PLYMOUTH
STAR
Number: 2 www.issuu.com/plymouthstar
“Don't read that – it's full of Truth!”
jobseekers to every vacancy. Well here we are, back for a second issue, and with This is before the government cuts hit a new logo at the top of the page. May was a busy Plymouth, which are predicted by the South West month for us here at the Star. We were at the Regional Development Agency, to make 8,000 Plymouth May Day Festival along with over 100 people unemployed in the city. It makes you marchers – maybe not the largest turnout, but we wonder if the RDA included its own abolishment certainly caused a scene. Then there was the AV in those figures. . . referendum and those local council elections. . . But the election results were hardly an And what does June bring? It doesn't look overwhelming swing to Labour. Labour won five good I'm afraid. The NHS bill may have “paused” seats (four from the Tories and one independent) but don't be fooled. The agenda of the Tories is and held seven. If anything the results show that best summed up in the words of David Cameron's the people of Plymouth are a tribal lot, and will own advisor Mark Britnell, who told a conference vote along party lines no matter what the political of executives from the private sector that future situation. reforms would show "no mercy" to the NHS and Of course, the fact that Plymouth City offer a "big opportunity" to the for-profit sector. Council is elected in thirds makes a seismic shift in Economic growth was at zero for the last power very difficult. The seats are now divided as six months, economic organisations from across follows: the political divide are downgrading future growth Conservative - 34 figures, and the cuts are still to hit. Perhaps the cuts Labour - 20 were the wrong idea after all. . . but you didn't Independent - 1 need us to tell you that!
Editorial
Local Elections Something is very wrong in Plymouth. Almost one in three of the population live in areas which are among the 20 per cent most deprived in England. At the start of 2011 official figures show Plymouth Moor View to have one of the highest ratios of claimants to jobs in the country – ranked at 55 out of 650 constituencies with 16.3
June 2011
this has been followed up with street stalls and petitioning in the city centre. The Socialist Party may have disengaged from the Trades Council led campaign, but support is growing in the areas that matter – the people of Plymouth themselves. The Labour Party has even started sending delegates to the organising meetings. Details of the campaign can be found at www.plymouth-tuc.org.uk. The anti incinerator campaign continues. It is still not too late to stop the council allowing the incinerator to be built at Camel's Head. Planning permission has not yet been granted. Get all the facts on the Incineration is Wrong website. June the 30th will also see coordinated strike action by the PCS, UCU, NUT and ATL unions. We'll try and have a report of the local action in next month's issue. On the horizon we've also the prospect of strikes in the dockyard over pensions, and strike action by the CWU over changes in their terms and conditions and the plans to privatise Royal Mail.
Vacant seats – 2 [I have no idea either - ed]
Foreign Newsdesk Campaigning City The Plymouth Fightback Against the Cuts campaign has been rolling on this month. The highlight was obviously the May Day Festival, with a wonderful address by John McDonnell MP, the audio of which can be found on our blog (www.plymouthmorningstar.blogspot.com) and
Barnstaple Elections As reported in the last issue, Gerrard Sables stood as Communist Party candidate in North Devon. In Barnstaple Central he received 90 votes for the North Devon District Council and 164 for Barnstaple Town Council. This is 7.4% and 13.3% respectively.
So where does profit come from? This section of the page will continue with the political theory theme of last month. This month we will look at one of the fundamentals of Marxist philosophy – profit and value. This summary, in such a small space, will obviously do no justice to the life work of one of the most revolutionary thinkers of the modern age. A good place to start (rather than trying to read the whole of Capital) are the two shorter works, Value, Price and Profit and Wage, Labour and Capital. Both of these are available for free on the excellent website www.marxists.org. Marx wrote that the primary source of profit in any and every enterprise is the labour power of the workers. A commodity, whether a product or a service, has a value. This value is made up of fixed costs (“fixed capital” - the physical resources in the commodity) and by variable costs (“variable capital” - the wages of the workers). The capitalist system generates profit by, in simplistic terms, getting as much labour for as little cost as possible, from a worker. This becomes glaringly obvious in times of recession – as soon as profits are threatened, wages, conditions and the very jobs of the workers are the first things to be squeezed. This feature of the system is the basis for the exploitation of every worker in the modern world. Only by changing the system, from one of private ownership and profit, can society move away from the destructive path we are following.
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Published by the Plymouth Morning Star supporters group, assisted by the South Devon Branch of the Communist Party of Britain.