三苗

29# ironland

2、何况，“市场”的自由充其量只能说是形式上的、 抽象的，

市场经济和资本主义社会中显然存在大量的直接和间接的强制


这同样是自由主义无论如何不可能取消的，不可能洗白的

同样这也是资本主义社会中抗争的基点。

三苗

29# ironland

3、那么，既然抗争必然存在

也就是对于大多数人来说

自由主义的主张根本是缺乏说服力的


而你又否认阶级斗争

那么请问底层如何解释自己的状况？


欢天喜地欣然接受是不可能了，

无非是
（1）宗教，也就是各种原教旨主义（因为绝大多数宗教在其起源的时候确实是底层人民的运动）

（2）把问题归咎于“精英”、“外国人”

populism和……

三苗

29# ironland

4、至于累进税的问题

福利国家我想你应该最少听说过

换言之，你连福利国家都反对，


那么在这个条件下，你谈什么不同意新自由主义呢？

三苗

29# ironland

第一点和第二点都不是理论问题


而是底层人民每时每刻的基本生活“经验”……

三苗

29# ironland


现在可以讲哈耶克和皮诺切特了


很显然自由主义不可能消除资本主义社会中的抗争


也就是无法用“和平”的手段……


那么结论是什么……

皮诺切特只是一个比较突出的例子罢了。

ironland

33# 三苗

凡事不可过度。印象里，皮皮虾的理想税率好像是80%。这可比现在的瑞典都高了。
好逸恶劳是人的天性。而财富不会从天而降，是需要勤奋工作才能创造的。如果努力工作，最后所得还不如拿救济的，我很怀疑在没有清教信念支持下，绝大多数人是否还能坚持工作。

至于你说的一、二点，真心希望你走出学校，给别人打打工或做个小买卖什么的。老板和伙计的关系，真不是马克思这种一辈子吃软饭家伙所想像的剥削和被剥削、你死我活的局面。那更是一种共生关系，互相依靠。

三苗

36# ironland


笑死了


马克思之前，工人运动就已经开始了。 现在中国又不是没有自发抗争。


比马克思主义更激进的也不是没有，你根本连改良主义都容不下什么“共生”？


说到“ 共生”，奴隶特别家内奴隶和主人也是“共生”滴……

ironland

37# 三苗
去试试。哪怕是开个淘宝店也好。体验一下当老板和当雇员的感觉。

三苗

38# ironland

不好意思

你应该知道我是研究什么的……嘻嘻。

ironland

39# 三苗

权当体验生活么，玩一玩。置身其中和隔岸观火是很不一样的。

顺利的话，没准你可以建立一个你理想中的企业。

三苗

40# ironland

不好意思哈

本人不是Robert Owen的追随者……请注意。

三苗

40# ironland


顺便再说下，社会生活不是画画。

三苗

‘Privatisation has shifted tax burden onto poorest’ says writer James Meek
by Sadie Robinson

The Campaign for Real Poverty is what privatisation should be called, argues author James Meek.



He spoke to Socialist Worker about his new book Private Island. It brings together his essays on privatisation of the NHS, housing, utilities, the post and railways.



“When you look at the series of privatisations as a whole, a greater picture starts to emerge,” he said.



“They have meant a big shift in the tax burden from the richest people in society to the poorest.”



Meek writes vividly about the impact of privatisation.



His piece about the selloff of Royal Mail begins with a postal worker in the Netherlands who has 62 mail crates stacked up in her home when he visits.



She has to work for two mail firms to make ends meet—but she can’t cope with the workload. Privatisation has driven down wages as firms compete to cut costs.



Examining the NHS, Meek describes his shock at hearing surgeons talk about operations in terms of cost and losses. Every procedure, from a birth to a heart replacement, has a code and a price.



“I felt as if I’d somehow jumped forwards in time,” he wrote. “Had the NHS been privatised one day while I was sleeping?”



Commercial

Meek argued that there has been “a consistent programme for commercialising the NHS that is independent of political platforms”.



The book gets across the devastating and absurd effects of privatisation. But for Meek there is more on sale than services.



As he put it in his piece on electricity, “What is being sold is not infrastructure, but bill-paying citizens. What is being privatised is not electricity, but taxation”.



Meek says “the market has failed”, but he openly admits isn’t sure how to challenge it.



He isn’t always against nationalisation, but argues that there are alternatives to private and state ownership.



“We’ve seen two semi-state entities on the railways recently and they’ve both done alright,” he said. “You can run something on commercial lines, but it doesn’t have to be privatised.”



But he knows that any challenge to the status quo would have consequences.



“The Scottish referendum has shown in miniature what it would be like if a genuinely radical, reforming government came in,” he said.



“What if Ed Miliband said, we are going to turn the water and electricity companies into non-profit making trusts? You can’t imagine him doing that. But if he did there would be a volcanic eruption.”



Meek’s book is a powerful testimony to the privatisation disaster. Many, including Socialist Worker, will disagree with him about the solutions.



But today the privateers dominate—and the more voices that speak out against them, the better.

States profiting from privatisation



One thing that for Meek exposes the hypocrisy of privatisation is that it’s not always private firms who buy up services.



Proponents of privatisation try to justify selloffs with the idea that private firms will be more efficient.



Yet state-run, state-owned and state-backed firms are among those leading the race.



“If you use water in London, you are compelled to pay a tax to China,” said Meek.



“That’s because the Chinese government is a shareholder in Thames Water.”



The main beneficiary of Britain’s electricity selloff has been EDF, owned by the French state.



Meek said he is “hostile” to this “not because I’m hostile to the French. “But it shows the absurdity of privatisation in the first place.”



“Public services are now not simply private, but control over them is removed and far away. There’s a sense of powerlessness.”



For Meek there was a bigger project at work



“Behind Margaret Thatcher were a whole set of economic ideologues,” he said. “They had a vision of the kind of Britain they wanted and the kind of global economy they wanted.”



He uses the example of council housing. “There was one constant underlying theme. ‘Why should the well off people pay for other people to have a house?’ What it comes down to is, let the poor be poor.”
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk ... s+writer+James+Meek

三苗

另外要补充一下，小店主及整个新老middle class也是资本主义社会中社会不满的一个来源

是尤其右翼populism的主要社会基础。

三苗

http://www.zaobao.com/news/china/story20141004-396314


补充哈。

吹笛在湖北

刘春 :《21世纪资本论》写得怎么样？内谁

任志强: 一般般吧。过去的矛盾集中于资本和劳动的对立与不公平中。似乎世界上造成贫富差别的主要原因在于资本获利过多，而劳动获利过低。今天的交易环节，互联网科技，文化艺术都在资本帮助之下改变了获利方式，让许多本来只能靠劳动获利的人改变了社会地位。从劳动追随资本变成了资本追逐创新了。

三苗

Health workers across England were set to join a four-hour walkout over pay on Monday of next week. The strike, due to start at 7am, will involve up to half a million workers.

The Unison and Unite unions announced the action last month.

Health workers in the GMB union joined it last week after 78 percent voted for strikes and 91 percent for action short of strikes. The Royal Society of Radiographers has not yet named a strike date though 53 percent voted to strike in its ballot.

And the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) will strike for the first time in its 133-year history (see below).

The action comes as the crisis in the NHS has become a key political issue in the run-up to next year’s general election.

Every week brings a new story about how cuts and privatisation are hitting workers and patients.

Medical groups and charities wrote a letter to the Independent newspaper last weekend. They described “a system buckling under the twin crises of rising demand and flat lining budgets are everywhere”.

Politicians are jostling to grandstand over the NHS.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said the general election would be a “day of reckoning on the NHS” for the Tories and Lib Dems.

But while he pledged to repeal the hated Health and Social Care Act, Labour is still signed up to the Tories’ spending cuts

Contracts

Meanwhile bosses continue to profit. Private health care firms with links to top Tory politicians won NHS contracts worth £1.5 billion in the last two years.

Yorkshire ambulance bosses were awarded pay rises of up to 30 percent.

Health workers are angry at health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s refusal to give workers even a 1 percent pay rise. But this dispute is about more than just pay.

Bristol’s Unite health branch vice chair Gwyneth Powell-Davies explained, “Many health workers are feeling under increasing pressure from the Tories’ cuts and privatisation. It’s becoming harder to deliver the kind of health service that we want to.”

This sort of pressure is forcing many health workers to leave, adding to existing staff shortages.

“But the strikes show that there is an alternative to individuals leaving the health service—taking collective action to defend it”, added Gwyneth.

That’s why health workers are encouraging people to join their picket lines for a “Breakfast for the NHS”.

Trade unionists and campaigners have been doing workplace collections for the strikers.

NUJ union member Phil Turner did a collection in his workplace. “We had an excellent response with everyone chipping in,” he said. We’re also organising a local rally through the trades council. We’ll take our branch banner down to the picket lines to hand over the donations and show our solidarity.”

Next week’s strike is a good start. Now unions should call more ­coordinated action. This could boost workers’ confidence to fight.

The Tories are on the offensive—but united, workers can beat them.

Threat from midwifery crisis

Midwifery lecturer Sarah Davies spoke to Socialist Worker about the crisis facing midwives.

“Midwives have to do 12 hour shifts with no breaks,” she said. “This never used to be the case. Many midwives are being forced to leave a job they trained for and love. It means there are minimum staffing levels at all times.”

The changes are also having an impact on pregnant women.

“The pressure now is for hospital wards to remain open at all costs,” said Sarah. “There’s no time for personalised care. Babies are increasingly being born before seeing the midwife. This also means that things such as help with breast feeding and post-natal care suffer.”


http://www.socialistworker.co.uk ... oin+NHS+pay+walkout

三苗

Julie Sherry joined a delegation from the British bakers’ union to support a day of strikes by US fast food workers in North Carolina.




The movement of thousands of fast food workers in a series of strikes, spanning 150 cities across the US, has captured the eye of the international media. It’s easy to see why. The movement symbolises something incredible — non-unionised workers, those on the lowest pay, many of them black, many of them parents living in poverty, who work in the most difficult conditions with no job security — have now lost their fear.

The strikes raise questions about the power of the working class today and the challenges facing the trade union movement.

Since late 2012, starting from workers in a few stores walking out in New York, the strikes have mushroomed to thousands taking to picket lines, in some cases shutting stores down. Their demands for $15 an hour (£9.17) and a union represent real class anger, and an expectation that they deserve a better life.

Working conditions for fast food workers in the US are similar in many respects to their counterparts in the UK. The average US fast food worker is paid an hourly rate of $7.73 (£4.70), while the UK average is £5 according to PayScale figures.

One of the key chants of the US movement, “We can’t survive on 7.25”, shows that for many workers, hourly pay is even lower.

On top of low pay, issues such as high working temperatures, no guarantee of hours and the lack of respect workers face every day were the tinder that caught fire. Strikers tell stories of how workers were sacked for eating a chicken nugget on shift, or drinking water out of the “wrong size cup”. And many face racism from managers.

Given these conditions, you might think that the workers would be a bit nervous or timid, that there would be a low turnout on picket lines, or that it’s incredible that the strikes took place at all.

But standing on the picket lines in September, megaphones were passed striker to striker, with many taking turns to lead chants and make impassioned speeches. During the strike hundreds of workers were arrested for civil rights-style sit-downs.

The scenes were reminiscent of the 1960s, with black and white workers linking arms, and being cuffed and taken away to huge cheers, and singing gospel inspired songs of justice. The frenzied carnival energy on the day, and the huge signs strikers held everywhere declaring “I believe that we will win”, sum up the nature of the strikes.

Their indomitable spirit was on display. It was worker-led and had that air of spontaneity that often brings terror to the bosses. But behind this image the strikes also represent a conscious attempt to address the question of what the trade union movement will look like in ten or 20 years time.

In 2013 the US union membership rate — percentage of waged/salaried workers who are union members — was at 11.3 percent, with only 14.5 million in unions.

This figure has almost halved in 30 years from the 20.1 percent rate in 1983. There is regional variation, with New York having the highest union rate at 24.4 percent, and North Carolina with the lowest at 3 percent.

The support for the strike movement from the 2 million-strong Service Employees International Union (SEIU) reflects a positive attempt to reshape the union movement because it places workers’ struggle at its heart in a politicised way. One of the great successes of the strikes is that workers have spread them to every state.

It is encouraging that a key element in the strategic thinking behind the campaign is the need to escalate in some way each time there are strikes. So it was vital, and powerful, that the strikes in September shut down Times Square in New York, the birthplace of the movement. There was also a conscious decision to highlight events in the South.

I joined a delegation from the BFAWU, the British bakers’ union, to North Carolina, a Southern state with the lowest union density, as well as sharp tensions over racism.

What the strikers’ campaign delivered was impressive. They linked up with civil rights movement veterans such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) president Reverend Barber. The significance of what fast food workers were leading was highlighted by banners that read “Organise the South”.

Particularly in the South, but also as a movement nationally, the strikes have placed the fight against racism and for social justice centre stage. Reverend Barber told strikers in North Carolina that they were “the continuation of the movement for civil rights and justice in America”.

He said, “Don’t let someone who is making a thousand times more than you tell you that you don’t deserve a living wage.”

From the start the campaign has had an emphasis on being worker-led. There is also a sense of the importance of winning small issues workplace by workplace in order to keep strikers united behind the bigger vision for $15 and a union. And this element is connected to the issue of fighting oppression too.

On 4 September workers in North Carolina, mostly black but alongside white workers too, marched, cheering and singing, to the McDonald’s. One worker who had never been part of the strikes before joined them. She was met with rapturous applause.

The atmosphere was electric. Workers took to the roads, chanting, “We shall not be moved”, and a slow, powerful rendition of their own, “We’re ready for 15”.

Scared

One striker from Greensboro, her two young children with her, explained the racism faced by one of her colleagues when he led the charge to get workers to join the strikes.

“When they hired him he had his dreads [dreadlocks] and that was all fine, but when he got involved in the union, they said his dreads were a problem. The bosses said they didn’t like his ‘urban look’ and that he had to go. The manager said she ‘needed more white people’. That’s what we’re dealing with here in the South.

“But the managers are scared now. Some of us overheard them saying they would have to get him back. We had made it clear that he just had to say the word and we would all march down there. Every time we strike there’s more people coming out, they are not scared any more now they’re realising it’s their right to organise.”

The strikes on 4 September came after a US-wide fast food workers’ convention where delegations of strikers came together from across the US to discuss the next steps — more than 1,200 of them turned up.

On the day of the strikes we met many people who said they’d love to have gone but hadn’t been able to get there. For a section of workers who are non-unionised and have virtually no rights at work, the unprecedented turn out at the convention is remarkable.

Many of the tactics building the strikes focus on fast food workers visiting other workers, getting leaders inside the workplaces, and encouraging every worker who joins the campaign to get five others around them.

The results represent the beginning of the development of a confident rank and file rooted in each area.

The strikes have been one day at a time, are symbolic, and aimed at maximising political pressure on notorious multinational employers. In many workplaces it is a minority who are on strike, but in a large number it is a majority, and stores have been shut.

As the strike movement deepens and grows the question raised is: at what point does the escalation move to more days striking and more stores shut? But the key is that it is deepening and growing, and has a momentum driving it forwards.

From the beginning the “walk backs” have been just as important for the movement’s success as the “walk outs”. It is one thing seeing the spirit of the strikers on the picket line on strike days, but you only really begin to understand their courage when you are on a “walk back” with someone who is from a workplace where they were the only one on strike.

The early success of these walk backs — getting victimised people back in work through political pressure and protests — means that now workers are less likely to be singled out. And of course in many places workers are going back together, in some places as the whole workforce.

There are many similarities to the situation fast food workers face in the UK — poverty pay, a culture of insecurity, bullying management and job insecurity. But there are also significant differences that help explain the eruption of the movement.

The tensions created by the gap between expectations many peoeple had of how Barack Obama’s election victories could bring change, and the reality that many elements of people’s lives have not changed — such as racism and poverty — form the backdrop to the confidence of the fast food strike movement.

Gutsy

In Britain the key battle is the fightback over pay in the public sector, because it is also a politicised strike movement to defend the welfare state, to save the NHS, and to reject the austerity agenda.

The development of strikes by up to a million or more over pay can inspire unorganised sections of workers, like fast food workers. This helps create circumstances where they may gain confidence to fight.

The Fast Food Rights campaign in the UK, launched in January by the BFAWU bakers’ union, John McDonnell MP and Unite the Resistance, raises the political issues of zero hours contracts, a demand for a £10 an hour living wage and union rights for low paid workers.

The lesson from the US fast food strikes is that no group of workers should be written off. It reminds us that gutsy struggle can sometimes come from the most unlikely places. It proves that no matter what setbacks the working class movement has experienced — the conditions of exploitation, poverty and oppression they face — capitalism continually creates the ground for new struggles to rise up.
http://socialistreview.org.uk/395/us-workers-strike-living-wage

三苗

Mass protests in Ireland over new water charges
by Simon Basketter  





   





Part of the protest in Ireland last Saturday (Pic: Richard Boyd Barrett)


Part of the protest in Ireland last Saturday (Pic: Richard Boyd Barrett)


Protesters filled the streets of Dublin last Saturday against the introduction of water charges.

Organisers had hoped 20,000 would turn up, but in fact some 100,000 people protested.

“This day will go down in history as the day that the people decided to roar,” Independent MP Clare Daly told the crowd.

“We are here in our tens of thousands to say water is a human right, based on need, not an ability to pay.”

Brendan Ogle of the Unite union said, “It is a tipping point. It was a protest against water charges but it was also about six years of hurt, six years where the forces of austerity have pushed and pushed and pushed, and the people just cannot, and will not, take any more.”

In the run-up to the demonstration there have been a series of protests across Ireland to prevent the installation of water meters.

Protesters have burnt letters from Irish Water, and vowed not to pay the charge. Others said they had returned their envelopes with the slogan, “We won’t pay”.

While marchers expressed huge anger at the government there was particular rage directed at the Labour Party, especially deputy prime minister Joan Burton.

She had dismissed earlier local protests, saying that people on them obviously weren’t as poor as they claimed because they filmed them on their smartphones.

Sections of the crowd chanted “Hide your phone—here comes Joan”.

Ridicule

“It is tragic,” said Brendan, “The leader of the Labour Party has become the figure of ridicule among what should be Labour Party voters.”

He said Burton should apologise for “getting up like Marie Antoinette and insinuating if people can afford a phone they should pay for water”.

People Before Profit MP Richard Boyd Barrett says street meetings have been called where water meters were being installed, which has led to political mobilisation on a new scale.

“I attended eight meetings around Dun Laoghaire in the last fortnight and there have been over 800 at them. I was at one in Tipperary where there were 200 and one in Rush where there were about 70. There has been massive mobilisation though Facebook and social media.

“Water is so essential to human life that it’s unbelievable this government would try to turn it into a commodity.

“We already pay some of the highest indirect taxes in Europe so this is just one charge too many for people already struggling to make ends meet.”

The charges kicked in on 1 October with the first bill due in January. People before Profit councillor Gino Kenny said that he had not seen such a large crowd at a protest since 2003 when people marched against the war in Iraq.

“The atmosphere was great,” he said. “This is just the start of a much larger campaign. We mustn’t lose momentum, this is when people need to stand together. The government are in big trouble”.

A day of local protests is planned for 1 November.


http://www.socialistworker.co.uk ... r+new+water+charges

三苗

University study exposes growing hunger in South London borough of Lambeth

By Allison Smith
18 October 2014

A study by Dr Kate Harvey of the University of Reading reveals the devastating impact of food insecurity on a group of children and their parents in Lambeth, a South London borough with a population of 304,000.

The study interviewed 72 parents and 19 children, aged 5 to 11, who are served by Kids Company, a not-for-profit social service agency that supports more than 36,000 at-risk children and young people in London and Bristol.

All study participants experienced some level of food insecurity. More than 90 percent worried about running out of food, and 86 percent experienced the lowest level of food insecurity on the Food Insecurity Survey.

The World Health Organisation World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.”

The lowest level of food insecurity denotes multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake. People in the lowest category are more often without food and may experience periods of hunger and malnutrition. Most of the children told interviewers that they sometimes did not have enough food to eat at home. Many reported that food availability at home was erratic, and some reported that most often there was no food at home when they asked for it. One child responded, “If there’s no cereal, I don’t eat anything.”

When another child was asked if there was ever a time they felt hungry at home, the child responded, “Well, sometimes I’m hungry, but then ... I’ll tell my mum and she’ll say ... just like manage with what you have .”

In one distressing interview, a child shared that when the father runs out of money—twice per month—the child doesn’t eat anything unless supplied by Kids Company. Kids Company is a limited service, and does not provide every meal.

The study reveals that more than 75 percent of parents had reduced the size of their own meals or skipped meals. Twenty percent of parents had gone without food for a whole day.

Parents worked hard to shield their children from the impact of food insecurity. In one example, a “mother ensured the youngest children in the family had home-cooked food when there was an insufficient amount for everyone.”

The University of Reading study found that for the participants, “specific psychological impacts included worry, anxiety and sadness about the family food supply, perceived lack of choice in the foods eaten, and shame and/or fear about being labelled poor because of food insecurity.”

Of the 32 London boroughs, Lambeth is one of the 10 most deprived, with the seventh highest level of child poverty, according to the End Child Poverty charity. Nearly 32 percent of Lambeth’s children live in poverty, with 22 percent of poor children coming from working families. Kids Company reported a 233 percent increase in self-referrals in the year 2012.

In response to the UK government’s 50 percent reduction in core funding to Lambeth, the Labour Party-controlled borough council announced its plans to cut services by more than £200 million between 2010 and 2018. This year alone, the council plans to cut nearly £30 million. One of the hardest hit areas will be youth services, with £6 million in cuts, which include eliminating youth clubs, closing several mobile libraries and reducing the Children’s Services Fund budget by £4.9 million. This includes £1.4 million in cuts by reducing the number of staff at children’s centres throughout the borough.

Lambeth council has indicated that the cuts will also likely lead to nearly 1,000 local government jobs lost across the borough. The council cynically described the draconian cuts as “responsible budget management.”

In a meeting earlier this year, council leader Lib Peck said they had “prioritised services.” This included the launch of the Do Your Part £90 Million Challenge, calling on resident “volunteers” to clean the streets, deliver IT skills training, grow their own food, police their neighbours and maintain council estates.

In addition to asking citizens to provide their own services, the Lambeth council—like others across London—is also asking many of its poorest residents to pay council tax for the first time. For many residents, the new tax bills are the equivalent of two week’s wages, leading many working poor families to have to choose between paying rent and council tax or buying food. Many fall into arrears.

In a July 2014 Guardian blog post, Patrick Butler explained what can happen under these circumstances:

“A council tax support-claiming household living in a Band D property in Lambeth would have an annual bill of £197. If they failed to pay and were court summonsed, issued with a liability order and charged costs, £127 would be added to this debt. Following the implementation of new bailiff regulations in April 2014, a minimum of £75 would then be charged by the bailiffs for 'compliance', potentially followed by a further £235 when they first attend the household's property. The net result would lead to an already unmanageable debt of £197 skyrocketing to £634.”

London is home to 100 billionaires, more than any other city in the world. It also has the highest rate of child poverty in Britain. According to the End Child Poverty Commission, in 2013, 40 percent of London wards had a child poverty rate of at least 25 percent.

In 2012, for the first time, Save the Children, which had previously only worked in non-G7 countries, started working in Britain because of the escalating child poverty levels. The charity’s 2014 report on poverty reveals that stagnant wages and government policies such as the “bedroom tax,” together with the lack of council tax relief, mean “the social safety net no longer acts as a sufficient backstop for poor families.”

In the Westminster borough’s Church Street Ward, the poverty rate is 50 percent—the highest in London and Britain. Knightsbridge and Belgravia, the adjacent borough, has the lowest poverty rate at five percent. Belgravia is home to more millionaires and billionaires per square metre than anywhere on earth. Russian oligarch and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich owns two adjacent houses in Lowndes Square, reportedly worth £150 million, a sum which would cover 75 percent of Lambeth’s budget deficit for the next four years.


http://www8.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/18/food-o18.html

年华

很庆幸我被西红柿的红歌吓得跑路。 ...
ironland 发表于 2014-9-26 23:45

你一个画家，移民美国 难道是这个原因  ？