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SYfest2011 opening rally
- 1. Socialism. a revolution in our lifetime or your money back
- 2. Capitalism:
- 4. It’s fun to the super rich togivemoney
- 5. Climate Change? Pfft! It’s more scared of you, than you are of it
- 8. Symptoms of asystemin itsdeathagony
- 10. Symptoms of asystemin itsdeathagony
- 11. Diagnosis “we are notin the businessofmakingcars we areinthebusiness of making money” - General Motors CEO
- 12. Guess who’s back? back again
- 13. Doctor Doom
- 14. “What is individually rational[for businesses] ... is a self destructiveprocess”
- 16. How corrupt are political parties out of 5? Transparency International 2010
- 18. Four score and sevenyears ago...
- 19. 4 of ingredients revolution
- 20. 3 ideas tothe world change
- 24. 1917 2017
- 25. the revolution will be live.
Editor's Notes
- CapitalismThe greatest system known to man.A system of peace, democracy and efficiency.It has used the vast wealth of human engenuity to eradicate world poverty, solve the environmental crisis, and a provide a future for all.It is the most democratic system imagineable.A system of cheques, and balancesheetsSo no one industry, such as banking, or oil, for instance, excercises undue influence over government
- Or at least that’s what my friend, Captain Capitalism tells meSome may have seen his facebook crusade against the Socialist Party, and his reasons not to join, including clasics such as:
- Compelling arguments , but i’m afraid i have caught him out already.It turns out this Captain Capitalism isn’t the first of his kind. In fact here I have video footage of what I can only guess is his American cousin.
- But, as always, there is some truth in the rantings and ravings of my imaginary friends.The development of capitalism , through revolutions 200, 250 years ago, was a great development. That’s how history works, economic systems have come into existence, moved things forward, and then rotted, decayed and have had to been over thrown, and put into the dust bin of history.Even feudalism, and before that, slave society, played a role in the development of society. But all turned from driving forces of development, to sick, dying systems holding us back. They were unable to put to use the resources of society.For instance, the first steam engines were built in ancient Egypt, and, as you do, it was used as an ornament in the temples and palaces of the elite. Sure why would you waste time and energy developing it to do work, when slaves were so cheap, and plentiful.In feudalist france, the landlords used to have the power to approach any of their serf farmers, and ask them to come around to their palace and spending the night at the ponds, shooing all the frogs away, lest these frogs woke the nobles up, and disturbed their rest before a busy day of land owning.And the level of inequality was undermining their rule. They were completely out of touch. And as the country entered an economic crisis, due to its wars, the elite were lost for ways out. When the King discovered the country had become bankrupt he responded, by building two more palaces. Not sure if that’s the greatest plan ever, but a damn sight better than buying angloirish bank I suppose.But look, there were a lot of great developments, 250 years ago. Medicine, and our understanding of human anatomy, for instance, had great breakthroughs. They discovered that blood wasn’t just something static in funny tubes, which it appeared to be as they’d only looked at dead bodies before. But that still didn’t stop them engaging in blood letting. 250 years ago the cure they came up with for ‘the pain of piles’ or hemeroids was: 'Take a great onion core it and fill it with b[utter] or oyle and roll it in embers until it is soft. Then binde it to the place.’So, ya, a lot of breakthroughs 250 years ago, but not really up to scratch today. Similarly, capitalism is a system not fit for purpose, and arguably as tying a red hot oil filled onion to your anus.
- Even worse than ancient Egypt, it doesn’t just not implement technologies, but with things like the potential now for sharing music, art and ideas it is actively engaged in a war against the capabilities of technology.And, the level of inequality is greater than ever before. Whilst 1bn people go without access to clean water, the super rich spend $30,000 a pop on Cartier designer deodorant. Even they cant stand the stench of their own greed.It’s not just on an international level either, but within the so called advanced countries. Almost a year ago, I got to do a speaking tour with Socialist Alternative, our sister group in the US. One of the colleges I spoke at was University of Washington, or U-dub as they call it, cause, well, Americans are weird. UW is one of the biggest Universities in America, it has a budget of $3.5bn, and a population bigger than my home city of Limerick.
- That’s a tent city, called Nickelsville, of homeless people, many of whom would have been foreclosed on – or evicted – as they couldn’t pay their mortgage. The most shocking examples of inequality I’ve seen.
- Moving on, another symptom of this system in it’s death agony is the huge unemployment, and that waste of resources that represents. With 450,000 unemployed in the south, that represents over $40bn worth of goods not being created every single year. And that is down to utter cowardice, and all round shitness of the Irish business class. The same can be seen in NI, where the private sector only manages to make up a minority of GDP, that is how downright terrible they are. And, worse than any system before it, capitalism in it’s death is also trying to kill off the planet, with huge environmental destruction, and a snails pace response to climate change, over 20 years since it became apparent.
- These are all symptoms of a common illness: a profit system. In this system, the ‘bad apples’ are in fact the geese that lay the golden eggs. The company that drives wages down and spends as little on environmental protection is the one that makes the most profit, the one with the highest share value, where the investment goes.And as a head of General Motors said, apparently when they were laying off workers and shutting plants in the 80s: we are not in the business of making cars, we are in the business of making money.So they drive down wages, exploit the third world and the environment, and make a fortune doing it. They blow up property bubbles, and when they collapse, make us pick up the tab. And now, in a crisis, when there isn’t a guaranteed market for them, the refuse to invest, or invest in poverty wage countries, making the crisis of demand worse and worse.This is a full blown case of the disease diagnosed in it’s infancy in the 19th century by Karl Marx. And now, even the ruiling class are starting to realise that their system is dying and redundant.
- Roubini – Doctor Doom as they call him – one of the few bourgeois econoimists who predicted the current crisis, has now come out and stated “Karl Marx had it right.. you can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working. What's individually rational ... is a self-destructive process."
- Repeat that: What is individually rational, for big businesses, is a self destructive process. All the symptoms of a system ready to be dumped are there. A system that is preparing its own funeral.
- The ‘pillars of society’ on which the ruiling class has rested are tumbling. Like the black knight in the holy grail. Their limbs have been chopped off:The respect and support for themselves directly has been decimated. The standing of ‘big business’, particularly bankers, but all ‘fat cats’ has never been lower.Classic props such as the church are not there to lean on like before, having fallen from grace through their own scandalsTheir Ministry for Information, the media, which they have increasingly relied on, is now much more exposed, following the Murdoch scandal, and othersAnd their snake oil salesmen, the silver tounged defenders of their system, the politicians, are probably the most hated of all: in the north ‘the politicians’ is practically a swear word. In the south, a recent opinion poll has shown that Irish people are one of the lowest int he world in terms of trust in our political parties.And the new government is hardly about the ‘great saviour’ of political credibility. In fact a whole new layer can be politicised by the experience of the lies of FG, and particularly the betrayal of Labour. You can practically see the puppet strings on Enda Kenny. Just want to show a little clip here, that underlines how this new southern government is gearing up to be one of the most hated in history.
- Four score and secen years ago, Leon Trotsky wrote an article called “The Timetable of Revolution” in which he asked if you could plan a revolution, indeed even fix a timetable for it. His argument was, in fact, yes. Revolution is an art, but it is also a science.In many ways, comrades, we have entered a revolutionary period of history worldwide, and our task now is to plan for a revolution. The situation is revolutionary, In particular in the objective situation, that is, the endemic crisis of capitalism. At the same time, consciousness lags far behind this reality, in particular consciousness of an alternative. Whilst this undoubtably means there will be confusion, and all manner of weird and wonderful ideas thrown up, as we will see over the weekend with the revolts in Greece and Spain, it doesn’t change the underlying motor of events, and indeed motor of history.But what is revolution? Fundamentally, it is nothing more, nothing less, than when the mass of ordinary people, particularly he working class, actively engage in politics. In the time of the death of capitalism, that mass naturally gravitate towards socialist ideas, to democratic control of the key sectors of the economy.
- Lenin developed this understanding of revolution, detailing the 4 ingredients of revolution, 4 things which define a revolutionary situation in the broader sense and looking at them can really help us demystify revolution, and how it comes about.The first ingredient I’ll talk about is: some sort of crisis, which results in the ruiling class not knowing what to do, and being divided in their response. Is it hard to imagine that? No, in my opinion, we are moving more and more towards that.Secondly, the middle class must be in turmoil, with a large layer looking for fundamental change. Again, already we are headed in that direction.Crucially, the working class must engage in struggle, in a serious struggle. They don’t just want to tweak things but to throw out the old way of doing things. Of this, I think already, there is a large layer of working class people who to one degree or another are already of a mind that the ‘whole system’ has to go. What is missing, is engagement in serious struggle. That doesn’t just emerge from no where, it is built up over time, through specific campaigns, and struggles, learning lessons from victories, but particularly from defeats. I think already, we have seen, and can see the outlines of the beginning of such struggles, anti water tax, against the cuts etc. But the events of North Africa, and southern Europe tell us these things can also develop through explosions.Finally, and a theme for elsewhere in the weekend, is the fourth ingredient: the existence of a revolutionary party, with roots in the working class and youth.
- How can such a situation lead to the overthrow of capitalism? Does it require everyone to read the communist manifesto, and become an expert on Marxist theory of economic planning? Trotsky in 1917 issued 3 key directions to the working class, which he said, if followed, would lead them to a socialist transformation of society. They were:1) Distrust the ruiling class2) Rely on your own strength3) Control your leadersBy distrusting the capitalist class and the rich, and relying on their strength as workers, not relying on the courts or media etc, workers would inevitably be in a battle to the death with the elite. It is either us, or them. If they have control over their leaders and their movement, then Trotsky was confident they would gravitate towards the best tactics, and towards the policies that could provide solutions, that is to the socialist position. And we see this constantly. In Waterford crystal, the workers, by themselves, saw the need to occupy he workplace – it was either that or walk away penniless. They also saw the need to demand the factory be taken into public ownership. And of course, cause the alternative was, as happened, have a vulcher capitalist swoop in and asset strip the company.
- Similarly, in Spain and Greece, the movements, for all their compliations, have raised the demand of democratic public ownership of the banks. This is not cause it was read in the communist manifesto, but because these ideas don’t flow from the head of Marx, but from the reality of capitalism.Already, distrust in the ruiling class, and in the so-called leaders of the working class, is high. Illusions, in courts or other things to fight for us might still remain, but they are shallow. Once again, capitalism is preparing it’s own funeral.Once again, confidence in our own strength, or the lack of it, is the issue. Whilst the working class today is stronger than at any point in the past, it’s confidence has been set back. The boxer is stronger than ever, but out of practice, and lacking in confidence. We have a crucial role to play, then, in explaining that there is an alternative, that we do have the power to change the world. That, as the phrase goes, if we all spit, we can drown the bastards.
- We shouldn’t shy away from this task, or from spelling out the alternative. The 20th century saw countless revolutions, one every year from 1917 on practically, but the vast majority did not succeed. The missing, 4th ingredient i spoke of earlier was missing – a conscious revolutionary intervention. It is not the casethat ‘socialism’ is like a curse word, ‘the system that must not be names’. Arming the movements with a understanding of socialism, and a socialist programme for changing society is a crucial task that falls to us.
- We must explain, that there can be no real democracy whilst 70% of the world trade is controlled by 500 companies. So long as the key wealth and industry is run for profit, society is, so if we want to break that dictatorship of the markets, and the rule of profit, we must free that wealth from the grubby grip of the super rich. We fight for every reform, but so long as this power is in the hands of the rich, all reforms will be temporary. Therefore, we need to take the key sectors of the economy into democratic, public ownership, and plan it for public good. That, essentially, is the programme the coming revolution must be armed with.
- Comrades, the next years will have very significant 100 year anniversery’s. This year we celebrate the centenary of the Belfast linen strike, as the workers movement in Ireland began to find it’s feet. In 2 years, the strike and lock out. And most importantly for us, in 6 years time, the 100th anniversary of the 1917 revolution, which opened up a period of revolution across the world, including here in Ireland.6 years ago, I first took a serious step into activity and organising. Then, we were looking at the revolts in Latin America, and saying that fire would spread east; that europe , and the middle east could see similar events. 6 years on that has happened. North Africa and Southern Europe are infected with the fire of revolution. Where can we be in 6 years time? It is up to us to spread that here, and ensure it does not burn out, as Connolly said, until “until the last throne and the last capitalist bond [are] shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last War lord."
- Finally, a tribue. That same year that Trotsky wrote about planning revolutions 1924, he also wrote an article, “not by politics alone does man thrive”, and I’m sure that will be a theme of the night times of the summer fest at least. Not being a woman, I can only guess that it also applies for ye. But anyway, with that in mind I want to end by quoting from one of my favourite musicians and artists, gil scot heron, who dies this year. In his most famous song, the revolution will not be televised, he said: “You will not be able to stay home, brother.You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.The revolution will not make you look five poundsthinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.The revolution will not go better with Coke.The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.The revolution will not be televisedThe revolution will be no re-run brothers;The revolution will be live.”