The ever-growing surplus value

I'm borrowing here a graph appeared at Naked Capitalism (data for the USA but it could be anywhere):

 

The implications are obvious: capitalists have been taking an ever growing share of the produced wealth since c. 1972. Previously, in what some have described as the period of "generous capitalism" (caused by the Cold War and fear of socialist revolutions) surplus value (the share of production appropriated by capitalists as manager class of the economy) was more or less stable, but since the 1970s it has grown steadily up to more than double, while real wages have remained stable. 

Wages are the share of production kept by producers, workers. But beware: salaries have remained stable but the share of wealth retained by producers has declined very sharply. 

This is how Capitalism works normally in fact. Marx explained it in Das Kapital with the example of the pin factory, in which vast improvements in technology and organization of production (~ productivity) led only to loss of jobs, not any improvement to the conditions of workers but exactly the opposite. 

Only radical and global class struggle caused a parenthesis in this natural tendency of Capitalism: the post-war decades of relatively shared affluence, which marked a generation that is now dying out.

But for all other generations of workers this is just the normal. And that is why Communism is extremely necessary and urgent.

Egypt: Petras analysis of the causes behind Morsi's failure

Borroka Garaia Da! publishes today a Spanish language article by James Petras (veteran international analyst from the USA) in which he synthetically analyzes the causes behind the fall of Morsi in four points (my synthesis):

1. The economy: Morsi adopted a neoliberal plan of removing subsidies without any kind of investment for job generation. He resorted to loans by the FMI, which demanded that suicidal economic strategy. The government was so undecided that it did nothing worth mentioning in this key economic aspect: neither social redistribution, nor investments... nothing. The result: economic deterioriation.
2. Sectarism: Morsi promoted divisionist fundamentalist policies that only satisfied the most fanatic among his supporters. 
3. Authoritarianism: imposing partisan appointments and abusing the presidential power against the other branches of government, disdaining any possible wider consensus.
4. Collaboration with Zionism and other Western Imperialism: maintaining the illegitimate and inhuman blockade against Gaza Strip, supporting the extremists against the Syrian government, totally folding to the demands of the US Empire.

However he mentions that while the core of the opposition is progressive, there are also important elements of supporters of the Old Regime, who want to reverse the democratic process. 

He thinks that Washington is playing many different cars in the Egyptian turmoil: Morsi, the Mubarakists, the center-right liberals, etc.

The military caste in turn is probably just seeking to weaken any civilian government in order to keep their privileges.

Japan: government announces Cyprus-like "bail-in" mechanism to face bank collapse

The Japanese government has announced this self-defeating mechanism by which savers' money will be made part of the bank's capital if the private financial corporation is at risk of bankruptcy.

The mechanism will be to convert savings deposits into preferential shares, a scam mechanism already used in Spain to massively rob small savers, or something called "subordinated bonds".

According to some Japanese-language economic media:

By having the investors shoulder part of the loss in a financial crisis, the system will reduce the burden on taxpayers.

Problem here is that savers are not investors. Investors are those who hold capital shares, aka stock, aka equity. What this system does is to force customers into forcibly becoming investors precisely when the investment is collapsing.

Large scale savers will probably have no problem here: they will already be rushing their money to overseas banks, where it will be safer, so the main victims of this scheme will unavoidably be small and middle savers, often people who have been saving all their lives in order to have something to rely on when old. 

Japan is by far the most indebted state on Earth. Its stock market woes have been driving the global ones downwards in the last weeks. 

Source: EXSKF.

Turkish Revolution report (night 6-7 June)

Garanti, the bank which owns several TV channels in Turkey, all of which are censoring the information on the revolutionary uprising, has been faced now with a boycott. Small business owners are closing their accounts in it and returning the bank's card readers, as shown in the photo.

But they are doing much more: they occupied one of the TV stations forcing the matter to be debated in the waves.

Garanti is controlled 50-50 by Doğuş Group and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA).

Repression moves to Ankara

As the international attention is to great extent focused on Taksim Square and Istanbul, the repression there has weakened. However elsewhere in the country and very especially in Ankara, it has increased instead.

Causes of the uprising

Aytekin Kurtul Kaan, member of the Turkish Communist Party (TKP), explains in an article published in Spanish language the causes of the social anger, which I synthesize here:

1. Growing repression: the AKP government, especially since 2007 has increased the repression, directed especially against military officers who were reluctant to NATO hegemony and independent journalists. Most of the charges were reliant on telephone tapping, what has caused paranoia in the population. 

2. Anti-secularism: imposition of religion teaching in schools, transformation of secular schools into religious ones, even what in Turkey amounts to nearly "blasphemy": Erdogan claimed that the founders of the republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Ismet Inönü were "a pair of drunkards".

3. Economic disaster: even if it is not usually discussed because of the protection that Erdogan has in the Western and Arab halls of power, Turkey has a worse foreign debt than Greece, debt that has been partly hidden by the sellout of the country's assets to private investors. Also the productivity level is mediocre in spite of the very low salaries, what has damaged the economy after the trade association with the EU. Today only 16% of Turkish citizens live above poverty level and 14% lives under hunger level.

In addition to that the intervention in favor of the Islamists in the Syrian conflict has caused many troubles especially in the border areas, where Syrian fundamentalist militias have attacked Turkish citizens. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es] (link 1, link 2, link 3).

IMF admits 'austerity' wrong for Greece

In yet another case of, quite hypocritical, "too little, too late", the International Monetary Fund has admitted (so far only internally but to be published this week) that the organization underestimated the damage that austerity would cause to the Greek economy and society. 

They also admit that the Greek debt bubble was only possible because the IMF bent its own rules in order to pretend and extend.

The acknowledgement seems to forecast a haircut of the Greek debt. 

Source: The Guardian.

State support for the economy works

Ah, the irony: ultraliberal (=ultracapitalist) and decadent Europe (EU) debates whether or not impose duties on Chinese cheap solar panels. Why? Because it is suspected that the overwhelming Chinese production necessarily required of state support. 

Sure, probably very true. If so, why not to begin or retake at least some much needed state support for the economy here in Europe?

That is what is not being debated at all. The current desperate situation of European economy and society is only because of ultraliberalization and destroying by design the state involvement in the economy. 

Without state intervention we are bound to become others' colonies.

Black Thursday: Japan's stock market collapse 7.3%, World follows suit

Japanese stock market Nikkei collapsed today, falling 7.3%, the biggest slump since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. 

Other global markets have followed the trend, as usually happens.

The "official" version of the causes, reflected for example by Euronews, blames Chinese and European economic weaknesses. However, would that be the case, why would Japan be the first market to collapse and so dramatically. 

The real reasons therefore seem to be Japanese many weaknesses: first and foremost the effects of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, which, no matter how much you deny them, are very real and scaring everyone inside and outside the Asian archipelago. Another weakness is the absolutely brutal (and ever-growing) public debt and related excessive strength of the yen. This pre-dates the Fukushima disaster but have been aggravated by the loss of export markets after it. 

Main source: Ex-SKF.