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El periódico «La Voz de los Trabajadores»: Edición de marzo-abril
La guerra de Estados Unidos e Israel contra Irán es una escalada importante en el Medio Oriente que tiene implicaciones peligrosas para los trabajadores de todo el mundo. La brutalidad del asalto imperialista a nivel internacional va junto con el ataque a las libertades civiles por parte del régimen de Trump dentro de Estados Unidos. Esto incluye las operaciones continuas del ICE y la Patrulla Fronteriza, las amenazas a las elecciones de mitad de período de 2026, los retrocesos ambientales que afectan profundamente a la comunidad negra y la brutalidad policial sin control.
Nuestro editorial en este número nos advierte: «Existe un gran peligro de subestimar la determinación de la élite empresarial estadounidense de llevar adelante esta iniciativa. No podemos confiar en que las sentencias judiciales o las próximas elecciones nos salven. Debemos organizarnos ahora, no solo para realizar manifestaciones masivas y crear redes comunitarias contra la violencia del ICE, sino para encontrar el camino hacia la construcción de un nuevo partido de la clase trabajadora a través del cual podamos organizar nuestra defensa política en todos los planos y todos los días».
En este número también tenemos artículos sobre los archivos de Epstein y la clase dominante, la huelga de maestros de San Francisco y una reseña del nuevo álbum de U2.
La edición de marzo-abril de 2026 de nuestro periódico está disponible en formato impreso y en línea como PDF y contiene articulos en ingles y español. ¡Lee hoy mismo el último número de nuestro periódico con una descarga gratuita en PDF! Como siempre, agradecemos cualquier donación que ayude a sufragar los gastos de impresión.
Haz clic en la imagen para leer el periódico o envíanos un mensaje para recibir una copia impresa:
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Class Struggle Doesn’t Stop Under the Pandemic
The corona virus pandemic, with the measures of social isolation, is forcing many mobilization processes to take a break in their forms of mobilization against their despotic governments. This occurs in: Hong Kong, France, Algeria, Sudan or Chile, to name a few examples. But those who think that these processes have died are mistaken.
By Asdrubal Barbosa
This because the causes that generated these processes did not end, on the contrary, these bourgeois governments remain despotic and overexploited the working class. In fact, they are taking advantage of the pandemic to trigger more attacks in terms of the living conditions of the most impoverished sectors of the population and take advantage of this interval to attack and repress the movement.
That is why it is essential that mobilizations remain, using all possible forms of struggle, as well as seeking to defend and preserve themselves.
Through social networks, criticizing and explaining the capitalist and pro-employer policies of these governments; with criticisms of the government’s initial inaction and then to incompetent management, capitalists and liars that have been made, and its harmful effects: spreading hunger and death across the planet. Already preparing for the return of the mobilizations when the contamination has cooled.
But it is also taking measures to ensure the safety and physical and moral integrity of its activists and militants.
The protests peaked when squares and streets in several cities were full, when they faced repression and workers carrying out strikes and demonstrations. It was the protesters and young people from the “First Line”, in Chile; the Yellow Vests and the strikers in France; the Lebanese against the government sectarian order; the Algerians against Buteflika’s dictatorial pouvoir (power) and his minions; young people from Hong Kong and Barcelona; the Iranians, the Palestinians and everyone else.The French have not forgotten
According to a French activist, social confinement “It works like a spring that is compressed and tensions are already breaking out in the neighborhoods. And the exposed workers, see that they are not considered. Are the workers in the front line, mostly women and informal workers who have a knife in their throat “. A generalized social explosion is likely to come after the “deflation”, enhanced by inflation and the worsening of living conditions in the most impoverished sectors, “Increasing the rejection of the Macron government”. The great contradiction is that despite the weight that the unions gained, union leaders do not want to confront the government and continue to leave exit doors that allow them to continue their policy.
In this sense, the Intelligence Services of France carried out a study in which they conclude that after the mandatory confinement there must be more radicalized protests. [1] They warn that some collectives that appeared in the last protests, are already calling for mobilizations. According to the confidential notes of this service «Confinement does not allow demonstrations, but society’s anger is not weakened and crisis management (…), fuels protests».
It could not be otherwise since in France, workers have been facing each other systematically, with general strikes and street mobilizations, against this government that currently accumulates almost 20,000 deaths. Research shows that most French people believe government hides information, who has not acted in time, is not providing the necessary means for health, nor does it give the correct uniforms on the evolution of the crisis. Health professionals complain about the lack of masks and virus detection tests.
In addition, containment measures, started in March 17, are clearly insufficient. Like in Italy or Spain, the French continue to work in factories and non-essential services. The regions most affected by the pandemic are Gran Este, and the Paris regions where there is a high population density, many immigrants, with the lowest wages, deteriorating public services and a growing social exclusion. Informal workers are also being severely affected by isolation. and those who cannot afford to telework and are therefore unpaid with the confinement. In the suburbs of Paris there are clashes with the police already, now, during social isolation.
The hated French police use confinement to harass, watch over, humiliate and even murder those who identify as their greatest dangers: immigrants from poor areas. In these regions, comments are made: “The police pose a greater threat than the virus”.
Hong Kong repression continues
Almost a year ago protests against the extradition law began, that allowed to deliver suspicious political enemies to the government of China, which was withdrawn in October, in one of the largest mobilization processes, since the former British colony.
In Hong Kong there was also a “breick” in the demonstrations, but the hatred of government officials remains intact and they want the overthrow of the head of government, Carrie Lam. Polls indicate that the majority is in favor of the demonstrations for democracy, with universal suffrage, and the creation of an independent commission that investigates the police’s brutal action during the demonstrations. Therefore, it is to be expected that soon “the masks against the virus will be replaced by masks to fight against tear gas”.
Many Hong Kong protesters have opted for virtual demonstrations, using Nintendo video games, censored by the Chinese government on the continent, decorating their spaces with political references.
For its part, the repression of the Chinese state has not abated. Three teenagers, accused of throwing “molotov cocktails” against a police station during the demonstrations were recently arrested, as well as several activists and political leaders, accused of having participated in “illegal assemblies” held during the mobilizations. The police are conducting various procedures, investigations and preventive arrests.Algeria repression in full quarantine
In Algeria, the Hirak (the Arab name for the protest movement against the dictatorship), in existence for over a year. The activists had to agree on a “health truce”.
But the repression has given no respite. According to the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees, there are 173 political prisoners in the country at the moment, among them Karim Tabú and Abdelouahab Fersaoui.[2]
It goes without saying that there is a great deal of mistrust of the information released, by the dictatorship, of Covid-19 in the midst of the health crisis. All indications are that Hirak should return with doubled strength after the compulsory isolation, even with all the arrests and persecutions being carried out by the Algerian dictatorship.Piñera tries to stifle the revolution
The pandemic gave a break to the street demonstrations of the Chilean revolutionary process, as well as postponing the plebiscite which was scheduled for April 26. But he didn’t close it.
Political and social contradictions continue to exist and deepen in a country that has its health system privatized, in the style of the United States, which with the pandemic will further harm the poorest and most precarious workers.
That’s why the Piñera government wants to take advantage of this interval to stifle the revolution, keeps more than 2,500 young activists as political prisoners in pre-trial detention, with poor prison conditions, without hygienic conditions, in a totally arbitrary way. What was qualified by the State Auditor General, Lya Cabello, after a recent inspection of the prison system, as a “time bomb” because “it cannot be guaranteed that prisons comply with the requirements to avoid contagion”.
Many of them are minors, adolescents detained, and placed in “precautionary measure of provisional confinement”.
There is a deliberate policy to eliminate one of the best sectors in the vanguard of this struggle, presented on the “First Line”. Carried out by one of the largest repressive apparatus in Latin America, who has murdered more than 30 boxers and mutilated more than 400, in addition to the rapes and sexual abuses committed by his troops. So much so that when Judge Daniel Urrutia released 13 trade activists to house arrest for the Covid-19 pandemic, the Court of Appeals left this measure ineffective, suspended the judge and opened an investigation against him.
Thousands of families, activists and militants are mobilizing against this situation through various organizations, while most organizations claiming to be “left-wing”, such as Frente Amplia, have shamefully forgotten these political prisoners. Defending the lives of these activists and combatants is defending a political capital fundamental to the Chilean Revolution. In this sense the heroic work that the People’s Ombudsman’s Office and the lawyer Maria Rivera are doing, and achieving, the liberation of these activists (even if individually) is a task of first order for self-defense of the movement.
Prepare for future battles
Even in times of pandemic, bourgeois governments give no truce to working class organizations, and increase their attacks.
That is why workers should only believe in their own strengths, organizing themselves during the pandemic and building a self-protection mechanism against the attacks they are receiving. Because only by its self-organization will it be able to alleviate the catastrophe that is preparing itself against our class and to organize itself for the battles to come. -
Welcome Back Lebanese Revolution!
Protesting the freeze of bank accounts and hunger, the Lebanese people brought the October revolution back to the streets on April 27, the so-called “night of the molotovs”. Starting in the outstanding city of Trablous, it spread across the country to Beirut, Saida, Nabatieh, Bekka valley and Akkar.
By Hassan al-Barazili
The Lebanese State sent the army to crush the protests. Resorting to tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live fire, the army killed 26-year-old Fawaz al-Samman and injured many others in Trablous.
In Saida they arrested and tortured 7 young protesters bringing back the collective memory about 2017 when the army attacked Syrian refugees, killing four of them.
In spite of the fact the number of protesters in the streets are smaller than two months ago, the Lebanese revolution is the first one to restart since the coronavirus outbreak which killed 25 people up to now. Other revolutions will certainly follow suit.
The crisis among the ruling classes
The rich families of different sects who have ruled the country since the end of the civil war are fighting for a better share of a declining capitalist economy.
The request for IMF international aid to bail out banks and the State was supported by all sectarian parties, Hassan Nasrallah included. However, the IMF certainly will recall CEDRE conference requirements: less public deficit, increase energy price and wholesale privatization which Hasan Diab/Michel Aoun administration cannot deliver without deepening the bourgeois split and soaring poverty level when already 50% of the Lebanese people are under or on the poverty line.
Another bourgeois “solution”, the so-called “haircut” or bail-in or Cyprus-way, implies into converting all bank deposits over half million dollars into bank shares (or bonds) what is rejected by the ABL (Lebanese Bankers Association) and all major parties (all of them led by rich families).
The international economic recession makes the loans or donations from friendly foreign governments not probable. The Hariris used to resort to Saudi Arabia and France. Hezbollah to Iran. Saudi Arabia faces economic constraints due to declining oil prices and the high costs of the military intervention in Yemen which the Saudis seem to be retreating from. France is arguing with Germany about bailing out all Mediterranean European countries. Iran is under a criminal blockage by the U.S. what together with low oil prices, COVID-19 explosion and conflicts with Russia in Syria are draining their cash. At last the U.S. are counting bodies and their major concern towards Lebanon is how to weaken Hezbollah, the main stronghold of Diab/Aoun administration.
What is left for the Lebanese ruling class in terms of economic policies are: high inflation to decrease people’s purchase power; and stealing bank deposits in hard currency exchanging U.S. dollars for LL 1500-3000 depending on the amount which are much below the LL 4000 in the black market.
Working people’s poor situation
The situation of the working people is dreadful. The quarantine brought dismissals and vanished the income for informal workers, street-vendors and small shop-owners. There are thousands of expatriates who lost their jobs and income abroad. Bank accounts are frozen. The one-time distribution of LL 400,000 by the State to the poor never materialized. Coronavirus is spreading. Domestic violence against women increased. The revolution restarted in 730,000-people Trablous due to years of neglect, extreme poverty and hunger.
A working-class perspective for Lebanon
CEDRE and IMF means more suffering and poverty. It is not a solution for the working class. The real solution starts in rounding up all the country’s wealth in the hands of the working class. The nationalization of the banks under workers’ control and the seizure of assets of a handful of the richest families are necessary steps to:- provide a monthly US$ 500 basic income to all poor Lebanese families to survive while in quarantine;
- to fund public education and a good national healthcare system to save lives;
- to pay for public works to provide energy and drinkable water for everyone at low cost generating thousands of jobs;
- To finish the bank accounts’ freezing for 99% of the people while seizing the millionaire bank deposits.
These steps lead necessarily to an open conflict with the bourgeoisie and their sectarian regime. The bourgeoisie have two main cards:- a) The sectarian appeal to divide the working people and rule;
- b) Open repression by the army, Mukhabarat (political police) and sectarian militias.
Yet, the working people have to resort to all means at their disposal:
1) Unite in struggle. It is urgent to build solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Trablous sending delegations, organizing independent protests in all other cities and calling pot-and-pan banging protests in order to show solidarity while staying away from COVID-19. A general strike by the workers who are at the workplace is instrumental as well.
2) Build independent workers’ and people’s councils across the nation inside workplaces, schools and neighborhoods to democratically decide every and each step of the revolution.
3) Bring the middle classes to support the revolution isolating the bourgeoisie. Their needs for lower cost of living (water and energy bills, healthcare system, university costs) and finishing the bank accounts’ freeze must be emphasized.
4) Bring Palestinian and Syrian refugees to the side of the revolution expressing the revolution opposition both to the Zionist State and Assad regime.
5) Call soldiers and low-ranking officials of the army to refuse to attack protesters and to organize soldiers’ councils inside the army to break away from any authoritarian top-down orders from the generals.
6) Organize self-defense of the working people both in neighborhoods and at protest sites to fight back repression.
7) Call international solidarity. The same day the revolution restarted in Lebanon, young Chileans were holding protests against the ruthless Carabineros police. Soon Iraq people and Hong Kong protesters will be back to the streets. The international economic recession will certainly multiply workers’ actions across the world.
8) No confidence in the regime’s parties: Hezbollah, Future Movement, Amal, Lebanese Forces and Free Patriotic Movement. All means all!
9) Build a revolutionary workers’ party to take the lead for the revolution to defeat the bourgeoisie and their sectarian regime, to bring the October revolution to power and to build the necessary international links to defend the revolution.
These are not easy steps as well as hunger and neglect are unbearable. The Lebanese working people will have to decide: Either to bow to the sectarian regime and poverty; or to put the October revolution in power.
The Lebanese working people in motion are in the capacity to carry out all these steps and build a new Lebanon for the workers and the oppressed. -
The MOVE house bombing 35 years later
The fire begins to spread from the MOVE house, which police attacked and bombed on May 13, 1985. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP) By JOHN LESLIE
May 13, 2020, is the 35th anniversary of the day Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a home in a working-class neighborhood. The resulting conflagration and police gunfire killed 11 people, including five children, and destroyed 61 houses.
The establishment narrative is that the bombing was the result of a “shootout” between Black radicals and cops, but this is not true. It was a military assault designed to wipe out the MOVE organization. MOVE, a back-to-nature group founded in 1972 by John Africa, had been the subject of police harassment for years and the target of a violent attack that landed nine MOVE supporters in prison. Today, as calls for an official apology from the city grow louder, it is necessary to review what happened.
Dress rehearsal
The 1978 attack on MOVE in Philadelphia’s Powelton Village neighborhood was a dress rehearsal for the May 13, 1985, police bombing on Osage Avenue. Police harassment of MOVE in Powelton Village resulted in an almost year-long siege and 50 days when no one was allowed to enter or leave the house, as cops attempted to starve MOVE out.
On Aug. 8, 1978, at 4 a.m., 600 cops surrounded the house as “… police made the first move. O’Neill ordered a bulldozer, which had a Lexan plastic shield to protect the operator from gunfire, to mow down the barricade. A long-armed ram tore the windows out of the upper floors. With the windows gone, fire hoses threw streams of water into the house” (S.A. Paolantonio: “Frank Rizzo, The Last Big Man in Big City America”).
Just after 8 a.m., shooting started, and police officer James Ramp was struck and killed by so-called friendly fire. Police fired bullets, tear gas, and water cannons into the house. MOVE members surrendered, and cops savagely beat Delbert Africa in full view of news cameras. Delbert Africa later recalled the incident, “I’m unconscious, and that’s when one cop pulled me by the hair across the street, one cop started jumping on my head, one started kicking me in the ribs and beating me.”
Cops claimed to find weapons in the MOVE house. Police ordered the house razed later that day, and any forensic evidence related to the standoff was destroyed.
Nine MOVE members—Chuck, Delbert, Eddie, Janet, Janine, Merle, Michael, Phil, and Debbie Africa—were tried and convicted in the death of Officer Ramp, in spite of evidence that he was killed by the gunfire of other cops. Seven of the MOVE 9 are now out of prison after 40 years. During the long decades of incarceration, two of the MOVE 9 died in prison. At the time, John Africa was found not guilty on federal conspiracy and weapons charges.
Three cops who participated in the beating of Delbert Africa were later acquitted. Speaking at a support rally for the three cops, the head of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police chapter said, “They should have killed them all.”
“At his press conference following the cop assault, Frank Rizzo, then the mayor, looked directly at Mumia (Abu-Jamal) and declared that a ‘new breed of journalism’ was to blame for Ramp’s death and that someday those like Mumia were ‘going to have to be held responsible and accountable.’” (“The Fight to Free Mumia Jamal” by Rachel Wolkenstein)
Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther Party member had become a respected radio journalist and covered the Powelton Village siege and assault. Mumia’s sharp criticisms of the PPD, and his refusal to back down in his advocacy for justice for the MOVE 9, cost him his job as a journalist. He took a job driving a taxi to pay his bills. On December 9, 1981, just months after John Africa’s acquittal, Mumia was shot, severely beaten and charged with the shooting death of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. The fight to free Mumia continues today.
After the Powelton Avenue confrontation, MOVE members relocated to the house at 6221 Osage Avenue. From the beginning, the house was under almost constant police surveillance. MOVE continued to fight for the freedom of their incarcerated members—political prisoners known collectively as the MOVE 9.
In the meantime, members of the PPD Civil Affairs unit solicited neighbors to assist in gathering information on MOVE supporters. In May 1984, the Police Commissioner, Gregore J. Sambor, ordered the drawing up of a plan to deal with MOVE. A replica of the MOVE house was constructed, and police made numerous trial runs at detonating a bomb on the roof in order to breach the roof. SWAT officers also worked with the fire department to gauge the effects of using a “squirt” truck to deluge the roof with water.
In the run-up to May 13, police and city officials, including Wilson Goode, the city’s first Black mayor, vilified MOVE as dangerous, violent terrorists. The failure of a raid on Aug. 8, 1984, the anniversary of the Powelton Avenue attack, appears to have been an attempt to provoke a violent overreaction by MOVE. After this abortive raid, the anti-MOVE rhetoric from officials and police harassment increased.
A few days before the raid, Judge Lynne Abraham, later the district attorney of Philadelphia, signed arrest and search warrants based on the false assertion that MOVE possessed a cache of weapons and explosives. The arrest warrants were for four members of the group—Frank James Africa, Ramona Africa, Conrad Africa, and Theresa Brooks Africa. There were seven specific charges, including criminal conspiracy, possession of explosives, and riot. This plan was set in motion by the police commissioner and Mayor Wilson Goode with the support and cooperation of local, state, and federal agencies.
The massacre
On Mother’s Day, May 12, police started to tighten access to the neighborhood and residents were ordered to evacuate. Those who refused to leave were threatened with arrest. By 10 p.m., the street was locked down. The house at 6221 Osage Avenue was surrounded by 77 cops, while hundreds more kept the area cordoned off.
At 5:35 a.m. on May 13, Sambor shouted over a bullhorn, “Attention MOVE! This is America! You have to abide by the laws of the United States.”
Soon after Sambor’s ultimatum, a fire department “squirt truck” deluged the house with 1000 gallons of water per minute to dislodge a structure on the roof that the police referred to as a “bunker.” Cops fired tear gas and smoke grenades at the house. At the same time a team of cops entered the house next door and tried to blow holes in the wall between the two homes with plastic explosives.
From 6 a.m. until about 7:30, police fired more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition at 6221 Osage Ave. Afterward, two handguns, a shotgun, and a .22 rifle were found in the ruins of the MOVE house. Cops were equipped with 16 M-16s, Thompson submachine guns, UZI submachine guns, 50-caliber machine guns, Browning Automatic Rifles, M-60 machineguns, and a 20mm anti-tank gun as well as handguns, sniper rifles, and shotguns. The following day, city officials falsely tried to claim that the majority of the gunfire came from MOVE.
During the attack, fire trucks sprayed almost 460,000 gallons of water onto 6221 Osage over more than five hours. Police teams on both sides of the house used explosives to breach the walls in order to pump tear gas inside. By 10:45 a.m., nine explosions had been set off by cops. The front porches had been blown off four houses on the street.
The bomb and aftermath
Community members and family of MOVE members gathered on nearby streets. Activists tried to reach out to Goode, pleading for an end to the assault. The effort to dislodge the rooftop structure with the fire trucks failed, and an attempt to obtain a construction crane to do the job was reportedly vetoed by Goode because of the expense.
Police decided to drop a bomb from a state police helicopter. They referred to it as an “explosive entry device.” The bomb was no small device, containing both the explosive Tovex and about three pounds of the military demolition explosive C-4. The force of the explosion splintered the rooftop structure and ignited a fire. The fire was made worse by the presence of two gas cans on the roof.
The decision by Sambor to “let the fire burn” resulted in the fire spreading and destroying 61 homes. This happened despite the fire trucks and 150 firefighters who were already set up a block away. Fire crews were ordered to spray water on the adjoining house to limit the fire to 6221 Osage Ave.
Ramona Africa is escorted from the courtroom on Feb. 9, 1986, after a jury found her guilty of riot and conspiracy. (AP) MOVE members had been sheltering in the basement, but as the fire intensified, it was decided to attempt to leave via a garage at the rear of the home. According to the later testimony of Birdie Africa, one of the two survivors, a MOVE adult, shouted that “the kids are coming out!” Among the hundreds who gathered at the police barricades, people began to shout “Murderers! Murderers!” Rocks and bottles were thrown, and riot police were deployed to push the crowd back.
Fleeing MOVE members were either shot dead by cops or returned to the house to avoid police gunfire. Six adults, Conrad Africa (36), Theresa Africa (26), Raymond Africa (50), Rhonda Africa (30, Frank Africa (26), and John Africa (54) died. Additionally, five children—Tomaso Africa (9), Katricia Dotson or Tree (13-15), Zenetta Dotson (12-14), Delicia Africa (11-12), and Phil Africa (11-12)—died in the massacre. Only two survived, Ramona Africa (30) and Birdie Africa (13)*.
The investigation afterward revealed the willingness of the state to wipe out anyone they see as an opponent. Not even one of the perpetrators of this foul crime was held accountable—not the mayor, not Sambor, nor any of the cops involved. Ramona Africa, however, was convicted of riot and conspiracy and served seven years in prison.
An apology?
Recently, Wilson Goode has expressed his opinion that the city should issue an apology for the MOVE bombing. Mayor Jim Kenney and City Council President Darrell L. Clarke have refused to participate in any process that leads to an apology for this gross violation of human rights.
Writing in the Guardian, Goode expressed his regret to all involved, saying, “This is the fourth time I’ve publicly apologized. My first official apology on behalf of the city came on 14 May 1985 in a televised address to the citizens of Philadelphia, to the Move family and to their neighbors. Today I would like to apologize again and extend that apology to all who experienced, and in many cases continue to experience, pain and distress from the government actions that day. They include the Move family, their neighbors, the police officers, firefighters and other public servants as well as all the citizens of Philadelphia” (italics, my emphasis).
In reality, Goode spoke far differently to the press several times. On May 14, 1985, he portrayed the police assault as a necessity, saying, “If I had to make the decision all over again, knowing what I know now, I would make the same decision because I think we cannot permit any terrorist group, any revolutionary group in this city, to hold a neighborhood or a whole city hostage. And we have to send that message out loud and clear, over and over again.”
Including the cops who participated in the massacre as “victims” strains the imagination. The city’s inability to honestly deal with the crime committed in the name of the “City of Brotherly Love” once again leaves the wound unhealed. It is past time for an apology from the city, the police department, and the entire political system. And the apology must be linked with reparations for those who were truly victimized, plus criminal punishment for those in authority who were perpetrators of the MOVE massacre.
*Michael Moses Ward, AKA Birdie Africa, died in 2013 at the age of 41.
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Radical Socialist statement on gas leak disaster in India
Children hospitalized after gas leak at the LG Polymers plant. (Agence France-Presse) By RADICAL SOCIALIST
Radical Socialist is a Trotskyist organization in India.
Radical Socialist is greatly alarmed at the death of 11 people, including a six-year-old girl, and more than a thousand people affected after styrene monomer gas leaked from a chemical plant belonging to LG Polymers at RR Venkatapuram in Visakhapatnam on May 7, 2020. Around 350 people are hospitalised till now. This gas leak has directly affected an area over a radius of about three kilometres. At least five villages within this radius have been severely affected. According to experts, styrene is a neuro-toxin and inhalation leads to immobilisation and eventual death in ten minutes.
The chemical plant situated in a densely populated area in Visakhapatnam city was taken over by the South Korean multinational LG Chem in July 1997. It manufactures polystyrene and expandable polystyrene from imported styrene and reprocesses primary plastics into engineering plastics.
In January 2018, AP Pollution Control Board granted environmental clearance to LG Polymers to expand production from 415 tonnes of chemicals per day to 655 tonnes per day, at an extra cost of Rs 168 crores. These include polystyrene and expandable polystyrene, both using hazardous chemicals for its manufacture. This clearance is considered valid till December 2021.
Evacuating people from the site. (Agence France-Presse) However, later in May 2019, the State Level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) pointed out that LG polymers was functioning without a valid environmental clearance order from it. It stated that no clearance was obtained by the company regarding ‘petrochemical based processing’ in the schedule to the EIA notification, 2006.”
In the wake of the COVID-19 lockdown, after the first phase of lockdown ended on April 14, 2020, the company also managed to gain permission for functioning citing that it was an “essential” industry. The South Korean company had managed to obtain a No Objection Certficate (NOC) even as the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown ended.
By no stretch of the imagination can a plastics manufacturing unit like LG Polymers be categorised as “essential”. This has clearly happened in collusion with senior government officials. The issues around the environmental clearance and the subsequent events around the lockdown makes it amply clear that this can’t be termed as an accident but constitutes criminal negligence by the company which out to maximise profits has bypassed all safety norms. Moreover, such an industrial disaster coupled with the ongoing pandemic can have far reaching dangerous consequences.
Radical Socialist also notes, and urges all socialist, working class, and ecologically conscious people and organisations to understand that the Modi government, right from 2014, has been committed tooverturning environmentally sound policies. As with other issues like centralisation of powers and overturning labour laws, it is using the current crisis to push aggressively for its eco-destructive policies, in the name of development/economic revival. This has to be combatted not merely in this case, but in all cases. The LG Polymers disaster is a warning that Indian capitalism and the Modi regime cannot be trusted at all in this matter, and only continuous resistance can ensure any positive development.
Radical Socialist demands that:
- The directors of LG Polymers be arrested for criminal negligence and flouting environmental and safety norms.
- The officials colluding with the company and easing environmental and safety norms should be booked.
- All safety precautions must be taken before reopening plants dealing with chemical and hazardous materials.
- All victims of this disaster must be adequately compensated.
- The local environment, atmosphere and groundwater sources must be cleaned and purified.
- Violation of safety norms in industries must be recognised as a criminal offence.
- Efforts must be made to shift from such polluting industries to environment friendly ones.
Reprinted from: Radical Socialist statement on LG Polymers disaster
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Ultra-right protesters (with guns) push to ‘re-open’ the economy
Armed protesters gather on the steps of the Michigan state capitol in Lansing, on April 30. (Jeff Kowalsky / AP / Getty Images) By JOHN LESLIE
Protests continue to call for the reopening of the economy, with demonstrations in Michigan, Massachusetts, Texas, California, and other states. Many of the protesters are armed with rifles and handguns.
In Michigan, for the second time in two weeks, an “American Patriot Rally” took place on the state capitol steps on April 30. The event was initiated by Michigan United for Liberty and joined in by other right-wing groups. The thuggish Michigan Liberty Militia provided “security” for the action. Hundreds of armed protesters moved into the halls of the statehouse and crowded into the gallery of the state Senate after first demanding to be allowed on the House floor.
At a May 2 protest in Boise, Idaho, militia extremist Ammon Bundy compared government quarantine measures to the Nazi holocaust against Jews and called such government intervention “tyranny.” A “Reopen Philadelphia” protest, organized by small business owners and members of the far-right Proud Boys, will be held at City Hall on Friday, May 8.
This push to reopen is proceeding even though the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise in all of the states that are rushing to relax social distancing and lockdown rules. Trump administration policy set guidelines for the states to follow in easing restrictions, none of which have been met. Trump has expressed the need for distancing but also expressed support for these demonstrations as being the expression of “very good people.”
Actions backed by a section of the ruling class
These protests, which include armed far rightists and anti-science vaccination opponents, are being financed by a section of the capitalist class. All the most backward elements of U.S. society are being gathered under the broad banner of reopening the economy and “freedom.” The Charles Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are among the institutions pushing these reopen mobilizations.
The pro-business magazine Forbes notes that a web of “various gun rights groups, state Republican Party organizations, and conservative think tanks, religious and advocacy groups” as being behind the protests. Forbes states that these mobilizations are not a grassroots movement but are the product of a “cynical manipulation” by pro-business forces.
It’s clear that some capitalists see the necessity of getting the economy, and their profits, moving again by any means necessary. The Texas Lt. Governor has expressed the necessity of “sacrifice” in the name of the economy. Trump, speaking to ABC News, said: “There’ll be more death … I think we’re doing very well on the vaccines but, with or without a vaccine, it’s going to pass, and we’re going to be back to normal.” He continued, “We have to get our country back. … You know, people are dying the other way too.”
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie joined the death chorus by comparing the current situation to the sacrifices made during World War II, “We sent our young men during World War II over to Europe, out to the Pacific, knowing that many of them would not come home alive. And we decided to make that sacrifice because what we were standing up for was the American way of life. In the very same way now we have to stand up for the American way of life…” In brief, we must let people die for Wall Street.
When the meatpacking giant, Tyson, moved to shut down facilities in the face of spreading infection in the workforce, Trump issued an executive order under the Defense Production Act to force meat processors to stay open despite the risk to workers’ health. In several localities, Democratic Party officials have moved to abrogate union contracts as an emergency measure. The potential for workplace exposure is great and there is the potential for a large increase in COVID-19 cases nationally. Workers in retail, food production, transportation, warehousing and logistics, and other industries are endangered.
In testimony before Congress on May 6, epidemiologist Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, projected that based on “the number of people already infected and being infected now, the virus will have killed at least 100,000 people in the U.S. within a month [May]. He also stated that the situation would only worsen without extensive testing.
On the same day, however, conservative economist Avik Roy parroted one of Trump’s favorite lines to argue before a Senate committee that quarantine measures have not been necessary. “Thirty-seven thousand American die each year in traffic fatalities, and yet we don’t shut down the roads,” Roy said.
The lack of a centralized federal response, and the expectation that the states would develop their own policy and acquire their own equipment, tests, and PPE, has led to numerous unnecessary deaths. Trump opposes widespread testing, which is one of the keys to a safe relaxation of restrictions. In some cases, federal authorities have seized shipments en route to states and municipalities. This led to the GOP Governor of Maryland placing coronavirus tests acquired from South Korea under armed guard in a secret location.
A harbinger of fascism?
The demonstrations do not represent a mass fascist movement, but these far-right mobilizations carry the seeds of such a movement. A portion of the capitalist class sees fit to use these reactionary mobilizations to advance their interests. So far, however, the traditional “legal” channels for attacking workers suffice to meet the needs of most capitalists. This could change in the context of a broader, more militant, working-class fightback. It’s not inconceivable, for example, that armed rightists would attack workers who strike against dangerous working conditions.
The working class and its allies are the key to opposing these ultra-right demonstrations. Mass-action counter-mobilizations—based on the unions, community groups, and other working-class organizations—must be built to oppose this attack on working people. This includes the right to organize self-defense and to form defense guards, based in the mass organizations of the oppressed and exploited, to protect against far-right attacks.
Reliance on cops and courts for protection is not the answer. All too often we see police allying with far-right groupings. U.S. socialist leader Farrell Dobbs noted, “The line of the police is to defend the exercise of the formal democratic rights of the fascists, on the one hand, and not to ‘see’ the violations of the democratic rights of the fascists’ victims. Meanwhile, the cops take full advantage of any violation of bourgeois-democratic law that the antifascists may commit. In any kind of confrontation between antifascist and fascist forces, the basic line of the cops is to protect the fascists in any way they can and to join in the victimization of the antifascists.”
The labor movement also needs to raise broad demands for workplace safety and workers’ rights. Many parents are expected to return to work, but there is no provision for the care of children who are not in school, as school systems across the country remain shut down. The demand for safe, free child care is essential for parents to be able to work. The health-care system must be nationalized under democratic workers control. Health care must be considered a human right and not a privilege. To achieve even these modest goals will require political independence for working people from the Democratic Party.
A job should not be a death sentence! Cut the workweek with no loss in pay! Living wages for all! Mass testing and workplace safety now! Free, safe child care for all! Free healthcare for all!
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[Britain] Capitalism’s Response to COVID-19: Not Enough PPE, Even Less Testing, Many Die
The class nature of pandemics is revealed by the fact that in the Flu Pandemic of 2009 three times as many of the poorest died compared to the richest despite both groups having the same level of infection. Today NHS doctors, nurses, porters, and care workers, bus drivers, construction workers and many others are dying in increasing numbers due to inadequate Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) and the government’s refusal to carry out mass testing and tracing.
By Peter Windeler, International Socialist League UK
The absurdity of the situation is that in the UK the cost of the crisis will be at least £350bn, which is 3 times the annual cost of the NHS. However, the crisis could have been averted if preparations had been made in response to the warnings over many years.BAME and workers are dying
A high proportion of those dying are Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) workers. In The Observer the journalist Sonia Sodha has been inundated with a torrent of racist abuse after raising the issue. Sodha also disclosed that a prominent broadcaster had sharply reprimanded her for pointing this out.
The crisis is bringing to the fore racism within the UK. What is obvious to all is that the NHS could not survive without foreign workers, but these same workers have to pay an NHS levy of £2,200 a year just so that they and their families can use the NHS.
It is becoming more and more evident that workers are paying the price of the crisis. Those that are most at risk of losing their jobs are the young and less well paid while the better-off can continue to enjoy their salaries and are more able to work from home.
There is a crisis in care homes, where residents and staff are dying are just now coming to light. “Figures gathered from care homes by the Guardian this week show the actual death toll is considerably higher, while Care England and the National Care Forum, which represent home operators, have estimated that between 7,500 and 4,000 residents may have already died from Covid-19. The official figures rely on death certificates, which can take 11 days to process and may not always include Covid-19 as a cause of death, sometimes including deaths from flu, pneumonia or other underlying causes.”[i]Workers fight for control of H&S
Dangerous situations are coming to light for all those forced to work. There are increasing deaths of bus workers in London due to coronavirus. This has caused a rapid response from drivers who sealed front bus doors and demanded and got other PPE measures. Their union branch also asked to witness the deep cleaning bus companies say happens each night to the buses. Their struggle is the reason that buses in London are now free, as announced on 17 April. Because for bus drivers taking bus fares means death.[ii]
RMT rail workers on the London underground have also imposed control over health and safety measures. If a rail worker’s task or job is considered health threatening it is not done, and they demand full pay.Government in crisis as it does not deliver
There is a shrinking pile of PPE equipment and NHS staff are being told to work with smaller and less effective aprons. Government ministers warn that shortages of PPE could continue, and test rates remain low while the hospital death toll rose on Sunday to 16,060. With deaths in care homes and at home, the COVID-19 death toll is likely to be around 20,000 or more.
Testing is extremely delayed for many nurses, those, for example who have a high temperature are sent home, and many are not getting tested.
The government cannot answer the most basic needs of protection for many workers and the UK population – unless you’re rich or powerful.
In addition to hospitals PPE equipment is in needed in care homes, prisons, local authorities, undertakers, and in many non-essential factories that continue to work.Ruling class hypocrisy
Everyone knows there is a lockdown but the rich can decide where they live. Prince Charles received a COVID-19 test as he isolated on his Aberdeenshire estate and the Queen relocated to Windsor Castle. The Prime Minister relocated to his grace and favour country retreat. Chequers to recover from an apparent bout of COVID-19 after leaving St Thomas Hospital in London.
The Chief Medical Officer in Scotland had to resign as she was visiting her second home during weekends. The daughter of the government Minister, Michael Gove, jumping the queue ahead of home care residents and staff to obtain a virus test (which was negative). Cabinet Minister Robert Jenrick broke lockdown rules twice in moving to his “family” home 150 miles from London and far away from his constituency.Wrong strategies, broken plans and promises
The government’s strategy for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic has further been criticised. The government had to make an apparent change in its policy of “herd immunity”, however when this was changed to a policy of lockdown there was no accompanying contact tracing policy.
To effectively curtail the virus, as well as lockdown, there needs to be a policy of testing and contact tracing. It now appears that the government failed to use the 5,000 contact-tracing experts employed by local councils that already are in place.
Public Health England (PHE) had a team of 300 contact-tracing staff that it was using, but these were stood down in mid-March according to a report in The Guardian on 6 April. The 5,000 contact-tracers based in the councils were expecting to be called to start work and were re-organising their work in the expectation. But they were never asked.
According to Anthony Costello, a professor of global health at University College London, giving up on contact tracing was wrong. Speaking to a reporter from Channel 4 News, Costello explained that a lockdown is not a solution. It must be part of a strategy if suppression of the virus by reinstating contact tracing. It was a “guerrilla war”, and it was necessary to identify those infected, trace all their contacts and isolate each one to snuff out the virus. China, Singapore and South Korea had successfully attacked the problem this way.
Professor Costello explained that during their press briefings the government had been unable to explain what their strategy was. And without a strategy, that included contact tracing, it was evident that the government were still pursuing “herd immunity” and a possible 500,000 deaths. On Radio 4 on the 9th April, Professor Costello mentioned that the incompetence of Britain is revealed by the fact that it has a COVID-19 death rate of 100 times that of Japan.
In the early stages of the crisis, The Sunday Times reported a claim of “just let pensioners die” by Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s special adviser when arguing for implementing a policy of letting the disease rip through the country and so minimise its cost to big business. It has now come to light that associates of Cummings, who worked with him on the Brexit Leave Campaign, have been involved with modelling the effects of “targeted herd immunity” on behalf of the NHS. This was revealed in documents seen by The Guardian after the government, Health Secretary Matt Hancock, explicitly denied that the sacrificial “herd immunity” plan had been ditched.Cuts and Coronavirus: capitalism exposed
The government has no strategy to end the coronavirus crisis in the UK because capitalism has destroyed public services and left workers at risk of death by the virus has been exposed by the closing of the testing laboratories run by the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS).
Matt Hancock admitted that the UK “…did not have the scale” to undertake the testing required for the COVID-19 pandemic unlike Germany. A network of 50 laboratories spread across the UK that operated as a first line of defence against virus outbreaks were run down, closed and centralised after 2003. A process that began under a neo-liberal Labour government was continued by the Tories with the sole purpose of saving money and rewarding the capitalist class.
Disabling the PHLS has resulted in a crucial lack of capacity for extensive scale testing. To avoid the implementation of the mad “herd immunity” scenario and its accompanying 500,000 deaths, it will be necessary to implement testing, contact tracing and isolation. Without the first part the second part cannot happen.
As the pandemic overwhelms the health service people the most vulnerable, especially in care homes, are defenceless against the virus onslaught. In particular people with disabilities are particularly at risk.The truth revealed
A strange clique of right wing politicians now rules Britain. This clique only thinks of his or her short-term interests and are incapable of think strategically for the population.
The UK death rate is still rising and is set to exceed the daily deaths in Spain and Italy. In fact, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), in Seattle, estimate that the UK will be the worst hit of any European country. The UK with a projected death toll of 66,000 will eventually have more deaths than the combined deaths of Italy, Spain and France who all have tougher lockdown measures.
Despite the World Health Organisation urging a policy of “test, test, test” the UK government did not carry out that advice. The WHO, an organ of the UN, has seen its advice ignored by both the US and the UK whose leaders only concern is with their selfish, short term political calculations.
One report from a senior figure that witnessed the government at first hand said, “They were very slow, and they didn’t understand the scale of this.” He went on to say that those at the top were “blasé”, that emergency Cobra meetings were nothing like the efficient co-ordination exercises that have followed terror attacks, but ‘chaotic”.[iii]
Can there be an explanation for the incompetence of the ruling class? The deadly prospect for the UK reminds one of something Trotsky wrote in his monumental History of The Russian Revolution. Trotsky was describing the state of the Russian army and how it suffered more casualties than any of its allies in the First World War. He reminded the reader that the Russian soldier used black humour to cope with the prospect of his fate. A common saying was, “the war would continue until the last drop of Russian blood”.
In 1917, a stinking corpse of a system, desperate to cling on to power and prevent a workers’ revolution, ruled Russia. So, it pursued a policy of sending soldiers to die against a superior enemy. It even had an offensive in July 1917 just to appease it allies, Britain and France, which from 18 June to 6 July cost the lives of 56,000 men.
Similarly, the projected death toll in the UK of 60,000 can be seen as a sacrifice to the hedge fund managers that support the Tory party. The present capitalist class have allowed this crisis by running down public services and being incompetent when faced with the crisis itself.Coronavirus warnings ignored
The pandemic has been rationalised in the finance circles as a “Black Swan” event – something that is unforeseen and takes everyone by surprise. However, this is not the case. Many warnings have been issued to governments throughout the world but to no avail especially in the UK and the USA.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, the threat of a pandemic was not in the 5 top threats to the global economy.
Since 2008, when the banking system nearly collapsed, capitalism saved the banks and capitalism itself by pumping in money through quantative easing. This is a fairly straightforward method of buying government and company bonds. By doing so, the money in the system has to invest in shares and keep the economy afloat.
Eventually, as the theory goes, governments will be able to get their money back by just selling the bonds they bought. Quantative Easing has continued. The US has embarked on a fresh round of it to lessen the effects of the crisis. This is the pumping of money into the economy by governments. The government buys its own debt and debt issued by companies to keep the companies afloat and to force investors to use their money in the economy.
But due to coronavirus the pack of cards has collapsed. The disruption to the global economy will be greater than the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. In the US there is estimated to be an unemployment rate of 30%.
However as always, the hedge funds have been able to make billions from the chaos in the money markets and stock exchanges.
Everything has now changed. The stability of the EU is threatened as the richer countries like Germany and the Netherlands refuse to share the financial burden with Spain and Italy and continue to impose strict measures on Greece. The French government stopped a company fulfilling an order of masks by the NHS and Germany has accused the US of highjacking a shipment of masks bound for them from China.
The Guardian on 10 November, quoted Marx from 1868 saying that if a nation ceases work it perishes. This is why there is now a drive to stop the lockdown and start up the economy. The government has to keep paying out, which will lead to an inflationary spiral, as it has authorised the Bank of England to print money without any value backing it up. It is very possible that hyper-inflation will merge with recession.
As the pandemic subsides one thing for sure is that the economic contradictions will not go way. Banks will essentially be insolvent and only keep going because of government bailouts. Unemployment will be higher and there will be an increase in precarious work. The social and health services will be under ever more pressure. Added to this will be a continuing reduction in living standards as inflation undermines what people can buy with whatever money they have.
The only way capitalism has prepared for pandemics was to close down as many public services as it could. For the moment the rich West has ensured the survival of capitalism. However, the less developed countries of the world are now left looking over the precipice. Future deeper crises are guaranteed, and revolutionary upsurges will intensify in the oppressed and also in the imperialist countries as a result.
No crisis can be truly overcome without a fight against the cause – the pandemic of capitalism. To live under capitalism means one crisis after another or even at the same time. Today workers are dying because capitalism will not protect them from COVID-19. It has to be overthrown in the fight for socialism. But that fight can only develop its full extent with a revolutionary party that fights for mass mobilisations, for workers’ control and a workers, not a parliamentary government
PPE for all staff and MASS testing and tracing!
Organise in your workplaces – NO safety – NO work – FULL pay!
Support all actions by workers to save their lives!
Defend our lives – fight for workers’ power – fight for socialism!
[i] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/coronavirus-deaths-in-care-homes-in-england-and-wales-more-than-quadruple-in-a-week
[ii] https://www.itv.com/news/london/2020-04-06/seal-doors-shut-to-protect-drivers-demands-union-after-london-bus-workers-die/
[iii] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/coronavirus-crisis-has-transformed-our-view-of-whats-important -
The Indian Lock-down
For the last 30 days the Indian government has imposed the biggest lockdown in human history. The movements and work of over a billion people have been effectively shut. Public offices are closed, vital public transport has been stopped. Cities with millions of inhabitants appear like ghost towns with empty streets shuttered shops and offices. These are the measures the Indian government has implemented to combat the spread of the coronavirus, possibly the greatest pandemic in the 21st century. Hidden from view, is the suffering of the most vulnerable sections of the working class and peasantry who rely on daily earnings to sustain themselves, and migrant labourers who suddenly find themselves stuck in their work cities without any means of returning home. Against their immiserization, migrant workers and daily wagers have protested across the country, in some instances these have turned violent.
By Mazdoor Inqilab India
It was not a surprise that the right wing government was vicious towards the poor of this country, and held nothing but contempt towards the vast majority of Indians who are working men and women. What the lockdown reveals was that it is also colossally incompetent in its approach.The chronology of the virus in India
The first reported case was that of a student returning from Wuhan in China to Thrissur district in Kerala, this was reported on the 30th of January. Since then, India began screening international travelers, but no ban or quarantining measures were implemented. International flights continued to operate and the risk of overseas Indians returning from countries affected by the virus remained a threat. Indeed, till the beginning of the lockdown on 24th march, the vast majority of early cases being reported were of people with a history of foreign travel who had just returned, or of individuals who had been in contact with such individuals. Yet, despite the risks, and despite knowing full well of the contagious nature of the virus, the government chose to avoid taking necessary early steps in implementing wider quarantine and travel restrictions till the 11th of March. On February 24th the Modi government rolled the red carpet for the US president Donald Trump in an event called ‘Namaste Trump’ . Thousands had gathered for it in the city of Ahmedabad.
Through the month of march more and more cases came to light, some of them like that of the Kanika Kapoor case highlighted the brazenness of the Indian elite. Kanika Kapoor was a wealthy pop singer who had thrown a grand party at her home in Haryana, she would eventually test positive for the coronavirus along with some of her relatives who had attended her ‘house warming party’. She had hid her travel history from the authorities. In another instance, a student from Kolkata who had returned from England tested positive for the virus. He had hid his travel history from the authorities and was tested positive only after showing symptoms.The failure of the authorities to effectively trace and monitor would lead to a much larger problem when the virus did begin expanding, yet the government clearly dragged it’s feet on the issue. It wasn’t until the 22nd of March (about 51 days after the first reported case of the virus) that the government decided to act with a “one day self-quarantine” .
The Modi government in its usual blusterous fashion, announced self-quarantine on a Sunday, with a call to bang utensils to show solidarity in a time of crisis. Even this ‘self-quarantine’ was rather ironically broken by the most zealous supporters of the government who came out on the streets, sometimes making a festival of banging utensils. Many had rightly guessed that this would be a primer for a nationwide lockdown, and the government’s method of easing the population into it. The lockdown was announced on the 24th of March and originally intended for 21 days, Since the implementation of the lockdown, all the shortcomings of the government’s preparations and the shortcomings of India’s healthcare infrastructure came to light.
The trains were shut, the planes were grounded, and trucks and road transport came to a halt. Industries and shops closed overnight, banks, utilities, and businesses suddenly closed down throwing millions of people out of work, particularly those who were employed on a contract or casual basis.A crisis decades in the making
When the pandemic hit India, our healthcare system was woefully unprepared to handle it. This was no secret, but it was only after the fact that the weakness of Indian healthcare came to light. At the outset India found itself handicapped for not having enough doctors A study from 2019 shows that India is missing 6,00,000 doctors and 2 million nurses. Add to this the fact, that India has one of the most privatized healthcare systems in the world, immediately the vast majority of Indians who are poor can’t afford access to healthcare, this despite having universal healthcare coverage. Most publicly owned hospitals lack necessary staff, equipment and infrastructure to handle a large inflow of patients and can’t even afford to pay their medicare workers enough.
Junior doctors, nurses and staff have been agitating for years for better pay, better protection and recognition of their demands without the government budging on the issue. Now that India is in the grip of a pandemic, it is the healthcare workers who are on the forefront in the fight against the virus. It is also the medical workers who have been found to be the most exposed to the virus, especially given the paucity of adequate protective gear.Masks, gloves, and other gear were all in short supply throughout the country, while production has only just been ramped up, in the early days India was forced to rely entirely on imports to meet its requirements. A fallout from this was a spike of cases where medical workers were found diagnosed with coronavirus. The most glaring case of this was Mumbai’s Wockhartd hospital which had to be turned into a quarantine zone.
Such cases of infections among medical workers and professionals are doubly dangerous in the Indian context where neither do we have enough hospital beds to treat patients, nor do we have enough number of doctors and nurses to treat patients. The quality of care from the professionals vary as well, with medical quackery being an endemic problem in India. Of the availability of beds and ventilators and other critical equipment, less said the better ! India has only 713,986 beds for a population over a billion, that amounts to a paltry half a bed for a thousand people. The number of ventilators, essential for treating critical cases, the disparity becomes even more stark.
At the same time Indian phramaceutical industry, while lauded for its role in generic drug supply to the world, still suffers from lack of adequate research and development. Research and development for new vaccines and anti-microbial drugs have slowed down since the 1960s due to lack of profitable investment in this field. For most of its history since independence, India has ignored its healthcare sector and allowed the rise of a vicious, exploitative profit driven healthcare sector which throws fifty seven million people into poverty every year. All of this has now come to a head in this time of pandemic as India finds itself unbelievably strained to fight the pandemic. As late as November of 2019 India was spending a paltry 1.29% of its GDP on healthcare. As a total of budgeted expanse, India’s expenditure on healthcare is lower than its expenditure on rail transport and less than a third of what India spends on the ministry of defense. The neglect towards healthcare has come to bite India, and it is the poor and working class who suffer the most.The class divide
After the Prime Minister’s appeal, his most virulent supporters, who are overwhelmingly from among the middle and upper middle classes, turned the lockdown and the quarantine measures into a celebratory moment. They banged their utensils when he told them to, they lit torches when he asked them to light candles, all the while medical workers and doctors were falling sick, treating coronavirus patients, and pleading for adequate protective gear. He calls them heroes on his tv broadcast but censors them and threatens with arrest when they raise these legitimate issues about India’s healthcare infrastructure.
While the middle class and star celebrities were extolling the virtues of social distancing, remaining home and making videos about what they did under lockdown, the working class, especially migrant workers, were suffering. After the initial lockdowns migrant workers were literally stranded in their cities of work, since train services and road transport was curtailed, they took to walking back home, often these would involve treks over hundreds of miles. Many simply died along the way, either due to exhaustion or accidents. The march home had for many turned into a march of death. The authorities often resorted to heavy handed tactics to curb the movements of migrants and enforce social distancing and lockdown measures. Policemen patrolling empty streets beating migrant labourers were a common sight, even children were not spared from the cane of the of the police. At one point government authorities in the state of Uttar Pradesh, governed by a religious fundamentalist Yogi Adityanath, had resorted to spraying migrants with disinfectants in scenes reminiscent of the early 20th century United States, where Mexican migrants were sprayed before being allowed in to work. This was not the only humiliation they had to endure during this lockdown, video footage exists of policemen in the same state forcing migrants to walk on their knees. The toll of this humiliation, the loss of earning, the hardship of travel has led to endemic suicides among migrant workers. One study suggests up to two hundred may have died from the effects of the lockdown among migrant workers, most of them being deaths due to starvation, exhaustion, police brutality or loss of income. ( https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/the-human-cost-of-indias-coronavirus-lockdown-deaths-by-hunger-starvation-suicide-and-more-1.1586956637547 ) .
When reports started coming out of the plight of workers, the right wing government, who in any case think of the poor as less than human, was caught with its pants down. Immediately they rushed to bring busses to transport migrant workers to their home states, these caused massive crowds in cities like Delhi and Mumbai where most migrant workers go for their work. For most within Northern India, their home state lay in the far Eastern states of Bihar, Jharhkhand and West Bengal. In the South it is typically either Eastern states or from Tamil Nadu. These are usually hundreds of miles from the main economic centers of india in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore. The government never thought to consider the impact of the lockdown when it was suddenly proclaimed on the 24th of March, they never considered the cascading effects of such a massive and sudden disruption to the poorest sections of the working class for whom their daily earnings are everything. Food scarcity compounded to the point where scenes of workers scraping for food, eating spilled milk from streets beside dogs.
After all these hardships, workers have not taken these humiliations and deprivations lying down. Recently there was a massive protest gathering in Surat and Mumbai by migrant workers demanding food, or transport back home. In a few cases workers have even rioted over food. With transports curbed and police patrols putting fear into people, food supplies have fallen across the board. Markets appear barren, and people are starving. The deaths from starvation are not being systematically reported, and the mainstream media, always in the lap of the government, have been doing little but lauding the government for its ‘decisive’ action in locking down the country, without regard to the hardships of the poor.What this pandemic has taught us
The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the horrible state of healthcare in India and the sheer incapability of Indian capitalism to provide the most basic needs to the vast majority of its people. The weaknesses of Indian capitalism have only be exemplified by an insensitive and incompetent right wing reactionary government in power, in the form of the BJP and its ‘great leader’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi. An alternative model is given to us in the form of Kerala, the lone Indian state which has succeeded in flattening the curve of the contagion, and limited the number of deaths due to the virus. Despite the lockdown, Kerala has been able to ameliorate some of the worst effects of the lockdown on migrant workers and used a decentralized approach, rooted in scientific data and careful preparedness to combat the spread of the virus. Unlike most Indian states, Kerala is a state that has taken prevention seriously and invested well in the healthcare sector with an eye towards access to healthcare. (https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/kerala-people-centric-health-system-coronavirus_in_5e875d55c5b6a9491835cb9e?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABy7aimhfRxEAOPsJmYYTHjkYEmu6-DplZBYMnlyazSdG9sM0giDRA4lxcVcfr62HfhT10vbaPvo2th9VoEyFBcC4ZSMvQGP-4LYVTD4wh9D84kpBIiH5iDJkBc3YziN44kg_stI33Ps7uKEP_HuUnf4nnbADXz538Baz6dpJIDv)
Yet, even the Kerala model is not without its shortcomings, it continues to suffer from shortages of equipment, from funding, and from a shortage of doctors. A more radical solution is needed to fix Indian healthcare, in the very least it should begin with a massive increase in healthcare spending including emphasis on medical research. Private healthcare has proven how useless and inadequate it is in dealing with the most pressing demands for basic healthcare. Profit driven healthcare is nothing but grotesque and parasitical, feeding off the misery of the masses to fill its coffers. India, which has the most privatized healthcare in the world, stands as testament for the failure of privately owned profit driven medicare.
What the masses of India needs is a nationalized health service, run democratically and in the interests of the people. This requires a socialist solution , which goes well beyond the capabilities of what Indian capitalism is capable of delivering ! FOR A NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE ! This is a key moment in our history, and we cannot let irresponsible greed driven private hospitals hold the country hostage. NATIONALIZE THE HOSPITALS ! Not a penny to private healthcare !
At the same time, the Narendra Modi government has proven its viciousness against the poor, and its complete failure in dealing with a dire crisis such as the Coronavirus. Without any plan to care about what hardships the poor would face, the government arbitrarily imposed a lockdown, without a single measure to ameliorate the conditions of the working class. The crisis has exposed the class divide in Indian society and revealed in stark fashion, who are the most vulnerable sections of the Indian working class. We demand BAIL OUT THE POOR ! An immediate package to cover expenses of the poor to take care of rations and housing needs during the lockdown.
At the same time, migrant workers need a specialized transport to help in returning home from their place of work. OPEN THE TRAINS! LET THEM GO HOME! At the same time, proper measures must be taken to track and trace coming migrant workers a provision must be made in hospitals for their immediate treatment and quarantining.
Across the country, we are seeing a dual crisis caused by the lack of crucial medical infrastructure, deficit in healthcare workers, and a complete neglect of the public healthcare sector. While the crisis did not begin with the BJP, the present government has given it a new vicious dimension. For the avoidable deaths of migrant workers and the poor, for the suffering and chaos caused by the government’s delayed response against the threat of the virus, we must lay the blame for this crisis at the feet of the BJP and the Narendra Modi government.
DOWN WITH MODI ! DOWN WITH THE BJP!
FOR A WORKER’S AND PEOPLE’S GOVERNMENT!
FOR A SOCIALIST INDIA IN A SOCIALIST SOUTH ASIAN FEDERATION!(links :
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/india-facing-shortage-of-600000-doctors-2-million-nurses-study/articleshow/68875822.cms?from=mdr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_India#January
https://scroll.in/article/958761/middle-class-entitlement-is-weakening-indias-battle-against-the-coronavirus
https://www.indiatoday.in/movies/celebrities/story/kanika-kapoor-tested-positive-for-coronavirus-the-third-time-confirm-hospital-officials-1660463-2020-03-27
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/mumbais-wockhardt-hospital-declared-containment-zone-as-26-nurses-and-three-doctors-test-positive/articleshow/75001148.cms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MKE28vDGqg
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-s-public-health-spending-lagging-behind/story-6YPZFSfWMVlHGipDXyUEFO.htmlhttps://qz.com/india/1826384/indias-coronavirus-lockdown-has-triggered-mass-migration-on-foot/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsqdUandqQc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR8rwjBB6Xo
https://www.news18.com/news/india/amid-covid-19-lockdown-migrant-workers-protest-in-surat-for-better-food-2580307.html
https://www.news18.com/news/india/migrant-workers-gather-at-mumbais-bandra-bus-stand-demand-arrangement-of-transport-to-return-home-2577497.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/chaos-hunger-india-coronavirus-lockdown-200327094522268.html -
COVID-19: Meat industry still closing plants as Trump urges re-openings
Workers at the Tyson plant in Emporia, Kan., in 2007. (Charlie Riedel / AP) By ADAM RITSCHER
Tyson Foods has announced it will be closing its meat-processing plant in Madison, Neb., indefinitely due to a COVID-19 outbreak there. Over 1200 workers are employed at the plant. The facility is one of four that the corporation has closed just in the last week. Tyson stated that their sales have dropped 15% and continue to fall as plants get shut down across the country and the meat industry’s supply chain is beginning to break down.
Tyson’s woes began back in early April when they shut their Columbus Junction, Iowa, plant after 148 workers had tested positive for COVID-19 and two of them had died. Following a public outcry, the company agreed to close their plant in Waterloo, Iowa, after 180 workers tested positive there. (The Waterloo plant is due to re-open this week.)
The Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union (part of the UFCW), which represents the 2000 workers at Tyson’s chicken-processing factory in Camilla, Ga., announced on April 17 that four workers there had died of COVID-19. The union went on to denounce the company’s slow response to the pandemic, and its failure to get adequate protective gear to their workers.
Nevertheless, company executives initially pushed back against calls that they should be testing all of their workers. This shocking resistance to basic preventative measures has led to an outcry by concerned citizens and local officials in many of the communities that Tyson has plants. All the while, workers continued to get sick and even die.
Begrudgingly, the company announced that it was closing its plant in Center, Texas—a community that because of Tyson has a COVID-19 infection rate four times higher than the rest of the state. On April 23, after a worker had died and 90 had tested positive for the virus, the company agreed to close their Wallula, Wash., plant.
Similarly, the Tyson plant in Dakota, Neb., closed on April 27, but not until at least 608 people had tested positive for the virus, and a worker had died. Dakota has a population of 20,000 people, but now has an infection rate 20 times higher than Omaha.
Overall, the meat industry has been hit very hard by the pandemic. At least 167 meatpacking and processing plants in the country have workers who have tested positive for COVID-19, according to tracking by USA Today. Over 9400 workers in the industry have been infected, and at least 45 have died. And at least 38 meatpacking plants have ceased operations at some point since the start of the COVID crisis.
The hesitancy of Tyson to issue proper PPE and to take other preventive measures to limit the transmission of the virus is not unique. Tyson’s facilities, along with Smithfield’s, have been getting a lot of press coverage, in part because of the size of their plants and the large percentage of the meat market that they control. But their penny-pinching practices seem to very much be the norm throughout the whole industry. National Beef, JBS USA, Hormel, Foster Farms, Empire Kosher, Wayne Farms, Allen Harim, Bell & Evans, Conagra, American Foods, OSI, and Cargill have all reported high infection rates.
It’s a travesty that the health and safety of this industry’s workers has been treated so cavalierly up until now. But their suffering is not likely to end any time soon. As a result of all of these plant closings, the country’s meat supply is beginning to drop. For example, there has seen a 50% drop in the slaughtering of hogs. Many farmers no longer have anywhere to sell their livestock. Some grocery store chains, like Kroger and Costco, have already announced that they are limiting how much meat customers can buy in some stores because of the drop in supply.
Washington and Wall Street have responded to this supply problem by urging the big meat companies to re-open closed facilities. And this has already begun to happen. Tyson recently began re-opening their plant in Logansport, Ind., despite the fact that 900 workers tested positive for COVID-19 there. And Smithfield is in the process of re-opening their Sioux Falls, S.D., plant even after over 1000 workers were infected.
The Trump administration issued an executive order on April 28 saying it would do everything possible to get shuttered plants to re-open. But so far they seem more concerned about corporate profits and liability issues than worker safety. The guidelines of Trump’s order state merely that plants have to make “good faith” efforts to keep workers safe. The administration has offered to re-open some of the plants under the Defense Production Act, which would then make Tyson, Smithfield, and others immune from being sued by their workers or the communities that these plants are located in.
Unions representing meat industry workers are calling instead for far more aggressive measures to be taken to provide for social distancing, proper PPE to be made available, and for schedules and breaks to be arranged in a way that doesn’t force workers to congregate in large numbers.
As socialists, we support these union demands. However, we call for an even bigger national response. We believe that what is called for is for these plants to be nationalized and put under workers’ control. Who would run them more safely than those whose lives are on the line?
Similarly, non-essential production needs to be nationalized and retooled to make the kind of medical equipment, PPE, and virus tests that are needed by everybody, but especially by front-line workers like those in the food processing industries. We also call for these workers to be given 200% hazard pay, along with free medical care, housing, and food for the length of the pandemic.
We’ve already seen how the capitalists handle the crisis. It’s time to turn things around and put working people in control of things!
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Cross-border feminism and socialist revolution
September 2019 march protesting violence against women in Durban, South Africa. (BBC) By ERICA ARADIA
The world crisis of capitalism is more obvious to more people than ever before. The pandemic has revealed the horrific lengths to which the world’s ruling classes will go in their efforts to preserve profits, with human suffering barely considered. But the result has not only been suffering. We have also seen the rise of heroic resistance to pandemic disaster capitalism. And nowhere has that resistance to mass working-class death been more inspiring than among the mostly women and gender non-conforming care and health workers around the world.
This is not surprising. Because working women, well before the pandemic, have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to struggle. From Poland to Argentina, from Turkey to Chile, women have been organizing massive one-day strikes around March 8. These “women’s strikes” against domestic servitude have grown to involve immigrant and low-wage women in their millions, and in some cases won the support of major national trade-union confederations who turned women’s strikes into actual one-day general strikes in Italy and other nations.
Perhaps no mobilization of women was as historic as that of the women in Chile during last fall’s uprising against the Piñera government. It is these women who in the last few months have initiated a global network of activists from the women’s strike movement and urged a worldwide response, not just to the pandemic but also to the accompanying economic crisis. This network aims to make sure that the gendered impact of the current crisis is understood everywhere.
Together we created the, “Cross-Border Feminist Manifesto: Emerge From the Pandemic Together and Change the System.” It was written by 50 womxn and LGBTQI+ folks from 20 countries, including Ecuador, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, United States, Italy, France, and Kurdistan.
The Manifesto marks an important moment in the cross-border feminist movement towards the global solidarity of the working class. It outlines how this pandemic further exposes capitalism’s systematic exploitation of the most vulnerable during this crisis, namely working-class women and gender-non-conforming people who are essential workers, people of color, women, LGBTQI+, Indigenous persons, people who are detained or imprisoned, and immigrants and migrants. In this way, the Manifesto understands the crisis of this pandemic as something that is deeply connected to the struggle against capitalism, patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and colonialism.
For example, persons in Gaza have been under militarized lockdown and occupation for nearly two decades. And the struggle for Palestinian liberation against Israeli Occupation is made more precarious by the virus in which Palestinian COVID testing sites are shut down by Israeli forces, Palestinians are continuing to be imprisoned and detained, and persons living in Gaza are denied medical care and supplies.
The Manifesto outlines the struggles faced by Indigenous communities and Native peoples, migrants, immigrants, refugees, persons living in Kurdistan and Occupied Palestine, and imprisoned persons. It highlights how these groups’ ongoing struggles for liberation are made all the more vulnerable during this pandemic. For example, capitalism and neoliberalism are reflected in the militarization and over-policing of urban and rural environments and of Indigenous territories, where armed forces are taking advantage of the pandemic to further terrorize people.
For this reason and many more, the document starts by saying, “We will not go back to normality, because normality was the problem,” outlining how the crisis of the pandemic reveals and intensifies gender and racially based violence and the hierarchies and structural roots of oppression, exploitation, and inequality of colonial, capitalist patriarchy. This can be seen in the increasing rates of femicides, domestic violence, and violence against LGBTQI+ persons all over the world since this pandemic began. Stay-at-home orders in the context of domestic violence can be life threatening. High rates of COVID in prisons, jails, and detention facilities, where the majority of prisoners in the U.S. and around the world are people of color, highlights the underlying discrimination of mass incarceration.
Moreover, in many cases the crisis of the pandemic is being used to further restrict sexual and reproductive rights of women and LGBTQI+ people, such as in Texas and Alabama, where abortion has been outlawed during the pandemic. In regards to racial disparity, Black, indigenous, and Latinx populations in the United States are dying and testing higher for COVID due to structural, racial, and class inequalities that put People of Color more at risk in their day-to-day lives. In this way, we see that capitalism and racism are the public health crises. So while coronavirus affects all of us, the effects of the pandemic are differentiated based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, documentation status, etc. This is why the crisis of the pandemic demands a cross-border feminist response.
The Manifesto also situates the crisis of the pandemic within the context of the global ecological crisis, asserting that the environmental and ecological devastation brought on by capitalism and imperialism has led to the imbalances that have allowed the spread of epidemics like coronavirus through widespread extraction of natural resources, industrial and large-scale production of food, single-crop farming, and pollution.
The Manifesto outlines how this crisis makes more precarious women’s and LGBTQI+ people’s productive and socially reproductive labor. It states, “The capitalist patriarchal system assigns the care of the most vulnerable, the elders and the children, to women, increasing the burden of domestic care work. Simultaneously, many women workers—nurses, janitors, grocery store workers, cashiers, farmworkers, pharmacists—have to be on the frontline of this emergency, working long hours in hazardous conditions, and often for miserable wages. Unwaged and precarious labor is strained, and domestic and care workers are struggling to pay for food, medical care, housing, etc. In this way, women and LGBTQI+ people’s lives are sacrificed to sustain the crisis, while at the same time bodies that are deemed ‘unproductive,’ as well as people with disabilities, are invisible and unprotected.”
Additionally, the document outlines and rejects the neoliberal measures all over the world that have led to austerity and the privatization of health care, social systems, and education. This means rejecting the trillion-dollar bailouts to banks that support the 1% and private companies that profit from the pandemic. The Manifesto states, “Although state measures are heterogeneous, the capitalist response to the crisis follows the same logic everywhere in the world: putting profits before our lives and unloading on the working class the costs of this crisis. This is why we want a cross-border feminist way out of the crisis, so that we will not return to a normality structured by inequality and violence.”
The Manifesto highlights how working-class people worldwide are “protesting to denounce the increase of femicides and domestic violence. Domestic workers are denouncing their extreme insecurity and lack of rights. Nurses and doctors are protesting the lack of protective equipment. Thousands of workers in warehouses and factories are going on strike because they refuse to sacrifice their health for corporate profits. Indigenous women continue to fight against the theft and destruction of their sovereign land. In every jail and prison, the detained are decrying inhumane conditions in an extremely racist prison-industrial complex.
“Everywhere, Black people are denouncing institutional racism in the management of the pandemic and migrants are resisting immigrant detention facilities and policies that harm migrant workers. Sex workers continue to demand the decriminalization of their jobs so that they are no longer excluded from social welfare or stigmatized by the patriarchal colonial capitalist system. In Rojava, Kurdish women in the midst of an historic resistance to war are responding to the pandemic by cross-border strengthening of their confederal self-organization, as well as community health and expanded networks of self-managed and ecological economies.”
These examples illuminate the ways in which women and LGBTQI+ persons are responding to the pandemic and fighting for a collective liberation that must be inherently anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial. We cannot continue to repeat harm caused by past feminist movements and white, transphobic, liberal feminism, which has neglected the degree to which racism, ethno-nationalism, gender identity, classism and imperialism shape the experience of misogyny for the majority of women and gender non-conforming persons of this world.
As revolutionary socialists, we need a working-class movement that is cross-border and lived and led by working-class women and gender non-conforming persons. A movement that puts at the forefront the specific needs of those who carry the heaviest burden of social reproduction—that is, women and gender non-conforming people who make up half our class. Without doing so, we will never make a revolution. We understand that there will be no class struggle left if it is not rooted in the ideals of eliminating women’s oppression.
Revolutions are made by the working class in its vast majority, with its most combative sectors, often women, at the lead. Revolutions must be supported by a thousand strands of community and social organizations maintained by women who channel and unleash the rage of centuries of oppression, showing us another world is possible. Today, the highly militant mobilizations of young women around the world signify that we are entering a new period of class struggle that may just place the prospect of socialist revolution on the horizon.
The new networks of revolutionary women are spaces in which the desperately important work of revolutionary socialist regroupment must take place. I hope that you all join us there—today to fight pandemic capitalism, tomorrow to build a new world party of revolution.
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The relevance of Marx at 200
Most of this article originally appeared in Left Voice (https://www.leftvoice.org/The-Relevance-of-Marx-at-200 ). An additional section has been reprinted from The Blanquist, (https://blanquist.blogspot.com/2020/05/first-principles.html?fbclid=IwAR2bLwTgX-rRfnBHg0GITu525BT-pGQDjltOagkMEFIpU4eexlkdkPh0-7w ), with an explanatory note by the author.
May 5 is the 200th birthday of Karl Marx. However, what is there to celebrate? Surely, Marx is out of date now with the fall of the Soviet Union and the triumph of capitalism.
While capitalism’s champions declared that the system was basically sound, the markets crashed in 2007/2008, unleashing the worst economic crisis since 1929. In the United States, the supposed success of capitalism, a handful of wealthy corporations hold the majority of the wealth, and close to 50 million citizens live below the poverty line.[1]
Since the crisis, there has been a renewed interest in Marx’s criticism of capitalism. According to Gareth Stedman Jones, author of the recent biography “Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion,” “he gave an amazing picture of the developmental logic of capitalism itself—how it creates world markets, how it invents new needs, how it subverts inherited cultural practices and disregards hierarchies and so on.”
He hastens to add, “What we should say is that capitalism may be an inevitable feature of the world, but it can be controlled. It can be channeled into less destructive forms, and that’s what political parties should aspire to do.”[2] In other words, we cannot fundamentally change capitalism because it is the best economic system we have, and trying to do so necessarily leads to tragedy. However, to reduce Marx to just an insightful critic of capitalism is to forget his life’s work as a theorist and practitioner of communist revolution. There lies the enduring relevance of Marx’s work.
The Communist Manifesto
In 1847-8, Marx and his life-long comrade Frederick Engels co-wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party at the behest of a small German revolutionary group, the Communist League. While the Manifesto was little read at the time of its publication, it has gone down in history as one of the single most influential political pamphlets ever written. The Communist Manifesto contains Marx’s most succinct summary of historical materialism, critique of capitalism, and the need for working class revolution.
The Manifesto’s starting point is that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”[3] This is the basic view of the Marxist theory of history, and while class struggles were recognized as a factor in history by bourgeois writers before Marx, what he did was to recognize that the class struggle was a law of social change. Throughout history, there have been struggles between different classes: “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight…”[4] The existence of class struggle between exploiters and exploited is just as true today as it was in 1848.
Marx and Engels lauded the great achievements of the bourgeoisie and the rise of capitalism. The opening sections of the Manifesto describe capitalism as a dynamic and ever-revolutionizing system, which reshapes all of society after its own image. Rather than looking back fondly on feudalism, Marx and Engels saw capitalism as an advance on what came before. The new system of factories and mass production changed the very conditions of life and caused leaps in technological advancement. Thanks to new inventions, one worker could perform the labor of ten or even a hundred in a fraction of the time. Markets expanded across the world, propelled by the steam engine, cheap goods, and the railroad.
In 1848, when capitalism was still in its infancy, the Manifesto was prophetic in its future vision of capitalism conquering the world:
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. … The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”[5]
Indeed, Marx and Engels conclude: “The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.”[6]
However, this praise of capitalism is conditional; in fact, the Manifesto also serves as a funeral oration for the bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels viewed capitalism as releasing forces which it could not control “like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world that he has called up by his spells.”[7] Capitalism lacks any plan or logic; its goal is not the satisfaction of human needs but the subordination of everything to the need for profit and capital accumulation. Crises bring unemployment, misery, and want.
At the same time as the birth of the bourgeoisie, there is the creation of the proletariat—the modern working class. Workers are a unique product of capitalism—a class of wage earners without property and with nothing to sell save their labor power. They are the creators of social wealth, but their labor only serves to enrich the bourgeoisie. The proletariat resists their exploitation, slowly and in small battles at first, but gradually they unite on a larger scale to fight.
In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels say that a great feature of the modern epoch was that “[s]ociety as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other—Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”[8] In 1848, the working class was only a majority in Britain, while throughout most of the world it didn’t exist. However, Marx and Engels brilliantly forecast the future growth of the working class. Despite claims that the working class is no longer relevant, now the working class numbers in the hundreds of millions in countries such as China and India. If anything, the working class is more of a historical force than it has ever been.
The drive towards capitalist accumulation has resulted in wars and revolutions. This was true during the twentieth century in the aftermath of the Great Depression with the rise of fascism and the Second World War. Big convulsions like that are not a thing of the past. Today, the U.S. remains mired in an imperial occupation of Afghanistan, while launching attacks on at least a half-dozen countries. Capitalism’s crises continue to spawn popular revolts from the Arab Spring, to the general strikes in Greece, to Occupy and Black Lives Matter in the U.S. If anything, Marx’s analysis of capitalism’s crisis remains more relevant today than in 1848.
According to the Manifesto, the working class is the only revolutionary class under capitalism, and their position in production makes them uniquely placed to overthrow it. Their very conditions of life compel the working class to organize and resist, creating a larger movement. The workplace is where they produce wealth and are forced to labor together for capital. With organization and consciousness, the proletariat can organize themselves collectively to run society in their own interests. The interests of the working class as a whole, regardless of whether or not they are consciously revolutionary, are diametrically opposed to the interests of capital, which leads them to struggle. The general course of working-class struggles, with ever-increasing boldness and radicalism, leads them outside of a bourgeois framework. Ultimately, the proletariat is the only class with the social weight and potential power to lead a revolution. While past revolutions replaced one ruling class with another minority ruling class, the proletarian revolution is different: “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”[9] The proletarian revolution is, thus, not simply a revolution of the working class, but it is a struggle against all forms of exploitation and oppression, no matter whom they affect.
Once the workers are combined with knowledge of their exploitation and the means to end it, they will lead a revolution to create a communist society, where “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”[10]
The Communist Manifesto took communism out of the realm of sentimental daydreams and gave it a real material and historical basis. Before 1848, there had been revolts and rebellions by the oppressed and exploited for liberation. Most of these great rebels possessed no scientific understanding of the world and believed themselves at the mercy of fate. All those struggles failed because the material conditions for their realization had not arrived. The advent of capitalism had created the possibilities for an egalitarian society. Marx and Engels understood this, providing the working class with a theory of how society was fraught with class struggle, the laws of motion of capitalism, and the necessity for revolution. Engels later said that the Manifesto laid down “the line of action” for communists to fight “as one common army under one and the same flag.”[11]
Working-Class Politics
Marx was an active leader in two organizations—the Communist League and later the First International—where he developed the fundamentals of working-class politics. His guiding axiom was that “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.”[12]
The essential task Marx saw for the working class was to become conscious of its historical mission and to transform itself into a political movement—a revolutionary communist party separate and opposed to all bourgeois parties—with the aim of seizing power. This did not mean abstaining from political struggle, neglecting to defend democratic freedoms, or refusing to fight for reforms, but that workers needed to do so under their own banner and to build their fighting capacity. Unfortunately, it is a lesson that the working class needs to constantly relearn in light of many betrayals and panaceas.
The Paris Commune
The dictatorship of the proletariat is often said to be synonymous with the grim bureaucratic police states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. When Marx invoked the term, he meant something entirely different, but for the working class to rule society through new democratic institutions in a manner fundamentally different from capitalist oligarchs. During Marx’s lifetime, he hailed the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871 for “storming the heavens” and as “the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor.”[13] While the Commune went down in defeat, its example has inspired revolutions and revolts throughout the world.
However, the Commune’s errors were not repeated by successful revolutions such as that of the Bolsheviks. Lenin, who built upon Marx, recognized that centralized leadership by a revolutionary party was needed in order to coordinate struggles. Secondly, it was necessary to smash the counterrevolution through a swift offensive. In a time when many are looking for easy paths to socialism such as by elections or supporting friendly progressives, we need to be reminded of the lessons of the Commune and the hard reality of what is needed to win.
Capital
During the long years of exile, Marx devoted himself to study in the British library in order to complete his magnum opus: Das Kapital. Marx’s goal was “to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.”[14] In this work, left incomplete, Marx covers many topics such as the nature of commodities, the exploitation of labor, the laws of motion of capitalism, and the causes of capitalist breakdown. Marx’s ideas in Capital remain hotly debated by both scholars and militants to this day.
While it would take a library to discuss Capital, we will touch on just one aspect of its enduring relevance. The growth of technology should be welcomed as a way to lessen the burden of labor; under capitalism, however, technology serves a perverse need. According to Marx, the driving force of capital is not the lessening of the workers’ toil but the search for profits. This compels each capitalist to develop technology in order to line their own pockets while showing no regard for workers by slashing their wages, intensifying the pace of work, or just firing them and tossing them into the streets.
Today, the ecological crisis and climate change provide further evidence that Marx was correct about the environmental devastation inherent in capitalism. “Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the labourer.”[15] In the 1860s, it was possible to ignore those words; now that’s no longer the case.
Our War Cry
Since his death, Marx has been declared dead many times over. He remains a spirit who haunts the bourgeoisie because he was right about what matters: Capitalism is the problem, and communism is the solution. As long as capitalism remains, Marx will find worthy disciples in the factories, universities, and slums. On his 200th birthday, the closing words of the Communist Manifesto still remains our war cry:
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Workers of all countries, unite![16]
[1] PBSpot Admin, “In the U.S. 49.7 Million Are Now Poor, and 80% of the Total Population Is Near Poverty”, The Political Blindspot.
[2] Sean Illing, “Karl Marx still matters: what the modern left can learn from the philosopher”, Vox.
[3] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “The Communist Manifesto”, Marxists Internet Archive.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Frederick Engels, “The Condition of the Working Class in England”, Marxists Internet Archive.
[12] Karl Marx, “The International Workingmen’s Association General Rules, Marxists Internet Archive.
[13] Karl Marx, “The Civil War in France”, Marxists Internet Archive.
[14] Karl Marx, “Das Kapital: Volume One”, Marxists Internet Archive.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “The Communist Manifesto”, Marxists Internet Archive*****
Defending First Principles
The following post was originally part of my essay commemorating Marx’s 200 Birthday, but taken out to save space. However, I think the entire passage can stand on its own. I am sharing it not only to commemorate Marx’s birthday, but also because it defends some important principles of Marx on political independence of the working class and the need for the revolutionary seizure of power. Considering the majority of the American left is mired in opportunism, reformism and social imperialism, I think those first principles of Marxism must be defended again and again. If that makes me a “sectarian” then I bear the insult with honor. — D.E.G.
*****
The principles that Marx advanced in the First International remain the foundations of working-class politics that are either dismissed or unknown by far too many self-described socialists and communists. According to Marx, “to conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.”1 The essential task Marx saw for the working class was to make it conscious of its historical mission and transform it into a political movement—a revolutionary communist party separate and opposed to all bourgeois parties—with the end and aim of seizing power. While revolution was the overriding goal of a working-class party, this did not mean abstaining from political struggle, neglecting to defend democratic freedoms or refusing to fight for reforms, but only under their own banner and to build the fighting capacity of the proletariat.
Marx and Engels cautioned that working-class parties cannot adapt themselves to the momentary passions of the proletariat by sacrificing principle to achieve short-term gains. They termed this to be opportunism:
“This forgetting of the great, the principal considerations for the momentary interests of the day, this struggling and striving for the success of the moment regardless of later consequences, this sacrifice of the future of the movement for its present, may be “honestly” meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and “honest” opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all!”2
If the task of the party was the conquest of power, then the means had to be in line with the ends. If the state was to be captured and smashed, then socialists could not support “reforms” that would strengthen its repressive apparatuses such as the police or army. Nor could the working class surrender its political independence by supporting bourgeois parties since this means replacing working-class politics for those of the class enemy. We can see the sorry result of this in everything from every social democratic betrayal since 1914 and popular front strangling of revolutions.
The conquest of power for Marx did not mean an elected socialist majority of fifty percent of the vote plus one, which would then proceed to abolish socialism. In his 1872 Address at the Hague, Marx said, “You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries—such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland—where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means. This being the case, we must also recognize the fact that in most countries on the Continent the lever of our revolution must be force; it is force to which we must some day appeal in order to erect the rule of labor.””3
Marx’s words been taken as a “loophole” by advocates for abandoning revolution for the safer and surer goal of a peaceful road to socialism. This is a deliberate misreading, Marx’s point on the peaceful conquest of power was very conditional. Secondly, Marx recognized that even an elected working-class government did not mean the bourgeoisie would peacefully abide by the results of the ballot box. “But mark me, as soon as it finds itself outvoted on what it considers vital questions we shall see here a new slave-owner’s war.”4
So even if the workers came to power through the ballot box, they needed to confront the bourgeoisie’s armed power with their own: “Reaction exists …We must tell them—we know that you are the armed force opposing the proletariat—we shall act against you peacefully wherever possible—and take up arms when that is necessary.”5
And has not history confirmed this? It is only through arms that the working class has conquered and held power. The peaceful road to socialism, under its many variants, does not lead to socialism. At best, it leads to betrayal or capitulation as seen by the sad fate of communist and socialist parties. At worst, the advocates of the peaceful road to socialism, as seen in Chile, disarm the working class to face of an enemy who has proven that they will show no mercy if victorious.
Endnotes
1Karl Marx, “Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association,” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/10/27.htm
2“A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works 27 (London: Lawrence & Wishart), 227. (henceforth MECW)
3Karl Marx, “The Possibility of Non-Violent Revolution” in The Marx-Engels Reader (Second Edition), ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), 523.
4MECW 22.606
5Ibid. 618
