The number of UK children living in “severe poverty” rose in the four years before the recession Save the Children says The number of children in homes in this category rose 260,000 to 1.7m from 2004 to 2008. The report warns there is a danger that severe poverty could rise even further. The government defines relative...
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Class
Failing the Children Again
Freedom
From the Western Clarion, Dec. 1917 One of the most amazing paradoxes to be found in modern civilization is the workers belief that they are free. Every experience points to the fact that they are quite the reverse. Their whole life, from childhood to the grave, is composed of actions most of which are...
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This Just In!
Dirty gossip about the capitalist mode of production Guess who’s not getting that rose garden??? You would have to search long and hard to find someone who was better at sticking it to the working class than The Economist. It has perfected one of the most truly remarkable posturing acts in the annals of...
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Why didn’t anyone wake me up while the revolution was going on? (Why we are not Leftists)
It is not uncommon to hear leftists talk knowingly of “ongoing struggles” when they project the day after tomorrow of an anti-capitalist revolution, as if it weren’t really over yet with the expropriation of the capitalist class. The working class must evidently “smash” the capitalist state and set up a “proletarian” régime holding...
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Why The Economic Crisis?
The WSP has produced three leaflets (in pdf format) meant to aid working people to understand the causes of the current economic crisis: “Booms and slumps – what causes them?” – Discusses in plain terms the causes of economic cycles and why “Ultimately, it is the economy that controls politicians and not the other...
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Power and Privilege
And this man wants to be president. From MSNBC : Senators John McCain and Barack Obama released their Senate financial disclosure statements on Friday, revealing that Mr. McCain and his wife had at least $225,000 in credit card debt…The bulk of the McCains’ obligations stemmed from a pair of American Express credit cards that...
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The big gamblers
Despite the turmoil in the markets, bank failures and write-offs amounting to $120 billion City bonuses will top $12 billion this year.Dozens of bankers at Goldman Sachs, for example, were awarded bonuses of at least $10m each at Christmas, with one lucky trader pocketing more than $20m in cash and shares. The average bonus...
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Booms and Slums
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...
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Only Workers are Productive
“Irish workers are second most productive in the world” headlined the business section of the Irish Times (4 September) reporting on an International Labour Organisation (ILO) study on productivity in various different countries. Productivity as measured by the ILO is a pretty nebulous concept. They take a country’s total GNP and divide it by...
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Emptying The Ocean With a Teaspoon
Apparently the hugely publicized “Product Red” campaign fronted by Bono and other celebrities spent $100 million on promotion but only brought in $18 million last year. Something of a flop! The idea behind the campaign was to raise money (and awareness?) for AIDS treatment in Africa through a partnership – participating multinationals aiming, by...
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