Tuesday, April 21, 2020

EVERYONE'S A SOCIALIST IN A CRISIS
By Tom Bramble
Republished from Red Flag.

March 22, 2020

One of the most prevalent ideological mantras of Western capitalism is that the market should rule. But as the latest health and economic crises demonstrate, capitalists soon forget their worship of the market when times get tough. They scream for government money, and plenty of it. It turns out that “the market” is fine when it comes to whipping workers to accept lower wages, but when it comes to lower profits, the market can go hang.

Every student with the misfortune to have studied economics at school or university will know that “the market” is the god before which we must all kneel. Markets bring consumers and producers together to ensure an equilibrium of supply and demand, the textbooks tell us. We may all be individuals each pursuing our own private interests, but this selfish endeavour miraculously results in an optimum outcome for all.

You don’t even have to step inside a classroom to have received this lesson. It’s rammed home in normal times in every newspaper, in every news bulletin on the TV, in every politician’s speech. Just listen to them. Governments can’t expand spending on Newstart because “the markets” won’t allow it. Governments shouldn’t ramp up public housing because that will throw property markets into a spin. Competition should be opened between universities because a market in education will sift out the bad providers from the good.

The champions of the market, if challenged to explain how it is that markets consistently result in supplies of goods lurching from shortages to gluts, point to the economic dysfunction of the old Soviet Union as proof that if “planning” replaces the market, a much bigger disaster ensues.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to see what rubbish this is. The last thing any capitalist wants is “free competition”, because that might squeeze their profits. Just look at how the supermarkets have destroyed small shops or how any new industry that emerges is soon dominated by three or four companies globally.

But there’s another angle to this. Capitalists preach “the market” for the working class – stand on your own two feet, don’t rely on the government – but themselves sponge off the public big time. Just look at the billions in subsidies and tax concessions the fossil fuel companies, huge enterprises for the most part, extract from state and federal governments in Australia. The vehicle manufacturers raked in hundreds of millions a year from the Australian government for decades until deciding it wasn’t enough and went overseas. This is why big companies and industry groups hire armies of former politicians to lobby on their behalf in the offices of premiers and prime ministers – there’s money in government coffers and they want it.

And while the capitalists talk about “the market” setting wages for workers, in reality, they don’t really allow the market to do the job. They use the whole apparatus of state repression, the industrial tribunals, the police, the courts to suppress workers’ rights to organise to pursue their demands.

But when a crisis hits all the bullshit about the market is thrown to the winds. And that is just what we are seeing now. Faced with the collapse of the capitalist economy, for the second time in a dozen years, with massive bankruptcies on the table and the stock market plunging by more than 30 percent and more to come, fervent advocates of the free market are now embracing government intervention to save their skins. As the Financial Times put it on 18 March, “World leaders have been forced to tear up the traditional economic playbook in response to the historic jolt to the global economy”.

In the United States, the heart of free market capitalism, capitalists and politicians alike are demanding huge government handouts. As the New York Times explained on 17 March: “Business groups, local and state leaders and a growing chorus of lawmakers and economists begged the federal government to spend trillions of dollars to pay workers to stay home and funnel money to companies struggling with an abrupt end to consumer activity”.

Politicians and their advisers who just a week ago were scorning the idea of “helicopter money”, government payments to businesses and consumers to stimulate the economy, are now trying to outbid each other to push the figure up. The Trump administration, proclaiming a state of war in the fight against coronavirus and the economic crisis, will shortly launch a huge fiscal stimulus program pumping more than US$1 trillion into the economy in two stages, including potentially $1,000 handouts to spur spending. And there will be more to come.

In other times, Trump might have denounced his proposals as “socialism”. Not today. He now boasts that his new package will be “big and bold”. His chief adviser, Larry Kudlow, says that Trump has agreed to do “whatever it takes” to address the crisis. Senator John Cornyn, second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, for whom government intervention is normally anathema, explained: “Our economy, our whole economy is in jeopardy”. Some in the Democratic Party, which in recent years has become the favoured party of Wall Street, are proposing a monthly payment to every American for the duration of the crisis. Alongside this direct injection of funds into the economy, the US Federal Reserve Bank is pumping trillions of dollars into the banks.

As in the US, so too in the rest of the world. The European Commission, which has long insisted that member states keep their budget deficits to 3 percent of GDP, has lifted limits on government borrowing. In 2015, it refused to allow the Greek government to hike spending when faced with unemployment of 20 percent, but is now telling governments it’s open slather. The future of European capitalism is at stake, so nothing is off the table. The Swedish government is allowing businesses to defer tax payments for up to a year at a cost equivalent to 6 percent of GDP. Britain has unveiled a £330 billion package of emergency loan guarantees to business and £20 billion in fiscal support.

Tory chancellor (treasurer) Rishi Sunak, said: “This is not a time for ideology or orthodoxy, this is a time to be bold ... I’ll do whatever it takes”. Pedro Sanchez, Spanish prime minister, triggered what he called “the biggest mobilisation of resources in Spain’s’ democratic history”, including €100 billion in state loan guarantees. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire, who has put up €300 billion in state loans to business, told the press: “I will not hesitate [to use] all the means available to me”.

The European Central Bank, which estimates that the crisis might result in the euro area economy shrinking by more than 4 percent this year, is set to inject more than €1 trillion into the European banks in the next nine months. “Extraordinary times require extraordinary action”, says ECB president Christine Lagarde.

In Australia, the Coalition government which has made “balancing the budget” a central feature of its platform, is now spending $18 billion, three-quarters of which will go to business. It is now lining up a new wave of spending commitments for business, both of a general nature, valued at more billions, and also to specific sectors like tourism, sports, arts and entertainment and the airlines which will total more than $1 billion.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is urging the federal government to provide wage subsidies to workers, equivalent in value to Newstart to all businesses experiencing a sharp downturn. It is also asking the government to provide concessional loans of up to half a million dollars, with 80 percent of the debt guaranteed by government, as well as wage subsidies to cover sick leave entitlements. Nothing but corporate welfare of a kind that they have long decried when applied to workers themselves.

In the short term, working class households will get some benefits from this cash splash. In Australia welfare beneficiaries will be getting $750 in their bank accounts. In the United States it is likely that Americans will receiving close to $1,000. But this is just short term relief to get the economy moving. The long term benefits will go to the capitalist class in the form of tax cuts and other financial concessions.

The current crisis demonstrates not only that all the ideological nonsense about the virtues of the free market is quickly thrown overboard when capitalist interests are threatened, but also that the idea that governments are essentially powerless in the face of the markets is rubbish.

Governments are not helpless victims who cannot do anything in the face of “economic reality”. In the normal course of events, when we demand things like better welfare, health care or education, governments tell us that it isn’t possible.

Workers every day face their own personal crises – lack of money to pay the rent or the possibility of defaulting on their mortgage because the boss didn’t call them in for work this week, overdue utility bills that must be paid or risk being cut off, expenses for children’s education that fall due, the fear of redundancy. These are crises that are experienced personally but are really a collective crisis of everyday life for working class people. But when we ask for governments to respond, we are told that addressing these things collectively is not possible, and that this is just the way things are.

But when the capitalist system goes into crisis, governments act promptly. It turns out that political decisions about the economy are possible and it is wholly possible for governments to tell the markets to go jump. The president of the eurozone financial ministers committee summed up the prevailing attitude today: “Rest assured that we will defend the euro with everything we have got”. European finance ministers are looking at deploying a firefighting fund set up during the last eurozone crisis, with €410 billion of capacity. In the case of Spain, the Financial Times reports that an inner circle of government has assumed “command economy powers”. The Spanish government will take responsibility for guaranteeing medical, food and energy supplies.

Most of the time we’re told that “the economy” can’t afford a decent standard of living for workers – higher minimum wages, liveable Newstart allowances, a massively expanded public housing program to get people out of the private rental market, free university education. Budgets have to balance. Businesses have to be competitive. Taxes have to be kept low.

And now, all of a sudden, we’re finding that the economy can, apparently, afford things that we have long demanded. Governments around the world are now laying out money on things that just weeks ago they would have attacked as unaffordable.

The Morrison government has been attacked even by the Business Council for not lifting the Newstart allowance. And now it’s spending $4.7 billion on a one-off $750 payment to millions on welfare. State governments too are ramping up health spending. In Western Australia, the government is freezing utility bills and public transport charges, doubling energy assistance payments and making sick and carers’ leave more available for public sector workers who either have the virus themselves or who need to care for others.

The Hong Kong government has handed out $1,000 payments to citizens. The Italian government, faced with one of the worst outbreaks of COVID-19, is suspending mortgage payments. In New Zealand, the government has raised all welfare benefits, permanently, by NZ$25 a week and doubled winter energy payments to beneficiaries and age pensioners. In France also, benefits are being hiked and made more widely available.

It’s not that governments have suddenly discovered a big pot of gold in the basement of the central banks. They say that they are taking these measures to both protect public health and to save the economy. But it’s obvious which takes priority. The new measures constitute the largest bailout bonanza in world history, carried out through state-administered transfers of public wealth and current and future debt to billionaires and big business: socialisation of losses, privatisation of profits. The outcome will be to further transfer, consolidate and concentrate wealth, just as has occurred since the GFC. While there is discussion about small handouts, nothing serious is being proposed to halt the mass layoffs now gathering steam.

In pretty much every spending package, subsidies to business, government loans and tax concessions account for two-thirds or more of the funds outlaid. Things that directly benefit workers – the big majority of the population – account for only one-third of the money. Just think of Australia: $13 billion to business, $4.7 billion to those on welfare.

When you think of the humiliating restrictions imposed on Centrelink clients, business is being showered with money with no strings attached. In Australia, the federal government is offering subsidies to bosses to keep apprentices and trainees. But all that does is encourage bosses to sack the trainee at the end of the six months and take on another one, with another government subsidy. No real jobs created, just a steady flow of money flowing into the bosses’ pockets.

But it’s not just a question of the money being disbursed. Other sacred cows are being slaughtered. The sanctity of private property, for example. The Spanish government has announced that it is requisitioning private hospitals and healthcare providers for the duration and developing plans to house and feed the homeless.

President Trump announced a series of extraordinary measures on 18 March, seizing on the powers vested in him by the Defence Production Act to steer production by private companies to overcome the shortage of masks, ventilators and other health supplies. Playing catchup on testing for COVID-19, Trump is deploying two Navy hospital ships to New York City and the West Coast. Astonishingly for the United States, whose president made his fortune in real estate, the Housing and Urban Development department will suspend foreclosures and evictions until at least the end of April. The federal government is also requiring employers to provide sick leave to workers infected with the virus. In California, the governor has announced plans to buy hotels to house some of the state’s 150,000 homeless people.

In Austria, healthcare workers with children are provided access to free childcare to allow them to continue working. In South Korea, the government is offering emergency child care to parents still at work, with class sizes limited to ten and supervised by trained teachers. In Australia, according to the Guardian, discussions are underway to underwrite home mortgages and even employment guarantees.

It turns out that these things, too, can be done.

So, in an economic emergency, few of the usual rules apply. Governments can marshal the resources and can threaten the narrow interests of private businesses. Hardcore libertarians despise these measures as rampant socialism. From their perspective, they’re right: the very existence of such programs is condemnation of the free market capitalist model that they promote. But they are best seen only as another approach to the management of the capitalist economy.

The fact that governments across the OECD are now prepared to spend trillions of dollar to save the financial system from collapse only confirms that the world economy cannot be left safely in the hands of “the market”. And, the situation clearly confirms that when the capitalist class and governments deem it necessary to save their system, lots of measures they once denounced as “unaffordable”, not permitted by the condition of “the economy”, are actually affordable and permitted. Governments can act when required. The ideological justifications of yesterday are revealed as threadbare. But nor are government interventions of this nature geared towards the interests of the working class, only the interests of the bosses.



COVID-19 Proves Workers Are Essential and Capitalists Are A Drain


March 27, 2020
By Jasmine Duff
Republished from Red Flag.

The Marxist argument that it’s the labour of workers, and not the supposed intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit of bosses, that keeps society running, has long been ridiculed by defenders of capitalism. In the conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the truth of Marx’s claim has been brought into sharp relief.


Those whose work has been deemed essential under the current restrictions aren’t the CEOs, bankers, mining executives – or the politicians who serve them. It will come as no surprise, perhaps, to anyone but themselves, that these so-called wealth creators can spend months isolated in their mansions or country estates without this having any impact on the basic functioning of society.


The rest of us would be better off without them. The people we depend on in this crisis are those whose labour we depend on in everyday life: nurses, teachers, those who grow our food and those who transport it to the supermarket shelves, and the people who, despite the health risks, continue to serve us in the supermarkets and chemists.


We’re told that corporate bosses like Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and mining magnate Gina Rinehart deserve their immense wealth because they play a special role in the economy. Typical of this perspective is the argument made by Forbes columnist and “leadership strategy” expert Rainer Zitelmann in a 2019 article. “For entrepreneurs, who usually earn far more than top-tier managers, high earnings are usually a reward for particularly good ideas”, he wrote. “The richest people in the world are those who have the best ideas.”


The ideologues making these arguments want us to believe that workers are unimportant and replaceable – nothing more than a “human resource” to be exploited at the whims of the capitalists. If you’re a worker, they think, it’s because you’re not smart, creative or driven enough to have climbed through the ranks. That’s why you deserve low wages, poor job security, a shitty education in chronically underfunded schools and a lack of decent health care.


The COVID-19 crisis has torn this argument to shreds. The global economy is grinding to a halt because many workers have to stay home. The CEOs self-isolating in their mansions can do nothing to save the situation. All their supposed creativity and intelligence is useless without the labour force that their wealth was built on.


The actions of our political leaders confirm this. The only creative and intelligent thing they’ve thought of to do to stave off the prospect of a deep recession is to keep as many workers as possible at their posts – recklessly sacrificing our health to protect the profits of their corporate masters. Prime minister Scott Morrison gave the game away when he said in a press conference on 24 March that while all “non-essential” workers would be sent home “everyone who has a job in this economy is an essential worker”.


As Morrison put it, “It can be essential in a service whether it’s a nurse or a doctor or a schoolteacher, or a public servant who is working tonight to ensure that we can get even greater capacity in our Centrelink offices, working until 8:00pm under the new arrangement in the call centres, these are all essential jobs. People stacking shelves – that is essential.”



When the basic functioning of society is on the line, it’s not the Alan Joyces or Gina Rineharts who are deemed essential. It’s the shelf stackers. Without workers, the capitalists are nothing.


The flipside of this equation is expressed in Marx’s description of the working class as the gravediggers of capitalism. Workers are the engine that keeps society running. When our labour stops, society comes to a halt.


Already, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen numerous examples that illustrate this potential. Thousands of Italian workers in the auto and metal industries have walked out in wildcat strikes to enforce social distancing, refusing to risk their health and the health of their families for Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte. Conte had made clear his desire to keep profits flowing despite the country having a 10 percent mortality rate from COVID-19 infections – tweeting on 14 March that “Italy doesn’t stop”. Workers, however, had other ideas.


Workers in Argentina who took over a factory in 2017 that previously sewed police uniforms are now using it to produce surgical masks. Another group of Argentinian workers who in 2011 took over one of the largest printing presses in Latin America are now using it to print 3D protective masks and produce hand sanitiser.

There has even been some action by workers here in Australia. Early in the morning on 27 March workers at a Coles warehouse in Melbourne’s western suburbs walked out in protest management’s refusal to provide adequate protective equipment. The industrial power of these workers is immense. A three-day strike at the same warehouse in 2016 resulted in supermarket shelves across Victoria and Tasmania lying empty for weeks.



Workers have the power to prevent capitalists exploiting our skills as pickers in warehouses, shelf stackers in supermarkets or as truck drivers. In a world without bosses, we could collectively and democratically decide how our skills should be used to advance the interests of everyone. We could distribute food, for example, according to human need. This would end the barbaric reality that exists under capitalism, where millions starve to death every year despite enough food being produced to feed the world 1.5 times over.


We could use our skills as construction workers to rapidly build hospitals, rather than, as this the case today, endless luxury apartments and shopping malls for the rich – so that in any future health crisis no one would be forced to go without a bed.


Working class solidarity, democracy and collectivity: these are building blocks of socialism. Socialism is a society in which workers can democratically decide, using all our skills and creativity, what kind of world we want to live in, rather than allowing a wealthy minority of capitalists to run society in the interests of profit. The bosses need us. We don’t need them.


Right now, capitalism is in crisis. Workers have more power than ever, but we’re being forced into more barbaric conditions every day. To quote German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, writing in the context of the of the epochal slaughter of World War One, we now stand at a crossroads, “Either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”


Every day, new sacrifices are made at the altar of corporate profits – whether it’s the destruction of the environment, or the destruction of human health. The task of organising for a socialist future has never been more urgent.

March 24, 2020
The Wall Street Journal's Pitch for Mass Murder is Catching on in Capitalist Circles

By J.E. Karla


Not even two weeks into an extraordinary response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, the upper echelons of capital are wondering whether saving millions of lives is really worth the damage being done to their investment portfolios. According to reports, the debate among the ruling class is over whether or not to walk back some of the measures taken to slow the spread of the virus -- efforts already considered tardy and inadequate by public health experts -- in order to minimize business losses.


Like many elite notions, this idea was first launched in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. An unsigned editorial there is the most visible the vanguard of the bourgeoisie ever really make their deliberations, and this one last week (behind a paywall, of course) was especially candid.


After opening paragraphs congratulating the response to date, hoping that “with any luck” the nation’s health care system won’t collapse, they lay out their basic thesis:


“Yet the costs of this national shutdown are growing by the hour, and we don’t mean federal spending. We mean a tsunami of economic destruction that will cause tens of millions to lose their jobs as commerce and production simply cease. Many large companies can withstand a few weeks without revenue but that isn’t true of millions of small and mid-sized firms.”


After some attempts at pulling heart strings over the entrepreneurs that will eat the most shit in the months to come -- using the petit bourgeoisie as human shields for big business, as is custom -- and some other telling admissions we’ll return to, they end with this:


“Dr. (Anthony) Fauci (Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) has explained this severe lockdown policy as lasting 14 days in its initial term. The national guidance would then be reconsidered depending on the spread of the disease. That should be the moment, if not sooner, to offer new guidance on what might be called phase two of the coronavirus pandemic campaign.”


They do not have the guts to explicitly state that this “phase two” would mean allowing most normal activity -- the contact the virus needs to continue its spread -- to return, but their weasel word description of “substantial social distancing… in some form” (emphasis mine) says it all. “This should not become a debate over how many lives to sacrifice against how many lost jobs we can tolerate… But no society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its overall economic health.”


They don’t want to debate how many lives to sacrifice in the name of saving “jobs,” -- a euphemism for the fortunes of employers, the bourgeoisie -- but that’s a great way to describe dialing back the only measures so far demonstrated to work against this plague in the name of economic “health.”


How many lives are we talking about? As I write, 565 people have died of the disease in the United States, with fatalities doubling every 2-3 days. The experience in Europe and China indicates that response measures take roughly a week to slow the virus down. That means that we should see 2-3 more doublings before last week’s actions finally take effect, 2260 to 4520 dead people this week. The Journal and their allies are suggesting that we should let those effects last a week, and then ratchet up the spread of the virus again.


Even assuming a very optimistic scenario where the doubling drops by half -- i.e. to once every 4-6 days -- and then lands somewhere in the middle -- say 3-5 days -- that would mean somewhere between 72,000 and nearly 600,000 dead people just a month from now.


But it’s worse than that, because there are about 5 times as many critical cases as there are fatalities. The absolute best case scenario puts us at more than 360,000 critical cases in a country with less than 100,000 intensive care beds. The worst case puts us at 3,000,000.


You can then add thousands of deaths from non-coronavirus causes that could not get adequate treatment -- car accidents, allergic reactions, heart attacks, etc. And that month cut off is arbitrary; the deaths would continue after that. In the New York Times Nicholas Kristof quoted a British epidemiologist as estimating a best case of 1.1 million. That best case involves much more distancing than what the Journal and company are proposing. They are calling for hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, to be sacrificed for the sake of “economic health.”


This blood thirsty logic is precisely the sort of thing capitalists project onto communists. This, however, brings us to the admission I alluded to above, buried in the middle of the editorial:


“Some in the media who don’t understand American business say that China managed a comparable shock to its economy and is now beginning to emerge on the other side. Why can’t the U.S. do it too? This ignores that the Chinese state owns an enormous stake in that economy and chose to absorb the losses. In the U.S. those losses will be borne by private owners and workers who rely on a functioning private economy. They have no state balance sheet to fall back on.”


We don’t need to debate the class character of the Chinese state -- even the Communist Party of China will admit that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” accommodates global capital. Regardless, the Wall Street Journal openly admits that the options at hand are a state-controlled economy capable of stemming the plague’s advance or letting potentially millions of people die for the sake of sustaining a privately-owned one.


The US government could easily freeze all debts, rents, and other contractual payments, guarantee a short-term income for all families, and take all necessary measures to maintain provision of food, medicine, utilities, and vital services until the virus has run out of steam. But even a momentary economy run on the basis of human need and not the accumulation of profit poses the threat of a good example. It’s bad enough that China does it incompletely, hence official bellicosity against them even in this hour of mutual need.


There is no amount of human lives the ruling class wouldn’t trade to prevent that risk, especially when they know they are the least likely to die.


The only silver lining is that one way or the other most of us will come out on the other end of this nightmare, and when we do the argument we must make is clear: capitalism will continue to kill us by the millions and billions until it is stopped. You don’t even have to take our word for it -- you can read it in the paper.



March 22, 2020
Capitalism, COVID-19, and Crisis: A Class Analysis


By Ikemba X

THE CAPITALIST/IMPERIALIST CLASS

In the past week, the global economy experienced its worst week since 2008 (following a series of “Worst Weeks”, it keeps getting worse), and the economic crisis is sure to deteriorate as time marches on. Three years of growth in the market have evaporated, unemployment has seen a spike, multiple industrial sectors have slowed to a crawl or stopped moving altogether, and the trillion-dollar injection into the market by the Federal Reserve did almost nothing to stop the free fall (other than transfer toxic assets to the public). If the recession hasn’t already hit us, we’re in for a catastrophe when the bills are due. The following is a brief outline on how we got here, and how much worse it's going to be this time around.


The modern capitalist economy simply cannot function without large amounts of fiat currency in the form of government-backed loans. As the bourgeoisie continues its song and dance of improving the means of production, increasing production of commodities, and better perfecting the division of labor, the price of operating such vast and complex industrial armies and machines is simply too much. In order to compensate for this massive cost, the bourgeoisie in the global core have forged an alliance between industrial and finance capital, exporting ever increasing amounts of production overseas, so that cheaper labor can be exploited. At home, the use of credit, loans, and ownership of companies into shares have allowed capitalists to continue their operations, though the market has grown more unstable than ever before. The financial crisis in 2008 drove capitalism to the brink of collapse, and it was caused specifically by inherent contradictions in the system. The rate of profit has continued to fall, production has become more expensive and commodities are produced in greater volumes for lower prices. Any panic in the market has a ripple effect, and the harsh truth is that a large majority of the world’s “wealth” is artificial, mere symbols in a computer program that rely solely on blind faith. If the bourgeoisie becomes scared enough to taking out its money and halting production, the whole rotten structure collapses. If not for the action taken by the Feds over the past few decades, including multiple bouts of quantitative easing under Obama, the global market may very well have imploded long ago. It took almost a decade for the economy to mostly recover from the 2008 crisis, for the working class a recovery never really came, and some of its effects are still felt in more isolated sectors of the economy today.


Leading up to the COVID-19 scare, there was an already existing crisis in imperialism and capitalist production. Notably, the Trade War between China and the United States has had negative effects on the rival imperialist powers, who were willing to threaten economic crises while jockeying for hegemony in the world market. The global energy sector was also entering a crisis, with Russia and the OPEC countries at an impasse on restricting oil production, which had the effect of flooding the market with oil. The overproduction of commodities in this critical sector of the economy was causing problems for the bourgeoisie in the United States, who have responded by seizing oil fields in Syria and beating the war drums, threatening Iran with invasion. Meanwhile, European nations are experiencing a contraction of unified dominance as Brexit causes a fracture in European imperialism, and a potential crisis in the UK with the looming threat of a No-Deal Brexit. This would have significant ripple effects on the global market, as the UK is one of the largest economies in the world.


It is important to remember that this crisis was caused purely through the anarchy of capitalist production. Once the capitalists were bailed out following 2008, imperialist plunder continued and the bourgeoisie recovered, leaving the proletariat to fend for themselves and foot the bill. This time around, production really has stopped, and the effects on the capitalist economy will be disastrous. The Chinese economy today makes up 16% of global Gross World Product, is the second largest economy in the world, and has the largest pool of cheap labor, as well as being a rising imperialist power, offering predatory loans to African countries. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, factories responsible for 70% of China’s exports have simply ceased to operate or have cut production massively, and travel to and from the country has been shut down completely. Several other countries have shut down massive sectors of their economy such as the airlines, and Italy has shut down its country altogether. Therefore, this latest crisis isn't caused by capitalists being unable to pay for their ventures, but rather there simply is no movement of capital, and no production of commodities. With this monumental economic halt/slowdown, we are staring in the face of a crisis the likes of which we have not seen in almost a century. The COVID-19 is sending the capitalist system into a freefall, and as always, the bourgeoisie and their governments will do everything in their power to make sure the workers absorb the brunt of this fall.



THE PROLETARIAN SITUATION


The situation in the United States is dire for the proletariat. For starters, there is a debt crisis, $14 trillion consisting mostly of mortgages, car loans, student loans, and credit cards. Deepening wealth inequality has accelerated the fall of real wages, and today (even before the arrival of COVID-19) most proletarians are in dire straits. Half of Americans make $30 thousand a year or less, and 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford a $400 crisis. Real unemployment was sitting at about 5% and has now spiked to almost 20%, and underemployment or those who have given up on finding jobs represent a forgotten sector that the US government is fine keeping in the dark. With the COVID-19 scare, layoffs are rising at an unprecedented rate, and those who aren't being fired are having their hours cut. In a country where health insurance is tied to employment, a pandemic which causes a spike in unemployment is probably the worst-case scenario for a proletarian.


The COVID-19 scare has also affected the mentality of the working class, who have begun panic buying commodities. This almost immediately resulted in a shortage of goods, which has ripped away the veil which hid the scarcity that does exist in capitalism, just like any other system. Lean manufacturing, or Just-in-Time manufacturing, provided us all with the hallucination that there was always an abundance of products for us to buy. However, after being put under pressure, the lie has been exposed for what it really is. In a nutshell, the transportation system has been developed enough that capitalists can rely on the nomadic lifestyle of proletarians in that industry. There is no large-scale storage of goods, but rather far-away sites that remain available whenever products are needed. Such a system is incredibly volatile, and any disruption in the distribution chain can cause an immediate and drastic shortage. We saw a glimpse of this with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, when the natural disaster destroyed the colony of Puerto Rico. The result was that there was a global shortage of IV bags, since Puerto Rico was the hub of production for these goods. Now, imagine a crisis like this, but in multiple industries on every level of the production process, and not just based on production itself being shut down, but also on the transportation industry being paralyzed (like what we’ve seen with the decline in airline traffic and mass layoffs of truckers). China produces most of the world’s steel and, as stated before, their industrial production has been slashed in 70% of factories. And that is just one country. Globally, we are already seeing crippling shortages of medical supplies, most notably in Italy, the United States, and Iran, which has been the hardest hit of the three due to imperialist sanctions.


There has also been a growing trend of social distancing and self-isolation as a result of the pandemic. The cultural effects of this have the potential to negatively impact us all. Sowing fear and distrust of each other, the COVID-19 scare threatens to further divide us, further alienate us, and further fuel xenophobic and racist tendencies among white proletarians, as indicated by the recent uptick in racially-motivated attacks against proletarians of East Asian descent. This directly plays into some of the most reactionary and chauvinistic ideas in the US, expressed clearly by the Bourgeois slogan “China Lied, People Died” and scapegoating, such as labeling COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus.”


In December of last year, the service sector accounted for 97% of new hires according to the Labor department. Additionally, the US economy relies heavily on consumer spending, and while the rush on grocery stores and online shopping may offset this in the short term, less and less people will be able to sustain this spending as incomes dry up in the coming months. Couple this development with the above-mentioned fact that most workers live paycheck to paycheck, and we see a crisis in consumption of commodities, one of the basic causes of capitalist crisis.


In short, the situation looks bad for the proletariat. Congress can’t even pass basic measures, and the clock is ticking. There have been discussions in Congress about a potential UBI bill, but if this crisis continues for several months, one-time checks will not be enough to stop the bleeding. Successive monthly checks may stop the bleeding in the interim, but the ripples effects of mass unemployment are sure to carry well into 2021, if not multiple years beyond. In other words, we’re going to see a crisis the likes of which the world has never seen before.

WHAT CAN WE DO?


There have been some policies proposed by Social-Democratic elements of the Democratic Party in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The measures proposed are attempts to treat the symptoms, and not cure the problem. Things like Medicare for All and nationalization of the healthcare system, as well as nationalizing any industries which seek government bailouts, do not get rid of the underlying economic problems which lead to the crisis we are faced with today. Medicare for All in theory protects us all from the virus, but we have seen clearly that the capitalist system of production and distribution has utterly failed the Italians, who have been hit by a chronic lack of medical supplies for their patients. In other words, what good will universal healthcare be if the medical industry itself cannot handle the demand. Currently, the for-profit system in the US offers less than 1 million hospital beds, in a nation of 330 million people. Additionally, our aim should not be to simply treat the sick. We must have a centrally-planned economy, with systems in place that prepare large storages of medical supplies we need for when viruses like this are unleashed on the world. We need an economic system that does not collapse after one month of a fraction of its production being cut.


Activists should be cautious moving forward in their political work. The most important thing we can implement right now is Serve-the-People survival programs, specifically in terms of food and medical supplies. In doing our work, make sure to have hand sanitizer, gloves, and masks on hand for use and distribution. We should also not allow social distancing and hygiene practices to be spurred on by panic, and use them with clear heads, knowing full well that we are protecting the lives of others through these actions, not just ourselves.


The large-scale demonstrations are coming. No society can have mass unemployment and shortages of basic materials without intensifying the class struggle as a result. We must be prepared to go among the masses where they organize, and organize our own demonstrations, building strong links with the people. Go to the masses, learn from them, and educate them. Most of all, stay safe. Use the time given to us in this crisis to study theory from revolutionary teachers such as Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Do not hesitate, and do not be afraid of study. Study the conditions of the people. I strongly recommend we all crack open Lenin’s “What Is To Be Done” again, in preparation for the coming months.

THE SPECTACLE 2.0 READING DEBORD IN THE CONTEXT OF DIGITAL CAPITALISM




Amazon warehouse workers plan nationwide protest this week to demand coronavirus protections

Annie Palmer CNBC APRIL 21, 2020

Amazon warehouse workers are planning a "mass call out" this week to call attention to what they call a lack of protections for employees who continue to come to work amid the coronavirus outbreak.
© Provided by CNBC Amazon workers at Amazon's Staten Island warehouse strike in demand that the facility be shut down and cleaned after one staffer tested positive for the coronavirus on March 30, 2020 in New York.

More than 300 Amazon workers across at least 50 facilities have signed up to take part in the protest, according to United for Respect, a worker rights group. To participate in the protest, workers will call out of work "en masse across the country" starting tomorrow and throughout the week. The protest is taking place across several days because workers are scheduled to report to their shifts on different days and at various times.


The workers are calling for Amazon to "immediately close down" any facilities that report positive cases and to provide testing and two weeks of pay for workers during that time. They're also calling for Amazon to provide paid sick leave, guarantee healthcare for all Amazon associates, eliminate rate-based quotas "that make hand-washing and sanitizing impossible" and commit not to retaliate against associates who speak out, among other demands.


The protest marks the first nationwide effort by warehouse workers to demand coronavirus safety protections, after workers staged walkouts at Amazon facilities in Staten Island, New York; Detroit and Illinois in recent weeks. Their calls have also sparked action from some of Amazon's corporate employees, who are hosting a "virtual sick out" on April 24 to demand that the company reinstate fired workers and to protest its treatment of warehouse workers.



The company's labor practices drew further criticism after Amazon fired a Staten Island warehouse worker who organized a strike to demand greater protections for employees amid the coronavirus outbreak. Chris Smalls, a management assistant at the facility, said he was fired for organizing the strike, but Amazon said it fired Smalls because he violated social distancing rules while he was supposed to be under quarantine after being exposed to a coworker who tested positive for the coronavirus.




Amazon declined to comment on the walkout plans for this week. But in the past, the company has downplayed the walkouts, saying only a small percentage of workers at the facilities participated in the protests and there was no disruption to operations.

A spokesperson from Amazon previously highlighted the number of steps the company has taken to protect warehouse workers during the pandemic. Amazon increased the frequency and intensity of cleaning at all of its sites and requires that employees sanitize and clean their work stations at the start and end of shifts. It has also started taking employees' temperatures when they report to work and has supplied them with face masks.

Despite this, warehouse workers say Amazon isn't doing enough to protect them from catching the virus while they're on the job. Monica Moody, a packer at an Amazon facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, said it's one of the reasons why she plans to participate in the "mass call out" tomorrow.

"I just want better treatment," said Moody, who is also a member of United for Respect. "I would feel a whole lot safer if they would just close down facilities for two weeks and clean them. I would go back to work, no problem."
JEHOVAH WITNESSES APOCALYPSE NOW
'People Would Be So Receptive Right Now, and We Can't Knock on Doors.'

ANOTHER 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN CREATED END TIMES RELIGION (CULT)THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY; FATHER, SON, HOLY GHOST. IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE END TIMES HALLELUJAH 

Dionne Searcey, The New York Times•April 20, 2020
Brenda Francis, a Jehovah's Witness, at her home in 
Calhoun, Ga., April 13, 2020. (Audra Melton/The New York Times)

Brenda Francis settled into the Kingdom Hall in Calhoun, Georgia, in mid-March, surrounded by dozens of familiar faces. Signs cautioning against shaking hands and hugging were posted around the room. It felt weird to her but was certainly understandable with the threat of an outbreak looming. She herself already had stocked up on some masks and gloves.

When it came time for members to comment on the Bible readings, Francis noticed the microphones typically passed around the room were now attached to the end of long poles.

That was the moment Francis, a 69-year-old widow living in a small, semirural community in the South, realized just how dramatically the coronavirus pandemic was about to reshape her spiritual life, more than anything ever had in the 47 years since she was baptized as a Jehovah’s Witness.

A few days after the boom mics came out in the Kingdom Hall, word came down from the group’s headquarters that, in the interest of safety, Jehovah’s Witnesses should stop witnessing, its practice of in-person attempts at converting people to the group.

“People would be so receptive right now,” she said of her ministry, “and we can’t knock on doors.”

Across the country, most religious groups have stopped coming together in large numbers to pray and hold services, in keeping with stay-at-home orders. They have improvised with online preaching and even drive-in services as the faithful sit in cars. Mormons have stopped going door to door in the United States and called home many missionaries working abroad.

Jehovah’s Witnesses — with 1.3 million U.S. members who hand out brochures on sidewalks and subway platforms and ring doorbells — are one of the most visible religious groups in the nation. Members are called on to share Scriptures in person with nonmembers, warning of an imminent Armageddon and hoping to baptize them with the prospect of living forever.

The decision to stop their ministries was the first of its kind in the nearly 150 years of the group’s existence. It followed anguished discussions at Watchtower headquarters, with leaders deciding March 20 that knocking on doors would leave the impression that members were disregarding the safety of those they hoped to convert.

“This was not an easy decision for anybody,” said Robert Hendriks, the group’s U.S. spokesman. “As you know, our ministry is our life.”

It was for Francis, who became a Jehovah’s Witness when she was in her 20s with a newborn and a member knocked on her door in Tennessee and persuaded her to attend a Kingdom Hall meeting. She converted. Her family was angry that she no longer came to holiday gatherings; the group doesn’t believe in celebrating holidays or birthdays. Jehovah’s Witnesses became her new family.

The more she studied the Bible, the more she came to believe it led to eternal life. She needed to spread the word.

Showing up cold on someone’s doorstep didn’t come naturally. She was so shy that once, she recalled, her high school principal — “this huge Goliath guy” — stood on her foot in a crowded hallway; she didn’t say a word but waited in pain for him to move. She had considered a career going door to door as a Mason Shoes saleswoman, but after receiving a catalog, she never mustered the courage to even try to make a sale.

To her, witnessing was different. Her faith had helped her stop smoking. It gave her meaning. She had seen people clean up their lives after attending meetings at Kingdom Hall.

“By the time I did go to doors, I was so convinced this was the right thing to do that I had no nervousness,” Francis said.

Through the years, she learned to build her pitch around a theme — a Bible verse or a current event — and tried not to sound rehearsed.

“You don’t want to sound like a robot,” she said. “You work from the heart. You want enthusiasm.”

Early this year, Francis had been seeing reports on Facebook about the virus sweeping through Wuhan, China. The host of a show she watched on YouTube, Peak Prosperity, had been warning that the outbreak could spread internationally.

She bought masks and face shields, just in case. She started using plastic grocery bags to cover the gas pump handle when she filled up her tank.

By early March, the virus still hadn’t hit Gordon County, where Francis lives. But the possibility was weighing on her mind. The message on her favorite YouTube show was getting more dire as the host, Chris Martenson, a financial guru-turned-pandemic early warner, ratcheted up his pleadings for viewers to prepare themselves.

Francis’ 27-year-old granddaughter has a compromised immune system. As a senior citizen, she herself was vulnerable. She did what she always has done and channeled her own feelings into her door-knocking ministry. Do you think, she would ask people as she carpooled with other members to canvass the county, that the virus is a sign of the end of the world?

“No one was paying much attention,” she said.

Elsewhere, in places like New York where infections were starting to climb, Jehovah’s Witnesses members were feeling the pinch on their ministries.

One of them, Joe Babsky, had been easing into conversations with members of his Planet Fitness gym in the Bronx for weeks. He knew them by first name only: Jerry, who had lost more than 100 pounds; Jason, who seemed to spend an hour on each body part; Bernie, a 78-year-old who was more fit than men half his age. Babsky had shown a few of them Bible verses and had made progress recently with Bernie discussing the logic behind the existence of an intelligent creator.

Then the gym closed.

“All those conversations and others were cut short,” Babsky said.

Life continued as normal in Francis’ town of Calhoun. She was convinced things were about to change, but she was too embarrassed to wear a mask — until an encounter in Costco when a passing shopper coughed without covering her mouth.

In mid-March, her Kingdom Hall meetings went virtual. Members logged into Zoom to share Bible Scriptures. Francis settled on one that she thought would resonate as she knocked on doors in her neighborhood across the county, which had by then registered a handful of COVID-19 cases.

At the doorstep, Francis would start her pitch by asking people if they could make one thing in the world go away, what would it be? If the answer had to do with the pandemic, she would recite a couple of verses from the book of Luke:

“There will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and from heaven great signs.”

All the signs were clear, she would announce. Armageddon was near. Her message finally seemed to be resonating with people.

And then she got word to stop knocking on doors.

“This has been so much a part of our lives, so it was like, wow,” she said. “I have often envisioned in paradise where going door to door would not be a thing because everyone knows God.”

This was not paradise.

But Francis was convinced that the end of the world was not far away. There were just too many signs, she said. And so she and many other Jehovah’s Witnesses members were more compelled than ever to witness any way they could. Many began writing letters or making phone calls to anyone whose numbers they had managed to collect before the pandemic hit.

Masked and gloved, Francis hands out pamphlets and cards with her phone number on them to fellow shoppers at the grocery store.

Last week, she sent a text to a woman in Hawkinsville, Georgia, a few miles away, whom she had been contacting from time to time. The woman said her restaurant had to close because of the pandemic and her brother-in-law was sick with the virus. A couple of days later he died.

Francis texted Scriptures to the woman and told her that soon all the sickness on Earth would be over; all sins would be forgiven; paradise was near.

The next day she received a written response: “Thank you so much for the information. It was such a comfort.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY 
US appeals order to give detained migrants beds in ArizonaASTRID GALVAN,Associated Press•April 20, 2020


US Border Patrol-Freezing Cells
FILE - In this Thursday Aug. 9, 2012, file photo, persons are detained for being in the country illegally and are moved out of the holding area after being processed at the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol's headquarters in Tucson, Ariz. The federal government is appealing an order by a U.S. District Court judge requiring the Border Patrol to provide beds, blankets, showers and medical evaluations to migrants held in its Tucson Sector facilities for over 48 hours. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)



PHOENIX (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday appealed a federal court order requiring the U.S. Border Patrol to provide beds, blankets, showers, quality food and medical evaluations to migrants held in many Arizona facilities longer than 48 hours.

In February, U.S. District Judge David C. Bury ruled in favor of migrants who sued nearly five years ago over what they called dangerously crowded and inhumane conditions in Arizona’s Tucson Sector, which covers most of the state.

Bury wrote that the Border Patrol and its parent agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, “administer a detention system that deprives detainees, who are held in CBP stations, Tucson Sector, longer than 48 hours, of conditions of confinement that meet basic human needs.”

The judge issued the final order last week, calling on the government to provide actual beds, not sleeping mats, and washable blankets, not the thin, foil-type ones provided now. It also requires that immigrants detained longer than two days get meals approved by a nutritionist and assessed by a doctor, nurse or other medical professional.

Migrants have long decried conditions in Border Patrol facilities, now infamously known as hieleras, or iceboxes, filing the lawsuit in June 2015. Video shown during the January trial showed a man walking over body after body in an attempt to reach a bathroom. His cell was so crowded, migrants were sleeping in the bathrooms, too.

The government has long said that the facilities are meant for short-term stays and that immigrants only remain for extended periods when other agencies don't have the capacity to take them in.

President Donald Trump's administration didn't list a reason for its appeal. But government attorneys argued in court that no constitutional violations had been proven and that the Border Patrol has taken steps to reduce time in custody. An attorney also said at trial that there wasn't funding to build facilities with beds.

The order applies only to the Tucson Sector, which includes eight facilities where migrants are held before they are deported or transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Coronavirus threatens to trigger new round of global food crisis: China official

ALL REVOLUTIONS BEGIN WITH A FOOD CRISIS

By Hallie Gu and Emily Chow, Reuters•April 19, 2020

FILE PHOTO: Chinese Vice Agriculture Minister Yu Kangzhen speaks at a news conference in Beijing

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The global coronavirus pandemic threatens to cause a huge shock to international food trade and trigger a new food crisis, a top agriculture official in China said on Monday.

The comments came as coronavirus outbreaks roiled global agriculture supply chains and upended trade, and after some countries restricted exports of main grains and increased procurement for reserves.

"The fast spreading global epidemic has brought huge uncertainty on international agriculture trade and markets," said Yu Kangzhen, China's deputy agriculture minister.

"If the epidemic continues to spread and escalate, the impact on international food trade and production will definitely worsen, and might trigger a new round of food crisis," Yu said during a video conference on the country's agriculture outlook.

The pandemic and measures some countries took to secure domestic supplies have inhibited normal trade and supplies, and caused some major price fluctuations, Yu added.

The coronavirus pandemic, which started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, has infected 2.3 million people and killed 159,000 people worldwide.

Strict lockdowns and quarantines to control the coronavirus outbreaks have disrupted China's supply chains and made it difficult for many industries to find enough workers, delayed poultry and pig production in the world's top meats market.

Though China has sufficient grains to meet domestic demand, some other import-reliant farm products like soybeans and edible oils may be impacted by the global pandemic, Yu said.

China's exports of aquaculture, vegetables, and tea will be affected due to the disease, Yu added.

Speaking at the same conference, Agriculture Minister Han Changfu ruled out a food crisis in China, saying it had the confidence and ability to secure supplies of grain and other major agricultural products.

While the pace of domestic virus transmissions has slowed, China is focusing on infections from overseas arrivals as it guards against a major resurgence and monitors the spread in northeastern Heilongjiang province.

"The risk of imported coronavirus is still huge and will put considerable pressure on livestock production," Yu said.

China is also fighting with the deadly African swine fever, which has slashed its pig herd by at least 40% and is still spreading. The country has reported 13 new cases of African swine fever since March.

"African swine fever risks have significantly increased, as pig production recovery accelerates and more piglets and breeders get transported," Yu said.

China's farmers, lured by good profits and a series of government policies, have sped up efforts to rebuild pig herd.

Pests, drought and floods also present harsher threats than usual to output this year, Yu added.

(Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 
in an external browser.)

(Reporting by Hallie Gu and Emily Chow; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Clarence Fernandez and Michael Perry)

Monday, April 20, 2020


Ethiopia and Eritrea: A wedding, birth and baptism at the border
BBC•April 20, 2020

ETHIOPIA IS EDEN, IT IS THE ORIGIN OF ALL THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS OF THE BOOK, JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAMISM
A peace deal between neighbours Ethiopia and Eritrea ending two decades of tension has transformed the border areas, reports the BBC's Rob Wilson.

Sat in a ground-floor flat in the city of Adigrat, northern Ethiopia, Zefer Sultan is having her hair braided ready for the baptism of her first child.

Playing on the TV in the corner of the room is her wedding video from a year before, which is keeping them entertained.

"Our wedding was almost at the same time as when the border was opened. It was a double happiness," she explains.

Late 2018 was a time of jubilation for many living close to the Ethiopia-Eritrea border.

A new peace deal between the previously warring countries had been agreed, and movement across the border permitted for the first time in 20 years.

Families who had been separated for this time were reunited, and events such as Zefer's wedding brought friends and relatives together to celebrate once again.

"Now I hope our son's baptism will be even better. I hope lots of family from both Eritrea and Ethiopia will come," Zefer adds.
Celebrations broke out at the Ethiopia-Eritrea border when it reopened in 2018

The ceremony is set to take place in Zalambessa, where the families of Zefer and her husband Zeray come from. It is situated just on the Ethiopian side of the border.

The town saw heavy fighting during the 1998-2000 war and suffered from economic stagnation for the following 18 years as the border was closed and heavily militarised on both sides.

Everyone in the town has a story of separation.
'We had to watch the funeral from a distance'

Important family events such as baptisms and weddings were missed by many. In some cases, people were not able to say goodbye to their loved ones as they were taking their final breaths.

Abrahaley Gebremariam, a local Ethiopian photographer, was unable to reach his ailing grandmother in Eritrea.

"We had to watch the funeral and remembrance services from a distance, we had no choice but to grieve her death from here," he says, pointing out her village just across the border.

"But we were with her in spirit."

Abrahaley has been able to cross the border twice since 2018 to celebrate religious festivals and visit his family.

"I am the flesh and blood of both people," he says.

This sentiment oozes through the borderlands.

It would be easy to imagine there might be animosity between Ethiopians and Eritreans in the area; as many as 100,000 people were killed during the conflict and many more were forced from their homes.

But the social and cultural ties have proved to be deeper, and have endured the forced separation that followed the war.

Gebrehiwet Kahsay, the grandfather of Zefer's new-born baby, explains why.

"The people were not in conflict, the problem was the leaders," he says.

"The people never betrayed each other."
Borders open - and then close

Zalambessa started to go through a transformation when the checkpoints opened again in 2018. Unrestricted movement brought about a business boom as trade and travel multiplied. Local businesses reaped the benefits.

"It became a bustling trade hub with hundreds of vehicles travelling back and forth. Peace and reconciliation enabled me to work in both countries as a cameraman," Abrahaley recalls.
Map

But just months after the border opened up, the official checkpoints began to close once again.

No official reason was given at the time, and almost all of the checkpoints are still closed to all trade and traffic.

While Ethiopia and Eritrea both say they are trying to resolve the situation, no formal agreement has been reached.

Nonetheless there has been a fundamental and lasting change. The border itself has been demilitarised and is not patrolled as it was before, so informal movement on foot continues in a way unimaginable just two years ago.
You may also be interested in:


Father reunited with long-lost daughters


Ethiopia's Ambo city: 'From freedom to repression under Abiy Ahmed'


Inside the mind of Ethiopia's Abiy Ahmed


Has Nobel winner brought peace to East Africa?

The bustling Saturday market in Zalambessa is one place where this is apparent.

It has been given a new lease of life since the peace agreement, when Eritreans started coming to buy goods.

And now while vehicles are restricted at the checkpoint, shoppers continue to walk across, carrying what they can in their arms.

For one Eritrean woman this meant tying a large wooden table to her back and walking three hours to get home. But she was not downhearted.

Before the border opened, she says she had to travel five hours to get to the nearest market in Eritrea.
Cross-border contraception

At Zalambessa Health Centre, the border opening saw a surge in people coming across from Eritrea to receive services.

While the numbers have fallen since the border checkpoints closed again, some still make the difficult journey on foot.

Everyone who comes to the clinic is treated equally.

"We have no reasons to treat Eritreans any differently than we do Ethiopians. We provide medical care to anyone first and foremost because they are humans," says acting director Dr Samrawit Berhane.

Patients tell the staff that in many cases it is closer than the nearest clinic in Eritrea, and some say they receive better treatment too.

Samrawit explains that they have also noticed a number of women coming specifically for family planning services and contraceptives.
Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict. [ Began in 1998 over the exact location of the common border ],[ Tens of thousands killed in the conflict ],[ Algiers peace deal agreed in 2000 but never fully implemented ],[ Abiy Ahmed became Ethiopia's prime minister in 2018 ],[ Pledged to restore peaceful relations between the neighbours ],[ Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki and Mr Abiy declared war over in July 2018 ], Source: Source: BBC, Image: Soldiers in the mountains

They say that in Eritrea, their husbands must grant permission for such services, and collections of contraceptives must be made together.

"Many women tell us they prefer to come here so that they can avoid these restrictions," says Samrawit.

'We are brothers and inseparable'

As you drive north towards Zalambessa, the vast and rocky landscape is awe-inspiring. But just as striking is the amount of construction work under way.

Peppered all along the road are half-built houses and blocks of flats, huge piles of gravel and sand, wooden scaffolding reaching up to the sky.

When the border opened in 2018, entrepreneurs came from all over the country to invest along the road.

Among them was Fisehaye Hailu, a self-assured and straight-talking Eritrean man who left his country after being detained as a political prisoner for 13 years. He has the look of a man who knows a hard day's work.

"It felt like things had brightened up overnight and I didn't waste any time before buying a plot of land," he says.

Fisehaye knows Zalambessa well, having been born just across the border.

Now his business venture is a three-storey hotel in the town.

"After it is finished, the name of my hotel will be an expression of my desire for the two people to be together. So I plan to name it The Two Brothers' Hotel," he explains.

"It's to say we are brothers and we are inseparable."
The baptism ceremony

The day of Zefer's son's baptism starts at 03:00 as they make their way up to the cliff-top church overlooking the borderlands between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

As the ceremony begins, relatives from both sides of the border gather at the house belonging to the parents of her husband at the bottom of the hill.

Zeray is keen to introduce one guest in particular, one of his cousins who has come from Massawa in Eritrea, as she did when he married in 2018.

"The fact that she has been with me from my wedding until now shows you love, culture and unity," he says.

Although she did not want to disclose her name, she explains how the 2018 peace deal has changed her life.

"Before, we had no news of who was dead and who was alive. But now we have learned about our dead and we are happy to meet those who are still alive," she says.

"It's a massive difference. It's like the difference between the earth and the sky."

Despite many sharing similar feelings about the new-found, but unofficial, freedom of movement, the closure of border checkpoints continues to affect all areas of life.

Zefer explains that there were actually fewer Eritreans at the baptism than at their wedding. Many chose not to come because they were not sure whether they would be allowed to cross the border.

"It's worrying," she adds. "If the checkpoints are closed, we can't move forward."

You can find out more by watching Rob Wilson's full report:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZuDMg-QlPE

Or listen to his radio documentary Rebirth at the Border from the BBC World Service
AMERICA PANICS
 QUICK GET BACK TO NORMAL
BRING BACK YESTERDAY'S ECONOMY
 BEFORE 'THEY' CAN CHANGE THE SYSTEM 
THEM, THE CONSUMERS, WHO ARE THE PRODUCERS,
WHO ARE THE WAGE EARNERS, WHO ARE SALARIED,
WHO ARE CAPITALISM BY OUR CONSUMPTION
WE ARE NOW IN A PANDEMIC INDUCED GENERAL STRIKE AGAINST CAPITALISM

AS IT IS AND AS IT WAS 






Chronicles of Insurrection: Tronti, Negri and the Subject of Antagonism
Alberto Toscano
Goldsmiths, University of London
Abstract: 
This article seeks to trace the origins of contemporary ‘post-workerism’ in the formulation of concepts of political subjectivity, antagonism and insurrection in Tronti and Negri. In particular, it tries to excavate the seemingly paradoxical position which postulates the increasing immanence of struggles, as based on the Marxian thesis of real subsumption, together with the intensification of the political autonomy or separation of the working class. In order to grasp the political and theoretical proposals of Italian workerism and autonomism, Toscano concentrates on the thesis of a historical transformation of capitalism into an increasingly parasitical and politically violent social relation, a thesis which is grounded in an interpretation of Marx’s notion of ‘tendency’ and which serves as the background to the exploration, especially in Negri, of increasingly uncompromising forms of antagonism. The article focuses especially on Tronti’s so-called ‘Copernican revolution’—giving workers’ struggles primacy in the understanding of capitalism—and critically inquires into the effect of this workerist axiom on Negri’s writings on proletarian sabotage and insurrection in the 1970s. By way of a conclusion, it notes the difficulties in prolonging the workerist gambit in light of capital’s continued effort, as Tronti would put it, to emancipate itself from the working class.

Keywords: Antagonism; Capitalism; Class Composition; Communism; Insurrection; Measure; Marx; Negri; Subsumption; Tendency; Tronti; Workerism

Page Header

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal of natural and social philosophy. It serves those who see philosophy's vocation in questioning and challenging prevailing assumptions about ourselves and our place in the world, developing new ways of thinking about physical existence, life, humanity and society, so helping to create the future insofar as thought affects the issue. Philosophy so conceived is not exclusively identified with the work of professional philosophers, and the journal welcomes contributions from philosophically oriented thinkers from all disciplines.

‘Cosmos’ and ‘History’ are both Greek words. ‘Cosmos’, which originally meant ‘order’, came to mean ‘the ordered structure of the universe’. ‘History’, which originally meant ‘investigation’, came to mean an account of human actions and the causes of conflicts. Systematic speculation on the cosmos and the effort to produce objective histories emerged together in a society where, perhaps for the first time, people reflected impartially on themselves and their world and took responsibility for the future. Yet a tension emerged between Greek cosmology and Greek history. With the Pythagoreans who argued that the order in nature is mathematical, the notion of cosmos as a timeless structure, crystallized. History, being concerned with human actions and the rise and fall of individuals and cities, was clearly about that which is not permanent. The tension between cosmology, conceiving the cosmos as an immutable, timeless order, and history, concerned with actions, intentions, conflicts and the rise and fall of individuals and communities, has been at the core of virtually all intellectual and political oppositions throughout the history of European civilization. What is required is a combination of natural and social philosophy, transcending all disciplinary boundaries, concerned with the fundamental issues of understanding the cosmos and our place within it as historical agents. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, provides a forum for advancing this understanding. It provides a focus to revive that unlimited interrogation of our cultural heritage introduced by the Ancient Greeks required for us to create the future. The journal encourages contributions from philosophically oriented thinkers from all disciplines.