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  • April 9 webinar: ‘Wars on the People’ — Repression and resistance at home and abroad

    April 9 webinar: ‘Wars on the People’ — Repression and resistance at home and abroad

    The UNITED LEFT PLATFORM, an alliance of revolutionary socialist organizations, invites you to an April 9 webinar with an activist panel on confronting and anti-immigrant terror and attacks on democratic rights at home, and U.S. imperial crimes around the world.

    This roundtable discussion will represent some of the important experiences of the rising movements resisting the domestic and global rampages of U.S. imperialism under the Trump administration, with perspectives on how these struggles can become powerful, unified, and politically independent. From beating back ICE terror in Minneapolis to opposing the U.S.-Israeli wars on Palestine, Iran, and Lebanon, and the U.S. threats to Cuba and Latin America, we see the critical necessity of bringing the struggles together for the common purpose of collective liberation.

    The speakers will discuss how the concrete experiences of May Day organizing can connect domestic resistance to MAGA authoritarianism to opposition to U.S. wars and imperialism as a whole. The panelists will give brief initial responses to focused strategic questions, followed by open discussion. JOIN US!

    Thursday, April 9, 8 p.m. Eastern; 5 p.m. Pacific

    SPEAKERS:

       • Kip Hedges – school bus driver and longtime union activist in Minneapolis

       • Avery Wear – Tempest, San Diego Socialists, LSAN

       • Omid Rezaian – IMHO

       • Dan Piper – Workers’ Voice, CT Civil Liberties Coalition

       • Meg C – Speak Out Socialists

       • Ashley Smith – VT Tempest Collective

    CHAIR: Blanca Missé, Workers’ Voice

    REGISTRATION INFORMATION:

    https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_R702vOe8QluM7Mha7LVF5g

    https://www.unitedleftplatform.net/wars-on-the-people/

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  • Workers’ Voice newspaper: March-April edition

    The U.S.-Israel war on Iran is a major escalation in the Middle East that has dangerous implications for working people everywhere. The brutality of the imperialist assault internationally is paired with the attack on civil liberties by the Trump regime inside the U.S. This includes the continued operations of ICE and Border Patrol, the threats to the 2026 mid-term elections, environmental rollbacks that deeply impact the Black community, and unchecked police brutality.

    Our editorial in this issue warns us: “There is a great danger of underestimating the determination of the U.S. corporate elite to drive through this effort. We cannot rely on court rulings or upcoming elections to save us. We must organize now, not only for mass demonstrations and community networks against ICE violence, but to find our way to building a new working-class party through which we can organize our political defense on every plane and on every day.”

    In this issue we also have articles on the Epstein files and the ruling class, the San Francisco teachers’ strike, and a review of the new album by U2.

    The March–April 2026 edition of our newspaper is available in print and online as a pdf. Read the latest issue of our newspaper today with a free pdf download! As always, we appreciate any donations to help with the cost of printing.

    Click on the image to read the paper or message us to get a hard copy:

  • Climate emergency: Divest UConn Foundation now!

    Members of the environmental activism group Fridays For Future stage a sit-in in UConn’s Gulley Hall for the third week in a row on Friday, Oct. 18. The group will continue the sit-ins until university administration responds adequately to their demands for climate justice. (Maggie Chafouleas / The Daily Campus)

    By STELLA KOZLOSKI

    We are reprinting below an opinion article from the Jan. 23 issue of The Daily Campus, a journal published by students at the University of Connecticut. Stella Kozloski is the vice president of UConn Fridays for Future and a member of the campus chapter of the Young Socialist Alliance.

    What does UConn Fridays For Future mean when we demand that the UConn Foundation divest from all fossil fuel holdings?

    We recognize that there is a constant exchange of money, endowments, donations, etc. occurring behind closed doors, the ultimate purpose of which is assumed to be for the benefit of the student body and the general public. Yet, we are not privy to most of what occurs, and we do not contribute to what decisions are made by this foundation. It is not us who determines whether our welfare has been increased.

    It might seem cold to focus strictly upon a financial issue. The climate crisis is a vast, humanistic issue, and there is much to be said on the anxieties it has brought onto the younger generations and its catastrophic impact on the way of life of many indigenous peoples or coastal communities. This is missing the point. The passionate struggle of many has been exacted by the cold calculations of a few. The climate crisis, from the very beginning, has been caused by the depreciation of life in favor of profit.

    What better example can be found than that of ExxonMobil, one of the UConn Foundation’s 2019 donors?

    ExxonMobil is well known to be one of the world’s largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies. Less well known is an article posted by the Los Angeles Times in 2015 that revealed ExxonMobil was a pioneer in climate change research during the ‘80s, financing both academic and company research. In 1989, ExxonMobil concluded that global temperatures in the 21st century could rise anywhere between 2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit and result in various catastrophic effects on our environment. Yet instead of searching for a more ethical alternative for their business, ExxonMobil launched a $30 million propaganda campaign to fabricate an “uncertainty” in the greenhouse effect.

    This corporation, which used its significant resources to knowingly support the obfuscation of years of research, is also a financial contributor to our university, which prides itself on research and academic integrity.

    FFF has seen some progress in our demands being publicly recognized by the university. President Thomas Katsouleas, while not outright declaring a climate emergency, has created a sustainability advisory council that includes student representatives and has stated in his letter to the student body that he has plans to “accelerate” the pace of UConn’s reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions. These promises are empty without actual systemic change. Entering 2020, the university is woefully short of the sustainability office’s goal of producing two megawatts of renewable energy. Instead, by FFF’s estimates we only produce a measly 20 kilowatts from the solar panels on Werth Tower, an array which was added by the university back in 2014. It is clear FFF has much to do in securing a better future for the student youth.

    One of our main demands we will be moving towards this semester is for the UConn Foundation to finally divest from its ties with the fossil fuel industry. This includes refusing the donations of ExxonMobil Foundation and Chevron Texaco Corporation. This also requires that the UConn Foundation reform its portfolio so that it is divested from all conventional energy stocks. The only way FFF can ascertain total divestment is if the UConn Foundation reveals its assets, so within our demand for the UConn Foundation to divest we also ask for increased transparency from the UConn Foundation.

    The effects of the UConn Foundation’s divestment would be beneficial both materially and ideologically. By divesting, we stop supporting corporations who profit off of the continual degradation of our environmental integrity by not investing in their dying technologies. This would also clear space for green energy opportunities. With this, we affirm that UConn cannot ethically associate with a fossil fuel company responsible for countering decades of extensive scientific research.

    If you are interested in participating in the UConn Fridays For Future movement, please contact us at uconnfridaysforfuture@gmail.com.

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  • Auto Draft

  • We support workers who want to get rid of Trump

    The following article was signed and published by La Voz de l@s trabajadores/ Workers Voice and by the Revolutionary Socialist Network. Socialist Resurgence supports the point of view expressed by the article, and we concur on the need for mass action in the streets to oppose the policies of U.S. capitalism represented by the Trump administration and the Republican and Democratic parties.

    We think, furthermore, that working people and their organizations need to break with the capitalist parties and to construct their own party—a mass labor party that struggles ceaselessly in the streets and workplaces, as well as in the electoral arena. We argue that such a party, if armed with a revolutionary program, could provide a step toward creating a workers’ government and making a socialist revolution.

    More than half of Americans support the impeachment of President Trump, that is, virtually all Democratic Party voters but also half of independents. The impeachment process led by the DP, however, will not solve the underlying and fundamental problems workers face: the growing housing and health-care crisis, the precarity of employment, the increase of racism and Islamophobia, the attacks on women and LGBTQ rights, and of course the outrageous immigrations policies implemented by this government.

    If Trump is removed from office through the impeachment process, Vice-President Pence will take office, and this is hardly good news. And if the Democrats win their game, they will successfully use the impeachment to campaign and win the elections. Because this is what this is about for them, ultimately, to opportunistically channel the popular anger against Trump towards the ballot box. Not that much will change if they are in power, especially if Biden is their candidate.

    Working People Have Many Reasons to Oppose the Trump Government

    Working people have many reasons to mobilize against Trump, starting from the massive $4.5 trillion in tax cuts he delivered to the wealthy and multinationals, and the $2.7 trillion cuts in social spending he proposed for the 2019-2020 budget, including $872 billion in reductions in Medicare, Social Security, Disability spending; another $327 billion in food stamps, housing support, and Medicaid; a further $200 billion in student loan cuts; and hundreds of billions more in cuts to education, government workers’ pensions, and funds to operate the EPA and other government agencies, while he continued to increase the military budget.[1]

    Trump has continuously bragged about improving the economic situation, with a record of low unemployment and managing to keep jobs in the U.S. The opposite is true: he has not managed to stop the outsourcing of GM and other companies, and has kept the quality of employment very low. There are today 60 million workers (37% of the total 160 million workers) who are contingent or precarious workers (either part-time, temporary or working for the “gig” economy) and who would like to work full-time but aren’t. Furthermore, Millennials, for example, spend an average of 37% of their income in paying back their student debt.[2] If the U.S. economy is in such a great moment, then it is difficult to explain why some 7 million Americans have defaulted on their auto loans; why credit card, auto loan, and education debts are $1 trillion each; and why the total household debt is approaching $14 trillion.[3]

    But this is not just about basic bread and butter issues; the Trump administration has also failed working people by attacking its most basic democratic and civil rights, and fueling racism, sexism and Islamophobia. He has emboldened the far-right and neo-nazi groups, he has maintained an offensive chauvinistic rhetoric against women and appointed to the Supreme Court two judges who could (and probably want to) reverse the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which allowed for legal abortions—and this will happen unless we stop them.

    Yet the most outraging actions of this administration so far have been the inhuman and criminal treatment of migrants, the policy of family separation and the caging of children for months and years in inhospitable detention facilities at the border. That, and the now escalating war gestures with Iran, and the idea that Black and Brown people should feel unsafe in the United States, are reasons enough to take to the streets to oust this government. After all, this is what the Chilean, Haitian, Lebanese or the Algerian or French people have done in 2019—just to name a few. They did not wait for elections, they did not resort to complicated and limiting legal procedures, they just reclaimed their power and sovereignty through mass action to say enough is enough.

    The Democrats Have Their Own Agenda

    These are all good reasons to impeach and remove Trump. But this is not why he is being impeached. The Democrats are not going after him for his most egregious crimes. In fact, they just overwhelmingly passed his latest military budget for over $700 billion and his revised NAFTA (USMCA), which continues the neo-liberal attacks on workers and the environment. They want to continue the anti-immigrant policies pursued by Obama (the “deporter in chief”). In spite of campaign rhetoric, they are not serious about overcoming the climate crisis.

    Instead, the Democrats are impeaching Trump for a smaller issue—that he tried to bribe/coerce Ukraine into helping him in his next election. This is bad, but is nowhere near as bad as the major attacks Trump has led, some of which the Democrats agree with Trump on. So the question arises: if you are facing a powerful and dangerous enemy, why won’t you use all the political ammunition at your disposal to get rid of him? The answer is unfortunately clear: Democrats have narrowed the terms of impeachment not for “pragmatic” reasons, as they argue, but because they don’t want to rock the boat. They don’t want to take a diametrically opposed stance on immigration, healthcare, or workers rights; they are still the party of compromise, of liberal capitalism and “bipartisanship.”

    Even worse, one of the reasons for Trump’s impeachment is actually a conservative militaristic one. The Democrats criticize Trump for not quickly giving military aid to Ukraine to fight against Russia. Ever since the 2016 campaign, it has been the Democrats who want to whip up a new NATO-based Cold War with Russia, while the Republicans want a narrow military defense of U.S. economic interests. The dispute over Ukraine reflects that division in the U.S. ruling class over foreign policy.  Both wings are militaristic and want U.S. domination around the world. We see the Democratic (and some Republican) opposition to Trump’s wanting to withdraw from Syria on one side, and Trump’s trade war with China and his support of the Saudi slaughter in Yemen on the other.

    The Democrats are using the impeachment process as an electoral tool: they know the impeachment vote will never pass in the Senate, [but] they don’t care. What they want is to use the process of impeachment itself to discredit Trump, because on their end, they have little to offer and inspire working people, so they prefer to put the spotlight on how terrible, corrupt and unstable Trump is, and how “reasonable” they are to carry on with the country’s political and economic affairs—that is, to continue business as usual.

    In the end, the struggle developing around the impeachment has to do with an inter-bourgeois fight, between the two factions of corporate power, and it is a struggle to define the political regime: will we remain in a liberal democracy with basic democratic rights generally (not always) in place and the so-called system of “checks and balances” or are we moving towards a Bonapartist or right-wing populist model, with Trump’s leading an uncontrolled and impulsive executive cabinet, constantly changing, and appealing directly to its supporters? What is not under question is the social and political nature of the society we live in, one founded on labor exploitation, with rising poverty, and with multiple forms of oppression. The Democrats, since the 1930s have preferred to stick to the liberal regime, which has proven to be successful to guarantee stability for the growth of mega profits and the containment of popular mobilizations and union struggles through a combination of cooptation and repression.

    The Problems with the Impeachment Process

    The impeachment process will not really solve our problems, and it carries problems of its own: first, it puts the future of the government in the hands of the Democrats and not in the hands of working people, and in this regard it is not an empowering process for those who struggle; second, it contributes to the sacralization of the U.S. Constitution.

    The impeachment process is a feature of the existing bi-partisan system, where working people do not have a chance to have a meaningful voice in the running of this country, even less to have political parties of their own with real chances to participate in Congress, and thus, must align themselves, or participate through one of the two parties they know they will never democratically control. Furthermore, as it has been established now, this is as a mere electoral manoeuver; the removal of Trump from office will never happen, for it requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. The only way to remove Trump and his government is through mass action.

    It is worth pointing out that the Constitution is not sacred, as the Democrats pretend. It was the product of class struggle and a balance of forces at the time of the foundation of the U.S. state, and it has since then been modified as a result of struggle, sometimes to inscribe rights won in the streets through mass action in particular amendments. This is why we should not worship the letter of the Constitution, we should defend the principles it claims to enshrine, those of freedom and equality for all, and sovereignty of the people, and we should do so from a class perspective while pointing to the reality that those principles are constantly violated for working people. Today, the U.S. constitution enshrines minority rule (Electoral College, Senate representation, Supreme Court veto, Presidential veto, etc.) not democracy. It protects private property rather than the public good. It originally excluded Black and Native people, women, and even poor white men from voting. It took decades of struggle against the original Constitution to even make it as democratic as it is.

    We Will Support Workers Who Want to Remove Trump

    The last two years we have seen an unprecedented level of workers mobilizations and strikes, starting with education workers, but also fast food and autoworkers. We have also seen large protests by young people against climate change, and popular mobilizations for immigrant rights, against the Muslim Ban, and of course, for women’s rights. The Women’s March 2017 day of action brought out millions in the streets in an unprecedented manner. Working people living in the U.S. have shown the power they have. Now, we need to use it to remove this government from office by our own means.

    While we agree with Doug Henwood [writing in Jacobin] that “the impeachment doesn’t strike at the sources of right-wing power” and that “it papers over but hardly heals the internal rifts in the Democratic Party,” mobilizing to get rid of the Trump government (and not of Trump alone) would not be a “profound waste of time and energy.”[4] We support popular mobilizations in support of the removal of Trump. We ought to participate in them, bringing our co-workers, and calling on the unions and community organizations to join in, and we need to put forward a clear political alternative: we will be most effective at removing Trump if we build mass militant mobilizations and avoid relying on the legal process and the Democratic Party politicians.

    We need to remove Trump for the right reasons and by our own collective strength. In order to do so, we need to present an alternative to Trump that is also an alternative to the Democratic Party. The official impeachment process alone will not remove the Trump government, but we, working people can, and should, before it is too late.

    Notes:

    [1] https://www.globalresearch.ca/trumps-34-trillion-deficit- debt-bomb/5671420 debt-bomb/5671420

    [2] https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/16/election-2018- and-the-unraveling-of-america/

    [3] https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/some-big-economic-questions- of-the-day/

    [4] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/12/impeachment-donald-trump-nancy-pelosi-democratic-party

     

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  • Imperialist Financial Capital in Africa

    By Yves Mwana Mayas & Cesar Neto
     
    Over-exploitation of the working class and the theft of natural wealth
    In the thought-provoking text “The Gravity of a Possible New World Recession”, published by Marxismo Vivo magazine number 15, the author, Eduardo Almeida, makes an important statement: “Financial capital controls the world at levels higher than that described by Lenin when he defined this as one of the central characteristics of imperialism[1]”. Although the statement seems correct, we decided to investigate this process on the African continent and see if this statement applies or not. In addition to seeking to understand and interpret financial capital in Africa, we also want to discuss how to get out of this situation. How to break with imperialism and how to fight for the second independence.
    Of the various sectors for the study at this time we chose to start with mining, but we could have chosen oil, given its importance. Thus, the African oil industry, although dispersed in five countries (Angola, Nigeria, Algeria, Libya and Egypt), according to 2017 data, together produced 5.690 million barrels per day. That is a production superior to the production of important producers such as Canada (4th producer in the world), Iraq (5th), China (6th), Iran (7th), Brazil (8th) United Arab Emirates (9th) and Kuwait (10th).
    Even with all the importance of oil production, we consider that mineral exploration, not as concentrated as oil, is carried out in almost all 54 countries, and is the best example we find of the presence of imperialist financial capital on the African continent.
    We will try to explain this vicious circle that involves the abundance of mineral resources, mining, investment funds, relations with imperialist governments, relations with local governments and, finally, the explanation of the reason for poverty.
    Data from mining on the continent points to the presence of the 10 largest mining companies in the world. There are other smaller and no less important companies. However, in this text we will deal with the nine largest, since two of them were unified in 2018, the year which our data is from. These companies are: Anglo American, Rio Tinto, Vale, BHP Billiton, Barrick Gold, Freeport-McMoran, Newmont Mining, Teck and ALCOA.
     
    Who are the main shareholders of these companies?
    On the specialized Market Screener website are the 10 largest shareholders of each of these companies, considering only the shares with voting rights. Altogether they are 49 banks and investment funds. And no more than that. Thus, of these 49 institutions, six of them have participation in five or more companies among the nine mining companies. Of these 49 institutions, by origin, five companies are from the USA and one is from Norway.
    Below is a description of the main investment funds and the stake held in the ten largest mining companies:
    The Vanguard Group, Inc.: Anglo American, Rio Tinto, Vale, BHP Billiton, Barrick Gold, Freeport-McMoran, Newmont Mining, Teck and ALCOA.
    Capital Research & Management Co. (Global Investors): Rio Tinto, Vale, BHP Billiton, Barrick Gold, Freeport-McMoran, Newmont Mining, Teck and ALCOA.
    Capital Research & Management Co. (World Investors): Rio Tinto, Vale, Barrick Gold, Freeport-McMoran, Teck and ALCOA.
    BlackRock Fund Advisors: Rio Tinto, Vale, BHP Billiton, Freeport-McMoran, Newmont Mining and ALCOA.
    BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Ltd.: Anglo American, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Barrick Gold and Teck.
    Norges Bank Investment Management: Anglo American, Rio Tinto, Vale, Teck and ALCOA.
    These nine companies, according to the Market Screener website, had an EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) profit of US $88.898 billion dollars. This is not revenue, it is profit. With that profit, if these mining companies were a European country, it would be the 25th richest country on the continent; or 7th out of 55 African countries.
     
    See: BLACK ROCKS in English 
    Dissecting investment funds
    And who controls these investment funds? To explain this we will use the exemplary case of the Black Rock Inc fund.
    Founded in 1988, BlackRock is an American corporation, headquartered in New York, and has offices in 30 countries and clients in more than 100 countries. In 2019 it was considered the largest investment fund in the world. Economic magazine “The Economist” considers BlackRock the largest shadow bank in the world.[2]
    Due to its weight, size and importance, Black Rock was hired by Barack Obama to advise him on issues related to the 2007-2009 crisis.
    Black Rock also stands out for being the world’s largest investor in coal plants, holding shares worth US $ 11 billion[3]. It also has more oil, gas and thermal coal reserves than any other investor. For environmentalists, Black Rock is the “biggest driver of climate destruction on the planet”[4], due in part to its refusal to part with fossil fuel companies.
     
    Who are the main shareholders of Black Rock?
    Continuing with information from the specialized website Market Screener, the 10 largest shareholders of Black Rock are[5]:  PNC Bank NA (Investment Management); The Vanguard Group Inc.; Capital Research & Management Co. (World Investors); SSgA Funds Management Inc.; Wellington Management Co. LLP; China Investment Corp. (Investment Management); Mizuho Financial Group Inc.; Black Rock Fund Advisors; Norges Bank Investment Management; and Merrill Lynch,Pierce, Fenner& Smith Inc.
    In the book, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, Lenin explains how banks “incorporate and subordinate” each other. “I have emphasised the reference to the “affiliated” banksbecause it is one of the most important distinguishing features of modern capitalist concentration. The big enterprises,and the banks in particular, not only completely absorb the small ones, but also “annex” them, subordinate them,bring them into their “own” group or “concern” (to use the technical term) by acquiring “holdings” in their capital, by purchasing or exchanging shares, by a system of credits etc., etc…”
    In the diagram below we can see how this incorporation and subordination process takes place, in the specific case of BlackRock. In order not to be boring, of the 10 largest shareholders we will describe 3 of them and the reader will be able to confirm how this intricate network of financial capital presents itself.
    Above we see that the investment funds that control Black Rock Inc. have close relations with those described below:
    * SSgA: its main shareholders: The Vanguard Group Inc.; Capital Research Management Co.; BlackRock Advisors (an arm of BlackRocks Inc.) and SSgA Funds Inc. (which is an arm of SSgA itself).
    * Mizuho: its main shareholders are: The Vanguard Group Inc.;BlackRock Advisors; and Norges Bank Investment Management.
    * Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith Inc.: After the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, as part of the bailout program for companies and banks on the brink of bankruptcy, the Barack Obama administration incorporated Merrill Lynch into the Bank of America as a department of that bank. So, instead of introducing the shareholders of Merrill Lynch, we are presenting the ten largest shareholders of Bank of America, which has among its main shareholders: The Vanguard Group Inc.; SSgA Funds Management Inc.; Wellington Management Co. LPP; BlackRock Advisors; Capital Research Management Co.;and Norges Bank Investment Management.
     
    Close relations between Black Rock and Obama
    The gigantic crisis of 2007 – 2009 was the first challenge of Barack Obama who was president of the USA from 2009 to 2017. Obama’s chief economic advisor was a then 31-year-old (born in 1978), Brian Christopher Deese[6], serving on the National Economic Council. He was responsible for the rescue operation of the auto industries, especially Chrysler and General Motors, which meant huge injection of public capital, closing factories, thousands of layoffs and reduced rights.  The New York Times, when describing the emerging figures of the new government, saw him as ” one of the most influential voices[7]“. But it was not only in the industrial field that he acted. Thus, B.C. Deese played an important role in saving Merrill Lynch, one of Black Rock’s 10 largest shareholders.
    As vice president of the National Economic Council, since 2011, B.C. Deese has been responsible for all liberalizing policies to the taste of financial capital in the fields of: financial regulation, housing, clean energy, manufacturing and the automotive industry.The newspaper “The New Republic” described him as one of the “most powerful, least famous people”[8]. The newspapers never tired of talking about how cultured and intelligent B.C. Deese was. Would he have been famous in the Bronx or as the son of renegade immigrants?
    After the Obama administration, B.C.Deese took on the important role of “Managing Director, Global Head of Sustainable Investing”[9] at BlackRocks Inc.
     
    Intensification of capitalist exploitation and its consequences
    Lenin wrote that “Finance capital, concentrated in a few hands and exercising a virtual monopoly, exacts enormous and everincreasing profits from the floating of companies, issue of stock, state loans, etc., strengthens the domination of the financial oligarchy and levies tribute upon the whole of society for the benefit of monopolists.“[10]. When Lenin says that “levies tribute upon the whole of society for the benefit of monopolists“, it can be translated today into:
    Overexploitation of workers: through low wages, exposure to carcinogenic chemicals, and accidents at work (Rio Tinto recognizes that only in 2018 did three workers lose their lives “due to fatality”).
    Child labor: child labor in mining in Congo, for example, causes countless deaths of children. Only one action brought in the USA points to the death of 14 children in the collapse of mining tunnels[11]. In Ivory Coast, cocoa harvesting for Nestlé is carried out with child labor[12].
    Destruction of the environment: There is no mining without destruction. The more than three hundred deaths at the Brumadinho mine in Brazil are a tragic example. But there are other ways, such as the forced removal of 10,000 families in Congo so that cobalt can be exploited for Tesla, Microsoft, Dell, Google, etc.[13]
    Theft of raw materials: France has been extracting uranium in Niger for decades. It pays only 5.5% of taxes and gets 94.5% net of sales. The lights that illuminate Paris, the City of Light, are generated by the Niger’s uranium. The horrible image of poverty in that country is a consequence of the “Parisian beauty”.
    Theft of land and natural resources: The charming English tea is stained with blood from peasants expelled from their land in Kenya[14]; and Unilever’s institutional propaganda says: “2.5 billion people in the world use Unilever” but what the propaganda does not say is that this empire was built with the theft of land, slave labor and the appropriation of natural wealth in the Congo occupied by the imperialists Belgians and English.
    Genocide: More than 150 years of genocide and impunity; civil wars and wars between countries[15].
    In this way “the monopoly, once it is formed and controls thousands of millions, inevitably penetrates into every sphere of public life, regardless of the form of government and all other ‘details’”. This quote from Lenin made over a hundred years ago remains true. There are several examples- one of the most scandalous was during the civil war in Angola at the end of the Cold War. The MPLA, aligned with the USSR, was attacked by UNITA, which was funded by South Africa and the US. At this time, Anglo American diamond company De Beers, based in South Africa, declared itself “neutral” in the conflict and had an air route that took the diamond produced and returned with food. They didn’t care about the government in power.  Just as today they invest in Latin America without questioning the government’s  character. The aforementioned financial groups have no problem with the politics of the rulers. They can be right wing like Piñera in Chile or Duque in Colombia. Or it could be the alleged rebel governments of Evo Morales in Bolivia or Maduro in Venezuela. Everyone is negotiable and the tactic is always the same: negotiate. And this is how the governments of the progressive PT, through Lula and Dilma, lent to Black Rock, with the low interest o fR $ 26 billion reais[16]. In contrast, in the 2010 and 2012 elections, Black Rock contributed to the electoral campaign of the three main parties of the bourgeois order: PT, PSDB and PMDB.
    These examples demonstrate with complete clarity how correct the central theses of Lenin’s “Imperialism” are, and further, how imperialist domination in Africa goes hand in hand with the ruling elites and involves the complicit silence of many organizations that claim to be representatives of the workers and poor people.
     
    Struggle for independence
    Between the end of the 1950s and the end of the 1970s, there was a long period of struggles for independence that resulted in major changes in the colonial relationship. Several subjugated countries in Africa gained their independence. We say it was a great victory, but an incomplete victory. Alejandro Iturbe, editor of the magazine “International Courier”, says: “In each country, the independence process had specific characteristics, but with many common elements. One of them is the nature of the leaderships that led them. These movements of national liberation were led by organizations of bourgeois nationalist ideologies and programs, with strong anti-imperialist elements (although some of them self-defined as “Marxist Leninists”), petty bourgeois directions and popular-plebeian rank and file”[17].
    The masses waged heroic resistance struggles against colonialism in the first place and over time they transformed the resistance struggle into an open struggle for independence. The masses with their struggles did their part, but the process did not continue until true independence.
    This happened firstly because they tried to stop and control the momentum of the masses, thus “freezing the rebellious processes”. Second, to the extent that their program was essentially bourgeois nationalist, they did not advance in the expropriation of large capitalist properties, in the nationalization of mineral exploitation, in the expulsion of foreign capital and in other anti-capitalist measures.
    We can say that it was an important political victory. However, as there was no progress on economic issues, in a few decades, they went backwards and many governments turned into bloodthirsty dictatorships.
     
    The struggle for Second Independence
    The “freezing” of the independence struggle has brought serious damage to the African continent. The first big problem is that by not expropriating the bourgeoisie, by not expelling imperialism, these gradually grew stronger and created a black, ultra-reactionary ruling elite. The end result has been the frightening growth of poverty. The World Bank recognizes that “the number of Africans living in poverty has increased and global poverty will become increasingly African[18]“. In the same report, the World Bank says: “If the circumstances remain the same, the [global] poverty rate is expected to drop to just 23% by 2030 and global poverty will become increasingly African, rising from 55% in 2015 to 90% in 2030”.
    The World Bank states that “Limited public resources challenge the financing of the poverty agenda”. In other words, it recognizes that governments do not have the money to fight poverty due to lack of resources, because they do not receive taxes from financial and commercial transactions, and because of tax evasion. However, the solution to the problem, in the opposite direction, is posed by the Economic Commission for Africa, a UN body, which supports free financial transaction; and the financing of the necessary infrastructure (roads, ports, electricity, internet, etc.) for the application of free trade treaties such as the BRICS and Free Trade Area[19].
    The economic situation that this generates in the continent can also be seen in other expressions of a colonial economy. 2015 data[20] indicates that:

    • African countries received $ 161.6 billion in 2015 – mostly in loans, personal remittances, and aid in the form of donations. However, $ 203 billion was taken from Africa directly – mainly through companies that repatriated profits and moved money illegally off the continent.
    • African countries receive about $ 19 billion in aid in the form of grants, but more than three times the amount ($ 68 billion) is withdrawn, mostly by multinational companies that deliberately report false imports or exports to reduce taxes.
    • While Africans receive $ 31 billion in personal remittances from other countries, multinational companies operating on the continent repatriate a similar amount ($ 32 billion) in profits to their home countries each year.
    • African governments received $ 32.8 billion in loans in 2015, but paid $ 18 billion in interest and principal payments, with the overall level of debt rising rapidly.
    • It is estimated that $ 29 billion a year is stolen from Africa in the form of illegal timber trade, fish and wildlife. wildlife.

     
    In this sense, the necessary struggle for Second Independence means driving the imperialist powers together with their companies and banks from the continent. For the writer of the International  Courier magazine Américo Gomes, “This will only take place with the method of the struggle of the working class, led against imperialism, but also against the new African bourgeois and its puppet governments, breaking with all reformist and nationalist leaderships, which do not pose these tasks as indispensable[21]“.
    .
    The resistance has begun
    We see that the patience of the African people is reaching its limit, as in many countries former dictators are falling one by one. It began in 2011 as mass protests toppled Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in power for 23 years. In 2014, we saw the mobilizations in Burkina Faso that toppled dictator Blaise Compaoré, the same one who led a coup d’état against Thomas Sankara in 1987.
    2017 marked the end of Robert Mugabe’s 40-year rule in Zimbabwe. And that same year, after 38 years in power, José Eduardo dos Santos saw his government lose power in Angola.
    Already in 2019, after 18 years in the presidency Joseph Kabila was forced to call elections and pass on the palace keys. That same year, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashi was less fortunate, and saw his 30-year-old government interrupted by an insurrection. And in Algeria, gigantic mobilizations ended Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s 20 years of rule.
    The overthrowing of dictators should and could increase in 2020. Some as old as Cameroonian President Paul Biya may fall, aged 86 and having been in power for 37 years. And some other dictators will try to keep themselves in power by changing the constitutions of their countries. There are many examples. Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo is an army general having received military training in France. Sassou Nguesso seems to like power, since his first term was 11 years (1979 to 1992),and in this second term he has ruled for 23 years.  Another example is in Eritrea, the priceless Isaias Afwerki who has been in office for 16 years and has never held elections. And we can’t leave out Paul Kagame from Rwanda who has been in power for 19 years.
    Others may also have tough days in 2020, such as in Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Mbasogo, who has been in power for 40 years and in Uganda, Yoweri Museveno, who has ruled the country for 33 years.
    What we can also say is that in South Africa the economic crisis is on its way. As a result we observed the fall of Jacob Zuma who ruled from 2009 to 2018 and after successive denunciations and financial scandals was forced by his party, the African National Congress, to resign. So Cyril Ramaphosa took a short term and was later elected president in May 2019. Thus, South Africa is a country in deep crisis because of deindustrialization, unemployment, and with an economy in successive contractions, and we can expect that the newly elected Ramaphosa government will be a crisis government.
    Workers and young people, 50 or 60 years after the struggle for independence, are a generation without memory of the experience of colonialism and their main reference is the effects of structural adjustments, globalization, dictatorships and all the harmful effects of neoliberalism.
    The downfall of these governments reported above – via mobilization or even elections – are part of the process of experimentation and search for alternatives. We therefore believe that we must participate and support all ongoing or upcoming struggles, be they around wages, youth rights or in defense of democratic freedoms and against dictatorships. However, in these struggles we must place the need for a Second Independence, with a real break with imperialism and the construction of a new, more just, egalitarian and fraternal society, a socialist society.
     

    [1]https://litci.org/en/the-gravity-of-a-possible-new-world-recession/
    [2]“Shadow and substance”. The Economist. May 10, 2014
    [3]“New Research Reveals the Banks and Investors Financing the Expansion of the Global Coal Plant Fleet”. Urgewald. 2018-12-05
    [4]“BlackRock’s Big Problem | Making the climate crisis worse”. BlackRock’s Big Problem | Making the climate crisis worse.
    [5]  https://www.marketscreener.com/BLACKROCK-INC-11862/company/
    [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Deese
    [7] “The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M.” by David E. Sanger, The New York Times, May 31, 2009 (p. B1 NY ed.)
    [8] The Editors (2011-11-03). “Washington’s Most Powerful, Least Famous People”. The New Republic
    [9]https://www.blackrock.com/institutions/en-us/biographies/brian-deese
    [10] LENIN.  Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism – http://www.marxists.org
    [11] IRA advocates Files Forced Child Labor Case Against Tech Giants Apple, Alphabet, Dell, Microsoft and Tesla for Aiding and Abetting Extreme Abuse of Children Mining Cobalt in DRC
    http: iradvocates.mayfirst.org/press-release/iradvocates-files-forced-child-labor-case-against-tech-giants-apple-alphabet-dell
    [12]“Sustaibale” Nestle Cocoa Made With Child Slavery, Suit Says
    http: iradvocates.mayfirst.org/news/sustaibale-nestle-cocoa-made-child-slavery-suit-says
    [13] 10 000 families to be moved from DR Congo cobalt site – provincial governor
    http: m.news24.com/Africa/News/10-000-families-to-be-moved-from-dr-congo-cobalt-site-provincial-governor-20191218
    [14]There is blood in the tea –  http: mg.co.za/article/2019-11-01-00-there-is-blood-in-the-tea
    [15] If you are one of those who believe that civil wars or between countries are motivated by religious issues, by the search for peace, by corrupt and authoritarian governments and other legends, we have bad news: wars are to dominate and plunder our wealth. See who are the main shareholders of the five largest military companies (Lockheed Martin Corporation, BOEING, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman Corp) in the world and compare with the main shareholders of the mining companies. The five largest military companies are controlled by 27 investment funds. Most of these investment funds are also controllers of mining companies. Let’s see: The Vanguard Group, Inc. and Capital Research & Management Co. are shareholders in the five largest companies. SSgA Funds Management, Inc., Capital Research & Management Co. (World Investors) and BlackRock Fund Advisors these three investment funds are shareholders in four of the five largest companies.
    [16]How much is 26 billion reais. Let’s compare. In 2011 the state spent 17 billion reais on household grant and served 13, 9 million families or approximately 50 million people. In other words, BlackRock alone received a small aid that would serve approximately 21 million families or 76 million people.
    [17] International Courier – Publication by the International Workers  League Fourth International IWL-FI.  2018, nº 19 page 22
    [18]https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/afr/publication/accelerating-poverty-reduction-in-africa-in-five-charts
    [19] UNITED NATIONS/Economic Commission for Africa -Assessing Regional Integration in Africa – Next Steps for Africa – Continental Free Trade Area
    [20] https://www.quora.com/q/africas/Africa-is-poor-they-said#
    [21]International Courier – Publication of the International Workers League / IV International.  2018, nº 9 page 7

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    , , ,

  • Middle East: The popular demonstrations continue

    Protest demonstration on Oct. 19, 2019, outside of Beirut, Lebanon. (AFP)

    By JOSEPH DAHER

    In retaliation for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran launched ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq, provoking Iraqi and non-US casualties. However, efforts by the Iranian regime and its allies in Iraq and Lebanon to derail or stop the demonstrations have failed to achieve their objectives.

    New massive mobilizations in Iran

    In Iran, new mass demonstrations have taken place since the Iranian government acknowledged and initially denied responsibility for the crash of a Ukrainian plane over Tehran. An Iranian missile mistakenly shot down the civilian plane a few hours after Iranian missile attacks on US bases in Iraq. The vast majority of the 176 passengers on the Ukrainian plane were Iranian dual nationals, visiting family over the winter holidays and returning to Canada or Britain.

    While maintaining pressure on Iran, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed the U.S., saying Monday that without the recent escalation of regional tensions, the 176 passengers on the Ukrainian Boeing would still be alive.

    Demonstrators in Tehran and many cities across the country expressed solidarity with the grieving families of the passengers and crew, and also launched hostile slogans against the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Revolutionary Guard Corps (Pasdaran), including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to the cries of “Death to the Dictator.”

    Soleimani’s portraits were also torn, broken and abducted by the demonstrators, while the demand for the fall of Khamenei and the regime resounded in the streets. The repression was violent, with the arrest of more than 30 people and videos on social networks showing police cracking down on demonstrators with truncheons and gunshots, leaving many injured.

    Artists and intellectuals joined the protest by cancelling their participation in the Fajr festivals (music, film, theatre and visual arts) that take place every year in February, on the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

    Faced with the demonstrations against the regime, Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, responded with a strong speech against the United States and European states, and against the popular protest, while praising the role of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and General Soleimani in maintaining security in the region and the country. For his part, Rohani, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, delivered a more moderate speech, pleading for better governance and more pluralism and transparency.

    Popular resistance continues in Iraq and Lebanon

    In Lebanon and Iraq, popular demonstrations are also continuing, although repression is increasing.

    In Iraq, Iran and its allies in the country are still trying to hijack the popular protest movement by limiting their demand to the departure of U.S. troops, without any change in the Iraqi confessional and neo-liberal political system. In particular, the Shiite Islamic fundamentalist leader Moqtada Sadr has called for a massive demonstration to denounce the U.S. presence in Iraq and asked his supporters (who took part in the protests and set up tents in Baghdad’s main square) to leave the area to join his movement.

    Despite pressure and threats, demonstrations and civil disobedience actions continue in Baghdad and in many southern cities, while denouncing the actions of the United States and Iran which seek to turn the country into a zone of settling scores to the detriment of the country’s working classes and their struggles.

    In Lebanon, the popular revolt against the confessional and neo-liberal ruling class has entered its fourth month of struggle, with a clear tendency towards radicalization, as evidenced by the almost daily attacks against the headquarters of the Bank of Lebanon and other private banks, and the increasingly violent altercations with the forces of law and order. The repression against the demonstrators was considerably reinforced, with several hundred people injured during the weekend of Jan. 18-19. At the same time, the working classes in Lebanon are facing a deepening economic crisis, including draconian banking restrictions and a loss of more than 60% of the value of the national currency.

    In the face of geopolitical tensions instrumentalized by the imperialist power of the U.S. and regional powers such as Iran, the struggling popular classes remain the lodestar of progressives and internationalists around the world.

    Joseph Daher is a Swiss-Syrian academic and activist. He is the author of “Syria After the Uprising: The Political Economy of State Resilience” (Pluto, 2019) and “Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God” (Pluto, 2016), and founder of the blog Syria Freedom Forever. He is also co-founder of the Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African Socialists.

    This article is reprinted from International Viewpoint, the on-line English-language journal of the Fourth International.

     

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  • Megafires in Australia: a climate tipping point

    (Above) A forest fire consumes pine trees in New South Wales on Jan. 10. As we go to press on Jan. 31, another massive fire is threatening the suburbs of Canberra, Australia’s capital city, as the southeast of the country endures record hot temperatures. It is thought that the Canberra fire was ignited when a military helicopter landed in a dry field. (Photo: Matthew Abbott / New York Times).

    By DANIEL TANURO

    The expression “tipping point” refers to the point when a system passes from one system of equilibrium to another, the point where it is no longer possible to prevent accumulated quantitative changes from causing a qualitative change. It is used in many different fields, from population studies to climate change, as well as social sciences.

    The specter of a “hothouse planet”

    The evolution of the Greenland ice cap provides an important example of a tipping point in the climate field. We know that the disappearance of the entire island’s ice cap will raise ocean levels by approximately seven meters. Specialists have observed that the melt has speeded up to a disturbing extent [1], but the ice cap does not seem to have entered an irreversible break-up process yet. According to IPCC, its tipping point would be located between 1.5°C and 2°C heating. At current emissions rates, we would enter the danger zone towards 2040…

    Recently, scientists have insisted on the fact that tipping points can link up via positive feedback (heating effects that increase heating). [2] According to their studies, the disappearance of the Greenland ice cap would release so much fresh water into the sea that the oceanic currents within the Atlantic Ocean would be disrupted. As some of these currents determine the climate in the Amazon basin, the forest in this region would rapidly become a savannah. This change would amount to a second tipping point.

    Obviously, a savannah absorbs far less CO2 than a forest. In consequence, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would greatly increase. This would result in a new increase in heating, so a third tipping point could be crossed. According to researchers, this could mean the breakup of two glacier masses, the Thwaites on the west coast and the Totten on the east coast of Antarctica. We know that they have been compromised (according to some scientists, the Thwaites has already crossed the point of no-return). [3]

    We also know that their disappearance would raise the sea level by around seven metres – as much as the disappearance of Greenland’s icefields.

    Seven metres + seven metres: in three tipping points we would have reached a fourteen metre rise in sea levels.

    And that is not all: permafrost melt, qualitative intensification of the El Niño phenomenon, collapse of other parts of the Antarctic ice cap, etc: tipping points could follow one another. What would happen then? According to these researchers, this little climatic domino game would fairly quickly push the Earth to a ‘hothouse planet’ regime with an average surface temperature 4 to 5°C hotter than today. Our globe has not experienced such conditions since the Pliocene, 1.5 million years ago (well before the emergence of Homo sapiens). At the time, the ocean level was 20 to 30 metres higher than nowadays.

    The ‘hothouse planet’ expression sounds like science fiction, but the scientific community takes this scenario in which ‘positive feedback’ leads to a chain of tipping points. The process would fairly quickly lead to an extremely different world than the one we know today and which our ancestors have known. A world that would certainly be very impoverished in terms of its biological bounty. Homo sapiens might survive, but two things are certain: 1) there would be no room for 7 to 8 billion human beings; 2) the poorest would foot the bill, although they bear the least responsibility for ecological destruction.

    A “live” tipping point

    The relationship between all the above and the megafires devastating Australia? Very simple: on the one hand, there is no doubt that this catastrophe is an outcome of climate change (as early as 1986, Australian specialists sounded the alarm bell in the face of this danger, but in vain). What is happening today, alas, confirms their projections) [4]; Moreover, these terrible fires probably constitute a tipping point themselves – a moment speeding up the global ecological crisis.

    In terms of biodiversity, the question is already settled. More than one billion animals have perished in the flames. The survivors will struggle to keep on living in deeply changed habitats, the fire has already wiped out several species of plants and animals, and certain unique ecosystems will not regenerate (such as the vestiges of the primary forest that covered Gondwana 250 million years ago! [5]) This is the very definition of a tipping point.

    In climate terms, the issue is more complex, as certain phenomena play out in opposite directions, as we shall see.

    Before that, it is worth repeating: we must not forget that fossil fuel combustion is and remains by far the main cause of climate tip. CO2 emissions caused by fires have been estimated at 6,73 Gt between 1 January and 30 November 2019. In comparison, emissions due to burning fossil fuels stood at 37.1 Gt in 2018 (33.1 Gt in 2010).

    And yet, emissions caused by fires are far from negligible. For example, they are higher than those of the United States, which emits slightly over 5Gt of CO2/year by burning fossil fuels. [6] As the climate system is close to the Greenland tipping point, the fact that gigantic Australian megafires reduce the leeway separating us from the domino effect described above is not a detail.

    Fires release large quantities of CO2, black carbon and aerosols. Sent into the atmosphere at a high altitude, these different elements do not have the same impact on the climate. CO2 and black carbon contribute to heating, while aerosols have a cooling effect, as they reflect sunshine (the same thing occurs during volcanic eruptions). However, aerosols fall back down after a few months, while CO2 will accumulate in the air for over a century. Thus, in the long term, the heating effect will win out.

    Smoke particles have another heating effect. The soot and aerosols will fall back to earth, sometimes very far from Australia. Recently, brownish soot has been observed on New Zealand glaciers, and it seems, as far as Antarctica. However, ice and snow contaminated in this way see their albedo diminish, so their melting will accelerate. [7]

    One major unknown is the impact of the catastrophe on forest survival in the middle term. Australia experiences fires every year. Up to now, the forests have resisted and regenerated. Eucalyptuses, in particular, are very fire-resistant plants. But, on the one hand, the current fires are unprecedented, moreover, the heating and drought risk making regeneration more difficult, if not impossible. A mature forest can resist hydric stress for a long time, but this makes growth and survival very difficult for young seedlings growing on naked soil, in an atmosphere made drier by the disappearance of forests, where fires also become more probable. Australia is experiencing a multi-year drought cycle. [8] In this context, specialists fear that a large part of the forests will not regenerate and will be replaced by shrub formations, which contain far less CO2. [9]

    Optimists will say that Australia has mostly sandy, chalky, gritty and clayey soils, rather light in colour, and that these soils reflect a larger percentage of the sun’s rays when bush grows than when they are covered in forests. Indeed, a broadleaf forest forms a dark mass that reflects only 15% to 20% of rays – about twice as less as light soils. But it is doubtful that this cooling effect of a greater albedo will compensate the heating effect of the CO2 released into the atmosphere by the destruction of millions of hectares of forests.

    Poor forests!

    In the world in general, many forests are in bad shape. Whether spontaneous or provoked, forest fires are tending to multiply and heating makes them ever more formidable and hard to master. We have seen this recently, in California, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Indonesia, in Congo, in Mexico and in the Mediterranean region (cf. the terrible fire that killed more than 80 people in Greece in 2018)… To the fires are added, in the Global South, deforestations caused by the capitalists’ extractivist frenzy in lumber, pulp, livestock, soya, palm oil, as well as mining, oil or hydroelectric exploitation.

    In temperate zone developed countries, the forested area has been increasing for several years. However, for many years now, the trees’ health has tended to decline, largely due to more severe heat waves. Fires have also multiplied even in the most northerly regions, such as Sweden, Canada and Siberia. According to certain scientists, contaminants caused by fires, very uncommon in these regions, have also been a significant factor in the record melt of the Greenland ice cap, in 2012. [10]

    If CO2 emissions continue to increase, it is certain that forest fires will multiply. To what extent? Californian scientists estimate that the relation between rising temperatures is not linear but exponential. [11]. Earth’s Future, 7, 892–910.]] As we know, national governments’ climate plans (‘nationally determined contributions’) are taking us to heating over 3°C by the end of the century. According to IPCC, with such a warming, fire frequency will increase on over 60% of the globe’s surface. Recently, Brazilian and US scientists came to the conclusion that if policies are unchanged, thirty years from now, they could experience the fate that is Australia’s today. [12]

    Alas, we have reason to fear that such warnings will not be heard any more than those made thirty years ago by Australian scientists when they warned of the probability that warming would provoke more and more serious fires.

    The cause of this wilful deafness does not fall from the sky: it is the product of governments in thrall to capitalist interests, thus of the capital accumulation that inevitably results from competition for markets between private owners of means of production. And yet, it is precisely this endless dynamic of accumulation that causes climate tipping.

    Systematic climate denial

    Among these capitalist governments, Australia’s is playing a particularly cynical, criminal role. The country is one of the highest CO2/inhabitant/year (more than 15t, more than the United States – only the Gulf monarchies do worse). But since the beginning of climate negotiations, in 1992, the leaderships of the parties in power have their foot on the brake of imperative measures.

    As early as the Kyoto protocol negotiations, in 1996-97, Australia decided to accept no emissions reduction that would have any negative impact on the country’s competitivity. Thus, the country privileged ‘emissions credits’. On the national level, it merely planted trees and limited deforestation (not to mention the bounty on killing dromedaries – imported in the 19th century – on the pretext that those animals were major methane producers).

    This outlook has been systematically maintained up to the present. In the framework of the Paris agreement, Australia pledged to cut its emissions from 26 to 28% by 2030. As we recall, at that deadline, respecting the goal of 1.5°C maximum with no ‘temporary overruns’ requires a global average cut in net emissions of 58% on average. In light of its historical responsibilities, Australia’s contribution should be around 70%.

    The Australian government does not only slam on the brakes when emissions cuts are mentioned. It also cheats, by activating its two favourite gadgets: natural absorption of CO2 and buying carbon credits.

    Firstly, the emissions calculation method has been altered to increase the estimate of quantities absorbed by forests. This modification had the dual outcome of re-evaluating upwards the emissions volume during the previous Labor government, then slightly lowering it since the Conservative government is in charge. But watch out: emissions caused by fires are not counted. [13]

    Secondly, the Australian delegates to COP25 fought with Brazil, China and India for unsold carbon credit stocks generated within the Kyoto protocol would remain exchangeable within the ‘new market mechanism’ foreseen in article 6 of the Paris agreement. However, it has been proven that scarcely 2% of these credits actually represented actual reductions. [14]

    Australia, privileged supplier of the world capitalist market

    The explanation for Australia’s climate positioning can be sought in the particular space its ruling class chose to occupy in the international division of labour. A wealthy western imperialist country, governed by whites, Australia is not an industrial nation but an exporter of raw materials: farm products, coal, gas, iron and other minerals that its geographical location allows it to valorise in trade with China. This role as a privileged supplier for the ‘workshop of the world’ has enabled Australia to be among the few countries generally spared by the 2008 crisis.

    Despite a few nuances, the two major parties (Labor and right-wing Liberal/National Coalition) are fundamentally at the service of this system and the policies it requires). Providing raw materials to China requires being particularly competitive, as the competition is tough with ‘emerging’ countries of the South. Thus, the need to be particularly neoliberal.

    The consequences are there, in all fields. Energy: 80% of electricity produced from coal (though there is no shortage of solar resources!). Social: from 2003 to 2015, the average wealth of the richest 20% of households has risen by 54% while the 20% poorest have seen theirs fall by 9%. Environmental: natural resources are offered to the private sector (particularly water; considered a ‘mining resource’ and listed on the stock market). [15] Democratic: The Australian state has conducted a particularly vile policy of deportation of migrants. [16] and is on the frontline of repression of unions, journalists and ecosocialist movements protesting environmental destruction. [17] Scientific: the government offered 4 million Australian dollars to climate denier Bjørn Lomborg and would have raised their offer further to base himself at University of Perth. Lomborg had to abandon the idea after an outcry among scientists… [18]

    Major extractivist capital’s control of Australian political life was at the fore of the last electoral campaign. Coal magnate Clive Palmer (a notorious climate denier, particularly for his plan to extend a coal terminal that would gravely damage the Great Barrier coral reef) invested huge sums (53.6 million AUS$, more than the rightwing and Labor combined!) to create a sham political party, whose only aim was to steal votes from Labor and ensure the victory of Scott Morrison, who is utterly devoted to Palmer’s plans. [19]

    Towards a political and social tipping point?

    Megafire “management” is the reflection of this policy subservient to big capital to its very marrow. The list of the government’s misdeeds in this crisis is actually so long that not all of them can be listed in the scope of this article. Morrison was catching the sun in Hawaii while his country was in flames. Firefighting services are entirely staffed by volunteers and underequipped. Casual disregard by those in power is directly responsible for the fact that at least 23 people have died, more than 2000 households have lost their homes, more than 250,000 residents have been displaced, five million people are inhaling toxic fumes and thousands of terrified people had to seek refuge on the beaches because they were circled by walls of fire more than 70m high.

    As a New Zealand journalist wrote, such a balance sheet does not come out of a void: it expresses a deep contempt for the ‘common people’. Marie-Antoinette said that starving French people in 1789 could simply ‘eat cake’ if they had no bread. Morrison seems to think that rebroadcasting cricket matches on TV and the New Year’s fireworks (which went on in Sydney in the midst of the catastrophe!) would lead the mass of people to keep on sleepwalking towards climate catastrophe, without drawing political lessons from the disaster, without realising that this policy leads directly to a scenario where the rich can get by while all the others would simply lay down and die. [20]

    The tipping point concept also applies to social sciences, as we said at the beginning of this article. Let’s hope that the scope of the catastrophe will mark the beginning of a tipping point in Australian public opinion. And hope that the social majority struggles for those who bear the economic responsibility and their political lackeys pay their debt, which will be a very heavy one. [21] And that an alliance of forces able to put on the agenda the break with productivism, extractivism, neoliberalism, racism (targeting migrants and Indigenous Australians) and the ideology of domination (over nature and over women). The toxic nature of this deadly nexus no longer needs be proven. Another, non-capitalist world, is not only possible, it is more and more urgently needed. Struggle without borders for its emergence.

    13 January 2020

    Footnotes

    [1] In ten years, this has multiplied four-fold.: Michael BEVIS et al. ‘Accelerating changes in ice mass within Greenland, and the ice sheet’s sensitivity to atmospheric forcing’, PNAS 5 February 2019.

    [2] This scenario is described by Will STEFFEN et al. (Aug. 2018) ‘Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene’, PNAS, August 2018.

    [3] New York Times, 13 May 2014. Ian Joughin et al., “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica”, Science 16 May 2014, Vol. 344 ; Issue 6185.

    [4] The Guardian, 16 November 2019

    [5] Le Monde, 3 December 2019. Gondwana was the single continent once in existence, from which the current continents have drifted.

    [6] Emissions caused by fires were slightly superior to 8Gt in 2003, according to the data of the European Copernicus programme. A slight tendency to decrease has been observed (Australia will change this!) but we must not misinterpret this: it is due to forests being replaced by crops or pasture.

    [7] Albedo refers to the proportion of sunlight reflected by a surface. It is zero for a black surface and almost one for a very white surface.

    [8] The Australian and Horn of Africa climates are influenced by a multi-year oscillation (the ‘Indian Ocean Dipole’) which tends to make weather alternate between hotter and wetter weather in the West, cooler and drier in the East. Climate change seems to be increasing this phenomenon.

    [9] Cf the notices collected by Bob Berwyn for InsideClimate News, 20 January 2020.

    [10] InsideClimate News, 23 August 2018.

    [11] Williams, A. P. & al. (2019). ‘Observed impacts of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire in California’.

    [12] Congresso em foco, 10 Jan 2020.

    [13] The Guardian, 22 December 2017

    [14] ‘How additional is the Clean Development Mechanism ?, Öko-Institut E.V, Berlin 2016

    [15] Australia is the country which has gone furthest in privatization et la ‘financialization’ of water (whose price is fixed daily in the market). Hundreds of farmers have had to give up: no money, no water to irrigate your fields but… agrobusiness takes over land and water for almond monoculture and speculate on prices. In the last ten years trading in water has become the new El Dorado, with a turnover of two billion euros per year. Some households have to pay up to 25% of their income on buying water. See the French television programme by Arte ‘Main basse sur l’eau’.

    [16] The current prime minister, Scott Morrison, was previously minister of immigration. While in office he perfected the Australian system of interning migrants in offshore camps where they survive in atrocious conditions. This system was held up as an example by the former Belgian immigration minister, the fascist Théo Francken.

    [17] ‘Under legislation pending in Tasmania, and expected to be copied across Australia, environmental protesters now face up to 21 years in jail for demonstrating,’ ‘Australia is committing Climate suicide’, New York Times, 3 January 2020.

    [18] Science, 12 May 2015.

    [19] New Daily, 25 October 2019.

    [20] James Plested, Red Flag, 6 January 2020. ‘Intense Bushfire : Australia’s dark age of climate catastrophe.

    [21] In mid-December, the insurance companies already faced a bill of 240 million Australian dollars. ‘Australia fires: The huge economic cost of Australia’s bushfires’, BBC News 20

    Daniel Tanuro, a certified agriculturalist and eco-socialist environmentalist, writes for “La gauche”, (the monthly of the LCR-SAP, Belgian section of the Fourth International). He is also the author of  “The Impossibility of Green Capitalism,” (Resistance Books, Merlin and IIRE) and “Le moment Trump” (Demopolis, 2018).

     

     

  • What is the class nature of Israel?

    Circa 1955: Palestinian refugees from Israel form a queue by the food tent in their camp in Amman. (Three Lions / Getty Images)

    INTRODUCTION by JOHN LESLIE

    When considering the tasks ahead for the socialist movement for building the Palestine solidarity movement, it’s important to consider the class nature of the Israeli state. Below are excerpts from three very useful works, one is the 1971 “Resolution on Israel and the Arab Revolution” of the Socialist Workers Party. Second is a document written by two Israeli socialists, Moshe Machover and Akiva Orr, on “The Class Character of Israel.” Finally, we suggest reading “The Hidden History of Zionism” by Ralph Schoenman.

    Settler colonialism is defined as “… an ongoing system of power that perpetuates the genocide and repression of indigenous peoples and cultures. Essentially hegemonic in scope, settler colonialism normalizes the continuous settler occupation, exploiting lands and resources to which indigenous peoples have genealogical relationships. Settler colonialism includes interlocking forms of oppression, including racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism” (www.oxfordbibliographies.org).

    The designation of Israel as a colonial settler state by the Socialist Workers Party, a predecessor organization of Socialist Resurgence, situated the Palestinian national liberation struggle in the context of the larger struggles of the peoples of the Middle East.

    *****

     From the 1971 SWP Resolution on Israel and the Arab Revolution:

    “Israel is a settler-colonialist and expansionist capitalist state maintained principally by American imperialism, hostile to the surrounding Arab peoples.”

    “It is an imperialist beachhead in the Arab world that serves as the spearhead of imperialism’s fight against the Arab revolution. We unconditionally support the struggles of the Arab peoples against the state of Israel.”

    Palestinian refugees in 1948.

    “The principal victims of the creation of Israel were the Palestinians–i.e., the Arabs who inhabited the region where Israel was established, who have been driven from their homes or placed in subjugation within Israel and the newly occupied territories. The Palestinians are a part of the Arab peoples, but they also form a distinct national grouping, with its own history of struggle against imperialism. There were Palestinian uprisings in 1921, 1929, and during the 1930s, reaching a high point in 1936-1939.  At the height of the 1936 rebellion, the Palestinians conducted a six-month general strike. Expulsion from their homeland through the creation of Israel greatly intensified national consciousness among the Palestinians. The upsurge of Palestinian nationalism in the recent period, especially after the 1967 war, was particularly marked in the refugee camps and newly occupied territories as a result of the direct oppression these people have suffered at the hands of Israel. The September 1970 civil war in Jordan further intensified Palestinian national consciousness.”

    “The struggle of the Palestinian people against their oppression and for self-determination has taken the form of a struggle to destroy the state of Israel. The currently expressed goal of this struggle is the establishment of a democratic, secular Palestine. We give unconditional support to this struggle of the Palestinians for self-determination.”

    “An integral part of our program for the Palestinian revolution and the Arab revolution as a whole is support of full civil, cultural, and religious rights for all nationalities in the Mideast, including the Israeli Jews. The major Palestinian liberation organizations also advance this concept and view it as essential to their attempt to win the Israeli Jewish masses away from support to Israel.”

    Palestinian fighters, 1960s.

    “Our revolutionary socialist opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state has nothing in common with anti-Semitism, as the pro-Zionist propagandists maliciously and falsely assert. Anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish racism used to justify and reinforce oppression of the Jewish people. Marxists have been and remain the most militant and uncompromising fighters against anti-Semitism and the oppression of Jews.”

    “The source of the oppression of the Jewish people in this era is the capitalist system, which in its period of decay carries all forms of racist oppression to the most barbarous extremes. This was horribly illustrated in the holocaust directed against the Jews of Europe by German imperialism under the Nazi regime. Today, anti-Semitism remains widespread in all of the Western imperialist countries. Until the capitalist system is abolished in these countries there is the ever-present danger that a new variety of virulent anti-Semitism can arise.”

    “In the Soviet Union and the workers states of Eastern Europe the privileged Stalinist bureaucracies perpetuate and reinforce many forms of racism and national oppression inherited from the previous capitalist era, including anti-Semitism and oppression of Jews.”

     *****

    “The Class Nature of Israel” was published in 1969 by the Israeli Socialist Organization (ISO). Written by Moshe Machover and Akiva Orr, the article discusses the nature and role of the Israeli working class and the distorting role settler colonialism has on their consciousness as workers.

    From The Class Nature of Israel:

    “If the uniqueness of the Israeli working class consisted only in the fact that it was composed mainly of immigrants, then it could still be assumed that through time and patient socialist propaganda it would start to play an independent, possibly revolutionary, role. In such a situation, patient educational work would not differ much from similar work elsewhere.”

    “However, Israeli society is not merely a society of immigrants; it is one of settlers. This society, including its working class, was shaped through a process of colonization. This process, which has been going on for 80 years, was not carried out in a vacuum but in a country populated by another people. The permanent conflict between the settlers’ society and the indigenous, displaced Palestinian Arabs has never stopped and it has shaped the very structure of Israeli sociology, politics, and economics.”

    *****

    Finally, in “The Hidden History of Zionism,” Ralph Schoenman explores the origins of Zionism as an ideology and documents the founding of Israel. Schoenman explains the four myths on which Zionism rests to justify the treatment of the Palestinian people.

    From The Hidden History of Zionism:

    “Four overriding myths have shaped the consciousness of most people in our society about Zionism.”

    “The first is that of “A land without a people for a people without a land.” This myth was sedulously cultivated by early Zionists to promote the fiction that Palestine was a remote, desolate place ready for the taking. This claim was quickly followed by denial of Palestinian identity, nationhood or legitimate entitlement to the land in which the Palestinian people have lived throughout their recorded history.”

    “The second is the myth of Israeli democracy. Innumerable newspaper stories or television references to the Israeli state are followed by the assertion that it is the only “real” democracy in the Middle East. In fact, Israel is as democratic as the apartheid state of South Africa. Civil liberty, due process and the most basic human rights are by law denied those who do not meet racial, religious criteria.”

    “The third myth is that of “security” as the motor force of Israeli foreign policy. Zionists maintain that their state must be the fourth largest military power in the world because Israel has been forced to defend itself against imminent menace from primitive, hate-consumed Arab masses only recently dropped from the trees.”

    “The fourth myth is that of Zionism as the moral legatee of the victims of the Holocaust. This is at once the most pervasive and insidious of the myths about Zionism. Ideologues for the Zionist movement have wrapped themselves in the collective shroud of the six million Jews who fell victim to Nazi mass murder. The bitter and cruel irony of this false claim is that the Zionist movement itself actively colluded with Nazism from its inception.”

     

     

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  • Trump’s Palestine deal: A plan for annexation and apartheid

    Palestinians in Ramallah protest Trump’s new “deal.” (AFP)

    By JOHN LESLIE

    On Jan. 28, President Trump, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu by his side, announced “the deal of the century,” presenting a two-state solution for Palestine that he claims is a “win-win” for both sides. To sweeten the deal, Trump said that the U.S. would give $50 billion to be split between the proposed new Palestinian mini-state and other countries in the region—including Egypt and Jordan.

    The Trump plan states that “the State of Israel and the United States do not believe the State of Israel is legally bound to provide the Palestinians with 100% of the pre-1967 territory [which Israel seized and has occupied for over 50 years].” The proposal also codifies Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank as being part of the state of Israel.

    The “agreement” would create a web of discontinuous Palestinian enclaves connected by enclosed roads running through land awarded to Israel. There are also promises to build some sort of infrastructure, such as a tunnel, connecting the Palestinian statelet in the West Bank with Gaza. The fate of Gaza is tied to the removal of Hamas as the governing authority in the city.

    The entire Jordan Valley would be “placed under Israeli sovereignty,” with the pledge that Palestinian farmers would be allowed to continue to work their land. A broad swath of territory along the present Israeli border would also be given to Israel. And Israeli settler towns would continue to operate within the land given to Palestinians.

    East Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim for their capital, would be placed completely under Israeli jurisdiction. Instead, Palestinians would be granted land in a nearby village to construct their new capital.

    Trump announced that for a period of four years, while the Palestinian authorities are considering his proposal, Israel would hold off from constructing new settlements on West Bank land designated to be included in the proposed Palestinian state. But some Israeli officials later backtracked from Trump’s promise.

    Trump’s deal, put together by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is anything but a victory for the Palestinian people, who have suffered under Israeli occupation for decades. “This could be the last opportunity they (Palestinians) ever have,” Trump declared.

    “It’s a big opportunity for the Palestinians. They’ve had a perfect record of blowing every opportunity they’ve had in the past,” Kushner said, adding, “Perhaps their leadership will read the details and stop posturing.” The Trump and Kushner deal is a take it or leave it offer for an occupied people, as their occupiers have been offered almost everything they want.

    Kushner’s statement ignores the fact that Israel has never fully honored any agreement. In fact, settlement building in the West Bank, something that was supposed to cease under the 1993 Oslo agreement, continued and even intensified after the pact.

    Plan opposed by Jewish groups

    Progressive Jewish organizations have condemned the move by Trump: “The plan itself is a plan for permanent Israeli military occupation and control, not a plan for peace. It is simply a continuation of Trump’s strategy since entering office: to disenfranchise Palestinians and deny their rights, their agency, and even their identity,” Emily Mayer of #IfNotNow told Newsweek.

    Rabbi Alissa Wise, of Jewish Voice for Peace, said that Trump had “contradicted international law on the illegality of Israeli settlements, the annexation of the Golan Heights and the status of Jerusalem, while cutting massive amounts of humanitarian aid to Palestinians.”

    It seems that this “agreement” is calculated to distract from Trump’s impeachment woes and to give a shot in the arm to his own reelection campaign and the reelection effort of his ally Netanyahu, who is under indictment for corruption.

    Trump is no impartial arbiter in the conflict. Since taking office, Trump has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the U.S. embassy there. Trump also recognized the “legality” of settlements in the occupied territories. Settlement building in occupied areas is illegal under international law. Israel has continued to destroy Palestinian homes and crops. Gaza is still under siege with the population trapped in what can only be termed an open-air concentration camp. Palestinians in Jerusalem have had their homes stolen and given to settlers.

    What this so-called “deal of the century” amounts to is not “two states” but the continuation of apartheid and annexation. It clears the road for a future Israeli regime to complete the process of ethnic cleansing by exerting their claim to all of Palestine. Some in the Israeli right wing envision a Greater Israel that would claim all of historic Palestine and extend into Lebanon and Syria.

    Neither of the U.S. capitalist political parties, Democrats or Republicans, are honest peace brokers. Israel is a valuable U.S. strategic asset in the region. Reagan’s Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, referred to Israel as “the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk.” The Democrats have, with a few exceptions, been abject supporters of the state of Israel. U.S. taxpayer dollars have funded the apartheid state for decades.

    Israel has often been a proxy for U.S. imperialist power and has provided aid and training to repressive regimes. For example, Israel sold arms and provided training to the military and police forces of Chile, Ecuador, and Argentina throughout the 1970s. Israel is also implicated in the training and arming of rightist death squads in Guatemala, Columbia, and Nicaragua. Israel also trains U.S. troops in counterinsurgency tactics and methods and provides training to police forces across the U.S. and around the world.

    Israel: A colonial-settler state

    Some Palestinian activists are terming this proposal the “new Balfour”—a reference to the 1917 Balfour Declaration by the British government, which expressed support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. This declaration was, of course, made without consultation with the indigenous people in Palestine, which had a small Jewish population at the time. After the World War, the European imperialist powers carved up the Middle East with no regard to the aspirations of the people of the region.

    More than 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes in the 1948 war that followed the founding of the state of Israel. This is commonly referred to as the Nakba, the catastrophe. Palestinian villages and towns were taken over and the land confiscated. The remaining Palestinian minority in Israel, referred to as the Israeli Arabs, are treated as second-class citizens. Palestinian people do not have the right to return to their homeland.

    Palestinian workers from the West Bank who manage to be allowed to work in Israel face discrimination, strict permitting processes, and lower pay than Israelis. Israel holds more than 4600 Palestinian prisoners; many are held in preventive detention without trial or due process. More than 200 Palestinian children are held as in Israeli jails. Palestinians in the occupied territories are subject to Israeli military courts.

    Since Oslo, the Zionist state has continued settlement building, with around 600,000 settlers now living in fortified Jewish-only enclaves, in violation of international law. Gross violations of Palestinian human rights are routine. Home demolitions and land confiscation are commonplace. The destruction of crops and decades-old olive trees and toxic waste dumping by settlers is frequent. In fact, on Monday, Jan. 27, settlers burned a classroom in a Palestinian school and wrote racist graffiti on the walls.

    What is on offer in the Trump plan is continued subordination and dispossession, not real self-determination. An ineffectual bourgeois leadership around Abbas have enriched themselves and sold out the Palestinian people in return for the limited power of running a Bantustan.* Israel has spent the years since Oslo creating the “facts on the ground” for annexation at the expense of Palestinian workers and farmers.

    Build the solidarity movement!

    Building international solidarity with the Palestinian people is an urgent task. We must shout a resounding no to the sham peace plan offered by the criminal Trump-Netanyahu axis. We support organizations fighting for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against the apartheid regime. This includes a vigorous defense of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace when they are attacked by Zionists and pro-Israel reactionaries.

    We reject the notion that criticism of Israel and advocacy for the Palestinians equals anti-Semitism. We also understand that far-right forces, for their own nefarious reasons, seek to infiltrate the ranks of the solidarity movement. We reject this right-wing agenda and work to fight any manifestation of anti-Semitism in the movement.

    We fight today for the right to return, the lifting of the siege of Gaza, and the freeing of political prisoners. We call for an immediate end to settlement building and the return of all land confiscated or stolen since 1967. We call for BDS until the end of the apartheid system. All U.S. aid to Israel must end immediately. The two-state solution is not a viable one for Palestinian workers and their allies. We call for a unified democratic, secular, and socialist Palestine, with equal rights for all.

    Reject the sham Trump plan! Self-determination for the Palestinian people! Free Palestine from the river to the sea!

     

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  • What made the Holocaust possible?

    Children freed from Auschwitz in January 1945.

    By ERNEST MANDEL

    Jan. 27 marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz by the Soviet Red Army. The liberators found about 7000 surviving prisoners when they entered the camp. An estimated 1.1 million people were killed or died there.

    To commemorate the date, we reprint the text of Belgian Trotskyist Ernest Mandel’s contribution to a symposium on the Nazi genocide held in Brussels in 1988. It was first published in French in Yannis Thanassekos and Heinz Wismann, eds., Révision de l’Histoire: Totalitarisme, crimes et génocides nazis, Editions du Cerf, Paris 1990, pp. 169-74. The English translation was published in Gilbert Achcar. ed., The Legacy of Ernest Mandel, Verso, London 1999, pp. 225 – 232. 

    1. What made the Holocaust possible – a unique event in history so far – was first of all a biological variant of an ultra-racist ideology, an extreme form of Social Darwinism. According to this doctrine there existed ‘subhuman races’ (Untermenschen), whose extermination was justified and even essential. For those who upheld this ideology, Jews were ‘vermin to be wiped out’, Blacks are ‘apes’, ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’, and so forth. The doctrine of extreme biological racism does not fall from the sky. It has a material basis in socio-economic and political practices that treated particular human groups in such an inhuman way that the need for an ideological justification — an ideology of dehumanization — and for a ‘neutralization’ of the perpetrators’ guilty consciences and feelings of individual guilt (see Himmler’s speech of 6 October 1943) arises almost necessarily.

    2. The Nazis’ systematic dehumanization of the Jews is not an isolated phenomenon in history. Comparable phenomena arose in respect to slaves in Antiquity, midwives (‘witches’) during the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, the American Indians, Blacks sold into slavery, and so forth. Victims of these phenomena can be counted by the millions, including women and children. If none of these massacres attained a systematic, wholesale character equal to that of the Holocaust, it is not because the killers were more ‘humane’ or merciful than the Nazis. It is because their resources as well as their socio-economic and political plans were more limited.

    3. It is not true that the Nazis’ extermination plans were meant exclusively for the Jews. A comparable proportion of the Gypsies was also exterminated. In the longer term, the Nazis wanted to exterminate a hundred million people in central and eastern Europe, above all Slavs. If the extermination began with the Jews, this was due in part to the demented faith of Hitler and some of his lieutenants in the ‘world Jewish conspiracy’, but also in part to a more practical reason. Before being exterminated, the slaves had to work (thus minister of justice’ Thierack: ‘Tod durch Arbeit’). Rightly or wrongly, the Nazis believed that the Jews would be less docile, less easily reduced to the slavery of completely resigned illiterates, than the other ‘inferior races’. This meant in their minds that the Jews had to be killed (including by working them to death) inside camps, not in still partly ‘open’ villages and towns (which was the fate foreseen for the Russians, Poles, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, and others, each of which was to be exterminated in turn).

    4. The doctrine of Jewish racial inferiority (‘subbumanity’) is linked in the minds of the most fanatical contemporary anti-semites to the myth of the ‘international Jewish conspiracy’ to seize power on a world scale and ‘suck the blood’ of all peoples. The joint instruments of this conspiracy are supposedly big speculative (banking) capital, Marxist socialism (later Bolshevism), Freemasonry, and even — the Jesuits! This myth was not of German, but rather of Russian origin (the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabrication by the Tsarist Okhrana (secret police)). At the end of the nineteenth century it was much more widespread in France, Britain, Austria, Hungary and Poland than in Germany strictly speaking. The Ukrainian chief Petliura, responsible for pogroms that killed more than 100,000 Jews in relatively little time, was devoted to this myth. There is no reason for us to doubt that he was capable of conceiving and carrying out the Holocaust if he had had the necessary material and technical means.

    5. The doctrine of biological racism can be seen in a much broader context: the rise of anti-humanist, anti-progressive, anti-egalitarian, anti emancipatory doctrines, which openly celebrated the most extreme and systematic violence against whole human groups (‘the enemy’) and spread widely towards the end of the nineteenth century. It seems incontestable to us that the launching of (and to a lesser extent the preparations for) the First World War was the decisive turning point in this regard. Without the First World War, Hitler and Nazism as a mass phenomenon would have been inconceivable. Without the launching of the Second World War, Auschwitz would have been impossible. Yet the crisis of humanism and of civilization that began with the First World War can in fact hardly be separated from the phenomenon of the crisis of imperialism, whose early manifestations under colonialism are rightly linked to the birth of biological racist doctrines among some of the colonists (remember the signs: ‘Dogs and Natives Not Allowed’).

    6. The Holocaust did not only have ideological roots. It would have been impossible without a given set of material and technical means. This was an industrial extermination project, not a do-it-yourself one. This is all that distinguished it from traditional pogroms. It required mass production of Zyklon-B gas, gas chambers, pipes, crematoria, barracks, and massive reliance on railways, on a scale that would have been unattainable in the eighteenth century and most of the nineteenth century, not to speak of earlier epochs (unless the project was carried out over decades or even several centuries). In this sense the Holocaust was also (not only, but also) a product of modern industry that has increasingly escaped from any control by human or humanist reason, i.e. of modern capitalist industry driven onwards by more and more intense competition that has gotten out of control. It is the most extreme example to date of a typical combination of perfected partial rationality and global irrationality, pushed to its limit: a combination characteristic of bourgeois society.

    7. Alongside the ideological and material/technical preconditions for the Holocaust, we must also consider its socio-political preconditions. Carrying out the Holocaust required participation, with different degrees of active or passive complicity, by several million people: in the first place undoubtedly by executioners, organizers and camp guards, but also by statesmen, bankers, industrialists, high-ranking civil servants, army officers, diplomats, lawyers, professors, doctors, along with the ‘foot-soldiers’: petty functionaries, ‘ordinary prison’ guards, railway workers, and so forth.

    A careful examination of this mass of several million accomplices would divide them by nationality, with the Germans strictly speaking doubtless making up no more than 50 to 60 per cent of the total. It would also divide them according to the degree of their irrationality, with psychopaths and fanatics in the minority, though certainly a substantial minority. But the majority acted out of habits of obedience, routine or calculation (the silence of church hierarchies falls into this last category), if not out of cowardice (the risks of individual disobedience being considered greater than the risks of complicity in inhuman acts).

    One of the factors that allowed the Holocaust to happen was of an ethical order, or if you like has to do with the motivation of behaviour. It took a particular turn of mind: the Holocaust was also the result, not just of the inclination to accept, celebrate, or even worship massive violence, but of the acceptance of the doctrine that the state has the right to require individuals to do things from which they should recoil, and in their hearts do recoil, from the point of view of the fundamental rules of ethics.

    According to this doctrine, it is better to submit to the state’s authority in every case than to ‘undermine political authority’. The extreme consequences of this doctrine have proven the absurdity of the conservatives’ (including Aristotle’s and Goethe’s) classic thesis: that the ‘disorder’ brought about by rebelling against injustice would always lead to still more injustice. There could hardly be a worse injustice than Auschwitz. Faced with massive injustice, resistance and revolt – including individual resistance, but above all collective resistance and revolt – are not only a right but a duty, which overrides any raison d’Etat. This is the main lesson of the Holocaust.

    8. Minorities with fanatical, extremist and inhuman views, i.e. pathological minorities and individuals, have existed and still exist in virtually all countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not to speak of earlier centuries. But they constitute a marginal phenomenon, with minimal political influence. They were certainly marginal in Germany in the period from 1848 to 1914.

    In order for such individuals to get a response from millions of people, a deep social crisis is necessary (as Marxists we would say: a deep socio-economic crisis, a deep crisis of the mode of production, and a deep crisis of the power structures). In order for such individuals to have a short-term chance of gaining power, still more for them actually to take power, there must be a correlation of social forces that makes this possible: weakening of the traditional workers’ movement (and to a lesser extent of traditional bourgeois liberalism); strengthening of the most aggressive layers of the wealthy classes; despair among the middle classes; considerable increase in the number of declassed people, and so on. The crisis of the Weimar Republic and the 1929-34 economic crisis evidently created these conditions in Germany in 1932-33.

    9. The peculiarities of German history; the specific nature of the ‘bloc in power’ after the German unification of 1871; the particular weight of the Prussian junkers and their militarist tradition within this bloc; the relative weakness of a liberal-humanist tradition compared with other countries (due to the defeat of the 1848 revolution); the evident disproportion between Germany’s flourishing industry and finance capital on the one hand and its limited share in the division of spheres of influence on a world scale on the other hand: all this made German imperialism more aggressive in the period from 1890 to 1945 than its main rivals. In the eyes of much of the German ‘elite’ in this epoch, the struggle for world domination would take place by way of war and militarism. The empire that Germany was to conquer – the equivalent of Britain’s ‘Empire of India’ – lay in centra! and eastern Europe (later to be extended from this base to the Middle East, Africa, South America and so on). This explains why much of the German ruling classes were prepared to accept Hitler, without fully realizing where this would lead them (though as early as 30 June 1934 it was clear to anyone who wasn’t blind that the man was prepared to tread underfoot the most elementary principles of morals and the rule of law, in fact that he was a ruthless murderer).

    Both the liberal-humanist tendency and the conservative militarist tendency were present among each of the bourgeois classes of Europe, the US and Japan from 1885-90 on. The difference is that the latter tendency remained in a minority in France and Britain, while it became the majority tendency in Germany and Japan (in the US the two tendencies have been in equilibrium since 1940). This difference can be explained not by ethnic factors but by historical specificities.

    10. If we see the Holocaust as the ultimate expression so far of the destructive tendencies existing in bourgeois society, tendencies whose roots lie deep in colonialism and imperialism, we can call attention to other tendencies going in the same direction, most notably in the development of the arms race (nuclear war, biological and chemical warfare, so-called ‘conventional’ weapons more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and so forth). A nuclear war, or even a ‘conventional’ world war without prior dismantling of nuclear power plants, would be worse than the Holocaust. The overall irrationality of preparations for such a war is already perceptible in the language used. When they speak of ‘limiting the costs’ of a nuclear war, this amounts to trying to commit suicide, to destroy the whole human race, ‘at the lowest possible cost’. What do ‘costs’ have to do with suicide?

    11. This interpretation of the Holocaust is in no way meant to relativize the Nazis’ crimes against humanity, which are the worst crimes in history, rich as it is in horrors. The interpretation has its specific scientific value. Those who reject it must demonstrate that it is mistaken on the basis of the facts, their correlation and interconnection. This is a debate among historians, sociologists, economists, political scientists and moral philosophers. A scientific thesis (hypothesis) can only be refuted with scientific arguments, not with extra-scientific arguments.

    Nonetheless, far from being in any way a concession to the Nazis or German militarists, or even to the German ‘elite’, this interpretation of the Holocaust also has a subjective function. It is also useful and necessary from the point of view of the interests of the human race. It enables us to avoid the intellectual and mora! risks inherent in the contrary thesis, according to which the Holocaust is beyond all rational explanation and is incomprehensible. This obscurantist standpoint is to a large extent a posthumous triumph for Nazi doctrine. For if a patch of history is irrational and totally incomprehensible, that means that humanity itself is also irrational and incomprehensible. Then the evil empire is ‘in all of us’. That is a scarcely indirect if not hypocritical way of saying that the fault is not Hitler’s, nor the Nazis’, nor that of those who allowed them to conquer and wield power, but everybody’s, which means nobody’s in particular.

    For our part, we prefer to observe what the historical truth was: that far from ‘all being guilty’, men and women everywhere, including in Germany, chose one of two camps. The criminals and their accomplices behaved differently from those who resisted. The Amsterdam workers who went on strike to protest against the first anti-Jewish decrees were not the same as the SS. The Danish resistance which saved practically all of the country’s Jews was not the same as the quislings. The majority of the Italian people (a ‘band of dishonest liars’, as Eichmann said with a cynicism that verged on the grotesque), who made it possible to save most of the Italian Jews, was not the same as the Croatian Ustashe. The soldiers of the Red Army who liberated Auschwitz were not the same as those who created the gas chambers. Between these two camps there were, to be sure, intermediate situations and behaviours. But the two camps’ existence is empirically verifiable. By explaining the causes of the Holocaust in a rational way, we explain at the same time the difference between these behaviours.

    12. Our interpretation of the Holocaust also has a practical, political function. It allows us to escape from practical impotence, and from the feeling of powerlessness in face of the risks of the phenomenon’s recurring. We say deliberately that the Holocaust has been the apogee of crimes against humanity so far. But there is no guarantee that this apogee will not be equalled or even surpassed in the future. To deny this a priori strikes us as irrational and politically irresponsible. As Bertolt Brecht said, ‘The womb from which this monster emerged is still fertile.’

    In order to struggle better against neofascism and biological racism today, we have to understand the nature of fascism yesterday. Scientific knowledge is also a weapon the human race needs to fight and survive, not a purely academic exercise. Refusing to use this weapon means facilitating the arrival of new would-be mass murderers; it means allowing them to commit fresh crimes. Explaining the causes of fascism and the Holocaust means strengthening our capacity for rejection, indignation, hostility, total and unshakeable opposition, resistance and revolt, against the ever-possible re-emergence of fascism and other dehumanizing doctrines and practices. This is a basic, indispensable work of political and moral hygiene.

     

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  • Minnesota snow plow drivers win strike

    By ADAM RITSCHER

    For months, St. Louis County in northern Minnesota had been locked in bitter contract negotiations with Teamsters Local 320. The Teamsters represent the 168 snow-plow drivers and other maintenance workers in the county’s Public Works Department.

    The dispute centered on a two-tier sick-leave accrual system that the county had forced on the Teamsters and other county workers several years back. Under this two-tier system, workers hired after 2013 couldn’t accumulate as many sick hours as more senior workers could.

    This is particularly important, given that snow-plow drivers seldom call in sick, and often are able to accumulate a substantial number of sick hours that they then cash out when they retire. It ends up being a very useful retirement bonus, essentially.

    In the aftermath of the introduction of the unpopular two-tier system, two other unions that represent county workers had successfully negotiated it away. So in this round of contract negotiations, the Teamsters were looking to follow suit. But the county refused to budge; instead, they practically dared the workers to strike over the issue. So they did!

    On Wednesday, Jan. 15, the snow-plow drivers went out on strike. Despite the bitterly cold temperatures and wind, they set up pickets at every single one of the Public Works Department sites in the County. The union also put together roving pickets to follow vehicles that the county tried to deploy. This was no small feat, given that St. Louis County is bigger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, and county garages are spread out throughout the whole county.

    For the county government’s part, they engaged in an ugly smear campaign in the media against the workers, and deployed supervisors and other non-contract workers to operate the plow trucks.

    The first couple of days saw temperatures drop even further. Some days, the wind temperatures were -20 degrees. No matter how cold it got, though, the workers kept every picket going from sun up to sun down. It’s worth noting that several presidential candidates announced their support for the strike, trying to score cheap political points, but not one of them braved the bitter cold temperatures to walk the picket line.

    The weather switched teams, though, when four days into the strike a big storm hit the region, dumping several inches of snow. The county’s scab crews were unable to even come close to getting all of the work done. They claimed they were able to plow 70% of the roads that the union snow-plow drivers usually plow, but counted in that number were many roads that were only plowed once during the storm, or only had one lane plowed.

    Numerous roads simply became impassable. And the inexperienced supervisors ended up demolishing numerous mailboxes, signs, and other things while trying to plow.

    By the end of the weekend, the county agreed to go back to the table, and at 3:45 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 20, the Teamsters announced they had reached an agreement. The agreement saw an end to the two-tier sick leave concession, and contained considerable gains in the health benefits for the workers. In other words, it was a victory, and it was subsequently unanimously ratified by the membership.

    We salute the hard-working sisters, brothers, and siblings of Teamsters Local 320. They stood up for what was right and won, and in doing so they demonstrated that strikes are still one of the most powerful and effective tools in the workers’ toolbox.

    Photo: Socialist Resurgence

     

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