Lebanon’s ‘October Revolution’ Continues

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Since last October  hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon have been demanding an end to corruption and a new apolitical government of technocrats. Lebanon has been paralysed by large-scale demonstrations for three months, driven by anger at the country’s sectarian political class, entrenched corruption and an economic crisis. The country is one of the most indebted in the world, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 152 per cent. In the 2016 budget, interest payments accounted for almost half of all government spending.
The country’s economy is struggling and more than 200,000 jobs have been lost since the crisis began. Local estimates say 10% of companies in Lebanon have gone out of business and many employees have had their salaries cut.
Banks have imposed limits on how much people can withdraw from their own accounts – in some cases as little as the equivalent of £150 every fortnight. 
Protesters say anger over the actions of the banks during the crisis has been fuelled by a long-held perception that the financial industry has a symbiotic relationship with Lebanon’s political class that has enriched a small, corrupt few, at the expense of the entire country. 
“We believe the banks are part of the oligarchy ruling Lebanon. The banks revolve around political figures here,” says 23-year-old Ziad Eldanaf, a philosophy student, at a protest outside Lebanon’s central bank . 

The UN’s top official in Lebanon has warned of a potential new migrant crisis is unfolding. Jan Kubis, a former Slovakian foreign minister, has told Sky News that Lebanon faces a new level of social unrest and chaos without the implementation of reforms to address a deepening economic crisis.  Kubis’ previous UN postings were in Iraq and Afghanistan. He knows what failed states look like, and he warned of the dangers of Lebanon becoming another.



“Without reforms, the crisis will turn into a security crisis. Then of course we will have not only those Syrians that are still in droves as refugees here but many others, starting with the Lebanese, that simply try to example this kind of social strife.” Kubis’ assessment of the state of the country is bleak. “Some are saying that it’s an existential crisis for Lebanon…”



“Lebanon is on the shores of the Mediterranean. Just look at what is happening now. Look at the waves of migration being generated by many other countries. And what is the destination? It’s Europe.”





The new government is perceived to be working to save bankers and oligarchs at the expense of the ordinary person. It is no coincidence that the new economy minister is the executive general manager of one of the biggest banks in the country, while the finance minister is one of the few economists in the country opposing capital controls, or  targeting the richest segment of society. 

Asked about the responsiveness of the officials he met with the need to listen to protesters and take their demands into account, Kubis said: “I don’t know. My message was ‘listen to the people, not only those who are protesting, but also those who are not protesting but share the same concerns and needs with protesters.’ Everyone is fed up with the lack of 24/7 electricity, unemployment, rampant poverty, lack of a social safety net, lack of proper healthcare for basic needs. These are concerns shared by everyone and not only protesters who are raising their voices.”

 Kubis tweeted, “Another day of confusion around the formation of a government, amidst the increasingly angry protests and free-falling economy. Politicians, don’t blame the people, blame yourselves for this dangerous chaos” .

Dr. Mona Fayad, professor at the Lebanese University’s Psychology Department, explained that the financial crisis has wiped out the entire lifestyle of the Lebanese people.



“We expect things to get worse. There will no longer be any ‘middle’ class and the Lebanese would be divided between the poor and the rich,” she said. 
Dr. Bashir Ismat, a professor of development studies and an expert at the Social Affairs Ministry, told Arab News: “The rate of people living in poverty has increased to 40 percent, and might even reach 50 or 70 percent if the state and Lebanese banks file for bankruptcy.”
The Ministry of Social Affairs in Lebanon estimates that 20 percent of the people who suffer from extreme poverty currently live below 4 dollars a day, compared to 8 percent in 2019.

Dr. Bashir Esmat said: “This percentage is likely to increase in case the economic collapse.” He talked about a “phenomena that the Ministry of Social Affairs began to witness recently, which was not seen before, as it was monitored that young students arrived at public schools in the Bekaa region, who had not eaten for two days due to lack of food in their homes.”



Zuhair Berro, head of the Consumer Protection Association, told Arab News that the current crisis in Lebanon is “unprecedented, especially that prices have increased by 40 percent in the last three months.” He expressed fears of a further deterioration in the economy, adding that even before the crisis, prices in Lebanon were already 30 percent higher than in neighbouring countries. “The financial crisis has exposed this monopoly system” in Lebanon’s economy, he said. “Speculation might totally erode the value of the Lebanese pound.” Berro said “the political class doesn’t have any solution” to the crisis, adding: “The former government stepped down and left the bank owners in control of the Lebanese pound. In addition, the statement of the new government didn’t include serious solutions. We’re heading toward total chaos, and we need remedies for the causes of the crisis.”

Today, the newly formed government’s vote of confidence will take place amid a continued crackdown on protesters.





Among the protesters who have taken to the streets over the past three months, there now exists a keen awareness about the culprits of Lebanon’s woes, and a new focus to target them. 



“We have always known what is causing the problems, but we couldn’t change anything without the numbers of people in the street,” says Jadid, a protester. 



https://news.sky.com/story/europe-faces-new-wave-of-migrants-unless-lebanon-acts-un-official-warns-11931077

Quackery and the Coronavirus Epidemic

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Although the fatalities of this new coronavirus has not reached the degree that many existing diseases have such as the widening spread of Dengue fever, or the re-newed rise of TB, it has certainly fuelled the fear of many. Frightened people will take desperate measures and we witness this happening. In China even the government is resorting to untried and untested remedies from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and in India the repeatedly discredited homeopathy is being recommended.

We cannot say for sure if TCM, and in particular the use of some herbs does not have a palliative value in the treatment of coronavirus symptoms even if we do not know what the active ingredient is or the best method of administration might be but we can be confident, it hold no curative value.

Shuang Huang Lian is a syrup made from honeysuckle and other plants and is most commonly used to treat coughs, sore throats and high fevers. It is now being advertised for use in the treatment of the coronavirus epidemic by the likes of the state-run Xinhua news agency but since no clinical study had been carried out, it is unknown whether the medicine could prevent or cure coronavirus. China’s National Health Commission issued a notice on the treatment of the coronavirus , asking medical institutions to ‘actively promote the role of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) during treatment’, two days after Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the ‘combination of Chinese and Western medicine.’


With homeopathy, however, we are more than certain it acts no more than a panacea. In India, the government sponsored ayurveda health system which homeopathy is a major component has become a multibillion-dollar industry in India, a $4.5 billion market and projected to increase to $13 billion by 2025. Ramkrishna Yadav — better known as Baba Ramdev – runs an ayurvedic business surpasses the sales of such giants as Nestles.

In China, TCM is also big business and is worth $130 billion, according to the country’s State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is being promoted by the Chinese authorities to enlarge China’s herbal exports and to gain recognition for Chinese herbs. China’s government has been lobbying the World Health Organisation for its acceptance and suitability to offer a false respectability of its clinical reliability.

In 2018, the WHO gave its approval to include TCM in its influential global compendium (known as the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, or ICD), which includes a chapter on traditional medicine for the first time.

Some scientists fear such actions confers legitimacy on unproven therapies and say WHO overlooked both the toxicity of various herbal medicine and the lack of evidence it works. While those who supportanimal rights warn it will further endanger animals such as the tiger, pangolin, bear and rhino, whose organs are used in some TCM cures. The Scientific American magazine called the WHO move ‘an egregious lapse in evidence-based thinking and practice.’

 A 1998 study found 99 percent of TCM scientific papers published in China produced positive results — statistically improbable and a good sign of fraud. Around a third of TCM drugs, when tested in British laboratories, turned out to contain conventional medicine—often in dangerously unsafe doses where supposed herbal painkillers had ibuprofen in them, for example.


What is clear is that the endless drive for profit exerts a detrimental influence over medicine and it will receive a government stamp of approval for purely monetary gain. Nor should we be at all surprised that the popularity of cheap ‘complimentary and alternative medicine’ solutions are in those countries which for whatever reason decline to  devote their social spending budget on providing effective health services.
More background reading on Traditional Chinese Medicine here

Class Solidarity and Inequality

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2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people, which means there is more wealth in the hands of 0.00003% of the world population than in 60% of it.



 In the US, where the highest number of billionaires live, the disparity between the ultra rich and everyone else is at a five-decade high: The richer 0.1% earn almost 200 times as much as the remaining 90%.



According to the Economic Policy Institute, as of 2018 the threshold to qualify to the 1% was about $421,000 a year. This means that someone making $400,000 a year and someone making $20,000 a year both belong to the 99%, while surely their lives and struggles are not alike.



Bertell Ollman, a professor of political science and a leading expert in Marxism told Quartz the current debate over inequality isn’t too far from Karl Marx’s representation of capitalist society:

 On top, says Ollman, are the capitalists—a small group of people who are interested in maximizing profit at all cost; below them is everyone else, whose work is exploited for the capitalists’ profits. Although it might look different in terms of social status, and income, the position of professionals and that of factory workers, for instance, isn’t intrinsically different.



“Whether it’s the 99%—or maybe the 95%—the middle class is still workers,” says Ollman. “People calling themselves social-democrats are focused on making it easier for the mass of comfortable workers,” says Ollman, pointing to the reforms social-democrats have carried forward in Europe. But Ollman says the European experiments, where some mitigations of capitalism were brought in in the form of the welfare state and regulations, show precisely the limits of maintaining a capitalistic framework while trying to make its reality more palatable to the middle class (as opposed to the working class). “Insofar as social-democrats don’t do away with capitalism, it’s going to turn around and bite them in the butt,” says Ollman. 



 So long as the system isn’t changed, he explains, reform can always be undone as soon as there is a government aligned with the interests of wealth. This also ends up alienating workers, who see only incremental progress, and don’t get necessarily captivated by social-democratic political forces. Better welfare structures are important progress, but “most workers are still doing something that is long, hard, dirty, and insecure,” says Ollman, “and that is what they think of, first and foremost.” This explains why those who would benefit from redistribution are often less engaged in the fight for it.



 Michael Thompson, a professor of political science at William Patterson University, also sees merit in the framing of everyone against the ultra-rich, while sharing Ollman’s cautiousness. “The idea of 99% versus 1% is significant for one level of analysis,” he told Quartz, “since it’s the traditional middle class that is falling apart.” Patterson says that the current debate on inequality is focused on re-establishing access to the kind of welfare programs that, with Franklin D. Roosevelt and after World War II, all but artificially created a middle class, and that lumping together people of different income (especially when they may have high earnings, but not a lot of accumulated wealth) with the aim of gathering momentum against inequality makes sense from a historical point of view.



Thompson, however, points to something else: While for the purpose of wealth distribution it may make sense for the 99% to rally together, focusing simply on the broader issue of the few who are holding onto wealth risks diminishing the complexity of class relationships at the micro level. “There are daily micro-inequalities that get glossed over by the broader conversation on inequality,” he says. “We are so obsessed with numbers that measure distribution that we ignore the new inequalities that are emerging.”
The urban 20%, for instance, who is more likely to be attuned to the inequality conversation, is in a position of power over the rest of the country—even when it doesn’t belong to the ultra-rich. Within cities, too, Thompson sees what he calls “the expansion of the servant society,” or the growth of people who lend their time and work for temporary services—such as driving for ride-sharing companies, or delivering food.
This risks derailing the fight against the ultra rich, Ollman says—because it recreates capitalistic, exploitative dynamics within workers. Those who are aware of the issue of inequality, then, as well as the more exploited workers who don’t have the luxury to engage in big political conversations, end up gravitating back toward isolation—they no longer identify as the 99%, but rather as parts of different subclasses. “People end up defending what they have, not reaching out for solidarity,” says Ollman. “This plays in the hands of the [capitalist] system, maintaining and enabling inequality.

The World Socialist Movement

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From the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

claims that socialism will, and must, be a wageless, moneyless, worldwide society of common (not state) ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution. claims that socialism will be a sharp break with capitalism with no “transition period” or gradual implementation of socialism (although socialism will be a dynamic, changing society once it is established). claims that there can be no state in a socialist society. claims that there can be no classes in a socialist society. promotes only socialism, and promotes it as an immediate goal. claims that only the vast majority, acting consciously in its own interests, for itself, by itself, can create socialism. opposes any vanguardist approach, minority-led movements, and leadership, as inherently undemocratic (among other negative things). promotes a peaceful democratic revolution, achieved through force of numbers and understanding. neither promotes, nor opposes, reforms to capitalism. claims that there is one working class, worldwide. lays out the fundamentals of what socialist society must be, but does not presume to tell the future socialist society how to go about its business. promotes an historical materialist approach—real understanding. claims that religion is a social, not personal, matter and that religion is incompatible with socialist understanding. seeks election to facilitate the elimination of capitalism by the vast majority of socialists, not to govern capitalism. claims that Leninism is a distortion of Marxian analysis. opposes all capitalist war and claims that socialism will inherently end war, including the “war” between the classes. noted, in 1918, that the Bolshevik Revolution was not socialist. Had earlier, long noted that Russia was not ready for a socialist revolution. the first to recognise that the former USSR, China, Cuba and other so-called “socialist countries” were not socialist, but instead, state capitalist. claims a very accurate, consistent analysis since 1904 when the first Companion Party was founded.

FOR A FUTURE

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Times are bad but the consolation is they have been worse. The very fate of humanity depends on the outcome between capitalism and socialism, since capitalism involves the threat of nuclear world war or environmental destruction. Nations are social structures ruled by definite classes. No nation is ruled or governed without a class structure — a leadership that answers to the class in power but speaks in the name of the whole nation. The real solution to the looming disasters is the socialist revolution. The only road to freedom for the workers is through their common struggle for the abolition of capitalism.



Pessimism can never be a tool for liberation, even though such gloom and doom can the sordid character of capitalist exploitation and oppression. Rather, the Socialist Party case is a heartfelt plea to unify and inspire a divided world. We each have the power to make our class stronger, and nationalism and racism weaker, by reaching out and seeing one another as one people. Though that may seem simple and naive, we have to constantly breathe the spirit of revolutionary optimism. We hold no reason to be disheartened. The apparent political indifference can not continue forever. And, when change comes, the Socialist Party will be in place to achieve its objective. The fact is the left parties have failed to overthrow capitalist imperialism nor do they promote progress towards socialism. Workers recognising their self-interest will see the absolute need for the unity of their class in order to overthrow the capitalist class.



The Socialist Party advocates world socialism. That is to say the destruction of the present class society, which consists of one class who live by owning property and therefore need not work if they so desire, and of another that has no property and therefore must work in order that they may live. 



Socialism insists that this system of society, which is the modern form of slavery, should be changed to a system of society which would give every man and woman an opportunity of doing useful work. Labour would be employed in co-operation, and the struggle of man against man for bare subsistence would be supplanted by harmonious combination for the production of common wealth and mutual services without the waste of labour or material. Everyone‘s needs would be satisfied from this common stock, but no person would be allowed to own anything which he or she could not use, or abuse by employing it as an instrument for forcing others to labour . Thus the land, machinery, and means of transport would cease to be private property. Thus men and women would be free because they would no longer be dependent on  property-owners for subsistence; thus they would be brothers and sisters, for the cause of strife, the struggle for subsistence at other people’s expense, would have come to an end. Thus they would be equal, for if all people were doing useful work. Thus the motto of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, which is but an empty boast in a society that upholds the monopoly of the means of production, would at last be realised.



The aim of the Socialist Party is to replace world capitalist economy with world socialism. Socialist society is mankind’s only way out, for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which threaten to destroy humanity. A socialist society will abolish the class division of society, and  simultaneously the abolition of anarchy in production. It will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will be a united commonwealth. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the development and strengthening of mankind itself.



After abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialism will replace the elemental forces of the world market, competitive and blind processes of social production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.



The abolition of private property and the disappearance of classes will do away with the exploitation of man by man. Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy: instead of being merely a means of livelihood it will become a necessity of life: want and economic inequality, the misery of enslaved classes, and a wretched standard of life generally will disappear; the hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time, the organs of class domination, and the State in the first place, will disappear also. The State, being the embodiment of class domination, will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire.



With the disappearance of classes a great field will be opened for the harmonious development of all the talents inherent in humanity.



In socialism no social restrictions will be imposed upon the growth of the forces of production. Private ownership in the means of production, the selfish lust for profits, the artificial retention of the people in a state of ignorance, poverty will have no place in a socialist  society. The most expedient and sustainable utilisation of the forces of nature and of the natural conditions of production in the various parts of the world, the removal of the antagonism between town and country, that under capitalism results from the low technical level of agriculture and its systematic lagging behind industry; the closest possible co-operation between science and technique, the utmost encouragement of research work and the practical application of its results on the widest possible social scale; planned organisation of scientific work; the application of the most perfect methods of statistical accounting and, planned regulation of economy; the rapid growth of social needs, which-is the most powerful internal driving force of the whole system-all these will secure the maximum productivity of social labour, which in turn will release human energy for the powerful development of science and art.



The development of the productive forces of world socialism will make it possible to raise the well-being of the whole of humanity and to reduce to a minimum the time devoted to material production and, consequently, will enable culture to flourish as never before in history. This new culture of a humanity that is united for the first time in history, and has abolished all State boundaries, will, unlike capitalist culture, be based upon clear and transparent human relationships. Hence, it will bury forever all mysticism, religion, prejudice and superstition and will give a powerful impetus to the development of all-conquering, scientific knowledge.



With the enormous growth of social productive forces which has accompanied the development of mankind, humanity will inscribed on its banner: “From each according to abilities to each according to needs!”




Fast Fashion Unsustainable

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The so-called fast fashion industry is spewing out 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon into the earth’s atmosphere each year – more than international flights and maritime shipping combined, according to the International Energy Agency. 



 A 29.99 pound dress in a high street chain may be made of cotton, an innocuous-sounding natural material, but uses fertilisers which seep into groundwater and create dead zones in lakes and rivers where marine life cannot survive. 



 A 5 pound pair of leggings uses polyester, a fabric which is partly to blame for the 98 million tonnes of non-renewable resources like oil the sector uses every year. 



 Clothes production including dyes and cotton farming uses 93 billion cubic metres of water annually, according to the Circular Fibres Initiative. This equates to around 37 million Olympic-size swimming pools. 



Despite some retail chains  launching recycling programmes for unwanted clothes, some 73% of garments still end up burned in incinerators, or in landfill. The latter produces methane, a greenhouse gas that therefore contributes to global warming. In Sweden, where clothes textiles are collected for recycling, non-reusable textiles are routinely incinerated, according to the Swedish fashion research programme Mistra Future Fashion. And there is not currently a solution to deal with the methane produced by natural cotton and wool products placed in landfill.



The Circular Fibres Initiative reckons that if the fashion industry’s circular economy fails to get going soon enough, fashion production will require 300 million tonnes of oil by 2050. That’s more than three times today’s requirements.



Retailers reckon all this pollution will disappear once the so-called “circular economy” gets up and running. The market, they say, will turn into a productive utopia where discarded clothes are efficiently recycled and sold back to customers. As such, rather than scaling back, fashion chains are expanding. Mega-chains like Zara have been ramping up the number of collections and new styles they release each year. This has led to a near doubling of clothes production in the past 15 years. 



The growing ‘middle class’ in China and India is driving up demand for disposable fashion. 



 300 million people are employed in the $1.3 trillion global fashion industry. Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest garment producer after China, relies on apparel for more than 80% of its exports, according to the World Bank.



The only certain way to help the planet is to scale back production. There would be less need for fossil fuels, water and landfills. But this cuts across an unsurprising goal to grow its profit and dividend.



https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-fashion-climatechange-breaking/breakingviews-fashions-climate-frankenstein-has-no-off-switch-idUKKBN20117H

Guatamalan Exodus

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The threat of famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources are increasingly being recognised as major factors in the exodus from Guatamala’s rural districts in what is called the Dry Corridor,  a region which stretches through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. 



A drought and prolonged heatwaves linked to the climate emergency devastated crops across Guatemala.  2019 was the driest year in a decade with only 65 days of rain. Guatemala’s subsistence farmers depend on rainfall – which is increasingly erratic – and most lack alternative sources of water.



 As a result, record numbers of subsistence farming families are going hungry: health officials registered more than 15,300 cases of acute malnutrition in children under five last year – up nearly 24% from 2018. It’s the highest number of acute malnutrition cases since 2015, when a severe drought destroyed harvests across Central America. At least 33,000 children need urgent medical treatment due to acute malnutrition, according to Oxfam Guatemala. Around one million Guatemalans – 15% of the population – are currently unable to meet their daily food requirements, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).



After an irregular rainy season and an unpromising harvest, almost 80%

of maize grown in Guatemala’s highland region was lost, according to Oxfam. 



Hunger is not a new phenomenon in Guatemala: at least 60% of the population live in poverty, hundreds of thousands rely on food aid, and almost 50% of children suffer stunted physical and cognitive development due to chronic malnourishment.



But experts warn that the additional burden of extreme weather is overwhelming these communities, which have been long ignored and repressed by the government. 



Now, drought, famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources are increasingly being recognized as major factors in the exodus. Marc-Andre Prost, a WFP regional nutrition adviser, told Reuters: “Climate change is not responsible for this situation but it’s definitely exacerbating a situation where people don’t have the capacity to cope.”
Central America is one of the world’s most dangerous regions outside a warzone, where a toxic mix of violence, poverty and corruption has forced millions to flee north in search of security. Amid the growing threat of famine, almost 265,000 Guatemalans migrants searching for work, safety and food security were detained at the US southern border in 2019 – a 130% increase on the previous fiscal year. Worsening hunger across the region is a factor in the rise in migrant caravans trying to reach the US overland. The caravans have been met with repression and hostility by Mexican and American authorities.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/07/guatemala-hunger-famine-flee-north

Debunking some immigration myths

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There is a common complaint about immigration that migrants are a drain on the health services of the host nation. Recent conservative governments in the United Kingdom have taken steps to restrict access to the National Health Service to migrants. Migrants rarely bring infections that pose a threat to the host population but denying them treatment may create risks.



  This article disputes this by citing research.



In the USA, Paul Van De Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has noted, undocumented immigrants were estimated to have contributed a net $12 billion into the Social Security system via payroll taxes back in 2007. Something similar plays out in healthcare. As two important studies led by Dr. Leah Zallman at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School make clear, in healthcare, immigrants subsidize the U.S.-born.



 A 2013 study published in Health Affairs, Zallman and colleagues examined how much immigrants pay into the Medicare trust fund, relative to how much Medicare spends on their healthcare. They found that while immigrants paid some $33 billion in Medicare taxes in 2009, they only used $19 billion in health services—in other words, they subsidized the trust fund to the tune of nearly $14 billion. 

In a second study, also published in Health Affairs, researchers turned to private insurance, and a similar picture emerged. Premium contributions from immigrants (including the undocumented) exceeded plans’ outlays on immigrants’ healthcare. In contrast, U.S.-born enrolees contributed less than what they used in care—a deficit of about $163 per native-born person. Including immigrants in an insurance system, in other words, makes it more actuarially sound. “Immigrants subsidize US natives in the private health insurance market,” the researchers concluded, “just as they are propping up the Medicare Trust Funds.”



 Evidence from  Spain similarly strengthens the economic case for covering everyone. It passed a law in 2011 that “gave an explicit right to free health care for all people living in Spain, both Spanish and migrant, irrespective of their legal status, making Spain one of the most migrant-friendly health systems in Europe.”  In 2012, a newly elected conservative government reversed this expansion. They were met, however, with a wave of resistance, including civil disobedience. Some 1,300 doctors and nurses pledged to defy the law and treat immigrants regardless of documentation status. After elections in 2018, the new left-wing government of Pedro Sanchez restored coverage to all. In 2018 Spain spent some $3,323 per capita on healthcare—compared to more than $10,000 in the United States. It seems unlikely that the 2019 figures will change that overall picture much. As such, the policy of extending universal healthcare to immigrants has not bankrupted Spain’s system.



 A study from Germany that found that a policy of limiting healthcare access for asylum seekers and refugees actually led to larger healthcare costs on the long term.  Furthermore, a study in several European countries found that extending access to primary care achieved large savings in direct medical and non-medical costs. Both studies concluded that inclusion of migrants in health systems reduced the risk of health conditions—which could be treated cheaply—progressing to complex and expensive illnesses. 



 In conclusion, migrant inclusive health systems reduce long term health expenditure, help to tackle shortages of workers, especially in the health and social care sectors, boost economic growth, and promote social integration in host countries.

Cut working hours without wage cuts

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With the average worker clocking 47 hours a week, Americans work more hours per year than almost any other industrialized country — 423 more than German workers, 248 more than workers in the United Kingdom, and 266 more hours a year than French workers, according to the latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development statistics. The United States is also the only industrialized country without national parental leave benefits or legally mandated paid vacation. Most European countries require at least 20 days of paid holiday and vacation time — the French actually get an entire month of annual vacation. 



Back in the early days of industrial capitalism, it was not uncommon for workers to work anywhere between 10-16 hours a day. But a bloody, centuries-long battle fought by socialists, unionists, and other similar groups in the United States won us the 40-hour work week in 1938.



Prominent economists like John Maynard Keynes were even making utopian prophecies that we’d all be working 15-hour weeks in the 21st century. 



Keynes’s prediction wasn’t based so much on the continued victories for labor as it was on a belief in increased productivity. Perhaps due to automation, or perhaps in combination with other amazing human achievements, steady increases in worker productivity would make it so that workers could simply work less and less until the weekday/weekend ratio was flipped: two days of work, five days off.



“It was such a struggle for the early organized working class to originally shorten the work week,” economic analyst Doug Henwood explained to Truthout. “But since then, it’s just completely fallen off the radar as a demand of the labor movement. And of course, organized labor is so desperate at this point anyway that they’re not really making many demands. But even just that imagination of what we can do with a shorter work week — it’s just largely disappeared from the conversation.”



“We don’t see payoff from increased productivity in the form of more leisure — it’s just more and more work,” Henwood explained. “The tendency of capitalism, especially in the American system, is just to work more and harder.”



https://truthout.org/articles/its-time-to-shorten-the-american-work-week/



Marx’s son-in-law wrote a pamphlet called the “Right to be Lazy” but his call has gone unheard and unheeded.



https://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/index.htm




Careers (Short Story)

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  A Short Story from the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the 1940s schools had the equivalent of what I suppose today would be called “careers” officers. Three people (it was usually three) would visit a school and pupils of fourteen and fifteen would be called in, one-by-one, for an interview about their job prospects. The interview took place with a head teacher present and was, at least in my own experience, a scanty and one-sided affair. It should be borne in mind that this was 1949 just four years after the end of the second world war and there was a serious shortage of labour. The resultant devastation wreaked by the Blitz called for massive re-building, but the thousands slaughtered both at home and abroad meant that jobs were plentiful but at very low wages in most cases.
In those days (and I suspect the situation is still prevalent today despite mass unemployment) poor families viewed their offspring’s school-leaving as a time when perhaps a little more money would be brought into the house to help alleviate hardship. The word “career” did not come into the thinking of people who spent a major part of their existence wondering where the next meal was coming from. And as far as I know not one child went from my school to either Grammar school or to a university. As for me, I was aware that, like my brothers before me, I would one day quit school and be expected to do something to contribute to household funds, but what that “something” was going to be was a thought I had never entertained. I think I fondly imagined that once freed from dreary old school I would spend joyous hours reading and writing or tearing round streets on the clapped-out old bike a neighbour had passed on to me. And I was encouraged in this self-deception simply because no-one at home had thought to discuss with me how I was going to earn a living, though once my father had remarked that he would not want to see me end up at Tate & Lyle’s, the sugar factory on the other side of the Thames.
I remember my career interview with as much clarity as though it was yesterday. Hauled in from the playground where I had been taking part in a game of net-ball, sweaty and dishevelled, I entered a room where four people, one woman, two men and the headmaster, sat round a table and eyed me suspiciously. But without looking at me the woman asked “What are you going to do when you leave school?” Without a moment’s hesitation I told her “I am going to write, Miss”. There was a stunned silence. I knew by the smiles of disbelief on the faces of those present that I had voiced a preposterous idea. The headmaster cleared his throat. “Heather writes very competent essays and poetry and edits the school magazine, but her other subjects are weak, particularly her maths. She could never earn her living as a writer.” I keenly felt the injustice of this statement. I had never said that I wished to earn my living as a writer. I had been asked what I was going to do when I left school and had answered in all honesty that I was going to write.
The woman said, still avoiding looking at me directly (I noticed that nobody looked at me or even addressed their remarks to me; they spoke only to each other) “What about an office job?” The headmaster stroked his chin. “Yes,” he said, “we had given that some consideration.” I wondered who had given that “some consideration” because it certainly wasn’t me. Then one of the men consulted his notes. “You could get a job in a shop,” he told me. Well, he didn’t actually tell me, he told the others. The second man ventured another splendid proposal. “What about a factory?” I was beginning to feel that eventually someone would come up with the bright idea of suggesting sending me up chimneys like poor Tom in The Water Babies.
I was gazing out of the window as they talked among themselves. I heard murmurs of “Pleasing appearance” and “Nicely spoken”. How could they tell? I had spoken only six words since I had entered the room.
The rest of that interview has always remained rather hazy for me. When I left that room depression descended heavily upon me. I saw, in my mind’s eye, years and years of office, shop and factory work stretching out before me. The attitude of those people, helpful though they may have thought they were being, had instilled in me the notion that I really wasn’t up to much, that I was in some way deficient. Now I know what is meant by a self-fulfilling prophecy. If children are told they cannot do this or that, then the chances are that they never will. To me education means always starting with the premise that kids are unique and social little beings, that they can do anything. But if they are treated as I was, only as fodder for a capitalist system, then in all probability they will become unhappy adults doing work that in their hearts they despise. That is what happened to me.
Heather Ball



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