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WHAT DRIVES THE CAPITALIST ECONOMY One thing that cannot change whilst capitalism lasts is the fact that workers, being forced to sell their working abilities to a capitalist by virtue of being  alienated from the means of wealth production, will only be employed by the capitalist on condition that the value of what they are paid falls significantly below the value of their labour input – what they contribute in terms of their labour to the product in question.  This surplus value is the source of the capitalist´s unearned income and is realised when that product is sold on the market. This system cannot possibly allow that the workers should be entitled to the full fruits of their labour. A business, after all, is not a charity; it needs to secure what in economic parlance is called a financial return.  The systemic need for a tiny minority to extract an economic surplus from the great majority makes it structurally impossible for all but this minority to live off an unearned income f
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NO. 1432 DECEMBER 2023 SS DECEMBER 2023 Editorial – Last Post for capitalism? Pathfinders – The tangled web Dear Editors Cooking the Books 1 – From Marx to Musk Halo Halo / Tiny Tips Material World – Think global, act global ‘Take me to your leader’ It’s that time of year again Human rights and human wrongs From ideology to humanity What drives the capitalist economy Video review: Illustrate to Educate? A polite reply to a Jehovah’s Witness Pro-Palestine or Anti-War? Cooking the Books 2 – Progress and pauperism Proper Gander – Fashion Victims Book reviews – McManus, Harper, Morland Obituaries – Moir, Hendrie 50 Years Ago – The Middle East war: a letter to a Kiev cousin Action Replay – Try and Try Again December 2023 events Life and Times – Nice twist, keep them happy – and screw them at the same time
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HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN WRONGS As the government considers whether to press on with yet another scheme that rides roughshod over human rights law, we must remind ourselves that rights are not really all they’re cracked up to be. With the UK Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the government’s plan to deport refugees to Rwanda is unlawful, the attention of the political bubble in Westminster has turned once again to the Tory Party’s favourite bugbear, the Human Rights Act. Once again, the talking heads of British ideological conservatism have been trotted out to denounce the perceived pernicious influence of foreign judges, and call for the repeal of this allegedly unfair and un-British piece of legislation. The debate over the future of the much-maligned Act, which incorporates the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights into British law, has been brought to a boil in recent times by numerous pieces of government legislation which call into question its hallowed principles. High-profile
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PRO-PALESTINE OR ANTI-WAR? Every weekend there have been protests and demonstrations about what is happening to the population of Gaza. Water, electricity and fuel are cut off. Hospitals, schools and residential buildings are bombed. Hundreds are killed every day and many more injured. Over a million have been displaced. Naturally people are horrified by what they see on their television screens is happening and, equally naturally, want it to stop. So do we. Despite this, most politicians will only go as far as asking for a ‘humanitarian pause’ — after which the siege, the bombings, the killings, and the destruction can continue as before. Some of the demonstrators are openly pro-Hamas chanting ‘from the river to the sea.’ Maybe some are doing it as an act of defiance as the government and the media have called for the police to ban it. But do they realise the implications of what, literally, they calling for — an Islamic state in the whole of Palestine including what is now Israel? Ho
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Lenin y el mito de 1917  Un mito se ha difundido de que en 1917 hubo una revolución "socialista" cuando más bien fue la   continuación de una revolución capitalista. ¿Qué justificación hay, entonces, para llamar a la   agitación en Rusia una revolución socialista? Nada más allá del hecho de que los   líderes del movimiento de noviembre afirman ser socialistas marxistas. M. Litvinoff   prácticamente lo admite cuando dice:   "Al tomar las riendas del poder, los bolcheviques obviamente estaban jugando un   juego con mucho en juego. Petrogrado se había mostrado completamente de su lado.   ¿Hasta qué punto las masas del proletariado y el ejército campesino en el resto del   país los apoyan?"   Esta es una clara confesión de que los propios bolcheviques no conocían los puntos   de vista de la masa cuando tomaron el control. En un congreso posterior de los   soviets los bolcheviques tenían 390 de un total de 676. Es digno de notar que  Ninguno de los periódicos capita
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