An interesting take-over battle is now taking place in the world mining industry. Towards the end of last year, BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, made a bid to take over Rio Tinto, the world’s second largest mining company. According to the Times of London (5 February) a BHP-Rio merger “would create the world’s largest iron ore, aluminium and coal supplier . . . A merged BNP-Rio would control about 36 per cent of the world’s iron ore, which is used to make steel, and consolidate 75 per cent of that market in the hands of only two...
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In his latest book, Coral, A Pessimist in Paradise, the biologist and popular science writer Steve Jones attributes to Marx the statement that “we see mighty coral reefs rising from the depth of the ocean into islands and firm land, yet each individual depositor is puny, weak, and contemptible”. Marx was something of a polymath, but an expert on corals? These words do appear in Capital – in chapter 13 of Volume I on “Co-operation” – but were not written by Marx. He was quoting a passage from a book by Richard Jones making the point that by working...
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The 17th Congress of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party was held back in October. It was five years since the previous one, so this is clearly not a decision-making body that determines how the party — and therefore the country — should be run. Rather it’s a rubber-stamp gathering that endorses what the CCP’s power-holders have already decided. The Central Committee is ‘elected’, but even that meets less than once a year, and it is the political bureau and its standing committee (nine men in dark suits) who really run things. The CCP has changed over the years. It now...
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“Socialism is Illogical and Irrational” I’ve been told this on a number of occasions when attempting to discuss the pros and cons of socialism and capitalism . . . not that the proponents of that view can offer any evidence that the present system of free-market capitalism is either rational or logical. Theirs is the response of the semi-secure, semi-comfortable, and semi-informed; they sit within the bubble that the system allows them, observing the world through the reversed telescope of capital’s media machine. What they see, hear and read “informs” them and shapes their world-view. When compared with much...
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After decades of uneasy existence as part of Serbia the newly independent state of Kosovo has emerged with its inevitable new anthem and new flag. But there are real political concerns best not forgotten in the ballyhoo and hopes for a brighter future. One man interviewed by the BBC’s Mark Madell described how during the war he fled his village with many relatives under attack by Serbian troops. He had to leave his aunt behind and she was burnt to death. He said: “Kosovo is rich in minerals and rich in farming land, is rich in all other aspects....
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Jack London who was born on this day in 1876 is the subject of an article in this month’s Socialist Standard. Older editions of our journal have also examined London’s oeuvre, including The Iron Heel. This book was reviewed in February 1975 and from the introduction we learn that “Jack London wrote over fifty books in a short life. The majority were written in haste; they include childish trash, four or five first-rate novels, and a number of outstanding short stories. In most of his writing the chief idea in one form or another comes from a crude form...
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Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank revolutionised credit for the poor, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and micro-finance became a household concept. The maxim – “teach people how to take a small investment, grow their business and eventually become self-sufficient”. The micro-finance sector is in the middle of a boom: “Micro-finance will grow more and more,” claims Nairobi-based director of Inclusive Financial Systems, Stephan Staschen. “More commercial entities will also get involved as they realise its profitability and the result will be that many poor people will be served.” Yet , this report , questions its effectiveness ....
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Editorial from the forthcoming January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard This article, aimed at the British Green Party, can be just as easily applied to the Green Party here in the States. Capitalism, no matter how progressive, can never be reformed in the interest of the working class or the planet. People are right to be concerned about what is happening to the environment. Materials taken from nature are being transformed by human activity into substances which nature either can’t decompose or can’t decompose fast enough. The result is pollution and global threats such as the hole in...
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Fundamentally there are three elements to the climate change debate, elements of dissimilar weight and influence: first there are the governments and the economy to which they are bound; second is business and the corporations, including the media; and third are the citizens. There is deliberately no mention here of the planet, the environment, changing weather patterns or natural catastrophes as the planet itself is in no imminent danger. The Earth will continue to survive in one form or another. Humans are not destroying the planet, merely hastening its change and their own demise if they destroy and poison...
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Anyone who has read Frederick Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England will long remember much of what it says. Page after page describes the lives of workers in the big cities in 1844. Two boys in London, for instance, were arrested for stealing a half-cooked calf’s foot from a shop: the magistrate discovered that their mother had sold or pawned all the family’s possessions in order to buy food. Many others had little or no furniture and slept on the floor, covered in rags. The accounts of slum dwellings are sometimes hard to believe. Perhaps the...
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