Film Review: The Company You Keep

by Daphna Whitmore

What motivates you? More than once the question is posed in The Company You Keep.

Robert Redford directs and acts in the movie, which is based on a novel by Neil Gordon about the  sixties’ militant left group the Weather Underground.  The Weather Underground grew out of anti-Vietnam War protests and were a faction of Students for a Democratic Society,  a mass movement with 100,000 members.

Redford made the movie on a $1 million budget. He is a genuine left-liberal and his pulling power is clear with politically-conscious stars like Julie Christie and Susan Sarandon and plenty more big names – Stanley Tucci, Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, Chris Cooper, Terrence Howard, Anna Kendrick, Brendan Gleeson – working for next to nothing.

Sarandon plays a fictional Sharon Solarz, formerly a member of the Weather Underground, who has been living in suburbia for thirty years under an assumed identity. Her arrest sets the stage for an FBI manhunt for others in her group. Will she disavow her revolutionary past? Not likely. Instead she explains her motivation to the ignorant young journalist played by Shia LaBeouf.

She tells him people were drawn into a movement against the murderous system and government waging genocide in Vietnam. There was the My Lai massacre, the killing of students at Kent State and Jackson State, the use of the draft; you got a number and waited to be sent overseas to fight a dirty war. The Weathermen decided civil disobedience and peaceful protests were not getting them anywhere, and they wanted to “bring the war home”. There was a revolution going on: “Japan, France, Angola — and I wanted to be part of it. . .  If we sat at home while our country committed genocide — that was violence.” Sarandon’s character challenges the reporter about what he is willing to take a risk for. For her part yes, she would do it again, but “smarter, better, different. We made mistakes, butwe were right,” she says.

Alex Ferguson and the commodification of the ‘beautiful game’

by Harley Filben

The unthinkable has happened. Referees will sleep easier in their beds. Rival teams will dare to relax after the clock strikes 88 minutes. Stress levels on newspaper sports desks will plummet.

Alex Ferguson has announced his retirement, and we are all the poorer for it – Manchester United fans, supporters of rival clubs whose torture of Glaswegian voodoo dolls has come to naught over the last quarter-century, and the very small proportion of those who follow English football with no interest either way. Doubters as to the significance of this event should simply consult last Thursday’s papers (May 9), accompanied by a shower of pull-out supplements that makes press coverage of a royal wedding look positively restrained.

Ferguson began his managerial career in 1974, at the relatively young age of 32. He ends it at the exceptionally old age (in a profession not noted for being especially relaxing) of 71. That period, just shy of four decades, spans the prehistory, gestation and birth of the current epoch of English football – what you might call its financialisation. His relation to this transition is

Iran’s upcoming ‘vetted’ election

Hashemi Rafsanjani: last-minute capitalist candidate

The Islamic republic is bitterly divided at the top and subject to crippling international sanctions. Yassamine Mather analyses the political situation in the run-up to the June 14 presidential poll

On the last available day, ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani arrived at the ministry of the interior to register himself as a presidential candidate. Rafsanjani was the Islamic republic’s fourth president, from 1989 to 1997, and is now once again standing as a ‘reformist’. In reality he is the candidate of capitalism and probably still one of the richest men in Iran. Despite that, the announcement that Rafsanjani had entered the race ‘to save the country’ generated an almost unprecedented hysteria.

There are two main explanations for his timing. The principlists (conservative, hard-line supporters of the supreme leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei) are accusing Rafsanjani (also known as the fox because of his political cunning) of holding back before making his dramatic, last-minute move in order to surprise and spread confusion amongst his opponents. There is some truth to this claim: confident of an easy ride, principlists entered the presidential elections with at least seven serious candidates, and another 14 less serious contenders. One assumes that, had they known they would be facing such a figure, they would have tried to rally round a single candidate.

Some of Rafsanjani’s allies have claimed he was waiting for the approval of the supreme leader before putting himself forward. Two weeks ago he said he would only go ahead if Khamenei wanted him to do so, but a few days later there was a slightly different version: he would only

Information Technology and the rise of New Zealand’s modern servant class

by O’Shay Muir

Five years on from the height of the global financial crises in 2008 there has been much talk in the media of what is being referred to as the jobless recovery (http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/business-mood-turns-upbeat-%E2%80%93-its-jobless-recovery-wb-134532). During the crises business learnt how to better manage and organise their labour force more effectively, learning how to do more with less. This improved organisation of labour combined with greater investment in technology has led to what many experts believe is a jobless recovery, greatly affecting middle class jobs (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10861554).  One of the main drivers behind this phenomenon has been vast improvements in computer technology, most especially computer software, with many experts noting that such technological advancements are replacing human labour at a pace never before witnessed in history (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10861554).

Technology replacing human labour is nothing new, however, most especially under capitalism.  One of the best ways to understand this phenomenon is to use Marx’s concept of relative surplus-value. In volume one of Capital, Marx notes that there are two ways in which capitalists can increase their rate of surplus-value. The first is absolute surplus-value, which involves a lengthening of the working day and the second is relative surplus-value, which involves improved organisation of the labour process and investment in new/better technologies to increase production, allowing one to produce at a lower cost than the competition. While both, especially relative surplus-value, give bosses a competitive advantage for an initial period of time, sooner or later the competition will catch on and what was once competitive advantage will become the new social average.

The other drawbacks are that the gains employers can make from absolute surplus-value are limited, as there are physical limits to how long workers can work, while the production of relative surplus-value leads to a fall in the rate of profit (see here).

While absolute surplus-value production has an obvious effect on workers’ well-being, Marx’s investigation into relative surplus-value indicated the impact that new technologies have on replacing

The poverty of the child poverty slogan

Poverty rates 1982-2012; the blue line is the key one as it tracks the percentage of incomes 60% and under the median income each year; taken from Treasury report, May 2012

by Don Franks

“Suffer the little children to come unto me,” Jesus said. 

This week, so does our prime minister .

Action on child poverty is tipped to be a surprise package in the Budget  next Thursday. Children who aren’t fed become victims and the Government has to deal with that, John Key reckons.

Last Monday Key said although National would not back Mana leader Hone Harawira’s “feed the kids” member’s bill, they might make a move on food in schools.

Key pointed to his state of the nation speech in 2007 and the Government’s support for KidsCan, Fonterra’s milk in schools programme and an extension to the fruit in schools scheme as signals he backed such moves in partnership with business.

Today Key said the Government was looking at the broader issues of

Go Aaron Gilmore

by Don Franks

The radio news (Thursday afternoon) just announced Aaron Gilmore has refused to resign from parliament.

On a bleak winter afternoon it was nice to get a positive report and I can only respond – go Aaron!

Sure, the dude is a Tory, he’s unproductive, rude, a nasty drunk, a sleazebag  and a congenital liar.

That much could be emphatically said about  many other members of parliament. These are the enemies  out in the open.

Amongst them are parliament’s polite, caring, hardworking members who get their endorphin fix on the adventure circuit. They don’t tell lies, they just put things in perspective, or get Clint to do that for them.

Whatever the superficial plumage, they’re all bastards. Parliament has developed into such a hidebound buffer for the bourgeoisie that its honourable members cannot but do the work of the class enemy. In fact they all swear a loyal oath promising to do so before they’re allowed to take their seat. However nice their smile, or however sad their countenance, as they briefly

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday

. . . but not in New Zealand at present

by Colin Clarke

The celebration of the 1st of May as workers day has a strong and proud tradition all around the world since the nineteenth century. It was the one day of the year when workers could stand up and say ‘we are many, they are few’. Alexander Shliapnikov, in On the Eve of 1917, tells how, when he lived and worked in London before the Russian revolution, he would always take May Day off and the next day be asked by his fellow workers if he was ill. He would then explain the significance of workers’ day to them.

The best May Day march I have been on was the first May Day during the 1984-1985 British miners’ strike. You could feel the power of the working class as it marched in solidarity with them. At the time, there was every chance they could win the strike and there was a real mood of optimism amongst the marchers. The event encapsulated the true meaning of the day as a celebration of the power of the working class, especially as there were other marches around the country, equally strong.

Unfortunately, most May Day marches I have been on have been very different; either passive trade union-organised events or local ones attended by