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With total student debts in the U.K reaching a staggering
£18 billion, the threat to our education by privatisation has never been greater. The result has been that the responsibility for higher
education has been handed down, like a cursed heirloom, from government to
university, to family, the buck finally stopping at the student. This means
that students going to university today will pay three times as much as they
would have done a decade ago.
We republish this article from Socialist Appeal April 1995 on proportionality as part of the ongoing discussion in the labour movement about reserve places as a means of overcoming discrimination. Since its original publication it has become more evident that proportionality and reserved seats have been used to undermine democracy in the trade union movement, while not resolving the issues of discrimination.
A critical
comment by Moroccan Marxists on the line of thought developed in the article,
The bourgeois economists are incapable of understanding
crises, which are an inescapable result of capitalism. They look for subjective
factors such as "confidence", even "human nature". In reality what we are
witnessing are the real workings of the capitalist system in a period of
decline.
More
people have been killed in Myanmar (Burma) as the military try and hold back
the wave of protest. But pressure is building up on the regime. Whether it will
clamp down firmly or move in the direction of negotiations depends on the power
of the movement in the coming days.
The Third International was created by Lenin and Trotsky as an
instrument of world revolution. However, as Ted Grant wrote in 1943,
the Comintern under Stalin quickly degenerated "into a kept whore of
the Stalinist bureaucracy, applying its policy according to the
changing moods of Kremlin policy. In reality the creation of the
International was not a question of sentiment or convenience, but arose
directly from the objective tasks posed in front of the international
working class."
The way
the computer industry functions today is a perfect illustration of all the
faults and massive inefficiencies of capitalism, where the primary goal is not
serving the interests of society. Developing, improving and distributing
software takes place only where big profits can be made. This stands in sharp
contrast to free software, where human knowledge and the produce of human
labour is used to the advantage all of society.
