Wednesday, May 29, 2024


Porto Alegre Floods and the Failure of the


Minimal State


 
 MAY 29, 2024
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Bruna Rodrigues, 36, from the Communist Party of Brazil, the first black woman ever elected to Rio Grande do Sul’s state legislature.

On April 31, 300 mm of rain fell in the mountains of Northern Rio Grande do Sul, causing dam breaks, landslides and submerging entire towns, leaving over 160 people dead as it headed south towards the Guaíba drainage basin, where all of the streams and rivers of the northern third of the state converge to enter into a river that runs directly past downtown Porto Alegre. Devastated by a huge flood in 1941, the City of Porto Alegre used Dutch technology to construct a huge dike, floodgate and pumping station system in the 1960s to prevent a similar tragedy from every happening again. As the water level in the Guaíba River surpassed the 3-meter mark during the first days of May, the public found out that some of the flood gates were missing rubber seals and bolts, and many had rusted into their tracks. Furthermore, pumping station 17, located next to Porto Alegre’s historic district, which hadn’t worked during a recent flood in November, 2023, was still broken. By the time the water hit it’s high point of 5.33 meters on May 5th, half of the city’s pumping stations were inoperable, 85% of the city of 1.4 million no longer had running water, and over half the city had lost its electrical service. Two weeks later, I traveled by bus from Florianopolis to Osario, Rio Grande do Sul. There, I caught a local bus to the Agronomia municipal bus terminal, which had been temporarily set up for inter-city transport as both the city’s main bus terminal and airport were still underwater, along with large swathes of the city and the surrounding suburbs like Canoas and Sao Leopoldo, part of the metropolitan area of 3.3 million. On the day I arrived, 580,000 people had been displaced, with 71,000 living in shelters and the remainder in the houses of friends and families.

On May 22, I interviewed State Congresswoman Bruna Rodrigues. Daughter of a public street sweeper and the first member of her family to study at university, she was elected City Councilor in 2020 and State Congresswoman in 2023 . Before that, she served as President of Porto Alegre’s Residents Association Union and the Union of Socialist Youth. A member of the Communist Party of Brazil, Rodrigues is a former cabinet member of 2018 Vice Presidential Candidate Manuela D’Avila, and co-founder of the state assembly’s first congressional black caucus.

I caught up with her in Porto Alegre’s Santa Teresa neighborhood at Preta Velha, a formerly abandoned public school building which she helped convert into an Afro-Brazilian movement community center. Preta Velha is now running a solidarity kitchen and serving as a voluntary distribution center for donated clothes and sanitary goods. Due to the noise of dozens of volunteers packing hot food into Styrofoam containers and folding and packing donated clothing, her press secretary suggested we go upstairs, where I filmed this interview in an empty classroom. The following is a translated transcript that has been edited for readability.

Brian Mier: Could you explain some of the failures of the Porto Alegre city government over the last few years that have exacerbated this catastrophe?

Bruna Rodrigues: There have been a lot of them. First of all, Porto Alegre has seen its public services severely degraded over the past 20 years – destroyed by a governing coalition that believes that the State should be minimal and subordinate to the market. One example is the Civil Defense department, which is responsible for rescue operations during disasters. Today Porto Alegre has its lowest number of Civil Defense workers in its history. In counterpart, there has been a huge level of privatization and outsourcing of city services. When you look at investment, the disgrace is even deeper. There is no work being done on prevention and environmental education – we can start there. Porto Alegre recycles less than 6% of its solid waste. Furthermore, the Water and Sanitation Department, DMAE, is being prepared for privatization and has laid off half its workers over the last decade.

The Porto Alegre Mayor’s Department changes actors but the policies remain the same. Mayor Sebastião Melo was José Fortunati’s Vice Mayor and has been part of the government for 20 years. So a very small part of the actors change but the management remains the same. We can see what they have done to DMAE, and how they closed the Department of Rainwater Drainage (DEP) – a service that was essential for a kind of urban development in which basic sanitation was treated as an important policy. So when we talk about structural axes, environmental policy practically doesn’t exist in Porto Alegre aside from tree trimming and removal, which isn’t done very well. There are no prevention policies, no policy of analysis of the advance of climate disasters meaning that there is no investement in a phenomonon that is here to stay. In Porto Alegre we have neighborhoods built on river islands that historically suffer from floods. No solution has ever been made for them. To the contrary, this coalition has pushed the ideology of the minimal State for years and this has led to a strategy of blaming of the victims. This is what the mayor’s office has been doing. It’s been shirking its responsibilities and putting all of the blame for this catastrophe on its citizens. We are fighting hard against this.

Mier: How does Mayor Melo work to put the blame on his citizens?

Rodrigues: For example he says, “people live in risk areas- this is the problem.” When he says that this is the problem and we look at the people who are living there, they are people who have no access to social housing policies. When we look at this city we see that it doesn’t have a clearly defined housing policy. It doesn’t have a strategy – it hasn’t had a municipal housing plan for many years. Porto Alegre hasn’t produced any social housing for a long time. It doesn’t have a municipal development plan. The city government’s own vacant buildings and lots, which could be converted to social housing, are given to real estate speculators for market initiatives instead of the population that needs it the most.

Mier: What do you think is the most important thing that the Mayor’s Office should do now for the flood victims?

Rodrigues:For starters, they should listen to them, right? So far the people are being thrown into different predetermined places. Their lives are now being defined by public services that barely exist. Here in the Preta Velha collective, which has opened its doors for solidarity, people who were rescued are arriving who have been given bad information, who have been dumped in shelters but don’t have any information, and who are receiving reduced quantities of food. They are leaving these places and going to the houses of relatives but they don’t have any perspective of returning to any form of dignified housing. So when we talk about these public services which aren’t being delivered we’re talking about these people who are suffering the consequences. They were taken from the water and thrown somewhere out of the water. So when we talk about public policies, of a government that has the capacity to rescue people, put them somewhere dignified and offer them some kind of perspective for the future, unfortunately, this is something that Mayor Melo hasn’t been able to do.

Mier: Have you witnessed any attempts by people on the far right to sabotage or deligitimize the relief efforts made by the federal government?

Rodrigues: Disinformation is on the loose everywhere in every form imaginable. The Federal Government brought in 3500 rescue workers during the first week of the flood, but they spread lies that the Federal Government hadn’t arrived yet. President Lula took a series of measures so that Rio Grande do Sul could organize rescue efforts that including deploying the army and the national security force. He also allocated funding and, unfortunately this is all being distorted on social media to generate a smokescreen to take the blame away from the responsible parties and re-frame all the anger and hatred. Unfortunately, Brazil has a tradition of political agents fomenting and organizing hatred in a way that people have a hard time understanding what is real and what isn’t. The fake news is doing this, unfortunately. So when we talk about sabotage, we are talking about everything that wasn’t done so that the people could have been rescued with dignity. The governor has been working as an interlocutor of the weather and not a manager who is living in a disaster zone, a total tragedy, without the capacity to manage or organize civil society to show more solidarity. So we have a lot of challenges but we are fighting so that we can return to having a strong State that has the capacity to care for its citizens.

Brian Mier is a native Chicagoan who has lived in Brazil for 25 years. He is co-editor of Brasil Wire and Brazil correspondent for TeleSur English’s TV news program, From the South.

 

What is Dual Power?

Dual Power, sometimes referred to as counter-power, is a stage in a revolutionary movement where two competing political frameworks occupy the same space. For anti-state revolutionaries this implies a significant mobilization of people organizing autonomously and outside of and against existing power structures and institutions.

In this episode of A is for Anarchy, we examine the historical origins of dual power and analyze current examples and those throughout history.

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SubMedia is directed and produced by Frank Lopez. Read other articles by subMedia, or visit subMedia's website.

Deadly Heat in a Political Jungle

World heat is worse than ever. The entire planet is sweating.

Every summer is hot but never like this. In America, it’s a national election year in the face of global record heat. What are candidates’ positions on CO2-infused heat?

Graph by Brian Brettschneider, PhD, Climatologist

It’s extremely significant that global heat is just as bad in the world’s oceans, which have absorbed 85-90% of planetary heat, serving as a heat reservoir for decades. But now, the oceans are starting to strut their hot stuff. According to Copernicus, April was the 13th month in a row that global sea surface temperatures between 60 degrees latitude south and 60 degrees latitude north have been the warmest on record for the month. Astoundingly, nearly 30% of the world’s oceans were above 28C (82.4°F) too hot for a bath, in April 2024, setting a record. Both the Mediterranean and Black Seas also had sharp upward trends for the month. Has civilization lost its ocean heat cushion?

Consequently, heat deaths are on the rise and look to escalate, by a lot, and soon. This is a worldwide crisis like none other. It requires world leadership to do something, soon, like the day before yesterday. But, how soon and will it be enough and who’s willing?

According to World Weather Attribution d/d May 142024: Consistent sweltering temperatures well above 40C (104F) are creating havoc from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria in the West to Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines in the East, and even though  heat-related death tolls are typically underreported, hundreds of heat-related deaths have been reported, schools have been closed, and citizens warned to stay indoors.

Moreover, two studies by World Weather Attribution (WWA) “found that human-induced climate change influenced the events, making them around 30 times more likely and much hotter.”

Heat knows no borders. According to WLRN South Florida d/d May 23, 2024: “Heat Dome Leads to Sweltering Temperatures in Mexico, Central America, and US South”“This extreme heat is occurring in a world that is quickly warming due to greenhouse gases, which come from the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal.” For example, Miami International Airport is running 10°F hotter than normal at 96°F.

Mexico City is nearly a war zone scenario with record high temperatures which, combined with pollution, leads to multiple city-wide protests, including by police: “A group of police agents blocked six lanes of traffic Wednesday on a main Mexico City avenue, saying their barracks lacked water for a week and the bathrooms were unusable. ” (Ibid.) Water has been trucked for hospitals and to firefighting teams. Numerous birds and animals in the wild of Mexico have dropped dead on the spot.

All Central America is exposed to the same horrendous moist heat. And people wonder why they migrate North.

Yale Climate Connections d/d April 29, 2024 listed some global warming samplers (1) corals are bleaching in every corner of the ocean, threatening its web of life (2) extreme drought in southern Africa leaves millions hungry (3) West African heat wave: high humidity made 40°C feel like 50°C, which is a killer (4) discomfort may increase: Asia’s heat wave scorches hundreds of millions (5) record heat in Europe, Asia closes another extremely warm month for the planet (6) Europe unprepared for rapidly growing climate risks, report finds (7) China breaks heat records as sweltering weather baked cities from north to south.

“The era of global boiling has arrived,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned. “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.” (Source: Climate Action, World Economic Forum, August 4, 2023.)

António Guterres “nailed it” nine months ago. Meanwhile, at some point in time soon, the major nations of the world will hit panic buttons and go all-in supplanting fossil fuels with renewables as quickly as possible. They’ll be forced to do this. After all, when police protest in the streets, as in Mexico City, who’s left to patrol?

It’s a national election year in America, and climate change should be a major political issue as the heat is on for the whole world to see like never before, and it will get worse, as stated by the UN secretary-general. What’s the political landscape in America? According to the mainstream publication Yahoo! Finance d/d Feb. 15, 2024: “MAGA Republicans Have a 920-Page Plan to Make Climate Change Worse.” Isn’t that just great!

Here’s the opening paragraph of Yahoo! Finance’s write-up: “When former President Donald Trump exited the Oval Office in January 2021, he left behind a record of environmental rollbacks unrivaled in US history. Over his 1,461 days as commander-in-chief, Trump replaced, eliminated, or otherwise dismantled more than 100 environmental rules – at least — from repealing the Clean Air Act to allowing coal plants to dump toxic wastewater into lakes and rivers to declaring open season on endangered gray wolves.” Several of the hatcheted rules were from Richard Nixon’s administration.

Subsequently, the Biden administration rolled back a lot of Trump’s hatchet job.

“Had all Trump’s policies gone into effect, the nonpartisan Rhodium Group estimated at the end of 2020, they would have added an additional 1.8 gigatons of CO2-equivalent to the atmosphere by 2035 – more than the annual energy emissions of Germany, Britain, and Canada combined. But even though we never felt the full brunt of them, the medical journal The Lancet estimated that the policies undertaken during his presidency were responsible for 22,000 deaths in 2019 alone due to sharp increases in things like asthma, heart disease, and lung cancer.” (Ibid.)

Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for MAGA Republicans going forward: “The plan’s proposals include eviscerating existing climate programs and increasing reliance on fossil fuels. It emphatically repudiates efforts to decarbonize the economy and is a wholesale reversal of the progress made on climate policy over recent years.” (Source: “Project 2025 Tells us What a Second Trump Term Could Mean for Climate Policy. It Isn’t Pretty“, WBUR nonprofit news org, March 27, 2024.)

Well, that’s great to know, but here’s the real issue: “Much of the voting public is disturbingly unaware of both Biden’s climate record and the assault that Project 2025 would marshal against it.” (Ibid.)

Make America Great Again. Really?


Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.
END THE EMBARGO

US allows Cuban entrepreneurs conditional banking access


AFP
May 28, 2024


A delivery van from a US-based food remittance company drives on a street in Havana on May 22, 2024 - Copyright AFP/File Raul ARBOLEDA

Private sector entrepreneurs in Cuba will be able to establish US bank accounts which they can remotely access, US officials said Tuesday, in announcing an update to the country’s Cuba policy.

The new rules modify a longstanding embargo on Cuba, allowing conditional access to the US banking system among moves to support the private sector.

“These amendments will facilitate greater access to internet-based services for the Cuban people,” a senior US official told reporters.

They will also “provide the independent Cuban private sector greater access to international transactions and US banking services, including through online payment platforms,” the official added on condition of anonymity.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez criticized the measures as “limited,” saying “they do not reverse the cruel impact and economic suffocation” caused by the six-decade-old embargo imposed by Washington.

“These measures seek to create divisions within Cuban society,” Rodriguez wrote on X.

Under the changes, independent private sector entrepreneurs will be able to set up remotely accessed US bank accounts for authorized transactions.

According to US officials, this should help to facilitate the import of food, equipment and other goods that support Cuban people.

US authorities have also reinstated authorization allowing for transactions that start and end outside the country but pass through the US financial system.

In May 2022, US President Joe Biden’s administration vowed to encourage the growth of Cuba’s private sector, including by supporting greater access to US internet services and e-commerce platforms.

As of 2021, Cuban entrepreneurs could establish private small- and medium-sized enterprises — after these were banned for almost six decades in favor of state-owned enterprises.

Some 11,000 private companies have since been registered, said US officials.

Cuba’s centrally planned economy is in its deepest crisis since the end of Soviet subsidies in the 1990s.

“The Cuban economy is a shambles and there is rising public frustration with the arthritic dictatorship,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America program at the Wilson Center.

“Greater internet access would offer business opportunities and new tools for Cubans to work together to communicate their legitimate grievances,” he said.

Authorities said that the latest announcement excludes prohibited Cuban government officials such as military officers.

The amendment also comes shortly after the Biden administration removed Cuba from a list of countries that it says do not cooperate fully on counterterrorism.

Cuba was on the list alongside Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela.

U.S. announces changes to give private sector, small businesses in Cuba more financial support

It would also bolster access to U.S. internet-based services, part of limited but timely measures that officials said would help give the island’s budding small businesses a leg up.


A person waves a Cuban flag during a gathering in Havana, Cuba on May 1.Ariel Ley / AP file

May 28, 2024, 
By Reuters

WASHINGTON/HAVANA — The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday announced regulatory changes to allow more American financial support for Cuba’s nascent private sector and bolster access to U.S. internet-based services, limited but timely measures that officials said would help give the island’s budding small businesses a leg up.

The United States said it would permit small entrepreneurs on the Communist-run island to open and access U.S. bank accounts from Cuba for the first time in decades, following prohibitions put in place shortly after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

The measures would also allow Cuban entrepreneurs to use U.S.-based social media platforms, online payment sites, video conferencing and authentication services, previously unavailable to the sector and a major hurdle currently facing small businesses on the island.

The moves aim to fulfill the Biden administration’s long-delayed pledge to help Cuba’s budding entrepreneurs, giving its small but fast-growing private sector deference despite the Cold War-era U.S. embargo that has for decades complicated financial transactions by the Cuban government.

“Today we’re taking an important step to support the expansion of free enterprise and the expansion of the entrepreneurial business sector in Cuba,” a senior U.S. official told reporters on Tuesday.

The Cuban government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the policy changes.

In crafting the measures, U.S. officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, signaled they had sought to balance the goal of bolstering the private sector with a desire to avoid benefit to Cuban authorities.

President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 with hopes high in Cuba for a reversal of a harsh Trump-era approach, but Cuba’s crackdown on protests during the summer of that year prompted the administration to keep pressure on Havana.

The new measures would exclude Cuban officials, military officers and other government “insiders,” with the aim of minimizing resources available from the benefits to the Cuban government, the officials said.

Republican U.S. Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American lawmaker from South Florida, quickly criticized the Democratic administration’s announcement.

“The Biden Admin is now giving the ‘Cuban private sector’ access to the U.S. financial system,” she said in a post on X. “This would make a mockery of American law, considering no progress has been made toward freedom on the Island and repression has intensified.”

Cuba has long blamed the embargo — a tangled web of U.S. laws and regulations that complicates financial transactions by the Cuban government — for decades of economic crisis that have left it with little choice recently but to open its economy to small private business.

Such businesses — for decades taboo in Communist-run Cuba — are now booming on the island.

New Cuban laws put in place in 2021 have seen the establishment of upwards of 11,000 small businesses as of May, the government has said, ranging from corner grocers to plumbing, transportation and construction businesses.

Those businesses employ upwards of 15% of Cuban workers and accounted for around 14% of gross domestic product, according to economy ministry statistics from late 2023.

The regulations announced on Tuesday also authorize U.S. banks to once again process so-called “U-Turn” fund transfers, allowing them to move money for Cuban nationals — including payments and remittances — so long as senders and recipients are not subject to U.S. law.

Such measures are a step in the right direction, said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, but he noted a “glaring omission” in the policy: Cuban businesses are still handicapped by a requirement that they use banks in third countries to move their money.

“As long as financing, investment, and payments need to be routed through third countries, the Biden-Harris Administration will be constraining precisely the activity it professes to support,” Kavulich said in an email.

There was no sign that Tuesday’s announcement could foreshadow a more significant easing of U.S. sanctions and other restrictions on Cuba, beyond the modest steps that Biden has already taken since he became president.

Some analysts have attributed Biden’s cautious handling of Cuba issues to his concern that a softened approach to Havana could hurt him politically among strongly anti-communist Cuban American voters in Florida, a key swing state that he lost to Trump in the 2020 election.

The U.S. officials declined to say whether the administration was conducting a formal review of Cuba’s continuing presence on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.


 

Cuban May Day rally demonstrates resilience in the face of the illegal US blockade

“As the sun rose over the Malecon, the seafront was transformed into a bright sea of banners, flags, and the noise of hundreds of thousands of people – the atmosphere was a clear & exceptionally powerful reminder of the resilience of the Cuban people under the illegal blockade”

By Fraser McGuire

Earlier this month I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Cuba as part of the young Trade Unionists May Day Brigade, organised with the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. The brigade included attending the annual May Day celebrations in Havana and participating in a conference on international solidarity with delegates from more than 30 countries across 5 continents.

Youth Trade Union Delegation to Cuba for May Day 2024.

When our group arrived in Havana on May 1st it was 4am. There were still several hours before sunrise, yet already the streets were packed with thousands of people who had travelled from across the country to take part in the May Day demonstration. As the sun rose over the Malecon, the seafront was transformed into a bright sea of banners, flags, and the noise of hundreds of thousands of people – the atmosphere was a clear and exceptionally powerful reminder of the resilience of the Cuban people under the illegal blockade enforced by the United States.

Delegates from trade unions and political groups across the world had travelled to Havana to attend the May Day celebrations and extend gratitude and solidarity to the Cuban people. Many of the international visitors gathered near one end of the huge demonstration at the José Martí Anti-Imperialist Platform – which is directly opposite the US embassy. The demonstration was also attended by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez as well as Raúl Castro and other senior government and trade union figures.

The next day we attended the international solidarity conference in Havana, which was addressed by speakers including President Díaz-Canel and the Deputy Foreign Minister, as well as trade union delegates and representatives from the Progressive International and other Latin American nations. A central theme of the conference was a defiant rejection of US interference in Latin America – from intervention in Haiti to the occupation of Guantanamo Bay and the suffering caused by economic sanctions against the people of Cuba and Venezuela.

President Díaz-Canel touched on the hypocrisy of the US regarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In the ‘land of free’ which imposes economic restrictions on nations across the world it deems ‘unfree’ can we witness the full repressive force of the state mobilised to injure and arrest thousands of students calling for peace.

Global South nations have stood firm in condemnation of the genocide in Gaza – in Latin America, Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on May Day the ending of diplomatic ties with Israel, and Brazil has paused a deal with Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. Cuba has not had diplomatic relations with Israel since 1973.

Everywhere we visited in Cuba there were signs of struggle from the US blockade, and of the impacts of the US classification of Cuba as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’, a decision made under Trump which has been continued by the Biden administration. The blockade makes it increasingly hard to access food, fuel, and basic medical necessities, while the inclusion of Cuba on the state sponsors of terror list stops Cuba from having access to international banking systems.

The official wording of a US strategy document on the sanctions on Cuba includes the sentence “activities directed against the economy are intended to aggravate existing economic difficulties and thus to increase the level of disaffection… in the popular masses”. Seen up close, it becomes clear that the US blockade is a form of economic warfare against the Cuban people- a punishment for the removal of US backed dictator Fulgencio Batista more than 60 years ago.

As part of the May Day brigade, we had the opportunity to visit a Cuban hospital and speak to doctors and nurses working in Cuba’s inspirational healthcare system. The achievements of Cuba’s healthcare system under decades of embargo are nothing short of a miracle, weathering the covid pandemic with constricted access to crucial medical supplies, and training world-class doctors and scientists. One doctor told me that the successes were because, despite less access to resources, technologies, and international markets, the Cuban system puts patients and ordinary people right at the heart of its healthcare structures.

Despite the ever-growing international opposition and condemnation of the US blockade, solidarity with Cuba has never been more vital than now. The next US election may be one of the most significant in terms of the relationship between the US and Cuba, while the Biden administration has failed to relax the hardline attitude, a second Trump presidency could see sanctions tightened even further.

Solidarity isn’t just rhetoric and condemnation, but also must translate to material support and education. Across the UK we have seen trade union and grassroots support for groups like the Cuba Solidarity Campaign as well as meetings and film showings about the impacts of the US blockade on Cuban society. Cuba is a beacon of hope for many, yet it is also a lighthouse warning of the reality of US imperialism. Building and strengthening the movement to end the blockade has never been more necessary.


 

Joseph Stiglitz and ‘progressive capitalism’

“If an economy is made more equal, would it stop future slumps under capitalism or future Great Recessions? More equal economies in the past did not avoid these slumps. Progressive capitalism is an oxymoron in the 21st century.”

By Michael Roberts

The liberal leftist economist and Nobel (Riksbank) prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has another book out to proclaim the benefits of what he calls ‘progressive capitalism’. The Road to Freedom is a play on the title of Friedrich Hayek’s infamous book, The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, which claimed that government intervention into the ‘freedom of markets’ would cause shortages and misallocations of resources and eventually to the end of democracy and freedom in a dictatorship a la Stalinist Soviet Union. John Maynard Keynes expressed his agreement with Hayek after reading his book. He wrote to Hayek that: “morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement with it, but in a deeply moved agreement.”

But Stiglitz certainly does not. For him, Hayek’s claim that ‘free markets’ mean freedom for the individual really means ‘freedom for the wolves and death to the sheep’ (Isaiah Berlin). Free markets are designed to make profits not to meet the social needs of the many. “Externalities are everywhere,” Stiglitz writes. “The biggest and most famous negative externalities are air pollution and climate change, which derive from the freedom of businesses and individuals to take actions that create harmful emissions.” The argument for restricting this freedom, Stiglitz points out, is that doing so will “expand the freedom of people in later generations to exist on a livable planet without having to spend a huge amount of money to adapt to massive changes in climate and sea levels.”

For Stiglitz, the enemy of human freedom is not capitalism as such, but ‘neoliberalism’ which has bred soaring inequality, environmental degradation, the entrenchment of corporate monopolies, the 2008 financial crisis, and the rise of dangerous right-wing populists like Donald Trump. These baleful outcomes weren’t ordained by any laws of nature or laws of economics, he says. Rather, they were “a matter of choice, a result of the rules and regulations that had governed our economy. They had been shaped by decades of neoliberalism, and it was neoliberalism that was at fault.”

Stiglitz has argued before in previous books that it is not capitalism that is at fault but the decisions of governments and their corporate backers to ‘change the rules of the game’ that had existed in the post-war period of managed capitalism. The rules were changed to deregulate; to privatise; to crush labour unions etc.  But Stiglitz never explains why the ruling elite felt it necessary to change the rules of the game.  What happened to swing the post-war rules into the neoliberal ones?

Anyway, Stigliz reiterates his call for the creation of a “progressive capitalism”. Under the rules of this form of capitalism, the government would employ a full range of tax, spending, and regulatory policies to reduce inequality, rein in corporate power, and develop the sorts of capital for social needs not profits like ‘human capital’ (education), ‘social capital’ (cooperatives), and ‘natural capital’ (environmental resources).

Stiglitz does not want to get rid of capitalism but to regulate it, so it works for the many (sheep) over the few (wolves). “We need environmental regulations, traffic regulations, zoning regulation, financial regulations, we need regulations in all the constituents of our economy,” he writes. But Stiglitz is either naïve or applying sophistry here.  The history of regulation is a history of failure in controlling capitalism or making banks and corporations apply policies and investment in the interests of people over profit.

How can anyone not see that, after the global financial crash of 2008, or the subsequent financial scandals galore; or the failure to stop or regulate fossil fuel production and finance? Regulation has not stopped regular and recurring crises of production under capitalism, whether in the imagined ‘progressive era’ of 1945-75 or in the neoliberal era since.  Stiglitz has nothing to say on this.

Indeed, he almost recognizes that his policy proposals of taxing the rich, regulating finance and the environment and increasing public spending to achieve progressive capitalism are not likely to be adopted by governments and big business.  But when asked that, maybe, the only real alternative to achieve human freedom is a revolutionary transformation of the economy and society, he replied at a LSE presentation of his book, that revolutions are violent and risky and so should be avoided in favour of gradualist change.



His answer reminds me of Geoff Mann’s comment in his excellent book, In the Long Run We are all Dead“the Left wants democracy without populism, it wants transformational politics without the risks of transformation; it wants revolution without revolutionaries”. (p21).  Stiglitz really echoes Keynes who once said, “For the most part, I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable. Our problem is to work out a social organisation which shall be as efficient as possible without offending our notions of a satisfactory way of life.”

How would regulation and more equality deal with the impending disaster that is global warming as capitalism accumulates rapaciously without any regard for the planet’s resources and viability? Programmes of redistribution will do little for this. And if an economy is made more equal, would it stop future slumps under capitalism or future Great Recessions? More equal economies in the past did not avoid these slumps. Progressive capitalism is an oxymoron in the 21st century. And even Stiglitz doubts that it is possible to achieve.


  • Michael Roberts is an economist and author, you can follow Michael Roberts’ blog on Facebook and YouTube.
  • This article was originally published by Michael Roberts’ blog The Next Recession on May 13th, 2024.




 

Labour’s New Deal for Working People has “more holes than Swiss cheese” – Unite

“Working people expect Labour to be their voice. They need to know that Labour will not backdown to corporate profiteers determined to maintain the status quo of colossal profits at the expense of everyone else.”

By Labour Hub

Further revisions have been made to Labour’s New Deal for Working People document and union leaders are not happy. The Labour hierarchy released a 24-page document called Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay on Friday, but the further dilution of policies agreed only days ago has sparked a furious response.

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham commented: “The again revised New Deal for Working People has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. The number of caveats and get-outs means it is in danger of becoming a bad bosses’ charter.

“Working people expect Labour to be their voice. They need to know that Labour will not backdown to corporate profiteers determined to maintain the status quo of colossal profits at the expense of everyone else. The country desperately needs a Labour government, but the party must show it will stick to its guns on improving workers’ rights.

“Fire and rehire is abhorrent and must be banned – no ifs no buts. Unite will continue to call out any row backs on the New Deal for Working People, which was a promise made.”

Back in 2021, Keir Starmer told the Trades Union Congress conference that a Labour government would guarantee sick pay to all workers – and indeed increase it. That pledge has  now been abandoned. So has the ban on all zero hours contracts, the end of age bands and the promise of increased maternity and paternity pay.

Just ten days ago, the Labour leadership was reported to have reached agreement with union leaders on its commitment to workers’ rights. But even that was a dilution of the rights set out in a 2023 Party Conference resolution, unanimously passed. Momentum activist Angus Satow has detailed how Labour’s New Deal for Working People has been constantly eroded since it was first announced in 2021. 

For Party leaders to have alienated key supporters in the trade unions just days into the general election campaign is not only incompetent, it’s foolhardy. Labour’s New Deal for Workers enjoys “overwhelming support”, including among Tory voters, according to recent polling.


 UK

Keep Our NHS Public’s call for the General Election – ‘Restore the People’s NHS’

“Our call to end private involvement in NHS-delivered health care is not just a question of principle: privatisation means fragmentation and undermining of safe NHS provision”

By Keep Our NHS Public

After 14 years of Coalition and Conservative government, and nearly five years since the 2019 Johnson government was elected, there is a long-awaited opportunity for political change.

The electorate has the chance to vote in the General Election 4 July. Keep Our NHS Public will be emphasising how much damage this government has done to the NHS and to social care. Injustices and heightened health inequalities have impacted on the majority of working people, disabled people, black and brown communities and groups vulnerable to exploitation, including undocumented people:

  • 14 years of damaging underfunding of the NHS, public health, social care and education
  • 14 more years of inviting private sector interests to parasitise the NHS
  • Record waiting lists – now at 7.54 million (up from 2.5m in 2010)
  • Worst ever cancer waiting times
  • 14 years of overseeing the rundown of social care services
  • Thousands stuck in hospital because of lack of community care and social support
  • NHS GP services underfunded, undermined and corporate business allowed in
  • Access to an NHS dentist almost destroyed
  • Wages and working conditions for NHS staff driven down, endangering staff morale and safety
  • Workforce planning neglected and NHS doctors and nurses being replaced by physician associates and nursing assistants
  • Staff vacancies of 120,000 in NHS and 165,000 in social care
  • 268 people suffering avoidable deaths each week from delays in urgent care
  • Ambulance service in crisis
  • 39,000 premature deaths in 2022 alone on waiting lists for cardiac care.
  • Scandal after scandal in maternity care involving avoidable deaths of hundreds of babies and too many mothers.
  • One of the worst covid pandemic outcomes among rich nations – 239,688 with Covid on their death certificate: 260 people dying weekly this last year.
  • Renewed cynical attacks on the benefit entitlements of disabled people.

The NHS needs a sea-change in policy from a new political leadership in government. Keep Our NHS Public will be highlighting the record of those in government to asking voters to select those who will best support a public and well-funded NHS, and move to establish a publicly funded national care, support and independent living service. This requires a fundamental change in perspective – one that regards funding of public services as an investment in human well-being and an underpinning of a productive economy. Good public services maximise the ability of people to participate in society and a productive economy – they are not simply a cost to be grudgingly accepted.

The new government, which it is assumed will be Labour-led, must change key policies on the NHS.

Our call to end private involvement in NHS-delivered health care is not just a question of principle: privatisation means fragmentation and undermining of safe NHS provision – starkly seen in the undermining of NHS eyecare (ophthalmology).

The NHS needs stability and urgent funding, not reform and further reorganisation. NHS staff and services need security to do their job and to treat patients safely and well. Primary and community care, hospitals and public health desperately need urgent support.

Our vision is to restore the people’s NHS:

  1. a publicly provided NHS and an end private involvement
  2. an NHS funded to succeed – not defunded to fail
  3. respect, recognition & decent pay & conditions for all health workers
  4. re-invest in public health & tackle health inequalities
  5. a rebuilt, restored and expanded NHS

The NHS when funded to succeed has been and can be again one of the best health systems in the world. We are calling on political parties to back this vision – we need commitment to change. Please join us to make our vision for the NHS a significant part of the 2024 General Election campaign.