Communist women fight and die for Rojava

Written by: Nick G. on 18 November 2019

Organisations and parties active in the fight against fascist Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria/Rojava have honoured two females comrades recently killed by the invaders.

The Marxist-Leninist Party of Turkey/Kurdistan wrote:

Ceren Güneş of DKP (B) and Aynur Ada of DKP-BÖG fell martyr in the great resistance against the invasion of Rojava by the colonialist fascist Turkish state.

They rejected the patriarchal capitalist system and all "easy" living opportunities within it and realized their own history in a revolutionary way. In Rojava we fought with them in the International Battalion and witnessed their revolutionary practice. We took part in the defense of our Rojava women revolution, shoulder to shoulder in the battle trenches.

Ceren and Aynur; The ideals of these two pioneering women, who are exemplary revolutionaries of the break-away from the patriarchal bourgeois order, the sharp practical reckoning with traditional roles imposed on women, are our ideals. We once again promise that for these ideals we will raise our level of warfare on all fronts and strengthen our revolutionary commitment to them at every step.

will draw strength from their responsibility, daring, courage and determination, to shoulder strategic tasks within their party at a young age. We will learn from their practice of becoming leadership and command and force all the possibilities to include it in our leadership style.

Once again we salute all our female comrades who have become immortalized fighting with great devotion and determination in the trenches of Rojava. In the struggle against the invasion of Rojava, we promise victory to all the heroines and heroes of the resistance who have gone to immortality.

Comrades Ceren and Aynur are alive, the fight continues!
Long live our Rojava revolution!
We will defend every position and fight for every piece of land!
Long live the women's comradeship!
Long live our women's revolution!
November 10, 2019

The Turkish Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), said of Comrade Ceren (above):

The commander of the women’s liberation struggle became the voice and colour of resistance to fascism, patriarchy and all kinds of reactionism in every area of Rojava. When the Turkish fascism turned Rojava into hell under the leadership of imperialism, comrade Ceren, a member of the Central Committee of the DKP/Birlik (Revolutionary Communard Party/ Union), who didn’t refrain from any revolutionary actions, determined her ranks without hesitation. She rejected all he careers, and opportunities offered to her….

Of Comrade Aynur, it wrote:

Comrade Aynur was martyred, who ran from trench to trench without discrimination of duty and she was written as a commander who enlightened our way in the struggle for women’s freedom as a member of DKP/BÖG (Revolutionary Communard Party / United Freedom Forces) central committee member and commander of KÖG (Women’s Freedom Forces).

We will not only remember her as BÖG fighter, but with infinite revolutionary solidarity, and we will always commemorate her in our struggle. As comrade Aynur said “We will defend this land without any organizational concern, even sharing our arms and legs”, who proved her position in the struggle, she will live in our struggle as a commander, fearless warrior and comrade…

Aynur Ada is Immortal!
Ceren Güneş is Immortal!
No Forgetting! No Postponement! Never Give Up!
TKP-ML Communist Women’s Union
10 November 2019

The DKP/Birlik said that Ceren Güneş took her part in all the battle fronts for the past four years, adding:

“She joined the battle for Manbij and served as a commander in the International Freedom Battalion (IFB) in the Raqqa battle. On the Raqqa front, she commanded the fiercest battles with great courage as ISIS attacked three times to bring down the IFB headquarters.”

The statement ended with the following remarks; “She did not come to these lands to die but she never hesitated to challenge death. She came here pursuing her great dreams. She came to carry the revolutionary and militant accumulation against Turkish fascism. Death will not stop her march. The youth of Turkey will make the ideals of this brave revolutionary woman come true.”

The International Freedom Battalion said,

“Ceren Güneş, real name Özge Aydın, was the military commander of DKP/Birlik and one of the coordinators of the international volunteers inside the International Freedom Battalion. She left Turkey 4 years ago to come to fight alongside the Kurdish people in Rojava in their struggle against the Islamic State.”

The statement added: “Loyal to her ideals, she kept fighting against all forms of fascism threatening Rojava and its people. Following the revolutionary path in which she believed, she had been actively fighting on the frontline since the battle of Serekaniye, although she was lightly injured a few days before her death.”

The statement continued: “No words are sufficient to describe the admiration we had for her political commitment in life and the pain we have since her death. The internationalist fighters have lost a dear friend and an extraordinary comrade. The price for victory is high, but she inspires us to continue to struggle for it.”

The statement ended: “Now more than ever, revolutionary unity and international solidarity are needed to defeat the imperialist forces who have chosen Northern Syria as a new battle/play-ground. It is our duty to honour Ceren’s legacy and to oppose with a strict revolutionary ethic those who try to impose a tyrannical order on these free lands.”

A moving visual tribute (not in English) to the two women and their fellow martyr, the male comrade Imran Firtina, is available on Youtube.  It begins with their childhoods, early teenage activism and mature communist activity and ends with their funeral. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MOUgYbVW64

Glory to these fallen heroes!

(Comrades Aynur and Imran, above)

Protests erupt across the country over Kumanjayi Walker murder

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 18 November 2019

Just days before 19-year-old Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker was murdered in Yuendumu, Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri, and Yorta Yorta writer Nayuka Gorrie spoke about deaths in custody on Q&A, “It’s not just racism and white supremacy. It’s wanting to disappear Indigenous people and for our sovereignty not to be upheld.

They “want to pin it on one person and say, ‘You know it’s one bad guy or it’s a couple of bad apples.’

“If we’re thinking about the police, if we’re thinking about institutions, we have to understand it’s a cultural issue. It’s a systemic issue,” Gorrie said.
Kumanjayi Walker is the 424th First Nations person to die in custody since the 1990 Royal Commission.

Eyewitness Senita Granites said police dragged Kumanjayi from his family home by his leg to the paddy wagon that then took him to the police station. Family were not informed of his death till the next day. 

In a message to rallies around the country, Senior Lawman Harry Jakamarra Nelson said, “He was minding his own business and they came in and shot him dead. There was no weapon at all. Hundreds of us waited outside. Even our Aboriginal police officer was not allowed in.”

Another Senior Warlpiri Lawman Ned Jampajinpa Hargraves said, “The police were giving us no information. They shot him in front of his family. Policeman is not qualified to look after him. Why three shots?” he asked.

Standing firm

The Warlpiri People are standing firm as support grows.

The Territory First Peoples’ legal service spoke out immediately.

The Central Australian Aboriginal Health Service has called for the inquest “to take priority over all other inquests”.

They want a report in three months, because families are dragged through years of anguish awaiting coroners’ reports.

The Central Lands Council called for immediate release of police body camera footage.

Protests have continued for a week. In every Australian capital city, record numbers protested. In Sydney, well over around 1500 gathered with just 24 hours’ notice, many times bigger than any recent death in custody rally.  In Adelaide, the cold granite columns of Parliament House were covered in blood red handprints.

In Alice Springs, hundreds gathered on Thursday and became thousands by Saturday, the biggest protest in the town’s recent history. There were also rallies on Elcho Island, at Elliott, Hermannsburg, Tennant Creek, on APY Lands and other parts of the NT, as well as in Kalgoorlie and in Geraldton WA where Yamatji woman Joyce Clark died in custody, shot by police, two months ago. Police provocatively increased their presence in Carnarvon for her funeral two days ago.
Until last week, no police officer had ever been charged with murder, though it’s been a demand at many inquests. The quick arrest of a police officer, charged with Walker’s murder, is testament to the strength of the Warlpiri and their wide connections.

But it’s also a ruling class attempt to quieten things down. That may succeed to a point.

But a significant shift in power has happened. Despite Yuendumu’s physical isolation, that story has spread like a flame across Australia.

The young are taking their Elders’ lead and learning the strength of unity.

(Melbourne protest, above)

Bourgeoisie only has one answer to effective dissent: repression

Written by: John S. on 13 November 2019 

We are witnessing an upsurge of popular action around the world.

 

In 2011, there were the massive actions of the Arab Spring. In the decade since, there have been the Occupy, Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements originating in the US. The French workers created the Yellow Vests movement of social protest. Young people around the world go on school strikes to protest inaction on climate change.

 

And now huge popular uprisings in Chile, Lebanon, Haiti, Ecuador and Iraq against material problems such as corruption, repression, unemployment, and the increasing cost of living.

 

There is mass action for self-determination (e.g. Catalonia and West Papua).  

 

In other cases, there is action by some sections of the masses against perceived problems, and for some vague, convenient but superficial instant remedies (e.g. Brexit), often whipped up by demagogues and reactionary populists.

 

Despite the diversity of the demands and causes, the common factor is the preparedness of people to take action.

 

Building up the repressive resources of the State

 

The consistent response of the ruling classes around the world is the build-up of the repressive resources of the state, to stamp out opposition. Over the last twenty to thirty years, there has been a steady militarisation of police forces and policing. More and more heavily repressive equipment, black Nazi-style uniforms and brazen bullying and suppression of opposition, and accompanied by legislation that has steadily wound back democratic rights, often in the name of anti-terrorism.

 

All this has occurred in Australia.

 

Australian police forces have been acquiring more and more weaponry, drones and vehicles. The Australian government has passed several pieces of legislation increasing ASIO's powers to secretly detain and question people, with no access to lawyers and no right to even tell anybody. Evidence surfaces of police acting against protesters giving white power hand gestures and wearing right-wing slogans.

 

The Australian Federal Police have raided journalists, and arrested lawyers. ASIO has raided the lawyer representing East Timor in its dispute with the Australian government over oil and gas rights in the East Timor Sea. The police and ASIO have been intimidating and repressing actual and potential whistle-blowers who believe, for some reason, that the Australian people have the right to know the truth about what governments, the police and the armed forces are doing.

 

The world-wide upsurge in the popular movement to save the planet from destruction has been so strong that it not only threatens to get out of ruling-class control, but also has pressured banks, super funds and now insurance companies to start to divest from fossil fuels, to refuse finance and insurance. This is a huge threat to the fossil fuel industry and to the ideological fossils who will not see beyond their bloody-minded myopia. (The latest incarnation is the belief, alluded to by Morrison, that this is all part of an international conspiracy to take over the world and impose a single world government, presumably the United Nations, which in reality could not organise itself to get out of a wet paper bag).

 

Threats against people’s rights

 

The response of the Australian ruling class is repression. Dutton threatens to withhold welfare payments. Morrison threatens to extend anti-secondary boycott provisions to outlaw divestment and boycott campaigns The Queensland Labor government threatens repressive legislation and action, reminiscent of Bjelke-Petersen. The Victorian police viciously attacked demonstrators at the recent rallies against the international mining conference in Melbourne. The Federal government is introducing legislation to hobble and repress unions even further.

 

Morrison patronises and belittles the students who joined the environmental rallies, telling them they should stay in school. As Paul Oosting of GetUp! observed, “Morrison talks of quiet Australians because he wants Australians to be quiet”.

 

It is all proof of the accuracy of the comment by former Prime Minister John Gorton when he said “Dissent will be tolerated so long as it is ineffective”.  And how little room they allow for ineffectiveness – the slightest threat is met with repression.

 

This raises the issue of democratic rights. Despite all the hype about the beauty of our democratic system, our democratic rights are actually very limited and fragile. What has been hard won over centuries is easily and quickly lost – dispensed with by governments that sense the slightest threat.

 

Australian people, indeed all people around the world, must and will continue to stand up for their rights – civil liberties; rights to speak up, to organise and to protest; to protect the planet; for a decent standard of living; for clean honest government; for national independence and self-determination.

 

However, in the long run, these limited defensive actions are not enough There can never by political democracy without economic democracy. The whole system of private ownership of the economy, the power of the multinationals to exploit the world's people and environment, to control the media and what people see and hear, and to impose their selfish will through weak, subservient governments, needs to be overthrown. We need a socialist economy, with full democratic rights for the people, a popularly controlled media, and respect for the people and the environment.

 

Only full economic and political control can guarantee our democratic rights.

Oppose the US-backed coup in Bolivia!

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 13 November 2019 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) condemns the US-instigated coup that has forced the resignation of democratically-elected Indigenous Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Morales and other senior leaders of his government have been forced to flee the country. Mexico has provided them with asylum and protection.

The Morales government dared to defy imperialism and set Bolivia on a course for economic independence. It sought to improve conditions for the Bolivian working class and to support Indigenous communities through a series of progressive reforms. These progressive policies gained Morales significant support amongst the Bolivian masses. However, his government did not extend its electoral popularity to a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist elements in the country. He tried to govern with the old machinery of state (police, courts, army, parliament etc.) still in existence.

It was elements of that existing state structure, notably the police, who began rioting against the government which resulted in the coup. It was the head of the Bolivian Armed Forces Gen. Williams Kaliman, who went on national television and demanded that Morales resign. They were the leading players in the coup. They were ably supported by the right-wing opposition parties and the US-supported Organisation of American States which had alleged there were “voting irregularities” in the recent election victory of Morales to a fourth term of office.

Despite claims of “a restoration of democracy to Bolivia” by the coup plotters and supporters, the reactionary anti-working class, racist, and anti-Indigenous character of the coup quickly revealed itself. Police and military officers have filmed themselves cutting the Indigenous Wiphala flag from their uniforms and rioters burned the flag in the streets. The Wiphala flag, representing the Indigenous people of the Andes, was raised to the status of an official dual flag of the Bolivian state in 2009, a sign of the political progress that had been made by Indigenous people under the Morales government.  

The coup against Morales is a set-back for the people of Bolivia and for the broader anti-imperialist movement in South America. Its success will likely encourage US imperialism to further acts of destabilisation against Venezuela and Cuba, and strengthen the right-wing reactionaries in the region.

There will no doubt be important lessons to be learned by our South American revolutionary comrades.

Our solidarity and support goes to them, and all the Bolivian masses organising and fighting to resist this attack on democracy and their rights.

CPA (M-L) affiliates to ICOR

9 November 2019

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) has officially affiliated to the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations (ICOR). The decision to affiliate was debated and approved by the 15th National Party Congress held in June earlier this year.

The ICOR is an international union for the organisation of practical cooperation and coordination for the activity of revolutionary organisations and parties around the world, and for mutual support in class struggle and party building. It currently consists of 56 parties and organisations from 46 countries.

Affiliated parties and organisations unite on equal terms, and respect the differences between member organisations in terms of their size, practical, organisational and political experience, historical-ideological roots, and their strategic tasks based on the concrete socio-economic conditions of each country. The ICOR Founding Resolution includes a revolutionary, anti-imperialist, anti-revisionist and anti-Trotskyite platform, which forms a basis for achieving unity in all essential questions by an interrelated process of theoretical discussion and practical work.

Our affiliation to ICOR is a reflection of the Party’s conscious decision to deepen our connections with the international revolutionary movement. Joining ICOR presents us with the opportunity to make new connections, share analysis and gain deeper understanding on key questions related to the revolutionary struggle being waged around the world by the working class and oppressed people against capitalist imperialism. As the crisis of imperialism intensifies worldwide, so too does the threat of imperialist world war, the strengthening of reaction and the trend to fascism, and the intensified exploitation of the workers and masses. The need for international coordination and cooperation between revolutionary parties and organisations is becoming increasingly clear.

Long live proletarian internationalism!
Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

Uber

Humphrey McQueen                               11 October 2019

We reprint with permission of the author, Australian Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen, the text of his talk on Melbourne’s 3cr Solidarity Breakfast show on 28 September 2019.  In the talk, McQueen takes a look at the political economy of a major player in the gig economy, Uber.

 …………………………..

How Uber attracted capital in its several forms turns out to be neither innovative nor ingenious, merely delusional beyond the point of fraud.

Uber Technologies Inc. lost $20bn in the five years to 2019, despite revenues growing fivefold. Without forcing down the take-home pay of its ‘partners’, and purloining the ‘Safe Rides Fee’, Uber’s combined losses would exceed $US100bn. Not even a Wall Street so fevered as to over-subscribe an issue of 100-year Argentinian bonds could ignore those numbers so that Uber’s May 2019 IPO (1) came in at around half of its vaunted valuation of $120bn. (2)

Despite that flop, the chatterers still fail to grasp Uber’s master plan. (3) To cut through its ‘propaganda narrative’, we should ask exactly how, if at all, Uber differs from any other cab company, beyond recruiting a network of operatives on-line. That their labour provides a service rather than a physical object is now the case for a majority of wage-slaves in O.E.C.D. economies. Drivers for UberEats add value (4) to physical commodities but are a drain on the parent company’s bottom line. (5) Uber’s ‘secret ingredient’ is neither its smartphone app, which is much the same as cab companies have used for years; (6) nor its use of Greyball (7)  to obstruct law enforcement; nor in its copy-cat tax-dodges (8)  - were it ever to turn a profit.

Uber’s gambit in 2007-9 looks rather like the front-end of a Ponzi scheme for which Silicon Valley stumped up $US13 billion. In the text-book scam, funds from subsequent investors would have paid dividends to the initial subscribers. Instead of preying on the ‘greater fool’, Uber always intended to burn through the $13bn to subsidise fares and to extend service levels to reap monopoly profits after it had driven out competitors. Oligopolies resort to loss-leaders to retain market share: Uber blew that tactic out into a strategy for a new entrant to seize multiple markets in double-quick time from a standing start. A Libertarian Blitzkrieg from a monomaniacal Ubermensch did not pay. His downfall came in June 2017 when his backers insisted on going public to get back some of their investment.

What distinguishes Uber’s relationship with its workforce is that the company does not hold title over much of the equipment. (9) That expense is not ‘shared’ between the investors and their ‘partners’. The latter supply the fixed-capital with their late-model vehicles and also the circulating capital to keep them on the road. (10) Uber boosts its extraction of value by getting its capital equipment as a gift from its ‘partners’. This free-loading reverses how capital-within-capitalism continues to turn self-sufficient producers into wage-slaves by stripping them of productive property. (11) Its founder did not expect that his ‘partners’ could also use social media to fight back to secure benefits. They pressured the law to judge the ‘partnerships’ to be yet another expression of wage-slavery.
Uber’s pitch around its drivers’ becoming its ‘partners’ conceals how that social relationship has nothing in common with its partnership with Saudi Public Investment Fund. The owner-drivers will never be more than micro-businesses.

Protesting labour conditions and wage-cuts, however, will never penetrate the ‘actual inner movement’ (12) of the forms and circuits of capital accumulation (13). Uber exemplifies some while skating over their consequences in its PR releases. (14)

Coca-Cola Company, which outsourced its capital requirements from the 1890s by franchising bottling operations to family firms as large as itself.  (15) By contrast, Uber hitched a ride with the reconfiguration of the franchise into a device to extract rent by imposing all manner of predatory fees and obligations on franchise-holders. Those burdens corner them into underpaying their staff to ward off bankruptcy. 

To keep conning legislators, investors and the media, the ‘propaganda narrative’ had to keep rolling. A $500m. campaign to restore the corporation’s image laid another egg. (16) Grappling with losses of $US4.7bn in 2017, UBER’s new CEO came to realise that he had to go on pretending that it could finance vertical-liftoff aircraft (VLOL) as well as driverless cars (AV) (17) to prop-up the IPO. He suspended the latter project after a test vehicle killed a pedestrian in March 2018; but he had to revive that arm as part of the PR effort. He also promises that Uber Elevate will operate electric air-taxis ‘within five years.’ That’s a safer bet than Tesla’s one-way tickets to Mars. Hovering over such promises is the 2013 quip of PayPal’s Peter Thiel: ‘We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.’

Whatever is to be done?

Uber might manage the switch to driverless cars by taking one or other of two routes. Along R1, its ‘partners’ would borrow more to acquire the first generation of automatic vehicles which will be much more expensive and less reliable than their successors. (18) Since many of its U.S. ‘partners’ are sleeping on their backseats and getting by on food stamps, their access to credit will remain remote until sub-prime loans re-emerge from the swamp. On R2, the burden for the fixed-constant capital would rebound to Uber. (19) It would buy fleets of driverless vehicles from its production division with funds from cashing out more of its stock. The corporation then would be burdened with depreciation of its prime fixed asset. That outcome would drive its market valuation down further. Moreover, its share price would keep shrinking as cheaper and more efficient models roll out from rival auto-making oligopolies with established sales networks.

Given Uber’s record of record-breaking failures, its founders might be well advised to escape from the bother of running a business. It could unload shares before parking any take with a wealth-management fund such as BlackRock, that firm which shifts $US6.3 trillion on software known as ALADDIN for Asset Liability and Debt and Derivative Investment Network (20) . Global capital is not ruled by ALADDIN although many corporates rent time on that platform. (21) Nation-market-states are vulnerable to its algorithmic trades which are just about smart enough to track market trends. (22)

BlackRock and its ilk moved towards this pivotal place during the 1990s. At the time, excess capacity in production was blowing out to reappear as excess latent money-capital before the implosion of 2006-9. (23) This financialisation compounds the churn in working lives as most corporates continue to chase quarterly profit numbers. The ‘L’ in ‘long-term’ stands for loser.  The ‘p’ in an Uber ‘partnership’ flashes phoney, but never profit.

 

(1) An IPO or Initial Public Offering occurs when a private company is launched on the stock market with an offering of shares to institutional or individual investors.  It is a way for the company to raise capital – called equity capital - to help fund its operations, and to line the pockets of its start-up founders.
(2) Hubert Horan, “Will the Growth of Uber Increase Economic Welfare?,” Transportation Law Journal, 44, no. 1 (2017): 33-105; “Uber’s Path of Destruction,“ American Affairs, III, no. 2 (2019):108-33; with updates posted on Naked Capitalist..
(3) Mike Isaac, Super-Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: W.W. Norton, 2019).
(4) Karl Marx, Capital, II, (London: Penguin, 1978), 225-32.
(5) Forbes Asia, April 2019: 55-7.
(6) Nick Smicek does not quite get it, Platform Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).
(7) Greyball is a tool used by Uber to identify law enforcement officers masquerading as “customers”. It helped Uber evade local regulations. See: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/uber-secret-program-greyball-resignation-ed-baker
(8) Brian O’Keefe and Marty Jones, “Uber’s Tax Shell Game,” Fortune, November 2015: 49-56.
(9) Constant capital is the capital vested in the materials used in production, as well as the machinery and equipment used in the production of commodities. Constant capital is fixed so long as the machinery etc is capable of being used, although it is decreasing in its value over time due to wear and tear. Other forms of capital required in the process of production are regarded as circulating constant capital. For why a vehicle on the road is fixed-constant capital while its fuel and load are circulating-constant  capitals, Marx, Capital, II, 242; my “Capital Refined,” www.surplusvalue.org.au/mcqueen/marxism
(10) As Marx observes: ‘A musical conductor need in no way be the owner of the instruments in his orchestra …,’ Capital, III, 511.
(11) Karl Marx, Capital, I (London: Penguin, 1976), 873-904.
(12) Karl Marx, Capital, III (London: penguin, 1981), 428.
(13) Capital accumulation is both the increase in profitability of a company and its need to increase its investment in constant capital rather than in variable capital, or wages.
(14) Michal Kalecki (with Adam Szeworski), “Economic Problems of Production Automation in Capitalist Countries,” Collected Works of Michal Kalecki, Capitalism, economic dynamics, vol. II, Jerzy Osiatynski (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991): 374-85.
(15) See my The Essence of Capitalism (Sydney: Sceptre, 2001), chapter 5.
(16) Washington Post, August 29, 2019.
(17) Autonomous vehicles is a term also applied to driverless trucks and trains now widely used in mining.
(18) Marx, Capital, I, 528; Marx, Capital, II, 154 and 157. Military contracts bear the high first-run production costs of technologies to assist their commercialisation at prices which make new goods competitive with those from lower labour-times, Jane’s Defence Weekly (JDW), April 4, 2018: 28; cf. JDW, 56, April 24, 2019: 26-31. Japan Inc. has long spun-on from commodity production to equip its military on the cheap, Japan Defence Agency, The Defence of Japan, 1989 (Tokyo JDA, 1989), 142.
(19) Sheelah Kolhatkar, “Taking the Wheel,” New Yorker, April 9, 2018: 50-59; Marx makes a comparable point about road building, Marx-Engels Collected Works (M-ECW), vol. 28 (New York: International Publishers, 1986), 452ff.
(20) ALADDIN is an electronic system for the management of financial assets, much of which is fictional capital embedded in speculative promises of future gain (derivatives) or in repayments on loans (debt management). In 2013, it managed $11 trillion or 7.5% of the world’s financial assets. Last March, Europe’s largest bank, HSBC signed a deal to offer BlackRock’s Aladdin investment management software to the bank’s wealthy customers as the world’s largest asset manager sought to increase revenues by selling its technology.
(21) Forbes, December 26, 2017: 52-4. Perhaps because 11 percent of Blackrock’s employees are IT developers, it ranks towards the low end on the ‘Marx Ratio’ of executive salaries to staff wages, New York Times (NYT), May 22, 2018: B5.
(22) David Peetz and Georgina Murray, “Restructuring of Corporate Ownership in Australia through the Global Financial Crisis,” JAPE, no. 71 (2013): 76-103.
(23) Marx and Engels: ‘The crisis itself first breaks out in the field of speculation and only seizes hold of production later. Not over-production, but over-speculation, itself only a symptom of over-production, therefore appears to the superficial view as the causes of the crisis.’ M-ECW, vol.10 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), 490.
(24) The Economist, December 16, 2017: 58; March 10, 2018: 60.