It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, September 17, 2020
U.S. reacts angrily to losing WTO ruling on China tariffs
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Claims that $200 billion US worth of goods had benefited from illegal practices not proven, WTO says
The Associated Press ·
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, seen during congressional testimony earlier this year, cited the decision as proof that the World Trade Organization isn't equipped to deal with what he characterizes as China's unfair trade advantages. (Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press)
The decision marks the first time that the Geneva-based trade body has ruled against a series of high-profile tariffs that U.S.President Donald Trump's government has imposed on a number of countries — allies and rivals alike. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the WTO treats the U.S. unfairly.
In its decision, the WTO's dispute settlement body ruled against the U.S. government's argument that China has wrongly engaged in practices harmful to U.S. interests on issues including intellectual property theft and technology transfer.
The ruling, in theory, would allow China to impose retaliatory tariffs on billions' worth of U.S. goods.
But it is unlikely to have much practical impact, at least in the short term, because the U.S. can appeal the decision and the WTO's appeals court is currently no longer functioning — largely because of Washington's single-handed refusal to accept new members for it.
The appeals court issues final rulings in trade cases and stopped functioning last year when the terms of two of its last three judges expired with no replacements. That means the United States can appeal the decision "into the void," said Timothy Keeler, a lawyer at Mayer Brown and former chief of staff for the U.S. Trade Representative.
"This panel report confirms what the Trump administration has been saying for four years: The WTO is completely inadequate to stop China's harmful technology practices," said U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer in a statement. He said the U.S. had presented "extensive evidence" of China's intellectual property theft and the WTO has offered no fixes for it.
"The United States must be allowed to defend itself against unfair trade practices, and the Trump administration will not let China use the WTO to take advantage of American workers, businesses, farmers, and ranchers," he said.
Abolish the WTO: Republican senator
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, one of the prominent China critics in the Republican Party, said it was "more evidence that the WTO is outdated, sclerotic, and generally bad for America. USA should withdraw and lead the effort to abolish it."
The Chinese ministry of commerce said the ruling was "objective and fair" and called on the U.S. to respect it.
The U.S. tariffs target two batches of Chinese products. Duties of 10 per cent were imposed on some $200 billion worth of goods in September 2018, and were jacked up to 25 per cent eight months later. An additional 25 per cent duties were imposed in June 2018 against Chinese goods worth about $34 billion in annual trade.
The Trump administration has justified the sanctions under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, once a common tool used by the U.S. government to impose sanctions — and recently revived by Trump. The U.S. argued that China's actions had amounted to "state-sanctioned theft" and "misappropriation" of U.S. technology, intellectual property and commercial secrets.
The WTO panel ruled that the U.S. measures violated longstanding international trade rules because they only applied to products from China, and that Washington had not adequately substantiated its claim that the Chinese products hit with the extra duties had benefited from the allegedly unfair Chinese practices.
The United States has suddenly called a tariff truce with Canada, lifting its 10 per cent aluminum levy Tuesday just hours before Ottawa was to unleash a suite of countermeasures.
The tariffs on Canadian aluminum will be lifted retroactive to Sept. 1 because Canadian exports are expected to “normalize” over the remainder of the year, the U.S. trade representative’s office said in a statement.
Abigail Bimman explains why a trade threat still looms.
For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca/news/7336417/us-standing-down-aluminum-tariffs-canada/
CBC
The United States hit the pause button on tariffs on Canadian aluminum today, agreeing to withdraw current penalties — at least until after the presidential election in November.
To read more: http://cbc.ca/1.5724391
Virtual schools face rocky start — with delays, confusion and technical problems
'We're flying the plane as we build it,' says Regina school official
WE HAVE ONLY HAD COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET IN SCHOOLS SINCE THE NINETIES
Getting virtual schools off the ground this fall has proven to be a significant challenge across provinces, with parents feeling left in the dark, enrolment lists in flux, technical issues and teachers still being hired or reassigned as classes get underway. (Shutterstock)
Some Canadian parents might have looked longingly at neighbouring provinces getting the option of distance learning this school year, but getting virtual schools off the ground has proven to be a tricky undertaking.
With many parents feeling left in the dark, postponements, enrolment lists in flux, technical hiccups and teachers still being hired or reassigned as classes begin, heading back to school online this fall has gotten off to a bumpy start during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"There's a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of 'I don't know' and 'We'll figure it out as we go.' I'm a planner, so that kind of stuff makes me very anxious," said Ashley St John, a Toronto mother of a blended family of five children between two months and 12 years old.
Because St John is currently on maternity leave, she said she feels lucky to be able to choose online learning for her school-aged children — a decision made because two members of her multigenerational household are immunocompromised.
But school-related emails being sent to an outdated address and no followup phone calls forced her to rush around to confirm that her kids had indeed been enrolled in virtual school this fall.
"I have zero faith that they're organized.... The feeling I get is that they don't have a plan, they're not prepared," she said.
WATCH | Parent reacts to Toronto school board's latest postponement:
Watch
Toronto District School Board (TDSB) delays on-line learning again 21 hours ago Ashley St John speaks to Dianne Buckner about the postponement and what this means for her blended family. 6:58
Parents in Calgary are also decrying a lack of key information and details about the Calgary Board of Education's Hub online learning program, which was slated to begin as early as Monday.
"We just don't have any information as to what time we need to be home and in front of our computers to be able to let the kids connect with their teachers," said Tamara Rose, who is working from home full time because of multiple autoimmune diseases.
Rose said she feels frustrated: She wants to be able to schedule her video meetings for work apart from the time her daughter, Scarlett — who had expected to start Grade 2 virtually this past Monday morning — will need the computer for school. She also needs to juggle the times her seven-year-old will join her grandfather outdoors for some physical activity, like hiking.
"We're kind of all just in the dark right now," she said.
Tamara Rose, with her seven-year-old daughter, Scarlett, is among the Calgary parents who are waiting to receive details about their children's online learning classrooms. 'We're kind of all just in the dark right now," she says. (Submitted by Tamara Rose)
Though some parents have received emails identifying their children's Hub teachers, what school supplies will be needed and details of their kids' virtual school day, others — like Rose — are still waiting.
"Some moms are sitting there hitting refresh [on their email] all day," she said. 'A monumental task'
Creating virtual classes for so many students — and then staffing and supporting them accordingly — has been "a monumental task," Toronto District School Board chair Alexander Brown said Tuesday morning, a day after Canada's largest school district announced it was once again delaying the start of its virtual option.
The TDSB has begun a staggered entry for in-class learning this week, but its virtual school will now start on Sept. 22, with the latest postponement due to a large influx of families — about 72,000 students from the board's roughly 250,000 total enrolment — opting for online learning.
The 72,000 students in the Toronto District School Board's virtual school this fall represent an enrolment bigger than most school boards in Ontario, says Carlene Jackson, the board's interim director of education. Tuesday was the deadline for parents to enrol their children in virtual school. (CBC)
"That's bigger than most school boards in Ontario. We've seen increases of over 6,000 in just the last couple of days, and we are expecting that to grow," said Carlene Jackson, the board's interim director of education.
"We did decide to allow parents to have choice and flexibility in terms of whether or not they wanted to send their children in person or do online learning," she said, clarifying that Tuesday was the deadline for virtual school.
"We do need the additional time to get the additional teachers in place and to develop those timetables."
The Toronto public board isn't alone: School boards in Peel Region, Hamilton-Wentworth and Waterloo region were among the other Ontario districts that announced delays to the start of virtual learning in recent days due to a significant last-minute uptick in sign-ups, which has required reassigning or hiring many more teachers.
"It's a buyer's market right now for teachers. They're needed all over the place.... There's a huge teacher shortage right now," said Patrick Etmanski, head of the Waterloo unit of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association.
"They've delayed the online stuff because they can't find people to do the work." E-learning can overload internet
Getting the Calgary Board of Education's massive virtual effort ready has taken a Herculean effort over the past weeks — from finalizing the student registrations to reallocating existing teachers and hiring new ones, said Joanne Pitman, the board's superintendent of school improvement.
She said that earlier communication from the board — which included a link to some independent assignments to familiarize students with online learning — had indicated that real-time instruction would begin sometime this week.
"We're actually, in under two weeks, reassigning and building in over 700 teachers to be able to support the just under 20,000 students who have registered for Hub," Pitman said.
Anticipating the complexity of a brand-new virtual offering was why Regina Public Schools chose to start its e-school program the week after beginning a staggered in-class return, said Terry Lazarou, the board's supervisor of communications.
"We have to build infrastructure. We have to get it staffed. We have to do all of the stuff necessary to have that work successfully," he said Tuesday. This initial week would be "very much a 'getting to know you'" experience for elementary students, but "actual learning" for high-schoolers, he said.
On the first day of the e-school program at Regina Public Schools on Monday, a server exceeded capacity and prevented anyone from logging in for about 20 minutes before being quickly resolved, spokesperson Terry Lazarou says. 'The internet is a lovely thing, but it's not magical.' (Kirk Fraser/CBC)
"There were obviously hiccups," Lazarou said about Monday's inaugural day of e-school, which has about 2,000 students enrolled. A server exceeded capacity and prevented anyone from logging in for about 20 minutes before being quickly resolved, he said.
"We're very reliant on infrastructure that everyone else in the province is also using. The internet is a lovely thing, but it's not magical. When volume goes up or when other things happen, it's susceptible to overuse sometimes."
Moving forward, Regina Public Schools is focused on improving its offering, Lazarou said. Key will be ensuring that technological systems stay "robust enough to be able to handle the need" and that all families in e-school continue to have the equipment and internet access required to participate online. Officials are also making the necessary accommodations for students with intensive needs.
"There is a lot more work that needs to be done," Lazarou said. "We're flying the plane as we build it.... This is going well, but everything can go better. And we're working on ensuring that it does go better."
Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce urged patience as "tens of thousands" of students get started virtually from kindergarten to Grade 12 this school year.
Referring to the fact that even without COVID-19, class numbers typically fluctuate somewhat before settling later in September, Lecce told a daily Ontario press briefing on Monday that there will indeed be consolidation — and perhaps reorganization — of classrooms in some regions this fall.
"While we're seeing the migration of tens of thousands [of students] ... it creates operational challenges for boards," he said. "It's not an excuse, but it's important context for families to understand."
With files from Deana Sumanac-Johnson, Lucie Edwardson, Jacqueline Hansen and Kate Bueckert.
The United States is closing in on 200,000 COVID-19 deaths and has surpassed 6.5 million infections—two bleak milestones in a battle that President Donald Trump, in important ways, chose not to fully fight. With the new revelation in Bob Woodward’s book, Rage, that the president understood how deadly the virus was on February 7th—and likely even earlier—but chose not to act in the manner one would hope with that information, there is little comfort to offer the families, friends, and loved ones of the tens of thousands of Americans who should still be alive today.
Instead of putting forth a national strategy to combat the pandemic or issuing guidelines for states on how to curb the virus’s spread, the president actively sowed confusion and downplayed the severity of the situation. Americans were left largely in the dark about the virus’s lethality. Accompanying this carnage is catastrophic economic fallout, which too can be attributed to the president’s inaction and misdirection.
As a result, the United States has been plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Annualized gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by a crushing 31.7 percent in the second quarter of 2020—easily the largest recorded drop in American history. 11.5 million jobs have been lost since February, and slowing job growth is pointing to a stalled recovery. Communities of color are bearing the brunt of the economic fallout, with Black, Latino, and Asian unemployment rates consistently higher than that of their white counterparts.
With no end in sight to the recession, it is worth remembering that this economic crisis was not inevitable. Had President Trump taken steps to curb the coronavirus’s spread within the United States sooner, the economy might be back to normal by now.
International comparisons, while imperfect, can illustrate just how much worse the recession is in the United States compared to other countries. As demonstrated by the experiences of peer nations, a rapid and coordinated public health response could have contained the pandemic more effectively and reduced the mounting economic losses.
South Korea, which recorded its first case of COVID-19 on the same day as the United States, largely avoided shutting down its economy due to its early and aggressive actions to counter the spread of the coronavirus. In July, South Korea’s harmonized unemployment rate, a metric calculated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to enable the comparison of unemployment figures across countries, was 4.2 percent—just 0.9 percentage points higher than it was in February. The United States, on the other hand, registered an unemployment rate of 10.2 percent in July—higher than any point reached during the Great Recession and 6.7 percentage points higher than where it was in February. Every OECD country with published July harmonized unemployment data (aside from Colombia) was performing markedly better than the United States relative to pre-pandemic levels.
The president, of course, argues that the economy is in shambles not because of a failed public health response on his part, but instead due to the lockdowns implemented in most states across the country. These measures, he argues, are the real reason consumer demand has crumpled. The president believes that economic activity would roar back to its pre-pandemic level if only the United States were open again for business.
That’s a false hope built on mistaken empirical assumptions. There is strong evidence suggesting that the fear of the virus’s spread (perhaps compounded by an inadequate policy response) led to an economic slowdown before stay-at-home orders were even in place. As early as February, real-time economic data show a marked decline in spending on high-contact activities. From mid-January to mid-March, consumer spending on (i) transportation, (ii) entertainment and recreation, and (iii) restaurants and hotels declined by 24 percent, 24 percent, and 9 percent, respectively. Spending on groceries, on the other hand, surged by 43 percent over the same time period, indicating a clear public acknowledgement of the health risks of venturing out of the home and economic belt-tightening.
This phenomenon also holds true across states. Analysis shows that states with more serious restrictions did not see worse economic outcomes than states with more lax ones. In many cases, the economic outcomes in states with longer stay-at-home orders improved after lockdowns ended. States that gambled with their residents’ lives by not shutting down or by reopening too quickly ended up with nothing to show for it economically.
This patchwork of lockdowns has only compounded the confusion. Since the beginning of the pandemic, states have been in a constant shuffle of reopening and shutting back down based on caseloads within their borders. Yet there are serious problems with delegating lockdowns to states, the most obvious one being that Americans are mostly free to move between them. Even the most diligent state can have its progress in combatting the virus erased by an inflow of infected guests or a transient mask-weary population.
While the implementation of a national lockdown may be unconstitutional, the president could have taken significant steps to encourage people to stay home and adopted other mitigation measures, and then collaborated with states to enforce such policies. Instead, he offered conflicting messages on wearing masks, downplayed the risks, pushed fake cures, and tried to turn state lockdowns into partisan issues.
Now, the United States is virtually alone among wealthy countries in its mounting death count. Other countries sacrificed economic activity for a short period to bring the pandemic under control, and the results have been mostly positive. Over the month of July, the United Kingdom registered an increase of 12 deaths per million residents. Over August, that figure had dropped to 5, indicating a decreasing rate of growth. Canada’s monthly increase in deaths per million residents dropped from 9 to 5 from July to August. Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, New Zealand, and Singapore registered no change over the same period.
The United States, on the other hand, saw its monthly increase in deaths per million residents surge from 78 to 91 between July and August—a significant and non-trivial acceleration. In August, the United States overtook France in total deaths per million residents. Projecting each country’s growth rates reveals that we will soon pass Italy, the United Kingdom, and Spain.
Much of the evidence available suggests that the economic recovery is consequently stalling in the United States. Consumer spending dropped 33 percent at the end of March compared to pre-pandemic levels, and over the subsequent months it gradually recovered. Since the middle of June, however, consumer spending has remained around 7 percent below its February level. Similar trajectories have been observed in small business revenue, new job postings, and the overall employment level.
Many of the provisions in the CARES Act aimed at helping the most economically vulnerable have expired, subjecting tens of millions of Americans to intense economic hardship and beginning the process of erasing the progress made thus far. The $600 weekly Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation payments ended at the end of July, squeezing the finances of over 10 million unemployed Americans. The eviction moratorium has also expired, which has already led to millions of evictions nationwide and is expected to lead to millions more.
The HEROES Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives in May with bipartisan support, would have likely been sufficient to keep the economy afloat at the time it was passed, and in the process it would have provided the country enough time to get the pandemic under control. Unfortunately, the HEROES Act was not considered in the Senate, and the pandemic is still raging across the United States. Now, with the Senate still unable to pass its own bill and negotiations stalling yet again, the prospect of a new round of relief is starting to slip away. There is a real possibility that we won’t see a new aid package until the 117th Congress is sworn in next January. Until a substantive and comprehensive bill becomes law, COVID-19 will continue to kill Americans, and the economic recovery will likely continue to stall.
President Trump could change this trajectory. If he were to unveil a national plan to ramp up testing, work with states to minimize transmissions, and engage in negotiations with Congress to pass a new round of relief, it is still very possible that our country could get the pandemic under control and follow in the economic footsteps of some of our international peers.
It seems though that the president is instead placing all of his faith in the successful development and wide distribution of a vaccine, which would surely lead to an economic rebound. Yet the public health community is not expecting to see widespread vaccination until the middle of next year, and there are mounting concerns that some of the candidate’s clinical trials are not going as well as initially hoped. Even if one of the vaccines successfully passes trials and is approved, there are already significant challenges to distributing and administering it to over 300 million Americans.
For now, it is important to remember that many of the deaths and much of the economic hardship could have been avoided had President Trump acted on the intelligence and public health information he received before the coronavirus crisis began. His repeated abdication of responsibility has led to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and his continued refusal to lead is only lengthening and deepening the economic damage he has caused. The COVID-19 pandemic was the first real exogenous test President Trump has faced in his role, and it has become clearer than ever that he has failed. Unfortunately, things will likely get much worse before they get better.
CNN's Don Lemon reacts to some moments from ABC's town hall with President Donald Trump where he was confronted by voters about a variety of issues, including the Covid-19 pandemic and healthcare.
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
COVID: Which side are we on?
August 16, 2020
Length:1357 words
Summary: An examination of how class divisions and opposed concepts of freedom underpin the radically divergent approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and the U.S. — Editors
On whose side do we stand in the face of this horrible epidemic which, in my country of the United States, causes at least a thousand deaths a day (a total of 155,000 certified deaths, not counting thousands of poor, undocumented people who die without a trace) and which resumed in July to double its national extent? With the neo-liberals denying the danger in order to bring in the salaried workers without taking health measures and risking their lives to produce profits and inflate the stock market? Or with the resistance of emergency workers, teachers and frontline workers who want to protect themselves and others by strengthening public health measures?
The two camps
The class line is clearly drawn. On the one hand, neoliberal and fascist governments, such as those of Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil, both of which are denialist, minimize in their massive propaganda the danger of Covid-19, refuse to wear masks, denigrate science, and discourage any effort to control the virus. Their objectives?
For Bolsonaro, it is the genocide of the indigenous people of the Amazon in order to open it up to agricultural exploitation by cutting down and burning the trees that give the planet a large percentage of its oxygen). Trump was already a denier of global warming, which he dismissed as a “Chinese myth.” As soon as he came to power, he took away all the laws that protected the environment to benefit his buddies in the oil industry.
As for COVID, Trump denied it from the beginning (“a bad cold”) and refused to wear a mask. Every day, in Tweets and press conferences, Trump spreads false statistics and ridicules science by dismissing Dr. Fauci, the official head of public health of the Republic. This denialist propaganda is quickly taken up by the Republican party (in power in the Senate and in many federal states), by the mass media such as FOX News, and it floods the Internet.
Christian-fascist militias armed with semi-automatic rifles organize threatening anti-mask demonstrations under the protection of the police, normally so brutal against the demonstrators, but who sympathize with Trump.
Result? The USA, the richest country in the world, has the most sick and dead people on the planet. Thanks to Trump’s policy, which only thinks about his re-election and the stock market, with 4% of the world’s population the US has more than a quarter of the population affected. (“We’re Number One!”) Compared to France, an American, like my daughter Jenny in NY, is much times more likely to die from the virus than a Parisian. And I don’t count her autoimmune condition, severely declared, which could multiply this danger a lot. As for New Yorkers my age, it’s dropping like flies.
Same phenomenon in Germany, where the neo-Nazis, who are becoming more and more numerous and active, are using the idea that they are defending “freedom of expression” by rejecting masks to mobilize the masses. Far from defending freedom, these Nazis are part of an international right-wing negationist movement financed by neoliberal right-wing groups of which Trump and Bolsonaro are champions.
Between these deadly neo-fascist movements and the revolt of the nurses and teachers who defend human life and the public health service, I have no difficulty in choosing my side.
An explosive video
A propos of Germany, I just watched a video in German language (with titles) entitled “2,000 doctors explode governments on coronavirus management” recommended by Gilet Jaunes [ort Yellow Vest] comrades here in France who consider it a “bomb”. (Time bomb: if you don’t know German, you have to be patient and read tiny subtitles).
Far from criticizing the lack of tests, masks, respirators, and hospital beds typical of the neo-liberal management of this public health crisis, which has long been starved for credits, the consensus of these German experts (not all doctors) is that the danger of the pandemic is being scandalously exaggerated in order to impose liberticidal laws. (Here in France, we have been flanked by liberticidal laws to crush the Yellow Vest revolt just before COVID, but it doesn’t matter).
This impression is supported by a few examples that are probably authentic (no notes). Federal governments in Germany exaggerating their controls, examples of deaths falsely attributed to COVID, comparisons with the Black Death (surprise! It was much worse) and predictions that there will not be a “second wave” (as was the case with the Plague, “Spanish” flu and other epidemics). We’ll see in 2021, but in the meantime why not produce tests, masks, respirators as a precautionary principle?
Worse still, for these experts, the scientific journal The Lancet is accused of having published an article denying the usefulness of CLOROCOQUINE. For German experts, this is an indication of a conspiracy among specialists. But The Lancet had to withdraw this article under the criticism of other scientists, which seems rather to confirm that the international scientific system knows how to correct itself.
I am willing to accept that these German experts are bona fide with their open secrets, and not puppets of the neo-fascist deniers demonstrating in Berlin. But what can we do politically with their message?
Organize real scientific experiments with control to demonstrate the usefulness of CLOROCOQUINE used in the right doses and at the right time? Yes!
Join forces with Donald Trump, Jair Bolosonaro? Join the ranks of neo-fascist gangs who demonstrate against masks, divide the masses, and put at risk thousands of innocent people like my daughter and I who need to breathe? No!
I’ve been fighting for individual freedom for over 60 years and I ask myself, “Do certain forms of confinement violate human rights?” It’s not impossible, but most of them don’t. On the contrary, they assert people’s right to live, which Trump and the neo-liberals neglect. I don’t have the right to put a neighbor’s life at risk by walking into a store without a mask. I don’t have the right to force my employees to put their lives and the lives of their families at risk in order to make a profit.
Oppressed communities know how to put the community first. Those who define “personal freedom” as freedom from responsibility to others follow a totally bourgeois conception of freedom. Especially since Donald Trump, a racist and misanthropist, knows perfectly well that the poor, the oppressed, the racialized, the immigrants, the workers die in greater numbers than the white petty bourgeois. He does everything he can to divide. I do not have the right to ignore the problem of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and continue to consider myself a Yellow Vest.
The role of the Yellow Vests
I have always understood that the role of the Yellow Vests was to give an authentic voice and a rallying point to the 99% independents from parties, unions and sects in order to change the system, establish direct democracy and defend public services, especially health, by supporting the resistance of workers, for example nurses and emergency doctors who, poorly paid and overworked, are still demanding protective equipment and masks that can be changed while they risk their lives to save ours.
Our class role is to attack our billionaire governments who, for “economic” and profit reasons, are closing hospital beds and cutting budgets in the face of a global pandemic of a new virus that we don’t yet know when (or if) it will stop.
The neo-liberals in power are taking advantage of this crisis to privatize public health and get rid of the duty to protect the population. On the contrary, they minimize the gravity of the situation to force poor workers to risk their lives, often without adequate protection (it’s expensive!), to run their machines for profit.
And to “free” the parents of wage-slaves, the neo-liberals want to open schools in September without installing adequate protection, especially rapid and frequent testing to isolate those who are contagious. In the U.S., teachers’ unions are already planning a strike under the slogan “I love to teach but if I’m dead I can’t teach.” You have to be with them.
Why Prison Abolition? Why Now?
Behavior Modification Control at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility
August 23, 2020
Length:2488 words
Summary: This report by a longtime Black political prisoner in Indiana exposes the mental and physical mechanisms being used to try to prevent prisoners from uniting against their oppressors. It concludes with a brief auto-biographical sketch on why prison abolition is imperative.
Behavior Modification Control: The Wabash Valley Correctional Facility G-Cell House Experiment
Segregated confinement has always been used to control or alter a prisoner’s behavior. The threat is that if you don’t stop your resistant behavior you will be placed in isolation.
During the 1980s Indiana Prisons were experiencing their worse episodes of violence. Officers were dogmatic and extremely brutal to the prisoners. As the political education of prisoners surged, militancy called men to take action. Prisoners in revolutionary anger lashed out in defense of their humanity, human rights, and civil rights.
We never prepared for it, but the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) had plans to build two units here in Indiana to modify the behavior of prisoners. In 1991 the Maximum Control Complex was built as an annex to Westville Prison, located in Westville, Indiana. In 1993 the Secured Housing Unit (SHU) was built as an annex to Wabash Valley Correctional Facility (WVCF). These two units were designed to house and segregate Indiana’s worst of the worst. In addition, in seeking to maintain human bodies in a cell for 23 to 24 hours a day, a lot of prisoners were gradually removed out of the general population in a series of sweeps. But it didn’t alter the internal violence taking place inside any of these plantations. The psychological threat was obvious—if you don’t stop engaging in violence or political resistance you will be buried in isolation.
While the U.S. claims not to engage in torture in military operations, it has and will continue to engage in it with anyone deemed a terrorist. Likewise, the IDOC claims to not promote retaliation against prisoners but they have and will continue to do so, even though it violates the very policies they have sworn to uphold and enforce. The purpose of this essay is to expose who the real monsters are at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. Highlighting obvious facts will show how they retaliate against us. We are not ignorant of their treachery.
The Experiment and Our Movement to Challenge It
For years, two housing units at WVCF have operated as general population status. Many of us are so happy to be out of segregation that it is not being properly challenged. This is over now. They are releasing us from segregation into yet another segregation-style housing unit. G-House and P-House are both another form of segregation. The idea behind behavior modification is to take away the prisoner’s freedom of movement and isolate him from the prison’s creature comforts. We are cut off from almost everything which is supposed to give us better control or our activities.
As a revolutionary political prisoner, I have been the subject of behavior modification experiments for the past 30 years. So, I and other comrades have no other choice than to challenge these tactics. Our movement inside and outside these prison walls is about building relationships with everyone who is engaged in the same work. Getting the word out to the media about the punishment and retaliatory schemes being used by the officials here at WVCF is very important.
Targeted for Retaliation and Invidious Discrimination
The way to right the wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
—Idea B. Wells
On September 6, 2018, WVCF officials decide to convert what was a general population cell house into G-House. That is, they transformed it into a Restricted Movement Unit. It brings together four groups of prisoners in one unit, allowing each one to come out for recreation for one hour a day, but divided by the different groups. They isolate us from all programs, educational access, and religious services. They disrupted our daily ability to socially interact with friends and comrades. This was an experiment in psychological behavior modification control.
They moved a lot of prisoners out of this unit to make room for new prisoners they were targeting for retaliation. They singled out maybe 30 to 40 prisoners they wanted removed from general population. Six months later they had to modify the restrictions to allow all prisoners held in G-House access to all programs. They found a loophole to get it approved, as a Modified General Population Housing Unit. But they never changed the way recreation is operated. We are still held in our cells 22 or 23 hours a day. There are still four groups of recreation being run, not just one. As in all the population houses, G-House cells have key locks on the food tray slots. No other house has locks on their doors.
This housing unit is a segregation unit by another name. One prisoner filed a complaint against a counselor for messing with his legal mail. He was in a time-cut program called PLUS and only months from completing it. He was kicked out of the program for filing his complaint. He had no bad conduct, yet they had him moved out of the program and sent to G-Housing. This is a case of retaliation, simply because he filed a complaint against that counselor for mail tampering.
On January 26, 2020, I was removed from my sanitation job by internal affairs and sent to segregation under investigation. I had no conduct reports, no bad work evaluations. On February 21, 2020, I was released to the G-Housing Unit and removed from a working unit. They put me in G-House to keep me isolated from the prisoners and staff alike. This was retaliation. According to official policy I was supposed to be given a job at equal pay scale as what I was paid prior to being removed from my job in January. The G-Housing Unit has to be exposed as a warehouse dungeon specifically used for prisoners they want out of the way. They want me isolated, and out of the reach of some people, even if doing so violates the law and the Constitution. But they can’t isolate my mouth, they can’t stop me from voicing my concerns. I just want to teach them to keep their feet off of my neck.
Corruption and Coverups
Corruption and coverups can only exist when revolutionary conscious prisoners turn a blind eye to it and do nothing about it. In 2019 a comrade was murdered while an officer sat at his post as if nothing had happened. Once he was found dead his body was already hard—which tells you how long he was dead. They claimed it was from a drug overdose. But he was beaten and stabbed behind his ear twice. This happened in the G-Housing Unit. The prisoner was severely beaten while an officer neglected his duties to do security checks every 30 minutes.
In 2018, prior to G-House being converted to a Restricted Movement Unit, during the running of lunch meals two prisoners hid out inside a prisoner’s cell. As soon as the lunch line doors rolled, they entered a comrade’s cell and stabbed him and beat him up. This could never have happened if she had done a count and security check to ensure everyone was accounted for securely in their respective cells. This female officer failed to do her job, and her actions caused yet another prisoner to be beaten.
The criminal justice system, in conjunction with the prison industrial complex, is a nationwide problem. Its philosophy is to create and devise programs that can ultimately control those captives in their custody. The IDOC has used units like G-House and P-House to modify behavior by turning prisoners against other prisoners, create distrust, slander each another, and destroy unity and solidarity so that prisoner will have no one around them to trust. This way prisoners can only confide in prison administrators—which is how they maintain control of this prisons. These experiments in behavior modification of the past are still being used today. This is why we organize ourselves and work tirelessly to educate prisoners to avoid these manipulations from happening.
Indiana prisoncrats are also implementing the use of a tactic straight out of the Willie Lynch handbook, Breaking of a Slave. Lynch wrote about using slaves to keep other slaves in line. He also boasted that this system would perpetrate itself long after he was dead and gone. Today, some prisoners are being given positions so to try to keep other prisoners in line, as in allowing heads of street organizations to control entire units to make these prisoncrats appear to have everything under control. Revolutionaries and political prisoners are supposed to actually be the dominant players in these environments. But we are out-numbered by the opportunist informants and reactionaries. We still trying to teach these men how to oppose this stuff. We struggle forward.
We Are Supported by a Movement
We are organizing and slowly growing in our membership. IDOC-Watch watch was created as in prison as a watchdog group. It is a voice of Indiana prisoners and exposes violations that occur in prisons. We have litigated conditions inside WVCF and other prisons. Primarily, we want to confront how long prisoners are being held in these solitary torture chambers that they call segregation units.
Our movement, IDOC=-Watch, is now in several cities in Indiana, which now include Indianapolis, South Bend, Bloomington, and Gary. We are always open to new allies and friends of the movement. If anyone wants to join us or learn more about IDOC-Watch, you can do so by logging onto our blog idocwatch.org/blog-1, or our mail address at IDOC-Watch, PO Box 11095, Indianapolis, IN 46201.
Not a General Population Unit
Since September 6, 2018, G-Cell House could no longer be considered a General Population Unit. They converted G-House into a Restricted Movement Unit, and in doing so cut us off from all programs and religious services, school, etc. This action violated all prisoners based in G-House of their first amendment rights. On April 6, 2019, due to pending legally challenges, the prisoncrats removed restrictions against attending programs, religious services, and school. But they maintained the restrictions on recreation. There is no other unit at Wabash being operated like the G-House. Instead of those houses in the left and right sides of the unit being let out of their cells together for recreation (as all the population houses do), there are two recreation groups on the left side, and two recreation groups on the right side. We never get to see people from general population. We have locks on every cell door, just like in the segregation unit. Many of us have spent six months to a year in one of these three segregation units at WVCF, instead of being sent to a regular population house once our time is up. They are having many of us sent to G-House, which is amounting to double punishment. These tactics are being used to scare prisoners into changing their behavior. Yet they have not been able to stop any violence from occurring in G- or P-Housing Units.
We want the following demands to be addressed: We want all prisoners with one year or more released to general population. We want G-House to become unrestricted and opened up as a General Population Unit and not modified segregation. That all padlocks be removed from every door in G-House. That all prisoners be give 30-day and 90-day reviews, just like it is done in other Restricted Movement Units.
Protest calls and letters should be made to:
Governor Eric Holcolm
Office of the Governor, State House, Room 206
200 W. Washington Street
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: 317 232-4567
Commissioner Robert Carter
Indiana Government Center-South
302 West Washington St.
Indianapolis, IN 46204-2738
Phone: 317-232-6711
The author of this essay can be reached by going online to connectnetwork.com and setup a free account. Go to Indiana Prisoners and find “Leonard McQuay,” 874304, location Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. Once you send me an email I will be able to email you back. You can also write me via snail mail at:
Brother Khalfani Malik Khaldun
(Leonard McQuay)
874304
PO Box 1111
Carlisle, IN 47838
* * * *
If these Walls Could Talk
If these walls could talk, they would openly reveal to you the story of a boy at 17 entering a prison plantation with a 25-year sentence to serve twelve and a half years.
If these walls could talk, they would explain to you how I transitioned into a man inside these walls and embraced the revolutionary mission as a political prisoner. If these walls could talk, I’m sure they would reveal that I spent at least 27 of my 32 years in prison fighting for change inside these walls—self-educating myself and countless young misguided youth on the struggle and the ways to survive this prison life style.
If these walls could talk, they would let you know all the main and suffering I have endured from losing my mother and two brothers, my father, two sisters, and my only son since 1997. That I pray they went to heaven. If these walls could talk, they would tell you the prisoncrats in 1994 framed me for the murder of a prison guard that ended in a trial in the state of Indiana that gave me a 60-year sentence. If these walls could talk, they would describe what it was like to spend as total of 20 years in solitary confinement, now knowing if I was every going to see the light of day. If these walls could talk, they would tell you how guards would tamper with my food trays and give racist prisoners my mail, and tear my cell up just because they can get away with it.
If these walls could talk, they would convey my discontent for President Trump who is more stupid than Forest Gump. They would say how I expressed solidarity with the comrades and organizations who opposed the assassinations of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, LaQuan McDonald, Castille Abree, and of course George Floyd. Say their names loud and proud. George Floyd changed the world, as did Eric Garner.
If these walls could talk, they would tell you the main who has sacrificed half of his life confined to a prison cell is a stand-up person full of compassion, love, and vision. He does appreciate the love and support given to him.
If these walls could talk, they would tell my story to world, calling on the entire activist community to bring Khalfani Malik Khaldun home from these trenches. If these walls could talk, they would say that I am proud of all of the youth of all races out in the streets mobilizing to defund the police. Keep that fire alive!
If these walls could talk, they would tell you that I love each and every one of you. That I am devoted to the abolition of all prisons. That I will be an outstanding representative of our national and global solidarity movement. Power of the People! Black Lives Matter! Political; Prisoners’ Lives Matter! Now as a people let us change the world. Peace and Blessings!
Ecology and Life in the Pandemic: Capital’s Treadmill of Growth and Destruction
August 24, 2020
Length:4128 words
Summary: Report to the July 2020 Interim Convention of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization, slightly updated — Editors
“One basis for life and another for science is a priori a falsehood.” —Marx, 1844 Manuscripts
The reality of life in 2020 is one of overlapping crises—Covid-19, a deep economic recession, climate change and its related effects, and the dehumanization of persons of color, just to name a few. All of these and more are fundamentally related to attempts by capital to despotically control all of nature, including human beings for the purpose of extracting whatever surplus value it can. This despotic control has reached a point where it can be said without exaggeration that capital has become hostile to the continuance of life on Earth. This is especially clear in the case of the ecological crisis that capitalism faces and in one of its most pressing recent manifestations, Covid-19.
Earlier this year as wildfires raged across Australia at an unprecedented rate, seeming to signal an urgency in preventing further climate change, many in the world paid lip service to the threatening ecological crisis that is clear to soon envelop the world in catastrophic change—rising temperatures, glacial melting, rising sea levels, increasing drought in some regions, loss of biodiversity, increasing scarcity of clean water, etc. Earth’s average temperature has increased about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, most of which has occurred in the past 35 years, with the six warmest years on record taking place since 2014. Globally, sea levels rose about eight inches (about 20 cm) in the 20th century and we are currently on track to double that this century.[1] Scientists predict that the effects on human communities will be profound and will likely include temperature increases which could by 2070 rise to levels that will make about 19% of the Earth unhabitable by humans;[2] droughts in many parts of the world that will disrupt local and international food chains, leading to at the very least, regional famines; increasing water shortages that could lead to regional conflict; increased transmission of infectious disease; and the flooding and submersion of low-lying coastal areas. All of the above are likely to increase conflict as well as create new climate refugees seeking basic survival. Moreover, those who will likely see the greatest negative effects of climate change are those least able to mitigate those effects due to poverty among many other factors.
How Did We Get Here?
The basic story of climate change is a familiar and (outside of the far-right) a non-controversial truth. The increased use of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution has led to atmospheric degradation. These fossil fuels, which took thousands of years to create, have been burned for their energy and released into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. With more carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the Earth has been getting warmer since greenhouse gases reduce the amount of heat that can escape the atmosphere into space.
While the above is relatively uncontroversial, there are at least two prominent theories of why humans have caused climate change. One argues that the current age is one of the Anthropocene, meaning that human beings as such are having a large enough effect on the climate to represent an entire era of environmental history. In brief, this theory is problematic as it posits abstract human beings outside of any particular mode of production as the cause of climate change. This theory follows the logic of capitalism which argues that human beings have always been egoistic and acquisitive and rules out the possibility of a different type of social relations as human nature is unchanging and unchangeable.
Others such as Jason Moore would argue that the current environmental regime is one of the Capitalocene. Here, it is the relations inherent in capitalism, in its incessant drive to attain greater and greater surplus value which leads to the destruction of the environment. While space prevents a full discussion and critique of Moore’s work, I would like to point out some of the most significant aspects of his understanding of the relationship between humanity and nature.[3] Perhaps the most noteworthy of these is his critique of the majority of left ecologists that either explicitly or implicitly maintain a theoretic separation between nature and society where each is nearly completely isolated from the other. Moore points in the direction of a theory that dialectically combines the interrelations between nature and culture which can be more useful. Here there are constant interactions between human beings and the natural world where it becomes impossible to completely separate the two. Human beings create new nature while simultaneously, nature acts on and changes the human being.
As Kohei Saito (2017) rightly points out, Moore’s theory is problematic in that he trades the Cartesian dualism of “nature” v. “culture” for an undifferentiated unity of the two. As Marx notes in numerous places in his work, humans are natural beings, but they are also unique in the sense that they are also conscious beings, capable of conscious change to their environment in a way that nature never can:
A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally. Man not only effects a change of form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials.[4]
If we do not maintain this conceptual distinction between the human being and nature, the subjective aspect of humanity cannot be understood, nor can purposeful change happen. Thus, Moore cuts off the most important avenue for humanity to overcome this crisis.[5] However, we do not need to follow Moore this far with his unitary theory. Instead, a dialectical unity of humanity and nature where both commonality and difference are acknowledged can be conceptualized. As Marx argued in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please in circumstances they choose for themselves; rather they make it in present circumstances, given and inherited.”[6] The same can be said for nature as for history.
Another important point for Moore is that we must look closely at the relations between humanity and nature, not as such, but in social and historical context. Human beings do not interact with the natural world in the same way in a feudal society as they do in a capitalist society. Moreover, within different stages of capitalism, humanity’s relationship with nature may shift. The reverse can also be true—climate conditions affect capitalist relations and the opportunities available for individual capitalists to expand. Looking at the issue from a more global perspective, we can perhaps say that contemporary capitalism has developed to the point where its own rapacious nature has led to conditions that further limit its ability to expand and survive (more on this below).
This type of thinking undermines the logic of neo-Malthusian environmentalists who would argue that overconsumption and an increasing world population are the biggest problems. Instead, the issue is that capitalism so exhausts the inputs of nature and the available labor power such that these workers and resources will not be able to reproduce themselves at the same rate, quality or cost for capital. It becomes more expensive for capitalists to do business, cutting the rate of surplus value. Simply reining in overconsumption through state interventions like population control, pollution regulation, or caps on production would, at best, slow down the degradation of nature, but could never solve it. Similarly, the proposed Green New Deal would be a positive development in the sense that it prioritizes new green technology, more democratic control of industry and a stronger social safety net. However, the basis of this program is a neo-Keynesianism which does not question the basis of capitalism itself, thus it cannot be effective in bringing about the type of transformative change necessary to stave off the climate crisis. Capital’s raison d’etre is to expand its accumulation of value and the only way of doing this is through the exploitation of the “free gifts” of nature—i.e. overworked nature and human beings that cannot continue to reproduce themselves in the same way for future rounds of production—hence, the necessity of further degradation of the natural world.
Ecology, the Pandemic and Capital
The Covid-19 pandemic underlines the close relationship between capitalist relations and the natural world. It should be noted that this is far from an instance of “nature” reasserting itself against humanity. Instead, the very conditions for a pandemic are written into the social relations of globalized capitalism at a number of levels. Sonia Shah in Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond charts the outbreak of pandemics in the modern world starting with Cholera in the early 1800s. There had been outbreaks of Cholera in parts of India for a very long time, which could become a local epidemic, but not a large-scale pandemic. She argues that in part, what made the Cholera pandemic possible was the dense concentration of people together in cities, high levels of poverty coupled with inadequate sanitation, and the increased ability of individuals to travel throughout the world, spreading the disease. All of these factors were made possible by a particular type of social organization: capitalism. While it is very unlikely that Shah herself could be accused of being a socialist, she shines light on the degree to which capitalism in bringing parts of the world together through commerce, the increased agrarian production that allowed for more people to live and work in cities and through the vast inequality that value production creates, opened up significant ground for the possibility of pandemics.
Additionally, Shah is keen to point out that we are likely to see an increase in epidemics and pandemics. This has as much to do with social relations as it does with the biology of viruses. As we have seen with Covid-19, geography is no barrier to transmission. When it is possible to travel around the world by jet, cruise ship, train or car, securing borders from contagions is almost impossible, especially if there is little or no advance warning. Add to that the motive to sweep under the rug the outbreak of a new virulent pathogen as has been the case in countries like the US and China in order to protect tourism, industry and reputation, and you have a recipe for a full-scale world pandemic.
Moreover, because viruses can adapt to their environments in unique ways, the possibility of more virulent pathogens only increases as interactions among humans and between humans and animals increases. Viruses, bacteria and other microbes have the ability to acquire traits through horizontal gene transfer, meaning that as they interact with each other, they can pick up the traits of that microbe simply from that interaction. Antibiotic resistant MRSA emerged in this way, for example.[7] Thus, more interaction between live beings creates the possibility of more dangerous pathogens. This issue will certainly not be abated in the new society and, in fact, the interaction of people from all parts of the world may increase. What will be different, however, is that these and other interactions will not be driven by profit, but by socialized human needs. When epidemics or pandemics happen, there will be appropriate infrastructure in place to combat it such as free adequate and equal healthcare for all, PPE supplies on the basis of need instead of profit, public dissemination of factual information to a public that can critically assess this information, and scientific research that is driven by community interests rather than profit.
Finally, capital’s drive to produce greater amounts of surplus value factor significantly into the equation. For example, the overuse of antibiotics on farm animals to maintain their health in the completely unhealthy conditions of factory farms has been common. Also, for reasons that are not fully understood scientifically, antibiotics help these animals grow faster, meaning less time between birth and slaughter—less cost of doing business and faster turnaround means a greater profit. This use of antibiotics has led to the development of antibiotic resistant pathogens that is making medical care more difficult and increasing the potential for even more lethal pandemics in the future.
While Covid-19 is a natural phenomenon in most senses, because it exists in a globalized capitalist world, it lays bare many of the contradictions of contemporary capitalism. It is certainly no accident that Black, Latinx and other persons of color are being disproportionately affected by Covid-19—in fact, the dualities of capitalism and its understanding of “nature” and “society” as well as how it values these things has meant that there will always be workers and aspects of “nature” that will be disposable if it means greater profits for capital. Blacks are about 3.5 times more likely to die from Covid-19 and Latinx are twice as likely to die.[8] Native Americans make up 57% of cases and 72% of hospitalizations in New Mexico.[9] The Navajo Nation alone has had more cases of Covid-19 than 12 states and more deaths than 7 states.[10]
These disparities can be traced to a number of factors stemming from structural inequalities which have been legitimized through the implicit and explicit rhetoric of biological differences which have no real scientific legitimacy once environmental factors are brought in. These groups are not more likely to be diabetic, have heart disease, or asthma because of some genetic predisposition as the medical community often presumes, instead capital has deemed these groups disposable and has naturalized their eventual deaths from these environmental factors.
Take for example, the prevalence of asthma and cancer within minority communities, which are also significant risk factors for complications from Covid-19. A recent study found that Blacks and Latinx breathe much dirtier air that contains PM2.5 particles—extremely small particulates that can collect in the lungs and lead to cancer and other lung problems. Blacks are exposed to 56% more pollution than caused by their consumption and Latinx are exposed to 63%. For non-Hispanic whites, they are exposed to 17% less than their consumption.[11]
Similarly, there have been disproportionate deaths by race in Louisiana. Some of this can be linked to what is known as “Cancer Alley.” This is an 85-mile area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that is home to more than 150 chemical plants and refineries. This area has seen five times higher death rates from Covid-19 than the rest of the nation. A recent study from Harvard showed a strong relationship between exposure to PM2.5 particles and Covid-19 deaths even after other factors were controlled for such as healthcare access, poverty, unemployment, and preexisting conditions.[12]
These are just two of many examples of how capitalist-led environmental destruction has put minority communities at greater risk of disease and death. Easily added to these issues are safe water issues on Native American reservations, unsafe water in many cities due to failing infrastructure, food deserts, and the greater heat exposure of cities.[13] These seemingly natural problems become social and changeable problems when viewed as what they really are: the result of capitalism’s efforts to eke out surplus value from nature—whether that is via a static ahistorically created human being or a static ahistorical “natural” commodity. This is why it is so important to view nature and society as dialectically related rather than as simply isolated and opposing forces. Urban spaces and marginalized individuals are finally seen as not just existing outside history but are a part of capitalist nature that human beings have created. The natural becomes historical and thus changeable.
Moving Forward
Capitalism’s defining feature is its need to create greater and greater amounts of surplus value. It can only do this successfully through commodification and its necessary movement of abstracting out all concrete characteristics other than an object’s ability to produce surplus value. This is the only use value that capital truly acknowledges. Because of this, it makes no difference to the capitalist what is produced, how it is made or what harm comes from its production. The worker without health insurance who becomes sick can be replaced by another who is healthy at the same or potentially lower rate. The chicken that is genetically engineered in such a way that it can barely stand upright because of its large breasts is more commercially profitable,[14] and thus, better than the non-genetically modified chicken. Neither the fate of the worker or the chicken matters to capital.
This illustrates the need to uproot capitalism. It is a cruel system that can never work for human or natural interests as its sole purpose is to continually produce. A supply of one good is totally consumed, so it is then time to look to a new source of surplus value. Capitalism’s rapacious nature is such that it will continue to destroy the bases of life beyond the point where it loses profitability. There is no hope that it can or will regulate itself.
We have recently seen the growth of celebrity of Greta Thunberg and other young environmental activists who are calling for a change in the way in which human beings interact with the natural world through events like school strikes and Thunberg using her celebrity to get the message out that the status quo will destroy the planet. While not yet a Marxist movement, these efforts illustrate an important step forward as they show not only the negative of climate change, but also indicate that another world is possible. These young people who will have to disproportionately bear the burden of capital’s frenzied activity to extract as much value as possible, have taken the first step of saying “no” to the current system and are just beginning to think about what an ecologically sustainable society might look like. Perhaps most encouraging is Thunberg’s recent statements which seem to indicate that she is beginning to see the interconnected nature of capitalist oppression. For example, in discussing the Black Lives Matter Movement she says that society “passed a social tipping point, we can no longer look away from what our society has been ignoring for so long whether it is equality, justice or sustainability.”[15] As she and many other young activists take to the streets and public airwaves demanding change, we should critically support their message and encourage them to think deeper about what a new society should look like.
Certainly, the Covid-19 crisis begins to show that another world is possible. Carbon emissions this year are estimated to be between 4.4-8% less than last year. This would be the lowest levels since World War II.[16] Wild animals have been seen roaming urban spaces devoid of people. These sorts of things show that we have not reached a point of no return, and that there is still time to avoid the worst, however, this reprieve is only temporary. It was the power of the state which forced business and industrial closures and mandated lockdowns for citizens in a time of crisis. These types of policies have already shown signs of wear perhaps most visibly with the recent armed protests in the Michigan State legislature. Individuals were essentially protesting for a return to normal—the right to be exploited by their bosses and the right to spread a deadly infection. Others, including prominent politicians have called for a reopening even at the expense of a greater death toll. For many, the system must be maintained at any cost, thus state-mandated change outside of a clear emergency is unlikely to be tolerated for long enough to do any real good.
Hence the importance of our work on The Critique of the Gotha Program. As Marx addresses the Gotha Program in his own era, we need to continue our work to theorize an alternative to capitalism which can bridge the gulf between “nature” and “society” in both theory and practice. This will involve great creative efforts from our organization and others of like minds in order to truly unite the purposes of the natural and social sciences in such a way that they are able to truly serve all regardless of race, class, gender, sexuality, gender identity, and ability. However, as Marx notes, the foundation has already been partially laid:
But natural science has penetrated all the more practically into human life through industry. It has transformed human life and prepared the emancipation of humanity even though its immediate effect was to accentuate the dehumanization of man. Industry is the actual historical relationship of nature, and thus of natural science, to man. If industry is conceived as the exoteric manifestation of the essential human faculties, the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man can also be understood. Natural science will then abandon its abstract materialist, or rather idealist, orientation, and will become the basis of a human science, just as it has already become—though in an alienated form—the basis of actual human life. One basis for life and another for science is a priori a falsehood. Nature, as it develops in human history, in the act of genesis of human society, is the actual nature of man; thus nature, as it develops through industry, though in an alienated form, is truly anthropological nature.[17]
[3] For a full theoretical exposition of this theory, see Jason W. Moore. 2015. Capitalism and the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso. For an interesting application of these theoretic premises, see: Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore. 2017. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. University of California Press. Where Moore’s argument is especially problematic is in his adherence to a theory of underconsumptionism which posits that capital must continually expand to non-capitalist realms in order to avoid and/or overcome economic crises, ignoring the importance of labor to capital as well as subjective possibilities. However, his is a more nuanced look at the issue than most which includes important discussions of gender and social reproduction, for example.
[4] Karl Marx. 1976. Capital, Vol. I. New York: Penguin. P. 284.
[5] Koehi Saito, 2017. “Marx in the Anthropocene: Value, Metabolic Rift, and the Non-Cartesian Dualism,” Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie. 4(1–2): 276–295.
[6] Karl Marx. “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Terrell Carver, ed. 1996. Marx: Later Political Writings. Cambridge University Press. p. 32.
[7] Shah, Sonia. Pandemic. 2016. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition. P. 72
[13] A study in the journal Climate, found that “redlining” is a strong predictor of which neighborhoods are exposed to extreme heat. These neighborhoods are less likely to have green spaces and will contain more concrete and other materials that will trap heat due to the “heat island effect.” “The analysis examined 108 urban areas across the country, and found that 94 percent of historically redlined neighborhoods are consistently hotter than the rest of the neighborhoods in their cities, underscoring a major environmental justice issue. Portland, Oregon, showed one of the largest heat disparities between redlined and non-redlined communities — up to 12.6 degrees F.” Rachel Ramirez. “Another legacy of redlining: Unequal exposure to heat waves” January 15, 2020. https://grist.org/justice/another-legacy-of-redlining-unequal-exposure-to-heat-waves/
