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How do we know if any of these income schemes even work? Guy Standing, economist, author and co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network, looked at basic-income pilots in the US and Canada going back to the 1970s. He says they led to improved school attendance among poorer families, and also had mental-health benefits while decreasing crime, behavioural disorders and substance misuse. So, UBI is as much about experimenting on people, in essence; as much about managing their lifestyles as about providing a decent standard of income for all.

On the surface, the discussion of incomes seems to be driven by an egalitarian sentiment. We cannot have a CEO paying less tax than the cleaner, says Corbyn. [W]e dont want [to] turn Britain into a bargain-basement economy on the shores of Europe where we continuously reduce corporation taxation [and] encourage a low-wage economy. But it is Corbyns bargain-basement egalitarianism, rather than corporate pay, that is the real problem. Despite the stagnation of wages and rising prices over the past decade or so, it seems that, according to Corbyn, the best we can hope for is putting a cap on what the richest earn. Its hardly inspiring.

At less than five per cent, unemployment today is at its lowest since the 1970s. But wages are growing slowly less than two per cent in the past year and this rise is more than cancelled out by rising inflation. Consequently, living standards are stagnant, if not falling. Much of the new work created over the past decade has been through self-employment. Self-employment levels increased from 3.8million in 2008 to 4.6million in 2015. While this in part reflects a rise in insecure work, and a reluctance among employers to put people on contracts, it also suggests that some are choosing to use their initiative and strike out on their own.

Corbyn, and many on the left, fail to recognise this ambition. This is not about limiting aspiration or penalising success, Corbyn insisted on the day he announced (and then shelved) his maximum-income policy. But it really is. Instead of seeking to impose a ceiling on the pay of the wealthy few, he should be calling for higher pay for all, and much higher than the measly 10 an hour hes now pledging. Corbyns plans reveal the dearth of aspiration in the income debate. The left has given up on dramatically improving living standards and instead just indulges its paternalistic, regulating impulse. Left-wingers today would rather hold back enterprise than unleash it.

These various income schemes are always put forward by academics. But why should they decide what working people get paid? This never used to be an academic question. It was a point of political contestation occasionally even violent confrontation between employers and workers. The defeat of the trade-union and labour movements in the 1980s put an end to that. Today, there is a tendency to look to the state or expert committees to decide what working people should earn. The minimum wage is worked out by the supposedly independent Low Pay Commission and set by government. Dont workers get a look-in?

Today, being a lefty seems to mean defending the tax system and waxing lyrical about fat cats. It is surely time we challenged the assumptions of these supposed champions of people on low incomes. If we are to go beyond the basics and maximise our earnings, then we need to get to grips with the underlying cause of stalled living standards and insecure working lives. We need to be much bolder, and more ambitious, than those coming up with low-horizon schemes. Any new ideas to improve peoples standard of living should be encouraged, but if the British economy cant generate enough well-paid work to go around, it really will just be another academic exercise.

Dave Clements is a writer, public servant and convenor of the Institute of Ideas Social Policy Forum

Picture by: Getty Images.

For permission to republish spiked articles, please contact Viv Regan.

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Living wage? This is bargain-basement socialism - Spiked

You have to feel for Jeremy Corbyn.

In a week in which Theresa May continued to build her axis of evil including meetings with Saudi Arabias human rights-abusing autocracy and the Philippines President Rodrigo the Punisher Duterte Jeremy Corbyn was making headlines for his angry outburst during an ITV News interview, and for allowing the spectre of antisemitism to continue to haunt the Labour Party through Ken Livingstones continued bout of Hitler Tourettes. Another open goal spectacularly missed.

Is it with an increasing inevitability that the shenanigans of this Government are met with radio silence, or worse, a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, from Labour.

Is it not time for those still rallying around Corbyn face up to the fact that perhaps he is not the leader many on the left had hoped for?

Jeremy Corbyns leadership win was politics Guy Goma moment - a rabbit in the headlights stare of a man realising that, through a series of spectacular coincidences and accidents of fate, he had suddenly found himself thrust into the limelight. From the moment he was elected, there has been a siege mentality to his leadership.

Supporters have sought to blame the media and the Parliamentary Labour Party for poor poll numbers. Just this weekend, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was asking, Whats interesting is when you poll the issues and our policies, they are extremely popular, so whats preventing people translating that into strength in the polls?

Well John, it could be the infighting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, or the swath of media who have had it in for Corbyn from the start, or the briefings against him, or the leadership challenges. Its probably all of those things. But are thoseon the left unable to take even a cursory glance in the mirror?

How, then, can we explain this disconnect between popular policies and an increasingly unpopular leader? It has been clear to many for some time that Corbyn is unable or unwilling to translate even the more popular policies into vote-winning ones.

His muted EU referendum campaign, and subsequent failure to make the case either way for where Labour stands on Brexit, has allowed the Liberal Democrats the Liberal Democrats FFS - to manoeuvre themselves into the position of speaking for the 48% who voted to Remain, whilst picking up approximately zero potential voters from the Leave side.

Labour, as it happens, are on something of a roll. Last weeks announcement that a Corbyn government would provide universal free school meals, funded by VAT on private school fees was broadly well-received, popular with the public, and pissed off exactly the right kind of people (Im looking at you, privately-educated The Sun journalists). Then, this week, a proposed rise in the minimum wage to 10 by 2020.

But it all comes back to this: Jeremy Corbyn is not capable of winning a General Election. He isnt even the figurehead of a socialist movement. Hes an arbitrary avatar, chosen almost by default from Labours current group of socialist MPs to stand in the 2015 leadership election. If hes not capable of winning a General Election, then all this is for nought.

And the real danger for socialists is that, by continuing as leader and allowing his leadership to become synonymous with the socialist cause, he pushes socialism off the agenda for the foreseeable future. Opponents from all political sides will be able to point to Corbyns leadership as an example of socialisms failures.

If youre a socialist, you neednt support a political leader just because they are too. If theyre incompetent, theyre harming the cause.

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Is the Cult of Corbyn doing more damage than good for socialism and the Labour Party? - JOE.co.uk

In Yuriys story, Stalin plays the defining role in the creation of the winery, a narrative that has likely changed little since the autocrat was alive. Creating the winery in a massive former alabaster mine is just another of his mythic, Herculean labors. Here, Stalin created a five-year plan for champagne just as he created one for coal and steel production that also transformed eastern Ukraine.

As a Georgian, Stalin came from a part of the Russian Empire with a real wine culture, where wine is carefully cultivated and sipped rather than used as substitute for vodka. Here, Stalin took that tradition and recreated it on monstrous scale.

Yuriy rattles off more statistics. Within its first four years of opening, the factory produced 1.3 million bottles of what they labelled champagne, ignoring the French requirement that the term champagne only be applied to sparking wine from the Champagne region of France. In 1959, that number doubled to 2.7 million bottles and continued to grow. Stalins aim was to provide Soviet citizensafter years of wartime rationingwith a desirable consumer good that everyone could afford. That could only be achieved with production on a massive scale.

This abandoned alabaster mine was chosen because its huge size allowed it to accommodate wine making of the scale Stalin envisioned. But there were also clear drawbacks, as the steppe winters were far too cold for grapevines. As a result, grapes had to be brought in from the south: from Georgia, Crimea, Odessa, and Moldova. That tradition carries on today in many of the winerys reds, which still use Georgian saperavi grapes.

Yuriy tells me more stories as we drive deeper and deeper into the caverns. Every so often, we stop so I can take pictures of one of the surreal Soviet murals on the walls. There are smiling young women in folk costumes collecting grapes, birds getting drunk on red wine and starting fights, and bears smoking while enjoying a bottle of Soviet brut.

Mural of woman in folk costume collecting grapes.

The unimaginatively named Soviet Champagne was the winerys first wine and flagship brand. With its iconic black and silver logo, it was instantly recognizable and the champagne in the Soviet Union. Thats not to say its particularly good. Soviet Champagne is saccarine, too sweet for most Westerners; it is said it mirrors Stalins own tastes. But for people who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, it is the taste of youth, inextricably intertwined with memories of school graduations, holiday celebrations, and the best kind of long nights. Artwinery has worked hard to hold onto this nostalgia market. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they changed the name of the wine to Artemovsk, after the Soviet name of the city where the winery is located, to keep the Soviet association.

But in 2015, de-communization laws, found in weaker forms in many post-communist states but absent in Ukraine until after the most recent hostilities began, forced the winery to re-brand once again, as the townnamed after a Russian Bolshevik in 1924re-adopted its pre-revolutionary name, Bakhmut. The winery has compromised, changing its name from the Artemovsk Factory of Champagne Wines to Artwinery, but they are fighting to keep the valuable Artemovsk brand for the wine itself.

There are ways of getting around such rules, of course, and some find it worthwhile for the uniquely associations of grandeur. At a recent communist functionary themed party I attended, twenty-something Ukrainians and ex-pats mixed on the top floor of one of Kievs elite Stalinist high rises in an apartment that has passed from the old Soviet elite to the new capitalist one. That night, as people looked down on the bright lights of Kievs main drag, there was no shortage of Soviet Champagne. Closer inspection, however, revealed that instead of the Russian Sovetsky or Soviet, they instead bore the nonsensical name Sovetovskoe, which, owing to its complete lack of meaning, skirts the new regulations.

I follow Yuriy past a giant bust of the the Roman god of wine, Bacchus, carved into the alabaster wall. Yuriy brings me a to a map of Artwinerys exports. In 2003, they produced over 12 million bottles of champagne, 58 percent of which was exported. Before the war, Russia was the largest foreign market, but now Russian-imposed trade restrictions have cut them off entirely. Now Germany, home to the largest Russian-speaking community in Europe outside the former Soviet Union, is the largest market. There, a bottle of one of Artwinerys wines goes for about 10 euro, far more than the $3 is usually costs in Ukraine.

Artemovsk, however, was not the only major brand. After Russian annexed Crimea in February 2014, many Ukrainians were surprised to still be able to find Crimea Champagne on store shelves, even as Crimean restaurants suddenly found themselves cut off from their supplies of Crimean wines. Not so for the Crimea Champagne, the grapes of which came from Crimea, but which was made deep within these caverns.

The loss of a vital market is not the only way in which the war has affected the winery. In 2014, separatists briefly took control of the town of Artemovsk. There was a shoot out with one of the security guards at the winery, but the rebels didnt enter the caverns. But it is the economic impact that has been most lasting. With most bottles taking three years to produce, the winery has drastically cut back production and is instead hoping to sell some of the millions of bottles still sitting, unsold, in the caverns.

Passing rows of bottles, Yuriy takes me to see how the bubbles are formed in the champagne. Row after row of wooden stands contain bottles full of wine that must have their elevation increased at pre-determined intervals to ensure proper development. It is the sort of time consuming work requiring huge supplies of laborers that was only possible in the Soviet Union. Since 2003, much of the work has been automatized with the staff of the winery reduced to some 500, who now screen bottles for impurities on conveyor belts and use French-made tilting machines rather than doing the work by hand.

Amidst the kitschy murals and whirling modern technology, however, the the caverns also have a darker side. In 1942, Nazis took control of the area. After a building caught fire in Artemovsk, they blamed the citys Jewish community. Nazi forces rounded up the local Jews and kept them in a basement for two days without food or water. Then they took them to these same mines and sealed all 3,000 of them in tunnel behind a fresh new brick wall. In their report, Sonderkommando 4b stated with this action, the district of Artemovsk was also freed of Jews.

When the Soviet army retook the city and opened the tunnel, they found only a few of the victims had gunshot wounds, presumably to force them into the tunnel. The rest were left to die. When the Soviet officers discovered the bodies, they were well preserved due to the same factors that later led Stalin to choose this site for his winery: dry air and even, low temperatures. The bodies were then brought out for relatives to identify.

We come up to the site of the tunnel in our golf cart. It is another regular stop on the wine tour. The Soviet monument denies these victims their religious identity, referring to them only as Soviet citizens who lost their lives. In the Soviet worldview, identity was determined by class, leaving no room for religious or ethnic minority identities. A newer plaque from the local Jewish community calls for God to remember the souls of Artemovsks Jews, and there are memorial sculptures and candles built into the wall.

After the memorial, Yuriy brings me to a tile area set against a pink cavern wall with 70s-style display cases, each holding one of their signature bottles of wine. Yuriy again talks about their famous brands, and it dawns on me that his spiel was designed to impress high ranking-party functionaries rather than tourists.

Yuriy leading the wine tasting.

Yuriy then takes me into a cavern with a long circular table and heavy, throne-like wooden chairs. This was where the real high-level functionaries came to party. Luminaries from First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Petro Shelest to Ukraines second president Leonid Kuchma all made visits. Noticeably absent, however, has been current Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. With the winery partially owned by political opponents like oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, he is not expected to make a visit any time soon.

From the throne room, Yuriy takes me past a formal dinning area bedecked with statues of Poseidon and Athena to a private tasting room. Here, he puts on his white lab coat and begins to instruct me in the carefully scientific process of wine tasting. Each glass must be lifted to the light, carefully tasted, and described. Yuriy briefly remarks with sadness how after the Soviet Union collapsed, the French made them drop the word champagne from their bottles, but soon moves on.

I try a mixture of their sparkling wines: white, ros, and red. Most are too sweet for me, but there is one clear standout: the Krimart brut. It has a rich, dark-red color and smells of raspberries. Rather than the sweetness overpowering the red wine, the red wine gives substance to the effervescence.

From there, it is back into the golf cart and into the dark evening. The workers are leaving the premises of the winery as they would any other factory job. I walk with them, stepping out from Stalins subterranean technicolor winery, and back into the real world.

Excerpt from:
of Champagne Socialism - Roads and Kingdoms

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This mornings key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Venezuelan opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens after being bloodied by a Maduro supporter (AP)

A march on Monday by members of Venezuelas National Assembly who were opposed to president Nicols Maduros Socialist government was met by men with sticks and rocks by Socialist supporters.

On Tuesday, Venezuelan police attacked protesters with tear gas, water cannons, and pepper spray. The clashes began after the authorities closed subway stations, set up checkpoints and cordoned off a square where opponents had planned their latest protest against the Socialist government and a crippling economic crisis.

The protests were triggered by a decision last week by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court to effectively dissolve the National Assembly and take over its legislative powers, effectively making Maduro a dictator.

Maduro is in control of the presidency, the army, the media, and the courts. The National Assembly was the only body that expressed any opposition to Maduro. Maduro has repeatedly used the courts to reverse any legislative decisions that he did not like, but this time he was going to eliminate the legislative branch completely.

Maduro has been jailing bakers because there is a bread shortage, and has been jailing factory workers because there is shortage of milk, rice, flour, ketchup, diapers, and toilet paper. It seemed that Maduro could get away with anything. So it was to everyones surprise that Maduros latest move generated worldwide outrage, even from some normally compliant mainstream media sources. Even Maduros attorney general Luisa Ortega Diaz was opposed to the latest move.

The international opposition caused Venezuelas Supreme Court to reverse the decision on Saturday, but the crisis has continued because it triggered violence in the streets. There were thousands of people on both sides, pro- and anti-Maduro, in a situation where anger is increasing between the haves supporting Maduro and the have-nots opposed to Maduro. Reuters and Washington Post and Venezuelanalysis

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The Organization of American States (OAS) approved on Monday overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding that Venezuela restore full constitutional authority to the National Assembly.

However, that decision came at the end of two days of extraordinary brinksmanship.

On April 1, Bolivia assumed the rotating Pro Tempore presidency of the OAS. A meeting had been previously scheduled to discuss the Venezuela situation, but Bolivia is one of the two closest allies to Venezuelas Socialist government, the other one being Ecuador. So the first action taken by the Bolivian representative was to cancel the meeting.

This infuriated other OAS members, led by Costa Rica and Mexico, so they conducted what is being called an institutional coup, and went ahead with the cancelled meeting. Bolivia protested the move and subsequently walked out of the meeting, joined by Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

There were 21 remaining countries at the meeting, and 17 nations approved the resolution, with four abstentions: Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Belize and El Salvador.

According to the text of the resolution:

EXPRESSING our grave concern regarding the unconstitutional alteration of the democratic order in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and our continuous support for dialogue and negotiation to lead to a peaceful restoration of democratic order,

[The OAS] DECLARES that: The decisions of the Supreme Court of Venezuela to suspend the powers of the National Assembly and to arrogate them to itself are inconsistent with democratic practice and constitute an alteration of the constitutional order of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Notwithstanding the recent revision of some elements of these decisions, it is essential that the Government of Venezuela ensures the full restoration of democratic order.

Pary Rodriguez, Bolivias OAS representative, said that the resolution is totally illegal and arbitrary and dont correspond to the norms of international law. Latin American Herald Tribune and Panama Post and TeleSur

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In a lengthy article that doesnt anywhere contain any form of the world Socialism, the New York Times blamed Venezuelas massive economic crisis on populism, apparently to take a swipe at Donald Trump.

According to the article:

When Hugo Chvez took power in Venezuela nearly 20 years ago, the leftist populism he championed was supposed to save democracy. Instead, it has led to democracys implosion in the country, marked this past week by an attack on the independence of its Legislature.

Venezuelas fate stands as a warning: Populism is a path that, at its outset, can look and feel democratic. But, followed to its logical conclusion, it can lead to democratic backsliding or even outright authoritarianism.

This is really laughable. I remember, years ago, when I really admired the NY Times, but since the 1980s it has moved progressively leftist, and today no longer reports news.

Socialism has led to disaster every time it has been tried. There have been oceans of blood spilled in the name of Socialism in countries like the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea and China. In fact, Socialism has been such a disaster that every country has been forced to abandon it, including the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, East Germany, and so forth. North Korea has not abandoned it, and that whole country is a disaster. Venezuela is headed the same way.

How stupid to you have to be to believe in Socialism when it has failed spectacularly every time it has been tried, and has never been successful not even once?

Actually, as Ive written several times in the past, it is pretty easy to prove mathematically that Socialism always collapses.

In 1991, I visited a huge computer show in Hanover, Germany. It was a special occasion because the Berlin Wall had just fallen, and East Germans were visiting the show for the first time. Theyre in a state of shock, I was told. Theyre still using punched card equipment from the 1950s. Why had Communist East Germany gotten stuck in the 1950s?

The same with Cuba, which is still using automobiles from the 1950s.

In medieval times, a feudal estate with a couple of hundred tenants could be run on a Socialist basis, if the feudal lord desired. All hed need is one or two regulators to make sure that all prices were fixed and all transactions follow the law.

But as the population grows exponentially, the number of transactions grows exponentially faster, and so the number of regulators needed becomes a larger and larger percentage of the population. By the time you have a country with millions of people, every person would have to be a regulator to make it work, and obviously thats impossible. So thats why countries like East Germany, North Korea, Russia and Cuba all got stuck in the 1950s until they gave up Socialism. NY Times and News Busters

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Venezuela, Nicols Maduro Moros, Organization of American States, OAS, Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Belize, El Salvador, Pary Rodriguez, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, East Germany, China Permanent web link to this article Receive daily World View columns by e-mail

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With Venezuela's Socialism Spiraling into Chaos, NY Times Blames the Mess on 'Populism' - Breitbart News

Activists from around the country at an evening plenary of the annual Socialism conference

THE UNPRECEDENTED outpouring of resistance to the presidency of Donald Trump has set the stage for what is likely to be the largest and most important Socialism conference yet.

The annual Socialism conference has a well-deserved reputation for bringing together leading left-wing figures with activists from the front lines of today's struggles for social justice to participate in a weekend of discussion and debate--about contemporary events, hidden chapters in radical history, and the tradition of socialism from below.

This year's conference, which will take place July 6-9 in downtown Chicago, comes at an especially critical moment. Trump's attacks on immigrants, escalation of U.S. military operations and embrace of law-and-order politics--not to mention his cabinet stuffed with billionaires and arch reactionaries--has provoked a massive response from ordinary people horrified by his agenda.

The call for a Women's March on Washington the day after Trump's inauguration led to the largest single day of protest in American history, and since then, there have been repeated mobilizations in opposition to Trump's anti-Muslim travel ban and his attacks on undocumented workers.

A new generation of activists is thus being forged--in the crucible of street protest and political radicalization. Some of these people are also looking around for ways to get involved, get educated and find others with whom they can seriously engage in the project of fighting for social change.

Socialism 2017 will feature scores of talks, panels and discussions, as well as entertainment, art and culture.

This year's featured speakers include #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Alicia Garza; historian and indigenous rights activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; feminist playwright Eve Ensler; African American historian Karen Fields; labor journalist Sarah Jaffe; Scottish socialist Neil Davidson; Subterranean Fire author Sharon Smith; Socialist Worker editor Alan Maass; and many, many more.

As in years past, the radical independent book publisher Haymarket Books is curating a huge selection of the best progressive, socialist and Marxist books--covering every topic under the sun from an unapologetically left-wing point of view.

Haymarket authors will be on hand to sign books, including Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation; Jewish Voice for Peace executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson, a contributor to On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice in Palestine; Donna Murch, author of Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Mass Incarceration, and the Movement for Black Lives; and Paul D'Amato, author of The Meaning of Marxism and the editor of the International Socialist Review.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THIS YEAR'S conference will also include a series of talks organized by Jacobin magazine. Jacobin founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara and contributor Paul Heideman will be just a few of the speakers featured in this track of meetings.

A list of some of the more than 150 talks is now available on the conference website--and audio recordings of prior Socialism conference talks have been posted at WeAreMany.org, if you're interested in getting a taste of what the conference is like.

To mention just a few of this year's scheduled talks: "Trump, Economic Nationalism and Imperialism Today," "Race, class, and Marxism," "Is It Too Late to Save the Environment?" "Bread and Roses: Women in the U.S. Labor Movement" and "Ways of Seeing: The Art and Politics of John Berger."

And because this year is the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, there will be a half-dozen talks on various aspects of the revolution and its continued relevance today, including the role played by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, factory councils and workers' power, and the rise of Stalinism.

If you're interested in meeting up with others now who will be at the conference, check out the website of the International Socialist Organization to find out about branches in your area.

Depending on your location, you may find people with whom you can coordinate travel and collaborate with to publicize the conference--and find out about important meetings and events you can get involved with in your city or region today.

Downloadable flyers (large 11x17 posters and smaller handbills) are now available on the Socialism 2017 website. They can be posted in cafes, on campuses and on street corners, and handed out at protests, on the street, at activist meetings and events, and in classes to let people know about the conference.

Print some out, hand them out and post them around your workplace or school today!

Finally, take a moment right now to get registered for the conference. The early-bird registration rate, which is available through May 15, is just $85 (the regular rate is $100). In order to make the conference as easy to attend as possible for a new generation of student radicals, the Socialism conference is this year offering a special discount rate of $50 to students with a valid student ID.

See you in Chicago on July 6!

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Start planning now for Socialism - Socialist Worker Online