Pluto expresses its solidarity with all those out on strike today…for the rest of the week we are offering a 10% discount on five of our best books on protest, resistance and alternatives to austerity. Click here to go to direct to the special offer on our website.
As the graph below (compiled from Office for National Statistics figures) shows, the wealth of the 1% and the strength of the trade union movement have always been inversely related. A stronger union movement means a more equal society.
Unflinching survey of the state of welfare systems across Europe today, as they struggle in an age of government austerity and neo-liberal reform.
“With his focus on the shift in the balance of power behind the flourishing and now the destruction of social democracy Asbjørn Wahl has produced one of the best analyses of the politics of the welfare state. He also draws on ideas from struggles across the world for building a new power for democratic ownership of the economy – the only basis on which our social rights can have a future.
“ – Hilary Wainwright, editor of Red Pepper and author of Reclaim the State (2003, 2009)
“This scholarly and thoughtful yet accessible book is relevant to the whole of Europe and the world. The social model of the Welfare State is one of the greatest conquests in the entire history of human emancipation and the ongoing attempt to destroy it is a crime against humanity. We should read it, learn from it and organise so as to fight back with all our strength.” – Susan George, President of the Board of the Transnational Institute
Selected writings from a prominent voice of the new activist left. Reflections on being young, broke and angry in the twenty-first century.
“Cuts, sexism and riots, Laurie Penny’s fresh and angry voice captures the moment and the important issues – highly recommended.” – Polly Toynbee
“Penny is re-inventing the language of dissent, delivering verbal taser-barbs to the left and right, and causing apoplexy among the old men in cardigans who run the British blogosphere.” – Paul Mason, economics editor of BBC’s Newsnight
Accessible, and critical, guide to key economic concepts, relating them to everyday experience. Text is complimented by educational cartoons.
“Stanford is that rare breed: the teacher who changed your life. He has written a book – both pragmatic and idealistic – with the power to change the world.” – Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
“Jim Stanford has a unique ability to explain economics in ways that average working people can totally relate to.” – Bob White, Former President, Canadian Labour Congress, and Former President, OECD Trade Union Advisory Committee.
Sebastian Dullien, Hansjörg Herr and Christian Kellermann
“Highly stimulating and thoughtful.” – Nouriel Roubini. Sets out realistic alternatives to the neoliberal capitalism that caused the global crisis.
“The authors present a highly stimulating and thoughtful proposal on how to stabilise the world economy and how to make financial crises less likely and less lethal in the future. It is comforting to see such a constructive contribution to this debate coming from Europe.” – Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics and International Business, New York University
“An important contribution to the post-crisis economic literature which offers sensible, practical and distinctly non-utopian policy options. Whatever policy agenda is likely to emerge from the current financial mess, I would bet it will be based on the principles outlined in this book.” – Wolfgang Münchau, associate editor of the Financial Times
Sharp essays take on the government’s agenda of university cuts and fee increases, and outline an alternative manifesto for higher education.
“The corporatising of universal education is one of the most insidious and dangerous attacks on the very notion of human rights. This book calls us to arms. Every student, every educator who cares should read it.” – John Pilger
“This is an essential book. The future of our universities is up for grabs and the manifesto will play a huge role in providing alternatives at a time when the government says there aren’t any.” – Clare Solomon, President of the University of London Union (ULU) 2010-11 and editor of Springtime (2011)
October’s Rebellious Media Conference in London was an inspiring event, bringing together activists and writers to discuss how we can create an alternative media. The organisers have now produced a fundraising DVD which will help cover the remaining costs from the event. The DVD will include both Noam Chomsky’s keynote speeches, including the Q and A sessions, as well as speeches by other figures including Michael Albert from ZNet.
Visit Rebellious Media for more information and to order the DVD.
Noam also recently delivered, in his usual informed and inspiring fashion, the 7th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture on the topic of ‘Unpeople’. You can watch the full lecture here:
“Humanitarian” Intervention and the Standards of the West
Noam Chomsky
“Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty, and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive.” – The New York Times
“On the one hand we have the established media, the respectable community of foreign affairs analysts, the government – on the other, Noam Chomsky.” – The Nation
Noam Chomsky analyses US foreign policy in the Middle East in the 10 years since 9/11. Includes 3 previously unpublished essays.
“Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty, and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive.” – The New York Times
“On the one hand we have the established media, the respectable community of foreign affairs analysts, the government – on the other, Noam Chomsky.” – The Nation
Commenting on the Occupy Wall St protests recently, the anti-war activist Matthew Good complained that protesters were wasting their time camping in down-town Manhattan. They should, he argued, be gathering around the Pentagon. After all, the 700 billion dollars that US spent bailing out the bankers is a pittance when set against the annual one trillion dollar US defence budget.
His analysis assumed that the issues of rogue banks and outlandish defence spending were separate. Yet our recent financial crisis was largely created by the global trade in weapons. The acute financial distress and unemployment facing many Europeans and Americans today have their origins in the West’s economic reliance on exporting death.
As part of the impressive organisation taking place down at Occupy London, protesters have set up the ‘Tent City University’. As the organisers describe it on their website:
This is a space to learn, share knowledge and develop skills through a wide series of workshops, lectures, debates, films, games, praxis and action. As formal education becomes more and more commodified and inaccessible, here we have an opportunity to explore popular alternatives. Because between us we have all the resources we need. Anyone can teach, everyone can learn – and the two go hand in hand. Feel free to propose sessions, listen to new ideas and share with others what you know or want to know. Let’s learn together!
All events are free, open to anyone, and take place in the ‘University Tent’, (next to the ‘Info Tent’), at the OccupyLSX camp, outside St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Here is a list of Pluto authors currently booked to speak:
In an interview with Peace News for ZNet Matthew Alford, author of Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy, discusses the relationship between Hollywood and the US military-industrial complex:
PN: Why do the vast majority of Hollywood films routinely promote the United States as a benevolent force in world affairs and support the foreign policy of the US Government?
MA: Hollywood is a corporate media system akin to the news in that it is ostensibly free but nevertheless directed by strong factors that determine a pro-establishment line. These factors are: the concentrated ownership within Hollywood, which is owned by the same parent companies that own the news media; the prevalence of product placement and the general commercialised feel; the influence of the Department of Defense and the CIA, and the fact that if filmmakers do push radical political positions they tend to cause themselves a lot of problems (the Jane Fonda effect). Then there is the pervading ideology which says there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’, that America is good and benevolent with enemies throughout the world.
Writing in the Guardian, Alastair Crooke, author of Resistance: the Essence of the Islamist Revolution, argues that parts of the pro-democracy movement in Syria are being exploited by external forces. He points out the interest which various governments have in seeing the Assad regime fall:
This summer a senior Saudi official told John Hannah, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, that from the outset of the upheaval in Syria, the king has believed that regime change would be highly beneficial to Saudi interests: “The king knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.”
This is today’s “great game” – losing Syria. And this is how it is played: set up a hurried transitional council as sole representative of the Syrian people, irrespective of whether it has any real legs inside Syria; feed in armed insurgents from neighbouring states; impose sanctions that will hurt the middle classes; mount a media campaign to denigrate any Syrian efforts at reform; try to instigate divisions within the army and the elite; and ultimately President Assad will fall – so its initiators insist.
Jurors at the London session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine
Writing in the Guardian, Desmond Tutu and Michael Mansfield highlight the significance of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which opened its third session in South Africa on Saturday. They raise parallels with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa:
We have visited Israel/Palestine on a number of occasions and every time have been struck by the similarities with the South African apartheid regime. The separate roads and areas for Palestinians, the humiliation at roadblocks and checkpoints, the evictions and house demolitions. Parts of East Jerusalem resemble what was District Six in Cape Town. It is a cause for abiding sadness and anguish. It revolves around the way in which the arrogance of power brings about a desensitisation. Once this has occurred it permits atrocious acts and attitudes to be visited on those over whom power and control are exercised. What such people are doing to themselves just as much as their victims should also be of concern.
Tutu and Mansfield write that the role of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine is to apply the standards of international law to Israel’s conduct in relation to the Palestinians:
These are all matters the tribunal will be assessing in order to ascertain what parallels and comparisons can be drawn. Whatever they may be, the ultimate objective is to consider the Israel-Palestine situation on its own facts and apply the norms of international law to identify three major issues. Have there been violations? If so, what are they and who is responsible? And thirdly, what are the legal ramifications and processes which should ensue? It is hoped that this process may contribute and not detract from the urgent need to progress understanding and peace, truth and reconciliation.
The evidence from the London session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine is collected in a new book from Pluto Press, Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation, edited by Asa Winstanley and Frank Barat.
The 2011 Historical Materialism conference takes place this week in central London. Pluto has a number of authors speaking including Ben Fine, Esther Leslie, China Mieville, Sheila Cohen, Andrew Kliman and Gilbert Achcar. There will also be a launch for Pluto’s ‘Future of World Capitalism’ series with Alan Freeman, Radhika Desai, Henry Heller, Costas Panayotakis and Roger van Zwanenberg on Friday at 2.15pm, in SOAS room 4418.
In an article for November’s Socialist Review Bill Dunn considers the relevance of Marxist economics in getting to grips with the twists and turns of the current crisis of capitalism:
Capitalism’s recurrent crises are not aberrations. Financial deregulation and shifts of income between and within countries were achieved by powerful capitalist interests responding to the crisis of the 1970s, which Keynesian-inspired state regulation failed to prevent. To understand the real problems we need to go beyond the criticism of neoclassical economists or Keynesians. We need to examine the dark underworld of exploitation within capitalist production.
He provides a useful summary of a key Marxist explanation for why capitalism goes into repeated crisis – the tendency for the rate of profit to fall:
Competing firms invest in new technologies and new equipment – what Marx calls “constant capital”. The innovators steal a march on their competitors and capture a greater share of profits. As others follow, the new techniques become generalised and the leaders’ advantages are lost. Moreover, capitalists overall are now investing more in constant capital than in labour, or “variable capital”. While they must continue to pay the machine-making capitalists for the full value of the capital they purchase from them, it is only the workers they can exploit.
The An-Nahda party have emerged as the winners of Tunisia’s first full democratic election since the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, taking 40% of the vote. The Guardian has profiled the An-Nahda party leader Rachid Ghannouchi:
An unremarkable-looking man of 70 with silvery hair, wearing an ordinary grey suit, an open-necked white shirt and with a shy, toothy smile, he is an astute politician with a formidable party machine. Months after he returned from 22 years of exile in the UK, the victory of Ghannouchi’s An-Nahda party in Tunisia’s first free elections is a political earthquake in the midst of the Arab spring.
Ten months ago Tunisians took to the streets in a revolution that had no leader, was non-political, non-ideological and non-religious, ousting the dictator Ben Ali and inspiring similar uprisings across the region. Now Ghannouchi’s brand of moderate Islamism has taken around 40% of the vote in what he calls “the first free and fair elections in the Arab world”.
It is the first Islamist election success in the region since Hamas won a Palestinian vote in 2006. Nahda (Renaissance) has defined itself as “a new model for the world”: Islamist and pro-democracy, modern, open and consensual, an antidote to the western notion of a clash of civilisations.
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