la vente de sa force de travail, laquelle le bourgeois achète, puisqu’il en a les moyens, sinon, les capitaux pour le faire. On distingue le bourgeois par ses possessions de capitaux, dont surtout, celle des moyens de production, lesquels serviront ensuite, avec le labeur des prolétaires, à créer d’avantage de richesse, qui elle, se cartellisera chez le bourgeois.  Certes, il y a réponse à une demande, une offre. Mais qu’est-ce qui explique le fait qu’une classe possède ces moyens de production –les moyens également, d’offrir-, et qu’une autre, soit elle, obligée de vendre sa force de travail pour subsister à ses besoins criants, sinon à ceux de ses proches, comme de sa famille?

Il s’agit là d’un processus que préfèrent taire nos adversaires idéalistes, donc également, capitalistes. Car les idéalistes rejettent cette forme d’étude, par expérience, qui permet d’expliquer une chose ou une autre. Par exemple, un cornet qui serait porté au Soleil brûlant, comparé à ce cornet qui, serait préservé au congélateur. L’un des deux, sans équivoque, ne se sera plus de la même forme. Il aura fondu, pour des raisons explicables, prouvables et démontrables. La chaleur –à un certain niveau relatif-, permet la fonte de la glace, telle est la conclusion d’une étude bénigne (nous pourrions certainement pousser l’étude de la glace plus que cela, voire à identifier les composantes, etc..). Je démontrerai, dans les prochains paragraphes, qu’un processus explique également qu’il y ait des bourgeois, et qu’un autre explique aussi, qu’il y ait des prolétaires.

Le capital. Le capital, lorsque l’on en possède, permet toutes sortes de choses. L’une des divinités qu’il permet se nomme l’exploitation. Celle du labeur d’autrui en partie, sinon maintenant, celle des malheurs et maux physiques d’autrui. Le bourgeois en possède énormément, comparé au prolétaire. Avec ce capital, le bourgeois transforme la demande en offre, en créant une entreprise, par laquelle il sera dit qu’il «crée des emplois». Mais de fait, c’est la demande qui crée l’offre –les emplois-, et non l’intermédiaire qui possède les capitaux –Ça peut être n’importe qui, il y a même des loteries pour s’en assurer!-. Bâtissant son «entreprise privée», les prolétaires remplissent déjà, une autre demande, formulée elle, par le besoin des consommateurs, dont aura pu profités un chanceux détenteur de capitaux, en quantité adéquate pour ce. Un autre bourgeois. D’ailleurs, même la voiture dans laquelle se promène le bourgeois est une conception faisant suite au labeur de prolétaires, ayant rempli, eux aussi, une demande, elle aussi, issue des capitaux d’un autre bourgeois, tout aussi intermédiaire que mon autre exemple. Mais là n’est pas la question… Comment, maintenant, expliquer cet amas de capitaux chez une parcelle, et minoritaire, population mondiale? Ce débat n’ayant pas lieu dans les échanges de nos trois mousquetaires à Radio-Canada, il s’agit là d’un débat purement totalitaire.

Le capital peut s’amasser de diverses façons, mais nous verrons toutefois, que peu importe la façon dont il sera amassé, il en demeure qu’il n’y a pas lieu de légitimer l’exploitation du labeur d’autrui. Par exemple, certains capitalistes vous diront que le bourgeois a travaillé comme un forçat, et que comme récompense, on lui doit le fruit du labeur d’autrui. Mais cette quantité de labeur n’est pas quantifiable, sinon, l’unité de mesure avec laquelle les capitalistes la calculent, elle, n’existe pas, ou n’a pas été dévoilée par ces capitalistes. Il est donc impossible de comparer le labeur du bourgeois, avec celui de quelconque prolétaire. Un marchand de savon, par exemple, travaillera t-il aussi fort, physiquement, que le poser de bitume, sinon que le charpentier? J’en doute! En vérité, la quantité de labeur n’est pas calculable, cette excuse n’est donc qu’un paravent vis-à-vis le réel fait, celui que le bourgeois, pour partir son entreprise, possédait déjà une quantité nécessaire de capitaux.

Sinon, les capitalistes vous diront également que le bourgeois a pris des risques, mais comment, aujourd’hui, peut-on croire à cet argument fallacieux, puisque l’on est à même de constater que ce risque, a bel et bien été partagé lors de la récente crise capitaliste. Qui donc a perdu son emploi chez GM, les employeurs, ou les employés? Dans cette forme, nous pouvons déjà conclure, sans aller plus loin, que le risque était partagé, que les travailleurs, prolétaires, ont pris le même risque que les employeurs, les bourgeois. Même que, durant toutes ces années, le bourgeois aura certes su se mettre de côté, quelques parts de profit, ce que le prolétaire n’avait peut-être pas les moyens de faire (Je vois déjà les capitalistes me dirent que les employés de GM étaient bien payés, mais c’est certes, parce qu’ils ne connaissent pas le salaire des employeurs! Car une comparaison nous rendrait vite justice, tout en considérant que ce sont les travailleurs qui créent la richesse, les voitures en l’occurrence et non pas le capitaliste, qui n’injecte qu’un capital.).

Et le comble, arrive, lui, lorsque l’on émet une critique vis-à-vis l’héritage, car il faut, à ce moment, tenir compte de leurs premiers arguments… Si le bourgeois a travaillé fort pour gagner son droit d’exploitation du labeur d’autrui, comment est-ce possible que les héritiers héritent de leurs divins droits à leur tour? Ont-ils, eux aussi, travaillé fort? Donc, l’argument tombe ridiculement dans la fausse des idéalistes. Ensuite, par la même ridiculité, les capitalistes laisseront tomber leur argumentaire, selon lequel, les «méritants» auraient pris des risques pour se gagner le droit d’exploiter le labeur d’autrui, en défendant par exemple, l’héritage de ces divins droits.

Il existe diverses raisons pour laquelle des gens sont plus riches que d’autres. Dans notre système économique, capitaliste, il y a ces classes. Déjà, n’est-il pas facile de résoudre l’équation? Un parent riche, offrira t-il les mêmes services à son enfant, que le parent pauvre, incapable d’offrir quoique ce soit? Les réalités sociales, découlant elles, de la réalité économique, n’ont donc rien en commun lorsque l’on examine une famille bourgeoise versus une famille de prolétaires. On peut déjà constater qu’une des deux familles aura moins de misère à soigner les siens –dans un milieu où la santé se donne au privé-, que l’autre, sans parler des chances d’éducation qui s’offriront à un, versus l’autre. Il est donc irréfutable que des conditions diverses existent dans notre société capitaliste, il est donc clair également que certaines personnes disposent d’un amas de capital, possiblement hérité, amassé par avarice, gagné par une loterie ou gagné à même une autre source d’exploitation du labeur d’autrui. Et que ces mêmes personnes, seront celles qui pourront transformer la demande en offre, via leurs capitaux, lesquels ils prendront pour construire des moyens de production. Mais encore, vous savez déjà qui construira ces moyens de production.

Donc, lorsque Marie Grégoire dit que la bourgeoisie est la poche qui donne des «scanneurs» aux hôpitaux publics, elle omet de dire pourquoi ces riches individus possèdent les capitaux, elle omet de dire qu’il y a exploitation du labeur d’autrui, elle crée donc, un totalitarisme des plus absurdes, en direct à la télévision. Et quand elle ajoute que ce sont aussi «des créateurs d’emplois», elle raye d’un coup, l’existence de la demande et le processus expliquant la capacité de ces riches individus de «faire bâtir» des moyens de production. Ces gens ne sont pas des méritants, mais des privilégiés, parmi une masse laborieuse. Ces gens ne sont pas méritants du labeur d’autrui, mais de purs et simples exploitants, se servant de leurs privilèges et de leur amas de capitaux, pour amasser d’avantage de capitaux.

Le tout est purement idéologique. Madame Grégoire, madame Frula et monsieur Charbonneau sont capitalistes. À leurs yeux, les bourgeois sont des méritants, car en défendant leur domination, ils s’assurent un retour d’ascenseur. Et bref, la classe politique québécoise, et mondiale, se démène pour préserver les privilèges acquis des bourgeois, acquis non par démocratie, mais bel et bien par la dictature. Jamais, personne n’a voté pour le capitalisme, ce système fut installé, voire imposé par ces mêmes bourgeois premiers. Avez-vous déjà voté pour un bourgeois? C’est certain que non! Pourquoi? Parce qu’il est impossible de le faire, et qui donc, en réalité, règne sur nos États? Les bourgeois, par leurs lobbys.

L’existence des capitalistes, des bourgeois donc, n’est redevable qu’au système en place, lequel est imposé et pour lequel nous n’avons jamais voté. Sans système capitaliste, les gens d’affaires ne servent plus à rien, ils sont remplacés, dans un système socialiste, par un conseil –comme il en existe dans les entreprises appartenant au bourgeois apte à se payer des gens pour gérer son entreprise…- ouvrier, sinon populaire, par lesquels les prolétaires exerceraient une vraie démocratie, participative celle-là. Les travailleurs, si conditionnés pour ce, savent gérer et peuvent le faire. Ces bourgeois ne sont donc aucunement indispensables, si la crise capitaliste débouche sur la révolution communiste tant attendue.

Débarrassons-nous des parasites! Débarrassons-nous des exploitants du labeur d’autrui! Débarrassons-nous des bourgeois, de ces gens dits «d’affaires», maintenant que nous les savons dispensables!

]]> http://aanavandi.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/a-blow-to-ksrtc/ Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:13:50 +0000 binai http://aanavandi.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/a-blow-to-ksrtc/

A division bench of the Kerala High Court has stayed a government order which states that permits of private operators would not be renewed on 31 notified routes, if KSRTC expresses willingness to operate services. This clause (Clause 4 of a Notification issued by the Government of Kerala in November last year) was to provide KSRTC a free hand on lucrative routes. Private operators have claimed that KSRTC does not have the required infrastructure to operate services on the said routes.

The operators have contended that nationalisation should be permitted only when KSRTC had the required infrastructure to “provide efficient, adequate, economical and coordinated services.” The petitioners also claimed that “the order was illegal. It was against the spirit of the provisions of the Motor Vehicle Act. The order indicated that the government was not sure whether the KSRTC could operate efficient services on these routes.”

Is this stay a blow to KSRTC? A come-back of KSRTC (where had it been to?) would bank heavily on the nationalised routes. Although newer buses introduced by KSRTC are far more comfortable than private ones, the service provided by Private operators are a step ahead of KSRTC. I do find improvement in the attitute of KSRTC employees, but things have to change rapidly for KSRTC to get back to the black. For now, instead of complete nationalisation, KSRTC should look forward to raise healthy competition from private operators, and try itself to win more passengers.

Nous apprenions lundi que Pemex, l’entreprise pétrolière nationalisée du Mexique, voit sa production chuter de façon dramatique cette année, et ce encore plus vite que les plus sombres prédictions.

Pemex a été formée lorsque les compagnies pétrolières américaines et britanniques qui opéraient au Mexique ont été expropriées de leur propriété et que l’État a nationalisé la production de pétrole.  Mais comme c’est souvent le cas pour les entreprises d’État, les considérations politiques l’emportent souvent sur le gros bon sens ce qui ne peut mener qu’au désastre.

Pemex voit environ 60% de ses revenus être subtilisés par le gouvernement qui s’en sert  pour financer ses dépenses de programme et sa bureaucratie obèse. Cela laisse bien peu d’argent pour l’investissement et lorsqu’une compagnie pétrolière n’investit pas suffisamment, sa production diminue. La production de Pemex est en baisse de 35% en 2009 par rapport à son peak de de 2004 et le taux de déclin va en s’accélérant. 

Pour ralentir le taux de déclin de sa production, Pemex a dû s’endetter et éprouve maintenant des difficultés financières. En juin dernier, elle a demandé $1.5 milliard en aide gouvernementale pour boucler son budget, malgré le fait que le prix du pétrole frise les $70.

Pourquoi Pemex est en difficulté malgré le prix élevé du pétrole? La raison est simple: Pemex subventionne l’essence. Le prix du litre est présentement d’environ CAD$0.68! Donc, la demande locale ne réagit pas au prix élevé du pétrole et elle continue de croître. Et comme Pemex a grandement sous-investit dans sa capacité de raffinage, elle doit importer de l’essence raffinée des États-Unis, au prix du marché.

Le Mexique représente environ 10% des importations de pétrole des États-Unis. Si la tendance se maintient,  plusieurs experts pensent que ce pourcentage tombera à 0% d’ici quelques années. C’est donc 1.5 millions de baril par jour que les États-Unis devront trouver ailleurs. Le manque-à-gagner pourra être comblé en partie par les sables bitumineux canadiens, mais ça ne sera pas suffisant.

Les entreprises privées auraient investi suffisamment pour maintenir et faire croître la production ainsi que la capacité de raffinage, notamment grâce à leurs technologies plus avancées (développées avec des investissements en R&D que Pemex n’a pas faits). Ils auraient ainsi maintenu un niveau élevé de production, de  royautés et d’impôts pour le gouvernement Mexicain et auraient maintenu un grand nombre d’emplois pour les travailleurs Mexicains. Maintenant, les Mexicains font face à une situation où non seulement ils ne pourront plus exporter de pétrole à gros prix, mais en plus la baisse de production entraînera des pertes d’emplois et de revenus de taxations et de royautés pour le gouvernement.  Ils auront tué la poule aux oeufs d’or…

Pemex est un exemple flagrant des problèmes reliés aux entreprises d’État. Pendant ce temps, Léo-Paul Lauzon nous propose de nationaliser les raffineries de pétrole du Québec pour nous permettre d’avoir de l’essence bon marché et suivre ce même sentier menant tout droit à l’échec. Quelle stupidité. M. Lauzon n’a pas pensé que si le l’État achetait les raffineries de Shell à Montréal, par exemple, et vendait l’essence 10% ou 15%  moins cher, il ne ferait pratiquement pas de profit sur cet investissement. Ce serait donc de l’argent “mort”, qui ne rapporte rien. Quel non investissement…à moins d’utiliser la violence pour subtiliser ces actifs pour presque rien (à la Chavez). De plus, la consommation d’essence augmenterait dans la province (en réponse au plus bas prix) ce qui aurait comme impact de créer une pénurie…laquelle permettrait aux compétiteurs de hausser leur prix!

I am unfortunate enough to live in an area where the FirstGroup monopolises the bus services and I have had many more negative experiences than positive ones with this highly profit driven firm. At the moment I only need to use the bus a few times a month, as I walk to work, and yet they still somehow manage to astound me. Also, I’m pretty sure the fares increase between every time I get on. 

To add a bit of background and justify my dislike we’ll go back to when I was 16 and went to an A-level college in Leeds City Centre. I don’t actually live too far from the centre but it takes over an hour to walk (I have tried it) so the bus was really the only option. The bus I could get to college, the number 49 if anybody is interested, should have been an easy option. It only set off from a depot about 1/2 mile away from my stop and supposedly comes ‘every ten minutes or less’. In a world of perfect bus services this should mean that every ten minutes or less a new bus would set off from the depot, not five minutes away, and arrive at my stop to drop me off 20 minutes later outside my college.

I don’t think this ever actually happened. 

What would generally happen was that I would arrive at the bus stop around 08:00 to give myself plenty of time to get to a 09:00 lesson and would often find myself still stood at the same bus stop anything up to 80 minutes later, surrounded by some highly agitated professionals checking their watches and either swearing under their breaths or swearing loudly to each other. Once the bus did actually arrive it would take an inordinately long amount of time to actually get into town, as there were so many agitated people to pick up along the way and you would be charged a ridiculous sum for the pleasure.

I believe day tickets now in Leeds, or day-riders as everybody calls them (they have tried to change it to FirstDay’s but I’ve never actually heard anybody ask for one), cost £3.20 off peak. I’m fairly sure that when I was 16 they cost £2.00 but the price seems to creep up every couple of months and yet the service never seems to improve. Some routes also still have the old style buses, with broken seats, graffiti covered, littered, stained and often smelling rather unpleasant and on a few occasions drunk people try and grope you and sit on your knee whilst the driver pretends it isn’t happening (this has happened to me three times now). Sometimes the drivers can be fairly rude too and I’ve noticed also often deliberately over charge for single journeys. 

Once I was at university I realised that if I went for the first or second bus of the day, between 06:00 and 06:30 it would usually be on time and I could spend the time until lectures in the library or in a coffee shop. I also realised that if I got the only other  bus run by a different service in my area it was cheaper, cleaner and on time. Unfortunately it also ran much less often and wasn’t always convenient. Getting home was a different matter and usually involved standing with dozens of other people, weary after a long day, in various weather conditions, waiting for a long overdue bus, only to watch it drive by the stop because it was too full to pick anybody up. 

Even when I lived in a different part of Leeds I had much the same problem, it wasn’t just a few particular services, it was them all.

Now, as I rarely get on a bus, I had mostly forgotten about my long standing animosity towards First buses, until two days ago, then it all came screaming back. I had a hospital appointment, which I was kindly given a lift to and afterwards I would be getting the bus back to work to finish up the working day. As it turned out, the receptionist had got confused about the appointment times and my appointment was actually the day after, now yesterday. So already slightly annoyed I went to wait for the bus, which stops just outside the hospital grounds, so I could get back to work as quickly as possible, since I would now be having to take more time out to go to the appointment again on the right day. 

The bus was another ‘every ten minutes or less’ service and surprisingly I was only waiting about ten minutes, so far so good. Then when I boarded I was confronted by a rather unfriendly driver who looked at me like I was stupid when I gave him my destination and then charged me £1.70 for what is a pretty short distance. This price increase annoys me so much I have actually drawn the route on this map to show you how short it actually is: 

The green dot is the start of my journey and the red dot is the end. I would estimate it to be about a mile and a half and should only take around five minutes via bus so I assumed I would be back at work fairly quickly.

This is why you should never assume. 

A few stops after I had boarded the bus stopped near the roundabout to change drivers. As usual, the new driver wasn’t at the stop so we had to wait for them to arrive and then wait whilst the new and old driver had a chat and then wait some more whilst the new driver fiddled about settling in. It was during all this waiting that all my past grievances with First buses crept back to the forefront of my mind. Eventually I got back to work and yesterday when I went back for my appointment I chose the sensible option and walked home, which I enjoyed and involved no annoyances.

I have tried to think of a good word to say about FirstGroup buses in Leeds and I just cannot. It is an unreliable, unfriendly, overpriced service that seems to do nothing but disrupt peoples lives and unfortunately it is unavoidable for many. 

The solution I like; nationalise the bus services, or rather re-nationalise the bus services (another great move by Thatcher there). That way the service can be properly regulated and would be a service actually based on the people rather than the profits that FirstGroup care about. 

Although of course then certain American factions would probably call it the ‘Socialist Bus Service’, but never mind. I’m sure we could live with that.