The People's Supermarket - Shoppers of the World Unite!

Yet another store opened its doors in the past few weeks, selling an array of items from organic muesli and recycled toilet paper to ecological soap and fairtrade coffee. Its enthusiastic staff, sporting eye-catching bright yellow T-shirts, work the tills and replenish the shelves. There are carrier bags, crips, baskets, and customers young and old. But this is not just another run-of-the-mill supermarket - this is the People's Supermarket (TPS), run by the people and for the people.

For a membership fee of £25 and a commitment to volunteer for four hours a month, you become a part-owner of TPS. You will be able to vote on what foods are stocked and influence how it is run and get a 10% discount on everything you purchase there.

The main driving forces behind this 'socialist supermarket' are a group of social entrepeneurs led by Arthur Potts Dawson. He is a successful eco-friendly chef who set up Waterhouse, Britain's greenest restaurant. Arthurs says: "This supermarket will be communal. It will be friendly, local, cheap and democratic."

He is striving to introduce a more ethical social alternative to the big supermarket chains. Funding from the local council, the Development Trusts Association and private donors have brought this project to life.

The concept is not new. It is modelled on the famous Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn, New York, which first opened its doors in 1973 and now boasts over 14,000 members. Park Slope's slogan is 'Good food at low prices for working members through co-operation.' It offers members who volunteer at the store savings of up to 40% off their weekly grocery bill. In stark contrast with most capitalist stores in the United States which have 100% mark-up on items, Park Slope has just 20%.

The Park Slope Food Co-op even provides free childcare to children of co-op members while their parents or guardians are working and/or shopping at the co-op. There are plans to introduce similar provision in TPS, alongside a café, kitchen and meeting place.

Co-ops are offering an affordable alternative to rapacious supermarket chains. They favour selling organic, minimally processed and healthy produce, seeking to avoid products involving the exploitation of others. They also have admirable green policies, seeking out local ecological producers with fruit and vegetables sourced from some of the best local farmers markets.

The Park Slope model, embraced by TPS is exposing the myth that you can only have either cheap or good food and never both. One of TPS's mission statements is to sell the best food at the lowest possible prices. Potts Dawson, evidently passionate about delivering affordable food to the masses, lambasts big supermarket chains.

"Supermarkets control how we buy food and what we can eat and they make an absolute fortune from us. I want this to be a real wake-up call for people to see what supermarkets are doing to them and to show that there is an alternative model."

They have an arduous task on their hands in challenging the traditional large capitalist supermaket. Out of every £8 spent in Britain, £1 is spent in Tesco. The giant supermarket chain amassed £3.4 billion in pre-tax profits, up over 10% from the previous year. The pockets of its chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, are bulging after notching up over £5.2 million in salary and bonus last year. The company's eight-person executive committee will share £24 million between them.

With TPS and its egalitarian ideology, any profits will go back into making the food even cheaper still. There will be no obscene largesse with ridiculous dividends for shareholders or massive bonuses for bosses. It is the members who will benefit, all equally.

Potts Dawson criticises the behaviour of giants like Tesco. "Supermarkets are making massive demands for profit to satisfy their shareholders and that's very destructive for the world economy. They are flying cheap products across the world while local producers struggle to get their goods into local shops".

On opening day in TPS, one store product label proudly professed: 'I am the People's Milk. I am British, fresh and cheaper than Tesco.' Although also stocking household brands in addition to The People's Pint, TPS also sells 50 own-brand goods for £1 or less - including 'The People's Loaf', free from additives and preservatives.

TPS has arrived at an opportune time with weekly shopping bills rising and Tesco alone currently expected to lose £85 million of food per year as 'waste'. The money we spend at the supermarket is not just spent on the food we eat - it also pays for the food they have to throw away. It is an unsustainable and foolish system. The co-op supermarket concept is giving the world real food for thought.

Chávez takes 'anti-people firms' into public ownership

During one of his 'Alo Presidente' six-hour weekly state television shows packed with political announcements and revolutionary pronouncements, Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chávez announced plans to take over more private companies.

In his 11-year tenure, Chávez has taken a host of businesses into public hands, from oil to to food production. The profits of these companies, which were previously siphoned off into the bank accounts of the wealthy, are now being used to bankroll Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution and to fund its numerous accompanying social programmes.

The words 'nationalisation' and 'expropriation' have negative connotations in the Americas that have been encouraged by the capitalist media, who equate them with theft. However, under Venezuelan law, the owners of all companies that have been nationalised are compensated with their market value. Chávez himself said that he will only nationalise those companies which contravene laws, infringe on workers' rights, and adversely affect the national economy. To los capitalistas, the nationalisations are only acceptable when they are designed to bail out bankers; for them, nationalising profits is an act of despicable communism.

On June 2nd, thousands of Venezuelans marched in favour of nationalisations and anti-corruption measures, which took place in the wake of the recent arrest by the Bolivarian Intelligence Agency (SEBIM) of state-owned food producer PDVAL President Luis Pulido on charges of hoarding food. Over 30 tons of decomposed food products, including oil, sugar, coffee, butter, rice, meat, pasta and milk, were discovered by authorities in containers. This was an act of economic sabotage with corrupt officials trying to provoke product shortages. Chávez publicly condemned the corruption, stating that such practices are anathema to the raison d'etre of PDVAL and its noble mission of providing food at state-regulated prices and called for those responsible to be imprisoned.

The Venezuelan Government is also expropriating several small food distributors and other companies who have violated price controls and have hoarded items to create shortages and raise inflation, which currently stands at 30 per cent. Chávez remarked: "The bourgeoisie have declared economic warfare against me and I call on workers to join with me in the fight to take back our economy."

President Chávez also spared some vitriol for Lorenzo Mendoza, billionaire owner of Empresas Polar, the nation's largest food and beverage producer and distributor.

Mendoza's company has been implicated in hoarding goods in its warehouses, resulting in public panic, and then releasing them at higher prices, causing inflation and crippling the economy. They have also been criticised for attacks on workers' rights, pay and conditons. He warned Mendoza that if his company continues these immoral practices then he will nationalise it. He directly challenged Mendoza in his combative style, saying: "Let's see who lasts longer - you, with your Polar and your riches, or me, with my people and the dignity of a revolutionary soldier."

This policy of nationalising companies is strengthening worker particpation in society and empowering the forgotten masses. It is an integral part of Chávez's construction of 21st century socialism. It is putting companies at the service of the people under the direct control of workers. In response to criticisms that nationalised companies are performing poorly, Venezuelan vice-president Elas Jua claimed that production has increased in 80 per centof nationalised companies over the last decade.

José Mora, a leader of the Union of Socialist Workers and National Assembly member, lauded nationalisations stating: "We are producing for the country. We are producing for the population. Business people produce using workers to get richer, exploiting workers."

It is a practical implementation of a great socialist ideal of producing on a collective basis for the collective well-being and, much to the chagrin of Venezuela's capitalist class, it is working.

On May 15th, speaking of Plan Guayana Socialista, Chávez appealed to workers to promote workers' control and the election of managers from below. One small example of workers producing without bosses is the Gotcha Workers, a group of female textile workers whose previous owners closed down their factory. The former bosses fled without providing any compensation for the workforce. The staff responded by taking control of the factory and are now producing and selling direct to the local communities. Two weeks before, Chávez told a gathering of workers: "Wherever you see a private company, a capitalist company that is exploiting the workers and is not complying with the laws, that is hoarding, denounce it, because the government is willing to intervene. Factories that close down should be occupied by the workers."

In his most recent address, Chávez also criticised large multinational companies Coca-Cola and Pepsi for wasting water and using large quantities in their poduction processes. Water shortages have resulted in power cuts and rationing. He said: "Water in the first place belongs to the people. Water is social property."

The conservative assertion that private is good and public is bad is being directly challenged in Venezuela. As capitalism wreaks increasing havoc throughout the world, it is inspiring that Venezuela is not only preaching about an alternative socialist economic system but is actually putting it into practice.

Rising fortunes of German Left

TWENTY years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany is once again experiencing a transformation of its political landscape. Die Linke, The Left in English, are capitalising on a nation’s discontent with capitalism, and are articulating a socialist alternative to Angela Merkel’s conservative government. They seem to be striking all the right chords with a substantial section of the German population and are turning this support into tangible electoral gains. In the Bundestag 2009 Federal Elections, Die Linke, with just under 12 per cent of the vote, secured 76 out of 622 seats, making it the fourth largest party in Germany. It is the largest party in the GUE/NGL grouping in the European Parliament. In the EU Parliament elections, it increased its vote to 7.5 per cent.

Die Linke was founded in June 2007. It was a merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) – the successor party to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany who ruled the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) for four decades - and the Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice.

Despite its powerbase and membership coming predominantly from East Germany, it is enjoying increasing electoral success in the West. Die Linke is a broad church of the left comprising members from a range of left-wing political backgrounds from disillusioned Social Democrats to hard-line communists. There are several platforms within the party but they have garnered support by logically concentrating on their common objectives rather than differences.

TERRITORIAL UNITY, SOCIAL DIVISION
Germany though territorially unified, is in many ways still socially divided. The majority of promises made by proponents of German reunification remain unfulfilled. The gap between rich and poor has grown and with it the disparity between incomes in the West and the East. The welfare state has suffered dismantling and Germany’s elite have pro-actively supported the unpopular invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The reunification has been criticised as hasty, ill-thought out and biased towards the West. Literally overnight 16 million Eastern Germans were incorporated into the new Federal Republic. However, many soon felt like second class citizens, as unemployment soared and poverty increased in their regions. State assets were sold off for a pittance. Ostalgie – literally East nostalgia and meaning nostalgia for the GDR, soon set in as Easterners longed for the strong social protections of the former Eastern state. The SPD’s abandonment of social democracy and warm embrace of New Labour economics under Gerhard Schröder caused a vacuum on the left which Die Linke is now filling.

It was due to the attack on Germany’s welfare state by Schröder and his supporters that Oskar Lafontaine, current co-chairperson of Die Linke, resigned from his position as then minister with SPD in 1999. Lafontaine, who was born along the French border to a poor, working class family, is a charismatic leader who has drastically improved Die Linke’s popularity in the West. Known as ‘Red Oskar’, Lafontaine became Finance Minister in a Social Democrat-Green coalition which dislodged Helmut Kohl’s Conservatives from power. In his governmental role Lafontaine cut tax rates for those on low-incomes, introduced new levies on big businesses and tightened controls on financial markets. In less than a year however he resigned from his post after becoming increasingly disillusioned with Gerhard Schröder and his Blairite shift to the right. He is castigated by the right as a “leftist populist” but is revered by supporters as a highly effective leader, articulate and amiable.

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Die Linke’s other co-chairperson is Gregor Gysi, an East German born and bred lawyer whose father was an ardent communist who actively organised underground resistance against Hitler’s Nazis. Gysi, a passionate communist himself, is balanced in his views of the GDR. He praises its admirable social achievements in education, employment, culture and general welfare protections but is critical of the state’s former repressive methods.

The Left’s explicit aim is the achievement of democratic socialism. Their ideology is unapologetically left-wing. They reject privatisation, are anti-capitalist and pro-social justice, and argue for a redistribution of wealth through higher corporation tax and increased tax for wealthy individuals. They also support natural resources being under public ownership. They want to introduce a national minimum wage, expand affordable housing and advocate generous maternity leave. They have been steadfast in their opposition to the war in Afghanistan and Germany’s unpopular involvement and have campaigned for a rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. According to their Key Programmatic Points, for Die Linke another world is not just possible but necessary.

Like many European countries, there is little that separates Germany’s two main parties, namely the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD).
Both parties shared power in the a so called ‘grand coalition’ between 2005 and 2009. The SPD have since been criticised for spending more time and energy criticising Die Linke while cosying up to their former senior conservative government partners. What is perturbing them now is that Die Linke is gaining ground, not just in its traditional East strongholds, but in the West. Now it is virtually impossible for the Social Democrats and the Greens to form governments without the Left Party.

The 2005 electoral alliance between the two main groups that now comprise Die Linke enhanced the left’s electoral performance. Bucking a familiar trend on the left of splitting, Germany’s Left Party has opted for unity and seems to be reaping the electoral rewards.