General Secretary's address to the new Executive Committee

Communist Party general secretary delivers the Political report to the first meeting of the new Executive Committee this weekend


Comrades, It's not my intention to deliver a state of the universe address - that was attempted in my General Secretary's address to our 51st congress. But I do want to highlight some economic and political developments and trends that, I believe, should provide a context for our decisions today and our work over the coming two years.
Firstly, I think it can be said that barely a day passes which does not confirm - and sometimes dramatically - the analysis made at our congress of the domestic and international situation.

The NATO summit in Lisbon, for instance, underlines the extent to which United States imperialism is seeking to re-orientate its military perspectives while rebuilding its hegemony over the other main imperialist powers - notably France and Germany - and over emerging or re-emerging economic and political powers such as Russia and India. China and Brazil present particular problems because of their own political orientations.

Liberal Democracy - The greatest oxymoron of them all

The first section of this article is based upon part of the final chapter of "Hegemony and Socialist Strategy - Towards a Radical Democratic Politics" by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.

Liberal Democracy has managed to successfully brand itself as the most "democratic" of political systems. Any system calling itself socialist, never mind communist, is tainted with undertones of totalitarianism or authoritarianism. The Liberal Democratic model, with a multi-party system based upon "free and fair" elections is the model exported around the globe by the giants of capital and their militarised political wings. And why not? Surely being "liberal" (in the social sense) is what every educated person would want to be described as. And "democratic", well don't we all want to be that. . .

In the 1940s the economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek attacked state intervention in economics and criticised the creation of welfare states. His belief was that a state would move towards totalitarianism when the law, which he viewed as a means of controlling the state, was instead used by the state to give new powers to itself. This addition of legal powers to an administration would lead to collectivisation and an increased bureaucracy.

This version of liberalism entangles liberty and democracy and reduces political objectives to one goal: individual liberty. "Democracy is a means, a utilitarian device, for safeguarding peace and individual freedom" - Hayek, The Road to Serfdom.

A Conscript Army of Cheap labour

The Communist Party of Britain's Economic Committee has issued the following statement in response to the plans announced today (November 11, 2010) by the Con-Dem government's Work and Pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith

The unemployed have joined the lengthening list of 'the enemy within', alongside striking workers, housing and incapacity benefit claimants and students.

 

They and their dependants—including children—are to be punished if they don't rush to do unpaid menial work, or jobs once done by properly paid council employees with a pension scheme.

 

The Con-Dems are raising a new conscript army of cheap labour, as part of their drive to boost big business profits by dragging down wage levels.

 

The new scheme unveiled by Work and Pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has to be seen as the latest in a barrage of attacks on the unemployed, the sick and the incapacitated.

 

It follows on from the programme of 'social cleansing' which will drive housing benefit claimants from middle class and inner-city areas. Its architect is the arch-Thatcherite who tells the unemployed to 'get on the bus' to spend three hours a day travelling to and from an eight hours a day job.