Letter: Congratulations on the July issue
1999Charlie van Gelderen 1999-10The page as the paper published it (Wayback Machine) →
From the paper's own web edition, recovered from the Internet Archive: the text as the paper put it online, not machine-read. The printed issue of October 1999 is not held.
A letter from the 'Our Readers Speak Out' page of the October 1999 web edition, signed 'Charlie van Gelderen, Cambridge, England'; separated from that page 3 Nov 2026, the text exactly as the paper put it online (the page printed no headline for it, so the title is ours). The printed issue of October 1999 is not held.
Dear editor,
I am writing especially to congratulate you on your July issue. Your coverage of the Balkan War was brilliant and in the best Marxist tradition. I found the discussion between Cockburn, George, and Seligman particularly stimulating.
The Blair "New Labour" government has shown that the social democratic leopard has not changed its spots since the betrayal of August 1914. In domestic and foreign policy it is trying to out-Thatcher THATCHER!
I also appreciated Nat Weinstein's Marxist analysis of "Inflation? Deflation?" In Britain, as in the U.S., capital is on the offensive. Inflation at 2.5 percent is well below the government's target and the lowest it has been for decades. Unemployment is falling, with the jobless at a 19-year low of 1,280,100.
But in spite of the decrease in the (unemployed) reserve of labor, the rate of increase in average earnings in the first part of this year dropped from 4.6 percent to 4.3 percent. This, of course, has not stopped the bosses from voting themselves fat-cat salary increases and bonus share options.
That is why I appreciated Paul Siegel, in his review of Daniel Singer's book, stressing the current importance of parts of the "Transitional Program," as I did when I spoke to the Fourth International's Youth Camp last year.
I think with the growing disparity between the earnings of theheads of corporatioins and those they employ, the demand to open the books should be high on the agenda.
Charlie van Gelderen,
Cambridge, England