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NEC report 25 November 2016
UCU at grave risk
The NEC met against a background of major threats to those working in Higher and Further education. The HE Bill had its third reading in parliament and passed, taking further steps towards privatisation of the sector closer. Both of our national pay disputes, in FE and HE, have been called off after e-ballots, on pitiful turnouts, gave majorities against further action. None of this was surprising given the complete failure to campaign or recommend a vote for further action in either ballot.
The ending of our last national industrial action before the new anti-union laws are implemented comes at a time when the NUS/UCU demonstration for education had brought thousands into the streets to defend post-16 education and the scandal of casualization became front page news in the Guardian.
With the anti-union laws imposing high thresholds in ballots for strike action to be official means we now have a major shift in the industrial relations environment for UCU. That such a shift has taken place is not recognised by a majority on the NEC who have systematically failed to lead the union in the face of government and employer attacks.
A simple example of this failure to face reality was that the General Secretary's report failed to even mention the cases of trade union victimisation, including the high profile cases of Mark Campbell and David Hardman and the academic boycott and censure at London Met University.
Emergency Motion
UCU Left supporters on the NEC put forward an emergency motion, outlining the problems and seeking an emergency Congress and Sector Conferences, in order to bring the union together to develop a new strategy. Predictably the small majority voted 25:21 to reject the proposals.
There are significant groups of activists in our union who are demanding the leadership lead. Whether this is against casualization, or to defend EU workers' rights or to end the gender pay gap, our leadership is failing to provide a response, other than create evidence of these excesses. So despite the platitudes of the leadership not a single union branch is currently balloting for industrial action against the gender pay gap or against casualization. UCU Left believes this is woefully inadequate of the leadership of our union.
In HE, UCU Left is calling on activists to pass a motion in HE branches calling for a Special HE Sector Conference. We have to come together to learn from the mistakes of the last campaign to develop a coherent strategy for future collective action that will mobilise our members, or our union risks becoming irrelevant in the context of the HE Bill and Brexit.
The UCU elections provide one further opportunity to address these problems. Jo McNeill is standing for General Secretary and a range of UCU Left members are standing for the various NEC positions. Supporters should be seeking to invite Jo to speak at your union branch and organising hustings for both General Secretary candidates.
'Jo McNeill for General Secretary' blog can be read here.
Free Movement of Labour
Brexit, anti-immigrant, scapegoating and the normalisation of racism was a further area of major discussion. NEC was united in condemning the popularisation of racism by the Tory government and their supporters. However, too many in the trade union and labour movement are pandering to these ideas by accepting immigration is a 'problem' and 'controlling numbers' is the answer. NEC overwhelmingly, but not unanimously, passed a motion to make the defence of the Free Movement of Labour central to our defence of EU, and more generally migrant, workers. Branches should use this motion to link up with the Campaign for the Free Movement of Labour post Brexit and to mobilise for the one-day strike called by the 'A day without us' campaign.
Motions supporting the Stand Up To Racism trade union conference on 4 February and demonstration on 18 March were also passed. Both are also backed by the TUC.


This is the latest set of illustrations for "Lindy's Sports Annual" (college basketball edition). The feature illustration accompanies an article about Kentucky coach John Calipari. Calipari is controversial figure. There's no doubt that he wins basketball games. Some people, however, don't particularly care for his methods. There are strong feelings on both sides and this illustration is meant to convey the range of those feelings.
On the right side of the illustration, John Chaney makes a cameo. Type "John Calipari John Chaney" into Youtube to find out why if you aren't already familiar with the incident.
Illustration number two goes with a remembrance of iconic UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, who passed away recently. Wooden's coaching career encompasses enough wins to warrant a dictionary entry under "success" or perhaps "badassery" (wait, is that last one a word?).
The third illustration pairs up with a scoping article on the change in brackets (from 65 to 68 teams). Initially, there was talk of an increase to 96 teams. The illustration (the idea came from my editor, Shawn O' Neal) plays off the idea that filling out a bracket with 96 teams would be a daunting and ridiculous endeavor. Included among the forms on the hypothetical brackets are job and mortgage applications, a 1040 ez, and a subpoena.
Of these, my favorite is the John Calipari piece. I had the most time, which allowed me to carefully consider the subject matter and execution. I think attention to detail is one of the factors that contribute to memorable illustrations. I'll let you be the arbiter as to whether or not I managed it in this round.


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Bloomington capital fund growing in second cohort
(photo courtesy of The Mill)
by: Alex Brown, Inside INdiana Business
Posted: Mar 25, 2021 / 11:51 AM EST / Updated: Mar 25, 2021 / 11:51 AM EST
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (Inside INdiana Business) — A nonprofit entrepreneurship center in Bloomington has begun the second cohort of its capital fund for early-stage and high-potential startups. The Mill says the member-managed Flywheel Fund II has already quadrupled the membership of investors seen in the first cohort, and has increased the amount of money to be invested by 500%.
The second cohort is comprised of 50 investors and an investment fund of $640,000. The Mill says the cohort plans to make between six and eight investments of about $50,000 each, with about one-third of the fund being reserved for follow-on investments between $50,000 and $150,000.
"We're seeing a lot of excitement around the opportunities in Indiana right now," Pat East, executive director of The Mill, said in a news release. "When we launched Flywheel, we knew promising startups existed here. With critical investment at the right time, the opportunities for innovation and investment can increase exponentially. In five years, the startup and investment landscape in southern Indiana in particular is going to look very different. The snowball is starting to roll."
East says the Flywheel Fund is not just about growing the startup pool in southern Indiana. He says it is also about growing the pool of investors; many of the fund's members are first-time investors, according to The Mill.
Flywheel Fund II will begin hearing startup pitches early next month.
The Flywheel Fund I cohort, which began last year, invested a total of $120,000 in five companies, including Civic Champs, FloWaste, Qualifi, and Stagetime.
© 2022 Circle City Broadcasting I, LLC. | All Rights Reserved.
Arctic air to return
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Old National earnings remain positive

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Auf dünnem Eis ist ein deutscher Fernsehfilm von Jörg Grünler aus dem Jahr 2008. Es handelt sich um den vierunddreißigste Filmbeitrag der ZDF-Kriminalfilmreihe Stubbe – Von Fall zu Fall mit Wolfgang Stumph in der Titelrolle.

Handlung
Bei einem Banküberfall in Hamburg-Uhlenhorst erbeutet der maskierte Räuber 80.000 Euro und tötet eine Kundin. Auch eine Bankangestellte wird schwer verletzt. Die Kommissare Stubbe und Zimmermann werden verständigt und treffen am Tatort auf den Raubdezernatschef Matthias Gerber, der in diesen Fall mit den Kriminalbeamten zusammenarbeiten muss. Gerber zeigt sich darüber wenig erfreut und sieht eine Übereinstimmung zu früheren Fällen. Stubbe hat jedoch Zweifel, dass es sich um einen Serientäter handelt. Nicht nur der Schusswaffengebrauch war neu, auch einige andere Details passen für ihn nicht zu den vergangenen Überfällen. Zudem ist Stubbe nach Durchsicht der Überwachungsbänder davon überzeugt, dass die Bankangestellte Britta Kilian den Täter erkannt hat und dieser deshalb auf sie geschossen hatte. Nach Analyse der Umstände des Überfalls halten es Stubbe und Zimmermann für sehr wahrscheinlich, dass der Täter ein Insider und womöglich selber Angestellter der Bank ist. Nur so konnte er wissen, dass an diesem Tag besonders viel Geld in der Kasse war und einige Angestellte aus Krankheitsgründen gefehlt hatten. Zuvor gab es sogar einen Sicherheitskurs zum Verhalten bei einem Banküberfall, sodass der Täter womöglich wusste, worauf er besonders achten muss, um sich nicht zu verraten. Allerdings halten Stubbe und Zimmermann es nicht für ausgeschlossen, dass ihr Kollege Gerber ihnen etwas verheimlicht. Nachdem er vor zwei Jahren im Einsatz einen 14-jährigen Jungen erschossen hatte und seinen Dienst beim SEK quittierte, benimmt er sich seinen neuen Kollegen gegenüber mehr als verdächtig. Immer wieder hält er Informationen zurück und auch er kannte die Bank von der Schulung. Die hatte er selber durchgeführt, weil er im Zweitjob für eine Sicherheitsfirma arbeitet, um seine Schulden aufzuarbeiten, die er seit dem Bau eines Eigenheims hat. Stubbe provoziert Gerber bewusst, um ihn aus der Reserve zu locken. Doch verkennt er den Mann, denn durch dessen Vergangenheit ist Gerber nur übereifrig, um ja nie wieder einen Fehler im Dienst zuzulassen.

So gerät der Bankbeamte Werner Hofstetter ins Visier der Ermittler. Er zeigte sich sehr besorgt um seine verletzte Kollegin und Stubbe ahnt nun auch warum. Britta Kilian hatte Hofstetter tatsächlich erkannt, aber weil sie seit Jahren heimlich in ihn verliebt ist, hatte sie ihn nicht verraten. Als Hofstetter sie im Krankenhaus aufsuchen will, nehmen ihn die Beamten fest.

Hintergrund
Der Film wurde unter dem Arbeitstitel Neun Leben hat die Katze in Hamburg und Umgebung gedreht und am 20. Dezember 2008 um 20:15 Uhr im ZDF erstausgestrahlt.

Kritik
Für die Kritiker der Fernsehzeitschrift TV Spielfilm war der Stubbe-Fall Auf dünnem Eis "trotz Stubbes schnarchiger Vater-Tochter-Konflikte […] solide inszeniert und spannend bis zum Schluss". und sie vergaben dem Film ihre bestmögliche Wertung (Daumen nach oben).

Weblinks

Einzelnachweise

Auf dunnem Eis
Filmtitel 2008
Deutscher Film
Kriminalfilm
Fernsehfilm

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Category Archives: protectionism
Notes on Trump (by Arthur Dent)
"If there was a left, we would be in a good position to finally rid ourselves of the pseudo-left who can be shown to espouse essentially the same anti-globalist and isolationist ideas as Trump. But in order for there to be a left, we have to be able to present a coherent economic program that explains how to unleash the productive forces of a globalized world for the benefit of the majority who only work here rather than primarily for the owners".
Arthur Dent – Thursday 2017-01-19
Even if I had a deep understanding of US and world politics and economics I could not hope to figure out what's happening at the moment. We are at an important turning point in multiple processes, many of them dependent on unknowable contingencies.
But here's an outline of some aspects that mass media analysts don't seem to get.
The big event was Trump beating the entire Republican establishment as a complete outsider in a hostile takeover. Most attention has been directed at the subsequent defeat of the Democrats and the wailing and gnashing of teeth from their celebrities and media. But the situation on the Republican side is far more interesting.
Instead of splitting they have jointly celebrated defeating the Democrats and appear to have successfully formed a united administration. Both sides are indeed glad to be rid of the Democrat administration and can work together for reduced taxes, less regulation and some other points of agreement. It is also quite traditional for Republicans to accept budget deficits as long as they are not funding a Democrat administration. But the fact remains, President Trump has no party in Congress. They despise him and are cooperating only because they fear him.
Trump's focus is on building his own party. If he had lost the primaries he looked like running as a third party (which he tried to do decades ago). If he had won the primaries but lost the election he would still have been at war with the Republican establishment, who could reasonably be accused of having treacherously helped the Democrats to win by attacking their own candidate. Having won, without any help from most of the Republican establishment he is now in a much stronger position to actually take over their party. If he doesn't, they will find a way to get rid of him.
All members of the House of Representatives and one third of Senators come up for election in two years, together with State legislatures and governors. The mid-term primaries start in a year. Trump's campaign organization has databases with more than 10 million email addresses and 2 million donors. Trump's campaign more than doubled the numbers voting in Republican primaries (many of them former Democrats). Usually only small numbers participate in mid-term primaries and they are mainly mobilized by actual party activists – especially cronies of the local incumbents.
If Trump can keep his base mobilized over the next two years he will end up with a large party in Congress (and in the States) whether or not the Democrats regain majorities.
The media and celebrities are still helping by denouncing him as a deplorable outsider. That's exactly what he wants to keep his base mobilized. He won because so many people are utterly sick of politically correct plastic insiders.
As far as I can make out the media actually do not get this. It is plausible that when they gave him enormous amounts of free publicity in the primaries they were consciously intending to help him beat the other candidates so that the Republicans would nominate a grotesquely deplorable candidate who would lose the election. But they actually seem to think it really matters that he has become more unpopular since the election under their onslaught. His popularity among Republican voters is what matters for the primaries and he is not harmed at all by attacks from media and celebrities.
So here's one possible sequence of events.
Congress approves a fairly large infrastructure stimulus program and deficit as well as funding construction of a secure southern border and improved healthcare. Republican defectors would be outnumbered by Democrat collaborators.
Together with tax cuts and deregulation this has the expected effect of increasing GDP growth and thus jobs and wages at least in the short term. If Trump actually launched trade wars that could produce the opposite effect, even in the short term. But he can start lots of trade disputes that build momentum against globalism without actually initiating a trade war.
So Trump will be seen as having delivered. Many of his opponents will be removed in the primaries.
Hispanic hostility and Democrat mobilization against Trump's immigration program won't have much impact on Republican primaries since few Hispanic voters would register as Republicans. But this issue could win seats for Democrats at the midterm elections.
Assuming the Democrats get their act together and stop carrying on the way they are at the moment, they should be able to mount a serious campaign to win back majorities in the House and Senate at the midterm elections. But to do so they would presumably go with Trump's trade policies, denouncing him for having not gone far enough. After all Bernie Sanders was a serious challenger to Hilary Clinton with protectionist policies (and against open borders) and Clinton actually announced opposition to the TPP in response. Arguably he could have defeated Trump.
So the result in two years could be that the US has shifted from a two party system in which both parties support globalism to a two party system in which both parties oppose globalism. If there was a Democratic majority their obstruction could be blamed for any economic decline that set in after two years.
In three years or so Trump could announce that the border was now secure enough to offer a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants without risk of encouraging more. That could produce a significant hispanic vote for a President that had actually delivered rather than merely attempted comprehensive immigration reform.
A major world economic crisis could break out at any time. I would be surprised if it was postponed for another 8 years. So I would also be surprised if an authoritarian demagogue was not President of the USA when it does break out.
The collapse of the old parties and their plastic politicians extends far beyond the USA. Lots of people are being drawn into thinking about politics for the first time. Their first thoughts are abysmally stupid and make them vulnerable to demagogues spouting nationalism and nativism. But many will end up thinking more deeply now that they have begun thinking.
If there was a left, we would be in a good position to finally rid ourselves of the pseudo-left who can be shown to espouse essentially the same anti-globalist and isolationist ideas as Trump. But in order for there to be a left,we have to be able to present a coherent economic program that explains how to unleash the productive forces of a globalized world for the benefit of the majority who only work here rather than primarily for the owners.
Posted in Arthur Dent, Democrats (US), globalism, isolationism, protectionism, pseudo-left, Republican party, Trump, Trump's Inauguration, Uncategorized, US Election	| Tagged Arthur Dent, globalism, isolationism, protectionism, pseudo-left, Trump, US Election	| 60 Comments
Solutions: Part 6 of 'Unemployment and Revolution' by Albert Langer, 1981
Part 6: Solutions
Considers various "solutions" from the labour movements, in the light of the earlier analysis, and rejects them all, but cheerfully, in view of the next instalment, part 7.
– "Giving Fraser the Razor"
– Blowing Up the Balloon
– Fine Tuning
– Political Facts
– Shorter Hours and Higher Pay
– Expanding the Public Sector
– Workers' Co-operatives
– Labor to Power with Socialist Policies?
– Economic Consequences of Statism
– Protectionism
– "Militant Struggle"
– Revolutionary Optimism
The collection of previous instalments on the nature of unemployment is important because it suggests what could and what could not be solutions to the problem.
It follows from the above analysis that the unemployed form an essential "reserve army of labour" as necessary to ensure a continuous supply as the existence of stockpiles of commodities in the warehouses or unused production capacity in the plants. The size of this reserve army does not depend primarily on government policy, but on the objective state of the economy and the phase of the business cycle that it is in.
Australia is part of an interlocked world capitalist market where capital flows freely according to the rate of profit, and where movements in interest rates, prices, wages, and unemployment therefore take place in parallel among all the advanced western capitalist countries together. It would obviously be nonsense to blame the overall state of the Australian economy on the particular policies of any government here, since the same situation exists throughout the western world.
The conservatives are right to say Australia has to adapt to changes in the world economy or the situation will get worse. They are also partly right to say that to stimulate investment and reduce unemployment profits must be improved at the expense of real wages and living standards. But they are wrong to pretend that there will be much improvement without a major economic crisis.
Unemployment has grown because overproduction and insufficient expansion of markets has reduced profit margins and therefore reduced investment. Any "solution"must therefore involve expanding markets to increase profitability. That is the crucial fact which emerges from studying the causes of unemployment.
A lot of people in the labour movement do not like admitting this and instead come up with all kinds of fancy arguments suggesting that capitalism is really a wonderful system capable of continuously improving living standards and providing jobs for all – if only the government would follow correct economic policies.
Those arguments are very mysterious and technical, involving "multipliers", "accelerators" and various tricks with mirrors. But you only have to look around at the real world to see they are bullshit. For what possible reason would the capitalists be ignoring this wonderful advice on how to keep their system going, if it could really work?
The conservatives are openly admitting that capitalism is a rotten system which needs to grind people down in order to keep going. They are admitting that full employment and rising living standards are not permanently compatible with the capitalist system, which has its own requirements contradictory to social needs. They are actually admitting that production for profit is the cause of our problems.
On that point every socialist, revolutionary or not, must surely agree with the conservatives. Only the wettest "liberals" could join the Labor Party in insisting that there is really nothing wrong with the capitalist system itself – the problem is that wrong economic policies are being followed.
Socialists will not disagree with conservatives about the existence of statistical facts, like the decreased share of profits in the GNP, "real wage overhang" and so on. We will not join the Labor Party in arguing that it can all be fixed by magic tricks with mirrors.
Where we do disagree with conservatives is about whether capitalism is such a wonderful system that we should put up with unemployment and reduced living standards just in order to keep it going a bit longer.
Where revolutionary communists will disagree with other "socialists" is whether capitalism is just getting worse in a gradual way that would make it possible to introduce socialism peacefully, or whether it is heading for major upheavals which make a violent break between the old system and the new, both necessary and possible.
Now let us consider some of the various "solutions" that have been proposed for unemployment according to the simple criteria – "will this proposal increase profitability". If it will not, then we know from the analysis above, that it will not work.
Giving Fraser the Razor
Attempting to blame each other for the state of the economy happens to be one of the daily preoccupations of Government and Opposition politicians, and unfortunately the left generally goes along with this charade.
Conventional wisdom has it that government job creation schemes, more stimulation of the economy through deficit spending, and various specific adjustments in economic policy could improve the situation. Only Fraser's "razor gang" mentality prevents these solutions being adopted.
In Britain the state of the economy is being blamed on the Thatcher Government, by business as well as labour. But tightfisted "monetarist" governments have come to power in Australia, Britain and the USA as a result of the previous failure of their opponents to improve the state of the economy. They may conceivably make things worse. But their predecessors have not done too brilliantly either. It will be interesting to see what happens in France. Does anybody on the left seriously imagine that France will now escape the economic difficulties embracing the rest of the capitalist world, because it has a more 'progressive' government?
At the first Australian Political Economy Movement conference in Sydney, there were a number of papers purporting to explain unemployment and economic crisis as an inherent feature of capitalism. None of them even suggested that the personal malevolence of Malcolm Fraser was a cause of the problem – let alone the cause.
Nevertheless, the conference plenary session adopted a resolution loudly denouncing the Fraser Government for causing our economic difficulties with its wrong policies!
If that is the response of people at a political economy conference, it is not surprising that the left generally completely capitulates to Labor Party views about the economy. The general feeling is that somehow or other, it must be Malcolm Fraser's fault, even though unemployment actually grew much more rapidly under Whitlam than it has under Fraser.
Even people who know better tend to go along with this because there does not seem to be much else to do. Demonstrations and agitation have to have a target, and Malcolm Fraser, with his callous attitudes, makes a good one.
If we cannot blame government policy, what can we do? It is in the Labor Party's interest to pretend that Fraser's policies are the cause of unemployment. But the only way Labor could do better than Fraser at reducing unemployment would be if they know how to make industry more profitable. There is no evidence that they do, and no reason to doubt that Fraser is doing as much to increase profitability as he possibly can.
Certainly we should give Fraser the razor, along with Bill Hayden, Bob Hawke and the rest. It will improve public morale no end. But it will not bring down unemployment. Only improved profitability and expanded markets can do that.
Blowing Up the Balloon
The main thrust of objections to the Fraser Government's economic policies seems to be that they could do more to stimulate the economy by increases in government spending. They are accused of wilfully refusing to do so because of dogmatic adherence to "monetarist" theories, and general hostility towards the working class.
Actually this argument amounts to dogmatic adherence to Keynesian theories that have long been discredited by the course of events. All the governments of the western world have been stimulating their economies by increases in government spending, and it simply is not working any more. Keynesian economic policies now amount to little more than attempting to prolong the "boom" phase of the capitalist business cycle by deliberately encouraging the overextension of credit to finance overproduction and overinvestment.
Credit expansion has deferred the crisis, and intensified the most prolonged boom in history. But only at the expense of deepening the structural imbalances that the crisis is needed to resolve, and therefore making the crisis far more intractable when it does come. There comes a point when it just does not work any more. If it still worked, they would still be doing it.
When asked what would happen in the long run, Keynes replied that in the long run, we are all dead. Glib claims that more deficit financing to stimulate the economy are the answer, are simply an assertion of faith, flying in the face of all recent experience. The conservative Ford Administration in the USA ran a breathtaking $60 billion deficit, and it has not done any more than postpone the problems.
Attempting to stimulate the economy by more government spending has been compared to trying to stop a balloon collapsing by blowing into it harder. At a certain point when a balloon is being inflated, the fabric tears and air starts rushing out the hole. You can keep the balloon's shape for a little while by blowing harder, but the air keeps rushing out and the hole gets larger. Eventually the balloon has to collapse and the only thing to do is to let it go and patch the hole before re-inflating it again – if the hole has not got too big to patch while you were uselessly blowing air through it.
If government spending is paid for by taxation, then it is just a transfer of resources from one sector of the economy to another, with no necessary increase in employment, although the projects may be well worthwhile for other reasons. If the money is borrowed on the open market, then it drives up interest rates and diverts funds from other investments. If it is effectively "borrowed" from the Reserve Bank, then credit inflation can be the only result. The trick can not be done by mirrors.
"New Deal" policies did help speed up recovery from the last depression. But mainly by helping to keep prices up in those industries where they had collapsed more than necessary due to insufficient monopoly concentration. The "New Deal" stopped dumping, put a final end to "laissez-faire" and thoroughly established the system of state monopoly capitalism. But today nearly all industry is pretty well monopolised. Even the farmers have strong cartels, and with rampant inflation, dumping can hardly be an immediate problem.
Really it has been a remarkable performance since the last depression. Despite predictions of capitalist stagnation since the end of the fifteenth century, and with a social system straight out of the sixteenth century, the bourgeoisie has managed to sustain economic growth for another fifty years at a pretty fair pace.
While pathetic by future standards, the rate of economic growth has been sufficient for conservatives and reactionaries (including most of the "left") to actually complain and want to slow it down. What more can state capitalist policies be expected to achieve? Permanent survival of capitalism?
Fine Tuning
When people say that government policy is responsible for unemployment being more than it should be, they usually argue that there should be a certain increase or decrease in interest rates, the exchange rate, taxes, deficits or what have you.
Perhaps there should be. Who knows and who cares? The argument always revolve around the fact that any effect in one direction is counteracted by other effects in the opposite direction.
Quite clearly there is some underlying movement in the economy itself that makes the adjustments in government policy necessary. People argue about whether interest rates should be marginally increased or decreased, but they have gone up from 2.1% on two year government securities in 1950 to 10.8% in 1974 on their own volition and for objective reasons. Nobody seriously suggests that any government policy could successfully halve today's interest rates, let alone restore them to their 1950 levels.
Adroit handling or misguided policies could make a good situation better, or a bad situation worse, or vice versa. But in a market economy it is the market, not government policy, that determines the overall situation. And we are talking about a world market, completely outside the control of any group of governments, let alone the Australian Government.
A government that raises interest rates when it should be lowering them, or vice versa, can certainly make things worse. The same goes for other economic variables that government policy can influence.
But the best a government can do is get its economic policy absolutely right, all the time. In that case they will avoid precipitating any crisis before it is unavoidable, which is not quite the same thing as having "control". No amount of "fine tuning" can determine the overall direction that the world economy is moving. Nor can it change the fact that interest rates and other variables must be adjusted in accordance with that movement and not against it.
"Fine tuning" has been likened to trying to straighten a piece of string by pushing it. The sort of "controls" available to governments are just not capable of determining economic developments. If you want to straighten a string you need to be able to pull both ends, not just push. If you want to control unemployment, you have to have complete central planning of investment and employment and indeed, production and consumption generally. The economy needs a new engine and new steering, not just "fine tuning".
There is a branch of mathematics called "control theory" which investigates what observations one needs to be able to make, and what variables one needs to have control of, to determine the future path of a complex dynamic system.
Economists have a "simpler" procedure which consists of counting the number of "variables" and "policy instruments" and hoping they are equal. To predict the future course of the economy they do a lot of plotting straight lines through two points.
The fact is that even very simple dynamic systems are extremely difficult to observe and predict, let alone "control". It is sheer stupidity to imagine that anything so complex as a modern market economy can be effectively controlled by anything so simple as government monetary and financial policies superimposed on market price movements.
A system like this is bound to have oscillatory movements and catastrophes. It is like trying to damp out ripples in a pond by making counter ripples. You will get pretty interference patterns, but nothing very stable.
Before you can control any dynamic system you have to at least be able to predict what the effect of any changes you make will be. If anyone knew how to predict that, for the world market, they would not be wasting their time giving economic advice to governments. Literally billions of dollars could be made by speculation on the commodity and financial futures markets if anyone knew how to predict what the world market would do next, let alone control it. The funds you could accumulate from speculation would give you far more control over subsequent market movements than any amount of government policy.
There seems to be no obvious reason why anybody on the left should want to enter into the argument about whose policies for fine tuning the economy would work better. But if we are to do so, there seems no compelling reason to enter on the Labor Party side of that debate.
There is good evidence that the conservative parties are better at that kind of thing than the Labor Party is, because they have more idea of what it is all about. At least they understand that the name of the game is "profits" and are therefore trying to make the capitalist economy work the only way it can. Labor Governments do end up adapting themselves to economic reality, and working as hard as they can to boost business profits. But it does not seem to come naturally, and we have to put up with an awful lot of hypocritical mumbo-jumbo about the workers' interests, before they get on with it.
Labor Party supporters make persistent efforts to prove that the other party's economic policies are stupidly wrong. This proves only one thing. It proves that these people, even if allegedly "Marxist", have a very deep faith that capitalism can be made to work much better, and that their party is the one to do it.
Political Facts
Most voters understand how capitalism works, better than the Labor Party does, and they are aware that conservative parties know more about economic management than reformist parties do. That is one major reason so many workers vote for the party that frankly upholds the interests of their bosses. If people did not accept the basic idea of having bosses, they would be working for a revolution, not voting Labor.
Labor supporters seem to have a mental block about it, but Fraser is Prime Minister because he won by a landslide, not because John Kerr put him there.
People voted for Fraser because the economy deteriorated much more sharply under Whitlam than it did under McMahon. One statistic tells the story.
Unemployment rose by more than 100 for every day Fraser was in office, according to Bill Hayden speaking at the last Federal elections. It did, but unemployment rose by 150 for every day Labor was in office.
Another fact confirms that part of the reason for this sharp deterioration was Labor's policies and not just objective conditions. The fact that Labor has abandoned nearly all the economic policies advocated by Whitlam and adopted those advocated by Fraser.
Bill Hayden fought the last election on policies to cut taxes and put money back in people's pockets, reduce government spending, impose wage restraint and so on – exactly the policies that Fraser won with. It is hardly surprising that most voters preferred to let Fraser implement those policies himself, even though he obviously has not been doing much good with them either.
In government, Labor even had a policy of discouraging foreign investment – in a completely open economy largely dominated by foreign capital. When that policy actually started to work, and foreign capital dried up, Labor supporters complained about a conspiratorial "strike by capital" that was aimed at bringing down their Government. How contradictory and inane can one get?
That is a good illustration of how bad government handling can make a bad situation worse. But Labor supporters are well aware than even if the Whitlam Government had handled economic policy perfectly, instead of stuffing it up, unemployment would still have grown dramatically because of the general state of the world economy. Why should we not admit the same about Fraser?
Public opinion turned against the Labor Party because of the mess it was making, and also the mess it was not making but was blamed for anyway. The media mobilisation of that public opinion was carried out by the same newspapers that brought Labor to power in 1972 with viciously personal attacks on McMahon, and "It's Time" as the front page headline. In 1972 McMahon was blamed for unemployment too. It was not his fault, was it?
To gain control of the Senate, which he had never tried to abolish, Whitlam resorted to open bribery of an opposition member, Senator Vince Gair, in the tradition of banana republics and dictatorships everywhere. When the Parliamentary opposition tried for force the Labor Government to elections by cutting off supply, that Government tried to rule without the consent of Parliament or the people.
Rather than face a democratic election, Whitlam was even prepared to ask the Queen of England to intervene in Australian politics; to sack an Australian constitutional official appointed by Whitlam himself, and allow Whitlam to rule by decree.
If a conservative government had done any of those things, Labor supporters would rightly have been outraged. But Labor supporters prefer to forget about the economic incompetence that cost them their chance in government. They prefer to distract attention from their undemocratic manoeuvres by a loud-mouthed phony republicanism – as though Kerr had caused the constitutional crisis by insisting on elections, rather than Whitlam by refusing to hold them.
Labor supporters adopt the classic conservative and reactionary argument, that an unpopular government should be given a guaranteed period in office so that voters can not throw it out before they find out what was really good for them after all.
After the Kerr business a lot of people suddenly realised what they ought to have known before. That Parliamentary forms do not mean very much and the conservative parties will use every dirty trick to stay in power. It ought to have also taught another lesson – that the Labor Party shares the same basic philosophy.
Neither party is so committed to Parliamentary government that it would fight against Parliament being replaced by military rule in the face of a genuinely revolutionary opposition.
It is sickening how people on the left pretend the economy is crook because of Fraser, when they know perfectly well it is an international problem. We should stop supporting Labor Party lies and start telling the truth about how the capitalist system really works.
Of course we need a target to fight. But if we do not know what that target is, then we had better take time off to find out, instead of just whingeing impotently about Fraser.
Shorter Hours and Higher Pay
Campaigns for a shorter working week and higher real wages have been put forward as a solution to unemployment. The argument is that higher wages will allow workers to buy more goods and so force employers to hire more workers. Likewise shorter hours will require more workers even to produce the same amount as now.
Of course we should fight for shorter hours and higher pay. That will become more difficult as unemployment increases. But it is still possible to win victories, even when there is mass unemployment, for reasons explained earlier. But the effect will be to reduce profits further, not increase them. So it cannot be a solution for unemployment.
In a communist society, any accidental "unemployment" could certainly be eliminated by reducing the amount of work done more rapidly than had been planned. Alternatively, people could work the same hours, but the extra workers could produce more goods so that everyone's standard of living would rise. But that is because workers would not be "employed". They would not be used by the owners of means of production to make a profit. They would be the "employers", using the means of production to satisfy their own social needs.
In a capitalist society production is carried out for profit, not needs. General Motors can certainly be compelled, under some circumstances, to pay its workers more, or let them work shorter hours. But they are in the business of making money, not just making cars. If they can not make more money they are not going to hire more workers just so the workers can buy more cars.
There is no such thing as "overproduction" in the abstract. Whatever Friends of the Earth might say, it is not as though we have too many consumer goods or houses or schools or anything else. Nor have we too many means for producing them. Living standards are abysmally low is most of the world, and nothing to write to another planet about here in Australia. It is just that too much has been produced to be sold at a profit, and that is not a problem you can solve by reducing profits further.
Expanding the Public Sector
Calls to expand the public sector, are becoming more common, (especially from public sector unions!). This is partly just a reaction to government policies aimed at expanding the private sector at the expense of the public sector. But there is also some suggestion that in itself, expanding the public sector would create more jobs and reduce unemployment.
Government job creation schemes either have to be paid for by the rest of the economy, in which case they provide no net investment, or else they have to pay for themselves. In that case they have to sell their products on the market that is already suffering from overproduction and overinvestment. As far as employment is concerned, there is no difference in principle between expanding either the public or the private sector. The problem is that both are contracting, because they both face a lack of markets. Why should one be able to find markets when the other cannot?
In fact, of course, the public sector has expanded quite dramatically and will no doubt continue to do so. There are lots of things capitalist state enterprises can do better than capitalist private enterprises. But this has not prevented unemployment from growing and there is no reason to expect that it will. In Britain for example, some of the biggest layoffs have been in nationalised industries like British Leyland and the British Steel Corporation.
Whether a firm is publicly or privately owned, in a market economy its ability to provide jobs will still depend on its profitability and that will depend on selling its goods on the market. When there is overproduction it affects government owned enterprises exactly the same way as private ones.
It sounds plausible for Australian car workers to demand that the car industry be nationalised to safeguard their jobs. But how has that helped British car workers? What are railway workers supposed to do when their jobs are threatened? Demand that the railways be nationalised? In Britain some coal miners have actually been demanding that their industry be sold to private enterprise because the government is unable to invest funds in keeping their jobs.
Nationalisation is probably a good thing for all sorts of reasons, but reducing unemployment is not one of them. One need only look at Poland or Yugoslavia to realise that even economies completely dominated by the public sector, can have pretty much the same kinds of economic problems as the "mixed economies" of the west. The economic laws applicable to market economies apply whether the capitalise enterprises are owned by shareholders, bondholders, or the state.
Workers' Co-operatives
There have been some instances of bankrupt firms being taken over by their workers to preserve their own jobs. The Clydeside shipyards, Lipp watch factory and Lucas Aerospace are well known examples. There is also a traditional "co-operative movement" associated with the labour movement, and a movement for workers control and/or "self-management'. Capitalists themselves are also trying to incorporate workers' representatives in management functions, with extensive legislation for this purpose in West Germany and some other West European countries, and in Yugoslavia and China.
To some extent, workers' co-ops can positively represent the new form of social production emerging within the old. Just as the emergence of huge transnational corporations and nationalised industries points towards the socialisation of industry, but more antagonistically.
If workers' demonstrate that they can manage industry better than capitalists, that is certainly worth demonstrating, to pave the way for getting rid of capitalism in future. It may even save specific jobs in specific cases. But so, for that matter, could any other improvement in the management of an ailing firm.
Obviously improvements in the competitive position of a specific firm cannot reduce, but only displace, the unemployment resulting from overproduction in the economy as a whole. Other workers' in the same industry will lose their jobs as a result of competition from the firm whose management has improved. This may encourage further takeovers, and be well worthwhile, but there is no need to pretend it will reduce unemployment.
Bankrupt industries may not be the best placed to attempt demonstrations of the superiority of workers' management. If the prospects for a firm are so poor that its owners are prepared to let the workers' have it, then they must be very poor indeed. The workers will quickly find themselves facing the same problems of finding a market for their products, that the previous management was unable to face.
The workers' may do better, since they will show more initiative and will know how to increase productivity and so on. But they may also find themselves accepting worse conditions than they would put up with from their former bosses. (Many self-employed people do put up with longer hours etc – the compensation of not having bosses being well worth it). In the end they may find that they too are forced to carry out layoffs.
If we want practice at running industry ourselves, why not start by taking over some really profitable ones, instead of lame ducks? Presumably we cannot because the state power would be used to prevent us. So it comes back to a question of overthrowing the state. I
In itself a co-op need not be anything especially progressive. For example, the ultra-reactionary health funds in Australia are supposed to be owned by their contributors. So are some insurance companies and agricultural marketing organisations. Within a market economy a genuine workers' co-op is certainly a more progressive form of organisation than the traditional structures, but it still only amounts to the workers collectively being "their own boss". It does not abolish the status of workers as "employees" of "their" firm, who are "employed" (used, exploited) by it.
In Yugoslavia the entire economy consists of enterprises nominally under workers' control, but exchanging products with each other, and allocating investments, through the market as in any other market economy. Yugoslavia has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe, as well as a very high rate of economic emigration.
If all the firms in an entire capitalist economy went bankrupt and were taken over by their workers, to sell each other goods on the market, they would all remain bankrupt. When the working class does take over industry, it will do so collectively as a class, and abolish the market economy, not " be their own bosses" within it.
To abolish unemployment, we need to abolish the market economy. Any measures that train workers in economic management are beneficial to that, but none can solve the problems of a market economy without actually abolishing it.
We should support workers who take over their bankrupt firms, just as we should support workers fighting for shorter hours or higher pay, or unemployed youths looting shops, but we need not pretend that any of these activities will reduce unemployment.
Labor to Power with Socialist Policies?
Perhaps a Labor Government with more radical policies could solve the problem? Instead of capitulating to business pressure, they could really hit hard with resources taxes, nationalisation, and a siege economy protected from overseas influence. By taking control of the commanding heights of the economy, they could force industry to provide employment whether it is profitable or not.
This sort of program has gained some support in the British Labor Party. Presumably it could become popular here too, although events in Britain may pre-empt that. The "left" program has won some support from traditional Labor Party activists, because of the obvious bankruptcy of previous policies. But it has also been imposed on the British Labor Party by fairly manipulative means, by people who know they cannot get as much support for their program by going to the working class directly, as they hope to get by working through the Labor Party. It is not a socialist approach, let alone a revolutionary one, because it is based on making social changes from above, without the support and against the wishes of the only people who can really change society – the masses themselves. If it could succeed, the result would be a more bureaucratic and less democratic society – a corporate state, not socialism.
There is an ideological convergence between the interest of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie in state owned industries, trade union bureaucrats, state employed intellectuals and so on, in promoting this "statism" as "socialism". A more fascist face of a similar basic ideology can be seen in Eastern Europe and in the French Communist Party. The techniques of demagogy and manipulation also have a lot in common.
A feature of this approach, is an identification between "socialism" and "government controls". The solution to practically any problem is supposed to be a government regulation compelling private industry to act more in accord with the public interest. That identification is promoted heavily by ideologists of the right, like Milton Friedman, who exploit resentments against "big government" and bureaucratic regulations".
In fact government regulations are required in a market economy because of the inherent antagonism between the interests of each separate producer, to maximise their own profit, and the public interest in things like a better environment, safe working conditions, better products and so on. The regulations are effective by making it more profitable for firms to modify their behaviour in the public interest, than to go on ignoring the public interest. The same effect is achieved by various selective taxes, allowances and so on. Where regulations cannot overcome the limitations of production for the market, the bourgeois state itself will step in and provide a "public service" – such as roads, broadcasting, education and so on.
There is always a need for more regulations, because the bourgeois state is unwilling to interfere with the private interests of various sections of the bourgeoisie as much as it should. So naturally, progressives often find themselves involved in campaigns for more government regulation to restrict some particular abuse or other. Likewise there is always a need for more "public services" because the bourgeois state is always reluctant to assume responsibility for an activity that might have been carried out by some particular section of the bourgeoisie. So we find ourselves involved in campaigns for more public services.
In these campaigns, the interests of sections of the bourgeoisie tied to state capitalism, often coincide with those of the working class. This is nothing new – a lot of social progress within capitalism has depended on one section or another of the ruling class breaking ranks from the others. But we should not delude ourselves that the bureaucrat bourgeoisie and their trade union hangers-on are in any way "socialist".
The statist approach can never turn private production for profit into its opposite – social production for use. Regulations are symptoms of the basic antagonism persisting, while the elimination of unemployment and economic crisis requires a removal of that underlying antagonism. We need to abolish private production, not just provide more public services.
A socialist economy would actually require less regulations and controls than a market economy. Even the "public sector", and as such enterprises became genuinely "public" they would cease to be separate enterprises having separate interests from the "public" at all. You do not make regulations governing your own conduct at home, so why should you do so at work?
The result of the "left" influence on the British Labor Party has of course already been a sizeable swing of Labor support to the new Social Democratic Party, even though the Labor Party has not yet fundamentally broken with its traditional "labourism". This will presumably produce a Labor Party and trade union backlash against the "left" program that is alien to the traditional outlook of Labor Party supporters. Alternatively, the present two party structure in Britain may be replaced with a new one, leaving the "entrists" once again out in the cold, and the traditional Labor supporters once again bankrupt. You cannot change people's political consciousness by stacking their party meetings, and most workers prefer their present bosses to the proposed new ones.
Economic Consequences of Statism
Let us leave aside the political aspect and look at the economic consequences of a statist program being implemented. Remember, we are not talking about a popular revolution in which the working class takes command of society and re-organises it. If that was the aim, the method would not be through the Labor Party. We are talking about policies to be implemented by a parliamentary government, with the existing state machine still in place, and with the working class still tied to its traditional organisations. Viewed in that light, we have an excellent recipe for a Chile style disaster.
Every measure proposed is designed to transfer economic power from private industry to a government hostile to private industry, without actually expropriating private property. The present owners and managers of industry are to be directed to carry out economic policies hostile to their own interests. But why on earth should they comply?
In themselves, the measure proposed as an "alternative economic strategy" could only reduce profitability and jam up the economy completely. Not capitulating to business pressure must mean reducing profits and therefore reducing private investment and job creation. "Controlling" foreign investment must mean less foreign investment and so less jobs.
Legal nationalisation would just mean saddling the government with a lot of businesses that were already in trouble, plus additional debts to pay off their owners. If capitalism survives the coming crisis it will certainly be with a great deal more nationalisation and state capitalism, but that would be part of the emergency re-structuring after the crisis, not a means of preventing it.
Perhaps the aim of crippling business profitability would not be legal nationalisation, but to force capitalists to hand over their enterprises to the government without compensation. A roundabout sort of expropriation. But if the aim is expropriation, this is a rather odd way to go about it. Expropriation means confiscating the property, worth thousands of millions of dollars, of the class that has up till now ruled society. That class has shown a definite tendency towards hysteria when its property rights are even mildly infringed upon, let alone denied entirely. What on earth is the point of leaving them in charge of industry while you are expropriating them? If they are not kept under lock and key, surely they should not actually be the people asked to implement government directives against their basic interests?
What else could they do except sabotage things in every possible way, and ensure the government is blamed for the economy being in a far worse state than it was before? In war, when one army defeats another, the first thing it does is confiscate the losing side's weapons. It does not put them in charge of guarding the armories and performing sentry duty. The bourgeoisie's weapons are its control over industry (not to mention its military weapons).
If our aim is to confiscate the property of the ruling class, then we need our own state and our own army to establish that state. Trying to do it through cabinet ministers in their state, surrounded by their officials and their armed forces, seems rather odd. It sounds like just a complicated way of getting those ministers killed, and anyone silly enough to be associated with them, killed also.
Fortunately, the chances of a Labor Party with "left" policies gaining office seem quite remote. So we need not worry too much.
Unlike other "solutions" proposed from the labour movement, increased tariff protection could have an immediate positive impact on employment in Australia. By restricting other countries from access to Australian markets, the opportunities for employment creating investment in Australia are necessarily widened, at the expense of course, of jobs in other countries.
It is amazing how "leftists" put forward the most blatantly chauvinistic proposals for displacing unemployment from Australian to Asian workers, with pious references to opposing their low wages, exploitation by fascist regimes etc.
Apart from elementary class solidarity, the catch with protectionism is of course, that it cuts both ways. It is to the selfish advantage of any country to restrict its markets. But when all countries do it the result is a loss of markets for all.
While world trade is expanding, there is an increasing "cake" and different countries have been able to agree on how to divide it up. As the crisis intensifies pressures for protectionism will become stronger even though everybody knows the result will damage everyone. So will the pressure for trade wars, and real wars.
Protectionism is inevitable as world trade spirals downwards, but we have no interest in promoting it.
"Militant Struggle"
In their newspapers some political groups urge "militant struggle" as the workers answer to the "employer's offensive". It is not entirely clear what this means, if it means anything. But presumably it must be intended to suggest that layoffs and the like are not the result of blind market forces, but are some kind of conscious conspiracy by the capitalist class in order to weaken the working class. By fighting back hard enough, workers can force employers to abandon their "offensive" and restore full employment.
This is obvious nonsense, nor worth discussing. But it does raise the question of how much can be achieved by resistance to layoffs and cutbacks. The answer is, of course, that "if you don't fight, you lose". People have to fight or they get ground down, and you can win specific improvements by fighting.
But you cannot change the overall working of the system by this sort of fight. Since we are going to be forced into all kinds of defensive struggles, often losing ones, it is pretty important to be developing an offensive strategy that can win as well. Otherwise it gets rather demoralising. We need to be able to say what could be done about the economic situation as well as just resisting its consequences.
Instead of that, trade unions tend to just resist and lose, in a fairly hopeless sort of way, or even turn the battle against other sections of workers. Often, trade union responses to unemployment ignore the fact the employed and unemployed workers are both part of the same labour force, with common class interests. Trade unions often emphasis protecting the jobs of people who already have them, and especially those who have had them longest – at the expense of school leaves, housewives, part-timers, casual workers and others who need jobs, and perhaps need them more desperately than those protected by "seniority".
Like demarcation disputes, these trade union efforts can be very "militant" without any positive result. Trade unions are basically conservative organisations concerned with selling their members' labour power at the best price they can get. We should aim to unite the employed and unemployed workers rather than just protecting the separate interests of employed workers from unemployed ones.
Militant struggles against redundancies, factory occupations and so on, can also suffer this problem to a certain extent. Even if they can actually save the particular job at stake, which is unusual, they can not reduce the size of the pool of unemployed and can only displace unemployment from one group of workers to others, often within the same industry, or even the same firm.
Employers may conceivably be forced to keep a particular factory open, although that is often just as hard as finding new jobs. But it is pretty difficult to change the fact that the total amount of labour required in an industry has declined. The question will be whether a particular factory gets closed down or other factories stop taking on school leavers to replace retirements. Either way, unemployment will grow, but it will affect different groups of workers directly.
The same applies to struggles against "the cuts". The plain fact is that the government is forced to cut its expenditure because it just has not the resources to sustain it. There is no conspiracy. Nevertheless, what gets cut where, and how much of the brunt is suffered by who, will be influenced by class struggle. So it is worth fighting back. As long as the fight is not just suggesting that some other, more vulnerable section of the working class should cop the lot.
Just saying "cut defence" sounds like an easy way out. But the whole defence budget would not make all that much difference, and it avoids some hard questions about how to deal with Soviet aggression. In practice, if the budget cannot be increased, struggles against the cuts will, whatever people might say and want, just divert cuts from health to education, or education to welfare, or welfare to health.
If we want to not only oppose any cuts at all, but also demand improvements in welfare and public services, we need to have definite proposals about how this can be achieved. We should certainly support militant defensive struggles. But they cannot be put forward as a general answer to unemployment and economic decline.
Revolutionary Optimism
This whole paper so far may sounds rather pessimistic and deterministic. It seems unemployment is inevitable and there is nothing that can be done. But that is only true if your perspective for "something" is for some reform within the capitalist system. Things are grim for reformism, but not for revolution.
Recognising the inevitability of certain laws under capitalism is not deterministic. It implies that the way out is to abolish capitalism. Revolution is a voluntaristic act that must be carried out consciously. The next section, to be published later, (editor's note: this refers to part 7) discusses revolution. It suggests how the economic situation could be resolved by revolution and suggests that revolution is a perfectly matter of fact "solution" that makes far more sense than the others that have been put forward.
(Next instalment: Revolution, drafted in 1982)
Posted in Albert Langer, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Marxism, protectionism, revolution, socialism, unemployment, wages	| Tagged Albert Langer, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Marxism, optimism, protectionism, public sector, revolution, socialism, statism, unemployment, wages	| Leave a comment


In some situations, especially large deployments, you may need to consider ways of optimizing the performance of the Klocwork Servers.
Running the License Server on a separate host (separate from the Klocwork Server) is a good way to load-balance for larger Klocwork deployments. You can use either the License server packaged with Klocwork, or your own installation of FlexNet Publisher.
All server hosts must see the projects_root directory under the same file system path name, and all must have write access.
All servers must see the Klocwork executables under the same file system path name.
When you install and configure Klocwork components on multiple machines, keep in mind that the maximum length of the path to the projects_root directory is 68 to 72 characters, depending on the length of the Database Server port number (1 to 5 digits).
Setting up multiple projects_root directories can also improve performance.
If you find the Klocwork database performance to be slow, you can customize the MariaDB configuration file found at <Server_install>/config/kwmysql.ini.


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Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book
By Thomas Andrae
Categories: Comics Studies
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