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Victor Grayson: In Search of Britains Lost Revolutionaryby Harry TaylorPluto Press 16.99

HARRY TAYLOR hasnt solved every riddle involving Victor Grayson, but his investigation of this complex and enigmatic figure is thorough and enthralling. Grayson, a charismatic and fiery socialist orator, was seduced into serving the establishment he hated before his mysterious disappearance in September 1920.

The book builds on earlier biographies by socialist journalist Reg Groves and Labour peer David Clark, but roundly refutes a bizarre conspiracy theory concocted by right-wing journalist Donald McCormick. The motives for further investigation are Taylors discovery of fresh information, and his conviction that Graysons story holds lessons for the British left in the wake of the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn. Theres a sense in which were haunted by Grayson.

We begin with a childhood of privation and challenge in working-class Liverpool. In a pivotal episode, the teenage Grayson stows away on a ship bound for Chile and is put ashore in Pembrokeshire. The 165-mile walk to his home city reveals it has no monopoly on destitution.

The book explores the tension between Graysons Christianity and socialism, the bisexuality that led to him being blackmailed, his attractiveness to older and wealthier female admirers, and his natural flair for oratory. Taylor rejects the established image of Grayson as a hot-headed troublemakerwith no grasp of ideology or policy. His calls for direct action were consonant with the beliefs of the Labour leadership at the time, and he had a working knowledge of Marxs writing.

The tragic sweep of Graysons life is punctuated with fascinating cameos. For example, I was surprised to discover he received support from writers Hilaire Belloc and GK Chesterton, whose suspicion of socialism was offset by disillusionment with the party-political system.

Graysons legend centres on an astonishing by-election victory at Colne Valley in 1907, achieved without official Labour Party support, but with a blend of Christian socialism, Marxist economics, and dazzling eloquence. In Parliament, his provocative attempts to secure an unemployment debate led to Labour MPs unanimously supporting Liberals and Tories in voting for his suspension. His behaviour was attributed to drunkenness, but Taylor finds evidence of a premeditated and principled stand.

Graysons drinking did eventually derail his career. Later, he mustered working-class support for the first world war on behalf of his old adversary Churchill, served at Passchendaele and condemned striking workers.

Taylors compelling scholarship assesses Graysons career in the context of his era, but we are challenged to draw conclusions relevant to our own. The author focuses on the need for a Labour Party responsive to the needs of working people and based on strong structures and organisation.

Another moral to be drawn about progress towards socialism is the need to focus on the song rather than its singer.

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Focus on the song rather than its singer - Morning Star Online

Debate

14:30

by Eric Kaufmann

Not so hip anymore

Random House, the publishing giant, recently cancelled plans to publish a collection of Norman Mailers political writings on the centenary of his birth in 2023 after a junior staffer objected to the title of his 1957 essay, The White Negro. Mailers essay celebrated what he took to be the uninhibited, expressive ethos of the African-American hipster, with his jazz, style and dance. This Hip sensibility was contrasted to the spiritually repressed and boring Square quality of white America.

Left-modernism is the dominant ideology in western elite culture, sometimes referred to as the successor ideology. Its an uneasy compound of liberalism and socialism in which the cartridge of liberalism, with its historic concern for the rights of minorities and desire to be free of social constraints, is plugged into the slot in socialisms victim-oppressor console once reserved for the working class.

Mailers Beat Generation exemplified the Left-modernist ethos, valorising the downtrodden as spiritually superior to the white middle class. Mailers critique in The White Negro recalled Carl Van Vechtens 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. Van Vechten belonged to Americas first generation of cultural Leftists, the Young Intellectuals, who brought drug-taking, modern art and critiques of white Protestantism to New Yorks Greenwich Village in the 1912-17 period.

Van Vechtens innovation was a form of slumming in which white bohemians started going up to Harlem to see black jazz. Like Mailer, Young Intellectuals like Van Vechten viewed African-Americans as a source of spiritual depth and liberation from the oppressive structures of Protestant white America. As Mailer wrote in his essay, In such places as Greenwich Village, a mnage--trois was completedthe bohemian and the juvenile delinquent came face-to-face with the Negro.

The phenomenon of WASP Americans turning against their own ethnic group began in pre-World War I Greenwich Village. For Randolph Bourne, a key figure in the Young Intellectuals, writing in 1917, The Anglo-Saxon element is guilty of what every dominant race is guilty of in every European country: the imposition of its own culture upon the minority peoples. Bourne equated Anglo-Saxondom with masculine domination, blending anti-whiteness and feminism into a kind of wokeness avant la lettre.

By the 1920s, in the wake of immigration restriction and the prohibition of alcohol, the Left-modernist critique of the countrys WASP ethnic majority had become a staple of the American literary world, featuring in novels such as Main Street or even The Great Gatsby.

Where socialism believes in equality-in-similarity, Left-modernism celebrates equality-in-diversity, with little emphasis on community. As radical fifties avatar C. Wright Mills confided, he could appreciate liberty and equality, but not fraternity. Left-modernism appealed to bohemian intellectuals because it allowed them to combine artistic experimentation and self-expression with egalitarian politics. When the Soviet Union banned artistic experimentation in favour of socialist realism in 1938, this helped alienate a significant section of the western cultural Left, many of whom turned against communism.

From the 1910s to the 1960s, Left-modernism largely managed to keep its twin balls of radical Leftism and modernist individualism in the air. But with the victory of civil rights and the rise of minority social movements as Left-modernism acquired institutional power through the expansion of universities and television the ideology wobbled on its axis, elevating its Leftist superego over its modernist id.

Viewed through its new politically-correct lens, the anti-white romanticisation of black Americans exemplified by Van Vechten or Mailer became a personification of the very whiteness they railed against: a micro-aggression rooted in colonialist domination and cultural appropriation.

Mailer chose to ride the shark of anti-whiteness, so his estate shouldnt be surprised when it turns on him.

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Norman Mailer is reaping the anti-whiteness he sowed - UnHerd

It is my responsibility to close the Ninth Legislatures Seventh Ordinary Period of Sessions and, at the same time, I come before you, the highest representation of our people, to comply with a legal mandate: to render accounts and report on my administration as president of the republic. I will do so by sharing some assessments of the situation we have faced in this period, the issues on which we have focused our work, and the issues toward which we must direct our principal efforts. I do so on a day of special significance for all Cubans, the day on which the always loyal Camilo Cienfuegos disappeared, a symbol of Cuban citizenship, of courage, an eternal hero of Cuban youth, and, like them, joyful and profound.

By speaking these words publicly, I will surely be able to count not only on your opinions, but also on those of our people. We will rely on them to improve our work, with the responsibility that comes with being a public servant.

First, I must emphasize the very complex world context, rocked by multiple crises created by the unjust global order, which have worsened because of two long, hard years of pandemic. Less than a week ago, deaths due to COVID-19 worldwide numbered around 5 million and the number of infected persons exceeded 243,700,000. The World Health Organization estimates that, if we consider the level of mortality directly or indirectly linked to the new coronavirus, the pandemics toll could be two to three times higher than official records indicate; but the real impact on all aspects of life on a planetary level is yet to be known. What no one doubts is its high cost for the world economy, already impacted by the prolonged prevalence of unsustainable consumption patterns, which have increasingly narrowed the zones of luxury and comfort while the world of the excluded dramatically expands.

Despite Cubas advantagesdue to its free, universal public health system and its capacity for rapid scientific development, which put us at the forefront in research and vaccine production globallywe were unable to escape the pandemics blows.

As has been addressed in this assemblys sessions, since 2019, the economy has functioned under exceptional conditions. The combined effects of the tightening of the blockade and the escalation of the pandemic led the country to lose more than $3 billion in revenue during this period. In addition, significant non-budgeted expenditures were made to confront COVID-19, to protect workers and the population in general. All this has limited our capacity to assume indispensable expenditures to sustain state supplies, fundamentally of food and medicines, as well as the resources needed to maintain the national electric system. This difficult situation provokes dissatisfaction and unease within the population. To give you an idea: some $300 million were needed just for health services and disposable supplies to treat COVID-19 patients, while the operation and maintenance of the national electric system requires at least $250 million a year.

The failure to complete regular maintenance in a timely fashion and our inability to acquire the necessary resources to guarantee electric service caused the aggravating power outages that we have experienced since June 21, 2021. Although the limitations have not disappeared, fuel for the generation of electricity is available, and a certain level of financing was secured (under very difficult conditions), which will allow the recovery of 608 megawatts of power generation capacity before the end of 2021, thus gradually improving service across the country.

In this context, conditions that favor inflation have emerged due to the existence of a demand that is much higher than supply, making it the principal priority of the governments work. One solution would be to increase supply through greater participation by national producers in our domestic market.

Thanks to the sustained control of COVID-19, a gradual process of economic and social recovery has begun, contributed to by measures approved for greater autonomy for socialist state enterprises and the improvement and diversification of economic actors.

The plan of the economy and state budget for 2022, which we will evaluate next December, will be directed at projecting the recovery of fundamental levels of activity, achieving greater autonomy in administrative management at the territorial level, prioritizing compensatory measures to assist the most vulnerable, and consolidating the implementation of the Tarea Ordenamiento [economic reforms process], among other priorities.

Thanks to our system, to the integration of all forces in pursuit of an objectivethat is, thanks to unity around the partyCuba found immediate answers to the unforeseen pandemic and, at the same time, the reprehensible tightening of the blockade. It is necessary to point again to the contemptible opportunism of our adversary. Precisely during the months when the pandemic peaked in our country, power outages became frequent and the supply of goods and services declined significantly, creating a favorable climate for exasperation and discontent. The historical enemy of the Cuban nation, the United States, understood the importance of the moment and launched attacks on our economy with even more viciousness. In direct contradiction to president Joe Bidens recent declarations before the United Nations General Assembly supporting multilateralism and cooperation in the struggle against the pandemic at a global level, the blockade on Cuba was tightened, new sanctions were imposed, and a new destabilization plan was set in motion, following their soft coup manual to the letter.

We have never sat back waiting for change in a policy that for over sixty-two years has shifted only to tighten the siege. The enemys formula is based on the idea that our great material difficulties will weaken the resistance of the people and finally bring us to our knees. Against a socialist project like ours, violent or military actions, invasion, occupation are never ruled out; but the first bet is on demoralization, on surrender. This is why the message of hatred of communism, the antisocialist emphasis, the persecution of every possible economic solutionin short, the blockadecontinue, no matter how much they damage, how much they erode the faith of a people in its own strengths.

However implausible and immoral it may seem, this is the imperialist plan for Cuba. The hypocritical cover-ups and deceptions about an alleged revision of the policy, which the current government repudiated during the electoral campaign that brought Biden to power, are no longer believable. Fraudulent justifications touting the supposed intention to support the Cuban people, and only deny the government any help, are no longer valid.

The evidence is there for all to see that the objective has been, from the beginning, to provoke economic hardship, punish the people, erode their standard of living, restrict their sources of income, limit consumption, and undermine social services on which much of their well-being, and the meeting of basic needs, depends. The goal is to condemn the Cuban population to the role of hostage in a genocidal policy with hegemonic designs.

This is why Washington is so annoyed by Cubas success in confronting the pandemic, in particular the outstanding results of our vaccination program, developed with ingenuity, effort, and our own resources. It explains the determination to disparage our public health system and deny this extraordinary achievement of Cuba, which exposes the deceitful portrayal they want to impose on our reality. Every vaccine created and administered, every immunized compatriot, every infection avoided, and every life saved are victories for the national cause and defeats of the imperialist aggression against our country. It may seem incredible to describe it this way, but there is no other way to describe the shameless use of a pandemic, with cold political calculation, against an entire people.

As I recently pointed out during the closing of the last plenum of the Communist Party of Cubas Central Committee, in the current climate of our bilateral relations with the United States, that countrys embassy is playing an increasingly active role in political subversion efforts. In contrast, I can categorically state that our embassy in Washington has never conducted any activity meant to subvert the established order in the United States, or undermine its political, legal, or constitutional foundation. Our diplomatic mission in that country is limited to an intense effort to favor bilateral relations, to lift the economic blockade, and to counteract slander campaigns against Cuba and the revolution.

The record of our diplomatic representations in the United States has always been absolutely spotless, despite our genuine concerns and legitimate opinions on the unjust nature of the U.S. political system and the political, economic, and legal abuses committed there on a daily basis. The U.S. government shamelessly uses the privileges enjoyed by its embassy in our country. U.S. diplomatic officials frequently meet with counterrevolutionary leaders, providing them guidance, encouragement, logistical support, and direct and indirect financing. On their communication platforms, including digital networks, they issue offensive statements on a daily basis that constitute open interference in the internal affairs of our country.

It is only fair to ask what the U.S. governments response would be if any embassy accredited in Washington engaged in instigating, guiding, motivating, and financing any of the multiple extremist groups whose illegal activities threaten the stability, life, and public order of that country. It would be good to know how the U.S. government would respond to an embassy accredited in its territory that publicly engages in promoting civil disobedience, political demonstrations, and massive marches against the established legal order.

Recent provocations have made clear that a concerted operation against Cuba, based in the United States, is underway, involving millions of dollars directed toward generating an image of Cuba as a failed state, where citizens rights are trampled. The plan also includes efforts to recruit other countries to join the economic aggression, and to pressure the United States itself to take even more punitive action on a larger scale.

The truth always prevails, no matter how powerful the tools are today to hide or distort it. Lies may spread as fast as the COVID-19 virus and have the power to confuse and infect many, but they will not be able to break the will of this heroic people, tested so many times. Despite the plans of imperialism, we are defeating the pandemic, as we have defeated and will defeat their aggressive plans, no matter how vicious the campaigns or the slanders. The blockade is and will continue to be, in the foreseeable future, a fundamental obstacle to our strategies and potential for economic growth and development, but it is not an insurmountable impediment. We will continue to struggle against it tirelessly, with the support of the international community.

Our development and the peoples well-being necessarily depends on the effort we make and the intelligence we bring to the task, aware that the cruel U.S. war will persist as long as that countrys desire to control Cubas destiny persists. The blockade is not only meant to punish us for our resistance. It is an everyday part of the effort to prevent socialism from being associated with growth, progress, or prosperity. No! Socialism is not to blame for our problems. Only socialism can explain the fact that we have survived this ferocious, genocidal siege, without renouncing development. As I expressed a few days ago at the Central Committee plenum, a worthy response to this undeserved punishment depends on us alone. Our originality must be as great as the malice of those attempting to subjugate us. The revolution has been, and will always be, distinguished by the capacity of our people to resist and create.

Our economic and social strategy for boosting the economy and confronting the global crisis caused by COVID-19 was the first response. It adjusted the countrys projections given the new situation without renouncing our development program through 2030. It is a revolutionary response with the flexibility and capacity to adapt to the complexity of absolutely new and unpredictable situations, such as the pandemic itself. It is a response based on our strengths and takes into consideration existing limitations.

Promoting the development of a government management system based on science and innovation, we created the National Innovation Council, to provide specialized advice that will have an impact on decision-making and our most pressing problems. Among the actions taken to complement the economic and social strategy, more than sixty measures have been approved to stimulate the production and distribution of food, along with others meant to increase the efficiency of state enterprises, encourage the activity of new economic actors (the so-called mipymes [small and medium businesses]), remove obstacles in processes, and create production chains.

At the same time, during a year of so many limitations, our state has undertaken an intense international effort of dialogue, exchange, and cooperation with other nations and their leaders, participating in summitsvirtually and, to a lesser extent, face to facewhich have allowed us to maintain solid relationships with the international community and, in particular, with friendly nations. As an expression of Cubas unchanging commitment to solidarity, recognized with gratitude throughout the world, some fifty-seven medical brigades from the Henry Reeve contingent have directly confronted COVID-19 in forty nations.

I have allowed myself to insist on external factors that aim to weaken us because, under the fireworks of nonconventional warfare and the deafening racket that professional haters produce on the Internet, we could fall into the error of not recognizing our own strengths, of not appreciating our indisputable progress during these last two years plagued by challenges and uncertainty worldwide. Let us begin with the legislative work, which should contribute much to the countrys institutionality.

During this Period of Sessions, complying with the agreed schedule, we have approved four important laws that represent a transcendental reform in the countrys judicial and procedural order. It is only fair to recognize the effort made under the conditions imposed by the pandemic. These norms concretize the content of Cubas Constitution and reinforce the rights of citizens, in harmony with society as a whole. They are the result of a broad, creative, and participative process, to which directors and specialists of the courts, the Attorney Generals office, collective legal teams, and university professors contributed, in addition to a segment of our people.

We must continue to perfect this practice in the drafting of legislation, to ensure that each law we approve is the result of the contributions of all those linked to the issue at hand and, when appropriate, consulted with the people through various means. The normative provisions approved place the country at the forefront of the most advanced and modern legislation in this field, and reflect a spirit of renewal, reaffirming access to justice for all, expanding due process, and thus helping to concretize the concept of the socialist state of law and social justice, recognized in Article 1 of the Magna Carta.

The Law of Courts strengthens judicial functioning in the country, reinforcing the independence of the judiciary and the role of judges in society, adjusting its structure and operations to current requirements. It recognizes essential principles in judicial matters, including the supremacy of the Constitution, impartiality, equality, free access to justice, and popular participation. The criminal process, in accordance with the law, is endowed with greater guarantees for all those involved. Notable elements include the strengthening of rights and guarantees recognized in the Constitution and international treaties, the recognition of victims and injured parties as procedural subjects, anticipated forms of solution in processes, treatment of persons between 16 and 18 years of age who are charged and prosecuted. Also significant are provisions guaranteeing legal assistance from the beginning of any process, along with court control of the precautionary measure of pretrial detention at any stage of the process, issues raised during the popular consultation of the Constitutions text.

The Administrative Process Law, in addition to making this matter independent for the first time in procedural norms, will guarantee citizens the possibility of filing claims in court if they believe their rights have been violated by the public administration. Finally, the Code of Processes standardizes procedures for civil, commercial, family, labor, and social security matters. It reinforces the protection of people in vulnerable situations and establishes measures to enforce judicial decisions, among other relevant issues.

The four laws approved pose a challenge for those responsible for the justice system, given the need for training and guaranteeing their adequate implementation to safeguard prompt and effective justice. We reiterate the will to continue meeting the legislative timeline approved by this parliament and, with it, developing the contents of our socialist Constitution.

The Eighth Party Congress opened valuable debates and offered fundamental directives that serve as references and the driving force in what we do. Addressed during the event were the most challenging problems of our reality: the gaps, failures in communication, need to promote dialogue, participation and popular control, life in our neighborhoods, work of mass and social organizations, attention to vulnerable sectors of the population, knowledge of the problems and the interests of our youth, bureaucratization of community work, but, above all, the effects of the blockade on the daily lives of all Cubans and the high level of political sensitivity demanded by the implementation of the Tarea Ordenamiento. The reform process was carried out in difficult circumstances, as it was considered a non-postponable step in increasing enterprise efficiency, but it had an undesired impact on the lives of citizens, which today is expressed, above all, in severe inflation.

Deputy prime minister Alejandro Gil explained the causes and possible solutions to this problem at length in his report, so I will not attempt to do the same, except to say that we are aware of its severity and it is the governments priority to address it and support vulnerable people. Several elements of its initial design have been rectified, taking into account the peoples opinions. We are not going to lie and say that this will be solved with the stroke of a pen; I can only say that the revolution will never do anything against the interests and demands of the people. And I am personally confident that we will meet this challenge, just as we have overcome other seemingly insurmountable challenges.

The guidelines updated at the Eighth Party Congress and what pertains to this five-year period in the National Economic and Social Development Plan through 2030 constitute the foundations of the strategy to boost the economy, which we have decided will be the responsibility of the Ministry of Economy and Planning, through its macroeconomic and other programs.

For ten years now, the Permanent Commission for the Implementation and Development of Policy Guidelines has worked on updating the economic and social model of socialist development, but we decided that it is time to deactivate the Commission and transfer its main functions to the Ministry of Economy and Planning. Today we are in a better position to improve government work in close alliance with peoples power bodies, which have much untapped potential. I can imagine no better place than this to reflect on what we expect from our peoples power. Peoples powergenuine and innovative peoples power, and thus also questioned and attacked by those who do not recognize it or fear its exampleconstitutes the foundation and essence of the Cuban political system. To strengthen it is to empower the initiative and direct action of our people in the consolidation of socialism.

This very session of the assembly has given us good reasons to propose a critical and reflective discussion of participation and popular control, and its various forms, mechanisms, and procedures. But I also point out the importance of conducting these analyses in all social environments, all state institutions and bodies at all levels, to encourage creative and responsible action in the revolutionary socialist process.

If the conversations with representatives of diverse organizations and social groupsthat is, meetings with sectors and tours of the provinces and neighborhoodshave taught us anything, it is the need to assume new styles of work that better reflect the countrys social heterogeneity, to adequately channel the concerns and contributions of the citizenry, and to respond to every demand received in a timely, pertinent, and well-founded manner within the established time frame and procedure. It is imperative to take advantage of the peoples knowledge, strengths, and initiatives, not in a formal way, but organically, respectfully, aware that in this practice the principle of co-responsibility is accentuated along the path to the greatest possible social justice. When we speak of innovation as one of the pillars of government management, we are also thinking of our peoples power. Socialist democracy demands doing, innovating, changing, and permanently transforming the forms of democratic participation.

The 2019 Constitution and the laws approved by the current legislature of the National Assembly of Peoples Power provide the legal foundations to support our actions, which we will continue to develop along with the legal system: actions that stimulate, promote, and concretize popular participation have defensive and constructive importance for socialism. Immobility and formalism in government bodies at the local level are as harmful as paternalism, such as in the delivery of goods and resources without considering the importance of social participation.

Participation is the essence and best defense of our socialism. The opposite only serves the enemies of the revolution and their objective of returning to capitalism in Cuba. Freedom of discussion, the exercise of criticism and self-criticism, is vital to continue advancing, to create and love. We must listen, dialogue, attend to the proposals of our people. We must conduct popular consultations on matters of local and national interest, promote participatory budgets to decide, among us all, where and how best to spend public funds, with emphasis on the locality, the neighborhood, the municipality. We reaffirm here the will of the party, the state, and Cuban society to respect, promote, and guarantee constitutional rights, a commitment that was expressed during the process of constitutional reformthat had as its culmination the binding referendum to approve the 2019 Constitutionand in all the actions that are taken on a daily basis to ensure the protection of rights.

These hard pandemic months provide the best evidence of how the statesupported by scientists, health personnel, educators, workers, campesinos, soldiers, youth, and studentshas worked hard to reduce infections and fatalities, in communities and neighborhoods, in workplaces, in mass political and social organizations. Citizen participation saves lives! The protagonists of this process are those who construct our sacred unity, those who develop the nations capacity for resilience, the guardians of dignity: our people. As we advance in mass vaccination, paying special attention to children and adolescents, we demonstrate our commitment to the comprehensive protection of the rights of the new generation in Cuba. That such efforts are everyday events in no way makes them less extraordinary.

We are committed to recognizing and advancing the rights of families, developing the principles of family plurality, diversity, equality, and non-discrimination. As a result of this intention, we now have a preliminary draft of the Families Codea solid, rigorous document based on human dignity as the supreme value that sustains the recognition and exercise of duties and rights. We are convinced that, through processes of specialized consultation, popular consultation, and debates in the National Assembly of Peoples Power, we will reach the legislative referendum with a draft Families Code that will place Cuba among the most advanced countries in the world on the question. These are just some examples among many, including the National Program for the Advancement of Women, the National Program Against Racism and Racial Discrimination, and the Decree Law on Working Women and Maternity, among others, which show that the revolution respects, promotes, and guarantees equality and democracy.

This assembly recently approved an important declaration denouncing the interference of the U.S. government in our internal affairs and its unacceptable role as instigator and facilitator of current provocations. In this same hall, where the Constitution of 2019 was discussed at length until its approval, I cannot fail to refer to both the subtle and flagrant attempts with which adversaries of the revolution, many of whom attacked the process that led to its approval, today seek to use the rights it guarantees to destroy the work that the Constitution defends and protects. According to Article 56 of the Magna Carta: The rights of assembly, demonstration, and association, for lawful and peaceful purposes, are recognized by the state as long as they are exercised with respect for public order and compliance with precepts established by law. The exercise of rights implies the fulfillment of duties, among them, respect for the order established in the Constitution, which is an expression of the principle of popular sovereignty. The law of laws cannot be interpreted at ones convenience, much less in the interest of those who are the first to disrespect it. The Constitution, in Article 7, stipulates it is the supreme law of the state. All are obliged to comply with it. The provisions and acts of state bodies, their directors, officials, and employees, as well as those of organizations, entities, and individuals are to abide by its provisions. Our Constitution consecrates the principles of independence and sovereignty of peoples, recognizes the right to self-determination expressed in the freedom to choose our own political, economic, social, and cultural system, condemns direct or indirect intervention in the internal or external affairs of any state, including armed aggression, any form of economic or political coercion, unilateral blockades in violation of international law, and any other type of interference or threat to the integrity of states.

Rights are not unlimited. The limits are also stipulated in the Constitution, and include the rights of others, collective security, general welfare, respect for public order, the Constitution, and laws. A demonstration ceases to be peaceful at the moment when participants seek to alter the normality of community life, social peace, express the intention to subvert the constitutional order and position themselves as the opposition to socialism, and, even more so, when all this is done following a script serving the political interests of a foreign government that has maintained an economic war against our country for six decades.

I would like to particularly express our gratitude to the scientific community, called on to provide us with the tools that only science can and should contribute to economic and social processes in this era. Thanks to Fidels visionary policy of promoting science, and the continuity Ral provided to that work, thanks to the talent, dedication, and commitment with which several generations of Cuban researchers have been trained, our government has been able to face the terrible threat of a pandemic like no other in Latin America or the third world. When we review these years in the not-too-distant future, we will be obliged to speak first of all of the health professionals, the creative scientists, and academics who came out of their classrooms to share knowledge.

And we will also talk about our armed institutions, the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior, which made a decisive contribution in supporting efforts to confront the situation and took on the hazardous mission of producing, transporting, and delivering oxygen to hospitals in the countrys most critical hours. I must also acknowledge the Revolutionary Armed Forces enterprise system for its indispensable contribution to the nations economy, which has provided us with fundamental resources during emergencies.

Only an organized country with a leadership united in a common purposethe safeguarding of the nationcan set the highest goals in the most difficult hours. Knowing that our nation, blockaded and without financial resources, could not aspire to protect its population from the threat of the pandemic, we asked our scientific community for a sovereign solution to confront the spread of the disease.

Today, we are the first country in Latin America with three vaccines and two vaccine candidates under development, and the first in the world to begin vaccinating children between 2 and 18 years of age. Along the way we experienced hard blows: peaks in new infections, full hospitals, crises in the availability of beds and oxygen, painful deaths, increased tension with breakdowns at electric plants, limited availability of medications and food. The anti-Cuban mob, calculating that our end was near, went for our throats with demands for a humanitarian intervention and even military invasion. They did not even bother to look at the history of how nations saved by Yankee or North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops have ended up in this century. But the Cuban people do know this history, they are informed, and the good people of the world know it too. With this consciousness, solidarity donations were organized, and they continue to arrive in Cuba.

In the last few weeks, the number of new infections and deaths has dropped significantly. Students are getting ready to go back to school and the country is preparing to open borders to oxygenate the economy. We feel like celebrating for our children, doctors, scientists, our vaccines, and our people; for Fidel, who returned again and again to his legitimate faith in human beings to save lives and illuminate the horizon. There is more than one reason that our celebration should be responsible and restrained. In many parts of the world, new outbreaks of the pandemic are occurring amid the crisis caused by the economic slowdown. This is the world we live in and it is up to us to assume the risk. Let us make this success last.

On November 15, 2021, Cuba will reopen its borders, students will return to school; Havana, the capital of dignity, will await its 502nd anniversary, to celebrate as it has not been able to do in the last two years. National life will resume its course, with the greatest joy, but alert. The peace and harmony that distinguish life in our streets will continue to reign. No one is going to spoil our party! We are now vaccinated against COVID-19, and we have always been vaccinated against fear! We have a homeland, and we defend life! And we remain true to Patria o Muerte! We will win!

See the original post:
Socialism Against the Siege - Monthly Review

This article isreprintedfromCatalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, a publication from the Jacobin Foundation. Right now, you cansubscribe to the print editionofCatalystfor just $20.

The struggle against capitalism is as old as capitalism itself. The battles have been bitter and bloody, with triumphant highs and painful, lasting lows. But the Left is nothing if not tenacious. We keep the red flag flying, doggedly struggling for a better world, for socialism. Despite the odds, we never give up.

Grard Dumnil and Dominque Lvy, two highly regarded heterodox economists, want us to give up. Theyve had enough of our flailing and failing. To convince us, theyve written a book,Managerial Capitalism: Ownership, Management and the Coming New Mode of Production. The title argues that our quest has been in vain: The working class wont rise up and bring socialism. If anyone is going to save us it will be the doctors, lawyers, bankers, consultants, and other members of the 1 percent.

This may seem like a surprising message coming from Marxists, but Dumnil and Lvy (D-L) have been developing this argument for a long time.Managerial Capitalismreads like an opus, consolidating and honing their empirical and theoretical case for the end of capitalism and the triumph of managerialism a new antagonistic mode of production.

To be sure, D-L havent written off the popular classes (the 99 percent) who they argue still have a role to play. Instead, they argue that the Left has made a mistake in locating them at the center of history a mistake they place at the door of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. D-L say that Marxs theory of history was wrong well, partly wrong.

The correct part of Marxs historical model, according to D-L, was that capitalism has brought increasing socialization expanding and deepening rationalization and bureaucratization which they see as a good thing. Marxs model went south, according to the authors, when it assumed that this background process of advancing sociality would eventually combine with the increasing contradictions of capitalism (stemming from class divides and competition) to empower the working class to rise up and overthrow capitalism, bringing socialism. Marx and Engels were wrong, D-L argue, to believe that capitalism would be replaced with socialism via ordinary folks.

D-L consider the weakness of Marxs historical framework, combined with his under-specification of class, to be a serious analytical barrier, blinding us to a big shift that began as far back as the nineteenth century: namely, the start of a slow transition from capitalism, which values private ownership and hereditary transfers of wealth, to managerialism, which empowers high-wage workers and rests on the values of meritocracy. In short, weve vastly underestimated the importance of managers in the process of accumulation.

If we took the role of managers seriously, the authors contend, we would realize that already by the New Deal, the managerial class the wage earners belonging to the upper fractiles of income hierarchies had taken the reins in a hybrid mode of accumulation called managerial capitalism. In the years encompassing the post-WWII compromise, these managers were actively transitioning society to a new mode of production beyond capitalism. D-L say economists at the time James Burnham, Joseph Schumpeter, John Kenneth Galbraith, Alfred D. Chandler Jr saw the writing on the wall: market mechanisms were constrained and the profit motive dampened, both expressions of the growing distance from the economics of capitalism.

This transition was disrupted by the neoliberal counterrevolution which seemed to herald a return to the old ways (wages and bonuses tied to stock prices, for example). In the melee, the growing power of managers was forgotten, while the postcapitalist musings of Galbraith and Schumpeter were consigned to the dustbin. D-L argue that this forgetting was a mistake. They say that over the past few decades, managers have retained and increased their control, this time in a compromise with the bosses instead of the workers. When the crisis of 20078 hit, the managers used their dual power in the markets and in government to steady the ship.

Today, D-L say, the managers are more powerful than ever theyve become a new ruling class that, unlike elites of old, lives primarily on wages rather than capital. It is the managers, not the owners, D-L contend, who run the global economy, and if we look at the twentieth century overall, it is these high-wage earners, rather than owners of capital, whove seen the strongest gains.

Ten years after the crisis weve reached a turning point. Neoliberalism seems to have run its course, morphing into what the authors call administered neoliberalism an unstable system that is one step closer to the gradual establishment of relations of production beyond capitalism. But in this moment they also see an opening . . . of sorts. Divisions within the upper class are growing and the very top the 0.01 percent has accumulated such unimaginable wealth that it is floating away. D-L argue that this elite polarization creates a space for the popular classes to make an alliance with the lower-upper class those who take home a shade under half a million dollars a year. We just need to convince them to side with ordinary folks instead of capital like we did in the 1930s. In doing so we can develop a new compromise that someday, maybe, will bring us something that we can still call socialism, as the mark of a reclaimed affiliation with earlier endeavors.

There are two interrelated elements ofManagerial Capitalism that are timely and warrant further interrogation. The first is the authors focus on the shifting material basis of the upper class and its significance for the future of capitalism. D-L present data showing how in the 1920s the top 1 percent derived only 40 percent of its income from wages (pensions, bonuses, stock option exercises, etc.); the rest was capital income (sum of dividends, interest, and rents). By the early 2000s, the breakdown was skewed in the opposite direction; elites today make roughly 80 percent of their income from wages. D-L say this shift undermines our traditional understanding of capitalism as a social structure based on the private ownership of the means of production. The capitalists, as owners of the means of production, are the upper class; they make decisions regarding the use of the means of production.Today, the upper class is a bunch of wage earners.

The question of how to classify highly paid workers is an old one: do they fall in the capitalist camp or the worker camp? Generations of historians, development experts, sociologists, economists, and labor scholars, Marxist and non-Marxist alike, have wrestled with how to parse out who benefits from capitalism and actively or passively wants to see it continue and who could be convinced that theyd be better off with socialism. Weve given these high-paid workers in contradictory class locations many names: salaried bourgeoisie, managerial bourgeoisie, and so on, but weve never come up with a pithy solution to the conundrum.

However, most scholars, and not just radicals, agree that a deep, structural divide separates the ruling class and the working class. The ruling class privately owns the means by which ordinary people make their livelihood. They decide to create or not create jobs. The rich reproduce themselves and hoard opportunities and resources through closed networks and back doors to power. The working class does not; the only way it gains power is by collectively refusing to reproduce the system.

D-L arent satisfied with this understanding of class. They are frustrated that even though the main social split is nowadays between lower and higher wage earners, and increasingly so in conformity with the rise of managers, the resistance to the development of a new analytical framework remains very strong in the left. They see the skew in the income of the upper class toward wages rather than capital as fundamentally important: its not capitalism if the richest people are getting rich primarily from wages instead of capital.

Setting aside the debate about whether we can neatly distinguish between wages and capital income in this era of financialization (particularly given the post-2008 recovery policies of the US Fed), does the purported shift to wages as the lifeblood of the ruling class mean were no longer in capitalism, or that were transitioning to a new mode of accumulation? How much capital does one have to own to be a capitalist?

D-L joke about circles of stricter or looser Marxist obedience, but in morphing class and centile theyve resuscitated old debates. It may very well be that the ruling class is now living on wages more than it did in the past, but that doesnt mean the divide between the rich and poor has blurred or become more permeable. Class is not reducible to asset classes, income streams, or the skills one brings to the marketplace. Class is about the power of elites elites who actively reproduce their class power through relationships, networks, and institutions.

The rich have prospered since the 1970s while the working class has seen its power reduced to pre-New Deal levels. The ever-widening gap between the rich and the rest (regardless of our Polanyian daydreams of a leftward swing) demonstrates this better than anything.

Capitalism, as a historical system, has evolved over time and by extension so has the makeup and networks of its ruling elite. D-L show this in fascinating detail in their chapter on class and imperial power structures. Drawing from the Orbis 2007 marketing database, they diagram the global network of ownership and control, highlighting both the persistence of a dense Anglo-Saxon global network and how the management of the ownership of the large economy is basically in the hands of top financial management.

But at the risk of beating a dead horse, we shouldnt lose sight of the fact that, despite significant reorganization, the driving imperatives of capitalism to demand competition, to commodify new spheres of life, and to prioritize profit above all else have remained the same. How the ruling elite gets its succor has not changed these imperatives, at least not yet.

This is why many on the Left are resistant to a new framework, not because we cling to the idea that the ruling class must be solely or primarily owners of capital assets, but because the driving imperatives of capitalism havent changed. The ruling class is simply finding new ways to cement and reproduce its power as capitalism evolves.

D-L arent just concerned with fixing Marxs theory of class to properly account for the role of managers in accumulation. They also want to show how managers could be central to building a better world. They do this by emphasizing the part of Marxs theory of history thatwasright, in their opinion: the fact of increasing sociality increasing bureaucratization and rationalization of governance and production. This is the second major thrust of the book.

D-L pull together the threads of Marx and Engels that underscore a tendency towards rising degrees of sociality, or equivalently, socialization, notably the socialization of production associated with the advancement of productive forces. They agree with Marx and Engels that capitalism is the great architect of gradually more sophisticated and efficient economic and, more generally, social relations. They characterize increasing sociality first by the technical aspect of production and the corresponding division of tasks, within firms and among industries and second by the increasing organizational role of central statal or para-statal institutions both domestically and internationally.

This background process of socialization is central to the authors analysis. They say that over time capitalism has engendered increasing complexity in tasks, technology, and production processes, and the needs of governance have become more variegated and demanding (as the state has increased its reach and capacities), increasing the need for, and power of, managers. The old system, D-L contend, in which ownership is transmitted within family relationships by inheritance or marriage just doesnt cut it any longer.

Today individuals are located within distinct positions depending on their skills. A variety of tasks has to be performed; there is a division of labor within firms, as well as among firms connected by markets or interacting through given forms of central coordination or organization. Managers have become the key agents in the progress of organization and they get where they are through hard work and skills, not inheritance. As a result they value meritocracy.

The ascension of meritocracy over inheritance, D-L argue, was already visible in the post-WWII period when the advance of managerial traits, associated with the rise of the new relations of production, gradually dismantled the foundations of capitalist practices as well as the ideologies of the private ownership of the means of production, including its hereditary transmission, under the banner of meritocracy.

Today, meritocratic ideals hold even more sway. Meritocracy is the guiding narrative of the knowledge economy, of the Information Age, of the Silicon Valley disruptors. Advances in science, medicine, business, and finance have made higher education more important than ever. Good jobs require great credentials. All this feeds not only the growth of managers but also the ideology of meritocracy, which D-L say increasingly substitute[s] for the values of ownership.

D-L place great emphasis on this background evolution of increasing sociality, both because they think it has made society better for everyone (a knowledge-based economy is assumed to be better) and because it imbues the emergent legitimating framework of managerialism with a skew toward meritocracy rather than heredity or a might-makes-right logic: Given the enhancement of, notably, social interaction and education, the monopoly of social initiative on the part of minorities [elites] would become more and more difficult to sustain along the course of a managerialism sufficiently bent in a direction of social progress.

D-L say the centrality of meritocracy in todays society holds the promise of building a dignified future on the most progressive traits of managerial modernity. Skilled, smart people will prosper in managerialism. With a bit of elbow grease, and a lot of studying, anyone can be anything. The American Dream might just come true after all.

While meritocracy instead ofinheritance certainly sounds appealing, it doesnt quite fit reality. Most wealth, at least in the United States where D-L concentrate their analysis, continues to be transferred from elite parents to their elite children, and is highly skewed according to race, class, and gender. The United States might have the richest wage workers, but it has the least amount of intergenerational mobility.

Perhaps a manager-led economy will evolve toward meritocracy in the future, given the knowledge and skill requirements of modern-day capitalism? Its possible, but it doesnt seem likely given the current trajectory. The world built and championed by the boy kings of Silicon Valley and Wall Street rainmakers is a world defined by exclusion and hyper-competition. The most advanced sectors create the fewest good jobs. Young people are more educated, more productive, more hardworking than ever, yet they are worse off than their parents or grandparents. The knowledge economy is an economy that doesnt need or want most peoples knowledge, particularly the knowledge of poor people and people of color. Ordinary folks are increasingly consigned to tending to the wealthy and shopping. If they cant service or consume they are ignored, warehoused, or killed.

The meritocratic ideals of the managerial ruling class, to the extent that they exist at all, will not trickle down to spur a more equitable society.

Dumnil and Lvy are no Pollyannas. They acknowledge that a world run by managers could be just as bad as capitalism. They say the trend of increasing sociality has created the potential for a more equitable society, and that, despite our losses during the neoliberal period, were in a better place than many believe. All the hard work of the popular classes hasnt been in vain because century after century gains accumulate.

D-L are counting on ordinary people to, through patient conquests and obstinate class struggle, sway our managerial overlords to our side to bend them to the left. They say bifurcations are moments of contingency. For example, in the 1970s crisis they argue that there was nothing that required a transformation of the postwar compromise to the benefit of the alliance between upper classes in neoliberalism. Following Marx, they contend that circumstances were created, but the outcome, that is, the determination of one specific configuration of class alliances and domination, remained contingent and determined by political circumstances. Today, they see a similarly contingent moment. To seize the gains we want, they implore us to look back to when things were the best for the American working class and to rebuild the Keynesian compromise.

The Keynesian era, D-L contend, represented a new hierarchy of class powers and a new social order that was the expression of a political compromise between popular classes and the rising classes of private and public managers. Under this social order, based on an alliance between managers and popular classes, exceptional degrees of democracy were . . . reached.

D-L are right that there is an opening today. But looking back is not the answer. The postwar compromise was shaky, exclusionary, and riddled with contradictions at its peak. The bosses never gave in. They fought the whole time. The only thing that kept the compromise alive was the threat posed by the Soviet Union, the space for profitable economic growth after the devastation of World War II, and the power of organized labor and mass social movements a power so great it made ruling elites quake.

The 1970s was a crossroads. In that moment of profound crisis workers and social movements demanded deeper, more radical change to push beyond the contradictions of Keynesianism. The ruling class was faced with a choice. It could have gone with the workers, instituting real industrial democracy and meaningful redistribution. It didnt. Elites opted to side with capital, to circle the wagons rather than manage away capitalism.

In doing so, elites left us with a powerful lesson a takeaway that is the opposite lesson from Managerial Capitalism. Beyond a certain point, the rich will never vote away their wealth and power. When push came to shove in the 70s, highly paid professionals knew which side their bread was buttered on. There is no reason to believe that this time around will be different, that the managers will be able to, or choose to, use their position to manage away capitalism. Why would someone making half a million dollars a year side with someone making $30,000? A shared belief in meritocracy?

None of this is to say that D-Ls analysis isnt valuable. They expertly demonstrate how global capitalism has evolved as a historical system. It has become more rationalized and bureaucratized. The pathways through which the capitalist class accumulates wealth and reproduces itself have shifted. But the fundamental drives of accumulation, of gaining and reproducing power, have not changed.

Correspondingly, the role of the working class has not changed. If we want a better world, its up to us to make it. Dumnil and Lvy are right that there will be no natural progression to socialism, but the Left has known this for a long time. We keep the red flag flying anyway to rein in our bosses, to fight injustice, to build a better world here and now.

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The Managerial Class Will Never Give Us Socialism - Jacobin magazine

THE last couple of years can seem a bit of a blur, a depressing sequence of semi-lockdowns and partial reopenings.

The virus casting its shadow over all our plans, as in the background the Conservative government assiduously strips away rights to protest, to vote, to freedom of speech, to seek refuge from persecution, even to receive warning if it decides to remove our citizenship.

This monotony should by now have exploded any notion that Covid is a temporary emergency after which we can go back to normal.

As the left economist James Meadway points out, it has long been obvious that the period of time over which the virus would be an acute social problem [is] likely to be measured in years rather than months.

The same is true for the Morning Star itself. The first lockdown caused an immediate crisis from forcedadaptation to home working to the collapse in shop sales, sales to trade union offices and advertising for inevitably cancelled events.

We weathered these thanks to the hard work of staff and the extraordinary commitment of our readers, who met two special fundraising appeals on the trot.

As time went on, improvements to our web operation and e-edition boosted online subscriptions, while a new home delivery service is also taking off, allowing easier daily access to the print edition.

But it has become clear that print sales will not simply bounce back during reopenings a precarious title marginal to most vendors takings is vulnerable to being taken off the shelves, while shoppers habits are changing as are union office working arrangements.

At the same time soaring inflation affects our costs too. For the Star like the broader left, 2022 must be a year of hard miles steady work to rebuild sales in whatever format to secure the future of our newspaper.

It continues to play a unique and irreplaceable role on the British left and we plan to hold a major Morning Star conference this year because of that.

The reason for the viruss especially severe impact on Britain whether measured in the number of deaths or the economic fallout is linked to the nature of the neoliberal state, the extent of privatisation and outsourcing in our public services, their chronic underfunding and understaffing especially in the NHS, the prevalence of poverty pay and insecure jobs and housing.

Yet as in some previous national dilemmas that over EU membership springs to mind the ruling classs domination of the airwaves, print and social media shapes a debate in which working-class interests barely get a look-in.

Take the discussion on protecting the NHS, which is often restricted to how far we ought to impose lockdowns and seldom touches on the deeper structural reasons for NHS fragility most prominently understaffing, with tens of thousands of vacancies across the health service now regarded as the norm.

While trade unions are raising these questions, the defeat of the left in the Labour Party means they are not being fought for at a national political level.

The government is clearly not prepared to protect the NHS by raising pay to reward existing staff, attract new staff and reduce workloads which are becoming unsustainable.

By voting in favour of whatever Covid powers it asks for without making these conditional on specific demands that address deeper problems raising NHS pay, raising statutory sick pay, restoring the universal credit uplift Labour helps to normalise both the degrading of our public services and the states right to impose highly intrusive restrictions on ordinary people not as an emergency measure, but as a means of covering up for its refusal to invest in our health service or its workers.

This problem will only become more serious the longer Covid remains a fact of life which it seems sure to be for the indefinite future, given the effectiveness of British and EU support for big pharma in blocking a vaccine patent waiver.

The channelling of anti-system anger into the anti-social opposition to vaccines and Covid precautions is only likely to grow.

Currently, both Labour and Tory policy is to ignore the social causes of these phenomena and make up for the lack of public confidence with heightened authoritarianism.

Labours bid to ban anti-vax disinformation online is reminiscent of its calls for a ban on the RT channel for allegedly spreading propaganda ahead of the EU referendum both show a tendency to ascribe popular discontent to the work of malign agitators and a complacent belief that increasing state power to police communications is a solution with no downsides.

In the process they make the underlying problems worse. Mandatory vaccination for health workers does not address the particular reasons why people from some communities (particularly certain ethnic minorities) show higher levels of vaccine hesitancy.

It smacks of contempt when health workers are being denied a proper pay rise.

It is likely to exacerbate understaffing if it drives more health workers away, especially in particular sectors.

The British Dental Association has warned of a devastating impact on NHS dentistry, already a service reduced to the point of non-existence across large parts of the country, as the Communist-led Toothless in England campaign has demonstrated.

That campaign which began when a couple of comrades in Leiston noted the closure of the towns only two dental practices that provided NHS services is an instructive one.

The speed with which street stalls, social media and petitions attracted support was impressive.

The campaigners have built a high profile and won significant local media coverage. It has spread beyond Suffolk and secured meetings with the East of England NHS commissioners.

All because campaigners were finally taking action on an issue which concerns millions of us the extortionate cost of privatised dental care but about which our established politics is silent.

Many people see the inability to afford a dentist as a fact of life. Toothless in England says its one we shouldnt have to put up with.

Thats an attitude we need to build across a whole range of issues, because it is clear by now that rather than levelling up the Tories are intent on levelling down, and using the disruption caused by Covid to permanently inure us to lower living standards.

For all their heady promises on climate change, Conservative policy is, as in the health service, making things worse: passengers face the biggest price rises for train tickets in a decade while from London to Scotland hundreds of routes are threatened.

A drop in revenues caused by the pandemic and lockdowns is being used to permanently degrade our transport systems.

In London, headlines suggesting hundreds of bus routes and entire much-used Tube lines could be axed the Bakerloo and Jubilee Lines have been mentioned are met with scepticism.

The prevailing attitude is that they couldnt get away with such a blatant downgrade to the capitals network.

The truth is of course that they can get away with anything unless they are stopped.

For much of Britain the axe looming over Londoners did its dirty work years back.

Our transport network was much more extensive, much more reliable and much cheaper a few decades ago than it is today.

Yet because of the pro-privatisation, pro-car consensus at Westminster, we have usually lacked a political movement prepared to say, like the Toothless in England campaigners, enough is enough.

The defeat of Corbynism in 2019 has left us without such a movement on a national scale. But the necessity of rebuilding one is clear.

Aside from a pandemic whose impact underlines the urgency of taking greater public control of the economy, we face a climate catastrophe that politics as usual is simply incapable of addressing and an increasingly tense new cold war with the nuclear powers Russia and China.

Nor does the logic of capitalisms constant need to break open new markets and exploit to the end every last resource make it amenable to gradual reform.

The half-hearted calls for a more responsible capitalism by Ed Miliband in 2015 resulted in a media savaging only tame by comparison with the attacks on Corbyn which followed.

Similarly, Keir Starmers leadership of Labour aims not at offering a more electable form of the politics Corbyn stood for though this was the false prospectus on which he stood for leader but at the systematic removal of all socialist content from the partys offer.

Every shift, from abandoning the Green New Deal to ditching support for energy nationalisation, and every shadow cabinet reshuffle have marked this consistent march to the right.

Starmer is not the candidate of reforming the capitalist system, but of restoring its unquestioned supremacy.

We face a serious assault on living standards. This takes multiple simultaneous forms: the attacks on public transport, the refusal to take action to strengthen the NHS despite the pandemic, soaring utility bills accompanied by cuts to social security and below-inflation pay offers.

Industrial resistance has already begun in the transport sector but has got off to a rockier start in the health service.

But alongside the organising to be done in workplaces, workers need the confidence of knowing the public are on their side.

It is all of our responsibility to make it clear that we see what is going on here and that we though not the health contractorsor the rail profiteers or the majority of our representatives in Parliament are truly all in it together.

We cannot shy away from political demands the case for energy nationalisation is obvious and it commands majority support.

With unions, campaigns like We Own It can raise the profile for such demands, but we need to put politicians on the spot at local level, which means building effective local activity whether through trades councils or branches of the Peoples Assembly or other bodies.

At the same time, the immediate response we see from unions in multiple sectors is the right one. Rising energy costs are one aspect of rising living costs and the answer must be higher pay.

The wave of workplace militancy we are seeing in several major unions is key to this. Fighting and winning regardless of Westminster is our only option. But understanding the context of these attacks is also crucial.

As with the attacks on our public services, the long-term plan to force down living standards for the majority of people in this country is down to capitalisms inability to satisfy the take the money and run demands of a tiny elite while meeting ordinary peoples expectations of life and work.

The same dilemma prevents meaningful action on climate change and a rational, global approach to handling the pandemic, while the refusal of the worlds dominant imperialist power, the United States, to countenance a loss of hegemonyis behind dangerous tensions with China that could yet erupt into a catastrophic war.

It is more than a century since Rosa Luxemburg said the choice we face is between socialism and barbarism. All the crises threatening our world today demonstrate how right she was.

There is only one daily voice in the British media fighting that corner thank you for keeping the Morning Star shining in 2021, and lets build a wider readership and a higher profile through 2022.

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Socialism is still the only answer to the war on living standards, public services and the planet itself - Morning Star Online