Disability benefit won’t lift Canadians in need above poverty line: advocates

Story by Naomi Barghiel •

Dozens of Liberal members of Parliament had called on the finance minister to set aside money for the Canada Disability Benefit in the federal budget, tabled on April 16, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Federal budget 2024: Canada disability benefit disappoints advocates

Pam Bristol from Regina is the caretaker for her 18-year-old son, David Rheault, who was born with a severe case of cerebral palsy. The term is used to describe a group of brain disorders that affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance.

Rheault can say some words but mostly communicates with assisted technology, Bristol says.

She says she isn’t worried about being able to support her son while he lives at home, but “as an adult trying to live independently, $200 a month is a pittance.”

Despite being touted by the Liberals as the budget’s largest line item, critics say Ottawa's investment in disability benefits announced this week doesn’t do enough to help the 1.4 million disabled people living in poverty across the country.

The federal government’s 2024 budget, tabled Tuesday, includes more details on the implementation of reforms to the Canadian Disability Benefits Act, which received royal assent last June. The initial funding envelope for the program is $6.1 billion over the first five years, and $1.4 billion annually afterwards.

The goal of this program is to provide financial support for low-income, working-age people living with disabilities. The maximum benefit is set at $2,400 annually and is estimated to go to more than 600,000 low-income people with disabilities aged 18 to 64.

The plan to offer 600,000 people with the benefit works out to $200 per month, which is about six dollars per day.

Bristol says individuals like her son need better support to live a quality life.

“David would at some point, as most adult children, would like to move out from his parents’ home. And when the time comes we will support him in that. But there needs to be good quality options. Those options are pretty scarce right now,” she told Global News.

Rabia Khedr, the director of advocacy group Disability Without Poverty (DWP), has been vocal about the limitations of the proposed benefits.

“In many cases, you can't even pay for a round trip on public transit with that,” Khedr told Global News, referring to the allotted $200 a month.

Ottawa says the payment is meant to be a supplement to existing provincial and territorial programs rather than a replacement, but advocates were more hopeful when Ottawa committed to moving forward with a federal benefit in September 2020.

“We had our expectations tempered. We were not expecting it to be ideal out of the gate, but we were hoping that the government would honour at least the minimum model proposed by the Parliamentary Budget Office,” Khedr told Global News.

The PBO’s November report explored the cost of three hypothetical implementations of the benefit, ranging from around two billion dollars to $20.5 billion this year. The lowest cost option was an average annual benefit of $7,600 for 275,000 applicants.

Global News

New Brunswick advocates for people with disabilities support Canada Disability Benefit

Duration 1:52   View on Watch

Maytree, an organization aimed at looking for solutions to end poverty, releases a report each year showcasing social assistance programs in Canada. Its 2022 report suggests a single adult with a disability would be in poverty after receiving funding from provincial programs. An additional $200 a month wouldn’t be enough to bring them above the poverty line.


Kamal Khera, the minister responsible for the benefit, said Tuesday that she recognizes the fund doesn’t go far enough but she also said it lays the groundwork for change.

“This is a starting point. This is a keystone in creating a key benefit that our government has put forward. And we're going to continue to work with provinces and territories to make sure that they get the supports that they need,” said Khera, who is the Minister of Diversity, Inclusion & Persons with Disabilities.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland addressed concerns about the benefit’s limitations in a press conference Friday. She said the government recognizes the challenges that people with disabilities face in Canada everyday.

“That’s why we were so glad that that’s part of this budget which invests so energetically in Canada and Canadians. We were able to make a historic investment in Canadians living with a disability. We have done more than any federal government in Canadian history and I’m glad that we’ve been able to do that,” Freeland told reporters.

Still, she says the government aspires to do more.

“This is a big step. Better is always possible in Canada. We need to keep working hard,” Freeland said.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh echoed critics after the tabling of the budget Tuesday, saying the benefit does not go far enough in supporting low-income people with disabilities. He said he wants to hear more from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on his party’s concerns before supporting the budget.

“What’s the plan to address the fact that $200 a month for people with living with disabilities is insufficient. What is the plan to address those concerns? I want to hear that from the prime minister,” Singh said.

Global News

Federal budget 2024: Liberals failed to tackle ‘corporate greed,’ Singh says

Duration 2:57  View on Watch

According to DWP, 41 per cent of Canadians living with disabilities are low-income, with 16.5 per cent living below the poverty line. They estimate this accounts for 1.5 million people.

The budget also proposes expanding the disability tax credit so people can deduct costs of things like having a service animal, purchasing specialized computer equipment and ergonomic chairs. This tax credit is expected to cost $1 million annually.

Canada Disability Benefit payments are slated to begin reaching people who need them by July 2025.

Khedr says she is heartbroken for the Canadians who are disappointed by the federal budget, and for those who were waiting in anticipation “of this benefit lifting them out of poverty so they don’t have to consider medical assistance in dying.”

“The government did not look into any creative ways to fund an adequate benefit,” Khedr told Global News.

For Rheault, his goal is to one day be able to enter the workforce as either a truck driver or firefighter. Bristol says it could be possible for her son, despite his motor skill challenges.

“We’re hopeful with the right kind of instruction and support that he can find work.”

-- with files from Global News’ Kyle Benning, David Baxter and Moosa Imran

Why does the West fear and loath Iran?

Thomas Foster answers six vital questions about what kind of society is Iran—and why Israel and the West want to destroy it

Israel attacked the consulate of Iran in Damascus, Syria, on 1 April

SOCIALIST WORKER

Friday 19 April 2024

What is the nature of the regime?

The current Iranian state emerged after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the hated Shah and his Western-backed regime.

It is a capitalist state with a ruling class dominated by a conservative Islamic clergy that follows the Shia version of Islam. Iran is a junior imperialist power but strives to become the major force in the region.

The clergy has its own version of religious law, which the state enforces strictly. The Iranian state embodies reactionary ideas and policies towards women’s rights and LGBT+ people.

The state controls a large part of the economy and dominates large-scale industries, media, communications, transport and many other sectors. And it owns the oil industry, which makes up around 40 percent of its total revenue.

Its ruling class has the same interests as all capitalist classes—growing its own economic and political power, while preserving its existing privileges.

This means it is locked into imperialist competition with other states in the region—including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

And this competition affects how Iran acts. It backs resistance groups that align with its Shia ideology, including the Houthis in Yemen—in part due to Iran’s antagonism with Sunni Saudi Arabia. It backs Hezbollah in Lebanon, in part due to its antagonism with Israel.

And it backs the Assad regime in Syria that is fighting the Saudi-backed Isis group and the remaining forces of the revolution of 2011.

Iran has tried to counter US power in the region by befriending both Russia and China. China is Iran’s largest trading partner and buys some 90 percent of Iran’s oil.

Is Iran a dictatorship?

Iran is an authoritarian regime where a religious clergy rules with few democratic constraints.

But it is far from the monolith that the Western media generally says it is. It has competing political factions that exist within the state.

Sometimes those factions reflect ruptures in the ruling class and create political crises, and openings for others that want a different type of society.

Movements demanding more freedom and democratic rights emerge often and have sometimes fused with workers’ unions, the women’s movement and groups demanding national and religious rights.

But the state has so far been able to repress all such upsurges.

The power of the clerics is enshrined in Iran’s supreme leader and the Guardian Council, a 12‑person group made up of religious experts and lawyers.

The supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has religious authority that flows into political power. He sets and implements policies, ­commands the Iranian army and can declare war.

As supreme leader, he hires and fires all military and police chiefs, the leader of the courts and the head of the state-owned media.

The supreme leader also has control over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the part of the military charged with defending Iran.

The Guardian Council approves and can disqualify candidates in local, parliamentary, presidential elections and has veto power over any law passed by parliament.

Half of its members are appointed by the supreme leader and he can dismiss any member of the council.

Throughout its existence, the Guardian Council has helped conservatives by disqualifying reformist candidates and vetoing reformist laws.

Beneath these bodies sits the president, who is elected and serves as head of government and selects ministers, and parliament, which has 290 elected members.

Parliament does debate and vote on laws. And there are competing factions—reformists, moderates and conservatives, and within each there are several groups.

Reformists demand that social restrictions are eased and want political reforms. They propose a more moderate version of Islam and closer relations with Western imperialism.

Conservatives want an even more strict version of Islam and want the state to remain hostile to the West.

But the trend since 1979 shows conservative factions growing in power. The reformists’ warmth towards the West, combined with the possibility of war, has seriously weakened them.

What are the recent protest movements in Iran?

Iran’s government has faced multiple waves of popular rebellion in recent years, most recently in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022-23, and protest waves in 2019 and 2017-2018.

The recent women’s movement began as a protest at the morality police after it murdered Masha Amini, a young woman it said had worn her hijab incorrectly.

Two million people participated in huge protests from September 2022 to spring 2023. Young people took to the streets and campuses, defying the state crackdown.

The protests developed into a movement demanding fundamental change—and the overthrow of the current Iranian state.

There was another protest wave in 2019 after the government tried to end fuel subsidies. Prices jumped up and this led to a revolt in dozens of cities, with demonstrations, sit-ins and strikes.

National protests against rising inflation erupted between December 2017 and January 2018.

These upsurges had workers’ economic demands as the driving force. Yet they flowed into political opposition to the supreme leader.

But all ended unsuccessfully with the state able to crush them. Part of the problem was that the protests, including those that involved some groups of workers, failed to become the majority.

On top of this, the protests had to contend with the “support” of Western states that tried to manipulate them for their own ends.

Why does Israel hate Iran?

Israel is desperate to smash Iran because both sides are competing for military, political and economic power across the region.

Israel wants to stop the West from “normalising” relations and doing deals that try to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead, it wants the West to join it in a war that would reduce its rival to rubble.

By contrast, Iran presents itself as a force that can stand up to the bullies—including Israel.

It wears its support for Palestinian liberation as a badge of honour, framing it as a fight for Islam against Zionism.

After the 1979 revolution, Iran cut off all relations with Israel. It said Israel was an illegitimate state in occupied Palestine. Iran stopped allowing Israeli citizens into Iran and banned all Iranians from travelling to Israel.

The Israeli embassy in Iranian capital, Tehran, was transformed into an embassy for Palestinians.

The focus of Israel’s fear is that Iran develops a nuclear weapons programme that can rival its own.

Currently Israel is the only regional power with nuclear weapons, providing it with a huge military advantage.

That competition means they are embroiled in a long “shadow war” of attacks on each other’s interests.

Israel has carried out sabotage and cyber-attacks against Iran’s nuclear power and military facilities, while Iran has carried out drone strikes on Israeli oil tankers and launched its own cyber-attacks.

Should Iran attack Israel?

Iran has every right to retaliate against Israeli attacks—including the bombing of its embassy in Syria, and later bombings of its territory.

Even David Cameron, the British foreign secretary, admitted that if a British embassy was struck by missiles, the British state “would take very strong action”.

But the current strike and counter-strike exchanges between Israel and Iran risk becoming a major regional war.

And that would be a catastrophe for hundreds of millions of people. Such a war is no route to Palestinian liberation.

To truly win Palestinian freedom we need to break from the logic of imperialism. The route for this is revolt against Zionism and dictatorship by ordinary people from below, across the whole of the Middle East.

It is workers and the poor who have the collective power to transform society. Mass workers’ revolt would make unworkable Israel’s role as a watchdog for US imperialism. And it would be a challenge to ruling classes across the entire region.

How did the current regime emerge?

In 1979, the Iranian people overthrew a brutal US-backed monarchy, inflicting a huge blow to US imperialism in the region.

The revolution comprised many forces, including workers’ unions, nationalists and the left, but was eventually diverted by Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic clergy.

He opposed workers’ power and more moderate elements of the Islamic movement, jailing and torturing opponents.

Prior to the revolution, Iran was ruled by the Shah, a monarch put in power in 1954 by a US and British-backed coup in 1953—which overthrew Iran’s popular government that was nationalising the oil industry.

The Shah pushed through a programme of capitalist development that alienated sections of the traditional religious establishment and millions of the poor. There was huge inequality and oppression of national minorities.

From the summer of 1977 onwards, there were significant protests and strikes against the Shah that grew in size and frequency.

In October 1978, workers went on a national general strike. Strike committees, called shoras, were set up to organise and coordinate activity—a sign that the movement had become revolutionary.

In December, huge protests of over six million people—in a country of then 37 million—demanded the end of the Shah. Workers took over cities and towns with shoras being set up across the country.

On 16 January 1979, the Shah fled into exile. Throughout this period, Ruhollah Khomeini, who was the most prominent religious leader and outspoken critic of the Shah, had cultivated a huge base of support. On 1 February, he declared himself head of state.

But the religious clergy wasn’t in complete control of the revolution as there was an intense struggle to decide the type of society to replace the Shah’s dictatorship.

Many among the capitalist class joined forces with the clerical establishment to work together against the left. Khomeni saw the shoras as a threat to the clergy’s power and moved to re-establish state control.

The religious clergy used repression to consolidate its power, organising gangs to attack the left and enforce “morality” against women who refused to wear the veil. Khomeini was established supreme leader of Iran and the result was the capitalist theocracy we see today.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for IRAN 

Portugal ’74—When workers and soldiers fought for real power

Half a century ago this month millions took part in a revolution that brought down a brutal dictatorship and opened the possibility of fundamental socialist change. Dáire Cumiskey looks at the revolution and talks to author and historian Raquel Varela

Sunday 21 April 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER 

Issue 2901

Workers join rebel soldiers for the 100,000 strong May Day demonstration

It’s 50 years since a revolution swept Portugal, catapulting around three million people—a third of the entire population—into political activity, most for the first time.

Workers took over their factories. People transformed mansions into ­creches and cultural centres.
It showed revolution was possible in Europe and overthrew the fascist regime begun by António de Oliveira Salaza in 1932 and carried on under Marcelo Caetano after 1968.

This regime, known as Estado Novo (New Stare), opened up Portugal to ­foreign investors eager to take ­advantage of cheap, well-policed labour.

But Portugal’s economy remained backward and its economic output per head was low compared with other European countries.

Discontent amongst the Portuguese people had steadily grown in opposition to those in charge, seeping even into the ranks of the army.

The Portuguese army was largely a conscript army, where the rulers sent young men to kill and to die in the colonies that were still part of a decaying empire.

The risings in Angola, central Africa, in 1961 temporarily destroyed Portuguese control in much of this colonial outpost. But instead of pulling out, Portugal’s rulers plunged into a doomed effort to regain full domination.

Anti-colonial forces also fought back in Mozambique, south Africa, in 1964 and in Guinea Bissau in west Africa. Realising they were being sent to be slaughtered, disgruntled officers began to plan for resistance to the fascist regime.

A group of 400 officers, the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), overthrew the prime minister Caetano on 25 April 1974.

They removed 100 generals and general Antonio de Spinola became president despite playing no part in the coup.

The divisions and the tumult at the top opened the way for much more profound resistance that could offer real social change. Workers supported the armed forces’ actions but then went further.

Workers occupied factories and joined enormous demonstrations. Some 260 families from a shantytown in the capital, Lisbon, moved into an empty apartment block near the city. The military ordered them out but was forced to back down when the families refused.

The “Carnation revolution” ­underlined that the global ­revolutionary wave of 1968 was not finished and the methods of class struggle based on workers’ power were not outdated.

The Portuguese events rekindles the hope that workers could transform the economy but also change themselves and challenge oppression in the course of the revolt.

During the month of May 1974, in a country of nine million, over 200,000 workers were on strike across key industries including shipbuilding, textiles, electronics, hotels, catering and banking.

The ruling class went from celebrating “freedom” from fascism to warning of the need to protect “democracy”. By this they meant saving capitalism.

In September 1974, Spinola called on the “silent majority” to join a rally opposing the left.

It was set for 28 September—but workers organised a counter rally and it never took place.

Instead, at least 40,000 people ­protested in the centre of Lisbon, and soldiers defied orders to remove the barricades, joining them instead.

The revolution set up workers’ and neighbourhood councils nearly everywhere. The ruling class found it impossible to contain the revolt for many months.

But crucially the main left forces—the social democrats and the Communists who were emerging from their underground organisation—held back the attempts to deepen the revolution further.

Revolutionary socialist Chris Harman said the left had been disarmed “because the workers looked to the armed forces to act for them, and inside the armed forces the rank and file looked to the progressive officers for a lead”.

There was no going back to Caetano’s regime. The colonies gained their independence and the ruling class put its hopes in a parliamentary democracy that could develop the economy and integrate more into Europe.

But long after Portugal’s bosses were able to retake control, the memory of 1974-5 continues to haunt them and inspire workers.
Interview with Raquel Varela— ‘History of the revolution told from below matters’

What does your book tell us about the mass participation in the revolution?

I estimate that three million people were involved in the protests, strikes, and workplace occupations. At the time, around 600 workplaces were self‑organised or were workers’ cooperatives.

In the big factories, the workers’ councils did not want to take ownership, but they did control how they functioned.
There was also land reform with cooperatives and workers management in hospitals, schools and across the public sector.

In schools teachers directly elected their representatives and they debated a new curriculum. Agreement was made that all children up to 16 years old should have the same quality of studies with a unitary education.

How did workers take over the media during the revolution?

Portugal had one of the greatest anarcho-syndicalist movements in the history of Western countries. Those in these movements were some of the most militant fighters, but often, their politics isolated them.

From the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century, there were more than 300 workers’ newspapers. And one of them, called The Battle, had 25,000 copies printed each day.

Workers’ councils during the revolution meant that newspapers were run amazingly democratically. I have studied this for a book I’m collaborating on, The People’s History of Portugal, which has not yet been translated.

There was a moment when committed journalism was born during the revolution.

There were massive strikes among journalists and newspapers between 1974 and 1975. But today, that journalism is totally destroyed. There are no workers’ journals today, creating a massive crisis in that worker voices and debate is simply not heard in society.

How did the revolution relate to the revolts for liberation in the colonies?

The two struggles are absolutely connected. The anti-colonial revolutions started among the forced labour workers. Revolts prompted what the Portuguese state calls the Portuguese Colonial War in 1961.

The Portuguese state calls them colonial wars, but for us, they were anti-colonial revolutions. A cotton worker strike in Angola led the Portuguese army to take revenge.

The Portuguese army used Napalm to kill Angolan people. After this the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola started the armed struggle. The same happened in Guinea Bissau and Mozambique.

Portuguese dock workers were fundamentally supportive of the liberation movements. The liberation movements and the army were at a stalemate when the generals in the army organised the progressive coup.

They sought a political end to the fighting in the colonies that saw thousands of Portuguese men die in defence of a dying empire.

How did a military coup lead to workers’ involvement on such a mass scale? When they organised the coup, middle-ranking army officers got messages out asking people to stay at home and wait.

They repeated ten times that they could arrest people if they were out and about. Despite these warnings, people began to go out to work.

Because there were no unions and no political parties, there was no mediation between the state and the workers. The workers very spontaneously self-organised in thousands of workers councils and neighbourhood councils.

Immediately, these councils did away with the leaderships of the municipalities and the fascist unions, and the companies that were attached to the regime.

They began to self-organise society.

In my book I argue that we shouldn’t view the military coup and workers’ self-organisation as two separate moments but one continual revolution that starts in 1961 and goes until 1975. It’s all one single revolutionary process.

We have to look much further than mainstream understandings to assess the history of such a revolution. This is why a people’s history is so important because its history is told from below.

A Marxist approach to history must consider the work of the working class. It’s about studying the process, not just the results.

After 1975, how did those in charge succeeded in their counter revolution?

Out of necessity the social democratic rulers that ushered in the counter revolution had to give many concessions to the workers.

The first thing the counter revolutionary forces destroyed were the soviets in the barracks, dismantling dual power in the army on 25 November 1975. Then, in 1978 and 1979, they removed the workers’ councils. Later, in 1982, the land reforms was destroyed.

Lastly, in 1989, they began to privatise banks on a large scale that had previously been under workers’ control.

All of this was only possible because the ruling class had worked hard to destroy the shipyard workers’ organisation in a similar way to how Margaret Thatcher destroyed the miners in Britain.

They had been the vanguard of the revolution. It was a slow process to bring the working class to accept a neoliberal capitalist system made up of companies, the state and the union.

They had to destroy the more combative trade left wing trade unions, which were ran by the rank and file and largely those who were influenced by the ideas of Maoism.‘Everything was possible’, 50 years since the Portuguese Revolution, Saturday 27 April, 6pm, London Welsh Centre, 157 Grays Inn Road, London, WC1X 8UE Speakers—Raquel Varela, Bob Light and Hector Sierra
People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution, By Raquel Varela, £19.99,
Portugal at a Crossroads by Tony Cliff (Written in 1975) tinyurl.com/Portugal75cliff
Portugal 1974-5 by Bob Light tinyurl.com/Portugalboblight75

 

In search of a new Ukrainian identity

Mike Phipps reviews Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War, by Volodymyr Ishchenko, published by Verso

This is a cautious, even-handed book – perhaps excessively so. Volodymyr Ishchenko has not been one to unconditionally take sides as Ukraine polarised in recent years. He rejects the artificial counter-position of the ‘new’ Ukraine – “young, metropolitan, cosmopolitan, fluent in English, stylish, mobile, liberal, well-educated, successful” to the old ‘Soviet’ or ‘Russian’ outlook – “old, conservative, provincial, rigid, clinging to dying industries, poorly or inadequately educated, in bad taste, losers.”

He sees both the Maidan and anti-Maidan protests as symmetrical: mirror images of themselves, each based on a combination of legitimate grievances and irrational fears.  Even in late January 2022, “as Western countries escalated their rhetoric about an ‘imminent invasion’ by Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi questioned this narrative at a press conference with foreign reporters.”  Ishchenko says: “I felt proud and I think many other Ukrainians did, too.” Yet less than a month later, Russia did indeed invade.

Ishchenko retains a detached view after the Russian attack. He is highly critical of the Zelenskyi government’s decision to suspend eleven Ukrainian political parties for their pro- Russian links, suggesting that “moves such as these suspensions that alienate parts of the Ukrainian public – and make them question the intentions of their leaders – make the country weaker not stronger, and only serve the enemy.” Others, however, saw this step as pretty lenient, given that the MPs of one of the larger groups, the Platform for Life, were able to retain their parliamentary immunity.

As for Russia, where other commentators saw Putin’s imposition of military conscription as a purely coercive measure, Ishchenko argues that this is simplistic and a strong element of bribery is involved. Drafted soldiers receive five to six times the Russian median wage. The billions of dollars of redistribution required by this measure constitutes, in his view, a form of military Keynesianism and helps explain why the war continues to be popular in Russia, to the bemusement of some Western commentators. He contrasts this with “the Ukrainian government’s decision to stick to neoliberal dogmas of privatization, lowering taxes and extreme labour deregulation, despite the objective imperatives of the war economy.”

The author is uncertain about the importance of Ukraine’s potential NATO membership in Putin’s decision to invade. “Whatever role NATO expansion played in bringing about war, Ukrainians’ attitudes counted for little,” he opines. “The grim irony is not only that NATO was far from extending formal membership to Ukraine, but that there was not even evidence of a stable pro-NATO majority in the country.”

This is somewhat different to the analysis proffered by Tariq Ali just one week before the invasion, which derided Ukraine as “Natoland” and mocked the threat of a Russian invasion as “based on some aerial photos of tents in a field and other helpfully selected nuggets of US intelligence.”

Support in Ukraine for joining NATO plunged after the West’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. But equally, support for joining the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization plummeted in 2014 after its annexation of Crimea. These insights support his analysis that Ukrainians are not as ideologically polarised as politicians might wish.

But actually, we can be far clearer about the issue of NATO. The last significant group of eastern European countries to join the Alliance did so twenty years ago. Russia’s war on Ukraine had very little to do with a supposed ‘NATO threat’.

The war causes difficulties for Ishchenko’s analysis. His rejection of “reductive binary choices” between exclusionary nationalisms on both sides is undermined by the violent and protracted character of the Russian onslaught. Ishchenko attempts to explain the rationale for the war, rejecting Putin’s own explanations about Ukraine and Russia being one people and Russia’s fears of NATO expansion.  Accepting this at face value “would mean that the Russian ruling class has either been taken hostage by a power hungry maniac and national chauvinist obsessed with a ‘historical mission’ of restoring Russian greatness, or suffers from an extreme form of false consciousness – sharing Putin’s ideas about the NATO threat and his denial of Ukrainian statehood, leading to policies that are objectively contrary to their interests.”

This is wrong, believes Ishchenko: the war does represent the collective interests of the Russian ruling class: expanding the sphere of influence in which oligarchic capitalism can operate and fending off the threat from the West, whose anti-corruption rhetoric resonates with a growing professional class. It’s a stance echoed by the elites – whose lack of legitimacy necessitates resorting to violence to shore up their power –  in many post-Soviet states, including in the past Ukraine. Now, however, the latter is finding that state corruption and crony capitalism are undermining its war effort.

It’s the essence of Ishchenko’s thesis that beneath the nationalist disputes lies a profound class conflict. The East-West division in Ukraine is less about linguistic or cultural differences and more a clash between its professional middle classes whose pro-Western agenda “threatened most of the political capitalist ruling class and marginalized large segments of Ukraine’s workers.”  

It’s good to foreground a class analysis, but the author goes further, suggesting that describing the Russian state’s actions as imperialist is simplistic. This is problematic –  Ishchenko’s ‘a plague on both elites’ stance sidelines the critical point that Russia’s invasion threatens the very existence of Ukraine, whatever differences he and we may have with its government. As Vincent Présumey and Stefan Bekier put it on this site a year ago: “ In the outlook of Russian imperial nationalism, Ukrainians can only be Russians or dead.”

As Simon Pirani has explained, Russia’s imperialist attitude to Ukraine is rooted not only in its history but in the current military methods it is using. Its attempts to “subjugate an enemy population” are demonstrated both in its attacks on the civilian population – including massacres, rape, torture and forced deportation – and in its efforts to eradicate Ukrainian culture and with it Ukrainians’ collective identity.

Moreover, as Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval have argued, Putin’s regime embodies  an “eminently political form of imperialism: it aims to spread a dictatorial and nationalist conception of power everywhere in which civil and political freedoms have no basis for existence. This is why the Putin model has so many supporters among the global right and extreme right.” 

Ishchenko is fearful that the decolonisation of Ukraine is simply an anti-Russian reflex, to be replaced by the worship of all things Western. He’s dismissive of the “burst of mutual help and horizontal cooperation” that the war has unleashed and doesn’t foresee much of a role for the self-organized Ukrainian people after the war, even if the power of the oligarchs is fatally weakened. Of course, it’s hard to predict if he will be proven right – but in any case that’s no reason not to fight for the existence of an independent Ukraine, which in current conditions is definitely not an abstract issue of identity politics.

Rather than accept the Western narrative for Ukraine of liberal modernization, Ishchenko offers what he argues is a more positive conception of the country’s identity: “Instead, we need to recognize that we could be proud of having once been part of a universal movement. Ukraine was crucial to the greatest social revolution and modernization breakthrough in human history. Ukraine was where some of the most significant battles of World War II took place. Millions of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in the Red Army contributed huge sacrifices to defeat Nazi Germany. Ukraine was a world-renowned centre of vanguardist art and culture. The mass murders and authoritarianism of the state-socialist regime are universally acknowledged; but to exploit them to depreciate the scale of Soviet achievements is to cast Ukrainian labour, blood and suffering as meaningless… We should claim our past in full to claim a better future.”

“Universally acknowledged” may be an overstatement here. A recognition of Stalin-era mass murder is certainly not in the Great-Russian outlook peddled by the Kremlin. Ishchenko’s search for the universal runs up against not only this ongoing colonial Russian mindset but its concrete and brutal expression under the Soviet regime.

Introducing his book, Ishchenko says, “ You should not read it looking for some objective Truth about the war in Ukraine.” He’s right about that – but we should still keep searching.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.

 

Labour Hub – http://www.threads.net/@labour_hub

 

LABOUR HUB EDITORS

Democracy or electoral autocracy: when religious fervour trumps rising unemployment as an election issue 

Praveen Kolluguri previews India’s upcoming general election.

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India, the world’s most populous country is going through its general election in seven phases starting from 19th April to 1st June 2024. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition, is tipped to win for the third time in a row in all opinion polls. The main opposition led by the Indian National Congress (INC) is trying to fight as a coalition called INDIA. Unfortunately, this coalition has been plagued by disunity since its early days, with some key partners now out of it, like Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), who will be fighting the election on their own.

This article highlights the issues that most concern us from the labour perspective and the conditions that are likely to make this the most one-sided election in India’s electoral history. 

Of major concern to us is the issue of electoral bonds, an opaque way of funding political parties in India that was introduced by the current BJP regime. By buying electoral bonds, any individuals or organisations could fund political parties without disclosing their interests to the public. This scheme, to no surprise, has favoured the BJP, with 75% of the funding going to its coffers. As we now know, between 2019 and 2024 the party encashed nearly £600 million, making it one of the richest political parties, if not the richest one in the world. The second on the list was the TMC, which is based out of the state of West Bengal with £160 million, and the main national opposition Congress (I) party at £135 million.

Since the Supreme Court ordered the State Bank of India to release all data pertaining to electoral bonds, it has emerged that these donations to the BJP were mainly from firms that were crony capitalists under the current regime or were under investigation by central agencies for various misdemeanours, revealing the quid pro quo nature of these donations. A large number of these firms have not declared profit and hence haven’t paid any taxes, but they still found money to donate to the political parties. The Adani Group, which has been the main beneficiary of the current ruling regime, and whose net revenue grew from £2.4 Billion in 2014 to £72 Billion in 2022, was surprisingly missing from the list. But they have supported the government through capturing media companies and eliminating any independent media coverage, and have been rewarded with perks such as mining contracts that are threatening the lives and livelihoods of indigenous communities, and the ecological balance across the forest ranges of India. The Adani Group is now among the world’s largest fossil fuel companies and its presence is international, including here in the UK, through their sponsorship of a ‘green energy’ exhibition at the Science Museum. This blatant greenwashing by a fossil fuel company is being opposed by several climate justice groups including us. 

The financially disadvantaged opposition is also under attack by various investigating agencies: the bank accounts of the INC have been frozen since February 2024 owing to a tax probe.

Federalism, which offers a tiny ray of hope against the excesses of the BJP-led union government is also under attack. Two sitting Chief Ministers, who represented prominent voices of opposition, have been arrested in the lead-up to the election. One of them is Hemant Soren, who was the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, and leader of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha Party (JMM). Soren had been a strong voice for the rights of the Adivasis, the Indigenous peoples of central and eastern India. Himself a Santal Adivasi, he has taken a prominent stand against the assimilation of the Adivasis into the Hindu religion fold. In fact, Adivasis have been campaigning for a separate ‘Sarna’ code in the list of religions in India’s census. The other Chief Minister behind bars is Arvind Kejriwal, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a liberal centrist party which has been in power in Delhi for the last two terms.

Many public intellectuals like Dr Anand Teltumbde have commented that this will be last election for India as a secular state with the rule of law. The BJP’s ideological base, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was originally inspired by the 20th-century European fascist movements in Italy and Germany. This makes the BJP a Hindu nationalist party that is open about its ambitions to bring sweeping changes to India’s constitution and make India a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, a majoritarian Hindu state. The Islamophobia that has been inoculated amongst all sections of Indian society, through the medium of WhatsApp forwards and social media memes, has potentially genocidal consequences. While most at risk are the over 200 million Indian Muslims, another 100 million people following other religions are also being targeted,  including Christians. The economic ghettoisation of Muslims over the last decades has meant that their labour and work prospects have also been shrinking. 

Hence from a labour perspective, it’s important to keep our eye on how the religious fervour gripping the country is masking the high rates of unemployment and the human rights situation, both of which have been steadily worsening since 2014 when the BJP first formed the NDA government at the centre. This includes sectarian state-sponsored religious, caste- and gender-based violence, atrocities on Muslims and caste-oppressed communities, and severe suppression of dissidents and activists.

Over 90% of workers in India are outside the formal economy and denied basic labour rights and protections such as minimum wage, pension, and maternity pay. The new labour codes have re-introduced regressive labour practices such as the removal of the eight-hour working day regulation, measures against unionising, and the removal of workplace health and safety regulations.

The PR story of the miracle growth of India that we often see and hear about in the West is the story of jobless growth, the story of the growth of crony capitalists. Neoliberal economic policies since 1991, under successive Congress and BJP-led governments, have deepened with the BJP’s absolute ascendancy since 2014, with job security, income security, health security, food security and social security all at an all-time low. The state has massively withdrawn from public services, and public employment opportunities are reducing, with little nationalised health and welfare services. One illness in the family can wipe out all the savings of the average worker.

As in other countries before, the rise of right-wing nationalism and youth unemployment (16% of those aged 15-29 are unemployed) go hand in hand and have resulted in a Billionaire Raj that is even more unequal than the British Raj. India’s top 1% income share is among the very highest in the world, higher than even South Africa, Brazil and the USA.

In this context, it is safe to say that India is rapidly hurtling towards autocracy. While it was already downgraded to the status of an “electoral autocracy” in 2018, India has declined even further on multiple metrics, to emerge as “one of the worst autocratizers” according to the Democracy Report 2024 released by the Gothenburg-based V-Dem Institute that tracks democratic freedoms worldwide.

The issue of unemployment and poor labour conditions are pushing Indian workers to seek work abroad. The government, instead of addressing the concerns, has also hitched itself to the bandwagon and actively facilitated the sending of Indian workers to Israel to replace Palestinian workers in the building industry there. As one of the workers looking to sign up on this scheme said, “I’d rather die in a warzone than starve to death.”

Indian trade unions have condemned this betrayal of India’s historical support of Palestine. We also salute the Indian dock workers who, despite their own harsh working and living conditions, still refused to handle weapons intended for Israel. While all such developments do not make it as election issues, it should be telling us something of the way in which India is heading.   

Should the UK labour movement be concerned about the developments related to the increased religious tensions in India? We only have to look towards Leicester and how it spilled onto the streets there recently. We therefore call on the Labour Party to robustly challenge the BJP-led NDA government if it comes back into power as projected. In addition, we urge readers to join our call for suspension of free trade with India, where the signing by the UK of such agreements has been at the expense of social justice and worker’s rights. 

Praveen Kolluguri is an activist with India Labour Solidarity.

Image: India map. Source: Transferred from ml.wikipedia to Commons. Author: Rajeshodayanchal at Malayalam Wikipedia.,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

 

Silenced by the German authorities from speaking out on Palestine

We reproduce an edited version of a speech made by Doctor Josie Shakur at a Glasgow Healthcare Workers vigil for Palestine on April 13th.

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Thank you for joining us today and a warm welcome to our healthcare vigil for Gaza.

My name is Dr Josie Shakur. My colleagues and I are the Glasgow Healthcare Workers for Palestine. 

On Thursday 11th April, Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta was sworn in as Rector of Glasgow University. 

Dr Ghassan, a Palestinian-British Glasgow University graduate and renowned reconstructive surgeon, won a staggering 80% of the vote. 

His inauguration speech contained words of hope, strength and sincerity.

On Friday 12th April, in Germany his voice was silenced by the German authorities.

Dr Ghassan was due to share evidence at a Palestinian conference in Berlin on the atrocities he witnessed during his 43-day surgical mission to Gaza in October 2023 but his passport was seized at the German airport.

He was questioned for three and a half hours by German police, then ordered to return to the UK – otherwise he would face a fine or imprisonment if he tried byany medium to share his words at the conference.

The German police also raided the conference venue and abruptly stopped the event. 

All this while a Nicaraguan legal team have presented evidence at the International Court of Justice on Germany’s complicity in the massacre in Gaza. 

Dr Ghassan made a statement yesterday and it reads as follows:

“Europe is shedding its liberal hypocrisy. They are accomplices in the crime and that is what accomplices do.

“They bury the evidence and silence the witnesses. I was invited to address a conference in Berlin about my work in Gaza hospitals during the present conflict.

The German government has forcibly prevented me from entering the country. Silencing a witness to genocide before the ICJ adds to Germany’s complicity in the ongoing massacre.”

Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta.”

For merely talking about medical events witnessed in Gaza, Germany is prepared to use criminal punishment. 

This conference was attended by Jews, Palestinians and people from all faiths and non-faiths. It was a peaceful respectful gathering. 

Yanis Varoufakis , the former Finance Minister of Greece, was also due to speak at the conference. 

When he was asked why, he quoted Hanan Ashrawi (former Minister of Education in Palestine): “We cannot rely on the silenced to tell us about their suffering.”

Mr Varoufakis posted his full speech on line later on Friday 12th April for everyone to read.

Those who legitimately and peacefully speak up for peace in Palestine and declare their outrage at the six-month massacre in Gaza should never be silenced.

It is Day 190 of the horror rained down on Gaza by Israel. 

For over six months now we have been saying STOP to the massacre of innocent civilians, destruction of all infrastructure, annihilation of health care, terror on hospitals,  murder of UNRWA Staff and all humanitarian aid workers. STOP to the torrent of endless disease, starvation and trauma. 

The aggression on hospitals in Gaza has been unrelenting. 

We have seen the horrific tragedy that unfolded in Al Shifa hospital recently: executions, mass graves, murder of critically ill patients, healthcare staff, torture, displacement and destruction of the entire hospital complex. Those inside were ordered to evacuate the hospital by Israeli drones demanding: “Come out, you animals.”

Al Shifa hospital (“the house of healing”) is now reduced to burnt embers.

Gaza’s dust and rubble holds the entombed bodies of many innocents but also the secret horrors that have taken place.

All medical facilities have been struck – a move to actively prevent any adequate healthcare provision now and in the future. 

100% of Gazans are starving. Malnutrition is soaring. Aid workers continue to be killed.

Only a few days ago, a UNICEF aid truck cleared to travel by the Israeli army to the North of Gaza was shot at by that same army. 

We call upon you all to use your voices. Do not be silenced. Protest peacefully.

We must shed light on the apartheid regime which a UN official called so much worse than the South African apartheid.

Boycott, divest, protest to your MPs, to the government. 

Dr Ahmed Almaqadma’s (plastic surgeon) last words on his Instagram feed, spoken softly and calmly before he was executed alongside his mother, Dr Yusra, in the grounds of Al Shifa hospital were: “This genocide must stop now. Enough is enough.”

Collective peace, strength and solidarity bind us.  Please stay resolute. Shout louder than ever before. 

Free, free Palestine. Thank you. 

Trade Unions Under Military Rule in Myanmar Conference

By Jay Kerr

Ever since the military coup overthrew democracy in 2021, the people of Myanmar have been engaged in resistance against the brutal military regime. From the Myanmar Spring, where millions came onto the streets to protest the coup, led by garment workers and their trade unions; to the call-to-arms by the National Unity Government in exile to form a people’s army and fight for their country, Myanmar has been in a state of civil war and resistance for over three years. 

The trade unions in Myanmar put aside their differences after the coup to form the Myanmar Labour Alliance, a coalition to present a united front against the military junta. With knowledge of the importance that economic sanctions played in the early 2000s in forcing the military to open up society to democratic reforms in 2011, the Labour Alliance made the democratic decision to push for comprehensive economic sanctions once again. To that end they called on international fashion brands (one of the fastest growing industries in Myanmar) to end operations and leave the country, thereby stopping a source of tax revenue for the military, and presenting a strong message that there could be no business-as-usual in a military controlled Myanmar.  

It very quickly became apparent that the garment factory bosses would use the military coup to crack down on the hard-won rights that the trade unions had secured in the industry over the past decade. Within weeks of the coup the unions were reporting on a rise in forced labour, physical assaults against workers, as well as gender-based violence and harassment, all while wages were falling, and in some cases not being paid at all. It was very clear that it was impossible for fashion brands to implement their own codes of conduct in Myanmar and do the due diligence necessary to protect workers. 

In late January 2022, just before the one-year anniversary of the coup, No Sweat and Global Women’s Strike launched the Myanmar Military: Never in Fashion campaign in support of the Burmese trade unions calls for fashion brands to leave the country. We demanded they make a responsible exit and provide financial security for the workers that had made their clothes for so long that were now facing poverty and insecurity. A statement was signed by almost 200 trade unions and civil society groups from around the world. 

Many brands took notice, as the evidence was hard to argue with. When the Ethical Trading Initiative finally put out a report in  September, confirming what the Burmese unions had been saying for over a year, brands such as Primark and Marks & Spencer announced plans to exit the country. However, many big names such as Zara, Mango and H&M vowed to keep sourcing despite the worsening conditions. 

The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, working with the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM) has now identified over 400 cases of labour and human rights abuses against garment workers since 2001 and continues to monitor the situation. Added to the list of abuses is forced conscription, as reports emerge that factory bosses are handing workers over to the military to become unwilling soldiers on the front lines in the civil war against the ethnic armies and the People’s Defence Force. 

Now, on Saturday 20th April, there an opportunity to find out more about what is happening in Myanmar and hear directly from the trade unions that are playing their part in non-violently resisting the military regime. 

Join us at Friends House in Euston, London for the one-day conference, Trade Unions Under Military Rule in Myanmar, which is supported by PCS and the Peace & Justice Project, where Jeremy Corbyn will speak alongside exiled Burmese trade union leader, Khaing Zar Aung and Burmese human rights activist, Dr Maung Zarni, on the latest situation in Myanmar. Then, in the evening head over to The 100 Club on Oxford Street where legendary political comedian Mark Thomas will headline a special fundraiser to support the Burmese unions in their struggle.

Gig tickets and conference registration can be found here.

Saturday 20th April: 

12pm, Trade Unions Under Military Rule in Myanmar Conference, Friends House.

7pm, Stand Up for Myanmar Comedy Night with Mark Thomas, The 100 Club.

Jay Kerr is an activist with No Sweat

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Borders are now a means of disciplining a global working class

Mike Phipps reviews Essential Work, Disposable Workers Mostafa Henaway, published by Fernwood

 APRIL 21, 2024

Despite the rhetoric adopted by a range of politicians, there is no ‘immigration crisis’, argues the author of this thoughtful new book. Rather, what we are seeing is the normal functioning of the global economy reaching its logical conclusion. Only an internationalist understanding can tackle the destitution of the Global South that this causes.

Since the 1990s, remittances have become the largest financial flows from the Global North to the South and are now integral to the current phase of international capitalism. Rather than seek alternative state policies to redress the inequalities that are essential to capitalist development, “countries are locked into a model of labour export that separates families, destroys communities and lacks concern for workers’ livelihoods.”

The Philippines alone has over 10 million of its citizens living and working abroad, nearly 10% of its population, a process that began with economic liberalisation which devastated the domestic economy. Likewise Mexico, which had healthy growth rates in the 1970s and 1980s, was forced to accept IMF-imposed privatisations and other neoliberal measures which obliterated livelihoods and led to a mass wave of migration to the north. In 2017 alone, Mexicans abroad sent home a staggering $36 billion. In El Salvador, remittances make up a quarter of GDP.

These sums are not just a lifeline to migrants’ families – they also improve the credit rating of financially desperate countries, which can use them as a strategy to access external loans and lower their borrowing costs, which in turn bolsters the unpopular elites that adopted this devastating strategy.

In the Global North, the growing militarization of borders has been accompanied by increased deportations, detention and denial of rights. In this model, borders serve not to deter migration but to discipline a global working class, in which migrants constitute a vast, low-wage, flexible workforce, exploited to undermine trade unions and make all work more precarious.

Despite the official rhetoric, there is a great deal of state collusion in this process. In Spain, the authorities move irregular migrants to areas where labour is needed. They are routinely paid half the minimum wage and risk deportation if they ‘cause trouble’. The US shows similar patterns in maintaining its cheap agriculture labour.

How to organise against the injustices that migrant workers face, in the context of declining union power? Henaway has a number of ideas, based on his experience as a community organiser at the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal. But he also draws on the struggles of Latin American cleaners in London, African warehouse workers in northern Italy, the Sans Papiers strikes in Paris, and elsewhere.

While there are undoubtedly objective difficulties to achieving success in these struggles, Henaway is keen to emphasise the subjective obstacles they face – in particular the conservative methods and attitudes of much of the left and its traditional organisations.

A lot of the case studies here are from Canada where the author is a long-standing activist. But the conclusions apply far more generally, so this book should be widely read to understand the driving forces behind, and the consequences of, global migration.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.

 

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LABOUR HUB EDITORS

UNRWA funding must be restored immediately!

APRIL 22, 2024

“Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency UNRWA are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has said,” the Guardian reports. “The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that UNRWA had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that ‘the Israeli government has not informed UNRWA of any concerns relating to any UNRWA staff based on these staff lists since 2011’.”

Israel’s allegations about the involvement of UNRWA staff in the 7th October Hamas attack led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Most of the donor nations – with the exception of the USA – have now resumed their funding, but Tory ministers had said they would wait for the Colonna report before making a decision.

Now the Colonna report is clear, there should be no further delay in Britain resuming funding. A Momentum spokesperson said: “The Tories should never have suspended funding to UNRWA and Labour should never have supported it either. As the people of Gaza suffer in famine, it is well past time for David Cameron  to immediately restore the UK’s funding to UNRWA.”

Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Minister for international development, is now calling for support for the agency, warning that “time has run out for hundreds of thousands” of people in Gaza. This is a welcome U-turn from the Labour front bench, which initially supported the Tory government over the suspension of funding – all based on unsubstantiated allegations from Israel which has been accused of carrying out a genocidal onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza.

In recent  days, 200 bodies have been found in a mass grave at a hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis. Much of the city is now in ruins after months of relentless Israeli bombardment.

More than six months into the Israeli onslaught, more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 13,000 children and 8,400 women. An additional 8,000 people are missing, and nearly 76,000 have been injured. Almost the entire population of around 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip has been displaced, and 62% of all homes have been damaged or reduced to rubble.

There will be a further mass demonstration for a ceasefire in London this Saturday, despite the antics of Gideon Falter of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, supporters of whom want to see such protests banned. Falter claimed he was prevented by police from crossing the road during a previous London march in support of Palestine.

The police were forced to apologise for their treatment of Falter. But it has now emerged that the officer in question was concerned after he had seen Falter acting in a way that led him to believe he was trying to provoke a confrontation with marchers. That fuller account showed “a totally different encounter to the one that Mr Falter has reported,” said a former Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent.

Former Labour minister Chris Mullin echoed the views of many when he tweeted: “Why can’t BBC news try interviewing some of the impressive Jews who were on the demonstration instead giving air time to a stunt by that Zionist trouble-maker Gideon Falter?”

APRIL 22, 2024