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Dave, more for your speech at Conference — a 20-page Marxist analysis of Amazon as a new capitalist business model (signaled by a lurker on this forum — thanks):
Wages and working conditions are discussed on pages 14-16. From this it appears that working conditions as very bad (as generally in such warehouses):
Various reports, whether authorised or not by the management, compiled in warehouses and by Amazon managers, show that the working conditions in force in this company are comparable, equivalent, to those experienced by the majority of proletarians in the advanced countries in industry or largescale distribution. The physical strain, in particular in the little-mechanised warehouse-factories where the pickers walk 10 to 15 kilometres per day and where, conversely, the packers experience long periods of standing in one place, the duration of work, the repetitive tasks at a frantic rhythm imposed by the machines, the surveillance and the permanent pressure from the managers, is accompanied by a company patriotism based on a culture of always producing more. The big boss, the big cheese of Amazon who is the centre of everything, Jeff Bezos, promotes an ideology of “high standards of quality” and a “customer orientation” with slogans such as “You make history” (“Work hard, have fun, make history” plastered everywhere). Yet the average time served in the company is no more than a year.
As to pay, it could be worse as Amazon pays its workers a bit above the minimum wage:
Concerning its wages policy, Amazon tends to pay slightly above the minimum wage in force in the states where it is established. For example, in 2018, Amazon stated that permanent staff would get €12.22 per hour starting salary, in Germany, and €14.31 in Spain. In the UK, the basic wage in the company is £9.50 per hour (£10.50 in the London area). In France, Amazon refuses to apply the collective labour agreement in force in logistics, preferring its own scale which starts at 2.79% above the SMIC (minimum wage). In 2018 the management granted a wage increase of 2.8% to all employees in warehouses in France. In the US, Amazon has stated that it pays employees working full-time in warehouses (250,000 people) at the rate of $15 per hour on average (special payments and bonuses included)
As you say, that statement of Conrad’s is ridiculous for the reasons you give. He cites Erich Fromm. I checked this and Fromm was not talking about Marx in particular but about the idea of socialism in general. What he wrote was:
Marxist and other forms of socialism are the heirs of prophetic Messianism, Christian Chiliastic sectarianism, thirteenth-century Thomism, Renaissance Utopianism, and eighteenth-century enlightenment.
Maybe, but I would have thought that, in Marx’s case, the last was what influenced him.
Marx’s Jewish Question is a criticism of the state and money and, as Conrad points out, does advocate giving full political rights to Jews (as those who practised Judaism). Because it was an early work, dating from the same year (1843/4) that he became a socialist, Marx still identified capitalism with money; which would be why he identified Judaism as the religion of capitalism. But capitalism is not about money-lending and “huckstering”. It’s about production for profit and capital accumulation. In which case it is Protestantism (Calvinism rather than the semi-Protestantism, or semi-Catholicism, of the Church of England), because it preached abstinence and so saving rather than spending money earned from working, that fills better the role of the religion of capitalism. I’m not sure either that Judaism is a religion of money. It’s a tribal religion based on adherence to rituals. To that extent Marx’s criticism of Judaism was unfair.
I think Marx would have been influenced by Moritz Hess (as he then was) who, the following year, published an article advocating communism as a moneyless society
Watching the debates in Parliament (as you can on the BBC Parliament channel), it is striking how much of the procedure is similar in many respects ours, e.g. on motions and amendments to them, with an original motion if amended becoming the new “main” motion (what we call the “substantive” resolution — actually “main” is clearer).
There are differences of course, in particular that it is not the chairperson of our conferences who decides what motions are voted on (that’s decided by a standing orders committee) as the Speaker does and “points of order” which are not really points of order, i.e. of procedure, are not tolerated. Our procedures were borrowed from those of smallish craft unions rather than Parliament but Parliament’s are more or less democratic.
There is even provision in our procedures for the meeting to overrule the chairperson. Clause 16 of our Conference Standing Orders reads:
… the ruling of the Chair shall be binding, unless challenged by one of the following Resolutions; ‘That Comrade X leave the chair” or “That the Chair is directed to rule that …”
If I understood what the pundits were saying last night Parliamentary procedures also provide for MPs to move a Vote of Direction to the Speaker. Whether or not this will be used to overcome “Bercow’s Bombshell” remains to be seen. I doubt, though, that anyone will move “That Comrade Bercow leave the chair”
This from that libcom thread is really disturbing:
Joshua Clover (of Commune editions, and author of the book Riot-Strike-Riot’) posted a thread on twitter a day ago, close-reading the perpetrator’s manifesto, and he observes that the “threat to whiteness” that white supremacists perceive, is actually strikingly parallel to the unfolding climate crisis and the likely pressures this will put on the bastions of capitalism/imperialism and white privilege tied up with them. Hence climate crisis is “a secret key to the whole terrible rant”.
The widespread theories of “replacement” and “white genocide”, Clover says, are like a “fantastic form” for the very real prospects of catastrophic climate change, resulting migration flows and competition for resources etc. and hence the anticipations of a genocidal war from those who think the west should be a bastion to provide only white people with security.
Twitter have contacted us but we will need to know exactly what you said to them if you can email this to head office.
I don’t suppose he was a communist in our sense but rather in the Russian (or Chinese) sense. I would put the question the other way round: what was it that attracted him for a while to “communism” and to anarchism? The link between anarchism and (US) libertarianism is easy of course.
There’s a disturbing thread on libcom about the nutter’s claim to be some sort of “eco-fascist” ( when “I was young I was a communist, then an anarchist and finally a libertarian before coming to be an eco-fascist”):
https://libcom.org/forums/news/christchurch-mosque-shooting-15032019
The discussion amongst international law lawyers about how to get out of the “backstop” is very revealing. It confirms what we have always said that, in the end, treaties are just scraps of paper that any state can get out of if and when it wants.
One of them, with the perhaps appropriate name of Pannick, says that what the UK would need to do to get out of the backstop would be to invoke Article 62 of the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties by claiming that “a fundamental change of circumstances” had occurred:
Some MPs have suggested looking into whether the backstop could be solved by using Article 62 of the Vienna Convention – which would allow the UK to withdraw from any treaty if there had been “a fundamental change of circumstances… which was not foreseen by the parties”.
In a letter to the Times, cross-bench peer and QC Lord Pannick said the UK would be “entitled to terminate the withdrawal agreement” under this clause – although he questioned whether it would be “wise politically”.
Evidently this Article is the let-out clause that is always in the small print of all legal documents. Any lawyer worth their salt should be able to come up with some specious argument about how circumstances had changed and that this was not foreseen. After all, that’s their trade.
What to do in the event of a referendum, general election or Euroelections provoked by the Brexit shambles is already on the agenda of the EC and Conference.
In the event of a general election, South Wales branch would contest a seat in Cardiff. In the event of Euroelections we could contest the South East and/or Wales region, both of which we did last time (these elections are based on proportional representation of party lists). As to a referendum, that would depend on the question, but the most likely one would be to confirm whatever deal is agreed.
In the meantime we will be leafletting (with our “Identity” leaflet) this pro-referendum march next Saturday as many on it will be protesting as much against xenophobia as against leaving the EU.
Some ammunition for Dave’s anti-Amazon speech at next month’s Party Conference:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8610116/911-calls-amazon-warehouses-workers-suicidal/
On the other hand:
They are not evidence that Amazon workers experience suicidal episodes more often than other American workers, in or out of a warehouse.
i.e., conditions in other companies’ warehouses may be no different.
Who the hell is Beto O’Rourke? In fact why am I wasting our cyberspace to mention the name of this obscure non-entity again?
More on her thinking here which someone has posted on our facebook page (I wish the Americans would write 11 March as 11/3 not 3/11).
Pity she opts, to benefit from “techno-futurism” and breaking the link between work and satisfying needs, for universal basic income and not for socialism as a society of common ownership, democratic control, production geared to satisfying people’s needs and not for profit, and distribution on the basis of “from each according to ability, to each according to need”, i.e., a world of abundance every man women and child on Earth can have unconditional free access to what they need just because they are members of society.
Yes, there does seem to be a trend developing to say that capitalism, at least in its so-called “neo-liberal” form, has “failed”. There’s him, the famous Elizabeth Warren, Corbyn & McDonnell, the Business Insider and the analysts it cites. But Rajan is being a bit of an economic determinist when he says:
“I think capitalism is under serious threat because it’s stopped providing for the many, and when that happens, the many revolt against capitalism,”
as if there was a direct link between worsening economic conditions and people revolting against capitalism (also of course he’s wrong when he suggests that at one time capitalism did provide for the money, whereas it never has or can.) Fortunately or unfortunately, this has not proved to be the case. The outcome this time is most likely to be a revival of reformist movements that aim to try to put things right through more government intervention and regulation in the capitalist economy. Reformists as, once again, more or less consciously “the breakdown gang of capitalism”.
Of course capitalism becoming a dirty word again is grist to our mill but, as we know, discontent with capitalism will not lead to a movement to end it unless people hear, discuss and come to agree with the case for socialism. Hence the need for a group like us to do all we can to help ensure this happens.
It’s all smoke an mirrors. Some Brexiteers had seen the backstop as a cunning ploy by the nasty Europeans to keep the UK in permanent vassalage to them by forcing the UK to stay in the customs union indefinitely and made a big song and dance about this. In other words, they accused the EU of bad faith. As in fact this was not the EU’s intention it was no real problem for them to confirm this, which they have done. In any event, if they had blatantly used the threat of refusing to allow the UK to leave the customs to extract a better final trading arrangement — which would be a case of bad faith — the withdrawal agreement already provided for the UK to appeal to an arbitration panel about this and presumably win if it was that blatant. The most that the documents that May has brought back from Strasburg do is to give more prominence to what was already there. I suppose that getting the EU to confirm in a further legal document that they will not negotiate a new trade agreement with the UK in bad faith might make the UK’s bargaining position slightly less weak. The EU, however, don’t think they have conceded anything meaningful. In other words, this was an opening exchange in these negotiations.
Business Insider is a US financial magazine. I got mislead by the way the word “labour” was spelt. They were in effect arguing that too low wages were slowing down the growth of the capitalist economy and, to remedy this, workers should get some more of the value they create. She might agree with this but had made the statement in connection with a demand for a higher minimum wage. Ironically — cruel fact as it is, but capitalism is like that — some people on very low wages are on them because their skills are not enough to create much more value than that of their wages. The real way out of course is to abolish the whole wages system so that people can satisfy their needs irrespective of what they are able to contribute.
