The Socialist 12 July 2002

Strike Back Against Low Pay

Potters Bar inquiry: RAIL WORKERS and passengers will be horrified by the findings of the inquiry into the Potters Bar rail crash, which killed seven people in May.

What We Say: NEXT WEDNESDAY, 17 July could see the biggest industrial strike in Britain for more than 20 years. Low-paid council workers have voted to reject a 3% wage offer; up to one million are expected to take strike action for a 6% rise. More ...

Time For Unions To Break With New Labour: WORKERS ARE also increasingly questioning why they should carry on funding a party which attacks their rights and sells their jobs and services to private companies.

FIGHTING BROKE out at last weekend's annual Orange Order parade at Drumcree. Demonstrators threw missiles at police, resulting in 24 injured as well as two civilians. However, Drumcree is not the issue it was. By Peter Hadden

Another Dangerous New Mental Health Bill

NEW LABOUR'S Mental Health Bill includes provision for people with mental illnesses to be committed to long stay accommodation in case they may become a danger to the public (or themselves). By Clare Wilkins

WORLDCOM is the latest American company to rock world stock markets with its false accounting. Apparently at least one of its directors couldn't tell the difference between expenses and profit. This scandal follows on from those at Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, Global Crossing, Qwest and of course Andersen Accounting who were supposed to assure us of the probity of such companies! By Jean Walker

IN THE third article in our occasional series on Marxist classics, KEN SMITH looks at Karl Marx's pamphlets, Wage Labour and Capital and Wages, Price and Profit.

Aids pandemic: AS 15,000 delegates attend the International Aids Conference in Barcelona, the United Nations estimates that 68 million people could die of the Aids disease by 2020. ROGER SHRIVES reports on how the capitalist profit motive is allowing this pandemic to spread.

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Council workers say...

Strike Back Against Low Pay

THE DECISIVE votes for strike action by members of UNISON, GMB and TGWU working for local councils, reflects their growing anger over low pay. This is on top of the thousands of council workers mobilised to fight for higher London Weighting payments.

Brian Blake, service conditions officer, Ealing UNISON, personal capacity

Public sector workers' pay has been eroded over the years, especially in local government and workers are no longer prepared to tolerate cuts in their living standards.

The stage is now set for a battle between council workers and the employers, which will include the government.

Council workers are angry that other public sector workers have been given some pay concessions, as 'essential' workers but they have not.

Whenever the government talks about 'essential workers' they always mention nurses, teachers, the police etc but never local authority workers or ancillary staff.

Many council workers live on less than £13,000 a year and have to do two jobs to make ends meet. I have had members come to me in tears saying that after paying all their bills they only have £10 a month to live on.

That is why this action is so important. The claim for 6% or £1,750, whichever is greater, would bring the lowest paid up to at least £5 an hour. Still not enough but at least the minimum demand of the trade union movement and would be a step towards the European decency threshold of £7.50 an hour.

In London the call for £4,000 flat rate London Weighting would be an improvement. Though this would still be far short of the real cost of living in London.

The government talks about 'reforming' the public sector. This is just New Labour-speak for privatisation.

They don't really want to improve public services, this would mean putting in more resources. All they're interested in is giving opportunities for their big business friends to make a profit.

• For a fully-funded pay increase of 6% or £1,750 per year, whichever is greater.
• End privatisation of the public services.
• Step up the action to win the claim.

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Potters Bar inquiry

Bring Rail Bosses To Justice

RAIL WORKERS and passengers will be horrified by the findings of the inquiry into the Potters Bar rail crash, which killed seven people in May.

The inquiry found that private contractors had failed to fully tighten one-fifth of the nuts holding sets of points together along the stretch of track in Hertfordshire where the accident occurred.

This was not an "isolated incident" as the private bosses claimed. The profit-obsessed contracting system has around 2,000 registered rail infrastructure companies with 84,000 registered temporary workers while permanent workers, track staff who knew their own local lines, have been halved to about 15,000.

As rail union RMT general secretary Bob Crow says: "No-one knows who's working where on the railway network."

A rail engineer told The Socialist after Potters Bar: "The industry isn't run for the good of the passengers or to provide a service, it's just there to make profits. If it costs money to do anything then it just gets ignored."

Private rail operators have ruined the traditional safety culture on the track. Cost-cutting bosses employ fewer and less well-trained staff who then work with little or no supervision.

The rail unions say the maintenance company Jarvis should be prosecuted for failing to maintain the railways. They have put workers under intolerable pressure and passengers at more and more risk.

In the same week as the inquiry Jarvis awarded massive bonuses and salary rises to its directors. Its chief executive Paris Moayedi had a 66% salary rise, boosting his pay from £359,000 to £595,000.

Jarvis's chief operating officer Kevin Hyde, responsible for the day-to-day running of its engineering division, got a £100,000 bonus, pushing his pay up 71% to £352,000.

Jarvis increased profits by 85% last year. The profits of the privatised companies since privatisation amount to £7.5 billion. But more than that - £10 billion - has come from public subsidies to the railways!

We are paying a fortune for private firms whose neglect has created Europe's worst record on safety. These firms award huge dividends and fat-cat salaries to executives while forcing workers' pay levels down.

We say:

• Bring privatised rail bosses to justice for neglecting safety in their drive for profit.
• Renationalise the rail system, paying compensation only to small shareholders who can prove they need it. The industry should be run as part of an integrated transport system under the democratic control and management of rail workers and users.
• A massive programme of investment now to improve safety and service provision.

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What We Say

Summer Of Discontent

NEXT WEDNESDAY, 17 July could see the biggest industrial strike in Britain for more than 20 years. Low-paid council workers have voted to reject a 3% wage offer; up to one million are expected to take strike action for a 6% rise.

The media are talking about a "summer of discontent", comparing this strike with the "winter of discontent" of 1978/79, when public sector manual workers joined tanker drivers, lorry drivers, Ford workers and others in striking against the then Labour government's pay restraint.

Labour's right-wing, anti-working class policies of holding down wages at a time of high inflation and cutting public spending resulted in disillusionment with Labour amongst many sections of workers, paving the way for the coming to power of the Tories under Thatcher in the 1979 election.

Today, the number of workers taking action or preparing to move into struggle is increasing. Recently benefit workers, rail workers, college lecturers, teachers and local government workers have all taken strike action.

A ballot of Tube workers has delivered an overwhelming vote in favour of action over safety and privatisation, and firefighters could strike if their pay claim is not met.

But the number of days lost in strikes and the extent and scope of struggles is still far below that of 1979. Nevertheless, a united national strike of all council workers is extremely significant.

New Labour's pro-big business agenda of low pay, cuts and privatisation has fuelled a rising tide of anger and resentment, especially among public-sector workers, which is leading to a greater industrial militancy.

The election of Left leaders in unions such as the railworkers' union RMT and civil service union PCS, is a reflection of this growing unrest. These leaders have in turn been prepared to give a lead to benefit workers and rail workers in taking action.

Where workers have gone on strike union membership has increased and a new layer of activists, most new to struggle, many women, are beginning to come forward to take positions as stewards and union reps.

The strength of feeling amongst workers about low pay in particular, is forcing even those union leaders who are not on the Left to sanction national strike action.

However, it's important that this and other strikes, such as those over London Weighting by teachers and local authority workers, are not used by union leaders as a means of allowing workers to "let off steam" and left at that.

If employers do not meet the unions' demands for higher pay then the 17 July strike must be seen as just the beginning of an organised plan of strike action to force them to back down.

Time For Unions To Break With New Labour

WORKERS ARE also increasingly questioning why they should carry on funding a party which attacks their rights and sells their jobs and services to private companies.

The GMB, RMT and CWU unions have all decided to cut the amount of money they give to the Labour Party, while UNISON conference voted to censure the leadership for failing to report on a "root and branch" review of the union's political fund.

Feeling the pressure from below, union leaders are being forced to make some concessions on the unions' relationship with New Labour. However, they will strongly oppose any moves towards totally severing the link.

In the firefighters' union FBU for example, conference voted in 2001 for the executive to bring back rule changes to this year's conference which would allow the union to fund candidates other than Labour. Instead the executive reaffirmed affiliation to New Labour.

Andy Gilchrist, general secretary of the FBU, was able to exploit his militant stance on firefighters' pay to reverse the previous year's position. Moreover, those arguing in the FBU to loosen the links with Labour are still equivocal about whether they should make a clean break.

Even leaders on the Left such as Bob Crow of the RMT are resisting making a decisive break. Instead he advocated the union withdraw backing from one group of Labour MPs and sponsor a group of 'Left' MPs who agreed with the union's policies, including nationalisation.

Unfortunately this stance sows the illusion that the Labour Party can be transformed from a big business party back into a party which reflects workers' interests.

One important difference between 1978/79 and now is that the Labour Party was then at least open to democratic discussion and accountability and the unions were able to have some influence over policy.

At the Labour Party conference in 1978 for example, a supporter of Militant (forerunner of the Socialist Party) moved a resolution rejecting the Labour government's 5% pay restraint. This resolution was passed, breaking Labour's "social contract" with the unions and paving the way for the industrial struggles of the "winter of discontent".

Now democracy within the Labour Party has been effectively shut down and the unions' ability to influence policy curtailed. According to a report in The Guardian (8 July), New Labour are even considering breaking the national, organised participation of unions in the party by doing away with central trade union affiliation from political funds.

Cutting donations to the Labour Party, diverting money to 'Left' MPs or democratising the unions' political funds - all are steps forward but none go far enough. The unions need to make a clear break with New Labour and begin the task of building a new, mass party which can politically challenge New Labour's pro-big business and anti-working class policies.

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Build The Fight Against Sectarianism

IN PLACE of Drumcree there is more widespread and sustained conflict than ever: disputes over other parade routes, sectarian attacks and fighting at 'interface' areas.

What happened in May and June in East Belfast, where at one point there was hand-to-hand fighting involving up to 1,000 people from the Short Strand and the surrounding Protestant districts, is a warning that, left unchecked, the situation could spiral out of anyone's control.

It is not in the interests of either Protestant or Catholic workers that the situation continues.

The only people who stand to benefit are those hard-line sectarian intransigents who use violence to corral people behind their point of view and in this way maintain effective control over working-class communities.

The real roots of what is happening lie in the social and economic problems endured by those living in working-class areas and in the failure of the 'peace process' to do anything to overcome the sectarian divisions on the ground.

In fact the peace process has been a process of increasing division. The sectarian parties, while they have entered into a fragile agreement at the top, have constantly whipped up their own sectarian agendas to keep "their" communities on side.

Unable to see any alternative, the uncertainty felt in working-class communities has translated into growing sectarian tension fuelled over the years by issues like parades. The Troubles have continued in the form of a long drawn-out war of attrition over territory.

For working-class people there has been no peace dividend. The pro-business agenda of all the major parties in the Assembly has meant that in the working-class areas it has been at best more of the same: low pay, services sold off to profiteers and the ever-worsening housing problem. The shortage of housing intensifies conflict with communities fighting for every inch of space.

Working-class communities face a quite stark choice. A sectarian conflict can continue inch by inch over territory leading to a slow and painful repartition. Or workers can stand together to stop the attacks and in a class movement for jobs, homes, decent services and proper facilities for all.

This means a campaign on the streets. It also means a political campaign to challenge the right-wing and sectarian parties and to build an alternative; a mass Socialist Party based on the unions and genuine community organisations to challenge their influence at the polls.

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Another Dangerous New Mental Health Bill

NEW LABOUR'S Mental Health Bill includes provision for people with mental illnesses to be committed to long stay accommodation in case they may become a danger to the public (or themselves). The Scottish parliament has also decided that the mentally ill can be subjected to compulsory treatment.

Clare Wilkins

The government calls this proposed legislation the greatest reform of mental health provisions for 40 years. Reform is supposed to mean improvement, but the proposals are not about improving treatment for people with mental illnesses.

The Tories closed long-stay mental hospitals and transferred patients into the "community." This was to save money not provide better care. Mental health users and people with learning disabilities often find themselves in hostels without access to treatment or adequate support.

Some have resorted to self-harm or minor criminal offences in order to get access to an emergency mental heath bed. Large cities have around ten to thirty of these beds available and the longest stay is three days.

There is a stigma attached to being mentally ill. The charity SANE has a poster up at my psychologist's office: "You don't have to be mentally ill to suffer from a mental illness".

The media and politicians use the term "mentally ill" to mean violent, dangerous, and untreatable and usually someone with schizophrenia. There has been an outcry at the proposal to release Eden Strang from long-stay secure accommodation, despite the fact that his schizophrenia has responded well to treatment and he will continue to receive treatment and be supervised.

One in four people suffer from some form of mental illness in the course of their lives.

Compulsion will cover people who have "a disability or disorder of mind or brain which results in an impairment or disturbance of mental functioning."

The Royal College of Psychiatrists says that these criteria are so wide that large numbers of patients would find themselves inappropriately "sectioned". In fact, it could cover any mental illness. I have clinical depression triggered by stress - it covers me!

It is a law that could be misused. In the first half of the 20th century single women who had sexual relationships or became pregnant were permanently committed to mental institutions. In Stalin's Russia opponents and dissidents were incarcerated in mental institutions.

The Bill has been produced in reaction to a small number of violent acts and murders committed by people with mental illnesses who have not had proper treatment or care.

The only compulsion needed is compulsion on the health service to protect the mentally ill. These measures will increase the stigma of mental illness and drive people away from seeking treatment.

We need a mental health care system that is properly resourced, based on people's needs and with users and carers playing a full role in their own treatment and how the system operates.

Ignorance, prejudice, fear and the stigma of mental illness must be dispelled so that this can happen.

The exploitation and inequalities of capitalism itself causes many people to become mentally ill. Capitalism does not consider it profitable to provide proper research, prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The mental health of all would be a fundamental priority in a socialist society.

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Big Business Scandals - Don't Let Workers Pay The Price

WORLDCOM is the latest American company to rock world stock markets with its false accounting. Apparently at least one of its directors couldn't tell the difference between expenses and profit. This scandal follows on from those at Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, Global Crossing, Qwest and of course Andersen Accounting who were supposed to assure us of the probity of such companies!

Jean Walker

What all these infamous cases have in common is the huge capacity for greed of fat-cat shareholders on a feeding frenzy. WorldCom is facing bankruptcy after over-stating its profits by $3.8 billion. "Confusing" expenses and profits enabled the company to look much healthier than it was.

This in turn led to the share price remaining high, thereby boosting the major shareholders' personal fortunes. WorldCom now has at least $30 billion of debt, including $167 million of an unpaid loan to the former chief executive officer (CEO) to allow him to buy company stock when its price was at its highest.

The case of Enron is now well-known. This company, once the seventh biggest in America, collapsed in December 2001. It cooked the books for years so that it never paid a penny in income tax. Profits were overstated enabling Kenneth Lay, the former chairman and friend of President Bush, to have a take-home pay of $152 million, before bonuses were added.

At the same time, rank and file workers for the company were barred from cashing in the share options they were given as part of their pay package. When the share price crashed, these workers' savings were wiped out.

Gary Winnick, friend of former US President Bill Clinton and CEO of a digital communications company Global Crossing, did even better for himself. Before filing for bankruptcy of the company in January 2002 because of company debts of $12 billion, Winnick cashed in shares to the tune of $734 million.

Former Tyco executive Kozlowski has more artistic tastes. Kozlowski avoided $1 million sales tax on a number of original paintings which he bought to adorn his Manhattan apartment. This brought to light grossly inflated declared profits and hidden debts within the company.

Since the beginning of the year, Tyco has lost over $90 billion and is now in the process of selling off or closing down many of the subsidiary companies. Maybe Kozlowski couldn't afford the sales tax? After all he only 'earned' $332 million including bonuses and stock options between 1999 and 2001.

Job losses

THESE FAT-CAT shareholders seem to have combined personal incomes of more than the GDP of many small countries but these scandals have deeper implications. All round the world ordinary workers are paying the price for this corporate greed.

Even worse, they are paying several times over. The job losses are mounting. Enron have shed nearly 18,000 jobs since Christmas, WorldCom have already announced 17,000 job losses and Tyco are rapidly selling subsidiary companies.

In Tyco's plant in Swindon, electronics workers have been given no information other than to "keep their heads down" and keep working.

A skilled shop-floor worker for Tyco in Swindon gets £17,000 a year basic pay, as compared to Kozlowski's average of $100 million a year, and the workers are not expecting their bonuses this year. There is also great concern about the value (or lack of value) in the company pension scheme.

The security of tens of thousands of workers is looking precarious because of the large proportions of pension schemes gambled on the stock exchange. The CIO-AFL (America's equivalent of the TUC) has $200 million of workers pensions invested in WorldCom alone.

Most pension and life assurance companies gamble investors' money on the stock market as a matter of routine. All these funds are vulnerable because the value of shares is falling across the board, not just in the scandal-hit companies.

This is compounded by a flight of capital from the US economy following the collapse of so many large companies. This is slowing down the US economy and hence the world economy. Recession will see workers paying the price yet again in job losses, wiping out of savings and their pensions becoming worthless.

Press reports over recent weeks suggest that the companies caught so far are just the tip of the iceberg. It's not a case of a few "rotten apples" spoiling things for everyone. It's a sign of the sheer rottenness of the capitalist system.

President Bush and his administration are screaming 'outrage'. Something must be done to protect investors they say. But these are only mealy-mouthed words. The Republican Party is blocking moves in the US Senate to make it illegal for the same company that prepares accounts to be the auditors as well.

This minor measure may have made sure Enron and WorldCom were found out a little earlier, but it would not have prevented the gluttonous feeding frenzy of so many greedy individuals and corporations.

Workers' control

IT IS very unlikely that any meaningful reforms of the system, even action to root out the worst excesses, will be forthcoming from the US government. Capitalist governments rarely bite the hand that feeds them.

Two-thirds of the members of Congress have either been employed by Enron or Enron have paid their campaign expenses. Several dozen members of the Bush administration are in a similar position.

The picture in Britain is hardly less sleazy. Public services are decimated in order to give blank cheques to private companies to build our schools and hospitals.

The PFI - PPP schemes are a cosy arrangement where the government gives huge sums of taxpayers' money to big business for 25 or 30 years at a time, in return for the building of schools and hospitals that could have been built far cheaper using public finance.

What's the connection with Enron, WorldCom etc.? Government in Britain and the US seems to exist to benefit big business and fat-cat shareholders at the expense of the working class. The system is rotten to the core and a few reforms will not remove the stench of greed and corruption.

The only way for workers to benefit from the fruits of their labour, instead of paying for the extravagant lifestyles of shareholders is if they collectively own the companies they work for. All large companies need to be nationalised and democratically controlled by the working class.

Only a socialist system based on need and not greed will ensure that the few do not get super-rich at the expense of the many. In the year 2000, chief executives of large companies earned 458 times as much as their shop-floor workers. The differential is probably even greater now.

Nothing short of a socialist plan of production will ensure a guaranteed income for all and rid us of the parasite fat-cat shareholders that fatten themselves at our expense and destroy our planet in the name of profit.

The Socialist Party will fight for reform and for a decent minimum wage, for the prosecution of thieves like Kozlowski and Winnick and for nationalisation under working-class control of all major companies and all those found to be trading fraudulently.

Most importantly we continue campaigning for a mass party of the working class - a party that is socialist in content and will represent the workers' interests, rather than the interests of those that exploit us.

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How Capitalism Rips Off The Working Class

HOW MANY times has a boss told a shop steward or union rep that if they ask for too big a wage increase then prices will go up? Former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson claimed in the 1960s that: "One man's wage increase is another man's price rise". This is still a common cry from bosses world-wide.

When the national minimum wage was brought in, Britain's bosses again argued that wage rises cause inflation. If the minimum wage was at too high a level, they said, workers would be priced out of jobs, prices would rise and economic meltdown could follow.

Some trade union leaders stressed that a minimum wage had been introduced in other countries - sometimes at a higher level - without this economic Armageddon happening. This was a correct argument but it did not really explain why wage increases do not cause inflation.

If workers want the best arguments to expose the bosses and show that they can demand larger pay rises than are offered without causing economic chaos, then look no further than two pamphlets from Karl Marx written in the 19th century.

Workers produce wealth

IN WAGE Labour and Capital and Wages, Price and Profit, Karl Marx anticipated the arguments of today's capitalists and exposed the myth that workers get a "fair day's pay for doing a fair day's work".

Wage Labour and Capital first advances the arguments that Marx would fully develop in his exhaustive economic study, Das Kapital (Capital in English). Here for the first time, Marx unravelled a problem that had bedevilled even the greatest of the 'classical' economists: Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

They could not fully explain how a commodity or good attained a certain value and how in attaining that value the capitalist was able to make a profit.

Both had been on the right lines in different ways, but neither could square their argument that the quantity of labour that goes into any product determines its final value with their mistaken belief that the capitalists also add value in the production process which justifies them collecting their profits.

The capitalist class have always tried to excuse their parasitic existence and mega-profits by arguing that they take the risks in bringing together the factors of production. This has in turn been adopted by orthodox economics as the way capitalists add value in the production process.

If they stopped peddling this lie, the game would be up. They would have to admit that workers' labour, especially the unpaid labour of workers, produced all value (ie, new wealth) in society and their days as parasitic capitalist bosses would soon be over.

Marx argued that it was absurd to say the capitalists used profits to make further profits, as profits were a reflection of the value already created. By transferring money (capital) or charging rent on land the capitalists were not adding value but appropriating it and using if for their own ends.

Labour power

TO DO this Marx showed that labour had a double meaning or effect. Labour was used to describe the cost to the capitalist of hiring a worker but it also referred to the actual amount of labour performed by a worker.

Marx pointed out that labour was a commodity and like all commodities it was bought and sold. The crucial difference is that when a capitalist pays a worker he does not pay the worker for the value he puts into the production of another commodity, instead the capitalist pays for labour power.

The capitalist tries to pay as little for this labour power as he reasonably thinks he can get way with - basically enough to provide for the week-by-week upkeep of the workers and their families.

The bosses continually try to increase the pressures on workers to work for as little as possible using their hired media, the arguments of academic economists and using the brutality of unemployment and ever-intensifying contracts.

From this the capitalist then tries to get as much labour power out of the worker as he possibly can. In other words the capitalist exploits the worker by not paying for the full value of his or her work and trying to push the workers to work longer and harder to increase the extraction of surplus value (profits) from the worker.

Marx explained this simply. He showed that, for instance, if a worker worked an eight-hour day then four hours of this was worked to reproduce the value of what the workers was paid in wages. In the other four hours the worker effectively worked for the capitalist for nothing - allowing the boss to extract surplus value.

In general, the total wealth and total profits of the capitalist class grow at a greater rate than workers' living standards. A look at the difference in the proportions of national and international wealth going to the capitalists compared to the workers at any period in history will confirm this.

Trade union struggle

ALTHOUGH WORKERS' relative living standards may rise, it is also true that the wealth gap between the workers and the capitalists is ever-widening at most times. There are periods, though, where the working class through their organisations like the trade unions have mounted a militant struggle for an improved share of the wealth and this trend has marginally abated.

That is why Marx supported the struggle of trade unions - even although it was not directly linked at the time to the struggle for a socialist society - to push for better wages and conditions. This little pamphlet shows that workers are the source of all wealth in society and the unpaid labour of the working class is the source of all the capitalists' profit.

The second of the pamphlets Wages, Price and Profit is really an expansion of these arguments by Marx against socialists like John Weston, a follower of Robert Owen.

Weston argued that although he believed capitalism was wrong and should be removed, that it was pointless for workers to use trade union action to fight capitalism. He argued this because he accepted the orthodox economic line that it was supply and demand that conditioned the values of things and that any wage increases would be wiped out soon after by price increases.

Trade unionists and socialists facing these arguments today would do well to read both of these little pamphlets (available together in one book from Socialist Books, see above).

Although some of the argumentation and language can prove difficult, it is worth persisting and perhaps enlisting the help of someone who has read them already to discover a whole new world of economic understanding that is far different to the bosses' sterile, dull economic orthodoxy.

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Aids pandemic

Pharmaceutical Giants Obstruct Progress

AS 15,000 delegates attend the International Aids Conference in Barcelona, the United Nations estimates that 68 million people could die of the Aids disease by 2020. ROGER SHRIVES reports on how the capitalist profit motive is allowing this pandemic to spread.

BOTH AIDS and infection with the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) which causes it are spreading faster than predicted. 40 million people already have Aids, the most serious outbreak of illness in human history. Three million died from it last year.

The disease is more widespread than had been thought in the worst hit countries - particularly sub-Saharan Africa (in Botswana, for example, it is predicted that a baby born in 2010 would have a life expectancy of only 27 years) and spreading into new populations in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe.

A new UN report says Aids could kill up to 70 million people if the world's richest nations don't more than triple the money they spend to curb the epidemic.

The UN calculates that the poor countries most at risk would need to spend up to $10 billion to tackle HIV/Aids. So far only about a third of that had been forthcoming from countries plagued by 'debts', drought, famine, warfare and other problems.

Aids agencies have given advice on how to stop the disease spreading. But the main obstacle to tackling HIV/Aids is capitalism, particularly the activities of profit-hungry pharmaceutical companies.

Only 1% of new pharmaceutical treatments developed over the last quarter of a century were for diseases normally found in poorer nations. But drugs are available to ameliorate the lot of HIV/Aids sufferers - they were developed because there was a market in the West.

These drugs though are expensive to buy as the world's top pharmaceutical companies make huge profits out of them. And while millions face a painful death, the drug firms protect this right with laws forbidding cheap 'generic' substitutes.

When Brazil used a loophole in these laws allowing cheaper alternatives ("in a national emergency") to produce and distribute its own anti-AIDS drug at 75% below prices in Europe, it cut Aids-related deaths by 40% in five years.

Last year the world's top drugs firms tried to stop that happening again by suing South Africa's ANC government over cheap generic Aids drugs which it bought or made.

The drugs giants said South Africa was violating intellectual property rights. They were really worried that if poorer countries could get cheaper drugs, it could push down profits in their biggest markets - North America, Japan and Europe.

The South African government won a victory over the drug companies after the courts asked the drugs firms to explain why their prices were so high.

After this court case, the cost of a three-drug cocktail went down from $1,500 a year to $300, raising hopes that poor countries could now afford them. But, says medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres, the drugs are still too dear, they want the cost to go down to $50 a year.

The UN aids body had set up a scheme to supply discounted drugs to countries in Africa. So far it has only enabled 22,000 extra people in eleven countries to get drugs, which are still too expensive and discounts are only available for a limited number of drugs.

Emergency action is needed to halt the spread of HIV/Aids. That must include fighting to take the whole pharmaceutical industry worldwide into public ownership, under the democratic control of the working class and service-users.

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