Unions have a substantial impact on the compensation and work lives of both unionized and non-unionized workers. This report presents current data on unions' effect on wages, fringe benefits, total compensation, pay inequality, and workplace protections. Some of the conclusions are: • Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%. • Unions reduce wage inequality because they raise wages more for low- and middle-wage workers than for higher-wage workers, more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers who do not have a college degree. • Strong unions set a pay standard that nonunion employers follow. For example, a high school graduate whose workplace is not unionized but whose industry is 25% unionized is paid 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries. • The impact of unions on total nonunion wages is almost as large as the impact on total union wages. • The most sweeping advantage for unionized workers is in fringe benefits. Unionized workers are more likely than their nonunionized counterparts to receive paid leave, are approximately 18% to 28% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, and are 23% to 54% more likely to be in employer-provided pension plans. • Unionized workers receive more generous health benefits than nonunionized workers. They also pay 18% lower health care deductibles and a smaller share of the costs for family coverage. In retirement, unionized workers are 24% more likely to be covered by health insurance paid for by their employer. • Unionized workers receive better pension plans. Not only are they more likely to have a guaranteed benefit in retirement, their employers contribute 28% more toward pensions. • Unionized workers receive 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays). Unions play a pivotal role both in securing legislated labor protections and rights such as safety and health, overtime, and family/medical leave and in enforcing those rights on the job. Because unionized workers are more informed, they are more likely to benefit from social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and workers compensation. Unions are thus an intermediary institution that provides a necessary complement to legislated benefits and protections. The union wage premium It should come as no surprise that unions raise wages, since this has always been one of the main goals of unions and a major reason that workers seek collective bargaining. How much unions raise wages, for whom, and the consequences of unionization for workers, firms, and the economy have been studied by economists and other researchers for over a century (for example, the work of Alfred Marshall). This section presents evidence from the 1990s that unions raise the wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise total compensation by about 28%. The research literature generally finds that unionized workers' earnings exceed those of comparable nonunion workers by about 15%, a phenomenon known as the "union wage premium." H. Gregg Lewis found the union wage premium to be 10% to 20% in his two well-known assessments, the first in the early 1960s (Lewis 1963) and the second more than 20 years later (Lewis 1986). Freeman and Medoff (1984) in their classic analysis, What Do Unions Do?, arrived at a similar conclusion. Historically, unions have raised the wages to a greater degree for "low-skilled" than for "high-skilled" workers. Consequently, unions lessen wage inequality. Hirsch and Schumacher (1998) consider the conclusion that unions boost wages more for low- and middle-wage workers, a "universal finding" of the extensive literature on unions, wages, and worker skills. As they state: The standard explanation for this result is that unions standardize wages by decreasing differentials across and within job positions (Freeman 1980) so that low-skilled workers receive a larger premium relative to their alternative nonunion wage. The larger union wage premium for those with low wages, in lower-paid occupations and with less education is shown in Table 2. For instance, the union wage premium for blue-collar workers in 1997, 23.3%, was far larger than the 2.2% union wage premium for white-collar workers. Likewise, the 1997 union wage premium for high school graduates, 20.8%, was much higher than the 5.1% premium for college graduates. Gundersen (2003) estimated the union wage premium for those with a high school degree or less at 35.5%, significantly greater than the 24.5% premium for all workers. Unemployment insurance Unemployment insurance (UI) is a joint federal and state program that was created in the Social Security Act of 1935 to provide some income replacement to workers who lose their job through no fault of their own. Budd and McCall (1997) offer a cost-benefit decision-making analysis to explain the costs facing the unemployed worker in filing a UI claim. In a system with complex eligibility rules and benefit calculations and a lack of uniformity among states regarding these rules, the difficulty, or "cost," of obtaining information is formidable. In fact, the main reason that many unemployed workers never file a claim is because they thought they were not eligible (Wandner and Stettner 2000). The threat of an employer retaliating by not rehiring a laid-off worker might be another cost weighing on the decision to file a claim. Unions can help offset the costs of workers who are laid off. Primarily, unions provide information to workers about benefit expectations, rules, and procedures, and dispel stigmas that might be attached to receiving a social benefit. Unions also can negotiate in their contracts layoff recall procedures based on seniority and protection against firing for other than a just cause, as well as help workers build files in the case of a disputed claim (Budd and McHall 1997). Additionally, the union-wage differential reduces the likelihood that unemployed workers will be ineligible for benefits because their pay is too low (Wenger 1999). Budd and McHall (1997) have estimated that union representation increases the likelihood of an unemployed worker in a blue-collar occupation receiving UI benefits by approximately 23%. At the peak of UI coverage in 1975, one in every two unemployed workers received UI benefits. By the mid-1980s, the ratio of claims to unemployed workers (the recipiency rate) had fallen to almost 30%. Blank and Card (1991) found that the decline in unionization explained one-third of the decline in UI recipiency over this period. These findings underscore the difference unions make in ensuring that the unemployment insurance system works. Considering that UI acts as a stabilizer for the economy during times of recession, the role of unions in this program is pivotal (Wandner and Stettner 2000). Worker's compensation Laws governing workers' compensation are primarily made at the state level (with the exception of federal longshoremen), but they generally form an insurance system in cases where a worker is injured or becomes ill at the workplace. The employer is liable in the system, regardless of fault, and in return they are protected from lawsuits and further liability. Once again, lack of information about eligibility and the necessary procedures for filing a claim forms the greatest obstacle to receipt of benefits. Fear of employer-imposed penalties and employer disinformation are important other factors weighed by workers deciding whether to act. As with unemployment insurance, unions provide information to workers through their representatives, and they often negotiate procedures to handle indemnity claims. Through grievance procedures and negotiated contracts, unions protect workers from employer retaliation and, furthermore, act to dispel the notion among workers that employer retaliation is commonplace (Hirsch et al. 1997). Hirsch et al. (1997) found that, after controlling for a number of demographic and occupational factors, union members are 60% more likely to file an indemnity claim than nonunion workers. Employers and the private insurance companies that sell worker's compensation insurance policies have mutual interests in denying claims to limit costs (Biddle 2001). According to Biddle, higher denial rates lead to lower claim rates. The robust finding of Hirsch et al. demonstrates that unions provide a needed counterbalance to this interest. Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) The Occupation Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA) provided the foundation for the Occupation Safety and Health Administration, which enforces safety and health standards at places of work. The administration's purpose is to limit work-related injury, illness, and death due to known unsafe working conditions. They currently have only 2,100 inspectors to monitor over seven million establishments. Enforcement of OSHA regulations presents an obvious challenge; OSHA implementation requires worker action to initiate complaints. In two studies of OSHA and unions in the manufacturing and construction industries (1991a and 1991b), Weil found unions greatly improve OSHA enforcement. In the manufacturing industry, for example, the probability that OSHA inspections would be initiated by worker complaints was as much as 45% higher in unionized workplaces than in nonunion ones. Unionized establishments were also as much as 15% more likely to be the focus of programmed or targeted inspections in the manufacturing industry. In addition, Weil found that in unionized settings workers were much more likely to exercise their "walkaround" rights (accompanying an OSHA inspector to point out potential violations), inspections lasted longer, and penalties for noncompliance were greater. In the construction industry, Weil estimated that unions raise the probability of OSHA inspections by 10%. In addition to the findings above, Weil notes that the union differential could be even larger if OSHA's resources were not so limited. He claims, "Implementation of OSHA seems highly dependent upon the presence of a union at the workplace" (Weil 1991a). Following the trend of declining unionization, OSHA claims have dropped from their peak in 1985 of over 71,500 and are currently at close to 37,500 (Siskind 2002; OSHA 2003). Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Passed in 1993, the FMLA grants workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12-month period to care for newborn or newly adopted children, or in case of a personal or family member's health condition. The leave taker is guaranteed the same or equivalent position upon return. One of the most striking characteristics of the act is that less than an estimated 60% of employees covered by the FMLA are not even aware that it exists. There is also widespread misunderstanding on the part of the employer about whom the act covers and when it applies. There is evidence that this leads employers to reject legally entitled leaves (Budd and Brey 2000). According to Budd and Brey (2000), union members were about 10% more likely to have heard of the FMLA and understand whether or not they were eligible. Union members were found to have significantly less anxiety about losing their job or suffering other employer-imposed penalties for taking leave. And although the authors did not find union membership significantly increases the likelihood that a worker would take leave, they did find that union members were far more likely to receive full pay for leave taken. The biggest obstacle to workers exercising their rights under the FMLA—besides the fact that the leave is unpaid rather than paid—is information, since only a very slim majority has even heard of the act. With the exception of a $100 fine for failing to post a notice, employers have little incentive to inform employees of their rights. Unions are one of the few institutions to create awareness about FMLA's existence and regulations. Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) This act, passed in 1938, had two main features: first, it established a federal minimum wage. Second, it established the 40-hour work week for hourly wage earners, with an overtime provision of time and a half the hourly wage for work done beyond 40 hours. Trejo (1991) examined the union effect on compliance of the latter part of the FLSA, finding that employer compliance with the overtime pay regulation rose sharply with the presence of a union. He hypothesizes that this result reflects the policing function of unions because unions often report violations to enforcement agencies. Summary: union impact on workplace protections The research evidence clearly shows that the labor protections enjoyed by the entire U.S. workforce can be attributed in large part to unions. The workplace laws and regulations, which unions helped to pass, constitute the majority of the labor and industrial relations policies of the United States. However, these laws in and of themselves are insufficient to change employer behavior and/or to regulate labor practices and policies. Research has shown convincingly that unions have played a significant role in enforcing these laws and ensuring that workers are protected and have access to benefits to which they are legally entitled. Unions make a substantial and measurable difference in the implementation of labor laws. Legislated labor protections are sometimes considered alternatives to collective bargaining in the workplace, but the fact of the matter is that a top-down strategy of legislating protections may not be influential unless there is also an effective voice and intermediary for workers at the workplace—unions. In all of the research surveyed, no institutional factor appears as capable as unions of acting in workers' interests (Weil 2003). Labor legislation and unionization are best thought of as complements, not substitutes. Conclusion This paper has presented evidence on some of the advantages that unionized workers enjoy as the result of union organization and collective bargaining: higher wages; more and better benefits; more effective utilization of social insurance programs; and more effective enforcement of legislated labor protections such as safety, health, and overtime regulations. Unions also set pay standards and practices that raise the wages of nonunionized workers in occupations and industries where there is a strong union presence. Collective bargaining fuels innovations in wages, benefits, and work practices that affect both unionized and nonunionized workers. However, this review does not paint a full picture of the role of unions in workers lives, as unions enable due process in the workplace and facilitate a strong worker voice in the broader community and in politics. Many observers have stated, correctly, that a strong labor movement is essential to a thriving democracy. Nor does this review address how unionism and collective bargaining affect individual firms and the economy more generally. Analyses of the union effect on firms and the economy have generally found unions to be a positive force, improving the performance of firms and contributing to economic growth (Freeman and Medoff 1984; Mishel and Voos 1992; Belman 1992; Belman and Block 2002; Stiglitz 2000; Freeman and Kleiner 1999; Hristus and Laroche 2003; with a dissenting view in Hirsch 1997). There is nothing in the extensive economic analysis of unions to suggest that there are economic costs that offset the positive union impact on the wages, benefits, and labor protections of unionized and nonunionized workers. Unions not only improve workers' benefits, they also contribute to due process and provide a democratic voice for workers at the workplace and in the larger society.

CLASS WARS, SICK SOCIETIES

SOUTH AMERICAN REVOLUTION If the nature of a revolution can be established by the manner of its dress, then the one led by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela must rate as one of history’s more ambiguous upheavals. Chávez has had three standard outfits during his five-year presidency – baseball kit, military fatigues, Italian suit and silk tie – and he has generated an ideological froth to match. On returning from the Middle East, he proclaimed that his country should turn to Islam; when back from Cuba, his preferences turned to the rigours of communism. Like a compass surrounded by attractions, his heroes and sacred texts pull the president in as many different directions as there are forms of punishing the rich. “Where is this revolution going?” Chávez asked himself in an interview with Le Monde Diplomatique at the end of 2001, on the eve of the year that would see him ousted, reinstated, and confronted by a two-month general strike. “Well, like every revolution it’s going towards the transformation of political, social, economic and also moral structures.” For those wanting more specifics, he highlighted a recent protest by employers: “that was the first lockout [of employers] in Venezuelan history. Now, that shows we’re going in the right direction.” The travails of heroism Amid the global roster of bland, business-courting political leaders, such flagrantly provocative statements are the sort to have won Chávez a following on the international left. Selective glimpses at the recent history of his country would also suggest that the former paratrooper is rightfully seeking justice in a land of outrageous inequality. Consider, for example, the cabal which toppled him for two days in April 2002. One meeting just hours before the coup was held in the offices of the Venevisión television station, and featured Latin American media tycoon Gustavo Cisneros, employers’ federation chief Pedro Carmona, and hereditary oil magnates. Carmona then journeyed to the army headquarters, seized power, annulled the constitution, and suspended all elected officials – all to a sigh of approval from the White House. The romantic vision of Chávez would then no doubt proceed to tell of the tens of thousands of incensed shanty-town dwellers who descended on the capital, at great risk to themselves. “The top dogs are coming back, the old bunch of thieves,” they shouted; and Chávez, aided by a bout of infighting in the military, reassumed a mandate to last until 2006. Any reasonable judgment, based on the rhetoric and the personalities, would indeed opt for the corner of the people’s hero. But Venezuela is ample proof that the course of revolutionary government does not always follow its precepts, and can well betray them. Does it really serve the interests of the poor to enrage the middle and upper classes with forty-nine laws in the space of a year (2001), including ones designed to hand out land, stiffen “Bolivarian” school education and “democratise capital” in the banking sector, while also offending the mighty in Washington by likening the attack on Afghanistan to terrorism? On paper it may, but in the context of Venezuela, these were essential precursors to a year of civil breakdown, economic collapse and huge capital flight. The bombast of Hugo Chávez in the face of what he termed a “rancid oligarchy” did not so much empower the underprivileged as bring to the surface Venezuela’s latent class war. The current cost is a decline of 29% in GDP in the first three months of 2003, the bankruptcy of 15% of businesses, interest rates in the region of 50%, and unprecedented levels of civil paranoia and crime. Chavez may try as hard as he can to shift all the blame for these figures onto the shoulders of the “squalid” overlords, who in his eyes spent the 1970s sampling French cheese and Scotch whisky, but he is also responsible for committing the cardinal Latin America error of ignoring the economic balance of power. The same occurred to Alan García’s Aprista government in Peru during the second half of the 1980s. This pledged to pay in debt servicing no more than 10% of the value of its exports, only to find hyperinflation and the flowering of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla insurgency hastening its downfall. Fidel Castro’s Cuba, of course, is the epitome of beneficial action for the poor gone wrong. At present, some 700,000 Cubans out of a population of 11 million have been to university, only to graduate before a vista of minimal employment and enrichment. Venezuela, in Chavez’s Bolivarian imprint of revolutionary associations, a schooling boom and an intense dislike for business, is heading in precisely the same direction, with one principle consolation: while Cuba exports tobacco and sugar, Venezuela deals in oil. Venezuela: class war, sick society Yet seen through the prism of Venezuelan society, the reading of Hugo Chávez as self-destructive philanthropist is far too contrived. Such is the polarisation of opinion around Venezuela that blame for the country’s economic and civil implosion is attributed wholly either to Chávez or to the oligarchy (which, as if to emphasise the country’s singularity, includes the trade union movement). This marks a social divide that is astonishing in its production of blinkered hatred. The seam that has always run through Venezuela – separating anyone with formal employment from the 60-70% of the population clinging to semi-urban hillsides and scraping by – has now become an abyss, across which empathy and understanding rarely travel. Plead for neutrality, and you are sure to be hounded: a television reporter for one of the five private television stations, all of which openly despise Chávez, revealed that her efforts to give objective coverage of a street fight received short shrift from the producer. “Go on, say it was the chavistas who attacked with stones. Say it, or you’re fired.” The prospect of a referendum on the president’s rule, which is constitutionally permitted from 19 August onwards, is now the principal hope for the opposition, and will doubtless renew the bitter political contest. Thus, as much as the chavistas may fume and lambast their enemies, the alternative they represent is no more enlightened or accommodating. “I had a gold mine with 250 employees and we managed to extract 1,300 kilograms of gold,” recalls Héctor Mezones, who recently fled to Madrid to set up an exclusive restaurant. “But Chávez ordered a revision of the concessions, and that halted all activity. I wasn’t going to stay around to see how we were going to be ruined in a society where the proletariat is happy with having bread to eat, but doesn’t realise it has lived through a forty-year educational and cultural regression.” In these circumstances, which resemble the racially-tinged class cleavages of Allende’s Chile or Central America in the 1980s, Chávez’s haranguing and occasional persecution of the television bosses, the oil executives and his political opponents is understandable, if not laudable or wise. Should anyone question his mission, the president can easily point to his election in 1998 with 56% of the vote, and his success in no less than four referenda that followed to ratify a new constitution. These events together signalled fundamental landslide reactions to an unsustainable system of government and distribution of the social spoils. The medicine for such a sickened society was always going to be painful. Forty years for the locust From the Punto Fijo pact of 1958 which opened the way to a new constitution, to Hugo Chávez’s victory forty years later, Venezuela appeared to the outsider to be a relatively rich, stable two-party democracy. This appearance, however, shrouded a Hispanic hacienda tradition which treated the state as private property, accentuated by an oil boom fuelling over half the government’s revenues without any contribution from the public. Vast quantities of money were wasted, crony-run monopolies multiplied (in beer and canned food, for example), and the poor who flocked to the city fringes received just enough through the circuits of patronage to sustain them, without ever having a larger claim over the dollars that magically filled state coffers. This was a society shorn of democratic entitlement and responsibility, hinging on elections yet without a shared public life. Inevitably, it collapsed. In February 1989, following a steep decline in the world price of oil, President Carlos Andrés Pérez (prompted by the IMF) announced a 30% increase in bus prices: the poor were to pay for the absence of oil riches. Over the days of rioting, looting and police repression that followed, some 400 people were killed, constituting the bloodiest uprising in recent South American history. In February 1992, Hugo Chávez, a paratrooper and thereby a member of the sole institution that was open to all sectors of Venezuelan society, mounted his one and only coup. It failed; he nevertheless became a national hero. For those seeking vindication of Chávez’s regime, there is no better reference: while the so-called “Caracazo” riots illustrated the absolute exclusion of the marginalised poor from Venezuelan political life (their only options were violent), Chávez seemingly represents an effort to bind these people to the system, to channel their legitimate grievances. There is certainly evidence to support the claim. His Bolivarian circles and creation of local councils, as Dan Storey discusses in openDemocracy, appear to have inserted political practice into the heart of previously anarchic and combustible communities. He is, evidently, the president of the poor. Populism or patience? Yet placed against Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva in Brazil, or even Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, the demagogic populism, the buffoonery and love of outrage take much of the shine off Chávez. He is, in truth, a traditional Latin American populist, a man who has violent fringes, as shown by bombs in embassies, television stations and even the Organisation of American States (OAS) offices; peculiar allies, including China, Qatar and Saddam Hussein; and an interminable Sunday evening television show, Aló Presidente, a That’s Life spin-off where people’s problems are solved and the president vents his spleen. All government flows through him, a fact he excuses by arguing that his will and the real interests of the Venezuelan nation are one and the same passion, born from his 1992 coup: “the people even invented a prayer: ‘Our Chávez who art in prison, hallowed be thy name.’ How do you fight that? It’s messianic, yes. But not because I pushed for it.” Not unlike those shantytown rebels in 1989 who stole the best whisky and champagne from the boutiques of Caracas, Chávez seems to have partaken too much of the political culture that preceded him. While the international banks speak of “second-generation” institutional reforms in the continent, Chávez is the relic who goes to a EU conference in Spain and berates the massacres of the conquistadors. Lula, by contrast, comes from a background even more deprived than that of Chavez, yet assiduously courts foreign capital and manages the world stage with ease. He is just as determined to bring the poor into the social mainstream, but wishes it to happen through the rule of law, business creation, and some variant of European consumer capitalism. The terrific austerity now being imposed in Brazil is the exertion to be made before the “orchestra” is tuned up, and in his words, “the symphony can begin.” The comparison between Lula and Chávez does not flatter the Venezuelan leader – though the latter would certainly protest, with some justice, that civil society is much more mature in Brazil, and its elites far more perceptive. Indeed, Lula himself has been inclined to indulge Chavez rather than rebuke him, and (as well as welcoming the Cuban leader to Brazil) has turned an approving eye to the intensifying mutual aid between Fidel Castro and Venezuela – the sugar factories, health services and university places are contributed by Cuba, the oil by Venezuela. Both within Brazil and in forays to the richer nations, Lula has never failed to listen to the bankers and portray his policies in terms of the future profitability of business. In a Latin American perspective, however, the arrival in power of the Workers’ Party leader is also part of a continental shift in which a certain space for repositioning is perceptible. Washington’s hawkish US assistant secretary of state Otto Reich, who played some part in the April 2002 coup against Chávez, is no more. Chile and Mexico successfully resisted US pressure for a second Iraq resolution in the UN Security Council. And the renegade revolutionaries from Cuba and Venezuela, their economies in tatters, are once again on the guest list for major functions across the continent, which the two men enjoy enormously. One simple reason to explain Chavez’s embrace of the revolutionary left is that semi-tropical export economies tend to present a highly-circumscribed choice of leader: as one impoverished Venezuelan put it to a visiting reporter, “he’s an idiot, but he’s our idiot.” Another, more significant consideration is that both Chávez and Castro lie within the political spectrum of the fight for equity in hostile surroundings. They stand at the destructive extreme of levelling politics, yet Lula must be aware that the pole they represent is a useful and persuasive menace in his own coming battles with business, land and financial elites. Many of the goals espoused by the three leaders are after all similar. Where they differ is over the extent to which historical conditions and ideological dogma have driven each to see different group interests as essentially incompatible – and society as a zero-sum contest between rich and poor. The hold of an inclusive vision, which argues for mutual benefits between classes and ethnicities, has always been tenuous on the continent: the more defective the underlying political and social settlement, the more likely that economic orthodoxy and the democratic rule-book will be flouted.

GENEROUS SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH

While the Poor are told to play the Free Market Game Those of us further to the left always had some difficulties with the notion, but George W. Bush's administration (and perhaps some of his acolytes nearer home) appear to have found a new approach: socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. In building a left polity without a basis in common ownership, a generation of Fabians and social democratic thinkers constructed a polity where the less well-off in society would be provided with a safety net - and indeed equality would be promoted, particularly through comprehensive education - while the richest could enjoy relatively laissez-faire pro-capitalist politics, their only cost being progressive taxation to fund the 'socialism' of the poor. Compared with much of the philosophy of the New Labour era, it was quite progressive, and it certainly isn't the purpose of the current article to criticise it. I was always sceptical that a single polity - the sum of the policies for rich, middling and poor - could really serve the interests of all three. At best it could serve the interests of two out of the three, and two contiguous groups. As such, I've always seen it as my business to try and design policies that serve the interests of those on moderate and low incomes, even if those policies run contrary to the interests (the immediate, material interests, at any rate) of the rich. But of course, all manner of states have intervened in all manner of economies, and just because we are used to the notion of state intervention as being part of the politics of the left, we must not ignore the potential of the state to intervene in the interests of the wealthy, even where the intervention may run contrary to the interests of those on moderate and low incomes. Of course, it may be the case that - in the interests of people of all manner of incomes, and across the world not just in the US - $700 billion (or more) will have to go to bail-out the gambling debts of the super-wealthy. It may be that that's what we have to do, because actually capitalism - even if you try and just reserve it for the rich - is inherently flawed, and is all-consuming. Our interests have - like it or not - become bound up with those of Wall Street and the City of London; and because governments in many countries have allowed the gamblers to have their fun (never bailing out those who truly lost when the losses consisted of the savings or pensions of people on moderate or low incomes) we have arrived at moment of emergency intervention. But this is also the moment of the test. Do we throw billions of dollars and pounds and euros at this tainted industry just to allow it to start again? For pinstriped gamblers to pocket billions in future boom years, and the rest of us to bail them out again when the next bust comes along? Can we afford that little bit of 'socialism' to keep the rich in business; the super-wealthy winning in boom and bust, while those on moderate and low incomes take the hit in both conditions too? After all, $700 billion dollars is an extraordinary amount of money; earlier debates about money in Congress this year have been about just how big the cuts in Medicare provision should be. John McCain - proud to have played his part in securing $700 billion dollars for bankers - has a set of policies that involve cutting Medicare further, getting rid of tax incentives for employer-paid health insurance... After all - ordinary people should be subject to the whims of the market. In the UK, we have closed down Remploy factories, while reducing the number of people eligible to claim a decent Disability Living Allowance amongst other 'welfare reforms' where we look after the pennies, while the pounds pour into the wealthiest people's back pockets and keep funding city bonuses. If it wasn't for the human cost of the nascent crisis, one could almost laugh that George W. Bush - that great ideologue of capitalism - should be presiding over such a great crisis of capital that he has had to occasionally take up the old cry of 'nationalise the banks!' But the important thing for us is to ensure - in the UK at least, where we have potential power over such decisions - that the interests of those on moderate and low incomes are kept at the forefront of all our decision-making, regulation and intervention. Underwriting the poison with tax money and public debt, while selling off the gold to another set of gamblers does not come under that heading. We also need to ensure that we rethink the stuctures of high finance - fundamentally and entirely - in the interests of those same members of society - even if that should run counter to the interests of the wealthiest. That is the lesson of the crisis, and it's a lesson we need to learn quickly and well.

MAKING OF THE NEW LATIN LEFT

Latin American authoritarianism: the 19th century's post-independence strongmen (including capricious butchers such as Paraguay's Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia); the mid-20th century's military rulers, inspired by national-security doctrines and the demonisation of the left after the Cuban revolution; and - today - the "third wave" represented by Morales and Chávez. The former shunned democracy entirely, while the latter shelved altogether the need for popular consultation ("the ballots boxes are in safe keeping" proclaimed the Argentine junta of 1976); what marks the current generation (so the argument goes) is that it rules through the "tyranny of the majority", exploiting long pent-up grievances to overrun all state institutions and taint opposition with the stigma of being oligarchs, imperial lapdogs, and enemies of the poor. This story, wholeheartedly propounded by the US military's southern command (whose chief, General Bantz J Craddock, predicts a "backwater of violent, inward-looking states") is not without its truths. At the level of rhetoric, both Morales and Chávez do specialise in bombast and confrontation. The actions of their states tend to be sudden, top-down, and geared to mass approval: take the 1 May nationalisation of Bolivia's hydrocarbons, or Chávez's blizzard of forty-nine decrees in 2001 and his incessant military build-up. Inside the states, and despite differences of circumstance and history, new prerogatives of presidential power emerge. Some $15 billion, taken from "surplus" oil revenues and central bank reserves, are now under the control of Venezuela's development fund, Fonden - an organisation run by a president-appointed board, with decisions rubber-stamped by a parliament where all 167 seats are occupied by chavistas. "Others used them (presidential decrees) to put their hands in people's pockets," Kirchner recently explained of his own ruling habits in Argentina. "I use them to fill pensioners' pockets and protect people." As the various legs and arms of public power become occupied - first the executive and parliament, then the courts, the civil service, the armed and security forces, state-run companies, and finally the press and provinces (which not even Chávez has yet achieved) - the mística of power intensifies. The Venezuelan leader, according to his brilliant ex-guerrilla opponent Teodoro Petkoff, exerts a "magical-religious" thrall; López Obrador, though he will have to wait, is denounced for "messianic" tendencies; Morales received his ceremonial vestments of the Great Condor at Tiwanaku a day before his presidential sash. "There is a classic and well-known fear of freedom, an insidious and pernicious feeling," writes Chilean author Jorge Edwards, with urbane disillusion, of the continent's penchant for "Napoleon's imitators." A question of land The criticisms are valid, but in themselves they hardly amount to the dawn of leftwing tyranny. In all cases, barring Cuba, the opposition is alive and vociferous, the ballot secret, the press free, and the courts still function; there is definitely no sign that prison cells are receiving political inmates. Yet the sense of imminent institutional shutdown is undeniably strong. Middle and upper classes in Bolivia and Venezuela look to Havana with grave foreboding, uncertain what the much-vaunted Chávez-Morales-Castro "axis of good" might entail. They find swaggering populism tolerable, even normal: it is and always has been the default mode of the right across the region. But a state that extends its purported revolutionary mission into a country's most ingrained institution - private property - is quite another thing. The extent to which the fears of Latin America's wealthier social strata, the denunciations of encroaching dictatorship, and the attempts to reorder a nation's ownership structure are strapped together should never be underestimated. Time and again, the region's societies have tolerated far-reaching reform, only to snap into warring factions when the issue of land deeds is broached. The seed of Chile's coup in September 1973 can largely be found in fears of a property revolution that had in fact been initiated in the 1960s, under a reforming Christian Democratic government. And as a recent, unofficial biography of Chávez makes clear, the item in the waterfall of Bolivarian legislation in 2001 "that provoked the greatest agitation" concerned legal controls over land and agrarian development; Chávez termed it "hot stuff"' and said "I worked on it myself." The raw neurosis that the lexicon of land reform produces - the word "expropriation" has similar connotations to violent mugging in Latin America - stems from firm historical roots. Shaped by an invasive, colonial rule, the region's economies generated centuries of fine living for some, married to low-paid extraction and harvest for the rest. Ownership, in other words, bequeathed wealth and status; it defined social identity in a profoundly conservative fashion, sapping the continent of the less fecund north's capacity for market innovation, mobility, and industrial investment. When attempts are made to rewrite the underlying property structure, the margin for democratic compromise appears minimal: those who gain do so at the expense of someone else's loss. This is, more than anything, a zero-sum game. Bolivia is now living the early stages of this conflict. Some thirty-five million acres, say government officials, are to be distributed to 2.5 million people, or 28% of the population, by 2011; this in a country where, according to the Catholic church, 50,000 families own 90% of the land. "The historical enemies of the poor must accept this land revolution," declared Morales in June. According to his vice-president and strategic mastermind, Álvaro García Linera, the eventual goal is a three-tiered "Andean capitalism": modern industry (initially gas production), urban trade, and traditional farming. Already the countryside has witnessed shootouts and deaths. The strident opposition in the eastern Santa Cruz lowlands has spawned a protest network (Nación Camba). It boasts vigilante, racist tendencies and an agenda of halting land reform, as well as a civic leader, Germán Antelo, who excoriates the government for "authoritarian fascism", and for its "manuals of subversion written in foreign lands." It is no coincidence that the lion's share of the land destined for redistribution - on the basis of laws passed in 1953 and 1996, albeit to little effect - should lie in the fertile east. It may be predictable, but there is still something unsettling in the way Bolivia's great popular awakening, that of Morales's landslide election in December 2005, should have so soon produced a stand-off threatening the very foundations of democracy. "In this tug of war, democracy keeps going only as a precarious balance between demands for social change and the interests that resist it," explains Ana María Romero de Campero, who heads the Unir-Bolivia foundation, devoted to the unenviable task of pacifying the country. The conflicts, she says, are still building up, "exacerbated by one side, then another." Other countries in the left-leaning quadrant, where urban population densities are much higher, have not suffered the same extreme polarisation through agrarian reform. But the propertied still shiver with anxiety at the morning news: a tremendous row is brewing within chavista ranks - oxymoronic as that may seem to some - over decrees to expropriate ninety-five supposedly underused properties in Caracas, two of them golf courses. Luis D'Elía, former piquetero (picketer) leader in Argentina and now a government housing official, has likewise lobbied for a more radical treatment of land, particularly the tracts in hands of foreigners - starting with 300,000 hectares belonging to United States businessman Douglas Tompkins. In these countries, however, a rather different form of redistribution provides a greater cause for alarm. Violent crime is not government policy, but the terror it generates, and its sharp recent rise - Latin American accounted for 75% of all the world's kidnappings in 2003 - would seem to express in a diffuse way the abandonment felt by the wealthy, and the vengeance that society is preparing for them. Where governments should exert firm control, there now appear territories run by sub-states forged in prisons (as in Brazil's Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Capital Command / PCC), or armed gang networks camped out in the hearts of cities. It is not difficult to imagine the panic felt by the Portuguese business community in Venezuela when, for several weeks in 2006, a list of their names and addresses were sold first at street-stalls, before then being posted on the internet. All power to the informal A populist leftwing drift is neither novel nor particularly threatening: Brazil under Getulio Vargas, Argentina under Perón, Bolivia from 1952, Peru from 1968 - all provided less democratic and constitutional varieties of the very same phenomenon. But this new political climate is marked by Cuban guidance, institutional fragility, and a bellicose rhetoric of them-and-us; for many, it seems in word and deed to be heading to a democratic dead-end and an overarching state. Were Hugo Chávez to lose in December, would he really give up power? Radical intellectuals respond with a familiar, yet powerful argument. Drawing on the great theorists of Latin American revolution, the Cuban José Martí and the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui, they stress the primacy of social rights, derived from the moral urgency of combating extreme poverty. Fidel Castro still draws on huge sympathy across the continent for this very reason; his government counterpoises its extraordinary aid of 2,600 medics to Pakistan after the earthquake in October 2005, its eye-surgery for 6 million poor people across the continent, with the export of war by Washington in the name of freedom. "Democracy is under threat in Latin America, but not in Bolivia and Venezuela," argues Atilio Borón, a prominent Argentine sociologist. "The great problems are to be found in countries where governments are failing to rule in line with the expectations of the electorate, causing a very serious corrosion of legitimacy." Were social welfare and the full quota of civic and political rights incompatible, then it might be right to choose the former. But from the developed west, this trade-off sounds suspect: surely a formula in which the two feature, as they did in post-1975 Spain, would be preferable. Surely political movements and parties can reach an accommodating pact to serve the common good while also blocking authoritarian takeovers. The blueprint for best-practice democracy, however, must at some stage face up to the domestic particularities of Latin America. Spain's parties of right and left struck a constitutional deal that has brought thirty years of growth and alternation in power. Colombia in 1957 and Venezuela in 1958 witnessed very similar left-right pacts, whose signatories pledged growth, civil rights and social justice - only for Colombia to be consumed by over four decades of fratricidal conflict, and Venezuela to seize up in 1998, victim of rampant corruption and a hobbling, hapless state. "We do not know what sort of country we want to be, nor how we want to be it, nor how we can be it," reads the confession of Ramón Escovar Salom, an interior minister in the last pre-Chávez government. Those political parties which might steer a moderate course towards reform, meanwhile, have vanished from sight in the countries that would most appear to need them. The new movements - the Bolivarian cause in Venezuela, Bolivia's MAS - rose in the twilight of party systems, staking out constituencies at extreme speed through a febrile grassroots and a national media presence. And in no way do they resemble the parties they superseded: locating stable membership, manifestos and conventions is a fruitless quest. MAS is a focal-point of dozens of different social sectors and radical causes, which it does not altogether control. Chávez, meanwhile, is at the pinnacle of a bewildering array of groups and neighbourhood committees, first engendered by his propaganda trips across Venezuela in a Toyota Samurai after his release from jail in 1994. If there is any glue in these huge and powerful movements, it is a certain defining social experience. These are the quintessential products of 1990s Latin America, where the state pulled back, poverty rose, mass media spread, and formal contractual employment withered. Indeed it is the people subsisting in black market employment, accounting for 47% of all the region's urban jobs in 2003 - rising to 66.7% in Bolivia, the highest rate on the continent - who are the bedrock of this political transformation. Apart from limited labour laws, their lives are virtually without a safety net - and 75% of Latin Americans are afraid they will lose their job. The state has done nothing for them. Their homes are built, not bought: a United Nations study in 2000 found that 50% of homes in Caracas were constructed unofficially. Their hopes of social advancement are virtually nil. Argentine author Tomás Eloy Martínez memorably reported the case of one man from Berazategui in Greater Buenos Aires, who encapsulates just such a struggle with shift work, penury and constraint: a factory hand who on losing his watch, and unable to pay for a new one, regularly gets up to walk to the bus station during the night so he can ask for the time, and thus not be late to start his job at 6am. It is no surprise that voters such as these demand sweeping change. Nor is it remarkable that coarse nationalism and primetime TV proclamations are the political response. Their plea - echoed in multiple Latinobarómetro surveys from across the continent - is for effective, accessible government. Their leaders' venom against the oligarchy or petrolatifundismo (oil and estate ownership) or the empire strikes a popular chord, and soothes high expectations. But this impatience and battle-readiness is leavened with far more pragmatic demands, complicating the prognosis for imminent authoritarianism. Ideology is fuzzy and volatile: having spent five years in jail for training a revolutionary militia in the 1990s, García Linera now appears to be Bolivia's chief pacifier of the opposition and foreign investors. There is certainly no systematic revolutionary plan, nor state structure able to pull one off, nor a cold-war power willing to sponsor such a transformation. Just as significantly, the popular social demands are material - for food, health and education. Any threat to the future provision of these goods would quickly sap the leaders of authority. Chávez, for instance, may have built up a massive war chest of discretionary funds, but focus-group work by the Hinterlaces agency in Caracas in 2004 noted just how willing his supporters in that year's referendum would be to change sides should he not deliver on his promises. Inside the regimes, crude and boisterous democracy is in fact the normal working practice. Frequent governmental chaos in Bolivia, particularly involving the nationalisation of gas fields, is a faithful reflection of the clamour of so many powerful social groups, with their front line in the shanty towns of El Alto. Even if this would seem to entail a tyranny by the poor majority and the construction of huge constituencies fed by political patronage, there are sounds reasons to expect that issues such as crime, economic stability and growth - on which a future opposition might thrive - will gain greater popular leverage. For just as free trade's creative destruction promises in the long-run to make rich workers out of the world's labouring poor, so these governments are hoping to turn the marginalised into an aspiring bourgeoisie, a boli-burguesía. Horizontal movements, driven by vocal material demands, are not harbingers of dictatorship. Extreme polarisation, however, has fostered a climate in which violent action, curbs on independent institutions, electoral boycotts and vigilante groups may flourish. It is easy to lament or condemn the clumsy aggression of a populist regime; but much harder to accept that it emerges from a process of political and governmental decomposition that has left millions to survive without support, and to give their votes to the promise of instant remedies. Wise diplomacy and the counsel of neighbouring moderate governments, especially once the Brazilian election campaign is over, should serve to allay many of these tensions. Yet all concerned, inside and outside, should remember that these new leaders are not dangerous and disposable puppets, but the products of history, pouring from groundswells in their societies. Cuba's Josè Martí said it well: Injértense en nuestras repúblicas el mundo; pero el tronco ha de ser de nuestras repúblicas ("Let the world form part of our republics; but the foundation has to be of our republics").

THE FIRST MANY MOVEMENTS GET OFF THE GROUND RUNNING

As The Expected Prosecutions of NPP Functionaries Begin A new movement that purports to be fighting for the freedom of "politically persecuted" individuals has been formed. It is FREE GYIMA MOVEMENT. It main aim is to fight for the acquittal and freedom Mr.Charles Gyima the former Boss of the National Investment Bank who is currently in the custody of the National Bureau of Investigation BNI for causing Financial loss to the state. Even before this chap is hauled before a court and determined to be either guilty or innocent this group led by Egbert Fabille ,the Editor/Publisher are shaping up to dominate the media space to primarily accuse the NDC government of witch hunting. Based on the sleaze,greed,and corruption that has gone on over the last 8 years,it will not be surprising to see t his movenement as one of many yet to come. We may soon have the likes of FREE OSAFO MARFO MOVEMENT,FREE KOJO MPIANI MOVEMENT,FREE ANANE MOVEMENT,FREE OBETSEBI MOVEMENT or even FREE Kuffour MOVEMENT. Surely the wrongs the NPP did will not be quietly swept under the rug.

GHANA'S POLICY SPACE

TRADE POLICY PRACTICE IN GHANA Economic partnership agreements’ or free trade areas are currently being nego-tiated between the European Union and the different sub-regions of the ACP group, including ECOWAS. EPA/FTAs will have considerable consequences for domestic economies in the sub-region and therefore will be a critical element in defining the direction of the region's economic development in the next decade or two. While the ECOWAS governments and the European Commission are still agreeing the road map for the negotiations, EPAs have not been discussed fully with local stakeholders. This first workshop, organised by TWN-Africa and GAWU was a first test to measure the concerns and reactions of stakeholders – particularly producers - to this latest addition to an ‘alphabet soup’ of initiatives ostensibly aimed at reversing Africa’s economic decline. The EPA negotiations are taking place while the Government of Ghana is formulating a national trade policy. Through a series of contributions and debates, local actors from agriculture, industry, services and financial sectors presented a list of concerns and issues that should inform both government’s position in EPA negotiations as well as the content of the national trade policy. Beyond getting the right set of policies, changes in many practices on the part of the authorities are required as well. Who calls the shots? An overriding concern of national stakeholders is the excessive influence that external partners have over national policy making. While it is true that the government depends extensively on international do-nors for public financing, it was observed that development partners are pro-tecting their national interests primarily, and therefore their policy prescriptions are biased towards providing opportunities for their own multinationals and promoting their economies. Consequently, the policies that they advocate have not tended to be primarily in the interests of the local economy and its producers. It is only national actors that can identify what the national interests are. It is understood that government is constantly under pressure to liberalise and open the economy to foreign goods, services and investors. But the focus on the external had become excessive – to the detriment of local actors. While lib-eralisation may ensure cheaper imports for consumers (eg. rice, poultry), the benefits are limited to just that – lower prices. Encouraging local production, whether for export or for domestic consumption has multiplier effects that cre-ate jobs, support the growth of new sectors, contribute to social welfare as well as public finances. Conversely, when an economic sector collapses, the consequences are widespread and go well beyond the sector which is directly affected. Left by the wayside … is agriculture passé? Agriculture is the largest eco-nomic sector, but the government has not drafted an agricultural policy which would work in concert with the trade policy. It has however adopted a posture – which is that of opening up the sector to imports. The problem for the Ghanaian agricultural sector is that the playing field is not level, particularly because so many agricultural imports entering the market enjoy subsidies. Obviously our hopes of influencing change in global trade rules to tip the scales in favour of Ghana’s producers is slim, but we can find ways to work around the rules through well thought domestic policies so that the agriculture sector can thrive. A balance needs to be struck between the export driven model and the import substitution model. In the rice sector for example, there has been a loss in the domestic market of about 150 million, but at the same time, export earnings are stagnant at some 30 million. We have to question the rationale of giving up this sector if we are not able to see the quid pro quo. The poultry issue clearly begs the question to what extent is government in control of policy making and how committed is it to the local farming sector? – Adhering to WTO, World Bank and IMF policies is a questionable path if the end result is the death of the agricultural sector as a result of free-for-all imports. The emphasis on exports may make sense on paper, but it may be much more beneficial for us to focus on domestic and regional markets, rather than international markets only. Connecting the dots in export promotion policies: In countries such as South East Asia which have experienced an economic boom, companies had built their export success on the back of successes on their domestic markets. The companies that were most likely to succeed in exports were those that per-formed well in their domestic markets. National policies that are geared at strengthening the domestic producers in domestic markets will be the launch pad for growth in the export sector. Import substitution policies – as a path to industrialisation - has been aban-doned in favour of the search for foreign direct investment. Such investment has not been forthcoming. Relatively speaking FDI inflows have been inade-quate and concentrated mainly in the extractive sector. Therefore the policy of deregulating and liberalising had resulted in more consequences than benefits. The bias towards attracting FDI as one of the planks for economic growth has left local economic operators marginalized and overlooked in public policy. The support required from the state – which companies in other countries have been able to rely on – has not been forthcoming. Many of the areas that need to be addressed to make local companies competitive in a have been neglected. In fact, it is time that some survey on the impact of the policies of the last two decades on the local business sector was conducted. Local stakeholders also stated repeatedly that the issue of competitiveness vis-à-vis foreign imports had been grossly misrepresented. When it comes to com-petitiveness both in terms of price and in terms of quality, it is not clear cut that local products are automatically inferior, as tends to be the stereotype. Similarly the price differences were frequently the result of export and other subsidies that industrialised countries are able to provide their producers. Industrialised countries are able to subsidize agriculture as a result of the growth of other sectors, particularly manufacturing. Therefore the lack of active policies to support the manufacturing sector has an impact on the extent to which government is able to support agricultural producers. In parallel, the lack of support for the agricultural sector is resulting in increased poverty since this is the sector where the majority of the population gain their livelihoods. Manufacturing – how serious are we? Prices of raw materials world-wide are falling, which provides an opportunities for boosting manufacturing. How-ever much the word is disliked by donors, protecting infant industries is a ‘pas-sage obligatoire’ – an unavoidable step – in building manufacturing capacity. Rather than enjoy ‘domestic preference’ local suppliers face reverse discrimina-tion. A local manufacturer bidding for a government contract still has to pay duty on raw material inputs. Foreign suppliers are able to gain duty free access to markets, particularly where the contracts are part of foreign aid projects, which is the case in a large number of public contracts. Public procurement is one of the largest markets, but with the new government procurement bill, the state no longer has the option to support local manufacturers through public contracts. The problem with removing ‘domestic preference’ provisions in the procurement bill is that in manufacturing as in other sectors, competitiveness can only be built through practice – through learning by doing. Many industries start by producing low quality products but are able to transform their industries into manufacturers of high quality goods. For example, Ghana’s export drive in the region has been based on the plastics industry built over the years. ‘Passive protectionism’ should be distinguished from ‘active protectionism.’ In the for-mer, governments simply protected and ‘sat back’, expecting that the rest would follow. In the latter, protectionism is part of a strategy to help strengthen local manufacturing in the knowledge that trade barriers will come down and they will have to compete. Such a long term strategy seems to be lacking. Low quality imports disadvantage local producers that have a competitive ad-vantage in quality. Worse still, they affect consumer health and safety. Liberal-ising markets, without equipping regulatory institutions, such as the Ghana Standards Board is disadvantaging the country in both ways. The private sector would be prepared to support the effort to strengthen these institutions as a way of ensuring that low quality imports are not put on the Ghanaian market. Tapping potential to meet local investment requirements locally: On the subject of investment – which is needed to finance production - the poten-tial on the local market has also been overlooked in favour of attracting foreign investment which is declining. Over the past 7 years $507 million had entered the country as FDI and the figure is declining. Just 5 million Ghanaians saving 1 million cedis a year could surpass that amount. The problem was not the lack of money locally to finance investment, but a lack of creativity in finding different ways to mobilise local resources, create more savings and utilise this for in-vestment. The challenges for local resource mobilisation are a problem of policy, orienta-tion as well as institutional readiness to be more innovative. Where attempts had been made, the financial services sector had proved that it could be done. It was up to government to ensure a regulatory environment that builds the confidence of citizens to invest their savings in local production. Mainstream banking has tended to be far too conservative and unable to adopt strategies to mobilise resources that take account of the reality of the Ghanaian economy. Eyeing the services sector – the need for caution: Services are the fastest growing economic sector world wide. Services liberalisation – including of public utilities is now a heavy focus of attention in WTO negotiations. Within the WTO, countries have to indicate their intention to liberalise services sectors and may also make requests of other countries to liberalise sectors which are of interest to them. Ghana had made a number of commitments to liberalise services, and has to consider a number of requests. The Ghanaian government has also liberalised some services sectors through domestic legislation. In the EPA negotiations, the EU is demanding that services liberalisation be part of the trade agreement with ECOWAS. Decisions to liberalise sectors or otherwise had significant implications for local service providers. There is a need to review the experience of services liberali-sation to date, as in some cases the results have been fairly chaotic, particularly given the inability to monitor and regulate the activities of services operators. The results of reform of different sectors had to be assessed before commit-ments could be made at the multilateral level (WTO, EPAs etc). In particular it was stressed that decisions on liberalisation should be based on a pragmatic vision for the sector in the context of overall social and development policies, and after an objective assessment of strengths and weaknesses of the local sectors to supply such sectors. In some services areas such as cargo handling, Ghanaian companies have de-veloped expertise and are well established. Cargo handling is a valuable earner of foreign currency for the country and so considerations to open up to external operators has to be viewed in that light. Different sectors have to make their views known to clarify the direction in which services can be liberalised or oth-erwise. Meeting the challenges of the expanding fisheries industry: Though it seems obvious that policies should be chosen in the light of the national social and development policies, the full development potential of the country is lost due to the lack of comprehensive and mutually reinforcing set of policies focus-sed primarily on building local production capacity. The fisheries sector, is one of the most important non-traditional exports. However, the challenges for de-veloping a sustainable fisheries industry are many. The problem of depletion of fish resources and degradation of the coastline, combine with a list of other is-sues that require attention from policy makers. Commercial fishing relies heavily on expatriate fishing crews and not enough has been done to upgrade Ghana-ians to do these jobs. Where pricing is concerned, there is a problem of a mo-nopoly, so that it is more profitable to sell fish in neighbouring countries, in-stead of to the quasi-sole buyer in the country. Inland and artisanal fisheries sectors should also be supported and developed. The rise in illegal fishing is another matter for concern. There is an institutional vacuum because the Fish-eries Commission has not been set up. Perhaps because of the lack of a statu-tory body to oversee the industry, these problems persist in spite of numerous representations made to government to address problems. However, over and above the national constraints the fisheries sector is in diffi-culty because it has benefited from special preferences to EU markets. Now that the EU has been providing similar trade preferences to other developing regions, the position of the sector in leading the drive in non-traditional exports was being compromised, particularly when measures are taken without warning. This means that in the EPA negotiations, the Ghanaian government should try to secure a predictable margin of trade preferences over a predictable timeframe before they are phased out. Outreach efforts needed for micro operators: It is critical that policy dis-cussions are accompanied by an outreach programme that enables all economic actors to make their inputs. There are many that operate on the micro-level who never get a chance to contribute to policy. Traders are an essential part of the economy, and yet they had very little opportunity to shape policy making. Equally, not enough trouble is taken to inform them of new policies. In conse-quence, traders are left to survive by their wits, and in turn feel little obligation to respect new policies. Often traders and producers are pitted against each other, and yet this conflict of interest could be resolved by designing a policy framework that ensures that they are complementary rather than oppositional. Commerce has in fact been relegated to the informal sector – as the place for people who could not find jobs and yet the market queens are a central part of our trade policy. In the public sector, traders are immediately perceived as criminals so that they are blocked rather than facilitated by the authorities. It would be desirable for traders to be able to graduate into production – but it is impossible for them to generate the necessary capital because of requirements from banks to produce collateral. All in all, the preliminary documents presented by the Ministry of Trade as the basis for formulating the national trade policy were welcomed as useful, par-ticularly as they provided relevant data and information to enable stakeholders to assess options. The fear was that recommendations from local stakeholders that did not get the nod from donors would not be accepted. Secondly, there were many problems of administrative inefficiency and corruption that needed to addressed. Finally it was stressed that without looking at some fundamental problems – such as electricity supply – there was never any hope for the coun-try to become competitive. Electricity privatisation had been undertaken and yet problems still persisted. Economic Partnership Agreements – where do we go from here? As a result of all these difficulties and challenges, local operators were fairly sceptical about the ability of Economic Partnership Agreements to bring benefits to the country. Firstly the agenda is that of the EU: no-one in the country had asked for EPAs. However the initiative is on the table, and the success of EPAs de-pends largely on the kind of agreement that the governments are able to nego-tiate. The outlook for concluding a successful agreement is grim. To start with, the EU’s negotiating directives demonstrates that it is more clear about its de-mands of ACP countries, and much less committal when it comes to its own ob-ligations. Such nebulous language is not acceptable. While there are losses and gains in any liberalisation exercise, the country has to be assured of net gains. Furthermore, tariff reduction needed to be accom-panied by measures to cushion the costs – particularly training people to work in other sectors. Just the literacy rate now estimated now at less than 50% in-dicates the level of the challenge to deal with the human resource challenges. The data needed to undertake an adequate cost-benefit analysis of EPAs was not sufficient to negotiate competently. It was pointed out that impact assess-ments that had been conducted had not been satisfactory, and in fact there had not been any training of local capacity in impact assessments which was an ex-tremely difficult discipline. Some institutions such as UNCTAD had developed tools to assist countries to conduct such assessments, but the training in these tools still needed to be undertaken. There is heavy reliance on external consult-ants to do such work. The quality of their work is not guaranteed. Furthermore, since they are commissioned by donors most frequently, their terms of refer-ence do not prioritise the needs of the country. Building local capacity in the public sector to service these needs is further hampered by the caps on public spending and hiring that donors insist on. These practical questions make it dif-ficult to negotiate successfully in the timelines that are given. Already the negotiations have hit a stumbling block in ECOWAS because the road map does not clearly spell out that the EU is prepared to pledge additional financing to help bear the costs of EPA-FTA liberalisation. The European trade commission has stated that it only has a mandate to negotiate trade issues not financial packages. ECOWAS on the other hand is insistent that additional fi-nancing is the only way to make EPAs meaningful to support programmes to enhance the competitiveness, compensate for tax revenues, and deal with ‘ad-justment costs’ of economic sectors that will be negatively affected by liberali-sation. Therefore with so many challenges and questionable benefits, how should Ghana deal with the EPA negotiations? Should we negotiate EPAs or not? For all intents and purposes, the governments have already committed to negotiations and therefore it was not possible to backtrack. Some organisations are clearly against an arrangement of reciprocal trade with the EU particularly given that the coverage area will be between 75% and 90% of all trade between the two. Others feel that there is no point in avoiding negotiations; it is better to deal with the difficulties and ensure that the set up negotiated maximises potential advantages and minimises the costs. However a consensus emerged that the timelines are too short for the country to undertake meaningful negotiations, and there is a need to slow the process down, particularly to make informed decisions about the positions that the country should take. The debate on EPAs needs to be a public debate involving all stakeholders. It was important to prevent a situation where government is under pressure to sign an agreement that will be to the detriment to the national economy. For this to happen, different sectors have to come together and engage with the government so that it is moving forward with a mandate that reflects the con-sensus of the various national stakeholders, small and big.

"EX-GREEDY' CAUASES PUBLIC ANGER

AS MPs Threaten the Executive Now Ghanaian know the trues colors of majority of our politicians.A bunch of corrupt greedy ,selfish and insensitive group who pretend to care about the people who put them in power. President Mills last week revised the Ex-gratia (Ex-greedy as i call it) payment that was written by the disgraced former adviser to Ex president Kuffour. This did not go down well with both the former and current Parliamentarians and government official who will benefit from it and a lot has been threaten since. Led by the chief stomach politician, Freddie Blay ,former deputy speaker and MP in the last parliament these group of beneficiaries have threaten to institute a legal action against the President for what they consider as an unjust and unconstitutional action by the president. The current parliamentarians especially those in the NPP opposition have either publicly condemned the downward revision or or quietly supported and given moral support behind the scenes. the NPP with the notable exception of P.C. Appiah Ofori are also threatening to cause problems for the the executive thorough "constitutional blackmail. (Un)Surprisingly some members of the ruling NDC are said to be angry about the action of their president are grumbling and wishing for a reversal of the decision. These insensitive politician are impervious to the angry public outcry against their excesses. The public mood is that of anger and some members of the the suffering Ghanaian populace are so disillusioned they have threatened not to vote again since all the politicians from both sides are the same.

RICH PEOPLES EXCESSES CAUSING THE POOR

In the gilded age (less than 2 years ago)the rich had it so good that their excesses became a constant feature our our times. We became so used to it in some few years it became normal.Champagne flowed, private jets flew around, huge fuel guzzling SUVs were driven around and a lot of money was earned and burned by the 2% of the world population who were part of the super rich and controlled over 90% of the worlds resources.The gap between the rich and the poor widened so much that for the first time in human history more people had more money than ever before whilst at the same time more people than ever were classified as poor. Those at the fringes of the global economy actual experienced a fall in their incomes and resources and this pushed more people into poverty. It was not only in developing countries where this happened but also in the rich economies. The US led the way with the shrinking of the middle class with a inexplicable situation where at the time the richest section of the society was burgeoning , the number of people classified as poor increased about 40%. When the "masters of the universe" were devising planning and executing their financial engineering schemes it actually affected the poorest of the poor an when the crash came the poor are the first and worst sufferers. The World Bank warned last week that up to 53 million more people around the world could fall into poverty in 2009 as a result of the global economic slump, and up to 400,000 more children could die each year as a result of rising infant mortality. The statistics highlight the worldwide character of the social catastrophe being caused by the deepening crisis. The bank's new estimates for 2009 suggest that lower economic growth rates will force 53 million more people to exist on less than $2 a day than was expected prior to the downturn. This is on top of the 130-155 million people pushed into poverty in 2008 because of soaring food and fuel prices. The bank's extremely low benchmark for poverty—$2 a day—suggests that its figures vastly underestimate the actual number of people around the world who are barely able to feed, clothe and house themselves. Preliminary estimates for 2009 to 2015 forecast that an average 200,000 to 400,000 more children a year, a total of 1.4 to 2.8 million over the six-year period, may die if the crisis persists. In addition, millions of people already living in poverty "will be pushed further below the poverty line," according to the World Bank policy note,"The Global Economic Crisis: Assessing Vulnerability with a Poverty Lens." The note states: "Almost all developed and developing countries are suffering from the global economic crisis. While developed countries are experiencing some of the sharpest contractions, households in developing countries are much more vulnerable and likely to experience acute negative consequences in the short- and long-term." Almost 40 percent of 107 developing countries are "highly exposed" to the poverty and hardship effects of the crisis and the remainder are "moderately exposed," according to the report. The bank warns that three quarters of these countries will be unable to raise funds domestically or internationally to finance job-creation, the delivery of basic infrastructure and essential services—including health, education and core public administration—and safety net programs for the vulnerable. The statistics provide only a pale outline of the impoverishment, malnutrition and misery caused by the global recession. These outcomes are an indictment of the anarchy of the private profit system. First, the speculative escalation of food and fuel prices of 2007-08 threw up to 155 million people into poverty; and now the financial crash is threatening many millions more. These forecasts make a mockery of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals, which set targets to overcome poverty by 2015. The World Bank released its forecast to coincide with the Group of Seven (G7) summit of finance ministers and central bank governors in Rome last Friday and Saturday. Anti-poverty organisations from the UN Millennium Campaign joined the bank in lobbying for the establishment of a "Vulnerability Fund" in which each developed country would devote 0.7 percent of its stimulus package to aid impoverished "developing" countries. Even this utterly inadequate proposal received short shrift from the G7 ministers. In their final communiqué, a single one-sentence reference to poorer economies said: "The G7 also stresses the need to support emerging and developing countries' access to credit and trade financing and resume private capital flows, and is committed to explore urgently ways, including through multilateral development banks, to enhance this support." In other words, the plight of hundreds of millions of destitute people must be left in the hands of the same financial system and "private capital flows" that have broken down, producing the worst global collapse since the 1930s. The Rome summit proved incapable of offering any new measures to stem the rapidly deteriorating global situation. As the meeting gathered, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) warned that worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit 50 million by the end of 2009. The ILO expressed concern that "social tensions may begin to arise." The slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million American jobs. While the number of jobs in the US has been falling since the end of 2007, the pace of layoffs in Europe, Asia and the poorest countries has now caught up, underscoring the global character of the crisis engulfing capitalism. Unemployment in Britain is expected to rise to 9.5 percent by the middle of 2010, from 6.3 percent now, according to Peter Dixon, an economist with Commerzbank in London, and Germany's jobless rate could rise to 10.5 percent from 7.8 percent. More than 20 million Chinese internal migrant workers have already been thrown out of work, and in India, another former boom economy, about 500,000 people lost jobs between October and December 2008, according to one recent analysis. "This is the worst we've had since 1929," Laurent Wauquiez, France's employment minister said in comments cited by the New York Times. "The thing that is new is that it is global, and we are always talking about that. It is in every country, and it makes the whole difference." The G7 ministers were confronted by news of a record gross domestic product (GDP) fall across the Eurozone—1.5 percent in the December quarter—and warnings by economists that Japan, the world's second largest economy, is contracting at an annualised rate of more than 10 percent. However, the summit simply reiterated calls for further stimulus and bank bailout packages of the kind that have already failed to halt the recession. Despite the global dimension of the economic and social problems, the meeting could barely paper over the mounting tensions between the major powers and the growth of protectionism. The final communiqué merely restated a perfunctory commitment toward "avoiding protectionist measures," even though a rash of such measures has occurred since the G7 ministers last met in October. On the eve of the summit, the US Congress adopted President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package with a "buy American" clause that requires the use of American steel in infrastructure-building projects. In France last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to supply low-interest loans of 3 billion euros, or $3.86 billion, each to PSA Peugeot Citroën and Renault in exchange for an agreement not to lay off French workers, which means that Eastern European plants will bear the brunt of planned cutbacks. Last month in Britain, unions organised strikes and protests against the employment of construction workers from Italy and Portugal, invoking Prime Minister Gordon Brown's earlier promise of "British jobs for British workers." These are not isolated developments. Most of the stimulus and financial bailout packages adopted since last October contain measures designed to rescue the national economy, banks and industrial sectors, directly or indirectly at the expense of those of other countries. Economists have noted the summit's failure to stem protectionism. "The G7 statement ticks all the right boxes, but as expected does not go beyond generic statements of principle and commitments that we have heard before," Marco Annunziata, the chief economist in London for UniCredit, Italy's largest bank, told Canada's Globe and Mail. Despite the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, all the national-based rescue packages have been unable to prevent the rapid growth of unemployment. None can resolve the global crisis because they are all based on protecting and upholding the interests of the financial and corporate elites in each country. While official lip service is paid to coordinated action and to avoiding protectionism, the world is once again witnessing a rise of "beggar-thy-neighbour" responses of the kind that dominated in the 1930s, culminating in the Second World War. As in Britain, France and the US, the trade unions are at the forefront of the nationalist response, which serves only to divide the international working class along national lines and divert working people from the actual source of the galloping joblessness and social misery—the private profit system itself. Rising unemployment rates, especially among young workers, have led to explosive protests in countries as varied as Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to widespread strikes in Italy and France. But without a clear alternative political perspective there is a danger that these upheavals will be contained and trapped within a national framework. The precipitous worsening of global poverty and unemployment and the plunge into a new period of trade wars and military conflagrations can be halted in only one way. It requires a conscious international struggle by the working class on the basis of a socialist program to overturn the capitalist order and build a new world economy based on human and social need, not corporate and private wealth accumulation.

GHANA FROM THE INSIDE

MY Perspectives from the Real Ghana as i traveled extensively in Central Region This will be the first of many blogs I will be entering while I will be on the field. Well if u are lost ; I am conducting a monitoring and evaluation as a member of a team engaged by the Ghana statistical services (GSS) together with the institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) to conduct a baseline survey of districts that will benefit from the Millennium Challenge Account . After a difficult and mostly disorganized training program preceding a waiting period of about a month we finally set of at 1:28pm from Accra on 31 March 2008 towards Winneba in the Central Region. We arrived at Winneba around 4pm. After a meeting with the District Coordinating Director who seemed preoccupied with other things he directed us to The Army Guest House to arrange for lodging. Unfortunately for us we were told the place was fully booked for weeks. We went round a couple of hotels looking for accommodation and it became apparent that the District has a very bad record in paying its bills. For this reason no hotel was willing to give us accommodation without upfront payment. We finally got an average looking guest house where we were paired two in a room. The lady among us was given a room on her own (for obvious reasons). On the first day 2 of the team members had not fully joined us. One of them lived in the region where we were working, so he chose to commute to the survey base for the first couple of days. The other called and arranged to join us on the second day. On the second day we earnestly proceeded to start preliminary work. With the assistance of the Resident District Statistician we went ahead and identified all the Enumeration Areas (EA) that contained our respondents as well as the selected households .Winneba contained 8 being a sizeable town. This exercise proved to be quiet challenging given the nature of planning and address system in the town. During the evening the hotel manager told us that the district authorities had only arranged for only 5 days of stay we were expected to check out on the 5th day. After some long enquiries we found the identity of the various assembly members for the respective electoral areas. The assemblymen are important for 2 reasons • As part of due process and protocol they are the point of reference for all the work in the chosen community or EA. • Thety are the main respondents to the community questionnaires. On the 3rd day the two group members who had not joined us turned up; compounding our already precarious accommodation problems. Work started promptly around 7:00am. The various interviewers were sent to their respective EAs to familiarize themselves with their respondents and possibly complete the 1st cycle for the chosen 5 respondents. Meanwhile myself together with the supervisor and the driver proceeded to find accommodation. First we decided to opt for free accommodation with the assistance of the assemblymen .Being the "real men and women on the ground” we had strong conviction they will be in a better place to help. We were even pleased to hear that the assembly member for electoral area who happened to be the presiding member for the Awutu-Effutu-Senya Districts was willing to help us.The Hon Alexander Markin (who seemed ubiquitous with his highly visible billboards erected everywhere there was space in town) we were told was currently in Accra and that he will be in winneba that very evening . We were given the impression that he will assist us as soon as he gets to know about us and our mission . We acquired his contact details and promptly got in touch with him. He promised to "sort us out" as soon as he got into town.We later gathered that the presiding member was coming to oversee the conduct of a second round of elections for the confirmation of of the New Municipal Chief Executive for the newly created municipality of Winneba .(The Ewutu-Effutu -Senya district had been split into 2 and the results left Winneba as a municipality ) Apparently the man nominated by th President of the Republic had failed to get enough votes needed for him to be confirmed.The grassroots people alleged that the new MCE was arrogant even though most of them do not question his ability to perform. This necessity the re-election . We finally saw the presiding member only for a brief moment and all our hope was dashed when he shrugged us off. 15 May Following our earlierConducted protocols at Senya - Beraku and Awutu Bereku we went ahead to meet with the various community leaders including Assemblymen and Chiefs. We first stopped at Senya the hometown of the late former Vice President Kow Nkensen Arkaa. It is a mainly fishing community with an estimated population of about 18,000.The town is a semi-urban area with paved roads police station ,post office,a secondary school etc.A colonial fort and a huge mansion on the seashore are the main prominent structure in the town. We met the King of the town,a towering bulky man who has dignity written in his demeanor.He revealed that he is the Presiding Member for the newly created Awutu -Senya district .He was very welcoming and seemed eager to assist.He assured us he together with his assemblymen and unit committee members will secure accommodation for the interviewers who will stay in the community and facilitate the work. 16th May We dropped the team members off at their various stations :Alex at Aberful,Rashid at Bontrase ,Awotwe at Senya - Beraku and Josephine at Awutu Bereku. On Monday 19th May we visited a 72 year old feisty woman in the Winneba township to look for accommodation .The interesting aspect of the meeting was how from nowhere she managed to bring the Chieftancy issue that had dogged the town for years into the conversation. The level of her knowledge and passion suggested she was an interested party. 5/22/08 I have seen deprived schools in my lifetime but nothing prepared me for the absolutely shocking condition of the Awutu -Bereku AME Zion Primary and JHS.The school is housed in a flimsy wooden structure ,without a concrete floor ,window, doors or p 5/23/08 We took our GPS reading and school questionnaire from the AME Zion J.H.S. The condition of the school is simply abject. Situated in a flood- prone zone ,it sorrounded by a lagoon and stinks of rotten bog. The head gave a sorrowful rendition of the myriad problems that the school faces including the fact that classes have to be ended whenever clouds gather and rain threatens. He also complained about the working condition of teachers in general and how pupils who passed through the school go on to earn certificates as community health nurses and get paid 2 to 3 times more than himself.He remostrated on how the gap in salary of teachers and nurses which used to be at par has suddenly widened over last decade .

Science, religion and society

It was refreshing to see the publication of Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion. It is not every day that one of the premier evolutionary biologists in the world publishes a text dedicated to the defense of atheism. Dawkins has done us a service, if only in making more acceptable the general proposition that religion and science are at odds with each other, and that it is science that should win out. The God Delusion has received an enthusiastic response from the public, including in the United States, generally considered the most religious of all industrialized countries. Dawkins book has so far spent 24 weeks in New York Times bestseller top 15 for nonfiction. During a book tour in the US last year, Dawkins drew large and sympathetic crowds, including at some states (such as Kansas), more often associated with religious fundamentalism. Some of the interest generated by Dawkins’s book is no doubt due to the author, whose books, including The Selfish Gene, have become standard texts in evolutionary biology. Whether or not one agrees with everything he says about the theory of evolution, it is certainly true that Dawkins is a gifted writer with a capacity to explain complicated issues in direct and clear language. However, there is more involved than this. There is a hunger for alternative perspectives, for views that challenge supposedly universally accepted propositions. There is a latent and widespread oppositional sentiment, and Dawkins’s book appeals to a deep hostility to the religious fundamentalism and backwardness that increasingly characterize governments in Britain, the US and internationally. Against the “appeasement” of religion There are certain severe limitations to Dawkins’s presentation of religion, which will be discussed below. However, perhaps most laudatory in the book is its willingness to challenge not only religious orthodoxy of various stripes, but also those within the scientific community who insist upon attempting to reconcile religion and science. The perspective of these thinkers (who Dawkins dubs the “Neville Chamberlain School of Evolutionists”) is that science can best be defended from fundamentalists (such as those who want to ban evolution from public school curricula) by accommodating non-fundamentalist strands of religion. This is done, according to these thinkers, by insisting that religion and science need not be in conflict, that perhaps they are complementary, or at least address different questions. The late evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould has been closely associated with this perspective, arguing that religion and science occupy what he called “non-overlapping magisteria,” using a verbose term to cloak an extremely superficial idea. “To cite old clichés,” Gould once wrote, as quoted by Dawkins, “science gets the age of rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, and religion how to go to heaven.” Dawkins gives the adequate reply: “This sounds terrific—right up until you give it a moment’s thought.” One of Dawkins central claims is, “The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question, even if it is not in practice—or not yet—a decided one. So also is the truth or falsehood of every one of the miracle stories that religions rely upon to impress multitudes of the faithful.” In other words, if God exists and is anything more than a vacuous concept, he/she/it must have some effect on the world. This, certainly, is the belief of most religiously-minded people, who believe that God intervenes in the world, performs miracles, answers prayers, etc. Dawkins cites one experiment finding that patients who receive prayers don’t actually do better than patients who don’t receive them. This may seem a somewhat silly experiment (which was actually performed by supporters of religion) but it does illustrate the basic point—if religious phenomena exist, they can be tested scientifically. While this is an important observation, there is something missing in Dawkins’s presentation of science and religion. He treats the “God hypothesis” as basically equivalent to the claim, for example, that a teapot is in orbit around Mars (a famous proposition given by Bertrand Russell, who pointed out that though he may not technically know that such a teapot does not exist, he is not obliged to be agnostic about it). His ultimate justification for his atheism is that it is very probable that God does not exist, just as it is very probable that there is no teapot orbiting Mars. The preponderance of evidence indicates, says Dawkins, that God does not exist. This “99 percent atheism” actually leaves the door open for skepticism if seriously challenged. The God hypothesis, however, is a very different type of hypothesis from the teapot hypothesis. Indeed, it is not really a hypothesis at all, since it involves at its core the claim that the process of scientific investigation—including the testing of hypotheses— cannot arrive at truth (or at least the complete truth). The religious proposition involves the belief that there exists truth outside the possibility of scientific investigation, and therefore the statement that there can be no scientific justification for religious belief is—from the point of view of the religious individual—beside the point. One is merely question begging by asking, “But what are your scientific grounds for your non-belief in science?” The conflict between science and religion lies at a more fundamental level than Dawkins’s empiricism. The foundation for atheist belief is not really that God is an unlikely proposition (though the hypothesis, if taken as a scientific hypothesis, is the most unlikely hypothesis one can come up with), but that atheism flows from a materialist world-outlook—a philosophical position that holds that everything that exists consists of the law-governed development of matter in its various forms. Since matter is law-governed, it can be subject to scientific investigation, and at the same time science requires the presumption that the objects of its investigation follow causal relationships. This, ultimately, is the central conflict between religion and science, which is conflict between materialism and idealism, rationality and irrationality. The proof of the materialist world outlook lies in the entire historical experience of mankind in its interaction with nature, particularly in the extraordinary development of scientific knowledge over the past several hundred years. The proof of materialism is demonstrated in this historical practice, whereby mankind has not only formed hypotheses, but realized these hypotheses in the transformation of the material world. It has become a fad among those who argue that science and religion are compatible, while also arguing strongly for the teaching of evolution in schools (and perhaps most prominent among these is Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education), to make a distinction between methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. Science, according to these thinkers, depends on methodological naturalism—the assumption during scientific experimentation that there exists nothing outside the material world of cause and effect. This is distinct from the claim that there is actually nothing outside of this material world of cause and effect. Such an argument, taken up by those who would defend science education, in fact undermines the foundation of science altogether, since it eliminates any solid connection between scientific investigation and reality. There may exist a God—or any other supernatural entity—but science can never discover this underlying truth (what Kant would term the noumena), since science relies on the assumption of causal relationships and natural law-governed processes, which supposedly may or may not allow humans to arrive at a complete understanding of the universe. The ability of science to predict and transform the material world demonstrates, however, that it is not only a useful method, but a means of arriving at an understanding of the real world. Through a rigorous system of observation, reason, hypotheses and experimentation, science allows humans to arrive at truths about the world as it is “in itself.” It is a systematic means of testing the truth of our conceptions through practical interaction with the world. Its rationality is what distinguishes science from religion, which in one way or another relies on the irrational, on superstition, on “faith.” Religious belief and social history Dawkins does not deal seriously with any of these philosophical issues, and his defense of atheism, while important, is ultimately unconvincing and superficial. He devotes a considerable amount of space in his book to discussing the various “proofs” for the existence of God (the cosmological argument, the argument from design, etc.), all of which have been refuted a hundred times already, and to which Dawkins adds nothing new. Most of these proofs (such as the assertion that every effect must have a cause, a recession that must lead ultimately to an uncaused cause, which is God) are not remotely convincing to anyone who does not already believe in God, and their refutation will not in general be convincing to anyone who does. On the more frequently invoked “argument from design,” Dawkins points out that Darwin put an end to this proof in his theory of evolution, which explained how complex, apparently intelligently-designed organisms, are the product of a long process of natural selection. In discussing the origins and perpetuation of religious beliefs, much more is required than a review of the various proofs for God’s existence. A scientist must also examine why these beliefs arose and why they are perpetuated. Here Dawkins enters what is for him somewhat foreign territory, and he frequently stumbles, due in large part to his failure to take seriously the role of social relations in shaping and perpetuating religious belief. To adopt a materialist, scientific, approach to religion is first of all to recognize that religion is fundamentally a product of society. Culture is a social, not an individual, phenomenon, and in the process of his development the individual adopts in one form or another ideas present in the broader social milieu. A materialist explanation of religious belief must therefore be rooted in a materialist approach to society. As with many natural scientists, however, Dawkins does not carry through his materialism to social and cultural history. He ends up resorting to various idealistic explanations for religious belief. Historical materialism—that is, Marxism—sees ideology, including religion, as rooted in the process of production and the social relations humans enter into in order to produce. As Marx wrote in his famous preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” On the one hand, religion is perpetuated by the ruling elite during different stages of historical development as a means of justifying particular social arrangements. In the Middle Ages, for example, the Catholic Church in Europe was one of the principal institutional and ideological props of feudalism, not to mention one of the largest landowners. With control over the productive forces, the ruling elite, in alliance with the church, could perpetuate religious belief through myriad means. In addition to justifying various hierarchies, religion has been used to tell the poor and exploited that salvation lies in the next world, rather than this one. On the other hand, religion frequently plays the role of “opiate,” i.e., it provides comfort for the poor and exploited, a hope for salvation and a better life in another world. For this reason, religious ideology can have a receptive response among broader sections of the population. Religion, Marx wrote in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, is the “sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions.” Of course, the history of religion, like that of any ideological phenomenon, is complex. Religious ideology takes on a semi-independent existence, with its own internal logic. There is also a trend in religious evolution. As humans come to understand the natural world through the process of scientific explanation, the concept of God has tended to become more abstract, more removed from day-to-day events. Religion tends to occupy the realms of human experience that scientific knowledge has yet to penetrate, though this is not an entirely linear trajectory. In general, however, social progress has been associated with the advance of science and the retreat of religion. The point is that this explanation of religion imbues any discussion of religion with the social content necessary for its comprehension. Dawkins completely dismisses this perspective. “Nor are Darwinians satisfied by political explanations, such as ‘religion is a tool used by the ruling class to subjugate the underclass’,” he writes. “It is surely true that black slaves in America were consoled by promises of another life, which blunted their dissatisfaction with this one and thereby benefited their owners. The question of whether religions are deliberately designed by cynical priests or rulers is an interesting one, to which historians should attend. But it is not, in itself, a Darwinian question. The Darwinians still want to know why people are vulnerable to the charms of religion and therefore open to exploitation by priests, politicians and kings.” This is a fair enough point when discussing the historical origins of religious belief in the evolution of man (though the talk of “cynical priests and rulers” is a mechanical and one-sided presentation of the Marxist theory of religion, which Dawkins here alludes to without naming). Given the way in which religious beliefs of some sort or another have emerged on numerous occasions in almost every society, it is certainly legitimate to ask if there is something in our biological makeup that predisposes human society to adopt religious conceptions, even if one insists that the social dimension takes precedence in man’s later development. There might be other ideologies that could serve the same social function as religion does, so one is led to ask why religion predominates. Dawkins would like to discuss what it is in our evolutionary heritage that makes religious explanations particularly attractive, that makes religious ideology particularly universal. We will return to the limitations of this approach below, after first going into some detail about Dawkins’s views on the question that he would like to focus on. In giving his own answer, Dawkins notes that an evolutionary explanation of religious belief need not postulate an evolutionary benefit for religion itself. “I am one of an increasing number of biologists who see religion as a by-product of something else,” he writes. “More generally, I believe that we who speculate about Darwinian survival value need to ‘think by-product.’ When we ask about the survival value of anything, we may be asking the wrong question.” Dawkins proposal for an evolutionary foundation of religious belief is not particularly profound: We have evolved to believe what we are told by our elders. This is beneficial, Dawkins says, because generally our elders are right, and those who believed what they were told benefited from the accumulated experience of their elders. This may be true, but it leaves open the question as to why it was religion that has been passed on from elders to children, rather than something else. The fact that Dawkins does not consider this obvious objection to his theory is an indication that he has not really thought through this question very seriously. More promising is the theory presented by Daniel Dennett that religion is fundamentally misplaced intentionality. Humans evolved to interpret certain actions, particularly actions that they did not understand, to be the product of intentional agents. This was useful when dealing with actual intentional agents, because it allowed early humans to better predict the behavior of animals or fellow humans (a particularly useful quality as social relations developed). Religion is the imputation of intentionality on the natural world: It is a god that causes the rain to fall and the rivers to flood; it is a god that is the cause of life and death, etc. While these various proposals are interesting, they are not particularly useful unless they are rooted in an investigation of the scientific evidence, including archaeology. As of yet, both Dennett and Dawkins have been engaging largely in armchair evolutionary biology in discussing this question. More fundamentally, theories such as those proposed by Dawkins and Dennett do not further our understanding of the history of religion, which is really the most important question in understanding its persistence and nature today. Supposing that religion had an initial impulse in misplaced intentionality or in the tendency of children to believe what they are told, this does not explain why it should continue even when science has led us to the conclusion that this intentionality is in fact misplaced, and does not explain why children continue to be indoctrinated in the existence of fictional beings. It also does not explain why religion has evolved as it has over the years. To deal with this question, Dawkins (and Dennett) resort to the theory of the “meme,” a supposed cultural equivalent of the gene. A meme is a purported “unit of cultural inheritance,” and certain memes have a greater tendency to reproduce themselves, etc. A more detailed critique can be found in James Brookfield’s review of Dennett’s book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a natural phenomena. Here it is sufficient to note that by locating the basis for the spread of an ideology in the idea itself (rather than the society in which the idea emerges and spreads), the proponents of meme theory generally fall into an idealist interpretation of history, one that has great difficulty in explaining what accounts for ideological development. Dawkins confesses the difficulty he has in explaining cultural evolution when he writes about the “moral zeitgeist,” which he says is “a mysterious consensus, which changes over the decades” and accounts for changes in moral or religious conceptions. He has no real explanation for the changes in this “moral zeitgeist,” but, Dawkins writes, “The onus is not on me to answer.” If all Dawkins aimed to do was provide a logical proof for the non-existence of God, or propose theories for why religion may have emerged in the development of early human society, we might accept this statement. But in fact Dawkins aims to do much more. He wants to tackle contemporary social and political issues, and without any serious basis for explaining why religions persist he is left floundering, often finding his way into quite reactionary positions. Religion and politics The problem Dawkins and others confront in explaining religious and ideological change lies ultimately in their refusal to take up Marxist theory. Dawkins refers to Marx only once in passing, and deals with class theory only in the paragraph quoted above. For Dawkins, religion has no social or political significance. He treats it merely as an idea without any real connections to the more material conditions of life. He writes, to cite one example, “The Afghan Taliban and the American Taliban [Christian fundamentalism in the United States] are good examples of what happens when people take their scriptures literally and seriously.” Certainly scripture plays a role, but both the Afghan Taliban and the “American Taliban” are products of deeper social relations in their respective societies, and in fact the differences between these societies impart different characters to the respective ideologies. This approach to religion has definite political consequences. Early on in the book, Dawkins discusses the case of the anti-Islamic cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which produced sharp protests in February 2006. Press and governments around the world denounced the protests as attacks on free speech, and defended those who decided to publish the bigoted cartoons as proponents of free speech. Dawkins accepts this interpretation entirely. One need not be a supporter of the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism to recognize that what was really involved was not a defense of free speech by a Danish newspaper, but a deliberate provocation designed to whip up anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe and elsewhere. The protests, on the other hand, reflected anger that was more than merely religious in character. There is seething resentment against the United States and European governments to their policies in countries composed largely of Muslims. The fact that discontent in many regions of the Middle East and other areas often takes a religious character is also a product of historical and political factors. The perspective of secular bourgeois nationalist movements has failed utterly, secular socialist and internationalist movements have been systematically betrayed by Stalinism, and the United States and other powers have worked for a long time to undermine secular movements of all stripes because they have viewed these movements as more of a threat to their interests than religions movements. Both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban are in part products of the American intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the US waged a proxy war against the Soviet Union by generously funding the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists. On the other hand, a movement such as Hamas in the Palestinian territories—which is very different phenomenon from Al Qaeda—has gained traction in part because it provides critical social resources and services not provided through any other channels, particularly as the Palestinian Liberation Organization has moved increasingly to the right, accommodating itself to American imperialism. Dawkins’s blindness to the social and political roots of religious ideology leads him toward quite reactionary positions. He goes so far as to quote approvingly the words of Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, who has written: “Could it be that the young men who committed suicide were neither on the fringes of Muslim society in Britain, nor following an eccentric and extremist interpretation of their faith, but rather that they came from the very core of the Muslim community and were motivated by a mainstream interpretation of Islam?” One rubs ones eyes in disbelief when one reads the uncritical representation of these words by Dawkins. The Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity is an evangelical outfit whose main aim is to promote anti-Islamic chauvinism, which is precisely the aim of Sookhdeo’s sentence quoted above. One might give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt in assuming that he quotes without real knowledge of who he is quoting, but regardless it is certainly a misfortune that Dawkins, an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq and an opponent of Christian ideology as much as Islamic, should lend his authority to such a vile perspective. But such is the consequence of remaining blind to the social and political issues that lie behind most religious questions. Approaching such matters from an idealist perspective, Dawkins is easily led to the conclusion that Islamic fundamentalists must simply be a product of Islam as a religion, and this leads him into the same bed with such utter reactionaries as Sookhdeo. There is a tendency among the advocates of atheism—and this is perhaps most clear in the works of Sam Harris, who Dawkins also quotes approvingly on several occasions—to adopt a contemptuous attitude toward the religiously-minded population, which is still a majority of the working class around the world. Since religion is conceived of only as an ideological phenomenon, it is ultimately the population itself that is to blame for belief in religion and whatever policies are justified in the name of religion. Not only does this often lead to right-wing political positions, it also fails utterly in offering a suggestion for how the influence of religion can be diminished. Marxists too want to undermine the influence of religious movements, in the Middle East, in the United States, and around the world. Religion is inherently anti-scientific. It cloaks the real nature of society and repression, and it often serves as an ideological buttress for social reaction and militarism. However, to realize this aim requires that one first of all comprehend the actual social and political basis of religious belief. As Marx wrote in the same work quoted above, “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their conditions is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions...Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.” In other words, the fight for scientific consciousness among masses of people, and with this a materialist world outlook, must be bound up with the attempt to explain to people the real nature of society and oppression. It must be bound up with a political struggle and a socialist movement.